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the-obnoxious-sibling · 2 months

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in which this story comes to an end. (fucking finally.)

part eight of the post-marineford portion of the near miss fics! (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) if you have no idea what i’m talking about but would like to read a shanks/buggy story about kissing in disguise and then having to deal with the emotional fallout of doing that, click on this link, that’s the tag for the whole thing in chronological order. (plus a fair bit of complaining about writing, one inspirational improvised musical number, and a snippet of shanks pov) if you do know what i’m talking about: it’s done! it’s done!! i wish i could say i planned to end this on 3/8 but lmao, did not know the significance of the day until, like, this tuesday. but it’s done. i’m taking a break from the world of this story to work on some gift exchange fics, but i will be uploading the first few fics to ao3 soon, and should start posting the shanks POV post-marineford story in late april. if there are scenes you’d especially like his POV on, let me know! i’ll do my best to incorporate them.

Buggy spent a very cathartic half-hour shouting at a bunch of guys who ate up his words with a spoon. Always eager to please, the men obediently found themselves disembarkation buddies, cleaned up the messes they’d made, and started gathering their things (mostly weapons they’d stolen off the guards at Impel Down).

It was nice to be respected, Buggy thought as he watched them scurry around the ship. However misplaced the respect, it made people listen to him, something Buggy had wanted for as long as he could remember. He’d never been able to get enough. Probably never would, if the hunger that grew every time these men cheered his name was anything to go by.

He wandered up to the room he shared with Galdino—thankfully empty, he didn’t want to end up in another slap fight over details—and took care of his own possessions. (It wouldn’t do to have any excuses to delay or hang back when they got to the meeting point.) With the modified Marine jacket and hat back on, Buggy could fit everything else in a small satchel that he strapped around his waist, neatly hidden by a twist in a sash and the way the jacket fell. He left the room… more or less the way it had been when he arrived—there was no way to hide that dent in the wall, and Galdino would have to be the one to deal with the smear of wax across half the bed—and exited the room for the last time, taking in the view of the deck below with a contented sigh.

The Red Force was a well-run ship—a compliment Buggy would never voice aloud, but in the privacy of his own mind he allowed himself to think it. Even with hundreds of strangers aboard who couldn’t help but get in the way, she was clean, well-equipped, and sailing smoothly. Buggy didn’t know if he’d be able to say the same in a few hours, when all these men would be trying to squeeze onto the somewhat smaller Big Top. Buggy rubbed a hand across his mouth to hide his involuntary grimace at the thought. Maybe the island they were meeting up on had some industry he could put them to work at? A farm would be fantastic, if he could get paid for their labor and get the produce at a discount as well…

Buggy looked over the deck in search of one of Shanks’ senior officers. He didn’t know most of them by name, but those cloaks and capes they wore were distinctive enough that he thought he should be able to identify them on sight, and surely if the one he found didn’t know anything about the island, they could point him to someone who did. The navigator? Roux, who seemed to know a little about everything? Beckman, whose job it was to know something about everything?

And, think of the devil, one of the doors to the interior of the ship opened to reveal Beckman, speaking with a few of those cloaked men. They each went their own way, and Beckman crossed to the railing, taking up a pose not dissimilar from Buggy’s a few levels above him. That was a first mate for you, always keeping an eye on things, one way or another.

Buggy sent his feet down the stairs and the rest of him took the shorter path, swooping down to Beckman’s side like a giant white bat. To his credit, Beckman didn’t react to this unusual approach. Instead, calm as anything, he said, “Whatever you said to those men, it seems to be doing the trick. Thanks.”

Buggy waved the praise off. “If they’re so eager to be under my command, they’ve got to start learning to behave themselves sooner or later. Might as well be now.” Leaning an elbow against the railing, Buggy looked Beckman over. He sure did seem a lot more relaxed now than he’d been outside Shanks’ rooms. Relaxed enough to share intel? “Tell me something.”

Beckman glanced sideways at Buggy. “Hm?”

“What do you know about this island where we’re meeting up with my crew? Is it populated?”

“Ah, I don’t think so, no,” Beckman said, tilting his head back, recalling the facts. “Snake picked a jungle island that’s a bit out of the way of normal trade routes. There’s some ruins, but no signs of recent habitation.”

Buggy tried not to visibly wilt. “Ah.”

Beckman’s eyes lingered on Buggy. “We didn’t want to risk a naval presence on the island getting word out to the rest of the Marines.”

“No, no, it makes sense.” Buggy sighed, shoving a hand under his hat to scrub at his hair. “Just trying to figure out how the hell I’m gonna feed all these guys in that case.” No way had anyone thought to tell Alvida that Buggy was bringing new guys with him, let alone a lot of new guys. She’d have gotten the ship supplied with their normal numbers in mind.

Well, the new guys were a tough bunch, maybe they’d see hunting for their dinner as a fun challenge. Assuming there was anything safe to hunt and eat on this island… Buggy dug his fingers into his scalp, biting back a frustrated groan.

Beckman laughed. “Yeah, I don’t envy you that job. At least we were expecting to take on passengers.” He whistled to get the attention of someone up in the crow’s nest and flashed a hand sign at them. After a few exchanges, he stopped signing and rolled his eyes. “Stubborn, overworking little—” He cut himself off and glanced at Buggy. “Was that all you wanted from me?” Buggy nodded. “Then I’ll see you when Shanks finally gets up the nerve to talk to you… or when we land. Whichever comes first.” With that, he walked over to the mast, got the attention of a young man who’d been leaning against it, and grabbed onto a low-hanging rope. The two of them pulled themselves up into the rigging—to harass whoever was up in the crow’s nest into taking a break, probably.

Buggy watched them climb for a minute, a frown crawling its way across his face. When Shanks finally gets up the nerve to talk to you… so there was something Shanks was hiding that he didn’t think he should, huh? Buggy had figured the feeling he was getting off Shanks was about one of those topics he’d had private conversations with Roger about way back when, not something that Shanks would consider any of Buggy’s business. But apparently that wasn’t the case.

Buggy’s frown deepened. He could come up with a list of topics Shanks wouldn’t want to broach but would still feel obligated to bring up, no problem. But that list was short, and Buggy didn’t like the thought of discussing anything on it.

Unsettled, Buggy leaned back against the mast, arms crossed.

“Look out below!!!”

Buggy looked up and shrieked at the sight of a man falling head-first out of the crow’s nest. He scattered—it wasn’t like his body would soften the blow enough that the guy would live—and then blinked, as a rope he hadn’t noticed went taut, and the falling slowed to a gentle, somehow mechanical motion.

“The hell is wrong with you?!” he demanded, floating up to be eye-level with the slowly descending man. This was, if Buggy remembered correctly, Shanks’ sniper, Yasopp, of the infamous years-long tempting out to sea. Someone with good aim, and a keen eye, but not particularly decisive—or, at least, he hadn’t been back then. He was also apparently someone with a shitty sense of humor; he wasn’t answering Buggy’s question because he was too busy laughing and pointing at Buggy.

“Your face! Oh, my stomach hurts,” he said, clutching at his waist. “Oh man, that was almost worth getting kicked out of the nest.” As they approached the ground, he shifted his weight so his feet would touch down first, and untangled himself from the rope with practiced ease. “Phew. Sorry, uh—Buggy, right? Yeah, sorry about that. The crew knows better than to stand so close to the mast when the watch changes, and I didn’t think to check before I jumped.”

“Jumping from the crow’s nest for fun.” Buggy shook his head. “And here I thought you people were almost respectable.” Yasopp, the maniac, cackled. Beckman, drifting down to the deck on his own rope mechanism, in a much more orderly fashion, chuckled a little.

“It’s possible we’ve been on… well, not our best behavior. Let’s call it better behavior than usual, these last few days,” Beckman admitted. “Except for Yasopp, who doesn’t know the meaning of the concept and so stays up in his nest.”

“You haven’t been on your best behavior, you’re as mean as ever,” Yasopp said, putting on an over-the-top pout.

Beckman rolled his eyes. “Because I need to be, to get anything done around here,” he said. “And you need a break. Drink, talk to someone, tinker with one of your ridiculous trick bullets, I don’t care, just—let someone else keep an eye on things for a few hours, okay?” He nudged Yasopp in the side with an elbow. “Or are you gonna say you didn’t train your juniors well enough at their job?”

Yasopp crossed his arms, sulky. “No,” he conceded.

“Good,” Beckman said. Giving Buggy an apologetic grimace as he untied himself, he said, “I trust he’s apologized to you already?” His tone suggested that if he hadn’t, Yasopp would soon regret it.

What a mother hen of a first mate, Buggy thought, fighting down a smile. “Yeah, yeah, it’s fine,” he said, shrugging off the incident like it hadn’t carved a decade off his lifespan. “I should’ve known you people had to be at least a little crazy, since you run around with Shanks.”

A small smile crossed Beckman’s face, and Yasopp muffled a snort of laughter in a fist.

Someone called out in a panicky tone for Beckman from a far corner of the ship, and the smile fell off his face. “If you’ll excuse me?” Not waiting for a reply from either of them, Beckman walked off.

“So mean,” Yasopp said, fondness creeping into his voice.

“That’s first mates for you,” Buggy said, unable to keep a similar fondness out of his own voice. Shanks had done a good job finding this guy. When you grew up with the gold standard first mate (or, heh, the Silvers standard?), it was hard to find someone who could measure up. “Keeping things in order when your captain’s lost his head.”

Yasopp chuckled. “Ah, the boss isn’t that bad off.” When Buggy gave him a skeptical look, he smirked. “Lost his heart, maybe, but he knows where his head’s at.”

“I—uh.” Flustered, Buggy cleared his throat. He’d really just gone and said it. “You’re a lot less subtle than your crewmates.”

Yasopp shrugged. “I leave subtlety to subtle men. I’m not built for it; I’m built for getting to the heart of the matter, and doing it fast.” He extended two fingers towards Buggy, lifted his thumb into the air, and twitched his hand like it was a gun recoiling. “We both know where things stand. What’s the use in dancing around it?”

“Sure,” Buggy muttered, his thoughts going back to what Beckman had said. What was it Shanks both didn’t want to tell him and needed to tell him? What was there left unsaid, besides the sort of thing Buggy had already decided didn’t need saying? He crossed his arms. Damn it, he’d been trying to avoid thinking about this shit!

“Hey,” Yasopp said, snapping his fingers to draw Buggy’s attention. “You work with bombs, right? You make them yourself?”

Welcoming the change in topic, Buggy scoffed. “Of course,” he said, “only an idiot trusts the kind of weapons manufacturers who are willing to sell to pirates to make explosives that are good, reliable, and cheap, and I have better things to spend my money on.” He narrowed his eyes at Yasopp. “Why?”

“Because Beck just gave me permission to tinker with my trick bullets, and if you make your own explosives you might be able to figure out what I’m doing wrong with this one.” Digging around in one of his oversized ammunition pouches, Yasopp presented Buggy with an unusually lightweight cartridge. “Here, what do you think?”

Buggy cracked the cartridge open, curious. Inside was a pool of silvery-black gunpowder and a thin-walled hollow bullet, which proved to have some other kind of powder inside. Buggy pinched that powder between two fingers, rubbing them together to feel the grit and then sniffing at the residue left behind. He stared at his fingers, baffled, and smelled them again. “What is that, aluminum and an ammonium salt?” Yasopp nodded. “Are you trying to make a cartridge that explodes in the barrel?”

Yasopp sighed, running a hand through his locs. “What I want is a smoke bomb I can fire out of a gun. What I’m getting is… that, more or less.”

“Yeah, of course you are, a big velocity change ignites this stuff easily. With a different catalyst, though, or maybe a better sealed chamber…” Buggy trailed off, considering the bullet. A miniature smoke bomb, huh? Something that could stand up to the initial shock of gunfire, and turns to noise and powder on impact… “Do you have a chem lab around here somewhere?”

Yasopp grinned.

The two of them didn’t emerge from Yasopp’s workroom until the bell rang out announcing last call for lunch. Buggy wasn’t sure he’d ever get the metallic burnt smell out of these clothes, but he didn’t care; this had been fun, the kind of idle experimenting with explosives that he hadn’t had time to do in years. Buggy hadn’t realized how much of a man’s free time it ate up, captaining even a smallish crew, until he’d gotten a fraction of that time back.

“Too bad we didn’t figure out a solution for your smoke bullet problem,” he said, dusting the last of the gunpowder off his shirt sleeves.

“Eh, I’ve been working on this on and off for months, it wasn’t gonna be an easy fix,” Yasopp said, shrugging his star-spangled cloak back on. “But it got both of us out of our heads for a few hours, so I’d hardly call it a waste.”

Buggy blinked at him, frozen with one arm in his jacket. “Both of us?”

“You were fretting, I don’t know what about. Shanks, at a guess. And I’m… not good at letting other people take on my responsibilities.” Yasopp grimaced. “Beck doesn’t always have to toss me out of the nest, but…”

Buggy frowned, sliding the jacket up his other arm. “I wasn’t fretting.”

Yasopp gave him an unimpressed look. “Sure. And what kind of concealer do you use to hide the frown lines you must have, if you make that face every hour of the day?” When Buggy scowled at him, Yasopp said, “I’m not a subtle man, remember? If you want somebody to pretend to believe your lies, you’re looking at the wrong guy.”

Buggy sighed. As Yasopp locked the workroom up behind them, he admitted, “It… was good to get out of my head for a while.” Yasopp gave him a squeeze on the shoulder, and they left it at that.

Lunch was a bit less exciting than the past few days had led Buggy to expect: the fried rice with pickled cabbage and ham that had been served with Shanks’ breakfast was the main dish on offer, with other repurposed leftovers making up the rest of the meal. When Roux wasn’t looking, Buggy gave him a curious look. The rest of the crew had been on their best behavior, according to Beckman… so, had Lucky Roux been showing off? If he had, it had worked on Buggy; he still wanted to poach Roux for his own crew, even if this less impressive offering was his usual fare.

Eating his bowl of rice with a couple promising-looking toppings—all well-spiced and delicious, of course—Buggy made his way out onto the main deck. A few Red-Haired and Whitebeard Pirates glanced Buggy’s way, but most of them had gotten used to Buggy over the last few days and returned to their meals without paying him any mind. He peered down at the lower deck, crowded with men in worn prison uniforms standing in surprisingly well-organized clusters of twos and fours, finishing their lunch.

“Afternoon, men!” he called.

“Captain Buggy!” they cheered.

“Let’s see,” Buggy said, and on a whim set aside his bowl to chop off his feet and swoop down, close enough to excite his men but just out of reach. “Aren’t you arranged all nice and orderly?�� It looks like you did as I asked.”

“Of course!”

“We’d do anything you asked, Captain Buggy!”

Buggy grinned. Music to his ears. “Then I suppose I should reward you, shouldn’t I?” A few excited sounds rose from the crowd as Buggy returned to his spot on the deck above them. “Hm… I’ve told you a few stories of the old days with Captain Roger, and a few more adventures of the great Captain Buggy’s crew. But there’s someone I’ve yet to introduce you to, a captain who’s been allied with me and mine these last few months.” Someone who might need some convincing to cooperate with the sudden appearance of all these guys… and who was more eager for praise than even Buggy. “Let me tell you how the strong, beautiful Iron Mace Alvida saved my life.”

A hush fell over the crowd.

“Yes, I know what you’re thinking: the great Captain Buggy, in need of rescue?!” The wide-eyed stares Buggy received confirmed this. And by the look of it, some of the men were mentally tacking on the phrase by a woman? to that question, as he’d suspected they would. Yeah, best to nip that potential problem in the bud. “Well, I’d been through a terrible trial in the days leading up to our first meeting. Separated from my crew, from my body, alone on a half-wrecked ship, starving, a vicious sea monster rising out of the waves before me, his many-toothed maw dripping with drool, eager to eat me—when suddenly! A great iron mace came down on his skull!” Buggy slammed his lunch bowl against the railing, the crash of metal on wood drawing the eye of every man below.

Buggy grinned. If they hadn’t been hooked before, they sure were now.

He fudged some of the details, of course—no need to reveal exactly who had put him through that terrible trial, or how his crew had behaved in his absence. But the broad strokes were true enough, and the changes he made were in support of his reason for telling the story: to convince these guys to respect Alvida, to flatter her as they did him, to make this joining of forces go as smoothly as possible. Sure, it didn’t put Buggy in the best light, at least not at first, but he didn’t want Alvida taking a perceived slight out on a man who might be able to stand up to her mace. If revealing one of his weaknesses was how he avoided that disaster, so be it.

He was just reaching the ‘rescuing his crew from cannibals’ climax of the story when a cry rang out from above: “Land ho!”

Finally. The relief that rushed through Buggy nearly made him cry. After all the many hells he’d been through since being arrested… things could finally start getting back to normal.

“We’ll continue this story after we disembark,” Buggy announced, to a few disappointed groans from his men. “Find your buddy if you lost track of him during lunch! Make sure you both have everything you’re taking with you! Stay out of the way of the Red-Haired Pirates while they’re get us to shore, but be ready to leave the second we’re docked!”

“Aye, Captain!”

But of course, it wasn’t quite that simple.

Buggy found Galdino sitting in the empty mess with Lucky Roux, making polite conversation over a pot of tea. Though, with these two, it might not actually be the conversation it seemed to be—something about the island Roux sourced his tea from? Apparently it was a distinctive blend, and hard to acquire.

“Did you need something, Buggy?” Galdino asked, an undertone of irritation to his voice. Because of course Buggy needed something, why else did he ever seek Galdino out?

Well, if Galdino didn’t want to be used, he shouldn’t have made himself so useful.

“The dock’s gone,” Buggy said. “Either rotted through or swept away in a storm.”

Galdino glanced up at him, and set down his teacup. “Well, at least it’ll be a challenge. Lucky Roux, it’s been a pleasure.”

“It’s sure been something, having you people aboard,” Roux said with a wide smile. “Hopefully not for the last time.”

Buggy snorted. “In your captain’s dreams.”

Galdino muffled a laugh in his fist; Roux didn’t bother concealing his amusement. Buggy realized how his words had come off, scowled, and stormed out of the mess with a mutter of, “Come on, Galdino.”

The two of them joined Beckman and the Red-Haired Pirates’ navigator at the bow of the ship, and considered the space where a dock clearly used to be. A ship this big, an island with such a sharp drop from shore to sea? They wouldn’t be able to land without a dock.

“Can you do it?” Beckman asked.

“I’ll need to begin from the shore,” Galdino said, thoughtful. “If it isn’t well anchored from the start it’ll drift away.”

“That’s no problem.” Buggy chopped his feet off and leaned forward, letting Galdino sit cross-legged on his back. He flew them to shore, where Galdino made some long wax spears that Buggy wedged into place. When they were securely dug in, Galdino melted the tops of the spears and, starting from that spot, created more wax to mold into a floating dock. Nothing that would be any good at anchoring a ship the size of the Red Force long-term, but they didn’t intend to be here any longer than necessary. So long as it could hold firm while the men disembarked, that was all they needed.

While Galdino worked, Buggy hovered above the canopy, looking for any kind of promising location to settle his men. He quickly spotted the ruins Beckman had mentioned—several of the old buildings were tall enough to be seen well above the treetops, the gray of the stone standing out against all the greenery of the jungle. There was one with a large paved area around it, not far from the shore, which seemed promising. Buggy took a moment to fix the spot in his memory, then went back to tell Galdino about it.

Galdino barely paid him any mind. He was focused on his work, and confident enough in it to stand on the dock as he was building it, a foot or two of wax all that separated him from the awful, helpless death that awaited any Devil Fruit user in the ocean. It was bold of him; Buggy preferred a nice, reliable boat any day.

“Any messages to pass on to the men?” he asked, hovering at Galdino’s shoulder.

“They’ll need to be light on their feet, and should stick to the center of the dock,” Galdino said. He was starting to sweat; extruding this much wax in one go must take a lot of effort. “If their weight isn’t balanced right, one wrong move could capsize this whole thing.”

Buggy blanched. Yeah, he could never. “Noted,” he squeaked, and flew back to the Red Force to convey these instructions.

Despite Galdino’s warnings, the disembarkation went well. Buggy watched with no small amount of pride as the buddy system worked beautifully, each pair of men walking down the gangplank, across the waxen dock, and onto the shore without any signs of a bottleneck developing. Being listened to was nice—it was very nice—but being listened to, having your orders followed, and seeing them work exactly as you imagined, now that was heaven. Buggy might not be the strongest pirate the world had ever seen, but damn it, he was good at this shit.

As the last dozen pairs prepared to leave the Red Force, Buggy felt a gentle weight press down on his foot. He frowned, tried to remember where he’d left his feet, and only then noticed a presence on the main deck that made his hackles rise.

Shanks.

“Are you holding my feet hostage?”

“That depends,” Shanks said, giving Buggy an unreadable look. “Are you leaving without saying goodbye?”

Oh, this guy. On his own ship, surrounded on all sides by his most trusted officers, and still managing to look like some kind of miserable wet cat, terrified of being left alone.

“And how was I supposed to say goodbye to someone who’s been hiding from me?” Buggy asked, instead of the dozen meaner things he wanted to say.

Shanks glanced away, suddenly awkward, and Buggy took the opportunity to look him over. The shower had done him good, gotten him clean of all that secondhand makeup—though it had not, Buggy noticed with a quiet little thrill, removed the bruises that had apparently been hiding underneath some of that makeup. His hair looked nicer, almost healthy, even pinned back by the sunglasses Shanks had propped up high on his forehead. “Are these the shame glasses I’ve heard so much about?”

Shanks’ hand rose to fiddle with the temple of the glasses. “Ah, yeah.”

“I thought your crew was supposed to laugh at you while you were wearing them?”

“They’ve been laughing at me, all day,” Shanks said, tired. “And they’ve been right to, given… everything.”

Well, that was ominous.

With a sigh, Shanks said, “There’s something I should have told you earlier, Buggy, but there never seemed to be a good time, and… I didn’t know how to say it.” A sheepish smile pulling at the corner of his lip, he said, “I still don’t, to be honest,” and pulled the sunglasses down over his eyes.

It took Buggy a moment to put it together. Shanks’ discomfort, the way the large mirrored lenses took up so much space on his face, the nervous twist of his lips… then Shanks ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead, and it clicked. All the blood draining out of his face, Buggy caught Beckman’s eye; he nodded, ever so slightly.

(Fuck.)

Buggy got up in Shanks’ face, looking past his own wide-eyed reflection to confirm that spark of recognition. Shanks leaned back, Buggy reconnected to his own feet, and at this angle… yeah, he knew that face. He’d kissed it, once.

(Oh fuck, he’d pickpocketed that guy, too.)

Fighting down a hysterical burst of laughter, Buggy said, voice high-pitched from the strain, “Well, uh, thanks for the ride, Shanks! I’d say I owe you one, but I’m pretty sure you still owe me another two or three dozen favors before we’re even.” He backed up, hands brushing along the railing as he inched towards the stairs, and beyond them the gangplank, the dock, the island, freedom.

(Somewhere he could have a little breakdown about this revelation in private.)

“Buggy…” Shanks cautiously held out a hand.

Buggy pulled back out of reach. “I’m not saying goodbye to you, Shanks!” he snapped. Shanks faltered, his hurt visible even past those ridiculous sunglasses, and Buggy sighed. Did he have to spell it out? “Stupid. I already told you.”

Confusion wasn’t a much better look on Shanks. Well, either he’d figure out or he wouldn’t.

Buggy rolled his eyes, spun around, and ran off. Over his shoulder, he promised, “Until next time, Red-Hair!”

#notfic #the near miss fics #one piece #shuggy #buggy #shanks #now if you’ll excuse me i’m going to sleep for a week #orz why is writing so easy at the beginning and so hard at the end

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ramsywasalittlelamb · 2 months

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cover up and say goodnight, say goodnight

a batfamily agere fic! 2.7k words, fluff! warnings for mentions of nightmares and fear toxin, never goes in depth!

hello!! ive been super inactive as of late for a multitude of reasons, but mostly bc ive gone back into spy mode of having an online existence lol enjoy the fic! (better to read on ao3 imo!) lmk if i need to add any warnings!

pinterest photo links 1 2 3, title from this must be the place by talking heads!!

First it was Tim.

He had been taken off duty mid-patrol after a dose of fear toxin had been administered to him and possibly Jason. Even though he argued that he was fine, he took an antidote, and they should be more worried about Jason, Bruce persisted until Tim resigned for the night and retreated back to the cave.

He would never admit that his hands trembled with the scenes flashing in his mind on the back of his eyes each time he blinked for a second.

He would never admit that the hug he received from Alfred upon arriving made him tear up underneath the mask.

He would never admit that in the middle of the night, the lonely openness of the room and the creak in the hallway floorboards began to scare him enough to not sleep, prompting him to go to Bruce’s room because Bruce’s room was safe. Because Bruce was safe.

Bruce squinted in the darkness of his room when a weight dipped his mattress, beginning to sit up to ask what was wrong or if someone was hurt, but soon settled back down when he saw a teary eyed Tim crawling into the bed with Aurora tucked between his arms in a tight hug, thinking he hadn’t woken Bruce up.

Bruce would never admit that Tim woke him up.

Next it was Damian.

He had come home later than Drake but earlier than the others for school purposes, getting enough sleep the night prior was valued for the loud and noisy classmates he had to put up with for a majority of his day, along with getting his homework done on time for the next day.

He had finished his schoolwork, freshened up, and followed his usual routine for the weekdays, ready to sleep.

Except.. something was off.

He had traced back everything he did, and everything he did was in the correct order and routine…

Oh, his pacifier was missing from his bedside table. He must have left it in father’s bedroom from the previous night.

He folded back his covers and trotted down the hall, narrowly avoiding the loud spots on the floor and opening the door to father’s room, only to see Drake and father slumbering.

He continued forward, passing the empty and inviting spot on one of father’s side to grab his pacifier and return back to his bed.

But he paused, eyes and mind darting between the open slot on the mattress and the half open door, revealing the nightlights placed throughout the hall.

Bruce would never be able to explain the selfish disappointment he felt when he heard the door close, only for a burst of joy to replace and erupt in his chest when he felt Damian snuggle against his side, the pacifier knocking against his shoulder in a rhythmic motion.

This time, it wasn’t Jason.

He had been having nightmares on repeat— as if that was new,— the way he had been carrying himself and working the past few nights had been concerning at the very least. Everyone had noticed, but didn’t bring it up, until Dick came over from Bludhaven and took him aside.

Jason had admitted to not having great sleep recently, but had argued that, once again, it wasn’t new to him. He could work it out, push through. And once the nightmares have made their run, everyone can carry on their merry way.

Of course, nothing ever worked out that way for anyone in this family.

His head felt full of just.. a feeling of disturbance, followed by the fact that he was distracted by how his left arm and right leg weren’t cooperating with him, one of scarecrow’s men had whacked him square in the head, sending him to the ground.

The rush of cold air flowing through a crack on his mask hit his face, everything felt so far away. Why does everything feel so fuzzy? Why is someone yelling in my ears? Why are there so many sounds?

The hands under his armpits dragging him from his spot on the floor cut him out of his thoughts, his eyes burning along with his lungs, the loudness in his ears was just too much. He struggled against the hands dragging him, effectively flipping on his stomach and away from the person.

He blinked heavily up at the person, his vision swimming as he squinted at them. Dick? Tim? Bruce? None of those options sounded great to deal with right now.

Next thing he knew, he was jolting awake with panic and fear seizing in his chest, an overwhelming feeling of everything crashing into his system. He wasn’t in his room, he wasn’t even in a safe house, this was the manor.

With remnants of the nightmare leaping around in the fog of his mind, he clutched the sheets closer to him as he tried to move off the bed, but his limbs didn’t want to cooperate. His knees hit the cold floor with a whimper leaving his mouth, tears filling up his eyes quickly as he sat in his own misery.

Then it was Cass.

She almost always sought someone out for cuddles during the night, regressed or not. It was comforting being wrapped up in someone’s arms, but just like tonight, sometimes it was because it just got really cold and lonely in the manor.

Tucking her big bird plush in her arms as she wrapped her fluffy blanket around her shoulders, she ventured out into the hall.

Her hand was on the handle of Bruce’s door, when something felt.. off… There was an icy ache of worry forming in her chest, something in the back of her head to look around first.

Listening to her instincts, she checks all the rooms, some of them missing their owner, making her smile knowing she’ll have more people to hug tonight.

Two rooms, side by side, had light coming from underneath the door. Dick was awake, which was no surprise seeing as he slept until five in the afternoon, but Jason being awake set off the alarms in her head.

Opening it slowly to let him know she was entering, and thankfully not receiving a request to leave, she saw Jason sitting beside his bed with his face hidden by his arms resting on his tucked up knees. The blankets tossed around and his pillow shoved between the wall and mattress. Clearly not a restful night.

She sat beside him, at a distance for his comfort, allowing him all the space and time he needs, but letting him know she was there. She would always be there for them.

“Nightmare.” Jason grumbled, his voice muffled by his position. She hummed, nodding even though she knew he couldn’t see it. She knows how terrible nightmares can be, she also knows how badly they affect everyone in the family differently. Some had gotten used to them and could shake them off easier, meanwhile others couldn’t even close their eyes without an image of the bad dream reappearing.

“It sucks and— and it’s frustrating! I know I get them, and they still get me shaken up when it happens, and it sucks!” He says, throwing his head back against the mattress, letting his arms fall to his side.

Hm, regressed.

She takes big bird from her arms and places him into Jason’s lap. If he helps her take her mind off bad things, he should help Jason do the same.

“Big bird? What am I supposed to do with it?” He wipes his nose with his sleeve with a small scowl and questioning look at the plush.

“Him.” She corrects, “Hug.”

He pauses, looking between Cass and Big bird, before picking up the stuffed animal and hugging it, releasing a breath of what seemed like relief.

“Come.” Cass says after letting Jason have a moment of peace with big bird, standing up and reaching a hand out for Jason to take.

He takes it, the two of them walking hand in hand a little further in the hallway to Bruce’s room. Jason pauses at the doorway, but Cass pats his hand, nodding with encouragement.

Cass lays with her back to Tim, scooting as close as she can to make room for Jason— though that’s not too hard with how large Bruce’s bed is. Jason shuffles hesitantly, tucking his head under Cass’s chin and allowing himself to be hugged by her, whilst hugging big bird in his arms.

She won’t be cuddled tonight, but she’s always willing to repay what the others have given her.

“G’night, love you.” He whispers to her, nuzzling further against her in search of comfort.

“Love you too.” She murmurs back, a smile etched on her face as she drifts off.

After hearing a few doors and very quiet talking, Duke decides to get up from his bed of misery.

He had tried making it more comfortable over the time he’s been here, but sometimes nothing would shake the feeling of homesickness he still felt.

Plus, that fuzzy feeling— regression, he reminds himself— keeps making it hard to do anything but lay down and cry in his own sadness, curled up with his all too cold blankets and in want of a hug.

But it’s late, everyone is probably settled back down for the night and— and he couldn’t just bother anyone for a hug anyway. He’s new to this family, the dynamic, and he just.. he didn’t slide in perfectly like a puzzle piece yet.

Sure, he was close with them and he talked to them like family, but everything was still new and he continued to find out more things. Not only about them, but himself too.

And right now, he just feels small, tired, and homesick.

Though.. Tim did tell him that if he ever felt in need of a hug, no matter the time, Bruce will always be willing to give one to him— Perks of being the new kid, Bruce couldn’t really get angry with you, Dick added. And Bruce did give some good hugs.

It wouldn’t hurt to try.

He picks himself off the bed and goes down to the end of the hall to Bruce’s door. He can hear Bruce snoring on the other side, the sound of the sheets rustling every now and then. Maybe Bruce was just an active sleeper.

He opens the door and…

Pretty much everyone is already in the bed, like a secured spot dedicated to each and every one of them. Ouch.

His bottom lip begins to wobble as his eyes well with tears. It’s not that serious, really, but seeing all the others so adjusted and comfortable to do this like it’s a routine, meanwhile he still feels like he’s intruding on everything.. It’s isolating, to say the least.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring at the absolute cozy and familial scene in front of him, watching like an outsider, like it’s a paused screen.

Dick hears the door to Bruce’s door open for the umpteenth time tonight, but he never hears it close.

Odd.

He clicks off his phone, peeking his head out quietly to investigate and Duke is standing at Bruce’s door, teary eyed, fidgeting with the frayed hoodie strings.

Alarms go off in his head immediately. Duke never seeks out Bruce in the middle of the night like this, and he certainly has never seen Duke come to anyone crying, so something must’ve happened.

He walks over, his steps unintentionally quiet until he purposefully makes a floorboard creak under his weight. Duke jumps at the noise and stares wide at Dick.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Did something happen?” Dick whispers, bending over a little to get more eye-to-eye with Duke, reaching over to pull the bedroom door nearly closed to block the sound of them talking.

Duke glances between Dick and inside the room through the small crack, biting on his lip before shaking his head, wiping his tears away with the sleeve of his hoodie. “‘M fine.” He says wetly with a sniffle. Very convincing.

“Duke, if something is wrong, you can let me or anyone one of us know. We won’t judge you or tell another person.” He assures, trying so hard to get concern across and not worry and panic in his expressions.

Duke hesitates, “I’m jus’ not feeling good. Sad.” He says, his bottom lip quivering as more tears well up. “Jus’ wanna hug.” He says in such a pitiful way, Dick thinks his heart just got torn then ripped out of his chest.

“Oh, lightning bug, I’d be more than willing to give you a hug— any of us would be.” He says, opening his arms for Duke to crash into, to which he promptly does. Tears soak through Dick’s shirt, though he doesn’t really care at the moment because his baby brother is sad, and he can’t have that.

“Did you want a hug from Bruce?” Dick asks after a few beats, he needs to figure out why the kid was just standing there. Duke nods against his chest. “Okay, so why didn’t you go in and get one, bug?” Duke hesitates again, holding Dick tighter.

“Didn’t feel right. Everybody is asleep ‘n cozy and.. I’d just be bothering them.” Duke says, muffled against Dick’s chest. “It’s scary being the new kid.” He says, moving his head to look up at Dick with a nervous look and tears steadily streaming down his eyes.

“Duke.. bud, I know it’s scary. You could never bother us though, especially if you’re upset.” Dick says with a frown, sorrow filling his voice as he runs a hand over Duke’s head comfortingly. “How about we go in there together? If you feel uncomfortable then you can leave or hug me tighter, how does that sound?”

A small and shaky— but still!— smile breaks onto Duke's face, making Dick smile back. The two walk over next to the side Damian rests on, seeing as the other was quite packed. Dick shuffles under the covers, Damian snuffles for a few moments, both Dick and Duke freeze until he flips over and nuzzles against Dick, who just combs his fingers through his hair.

Duke shifts on his feet for a few moments, then slowly climbs next to Dick, adjusting himself comfortably under the blankets and curling around Dick, who runs a hand up and down his back.

Within moments, Dick is the only one awake, smiling to himself as he looks over all of his siblings and his dad bundled together in peace. A giddy feeling fills his chest, a childish glee tugging at his mind. He holds Damian and Duke closer as he closes his eyes, happy to be sleeping surrounded by warmth and love.

Alfred checked all of the kids' rooms after nobody showed up in the midst of his cooking— let alone once it was done. No footsteps, no laughter, no tired groans from the ones who stayed up all night.

It was suspicious.

Nevertheless, he carried onwards to Bruce’s room, opening the door quietly, ready to start the daily routine of many years, until he saw Bruce already awake, surrounded by a pile of sleeping children.

“Good morning, sir.” Alfred whispers, a smile tugging at his lips at the sight.

Bruce huffs a breath in reply as he tries to sit upwards, shushing Jason when he whines at the subtlest movements or sounds, petting down his hair.

“I believe you might be stuck on the bed for the day, Master Bruce.” He says above the children, careful not to disturb any of them. Bruce chuckles quietly, “I guess I am. Not the worst situation to be stuck in though.” He says fondly, his eyes full of admiration and love for all his kids.

“Definitely not the worst.” He agrees, moving towards the bed to readjust Bruce’s pillow, seeing as the man couldn’t really move to do it himself.

Stepping away to leave the room, he pauses at the door. “I’ll come back with breakfast, perhaps a bedroom picnic is in order.” Alfred says, a twinkle of happiness shining brightly in his eyes as he leaves.

It may be Bruce’s bedroom, but the bed certainly does not hold one owner.

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dndads-winter-gift-exchange · 7 months

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Welcome- again!

Hello and welcome to the Dungeons and Daddies winter gift exchange official blog! This gift exchange (also called a “secret santa” in some places) will be run by fans, for fans, and will be a place to spread some DnDads joy. This is our second time running the event!

If you don’t know how this works, basically: Soon, we will be releasing a Google Form where we will gather general preference information from everyone who wants to participate. We’ll be using this information to both assign you someone to create for, and assign someone to create for you! Who’s creating for who will be kept a secret until it’s all revealed during the final week of February(the 22nd-29th), where everyone will be gifted their works. Fun!

(edit, Novem. 19th: the form has been released!! here's a link)

This event will be accepting all kinds of creations: fanfics, fanart, cosplay, crafts- you name it! Here’s our official rules, which include some regulations on what you can request content-wise. Returning people should make sure to reread them! They’ve changed since last year.

This event will be celebrating season 1 AND season 2 of Dungeons and Daddies, along with some of the miniseries when possible. All of this will be tagged accordingly so people won’t be spoiled, and in your preferences on the sign-up sheet you’ll be able to state what you are and aren’t interested in. Easy as pie!

Our current schedule is:

November 15th to December 15th: Sign-ups open!

December 15th to January 1st: Sign-ups close and assignments are sent out, including a link to the (once again optional) Discord server.

February 22nd to February 29th: Gifts are revealed!

Returning people may notice the creation period is a little shorter this time around- this was unavoidable since February is a short month, but after careful consideration we’ve concluded that the lack of holiday chaos will probably mean people have more free time, even without the extra days. If this ends up actually being an issue, we’ll extend a little into March! Winter starts then for people in Antarctica anyway.

When the time for gifts being revealed comes, we’ll be asking everyone to post their gift here on Tumblr with the tag “#dndads winter gift exchange 2024″. There will also be a collection on ao3 for any fic that ends up posted there!

(p.s… you may notice we skipped a year, even though the events have been consecutive. we’re basing our event year title on what year gifting week takes place in- and since it’ll be in 2024, there you go!)

And as always, here’s our little FAQ for some more common questions.

The ask box and our DMs are open and will remain open for the whole event. Feel free to send in any questions! Or you can email us at [email protected] , which we check regularly. We’re so excited to get back at it!! See you all November 15th :]

#dndads #dndads gift exchange #dungeons and daddies #dndads season 1 #dndads season 2 #dndads winter gift exchange 2024 #aaaaa i'm super excited ya'll! this is going to rule

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sumiink · 5 months

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Sumi's Fic Recs

I've been saving a list of fan fiction I like for years now and thought I should share it!

Fandoms include Danny Phantom, DPxDC, Batman, DCMK, BNHA, and Miraculous Ladybug, Legend of Zelda (Linked Universe), Mob Psycho 100, and Genshin Impact. Links, summaries, and comments under the cut.

Danny Phantom

Phantom of Truth by Haiju

NOTE: An edited/updated version of the sequel (Shadow of a Doubt) is also on AO3, but not finished. The finished, unedited version can be found on FF.net here.

Summary: Locked away in a secret government lab with Phantom as her sole object of study, nothing stands between Maddie and the truth... except, perhaps, herself.

Review: You can’t talk about Danny Phantom fanfic without bringing up Phantom of Truth. This one defines the vivisection genre. It’s written in Maddie’s perspective and you can see her character in every little detail of the writing.

Treading Water by TheFullCatastrophe

Summary: "This is the story of why we had to start calling Danny Fenton, Danny FINton. Get it, Danny? 'Cause you have FINS? Oh, I kill me." - a summary by Tucker Foley.

Review: Mermaid AU! Another classic fandom fic, this one with great worldbuilding and some dark, realistic vibes that make the ghosts (well, mermaids) really feel dangerous.

Modern Day Ghost Girl by MemoryWriter

Summary: Wendy Manson, 14-year old freshman in Casper High. Recently she's been able to sense ghosts, and on the day Wendy's paranormal curiosity gets the best of her, her project partner and ex-best friend Shane happens to follow her. When she meets a mysterious ghost in the abandoned apartment, what of her identity will she be discovering?

Review: One of the first fics I ever read, so it holds a special place in my heart.

Outside Looking In by Ellen_Brand

Summary: Casper High's new psychiatrist has some interesting interviews ahead of him.

Review: A great outside perspective into Danny. Also I just like Cade!

Phantom’s Sketchbook by AkoyaMizuno

Summary: Mr. Lancer finds himself in an unparalleled situation, he has access to something which can give him incredible insight into the personal workings of Amity Park's local ghost teen hero, Danny Phantom.

Review: Another fandom classic! A must read for the student/teacher relationship between Mr. Lancer and Danny.

You Should Be Dead by SapphireDragon11

Summary: Dash and Kwan are horrified to discover they've accidentally killed their classmate, but perhaps even more so when he shows up at school the next day. With his secret on the line, Danny soon discovers Dash and Kwan are the least of his worries.

Review: An epic story of Danny going up against incredible odds! One of my absolute favorites!

DPxDC

But I Want to Be Let In, Not Out by TheWritingOwl

NOTE: Actually a series of one-shots!

Summary: Growing up with the Fentons, Danny resigned himself to the fact that he would never see Damian again. However, when he gets summoned to Gotham after becoming the Ghost King, he finds himself reuniting with his long lost twin.

Review: Some nice demon twins au with batfam elements- all the stuff I like in a DPxDC fic.

close enough to be whole again by hailsatanacab

Summary: “If you ever find yourself in danger, go to Bruce Wayne. He will help you.” His mother had loved him, in her own way. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have helped him escape. If she hadn’t, she would have dragged him back to the League of Assassins, to Grandfather. If she hadn’t, he’d be dead. She loved him, but she loved the League more. Jack and Maddie Fenton loved him too, they did, but they loved their work more. They loved their work more. -- After his parents react poorly to his reveal, Danny escapes to the only person he thinks can help him - Bruce Wayne. He doesn't know what to expect when he gets there, but it has to be better than where he is, surely? He certainly doesn't expect to be reunited with his long lost twin brother Damian. It's funny how things work out that way. Danny is 16 years old, not Phantom Planet compliant

Review: More angsty demon twins AU with secret identity shenanigans, what’s no to love?

Recognized by AgentIanLegend

Summary: When they heard the fateful words "Recognized: Robin - B01," nothing could have prepared them for the web of secrets which would unravel as Daniel Fenton and Richard Grayson search for answers.

Review: An epic story will all kinds of twists and turns. Very will written with great pacing and tight storytelling!

Batman

hand in unloveable hand (a chokehold) by britishparty

Summary: Tim Drake is eleven years old when he’s grabbed off the streets of Bristol while he’s on his way home. It will be okay, he tells himself: they’ll call his parents, and they’ll pay the ransom, and he’ll get to go home.

There are pictures of Batman and Robin on the camera he was carrying. A lot of pictures.

They don’t call his parents. They call Black Mask.

- or: the one where Black Mask kidnaps Tim and tries to groom him into a ruthless heir, and Tim tries to figure out how to destroy him from the inside out.

Review: Tim is great in this. This one is full of scheming and mind games and all that good stuff.

From When He Sprang by WereDog15

Summary: January 2012. For the last four years, Jason Todd has been living on the streets of Gotham, doing whatever he can in order to survive on his own. But one night, as he emerges from his dwelling in Gotham’s underground tunnels, he encounters the legendary dynamic duo of Batman and Robin.A little bit of help can go a long way, but Jason's world is ripped apart as he is unintentionally put in the path of one of the deadliest secret societies that the world has ever known.Discover the story of the event that changed their lives forever, and put Jason on the path to becoming the second Robin.

Review: THIS FIC. It’s creative, it’s dark, it’s gory - this one makes me feel like I’m back in middle school reading The Hunger Games for the first time. This fic does not pull any punches.

Liminal Spaces by Calamityjim

NOTE: A multi-part series with some extra one-shots too

Summary: Bruce's habit of collecting strays is not limited by dimension. Or When Young Justice Batman comes across an angsty, seemingly abandoned by his Batman Tim Drake, he decides to step up to the plate and parent the crap out of him.

Review: Oh this one is a long, epic story with all kinds of twists and turns. And lots and lots of emotional batfam moments.

A Gentlekid Thief by Blazonix

Summary: Tim didn't mean to become the notorious thief Red X; it just sort of happened. Just like how he somehow wound up being Batman’s greatest nemesis - his therapist. He would like to remind whatever higher forces are out there that he is still only 12.

Review: Funny and clever!

From the Shadows by Wolfsbanesparks

NOTE: Shazam crossover

Summary: All Billy Batson wanted was to survive a particularly rough week living on the streets of Fawcett City. The last thing he was looking for was a new family. All Bruce Wayne wanted was to learn a bit more about his upbeat teammate under the guise of official Wayne Enterprises business. But he could never turn his back on a child in need. Especially one as surrounded by mystery as Billy. OR Billy gets adopted by the Batfamily while trying to deal with a strong magical enemy.

Review: I’m always a fan of gen fic that also has an overarching story and great villain!

Shutterbye by katiesparks

Summary: The more I research it, the more I know it has to be true. Dick Grayson is Robin. And that means Bruce Wayne is Batman. All the pieces fit. I move my Dick and Bruce Wayne things into the Batman and Robin box and buy an extra lock for it.

Review: One-shot written from a young Tim’s perspective. The writing style really brings his character to life.

Surveillance by smilebackwards

NOTE: A multi part series

Summary: Tim knows antagonizing Lex Luthor wasn’t exactly his safest move but the point is really driven home by the bullet to the shoulder. Or: The AU where Jason never died and Tim is a civilian who contributes to crime fighting by taking surveillance photos and leaving them on the desktop of the Batcomputer.

Review: Gotta love some ‘stalker Tim gets involved in hero stuff without actually wearing a cape’ stuff.

Detective Conan & Magic Kaito

(Don’t) Believe What You Know by discordiansamba

NOTE: This fic is actually a rewrite, buuuuuut I saved the older, longer version if you want to read that one instead. Available here (I just copy and pasted it, so formatting may be a little weird)

Summary: For as long as he's known him, Hattori Heiji has always seemed to gotten mixed up in cases with a sort of... supernatural touch. Honestly, Conan's never thought much of it- it's not as if the things that go bump in the night are actually real, and they've got countless cases behind them to prove just that.But after getting mixed up in a strange case in Osaka and learning a disturbing secret from Heiji's past, its left Conan wondering if there's more his friend isn't telling him. So he does what any good detective would- investigate.He's just... not sure he was ready for the answers.

Review: I am a huge of discordiansamba’s writing! It very descriptive and the stories tend to have a lot of interesting moving parts. This fic in particular is great for its worldbuilding and the magical, dangerous adventures Heiji gets involved in. And Heiji trying to hide stuff from Conan always makes for some good tension.

Blood and Snow by discordiansamba

Summary: Heiji Hattori has never believed in the supernatural. Things like vampires have always been a bunch of nonsense to him. But the supernatural is about to prove itself very real.

Review: If you like the last one, you’ll like this one too – another supernatural adventure focusing on Heiji!

Unprofessional Opinion by Ellen_Brand

Summary: A series of psychologicalpersonality profiles of our boys... with guest shrink Cade Maboroshi!

Review: I just like Cade! And an outsider’s perspective is always fun, especially in this writing style.

The Case of the Magic Bullet Murder by MirrorandImage

NOTE: Technically a sequel, but I didn’t read the first one and wasn’t lost. There’s also a third fic that’s good too!

Summary: As always Conan stumbles across another body; and this time the prime suspect is this high school kid named Kuroba Kaito. Sequel to The Case of the Hidden Epidemic.

Review: We get to see Conan interact with Kaito, and that always makes for fun secret identity shenanigans. And we even get to see Kaito get involved in solving a case!

Insanity, Apparently by Taliya

NOTE: A series of one shots

Summary: Takagi Wataru would like to register a complaint to whichever deity thought it would be hilarious to toss him into odd situations with Kaitou KID. Repeatedly. Because this was far beyond his pay grade.

Review: A fun story with a mix of characters you don’t see very often.

Be a Better Me by Lisa_Telramor

Summary: Kaito thought that the Robot Incident ended with the destruction of his copycat robot. He couldn't have guessed how wrong that assumption was when he is injured months later.

Review: Wonderfully angsty and doesn’t shy away from the horror of Kaito’s new reality.

Guide you home by Tobina

NOTE: Uses Guide & Sentinel tropes, which I’d never heard of before but I guess it used to be popular in fanfic in the 90’s? Basically Sentinels have superpowers and Guides help them control it. The two tend to be lifelong partners, but it can be romantic or familial or platonic.

Summary: As a Level 5s Sentinel and skillful detective, Kudou Shinichi helps the Tokyo Police Department whenever they get stuck with a case, his Guide Ran at his side to ground him when needed. After a KID heist, it becomes clear that Guides are dissapearing and Shinichi and his western counterpart Hattori Heiji are knee-deep into the case, especially because this one hits far too close to home for comfort. When then even phantom thief Kaitou KID gets involved, things are bound to get... interesting.

Review: A GREAT story that does a good job with worldbuilding and characters’ relationships. While it focuses on Conan, my favorite part of this fic is the arc the Kaito goes through and the way this story takes a look at his motivations and moral compass.

It's Raining Men, Hallelujah by Asuka Kureru

Summary: Conan already has some kind of corpse magnet power, but when Heiji is in his orbit the corpses actively come to them. From above. Witness.

Review: A fandom classic! Short and hilarious.

Inconceivable by joisbishmyoga

Summary: In the face of a DNA analysis Kaito can't deny, he begins uncovering the rest of his family's secrets. Too bad he's not the only one looking.

Review: An epic story that has a takedown of the Black Org AND twin AU, what’s not to love?

Secrets in Indigo by Sinnatious

Summary: A throwaway comment about Kaitou KID’s eye colour sets Kaito on an uncomfortable path of discovery.

Review: I can’t give too many spoilers! An overall great story with great writing as Kaito discovers secrets and also tries to keep them hidden.

The Young Royals of Deduction by joisbishmyoga

NOTE: One shot

Summary: The Exclusive Interview with Four Children Taking the Investigative World by Storm

Review: Short but fun!

My Hero Academia

The Thin Gray Line by A_ToastToTheOutcasts

Summary: The beauty of the era of quirks wasn't the amazing abilities; it was that nobody sane would even entertain the thought that Kuroko, the most wanted vigilante in all of Japan, was Quirkless.

Review: A vigilante AU with a badass Deku (or, in this case, Kuroko) who puts the whole Hero Commisison to shame. The rivalry between Deku and Bakugou is so intense in this fic, I love it.

Yesterday Upon the Stair by PitViperOfDoom

Notes: When you’re done with this, there’s also a fun related one-shot by another author called U.A. Unsolved by kabukichou (ameliafromafairytale)

Summary: Midoriya Izuku has always been written off as weird. As if it's not bad enough to be the quirkless weakling, he has to be the weird quirkless weakling on top of it. But truthfully, the "weird" part is the only part that's accurate. He's determined not to be a weakling, and in spite of what it says on paper, he's not actually quirkless. Even before meeting All-Might and taking on the power of One For All, Izuku isn't quirkless. Not that anyone would believe it if he told them.

Review: An epic story full of secrets and ghosts!

Hero Class Civil Warfare by RogueDruid (Icarius51)

Summary: Heroes lead by Bakugo. Villains lead by Midoriya. Seven days prep time. Three days for Izuku Midoriya to show why they should be glad he's not a real villain.

Review: Badass Deku going all out and scaring his classmates. This one uses nearly every character from class 1-A and 1-B and manages to make everyone have an impact on the story!

Tales of the Jade Mantis by Chess_Blackfyre

NOTE: A multi-part series

Summary: The adventures of Inko Midoriya, Number One Vigilante in all of Japan, and her complicated relationship with the Number One Hero, All Might. However, it's not all about kicking butt and taking names, watch as the telekinetic in the leather jacket struggles with things like brutal mentors, working in customer service, and trying to be a good single parent.

Review: The only fic I’ve found with Inko as a vigilante! Quite the journey, this one goes over her career as a vigilante and what comes after when Izuku suddenly has a quirk. I love the weird adventures Inko gets up to and the interesting people she meets. One of my all time favorites!

Monochrome Skies by QuantumPoint

Summary: Midoriya Izuku died four years ago. Midoriya Izuku dead in a housefire when his mother didn’t notice him come home early. Midoriya Izuku dead because heroes failed to hear the screams of a scared child. Midoriya Izuku dead alone and scared.His mother mourned him but went on with her life. The heroes swore to be better, but still made the same mistakes. And for four years, everyone believed he was until Aizawa caught sight of a well-known vigilante and decided to investigate. Everyone believed it until Yagi bumped into a kind child on the street and tried to give him hope.

Review: I can’t say much because spoilers, but if you’re an artist, read this.

brilliant lights will cease to burn (by my hands i’ll reignite them) by novalotypo

NOTE: It’s a Card Captor Sakura crossover, but honestly I’ve never seen that and as far as I can tell this doesn’t have much to so with that show. It’s BNHA characters and world with some Card Captor magic elements.

Summary: Midoriya Izuku is quirkless. This, he knows very well.This is also what he knows:Weekends and vacations are reserved for walking neighborhood dogs. The elderly are the most powerful people on Earth. Local gods are picky eaters. Trust is a feeble, feeble thing. Magic cards are incredibly difficult to seal, especially when the world thinks you're a vigilante. Heroes are not magicians, but magicians can be heroes.Becoming a cardcaptor wasn't on Izuku's bucket list, but he'll be damned if he doesn't make the best out of it.

Review: Deku doesn’t have a quirk, so he gets sucked up into some magical card captor responsibilities and goes all out, as he does. This one has an analytical Deku, otherworldly magic, creepy villains, and some tension between a vigilante Deku and hero society as a whole. One of my absolute favorites!

Quirk: Knife! by brightredwings

Summary: Izuku Midoriya is unlucky, to say the least and life hasn't exactly been kind. Things weren't so bad in the beginning, but once he was diagnosed quirkless, well, it all went to shit. Everyone grew to hate him, even his best friend and own father.Was it really that impossible to become a hero without a quirk? It doesn't really matter because to Izuku, the term hero is flexible. He'll be his own hero because he's learnt from his own experience, people are selfish and the only one he can rely on is himself.Left alone to fend for himself in the world, Izuku goes out to change things on his own terms, despite his methods being slightly illegal. Keyword, slightly. It's only illegal if he gets caught, right?

Review: A long story with great arcs for a lot of League of Villains character, and a beautiful ending. Some pretty intense angst with happy endings for everyone.

Roses are red and they taste like shit by Unbreakable_Red_Riot

Summary: Katsuki was really fucking sick of the smell of flowers.

Review: Ah, yes, KiriBaku with hanhaki disease. Mostly from Bakugou’s point of view, so you get to see all his frustration and a ton of drama. Also looks into some other characters like Midoriya and Todoroki, which is a nice touch.

The Beauty of a Beast by starofgems

Summary: Once upon a time a lonely beast lived in a manor deep in the forest. He dreamed of the day his true love appeared to break his curse... When a beauty finally appears in his life, it is not quite as he imagined. For who could have thought a beauty would be more of a beast. Or The beauty and the beast AU nobody asked for but here it is.

Review: A very sweet love story. (KiriBaku)

The Deaf Hero: Deku by BeyondTheClouds777

Summary: His whole life, Izuku was told that he couldn’t do it. That he should give up while he still had the chance. That someone like him—Deaf, Quirkless—could never become a hero.But Izuku wasn’t going to give up. Not now and not ever. (OR, the one where nearly everything's the same, but Izuku is Deaf.)

Review: Right what it says on the tin. Deku’s added deafness creates more tension between Deku and Bakugou, his classmates, and even other heroes. Things get angsty but Deku always stays determined, which I love.

Miraculous Ladybug

Where Have All The Heroes Gone and Where Are All The Gods? by Anthemyst

NOTE: This is actually part 5 of a series, but I just started with this one and didn’t feel lost. Just know that in this story, Gabirel isn’t Hawkmoth. Most of this was written before Season 1 ended, I think.

Summary: On their fourteenth birthday, the Agreste triplets' world is turned upside down. Their government has been overthrown, their city taken, and superheroes all over Europe have suddenly and mysteriously vanished-including, to their shock, their parents. They'll need to work together, and become the heroes Paris needs, if they're going to save both their parents and their country.

Review: A next-gen fic that got me into ML fanfic in general! It’s got a fun dystopian vibe and the Agreste kids are all fleshed out very nicely. One of my absolute favorites!

Not A Bit by CaptainOzone

Summary: "Sometimes, being a brother is even better than being a superhero," says author Marc Brown. Félix Agreste has been both, and he can't have said it better himself. (AKA The Brothers AU I wanted to read but had to write myself when I realized this AU has a depressing lack of fic to its name)

Review: I’m always a fan of fic that has Marinette and Adrien AND Felix and Bridgette.

Legend of Zelda (Linked Universe)

Looking for Group by Tashilover

Summary: People want to be a Hero so badly, they're willing to bribe, lie, cheat, and beg. Twilight knows there's a Hero amongst the people in this college town. It's just a matter of finding them.

Review: The modern setting keeps things fresh, yet this story is still full of legends, danger, and a fight of good vs evil!

Mob Psycho 100

tomorrow isn’t always another day by suitablyskippy

NOTE: One shot

Summary: It’s like Reigen’s been waiting for the question. He stops dead on the pavement, grips Mob by the shoulders, and stares down into his eyes with an expression as haunted as though every ghost the pair of them has ever exorcised has taken up residence behind it. “Mob,” he says. “Mob,” he says again. “Tell me, Mob. Look at me and tell me. Tell me truthfully. Do I look cursed to you?”Mob looks at him, and tells him truthfully. “No.”“Well, you didn’t look very long,” says Reigen. “Let’s just stand here for a moment, like so, and you can have another look, a nice long look, and really think about it...” (There's nothing strange about being called back to exorcise the same haunted photocopier six days in a row. It must just be a very haunted photocopier.)

Review: THIS WHOLE CONEPT IS HILARIOUS

Genshin Impact

Traveler’s search for Scaramouche by Scuriel

NOTE: A choose your own adventure story!

Summary: Ei wants Traveler to search for Scaramouche and get back her gnosis. They have many decisions to make along the way.

Review: Don’t see something like this very often! There are actually a lot of different outcomes.

#fic rec #fanfic #danny phantom #dpxdc #batman #Dcmk #bnha #miraculous ladybug #linked universe #mp100 #genshin impact #can you tell i like angst #and tim drake #and twin stuff apparently #and gen fic in general

41 notes · View notes

noodleofwriting · 6 months

Text

Blood Upon the Snow

Word count: 6,814

Summary: The full flashback from Before the End of Time (TVA Loki fic I'm wrapping up). Loki and his love go into the forests of Asgard in the dead of winter to find an Asgardian child lost in the mountains. Ending up in a fight for their lives, both reveal their true selves and come together as one in the heat of battle. The myth of how Loki got his horns.

Warnings: Gore, intense fight scene, angst, bookended in fluff

The playlist I made while writing this linked here

Spoilers: The only spoilers are in the Epilogue, so if you haven't seen Loki S2 E6 just don't read that part.

Author's notes: This kind of just ran away from me while writing a fic inspired by Loki S2 E6 (coming soon!) -- but there are no spoilers for most of this. This all takes place before the first Thor film.

For this, I leaned a little more towards Norse myth, where the love interest/reader is heavily inspired by Skadi, goddess of the mountains and hunting (and skiing, interestingly, but that's not represented here). That being said, if you like the reader to "wear the pants" of the relationship, this one is for you!

This was truly my imagination running wild with easily my favorite fictional character of all time, Loki, as a love letter to him and the myth he comes from. I hope you can feel the love as you go on this adventure with me!

ALSO: Thank you all so much for the support for my first fic I posted a few months ago (linked here)! It means so much to me that people enjoyed it. I'm getting more comfortable with posting fanfics, now, so expect to see more in the future. The fact that some of you enjoy my unorthodox approach to fanfic makes my heart so full and grateful.

Loki held her to his chest. Her smell mixed with the freshness of the air coming in through their window — a cool Asgardian summer night. He could feel her relaxing into him.

She looked towards their bed, where he had put his helmet moments before. The long horns coming from it curled away from the bed, white and streaks of brown matching the rich earth tones of the bed, gold contrasting in a way screaming of the old world and power.

“Do you remember when we got those horns?” She asked.

“How could I forget?”

It had been one of the deepest, most harsh winters that Asgard had experienced in centuries — as if a curse had fallen over the land and made it permanently frosted. The snow had gotten so deep that a child had gone missing, running into the forest to play and not home when they should have been — evening beginning to come over the land.

The child’s mother had come begging to her, as most of the Æsir had gone to battle in another realm. It had just been her and Loki at home, helping to move cattle between fields. Or, rather, Loki was there for moral support while she worked her magic, singing to the cattle and them responding like she was speaking their language, butting each other and blowing out steam as they trudged through snow coming up to their withers behind her.

The mother had come right up to her, casting him a wary sideways glance as his love gently grabbed the woman's arms, steadying her. The mother then described her son running into the forest and not coming back, despite her calling for him and being gone longer than he had ever been before.

By the time she had looked over to Loki, he knew they had already said that they would find the boy.

The mother cast another weary look to him, turning to her and worriedly whisper-speaking to her. He was sure she was whispering something about how Loki couldn’t be trusted with something this important, that he always caused chaos wherever he went.

His love calmed the woman then, walking them over to Loki.

“I would trust him with my life.” She gave him a knowing look. “He wouldn’t let anything happen to you boy,” to which she then looked to Loki expectedly, tilting her fur-enrobed head to the mother.

Loki stuttered over himself trying to get the words out. “O-of course. We’ll bring him home to you.”

After settling the cattle, they moved to the stables to grab their horses.

Loki came up beside her, speaking low.

“Are you sure about this?”

To his surprise, she looked to him with foreboding, no admonishment in her voice.

“This could be dangerous, Loki,” she looked ahead and began to take her draft horse out of its stall, absentmindedly rubbing its muzzle. “We can’t not go out there, though.”

He recognized her demeanor — quiet, introspective, serious.

“A premonition?” Half-whispered as they stood between their horses, fully saddled. Ice crystals blew through the barn, making his horse shake its head, pressing into his back.

She cast him a wary glance. “I don’t know yet, for sure. But we need to be exceptionally careful.”

Looking out to the forest on the edge of the city, where spruce was white with snow clinging. She sheathed a long sword into the scabbard on her saddle, the horse adjusting to the sudden weight.

“This is the kind of forest that doesn’t want to be disturbed,” she spoke, “and we’re disturbing it.”

He took the hint and followed suit, sheathing his daggers. She had always refused to take a weapon into the forest outside of a battle, and it made his intuition twitch to see her doing so now.

When they rode out to the edge of the forest it was exceptionally quiet save for the disrupting of the snow, their horses making paths through it. His horse was struggling, a couple hands shorter than hers, which moved through the feet of snow with ease. She never lost that look on her face, though — whole body tense, eyes moving between the trees.

An owl moved from one tree to another, catching a rodent. The small scream reverberated through the trees, stilled only by its echoes fading.

Loki realized he was holding his breath, then, and gasped to breathe normally again. A billow of his breath crystalized in front of him.

Her horse was suddenly next to his, and she reached down to grab his hand. Looking up to her he was met with an intensity that screamed eternal, screamed ancient in a way he had never seen in her before, as if he were looking into the eyes of a wolf.

“I love you,” she spoke, steam billowing from her lips, “stay alive”.

Loki swallowed hard, looking up at her, in all of her beauty and wildness. He reached his hand up and caressed her head, pulling it down to his, lips meeting. The freezing cold left for a minute while they kissed, her lips full and warm against his, fortifying him.

When she pulled away from him, there was a red tinge to her cheeks. Their faces hovered for a split second.

“I love you,” he repeated, “stay alive”.

They moved into the forest, feeling the difference in light like a cloak as the forest enveloped them. He quickly found small footsteps dredging their way through the snow, leading deeper and deeper into the trees. They followed them.

Loki noticed that he had lost count of how many trees they had passed after a while, all looking identical to him save for the occasional gnarled knot or branch that he would duck under.

A quiet so profound it felt like a blanket followed them, making him jump every time a vole or bird would move by them. She, however, never startled, as if she had known they were coming long before an animal would make itself appear. She would twitch her head, cocking it one direction or another, like a dog catching a sound in its soft ears, pinpointing it.

They stopped after making their way close to a mile, where the tracks of the boy stopped.

Snow was kicked up in a several foot radius, like something massive had come from the side and bowled the child over.

She jumped from her horse. Moving to the disturbance cautiously, crouching down, she ran her fingertips over a few drops of blood, moving it to her lips. The bloodied snow stuck to her lips and her tongue darted out, taking it into her mouth.

Loki had never seen her do this before, but didn’t question it. He sat in the saddle with baited breath waiting for her to say something.

When she looked up to him, her face said it all: it was the child’s blood.

“What do we do now?” Loki spoke, breaking the silence that had lasted between them the entire way through the forest.

Standing up, she looked towards a tree to her left, where massive claw marks dug into the bark, revealing the lighter pulp underneath. Her fingertips ran across it. Immediately she jolted as if struck by lighting; she whipped her head up, back stiff, eyes wide as a gasp choked out of her.

Loki leapt off of his horse and came to her side, grabbing her by the shoulders, fingers digging into the fur of her cloak. He spoke her name, shaking her slightly.

She took in a shuddering breath, turning to look at him. Her eyes were wide and crazed, shaken, as if she had seen a ghost. Her voice came out stuttering over itself in a way he had never seen from her before. For her to be this shaken by something could mean Ragnarök itself was in the forest, a great wolf waiting to swallow them.

“Whatever took him was touched by a dark force — something I’ve never felt before.”

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“What do we do?” He asked.

She looked to him again with that intense stare, the look of premonition.

“We kill this thing,” she said, “whatever it is, it a scourge on the land. It won’t stop with one life.”

The massive path of whatever this creature was moved onwards from them, towards the sharp black mountains that were a few more miles out from where they were, uphill.

They mounted their horses and made their way up the mountain, a solemn silence between them.

By the time they were approaching the edge of the forest, their horses were breathing heavily, steam coming from their backs. They had made their way into the upper mountains, where trees mostly gave way to rocky cliffs, creased with snow blowing over them. Ice shards blew into his face, no forest left to soften the wind. It was bitterly harsh and cold, the kind of place that only some of the most extreme and terrifying animals and monsters would reside in — or the land of frost giants, Jötunheim, from whence he came. A shiver rang down his skin at the thought of this birthplace.

Soon after they had cleared the trees and were up into the mountain, a boulder came into view — pressed up against the stone was the boy. His clothes were tattered, a large gash across his chest.

“There he is,” Loki gasped.

She immediately hushed him.

“It’s close,” she whispered. “It wouldn’t have left him.”

Just as the words left her mouth, the rustle of something large came from across the mountainside.

At first, Loki couldn’t see anything.

Then it moved, a mass that had looked like the shadows of many trees making its way towards them. An immense beast, with gaping, blood-coated teeth and several pairs of horns jutting from it. It towered at least fifteen feet above them at the shoulder, covered in snow-white and mottled grey scales. Several sets of reptilian eyes set on them, pupils narrowing as it began to circle them. Its eyes glowed red, a black smoke trailing from them.

A bilgesnipe, but not one like Loki had ever seen before. This beast was several hundred pounds more massive than any he had seen, and it reeked of a dark magic that Loki couldn’t place.

Loki looked over to her. She was looking towards the child.

“Protect the child,” she said, voice flat and low.

Before Loki could say anything, she moved back and ripped her blade free — one of the finest of the dwarves’ creations, a large broadsword forged with several metals, a hilt of gold.

He decided to trust her in that moment, his body flowing warm with his magic as he removed his daggers from his steed and sheathed them. He then ran to the child, concealing himself from the beast in the meantime. It felt unnecessary, though, for as Loki turned from his partner, he heard a guttural yell come from her, beckoning the beast over.

Glancing back, Loki saw their horses disappearing to the trees as she growled to the bilgesnipe, making animalistic growling sounds that he couldn’t recognize. It took the bait, bowing its head low before beginning its charge towards her.

Loki forced himself to turn his head away and focus on the child, fallen haphazardly against the rock.

The boy looked worse than he had from a distance. Blood smeared on the rock behind him, like he had been thrown against it. The wound on his chest seeped blood, soaking his soft wool shirt. Loki carefully moved the boy upright, feeling the warm wetness of blood on the back of his head, kneeling down to cradle the child in his arm. Loki bent his ear down by the child’s mouth, watching his chest for any sign of breathing.

Shallow and labored, the child was breathing. Loki gasped in relief, resting his hand on the child’s chest. Swirls of green emitted from his fingertips and into the wound, beginning to heal it ever so slightly. His magic was limited when it came to healing, but it didn’t matter — this boy was hanging on by a thread and Loki was not going to let him die.

Loki whipped his head towards the battle that was unfolding between the bilgesnipe and her. She moved close to the beast, staying just out of reach, forcing it to careen its head faster past its limit. Knowing she couldn’t take it head on, she was coming down on its back where she could, the hide exceedingly rough and difficult to get through. Her blows barely drew any blood. She had shed her outer coats, leaving a thin shirt and hide pants — also leaving her vulnerable to the beast. The smallest miscalculation in her movements and the monster would be on her.

Bilgesnipes were more a thing of legend than of fact — they were rarely seen and feared tremendously, like a dragon without its wings, lurking in the dark mountains and taking cattle that had lost their way as a snack. Their size alone made it almost impossible to take one down unless you had several men and a ton of luck, even with Asgardian warriors. Seeing her take on the creature alone terrified him — one wrong move and she was gone from him forever, the only person he had ever loved.

Her movements were almost unnatural, leaping away right as it would bring its head around to snap at her. She was taking full advantage of its blind spots, occasionally rolling away to avoid its spiked tail whipping around. Growls shook the earth they were on. The cry that would come from her as she struck the beast was guttural and extreme, the muscles in her arms quivering as she would cut into the massive beast.

He needed to join her in battle — but looking down at the child, he was barely coming out of his death throes.

“Come on, child”, said somewhat impatiently, “your time in Valhalla isn’t upon you yet.”

As if he had heard Loki, the boy choked to life, gasping, and clutching his arm like a lifeline. The small sounds he made brought tears to Loki’s eyes, laughing in relief.

Just as the child’s eyes opened, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the cold air.

The bilgesnipe had landed a massive blow across her torso with its claws, sending her tumbling back into the snow.

He screamed her name across the mountain, guttural and piercing, ringing silence following.

She didn’t move.

Loki sat the child against the boulder tenderly, sitting him up and ensuring he could breathe. He cast an illusion over the child, and he disappeared entirely.

The roar of the bilgesnipe barely registered in his peripheral as he ran over to her, knees collapsing in the snow. Loki turned her over so she wouldn’t suffocate.

Three long, deep gashes tore from her lower hip up to her face, slicing across her lips. Blood poured from her, streaming, staining the snow red — like a freshly hunted deer after you had slit its throat in winter.

Her eyes were closed, but he could see her breathing, laboring and shuddering as it was. Her face was torqued in pain, tears streaming down the sides of her face towards her ears.

This wasn’t happening.

He called to her, voice cracking, desperately trying to bring her back from where she was going. Pressing his palm into the largest wound on her chest, he flowed magic into her like a tidal wave, feeling every cell in her body desperate to repair itself. He had never revived someone before, but damn it all if he wasn’t going to do it now.

The moment his magic slammed into her, she shot up, a visceral scream ripping from her that echoed across the jagged mountains. Her eyes were wide, bloodshot and animalistic, pupils slitted and glowing yellow. Her teeth were bared and he saw that her canines were larger and sharpened, and he felt sharpened claws rip through his leather armor where she gripped it. Loki has seen glimpses of this when they had gotten into particularly heated arguments — the slight sharpness of her teeth, the look in her eyes of something untamed — but he had never witnessed her fully in this animalistic, berserker-like state.

When she looked to him, he saw that archaic thing that he had been noticing from her for years, now at its peak. He truly felt like he was looking into the eyes of a god for the first time, power coming from her that took his breath away.

After she had screamed, a deadly silence had fallen over them, and he realized that the wind no longer blew, the forest no longer shaking or making a sound. A pin could drop in the snow and he could have heard it a mile away.

Then the forest moved.

He couldn't explain it, couldn't contort any part of his conscious mind to make sense of what his eyes were seeing. The trees moved, as if they were shifting the forest forward towards them.

A cacophony of howling so loud that it rang in his ears, blurring his thoughts.

Massive streaks of brown, white, grey and black came bounding from the trees, practically ripping the spruce from their roots, backs breaking branches as they moved underneath them.

A dozen or more dire wolves surrounded them then, the same yellow eyes glowing as they looked to him, looked to her, and then immediately took to surrounding the beast, easily standing half as tall as the bilgesnipe themselves. A couple of them broke away, sending massive amounts of snow flying as they bound to the boulder where the child was, surrounding him and standing guard.

Looking back to his love, he could see the resemblance, especially with her massive head of hair knotted and braided all around her face.

He could feel her power emanating from her as she rose, bending to lift the long sword as if it were nothing. Her blood fell freely into the snow, but she never flinched as she growled, twirling the blade in her hands expertly and making her way back towards the beast. As she did so, the dire wolves reformed rank, nipping and growling, barking and tearing at the bilgesnipe at all sides, clearly distressing it. Now it bore seeping teeth and claw marks on its hide, each attack of a wolf adding more.

He noticed that they were behaving precisely the same way lesser wolves take down large prey, like a moose or wisent — surrounding it on all sides, making small attacks on all sides to exhaust it, making it easier to deliver the killing blow.

But the bilgesnipe came to its wits, lashing out and striking one of the massive furred beasts, where it flew and slammed into a tree, falling limp. Its companions cowered then, growling and moving their heads down.

Even now, the fight wasn't even.

She fought as if this wasn't the case — easily standing among the wolves, she ripped at the beast, now tearing away large chunks of flesh, distracting it and weakening it just as the rest of the pack was.

Loki suddenly felt his magic coursing through him, felt the chill of the mountain seeping into his soul, reminding him so much of Jötunheim. It coursed through him, the snow beginning to flurry and manipulate itself to his will; with the snap of his wrist, it turned it to a long shard of ice.

He felt growing pains with this magic, a familiar and suppressed power that gave away his roots that he had let go of in order to be in his place with the Æsir. He was hesitating, not wanting to allow himself to go into that place entirely — to completely yield himself over to his full power. Transforming back into an older version of himself.

Then he looked to her, seeing her in her warrior-state, blood streaming from her wounds. Entirely unyielding and releasing all of her power that she had suppressed for years, exulting cries and bared teeth. He didn't know if she, too, was of a different blood or not, but she was bearing all of her soul to this fight; screaming and howling, lashing and throwing everything into each swing of her sword, joining the wolves.

When the beast lashed her with its tail and she cried out, falling to her knees, all hesitation left his body.

When the creature turned to attack his love, a wall of ice bolted from the ground, shards of ice shoving into the creature’s gaping mouth. It reeled, letting out an earth-shaking howl, stepping back.

Loki saw her look to him with wild eyes, fully see him in his Jötun state. He froze in that moment, terrified of what she would think — would she realize that he was a monster?

She smiled — what?

No, she couldn’t be — but she was, her bleeding lips bearing her bloodied teeth, eyes crinkling with mirth.

Her voice resonated through him, more in his mind than in the air.

“Come and fight with me in our true forms, my love, my heart!” she waved her arm, beckoning him to her. “If we die today, we die as one in our true selves.”

He had never loved her more than in that moment.

By the time Loki had come up next to her, the wolves were in their full frenzy and the bilgesnipe was beginning to grow desperate — throwing its head and crying out, biting at whatever was near it. Another wolf had been knocked unconscious and others bore intense wounds, but they showed no signs of slowing.

Their cries were growing frenzied, heat rising in the air, the prey getting weaker, the time for the killing blow growing imminent.

Loki looked to her, the leader of the pack, asking with his gaze what the next step was.

She looked to him, smiling wide in the thrill of the hunt.

“It’s our time, Loki,” her words flowed from her like poetry, “when the time is right, we finish this monstrosity”.

Taking a deep breath of the frosted air, he felt it settle into his lungs like home.

The dire wolves then changed their behavior, beginning to take more intense bites, dragging the bilgesnipe by the legs, the hips, the back, throwing their weight into each part and dragging it down. The earth shook as its legs collapsed underneath it, causing so much snow to come up that it temporarily looked as if they were in a blizzard.

Loki to the chance, snow in the air, to bring an immense chunk of ice on the withers of the best, bringing it down completely. Its head trapped under the weight of the ice, it thrashed its head, deteriorating.

She didn’t hesitate. Coming down with her sword, she slammed the blade tip-first through the largest eye of the bilgesnipe, ocular liquid and blood flowing following a resounding crack as the blade was buried to its hilt in its skull.

Its body fell still against the snow, quiet settling over the mountains as its final cry rang through. Snowflakes fell and melted on the fresh blood pouring from it. The black smoke slithered from its slacked mouth and eyes, cascading over the ledge of the mountains and down out of sight.

The dire wolves stood then, howling into the dusk that had settled over the land, snow turning purple against the blue of the sky. The brightest stars and planets began to twinkle. Howling resonated in the air, the differential notes clashing and resounding, ringing and echoing in solemn victory across the wind.

She collapsed into him then, Loki grunting and looping his arms under her shoulders to support her. Her breath was ragged, blood continuing to leave her body from the gashes across her, matching the child’s but lager in magnitude — he could see her ribs between the shreds of her skin.

The boy.

Just as Loki whipped his head towards the boulder, he saw a grey wolf gently nudging the child to stand, another of white gently lifting him by the clothes onto the back of the grey. The white kept its muzzle up for the child to grab onto as he adjusted, falling forward and grabbing the grey fur of the wolf’s neck. They began making their way towards them.

Looking back down to his love, he saw that she came back to her normal form, eyes back to normal, teeth blunted and human. Her breath was ragged, crying out when he shifted his weight to support her better. Her face was dangerously pale, showing how much blood she lost. She gasped with every move she made, but she forced herself to turn and face him regardless.

She lifted her hands to caress his face, shaking and smearing blood on his blue-tinged cheeks, fingers ice-cold. Her face was bloodied, raw, and beautiful, looking at him in pure love and reverence.

“You’re so beautiful as your true self, my love,” she spoke.

Loki Laufeyson, adopted child of Odin, held her in his true form, tears streaming down his face. In all of his life, he had never felt love like this — pure and raw, bloodied and glorious, soft and furred. The love of his life looking at him in his true form and smiling filled a hole in his heart that had been aching for centuries, and the relief of it being filled brought tears to his eyes. She wiped his tears as they came down his face.

He smiled, lifting a hand and caressing her cheek in kind.

“I've never felt a love like this,” he confessed, face serious. “I've never loved anyone as much as I love you. I never will.”

Her eyes widened slightly at this; breath baited.

“Will you take me as your husband?” He whispered, looking to her perfect, scarred face.

She smiled wide in that moment, laughing despite the pain she was in.

“You were mine the moment we came together, Loki.” She leaned in, their lips brushing. “Ragnarök itself could never steal you from me.”

He hesitated for a moment, and then began:

“You will be mine and I will be yours until the end of time,

Under the leaves of Yggdrasil, we will be joined,

Two branches intertwined into eternity.”

She continued the vow:

“Of one mind and body,

Souls bound until the end;

I take you as my one true love,

In war and in peace.”

In unison, they spoke:

“The mountains will echo with our song,

The halls of Valhalla will be warmed by our embrace.

The fields will be fertile from our union,

And our love will battle through Hel itself.”

They were both crying, now, the happy tears of a wedding on a lonely mountain where their witnesses were wolves and the monster they had felled together, pouring blood upon the snow.

Their foreheads joined, breath steaming between them. They looked at each other with pure love, mirth at the edges of their eyes.

They came together as one when their lips met, the pain and ache they were both feeling melting away for that moment. The world disappeared from around them. He felt her lips against him and felt home, felt the rest of this life.

When they parted, she cried out, resting her head against his shoulder.

He sobered, looking over her shoulder to the dark mountains, stars shining over them. Her weakened body sent fear jolting through him, and the thought crossed his mind that he might lose her here.

“You’re not leaving me,” Loki said, voice lilting between a question and a statement.

She strained out a laugh under her breath and into his shoulder.

“Not this time, my love. It takes more than this to kill me.”

He held her face to his neck, arms wrapped around her, holding her warm body to him. She was the only thing in the Nine realms that mattered in that moment.

“I’m guessing we’ll need to postpone our lovemaking as newlyweds a few days,” he joked, starting to feel the deep ache of battle coming to him as adrenaline wore off.

That drew another hoarse laugh from her, making him regret it slightly as she dug her fingers into his sides in pain. Her warm breath cascaded over his neck, giving him chills.

Loki felt his body move back into its Asgardian form, the frost suddenly hitting him much harder than before. One of the wolves came up to their side, coming down on one knee and bowing its head towards them.

Despite his knowing, he still felt prickles of fear when regarding the dire wolves — again, a creature that he had been raised to fear, not fight alongside, ride on the back of. Its fur was bloodied in many places, its mouth dripping with fresh blood and scales.

But when he looked back to his wife, all that he saw was love and respect for the beast. She started moving them towards the wolf, moving from supporting herself on him to the side of the wolf. His body felt cold from the absence of her body against his, already missing her. The blood coating his front added to the chill against his skin.

She turned laboredly, gesturing to the fallen bilgesnipe. He looked to her, confused.

“Take a set of its horns, Loki,” she said, “let them serve as a reminder of our union and your true power”.

Loki nodded, cautiously moving over to the bilgesnipe. He grimaced at the grotesque state of the thing, sword still sticking from its head, eyes bulging.

It had a few sets of horns protruding from its skull, larger than Loki could even carry himself. There was one set, though, that appeared to have just started growing — only a little over a foot long and thin, curving elegantly back around, though not touching back.

He reached out to grab one, taking out a hunting knife and carving it out of the scaled head, trying to remove as much of the flesh as possible. Loki held it over for her to see, earning an approving nod.

After removing the other horn, he placed them both under his arm while removing her broadsword from the skull of the bilgesnipe, sneering at the squelching sounds that came as he did so. Both of their horses had returned a few moments prior, and he sheathed the sword after wiping it off with some snow. It gleamed from its hilt, as if exuberant over its victory. He stowed the horns in a saddlebag on his own horse, which turned to sniff at them curiously.

Loki helped move her onto the back of the wolf. He then leaped up behind her, holding her steady as the wolf rose. Her back was pressed against him comfortably, that warmth he had craved coming back to him. His hands were around her waist, grabbing some of the neck fur of the wolf, noting the mixture of coarse and soft hairs that constituted its coat. She leaned back and rested her head on his shoulder, shuddering a sigh of relief as she let some of the tension in her body relax.

He gazed down at her, still trying to figure out what he had done right to be here, with the love of his life in his arms, her warmth against his. Peace settled over him then, in a way he hadn’t felt before — it settled deep in his bones as her breaths rose into the dark sky, stars shining brilliantly, the starkness of the mountains beyond them.

Two ravens circled above them, coming together and moving out from one another in perfect sync.

They made their way back through the forest, the other wolves beginning to dive into their hard-fought feast behind them. The wolves carrying them and the boy seemed to know exactly where to go, and it felt as though they got back in a fraction of the time, their horses trailing behind. Loki flowed his magic into her the entire way, not caring that it made him slightly lightheaded to focus so much of his power for a prolonged time, working to start mending some of her wounds and relieve some of the pain. She sighed in relief as he did this, her face nodding into his neck.

They eventually broke the edge of the forest and entered back to the plains that surrounded Asgard, the full brilliance of the city on display as warm lights flickered from towers through the cold air.

Loki immediately took notice of the small crowd that was ahead of them. Men and women, most armored, were gathered around in groups, torches illuminating their faces as they began moving battle steeds out and were assembling weapons. Townsfolk, with a nervousness to their stares, watched the group. A search party was being formed, he realized, to come and find them. Even the warriors who had just come from a long battle were there, blood and exhaustion all over them. Loki felt his heart swell at this, that they would come out to find them.

Quickly, Loki recognized the armor and faces of several of the soldiers — his brother, Thor, stood out in his silver armor plates, Mjolnir resting anxiously in his left hand.

The moment they were in sight, a silence swept over the group, turning and looking out towards the two dire wolves, which hadn’t been seen this close to Asgard in centuries.

He knew they were about to call to arms, so Loki waved an arm above his head.

“It’s us!” he cried out.

“We have the boy!”

Thor, recognizing Loki’s voice, started out towards them, torch in hand. The rest of the group stood in an uneasy anticipation, unsure of whether to start readying for an attack or not.

Once the wolves and Thor met several paces from each other, a flash of recognition and bewilderment came over Thor, and he waved back to the others, confirming that it was them. Several others started coming over, then, torches in hand.

Thor came up to the side of the wolf. A slight terror that he was trying to underplay made Loki smirk a little.

“How…?” Thor’s voice was bewildered.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but Loki cut him off.

“I assure you, Thor, these are not illusions of my making.” Loki said.

He looked down to his love, who was resting on his shoulder still.

“These are her beasts?” Thor’s confusion only grew, his voice upturning in disbelief.

Loki nodded, reveling for a moment at having something cooler than his brother. It was childish, but he needed this. Just let him have his moment.

“If you’re done ogling, dear brother,” Loki began to shift her, making her gasp in pain, “my wife is injured.”

Triple-kill on Thor’s confusion, but he quickly focused on her, only taking a small step back as the wolf lowered itself and she slid off. Several rich Asgardian curses flurried out of her mouth as she landed, immediately grabbing onto Thor with a vice-like grip, knees buckling under her. He wrapped an arm around to support her. He grimaced at her front, soaked in blood and ripped.

“You’ve fought a great battle, haven’t you?” Thor asked, looking up to her face, echoing blood and scars. He smiled with sorrow in his eyes at her state.

She grimaced, looking up to him. “It would appear that way.”

Loki jumped down, turning to the wolf that had fought beside them. Behind it, he saw some bewildered soldiers take the boy from the back of the other wolf. The boy was weak, but alive, and Loki smiled as the boy’s mother rushed and clutched her child to her chest, tears of relief streaming down her face as she cried.

The wolf they had ridden in on looked down to him patiently, waiting to see what he was going to do. It was waiting for something form him, glancing over to her and then back. Loki reached a hand out to it, landing on its shoulder.

He felt a response come to him, though he didn’t fully understand it.

“Thank you,” he murmured, “for letting me have her.”

The wolf bowed its head towards him for a moment before turning back to the other wolf.

They bounded into the forest, completely silent despite their massive frames. They disappeared into the tree, back to their home.

He turned and rushed back over to her and his brother. He was doing what Thor did best, making his wife laugh to take her mind off of her gaping wounds. They had stopped bleeding for the most part, some of the flesh threading back together, but they still made him nauseous whenever he would look down at them.

“Loki!” His brother called to him, eyes twinkling.

Loki raised an eyebrow, coming over and helping to support his wife, relieve even just a touch of her pain.

Thor reached out to him, grabbing the back of his neck in the way that he did when really trying to communicate with his brother. Loki yielded, his wife leaning against him.

“She told me the smallest part of what you did up there,” he spoke gently, looking up to the mountains.

Loki gave him a confused look. Where was he going with this?

He noticed tears start to come to Thor’s severe blue eyes, dropping Loki’s obstinancy.

“I’m honored to have you as a brother, Loki.”

Loki couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“I mean it,” Thor said, putting their foreheads together.

“I will gladly fight with you until the end, brother, and then we will have our places in Valhalla together”.

Tears were stinging at Loki’s eyes, now, making his whole face ache from exhaustion.

“Thank you, brother,” was all Loki could get out.

When he turned back to her, she was smiling up at him. Her face was still pale, though, and he could tell that she was losing strength fast.

“We need to get you to a bed,” Loki remarked, looking to Thor.

They limped her over to the crowd, where Thor immediately started shouting about their glorious battle and the mighty feast that must be arranged for the two in celebration of their love and bravery. Loki was more focused on getting her somewhere where she could be healed, but there was a warmth in his heart that his brother put there, returning him to that serene sense of belonging, of love.

The official wedding was in the Spring, after she had healed and they had caught up on the newlywed traditions they had missed out on previously.

The ceremony was a true Asgardian ceremony, with lavish decorations and bountiful feasts, drinking and dancing that went long into the night and next morning.

When they repeated their vows to each other, Thor walked up to them, a helmet in his hands. It was a rich gold band with the bilgesnipe horns coming from it, curling back in spectacular fashion, polished to their full beauty.

She took the helmet, turning to Loki, tears brimming as she spoke.

“Loki Laufeyson,

This helmet, made from the finest dwarven smiths, bears the horns of the bilgesnipe that we battled on the day that we were married — on the day that we came together as one body, one spirit.”

She lifted it and set it on his head, the helm fitting him perfectly, black hair cascading out from underneath it.

“May it bear the symbol of our union under the loving branches of Yggdrasil, and your true power, for as long as you wear it.”

The cheers echoed for miles as he leaned down and captured her in a kiss, his love for her aching in his heart.

The merriment echoed far into the trees, bouncing through the mountains, where lay the bones of a mighty beast in the everwinter of the mountains.

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

Epilogue (Loki Season 2 Episode 6 Spoiler!)

Loki sat on a throne of shattered obsidian and gold.

Strands of time — of lives, of deaths, of freedom — came from him in all directions, each one tended by him. They ran down to the roots and through to the branches of Yggdrasil, intertwining with each other, branching into the endless cascading possibilities of time, glowing green with his power, his purpose.

His helmet sat on his head, the horns in their full glory, natural and no longer covered in gold.

He looked up at them, framing the intertwining branches of fate that were brought together by him. Now safe, under him. His true self, in a way that he grasped with an intensity and purpose that aged him, settled into his bones with such truth that it made him sigh.

A tear fell off of his cheek, echoing into the void until it landed on a branch, pulsing green.

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overtrred28 · 5 months

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Stargirl | matildas x original character fic [part twelve]

Words; 2.8k

Pairings; matildas team x astrid taylor (OC)

Warnings; swearing

A/N; sorry for the late update. also if you’re a follower of this series please link if i should continue this story on tumblr or if it’s easier to just read it on wattpad or Ao3. xx

masterlist

The next Matildas camp came around a few weeks later and this time it was in London, making Astrid very excited as she had never had the chance to visit before. But even though she was excited to do some minimal sightseeing, she was more excited to be playing for the Matildas again and continuing to show the coaches how much she was improving while at Hammarby. Though she really didn’t have anything to prove in regards to her footballing skills, the recent score sheets of their games showed just how hard she was working.

Between the last international break and this one, Hammarby had played 5 games and won 3 of them, thanks to goals by Astrid and Kyra. Astrid had started and scored in all games, proving her to be a consistent player who was able to help out the team in both halves of the game, scoring in either the first or last few minutes.

“ASTRID!” Kyra pounded on Astrid’s front door, Courtney standing behind her watching the time. The door finally swings open to reveal a dishevelled, panting Astrid.

“Will you shut up? It is five o’clock in the morning for fuck’s sake.” Astrid hissed at the older girl before walking back through her small apartment, Kyra and Courtney shuffling in behind with their suitcases.

“Well I wouldn’t have to be that loud if you had just been ready 15 minutes ago when we told you to be.” Kyra argued back, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched Astrid disappear into her bedroom.

“We do have to be at the airport by seven and it takes an hour and forty minutes on a good day.” Courtney nodded from her place beside Kyra, looking around at the small messes that had accumulated throughout Astrid’s place.

“I know that. I slept in and needed to finish packing, okay? Can we move on and get going then?” Astrid reappears with her bags and a large coat now covering her body, preparing for the cool weather of London when they arrive.

“Let’s go.” Courtney nodded at the pair, interrupting before more arguing would begin and she would have to listen to them bicker on the whole drive and probably the whole flight. Luckily because it was still so early, all three girls had fallen back to sleep on the plane and woke up a little more civil than before they arrived in London.

It was 10:30am when they landed in London and the girls had taken a bus straight from the airport to the team hotel to settle into their rooms, while the rest of the team had begun day one of training. Because of their flight times and recent playing schedules, players had been trickling in since last night, a few more still to arrive tomorrow or the next day, still leaving a few days to train as a whole group before their match against South Africa.

Astrid and Kyra had been given their shared room number and headed straight up, wanting to get rid of their bags as soon as they could.

“Mine!” Astrid once again snagged the window bed first, leaving Kyra the one closer to the door, sighing as she watched Astrid flop onto it. “I could do with a nap to be honest.” Astrid mumbled with her eyes closed.

“Nope!” Kyra pulled the tired girl up by her wrist from the bed, a small squeal coming from Astrid at the unexpected movement.

“Hey!” Astrid protested as she landed on her feet, still subconsciously holding onto Kyra’s hand as they faced each other very closely. “Why not?” She whined, looking into Kyra’s eyes.

“Because I know if you nap now then you won’t be able to sleep tonight. And then you’ll complain and keep me up and then we’ll both be tired and cranky tomorrow.” Kyra explained with a stern yet still soft look.

“Fine.” Astrid huffed, reaching down to the bed where her phone had landed. “Can we go explore then? Most of the girls are still at training for another hour and I’m hungry.” She smiled at Kyra.

“Let’s go get the others then, Stargirl.” Kyra turned to the doorway, holding her arm out for Astrid to link her own in. They made their way down the hall to Charli and Teagan’s room, collecting them and Courtney from next door to join their adventure.

They exited their hotel and began to walk the streets of London, marvelling at the beautiful architecture and historical buildings. Astrid’s eyes lit up as they walked through the city she wished to live in one day, feeling completely at home in this atmosphere.

Whilst they were walking, Astrid had moved from Kyra’s arm over to Charli’s, once again catching up after a few weeks apart. They had been together for Charli’s birthday not that long ago; the Hammarby players surprised the now 21 year old during a free weekend and celebrated her with Tegan, Mini and even Harper whilst down there. But even with how much time they spent apart, despite living in the same country, they immediately took off where they left, talking as if no time had passed at all.

The five of them stumbled into a random café and studied the menu once sitting down. They caught up even more whilst eating and talked about the two upcoming games and what they could possibly look like. After a very satisfying lunch they had begun the walk back to the hotel to hang out with the rest of the team now that their training session had wrapped up.

Astrid had been the last to join the team in the room where everyone else gathered, taking the time to get changed into something comfy before heading back down; and was it made known.

“Well, well, well. Look who decided to join the cool kids.” Sam had come walking over to where Astrid paused in the doorway, looking up from her phone to see the whole room of girls staring and smiling at her.

“Really? I don’t see any.” Astrid put a hand over her eyes as she searched the room, stopping at Sam’s face in front of her. “Yep. Definitely no cool kids here.” She frowned as she made direct eye contact with the captain. And within seconds Sam had put Astrid in a headlock and began rubbing her head as the younger girl squirmed in her hold.

“You think you’re funny do ya?” Sam was laughing at the girl unable to release from her grasp, the rest of the room watching the interaction between the two players. Sam and Astrid had formed a natural and strong bond instantly when Astrid first joined. Sam had seen a lot of herself in the once 17 year old striker and wanted to mentor and take her under her wing, ensuring Astrid made the right choices for her career to grow as a person and a player. They had a sibling bond that was different to the ones they had with everyone else, picking on each other endlessly but knowing it came from a place of love.

“I do, yeah.” Astrid spoke from within Sam’s tight grasp. Sam laughed and eventually let her go and pulled Astrid into a hug, the latter girl always happy to be reunited with who she looked up to so much. “Good to see you Sammy.”

“You too kid.” Sam spoke into Astrid’s shoulder, squeezing once more before letting go. “So being at Hammarby is treating you well aye? I’ve seen your recent games and I gotta say I was pretty impressed by that nutmeg a few weeks back.” Sam laughed before looking around the room. “Cait was too.” She nodded to the Arsenal forward and Astrid let out a smile, spotting Caitlin, Macca and Lani playing some form of card game.

“Thought I’d try something new.” Astrid shrugged her shoulders. Sam patted her on the back before excusing herself, being dragged into another conversation with some coaching staff members.

After a night of shared laughs and conversation the squad had dinner together and headed off for an early bed, Astrid more than happy to finally get to sleep after a long day.

The next morning after breakfast the whole squad had piled onto the bus to make their way to the training pitch for day 2 now that everyone had arrived and they could have a proper session. For the England based girls who trained yesterday it was more intense than those who were just coming into camp and off the back of games like the Sweden based girls.

Astrid was having a great session so far, on top of her drills and even reaching a new top speed in their monitored sprints. But because the coaches and physios didn’t want those fresh from club games to be overworked, after an hour they sent them off for a light gym session; which highly disappointed Astrid who would miss the end of match scrimmages today.

Day 3 quickly rolled around after a night of rest and they were on their final day of training at the Wimbledon Qualifying and Community Sports Centre before completing their MD-1 at Kingsmeadow tomorrow. Though Astrid tended to be quite goofy and silly during these camps, when it came time to train she was heavily focused on keeping in top shape for the games.

Everyone began to notice this about the young forward as of late, impressed with her dedication but confused about her lack of lighthearted pranks and laughter during their training sessions. Truth is she was just trying to keep up a standard she had begun to set for herself. And with her accomplishments so far at club and international level it was pretty high.

She felt the need to prove herself and her place in the Matildas squad because she was so young and inexperienced compared to the other players. She knew she would have to keep working so hard after her initial call up, because you don’t always know if you’ll get one when camp rolls around.

This anxiety of maybe not being called up again began just before this camp when she was back in Sweden. Because this camp was quite close to their last one, the squad was selected quite quickly so preparations could be made for flights, accommodation and other admin things.

Kyra, Courtney and Charli all got their call ups on the same day, telling each other instantly and they waited for Tony to call Astrid and celebrate all together. But that call didn’t come on the day everyone else’s had and it left Astrid confused and upset. The girls tried to encourage the youngest player and Astrid brushed it off, convincing them she was fine but she would be lying if she said it did mess with her a little bit.

A week passed and she finally got that call from Tony asking her to join them in London for the next camp. She was excited to be called up but still lost and worried as to why she wasn’t asked in the first place, considering how well she had been playing at Hammarby recently and during that last camp since returning from her injury.

That’s why she was pushing so hard in training today, and it’s safe to say everyone was impressed. She was slotting shot after shot into the back of the net during the drills and attacking strongly during the scrimmage they were currently playing.

She was all over the field, originally being placed up front on the left but drifting behind and in towards centre when needed to, stealing the ball back from her opposition with ease to then run at it alone and score 4 goals for her team. The final whistle blew, her team winning thanks to her. And although she had fun in the scrimmages, she was exhausted after this one, dropping her hands onto her knees, taking deep breaths into her lungs while feeling her friends patting her on the back as they walked past.

“You okay stargirl?” Charli’s voice appeared and Astrid finally stood, looking the blonde in the eyes as she handed her a water bottle. “You really pushed yourself out there, huh?” Charli shot her signature smile as Astrid squirted the cool water into her mouth.

“Guess so.” Astrid shrugged nonchalantly, hot in her shorts and t-shirt training kit even though it was only around 16 degrees celsius right now.

“Come on, superstar.” Charli wrapped an arm around her and they began to walk towards where the group had huddled around Tony and the rest of the staff. After praising their performance today, Tony applauded them and sent them off inside to do some recovery but before Astrid could leave the pitch, Tony caught her for a chat.

“Astrid.” Tony called to her, Astrid pausing between Charli and Kyra, telling them she’ll catch up.

“What’s up Tony?” She used a hand to block the sun from her eyes.

“I just wanted to applaud you on your hard work today and over the past few months. You’ve really gotten stuck right into it after your injury and I’m very proud of your progress.” Tony spoke kindly and Astrid felt her heart grow.

“Thank you, it really means a lot.” She smiled brightly at him, grateful for his kind words.

“You deserve it. You’re a real asset to this team and I’m so glad to have you here with us.” He politely held her free hand, squeezing it between his own.

“Glad to be here, coach.” She nodded, squeezing his hands in her own before excusing herself to join the team inside. That small conversation with Tony changed her mindset of this camp. They wanted her here and a part of this team and believed her actions made a real difference on and off the pitch.

For MD-1 they headed over to Kingsmeadow, aka the home of Chelsea. Astrid was excited to go to the grounds where legends had played and Sam could tell. Astrid was the first one to walk onto the pitch, admiring it when Sam caught up to her.

“It’s beautiful isn't it?” Sam was half talking to the cameraman filming them and to Astrid as well.

“Not bad Sammy.” She kicked the grass with her foot, looking around at the empty stands.

“So, when you gonna come join me and play on this every week?” Sam snickered and Astrid whipped her head quickly. The team had followed the pair and made their way onto the field slowly, walking past the two stopped strikers.

“Do you not know where my loyalties lie Samantha? London is red through and through.” Astrid stuck her tongue out, hearing the cheers from Steph, Caitlin and Lydia behind her.

“Atta girl!” Steph cheered, Astrid turning around to spot her, smiling at her before turning back to Sam.

“I have lost all respect for you.” Sam deadpanned before walking off to her team. Astrid just laughed out loud before sprinting to catch up with her, jumping directly on her back. “Get off me you jerk!” Astrid laughed while detaching herself from Sam’s back, now standing beside her.

“Have you not seen my childhood pictures? I lived in an Arsenal kit.” She crossed her arms over her chest, squinting at Sam through the bright sun.

“Whatever.” The captain waved her off and walked away from Astrid and the Arsenal players who had surrounded and laughed alongside her before they all walked back off to the rest of the group.

After a long and intense day of training the team headed back for their pre match team dinner of pasta and a night spent enjoying each other's company. But with focus pulling towards what could be a tough match tomorrow against South Africa, everyone headed off to their rooms for bed.

“Okay, predictions for tomorrow?” Astrid broke the silence in her and Kyra’s room as they laid in separate beds. Kyra placed her phone down, stopping her previous scrolling to look at Astrid. This had become part of their pre match routine whether they shared a room or not, speaking what their thoughts on the future match were and placing bets for the winning predictions.

“Alright. You,” Kyra points at Astrid in the mostly dark room. “Are going to score… a brace in the last… 20 minutes of play.” Kyra smirked at the other girl, Astrid raised her eyebrows.

“God, setting high standards are we?” Astrid scoffed at the midfielder before thinking of her own predictions. “You are going to start.” She paused. “Play the full game and have an assist.” She smirked in the darkness.

“You have a lot of faith in me.” Kyra laughed, Astrid joining in softly. “Loser has to take the winner out for lunch before the next game.” Kyra placed the bet, sitting up and closer to the edge of her bed to extend her hand to Astrid who was doing the same. With soft smiles they shook each other's hands, sealing the deal before lying back in their own beds.

“Goodnight Ky Ky.” Astrid whispered in the silence. She could just see Kyra’s face with the small moonlight that crept in through the curtains, a soft smile still lingering.

“Goodnight stargirl.” Kyra spoke into the room before they both drifted off to sleep.

to be continued...

#auswnt #kyra cooney cross #auswnt x reader #matildas #caitlin foord #charli grant #mackenzie arnold #steph catley #sam kerr #alanna kennedy #matildas x reader #courtney nevin

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spenglersglasses · 3 months

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✨🧪MASTER FIC LIST☄️✨

Complete List of links and tags for works posted on AO3!

Click on the name of fic to read! If you don't see something you are interested in, please feel free to send an ask when open as well as commission me through the heart mug site. Link in pinned post on main blog @copiousloverofcopia or carrd info at the bottom of this post!

Updates:

I will be adding more as I go. Check them out if you’re into Egon Spengler, Weyoun, Milton Dammers, Herbert West (like all Jeffrey Combs content lol), fluff and smut, you know all the things lol. Fics are listed by main Character featured in them, if it's a duo fic then the fic is listed under BOTH of them.

Asks/Requests- OPEN

Commissions- OPEN

Egon Spengler

Multi-Chapter Works:

🧫Observations in Love (ONGOING) >>> Egon & OC Molly Webber Things have fallen on hard times for the members of the Ghostbusters when the memory of saving the world from the threat of supernatural destruction fades in the minds of the city. Now, with each of them going their separate ways, Egon joins up with another scientist to share a lab so he can continue his experiments. When an innocent mistake by his lab mate leads to a mix up that could mean big consequences for Egon, he must choose whether or not to reveal the truth to Molly, the test subject or keep it secret forever. (NSFW-Fluff/Romance/Accidental Lovers/Pregnancy/Semi-canon following)

One Off Works:

The Twinkie Experiment No turning back now, you had already agreed to it. Agreed to whatever it was the dear former Ghostbuster and his newfound friend from Arkham would ask of you. You were more than happy to participate, that was until you took the first step onto the stoop leading to the lab. Only then you hesitated—breath quickening and your nerves firing from all sides. (NSFW-Breeding/Pregnancy/Three-way/Reader)

Weyoun

Multi-Chapter Works:

☄️Diplomacy (ONGOING) >>> Weyoun & Chercut Ara (Reader) As a Bajoran crew member of Deep Space Nine you know you should loathe the Dominion and their diplomat Weyoun. Despite everything, you are drawn to him and though you have tried to deny it everything changes when he comes to you with a proposition. (NSFW-Enemies to Lovers/Romance/Angst/Breeding/Pregnancy/Reader)

Milton Dammers

Multi-Chapter Works:

🕯️An Unlikely Pair (ONGOING) >>> Dammers & OC Zoey Weston Special Agent turned paranormal private investigator; Milton Dammers has mysteriously risen from the dead (after the events of the film), finding himself in a body bag in the morgue of the Fairwater Medical Center. Dammers has no idea of how he got back just glimpses of a woman dressed in black, haunting his mind. Now years after his mysterious return to physical form, he has continued his investigations into the occult and spiritual disturbances of the quiet town with the help of Frank Banister, who has become an unlikely friend. When one fateful meeting puts Zoey Westin in his path, Milton's life and changes forever. (NSFW-Romance/Angst/Pregnancy/Paranormal/Gore/Violence)

Herbert West

Multi-Chapter Works:

💉Playing God (Coming Soon!) >>> Herbert West & Danielle Cain When Miskatonic University medical student Danielle Cain rents a room to a newly transferred classmate Herbert West, upon his transfer from Switzerland her life turns upside down. Turns out West is a bit of a mad scientist, wanting to create life—at any cost. (NSFW-Angst/Romance/Gore/Violence/Horror/Breeding/Gender-swapped Dan/Semi-canon following)

One Off Works:

If you would like to commission me or check out my other social media, please see my carrd linked below:

(*carrd is linked to my main blog on Tumblr @copiousloverofcopia)

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kuzann · 3 months

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The Wayward Heart

Written as my gift for @vixianna for the @valentines-core-exchange!

Summary

A ghost has stolen Vlad's heart, and now there's only one thing he can do to get it back: pretend to date Jack Fenton. Will he be able to work past his feelings, or will the entire matter end in disaster?

You can also read it on Ao3!

I think I got a bit too ambitious with trying to fit this entire story into only 20k words. ^^; But I still had an absolute blast writing it and I hope everyone(especially Vix) enjoys reading it! 💜 I'll be posting outlines and notes for it later today. Also, here's a link to the development of this fic for anyone who's interested in having a look!

Acquiring Help

Vlad paused before the front steps of FentonWorks and tried to get himself in order; he’d flown over so fast that he’d collided with a few trees on the way, and the disheveled result carried over to his regular attire. He plucked a particularly clingy twig from his hair and smoothed down a few silver locks that had come loose from his ponytail. The pronounced shadows under his eyes were something he could do nothing for at the moment—they were a consequence of the power drain he’d been hit with earlier, and a visible reminder that his ghost form held very little strength now.

The day had gone downhill so fast and it wasn’t even noon yet. If only he’d never heard of that wretched artifact to begin with. Then he wouldn’t have to beg Jack Fenton of all people for help and hope that Maddie was willing to play along.

Vlad took a deep breath, let it out, and steeled himself. Best to get this whole humiliating affair over with as soon as possible.

There was a distinct... Lack in his chest despite the nervous pulse thrumming in his fingertips. Another reminder of what was on the line here.

The door opened mere moments after he rang the doorbell and he was greeted by Jack Fenton’s wide smile and typical lack of volume control.

“Vladdie! Good to see ya!” Jack said as he stepped aside and gestured for Vlad to enter. “How’ve you been? Wanna play chess?”

“Perhaps another time, Jack,” Vlad said as he strolled past Jack and into the living room. The rest of the Fenton family was there, each watching him with either annoyance or suspicion or a mix of both. So circumstance had decided to hand him an audience. Just great. As if having to ask Jack for help to begin with wasn’t humiliating enough already. “I’m actually here because I need your help with something,” Vlad continued as he turned to Jack. “I’ve run afoul of a particular ghost—”

“And you need me to hunt it down? Say no more, pal!” Jack already had a gun in hand and was about to rush out the door when Vlad hung onto his harm to stop him.

“Not necessarily!” Vlad said quickly; if he couldn’t get ahead of Jack’s triggerhappy tendencies then they’d be in real trouble. “I require help of a more... Delicate variety. We have to play along with the ghost’s game this time.”

“And why would that be?” Maddie asked as she joined them. “Why should we cater to any ghost’s unreasonable whims?”

Vlad sighed. “Because that ghost has collateral right now. Very important collateral.” He was going to have to say it eventually, a statement as simultaneously ridiculous and as it was horrifying. He’d been trying to avoid it.

“And what ‘collateral’ might that be?” Maddie asked, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.

“My heart,” Vlad said, flushing a bit with embarrassment. “Not in the metaphorical sense!” he added quickly, upon seeing their disbelief.

“Hold on—” Maddie grabbed his wrist and held her fingers against the underside for a few moments. “But you still have a pulse,” she said, one fist braced against her hip as she dropped his arm. “How do you know the ghost wasn’t trying to trick you?”

“Well, that would be far better than the alternative,” Vlad admitted, feeling a tiny bit of hope and no small amount of embarrassment. In truth he’d been so freaked out by the reveal that he hadn’t thought to ask someone else to check. Still, best to be sure. “But shouldn’t you also listen for it, all the same?”

Jack swung Vlad to face him and put an ear to his chest, even as Vlad fought down the rush of annoyance at having his personal space invaded so suddenly. He was a little paler than usual when he straightened. “Uh, you usually need a stethoscope to hear it, right?”

“You’d need one to hear it better but you should be able to hear it as long as you’re close enough.” Maddie was beginning to look a little worried as well, not a good sign. She also brought an ear to Vlad’s chest—something that would’ve made his heart race in better circumstances—and came away with an even deeper frown. “I’ll go get the stethoscope.” She took the steps two at a time as she sprinted upstairs, but Vlad’s smidge of hope was already dashed.

“Don’t worry, V-man. We’ll figure this out!” Jack pulled Vlad into a tight side-hug that he must’ve thought would be reassuring. Instead it added a distinct thread of anger to Vlad’s present anxiety.

Vlad glanced at Danny and Jazz and found the two watching him with keen interest in the latter’s case and smug amusement in the former’s. He was about to give Danny a glare when Maddie returned with the stethoscope in hand.

Maddie put the stethoscope in her ears and brought it to Vlad’s chest. She went a few shades paler after a few moments. “How can he still be alive like this?”

“Isn’t it possible that Vlad just never had a heart to begin with?” Danny asked, his smirk still firmly in place.

Vlad gave him a look. That was a low blow given the circumstances, even with the relationship between them as bad as it was.

“Danny!” Jack said, looking at his son in shock. “How could you say something like that?!”

“Now’s not the time for distasteful jokes, Danny,” Maddie added. “I know what you’re getting at, but there was a time when Vlad was a kinder person than he is now.”

Vlad looked at her in shock—that comment felt like she’d actually slapped him. “Maddie—”

“Don’t interrupt,” Maddie said, holding a hand up for silence. “I’m thinking.” She brought a hand to her chin as she considered the current predicament more. “We should run some tests—”

“There’s no time for that!” Vlad said, holding his hands up in a silent request that they give him a little distance. The last thing he needed was them running tests that could reveal his secrets, especially without the cover of chronic ecto-acne to explain his more ghostly qualities. “I can’t keep the ghost waiting forever!”

“Then what game is my dad supposed to play with this ghost, Uncle Vlad?” Danny asked, with as much disdain placed on the name as he could muster.

Vlad ran a hand down his face and sighed. They’d arrived at the worst part of the whole affair. “We have to pretend to be a couple,” he said after some hesitation, feeling absolutely wretched as the words left his mouth.

Momentary silence followed the statement, and then Danny began laughing so hard that he fell off the couch.

Maddie tried to hold back her laugh, and failed.

“Well that shouldn’t be hard!” Jack declared, grinning as he pulled Vlad into another side-hug. “Vladdie and I were basically a couple back in college!”

“Don’t talk about that!” Vlad snapped as he pulled away from Jack.

Danny’s laughter came to an abrupt end. “Oh, gross!” he said, wrinkling his nose as if he’d just smelled something foul.

“Now Danny, just because those moronic churchgoers are so loud—” Maddie began.

“It’s not about two dudes being together,” Danny said. “It’s about one of the dudes in question being Vlad.”

“Anyway,” Maddie said, sweeping the conversation past its temporary tangent as she turned to Vlad again. “You still haven’t told us much about this ghost. What sort of powers are we talking about?”

“This ghost is called Mitzi the Matchmaker. As indicated by her title she’s all about matchmaking and helping ghosts form stable couples.”

“Ghost couples... So why’s she after you, then?” Jack asked with sincere confusion.

“Well, she had a particular artifact that I feared she might misuse, so I attempted to retrieve it,” Vlad began, the lie running smoothly enough; he’d gone over it on the way over, after all. The embarrassment necessary for selling that lie, however, was genuine. He wouldn’t hear the end of this one for a while. “And unfortunately it ended up activating on me instead.”

Danny let out a single snort of amusement at that. Jazz, meanwhile, was watching him the way a microbiologist watched a particularly interesting microbe on their slide. She even had a notebook open on her lap.

“So if we can convince her that you two make a good couple she’ll give your heart back and leave?” Maddie asked, giving him an incredulous look.

“That’s what she told me,” Vlad replied. “First I have to bring Jack back to her so she can do some sort of test. She’s at my mansion now.”

“And may I come along?” Maddie asked.

“Of course, I was hoping you would want to,” Vlad said quickly. In truth he’d been a tad hopeful that Mitzi could perform her compatibility test on him and Maddie as well; hopefully the result would be an even better match than whatever match he and Jack made.

“And if you try to use this to threaten my marriage, Vlad...” Maddie began, fixing Vlad with a glare.

Jack gasped. “Maddie! Vladdie would never do something like that!”

“I won’t!” Vlad said, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. “I just want my heart back, and to avoid that ghost she was trying to pair me off with instead!”

“Wait, other ghost?” Danny cut in. “What other ghost?”

Vlad let out a grumbling sigh. “She said that if I couldn’t find a good match myself then she’d force me to marry a ghost instead. He calls himself the Future Ghost King or some nonsense.”

Danny looked surprised. “Since when was there a Future Ghost King?”

“He picked the title himself, he’s some sort of wannabe tyrant from what I’ve heard,” Vlad replied with a wave of his hand. “And naturally he gets a large portion of my assets if I’m forced to marry him.”

Any lingering humor at Vlad's expense evaporated.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Danny said.

“The last thing we need is a maniacal ghost with Vlad’s resources,” Maddie added.

“No scummy ghost is laying a finger on my buddy!” Jack declared. “Let’s get over there and prove what a great couple we are, Vlad!” He grabbed Vlad by the hand and dashed out the front door, dragging Vlad along behind him like a hapless kite.

~~~

Vlad led the way to his library once they arrived, and there they found Mitzi the Matchmaker waiting for them.

She looked like your busybody aunt. Well, your busybody aunt who happened to be dead and had a taste for Edwardian fashion. Bright teal eyes blazed beneath the brim of her merry widow hat, the perfect contrast to her dusty rose attire and gray skin. She sat in the air as if perched on a bar stool, her floor-length gown trailing into a ghostly tail where it would’ve otherwise shown her boots, and looking perfectly at ease in Vlad’s library. The fur shawl draped over Mitzi’s shoulders shifted and raised its head, revealing itself to in fact be some manner of ermine ghost.

“Well you took your sweet time,” Mitzi said. Her voice was deep and somewhat husky, the sort that was uniquely suited to certain varieties of jazz accompaniment. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d decided to run off.”

“I was simply explaining the situation to everyone,” Vlad replied. He spotted the wretched artifact at her hip, a glass globe surrounded by a framework of interlocking metal rings similar to an armillary sphere. The beating heart inside the central globe was clearly visible even at this distance. “I’d like to introduce Jack Fenton and family,” he added, gesturing toward Jack with one hand.

“Hmm.” Mitzi drifted a tad closer as she sized him up, and Jack’s brows came down in a glare when he saw what was inside the artifact—Vlad had to put a hand on his shoulder to remind him to behave. “He will suffice, if the test proves your compatibility.” She drifted over to the nearest table and gestured for them to follow, her pet slipping from her shoulders and pulling chairs over for them to use.

They sat down across from Mitzi with Jack in the middle. Vlad noticed his pulse starting to pick up, and his eyes were drawn to the artifact at Mitzi’s belt; his heart was beating faster in time, making him a little sick as he watched.

The ghost nodded with satisfaction and shook her gown free of the ghostly tail, then summoned a wide shallow bowl of pale ceramic with a wave of her hand. Her pet passed a small bag to her, and she drew two black oblong stones from within. The stones had a silver sheen to them in the light, and she passed one each to Vlad and Jack. “Hold it in your hand for a few moments, and it will be attuned enough for the test.”

Vlad closed his fingers around the stone; it was heavy for its size and slightly warm, and its appearance reminded him of those magnetic hematite toys now that he’d gotten a chance to see it up close.

Mitzi gestured for the two to give the stones back, and she positioned each over an opposite side of the bowl once she had them in hand once again. “Now we will see.” She released them into the bowl. They skittered down the sides toward the center, repelling and dancing around each other twice before snapping together with a sharp click. “A good result,” Mitzi said with a smile.

Jack grinned. “Check me and Maddie next,” he said, probably seeing the little display as something akin to a game. Vlad couldn’t help but feel his hatred flare at the sight.

Mitzi passed the stones to Jack and Maddie and performed the test again as soon as she took them back. This time the two stones clicked together as soon as they drew near each other.

Maddie smirked. “I suppose Vlad is wanting to test with me, just out of curiosity,” she said without even a glance in his direction.

Again Mitzi performed the test. This time the two stones repelled each other so strongly that one of them shot out of the bowl and skittered off the table into a far corner of the room.

Vlad let his head drop to the table with a loud thump. He should’ve known, yet he’d still held out some hope. Seeing the stone leave the bowl felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. But at least the first test might allow him to get Mitzi to give his heart back and shove off if he could convince her that he and Jack were a thing. His skin crawled just thinking about the fact that he might have to get... Intimate, with Jack.

“Are you done moping yet?” Mitzi asked, cutting Vlad’s silent pity party short.

He lifted his head as Mitzi’s pet brought the errant stone back to her.

“You should be happy, really. You’re more compatible with Jack here than with Reginald,” Mitzi said. “Be that as it may, however, I still expect you to prove your relationship to me.”

“Of course,” Vlad said with a wave of his hand. “How should we do it? A tender embrace? Something of that sort?” he asked, his stomach churning even as he made the suggestion.

“You will perform a series of trials that I have devised for you, perhaps more beyond them if things prove difficult,” Mitzi said, without even considering his suggestion. “And when I am satisfied you will have your heart back. We start tomorrow.”

Vlad was expecting Danny to pull him aside once Mitzi dismissed them for the day. He’d even been expecting the boy to use force. The landing still ended up being painful, however.

~~~

“Must you do that every time you’re annoyed with me?” Vlad asked as he shoved the remains of a bookshelf off of himself. Danny had waited around half an hour before jumping him, catching him by surprise in his library as he tried to find any way out of this mess that didn’t involve playing Mitzi’s game.

“You’re the one who set the precedent the first time we met, I’m just following through,” Danny replied, arms folded over his chest as he watched Vlad. “Now spill it, Plasmius. What are you really up to?”

Vlad let out a grumbling sigh and got to his feet, shedding a few books as he did so. “Basically what I told your parents, with a few details omitted, obviously,” he replied.

“Those details being?”

There was a brief pause as Vlad considered whether or not he could trust Danny with the information, then realized it didn’t matter; the boy would find out either way, and he might even win a bit of trust from him if he was open about it now. “My heart wasn’t the only thing the artifact stole. It carved out a considerable portion of my ghost powers as well, it took most of my strength just to fly over to FentonWorks.”

“So that’s why you look worse than usual,” Danny quipped. He paused, one hand to his chin as he thought about something. “Sooo the chances that I could get rid of this ghost and get you away from my parents early—”

“Don’t fight her,” Vlad said, cutting Danny off. He didn’t want to think about what could await him if she succeeded in destroying his heart—full ghost at best, total annihilation at worst. “It’s too risky, just as I said to your parents.”

“And you decided to tick off this ghost, why?” Danny asked. “I know it wasn’t some noble goal of keeping the artifact out of her hands. It was probably hers to begin with, wasn’t it?”

“A curiosity, to see if it could help me achieve a long-term goal,” Vlad replied stiffly.

“Right. So you were gonna try to use it to pair up with my mom,” Danny said, hitting the nail on the head. He smirked and huffed a short laugh through his nose. “And now you have to pretend to pair up with my dad instead, how’s that for irony?”

“Are you quite finished with your little interrogation?” Vlad rolled his shoulder, holding back a wince when it twinged; his healing factor was down too with his power levels being so low. His entire body was a mass of aches thanks to Danny’s attack. “I have special time with your father to prepare for.”

“Well, I do have to warn you that if you’re planning to use this to ruin my parents’ marriage—”

“Which I am not because that could jeopardize my own survival,” Vlad snapped. “Not to mention that your mother already implied ugly things if I did anything of the sort. I just want to put this whole mess behind me so I can forget it ever happened.”

“You’re lucky my dad is willing to go the distance for you like this,” Danny said, his smile fading. “You really do take him for granted.”

That got Vlad angry. He took a deep breath through his nose and clenched his fists; had he been at full power he would’ve blasted the brat right out of the air before he’d even finished the sentence. Go the distance? For twenty years Jack had proved what distance he was willing to go for Vlad, and it was woefully short. He only cared because Vlad was worth something now, and there was no way Vlad was falling for such an obvious trick. “I will give him as much esteem as a fairweather friend deserves, and nothing more,” Vlad said, forcing his tone to remain level. “I don’t know what your father told you about our past, but he gave me no reason to keep seeing him as a true friend after what he did to me.”

“Oh come on! Would you just move on already?” Danny said, his own frustration starting to show itself. “Everyone would be happier if you could just get over yourself and—”

“Do not speak of things you clearly know nothing about,” Vlad snapped, his tone declaring that while he could do nothing about Danny now he would certainly remember everything that happened and act on it later. “He ruins my life and pretends I don’t exist for two decades, then acts like nothing happened the next time we meet. Why don’t you tell me how you would treat a friend like that?”

“Ruined your life? What, by giving you superpowers?”

“You’re lucky that your own transition was so brief,” Vlad said, the breath behind his words hot with fury. He tried to calm himself by smoothing the wrinkles out of his sleeve and adjusting his suit cuff, his hands shaking as he did so; it didn’t work. “You would’ve broken long before I did had you endured mine.”

Danny didn’t reply, but by the incredulous look on his face the message hadn’t made it through. At last he sighed and leaned back. “Whatever. As long as you’re not after my parents I guess I won’t do anything.” He flew away, flashing into invisibility just before he phased through the far wall.

The clean noon light faded back into proper prominence, having been temporarily chased away by Danny’s ghostly influence. It was the sort of thing Vlad typically didn’t notice, given that he was usually the source. The room’s return to normal temperature also brought his attention to the heat pouring off his face.

Vlad looked down at his hand. The trembling was barely noticeable now, but it was still there. How had Danny managed to get a rise out of him with such ease? And when he wasn’t even trying to do so, no less.

He let his arms drop and took a deep breath to steady himself. It had to be the exhaustion that hung over him. Being low on ghostly power always made his human body tired. This was no different. Now he had to mentally prepare for the hell to come and try to get as much sleep as possible tonight.

~~~

The blast doors on the Fenton Portal were closed, to keep any additional ghostly interlopers from causing problems in the days to come. Jack missed the low hum it filled the lab with whenever it was open. He found it strangely comforting.

Noise from the various devices spread around their lab filled the gap in the background noise instead. Jack and Maddie had gotten back to business as usual after leaving Vlad’s house, though Vlad’s situation never strayed far from Jack’s mind.

“Man, I can’t believe Vladdie’s heart got stolen like that! Talk about creepy…” Jack said during a brief break from working on the circuitry of their latest prototype.

“Well, I suppose that’s what he gets for not leaving such things to the professionals,” Maddie said, not bothering to look up from her work on the prototype’s outer shell. By the way she paused in her work Jack knew she had more to say, but she chose not to share whatever it was.

“You’re… Okay with this, right?” Jack asked hesitantly. While she hadn’t objected to it while they were caught up in what was going on, he was still wary that she might have changed her mind. He couldn’t stand the thought of leaving Vlad to some ghost, but if Maddie wanted otherwise that would complicate things.

“It’s fine. In fact, this might be exactly what Vlad’s been needing lately,” Maddie replied. “It’ll make him appreciate you more.”

Jack released the tension that had been building in his shoulders as he waited for her reply. That was a relief. The confidence in Maddie’s voice reassured him that she didn’t see Vlad as some sort of romantic threat, too. He’d been a tad worried about that from time to time but never had the courage to bring it up. “I’m just happy to spend time with him. Wonder what kind of stuff we’ll be doing tomorrow...”

The First Trials

It was a beautiful day. The light was clear and the air crisp and gilded with golden threads of birdsong. A light breeze caressed the trees around the trail, its chilly touch just strong enough to keep any heat of exertion at bay, even through the long sleeve shirt, jeans, and hiking boots Vlad had chosen to wear.

The natural beauty of the place was lost on Vlad as he focused on two things: getting away from Jack, and trying to figure out a way to avoid having to spend more time with Jack. He’d hit his limit before they even reached the trail Mitzi had chosen for the trial and now he set a relentless pace that kept Jack on the move and out of breath, keeping the excruciating smalltalk at bay and putting a good bit of distance between them.

Vlad arrived at the first overlook and spared a few moments to stare out over the forest below, spotting the shining blue sliver of Lake Erie in the distance. He moved on just as Jack made it to the overlook.

It was just past noon when Vlad arrived at the trailhead again. He had as many answers as he’d started the hike with, which was none. Frustrating, but at least they would be heading home soon.

Maddie raised an eyebrow and put her hands on her hips. “Where’s Jack?”

Mitzi floated beside her, looking completely unamused. “Yes, where is your partner? I had hoped you would be enjoying the trail together.”

“He was right behind me just a moment ago.” Vlad turned back to the mouth of the trail and started toward it.

Jack joined them before Vlad could set foot on the trail again, out of breath and very sweaty in the long sleeve shirt and overalls he’d worn for the hike. “That was—” he paused to catch his breath, “—a real workout. Thanks for pushing me there, Vladdie.” Jack gave Vlad a thumbs up, and for a moment Vlad wondered if he was actually trying to trick Mitzi into thinking this was intentional.

Mitzi spoke before Vlad had the chance to roll with it: “This is how you treat someone so close? How disappointing.” She shook her head, arms crossed over her chest. “You have failed this trial.”

“Failed?!” Vlad broke out into a cold sweat as he scrambled silently for some way to talk her out of giving them a failing grade. “But we completed the hike, didn’t we?” A weak attempt, one that he regretted even as it left his mouth.

“The point of this trial was to enjoy nature together. You barely enjoyed the nature and you were not together. It’s as if you can barely stand to be around this man you claimed to be your partner.”

“But—”

Mitzi held up a hand, silencing him before he could get another word out. “You have failed this assignment. Do not embarrass yourself further by trying to talk around this.”

Jack straightened and huffed as big a laugh as he could while still out of breath. “Don’t worry, Vladdie! We’ll ace the next one!” he declared as he pulled Vlad in for a tight, sweaty side-hug—and made Vlad regret every moment he’d forced Jack into a fast pace on the hike.

“You’d better. This is your first strike. Two more and I’ll be shipping you off to Reginald.”

Vlad went pale. They were doomed. He couldn’t even remember saying Jack’s name when Mitzi asked if he had anyone he’d want to be with, he’d been scrambling through the beginnings of a plan to get Maddie to help him and was thinking so intensely on it that he must’ve said it by accident. There was no way he’d be able to tamp down his anger long enough to make it through the rest of these trials; they were only delaying the inevitable at this point.

“I will let you rest for a few hours, then the next trial will begin,” Mitzi said, cutting Vlad’s ruminations short. “Take care not to disappoint me next time.”

~~~

Mitzi wanted them to waltz. Jack had never waltzed before, but he could dance and that had to be good enough. They’d ace this trial no problem and put things back on track.

They were in the small ballroom on the west side of Vlad’s mansion, making space while Mitzi selected the music they would dance to. Jack did his best to ignore the ache in his legs as they moved the furniture to the walls. He’d had a few hours to clean himself up and recover after the hike trial, but he was definitely going to feel it for a few days with the pace Vlad set for them.

At last Mitzi found the music she wanted and played it for them. It was a classical piece, definitely not something Jack was used to dancing to, but they only had to waltz until the end of the song and that would be this trial in the bag.

Jack met Vlad in the middle of the cleared space. The floor under their feet was hard polished wood that made even Jack’s boots sound fancy as he walked across it and held the afternoon light like the surface of a still pond.

Vlad’s usual suit was as crisp as ever, but he looked tired. The shadows under his eyes were more pronounced than usual, and Jack hadn’t seen him smile even once today. “Do you know how to waltz?” he asked as he looked up at Jack. The light playing across his hair made it shine almost like moonlight, and Jack’s pulse quickened a bit as he looked at it.

“Nope, but we’ll figure it out,” Jack said with absolute confidence. There was nothing they couldn’t face when they worked together, after all. The hiking trial was just a fluke.

“Right.” Vlad closed his eyes for a moment, then drew himself up to full height. “I’ll take the lead, then. Just follow my movements and we’ll be fine.”

Their first silent attempts were clumsy, but as long as Jack kept his attention on their feet he managed to keep time. His grin faded somewhat when he looked up and noticed that Vlad still wasn’t smiling. Nerves, probably. Jack couldn’t blame him with his actual heart on the line.

“Passable,” Mitzi said. “Let’s see how well you do with music.”

They started their waltz with Vlad leading them in time with the music. It was getting easier and easier as they moved. Jack lifted his attention from their feet and grinned at Vlad.

“We’ve got this one in the bag,” Jack said, his voice just loud enough for Vlad to hear over the music.

“Yes, just keep following my lead and we’ll make it through this,” Vlad replied, looking a little more relaxed now. Jack couldn’t help but admire his grace, he was dancing so well even when he was this tired.

“We could even spice things up a bit and pass this thing with flying colors!”

“Wait, Jack—” Anything else Vlad had to say was cut off as Jack yanked him into a spin. “Jack, we just have to do a waltz!”

“We got that down, let’s try to impress her.”

Vlad pulled Jack back into the waltz and winced. “You can’t just change the plan without asking me first!”

“But I did ask,” Jack said as he let himself get swept up in the music again.

Another wince from Vlad as they completed another round. “You did not ask.” Vlad winced again and his frown deepened. “You told me your idea and just went ahead with it before I could say otherwise.”

“Come on, it’ll be fine! We’re already halfway through!” Jack swung Vlad around again and tried to push back into the waltz at the end.

Vlad winced and grit his teeth. “Jack, stop.”

“But we’re past the halfway mark, we just have to keep going a little longer!” Jack caught Vlad as he fell back and kept up with the dance. Probably soreness from the hike making him stumble, poor guy.

“Jack—”

“Don’t worry, Vladdie. We’re almost there!” It had to be because Vlad was tired from the hike. With that being the case Jack would just have to lead.

“Jack!” Vlad stumbled again and almost lost his footing.

“It’s fine, we’re doing a-oka—”

“You’re hurting me!”

Jack stopped and stared at Vlad for a few moments, then he looked down. He was standing on both of Vlad’s feet. “Oh.” Jack stepped back.

Vlad pulled himself free of Jack’s grasp, then limped to the nearest chair and sat down.

The CD moved to the next track.

Jack remained where he was, unsure of what to do with himself. They’d almost done it. They were even having a good time...

Vlad had his head down, his expression hidden from Jack. He had to be tired from the hike, and had to be stressed over what was going on. Taking risks was probably even scarier than usual.

Which meant Jack had gotten carried away again...

Jack approached slowly, and Vlad didn’t stir when he reached him. “Uh, could we try again?” he asked hesitantly. “I’ll let you lead.”

For a moment he worried Vlad might not reply. “Fine,” Vlad said finally. “Just don’t step on my feet this time.” He allowed Jack to pull him up from the seat and followed him to the center of the dance floor.

Mitzi started the music again.

Jack watched Vlad’s movements and followed, taking special care to avoid his feet. Their waltz was still clumsy, but it caused a minimum of pain for Vlad this time. The music dulled to background noise as Jack focused on his dance partner.

Vlad still wasn’t smiling. In fact the set of his jaw suggested he was angry and trying to hold it back. It brought to mind something Mitzi said earlier: it’s as if you can barely stand to be around this man... But that couldn’t be right. They were friends. Vlad invited him back into his life with the reunion invitation, and then he’d even moved to Amity Park to be closer to them... The situation was just a bit awkward because Jack was a married man.

There was the way Vlad was holding himself at a distance too... But that could be explained by the fact that Jack was married again. Didn’t want to give Maddie the wrong idea. But it still hurt after how close they’d been back in college...

The end of the waltz was drawing near. Vlad’s knees buckled as they came to a standstill and Jack swept him into a dip to hide it. Not that they needed to, but it felt natural.

Vlad blushed deep red when he realized what was happening, but he said nothing.

Jack felt the sudden desire to complete the dip with a kiss the way he did with Maddie. He resisted and brought them back up to a standing position again. That would definitely be too far, despite their current couples act. It would only be acceptable if Vlad invited it. Jack held Vlad a little closer all the same and met no resistance; he was still worried that Vlad’s legs might give out again.

Mitzi applauded them, her pet joining in with a toothy grin. “Excellent. You have passed the trial.”

Vlad let out a long sigh and went limp in Jack’s arms. “Thank goodness.”

“That’s it?” Jack asked, looking at Mitzi with surprise.

“I don’t expect you to waltz professionally, just successfully,” Mitzi replied. “And you did, I’m pleased to say.”

“Good, good,” Vlad said distantly. He started to step back. “Alright, Jack. You can let me go now.”

“Oh, right.” Jack let him go.

Vlad made it back to the chair and collapsed into it. “Are we doing any more today?” he asked after taking a few moments to recover, his tone fearful.

“That’s all for today,” Mitzi replied. “I can’t expect you to show me your best if I run you into the ground, after all.” She paused to consider something. “Though one’s true mettle does reveal itself under stressful situations, now that I think about it.”

Jack and Vlad shared a worried look.

“Perhaps another day,” Mitzi said, finishing the thought. “For now, go take your rest and prepare for tomorrow.”

~~~

Vlad stared up at his bedroom ceiling, too tired to do anything other than lay around with his feet up and mope. He’d alternated between ice and compression as soon as Jack was out the door, and they still ached terribly regardless. The fact that his body was more durable than that of a typical human had saved him from worse than the multitudinous bruises he dealt with now. Any normal human would’ve walked away with a few broken toes at best after dancing with Jack.

Just what was he thinking earlier? They were doing fine with Vlad leading the waltz but all of a sudden Jack had to ‘improve’ on it. As if what Vlad was doing just wasn’t good enough. Stepping all over his feet like that had probably been intentional too.

Vlad shifted his legs to keep them from falling asleep.

Jack probably would’ve kept on doing it had Vlad not told him. And not even a whiff of an apology afterward too. Some things never changed, but at least he wasn’t making excuses for himself this time. No, he’d just pretended it didn’t happen and moved on. It wasn’t in Jack’s nature to admit to doing wrong. Danny’s ability to say ‘sorry’ at all had to have come entirely from Maddie.

The way he’d told Jack bothered him. You’re hurting me. It was the truth, but it sounded weak and pathetic. Like he was beneath Jack when he should’ve been above being able to be hurt by thim.

Vlad turned onto his side to give himself something new to stare at, his legs slipping off the pillows as he did so.

He’d been letting Jack hurt him for years, by carrying that grudge. But doing otherwise felt like letting Jack off easy after the damage he’d done. After all the years of pain he’d caused without so much as an ‘I’m sorry’ to say for himself when they finally met again. Jack Fenton was an arrogant fool who forced everyone around him to pay the price of his good fortune.

A set of paws kneading biscuits into his ribs cut off any further musing. Vlad turned his head and found his slender white cat Marty standing over him, purring and biscuiting away without a care in the world.

“Hello there my little man,” Vlad said as he turned over to give Marty a better perch. “Are you making your bread again?”

Marty gave a little chirp of a meow and settled on Vlad’s chest, eyes closed and fangs hanging out of his mouth in a way that Vlad found absolutely adorable.

“Oh what would I do without you,” Vlad said, smiling. He scratched at Marty’s neck and was rewarded with an even louder purr. Yes, no point in wasting any more energy on Jack than necessary. Vlad would just have to rest up and try to get through the next day with as much grace as he could muster.

~~~

Jack set his needlepoint project on the bedside table; he was making clumsy stitches, and it was clear that he would just keep doing it if he tried any more tonight. “Maddie?” he asked, looking over at her.

“Hmm?” Maddie kept her attention on her book for a few moments longer, then looked up at him. “Yes, Jack?”

“Do you think Vlad still likes me?”

Maddie’s eyebrows snapped up with surprise. “What brought this on?”

“Well what that ghost said after the hike, and Vlad wasn’t having fun at all even though I was…” Jack fiddled with the sleeve of his night suit as he thought it over again. “So it made me wonder.”

“Better late than never,” Maddie said to herself as she placed her bookmark and set her book aside. “Though to be fair, Jack, you were stepping all over his feet during that first waltz.”

“I didn’t know I was doing that!” Jack said defensively. “I would’ve stopped sooner if he told me,” he added.

Maddie gave a quiet sigh. “I know, you do get caught up in your head so easily. It’s just something people have to get used to.”

“But Vlad knows me. He knew how to roll with it back in college.”

“That was twenty years ago, Jack,” Maddie said. “And you didn’t part on the best terms back then. You really don’t think he’s changed?”

“Well I...” Jack stopped. He had no real answer. Didn’t want to find the answer, more like. He’d caught glimpses of his old friend here and there, behind the mask of wealth and success. The Vlad he knew had to be in there somewhere. He’d assumed that Vlad just needed time to unwind around him, that they would eventually reclaim what they’d left behind in college. He’d assumed that Vlad was trying in his own way, and just hadn’t found his stride yet. That he wanted to be Jack’s friend too.

He’d assumed, and he’d assumed. Earlier he’d assumed that Vlad needed him to take over the dance, but really he just needed Jack to keep following along with what they already had planned. They hadn’t needed to do the fancier things that Jack wanted, just what was necessary. In the end he’d been trying to show off for Vlad instead of doing what Vlad needed.

“I don’t know,” Jack said.

“Well, maybe it’s about time you found out,” Maddie said.

~~~

The stove was on fire. Not the parts of the stove that should have fire coming out of them, but the pans and pots and all the parts in between.

Vlad put a fire blanket over the lot and tucked in the edges to trap out the air. His physical movements were carefully controlled, but inside he was screaming. He never should’ve left Jack unattended in his kitchen. This was an absolute disaster.

“Whoops, haha,” Jack said, at least having the grace to sound embarrassed over what he’d done. “Guess things got away from me there.”

“Yes, you managed to put us back to square one in a single stroke,” Vlad grumbled. He should’ve known better than to let Jack handle something like this by himself—he’d always been an absentminded cook at best from what Vlad remembered. Vlad sighed and ran a hand down his face. “I don’t have enough ingredients on hand to make the same thing again. We’ll have to figure something else out.”

“I’ll uh, go check on everyone,” Jack said, and he slipped out of the kitchen before Vlad had a chance to tell him otherwise.

That was just as well for now. Let Jack try to explain the delay to his family without admitting he was at fault. Vlad didn’t need Jack distracting him while he tried to think anyway, that was already hard enough at the moment; his feet still hurt from yesterday, he was tired from most of his ghost powers being absent, and the stress of falling behind and dealing with Jack’s antics had him near breaking point.

What he needed most right now, at this moment, was to get off his feet.

Vlad took a seat at the kitchen table and rested his head on his arms, trying to will ideas into his tired and overwhelmed brain. He had sandwich makings, but the meal had to be more elaborate than that. Something he and Jack would be putting together as a team that didn’t just take five minutes to make.

“Hey, Vladdie.”

“What is it?” Vlad growled.

“I know how to buy us some time.”

“Oh what, are you going to distract them by setting my dining room table on fire too?”

“Nah that would make things worse,” Jack said with complete seriousness. “I was thinking we should do a cheese board. Y’know, as a warm up for the main course.”

Vlad lifted his head and looked up at Jack. “You got the idea from Maddie, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Actually it was all mine!” Jack declared proudly.

Vlad wondered if he was lying to save face, then decided it didn’t matter at the moment. “Well I’ve got a good selection on hand at least,” he said as he hauled himself to his feet and started toward the fridge.

“I can put it together,” Jack said, moving to head Vlad off before he could get there. “You plan a new meal while I do that.”

“Fine, fine,” Vlad said with a wave of his hand. “Just don’t set the board on fire too.”

“No worries, V-man. This’ll be easy!”

Vlad retrieved his best cheese board from its slot in a cupboard and passed it off to Jack, then took stock of the ingredients they had on hand. Sandwich makings... He could turn them into monte cristo sandwiches, which were at least more entertaining than regular sandwiches. Vlad took a few cookbooks down from the shelf and flipped through at random in search of ideas. Now what to serve with it, something light and crisp to counteract the savory sweetness of the monte cristo… Fresh fruit parfaits? Those would be a good dessert. A green salad with light vinaigrette dressing would do for a side, and tomato bisque was always a winner when it came to soups.

“Hey, Vlad.”

“Hmm?” Vlad looked up from his planning and found Jack standing across the island from him.

“Ta-da!” Jack swept a hand over his creation.

Vlad had been expecting Jack to simply throw cheese and crackers on the board and call it a day, but what he found instead was much more than that: a variety of cheeses and crackers of course, but there were also grapes, apples, pears, artichoke hearts, olives, and a green dip that he guessed was pesto. In all it was a board that offered a nice variety of flavors to accompany the cheese, and all it needed now were some suitable refreshments to accompany it.

“Well, I’m impressed, Jack,” Vlad said. It was a sincerely pleasant surprise to see something turn out right. “How did you make your selections? You did a good job.”

“Uuh...” Jack stared at him blankly. “I dunno, I just thought it would taste good together,” he said with a shrug.

“Right... You’ve always been a man of instinct, haven’t you?” Vlad said, partially speaking to himself. It was a trait that, paired with Jack’s amazing luck, allowed him to get away with his spontaneity a lot of the time. “I have some ciders that will go well with this, they’re in the fridge.”

Jack took the cheese board out while Vlad wrote down their new menu and found the required recipes for it. They had more time to prepare the new meal, so Jack had at least somewhat redeemed himself for what he’d done earlier. Vlad was not letting him use the stove under any circumstances, but that didn’t mean Jack couldn’t help elsewhere...

Vlad was ready when Jack returned. “I have a plan,” he said. “Are you ready to help?”

“Lay it on me, Vladdie!” Jack said with utmost gusto.

“I want you to be my assistant while I prepare the dishes. So you’ll be doing things like prepping ingredients and getting plates and such ready. Can you do that?”

“I don’t see why not,” Jack replied. “Let’s get cracking!”

~~~

The lunch was a success. What Jack lacked as an individual cook he made up for as an assistant to one. He’d been at Vlad’s elbow throughout, ready to help and even able to preempt what Vlad needed at times, and it had even become somewhat enjoyable to work with him toward the end. Not that those feelings would last long. It was just a matter of time before Jack hurt him again.

“You have passed the trial,” Mitzi said, giving them a genuine smile.

“We did it!” Jack gave Vlad a wide grin.

“That we did,” Vlad said, his voice flat with exhaustion. He swirled his peach spritzer and took a sip. The trial had taken its toll regardless of success. Hopefully there would be nothing more today.

Real Talk

The picnic was pleasant enough. They’d again worked together to prepare it, as they’d done the previous day, a light affair like an afternoon tea since lunch had already passed. It was a sunny spring day, and the hill they’d picked out in Amity’s largest park offered a nice view of the city.

“Hey Vlad, have you been okay lately?” Jack asked as he looked over at him.

Vlad stared at him blankly. He was really asking that, given the circumstances?

“I mean outside of the stuff that’s going on right now,” Jack said hastily.

“Am I okay?” Vlad had to stop and think about it, swirling his iced tea as he did so. If he was being honest with himself, his life didn’t feel particularly… Happy. It was one long string of goals with a temporary high whenever one was achieved, but the moments in between weren’t particularly happy on their own. They gave him too much time to brood on the past, so he moved through them as quickly as possible. “No, I suppose not,” he admitted aloud, to his own surprise.

A panicked look settled on Jack’s face upon hearing that. “Oh, uh…” Jack looked away, plainly unable to think of an adequate reply. The fool, he shouldn’t have asked such a question if he wasn’t prepared for the truth. “Chin up…?” he tried as he turned to Vlad again, giving him a weak smile and a thumbs up.

Vlad said nothing in reply, settling for a cold stare before turning away himself. He hadn’t had any hope that Jack might be supportive to begin with, but that reply was so pathetic that he couldn’t even glean any joy from watching Jack squirm. The resulting silence that stretched between them quickly became too much, and Vlad got to his feet. “I’m going for a walk,” he said, and he left it up to Jack on whether he had the nerve to follow or not.

Jack did follow him, after letting him walk ahead a few paces, and tailed him all the way down to the shore of the nearest duck pond.

A pair of swans swam past, along with several ducks that kept a respectful distance from their larger relatives. The breeze that meandered over the pond and stirred its surface was sharp enough to bite through Vlad’s suit. Part of him acknowledged that such would be a catalyst for getting a real couple to draw closer together for warmth, and so he ignored it.

“So you’re not supposed to feed them bread, huh?” Jack said.

Vlad looked over at him and noticed the sign he’d been reading, a handy infographic that pointed visitors away from bread and toward foods that were better suited for aquatic fowl, such as lettuce, frozen peas, and birdseed. “Well if you can’t convince people not to feed them to begin with, it’s best to tell them what you should feed them instead,” he acknowledged. Such an empty conversation. It left him as cold as the sharp spring breeze.

“I’ve been having fun spending time with you,” Jack said, perhaps to make up for his lackluster performance earlier. “Even though it’s not happening for the best reason, I mean,” he added.

“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Vlad said. This charade of friendship was so tiresome without some other goal to occupy him. Part of him wished Jack would wise up already, even as another part wished it was easier to be around him. He did miss those college days, when he let himself be honest, but Jack was just so… Unreliable. Vlad couldn’t trust him not to cause the equivalent of a proto-portal accident all over again and then just make excuses and disappear like last time, if he even remotely acknowledged that he had some hand in it, anyway.

Jack seemed to get some sort of hint from Vlad’s lack of reciprocity and dropped the matter without comment. “I guess we’ve been out here long enough,” he said after more silence filled with the sigh of the breeze and the chatter of the ducks. “Should we head out?”

“Sounds good,” Vlad said. He turned, putting all his weight on the leg nearest to the pond.

The bank gave way under his foot and dumped him into the pond with a loud splash, scattering the nearby ducks and drawing the swan pair’s ire. They hissed and swatted at him with their wings a few times—Vlad covered his face to avoid a broken nose—before swimming off in a huff.

“Man, you have the worst luck sometimes,” Jack said, a sympathetic tilt to his brows as he helped Vlad out of the pond. “Your house blowing up, that ghost attack at the reunion, the proto-portal accident... You didn’t break any mirrors, did you?” Jack added, adding a small nervous chuckle to the question.

The final item on the list didn’t escape Vlad’s notice. He grit his teeth and glared at the grass between their feet as his anger flared to a roaring blaze. Just bad luck? Was that what he’d convinced himself it was? “Do you know how long I was stuck in the hospital after the accident, Jack?” Vlad asked, his gaze still on the grass.

“You said it was a few years,” Jack replied. Any humor in his voice was gone, replaced with a hesitant wariness.

“Five years,” Vlad said. “And do you know what it’s like to be infected with ecto-acne?”

“I mean, it’s pretty bad stuff. You and the kids were dying there for a bit, before we found the cure.”

“Ah yes, the diet cola component. However could that have gotten mixed into the proto-portal’s power signature, I wonder?” Vlad made a show of pondering on the question, one hand held to his chin as he did so. “It’s as if someone poured the wrong substance into the filtrator because they weren’t paying enough attention,” he said, noting Jack’s flinch as he spoke. “‘Pretty bad’, hmm? Those paltry little words fail to encapsulate what it was like to live with ecto-acne. It returned for monthly flare-ups after I got out of the hospital and every time I had to wonder... What function would I lose and for how long, and would it be the end of me this time?” Vlad paused for a humorless chuckle. “Ecto-acne. What an embarrassing, innocuous name for such a wretched illness.”

“Vlad?”

“What’s wrong? Haven’t you been wanting to talk to me?” At last Vlad looked up and met Jack’s eye. “Does this subject matter make you uncomfortable? I can’t imagine why.”

“Well it’s just, you shouldn’t dwell on the past, right?” Jack offered with an attempt at a smile. The worry was apparent on Jack’s face now, but Vlad took no pleasure in it. After all this time and all this pain, Jack still wanted to run away; to say that Vlad was disappointed by this was a gross understatement. “And besides, look at where you ended up! A genius billionaire, and you used your time in the hospital to plan it out.” Jack’s smile widened a little, despite the worry that still hung across his brow.

“And how lucky I was that those plans succeeded,” Vlad said smoothly. He was not letting Jack run away from this. Not this time. “After all, it wasn’t as if I could count on anyone else to help me out of the mountains of medical debt I was saddled with. Not family, not friends,” Vlad said the word with a special amount of venom, making Jack flinch again. He closed his eyes and lifted his head toward the sky. “Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened to me had my plans fallen through, and I always come to the same answer.” Vlad lowered his head and met Jack’s eye again. “I would’ve died, drowning in medical debt as I succumbed to a disease that had no cure.”

“I—” Jack reached out to Vlad, but stopped short of touching him. “Vlad, I would’ve helped you before that happened.”

“Oh please,” Vlad said, his voice cold. “We both know that’s a lie, Jack. You didn’t work for a cure until Danny’s friends were involved, and even then you couldn’t find it. I’m lucky that Danny was willing to go the distance for his friends. It’s such a shame that I can’t say the same of his father.”

“That’s not true,” Jack said, getting a little strength back in his voice. “I’m right here helping you now, aren’t I? I’ve been ready to help you get through this since the moment I heard about it.”

“Yes, I do admit that you’re eager enough when it comes to fixing problems you didn’t cause. I suppose I can commend you for that.” Vlad watched Jack for a few moments. “But there’s still something that’s bothering me about what you said earlier.”

“Which part...?” Jack asked, the worry returning in full force.

“So the proto-portal accident and all that came of it was just bad luck? Is that really what you think?” Vlad said, his words slow and deliberate.

“Well yeah, none of us expected it to blow up,” Jack replied with a shrug. “What else would it be?”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” Vlad said coldly, tapping one sodden shoe against the grass. The cold was a distant memory now, with the fire of anger burning hot in his chest. “I always saw it as an easily preventable accident.”

Jack held his hands palm-up in a placating gesture. “But we had no idea it would happen!”

“Maddie spotted the mistake in your calculations within seconds of seeing them.” Vlad kept his voice level, but the seething heat was making its way through, in the tension that made his neck and jaw ache. He couldn’t believe Jack was trying to pull this. As if the accident and the moments prior hadn’t played themselves back in Vlad’s head over and over as he lay in that hospital bed. “If you had taken even a moment to listen to her or to check your calculations it wouldn’t have happened.”

“But it was just an accident—”

“An accident does not preclude one from fault, Jack!” Vlad snapped. “If you hit someone with your car while speeding, you are at fault. If you drop something from a tall building and it hits someone on the sidewalk, you are at fault.” An angry heat poured off his face, and his breaths came quick and hot; the only thing missing was his heart pounding against his ribcage, though he was sure it was doing the same against the interior of the artifact even now. “And if you turn on an experimental portal device without so much as checking that the area is clear and giving no time for someone to get out of the way, you. Are. At. Fault!”

Vlad paused to catch his breath, surprised by his own vitriol. But he’d been waiting to say this to Jack for years, hadn’t he? He’d just hoped that Jack’s reaction would’ve been different...

“I mean, you shouldn’t have been standing so close to it to begin with...”

Vlad’s breath caught in his chest, as if he’d been kicked. He remembered that one, or rather, one of its kin, from the frantic minutes following the accident. The first words out of Jack’s mouth were excuses, attempts to pass blame, and what Jack just said had been among them. Never once had he admitted fault or apologized for what he’d done.

“You really haven’t changed at all, have you?” Vlad’s anger cooled somewhat, tempered by sorrowful disappointment. They would never see eye to eye on this, and Vlad would never get his resolution. It was time to give up on that. “No matter what happens, it’s never your fault.”

“I didn’t mean it, Vlad. You know that.” Jack’s tone had a gentle desperation to it. Vlad didn’t care to puzzle out what that desperation might be for. It certainly couldn’t be his friendship. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

“But you did.” Vlad took a step back, and the cold of the breeze playing across his soaked suit crept back in. “You hurt me, and then you left me for dead and never looked back.” He turned, and started back up the hill. “I’m going home. We have nothing more to talk about.”

Vlad noticed Mitzi lurking under the shadow of a nearby tree. “Strike two,” he said as he passed her by. There was no point in trying to talk his way out of how this one ended. One more failure and it was off to Reginald, though part of him wondered if that might actually be preferable to the possibility of being stuck with Jack Fenton. He’d certainly found ghosts easier to exterminate than humans, and this Reginald had to have cracks in his armor...

~~~

Jack knew it wouldn’t help to follow Vlad. So instead he packed up the picnic and, after a brief check to make sure Vlad wasn’t still around and in need of a ride, drove himself home.

He had his answer now, the one he’d been dreading. Vlad didn’t see him as a friend anymore. The accident made sure of that. What he didn’t understand was why Vlad had to keep holding on to something that was so painful. Jack would be drowning in misery if he did that.

Jazz was in the living room when Jack walked through the front door. “Hey dad, how did the picnic go?” she asked.

“Badly,” Jack replied. He left the picnic basket by the door and dropped onto the couch.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Well I guess it couldn’t hurt,” Jack said with a shrug.

“So what happened?”

Jack sighed. “Vlad started talking about the accident, I can’t really remember why.” The start of the conversation’s descent was blurry, but Jack did remember mentioning bad luck… “He still hasn’t forgiven me for what happened. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Did you ever apologize...?”

“Of course I did!” Jack said defensively, then he stopped himself. “No, wait...” He tried to recall, then heaved a long sigh. “I don’t remember doing that right after the accident...”

“Then maybe you could start with an apology?” Jazz said with a hopeful smile.

“What’s that gonna fix? He already hates me,” Jack said, hanging his head.

“You’d be surprised,” Jazz replied. “That kind of acknowledgement can accelerate someone’s recovery after trauma. And it can put a relationship on better terms.”

“You really think so?”

Jazz sighed. “Dad, you do need to get better about apologizing anyway. Just in general. It’s kinda sad that it was such an outlier for you to apologize to mom about forgetting your anniversary last year, and it’s still an outlier now.”

Jack drooped against the couch. “I guess it’s worth a try... But how am I supposed to make it stick? I can’t just say the word with nothing else to back it up.”

“Well, you need to make it clear that you understand what you did wrong and try not to do that again. Part of the apology is you proving you can be better.”

“But what if I mess up again?” Jack asked hopelessly. He knew his track record, though he tried to ignore it; any attempt he’d made at changing his ways just hadn’t stuck.

“Then you make sure you stick around to fix things afterward.”

Jack reddened slightly with embarrassment. That was another way he’d failed Vlad, now that he thought of it. Twenty years of absence was magnitudes worse than forgetting his anniversary a bunch of years in a row. Who knew if it was even possible to fix their relationship at this point.

But at least he had some idea of where to go from here.

“Thanks, Jasmine,” Jack said, smiling as he put an arm around her shoulder. “You’re the best daughter a dad could ask for!”

“Guilty as charged!” Jazz declared, lifting her head high with a grin. “I hope things work out with you and Vlad. I think it could be really good for both of you to have an actual friend.”

“What? I have—” Jack struggled to name a friend he had other than Vlad, and came up with nothing. “I mean, Vlad probably has friends, right?”

Jazz laughed. “He does not act like he has friends,” she said, her tone dead serious.

“Well if I can salvage this maybe he’ll have one.” Jack’s spirits were lifting already, though the thought of his coming talk with Vlad made him nervous. He’d have to prepare... Or trust on instinct now that he had a better idea of what to do.

Jack stood and started off, then stopped short and swung back around to give Jazz a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks again, Jasmine.”

“No problem.” Jazz gave him a kiss on the cheek in turn. “What’re you gonna do now?”

“I’m gonna go try out my new kitchen skills with your mom!” Jack declared.

~~~

Jazz waited for her dad to leave the room before calling out the spy who’d been listening in on the conversation: “I know you’re there, little brother.” She opened one of her notebooks as Danny popped back into visibility and leaned on the back of the couch.

“You really think things’ll get better if they’re friends?” Danny asked, his eyes on the kitchen doorway.

“It’ll mean Vlad has less motivation to mess with us if he actually cares about dad,” Jazz replied. “Plus maybe he’ll stop doing the villain stuff as much once he feels better in general.”

Danny didn’t answer right away, his attention temporarily turned inward to his own thoughts. “Yeah, maybe.”

Jazz knew there was something on his mind and patiently thumbed through her notebook as she waited for him to share it.

“I guess dad really did mess things up back then, huh?” Danny said finally.

“Did Vlad tell you something new when you went to talk to him the other day?”

“Well, he implied that it was long and painful when he turned into a half-ghost.”

Jazz grimaced. “And that would be on top of dealing with ecto-acne.”

Danny ran his hands down his face with a groan. “Why am I the one having to deal with dad’s crazy ex-friend all the time? It’s so dumb.”

“If this goes well then maybe you won’t have to anymore,” Jazz said, smiling.

~~~

Vlad turned the conversation over in his head again and again. He’d been unusually direct with Jack, almost suicidally so given the stakes. He should’ve been able to handle himself better, should’ve been able to pretend everything was fine and make it through the trials without issue, but his emotions were getting in the way.

And he had an idea as to why.

He’d come to the realization after mulling things over in the shower and putting on his pajamas, and now he strode toward the sun room at the back of his mansion where he was sure he would find the ghost he had in mind.

“You did something to me,” Vlad said as he came to a halt next to the round glass table she was seated at.

“Of course I did,” Mitzi said with a smirk. “I took your heart, do you need me to refresh your memory on how to get it back?”

“Not that,” Vlad said. “It’s my emotions. You’ve done something to them, haven’t you?”

“Oh, that.” Mitzi lifted the artifact, giving Vlad a good view of his own heart. It still made him slightly queasy when he saw it. “It’s the artifact you were trying to steal from me, dear. It opens a person’s heart, metaphorically speaking.”

Vlad’s eyes widened. “You’re going to force me—”

“Into loving someone? That’s not what it does, darling,” Mitzi said. “By open I mean that you’re simply more honest about what you already feel.”

“So you were intending to sabotage me from the start.” That made sense, perhaps she’d brokered some sort of deal with this Reginald and then lured Vlad into messing with the artifact. It sounded like a typical ghostly scheme.

Mitzi gave a melodramatic sigh. “Now you’re just being silly again. You’d be surprised at what a little emotional honesty can do for a relationship. Perhaps you should try it more often.”

“That ‘emotional honesty’ made me fail today’s trial.”

“I never said you failed. You did that yourself.”

“I was only stating the obvious.”

“The obvious?” Mitzi leaned one arm on the glass tabletop before her and looked up at him. “My my, I never thought the illustrious Vlad Plasmius would turn out to be such a quitter.”

“A quitter?!” Vlad snapped, indignant. How dare she say such a thing. His track record was not that of a quitter! “I am not a quitter, madame!”

“Oh really?” Mitzi stood, bringing her face level with his own. “So what’s the matter, then? Is this Jack Fenton just too much for you to handle? Has he already won?”

“He has not—” Vlad’s face began to heat up. Just how much did Mitzi know? She couldn’t know that Jack had defeated him in a head to head fight once, he’d worked so hard to make sure no one found out about that! No, she had to be talking about the trials. “Jack Fenton has not defeated me!”

“So you say,” Mitzi said. “But given your attitude I can’t say I’m terribly convinced.”

Vlad’s eyes flashed red for a moment. “Then I’ll prove it. I won’t let him stop me this time.”

“Well, I’m happy to hear it. In that case, I’ve picked out your next trial.” Mitzi leaned back with a smirk. “And as for when it will happen...” She looked up as her pet drifted down through the ceiling and coiled itself around her shoulders, whispering something in her ear as it did so. “Ah, excellent!” She returned her attention to Vlad. “Tonight you will be sharing a bed with your to-be partner. What you do in it is up to you, but I expect the two of you to share it for the majority of the night.”

Vlad could feel the color draining from his face when he heard that. “Tonight? I don’t get more time to prepare?”

“You’re the great Vlad Plasmius, aren’t you? I’m sure you’ll figure it out!” Mitzi declared with a grin.

~~~

The hour of the next trial arrived far too soon. Vlad let Jack in at around eight in the evening but was unable to manage more than a frigid smile. So despite his earlier enthusiasm he wasn’t able to push back the artifact’s effects. He would have to play this carefully if he intended to win.

Mitzi escorted them to the bed they would be using. Not Vlad’s own massive bed, but a queen size bed in one of the many guest rooms scattered around his mansion. So she intended for them to get cozy. Just lovely. Vlad could only hope that Jack was as uninterested in anything but sleep as he was.

Jack gave Vlad a nervous smile as Mitzi closed the door behind herself and left them alone. “Well this shouldn’t be too hard. We got plenty of practice back in college.”

The memories of those warm nights rose in Vlad’s mind, and he viciously kicked them back down into the abyss where they belonged. “I expect you to not shove me out of the bed by morning, then.”

“Sooo what do you normally do before bedtime, Vladdie?”

“I’m going to sleep early.”

“Oh, okay,” Jack said weakly.

Vlad climbed into bed and pulled up the covers.

Jack took the other side of the bed. It was too small to keep the two from touching each other—if they were going to both stay on the bed at the same time, anyway.

An expectant silence hung over them after Jack turned off the light on his side of the bed. He probably wanted to talk.

Vlad braced himself, his anger already rising. What more was there to talk about after what happened today? Jack would have nothing but more excuses. They were the last thing Vlad wanted to hear right now.

Jack inhaled as if to say something, but nothing came of it. He resumed his normal breathing for a while as Vlad listened and waited.

“Sorry, Vlad,” Jack said finally. “About today, and the accident. I’m gonna do better from now on.”

For a moment Vlad couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Jack Fenton, apologizing for something? Had Vlad fallen into a parallel universe without noticing?

Vlad couldn’t deny that he’d wanted an apology from Jack ever since the accident, but he let it hang in the silence between them regardless. There was always the chance that he didn’t mean it.

And there was something else Vlad wanted, too. The answer to a question that had cut at his heart ever since he’d first asked it.

“Why did you leave me behind?” Vlad asked, his tone more tired than anything else. “I needed your help.”

“You told me to get lost, so I did,” Jack said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, you mean while I was in severe pain and reeling from the shock of getting my face blasted by spectral radiation? And while my so-called best friend was giving endless excuses for why it wasn’t his fault?” Vlad glared at the far wall. Yes, he did remember telling Jack to kick rocks, but he’d only done that as a response to the stream of excuses Jack had flung at him following the accident. What he’d wanted was for Jack to go and think about what he’d done and come back later. He hadn’t meant forever.

“I tried to visit you at the hospital, but they wouldn’t let me in,” Jack added.

“They deemed it non-contagious a month after I was first admitted,” Vlad said. “You could’ve visited then.”

Jack had no immediate reply. “I was too scared to face you by then,” he said. “I didn’t want to make things worse.”

“Funny. That’s exactly what you did by never showing up.”

“I know, I screwed up. I hurt my best friend cause I was careless. I made everything worse cause I was scared.” Jack heaved a long sigh. “I’d go back and change everything if I could.”

Vlad gave a humorless chuckle as Clockwork immediately came to mind. Best not to risk mentioning him though; with Vlad’s luck they’d both end up dead or with some other worse outcome. Jack meddling with the timeline was a thought too horrifying to entertain for long.

“And after I got out of the hospital?” Vlad asked.

“I did notice when you were making strides…” Jack admitted. “But I figured you had it handled, and how would that look if I only showed up then, right? So I decided to stay away until you decided you wanted me back.”

“I see.” Vlad couldn’t say whether he was satisfied with Jack’s answers or not. They sounded sincere enough, and they certainly weren’t meant to save face given that Jack had admitted to being a coward. A sort of numbness hung over Vlad now, coupled with a lighter feeling. As if something was no longer weighing him down.

“I still want to be your friend. I’ve really missed having you in my life, all these years... But I understand if you don’t want that, after everything.”

Vlad had no answer for him now. Twenty years of hate and resentment wasn’t something to be undone with one conversation... But said conversation could open up new avenues for them. It felt good to finally feel like he was being heard, that Jack was actually listening to him instead of bumbling endlessly on and assuming that everything was fine. Now he needed time to let everything sink in.

Perhaps the fact that he was even taking the time to consider the thought was a ray of hope.

So that issue needed time. Now to take care of the other thing that needed dealing with at the moment. Vlad pushed himself toward the center of the bed until his back made contact with Jack’s ribs.

“Vlad?” Jack asked, startled by the sudden move.

“The gap where the sheets hung between us was cold,” Vlad replied.

Jack gave a hesitant chuckle. “Yeah, I understand.”

~~~

Jack’s arm was draped over Vlad’s waist when he woke up the next morning. Vlad checked the time and found that it was a few minutes past seven. He slid out from under Jack’s arm and sat up, lingering on the edge of the bed. That was one of the best nights of sleep he’d had in years, though he hated to admit it. The human desire for contact wasn’t such an easy instinct to shake.

A strange unmoored feeling hung over him now, but he had to admit that it wasn’t a particularly unhappy feeling at least. Perhaps bewilderment might be a better descriptor. Had someone told him that Jack was capable of apologizing he wouldn’t have believed them, but he’d heard it with his own two ears last night. Jack was finally starting to acknowledge the gravity of what he’d done. There might be hope for them yet…

Movement on the other side of the bed derailed Vlad’s train of thought. Jack grunted as he did a full-body stretch, then flopped back against the bed again. “Wow, I slept great last night!” he declared as he sat up.

“I did as well,” Vlad said.

“So what now?”

“Call your family over. I think breakfast is in order.”

Jack grinned. “You got it, Vladdie!”

Where things could go next, Vlad wasn’t sure. He was content to watch and leave himself open for now.

~~~

Vlad and Jack walked abreast as they climbed the grand stone steps of Amity Park’s main museum. Jack had been eager for the new trial, though a tad hesitant for some reason. He finally spoke up as they walked into the main hall after buying their tickets.

“Hey, Vlad?”

“Something wrong?” Vlad asked as he turned to Jack.

“I’m not much of an art guy,” Jack replied, fidgeting by scratching at the back of his head. “I don’t think I really get it? So I probably won’t have anything interesting to say.”

“You don’t have to be an expert to enjoy art, Jack,” Vlad said. “Just look at it with an open mind, see where that takes you. There are plenty of other halls we can explore if you get bored.”

“Sounds good,” Jack said, giving Vlad a relieved smile. “Let’s do that first.”

The current seasonal art exhibit displayed a collection of paintings by Van Gogh and his contemporaries. Every last one was a replica due to the security concerns associated with Amity Park—too many ghost attacks to risk displaying the real thing. They wandered for a while until Vlad stopped before one particular painting, a snapshot of country life by Constant Troyon that depicted a group of farm workers next to a tree-ringed pond. Vlad stared into the painting for a while, taking in its details, and slowly the chatter of the museum patrons behind him fell away, replaced by birdsong and the contented clucking of chickens and distant conversation carried on the breeze…

“Find a good one?” Jack asked, snapping Vlad out of his imaginings.

“I can hear this one,” Vlad said, gesturing toward the painting with one hand.

“Uh—”

“Not literally,” Vlad said quickly. “Just look for a bit and try to imagine what this scene would sound like.”

“Hmm.” Jack stared at the painting for a while, his chin resting on one fist. “Oooh, I think I get what you’re saying,” he said finally. “It’s like it draws you in?” Jack squinted at it, a hint of suspicion in his eyes. “Are we sure this thing isn’t haunted?”

“I think it’s just doing the typical art routine. Plus, this is only a replica of the real one,” Vlad replied, a touch of genuine amusement to his smile. “Though I don’t doubt there are haunted paintings out there.”

“Yeah, maybe even ones like— What was that author again? His stuff was pretty creepy.”

“That’s a very broad category of authors, Jack.”

“Back in college, remember? That story about the painting that changed every time the guy looked at it?”

Vlad took a moment to plumb the depths of his memory, going back to those college nights when they had enough time between their studies to read to each other. “I think I remember the story you’re talking about. There was that undead creature that stole a baby, right?”

“Yeah! That’s the one,” Jack said, his enthusiasm building. “Maybe we could read that guy’s stories again.”

“But what was his name?” Vlad closed his eyes as he tried to remember. He knew the name he was searching for was a common one, but which…? “His stories had a bit of a Lovecraft feel to them, didn’t they?”

“Yeeaaah.” Jack paused, trying to recall the name as well. “Wasn’t he from before Lovecraft though?”

“Was it James?” Vlad guessed.

“Yeah!” Jack said with a grin. “I think you got it. M… M. R. James?”

“That does sound right,” Vlad said, then he grimaced as he recalled something else. “And I do recall getting some weird nightmares after reading some of those stories.”

Jack laughed. “Guess we should postpone picking those up again?”

“Mmm, I don’t know. Maybe it’s about the state of mind you’re in when you read them.”

“I’m kinda glad that ghosts aren’t like those stories after all. Not the ones I deal with, anyway.”

They both looked at the painting again. It was the same as when they’d looked before, and Vlad breathed an inward sigh of relief. He had enough on his plate without having a haunted painting to worry about.

They returned to wandering among the paintings until Vlad called Jack’s attention to Van Gogh’s Starry Night. “What do you think of this one?”

Jack looked self-conscious again as he turned to the painting.

“You don’t have to say anything profound,” Vlad told him. “Just think about how it makes you feel.”

Jack calmed under the assurance and let his eyes wander the painting for a while. “I mean, obviously it’s really pretty. I like that the brush strokes are really big.”

“Yes, it’s a style that Van Gogh is well known for.”

“It looks kind of like something from a dream, y’know?”

Vlad regarded the painting again. “You’re right, it does remind me of something I’ve seen in my dreams before.”

~~~

They enjoyed lunch in the museum’s food court, after which Vlad led the way to a hall that he was sure they would both enjoy.

Jack’s face lit up when he spotted the first dinosaur display, a bold triceratops posed with its head up and mouth open. “Now we’re talkin’!” he declared as he looked down the rest of the hall.

They strolled among the dinosaurs, admiring what the ancient beasts left behind and trying to imagine what their lives may have been like. As with the paintings no one wanted to risk letting the real thing get destroyed in a ghost attack, but they were casts of the original fossils and thus good enough.

“Hey, Vladdie,” Jack said as they looked over an allosaurus exhibit. “Do you think dinosaur ghosts are a thing?”

“I haven’t heard of any being found,” Vlad replied after some thought. He certainly hadn’t come across any, even in his extensive exploration of the Ghost Zone. “But the Ghost Zone is a truly vast dimension. Who’s to say that they don’t exist in some far-flung corner that rarely sees contact with more modern ghosts?”

“We should go look for them sometime!”

“Hah, maybe so,” Vlad said with a small smile. He had to admit that he’d love to see a dinosaur ghost as well, if they existed. “That would be quite an adventure, wouldn’t it?”

Accidental Marriage

Mitzi summoned them all to the sun room the following day. Vlad faced her with less trepidation than before, his usual anger toward Jack having faded to background noise since the apology. “I have decided on an optional trial for you to consider,” Mitzi declared as they gathered round. She lifted the artifact and placed it on the table before her. “If you pass this test of trust I will give you your heart back without complaint.”

“So what will it be, then?” Vlad asked, eying the artifact warily.

“Jack will take care of your heart for the next forty-eight hours. Accomplish this without incident and you will pass,” Mitzi replied. “So how about it? Do you trust him enough to give him your heart?”

Vlad broke out into a cold sweat as he considered it. The condition would guarantee an end to this whole matter in two days, but allowing Jack to watch over the artifact was...

His heart beat frantically within its glass prison.

“You don’t have to,” Jack said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I can keep doing this as long as it takes!”

“But we can’t let this whole mess burden us forever,” Vlad replied. He knew that even Jack would grow weary of having this ghost constantly disrupt his life in the name of the trials, no matter how much he liked spending time with Vlad. This was a sure way out, but the thought of literally putting his life in Jack’s hands terrified him.

“Do you need a moment to think about it?” Mitzi offered.

“I’m—” Vlad pressed his hand over his mouth as he agonized over it, thumb digging into his cheek and index finger pressing the opposite cheekbone. Jack had promised. Surely he could do this for two days, and there was no condition to keep Vlad from staying nearby for the duration. He could endure the anxiety for the next two days and then he would be free to figure out their relationship going forward, without Mitzi and her trials hovering over them. Yes, he could endure that. He’d suffered through far worse before.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Maddie said hesitantly. “Jack cares about you a lot, Vlad, but I don’t think he should be saddled with this.”

He distantly appreciated Maddie’s honesty. She knew Jack better than anyone, she was only being realistic.

But at the same time, he worried. There had been a spark of... Something, the previous day. A feeling he didn’t want to let go of. If the trials became a burden to Jack, and if that drove him away...

“Vlad, you don’t have to do this,” Jack said again.

At last Vlad lowered his hand and took a deep breath. “Do you want to do this, Jack?” he asked, doing his best to keep his voice steady.

“It’s your heart, Vlad. You should decide—”

“I would like to take what you want into consideration before I make my choice,” Vlad said as he turned to him.

Jack brought a hand to his head, brow creased with worry as he considered Vlad’s question.

Vlad swayed slightly where he stood as he watched Jack. Everyone in the room was watching with him.

“I want to do it,” Jack said as he lowered his hand. “I’ll do it.”

“Very well.” Vlad turned to Mitzi. “Then I accept the terms of this trial and I look forward to getting my heart back in two days’ time.”

“Very good. Then hand it over to him and we will commence the trial.” Mitzi stood and passed the artifact to Vlad.

He stared down at his heart for a few long moments, the sight of its frantic rhythm only heightening his anxiety. Vlad turned to Jack, who looked every bit as worried as he felt. “I need you to take care of this, Jack.” It was difficult to speak, anxiety had his throat in a stranglehold. He pressed the artifact into Jack’s waiting hands. “Please don’t let me down.”

“I won’t,” Jack said, holding the artifact close to his chest. “I promise.”

“Best of luck to you both,” Mitzi said, looking very pleased with herself. “You may do as you please for the next two days.”

They left Mitzi in the sun room. Maddie stopped them as they walked through the library.

“So we do have the artifact in our possession now,” she said as she eyed it. “Maybe we could see if we can undo it ourselves—”

“No!” Jack and Vlad said in unison.

“It’s too risky,” Vlad said.

“If we mess up even a little it could kill him,” Jack added.

“Alright, you have a point,” Maddie said, a tad taken aback by how quickly the two had given their answer.

“I still can’t believe you actually gave it to him,” Danny said, staring at the artifact in shock. He looked up at Vlad. “What’s with you right now? Just, why?”

“I’m tired of this ghost’s antics and I decided to put a little faith in your father,” Vlad replied, annoyance creeping past the anxiety. “It’s just two days. We’ll be fine.”

~~~

They made it through the first day and night without issue. Vlad was always nearby throughout and only disappeared for brief stints to take care of his cats, as expected. Jack didn’t even see it as an insult to his abilities; Vlad was simply worried, as he had every right to be. He was really going the distance by trusting Jack with this after what happened twenty years ago.

And Jack, in turn, felt like he was going to lose his mind from the sheer anxiety of it all. If he messed this up Vlad could die. Even if Vlad didn’t die it would hurt him, and Jack so desperately wanted to avoid hurting him again. The artifact felt like a lead weight no matter how he carried it with him, while at once being something he assumed to be so delicate that he feared what would happen if he dropped it even a few inches onto any surface. Any time he lost sight of it for more than a few minutes he panicked, even if he was in fact holding it at the moment. In all it had been a miserable twenty-eight hours so far.

They’d made plans to watch a movie together earlier that morning. It was during preparations for heading over to Vlad’s house that Jack decided to hide the heart. Nightmare scenarios played themselves back in his head over and over, of him knocking the artifact off a table and breaking it or dropping it or some other accident, and so he decided that the best way to keep it safe would be to store it under lock and key.

Key code, anyway. Jack opened up the ghost-proof safe and carefully placed the artifact inside, then muttered the code under his breath as he punched it in—they’d be in just as much trouble if he forgot how to get back into the safe, after all.

Jack was already feeling better as he walked away from the safe. It would survive even if FentonWorks were to collapse on top of it—in fact Vlad’s heart would be the least of their worries if that were to happen. They’d only have to dig it out of the rubble and open it in that scenario.

An unfamiliar ghost slid down from the wall where it had been spying on Jack, invisible and unnoticed. It approached the safe with the numbers for the code still in its mind. Its master would be very pleased with this prize.

Vlad let Jack in as soon as he knocked on the door. “Jack,” he began when he noticed something was missing. “Where is—”

“I was worried about dropping it, so I locked it up in a ghost-proof safe,” Jack said proudly.

“Ah.” Vlad relaxed a little. “Not a bad idea, actually. Better than carrying it around.”

They took their time picking out snacks for their Back to the Future movie marathon, chatting away aimlessly about other movies they might want to watch together all the while. Vlad had an indoor theater that they could use, but instead they chose a more comfy setup in the den. There they sat sharing a couch among the dark hardwood furniture and shelves of books and antiques, a snack-laden coffee table sitting between them and the widescreen set into the wall.

The movie was well underway when a ghostly presence filled the room. They both jumped to their feet, ready for the intruder, when the ghost appeared between them and the widescreen tv.

“Greetings, Vlad,” the ghost said in a bellowing, slightly metallic voice. He was clad in a full suit of armor with a helmet that displayed its owner's blocky face across its visor, and a necklace of large multi-colored gems rested across his breastplate. “Today you will have the honor of giving me, the great Reginald, your hand in marriage!”

Jack and Vlad shared a look for a moment, then burst into laughter.

“What makes you think he’ll say yes, ghost?” Jack raised an ecto-blaster that he’d stowed away in a pocket and noted that Vlad had taken one from within his coat as well.

“Yes, what indeed? I’m not intending to marry anyone at the moment,” Vlad added.

“Such insolence,” the ghost said with a scowl. “I’ll rephrase it, then.” He lifted his deep red cloak and retrieved an object from within—the artifact, with Vlad’s heart still inside. “Give me your hand in marriage or I’ll crush your heart under foot. Is that more clear?”

Jack’s whole body went cold upon seeing the artifact. How? When had that ghost—

“Come on, now,” the ghost said with a smirk. “I don’t have all day.”

Vlad lowered his weapon and let it fall to the floor. He gave Jack a look of utter betrayal, eyes wide with fear and face pale. “I can’t believe I trusted you,” Vlad said quietly. He stared at Jack for a few more moments, then slowly walked over to the ghost and stood beside him.

“Very good. Let us be off, then.” The ghost swept his cloak around and the two, one of the gems on his necklace glowing intensely as they vanished in a swirl of scarlet energy.

The light returned to normal. The movie continued as it had been doing throughout the encounter, so thoroughly ignored that it might as well have been on mute. Jack slumped back onto the couch and let the weapon fall from his hand, his fingers numb with shock.

He’d failed. Things had been going so well, only for him to ruin their chances in the second half. Some ghost had Vlad in its clutches and who knew what horrors it had planned for him.

And the way Vlad looked at him...

Jack surged to his feet, fists clenched as he drew himself up. No, it wasn’t over until he ran away and hid like he’d done last time. He’d get Vlad back if it was the last thing he did.

Again the lighting of the room shifted as another ghost drew near. Jack swept up his gun again and prepared for a fight.

Any hope that the ghost might’ve come back for a rematch was dashed when Mitzi appeared before him. “What is going on?” she demanded. “Why has my artifact just appeared in the Ghost Zone?”

“You!” Jack snapped as he pointed his ecto-blaster at her. “You were in cahoots with that ghost, weren’t you? You were gonna hand Vlad over to him all along!”

“What ghost?” Mitzi asked as she glared down at him. “And put that thing away while I’m talking to you!”

The ermine ghost flowed from her shoulders in a flash and wrapped itself around Jack’s arms, yanking them down to keep the ecto-blaster away from Mitzi.

“Hey!” Jack struggled against the ghost, only for it to wind itself around his body and pin his arms to his sides instead.

“Now tell me what happened,” Mitzi said, a little calmer now. “What did this ghost look like?”

Jack’s ire cooled a little; Mitzi would already know what the ghost looked like if she was working with him, after all. “Big, wearing some kind of techno armor with a cloak, said his name was Reginald...”

“Oh dear.” Mitzi looked embarrassed. “Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Let’s go find your family. We’re going to need all hands on deck to deal with this and I don’t want to repeat myself.”

~~~

Vlad woke up on a dais. Reginald had done something to force him to fall asleep soon after they arrived in his lair, he had no idea how much time had passed between then and now.

The dais had been built within an elaborate ballroom with sweeping arches and tall windows that gave clear views of the swirling eddies of the Ghost Zone beyond. Red garlands and sharp white flowers like fragments of bone decorated every inch of the place, giving it an elegant but hostile feel. A crowd of ghosts milled around the room, most of them of the skeletal variety, finely dressed in black and shades of gray. They had been invited to a very special occasion.

Vlad looked down at himself and found that they’d left him in his usual suit for the occasion, either because it was already fancy enough or because he wouldn’t last long enough to merit something nicer.

He had no idea how he would make it out of this. Reginald had not let on to what he planned after marriage, but given that he held all the power in this situation it couldn’t be good. That the ghost might simply kill him immediately after the vows were said was a distinct possibility. There just wasn’t enough time to figure a way out of this...

“Welcome to the rest of your life, sleeping beauty,” Reginald said with a smirk. He stood across from Vlad on the dais and now wore a suit of gaudy gold armor with a red cloak and accents, the artifact hanging from his belt. “Enjoy it while you can.”

The rest of the proceedings passed in a blur—Vlad was oscillating between panic and being consumed by thoughts on how to escape and took no notice as the dusty lich in robes mumbled the vows they would be agreeing to.

“Well, what say you?”

Reginald’s voice snapped Vlad back to the present. He looked up, and Reginald patted the artifact at his belt once he had his attention. Would it even be worth delaying in the hopes that he’d figure something out before Reginald had the chance to dispose of him afterward? Wouldn’t it be better to die now before the wretched ghost could lay claim to everything he owned?

“Just say what’s on here, and the name of the one you would bind yourself to,” the officiator said as he passed an ancient-looking piece of paper to Vlad.

The vows were surprisingly simple. Apparently ghosts didn’t like to waste time on such things, though they had a far longer span of existence to look forward to than average humans did.

Reginald wrapped his fingers around the glass globe at the artifact’s center, his hand big enough to nearly hide the heart within. He would crush it if Vlad didn’t obey.

Naked survival instinct pushed Vlad into reading the vows aloud: “In all the vastness of the Ghost Zone there is but one I wish to bind myself to, power and soul.” Vlad shuddered a little as Reginald took his hand away from the artifact; apparently he would wait a bit before doing the deed, once the vows were said. The thought made him feel sick. “With them I will share all triumphs and failures, all joys and sorrows. Together we will face eternity. This I promise to you—”

A black-gloved hand dropped onto the artifact, attached to an arm clad in an orange hazmat suit.

“—Jack Fenton!?” Vlad stared in shock as Jack threw off the rest of his potted plant disguise and grabbed at the artifact with his other hand as well.

“That’s right, Vladdie!” Jack said with a grin, ducking under a punch from Reginald as he did so. “I’m gonna get you outta here! And I brought the whole family to help!”

An explosion went off on the far side of the room. Bits of wedding cake flew through the air, splattering onto guests and decorations, as Maddie stepped through the smoke with a Fenton Bazooka in her hands and started firing on the guards.

The guests scattered as the skeletal guards started pouring in.

Back on the dais a tug of war had broken out between Jack and Reginald. Each had both hands on the artifact and was trying to swing the other off of it.

“You might want to be a little more careful with that!” Vlad said, wincing as he watched the two swing around again. It was a wonder they hadn’t pulled it apart yet.

“Wretched oaf! Just what do you think you’re doing?” Reginald said as he tried to kick at Jack and missed. “Now I’ll have to go through a mountain of paperwork to get the next wedding set up!”

“I’m saving my best friend!” Jack declared. He blocked a kick from Reginald with his own boot and pushed him back. “We’re going home, whether you like it or not!”

“Best friend?” Reginald laughed. “That is funny. Do you have any idea who you’re trying to save?”

“Quit trying to mess with me, ghost!” Jack glared at him over the top of the artifact. “It won’t work!”

The sick feeling that had been driven away by Jack’s arrival returned. No, he wouldn’t—

“Why don’t I show you.” Reginald turned a dial near the top of the artifact with his thumb.

—a painful jolt of power surged through Vlad. The black transformation ring appeared without his bidding and split, revealing his ghost form and his secret.

Jack stared at Vlad in shock, though his grip on the artifact never wavered. “What...? Vlad?”

Vlad instinctively wanted to hide his face from Jack, for what little good that would do. The sudden wave of shame and fear mixed into a heavy feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach. This was not how he’d wanted any reveal to go.

Reginald let out a long laugh. “Hasn’t your so-called friend attacked you before? And I recall him putting out a call for ghosts who would be willing to go after you in the past as well. Some friend he is.”

“But, why did you do it?” Jack asked, his eyes still on Vlad. Pleading, probably for some explanation that would keep his worst assumptions from being proven right.

Vlad could think of no lie that would satisfy those terms. Not in such a short amount of time, anyway. So he settled for the miserable truth. “Because I was angry, and stupid, and selfish,” Vlad replied as he looked away. “I thought getting back at you would make me feel better, but it never did.”

Reginald tried to wrench the artifact out of Jack’s hands, only to find that the man still had as firm a grip on it as ever.

“But we were having such a good time at the museum...” Jack said, the pleading look replaced by sadness. To Vlad’s surprise it made him feel even more sick to see it.

“I did have a good time with you then. Things got... A bit easier after you finally apologized,” Vlad said. He looked up at Jack again and took a deep breath. Ever since he’d started feeling better around Jack he’d known that this was likely to come up. If only it had been under lighter circumstances. “And I also need to apologize for what I’ve—”

An ecto-blast bursting over the rug at his feet interrupted any further discussion. Vlad staggered back and looked up at the source, finding Maddie on the other end with her ecto-rifle still raised and ready to fire.

“Aren’t you forgetting someone, Vlad? I always knew there was something rotten about you.” Maddie took aim, her finger closing around the trigger. “I suggest you start running.”

Anxiety turned to cold gut-wrenching fear as Vlad focused his full attention on Maddie. His ghost form might be a little stronger after the power injection, but he was still too weak to even conjure a shield, let alone try to fight her off. If she caught him he’d be done for.

Vlad darted forward, intending to duck past Jack and Reginald, only for a shot from Maddie to shatter the ornate vase ahead of him and drive him back in the opposite direction.

“What? No! You can’t kill him until he’s bound himself to me!” Reginald howled. “Guards! Protect him!” One of the gems on his necklace flared green as he gave the order.

The skeleton guards that had been pouring into the room to fight the Fentons turned and focused their attention on blocking Maddie’s shots or lunging at her once they got close.

“Maddie? Maddie, no!” Jack released the artifact and dashed over to his wife. “Maddie don’t kill him! Please!”

“Not now, Jack. I’m busy.” Maddie paused just long enough to swing Jack to the floor in a controlled throw and resumed her onslaught. “Kids, restrain your father and watch my back.”

“Wh—” He sat up, and was immediately hit and tied up by his own Jack o’ Nine Tails.

“Sorry, dad!” Jazz said, giving him an apologetic wave before activating her Fenton Peeler and shooting down a charging ghost.

Guard after guard fell as Maddie fired, her shots always scattered around Vlad’s current location.

Vlad overturned a table for cover and darted behind it. Maddie blasted holes in it behind and ahead of him, forcing him to break cover while she paused to reload.

“Maddie! At least let him explain himself!” Jack struggled against his bonds, trying to get free, and only succeeded in falling over.

“He had sooo many chances to explain himself before now,” Maddie replied as she raised her rifle again. Rather than fire she took an ecto-grenade from her belt pouch, pulled the pin, and hurled it into the cluster of guards that were trying to get between her and the target.

Vlad was moving before the grenade had a chance to bounce a second time. It exploded directly behind him, close enough that it knocked him into a roll that left him on his back.

With a yelp he scrambled back to his feet and started running again as another shot from Maddie’s rifle knocked out the guard just behind him.

“Maddie, stop!” Jack said, wincing as Vlad dodged another shot.

“Don’t worry about it, Jack,” Maddie replied as she fired another round of shots that dropped yet more guards near Vlad. “You’ll thank me later, I promise.”

“Kids!” Jack turned to Jazz and Danny instead, who were watching Maddie’s back as she’d asked.

“Dad, it’s gonna be fine,” Danny asked as he reeled in the Jack o’ Nine Tails and prepared for another shot; both he and Jazz were dressed in hazmat suits like their parents, a sight that had made Jack proud beyond words as they were setting out on the rescue. “Vlad’s not gonna die.”

Jack tried wriggling out of the cords again and found that they were starting to loosen.

At last the stream of guards slowed, and Maddie finished off the last few as Vlad’s frantic flight brought him to the dais again.

Vlad lost his footing and hit the floor hard, the last of his energy long spent. He lifted his head to find Maddie standing over him—she’d thrown Jack to the floor yet again to give herself time to dash over. The sight was enough to make his heart feel as if it was trying to escape his ribcage.

“Any last words, Vlad?” Maddie asked as the whine of a charging ecto-rifle filled the air between them.

“I wish I’d just talked to Jack to begin with.” Vlad screwed his eyes shut and waited for the end, too tired to escape.

Reginald snatched the rifle by its barrel and lifted Maddie into the air. “Enough of this! You will stop—”

Maddie kicked off his chest, dropping the rifle and drawing an ecto-blaster instead as she vaulted through the air. Three well-placed shots shattered the gems on Reginald’s necklace before she even touched the ground.

“No!” Reginald dropped the rifle and staggered back. “How did you—”

Jack scrambled over to them, having finally gotten back to his feet, and threw himself over Vlad. “Maddie, I know you’re mad—”

Maddie straightened and breathed a sigh of relief. “Don’t worry, Jack. I’m not going to shoot him.”

“You’re not?” Jack sat up, still clutching Vlad in both arms.

Vlad clung to Jack like a terrified cat, returning to human form as he sat up. “But you just—”

“Used you as the perfect distraction, yes,” Maddie replied with a sunny smile. “Thank you for doing such a good job, by the way. Your abject terror was very convincing.”

Jack and Vlad shared a glance—they were both blushing.

“The three of us are going to have a long talk after all this, though,” Maddie added, her eyes sharp as she glared at Vlad.

“Yes, Maddie.” For once he wasn’t looking forward to being able to talk to her.

“I’m just glad you’re alive!” Jack blubbered, and buried his face in Vlad’s neck as he started crying in earnest.

There was no response Vlad could think to give right now, save for sheer bewilderment. Even after discovering how hostile Vlad had been to him, he still cared enough to cry over almost losing him. The blush that settled on Vlad’s face was one of embarrassment this time. Perhaps he had been taking Jack for granted, at least a little. It really was amazing, the work that a sincere apology could do.

Vlad looked up at Maddie again. “Were you planning to attack me all along? And was that really necessary? Just look at the state Jack’s in now.” His coat was going to be quite soggy after this.

“Oh that was spur of the moment,” Maddie replied. “Our original distraction got derailed, so I had to think fast. This one worked even better than the one we originally had planned.”

“Distraction for what—”

“How dare you ignore me!” Reginald hauled himself to his feet, the artifact clutched in one hand. “You’ll pay for such insolence! If I can’t have him then no one can!” He hurled the artifact to the floor. It shattered on impact, leaving a pile of fractured metal and broken glass behind.

A shot from Maddie knocked Reginald to the ground once again, his suit twitching as its electronics glitched from the damage.

Vlad let out the gasp he’d taken as Reginald threw down the artifact. He was alive, to his immense shock. Pale and shaken, to be sure, but alive. And currently having his ribs ground to dust from how tightly Jack was hugging him again.

Reginald lifted his head, the terrible grin on his face falling when he realized that Vlad was still very much alive. “How?!” Reginald cried as he stared at the remains of the artifact. “That should’ve killed you outright!”

“I returned his heart while you were all so distracted by the chase.” Mitzi stepped out from behind one of the scarlet curtains and sauntered over with a smirk on her face. “Maddie made it quite easy with her clever little play. Excellent work, darling,” she added with a nod to Maddie.

“I do admit that it was cathartic watching Vlad run for his life,” Maddie said. She turned to Vlad, her smile dropping as she added, “I might not have been trying to hit you, but I’m still very angry over what you’ve done.”

Vlad drooped a little under the force of her glare. “And we’ll talk later, I understand.”

Jack breathed out a long sigh of relief, his face still pale from watching the artifact shatter. “I guess it’s over now.”

“Yes, it seems so.” Vlad pushed at Jack, who released him. With a sigh Vlad got to his feet and straightened his coat. The blush was back, and now he couldn’t find the words for what he wanted to say. “This probably sounds meaningless after all that’s happened, but I’m sorry for the whole, sending ghosts after you and all of that. I’m honestly not sure why you’re willing to give me another chance.”

“I’m not sure you really meant it,” Jack said with a shrug as he stood.

“Huh?” Vlad stared at him. That did not compute.

“Well I mean, if you were really trying to kill me why didn’t you just hire a human hitman? I never would’ve seen that coming,” Jack said, his tone suggesting that this should’ve been obvious.

“Yes, I was wondering the same,” Maddie added. “Honestly that’s one of the reasons I didn’t just shoot you on sight for what you’ve done. Of all the things you send after Jack, it’s ghosts? It’s like you were trying to fail.”

“Well I—” Vlad had gone completely red now. The whole thing made him feel downright stupid. “I don’t know, I just never thought to use anything other than ghosts.” Had he really been holding back this whole time without realizing it? Was that why he’d failed time and again when it came to disposing of Jack?

“And didn’t ghosts stop showing up to kill dad after he kicked your butt that one time?” Danny asked with a smirk.

“That was a fluke!” Vlad snapped, his ears burning. “I lost because I was tired!”

Jack burst out laughing. “That was a great fight! Maybe we could do it again sometime!”

“Absolutely not!” Vlad snapped. His ego couldn’t take another loss like that. Even after getting the Skeleton Key he’d still suffered momentary stabs of humiliation over having lost to Jack Fenton in a head to head fight.

“If everyone could settle down for a moment.” The officiator glided over, his feet hidden under the length of his robes—or perhaps he had no feet to speak of. “There’s still the matter of the vows.” He turned to Jack. “Do you accept this half-ghost, Jack Fenton?”

“Well yeah, of course I do! He’s my best friend!” Jack declared. He pulled Vlad into a side-hug, eying the officiator with suspicion. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Then congratulations,” the officiator said, satisfied. “You’re married.” He then tossed a handful of confetti over the two and started toward the remains of the dessert table.

Everyone watched him in stunned silence as his words sank in.

“Wait, what do you mean we’re married?!” Vlad pushed away from Jack and dashed after the officiator.

“But I’m already married!” Jack said, looking worried and bewildered as he trotted after them. “This doesn’t cancel the first one out, right?”

The officiator stopped to address them, looking annoyed. “It’s a separate affair, it doesn’t interfere with any Earth marriages you might have.” He turned to Vlad. “You said the vows that opened the contract, and your partner here sealed it with his agreement.”

“And if we want to undo it—”

“Well you’ll have to complete the paperwork and the rituals to undo the binding,” the officiator replied. He squinted at them for a few moments as he thought it over. “It’s going to be difficult given that only one of you is part ghost, though.”

Vlad groaned and covered his face with one hand.

“Don’t worry about it, Vladdie! We’ll figure it out,” Jack said as he put a hand on Vlad’s shoulder. “As long as Maddie is understanding,” he added with a nervous laugh.

“You really think I’m going to acknowledge a ghost-marriage as valid?” Maddie asked as she joined them. “And on the bright side, maybe it’ll help reign in Vlad’s more...” She gave him a look. “Annoying tendencies.”

“Maddie—!”

She cut him off. “Also if anything does happen to Jack, I know exactly who I’ll be blaming first.”

“Maddie stop, we both know he wouldn’t do that!” Jack said, pulling Vlad close again.

“Or couldn’t,” Danny added. “Vlad’s kinda incompetent, let’s be real.”

“Oh shut up!” Vlad snapped, only to receive an even bigger smirk from Danny in return.

“Guess Mitzi’s plan worked out,” Jazz said with a knowing smile. “Though I’m not really sure how well getting dad and Vlad to team up will work out for the Ghost Zone...”

“Yeah yeah, keep being smug that you figured it out before anyone else,” Danny said with a roll of his eyes.

“Plan?” Vlad turned to Jazz. “What plan?”

“She wanted to get you and dad to reconnect all along so you’d stop causing trouble in the Ghost Zone,” Jazz replied. “That’s why she set up the trials the way she did.”

“That’s right,” Mitzi added as she joined them. “Even down to making the artifact and spreading rumors about it that would get your attention, and convincing you that you’d said Jack’s name while you were panicked about losing your heart.”

Vlad blushed with embarrassment yet again. It was one thing to play him for a fool, quite another to brag about it in front of an audience.

“Come now, darling, you should be happy. You finally heard what you needed to and set foot on the right path. Isn’t that worth all the hardship?”

Vlad gave her the biggest scowl he could manage, fists clenched at his sides.

“You’ll thank me one day,” Mitzi said knowingly. “For now though, I think it’s time we said goodbye.”

“Should we do anything about Reginald before we go?” Maddie asked, casting a glance at the ghost.

Vlad glowered at the ghost and pulled himself from Jack’s arms. “I think a little extra punishment is in order for him trying to force me to marry him, don’t you agree?”

“Yes, even you wouldn’t go so low as to do that,” Maddie said. Vlad was beyond tired of getting sniped like this, but perhaps he did deserve it. “Let’s show him what happens when he messes with us.”

“That might not be necessary,” Mitzi said, gesturing to a small group of ghosts who had just entered the room. They had their eyes fixed on Reginald and violent thoughts in mind given the way they glared at him. “Those ghosts were bound in service to him by that necklace. They’re quite unhappy with him, so perhaps you should leave it to them. You have more important matters to attend to anyway.”

~~~

The ride home in the Specter Speeder was quiet. At last it glided through the Fenton Portal and coasted to a stop in the lab.

“Woo! Home sweet home!” Jack said as he swung the hatch open and stepped into the lab.

“Not bad for a day trip,” Maddie added as she hopped out after him. “And as for our talk, Vlad—”

Vlad sighed. “Can it wait for now? It’s not like I can get away from you,” he said. He was still tired, despite having his full power back; the sheer stress of everything had taken its toll, and he was in no condition to be having an intense conversation at the moment.

Maddie considered it. “Fine. We’ll put it off until tomorrow, then.”

“Glad to have you back, V-man!” Jack pulled Vlad into another hug, and Vlad let him.

“Yes, glad to be back, Jack,” Vlad said. He resisted the urge to rest his head against Jack’s shoulder. “Thank you for saving me back there. It seems I can put a bit of trust in you after all.”

Jack looked at him with surprise. “Even though—”

“Yes, even though you caused it. You actually came back and helped fix things, and for that I’m grateful,” Vlad said, giving Jack a sincere smile.

“Gross!” Danny said, completely ruining the moment—likely on purpose.

Vlad glared at him. “Get used to it, Little Badger,” he said, smirking as he draped an arm around Jack’s shoulders. “Oh, and be ready for me to make him even more embarrassing than usual. You’ve been warned.”

“Send him back,” Danny growled.

“Aw, cheer up, Danny! You have a super-powered uncle now!” Jack said with a grin. “Just think of all the fun things you could do together!”

“Let’s put a pin in that until after we’ve had our little chat,” Maddie said. “But for now let’s take it easy. Things have definitely been interesting lately.”

“Hey, we should finish watching Back to the Future!” Jack said. “That stupid ghost interrupted us earlier.”

“That he did. Sounds like a good idea to me,” Vlad replied.

“I’ll get the snacks going!” Jack declared, and he dashed up the stairs to the kitchen.

“I wouldn’t mind watching it again, so I’ll join you,” Maddie said, smiling as she followed Jack out of the lab.

“You have a lot of stuff to answer for, Vlad,” Danny said before Vlad could leave the lab. “I’m not gonna let you off easy.”

Vlad turned to him. “Yes, I will have to work on that,” he said. In truth he was dreading more than a few of those, especially the clones. Maddie just might try to kill him when she found out about that... “But for now I suppose you’ll be down an arch-nemesis. I do hope you don’t get bored.” Vlad cleared his throat. This was all so terribly embarrassing. “Sorry for... All of that. I’ll prove to you that I mean it.”

“You’d better,” Danny said, arms crossed over his chest. “Cause if mom finds out even a fraction of the stuff you’ve been doing to us, you’re dead.”

“Just think of this as extra incentive in your rehabilitation,” Jazz said with a sunny smile. “Don’t let us down.”

Vlad forced a smile. They were absolutely going to use this to blackmail him. He had no doubt. “Well then, I look forward to working with you both.”

#Danny Phantom #Valentine's Core Exchange 2024 #Vlad Masters #Jack Fenton #Maddie Fenton #Danny Fenton #Jazz Fenton #phanfiction #Jack/Vlad #Vlad Plasmius #kuzannfic

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