#like once a week do a puppets bunker

[ussgallifrey]

(She Moves With) Shameless Wonder | 19

✦ Summary: Your badge clearly said SHIELD consultant, so you weren’t entirely sure where Fury was getting this whole make you an Avenger idea from. But you had a feeling it might have something to do with the recent discovery of an artifact at the bottom of the Arctic Sea.

✦ Pairing: Steve Rogers x Female Reader

✦ Warnings: Canon divergence, language, mentions of WWII.

✦ Word Count: 5.4k

✦ Playlist: Here

✦ Author’s Note: And now we officially enter the Age of Ultron arc. This section of the story will be experiencing some of the biggest changes to the canon as I try to fix the mess that was the second Avengers movie.

[Master List]

The work you did was strictly off the books, so to speak. After the fall of SHIELD, you quickly disappeared into the shadows - much like the infamous ghost of a man who had been used like a puppet by the infernal organization that had grown within the once trusted global security organization.

Humans were used to that from you, though. Unlike the flash and fantastic showboating of Tony and his suits, or the iconic alter-persona of Dr. Banner, you were just in the background. You rarely appeared on newsreels after the Battle of New York, three years prior. And only a few glimpses of your person were to be shared in the aftermath of the Triskelion disaster. 

No, you preferred it this way. So similar to the way you used to exist within these mortal confines on Earth.

Nick Fury had changed that aspect of your life once the trickster god seemed fit to cause chaos in the human realm. You enjoyed the anonymity of your previous existence and it was one you were more than eager to return to - especially when said ex-Director requested your help in dismantling the old regimes of HYDRA.

When Agent Carter dropped the entirety of SHIELD’s files onto the internet, far more than what should have ever been buried was recovered. Maybe it was a sense of guilt - knowing you had participated in years of the organization without noticing this evil growth from within - that sent you on trail after trail. 

Like connecting points on a spiderweb, the bases and old headquarters appeared from within their dusty tombs, encrypted evidence falling to the wayside in the aftermath.

Warsaw is one more checkpoint on the seemingly never-ending list of missions. Deep within the depths of the Political Science and International Studies building, lost behind fake walls and hidden staircases rests yet another HYDRA remnant of post-war Europe.

The air itself is stale and stagnant from disuse. Dust floats down in an ongoing cascade within the beam of ancient overhead lights. You had suspected as much - this close to the general populace, it would have been a miracle if this place was still in operation. But still, you sweep the rooms - from the offices to the medical ward, to the holding cells. Carefully skimming through the few remaining documents left behind by the previous occupants.

You had only discovered the location of this particular bunker two weeks ago. And from there, it had been over a month since finding the vague mention of a Polish bunker within the notes of a report from a facility in Finland.

The surprisingly large underground compound must stretch beneath the entirety of the central university, so you assumed. With its twisting hallways and flickering lights that give it an all too familiar eerieness about the place. Not to mention the time it had taken you to scout out the entrance and finally calculate a time in which you could slip inside unnoticed by the students.

Nick would be content to mark another check on the list, even if this particular place gave you little information that wasn’t already common knowledge for HYDRA operations.

As you exit the ex-commander’s office at the end of the hall, a folder of possibly useful files in the crook of your arm, you come to an immediate stop when you hear the sound of muffled voices up ahead.

Pressing against the wall, craning your neck ever so slightly to try and distinguish the sound. You had observed this place for well over two weeks now and never once had you seen a single person stop at the hidden wall entrance. The amount of dust and decay within proved that you had been one of the first people to open this particular tomb. But perhaps an unknown alarm had been triggered?

Preparing yourself, as the sound of feet grows closer and the voices come to a sudden deafening silence, with a steadying breath you round the corner of the hallway and immediately have to throw your arm up to block the attack.

Sharp rounded metal meets the backside of your forearm, bouncing off of your body with a reverberating sound as the object hits the wall before being swiped up by the assailant once again.

Bringing your hands up to a defensive stance, the adrenaline rushes from your body as you stare down the three familiar faces just a few feet away.

“Steve?”

The supersoldier, with his shocked gaping mouth, slowly lowers his shield and takes a hesitant step forward - as if expecting you to vanish from sight. 

“Athena?”

Your lips break into a smile as you cross the floor to meet him halfway, eyeing the shared look that Nat and Sam share just behind the man’s back.

“Wow,” he blinks, lips curving up into a warm smile though his features are slightly obscured by the harsh lighting in the tunnel, “Are you… are you good? I wasn’t expecting to - you know,” the supersoldier gestures vaguely at your arm.

With a laugh, you say, “Come on, you know it’ll take more than that shield of yours to get me.”

He shakes his head, chuckling, “Right, right. So… still doing Fury’s work?”

Tapping the folder once, you reply, “You know it. Better question, what are you three doing in the middle of Warsaw?”

It had been nearly three months since you had last caught up with him in New York. And between Nick’s request for limited contact, you were really only able to tell him about the various locations you tackled after the fact.

At that, he glances back at his companions, looking a hint hesitant to admit, “This was one of the first places Buck was taken to after… the train.”

With a little hum of understanding, you pull back, “I’m not sure what exactly you’re expecting to find here, but I only grabbed these from the commandment’s drawers - nothing more than a collection of generals and possible locations.”

He gives a terse nod, deciding to take a look around for themselves anyway. Without another word, you return to the interior entrance of the bunker - by the concrete stairwell - to wait for your friends.

You knew that Steve had continued looking for Bucky after the events in D.C., but the few times you spoke about it together he had made very little progress. Even with the help of Tony and his access to the millions of cameras within the nation’s capital, the man had still managed to disappear without so much as a footprint left behind.

It wasn’t any wonder that Steve had turned to tracking him through the past. Who knows what little piece of information could give value to his old friend’s current whereabouts?

The four of you walk companionably through the University’s main courtyard, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible - though with Steve walking next to you, even with his baseball cap and sunglasses, it was hard not to be noticed.

He had not found whatever it was he had been searching for, apparent in the grim frown on his face as he emerged from the hidden bunker complex. It had merely been a stop between the Alps and Moscow in Bucky’s journey, he told you. Maybe there had been records at some point, but with the University basically destroyed to its foundation in the war, and the way the Nazis had departed when the Soviets came in, well… it was a miracle that any record from 1945 had survived.

“So, where are you staying?” you ask, glancing over at Sam.

He huffs, eyes flicking further over to Natasha who’s walking beside him, “Nowhere yet. And I’ve had my fair share of trying to sleep on the jet.”

The thought of the three of them crammed into the seats of a quinjet makes you smile, “Well, there’s plenty of hotels and such around here, pretty cheap too. Though, I’m sure you - ” you direct that towards Natasha, specifically, “ - probably have a good contact for that.”

She nods, typing something on her phone, “That I do.”

“And you?”

You turn to look at the man on your right-hand side, pausing at the crosswalk for the busy street along the river. He looks calm in the afternoon light, with only the faintest dusting of worry around his eyes. Steve shoves his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels for a moment as he stares you down - a small smirk ready to form on the outer corner of his lips.

“Where am I staying, you mean?”

He nods. The crosswalk clears of traffic.

Clutching the folder to your chest, you answer, “Nick has a place for me in Old Town. Been there since the fifth. Right above a tea house.”

You can feel the heat of his body next to yours, though your arms barely even brush as you walk down the sidewalk, side-by-side. Behind you, you can hear the very muffled noise of Sam and Natasha conversing, though you can’t make out the words for the life of you as cars zoom by and more tourists pass you.

“So,” Steve’s forearm lightly collides into your own, “You’ve been in Poland since the fifth?”

You laugh, having to crane your neck slightly to get a better look at his face, “No, I’ve been in Warsaw since the fifth. I was in Lębork before that, and Koszalin before that. So… about six weeks or so?”

“What?” Sam chimes in, “Can’t use your zap zap teleport powers?”

Your features furrow for a moment, “Not since the fall of SHIELD. Thanks to Nick, Pierce got a hold of the formula they used to track my arrivals. Cosmic energy released on a small scale, but noticeable enough if you know where to look. So, I keep the journeying pretty limited these days.”

The other man gives a thoughtful ahh, looking like he wants to ask possibly more questions of you, but seems to find a reason to close his lips once again. You look over at Steve, but his own gaze seems to be pulled in the opposite direction.

Eventually, the colorful brick masonry of Old Town comes into view. Castle Square is bustling with people: tourists posing by Sigismund's Column, locals seated outside of the Italian restaurant, all set to the sound of a plinking street organ grinder somewhere nearby. 

Glancing over at two of your companions, you watch as Natasha pulls at Sam’s forearm to which he replies with a hushed okay okay. Steve seems oblivious to them as he slowly takes in the Square. You instantly feel the need to move alongside him as he squints against the radiant light from overhead.

“First time in Warsaw?”

He blinks, gaze lost in a realm known only to him as a distant voice passes his lips, “No… not my first time.”

At once, you understand in so few words. You nudge his arm with your elbow as you lean into his space.

“It took years to get it back to this. Had to rebuild everything from scratch, basically.”

He sniffs, eyes a little glassy when he asks, “When did you…?”

“April 1945. And again in ‘52, ‘65, ‘83, and ‘91. I’m probably missing a date or two, but I think that’s the gist of it. I worked at the National Museum for a year, you know,” you watch as his eyes seem to pull their focus back towards you and away from whatever long-gone memory had held his attention.

Steve turns his body towards yours, interest piqued, “Where did you work?”

With a knowing smile on your face, you look up at him, “Would you be that surprised to hear that I oversaw the Gallery of Ancient Art?”

At that, he tilts his head back and laughs.

“It’s a bit of a personal specialty,” you say with a playful curve to your lips.

“Hey! Shieldmaidens.”

You both turn towards Natasha who has a permanent smirk on her face, though there’s something else there - in her eyes. Steve gives an exasperated huff, clearly in disagreement over the given nickname.

“I’m gonna take this one,” she pulls on Sam’s arm, “and get the three of us a place to stay for the night.”

Steve presses forward, “Okay, we can catch up later - ” he smiles down at you, a hand on your shoulder as he goes to leave.

“Hey, you two go on. Looks like you were reminiscing and talking about shared interests or whatever it is you two do,” Sam grins. “I’m just carrying the bags and then I plan on passing out once she gets us a room.”

“Yeah,” Natasha agrees. “Don’t let us spoil you two catching up. It’s been, what Rogers, three months?”

The supersoldier in question coughs roughly into his fist, all of his attention focused away from you, “If you’re sure,” he says with a slightly biting tone that you’re surprised to hear.

“Positive,” Sam beams, allowing himself to be led away by the redhead.

The silence stretches between the two of you as you watch your companions walk away, disappearing into the crowd of people and down one of the first brick roads. Steve seems rigid beside you now, as he flexes his fist next to his side. You’re still not sure why there’s been a sudden change in his demeanor, but it had been three months since you’d had the chance to catch up with each other.

“So…” you start, feeling shockingly cautious as you turn towards the man next to you.

With a long exhale, Steve slowly turns towards you, “So…?”

The tea house is off the tourist path. A small sign next to the door is its only indicator of existence - though the larger sign for the pub next door seems to garner most of the attention from passersby. At the end of the entrance hall stands two sets of stairs: the keycard-locked wooden staircase that leads up to the rental apartments and the slightly curved stairs that lead down to the hidden restaurant.

Steve has to hunch his shoulders and duck his head to make it through the bottom stone archway.

The room is cave-like with its candle-lit aura. Curved archways made of light-colored bricks make up the small room. Several small petrified log tables line the outer perimeter of the chamber, with cushioned ottomans and wooden chairs dispersed evenly throughout. A luminescent counter rests along the back wall between a shelf of tea boxes and the main seating area, with antique teapots lining the wooden serving surface.

You pick the table in the far corner of the room, in a small alcove where the outline of a now bricked-up window resides. A carefully stacked bookcase rests beside the table where a long white-stick candle is already lit and waiting.

For the middle of the week, the patronage is low for the time of day. With only a group of young women occupying the table next to the stairs.

Steve takes a seat on the ottoman opposite yours, ruffling his hair with his hand after pulling his baseball cap off and tucking it away on his knee. His sunglasses remain folded on the hook of his shirt collar.

After tucking the folder away for later, you shyly meet his eyes in the low light of the room, “So… how bad is your Polish?”

He folds his hands onto the tabletop, taking a long sweeping glance around the room before answering with a genuine, “Bad. Very bad.”

With a knowing smile, you drop your elbow onto the table and stare at him - glad for the companionship once again, “If we were anywhere else in town, you’d be in luck. Almost everyone speaks English, German, or Russian here - helps with the tourists.”

His blue eyes seem to sparkle as he rests his cheek on his hand, “I’m guessing there’s a but to that?”

“However,” you smirk, “You’re very fortunate that your dearest friend is quite fluent in Polish these days.”

The blonde laughs with a warm chuckle, muttering a low, “Very lucky, indeed.”

You order for the two of you at the counter, seeing the way that Steve has turned almost fully in his seat to watch you from across the room.

Poproszę grzane wina i czarne herbatę. Och, i lawendowy sernik, you tell the server before returning to your table and immediately telling the supersoldier that he’ll just have to trust your ordering-ability and maintain a little bit of patience.

An indie rock station plays in the background as the two of you sip from your drinks - you from your mulled wine and Steve from his black tea. He had spent an inordinate amount of time looking over the painted porcelain of the cup and saucer he had been given by the waitstaff.

“So,” you begin, lowering your drink, “If you’re retracing his steps, where’s the next stop?”

His eyes flick over his cup to your face for a moment as he finishes drinking from his tea blend, carefully placing it back down on the saucer before responding.

“I don’t actually know. I was hoping we’d find the smallest lead down there, but… here we are. Square one, again.”

You make a low hum in your throat, folding your hands onto your lap as you watch a new group descend the stairs in search of their own table.

“And I assume there have been no sightings since…?”

Steve gives a shake of his head, eyes pressed closed.

“I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”

You reach across the small table to squeeze his free hand and his eyes blink back open. His thumb is calloused and warm as it rubs over the back of your hand.

“Thanks,” he ducks his head for a second, cheeks pink from the heat of his drink. “But we don’t have to talk work.”

“Okay,” you lean back in your seat, allowing your hand to slip from his grasp - if only to rest on the table just a breath away from his own. “How’s living with the resident playboy billionaire then?”

Steve huffs into his drink, a smile spreading to his face though he tries to hide it behind his cup, “Surprisingly good?”

Your brows raise in their own volition, “Really?”

He nods as you take a long sip from your wine.

“Mostly stays down in his lab, so not a bad roommate. Bruce is around a lot. Sometimes Clint or Nat. It’s a little… modern for my taste. But, I can’t beat the gym he has set up. Have you ever seen the training rooms there?”

“Once,” you admit, eyeing the lavender cheesecake that the waitress brings over to your table. You wait for her to leave before prodding, “So, are you still looking for your own place in the city or…?”

With a lackluster shrug on his part, “I don’t know. A place in Brooklyn is worth more than I’m willing to spend. And, I hate to say it, but it’s not all that bad living at the Tower.”

Scooping a piece of the dessert with your spoon, you can’t help but let out a small moan of satisfaction as the flavor hits your tongue. You miss the way that Steve’s eyes flash and darken all at once.

“Mmm,” you swallow, offering a sheepish smile, “There’s nothing wrong with that though, Rogers. Probably good for you to be around people like that. Well… maybe not Tony necessarily.”

He chuckles, watching you with a comfortable look on his face - golden light from the candle making his features appear more rugged than usual, “Think I could ever convince you to get a room there?”

Your spoon freezes halfway to your mouth as the words hit you.

“Are you serious? Me? Live there with you nutcases?”

The candlelight’s flickering flame dances in the depths of his ocean blue irises as he stares at you from across the table.

“Thor does.”

You blink.

Steve reiterates, “Thor. He has a room at the Tower. Comes and stays for a few weeks at a time.”

“I… I thought him and the astrophysicist were - they are, were, living together last I knew.”

It wasn’t often that the two of you conversed, you and the God of Thunder. But the last meeting, some six odd months back, he had been gushing over the good Jane Foster, and did you ever try rollerblading? He had grown quite fond of it thanks to her. 

Had so much changed since that last conversation?

“Huh,” is all you can manage, staring into the swirling reds of your mulled wine for a moment.

“Just a thought,” he says quickly, as though it had merely been a silly idea on his part and not an actual very serious suggestion. The rapid tapping of his fingers against the table makes it clear how quickly the conversation has shifted.

“So,” he breathes out in a rush, forcing a smile, “You’ve been here for a month and a half. And the other six weeks?”

Grateful for the change in topic, you eagerly begin regaling your journey from Sweden to Finland, sailing across the Baltic Sea. More bunkers and compounds and abandoned (or not so abandoned) research facilities stretching between Estonia and Lithuania. Traveling across half of Europe without your powers, you remind him.

He listens to your stories, enraptured as your drinks cool in their cups and more and more people fill the tea house.

Steve tells you about training with Natasha and following strange leads across Southern France in search of Bucky. You hear all about Sam’s new baby nephew and how he can’t stop showing them all photos on his phone every time his sister sends him one (per his request). The two of you talk and talk until you can barely hear each other over the sound of the crowd.

Placing his hat back on, though forgoing his sunglasses, Steve holds the folder for you as you collect your coat and go to pay and tip the staff.

Back in the hallway, you can hear the muffled sound of the raucous patrons from the neighboring pub. When you look down towards the front door, you can see the shop lights flickering against the darkness of the evening dusk. The two of you linger, there, in the space between.

“How long do you think you’ll be staying here?”

The supersoldier tilts his head in thought, “Maybe a day? At most.”

A sudden frown seems to find its way onto your lips and it brings with it the startling realization that you aren’t willing to say goodbye to him just yet.

It was silly, really. Nearly two thousand years on this planet, traversing the globe on your own for centuries at a time. And yet, with only three years of knowing Fury’s team, you had grown strangely attached to them all. 

It was almost painful to admit that someone like Steve Rogers had successfully fused himself into your life. Six weeks on your own, with only text messages on a burner phone shared between you and Nick, and here you were aching for the first bit of familiar human contact you came across.

And as you look at your companion, with his looming physique and soft blue eyes, you find yourself asking, “Do you, uh, wanna come up?”

Gesturing at the closed-off stairs behind you with your thumb.

Steve blinks once - twice - before slowly nodding, a smile tugging at his lips.

“Yeah,” his voice is shockingly low in its tone, “Think I have time for that.”

The rented apartment is warm and inviting with touches of older detailing throughout the small space. On the third floor of the building, up a metal spiral staircase to the fourth floor to access the slanted-ceiling bedroom. It was cramped quarters for sure if more than two people were staying there. Luckily for you, it had perfectly fit your needs for the past two weeks.

But with the hulking presence of the supersoldier suddenly there beside you, invading that already small space, things become far tighter than you realized they could ever be.

Steve lays his folded leather jacket over the back of one of the two dining chairs, watching as you slide off your boots and make for the chest of drawers under the small wall-mounted television set to deposit your folder of files at long last.

When you look back at him, it's with a sudden burst of nervousness that makes you laugh and hold out your arms, “Home sweet home.”

He gives a surmising nod, looking over the tiny kitchen in the corner of the U-shaped living area - with the staircase right dead center in the room, “It’s no Olympian temple.”

You catch the playfulness in his gaze as he slowly makes his way over to you.

“Probably for the best. Gold and glamour never really suited my taste anyway.”

“So,” he comes to a stop just a foot away from you, “How long are you staying here?”

That was a much lesser known fate, you had to admit with a shrug, “However long until Nick sends me another location to scout out.”

The huff of breath that escapes his lips sounds sour to your ears as he asks, “You plan on doing all of Fury’s work for him?”

You smooth your hand over your shirt sleeve, “Keeps me busy.”

Truth be told, you probably could have said no to the ex-Director at any given time and he would have accepted it and found another agent to fill your shoes. This job, though, did keep you busy. It kept you from thinking about Olympus and the betrayal of SHIELD. It was a single-track direction with a clear endpoint.

Was it lingering guilt still keeping you rooted in the position? All those years working for the security agency and never once clocking into the nefarious group buried in the underbelly of SHIELD.

Steve’s face softens with the quietness of your voice, offering a gentle, “Sorry. Guess we both have our own reasons for following these old paper trails, huh?”

You give him a half-smile in reply.

“Was a nice surprise seeing you down there today, actually.”

It was more than nice. It was like a breath of crisp winter air - a relieving balm on the ongoing ache of your solitude. Though the position of his body next to your presence sends your heart racing from the close proximity and the tight space of the apartment becoming an overwhelming force. You back away, to the balcony window - in need of truly fresh air.

“You know,” you gasp softly, trying to steady the flush of heat coursing through your body, “You can’t quite get a view like this back in New York.”

That makes him raise his brows with curiosity as you gesture for him to follow you with the tilting of your chin. Pushing the two-paned window open, you hop up onto the sill and tuck your feet in to hop through to the small metal balcony.

The very distant starlight is barely visible over the brightness of the city. Instead, it's the glowing golden orbs of streetlights that fill the night sky. Steve’s boots make a heavy thud as he lands next to you, resting his arms on the railing as he looks out over the cityscape. A boat horn echos off the Vistula River.

You find that you don’t mind the closeness of the supersoldier out here so much as you did inside.

“Sometimes, I miss the way the stars used to light the sky.”

He turns his head towards you but remains silent.

“Before automatic lights and gas lamps and lanterns. When the moon and stars were enough,” you explain with a distant sort of voice. “All good inventions, but… nothing beats the view of an unpolluted night sky.”

Steve’s eyes are nearly black in the low light that emits out of the window from inside the apartment. His elbow is jutted up against yours on the railing and you find yourself wanting to lean into his radiant heat - if only to stave off the chill of the evening air.

“Sometimes, I remember…” he stops for a moment and clears the hitch in his throat. “When we were taking down HYDRA bases, just the seven of us, we’d find shelter in all sorts of places. Blown-to-bits churches, abandoned barns, sometimes just a makeshift foxhole.”

He stares out over the city, but you imagine it’s not what he’s seeing in his mind’s eye.

“Never could sleep much on those nights. Just remember looking up, seeing that blanket of stars up there, and wondering how the hell something that beautiful could remain untarnished by everything going on down around us. You know?”

You meet his pointed gaze.

Staring at each other for a long silent moment, comfortable in each other’s familiar presence. Steve’s eyes flicker across your face as he suddenly turns to face you, a large warm hand reaching down to gently encircle your wrist.

“Athena…” he murmurs, lowering his head slightly as his eyes flicker down to your chin before moving back to your eyes.

There’s a beat of a moment where you think something’s happening. With the sudden closeness of his face to yours. And you almost find yourself slipping into that moment of unknown with him.

But it’s the sudden shrillness of ringing bells that makes him pull back, angrily fishing his hand into his pocket to retrieve a phone. You give him a small smile, backing up enough on the tiny balcony to give him the idea of space.

“Yeah?” he all but barks into the receiver.

You can’t make out the words from the other person, but his brows shift together as he nods, “Yeah, she’s here.”

Tilting your head in question, he continues to listen to the caller with an increasingly deeper furrow on his face.

“Mhmm, twenty minutes. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Bye.”

He presses the power button and stares at the blank screen for a long moment.

“Dare I ask?”

At the sound of your voice, he pockets the phone once again and says, “That was Nat. Tony put out the call. Thinks he has a location on Loki’s scepter finally.”

Your brows raise in surprise. 

It had been three years since the Battle of New York when the STRIKE team had supposedly taken the scepter into SHIELD’s safe hands. It had been a year since the Triskelion. Nearly nine months since Tony had started sorting through every single file and organizing an ongoing list of people and locations and terrorist groups.

“Where?”

Steve rubs his hands together, looking like he’s all but ready to leap back inside, grab his things, and go.

“Sokovia.”

You nod in understanding, “Well, you better get going then.”

His eyes widen slightly and his head quirks to the side as he looks down at you, “Could probably use another person to even out the team, you know?”

Crossing your arms over your chest, you eye him up, “Is that so?”

He shrugs, “Unless you were looking to be Fury’s loyal agent and go searching through more empty bunkers for him?”

There’s a particular teasing tone of voice there, one that you try to ignore despite the growing smile on your face.

When you throw together your duffel bag of items, tucking the latest folder on top of your belongings, Steve leads you down the stairs and out of the apartment. On the cobblestone streets of Old Town, you could pass for any other tourist couple as the man wraps his arm around your shoulders and guides you to an idling car.

At the airport, in one of the hangars, Sam and Natasha are already waiting for your arrival. The other man stifles a yawn behind his hand as the Russian smirks at your approach, pocketing her phone as she calls out.

“Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

Steve brushes past her, walking up the ramp of the quinjet with a brisk, “Not at all.”

You settle into the secondary seats behind Steve and Natasha - content to let the humans do the flying. Next to you, Sam is already dropping off to sleep, head lolling to the side as you fly over the border of Poland into Germany.

Every now and then, Steve turns in his seat, glancing back at you. For your part, you’re surprisingly happy to find yourself back on a real mission again after all this time. And if it meant that something as big as the scepter was finally put into the right hands, then it was a much better use of your time than running across Europe for Nick.

Offering Steve a gentle smile, you ease yourself back into the hardback chair and settle in for the next few hours of the flight back to New York City.

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#steve rogers x female reader #steve rogers x reader #marvel fan fic #series: shameless wonder #my fic

[motheatenscarf]

So much is happening so fast in Endwalker and I want to keep playing, but I also want to catch up and post some thoughts about it, but also like.

God, there's 80 things to unpack for every 5 quests I do. Just.

The existential horror of the ancient moon ghosts.

Zenos' weird "No, I don't want to fight you if you're not gonna pay 100% attention to our rivalry :<" pouting.

The fact that there's a colony of moon rabbits that turned the moon into a spaceship to ferry the people of the world to a new home once the Final Days returned.

The slow ticking of the doomsday clock.

The fact that Thancred casually said "Hey, bright side; same hat! :D" about getting one's body stolen and puppeted by someone else, but STILL hasn't talked about getting possessed by Lahabrea

The suicide of the 1st Legion Legatus whose name I forget, the BLEAK but believable way of Garlemald being broken under its own martial weight being manipulated against it and the people's reactions to that.

And how my poor poor WoL is psychologically reacting to ALL OF THIS happening over the course of LESS THAN A WEEK.

And I'm also realizing that like, my character is from Garlemald, she left under bad circumstances and only her mom was still left alive. And uh. She never like, checked back in, to see if her mom got in trouble for the crimes Talia committed against the state, or if when word got back that she was this Eikon slayer, the blame landed on her mother.

Was she sent to a gulag? Was she just executed? Was she incorporated into someone's power structure as a researcher? Did she help create any of the myriad horrors Talia has fought? Did she just flee and go into hiding,? Did she leave the country? Was she still there when the tempering happened? Did she find a radio and is waiting somewhere, half-frozen to death and starving in a bunker? Was she already killed in the civil war?

Like at least half the country's population is probably toast, and that's being optimistic. The ones who didn't die in the war and weren't tempered have been running low on heat and supplies for months, and how many more will kill themselves rather than accept Eorzean aid? And how many of the ones who survived the devastation but did get tempered can even be saved? How many are too far gone physically to be recovered? How many will even allow themselves to be captured with nonlethal force? I think it's not unreasonable to estimate that like, probably a good 3/4 of the people who lived in Garlemald are just... gone.

And how far, FAR too many of those survivors will never get closure on what happened to most of their loved ones.

So I've been wracking my brain to come up with what the most interesting answer would be for what happened to Echidna, Talia's mom, and I think the most interesting conclusion is a lack of closure.

She'll never know. She'll never get to reconcile or officially burn the bridge or get any kind of closure or explanation from her.

Because there are SO MANY people who are going through exactly what she's going through right now in Garlemald. If the narrative killed Haurchefant to teach the WoL a lesson about loss and selfless, reckless love in the face of war, giving them a personal investment to end the Dragonsong war, I think I can give Talia a dead mom to teach her a lesson about

a.) DIRECTLY relating to what the survivors of the initial Final Days went through, with that "tragedy but no catharsis; truth but no meaning," to the kind of devastation which befell her home.

and b.) give her some mommy issues to maybe project onto whatever the fuck is going on with Hydalen, since like her mother, she is also distant and obfuscating and speaks in riddles and half-truths while insisting it's for her own good.

And it probably is! I'm really enjoying that the narrative is a lot more vague about if Hydalen is uh, entirely "good" or not, it's left far more up to interpretation and it lets the player express doubt and resentment toward her. Which is good, because I think it's definitely a complicated situation which she did her best to resolve, given how the deck was stacked against her, but like all mothers doing their honest to god best, she still made some mistakes and did some damage.

Which, again, I LIKE! Let her be complicated, her adversaries certainly are, and I love stories where there's no real "bad" or "good" guys, there's just people doing their best to do what they think is right. People disagreeing is far more interesting than the boring diametrically opposed essentialism of light vs. dark this game started out with between Hydalen and the Ascians. I think if the Ascians got the Shadowbringers treatment of pulling the curtain back and humanizing them, Hydalen needs the same. And spoiler alert, humans are flawed. I'm glad it isn't framing her anymore as some bottomless font of moral purity and goodness no matter what mistakes she makes, that's the shit I HATED about Minfilia pre-Shadowbringers.

Anyway, that was a tangent, and you see how long it is? You see how I'm incapable of brevity?

YEAH, I have like 20 more posts of this length I can write about like, everything that just happened between starting Garlemald and meeting the Noah's Ark NASA Moon Bunnies

#Caitlin Plays FF14 #FF14 spoilers #Eschatalia Solanum

[izayoichan]

🎶

#FFXIV Screenshots #ffxiv viera #Tadashi Toshiro #ffxiv screenies #was watching a friend decorate their room and took some screenshots while waiting #it happens #and I do still like this lady after all #so why not #balmung #sadly I play her very little #like once a week do a puppets bunker #the downside to being on my non main server

[gravegroves]

It's not that Billy isn't grateful that the bastard sprung him out of the secret government lab he'd woken up in and subsequently spent weeks or maybe months being poked and prodded.

But out of all the closeted queers in Indiana that could have taken Billy under their wing, Murray goddamn Bauman is probably the last one that should legally be allowed to care for another human being. On the flip side, he may have single-handedly convinced Billy that heaven must be real, if only because Murray has most certainly dragged Billy to some version of hell. A better hell than he'd come from, but hell all the same.

Billy's starting to really hate classical music.

The fact that he's still bedbound doesn't help the situation any. If he could walk he'd smash that damn sound system with his bare hands or just fucking leave. But walking isn't an option while his body tries to heal, so if Murray doesn't soon turn off the 9th repeat of that Bach-Rachmaninov-Mozart bullshit he's blasting throughout the bunker-like structure Billy has been forced to call home for the past two weeks, he's going to strangle himself to death with the IV tube still lodged in his arm. Hopefully he'll shit himself after the fact and Murray will be forced to clean that up too.

"Turn that crap off or take me back to Hawkins you balding piece of shit! At least my dad only beat me!" Billy roars at the water stained concrete ceiling and grits his teeth against the pain when the move pulls on what feels like all the stitches in his body.

Murray glides into his field of vision like an unwashed spectre and throws himself onto the couch opposite the one Billy's lying on, still dressed in that same ratty bathrobe that probably hasn't been on the laundry pile in years, smiling that maniacal smile that Billy is less and less convinced is put-on by the day.

"Self degrading humor to mask the pain. You'll fit in here just fine." Murray sing-songs before getting back up and scuttling his way out of the room like the cockroach he is and into what Billy thinks might be the kitchen. Doesn't exactly know the layout of the hovel they're in, being bed-bound and all that.

The music cuts out and all the muscles in Billy's body slowly unwind as he breathes a sigh of relief.

Murray comes back with a flask of something foreign and pours a generous glass before handing it off to him, either unaware that Billy probably shouldn't be mixing alcohol with the cocktail of drugs he's still on or, more likely, doesn't give a shit. Billy downs it before the man can even open his mouth, too quick to really appreciate how it goes down smoother than water.

"You fucking philistine. That's good Stolichnaya." Murray grins before downing his own helping straight from the bottle.

"You a commie?" Billy asks, such a carbon copy of Neil he can almost feel the man's hand up his ass directing his words like a fucking puppet and he bites his tongue hard enough to hurt. Not that Billy's a big fan of the commies or the government or Neil or anyone really, but he's fairly sure they're the worse guys if this whole situation were a contest.

"Nice ideology, poor execution. No, but I'm gonna teach you how to speak like one Billy-boy!" Murray says, snatching away Billy's empty glass and filling it for him once again. "No one learns Russian well when they're sober though, so drink your heart out. It's gonna be a long year."

Billy stares.

"The fuck am I learning Russian for?"

Murray grins.

"Gotta go save a bigger Bastard than you or I."

"And why the fuck would I do that?"

Murray throws his hands out wide, "For the greater good, Billy. And maybe Steve Harrington will touch your dick about it, who knows."

Drugs really have a way of loosening Billy's tongue as it turns out, and it had taken a good day and a half for the worst of the effects to wear off after Murray had gotten him out. The Bastard hadn't let the opportunity to pry slip by him though, that's for fucking sure.

Billy scowls.

Besides, Steve Harrington doesn't even know that Billy's still alive. No one does. And even if he did… well.

The greater good will have to be enough, he supposes.

#a weird little thing i've had lying around #we put down my cat that other day and i'm sad as fuck #billy hargrove #murray bauman #steve harrington #pre-harringrove #harringrove #gravegroves writes

[one-more-offbeat-anthem]

after the credits

to thirteen years of cas and of the greatest love story ever told...an empty rescue fic for y’all :) 2.3k,  read on ao3 here

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

After a while, Castiel gets tired of watching. He’s practically dreaming all the time, but he’s so tired.

Eternal sleep is not restful.

He can’t leave the Empty, but he manages to mold it, with his mind, into a theater. He went to one once, with Dean, and there are probably nicer theaters, like those for plays and operas, but this movie theater is right for him. If he concentrates, he can almost smell burnt, buttery popcorn and spilled soda and old carpet, and Dean right next to him, aftershave and car oil and whiskey.

Almost.

The scenes unfold in a memorable order, because they’re Cas’s own memories. At first, he tried to jump in, alter the scene, but he’s powerless. So, like clockwork, he watches. He’s saving Dean in hell. He’s being stabbed in the chest by the same man he raised. He’s asking Dean to get answers from Alastair and then almost getting the grace pressed out of him. He’s slamming his palm onto a bloody sigil. He’s--

Everything, all of his twelve years on earth, pass by, over and over and over again.

Right now, it’s an early scene, not far into the cycle. It’s not one of his favorites, because he can see the expression on his face, remembers exactly how he felt. Remembers that he he was feeling at all.

“That was a pretty awkward kiss, huh?”

Cas turns sharply at the sound of Dean’s voice. Of course, Dean does talk in this scene, before he kisses Anna. But this Dean is sitting next to him, frowning at the screen.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Cas says.

“I know.”

Chances are this is just the Empty trying to mess with him. Last week a random trashcan showed up in his theater. Or maybe it was last year, or a millenia ago, or five minutes from now. Time is weird.

They keep watching in silence. On the screen, in the memory, Cas’s head jerks away from the sight of Dean and Anna kissing. The scene flips then, to a park at night, Anna right in front of Cas, no Dean in sight.

“For the first time, I feel...” Memory-Cas says.

“It gets worse,” Anna warns.

“So your first feeling….” Dean starts.

“It was something.” Cas can’t look at him. The scene on-screen changes.

Dean, to his merit, doesn’t press.

The memories progress through the year they spent trying to stop the apocalypse, the year that ended with Sam diving into the pit and Dean going off to Lisa’s. Then through Cas starting to work with Crowley, a conversation that happened right behind Dean without his knowledge.

On-screen, Cas is watching Dean rake leaves. The expression on his face is nearly mournful. After a moment, Crowley steps into view.

“Ah, Castiel. Angel of Thursday. Just not your day, is it?” Crowley says.

“What are you doing here?” Memory-Cas asks.

“I want you to help me help ourselves.”

“Speak plain.”

Crowley smirks. “I want to discuss a simple business transaction. That’s all.”

“You want to make a deal? With me? I’m an Angel, you ass. ”

The scene flips again.

“Is there a way to pause this?” Dean asks.

Cas shakes his head. “It just does this, on a loop. I can’t sleep. The Empty won’t let me.” He puts a hand on the armrest between them. “I forced the theater up, to make it better.”

“It looks a lot like that theater we went to once.”

“I know.” Cas stares at Dean for a moment, looks away.

Many of these scenes are things Dean knows of. Cas works with Crowley, gets locked in a ring of fire, feels his chest seize up as Dean looks back for a moment. Watches the Leviathans lead him to a lake. They meet again on porch steps, Cas unable to remember who he is but still able to figure out that Dean is important. Cas gets his memories back, takes on Sam’s hell trauma. They go to Purgatory, Cas stays behind. It’s like clockwork.

Until.

“I don’t remember that,” Dean says slowly, watching himself die on the screen. “You never--you’ve never killed me.”

“Yes and no.” Cas knows what’s coming next--he’s going to kill Dean thousands of times. Each one is the same, with Cas in tears as these copies, mock-ups of Dean struggle, beg and plead, tell him not to. Each time, Naomi makes him do it again.

Until, finally, he doesn’t hesitate.

And she says he’s ready.

As they watch that scene in the crypt unfold, with the real Dean at Cas’s mercy, Dean leans forward, putting his elbows on his thighs and propping his chin in his hands. “You lied.”

“Hm?”

“You said you didn’t know what broke the connection.” Dean twists his head to look at Cas. “But you did.”

“I did,” Cas assents.

They watch Cas ride cross-country on a bus, pulling out his phone and almost calling Dean over and over again.

“Is there a way that we can see some of my memories?” Dean asks.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”.

Dean shrugs. “Well, I am here, and you figured out how to make a friggin movie theater, so I think I can do it.”

The image on the screen shudders, coalesces, breaks into a million pieces and then reforms. Dean is standing on the edge of a lake, picking up Cas’s coat, still covered in Leviathan goo. “You dumb son of a bitch,” Memory-Dean mutters, wrapping up the coat in his arms.

The scene flickers again--the coat in those same hands, moving from car to car to car, and then being passed to Cas. “I always knew you’d come back ,” Memory-Dean says. It’s a soft scene, almost, but then it flips to Dean seizing a monster’s collar in purgatory. He’s covered in blood and grime as he shoves the monster up against a tree, practically growling, “Where’s the angel?”

Even after the monster answers, Dean guts him.

It’s a cycle. The memory blurs through sleepless nights, through Dean stepping into streams to pray, prayers Cas knows well. It pushes past Cas letting go of Dean’s arm in the portal, and here’s something else new: Dean sees Cas on the side of the road, sees him outside the window while it pours down rain, sitting bolt upright at the phantom sight of Cas’s face.

“Why are you here?” Cas finally asks. This must really be Dean, after all. The Empty wouldn’t know these things, wouldn’t be able to dream them up. They’re too good, too honest.

“To bring you home.” Dean kicks the back of the seat in front of him, leans back in his own chair.

“I can’t go home.”

“You should.” The scene on screen rapidly changes--it’s Dean as he looks now, carrying a little boy on his back. The little boy is blonde, round-faced, holding onto Dean’s neck for dear life, laughing as Dean swings around.

“Is that--” No, it can’t be.

“Yep. He’s four, you know.” Dean clears his throat. “He misses you.”

“I wish I could have gotten to say good-bye.” Cas trails off.

“Come home. Then you never have to say it.”

Cas shakes his head. On the screen, Dean is reading to Jack, Jack following the words with a chubby finger. “It would be...awkward.”

“How?” Dean raises an eyebrow. “We’re family, dude. Jack misses you, Sam misses you, and Eileen’s been hanging around, and me…” Dean clamps his mouth shut.

That’s why.

“Things aren’t going to be the same. Not after…” Cas takes a deep breath. “What I said. We won’t be able to ignore it.”

“Then we won’t.”

“Dean--”

“You don’t know?” Dean’s eyebrows furrow. “You don’t know. Okay. I, uh…” The screen turns black.

“You what?” Cas is almost afraid to know.

“I didn’t want you to see this.”

The blackness unfurls into Billie’s library, Dean standing in front of her. They’re clearly in the middle of a conversation.

“What do you want me to say?” Memory-Dean asks. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. ”

“Don’t you?” Billie replies.

“I couldn’t save Mom. I couldn’t save Cas. I can’t even save a scared little kid. Sam keeps trying to fix it, but I just keep dragging him down. So I’m not going to beg. Okay, if it’s my time, it’s my time.”

“Dean--” Cas starts, but Dean just looks at the floor, like he’s trying to avoid this.

“You really believe that,” Billie says. “You wanna die.”

“When was this?” Cas asks, speaking over the rest of Billie’s statement.

“It was...right before we, uh, got the call from you. That you were back.” Dean leans his head all the way up, looks at what would be the movie theater’s ceiling, if it wasn’t in the void. “I had a bad time. I…I would show it to you. But I don’t want you to see me like that. I held it together enough to wrap your body and burn it…”

“Hunter’s funeral.”

“Only kind I know how to do.” Dean swallows, audibly. “I’m doing what I can now. Having Jack to take care of, and Eileen around, too, helps. But it’s…” He finally looks at Cas again. “Please let me take you home. Please come home with me.”

Cas would do anything for Dean Winchester. He has done anything for him before. So he will grant him this, at least the illusion, because Cas knows he can’t leave the Empty. He’s trapped here for eternity.

He takes Dean’s hand.

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

There is a little boy crawling on him.

“Daddy,” the boy says, poking his face, “I know you’re awake.”

“Jack,” Dean says, from somewhere up above, “Cas is still sleeping.”

Cas blinks rapidly. “‘M not.”

“Shouldn’t’ve said that.” Dean releases Jack, and Jack fully clambers onto Cas.

“I missed you,” Jack says.

“I missed you too.” Cas holds onto him, tight. He’s so small, like he’s supposed to be. A kid. Safe.

Cas thinks he might be in Dean’s bed.

The bunker, he discovers, looks much the same. He was gone for four months, in which time Dean and Sam took care of Chuck, Jack became a kid, and Eileen became a permanent fixture. When Dean and Sam aren’t looking, she signs to Cas, “He already looks better.”

“Who, Dean?” Cas signs back.

Eileen nods. “He had a pretty bad time.”

Dean turns around then, and Eileen presses a finger to her lips.

There’s not a quiet moment for the rest of the day. Sam explains what happened--”You might be human now,” he says, and Cas replies, “I’m not tired yet.”--and Jack wants Cas to read to him and play Barbies and racecars and puppets (apparently Dean built Jack’s little puppet theater, which--).

After dinner (spaghetti and meatballs, and Dean has a Coke instead of beer, Cas notices), everyone goes off to bed, and Cas realizes he is tired, which is something to think about.

He starts to head to the room he typically stays in, but Dean seizes the top of his arm. “Nope, you’re coming with me.” Dean drags Cas down the hall towards his room.

Cas hadn’t gotten a good luck at it earlier, what with Jack climbing all over him, but he sees it now. Dean’s bed unmade, scraps of random paper littered across the dresser, a picture Cas recognizes because he and Dean are wearing cowboy hats, and now he knows how Dean was really doing right before that case in Dodge City--

There’s also a dent in the wall. That’s new.

Dean follows Cas’s gaze. “I chucked a whiskey bottle at it. Sam took the rest of my stash the next day.” Dean steps over, brushing the drywall’s cracks with his fingers. “I didn’t fix it up so I wouldn’t forget.”

I couldn’t save Cas. I can’t even save a scared little kid. Sam keeps trying to fix it, but I just keep dragging him down. So I’m not going to beg. Okay, if it’s my time, it’s my time.

“Dean,” Cas says, “Tell me in words.”

“What?” Dean turns away from the wall. “Tell you what?”

“You know.”

Dean swallows, licks his lips. “I’d say don’t ever do that again on the whole dying thing, but I said that to you once and you didn’t listen. And maybe if I say it the right way now, you’ll stay, but…” Dean slumps, sits on the bed. “You can’t leave again.”

Cas touches the wall himself before sitting next to Dean on the bed. “I’m not going to.” He isn’t sure if he’s allowed to touch Dean.

Dean touches him instead, leaning into Cas, finding one of Cas’s hands, holding it tight. He’s crying, Cas realizes. “I love you,” Dean says into their joined hands, then his chest wracks with a sob. “I was always so sure that if--” another sob, “If I said it, you’d leave. Get taken away from me.”

“I’m not going to leave,” Cas repeats.

He isn’t sure how long they sit like that, but Dean finally straightens up, lets go of Cas’s hand, wipes his eyes with the back of his own. “Pajamas,” Dean says, standing and crossing to the dresser. “We gotta get you some of your own, but…” He digs a pair of sweats out of the drawer and tosses them to Cas. “These’ll do for tonight.”

Cas doesn’t ask if he can stay. Dean doesn’t ask him to leave.

With the lights out, it’s pitch black, almost as inky as the Empty, but Cas can hear Dean breathing, so close to him. The bed is almost too small for both of them, so they’re nearly chest-to-chest. Hardly ever have they been this close. Never did Cas dare to dream it.

In the dark, under the covers, the world outside of this room, Dean kisses him. It’s flat, soft, a brush of lips, the barest ghost, but it’s enough. More than enough.

Cas is home.

#offbeatwrites #it's DEANCASAVERSARY #IT'S CAS DAY #IT'S CAS'S BIRTHDAY #it's also one of my best friend's birthdays she has the best birthday huh #anyways I don't really know where this fic came from I just went hey. what if cas hadmovie theater #and I LOVEEEEE the trope of them showing each other their memories. there was so much stuff that if they'd just TALKED about it.......... #god. #anyways! enjoy :) #also yeah minor similarities to a drabble I wrote this summer #that was very much an accident but I think they're different enough

[kindcolors]

HELLO under the cut is a thing I wrote of a preverbial Red Mesa radio ep, i had a lot of fun writing it so i hope y'all enjoy :]

CONRAD: If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s adapting. Welcome to Red Mesa.

Folks, I’d like to start by talking about that football game we played against the Stone Meadow Dove Mourners last week. In a 3 to 17 victory, the Red Mesa Carpenter Ants took themselves a pretty trophy! This makes their second win of the season; with a streak like this, we’ll see them headin’ off to the finals once again to fight for that championship title.

When asked about the team’s win, coach Fatima Hassan had this to say: “I can see every equation. It’s all showing, living, pulsing through my veins. We have to win. We have to.” After speaking with reporters, Hassan rose from her chair, walked to the window in her office, opened the window up, screamed, then sat back down. Well, Fatima, we’re rootin’ for you and all the Carpenter Ants playing in the season!

I think we oughta get into the news.

The Haunted Puppet Theater would like to deny reports that one of their puppets has escaped containment, and has been terrorizing citizens.

“All of our puppets are really cool,” said the theater’s director, George Tristan. “So, if one of our puppets did get out, it would be really chill, not attack people. Especially if the ghost inside the puppet was, theoretically, the ghost of a vigilante who was hung following a false arrest. That ghost would be really. Chill.” Tristan put a very heavy inflection on the word ‘chill.’

In unrelated news, the Red Mesa Court House was set on fire last night. Of course, it was very quickly handled, but the cells did see a great deal of damage. The verdict is still out on who started it, and there are currently no leads.

Citizens of Red Mesa, the bell has tolled, marking the beginning of the most harrowing time of the year: it’s Girl Scout cookies season. Through Red Mesa, they will create their strongholds in front of the doors of the buildings we use most. We will have no choice. We will buy cookies. We must buy cookies. I fear what will happen if we don’t give our patronage to that sisterhood of sash-clad warriors. All proceeds go to buyin’ the Girl Scouts better tents for their reconnaissance missions, so stop and buy a box from ‘em!

A new woman came into town today. Who is she? What does she want from us? Why her perfect and beautiful eyes? Why her perfect and beautiful blazer? She says she is a ufologist. Well…we ain’t we all been ufologists at one point or another in our lives? But why now? Why here? And just what does she plan to do with all them files and whiteboards in that office she’s renting – the one above Richard’s Sub Shop?

Someone’s always down at Richard’s. Someone.

Next, let’s look into that community calendar! On Monday, the Intergalactic Bank of Red Mesa is hostin’ a barbeque, which is open to Red Mesa residents and beyond. If you’re itchin’ for some BBQ, go on down. Tuesday, Eagle Eye Records is havin’ a flash sale. You just walk in, and the owner Mason Yang will randomly assign you a CD. You have no say. Wednesday ain’t real. Why would a day be named Wednesday? I think you just made that up. Thursday is the Red Mesa Elementary soup drive. Load up any cans that didn’t fit in your doomsday bunker and hand ‘em over to fill up the elementary school’s! Friday. Friday. Saturday is our weekly required town meeting. Meet on down in City Hall. Ugh, watch out, though, I heard Marvin Campbell was bringin’ donuts. Ugh, Marvin. Sunday is the Parade. What Parade? Those invited know, so don’t you worry too much about it.

And now, let’s get to that traffic. Above us right now, there is a craft. It is round, cast in a blueish metal unknown to anyone on earth. Within that craft are three beings. Martians? No. Plutonians? No, of course not. They hail from the Dogtooth galaxy, from a planet they’ve left years ago. Now, they settle on Earth, but are reluctant to call it home just yet. There is a pair of mothers and a son. The boy shuffles in his seat; he refuses to buckle his seat belt. Both mothers waiver in an attempt to talk to him, both worried about making a first move that will solidify them as the ‘bad cop’. Finally, the driver twists in her seat and points one of her three fingers at the boy.

‘Xeon,’ she says, in a language I can only translate back to you, as the original tongue would be garbled over our sound waves, ‘Buckle up, now.’ With a huff, their son does as told, and he is secured in with a click. The mothers look to one another. They are thankful and surprised that this went so smoothly.

This has been traffic.

That new ufologist, we now know is named ‘Claudette’. Saw her out on the town last night, in the Sunset to Noon Saloon. I was out at the bar, nursin’ a drink whose name I already forgot, as is customary in the saloon. She was at a table with her team, with five glasses surroundin’ her. With a shaky step, she lifted herself onto the table and threw a toast out to the crowd of people in the saloon. She said we was the most ‘ufo-logically’ interestin’ community in the whole U.S., then backtracked on account of her doubting ‘ufo-logically’ was a real word. In the end, she settled on tellin’ us ‘Aliens are really neat, and there are a lot here. I love it here.’ She drank her shot and smiled, and boy, it was perfect. I fell in love instantly.

The Red Mesa Soup Kitchen would like to remind y’all that it is accepting any volunteers who wish to come on over and help feed refugees of the Blood Space War. No knowledge of how to cook is required, only a big heart and a resistance to acid. If that sounds like you, the Soup Kitchen is open from 7 am to 7 pm on weekdays, and from 7 am to 9 pm on weekends.

Now, everybody, I’d like to implement a new kinda segment into the show. She’s still in her early stages, so let’s see about the first few editions and let her grow from there: It’s the Red Mesa Young Author’s Corner! We got a whole lotta bright kids here in ‘Mesa, and I thought it was time to finally give them a little spotlight. I’ll read off three snippets of writing sent in by Red Mesa Elementry Students. First, we have a piece by Melody Fisher, Age 5.

“Before anything, there was space. Before that, who knows. Space spans out so wide, who’s to say that it isn’t all that ever was? Space, it’s so terrifying, it’s swallowing me whole, this is all I will be. This is all I will be, and that is horrifying. How scary it is to be so young, and know so much already. Someone free me from this curse.” Well done, Miss Fisher! You’ve got a real talent here!

Next, is Newt Oswald, Age 4.

“I saw a bunny. He went hop. He said so little, I said a lot. I saw a bunny. He went hop.” Mr. Oswald, you got a real eye for poetry! Keep it up, kiddo.

And last but certainly not least, we got in a piece by Harrison Ripley, age 10! He’s my nephew, and not to spoil, but I’ve read some of his stuff, and it really is a treat! Let’s read:

“When the man sat down, he realized he left his hat in the car. All that walking, and for what? To abandon the most integral part of his ensemble in the passenger’s seat? He could never go back for it now, not with the rain beating against the awning’s roof. He’d have to make do with his outfit as is, but would Cynthia even hold her interest in him, knowing how forgetful he’d grown? Three dates of jokes about the infamous hat, and the night he promised to finally show it in person, it gets left in the car. What a fool he was. What a waste of a man.”

Oh, Harrison, you did so well! All of you kids did! This has been the Young Author’s Corner.

Now, while it’s on my mind, why don’t we take a look at The Weather?

A strange man has been spotted ‘round town. He is described as 7’4, and he wears a pure black suit and a pair of sunglasses. Now, don’t get him confused with the members of the Red Mesa Police, who all also wear black suits and sunglasses. No, our police are usually draggin’ away people who know a bit too much about what goes on in galaxies beyond here. This man has been spotted following people but saying nothing. He only watches. Be careful out there, Red Mesa.

Everybody, here's your fact of the day: Did you know you got bones? Do you know how many? Well, it’s at least 4. No, 5. Try and count! I promise you got more than 5! This has been the fact of the day.

Oh, before I forget, here’s a word for our sponsor: A lover’s kiss is a unique, certain kind of comfort. For people with no interest in romance, this same feeling comes from the comfort of friends, or pets, but it is the feeling of love all the same. A tender smile, the first meow of a kitten. Everything good about the world is held in the hope we find in others. Love is found through the ones you kiss at the end of a long day. Dr. Pepper, whether you find that feeling in the brush of lips against your forehead, or the bristle of fur against your cheek as you turn in for the night. It tastes like a kiss, except not.

Now, it’s time for another round of Q&A with Conrad! This is the time to send in questions to me or the station, and I’ll answer one of y’alls questions once a week here, live, on the radio! Here’s a question: Hey Conrad, you know the cave beside the CVS? What’s in there? For the last week or so, I’ve felt compelled to enter it by a low voice only I can hear. What’s up with that? Well, very interesting question! The only answer I got is: how did you know that. This is the fourth letter I’ve received today about that cave. Why must you find out things that need to stay unsolved? Why can’t you leave well enough alone? Stop. Writing. This. Station.

Thank you for your question! We’ll answer another lovely question this time next week!

Claudette came by the studio! Nestled in her arm was a chart, which she kept scribblin’ on with a pen. I couldn’t see what was on it, but I’m sure it was real important. She told me that since the radio tower was so tall, it was a real hotspot for UFO activity. She asked for access, and I led her out to see it. When she saw it, she asked me if it would be alright for her to climb on up. I had to tell her no; the idea of that made me too stressed. Oh, her face fell a bit, I could tell she was disappointed, everybody. It’s so hard to keep people happy while considerin’ their wellbeing, but Claudette didn’t let me stop her excitement. She scribbled down a whole page worth out there and thanked me for letting her observe. I touched her hand, and it was just as warm as I expected it to be. So, So warm.

Well Red Mesa, the red of our sky is dimming, which means that night is drawin’ close. As the show for today comes to an end, I leave you all with the hope that today was kind to you. I hope you were kind to yourself too; unnecessary self-hatred attracts wolves.

Goodnight, Red Mesa, Goodnight.

#rambles #long post #conrad ripley #red mesa #mywriting #todays weather is i like giants by kimya dawson!

[firerose]

Dark Leo -Dark  seven au part2

@reading0mens Hope you enjoy it, I put a bit under read more because it’s kinda long XD

Leo‘s world is shattered after Jason‘s death

He knows it was a storm or fire

He knows that his cheating death caused the fates to take Jason away

At Jason‘s funereal he cries into Piper‘s shoulder

The boy that told him he was important, that made him believe he was worth something was gone

His sorrow makes him burst into flames and as Piper lets go he sinks over his friends grave

Things only got worse from there

He can‘t look at Calypso anymore

She was the reason he cheated death after all

He thinks about how she always complains about him, never truly helped him as Jason did

He goes back to Camp half-blood not caring that there is a battle coming for the Romans

He couldn‘t help them anyway

He locks himself in Bunker 9 building machines to distract himself from the cruel reality

Jason Grace was dead and he was alive

Calypso tries to get through to him but he yells at her that he regrets having saved her

He doesn‘t mean because of her of course but it is still her that he cheated death for

Calypso leaves in tears

Leo continues building and as his hands work on inventions his mind goes to Hera

Why didn‘t she save Jason?

He was her hero, wasn‘t he?

The bridge between greeks and Romans

So what kept her from saving him?

Anger begins to rage in him

Maybe Jason was just a tool for her

A weapon she could use and then forget

A scream breaks out of him and flames start floating over everything

He begins to despise the queen of Olympus just like he once hated Gea

At least Gea never acted like she wanted to protect them

He feels a desire to make Hera pay, to play with her just like she did with him

He knows that he can't take revenge on Hera all by himself Isn't there an emperor in new york

A plan starts to form in his head

Nyssa brings him the news

Camp Jupiter beat Caligula and Commodus now only Nero is left

The only change for Leo to take revenge on Hera

He leaves in the early morning

He is not nervous only strangely excited

Finding the emperor was not hard he could oversee the whole city on his metal dragon

„What do you want demigod?“, Nero asks coldly sitting on his throne arrogant as always

Leo only smiles darkly „I want to treat Hera just like she treated me and my friends.“

Nero has picked up many demigods from the streets but this one is special

He has an almost feral look in his eyes like he would be ready to burn the world

„And how exactly do plan to do that? Nero asks his voice full of curiosity

After hearing the plan Nero allows Leo to stay

He has a big room full of machines, engines automatons

Leo loves it

He builds robots small ones at first but his anger makes his talents grow

Somehow he manages to equip them with laser eyes ten arms that shoot fire canons, their fingers made of blades

He makes other inventions to ones that he prays to one day use on a certain goddess

A part of him is terrified of his work but another screams justice for Jason so he continues

Two weeks later Leo gives Hazel and Frank a surprise visit

They are happy to see him, they are his friends after all

Leo laughs with them, jokes as if everything was normal

One night he and Frank even mourn Jason together

When he feels real tears form in his eyes he is grateful for Franks hug

He can tell that Frank wants him to feel loved just like Jason once did

He is thankful and when Frank leaves his firewood feels heavy in Leo‘s hand

The next day horns are blowing, demigods scream in terror

A huge robot army is threatening to enter new Rome

The Legion is horrified but they swore to protect the city so they get ready for battle

None of them is showing their fear when they stand between the robots and their city

Reyna and Frank stand before their cohorts but Frank is not too worried

Those robots are made of metal and he sees in Hazel‘s smile that she knows this too

The daughter of Pluto raises her hand to save those she loves

But then a voice close to her speaks up coldly

„Hazel stop “, She almost did not recognize it

Leo stands a few feet away eyes gleaming darkly, Franks stick lays in his hand

Franks feels a cold dread in his stomach

„Leo…...what are you doing? Frank asks unable to hide his fear

Leo lets out a pained humourless laugh, I‘m destroying the god's ego by crashing their glorious temples.“ he explains and Hazel feels her heartbreak at his words

How is this the same boy who made her smile with his jokes

Reyna curses“ How dare you betray us? After Jason-“

Leo interrupts her with a mad shout

„That's exactly my point! Jason died because Hera for some reason refused to save him. We are all just puppets for the gods don‘t you see that!“I'm trying to save us from them but if you don‘t surrender now I will be forced to let you suffer for the god's crimes.“, Leo explains his tone almost hysteric

There is silence for a moment

The robots stand like dead status, new Rome's citizens glance towards them from behind the barrier, the roman soldiers are glaring at Leo

„Romans don‘t surrender.“, Frank finally responds his voice brave, his eyes full of pain

Leo smirks like he expected that answer

His whole body bursts into flame

Frank falls to the ground as his stick is swallowed by fire

Pain ignites in his heart, he hears Hazel‘s scream

He looks at his girlfriend a hand stretched towards her as if to hold her one last time

She stretches her hand towards him as well, her mouth moving as she sobs

A weak scream leaves his lips when a Robots blade impales her neck the blade coming out bloody at her throat

Her hand sinks, her body collapses into a puddle of her blood and Frank‘s world goes black

Leo stares at their unmoving bodies

The stick in his hands is now only ashes

He knows he should feel something

He should feel remorse

Instead, he just feels empty

The gods could have saved them but they didn‘t

If the gods would just be better he would not have done this

The gods are to blame not him

So he joins the massager

The demigods are fighting bravely but nothing prepared them to fight eight feet high machines

Blades are piercing through their bodies, the fire burns their flesh, dozens get trampled

Leo is in the middle of it all shooting fireballs burning everyone who gets too close

A fireball hits Reyna‘s hair and the Praetor is doomed to a firey cruel death

Soon the city falls, Terminus  barrier is not strong enough to hold the metal beasts off

New Romes citizens are slaughtered in their streets, their buildings, temples destroyed

Their screams ring in Leo‘s ears but he continues to fight

This is for Jason. This is for Jason

He keeps using this excuse even though a part of him tells him that Jason wouldn‘t have wanted this

When Leo the last screams finally have died new Rome is in ruins

On Olympus, the gods are raging

Their pride has never been attacked like this

Hera looks at Leo wandering through the dead city with worry

He was her hero once just like Jason but now he seems …..changed

Maybe somehow she could convince him to come back to her

She is his grandmother after all

So she goes down to him in the form of his old babysitter

Leo growls when he sees he sees her

„Now you decide to show up? After I slaughtered thousands of People? Wow you are a horrible patron goddess!“, He snarls

Hera looks at him in pity

„Leo I know you are angry but this is madness. Jasons death was in the hand of the fates and I couldn‘t do anything sometimes even we gods are powerless. Don‘t go down this road my hero it will only bring you to suffering.“ Hera warns but that only makes Leo more furious.

They are standing in the smouldering ruins of her city and yet all she can do is makeup excuses

„You ……..you are so arrogant Hera! First, you act like my protector, my babysitter for years and then you don‘t even save my mother, then you give me fake memories about my best friend and then when I‘m finally growing closer to him you watch him die too. I bet if I hadn‘t killed Frank today you would have done it! Jason Frank and I were just pawns whose lives you controlled and that you now don‘t need anymore!“, Leo yells his hands balled into fists.

Hera listens to her face showing guilty embarrassment

She is too lost in thought, that is why she sees the net that Leo throws over her too late

The strings are made of celestial bronze but when she tries to escape the net only grows tighter cutting into her skin

Leo smiles at her in amusement.

„I hope you enjoy your new home your high majesty., He mocks

Hera realized that this was all part of his plan

Destroying new Rome to get her attention, louring her here so he could capture her

„Let me go immediately demigod or my wrath-“. She is cut off when Leo gags her

He has enough to listen of listening to her

He just wants to visit Jason's grave one last time

Leo returns to Nero with his army and with Hera

She is carried by one of the Robots trapped in metal strings

Nero welcome Leo with open arms

This child is a blessing even better than Meg Mc Caffrey

He tells Leo that he wants to wait with his attack on the greeks

He wants the news about camp Jupiter to reach them first

Leo agrees and grins at Hera

The goddess tries to change from even her real one but the strings only golden

„They drain your godly essence. The emperors are no strangers to dark magic Hera. You won‘t get out of here unless I allow it.“, Leo mocks once he has taken her to his room

The image of Her lying helpless and restrained on the ground gives him chills of joy

He picks out a knife from his toolbelt, Heras's eyes widen

„Now let's see how you like being hurt without someone there to help.“ Leo muses and drives the blade into the goddess's arm.

He smiles at the golden blood and Heras agonized groan

He is going to have so much fun with her

Leo almost feels disappointed when Nero tells him that it‘s time for the attack

By now all demigods know what happened

Chiron evacuated Camp half-blood taking the younger Campers to safety

Nero knows it‘s only a matter of time until the rest disappears to

So Leo and the emperor fly to  Long island alone with Festus who hold Hera in his claws

The robots are deactivated until Leo's command, Nero wants to give his enemies hope of winning

A handful of Campers is already waiting for them at the top of Half-blood hill

Leo winces when he sees Percy and Nico

He had forgotten the people close to Frank and Hazel

„Surrender or face the same end as your roman friends!“, Nero demands

Percy spits to the ground

Nico gets out his sword his eyes piercing into Leo soul

„Do you think Jason still loves you after what you did Leo?“, Nico asks coldly

Leo‘s heart feels like it‘s torn apart

Nico‘s words are the truth in the back of his mind. The truth that his lust for revenge drowned out

Jason, sweet kind Jason would never love someone who killed his friends

Leo feels panic, he has to move forward he has to distract himself from his thoughts

„Let that be my concern.“, Leo spats and drops Hera to the ground

Her body is covered in deep cuts, golden blood covers the strings

The attack begins

Leo decides to take out Percy first

He shoots fire but Percy uses the lake to his advantage

Water and fire clash together in the air squishing as they meet

Leo gets more furious

He creates big flames that lit the threes next to Percy on fire, tiny flames to grasp Percy‘s hair

Percy seems to be prepared for everything

He protects himself with shields of water and creates tentacles in an attempt to drag Leo to the ground

Their fight is hard, full of hatred and so none of them notices Nico‘s fight against Nero

Until the emperor screams while he's being sucked into the earth

Neros household, all young brainwashed demigods panic and run

Leo yells in frustration

Why did he choose such bad allies?

Nico collapses from the uses of his underworld powers, the grass around him black

Leo wants to take his chance and flames flicker from his hand#

But then a big hand of water grabs him and lifts him off his dragon

Leo is taken by surprise but soon blind rage follows

„Now!“, He hears Percx yell and when he turns his head he sees Annabeth cutting Heras net with Nico‘s stygian sword

Desperation and fear will Leo

„No please!“, He Beggs but Percy drops him on the ground without mercy

Hera although wounded immediately grows to full size her eyes blazing with fury

„I WARNED YOU MY HERO NOW FACE THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS.“Hera yells her form glowing

„No wait!“, Percy says his eyes widened in shock

Leo knows what is coming, he has seen it once before

Tears of sorrow, of fear, of anger stream down his cheeks

He wonders if Hades will let him see Jason again after he murdered his daughter

In a last attempt to turn his fate he reaches for his toolbelt

But then he stops

How can he destroy the greeks after they took him in after they tried to make him belong somewhere?

His thoughts wander to Piper and his heart is split by deep guilt

Leo Valdez opens his eyes and stares right into the godly flames that even he can‘t survive

His last thought is a prayer of forgiveness to all he has killed in his path for revenge

Leo is buried at Camp half-blood

There are a lot of discussions about it but no one can think of a better place

Hera assures the Campers that in a few years there will be new roman demigods

This does not help the losses though

Percy and Annabeth spend many nights crying with each other about their lost friends, their lost future

Will has to hold Nico for countless nights too, Has to remind him that he always will be there for him

Apollo becomes a god again

And in California Piper Mclean cries out her prayers to the gods

She prays for them to free her out of these new fake mist reality

She prays for them to let her wake up in a world where her best friends are still alive

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

Honestly I wished Hoo went more into the fact that frank Jasons and Leos lives were all controlled by Hera! That would have been such an interesting dynamic!

#percy jackson #heroes of olympus #dark!leo #dark seven #valgrace #leo valdez #jason grace #piper mclean #annabeth chase #hazel levesque #frank zhang #trials of apollo #the burning maze

[gnbrkrs]

(5.5 SPOILERS) The weekly YoRHa records so far and some of my thoughts regarding the thing.

So I decided to put together a compilation of Konogg's records featured in the weeklies that I've got so far. For those of you that don't know, each time you do the weekly in Komra after completing the quests that follow the Tower of Paradigm's Breach, there will be an additional quest available from the Dig Site Chief, in which he gives you a new recording from Konogg. The quests so far also deal with Glagg, the village elder, acting increasingly odd, which I will touch upon later.

I would also like to make a small disclaimer that my first-hand knowledge of the Nier/ Drakengard franchise is extremely limited, and mostly comes from outside sources like the wiki, fans of the franchise that I know, and me briefly playing Automata (I am too broke for the Replicant remake right now). If you see anything that is inconsistent or wrong in my assumptions, feel free to point this out to me, I will correct them later.

Below, you can see the first 5 messages (which is what one would get so far if they have been doing the weekly since the raid's release) from Konogg, which reveal what he is doing after losing Anogg and setting off to find out more about the spheres himself, as well as a few bits shedding more light about what happened at the Tower of Paradigm's Breach.

Though first messages appear to be largely introductory, the latter ones appear to give us some rather interesting information (which I am curiousl how Konogg obtained). The fourth message appears to indicate that the 2B and 9S we interact with are either copies or new bodies made through the spheres with their consciousness transferred, which could explain the 2B corpse room we see in the Copied Factory instance as the first few defective copies/ bodies.

The fifth message, however, makes me extremely worried about Konogg. His tone appears almost obsessed in the last sentence, as if he is planning to do something extremely reckless with the spheres, which makes me worried about both him and the rest of the world. From what I have understood, the white spheres are bad news in the Nier/ Drakengard universe, which is why what he says does not make me optimistic at all, just as the next thing that I am going to talk about.

Another notable thing that persists through the weeklies as you progress through them is Glagg the village elder's increasingly odd behavior, as shown in the image below (which is a log of the last weekly's dialogue).

Though I do not have any direct confirmation of this, I have come to suspect that Glagg has contacted the White Chlorination Syndrome (aka Nier-verse's salt disease that destroys worlds) and has begun to exhibit the early stage signs of it. The way I was explained it, the victims of WCS make a subconscious "choice" to either serve a god and gradually turn into a berserk monster, or slowly turn into a salt pillar. For now, it appears that Glagg's erratic behavior is in line with one going berserk and becoming a monster on latter stages, and then there is the fact that both we and Konogg visited the Copied Factory, which contained the white particles in the air and on the items.

A few comparisons have been made between WCS and Tempering and how Hydaelyn's influence may protect the WoL from it's influence, though I am not entirely certain of it yet and doubt Natsuko Ishikawa would allow something like a WCS infection to happen to the WoL with the future story plans (which could be the disagreement they mentioned in one of the videos about the making of Shadowbringers, where Yoko Taro said he wanted to get WoL to do something messed up, only to be told that that's a big no-no by the writing team).

However, the WoL's likely safety does not mean safety for the dwarves or the rest of the world. Glagg is still in the village and not isolated, several items have been brought to Komra from both the Copied Factory and the Puppet's Bunker, possibly containing more particles on them, and the dwarves begin to trade these parts with the rest of the world starting from the third week of quest completion, possibly spreading the WCS further and unknowingly putting the rest of the world in danger. And then there is Konogg, who may be infected due to visiting the Copied Factory area with the particles. It is quite possible that a new threat may arise for the First in the form of White Chlorination Syndrome, just after the world has set on a path of recovery.

While the YoRHa questline makes a passing mention to WCS's similarity to the stoneblight disease Lamitt cured, I have serious doubts Yoko Taro would allow something as serious as a WCS cure, knowing both a little of Nier lore and Yoko Taro's notoriety with making tragic endings even more tragic by adding context in following installments. Could it be that we have very well been baited into dooming the First once again after saving it?

I plan on keeping this thread updated as new weekly installments release and I get new information. If you have any extra comments/ points to add, feel free to do so. I also may try to take a peek at the game's files through no-good means to find out more once I have more time (last few weeks have been busy both IRL and in-game, with me finishing my Master degree, doing paperwork required for a job and camping a plot for my and my friends' FC). For all the questions and ominous theories that arise, one thing is perfectly clear: the YoRHa questline did not end with the Tower of Paradigm's Breach, and has a lot more in store.

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv speculation #yorha: dark apocalypse #ffxiv spoilers #5.5 spoilers #ffxiv 5.5 #ffxiv 5.5 spoilers #patch 5.5 #final fantasy xiv spoilers #patch 5.5 spoilers #yorha: dark apocalypse spoilers #konogg #glagg #white chlorination syndrome

[im-totally-not-an-alien]

Final Fantasy prompts no 53

1. Cloud is immortal and has lived for tens of thousands of years. He has watched his friends and enemies get reincarnated over and over again. He would always interfere and save the day when things got bad, prompting legends and myths of a golden haired hero with glowing blue eyes who swore to return whenever the world was in peril.

But thats not the end.

He took great care to find his friends and keep an eye on them, watching over them as a guardian angel of sorts. When he came across Sephiroth again, he expected a battle, but seeing the dull eyes of a broken teenager staring up at him as he layed battered and bruised by his own parents? It made him realize that Sephiroth wasn't born evil.

The blond added Sephiroth to his list of people to protect.

Cloud often removed Sephiroth from the abusive households he was born into by exposing the parents for their crimes and harassing them as an anonymous individual.

Once the silverette was out of the home he would manipulate circumstances so that he would come to live with Zack or one of his other former friends.

Once he hit a certain age, he would find people Sephiroth was romantically compatible with and play puppeteer until one of them married the silverette. Cloud had done this so many times that he practically became an expert. Strangely, in the recent past lives the marriages ended in amicable divorce. He didn't know what he did wrong, so the blond began expiramenting with Sephiroths "types" again, trying to find a perfect match.

This life however, Sephiroth refused to so much as hold hands with someone romantically and Cloud is about ready to rip his hair out in frustration.

The man walked down a busy street, thinking about what to do next when Sephiroth himselfed grabbed his arm.

Startled, Cloud stared up at him.

"It's you." Sephiroth muttered reverently, as though he couldn't believe his eyes.

Cloud never made contact with these people, he had learned his lesson after the fifth time he lost Zack. He let them live out their lives, only interfering to stop something negative from happening. The blond never showed Sephiroth his face since his ninth life.

So how did Sephiroth know who he was?

2. Cloud nearly giving Denzel "The Talk"

3. Denzel accidentally calling Cloud "Dad", calling Tifa "Mom", and Marlene "my sister" until he was eventually like, screw it, and called them that without hesitation

4. Denzel got in trouble at school for beating up a group of boys that were bullying another kid.

He gets suspended and Cloud takes him out for an awesome ride on Fenrir as a reward, followed by fighting lessons from both him and Tifa, then ice cream.

5. Au where Hollander was murdered by Hojo long ago. Degradation is running rampant through Shinras SOLDIER program, killing several and weakening many more.

Genesis is determined to find a cure, after all, his life is on the line. He's eventually cornered by Angeal and Sephiroth, who pull the truth out of him, and begin aiding him in his search.

They discover AC Cloud, who is from a different dimension/timeline whose very body contains the cure.

Cloud was no longer human, and had developed new organs of unknown purpose, his body having disposed of the unnecessary organs such as lungs, gallbladder, and pancreas, and modifying the ones it kept, such as the digestive track. The catch? Now he needed to feed on large amounts of natural Mako every month to survive.

Genesis sees no problem with this and asks for the blond to save them. Cloud, however, refused, not knowing what was happening to him and knew spreading it would be the bad idea of the century.

Genesis doesn't take "No" for an answer.

Hojo finds out the blond was essentially a second Jenova and had a mini lifestream inside him and becomes desperate to get his claws on him.

6. Jenova haunts Clouds dreams, filling him with dread. Not because she was tormenting him, no. It was the opposite.

In the dreams, she held him like a loving mother. Her gentle embrace warmed him, her soft words brought him comfort, made him confide in her. That's why he was afraid.

Cloud was beginning to love her, and it terrified him.

7. Zack Fair is hereby prohibited from using any form of glitter or glue.

Why? It's Classified.

8. Au where Lazard freed Zack from under the nebilheim mansion, but also dragged him outside, leaving Cloud behind.

He lied to Zack when he woke up, telling him the infantryman was dead. He believed that Zacks chances of survival would be infinitely higher if he left the boy behind, which he would never do if given a choice. So Lazard made that choice for him.

So Zack made it to Midgar on his own.

Cloud was found by Sephiroth months later. The blond had no fight left in him and tried to merge with the other Sephiroth clone, unfortunately since his cells were mutated, Cloud could not merge with Sephiroth.

The silverette had planned to abandon this failed clone until Cloud nuzzle his face against Sephiroths gloved palm. From then on out, Cloud followed Sephiroth everywhere, doing the cooking and the laundry or whatever he could to make himself useful. He would beg the former General not to abandon him, as everyone else had done in the past.

That, admittedly pulled on his heartstings a bit. Sephiroth had also been abandoned and betrayed by his two closest friends. By the company and people he foolishly devoted his entire life to.

So Cloud stayed. His master taught him how to fight, how to care for his gear, and they bonded over shared experiences and silent companionship.

It was during that final battle, where Zack and AVALANCHE slew Sephiroth, that Cloud, hidden somewhere out of sight, swore vengeance against the man who pretended to be his friend, who he believed abandoned him and left him to rot in that hellhole after he had sworn for years that they'd get them both out, that he would save Cloud, (Cause that's what heros do!) only for him to murder the first person other than his mom to ever care about him.

Clouds body held both S and J-cells, and though they may be mutated, he could still call for Reunion. Something Zack couldn't sense due to him being an A-type SOLDIER instead of an S-type like himself.

The blond could cultivate the summoned J-cells and make them multiply under his care. He knew the best revenge was patience, after all, so long as Cloud lived, Sephiroth would never truly die.

All he had to do was stay hidden. Know one could know of him, not that they were looking for a supposedly dead man, even if they were, they would never find him in his hidden underground bunker since no one with more then three brain cells would go near the Northern Crater.

9. Sephiroth drops blatant innuendos and pickup lines all throughout his fight with Cloud, but the blond thinks he's just imagining it.

Seph actually manages to escape that time, but after the fight, his friends point out all the questionable things the silverette said.

Cloud wasn't sure if he should be relieved that he wasn't hallucinating it.

10. Tifa caught Denzel and Marlene "interrogating" a doll that was tied to a tree.

They were hitting it with sticks and yelling, "Who's your source?!" At it.

Needless to say, Reno is no longer allowed to around the children without adult supervision.

11. Kunsel began fiddling with a laser pointer, absent-mindedly tracing large slow circles on an opposing wall. He kept thinking back to all the laser pointer related incidents from the past few weeks until he noticed, much to his horror, that a few of his fellow SOLDIERS in the mess hall were tracking the little red dot with laser focus.

Pun intended.

12. Aerith had long since faded into the lifestream where she belonged, but that's not what this story is about.

Thousands of years have passed since the events of MeteorFall, and Gaia is nearly overflowing with mako energy.

Cloud felt as Gaia began remaking her WEAPONS, and couldn't help but wonder as to why. After about a year of searching he found Vincent again and asked him.

The truth was disturbing. Gaia's lifestream had outgrown the planet, and was preparing a new Omega WEAPON to suck the life out of this one and travel back to the "Mother planet"

Cloud eventually found out about Gaias plans for him by eavesdropping on conversation between Gaia herself and the Cetra from the "Mother planet". You see, Cloud has a unique relationship with the planet. He was modified using Jenovas Eldrich powers, and over time, developed his own. The blond allowed Gaia to use his body/very being as a sort of ward against all things Eldrich, and has worked spectacularly well.

Gaia planned to keep him alive as she traveled through the cosmos. That wouldn't be a problem, no the problem was that she planned to encase him in crystal and keep him there for the rest of eternity. When the Cetra mentioned breeding him so that other planets would have a ward, he nearly gagged.

He told Vincent about everything and admitted he was afraid. The only reason he remained sane all these years was because he could travel and have new experiences. He couldn't do that if he was trapped.

Vincent suggested a rocket, to which the blond revealed that Gaia herself always sabotaged the rockets and space programs. For obvious reasons. They were stuck and didn't know what to do now that it was literally them against the world. So when Vincent suggested reviving Mako energy and the SOLDIER program until they could find a way off of Gaia, Cloud didn't dismiss it.

13. Another summoning gone wrong Au where Sephiroth, Zack, and Cloud who are in the normal modern universe and are lovers in a poly relationship, decide to mess around with a spellbook Zack picked up in a shop. They were saying spells out loud and making fun of them, they also did the wierd little ceremonies and made "potions" and had a good time.

Nothing happened, until they woke up the next morning to the chocobo frantically patting them awake with his hands, stunned silent.

There, in their king sized bed, were their trans-dimensional alter-egos, done up with swords and pauldrons and...is Sephiroth wearing a fetish outfit? Said silverette poked his alter-ego with a ruler a few times to confirm he was out cold.

What were they supposed to do now?

14. Final Fantasy 7 and LoZ: Breath of the Wild crossover

Cloud lands in a new reality, but he's too focused on trying to fight the new breeds of monsters and surviving the desert heat to ponder the situation for long

And then there's all those things that keep trying to electrocute him...Clouds not having a good day.

On the other hand he has plenty of things to take his anger out on.

Also, Cloud meeting a horse! Which are critically endangered on Gaia!

15. Genesis finds Cloud post DoC and begins taunting him, but gasps dramatically when he learns the blond has never tasted Banoran apples/apple products. He drags Cloud along to get a taste. Weirdly, they get along.

#cloud strife #sephiroth #sefikura #ff7 #zack fair #sephiroth+x+cloud #genesis rhapsodos #ff7 story prompts #ff7 prompts #final fantasy 7 story prompts #final fantasy 7 #final fantasy story prompts

[sephirothisaslut]

I’m not fond of goodbyes... See you later?

1.

The first time Cloud met the General was on an errand for Zack.

It was Sunday, and Zack had gotten drunk the day before. How he got drunk in the first place is a mystery, but Cloud suspects it’s just an excuse to sleep in. Zack sent him a rather long message via PHS apologizing to Cloud for the inconvenience, telling him to go to his mentor (Angeal) and explain Zack’s absence.

Rather annoyed with his friend, Cloud resorted with scolding him over the phone.

“Why can’t you text him? Do I really have to say it in-person? “

“Sorry Spiky but we were supposed to train today, and Angeal doesn’t allow phones in the training room.” Zack sounded sheepish. “look I’ll make it up to you. How about some Ice-cream? My treat!”

“Ugh, Zack you’re lucky I’m awake anyway. You know this is the only day Cadets can sleep in.”

“Yeah yeah, Thanks a lot Spike!”

“I hate you” Cloud said, hanging-up.

He gathered his bearings, woke himself properly and got dressed for the day.

Cloud made his way through the building and entered the elevator, pressing the SOLDIER floor. The building was rather quiet, save for the occasional pencil pusher. Seems like everyone slept in today, of course except Cloud. Grumbling at his predicament, Cloud exited the elevator and headed to the First-Class Training Room. He knocked and entered as the door slid open.

As he stepped inside, he froze. There in the middle of the room was the Silver General himself, arms crossed and clad in his usual attire. He lifted one eye-brow and spoke.

“What are you doing here Cadet?”, Sephiroth said with a snap.

“Se-Sir! Zack asked me to tell the Commander about his absence Sir!” Cloud replied in a salute.

“At ease Cadet. It seems that both of us are hear for the same reason.” Sephiroth explained with a smirk. “Angeal sent me to inform Zackary of his absence.”

“Sir?”

“Tell Zack that training is postponed today, Angeal was sent on a mission along with Genesis last night.”

“Ye-yes Sir!” Cloud said, still stiff and dazed.

“Cadet I told you ‘at-ease’, and today is Saturday is it not? You’re not on duty.”

“yes si- I mean yeah.” Cloud uttered while rubbing his neck, “Sooo, I should leave then…”

Sephiroth merely raised an eyebrow again and smirked, looking very amused.

“Yeah ok, um, see you later” Cloud said as he left, then tensed as he realized what he just said to ‘the fucking General.’

“Hmm, see you later Cadet” Sephiroth replied as he went through the door, leaving Cloud in an empty training room.

 2.

“Ughh Zack why do I have to go” Cloud grumbled, “I’m a Cadet, I’m not supposed to be hanging-out with SOLDIERS, much less the Gods-damned Top Three of Shinra!”

“Oh come one Spike, you’ll be fine. And besides you already met Angeal and Sephiroth that one time, and Genesis will probs be ok with you, so long as you don’t insult Loveless.” Zack said while dragging Cloud toward the SOLDIER Housing section.

“You could’ve at least told me earlier so I could’ve made some more Mashed Potatoes.” Cloud gestured to the container he was holding.

“Shush, stop being a worry wart and relax. Come on!” Zack sprinted as Cloud chuckled and jogged behind him.

It was a fairly warm evening, Angeal welcomed the two boys, and Thanked Cloud for his Mashed Potatoes ( to which Cloud responded with a stuttered “yo-Your welcome…”). Genesis was lounging on the couch reading Loveless, while across him was Sephiroth scanning Angeal’s CD collection for a suitable movie.

Noticing Cloud’s gaze, Sephiroth looked up and met his eyes.

“Ah it’s the Cadet, I assume you’re here with Zackary?”

“Yes Si-“

“I believe it’s Saturday, ease-up Cadet” Sephiroth said, referencing their first meeting.

“I-…Yes”

“Sephiroth don’t be a hypocrite, how can the boy relax if you keep calling him cadet?” Genesis chided, lowering his book to tease his friend.

“Hmmm, True. So Cadet, what’s your name?” Sephiroth asked, turning to Cloud.

“uh-Cloud Si-, I mean Cloud…Cloud Strife” Cloud stuttered with a slight blush.

“Cloud? Very unusual name.”

“Look who’s talking” Cloud whispered under his breath, turning to head to the kitchen to offer help to Angeal.

“Touché”

Cloud winced, he forgot about enhanced hearing. He looked over his shoulder to see if he’s offended the General somehow, and relaxed when he saw Sephiroth had returned his focus to the CD Collection.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, he left to make sure Zack hadn’t burned whatever dish Angeal has tasked him to supervise.

After preparations and several dishes, the group settled in front of the TV and started their little movie marathon. Genesis sat beside Angeal, slightly leaning on the gentle giant. Zack was seated between Angeal and Cloud, while Sephiroth settled at Cloud’s other side.

A movie in and Cloud tried not the squirm, and he seems successful. He tried focusing on the movie and not the fact that he’s sitting next to Sephiroth. He peeked at the General and blushed as he met Sephiroth’s eyes.

“So, Strife. I take it training is hard?” Sephiroth asked with a small smirk.

“Yes si-…yeah, yeah it is.”

“Hmm, who is your drill sergeant?” Sephiroth asked with curiosity.

“Sir Ghi, he’s tough on us.”

“Why is that? I heard from the Thirds that he was a relatively moderate instructor”

“Ah, it might have something to do with Bunker 4” Cloud explained with a chuckle.

“Oh? What did they do?” Sephiroth leaned closer, now obviously invested in the story.

Cloud, now noticing that their shoulders are touching, was flustered.

“Th-they didn’t do anything” Cloud squeaked, “They started a rumor that apparently Sir Ghi had once tripped during a fight with a Zolom.”

Sephiroth merely continued looking at Cloud, his smirk now a smile.

“They said he face planted in the mud and had to call for reinforcements to help him.” Cloud continued, now a little relaxed.

“It’s true” Sephiroth laughed.

“No shit!?” Cloud blurted, surprised. “I-I mean, really?”

“Yes, I was the ‘reinforcement’ that was called. It was quite messy, he never accepted missions on Swamplands after that.”

“Oh Gods, I gotta share this with the rest of the guys.”

“It’s better if you don’t, I imagine once the story spreads, Sir Ghi will make your training regime much more painful.” Sephiroth said, turning back to the movie.

“Hmm, true.” Cloud hummed as he returned to the movie.

“Oh and Cloud?” Sephiroth said without looking

“yes sir?”

“Call me Sephiroth”

Cloud looked at him, shocked. He gaped, then slowly closed his mouth and turned back to face the TV.

“Sure…Sephiroth” Cloud said, leaning slightly on the General.

Cloud didn’t see but a satisfied and happy smile graced Sephiroth’s lip.

After 3 more movies and several snacks and meals, everyone agreed to call it a night. Genesis left for his apartment, Angeal and Cloud stood and left to wash the plates, Zack headed to the bathroom, and Sephiroth volunteered to fix the living room. Cloud emerged from the kitchen and Zack from the bathroom. Everyone said their goodnights, and farewells.

“Hey Angeal, we’re heading out now!” Zack yelled toward the kitchen

“Goodnight Zack” Angeal voice emerged with the sound of running water.

“Night Seph!” Zack addressed the General. To which Sephiroth responded with a nod.

“See you later Cloud” Sephiroth smiled as he passed the two.

“See you later, Sephiroth” Cloud responded with his own smile.

3.

It had been months since Genesis defected, and weeks since Angeal had too. Zack and Sephiroth were saddled with the duties two Commanders with their normal workload. Adding to the stress, the President has tasked Sephiroth with bringing Genesis, and Angeal back.

Before he was to be deployed, Sephiroth called Cloud.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be out, but it will most likely take a few days. Three at least” Sephiroth explained.

“Hey it’s ok, I’ll be fine. Just stay safe yeah? Come back soon, and drag Genesis and Angeal back with you.” Cloud responded soothingly.

“I intend to, but I suppose I can’t blame them”

“…” “Sephiroth?”

“Yes?”

“Do you sometimes think about it?”

“About what?”

“Defecting” Cloud whispered, but then hurriedly supplied, “I-I mean I know Shinra doesn’t exactly have a safe environment, and I know their ethics are-“

“Cloud” Sephiroth’s voice cut through Cloud’s rambling.

“So-sorry I was just-“

“Cloud, I would never leave you.” Sephiroth said as both a reprimand and a promise. “You’re too important to me for that”

“o-oh”

“Cloud I love you”

“I love you too…I’m sorry I guess I’m just depressed from failing the SOLDIER exam and…”

“SOLDIER or not I still love you”

“…thank you, Seph.”

“Anyway, the transport is here…See you later?”

“hmm, yeah. See you later Seph”

Sephiroth snapped his PHS close, and turned sharply toward the chopper. He was determined to bring his friends back. And he was determined to return them even if he had to drag them by the ear, he had made a promise after all.

 4.

Cloud fought. And he intends to survive. He survived two Sephiroth clones, and Geostigma. He can survive this.

Several years since he had found himself atop the cliffs. Since he impersonated Zack. Since he lost his memories, and still missing a bulk mostly from his time in Shinra. He fought, and struggled. He held his ground as Sephiroth, the Calamity’s child, threw half the city at him. Cloud glided, jumped and dodged. He parried and slashed, hoping that this would be the last time he had to face this monster.

Cloud didn’t understand Sephiroth’s obsession with him. Perhaps it the Jenova cells, but there were times when Sephiroth’s gaze bore through him and saw something more than a puppet. Nevertheless, he still fought. Their blades met and sparked. Cloud cornered Sephiroth, finally using his Limit Break. First Tsurugi glowed and each individual sword floated and surrounded the World’s Enemy. Every strike hit his adversary where he intended.

 Cloud landed, his blades followed, surrounding him. Sephiroth rose, his wing outstretched. And then…He fell.

Cloud rushed toward him, intending to finish the job. He stood beside the One-Winged Angel, and saw-for the very first time- his face devoid of insanity and madness.

Cloud was shocked. He looked closely at the monster he had been chasing and fighting, and saw only a man. Sephiroth looked at him, smiling with broken eyes. He didn’t sneer, he just smiled sadly. He spoke in a rough, scratchy voice.

“I’m sorry Cloud…I…I’m sorry” The man said, staring into Cloud’s eyes.

“Shut up Sephiroth! You have no right to ask for forgiveness” Cloud replied with a fierceness that made Sephiroth wince.

“I know…But even so, I still would like to try” Sephiroth pleaded, his eyes now looking at the grey, empty sky.

“After everything you did to the planet? To the world? Sorry isn’t going to cut it.” Cloud glared. How dare Sephiroth of all people.

“I’m not asking the planet’s forgiveness…I’m asking for yours”

“what?”

“I’m sorry I left Cloud. I’m sorry I believed Hojo over you and Zack. I’m sorry I broke my promise.”

“what are you- “

Cloud winced; his hand shot to his head. He’s seeing visions… memories? He doesn’t know. It feels different from Jenova. There was no pain, only surprise and confusion. What are these? Are these his or Zacks? No, it’s definitely Cloud’s. Then why…no…

NO

“No…No..nonono” Cloud crashed to his knees, clasping Sephiroth’s hand.

“Cloud?”

“no no Seph please This can’t-  .. You can’t” He gasped, still dazed from his recent memory rush. He pleaded and begged as Sephiroth slowly disappeared in flecks of black feathers and miasma.

“Cloud…”

“don’t..just not-“

“Cloud…I’m not fond of goodbyes…”

‘See you later?’

Cloud returned Sephiroth’s broken gaze. He squeezed his hand tighter, afraid to let go.

“You can’t-” He whispered as the hand he held turned into a single black feather. He bowed down, unmoving for minutes.

And at the very last second, Sephiroth finally broke Cloud.

 1?

Cloud woke up. His vision swam as his eyes focused on the Cadet barracks’ ceiling. His PHS was ringing. It was Zack.

 “Why can’t you text him? Do I really have to say it in-person? “

“Sorry Spiky but we were supposed to train today, and Angeal doesn’t allow phones in the training room.” Zack replied sheepishly. “look I’ll make it up to you. How about some Ice-cream? My treat!”

“Ugh, Zack you’re lucky I’m awake anyway. You know this is the only day Cadets can sleep in.”

“Yeah yeah, Thanks a lot Spike!”

“I hate you” Cloud said, hanging-up.

Cloud stood and rose from his bed. It has been months since he was sent back, and this was the moment he had prepared for. After several minutes he was dressed. He applied his contact lenses (being sent back with his enhancements, meant that he had eyes that glowed like headlights). He headed to the elevator and pressed the button for the SOLDIER Floor. And just like last time, the building was quiet. He slowly walked toward the First-Class Training room, his knuckles hovering over the door. He breathed in, and out…Then, he knocked.

The door opened to reveal the Silver General. His back was turned, arms crossed. Cloud allowed himself to drink-in the sight. He was just as he remembered.

Sephiroth turned, his eyebrow rose.

“What are you doing here Cadet?”, Sephiroth said with a snap.

“Sir! Zack asked me to tell the Commander about his absence Sir!” Cloud replied in a salute.

“At ease Cadet. It seems that both of us are hear for the same reason.” Sephiroth explained with a smirk. “Angeal sent me to inform Zackary of his absence.”

“…” Cloud said nothing. He refused to.

“Tell Zack that training is postponed today, Angeal was sent on a mission along with Genesis last night.”

“Yes Sir!” Cloud replied

“Cadet I told you ‘at-ease’, and today is Saturday is it not? You’re not on duty.”

“Sir, even so, you are still my superior” Cloud strained to keep his voice from cracking.

Sephiroth merely raised an eyebrow again.

“I shall take my leave then Sir.” Cloud saluted and turned, “Goodbye…Sephiroth” he whispered, knowing this time, Sephiroth can hear him.

Perhaps he had been selfish. Waiting months before enacting his plan. Just to say goodbye.

He never looked back. He didn’t dare to. After rounding a corner…he fled. He ran from the tower. He ran from his old life. He ran and never looked back.

A year later, Sephiroth was sent to return Genesis and Angeal…He never came back.

A few months after Shinra’s General went AWOL, Avalanche had managed to kill the President. A gaping hole was left on the President’s chest, a single strike from Masamune. Meanwhile, Hollander remained slumped on his chair, a pool of blood under him. A blond man standing over him.

Several more months following President Shinra’s death, it rained in Midgar. Genesis’ and Angeal’s degradation cured, and Jenova was thrown into a pool of Great Gospel’s water. Sephiroth kills Hojo, and burns his corpse to ashes.

#sefikura #time travel #sephiroth #cloud #tragedy #fanfic #final fantasy #ff7 #ff7cloud #ff7 remake #im sad yall #no regrets #sephiroth x cloud

[kashimos-hajime]

run to you | amaranthine (6/6) | b.b.

summary: “How dare you make me choose between the son I chose and the man I love?”

WARNINGS: blood, civil war bullshit, swearing, angst like HELLO, mentions of torturing/brainwashing, but some softness too, ends on a hopeful note pairing: bucky barnes x fem!reader word count: 11.2k

a/n: super long chapter bc i tried to pack the essentials of 2016 into here! hope you enjoy loves and sorry for the wait!! there’s a LOT of subtle tony and reader family vibes. it’s 224 am as i post/edit this so excuse any of that. vibes are run to you by pentatonix.

amaranthine masterlist

I've been settling scores I've been fighting so long But I've lost your war And our kingdom is gone

You move Bucky Barnes to the bunker he left forty years ago while he heals. He sleeps a lot, although nightmares plague then more often than not, and you try to busy yourself by running errands—trying to find something for you to do. You’ve spent the last forty years focused on achieving this one thing and now…

Now, you’re bored.

It’s only been three days.

“I’m going to find Tony, okay?” you mumble into the pillow, relishing the gentle, tentative caress of his fingers along your bicep. He’s been watching you sleep for the past hour or so, blue eyes muted and soft. You’d spent the night soothing his nightmares, wiping away the sweat, assuring him that you’re here, and you’re exhausted, but the day needs to start no matter what. Opening your eyes, you meet those blue eyes, and brush strands of hair away from his forehead. His pink lips are twisted into a frown, and you smile. “What is it?”

“If I’m staying with you, then we can’t stay here,” he whispers. You wrinkle your nose, leaning forward to kiss him chastely before getting up but he cups the back of your neck, bringing you close again.

“I can’t just disappear on Tony,” you mumble against his mouth. “I need to tell him.”

“No.” It’s sharp, succinct, the taste of fear and desperation that seeps into your skin as he grabs your wrists, and you sit up, pulling him up so you can look at him. You swallow your words as he shakes his head, metal arm clicking, clicking clicking.

“Bucky, I can’t keep this a secret from him. I can’t keep what happened with Howard and Maria a secret. He’s my family.” Your hand gently rubs the scarring of his shoulder before running down his bare chest, and your fingers trace the stitches where the chest tube had been before finding his waist. “I can’t, and you can’t make me choose between him or you. Please don’t make me choose.”

“I wouldn’t,” he whispers, his hand going up and down your arm. The rough calluses of his palm, the warmth of his skin, it sends shivers down your spine. “I could never do that to you, but don’t you see he’ll hate me?”

“He’ll understand. When you explain it to him, he’ll understand that that wasn’t you.” You hold him closer, his forehead pressing into your chest and you close your eyes, running your fingers through his hair. Your other hand holds his head to you, and he’s silent, grabbing at the sheets around them. He’s holding himself back from touching you. “I’m not going to let him hurt you.” You rest your chin on his head and he lets out a shuddering breath at the feel of your fingers tracing the curve of his back. A sort of desperation sinks into your gut and you slide your arms around him, palms smoothing over the scars carved into his muscle. They’re faded but still waxy to your touch, and you bury your face into his hair.

“They’ll take me when you tell him. He’ll take me,” he murmurs, voice hoarse and breaking. “You can’t stop them from taking me.”

“Bucky—”

“It doesn’t matter.” He pulls back, eyes empty of anything. He is the void of grief, guilt, anger. He is the devil’s puppet, and now that you’ve cut his strings, he does not know how to move on his own. He wants what he thinks he deserves. “It doesn’t matter whether or not I was the Winter Soldier. I still did it.” Your hands cup his face, and his hands find your waist as he sucks in a huge breath, trying to calm a heart rate you can hear racing through his body. Sitting in his lap, you simply soak in those tired features, before sliding your arms around his neck again and hugging him tight.

“Let me do it all,” you whisper. Kissing his hair, you pull yourself away, and his eyes drop to his hands. You press your lips together, jaw clenching, and something inside you breaks at how small he looks, hunched over in your bed. “Don’t worry, okay? Get some sleep.”

“I should pay for what I did, shouldn’t I?” he whispers. “At least you’ll know where I am.”

“Let me handle it, love,” you repeat. “Don’t spiral on me before we know for sure, alright?” Pulling on a shirt, your mind is running through the list of all the things you can do. Everything you can’t do. Some very selfish part of you wants to hide Bucky away from the world, give him the time he needs—the time you need, but you think of Tony who you’ve always put first before anything else.

The abject horror of watching him fly into the wormhole, the death of his parents, nearly losing Pepper…

Tony has grounded you ever since he was born. He’s been with you despite everything you’ve lost. You grieved his parents together, you were there when he walked across the stage even though his father wasn’t. You love Tony… you love him…

But Bucky… you have dedicated your entire life to him. You have loved him, searched for him despite all odds. You mourned him for thirty years, and then the other forty he wasn’t with you. You stay up at night imagining all that could’ve been, and still be.

To pit them against each other is impossible, yet you must choose anyway.

You meet up with Tony for lunch and say you have a new lead in Europe. I need a ride, maybe some supplies. This’ll have to be off the grid.

Tony worries, but that’s in his nature, and you can’t say anything about it.

You ask Bucky where he wants to go in the world, and you promise you’ll take him.

He tells you Bucharest—a place untouched by the kiss of frost, untouched by the Winter Soldier, a place where the two of you can start anew.  

You fight off the nausea curdling your stomach the whole flight there.

.

It’s been two years since Washington, and Bucky still wakes up surprised when you present to him a cup of hot coffee and a plate of breakfast. It’s become one of your favourite things, to spoil Bucky Barnes, and you do it every chance you get. There’s a quiet routine the two of you have fallen into ever since the two of you decided to settle in Bucharest, and you enjoy it. You don’t mention his nightmares—they’ve receded into only three times a week instead of every night—nor does he bring up the fact that you’ve left everything behind for him—you pick up your phone to call Tony at least once every day before convincing yourself it’s better this way and setting it back down without dialling.  

No, you follow the routine.

Wake up in bed together with the occasional surprise breakfast in bed

Shower and then plan out the day after breakfast

Go out to the markets

Have lunch together and go to the library

Your afternoons are normally spent together, but there is the occasion Bucky will go on a run or you’ll spend yours baking, and you won’t see him until dusk, but you don’t mind.

No one’s searching for you now, although the backpack underneath the floorboards and the one in the false bottom of one of your empty drawers still whisper in your ear.

“How about plums for dessert?” he asks, uncertain as the two of you walk the markets. It’s bustling, loud with life, and you smile, wrapping an arm around his. You squeeze his hand, and his eyes soften when his eyes meet yours. You’ve given him a haircut just this morning, and it makes him look younger, like the man you knew back in the forties. Those eyes are his, too. Bucky’s slowly coming back to you every day. “They should be in season, and fresh fruit seem nice.”

“That sounds perfect. I’ll go get the papers,” you say, and he nods. They don’t normally waste the money they have on things they didn’t need like the papers just in case the two of you need to pack up quickly and move, but you know he likes to read news about Steve. Steve. Hah. You wonder what he’d think, knowing you’ve been hiding your best friend away from him for two years. Knowing Bucky wanted to hide at all.

Bucky’s eyes are doubtful, but you merely adjust the cap on his head and smile. Although your fingers want to brush hair behind his ear, you know that you’ve snipped it all away. Instead, you cup his cheek, thumb brushing underneath his eye. You lean up to peck his jaw, untangling yourself from him and his eyes linger on your face before he turns to walk into the maze of stalls. Surveying your surroundings, you watch people pass by, going on with their day, before spotting a vendor across the street. He’s chewing lazily on a straw, leaning on the desk as he reads the newest lotto numbers, and you wait until the light turns, crossing the road.

“Good afternoon,” you begin, approaching the stall. Your gaze trails across the magazines, the little toys and bobs that tourists would love, before glancing up at the man who drags his eyes away from the little TV he has hanging at the top left corner of his stall.  You smile, adjusting the hoodie on your frame. “Do you have today’s paper?”

“Yeah.” He lazily grabs one from the box, sliding it first page down over. “Three leu.”

You procure three one leu bills, handing it over for the paper and you dip your head in thanks before heading back across the street. You tuck the newspaper underneath your arm, eyes scanning for a place to give it a brief read. Bucky’s still wandering the markets, his hand holding onto a bag of some other vegetables you know he hadn’t intended to buy, but you’ve convinced him you can come up with something no matter what he buys. You like the variety it brings, and you hope he likes the choice of it all.

His eyes catch yours as if he knows you’re staring and you wave, unclamping the paper from your arm. His lips twitch into a faint smile before he approaches the fruit vendor and you find an empty spot on the bench, sitting down with your bag in your lap.

The day’s not too warm or too cold, and you relish in the gentle breeze kissing your cheeks as you set your gaze on the paper.

Your breath spears into your ribs, everything inside you draining out as you read the front page of the news.

Winter Soldier. Bombing in Vienna at a United Nations Conference. The Winter Soldier.

Winter Soldier.

Your eyes widen as you soak in the black ink, printed boldly, sharply into the dulled paper. Your hands tremble and your guts are in knots. Chains wrap around your stomach, squeezing bile up your throat as you throw the paper off of you like it’s poison. Your eyes sweep the area, blood rushing down to your legs as you search for threats and Bucky, bumping into random civilians who have no idea what you’ve just read. You can barely contain yourself to a run, unwilling to draw attention to yourself as you scour the markets. He isn’t at the fruit vendor’s stand. Not at this one anyway.

Shit, shit, shit.

You know it isn’t Bucky.

Bucky was here with you.

Shit, shit, shit. Where is he?

Holding your bag tight to you, you feel the contours of the pistol you carry with you at all times, eyes searching, eyes trying to find you. His eyes—ocean eyes—brown jacket, that red henley. Red and blue and brown—

His voice, that sweet voice speaking Romanian, pierces your hearing and you turn to the source of the sound, seeing him lean over as he rolls a plum between his metal fingers. Fingers you know feel just like his flesh hand does, just as your hand does.

You focus on this as you walk towards him, as strange as it seems. You focus on his metal hand covered beneath glove and sleeve, and how whenever you hold it, you don’t feel like you’re holding something dead. How whenever you hold Bucky’s hand, you do not feel like you are dead.

“Love,” you call in Romanian, and he turns to you. For a moment, his eyes study you before he smiles and looks at the wooden tray of plums proudly.

“What do you think, angel?”

“They’re lovely, but we have to go,” you whisper, not giving the fruits a second glance. Bucky’s still eyeing the rows of plums but you reach up, turn his face towards you. His eyes soak you in, soak in the panic radiating out of your every pore, the wild fear, and his eyebrows furrow together. He takes your hands, squeezing them gently, before excusing himself from the vendor and pulling you away.

“What is it?”

“We have to get back to the flat, now,” you whisper, pulling him close to you. He wraps an arm instinctively around you, ducking his head so his face is covered by the shadow of his cap and you keep a smile on your face. Both of their sets of eyes are making sure no one’s tailing them as you explain in English under your breath, “There was a bombing at the United Nations conference in Vienna. Someone framed you. King T’Chaka is dead.”

“What? Who?”

“Someone who doesn’t want you to rest.” His arm tightens around your shoulder as you reach the apartment building. Urging Bucky into a quick march, the two of you part and you run up the stairs first as he bars the door to the lobby behind him.

“My journals—”

“We’ll go get them,�� you assure quietly, already running through a list in your head of what you’ll need on short notice. You’ve been prepared for weeks for this. You’ve never had the luxury to be comfortable in that cramped apartment with only a mattress between them and newspaper plastered over the windows. Entering the apartment silently, you head for the bathroom first, unhooking the mirror from the wall to grab quinjet keys from the tiny hole in the wall. Your eyes pass over the trash can littered with Bucky’s hair, and you swallow, grabbing the scissors off the sink countertop.

Running into the kitchen, you unzip your purse and toss it aside, shoving the pistol down the back of your pants before crouching down and pulling open the drawer with the false bottom. Bucky hides next to you, helping you lift the false bottom to a backpack containing all your assault rifle parts, canned foods, water, and first-aid. 

Unzipping it, you watch him stuff the little snacks they’ve spent money on, candy bars and granola, into your back as you listen out for intruders. You throw the scissors, just as you look at the back door.

Something scuffs outside your front door and every muscle in you freezes.

The door gives in quietly, and you pull the pistol out of your waistband slowly, eyes trained on Bucky. He shakes his head. He doesn’t recognize the sound of their footsteps either. Not their nosy neighbour, or the kid from upstairs who knocks on their door every once in a while.

The intruder steps foot and the wood gives in immediately. It’s their trap plank, one they know squeaks, and you know immediately it is a stranger. Shooting up, your arms press against the countertop, fingers hovering on the trigger as your thumb pushes the safety off, and you swallow, taking in a deep breath to steady your heart rate. Your mind is sharply focused on the feel of the gun in your hands, and your throat folds as the image of the intruder burns itself into your brain.

“Y/N?”

“Steve?” Straightening up, you lower the pistol but your body does not ease at the sight of Captain America here. “What are you doing here?”

“Heads up, Cap. German Special Forces approaching from the south.”

“Why are you here?” His shield is still to his side, and your jaw clenches. Bucky is still crouched by your feet, and you reach down to grab the backpack, swinging it onto your shoulder. “Tony said you were off the grid.”

You pull up your hood roughly, tying the drawstrings tight. “I am.”

“They’ve set the perimeter.”

“Where’s Bucky?”

“He wasn’t in Vienna. I can testify for him.” Your voice is taut as you walk out from behind the counter. Your foot is just over the floorboard where Bucky’s backpack full of journals is and you inhale deeply as you glance back at the door behind you. It’s a long fall down from the twenty-seventh story.

“Well, the people who think he did are coming here now. And they’re not planning on taking him alive.” His words sink into the air, and you nod. You hadn’t thought any different. “He’s here.” Steve‘s voice dips at the words, and you falter for a moment, finger finally relaxing on the trigger. His eyes scan the apartment, before landing on the kitchen counter and it’s almost as if he sees right through it and then this man, this sad, sad man looks at you again with grief powerful enough to kill anything. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

Your voice, soft, delicate: “Yes.” You turn to the crouching man who stands, head bowed before turning to meet Steve, and you can feel the tension, thick as butter on your tongue. How much you ache to just slice through it with a sharp knife, but you merely watch, study Steve’s expression. Although half his face is covered by a helmet, his eyes tell you everything. His eyes, wide with shock, blown with nostalgia, as they see a short-haired Bucky—a shadow of his best friend, who stares at him with such emptiness it pains the soul.

“Do you remember me?” Steve asks softly.

“They’re entering the building.”

“You’re Steve. I read about you in a museum.”

“We have to go, Bucky,” you whisper and he turns to you, nodding. Steve steps forward but you merely raise the gun to him. He freezes in his tracks. “I’m not afraid to shoot a soldier, Rogers.”

“They’re on the roof. I’m compromised.”

“You used to be,” he says and you sigh heavily as Bucky pulls off his leather glove to reveal that metal hand, gleaming and elegant and cold. You can hear the pattering of boots up the concrete steps, and your mind runs over escape routes through tunnels, sewers, ways you can escape without hurting anyone on your way out. The thought of death makes you exhausted.

You head towards the kitchen, pulling open a cabinet and grabbing the black holster, clipping it onto your belt, shaking your head to yourself. “We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“This doesn’t have to end in a fight.”

“It always ends in a fight,” Bucky murmurs. You turn the safety on, slip the pistol into the holster. The two of you share a look, and you nod to reassure yourself and him.

“Five seconds.”

An uneasy glance to the window.

“You pulled me from the river. Why?”

“Four seconds.”

“We don’t have time for this.”

“I don’t know.”

“Three seconds.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Two seconds…. Breach! Breach! Breach!”

Glass shatters and you turn to the window as a flash bang barrels through the air. Smacking it out of the air, you turn away and close your eyes tight, away from the blinding white light just as another one is thrown through the glass. Steve muffles it with his shield and there’s German shouts on the other side of the door as the wood begins to give beneath the ram.

You’re grabbed by Bucky who shoves you towards the mattress, and you lift it up, rebounding another flash bang. A high pitched whine fills your ears, and you turn to see Bucky fling the table at the door to buy them more time. Letting the mattress fall, you run to roll behind the kitchen counter as soldiers burst through the window. Tackling the man, you manage to disarm him with a quick break to his arm before another guy bursts through the back door to the balcony. Steve takes care of him easily and you punch through the floorboard, grabbing the straps of Bucky’s backpack and flinging it out the door just as three more men stream in through the broken windows. Pushing yourself over, you roll into one of the soldier’s space, reaching up and grabbing his gun just as Bucky punches him out. Steve lands a nasty bash of a shield to the other man’s head, ringing him out, and you grab a cinder block, flinging it towards the last one.

The contact dazes him, shattering against his helmet which cracks upon impact and Bucky kicks him through the wall, letting him dangle off the side of the building just as Steve grabs at him.

“Buck, stop! You’re going to kill someone.”

Two more men repel down the side, landing on the window sill and you barely hear Bucky whisper ‘I’m not going to kill anyone’ before he grabs Steve and throws him at the intruder.

The other man detaches himself from his rope, dropping onto your mattress and you sprint at him, too quickly for him to bring up your gun. He raises his arms, trying to protect his face but you fling yourself at him, legs wrapping around his chest, arms catching him in a chokehold. Wrenching him back, the two of you fall together before you fling him off of backwards, letting him crash into the bookcase before you roll to your feet again.

Shotgun blasts disturb the pitched whining in your ears as they detach their door from its hinges and you suck in the breath of sulphur and gun oil, approaching the barred door with a determined set to your jaw. Bucky walks past you, leading the way while you keep an eye on his six. His metal fingers curl into a fist as you take a moment to gather yourself. The adrenaline pumping through your veins is pure fire and your muscles welcome every stretch and pull as he punches through the wall, knocking out whoever’s holding the shotgun, before barging through.

Slipping past Bucky, you jump onto whoever’s at the top of the staircase, bringing him and his friends down behind him. You fall into a messy heap, your body nipping from the sharp edges of the stairs as glass shatters above and you spare a glance to see someone repelling from the glass roof. The sound of an AR going off makes you flinch, but it’s cut short as more men climb up the steps.

Climbing up onto the red rail, you balance atop of it and wait for a man to pass just across from you on the flight below, and jump. Landing on him, you use him to break your fall, soldiers crowding around you, and you bring up his body as a shield, lunging into whoever’s down the steps next to you. Once you’re on solid ground, you block whatever hits come your way, flinging people off of you left and right.

You punch a man in the throat, fist leaving him breathless as you throw him into the wall before ducking underneath a swing from someone behind you. You grab their wrist, twisting it behind their back and pulling enough for his shoulder to give away in a small pop. He crumples before you as you kick the back of his knees before climbing over the railing once again and swinging down. You bypass all the other soldiers trying to catch up, too quick for them to realize you’re their target as you try to think.

Bucky’s still far above you, but he knows where his journals are and where the meet up point is.

You can’t count how many nights you’ve spent staying up with him, compiling a seamless escape plan with so many exchangeable routes. You descend down the steps, another wave of soldiers storming up and the first one swings up his gun, a smattering of bullets causing you to duck.

You spot a door that leads to an outer staircase and barge through with your shoulder. It opens with a slam, the sound ringing in your ears, and you don’t give yourself time to second doubt your abilities before you’re jumping.

Your legs bunch, stretch, bring you to the concrete railing before launching you forward. You flail through the air, the wind dragging at your clothes, and your heart shoves its way up your throat. You’re weightless for just a moment before you land, body tipping to roll out the momentum. You grab Bucky’s backpack, holding it to your chest and you turn around to see if he’s following.

Not even a minute later, you see him bursting from a few stories above you, landing with a painful grunt. He pushes himself up, sprinting towards you and you throw him his backpack just as a shadow flies over you.

Raising your gaze, you squint against the sun to see a black figure soar through the air. Bucky whirls around just as the attacker lands on him and you run towards him. The black figure is sleek, human, and you frown at the cat ears, the silver weave in between metal fibres.

The Black Panther.

Shit.

It doesn’t stop you from running at him full force, pushing him off his balance. You duck underneath a swipe of his claws, turning to Bucky quickly. “Go!”

Blocking a swing from the left, you grab his wrist and pull him into your fist, jabbing him twice underneath the ribs but the Panther's claws latch onto your sleeve, pulling you over and kicking you in the abdomen.

You crash into an air vent with a gasp, the air pushes out of your lungs as the Panther comes at you again. His claws dig into the vent beside your ear and you grimace, pushing back against his hand that comes gliding through metal like soft cheese. Slouching, you let his arm run over your head and bring a knee to your chest. When your foot connects with his chest, you launch him across the roof, his claws nearly nicking your other ear.

A whirling fills the air, the vibrations running through your bones, and you peer up at the sky to see a helicopter. The shudder of the machine gun ripples through the air and your eyes widen as a trail of bullet fire cracks the roof, dust spiralling through the air.

“Come on!”

A rough hand grabs your shoulder and you’re pulled roughly to your feet. Shoes digging into the concrete, you can feel the bullets nip at your heels, the spat, spat, spat of death chasing you before you throw yourself off the edge of the roof and onto a narrow edge. Bucky lands before you, not pausing before jumping off the roof and you follow after him. He catches you by the waist, softening the landing but it’s still a shockwave up your legs.

An ache festers in your shins, your lungs are on fire, and you try to keep your eyes on target as the helicopter cuts you off and you stutter to a halt while Bucky jumps into the tunnel. Glancing behind you, you see the Panther run after Bucky, and you vault over the barrier, your mind already making a new route.

The helicopter flies after you as you run across rooftops, the tunnel still running below you, and you feel weightless as you jump from building to building. Your feet slap against the rooftops, your lungs burning.

Dropping down onto the street, you spot a brick barrier around an opening. There are civilians, women, men, and children, who are sitting on the benches or going about their day and you wave them off, screaming for them to get to cover as the helicopter speeds after you. Jumping onto the bench you use it as a stepping off point and you jump into the hole, onto the tunnel road just as a car swerves to miss you. You whip around, trying to find Bucky and you see him sprinting towards you. Behind him are a plethora of blue and red and white lights, piercing the dimness of the tunnel.

The ground rumbles beneath your feet and you turn to see a couple on a pair of motorcycles speeding towards you. Buckling your backpack across your chest, you run towards the woman and you knock her off as carefully, as quickly as you can. She lets out a terrified shriek as you swing it off the road, your leg hooking on the seat.

Your fingers wrap around the handlebars, and as soon as the wheels are grounded once again, you speed against the direction of traffic. Leading the way, you press yourself against the motorcycle.

Everything falls to a blur, your eyes ahead but when an explosion prompts you to look back, your eyes widen at the rubble collapsing the tunnel. Bucky floors it, trying to catch up with you just as something is flung through the air.

You open your mouth to warn him but the next thing you know, Bucky’s skidding across asphalt, tumbling and you brake hard. Tires screeching and leaving black marks in the road, you jump off the cycle and run towards him while Steve tackles the Panther off of Bucky. There’s a loud crash of vehicles, and you barely glance up before you skid to a stop. Crouching beside him, your eyes search for injuries, road burns, anything, as the sound of sirens echo through the tunnel. Cars surround them on all sides.

“Are you okay?” you whisper, helping him up, and his hand snags on yours as he nods with a grunt. The Black Panther stands, and you eye him with scrutiny, standing in between the two men. When you’re sure he won’t attack you, you turn to look at Bucky. He’s panting hard and his hand finds your forearm, gripping you protectively as if he isn’t the one they’re searching for. You gently take his hand and put it down, raising your head to meet his eyes.

I’m sorry, he seems to say.

We’ll get out of this, you promise. You cup his cheek briefly, the flashing blue and red lights illuminating his face and he nods, eyes trained on the Panther. Letting your hand drop, you turn to assess the situation.

You eye your surroundings discreetly, keeping your body turned into Bucky, counting the number of guns pointed at you. All of the German Special Forces are taking cover behind their cars, suited in black bulletproof vests, the air rank with burnt cement and melting rubber. Behind the Panther, officers exit their vehicles, and you feel the landing of War Machine before you hear his voice.

A clank of metal, the quaint sound of his repulsors firing up. James Rhodes. Rhodey.

“Stand down, now. Congratulations, Cap. You’re a criminal.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Steve raise his hands and you’re nudged away from Bucky as he’s forced to his knees. A gun pushes into your back, forcing you into line beside the Black Panther. You let out a grunt but willingly go, not keen on having a gun shoved into your face even more than it already is, and keep your head down as Bucky is pushed onto his stomach. Manacles clink into place and you raise your hands. Undoing the drawstring, you feel the hood loosen around your head.

“Your Highness.”

You turn to the man beside you, a man who shares similar features to a man you’ve met in the past and he holds his helmet in his hands as he meets your gaze.

T’Chaka’s son stands before you and when you tug down the hood, you hear James’ filtered breath, a soft inhale he fails to mask to your impeccable hearing.

“Doctor.”

The guns lower and you raise your hands again.

"Hey, Rhodey.”

.

You stare into the thick, three inch glass cell, but Bucky refuses to look at you. He’s chained by the legs and wrists to the exam table, and you cross your arms over your chest.

“You should go,” he whispers in Romanian, his voice muffled by the barrier between them. “They only want me.”

“I’m not letting them take you without fighting for you. You didn’t do it.”

“They don’t care.” The task force around you is arguing about moving him, but none of them seem eager to go even close to the most dangerous man in history. “I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” The forklift’s engine ignites and you step back as it lifts him up, the glass cell tipping back and cutting off your conversation. You press your lips together, watching as his eyes struggle to meet yours, and every nerve in your body is telling you to follow after him, but you don’t.

“So, this was your off-grid mission, huh? Playing house with my potential godfather?”

You close your eyes, lower your head. Tony steps in beside you, and you sigh. “Tony, I—”

“How long?” He doesn’t sound angry, furious as you’d expected. Simply… simply interested. Opening your eyes again, you look up and Bucky’s gone.

“Ever since Washington. He didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Well, I’m glad you found him. I knew you were just one call away.”

At this, you turn to admire your boy, and he smiles. He looks tired, his red silk tie doing nothing for the beginnings of eyebags pulling at his face, but he’s still the boy you raised and love as your own. “It’s good to see you, Tony.”

“Thanks, auntie.” Your body melts at the name, a name he hasn’t called you since he was twenty-one and you two were standing at his parents’ tombstones while he sobbed into your shoulder, and you wrap your arms around him desperately. He sinks into your embrace and your eyes close as you stroke his hair. “I don’t know what to do.” About the Accords, about Steve, about Lagos. I read your emails, Tony. Every single one.

It’d been a weekly trip to the quinjet parked outside of Bucharest, just a little hike with Bucky to reconnect and refresh themselves. You were supposed to go tomorrow.

“You’ll do what’s right,” you murmur. You know it because that is what Tony has done since he’s been a little boy. “You can try, and try, and try, but sometimes, people won’t change, or they’ll do something you didn’t expect, and it won’t be your fault.”

“Ma’am, we need to take you to your cell.”

Pulling apart, you run a thumb down Tony’s cheek like you did when he was younger, and he smiles. He’s still got that little boy’s smile, but it fades quicker when he realizes what the task force member said to you.

“Cell. Right.”

“H.Y.D.R.A. still tampered with me, too,” you mutter, inspecting his hair. “They want me for a psych eval, priority number two after Bucky.” You spot a few grey hairs at his roots, and you frown. “You need to get some sleep.”

“Pepper and I are on a break,” he says with a shrug. “Still getting used to the empty bed.” Clicking your tongue, you sigh and pull him into another tight hug quickly. “I’ll see you in a bit. I need to sort this out.”

“I know you will.” You draw away and walk after the soldier down the same path Bucky was taken. You look back to see your boy still looking, and you smile. Everything’s going to be fine.

Tony will figure this out, you tell yourself. We’ll figure everything out together.

.

“What’s your favourite colour?” a guard asks you in heavily accented English, and you smile. You’ve been staring at your handcuffs ever since they put them on you.

“Blue,” you tell him in German. “And you?”

“Purple. It is my wife’s favourite colour,” he explains and your smile softens at the sentiment.

“Blue is the colour of his eyes,” you reply and he ducks his head, trying to hide his smile. You sit at the table, tapping your fingers against the metal, and he stands at the doorway, rifle held in hand, but you’re not afraid.

“You love him, yes?”

“For decades, now.”

“I am a big fan. My father told stories about the Howling Commandos, ma’am.”

“I’m flattered.”

We’ll figure it out.

The lights switch off and the room plunges into black before the emergency lights turn on. Everything around you is illuminated with red or bathed in blue shadows as you look up.

“What was that?”

“We will stay here. I’m sure it is nothing,” he says, and you nod. Something bites at your stomach and you look down at your chained ankles before glancing at the security camera in the corner of the room. “He does have beautiful eyes,” the soldier offers as a comfort and you chuckle. “My children have blue eyes.”

“You have children?” you ask with a wonderous grin. The idea of children has always been so far out of your mind that just the thought sends your mind into a flurry of possibilities. “How many?”

“Twins, a boy and a girl. They are three years old.” He’s extremely proud of it and you tilt your head up at him, your smile growing. “Albert and Ada.”

“That’s adorable. How long—” Your question is cut off by a violent scream, and your head jerks to the wall, the wall that separates you from Bucky. “What the hell was that?”

“Ma’am—” You stand up and he looks tentative to raise a gun towards you, but you’re too terrified to do anything else.

“That is not the sound of a man going through a psych eval.” The memories of the last time you confronted the Winter Soldier blazing through your mind, you shuffle around the table.

“Ma’am, sit down, or I will be forced to shoot.”

“Take these cuffs off of me, now.” You raise the silver chains to him, and he gazes at you apprehensively. You know, with enough effort, you could probably tear your wrists out, but you don’t want to hurt this man. “If what I think is happening is happening, you are not safe. The most dangerous man in history is just through that wall. You’re not going to be able to stop him.” When the man still hesitates, you let out a frustrated growl that’s punctured by another desperate scream. “Think of your wife, your children, and leave.”

You lift your cuffed hands again and you meet his gaze, dark brown almost black in the red lights. His mustache twitches before he lifts up the key. The mechanical cuffs click and release, a hiss of air escaping and you let out a relieved breath, tossing them aside while the soldier ducks to unlock the ones around your ankles.

As soon as the manacles unlock, you’re stepping out of them, your legs unusually heavy. You feel as if you’re swimming through molasses, flinging open the door and running to the room next to yours.

“Bucky!”

The pounding against glass, like a drumbeat, shatters your skull and you rush into the room, spotting a man holding a red book slowly pacing around the glass cage. Bucky’s fist is slamming against the glass, his head hanging low as he lets out a low groan of pain. At your entry, the man looks up and frowns, as if you are a mere nuisance, and your blood chills at the sight of that book in his hands. Red leather and a printed black star. H.Y.D.R.A.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” you breathe, carefully approaching the man and he flips pages in the red book, eyes not straying from yours.

“Oh, I understand completely the consequences of my actions, and they are intended to rip them apart.” His finger settles on a line on the page and you watch him warily. Bucky leans against the cell door, and you edge towards him slowly. If you can just put yourself between the two and get him out—

“Angel, go,” he croaks breathlessly. You do not listen. “No, you have to. There are words—“

“Step away from the patient, Doctor,” the man says softly, arrogantly. “I do not wish to harm you.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I do.” His eyes flicker to the page. “Angel of death,” he enunciates slowly in Russian, and you’re rooted to the spot as his eyes finally lift off the page. “An apt name for what you could’ve become.”

“Stop.” You ache to forget. You almost do sometimes, and sometimes, it is all you know. “That’s not who I am.”

“Ah, so you do know.”

“Get out of here. Please, go—”

“Unfortunately, I cannot have what I want unless she is out of my way.” You’ve almost reached Bucky’s cell, and your fingers stretch for the handle. The doctor doesn’t stop you, merely looks at you as if committing your image to memory, but not in a fond way. In a way for science: you’re nothing more than a test subject, a data point. Bile crawls up your throat at the thought. “Malady.”

Your brain short circuits. The smell of burning skin sinks into your sinuses and the agony that speared itself into your temples as they shocked your past out of you returns tenfold yet quaintly numb. Something inside your head unwinds, your feral rage you’ve locked away growling in anticipation.

“Three.”

Your whole body is sluggish as you try to work against the voices in your head to give in to the temptation. Pushing yourself against Bucky’s cell, you slam your fist into the glass. It cracks underneath your knuckles.

“Stop!”

“Brimstone.”

The smell of sulphur, the grime beneath your nails. You can taste the still water they shoved towards you, the vomit burning the back of your throat. Voice hoarse, skin slick with oil and sweat. Hell on earth. Your next punch comes weaker, and your knees begin to tremble as the voice in your head grows louder.

The feral rage pokes its head from the shadows, licks its bloody muzzle. It’s starving.

“Longing.”

It slams itself against the metal cages of your mind. Closing your eyes, you collapse against the glass and sink to the floor. You try to ignore his voice, the firm order to his accented German, but the words still sink into your head as if these are welcomed.

“Eternity.”

A hollowness, the weight of your heart wilting in your chest, the unending agony of searching for someone you don’t even know exists, causes you to let out a soft moan. It aches to feel it all at once, to plunge into a darkness you’ve clawed your way out of, and you want to scream, release the knot in your chest. You feel like you can’t breathe—

“Stop!” Bucky’s voice, terribly hoarse as he shouts through the glass sounds so far away and you raise your head to the wretched light. A breath pries its way out of your throat. “No!”

“Nightfall.”

A terrified scream wrenches its way through your throat and you claw at your wrists, eyes unseeing. There are cuffs—Zola is chaining you to the table because you’re thrashing too much. Lurching, you scream for Bucky, your mind unravelling as everything surges back to you. You are in that Austrian prison again, shivering against a bony body. The clamp of the machine against your head digs into your skull and you reach up to your hair. Electricity runs underneath your skin.

Fistfuls of hair bunch between your fingers as you tug, your stomach turning at the rawness of the injections running through your veins. The blood curdles in your head and you pitch forward, head pressing against the concrete floor. You slip away, your vision spattered with stars. The cage creaks under the force of your rage, still chained back but just barely. The metal is rusted, and as the man speaks, you hear it purr in satisfaction. These words are gifts to the animal inside, a fuel to its fire, and the voice sneers, obey, obey, obey.

Repeat after me, soldat.

Ready to comply.

Again.

Ready to comply.

Again.

Я готов отвечить

.

You wake up in a prison cell, your body aching and your throat raw, and you feel like you’ve been charged by a hundred rhinos as your neck sets itself on fire in pain. Trying to narrow your eyes on the side of your neck, you crane your head to spot the giant, blooming purple mark on your throat.

Your skin is red, split with dried blood and bruised. Your lips tremble as you work through each muscle and you let out a soft hiss as you look up at the metal wall. Your reflection is haunting, warped beyond compare.

The blue jumpsuit hangs off your frame, your arms locked together with maximum security handcuffs that are just little more than holes in a big block of titanium. You stand up uneasily, your arms dropping heavily, and approach the bars.

You’re in a circular shaped room, cells just like yours in the wall. Within five of them are Avengers you’ve read or know, and you search for Bucky as one of the guys notices you’re awake. Clint is leaning against the glass, staring at you with a deadly focus from across the room.

“Hey, Doc.”

You don’t respond. Your throat is raw, and it tastes like metal as you send him a nod before continuing your survey of the surroundings. You lean forward, eyes scanning the other empty cells and you notice with a heart wrenching lurch that there are at least two cells between you and the next inmate.

What have I done?

There’s a single door, cameras at every angle. The only other female in the room, a girl, sits in the corner of her cell with her arms strapped to her as she stares up at the camera. The Scarlet Witch.

You turn away, sliding down to the floor with a sigh. Your head is pounding. Closing your eyes, you try to soothe your raging thoughts as you lean against the wall, but your back protests when you move too sharply.

You hear the gears in the doors turn before it opens, and you open your eyes again to see Tony stride in. A wave of shame washes over you once you catch sight of a bruise blooming on his eye and his arm in a sling. It’s searing cold as he stops in the middle of the room, soaking it all in as you are still trying to do. Did I… do that?

“The Futurist, gentlemen!” Clint’s loud clapping pierces your eardrums and you squeeze your eyes tight, twisting away from the center of the room. “The Futurist is here! He sees all! He knows what’s best for you whether you like it or not.” The words are dripping with bitter sarcasm and you suppress a growl.

“Shut your mouth, Barton,” you call, your voice grating on your own ears. You tuck your knees to your chest, your titanium cuffed hands in your lap. Your stomach is churning and every shift causes a dull ache. You simply stare into your lap, sore neck arching, and wonder if he’s safe. Wonder who you’ve hurt—how could this have happened?

His footsteps stop before your cell.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Did I do that?” you ask quietly, unable to even look at him. Tony’s sigh reaches your ears, but you can’t tear yourself away from staring at where you know your fingers are, encased because they’re dangerous—you’re dangerous.

“It was Barnes. Are you okay?”

Turning to Tony, you feel so small under his gaze, so pathetic. You’ve always wanted to be strong for him, but the way your mind feels—decimated, torn to shreds—you can’t help but release a shuddering breath in response.

“Whatever he did, it wasn’t him. Please don’t punish him for it.”

“I won’t,” Tony says, and you look up into his eyes. He has Maria’s eyes. “Look, I got them to transfer you to a psych facility in New York,” he adds, tapping on his watch before expanding on an image. He shows it to you and you lean forward, squinting. On the screen says: I know where Barnes is. “Great faculty and staff. You’ll be transported in ten, fifteen minutes? Happy’s overseeing everything, but it’s good to see you awake.” A swipe and the screen shifts. Ping my location once you get on the chopper. “It should run smoothly.”

“What happened with everyone else?” you murmur under your breath, and Tony sighs.

“Ran into some people at an airport in Leipzig.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” He reaches through the bars but you jerk back, swallowing. Angel of death. “What was that back there? I never knew—”

“I didn’t know either. I suspected it, but they wiped memories, tortured us in so many ways, I guess I thought it was a nightmare.” Your eyes flutter shut at the agony that had splintered you apart, and you press your back against the wall, resting your blocked hands on top of your knees. Something inside you pulses unnaturally. “How many people—”

“Don’t do that to yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I barely got to the sixth word before I lost control, Tony.” Your eyes flash to his and his lips press together as you push yourself up. Ragged and exhausted, your skin is not your own. You’ve slipped someone else’s on—a someone you left behind the minute you found Bucky again. Murderer.

“Probably Dad’s work fucking with the programming,” Tony mumbles before raising his voice again. “Natasha and Sharon Carter worked to take you down before you could do any more damage, but Carter ended up with a bruised face, tailbone, and a few other scratches. A shattered hand and wrist. She caught one of your punches before Natasha got in a good blow. Widow’s Bite to the carotid.” When you don’t reply, your godson touches the bars with gentle fingers. “I’ve got to go, but I promise I’ll see you later.” You nod, and his hand falls away from the bars as he walks away. You watch him go, eyes trained on his back, before sitting down on the bed and passing time by staring at the wall and thinking.

When Happy escorts you out of what you now realize is the Raft, your chest deflates at the chopper waiting for you.

When you lift off and the Raft is nothing more than a speck in the waves, Happy unzips the black bag at your feet to reveal all that you need, and he relays the instructions, keeping his eyes steadily on his datapad as you change out of your blue jumpsuit. Changing into a long sleeve thermal shirt, you pull it snug over your chest before pushing your feet through pants.

“Tony’s heading for Siberia,” Happy begins, and you glance up from where you’re lacing up your boots. They’re sturdy, hard, and you juggle your weight from one ball of the foot to the other, trying to work them in. “We’re dropping you off in Bucharest to pick up that quinjet. F.R.I.D.A.Y. will upload coordinates when you start her up.” Grabbing a bulletproof vest, you slip it over your head and begin to velcro it tight. Your insides are twisted and you fight to keep your expression calm as you crouch down to examine the assault rifle. “Ma’am?” You glance up.

“Yes?”

“Good luck.”

Your smile feels grimmer than death. “Thank you, Happy.”

.

“Howard… Howard!”

Maria’s voice echoes in your ear, the tape playing over and over again, as you scramble over a small edge of the facility. You’d watched it once before it reran itself, and you couldn’t hold back the bruising in your chest at the vision of your lover beating to death a man you trusted for decades.

Everything around you is collapsed debris, the smell of electricity and smoke plunging into your sinuses. Dust stirs with your every step and you glance around as a force pulls you towards the silo. Ground up cement and grey snow is still falling gently down and you look up to see the hatch closed before a scream tears your attention away.

Beneath the grate, you hear the wind howling, the sound of a repulsor firing. Shouting echoes through the silo. There is a whine of warning, the crunch of metal, and then blast. Your heart leaps into your throat and you glance around to see if there’s a quicker way to get down than merely jumping.

There isn’t.

You take a deep breath and jump to the ledge just opposite, lower than your starting point. The metal trembles beneath your feet and you freeze for a second as it stabilizes, and then jump again. There’s the sick hammering of metal, clunk, clunk, clunk, and you swallow a breath, glancing down at how far down the bottom is.

The clunking fades, and you steel yourself for the sensation of freefalling.

You don’t give a damn about however many feet are between you and the floor, and you jump. Only one thought is on your mind.

Tony. Tony’s in danger. Tony—

Your fingers wrap around the grip of your rifle, your knees bending at the shockwave of pain that rolls up your legs. Rolling onto your side, you feel your battered body nearly give in, your neck protesting violently at the sudden jerk of your head as something lands with a thud. Your mind is a whirlwind of scenarios, of what you’ll find, and you force yourself to continue the roll until you get onto our knees, whipping up the rifle without a second of hesitation.

“Stand down, now.” You don’t recognize your voice—harsh, flat, cold—as it echoes and escapes into the Siberian winds. Steve sits on top of Tony, his shield poised in the air as he stares openly at you in shock. Your godson looks at you in utter relief, his face bruised and gashed, bleeding. Bleeding.

Have you caused this outcome? Is this what you’ve done?

You have felt guilt before—it is something you have learned to live with—but this is different, seeing Tony no more than a little boy in the eyes, an anguish in his gaze that reminds you of the first time he asked you if Howard did love him. The memory alone makes your throat cinch shut.

Your back is screeching at the strain, but you merely aim your weapon steadily at Steve as you slide down the ramp. Your eyes barely lift off of his to the black mass laying still on the ground, and your heart nearly jumps out of your mouth when you see a glint of silver, the sparks of wires.

Eyes narrowed down your sight, you walk slowly until you stand right beside Steve, the gun muzzle pointed right at his temple. Steve’s audible pants rattle in your ear as you kick him off Tony, launching him against a sloped column with a painful gasp.

Crouching, you drop your gun and help Tony stand up. He holds back a groan with a clenched teeth. His arm, around your neck, pushes down to steady himself and you hoist him up as you pull him away from Steve. His armor clanks, his movements slow and dragging, and you inhale sharply as you watch Steve slowly get to his feet.

Wiping at blood that smears his cheek, he picks up the shield and begins to limp to Bucky. Tony lurches forward, and you can taste the anger in your mouth—sour, bitter with grief—as he yells himself hoarse and you barely hold him back as his words ring in your ears. 

“That shield doesn’t belong to you. You don’t deserve it. My father made that shield!”

Tony lets out a painful gasp, pitching forward. Your hand presses against his chest, feeling the hum of the arc reactor as you push him back up, and you swallow at the hollow ring of the shield colliding with cement and stone. As Tony stumbles from one foot to another on the spot, you watch Steve pull Bucky up.

“So?” Steve asks quietly, and your eyebrows knit together as he turns to you for a moment. There is no animosity, just a blank look.

“So, what?” It is your turn to be angry. It’s a hot, raging thing that shoves up your esophagus, and your words spit hot. “You expect me to go with you after you tried to kill my family?”

“Bucky’s not going to be safe. We need to find a place for him to hide,” Steve murmurs, and the most incredulous laugh pries its way out of your mouth. You feel Tony’s glare weigh heavily at Steve, still too heartbroken to say any more than what he’s already said, and you glance at him, the image of his bloodied defeat printing itself into your head. “It’s going to be easier if you’re with us.” Bucky raises his head weakly, blood streaming down from his broken nose, and your heart splits at the soft glow of his eyes.

No, he seems to say, even through the pain of losing his arm. Don’t come. Even if it means we have to leave each other again. A sweat is starting to gather at his brow, and he’s still struggling to breathe, and as much as you want to run to him, you don’t. You hold Tony up just as Steve holds Bucky up, and you realize it then that you are a mirror image of Captain America. You will always choose the person who is somehow, and always will be, more important than the other, no matter the personal cost.

No matter the splintering of souls.

Please don’t make me choose.

I could never do that to you.

Your palms are sweating, your eyes trained, and your heart is wild in your throat as you whisper with a fury untamed. “How dare you make me choose between the son I chose and the man I love? How dare you bring this on us?”

“On us,” Steve repeats quietly, almost mockingly if not for the way his eyes seem to fall, if not for the way it all seems to pull him down then. “Yeah, this whole thing’s on us because you didn’t tell Tony either.”

Frigid waves crash down over you, extinguishing your rage as Tony stiffens, and you stare at Steve, shock blocking your ability to speak. Steve’s whole body caves inward, and then he turns away. Bucky’s eyes linger for as long as they can, a silent, loving apology, and you merely soak in his broken gaze before he’s trudging away. Your bones splinter under the weight of a world placed on your shoulders again.

There he walks away from you again, and you must play your waiting game.

Tony doesn’t ask questions until you’re both on the quinjet.

“So you knew?” he asks, his temper a quiet thing. It’s simmering beneath his skin and you grip the controls until your palms sweat. “How long?”

“Two years. I had my doubts since it happened, but he confirmed it two years ago after the spill in Washington.”

“Two years.”

“Tony—”

“So, you chose him anyway. When it mattered, you chose him.” Swiveling the chair, you stand up and look at Tony who you’ve patched up as well as he’d let you. His laceration isn’t stitched yet, but you’ve managed to tape the minor scratches shut, and he’s holding an ice pack to his swollen face. His bashed armor lays on the strategy table, and you glance at the hollow thing for a moment, trying to gather the right words.

“I just wanted to be selfish,” you admit quietly, looking at Tony again. He’s staring at you with wet, dark eyes, and you lower your head in shame. “I wanted to be happy.”

“No matter what it meant for the people around you?” he asks, and his words don’t need to be blunt or sharp for them to be harsh.

“I’m sorry.” You tentatively sit beside him, and you swallow. There is a distance between you and Tony that you don’t know how to cross. “I knew it then, and I know it now, that it was wrong, keeping it a secret from you, but I thought it was his story to tell, and he asked me not to say anything.”

“So, you chose him,” he concludes again, and you nod. You want to touch his shoulder, his knee, some kind of comforting pat but you know he will flinch away based on how coiled up his body is.

“I did, but I choose you now. And I promise I’ll always be here for you, no matter what. Even if you hate me. Even if you never want to see me again. I can’t ever say how sorry I am that I kept this from you, and—” Blood tracks down his temple, a slow, languid trail that drives you crazy. You grab a clean, moist towel from the table and wring it between your hands, small droplets landing between your boots. You glance from the white cloth to Tony, who’s still quiet— “Tony, you’re still bleeding.” His eyes search your face, and you meet his despairingly. You’re hollow, chock full of what ifs.

“Growing up, you were the only person I talked to about everything,” he says quietly, and your eyebrows rise in surprise. His voice is dulled, near to breaking. “Not even J knew some of the stuff I told you. You just understood everything so easily, and I never understood why when I was little. It was when Mom and Dad died did I get why you could pinpoint how confused I felt, how hard it was. Because of him.”

He pauses to look at you, and you nod, your lips pressing together in a sorrowful smile. “Because of him.”

“You know, even when I was little, I used my Christmas and birthday wishes on you.”

“On me?” you repeat, your smile waning and growing again, and he nods earnestly, his lips pressed together in an effort to squish his tentative smile.

“I just wanted you to be happy like Dad used to say you were. Guess that meant the Sarge had to come back, so I asked Santa if I was extra nice, if he could bring people back from the dead. That was before Dad told me Santa wasn’t real, and that I was too old to be believing in those things, but I fell into the habit again after they died. You know, wishing for the dead to come back to life. Guess my wishes got mixed up between Santa and Satan.”

“I taught you that,” you whisper, and his smile, just barely, lights up his face at the memory. “I told you Santa and Satan were brothers and if you were naughty, Satan would come and eat you up.”

“Yeah.” He lowers his ice pack, hand reaching to wipe away the blood but you catch him before he does, offering the rag again. He merely leans forward and you smile, tinged with exhaustion. It was his way as a boy to tell you he wanted your hug, by putting his chin on any part of you and pouting like a puppy with those dark eyes. Except now, he merely closes his eyes and seeks the comfort of his mother.

A comfort you can’t give him, but you’ll damn well try to come close to.

“I’m sorry for hurting you, Tony,” you whisper, gently swiping the blood away from his face. “I never wanted to do that.”

“I know.” Not forgiveness, not yet. “I just want you to be happy, auntie.”

“I know.” You gently rub his forehead before wrapping your other arm around him. His own snake around your waist and you embrace him tightly, eyes closing as he melts into you. “It’s okay.” His shoulders shudder beneath your palms, and you kiss his hair, eyes closing. You press your cheek against his skull. “When you’re ready, I’m gonna stitch you up, okay? Fix you up.” A shaky nod. You run your hand up and down his spine as he raises his head to suck in a lungful of cold air, and with Tony’s head on your shoulder, you wonder where Bucky is now.

You hope it is somewhere where he can rest, even if it means he never sees you again. Is this what you fought for? Killed for? Your peace only to be shattered by something out of your control?

Two years is better than nothing at all, a quiet voice tells you, and as you stitch Tony’s cut, you tell yourself you can be happy knowing he’s safe, but even that, you don’t know.

“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?” your godson asks as you pull the final thread through. He’s been studying you rather intensely for the past fifteen minutes and you don’t answer. Cutting the thread, you clear your throat and put away your supplies, pulling off your gloves.

“I’m just thinking about what we’re going to do when we get home,” you reply lightly.

You can tell Tony doesn’t like your answer by the twitch of his lip but he doesn’t bother to pick a fight and picks up a handheld mirror you left next to him to check out his new stitches.

“A lot of cleanup with Ross,” he says, “and you probably don’t want to go to that psych facility.”

“I don’t.”

“Thought so. I can probably negotiate something about that, set you up with a personal psychiatrist. We’ll get you a room at the compound; it’s been a while since you were home.”

Your smile is tentative as you zip up your medicinal bag, and you narrow your eyes at the sunlight that streams through the windows. An outline of a city cast in gold is in the distance as you approach the pilot’s seat once again. You try to fight off the disappointment, the hurt. You always dreamed you’d come back here with Bucky one day.

“I won’t get mad at you for thinking about the man you love, auntie,” Tony whispers when you land at the compound, and you nod to yourself, closing your eyes at the memory of the last time you were in here, flying to Bucharest two years ago. Bucky’s gentle hand on your shoulder as he coaxed you into letting him take over. Tony kisses your cheek and you open your eyes as the ramp lowers, and you get up, shaking yourself of the memory.

Wherever Bucky is, you know one way or another your paths will cross again, whether you search for him or not, and the stirring in your restless soul tells you rather that it will be sooner rather than later.

#fic: amaranthine #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x yn #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes imagine #bucky fic #sebastian stan #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan x you #sebastian stan x y/n #sebastian stan x yn #sebastian stan fic #sebastian stan fanfiction #sebastian stan imagine #my writing

[one-more-offbeat-anthem]

Dean is starting to realize that having choices doesn’t always make things easy.

When he was a kid, he never had a choice--he had to follow along with what his dad wanted, getting revenge, like it would be a rescue mission for their family. Even when John Winchester was long gone, though, Dean still didn’t have a choice; he had to keep going, had to get whatever was out there before it got him. Save the world. Avert the apocalypse. Defeat God. Over and over and over again, Dean had to do these things, and when the puppet strings were finally cut, he thought he’d get peace.

In a way, he was right. His life’s a hell of a lot more peaceful than before--he hunts when he wants to, because he wants to, not because of some crazy sense of duty that used to make him work himself to the bone. He has a house, now--he’ll never regret the bunker, his first true home since a long-burned house in Lawrence, but it’s nice to wake up to sunshine and walk outside and have an honest-to-god deck. Then there’s the whole deal with Cas--Dean had told Jack once that love can get crazier than that, and apparently it can get crazy enough for Dean to journey to the literal void and haul Cas out by the lapels of his trench coat.

(That trench coat now hangs in their closet. It’s not used as often but if it’s a blustery day, Cas still puts it on. Dean likes that Cas has other clothes now, although the first time he saw him in just a t-shirt he was pretty sure he’d actually died and made it to heaven.)

But part of having a choice, part of having freedom, is realizing how fucked up some of the shit before that freedom was. 

Which is why Dean’s been going to therapy.

“I hate it,” he admitted to Cas one night in bed, when they were curled up together, after the fourth or fifth appointment. “It’s supposed to make me feel better, right? But I just feel like she flipped me inside out.”

He said that, but he still goes, because after the inside-out feeling comes some kind of weird clarity where Dean’ll randomly drop his knife while he’s cooking and get all teary-eyed for reasons that having nothing to do with the onions he’s caramelizing. 

And right now, Dean’s especially glad for the patient counseling of Veronica Matthews, Psy.D., because he can’t think. 

He’s at the grocery store, like he is practically every week (when you’re feeding two adults, one adult-sized toddler, and your brother and his girlfriend visit your house near-constantly, plus your sorta-daughter and her girlfriend regularly crash on the couch on the way to hunts, you go through a lot of food), so it’s not any different than normal. Dean’s got the list, carefully written in Cas’s cramped handwriting--milk, eggs, cereal, beer, pasta, it goes on and on. 

(Ice cream is written at the bottom in Jack’s messy scribble, too.)

And Dean’s been going through the store the same way he always does, aisle by aisle, carefully scanning the list that Cas has organized by type of food. He’s going to get some wine in addition to the beer, he thinks, even though it’s not on the list, because Sam secretly likes merlot better than a pale ale, even if he’ll never admit it. 

Then a family walks by, a mom and a dad and a little girl sitting in the basket holding a stuffed rabbit and a slightly older boy walking beside the cart, poking his sister, and Dean hears a snippet of their chatter. They’re planning a barbecue for the little girl’s birthday, apparently, inviting the extended family. It’s so fucking normal, a scene Dean’s seen played out in the grocery store dozens of times, little kids begging their dads for cupcakes or moms carefully choosing what kind of vegetables their kids will like, but it plunges him into cold water, and he freezes up, white-knuckling the grocery cart’s push handle. 

Dean’s not sure how long he stands there in front of the cans of peas, feet glued to the ground, but then he remembers Dr. Matthews’ advice. He takes a deep breath, counts to ten. Exhales. Does that again. 

He’s at the grocery store. He’s not a kid anymore, stealing food because his mom’s dead and his dad’s well on the way, half-drunk on sorrow and all the way drunk on booze. He has a family waiting for him--Cas. Jack. Sam--Sam is safe. Sam is happy. Sam’s not going to starve. Eileen. Claire. Kaia--the list is longer than he thought. 

He’s safe. 

Dean lets out a final breath and pushes the cart past the canned vegetables, on his way to decide what kind of ice cream Jack might like. Maybe birthday cake. Something colorful with way too much sugar. 

Dean is starting to realize that having choices means he doesn’t have to do all of this alone.

#panic attack tw #sorry y'all I had brainworms todya #TFW goes to therapy is one of my favorite post-canon things #offbeatwrites

[miqo-tales]

5.5 daaaaaaays a week

(I loo-oo-oo-gin for ya)

Dragoons! Weird towers! Windows updates! Bahamut v2! Poor choices! Robots! Retcons! Aliens! Ikaruga! Creepy girls! Gamefaqs! This patch has it all folks!

MSQ

Arenvald would be a terrible poker player.

Also, the only thing missing from these scenes is someone standing behind Arenvald waving a giant black flag with the words "HE GON' DIE" on it.

I fail to understand how Estinien is so hard to find. I don't expect he has many hobbies or interests outside of "kill dragons", and that work has certainly dried up lately. Where does the man go?

Not much to say about the whole Azys Lla section, other than to note that the tempering cure has gone from 'that's convenient' to 'ok really?' very quickly.

Also you'd think Mr Has-Absorbed-the-Essence-of-Nidhogg could spare some aether.

Tiamat is green!

Also shocked she didn't die!

OK, so is that Amalj'aa chief not tempered? Or is he just that impressed that everyone tried to help them?

I'm mildly interested in what the Lunar versions of all the different Primals look like. But I also know they'll just be purple, so meh.

Oh, Sharlayan, interesting. So it sounds like we're probably not going there ourselves in 5.x, but I wonder if maybe in 6.0?

I'm REALLY surprised that Alphinaud did not volunteer to go with Krile. He's broken up over Arenvald, he just had an argument about his idealism, we know his father is not keen on what he and Alisaie and Louisoix have been doing. Really seemed like the ideal situation for his current character development.

I'm amused at the cruel tease of Zenos choosing a weapon out of sight. Also, interesting how genuinely angry he is in this scene. More so than we've ever seen before.

But I also have to wonder, what exactly was Fandaniel's goal in sending the dragons and soldiers to Pagl'than? Clearly wasn't trying to abduct more, so... just plan eradication? Spreading fear? Zerg rush?

Paglth'an

I like that the music is a re-arrangement of the music in Zanr'ak.

Kinda surprised at the kind of pulls you can do here. Breaks a little from their usual trend of gating it to only allow two groups at once.

Man that second boss is... lazy?

I mean, I get all three of these bosses are callbacks to Bahamut's Coil, but damn. Almost no effort in coming up with that second one.

Sorrow of Werlyt

Was not expecting Allie to have already run off. Also was not expecting Severa to be so attached to her already, but sure.

Allie clearly went to the GIJoe / Imperial Stormtrooper school of shooting accuracy. I mean damn girl, giant uber-powerful robot weapon of death and you can't manage to hit anything but bridges and walls?

Good job, Cid, you built a robot bus.

OK, fight is pretty interesting. I'm glad they didn't do yet another second phase. But I wish it had gone to armor-less mode a second time. Just to break up the fight a bit.

The area the Diamond Weapon crashed in looked so much like a battlefield that I was expecting a second fight in a solo instance.

"Haha Gaius, I know all your moves! OH SHIT YOU'RE GLOWING FUUUUUUCK"

Valen desperately scanning that BradyGames guide on Gaius.

Gaius creeping out the entire town with that Jedi holocron.

I kinda wish this hadn't ended with Allie completely recovering. Maybe just have her eyes change back or say something simple, dunno. Think that would have had more impact.

Nier - Tower at Paradigm's Breach

Yea, honestly, I got nothing. Like, what?

I mean seriously, what? This just feels like a retcon or a completely different story. Maybe the weekly questline will fill in some of the details, but I'm not sure it'll help overall.

Now, mechanically, this raid is fine. I think I like it the best of the three in terms of mechanics. Visually, ehhhh, I think I liked Puppet Bunker more. In terms of music, that's a bit harder. I think I'd say Bunker again. Tower is a really close second, but Factory still has the best final boss theme.

In the end I think Tower really only accomplished two things for me: 1) yea, sure, I'm interested in playing Nier to figure out what the fuck this references, and 2) fuck Komra.

Also, like every Nier raid so far, I needed a nap after some of those bosses. Yeesh, exhausting.

Summary

As usual, it's hard to give a concrete judgement of the .5 patch, cause it's split in half. However, this time I feel like it's a bit harder to guess where the part 2 patch will take us. So it's made this kinda interesting to me.

For the Sorrow of Werlyt, it's still kinda eh? I will give this part some credit that it did an okay job finishing it up. But it still depends a bit too much on Gaius himself. And the noble soldier thing that this storyline has been pushing for him still feels a little forced.

On top of that, I have to say that I think I wouldn't have so much trouble with this storyline if Allie and her siblings didn't refer to Gaius as "Father". Like if they just called him "Teacher", or "Sir Gaius", or "General" or anything else and there wasn't this father/children thing going on, I think all this would come across as less bothersome. It wouldn't fix everything for me, but it would help.

For Nier, I dunno. I've only ever played Drakengard 2 and 3 (fuck #3 btw) (also, never done 100% of either). So I don't know what a lot of this shit really means. And unfortunately, the story is too inconsistent and incoherent for me to really care about it without the knowledge of what's being referenced from those games. But in terms of mechanics and music it's been amazing, so I still like it overall.

#ffxiv #5.5

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

Motion Sickness Chapter 49

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

We left Wutai behind weeks ago and sold the horse in Shumi at the same vendor that I'd bought it from with a considerable mark down.

I didn't really care much about that.

Instead I cared about securing an airship in Mistral. Which we did after the train ride from Shumi.

"You're going to be able to fly this thing?"

Neo nodded. Our relationship changed slightly after Wutai. She knew that I wasn't blowing smoke about my origins. She knew I wasn't lying about Mother's control over my mind.

She knew how dead serious I was and a bit more about how fucking crazy I really could be.  

Good.

Don't cross me, Neo. I'm not a man whose bad side you want to be on. Don't believe me, just watch.

We walked out on an air-pad together in Mistral. We climbed aboard our small military freighter together. It was a small ship with the Mistrali cockpit to it and a bit of Atlas inspiration in the geometry of the wings.

She strapped herself into the pilot's seat and bit back a bit of yawn.

I sat back in the cabin and kicked my legs up. I pulled out the little black book we'd gotten from Merlot's laboratory and began to read through it. My new favorite pastime.

There I was, notes on me and how my skeletal structure was forming. Sketches of me at different stages of my development. It was the closest thing I had to a family picture book.

"You know where to be able to land this thing in Solitas?"

She shrugged at the same time she nodded.

"Good. We'll get there and the first thing we'll need is data, not money." This plane had run me a few hundred grand but I still had a few million Lien. A small fortune.

Neo still had all of her money from the last one. I'd run the lion's share of our expenses out of my pockets.

"That means heists regarding the most valuable of commodities."

She gave me a backwards glance as she started the plane up.

"No, not water Neo. Don't be ridiculous."

She rolled her eyes at me.

"Its information. Unfortunately my semblance doesn't give me a million eyes and the ability to hear and see shit across the city. I'm just good at smashing kneecaps. So that's what we'll have to do."

"I want to know what Ironwood is up to. I want to know if there is a maiden in Solitas. I want to know where she is, if she's there. I want to know how she takes her tea or if she drinks coffee. She'll either be summer or winter, because Cinder is fall and spring."

I read through a few notes of how my musculature was tested through dance while I was in the tube. My father hadn't wanted me to know how to fight but needed a way to test my movement. Dancing was good for that while floating in embryonic liquid.

It also gave my nervous system the tests he felt it needed.

The fucking sicko.

Neo held up her scroll at me with some typed words.

"Ice-cream?" I asked, reading aloud. "Sure we can get some when we land. You've more than earned it. We'll find a cafe, get you a sunday if you want."

She gave me a glittering smile and ran through some preflight checks. She flipped a few switches I could only guess the purposes of.

"Yeah yeah you're an old fashioned ice-cream girl. I should have guessed."

I pulled out my pipe. I started to pack it and my mouth watered slightly. Neo turned on the no smoking light in response. I grumbled and stowed the pipe in my pocket again. She just gave me a smug grin.

"This is how you repay me?"

She held her nose.

"Yeah I guess. A bit stuffy in here. Can't exactly open a window, either. I have to wait to smoke and you've got to wait on that ice-cream. Is that it? Fair enough, I suppose."

The bullhead took off with a hovering heave.

I read a little more out of my little black book in Merlot's tight scrawl.

Subject has been implanted with memories of living in the areas surrounding Vale. I avoided giving him memories of nearby locations in the event that he escapes.

That cruel son of a bitch.

He spasms and calls out for his mother. I can only assume he means Salem. It appears she is imparting him with some memories of her own, she does so even as I write and sleep. I should like to find out more. What all she leaves him with in addition to my own vat training creates an unpredictable specimen, however. I fear letting him out of the tank and it's doubtful we could have a reasonable dialogue. I wonder if Salem would pay a price to have him.

It may be a method to acquire more of her cells. A trade of sorts, for this son. She already gave up some cells for inferior Grimm specimens I created. It may just be possible.

At some point the text just ended. With no mention of how I ended up in Vale with a sword or even the falsified huntsman records. I could only guess at how that happened. Salem claimed to have had a bit of role in that. Making sure I infiltrated Beacon and was on my way with Ozpin none the wiser but I was no closer to figuring out how she'd done it.

Perhaps she took Merlot up when he tried to sell me back to her and used yet another of her agents. It was unclear.

What was clear was that I was a bit of a mess. A bunch of accidents had created me and left me in the state that Merlot had dubbed a partial failure. Salem had been poisoning my mind before I left the womb, so to speak. It was possible she continued to poison me in my dreams now.

And with that terrifying thought I closed the book and tried to get some shut-eye as the plane flew.

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We landed in Solitas in the depths of a pine subarctic forest. Neo put us down in a clearing and the plan was to hitch a short ride to Mantle by train or car in a nearby township.

It was the borders of Solitas that were closed so now that we were on the northern continent I didn't expect that we'd encounter resistance to our arrival.

"You're not wanted here, are you?"

Neo shrugged.

I took that as meaning, 'if anyone recognizes me.' So probably no more than in Mistral. We'd walked around pretty freely down there so, again, I didn't expect much trouble.

"You've got disguises on you, too, though." She rolled her eyes and they turned green and her hair switched to black before they all shifted back to their natural colors.

I nodded and set about unfolding a tarp over the top of the airship to protect it from the elements. We couldn't exactly get it close to the city without alerting Atlesian air-control to our presence.

Neo was mute and couldn't respond to air traffic controllers and we didn't know the appropriate communication codes to fly into the airspace, besides.

The whole place was in a state of lockdown, unlike Mistral and Vale, and they'd probably shoot us down if we didn't skirt the edges. I'd been worried a patrol might head us off and start shooting at us even as far away as we'd flown.

I tied the tarp tight over the ship with bungee-cords and refueled it from the dust supply we'd brought in the back of the ship. It took powdered burn, and a hefty amount of it too but we couldn't exactly refuel around here.

It took us a bit of a hike to get to the nearest township, Senew, we'd had to land far enough away that no one could have seen us.

I marked the place we landed on the map on my scroll so we wouldn't lose the airship. It would be hard to find again unless we knew where to look. And that's assuming it didn't get buried under snow in the meantime.

I marched through the snow drifts. My clothes which had been a stray too hot down in Mistral under all my armor were more at home here. The thick cape didn't help with getting through the drifts but my boots were key.

Neo had to step along through my foot prints, following me. She was short enough that I was worried I might lose her if she had to mark her own trail. I had to resist the urge to laugh at her tiny form as she struggled through the snow, something I knew she wouldn't take well.

I lit my pipe and eventually we made our way to Senew.

I found a small cafe and ordered Neo ice-cream, just as I'd promised her. I wasn't sure if she'd change her mind because of the cold weather but she seemed content with her selection. It couldn't have been a popular order in this cold. She deserved a treat after flying all the way here and then hiking a few kilometers in the snow, though. I ordered a hot coffee and we sat together in the cafe.

"Are you sure you won't be cold?"

She nodded.

"It's just that you're so small. And your ice-cream is so large." It was a decently sized sunday topped with a banana and hot fudge. I suppose that the hot fudge might help with the cold.

She kicked me under the table.

"It's adorable."

She kicked me again.

"Alright, alright. It's not adorable."

She glowered.

"I just can't win with you, can I, Neo?"

She gave me a look that said 'you're not even trying to win with me.'

"Fair enough. So this is Solitas. Looks bleak."

I listened to the wind through the window of the cafe. It was howling. It might whip itself up into a blizzard and I didn't want to be caught up in that.

"Do you think things will be better in Mantle?"

Neo shook her head.

"So it's pretty desolate there, too."

Neo nodded.

"You've been? Well once we're there we'll need to narrow down our search for the maiden. Probably in Atlas, at a guess. Probably in a bunker if Ironwood has his way."

Neo nodded and took a bite of ice-cream.

"But bunkers don't much matter to you, do they Neo? We'll find her. Even if we have to break into every bunker in Atlas."

I was tempted to light my pipe again but there was a man near the Cafe's bar wiping down tables and I didn't want to do anything noticeably illegal within the first few hours of landing here. Mary Jane was a prohibited substance all across Remnant and the cafe probably had rules about smoking and I didn't want to be thrown out, at least not before Neo had finished her ice-cream.

“Come to me, child…”

The wind whispered and with it came a cruel voice.

“My child. My little puppet. You will bring me the relic.”

My hand fell to my side and patted the relic where it hung. It still had two questions left. I considered using them on Cinder's whereabouts. Or that of the remaining maidens.

I had so many options. So many questions. I'd only ever get two more answered. There were so many secrets about my own life I'd never get answers to if only due to the opportunity cost of only getting any two answered.

And that was if I didn't ask about the maidens. Or Cinder. Or Ozma. I knew so little. Perhaps I was just a puppet with Salem pulling the strings.

The hidden truths about how I came to be in Vale alone held a dozen questions. Why had she sent me to Vale. How had she done so? Where was Merlot now? Where were my sisters? How had they come to be?

On instinct I'd burned one of my questions because I needed to know how to deal with Salem. I had a loose plan for that. Destroy her body so completely that she could never reform. Scatter her remains across this world such that she'd never take possession with her feet ever again, let alone her mind. The relic had indicated that such a thing was indeed possible. I just needed to get close enough to do it.

It took me forever to muscle up the courage to use the thing. Even looking at it reminded me of Ren and Nora and what I'd done to them. It felt wrong for me to be the one using the questions for that reason. Once I'd cleared my mind of the bloodlust I had only one choice in moving forward. To use the relic. So I did. And I'd burnt one of my valuable questions.

I could ask how to resist her commands so that I could actually strike at her without her dominating my mind. I could ask how else I might be able to defeat her. There were so many options. So many choices. I found myself paralyzed by the sheer number of them.

And I had only two left.

Finding out Salem was immortal had been a kick in the gut. But it wasn't so bad knowing that she could still be stopped. Still be delayed. I could still shut her down. She could be wounded.

And like a god of a myth of old, if I scattered her pieces fine enough, she would never return to power. It was just a question of breaking her hold over me. I couldn't cut her into bits if she controlled my thoughts.

So what questions should I ask the relic? Should I even ask it anything? A good question, one I'd ironically like the relic to answer.

I could also ask about the other donor who'd created me. My surrogate. It was a mystery I may never have the answer to any other way.

I sighed and stood up, I slammed back my coffee. Neo was finished eating and I had a train to catch.

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We took the train ride into the city. I watched Atlas loom overhead. A giant rock with engines dangling beneath. The gondolas and their cables stretched to the upper city like a spider's web. Hovercraft swarmed the floating rock. All in Atlesian design and bearing Atlas' colors.

I knew a little of the place's history. How Atlas had been set up above the city of Mantle. I know about how some had been left behind.

The lower city was dirty. It was mostly a giant slum with buildings pacted too close together for comfort. I looked out the window as we rode in on the place. I imagined a lot of people worked in the upper city and commuted there each day from down here.

The cobbled streets were packed with vendors in a way that reminded me a little of Mistral's middle and lower levels.

It must be hard to see such affluence then to come back down here day in and day out.

There was a quiet resentment to the place. Angry about the rock that hung above. A constant reminder of haves and have-nots.

We shuttled past a dust mine in the middle of the city. A large open-pit thing that seemed to threaten hunger. As though on a bad day it might stretch it's maw wide and swallow the place whole.

I only caught a narrow look as we bulleted past the famous dust mines of Mantle. It looked like the kind of place no one would choose to work in. It was about needs.

There were faunus every which way you looked. The racial segregation couldn't have been more prominent any where else in the world. The upper city, that's for humans, the lower city, that's for faunus. A clear dividing marker to segregate the two based on economic strata now, and social strata in the past.

My life might be a total piece of shit but hey, at least I wasn't a dust miner.

"Come on Neo. Let's find a place to stay."

We found a small motel willing to put up with us. They managed to keep it clear of the soot of the mines. There was a grime to the air which only heavy machinery spinning into the earth could throw up. I imagined how clean and fresh the air in the city above must feel. I imagined trying to raise children in a place like this. I promptly stopped.

I was just making myself depressed and pointlessly. There were real things in my life about this city that should make me depressed. I needed to find a branch of the Malachite or a rival gang organization.  

It was at times like these that, let me tell you, I got the White Fang. Their purpose was a noble one from the sight of the Mantle slums. I could see how and why the Fang were born when I looked out a window here.

"Let's take a tram up."

The upper city couldn't have been more different. It was also built down into the rock it floated on. Atlas Academy, I could see it from our gondola, had windows looking down and out over the wastes. They were dug into the mountainous slab.

There were also taller buildings which stretched upwards. Giving the illusion of some sort of man-made crystal, hewn from a different kind of rock. The city was a geode. Building upwards and downwards into the dull mound.

We landed and made our way off the gondola. We were surrounded by Mantleans working clerking jobs in the upper city. We stood out a little as hunters but only a little. We were given second glances but they were only that.

"I'm not sure I like it here. I think I prefer Mistral to Atlas." I told Neo. I watched busybodies bustle. "At least in Mistral they don't pretend that the lower floors are part of a different city."

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-WG

#neo #neapolitan #cloud strife #jaune arc #ruby rose x jaune arc x weiss schnee #war of the roses #lancaster #white rose #whiterose #whiteknight #white knight #cloud!jaune arc #sephiroth!Jaune arc #motion sickness #rwby #ffvii #ff7

[magics-protector]

Show Me The Way (Part 1)

Pairing: Gadreel x Reader 

Warnings: Language, Mental Health (mentions of past trauma), does not follow cannon storyline because I want Gad to be happy

Word Count: 1,225

Summary: The Reader is the Winchesters cousin and meets Gadreel after Sam and Dean locked him in the bunker to get answers out of him and soon after, she’s tasked with getting information out of him. However, upon meeting him, the Reader realises that Gad isn’t as bad as Sam and Dean made him out to be. 

There was a loud sound that echoed through the halls of the bunker that rang out at about 1 in morning.  

Y/N shot up from her bed, the memories of her already terrible sleep fading into the back of her mind for now as she bolted out from her covers, grabbing the oversized flannel that was gifted to her by Sam that rested on the edge of her bed.  

Her legs carried her to the dungeon as Dean has labeled it, the pads of her bare feet leading her towards the loud sound and as she got closer, she slowly started to realize what the sound was.

They were screams.  

Pounding on the door, Y/N barely got a word out before Dean swung the door open. He and Sam walked out of the room and closed the door before Y/N could even catch a glimpse as to what or who was inside. She looked up at her cousins and shook her head.  

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”  

Sam looked over to the clock across the hall and grimaced. “Later than we thought it was.”

With a frown plastered on her face, Y/N shook her head. “Obviously.” She looked over Dean’s shoulders to see if the peep hole was open, but it wasn’t. She nodded towards the door. “Who’s in there?”  

Sam and Dean glanced back at the door before Dean opened his mouth to answer and answered with malice and anger in his tone. “Gadreel.”  

With just one name, Y/N’s blood went cold. She looked at Sam with sympathy but he looked away. He had been distant ever since the whole possession mess. Y/N assumed it was the guilt from what happened to Kevin – she didn’t know the young prophet but it was obvious that he was family to her cousins.  

“We wanted to get all the info that he got from Meta-dick but it isn’t working out.”  

Angels were resilient, centuries of fighting off hell and various other creatures can turn anyone into a cold heartless warrior. Y/N knew that, she’s watched it happen, so maybe they needed a new approach. Y/N looked at Dean and then to Sam. “Let me try.”  

Instead of the protective protest she had grown so used to, Y/N watched as Sam and Dean looked at each other and without warning, opened the door to the dungeon. She glanced at her cousins for one last objection but it never came, only Dean’s cold stare and Sam’s puppy dog eyes. Realizing there would be no objection, Y/N tightened the flannel around her body and walked in to see the angel strapped down to a chair inside a ring of holy fire.  

Y/N was shocked to say the least. Gadreel, despite being covered in what she assumed was his own blood, was strikingly handsome – well his vessel was. Turning her head to check if the door was shut and confirming it was, she rushed over to a bucket of water the boys saved for interrogations and brought it to Gadreel, stepping over the little ring of fire with absolute care. With the wet rage that soaked in the water, she lightly dabbed the blood off his face. Gadreel’s eyes snapped open and stared at the girl in front of him with confusion.  

“What are you doing?”  

Damn, even his voice is sexy Y/N thought.  

“What does it look like, genius?” She said. “I’m cleaning you up.”  

Gadreel tilted his in confusion. “Why?”  

Y/N looked down at her hands and then back to the angel. “Because, you need help and you haven’t given me any reason not to.”

And with that, Y/N went back to work on cleaning the shocked angel. “Now, we may as well pass the time by sharing stories. How about you tell me about what Metatron told you?” Y/N said in a soft voice.  

Gadreel’s eye wandered away from the female hunter, looking down in shame. “I’m afraid I have no information to give. Just like I told the Winchesters, I have not worked for Metatron or seen him in two weeks.”  

Y/N trailed her eyes to land on the angel’s and saw them dilate. He was telling the truth. She looked down at the soaked rag in her hands.  

“So,” Y/N’s voice was quiet, almost regretful, which drew in the angel’s attention. “Sam and Dean have trapped you for nothing?” There was anger on the edge of her tone but she did not let it take control of her voice.  “They’ve locked you up for something you didn’t know?”  

The angel nodded slowly, amazed and shocked at the fact that this little human actually felt remorseful towards him. Never in his long lifetime has anyone ever felt pity or remorse towards him. He was always the angel who let in the beast, the traitor. He was always met with anger and resentment, every hit he’s ever forced to take full of rage and wrath but never pity or remorse.  “I only wanted to help, but it seems the Winchesters will never forgive me for what I have done.”

“Yeah.” Y/N said, running a hand on the back of her neck. “They tend to be like that.” Y/N lifted her hands and ran them over Gadreel’s bound ones, tracing the tiny scars on his hands. “I’m sorry, Gadreel. I am so sorry.”  

Gadreel furled his eyebrows as he stared down the young huntress. “Why would you be sorry? I have done nothing to wrong you – er?”  

“Y/N. Y/N Winchester.” She replied. “I’m Sam and Dean’s cousin.”  

Gadreel looked down again, guilt flooding his vessel. “So, I have done something to wrong you. I apologize.”  

Y/N looked up at Gadreel and stood up. She huffed and crossed her arms. “You just wanted to help. The only thing you did wrong was allowing Metatron to control you like that and that wasn’t even your fault.”  

Gadreel looked up at Y/N and tilted his head. “But it was. I let Metatron control me and use me as a puppet, like your cousins thought I had used Sam.” Gadreel looked down at his bound hands and sighed, his voice edging the verge of tears. “I fear I will never be able to redeem myself.”  

Y/N looked down, throwing the rag in the bucket and smiled. “Then don’t.”

Gadreel looked at her with confusion. “What?”  

“Don’t redeem yourself. Start over, make a new life for yourself.” Y/N leaned down and rested her hands on top of Gadreel’s bound ones. “Let me help you. I can get you out of here and you can go off and start a whole new life for yourself.”  

Unable to comprehend what Y/N had just said, Gadreel stared at her with eyes wide and he felt something tighten in his vessel’s chest. Before he could even get a word out, a loud knock echoed through the room. Y/N wiped around quickly and then wiped back to Gadreel.  

“I have to go.” She said and jumped over the holy fire but she stopped before the door and turned. “I’m going to help you Gadreel. Don’t worry.” And with that, Y/N turned and walked out the door, leaving Gadreel alone in the dark.  

And for once in his long existence, Gadreel felt a weight lift off his shoulders finally knowing that someone – even though they just met – actually cared.  

#supernatural fanfiction #supernatural x reader #supernatural imagine #supernatural reader insert #supernatural #gadreel x reader #gadreel imagine #gadreel fanfic #sam winchester #dean winchester #reader insert #female reader #x reader fanfiction