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ginemrys · 3 years

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dozens of colours of thread

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TW: this oneshot mentions suicidal thoughts and goes deep into depression. also brief mentions of parents being ill/dying

Everyone had noticed it, had noticed that James Potter was acting weirdly. He took long walks alone at night, walks that usually led him up to the Astronomy Tower.

WC: 2600

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The dregs of sadness had started simmering at the end of his fifth year, after he had completely destroyed someone else’s life thanks to his own stupid arrogance. He’d spent most of that summer sulking silently while also trying to hide how he felt from Sirius, who had it a lot worse than him. He’d tried to stay positive for his friend, who had been disowned by his abusive family and moved in with James, because Sirius needed positivity around him.

Sixth year had been rough. The looming war was growing ever closer, tensions were high behind the castle walls. Mary MacDonald had been attacked, as had countless other Gryffindors and muggleborns. Then Sirius had told Snape, told him where to go to find Remus in his werewolf form. James and Snape had both almost died because of what Sirius had done. For weeks it had seemed like James and Remus were finished with Sirius, their conjoined fury pushing him away. It hadn’t been until Lily Evans had spoken to James in a way she’d never done so before, told him to forgive Sirius, told him how much the man he usually called brother was hurting, that James spoke to him again.

Even though Lily had somehow become his friend, James still felt the sadness. Because friendship was all they could ever have. Snape was lurking around what seemed to be every corner when the two of them were together, even if there were others around them. James had been hit with many a curse, his skin needing to be knotted back together thanks to Snape’s horrific dark magic. It was the year that he spent the most time in the hospital wing.

Then came the summer again along with a heavy letter and an even heavier Head Boy badge. Sirius had sworn hands down that it was some kind of mistake and that the badge was meant for Remus. James had even considered writing to Dumbledore to ask if he’d messed something up, but he also knew that the old wizard had an odd sense of humour. So instead he wrote to Lily, telling her that he had received the badge. She’d written back, which helped to alleviate the sadness for a short time as his eyes roamed over her words. She’d also gotten a badge, they’d be working together as Head Boy and Girl, and she also said that she was excited about it, that he would be a good Head Boy. James had smiled at that, smiled until he saw the ‘ your friend ’ as the bottom of the letter. That’s all he would ever be.

Being responsible was difficult with Sirius as his best friend. Because Sirius always wanted to pull some kind of prank or hex some Slytherins. But James couldn’t do that any longer. Seventh year was the first year that James hadn’t received a detention within the first month of being at the school. The sadness was worse now, his parents had caught some rare illness, dragon pox the healers had called it, and so were mostly bedridden. James did his school work on time, patrolled the corridors with Lily, removed points and dished out detentions.

Everyone had noticed it, had noticed that James Potter was acting weirdly. He took long walks alone at night, walks that usually led him up to the Astronomy Tower. He’d stand with his bare toes curling over the edge, a small, minuscule wondering in the back of his mind, how bad could it really be if he let himself fall?

Lily kept smiling at him. She kept finding ways to touch him, whether it be a brush of her hand against his arm or a ruffle of his hair. It confused James to no end. Her smile was always so bright, so beautiful. It was a smile that seemed to be reserved for him, and him alone. But it was also a smile he couldn’t feel he could return, because of the sadness.

James kept the sadness at bay as best as possible around other people, he tried to stay happy, to stay the same positive man he always had been. But it was even harder when Dumbledore asked him to join the Order of the Phoenix, because even though he had said yes before the headmaster could even finish asking, the fear of death still rose up in him.

It was winter before he told anyone. He found himself at the top of the Astronomy Tower once again, his toes frozen in the ice cold air. Not that he noticed the cold. He didn’t realise he was crying until he started sniffing, his sleeve wiping at the tears on his cheeks. He nearly lost his balance and fell when she spoke.

“James? What’s going on with you lately?”

He turned to see her there, her worry for him clear as day on her face. She looked scared, her hand halfway outstretched like she was about to try and grab at his shirt and pull him away from the edge. James suddenly realised what this looked like, what it was. So he stepped away from the ledge, moving back towards sturdier ground.

“Evans… Um… Nothing, I’m okay.” He avoided her eye, staring down at his bare feet.

“Merlin, you look frozen…” Lily whispered, taking a step closer to him. “Why didn’t you wear more layers, James? And shoes?”

“I’m okay.” He repeated.

“No, no you’re not.” She shook her head, taking another step towards him that almost forced him to look at her. “You’re not okay, James, and you haven’t been for a while.”

His lip trembled as he stumbled back, only stopping when he felt the wall behind him. He slid to the ground, his knees tucked against his chest. “How did you find me?” He asked softly, his hands in his hair.

“Well, Remus told me you sneak out of your dormitory most nights, and you seemed so down today I was worried about you.” Lily said, moving to sit next to him. She didn’t sit too close, leaving a couple of inches between them. “You didn’t even see me in the common room as you walked out, so I waited a little while then followed you. It wasn’t like I performed some really difficult magic to scout you out.”

“Right.” James said, rubbing his face with one of his hands. “Well, sorry for worrying you, Evans. But I’m fine, I just like getting some air.”

“Don’t lie to me, James Potter.” Lily snapped, making him start. “You were crying in here before I said anything and you looked like you were going to-”

“Maybe I was.” He interrupted, looking at her. “Maybe I was going to, because everything is so shit right now and maybe I would be better off for it.”

Lily blinked at him, and James could see how deeply his words had affected her. Her eyes welled up, her hands shaking a little where they rested in her lap. “Don’t.” She said after a long pause. “Don’t you dare. You mean too much, James. To everyone around you, to your friends, your family, to me.”

James swallowed deeply then, his hazel eyes widening beneath the wire frames of his glasses. What could she mean? She hated him, sure they’d been getting on better recently, they worked well together and joked together. But she hated him. He meant nothing to her.

Her hand touched his, and she winced. “You’re like ice.” She whispered and soon enough there was a small blue fire burning away in front of them, warmth spreading through his bones. Lily pulled off her jumper and with another flick of her wand it became a blanket. She tried to spread it over both of them, but it wasn’t quite big enough. So Lily shifted closer, their hips meeting and their thighs pressing together.

As numb as James felt in that moment, he had to admit that her body heat felt nice by his, her warmth seeping into his skin. Before he could help it, a tiny sigh of relief escaped him as his fingers started to thaw out beneath the blanket. She must have placed a warming charm on it.

“Talk to me.” Lily said, her voice cutting through the silence after a few short moments.

“I’m just having a rough-” He cut himself off before he could finish, shaking his head. “No… I was going to say month but… Actually, despite what everyone thinks and says, I’ve had a rough few years. But you can stop worrying, Evans.”

“No, I won’t. Because this isn’t you , James.” She spoke up again, her hand finding his beneath the blanket. He kept his eyes fixed on the stone floor in front of him, knowing that if he met her gaze he would never be able to look away. “Sirius told me about your parents, told me everything. He said that you wouldn’t mind if I knew, I hope he was right. My dad- Remember he died, James?”

He looked at her then, his eyes snapping to meet hers. Of course he remembered. She’d raced out of the Great Hall during spring of their fifth year, tears streaming down her face. She’d been gone for a week and for the first time ever Lily Evans had been behind on her homework.

“I know about wanting to keep things private, I know about wanting to pretend everything is fine in front of others before finding a spot to cry in.” Another memory stirred, one of James seeing Lily’s name alone in a classroom on the map, of him seeking her out. Of her telling him to go away before crying against his chest as he held her. Only a few months after that she’d screamed at him after he had been the cause of her biggest heartbreak. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped you.”

“Because it’s not just my parents being ill, Evans. It’s everything.” James finally admitted, unsure of whether it was just to her or to himself as well. “Because I know that for years I’ve been everything that would disappoint them, that I’ve hurt people, people I care about a great deal.” He might have imagined it, but her cheeks seemed to turn a little pink at that. “Because there’s arseholes out there that hate people like you, just because of who you are, that no matter what I say or do there’s nothing that can stop them. Because I want to protect muggleborns, protect my friends, protect my family. But at the end of the day I’m just a seventeen year old kid that can do a little transfiguration and can duel. And ride a broom.”

“You’re more than that.” Lily said when he stopped to draw a breath. His words had tumbled out of his mouth after so long of keeping them trapped behind a smile. “James, you’re an incredibly talented wizard. Magic comes so easy to you, I’ve seen you in class. You don’t even need to make notes, you just figure it out so quickly. You’re kind, you’re smart. Sure you’re a little hotheaded and arrogant at times, but you make up for it in the way you treat your friends.” The hand that wasn’t holding his had moved to his cheek, making James’ heart lurch up into his throat. “You care so deeply, I was too stubborn before to see it. It’s shown in the way you ruffle up Remus’ hair when he’s looking peaky, when you help Peter with a spell. When you comfort Sirius after he sees his brother with the Death Eaters.”

“Have you been watching me, Evans?”

“Yes, I have actually. Because you’ve been worrying me for a while, and because you’re my friend. More than that really.” She definitely blushed that time. “Your grief is warranted, your sadness and your doubts are completely valid. But they’re not all that you are. You’re a great man, James Potter, not just a star chaser that can non-verbally transfigure a desk into a pig. “You’re a good friend, a trustworthy one, and Merlin, anyone who has any sense loves you.”

James blinked at her a few times, drinking everything she said in, the fog in his brain starting to disappear at the same rate that the warmth was seeping back into his skin. Maybe she was right, maybe he was more than that.

“I’m not saying you have to wake up tomorrow morning and be happy.” Lily continued, apparently not noticing the effect her words were having on him. “I’m just saying that you have people who care about you, who want to help, who want to burden some of the weight on your shou-”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence, her words cut off by James’ lips pressing against her own. His hand dropped hers as he moved to cup her face with each of his hands, pulling her lips to his. He didn’t know what had given him the nerve to do it, maybe the Gryffindor in him had reared its head finally. She was still for a second, her lips frozen against his.

Just as he was doubting his decision, she responded. She moved, her hands sliding up to rest on his chest, fingers clutching at his shirt. She leaned into him, pushing herself up and into his kiss. While James had been attempting to keep the kiss sweet, feeling Lily respond so eagerly set him ablaze.

Though the tips of his fingers were icy on her face, James felt like he was burning up with heat. His tongue slipped along her lower lip, prompting her to open for him, their mouths meeting again and again in a delicious slide of lips and tongue pressing together. One of her hands reached up to his hair, tugging on his soft black curls. James moaned at the feeling, a hand of his own dropping to her waist to pull her impossibly closer.

A small whimper escaped Lily’s lips when he moved away, her lips red, her eyes blown. They were both breathing heavily, their cheeks were flushed.

“I’ve been wanting you to do that for ages.”

“I’ve been wanting to do that for years. Wait, how long is ages?”

Lily’s face somehow got even redder as she looked at him, the tongue that had just been in his mouth darting out to wet her lips.

“Since last year, after the Quidditch final.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. You made me wait, Potter.”

“It won’t happen again.”

Whichever one of them leaned in first, James couldn’t tell. But all he knew was that Lily’s hands were back in hair after she had climbed onto his lap, knocking the blanket away to get closer to him. Her mouth was working on his neck before he managed to say it.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” Lily asked between kisses. “For snogging you? Because for that you’re very welcome.”

James grunted when she bit down on his neck softly, his head leaning against the stone wall behind him.

“For saving me. Every night, I was a little closer.” He whispered, his words drawing Lily away from his neck, her green eyes meeting his hazel ones again. “I was so cold for so long, Evans, numb to it all. But you, you came in here with those blazing eyes and your kind soul. And now I’m warm again, I can feel. I’m not completely whole again just yet, but even now, I’m being stitched back together.”

“Then let me keep threading the needle.”

#jily #james potter #lily evans #harry potter #marauders #marauders era fic #jily fanfiction #jily fanfic #angsty #james is a sad boy #lily saves him

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queenofvestfold · 4 years

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Run away with me

Pairing : Sigurd x reader

Summary : you’re the daughter of a Jarl who promised you to a great warrior for political purposes even though you are madly in love with one of the youngest sons of Ragnar. As you start to think that there’s nothing you can do other than complying to your father’s choice, you came with something that could alleviate its decision in the most sweetest way.

Warnings : first time, explicit smut, fluffy puppy love, it might sound a bit angsty but I swear it’s in the better ways and with a happy ending, non-protected sex (protect yourselves kids that’s important! -not in my writing though because there are no such things as STD’s in my kinky fantasy world, isn’t great?-)

I’m french and english is not my first language -ofcourse-, I think it’s the most important warning because mistakes can be found, so don’t hesitate to tell me about it!

It is at night and night only that you could meet the one you love.

Being the daughter of the famous Jarl Hingfrid you were promised to a great warrior 3 times your age that you hadn't even met. Your father didn't care about your feelings about it, even if he knew you were in love with someone else, Sigurd. No one ever made you feel that, you were in love with him like you never thought you would be with anyone.

He courted for months, writing songs and singing them to you on your secret shore near the village. He never tempted anything that would have led you to an unladylike position, the only moments his body touched yours was when you were holding hands and when he bid you goodnight by kissing the top of your hand. These weeks had been the sweetest of your life even though you knew it couldn’t last. The marriage was approaching and you couldn't indulge in this idea of marrying this man who would be the first to kiss and sleep with you.

That day you told Sigurd to join you in the wood cabin at night, and he came, wondering what was so important for you to disobey your father and leave the house at night.

The fire was burning in the middle of the room, and you patted the edge of the bed before he could say anything, asking him silently to sit next to you.

You decided to gather your courage and leaned toward him, letting your lips brushing his before kissing him tenderly.

You could feel him tense under your touch, you could tell it took all his strength to stay still and not letting himself go weak under your fingers that lingered in his hair.

"My love, what are you doing? You know we cannot" he muttered, his voice almost breaking under the emotion. You could see in his eyes with internal conflict that was torturing him.

"I don't want to marry this man. I don't want him to share my bed let alone be my first! I want you Sigurd, please, make feel what it is to love someone entirely. Make love to me, so I can cherish that memory until my last breath." You begged him.

After these words his hesitation vanished almost completely. He kissed you passionately, his hands gripping your waist to pull you on his lap. Even if both of you wanted to make this moment last, to relish every second and touches the eagerness and desire that was held for so long made it difficult.

He removed your dress as you were untying his shirt and breeches. Sigurd laid you on the bed and stood up to remove his last piece of clothing.

He crawled on the furs to lay next to you "Are you sure that you want this? That...you want me?"

You closed the gap between your two bodies for only answer. Crushing your lips on his, you felt him growing hard against your thigh making you blush uncontrollably. You let your hands wander on his torso without breaking the kiss that became hotter and messier.

He left your now swollen lips to drop sloppy kisses down your neck, alongside your collarbone and your hardened nipples, licking and sucking them.

You clenched your fingers around his hair between two huffled moans.

He abandoned your breast, only to go lower...and lower. His mouth found your already dripping wet folds, exploring your most sensitive areas with the tip of his tongue. While his mouth took care of your sweet spot, his fingers were preparing your entrance to receive him. Slipping three fingers, slowly one by one, waiting each time for you to adapt to the new sensation. Never breaking eye contact with you as he wanted to see your face twitching under the pleasure and your pupils dilated with lust. When he saw that your body didn't clench around his fingers anymore and that you started to crave for more, he withdrew. While you gave him a disappointed sigh he rose to your level, resting between your legs, his length already leaking stayed on your lower abdomen. You could see a slight hesitation in his eyes on whether he should take what was promised to another or if you would regret it.

You took his chin in your hand, giving him your most determined look and took his manhood on your other hand. You started to stroke him then rub it against your swollen folds, ending by guiding him slowly inside of you.

This sight made you both whimper at the same time. You didn't understand what was happening inside your stomach but you knew that without this little hint of pain you would have already cum at the feeling of his shaft throbbing inside you. The pain disappeared rather quickly under the trail of kisses he gratified to your neck and the sweet nothings he whispered in your ear.

You started to grind your hips against his for him to realize how ready you were for him. Answering to your silent prayer, he started to move back and forth lovingly, you were not experiencing any pain given that how tender he was. You locked your legs on his hips, accompanying his thrusts by swaying your hips at the same time as your hands rested on his back. He couldn’t suppress those throaty moans that came out of his mouth at each of his thrusts feeling how tight you were around him.

You both knew you couldn’t last long, the tension that was in the air for so long was finally about to explode as the finale proof of your love.

His thrusts were getting messy as he knew his release was close “I’m going to come, kitten” he warned you ready to pull out.

“I know, I want to...feel you inside me” you managed to answer between your moans, clenching your walls around Sigurd while you kissed him.

Your words made him come even quicker, spilling his seed inside of you in a loud grunt as you both came undone at the same time. Leaving him panting he buried his head in the crook of your neck where he left few kisses as you absent-mindedly rub his back the time you came back from your high.

Regaining some strength he cautiously pulled himself out of you and wiped your folds and his shaft clean. Only to let himself fall next to you with an enamored smile, covering your body with the furs.

“Run away with me.”

“What did you say ?” you asked afraid you didn’t hear him correctly, the hand that was caressing his torso dropped in surprise.

“You heard me. Run away with me, don’t go back to your father. We can start a life somewhere else just the two of us where we will be free to love each other, where our children would grow safe and carefree. What do you say?” he was a bit tense waiting for your answer but you could see his look overflowing with love.

“I say that I don’t know what I have done to deserve a man like you.” you managed to say without being able to contain the tears running down your cheeks. Feeling his arms hugging you tightly again his chest as you lean to kiss him lovingly.

#vikings #vikings history channel #vikings fic #vikings imagine #sigurd #sigurd snake in the eye #sigurd ragnarsson #sigurd x reader #sigurd snake in the eye x reader #sigurd ragnarsson x reader #sigurd imagine #sigurd fic

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eternalstrigoii · 4 years

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Your Own - II

We have something they didn’t plan on: alternating POV. I Borra (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) x Desert Warrior Dark Fey (Reader); Maleficent x Diaval; Aurora x Philip; Conall x A Break.

Yet another love-filled shoutout to @vespertineoracle for putting up with my nonsense + loaning Nyvi where he’s needed.

“Dwellings space out along here,” Borra traced the open swath of farmland on the map between the stone walls of one human kingdom and the since-crumbled wall of thorns around the moors. “They’re surrounded on all sides but the sea.”

It was a matter of concern, and for good reason. Forays into the moors rarely went above single-pair scouting parties, and almost never included those who were not Conall, Borra, or you anymore.

“How do they survive?” Ini wondered aloud, scowling at the shapes meant to represent high peaks and rolling valleys; dense fields of crops nearly walled with grain. If not for the danger it held, the beauty of the rolling landscape bathed in night would’ve pleased you immensely. (You ran your tongue against the backs of your teeth at the memory of a melon stolen from a vine, its sweet, green flesh sugary and easily rent by your talons in the safety of the nest.)

“With help,” you replied, banishing the memory as quickly as it came.

Borra met your eyes, and you shifted your weight to the balls of your feet to keep your wings from drooping. He’d gone out alone the night before; he was as tense before he left as you were when he did. He cared for those defenseless creatures, some of the last of your kind left mostly-undisturbed. (Your kind, even if they weren’t precisely yours; they could do nothing to alleviate your plight, though there was much you could do for theirs.) You were the shield at his back, and you stayed to protect them while he was gone. You’d watched the sea for ships, for lights, for anything that could’ve been a threat until he returned. Unscathed, which pleased you. Angry, which did not. There were more poachers, and one of them got away. With a fey, he presumed, for he never saw the little creature return.

And now he seethed. He plotted, restless, at your side.

“Can we monitor a route?” Ini asked.

You were thinking less of scheduled routes and more of establishing your own sort of battlements, your own stations around the moors where they could be stopped before they entered.

You nearly thought Shrike had come to join you when she landed, except she stalked toward you with much too clear of intent. “Is it true?”

You were all torn away. Borra’s head quirked.

“Conall found a newcomer. One of us, out there.”

The since-crumbled wall of thorns, your mind reminded though you shoved the thought away.

You stood with him, followed without being prompted. Whispers betrayed collective curiosity, though no one dared approach. No one should; migrations were rarer and rarer these days. It was as though, beyond your self-imposed isolation, nothing of your people was left.

Maybe there weren’t. Maybe this one was all that remained.

You followed the scent of iron-burned flesh to the healers’ nest. You stood behind him as Conall kept pressure on her wound while Nyvi, cradling something that did not look like a bolt or the head of an arrow, placed it into the black stone bowl. It hissed, boiling the water while it burned off her blood.

You rested a hand on his back, watching the seawater froth and churn. The object bobbed, small and round. Compact. Like a stone for a slingshot, easily fired from a distance.

“They plucked her from the sky,” you whispered.

Conall’s gaze lifted. They were both soaked to the skin, you realized, and they had yet to unwrap a strange, bird-skull decorated material from around her head. It looked like leather, though why one would wear leather armor on their head puzzled you for a moment. Just a moment. Until the severity of her wound regarded you, and you tore your eyes away from the blood-soaked cotton Conall held to her skin.

“Will she live?” Borra asked, though not even he could keep the tension from his voice.

“She won’t die,” Nyvi responded. “Conall brought her in time.”

“Who is she?” you managed, though your voice was hardly above a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Conall replied, his voice even and low. Betraying nothing that the bone-dressed fabric plastered to her skin did not. “I watched her fall into the sea.”

You looked to him, though you knew he’d already decided. The wall of thorns was not made by collective strength or unity amongst the moor-folk; the crumbled wall of thorns had to be hers. They had to be her doing, though you couldn’t imagine why she would let them fall.

“Borra,” Conall cautioned.

He looked to you. You nodded without needing to be asked; the others could stay. If there was a chance he’d be fired upon, you wouldn’t let him go alone.

“Suren.” His voice was less guarded with you; don’t do this.

You had gone last down the woven flight-tunnel, though, and that meant you would be the first to leave. So you did, with Borra at your back and something like fear weighing heavy in your chest.

The others watched you leave as though they knew you would once word reached you. You wondered if they knew about the iron ball withdrawn from her side, and you bristled at the thought. You didn’t know her, yet you didn’t want her to die. Humans shed blood often enough at the expense of your people’s lives, people you had known since you fledged and those who had been lost long before you existed. Outsider though she was, she was one of you.

You kept close to the water with him. Your ascent hugged the cliffs. It was cool and quiet with thin clouds passing before the moon; the high twinkle of stars painted the black sky in a hue of glittering magic.

He held out his hand, and you fell back. Your wings flattened; you coasted alongside him into the low branches of a nearby tree.

There was a horse coming. It struggled across the river, with the water rushing violently around it, but it was sure-footed and its rider…

Was not dressed like a poacher. Not at all.

You scowled and lowered into a familiar crouch, keeping an eye on the big, white beast and the golden-haired child perched on its back. Her cloak was as white as its fur, and the floral pinkness of her dress made your eyes narrow.

Some part of you wish she’d seen you, quirking your head like the hawk watches prey. Saw the moonlight on your golden eyes and faltered. But it was the part of you that also held those moor-folk dear, and the part that backed your confusion as the girl swiftly dismount. “Maleficent?!”

The moor-folk gathered as she ran over the grass and the moss. They knew her.

“Godmother?!” Her voice cracked. She sunk onto a chair of woven branches, her slender body wracked with early sobs.

You looked to him, refusing to believe what it was you thought you saw. He was always so near to you in thought that if he believed it, you would’ve also.

But he watched her with sharpness in his eyes, and you shifted your weight nearer to him as though in preparation for attack. It would not be the first time you’d witnessed human deception.

“Please,” her voice was small and breathless, “come back.”

The moor-folk didn’t know what to make of her, but they gathered. They gathered like they wanted to comfort her. Like they knew her, and the absurdity of the thought nearly made you shake your head. Humans do not commune peacefully with fey, they never have.

“She’s not on the moors,” another voice called, and you raised your talons in preparation.

“Oh, Diaval!” the girl gathered her skirts and ran from the branch-chair into the arms of another man – human, you thought, though the only human smell came from her. “I’m so happy to see you.”

“No one’s seen her.” So they did commune with the fey. These two, at least. They understood their language, and the moor-folk…cared for them? Knew them in return? “She’s nowhere to be found.”

Not to them. But you knew where she was, and you knew who she was, though you waited for confirmation.

They both looked wrought.

“What if she never comes back?” Diaval asked, and suddenly patted the front of his feathered coat, “What if I’m stuck as a human forever?”

Then what are you? you thought, quirking your head again.

“I have to find her,” the teary child replied, and you bristled.

You can’t, you shan’t, and you don’t deserve to. Your kind shot her from the sky.

They looked off into the peaks, and you followed their gaze to the highest of them – the one that would make the best fortress, should their people need to be gathered.

“She’s the only one who can break the curse.”

Curses. Humans communing with fey. Absurd.

And yet, you still looked to Borra in hopes he thought the same. As though your uncertainty wouldn’t be mirrored.

Curses. Humans communing with fey. Poachers on the moors, and a dark fey nesting in the peaks none the wiser. None of it made sense.

“Have you ever gone there without flying?” the girl asked Diaval.

“No,” he admitted. “It’s a sheer drop. It won’t be easy.”

“We must.” The girl was…willful. Strange. She moved across the moors like she knew them well, and the flare of concern in your chest when she approached the little creatures wasn’t a response you could stifle.

“Leif?” she paused before one of the tree-men gathered along the forest’s seam, “Would you help me get there?”

The tree men communed, all three of them, before agreeing.

“You should let me go first.” Diaval joined her. “She may not…” He paused, as though struggling to find words. “She may not be open to your company right now.”

The child had her shot from the sky.

You bristled so hard, the flare of your wings came so abruptly, that Borra had to rest a hand on your shoulder to stop you from disturbing the trees.

“Please.” The child’s voice broke again, and real tears came this time. “This is all my fault. I need her, Diaval.”

The not-human was her mate, you thought in passing; he didn’t smell like fey, but the pain that flickered clearly across his face betrayed his agreement. He feared for her, the half-dead fey Conall brought back to the nest. There could be no one else. You hoped there could be no one else.

“We’ll find her, Aurora,” he said, drawing her close again. “I promise.”

You hated doing nothing, but nothing was what you did. When they left for the peaks, you and Borra took to the skies with information that you thought made no sense separately or together.

Not to anyone but Conall.

You left them to make sense of it on their own. In the safety of the nest, with Ini watching for ships or lights or flying projectiles, you had fewer qualms about leaving him on his own.

Or, so you told yourself. But you had to see her.

She slept still, her dark wings unfurled to her sides. They were preened enough to properly dry, though that didn’t stop you from combing out a spot of matted feathers when you saw it.

Nyvi redressed her wound. Again. You could tell by the growing pile of saturated bandages that he’d done it several times in your absence.

She was beautiful. There were chips in her horns like they’d been clipped by weapons, but they were nearly pristine. Her hair was long and straight, the color of wet bark. Her lips were the color of ripe berries. She was of the forest, then; appropriate that Conall of all of you would find her.

“Did you find those responsible?”

You tore your eyes from her face to offer Nyvi use of your hands. He accepted them willingly, offering you the pad of cloth that would continue to absorb her blood as long as it flowed. You held pressure while he gathered new bandages for her wound.

“We know they came from the fortress on the other side of the river.” Ulstead, you thought with mounting disgust. A name like spitting up a half-eaten bone. “She was there, and then they shot her from the sky when she departed.”

“Why would she go to a human fortress?” He slipped the bandages under her with the ease of pouring sea water, and wound them tightly around her stomach.

You were silent for a moment. It made no sense to you either, but neither you nor Borra could deny outright what you’d learned. “Because she has a human daughter, and it was a matter of courtship between her human daughter and their prince.”

His hands paused. He looked at you like you’d grown another set of horns.

“I know. Conall believes she’s already begun forging peace.”

“And what do you?”

You believed only what you knew, and the black marks around your wrists may have been covered by your gauntlets, but the ones around your ankles never were. The piebald scald on Borra’s back and sides. The lameness in Nyvi’s left wing.

“I believe what I see,” you whispered. “How much blood has she lost?”

“A deal. She’ll be weak for a time, but she should recover.”

Maleficent. You thought her name over, and it was nearly on the tip of your tongue when Nyvi gently moved your hands to finish folding her bandages. They were separate from the ones around her chest, covering her in place of armor.

“She won’t die?” you verified. It was because Borra had taken to protecting the creatures of the moors, you justified to yourself; she was one of you, whether or not you knew her. Your wariness, your hesitation, wasn’t mirrored in your mate. He wanted to protect her just as fiercely as the other little creatures who couldn’t defend themselves. He wanted to protect her even if she was shot down for attempting to forge an alliance between humans and fey.

“She won’t die.” Nyvi’s hands closed over yours and gave them a comfortable, chilly squeeze. “Come. We need to let her rest. I imagine Borra and Conall will be holding council soon.”

You nodded, fully in agreement, and yet you lingered.

You were used to rage when they tried to take your peoples’ lives. You seethed with him at the vanished moor-folk; every vanished fey was to be presumed dead for good reason. But, at least for the time, you were sad for her.

“She was all alone out there,” you said before Nyvi fully left. “With a human for a child and another creature for a mate.”

“She’s home now,” he said and caught your fingers once again. “Let her rest.”

You did, allowing yourself to be guided from the nest in which she slept with the cushion of shed down beneath your feet muffling your retreat.

You were sad for her, and you were sad for Conall, and you were, in part, sad for yourself, because his rescuing her from the bottom of the sea proved that there could be no diplomacy. If your people were to have peace, there must first be war.

“If Conall hadn’t found her, she would be dead.”

One of the forest-women nearby shifted restlessly. You knew her from the last celebration; she’d just welcomed a child into the nest, her first with her mate. They weren’t even a moon old.

You all had vested interest in Maleficent. In what became of her. Her existence was as much a joy as a threat, and, though Conall and Borra were largely in agreement, the gravity of your newfound situation escaped no one.

He told them of her daughter’s search. He told them everything – of the girl, of Diaval, of the moor-folk and his time protecting them. He told them how, in all that time, she evaded sight. Conall pressed that her defense of her human child shouldn’t come as concern, and Borra agreed; it wouldn’t be the first time the fey were blamed for carrying off one that was unwanted. But it changed nothing of the circumstance that brought her to you, the potential for that same child’s betrayal despite what you’d seen.

The only advantage that you had in regards to housing her was that no one launched ships. Not yet. Because the moors were surrounded on all sides but the sea, and that made the moors a clear advantage.

He held up the iron bullet, and the sound of burning flesh set your teeth on edge. He was used to pain, and you sought to be just as comfortable, but it was different when it was him. The sear of iron on your skin could be ignored, but the possibility of his pain could not, even when he didn’t flinch.

You were grateful that Nyvi stayed close. That his wing brushed yours even when it was physically difficult for you to unwind your talons from your palms long enough to provide a gentle touch in return. You had to brush his wing with your own in thanks; you couldn’t recall when last your circumstances escalated so quickly. Poachers. Escape. A mysterious dark fey shot down from the sky. A mysterious dark fey communing with humans. You should’ve distrusted her, and you did not, because she was alone and as badly in need of family as the rest of you.

Entertaining the alternative was too much. A traitor in your nest. Brought home and cared for by the people you loved most. Someone who would turn on you, let you die – or worse.

You all gathered because you were afraid. Afraid of what she meant, what had been done, and what would be done in retaliation.

You could offer them no comfort.

And that was why you were glad Borra rose to the occasion. He thought clearly. He planned ahead. If you were to go to war, he would lead once he knew the odds.

Conall must know that.

You couldn’t keep your eyes on either of them for very long. You were tense and it had no outlet. You were tired of planning; he should’ve taken you with to the moors the night before last. If you’d been able to do something with yourself before all of this, maybe what was left unknown wouldn’t make your skin crawl.

Like her loyalty. Like why she had been shot down now.

Like why you’d never seen her. With all the berries you’d foraged, the rabbits you killed, the herbs you fetched for the healers for their balms and salves and tonics; how hadn’t you seen her? How hadn’t you crossed her path? You had a suspicion, a faint, nagging thought that couldn’t be dismissed – had she seen you? Were you both predators keeping watchful eye on the other, or had your dance changed? Which of you remained the predator and which became unwitting prey?

“You’re wrong, Con,” Borra said, and your attention returned. Sometimes you thought he could’ve spoken from miles away and you would’ve heard him. “We have something they didn’t plan on.” He turned away from Conall. Stared into the shadows at the flight-path’s entrance. “We have her.”

You bristled, and you hated how quickly it began to ease.

She was no threat to you. She was wounded, cowering as though she’d never seen another of her own. Her eyes were bright like Conall’s, the crisp green of a forest in spring, and they were wide. Her wing was even partly folded around herself for protection.

Good, you thought. She distrusts you as much as you distrust her. But only that much. There was a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes. If you were kind, you would acknowledge her relief.

It was no wonder Borra didn’t share your reservations.

The collective of you shifted toward her, their attention piqued. Even Nyvi moved closer to you; you glanced his way and refused to acknowledge the quiet surprise in his features. She wasn’t supposed to be awake and mobile.

“She holds powers none of us possess.” He presumed. You presumed. You hoped. All the talk of curses and thorn-walls and great battles with fallen kingdoms leaving shifted soil and shattered trees had to mean something. But you didn’t know her, so it was little more than an educated guess.

“She’s wounded, Borra,” Conall replied, and you poorly resisted the urge to note his reservation.

“Who are you?” she cried. Maleficent. What would she have done if you breathed her name?

Probably what she did when Borra approached her. Her wings flared in self-defense, drawn up and fluffed to make her look larger than she was.

She’s been hurt before.

She was no warrior. Not like you, not even like the majority of you. When he got close to her, she froze, tense. The antelope in the open grass.

Teach her to fight, the part of you whispered that wasn’t demanding she show you that she already could. She held her own just fine with Borra studying her, with no space between them besides the teasing breath of provocation. You knew what he was doing, and yet you snarled low in your chest when he abruptly flew backward, momentarily engulfed by a swirling, green mist.

He didn’t land hard. He wasn’t hurt. But the step forward you’d taken was instinctual.

“You see?” You knew he spoke to Conall above the rest, and yet you forced yourself to release your breath. “You see what’s inside her?”

“Yes,” you whispered with them. He was right. Whatever he noticed, he baited the truth out of her, and it panned out in his favor.

“That is what will save us all.”

Or doom you, that nagging part of you whispered in the back of your thoughts.

But you trusted him. When the others took flight – when you all left her – you did not stay behind.

Whatever fear you have of her, place your trust in him. He has yet to be wrong.

“Are you coming with me?” He ran his hands over your arms while you stared into the darkness from whence you’d come. You watched the flickering bonfires of families not too much unlike your own, long lost, and the moist chill of the caverns bled into your clothes.

“Back to the moors?”

His fingers trailed over you. You closed your eyes, folded your wings. Sunk back into him. “We have to know what we’re up against.”

“We can’t afford to move quickly.” Though you couldn’t afford to doubt him, either. There was a reason he led, and it was the same reason that you loved him. He was smart, keen, attentive. And, as his wings folded around you, you released the tension in your posture at the reminder that he would never allow harm to come to any of you – not in battle, and certainly not in the damp cold of a lower altitude.

“The escalation worries you.” A statement, not a question, but an invitation all the same. He rubbed warmth into your arms and you leaned against him with your eyes closed, basking in his warmth like the lizard in the sun.

“She worries me,” you admitted. “Her closeness to them. She may be one of us, but she was alone, Borra. She doesn’t know our people. She has no loyalty.”

He sighed. The movement of his whole body against yours offered you comfort even when the subject didn’t.

“You saw her,” you pressed.

“She was afraid,” he murmured near your ear in effort to keep it between the both of you.

You felt for her. Truly, you did, but you stared at him. As though fear hasn’t led humans to hatred. As though fear wasn’t the undercurrent leading you to war – not fear of death or fear of extermination, but fear of whatever else might come instead. Whatever they did to those little fey, whether they killed them or entrapped them or kept them as live decorations; if they killed enough of you, there was nothing to stop them from doing the same to the ones that remained.

As deeply as you longed for freedom, you wanted to shed the fledge-down of fear that clung to you even more.

“Come with me,” he repeated, more gently. “I need your eyes.”

Take Ini, you almost said, but it would do you no good to wander around the nest and play at killing deer on the plains with your kinsman’s daughter.

You pressed close to him. Nodded into the crook of his neck.

The tide was high. You should’ve known with the moon the night before, but you took the long path into the moors, avoiding Ulstead altogether. There were necessary tactical advantages to your detour, especially considering you didn’t know whether or not the potential remained that you both could be shot from the skies, but you strongly suspected he had an ulterior motive in bringing you outside the nest on one of those rare daylight excursions.

The sun on your back made you splay your wings and coast on the tidal currents. There was brine in the air and it filled your chest with its freshness, its purity. The wheat fields were thick and golden and your fingers skimmed them when you had to fly low over them, the brush of their seeds against your palm tickling like the fine hair of some strange creature.

Low clouds kissed the peaks and traced their misty lips over your skin. You did a twirl onto your back, careful to keep high enough to remain out of sight.

But the wind still startled right out from under you when a voice rang out from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

“To all who live on the moors--”

“Great skies,” you whispered, diving to stick close. You were high in the trees, and yet the sound reached you as though divine. Like the phoenix herself spoke from the belly of the earth.

Borra landed with you at his side, your fleeting dream of catching fish for lunch and perching in the mountains to let the wind caress your hair gone with the warmth of the sun while shielded in the canopy.

“--And kingdoms far and wide, the king and queen invite you to attend the wedding of their son, Philip, to Aurora in three days’ time. All are welcome--”

You looked to one another, doing nothing to quiet your surprise in the privacy of mutual isolation. Aurora? The daughter? Maleficent’s daughter? The girl on horseback last night?

Great skies. He was right.

“--And all are expected.”

You watched his eyes change. He planned, though you knew what would be done: fly low, scope out the battlement, keep to the trees and return the way you came. All potential threats needed to be identified; whatever you couldn’t do now would have to be revisited under the cover of darkness – you’d have to know the numbers of their men, the prevalence of their iron, the tricks they had up their sleeves.

“She betrayed her,” you whispered, though it sat strangely on your tongue. You’d witnessed mortal deception, but it never looked quite as authentic as the child made it seem.

“It’s what they do,” he agreed. “We’ll have to scope the battlement—”

“Know their men. Find their iron, and their tricks,” you finished.

His wings quirked, and the faintest hint of pleasure touched the curve of his lips.

“I won’t go into war not knowing what it is we’re up against,” you reminded him, though you knew he didn’t need to be. He wouldn’t ask any of you to follow him blindly into the unknown. You already knew they were taking fey, that they refined their weapons and had new methods of shooting you down from the very sky.

“I’ll never ask you to.” His fingers found yours and laced through them securely.

It was different, out there. Less stifling. Maybe it was because you’d soared freely through the peaks, or maybe it was the familiar comfort of his body heat perched beside you, but you abandoned your reservations.

You could be ready for war in three days. All of you, together. The risk was high, but with attention to detail and a prayer to your ancestors for luck that, in your heart, you’d already begun, your people might soon know freedom.

#Dark Fey #Maleficent: Mistress of Evil #Borra #Borra Maleficent #Maleficent Borra #Conall #Conall Maleficent #Maleficent Conall #Suren of the Cavernous Dark #In Which We Fill In Plot Holes And Straighten Out The Timeline (sorta)#I promised you New Content and I didn't lie but I also wasn't truthful

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 4 years

Text

The assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani on the outskirts of Baghdad was a major escalation in the conflict between the United States and Iran. But the U.S. drone strike that killed the powerful commander of the Quds Force within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps might claim another casualty as well: the U.S.-Iraqi relationship. Allied with both the United States and Iran, Iraq now finds itself as the frontline battleground for these two foes.

The precarious state of Washington’s relationship with Baghdad was apparent even before the United States killed Soleimani on January 3. It was thrown into stark relief on New Year’s Eve, when Iraqi security forces looked the other way as hundreds of Iraqi militia supporters attacked the U.S. embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone. Embassy staff were kept under lockdown and U.S. Apache helicopters hovered overhead as the pro-Iranian militia supporters breached the outer cordon, burned American flags, ransacked guard posts, and sought to scale the walls before U.S. marines pushed them back with tear gas.

Such a scene would have been difficult to imagine back in 2009, when the U.S. embassy moved out of the Republican Palace and opened its current facility on the banks of the Tigris River. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad was the largest in the world, covering 104 acres and staffed with 12,000 people. It symbolized the high hopes that both countries had for the U.S.-Iraqi relationship. The United States’ reputation had suffered a blow in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, but it recovered somewhat during the troop surge of 2007, when U.S. forces helped defeat al Qaeda in Iraq and bring Iraq’s civil war to an end. By 2009, U.S. forces had largely transferred responsibility to Iraqi security forces, and Iraqis were hopeful that their country was headed in the right direction. But then everything unraveled.

The trouble started in the aftermath of the 2010 elections. The United States and Iran both supported Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s bid for a second term, even though his coalition didn’t win the most votes. But Maliki went on to pursue sectarian policies that created the conditions for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, to rise from the ashes of al Qaeda in Iraq, proclaiming itself the protector of the Sunnis against Maliki’s Iranian-backed regime. President Barack Obama’s administration had hoped to keep a residual force in Iraq, but it failed to negotiate a new security arrangement when the existing Status of Forces Agreement expired in 2011, precipitating the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the country. ISIS took advantage of the situation and by 2014 it had seized more than a third of Iraq. Only then did the Obama administration finally withdraw its support from Maliki, and, at the request of Iraq’s new prime minister, Haydar Abadi, sent U.S. troops back to Iraq with the mandate to support the fight against ISIS and to train and advise Iraqi forces.

Among the forces that battled ISIS alongside the United States was Kataib Hezbollah (KH), an Iran-backed Shiite militia that was officially folded into the Iraqi security forces through an umbrella group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. But once the common enemy was defeated, KH turned its sights on U.S. forces in Iraq—at the direction of Iran. The Iraqi government was either unwilling or unable to stop the group from firing rockets at U.S. facilities, as it did on December 27, when it killed a U.S. contractor and wounded three U.S. military personnel at the K1 military base in Kirkuk. The United States responded to this most recent attack with air strikes intended to degrade KH’s ability to conduct future attacks by eliminating their weapon storage facilities and command and control in five locations in Iraq and Syria. But the air strikes also killed more than two-dozen KH fighters and prompted supporters of the militia to launch an assault on the U.S. embassy on New Year’s Eve.

Joining KH supporters outside the U.S. embassy were three of the strongest pro-Iranian militia leaders in Iraq: Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of KH and deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, who was previously convicted of bombing the U.S. embassy in Kuwait; Qais Khazali, the leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, whose group was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of U.S. soldiers and British contractors in Iraq; and Hadi al-Ameri, the leader of the Badr Corps. After two days of protests, the militia leaders ordered their supporters to go home, claiming that they had secured the support of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mehdi to push forward legislation to evict U.S. forces from Iraq. Mehdi has since denounced the U.S. air strikes on KH and condemned the assassinations of Soleimani and al-Muhandis, who died alongside him in the U.S. drone strike, calling them a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and of the terms under which U.S. forces operate in the country.

Mehdi’s response to the protests at the U.S. embassy stands in stark contrast to the government’s response to antigovernment protests that have swept the country over the last three months. Since October, tens of thousands of young Iraqis have taken to the streets of Baghdad and other cities to express their frustration with government corruption, poor public services, unemployment, and Iranian interference. Theirs is the largest grassroots mobilization since the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Demonstrators called not only for new leaders but for an overhaul of the post-2003 political system that institutionalized sectarianism and created a kleptocracy in which Iraq’s political elites divvy up the country’s oil wealth.

The demonstrations forced Mehdi to resign as prime minister (although he remains in a caretaker capacity as his replacement is negotiated) and won the passage of a new election law, but not before Iraqi security forces and Iran-backed Shiite militias killed more than 500 protesters and wounded another 21,000. Taking to social media during the siege of the U.S. embassy, some Iraqis observed acidly that the pro-Iranian Iraqis carrying out the assault were the same ones they had been protesting against for months.

The aspirations of reform-minded demonstrators are likely to be drowned out by the escalating tensions between the United States and Iran. Heightened instability may prompt the government to take even harsher measures to shut down the protests, which they regard as an existential threat. Iraq’s ruling political parties have little incentive to make real changes to a system from which they benefit. For their part, Iranian leaders see control over Iraq as essential to their political survival, an economic “lung” to alleviate the crush of sanctions, and a crucial overland logistical supply link to the Syrian regime and Lebanese Hezbollah. Iran remains the most influential external actor in Iraq, with deep ties to Iraqi politicians and Shiite militias.

After the events of the last week, the Trump administration may decide that a U.S. presence in Iraq is no longer tenable, particularly in an election year. Trump has repeatedly declared his intention to withdraw U.S. troops from the region. And to many Americans, the attacks on the U.S. embassy and chants of “Death to America” conjure up memories of Tehran in 1979, when Iranians overran the U.S. embassy there and took American diplomats hostage, and Benghazi in 2012, when Libyan militants killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. The United States already shuttered its consulate in Basra, and reduced staff in Baghdad and in the consulate in Erbil out of concern about increasing threats from Iranian-backed militia. Closing the embassy in Baghdad would be a wretched end to the U.S. relationship with a country in which it has invested so much blood and treasure. But by assassinating Soleimani, the Trump administration just made that outcome much more likely.

#iran #iraq #baghdad #united states #green zone #iraqi civil war

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monstaxsthetics · 5 years

Text

Ch. 1

Genre: Angst / Romance / Action

Warnings: Harsh Language / Violence

Characters: Wonho / Lee Hoseok x OC x Monsta X

Word Count: 4.1K

Synopsis: Nara and Hoseok split ways six years ago. She was not a top trauma nurse who couldn’t be happier with her life and Hoseok was head of her father’s security detail. When her father is kidnapped and her life is put in danger, Hoseok and Nara are reunited. What will come of the reunion and will they find her father before it’s too late?

“These violent delights have violent ends. And in their triumph die, like fire and powder. Which, as they kiss, consume”

Ch.2 Ch.3

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Nara had just sat down for what felt like the first time in her 18 hour shift, taking a sip of her much needed coffee and a bite from her apple, she felt the familiar buzz of her pager before she heard a code being called over the hospital P.A. system.

“Code blue, trauma room 1. Code blue, trauma room 1.”

Groaning, she chugged what was left of her coffee.

“So much for an apple a day”, she thought, stealing one last bite.

She ran as fast as she could from the break room, through the corridor, down three flights of stairs, sliding over a gurney, and around a corner just as a nurse and intern group were beginning their hospital tour.

“And that was nurse, Hwang Nara, the resident LUNATIC.” the nurse giving the tour shouted.

“I think you mean badass!” Nara said, tossing a couple of finger guns and a wink toward the group before continuing on her way.

And she was. A badass that is. She had only been a trauma nurse at Ansan Hospital for a short time now and was already making a name for herself. Sure among them were the occasional ‘lunatic’, ‘unhinged’, ‘reckless’, etc. But more than anything she was gifted, and a great asset to the hospital - when she wasn’t being a liability or a thorn in anyone’s side - and any doctor or nurse in that hospital would tell you the same.

When she arrived at trauma room #1, nurses were scrambled around an unconscious man who was struggling to breathe. No amount of oxygen or air being manually pumped from the ambulatory bag were providing any aid to the suffering man.

Nara looked around and realized she had made it there before any of the on-call doctors. Pushing her way to the front she pulled her stethoscope from her pocket, pressing the icy cold metal to the patient’s bare chest. It only took a moment for her to realize what was wrong.

“Stop the ambu. It won’t work” she informed the others.

“He has a tension pneumothorax. His right lung has collapsed and air is filling his chest cavity. Where is the cardio team?”

All the surgeons were either in surgery or on other urgent cases. Nara knew that the patient wouldn’t last while waiting for them to arrive.

“Give me a large bore needle, please.”

No one made any movements to assist her.

“Anyone? He needs a thoracostomy!”

“It’s against protocol, Nara” another nurse said. “We should wait for a surgeon to get here.”

“We don’t have time for that. If he dies while we’re waiting, do you want to explain to his family and friends that we could have saved him if it wasn’t for fucking protocol?”

Still no one moved to assist her.

“Fine! I’ll do it myself.”

Nara retrieved a large bore needle, a mask, gloves, and iodine from the room’s supply cabinet.

She carefully disinfected the area just above the patient’s third rib on his right side making sure she had located the intercostal space along the midclavicular line. She then slowly inserted the needle into the disinfected area at a 90 degree angle, keeping her hand steady as to not damage any of the underlying blood vessels.

A pregnant pause overtook the room as everyone held their breath. At some point the nursing students and their tour guide had made their way to the E.R. and were now watching the scene in stunned silence.

A moment later, a rush of air could be heard coming from the patient’s chest followed by the sounds of the bedside machines alerting the staff to his stabalizing vital signs.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, smiling, and congratulating Nara for saving the man’s life - well not everyone.

“Hwang Nara!” she heard her superior call out. “Why am I not surprised it’s you? My office, now!”

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Pulling her keys from her purse, Nara trudged up the stairs to her apartment, her legs heavy and energy drained from the brutal 18 hour shift. A shift that mind you, should have ended on a high but instead ended with her once again being reprimanded by her department head effectively killing the adrenaline rush and pride she felt after saving that patient.

Reaching the top of the stairs, she started around the corner when a hand clamped down over her mouth and a large arm pulled her back toward the stairwell. Panic spread through her body and her blood ran cold. She tried to scream but it was muffled and the stranger shushed her. There was something familiar about this person. Something nostalgic in the way they smelled and they way their hands felt. She knew this person, she was sure of it. But who did she know that would try and kidnap her? She tried to scream again, when the grip on her mouth got tighter.

“Shhhhh shh Nara, it’s me, be quiet.”

She did know him. It was Hoseok. This knowledge however didn’t alleviate her stress, instead it filled her with rage. She channeled her anger into enough force to elbow him in the chest, his hand falling from her mouth in surprise, but the other still remained tight around her waist.

“Yah! Lee Hoseok, are you crazy? What in the hell do you think you—?”

In a flash, he had her spun around, looking into her eyes. “Wow”, she thought. “How was he still this beautiful?”

“Nara listen to me, you have to be quiet. You can yell at me later, I promise.”

“Later? Why would there be a later Hoseo–?” Nara was became more indignant with each word from Hoseok.

Hoseok shoved her up against the nearest wall.

“Nara! For the love of god will you please shut up?”

She was going to attempt to argue once more when she realized how anxious he appeared, his body was rigid and his eyes kept searching up and down the halls. “What was happening?”, she questioned internally.

At that moment three men in black hats and masks ran out of her apartment. Her eyes widened and she was about to scream at them and ask what in the hell they were doing when Hoseok placed a finger over her mouth and shook his head, his eyes pleading with her to stay quiet.

“I swear I heard keys hyungnim. She should be home by now. Her shift ended an hour ago”, one of the masked men could be heard saying.

They were heading in the direction of the stairwell where she and Hoseok were hiding and she was beginning to grasp the situation. These men were here for her. “But why?”

As they quickly made there way towards the stairs, Hoseok maneuvered his body in front of hers, his back facing the men and leaned in close. To anyone approaching it would seem as if they were just two lovers taking advantage of one another in the stairwell.

The men approached them curiously but the charade worked and they quickly left the apartment building, the elder scolding the younger that he must have been mistaken about her work schedule.

When the danger seemed to be gone, at least for the immediate future, Nara regained her senses. She shoved against Hoseok’s chest with all of her strength.

“Hoseok, you have five seconds to tell me what’s going on and who those men were.”

Hoseok grabbed Nara’s arm, dragging her inside of her apartment. He checked all the rooms and when they were secured he locked the door. Nara stood with her arms crossed over her chest, still waiting for an explanation. He ignored her and made his way into her bedroom, an increasingly agitated Nara following behind him.

“Are you going to answer me? What are you doing here? Who were those men?”

He continued to ignored her, opening her closet, rummaging around until he found a duffle bag. He removed the bag and set it on her bed.

“I’ll explain later, but right now we have to get out of here. Fill this bag with the things you need quickly and lets go.”

“Wooow! You really have lost your damn mind, huh? What makes you think I’d go anywhere with you? I haven’t seen you in six years and you just show up out of the blue all ‘Nara we have to go’. Hell no! You don’t get to do tha–”

“Your dad is missing, Nara.”

Nara stumbled a bit and gripped the door frame for stability taken aback by Hoseok’s words.

“What did you just say? Th-that’s not possible, I just talked to him last night.”

“I know. We checked his phone records. You were the last person he spoke to. He wasn’t at the house this morning when I got there to pick him up and he didn’t show up for any of his meetings today. Hyunwoo and the others are searching for him right now and I’m guessing those men who were just here had something to do with it too so we need to go, NOW!”

Nara couldn’t handle the onslaught of information, finding her nearby desk chair to sit down as her legs threatened to give out. Hoseok kneeled in front of her.

“Nara-yah….”

Hearing him call her name endearingly made her want to simultaneously hurl and throw her arms around his neck and sob.

“I know this is a lot, but I promise you we will find him, okay?” - He swiped a stray hair from her face, brushing it behind her ear - “But right now, we need to get you out of here before those men come back.”

She knew he was right, as much as she hated to admit it so after a few calming breaths, she silently placed all of her necessities into the duffle and grabbed a picture of her father and followed Hoseok out of the apartment building. He lead her to a sleek midnight blue two door sports car. “The car suits him”, she thought. He opened her door for her and placed her bag in the back seat. She slid down into the cool, smooth leather seats and hugged her coat closer to her body.

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖✖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖

As they sped through the dark streets, Nara stole glances at Hoseok. He hadn’t changed at all. Sure he was older and bigger, much bigger, but his features were the same, somehow more handsome with maturity. His jaw was clenched and the veins in his defined arms pulsed as he shifted gears and gripped the wheel tighter. His stress and anxiety were clear.

This fact didn’t surprise her. Hoseok had always been close with her dad, even beyond their working relationship and Nara suspected that Hoseok was just as affected by her father’s disappearance as she was.

When they passed the exit for her father’s house, she asked where they were going. Hoseok explained that people were watching her father’s home and that it would be too dangerous to return there. He said he was taking her to their hideout on the outskirts of the city.

“Who are they? I know Hyunwoo of course, but you keep saying them.”

“The rest of your dad’s special protection team. They started after you left. There are seven of us now.”

Nara shook her head in understanding and stared out the window for the rest of the car ride.

About 45 minutes later, they pulled up in front a seemingly abandoned building, lined by trees on one side and a river on the other, cutting them off completely from the city. The breeze had picked up and Nara shivered as she stepped out of the car, grabbing her bag. She followed Hoseok into the dilapidated concrete structure and toward and elevator, she was surprised to see it actually functioned. He pressed the button for the basement and the two of them descended.

The elevator doors opened up directly into a rather spacious and tasteful loft. Not at all what Nara expected to find in this building or when Hoseok referred to it as a ‘hideout’. They walked in and immediately were greeted by six sets of eyes ranging in expressions from curiosity, to boredom, and others she couldn’t quite place.

Hyunwoo was the first to say anything or make a move. He stood from the kitchen island and enveloped her in a tight hug. He pulled back, looking her over and asked if she was okay to which she just nodded. He was exactly the same. He had the same beautifully tan skin she envied, the same warm brown eyes that creased at the sides when he smiled, and a warmth and feel like an older brother would have. His presence alone instantly comforted Nara and she regretted not keeping in touch or visiting Hyunwoo, regardless of her disdain for his best friend. He ruffled her hair in true big brother style and smiled before rejoining the others around the island.

It looked like they were gathered around a tablet and some blue prints, seemingly looking for Nara’s father, Hwang Ji. Hoseok introduced her to the others and them to her in turn. He went around the table one by one telling her their names and positions on the team.

First up was Lee Minhyuk a cute blonde who was smiling from ear to ear at her and clinging to the chestnut brown haired man to his right who’s eye smile could rival that of Hyunwoo and who had the deepest set of dimples she’d ever seen.

“Minhyukie here is our infiltration specialist. He’s good at breaking into places and taking things that aren’t his which is how he earned the title.”

“Hey to be clear, I am not a thief. I just so happen to be extremely well versed in acquiring things that don’t technically belong to me. But you know what they say, ‘finders keepers’ and all that.”

“You know that doesn’t actually apply when you break into someone’s home and ‘find’ things right?” a boy with perfectly quaffed hair and looks to match said dejectedly.

“Meh potato, tomato” the cute blonde shrugged.

“That’s no—”

“Just let him have this please” the chestnut haired man Minhyuk was clinging to said before turning his attention back to Nara. “I’m Jooheon, it’s nice to finally meet you. I’m sorry it had to happen this way. I’m in charge of the tactical unit.”

Minhyuk beamed whenever Jooheon spoke and never tore his eyes from him. Nara made a mental note that there was definitely something there. Hoseok had given up on introducing the others and thought it best they introduce themselves.

A boy with a kind almost motherly gaze looked at her with what Nara could only assume was some type of sympathy.

“I’m Kihyun, I run intelligence for the group.”

“That’s a fancy way of saying he’s in charge of the cooking.” a slightly shorter boy with jet black hair that looked almost blue said. He had a devilish grin and it made Nara uneasy when he flashed it in her direction.

A quick hand landed at the back of his neck.

“This here is our little resident psychopath, Changkyunie, who should learn to watch what he says before the cook decides to poison him, don’t you think?”

Kihyun pinched Changkyun’s cheek harshly until the latter yelped in pain.

“What are you in charge of?” Nara asked as he nursed a red cheek.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know” he said with that same unnerving smile. And for the time being, Nara wasn’t entirely sure she did want to know.

Next to him was the boy from earlier who teased Minhyuk. Nara would have sworn he got lost on his way to a runway show with his modelesque looks, if it weren’t for the knife he held in his hand twirling from finger to finger as he stared at her, disinterested.

“Aish this is exhausting…. Fine, I’m Hyungwon, I work with Minhyuk here on infiltration. But stealing isn’t my portion. I’m more of the……well distraction.”

Minhyuk hopped off his stool, finally releasing Jooheon’s arm for the first time since they arrived and rushed to Nara’s side.

“Noona, are you hungry, have you eaten?”

Noona? Nara thought to herself. They weren’t introduced more than five minutes ago and now she was noona? It was quick but not necessarily unwelcome. Minhyuk had a contagious personality and he made her feel at ease. He was comfortable and she felt her shoulders release some tension as he locked arms with her and led her to the fridge.

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖✖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖

Kihyun ended up whipping up a delicious meal just from some leftovers in the fridge and when they were all full the others retreated back to their earlier conversations and planning on how to find her father while Hoseok showed her to what would be her room for the time being.

It was awkward to say the least. She and Hoseok had not parted on good terms, and even after six years apart, two hours in his presence had brought the emotions she had locked away bubbling to the surface.

“You should wash up and make yourself comfortable and when you’re up to it, you can come down and we will brief you on what we know so far.”

“Thanks”, was all Nara could manage to mutter, as she tried to keep her emotions at bay. Both over her father disappearing and over seeing Hoseok again.

She spent more time than was necessary in the shower, welcoming the slight sting and pink hue that the hot water brought to her skin, slowly soothing the tension in her muscles. After about 30 minutes, she decided she should leave the shower and face what was waiting for her downstairs. No matter how much she wished to just stand in the spray of the shower she knew she couldn’t remain in denial forever.

She brushed her hair and teeth, pulled on some leggings and a large tattered sweatshirt with her alma mater’s logo on it and headed down the stairs.

They all took turns explaining to her what each of them had gathered on the situation so far. They believed her dad was taken sometime between 8 - 10 p.m. the previous night. The last person he had spoken to was Nara around 7p.m.. He had sent all of them home for the day and only his minimal security unit remained at the house.

Hwang Ji had believed that his home was well enforced enough that he didn’t need them all on watch 24/7 and he was adamant about them all being able to maintain their own lives and rest comfortably in their own home. When Hoseok got to the house in the morning to pick him up and drive him into the city to the corporation, he didn’t answer his text or calls. Hoseok went inside to check on him but he wasn’t in the house and neither were any of the guards from the minimum security team. He thought that it was possible he wanted to get to the office early before his meetings and had the other guards drive him.

Hoseok drove to the office to confirm this, but was told that Hwang Ji never showed up. The guys spent the rest of the day interrogating his known rivals, and combing the streets for him. They checked the house’s CCTV and found that the surveillance and security systems were shut down around 7:30 p.m. and didn’t come back online until after 10:30 p.m.

Hoseok had a feeling that whoever took Hwang Ji may try and harm Nara too which is how he ended up at her apartment building. Nara hadn’t been home in six years, her and her father preferring to meet halfway between their respective homes to catch up. However, the team kept tabs on her and knew her schedules. Protecting her father also meant protecting his family and those dear to him. Since Hyunwoo needed to lead the tactical searches and interrogation for the group and Nara wasn’t familiar with the rest of the group, it was decided that it would be best if Hoseok was the one to go retrieve her as to lessen her alarm. A plan that hadn’t gone as well as planned when the three masked men showed up.

None of their leads or the usual suspects had turned up any promising information and they found themselves starting over from ground zero. Nara found her head spinning with all the new information and trying to keep her nerves under control. Losing her shit now wasn’t going to help find her father any faster.

Later that evening she found that it was only she, Hoseok and Hyunwoo left awake as they sat around the coffee table at 1 a.m. sharing a drink. Nara hadn’t found the strength to fall asleep yet and Hoseok and Hyunwoo stayed up with her out of worry and support.

“So how did you all come together? Where did they all come from?” Nara asked, sipping from her now warming can of beer.

“Heh, where to begin?” Hyunwoo chuckled. “Uhm Hyukie was a runaway. He comes from a pretty wealthy family but his parents have always been sadly disinterested in him or anything he did. He rebelled for a while, trying to get their attention, but eventually he just ended up leaving home.”

“I watched him shoplift from a convenience store one day and charm the panties off the girl behind the register and the security guard alike and so I followed him.” Hoseok said. “I told him what I had seen and he begged me not to turn him in. Of course that wasn’t what I was there for and I explained a bit of who I was. I brought him to meet your dad and the rest is obvious.”

“I found Kihyun” Shownu said. “He bumped into me trying to outrun the cops. He looked so helpless and I didn’t know what he was on the run for, but for some reason I decided to help him evade the police. Turns out the cops were from cyber crimes and they were after him for hacking into the Seoul National Hospital system to clear the debt for his sick mother.”

They went on like this explaining a bit of the other’s backstories and helping Nara to understand the boys she would be associating with for the foreseeable future and who her father had entrusted his life to.

Minhyuk recruited Jooheon from an underground MMA circuit. He fell for him instantly and was shocked when he found out Jooheon shared the sentiment. They’ve been together ever since.

Kihyun recruited Changkyun who brought along his childhood friend and current roommate Hyungwon. It was the only way he would agree to come. Hyungwon was a runaway too and had spent time as a male model and escort for some time before coming to the company. Changkyun was working for another crime organization as an assassin. They were lovingly dubbed the ‘psycho unit’ although they referred to Hyungwon as more sociopathic than psychopathic.

This thought unnerved Nara a bit and she gulped but they assured her that they were deadly to those who crossed them or to their targets but to everyone else they were all bark and no bite.

They spent the rest of the hour in silence, the three of them dozing off while a muted melodrama played on the tv in the background. Nara was finally feeling the exhaustion threatening to take her when,

“A WHOLE NEW WOOOOOORLD. A DAZZLING PLACE I NEVER KNEEEEEW!”

Nara sat straight up on the couch fumbling with her phone and dropping it on the floor.

“BUT WHEN I’M WAY UP HERE, IT’S CRYSTAL CLEAR”

She looked at Hyunwoo and Hoseok, neither seemed alarmed by the obviously tone deaf dying animal that had broken into their home.

“What in the ever loving fuck is that?”

“Ahhh you mean the sound like someone strangling a cat?”

“Obviously”, Nara nodded at Hyunwoo.

“That would be the incomparable Im Changkyun”, he said with a fancy flourish of his wrist for emphasis before returning his attention back to his phone.

“Wait, what? You’re telling me that the little psycho you just told me about, the one who could kill you in 50 ways in 2 seconds, Changkyun likes Disney movies?”

“OH MY GOD HE’S A REALLY BAD BOY, HE’S A REALLY BAD BOY!”

Hyunwoo nodded, still unphased by the screeching coming from the shower where Changkyun was supposedly “singing”, if you could call it that.

“Mhm, big fan of Red Velvet too. Even knows the dances.”

“That song is gonna be stuck in my head for a week.” Hoseok added from his spot beside Nara.

Nara picked up her phone and sat back, laughing as Changkyun broke out into a terrible rendition Rainism.

“I’M GONNA BE A BAD BOY, I’M GONNA BE A BAD BOY, I’M GONNA BE A BAD BAD BOY!”

She hoped he didn’t slip in the shower and break something trying to do the choreography. “These boys were going to be the death of me”, she thought.

Head reeling from all the information and Changkyun’s singing, she bid Shownu and Hoseok goodnight and retired to her room where she fell asleep almost as soon as her head met pillow.

Ch. 2

#wonho fanfic #wonho fanfiction #monsta x fanfic #monsta x fanfiction #wonho #lee hoseok #monsta x

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bugaboowritings · 5 years

Text

Lying to Friends - (Stressed Marinette Fic)

Marinette is Ticking Time Bomb

With light ice angst

I’m WRITING IT!! Here is Part One of the idea where “Ladybug” (the episode) was about a huge Godzilla-like Ladybug eating Paris (Ladyzilla AU or Ladybug Monster AU?). Or just a fic about Marinette lying to Alya, if you only read this part.

Enjoy.

She tapped her pen twice as fast with each passing second. Drumming it against the polished desk cluttered with her chipped-edge textbooks and countless colored pens. Unconsciously moving the one in her petite fingers like a seesaw with her thumb. Bringing relief to her as its beat stayed constant. Much like a metronome, it combed her thoughts into neat lines. In a sequence, she could manage with. Fixing it from the jumble of nonsense that usually caused her to blank out as she stared off into the nothing.

Even when handing her pen off to Alya, Marinette thumped her foot up and down. Keeping the rhythm going. Comforting herself. Alleviating the wrinkles on her forehead while the sides of her throat made her feel nauseous. Getting hit by a sudden fever or tasting the reason why tuna sandwiches shouldn't be left in a schoolbag. Excusing herself from her seat. Turning the chair under her with a little too much force. Preparing to get a scolding by the librarian for that later as Marinette cringed at the thump it made. Alya, on the other hand, didn't bat an eye, her arm mindlessly waving bye as her eyes narrowed on the chemistry problem. Biting her top lip before uncapping another highlighter.

Marinette stepped out of the library with a big huff. She picked the wrong day to be skipping out in her studying with her chem test creeping closer and closer. However, the deadline didn't jump-start panic into her system as it once did. She and Tikki had trouble figuring out if that was a bad thing or a good thing. Yet, there was an undeniable hunch blazing in the back of her mind that wouldn't let her study even if she tried.

A sixth sense throbbing.

Ladybug intuition, if you will.

Something very bad was going to happen. As if, as if the world was on the verge of seeing something horrible.

Tikki instructed Marinette to be on the lookout. Reminding her to pick her allies wisely if the battle up ahead demanded more heroes. Marinette visited Master Fu over tea to speak on the matter. Even mentioning it to Chat Noir on a late-night patrol. Before brushing off the comment she made as a simple thought. Chastening herself as she chewed her lip. The last thing she wanting was to make her partner worry for no reason but this sense of doom made her develop a case of insomnia she couldn't cure.

Marinette was scared.

Of what? She was unsure about.

Maybe everything is getting to her. Like she was crashing from a high.

No.

No, Marinette was fine.

Other than the irrational panic, she's good.

She had a schedule now so she won't be stressed too much about commission deadlines and due dates. Slowly getting into the self-care routine thanks to Alya and Adrien.

She's good.

Though she knew that wasn't the whole truth.

Lila picked at her nerves each and everyday. Making it seem like another battle lost when she gave Mari that dumb smirk and ARH! It was so infuriating! Watching her go around like the victim when she lit the match that led to the fire. Lila was worse than Chloe. Marinette even wanted to go far as comparing her to Hawkmoth.

Marinette ground her teeth at that.

Hawkmoth has been a pain lately.

Marinette punched a number in the school's vending machine. The same that had stickers on the sides and graffiti etched on the glass. Hoping a drink will clear her head. Searching her coin purse to get something for Alya too. Knowing too well that she couldn't drink it in the library.

Shooting Alya a text to get down for a quick break.

Marinette pulled back the can tab, the sizzle of the carbonated drink was music to her ears after swallowing the cafeteria's bitter "green" juice for lunch. Taking a sip as a pick-me-up from studying, waiting for the sugar to kick in her system. Leaning on to the cream-yellow bricks that made up the walls of the school. Noticing one of the bricks had someone's initials scratched on to it.

"Girl, you don't even know how much I needed this." Alya popped open the can by Marinette's feet. Not asking if it was her's because of course, it was her's. Grinning when it saw it was her favorite flavor. Smiling a little wider when tasting how cold it was. Balancing out the sun while its rays warmed the air around them.

"I thought we could use a bit of a breather." Marinette hummed. Tipping her head back as she took another sip. "It's not good being inside for too long."

"Yeah," Alya smirked, slurping her drink. "Sure that it wasn't because of the view."

Feeling the bubbles in her drink go up to her nose. Marinette coughed into her elbow. Almost dropping her can.

"Ah- what?"

Alya patted her back till Marinette quit coughing. Her brown locks swayed as her head nodded towards the locker rooms. There, as if on cue, the fencing team poured out. Laughing with their gym bags slung over their shoulders.

Adrien smiled as one of his teammates patted his back. His sandy-golden curls were messy and all over the place. It was a charming look, really. Though he was probably sweaty from practice. The sunrays made his hair glitter as he laughed lightly at one of his teammates' jokes. Marinette could just stand there to watch. Maybe even try to grab his attention or call him out from the crowd.

Then he looked at her.

Marinette straightens up. Not caring that her pigtails were a little loose or the fact that her face screamed "fresh out from the grave" with the bags under her eyes.

He gave her that soft smile he seems to offer only her. Or that's just what Marinette likes to think. To imagine if somehow, someway, he thought she was special.

Miraculous even.

Marinette pumped out her own smile, not helping the red that appeared up to her ears. Waving goodbye a little too enthusiastically. Staring at him even when he turned around, making his way out the school's grand doors. Possibly out to where his bodyguard stood. Entering a slick black car that would take his home. Probably, reaching for his phone to text Nino about when they should hang out. Or probably just shut in a room to practice his piano.

"No," Marinette confessed. Shaking her head swiftly. "No, you got it all wrong."

"Mari," Alya cooed. Sporting a fox-like grin. Steaming up another scheme before Marinette stared her down.

"Seriously. I have to much on my mind to try and chase boys." Marinette sipped. Noticing how her grip made a dent in the can.

A hand fell on Marinette's shoulder, shaking her a bit before feeling Alya's hand skated into small circles. Knowing too well it was the same trick she did when her younger sisters were upset.

"You wanna talk about it?"

----

The two girls sat by the vending machine for a while. Marinette had dropped to the ground when Alya squatted next to her. Their nearly empty cans stood by them. Trembling when a breeze came in but the leftover juice in them kept them from flying away like another piece of trash in the wind.

Marinette had a great view of the quad from where she sat. It was 4:15 and Ms. Bustier's breathing class was starting. Their meetings were once weekly only to switch it to daily sessions as Hawkmoth started acting up. Pulling out stronger akumas. Every time getting closer and closer on getting the miraculous. Every time he seemed to manage to set the city on fire before Marinette could call on her Ladybug Cure to extinguish it.

People were fearing for their lives.

Marinette felt the tension leaving the student's shoulders as Ms.Bustier told them to breathe.

People were fearing for their lives.

Scared out of their minds to think that they could be one of Hawkmoth's "champions". A pawn in his game. Manipulated then tossed away when they failed.

Marinette came to the conclusion that whoever hid behind the mask, behind the akumas, behind the destruction and terrorism that haunted France she would beat to a bloody pulp.

It was already set in stone.

Nothing could change her mind now. Not after days, weeks, months, years fighting against this villain, she has seen first-hand how it changed her community.

Emotions were a weapon now. Feeling anxious or bothered or frustrated or disappointed or anything negative was seen as a weakness to the villain. A target on your back as you felt anything other than happiness. It drained people after a while. To think that people were afraid to express themselves in fear that a little black butterfly would come down and evilize them. The same healthy emotions that were the basis for any person was now a feared weapon.

Teens, the main targets for akumas, now had this fear on their back as anxiety, depression, and anxiousness ate them up.

Nadja reported that Akuma-Safe Protocols were now implemented in every school or public area.

Alya posted safety guides to Akumas on her blog.

The Mayor released messages to the press about how they had to work together with their heroes. To stop this dumpster fire that seems to grow each and everyday.

And the person stopping from Paris burning down was Marinette Dupain-Cheng in a bug costume with a flirty cat by her side.

Marinette gave a heavy sigh as Alya brushed her bangs back. Petting her like how a mother would comb her child's hair with their fingers. Waiting for Mari to say what was on her chest.

God, Marinette just wanted to tell her. To rant. To vent. To cry. All to stop the headaches she was getting or to release the pressure in her. To explain to Alya who she really is. The same hero Alya follows around was the girl that sat next to her in every class. How every time she lied was to go save Paris, not to ditch her. How the secret society that Alya figured out was the same one Marinette went to every Wednesday for tea. Really, she wanted to spill. To stop lying to her best friend in the whole wide world. To tell the truth. To break down this wall between them.

But Marinette just bit her tongue.

Alya could never know about this.

"I'm just worried about this semester, you know." Marinette sighed. It wasn't what was bothering her, but it was something her parents brought up during dinner. Not to scare her, but because they were too interested in what she plans to do.

"It's our last year here before we move on to bigger things." She groaned, getting up from the floor.

"My dream of having my own fashion house and your's about being a reputable reporter.

"I'm scared that we're gonna grow apart." Marinette huffed. Tossing her can in the green bin.

"Hey," Alya's eyes soften with her tone. "We're going to conquer the world together, remember. We, kind of, still need to be best friends for that to work out." She beamed.

Her smile mirroring on to Mari's face.

"I guess, you're right about that."

"I know I am!" Alya exclaimed. Throwing her arm around Marinette's shoulder.

"Now that we are on the topic of working together, there is this one problem I can't seem to solve on the study guide-"

"ALYA!"

"What! I need help with it!"

------

TBC -see you next week

#ml #ml fic #fic #writings #my writings #my writing #miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #alya cesaire #ladybug #light ice angst #angst #miraculous #miraculous the tales of ladybug and chat noir

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alitheamateur · 5 years

Text

A Taste of Home

CHAPTER 2

Catch up on Chapter 1

(many hugs, and thank you's to @miidailyinspiration for the help on my face claim for Amelia. You’ve helped put my indecisive mind to rest, love!)

Casual, but not sloppy. Sophisticated, but not stuffy. This was no ordinary to-do, and you weren’t about to make light of the situation at hand.

To add to stresses of attire, your mother had found the whole thing to be so “cute,” and some twisted little cell of her excitement thought it a necessity to call his mother and cackle about the nostalgia of it all.

By some circumstances you were unsure of, your cell number had somehow fallen into his lap, and the day you were supposed to head towards to outskirts of the Boston tree line, he had texted you details.

C: Picking up a bottle of wine for tonight. Preference? You name it.

Y/N: How about a red?

C: Anything for the guest of honor. See you around 8!

Attached to his last reply, was a syrup sweet selfie that made you want to punch someone just to kill off some of the nauseating lovability, of he and the famous pup you’d seen often on his socials.

You didn’t know where to begin with preparation, nor exactly what to prepare for, and the day passed on like the speed of a changing season so your mental torture could lag on. A quick color and blow-out at the salon was never a wrong turn, and a trip to the mall couldn’t hurt matters.

Silencing your phone, and securing the doors of your car with two deeps, your knees wobbled like a feeble fawn towards the front steps. It was extravagant, but not in an “I’m better than you” type of way, and it’s woodsy endearment was the coziness your nerves needed.

Taking the steps one by one, hearing a dogs roaring bark behind the solid oak of his front door, a thought was conceived.

Was this… a booty call? Do people even know what that is anymore? Had you been invited to the quiet forest around his home, to glug too much wine, stroll down memory lane, and wind up on your back?

The more troubling conclusion, being you weren’t sure the idea sounded half bad….

There’d have to be some self-respect. Your shambling life left no room for any more error, and you wouldn’t fall into such handsome traps that easily.

Using the pane of glass that lined the entry as a reflection check, the door was pulled open, letting the interior nose of music and galloping steps of Dodger loose.

You cursed mentally when you stuck your hand inside the lining of your light jacket to feel the mint still wrapped that you had forgotten to chew on the drive over.

The handsome pups’ leash was held onto by an even more handsome man, and both of them seem quite eager to greet you. However, one more interested in sniffing around your shoes and backside.

“Woah, Dodge! Let’s mind our manners, boy.” His owner laughed with squinted eyes.

He met you with an unexpected, one arm embrace. His fingers snuck under the hem of your breezy springtime cardigan, and rested sprawled across the silk camisole covering the small of your back. Your cheeks brushed together at the ensuing of his gentle, platonic kiss to your face, and his beard felt softer than you would’ve imagined.

“Glad you could sneak away to hang out.”

“Thanks for the invitation. This place is stunning.” You barely recognized your own voice as it’s tone stuttered and dropped into some weird, sad excuse for seductive key.

Jealous at how effortlessly he could barely graze your skin and have you wanting to shout his name in an explicit context, you rustled your hair to swing its vanilla scented sweetness toward him, trying your own much more forced hand at seduction.

With smiling eyes, he gestured you through the front door, leading the way into the foyer. The simple brightness of its monochromatic scheme added an appealing cleanliness and homey feel. A grand piano was nestled near the fireplace, and a candle of spicy sweetness flickered on the white mantle as you heard Dodgers leash clang against a metal coat rack.

“Do you still play?” You asked running a finger over the glossy top of the black instrument positioned on a patterned rug.

His skinned turned red behind the protection of his grizzly beard, and he squeezed his palm to the back of his neck. The loose cotton of his shirt teased up his belly, gifting you with the sight of a meaty, perfectly exercised torso. Your eyes dilated with zealous desire at the way a trail of light hair trailed beneath the band of his relaxed blue jeans.

“I do, yeah. Badly, but I do. I don’t get as much practice as I’d like. Get me drunk enough & maybe I’ll play you something.”

Still the same old guy. The tortured musician with a home on the stage, and a healthy liking to beer.

“Speaking of, I’m heading to the kitchen for a drink. Glass of wine?” He walked in reverse down the hall, offering you up a beverage.

“Sounds perfect. It better not be the cheap shit either, Evans. I know how you operate.” You bit your tongue at the bold banter of your sarcasm. But, it wasn’t as if he didn’t know your true colors. He’d known you since school age, and if he was willing to still speak to your after your raging ugly-duckling stages of junior high, surely he could handle a witty tongue.

When he disappeared behind the wall of the kitchen and glasses clinked, and the cabinets slammed, you helped yourself to sight seeing around the empty den. Photos of he and castmates, his nephews and nieces school portraits, and some exquisite artwork decorated the walls, alongside the glorious steel shield you’d seen on the big screen. The life of riches, and fame hadn’t rotted through to who he really was yet it seemed, and you admired the simplicity of his private life.

“I’ll let you touch it for the right price,” he snuck in undetected from the left, long-stem swirling in one hand, and an already half-empty beer bottle in the other.

You eagerly grasped at the wine he had poured for you, desperately pining for something to center your weak knees from his closeness. Grazing across his full fingertips, your hormones began to dance.

“Excuse you?” For a brief moment, unsure of what exactly his cheeky comment suggested, you coughed in shock.

“The shield, Amelia. Don’t make me out to be an asshole here, kid.” Chris rolled his eyes with a faux grin, struggling to hide the slightest bit of insult from your insinuations.

Wait, kid? No, no, no. For one, 29, divorced, and your own insurance plan hardly classified you in the kid category. And the boobs. C’mon, Evans. Didn’t you see the boobs?

“However, I think the term kid need no longer apply…”

Did he hear your thoughts? Could he read minds now? He’s Captain America. Of course he could. Your thoughts heckled you.

Abruptly set on actual fire at the way his eyes painted over you like daggers memorizing your every curve, you choked up a dousing gulp of wine, and it dribbled down your rounded chin. He caught the beads of dark Merlot pooling at the corner of your lips with his thumb, then quite accidentally erotically, sucked the liquid from his finger with a pop of his half-smiling lips.

“Still as elegant as ever, I see.” Chris winked, and pulled an open-mouth sip of his sweating bottle of ale.

Bury your head in a hole full of poisonous scorpions, or plunge from a plane with no parachute? Both scenarios seemed like a fitting death for the embarrassment boiling throughout your pulsing veins.

“I resent that. I didn’t even trip up a single stair on the way in, thank you very much, sir.” Your hair toppled over your shoulder with your sassy, matter-of-fact head bob. The loose strand falling airily into your face.

“You’re so right. Seems little Mil is all grown up and coordinated now.” He reached for the lock of your hair in an instant, like he couldn’t resist its’ touch, and twirled it around his pointer finger only once, or twice before pushing it from your eyes.

The room went silent then, and spun with the drunken tension of unexplained passion. You wondered if this whole façade was some sort of sick way for his ego to get off, or had word gotten around to him about your less than happy fortune, and he pitied you, and old friend, in some way? Sure, you could put an outfit together in less then 5 minutes like nobody’s business, and you weren’t exactly a bore to be around. But you were such a… a simpleton compared to him in every sense. Often stringy, dull blonde hair no matter what “shine shampoo” you paid for. Your legs not even half the length of an average sized woman, and you were barely tall enough to reach the pedals of a car. A tiny, blonde, plain-faced woman with the occasional humorous comeback. Nowhere near the realm of anything he deserved.

He never broke his laser, blue-eyed stare with yours when he stretched blindly the empty his hand of the bottle, placing it to rest on top of the piano behind you. They color looping around his pupils was like your own lustful swimming pool where you wanted to float wearing nothing but a smile. The rounded point of your chest touched his when he leaned past you, and you prayed the thin lace of your unlined bra was just enough to hide the gentle bud of your breast. You were sure the news of the split with your husband was indeed knowledge to him, because he wasn’t the type to ever sink to the level of pursing a taken woman.

But, was this that? Was the closeness of his body, and his ruthless, studying stares his idea of pursuit? Or was your needy, wishful thinking playing tricks on you?

“I see the tan line on your finger, but the ring is missing?” You couldn’t make sense of his words as a question, or a statement.

“I’m sure you’ve heard more than I would have liked for you to, Chris…”

He gently squeezed at your teeny bicep, his head ghosting a nod just before you dropped to shamefully examine your feet.

“I did hear some stuff. But, it came directly from your moms mouth. Well, straight from your moms mouth, then my moms who she told.” He smiled to alleviate your stresses. “But, if you wanna talk, I’ll listen, Amelia.”

You wanted to. Oh, how curiously bad you wanted to. Something in the velvet ease of his voice willed you cry, and confess, and vent your broken hearts every desperate pain, and you had no idea why. He was a familiar face, but one from the past. You’d lived an entire life since the two of you had last seen the other, and yet something around his eyes hypnotized you to confide there like a terrified stow-away, running from the harshness your reality.

Just as your lips parted, and you’d carefully allowed only one tear to totter on the edge of your eyelid, the yelps of an observant dog startled you both. Dodger stood on his hind legs, peeping and panting as he stared out the open curtain of a bay window.

“Shit Dodger. Calm down boy, it’s fine.” Chris dropped his hold on you to settle the curious animal. “Everyone else is here. Late as usual.” He remarked.

“Everyone?”

“Yeah, some of the guys are coming to watch the game tonight. You’ll remember most of them. Their wives, too! When I saw you the other day, I knew I had to invite you out to visit with everybody since you’re back here now. Thought it would be cool for everyone to catch up, ya’ know?” The man casually explained as he strolled towards the entryway.

Stupid you. Always stupid, stupid you. Of course, this wasn’t a date. He didn’t want to date you. Not now, not ever. You fluffed your mess of curls, and paid for yet another outfit you didn’t need simply for nothing. But, the outfit was charged to a credit card in your wallet still under the name of your oh, so generous, soon-to-be ex-husband, who you were sure wouldn’t mind. So, that part wasn’t exactly a problem.

The signs had been all there though, right? The wine he’d asked you about. The sinful way he whispered and teased into your ear? It definitely seemed flirtatious in the most welcomed of manner. Or, maybe you just desperately wanted it to feel that way. Did your ego subconsciously create the boost it needed?

“Mills? Hey, you in there? Amelia?” He pleaded you from your daydreaming state as you swayed on your feet due to the thoughtful coma you were entranced in.

“There’s not a problem is there, sweetheart?”

“No, no. God, no! Not at all! It’s great, yeah. I’m excited to see them.” Your words wavered a little, battling the line of truth and lie.

It wouldn’t be so bad to see some familiar faces, and maybe rekindled some friendships now that you had waywardly returned. But, the scoop neckline of your slinky tank couldn’t hide the wave of blushing, blind disappointment climbing your chest. A result of how you felt about having to share him with others. As if he was yours to share.

People welcomed themselves in, some toting 6-packs, a brown sack marked with the logo of a bakery downtown that you knew created all things scrumptious, so you’d have to get into the good graces of the woman you didn’t recognize carrying it towards the kitchen. The faces had changed, but a handful of them still had those same smiles, or telling eyes from the past, and they appeared strangely excited to see you. Especially Tucker, someone closer to your age who had grown close to Chris through tap classes. The only other person on the planet who was informed on your most secret desires for the handsome Evans in question.

He nearly sprinted towards you, cradling your now squished, reddened cheeks in his hands. Your nose crinkled and eyes rolled with nothing but the truest joy at his fanatical greetings.

“Well, well. If our girl isn’t where all her little wet dreams from 15-years-ago unraveled, hm? Assuming you have been up to his bedroom already?” Tucker pinched your bottom playfully, murmuring into the hollow of your ear.

“Oh, give me some credit, Tuck! What kinda girl do you think I am?!!”

“One who has wanted a slice of that man since we were 13, Amelia. That’s who.”

God, he wasn’t wrong. He was the farthest left from anything resembling wrong, and it made the contents of your stomach swimming with the heavy red wine want to escape. You didn’t trust yourself to keep it together with Chris, and hold on to even the tiniest little remnant of your dignity. Your gut knew all he had to do was say the word, and you’d go skipping into his bed like most eager of beavers. But, God. You wanted him to say the word……

A/N: I hope you guys are enjoying. This one is a bit unnerving for me, and my readers are used to Hardy content. Your feedback is always welcomed with open arms! Again, let me know if you'd like to me added, or removed from the tag-list! xx

TAGS: @miidailyinspiration @eap1935 @mollybegger-blog

#chris evans #chrisevans #chris evans x ofc #chris evans fanfiction #fanfiction

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castleportrpg · 5 years

Text

LIGHTS OUT: PLOT DROP #1

CASTLEPORT is in darkness and the town is under advisement to shelter in place, leaving many citizens stranded and scattered downtown. Emergency services are on high alert, with the local authorities patrolling neighborhoods and offering assistance where they can, but power isn’t expected to be restored until morning, only exacerbating the situation as the tensions begin to rise. Through the town’s emergency alert system, there are a series of texts messaging and social media postings, giving updates and instructions to the citizens in the hopes of alleviating fears and growing paranoia.

Your characters find themselves in different scenarios, in different locations around town. Each person will choose from (1) ONE of the given prompts under the cut and write a SELF-PARA of at least 300 WORDS. We’ve supplied the background and scenario, and the rest is entirely up to you! We encourage everyone to be as creative as possible.

How did your character wind up in this particular place? Do they follow the rules and stay put, or take their chances around town? How do they contend with the obstacles presented?

While this para is the only mandatory piece of writing, we highly encourage everyone to communicate on the dash as much as possible, meaning TEXTS, SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS, and if possible, F2Fs with other characters. The power is out and paranoia is high, it’s totally plausible for people to reach out to whomever they can.

The para must be posted by WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21 at 11:55PM EST, as it will be necessary for us to move on to the next plot drop, so please take that into consideration when plotting out your character’s blackout arc. And above all, have fun!

Please reply to this post with the number of the prompt you intend to write about. A reminder that each prompt can only be used ONCE.

LIGHTHOUSE: While enjoying one of CASTLEPORT’S summer traditions of Bonfire on the Beach, the sudden storm changes party plans. Some people are able to sprint towards their cars but MUSE decides not to risk it, opting to take shelter in the old PUTNAM LIGHTHOUSE and ride out the storm, trying the door and surprised to find it thankfully unlocked. Inside, the recently renovated interior is dry, even if the cell service is sketchy. Shadows play along the walls, and the creak of old wood mixed with the pounding rain and rumble of thunder makes it less than ideal (and frankly a little terrifying), especially as there's a noise outside that they just can't make out, but sends a chill down their spine nonetheless. It suddenly goes quiet and then the sound of an emergency siren rings out and an alert pops up on MUSE’S phone, detailing a town-wide power loss. MUSE wonders if they should stay put, or take their chances on the darkened roads to return home.

MEMORIAL LIBRARY: The ideal place to spend a quiet evening in blissful air conditioning, MUSE pays no mind to the rain outside, finding the repetition of it hitting the roof of the old building oddly comforting. Comfortable and dry, it doesn’t take them long before they’ve dozed off, unaware that the library has grown emptier and, tucked away as they are, they’ve gone unnoticed by the eagle-eyed librarian, far too focused on getting home and getting out of the wet weather. It is only the pop of the cut current that wakes them to a building plunged into darkness and shadows lurking in every corner. Making their way to the main entrance, they discover the front doors locked, and the town in darkness.

THE MAGGIE: A night out at the local watering hole turns interesting when the town goes dark and the patrons panic. MUSE debates whether or not to stay or make the trek home, though the prospect of wandering in the dark doesn’t appeal to them in the slightest. Their choice is made once the emergency siren sounds and the alert goes out to the citizens, urging them to remain wherever they are, as traveling conditions are less than ideal. After an hour of drinks, and environment thick with suspense from the storm and subsequent blackout, MUSE goes to the bathroom. It’s dark and empty. Guided by their self phone light they proceed to do their business. Suddenly, the door flies open, there’s banging and yelling, and the sound of their name in a chorus of eerie and unrecognizable voices. It’s hard to tell just how many people are in the confined space but it’s loud and chaotic, then suddenly they're gone and it’s silent again. Who was that? What was that about? Was it simply just a dumb prank, or something...else?

HOME ALONE: There’s nothing pathetic about a Saturday night spent alone. Especially a rainy one. The quiet evening in shifts once the lights go out, with no guarantee from the alert system that it’s returning anytime soon. With the warning out to stay indoors, there’s nothing left for MUSE to do but wait it out. Things are relatively quiet...if a little creepy all alone. And that’s when their phone rings. The first time, it’s mostly breathing and laugh that could almost be described as weird as hell. They hang up and chalk it up to a wrong number. The second call, the voice is muffled and asking if they’re alone. By the third, it’s a different number and a different, deeper voice, with a warning about the back door they’re suddenly unsure if it’s actually locked or not. Especially when a loud crash and breaking glass could be heard from outside, complete with the sound of running footsteps.

DOUBLE C DINER: With a series of false alarms and news of pranks throughout the town, there is a news alert warning citizens to be alert. Tensions rise with the few patrons still in the diner, and many suggest chancing it out in the rain, making a run for the parking lot. In the midst of the arguing, there's the sound of banging at the front door. A shadowy figure, tapping on the glass, voice muffled by the thunderous pour of rain. Several people want to refuse them entry, paranoid about the warning and unable to see exactly who's under the hood, soon an argument breaks out, with MUSE caught in the middle. Do they open the door? And who's under the hood?

THE GAZETTE: Waiting out the storm, the building, like all the others around town is suddenly thrown into darkness. The backup generator is (mercifully) working, but leaving seems to be out of the question, thanks to the advisory warning sent out to the CASTLEPORT citizens. With nothing left to do but sit tight, MUSE finds themselves in the eerie quiet of the newsroom but the peace is rudely disturbed with a sound of a loud sound out back. The generator has blown a fuse and is currently on fire.

ON THE ROAD: Driving back to town, MUSE suddenly finds themselves with a stalled car out on the long, pitch-black road near the NORTH WOODS. A call to roadside assistance is met with a vague promise of a tow truck coming soon, but with resources stretched to the limit thanks to the power outage and bigger emergencies on the docket, it’s going to be a long wait. MUSE sits tight, with nothing but their cell phone to distract them from the pouring rain and dark shadows of the empty (and eerie) tree-lined road. Feeling exposed (and maybe a little creeped out), there is a silent debate of whether or not they should stick around and wait for roadside assistance, or take their chances with walking back to town.

CONCORD HALL: The police station has been swamped with calls since the blackout. MUSE is a witness to the chaos, officers everywhere, working by flashlight and trying to communicate with old radios and the absence of trusty cell phones. CASTLEPORT PD was a deadzone without the WiFi. A few spots had mild reception. One being, the first floor cell, a key location in many a wild high school stories, like the legendary Puckerman pizza delivery, getting a pie special ordered during an overnighter. Knowing it would be the only place that held any chance of being connected with the outside world, MUSE makes a beeline for the two room cell, amidst the chaos and hive of activity in the station. They managed to find their way into the closest one on the left side, eyes still attempting to focus in the dark as they sat on the bench nearest to the window. Completely distracted, they didn’t notice the rise in background commotion at the station, nor the sound of the emergency siren ringing out. It was only the resounding clang of the heavy cell door slamming shut that caught their attention, delayed as it was, as the cold realization that they were locked in, during a blackout, and possibly alone.

#cportevent #cportlightsout

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izanyas · 5 years

Text

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow (14)

Sorry for the long wait.

Rating: M Words: 8,000 Warnings: mild gore/horror.

[Read from prologue]

and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow Chapter 14

Jiang Yanli had tears running down her face when Wei Wuxian broke out of her embrace. Her hands lingered for a second longer around his neck and shoulders, not shaking anymore but gripping tight and afraid. He had to grab her wrists and pull them away himself, and then again she resisted, her anger visible in the tense line of her mouth.

"A-Xian," she said again.

It was as if his name was the only word she knew how to say anymore.

Wei Wuxian bowed his head. He dragged his legs away from hers and pushed himself to his feet in silence, dusting his black robes, looking vaguely at Little Apple on the side who hadn't made a sound since the dog had been thrown out.

Jiang Yanli rose slowly. She didn't pretend to fix her appearance. "A-Xian," she said again.

"Did you tell Jiang Cheng?" he asked.

"No." He heard her shake her head; felt her put a hand over his elbow, had to resist shaking her off out of habit. This was Jiang Yanli, not someone to protect himself from. If she did try to hurt him, he would just have to allow her. "I wanted to be sure," she said. "Otherwise he would have come running."

"Don't tell him," Wei Wuxian said.

Her silence was worth a thousand words.

"He doesn't need to know. I know I have no right to ask you anything, but please, don't tell anyone."

"You're right," she replied curtly. "You have no right to ask me anything."

Wei Wuxian exhaled shakily. His skin seemed to sting at the touch of air alone; where Jiang Yanli's hand was holding him, it burned.

"A-Cheng will have to know eventually," she murmured.

"Why?" Wei Wuxian asked.

He turned around to face her. Her hand slid from his arm at last, and he was once more shaken by how close in height they were now. He had grown used to looking at her from above, even on that day in the Nightless City, when she had been injured and lay on the blood-soaked earth like one more corpse on the battlefield. Now their eyes were almost level.

Staring at her was as hard now as it had been then.

"If Lan Wangji and I recognized you, A-Cheng will too," Jiang Yanli said urgently. "You can't escape him forever."

"I don't see any reason why. He had no clue who I was when we met in Dafan, and I can avoid him. If you don't say anything, he will never know."

"You're so stubborn!" she cried out at him. Her face looked fraught in the darkness, and Wei Wuxian had never more wished that he could not see. "Why do you always—"

Her words were interrupted by loud, distressed barking.

Wei Wuxian had all but forgotten about the dog. It seemed to have fallen silent while they were embracing, as if it and the rest of the world meant to pay respect to their reunion, but now its yapping came more loudly than ever. Even with the solid wall of the shed separating them from it, Wei Wuxian shuddered.

"Fairy," Jiang Yanli murmured. "Oh, something must have happened to A-Ling."

This caught his attention. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"He was gone from the room when I woke up earlier. I was going outside to look for him." She sighed a little fondly and added, "I think he did not take too well to me telling him to let you and Hanguang-Jun handle this night-hunt. He may be trying to steal the glory from you."

She looked fond and worried at once. Parenthood suited Jiang Yanli as it did few other cultivators; Wei Wuxian remembered her on the seventh day after Jin Ling's birth, laid out in embroidered sheets and holding the babe in her arms with such a glow to her young face that the rest of the room seemed to lighten with it. Jin Zixuan had not taken his eyes off of her even once, that day.

She didn't know what Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji did about the burial grounds hidden in the forest.

"I shall look for him," he said lightly.

"I'll come with you."

"Shijie—"

"I'll come with you," she repeated. Her eyes were as steel. "He is my son."

The one and only thing Wei Wuxian had not stolen from her.

She soothed the dog outside after they opened the door. The beast's panic was more obvious now than when it had smothered Wei Wuxian under its weight, and Wei Wuxian kept as far away from it as he could while still within reaching distance of Jiang Yanli. Fairy, for that was the dog's name—no doubt another fancy of Jiang Cheng—tugged and yelped at Jiang Yanli in fury, foaming at the mouth, almost crazed with worry for its master. Jiang Yanli looked more trouble as time went by and they ventured closer to the forest. Wei Wuxian wisely kept what he knew of Qinghenie's buried sabers to himself.

He was anxious too. A knot of tension seemed to grip him by the throat at the proximity of her, at the knowledge that she had recognized him so easily, at everything left unsaid still that he knew she would not let slide away. That he owed it to her did nothing to alleviate this pain.

They crossed through the darkened woods with only the glare of Yanli's sword to guide their feet. Wei Wuxian saw the turtle-shaped root which he and Lan Wangji had run into during the day. With shadows shifting over the dome of its shell, it looked ready to spring alive any second and take the rest of its tree with it.

For a second he was back in Qishan in the cave of the tortoise. Rot in his nostrils and heat crawling upon his back and Lan Wangji kneeling face to a wall, playing music on bowstrings with his fingers bleeding open.

I never thanked him, he thought.

The barrier laid around the burial grounds did not work on animals. Though he and Jiang Yanli could see nothing in the direction Fairy pulled them, the dog was insistent, louder and louder as they approached the place where he must have lost his master. Wei Wuxian stepped over a thick, raised root; he bowed to avoid the lower branches of an oak so tall it seemed to reach the sky.

A shiver of dark, crawling energy swept over his skin. When he opened his eyes, they were standing before a black-stoned burial home. Jiang Yanli took a step backwards in surprise, and her boot dug into the fine bones of a dead bird, cracking loudly in the silence.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Let's just find Jin Ling, quickly," Wei Wuxian replied.

He knew not if he managed to hide his fear from her. Either way Jiang Yanli looked at him for a long second before acquiescing.

She had always been like this, Wei Wuxian reflected as they approached the edifice. Fairy's barks turned to pained and terrified whines. He refused to enter with them, sticking close to the front steps without putting so much as a paw on it, and Jiang Yanli scratched the top of his head with a hand before going inside, her head held high. She had always remained so dignified in her fear and loss; be it half-starved and broken-boned in that cave in Qishan or flying all the way to Lanling on her own, after separating him and Jiang Cheng from what could have been a bloody fight.

Now, with her son missing and the unmistakable trace of death and curses on the night air, she stood as strong as a tree herself.

Wei Wuxian bowed his head and followed her inside. The dog whined but made no move to enter.

Whatever Nie Huaisang had said about those burial grounds, the mounds of which rounded under the trees behind the funeral home, people from his sect obviously came often. A layer of dust had gathered, no older than a few weeks. Torches rested upon the door frame, ready to be carried around.

Jiang Yanli lit one with a talisman. She made as if to offer one to Wei Wuxian too, but he shook his head. He feared what contact with fire could bring out of him when energy thickened the air so, almost begging to be used.

The hallway at the end of the empty house forked three different ways. "Which way did he go?" Jiang Yanli asked to no one. She shone light upon each of the three dark corridors, hoping perhaps to find trace of Jin Ling. "A-Xian, can you feel anything?"

Wei Wuxian had no wish to share what he was feeling. "Jin Ling is a straightforward boy," he declared, stepping into the middle road.

Her laughter was brittle.

They arrived, as expected, into one of the dirt domes they had glimpsed from outside. Several small coffins lay in rows at the center of it, shivering in the flame light. They looked like children's tombs.

He all but felt Jiang Yanli shiver. Wei Wuxian approached the closest of them and lifted the lid of it with a creak of rotted wood. A rusted saber came to light, weakly calling to him. The satin cushion it was laid on had darkened with the ages.

He closed the lid again. "It's only weapons," he told Jiang Yanli, who stood where he had left her as if frozen to the bone. "Shijie, I don't think any of these holds a corpse."

"Are you sure?" The torch in her hand shook. "It looks like—"

"You can check yourself if you want. I promise you won't find your son in any of them."

She looked at him for a long time. Finally, her trembling jaw settled, and she nodded curtly. "Where is he, then?"

Wei Wuxian had an idea about that, but he was certain that she would not like it.

The walls here were not made of stone at all. Though the funeral home that made the entrance of the place was familiar enough to look unobtrusive, the inside of the mounds were made of dirt as well as their outside. It was with Nie Huaisang's words in mind that Wei Wuxian took the bamboo flute from his hip and put it under his mouth.

Before the first note could even leave him, answers came from all around him. He lowered it again. "I think Jin Ling is inside those walls," he said.

Jiang Yanli dropped the torch. It rolled upon the ground till it hit one of the small coffins, its light flickering wildly over her ashen face. "The walls," she repeated.

He thought for a second that this would finally be too much for her to handle. She once again surprised him by taking her sword in hand and immediately slashing at the dirt around them.

"Shijie!"

"He can't breathe in there," she said.

She sounded winded. Though her grip was sure and her face set and determined, Wei Wuxian could see just how panicked she was, just how scared she must be of losing her most precious person again.

"Shijie, there's no need," he said, crossing the distance between them in a step and grabbing her wrist firmly. Shock made her halt for a second—Wei Wuxian had not touched her like this since before Yunmeng had burned. "I have a much quicker way of doing this."

He braced himself for a second before bringing the flute to his lips again.

The corpses which had earlier answered him so readily did so again. This time, Wei Wuxian called for them to free themselves.

Dirt started crumbling from the walls. Their surface shook as dead bodies in various states of decay emerged, some merely bone, some draped in strands of rotted flesh and muscle. All squirmed their way out of decades and centuries of dry and then wet earth, snapping their empty, dislocated jaws, breaking in their attempts to flee. One woman dug her way up the ground between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli and looked at them with empty eye sockets.

Jiang Yanli had seen Wei Wuxian control corpses several times, during the Sunshot Campaign and during the hunt on Phoenix Mountain and then at the Nightless City. She was not squeamish by any means, having worked a lot at healing the wounded during the war and having gone through very harsh childbirth herself, but she gasped. She put her free hand over her mouth to fend off the terrible smell suddenly filling the cave, and she swayed on her own feet.

Corpses emerging from the walls was not all that Wei Wuxian aimed for. Those who were caught on the outside of the mounds he could feel struggling, fossilized in place and breaking themselves apart trying to answer his call, but he doubted that Jin Ling had been buried so far in. A pan of wall shattered before them, freeing three mostly-intact men with rope burns around their blue necks, and behind them a silhouette fell that was not controlled by him at all.

Wei Wuxian shifted his orders and his music; the corpses crawled back into the ground and walls.

"A-Ling!" Jiang Yanli cried out.

She rushed to her fallen son's side, heedless of what she stepped into, and pulled the boy into her lap so she could check on his breathing and health. Wei Wuxian was not worried; if he had not obeyed him, then he was still alive. A few seconds later, a sob of relief echoed through the destroyed hall.

"He's alive," Jiang Yanli said haltingly, "but I can't wake him up."

Wei Wuxian finally turned toward them.

Jin Ling was very pale. The dirt smeared over his face made his skin appear white in contrast, almost as much as the corpses now fusing again with the mud walls around them. So much resentful energy wafted through the air that Wei Wuxian felt he could choke on it as he approached them and crouched by his nephew's other side, but he shook it off, putting a hand against the boy's forehead and feeling for a trace of life.

Jin Ling's breaths were slow and shallow. They didn't rise in his chest at all or make his thin throat shiver. Wei Wuxian's hand flew over the length of his body without quite touching him. He frowned, halting his movement, when he reached the boy's right leg.

"Is he okay?" Jiang Yanli asked.

Her voice was very soft. Wei Wuxian met her eyes for a second and replied, "Yes. He'll wake up in a while, I believe."

It wasn't a lie.

Jiang Yanli did not ask him to carry her son for her. Though Mo Xuanyu was much shorter and thinner than Wei Wuxian had been, his physical strength still surpassed hers, yet she was the one who rose up with her son in her arms and hoisted him up on her back.

They hurried out of the burial site. Ghostly hands seemed to touch every inch of Wei Wuxian's skin, pulling backwards, whispering that he should stay. As if he were already part of the décor here, as much as he had been part of Yiling's Burial Mounds. Jiang Yanli did not seem to notice just how slow and heavy his steps were behind hers, so hasty was she to return somewhere safe. They found Fairy waiting where they had left him, and not even the dog's loud barking managed to shake Wei Wuxian out of the stupor that this place had put him in.

The forest had not seemed so thick and maze-like in daylight. Wei Wuxian started breathing easier only when they reached the edges of it, where the trees were fewer and farther-between. They made their way toward the village with quicker steps than they had come, Jiang Yanli not once complaining about her son's heavy weight.

Though dawn would soon be upon them, they saw no one as they crossed the wide central street. The sky had turned grey over their heads when they reached the front steps of the inn, but the dining room beyond the door was empty, and no sound came from the creaking floor above.

Wei Wuxian wanted nothing more than to go back to his own room and sleep, but he could not. Not yet. He accompanied his shijie to the room she had bought for the night and watched her lay her son down over one of the two beds there. She lit a candle on the cabinet between them; gold gleamed around Suihia's handle, unmoving as it was at Jin Ling's hip.

It was a good thing he had not lost it when the graveyard trapped him. Wei Wuxian did not wish to bear witness to this boy losing more of his father's memorabilia.

Jiang Yanli sat on the mattress. She put a hand on Jin Ling's knee and watched him in silence for a long moment. Wei Wuxian shifted on his own feet by the door, unwilling to go but unwilling to explain why, and wondered how to get her to leave the room. He only needed a minute.

"A-Xian," she said.

He felt as though the name ought to echo around them, as though the silence was too thick to allow it. He looked away from her.

She repeated it in the same way she did when he was small and unruly, when Yu Ziyuan had gone after spearing him with her words and Jiang Yanli had to come and soothe him. "A-Xian," she said, "I can't forgive you if you won't tell me why you did it."

"You'll have to be more specific," Wei Wuxian replied.

Jiang Yanli's hand left Jin Ling's leg. She rested it atop the sheets instead, digging her nails into it almost to the point of tearing. "Tell me why you killed him."

Please.

Wei Wuxian looked at the burning candle until he knew his sight would carry a grey spot in the shape of it. He touched with his fingers the rough length of the bamboo flute and imagined—remembered—Chenqing's smooth and cold side; the feel of it in his hand as Wen Ning brought destruction to the men and women around him, as he faced Jin Zixuan with hatred and was met instead with love.

"I can't," he replied.

He could give her no answer that would satisfy her.

"A-Xian," she breathed.

"I can't," he cut her off harshly. "Shijie, it wouldn't matter even if I told you."

"You're wrong—"

"What is it you want to hear?"

Her shock was understandable, in a distant way; he had never yelled at her before. The guilt of doing so now when she should be the one screaming made him lower his voice, made him swallow down the knot of anger, of shame, that those memories would always bring out of him.

"Shijie," he murmured. "If I told you I murdered him in cold blood, you would not find peace. If I said I was defending myself, you would hurt. If I told you it was an accident, you would try to forgive me and live forever in sorrow. I don't—" he clenched his teeth. Released them slowly. "I don't want that for you," he went on. "You can hurt me if you want. You can kill me. But I won't answer you."

He would not add to her grief any more.

Jiang Yanli's eyes shone. The brightening sky outside and the candlelight beside her glimmered within them and rolled down the swell of her cheek alongside the first tear. "When did you become like this, I wonder?" she asked in such a thin voice that it was barely more than a whisper. "When did you decide that you could not trust me?"

He didn't answer her.

"You used to talk to me," she said.

Wei Wuxian saw the shape of her rise from the bed and approach him with slow steps. He wanted nothing more than to leave now, to shut the door in her face and lock himself in his own room, to drink the bitter moonless tea and find comfort in the safety it brought him, even so late after he truly needed it.

She took his hand in hers. "I never believed that you told me everything in your heart," she said, "but you could talk to me, once. You could tell me things you could not tell anyone else."

He had once sat with her at the Pier, with their feet in the water, and spoken of forlorn dreams.

"What happened to you?" Her fingers were cold upon his cheek, soft but unstoppable. She turned his head sideways until their eyes met. "What did we do that drove you away from us like this?"

He almost wanted to laugh. "You didn't do anything," he replied.

"I don't believe you."

He could feel her searching his eyes for deceit. Her own widened with disbelief when she found none, as he had known they would. Wei Wuxian pushed her hand off of his face and repeated, "You have nothing to blame yourself for. You and Jiang Cheng."

"All those years I thought…"

She struggled with her words. Wei Wuxian let go of her wrist and took his own hands back, stepping away so that a more appropriate distance stood between them. On the small bed in the corner, Jin Ling stayed as still as the dead.

He didn't have much time.

"I remember the awful things that A-Cheng said to you when our parents died," Jiang Yanli said shakily. "All this time, I thought this was the reason you distanced yourself from him."

"I don't remember him saying anything," Wei Wuxian lied.

"Then what happened, A-Xian? Why won't you tell me what happened to you, if you won't tell me what happened to Zixuan?"

Because he could never let them know the truth. Wei Wuxian would rather die a second time being thought of as nothing more than a murderer.

There was too little time for such thoughts now. Jin Ling's skin had not grown any warmer in the minutes they had wasted talking, the cold energy seeping under the skin of his leg now spreading faster and faster. If Wei Wuxian did not act soon, the boy would surely become one more of the Nie burial site's meals.

He stepped toward the bed briskly. "Shijie, I will need Lan Wangji to wake Jin Ling up," he declared.

"You said—"

"He will wake up, but it should be easier with Lan Zhan's help. Please, can you fetch him for me?"

Jiang Yanli would never put anything above her son's safety. Wei Wuxian needed not stare at her to picture how she looked as she made her decision, and her words of assent were lost to him. The door open and closed behind him with the same harsh sound of old wood that any movement of the inn brought.

He bent over the bed and quickly took off Jin Ling's muddied boot. His ankle already bore the black mark of the curse Wei Wuxian had felt inside the mound earlier; it crawled up the length of his calf and knee, stopping short of his thigh, but Wei Wuxian could almost see it squirm and spread under his very eyes.

Foolish boy.

Sitting down would be easier for the transfer. Wei Wuxian did so without grace, preferring the chair to the bed itself as he worked the dark energy from Jin Ling's leg to his own. The feeling would no doubt wake the boy up, and he only had a moment before Jiang Yanli returned in Lan Wangji's company.

There was no pain when the mark grew on his skin, but pain would have been preferrable, he thought with a wince. It was as though ice was pressing in from under his skin and numbing his whole leg down. Soon enough all movement from his knee was restrained the way that the phantom touch of the sabers' will had tried to pull him back earlier. The curse looked even blacker on Mo Xuanyu's pale skin; it did not stop at his knee but rose instead higher, fueled by the power used for transfer, crawling around Wei Wuxian's thigh.

Jin Ling stirred with a groan. Wei Wuxian shoved the boy's clothes down over his leg again and, as he opened his eyes, tried to look as inconspicuous as possible.

"Mo Xuanyu?" Jin Ling said raspily.

His weary face immediately twisted into suspicion, but it probably had more to do with the boy's usual animosity against his would-be uncle than anything Wei Wuxian had done.

"Welcome back to the living," Wei Wuxian said.

"Where am I—"

The door opened again before he could finish speaking. Jiang Yanli came in, followed by the ever-proper Lan Wangji, almost fully dressed and with not a hair out of place. His eyes found Wei Wuxian's immediately. The line of his brow eased.

"A-Ling!"

"Mother? What—"

Wei Wuxian pushed himself off of the chair as Jiang Yanli rushed to her son again. His first step on the cursed leg was faltering, but the limb managed to hold his weight with nothing more than a slight limp.

"What happened?" Lan Wangji asked softly once they were side by side.

"I'll tell you while we eat, Lan Zhan. I'm famished."

He threw one last look behind his shoulder.

Jin Ling had sat up on the bed and looked more confused than ever in his mother's embrace. Jiang Yanli was not crying now, though she spoke fastly of his recklessness and promised many more punishments when they were home than Wei Wuxian cared to listen to. He saw her hand splay in the boy's dirty hair shakily. He watched her hold him close in such obvious relief that it lightened his heart empathetically.

"Come on, Lan Zhan," he said. Tearing his eyes away from the both of them ached more than it ought to.

Lan Wangji followed in his steps without a word. His presence felt a little like comfort.

The room downstairs had started filling up since they came back to the inn. Early risers, most of them peasants, were eating and drinking and conversing in low voices on the benches near the door. The innkeeper's wife was busy serving them and exchanging local news, her sharp and snowy scent tickling Wei Wuxian's nose. He sat with Lan Wangji at the other side of the room and allowed the other man to order for them both.

He filled him in as they waited and ate about the barrier and the funeral home, about Jin Ling's escapade and his own attempt at a nightly walk. He did not talk of the curse on his leg or his and Jiang Yanli's earlier conversation. He said nothing of his own intent to summon Wen Ning in the donkey's shed.

If Lan Wangji noticed the omitted parts of his story, he said nothing of it. He ate and drank in silence, apparently content to listen to the sound of Wei Wuxian's voice. He frowned when Wei Wuxian smiled and sighed when the flow of his words ran out, his long and white fingers cradled around a cup of tea, rubbing its rim again and again.

With midday high over them all, there was nothing to hide the red around Jiang Yanli's eyes. She had washed herself of the fatigue and grime of their late night excursion, but Wei Wuxian knew as well as her that some things simply did not come off the skin.

It was with those red eyes that she looked at him now in front of the inn, one hand over her sword and the other on her son's shoulder. Zidian caught to sunlight every way she moved, sending blinding spots of white in Wei Wuxian's way that he had to blink at.

"Thank you for helping my son," she said very properly, bowing at the shoulders.

The odd part was just how stiff Lan Wangji was in nodding back to her. Though his face was as impassible as ever, Wei Wuxian thought he could read tension on him.

"Lan Wangji," Jiang Yanli said suddenly. She had not risen out of her bow yet. "The next time we meet, I would like to speak with you. My brother as well."

Lan Wangji glanced briefly at Wei Wuxian. "No need," he replied.

"On the contrary. I think it is very much needed."

Jin Ling had long stopped bowing himself. He was staring at his mother and Lan Wangji in suspicion, his young face scrunched as if looking hard enough would reveal to him what they were alluding to.

"You'll become all wrinkled if you keep doing that," Wei Wuxian commented.

"I will not," Jin Ling replied angrily, but his face did smooth over.

Wei Wuxian had hoped to distract them from the solemn atmosphere. But although Jiang Yanli's mouth thinned into a smile, her eyes were full of sorrow. They came to rest on Wei Wuxian wearing the same longing that he felt deep within his heart.

"Mo Xuanyu," she said. He saw her hesitate over the name and wet her lips quickly. "Be well," she added with too much emotion. "Take… take care of yourself."

He knew not if voicing an answer would be possible. Instead, he bowed.

"Lan Zhan," Wei Wuxian said as soon as the glare of their swords was too far to be seen with the naked eye. "Let's investigate the barrier again now and make sure it is fixed."

Lan Wangji looked at him and replied, "No."

"No? Why not?"

"You're hurt."

Wei Wuxian had a reply ready for this. He hadn't thought he could fool Lan Wangji's piercing eyes, but this job took precedence over the curse mark roped around his leg. His protest died when Lan Wangji met his gaze evenly.

He sighed. "All right, then."

Lan Wangji stepped beside him again as they walked up to their rooms. He did not hesitate upon entering Wei Wuxian's despite what propriety would dictate out of him, and Wei Wuxian hid a smile at that. He too wondered what had happened to Lan Wangji, to make him so bold now.

"It's only a curse," he told the man as he sat upon his bed and tugged off his boot. "A small one. Jin Ling did not stay trapped long enough to be truly endangered, it should go away on its own once we leave this place."

"It will get worse if we go back now," Lan Wangji replied.

Wei Wuxian could not deny this.

The cold was still as bright under his skin as ever. It was odd to tug back the leg of his clothing and touch his own blackened skin; his fingers met with human warmth where his limb felt like a block of ice. He knocked against it with his knuckles, expecting it to sound like wood or rock.

"Lan Zhan," he asked without thinking, "does my leg feel weird to you?"

He realized what he had said in the next second.

Lan Wangji had been in the middle of setting his sword and guqin down against the bedside cabinet. He paused in his movement as if touched by a curse of his own.

This would be the moment for shame, for panic. And panic there was underneath Wei Wuxian's bravado, even as he met Lan Wangji's eyes and did not go back on his words, even as he searched for a reason why he would say such a thing, why he would make such an offer. He remembered cloudily what he had thought eons ago as he visited Qishanwen and called on Lan Wangji for a comment on another: He is too proper not to rile up once in a while.

Lan Wangji was still as proper now as he had been when they were teenagers. His body leaned and honed from training, his mind sharpened by meditation. The years had been nothing but kind to the lines of his face and hands, turning handsomeness to beauty, making him look at all times like a stone statue of a man. He stood now in the dusty light of the room with his eyes fixed on Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian realized that while he had once wanted to rile him up, now he felt nothing of the kind.

Now he felt nothing at all that he could recognize.

Lan Wangji approached the bed slowly. He kneeled beside it in one graceful motion, right beside where Wei Wuxian's bare foot knocked against the floor. He put his hand against the roof of Wei Wuxian's foot, and Wei Wuxian felt his fear distill into something much, much different.

The touch of him went unfelt on the patches of skin covered in the curse marks. Lan Wangji's fingers traced up his ankle and leg slowly, at times entirely numb and at times unbearably present. Numbness vanished out of Wei Wuxian's conscious as he suddenly felt his whole sense of touch narrow to the contact of Lan Wangji's fingertips, as goosebumps erupted on his skin and almost made him want to hurl. It felt good and terrifying at once, this touch, this press of fingers to skin that was nothing like Jiang Yanli's embrace or Jiang Cheng's hand on his shoulder. Nothing like grass and dirt into his mouth on a mountain in Yiling.

Lan Wangji's hand stopped just below his knee. He slid it under Wei Wuxian's leg and lifted it with his palm there, his index caught into the crease and his thumb splayed against the outside of his thigh.

"Not weird," he said simply.

Wei Wuxian breathed in and met his eyes again.

He had once been the one to touch Lan Wangji's leg like this. He had healed him to the best of his abilities while they were trapped in that cave, using herbs to clean his wounds and praying to escape in time to avoid death or infection. Lan Wangji had protested then, offended to share so much as a touch with him. He had turned his back and obeyed Wei Wuxian's wishes when his fever struck him, refusing so much as a glance without thought for his own comfort. Wei Wuxian had only cared for his own dignity then. Now, suddenly, gratitude swelled within his chest that he knew not how to repay.

And yet something else tugged at his memories. The sight of Lan Wangji on his knees before him and in much dimmer light; hollowness through his heart and belly and lungs, anger and sorrow on his tongue like so many knives; fear like a sword through the belly as he shouted things out with as much cruelty as he could muster. They swarmed and floated like smoke slipping through his fingers, just out of reach of his knowledge, erased by the timelessness of death.

Wei Wuxian tugged his cursed leg out of Lan Wangji's hold. The man's hand fell away at once, resting gently over his own lap. He did not look away.

"Thank you," Wei Wuxian said.

He meant it from the bottom of his heart: Thank you for not looking at me back then. Thank you for being here today.

And though he could not remember why, though he could not bring himself to say it: I'm sorry.

The curse vanished with the sound of Lan Wangji's guqin.

They walked into the forest that afternoon with lighter steps than the day before, greeting the turtle-like root as an old friend, traversing the barrier easily. The odd events that followed—a man with a visage like smoke, a corpse with stitched-up limbs—happened to Wei Wuxian as if through a haze, as if he were an outsider looking in. He still felt upon his skin the touch of Lan Wangji's callused fingers, there-and-not-there between patches of cursed skin.

They left behind the village and its hostile inhabitants, traveling south where all four limbs of their dear friend's corpse pointed. Wei Wuxian returned to the familiar quiet of nights spent out in the warming weather, lying prone on the soft grass and watching starlight prick the sky, Lan Wangji's sandalwoodscent never too far from him. He found as the days went by that he did not mind it; that on the rare occasion they ventured far from each other, he would even miss it.

The farther south they went, the more villages they saw. Yueyang was less averse to them than Qinghe's border had been, and they could sleep there in inns that looked like the one in Dafan, with separate rooms and spaces for people of all statuses. Lan Wangji still drew looks wherever he went with his pristine white robes, and Wei Wuxian did for Mo Xuanyu's stature and face, but few people bothered to do more than stare and then go on their way.

They stopped in such a village five days after leaving Qinghe. Before that, their steps took them across the entrance of what looked to be a wide and abandoned mansion, the soil of which was stained with old blood.

Wei Wuxian paused before it. Cold slithered up his wide sleeves as the resentful energy there felt the presence of something akin to it; he shivered.

"Wei Ying?" Lan Wangji called.

"Something bad happened here, Lan Zhan," Wei Wuxian replied. He stepped across the threshold of the derelict house, little as he wished to. "Can't you feel it?"

Lan Wangji closed his eyes for a second before nodding. Like Wei Wuxian, he entered the wide hall. There were still cabinets and vases around, as if its inhabitants had not had time to pack any before tragedy struck them.

"Really bad," Wei Wuxian murmured. "We should see what our dear friend has to say."

The haunted left arm of the corpse was not pointing anywhere anymore. It struggled inside Lan Wangji's hold as it had when they approached the Nie sabers' burial grounds. Another piece of the puzzle was close to where they stood.

They left for the village soon after. Wei Wuxian felt a weight at his nape the entire time they walked, but look as he might through the trees around them, he could see no human or ghost following in their steps.

"I will investigate," Lan Wangji declared after paying for their stay at the biggest inn around. As Wei Wuxian opened his mouth to protest, he cut in: "You are tired."

Wei Wuxian smiled helplessly. "Nothing gets past you, Lan Zhan."

"The house earlier…"

"Yes, yes. It sapped my energy. Truly, I want nothing more than to eat and sleep."

Lan Wangji nodded as if to say, Then do. Wei Wuxian walked past him and to the farthest free table he could find, brushing their elbows together on the way.

He was served quickly enough considering his status. The beta boy who took care of the various guests' orders looked as tired as Wei Wuxian felt, which could explain why he did not want to waste time on berating him for walking unchaperoned.

Unfortunately, the guests themselves felt so such reserve.

"Are you alone?" asked an old woman sitting at the table behind his, disapproval evident on her thin voice.

She did not greet him or offer her name when Wei Wuxian looked at her. Her hair was striped with white and grey, and her face cracked open with wrinkles so deep that they casted shadows onto her eyes and lips. She looked at Wei Wuxian in distaste, sniffing loudly for a trace of his scent. She must have caught it, for Wei Wuxian had not used the paste since morning; her anger turned even more palpable.

"I asked you if you are alone," she repeated harshly at his lack of answer.

"I am," Wei Wuxian lied.

"Shameful."

He was struck with the crystal-clear memory of Lan Qiren looking at him in distaste from the high dais of his classroom.

"Aren't you alone too?" he asked, toying with his untouched cup of wine. He had to twist around on his bench to face her.

"Who raised you to be so inquisitive, omega?" the old woman replied loudly. The noise of the room around covered her words but to the closest of guests, who glanced their way and shook their heads.

Wei Wuxian wondered what she would say if he replied with Jiang Fengmian's name. He wondered if she would even know it.

"These things would have never been allowed in my time," the woman complained, loud again. "The Chang clan would have your fingers for this if Chang Cian was still alive."

"The Chang clan?"

There was a cane next to her, leaning against the side of the table. She grabbed it with both hands and tapped its end against the wooden floor. "A great cultivation clan used to live here, boy," she rasped. "You travelers think us a haunted town, but if you had come here a few years ago, you would speak differently."

That was interesting. "A haunted town," Wei Wuxian replied. "So there is something haunting you."

"Of course there is, with the way Yueyangchang was massacred. Foolish boy."

"I am not from around here."

She kicked his leg with the cane. "I could tell," she said. "None of you lot would come if you knew about those terrible corpses in Yi City." She leaned in closer to him despite her earlier disgust, fake-whispering almost loudly enough to be heard over the room's chatter. "Three boys came yesterday to hunt for those spirits, and I told them, they're all in Yi City. All the spirits of the Chang clan, hungry for revenge."

"What happened to the Chang clan?" Wei Wuxian asked in the same tone as her.

She put a wrinkled hand over her heart quickly. "All killed, they were," she answered. "Chang Cian all those years ago with his alpha brothers and sisters, and his son Chang Ping later by lingchi alongside the rest of the clan. Now we are haunted, brought a little more to ruin year after year."

Lingchi was terrible enough torture to make even Wei Wuxian wince. "Someone must have hated them very, very much," he told the old lady.

She leaned even closer. "It was that Xiao Xingchen," she whispered. "It was that damned monk from the mountain, coming in and pretending to be a sage—"

Her cane flew out of her grip and clattered on the floor the next table over. The woman gasped in surprise and fear, holding her hand close to her belly; the metal pommel of the cane had cut the inside of her thumb and made her bleed.

Wei Wuxian looked up.

The man who had kicked the cane away lowered his foot slowly, deliberately. He must not be much taller than Mo Xuanyu and not much older either, though he held in one hand a jar of clear wine and in the other two porcelain bowls. He dropped them onto the woman's table and ordered, "Move."

The old lady shriveled in on herself, still holding her bleeding hand. "Omega scum," she grumbled him plaintively. "All of you ought to be locked up—"

She cried out when the young man put a foot atop her fragile knee. "I said move, alpha," he repeated. He bent down, putting more of his weight onto her and making her sob out with pain. "Move before I make you move."

Stubborn and alpha she may be, but the man attacking her was stronger in every way. Wei Wuxian suffered her accusatory looks in silence—he had no wish to help any alpha on a good day, let alone one who had insulted him out of nowhere—until at last she began to move away. She squirmed out from under the man's foot, bending low to get her cane from the floor. The man sat where she had sat, watching her limp away with an empty smile.

His hair was in disarray, his clothes holed and stitched up too many times to count. Black bruises darkened the skin under his eyes, as if he had not slept in days. The scent coming off of him was almost peach-like; Wei Wuxian recognized it as the fragrance of guihua flowers.

"She's still as annoying as when I was a kid," the man said to Wei Wuxian, pouring liquor down both of the bowls. "Never managed to shut her mouth for a second and never will."

"I take it you are from around here," Wei Wuxian replied, accepting the bowl that the stranger gave him.

He waited until the other had taken a sip before risking one of his own. The wine in it was surprisingly sweet.

He put the bowl down once he was done. The other man had not once stopped looking at him. He smiled then, exposing sharp teeth to the light of day, and said: "You are a cultivator."

"What makes you say that?" Wei Wuxian asked.

"Your conversation earlier for one. But I also saw you enter the village with that alpha in white." His nose twitched childishly at mentioning Lan Wangji. "A couple of those white-clad cultivators came around here yesterday, it made quite the ruckus."

"And you were not interested in talking to those cultivators."

The man grinned and replied, "No. But I am interested in you, omega cultivator."

He had barely touched his own wine, but he bent over the space between their respective benches to pour more for Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian was quite confident in his tolerance for liquor, but he would rather not risk inebriation here.

Still, he took the offered drink with a nod of thanks. "You interrupted quite the story there," he said. "The lady was telling me all about the one who massacred the local cultivation clan."

The man humphed. "You could get that story out of anyone here. No need to listen to her kind."

"Then could I get it from you?"

His only answer was silence.

Wei Wuxian leaned back against the table, crossing one leg atop the other, and asked: "Will you tell me about this Xiao Xingchen?"

"Don't you want to know about the ghosts in Yi City? Aren't you here to banish them?"

"I've seen enough ghosts and corpses to last me several lifetimes." Wei Wuxian almost laughed at his own words, so true were they; what surprised him was the quick, avid smile that the boyish man in front of him gave at them. "That woman said he was a monk. That he came from the mountain. What mountain was that?"

The man said, "The one where the immortal Baoshan Sanren lives."

Noise fluttered out of Wei Wuxian's hearing. The voices of the men and women around dimmed until they were whispers, until all he heard and saw was the omega man in front of him, his sugary scent and mean-spirited smiles—until all he tasted on his tongue was the tang of that oversweet wine.

"Does that interest you?" the man murmured silkily.

"It does," Wei Wuxian answered.

Here and now, he had no room for anything but honesty.

The man laughed. He bent backwards over his table until he all but lay on it, one hand around his wine and the other, gloved in black, squeezing the side of his bench. He raised it as he straightened up, putting his elbow on his knee and his chin over the bend of his wrist.

His pinky was cut short at the second knuckle.

"Fine then, cultivator," he said.

Something like glee, like bloodlust, was etched into his face as deeply as the bruise-like circles. Wei Wuxian felt for a second that this person before him was a thread away from breaking apart on his own cutting edges.

"Let me tell you about Xiao Xingchen."

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#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wangxian #lan wangji #wei wuxian #fic: and the calm is deep where the quiet waters flow #featured

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redsdesktop · 6 years

Text

Deviant Dynamics: Revolution

Chapter 28

Masterlist

Warnings: Mild Language.

Connor was anxious, he wasn't certain how bad Gavin would look, but he wanted to see. While they hadn't been exactly on friendly terms in reality, he still recalled what the other detective was like in the simulation and he at least wanted to be on slightly nicer terms with the salty man. Connor pushed open the door to the hospital room, the nurse said he could receive visitors which was a relief.As Connor took a step inside, he halted at the sight before him, making Collin bump into his back, grumbled in annoyance. Gavin looked up from where he'd been watching TV, his face was swollen and bruised. Reading about the injuries was one thing, but seeing it was another. His arm was already wrapped up in a cast and without his usual clothes, Gavin looked less intimidating in a hospital gown.

"Fuckin' great, just who I needed to see, Gandalf and his three asshole toasters." Gavin growled out, but his words didn't have their usual fire to them, as if he was far too tired. Or maybe too drugged up. Connor wasn't dissuaded as he moved into the room finally, placing the box of cookies on a tray beside Gavin's bed and tied the balloon to the back of a nearby chair.

"Nice to see you too, Gavin." Connor teased lightly before carrying on. "I brought you some brown sugar and cinnamon cookies, soft baked. I didn't know what kind of cookies you'd like, but they looked nice. And as per human tradition, I brought you a get well soon balloon to remind you that people care about you." Connor stated casually, though only receiving a confused glare from Gavin before the detective looked away, uncertain how to really deal with the android's care. Collin moved in to ruin the mood though. Well, maybe make it less awkward at least.

"Yeah, get well fast, the office is boring without you around to pester. Who am I supposed to throw stuff at now that you went and got yourself beat the hell up." Collin folded his arms, receiving Gavin's usual annoyed and fiery glare, it was nice to see his old self again even if the man tended to be a bit of an asshole. A bit was an understatement but Collin and Gavin seemed to have a very weird friendship going on.

"Fuck off, you plastic asshole." Gavin tried to flip Collin off but his one good hand was cluttered with wires from his heart monitor, making him growl out in annoyance. Hank moved in and dropped down into one of the empty guest chairs, Conrad lingered by the door, not wanting to let anyone else in without them getting cleared by him first. With Gavin being claimed by a bite mark, it wasn't known if the one who did it would seek him out again and Conrad was on high alert. "What are you dicks doing here anyways?"

"Well, I wanted to make sure you got some get well gifts and we also need to ask some questions, you know the drill." Connor admitted, he didn't like bothering Gavin while he was recovering, but they just didn't have the luxury to wait. More omegas were out there, they could be in danger right now. He just hoped Gavin kept his stubbornness and experience on the force to understand the necessity of receiving answers post haste.

"Yeah, well, there isn't much to tell." Gavin gave in, reaching over to the box of cookies to pull them onto his lap. "I went home, ordered some pizza delivery. So when someone knocked on my door, I didn't think much of it, figured it was just the delivery guy." Gavin scowled, angry at himself as he opened the box of cookies to fish one out. Taking a bite, he mumbled around it. "When I opened the door, the asshole clocked me right in the face." He gestured to the side of his face which looked like he got hit by a sledgehammer. Definitely an android's doing. "Fucker knocked me to the floor and before I could clear my head, he was on me. He pulled my arm up my back and when I started thrashing about the dick fuckin' crushed it." He snarled at the reminder though it was ruined when he shoved the rest of the cookie into his mouth.

"I nearly blacked out, I thought the worst was going to happen after all the biting. I don't know what happened but suddenly the asshole just upped and left as if he just fuckin' changed his mind." Gavin frowned in confusion and rubbed the back of his neck gingerly, The scars would remain there until the one who made them disowned their claim. Otherwise Gavin wouldn't be able to be claimed by anyone else, not that was a problem as Gavin made it abundantly clear he had no interest in being claimed in the first place.

"Are you sure it was a male? And did you catch their scent? Or get a look at them?" Connor pried though he figured Gavin would've mentioned seeing their face if he had by now.

"Well, I caught a glimpse but it wasn't enough to see any features. From the weight and feel, they were definitely a dick or a really manly woman. Whatever their scent was burned the fuck out of my nose, like snorting something spicy with a bit of sweet afterwards. Like a fuckin' Christmas candle right next to my nose." Just thinking about it made him rub at his nose as if he still couldn't get the scent out of it. "I didn't see anything, the asshole made sure of that while I was face down on the floor. The weirdest fuckin' thing is when I came to, he fed my god damn cat."

Now that was a bit unusual, making Connor frown in confusion. The case sounded like a hit and run, the android having proven to be aggressive and violent by harming Gavin and then turning around to make sure Gavin's cat was fed and watered. "Do you know any android that would want to attack you?"

"Besides you assholes, no. And you three are never too far apart, so I already know it wasn't the plastic detective squad." Gavin dug out another cookie and Connor turned to grab a bottle of apple juice from a nearby table, setting it on the tray for Gavin in case he needed something to wash it down.

"Well, we'll find them. For now just rest up so you can hurry up and get back to the station. By the way, do you need someone to take care of your cat tonight? We can swing around by there before we head home." Connor offered a little eagerly, Gavin raising a brow at the unusual tone, looking a little suspicious.

"Yeah, she needs to be fed and given some attention, don't know how she'll respond to androids though. Might take after her old man." He sounded a little proud, but Connor doubted it. If the cat was anything like the one in the simulation then Tinklebottoms would be more than happy with any sort of love and affection.

"No problem, we'll swing by there and make sure she's taken care and we'll check out the scene for any sort of clues that will help us." Connor nodded, reaching out to give Gavin a light pat on his uninjured shoulder as an offer for comfort, nothing too over the top since he knew Gavin wasn't much one for receiving anything remotely soft. "For now, rest up and let us handle everything in the meantime."

"But you'll owe us one." Collin chimed in, having situated himself leaning against the wall next to Conrad who hadn't turned his eyes off Connor. Seeing Conrad behave this way made Connor worry about him, pressuring him to solve this case soon so Conrad could relax again. The whole pack seemed to be dealing with the stress in their own ways. Connor buried himself in work, trying to solve the case, Collin was more aggressive than usual and Conrad was eerily reserved, forcing himself to contain his alpha instincts to stow Connor away somewhere safe. Connor was tempted to allow Conrad to do just that just so he could alleviate some stress on the younger android, but three androids were better than one and Connor would go stir crazy worrying about Conrad and Collin.

For now, they decided to leave Gavin to rest a while, the detective had managed to put on a angry exterior but Connor couldn't help but to wonder how the man really felt. Gavin was at heart an alpha, so to be marked in such a way might be a bit damaging. While it wasn't unheard of for a alpha to mark another alpha, but Gavin was already having issues trying to be an alpha that he likely didn't want to accept anything that was a bit out of the ordinary for an alpha. As Connor walked behind Hank and Conrad, he raised his hand up, feeling the bite marks on the back of his neck, wondering what it would've been like is someone he didn't like or even know bit him? He turned his head away at the thought, his systems protesting the idea, rejecting the thought of belonging to anyone else besides Conrad and Collin.

The car ride was quiet again, Connor leaning to rest his head on Conrad's shoulder, which seemed to ease a bit of tension out of the alpha. Connor closed his eyes, simply soaking in the presence of his alpha and epsilon on either side of him. He must have drifted off a little as Hank parked the care. "You three can go take care of the damn cat, I'm going to stay in here and listen to the sports news channel." Hank stated gruffly and Conrad opened the door to let the other two androids get out, Collin could've gotten out from the other side, but he wanted to follow Connor as usual. They took the elevator up from the parking garage to the third floor of the apartment complex, it was nothing fancy, a little outdated but kept in good repair.

Connor reached out, his inner wrists moving to bush along the insides of Conrad's and Collin's inner wrist, offering them reassurance while receiving some himself. It was a small gesture but a intimate one that meant a lot to each other. The elevator was a bit cramped, especially when Conrad and Collin crowded him into one of the back corners, Connor didn't really like being given such small space but he suffered through it. He excused the younger android's behavior for now, since their stress levels were high, they likely would've been on slightly better behavior if Connor wasn't in the center of this case. The elevator door dinged and the doors slid open, Connor waited for Conrad to move first, but the alpha bristled, giving off a wave of cold mountain air scent.

"Oh, the RK Detectives, its a pleasant surprise to see you three here."

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