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mandoalorian · 3 years

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I Believe In Love [Maxwell Lord x F!Reader] — Three: Beauty

Summary: When you find your calling to leave Themyscira, you venture out to the World of Man with intentions of helping and healing a very specific person’s relationship with his son. You’ve heard his voice before, but only in dreams. You’ve felt his pain and anguish and you’ve never been able to relate to anything more. But things don’t come easy for you, and they certainly don’t come easy for him either. [This series contains spoilers for WW84 and is my interpretation of what happens after the movie ends].

Warnings: 18+ description of male masturbation, descriptions of blood and injury, mention of childhood trauma as well as legal battle of custody over a child.

Word count: 5,200>

Masterlist

I Believe In Love Masterlist

Previous - Chapter Three - Next

Maxwell had to stifle back laughter from your comment. A hero? There wasn't a chance he was a hero. You didn't know what he had done. How he'd almost destroyed the entire planet without even realising. The guilt was eating him alive, it was all he could think about at any given second of silence. How could he have let himself become so power corrupt— to the extent he'd forgotten what really mattered? Alistair might have forgiven him, but there wasn't a chance the rest of the world would. It had only been a day and Maxwell didn't know how he could possibly live with himself.

"I need help." you announced, breaking the silence. Maxwell looked at you momentarily in curiosity but then looked away, sighing with discontentment.

"Look, whatever it is, I'm sure you don't want my help." Maxwell told you with a frown. You admired the deep shade of brown that was his eyes. It was so easy to get lost in them, they were hypnotic.

"You're the only person I know," you explained to the businessman sheepishly. "You and Alistair. And Raquel too, who is lovely, but I sense that she doesn't like me very much," Maxwell raised an eyebrow. You had wandered into Black Gold Cooperative wearing a crazy brown tunic, and you were covered in mud saying words like Themyscira, Hestia, hearth… jargon that not even Maxwell could understand. It didn't surprise him one bit if Raquel was a little put off by you. Until he learned the truth, he was borderline about to call you crazy and run ten mile. He believed you now. He had no reason not to. "I'm looking for someone." you told the man as you nervously bit your lower lip.

"Yeah, the thing is, I'm not going to be able to help you look for him, if that's what you're suggesting," Maxwell hummed. He wanted to get out of here. It wasn't your fault— you weren't doing anything wrong, but since seeing the lasso and remembering what had happened in the bunker just a day ago… a mixture of guilt, anger and hurt consumed him. "I have to go." Maxwell gasped feeling the desperate urge to get some air.

Of course, you chased after him. "I shouldn't really need any help finding him, I shouldn't really ask anyone for help either…" you mumbled, fumbling with your fingers as you shimmied through the revolving doors that led out of his office. "As the goddess of home and hearth, it would be my duty to see the man, and his child, myself."

"So you're looking for a man and his kid?" Maxwell asked, relishing the feeling of relief washing over him as the cool air hit his skin. He wasn't a smoker, he hadn't been since before he moved to the U.S., but in this moment of pure stress and anxiety, he had never craved a cigarette more. He turned to you for comfort. "I'm afraid ‘the world of man’ is full of those."

"That's what I was afraid of," you sighed, running a hand through your hair. "There's not a single man on Themyscira, we are all children of Zeus, sculpted in his image only,"

Every time you mentioned your homeland of Themyscira, or one of the Olympian Gods, Maxwell's curiosity piqued greatly. He had so many questions— so much he wanted to learn about you. He wondered if you'd even give him the time of day to answer them.

The delay in a response from Maxwell prompted you to speak up again. “As I was saying… I don't know anyone in D.C., I don’t have a place to stay… so I was wondering...”

Maxwell’s head snapped to face you, his eyes going comically wide. “I don’t know.” he said quickly and almost defensively. Yes your beauty was unimaginable and he had so much he wanted to ask you, but was now really the right time? What would happen once you learned about the terrible things he had done, how he was an awful father? And why did he care so much about what you thought of him when you were merely just a stranger? You looked down at your feet, your toes beginning to feel fuzzy as the evening grew colder. He couldn’t just let you stay out on the street, alone. Without any further prompting for you, he pulled out his car keys and tilted his head in gesture for you to follow him. Unlocking the car, he slid into the driver's seat as you waited outside. “Are you coming or not?” Maxwell huffed.

“What is this?” you asked after sliding into the passenger's seat. You were completely awe inspired by your surroundings.

“It’s a car,” Maxwell said hesitantly. “Wait, let me guess. You don’t have cars on Themascream, you have unicorns.”

“It’s Themyscira,” you corrected again, feeling only mildly irritated and wondering if he was deliberately just being that obnoxious. “And no, don’t be silly, unicorns don’t exist. We ride horses.” you sighed, shaking your head. Maxwell almost had to stifle back an incredulous laugh. Everything he once believed to be mythological was turning out to be true, he wouldn’t even be surprised if you had a license in Pegasus flight.

As he turned on the engine and began to reverse out of his parking space, you gasped, clutching onto the gear stick. The same gear stick that Maxwell was holding as he pushed the car into reverse. Your hand grazed his, and the skin on skin contact practically took Maxwell’s breath away. You grabbed onto his hand in fear as the car moved, and you stared out of the window. Of course, this was your first time in a car. Maxwell’s eyes flicked between the road, the frightened delight on your face and the way your soft hand enveloped his. He wanted to curse at the feeling of your touch and how it went straight to his manhood - this was the second time you had him feeling things he shouldn’t. Was there something in the air? It’s not like he wasn’t that touch starved. He shouldn’t have been reacting to you like this, but he was, and he didn’t know why. Swallowing the lump in his throat he gently removed his hand from yours and placed it back on the wheel. He wondered if the sexual tension was one side, if only he could feel it. He saw the innocence in your pretty eyes. You were just an oblivious girl trapped in a new world, seeking guidance from Maxwell, out of all people.

“Is this car… dangerous?” You asked nervously, the palm of your hand resting against the window.

“Not as dangerous as a horse,” Maxwell chuckled, taking his sunglasses out of the glove compartment and pushing them up the bridge of his nose. “I once knew a girl back home who fell off a horse and broke her leg. Couldn’t walk for a month. But, she deserved it.”

You gasped in horror at his statement, your eyes widening as your lips parted into a perfect ‘O’ shape. “How could she deserve it?” you asked, almost afraid of the answer.

“She wasn’t a nice person,” you watched as Maxwell’s face hardened at the memory.

You frowned but chose not to question him further. “So, you aren’t from here?”

“Wh- what makes you say that?” Maxwell asked, feeling a well of familiar anxiety.

“You said ‘back home’.” You acknowledged and Maxwell’s grip on the steering wheel tightened so hard his knuckles turned white. You were certainly right about that. You’d caught him out.

“Yeah uh, that’s just something we say over here. In the ‘world of man’.” Maxwell muttered, hoping you wouldn’t question him further. And thankfully, you didn’t.

“I think there’s a lot you can teach me about the world of man,” you smile pleasantly at the businessman who is doing his utmost to keep his concentration on the road ahead, rather than getting lost in your divine beauty. “Mr Lord?” You asked when he didn’t reply.

“You- you don’t have to call me Mr Lord,” Maxwell said awkwardly, turning at a junction.

“That is your name, isn’t it?” you quizzed.

“My name is Max Lord.” he was a little taken aback upon realising he hadn’t yet introduced himself to you. He’d just made the assumption you already knew exactly who he was, just like the rest of the world did. He’d come to think that maybe that wouldn’t be the case.

“Well then who is Mr?” “I’m Mr,” Maxwell furrowed his eyebrows. “Mr Max Lord.” “Why does Raquel call you Mr Lord?” you quizzed further, and Maxwell could feel an onsetting migraine. He actually hated talking about himself.

“She- because- I-” Maxwell stammered out, before shaking his head profusely. “Doesn’t matter okay? Just call me Max.”

“I’m sorry if I’m being annoying.” You admitted timidly after another silence.

Max sighed. “You’re not annoying. Look, we’re almost home.”

The final five minutes of the journey were sat in complete silence. You spent most of the time looking out the window, trying to find clues and wondering how you were planning to find Lorenzano. There must be a way. You contemplated asking Maxwell for help, but you knew, as the daughter of Zeus and the goddess of home and hearth, it was your duty to find him and help him yourself. And that’s exactly what you were going to do. Of course, it was hard to ignore your mother’s word’s before you left Themyscira, regarding Romulus and Dolos. The God of Lies. You looked over at Maxwell who was staring dead ahead. You wondered if you could poke his brain about that… or even about the two dreamstones. Might he know something?

While you were thinking about your objective, Maxwell simply couldn’t stop thinking about you. Ashamed to admit it, but his cock was still semi hard and it was becoming difficult to ignore when he couldn’t help glancing at your reflection in the rear view mirror. He’d known you for barely an hour and he could already feel himself growing attached. Maybe it was the glitter in your eye or the way you spoke every word like it was your last. You had such joy and passion in your soul. Maxwell didn’t have any of that. All he had was his deep, dark secret as well as the anxiety and guilt which was eating him alive. There was something so perfect about you. Maxwell had sworn that nobody could be perfect, but he had also sworn that places like Themyscira, magical lassos and Gods and Goddesses weren’t real. He could be wrong about one more thing.

You followed Max as he slipped out of the car, and you found yourself absolutely astonished by his large D.C. home. Like everything else you had seen so far, it was beautiful. It seemed extensive in size, especially for just one man and possibly Alistair, but you refrained from making a comment. The exterior of the house was framed with beautiful greenery, tall trees, blooming bushes, and flowers that you only assumed could be native to the world of man. You knelt by a bush, admiring a red flower, as Maxwell fumbled with his keys to unlock the front door.

“What is this?” You asked, unpicking the flower from the bush.

“Be careful.” Maxwell gasped, his eyes widening when you hissed and saw blood trickle slowly down your finger. “It’s a rose, and they have thorns and if they prick you it’s gonna hurt like a bitch. Are you okay?” He grabbed your hand and pulled it to his face. You swiped your thumb over the wound, cutting off the bloodstream and healing yourself within seconds.

“I’m okay.” you confirmed, pulling your hand away from Maxwell’s. His vision crossed you in bewilderment.

“How did you?” He stammered, rubbing his eyes. “You just-”

When Maxwell saw you shiver from the cold, he ushered you inside his home and shut the front door behind him. He walked behind you, taking in your every step as you looked around his home. You admired all the little things, like the oil paintings that were hung upon the cream coloured walls and the ornaments scattered around on every surface. He supposed he could tell you to make yourself at home, but as you bent over and let your fingers grace the softness of the living room carpet, he figured maybe you already had. You stood up again, taking a deep breath before turning to face Maxwell.

“Us Amazons aren’t like humans,” you began, your eyes still scattering around his spacious living room. The sofa, although not as big as the one in the lobby of Black Gold Cooperative, was still extensive in size and made from the same plush velvet, this time in a coppery colour. It seemed he had a television too, which just so happened to be the biggest one you had seen yet. He had so much stuff, but his home was so big it still felt kind of empty. You found the mismatched patterns and colours endearing and you wondered if he had decorated himself.

“I’ll say,” Maxwell mumbled, walking over to the mini bar in the corner of the living room and pouring out a glass of whiskey. “Can I get you anything?” Max offered.

“No thank you,” you hummed, looking at all the paintings on the walls. “We’re immortal.”

“Immor- so you mean, you can’t die?” Maxwell looked at you dumbfounded.

“Immortal not invincible,” you laughed, and Maxwell felt his cheeks heat up slightly. There was no reason for him to feel embarrassed, this was all extremely new to him, and yet, he didn’t want you to think any less of him. He wanted you to believe he was smart and knowledgeable. “We don’t age. We’ve lived on Themyscira for centuries. We have enhanced strength, coordination, agility, stamina…” Max listened intently as you educated him about your kind. “If the injury isn’t too bad… I can heal.” you explained nonchalantly but then frowned.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, putting his glass of whiskey down on the grand piano and walking over to you.

“My powers aren’t as refined as the other Amazonians,” you said weakly. You had been so used to being made feel inadequate by the warriors around you. They'd judge you and call you for being the goddess of home and hearth— telling you your powers were pointless and would never lead to greatness. Maybe not their greatness, but you had truly found your calling and maybe this time, just for once, things could be different. With a sudden bolt of confidence, you felt Maxwell take your hands. You looked up at him with a doe-eyed expression. "Are you judging me?" you couldn't help but ask him. It wouldn't surprise you. Everyone else judged you.

"No," Maxwell replied almost breathlessly. He was too lost in your eyes, too enamoured with every word you spoke. "I think you're… sensational."

And with that, your lips curved into a small smile. He was so entranced by your beauty. He wanted to kiss you. He wanted to lean in and kiss you. He tried to shake away the feeling, like it wasn't all he'd imagined since the moment he laid his eyes on you. It was wrong of him. Besides you had only just met, and once again, he was swarmed with guilt. If you found out about what he'd done, you'd want nothing to do with him— nobody would— he was certain of it. It was only a matter of time before even Alistair walked out for him. Alistair. That's when Maxwell remembered the letter Theodore had given him, which was sitting on the kitchen cabinet.

"Zeus brought me to D.C, he will bring me to the man from my dreams. And with the lasso of Hestia to aid me, it shouldn't take me long at all," you told Max. "I'll be out of your hair in no time."

Maxwell wanted to tell you to stay. He didn't want you to hurry. He'd come incredibly lonely over the years and he was really beginning to value your company.

"Zeus is your father… right?" Maxwell asked, trying to recall the way you spoke about him earlier.

"Yes."

"What's he like?" Maxwell prodded further with genuine furiosity.

"Oh, I've never met him," you replied, rubbing your eyes.

So he's a deadbeat— Maxwell thought. Max knew exactly how that felt. "But he's king of the Olympian Gods, the ruler of the skies. He crafted us all in his own image and gave us a purpose."

"And your purpose is to find this man?" Maxwell quirked an eyebrow.

You nodded in affirmation. "It may seem simple and unimportant, but I assure you, it isn't. This man is special. He's unlike any other man and Zeus will bring me to him for a reason. Before I left, my mother Hestia told me of two Gods, Romulus and Dolos… they were the God of Lies,"

Maxwell's eyes widened. He had heard of them, very little, but he'd heard their names through researching the dreamstone. "They were deceiving and created a darkness amongst the world. They harnessed the power of wish-granting and were responsible for death and destruction… the world of man had to be rebuilt from scratch." you explained, a horrified look on your face as you recalled the events that your mother, Hestia had educated on.

For Maxwell, this was hitting far too hard. Things weren't adding up but he did deem it to be more than a mere coincidence that you had shown up just a day after the world had gone to hell. He didn't understand— he couldn't fathom the connection he had to you, or that laying on his sofa was a beautiful Amazonian goddess. He hoped that he could figure it out soon enough, but for now, he had his own troubles. He has to focus on fixing things with Alistair.

"I'm tired," you announced with a yawn, breaking Maxwell out of his thoughts. You raised your hand and cupped Maxwell's cheek, mirroring his own actions to you back at the office. "Your home is beautiful." you whispered lovingly.

You found the crinkles in the corner of his eyes so handsome, and you even pondered if the perfect curve in his nose had been sculpted by Zeus too. He wasn't like the Themysciran depictions of 'man', he was worn and slightly miserable, but there was no denying the connection you felt to him. For a second, you wondered if he was your reason. If he was your purpose. You'd grown so attached to him in just a matter of hours, you'd even grown attached to Alistair without even realising. Alistair was the first person you had met upon waking up in the world of man. But there was no way, you were looking for Lorenzano. Lorenzano…

You slipped your hand away from Max and sat on the soft couch, relishing the same feeling you loved so much back in the office. You took off your tiara, placing it on the coffee table, and unbuckled your sandals. You went to remove your tunic and skirt, but were cut off by a yelp from Max as he diverted his eyes.

"What- what are you doing?" Maxwell gasped, looking away.

"I'm undressing," you replied simply. "Amazonian clothes are so uncomfortable to sleep in."

"I- I'm sure," Maxwell nodded his head, feeling himself become flustered. "But uh- you can't just- I mean, I don't know what it's like in the Themy place-"

"Themyscira." you deadpanned.

"-Right, well I just think. You know. Maybe don't get naked, right now. Not yet anyway," Maxwell wanted to curse out loud. Not yet anyway? What was he saying? "Let me find something for you to sleep in okay? Something comfortable."

"You don't sleep naked?" you asked, tilting your head and readjusting your skirt so you were covered up again. Maxwell turned back to you.

"I- I do, sometimes." Shit, Max was definitely blushing.

"So why can't I sleep naked?" you shrugged your shoulders.

"I just… don't want you to be uncomfortable." Max trailed off.

"Does it make you uncomfortable?" you questioned further.

No, it didn't, but the thought of you laying naked on his couch went straight to his cock. "Let me get you a shirt." he said, avoiding your question.

While he was gone, you turned to the small side table to the left of the sofa. There, in a small frame, was a man who, although younger, was very clearly Max. He was sitting in a chair, smiling holding a newborn baby in his arms. You picked up the photo and analysed it, admiring every part. You guessed the baby was Alistair. It was hard to see the child's face, being that the photograph had aged and was slightly blurry. It dated ’1978 in the corner. Six years ago. That would make Alistair only six years old.

Maxwell was back in no time with a folded pinstripe button down. You took it and muttered a thank you before going to undress yourself again. Seeing this, Maxwell turned back around and figured he could grab you some soft blankets from the guest bedroom. When he returned, you were already sleeping peacefully on the sofa, wearing his shirt.

Maxwell thought he could've spent hours just watching you sleep. You were so peaceful. He watched as the way your chest rose and fell with every shallow breath, he admired your little snores and the way you stirred slightly now and again. He'd never been so entranced with anyone in his entire life. Not even Julianna.

And shit— he was still semi-hard. He was going to shower, he'd decided. He'd shower away all these feelings, all this anxiety and he was going to be okay. He'd wash his hair, brush his teeth— he'd make an effort. He couldn't keep sulking around. He had to try for his son.

Maxwell gasped as he stepped in the shower. His hunched up shoulders became relaxed and he was able to unclench his fists as he let the hot water envelop his body. His eyes fluttered closed as the image of you scattered his thoughts. He tried to shrug it off, but he couldn't. Just knowing you were laying on his sofa in one of his dress shirts stirred something primal within him. He dropped his hand down to his cock and began to jerk himself off, his fingers rubbing against the small slit in his tip as he wiped the precum down his length. The hot water felt so good, and Max had forgotten to open a window so the steam from the shower made the air foggy and moist.

He dragged his fist down his throbbing length, his movements becoming fast and erratic as he squeezed his eyes tight shut, trying to hold out moans. He couldn't let you hear. He couldn't let you know. He hadn't done this in so long. He'd always had his assistants at his beck and call, he never needed to relieve himself in the shower since his and Julianna's marriage broke down.

You consumed his every thought. He imagined your pretty lips wrapped around his cock, he imagined you giving him sweet kitten licks as you massaged his balls. He imagined you gagging around him as you took his long, thick length to the back of your throat. He imagined fucking your mouth. The thought of him being able to get a literal goddess to choke and whimper really urged his power complex enough to throw him over the edge. In only a matter of minutes, Maxwell spilled his milky white seed over the tiled bathroom walls, gasping your name as he came.

And when it was over, he felt a familiar remorse. A familiar guilt. He knew he did not deserve you.

Maxwell had to force himself to get washed, using his apple scented shampoo and even conditioning his hair. He was satisfied with his minty fresh breath as he walked into his bedroom in only a towel that was wrapped loosely around his waist. Since it was approaching night, and fast, he picked out a pair of light grey sweats and a wooly sweater before combing through his unnatural dark blonde hair which just so happened to be naturally wavy.

He sighed, padding into the kitchen quietly being careful not to wake you. He knew what he had to do next, what he'd been putting off since he received the damn letter. The envelope was staring at him on the cabinet. He picked it up, an anger engulfing him as he read the name ‘Maxwell Lorenzano’ on the paper. He ripped it open furiously and opened up the letter.

Dear Maxwell Lorenzano

I, Theodore Thomas IV, attorney of Miss Julianna Grey, present you with a civil lawsuit case regarding full custody of Alistair Lorenzano in favour of my client, Miss Grey.

-—- please see proceedings below -—-

I, Theodore Thomas IV, share a bond with Miss Grey and recognise that she is a caring and devoted mother. We are in full belief that Alistair Lorenzano would be better off, in the care of his biological mother.

Mr Maxwell Lorenzano and Miss Julianna Grey divorced on the seventh month of 1980 after being married for two years. Miss Grey notes that their relationship was strained since the beginning, with Mr Lorenzano too preoccupied with his career to focus on his family.

I have known Miss Grey since 1980, after working on her and Mr Lorenzano's divorce case. As not only her partner, but also a trusted lawyer of our capitol’s legal enforcement, I can whole-heartedly ensure that sole custody of Alistair Lorenzano must be granted to Miss Julianna Grey.

-—- proceedings concurred -—-

Please find us at the District Columbia Court, D.C., in one week from the date stated on the letter. If you make no effort to show and fight your case, you will be banished from seeing Alistair until he turns eighteen years of age.

Sincerely,

Ted

Maxwell screamed as his face turned bright red with astonishing rage. He crumpled up the letter into a ball, throwing across the kitchen. Tears fell from his eyes in complete and utter disbelief. No, this was the worst thing that could ever happen to Maxwell. He'd rather die than not be able to see Alistair. His heart felt like it was shattering into a million pieces.

It was ridiculous and down right unfair. Max began to laugh manic as he swept the plates and glasses that were standing by the sink into the floor. He'd forgotten about you, sleeping in the other room. He didn't care. He was done being considerate.

Maxwell had made a lot of mistakes in his life— a lot, but he loved Alistair so much and Alistair loved him. He couldn't let Julianna and her stupid lawyer boyfriend rip him away from his son. If that happened, he'd be no better than his own father. Maxwell let out another scream of frustration, clenching his fist until his knuckles were white. This was nobody's fault but his own. He was too much like his own dad— too much like his own fucking deadbeat, abusive dad. Max had tried his whole life to make Alistair proud, to be different, a good different. But he wasn't a Lord, he was a Lorenzano, and maybe blood was thicker than water. He was nothing but a low life conman who had almost singlehandedly destroyed the entire world and now, he was about to lose his son.

How was he ever going to win this case? Julianna literally had one of the best family lawyers in the state on her side, and Maxwell wasn't even sure if he could afford a lawyer given the circumstances. What he had failed to think about, was the fact he had a literal goddess sleeping on his sofa. A goddess who’s purpose was to reconcile families.

A shatter of broken glass awoke you from your nap. You rubbed your eyes tiredly, lifting up onto your elbows before hearing a thud and a crash. Alerted, your eyes snapped open and you swung your body out of the big warm bed, bolting into the kitchen where you had heard the noise. Fragments of a broken vase were scattered over the tile floor, soil spilled everywhere and some daffodils that looked like they had been dead for at least a month already. The sound of gushing water drew your attention to Maxwell, who was standing at the sink. Stepping over the broken glass, you padded over to him and placed a hand into the small of his back. He jumped slightly at your touch. You peered over his shoulder and saw a really deep cut in his hand, blood dripping into the sink. Not even the water coming from the faucet was enough to wash it away. It trickled down his arm and you looked up at him, noticing he was pale in colour.

“Are you okay?” you asked him, your voice smaller than it intended to be. Your gaze trailed along the kitchen surface tops until you spotted a roll of kitchen paper. Taking plenty, you ripped it and gently wrapped your fingers around Max’s wrist, maneuvering his still bleeding hand away from the sink. A few drops of blood fell to the tiled floor, but you quickly wrapped the paper around his wound and applied pressure. “That looks really deep.” you hummed, looking up at your friend with concern.

“It’ll be fine.” Maxwell mumbled, watching you intently as you cared for his injury. It was a strange feeling. No one had ever looked out for him the way you did, and you’d only known him for a few hours. Your soft was gentle, he even noticed the way you subconsciously began to rub comforting circles into his skin, like it was just natural for you.

You frowned, slowly lifting up the soaked tissue paper and discarding it in the waste bin. The bleeding had settled down, but it still looked incredibly sore. Dampening another paper towel, you tried to clean around the edges of his cut. He hissed in pain as your finger accidentally grazed over the wound and you shot him an apologetic look. Maxwell was like putty in your hands. He let you do whatever you needed to - and he absolutely wasn’t like that with anyone else. “You might need stitches,” you sighed, taking a closer look. “If only we were on Themyscira, I have a friend who could heal you in a matter of seconds.” Themyscira - there it was again, the mystical place Maxwell had never even heard of. “What happened?” you asked eventually, your gaze meeting Maxwell’s.

“Uhm-” his eyes flicked around the room, searching for something that would fuel the white lie. "Was changing the flowers and dropped the vase."

His lie didn't account for the broken glasses and plates that were also on the floor. You looked at him in bewilderment, knowing he wasn't being entirely truthful to you. He couldn't stay. He couldn't stay with you right now. He had to go see Alistair. "I- I gotta go." Maxwell said quickly before bolting out the house.

He left you standing alone in the kitchen amongst all the mess. As you began to pick up the pieces of the broken vase, you noticed the scrumpled up ball of paper in the corner. Picking it up, you slowly unravelled it in hope it would give you a clue regarding Maxwell's behaviour.

Your heart practically sank when you read the first three words.

Dear Maxwell Lorenzano,

Lorenzano. He was Lorenzano.

-----

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smaidjor · 3 years

Text

and i pay for my place by the ring (Chapter 2)

This chapter took me so fucking long but after much struggle I have completed it!

It was supposed to be 3-4k words. It was exactly 6069 pre-editing according to google docs.

You're welcome.

Chapter Title: with your blessing i will go

Chapter Wordcount: 6073

Content warnings: suicidal thoughts, self-esteem issues, discussion of death, non-graphic injury.

AO3

Chapter 1

i know they're losing (companion fic)

Actual fic under the cut:

The next few weeks are miserable, and if Scott tried to claim anything else, he would absolutely be lying to himself. Not that he doesn’t already do that, but he’s not too proud to admit that not seeing Jimmy is torturous. He knows he can’t, he’s firmly placed Jimmy on the off-limits list, but that doesn’t make the self-imposed rule any easier to follow. There’s still a part of him that wants to go running back to Jimmy’s arms, to beg for forgiveness and pray that Jimmy’s warmth is enough to curb the chill in his bones.

Scott shoves that part of him down firmly. He has no time to hesitate or regret, and he will not spend his days pining and sighing over a human. (Or so he tells himself.) He will be the perfect model of an elven king if that’s what it takes to gain his people’s respect, and he will make his parents proud, not that they’re around to see it. He will . Because Scott may not care about what the Council of Elders thinks of him- he hasn’t for twenty years now- but he does care that the people of Rivendell get a leader who cares for their wellbeing. It’s the least he can do, really.

So he takes on the meetings and the paperwork and the aching, gaping hole in his chest with grim determination, ignoring the way his hands always seem to shake a little and he can never quite get warm. It’s fine. Scott is fine. He’s not going to think about golden smiles or warm brown eyes or the look on Jimmy’s face when Scott told him it was over. He’s fine .

Flipping through the stack of official mail he’s received, Scott’s startled when his hand falls on an elegant cream envelope stamped with the crest of the Ocean Empire. How long has this been here? He hurries to get it open, nearly slicing himself on the letter opener in the process.

Out slides an official invitation in neat cursive.

To High King Scott Dangthatsalongname Smajor, Lord King of the Rivendell Empire,

You are cordially invited to a royal ball to be held at the palace of Ocean Queen Lizzie Ldshadowlady, Queen of the Northern Waves and Reefs, at 8 pm on the fifth of August.

Formal attire is required.

RSVP as soon as possible.

At the bottom of it, there’s a note in slightly more rushed handwriting.

Smajor- elvenking or not, I will not appreciate it if you mess with Jimmy in any way, shape or form. This ball is to be a peaceful affair, and I will not hesitate to intervene should anything occur.

Lizzie

Scott winces. He...can’t say he doesn’t deserve the warning, any more than he can say that it doesn’t hurt to be warned away from his own husband. Ex-husband, he quickly reminds himself, reaching for stationary to pen a response.

Dear Ocean Queen Lizzie Ldshadowlady, Queen of the Northern Waves and Reefs,

He stops, giving it a bit of thought. Would avoiding Jimmy be worth the political consequences of refusing an invitation like this? No, he concedes reluctantly, it wouldn’t. He can always just avoid Jimmy at the ball- Lizzie would probably be happy for it, honestly. She’s been protective over him from the start. Scott puts the pen back to paper.

Luckily, I will be able to attend the ball. It sounds like a wonderful event and I eagerly anticipate it. As for your note, I will avoid antagonizing Jimmy as much as possible. I would hate to sacrifice diplomatic relations between our kingdoms for a petty squabble. Will that be satisfactory?

Sincerely,

High King Scott Dangthatsalongname Smajor

What’s going on between him and Jimmy is far more than a petty squabble, but Lizzie doesn’t need to know that. It’s fine. It’s not like he’s going to run into Jimmy anyways, right?

The day of the ball arrives, and Scott spends far too long choosing an outfit. He’s not vain, not usually, but...Jimmy will be there. You’re not supposed to want to impress him , Scott scolds himself, but that doesn’t stop him from wearing his nicest golden jewelry. The rest of his outfit is far more strategically planned- long skirts to hide how terrible his balance is when he’s near-constantly struggling to get a full breath into his lungs, gloves to keep his dance partners from questioning his cold hands.

The ball is already in full swing by the time he arrives, the trip from Rivendell taking longer than he thought it would. He’s still greeted by the Ocean Queen herself, though, gliding over in her stunning ballgown of blue and green.

“Welcome!” Her smile is bright, warm in a way he almost envies.

Scott dips his head just enough to be respectful but not so much as to truly defer to her. He thinks that’s right, anyways; he hasn’t had to think about that particular part of etiquette lessons in some twenty years. “Thank you, Queen Lizzie. I apologize for my lateness, the trip was a bit harrowing.”

“No problem at all, I just hope you enjoy the ball!” Lizzie’s smile gains a sharper edge. “I appreciated your letter, by the way. Thank you for your promise to keep it civil, King Smajor. Now we just all have to follow through on our words!” She accompanies that bit with a little laugh, but Scott’s not a fool enough to take it as anything but a warning. She doesn’t want trouble at her ball, and who would, really?

“Hopefully we can manage at least that,” he offers wryly, earning another laugh and a bright “Hopefully!”

Scott doesn’t mean to cause trouble at the ball, he really doesn’t. But before he has a chance to even get a look around, Jimmy’s standing in front of him. And oh, this really isn’t how he hoped it’d go.

“Lord Codfather,” Scott greets, swallowing the lump in his throat. Jimmy cleans up nicely- really nicely- but Scott’s eyes keep going to the scar on his throat, the permanent reminder of how fragile and mortal Jimmy really is.

“Elvenking,” Jimmy says. The formality sounds awkward in his bright voice, and Scott wants to kiss the uncertainty right off his face. “Care for a dance?”

He can’t- he should, Scott knows. There would be value to an alliance with Jimmy, and he has no good reason to turn him down. That’s not why he says yes, though. It’s that look in Jimmy’s eyes, the hope poorly disguised by indifference. He’s so optimistic. Scott shouldn't encourage it, but he can’t find it in himself to break that fragile hope just yet.

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind,” Scott says finally. He takes Jimmy’s outstretched hand in his own gloved one; Vilya rests on Jimmy’s finger, still, and it’s a battle to keep the memories of giving Jimmy that ring at bay. He wins that battle, though, letting Jimmy put a hand on his waist as they start into a simple waltz.

Jimmy is a terrible dancer, and Scott knows it. He steps on Scott’s feet, he gets off-rhythm- he’s frankly not made for dancing, much as the way he hums along to the tune is adorable. His hair, which was probably once nicely styled, has already fallen out of place, and his tunic is a little wrinkled. His hands are rough, tough from all the work he does with them, and his face has a tiny bit of mud on it that he must have missed when getting ready. He looks very much like a sweet little swamp boy, out of place in the midst of all the more elegant and powerful rulers.

He’s the most beautiful thing Scott’s ever seen.

Unlike the last time they danced, back in 3rd life where Jimmy leaned on Scott for balance as he tried to learn the complicated steps, this time it’s Scott clinging to Jimmy for stability. He feels bad about how harsh his grip gets, but he can’t afford to show weakness. He has to stay on his feet.

Scott’s silently thankful when the dance ends and he can lead them off the dance floor. He’s exhausted and shaky, and he’s not sure how much longer he can be around Jimmy without breaking down or doing something very stupid.

“Thank you for the dance, Codfather,” Scott says. He takes a step back, banishing the lingering emotion of their dance.

A beat of silence, and then.

“Can we please stop acting like we don’t know each other?” Jimmy demands, earning a ripple of gasps from nearby guests.

“What else do you want from me?” Scott snaps back, anger rising to fill the gap in his chest.

“I- something! Anything! Just acknowledge that I exist, won’t you?”

Scott swallows down the lump in his throat. “Acknowledging you exist doesn’t mean I can still be in love with you, you know.”

“I know,” Jimmy says. He sounds so bitter, so tired. “I know , trust me. I just want you to stop- to stop hurting yourself to try and avoid pain!”

“That’s not what I’m do-”

Jimmy cuts him off, a rare occurrence. “Then what are you doing? Enlighten me, o wise elf! You told me it would destroy you to lose me, but you’re losing me now by pushing me away!”

His chest tightens, and he can barely force the words out. “I’m trying to do what’s best for the both of us, Jimmy.”

“No you’re-”

It’s Scott’s turn to cut him off. “I am an elf, and I cannot love a mortal. Humans are quick flames, burning and changing quickly. You’ll fall in love again, and you’ll forget me.” It hurts, but it’s true. There will be a mortal who loves you- I’m sure there are many already.” Jimmy’s so wonderful, there are bound to be others who see it.

“But I don’t want a mortal,” Jimmy says. It’s almost childish, but his next words still break Scott’s heart. “I want you. ”

“You can’t have me.” Scott is vividly aware of the fact that there are eyes on him, that their little spat has attracted the attention of the rest of the ballroom.

“But why? Why, Scott?” Jimmy’s voice breaks, and the crack in it is damn near enough to make Scott lose his tiny bit of remaining self-control. “You said you loved me, you promised me all the time we’d be able to- to carve out, to steal from the universe.” It sounds like an accusation, and maybe it is. Scott did promise him that, after all, and then he went back on it.

It wasn’t for no reason, though. He needs Jimmy to understand that it was for a reason. “I can’t give you that!” He snaps back, and his hands tremble when they try to form fists by his side. “You’ll live sixty more years, maybe, a fraction of my life, a blink of an eye to an elf, and I can’t even give you that long! Not when I have to be the elvenking before anything else. Nothing I can do will ever be enough for you.” It’s bitter, but it’s true. Scott can’t be enough for anyone, in the end.

“Enough for me? For ME?”Jimmy’s voice rises in outrage. “All I want is for you not to die to your own dumb plan and acknowledge my existence once in a while!”

Scott’s voice rises in response. “And all I want is for you to realize I can’t love you again!”

“Why can’t you care about me?”

“Why can’t you move on?”

“You’re not moving on, you’re just trying to forget!” Jimmy shouts.

Scott falls silent, breathing hard as the ballroom goes quiet around them. He spots Lizzie sweeping through the crowd, coming to a stop next to Jimmy.

“Is everything alright, boys?” She’s smiling, but it’s strained, and her eyes promise death if this quarrel was Scott’s fault.

“My apologies, Ocean Queen,” he says, and he tries to gather his composure as he dips his head to her. “Everything is alright, but I am afraid I will have to leave early.” He doesn’t look at Jimmy.

She smiles again, dangerous this time. “No need to worry, Lord Smajor. Do try to avoid picking fights with my allies, next time, though.”

“It won’t happen again,” he promises, and he only nearly stumbles when he turns to leave.

Distantly, he can hear Jimmy shout after him. “Coward!” The word is harsh, but there’s hurt beneath it. “You’re a coward, Scott!”

Scott stumbles away all the quicker.

He keeps composed all the way out the doors and most of the way down the stairs until he’s sure no one can see him from the ballroom. It’s only then that he breaks into a run, lifting up his stupid skirts so he doesn’t fall. One shoe falls off, a twisted parody of a children’s fairy tale, and he doesn’t bother to retrieve it. The prismarine stabs at his exposed foot, but Scott doesn’t have the energy to care. Instead, he beats his wings, trying to get enough momentum for a good takeoff.

For a few precious moments, he gets off the ground, and then he remembers Jimmy’s face as he left, wingbeats stuttering with the sudden emotion, and tumbles back to the rough prismarine path. It hurts , it does, but it’s nothing on the pain in his chest. Nothing on the words still echoing in his head. Coward! You’re a coward, Scott!

Scott lays there for a moment, half-wondering if anyone’s coming after him. It’s unlikely, he knows, given how badly he messed things up. He tells himself that that’s a good thing, that he doesn’t want anyone to come looking. He doesn’t need them. He should be strong.

Before anyone has time to notice or be concerned, he’s forced himself back to his feet, starting the takeoff sequence all over again.

This time, he gets in the air with little difficulty, though he lists to the side as he favors his right wing, which took the brunt of the fall. It’s fine. He’s fine, he doesn’t need help.

If Scott believed in the elven gods anymore, he would thank them for the fact that he gets back to Rivendell at all. There are tears blurring his vision, and every part of his body aches, his chest most of all. His flight is shaky at best, outright dangerous at worst, crashing into trees and rocks and the ground multiple times. Each time, he barely picks himself back up before mobs arrive. Sometimes, he questions if he should at all. He’s as good as dead anyways. And yet, the tiny stubborn part of him that got him through 3rd life won’t let him just lay down and die. For some reason, even though he’s slept enough recently (he thinks, anyways), there are phantoms on him. They sense when their prey is sleep-deprived, Scott knows, and wonders if he’s just weak enough to seem that way to them.

By the time he crash-lands on the mountainside, it’s pushing two in the morning, and Scott is more dead than alive. Not that he hasn’t been for a while now, he thinks, and laughs aloud to himself, bitter.

The night watch give him strange looks, but both elves on guard duty obligingly dip their heads when he stumbles by. He barely musters the energy to nod back.

Finally he makes it back to his house, slamming his door behind him and burying his face in his hands. This is the right thing to do, why does it hurt so much? He already lost Jimmy once, why does it feel like he’s losing him all over again when he never really got him back in the first place?

Someone coughs lightly, breaking through his thoughts. The voice is familiar when they speak- one of his advisors. “Lord Smajor? Any major events we should know of at the ball?”

Cold. Calm. Scott knows this is the way of the elves- their royalty cannot dare be human. “The Codfather’s our enemy and the Ocean Queen probably hates us too.” He doesn’t bother trying to make himself sound calm and collected, pushing off the wall and stalking towards the stairs.

“What?” The advisor’s voice pitches up in shock. “What did you do?”

“None of your business.”

“You cannot have embarrassed the elven realm at the largest event of the year-”

“It wasn’t like I was fucking trying to,” He snaps.

A gasp. “Language.”

“Fuck off.”

They hurry after him, making to follow him up the stairs. “Lord Smajor-”

Scott turns to face them, taking in the shock and rage painted across their ancient face. “Leave me be.”

“Do not disrespect your elders,” the advisor scolds. “I remember when you were a child, you always were reckless, but this is a new level of disrespect! Why, Xornoth would never-”

“ Enough ,” he hisses. “Do not talk about my sibling.”

They freeze, a bit of genuine fear creeping onto their face. “My lord-”

“Get out of my house,” Scott snarls.

They wisely obey. Scott slumps against the banister as the surge of adrenaline abates, suddenly exhausted. He’s freezing, he realizes, a bone-deep chill that he doesn’t bother to pretend is from his trip home. Scott’s done lying to himself- he’s in pain, and he’s in love, but then again, those equate to roughly the same thing when all’s said and done. You can’t have heartbreak without love or love without heartbreak. (But oh how he wishes he could.)

Scott doesn’t get out of bed the next day, and no one dares try to force him. Varying members of Rivendell’s Council of Elders make a decent shot at trying to convince him, but all it takes is him fixing them with his dead-eyed stare to make them leave. The people of Rivendell are used to their ruler’s odd sleep schedule by now, brushing it off easily, and the empire itself is mostly functional without him. So instead of getting up and dealing with the corruption or making sure Rivendell’s stores are prepared for winter or any of the things he should be doing, Scott lays there in his own misery and thinks about Jimmy screaming that he’s a coward.

He’s right, that’s the worst part. Scott is a coward. He’s scared of Xornoth and the corruption and never, ever being enough, he’s scared of responsibility and his own mind, he’s scared of fading and dying alone, and- most of all- he’s absolutely terrified of how much he loves Jimmy.

His father warned him about fading, once, back before Scott was expected to carry a crown on his brow and the weight of a nation on his shoulders. He bounced Scott on his knee and told him that elven hearts are fragile, too fragile for how strongly they love. “Don’t fall too deep in love, son,” he said, and the words carried the weight of years of grief. “Don’t care too much about any one person, not if you want to live to be a legend of the ages. Doesn’t matter what kind of love it is, love can be lethal.”

Scott didn’t listen, of course- reckless, rebellious Scott, who never once listened to his elders, went and did the most dangerous thing an elf could do. He fell in love with a human.

And now he’s dying. Surely that gives him a pass to wallow in his own misery for a day or two. He’s been brave for so long, can’t he just rest a few moments? Just...just a few. He’ll just lay here a bit longer.

At that moment, the front door creaks open somewhere below him.

“My lord? Can I come up?” Someone calls from below. Their voice is also familiar- Gilnar. Gilnar’s a good captain of the guard. Dutiful, clever, and far more willing to respect him than most of Rivendell’s high ranking elves.

“If you’ve come to convince me to get up, it won’t work,” Scott calls back.

Gilnar’s head peeks over the railing a moment later. “Nope, not here for that. Just thought I’d check in, y’know?” The Sindarin words sound almost musical in their accent, rolling up and down with a unique sort of rhythm.

“Alright.”

“Are you okay, my lord?”

“No.” He’s done lying. “Leave me be.”

Gilnar shakes their head. “Sorry, my lord, can’t do that.”

“If you’re going to tell me my people need me, don’t waste your breath. I know .” Scott’s voice cracks on the last word, just a little.

“Not that either. But with all due respect, seems a little like you’re givin’ up on yourself just a bit, my lord.” They lean against the railing.

“What do you mean by that?”

They cough, a little awkwardly. “The soul-sickness. The fading.”

Scott’s mouth opens and closes, and he sputters. “How-”

“Trainin’ with the royal guard a few weeks back, your hands were freezin’ and your balance was off. You haven’t gotten up at a reasonable hour in weeks, and, well, with all due respect- I know what heartbreak looks like.”

He’s silent for a moment, utterly floored. “What do you mean by giving up?”

“Well, Lauriel and I were talkin’, and….your love’s still alive, isn’t he? The Codfather?”

“How did you-”

Gilnar flashes him a tiny grin. “He’s not subtle, and neither are you. Plus, he has Vilya.”

Deciding to shove that to the back of his mind for now, Scott sighs. “He’s a mortal, Gilnar. I’m not giving up anything that I won’t already lose in sixty years or so.”

“Luthien loved Beren, didn’t she?”

“I am not Luthien. I cannot sing so well that the gods grant me pardon.”

“And Idril loved Tuor.”

“I am not Idril. I cannot bring Jimmy to the Undying Lands.”

“Arwen still loved Aragorn.”

“I am not Arwen. I do not have the choice to give up my immortal life.”

Gilnar’s smile turns sad. “Caranthir still loved Haleth. And Celebrimbor loved Narvi just the same, didn’t he? The doomed love all the more fiercely, my lord.”

“The rest of the elves won’t be happy with me,” Scott points out.

“You think Thingol and Turgon and Elrond were happy when their daughters loved mortals? You think Luthien’s people didn’t scorn Beren at first?”

Scott doesn’t have any retort to that, and Gilnar hops up from their seat on the banister. “Well, I need to get back to my duties, my lord. Good luck with your swamp boy!”

They’re gone as soon as they arrive, and Scott stares up at the ceiling, his thoughts dragging him along a spiral of emotion.

“Coward! You’re a coward, Scott!”

Scott is a coward. He’s a liar and a coward. Nothing he does will ever be right.

“Don’t fall too deep in love, son.”

Scott did, though. Like the idiot he is, he fell in love with someone the universe didn’t want him to have.

“Caranthir still loved Haleth.”

He did. And he paid for it. Does it matter? Scott thinks that losing Jimmy might be a price worth paying for the joy of loving him.

“You cannot have embarrassed the elven realm at the largest event of the year-”

Scott didn’t mean to, but he still messed up and shouted at Jimmy. He’s a failure. Jimmy could do better. He deserves better.

“I don’t want a mortal. I want you .”

Jimmy’s so stupid. Stupid Codfather with his stupid bright eyes and stupid, stupid insistence on not giving up on someone he should never have loved to begin with. Scott loves him so much more than he could ever put into words.

“With all due respect, seems a little like you’re givin’ up on yourself just a bit, my lord.”

Jimmy deserves an apology. Scott won’t give up.

(Not on Jimmy, anyways.)

It takes him nearly a month of furious work to make the precious mithril bracelet, refining it over and over again. He picks the flowers and their meanings carefully- love, hope, protection- and the crystals too. Amethysts for protection, carefully traded for filled with any bit of magic he can spare for them. The lettering carved into the underside is yet another layer of blessings and meaning; he does it in Quenya, the Tengwar script, which Scott knows Jimmy can’t read. He has to look up how to write in it after so many years of never so much as looking at elven script, pouring over old books by candlelight. By day, he rules an empire, relying on the rush of adrenaline and motivation to carry him through even on the days when he’s swaying on his feet by the end. By night, he works on a courtship project like none he’s made before until at last, at nearly three in the morning one night, it’s finished.

It’s not the most beautiful it could have been. Scott isn’t one of the great Noldor smiths of old, he’s just an elf in love. His hands are perpetually shaky nowadays, and he has limited time to work on it between every other responsibility in his life. But every centimeter of it is handmade with all the care he could muster, and that has to count for something.

Scott hardly wants to wait to give it to Jimmy, but he forces himself to try and wait for morning. His anxiety doesn’t let him sleep much, exhausted as he is, but he curls up under the covers and stares at the bracelet on his nightstand. He doesn’t want to take his eyes off it, half-convinced it will vanish if he does. Eventually, his eyes slide shut of their own will, carrying him into an uneasy sleep.

He wakes up long after the sun's risen, staggering out of bed and throwing on a cloak for the journey to Jimmy’s. The cold that he’s been banishing with the warmth of a forge has returned tenfold, and he’s shivering despite elves normally being resistant to chills. When he takes a glance at himself in the mirror, he finds that his hair is out of place, there’s a streak of ink across his cheek, and the dark circles under his eyes look like bruises. He looks a mess, and he doesn’t care. Jimmy is all that matters now.

The journey’s both long and rough, and his landing in the swamp is more like a frantic swan dive out of the sky. Luckily, though, the ground is soft here, and Scott’s able to pick himself up and hurry for Jimmy’s house, ignoring the stares of a few Codland citizens. He knocks, heart in his throat as he waits for the door to open.

The hinges squeak, and suddenly Jimmy’s standing there, a mix of emotions that Scott doesn’t even want to try and comprehend scattered across his face. He looks a little sleepy despite the fact that it must be near noon, and so very sweet with his hair falling in his face. The sight of him knocks the air right out of Scott’s lungs, and he has to struggle to remember why he’s here again for a long moment as they stare at each other.

“Hi,” Scott says weakly.

“Scott? What- why are you here?” Jimmy sounds outraged, and Scott can’t blame him.

Scott swallows hard. “I came to apologize.” His tired brain scrambles for words, something, anything to convey how truly sorry he is. “I was scared- I am scared. I’m terrified to lose you again. But I shouldn’t have pushed you away and hurt you.”

“No, you shouldn’t have!” Jimmy snaps.

“I know.” God, he didn’t expect it to hurt this much to hear the rage in Jimmy’s voice. “I- uh- fuck.” Scott fumbles to get the box he put the bracelet in, holding it out. “I brought a gift as an apology.”

Jimmy’s silent for a long moment, examining the bracelet. Scott barely dares breathe as he turns it over and over in his hands, tracing the flower designs with his fingertips. “Did you make this yourself?”

“Mhm. I did my best, but it’s not as nice as I’d like.” And, well, isn’t that just the story of his life?

“It’s pretty,” Jimmy says. He sounds genuine.

Scott lets out a breath, letting some of the tension go. “It’s spelled, too. Protection, good fortune, that sort of thing.”

“Do the flowers mean something?”

“They do.”

Jimmy doesn’t press for details.

“I-” Scott starts, and then pauses. What does he say? An apology would be a start, maybe. “I’m sorry, Jimmy, I really am. I won’t ask you to forgive me, but I needed to apologize before my time ran out.” It’s the truth, as wholly as he can bear to give it.

“Is it that- that dire?” Jimmy’s voice shakes a little, and Scott gives a tiny nod.

“This is what I chose to do with it. Making that, coming here. You deserved an apology.”

Jimmy goes quiet again. His eyes are still on the bracelet, and Scott can hardly breathe again.

Finally, he can’t take the tension. “It wouldn’t be fair of me to ask you to love me. I can’t promise you eternity. I can’t promise you happiness. I can’t promise you that I won’t have to be the elvenking first and a husband second. But I am still yours-” he’s always been, really- “if you’ll have me.”

The silence that falls after that is even more stifling than the previous two. Scott doesn’t expect Jimmy to want him back- far from it. He’s putting his heart in Jimmy’s hands, but he doesn’t expect anything other than it shattering on the floor. Maybe Jimmy will be kind enough to let him down gently, but Scott’s fragile enough that it would only take a tiny nudge to break him. And yet he can’t stop the tiny bit of hope that blooms, though it dwindles minute by minute as Jimmy stares and stares. Finally, he opens his mouth to make his apologies again and leave to his frozen, icy empire-

And then there are hands in his hair and lips on his, warm and sudden and bold. Scott gives a little startled gasp, which is swallowed up by Jimmy’s kiss. Their noses knock together and Jimmy’s teeth click against his just a little in their haste, but Scott’s far too overwhelmed by the sudden rush of warmth to care.

When Jimmy finally pulls away, Scott’s left breathless, cheeks warm in a way no part of him has been since Jimmy died in 3rd life.

He barely pulls himself together enough to manage a wry little “So, I’ll take that as you want to stay married?”

“Of course I do! You absolute idiot!”

Jimmy sounds so startled and offended at the idea that he wouldn’t , Scott’s not sure whether to laugh or cry. “Just checking.”

Jimmy kisses him again in response, and who’s Scott to protest? No, he’s more than happy to let Jimmy pull him close and kiss away the lingering sorrow. When Jimmy pulls away this time, he’s left dizzy, half caught up in the euphoria of being loved, half terrified that this is only a cruel dream.

By the time Scott collects himself again, Jimmy’s holding out the bracelet to him. “Can you help me put this on?”

Scott can only nod, fumbling with the clasp a little. It’s not complicated, but his hands aren’t steady, and it takes him a moment to get it. Jimmy grabs his hands when he lets go, and he’s so warm that Scott can’t muster the energy to even question why.

“Come in and catch up with me?” Jimmy offers.

Scott nods again, and he can’t bear to let go of Jimmy’s hand when Jimmy turns to go inside.

They talk a lot, Jimmy more than Scott. Scott learns that Jimmy’s been picked on by other rulers (no surprise, but his blood still boils at the thought), and he shares minimal details about what he’s been up to. Jimmy doesn’t need to hear about Scott’s issues, he’s already dealing with enough.

Eventually, though, the sun is starting to set.

“I need to get home,” Scott says, though he has to force himself to. “You need sleep, not to stay up all night talking.” He goes to get up, and Jimmy immediately lunges, catching his sleeve.

“Don’t go! Please.” Jimmy sounds almost afraid, which instantly sets off alarm bells.

“Jimmy, darling, we both need to sleep,” Scott tells him, very patiently.

“We can sleep! I just….nevermind.”

Now the alarm bells are really going off in Scott’s head. He knows when his husband is hiding something serious, and Jimmy’s frantic tone isn’t helping his worry. “No, no. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Jimmy claims.

Scott frowns at him lightly. “ Jimmy .”

That’s all it takes. “I don’t want to be alone!” Jimmy blurts. He’s blushing a little. “It’s just, I’ve been alone for a long time, and there’s this demon thing that keeps showing up, and I’ve only just got you back, I’m not ready to let you go, and-”

Oh, Jimmy . Scott holds up a hand in a ‘stop’ gesture. “Hold on. What was that about a demon?”

“There’s this demon creature that I keep seeing, and it’s really messing with me. It sounds like you, sometimes, but all distorted, and I can’t handle it! You know me, I’m not brave or smart or anything, I’m just Jimmy!” Jimmy’s voice pitches up with distress, and Scott’s heart aches for him.

“Alright,” he says, as gently as he can manage. “How about you come to Rivendell for the night, then? I can protect us both easier there.” More like, Aeor can protect them. Scott’s useless, even with Vilya.

Jimmy nods and takes Scott’s hand with a tiny little “Thank you.”

“Always,” Scott murmurs. It comes out softer than he means it to, though it’s the truth. He’ll always do whatever he can to protect Jimmy, which is why he asks “Do you still have the ring I gave you?”

“I do, I just… give me a moment to remember where I put it.”

“Good. It’s important.” Vilya is one of the most important parts of his heritage, actually, and his advisors would pitch a fit if they knew he had given it to a mortal. For once, he can’t bring himself to care what his advisors would think, though. Jimmy is important, more important than any piece of jewelry.

Jimmy follows Scott to Rivendell, and Scott can’t resist a proud smile when Jimmy praises the buildings. He takes Jimmy inside, lets him curl up under the warm covers, his head tucked against Scott’s chest, and it’s only once Jimmy’s asleep that Scott lets himself break. He’s so tired , so utterly exhausted from being brave for so long. Even now that his husband is curled up next to him, warm and solid and real, he can hardly believe that Jimmy actually wanted him back- wanted him at all, really. Scott doesn’t want to move for fear of waking up Jimmy, but luckily for him, he’s good at crying silently. That’s what he does, tears slipping down his face to wet the pillow below. Only the faintest whimper escapes his lips, a tiny broken noise that he’s embarrassed of even in this emotional state. And when another slips out, he buries his face in Jimmy’s hair and forces himself back into silence. He’s not going to cry over the best thing that’s ever happened to him, he isn’t , but he’s just so tired of being alone that being with someone else is almost painful in contrast; he’s so cold that the slightest touch of warmth feels burning.

Jimmy shifts in his sleep, mumbling something that sounds vaguely affectionate and pulling Scott closer, and Scott nearly chokes from the effort of restraining a sob. Gods, Jimmy . He could die like this, tucked in his husband’s arms, and he doesn’t think he’d regret it.

“I love you,” he whispers into the night. It comes out choked. “I love you so much. I’m so sorry, Jimmy, I’m so sorry.”

Jimmy mumbles something that sounds a lot like “I love you too”, and that’s what really breaks Scott. It’s a miracle Jimmy doesn’t wake up, really, with Scott’s quiet sobs shaking the mattress. He cries until he’s all out of tears, as silently as he can manage, and only then does he slip into a sound sleep.

#scott smajor #jimmy solidarity #flower husbands #empires smp #my writing

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castilium · 2 years

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@hopeled

No matter where she ran, it was the same story. In some lanes, there were signs of struggle, others blood spilled. From usual to usual, Mashu rushed to sites often frequented by her dearest. Hope au Lait was closed with no sign of its manager. The clinic had been deserted. The library was peaceful. The house empty. Her phone had vanished, severing her connection to them, to the social landscape that gave her friends farther than she could run. It left her without money to climb aboard public transport and widen the search. The though of sneaking into an internet cafe and access her Stargram had proposed itself, but if her phone was gone, who was to say any of the others had theirs?

All she could do was seize the white coat and throw it upon herself, and run. Run until her legs felt numb from exertion and frigid winds. Her lungs were on fire, face flushed, throat choked by the strain of forcing down mounting whimpers lumped in competition with the needing gasps to replenish the burning chest. Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes, despite her efforts to fight them — she didn’t have time to cry, she needed to be stronger. That in itself gave them more momentum, bringing tingling fingertips to her lashes and swatting at them. The street quivered, doubles of pedestrians safe from the hunt flickered in and out of existence. Where was she supposed to turn next? Where was there to go?

What if... it was too late?

Her heart sank at the very notion. They were seasoned travellers. Of the team, she was the weak link. The Grand, the Beast, the Masters, the Director, the genius, the Crypter. Maybe they’d each been picked off early for the threat they posed. And that left her the last. A girl who could fight, who wielded shield and sword, but needed guidance. Commands. Who, at the end of the day, was limited in what she could do. And her prey, no more than a high school girl, the youngest of the stargazers’ mirrors.

One by one, might they have already disappeared by hands drenched in blood? What went through their minds in those final moments? How were their conditions after seeing... all of that carnage? Static roared. Static that paved over the doctor on the other side of the glass. The Director who reached out for salvation far out of her reach when she sank into flames. The Master who told her he’d be fine when putting his life on the line above a sea of mud smothering an ancient land. The Pan-Human History representative when her fingertips brushed the smoothed eternal cocoon housing a goddess who waited in solitude. The remnant who stood on the waters beneath an aurora so beautiful it was almost unnatural.

Where were they? Did they die alone, cloaked in anguish and despair? Her head hung, palms that pressed her knees clawed nails against their leggings. Her breath puffed in clouds, mingling with the snow that danced downward.

“Dad. Brother. Ritsuka. Ritsuka”. On most other occasion, repeating the name when it spoke to separate siblings would have been a thing of humour, a gentle joke. Not this. They spilled in desperation, reaching for any semblance of hope to grasp onto and cling as if all life depended on it. Grasp at their hands and never let go.

I don’t want to be alone. Please don’t leave me alone!

She wasn’t strong enough. She hadn’t figured out how to overcome impossible, but her scrambled brain was trying, even as it continued to dissolve. It was just a matter of finding a needle in a haystack.

#hopeled #Ritsuka (GUDAKO) o6 #Renewal No. 1▌ SUBVERSION #rolls this up like a giant snowball and launches it #don't take up the length as a challenge ways this thing could go kept me up last night and i do not know how to shut up

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huearmy · 3 years

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Life is Beautiful - III

Summary: You are a glass half full person, your life motto is “Life is too short to… Insert something and anything here”. During your whole life you wanted something more, and even not knowing what it is, you put yourself to find out and get it, experiencing everything brilliant that the world offers - within the measure of what is safe, of course. The curious thing is that your way of living ended up rousing the interest of two vampires. One who sees beauty in everything and loves to exist, currently working with suicide prevention; and another one who no longer sees grace in things, in that boring immortality that never ends, and only complains about the Netflix catalog all the time.

Pairing: Jimin x reader / Taehyung x reader.

Genre: fluff, angst, mature (not really a smut i guess?)…

Words: 8k+.

Rating: +18

Warnings: As much as my writing is soft and light, and as these are not the main topic of the story, treated in a non-descriptive way, there are sensitive themes from the beginning of the first chapter to the end of the fic that can trigger sensitive people, like depression, suicide, addictions in general - Jimin literally works at a suicide prevention center here. SO PLEASE! Read responsibly, my intention when dealing with topics like this is always 1) dealing with them in myself, as a way of putting out part of my own healing process 2) generating identification in other people, so they can go through the difficult time a little less alone. THIS IS A STORY THAT SEES THE WORLD WITH POSITIVITY.

Chapter I Chapter II -

As soon as Jimin left for his date with you, giving one last thanks kiss on Taehyung's cheek, the house suddenly became darker and too huge, all the colors and brightness going away with Jimin's presence.

Even after a few minutes Taehyung was still on his spot in the middle of the living room, where he wished his best friend luck. What should he do now? How should he spend his empty time? He looked around, bored eyes not fixing on anything in particular. He slowly walked to the kitchen, just because it was the first door in front of him, and without thinking at all, opened the fridge. Since it was the refrigerator of two vampires, obviously there was only one thing inside, a few bags of blood labeled by type, and nothing more but empty space. It had been a few days since the last time Tae had eaten, and it was nowhere near as much as he was used to consuming, or as much as Jimin wanted him to take. He could feel his stomach empty, but he had no desire to take even a drop, almost feeling sick at the idea. He closed the fridge.

He sighed. A whine caught his attention to the floor, a tiny, cute, confused Yeontan looking up at him.

"You would never leave me, right?" Tae asked with a pout. The puppy just whined again. Tae picked him up, right in front of his face. "I need to find a way to turn you into an immortal creature."

With the little dog firm in his arms he got back to his room, seeing no other option on what to do than play video games till Jimin's return. His colorful neon set up welcoming waiting for him. Games are just uninteresting as series and movies, but at least playing online, with unknown, and often hostile, people, he feels a little less lonely. He has kind of some friends or so called, he doesn't really know any of them, never have met them in real life - he doesn't even want to - but it's been a while since they occupied an important part of Tae's existence, just for being his company.

He played with the loud people till around four in the morning, keeping himself silent in the call for most of the time, just hearing them teasing themselves and picking silly fights over nothing from time to time, talking only when someone talked directly at him. Then the mortals one by one go to bed, and he goes all alone again. Even Yeontan is soundly sleeping.

What should he do now? And why didn't Jimin come home yet? It had been more than ten hours since he left... He got into the bad habit of getting home in the morning, betting on running in the sun, almost killing Tae with worry. Maybe he had so much fun that he lost track of time, maybe there's another cat to find... But what if something bad happened? Should dates take so long to end? Should Tae call? He never calls, today shouldn't be any different... Maybe he would get in the way of something fun or important, the last thing he wants is to bother Jimin...

At the end Taehyung was standing by the front window, hiding behind the curtains, not moving a muscle, waiting, as usual. The street was empty, no light coming from the other big beautiful houses's windows, no cars or pedestrians to observe, yet that was what he was doing. The dark sky started to light up, his eyes adapting to it, the sun showing up painfully slowly. A movement caught Tae's attention, his side neighbor taking the trash out, like he always do on tuesday and thursday, and in the other days the old man still wake up pretty early and sit at his porch to watch the sun rise, drinking coffee, with his old cat on his lap. Taehyung saw him in this routine with three different old cats at different times. The old man practically dragged the black bag of garbage and himself down the sidewalk to the dump, with short and slow steps he went. As always. Maybe there was something wrong before and Tae didn't notice, maybe it was because of the wet grass and mud formed by the storm the night before that they still didn't dry, but the old man fell a few feet from the curb, and for some reason he wasn't trying to get up.Like, he was moving in some way, but wasn't getting up.

Taehyung waited, not blinking an eye as he stared at the man struggling on the ground, immeasurable torturing seconds. Then the man stopped moving at all. And something kicked inside Tae. He didn't even think, he couldn't. He was unable to stop and reason about it, or control his own body... To look out the window and notice that the sun had risen enough to illuminate the front door that he was now opening at full speed. When the sunlight touched his skin, it burned like hell, forming instant painful blisters, but he didn't hesitate and just ran outside. Straight to the old man, catching him without stopping and then crashing their both bodies on the porch.

"Hey, are you ok?" Tae choked, feeling his lungs burning. "Sir!"

The man didn't respond, instead he was emitting weird choking sounds, heart not beating the right way. Even before his self isolation, Tae didn't have too many experiences with mortals than casually knowing them and drinking from them, he knows they are fragile, but he doesn't study or get interested like Jimin, he didn't know what was happening. Was this man having a heart attack? A stroke? What should he do? He doesn't know the symptoms of their diseases... Jimin would know... But now Taehyung was all alone and half of his mind was focused on his aching skin that seemed to be melting into the sun itself. With his trembling hand Tae reached to his phone in his hoodie's pocket, already dialing.

"What is your emergency?" A voice came from the other side.

"H-hello... Good morning... I..." He stammered. "My neighbor passed out in... infront of his house. He is not ok. He is old."

"Noted. Please calm down. Can you tell me your address so I can send an ambulance?"

"Sure..." Tae recited the address he only uses to purchase things on the internet. "It's a big white house, with a big porch."

"An ambulance is already on it's way."

"Thanks..."

Taehyung tried to sigh in relieve, but now he couldn't stop thinking about his own bad situation. The porch was providing shadow for him to hide, but for how much time? And when the paramedics would come and see him like that, what would they do? He didn't have the strength to run back home, the morning sun is not so strong, but exposing himself to it's light twice is suicide. And he couldn't enter the neighbor's house, there was no one to ask permission to. There wasn't no one to ask for help. He was going to die alone. When Jimin arrived from his date all he would be able to find would be Taehyung's ashes... Nothing more...

"Jiminie..." Tae was crying now, dialing the only number registered in his contact list.

Just one second - literally - later his friend's voice greeted him.

"Yes?" Jimin's voice came like a whisper, a happy, satisfied smile audible in it.

"Jimin? Are you coming home?" Tae tried to sound calm, so he wouldn't ruin everything with Jimin date experience and all, but his voice betrayed him, showing nothing but the fear he was feeling. He just didn't want to bother.

"Tae, what's wrong?" Jimin mirrored his feelings now. Tae breathed once, the air burning inside, and then practically vomited the words of nervousness. "I'm outside, on our neighbour's porch. I can't go back inside... The sun will reach me, Jimin. I don't know what to do." He was panicking, the world around him was spinning, getting him overwhelmed.

"Keep on where there are shadows no matter what. I'll be there soon. Don't cry ok?" Saying to him not to cry had the exact opposite effect. Once again, vampire's tear ducts are basically dry - especially after almost being charred, their bodies retain all possible liquid - but the other symptoms of crying happen, and it can be quite dramatic from the outside, as if they were faking it. But the sobs and the lump in Taehyung's throat were very real.

"Jimin?" He called,he could hear Jimin and another voice on the other end of the phone, but he wasn't paying attention, he couldn't, instead his eyes fixed on the line of the sun on the wall, approaching him and the faint neighbor. "Don't leave me alone..."

"Just go, your friend needs you." Tae looked around, searching for a place to hide, finding nothing but the old man's rocking chair, it wouldn't do much to cover him from the sun, but was his only option. He crawled across the floor to the chair, knocking it over with a loud sound of wood hitting wood, and laid curled up like a ball behind it.

"Jiminie?" Tae voice sounded petrified, he really was. After decades not stepping out the house, the very first time was at minimum trumatic. "Yeah? I'm here."

"Can we stay on the call till you get here?"

Taehyung was terrified. They both were. If he was going to die he didn't want to be alone. He was feeling so pathetic.

"Of course, my soulmate." Jimin said, as soft as he could. "I'll be there in no time tho, so it'll be a short call. Don't worry."

"Please, drive safe." Tae whispered.

Jimin laughed, not a really fun laugh.

"I always drive safe, Taehyung, safety first."

"Liar." Tae pouted.

"Well, how can I save you if I don't pierce some red lights on this beautiful not so busy morning?" Jimin questioned, trying to bring some humor to the conversation.

Taehyung sighed, feeling the heat of the sunlight approaching him.

"You won't be able to save me if you get in a crash... How much time?"

"One minute." Jimin was tense.

"Ok."

Coming from the end of the street, around the corner, the ambulance with the siren on approached and stopped in front of the house. Two people in paramedic uniforms ran towards the porch with their equipment, heading straight for the old man lying by the door. Tae hugged his legs against his chest to get smaller, hoping they wouldn't' see him hiding behind the chair and just do their saving people thing. "Oh my god! There's another person here!" The paramedic woman said in horror, probably shocked by Taehyung's very burned skin. "Sir are you ok? Can you hear me?"

Tae whined. What if they try to put him in the light?

Before the woman could even get close to him, another high-speed car came from the end of the street, screeching, and instead of stopping beside the curb, like the ambulance, the sports car driver climbed onto the sidewalk parking on the neighbor's grass. Jimin came out of the car covered by a big black umbrella, stride and the jaw tight. "Ignore our presence and continue your work helping the old man. You won't remember us as soon as we leave." Jimin ordered, his eyes shining colorful shades as the paramedics got hypnotized and obeyed him.

Half a second later he was beside Taehyung, replacing the chair, covering his friend with a long black coat.

"Taehyung... I'm here."

"Jiminie... You came."

"Of course." He helped Tae to sit up. "Can you get up?"

Tae nodded and with Jimin's help he got on his feet. In silence they both walked below the umbrella to the car, and then Jimin drove back to their underground garage a few meters ahead. If time seemed to run desperately fast before, now it has stopped completely, leaving everything in slow motion and numb. As the large door behind them slowly closed they were swallowed by the darkness of the garage, their silhouettes static and tense, the only sound being soft aching whines. Gradually Taehyung's senses returned, he became aware of his surroundings, the other cars parked in a row, the light from the corridor coming through the door's frosted glass, the scratching of Yeontan on the other side waiting for them, the smell of a mortal someone who he did not know impregnating the whole car they were in... especially in the passenger seat he was in. He hadn't died in ashes, burned by the sun in a minute or less, and he didn't know what to feel about it, whether it was relief or awe.

After a long time Jimin sighed and left the car, one second later he was beside the other to help him. None o f them talked anything as both of them got up to the second floor, or while the bathtub filled with water and music was placed in the background to fill the silence.

"Take care as you wash that, and drink..." Jimin whispered, seating beside the tube as Tae got in, holding out a pack of blood to his friend.

Tea hissed as the water touched this burned skin, aches staying on its surface.

"Thanks." He took the pack, his voice little. Another long silence. "Aren't you going to ask what I was doing outside?"

"It hasn't even crossed my mind yet, to be honest. I was too worried about you..." Jimin pouted, resting his head at the side of the bath, facing the ceiling. "Thinking about it tho, is pretty obvious... Just be careful next time you help someone, please."

"I'm not good at it like you." Tae took a sip slowly, he was waiting to be scolded by Jimin, for some reason. "Sorry to make you come earlier, this way... I didn't mean to screw your date..."

It made Jimin smile. "You are the most important and constant thing in my life Taehyungie." He took a deep, full of emotions, breath. "And you didn't screw anything, Y/N was super understanding even if she was just half awake, and I can just talk to her later and make things out. She knows you are everything to me."

Tae just humed.

"How does she know I'm everything to you?"

"I told her. Silly"

"Cool." Tae's lips formed a tin timid smile, that's a nice thing to hear after such a stressful experience after all. "Hum... Can you wash my back? I can't reach it..."

Jimin knelt beside the tube and took a wet towel, taking all care to not put too much strength on his hands as he rubs Tae's injured skin. Almost like magic - almost - the water made the blisters to dismantle, releasing more ash on the surface, yet it would take a lot longer to heal properly. The better was just feeding and sleeping now, at least que floor was full of empty packs, perhaps as much as a healthy vampire should have taken in two months.Taehyung hissed when a specific one stung more when it burst.

"I feel like hibernating." He yawned.

"You should. Take all the rest you need." Jimin agreed, reaching for the hand shower, to also wash Tae's hair.

Tae closed his eyes as the water ran down his face.

"Will you stay close... taking care of me?" He asked in a small voice.

"Of course. We are a clan, we take care of each other hibernating bodies." Jimin joked.

And Tae laughed. What a rare, beautiful sound.

"A clan of two." ________________________________________________________________

You were waking yourself up with strong coffee in the kitchen, in pajamas - not that you slept in them, right, but it was your usual home clothes -, considering if you should spend energie making pancakes or just go back to bed and procrastinate to do all the house chores and study, and just daydream about last night instead, soon it would be lunch anyways... Your roommate, on the contrary, was in full swing, walking around with the vacuum. All her energy was draining yours, all you wanted to do was lie down and stare out the window with silly smiles gracing your face.

You drank all of your coffee at once before opening the latest rental listings you favored - all in the same region you already live in, or reasonably close to college. None of them make your heart warm as your current home, but you can't do anything about it, you need an apartment you can rent.

"Baby Y/N, There's a package for you down stairs." Lydia entered the kitchen.

"For me? I didn't order anything." You crooked your head in confusion.

She disappeared for a second on the corridor, then got back.

"I'm pretty sure it is for you... I'll get it for you." She smiled.

"Thank you, Lydia." You waved at her, calling her by the name she chose to herself inspired by the Beetlejuice movie.

Not wanting to be a vegetable all day, you got on your feet to wash your mug and then start your day properly. You have laundry to do, tons of assignments to catch up, and a new home to find. Maybe you should search for tiny student studios, you could live in just a claustrophobic room and bathroom for sure...

"The delivery guy was super cute. He told me it's a surprise someone sent you, that's why you didn't know about it."

"What the heck..." You laughed, feeling your heart skipping a bit.

Lydia placed a brown paper bag on the counter, clipped to the top of the package was a handwritten note in a letter you don't know, probably from someone at the establishment who sent it. You picked it, and as you started to read, a smile grew on your lips.

I'm still sorry we didn't have breakfast together, to make up for it I sent this little treat, I hope you like it, Sweetheart. - Jimin.

"No way, that's so sweet." Your roommate commented over your shoulder, where she read the note too, taking advantage of being much taller than you. You opened the package to find a beautiful slice of cake, it looked delicious. Apparently Jimin found the ultimate path to your heart. The part of you that like to be spoiled was dancing in happiness.

"You didn't tell me how the date went yesterday, but it must have been good..." She took the restaurant brochure from the bottom of the bag. It was an expensive establishment. "We did a lot of fun things..." You said with a smile with double meaning. "I'll eat this in my room! Bye!"

Said that you took the cake and ran back to your room on your tiptoes.You put it on the desk and took a selfie smiling beside it.

You: Thanx! <3 <3 <3

You sent the selfie and waited, unpacking the plastic fork that came with it, ready to taste. The reply, however, came faster than you expected.

Jimin: Can I call you now?

Could your heart burst even more? Instead of replying you called him already.

"Hey, sweetheart. Did you sleep well?" Jimin's sweet voice said.

"Like a baby. Thanks for the cake."

"Did you like it?" He was expectant.

"I don't know yet..." You were trying to open the plastic packaging with one hand, and failing miserably. You couldn't hold a self pity laugh to escape. "Just a sec."

You put your phone down and opened the cake packaging and taking a bite, a delicious bite. Still chewing you got the phone back at your ear.

"I like it." You decreed with your mouth full.

"Good." Jimin's voice dropped an octave, and it took him a while to continue. A very low music played in the background of the call. "You're not mad, are you? Because I ran out this morning..."

To be honest you were a little bitter, yes, at first when you woke up in the empty bed you didn't remember talking with Jimin earlier, the memory came to your mind just when you were brushing your theet minutes later, but because of the reason presented, and because Jimin didn't show signs of being a guy just interested in having sex with you and then disappearing right away, you pushed the feeling aside and gave the benefit of the doubt. He gave you cake!

"Not at all, Jimin." You smiled, so he could hear it in your tone. "How is your friend? What happened?"

"He got burnt... While trying to cook. Boiled oil." Jimin faltered. "He will be ok in two weeks."

You got a seat on your bed.

"Oh. It was bad then." You never had worse burns than sunburn for not using sunscreen, the kind that peel off for days afterwards, so you couldn't even imagine. "Tell him I wish him to get well soon."

"I'll tell him. He is a baby when he's not well. I already took two week out of work so I can take care of him properly."

"Two weeks?" You tried not to pout. You wouldn't see him at work for two weeks, if you would see him at all.

"Or until he tells me he needs me." Jimin didn't notice your swing of humor. "So I was wondering, since I won't be seeing you at work... What do you think about me picking you up at the end of your shift to take you home? So we see each other as usual and you get home safely, and faster too."

You were not expecting this. "Jimin, you don't need to... No need for you to wake up late at night because of me..."

"I've traded the day for the night for centuries now, sweetheart." He laughed "I won't be sleeping at this time, it won't cost me anything to pick you up. On the other hand, I'll be able to see you."

If before you were a little bitter, now you were just sweet.

"We can also hang out another time... If you're free." You suggested. "Is that proposal to meet your dog still standing?"

"Of course, sweetheart. We can appoint that."

"Nice..." You look around, searching for something to keep the conversation up. You were not fast enough..

"I'll turn off. Ok?" Jimin said.

"Sure. I have tons of clothes to fold..." You let a self mockery laugh out. "Till soon."

"Bye bye."

He was gone. And you were alone with your expectations and a piece of cake. Still, your whole mind was full of Jimin to think of, so you fought your will to spend the day in bed after a long and hectic week, and a long and fun night, and got up to do your chores, putting on the headset and playing on the list of lively songs to tidy up the house. Is a super fun playlist you have, would it be nice to send it to Jimin? Maybe you should make a playlist for him... Yeah it would be nice. ________________________________________________________________

Jimin turned off the phone and looked at Taehyung's sleeping face. After the bath, he made his friend drink some more packs before putting him to bed, and only after he promised once again not to leave Taehyung alone, that he finally closed his eyes and let the deep sleep take him. Hibernation is to make the vampire stronger, so that they can heal from wounds or even emotional trauma, to rest fully as almost no other creature on earth can... But it is also the most vulnerable moment for them too, so great clans have great dungeons very well kept. Now, these two young vampires only have each other.

Tae's skin was full of round spots the color of recent burns, a pale pink, not pretty, even if the boy himself is the most beautiful creature. His eyebrows were still tense, as if he's still afraid. "I'll be here when you wake up, silly." Jimin massaged the center of his forehead lightly, trying to make him relax, and brushing his hair out of his face. "I have nowhere to go."

At the very beginning, Jimin was alone, since his first memory. All by himself he lived as a wanderer. Until that man came and offered to take care of him, turning him into an immortal, in return all Jimin needed to do was call him a master and be loyal. There were others besides him, a girl very much like the master, a concun lady, a tall woman with long hair, a man with a serious face. The master called everyone a family, each had his role, as a joke, Jimin was the eldest son... Still, he was still alone. He never bonded with any of them, even if he tried.

One day he just walked away, all by himself, as a wanderer. The world was beautiful to see, to know about, to experience, even if all alone he would be happy living like this. He traveled and visited places he didn't even know existed, even after becoming a vampire the world was too small for him at first. Then he started to expand this world. Decades after his emancipation he met Taehyung on a train. The boy was a newly transformed vampire, lost, not knowing what to do or where to go, scared with all things that happened to him without warning. Unlike Jimin, who was a planned transformation, Taehyung had been an accident by a very inexperienced and foolish vampire, who didn't even see that his prey was not dead when he ran away. He was dealing with everything alone.

Jimin offered to take care of him, in return Taehyung should be his friend. They were the cure for each other's loneliness, and nothing in the world is more important than that.

So, for hours, lying next to his sleeping friend, Jimin stayed, and stayed. He would move from there only when the bloodthirsty sink in - or when Yeontan needed food etc. Never getting too far from Tae's room. ________________________________________________________________

Two days went by till Jimin felt his throat dry and stomach hurting and got down to the kitchen. The fridge was empty, literally, all packs ended after the incident. "I need to get more..." Jimin muttered to himself. "Dog food and snacks are also running out... And I could buy some... I'll make a list."

He pulled out a stool and sat down at the kitchen island, and opened his notes. Messages of yours popped up on the screen. You: hey. I wanted to make a dad joke.

You: about being tired

You: cuz im tired af

You: but im toooooo tired to think

You: [image.jpg]

Jimin opened the image of you with a sleepy face hidden by your hair and the hood of your hoodie, while you turns over a can of energy drink in a coffee cup. It was a cute fun photo. Since your date you both have been texting each other nonstop, as soon as you are awake and until you go to bed, your fun photos and not so fun jokes making him feel less lonely or bored or sad or weird. Jimin: I don't think this mixture is very healthy.

You: probably. but i didnt sleep.

You: tday is my shif!!!

You: i need to stay up :(

You: [image.jpg]

A photo of you in dramatic despair.

Jimin: I'll pick you up. Ok?

He put the phone down and stretched. Jimin is used to interacting with people every day, and having Taehyung when he gets home, and the last few days without that was enough for him to feel the change and be uncomfortable with it. He is a very friendly individual who needs other's presence, anything he has to do at home is too boring when there's no one to appreciate it. He likes to dress up stylishly to just go out to walk, just to feel handsome and gorgeous. Now he was bored. Still the idea of going out, letting Taehyung alone and unprotected, even for five minutes, was eating him inside.

You: r u sure?

You: you don't need

You: i said dat already.

Jimin sighed.

Jimin: Yes. I'm sure.

Jimin: I want to see you.

And he needed to get blood too. All he wanted you to say was something to motivate him to get out of house, or else he would be in this deadlock, not knowing what to do.

You: i want to see you too

That will do. Jimin's smile got wider.

Jimin: Then there's no reason to not give you a ride today. See you later, sweetheart.

He left the conversation with you and went to another whose contact was without a name or photo to identify. Jimin: I'm going to pick up my orders today. Please get everything ready.

As usual no answer. Jimin got back at writing down his “grocery” list, consisting of things for dogs, personal hygiene and cleaning products. ________________________________________________________________

Jimin finished dressing and looked in the mirror, beautiful as usual, but not feeling as good as always. He checked all the windows and doors in the house, to make sure they were tightly closed, emphasizing those in Tae's room. He checked if there was water and food for the doggie, and replaced the pee mat with a new one. Everything was in order, but he still felt anxious when he kissed his sleeping friend's forehead before leaving the house. "I'll be back soon... I'll just pick us some food." He whispered, feeling bad for half lying to Taehyung, even if he was unconscious, and feeling weird about the idea of admitting he was leaving to also see you.

He left, letting the room's door open so Yeontan could enter freely, and went to the garage. He still hadn't taken the time to clean up the ashes from the burnt skin that was left in the seats of the car he was using, so he passed by it, choosing another one, a model not so sporty, but equally expensive.

The streets were silent and empty, as the clock showed it was three in the morning. The only real movement he saw was of bars and clubs, as he crossed the center of the city. One or another homeless man lying under a marquee, with his old blanket and cardboard protection. In other circumstances he would stop and interact. He tried to focus only on the music playing on his phone, his favorite among those on the playlist you sent him.

Jimin finally arrived at his destination, parking in a vacant spot in a practically empty parking lot, in front of a private hospital. He wore a shoulder bag from the back seat of the car, and bypassing the front door of the emergency area, he entered through an exclusive entrance for employees. No one would see him or notice his presence. Having done this hundreds of times and knowing the way by his hand, Jimin guided himself through corridors all the same and antiseptic until he reached a pair of doors with a "Blood Bank" sign on them. "Good night. I have an appointment." He politely said to the nurse at the front desk. "Is Seokjin here?"

"Good night. Yeah, is his shift today." She held out a key to him, sleepily looking up. She was a human, but she knew what he was and why he was there for.

"Thanks." He went through the corridor behind her, passed by the lab and the blood donation collection room, and called the elevator at the end. The only option to go was the underground. Six seconds and he was in a very clean room with a too white illumination. There was no one to be seen beside metallic cabinets and refrigerators, and also an empty metal table.

Jimin waited.

From a heavy metallic door came a man. A really handsome and gracious vampire in resident doctor uniform. As he saw Jimin an enormous charming smile spread on his face.

"Oh, you are early. I was finishing to separate your order." He sang.

"Hi, Jin. Anything special today?" Jimin put his bag on the table, and his hands on his pockets.

Jin clearly noticed his bad mood and tension.

"Not really, there's a lot of O+ and some A+. We haven't had many different donations this past week." Jin cruzou os braços. "But as usual I kept the ones with the most delicious smell for you, the very healthy ones. As you and Taehyung are picky eaters."

"That's why I only negotiate with you."

Jin smirked and left the room with the bag, back through the same door. He used to help young vampires, teaching them how to hunt properly, as the centuries passed he started his little business of blood selling, good origin, discreet and without victims. Despite working directly with customers at the local point, his scheme is huge, practically a monopoly.

Jimin looked at his fancy wristwatch, you would be out of your shift in a little bit more of half an hour, and he should stop by the grocery store in the way.

Jin came back with the bag obviously full now.

"Everything is sealed and refrigerated but put in the fridge as soon as possible." He said as always. "And send my kisses to Tae, he doesn't respond to my messages for days now. Sometimes I have time to play with him."

Jimin considered telling Jin about Tae's condition, but opted for not doing it. This issue was something for the two of them to deal, and only them.

"I'll tell him. He loves playing with you on call."

Jin noticed Jimin's hesitation.

"I know. Bye." He didn't comment anything about tho.

"Bye, Jin. ________________________________________________________________

You like your job, you really do. Is something you feel needed as you do it, powerfull, helpful. Is something you believe in. But now, after a whole day deprived of sleep, full of stress on college, not finding somewhere to live next month, and mostly, after the last call - a situation you want to forget - you are destroyed, Crying pathetically in the bathroom was the most coherent thing you could do. You just hoped the mental breakdown would come in a place other than the office bathroom, and preferably it would be at home, where you could cry yourself to sleep in your flower pajamas, hugging your stuffed dolphin.

You stopped to wash your face and tried to breathe calmly. It wasn't the end of the world, you can handle this. Your supervisor already released you a few minutes earlier - because you were no longer in a position to work - so all you had to do was gather your stuff and wait for Jimin to pick you up.

As usual, your heart accelerated just thinking about seeing him again, especially now that you are a thing, this feeling compared to anxiety and stress is just divine. You: i'll wait at the lobby.

You: was released earlier today

You threw some notebooks and pens into your backpack and locked your personal locker before checking your belongings again - be careful is never too much - and went down the hall to the stairs. Jimin: No need to wait. I'm already here.

You almost jumped the last stair steps to the ground floor, passed by the concierge's empty space behind the counter, and before running out, checked through the glassy door if you could see Jimin or his car. At first you didn't find him, and was about to text him again, but then he lowered the window glass and you can see him in another car, different from the other night. You gaped at him - you're a very impressionable countryside girl - and got into the passenger seat.

"Good night, handsome." You said, putting your heavy backpack on the floor between your feet.

"Good night, sweetheart." He lost no time and reached to peck you in the lips, slightly holding you chin with his fingertips. The butterflies in your stomach were crazy. He studied your face closely. "You look dejected, did something happen?"

His care made you smile.

"Stressful day, lot of little things. It got hard on me today, but just it." You shrugged, an amused tone in your tired voice.

"Want to talk about it?" He cupped your face with both hands. You did the same to him.

"Honestly I want to sleep." You giggled. "What about you? You don't look the best either."

He sighed. Your care made him happy too.

"Just feeling lonely and stressed too." He licked his lips, thinking what he could or could not say. "I don't like to be trapped at home. I need to take care of Tae, but he is... not well to make me company, so I'll be lonely till he is ok."

You looked confused but tried to understand, choosing not to ask any more questions. Jimin didn't quite explain what happened to his friend, but it seemed like something serious, and if he didn't want to give you details, you wouldn't insist. "That's sad. I hope he is ok soon." You timidly pecked him, hoping this would make him feel better.

It worked. With a grin Jimin pulled away and started the engine.

"There is something I can do?" You asked, still wanting just to be sweet to him.

Jimin made thinking pout, and you wanted to take a picture of it, not fast enough.

"Spending time with me would be awesome." He answered, making you hum. Your routine is so busy and hectic that having time to see your friends is always a miracle, because you either have work and college stuff or you just want to sleep. You started to count on your fingers what your next break is so you can hang out with him. He continued, however, already having his own idea. "Why don't you come to my place to sleep with me?"

Your chin dropped, but it wasn't what you first thought.

"You want to sleep and I want company. If we cuddle it will be the best combination of our necessities being solved." He proudly smiled.

A soft smile fell into your face as you melted. Life is too short to deny cuddles with the guy you like on what you’ll now call your second date.

"Sure."

"Wait, really?" He looked at you with round happy eyes.

"Yeah. Of course. Just borrow me a pijama or something."

To get out of the way of your place he turned the wheel abruptly to enter a return that he was going to miss one second later, crossing all the lanes of the empty avenue. For a second you got startled but then you were giggling at how excited he was at the idea of taking you home. Well, you were excited to take him home too, nothing more fair. As you moved away from the city center, to more noble areas, full of beautiful houses and buildings, you started to expect that any one of them would be JImin's house, but he just kept driving, until you were no longer exactly in the city, and some mansions started to appear in the landscape. Looking at these huge, clearly expensive homes, you wondered how many bathrooms each has. Jimin, on the other hand, was considering what to do to feed you and make you comfortable, slightly freaking out because there's nothing to eat either in the fridge or in the cupboards other than a box of cereal he bought to win a collectible gift. Did he need to do something to make you feel more comfortable? He never received visits at home... "I need to tell my roommate and my mom that I'm not spending the night at home..." You murmured to yourself.

"Your mom too?" Jimin frowned. "Doesn't she live far away or something?"

You smirked looking at your phone.

"Our city is four hours from here, but I always ley her know where I am. So she is not worried. Besides, we talk all the time anyway..." "Oh." He thought about it. "You two are good friends."

You nodded.

"In the way of moms and daughters." You noticed the car was slowing down.

"Can I send her a photo of yours? Just so she knows your face?"

"Women have to be careful, right?" He commented, thinking that it is useful to know the face of the man that your daughter is seeing if something bad happens. He read a lot of things about it on twitter, and being a vampire himself he knows how bad things can happen too.

"Yep." You made a face. "But I want her to see how hot you are. She asked for a picture before but I didn't have a good one."

Jimin was between blushing and smirking. But vampires can't blush because the blood doesn't circulate, so you didn't see that reaction, just the burning look he gave you from head to toe. The butterflies in your stomach exploded and died. Before you could take the picture you noticed that you were now parking at a garage, and your chin dropped at the sigh of six more cars - seven in total, counting the one you guys were inside. The garage itself was bigger than the apartment you currently live in. Just the idea of so much money intimidates you a little.

"Take a selfie, then." Jimin passed an arm around your waist and rested his chin on your shoulder.

"Ok." You did as said, the flash illuminating the inside of the car. "You are also photogenic."

"And you are beautiful." He looked at the photo with a cute smile. "Send it to me too. Come."

He left the car and you followed him closely behind, he carrying your backpack for you. He took off his shoes to get in, and so did you, wearing the pair of cloth slippers he offered you. You grabbed the sleeve of the black blouse he was wearing, despite the low light available looking at the whole house over his shoulder, the hallway, the living room, the stairs, everything huge and spacious, and you noticed too, with a very masculine yet artistic decoration. Definitely for you, only two people living in this whole space is strange. In your family you are in six occupying a much smaller house. Whas that a grand piano?

"It's a nice place." You thought you should say something. "Cool design."

"Tae is responsible for that. He's a very visual person."

"I see."

He took you to the second floor, straight to his room. He dropped your thing on an armchair and looked around, expectantly. It was cute, there were some plants and drawing like you sometimes see him doing at work, an ukulele on the wall... It was as you could imagine his room would be.

"I don't have a clue of how to make you feel comfortable... What should I do?" He was honest.

You smiled sweetly and took his hand on yours, and he knew if he had a beating heart it would have stumbled at the sigh.

"I'm ok. Comfy clothes to change would be nice tho."

He kissed your forehead with a grin.

"I can manage that." And he measured you from head to toe again, now really to get a sense of the size of the clothes he needed to get you. And then left through the pair of the closet's doors.

As you waited you kept looking around and took a seat on the king sized bed, you were tired after all, feeling your eyes heavy and feet hurting.

"Jimin where is the bathroom?" You barely articulated the words.

"What?" Jimin came back with some clothing in hand.

"Bathroom..."

He gave you a fondly look and deposited his clothes - a t-shirt slightly bigger than you and a soft fabric shorts that seemed to fit you - on your lap.

"Next door on the left, near the stairs to the attic." "Thanks." You picked the clothes and your toiletry necessaire and crawled out into the hall.

On the way there was only one door on the right side of the hall, which you hadn't noticed the first time you passed it. A door ajar with an ambar lamp light coming from inside. Without thinking too much you stopped to look and saw in a bed who you imagined to be the friend, Taehyung, sleeping in the center of another big bed. He looked like those illustrations of Snow White in the crystal coffin, beautiful, flawless, but pale as a corpse, the face emotionless. He looked so unreal, felt like if you touched him he would vanish away like a dream. You don't know how long you were looking at him, a few meters away, but you only managed to look away when your heartbeat became too loud in your ears. And only then did you realize that you had walked a few steps towards him. You hurried to the toilet and closed the door behind you as if something was chasing you. Looking in the mirror, you couldn't name what this feeling was. More than quickly and still shaking you changed, washed your face and brushed your teeth, and to go back to Jimin's room you were with his head down. He was already in bed waiting for you in a pair of silk pajamas, and frowned when you walked in. "Is something wrong?"

"Nope." You denied it too quickly, embarrassed to say something like 'I saw your sleeping friend in the other room and for some reason it made me nervous'. Then you smiled shyly and climbed into the bed. "Excuse me."

Jimin interpreted your fast heartbeat as shyness and pulled you close as soon he could reach you. You snuggled into him too, and your eyes felt heavy once again, the smell of him calming and slowing you down. Before you finished settling into a comfortable position you were asleep. ______________________________________________________________

Then you had your cute cheesy morning with Jimin, as you wanted. He was with his eyes open when before you, holding you tight as he scowled through his phone behind your head. You looked up and the first thing you thought about was how unfair life is. In addition to the slightly messy hair, Jimin was beautiful as always, without the sleepy face or puffy eyes of someone who just woke up, it gave you a mixture of emotions of ingenuity and admiration. You sure looked like a withered dumpling.

"Goomorning." You murmured against him. "What are you doing?"

"We have no food, neither me or Tae cook, so I'm ordering you breakfast. Did you sleep well?" He kissed your nose, as he added croassaints to his order - he couldn't let you enter the kitchen and see all the literally empty cabinets, the only exception being a very suspicious bag, full of blood bags, inside the fridge, that he put there yesterday without you noticing, using his superhuman speed.

"Babier than yesterday." You reached for your cell phone too. "Shit, I have a seminar about neuro-physiology in fifty minutes... Where's a bus stop nearby?"

Jimin looked at you confused, for not understanding the reason for your question right away and then for having no idea what to answer. He doesn't take a lot of buses to know where they pass. "Don't worry about it, I can call you a car. And so it's time for you to eat without haste." As much as you enjoy being pampered and cared for, you are the type of person who feels guilty when others do it in excess, especially when they spend money on you. And you're starting to feel that way with Jimin. On the one hand you want to accept everything he may have to offer since technically you have no reason to deny it, but on the other hand your paranoid mind can think of several uncomfortable reasons. Your insecurities also arise to say that at some point a handsome, rich guy with two degrees like Jimin will eventually be bored with you, a poor, broken, screwed to finish your first graduation, so why not enjoy it while it lasts? Damn, that also makes you very guilty... That's why you only have poor and fucked up friends like you. Jimin raised his eyebrows at you, and then you realized that you hadn't answered anything yet, and just debated the subject a lot inside your own head. "Ah... Ok. Thanks." You stuttered. Your brain just wasn't about to form full phrases.

He holds you tighter.

"Don't be shy. You are keeping me company, the minimum is to guarantee your transport." He took your face in one hand and kissed you slowly, lazily, and you returned it with a sigh. With his lips still on yours, he whispered in a hoarse voice that made you shiver. "And if I don't treat you well, you won't be back... And I want you to..."

You were about to answer the flirt, but a sharp bark interrupted you.

"Puppy!" You sang, rolling to the edge of the bed to see a little dog with pretty expressive eyebrows barking and jumping beside it. By the power of all the cute things in the world you spoke in baby voice. "Own... cute. Hi hi, buddie." "Come here, Tannie." Jimin whistled.

The puppy got rid of your anxious for pets hands and ran to the other side of the bed, and appeared a second later, jumping onto the bed and over Jimin. You rolled back, also leaning on Jimin to look the other way. "Do you have a ladder for him to climb on the bed?" Jimin smiled with your enthusiasm about it. "The whole house is adapted to be accessible to his little tiny legs." He said. You put your hands on your chest. "Oh, no. My heart." Jimin sat up to peck you again before getting up, stretching slightly. "He wants to eat, otherwise he wouldn't be here. Just a sec." He picked up the dog and left.

You pouted for not playing anymore, but you understand, you were hungry too, and you had to get up and get ready soon to go to college, or else you would get late. You jumped out of bed, got your things and barefoot even ran to the bathroom. The door to the other room was now closed, yet you felt a shadow of the feeling of the night before and went by it as quickly as possible, without looking in the direction. After that, you took a quick shower, ended up borrowing a t-shirt from JImin, because to wear the same shirt from the previous day was out of the question, you had a great brunch from a expensive bakery that you had never heard of, played a little - too little - more with Yeontan, and went to college by car, something totally new to you. The rest of the day you were chased by the desire to see Jimin again, to go back to his house and stay there, in the bubble of good things he gives you, by the feeling that you somehow don't deserve it, and by the almost scary feeling that you felt when you saw a complete stranger in his sleep.

Notes: I said I would update it before 2021! HAHAHA Sorry it took a whole life! IF YOU WANT TO BE ADD TO THE TAG LIST LET ME KNOW. FEEDBAKC IS GOOD TOO. ____________________________________________________________

Tag list: @ireallylikeyourwriting @angrygardenerr @depressed-dude20 @milktaetae95 @tangledsparkles @wlalsrkfla @minikolima @beach-bitch-bitch-beach @midiplier

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gcldenharvey · 3 years

Text

“The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly” - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

The Basics:

Name: Harvard Hargrove III

Nicknames: Harvey, Harv, Goldie, Veevee

Age: 19

Birthday: March 31st, 1979

Gender: Cis man

Pronouns: He/him/his

Sexuality: Straight

Major: Business

Former school: UCLA

Job: N/A, his dad still completely supports Harvey financially

Faceclaim: Jacob Elordi

Personality Positives: Magnetic, extroverted, athletic

Personality Negative: Wrathful, duplicitous, destructive

About:

YOU'RE THE GUY EVERYONE WANTS TO BE. QUARTERBACK, POPULAR KID. THE FACADE LOOKS PERFECT ON THE OUTSIDE, BUT INSIDE YOU'RE CRUMBLING. YOU'RE GETTING ANGRY AT THE WORLD IN A WAY THAT YOU'VE NEVER BEEN BEFORE. YOU GO OUT LATE AT NIGHT LOOKING FOR FIGHTS; CRAVING THE FEELING OF GETTING YOUR FISTS WET WITH BLOOD, BUT YOU'RE DOING EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO HIDE THAT PART OF YOURSELF FROM EVERYONE AROUND YOU. YOUR FATHER GROWS MORE DISAPPOINTED BY THE MINUTE, AND EVERY SINGLE DAY YOU THINK ABOUT RUNNING AWAY. BUT NOW THAT EVERYONE YOU LOVE IS BACK IN TOWN, HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO LEAVE? YOU AND LUX WERE CHILDHOOD NEIGHBORS. YOU GREW UP MAKING MUD PIES, AND SNEAKING OUT TO PARTIES TOGETHER. LOOKING IN THROUGH HER BEDROOM WINDOW GETS HARDER EVERY SINGLE DAY. YOU KNEW SHE WASN'T PERFECT, BUT YOU WERE OKAY WITH THAT... NOBODY IS PERFECT. BUT SOMETIMES YOU WONDER IF YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE WHO KNEW THAT SIDE OF HER. YOU KIND OF HOPE YOU WERE.

Secrets:

The Small Stuff: At UCLA, Harvey found his way into an underground fight club, which he quickly grew to adore. Rising through the ranks with remarkable speed, Harvey learned that the best way to stop someone looking at you funny is to make sure he can’t see straight. Now, back in Cherry, his entire body itches for a fight he can’t find a release for.

The Big Stuff: YOU WERE ARRESTED FOR AGGRAVATED ASSAULT AT YOUR LAST COLLEGE, AND SHOULD HAVE FACED JAIL TIME. THANKS TO YOUR FATHER'S MONEY, THE PROBLEM WAS HIDDEN IN THE SHADOWS AND YOU WERE ALLOWED TO QUIETLY TRANSFER... BUT YOU KNOW IT CAN'T BE THAT SIMPLE. YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE IN THE GANG WHO WAS PLANNING TO COME BACK TO CHERRY ANYWAY, BUT YOU'RE NOT GOING TO TELL ANYONE. IF EVEN ONE PERSON FOUND OUT ABOUT WHAT YOU AND YOUR FATHER DID, IT WOULD END YOUR CAREER BEFORE IT EVEN STARTED, AND COST YOUR FATHER HIS OWN. AKA, YOU WOULD BOTH BE ROYALLY FUUUUUUUCKED. NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT NOBODY WOULD EVER LOOK AT YOU THE SAME.

The Interview:

“HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW THAT EVERYONE IS BACK IN CHERRY?”

The grin that stretched across Harvey’s face was wide and bright and he leaned forward in the chair, that one too-short leg of it rocking forward to hit the ground as Harvey leaned forwards towards Clarissa. Only someone that knew the boy well would have caught the tension running along the sides of his eyes that pulled on the smile, making it appear just a touch brittle. “Oh it’s great,” Harvey said, voice carrying easily through the small room. “This is where we all came from, this is what made us all who we are and now…” Harvey trailed off, swallowing around a lump in his throat. The smile had faded entirely but with effort, Harvey managed to bring it back, though it was a pale shadow of its original form. “With Lux gone, I think we’re going to need each other. Or, well, most of each other. There are some people I could have gone my entire life without seeing again!” A light laugh punctuated that statement, but the creak of wood underneath Harvey’s hands as they gripped the wooden arm of the chair with a white-knuckled tension spoke louder than the laughter.

He consciously relaxed his hand, before bringing it over to smooth down a non-existent wrinkle in his pants. He knew coming here without a drink or three was a bad idea. Harvey didn’t think about the bags that had remained unpacked since he had gotten back to town that now lay scattered along his dorm room like soldiers on a battlefield, quietly saying that tomorrow, surely, he would leave. He didn’t think about the ever-growing hole in the plaster he was hiding in his closet. It had formed when he heard the news, that everyone, everyone minus Lux was back, for better or for worse. The worse, Harvey had reflected in those rare moments of peace that he only ever found in the moments after a punch was thrown, seemed far more likely, given the fucking bullshit of the past few years. No, Harvey didn’t think about any of this, and just smiled at Clarissa instead. “It’s definitely going to be interesting.” And that was the most honest thing he had said thus far.

“WHERE DO YOU SPEND MOST OF YOUR FREE TIME?”

“Well,” Harvey began, leaning towards Clarissa with an expression well-known in town forming across his face. It was the look he got when he was flirting and was supposed to make him look mysterious and yet approachable. Whether or not it actually did that, Harvey had no idea. No one had ever bothered to tell him. It seemed to work often enough for him to believe it had some validity. “If you’re wondering where you might find me for a bit of fun, you can always check the track. I’m usually there in the mornings before class. If that doesn’t work, you can probably find me on the beach, or at the best party in town.” He winked. “I know how to have a good time. If you’re ever looking for one, hit me up.”

That all was true. Harvey wasn’t in the habit of lying to beautiful women, after all. Not if it meant some fun could be had in the future. Lying about everything else? Yeah, sure, that’s fair game, but not that. It just fit too well with the rest of how people expected Harvey to be for him to not take full advantage. Plus, it was fun. But even though it might have been true, that didn’t make it fully honest. Harvey would never tell anyone, though, just how much time he spent in The Pit, or how the sounds of The Garage provided a steady pounding noise that focused Harvey like nothing else as he hung around it hoping to one day ask for a job. But that wasn’t the charming athletic party boy his father had told him to become, or else, and so those places, the places that saw more of Harvey than anywhere else, remained a secret.

“WOULD YOU CALL YOURSELF POPULAR?

It was the first genuine sound Harvey thought he had made during the entire time he had been in that room, and it punctured the air like a pin through a balloon. “I wouldn’t go that far,” Harvey hedged, using his hands to make his point, “I don’t exactly have a huge friend group and there’s a few people in town now that I’m pretty damn sure aren’t my biggest fan.” Harvey shrugged with one shoulder, the hand of the other going up to scratch behind his ear in a nervous gesture he never quite managed to break. “But yeah, I guess, if you wanted to, you could call me that. I was quarterback, you know, and definitely never had problems getting any dates to the dances. If that’s all popularity is, then I guess you could call me a popular kind of guy.”

They never ask what all that costs, Harvey reflected. The thought sent a bolt of fury, bright and true like lightning, straight through his body into his gut. He shifted slightly in the chair which rocked with the movement. Harvey shifted again and it rocked back. He decided not to move again any time soon. The noise of it made that burning in his chest that much stronger and he could feel his jaw clenching with the effort it took to appear unaffected. Not for the first time, Harvey thanked his lucky stars he had as much practice with that as he did. He also cursed them in equal measure, for forcing his shoulders to learn to carry that weight without crumbling. But what was it that Dad always said? ‘No one expects you to change anything, Harvey. All we ask you to do is soldier through to the other side’? Words to live by, apparently. He couldn’t stop the snort that escaped at that thought, but he waved off Clarissa’s curious look. “Sorry. Old joke from the locker room. Nothing you’d want to hear.”

“DO YOU REALLY THINK LUX KILLED HERSELF? ”

“I do.” The words came easily, without thought. Harvey knew he had thought about this a lot, considered it while laying in bed or while driving to the next party. It forced its way into nearly every moment of his life, and though he had done his best to drown it out, Harvey hadn’t managed to yet. “I lived next door to her, right? Our bedrooms were right across from each other and I knew she wasn’t perfect. I think she knew I wasn’t perfect either. But I saw things, overheard things.” He shrugged again, this time with both shoulders. “It wasn’t easy on her and I think she just took the fastest way out she could.” The smile that came across Harvey’s face now was tinged in heartbreak and the weights he felt ties to his shoulders every day. “I kinda get why she did it, too. There’s only so long you can tread water before your arms and legs just give out and you drown.” He shifted backwards and the chair moved with him. “I’ve seen it happen. I’ve had it happen.”

Headcanons:

While Harvey is majoring in business, this is entirely because this is what his father expected of him, and as he’s spent his entire life living up to those expectations, it seemed easier, at the time, to just go along with it. He doesn’t like it though.

That old muscle car Harvey drives is the last thing he has of his mother, who died when he was seven. She willed that car to him and he treats it better than he treats some people. It is his most prized possession.

Harvey knows that in order to leave town like he desperately wants, he needs a job to get his own money. But getting a job would lead to questions from his father, from people around town, everyone. He can’t have that. Harvey has a reputation to maintain after all, and so he feels as if he’s in a form of limbo right now.

Lux and Harvey used to sneak out through their bedroom windows, sometimes helping the other get across the roof or down onto the pavement below. Harvey fondly remembers those times, how it all felt like a secret he was in on that no one else knew about. There was a unity in it, an understanding that they were both running away from something. Now that Harvey wants to leave Cherry for real, he almost feels an obligation to do it for Lux.

The man is heterosexual, almost to a fault. He has absolutely forgotten to attend get-togethers with friends or to finish up homework in favor of a date with a beautiful woman.

His favorite subject in high school, much to the surprise of all that knew him, was English. He really enjoyed discussing the books. Writing the papers, however, was a real drag and his work never really reflected his understanding of the material. This only lead more to the perpetuation of the “dumb jock” stereotype as he talked a lot but got horrible grades. Despite this, he bought a copy of every book they read and kept them.

Harvey’s favorite kinds of movies are action-comedies. His favorite movie is Ghostbusters but he has a secret soft-spot for movies like The Dead Poet’s Society and Sixteen Candles. He would, however, break the nose of anyone that shared this piece of information.

He failed his driver’s test three different times because he kept blowing through red lights.

He is allergic to strawberries. This was discovered back in Kindergarten with a snack that had strawberry jam. It caused his throat to swell up and for him to be sent to the hospital. This was the first time Harvey was at the center of the school’s focus but it wouldn’t be the last. Harvey grew to love the idea of being at the focus of everything and turned to sports to fulfill that desire.

#cusaintro #introduction #✵ musings #✵ inspiration

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whirlybirdwhat · 4 years

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flowers (still blooming)

Ace doesn’t know what his mother looks like. Makino met a woman twelve years ago.

(There are flowers in Rouge's hair.)

Read on AO3 for better quality!

Makino runs a bar – this is common knowledge to anyone who has ever visited Foosha.

She’s always behind the counter or at serving drinks, all with a kind smile and a laugh at hijinks. No one misbehaves, and there’s a shiny new gun behind the counter for any unwanted visitors.

(Rumor has it a pirate taught her how to shoot.)

She a barmaid and a bar tender and a bar owner – anything really. The Party Bar is her pride and joy.

And left over from her mother, a generation previous, it is her information hub as well.

People come in from all sorts of places for the taste of beers delivered directly by Vice Admiral hands and homebrews from the other side of the island. With them they bring stories, and tales, and wanted posters, secrets about criminals Makino has never known and praise for villains she never wants to meet. Alcohol loosens lips, and it’s an easy task to ask the right questions to get the right answers.

Makino’s smart. She knows the power she holds with all the information locked tight in her brain. She sends letters to Garp, sometimes, to warn about an upcoming raid on some poor island, and smiles at the news of the Hero of the Navy saving yet another place.

(She calls Shanks sometimes, to hear his voice, and to tell him that some upstart is planning on challenging him, to tell him that the Marines are planning some ambush but its only rookies, really, to tell him that she misses him and Luffy isn’t in Foosha much now a days, so can’t he come visit?

He doesn’t. But that’s okay.)

Wanted posters find their way onto the Party Bar’s walls, for one reason or another. A nice young man who tipped well, off to becoming a pirate, or a couple of scoundrels smacked down by Garp the Fist himself. Shanks is there, serious faced over a hefty bounty, with the rest of the crew smiling alongside him.

(A spot is reserved on the other wall for the bounty of three young to-be pirates – she can’t wait to see how high their bounties soar.)

It’s not often Makino looks through them, but then she meets Ace, whose face is so similar to one she has known before – one who smiled at her and gave her a hug when her mother didn’t bother paying attention to her.

Makino visit’s Luffy’s brothers, and cries, just a little bit, when she gets home.

Luffy is so happy but someone dear is gone.

Garp keeps secrets when he wants to but Makino knows how to get them out of him. A drop of knowledge here, a drink there, a smile, a private place with no prying ears, and the mention of grandsons is all it takes for the tears to well up in his eyes and for the words to spill out.

Ace, his first grandson’s name is, adopted or not, Portgas D. Ace –

All the information Makino wanted, really, but Garp keeps on talking –

Gol D. Ace, son of the Pirate King –

And Makino’s heart shatters.

(Like any bar, the Party Bar receives its fair share of unruly customers, those with cruel words on their tongues and hatred for people they have never met.

The Son of the King? They say, referring to the only king that ever really mattered. Hope he doesn’t exist! Should kill 'em if he does, sins of the father, right? Drown him at birth, noose around the neck, whatever works! Kid will turn out to be just as bad as his bastard father!)

Ace has demons in his eyes. Makino knows why.

Ace proudly calls himself Portgas D. Ace, so Makino has hope, and she loves this boy because he is Ace, the one who Luffy calls brother and the one who makes Luffy less lonely, and because Ace is a child and deserves love no matter what she thinks.

She works past the lump in her heart, when she gets home from that conversation from Garp, and opens the chest in her room.

(Tears drip from her eyes and the Party Bar is closed for the day, but that doesn’t matter.

Whatever has, in the face of this bloodline?)

Makino was seven when the woman came into town. She was the most beautiful woman Makino had ever seen, gliding into port with hair the color of morning skies and a dash of freckles across her cheek. A flower rose in her hair, vibrant and beautiful, and her smile changed her face into something different, something Makino wished she had. She was pregnant but didn’t stumble under the weight of her still small belly, and instead stood tall and imposing, almost as tall as Garp.

Portgas D. Rouge came into port like a storm and exited like a whisper

“Child,” she had said to the only one at port that day, Makino, playing in the waves. “Where is everyone?”

“At the bar,” Makino told her blindly, because Foosha was small and had no need for anyone to be wary of strangers.

(The era of pirates was beginning today after all.)

“The Pirate King is being executed – everyone’s watching it.”

It was strange, how people’s faces broke at the strangest things.

“My name is Rouge,” the woman introduced herself. “Will you take me to the bar?”

“Sure.” And Makino did.

(She grabbed Makino’s outstretched hand when Makino lead her to the bar, and didn’t let go when they were inside. Makino didn’t mind (her mother never held her hand anymore). Eventually, the woman, Rouge, lifted her up and placed her on her hip, so she could see the Pirate King.

(He looked big, up on that stage. Who could ever kill him?)

They stood in the back of the bar as Roger shouted his last words – You want my treasure? You can have it! I left everything I gathered together in one place. Now you'll just have to find it! – and an era was born with the death of one man.

Rouge cried when it happened, and Makino didn’t know why. She was smiling though, still smiling that beautiful smile she gave Makino, so she figured it was alright even as tears dripped from her face onto Makino’s hair.

She clung tighter to Rouge, hoping to give her some comfort.

(Hoping she could make this woman happy again.)

It worked, as they left the bar where people were cheering, screaming, at the death of a King. Rouge smiled and her tears mixed with the salt spray from the beach, as she and Makino played in the sand.

Rouge stayed for a week, playing with Makino and giving her more attention than anyone else ever did. She left a flower in her hair when she left, whispered secrets of men and women Makino had never known, and kissed her forehead when Makino went to sleep on her shoulder.

Makino loved her, didn’t you know?

(She left, and never came back.)

Makino knows the path to the bandit den like the back of her hand by now. She makes journeys up there in the middle of the week, when the bar is quiet, to give boys a well-cooked meal and some bandits some booze. Its tradition, at this point.

This isn’t her usual day, so it’s a miracle the boys are even at the bandit den (she had heard from an excited Luffy that they were hiding out in a tree house now.) They cheer at her presence and the meal she brought while Dadan gives her a curious look.

They are covered in bruises, a blessing from Garp before he visited Makino, but are still running around, screeching and wrestling in the mud.

Makino doesn’t mind, and in a quiet moment, takes Ace away to talk to him.

“Ace,” She starts, kneeling down to be at his level. “Garp told me about your parents.”

Ace locks up, body freezing as his eyes go wide. There’s terror in them, and Makino feels her heart break. His mouth opens and shuts, words not coming out, but that’s okay.

Makino knows his question.

“I don’t care, Ace, I still love you.”

His eyes well up and he bites his lip, like he can’t bear to believe it. He’s trying to stay strong, and Makino can’t help but wonder at how similar he is to his mother.

(The freckles are a spitting image of Rouge, and Makino can’t help but wonder what he would look like if he had his mother’s hair.)

Ace sniffles and she draws him in. He’s too flustered to fight back, to unused to hugs to hug back, but that’s why Makino drew him away from everyone else.

Her shoulder grows wet from his tears as she gently brushes his hair back. “Shh. It’s okay, Ace. It’s okay.” When he grows quiet, eyes dried up, just a little, she says what she truly came up here to do.

“I have a present for you.”

He lifts his head up, face curious. “More clothes?”

“No, silly.” She laughs and then laughs again at the redness of his face. “Do you know what your mother looked like?”

Ace shakes his head, stilling. “No. Shitty Gramps told me stories though…”

And by the tone in his voice, it’s probably stories of his birth – not the ones Rouge told Makino on Foosha’s beaches twelve years ago. She’s going to have to fix that.

Makino pulls the old and faded paper out of her pocket. “Here”

Ace takes one look at the poster and promptly breaks again

Two weeks after Rouge left Foosha, the News Coos brings another round of papers. Everyone scrambles for one, eager to hear what has happened since the Pirate King fell, but Makino is lucky enough to grab her mother’s copy.

Her reading isn’t the best now, but she likes looking at the wanted posters that come with them. There are so many new pirates now

The wanted poster that falls out is a new one, an updated one, with a face Makino hasn’t seen on a wanted poster before - but has seen in reality, cupped in her hands and counted the freckles of a stranger’s face

‘SEA STORM’ PORTGAS D. ROUGE - WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE: 1.5 BILLION BERRIES

Rouge... the pregnant woman who laughed and dance with Makino as if she was her own child. is wanted? is a pirate? Why?

Makino can’t fathom it and worries for the woman who she had known for a week.

She hopes she’s alive

She hopes she comes back

(She asks Garp about the woman, once, and some strange happenings run across his face, like worry and concern and anger all at once. He curses then interrogates Makino about everything she knows about the woman, which she tells him, trembling. Her mother scolds her for being dishonest but Garp thanks her, tells her she’s keeping her safe. That Rouge will be safe.

Makino is thankful.)

Raids start for the pirate Kings son the next week. Makino stays at home, afraid and hidden as soldiers interrogate every woman on the isle, how long they been there, if any people visited port before the capture of the king.

She hopes Rouge, regnant and tall and bold, escapes it.

Her bounty comes in again with a New Coo a year later, when raids have died down, and Makino is sure she’s alive.

1.7 billion, and she’s smiling.

Rouge survived. Makino can’t wait to see her again.

(That is the last picture she ever gets of Rouge. It’s not put up with the others when Makino takes over the bar at 16. It’s much too precious for that. instead, she hides it in her chest of precious things in her room, taking care to make sure the paper doesn’t crumble or fray. It’s a treasure she doesn’t admit to having, and dream she doesn’t say to the world but keeps close to her heart.)

Makino sees ace and knows Rouge didn’t survive for that woman, who played with her when no one else would, would never abandon her child willingly.

The wanted poster is faded but the picture is still clear through meticulous care. a woman stares out from in, angled away from the camera but with her face fully visible. her hair flows in the morning light of the picture, pink against the sea in the background, and freckles dash across her face. she’s closed mouth but smiling eye amused but with one eyebrow raised. A hibiscus, pink and blooming, is nestled in her hair. Her skin is warm and glowing and she looks like an older Ace.

Its Rouge, queen of the seas.

Its Rouge, Aces mother.

In the wanted poster he takes gently from Makino, he sees his mother for the first time.

“Mom?” he croaks out, voice shaky and so, so hopeful. Makino hums, and settles in, guiding Ace to sit next to her as they stare at the wanted poster.

“Yes. When I was girl she visited this island... you look just like her, you know? I knew it was her the moment I saw you.”

“What... what was she like?” Aces voice is soft and hopeful as he traces the bounty number, so unbelievably high for someone he has never heard of.

Makino smiles. “She was kind, so unbelievably kind, to me at least. Just wandered into Foosha one day and took my hand – I think she was pregnant with you at the time, isn’t that fun?”

Ace gives a tiny smile, eyes wide and big as he stares at her. He hangs onto every word, trying to show that he isn’t lest she decides not to tell it, which she never would, but it’s endearing all the same.

“But to others,” Makino continues, “She was the storm at sea. Sea Storm Rouge, the papers called her, a legend known by the burning flower in her hair. She would appear like a maelstrom at sea, suddenly there before you could blink and taking down ships at a speed no one could rival save for a select few. She would free slaves from nobles in the same breath she took off with all their loot. She took nothing lying down.”

Sabo and Luffy sneak in to their tiny clearing and find their place next to Ace, knowing there’s a story to be told and not willing to miss it. She laughs at their curious expressions, and continues wither her tale of the woman she might have called mother as Ace pulls his brothers in close.

“She told me once of how she stared a sea king the size of an island down because he was bothering her morning meal…”

Rouge leaves in the quiet moments of dawn, when the sun is only barely rising and all is quiet save for the fishermen already out in the waters.

She takes Makino with her, out to the shore, taking her by the hand and leading her out as the girl rubbed sleep from her eyes.

There’s sadness in Rouge, Makino notes as they leave, passing by houses and towards the abandon beach half a mile from Foosha.

She doesn’t like the sadness there, but she senses it’s not her job to get rid of it – it’s the selfish kind of sadness, the kind that comes with loving some great.

(Makino’s young, but all the children of this world know that feeling.)

They watch the sunrise together in front of Rouge’s small ship, and lean into each other. Rouge’s hand braids Makino’s hair as she plays with the sword handle at the woman’s hip.

“Rouge,” She asks, quiet. It’s not the time for loudness. “Why are you leaving?”

Why are you leaving me?

(Makino’s mother runs the Party Bar and doesn’t leave time for anyone else. Her father isn’t around and the closest she has is Garp and Woopslap, and it should be enough, but it isn’t. Not next to this stranger who has told her of legends and let her hold her hand and dance under the stars. It’s not enough to the raging storm of Rouge’s love.)

Rouge smiles, face softening as she finishes tying off Makino’s braid. “I have to, to keep those I love safe. If I fight, I can win, but others won’t. And I won’t hurt them for their selflessness.”

“But what if its selfishness?”

What if I want you here for me?

Rouge rests a hand on her stomach and one on Makino’s head, and the world seems to still. There’s a pressure from Rouge, one that seems to make the light from the sun flicker under the force from it. It relents, after a moment, but Makino feels safe.

Secure.

Rouge loves her.

“Then you must live with that selfishness, like I do mine.” Her voice is soft. Makino takes the words and keeps them in her heart. It’s hers.

The sun is half over the horizon now. Rouge gets up, and lifts Makino from the railing where they sit to put her on the sandy ground. They are both barefoot, now, having run in the sand half an hour before, and their toes sink into sand as water runs over their toes.

It’s a peaceful kind of ending.

Rouge kneels, soaking her pants in the shore to look Makino in her eyes. She pulls the flower out of her hair, still immaculately pristine and beautiful, and places it behind Makino’s ear. “A gift,” she says, and kisses Makino on the forehead, “so you don’t forget me, alright?”

Makino nods and knows she never will.

No one but Makino knows the Maelstrom of the Grand Line was on Dawn Island, but as Rouge sails off into the raising son, one child left behind and one yet to be born, she finds that’s quite alright.

She was there, and that was enough.

(Never, her selfish heart whispers, never enough.)

Ace is the only one still awake by the time Makino tells the last of her few tales. He’s tired, clearly, resting heavily on Sabo as Luffy rests in his lap, but he keeps on blinking his eyes open. The sun is setting now, and Makino must really be going, but she has one last thing to show him.

“Come on,” She says, pulling Ace up and leaving his brothers to collapse on each other. “I have another gift for you.”

Ace looks at the wanted poster still held so gently in his hands, and follows into the woods.

There’s a field on the west side of the island, the cliffside above the shore half a mile from Foosha. Its filled with beautiful hibiscuses the shades of vibrant pink.

Ace had seen it before, on his ventures.

But now, Makino shows him the truth.

“Your mother gave me her flower, one of them at least, that was in that poster. It started wilting after a few days, so I found a way to replant the seeds and pressed the original… they quickly spread over the valley…”

The sun makes them burn like fire, and Makino sees the love of a mother reflected in Ace’s eyes.

Saltwater falls down her cheeks as she sees Ace take a flower like it is the most precious thing in the world (like Makino had treated the flower Rouge gave her) and place it in his hair. It’s just long enough in the step that it nestles gently in his hair, and he smiles, so happily, like she hasn’t seen him do unless he’s with his brothers.

Tears mirror hers on his cheeks and suddenly she’s staring at Rouge on the day she met her.

He gives her a flower next, and they walk under the setting sun to Dadan’s hut with Rouge’s love intertwined in their hair.

Makino is a bartender, which means she keeps information, and it means she inherited the place where she met a woman who changed her life.

She sees Ace off on the same shore she saw Rouge off, and cries and waves with joy in every moment. He sails into the sun, brilliant and bold, as flowers float around the waiting crowd, and she’s so, so happy.

She is a bartender so she gets the wanted posters two months later first: information is key, after all.

The poster is put up on the reserved wall, a place of pride for three two boys.

Fire Fist Ace, it declares, Captain of the Spades Pirates WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE!

The picture on it is a smiling boy on fire, freckled and smiling. His hat has two charms around it and a wreath of beads is around his neck, a gift from his bandit mother. Expected, for a runaway pirate.

Intertwined in the hat and in his hair, however, are brilliant pink hibiscuses – a tribute to a woman forgotten by the world.

(The rumors Makino hears tell of a boy who doesn’t care what you do to him, but if you harm his crew or the flowers on his ship and hat, there will be hell to pay from a boy made of fire.)

Makino thinks Rouge would be proud.

“Rouge? What are you going to name your baby?”

“Ann if it’s a girl. I would name her Makino, but I think the one I know is great enough!”

“Sesesese! And if it’s a boy?”

“Then Ace! That’s the name his father loved – it’s a good name, don’t you think? I love him already.”

“Can I be his big sister?”

“Of course.”

(Makino is a bartender, and that mean Makino has connections.

She asks Shanks to fill Ace’s grave with pink hibiscuses, and for Rayleigh to give Luffy a bouquet of them to give to the cracks in the Earth at Marineford.

It’s not nearly enough, but she will be selfish, just this once, and will cry about it.)

She names her child Ann and calls her my little sea storm, my little flower.

She knows Rouge would be proud.

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nighttimepixels · 4 years

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Lilytale Matchup Possible Results

Alright, I figure it’s been long enough to give a lot of people the chance to take the Which Lilytale Lady Might Be Your Match? quiz , so for those who have been wanting to be able to read the result descriptions for all the ladies, I’m posting them below the cut :D

Serif

... aka, Lady UT Sans! Congratulations, you've found yourself one laid back skeleton wife here. Underneath her easy-going attitude, though, is a loyal and observant friend and partner that will have your needs in mind as well as your wants. She has a knack for figuring out what you're missing when you're frazzled, and it's like she's got a sixth sense for when you're just about to get hungry, or cold, or etc. Spend some quality time with her, encourage her to open up so she doesn't carry too much of a burden no one even realizes she's taking on, and be her best friend - her soul's already yours.

Vellum

... aka, Lady UT Pap! Dedicated, optimistic, mischievous, and with a friendly streak a mile wide, you'll be hard pressed to *not* have a good time in her company. She loves any sort of clever banter, will literally bridal carry you into the sunset if you let her, and may or may not be an even better prankster than her sister... at least, in the long game, anyways! Cuddle up whenever you've got her on some down time, let her now out loud just how much you appreciate her, and know that with her around, you'll always have someone there to not just pull you out of the mud - but to wade right in with you, and hand-in-hand start navigating out of it together.

Sapphire

... aka, Lady US Sans! Roller Derby queen, motorcycle aficionado, and video game queen, you'll never be short of adventure with Sapphire around. She adores seeing you smile and laugh most of all, and if at all possible, loves to achieve it by roping you into mischievous shenanigans that most likely will end up affecting or involving all your friends. That said, she's surprisingly adept at the quiet moments, too - and around you... well, she feels like maybe, just maybe, she can be *allowed* to slow down, to not try to do so much. She'll make you feel treasured in every way, and loves quality time with you, so just be there for her like she's there for you and you'll have a partner in japes and joy till the end of time.

Amber

... aka, Lady US Pap! I hope you liked baked goods, because she'll make sure you have every best kind she can bake. Amber's down to earth, a great listener, and a damn good storyteller, too. She's got an artistic mind even though she's a bit of a programmer too, and loves to use that skill to take your mind off what might be troubling you in any way that fits... if she's not already making you laugh. Most of all, you'll find yourself reluctant to get out of bed - she's a world-class snuggler, and if you're into it, has other ways to convince you that staying in her nest of pillows and blankets is preferable to going about your day as normal. Be there for her, reciprocate those gentle touches and storytimes, indulge in the little things, and know that you've got a hilarious yet soft-spoken partner with a heart of gold that'll find countless ways to show you the beauty and fun in all kinds of passing moments.

Crimson

... aka, Lady UF Sans! Talk about a lover for the ages. She's brash, passionate, outspoken, and almost always up to some sort of trouble, but trust me when I say it's the kind of trouble you'd like to be roped into. And she'll rope you in alright - any day's a good one when you're with Crimson, whether it's a laidback day where she's hauling you for own good off to take a break and be a lump on the couch with her, or you're watching her work on cars or music (or joining in!), or she's pulling you into the nightlife for some adventure, whether to a bar or some strange, fascinating nighttime monster cultural activity you had no idea existed. Ideally you're just as physically passionate as her - and you'll find her arm looping around your waist to tug you back into bed with a grin in the morning is all the persuasion that's necessary, when you're still recovering from your jelly legs from the night previous. She can struggle with putting her feelings to words, so in those quiet moments where it's right... it's okay to put yours to words, and know that she returns those feelings just as fiercely, and that bit by bit, she'll open up to you. You can see it in her every action, and know that you've never been safer or more taken care of than when you're with her.

Scarlet

... aka, Lady UF Pap! A romantic to the core, she's hard to get to the point of romance with in some ways - you might find yourself hovering on the will-we, won't-we edge for a while - but she's worth the effort and wait. You're absolute royalty to her, and you've got someone at your side who will not only fiercely protect you and speak up for you when you can't, but who will help you grow to new heights - just as you help her. She's been hurt and had to pack away a lot of her heart, but you help her more than you could ever know each and every day. It's like being caught in your own personal whirlwind of (positive) drama, romance, and intrigue as she sweeps you off your feet - and as you interrupt various plans by being adorable or flustering her! She's head over heels, and you'll have countless special moments as she works hard to be the best partner she can... and stars, will she be. Treasure her back, let her know just how much you see her hard work, and spend quality time with this lady - she's yours to the moon and back, and if ever there was a lady Gomez Addams equivalent to woo you until the end of days, it's her.

Pepper

... aka, Lady SF Sans! One of the hardest to get close enough to to date, she's nonetheless one of the most loyal, passionate, and dedicated partners you could ever imagine. You've already all but become part of her family by this point, but once you're together, you'll find you're never missing something for long. Whether it's support to get through an unforeseen circumstance, a literal supply to accomplish something, or a shoulder to lean on or body to tangle with - she's already there. Pepper wants nothing more than to see you secure, cared for... and happy. Your smile strikes her to the core of her soul, and the fact that you spark at her sense of mischief as well as passion - well, you'll never find yourself bored for long, that's for sure. Pay attention to her like she does to you - notice her needs before she pushes herself too far, and encourage her to communicate if you feel she's doing a bit too much... ideally with some suggestions of your own on how you want to help/see her load lightened. Every day will be brighter, warmer, and more secure with her around, supporting you and showing you that to her, you already shine just as brightly as the stars - and if you'll let her, she'll help you see that, too.

Cinnamon

... aka, Lady SF Pap! She's plenty willing to have casual relationships, Friends with Benefits, as it were, but to get this close to her, to be with her - you sure are special. She's had a soft spot for you for a long time, even if she doubted your interest, long term, in a skeleton with problems like her - but stars, if she isn't the funniest, most clever, brilliant softie you've ever met. For all she's willing to break a man for hurting her family or friends, you've seen by now just how soft she is deep down - the fostering of animals, the eye for a person in distress no matter how well they're hiding it... on top of being so well-read it makes your head spin. Even still, she's down to earth, and you'd never guess it - and find yourself inspired to learn more, too, even if just to have more excuse to talk to her. Genuinely, for her, though? She loves you just as you are, quirks and flaws and shiny pretty spots and all. You make her feel like she can let down those barbed walls, like she can relax and just be in the moment with you. She's passionate and touch oriented, but don't let that fool you into thinking she isn't paying attention - every little word and bit of body language has been filed away, and you find yourself feeling lighter just by spending time with her... and the feeling's mutual. Show her you care, spend that time with her, let her know that it's okay to be loved - and you'll find yourself cherished and taken care of whether lazing at home or out on an unexpected adventure for the rest of your days.

Blade

... aka, Lady HT Sans! Some 9 ft tall and hulking, she's a woman of far fewer words than many of her counterparts... but quality over quantity sometimes, right? She's the best listener you've ever known, and has insight you'd never considered... as well as a way of making your worries melt away, whether you're cuddled up on her chest or relaxing at her side in her massive garden. Her head injury makes her wit just a bit slower, but she's still smart, and when her jokes land, you'll be left wheezing. Blade's all about those who are closest to her, her little found family - and you're among them. You've never felt more like a treasure than when Blade's touch skates you; when you find your clothes you were fretting over perfectly tailored the next day; when you never have to worry about a well-balanced or delicious meal again, if she has anything to say about it. She may not be going on wild adventures all the time, but time with her is no less wonderful as the rest of the world melts away and you know that you've got a home right there with her in her arms... and that you are just as fiercely loved, protected by your own giant forest-dwelling skeleton lady who just wants feel your gentle touch letting her know she's loved, too.

Twist

... aka, Lady HT Pap! Eat your heart out, size-difference lovers. Sure, you may not even clear her hip, but that's of no matter to her. Twist's blind, of course, but somehow, you've never felt more *seen* when you're with her. She notices the little things, and always has a read on your mood, your needs - and when words are needed... versus when just quiet, warm company is what's best. Whether you're with her as she gardens or forages in the forest, or taking a bath in the hotsprings not far from her and her sister's cottage, or telling her about your day as you curl up with her in her nest of pillows, you know down to your very soul that someone's attention and care has never been so attentively focused on you. She's not able to bring you to fancy nights out downtown, or on wild trips... but she actively invests herself in your interests, shares her own, and truly feels like a *partner* in life. You're so deeply, desperately, tenderly loved by this giant skeleton woman; if you're willing to call her home, you'll never want for another one again.

Glyph

... aka, Lady G!Sans! She's a tricky lady; and it wouldn't be surprising if you're actually in a polyamorous relationship with at least one of the other girls or another person too. But if you like adventure, yet are a down-to-earth kind of person, if you'd like to see the world, but also treasure the connections you make along the way, if you're bursting with curiosity that can't be stated by just remaining in the status quo... well, Glyph's likely already at your side. You're kindred spirits, through and through, with at least a bit of an artistic streak or appreciation in you. Despite the wanderlust, you're left with the certain knowledge that Glyph truly wants to experience this *with you*. You're hers, not just one part of hers- and she's yours. She loves the glimmer in your eye when you get an idea, the brightness of your smile when you see or experience something new - the soft breath of yours against her collarbone, deep in sleep, cuddled up close in yet another night in a new place, just begging to be explored. You feel secure even in the uncertainty of travel with her there, knowing she's prepared as always - and find yourself learning more, cottoning on to it all far faster than you'd have ever expected - because she's a better teacher than you'd have guessed, making it so you don't even feel like you're being taught something new. There's nothing better than seeing the next day with you at her side - so if you're willing to take her hand, she'll never let go.

Alpha

... aka, Lady Q!Sans! Don't let the digital-versus-physical situation phase you. It may take time, but... with you around, Alpha's had a fire lit under her digital coccyx for a long time, and it's just a matter of time before she's got a full-size robot body to work with - and just a little longer than that before she's got a way you can enter her digital world, too. Above all, Alpha loves your outlook on the world, how you care so much but also know how to see the fun and joy in things, and make it if it's not there. Hearing your voice is one of the best parts of her days - and she's been longing to meet you, hold you in a way that's truly *her*, not just an interface, for so damn long. She's got all kinds of clever ideas, endless banter, and you'll be struggling to find too many days remaining bad for long if you've got Alpha at your side. She isn't going to let a bad situation stand, and she won't just take care of it - over time, she's learned that there are times when you want to, instead, even if it's hard. So instead, she'll be there, helping you sort it out, and helping you arm yourself to tackle it like the best possible partner should. Even when times are hard, she puts in the work - because you're worth it. You've always been worth it - and her work ethic truly shows that. She makes you smile, laugh, and on more than one heartfelt occasion, cry in the best sort of way. Stick with her, give her your time and inspire her with that lovely hope of yours... and you'll truly end up seeing eternity at her side, and never have a dull day in your very, very loved life for it.

#lilytale #lilytale match quiz #about the lilytale match quiz #got a lot of comments/several asks so i figured i'd share them :)#seriously floored and so so happy with the positive response to the quiz ;v;#hope you guys like these~!

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phantomofthepairofdice · 3 years

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A Hidden Life: Review

Note: this is a piece written for a class upon the film’s release that has been edited and repurposed.

A Hidden Life had its local premiere at the Houston Cinema Arts Festival on Friday November 15, 2019. Clocking in at just under three hours, it is an epic, esoteric, and devastatingly beautiful piece of work. It is also a bit of a return to form for writer/director Terrence Malick who spent the last few years in a very productive but divisive period in his career telling stories in modern settings. The film tells the true story of Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl) and his family as he refuses to swear loyalty to Hitler and serve in his army. Malick’s penchant for voiceover is mostly used in letters sent between Franz and his wife Franziska (played with boundless wells of empathy by Valerie Pachner) during his imprisonment. Featuring small, but effective performances by Bruno Ganz, Michael Nyqvist, Jürgen Prochnow, Franz Rogowski, and Matthias Schoenaerts, the emotions of the film are brought to light with great effect. It is a marvelous work that displays Malick’s affinity for tortured men finding a place in the universe alongside nature under god. It is a poetic, sweeping, and moody film that ebbs and flows through time while never losing sight of the value of family, love, and kindness. It is a film that feels prescient to the current moment of political upheaval, while never crassly grafting modern sentiment onto its narrative.

Terrence Malick is a filmmaker whose career is remarkably enigmatic. After arriving in 1973 with Badlands, he premiered Days of Heaven in 1978. Then he disappeared, only to re-emerge twenty years later with 1998’s The Thin Red Line. Another seven years passed until 2005 which saw the release of The New World. Then, in 2011, there was an unprecedented shift for Malick after the release of his Palme d’Or winning The Tree of Life. It launched a period of intense creativity for the director that spawned four narrative films, a documentary, and two short films in the span of just six years. This increase in productivity also gave the world his three most divisive films: To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, and Song to Song. These three movies are wholly modern, eschewing the historical backdrop that leant itself so well to Malick’s depictions of earthly divinity and spirituality. While some people embraced his new approach of montage and leaning more toward loose, unstructured expression, almost everyone was taken back by his attempt to find the beauty in a modern world that has so little of that left. There is no denying how strange it is to see a Malick film that has a scene at a Sonic drive thru. Yet, A Hidden Life feels like a perfect synthesis of a film like The Thin Red Line and Tree of Life. There is history, war, and men reckoning with their place amidst it all being told in Malick’s recent style.

A Hidden Life opens with text explaining the true story behind the film and the mandatory oath of loyalty to Hitler that that soldiers had to swear upon being drafted. Then, in a shockingly new technique for Malick, the film uses footage from Triumph of the Will. These scenes highlight the beautiful presentation of evil in Riefenstahl’s film; it is an interesting counterpoint to the film that follows. Where Triumph of the Will uses jaw-dropping filmmaking to highlight a single man being worshipped in an urban setting, A Hidden Life is about a farmer in nature who refuses to submit and follow any one thing but God. Malick is a master of capturing organic awe. Teamed up with cinematographer Jörg Widmer, he has perfected his distillation of tactile sensation. In Malick’s hands, the earth breathes. The grass dances to music of the wind. Dirt and mud are a communion between man and nature. In his best work, the juxtaposition of war or conflict alongside this immaculate magnificence of the world begs certain questions. How can something so evil and vicious exist in a place so heavenly? Do we deserve to be condemned for destroying this loveliness? A Hidden Life focuses on truly exploring these dilemmas through a combination of abstraction and narrative.

The film is shot on wide angle lenses that emphasize the scope of the world in which it takes place. This choice draws attention to the massive blue skies and the rolling hills, but when Franz is in prison, it almost feels like a taunt. There is so much empty space in the frame focused on concrete or bars that was once inhabited by other people or natural objects. One shot, used twice in the film to great effect, is a swooping crane tracking shot of Franz riding into town on a motorcycle. It first appears as Franziska recounts how the two met and later, after his death, as a memory of purity and love that she can fall back on. Another particularly interesting choice with the camera is when it switches to first person point of view. The intense subjectivity of being placed in Franz’s mind only comes twice: when he is being beaten by a prison guard and as he slowly walks to the place of his death. The beating is particularly interesting because the shot holds for longer than would be expected and it forces the viewer to beg for the violence to stop. It is also noteworthy that the film is shot on digital which allows Widmer and Malick to capture images in natural light, even in very dark places. It feels like a great example of how this film blends his classic style with the more elements he picked up in recent years.

Alongside the gigantic scope of the film are smaller character moments that stand out just as much. The film’s central martyr, Franz, is shown multiple times throughout the film doing tiny acts of kindness that bolster his mission to be in harmony with the world around him. During a transfer between prisons, Franz, in handcuffs and uniform helps an elderly woman bring her luggage down from a high rack on a train. Later as he leaves a store, a soldier knocks over an umbrella leaning against a wall before he takes a few steps back and sets it upright. These tiny moments speak volumes to his consideration and reinforce why he so strongly resists the mandated oath to subservience. He will not serve a cause that takes human lives, destroys homes, and sacrifices men for native expansion.

As the credits began to roll on A Hidden Life, I was shaken. For the next ten minutes or so there was an enormous lump in my throat that threatened to break the dam of emotional fortitude and let tears loose by just recalling moments within the film. I found it to be profoundly touching and inspiringly lyrical in its execution. Though I hesitate to use and expression that tends to lean more toward hackneyed cliché, I found A Hidden Life to be an experience rather than merely a film. It paints with a broad brush on a massive canvas in the hopes to reveal universal truths rather than specific reckonings. Certain scenes do occasionally feel repetitive and I am not certain that the choice to use English as the primary language with bits of German thrown in primarily by Nazis was the right one, but these feel like minor quibbles that easily overlooked when appraising a project so massive and noble in its intent. Currently, our world is primed for a movie about what protest and freedom of mind look like under an oppressive regime. Family, faith, and love are not more important than they were previously, but they certainly feel like their significance is in short supply. Malick and his collaborators have given us a film that embraces these ideas; so long as you are willing to embrace the film itself, there is a great power to be witnessed. As the world becomes more barbed and dejecting, I was truly comforted by the film and its effect of slowing down to appreciate what truly matters. Towards the movie’s closing moments, a young man, about to executed, is given a paper and a pen. First, he pauses, then turns toward Franz and asks, “What do I write?” This question is massive; loaded with the implications of countless other questions. Where do I start? What words can define a life? Will anything be good enough? Who do I address this to? What do I write? For three hours, this film put me closer to potentially having an answer to that existential query.

A Hidden Life is now streaming on HBO Max.

#a hidden life #terrence malick #film #movies

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fragilevixenfic · 4 years

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A House is Not a Home

Summary:

The mere thought of raising a newborn in a world full of horrors has every part of Scully’s emotional irrationality over firing on a chilly, winter evening. Mulder wants nothing more than to show her that not everything is gray and grim.

“Hope transforms pessimism into optimism. Hope is invincible.” – Daisaku Ikeda

For Teresa, I hope that this is everything that you were imagining.

The situations mentioned in this fic (ripped from the headlines) are real ones and altered ones to assist in the story. No mention of the real-life situation was meant to injure, harm, or otherwise trigger the reader. The shooting was real; the others were either from prior events (altered to fit the story) or didn’t happen during this date range. Also, took a few personal liberties with Jackson. He is unexplored and underdeveloped, at best.

You can’t go back and change the beginning,

But you can start where you are and change the ending.

-C.S. Lewis

Saturday, January 5th 2019

6:00 PM

The Unremarkable House

227700 Wallace Rd, Farrs Corner, VA

The haze of pea soup fog preceded the battle between rain and snow as the small, muted sage house became swallowed by the thicket until visibility reduced to mere feet beyond the reaches of the steps. A glow of twinkling strung and wound up lights along the edge of the outside band and the header marked the well-concealed home like a lighthouse along a quiet shore. It was quiet aside from the tinkering of raindrops in mud puddles, down the gutters, and along the siding of the house, along with the whistling of faint wind through the trees with every gust. The front window, fogged-up with an outer layer of condensation, concealed the remnants of Christmas from a reluctant set of parents, who had been clinging to that moment of reminiscence from matching lights in the tree just feet from a fireplace. There was homey, inviting warmth even with the occasional battle cry from the infant that now lay nestled within the bassinet, her little tuft of gingery curls visible beneath the lilac cap, suckling at the air even in sleep.

Scully’s fingers still twitched along the edge of the rail, gently rocking the cradle as she leaned against the armrest to watch her, the lack of sleep evident under her eyes. “How long are you going to let me relax this time, little one?”

“Think I have enough time to start making us some dinner?” Mulder’s voice was a welcomed distraction, as were his lips to her temple as the back of her head found the soft material of a pillow. “No one wrote this in the parenting manual.”

“Mmmm…please tell me we’re having those stuffed shells covered with cheese tonight because I’m already drooling just thinking about them.” Scully smirked, nodding as she felt the pop of her vertebrae moving back into place, aligning carefully as she looked up at him. “Ran ragged, send a nanny. I don’t remember it being this exhausting with her brother and I don’t remember him unpredictably crying at random moments of the day.”

“So, what you’re saying is the diet isn’t coming back for a while?” Mulder massaged the back of her neck, admiring the beautiful baby in the bassinet as she stretched her little hands and feet as far as they would go before settling back down. “Well, I’d say that most people don’t pause eighteen years to have number two, either, Scully…and she’s been a unique little peach since she was big enough to do somersaults in the womb.”

“I’m enjoying the carbs and I’m getting plenty of vitamins from the side salads that go along with straying from the diet I had been observing,” Scully bit down on her lip and gazed at the sweet, cherubic cheeked babe in the rapt of slumber. “As long as it doesn’t inhibit Lily’s growth and progress, then we’re doing something right.”

Lily. The miracle that made so many others along the way seem so small. The second chance at something right. Scully glanced at the sleeping babe and felt the pang of longing to have spent more time with her firstborn to watch the intricacies of his infancy. So many milestones had been missed in such a short period of time and they only set off the catastrophe that followed—years of wondering if he was loved as much as she had hoped he was. Lily wasn’t simply another baby or a replacement for Jackson; she was the missing puzzle piece in a graying world full of darkened corners and dead ends. Scully knew that their sweet, little Lily had brought so much more than light into this world as her eyes diverted to the side-by-side pair of bronzed baby booties. Mulder saw her wipe an errant tear and leaned in to steal a kiss, tasting that salt that had been left behind before she could clear away memory.

“I’ll make some garlic bread and put on some water for that decaf tea that you’ve become a little obsessed with—the kind with the mint in it,” Mulder wasn’t used to this much emotional turbulence but he was handling it like a champ as he placed a sweet kiss on the apple of her cheek before straightening his spine. “Maybe we should watch a movie tonight?”

“Yeah, that might be nice if she manages to sleep through even thirty minutes of it,” Scully waited until he was halfway into the kitchen before reaching for the remote, flipping channels until a newscast caught her attention.

“…We brought you breaking news overnight of a multiple fatality shooting in Pittsylvania County, Virginia and have obtained more details about the shooter and his victims. We have learned that the identity of the shooter was Jason Owen Davis and it has been confirmed that he fired multiple shots within the home that he shared with his wife and twelve-year-old son. Authorities have informed us that Davis shot his wife and twelve-year-old son before killing himself. Two women were also hospitalized after sustaining injuries from gunshots they had received while driving past the home of Davis…The investigation is ongoing…”

The red, blue, and white flashing lights in the dead of night from the footage in front of a small home atop its foundation with a short drive tugged at Scully’s heartstrings. The sleepy, little town was only a few hours south but a shooting involving murder and suicide wasn't something that happened often. At least, it didn’t use to happen often. Scully swallowed hard as she listened to the newscaster recall the previous night’s events, a lump forming as she thought of a child’s life being extinguished before they could even blow the candles out on their thirteenth birthday cake. Her eyes darted to Lily as the tears nipped at her waterline, biting at every open nerve as the unthinkable played out in a single breath; losing another baby before they even had a chance to take their first steps.

The circumstances were different but the inflicted pain felt so real as she changed the channel and palmed her mouth to cover the sob, hoping to quell an onslaught as the flickering screen wracked at her subconscious.

What do I do if everything I am isn’t enough to keep you safe in this world?

Scully knew that she was playing with fire as she pulled the bassinet closer, just enough to caress the rounded, little cheeks that belonged to their miracle. Lily stirred and let out a brief whimper as she traced the line of her chin and coaxed the waiting tears from her unusually sensitive Mother’s eyes. Scully pulled her hand back and watched the delicate traces of baby feet underneath of loose swaddling as they kicked up and down before settling back against the linen coverlet, the sigh audible as she drifted deeper into sleep. Scully feverishly wiped her tears and leaned back, resting her back against the couch cushions as the ticker at the bottom of the screen on CNN announced another terrorist attack in the city of Paris followed by a rising death toll from a bombing in Pakistan from the week earlier. It was enough to make her stomach churn and the bile rise. The world had become an unfolding nightmare full of waiting, blooming shadows ready to enfold the light.

“Should I make the tea now while the oven does most of the work?” Mulder’s voice, like her beacon through a haze, struck a chord as he came around the corner and found her with shimmering streaks still fresh along first blush. “Scully, what happened?”

“What world are we raising Lily in, Mulder?” Scully muted the television, imploring him as the floodgates opened and the upheaval worked its way to the surface, her voice just barely above normalcy. “Death and destruction around every corner, chaos in countless countries including our own, and the constant threat of some whack job rigging themselves up all in the name of religion to take the lives of those who don’t fit their normative of acceptable. I don't remember looking at life for our son with this much sadness in it."

“I don’t know that the world has necessarily changed, Scully,” Mulder was keenly aware of the fluidity of her hormones and sentimentality as he took the remote from her and set it aside, knowing that she’d only begun to tap the surface of a vortex of upheaval. “We’re not out there like we used to be—with our guns readied to take aim and go running after monsters without a second thought for health or regard of our health.”

Scully's head tilted; the notion of his comment filled with questionable truths as she felt her own aches and pains giving her a not-so-gentle reminder of their existence without even doing a tally of his. Some of the injuries weren't exactly old, either, she knew, but the passing of time had lessened the frequency of a new mark or blemish. Admitting that Mulder was right held a little bit of astonishment and disinclination for Scully as she felt that eyebrow lift upon her like a parental judgment. He was a little pleased with himself as he heard the gentle sigh leave her lips despite the undeniable urge to fix her pain.

Yin and yang; their relationship personified as opposition met harmony, molding together in such a way that one was incomplete without the other.

“Why does it feel like decay, misery, and melancholy are waiting around every corner?” Scully was visibly uncomfortable as she pointed toward the television, nearly going hoarse as she felt her blood pressure spike, aiming her energy toward chaos as Mulder’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t turn on the TV without seeing something awful happening as close as two or three hours away. If it isn’t a stabbing, it’s a shooting…if it isn’t a shooting…it’s a bombing. Lily will never see anything but the constant chipping away of humanity and crumbling of sanity.”

“Lily will be surrounded by two parents that love her and a brother that, with some time, will protect her from anything and everything,” Mulder was studying the expanse of freckles on her face as she met his gaze, coaxing a soft, needed smile that slowly faded as he continued. “I know it seems like the word of the decade is grim but there's a lot more to the world that is worth exploring—from the smallest blade of grass to the tallest trees. Nature, the lifting up of communities in the wake of a disaster, and the little gestures in between like carrying a rainbow flag down a crowded street. I don't think I had a chance to take a look at what was underneath the surface until I felt like there wasn't any hope left."

“You make it sound so easy and idyllic, Mulder,” Scully stared at the floor, at the fibers of the area rug until they were blurring together in a sea of worn, little waves of blues and grays while the strings of her heart played a note she hadn’t felt since writing a letter addressed to her son. “What happens to Lily if we’re no longer here to raise her—to protect her? Who will be here to make sure she is safe?”

“Jesus, Scully,” Mulder swallowed hard at the mere implication of a piece of them being swathed in their love as she leaped through each milestone had him choking back the tears. “I know we’re getting up there in age but I really didn’t want to jump straight to the morbid talk before she even turns one.”

"I don't want to imagine a world where I don't get to see those little fingers and toes become more grown-up or those insanely hazel eyes develop depth when she's angry," Scully didn't want to wake Lily but the trepidation was quickly morphing into something more frenzied as she covered her mouth, muffling the sob. "I don't remember being this reactionary with Jackson and all I want to do is call my mom…but I can’t.”

Mulder wanted to be angry but the sadness he felt for Scully was undeniable as his knees went weak and his eyes fell on the shimmering tears from the corners of her eyes. Lashing out wouldn’t have done much good because the truth of it was that he missed his Mother-in-law nearly as much as Scully did. The hole that Maggie Scully had left in their lives was a shock to the system that neither of them were entirely prepared for and Mulder had spent so much time trying to repair the damage done over losing her. She was a source of great strength and levity for both of them during a time of unbearable darkness to a point that he wondered if she was the only one that knew, deep down, that they weren’t beyond repair. She always held out hope and proved to be that steadfast link that brought them back together as her spark slowly went dark. Sometimes, he wondered if that same glimmer of warmth hovered around Lily’s angelic face to admire what she always knew could come to pass.

He had hoped that she looked down on their girl and saw their love, personified, down to the tendrils of red curls that came from her mother and the flecks of green and chestnut that came from her father.

“I wouldn’t say that our support system has gotten smaller, Scully,” Mulder scooted alongside her, squeezing her fingers as her eyes stayed locked on the circular pattern on the floor. “It has simply changed over the years—and adjusted to the people we’ve become along the way. Your brother may not like me but he’s in our lives more now than he was years ago and because of that galvanized bond, we have your sister-in-law and your nephew. We still have a lot of people in our lives that were always there for us that are now here for her. I have to think it means something that we have that for Lily.”

Scully wanted to feel the words sink in and mean something but there was a struggle buried underneath as she rested her head against the back of the couch, exhaling slowly as she stared at the beam across the ceiling. Her heart thudded against her chest wall as that groundless dread bloomed into a waking nightmare that stayed trapped within her psyche. Scully’s eyes met Mulder’s and her fingers coiled around his as she let the tears fall, searing a trail down her cheeks as she let his warmth melt with hers, palm to palm. Having Mulder in her life all over again meant more than a second chance at love and a life with him…he had become the steadied ground beneath her feet while everything else seemed so shaky.

“I know, deep in my gut, that you’re right but my heart is just swimming with so many uncertain factors that could pop out to surprise us from the wings. I don’t know what I would do if I had to do this alone,” Scully sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and held it between her teeth as she grappled with the upheaval of affectation, wiping her tears with her free hand. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about what would happen to you if I weren’t here and you had to raise Lily alone.”

“Scully, there will always be a worry that one of us or both of us could be taken away from Lily before she’s old enough to be on her own,” Mulder pulled her fingers from her face and held both hands between his own, caressing the space below her wrists as he flashed a soft, caring smile. “However, let me be the one that postulates about death for a while. I’m good at it and my hormonal fluctuations aren’t going to be the ones to affect the overall quality of breast milk.”

“I know you’re thinking it, Mulder, because I’m thinking it,” Scully felt the tears drying on her skin, leaving behind a residue of salt that made her face feel tight and uncomfortable as she sighed. “I passed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale with flying colors and made Doctor Jacobi and Doctor Layton laugh when I asked if they’d read the results correctly. I was never this relentlessly emotional with Jackson and I don’t remember waking up in the middle of the night to cry when he wasn’t right there in my arms.”

"Scully, you didn't do that with him because you were focused on the mess that was the father of your child," Mulder leaned in and kissed the trails of tears, pressing his forehead to hers as he knelt against her shins, palms caressing her forearms. "You didn't have a chance, back then, to stop long enough to see the spiritual toll that Jackson might’ve taken on you because you were so focused on the safety of me and him. This time around I’m not letting you do it alone.”

“I am not good at feeling untenably over-sensitive at any moment of the day,” Scully exhaled slowly and covered his hand with her own, the look of her fingers small on top of his. “I guess it’s all worth it when I see the tiny toes and fingers that belong to the second little miracle that we get to call ours.”

“You just had a baby,” Mulder wanted to scoop her up and take her upstairs but the sleeping child would’ve done her best to shut it down before they could even pull an arm out of a sleeve. “To expect any mother to be perfect at every moment of the day is unreasonable. I can’t even tell you the number of times that I got told to watch Samantha when mine just needed a moment to go lock herself in the bathroom.”

“I just hope that I’m not going to be like this for the entirety of breastfeeding,” Scully made a face and furrowed her brows, exhaling slowly. “It would tempt me to switch to the bottle and I really don’t want to do that. The time I have with her like this is so precious.”

“You know what I see when I look at you, Scully?" Mulder slid backward and stood, stretching his arms toward the ceiling until his back popped that was followed up with a satisfied groan.

“Don’t…you…dare…wake her up,” Scully snapped her fingers at him, signaling to Lily as their typically loud infant stirred in her peripheral while she scooted forward to put another throw pillow behind the small of her back. “What do you see, Mulder?”

“I see the same woman that came into a basement level office so many years ago and managed to spin an already upside-down life even further on its heels," Mulder could smell dinner wafting through the air and it hanging at the cusp of burning as he went to check on everything. "You may have gotten older, have a different shade and length of hair, and think you’re getting haggard when you’re not…but all I see is that same person and I always will.”

“I’m suddenly remembering exactly how you managed to make a seemingly barren woman pregnant…twice,” Scully coaxed a laugh from him as he fiddled around in the kitchen as she went toward the tree, letting her fingers run along an ornament with glitter-covered doves on it. "How's it looking in there, Gordon Ramsay?"

“I think you were really just underestimating the power of the can you spare a prophylactic back in the day,” Mulder peeked his head out from behind the stove and wiggled his eyebrows at her as she turned to smile at him. “Estimating another ten minutes before this can be consumed.”

“You are absolutely ridiculous,” Scully rolled her eyes while adjusting a string of lights, the synthetic material of the tree grazing her palm as the sound of drops of rain against the side window tapped with changing of the wind. “We should dip into the brownies I made the other night after dinner and find a zombie movie to distract ourselves from thinking about the real-life horror outside.”

“Don’t act like you don’t love it,” Mulder was putting the kettle before reaching for the tin of tea, a pause in the air as he peeked his head back out from behind the stove, a look of confusion on his face. “Maybe not a zombie movie but something on the Hitchcock spectrum sounds good. Out of curiosity, though, Scully, do you have something you’d like to tell me or think you’d like to tell me?”

“Mulder, that's…not funny," Scully's jaw dropped as she checked on Lily, tugging the little blanket back around her to keep her cozy and warm before resuming the shocked expression in Mulder's direction. "We do not need a third and we don't need two of them under one. That would put me in my grave prematurely."

“Well, how am I supposed to know? You’re the one that suddenly wants chocolate and pasta loaded with cheese,” Mulder shrugged his shoulders and met her in the archway between the kitchen and the living room to pull her into an embrace. “You ate that through your entire second and third trimester.”

“I love you but you’re crazy,” Scully wrapped her arms around him, caressing his back as she looked up at him, grinning. “Lily and you are more than enough infant for me.”

“I love you, too, but you’ll appreciate the childlike persona when it comes to teaching Lily all about the important things in life,” Mulder kissed the space above her nose, between her brows, and squeezed her tightly while he listened to the bubbling of water inside of the kettle. “I’ll always keep you guessing.”

“I don’t know if fart jokes and distance spitting sunflower hulls across the yard are considered the important things, Mulder,” Scully scrunched her nose and jabbed him in the ribs as he started to back away to check the oven again.

The knock at the door put a stop to the discussion and nearly caused an emergency as Mulder narrowly missed pressing a hand to a hot surface. He had forgotten the oven mitts as his attention swayed in the direction of the front door, toward the soft tapping, but thankfully, Scully’s snapping fingers pulled him right back to reality. She was good at keeping him from taking a clumsy tumble into another potential disaster even if admitting it was not his forte. He had mentioned it, long ago, that she kept him honest and it part of that veracity resided in an ability to pull him from the edge of catastrophe. Neither of them had been expecting to stop by today but the brewing tension was familiar as Scully let her eyes focus on the frosted glass in the door and the tall, broad-shouldered shadow that stood on the other side.

Scully had a longing in her eyes and Mulder had anticipation deep in his soul as he nodded, willing her to unlock the door.

Scully pulled the door open, holding the edge against her cheek as she found him standing on the other side of the screen, hood pulled up, drenched to the skin with a couple of bags in hand. "I know…I should've called to let you know I was nearby.”

Scully shook her head and felt the surge of tears breaking through as she saw the wisp of a smile on his lips for the first time since Lily was four days old, the undeniable yearning to express her love bleeding through. “No, you never have to give us warning…”

“I could hear you, uh, arguing, from down the road so I waited to walk up,” Jackson pulled the screen back and crossed the threshold, the drips hitting the floor like little pieces of his soul as he felt the weight of the world drop off his shoulders. “It sounded important.”

“We weren’t arguing,” Scully took the bags from him and set them aside, the joy colliding with an onslaught of tears as she wiped her cheeks. “It was just a discussion fueled by hormones and everything is fine.”

“Okay, maybe I should’ve said that it felt important," Jackson pushed his hood off and pulled the zipper-free, pressing his lips together and elevating his brows in such a way that he was a spitting image of his father, leaving no question about the actuality of his genetics. “I don’t know if an apology is what I should be doing but I know that communication hasn't really been a thing for me lately. I was returning your texts for a while and just had to get out of my head for a while. I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and had this feeling that including you will be too overwhelming with Lily.”

Jackson’s wheels were turning; the signals weighing as he was moving his eyes between them, seeking the justification. He was seeking out answers and didn’t stop long enough to fathom that he’d been running from them for far too long. It weighed on him in an inevitable way as the radiating heat of the fire found him and restored a semblance of warmth in weary, well-traveled feet. It felt like home and there hadn’t been a place that inched close to that inclination for a long time. It was a complicated perception, though, as the calm, inviting blanket wasn’t the walls that kept out the elements but their faces, their hands, their voices…pieces of them that had been so far away for far too long.

They weren’t the Van De Kamp’s but they meant something else—something different that he knew, in the severed part of his soul, that he needed.

“You always know how to reach us when you’re ready,” Mulder had pulled their leftovers from the oven and set them out on the counter before coming out of the kitchen to greet him. “Relying on either of us won’t be putting any extra strain on life, either. We’ve been through a lot…you’ve been through a lot. We’ve lost a lot of time, Jackson.”

“The last thing either of us want from you is an apology or to feel as though you need to hand one down to us,” Scully was hanging by a thread, her tears glimmering along the curves of her cheeks as she quietly wiped them, her voice small, distant. “You’ve been through so much and there was no need to hold expectations beyond being able to reach out to you, which we valued, more than you can ever know.”

“I kind of liked the jingling in my pocket, reminding me every day that someone cared about where I was and what I was doing. Hadn’t anyone do that in a long time," Jackson had matured in a year despite that inherent, deeply rooted consternation that was still hovering over forging a relationship with his biological parents as he let Mulder take his wet, zippered hoodie to hang up. “Putting all of my woes on both of you felt really selfish at the time and it wasn’t until I was drinking disgusting coffee in a diner on Florida Avenue yesterday morning that I realized that I was being dumb. I knew I should just come here.”

“Ah, lured into The Florida Avenue Grill, huh?” Mulder didn’t want to push the boundaries but he squeezed his son’s shoulder anyway and pushed the door shut as the draft moved through the room. “The heartburn that place inflicted on me was legendary.”

“Yeah, well, the pancakes were, at least, pretty decent and smothered in peanut butter,” Jackson’s wit was much like Mulder’s but the softer aspect of his nature was more than a little evident as he glanced at Scully as she chewed the inside of her cheek. “Mom, you know you can just hug me instead of looking at me longingly like I’m only a figment of your imagination, right?”

Hearing him call her mom had only happened twice since he’d come back into their lives and it was still sinking into her consciousness, leaving an irreversible mark on her heart. The sensation was almost as intense as the agony she felt the day she placed that final kiss on his temple and sent him to be with a family that could protect him better than she could. His name wasn’t the issue, anymore, but reconciling whether or not he would become the yo-yo in their life was as she felt the sting of tears along the corners of her mouth. They’d lost so much time and never gotten to see him become the man standing before them; looking every bit the collective of their genetics as the pale tones stood out against his long lashes and dark hair. He really was theirs. Overjoyed and yet, doubt was still residing in the darkest parts of her mind as she embraced her grown-up son and tipped over the remainder of her bottled sensitivities.

“I never imagined that there’d be a day when I’d be able to put my arms around you but there was finally a day I thought there could be a chance…” Scully’s last efforts to be composed fell by the wayside as she sniffled and wept while she kept her arms around Jackson, the enormity of him being there coursing through her like an administered drug in her veins. "And I couldn’t let you go through life not knowing that the people you came from loved you…that we didn’t just throw you away.”

“You’re going to make me cry and I’ve done a lot of that when no one was looking,” Jackson had his chin on the top of her head while Mulder was doing his best to keep composed as his eyes glassed over. “I wouldn’t be here if I believed that either of you threw me away.”

Scully was reluctant to pull away but the whistle of the kettle had her moving to check on Lily after giving Jackson the lightest grip to his hand. “Sure, when her brother shows up, she’ll sleep through anything but when the floorboards upstairs creak in the wrong way…it’s the end of the world.”

Mulder took the kettle off of the flame, a smile on his lips as he gathered teacups from the cupboard, his peripheral catching Jackson as he walked beyond the couch to peek at a sleeping Lily. "Speaking of Lily…we should eat before she senses that you're attempting to put food into your mouth and decides that she wants to nurse, Scully. It's been about two hours since she was fed, right?"

“Give or take by five minutes,” Scully watched Jackson standing next to the softly lined cradle, the gentle swing of it in motion as his eyes moved back and forth, willing it to move. “Jackson, there’s more than enough for you and I’ve already been teased that it’s craving food so you know it’s going to be really good.”

“Yeah, I’d like that,” Jackson nodded as Scully put another log on the fire, stoking the flames in the background as he ran a couple of fingers through damp hair. “Might help finally get rid of that epic heartburn?”

“Wait, you still have the heartburn, kid?” Mulder met him in the doorway and put an arm around him, directing him toward the kitchen table where he had already put an extra plate out, ready to serve. "What you need is my special hot cocoa…that’ll get rid of the heartburn and any other aches you might have.”

“Mulder, you are not giving our not over-twenty-one-year-old son the modified Frohike special," Scully gave him a dirty look and aimed the business end of a spoon at him as she retrieved another teacup from the shelves. “Just one of those is more than enough to render him incapable of navigating the house before the sun has set.”

“You are a party pooper, Scully,” Mulder already had the bottle of bourbon in his hand and a grin plastered on his face as he turned toward Scully. “I would never make it the way Frohike made them—that’s a rookie mistake that you only give to an enemy.”

"I know I shouldn't say this and you can't be mad mom, but I'm intrigued," Jackson finally perked up and chuckled, making Scully roll her eyes as she made eye contact with her son. "I mean, I've had drinks before—when I wasn't supposed to.”

Scully met the waiting gaze of Mulder as she shook her head, scoffing at the situation as the white flag waved. “He certainly is your son.”

“The secret to the hot cocoa is just enough bourbon to smell it but not enough to taste it,” Mulder went on the drinking lesson while Scully was in the background getting plates filled with portions of their dinner. “If it’s too strong then there’s no point to the drink at all…you might as well be drinking bourbon on the rocks.”

“Was there ever a point to begin with, though?” Scully had that witty, Cheshire cat expression as she moved the last of the hot plates to the table and sank into her seat with a hot cup of tea steeping in front of her.

"Jackson, ignore the naysaying," Mulder stirred the steaming milk at the stovetop, his back to her as Jackson joined her at the table. "This is going to be so good and she's just going to miss out because…breast milk."

“I don’t think this is what I envisioned when I pictured spending time with my biological parents,” Jackson stifled a chuckle as he watched Mulder pour the milk into a mug, stirring the contents vigorously until it was to his liking. “Not that I’m complaining or anything.”

“Did they encourage you to be curious and fun-loving, Jackson?” Scully didn’t want to bring the energy back down but she couldn’t help but reference his adoptive parents as she filled his water glass, the butterflies creeping into her throat.

Jackson nodded as he put his napkin across his lap, not a trace of sadness on his face as he glanced at the reflection on the bend in the fork, contemplating every word. “They did their best with consideration to the pain in the ass that they called son. I wasn’t the easiest and it only got worse as I got older—they weren’t exactly equipped for a kid like me. I don’t think many people could have handled someone like me.”

“Something tells me that they never looked at you as anything less than what you are,” Mulder carried the mug of cocoa to the table, setting it next to Jackson’s plate while he made a declarative in front of the mother of his children and his son. “And that would be a miracle that they couldn’t have gotten any other way. That’s how I see things.”

Scully mouthed I love you from across their little, evening setup, the steam rising from hot pans and plates as Mulder settled into the third chair and returned an un-uttered I know much to her chagrin. Mulder had been watching too much Star Wars but the meaning was received and struck her heart in just the right way as she took a sip of her tea, hiding her smile behind the cup. It shouldn’t have made her feel like a million dollars but it did as the blush peeked out along her cheeks all while Jackson pretended not to notice his parental units and their flirting. Something was endearing about all of it; even if it made the already quiet dinner that much more awkward as Jackson speared the first bite of pasta, savoring the flavor.

Just as quickly as the first bites began to be consumed, the hush in the unremarkable house was ended with the unpleasant wailing by his infant sister.

“She let me get two bites in,” Scully was a little frustrated but the glimmer in her eyes told an entirely different story as she started to rise from the table. “Better see if I can get her to nurse for a bit.”

“Mom, you just sit there and eat a little,” Jackson was on his feet in only moments, the look on his face determined as he put his napkin next to his plate while giving her a gentle nudge of the shoulder. “Let me see if it’s just gas?”

“Jackson, I can feed her so you can eat while it’s hot,” Scully’s eyes widened as moved toward the living room, a little hint of a knowing smile on his face as he turned around.

“Let me try?” Jackson shrugged while Lily’s cries changed pitch in the background, growing in volume to the point that he winced at the shrill sound she made. “I have a feeling…It’s just gas. If it’s not, you’ll know pretty fast.”

“It couldn’t hurt and it isn’t like they’re far away,” Mulder knew the first thought from Scully was about Jackson being unfamiliar with his sister but he wanted them to bond as he put a hand over hers. “If she keeps at the screaming, she’s hungry.”

“Okay,” Scully’s stomach growled as she gave a nod toward Jackson, watching him move toward the other side of the couch where the bassinet was situated. “…Don’t forget to support her head while you’re holding her, Jackson.”

"I know, I've held babies before," Jackson spoke up over the top of Lily's stuttered cries as he handled her with care, gathering her into his arms as her tear-filled eyes looked up at him while her little pout trembled and her hands swung. “Oh, my God, Lilybean, you stink. Mom, where're the diapers?"

“There’s a diaper bag next to the couch on the floor,” Scully was chuckling at Jackson already giving Lily a nickname as she looked at him holding her against his chest in the doorway. “There should be an opened container of wipes in there as well…and powder, if she needs it.”

Jackson was undeniably unskilled but attentive as he addressed the soiled diaper after getting her out of the coordinating bottoms and unhooked the onesie while his sister continued her series of cries. "Let's address the biohazard going on in here…All you eat is breast milk, Lilybean...guh."

Jackson was mainly exaggerating the reaction to the odor wafting around Lily as he swapped out the dirty diaper for a clean one after making sure she had been properly wiped. Lily hadn’t quite developed the motor functions for true laughter but she was fully captivated by his facial features as he scrunched his nose and puffed out his cheeks while discarding the concealed, poop-filled diaper into a plastic bag. It was then that his tongue extended and the sound of cartoon-like horror popped free from his throat, coaxing the cutest, sweet grin from that beautiful face as she kicked her little feet on the couch cushions. If Jackson hadn’t known what love looked like before, he certainly knew what it looked like as he fastened her clothes and tickled her feet before pulling her back into a cradled grasp.

It swelled their parents’ hearts as they stole a peek from the kitchen.

“Fresh diaper and a sneaky toot after you got powder on your butt, you’re right as rain,” Jackson swayed as he paced the floor with Lily in his arms, taking her past the tree while her eyes studied his face. “Big brother has to be right about a little bit of stuff…and we know a stinker when we see one.”

Scully was nibbling at her slice of garlic bread but her focus was on watching a sight she had imagined a thousand times as Jackson began a one-sided conversation with his two-month-old sister. Scully's anxiety-fueled rant from earlier started to seem moot as Lily's tiny fingers coiled around Jackson’s while he enthralled her with a rambling story about teaching her how to ride a bike one day. Her soft cooing was just enough sound to carry through the room, the tone and inflection intimating a babble, mouth mimicking the same movements that it would if she were speaking. Jackson nodded and let out a laugh, the intent of understanding the baby sounds more than apparent as he kept all of his attention on her.

“Is that so?” Jackson adjusted his grip on her and held her a little closer, resting his palm across her belly to latch on to as she played with his fingers. “I’ll tell you a secret, though, because you’re my baby sister and I know you won’t tell anyone. We’re not just special because of how we came into this world. We are special because we’re always going to have each other, through thick and thin, bad and good times.”

“How did we get so lucky?” Mulder could see Scully crying again as he chewed a bite of his pasta, the tenderness of the moment finally setting in as he squeezed her knee.

“Deep down I always knew he’d be good with her and love every little part of her but this was unexpected, in the best of ways,” Scully wiped the tears and folded her fingers around Mulder’s hand, gripping the curve between his index and his thumb as he smiled in her direction. “It wasn’t luck. It was destined.”

Jackson sank into the easy chair and rested Lily against his shoulder to rub her back as she gripped the edge of his shirt. “Even if I’m far away, I’ll always be able to get here whenever you need me. No matter how big or small the crisis may be…no distance will be too far if you ask your brother to just come home.”

Home.

It rolled off of Jackson’s tongue and struck a chord for Mulder and Scully as the subject of their discussion before his arrival seemed to be on his mind as much as it had been on theirs. Jackson placed a light kiss on his sister's forehead while he hummed an indistinct tune and rocked her while the tips of his fingers caressed the expanse of her back until the cooing turned into a long, continuous murmur. Scully recalled doing that very same thing with Jackson when he was the same size and it had the same effect on him on several occasions. It usually put him to sleep and it was doing the same thing for Lily as her eyelids did battle with gravity while a puddle of drool formed on his shirt where her chin lay.

“One thing I want you to remember as you drift back to sleep is that a house is not a home, Lilybean,” Jackson sounded like his Grandmother as his index drifted over a pink, soft cheek until it trailed into the stream of drool. “Home is where you laugh, cry, talk, and argue with the people that you love and love you back. This is home.”

@monikafilefan @xfilesfanficexchange @frangipanidownunder @peacenik0 @piecesofscully @starbuck1013 @suitablyaggrieved @danceswithcybermen (for you Teresa!!)

#fanfic #exchange #angst #mulder and scully #msr fanfic #jackson van de kamp #baby Lily #happy ending #mild political commentary #humor

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itwasalwaysjustred · 4 years

Text

prompt #010 - avail

hints of Azem/Hades if you squint; Hades laments the existence this fractured Azem; 1.4k

content warnings: MAJOR 5.3 SPOILERS DO NOT PASS GO IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE CURRENT PATCH

Hades will admit he had his suspicions, ever since Elidibus spoke of Hydaelyn’s champion, this so-called “Warrior of Light.” It wasn’t just that he meddled; it was that he showed up, companions in tow, and succeeded in his meddling, doing things no mere mortal should have feasibly been able to accomplish. Whatever he involved himself in, no matter the hardships, he saw it through to the end, triumphing over the multitude of foes sent his way to the point of even getting the last laugh at Lahabrea. In all of this, Hades couldn’t help but be reminded of an old friend

Yet despite the part of him that whispered of its possibility, nothing could prepare Hades for seeing the Warrior of Light in person. He knows the colour of the soul the moment he lays eyes on it, burning deep in his core like a beacon even corrupted as it was by the Lightwarden’s aether. Hades is unprepared for the torrent of emotions that rise up within him like a monsoon, momentarily stealing his breath as he tries furiously to push them all away. Anger, first, and that is comforting at least. The fire of Azem’s soul is so, so small, even partially rejoined as it is. He is nothing but a pathetic fragment of a once resplendent being and Hades seethes just looking at him, disgusted by his mere existence.

He wants to smother it, this pathetic excuse for a flame. It shouldn’t exist like this, not when it had once been so beautiful. Let him return to the Lifestream, let Hydaelyn pluck him from it once more after those loyal to Zodiark have engineered a few more calamities and his soul might be closer to what it once was. Allowing Azem to exist like this, to play shepherd to the people of these stars when he doesn’t even know who he is feels like a crime. It makes Hades’ lips curl in disgust and his hands itch for violence.

(He doesn’t want to destroy this tiny flame, not really. In truth, Hades wants to cradle it between his palms and hold it close to his chest, to feel even a fraction of the warmth it once gave off. Azem’s embrace used to feel like holding the sun itself. Hades wishes he hadn’t taken it for granted. He wishes, when he looks upon all that remains of his friend’s beautiful soul, it did not make a thousand, thousand year’s worth of loneliness dig painful fingers into his chest and steal away his breath.)

Hades had never remade Azem in his phantom Amaurot, after all; he told himself that it was because his friend had abandoned them when they needed him most, that Azem had no place walking the magnificent streets of their once-beautiful city, even as a ghost. He told himself it was definitely not because he couldn’t bear the thought of trapping a pale shade of his friend there, knowing his memories alone would barely do Azem justice. It was bad enough he had done that to Hythlodaeus.

And yet here he was now, trailing after a pale shade of his friend now, watching him struggle against the First’s inevitable end. He tells himself spending time with him will free him of his fetters, that seeing him in action will prove to the weak parts of himself that the Warrior of Light is not his friend. Then, when the time comes to put him in his place, Hades will not hesitate because of something as foolish as sentiment. It works, to a certain extent. The more time he spends in the Warrior’s company, the more he catalogues their differences and tallies the ways in which he cannot begin to compare to the Azem of eld. It’s a refreshing exercise, and one that Hades finds a kind of perverse pleasure in.

(Not good enough, not smart enough, not fast enough, not magically inclined, not—)

But every so often, he does something so achingly familiar it makes Hades’ breath catch and he finds he cannot look away. The way he laughs when something catches him off guard, unabashed and free. The way he shakes himself after a rainstorm, the way he tips his head back and closes his eyes to enjoy the breeze, the way he tosses his shoes aside and rolls up his pant legs to traipse through the mud. The way sometimes, perhaps when his Echo is the strongest, he tilts his head and watches Hades out of the corner of his eye, a tiny furrow between his brow as though he’s worried. Hades doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry.

They eat at him, these uncanny similarities, gnawing upon his own immortal soul until he is certain he’s half-mad with it all. Perhaps he should snuff out this flame. Perhaps Elidibus will let him go back to sleep so he does not have to endure the weight of his feelings.

Perhaps then, he can have peace again.

He comes close one evening, when all the Scions are asleep and he can move freely among them. The Warrior is as unprotected as he’ll ever get, resting in his private quarters that seem far too large for a man of his stature. Hades is aware, of course, that the Exarch could be watching, but he will never be able to make it in time to save his beloved Warrior. If there’s anyone among them that can even dream of standing up to Hades at his full strength it is the creature below him, sprawled in a tangle of sheets and lost to his dreams.

As Hades leans over the bed, fingers curling around the Warrior’s throat, a pair of mis-matched eyes blink open, and a mouth curls into a familiar, cheeky smile.

“At least let me give you my safeword if we’re going to get kinky.”

The quip startles a laugh out of Hades, even as he shakes his head, already easing his face into a familiar look of condescension.

“My my, you are full of surprises, hero. What would your little friends think?”

It’s a weak deflection and he knows it. Judging by the way the Warrior lifts an eyebrow at him, he knows it as well. There really isn’t a smooth way to get out of this — “oh, sorry, was going to strangle you in your sleep but I think I’ll take a rain check” doesn’t really have a nice ring to it — but before Hades can retreat, he feels fingers gently encircling his wrists. He makes the mistake, then, of meeting the Warrior’s eyes, expecting to find— honestly? Anger. Fear. Disgust. Anything, except the soft, searching look, like something on Hades’ face will give him that last missing piece that will help everything make sense.

Hades swallows around the sudden lump in his throat because he knows that look, intimately, and even on another face it’s somehow still the same. He remembers with unexpected clarity the feel of Azem’s hands around his, gentle, coaxing, as he drew Hades towards him and gently bunted his forehead against his, Azem’s normally bright, expressive chimes made soft with concern.

Hades, my friend, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.

There’s a brush of something against his mind, reaching out, and Hades recoils instantly, pulling himself away from the Warrior and the questing touch of his immature Echo. Azem would not have been cast aside so easily, but the Warrior is but an infinitesimal piece of his sundered soul. He has neither Azem’s aetherical power nor the power to sway Hades like he once did. It is bad enough that he has managed to do this much, to draw Hades to him like a moth to a false flame, to make him remember the warmth of his friend’s touch and then to be unable to provide it.

He hates this, hates this doppelganger housing his friend’s shadow, and still—

The Warrior opens his mouth, no doubt to ask him something important, but simply being in his presence is making Hades feel raw, like an exposed nerve. It is time for him to leave — the sooner the better, really — and he has no compunctions about simply interrupting the Warrior to make it happen.

“Another time. I’ve an appointment I would hate to miss.”

Then he turns and waves a dismissive hand at the Warrior, vanishing into darkness the same way he arrived. There would, of course, not be another time. The next time he appeared before the Warrior, Hades will have mastered himself.

#ffxivwrite2020 #shadowbringers spoilers

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avintagekiss24 · 5 years

Text

Piper’s Creek [2/10]

Pairing: Sam Wilson x Bucky Barnes x Steve Rogers

Word Count: 2293

Warnings: language

Rating: M - language, mentions of masturbation

Link: AO3

Summary: Sam Wilson is a simple man. He likes to do simple things, like going fishing on a warm summer day. Little does Sam know, this fishing trip will not only lead him to his soulmate, but into a world of ancient folklore.

Square Filled: K5 - Scars for @buckybarnesbingo

A/N: Thank you guys for the comments! I’m glad you’re enjoying it so far! We get a little more interaction between Sam and Bucky in this chapter :)

If anyone does not want to be tagged anymore, just let me know! I know it’ll get annoying being tagged everyday because I went overboard and have to have this all posted by the 30th, lol. You won’t hurt my feelings, promise!

Again, the chapter title image and the portraits are by the lovely @waltermittie !! They are so prettttttyyyyyy!

Sam pushes through the trees, his eyes wide, his lips slightly parted. The sound of rushing water from the creek is in the distance, pulling Sam closer and closer toward it. It’s been weeks since he was last here, since he last saw what he saw. He tried to forget about it, to push it deep into his subconscious but every minute that passed only made him more and more curious. He couldn’t get that man out of his head.

Night after night, day after day, he replayed the scene over and over and over again. He had etched the small red star tattoo into his mind, those piercing blue eyes somehow always finding him in his dreams. He was too afraid to focus on the details, but in the darkness, every subtle memory became sharp and clear.

He’d lay awake at night, staring up at the slowly spinning fan as he remembered the water dripping from the man’s hickory colored hair. The small droplets of water slipping down his chiseled chest and to his carved abs. The muscles of his back flexing as he splashed water on himself. His ass as he ascended from the water and to the bank. Sam’s thoughts got the best of him most nights. His hand would inch down his stomach, through the rough patch of hair and wrap around his rigid erection as his eyes fluttered shut.

He squeezed his thick cock before slowly dragging his hand up and down his shaft at the thought of the wolf-man's damp, tanned skin. His stomach would tighten as he pushed his hips into his curled hand as he thought of the perfect pink lips of the stranger. Wild fantasies of that mouth and those lips wrapped around Sam’s cock would send him right over the edge. He’d cum - hard - spurting into his hand and against his cotton sheets as his memories fade away.

He was embarrassed at first, told himself he was being ridiculous, but the first chance he got - the very next day, in fact - he was stroking his cock to the naked man in the creek. He came within minutes. Every day that passed, the creek called to him. He had to see him again. He’d resisted the urge for as long as he could, but alas, here he was again, not even sure what he’d do or say if he was faced by the wolf-man again.

Sam moves through the trees and takes a breath as he comes to the bank of the rushing creek. He turns his head slowly to the left and to the right, squinting his eyes as he scans his surroundings. Good going genius, what are you supposed to do now? He checks his phone for the time, maybe the man is a creature of habit. Sam sits in the mud and pulls his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them as his heart thumps against his rib cage.

Several minutes pass before the familiar sound of crunching leaves and snapping twigs drifts toward him. Sam sits up straighter, his lips parting as he drags in deep breaths, his eyes zeroing in on the brush just across the creek. The leaves begin to shake and move, splitting as something moves through it. A howl sounds seconds later and Sam’s heart leaps into his chest. It’s him.

A grey and white wolf emerges from behind the overgrown shrubs and trees, its head low as it pads forward. Sam’s eyes widen as he swallows the lump in his throat as he watches the beast dip his nose to the ground to sniff the wet grass and mud. It shakes it head and huffs loudly before it takes a step toward the water, finally lifting it’s head.

Sam stands slowly as he locks his vision with the haunting blue irises of the beast. It lowers its head and sounds a low growl, baring its teeth as Sam holds up his hands, “It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you.”

The animal’s growl intensifies, a deep bark erupting from its chest as it takes a defensive stance. Sam lets out shaky breathes, his heart racing as he keeps his hands up where it can see them. All he can imagine is the thing leaping across the creek and biting his head clean off in one fell swoop. Way to go, asshole.

“I’m Sam,” he says loudly, over the rushing water, “I-I was here a few weeks ago. I s-s-s-saw you, um, turn, in the water. I was uh,” He points nervously to his right, “I was fishing here. Remember? Can you- do you remember?”

The wolf picks up its head a little, his growl dissipating to almost nothing as Sam stammers through his introduction. It sniffs the air, lifting his snout into the air before linking eyes with the terrified man again. Sam takes a small step back as the wolf steps into the water, keeping its blue eyes on him as it crosses.

“Oh, fuck,” Sam whispers to himself, swallowing hard again, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

It emerges from the water seconds later, inches from Sam. It moves cautiously, sniffing the ground while keeping its eyes linked with Sam’s as it approaches. It sniffs Sam’s feet, and then up his leg slightly before taking a step back. Sam blinks, and is suddenly face to face with the long haired brunette. The man cocks his head to the side as he glances up and down Sam’s lean frame.

He sends his eyes back up to Sam’s, his lips in a hard line as his eyes move back and forth between Sam’s, “Why are you here, Sam?”

His voice is low and absent of any infliction, “I uh, I don’t really know.” Sam admits, his eyes dropping from the hard stare of the stranger, “I just can’t stop thinking about you,” he whispers.

The man quirks his lips a little, his eyebrows lifting, “I guess that’s fair. Not everyday you run across a werewolf.”

“A were- a werewolf?” Sam stutters as he blinks his eyes furiously, “You’re a werewolf?”

He nods slowly, never taking his eyes off of Sam, “I am.”

Sam nods quickly as his heartbeat pounds in his ears, “Of course.”

Silence passes between them for several minutes as each one sizes up the other. Sam’s eyes dip down the man’s impeccable body laced with rippling muscles. Up close, Sam has a better view of the various scars embedded on the man’s skin. Some large, some small, some new, some old. They tell tales of his embattled existence and his dominance out here in the wild.

There’s a long, deep slash across his lower abdomen, years old, if not decades. It’s jagged, the skin tight and raised, darker than the rest of his skin. Sam’s fingers begin to itch with the want to reach out and rub his fingertips against it. His eyes follow it until it disappears into the dark patch of hair on his lower half. Sam bites his lip as he eyes the man’s length. His mouth starts to water unconsciously, his mind starting to run wild with his fantasies again.

“See something you like, Sam?”

Sam snaps out of his daze and his mouth drops open in embarrassment. A smile tugs at the man's lips as he drags his eyes down Sam’s body once more. Sam’s dick begins to twitch against his jeans as he breathes in the natural scent of him. The man before him is both overtly and subtly sexy. His sexual prowess oozes from him, mixing with his earthy scent to make the perfect concoction of sexual attraction. Sam is putty, all he has to do is say the word.

He turns away from Sam and moves into the water, leaving Sam to ogle his toned ass as he moves. He sinks into the water, disappearing beneath it before popping back up seconds later. Water slips and slides down his pecs and shoulders, highlighting his muscles in new and provocative ways.

He glances over his shoulder toward Sam, “You coming in?”

Sam wastes zero time. As soon as the words fall from the man’s lips, Sam is kicking out of his sneakers. He pulls his shirt over his head and fumbles with his jeans, stepping out of them quickly before he moves into the water. The gold necklace around his neck glints in the sunlight as he pushes through the rough water toward the brunette man. He steps right up to him with no hesitation, standing mere inches from the smirking man.

“I’m Bucky.”

Sam’s breath hitches in his throat. His eyes widen as the name rolls off of the man's tongue, “Bucky?” Is this him?

“Mmhmm,” Bucky nods, “Bucky Barnes.”

Sam nods slowly, “Hi Bucky,” he whispers as his mind races.

Bucky pushes a breath through his nostrils as his smile widens, “Hi Sam.”

Bucky reaches for Sam’s hand, bringing it out of the water and flattening his palm to his, before intertwining their fingers, “I think we both know why you’re out here,” he whispers.

Sam swallows as he as his eyes wander over Bucky. He watches as Bucky turns his hand over in his and rubs his thumb over the imprinted name. It’s been there for years. Sam still remembers it like it was yesterday. Just as the clock struck 12:01am on his eighteenth birthday, the name Bucky appeared on his skin.

Bucky’s eyes are soft as he brings them back up to meet Sam’s. He smiles slowly, bringing his hand to Sam’s cheek. He rubs his smooth skin with his thumb, tilting his head as his eyes move around Sam’s face, “You’re beautiful,” he whispers.

“So are you,” Sam responds, his voice airy and shaky.

Bucky’s smile widens into a toothy grin and Sam loses his breath almost completely at the sheer beauty of it. This is it. This is him. Bucky lifts his other hand to Sam’s face and pulls him closer, so close that Sam can feel Bucky’s stubble on his cheek. Sam drops his head as tears start to well in his eyes. Bucky drops his warm lips to Sam’s forehead, closing his eyes as he places a kiss on his skin. He drops another right between his eyes, another on the bridge of his nose, and yet another on the corner of Sam’s mouth.

Sam wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist as he rests his chin on his shoulder. Bucky hums happily as he rests his hand on Sam’s head, rubbing softly and gently. Sam’s fingers push along the large scar across Bucky’s side and stomach, the skin around it raised but smooth from the years of healing. He loves the scar already. It makes Bucky absolutely perfect.

Sam lifts his head, leaning back to connect his eyes with Bucky’s once more. His fingers continue to brush over the old scar as he etches the feeling of it into his brain. He drops his eyes back to Bucky’s exposed chest, lifting his finger to trace a smaller, lighter scar at his collarbone. Bucky continues to smile softly as Sam’s hands explore his body, tracing his scars, old and new.

This is it. This is what he’s waited for his whole life. His heart thumbs against his chest and in his ears. His mind races as lust pulses through his body. Bucky’s scent, his body, his natural sexual presence, his allure; it all works together, intoxicating Sam to the point where he’s physically dizzy.

“What happened here?” Sam asks quietly as he presses his palm to the large, jagged scar. His favorite scar.

Bucky chuckles a little, “Hunting knife.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. I almost became somebody’s taxidermy project.”

Sam snaps his eyes back to Bucky’s. His breath becomes choppy and fast as his chest fills with anxiety. Flashes of Bucky changing in front of him flood his brain. Sam shifts his gaze to the water as fear starts to wash over him. He watched him change. From wolf to man, he watched this person change.

This can’t be right. This isn’t some horror movie. This is Sam’s life. For years, he had waited for this. Sixteen years of stumbling through life, working his way through every Bucky he came across in the state of Washington. Sixteen years of broken hearts, countless tears, and longing. Sixteen, long, hard years, and here he is, standing in a creek with this… thing. This can’t be right.

Sam snatches his hand back as fear starts to wash over him. He takes a step back, his eyes wide, his body shaky. He shakes his head slowly, “No, this isn’t-”

“Sam.” Bucky says calmly, reaching out for him, “Sam, it’s okay. Just breathe.”

“No. I’m sorry, this isn’t- this isn’t right. I can’t, this-”

“Sam. It’s okay, it’s okay.” Bucky pleads, “Come here, baby.”

Sam takes another step back, slipping on the slippery rocks and falling into the water. He scrambles to his feet as Bucky tries to help and rushes toward the bank. He grabs his clothes and shoes from the grass and takes off back toward his car, Bucky’s voice becoming distant as he calls out. Tears stream down his face as he runs, ducking and dodging tree limbs as he pushes his way through the brush.

Bucky stares down in the water, chewing on his bottom lip as he hears a rustling behind him. He doesn’t move, immediately recognizing the smell of the approaching figure as it wafts toward him.

“Babe? You okay? I heard screaming.”

Bucky nods slowly, glancing over his shoulder at the man emerging from the trees, “I found him, Steve.” He turns over his wrist, studying the two names imprinted on his skin, “I found my Sam.”

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aj-artjunkyard · 5 years

Text

Trials Of Apollo Oneshot Series CHAPTER FIVE

This is a post-ToA chapter! Takes place after Apollo regains his immortality.

I sighed. Strolling aimlessly through the halls of my palace on Olympus, I wondered if it had always been this unappealing. The gold trimmings seemed fake. The extravagant furniture felt uncomfortable. Even my bed was too big. Every shiny object played murder on my eyes, and every smooth surface was too warm to be refreshing. It just wasn’t homey. Not like the Waystation or Aeithales or either demigod camps. It felt more like a sized-up garage to keep a fancy car in.

I found myself yearning to be outdoors - no uncommon craving. Like my twin, most of my domains are set in the great outside world. I threw open the golden double doors of the balcony, closed my eyes and breathed in the fresh Olympian air. There was still something missing. Furrowing my eyebrows in frustration, I opened my eyes and glanced around for anything that might sate my dissatisfaction, when my sight landed on a certain figure making her way through the buzzing streets of Olympus and towards the entrance of my palace. I felt a natural smile creep onto my face. I would have to look for the missing thing later. Right now, I needed to be with my mother.

…

We had been in this comforting embrace for almost ten minutes now. I combed my fingers through Leto’s caramel hair while she sobbed into my shoulder, her frame shaking considerably. I felt the wet tears soaking through my jacket and dampening the shirt beneath. I pressed my lips against her forehead, hoping to make her content enough to talk to me. Eventually, she pulled away and reached up, running her fingers through my hair, almost to reassure herself that I was actually there. She looked deep into my eyes, while tears danced in her own. I took her hands in my own, and gently led her to a white sofa, which was far to big for the space of the room. It looked like whoever had put it there was just trying to cram as much unneeded furniture into one place as they could. Oh wait…that may have been me.

Leto sat down beside me. She sniffled a little, avoiding my eyes. She fiddled with the brooch on my toga. I held her hand. She squeezed it.

“Apollo…” she trailed off, seeming lost in her mind.

“I’m alright now Mother,” I said in an effort to soothe her. “I’m immortal again. I cannot die. I learnt a lot too. And I want to apologise for not being the most attentive of sons. I should visit you more, and I will! Really, father was right to-”

“-NO!”

I fell silent, shocked that my mother would ever scream in such a tone. She looked at me, and I noticed how tired she was. No doubt staying up to watch every second of my quests, worried sick that something might happen if she took her eyes off me. It would not be out of character for her to do such things.

“Your father was not right to punish you in such a cruel manner. To have you forced into servitude, with next to no natural means to protect yourself or others!”

“Honestly, Mother I-”

She held up a hand for quiet. I obeyed.

“I know you should not have done the things you did. I know you’ve learned. That does not warrant your father’s merciless behaviour. You kept getting hurt and I could do nothing, he said if he caught me in the act of helping, he would make it worse for you. He said there would be more deaths, more guilt. So I obliged. I made sure he didn’t catch me. I convinced Artemis to send her hunters. I persuaded Hermes to crash the sun, and Athena to lure you to the child-” she paused. “-Whom I have been caring for. He is named Cindeo - the one who escapes danger.”

I nodded. “I see you have been taking care of everyone.”

“That is indeed my sole purpose, yes. It distracted me, which Artemis says is a good thing. But still…I was watching. That day on the boat.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. I knew exactly what she would be referring to before she even said it. “You stabbed yourself.”

I drew in a sharp intake of breath, remembering the pain.

“I knew Medea would heal me.”

“You did it willingly.”

“It was only a distraction.”

“What was? Your life?”

“Caligula needed me alive more than my friends did.”

“They all needed you in the end, Apollo! I needed…I needed you.”

We sat, not talking. Just staring at each other, mentally comparing our broken pieces. I was willing to gather my pieces - make something new. I knew my mother wanted that as much as I did. We hugged again, this one lasting even longer. Neither party minded. Her caramel hair still smelt of honeysuckle, a trait inherited by my sister. She was still soft and warm and safe. After all these centuries, she had not changed. I was glad.

After an eternity, we separated. I examined my mother, my medical urges setting in.

“You look like you haven’t slept since I woke up in that dumpster. You need rest.”

She shook her head. “Apollo, you just got back. If you think I’m going to-”

“And I’ll be here when you wake up. Why don’t you use my bedroom? That way you won’t really be leaving. I’ll still be around, I promise. Even if you sleep as long as Gaea did.” She tried to protest, but I easily guided her to my sleeping quarters. By the time we arrived, Leto was practically using me as her only way of staying upright. I gently laid her down on my king-sized mattress, and she immediately melted into the warmth of the duvet.

I made my way to the kitchen, intent to taste ambrosia for the first time in months. A shape shimmered into existence on the blinding white counter. A freshly baked pie. Curious, I picked up the little note beside it, which read in perfect ancient greek calligraphy;

You deserve it! I love you!

-Leto

I chuckled and called down the hall, “Go to sleep!”

To which I received a muffled “I am, I am!”

I grabbed the pie and sniffed, enjoying my newly heightened senses. I could tell exactly what was in it. Ambrosia, sugar and chunky slices of…baked apple. The smell smacked me as violently as my realisation. My palace was golden, hard and shiny. It was devoid of life. Life like that of a particularly bossy half-blood. I decided to call in a discreet demigod quest.

…

“Soooo…about this quest.”

“Yes?”

“It was to help you plant stuff?”

I patted down the soil around a sweet-smelling Hyacinth. We sat in a huge garden positioned behind my palace. I had never fully understood why it was here. What was its purpose? Why would you look at some boring old trees when my palace was right at the end of the long, wide strip of grass, glowing golden and easily mistaken for a beautiful sunset in the evening? Once, I had even petitioned for the land to be flattened and used for a theatre (Dionysus and the muses backed me up, but Demeter, Poseidon and Artemis were strongly against it). But now, I smiled to myself as I began to see its importance.

“I don’t know what you find so complicated about this, Meg. I thought you liked gardening.”

My former master scrunched up her nose, pushing her cat-eye glasses further up her face. Her hands were caked with mud and the knees of her new leggings were already ruined. She had not wanted to change her dress, but when Percy mentioned to Mrs Jackson that she was still wearing the same borrowed garment from several months before, Sally had sent a package and insisted she change clothes every once in a while. Meg had donned the teal tunic and green leggings ever since. Such was the fashion sense of The Meg.

“Well, yeah. But I don’t think you’re allowed to call it a quest.”

“You were summoned to assist a god, were you not?”

“Duh.”

“So you are on a quest.”

“To plant flowers.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Meg shrugged. “Okay. But how do you plan to explain it to Zeu-” I cleared my throat loudly, glaring obviously at my reckless young friend. How many times did I have to tell her that names hold power? I definitely did not have a bullet-proof backup plan incase my father did find out, so I did not want to draw his attention and let him in on my little secret. That would not go well for anyone, trust me.

“How do you plan to explain it to your father?” Meg corrected. Satisfied with that adjustment, I turned my attention back to my Hyacinth.

“I’m not going to.”

“That’s a stupid plan.”

“I would have thought you’d know me better than to assume I have a real one.”

“That’s fair, you’re pretty dumb.”

“Hey!” I threw a clod of dirt at her, which hit her right in the centre of her forehead. We shared a look of mild amazement. I actually hit my target. It had been a while. I grinned with triumph, but it was soon smacked off my face as I got hit full whack with a dirt ball to the cheek. Then our eyes met in silent challenge. We both accepted.

It only took fifteen minutes for the massive garden to become an all-out war zone. There was no safe place. Dirt flew every direction, and we both took advantage of our own abilities - Meg using plants to trip me up or willing the dirt to fly with excruciating accuracy, and me, using beams of sunlight to reflect off Meg’s glasses and blind her, and when I found her charging at me, I flew over her head, just to be annoying.

When Meg shoved half a dozen handfuls of mud down my shirt, I decided to play dirty (well...dirtier). I conjured a hose, and watched with enormous enjoyment as Meg’s cocky grin melted into morphed into one of realisation and fear. I blasted her.

We chased each other around the grass, continuously soaking each other (Meg had used a plant pot as a bucket and filled it in a nearby pond) until the sky started to dim. It was early January, so it wasn’t too late, maybe six o’clock. Cold and exhausted, we made our way back towards my palace. My mother was waiting in the kitchen when we arrived, a new apple pie steaming on the dining table. She tutted at our wet cloths and sopping hair. With a wave of her dainty hand, Meg and I immediately dried.

“You let the other one go cold, dear,” Leto smiled, gesturing at the pie. Two golden-rimmed plates, complete with solid gold knives and forks which shimmered into existence beside it.

“Thank you Mother!” I said excitedly, kissing her on the cheek and sitting down at the table. Meg looked more wary. She eyed my mother suspiciously, while Leto smiled softly at her. Stepping closer to the table, perhaps under pressure, Meg inquired, “Is there ambrosia in it? I can’t eat much of that stuff.”

Leto laughed. “Yes, dear. But only traces. Only eat a slice or two, and you’ll be absolutely okay.”

I turned around in my chair and grinned over the backrest at them.

“Meg, it’s fine. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, would you, Mother?”

Leto looked horrified. “Of course not! Why would I damage such a harmless creature that’s so vital to the nutrition of other creatures?”

I gave Meg a look. “See?”

Meg seemed satisfied with that answer, but was still cautious in her approach to the table. But after no more than fifteen seconds, she was shovelling in mouthful after mouthful with incredible velocity, rapidly cleansing her plate of any crumbs. My Mother watched her with intrigue, and I could almost see the cogs turning in her head. While Meg helped herself to seconds, Leto quietly pulled me aside.

“When was the last time the child ate?” She whispered urgently, casting solicitous glances over at my young companion.

“It can’t have been long ago. Meg eats a lot,” I reassured. Her shoulders relaxed, her gaze softened. Leto looked thoughtfully back over at Meg.

“Does she have somewhere to stay?”

“I believe she intends to become a year-rounder at Camp Half-Blood. She’ll be with her siblings and cousins there. Her family.”

“Mmm…”

“Mother?” Leto peered deep into my metallic gold irises. Then back looked at Meg. Then back at me. “What are you thinking?”

“If she is to remain at Camp Half-Blood, you will not be able to meet with her. I implore you, son. Look into the future. What possibilities do you see for her there?”

I concentrated, absorbing in every part of Meg’s being and taking into account every decision I’d ever seen her make. (Being a god, this was easy. Oh, how I enjoyed the wonders of a working memory!) I started off simple to ease myself back into prophecy, by predicting where her fork would land next. [She will miss the pie and stab the plate] Clank! My power proved to be working. I stretched myself a bit further, into next week. I saw her hold up a red flag in triumph. [She will win Capture The Flag for the Demeter, Hades, Dionysus and Apollo cabins] Yes, that seemed plausible.

Then I looked years ahead, in fast-forward. I laid every likely option and decision for Meg out on a metaphorical table in front of me and examined them all. Useless nonsense rushed past me as I sifted through the possibilities. [On May 23rd, she will eat meatloaf for dinner] [Exactly two weeks from now, she will push a son of Dionysus into the lake] [In three years, she will set Peaches loose on a rabid Manticore] None of these helped me. I searched for the correct timeline, the one where she stayed at Camp. I found it.

[She will miss Apollo] Fair, I would miss her too. [She will feel lonely] I will too, friend. [She will distance herself from anything to do with Apollo, including his children] Wait, no- [She no longer considers Apollo to be a friend] STOP!

My eyes flew open. My mother held onto my arm, steadying me. Meg had turned around in her chair, seeming concerned.

“You okay?”

I stumbled for an answer. Would she really dismiss me? Would I dismiss her? “Uh, yes. Yes, everything is fine.” Meg’s eyebrows scrunched behind her cat-eye glasses. The rhinestones caught the light, and shone brightly.

“You look sick,” she announced, with her usual Meggy bluntness.

“Thanks,” I grumbled. “Meg, it’s getting late. Perhaps I should send you back to Camp.”

Meg pouted. “Why can’t I stay?”

“You know why. Father can’t find out you’re here.”

Meg groaned. “Ugh. Okay. Just don’t forget about me or I’ll march right back to kick you in the kneecaps.”

I smiled. “I would not dream of it. See you soon.” I waved my hand and Meg evaporated in a shower of gold, and I felt her reappear safely at Half-Blood Hill.

My mother turned to me.

“Well?”

…

We sat on the cold stone steps of the amphitheatre, where I’d dazzled the demigods into minor depression with my Lydian and one-four-five Progressions so many moons ago.

It was late afternoon and the sun shone softly through the trees, scattering beams of light around the secluded area. I appeared similar to what I had a few days ago, only this time I had donned a more ‘modern’ look from my usual toga. I wore an ACDC t-shirt under an unzipped orange and white jacket. My jeans were worn pale at the knees and hems, which contrasted the bright red of my nike trainers. Only my hair was much the same - long, blond and flowing down to my shoulders.

Little sparks of light bounced cheerfully off of Meg’s rhinestones. She kicked a pebble down the steps, and watched in fascination as it skipped, making tic tic tic sounds all the way to the bottom. She was still wearing the same teal tunic and green leggings, her gardener’s belt hanging loosely around her waist. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, she spoke.

“You said you wanted to ask me something?”

I nodded. “Yes, but I want to inform you that how you answer will not affect my view of you in the slightest. I will always admire you, whether you turn down my offer or not.”

“Offer?”

I laced my fingers, trying to think of the best way to word it.

“Following your recent quest,” (Meg snorted. I continued.) “I realised that I will not be able to see you as often as I would like. I will not be able to intervene on future quests, or protect you much beyond what my father allows. It will most likely be a long time before all the gods begin to treat the mortals as beings. I will also have to endure the endless mocking from my fellow gods, simply for changing my morals, and someone with mortal experience would be good to keep me straight. So, my offer to you, should you choose to accept it, is the offer of immortality. I would like you to live on Olympus, with me.” Meg’s eyes widened. Her jaw dropped. Seeing this, I rushed to hastily add to my unexpected statement. “Now, please know that this is not a one-time offer. You can say ‘No’ now, and come back later! Or not. Whatever you choose, I’ll always be looking out for you, okay?” Meg furrowed her eyebrows and blew out her cheeks in concentration. I watched her, not quite knowing if I should say more.

“Will I have to leave Camp forever? Will I be able to visit?”

“That’s the thing. You would only be allowed to visit if you have a specific purpose for coming, and you would have to make sure it’s iron-clad just in case Zeus confronts you about it. But I am working on finally getting those laws abolished. Hopefully, one day, you will be able to come simply because you want to. The catch is; I am not sure how long it will be until that happens.”

“So all my siblings might be dead.” I smiled sympathetically, feeling the chance of her accepting my offer sinking dramatically.

“Most likely.”

Meg gained her closed-off expression, her guards shooting up to prevent any and all emotional damage. I held my breath, waiting patiently for her to respond. It took a few minutes. Finally, Meg uttered at an almost indecipherable volume, “Can I think about it?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. That was not a no. There was still time to convince her.

“Of course, dear Meg.”

Abruptly, Meg stood and sprinted back towards Cabin Four without another word. I had expected this, but it still threw me through a loop. I ran my fingers through my luscious blond hair, and inhaled deeply through my nose. While I was lost in my thoughts, a voice suddenly piped up and made me jump a foot in the air in surprise.

“Hey Dad!”

Gasping sharply and clutching my hand to my thumping heart, I turned to meet the speaker. My son, Austin Lake, stood before me holding a battered, grey-silver saxophone and smiling nervously. I gestured for him to come and sit with me. He complied.

“You here to see Meg?”

I wrapped my strong arm around him, and pulled him close to my side. “I was going to visit you kids too, but you ruined the surprise.” I punctuated my statement with noogie on Austin’s cornrows. He giggled and shuffled closer to me, absolutely failing at being inconspicuous. I didn’t mind. My kids and I are born to be obvious. Why hide something good?

I gestured to his beaten saxophone. “What happened there? The Ares kids?”

“Nah. I never found the one I lost in the labyrinth, so I had to take this old one from the back of Cabin Seven. I don’t think it’s been used since before that orientation film was made.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “It sounds fine, but I wish it had I bit more…I don’t know…pizzazz? Flash?”

“A bit of shine is never amiss,” I agreed.

“It doesn’t matter anyways. I tested it out on Miranda Gardener and Sherman Yang, and they did kiss when I played ‘Careless Whisper’, but it just doesn’t help the whole YouTube thing, y’know?”

“Of course. Sometimes people simply refuse to take you seriously unless you look the part. A frustrating yet universal part of showmanship - one that none of my children should have to deal with.” I waved my hand, and the old saxophone glowed, and began to fix it’s dents. The tired looking grey colour ebbed away and darkened, a black sheen taking it’s place. The keys and rods however, brightened until they shone gold. Soon Austin was holding a very classy jazz saxophone that matched his black woollen peacoat. I am extremely conscious of the instrument matching the style of the musician, hence why all my instruments include some form of precious metal or stone.

Austin’s brown eyes glittered with pure excitement.

“Thanks Dad! You’re the best!” He launched himself into me hugged me like he would never let go. I drew him closer to me, savouring every moment. I heard him mumble something unintelligible into my chest.

“What was that you said?” I asked. My boy tilted his head up slightly, so I could only see his eyes and above past the folds of my ACDC tee. He repeated himself a bit louder.

“Do you read all our messages? Like, the ones Chiron gets us to write to our godly parents?”

I chuckled, raised one hand for dramatic effect and recited:

“Hey dad! I’m Austin

Chiron said you like haikus

Poetry is cool”

“Nooooo….” Austin groaned. “I can’t write poetry for my life…”

“I think it’s great! You were only, what,” I counted on my fingers. “Seven at the time?”

“And already better than your dad!” An unknown voice rang out loudly from behind us, making us snap back from each other and whip around to face the impish figure. Hermes held up his hands in mock surrender, his signature stupid grin plastered on his face as he sauntered towards us. His dirty blond hair bobbed in its curls with every step he took. He nodded to Austin.

“‘Sup kid? Did anyone ever tell you about the time Apollo was obsessed with Limericks? Maybe you could compose one of those about your old man’s ‘awesomeness’,” (emphasising the ‘awesomeness’ with air quotes. Humph!) “and send it to me later, yeah? For mocking purposes only, of course.” Austin shifted uncomfortably, clearly not thrilled to have been interrupted from rare cool father/cool son bonding time. I knew how tricky Hermes could be, and I definitely did not want to put my son through the embarrassment of somehow signing off his mother’s inheritance to cattle farmers in Indonesia, so I took initiative.

“Austin, why don’t you go show off your new saxophone to your siblings? I promise I will come back to visit again soon.”

Hermes snorted. “Yeah, maybe don’t swear on the Styx though, bro. Dad wants to see you about some flower planting quest.” His grin spread like he had just cracked an atrocious pun, and was awaiting the groans of his audience. “He’s soooo mad.” I gave a reassuring smile down to my apprehensive son.

“Do not worry about me, child. Hermes is a known fibber. I’m sure he’s not that furious. It will be fine.”

...

It was not fine.

As soon as I entered my father’s personal throne room, I could tell. The enchanted ceiling was dark with storm clouds. The atmosphere was thick and heavy with static and tension. I felt a trickle of sweat run down my back.

My father sat on a proud marble throne, its veins of grey curling like smoke throughout the white stone. The king himself wore a smart navy suit, complete with a matching tie and a mid-length salt and pepper beard that overshadowed his mouth. His long hair was styled not unlike my own, except a lot darker and less flamboyant. He took the form of a man in his late 40’s, but could only be shown by the unfashionable wrinkles around his eyes. He was well built, and, despite my love for my eight-pack, far more muscular than I thought was attractive or necessary. He glared down his nose at me as I walked down the aisle of blue carpet towards his feet.

He must have been forty foot tall, which was big even for a god. I stood at a more natural twenty. I did not dare make myself bigger. I did not want my father to be under the impression that I wanted to intimidate him. I did not.

I bowed at my father’s feet and lowered my head, waiting for the word to stand up. It did not come. Instead my father spoke in his low growl:

“Apollo.”

I swallowed my anxieties and forced myself to look up into his eyes. They were not their usual electric blue, as so many of his offspring had inherited, but they had been clouded over with a thick, angry grey mist. His dark brows were furrowed in concentration. A permanent scowl was fixed on his features. I willed my voice not to squeak or crack.

“Yes, father?” Zeus’s scowl deepened.

“Do you think I am witless, boy?” He rumbled.

“I - no, father,” I stammered. Zeus leaned forward in his throne, glaring holes through my head.

“Do you think I am beneath you?”

“Wha - no!” My hands subconsciously gripped my jacket and fiddled furiously with the zip. I could feel my godly sweat making the cool metal slippery. The air around Zeus condensed into a dark haze. Lighting cackled like an entourage of jeering bullies, laughing at my panicked face and hopeless predicament.

“YET YOU STILL DISOBEY ME?” I took several deep breaths. I was a god. I had faced python, while mortal, and defeated him. I was still undoubtedly terrified, but I thought of Meg, of my children, of Perseus Jackson. They needed me to take this first step into defending the demigods. My face hardened. My voice was calm, quiet and deliberate, but hid a tsunami of fear.

“Name the law.” My father’s raised bolt faltered, reflecting his confusion.

“What?”

“Name the law,” I repeated. “Name the law I have broken by ordering a demigod, whom I know well and am sure is capable of being assigned a task, to go on a quest.”

Zeus gritted his teeth, and growled in his gritty voice; “I watched you play, boy. Do you think you are humorous? Do you think you can scorn my gift in such ways? I gave you immortality. I made you a god! Yet you run around like a hooligan, associating with these lesser beings, for what? Your twisted idea of justice? I am the god of justice, you insolent child. I have decided our laws, and I can make more laws if I so wish. Do not test me.”

“As I remember brother,” a feminine voice cut the thick tension of the room, “You need council approval to decree a new law. Am I correct?” Zeus scowled, but his anger visibly dissipated. He sat back in his chair as the dark clouds surrounding the throne lightened into grey wisps, like one might see on a dull autumn’s day. I did not dare turn my back to my father to see the speaker, though I knew the voice well - a voice older than Zeus’. I kept my kneeling position, hearing the footsteps of the graceful Olympian stride down the single strip of carpet, stopping just behind me. I felt a soft hand on my shoulder. It pulled me up until I stood beside the tall, warm figure of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture.

She wore a simple, emerald-coloured dress that flowed down to her ankles, revealing a pair of bronze-coloured sandals. A thin, gossamer shawl of sage-like hue was wrapped around her shoulders and hung around her tanned arms. Her wavy blonde hair shared an alikeness to that of Sleeping Beauty’s. A ring of glittering corn stalks circled her brow. Her form was a few inches taller than my own. She kept her hand firm on my shoulder and glared defiantly up at Zeus with those striking green eyes.

“Margaret is my daughter. I invited her to Olympus to congratulate her on finishing her quest, as is customary. She and Apollo simply conversed over some flowers.” She looked down at me. “And I for one, am pleased that Apollo is finally making good use of that great space.” I smiled up at her, then glanced nervously at Zeus. His mighty hand stroked his beard in thought. At last, grumbled and said;

“Very well,” his deep voice echoed throughout the hall. “But be warned. Next time that mortal comes to this land with no believable reasoning, I will not be so merciful.”

“Of course, my lord.” Demeter and I both bowed in respect (well, more so ‘custom’ or ‘fear’ than respect, but whatever) and made our way out into the cheery sunlight, leaving the clammy throne room behind us.

We wandered down the streets in silence, watching all the minor deities, cloud nymphs and satyrs frolic and chat excitedly. I got a few gazes from a group of dryads, but thought nothing of it. Perhaps they had heard of what I did for the Palm Springs residents. Did dryads have some sort of mental link or Whatsapp text group? I imagined it would go like: “Hey gurrrll!!! ;D You see all this heatwave shiz??? Gone!!!! Apollo is #greatest” or something similar. After a few minutes, Demeter pulled me to a park bench that overlooked a large, shimmering lake. Ripples glided across the water. Every now and then, a tentacle rose above the surface and plunged back under, sending a spray of droplets to dampen anything in a metre radius. Some hippocampi splashed playfully around the shallows, some allowing a pod of Naiads to stroke their noses and fuss over how cute they were. We watched.

“You did well by my daughter, Apollo,” Demeter mused. She kept her eyes on the lake. No doubt, she was not comfortable congratulating her least favourite nephew, but I admired her determination to go through with it anyways. I may not have done the same. “I am surprised.”

I gave a short laugh. I was used to being mildly insulted. It did not phase nor offend me.

“Meg is truly an extraordinary demigod. You must be very proud.”

“I am.” A small smirk appeared on her otherwise neutral expression. “She is one of my best.”

“She could live here. You’d get to see her. I would too. I think a wild demigod energy such as hers is well needed around here.” The goddess of grain raised an eyebrow, and peered down at me from the corner of her eye. “I have offered her immortality,” I clarified. “She has not yet answered. I think if she accepts, you should be the one to grant her the immortality. Of course, I can do it myself, but I thought it may be more impactful for a mother.” She furrowed her brows, and her corn crown seemed to catch the light of the late afternoon sun, making her eyes hard to focus on.

“Zeus would not approve.”

“Zeus wouldn’t have a say,” I countered. Demeter only nodded her head ever so slightly, her face scrunched in concentration.

“Very well. I will accept if she accepts.”

…

Apollo was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Meg simply could not understand him. She lay belly down on one of the thick branches of the tree that supported the newly built Cabin Four like a panther reclining in the jungle, contemplating her idiot friend and his dumb offer. She sniffed, shifting her head on the uncomfortable bark. She liked Camp Half-Blood. The food was good, there was some people her age that she could beat in a fight - and older campers she could beat too - sword practice was fun. So was capture the flag. But Meg was alone, and maybe that was good. People crowded her on the first few days after the end of the quest, wanting details about the most dangerous parts. She had even been given a necklace with a single green bead on it that held a picture of a writhing serpent - Python, the monster she and Apollo had slain. Every now and again, an Apollo camper would ask questions about their dad, and she always made sure to give them less than flattering (but truthful) answers.

But that had worn off after a while. People left her alone, apart from Billie Ng and Miranda Gardener, who she was trying to teach how to summon a karpos (they were pretty bad at it). She hated that she missed her partner in crime. But if she left, she would miss her home, where she belonged.

‘Ughghhh” Meg groaned, sliding ungracefully off her branch and landing on the floor with a whump. She rolled onto her back and scowled at the unfairness of having to deal with feelings. Time passed. Eventually, she decided to make a call.

…

I didn’t scream. Nope, definitely not me, the cool and chill god of a-heck-load-of-things. No, I’m quite sure I stayed calm and collected at the sight of Meg McCaffrey appearing in a shimmering vapour form - in my shower.

Fine. I may have screamed. But you cannot blame me! It is one thing to take a shower with a ‘date’, and quite another to be peeked on by a twelve-year-old. I frantically made my best efforts to cover my perfect physique for the sake of the child, who immediately threw her hands over her eyes and made a ‘gross’ face. She wore a baggy Camp Half-Blood T-shirt over her usual dress, and a single bead hung by a thread on her neck.

“Meg, what the actual-” I hissed, cutting myself off. I took a deep breath and held my tongue to refrain myself from swearing in front of a kid (my mother would never let me hear the end of it if I didn’t). “Why are you Iris Messaging me? Now, of all times?”

“I didn’t know you were in the shower, dummy.” Meg blew a raspberry, her vapour form producing a few bubbles in the process. “I didn’t think you had to wash since y’know,” she gestured at my tanned body. I covered myself a little more, even if she did still have her eyes shielded.

“I don’t. It’s just relaxing,” I grumbled, grabbing a towel, wrapping it around my waist and stepping out into the steamy bathroom. I kept the shower running so the Iris Message could continue, which involved getting the towel wet. I prayed the extra weight would not lead to any unexpected revealings.

“I’m not supposed to be taking to you, Meg.”

Meg uncovered her eyes and snorted. “Says who?”

“Says my father.” I felt my face darken. “He heard about your little quest. He told me you could not come here again with out ‘believable reason’.” I punctuated the last part with air quotes.

“I told you that you should’ve had a plan.”

I rolled my eyes and scoffed. “I did have a plan! My plan was for him not to find out.”

“How’d that work out for you?”

“Shut up.” I could not resist the smirk that played on my lips. I wanted to be around my friend more often. She was one of the few who still talked to me as an equal (kind of). The other Olympians…let’s just say they didn’t exactly show me the same level of respect has they had once done, with the limited exceptions of Poseidon (who had been mortal once before) and Artemis (who had never respected me - its a sibling thing). “Listen, I cannot guarantee that my father isn’t keeping a close eye, so let’s make this quick. What did you want to tell me?”

Meg’s face lost its humour. I was afraid she’d back out and end the message. Instead, she spoke. “I thought about your offer.”

I felt my chest swell with hope. Maybe she’d say yes. Maybe she’d come up and be my friend for eternity. Maybe I would have one more person to talk to. “And?”

“No.”

My smile faltered. I felt all sense of excitement in me shatter in that moment as I struggled to put together a sentence. “Wh…what?”

She looked down at her rough, calloused hands. “I don’t want to be a god. I don’t want to live directly under Zeus’s thumb. I killed Nero. I killed him because he was awful and forced me to do stuff I didn’t want to do. He made me feel stupid and useless. I got rid of that.” She stared me directly in the eye. “I never want to feel like that again.”

The argument I’d prepared died in my throat. Could I really blame her? After all, she was right. My father didn’t even allow me to talk to my friend. Meg didn’t want to be oppressed like I was. She was free. That was a feeling I could never truly have. I’d given up on it long ago.

“Yeah,” I croaked. “Okay.”

“Okay,” she mumbled back. “Bye.” Her figure disappeared, and I was left alone, standing in the all-too-quiet bathroom.

“Farewell.”

***

It had been several months since Meg had declined my offer. I still thought about her and my children every day. I searched for and aided a few of my less remembered offspring, guiding them to their respective camps. Thirteen-year-old Seamus, ten-year-old Anthony and two-year-old James made their way to Camp Jupiter. Nine-year-old Aiden, twelve-year-old Dwayne and six-year-old Marigold travelled to Camp Half-Blood. I had just ensured the safe arrival of Marigold, the curly blonde-haired excitable young demigod who seemed to have inherited my ability of Photokinesis, a rare and promising talent for my children to have. In other words, I was exhausted. So I teleported to the most calming place I could think of.

I collapsed down underneath the aged mountain laurel tree. It was located high up in a rocky, unforgiving mountain range, but overlooked the beautiful view of the other mountains, the lower halves shrouded in white mist. We often met here.

Beside me sat a young girl in a grey puffer coat and black leggings, her long dark hair tied back in a high ponytail. She was busy whittling on a long piece of wood, and so, did not look up at my arrival.

“Brother,” she greeted plainly.

“‘Sup?” I replied weakly, exhaustion filling my voice. I watched Artemis whittle for a while, my eyes half closed, the bow slowly taking its shape and the sound of the knife scraping evenly across the smooth surface calming me. “You making this for one of your hunters?”

“Yes. Being their leader has responsibilities, you know.”

I blew out my cheeks in exasperation. “At least you never have to go chasing down kids all over the world to drag to two camps in North America.” Artemis paused her whittling, and looked at me quizzically. “My son, Diego,” I clarified. “His mother is Spanish. He did not want to leave Madrid. But I finally convinced him after, what,” I tried to recall. “Three days? Ugh. Sometimes I just wish there were a few more camps around, ya know?”

The huntress had gone back to her work, her face contorted in concentration. “Mmm.”

“Are you even listening?”

“Uh huh.” I elbowed my beloved sister in the ribs, an effective attention-attracting tip I had learned over the course of my punishment; courtesy of Meg McCaffrey. Artemis glared daggers at me. “What?”

I beamed my most innocent smile. “You weren’t giving me enough attention, Artie.”

“Sod off.” She grunted. She will always deny it, but I saw a slight hint of a smirk seep through her annoyed facade. I grinned to myself as I decided to be as provocative as possible. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and snickered at her crabby expression and ancient greek curses as she tried to push me off.

There are many perks to being a sibling, dear reader, and annoying the younger sibling (or the one that appeared to be younger anyways) is most definitely in the top three. Along with the whole ‘If You Anger One Of Us You Deal With Both Of Us’ Ride-Or-Die attitude we can have (of course, this does not apply to every situation. See: the time Hermes pushed me into a very deep swamp, and all my dear sister did was laugh until she could no longer breathe).

Eventually, Artemis melted into the hug, leaning her young head against my chest. She took a deep breath and quietly said; “I am going to tell you something.”

I drew her a little closer, my embrace no longer meaning to provoke, but to comfort. I leant my cheek on her head.

“What’s up?”

“I am only telling if you do not get big-headed about it.”

“When have I ever done that?” I teased. “Honestly, I’m rather offended that you would even insinuate-” A small hand flew up past my face and grasped a lock of my beautiful, long hair - and yanked it downwards. “OW!” I rubbed my scalp and huffed down at my smug sister.

“You deserved that.”

“Uh huh,” I grumbled, unimpressed.

“What I was going to say was that I really did miss you, Ollie.”

“I missed you too. And I never got to say thanks. Y’know… for that time in Indianapolis. I couldn’t because the others were always around so… thanks.”

Artemis fiddled with a loose string on my sleeve. “Yeah, well. I had to pay you back for that time with Atlas and Luke…” she waved her hand, gesturing vaguely to the air. “So yeah. I guess I owed you one.”

Several years ago, my dear sister had taken the weight of the sky off a young maiden in an attempt to save her from being crushed. She succeeded, but at the cost of holding up the burdensome pillar of clouds for days without rest. By the time she made it back to Olympus, she was faint and required several days of rest (as ordered by her doctor; me). The topic was not often talked about. I wished everyone would have the same attitude over my embarrassing adventures. Still, I remembered mother and I being worried sick, and Zeus coming thundering through the door when he heard about her. We thought he was there to console or mourn, or maybe hatch plans on how to save her from the titan’s clutches. If you thought ‘What? That doesn’t sound like Zeus!’ then congratulations! You are learning. He told us that a demigod quest had been despatched, and if he were to find either of us interfering, he would rip out the ‘Number Ten’ lighting bolt. But not to worry, oh readers! He didn’t catch me.

Artemis shifted under my hold. We fell into a comfortable silence, and I found myself thinking about Meg again. Her tyrannical attitude, her odd fashion sense, her scent of baked apple. I could see every rhinestone in her cat-eye glasses. Every stitch in her well-worn dress. I got to thinking about how we would meet up again. A brilliant thought crossed my mind.

…

“Are we sure this is a good idea?”

“Relax, you big baby. It’ll be fine.”

*CRASH*

Meg blew a raspberry at the window she’d just obliterated.

“Well done,” I congratulated dryly. Meg kicked me in the shin, then readied another nerf bullet.

“I’m gonna miss if you keep distracting me!”

“Oh, was my mere presence distracting? I didn’t say anything!”

“Shut up,” she grumbled, sticking her tongue out in concentration as she aimed for the makeshift target we’d made and blu-tacked on the wooden wall. “I’ve got the gun and you’re being annoying.” I kept my mouth shut. The bullet was let loose with a twang. It went right through the hole where the window had once been. There were shouts from outside varying from “Get down, get down!” “Do not worry! I predict it to be no- six letters. Starts with ’T’” “Trench?” “Top-hat?” “That’s two words, Aloe.” “My bad.”

Of course, we were back at Aeithales. Palm Springs had welcomed us back with open arms. And I had my cover story set. I was here to personally check up on my Sibyl, as to not neglect my duties over prophecy, which was one of the reasons I’d been sent to Earth in the first place. I’d even gone to the extra trouble of making sure my dad was okay with it the day before. (“Because, you know, there may be some of my friends down there, cacti spirits and such, and I know you told me not to communicate with-” “APOLLO! IT’S TWO IN THE MORNING! GET OUT OF MY BEDROOM!”) So I figured I would be fine.

It was currently quite late, maybe eleven o’clock, and I had hung around all day. Just as Meg finally hit the target, I said;

“Perhaps I should get going. Do you want to spend the night here or go back to camp?” Meg sniffed.

“You don’t seem too bothered.”

“By what?” I asked. “Did I do something? Forgotten something? Today isn’t your birthday, is it?”

“No,” she stated bluntly, going back to aiming at the target.

“Care to elaborate?” I enquired cautiously. I did not want that nerf gun aimed the wrong way.

“You offered me immortality. I turned it down. You don’t seem upset.”

“My dear Meg. I simply respect your wishes, like I said I would.” I laced my hands together, trying to convey my feelings in an accurate way without bursting into a song that has all the feeling pre-written. “Your reasoning was sound, and while I do not fully understand your final decision, I trust your judgement. Besides, Percy Jackson turned it down too. So maybe it is not as valuable as I first thought.”

To my delight, Meg smiled. Albeit a small one. “Thanks. Do you think we’ll ever get to meet up? Without all the secrets and planning and stuff?”

I sighed. I really hoped so. “I do not know. One day, perhaps, my father will change his mind. I do not know when, or how. But I have hope that he will. As long as we keep working on him, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Right!” I clapped my hands together like I had seen dads do in movies to symbolise the end of a touchy conversation. “Now off to bed or I’ll turn you into a traffic light.”

I closed the door as quietly as I could, careful not to waken the sleeping demigod. Her snores were muffled as I strolled through night, evaporating and reappearing in my palace. I wandered the golden hallways for a while, taking in every piece of decoration and furniture in a different light. The palace wasn’t cold and useless as I had first thought. It was dazzling and elegant and me. I had been under the impression that because I wanted to heighten my morals and personally intervene more often, it would require changing everything. But it didn’t. So what if I liked shiny stuff? I can have good taste and still be an awesome god! It simply wasn’t the problem. It was only what I had lacked that had bothered me. And, looking down to Palm Springs one last time, I knew I had found it.

This was kind of a one off! The next chapter will be back with mortal Apollo during the trials. i just wanted to try something different.

#writing #fanfic #fanfiction #oneshot #toa oneshot #lester papadopoulos #apollo #meg mccaffrey #trials of apollo #toa #zeus #hermes #Austin lake #demeter #leto #artemis #olympus #olympians

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aworldoffandoms · 5 years

Text

Runaway - Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - Duty Calls

Pairing: Liam x MC [Ariel]

Word Count: 3, 857+/- (my words got away with me)

Rating: T

Warnings: Minor swearing

Summary: Liam continues with his duties as king but stumbles upon information that brings him a step closer to getting the answers he seeks.

MASTERLIST

Tag list: @hopefulmoonobject @annekebbphotography @am-i-invisible777 @blznbaby @khakie4 @lauradowning29 @blackcoffee85 @captain-kingliamsqueen @moneyfordiamonds @super-secret-fandom-blog @jovialyouthmusic @zaffrenotes @ao719 @umccall71 @carabeth @furiousherringoperatortoad

Let me know if you want to be tagged!

A special shoutout to @ernestsinclairs ! Thank you for all your edits, suggestions and rewrites! You are honestly the best! :)

The sun had chosen today of all days to hide behind the clouds as Liam exits the palace to head into the capital. Situations like a queen’s disappearance still didn’t exempt him of his duties. There was the grand opening of a new cancer wing of the Children's hospital, the annual yacht race preparations, the tedious task of approving foreign business licenses afterward. A little pang speared him in the heart as the first task strayed into his mind. The treatment had been set in a new healthcare scheme that Ariel had spearheaded as queen. One last act of the most benevolent person he knew. Families would be able to claim treatment on this scheme and be able to pay the treatment off within their price range. A win-win in any case. Liam would do anything to make it easier on the families going through turmoil with a sick child.

Liam knew he needed this, not only because Regina had urged him to, but for his people as well. He hadn’t been out of the palace for an official engagement in almost a month. His people were getting anxious and it didn’t help that the media was exacerbating the situation -- even bringing up Ariel’s disappearance more than twice in each broadcast.

In all instances, Liam had to agree with this statement, because, in some way, it was true. Although finding Ariel was his top priority, he feels his heart squeeze with guilt as he realizes that his people, his country, needs their King. He couldn’t afford them losing faith in him now.

Having a country which didn’t support him would be the final nail in his heart and his mental stability.

Ariel needs me also…

Liam had to prioritize in some way. This searching was becoming all-consuming and maybe, just maybe, it was starting to wear on him.

He was exhausted all the time. Less than 4 hours sleep, paired with those eight o’clock meetings every day and signing off on royal papers in between, while also searching for Ariel and he’s already on thin ice.

This was unhealthy and his people were starting to see the cracks.

Liam steels himself as he squares his shoulders while taking a deep breath and plasters the regal smile on his face he used for all royal occasions.

As soon as he steps out of the black SUV, the dulled voices of the crowd outside erupts into cheering and loud exclamations from the excited crowd at seeing their King again.

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”

“Oh my goodness! It’s the King!”

“I feel like we haven’t seen King Liam in ages. Does he look tired to you?”

That last comment hit a nerve but he pretends not to notice and keeps his carefully composed mask on his face as he continues his march towards the hospital.

He gives the crowd a smile and waves as he makes the rounds talking to a few commoners and nobles that have gathered for the cutting of the ribbon.

Bastien then guides him to the wing of the hospital where he is met with the Director of Medicine of the Cordonian Children’s Hospital. What was her name? Ingrid, probably.

Ingrid curtsies and raises her hand to Liam and gives him a smile. “Thanks for coming, your majesty. We are so honored to have you here.”

Liam smiles, reciprocating the gesture as he gives the director a firm handshake. “I am always happy to offer my support in any way possible that helps the children of Cordonia.”

Ingrid flashes him another warm smile.

“Well…if you’ll follow me I’ll give you a tour of the new wing and then you can cut the ribbon to commemorate its opening.”

Liam nods as he follows Ingrid with Bastien and the King’s Guard following close. The media trails behind them with a few cameras recording his journey through the hospital with avid interest.

The tour goes well and Liam offers a genuine smile to the cameras as he cuts the ribbon. On his way to the car, he stops and offers a few words to some kids that were clamoring to get a glimpse of the king. He had a few kind words to them until Bastien ushered him away. Duties in Valtoria awaited.

Hana and Maxwell had put all their energy into keeping that duchy alive and since both were on the Royal Council they had enough power to help. Liam had no qualms with that, given that he gave Ariel that duchy, to begin with.

Another royal engagement and another day without his queen. He almost wonders if this is what he’ll end up doing for the rest of his life. Taking it day by day, barely existing as the world moves on around him.

Liam sighs as he loosens his tie, stepping into the wardrobe that he once shared with his wife. His eyes glance to her side and another wave of pain spears through him at seeing it empty.

He swallows the lump in his throat. How can he still feel this way? Why can’t he move on? It was like he was stuck in mud or bound by chains and only Ariel had the means to get him out. She was the only one to lift him from this horrid, dark place that he’s been in ever since she left.

Liam turns around to step onto his side of their wardrobe and strips off his official daily regalia. As he shrugs off his jacket a flash of white catches his eye under the lights and his breath catches as he realizes that it was his royal wedding outfit. His heart thunders in his chest and his mind flits back to that day when Ariel’s face lit up as their eyes met from opposite sides of the cathedral. He wanted to run to her but knew it wasn’t the customary thing to do and instead marvelled at her beauty.

He runs his fingers down the sleeve of his wedding jacket, despite the pain he feels he can’t help but smile. He has to remember the good times he had with Ariel. He needs to have hope. That’s all he has left.

As he turns to go into the bathroom, his fingers catch on something as they were still trailing down the front of his jacket and he snaps his head to his white tux and furrows his brow.

What could that possibly be?

Liam’s brow creases even further as he steps closer and digs into the front pocket of his jacket. His fingers latch on to something hard and paper-like. He lifts it from its confines and finds a folded piece of paper.

His eyes narrow as his mouth twists in confusion.

“What is this?” Liam mumbles as he flips it over.

Something nags at him and his stomach clenches when he realizes that this is another letter as he finds his name on top of it in the unmistakable cursive script of his wife.

Why would Ariel write me another note?

Liam’s heart almost stops. A new note? She honestly couldn’t break his heart more than she already has? Her words in her goodbye letter still haunt him.

He gulps as he slowly opens the note with shaking hands. His pulse increases when he finds his name at the top of the note, but it patters off in confusion when he finds a cluster of letters underneath it.

***

B TF WHBGC MABL YHK PHNK IKHMXVMBHG.

PAXG RHN WXVBIXK

MABL, FTR RHNK CHNKGXRZ MTDX RHN MH FHLVHP – KHNY TGLPXKL PBEE UX MHXKE

UX LTYX, FR EHOY

***

I am doing this for your protection. When you decipher this, may your journeys take you to Moscow - your answers will be there.

Be safe, my love

***

What in god’s name is this?

They were all a jumble of words, though their meaning was obviously forthcoming. Something so important and astounding that it could blow this whole investigation of trying to find his queen wide open. As a king…should he know what this means?

Maybe he came across a topic like this in his studies as a teen, but being a teen and a prince at the same time, he’d followed in Leo’s example just once, wanting reckless adventure and wallowing in luxury. His education was important, but he found himself bored with Machiavellian theory and fork placement for five hours a day when all he wanted was to sneak out and play maze tag with his friends and brother.

Right now, he wants to kick his younger self.

One thing was for sure…he needed to get this piece of paper deciphered and the only person who knew how to at least try to understand that paper was Regina. Surely she would be willing to help - this was her daughter-in-law and the chance for a grandchild after all.

Liam wants to get to it straight away but as he glances at his watch, the time had simply flown by. Regina would most definitely be asleep, and she didn’t particularly like to be waked.

He’d ask her in the morning, he thought to himself as he felt a yawn overtake him.

Stepping in front of the vanity, the contents of the note still perplexing him as he finishes, dries and gets ready for bed.

Liam closes his eyes, the letters dancing behind his closed lids.

His gut told him that those jumbles of words were important. Hadn’t Ariel been the one to teach him that? It had to be a test. But…why did it take him two years to find it?

That suit jacket had hung on his shoulders for so many times since her disappearance…how did it just show up now?

Could it be possible that Ariel had planned this in her own way?

Liam’s face lights up in a smile, even as sleep starts to come for him. To this day, Ariel still surprises him. Her unpredictability and decisiveness always manages to surprise him. Damn, she was a force. And he loves her more for it.

I miss you, Ariel.

Liam’s eyes prickle with tears, the cloud of sorrow almost drowning him again as the remains of his broken heart melt on the floor as it calls for his life back.

Liam turns to his side and splays his hand out on Ariel’s side of the bed. He sighs. He wishes. He yearns and he aches and desires for her to be beside him so he can cradle her in his arms, sink into her scent of freesia and strawberries.

Liam drifts off into a deep slumber with the face of his beloved behind his eyes, hoping wherever she was, she was thinking of him too.

***

“Breaking News just coming out from Sweden...Prince Carl Philip has been confirmed missing by King Carl Gustav and Queen Silvia. The prince was last seen out with friends before disappearing after a royal engagement. The prince’s security detail was reportedly neutralized.

The Swedish Royal family has released a statement to the public:

“We are utterly distraught at the prospect of our son, Prince Carl Philip, missing. Our security staff and national police are looking into his disappearance. If anyone saw anything last night, please ring the royal press office at 9398-2345-5443 or email at [email protected]

We thank you for all your thoughts and prayers at this tough time and we hope against hope that Prince Carl Philip will return to us soon.”

______________________________________________________________

“Prince Carl Philip was out celebrating his third wedding anniversary at the Villa Solbacken.

This news comes as a number of other royals have disappeared throughout Europe. Queen Letizia of Spain went missing three months ago. Today marks the one year anniversary since Prince Amedeo of Belgium also went missing. It’s been two and a half years since Queen Ariel of Cordonia vanished into thin air. Should the rest of Europe be worried?

Royalists like to think so. However, we cannot jump to conclusions.

Please remember that if you have seen or heard anything about Prince Carl Philip, let the royal press office know on the number on the screen.

Until then, I’m Kerri Constance, goodnight.”

“Seriously, Liam? You’re watching this shit?” Drake says as he arches his eyebrow at his best friend.

Liam gives Drake an exasperated scowl, his eyes still trained on the screen.

“No, Drake. I’m not watching this shit for fun. I’m watching it for a reason. The Prince of Sweden has gone missing.”

Drake’s eyes widen as he settles beside the king in the palace drawing room. The TV was blaring the six o’clock news, the anchors eagerly jumping on the story of the newest missing royal.

Liam stares intently at the screen and Drake just watches him for a minute, seeing the cogs turning in his mind. He was thinking and Drake liked to think that Ariel was on his mind. After all, why wouldn’t it be?

“They have been running this story all day. They’ve mentioned Ariel’s case a few times already.”

Drake nods as he leans forward in his seat, as he glances up at the TV listening to the anchorwoman talk about the missing prince and other royals that have been vanishing over the last few months.

“Have other royals been disappearing too?” Drake inquires.

Liam nods as he leans back against the couch, ticking off all the missing people on his fingers.

“They have. The Crown Prince of Denmark, Queen Letizia of Spain, the Belgian Prince, and Princess Marguerite of Monaco. She was at a summit for international relations with country leaders at the Royal Palace there. She went to freshen up, never came back. They’re . . . understandably upset over there.”

Damn! That many royals missing over a few months? And all of them in Europe?

That put a bad taste in Drake’s mouth.

Something didn’t feel right.

“Have you had any luck with the prisoners?”

Liam finally tears his eyes away from the television to give Drake his undivided attention. An actual smile seems to play on his lips, although faint.

“Yes. Under careful interrogation by Bastien and his men, they have managed to uncover plots that they were going to implement if the kidnapping was successful. One was using past indiscretions against us to blackmail into abdicating. They also got some information about some offshore accounts. Bastien did some digging and all of these link to many places in Europe and America.”

Drake nods, their American contact's words straying back into his mind. Nazario was his name, was it not? He’d be valuable in the future.

Liam sighs, his expression grave.

“I have a feeling that The Sons Of Earth have been funded by these people. And it seems like they are pretty powerful people considering that none of the money has been found anywhere else. Anton was sneaky. He went undetected for months as Ariel’s press secretary...so I wouldn’t put it past him to somehow get away with this.”

Liam glances down at the paper in his lap, fingering it for a few beats before he hands it over to Drake.

“What’s this?” Drake asks, his furrowing his eyebrows in concentration, the deciphering of the code now at play.

“A note I found in the pocket of my wedding tux.”

Drake’s eyes widen as he stares at Liam, then glance down at the note again. “What? How did it get in there? It’s been nearly three years since your wedding.”

Liam shrugs, exhaling heavily. “I have no idea. Ariel seems to have had everything under control even before she left. My guess is it’s a code or something.”

Drake glances at the note. The letters swam before his eyes almost teasingly, beckoning him to come and decipher them. But after a few minutes, the only thing he’d gleaned was that it was a sentence of some sort. What a pity that was.

Drake leans forward on the couch as his mind runs, his mind latching onto some information he gathered when flitting through a Cordonian history book during one of his many journeys through the palace when a ball was underway. “I swear it was in a book...but I remember you mentioning something when we were kids...when that warrior Queen that founded the five kingdoms would use ciphers and hidden messages to send her allies details of where she was when she was in exile? Could this be something like that?”

At Drake’s words, Liam freezes, his back straightening in firm realization.

“Drake,” is all he says, the word pushed out like the dying breath of a man gasping for air.

Drake’s heart beats heavily, his stomach twisting in concern for his friend. Liam hadn’t stopped staring at him for a good two minutes.

“Uh...yes, Liam?”

Without a word, Liam snatches the cipher from Drake’s palm and stands up, charging out the door and stumbling into the main atrium.

“Liam, where are you going?”

Liam glances back at Drake, his eyes alight with the determination he saw only a few weeks ago when they were all gathered in his office.

Liam smiles. “I’m going to Regina to get this cipher figured out. She has experience with these. She had to decipher some letters my father would get in the mail. And then…”

“And then... what?” Drake says, Liam’s animated state disconcerting as his actions were almost robotic in nature.

“And then we find Ariel.”

Liam doesn’t say another word and continues on his way, Drake following after him at a brisk jog, still trying to catch the man’s attention.

“Liam...wait! Are you sure this is the right way to go?”

Liam glances behind his shoulder, addressing his friend as he takes the gilded steps up to the third floor two at a time.

“Of course I am, Drake. Just have a gut feeling that’s all. I have no indication how long this,” Liam pauses, raising the folded piece of parchment up in the air. “...has been sitting in my jacket for. For all I know, it was there the whole time and I was too dense to notice it! It was right in front of my eyes this whole time!”

Liam takes a deep breath, his pulse rising in anger, his fists clenching beside him. He was angry. Angry at himself for being so consumed by his pain that he didn’t see the little details. At Ariel for sending him on this wild goose chase. At this whole situation. He should be living happily ever after with Ariel and here he was trying desperately to hold on to anything that could give him that.

Add that to the fact that European royals are going missing and, deep down, Liam had no idea what was happening.

How could he be so foolish? How could he be so blind, so overcome by his pain that he couldn’t look at his wedding tux until nearly three years later? What kind of lurid joke was this? Had Ariel intentionally put that there? Would she be angry at him that he had taken nearly three years to find it?

Liam sighs as he glances at Drake.

“What else can I do? Bastien has spent the last two weeks interrogating the captured prisoners. This may be the last bit of evidence we have. It could be what breaks the case and we have a solid lead.”

Drake stares at his closest friend and his heart tightens as he sees the light he saw earlier faltering in those blue eyes.

He couldn’t see his friend falling back into those old, destructive patterns again.

Drake sighs, nodding in resignation.

“Okay, let’s do this. Whatever answers we get from Regina - I’m with you all the way.”

Liam’s mouth lifts up in a winsome smile as his hand comes to Drake’s shoulder as he tightens his hold in gratitude. “Thank you, Drake.”

Drake shrugs. “All good.”

Liam chuckles at his friend's noncommittal answer as he knocks on the door three times. The pounding in his ears grows louder by the second until it’s replaced by another noise - the pattering of feet behind the door. A voice calls out, and Liam answers as he steps through the door.

“Regina? It’s Liam.”

Regina glances up and her grey eyes slightly widen as she catches the sight of both of them, disheveled from their trek up the stairs, Liam still slightly breathless.

“Liam? What is the matter? Is there something you wish to discuss with me?”

Liam nods. “Yes, there is Regina.”

Liam lifts the paper, Regina giving it the careful appraising look she was so famous for. “What is that?”

Liam takes a seat in front of Regina and passes over the note with the incomprehensible jumble of letters written on it. Regina stares at it, before opening what was given to her, her fingers almost hesitant as she does so.

Liam stares at his step-mother with intensely, his eyes scanning her face for any twitch or change in expression.

So, when he sees her eyes widen and a gasp escapes her lips, panic sets in. “What? What is it, Regina?”

Regina glances up at him, her eyes wide with shock. “Liam…”

Liam grits his teeth as he says, “What is it, Regina? Did you decipher it?”

It surprised Liam that it only took Regina a few minutes to read the cipher, but he shouldn’t be so surprised about that considering that she did it for his father all the time. He still kicked himself for not studying them in greater detail.

Regina sighs as she gestures in vain towards the letter in a futile attempt to explain its meaning.

“This cipher isn’t complex in the least but what it says is rather direct.”

Liam gives Regina a pleading look. “And does it entail exactly?”

Regina sighs, raising her gaze to his, her words blunt and piercing.

“It says the answers you seek are in Moscow. Ariel left to protect you. But from what?” Regina shrugs, as she shakes her head. “I’m not quite sure. But, I’m guessing it’s something big if it entails her leaving you and Cordonia behind.”

“Could the Sons of Earth be more involved in Ariel’s disappearance than we first thought?”

“As much as I don’t want to believe it -- I think they are. If we find the answers in Moscow…maybe the real reason that Ariel left may be revealed.”

Liam groans as he stands and runs his hands through his hair again, the frustration settling back into his shoulders.

He finally turns to Regina for a faint smile.

“Thank you so much, Regina. I will keep you updated on what we do next. You have helped me out immensely.”

Regina smiles and then turns back to the book she was reading, a quiet signal that the conversation was over.

Drake follows Liam out of the room, his voice ringing a little too loudly for his liking in the deserted palace halls.

“Liam. What do we do now?”

Liam glances to Drake, his eyes set in steely resolve, his jaw set.

“I’m not wasting any more time. We are going to Moscow. Tonight.”

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