#out and left a bunch of foodstuffs behind :)

[vriendenboekjes]

today i made some sort of chia pudding. This is my first time using chia seeds so I wasn't sure what to expect! I used a soy-based yoghurt replacement and a bit of (cow) milk to thin it out and added pieces of frozen mango. And i sweetened it with some palm sugar and used a bit of cinnamon and galangal. Wish i had cardamom!

#🌬️ #food #i never bought chia seeds because the only times ive seen it in stores it's super expensive? but i got a little bag from someone who moved #out and left a bunch of foodstuffs behind :) #it's quite nice

[waltwhitmansbeard]

my fair lady: chapter one

this fic was inspired by @romeoandjulietyouwish's medieval au which i read in one sitting and then i could not stop thinking about for days. this is chapter one of idk how many but i got a bunch just sitting in my drafts lol. been sitting on these for a while. title is taken from the song of the same name by kaleo

Her heels click sharply along the stone floors, the staccato sounds jolting like small shocks of lightning down her spine. She keeps her shoulders back and her chin high, her expression neutral but pleasant as she nods her greetings at the bowing figures on either side of her. There's a bead of sweat beating a hectic path down the back of her neck; all these eyes on her, surely they can see she how she flounders, how she trips her way through every day, every meeting, every sentence?

Beneath the polite murmurs of "Your Highness" chorusing around her, there's a second set of footsteps, much softer and quieter than her own. Her shadow, the only thing that feels constant and reliable these days. As she approaches the throne room, the towering polished oak doors swing open before her. She passes through, tossing a wink at the goliath guarding one side, whose returning ear-to-ear grin nearly makes her laugh.

The chamber is sparsely decorated, only some tapestries and rugs and a few candelabras to distract from the centerpiece: a massive tree, its topmost branches scraping the fifty-foot-high ceiling, into which an ornate throne has been carved out of the trunk. The Seat of the Ashari, where her father should be sitting, where she is expected to sit in his absence. Keyleth approaches the tree and the council members gathered around it, and the shadowed footsteps behind her peel off to stand at a distance, always on guard. Instead of sitting on the throne, however, she turns just before it to face the council. "Good morning!" She winces internally at the natural cheeriness to her voice. She clears her throat and tries again, keeping her tone much more even. "Good morning."

"Good morning, Your Highness," the five reply with bows of various depths. When they straighten up, they're all looking at her, and she can feel her knees shaking beneath her gown.

"What news have we of the peace talks?" she asks, looking mostly toward the halfling Mistress of Defense.

"Your Highness," Lady Kima begins, "I have heard promising news from your father's retinue in Syngorn. Progress on ending this war with the Kingdom of Draconia is made every day, and I have been instructed to extend our ceasefire through at least the end of the month."

Relief floods Keyleth's body. "That is good news. Master Gilmore, will that give us time to open a new supply line for grain and other foodstuffs?"

"It'll be a tight squeeze, Your Highness, but you know I love nothing more than a tight squeeze."

Mistress Pike snorts a laugh at the same time that Lady Allura elbows Gilmore in the ribs, but the move does little to remove the shit-eating grin from his face—nor does it stop Keyleth from smiling herself. "Thank you, Shaun. Our people may not have reached starvation yet, but food stores are running low. We need all the help we can get." She sighs. "Anything else I need to be kept apprised of? Percy, how go the repairs in Pyrah?"

Adjusting his glasses, Lord Percival looks down at the notes in his ledger before answering. "Another shipment of worked stone and mortar are on the way to improve their defenses. I expect it to be arriving by the end of the week. Repairs should take another week and a half after that, assuming the weather holds."

"Wonderful. Should the peace talks not go the way we hope, at least our brothers and sisters in Pyrah won't be left defenseless." She smiles warmly. "I thank you all for your wise and invaluable counsel. I could not hope to step into my father's role as leader without your expertise and guidance. Please notify me at once if any news arrives from Syngorn." She nods once to dismiss the council members, who begin to turn and make their way out of the throne room. "Percival?" The Master of Development stops and turns back to face her. "A word?"

The rest of the council files out, and once Grog has closed the doors to the throne room once again, Keyleth collapses atop one of the colossal roots of the Seat of the Ashari, burying her face in her hands. "Oh gods, was that terrible?"

With a sigh, Percy drops his ledger to the floor and walks back toward his friend. "You're doing fine," he insists, kneeling before her so that he has to look up into her face. "You're overthinking things."

Keyleth snorts. "You can say that again."

"Look, do you trust us?" She lifts her head and looks at him, confused. "The council. Do you trust us to give you our honest opinions about what is best for the Ashari Nation?"

"Of course."

"Then trust us to let you know if we think you're making a bad call. The really scary conversations, those are happening right now in Syngorn. All sorts of deals and promises and plans are being made, in all sorts of secret back rooms, and your father is the one responsible for making sure all of them go exactly the way they need to for the future of your people. None of us is going to let you burn the house down in the meantime."

She smiles despite herself. "Thank you, Percy. You always know what to say."

"Because you're always in your own head. Come join the rest of us down here every once in a while, yeah?"

"Yeah."

Despite his station, Lord Percival stands, bends down to kiss the top of her head briefly, and then turns to retrieve his ledger from the floor. Before he leaves the chamber, he pauses to nod once at the figure lurking in the shadows. Then he, too, is gone.

There's a long beat of silence in the throne room, just the gentle creaking of bark as Keyleth shifts against the roots of the Seat. She hears him approach before she sees him. "Percival is right, you know." The voice is low in her ear, and her eyes slide shut at the sound. "You are too hard on yourself."

"I have to get this right," she whispers back. "I cannot let my people down."

His hands start gently braiding her hair, pulling it away from her face. "You could never. No one who loves her people as much as you do yours could be a disappointment. I can't promise you won't make mistakes, but I can promise that when you have their best interests at heart, you'll go right a hell of a lot more than you go wrong."

She turns, and Vax's face is inches from hers. He smells like leather and sweat and the night air in Zephrah. "You and I both know it is not only the interests of the people I keep close to my heart."

He holds her gaze for a beat, two, ten—it feels like a lifetime passes before his eyes return to his ministrations. "Are we having this conversation again, Your Highness?"

She sighs heavily, eyes sliding closed again. "You know I hate it when you call me that."

His fingers brush the nape of her neck. "I know you do, but when else am I going to get the opportunity to tease a princess?"

One eye opens to shoot him a look. "You better not be teasing any other princesses."

"Well, I really ought not be teasing this one." But his hands don't stop, and now her hair is intricately woven down her back, the braid tied off with a strap of leather he takes from his armor. He carefully adjusts the simple golden circlet around her brow, fitting it neatly within her braided hair. A hand comes to rest on her cheek, and she leans into the touch like a cat following a sunbeam along the floor. Of all the things she could do to ruin her nation, surely this is the most foolish. Yet the way her heart skips up into her throat at the feeling of his skin on hers, there is no way any god or man is supposed to be stronger than this.

There's a loud, officious knock on one of the doors to the throne room, and her cheek is suddenly cold again. Vax has disappeared, merged once more into the shadows from which he watches her at all times. Sighing again, Keyleth stands and smooths out her skirts, willing the flush to leave her face. "You may enter!"

A door creak opens, and Mistress Pike's brilliant blonde head pokes into the room. "Your Highness, if you have a moment, would you be able to come speak with the priestesses of the Dawnfather about the upcoming Highsummer celebrations?"

Keyleth's shoulders sink ever-so-slightly, but she smiles and nods all the same. "Of course." She looks over her shoulder. "Come along, Vax'ildan." She turns back to face Pike and sweeps out of the throne room, her familiar shadow following behind like a warm cloak in winter.

#critical role #critical role fic #cr fic #vaxleth #vaxleth fic #vox machina #vox machina fic #tlovm #tlovm fic #my fic #vaxleth au #my fair lady

[wiltingpierrot]

Gem Glow: Part 1

Welcome! Well, this isn’t really made to entertain. I’m just doing this to recover from trauma and get a good grasp of the show’s lore while having my girls react with me. Feel free to tag along.

We’ll be watching four episodes a day and react only to the major events as tackling all of them is a toughie.

 Sharpie: “I want to see real tears, Wilt.”

Wilt: “Tears? At the very first episode?”

Sharpie: “Yes. Otherwise I’ll make you cry by some other means.”

Wilt: “I have these tear marks. Those count, yes?”

Sharpie: “Real tears, I said.”

Wilt: “Ahh, how iconic.”

Spinel: “The area around the lighthouse is lacking a lot of flowers. That’ll change someday!”

Sharpie: “Yes, after a lot of blood, ink and tears had been shed first.”

Spinel: “Here we have a shot of the show’s hero, lamenting the discontinuation of a certain ice cream snack brand.”

Sharpie: “Is this triggering your PTSD yet?”

Wilt: “Not really. I thought it would but surprisingly I’m still okay.”

Lars: “Well, if you miss your wimpy ice cream so much, why don’t you make some with your MAGIC BELLY BUTTON?”

Spinel: “Hey Sharpie, let’s make foodstuff with just the energy in our gem.”

Sharpie: “And you still owe me 86 years’ worth of happiness.”

Wilt: “What is this civil conversation you’re having? That’s not how I wrote you two.”

Sadie: “Uhh Steven? Do you want to take the freezer with you?”

Spinel: “Think what would’ve happened if Sadie didn’t let him take that freezer home.”

Sharpie: “Does… does the cat’s face looked different to you?”

Spinel: “I love the lighthouse. The view up the top is always so breathtaking.”

Sharpie: “I’m not so happy with our roommate though.”

Wilt: “…I might have to draw this someday.”

Spinel: “Don’t you just love it when your pets greet you as you enter your house? I wish you would greet me whenever I fall asleep.”

Sharpie: “You’re just my nightmare.”

Amethyst: “’Sup, Steven.”

Spinel: “AME!!!!”

Spinel: “I AM IN LOVE.”

Sharpie: “You can stop replaying this 5 seconds worth of Pearl now.”

Spinel: “It’s 4 seconds worth of Pearl, you heathen.”

Spinel: “HOOO MAMA. Remember when Garnet kicked our ass?”

Sharpie: “She kicked your ass. She kicked your ass so much I had to start a switch to intervene. Now that I think of it, I shouldn’t have done that.”

Sharpie: “Being sliced open is one thing. Being pulled apart is another.”

Spinel: “It’s good that we’re stretchy.”

Sharpie: “I can disable that function and tear you apart like that, actually. Ever wondered why it doesn’t hurt when others pull at you like taffy but I can?”

Spinel: “I can do the same and prevent you from escaping my hugs.”

Sharpie: “*sigh*… I hate you.”

Spinel: “Ahaha! Pearl is so cute!”

Sharpie: “Ahaha! I love this technique.”

Wilt: “It’s good for breaking a hole through walls in maximum security prisons, yeah.”

Amethyst: “Uhh you guys, these things don’t have gems.”

Garnet: “That means there must be a mother somewhere nearby.”

Sharpie: “That’s a fascinating thought.”

Wilt: “It’s similar to how Pearl can project figures that can maintain itself while independent of the source. In this case, the main centipeedle can project independent but smaller versions of itself.”

Sharpie: “How come 2nd Projections aren’t like that, I wonder. Like we can’t have separate bodies or anything…”

Wilt: “Probably because the 2nd Projection has a personality of its own and it stems from the original gem, while Pearl Projections and mini-centipeedles are pre-programmed projections that would act accordingly to the original’s commands. Like, if Spinel makes a projection separate from her, it wouldn’t be you.”

Sharpie: “Fair enough.”

Spinel: “Speaking of Pearl Projections…”

Sharpie: “No.”

Pearl: “Steven, until you learned to control the powers in your gem, we’ll take care of protecting humanity. Okay?”

Spinel: “I want Pearl to snap my neck like that.”

Sharpie: “As if impaling you wasn’t enough.”

Spinel: “PFFFTT-“

Amethyst: “We went out and stole a bunch!”

Spinel: “That’s my Ame.”

Pearl: “I went back and paid for that.”

Sharpie: “That’s…. that’s very Pearl of her.”

Steven: “He left his family behind!”

Spinel: “AHAHAHAHAHA”

Sharpie: “What’s so funny about that?”

Sharpie: “Oh my stars. I hope we don’t have to bear another one of those.”

Wilt: “It’s catchy. I like it.”

Sharpie: “What a happy little family. It’s a shame that they’re doomed to a life of madness onwards.”

Amethyst: “Quick! Try and summon your weapon!”

“Awww, no weapon.”

Wilt: “He’s struggling. A sign of a well-rounded character. The progress is dramatic if we compare this episode to the last ones. And it only took him a few Earth years.”

Sharpie: “And it took us like what, 86 years to get this far and we’re still inferior to most we meet in our travels.”

Spinel: “God I love Pearl.”

Sharpie: “Can you even pay attention to anything that isn’t Pearl?”

Spinel: “I’m capable of paying attention to a lot of things and to nothing at the same time, Sharpie. Be amazed.”

Steven: “Can one of you just explain how to summon a weapon?”

Pearl: “Oh! I’ll go first.”

Wilt: “I love Pearl.”

Spinel: “I love Pearl.”

Sharpie: “…”

Spinel: “AUUGH! Pearl is so beautiful.”

Wilt: “This is so anime.”

Spinel: “This scene makes me wanna stand underneath a cherry blossom tree with her in a Friday afternoon and confess my love.”

Sharpie: “God both of you disgust me.”

Pearl: “Pay attention to these petals, Steven.”

Pearl: “The petal’s dance seems improvised, but it is being calculated in real-time based on the physical properties of this planet.”

Wilt: “HELL YEAH, I LOVE PEARL.”

Pearl: “With hard work and dedication, you can master the magical properties of your gem, and perform your own dance.”

Pearl: “Like so.”

Spinel: “HELL YEAH, I LOVE PEARL”

Sharpie: “So… Pearl’s approach is tuning into the technical reality of the universe to tap into her gem’s energy,”

Amethyst: “Listen Steven. All that practice stuff is no fun. Whenever I need to summon my weapon, it just happens.”

Sharpie: “And Amethyst’s approach is just winging it. Considering Ame is a gem made for war, of course summoning a weapon is natural instinct. Pearl however… She had to learn serious fighting, something most Pearls aren’t made for.”

Spinel: “We’re the same, ain’t we? Spinels ain’t made for violence but we can whoop butt just fine.”

Sharpie: “We just got lucky… and incredibly unfortunate at the same time.”

Sharpie: “Gems are such nuisances. So much that in other places of the world, a group of humans actually built little Distortion Bombs capable of disorienting corrupted gems to a point of repelling them away. Unfortunately those things are powered by tiny bits of gem shards, which is obviously not an easily obtainable source of power. The project was discontinued.”

Spinel: “The invention worked on us, too, which is kind of impressive!”

Sharpie: “The best those little bombs done to us were to irritate us, or temporarily disable our senses. Corrupted gems have warped sentience I think, so they would rely more on instincts and run away from the source of irritation as much as possible.”

Sharpie: “They say if enough energy is given into the device, it’ll have high enough amplitude to potentially dissipate a gem’s physical form. But this is just a fever dream. There’s no way they have access to that amount of energy without slaughtering a Diamond first. Still, props to the engineer who thought that was a good idea.”

Spinel: “So instead of using gem shards, he decided to use us by writing the function into Springy. If we poof, we can give bad gems nearby a head ache and make them go away. We can protect people even if we die in battle! He basically turned us into heroic suicide bombers against corrupted gems.”

Sharpie: “Necessary, considering every time we poof we somehow cause part of a building to catch on fire, killing the people we’re supposed to protect in the process.”

Spinel: “Uh huh… yeaaahh….. I mean, where else is the excess energy supposed to go?”

Sharpie: “I dunno. Some other harmless form of energy apart from heat? The sparkly dust clouds were already perfect and you just had to change it into something deadlier. Thanks to you, seven people that stood close to us turned into soup.”

Spinel: “Well, there was that one time where the fire storm actually saved us from a meanie who wanted to crush us. We can’t just ignore that.”

Sharpie: “Seven people died, Spinel. Seven people that happened to be our allies.”

 Wilt: “Please stop. We have to finish this episode.”

Steven: “So I’m supposed to work really hard and not try at all at the same time?”

Garnet: “Yes.”

Garnet: “Or…”

Garnet: “You can link your mind with the energy of all existing matter, channeling the collective power of the universe through your gem.”

Garnet: “At least that’s my way of doing it.

Spinel: “C’mon, kiddo. It’s not that hard to understand. It’s how Springy lived for the past 40 years. If she can do it, so can you.”

Sharpie: “I bet this makes the most sense to you, huh Wilt?”

Wilt: “It does. Considering we are all just ripples of energy on the surface of the large lasagna we call the observable universe.”

Sharpie: “What a nerd. Also we’re half-way through the episode. You better cry, Wilt.”

Wilt: “I’m saving this shot for reference.”

[tearsofthemis]

Tears of Themis : Chapter 1 “Social Snobbery” Part 10 [Investigation Stage]

[Previous Part] | [Masterlist] | [Next Part]

▌Location- QingPing Restaurant, First Floor

(Xia Yan and I have narrowed down our list of suspects to someone who has had a run-in with the restaurant, and has deep ties with Fang Yuan himself. I thought of Lu HaiYang, who had been briefly mentioned by XinRan, who tried to promote MeiWeiKa and was refused by Mr. Fang. Surely this counts as a form of “bad blood”.)

Xia Yan: “What if… there’s a connection between the QingPing case and another one that I’m currently investigating?”

MC: “Which case is it? I was thinking about Lu HaiYang, MeiWeiKa’s sales manager. Xue XinRan mentioned him in passing when she came to present her case.”

Xia Yan: “...”

MC: “What? Did she not mention him during your debriefing? Unless, there’s some other entity that we’re not aware of?”

Xia Yan: “Have you heard the news that MeiWeiKa has secured funding from PAX Investment Group and are planning their platform launch?”

MC: “I have. I’ve also heard that other smaller financial groups plan to follow suit.”

Xia Yan: “Yup, one of those financial groups hired me to run a background check on MeiWeiKa and investigate the company’s legitimacy. During the investigation, I uncovered that MeiWeiKa has not only hired a bunch of people to falsify data, but has also been obtaining illegal funding.”

MC: “What?! But MeiWeiKa is just a review app, why would they do something like that?”

Xia Yan: “I didn’t understand their motives before, but after taking on this case, I think I have a good idea where I can find my next lead. The competition between rating apps on the market is already quite fierce. Although MeiWeiKa is able to support itself through regular operation, they’re far from meeting the profit margin required for them to compete with already existing apps. However, if the restaurants registered with MeiWeiKa run into operating accidents, their PR service that’s offered at an inflated price would sound enticing to their clients.”

MC: “You’re suggesting that MeiWeiKa is purposely causing trouble for restaurant owners? For example, purposely lowering restaurant ratings by writing fake reviews, thus pushing owners to purchase their PR services in order to fix their reputation?”

Xia Yan: “It’s only a theory. I haven’t found any evidence that would support the claim.”

MC: “I would’ve never thought detectives today would be able to deduce something like that just by comparing two cases…”

Xia Yan: “What else should we be doing then? Invading the privacy of the young, rich, and famous? Or perhaps, catching infidels in action? Gimme a break.”

MC: “Your words, not mine. I wasn’t even thinking in that direction. I always thought all private detectives did were run cold cases that the police have dropped. It was sheer luck that Lu HaiYang turned out to work for MeiWeiKa. Let’s see if we can find something in the restaurant that’ll support your theory.”

~~~Investigation starts!~~~

▌[Examine photo frame on the bookshelf]

MC: “This photo is…? Mr. Fang’s family portrait?”

(I came across a photo frame nested between countless cookbooks.)

▌[Examine boy in the photo]

MC: “Is this Mr. Fang’s son?”

Xia Yan: “During my debriefing with Xue XinRan, she never mentioned that Mr. Fang had a son.”

MC: “She’s only been in Stellis City for a month, it’s only natural that she wouldn’t know too much about Mr. Fang’s familial status. I think… the boy in the photo looks kinda familiar.”

Xia Yan: “Familiar? Is it someone that you bumped into recently?”

MC: “Not that I can recall.”

▌[Examine woman in the photo]

MC: “This must be Mrs. Fang, she’s so pretty.”

Xia Yan: “Judging by how close she’s sitting to Mr. Fang, it must be.”

MC: “Her smile is so gentle, I think she must have been a kind person. It’s a shame that…”

▌[Examine man in the photo]

MC: “Mr. Fang was quite the looker when he was younger. But now he’s in such a deplorable state… I really hope that once this case is settled, he can start fresh again.”

▌[Examine photo behind the frame]

(As I was about to remove the photo frame backing to check the date of the photo, I found a second picture stuck between the frame.)

MC: “This man is… Lu HaiYang!”

Xia Yan: “There’s a date for the photo, March of 2028. This photo was taken last year.”

MC: “Why would Lu HaiYang’s photo be kept with Mr. Fang’s family portrait?”

Xia Yan: “Judging by Mr. Fang’s age, if he had a son, his son would be older than Lu HaiYang.”

MC: “I guess this could be a point of interest when we interview Mr. Fang.”

▌[Examine photo frame on wine rack]

MC: “That’s so impressive! Mr. Fang was last year’s Stellis City fishing champion.”

Xia Yan: “He looks so bright in the photo, but his current state…”

MC: “This case will ultimately determine whether or not his restaurant can stay open. Experiencing emotional stress is to be expected, unfortunately.”

Xia Yan: “Speaking of fishing, I remembered that you really liked seafood, are you still a fan?”

MC: “Of course I am, I love it more each passing day! Seafood is low in fat, so I won’t have to watch my weight that way!”

Xia Yan: “Nothing wrong with gaining a bit of weight. In fact, I don’t think you’re eating enough.”

MC: “No thanks, I want to be able to fit into the new skirts I bought.”

▌[Examine surveillance camera]

(Xia Yan found the restaurant’s surveillance camera which was tightly tucked away in the corner of the room, close to the front door.)

Xia Yan: “It looks like the security camera lens was shattered. Lemme take it down for a closer look.”

(The camera was mounted high up. Xia Yan stood atop a chair and was barely able to reach it. The chair shook as he worked, it looked dangerous.)

MC: “I’ll steady the chair, just be careful.”

Xia Yan: “Don’t worry, I work fast.”

(Xia Yan was as dexterous as he claimed to be, and he dismounted the camera with ease. I watched anxiously. The moment he got down from the chair, I left out a sigh of relief. My neck was strained after looking up at him for so long.)

▌[Examine shattered camera lens]

MC: “The lens is broken… how did they do it when the security camera is installed so high up?”

Xia Yan: “Judging from the shatter pattern, it must have been broken by something thrown at it.”

MC: “What if the culprit noticed and broke the camera to cover his tracks?”

▌[Examine camera’s wifi signal]

Xia Yan: “The camera’s wifi adapter is broken, there’s no way for it to connect to a network.”

MC: “Even if it’s connected, it’s not much of use to us. The cloud only stores surveillance footage up to fourteen days ago. The date of the incident falls beyond this window of time.”

▌[Examine camera’s SD card]

Xia Yan: “The security camera must have been hit by something. The card ejector got stuck from the impact, so I can’t remove the SD card. Nothing I can’t fix though! We’ll be able to retrieve the footage once I fix the ejector.”

▌[Examine the restaurant’s guest book]

MC: “It’s not often that you see a traditional guest book. XinRan had mentioned that after Mr. Fang had refused Lu HaiYang’s PR service, the restaurant had started receiving a lot of bad ratings on MeiWeiKa. All I see are glowing reviews from customers in the guest book. This is proof that MeiWeiKa is running some sort of smear campaign.”

Xia Yan: “Each handwritten review is filled with sincere praise. It’s clear that Mr. Fang’s dishes are celebrated.”

MC: “This…”

(There was an advertisement sandwiched between the pages of the guest book.)

MC: “It’s a flyer advertising MeiWeiKa’s PR services.”

Xia Yan: “There’s a handwritten price discount on the flyer, and even Lu HaiYang’s business card is here. It looks like MeiWeiKa was adamant about pushing their services to Mr. Fang.”

▌[Examine computer by the front of the restaurant]

(We opened the computer connected to the cash register in order to check the restaurant’s finances.)

MC: “Restaurant’s expenditures appear ordinary; most of their monthly spending is used to purchase foodstuffs. There’s also a monthly membership cost for MeiWeiKa. There’s also records of funds allocated to support students in need.”

Xia Yan: “Even though MeiWeiKa wrote fake reviews slandering the restaurant, Mr. Fang is still one of their members?”

MC: “His monthly membership payments are constant and date back all the way to March of last year. Huh? Wait, Xia Yan. Look at this, Lu HaiYang’s name is mentioned here!”

(I was browsing through records from the last couple of years when I came across Lu HaiYang’s name. Every month, FangYuan would transfer Lu HaiYang two thousand dollars.)

MC: “Lu HaiYang was one of Mr. Fang’s past benefactors?”

(On the record, FangYuan had started sponsoring Lu HaiYang a long time ago, and his payments stopped June of last year. That should correspond with when Lu HaiYang graduated from university.)

Xia Yan: “Can you pull up Lu HaiYang’s checking account number?”

MC: “I can! The first and last four digits… corresponds with the bank card from the Insect Repellent 330 transaction.”

Xia Yan: “Ah, I believe Lu HaiYang is our prime suspect.”

~~~Investigation ends!~~~

(After a second round of investigation, we had uncovered a clearer lead on the food poisoning case.)

MC: “Now we can confirm that MeiWeiKa, more specifically, Lu HaiYang, has pitched their PR services to Mr. Fang. Unfortunately, we still cannot indict Lu HaiYang based on one measly receipt. He can play around with the timeline and claim that he wasn’t here on the day of the incident.” Xia Yan: “What if he was caught on the surveillance footage before the incident happened? Then it would be really difficult for him to claim innocence.” MC: “But the security camera is…” Xia Yan: “From a quick inspection, the camera can still be fixed. I have all the tools I need in my bag.”

MC: “As expected from my most trusted detective, detective Xia-lock[1]!”

Xia Yan: “Just watch what I can do!”

(Xia Yan pulled tool after tool out of his bag and started to repair the broken security camera. Just as he started to make headway, XinRan helped Fang Yuan down the stairs.)

Fang Yuan: “There’s no need to fix it, I was the one who broke the camera.”

(Fang Yuan… smashed his own security camera?!)

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Translator Note:

[1] 夏洛克 Xia-lock : Xia Yan’s last name, 夏 Xia, is the same character used in the Chinese translation of Sherlock (夏洛克, Xià luòkè), as in Sherlock Holmes. MC is making a (bad) pun by calling him her Sherlock (Xia-lock).

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[Previous Part] | [Masterlist] | [Next Part]

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《CREDIT》 Translator: @humi-and-co Editor: @hallowsivy 《未定事件簿》Tears of Themis is a 2020 Chinese otome game by 米哈游Mihoyo. All original credits go to 米哈游Mihoyo. 

《 VOICE ACTORS 》  Xia Yan | Jin Xian: https://weibo.com/riceranger Xue XinRan | V17-Su Wan: https://weibo.com/u/2925530143 Fang Yuan | Zhao Yang

#tears of themis #tears of themis translations #otome #未定事件簿 #夏彦 #tears of themis trans #tears of themis xia yan #xia yan

[sidesandsanders]

Vampire AU For No Goddamn Reason At All

Nobody asked for it but here it is. Basically all of our boys are vampires and they live in a castle in the modern age. This species of vamp has retractable fangs, and their eyes glow under moments of extreme emotion, hunger, or strenuous use of their powers.

Logan: The Vampire Lord

- The oldest of the bunch, as in “he was a teenager when the bubonic plague was still a threat” old. Turned all of the other members of House Sanders. He keeps track of finances, utilities, making sure the public suspects nothing, practical stuff like that. He makes a living primarily online.

- Roman convinced him that any respectable Master Vampire must have a fancy and intimidating space to occupy, so Logan’s office has a throne instead of a desk chair, and an ornate but practical desk.

- He’s got a huge personal library in the castle. I’m talking mint-condition first editions of books that went out of print decades ago. He has a signed copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as well as countless psychology, biology, and medical textbooks.

- His powers include mind manipulation, but nobody is sure if he has more that he’s hiding.

- His eyes glow a dark indigo blue with flecks of silver when he’s hungry.

- He has three sets of fangs, his top and bottom canines, as well as a smaller set located directly behind the top canine fangs.

Roman: The Victorian Prince

- Turned in the age of grand ballroom parties and red wine, and refuses to give that lifestyle up. Don’t get me wrong, he accepts and adores modern technology and ideas, but he also adores the aesthetics and poetic romanticism of his original era.

- Pretty much every piece of furniture he owns is velvet. Velvet canopy curtains on his bed, velvet upholstery on every single couch, chair, and chaise lounge in his room. Silk sheets though, a prince must have standards after all!

- He throws lavish romanticism era styled parties, and has a habit of inviting everyone he knows the name of. He loves to show off, and having parties in the castle’s ballroom is the most fun way to do so. He has a pet deahhound named Juliet, who looks like an oversized, all black husky dog. She is the (second) star of the show at his parties.

- He can enthrall people, and while he doesn’t do it to strangers, but he has been known to use his powers to make his partners enjoy being bitten. There is a running joke in the family to compare him to an incubus.

- When he’s hungry, his irises glow red, but his pupils turn shiny gold.

- He has the standard top only canine fangs, perfectly white and sharp.

Patton: The Wayward Nurse

- He met Logan during the witch trials. As a medic with a green thumb, he got mistaken for a witch. Logan offered him a place in the castle, and Patton accepted. He grows herbs and flowers, along with a tiny grove of fruit trees, on the castle grounds. There are coconuts growing in his greenhouse year-round, since coconut milk is a half-decent blood substitute and he’d rather his family not hurt anyone.

- Some of the money coming into the household is from him selling herbal remedies, tea mixes, and foodstuffs to the locals. He has been known to give discounts if you bring your dog with you, and he always tries to pet them, even if they don’t exactly take well to his otherworldly aura.

- He practically lives in the garden and greenhouse, but he also has a very pastel and out-of-place seeming room in the castle. Every single item in that room is designed for maximum comfort and maximum coziness. If it is not fluffy, he’s not interested.

- He can heal other vampires in his bloodline, but not outsiders or humans.

- His eyes gloss over and turn silvery-blue all over when he’s hungry. They don’t glow but they are crazy reflective.

- Despite having the smallest fangs of the bunch, just a pair of extra sharp canines, he puts the most effort into hiding them.

Virgil: The Runaway

- The youngest resident of House Sanders, he was turned in the mid 2000’s after running away from home, and is still adjusting to immortal life. He uses his powers, various gadgets, and anything else he can get his hands on to keep outsiders away from the castle. He’s security, basically.

- Despite being the newest to the world of the fallen, he’s the one who most throws himself into the vampire lifestyle. While Roman emulates the classic victorian vampire aesthetic, Virgil is 100% living the vamp life. He got ahold of a coffin the size of a king bed, one made for couples who want to be buried together. He replaced the lining with a mattress and bedding and that’s where he sleeps now. He also spends a ridiculous amount of time in and around graveyards.

- He’s also has a bunch of “creepy” pets. Two bats named Ebony and Gerard, a pink-toed tarantula named Malice, and an orange and black speckled newt named Calcifer.

- On the opposite end of the spectrum to Roman, Virgil’s powers give him the ability to make people fear him. Very useful for getting people to leave him (and the rest of the castle) alone.

- His eyes glow deep purple when he’s hungry, and they have a subtle bioluminescence even when he’s not.

- He has defined fangs on his top and bottom canines.

Deceit: The Outcast

- An animal hybrid vampire, a snake, naturally. The second oldest, he was cast out by his birth family when he was a preteen, once his parents saw the scales growing in. He keeps to himself for the most part, occasionally taking part in Roman’s parties, if only to amuse himself by confusing the guests. Logan has made it clear to the other residents that he is staying in the castle, and is to be treated as equal.

- Every time someone outside the family asks his name or story, they get a different answer. The baker was told his name was Riley and he was Logan’s cousin. The florist was told his name was Dimitri, and he was Roman’s handmaiden. The head priest was told that his name was Damien, and he had come to corrupt the souls of the townsfolk.

- Absolutely fascinated by stories in all forms. He didn’t learn to read until much later in life, and he witnessed the birth of movies and video as art mediums, so he has a certain appreciation for all forms of storytelling. Live theatre has a special place in his heart though, as it was the first form of storytelling he ever experienced.

- He possesses the unique ability to transform himself entirely into a snake, as well as a mild form of hypnotic ability.

- When he’s hungry, his left eye glows a striking neon yellow, while his right eye turns into a hollow black void.

- His fangs mimic those of a viper. Long, needle-like points trailing out from behind his canines.

Remus: The Disgraced Duke

- Turned shortly after Patton. Was tossed out of the royal family of a small country because the people could not handle the idea of him being in any position of power, so for his parents it was either toss him out with the bathwater or risk a revolution. He just sort of...wandered around until he got to the castle, and nobody could figure out how to get him to leave, so now he’s just there.

- He spends most of his time pestering the other members of the home, pigging out on everything in the kitchen, trying his best to hook up with Roman’s poor unsuspecting party guests, or playing pranks on random townsfolk. He’s responsible for the local legend about a mutant octopus in the sewer. It’s just him flapping his tentacle arms about.

- He has a pet, but it’s not technically domesticated. He caught a strange little octopus/squid/crustacean creature a long time ago, and it’s miraculously not dead yet! (Patton turned it in secret, he was scared of what Remus would do if it died and he got sad). It’s name is Hentai.

- His powers are the ability to manifest tentacles, and cause humans to hallucinate, but the latter requires a lot of concentration and effort so he tends to use other methods to freak people out.

- His eyes glow and shift between a sickly swamp green and a fluorescent lime green, both colors shot through with flecks of black.

- His fangs are jarring, an entire set of sharp teeth that slide out over his “normal” teeth. He looks like a shark. They fall out and grow back pretty regularly.

#sanders sides #ts roman #roman sanders #logan sanders #ts logan #ts patton #patton sanders #ts virgil #virgil sanders #ts deceit #deceit sanders #ts remus #remus sanders #vampire #vampire au #ask me about my sinful headcanons for these boys #vamp au

[zigraves]

So anyway I wrote the thing with the plants and the bonemeal and the recycled divinity.

Under the cut: SFW, only a little mild blasphemy, and a bunch of horticulture and historical christian persecution references. Wordcount unknown ‘cause I wrote it on tumblr. Saunters vaguely downward into the theologically sentimental.

It starts, as all things do, with an apple.

Long before man bred Malus into a thousand forms, there was the Apple. After the fall from on High, after the expulsion from the Garden, after crawling wretchedly from the receding Flood, there was the apple.

And bloody useless it was, so far as Crawly - Crowley, Crowley now - was concerned. He was certain that, for an inanimate fruiting tree genus, the damnable things were smug. Taking half the credit for his early work, thank you so much, and crossbreeding with itself like some sort of horticultural pervert. Practically as bad as oak trees. Worse, even.

The worst thing about apples, he’d decided in Greece, was that everyone liked them so damnably much. And it was hard to avoid eating any of the sodding things when you were trying to look social and interesting to get some good bad work done. Pomegranates were fine - tiny little pistils you could just swallow, untasting. Grapes just slid down, easily chased by wine, so you barely had to notice them. But apples. You had to eat apples. Get your teeth right in there and chew the things, really taste them, and maybe that was fine for some people, but it was anathema to someone who spent so much time as a serpent that he largely didn’t bother with fiddly things like chewing.

Or, at least, that was Crowley’s excuse.

The alternative would have been to admit the truth.

He knew how an apple should taste - crisp, sharp, almost tart enough to make you howl, sweetness coming through low and clean after scraping your palate clean enough to fully appreciate it. And these, these post-flood things, these Eden cast-out cultivars, they lacked it. They were ash and grit. Soil in his teeth, mud under his tongue, and he couldn’t just blame them for it when all the food of mortal man was such, but... G-d, he still remembered manna. The taste of all things, cleansing and pure and crisp and sharp and clean and sweet and made of love, love in the highest, love beyond reach and comprehension. Love he could not taste again, nor any lesser foodstuff.

He is resigned, every few decades, to having to take a bite or two of a damned apple.

It is in Rome when he, cup of wine ready in the other hand to wash out the taste with the burn of alcohol, bites into an apple while making eyes at a Senator over some trivial persecution of those new Chrestian people. When he drops the wine and entirely forgets the Senator. When he tastes it again.

Sharp, crisp, clean, scouring his mouth and then lingering with the flavour of Love.

He tastes it.

For one moment of hope, horror, confusion, he feels like he could have somehow have been Forgiven as he devours the thing in desperate bites.

The next apple is ash and mud in his mouth, and Crowley aches in a way he’d almost managed to forget as the loss is made fresh all over again.

---

Crowley finds it again, the sudden burst of taste, of memory, of Love On Highest, lingering in the dregs of a bottle of under-fermented fig wine. There’d barely been enough alcohol to make it worth drinking, but the sediment in the last drip of the bottle hits his tongue and there it is.

An apple in Rome.

Fig wine in Jerusalem.

A sliver of overripe wild plum in Lyon.

Rosehip jam from Smyrna.

Years - decades - between them, and all else just dust ground between his teeth and dirt on his tongue.

And he realises, at last, at last, when he plucks idly at petals from Golgotha’s wild chrysanthemums and unthinkingly licks the petals’ stain from his thumb.

It’s enough to knock him stumbling back almost off his feet.

Horticulturalist even then, tending to his own little garden that could never be the Garden again, he knows full well that plants feast on blood and bone. Crushed bone for calcium, phosporus. Blood for iron, organmeat for nitrogen. Plants grow stronger when they feed on dead things, and he’d slipped the odd steak to a rosebush he particularly wanted to cultivate, but he’d never considered...

The chrysanthemums grow wild and lush on the site of Jesus’ martyrdom, fed by his blood in the soil. Holy blood and the bones of martyrs and the flesh of saints, filtered through years of decay and remaking until it’s very nearly more blasphemy than a benediction. Scouring and sweetness, and the memory of manna.

---

He spends a century or so haunting graveyards across Europe, Asia, north Africa, anywhere that Judaism and Christianity may have left their dead and graves untended by chance or otherwise, anywhere that a holy body could have been laid to rest and not dug up for relics. Runs into the angel once or twice, when Aziraphale is quietly consecrating a church and finds him skulking in the graveyard behind it, or Aziraphale is commending a brave sacrifice and Crowley is eyeing the mass graves with the eye of a keen amateur gardener.

Aziraphale becomes politely concerned at this morbid new fascination with lurking around the dead, though he doesn’t understand the cause of it and Crowley will not, cannot explain it to the angel. The arrangement hasn’t gained its capital A yet, and he cannot tell an angel what it’s like to lose the flavour of G-d’s love and every taste with it. He cannot tell Aziraphale what it’s like to Fall, and lose so much, and then be taunted with the memory of it every time the angel eats some sweetmeat and sighs with satisfaction.

The century passes.

He grows a handful of grapevines on the hillside remains of a forgotten little Portuguese ossuary (once said to contain the bones of some saint or other), and sleeps for a year until the wine is aged enough to be decanted. Aziraphale, unsubtly pleased that Crowley has finally found a healthier hobby than graveyard touring, commends the wine as a very good first attempt, and Crowley fights his impulse to throw the damn bottle at the wall when he realises the distillation has profaned the lingering hint of the sacred. The vineyard is sold, and fails within a decade or so of Crowley ceasing to pay attention to the vines.

Another century passes. The Arrangement grows stronger, and Aziraphale learns just enough tact that he no longer attempts to press a morsel of dessert on the demon when they meet for a dinner and Crowley drinks only wine or coffee or hard liquor.

Aziraphale is off fixing some miserable mess for the both of them in Sweden while Crowley picks at blackberries in England and spends an hour savouring a single fruit that’s barely ripe and tart enough to draw his cheeks tight up against his teeth.

Crowley heads off to France, arranges a handful of terrible convent fires and an equally convenient number of miraculous escapes, and sows wild artichoke in the ashes. Aziraphale stays back in London, setting up a bookshop.

---

When, finally, Aziraphale finally grants him the little tartan thermos, Crowley very nearly takes the lid off just to try feeding a dropper of it to an aloe plant he’s been cultivating.

The lid stays on, and the thermos stays in his safe. He takes the leaves off a dandelion growing in Canterbury, a nettle in Lancaster, wild garlic flowers outside Manchester. Makes coulis out of raspberries growing in an allotment in York. Secretly, privately, when he is truly alone and there is nobody to see his weakness, he eats the second-hand blood of saints and almost weeps to have this brief moment of reprieve.

Aziraphale has finally, entirely and wholly, stopped suggesting any snacks that he thinks Crowley might like. He’s witnessed enough that he knows how Crowley hides his disgust at every bite he takes to keep up appearances before the mortals. Once, drunkenly, Crowley admitted that he only drinks coffee because it’s hot and bitter and technically counts as a poison rather than a food so he can still just about get away with it, as long as he’s not stupid enough to add sugar or milk. Aziraphale isn’t sure if Crowley remembers it, and hasn’t brought it up again. No wonder he never takes mixers with his liquor.

The end of the world turns up and then shuffles back off again.

Nobody’s really supervising any more.

For the first time in millennia - in ever - they take a holiday.

At a very nice little winery in Armenia, Crowley absently steals a grape from the vine and pops it into his mouth. He doesn’t realise quite what he’s done until he catches Aziraphale staring at him, and his heart breaks at the hope in Aziraphale’s eyes. He knows the expression too well. He wore it himself in Rome, at that bite of the first apple.

“Sorry to disappoint, angel, but no,” he says, before the hope in Aziraphale’s eyes can transmute itself into words or actions. “It’s not what you’re thinking. But the Sasanian Empire used to reach all the way out here. Vicious bastards, back in the day- do you remember The Persecution? The Nestorians?”

“Oh. Yes. Dreadful business, brother against brother and all that.” Aziraphale does not immediately make the connection, and Crowley cannot blame him; it took him the better part of two hundred years to notice, himself.

“I’m not being Forgiven any time soon, Aziraphale. To be honest with you, I’m pretty sure I’m actually committing blasphemies when I do this, if anyone’s still bothering to keep score.” Rather than explain himself, he shoves the winery’s informative pamphlet at the angel and then shoves his hands back deep in his pockets, where they cannot get him in any more trouble.

After a minute, he takes them back out, googles “bloodmeal for plants”, and shoves that in front of Aziraphale as well. And the bible verses about the serpent condemned to eat dust.

It still takes a while before the connection dawns, as the angel has never been much of a gardener, nor taken the time to understand the intricate ways that soil’s nutrients influence the flavour of the plants that grow on it. He just barely knows the thing about Champagne and chalky ground, and Crowley’s generally been content to leave it at that. He wishes he hadn’t, now, as the wait is killing him while he watches Aziraphale’s face for the expressions that shift across it.

“So... you’ve been...”

“That’s me. Foul fiend, feasting on the flesh of the dead.” It’s dry, wry, but Aziraphale cannot miss the fragility of that sharp voice, nor the way Crowley is looking at anything but him.

“Oh. I wish you’d told me. Maybe I could have... oh, I don’t know. Blessed the creperie, or something.”

“Doesn’t work. Too direct. Gave myself one hell of a stomacheache when I snuck some communion wafers to test that particular theory. Don’t even like to risk eating out in case it’s properly halal and someone’s blessed it. Sorry.”

“Oh, Crowley. What must you think of me, all this time and I’ve been inviting you out to restaurants. I thought you just didn’t like food, I didn’t - didn’t think, not even after you had that little vineyard out near São Roque and then suddenly shut it all up. I’m so sorry, my dear.” Aziraphale takes Crowley’s hands gently, puts himself in front of the averted sunglasses. “I won’t do it again. We can go to more plays, or nice little bars, or museums, or any sort of thing.”

“What? No, no. Angel. No. Just because I can’t eat out, that doesn’t mean I don’t like going to restaurants with you. I like seeing you get to enjoy things, I like the secondhand indulgence. I like the face you make when someone’s done that creme pat stuff just right and you get all wiggly about it.”

“Wiggly.”

“Yes you bloody do. We’re going to go back to the hotel and you’re going to have that bozbash soup stuff you like that they don’t do right anywhere else, and I’ll have the local vodka, and it’ll be fine. Aziraphale. Please stop making that face.”

With visible reluctance, Aziraphale allows the issue to be shelved. The bozbash really is excellent, and Crowley was right that nowhere else got the quince and lamb just so.

---

The issue remains shelved back in London, though from time to time Crowley catches Aziraphale looking at Crowley’s plants in a speculative manner, as if realising that not a one of them is even remotely edible, not even in a recreationally poisonous manner.

Crowley has to be the first one to sort out dinner reservations again, and shove everything back into its proper track. The new chef at the Ivy does well enough that it doesn’t take long for his souffle to settle everything back into its right place.

He continues to buy Aziraphale truffles and pears and crepes and sushi until the angel stops moping about it and trusts that Crowley knows his own sensibilities best.

---

There is a garden, out on the chalk swathe near the south coast of England. Occasionally a fossil will unearth itself from the chalk beneath the turf. A handful of slightly yellowing apple trees grow along its borders, and clematis climbs the cottage that abuts it. Rosemary, sage, thyme and fennel run along the walls by the flint-studded path up to the door.

When Aziraphale introduces Crowley to the place, currently a holiday home but on the market for potential buys, he does not miss the way Crowley looks at the apple trees.

“No,” he agrees. “There haven’t been any famous martyrs buried in chalk. I don’t think there’s ever been anyone buried here at all, really.”

They book it for a fortnight’s getaway anyway.

Crowley tends the plants with his peculiar mix of bittersweet care and straight up bitter cursing while Aziraphale reads out on the lawn, and doesn’t notice when Aziraphale joins him to watch while he’s arguing with the marjoram. He’s got a sturdy set of gardener’s waterproof gloves on to keep the soil from getting under his black-lacquered nails or ruining the polish, and his watering can is some newfangled efficient sort that rarely drips when it’s not wanted to.

Aziraphale’s hand strays to the watering can, fingers dipping into the cool water within, and he murmurs a soft prayer.

“Oh lord, Who planted the first Garden. Bless this water, that it may sustain and nourish.”

Crowley does not openly flinch at the blessing happening three feet from him, but does give the angel a Look.

“Is this your way of telling me to stop gardening and make the tea, or something? Trying to discorporate me with my own watering can?”

Aziraphale shakes his head.

“I thought... well. If you can stomach the ones grown on bloodmeal and so on, maybe this would be worth a try. I promise not to bless the actual garden!”

The Look morphs into something much more thoughtful, and after a moment Crowley resumes his gardening.

Aziraphale quietly purchases the property with money that has been wholly legally obtained, and the summer fortnight stretches out and out into autumn as the garden flourishes like never before.

On a warm afternoon when the first autumn rains have been and gone and the apples are very nearly ready to pick, Crowley plucks at a leaf of marjoram, places it upon his tongue, and sobs so quietly that Aziraphale almost does not hear. He holds the sprig of the plant like a benediction, like a weapon, like a relic. Aziraphale steadies him with an arm about his shoulders as Crowley shakes at the taste of the divine, nearer now than it has been in six thousand years and more. When he tilts Crowley’s face, angular and tear-wet, down to kiss him, Crowley’s lips taste of salt, sweet balsam and holy camphor. The demon shudders against him, drowning in the taste of second-hand divinity and the wash of Love.

The apples grown in the South Downs are crisp, sharp, almost tart enough to make you howl, sweetness coming through low and clean after scouring you through. They taste, wholly and completely, of Love.

#Good Omens #fanfiction #no betas we die like mne #I wasted two hours reading about the history of apples only to use exactly zero cultivars in this #Crowley doesn't miss Heaven but he does miss the food #sfw

[otterandterrierwrites]

{Hungry hearts} IX. Star fritters (pt. 2)

A/N: The promised follow-up to this! I don’t want to sell myself short here but I hope the Drama feels right and not anticlimatic. My brain was like “too mushy for this time period, add angst!!” and I couldn’t argue against that. BUT there is a lot of cooking and talking about personal stuff, too!

A couple of days went by before Leia got back to him about their cooking plans, so much so that Han was beginning to think she had either forgotten or was acting like it.

‘Some of us are busy leading a revolution, you know,’ she told him wryly, arms akimbo as she watched him push a repulsor cart loaded with packs of membrill cheese into the mess hall’s kitchen. He’d kept those hidden from the person in charge of overseeing the supplies brought from Espirion as they were unloaded, since the membrill hadn’t been requested and he’d yet have to confirm with Leia that they were safe, edible goods. Afterwards, he had figured he would hold on to them for a little longer, until their off-the-books meeting (or else, until Leia asked).

‘I think you were just afraid your cookin’ skills will never live up to mine,’ Han drawled, parking the cart and sitting on a counter.

‘First off, get your butt off the place we prepare food on,’ Leia said, raising an eyebrow at him. ‘Second, does everything have to be a competition with you?’

‘Not everything, but—’

‘Good, because my fritters will knock everything you’ve ever made out of the park.’

‘Ha! Alright, let’s see it.’

Leia pointed at several piles of pale squares separated by layers of flimsi that she’d laid on the table.

‘We’re actually going to use the pre-made puff pastry dough that we use for pies because I… um, I actually don’t know how to make puff pastry. I remember the ingredients, but not the exact quantities. And you also need to do some tricky folding with butter, and you have to let it rest,’ she explained.

Puff pastry pies were a rare treat in rebel bases. Synthefood and dehydrated rations were the norm: easier to obtain, store and prepare than natural foodstuffs, and often lacking in terms of flavour unless you got creative with them—which many of the Alliance’s untrained cooks were not.

‘I was under the impression we’d be doin’ the whole thing?’ Han quipped. ‘You know that takes some of the credit off your cookin’ skills, Your Worship, don’t you?’

‘Oh, shut up and come here.’ She re-opened the pack of membrill Han had brought into her office and grabbed a knife. He noticed half of the square was missing and felt oddly pleased at knowing she’d at least enjoyed some herself. ‘First we need to cut this up into small squares, but not too small. Let’s just do this one to start with, all right?’

Once that was ready, she grabbed one of the squares of dough and laid it in front of her.

‘Now we take a piece of membrill, put it in the middle. We get some water in there,’ she said, dipping her index finger in a glass she’d set on the side and drawing a circle around the membrill square before grabbing another piece of dough. ‘We cover it like this, with the corners matching.’

She wetted the area over the covered sweet again, pressing lightly on the dough to seal it, and picked up the confection.

‘And now we just pinch under it like this and fold the corners out a little. See?’ Leia held it out for Han, who thought it looked more like a flower than a star.

‘Okay, I think I got it,’ Han said, nodding and rolling up his sleeves. He stood next to Leia and she watched as he repeated what he’d seen her do.

‘That looks good. Pinch it a little more—that’s right.’ She gave him a satisfied grin and then looked away, lost in thought for a moment. ‘I know I said we were just going to make a couple of them but—since there’s a lot of membrill and there’s a good stock of frozen dough… What if we made enough fritters for everyone, for breakfast tomorrow? I think the cooks will appreciate it. That is, if you want to. We’d have to be here a while, and we’d be doing a good deed, which I know you hate...’

‘Cute,’ Han said, although part of him appreciated her quick thinking in teasing him—when she wasn’t trying to hurt him. ‘Fine, let’s do this.’

He began to hand her over the packs of membrill, which Leia methodically unwrapped and set side by side on the counter—actually a long plank of durasteel set over trestle legs, identical to the ones spread out in dozens of rows in the hall outside. When the cart was empty, he grabbed a knife and they worked side by side cutting smaller squares of membrill.

‘So how come you know how to do this, Princess?’ Han asked as they worked. ‘Don’t imagine you were ever required to make dessert back home—or was it part of your royal training?’

He knew he was treading dangerous ground here: Leia could be as cagey about her past as he was. But sometimes, she’d open up a little, offer some kernels of her life before the day they’d met. In return, Han often found himself reciprocating—not with stuff that offered much about the less savory aspects of his life, though.

It wasn’t so much that he needed to know about her past. Nobody could understand better than Han that some things were best left behind, that his present self was the only thing he cared to show to the world. He was fine just getting to know this Leia, the one he shot Imps next to. He asked questions because then she’d talk to him about something other than her rebellion. And yes, maybe he’d learn something about her in the process.

Leia shrugged. ‘They were my favorites and I wanted to know how they were made, so one day when I was about six or seven, I snuck into the palace’s kitchens and asked one of the cooks to teach me. Memily was afraid she’d get in trouble if she put the crown princess to cook, so she told me we had to ask for my mother’s permission. I think I didn’t take that suggestion very kindly,’ she said, scrunching up her nose in embarrassment.

‘What did you do?’ Han asked, his knife still as he looked at Leia with interest.

‘Oh, nothing too bad, but… yeah, I think I said that I was the princess and she had to do as I said. I loved Memily, though. She just talked to me and convinced me to go to my mom and ask. She was very entertained by the idea, my mom,’ Leia said with a small, wistful smile. ‘She came down with us so that Memily could teach her, too. I was allowed to hang around the kitchens afterwards, if I wanted, as long as I behaved and didn’t get in anyone’s way.’

Han grinned, thinking of a tiny girl with pigtail braids trying to order around a bunch of poor cooks and learning how to make pastries next to her mother (whom he pictured in full queenly regalia).

‘So did you pick any other cookin’ skills from your stint as kitchen assistant?’

‘No,’ Leia said, laughing. ‘I’d moved on to something else a few weeks later. I did attempt to cook when I started going to Coruscant as my dad’s apprentice but—let’s say he claimed to have allergies I know he didn’t have, and I gave up after that.’

‘That bad, huh?’

‘Yeah… And I knew it was almost inedible, I just refused to give up.’

That didn’t surprise Han.

‘I think we’re done here,’ he said, looking down at all the cut-up membrill.

‘Okay, let’s clear up some space here—and here we go,’ Leia told him, moving a pile of dough squares next to him and setting the glass of water between the two of them.

They began to assemble the pastries, working in silence for a while.

‘Maybe I should take a commission here in the kitchen, teach ‘em what “flavor” means, whaddaya think?’

Leia chuckled softly but didn’t look up. He could see her biting her lip slightly and wondered what she was thinking about. Had he said something wrong?

‘Maybe you should,’ she said casually. ‘So when did you learn so much about cooking?’

‘Long time ago,’ Han said. ‘Picked up some from Chewie an’ his family.’

‘Oh.’

He could do this. He could give her something.

‘But mostly, I learned from Dewlanna,’ Han told her. It was less painful now, talking about her. ‘She was a Wookiee, too, an’ a great cook. She lived in the ship I grew up in, ya know. Looked out for me.’

‘Sounds like she was really special,’ Leia commented, touching his arm briefly.

‘Yeah.’

Leia didn’t ask what had happened with her, and Han was grateful for it. She got it. She understood this implicit agreement between them of not pushing, of accepting what was being given—at least as far as sharing personal information went.

‘She made a mean wastril bread,’ he said, smiling fondly at the memory, ‘an’ whenever I came in and watch her cook, she’d put me to do somethin’, said everyone should know how to feed themselves.’

‘Smart,’ Leia said with a dry chuckle. ‘My strategy is to just stick around people who can feed me.’

‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, as long as I’m here I won’t let you starve,’ Han said, without thinking much about his words. He expected to hear her laugh or make a comment, but Leia only said ‘Right,’ and kept working in silence.

After some time, she asked, ‘Would you start frying the ones we have while I finish the rest? You know how to fry, right?’

‘Sure, yeah. Do you?’

‘I... have fried,’ Leia said, looking away, her mouth twitching.

‘Oh no. What happened?’

‘A lot of splattering, and food that was still uncooked inside.’

Han shook his head.

‘Rich people.’

‘Hey!’

He winked at her and walked to the lined-up freezer units. ‘Fat, right?’

At Leia’s confirmation, he picked up a pack, took it to a deep pan and began his task. He fried pastry after pastry until they were golden brown, and placed them on trays lined with disposable towels.

In between batches, when the first ones he’d done had cooled off, Han said, ‘Alright, let’s try this.’

Leia looked up and watched him.

‘I hope you’ll like it.’

Han picked up a second fritter and held it out for her. ‘You too, Princess. Go on, you’ve earned it.’

The star fritter was as crispy as it looked, and Leia had been right: the sweetness of its heart was balanced out with the crust.

‘Well?’ Leia asked eagerly; he saw now that she had still not taken a bite out of her fritter.

‘Hats off, Your Royalness,’ he told her, raising his half-eaten pastry to her in salute. ‘They’re really good.’

‘Told you,’ Leia said, but she grinned before she started to eat. There it was, the nostalgic look again, as she savored her star fritter slowly, closing her eyes for a moment before staring off into the distant past of a Leia who wasn’t allowed to cook and didn’t need to, who was loved by parents that spent time with her, who thought that, no matter what, she’d always have her home to come back to, a plate of star fritters waiting for her.

Han was physically attracted to her, of course, but he was also drawn to the way they worked together, her quick wit, the fact that she didn’t back down from anything. Hells, even her shooting turned him on. And yet it wasn’t just that. He felt something for her he’d sworn he’d never feel again; mushy, idiotic feelings that he had no idea where they were coming from. He wanted to get her on his ship and fly her away from everything, have her making him try food from every corner of the galaxy while she watched closely for his reaction.

No, fuck this. I just want to sleep with her! he thought viciously.

‘Think we’ve done enough work today, Princess. When do we get to play?’ he asked, leaning in close, ignoring how lame his words sounded to his own ears as he tried to push those pathetic thoughts away.

Unsurprisingly so, Leia took a step back, her face darkening with confusion.

‘We still have some work left to do, Captain,’ she said firmly, then pointed at the still boiling pan. ‘That fat is going to overheat.’

‘Didn’t I do enough?’ Han asked, his voice rising in exasperation. He was met with a scowl.

‘Then go! I still have work to do here!’

This wasn’t what he wanted. How had they even gotten there?! But that was the truth, wasn’t it? She had work to do and it didn’t matter if he stayed or left. It never had. She “appreciated it” if he stayed, but only as long as he behaved and didn’t get in her way.

He turned on his heel and started walking away, waiting for her to call him back, to say that she wanted him to stay.

She never did, so he walked faster, because it was easier than staying and keep burning himself trying to do something he wasn’t meant to do.

#scoundressaturdays #hanleia #han x leia #han solo #leia organa #han and leia #star wars fanfiction #verse: hungry hearts #rated T #period: pre esb #2019

[kiruuuuu]

Blitz/Spectre oneshot in which she and Blitz get a little closer. (Rating T, fluff, ~2.5k words) - written for @ruaniamh​! Thank you again for commissioning me and I’m glad you’re happy with this piece ♥♥ You can find out all about Quinn “Spectre” Roach here! My commission info is over here :) 

.

In a – as Spectre finds – deliciously ironic twist of fate, Blitz fails to react to her approaching due to the blinding light of the afternoon sun.

She’s crouched behind the low wall marking the beginning of the bridge’s balustrade and waiting for her next victim: Mira’s heavy boots gave her away earlier and allowed the Canadian to catch her off-guard, and even Smoke’s lighter steps proved insufficient as Spectre swiftly climbed a tree when she caught a glimpse of him nearing her position. She’s keen on racking up a few more ‘kills’, her competitive spirit awakened by Bandit’s boisterous claims of ending up as the winner and nurtured by the crisp October air.

Ultimately, it’s a child’s game they’re playing, a more advanced tag – they were all given a piece of fabric and told to tuck it into their trousers’ waistbands on their backs, a little like a bright red tail now trailing after them and marking them as potential targets. If someone manages to snatch it from someone else for safekeeping, that someone is out and has to return to base and whoever has collected the most pieces at the end wins. Simple enough, though Sledge claimed it’d serve to test their senses and spatial awareness, challenge their manoeuvring skills and showcase how well they work on their own for once. Spectre, however, suspects that the mild temperature and unimpeded sunshine played a not insignificant role in this decision to allow Rainbow to roam the fields outside of the base freely.

In any case, she’s not complaining, instead she relishes the fresh air and warming rays on her skin, has always liked this mixture as it keeps her focused and cheerful whereas the sweltering summer sun often leaves her content yet tired. Proof of this are the four stripes of cloth in her pocket, courtesy of a lot of stalking around and observing carefully. Some of the others declined the opportunity to swarm out in order to find a suitable starting spot away from everyone else, and instead tackled each other head on right outside the gate like children playing football for the very first time, all clumped up and shouting. Spectre managed to grab Maestro’s fabric before he even joined the fray and was already halfway over the hill before he noticed her demonic cackling was directed at him.

Right now, she’s listening to the gurgling of the small stream next to her and to footfalls probably wishing they were quieter. A quick peek lets her catch a glance of fair hair, golden in this light, sharp cheekbones, a compact silhouette – she doesn’t need more than a fraction of a second to be sure of who it is. She’d recognise him by the sound of his laugh, the adorable cow lick on the back of his head, the unusually shaped birth mark on his wrist.

Don’t turn around, she instructs him silently and almost kicks herself for doing so. They might be impressively in tune for most of the time, but they haven’t figured out telepathy yet. Slowly, she creeps around the solid stone railing, follows him as he steps down the river bank, probably to check for anyone below the bridge. Anticipation is making her giddy, she’s looking forward to the dumb expression on his face when he’ll realise what’s happened, and so she makes a mistake, produces a noise, causes him to turn around. But the sun saves her.

In the moment of confusion, the second he blinks and squints, she shoots up and reaches around him to get a hold of her prize, yet the sudden movement makes her lose her footing and crash into the solid body; now they’re both flailing (and was that a squeak from Blitz?), an arm wraps around her waist to regain balance where she has none to give – and the next thing she knows is the horizon tilting and ice cold water enveloping both of them.

.

“Of all the things I wanted to achieve today, a bath in the river was not among them”, Blitz chides jokingly as soon as he’s emerged from the dressing room wearing his spare clothes and a grin which tells Spectre that he doesn’t mind. His hair is sticking up in all twenty cardinal directions simultaneously and she ponders whether to comment on it, eventually deciding against it. She doesn’t want to seem like she’s paying too much attention to his appearance.

“Not like you couldn’t use one”, she shoots back good-naturedly while they make their way towards a well-deserved lunch break.

“What, are you referring to the information retrieval again?”

“You call it intelligence gathering, I call it dumpster diving. Now which of these is a euphemism, hm? Didn’t you have to wade through sewage in Sevilla too?”

“I’ll have you know that both of those missions ended up successful and not everyone can be as limber as you. You probably would’ve climbed along the walls like a spider instead of stepping into that muck.”

Their playful back-and-forth is as familiar as it is comfortable, one of the constants in Spectre’s everyday life she looks forward to the most. Both of them enjoy poking fun at anything and everything, including themselves and each other – which is one of the reasons why they became fast friends. A sunny disposition in their job isn’t that common, usually it entails a much darker, morbid kind of humour. “I definitely wouldn’t have used an entire can of Lynx to get rid of the smell at least. That’s one way to keep the ladies off of you.”

As soon as the comment has left her mouth, she once again feels the impulse to kick herself. Because while Blitz laughs, it sounds oddly hollow to her ears. She shouldn’t have gone there, she knows he’s been wanting someone by his side for a while. She knows he even has someone in mind, overheard Jäger mention it to someone else. Felt strangely betrayed that Blitz would entrust him with this detail and not her, felt a stab of jealousy because who does Blitz call in the early morning after a bad dream? Whom does he send drunk texts which are as illegible as they are hilarious? Not Jäger, that’s for sure. She knows he doesn’t message anyone else, he never does so when they’re out together. She would like to see herself as his best friend but after that she’s had her doubts. If he kept this from her, what else did he keep?

Going down this path is futile and depressing, so she does her best to snap out of it but it takes a few minutes until her smile stops hurting.

A hiss is what finally distracts her mid-chew: “You are a fucking cat, young lady!”

Both she and Blitz snort at Mira’s accusation. “Did she sneak up on you too?”, he asks, amused.

“Please tell me who eliminated you so I can thank them for avenging my honour. You gave me the worst fright I’ve had in a while.”

While Spectre just grins proudly, the German opposite her replies: “More on accident, but we got each other.”

Mira lifts a brow and suddenly, it’s imperative Spectre doesn’t blush so she doesn’t give herself away. All the jokes and questioning glances whenever they playfight or feed each other unhealthy food to create the most disgusting combination are more than enough already. Still. It sounds nice: we got each other. “Is that why you’re looking like a drowned rat?”

“Watch out or you might hit someone in the face with all that charm you’re throwing around”, Spectre grins. Her mauve hair is still damp and probably hanging down sadly, so Mira might not actually be far from the truth – but she finds that she doesn’t mind, no, not at all. She can still feel Blitz’ loose embrace, hears his laughter bubbling up as they dragged themselves out of the stream, shaking the water off like a pair of dogs.

The Spaniard leaves them to their meals, still mock-grumbling, but gets replaced by Jäger immediately. “Can I interrupt you guys for a moment?”, he asks and Spectre idly wonders whether there’ll ever be anything he’d interrupt.

“I don’t know, can you?”, she replies and fights down a giggle when she realises Blitz just uttered exactly the same thing. They exchange a glance and a grin when he lightly kicks her under the table.

For a moment, she’s worried Jäger is going to hurt himself with how dramatically his eyes roll skywards. “Bunch of nerds”, he mutters. “All I wanted to know is whether you’re ready for tomorrow.”

“Of course! Tomorrow is a very special day.”

Blitz’ answer comes so fast that Spectre’s heart skips a beat. Did he – did he remember? She let it slip before, more than half a year ago, didn’t think he paid it any heed, didn’t think he’d care enough. He’s awful with remembering dates, only remembers Sledge’s birthday because it’s the same as his own, and his friends usually remind him of everyone else’s. But could he have -

“Yeah, I know how much you love Halloween.” Jäger earns a nod from Blitz and oh, that’s right. Of course that’s what he means. “You’re coming to Julien’s party too, right, Quinn?”

“Yes”, she replies curtly and contributes no more to the chatter about the Germans’ plans. She’s not hungry anymore.

.

The next afternoon, Spectre is in a rotten mood and hates herself for it. She adores Halloween, even decided to go all out this year and whip up a full-fledged zombie costume, ordered liquid latex for fake injuries, white contact lenses to max out the creepy and went so far as to buy blood capsules. Her plan was to dramatically announce her insatiable hunger for human flesh at some point during the party, and then gurgle crimson – Rook made the mistake of letting everyone know there’d be prizes for the best costumes and she’s determined to make it to the top three.

Well, was determined.

It’s silly and she knows it, yet this changes nothing. She received the usual greetings and best wishes from her family and friends, had Buck and Frost congratulate her inconspicuously, the two shoving candies and other important Canadian foodstuffs they know she misses into her pockets, and it’s how her birthday normally goes. She refuses to make a big deal of it, keeps it secret so people rather worry about enjoying Halloween than to procure impersonal gifts or, even worse, sing for her, and still -

Part of her had hoped she’d be important enough for Blitz to remember, yet she hasn’t even seen him all day. And the fact that this is what brings her down makes her feel even sillier.

No, she’s going to have a good time regardless. It’s not the end of the world. She’s going to freak everyone out by groaning and reaching out when they walk past, she’s going to unsettlingly stare at people and it’s going to be glorious. Rook hates zombies and she’ll have a whale of a time chasing him around his apartment.

Just as she’s made this decision, her doorbell rings unexpectedly.

For some reason, Blitz is holding a mug with the logo of a local wildlife resort in his hand, looking sheepish and apologetic at the same time. “There’s still time before we have to leave for the party, right?” He sounds out of breath, cheeks as red as his ears from the cold and looks adorable.

“Sure, more than an hour. I’m just starting to get ready.” Frowning, Spectre peers into the mug. “Did you bring… compressed dirt? You’re missing a few tentacles for your Davy Jones costume, I’m afraid.”

Blitz just laughs and enters the place where they’ve spent countless hours together, her kicking his ass at her favourite video games, them attempting to bake together, coming down after intense training or when they’ve just returned after a mission. He prefers visiting her, he’s said as much, thinks her flat is more inviting and homely and she secretly agrees. He toes off his shoes, hangs up his jacket and rummages in his pockets for a few more objects before herding her into the living room, taking his usual spot on the couch next to her.

Nothing gets clearer even as he sets the cup on the low coffee table and places an unassuming envelope next to it.

“What are you doing?”

The genuine confusion in her voice seems to amuse him for some reason. “You’re an idiot, Quinn. Did you think I’d forget? Happy birthday.” And with this, he conjures up a small candle and pushes it into the soft mass inside the ceramic. This is when it clicks.

“Is this – a mug cake?” She can’t believe it.

Blitz shrugs with an embarrassed smile. “I’ve destroyed your kitchen often enough that you know how bad I am at baking. This is all I could -”

A hug cuts him off and he seems happy to reciprocate it instead of talking. His strong arms pull her closer, squeeze her reassuringly and her heart sings. She can only imagine how long he must’ve agonised over what to gift her – because she also knows how bad he is at choosing presents. “Thank you”, she whispers and means so much more, but for now it should suffice. Another squeeze. She could get used to this.

And then the quiet, serene atmosphere vanishes as soon as she opens the envelope. Blitz watches her bounce and flail and cheer for a solid minute before he points out: “There are two tickets. I figured you might not want to go alone.”

“Two tickets to fucking Gamescom?”, Spectre squeaks ecstatically.

“And the flights, and a hotel room.” He seems extremely pleased with how excitedly his gift is being accepted – and this is the best thing Spectre could’ve hoped for, it’s the largest video game convention in the entire world. She’ll get to try out upcoming titles herself, collect all the swag, stroll around among like-minded people and this is amazing. “You can take whoever you like.”

In her exhilaration she misses his tone of voice but doesn’t miss his surprised expression when she punches him in the arm. “You hoser, of course you’re coming with me.”

“Really? I – I mean, I can probably be useful since it’s in Germany, so -”

“I wouldn’t want anyone else to go with me even if it was in France, or Canada, or wherever.”

And now she notices his blush still hasn’t disappeared despite his breathing long having calmed down. …maybe the cold wasn’t really its cause. Maybe, just maybe -

“I’d love to go with you”, he says and oh, he’s not really that interested in gaming normally, and he said a hotel room, and maybe, just maybe, he told Jäger instead of her because…

It clicks. And suddenly, she knows with vicious clarity that this is going to be the best birthday of her life. “Elias”, she murmurs and waits until he finally gathers the courage to meet her fond, helpless, hopeful gaze, “do you like me?”

And the bright red colouring Blitz’ face only deepens.

Seems like she won’t be using the blood capsules today after all, not when she’s pretty sure her mouth will be occupied otherwise for the majority of the party.

And only mere minutes later, she starts considering ditching her zombie costume entirely because there’s no doubt they’re going to be late anyway. Now they really, finally, eventually got each other.

#rainbow six siege #blitz #spectre #blitz/spectre #fanfic #commissions #blitz is a dork but that's why we love him #let's hope the cake doesn't taste how it looks

[purkinje-effect]

The Anatomy of Melancholy, 29

Table of Contents. Go to previous. Go to next. Have some heavy dialogue. Pretty sure this is the longest chapter to date. Some things happened at work yesterday that precipitated a need for this conversation to go the way it did.

Using some of the Abraxo Powder which it believed in good faith that its owner would no longer need to craft Mentats, Angel had cleaned ‘Choly’s Pharm Corps coat the night before in the stream which surrounded Sanctuary Hills. Washing the coat had made the singe-marks around the tail hem stand out a bit more, but the coat had survived the mud and Molotov cocktail surprisingly well, and the fresh wash had returned it to the stunning white it was supposed to be. During the washing process, the Mister Handy had deposited the ribbon bars, the name placard, and the contents of his pockets in his vanity, and, mostly out of habituation, ‘Choly sat at Hawthorne’s desk re-affixing the effects of his cleaned military uniform.

The sink no longer had running water, but he still used the basin to brush his teeth and wash his face with a can of water from Angel. He wet his hair and slicked it back into a firm French twist, and put his orthotics back on. Once fully dressed, coat and all, he returned his various effects to his pockets, including his last ampuole of Jet. He shoved the thought to the back of his mind, for what he could broker with it, and he focused on lighter things, setting out with Angel to inspect the houses’ back yards for useful plants.

Only once the pair had begun their noontime stroll, did the thought cross his mind that the should compose another addendum to the Merrick Index, for identifying pharmaceutically relevant plant and fungal specimens in the post-nuclear landscape. He’d have to sit down and do so sometime. They did find several hubflower bushes, as well as a few young mutfruit trees. Angel picked the fruit, while ‘Choly picked the flowers. ‘Choly annotated in whose yards they found what, so they could return and transplant the bushes and saplings when they could. But first, ‘Choly wanted to talk to the others about it.

Angel and ‘Choly walked back to the house with their share of produce, following the culs de sac which ran the entirety of the suburb, to find the Quincy survivors had gathered in what had once been Miss Rosa’s carport to discuss things. The power armor stood nearby, unoccupied, in the power armor station at the back of the carport. The pair came up, and ‘Choly listened and smiled pleasantly as not to interrupt.

“Glad you could make it,” Sturges acknowledged from where he leaned against one of the many workbenches the grease monkey mother had left behind on her property. “You’re part of this settlement, too, Melancholy. Weigh in your own ideas.”

“First of all... Let’s start this again, shall we? I feel like we all had a horrible day yesterday.” ‘Choly steadied himself to stand as squarely as possible, to balance with both hands on his cane in front of him. He cleared his throat. “My name is Melancholy, and this is Angel. I’m sure Angel wants to help out at least as much as I do, if not more. I used to be a chemist, and I can still be your chemist, if you need it. I lived at 103 Old North Lane, at that house right down there.” He pointed at it across the way a few houses down. “I... I don’t expect anyone to forgive me for what happened before. But I hope I can at least make it up to you.”

“We spent the morning picking fruit!” Angel set down the bucket they’d taken with them in the middle of the group who’d sat on the driveway. “I’ve washed them in the stream. Everyone’s free to eat their fill.”

“These came from nearby?” Preston inquired from where he stood off to the side. He bent down the pick one up, and hefted it in one hand, impressed, then handed the first fruit to Mama Murphy, who sat in a wooden kitchen chair. “Means the ground’s good enough for farming, if you ask me. Thanks, ah, Melancholy. Angel.”

“Oh my, yes, thank you,” she agreed.

“So the dirt’s viable.” Marcy rolled her eyes, and grabbed a mutfruit and handed it to Jun. Her husband absently picked at it to free the flesh from the dark rind. “We can’t subsist on just a bunch of mutfruit.”

“I like mutfruit all right,” Jun mumbled softly.

“We can grow more than just mutfruit,” Sturges replied, picking up a fruit for himself to peel. “We shouldn’t eat all of them at once, though. If the land here can sustain plants, we can plant a few of these, and grow more. We can sell some of what grows, and trade for other things like corn, or razorgrain.”

“Angel told me it cooked for you all this morning.” ‘Choly smiled again. “I imagine it did so with my food reserves. I’m more than happy to donate all my reserves to the lot of you. Don’t worry about food for me. I have... a dietary issue, I guess. I’ve got something else that I’ve been subsisting on for a while now. It doesn’t cut into any of the food reserves I can provide.”

“It’s not drugged, is it.” Marcy eyed Angel as it enthusiastically demonstrated some of the variety of foodstuffs it had in its storage compartment.

“You’d think so, but it’s not.” ‘Choly couldn’t hide that the remark stung, but he powered through it. “I’m sorry I yelled at the two of you yesterday. Really, I am. It wasn’t right of me. I shouldn’t have behaved that way. Every one of you deserves someplace they can call home, and feel comfortable and safe.”

“We were all having a bad day,” Jun insisted softly, making eye contact. “We didn’t know the house was already taken. It’s okay.”

“We found a house with a double bed,” Marcy added quietly, not making eye contact. Implicitly, she’d intended gratitude, that his insistence that they not settle for the first thing they came across had found them an even better option.

“I’m glad,” the chemist said, grateful they’d not dashed his apology outright.

“Someplace to call home,” Sturges shepherded. “Back on the subject. We’ve been discussing what renovations to focus on first. There are a few mattresses left in the area, and a good number of the houses are still standing, so bedding and shelter aren’t a worry. Establishing sources of food and clean water is, though. Of course, I’ve got all kinds of improvements to this place on my mind, including getting the houses looking more like houses and less like piles of downtown Boston.”

“It’s very good gardening soil. At least, it was.” ‘Choly’s head began to swim for how long he’d already been on his feet, and decided to sit with the others, closer to Preston. “I had a nice, forgiving flowerbed in front of my house. I’m positive we can grow things here.”

“A flowerbed, huh?” Sturges stroked his chin. “I’ve heard how people used to grow things for decoration, not just for food. Once we can get more settled in here, maybe we can start working on little upgrades here and there to go beyond sheer utility. Having something nice to look at doesn’t seem half bad.”

“Oh, it’s wonderfully therapeutic. I'll gladly help you all with whatever you decide to plant in your gardens, but after my walk this morning, I’ve already got plans for mine.”

“It’ll suit you, ‘Choly.” Mama still held the fruit in her lap.

“But I haven’t--”

“No trick of the Sight this time. I could see you in the backyard of the house I picked for myself,” she smiled. “I saw how those flowers perked up your eyes. We all deserve something that makes us get that look in our eyes.”

“I think we should plant the first mutfruit in a central location,” Preston commented, having thought on it as everyone else conversed. “Maybe around the tree growing in the middle of the court. The weeds don’t seem so bad around it, and it seems about the same distance from the houses each of us has picked.”

“Jun, Marcy, I’m gonna let you two sort out that,” Sturges said. “I’m very interested in seeing what kind of rain-catching apparatus I can rig from the steel and aluminum scrap of the collapsed houses. Maybe I’ll even find some pieces that I can just swap out one-for-one with the damaged equivalent in our houses. These things look like they’re all made out of the same assortment of pieces, just in slightly different combinations. Seems like it’d be easy enough first-stage repairs. Maybe I can even find a few doors in tact.”

“You’re just the man to figure out that kind of contraption,” Marcy agreed, helping her husband stand. “Jun, let’s go see what we can do with that median.”

Sturges walked off to the nearest pile of housing rubble, and began to scrutinize its remainder.

“I’m going to go back to keeping watch,” Preston said, returning to making the rounds of the suburb, armed with his laser musket. “Are you going to be all right, Mama Murphy?”

“I’m fine. You go on.” Standing with some difficulty, Mama asked ‘Choly, “Would you escort an old woman back home?”

“Certainly.” He offered his cane, but she waved it off. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. You know, I asked Sturges this morning at breakfast if he could help a girl out and set me up with a chair built just for these bones. He was confident about fixing me up with a wheelchair in particular. A motor powered one. The Commonwealth would be right back to bein’ unable to keep up with me.”

“Angel has doubled as my wheelchair often in the past few months,” ‘Choly commented thoughtfully, very much liking Sturges’s idea. “If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say your Sunday stroll yesterday inspired him.”

“I can give you rides whenever you like, Madam,” Angel offered. “It would be my pleasure.”

“You’re too kind. Both of you.”

‘Choly froze at the street as Angel and Mama made her way up the sidewalk to the front door of the house she’d picked. She realized once she’d passed the threshold of the faded blue house that he no longer followed her, and she turned to look back at him.

“You’re invited inside,” she ushered. “I’d like to talk to you, if that’s all right.”

“Why... why this house,” was all ‘Choly could say.

“It called to me. Angel, why don’t you go help Sturges? The two of us are fine here.”

“Are you sure?” The Handy looked between the two of them.

“It’s fine,” ‘Choly relented, shoulders drooping more than he’d intended. “He needs your help more than either of us does at the moment.”

“I’ll come check on you shortly. And Madam, don’t forget what we talked about this morning!”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she smiled, waving it off as Angel swayed down the street to find the handyman. “Come, ‘Choly. Sit with me.”

The chemist complied, taking to the dark navy canvas couch and sitting his cane across his thighs. Mama sat beside him, set down the fruit on the other side of her, and folded her hands in her lap. He’d never stepped foot inside Jahani’s house, and he didn’t like not knowing whether Jahani would have allowed it, had he been present to object.

“It’s good you stuck around. I’m glad to see you’re still here.”

“I’m glad you’re here, too. I... I wanted to talk to you.” He bit his lip and stared out the front window at the Longs, already hard at work at the circular median. “Forgive me, but do we have to talk... here...?”

“It’s the best place for us to talk, I think.”

“I really hope you’re not saying that, knowing who lived here-- I guess I should just be grateful that you asked me for Jet, and not for--”

“--don’t be like that. Even Psycho has its purpose. You know, I’ve been talking with Angel this morning. It offered me an Addictol. To at least ease the aches from my history with chems. It tried to convince me to swear off chems completely, and it’s mighty persuasive, boy, let me tell you. It cares a lot about humanity. That’s rare in a robot. But... whether I go clean isn’t up to me. If you’ll recall, I made a promise.”

He swallowed, unable to look away from the couple weeding.

“...To me?”

“To a man who’s lost, and had no path before the Sight started him in the right direction. Angel gave me that medicine, and swore up and down to me that it and you and everybody here in Sanctuary here... You all care more about tryin’ to add a few years to my life. But I haven’t taken it yet. I know how desperate you are for answers. I wouldn’t do wrong by you, if you want me to help you one last time.”

“I...” His shoulders locked in rigor, unable to unstick himself to provide the chem she’d requested the day before. “I have the Jet.”

“Ahh, I knew you were one to like a little kick. I know the Jet jitters when I see ‘em. You haven’t got ‘em today, though.”

“I feel like a hypocrite, coming to you like this. I made a promise this morning, myself. Also to Angel. That I’d go as clean as I could for my Mister Handy. That I owed it to take care of myself, for how much it takes care of me. But... as chem-free as I can be... I know from how I am, and who I am as a person, that that can’t ever be one-hundred percent... And...”

“It got you to take the Addictol, too, then. It’s a good robot, Angel is. The Agency did right, naming it that. You’re right. ‘As chem-free as possible’ ain’t always ‘completely.’ The only person that can say what good a chem is, is the person takin’ it. I know it ain’t always purely recreational, either. Sometimes... it’s a matter of life and death.”

“Mama, I...” His voice broke, and he shut his eyes.

“It’s your choice whether you pursue the request. And it’s my choice whether I honor your request. All I want in life is to do my best to make people safe and happy. And this group, it’s been too long since I felt as safe as I do here. I owe you for what you did for us in Concord. I’ll ride the Sight one last time, if you’ll let me. It’s the one real contribution I can make to this group these days.”

“You’re making it very hard for me to request it, by talking to me here. It may not be an intravenous chem, but I’m still... asking you to... take a chem on my behalf...”

“This house has very strong energies. I can tell even without the chems that the man who lived here last was... very troubled...”

“I know, Mama. I’m the reason he was so ill. He was a private. I was his captain.”

“Your conscience is the only thing stronger than what I feel in this house. You blame yourself for what became of that man. Your guilt motivates you more than you realize.”

“I couldn’t live with myself if I let you die, just so I could have direction again for five more minutes.”

“You can’t bring yourself to be the one makin’ the choice that I take the Jet. Is that it? I’ve experienced a lot of restless energy since we arrived in Sanctuary. A lot of information, even without the chems fueling the Sight. But it’s like a pile of photographs. I can tell you what I’ve picked up here, and you can see if you can make sense of it all. If that’s not enough, I’ll know you still need me to take the Jet to piece it all together.”

“What in Sanctuary Hills could possibly tell you what I need to go to Lowell for? Or how to even do that? The vault security incinerated everything I had on me that day, including my dog tags.”

“I touched your mailbox on the way in. Before I knew it was your mailbox. I know you got a summons back to active duty. But you never got there.”

“You... you know about my roommate then. And why I was so distressed in front of the Red Rocket.”

“And I know why your smile’s uneven. But... your issue’s not with what I know. It’s... with what someone else couldn’t have possibly known. Isn’t it?”

‘Choly trembled, eyes again fixated on Jun and Marcy at work outside.

“Please. Please don’t make me ask you for this. Not here.”

“It’s the only place I can make this kind of a connection, and the only way I can give you a connected understanding. Even with this strong a tie to a place, though, I have to warn you. The Sight’s sometimes real foggy. The things I tell you might only make sense once it’s time to make use of what I tell you.”

“Do you believe in free will, Mama Murphy?”

“I believe everybody can decide what actions she takes.”

“Free will, like...” He took off his glasses and screwed up his face in one hand before finally looking Mama’s direction. “How to put it... Is everything predetermined in life? Are my actions and choices my own decision? Are they uniquely meaningful? Or is the inevitability that I act and choose already decided for me before I even get to where I will act... and choose...?”

“You’re afraid that if you start relying on what you’ve learned from the Sight, then you won’t trust any choices you make without it later.” She put a hand on his knee, and looked upon him warmly. “You gotta have better faith in yourself, kid.”

“I... I can’t trust myself with self-agency. I’ve spent so much of my life fulfilling others’ will and desire. The government. Major Ernest Johnston. Gretchen Nordstern. Jacob Hawthorne. I don’t have the practice to know how to act for myself.”

“Melancholy. You know this ‘self-agency’ business better than you think. Look at yourself. You’re you. You’ve always been you. You may have let people tell you what to do, but you’re done letting anybody tell you who to be.” Hunched over toward him, she smiled up at him. “Tell me, kid. Who told you to stay here, and make sure we’d be fine? Who told you to make sure this group has enough food for weeks?”

“...My conscience,” he replied at last, brow knit.

“You did. You have a conscience. That means you’ve got morals. You know what’s right. You know what you should be doin’. We’ll be fine here. And I can guarantee you that you’ll have a place here if you ever decide to come back.”

“...A weak conscience is still a conscience, I suppose.” His features softened in guilt. “You really think I need to go to Lowell?”

“Even if you don’t go now, you’re going to end up there one day.” She dropped the humor a moment. “You owe it to the man who lived here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Psycho wasn’t the only chem he was forced to take.”

He stared at her in abject disbelief, a ringing developing in both ears.

“He... No.” He shut his eyes and put his glasses back on, shaking the notion from his head. “The Jet is mine, but so’s the Addictol. I want you to have the Addictol. You can’t have the Jet. You’re more valuable than what you can provide any of us. You. You’ve made so many sacrifices in your life, just to protect the people who matter most to you. I can’t ask you to make even one more. The man who lived here, the military called people who endured all he did a veteran. And he came home, decorated. Celebrated for his sacrifices. He came home to his well-earned peace, and didn’t have to make another sacrifice for as long as he lived. He... only lived another ten months, because of the war, but he lived it free. Nate and Nora. The couple I asked about yesterday? They were veterans, too. Celebrated. I imagine you’ve done more in your lifetime than anyone I know.”

Mama Murphy sat back slowly, and nodded solemnly.

“And you were the fourth ‘veteran’ of this place. You should be celebrated, too. If it gives the lot of you peace of mind, for me to retire. I can respect that.”

“I can’t make you use the Addictol any more than I can make you take any chem, but I still want you to have it. I don’t know what chems you’ve used to fuel the Sight, but it will help with everything but a Psycho addiction. You’re worth protecting, Mama Murphy. You’re more than just your Sight. You give everyone something worth protecting.”

‘Choly leaned into a fierce hug, and didn’t let go for the longest, relenting only to push off with his cane to stand.

“Thank you, Mama. Thank you for everything.”

“I told you this was the right place to talk. Now go on, before you make me cry.”

“Do you need anything before I leave?”

“You could ask Angel if it has any more of those wonderful hard candies left.”

“Tochno.” He patted her on the shoulder, and caught himself. “Without question.”

He rounded to her backyard and stood there staring out to where the stream came from the river to the Northeast, to clear his head. After some time, he threw the Jet into the water as hard and far as he could. With a huff, he turned about face, regretting only that the motion of the gesture had popped out his weight-bearing shoulder, and that he couldn’t use his cane for the walk home.

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#mama murphy #fallout 4 #sturges #preston garvey #jun and marcy long #fallout 4 fanfic #fo4 #the anatomy of melancholy #melancholy #automatron mister handy

[sapphireswimming]

Petecure (a voltron fic)

For @cthulhu-with-a-fez!! Happy birthday, friend!!! It’s been like two years but I’ve finally come out with another segment of this fic, haha. This happens directly before Jentacular  :D

Hunk and Keith, food and friendship, 3.5k

(still not posting to ffn yet, because these are middle chapters of the fic-to-come)

Petecure, n, modest cooking; cooking on a small scale

Keith was panting hard, sweat beading down his neck by the time he finally ordered the gladiator to power down. His entire body hurt but he liked the burn.

It was one of the reasons he liked coming down to the training deck so often when he was free. Going up against the sleek humanoid robot kept him sharp, always on the move. And when you were fighting for your life, even against a training dummy, there wasn’t really any time to think about anything else.

Like the fact that they were on an alien spaceship. In the middle of an intergalactic war ten thousand years in the making. And were somehow the Universe’s only hope to defeat the Galra.

His sword transformed back into bayard form with a flash.

As the gladiator resumed its place against the wall, Keith rolled his head around his shoulders, listening to the vertebrae in his neck cracking in sequence. Then he pulled one arm across his chest in a stretch. The strain made his arms shake.

He’d spent a couple rounds too long on the sparring floor, and it was already starting to take its toll on him.

He shook out his arms, waving them in wide arcs as he decided where to go next.

He was sweaty and gross and should hit the showers. The warm water would help. But before that, he wanted food. He was the kind of hungry you only get after a long, intense workout, and it would become a physical pain in his stomach if he left it until after a shower.

So off to the kitchens it was. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t the closest stop after the training deck. Coran’s grandfather hadn’t been thinking that one all the way through when he designed the place.

He made his way through the hallways as quickly as he could, swinging his arms from side to side in powerful movements in an attempt to keep them from seizing up on him.

But he was already uncomfortably hungry by the time he got to the mess hall and realized that there was no food. Or, at least, no food to speak of.

Resting a sweaty forearm against the doorframe, Keith stared at the goo hoses coiled up against the wall and groaned.

He did not want goo.

He really, really did not want goo.

Even if it was filling and had all of the protein and whatever else he was supposed to be getting, he was fed up with the way it stuck to everything, coating his teeth and throat with film. The way it oozed everywhere.

Unappealing to begin with, it had lost much of its charm as a constant source of food after their food fight at the table meant that he was picking it out of his hair and behind his ears and every wrinkle in his clothes for days afterward.

Nearly everything in the Castle of Lions was a significant upgrade from what was left of his home in the desert, but this was not one of them. He would be more than happy to go back to the canned goods and scavenged meat he’d lived off of after getting kicked out of the Garrison. He’d happily never touch the goo again in his life.

But it wasn’t like there were really any other options.

Keith sighed.

There was a fridge, or, at least, what he assumed was a fridge, on the far left side of the kitchen, over by the stovetop. He eyed it curiously. He hadn’t given a thought to it since they arrived. It had probably been empty for the past ten thousand years. Or, worse, hadn’t been empty for the past ten thousand years and was now sporting the finest mold growth in the galaxy.

Unable to resist his now morbid curiosity, Keith walked over to the fridge and slowly extended a hand, wondering if anyone had bothered to check it since they got here.

With a soft pop, the doors opened and frosty air billowed out in a cloud around him. Keith coughed, quickly covering his nose with the crook of his arm in case he was breathing in mold. But once he looked up, he saw that there was no fuzz, no moldy growths, no foodstuffs that had gained sentience in the past few millennia.

But it wasn’t empty, either.

In fact, it looked like a fairly normal fridge. Sleeker tech than he was used to, of course, and with a lot more vegetables in one place than he had ever seen. There were plants packed in high on every single shelf: bags of what looked like kale and spinach in several distinct shades of blue, as well as bunches of herbs, and something that might have been squash, if he was more confident about what a squash looked like.

He leaned forward to get a better look at it, pushing the doors open wider. Almost as soon as his fingers brushed against the vegetable, there was a yell from behind him.

“Ahhhh! No, put that back!”

Keith’s hand flew up so quickly it nearly knocked over the shelf and he had to pinwheel in order to keep from falling over as he turned, heart pounding, to see Hunk standing in the doorway.

He was standing, both arms outstretched, and a bag full of slightly glowing pink spheres were splattered across the floor where he’d dropped them. Hunk ignored them, stepping around them quickly as he all but ran forward.

“Don’t pick that up,” he said, breathlessly, all but begging Keith to step away from the fridge.

Keith was surefooted again, and didn’t feel like his heart was going to jump out of his chest anymore. He blinked at Hunk, then turned back to the innocent looking lumps in the fridge in confusion.

“Why not?” he asked.

Hunk’s eyes flew wide and he blurted, “I don’t know if that’s poisonous yet!”

Keith stared at him.

“I just picked it this morning and Pidge and I don’t have the scan results back yet,” Hunk went on to explain as Keith’s face twisted in disbelief.

“So… wait…” he said, putting a hand to his temples. “So you’re keeping it in the fridge?”

“Just until we find out if it’s edible or not,” Hunk assured him.

“In the fridge?” he repeated incredulously. “You said it might be poisonous!”

“Well, I don’t want to waste it if it’s good!” Hunk protested, the tips of his index fingers tapping together. “I’ve got big plans for that if we can eat it,” he said.

“Right,” Keith said glumly, finally turning to close the fridge door, careful not to touch anything inside. “If we can eat it.”

“Well, it’s not like anyone else has gone in there,” Hunk mumbled in his defence. “I didn’t think I needed to put up a huge warning sign to tell everyone to keep out of the fridge no one else uses.”

“Yeah,” Keith huffed as he swung the doors closed. “That’s because we don’t have any food,” he pointed out, turning on his heels only to catch sight of the goo station and rediscover how truly unappetizing an option it was, despite the low rumbling in his stomach.

 Screwing up his face, he bypassed the bowls and resentfully made his way to the stash of space juice boxes. He picked one up and took a seat at the island in the middle of the room, opposite where Hunk had just grabbed a cloth out of a low drawer.

He pouted as he viciously poked the little straw into the pouch. Too viciously, because it stabbed through both sides of the thin film, threatening to spill everything over his clothes and the island if he moved wrong.

“Euhhhhh,” he sighed explosively, wanting to chuck the entire thing at the wall if he knew the outburst and ensuing clean-up detail wouldn’t make him feel just that much worse.

“Oh, whoa, hey, man,” Hunk said, quickly redirecting his attention to the situation at hand. “Here, take this,” he said, holding out a glass.

Keith gratefully dumped the pouch upside-down and watched the contents trickle down into the cup. He squeezed the pouch to help it along, then shook out the last remaining drops. Just as he started looking around for what do with the empty pouch, Hunk swapped it out for the cloth he’d grabbed earlier.

“Uh, thanks,” Keith said, bobbing it in his hands before wiping them.

“No problem,” Hunk said, dumping the pouch into the waste chute. But when he turned around, he saw Keith had already climbed off of his chair and was cleaning up the mess in the doorway. “Ah, you don’t need to do that,” he said, rushing over. “I was going to-“

Keith stared up at him, cloth halfway to one of the pink shapes that had spattered on the ground. “This isn’t going to kill me, is it? Melt my hands or anything, right?” he asked.

“Uh, no,” Hunk said, rubbing the back of his neck. “No, it should be fine.”

“Then it’s fine,” Keith said, wiping everything up.

Hunk blinked at him. “Uh, thanks,” he said, as he knelt down to pick up the few that hadn’t exploded upon impact.

“No problem,” Keith said.

They both pushed up at the same time, Hunk with four pink spheres clutched to his chest and Keith with a drenched cloth that he maneuvered around so it didn’t drip everywhere.

“Where do you want this?” he asked.

“Uh, oh, the sink is fine,” Hunk said, laying his treasures out on the counter as Keith unceremoniously dumped the mess in the sink.

As he washed his hands, Hunk looked over. “You’re up early,” he noted.

Keith looked back at him with a sideways glance. “So are you?”

“So, uh, what were you doing? Were you training? You look like you might have been training. Cause you’re, you know, all sweaty and stuff.”

Keith raised an eyebrow.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with being sweaty or anything. Sweaty and stink…” he broke off before he could dig himself into a hole but Keith didn’t seem to have minded. He climbed back onto his chair and swirled his new glass of space juice around in his hand.

“Sooooooo,” Hunk said, rearranging the pink spheres for a minute before turning to look at Keith over his shoulder. “Long training session?” he guessed.

Keith nodded.

“Not hungry?” he asked, quizzically, nodding at the glass.

“Oh, I’m hungry, alright,” Keith returned sourly. “Could eat an elephant,” he muttered.

Hunk laughed. “Sorry, no elephants here.”

“Yeah,” Keith said, sipping at his juice again.

“You should have more than that, you know,” Hunk said, looking at him seriously. “You were probably in there for a couple hours, right? You need some carbs and protein and stuff.”

Keith considered Hunk for a moment, wondering how he’d known how long he’d been training, then decided that didn’t matter because Hunk was right. His stomach was squirming uncomfortably now and he needed more than just the juice.

But, looking back over to the goo again, he found that he still felt nothing but complete and total apathy toward getting any, let alone eating it. “I don’t feel like it,” he said, making a face.

Hunk followed his look to the goo station and pulled a face of his own. “Yeah, man, I hear you. that stuff is nasty,” he said.

Keith turned to him in surprise. “I… I thought you liked that stuff?”

“Me?” Hunk laughed loudly, turning to him with a spoon in hand. “No. No way,” he said, spoon swinging his denial. “Well, I mean, it’s grown on me, I guess. Kinda had to since there’s no choice because it’s basically been our only food option since we got here. But it’s so… blegh,” he said, eloquently.

Keith blinked at Hunk, uncomfortably started by this revelation.

“And don’t get me started on the texture!” Hunk continued. “And I mean, I’m a texture guy,” he said, hand over his chest. “At heart, ‘cause, like, variety is the spice of life, right?”

He heaved a huge sigh and looked over at Keith commiseratingly.

“Anyway,” he said, turning back toward the counter. “I would go for some of the Garrison’s yam enchiladas right now. Even the cheese French toast, which, as everyone rightly noted, is a perversion against all mankind.”

“Me too,” Keith said. He stared down at his glass. “Didn’t think it could get much worse than canned chili and peanut butter sandwiches every day.”

“Oh,” Hunk said, looking back at him with wide eyes. “Oh man. That’s rough. That… that what you had at that shack?”

“Yup,” Keith said, popping the end of the word. “Pretty much,” he said, swirling the glass around so that the liquid sloshed up the sides.

“So… what kind of food do you like?” Hunk asked curiously as he continued his work at the counter.

Keith shrugged, then realized Hunk couldn’t see him with his back turned. “I’ll eat just about anything, I guess,” he said. “Just… not…” he glared at the goo station again.

Hunk laughed. “That’s fair,” he said, chopping away. “But is there a kind of food you particularly like?” he asked again. “Favorite meals from home or from the Garrison? Taco Tuesday?”

Keith made a face, but it was less a grimace and more a grumbling confusion as he tried but failed to come up with an answer. It took Hunk a few long moments to realize that Keith might not have thought through what he’d put on a list of favorite foods.

Something twisted deep in his gut at the thought, and he vowed to do something to change that. Somehow. Even if they didn’t have access to any normal food from Earth here in the Castle.

He wasn’t sure how he could do it. But the first step was obvious. They had to get something to eat that wasn’t goo.

So he turned back to the counter and redoubled his efforts, trying to hurry his preparations.

“Yeah,” he called over his shoulder, trying not to let the silence grow too awkward between them. “I don’t know what my favorite foods are either, really,” he said, pretending to have misunderstood Keith’s expression. “I mean there’s just so much to choose from!” he said, slicing some swirly looking marshmallow plants and divvying them up between two bowls.

“Because where would you even start?” he asked, turning around to catch a glimpse of Keith’s thankfully amused expression as he took another sip from his glass. “There’s rice dishes and pasta dishes. And soup and bread, oh man, bread. And then you’ve got your meats and veggies and dairy. And Indian food and Thai food and Filipino food,” he counted them off on his fingers, starting over with each new classification and soon running out of fingers to continue.

“There’s too much to choose from!” he said, making a cheerfully frustrated noise. “It’s hard enough just picking, like, pizza toppings, man. Because do you go with a classic pepperoni? Or Hawaiian? Or a mushroom, sausage, green pepper combo? Or white pizza? Or chicken and artichoke? Like, ahh, it’s all just so good,” he said, eyes and mouth both watering at the images he conjured up in his mind’s eye.

“Dude,” Keith said, sounding like he wasn’t sure if he was impressed or worried.

Hunk laughed a little self-consciously, then, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry, too much talking about pizza?”

Keith shook his head a little and smiled. “Nah. Never too much talk of pizza,” he said. “But…” he trailed off, not entirely sure where he was going.

“Hmm?” Hunk asked, tilting his head back as he scraped the sides of the bowl.

“Nothing,” he waved his hand. “But… you really like food, huh?”

Hunk scoffed at the obvious statement. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, it’s kinda the basis for all of human life, isn’t it? Civilizations have been build upon food. Society is formed around food. It’s what defines entire cultures around the world!”

Keith raised an eyebrow, not entirely sold on the claim.

“We all need food to survive. We eat like three times a day,” Hunk said, a little quieter now. “That’s a lot of your life spent eating, you know? So, like, you might as well make it good food, right?”

Keith could agree with that. “Well, that would be nice,” he said. “Too bad we’re stuck on an alien planet with nothing but green goo to eat,” he sighed.

“Not… necessarily,” Hunk said, putting on the finishing touches.

Keith’s forehead furrowed. “What do you mean?” he asked slowly.

“Well,” Hunk said, turning around with something in his hands. “I don’t know what these are going to taste like,” he offered, placing a bowl down in front of Keith and another in front of himself as he pulled up a magnetically anchored stool for himself on the other side of the island. “But at least it’s not goo.”

Keith stared down at his bowl, piled high with swirled puffy things and what might have been some kind of berry on top of some sliced beet looking things. He pulled it closer to him slowly.

Hunk couldn’t tell if it was in reverence or distrust, but Keith readily grabbed the makeshift chopsticks Hunk had discovered in one of the Castle’s many storerooms.

Twirling them around, he was about to dig in when he suddenly paused. “You’re sure nothing in here’s going to kill me, right?”

Hunk grinned. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “Pidge and I, we set up this program that scanned each ingredient for its basic component parts and chemical makeup and then we analyzed that and compared it to your—“

“Okay, okay,” Keith cut him off with waved chopsticks. “I get it. Just… wanted to make sure you weren’t trying to kill me.”

Hunk gasped in mock offence. “Me? Kill you off? How could you think such a thing?” he cried in an overdramatic voice. “I can’t kill you,” he said, “because… then we’d be down a paladin and…” his tone suddenly changed to something more worried. “We wouldn’t be able to form Voltron and then Zarkon would probably be able to take over the rest of the galaxy no problem and—“

Keith stopped with his food halfway to his mouth, staring at Hunk who was visibly going off onto increasingly distressing tangents.

“Whoa, whoa, hey!” he said, one hand held out as if to pacify him. “Calm down, Hunk,” he said, staring at him with wide eyes. “It’s oaky.”

Hunk blinked at him. “Oh,” he said. “Right, yeah, uh, sorry, I just…”

“Eat your food,” Keith ordered through a mouth full of food before he could continue his nervous rambling. He jabbed his chopsticks at Hunk’s untouched bowl for emphasis.

Hunk plopped down in surprise with a quiet, “Okay,” as he picked up his own chopsticks. He didn’t start eating right away, though, too intent upon watching Keith’s initial reaction to the meal.

Keith took his time chewing, then swallowed. Paused a minute. Stared down at his bowl.

Hunk watched him nervously.

“Well,” Keith said, stretching his arms off to each side. “Not dead,” he proclaimed. “And that,” he said, pointing down at his bowl, “is a whole lot better than the goo.”

Hunk smiled tentatively.

Keith grinned. “Come on, man, quit worrying. You said you already checked this stuff and I trust you. And Pidge,” he added. “Besides, none of us are going anywhere until we have a chance to punch Zarkon in the face.”

Hunk grinned. “Heheh, good one,” he laughed before digging in. He ate more slowly than Keith, rolling each bite over his tongue, considering the taste and blended palette as he chewed and swallowed.

“Hmm,” he said, considering. “Not bad for a first try. Seems kind of dry, though. Could use a bit more sauce. It’s just hard when there isn’t any good sauce making material around,” he said, screwing up his face in thought.

“There’s those pink things that splattered when you dropped them,” Keith pointed out, digging down further into his bowl that was already half empty. “Or the goo, honestly, because the one thing it’s good at is covering stuff. And that’s what you want for a sauce, right?”

Hunk brought down both hands on the table and stared at Keith, who blinked at him, suddenly worried. “What?” he asked, mouth full.

Hunk turned to stare at the goo dispenser, then at the counter where he’d been working. “Yeah. Yeah,” he muttered to himself, hand on his chin as he thought hard. “Yeah, that might work if I took some of the… and then add in the… or if I sauté it? Oh yeah, that might be better because then you’d get the flavors out of the fresh stuff and that might actually work…?”

It became clear to Keith after a few moments that Hunk had completely disappeared into his head and wasn’t about to stop muttering his mental notes and calculations any time soon. He shook his head, leaving him to rhapsodize over whatever ideas he was formulating for his next culinary experiment.

But until then, he thought after a quick internal debate, he decided that Hunk wouldn’t even miss his bowl of food. In fact, it would be helping him, to take it, and finish it, and rinse it out in the sink. It would be like helping him clean up after all of his hard work preparing everything.

So, he nodded as he pushed his empty bowl aside and slowly reached out for Hunk’s, who didn’t even notice as it slid across the table, it was doing him a favor.

Really.

#voltron #voltron legendary defender #hunk garret #keith kogane #cthulhu with a fez #puppetmaster55 #since you were part of the first installment too #didn't get this done in time to have anyone take a look at it so hopefully there aren't too many typos and it's all good #but i did get it done in time to get it posted on your bday even in your own timezone so look at that! successssss #so i tried to get this done over the summer when you were helping me out but... well... this will have to do :) #fanfiction #mine #ss #happy birthday kelly I hope it's a fantastic one!!!!!! #kelly

[greatshell-rider]

SKELETAL ESCAPADES: CHAPTER THREE

[Chapter Index] [Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]

“Getting colder,” Atomic commented from where she half-sat, half-perched at the lair entrance, tail curled around herself and wings tucked in close.

CS2 glanced her way, unsure whether the banescale was speaking to it or not, despite them being the only two living and undead things in the tunnel. Atomic wasn’t looking at the necro-animation, but outward, gazing across the rolling hills of long yellowing grass and wilting flowers. It had been overcast for much of the morning, but now sunlight slipped through gaps in the flat stratus clouds, illuminating bright mottles over the grassland that rippled with the wind. It didn’t smell of rain, but coldness, yes.

CS2 was quietly excited. This winter would be the first snow it had ever experienced, even as a—

“Don’t you mind it?” it asked Atomic, since apparently the dragon had deigned to speak to it. “I thought a banescale would prefer the heat.”

“I don’t mind,” Atomic said stiffly, too quickly and irritably to be believable. A moment passed, during which CS2 continued to sort bee wings from fly wings, as it had been tasked to do by Tibia, before Atomic reluctantly continued, in a slightly less belligerent tone, “I don’t mind the cold. I like it, even. When flying on a high wind, or scouting at predawn, or when gathered around a fire under a clear night . . .” She trailed off, and though she hadn’t been looking at CS2 before, turned her head away.

“You like to be moving,” CS2 offered. “Not cold like this, cold when there’s nothing to do but sit, cold that seeps into you, rather than just touch you.”

Now the banescale did look at it, tilting her head to examine CS2 with one green eye. “Yes,” she said, for once not in brusque dismissiveness to try and bring the conversation to a close, but in agreement, acknowledgement. CS2 said nothing more, and the dragon returned her gaze to the outside. CS2 couldn’t read whatever Atomic was feeling through her body or eyes, but the fact that the banescale made the effort to get to the lair entrance every day and watch the world outside told it plenty enough.

She, like Tibia and Lamp, couldn’t wait to leave this hole.

CS2 continued to sort bug wings, satisfied with the short conversation. A moon had passed since Atomic had agreed to Tibia and Lamp’s care, and the necro-animation had been awake for much of it. It had watched Atomic’s slow, shaky healing—the banescale was constantly arguing with Tibia and Lamp both over what physical activities she could and could not do—and helped it progress, but more or less in silence. Most of the time Atomic avoided acknowledging CS2’s presence at any cost. Apparently something had changed? Or was still in the process of it.

Likely she was just desperate. It was approaching the end of the second day Tibia and Lamp had been gone.

CS2 wasn’t worried, of course, considering its continued animation was dependent upon both its creator’s consciousness and concentration. Last night it had felt the magic in its bones start to fade, had informed Atomic it was likely Tibia sleeping for the night, gone to the blackness itself, then returned in the morning same as ever. It was a good sign; Tibia’s power was growing, being able to not only maintain CS2’s animation at such a distance and length of time, but to reestablish it so easily as well.

The necro-animation had repeated this information to Atomic several times over the course of the two days, since the banescale had kept asking, despite Tibia having also explained it all before she and her mate left for their trip to the trading post. Yet Atomic kept watching at the lair entrance.

CS2 finished the last of the sorting and carried the piles down into Atomic’s den to put the wings away in the correct cubby holes. It hurried, and returned quickly, where it found Atomic in the same spot as before. It hid a sigh of relief.

Tibia’s instructions to CS2 had been clear. If the banescale tried anything while they were gone, it was to inform Tibia via their magic link immediately.

CS2 didn’t think it could be punished in any significant way if Atomic did try to steal Tibia and Lamp’s stuff and run off, or if Atomic died, or if she invited a bunch of drunken friends over and they trashed the place, but it also knew Tibia would be upset if any of that happened and CS2 failed to attempt to stop it. So it was very glad the banescale had been on her best behavior while CS2 was in charge of her—better behavior, honestly, than when Tibia and Lamp were home.

—Home. Huh. It hadn’t meant to think of the lair that way.

CS2 wavered at the tunnel intersection, wondering what other busy work it could do while keeping on eye on Atomic that wouldn’t make the banescale suspicious. It had already swept the stray grass into a single pile (twice a day), dusted Lamp’s maps, boiled the old bandages (Atomic had helped build a fire to heat the water, the first time CS2 had spoken to her without another dragon around), gathered the daisies that grew around the lair, tied said daisies into tiny flower crowns to hang on the walls, and sorted through every other material, foodstuff, and trinkets Tibia and Lamp possessed—the bug wings had been the last of the stuff for medical supplies. CS2 tapped two foreclaws together uncertainly. Maybe new daisies had popped up? Or it could sit still in the center of Lamp and Tibia’s den and watch for bugs dumb enough to crawl or dig their way inside, attack and add them to the hoard . . .

It heard scraping from the lair entrance, and peered down the tunnel to find Atomic getting to her feet and stretching out her wings. Alarm spiked through CS2’s bones and it scuttled towards the banescale, opening its jaw to ask what she was doing.

“I’m not going to run, you know,” Atomic said, without turning her head, a slight growl roughening the edges of her words. She flexed her long neck and rolled her shoulders, the long porcupine spines running down her body rattling. “I keep my word.”

CS2 slowed, embarrassment itching its skull. It forced out a laugh, nervous as it was. “Well, good, otherwise I’d have to—”

Atomic finished stretching and limped out of the lair.

CS2 gaped after her, one claw held up in warning, then figuratively blinked and rushed after her, all pretense abandoned as it squeaked, “What are you doing! Where are you going! You just said—”

“I won’t run,” Atomic snarled, favoring her injured leg heavily as she strode through the long grass, CS2 scampering close on her heels to avoid getting grass whipped in its skull.

“Then what—”

Atomic gnashed her jaws and CS2 clamped its own shut. After a moment, the banescale said, in a forcibly calm voice, “This is a walk.”

Unease gnawed at CS2, but it couldn’t keep quiet. “This’ll only worsen your leg.”

“Shut up.”

CS2 wavered, then sighed and simply fell in step with the banescale, mentally keeping track of where the dragon was headed and how far they were getting from the lair (not too far; Atomic couldn’t move very fast). It kept its connection to Tibia active and alert, ready to signal its master the moment Atomic tried to fly, but it still hesitated to contact her. Yes, it was supposed to tell Tibia if the banescale left the lair but . . . this was different. CS2 could feel it.

Also, it was nice to be outside.

Atomic wandered in a broad circle around the lair, moving slow and stiffly due to her leg, and always kept the lair within eyeshot—at her height, anyway, CS2 assumed. Itself, it had to count its tiny steps, and used that to determine if they got any farther from the lair. Despite the autumn chill, the sun was warm, the wind sweetly scented, and the feeling of loose dirt and old dead grass beneath CS2’s claws was soothing after two days spent inside the cramped, hard-packed soil walls of the lair. A skeleton could breathe out here.

So too, could a banescale. Though only able to view Atomic from behind and below, CS2 could see the tension easing from the dragon’s posture and stride the longer she walked. At times her breathing would get labored, and she would have to slow, stop, wait a minute, porcupine spines stiff and quivering as if daring CS2 to say a word—and it never did—before being able to move forward again. But she always did. For a quarter of an hour, she walked, limping with her wings unfolded halfway, so the tips brushed the tops of the grass as she walked, so the sunlight could bathe the skin as it did her scales.

Down at the ground, CS2 caught only stripes of sunlight, between the waving grass and Atomic's swaying tail, but that was sufficient. It could imagine how the banescale was drinking it in, savoring every moment, even as her leg ached and her body, long-wearied after spending moons ill, grew tired. With each step in the sun and every gust of the wind, CS2 relaxed more and more its grasp on its connection to Tibia, and became more sure in its decision to let Atomic have this walk. They'd both needed it, but her far more than it.

Finally, as Atomic's steps grew slower and her breaks longer, she altered her course, winding in smaller circles back toward the lair. CS2 followed, watching the banescale carefully now, wary of her strength failing and it needing to call Tibia not as a warning but a call for rescue, but Atomic never stumbled. Rather than head for the entrance tunnel, however, she walked past it, and climbed the short hill the lair was dug out of. At its peak, Atomic stopped. CS2 watched her large claws curl inward, dig into the peat and hold the layers of dirt and grass tight. It thought she might settle down, sit in the sun and wind here rather than her spot in the tunnel entrance, but it was wrong. She stayed standing. Her head lifted and her eyes closed. Her tail stilled and her wings sank down, draping to the ground not out of exhaustion, CS2 thought, but to root her to the earth, to ground her fully to where she stood even as the wind danced and whistled through her porcupine spines. CS2 watched her, and a longing rooted itself in its bones.

After a moment of hesitation, CS2 followed the instinct and clambered up the banescale's wings, keeping the touch of its claws light as it climbed to her shoulder. Even then, it hesitated, unsure of Atomic's reaction, but the dragon barely twitched. So the necro-animation sat, digging its claws into her scales to keep itself from getting flung away by the wind, and tipped its own head back, back, back. It had no eyes to close, and it stared straight at the sun. As a dead thing, the light could not dazzle it, but as an animated thing, it could see it again. It was much better than being in the shade of the grass.

CS2 lost track of time, minutes slipping away as if the wind took them itself, and was only made aware of its surroundings once more when Atomic’s shoulder shifted beneath it. It looked down to see the banescale twisting her neck to look at it, eyes inscrutable as always.

CS2 couldn’t stand the banescale’s unblinking stare for long. “What?” it finally asked with a light, nervous chitter. It was pretty sure banescales didn’t eat bones, magic or no.

“All this time, I’ve thought you were an . . . extension of the fae dragon. A piece of her mind, consciousness, whatever, put in those bones and following me around. Watching me.”

“Uh.” CS2 didn’t know what to say that. “What changed your mind? Because I’m not Tibia,” it added, unsure even after the dragon’s admission whether she knew it or not.

Atomic tilted her head, as if peering at the necro-animation from a different angle would help her figure it out. “I didn’t know little creatures could enjoy the sun. Didn’t know they had thoughts.”

CS2 said nothing. Of course the little creatures had thoughts. Of course they could enjoy the sun. They just rarely had time to do so, considering the brevity of their lifespan, considering how much of the little life they had was spent searching for food or hiding from bigger creatures. Considering how, when in the sun instead of the shade, a little creature was exposed, always at risk of its life ending within a moment, before it could even know it. CS2, in its flesh, living life, had never spent time in the sun when it hadn’t been also in fear, the terror of death so powerful it could have never let time slip away from it as it had just now, perched on the shoulder of a dragon whose head was twice the size of CS2’s entire skeleton.

“I didn’t know I could be so good at my job to creep you out,” CS2 found itself saying, the words not feeling its own even as it left its jaws. “That is my primary duty, you see.”

Atomic barked a harsh laugh, the force of it jittering through CS2’s bones. “Tibia programmed you well, whether its her own influence or strictly your own soul in there.” The banescale turned her gaze out, northward, the direction Tibia and Lamp had gone in pursuit of the trading post. “Creepy or not, you actually make good company.”

“I live to serve,” CS2 said, and Atomic threw it an amused glance.

“Speaking of, you know where they are, right? You can sense them?”

“Tibia and I are connected, yes, that gives us a general impression of where the other is.”

“Are they on their way back yet? I want do know how quickly I need to get off this hill, to avoid a lecture,” she added hurriedly.

“Uh-huh.” CS2 checked its tie to Tibia, assessed how strong its pull to her was. “Uhh. Maybe? After a certain distance, the feeling kind of plateaus. I don’t think she’s getting any farther away, but I don’t know if she’s getting closer either.” It shrugged. Without opening a link between their direct flow of thoughts . . . “I can tell you she is alive.”

“Comforting,” the banescale muttered. She looked to the sun, judging its distance to the horizon. “What would you do if they didn’t come back?” she asked softly. “If they got bored one day and simply didn’t return? I assume the magic would fade eventually, but Tibia’s last command would bind you, wouldn’t it?”

“Lamp wouldn’t leave behind his maps,” CS2 said flatly. “You can be assured of that much.” It patted a warm scale comfortingly. “They’ll come back, don’t worry, if not solely for your pleasant charm.”

Atomic snorted and finally turned, starting down the hill back towards the lair entrance. “I’m not worried,” she muttered.

CS2 chitterd in amusement, and rode easily on the banescale’s shoulder all the way back to the lair—up until Atomic’s foot slipped, sending all her weight crashing down on her injured leg. She shrieked as she fell, practically crumpling to the ground only half a leap from the tunnel. Dislodged by the sudden jolt, CS2 went sailing through the air, and crashed in a roll of its bones through the grass. It shook its skeleton out, then ran back to Atomic, who was shakily struggling to get upright again.

“Careful!” CS2 said, skidding to a stop next to the banescale’s injured leg. She was bleeding through the bandage again.

“I know!” Atomic snapped, pain sharpening her words. Even her good leg failed to support her, and she slumped back to the ground, panting heavily and injured leg bent at an uncomfortable angle. “I know, I know,” she repeated, eyes squeezing shut. “I know.”

CS2 dithered for a moment, but without the other two dragons around, there wasn’t much choice. “Stay here, I’ll be back.” Atomic didn’t reply, head drooping down in exhaustion, and CS2 scuttled down the tunnel into Atomic’s den with all the medical supplies. They didn’t have much left, and Tibia would surely notice its absence when she returned, but CS2 grabbed the pain-numbers anyway and hurried back to Atomic.

The banescale said nothing as CS2 applied the herbs as quickly and carefully as it could, merely lay slumped against the incline of the hill, breathing harshly through her open mouth. After a few minutes the effect took hold, and CS2 urged Atomic to move, slower this time, without any weight on her leg at all. The banescale used her good leg and her wings to pull herself down the tunnel, then into her den. She only made it halfway into her nest before collapsing once more, this time unconscious, leaving CS2 alone as it swiftly changed the bandage and applied more of a poultice Tibia had made before leaving, in case of a situation like this.

When it had done all that it could, and was weary from skull to tailbone, CS2 turned to go. A rustle of grass and twigs stopped it, and it turned to see Atomic conscious again, the banescale having turned her head to gaze at the necro-animation blearily.

“Don’t,” she began, slurring slightly, took a breath, and tried again, “Don’t tell Tibia about this, yeah? You—you’d be—in as much trouble—as I.” And she drifted back to sleep.

CS2 chittered softly, then stretched out its spine, tiny vertebrae creaking slightly. Tibia would figure out what happened. But Atomic was right. CS2 wouldn’t tell her master about the hill, about sunlight, about thoughts and fear. Tibia wouldn’t ask to know, anyway. But CS2 could keep its word, same as a dragon. It could afford to, now.

It had the time.

#Skeletal Escapades #fr #flight rising #fr lore stories #my writing #some chonky paragraphs in this one sorry for that lsdfkjsldkfs #we get some angst in this one! just a little! a little taste! just sprinkling it here ;) #fun fact it was after writing this section of the story that i sat back and thought about it and decided 'hey why not make this fucked up?' #This Is The Beginning >:)

[happy-hollow-rpg]

Teach Me How To Sing || Rada Orlov || Trial Results 1 || re: Erika K, Maui, Dusky, Shaela and Trick. ATTN: Everyone.

She knew it was coming. Trick read off the results and with each word she felt the metaphorical guillotine blade clicking back another notch. 

‘That is correct, however. Ava Alkaev, or rather, Rada Orlov is indeed the culprit behind this killing!’

How long has it been since she’s last heard her name? Five-- no, six years… Or was it nearing seven now? Her memory of that time is dreadfully blurry and the painful crescendo of silent screaming in the back of her mind isn’t helping matters. At least it was information shared by Trick and no one else… her single saving grace preventing the noise from immediately hitting a fever pitch.

“N-No secret… i-is worth… a life…” Rada replied bitterly to Maui through her tears. “I n-never wanted… t-to hurt anyone…ever... I d-didn’t… have a choice… I’m not… g-given one… E-Even though I… d-don’t want to die… i-if I had… b-been allowed… to instead trade… m-my own life… f-for hers… I would have...”

Rada squeezes her eyes tightly shut. The question about the charm… The implications of it still made every nerve in her body feel like it was on fire.

“A-And then… the sniper rifle… charm… it’s mi--hrk!”

Her words cut off with a choked and strangled sound. Ah ah ah, you naughty girl, you know better. Another round then-- Rada begins to cough violently, one hand pressed over her mouth while the other grips the edge of the desk to keep from falling over. No matter how hard she coughs, the feeling of water in her lungs refuses to leave… until it suddenly vanishes and she can breathe again. 

“O-Oh no… I…” Rada wheezes before taking in a sharp breath, tears of both fear and pain beading up. “I… s-still c-can’t… answer that… I’m sorry... I w-want to… a-and so… m-much more… b-but I… can’t…”

“M-Miss Kimoto… a-and Miss Allaway… sh-should both… understand… the feeling... f-from the… quiz show… M-Miss Aceso… t-too… I-I’m sorry… I j-just… c-can’t do it...”

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

“Oh my, that would cause a few problems in times like this, wouldn’t it?” Trick pipes up from her seat. 

  “What was it again… Ah, that’s right! Songbird, speak freely and without past restrictions. That should do it.”

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

As Trick spoke, Rada looked nervously in her direction. Just what was she--

"..."

The moment she hears it, she freezes, the only movement of her body the flickering of her eyes to lock onto Trick. But she’s not kept waiting, not like usual. The haze clears rapidly and Rada blinks a few times as the words settle into her bones.

“Wait... Y-You... M-My name is…” She pauses, weighing the syllables on her tongue before trying them. “R-Rada… Orlov… O-Oh..!”

She squeaks, holding both of her hands over her mouth as tears roll down her face. “Rada Orlov, that’s my name…! I c-can… say it…!” She says with wonder before she's slammed back into the reality of her situation. She has to act quickly.

“I-If I can talk... I n-need to--.... The sniper rifle charm… i-it’s mine…"

"I w-was taken... seven y-years ago... b-by the Russian mafia... I h-had to follow orders… n-no one was ever allowed to know… wh-what I did… and i-if they found out… I-I had to… k-kill them… I c-couldn’t let... the motive here go… a-another day… where someone else… m-might get the charm too… o-or figure out… it was me… and tell everyone…”

“O-Once the conditions for… the order take… I-I can’t hold it back forever… I-It’s like trying to… dam up a geyser… the pressure just keeps building… u-until it… explodes…”

“I w-wasn’t… trying to… f-frame anyone… I n-never… lied about that…” Most of what she’d said during the trial hadn’t been a lie, although she highly doubted that anyone would believe her.

“The handkerchief… m-must have… fallen out… of my pocket… wh-when I was leaving… th-the instrument closet… I d-didn’t even… know it… was missing… until M-Miss Aceso… sh-showed me…”

“I summoned… the sandwich… s-so that… the magic… might be… mistaken… a-as poison… b-because of its presence… i-instead of… summoning… W-With the number… o-of poison… caster cards around… and other… p-possible foodstuffs that… c-could have been… l-lethally poisoned… I thought… th-that there would be… t-too much… confusion to… tie it back… t-to a single person… and that… we wouldn’t reach… a conclusion… and just… run out… th-the clock… I n-never expected… a-anyone to… e-eat something that… c-could have… b-been the… m-murder weapon… A-And for people to get… poisoned...!”

“I didn’t know… th-that the… s-stardust… still glowed… w-with magic… once they crumbled… I thought… i-it was… inert… There was… s-some left in… th-the envelope… I p-put the powder into… It would have… very l-likely been… unnoticeable… otherwise… u-unless someone… u-used a… poison caster card… a-and risked… implicating themselves… or were… r-repeatedly casting… th-the spell M-Miss Julia… taught a few… o-of us… on everything… in sight...”

“And there was… o-only ever one… h-hemlock flower… I brought back… s-seeds from… M-Miss Julia’s… cottage… You can’t… powder… a live flower… a-and I didn’t… e-expect it to… be considered… e-evidence… since I… d-didn’t use it… t-to kill… M-Miss Davis… Otherwise… I would have… thrown it out…”

“I haven’t stolen anything… a-and I didn’t… set any of… the traps… O-Other than… k-kill Miss Davis… I haven’t… d-done anything to… hurt anyone...”

  With the sheer amount of words that kept flowing from her nervous mouth, you’d think that she’d eventually run out of steam. Only now does she finally give pause, trembling as she realizes that she has no idea how much of her precious time she’s wasted already.

She’d prepared for this, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying.

Rada’s gloved hands dove back into the pockets of her black coat, slowly pulling item after item from inside of it and setting them all onto the desk before bustling around the room with a few items in hand at a time.

On her own desk, she sets down a small vial of a milky-colored liquid that swirls of an off-white shade spiral when it’s shaken in front of Erika L. “I-It’s a potion of… fingernail growth…” She notes quietly, before moving on counterclockwise. 

In front of Santiago, she sets down a swiss army knife. “I-I’ve only used… the tools… I p-promise...” She squeaks. 

Then in front of Dusky, Rada places a time caster card and a rounded bottle with clear blue liquid. The air space in the bottle is filled with a gray fog. “I s-still… d-don’t know what… it does… s-sorry…”

Since Kimoto has been shadowing her, she skips over Erika K’s spot and goes straight to Sully, setting down the small vial filled with a watery looking greenish liquid, as well as a beautiful necklace in the shape of two interlocking rings. “M-Miss Allaway said… i-it might be… y-yours… a-and the potion… r-really is just… a potion of joy… Th-Thank you for… always… b-being nice...” Rada mumbles.

The next table is unoccupied, so Rada moves on to Amelia and Maui. She sets her own palm sized notebook and pen down in front of Amelia (“Th-There’s some… o-of my writing… in Russian… b-but the paper is… nice…”) but in front of Maui she sets down a literal bag of marijuana, stammers “M-Mister Treat summoned it… f-for me f-for a coin… D-Don’t make me… e-explain more please…!!” and zips away. 

Next, she sets down her empty leather coin pouch in front of RJ. “I-I thought… i-it might work… f-for a p-portable nest… f-for your… chick…” She mumbles towards him.

Then turning to Niro, she sniffles and places an ornate papercraft rose blossom on the table. “...Th-Thank you… for the… d-duet…” Rada squeaks before her hands fidget at the bottom of her dress on her right thigh and-- she shoves an untied garter with tiny metal sticks in it onto the space in front of him, turning bright pink. “Th-There’s a bunch a-and… they might be… d-different than… th-the ones you… a-already have… I know its… n-nice to… have extras… S-S-Sorry about… the garter...!” Rada scurries away. She’s going to die of embarrassment before she dies her actual death at this rate.

The next table is empty, so she moves on past it to Elle and Shaela. 

“...I r-really wasn’t… trying to frame you… M-Miss Ambrose… and I… d-do appreciate… e-everything that… y-you tried to do… f-for me… I-I’m sorry… I r-ruined it...” Rada bites her lip and sets down a poison caster card and a luck caster card in front of Elle. On the space in front of Shaela, she sets down her black coat. “It’s a good coat… i-it should fit… if you want it… a-and there’s peppermints… in the pockets… i-if you want to… give sugar gifts… or offerings…” That’s reaaaally about the max amount of time she wants to be near Shaela, so she zips off again.

Treat and Trick each get a paper flower set in front of them, and a black ball of yarn by Trouble, before Rada heads back to her own desk to give a pair of things to Erika Kimoto. The first is a round bottle with milky white liquid, but the second item she carefully unfolds is a shawl made out of crocheted stars in pretty purple and red yarn. She speaks quietly with her for a short time before turning back to the class.

  “I d-don’t know… h-how much… time I-I have left… b-but i-if there’s… a-anything I can… a-answer… I-I’ll… d-do my best…”

#chapter2 #trial2 #ic #Ava #submission

[xsparklingravenx]

The Dragon’s Curse

Title: The Dragon’s Curse

Fandom: Tales of Berseria

Characters: Eizen, Edna, Magilou, Zaveid, Velvet, Rokurou, Eleanor, Laphicet

Rating: T

Word Count: 8,764

Summary:  Legends say that the Rayfalke Spiritcrest is a ghost ship that sails the seas in search of the man who would one day call himself its captain. Eizen and Edna know better. Running from a past he left behind as he hurtles towards a fate he knows he will never escape, Eizen throws himself into a life on the sea, dogged constantly by the curse that brings misfortune to him and those around him

.A chance encounter with a travelling menagerie however changes Eizen and Edna's course. With the promise of a charm that might just fix Eizen's curse, all they want in return is a trip to Port Zekson. But it's Port Zekson that Eizen is running from, and a return trip might be all that is needed to bring him on a collision course with someone he left behind...

Part 1 / AO3

Legends said that the Rayfalke Spiritcrest was a ghost ship that sailed the seas in search of the man who would one day call himself its captain. It was a story that passed through the lips of many a sailor that came for a pint to drink in weary taverns, one that Eizen heard being discussed as he leant against the wall of a pub tucked away in Port Reneed. Tonight’s variation included a wildly imaginative addition as to how the original crew must have met their ends, and as Eizen listened in, he wondered how many drinks the storyteller must have had.

“Right now it’s anchored near here, you know.” another man said, his cheeks coloured pink by alcohol. “Saw it myself I did. Wouldn’t know it was no ghost ship by how well maintained it looks, only reason I knew it was the Spiritcrest was ‘cause of the fancy dragon emblem on it.”

“I thought I heard whispers.” a woman said, her face lit up with excitement. “Said it just drifted by and came to a stop, has anyone had a look around it yet?”

“Are you joking?” the storyteller said, horrified. “Ain’t you heard a word I said? The Reaper’s Curse came down and lead its last crew to their watery grave! Anyone who takes one step on that ship is a fool.”

They began to squabble, arguing over how no one could know if they were the ship’s destined captain if they never got a good look at it. Eizen scoffed and pulled a coin from his pocket, flipping it over and catching it again. When he looked down, the head of the demon lord Dhaos stared back up at him. Tails again, as it would always be.

If only they knew. He pushed himself from the wall to make his leave and walked out of pub like a ghost, not one person so much as giving him a second glance. It was for the best, he knew, but he couldn’t help but wish that he could sit down with the impressionable lot and tell them all about the Spiritcrest, how she creaked affectionately as she turned on the sea, how the sails rippled like oceans themselves when the wind hit them in the right way, just how sturdy and strong she was. There was nothing to be done, though. Not a thing in the world would make them see him, let alone hear what he had to say.

Port Reneed was alive at night, people buzzing around the market as though it was the middle of the day. Eizen made his way through, his attention mostly on dodging the people who tried to walk straight into him, but stopped when a stall caught his eye. Plush toys shaped like various animals hung from it like fair ground prizes, the fancies of children no doubt.

There was one shaped like a squirrel, its tail long and fluffy. He took off one of his gloves and reached for it to test how soft it was, and once satisfied with the feel, pulled it down. The stall owner didn’t look twice, but Eizen judged the price and then scattered some coins in front of him. He wouldn’t notice them until Eizen had already made his way out of the area, but it didn’t matter. The toy was paid for, and his conscience clear as a result.

With his purchase safely in hand, Eizen melded back into the crowd. Nearby, a man in the middle of a business deal burst into a coughing fit that nearly choked him, bringing his important conversation to a grinding halt. Elsewhere, a woman putting away stock for the next day found the majority of her foodstuffs to be spoiled. A townsperson bumped into a child, only to realise that the boy had robbed him. All that and more, just because Eizen had decided to walk among them.

He went back to the port. It was busy there, drunken sailors returning to their ships, some with women, some with alcohol, some just to rest their heads. They could be fascinating when he took the time to pay attention to them, but someone else had caught it instead. His gaze found the girl sat upon a cargo crate, her body turned away from him so she could face the sea. Propped open on her shoulder was a peach coloured umbrella that hid most of her from view.

Ordinarily, someone would have told her off by now, snapped at her to get off of precious cargo, but no one batted an eyelid because she was just as invisible as he was. He approached her with gentle footfalls even though he knew she was hardly the type to startle easy anyway.

“Nice view?” he asked.

The girl turned to face him. She looked near identical to him, the two of them sharing the same golden hair, the same stern curve of their mouths, their eyes the same shade of blue. She blinked once, slowly, like a cat, and sighed. “Could be better. Finally back from moron-watching?”

“Yeah. Listened in on some interesting stuff too.” Eizen paused for a second, crossing his arms against his chest. “Did you know the Rayfalke Spiritcrest is nearby?”

His sister smiled, a wry thing that looked more cruel than sweet. Though she was named for a flower, Edna was anything but delicate. She had learned the smile from him, but she’d honed it far more carefully. “You don’t say? I hear that ship is spooked by ghosts and rats and all other things gross.”

“Oh yeah? Well get this. I heard that there’s a curse on that ship, and the previous crew all threw themselves overboard when it took hold. Stories say that they preferred an icy death in the seas to the calamity that would no doubt await them if they lived.”

“I hear there’s an idiot human out there that the ship is waiting for.” Edna continued. “Apparently it’s so desperate for a taste of what a real captain could do.”

“Well, I hear that maybe, just maybe,” Eizen said, nudging her umbrella away to swing an arm around her shoulders, “that it might be a pair of malakhim that haunt the ship’s cabins.”

She made a noise of annoyance as she was forced to put her umbrella down. She was a scrawny thing, his sister, but appearances meant nothing when her tongue was sharper than a blade. “Nope. I’m pretty sure it’s definitely sailing around for a human captain. The ship’s probably sick of all your boring chatter and weird lectures. No one cares about detailed explanations of your plans to tunnel under the entire world.”

Eizen huffed, his pride somewhat stung. “It’d be viable, and a useful way to get around. But, I guess if you really think that way, I won’t give you this.”

He revealed the plush squirrel just long enough for her to catch a glimpse of it before hiding it away in the folds of his jacket. She tried to look unimpressed, but Eizen knew her well enough for her to see the way her eyes widened in longing. “What was that?” she asked, even though he knew that she knew. “It looked stupid.”

“Yeah, real stupid. Ugly too, who’d want something like this?” he pulled the toy out again and held it up to the nearest streetlamp. He scrunched up his face in mock disgust. “The fur isn’t even quality grade. What trash.”

Edna reached for it with her free hand, only able to get near it because of the added height of the crate. Still it remained out of her reach. “Eizen,” she whined. “Let me see it. Closer.”

“Wait, you actually want it?”

“Nope.” Edna said, but she was twisting the handle of her closed umbrella in an agitated manner. The mascot that already hung from it – the Normin she carried so faithfully with her – bobbed as she did so. “Where did you get it?”

“The market.” Eizen replied, finally giving it up to let her examine it more closely. She rubbed the squirrel’s tail against her cheek, her face set in a frown. “They had others, but they were even worse than this one.”

“And this one’s pretty bad, if you ask me. It’s got a tear in its back.” Edna said. She was still rubbing the tail against her cheek.

Of course it had a tear in it. He could have sworn it was perfect when he picked it up, but nothing was ever sacred when he was concerned. “I could take it back.”

“What’s the point? We’ve got it now, and you paid for it, right? May as well keep it.”

She must really have loved it to be saying that. “If you say so,” he said, feigning defeat. “So, you heard anything while you’ve been sat here?”

Edna shrugged. “Not a ton. There was some chatter about a menagerie or something, but as far as I could gather, it’s about stupid humans doing stupid things, so really it’s just gonna be a whole bunch of stupid.”

“A show?” Eizen considered the concept. He knew of circuses, of theatre shows and stand up comedies, but a menagerie was something he hadn’t encountered before. A collection of exotic animals, rarities in the modern world or just uncommon; it could have been a point of interest. “When?”

Edna shrugged, hopping off the crate and closing her umbrella up. “Tomorrow, I think. Why? Don’t tell me you actually want to go.”

“So what if I do?” Edna peered up at him with eyes that were evidently judging him. “Look, it’s no exhibition on priceless artefacts, but I’ll take entertainment when I can find it. We should go before we leave the port.”

“Entertainment?” she laughed, her ponytail bobbing at the side of her head. “That’s a strong word. You’re so lame, Eizen.”

“Bold words for someone who can’t let go of a plush toy.” Eizen said.

She punched him in the arm and hugged the squirrel to her chest. “The toy sucks and we’re going to your stupid menagerie. Now let’s go home, we’ve got to row our little boat all the way back.”

“You mean I’ve got to row all the way back.”

“Exactly. I’m tired.” She paused, turning half way. “By the way. Thanks, I guess.” 

“You’re welcome, I guess.” Eizen said. He saw the side of her mouth quirk up in her favourite sardonic grin before she turned completely and walked away. He followed, the two of them picking their way through the people, two earth malaks amongst an entire town of humans.

He thought of the drunkards in the pub, dreaming of plundering the Rayfalke Spiritcrest, and wondered what they would think if they knew the truth. The curse was real, bringing bad luck and hardship to anyone around him, human or malak alike. Not even his own sister was safe from it, and every day he questioned himself. Why had he let her come along as he sailed the seas? Why had he dragged her along when he’d decided to run from every problem he had been the source of?

If he was truthful with himself, though, he knew why. The answer was found in the malevolence that he harboured deep inside, hidden away from his sister, or in the dragon emblem that decorated the Rayfalke Spiritcrest. A reminder. Fate was inescapable, and he wasn’t going to stand scared of it. Edna was all he had, his only family, and though he had thought about abandoning her for her own safety, in the end he hadn’t been able to do it. If he went, she was coming with him. He wanted to show her the world before he eventually succumbed, and aboard their ship, they were making a good job of it.

He’d leave her before he ever became a dragon. He’d seen the destruction they wrought, the way they damaged the malakhim they left behind, the ones who had loved them so deeply before they had become twisted. Putting his sister through that fate was unimaginable.

---

Eizen quickly realised that, much to his disappointment, menagerie didn’t mean the same thing to the people running it as it did to him. Magilou’s Menagerie was less a collection of exotic animals and much more a collection of exotic people, and as he stood watching the titular Magilou force her suffering companion to “Act! Like! A! Dove!” he found his interest sorely waning.

The show had barely begun, and already Edna looked like she wanted to gouge her own eyes out. They were stood off to the side even though most of the hall’s seats were empty; Eizen didn’t want to get into the problem of taking a seat only for someone else to think that it was free. He’d offered to let Edna sit on his shoulders, but she’d heartily refused. He had a feeling she’d declined more because she literally didn’t care rather than because she had a decent view where she stood.

Apparently this section was supposed to be comedy, which was funny because Eizen hadn’t cracked a single laugh in the fifteen minutes they’d been watching. The rest of the limited crowd seemed to be enamoured, though. He had a feeling it was less to do with it being amusing and more to do with the pinkish blush on the cheeks of Magilou’s assistant. Humans were so easily won over, Eizen thought. Maybe that was something admirable about them.

Finally, after much badgering, the assistant finally relented with possibly the worst dove imitation Eizen had ever seen. Magilou beamed, undeterred, and threw her hands up in their air. Sparks flew from her fingertips, making the audience gasp in awe.

Edna’s attention was momentarily drawn, but only for the briefest of moments before she yawned loudly behind her hand and went back to looking bored. She obviously had realised the same thing Eizen had; this show would be full of flashy magic tricks that would no doubt have a mundane source. It was how all magic worked; it was only incredible until you knew how it worked, and Eizen was sure he’d figure it out before the show reached its end.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your undivided attention!” Magilou called out, bowing grandly as she lavished in the attention. She was a gaudy looking thing, her frame scrawny yet elegant in a way, her clothes a mishmash of pink and purple and books of all things. She and her partner made for a visually interesting duo, the other woman tall and broader shouldered, her hair long and black and braided. “If you enjoyed that, then there’s only so much more to come! You better hold onto your hats and strap into your seats, because tonight we plan to bloooow you away!”

A gust of wind shot through the crowd as she drew out the word. A wind machine, Eizen thought. Had to be. Magilou elbowed her assistant and said, “Oh my, Velvet, would you look at the crowd we’ve got tonight?”

For a moment, Eizen was sure that the two of them looked right at him and Edna. But then Velvet looked away and sighed. “Wow. What a crowd we’ve got tonight.”

She sounded so deadpan, so uninterested, that Eizen actually smiled, finally amused. Magilou huffed and broke into a tirade about how Velvet should appreciate the audience, and their skit began anew.

Comedy wasn’t their only forte, though. Magilou’s Menagerie was four people strong, which looked small at first glance. It seemed though, for what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in character. Magilou herself had enough personality for seven people, and Velvet, though seemingly taciturn, proved to have her own wit when provoked. Once they had left the stage, a man dressed in traditional looking robes took their place. Eizen had little time for that, though, his attention swiftly drawn by the weapons the man carried. Three; a sword at his back, and twin blades at his side. He flashed the crowd a cheeky grin, and then, much to Eizen’s disappointment, pulled the daggers from their sheaths. “Hey, everyone having a good time?” he shouted at the audience. He paused long enough for them to respond, and then shook his head. “What? C’mon, I can’t hear you!”

When the audience responded in a satisfactory manner, he nodded smugly and waved. “Well, I’m gonna show you something even better! I’m Rokurou of Magilou’s Menagerie, and you lucky few are gonna get to see some real skills tonight!”

“Oh great.” Edna said. “He’s gonna wave his swords around and call it a show.”

“They’re daggers.” Eizen said, appalled.

And Edna was wrong anyway, to call it ‘waving’. The man danced with the blades, his movements smooth and choreographed and graceful. Yet there was still a sense of chaos in the piece, something manic and unhinged that Eizen could only catch glimpses off. It was in the glee of Rokurou’s expression, in the way he would suddenly divert the routine into something completely unexpected. His movements were controlled, but at the times it seemed as if he was possessed by something that had its own ideas. For the first time that night, Eizen was actually watching attentively.

“Now this,” he said, “is real entertainment.”

Edna rolled her eyes.

Unfortunately, he didn’t touch the sword on his back once. When he finished his show, he put his hand on the hilt as if he was going to pull it out, but instead he just smiled. “Want more, guys? Then I guess you’ll just have to come back next time! Thanks for watching, see you again!”

“What a tease.” Eizen huffed as Magilou returned to the stage to link the act into the next segment. Edna yawned again, loudly, and then glanced up above to the rafters. Eizen watched as Magilou did her part and then danced off the stage, the final member coming to take her place.

The girl looked somewhat out of place in the show. Unlike the wild looking Magilou, the stoic Velvet, or the chaotic Rokurou, this girl exuded a calmer aura. Her ginger hair was tied in girlish pigtails, and her dress was ladylike and elegant. She stepped to the middle of the stage and addressed the crowd.

“Hello, ladies, gentlemen.” she said, her voice steady and relaxed. “My name is Eleanor, and I’m here to present to you a show that will leave you absolutely, positively—”

“Positutely!” Magilou hissed from off stage. The audience laughed and even Edna had a half-smile on her face.

“Um. Absolutely, positutely astounded!” Eleanor finished, a determined look on her face. She raised her arms to the audience, closing her eyes as she did so, and then the lights went dim.

“Oh?” Edna said.

A second later, something bright fizzled through the air above Eleanor’s head, sparkling white. It split into four beams of light, swirling like tendrils about her body in red, blue, green, and yellow. Her eyes snapped open and she pirouetted on the spot before collapsing to the floor, the tendrils following her smooth arc of movement. Their light diffused as she fell, but when she rose her arms again they followed her upwards, upwards, growing brighter again. She held them there for a moment, and then threw her arms outwards. The beams of light shot for the audience.

Amongst the gasps as the lights flew, Edna said, “These are malak artes.”

Eizen scoffed. “You’re giving them way too much credit. There’s no way, just an impressive light show that they’ve worked hard on. I bet if you looked around, you’d find some kind of device that lets them emit these lights. It’s simple, I’d assume. You’d just need something with—”

“No.” Edna said. She pointed up to the ceiling above Eleanor with her folded umbrella. “They’re malak artes.”

Eizen followed the point of her umbrella to the rafters. There, sure enough, was a tiny malak that looked about the size of Eizen’s thumb from where he was stood. He couldn’t make out much of the malak except that it appeared to be a little boy, and he was waving his hands in time to the tendrils that had seemingly been moving to Eleanor’s command.

Any enjoyment that Eizen had been deriving from the show vanished in that instance, replaced instead with disgust. Of course. None of the tricks in the show had been magic. They were just humans, bastard humans, who were bending a malakhim to their will.

He was about to grab Edna and haul her out of there, when the malak noticed he was being watched in the middle of an overzealous movement to send the water tendril around Eleanor’s head. He lost his balance, and if that wasn’t enough, the rafter he was stood on suddenly cracked. It split apart in a rough movement, and Eizen’s heart lurched as the boy fell fell.

The artes dispersed. Eleanor looked up in horror and shrieked.

“Eizen!” Edna shouted. Eizen didn’t think twice, didn’t think about how the malak being surprised should have been impossible if he didn’t have free will, and dashed towards the stage.

Velvet beat him to it. She all but snatched the boy out of the air, pulling him close to her chest. “Phi!” she gasped as the broken rafter clattered to the stage. Over the malak’s head, her eyes met Eizen’s. She could see him, he thought. She was looking straight at him.

Time stood still. Eleanor blinked. The audience looked at one another, confused, unknowing of what just transpired. And then the malak, Phi, waved his hands and whispered, “Thanks Velvet! Don’t stop, don’t stop, you can do it Eleanor!”

The four beams of light blinked back into existence, dancing around her body. Velvet let Phi go and kicked the rafter off the stage. Eleanor took her hands in her own. “Right, I can do this. Dance with me, Velvet?”

And before Eizen’s eyes, the solo dance turned into something intimate, something gentle and soft, while Phi stood back and conducted the lights like a musician would an orchestra. They spun around in time with them, Velvet slowly taking the lead, pulling her across the stage as the lights chased Eleanor’s skirts.

“Well what do you know.” Edna said, coming to stand beside him. “Looks like these humans aren’t as dumb as they look.”

When the dance came to an end, the audience applauded, rambunctious, wild. Magilou pranced back onto the stage like a gaudy, pink gazelle while Eleanor and Velvet made there way off. “Ladies and Gentlemen!” she cried, doing an excited little jig. “And malakhim too, thank you for your wonderful patronage tonight! While we’re done for now, there’s always more for next time, so strap yourselves in and make sure you come back next time. Whether Port Reneed or Hellawes, Loegres or Taliesin, we’ll be sure to raise the roof! Thank you, thank you, and maaaaagikazam!”

She pulled a ridiculous pose. Eizen thought that was the end of it, thought that perhaps this would be just one strange night to add to his thousand year log of memories to be forgotten about. But as everyone filed out, Magilou’s gaze fell upon him and Edna, and with a grin and a wave she said, “Hold up, you two, I think we should have a little chat!”

Phi, stood at the side of the stage, stared at them with wide, doe-like eyes, an encouraging smile on his face. Eizen glanced at Edna, who shrugged her response. Of course. He couldn’t rely on her for anything.

--- 

The rooms the menagerie’s members rented were nothing like their bright and wild personalities. Cheap, bland, and the very definition of temporary, Eizen wondered what kinds of rates they were being paid to perform given their tawdry lodgings. It couldn’t be much.

Magilou lounged across her bed chest down, her legs in the air behind her. The rest of the menagerie stood around, or in Rokurou’s case, leant heavily on the cabinet by the door. “What are malakhim anyway, like carriages?” he said. “You spend your whole damn life waiting for one, and then twenty show up at once.”

“Four.” Eleanor said. “We’ve met four.”

“Four, twenty, it’s the same difference.”

“I don’t think it is.” Phi said. He was sat on the edge of the bed by Magilou, swinging his legs off the side. “You’re both earth malakhim, right?” he asked, looking at Eizen. “I mean, you look like you are.”

“What gave it away?” Edna asked dryly. “And what are you?”

Phi shrugged. Magilou huffed. “Enough about him, I want to talk about me!”

“Business as usual then.” Velvet said.

“Hush! You know as well as I do that when I say ‘me’, I actually mean ‘us’.” Magilou ignored Velvet’s roll of the eyes and focused her attention on Eizen. “So! I think I speak for all of my menagerie when I say that we were surprised to see a duo of malakhim in our audience, and I think I speak doubly when I say that we were surprised to see Laphicet make such an amateur mistake like he did. In all our time performing, we’ve never had so much as a single mishap on stage! Why, I do think the two just might be connected. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Eizen shrugged. “Awful luck follows me around like a bad penny. That’s the way things go for me.” Magilou’s eyes flashed with interest. He ignored it. “So now I have a question. Why did you want to speak to us?”

She snapped her fingers in delight. Sparks flew from the tips. “Hold up.” Edna said before she could speak. “Where are you drawing your power from, if it isn’t the pipsqueak?”

Laphicet made a noise of protest. Magilou grinned deviously. From beneath her hat, something squirmed. With one stubby hand, the creature inside it lifted it, poking its head out; a normin wearing its own oversized hat and a wide smile. It jumped off her head and landed on the bed in front of her, placing its paws on its hips. “Miss Magilou has me to thank for that.” he said, haughty and high pitched. Eizen saw the longing in Edna’s gaze immediately. Whether it was to hug him or destroy him, he couldn’t be sure. “I’m the one providing all the scenery here! My name’s Bienfu, the man behind the man, the great and wondrous—!”

Edna poked her umbrella into him, sending him tumbling off the bed with a distressed cry. “Ah, that’s better.” she said. “I thought I heard buzzing. It’s stopped now.”

“I like this one.” Velvet said. Magilou giggled behind her hand as Eleanor went to rescue the normin from where he had fallen, patting his head softly.

Eizen, who was quite done with the diversions, reiterated his question once again. Magilou was happy to answer. “Don’t you think it a little strange? A ghost ship rocks into town on a dark and lonely night, and then like phantoms two malakhim show up, ready to torment and ruin the townspeople!” she gasped like she was still on stage, and then broke into a grin. “I’m joking, of course, but the point still stands. The Rayfalke Spiritcrest is something to do with you, isn’t it?”

“Of course not.” Eizen said, though he wasn’t really committed to the lie. “It’s just looking for its destined captain.”

“Hogwash!” Magilou said. “Absolute nonsense that is. If I were an ordinary girl maybe I’d buy that kind of story, but let me tell you, we at Magilou’s Menagerie are very much out of the ordinary. We are the devious, the dastardly, the deceptive, the dramatic! And we know malakhim and their ways when we see them.”

“Think she could fit anymore d’s into that sentence?” Edna asked.

Magilou ignored her and carried on. “So, with that in mind, I’ll ask again. Are you the ones who sail on that ship?”

Eizen held his tongue for a moment, drawing the moment out. And then he said, “Sure. Why are you interested?”

“Malakhim pirates!” Rokurou said. “Don’t you see why that would be a maybe even a little bit interesting? Sheesh, if the Abbey caught wind of you they’d go nuts.”

“They wouldn’t be pleased.” Velvet agreed. “But why don’t you get to the point, Magilou?”

“Right, right.” Magilou sat up at that, crossing her legs. “So, the thing is, Magilou’s Menagerie isn’t just some stationary bore of a show. We travel all around, right?”

“As most acts do.” Edna said.

“Except as of late, our shows haven’t been pulling in as much as they used to.” Magilou continued, waving her hand dismissively. “It’s the daemonblight. Everyone’s far too excited about that to come and see our brand of fun. I don’t see why, but, alas! I don’t make the rules.”

“So what are you getting at?” Eizen asked, his interest starting to wane. They were humans with resonance, but just because they could see them didn’t mean he had to bow to their every whim. Humans were fascinating, but they were all the same at the end of the day. He didn’t think he’d ever seen one that wasn’t acting for their own selfish means. “You’re running out of money. What does that have to do with us?”

“A ship would cost! Westgand has been fun and all for now, but we’re getting bored and it’s time to move on. I wanted Port Zekson would be our next stop, but we’ve found ourselves tragically stuck. Tonight’s earnings barely bought us dinner!”

Magilou collapsed on her back dramatically, a cry leaping from her throat. Eizen had a feeling she was over exaggerating. Edna pulled a face. “We should leave these morons to it then.”

Eleanor, who had been mostly quiet, hugged herself. Bienfu sat on her shoulder, his huge eyes peaking out from the brim of his hat. “I apologise for Magilou’s demeanour.” she said. “What we’re—she’s—asking, is that if you are the captains of that ship, perhaps you would consider taking us on as passengers? I understand that this is a lot to ask, and it is forward of us, but we’re sort of stuck right now.”

He crossed his arms, deep in thought. Port Zekson. Eizen hadn’t been to Midgand in a long time, and had absolutely no desire to return now. “It’s not happening.” he said. “And besides, what makes you think I’d go all that way for no pay? You think that just because we’re malakhim we don’t need funding?”

“Who said we wouldn’t pay?” Magilou said. She waved her hand and produced, from seemingly nothing, a tiny bag. It was no bigger than Eizen’s coin, and sat daintily in her hand. “I don’t just present our show, you know. I’m a witch, and you know what witches do? They create hexes!”

Eizen couldn’t believe this. “So you’re going to curse me? I hate to break this to you, but I'm already under one.”

“Oh how rude!” Magilou tittered. “I had a feeling you were. Like I said already, Laphicet would never make a mistake like he did tonight, and you wouldn’t believe the whispers we’ve been hearing of late. If you’re right and misfortune does follow you around, then this is just the thing! A good luck charm.”

Eizen looked at Edna, who simply popped open her umbrella in the middle of the room. “Oops.” she said, not sounding affected in the slightest. “Now I’ll have bad luck too. Don’t suppose you can make another one of those?”

Magilou did some sleight of hand wherein the bag simply disappeared with the movement. “Well, that’s the thing. The materials to make even one of these little baggies are quite hard to procure…and we’ll need all sorts of nasty monster bits for it to work. As it is, I’m fresh out!”

“This is ridiculous.” Eizen said. “So you don’t even have the good luck charm to begin with?”

“Getting the materials wouldn’t be difficult if we had more malakhim with us!” she said, jumping up to her feet. “Why, how about tomorrow? We go out, get the materials, make the bags, and then you can set off with us on board and the sweet knowledge that you’re in the hands of some seriously wonderful fortunes! We’ll be Magilou’s Menagerie, the terrors of the high seas, the storms that rock the boat sides—”

“We’re sorry about her.” Velvet said. “You should just go, forget about us.”

“But Velvet!” Laphicet protested. “I want to be a pirate!”

The thought of the good-luck bag was enticing. He didn’t believe in its magic, didn’t believe in anything to do with it really, but anything that could offset the effects of his domain had to be worth a look. And really, what was a boat ride at the end of the day? Once all was done and dusted, he and Edna could turn their backs on Port Zekson, their little placebo good luck bags in hand, and go back to searching every corner of the world for their own amusement.

“Alright.” he said. “But I’ll warn you now. Travelling with me, it’s not easy. My curse effects everyone around me. I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe on my ship, or even in this little trip out to find the materials you need. Keep that in mind. And also, I have one more condition. Say yes, and my ship will be yours to use.”

“Go on?” Velvet said.

“In your next performance, Rokurou uses that sword. I want to see it on the stage.”

Rokurou’s eyes went wide.

“Whatever you want, malak, I don’t care!” Magilou hollered in delight. “Woohoo! Port Zekson, here we come!”

---

The Warg Forest, past the Fens of Nog, was a nightmare to traverse. Marshy and wet to begin with, Eizen’s presence had only seemed to make it worse. A storm raged around them, the rain heaving down as if someone was throwing buckets of the stuff from the heavens. Edna looked at him from beneath her umbrella, dry and sheltered, and smirked

“It never rains like this.” Rokurou moaned, shaking out his soggy sleeves. “Like, seriously. It always rains but it never rains.”

“Right! Isn’t it fascinating, seeing this so-called curse in action?” Eleanor said. She walked alongside him, holding a spear in her hands. Apparently they weren’t just performers, but fighters too. Eizen found himself wondering about their pasts, about what had made them who they were. Humans lived such short, fleeting lives, a blink of the eye to a malakhim like him, and yet they managed to fit such a great deal of experience into them.

They were looking for the hides of lycanthropes, and the eyes and intestines of boars. Magilou didn’t seemed bothered by the rain, flinging balls of flame at anything that so much as moved. When Eizen questioned if charcoaled ingredients would work, she’d shrugged. “It doesn’t matter! Material is material, an eye is an eye, and hide is hide even if it’s a little bit blackened.”

“So, Eizen.” Velvet said, coming close. “Port Zekson. You’ve got a problem with that place?”

Eizen watched as Eleanor charged after a boar with a war cry. Laphicet and Rokurou followed as Edna and Magilou dispatched a skunk-like creature that had dared creep in on their space. “I don’t know what you mean.” Eizen said, twisting his enchanted bracelets. “Port’s a port.”

“And yet your eyes tell me a different story.” she smiled, but it was more like an Edna-brand of smile. Something cruel, not quite sweet. “Malakhim such as yourself are well travelled, correct? It wouldn’t be strange for some places to have bad associations.”

“There are plenty of places that I’d rather not sail to nowadays.” Eizen said. Port Zekson, Midgand itself, the real Rayfalke Spiritcrest down in Eastgand. Home seemed so far now. He knew the next time he returned he would not be himself. “But what would it matter to someone like you?”

“Just an observation.” Velvet said, though he had the feeling there was far more to her words than that. “You have a past there, don’t you?”

“And where is your past then,” Eizen said, “if you know so much?”

“Port Taliesin.” Velvet replied, curt, her eyes finding not his, but the battle Magilou was now raging with the boar that Eleanor had engaged. A second had joined the brawl, taking on Laphicet and Rokurou. “Aball.”

He had heard of it. “Your group is strange, you know. A bunch of humans with enough resonance to see the malakhim ending up together? How does that happen?”

The boar was refusing to go down without a fight. Rokurou cut through its hide, but even then it remained upright. Velvet stepped forward. “It starts with a hunt in the forest.”

She charged inwards, performing a roundhouse kick with the grace and flexibility of an acrobat. She did not let up, rapid strikes finding home amidst the carnage of Laphicet’s magical attacks. The boar struggled to keep up. She wore it down one kick at a time, and when she took even the slightest of hits, Laphicet was there with a healing arte. When she changed tactics, Eizen was surprised at the brutality of it. Hidden knives appeared from her sleeves, and with no mercy she cut through the boar like it was made of mere paper.

She reminded him of an assassin, and it was then he’d realised that he’d underestimated her. She dusted her hands while Rokurou began to gather the needed materials. “And how does it end then?” Eizen asked.

Velvet looked him in the eyes. “It ends with a girl finding her place in a travelling show, because there is nowhere else she feels alive. Ask us all, and we’ll answer the same. Whether it begins with that hunt, or a broken sword, or a cruel father, or dead parents, we all ended up here.”

Curiosity burned. He wanted to know the middles to those stories, what had driven Velvet to find her place with these people. Velvet said, “How does your story begin then, malak?”

Eizen reached into his pocket. His reaper’s coin was heavy in his grasp. “Depending on where you start,” he said, “it begins with either a girl, or a dragon.”

A roar from behind them. Eizen turned to see a lycanthrope, ugly and huge, approaching them with inhuman speed. “About time.” Edna said. She had been standing off to the side. “I was beginning to think you’d dragged us out here because you wanted to show off, but I doubt you puny humans could take on a beast like this.”

Eizen ran in first. Edna was strong in stature, but weak in pure strength. He was the opposite; he could deal the damage but couldn’t take it as well. Together, they covered one another’s weaknesses, their eyes always on each other’s backs. He slammed his fist into the beast’s jaw at the same time Edna let off an arte, the floor erupting upwards in an icy mountain-like structure. It disappeared almost instantly as it launched the lycanthrope into the air, the beast crying out in pain.

Eizen let loose with a wind based arte, something that had taken him a long time to learn and even longer to master. The green spears he conjured struck the beast as it fell, and with it he remembered Zaveid’s not-so-careful instruction, his lazy grin, the way he gave pointers. “You gotta just feel it, Eizen.” he’d said once. “Wind’s not like earth. It’s not steady, not stable. It’s chaos and it’s free and you’ve just got to go with it. You can’t control it like you do your earth, it doesn’t work that way.”

The wind-spears he had conjured caught the beast in a frenzy as it hit the ground, but it was stronger than he was giving it credit for. It recovered quickly, flipping to its feet, and then Eizen was forced to backstep as it swiped a claw at him. Inches from his face, he felt those claws cut air.

He could feel the eyes of the others watching them. This was the kind of monster that they had wanted help with, not the boars or the skunks or the other dregs of the forest. They were just humans with a child malak, while Eizen had a thousand years of experience and Edna had hundreds.

As the lycanthrope advanced on him, making it difficult to strike, Edna made her move. She ran in beside him, her umbrella in front of her like a spear, her earth artes enhancing its durability as she jabbed it into the creature’s chest. It gave Eizen the opening he needed to slam his fist into its jaw. He felt something crack beneath his force. He grinned at his victory.

But then, as it always did, his curse struck. The rains had made the floor sludgy and slippery. The beast snapped its head back so rapidly that Eizen was caught off guard, its claws slashing the space in front of it. Edna threw herself back out of its range but his boots caught in the mud, leaving him open as he tried to back step away. He caught the lycanthrope’s claws across his face, ripping open his skin from above his left eye to his jaw, four separate gashes that bled freely.

Eizen growled in pain, focusing his power into his fists. The wounds from a daemon hurt malakhim more than any usual creature, like the malevolence that made them up was searing into his skin. “Eizen!” Edna cried. He could feel magical energies from her, the beginnings of a healing arte. He could cast them too, they were both as talented as each other, but she was out of range and there was no way he could start up and successfully cast one when he was this close to the lycanthrope. He roared, earthen might in his blood and in his fists, and then he punched the beast back as Edna bathed him in healing light.

He brawled, the thrill of the fight catching up to him. He could see Edna falling under its thrall too as she began to toy with the lycanthrope more than truly battling it. She took its blows like she was made of stone, keeping its attention on her as Eizen beat it down, vicious and powerful.

But the malevolence around them, from the clawed marks cut into his face to the beast itself, was beating down on him like a sun. He could feel it acutely, like pinpricks in the back of his mind. Malakhim were more vulnerable to it than humans. Water was the most easily corrupted, but earth was just as much a toy in the hands of malevolence’s cruel effects. Eizen had many secrets, but this was his biggest of all; he had already absorbed enough to teeter him on the edge of an irreversible state.

And maybe that was why he lost himself, just ever so slightly. His curse was unkind and malicious, it turned every win into a loss and every moment of quiet into a chaotic din. He stunned the beast enough to gain the upper hand, and when the timing was right, he lost his grip on his malakhim nature and let something a bit nastier shine through.

“Eizen!” Edna gasped. She sounded horrified.

The dragon-like shadow that formed from him was a monstrous thing, For a single second in time it was like he had those scaled, powerful wings. Those shadows threw him upwards, sky bound, and he could see his sister, the beast, and the menagerie. All were tinted red and yellow. He wasn’t sure if he recognized them.

Fire reigned down. Not earth, not even wind. Fire.

He’d only known one fire malak. She was a beautiful woman, though he hadn’t seen her in years. She had helped him when Edna had been young, when he’d been but a boy in the eyes of malakhim, when he’d had no idea how to bring up an infant. Many people knew her, a steadfast guide to many youths, pure hearted, kind, serious. That was the opposite of everything he was in this moment, and yet he was using her element in his malevolent state.

In a flash, in the blink of an eye, he was on the floor again, the moment passed, the smouldering remains of the lycanthrope prone on the floor. Edna was looking at him with wide eyes. He looked at the menagerie, who all stared with varying looks of surprise, amazement, and horror.

How does your story begin then, malak?

Eizen stood there, breathing hard, feeling the malevolence rescind within himself, his body his again.

It didn’t begin with the girl, or even the dragon. Not really. It began with a disagreement, a fracturing of a friendship, and Port Zekson. Eizen was still paying for it. He would be paying for it for the rest of his life.

--- 

They didn’t talk about it. None of them mentioned it. Not even Magilou, who Eizen was sure would fire off a million questions a minute, breathed so much as a mention of it.

It was fine. Humans didn’t understand the relevance of the shadow, of what it meant to a malak like him, and he didn’t intend to spill those secrets. Eizen and Edna dropped the menagerie back at their inn and then went to stalk the streets of Port Reneed alone. Magilou said she needed time to do her magic, and Eizen, though admittedly curious, didn’t want to stay cooped up in their room.

The sun was setting, but people were still peddling their wares. Edna was silent as she walked a few paces behind him. He hadn’t breathed a word to her about malevolence. They had been travelling together for a long time and he’d never said a thing. She didn’t know, he told himself. She had no idea how close to the brink he was. What happened in the forest meant nothing. It was just an arte. Just an attack.

Together they looked at the stalls, Edna’s gaze longing when she saw the one selling stuffed toys. Eizen laughed. “Don’t tell me that you want another. I literally bought you one the other night.”

“I told you, I’m not interested in these stupid human things.” Edna said, a blatant lie if he’d ever heard one. “What do you think about Witchyface’s magic bags, huh? Think they’re worth their salt?”

“I think we’re just going to get a bag of singed bullshit.” Eizen said. Edna fixed her sarcastic grin to her face. “It was a waste of time. A grand waste, but a waste nonetheless.”

“But you still wasted it willingly.” Edna said. “So which is it? Do you believe in the bag of magic nonsense, or are you that desperate for an excuse to go back to Port Zekson?”

That stung. Edna was good at digging her claws in when she wanted. “We’re dropping them off and then we’re leaving.” Eizen said. “Port Zekson has nothing for me.”

Eizen took a fruit from a stall and swapped a coin for it. Edna took one for herself. “You keep telling yourself that.” she said, taking a bite of the apple she’d procured. She ate in silence, and Eizen didn’t have anything to say. Together they watched the humans hurry from stall to stall.

It was difficult to comprehend how they could fit so many experiences into their terribly fragile, fleeting existences. Eizen hadn’t been human. Some malaks had been once, but not him. He and Edna had been born from the earthpulses, the same one, rarities in that they felt their connection to one another when most malakhim didn’t form familial relationships.

“Eizen.” she said. “When are we going home?”

Home. The mountain from where he’d taken the name for their ship. How long had it been since he’d seen it? “Why?” he asked. “Not enjoying the travelling?”

“It’s alright.” Edna said. She looked at the apple, twisting her hand as she inspected it. “Sometimes though, I get sick of it. We’re earth malaks. We don’t belong on the sea, we can’t even swim. Have you ever wondered what we’d do if we sunk?”

“We wouldn’t sink.” Eizen said.

“We could sink. We’ve almost sunk before. Do you remember that time when that shark daemon attacked us? It was nearly as big as our ship and you fell in the water trying to beat it up. I had to fish you out, which was awful because I got soaked and you nearly drowned. Your dumb curse makes it so we nearly sink all the time.”

Eizen huffed at the accusation. “We don’t sink ‘nearly all the time’.” he said. “And I didn’t nearly drown.”

“Please. You’re earth, and yet a water malak could look at you funny and you’d fall over.”

“Is this an attack on my pride, Edna?” Eizen asked. “I’ve beaten plenty of water malaks in my time.”

“Wind malaks too?”

And there were her barbs again. Eizen didn’t wince, didn’t flinch, but he felt the sting nonetheless. She was still smiling, but now he had a feeling she was digging around in him for an answer to a question he didn’t know she was asking. “I could beat any wind malak that challenged me.” he said.

Edna snickered. She finished her apple and tossed away the core. Eizen hadn’t taken a single bite out of his. “By the way, brother.” she said. “You know it’s bad manners to answer a question with a question, right? I’ll let you off this time, but I’m gonna ask again. When are we going home?”

“When we’ve charted the entire world and seen everything we want to see.” Eizen said. “When we’ve plundered ships and taken their treasures. When we’ve found artefacts from a thousand years before I was born, when we’ve found the very edges of the sea. When we’ve tunnelled our way beneath the ocean to create our own personal escape routes to every island in this world.”

“Wow.” Edna said. “Big hopes there. How long are you planning on living? Ten thousand years? Will Rayfalke even still be there by then?”

“We can hope.” Eizen said. The conversation died with that, and Eizen thanked everything that she didn’t press further. It wasn’t a discussion he wanted to have, especially after the events in the forest. He’d named the ship after their mountain home for a reason, to make it feel like home away from home, but it seemed like even Edna got homesick.

He felt guilty. His sister pretended she was strong, but there was so much beneath her facade. He wasn’t stupid enough to pretend that their conversation hadn’t been about something entirely different. She was clever with words, and it felt like his grip on his own secrets was getting slack.

“Let’s walk.” Eizen said. He pocketed his fruit, his appetite having disappeared with Edna’s question. He thought about it, and decided it wasn’t fair for her to have the upper hand against him. “My turn now. A question for you?”

“Spit it out then.”

“Do you regret coming with me?”

He didn’t turn to look at her, not wanting to see her expression. She was good at masking her gaze but he didn’t want to chance seeing the answer written in the curve of her mouth or the look in her eyes. He wanted to hear it in her voice, to find the truth or the lie hidden there, to know if he’d made a mistake all those years ago when he’d been unable to leave her behind.

“Stupid.” she muttered. Her tone had bite to it. “You think I’d make a choice I’d regret? What do you take me for, a moron? Home isn’t just a mountainside, Eizen. Though you’d believe that, wouldn’t you?” she stomped ahead, opening her umbrella and resting it on her shoulder. “Ugh, do I have to spell it out for you? Yeah, home is Rayfalke, but that’s not the only place it can be. Home is also where you are. It’s doesn’t have to just be some dumb pile of rocks.”

Eizen didn’t think he’d feel relieved at the admission, didn’t think he had anything to be relieved over. Despite that, he still let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “Consider me told then.” 

#Tales of Berseria #eizen (tob) #Eizen #edna (toz) #Tales of #Magilou #Velvet Crowe #Rokurou Rangetsu #Eleanor Hume #Laphicet #Zaveid #My Writing

[archiveofolives]

Ring of Keys and Other Stories V

A/N/SUMMARY confessions is set in the younger days of baze malbus and chirrut imwe when high school crushes were all the rage. also i got lazy and totally just used real world foodstuff in this fic. i should also thank adam and eve from only lovers left alive for telling me about einstein’s spooky action at a distance

RATING/WARNINGS g/n/a

WORD COUNT 7,072

AO3 here

—

Being a Guardian of the Whills, one must always look to the Force as an example to model oneself on. It was perfect, graceful, subtle even in its power.

And being the most devoted Guardian of them all, in training though he still was, this was a lesson Baze Malbus understood only too well. Although the beauty of the Force was not something he could realize completely, at least not in his lifetime, he was still determined to take anything that the Force would be generous enough to share to him. Grace was easy—with proper discipline and diet, their bodies could be honed to dance to the music of the Force. But subtlety, that was a different trial altogether.

Especially if one required it to confess one’s feelings towards another. More so if that person was none other than his best friend, Chirrut Imwe, who was probably one of, if not the most observant person he had ever met.

He was the reason why Baze had had to go all out of his way just to set his plan in motion. There was a cherry tree growing out on an abandoned lot towards the eastern face of NiJedha, just a stone’s throw away from the lip of the natural mesa. He and Chirrut had discovered it once during a field trip, when they’d broken off from their friends in search of entertainment. At that time, it had been young and skinny but years of being left to its own devices had fattened it up and laden its lush canopy with bright, red fruits. Baze had been worried that the fast growing industrialization of the Holy City would have required its sacrifice but he also knew that it wouldn’t be long until it would be forced to make way.

What a sad day that would be when it came, Baze thought, as he looked upon the shaggy sentinel which was more foliage than trunk. He had to send out a prayer of thanks to the Force that he wasn’t yet too late when he flicked open a small knife he’d nicked from crafts class (he would return it before the teacher caught him, he swore) and set to work, driving the tip of his blade in scratch by scratch. After that, he ran back to the direction of the Temple of the Kyber.

It was an hour later when he returned with company chasing after him. “Come on!” he cried back to him.

Baze raced him to the side of the cherry tree, just under its full roof and turned to see Chirrut picking his way up the slight slope that would soon be leveled once a building claimed its place. The younger man fell forward with a graceful stumble, scrabbling at the earth in a sort of half-crawl for balance. “Old man! Tired already?” he teased.

“I was doing chores before you found me!” Chirrut hurried towards him, tripping a little on the way. He reached out, aiming for Baze’s shoulders and arms.

Baze gripped him by his elbows instinctively to steady him. He was laughing. “Old man!” he jested again.

Chirrut glared at him. They tousled briefly, each hand and kick landing in the air or in a block, no one quite managing to grapple the other to fling them to the ground. They stopped, breathless and laughing.

“So what?” the younger man gasped, all smiles now. “What did you want me here for?”

Just you, Baze realized with a slight and delightful surprise. It made his heart flutter, in a way that only Chirrut could whenever the popular boy chose his company over anything. He was up here alone with the one who held his affections. He felt so important. He could think of so many things they could do, things they could talk about, so many games they could play.

“Look at the bark! I wrote something there.”

“What?” Chirrut turned towards the dark trunk. “Where?”

“Just there!”

“Where is it?”

“Look closer!”

Chirrut shuffled towards the tree, leaning, eyes squinted. There were several times that Baze’s heart stopped beating when he thought his friend would spot his work but Chirrut kept looking. He would often raise his hand as if to feel the wood but at the last minute, he would always put it back to his side.

“Look down,” Baze advised.

Chirrut did. He peered a little closer, then broke out in a grin. “Chirrut and Baze were here,” he read. Actually, it was only supposed to be Chirrut & Baze but panic attached a small were here just under the second name. Okay, so maybe it was too subtle.

Chirrut appreciated it happily all the same. “You’ve left our marks!”

Baze prepared to lie. He had put together some speech about NiJedha’s growth and how he wanted to tell the world they’d been there before the chance was taken away.

“But why is your name under mine?”

Well, he certainly didn’t expect that criticism. And he doubted he could explain that when he began, he’d wanted to enclose their names in a heart. His thoughts stammering, Baze only shrugged, unseen though he was, and said, “No reason.” Damn observant Chirrut!

“We must always be together,” Chirrut decided with scholarly authority, nodding in agreement to his conclusion as he straightened up, hands behind him. “Our names must always be next to each other, in the same line. We are sworn brothers. We stand as equals.”

Baze remembered the time he and Chirrut had playfully picked up a pair of willow branches and pledged fealty to each other to the same tree. They were much younger then, still children, but though the years had passed, no one was yet backing out on an oath that wasn’t meant to be so serious and permanent.

With half a shrug, Baze acquiesced to Chirrut’s observation. “So I’ll find another tree and carve it in the correct way.” That would give him another excuse to write Chirrut’s name—and his name beside it.

Chirrut looked back to him and smiled brightly, clearly equally pleased by the prospect. Baze could feel his heart swelling and his ears burning. It was difficult not to smile back in the same way. “I’d love to see that,” he said. He looked upwards towards the bountiful canopy. “It’s too bad there aren’t any fruits, though…”

“Fruits?” Baze blinked, then craned his head up to point at the blushing bunches overhead. “There’s lots of them right here.”

Chirrut hurried beside him to look up the same way. “Oh…oh, oh! You’re right, of course.” He laughed. “Shall we eat them together?”

“What?” Baze sputtered, snapping to the shorter man who stared back at him in the same heartbeat, eyes as big as the cherries themselves. He’d almost repeated the question back to Chirrut but just the thought of mentioning it to his crush was enough to set him on fire. But even still, he had to say something because Chirrut looked like he was expecting him to thaw the ice.

As a natural defense, both broke out in a boyish laughter.

⚭

Eating cherries together.

Weeks have passed since. Now it was nothing more than an old joke, the newest of many, shared between two dear friends, unspoken—never spoken of—but one look is all it takes to set them both cackling and snorting.

Even the comfort and protection of Baze’s solitude were not enough to stop its intrusion. In his quiet hours, when he was supposed to be memorizing his verses or preparing his mind for his prayers, he would suddenly chuckle and grin like a fool. In fact, these days, just the thought of his friend alone could do that. A little mental discipline was all it usually took to ask Chirrut to sit at the back of his mind while he finished the task at hand.

And then it rained one day, one of those big, gigantic ones that only happened rarely. Baze was ecstatic and went off to find his best friend to share his excitement.

He spotted him in one of the outer, higher gardens of the Temple, soaked to the bones but he wanted to finish his forms. The other disciples had given up, hurrying out of the rain in squeals, passing him with barely a nod of respect. At any other time, he might have had a mind to speak to them about this behavior, no matter if he wasn’t all that much older than them.

But he was too entranced to care about politics just then. They say that people often loved someone who reminded them of another loved one—perhaps a mother or a father. But the one Chirrut reminded Baze of was the Force—beautiful, everflowing. He knew that if the Force ever became a person, Chirrut was how it would look like. The way he curled his fingers, twirled his hand and spread it out like a flower in spring. The way he reached for the rain and spun to its beat. The way he arched his body.

Chirrut ran to him after his final salutation, laughing while Baze chided him for his stubbornness and foolishness and ordered an urgent visit to the bath. He embraced him tightly, frantically rubbing warmth onto his back and into his arms while he dragged him inside. Ever since then, he could dream of nothing but Chirrut’s laughter, and the shape of him in his arms.

Now he carried a basket full of cherries under a white cloth while Chirrut rambled on about his duans on their way to one of the training rooms; there was something he wanted to try, he’d said. The last time Baze tried to confess, he’d been too subtle and worried that the message would not be acceptable. Now, he wondered if he was being too forward, even though the official story was that he enjoyed the joke too much.

“…so once I reach my next duan,” Chirrut turned to face him as they stepped through the threshold, “we’ll be together more often.”

Together more often. That sounded like a dream.

“So is that what this is all about?” Baze asked, setting the basket next to a rack of fighting sticks. Across the half-open double doors was a set of windows looking over the sprawl of NiJedha where walls would have stood. The afternoon sun set the polished, patterned floor gleaming like a mirror.

As he collected a pair of staves, Chirrut took his place in the middle and wrapped a length of fabric across his eyes, his silhouette surrounded by an aura of the sun. Baze wondered if there was anything this man did that was not impressive, and if he really wasn’t handpicked by the Force for all his inherent elegance.

“This is something else,” Chirrut said, turning slowly to the direction of Baze’s voice. He stretched out a hand. “Staff.”

Baze pressed one to his calloused palm. Doubts anchored his lips to a suspicious frown. “Are you sure you wouldn’t much rather get an Elder to walk you through this? Someone with more experience.”

“You trust the Force with your actions but not yourself?” Chirrut laughed, backing away. “How can you be a true Guardian if you cannot trust your own vessel?”

“You speak like a book of verses.”

“I trust the Force.” Spreading his feet, Chirrut aimed the top end of his staff to his friend, who imitated his form at the opposite end. “That’s why I covered my eyes. I want to see if I can do it.” He grinned at the pun he made. “Talk me through the forms. Like you do with the younger classes you assist.”

“I thought you trusted the Force?” When Chirrut refused to honor the jab with another, he had no choice but to begin.

They went through the forms in order, moving around each other at such a careful pace that would have made it seem like they were practicing a difficult dance—which Chirrut may as well be. His brows met, tight with concentration, under his plain blindfold and he had such a frown on his face that it seemed as if every step he made was a violation against his very reason for living.

This was quite unlike the man in his dreams—who even under the mercy of the weather moved as if the rain had been summoned by him and no other. Baze knew it was the blindfold that threw him off. Sightlessness could do terrible things to one’s balance. Even Chirrut’s breathing was graceless, mindful where it should have been natural. It improved a little towards the end of the session, when he could predict when their poles would meet and turn his closest ear to the sound in time, but it was still ragged.

Was Baze worried? He couldn’t say he wasn’t but he couldn’t say he had reason to be either. There was logic behind Chirrut’s mission that anyone in the Temple was sure to understand. But Baze could not shake off the impression that Chirrut walked on thin ice. That the price of Chirrut’s failure was much higher than he could see.

By the time they had finished, the light beyond the windows had burned to a golden glow. Soon a rosy, purple dusk would be among them. Baze remembered the basket of cherries he’d brought along as he returned the staves to their stand. He cheered up a little. It would be good to make Chirrut laugh, again.

“Hey, Chirrut. You hungry?” He spun to look at his friend. Chirrut stood frozen, off-center in the room. His blindfold was off, and there was an alarming look on his eyes that Baze could not have predicted but felt so easily across the distance.

Fear.

Chirrut stared at where Baze once stood,  looking so much like a boy faced with a nightmare. If one didn’t know Chirrut all too well, one might have thought that there was a bug that disturbed him, but Chirrut was devoted to preserve the lives even of pests—for they, too, were a part of the Force. That the object of his horror was invisible only served to alarm the man who loved him, even more than he already was. “Chirrut?” he called to him, hurrying to his aide.

He was within Chirrut’s reach when the younger man looked up in shock. There was something about his eyes that had changed that Baze couldn’t quite put his finger on—but then he smiled. And everything but Chirrut’s smile faded from his memory. Fingers reached for each other and entwined themselves. Baze gripped him tightly.

“I’m here,” he reassured him, savoring Chirrut’s relief. “I’m here.”

⚭

“But that’s what I don’t understand,” Chirrut spoke suddenly. “If permanence is a myth, then what proves the law of entanglement?”

They’d come a long way from the war Baze had waged that morning when Chirrut woke him up with a roach dangling helplessly by its antenna. He’d insisted then that he wouldn’t forgive and forget but there they were, walking side by side down a corridor, him juggling a pair of peaches the size of his hands, that would lead one to the prayer room and another to the Elders’ quarters. Dusk had fallen and the automated light panels on the walls, upon detecting their movement and the time of day, came on slowly with a soft honeyed glow. This was the usual scenery that greeted them beyond the training room after what Baze had come to call as their Blind Sessions. Progress was kind to Chirrut; several meetings after the first had honed the man to be sharper and faster in spite of his challenge.

But Baze still worried. This was no initiative that came from the Elders, cascaded through their networks and their comms. Chirrut refused Baze’s offer to invite their teachers to see his growth, insisting that he only wanted to do this with him, and him alone. Honor was quick to fill Baze—until he noticed that it was not so much that he was Chirrut’s undeniable favorite, but that Chirrut had become cagey about his motive.

Even to him, his own best friend. Chirrut kept a secret from him, even as he let him, and only him, in one.

He hoped the Elders could help him. He was at a loss; guilt curdled his bile just at the thought of him confessing his unease, breaking his promise to Chirrut but nothing killed him more than seeing the same haunted face on the man he loved the first time he’d taken off the blindfold.

These days, Baze was always trying his best to cheer him up. He did the same now. And it would be good to be distracted from the sin he was about to commit not long now. He raised a brow, and asked, “Why do you ask that?”

“Well—” Don’t mind if I do, Chirrut may as well have said. He always loved to speak of the Force and all that it affected. Raising two fingers that touched at the tips, he drew swooping brush strokes in the air until each had parted, one to each side. He explained, “—it is true and proven that two entwined particles, when separated even at opposite ends of the galaxy, will continue to be altered and affected in the same way as the other. As if they were never parted. That being the case,” his fingers swam in the air once more to be reunited with each other, “how could permanence be a myth when we have two elements that will always be as one?”

Baze had to remind himself that he was not in a conversation with the most perfect pair of hands he had ever laid eyes on, and that Chirrut was not speaking about the two of them. “Well, I think,” he stopped juggling (he’d actually long stopped juggling for the opportunity to watch Chirrut move) and cleared his throat, buying time to collect his wits, “I think…that there must be a law or a theorem that we’re leaving out here.”

Chirrut twirled his hands again to make fists, then moved both to the small of his back. Matched by a pensive pace, he turned to face his elder brother.

Baze burned instantly at the attention, a heady mix of its source being Chirrut and the pressure he was laying on him. “Y, you must be mistaking me for a text book!”

“It’s hard to see the difference in the dark.”

Baze swung a fistful of peach at Chirrut in retaliation who bent back in the same heartbeat, leaving a wide gap between himself and the offending hand. At the next, those nimble fingers which he’d just earlier admired enclosed upon his sleeve in a death grip that broke open his fist. The peach rolled off and landed smoothly in Chirrut’s free hand while he ducked and spun to the direction of a corridor branching out sideways. Man and fruit bounced in happy meeting, although the man put on a shit-eating grin for good measure.

“I’ll see you at dinner, Baze!” Chirrut waved and started backwards to the prayer room at the end of the path.

Baze was too busy flexing his stunned fingers and waving his hand, trying to regain some sensation in it, to return Chirrut’s goodbye…but mostly, he was also too busy pretending he was upset and not actually fighting off his own grin and failing miserably. Perhaps it was true that even if Chirrut beat him to an inch of his life, Baze would still be too drunk with adoration to avenge his pride. He loved watching him move as much as he loved watching him, period. That slender form, that long arm, those broadening shoulders of his.

But he did come up with a plan for revenge when he remembered that he still had one peach left—and by revenge he meant an excuse to engage Chirrut’s attention again. Because clearly, he couldn’t wait for dinner.

“Oi, Chirrut!” He didn’t wait for the man to turn before he pitched the round fruit with a force to attack. Chirrut had tensed to receive it, and for a second, Baze wondered what sort of acrobatic splendor the man was going to grace him with again.

So imagine his surprise when Chirrut’s acrobatic splendor sent him crumpling to the floor after the projectile landed with a clear smack on his face.

He might have ripped his throat to pieces when he roared his name, or beaten the speed of light when he dashed to his moaning friend. “Chirrut!!” Panic echoed on the quiet walls. No doubt one too many droids would have heard it and reported it to an Elder. A grand mixture of worry, horror, shame and hysteria gave Baze confusing signals; he wanted to cradle the bleeding man for there was suddenly so much blood but he didn’t want to joggle him in case they were dealing with a concussion. He couldn’t see it so well, Chirrut was hiding half his face in his hands. “Chirrut…!” he wheezed, tears coming on. In a spark of inspiration, Baze grasped his shoulders to steady him before he did himself more damage. “Chirrut, I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay,” Chirrut groaned, his voice stuffy and his own eyes leaking. “It’s okay. Just call the medi-droid, please. My nose is broken.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” Baze was wheezing while he fumbled for his comm piece to send out an alert.

“Baze, please, call the medi-droid.”

“I just did. One should be on its way. You’re going to be fine, Chirrut. I’m here.”

“No, I’m fine! You don’t have to stay here.”

“Chirrut, I can’t just leave you!”

“Baze, please!” Chirrut was crying, voice high and thin with fright. “Just go!”

It stung—more than Baze could ever imagine, could ever be prepared for even when he knew he deserved more than that. His body was frozen. He could sit still and pretend that he wasn’t there but he couldn’t just leave!

Fortunately for the both of them, the coveted droids had arrived to sort out the mess before Baze could make the wrong decision. Chirrut was carried onto a repulsor lift and escorted to the med lab with haste.

Baze remained where he sat on the floor, next to two peaches the size of his hand.

⚭

He couldn’t come up to an Elder to spill Chirrut’s secret after what he did. The guilt was bad enough—but now he couldn’t imagine betraying his best friend after what he’d done.

He didn’t see Chirrut at dinner, couldn’t find him no matter who he asked. He skipped his own prayer, reading and meditating hours because he couldn’t focus on anything other than his dear friend and was practically stuck in the dinner hall like a ghost lingering between life and the Force.

It was late in the evening when one of their Elders told him that Chirrut was having his dinner in the kitchen. Baze ran.

By the time he had reached the massive room, a wide circle doused in bright, golden lights that was filled with panels, machines, fresh produce and polished surfaces, the kitchen droid was already collecting Chirrut’s dishes and he was refusing seconds.

Baze had not yet formulated his apology when he crept next to Chirrut drinking his tea and sat down near him on the looping bench. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Baze?” Chirrut asked the room, and everything went still. The question repeated itself to him in weak echoes. Guilty, Baze couldn’t give an answer.

So Chirrut’s hand darted next to his knee and found Baze’s fingers. They gripped each other, like tethers in a storm. That was the only time Chirrut turned to face his friend. Baze had to stifle a wince when he saw what laid across his best friend’s face, a silver band of sorts with its own quiet lights, meant to prevent infections and further damage to the already wounded nose.

But Chirrut smiled, and all was well. The gesture was slight but it spoke volumes to Baze’s heart, enough to melt away his guilt.

“You don’t look so bad,” Baze said suddenly, even though his face looked swollen and the bruise was creeping up to his eyes. The kitchen droid wheeled back in and placed fresh cups of tea and a steaming kettle for the two friends. “I was really worried about you…there was so much blood.”

“They say my nose will heal in three weeks,” Chirrut reassured him, looking embarrassed but still cheerful. His voice had a nasal quality to it, mixed with the effects of his medical band, like it had gone through several channels before it cracked out of a comm system. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Does it still hurt?” Baze whispered, a hint of dread in his voice as he crept closer.

Chirrut tested his cheek. “A little if you touched it.”

Baze sighed, drawing back. He appeared discouraged even though they both knew how these injuries worked. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…I didn’t know why I did that.”

“It’s not your fault. It was an accident,” Chirrut responded quietly. “I know what you were expecting me to do. I tried but…” he shrugged, “I might have had one too many peaches.”

“That ought to teach you to stop stealing peaches from your elders.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Baze growled and Chirrut laughed. Too bad it was short-lived, cut out by a wince and Chirrut touching his cheek again. Baze frowned, drawing his eyebrows low between his eyes.

“It hurts to laugh,” Chirrut explained with a voice that asked to be excused for being such a killjoy. “So you better not make me laugh until it’s all healed up.”

“That’s going to be difficult.”

Even Baze surprised himself with how much he meant what he said, how much of his heart bled out to those quiet words. The kitchen seemed to still itself, anticipating the silence that could only come from so much honesty. Chirrut’s face remained impassive, but he kept his eyes averted from his friend. If he blushed, the lights hid it well.

The Force strike him but Baze wanted to kiss him so badly! He didn’t realize how full those lips were until the absence of words—for Chirrut loved to talk—stopped them from moving.

Maybe he would do it. He inched closer. He just had to put an arm around Chirrut’s back, move in slowly so Chirrut would know what he wanted to do and could speak up if he so wished. Just the slightest touch just enough to feel those lips on his…

“Don’t make me smile, too,” Chirrut ordered him. His voice popped Baze’s balloon and sent him falling back to reality, where he hadn’t noticed that Chirrut had been fighting off a grin. “It also hurts to smile.”

Well then, it would probably hurt him to kiss his lips, too.

Baze couldn’t say he wasn’t disappointed…but at least they were still friends. Eloquence left him, it was the price he had to pay for dreaming about Chirrut’s lips in front of the man himself. The Force probably thought that was very rude of him and saw fit to punish him this way.

He tried to recover with a shrug. “For what it’s worth, I still think you’re—” —handsome. That would make Chirrut smile. Baze bit his lip hard.

Chirrut turned to look at him in some sort of expectation. But when Baze refused to continue, he understood why and turned away from him again, facing forward. With a decisive nod, Chirrut said, “Say it to me when I’ve healed.”

Three weeks sounded like a long time, but maybe then, he’d have sorted out his feelings properly in a way that would allow Chirrut to receive them easily. With a nod of his own, Baze agreed.

⚭

A week later, the swelling had gone down—so Baze was alarmed to find out that his best friend had gone to see a doctor.

“Did he say where? Or who?” he’d asked one of their common friends who’d told him the news when he came to call on Chirrut that morning. He’d filched some freshly steamed maple cakes from the kitchen, a shared favorite of his and the younger man. That Chirrut appeared to have left in a hurry—for he had not even thought to leave a message in his comlink—worried Baze who thought this must be some sort of an emergency. He wanted to follow and make sure he was okay, that he had a friend when he needed one the most.

He received no suitable answer to his question, however, and was left with no choice but to wait for Chirrut’s return.

Baze dropped by to check on Chirrut again mid-afternoon. This time, he’d just caught the man as he was leaving his room. He raised the bag of maple cakes that was supposed to have been their breakfast as his greeting. Nothing in the world would have prevented that smile from splitting Chirrut’s face ear to ear.

“So what did the doctor say?” Baze asked, chewing down a mouthful of cake. They sat by one of the Temple’s outer ledges, feet dangling in the air, overlooking sprawling NiJedha. It was exactly the kind of place that would earn them a night in the detention room if they’d been caught.

Chirrut coughed and cleared his throat with some sweet tea. “Doctor? Said who?” he popped another cake in.

“Wany.” Baze frowned. “I’d gone to look for you this morning.”

“Must have mistaken me,” was Chirrut’s easy conclusion, shrugging. “I was in one of the quiet rooms, meditating. I had a dream and I wanted to reflect on it.”

“Ohhh?” Shifting closer until they were elbow to elbow, Baze nudged his friend and whispered conspiratorially, “What did you dream about?”

Chirrut only looked at him, smiled, and stuffed a maple cake in Baze’s mouth.

⚭

A week later, Baze chanced upon Chirrut hanging kneeling pads in one of the outer gardens of the Temple, just one level up from where he had been chiding a pair of younger girls for causing mischief on one of their older teachers. Giddy with excitement, he might have called this meeting fated.

He put his hands side to side of his mouth and whistled. Chirrut looked down, and he waved.

He wondered if maybe his eyes were fooling him, but Chirrut hadn’t raised his own hand in response before he returned to the task at hand. Baze tried again but was met with the same cold response.

“What?” He couldn’t even put his confusion to proper words. Chirrut could hear him but how could he not see him? He’d been tempted to try again, this time with his name, reproach from the Elders be dammed, but Chirrut had picked that opportunity to leave.

“What in Jedha’s…!” Frustration bubbled up from within Baze’s chest. How could Chirrut not have seen him! It made no sense at all. It wasn’t like Baze stood against the light, in fact he stood in a position where he would have been more easily noticed from above! It was almost as if Chirrut was…

Realization dawned slowly on Baze, but still too fast for his liking. He didn’t believe it at first, and knew that the chances he could be right would be staggeringly low with so little evidence. But how could he have thought of that…if he had no reason to?

⚭

A week later, Baze could no longer keep his silence.

There could be no subtlety this time, and there can be no guilt. He wondered if he should have at least tried to hesitate when they hailed a speeder that would take them to the edge of NiJedha but it was hard to consider it when every distance that separated them from the Temple of the Kyber, from safety and comfort, was something he rejoiced. Because it meant that finally, there was no going back. He would have no choice but to do this.

After their lectures, just before the sun was about to set, they’d taken a detour to the market to buy half a watermelon to share between themselves. They raced each other to the most number of seeds spat over the edge of the mesa, a contest Chirrut won unanimously, and sat back in blissful satisfaction, trading stories and rumors and gossips. They were comfortable.

Baze seized his chance when he started to get scared of ruining the moment. He jumped to his feet gaping at the skies, then jabbed a finger up at them with all the strength he could muster. “Chirrut, look at the size of that thing!!” he cried.

“Where!” Chirrut got up after him, searching the horizon. “Where?”

“There, over there! It’s so huge,” Baze gasped, shaking with excitement. He ran past Chirrut in an effort to follow it with his outstretched hand. He stood back when Chirrut took chase. “You see it? Look at it go!”

Chirrut stood gaping, and then finally: “Yes, I see it! You’re right, it’s so big.”

The sound of Baze’s heart breaking, under the weight of so many sudden revelations. Now he didn’t know what to do. He’d exposed Chirrut but what for? What then? Should he even have tried?

“What do you think is it, Baze?” Chirrut asked, eyes still on the empty skies. Was that a hint of desperation on his voice?

Baze wanted to embrace him. Baze thought about pretending that the lie was not a lie. “I don’t know…a ship?” He tried anyway, for what it was worth. He threw his voice but he could no longer put his entire being in it. This was all a mistake. “It looks like a freighter.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” Chirrut said. Baze flinched. “I wonder why it’s so quiet, though…”

Finally, the truth. Baze breathed a sigh of relief, even though he knew that the worst had only come, perhaps to ruin them once and for all. The growing silence seemed only to draw a raging river between them.

Slowly, Chirrut turned back to look at him past his shoulder. “There was no ship…was there?” he asked, voice quieter than the wind.

Baze shuddered at its frostiness, like a brisk wind had passed. He shook his head, then added conscientiously, “No.”

Chirrut frowned. “That was a very cruel trick, Baze.”

Baze wanted to crumble like the rocks of Jedha, right where he stood. But he nodded, and said, “Yes.” Not even a day into the relationship he so wanted, and he was already experiencing the pain of hurting the one that he loved.

Chirrut’s steps made scratchy echoes as he turned around to face Baze finally. He looked pale, all of a sudden. Baze had never seen him look so…unhappy. “How long have you known?” he asked.

“Since you’ve been lying to me,” Baze said. He wished he hadn’t. Chirrut looked stung but they could no longer allow themselves to be complicit to falsehood. “About the blindfold and the time your nose broke. About seeing the doctor…” Now that he spoke of them out loud, he couldn’t believe he’d missed all the clues when they were just there, waiting to be seen. Baze had to wonder if things would have been much better had he realized the signs sooner but he thought it was impossible to say. Maybe things wouldn’t change, or maybe things could have gotten worse, much, much worse than his imagination could prepare him for. Like what was happening right now. “How bad is it?” he asked.

Chirrut refused to answer, casting his gaze down to his feet.

Baze couldn’t take it anymore. He marched up to his silent friend and reached for an arm. “Chirrut, how bad is it—!”

“Nearly!” Chirrut snapped, snatching his wrist from Baze’s grasp, stumbling back with his momentum. Pain was the artist that etched his features, his face a canvas for his frustrations and his fear but the tears would not come. He gritted his teeth in a bid to be the master of himself. He glared at the dirt between himself and his friend. He could not look at him. “I’m nearly blind,” he snarled. The final admission.

Was this what Baze was expecting? Maybe. It should have felt good to be right, to finally know the truth, to have reached the bottom of the well.

Baze wanted nothing more than to disappear, though. To be gone from that moment, to be back in the market when he and Chirrut were out-haggling another humanoid who wanted their half of the watermelon. At least Chirrut had been happy, then. Mischievous and playful.

“I can,” Chirrut choked, raising a hand to an invisible wall, “I can barely see past my arm anymore. And even then,” he sniffled, “even then it’s coming closer.”

Baze tried to imagine it. To have this wall of blackness close into you, day by day and there was nothing you could do about it. No power. No help. No friend. He tried to see himself in that position, standing at the top of a cliff, a heavy nightfall devouring all that he loved. No matter how much he shouted, how much he prayed, it would keep coming. How could you defeat something you couldn’t touch?

He came close to Chirrut, his feet shuffling loudly in the empty afternoon. NiJedha was somewhere behind him but he’d forgotten all about its existence. A hand rose to press itself against Chirrut’s outstretched palm. Their fingers parted and curled around each other.

“I’m here,” Baze said to Chirrut’s sad countenance, hoping to comfort him. “I won’t be far. I won’t let go.” Chirrut nodded, simply so he could make some sort of reply. “What did the doctors say?”

“That it’s hopeless,” Chirrut said. “That I’ll go blind in months…weeks.”

“What did our Elders say?”

“Trust in the will of the Force.” Finally, Chirrut looked up to him and that was when he saw it. Some parts of his eyes…had gone milky white. That was what he’d seen back in the training room, when they’d first tried the blindfold. “It’s not that I don’t believe them anymore, or that I no longer believe in the Force…but I wish that it was not all that they say. I’m scared, I don’t know what to do! I’m alone in this fight.”

“Is that why you never told me?”

Chirrut smiled a little, sad and small. “I thought that if one less person in my life, the most important person in my life, didn’t know about my eyes, I could still pretend that it was not happening. If I’d told you, I’d just as well admitted to myself that I was going blind.” He shrugged. “I should have realized that the most devoted Guardian of them all would find out soon enough.” That was a joke. Baze knew Chirrut was just trying to lighten things up.

If anything, it just made him want to kiss him more, this noble fool whose struggling spirit would not lose its mettle. He restrained himself with the back of Chirrut’s hand, pressing his lips to his knuckles. It was the first test, maybe, of Chirrut’s acceptance of his affections but Baze wasn’t even thinking about his own heart now. Chirrut’s comfort preceded all of his. “I was…coming up with all these ways…to show you how much I’ve come to love you. Writing our names on the cherry tree, picking the fruits because we enjoyed that joke too much,” they both chuckled, “stealing maple cakes…but I kept sending the wrong messages because you couldn’t see.”

“I wish I’d seen them all,” Chirrut said, making Baze’s heart beat a little faster. “I would have enjoyed tormenting you, playing dumb.” For once, a grin broke free from his sadness when Baze snorted and frowned. “I would have driven you mad. That would have been a sight to see.”

“That plan wouldn’t have worked,” Baze grumbled.

“No,” Chirrut agreed quietly, his thumb stroking Baze’s finger where they touched. “No, it wouldn’t have. The most devoted Guardian would have seen through my ruse.”

So that was that, then.

In Baze’s obsession with making the right moves, doing all things at the right time, he never did imagine how Chirrut might respond. That it might have been possible that they were both nursing the same kind of love for each other. He might have been disappointed to find out that there was no breath of relief, no burst of a song or mad whooping. But this quiet admission was how it happened. And Baze was fine with that. Now, he was just glad that the last secret had been spoken, and there was no need to hide anything from each other, anymore.

They drew closer. Baze pressed his lips upon each of Chirrut’s fading eyes, then kissed him on his forehead, like a pledge of his devotion. His arms wove around Chirrut’s sturdy form just as Chirrut had sealed him in his own embrace. Far beyond them, a bruised dusk began to swallow the golden sun.

“What do you think should I do?” Chirrut asked suddenly, voice small and quiet. He tightened his arms around Baze.

Baze did not answer immediately, even though he knew all along what he wanted to say. “Trust in the will of the Force,” he said, “when you’re ready.”

“I like the sound of that better,” Chirrut said after a thoughtful pause.

“I know the Elders always taught us how bad fear is, but we’re only mortals. We can’t always be immune to fear, which clouds our minds and our hearts and our judgment.” It was fear that led them to where they stood—the fear of the truth, a truth mishandled. Baze could see it all now, and he was gladder for that. “Give yourself some time, Chirrut.” He kissed his forehead again. “And I’ll be here.”

“It’s sad,” Chirrut said. “The days where I can still see you and look at you with my own eyes are numbered. Soon I might forget how you look.” A bleak face of the future.

Nevertheless, Baze could find the will to assure him, “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”

#spiritassassin week #spiritassassin #rogue one #chirrut imwe #baze malbus #liv does sa week #seaofolives original #sa fic

[zahra-kha]

Return

They came back to everything in ash and ruin. The rains had lost since dried, so when Sahrin and Fitaan returned to the encampment, naught lay but dust and blackened remains of their livelihood.

A troupe carried everything on its back. Granted, the two of them had taken everything of vital importance with them when they’d left but...their home, their life, their family had been here. 

Sahrin’s steps hit the ground with heavy thuds as his knees threatened to buckle under him. Trembling, gloved hands reached toward the charred mass he’d once called home, as if willing it all to rise back up to its former glory. Silent pleas were answered in kind, devastation and blackened wreckage lay beyond his splayed fingers.

After a long moment he stiffened, turning to Fitaan. A rumble rose from his chest, but Fitaan opened his mouth to speak first.

“Whatever happened, it was weeks ago,” he said, surveying the area. His wide nostrils flared as he breathed in the dry air. A dark brown hand rose, resting against Sahrin’s shoulder to steady his nerves. “We will find no answers here, there’s no stench of death. No uneasiness. Consider it a blessing and let us return to Hyrstmill.”

Nothing was amiss when they returned to the village. Familiar faces greeted them as always, although perhaps one or two avoided direct eye contact at first. Fitaan hung back while Sahrin zeroed in on them, turning on the charm to approach them with pleasant smiles and gentle concern about events that occurred while they were away.

“Do you know if there was a fire a while back near our encampment?”

The genuine confusion on their faces threw the two men off. Did no one truly think nothing was amiss? Granted, the encampment was far from the village so as to keep out of trouble and for them to practice without bothering anyone but surely a fire large enough to engulf the entire encampment would have drawn some attention? Caused concern?

“We did notice smoke a few weeks back-” one of the villagers commented. “but it didn’t spread and there didn’t seem to be a fire...” the two villagers looked between one another, their expressions slowly morphing to genuine concern as they regarded Sahrin. “Is everything alright?”

“Have you seen the other members of our troupe?” Fitaan offers a change in subject.

Perhaps he felt a bit paranoid, but Sahrin thought he saw one of them shift their gaze away again.

“Oh!” the other villager stepped up, drawing his attention away. “I’d seen the other three, your young one’s been stopping by quite a bit, but the other two haven’t been around for a while. I think they left for a trip or another, they didn’t quite say...”

‘The young one’ was likely Zahra. Outside of Cecilia, who left the troupe for whatever reason or another, Zahra had been the youngest.

Fitaan took over from there. He stepped in and politely informed the two that there’d been a small fire and the encampment had been damaged and could the two of them stay in temporary lodgings for the evening? They’d travel to Gridania in the morning to file a proper report with the Adders (they wouldn’t, but the villagers didn’t need to know that). They needed to find Zahra and get some answers.

Hyrstmill wasn’t exactly equipped to house a bunch of people, but they were led to a small hut where they could put their things and rest for the evening. It held a few beds, mostly for travelers and adventurers, and had a small kitchen area for whenever they’d felt like having dinner. After spending most of the day and afternoon on the road, a hot meal would be welcome to calm down all the questions spinning in their minds.

Sahrin wanted to dig for more answers, but he wasn’t sure if the villagers would know much more. From the genuine confusion he saw on the people he spoke with and the lack of tension in the air when they arrived, no one had known about the fire. That suggested a few things - one, the fire had been intentional and it’d been controlled. Which, had he taken a moment to actually investigate and take a look around instead of standing there shell shocked, he would have likely had picked up on that immediately. Thinking back, the surrounding area hadn’t been scorched at all.

He knew things were amiss with the troupe, but he hadn’t known to what extent and why. When Armand had attacked Zahra, he’d been too focused on getting justice for the girl that he’d forgotten about everything else. Or maybe he just hadn’t thought it was that serious. Or -

“Sahrin,” Fitaan placed another hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You will overthink yourself to death. Go get cleaned up, I’ll make dinner.”

The warmth on his shoulder snapped him out of his thoughts. He pulled his hands from his hair and relaxed his body, letting out a sigh. Heavy steps echoed on wooden planks as he trudged from the hut they were staying in over towards the public baths.

“Sahrin.”

A familiar, yet cold voice pulls him toward the shadows of a storage hut nestled toward the back of the village. The hard glow of two amethyst rings bore into him from the darkness of the entrance. Stopping in his tracks, he turns and heads towards the shed, unbothered as the glow fades away as he approaches.

The shed holds little. A few farming supplies, some dry foodstuffs. As he walks in the door closes shut behind him and there’s the sound of a lock clicking into place. His ears flatten against his head and his fingers curl into claws, ready to strike. Still, he feels at ease, there’s no bloodthirst, no desire for his life. Anger, definitely. If he hadn’t known those eyes, seen them since childhood, he likely would not have walked inside the hut to begin with.

Still, the chill in her voice sends a shiver up his spine - even if he doesn’t find her a threat, her anger is palatable.

“Zahra...” he slowly turns towards her voice, a brow raising. “Have you been here this whole time?”

A match is struck. Sahrin squints as light blossoms inside the pitch blackness of the small hut as Zahra lights an oil lantern. She’s wearing a dark blue outfit, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. A rarity, but it looked good on her. Setting the lamp upon one of the shelves against the wall she finally regards her former mentor.

[“How’d the hunt go?”] the question is asked as simply as if she were asking him how his day went and not something as severe as whether or not he had completed passing judgment on one of their own. It was such a departure from her usual mannerisms that Sahrin had to double take.

“Zahra?”

[“Did you kill Armand? I didn’t think it was a complicated question, Sahrin.”]

It’d also taken him a moment to realize she hadn’t been speaking to him in common since he’d entered. Oddly enough, he found her dialect off when she was angry. Akin to a foreigner speaking Hannish. He couldn’t quite place the accent though. Eastern?

“He’s gone.” he responded, regarding her seriously. “Did you bring me here just to ask that? What happened to the encampment?”

[”No.”] the subject was dropped just as easily as it was brought up. Zahra leaned against the shelves, arms crossed. Her tail curled around her calf, her usual sign of when she didn’t want someone to easily tell what she was thinking. [I’m the one asking questions, Sahrin. And I want answers. I deserve them, my friends deserve them. And all the questions lead back to you.”]

For a moment, he could have sworn her eyes flashed red. She moved away from the shelves, unfolding her arms as she began to slowly walk toward him. Unease crept up, the sensation that for the first time since knowing Zahra he may not be entirely safe became a reality, and he desperately wished for his weapons. His heart clenched, and a deep, overwhelming sadness washed over him at the thought.

“What happened while I was gone?” it was a rhetorical question, more whispered than spoken, but she caught it nonetheless.

[”I took a knife to the gut and was poisoned by your longtime friend Sai, Esila is dead, and apparently, someone really, really doesn’t like you. Enough to go to magistrate Orhan.”] he let out a heavy breath at that. [”What happened is, I learned my ‘family’ were nothing but a bunch of strangers wearing smiles and playing pretend, and I will get to the bottom of everything. Even if I have to use the Kouris name to do it.”] she stopped in front of Sahrin, looking up at him. Her eyes flashed between red and lavender. Within their depths he saw barely contained rage.

[”You will meet with my friends and I. You will answer our questions. Or so help me I will use every dirty trick, every awful thing I’ve learned from my father and you and Fitaan will never see the homeland again. I will personally see to it that this entire troupe burns to the ground just like the encampment. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no innocent party, you’re all guilty and I swear I’ll bury you all for what you’ve tried to do to me, to Cecilia - all the murdering and scheming. All of you will face justice. I will be in contact.”]

She spun on her heel and was heading out the door, leaving him reeling. Only about half of what she’d said actually made sense, the rest hit him like a punch to the solar plexus. Esila dead? Sai stabbed and poisoned Zahra? Of course he had suspected something was wrong with the troupe but not even in his wildest dreams had he suspected - 

Are you sure about that? Look at what happened to Armand and ask yourself that question again.

“Zahra, wait!” he tried to chase after her as she unlocked the door and headed out. It couldn’t end like this. They needed to have a proper talk. Like they used to. He needed answers too! “Zahra, stop and talk to me!” he reached out and grabbed her arm.

If asked later, he’d be unable to answer if he’d had been able to defend against her blow. Perhaps because it was Zahra he hadn’t expected the strike, or maybe it was something else. Either way, the next thing he knew he felt heat. Not wind, which would have made sense, but a pure, white-hot burn that slapped against his chest and sent him flying back toward the hut. It knocked the wind out of him as his back slammed against the front frame. Stars swam in his vision and he struggled to focus on the sight before him.

Zahra stood, her weapons drawn, feathers of flame encircled her before fading into vapors. From a moment it looked as if the flames were dancing along her skin and hair, the latter which was normally pink now appeared to blaze a deep crimson, like her eyes. In the low light of the setting sun, he reminded her of the goddess of fire.

<”You do not get to touch us,”> she spoke to him in a language he did not understand, but it fit the strange accent he could hear earlier. It did sound vaguely familiar, he’d heard it before somewhere. <”You lost that fatherly privilege when your ‘family’ betrayed me. Your beliefs, your principles, we believed in you, trusted you, and you brought us into a lie.”> her hands clenched onto the chakrams and for a moment, he truly thought she would strike at him to kill him. Instead she turned and continued on.

#zahra kouris #zahra kha #ic

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The Definitive Guidebook to lodges dubai the palm ارخص موقع لحجز الفنادق

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