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sunder-soul · 3 years

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first of all your work is AMAZING- like damn that smut? 👀 but anyway- i’ve had this concept for awhile imagine that reader was the one who made the design for the dark mark for tom riddle? like y/n is an artist and likes to draw, paint, all that jazz, and she saw the symbol in like her dreams or something and decided to draw it. and then tommy boy sees it and takes a liking to it like, “...i could use that-“ i don’t if this is a weird ask or not but i thought it was interesting. 🥺👉🏻👈🏻

So this has been in my inbox for so long bc I just couldn’t crack how I wanted to tackle it and then yesterday BOOM I had an idea so here I am!! Hope you enjoy 💖

･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

Consume

Summary: Reader looks into Tom Riddle’s tea leaves on an unlucky day in Divination. Something looks back.

Word count: 1.5k

Content warning: none.

･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

You’ve heard of the domino effect before, but never has it been so grimly demonstrated to you than in that exact moment standing in front of the entire Divination classroom with the only spare seat left opposite Tom bloody Riddle.

It started (or at least, as far as you can tell) an entire week earlier when you’d walked in on Ophelia Greengrass sobbing in the fourth-floor girl’s bathroom during second period. Up until then you’d not spoken more than half a dozen words to Ophelia across your entire time at Hogwarts, but it had felt wrong not to say anything – and as it turned out, Ophelia had been in dire need of someone saying something to her. She’d been dating Lestrange for a little over three months and by the sounds of it things were not going well.

So of course you’d comforted her as best you could but it was hardly surprising when she tentatively approached again you the next day, and the next, and the next, and then every single day for an entire week there had been a new horror story until yesterday you’d finally had enough and told her that she should break up with him.

That, of course, was why he’d confronted you in the corridor that morning on the way to Charms, angrily accusing you of losing him his girlfriend. And that was why you and Lestrange had been caught by Peeves with a watering can full of Bulbadox juice brandished gleefully in his spindly hands.

Which was how you both ended up in the hospital wing for the entirety of first period, Lestrange with boils all over his face and down his back, and you with them on your hands from where you’d managed to shield yourself.

You’d left Lestrange behind complaining loudly as the matron peeled back his school shirt, sprinting all the way up to the Divination tower at breakneck speed, throwing the trapdoor to the classroom open and scrambling inside, the trapdoor falling shut behind you, the very final domino.

“Sorry I’m late, Professor,” you gasp as you spin around to face her. “Peeves caught me and Lestrange!”

The class snickers.

“That’s quite alright, quite alright…” Cassandra Trelawney says, deep and ringing, “we have not yet started, take a seat with Mr Riddle and we shall begin…”

You freeze. Riddle…?

That’s when it hits you.

Lestrange always sat with Riddle in Divination.

And you’re so late that everyone else already has partners.

You turn to see Tom Riddle sitting at the back of the room looking at you with a polite but blank expression on his face. The class giggles again. The vast majority of Hogwarts students are at least somewhat in love with Riddle – beautiful, intelligent, polite Riddle, orphaned and poor but refined and successful. Better yet he barely speaks to anyone, leaving a lot of empty space of endless possibility for people to fill in with their personal daydreams.

He scares you.

Those horrible boys that hang around him remind you of flies hanging around rotting meat. And if they’re the flies, that makes Riddle…

You grit your teeth and step forward, weaving between the other tables and snickering students to take your seat, dropping your bag to the floor and eyeing the tea set on the small table apprehensively.

“Begin your readings!” Trelawney calls.

You frown and turn to Riddle questioningly. “We’re doing tea leaves?”

“Tasseography,” he corrects smoothly, leaning forward and picking up the burnished copper pot with one hand and pouring steaming tea into the little china cup in front of him.

You blink at him silently. There’s something manufactured about his face that you can’t put your finger on.

“Shall I go first or would you like to?” Riddle asks casually, pouring you a cup, too.

“I don’t mind,” you mumble, looking away.

Riddle sets the pot down and picks up his cup in long, elegant fingers, lifting it to his lips. “The instructions are on page seventy-nine,” he says after taking a sip, looking around the room disinterestedly.

You pull out your book and find the right chapter and scan the first few paragraphs as Riddle finishes his tea, sipping absently at your own, and by the time he finally hands you his cup your heart rate has finally returned to normal from running up eight flights of stairs.

“You have a scattered-type formation,” you say, checking it against the diagram on your page, “and it’s north-west oriented.”

“Mhmm,” Riddle says noncommittedly, his dark eyes level on the parchment before him as he takes notes.

You lean forward over Riddle’s cup and frown as you compare it to the pictures in the book. “That looks like shepherd’s crook,” you say, pointing to a cluster shaped like a pinched hook, “which means… either the responsibility to protect, or the exertion of power and authority over a group of people.”

Riddle scoffs very lightly, his lips curling into a slight smirk as he continues to write.

Something about it had clearly struck a chord with him, but you pointedly train your eyes back on your book. “Oh,” you frown, checking his cup again. “Or it’s the old glyph for seven.”

Riddle stops writing. You look up curiously at the sudden lack of his quill scratching evenly on his parchment to find him perfectly still, his eyes on your face. “Seven?” he repeats, tone distinct.

You nod and push your book around to show him. “The number seven used to be drawn like that, too.”

Riddle’s eyes drop to the page and linger there for a moment before he resumes taking his notes – though his expression is much more preoccupied than before.

But something in Riddle’s cup has caught your eye. Beside the shepherd’s crook/number seven is a lump of tea leaves so distinct in form that it’s almost comical – the round of the cranium, the square of a mandible, and gaps in the leaves to indicate two eye sockets.

“Oh,” you say in surprise, pulling your book back around. “Wow, that’s pretty clearly a…”

You trail off, frowning. You’ve noticed the tea leaves below it, the long twisting trail that leads directly into the skull’s mouth. A cold, creeping feeling is curling in your stomach as something about the image before you seems to move, you can almost see the thing writhing, it almost looks like a…

“How are we going?” Trelawney asks, suddenly right beside you.

You jump, looking up at her in panic. “Fine,” you say quickly.

She lifts her brows, assessing you thoughtfully. “Hmm,” she says, before glancing at Riddle. “And you?”

“Fine,” Riddle echoes smoothly. But he’s not looking at Trelawney.

He’s looking at you.

･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

The image worms into your thoughts like a deep root, twisting into places you don’t expect to find it and spreading itself out more and more. The dreams are first, and then the nightmares, and finally the night terrors. The skull hovers before you, its pitch, hollow eyes bore into you, the snake coiling endlessly with its fangs yawning wide.

Something about it is cold and evil, some sort of strange perversion of an ouroboros, the eternal snake broken by the skull’s mouth.

Consuming it.

“What is that?”

Your head snaps up from your parchment feeling like you’ve just been jolted awake from a deep sleep, and it takes you a second to process the sight of Tom Riddle before you, his eyes fixed attentively on the parchment strewn on top of the essay you’re supposed to be writing.

He’d caught you drawing it for the hundredth time.

“Nothing,” you say hastily, sliding it away under a book. “Just a doodle.”

Riddle’s eyes flick to yours. There’s a cold rigidity to his expression that you don’t like. It’s a coldness that feels horribly familiar.

For a moment you almost think he’s going to force you to show him, but after a long moment Riddle looks away and he’s gone, disappearing off further into the library. You exhale in relief and pull out the parchment again.

Drawing it made the thoughts go away for a bit, like manifesting the horrible thing distracted it from its need to live in your head. You lift your quill and carefully write a single word next to the skull.

Consume.

･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

The parchment goes missing the next day.

You never prove that he took it, never even mention it to him, but Riddle’s eyes have a cold glimmer to them when he catches your eye in Divination next, the smallest curl to his lips like he’s daring you to bring it up.

The dreams abruptly stop.

･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

When you see it next, it’s in a photo on the front page of the Daily Prophet beneath a terrified headline, a spectre hovering just like it had in your nightmares at school years prior. Except this time it’s real. This time it’s above the burning remains of the family home of a prominent Muggle-born politician and Voldemort’s name is a shadow on everyone’s lips.

You stare at it on the page, the snake writhing in ink, the black, hollow eyes of the skull, and you think about Tom Riddle’s cold smile watching you from across the classroom, his manufactured beauty, the boys that hung around him like flies around rotten meat.

He’s named it the Dark Mark.

628 notes · View notes

probably-haven · 3 years

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Hello!! After seeing what you wrote about xiaoven fics I went to see what things you usually write and omg, your archon Venti headcanons????? I am absolutely in love. So if it isn't annoying, could you talk about xiaoven or Venti or Xiao or whatever ship or character you like? I don't care what you are going to say, I just want to know more about your thoughts ^^

I- is this... bestie, this is essentially a free ramble pass- kerujsgheskdfug. Trust me when I say that in no way is this, and in no way will it ever be annoying in the slightest- i literally- lets just say rambling off thoughts is kind of my specialty, especially when provided a topic to branch off of because otherwise I'm just- really indecisive about it so- iujskdh yeah- 100% definitely down to talk about Venti, Xiao, and/or Xiaoven XD. Also, yes- it may have been awhile since i last posted one(cuz again, indecisive about which direction to take part 5), but the Archon War Era Venti headcanons are still without a doubt my favorite posts I've made. It's just such an interesting topic with such endless potential that so few people actually think about or consider or even realize is there, so i always just get really psyched whenever i see someone interact with them lol.

.... this ended up being a bit of a mess: warning in advance

Anyway! onto the actual content!

- You see the thing about Xiaoven is that there's a lot of different ways that it could end up working out, and just personally my favorite way of portraying Xiaoven in my mind is as an unlabeled relationship because if anyone in genshin would give off that vibe its these two. And a number of other reasons.

- Firstly, I heavily headcanon Venti as being an aroace polyplatonic or perhaps heavily demiromantic. However, regardless of this I just don't think that Venti is really the kind of person to worry about how he should label his feelings, thinking it's silly to try to put them in one box or the other, especially with feelings and emotions being as fluid as they are in general. Plus it fits his whole God of Freedom vibe. I just- dont think he's the biggest fan of labels or social categorization in general.

- And secondly on the hand of Xiao... his defense mechanisms are very much ingrained in his personality. It's probably hard enough for him to not go into fight or flight(the answer is fight) at the slightest affection at first, at the slightest feeling of vulnerability. Even further down the line, with his fierce dedication to Liyue, I cant help but get the vibe that the moment he recognized that he was falling for Venti he would begin avoiding him, not only to avoid distraction from his duty, but to avoid corrupting him or losing him in general like he has with like basically every other person he gets close with(even believing that the cycle had repeated once more when he first heard of Morax's death)... now imagine Venti tryna slap a label on their relationship and tell me Xiao would have a positive reaction.

- The thing with Xiaoven.... honestly, i feel like theres more ways that it can go wrong than it can go right, but if they do manage to make their relationship work out, it's just simply beautiful in all terms of the word.

- Lets talk about killing. - During the Archon War, both were forced to kill a large number of people and gods alike- Venti out of a need to remain alive to protect Mondstadt, it's freedom, and the nameless bard's legacy by extent- and Xiao out of servitude to the god that was once his master

..... actually- break here- ive talked a lot about Venti on this blog but I havent actually spoken about Xiao all that much- so i should probably do that a bit first... do note though that my characterization of Xiao is pretty flexible actually- this is just- the possible characterization of him that i tend to favor as being the most- uh- "realistically complex"

Theres a line I saw this one time in a certain story: "He is a trained weapon. That's what he is, was, and always will be. You cannot change that so stop trying." And i just- think its a really interesting concept- that applies pretty well to Xiao now that i actually think about it. - the concept behind it is this: After spending more than a vast majority of his life killing or otherwise in battle, it's become a part of who he is, a normalcy that after centuries and centuries would be near impossible to get rid of or reverse, and even if it was possible, with his karmic debt constantly eating away at him its unlikely he has enough time left for that to happen. - it sounds like a cruel thing to say about him- but in context it's actually pretty layered and i think about it a lot. It's not as much a "he's a killer lol, that his whole personality" its more of a "The centuries of trauma he experienced have conditioned him into a constantly alert and battle ready mindset while also shaping his dehumanizing inferior-in-worth-but-superior-in-capability view of himself that would have likely been necessary to get through those time, and at this point he's been under that conditioning for long enough that it's essentially ingrained itself in his personality."

- the main idea is- it's a part of who he is, that needs to be accepted as who he is because its not something that he can just up and change. It's not all he is of course but his constant battle mode, as though always waiting to be ambushed or to be granted a new target to eradicate.

a couple character story quotes:

-"His past of service under the evil god had rid Xiao of his innocence and gentleness. All that remained within him was the means to kill and the weight of his sins. The only way he could be of service to mortals was in combat." -"Xiao does not feel any hatred. Having lived for over two thousand years, no single karmic debt constitutes anything more than a fleeting memory. No grudge can last a thousand years; nor is any debt so great that it cannot be paid off in this time. Xiao has spent many long years alone. But his battles have never been in vain." -"where did Xiao have to return to? He was merely leaving the battlefield." -"since Xiao wages a constant war against dark forces powerful enough to devour Liyue in its entirety, any bystanders who witness him in the heat of battle are likely to end up as collateral damage." -"The war he fights can never be won, and will never come to an end." -"Because ultimately, the one with whom Xiao wrestles is himself."

i feel like at some point this very nearly did consume his whole personality, almost turning him into nothing more than a being of slaughter under Morax's control, devoid of any "humanity" at all, consumed and corrupted by his karmic debt like his fellow yakshas before him. - until he experienced a moment of clarity- a song in the wind, the peaceful melody of a dihua flute. - and pulled back from the border of something he wouldnt have been able to return from, there a was a shift in his mind- a concept grown unfamiliar enough with time that it took him a great time to identify what it was; a curiosity. Something that there was no place for on the battlefield, something that by all means should have been completely useless to Xiao, and yet he held onto that curiosity, slowly regaining over time, a sense of who he was and who he could choose to be with each song that the wind chose to carry towards him every once in a blue moon.

and eventually that curiousity turned to longing. Longing "for a day to come when he will wear the mask and dance — not to conquer demons, but to the tune of that flute amid a sea of flowers"

...... uh- heh- if you couldn’t tell already i have a tendency to make my characterizations/analyses of characters more serious that i probably should.

to summarize: Xiao is constantly toeing the line between his ingrained nature and his humanity- almost as though still trying to decide how much of that humanity he deserves to have, how much he is allowed to have, and how much is safe to have.

^looking back after writing this, i think the best way to explain it is that this is the view that i keep in mind/the lense that i tend to most enjoy looking through and refering back to while examining and/or analyzing his character, actions, story, lines, and overall personality.

idk- i kinda got off track but i just think its a really interesting interpretation to think about because it has some really interesting implications ig- it’s not the full extent of how i view him of course, but i kinda got ahead of myself and its long enough as is so ill just elaborate as i go- Lol i actually have in progress playlists for both him and venti and just- vibes- i could ramble about the playlists alone for hours explaining everything... It’s probably a problem- uh- ill keep going now lol.

anyways! stepping off the angst path for a brief break! Brought to you by their lines in the snow: both waiting for it to get thick enough, Venti for the purpose of a snowball fight and Xiao for the purpose of a tasty and nutritious breakfast.

but its actually something of note that Xiao doesnt actually need to eat so anything he does eat is usually out of obligation or enjoyment- so like.... snow.... like i dont blame him, but of all things- an adeptus who refuses to eat basically anything but almond tofu looks at the freezing-cold-floor-water that yeeted itself from above and decided at some point- damn- that seems more edible than basically ever single actually edible thing ever.... im gonna eat it- like- im glad if eating snow makes him happy but- at the same time...

He probably convinces Venti to eat snow too though and Venti wouldnt even resist I mean he’s wind and has probably consumed worse things in his time so- 2 anemo cryptids with glowing tattoos sitting in Dragonspine monching snow in the dead of night is an amusing thought to me.

- kay, now back to more serious-toned thoughts

One of the things about the ship that i really like is the different contradicting parallels between them:

A lot of how i view Xiao’s character is someone formed largely by the things he cant control and who was forced to accept that accepted that and learned to thrive in it as much as he can. Venti on the other hand is surrounded by things he cant control and is ever adapting to control as much as he can while embracing whatever he cant as being part of the unpredictability of the world, seeing beauty in it.

both of them have lost people and do what they do to honor their memory: Xiao continues to do what the Yakshas once did And Venti chooses to do what his friend couldn’t

Xiao’s power coming from himself and Venti’s from others And both seem to appear to use their power for their own gain while truly helping others behind the scenes

both have killed a lot of people during the archon war Xiao views it as another necessary event out of his control and Venti would likely view it as a tragedy he chose to enact himself

and this is where we meet out balance

Xiao- contrary to how i think a lot of people view him as thinking of himself as a monster- seems canonically to have accepted this as part of his duty, as long as those he killed are not mortals. I dont think he enjoys it no- but someone has to do it and he’s just accepted that its a part of his duty Venti on the other hand-

See the beauty of the ship- as someone with an angst-centric mind- is this- these are two of the most traumatized mfers in the game

Xiao is by far the one who needs the most help and who can serve to benefit most from the ship- but he is nowhere near self aware enough to recognize that there’s anything wrong or unhealthy about his mindset in the slightest-

whereas you have the contrast with Venti who sorted through most of his trauma with the nameless bard alone during the archon war and while the result appears more healthy- is still really not- but he’s not self aware of that either because i mean- who’s going to tell him? nobody even knows.

however- venti is aware enough to notice flaws in Xiao’s mindset and “Venti” enough to want to help them through it-

Xiao- while not aware enough to recognize the flaws in Venti’s mindset, can recognize where it contrasts with his own, and is blunt enough to point it out- and then it’s out there to be mulled over-

they’re so similar and yet so different and a feel just conversing between the two of them, being in each others precense, just being exposed to two mindsets that are so very different could do both of them a whole lot of good.

GEEE THAT BIT OF RAMBLING HAD LITTLE TO NO DIRECTION AT ALL- LET ME-- LET ME MAKE THIS START MAKING SENSE- WITH... DYNAMICS OR SOMETHING

I don’t think Xiao needs to sleep really- and i dont think that sleeping would do anything except make him uneasy at first- he’d probably just get nightmares after all he’s been through- but with Venti he would soon learn that it doesn’t have to be that way, lulled into the first peaceful sleep he’s had in... as long as he can remember.

anywho back to not making sense cuz im fickle and i think most questions about ships are best displayed through character interactions so like- a possible exchange thats cliche but cliches exist for a reason

Xiao: Why do you try so hard to help me, it isn’t easy. I know that much Venti, with the most adoring expression: Because you’re worth it, obviously Xiao: But surely there are others more deserving of- Venti: No Xiao, everyone is just as deserving as the next person, you included Xiao: Then why me above others? Venti: ehe, cuz ur my warrior of course [O//////O oh shit, hes right] Xiao: My contract is with Morax alone [gay panic but in broody yaksha]

it’s kinda difficult cuz neither of them really address their feelings. I mean Venti does but he does it very indirectly and its rare that he ever does it with like- genuine directness- even spilling his backstory was in the form of a song- and told in the third person- so a lot of their interactions would often have some deeper meaning, especially with Venti being the bard he is.

I come up with a lot of- errant thoughts about Xiaoven- but this is making me realize that a true analysis of their ship is rather difficult because it just encompasses so many dynamics so its hard to settle on just one and not go rambling about who knows what bouncing from one end of the ship to the other- Because you truly can and thats the beauty of it

within one moment you can be having a heartfelt conversation about the archon war the impact of lost friends and times past, and the next moment Venti is trying to forcefeed Xiao an apple while Xiao screams about disrespecting the adepti and its just- so lovely

so while they have picnics with nothing but apples, dandelion wine, and almond tofu they can sit down and talk about the dreams Xiao once devoured, and the dandelion wine and apple cider that the first Ragnvindir invented from the plants that never could have grown in Old Mond. The foods that tasted of familiarity, or of the grilled ticker fish Pervases always used to eat, foods that tasted of friends and frankly family that had since passed, glaze lilies and cecilias and qingxin flowers scattered in the surroundings and woven into Xiao’s neat braids and Venti’s now messy ones, rebraided by the steady and inexperienced hands of one unused to gentle action.

and then of course Venti steals Xiao’s tofu once the mood becomes too grim and replaces it with a bottle of wine that Xiao refers to as “vile poison,” a remark that fatally wounds Venti as he collapses on the floor, proclaiming how he can only be healed by a Yaksha’s kiss. Xiao ignores this of course and simply takes back his tofu with a slight smile on his face, but as Venti persists he soundlessly places a kiss on his own palm before intertwining their fingers and pulling him back up from where he was dramatically sprawled on the floor, grumbling about how such action was “unbecoming of an archon.” A sign of affection only Xiao would ever know about. But Venti is literally wind and I hc his senses work differently anyways so he definitely knows- plus Xiao’s face is red as the blood of his enemies and the way he is pointedly not looking at Venti at all really speaks volumes anyways.

-Venti playing epic battle music whenever Xiao goes into fights in what looks like a ridiculously extra performance to anyone else but is actually doing wonders to keep Xiao’s karma at bay

-Venti preaches the practice of “kissing wounds better” and Xiao is unfamiliar with this medical treatment but views it as unnecessary regardless because adepti have accelerated healing, doesn’t mean he’s going to stop him though.

-Messages whispered on the wind

-Venti’s 1000 year sleep- an accident, not a fun time for the yaksha, and not a fun time for Venti once he woke up. Venti is actually more afraid of restful sleep than Xiao is, hence the sleeping in trees thing, but when Xiao is there, he can sleep restfully with faith that Xiao wont let another millennia slip through his fingertips.

- Xiao tends to make excuses when doing things that aren’t necessary to his duty, like in his birthday voice line “Have this, it’s a butterfly i made from leaves... Okay. Take it. It’s an adepti amulet -- it staves off evil” because at the current point in his progress it helps him to feel like he’s allowed to do these things. Not wanting to put him off from progress, Venti never comments on his excuse but never fails to whisper a quick reminder of how proud he is of how far Xiao had come.

- Xiao’s karma saddens Venti greatly- not only because of how it effects Xiao but also because its a reminder that as much as Venti tries to honor the memory of those he’s killed, there will always be those who resent him for it, and when he took the option of living away from them, he truly can’t blame them. - And when he gets too wrapped up in thoughts, whether around this topic or similar ones or otherwise, eventually, he’ll hear the sound of a flute on the wind. It’s not divine by any means, but as his own wind connects him to the source, he gets the sentiment all the same. “What impact does one individual’s remaining wrath have on the present. You have done much to help the living in the present” the unspoken idea that Xiao has included himself in that statement, because now, with Venti’s help he’s beginning to learn just how to experience living for himself.

- Venti’s form and Xiao’s mask are off limit topics though because if either mentions it the other will counter with the opposite and the mood will turn immediately bitter at the idea that both know that what they’re doing is destructive but neither are willing to change

- Venti who has different tells for negative feelings than most people because as much as he likes to pretend it is- this form isnt his, and Xiao who is able to identify those

- many fanfics and headcanons have Venti recognizing when Xiao is uncomfortable and getting him out of those situations. I see that and I love it but i raise you: - Venti taking Xiao to Mondstadt, careful that he doesn’t get to the point that he’s uncomfortable. And nothing goes wrong exactly, but Xiao notices the the way Venti’s cape is blowing in the wind, the way he’s holding his weight, barely on his feet so much as floating on the wind, connected with the ground only for the sake of appearance, all the while he looks just as happy go lucky as ever. And without a word, he grabs his hand and teleports them both out of Mondstadt. - turns out it was just a slight thing that reminded him of the archon war (cuz i will die on the hill of him having more tragic backstory than just Decarabian), and he of course gives a sincere if not flustered thanks to Xiao, because he’s really not used to people noticing.

- Venti trying to vent sneakily through fictional stories and Xiao is just like “Didn’t that basically happen to you” and Venti is just like “<_< shit”

- Venti once said affectionally that he wished he had met Xiao sooner and Xiao immediately and seriously shot it down by saying “If you had, I would have been forced to kill you” and both of them now stay up at night wondering who would have won that fight, not sure which result would have hurt more. (because honestly I have no idea who would win in that fight and that terrifies me- I like to think it would have been one of those legends that end with “and the fight persists to this day” or something along those lines)

- “How long have you been together?” “Adepti have no need for-” “1000+ years T^T how dare you deny our love” “O///O our...? ...useless”

- its disney- let me explain- i have this- i have this headcanon inspired by watching too many animatics- - so venti has a human form that isnt his- which he would have had to get used to moving in- and he’s a bard- - uh- anyway- as a third degree black belt in mixed martial arts, i can speak as an authority on this(not really an authority since i havent gone since quarantine but lets pretend). We have a thing referred to as the big three(most things do), and those things are martial arts, gymnastics, and dance. The idea is that they reflect really well off of each other and the best in any one category are good in all three. Timing, balance, form, discipline, technique, hand-eye coordination, grace, ease of motion, they all play a part- anyway-

- Venti taking Xiao’s prowess in martial arts and acrobatics and teaching him how to dance, and as someone who’s extremely skilled in the first two, the third comes easy to him, almost naturally. And it’s delicate and beautiful and lovely and it isn’t hurting anyone. And Venti points all these things out and more and despite how much Xiao insists that he feels ridiculous he truly does enjoy it and it goes a long way towards helping him form more healthy views of himself and his worth. - Verr Goldett walked in on him once and made a joke about performing at the inn. unfortunately Venti was there and agreed on Xiao’s behalf before he could protest and- and it wasn’t as bad as Xiao thought it would be... he still wouldn’t do it again though without reason, but with good enough reasoning he could probably be convinced.

- anyways point is he likes dancing to Venti’s songs and i just think that’s really cute - just picture the idea that all the animatics you see actually have the potential to be canon- ugh

- venti tries holding something out of Xiao’s reach since he’s taller and Xiao just fucking teleports

- both need their space but when they dont, all they have to do is speak the other’s name and they’ll be there.

- and because i just had to.... love languages

- lets start with Xiao- i don’t think he’d view acts of service or quailty time as a love language tbh, and he blunt but really bad with words so affirmation is out, leaving gift giving and physical touch. However, he seems to view most material things as meaningless so- - Xiao who’s love language is in his fleeting touches, something he’s only recently grown comfortable with because of Venti, and now is giving back, which he knows he doesn’t have to do, but that he want’s to, though he’ll still continue to make excuses for each one. “you were shivering” “The inn is high up, you could have fallen..... I said what I said, you’d question an adeptus?”

- and as easy as it is to say words of affirmation for Venti- he does that for everyone- i want to say his is actually acts of service - its the acts of service that let him see just how much Xiao has progressed afterall, from teaching him to dance, to playing another song on the flute, to supplying him with the almond tofu he seems to enjoy so much. Every little thing he does helps Xiao to grow and he couldn’t be happier about that.

- of course most of my headcanons for the ship do take place latter into the relationship because- y’know the less serious unhealthy vibes allow for greater range of thought, but i do still love to think about the serious implications so i kinda hopped back and forth. So sorry about how messy it is btw, i kinda- got carried away- it kinda got some kind of structure near the end tho so- maybe it’s okay. anyway- back to... lol something, we’ll see where thought forests lead.

#genshin impact #genshin xiao #genshin venti #xiao #venti #xiaoven #genshin analysis #genshin headcanons #xiaoven headcanons #xiaoven analysis #this is a mess i really shouldnt be putting all these tags but oh well #oh wow the grammar and spelling here is truly repulsive #sorry to all my english teachers i have failed you all

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young-dumb-and-vaccinated · 3 years

Text

Cult Girl: Doctorate (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 2

Oils

Cult girl socializes at the opera and receives an unexpected call.

Note: I tagged this as “anti mlm” as in multi-level marketing and not men-loving-men.

Trigger warnings: Discussions of cults and emotional manipulation

It wasn't until after the opera was over that people began to notice you may have had a little fun during intermission. Hannibal's hair wasn't in its usual perfect side part and his jacket was slightly wrinkled in places. You could cover most of his love bites with your stole, but nothing could hide that post-orgasm glow.

Most opera-goers stayed to socialize for hours after the show concluded, making an already long night even longer. It was like clubbing, but for rich old people.

"So you're the future Mrs. Hannibal Lecter?" A woman with silvery hair said. She dragged her husband into the conversation by the arm. "I've heard so much about you."

You were about to say something witty, but noticed the way she was looking at you. Scanning you up and down. Looking for anything out of place to grill you about.

"Only good things, I hope." Hannibal said in your silence. His voice was vaguely threatening. "She is a doctoral student, in her second year of her graduate studies in clinical psychology."

The husband, who, up to this point, hadn't spoken a word, perked up. "Is that right?"

You smiled, excited for the chance to talk about your passion. "Yes sir. I've still got quite a ways to go, but I love my work."

"You should be proud." The man praised, looking at Hannibal. "You've got yourself an ambitious wife."

"Oh, we're not married yet." You corrected.

"So when can we expect an invitation?" The woman asked.

"Six months from now, isn't it?" Hannibal answered. "Memorial day weekend. Then I'm taking her to Italy for a lengthy honeymoon."

The woman threw her head back and sighed. "That sounds heavenly."

"You young modern girls are always so intuitive." The man commented. "I'll bet you tricked him into marrying you."

You wanted to call this guy out for his sexist bullshit, but he wasn't far off. It was Hannibal who tricked you, though.

Technically, he proposed to you within the first six months. You just didn't know it. It took until shockingly recently to find out.

It was during a ballroom dancing lesson of all places. You were sweaty, but loved the feeling of your lover's hands gently guiding your movements. You stepped away from the lesson to get some water, and innocently asked when he would propose to you.

"I believe I already did." He said with enough conviction to blur the lines of seriousness and sarcasm.

"You pretended to." You corrected. "Remember? We were just pretending to be engaged for Anna's wedding."

"But it didn't end after the wedding, did it?" He observed. "You kept calling me your fiancé long after that weekend passed."

You paused, then threw your head back in exasperation. "Oh my god, Hannibal."

Hannibal laughed. "I told you. Someday it won't be a lie."

"You're a piece of shit, you know that?" You pressed your fingers to your temples. "So we've been engaged this whole time?"

"What can I say?" He said, gently. "I knew you were my one and only even then. It was just a matter of circumventing your inhibitions."

"I'm not complaining." You folded your arms. "But a little notice would have been nice."

"Well, if you insist." He laced his fingers between his own. "[F/N] [L/N]. Will you be my wife?"

Even though the question was truly just a formality, you were still as giddy as a schoolgirl to hear those words.

"Yes, Hannibal Lecter." You said, cheeks stinging from smiling so hard. "I will marry you."

Then you just went back to the dance lesson like nothing happened. It was shockingly in-character for both of you.

"No." You shook your head. "We killed someone together and took a blood oath to never separate."

The couple laughed. Hannibal looked down at you with pride.

“So [F/N].” The man said. “Have you given any thought to your doctoral dissertation?”

“Oh, Charles.” The woman rolled her eyes. “I’m sure she didn’t come here to be grilled about her studies.”

“No, it’s okay.” You smiled. As long as you were talking about school, you weren’t being interrogated about the thirty-year age gap between you and Hannibal. “I have been thinking about my dissertation. There are plenty of fascinating topics to choose from, but I can’t not write it about, well, the reason I began to study psychology in the first place.”

“And that is?” The man raised an eyebrow.

“Cults.” You said, grinning ear to ear. “Understanding them, their leaders, their followers, why people join them. How they evolve and grow more insidious as time passes. What form they’re starting to take in the digital age.”

“That is interesting.” The woman’s voice rose, connoting genuine engagement. “And what form are they taking in the digital age?”

You looked up at Hannibal, as if to ask for permission. Permission to rip into her and burn that bridge for good. He answered in the affirmative.

“Ma’am, could I take a look at your bracelet?” You asked, already knowing exactly what she would say.

Her face lit up. “Oh, do you like it?”

She pulled it off her wrist and handed it to you. You brought it to your nose and took a whiff, confirming your theory. Then you handed it off to Hannibal, whose sense of smell was much more refined. He took one breath, then recoiled.

Hannibal covered his mouth and nose with his hand and coughed. “That is... quite strong, Mrs. DeMarco.”

“It’s Affirm, by doTERRA.” She revealed, her voice growing defensive. “It helps you ground yourself and remember your worth.”

You handed the bracelet back to her. “Do you sell doTERRA, Mrs. DeMarco?”

“Well, now that you mention it...” A small smile appeared on her lips. “Why? Would you like to buy some?”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, ma’am, but...” You lied. “You’re actually in a cult.”

She had nothing to say to that. She just stared at you with her mouth agape, urging you to explain yourself.

“Multilevel marketing companies employ a host of cult manipulation tactics to con people out of their savings.” You explained. “Just because the promise is financial independence instead of a spot in paradise, doesn’t mean it’s not a lie. Research conducted by the Federal Trade Commission shows that the vast majority of participants actually lose money. The statistics are just a google search away, yet thousands of people still insist on the legitimacy of the companies they sell for.”

“Well, I-” She protested, but couldn’t find the words to defend herself. “I’m there for the community, really. For the first time in years, I have a sisterhood of like-minded women who love me!”

You smiled through a cringe. “That’s another pretty common cult manipulation tactic. They appropriate familial language to make people feel more connected to the group than they really should be.”

Although you didn’t expect her to, she looked to be genuinely considering it.

“Next time you see your ��sisters’,” You began. “Pay attention to how they talk about people who are not in the group. Or, better yet, tell them that you’re considering leaving. You’ll see how conditional their love is.”

An awkward, deafening silence followed. The woman looked at her husband, as if willing him to do something. To stand up to the evil twenty-something grad student who had the audacity to cite her sources.

Instead, the husband just burst out in riotous laughter.

“Miriam!” He nearly shouted, heaving like he was about to collapse. “I told you that oil business was up to no good! No honest company makes their employees pay to work!”

The woman’s face turned red. You almost felt bad for her. The feeling vanished when the man put his hand on your shoulder.

“Seriously, Dr. Lecter, you’d better keep this one.” He said, wiping a tear from his eye. “She’s an absolute godsend.”

“No divine intervention was involved whatsoever, Dr. DeMarco.” Hannibal smiled to himself and brought a glass of champagne to his lips. “She is a woman of her own making."

"Oh, we all know that's not entirely true." The woman snapped, slipping into passive-aggression. She glanced at Hannibal. "How much are you spending on this mouthy little know-it-all? Isn't it about $80k a year?"

You, of course, brought this on yourself. You threw down the gauntlet by going after this girlboss's side hustle, so now nothing was off-limits.

"I wouldn't worry about that, Mrs. DeMarco." Hannibal said, calmly. "My soon-to-be wife's education is a much better investment than that overpriced napalm you wear on your wrist."

You couldn't help but laugh at that. It was a laugh you shared with the man. Hannibal looked down at you, admiring how your face lit up.

"You'll forgive my wife's rudeness." The man requested. "Please, Ms. [F/N], tell me more about your dissertation."

"Well," you laced your fingers together. "I'm planning to write my dissertation on the cult of academic elitism."

"I would tread lightly, dear." The woman warned, eyes darting to Hannibal. "You wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds you."

You adjusted your stole, giving them a quick glance at the love bites along your neck.

"I assure you." You said. "He quite likes it when I bite."

Your clutch started to aggressively, audibly vibrate. You could have sworn you'd put your phone on silent, but it buzzed nonetheless.

"Probably just, y'know-" you stuttered, embarrassed. "An amber alert or something."

"We are expecting a snowstorm, I believe. I was warned of it a few minutes ago." Hannibal said, always ready to cover your ass whenever needed. The couple nodded along in understanding.

You pulled your phone from your clutch. Your eyes widened and your face turned sickly pale at the sight of a caller you thought you’d never hear from again. Without thinking, you slid the deny icon across the screen.

“Right.” You said, tucking your phone and your secrets back into the clutch. “Winter Storm... Theresa is headed this way.”

Hannibal cleared his throat. “In that case, [F/N] and I must take our leave before we get snowed in. It was very nice catching up with you. I will see to it that [F/N] and I have you for dinner very soon.”

#hannibal lecter #hannibal x you #hannibal x reader #hannibal nbc #cult girl #doterra #anti mlm

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haikyuu-appreciation-club · 3 years

Note

Hey, I was hoping to get an emergency request? I’ve been depressed and had my heartbroken a bit, so I’m kinda staying up at night just having bursts of crying fits, and so I was wondering if I could have some hcs of how Tsukishima, Aone, Ushijima, and Daichi would treat their s/o if they spent the night with them when they were crying on and off through the night. Thanks, and feel free to delete this if it’s not something you wanna do x

hey there anon!

im so sorry to hear that love, remember that it is 100% okay to cry and that every single thing you’re feeling is valid <3

my messages are always open (and ask box is too if you prefer to stay anonymous) xoxo

I hope you enjoy our bbys showing you some much deserved love :)

•Tsukishima, Aone, Ushijima, and Daichi Comforting Their Crying S/O•

warnings: mentions of mental health issues

genre: comfort + fluff

characters: tsukishima, aone, ushijima, daichi

•Tsukishima•

tsukishima was usually very snarky and playful when it came to your relationship

back and forth bantering was how you two showed your affection for one another

but when tsukishima heard your soft cries from beside him he knew that this was a time where he had to be more cautious with his words,

“Hey, what's the matter with you?”

you turned to look at him, eyes puffy and red, with hot tears streaming down your cheeks

you swiped at your face and offered him a forced smile,

“I’m fine Kei, sorry for interrupting your beauty sleep.”

he didn’t miss the slight shake in your voice with your attempts to lighten the mood

he tsked and flicked your forehead,

“I’m not an idiot Y/N, why are you crying?”

you casted your eyes downward, too embarrassed to face your boyfriend

it’s not as if you didn’t think he’d care or you were too nervous to open up to him but you didn’t want him to view you as weak or troublesome,

“I guess I just haven’t been feeling the best lately. I’ve been getting sad more often than usual without a reason and I don't really know what to do.”

tsukishima looked at you as you tried to stop your lip from quivering

seeing you like this made his heart hurt

he always hated seeing you so upset but he wasn't always the best at reassuring you during your time of need

he sighed, more towards himself then you, and pulled you into him

“Kei wha-”

“Quiet,”

“But what are you-”

“Y/N, save me the embarrassment and just cuddle with me, will you?”

your eyes widened at his statement, it was very rare for tsukishima to initiate something like this

but you didn’t complain, curling up next to him and wrapping your arms around his figure

soon after, the feeling of sadness washed over you once more as you tried to hold back your tears

you didn’t want to seem ungrateful by continuing your pity party

after all tsukishima practically leaped out of his comfort zone to help you

however, as you shook lightly in tsukki’s hold you felt his arms that were encasing you give a soft squeeze,

“you can let it out, it’s just us Y/N.”

once those words met your ears tears began flowing down your cheeks all over again

tsukishima held you, running his slender fingers through your hair until you fell limp in his hold, slipping out of consciousness

once he knew you had fully drifted off to sleep he placed a kiss on your tear stained cheek,

“I love you.”

•Aone•

aone was a very light sleeper, so he didn’t miss the light whimpers that escaped your lips as you lied next to him

at first he didn’t really know what to think, maybe you were having a nightmare or something of the sort?

but when he heard a sob rack your body he knew that wasn’t the case

aone wasn’t one to freak out over things, he was very composed and calm even in difficult situations

so, as soon as he sensed something was wrong he didn’t hesitate to take initiative

sitting up and gently shaking your shoulder, he spoke in a soft voice,

“Y/N.”

you turned to face him and immediately he could make out the tears staining your cheeks

he was never one to use his words, choosing to stay quiet for a vast majority of the time, but you didn’t ever mind

his actions had always spoken so much louder then his words ever could

you knew how much he loved you, it was displayed with every single thing he did

and when he silently tugged at your hand, lifting you away from the covers and into his warm embrace, you felt his love all over again

he lightly rubbed your back as you continued to cry into his chest, your arms lazily returning the hug

a part of you felt embarrassed being caught in such a vulnerable state but the way your boyfriend was caring for you washed away any feeling of unease

after a while, the soothing rhythm of aone’s large hand moving up and down your back brought you to a state of peace

however before the two of you drifted back off to sleep, aone tugged on your hand once more, pulling you out of the room

“Aone, where are we going?”

he didn’t answer you, just pointed in the direction of the front door

you were confused but figured it would just be simpler to comply with his unknown idea then to ask questions

aone pushed open the door and the cool air met the exposed areas of your body

you shivered a bit as you watched your boyfriend sit down in front of you, staring up at the night sky

he looked back and patted the spot next to him, signaling for you to join him

as you sat down, aone wrapped an arm around your shoulder and pulled you close, letting his body heat warm you up

the two of you sat there watching the stars in each other’s company

it was nights like these where you were truly grateful to have someone like aone in your life

•Ushijima•

ushijima was never exactly good at understand emotions or comforting others

so when he woke up to hear you softly sobbing beside him, he didn’t know how to react

his first instinct was to ask your upfront what was wrong but he had been told many times before that he was too blunt and he didn’t want to make things worse for you

so, he lied there trying to figure the best way to approach the situation

that was until he heard you get quieter and quieter, and soon enough your whimpers grew silent

he was confused at first but he figured you just had a nightmare and decided to approach you about it in the morning

after squirming around a bit, trying to get comfortable, he finally settled by your side with his large arm draped around your mid section

he always loved these nights with you, it gave him the opportunity to be in your company without the constant worry of conversation

he knew you didn’t mind his silence but the nagging from his teammates had made him a bit insecure about his quiet nature

so, being able to just lay down and enjoy your presence was definitely a favorite moment for him

he began to drift off into sleep until he heard your quiet cries once more, the sound leaving a pang in his chest

although he was not the best when it came to feelings, he did not want you to go through your issues alone, so he sat up and turned to you,

“Y/N, what is wrong?”

you flinched at the sudden sound of his voice, not realizing you had woke him up,

“Oh, sorry Toshi. I just had a bad dream, that’s all. Don’t worry you can go back to sleep.”

“You had been crying earlier as well. Is there something bothering you?”

you had tried to hid your emotions from your boyfriend for so long, but iit wasn't as if you didn’t trust him or didn’t want to confide in him

you just didn’t want to worry him or make him feel awkward about the whole situation, which is why you had been trying your best to muffle your sobs

but seeming as the whole plan back fired, you had no other choice but to come clean,

“It’s just, I’ve been feeling kind of off lately. I don’t know exactly why but I just feel sad,”

you peered up at ushijima through damp lashes and watch as his brows furrowed at your words

quickly you cut the conversation short, already feeling as if you were bothering him,

“I’ll be okay though so don’t worry, lets lay back down, okay?”

you leaned back to snuggle into the covers when you felt ushijima grab your wrist

“Come with me.”

“Huh?”

he didn’t give you an answer as he hauled you out of bed and towards the bathroom

you sat yourself down on the floor as he kneeled in front of the tub, turning on the water and grabbing some bubble bath from under the counter

you watched as he prepared a bath, humming your favorite song subconsciously as he did so

soon enough he had finished, wiping his hands on his pants and turning towards you,

“Undress please.”

your cheeks flushed at how straight forward he was with his words but you complied none the less

once you had stripped yourself bare, he lightly grabbed your hand and helped you into the tub

he spent his time kneading your body, earning groans of satisfaction from you as he released the tension in your sore muscles

as he massaged some shampoo into your scalp he spoke up,

“I am not good with my words, you know this. But when I am feeling unpleasant, I enjoy relaxing like this. I hope you do as well.”

your heart melted at his statement

he always tried his best in your relationship, even though he was unfamiliar with the concept

“It feels really nice Toshi, I’m definitely feeling a lot better.”

“I’m glad Y/N.”

he paused his actions for a moment as he peered directly into your eyes,

“I love you very much.”

you smiled up at him as you brushed your fingers across his cheek,

“I love you too Toshi.”

•Daichi•

daichi had noticed something was a bit off with you this past week

you seemed quieter and less cheerful then normal

so it wasn’t a huge surprise to him when he woke up to you crying into your pillow

despite his anticipation, it still broke his heart to hear your soft whimpers as you clutched the fabric beneath you

daichi wasn’t one to hesitate when it came to comforting you

whenever you had been down he was always right there, ready to pull you into a tight embrace or place gentle kisses on your forehead

and tonight wasn't any different as he grabbed your shoulder and turned you so he could see your face

his fingers gently swiped across your cheek, collecting the tears that you had shed,

“Y/N, what's the matter?”

when it came to your boyfriend you had always felt this sense of comfort, even when you’d try to hide your emotions or go through things by yourself, he was always right there with you

so when he asked you that question you felt compelled to let him know the truth

“I-I don’t know. I just feel so empty and broken, I don't know what to do. I’m sorry Daichi.”

“Hey, there’s no need to be sorry babe. Life can get the best of us sometimes and I understand that. But remember Y/N, you aren't alone in all this. I'll be right by your side, always.”

you looked up at him and smiled at his words, letting out a soft hiccup as he cupped your face in his hands

“Do you wanna talk about it some more?”

you shook your head slowly

daichi brushed his thumb across your cheek and pulled you close, pressing a chaste kiss against your forehead,

“Alright, do you wanna watch a movie?”

that suggestion received your immediate approval

you two always watched a movie at the end of your rough days, it was the perfect way to spend time with one another and get your minds off anything that had been bothering either one of you

you snugged up to daichi as the light from the laptop illuminated your faces

he wrapped his arms around you and placed a kiss to the top of your head,

“I love you Y/N.”

“I love you too Daichi.”

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

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uvobreakmylegs · 3 years

Text

The Graveyard

Vampire!Hisoka

🎃~Happy Halloween~🎃

Warnings: violence, gore, kidnapping, threats of noncon

The Nostrade cemetery sat a few miles beyond your hometown of Milsy, tucked in between the trees of a vast forest that had stood there for ages. The cemetery itself had been there almost as long, and was consequently the subject of gossip and tales of the supernatural. Every child that was born in Milsy had it drilled into them at an early age that they were never to approach the old graveyard or the woods beyond it.

The older folk claimed it was a gateway to hell.

You had your doubts that there was anything out of the ordinary about the cemetery, however. The rumors circulated in your town calling the graveyard cursed and that all manner of creatures roamed around it at night, but exactly what kind of creatures changed depending on who you spoke to, though the most consistent one was stories of ghosts and other restless spirits who were trapped on the cursed spot of land. But asking questions on how it became cursed didn't get you much in the way of answers. Even the middle-aged women who had nothing better to do than gossip had little to say when you asked. The closest thing you had gotten resembling an explanation came from an old man at the retirement home who had told you that something 'unholy' had happened there, long before he was even born, and that since then, evil had been attracted to the place. His explanation shortly turned into a rant about how it was the cause of everything wrong in the town; from the mysterious illnesses that occasionally plagued the people living there, the claims wild beasts that roamed the forests that only ate human flesh, to the disappearances in the town where typically teens and sometimes children vanished without a trace.

One of the nurses at the retirement home had escorted you out after the old man's rant and asked that you not come back if you only intended on upsetting their patients.

It was hard to believe that a graveyard could be the cause of an occasional illness that went around, but you couldn't blame the man for thinking the disappearances were related to the area. All of the witnesses to the missing children saw them last near that cemetery. Same thing with the the teens. Anyone else who had gone missing just vanished one day with no warning. And based off of what you had heard, you suspected that they had the same interests as you in wanting to find out what made that graveyard so special.

Your family was aware of your curiosity and tried to keep you on a tight leash, keeping your days busy and trying to keep the thought of visiting the cemetery out of your mind. As hard as they had tried, you had still found your opportunity and slipped away. Maybe going to an abandoned, likely falling-apart graveyard probably wasn't the smartest thing you had ever done, but there were probably dumber things you could have done instead of that, and you swore to yourself that if you just went there once and just see the damn place, you could put the matter to rest in your own mind.

The sun was at its highest point in the sky as you entered through the rusted gateway, still a long way off from nightfall. Though you told yourself to not believe in such things, it gave you some comfort that it wasn't dark out. Every ghost and monster story you had ever heard always took place at night. If there was something otherworldly in the graveyard, it seemed unlikely that it would come out in the middle of the day.

All in all, you would say that you were underwhelmed. The abandoned Nostrade cemetery appeared to be just that: an abandoned cemetery. Within the confines of the stone walls, there were graves and headstones as far as you could see, with an occasional mausoleum that obscured parts of the vast graveyard. There were large portions that were overgrown as trees, bushes and other plant life covered the slabs of stone, turning the gray rock various shades of green. You approached one of the headstones, kneeling down to inspect it and see what had been carved into it. Unfortunately, all you could learn from that particular bit of rock was that it was old, as the weathered stone had been battered by time and the elements to the point that it was impossible to read anything off of it. As you made your way further into the cemetery, you found that to be true of all of the graves you came across. Though you had anticipated that to be the case, given that there was no one to take care of the place, you had hoped you could learn at least a little about the people who had been buried there. The most you were able to make out from a few was just the image of a skull with wings that adorned the tops of the headstones.

And as you went deeper still into the graveyard, no matter where you looked, there was still no sign of any ghost or ghoul that the people in town were convinced inhabited every corner of the ancient site.

Part of you told yourself that it was time to head back now. You had accomplished what you had come here for: you had seen the graveyard, and proved to yourself that the multitude of stories that were passed around were just stories told to scare children and keep them out. You could be content with knowing that there was nothing mystical about it and get on with your life.

But you didn't want to leave yet.

For whatever reason, you felt compelled to explore more of it, to see how far it went. The size of it confused you, as it was larger than you had expected, and you wondered how many generations of families were buried beneath your feet for so many graves to litter the area in the way they did.

'I'll leave after I see the back wall,' you told yourself. That way you would have explored at least a majority of the graveyard, as well as see if there was anything different at the back, maybe an ancient tool shed of some kind for the long-dead caretakers.

There was nothing of the sort when you saw that wall come into view. Walking around a crumbling mausoleum, your eyes scanned the wall and the foliage that covered it. There was quite a bit more plant life this side of the cemetery, the graves near the wall all but overtaken by vines and flowers you didn't recognize. A tall tree towards the back, and on closer inspection, you noticed that behind the tree a bit of the wall had collapsed, allowing you a view into the dense forest beyond the walls. Considering the amount of time that the cemetery had been standing here abandoned, it was a miracle that more parts of it weren't like that; that the majority of the structures within the walls were standing upright instead of crumbling and broken.

You glanced to your right, wondering if there were any more parts of the graveyard that were more dilapidated like the hole in the wall before you.

“And what might a little fruit like yourself be looking for in here?”

You jumped at the sound of a voice behind you, your heart racing as you turned around to see who had spoken.

A man sat behind the mausoleum you had passed by, sitting cross-legged on a raised stone casket. He was dressed strangely, with card symbols on the front and back of his shirt and black heels on his feet. His hair was a vibrant red, and when he glanced over to you, yellow eyes looked you over.

The two of you stared at each other for a moment. He then turned head towards you, smiling with his eyes closed.

“Well?” he asked, his tone cheerful.

“Uh.... Nothing, really?” you stuttered out, “I just wanted to look.”

“Ah, sightseeing, then?”

“I guess.”

He wore makeup as well, a star and a teardrop adorning his right and left cheeks respectively.

“And have the sights this cemetery has to offer been satisfactory to you?” he asked, turning his attention back to what was in front of him: a pyramid made out of playing cards. He held a card in each hand, carefully moving them to the top.

“For a cemetery, I guess it has,” you said, shrugging your shoulders.

He hummed, placing the last two cards on the pyramid and carefully pulling his hands away.

“You must have gone out of your way to come here, and yet you don't seem like you care much for this place. Why is that?” he asked, turning to look at you again.

“Everyone in town freaks out over this cemetery, saying that it's cursed. I wanted to see if that was true,” you answered, placing your hands on your hips as you looked around once more, “it seems like a normal graveyard to me.”

“Oh? So just because you don't see anything wrong with it means that it must be normal?”

“I mean, if it wasn't normal, would you be hanging out here?”

The man smiled and chuckled to himself.

“Fair enough,” he said. He then motioned to the spot before him.

“Sit with me.”

You huffed, but obliged as you walked towards him. While he definitely seemed strange, you didn't get any sort of feeling that he was dangerous. Just a harmless weirdo who hung out in graveyards playing with cards.

…. Saying that in your head like that didn't make it sound like he was harmless. But for now you decided to go along with it. If worse came to worse, you were certain you could outrun him.

“What's your name?” you asked as you pulled yourself up onto the casket, copying him in sitting with your legs crossed.

“Hisoka. And yours?”

You responded with your own name as you settled yourself. The old stone didn't make for a good seat, and you squirmed a bit as you tried to make yourself comfortable. Hisoka watched with amusement, his eyes taking in your form as you looked back to him.

“Would you like to try?” he asked, pointing to the tower of cards before him.

You shrugged.

“Okay.”

With a single finger, he knocked over the structure, sending the cards toppling down.

“I've never tried making one before, though,” you added.

“That's fine. I can show you. Watch,” Hisoka said, gathering the cards together.

He put the cards in a stack, and with a practiced ease, he passed them from one hand to the other in the same way a professional dealer would. He then set about making the base, setting up two cards together so they formed a small triangle. A second set of cards joined them, and then a third.

“.... So do you just come here to play around with cards?” you asked after the sixth card triangle had been placed.

“Sometimes,” he said, laying several cards over the ones he had set up, creating the base for the next row.

“Doesn't that get boring?”

“Not really. I've met many interesting people through my visits here.”

“Like who?”

Hisoka paused as he began setting up the next row, looking at you with a grin.

“..... Me?” you asked, an eyebrow raised.

He nodded at you, smiling.

“That's stupid,” you muttered.

“And why's that?”

“We just met and we're playing with cards. You can't call me an 'interesting person' just for that.”

“The fact that you're here at all is what interests me,” he said, placing another set of cards.

“You said that the people in your town dislike this place, and despite all you seemed to have heard you came here anyway. And it appears to have been all for your own satisfaction.”

He hummed to himself as he placed down another layer of cards on top, the second row complete.

“Does it not matter to you that people have gone missing around this area?” he asked.

“It's been over two years since someone last went missing, and they caught the guy who did it,” you said.

“Oh? They found out who took that young man?” Hisoka's eyebrows went up slightly.

“Yeah. It was some guy in the next town over. Serial killer, among other things.”

“And they confirmed that he was the one responsible?”

“Technically, no. But there's a lot of people who went missing while he was running lose, and he isn't telling the police where the bodies are. So it's a pretty good chance that he's the one who did it. It's not like there are any other suspects.”

“I see.”

Hisoka was smiling, and you swore he was holding back laughter.

“You think it's stupid that I came out here?” you stated more than asked.

“I would say that you're a bit more brave than the others in that town of yours. That, or you just have a poor sense of self-preservation,” he said. The third row was now done.

“Tell me, do you plan on telling people about your visit here?”

“If I did that my family would lock me in the house for a whole year,” you scoffed, “you said it yourself earlier; it's for my own satisfaction.”

Hisoka's smile had widened. To you, it seemed like it was slightly too wide. Like the edges of his mouth went further than they should have. You caught a flash of his teeth as well, and noted that something about them seemed off. Like they were somehow sharper than they should have been.

“That's rather selfish of you, isn't it?”

His words broke your train of thought.

“How so?” you asked. The last set of cards of the fourth row was being placed.

“You came here without telling anyone despite knowing that there's a possible danger. What would happen if you injured yourself and you couldn't get back? No one would know where you were, and in a worst case scenario, you could die before any search parties find you. If they were to find you at all.

“You really didn't think about anyone but yourself when you came out here, did you?”

“.... Well that's one way to make me feel guilty,” you mumbled, “but I don't plan on dying in a place like this,” you added with a bit more confidence.

“You'll survive through sheer force of will alone?” Hisoka prodded.

“Something like that,” you huffed.

Hisoka was chuckling again, looking back at you with amusement. He'd gotten to the fifth row of cards, leaving only the very top of it left. With the last two cards in hand, he repeated what you had seen him doing before and placed the cards at the top of the pyramid, pulling his hands away slowly and spreading his arms open with a slight flair.

“See? Easy,” he said.

“There's no way I can do that as fast as you can.”

“You'll never know unless you try.”

Just like before, he knocked over the tower with the tap of a finger, the cards fluttering down onto the stone below them. This time he made no move to collect them, and he leaned back on his palms as he looked at you expectantly. Taking the hint, you gathered up the cards, sticking them into a semi-neat pile before grabbing two and copying what you had seen him do.

Or you tried to, at least. It took you several tries before you could get the cards to stand upright, and when you grabbed two more, you accidentally brushed against the two you had just set up and sent them falling.

A beat of silence passed as both of you looked at your fallen cards.

“We're going to be here a while,” you mumbled.

“Fine by me. I didn't have any plans,” said Hisoka. It was like that smile never left his face.

Many more tries were made with similar results, and it didn't take long for you to become frustrated to the point that you were tempted to give up. But a look at Hisoka's face made you reconsider throwing in the towel. He was clearly enjoying your failures and how irritated you were becoming by them. He wanted you to give up. The smug look on his face pushed you to keep trying, unwilling to give him that satisfaction.

After a bit, you realized that you could cheat slightly with the first row. The surface of the stone casket you sat on was rough with many grooves and bumps that provided a bit of support that at least ensured that they wouldn't fall instantly. After some careful positioning you were finally able to get a row of six. If he disapproved of the tactic he didn't mention it. You copied what you had seen him do earlier, grabbing what would be the base of the second row and gently dropping them on top, holding your breath each time.

Neither of you had said anything during this time, and while he seemed content just to watch, the silence was starting to get to you.

“So have you been to Milsy?” you asked.

“Yes. I frequently find myself there,” he said.

“Do dress differently when you visit? I feel like I would have heard something about you before today. The older women there live off of gossip.”

Hisoka shook his head.

“I don't need a disguise, if that's what you're asking. I only let people see me if I want to be seen.”

“Hmm.”

The answer didn't tell you much of anything. You decided against asking what he meant by 'letting' people see him as he would likely only give you more cryptic replies.

You grabbed two cards, trying to place them as carefully as possible on top of the ones you had stacked so far to start the second row.

“So do you live near this area? In another town nearby, or are you some kind of hermit?”

“I'm a magician,” Hisoka said.

“Magician? So you do magic tricks?”

“Yes.”

“... Can you show me?”

“I could,” he drawled, tilting his head, “but it would be boring if I just did that for you without anything in return.”

Your eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean?”

“That we could make this a little more interesting! How about I'll show you a trick or two if you can successfully make a card tower?” he asked.

It sounded reasonable enough, so you nodded.

“Oka- Fuck!”

You weren't paying attention and had set the cards down too forcefully, causing the cards beneath to fall under the pressure.

“Ah, too bad!” Hisoka teased, “going to try again?”

“Of course,” you said, already gathering up the scattered cards.

Remembering your cheat, you were able to set up the base cards a little more quickly this time as you began the process again and built your way back up. Trying to rush through it ended with you being punished when your tower fell once again when you reached the same point as the last time. Hisoka continued to smile while you cursed and began again.

You tried asking more questions about him, but the answers you were getting stayed cryptic. Hisoka was born “somewhere” and had lived in the area for “a long time”. He had no friends or family but said that he had “acquaintances” that could “work in those roles” if he so needed. He also claimed that he had traveled quite a bit but wouldn't say where exactly, saying that you wouldn't know the places he was talking about.

“I'm starting to think you're trying to get me to leave, Hisoka,” you said, hissing as your tower fell for the umpteenth time.

“And why do you think that?”

“You've been doing everything to avoid actually giving me a straight answer to any of my questions.”

Beginning again, you glanced back up at him, not surprised to see that smile still on his face.

“You're not wrong,” he said, shrugging, “however, I think if I told you the truth you would still be upset.”

“Why?”

“Because you would still think I was lying.”

You sighed.

“You're impossible to deal with.”

“So I'm told.”

Setting up the bottom row of cards had become somewhat easier now, and by this point you had managed to make it up to the third row. A small breeze came through and you froze, hands going around the cards protectively as if you could shield them. Luckily, the cards stayed in place.

“I don't actually want you to give up and leave,” Hisoka said, leaning forward with his chin resting in his hand.

“After watching you for this long, I want nothing more than for you to succeed. I would hate it if you gave up now.”

“If you say so.”

You weren't at all trying to hide your tone, broadcasting that you still weren't convinced.

Hisoka sat quietly as he watched your tower grow once again, taking in your expression.

“How about along with a few tricks, I give you something good if you complete it?” he asked suddenly.

“I don't know. Do I actually want anything from you?”

“I think you might. Complete the house of cards, and I promise it'll be worth your while,” he said, “you just promise me that you won't give up.”

You sighed once again.

“I've wasted so much time now, I'm not letting that all be for nothing.”

“That's the spirit!” Hisoka encouraged.

With your focus on the cards that you continually built up over and over again, you didn't notice the way the sun slipped lower into the sky as time moved forward. Though sunset was still far away, certain lesser things within the cemetery and the surrounding woods were waking up and found themselves drawn to your scent, multiple sets of eyes peeking over and around the old stone to look at the human who had wandered in. You didn't notice any of them, nor did you notice the warning glances Hisoka sent to all of the beings that approached. The smile stayed on his face the whole time, daring them to try something.

No attempts were made on your life; they knew better.

“Is this going to be the one?” Hisoka asked.

“Shut up.”

Hisoka chuckled, amused at how hard you were concentrating. You had finally made it to the fifth layer of the pyramid, four cards leaning against each other at the top. You held a card horizontally above them, preparing to place it. If you got this one, then all you would need to worry about was the last two cards to finish it, and then you would finally be done with this and be able to laugh in Hisoka's face. You were aware of how stupid and petty this whole thing had become, but after all of that effort, you refused to let it be for nothing.

The card was in place and you pulled away, releasing a small sigh of relief when the cards stayed standing. Without taking your eyes off of the pyramid you grabbed the last two, ever so slowly bringing them up to face each other in what was now a well practiced motion. You positioned them on top, placing them so that the top edges leaned on each other to create the point, and slowly, slowly pulled your hands away, mirroring the way Hisoka had done it earlier.

“I did it,” you breathed, amazed with yourself. Despite how you had told yourself that you weren't going to leave before doing it, you hadn't actually been sure that you could pull off the trick, your original motivations of wanting to prove Hisoka wrong long forgotten. It was such a meaningless achievement and had taken more time to complete than it was worth, but you had done it, and you couldn't help the pride you felt when you looked up to Hisoka who was politely applauding for you.

“Very well done,” said Hisoka.

And with one flick of his index finger he sent the cards toppling down.

Your satisfaction turned to shock as you watched the result of all your effort fall back down to the rough surface of the stone. All that time you spent, and it only stood for a few measly seconds.

“..... I want to punch you.”

“Now now, don't be like that,” the magician laughed as he gathered up the cards, “you won, after all.”

You glared at him as he flashed you another smile, and you caught it again: something that was just off with his teeth.

“Now, I promised to show you some tricks, correct?”

His voice brought you back to what he was doing as he divided the stack into two, holding the stacks in both hands. He then brought his hands together with a clap. When he pulled them away, the cards were gone.

…... A sleight of hand. That was his trick.

“I'm going to punch you.”

“But it was a trick, like you asked for!” he gasped, feigning shock at your irritation.

You put your head in your hands. This time had been so thoroughly wasted on this asshole.

“If it really doesn't satisfy you, I can show you some others. But first! I'll keep my other promise.”

Lifting your head back up slightly to look through your fingers, you saw Hisoka as he hopped off the casket and extended a hand towards you.

“.... Something 'good'? Do you want to elaborate on what that is?” you asked.

“All in good time; I want to take you somewhere first.”

“Take me where?” you questioned as he continued to beckon you into taking his hand.

“It's a surprise~”

When you didn't reach out to take his hand, he gave you another grin - what was wrong with his teeth? - and grabbed you by your wrist.

His hand was large enough that it circled around your wrist completely, and his nails long and sharp enough that they lightly nicked your skin as he pulled you off of the stone and led you through the cemetery. Hisoka weaved through the headstones and plants while you trailed behind. Normally you would have protested someone grabbing you and leading you along like this, but you were caught off-guard by how cold his skin was. Like a person who had been left out in freezing temperatures, Hisoka's skin virtually sapped the heat away from yours in his iron grip. It didn't make sense given how mild the weather was at the moment, and the two of you had been out there for so long; how could his skin feel so cold when you were just fine?

“Hisoka, are you sick?”

He tilted his head back as he smiled at you.

“I've never felt better.”

The two of you made your way to the hole in the cemetery's wall, climbing up the exposed roots of the tree that stood in front of it before stepping over the crumbled rock and out into the vast expanse of the forest. He continued to lead you forward, dodging your questions of where he was taking you with the same claim of it being a “surprise” and that you would “find out soon”, while his faster pace required you to trot behind him while you tripped over the forest floor. His hand remained in place around your wrist, never letting you fall and pulling you closer to him when you began to fall too far behind.

It now dawned on you how much time you had spent out here. People in the town would have noticed your absence, and for those that knew you well, it wouldn't take much for them to figure out where you had gone. You were screwed, and the only thing you could do to try and make this better was to get back before sunset.

“Hisoka,” you tried, “I just realized I've been gone for too long. I really need to get back home.”

“Don't worry; I'll take you home.”

Worries about this man that you had pushed away earlier were now coming back, and you mentally berated yourself for even speaking to him. You should have left the instant you saw him. Instead you spent, what, hours with him? With a man who thought that fun was hanging out in graveyards and playing with cards over buried bodies. You had idiotically thought he was harmless, and now you were being dragged by this man through the woods, further and further away from the cemetery and any familiar landmarks that would lead you back home while you fought against the grip on your wrist that didn't budge in the slightest no matter how you pulled against it. Your pleas to know where you were going and for him to let go became increasingly desperate but appeared to fall onto deaf ears as Hisoka pressed onward.

“Hisoka, please stop and tell me what you're doing!” you yelled, exasperated.

To your surprise, he abruptly stopped in his tracks and you to almost ran into him. You took the chance to catch your breath, looking back up at the magician. He wasn't looking at you, still facing forward.

“.... Hisoka?”

A long, low moan sounded from the man, and he turned towards you as he ran a hand through his hair, tongue licking his lips and his eyes brimming with lust.

“Your little heart is beating so fast and it's making me so excited~” he breathed, pulling your wrist up to his face and nuzzling against it. A chill ran down your spine and you tried again to pull back your hand. But just as before he didn't budge.

“Let go of me,” you whispered.

“That would be a bad idea, little fruit. There are lots of things in this forest that would love to have a piece of you, but as long as you're with me, you're safe.”

“I don't feel safe.”

Hisoka smiled against your skin, his other hand reaching to grip the back of your head. All the while his eyes never left yours.

“Would you believe that you're the first person to ever finish making a card house for me? In all of the years I've been here, every other person gave up and tried to leave,” he said.

“.... I can't say I blame them. I should have given up, too,” you mumbled.

“That would have been very bad for you, dear,” he continued, his lips only a breath away from the skin of your wrist.

“And why's that?”

“Because I would have killed you.”

Despite the gravity of his words, Hisoka said them with a certain air of nonchalance, all while he kept your wrist up near his face, his thumb rubbing circles into your skin as his eyes gauged your reaction.

You didn't know what to say or how to react. The alarm bells in your head were blaring and you wanted to tear yourself away from his grip and escape this situation. But the longer you spent in his presence, a sick feeling rose within you that you wouldn't be getting away from this man.

“.... That's a sick joke, Hisoka.”

“I said earlier that if I told you the truth, you would think I was lying, didn't I? If I had been completely truthful, you would have been scared off and I would have needed to kill you. It's a little rule I made for myself,” he explained, “just killing anyone who wandered in became a bit boring, so I thought it would be more fun to give people a chance to save themselves by playing my game. But as I said, you're the only one who stuck through it. And I have to say, I couldn't be happier that the first person was you. Some of these people I simply-”

“Let go of me!”

Your yell interrupted his speech while you once again pulled against his hold on you, your other arm pushing against the one that held you by the head. His words sent a rush of adrenaline through you and you twisted and pulled to free your wrist while you kicked at him. He was insane, dangerous and if he wasn't going to kill you, you were willing to bet he was going to rape you just based off of the way he was looking you over.

“Did you not hear me? Right now you're safest with me,” said Hisoka, not at all bothered by your struggles.

“You wouldn't want to know what other kinds of things are around these parts.”

And with that he bit into your wrist.

You screamed as his teeth sunk into the flesh of your arm and broke through. Hitting and kicking at him, you felt him sucking out your blood, watching the way his throat moved as he swallowed it. He was drinking your blood. Actually drinking your blood.

Hisoka was unaffected by your attacks, ignoring the way you were beating at him in an attempt to get him off of you. In mere moments after he had bitten you, you began to feel dizzy, and when your free hand landed a soft blow to his head, it stayed there. He opened an eye, taking in your flushed appearance as the blood-loss – how had he taken so much so quickly? - began to get to you. The corners of the mouth that was still planted on your wrist turned upward as he sneered at you. He was enjoying your distress, and that realization had you seeing red.

In an action fueled by rage at being toyed with by this man, you moved the hand you had placed on his head-

And jammed your thumb into his eye socket.

Hisoka yelled out in a mixture of surprise and pain. He pulled away from your wrist as he staggered backwards.

You lifted a leg and kicked him, finally pulling away from him and turning to make a mad dash back to the cemetery. The adrenaline and the panic in your mind allowed you to not really think about what you had just done to him, only focusing on getting back to the cemetery and from there escape home. And after that, you swore you would never even think about this place again.

Dirt and leaves kicked up around you as you scrambled to get away from that man. You prayed that you would be able to find that entrance to the cemetery – whatever kind of freak Hisoka was, he wouldn't pursue you with a wounded eye, right?

You weren't sure if you tripped over a stray tree root or just simply lost your footing to sheer stupidity, but you stumbled as you ran and fell flat on your face, the speed at which you fell making you hit the ground hard. Your arms and legs flailed as you tried to push yourself back up and continue running, but the shakiness you were suddenly experiencing made it hard to control your limbs.

A heel slammed down on the base of your spine and you yelped as you were forced back down onto the ground. Struggling only made the heel dig in deeper and you screamed as the pain became too much, tears streaming down your face as you were forced into submission. Your whole body shook as you looked at the person standing over you: Hisoka, breathing hard, his eye shut and blood trailing down his cheek and ruining his make-up. Slowly, he brought a hand up to his bleeding eye, wiping the blood with a single finger. He inspected it, like it was something he had never seen before, never experienced. There was a wild look in his uninjured eye, and when he looked back at you he smiled, sharp bloody teeth on full display.

“You have a vicious streak in you,” he breathed, “ if you're willing to gouge out someone's eye just to get away from them.”

“You- you were drinking my blood, you freak,” you spat.

He groaned, licking up his own blood as he looked down at you.

“Darling, you're perfect.”

Suddenly his body was on top of yours, pressing down and holding you in place while he held your wrists above your head. His other hand roughly gripped your hair and pulled your head to the side. His teeth sunk into you again, this time into your neck.

Warm blood was dripping down your neck as he began to suck you dry. Your vision began spinning, and your limbs weren't moving like you wanted them to. When Hisoka pulled away the hand that held your wrists in favor of grabbing your waist, you could barely move them. Your strength was almost completely sapped and you whimpered, never imagining you would die like this.

Hisoka pulled off of you, licking up the blood he had missed before sitting up, virtually straddling you as he re-positioned himself.

“I needed to take a bit more since you injured me, and of course, now you're probably too weak for me to continue like I wanted to. Shame. I liked the idea of fucking you into the forest floor, but I really want you to be awake for it.”

With a good deal of effort, you glanced back up at him.

Two yellow eyes gazed back at you. Two, perfectly fine, yellow eyes that showed no sign of injury save for the lingering smear of blood on his cheek. The eye that you had shoved your thumb into had miraculously healed itself, and that wide smile formed once again when he saw your shock.

“I.... I.. M-my- how?”

“I just drank blood from your neck; you really can't figure it out?” Hisoka laughed, “you aren’t very bright, are you?”

He leaned back down, his nose nuzzling against your cheek. Hisoka sighed against your skin.

“I'm going to keep you like this for a while, let you live out a few more years as a human. You'll want for nothing, and I'll keep you safe. And eventually, I'll make you like me.”

'I don't want to be like you,' you wanted to scream, but you didn't have it in you to say anything. By now you were having a hard time keeping your eyes open. When he finally moved off of you, you made no move to run again. You physically couldn't.

He hauled you up by the back of your shirt, laughing as your head lolled back when he pressed your body against his.

Hisoka's hand on your jaw pulled you back, and his lips met yours in a sloppy kiss, tasting your own blood on his tongue as he shoved it into your slack mouth.

He pulled away, patting your cheek.

“Get some rest now. I expect a lot from you.”

You barely registered his words before unconsciousness finally overtook you.

With a satisfied hum, Hisoka slung you over his shoulder and began to make his journey back to his home deep within the forest. Licking the last of your blood off of his lips, he let out another satisfied sigh.

You were going to keep him entertained for a long time.

#yandere hunter x hunter #yandere #yandere x reader #Hisoka #hisoka x reader #hisoka morow #hisoka morow x reader #reader insert #yandere hxh #halloween #vampire #hxh hisoka

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 3 years

Note

Any opinions on Remus Lupin? I just can't seem to find anything about him in your archive.

Just so you know, I wasn’t really avoiding this ask, it’s more that whenever anyone asks me about a character like this I have to prepare to have a good chunk of time free. Rants take time, you know.

But yes, there are now a number of asks about Remus Lupin and so the people have spoken and I am prepared to answer.

Remus Lupin’s life is a dumpster fire of pain and suffering culminating in him dying in pain and suffering nearly dooming his son Teddy to lead a life of pain and suffering and I can’t believe Remus agreed to have a kid knowing he’d probably pass on lycanthropy. Well, a lot of his decisions towards the end of the series become eyebrow raisingly questionable, but we’ll get into that.

I guess something I should probably address, since I see a lot of fics gloss over it or just never realize it, is that being a werewolf is akin to having leprosy. Whether it’s good or bad I won’t get into, personally I think turning into a blood thirty/uncontrollable wolf that will potentially eat a village probably isn’t a good thing and wizards are right to be at least wary, but it’s important to look at how he’s treated by society.

Lupin is given an opportunity the vast majority in his position are not and is allowed to attend Hogwarts. Dumbledore took a huge risk with this, had anyone found out (had Snape narked), I imagine the board of directors would have immediately sacked him. As this was the age before wolf’s bane (in which Lupin could have taken a potion and simply been ill for a few nights rather than turn into a werewolf), Dumbledore was actively endangering the lives of all the other students by giving Lupin admission. In fact, one student nearly gets eaten/infected. So, Lupin gets very very very lucky that Dumbledore took that risk for him, that Snape was silenced but not killed, and that he only ever had that close call with Snape.

However, on graduation his luck ends. Due to his disease, Lupin is not able to be employed anywhere and when we catch up to him in canon gives strong signs of being homeless. He seems incredibly worn down by life, aged far beyond his yeas (the guy’s gray at thirty something), and is resigned but not shocked when he’s fired from Hogwarts after having nearly eaten three students because he forgot to take his medicine.

But let’s take a side tour to Lupin’s shitty friends. My god, I’ve gone over James and Sirius before, but they are the world’s shittiest friends to everyone but each other. Lupin screams something like the charity friend for these guys, they’re friends with Lupin because it makes them feel generous and cool to be friends with a werewolf. The Animagus thing to keep him company, while cool and requiring a lot of hard work, feels like a weird gimmick if you take ten steps back. They turn into animals so that they can run around with their werewolf friend at night and keep him company? That’s great and all, guys, but it doesn’t exactly make Lupin’s life better.

More damning, everything they seem to do with Lupin is to remind him he has this horrible incurable disease that will see him dead in a gutter. Lupin is Moony to his friends, because he’s a werewolf, har har. I can’t quite recall but I do think there were offhand canon mentions that James and Sirius made a lot of jibes/good natured jokes about Lupin being a werewolf. Lupin is the werewolf friend.

And then we get to Sirius and what he did to Lupin. Sirius, as the world’s worst joke that belongs in a Stephen King novel, actively goads Snape into stumbling on Lupin on the night of a full moon nearly getting him mauled and making Lupin a murderer. This, more than anything else, highlights to me that Sirius never really cared about Lupin. Lupin’s condition, Lupin himself, is reduced to a tool Sirius can use to get what he wants (humiliating and or murdering Severus Snape). Lupin realizes this and the next day I’m sure Sirius and James are going, “Come on, Lupin, it was funny! And it was Snape! It was Snape and funny!” Never mind that Lupin probably would have been executed or else sent to a penal colony had Snape died or been infected. Sirius nearly destroys Lupin’s life, makes him a murderer, for a giggle.

I don’t think Lupin ever really gets over that.

We see in canon that, at least by Harry’s third year, he has no doubt in his mind that Sirius betrayed Lily and James. Fics often make a gradiose show of Lupin having to apologize for doubting Sirius, BUT WHY SHOULD HE?! Given what Sirius did to Lupin with Snape, given Sirius’ complete lack of empathy afterwards, if I was Lupin and this horrible thing had happened with Lily and James I might be surprised but in retrospect I’d go “Yeah, there were signs”. Of course, this makes things a little awkward when Sirius turned out to be innocent, but I hardly blame Lupin for believing it was Sirius.

Which gets me into Sirius/Remus, Wolfstar, or whatever terrible thing we’re calling it today. I get that fandom loves to warp Remus and Sirius into Harry’s cool uncles (guys, neither of them were this, I’ve been over Sirius but I’ll get to Remus) but it’d be the most toxic mess I’ve ever heard of. Given their history, given the pit of depression Remus is in in canon, given the sheer crazy of Sirius when he gets out of Azkaban: it’d be a cesspit of terribleness of Nabokovian levels.

Right, yes, so why Remus isn’t Harry’s cool uncle: Remus has no interest in being Harry’s cool uncle. If you go back and actually read “Prisoner of Azkaban”, rather than watch the film, Lupin is very very very hands off with Harry. Harry asks if Remus knew Sirius Black/his parents and Lupin gives a very vague non-committal response, Harry goes to Lupin and asks to be taught the patronus and Lupin agrees to give one very brief lesson, Harry’s the one who seeks out extra attention and rather than Remus. In other words, had it been up to Remus he would have been in and out of Hogwarts without Harry any the wiser. After the reveal, similarly, Remus never really reaches out. He’s always a much more distant figure than Sirius in Harry’s life, never really contacts him the way Sirius does despite not being on the run, and shows up awkwardly to one Christmas at the burrow. He’s not family to Harry, Harry stretches the definition to make him fit, but he’s not really interested in the role.

Instead he marries Tonks in what I can only describe as a complete descent into despair. Yes, feel free to throw stones at me, but guys. He marries this barely legal girl he barely knows, during most of that time period he gets to know her he’s off on the world’s worst mission trying to convince werewolves that the ministry/Dumbledore are great (needless to say, they’re not impressed). He marries her, she gets pregnant within the year while Voldemort takes over the country, and then they both die leaving their likely werewolf son an orphan. As it is, Lupin even starts panicking, realizing that he’s damned his son to a miserable life and that he’s married this girl he barely knows (and Harry, wise and empathetic man of the year, calls Remus a coward for fearing as much. Ah Harry, never change.) Teddy does get lucky in that he doesn’t apparently become a werewolf, though he is still discriminated against because his father is a known one. Lucky you, Teddy, dodged a bullet.

So yeah, that’s Lupin’s miserable life. What a dumpster fire, you poor, miserable, man.

#ask #anon #headcanons #harry potter #remus lupin #remus lupin's life is an endless pit of misery that ends in pointless death and the guarantee of his son's future misery #he's stuck with the marauders as friends because no one else would be friends with him and then they take constant advantage of him #what a life

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yourafms · 3 years

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hi everyone ! i’m kofi , the odd age of 24 , from the est timezone , and prefer either she / her or they / them pronouns ! i’m super excited that i came across this group , as i’ve been itching to play a rich muse for a while and also to play yu jimin ( or karina ! ) once again . i’m so ridiculously attached to youra that this intro may end up getting pretty long , but i promise all the info is necessary . that being said , i won’t keep this part long , and i can’t wait to plot with everyone !

* ( cis woman & she / her ) i thought i saw YU JIMIN walking down 5th avenue , but it was just YOURA KI . you know , the TWENTY ONE year old STUDENT & HEIRESS . they seemed to be feeling IRRITATED about the book announcement , it might be because they ARE expected to be in it . i’ve heard they are WINSOME and can also be QUERULOUS , but the best way to describe them is CRYSTALLINE TEARS STAINING SOFT SATIN , THE INESCAPABLE FEELING OF FAILURE , MELODIOUS LAUGHTER ECHOING IN SILENT PASSAGEWAYS , AND BITTERNESS DRIPPING FROM HER TONGUE LIKE HONEY .

template credit : @gunshzt & yearbook doodle credit : @springdoy !

content warnings : depression , car accident , and injury .

tidbits.

name : youra ki ( ki youra ) . nickname(s) : ra - ra . age + date of birth : 21 + may 26th , 2000 . zodiac : gemini . moral alignment : chaotic neutral . place of birth : pyeongchang - dong , south korea . place of residence : hell’s kitchen , new york . occupation : student and heiress . nationality : korean . ethnicity : korean . height : 5′5″ . language(s) spoken : korean , english , conversational japanese , and elementary french .

details.

from the moment ki ye - eun and ki si - woo discover they’re pregnant ( following what was supposed to be a regular doctor’s appointment ) , the tiny being growing inside of ye - eun was lavished with love and everything that money could buy . with si - woo hailing from the ki family of kg group , known for their success in the entertainment community while ye - eun hails from the park family of pkr group , responsible for south korea’s largest banks . it was only fate that the two crossed paths , and oh how the media loved as their relationship progressed . it was only a matter of time before the couple decided to get married . it was an over - the - top , multi - million dollar wedding that was covered by various media outlets .

it was five years following their wedding that the couple discovered they were pregnant , and were happy to have a baby of their own . deciding to keep the sex of their baby a secret , and it’s when the sweet baby is pressed into ye - eun’s arms that they decide to name her youra . for the first five years of her life , youra lives in a penthouse in the sky with her parents , constantly showered with love and everything she so desired . suddenly , though , when new opportunities arose the family moved to their new home in new york city , specifically , a multi - million dollar townhouse in the upper east side . youra begins school at one of the best schools money could afford , and her parents easily find her some activities to take part in .

for about a month , her parents try out a handful of activities for their daughter ranging from gymnastics to even a painting class , but nothing sticks . it’s not until they enroll her for ballet that youra finally finds something she’s not crying about on the drive back home . ballet truly sticks to their daughter , so it’s no surprise that as she gets older , she becomes serious with her discipline . when she’s ten years old , youra makes her stage debut when she’s cast as clara in the nutcracker . from then on , youra’s star continues to shine brighter and brighter , and her list of leading roles grows longer and longer . she does well academically , despite her busy life as a ballerina , and if you were to take a peek into her bedroom , you’d see that youra had her set on one thing and one thing only : the juilliard school .

attending such a prestigious school was the only thing youra ever wanted in her life , so it’s no surprise that during her senior year it’s the only thing she can think about . after her studies are complete , youra trains for hours on end , often not returning to the family home until late at night . the only event capable of tearing youra away from her pointe shoes and the studio is prom night . it was the one event youra wanted to attend , a last hoorah with her friends before they all went off to chase their own dreams . it’s all fun for the friends , car filled with giggles and singing along to whatever pop song was playing on the radio until it all came crashing down . [ CAR ACCIDENT AND INJURY CW ] all it takes is for a drunken driver to ruin their night , and the last thing youra sees is pair of blinding headlights . when she wakes up , it’s in the hospital with a cast on her right leg . her fears are confirmed when she’s told how bad the damage is , and no amount of tears or begging her parents to get a second opinion to save her from the dread that suddenly takes over . [ END CW ]

[ DEPRESSION CW ] for a full year youra secludes herself . with each day that passes , youra becomes angry and bitter towards her fate , often ignoring her physical therapy sessions and crumbling when she puts on her pointe shoes and is unable to do as she once was . for that year , youra struggles with the loss of the love she once for ballet , walls suddenly stripped bare of the posters that once lined them and moving the vast array of costumes out of her closet . [ END CW ] it takes a long time for youra to feel better , and for some of that anger to dissipate , although it still lingers . eventually , youra gets accepted to new york university , where she’s currently in her second year of study . now , youra is in her third year of study , majoring in art and art history . on top of that , she’s working as an intern at the met .

summarized.

youra could be classified as being ‘ bitchy ’ , but in reality , she’s still angry and bitter about the loss of her dream career . she’s been told by numerous professionals that she could never practice ballet again , but she has a tendency of pushing herself to do movements she once could do with ease , and that doesn’t always end well for her .

since the loss of her career , youra finds comfort in the material things . more often than not , she simply buys things to have them , not out of necessity . her purchases remain in their boxes and bags shoved in a corner somewhere , and they only get put away when her housekeeper comes by during the week . it wouldn’t be surprising if mostly everything in her closet still has tags on them .

has a habit of touching her hair , even when there’s nothing wrong with it . she chops it up to needing something to do with her hands , but it’s more of a nervous tick .

currently lives in a too big three - bedroom apartment in hell’s kitchen sans roommate . outside of the main bedroom , one of the rooms has been turned into a larger - than - life closet while the smaller of the two is her office . she doesn’t really know why she has an office when most of her work gets done on the floor at the coffee table .

extremely self conscious about the scar on her leg . the one benefit of having $$ is that doctor’s were able to ensure it healed well and there wasn’t too much scarring , but it’s still there and it’s so ugly ( at least to her ) .

since finishing physical therapy , youra keeps herself busy with a regular workout routine , which is mostly yoga and pilates . it’s not a surprise if you catch her at a fancy café picking up a weird looking green juice or sporting her gymshark / athleta gym wear .

#newyorkfm.intro #depression cw #car accident cw #injury cw #i def wrote most of this until 5am this morning CHXBXHCVBCX

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hongyueg · 3 years

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When an Orc Teaches a Math Class

What happens when Bolg's father gets accepted as his high school's new math teacher? https://archiveofourown.org/works/31756993 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Bolg heard the news his father had been accepted as The Middle-earth Academy for Cooperation and Mutual Success’ new math teacher, two things popped into his mind. The first being that he would allow no one to learn the new math teacher was his father and the second being he was going to avoid the math department as much as possible when he arrived at The Middle-earth Academy for Cooperation and Mutual Success (or MACMutS as everybody called it) in the Fall for his second year of high school.

“I can’t believe it!” Azog, Bolg’s father, exclaimed in Orkish as he pointed at his computer screen (and, yes, Orcs did have internet) for the seventeenth time.

Bolg, who sat at the kitchen table, nodded. He stared through the entrance of their home at the mountains in the distance. The ridges’ dark colors were comforting like the soup his father made during the Winter months. All the Orcs in their commune always jostled over to their dwelling as soon as they smelled the aroma of Azog’s signature dish seeping out of the little hut. With his dad now working at MACMutS full-time, Bolg wondered how their comrades would fare without him.

“This is wonderful,” Azog babbled on. “I’m finally going to meet new people, make connections, and see the world!”

~~~

A month and eleven days later, Azog and Bolg were off to see the world, or rather off to travel by train for eight hours and seven minutes to get to Gondor from Gundabad. After a little hassle at the train station to get a taxi to Minas Tirith (the problem was that Orcs didn’t have a system based on currency, so it was a bit hard to convince a Human driver to take them for free. Azog eventually just gave the Human his phone number and promised to do car maintenance for no charge at any time. Bolg was a bit skeptical how this could happen since Azog didn’t own any equipment to do car repairs, but the driver accepted the deal, so Bolg stayed silent), they arrived just outside the school’s main gates.

“How did you get here last time?” Azog huffed as he pulled the last of the luggage out of the taxi and waved the driver goodbye. Azog had brought an extra luggage bag just for his cooking ingredients to his son’s disapproval.

Bolg scratched his pale bald head. He didn’t want to admit he had relied on a Dwarvish prince he had met on the train to pay for his fare. “Uh, I just gave the driver the rest of the snacks you had packed me.”

“This will need to change,” Azog declared. “I will speak to the administration and make sure they give Orc students a pass to get free taxi rides. This school is supposed to be the symbol of acceptance and how can it live up to that ideal when it’s a financial struggle for some of their students to even get here.”

Bolg had stopped listening to his father as he noticed a few other students, non-Orcs who were probably First Years, gaping in their direction. He could somewhat understand their astonishment. Orcs only left their secluded communities for political or educational reasons and it had been over three hundred years since any major force of Orcs had participated in the continent’s wars. Still, Orcs weren’t that rare. If anything, they were much more numerous than Elves. Maybe they come from rural communities. Wait, why am I making excuses for them? They shouldn’t be staring . He glared at them and they hastily turned their gazes away.

“Well, Bolg, I’ll let you go to your dorm room. It’s a shame that you aren’t in any of my classes, but I will certainly see you around!”

As he trudged away from his father, Bolg prayed they would never cross paths inside the school.

~~~

“Bolg, what do you think of the new math teacher?” Rosie Cotton, a Hobbit in his year and one of his new dorm hallmates, asked as they headed off to the cafeteria together. The height difference was considerable between the two of them and Bolg had to bend down to hear her. The good thing was Rosie usually just chattered on without waiting for Bolg to reply, so if he missed a few words here and there, it was rarely an issue.

Bolg squinted his eyes against the late Summer sun, which was still bright despite the fact it was nearly evening. Orc eyes aren’t meant for this much luminosity. A pang of homesickness shot through him as he missed the cool, dark mountains around Gundabad. “Yeah, I think it’s great the school is hiring an Orc to be on their faculty.” He felt appreciative that Orcs didn’t have last names. No one had to know that Azog was his father and he preferred not to answer questions about how Orcs were birthed.

“Me, too! The school has been pretty good about having a diverse set of teachers and administrators, so it’s about time they hired an Orc. Ooh, I heard from Fredegar Bolger…” And Rosie rambled on until they arrived at the dining commons and went their separate ways.

After Bolg had picked up a steaming bowl of rabbit soup, he found his way over to his friends. It had been a couple months since he had spoken to any of them. While he did have internet back home, the connection wasn’t strong enough for video chatting.

“Bolg,” Gothmog cried, slapping his fat peach-colored hand against Bolg’s back as Bolg slid down on the bench beside the Mordorian Orc. “Good to see you. I was worried that you were never going to show up.”

“What, Gothmog? I was just finishing unpacking.” Bolg glanced at the other people at the table. There was Yazneg, an Orc from Moria, Shagrat, a Black Uruk from Cirith Ungol, and three dwarves from the Lonely Mountain who were all related and named Bifur, Bofur, and Bumbur. Off at the edge of the table was their year’s loner, a Human named Aragorn. Rumor had it that Aragorn had been raised by Elves, but had been kicked out for undisclosed reasons. He currently lived as a nomad among the Rangers of the North. The theories for why the Elves supposedly shunned Aragorn were vast and Bolg, despite having sat at the same dining table as the boy everyday of the last school year, still had no knowledge of Aragorn’s true history.

Bolg only half-listened to his friends as he slurped his stew. Shagrat complained about the creepy giant spider that lived next to his commune’s settlement. The dwarfs discussed how the mining expenditures in the East were progressing. Not like the Orcs really cared as money meant little to them.

“Y’know that new math teacher?” Yazneg’s voice jolted through his ears. Bolg spit his stew back into his bowl.

The others, even Aragorn, stared at Bolg.

“You okay, buddy?” Bofur asked, his dark brown eyes brimming with worry.

Bolg took a steady breath and placed his bowl back down onto the table with a soft clink. “Y-yes. Um, what were you saying about the new math teacher, Yazneg?”

Yazneg frowned, but carried on. “I was just gonna say that when I mentioned his name to my commune, they said that he was originally from Moria, but moved to Gundabad when he was young. I just found it kinda strange. For you non-Orcs, it’s rare that one of us leaves the place where we’re from. Bolg, you’re from Gundabad. Do you know anything about Azog?”

Once again, all eyes were on him. Bolg chewed his lip. “Uh, I don’t think so.”

Everyone continued to peer at him until Gothmog broke the silence by bragging about a difficult wrestling tournament he had won over the Summer.

Bolg’s secret was safe.

~~~

At least that’s what he had thought. They had all finished eating and saying their goodbyes. Bolg had been heading over to catch up with Rosie who was exiting the dining hall by herself when he felt a firm hand grasp his wrist.

Tense, he twisted around to see Aragorn looking up at him with narrowed eyes. Bolg trembled and had to remind himself that he was a Gundabad Orc and Gundabad Orcs weren’t scared of anything. “Why didn’t you tell them that Azog is your father?” Aragorn asked in a low voice.

Bolg glanced around him to make sure there were no onlookers. Fortunately, most other students were too occupied catching up with their friends and eating to notice Bolg and Aragorn. “I-I...How did you know?”

Aragorn shrugged. “I’ve heard about your father before. As Yazneg says, it’s rare for an Orc to leave their commune.”

“You Rangers spy on us?”

“You’re not answering my question.” Aragorn released Bolg’s wrist.

Bolg rubbed it. Aragorn had been gripping his wrist tight. “Do I have to? You never tell anyone your history, so why should I tell you mine?”

The Human sighed. “Fair point. Okay, keep your secrets to yourself, but don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone else.” With that, Aragorn strode away.

~~~

Why did Bolg want to keep his father’s identity a secret? Aragorn’s question rattled Bolg’s brain for the rest of the night. Luckily, if his roommate Faramir noticed, he didn’t say anything as they both prepared for bed.

Bolg lay on his mattress, staring at the darkness glittering around him. He had chosen the bed farthest from the window because light and Orcs didn’t exactly mix, but the usual comfort gloom gave him wasn’t there.

He turned onto his side again, the frame creaking underneath him as he moved.

“Hey, Bolg, are you alright?” On the other side of the room, the lamp flicked on, spreading glaring light across the open space.

Bolg sat up and twisted around to see Faramir peering at him. The young Human’s long dark hair was a bit tussled from lying down and his gray eyes appeared concerned. Bolg didn’t know much about his roommate beyond the fact he was the Gondorian steward’s son. He had thought it was a bit strange that Faramir had chosen to stay on campus when he lived not too far away in a palace, but decided he wasn’t in a place to question a noble’s decision.

“Yeah, I-I’m fine,” Bolg stammered.

“Just wanted to make sure since you’ve moved around at least five times now.”

Nine, Bolg thought to himself. “Yeah, everything’s good. I’m just stressing about something stupid. Not something anybody would care to listen to.”

“Try me. I’ve been told I’m a good listener.” The Human gave a little smile.

Bolg had never talked to anybody about his feelings before. It wasn’t something accepted in Orkish culture. If you had an issue, you just complained about the person closest in proximity to you and then wrestled with them until you felt better. Bolg didn’t feel like wrestling with Faramir. “Um, well, it’s about a certain someone. I don’t want anyone knowing about my, uh, connection to them because it’s just so embarrassing and he’s just so embarrassing and he doesn’t exactly fit certain standards and I think everybody would think I’m weird for being connected to him and then it...I would be a mess…”

Bolg stared at the ground. He was so glad that Orcs didn’t blush or he would be bright red right now.

“You have a crush on someone?” Faramir asked, his eyebrows raised. “It’s fine if you do. Feeling embarrassed about crushes is normal and you never know, maybe he likes you back. If you want help reaching out to him, whoever he is, I can help out-”

“No,” Bolg interjected. Another wave of gratefulness for Orcs’ inability to blush sparked through him. “It’s not a crush. It’s my...father.” Getting that last word out felt like trying to push Mount Gundabad over a few inches.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Bolg turned his attention to a tiny moth fluttering by Faramir’s lamp. “He’s the new math teacher.”

“Azog? Oh, I have him.”

“I mean, he’s energetic and strong and cares a lot about education, but he’s a bit bizarre in terms of Orkish culture. He wants to explore the world and meet new people and...he has a kid.”

“Is having a kid a bad thing? Sorry, I don’t know much about Orkish culture.” Faramir gazed at the floor.

“Orcs don’t really have families. We’re kind of born the size of adults and just integrated into our communes immediately. I mean, we still mature over time like other species do, but we don’t have parents. The fact my dad decided to raise me on his own is strange and we keep it a secret in our commune to avoid being shamed by other Orcs.”

“Born the size of adults,” Faramir murmured.

“Don’t think about it too much.” Bolg rubbed his head. “Sorry to bother you with this. I should have kept it to myself.”

The Human glanced up at Bolg. “No, no. It’s alright. How can I support you?”

Bolg blinked at Faramir. “Do you think I should tell my friends?”

Faramir sighed. “It’s up to you to do what you think is best, but if they’re good friends, then I’m sure they’ll support you.”

~~~

Bolg prayed Faramir was right as he sat down at the dining table the next morning. He had arrived at the cafeteria on the earlier side, hoping that the quieter atmosphere would calm his nerves before he spoke to his friends.

“Bolg, you’re early!” A voice cried out behind him in heavily accented Orkish.

Bolg twisted around to see Gothmog striding toward him. They rarely spoke Orkish to one another since the Gundabad and Mordorian dialects were, for the most, mutually unintelligible.

“Yeah,” Bolg replied in Common Speech. He fiddled with the fork he was using to eat his breakfast patties.

Gothmog took a seat beside him. “The cooks are trying out this new soup. Apparently they got the recipe from the new math teacher. He even donated his ingredients to them. It’s a Winter soup, but technically can be made year-round.”

Sure enough, the distinct aroma of his father’s signature dish swarmed Bolg’s senses.

“Is that a tear? Orcs don’t cry, silly.”

Bolg turned away from his friend. More tears wracked though his body and hiccups escaped through his mouth. His stomach burned inside of him and he craved to crawl into a nice, dark hole.

Gothmog began slapping his back. “Uh, Bolg? You okay? Are you allergic to the soup? Do you want to wrestle?”

A chorus of footsteps sounded behind Bolg. “What’s going on?” Came Bofur’s excited voice. Even more tears gushed from Bolg’s eyelids.

“Dunno,” He heard Yaznag say.

“I’ve never seen an Orc act like that,” blurted Shagrat. “Maybe he needs a good chokehold.”

“I don’t think that will help him,” Aragorn muttered.

Bolg shoved his platter of food away and pushed his face against the table's hard surface. Gothmog continued to clobber his back.

“Hey, Bolg, what’s going on? Are you alright?” Rosie’s breath tickled his arm. He hadn’t even heard her step by.

“Should we get a teacher?” Bumbur asked.

“Mister Azog, over here!” Bofur shouted. Bolg could hear what was most likely Bifur, Bofur’s mute cousin, jumping up and down to wave over the educator.

Heavy footsteps clomped in Bolg’s direction. “Hey, son, what’s going on?” Azog asked in Orkish.

“Wait, Mister Azog is your father?” Yazneg asked in Common Speech.

“Orcs don’t have fathers, silly,” Gothmog said in between wacks.

Strength surged through Bolg’s body and he sat up. Taking a deep breath, he wiped away his tears. With a single hand, he knocked Gothmog over onto the ground. Rosie, Bofur, and Bumbur all gasped. “It’s true,” Bolg said. He peered at his father who stood by the other side of the table. “The new math teacher is my father.”

#LOTR fanfic #High school AU #LOTR High School AU #orcs #bolg and azog #bolg #azog #the Hobbit #the Hobbit movies #aragorn #faramir #fanfiction #silly

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concussed-to-pieces · 3 years

Text

The Mettle Of A Man; Part Fifteen

Fandom: Fallout (4)

Pairing: Eventual Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: Enjoy!

Part One: ArcJet

Part Two: The Prydwen

Part Three: Orders

Part Four: Finding Brandis

Part Five: Weston Water And Oberland

Part Six: Meeting Preston And Matthew

Part Seven: Radstag And Radstorm

Part Eight: The Return To Sanctuary Hills

Part Nine: Domestic Ruminations

Part Ten: Institutionalized

Part Eleven: Two Weeks, Three Days

Part Twelve: Haylen’s Warning And The Glowing Sea

Part Thirteen: Under Fire

Part Fourteen: Dichotomy

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains allusions to torture and prolonged, vivid depictions of assault. Stay safe!]

"Call tags?" The scribe droned, not even looking up from the terminal.

Danse only hesitated for a second. "D, N, dash, four zero seven P."

The scribe punched in the letters and numbers, and Danse saw the young man visibly jerk in surprise. Rheumy brown eyes stared up at the towering suit of X-01 armor and the scribe's voice squeaked when he hissed, " Danse? "

The armored man nodded.

"Are you insane?! Danse--er, Paladin Danse, the elder has been on the warpath ever since you went...sir, he says you're a synth, a traitor to the Brotherhood. You're supposed to be dead! I knew there was something fishy about those reports!" The scribe whispered shakily. He looked incredibly nervous. "Most of us think he's off his rocker, but you try finding a soldier with the balls to tell him that point-blank!"

"It's comforting that you all have such faith in me." Danse said, meaning every word. "I'm afraid the announcement of my death was a bit...premature."

The scribe blinked. "Sir, after everything that...the amount of us that would stand by you through anything is the vast majority, I promise. Elder Maxson has locked up Paladin Brandis and-"

"Tell me he hasn't harmed Brandis." Danse cut him off, relieved when the scribe shook his head hastily.

"I think even the elder knows better than to assault one of the most beloved officers in our chapter." The scribe exhaled a long breath, then looked back up at Danse. "Sir, you should know that...well, it may be a bit disappointing to hear, but even if you are a synth, we're still with you, sir." The scribe gave him a salute.

Danse's eyes pricked with tears. He couldn't believe that he had the power to inspire such unwavering loyalty. "At ease, soldier. With any luck, this will be a diplomatic engagement. I'll take Knight Vega and be on my way."

"I...I am unsure if it will be so simple." The scribe admitted. "Ex-Knight Vega has also been confined to the brig since you went AWOL."

" Ex -knight?"

"Maxson stripped of her rank, sir. Accused her of conspiring against the Brotherhood. On her end, she maintains her innocence." The scribe shrugged. "I don't understand why he doesn't just exile her or have her stand trial, but he's been dragging his feet the whole-"

" Bait ." Danse realized. "He's been waiting for me to come back for her, of course . She's our only way into the Institute. Either that or he just wants the satisfaction of killing me himself." He moved past the checkpoint without another word, leaving the scribe to sputter. Danse hoped he wasn't being too self-absorbed when he surmised that the report of his 'death' was no doubt being utilized as a thumbscrew on Elizabeth. Maxson obviously needed a confession; hell, he might even suspect Vega of being the one that tipped Danse off in the first place.

No one paid him much mind as he strode across the compound. Though he did intercept a few curious glances, Danse chalked them up to the distinctive armor he was wearing instead of outright suspicion.

"Where is the elder?" He gruffed at a crowd of aspirants, counting on the staticky speakers of his helmet to disguise his voice. One of them grimaced.

"In a mood." She joked, the group of aspirants nodding and laughing amongst themselves. "But if you mean location, he's been hanging around the build site a lot. Watching the progress on Big Lib, you know."

Danse inclined his head and turned on his heel, making a beeline for the previously-mentioned location while he guiltily recalled the time that he had threatened Vega with an upbraiding for her own quips about Maxson. As he thundered back across the courtyard, he could hear the muttering start up. People were beginning to notice him. His window of opportunity was shrinking; he needed to find Maxson fast . Danse picked up his pace, half-jogging.

Catching sight of Maxson at the very top of Prime's gantry made Danse feel minute, an insignificant David at the feet of a giant. He swallowed hard, shaking off the unsettling sensation and cueing up his helmet's speakers.

At the whine of feedback, Ingram glanced up from her console beneath the shelter across the dusty tarmac. "Hey!" She said sharply. "Whoever you are, you don't have clearance to-"

" Elder Maxson! " Danse roared, ignoring the red-headed proctor in favor of tilting his whole body back to project his voice upwards. " You know why I'm here! "

" Abomination! " Maxson shouted, sounding almost gleeful . He bolted for the lift, as if he expected Danse to flee. The paladin stood his ground though, patiently waiting for the elder to arrive at the lower level.

"Danse? You…" Ingram trailed off, scrambling across the square. "Is it really you in there, Danse?"

"Yes, Proctor."

There was so much more he wanted to say, so much more to explain , but Maxson's arrival on the ground effectively cut off Danse's conversation. "I knew you would return, you traitor ." He asserted smugly as he marched over to Danse. "How kind of you to give me the privilege of ending you myself ."

Danse held up his hands peaceably. "I am unarmed, Maxson. I'm not here for a fight. I am simply here to request the amicable release of...of General Vega." He used the Minutemen title on a whim, watching Arthur's nostrils flare in irritation.

"Oh General Vega , is it? The Minutemen send a machine to do their dirty work? Or have you already infiltrated their ranks with more of your kind?" Maxson spat.

Danse shook his head. "This may come as a shock to you, Elder Maxson, but I had no idea I was a synth." He heard Ingram gasp behind him. Even Maxson looked momentarily startled at his admission and Danse seized the opening to reason, "through the entirety of my career I've done nothing to betray your trust, Arthur. And I never will. Please," Danse implored, "we need General Vega if we hope to eradicate the Institute."

"You expect me to believe that you wish to eradicate the Institute? You were born of it!" Arthur spat venomously. "You even standing here is an affront to nature, you scum . The Brotherhood does not negotiate with-"

"Elder Maxson, wait!" Ingram interrupted him sharply. "He's telling the truth. Vega is instrumental to gaining entry to the Institute. Our whole reason for being in the Commonwealth is to destroy the Institute. If we lose this chance-"

"I will not be spoken down to by my own troops, Proctor!" Maxson raged.

"Arthur, listen to me . You and Danse having a pissing match should be the least of our concerns." Ingram raised an eyebrow. "If he meant us harm, I feel like he would have come with a battalion or two. Danse might be a little dense , but he's never lacked battlefield intelligence."

"This thing isn't Danse, so stop referring to it as such!"

"Until proven otherwise, yes, he is . His DNA matched that Institute crap. It's him, Maxson. It's always been him. Sure, you might find it easier to think that the Institute grabbed the real Danse while he was out and about, but I don't think he would be reported as a missing asset if he was supposed to be here." Proctor Ingram theorized as she crossed her arms, her armor frame creaking.

"Just give me Elizabeth, Maxson." Danse pleaded. "This isn't a fight you want."

"Oh, on the contrary. This is the fight I want." Maxson seethed. "A chance to prove Brotherhood superiority once and for all! We will settle this as it is written in the Litany!"

"You sincerely wish to have a live-fire trial?" Danse asked incredulously, "a Litany trial, Arthur? As I recall, you stated before that you were above such practices."

"We live in unprecedented times, traitor." Maxson drew himself up to his full height. "My authority has been brought into question again and again. It seems only right that I battle my chief dissenter."

Danse was at a loss for words. Maxson's behavior was so irrational, he was almost tempted to consider whether the elder himself had been replaced by a synth. But no, voicing that fear would no doubt send Maxson into an even worse froth.

"When I defeat you, it will finally affirm the truth of the Brotherhood: that we were meant to stand tall atop the corpses of abominations, meant to triumph! " Maxson's eyes were wild as he turned to Ingram. "Proctor, you will bear witness to our Litany agreement. And now, abomination , issue your challenge." The elder demanded.

"Arthur-"

" Issue it or be slagged where you stand! " Maxson screamed, spittle flying from his mouth.

Danse had never personally engaged in a Litany trial. His memory of the terminology was hazy at best, but he still made an attempt. "As a Brotherhood of Steel paladin," he began haltingly, saluting and then extending his hand to Maxson. "I am issuing a formal challenge against your authority as elder of this chapter. Through your actions and your deeds, you have proved yourself unfit to lead in my eyes. We will engage in combat under your terms, and should I emerge victorious, I ask that you relinquish General Vega to me."

"And when I emerge victorious, I will kill you." Maxson stated confidently.

"So be it." Danse knew he had very little agency in this matter. Maxson wanted to fight him, and Maxson always got his way. "Your terms, Elder?"

"No weapons or armor. We fight with nothing but the skills we possess. The first one pushed out of the circle loses." Maxson smirked. "You might be a synth, but a bullet in your head puts you down just as easily as any feral."

"You give me your word as Elder that you will turn Vega over to the custody of the Minutemen if I win?" Danse insisted, his heart slamming in his chest. Oh God, he would have to fight Maxson. Worse still, he would have to beat him. Arthur's prowess in combat was almost fabled , that story about the deathclaw part of this chapter's mythos.

"I will give you nothing, creature , and it will be far more than you deserve. But certainly, if you manage to beat me, I'll see to it that your co-conspirator is relinquished to your care." Maxson sneered. "Proctor, send out the announcement that we will have entertainment shortly."

"Sure thing, Elder." Ingram muttered, sidestepping away as Danse removed his helmet.

"I want everyone down here and watching, Ingram!" Arthur called as she departed. "Make sure that traitor Vega is escorted to the combat area." He then chuckled in a self-satisfied manner, no doubt taking note of Danse's stern expression. "Oh don't worry, synth . We showed your precious general all the courtesies that the Brotherhood has to offer while we interrogated her."

Danse knew that Arthur trying to rile him up was technically a good sign. It meant that the other man was attempting to disperse some of his own nerves. However, it was difficult for him to capitalize upon with the worry of Vega possibly being injured getting added onto the pile of Danse's concerns. The growl erupted from him unintentionally, burring in his chest like a hacksaw. "Maxson, if you-"

"Do not speak to me, freak ." Arthur hissed.

Danse stewed as a crowd began to form. At least now they would have an audience. Hundreds of eyes watching his every move, but also watching Maxson's. Danse hoped that the scribe at the gate hadn't just been spouting optimistic nonsense.

The paladin emerged from his armor, standing at attention beside the frame as a vertibird whirred by overhead, descending from the Prydwen. Upon their first sight of him, the troops began talking amongst themselves. Danse reasoned that it must be quite the shock for most of them, to see him alive and well.

Please be alright, Vega , the paladin begged mentally. Please , Elizabeth .

He heard her coming long before he saw her, watching the crowd part for a lone knight in power armor. "You're a fuckin' piezashet , y'know that? Just a fuckin' asshole! " Backhand roared, struggling and straining against the iron grip of the knight that was dragging her along. "Let me go , y' fuckin' cockass'n sunuva' fuck! "

Danse blinked, a bit impressed with the vitriol the general was spitting considering her appearance. She looked like a stretch of bad road, gaunt, both of her eyes ringed yellow-green from faded bruising and her glasses absent. The whole left side of her face bore the distinct grate marks of the Prydwen's catwalks, indicating that she had been slammed against the floor. Her Vault suit was in shambles, half-ribboned and hanging off of her shoulder at a rakish angle, and her hair was a tangled, greasy mess.

Danse catalogued it all and swiftly tucked it away for later. Compartmentalize . She's alive and ambulatory. Priority is Maxson , he instructed himself sternly. Focus . You can't afford to be distracted right now. You face the elder of the Brotherhood of Steel .

All of that flew out the window the moment he heard Elizabeth's voice crack. "D... Danse? " She asked tremulously, "Danse, you're alive? "

Danse nodded, not looking at her. "For better or for worse, I am."

"I…" Backhand paused. "What's going on, Danse? I-I thought that...I thought you were…"

Her obvious distress gave Danse an odd rush of guilty comfort. She would have missed him. Had she mourned him when she thought he was dead?

To hell with it .

Danse turned to Elizabeth, carefully tipped her chin up and pressed a corner of the bandanna around his neck to her lips. "For luck." He murmured with a thin smile, cupping the right side of her face so he didn't hurt her. She just stared up at him, those eyes bright with pent-up emotions. The knight securing her coughed awkwardly and Danse stepped back, feeling Vega's gaze on him even as he moved to face Maxson.

Ingram cleared her throat and announced above the rising hubbub, "this is a Litany trial! The conditions are no weapons or armor, strictly empty-handed combat. If Paladin Danse manages to remove our elder from the circle, the Brotherhood has agreed to release the former Knight Vega into Minutemen custody. If our elder removes the paladin from the circle, Paladin Danse has agreed to allow the elder to pass swift judgement upon him."

"Say it how he said it, Proctor!" Danse barked, his deep voice carrying well. "He plans to kill me if he wins, don't shy away from it!" He heard Vega swear before the crowd of knights, aspirants and squires around him voiced their mixture of dismay and apprehension. "Elder Maxson has deemed me a threat to the Brotherhood and has forced my hand. So now we engage in a combat trial as it is written in the Litany."

"Trying to turn my troops against me, abomination?" Maxson huffed as he discarded his heavy battle coat and began rolling up his sleeves. "I can't say I'm surprised, but I am disappointed. I had hoped you would meet your end with some shred of dignity."

Danse shrugged, Backhand's lucky bandanna brushing his chin when he raised his head. "You haven't won yet, Maxson." He reminded the younger man with a sad smile.

Arthur lunged at him suddenly, dust flying with the speed of his approach. Danse barely managed to sidestep, latching on to Arthur's wrist and shoulder. The paladin used the other man's momentum against him, redirecting him around his body and kicking his legs out from beneath him.

"Are we beginning now, Arthur?" He asked sharply, that tactical portion of his brain considering the merits of stomping down on Maxson's groin with all his might.

But no, no, he couldn't--Maxson was the elder -

Arthur flailed on the ground, his face red with fury as he clawed at Danse's hands on him. The paladin released him and stepped back, not overly eager to stay within striking distance of the formidable elder. Unfortunately, Maxson didn't leave him much of a choice in the matter. The younger man darted forward again, too low for Danse to redirect him. The paladin took the brunt of Arthur's shoulder to his midsection, gasping out a pained breath even as he tried to brace his footing.

Arthur's shoulder drove deeper into his stomach and the younger man grappled Danse's legs, heaving him backwards off the ground . Danse frantically grabbed at Maxson's back before the younger man pinned him bodily, the two of them hitting the gravel with a bone-jarring impact.

Danse still hadn't been able to catch his breath and he barely got his arms up in time as Arthur cocked back for his first punch.

Maxson tended to machine-gun when it came to his blows, pummeling his target to a pulp within the first flurry. Danse had watched him fight enough to know that this was possibly the worst position for him to be in. Here, Maxson could just rain attacks down onto him until his damn arms broke, beat him into submission without even having to get him outside the boundaries. "You will die. In the dirt . Like the dog you are!" Maxson screamed as he struck Danse.

He's the elder. He's the elder. But...

Danse gritted his teeth. No . If Maxson was doing to kill him, he was going to work for it. Danse wouldn't hand him his fragile existence on a silver platter. Not anymore. Never again . Every assault, every misguided order, every time his admiration or willingness to help had been taken advantage of…

Danse sucked in a breath and shoved Maxson in the chest with all his might, knocking the other man off of him. " Fuck you Arthur! " He spat, suddenly red-hot angry . He got to his feet and loomed over the elder of the Brotherhood, smoldering with rage.

Maxson seemed confused, like he couldn't believe Danse was actually fighting back . He scrambled back to an upright position, the two of them circling each other much more warily now.

"You should have just laid down and died like a good soldier!" Maxson taunted, feinting a few jabs on the left before he swung in from the right. His fist caught Danse in the jaw, snapping the older man's head to the side as he continued, "should have just let me break you, Danse!"

Danse, reeling from the hit, staggered back a step and dropped to one knee. No, get up . Don't let him do this to you . He forced himself back up, glancing the next punishing blow off his shoulder and then landing a check of his own that sent Maxson sprawling on his back.

"Get up, Arthur!" Danse shouted, his fists clenched. " Get the fuck up and fight me! "

So fast Danse almost missed it, Arthur whipped his combat knife out of his boot sheath and rushed him with it, holding the blade low in an effort to conceal the weapon.

The blade that killed the deathclaw .

The point barely grazed Danse's arm as he flinched back, razor-sharp steel easily parting the flannel and skin beneath it.

He was in trouble now. Maxson unarmed was bad enough, but Maxson using a weapon he was intimately familiar with absolutely spelled certain death for Danse. Never mind that they had agreed on no weapons. Danse doubted anyone was exactly refereeing a Litany trial. As long as they stayed within the circle, he was under the impression that he was on his own.

Arthur slashed wildly at him, no longer bothering for subtlety as he openly attacked Danse with the knife. Maxson had this hideous, leering smirk on his face the whole time; he was playing with his food.

Danse felt like an idiot for even thinking that he had a chance at winning when Maxson buried the blade in his shoulder.

But what else could he do? Die in the dirt , like Arthur had screamed at him?

" You're a cheating sunuvabitch, Arthur! " Vega's voice rang out loud and clear like the crack of a whip. Danse saw her out of the corner of his eye, the woman struggling vainly against the armored vambrace that encircled her waist. " Coward! " She yelled indignantly.

Danse smiled thinly through the pain, gripping Maxson's wrist on the knife with enough force to make Arthur grunt. His free hand clamped down on the crook of Maxson's elbow, keeping the younger man locked in that position. Maxson headbutted him to try and make some space and Danse slammed their heads together harder, baring his teeth and snarling in Arthur's face.

Between the two of them, Arthur would always be smarter and quicker than Danse.

But Danse was stronger . Danse thrived in the trenches and on the front lines. Maxson may have called him a dog as an insult, yet there was truth in his words. Danse was a bulldog , boots on the ground, chewing for the jugular until the day he died. This wasn't his first time fighting for his life against insurmountable odds and he was finally refusing to roll over for Arthur.

Something flashed in Maxson's eyes for a split-second and Danse latched onto it. "You're afraid of me, aren't you Maxson?" He panted, maintaining his death grip as Arthur began to struggle to free himself. "Of what I could do to your leadership, your elder status-"

" Shut the fuck up!" Maxson seethed, the palm of his free hand crashing into Danse's throat. The paladin stumbled back and dropped to the ground, his lungs screaming for air as the blade tore loose. Maxson, instead of just finishing him off, began to pontificate, watching Danse writhe and hack for air in the dirt. "You know Danse, I saw what you had with Cutler and I envied it. I searched for years , trying to find something like it. I failed, naturally. So the only solution was to get Cutler out of the picture. But you were stubborn . You longed for a dead man, entirely ignoring the needs of your leader!" Maxson hissed, grinding the heel of his boot against the wound on Danse's shoulder. "And if I couldn't have you wholly, I would break you."

Danse knew on a technical level that the wound should hurt. His face automatically winced. But all he could focus on was Arthur's words, his confession . The heel of the elder's boot, already sticky with blood, crushed down on the side of Danse's head next.

"Why so quiet now, Danse? Do I behave like a man who fears you, freak? " Maxson mocked him, delivering one last kick before backing away.

Danse laid there in the gravel, bruised, bleeding; dazed not just by pain but by the knowledge that Maxson had sent Cutler away on purpose. Maxson had sent Cutler to his death. Sent Brandis to his death. Sent Danse to his death.

" Well , synth? For being so confident, you are remarkably silent!" Arthur needled. "Where's all that righteous wrath you threatened me with? I wanted a fight! "

Danse noticed dimly that the crowd was entirely still around them. It was eerie, like everyone else had vanished and it was just he and Arthur.

Danse raised his left arm, the whole limb shaking violently, and he curled his fingers to flip Maxson off.

The crowd's judgemental silence dissolved into laughter and rowdy shouts, both for and against the paladin. He vaguely picked up Vega yelling, " Attaboy! "

Arthur sputtered with fury. He leaped at Danse, no doubt enraged enough to slit his throat. All Danse could think to do was hike his knees up, planting them firmly in Maxson's pelvis and then catapulting the smaller man up and over his body. Maxson landed several feet away on his back, giving a pained grunt as the wind was knocked out of him by the impact.

The knife clattered and skidded through the dirt and gravel, out of reach for the moment. Danse floundered to roll over, trying to keep the distance between himself and Arthur while the dust settled. When it did, though, he realized something.

Arthur's entire body was outside the circle.

Danse blinked, eyes wide as he realized that not only did that mean he had won, that meant Arthur had lost. In front of everyone .

" Freak! " Maxson shrieked, staggering back to his feet and pointing an accusatory finger at the wounded paladin. "At least Cutler had the good sense to get himself killed , unlike you and fucking Brandis! " The elder screamed, blood and saliva flying from his mouth. "You two are like goddamn radroaches! "

"Elder Maxson?" Rhys . He sounded so hesitant, so unlike himself. "Sir, did you...did you send our squad out here purposely? "

"It is not your place to question me, Knight! And don't act like Danse didn't tell you as much, I'm certain he wasted no time vilifying me upon your arrival to the Commonwealth!" Maxson spat ruthlessly. "Traitorous liar! "

"I'm afraid the paladin may have been too preoccupied with keeping his squadron alive to convey any personal irritation regarding you , sir." Haylen said dryly. "Perhaps you can fill us in on what we might have missed?"

Maxson, instead of answering, threw himself back at Danse.

…

Danse hit the ground with Maxson on top of him and Backhand screamed something abusive that was extremely unflattering to the elder's lineage.

Arthur grabbed Danse by the collar of his worn shirt and slammed the back of his head against the ground, the elder appearing to snap as he howled with rage and punched Danse again and again and again -

Vega's fists clenched in her binds and she struggled futilely against the knight holding her, willing Danse to fight back, to do something , don't die on me!

Suddenly a huge gauntlet was seizing Maxson by the seat of his pants, tossing the young man off to the side.

"That is enough ." Brandis, Brandis , how had he even gotten there?! Backhand had last seen him in the bowels of the Prydwen as she was being led out from the cell! The elderly paladin stood tall over the two bedraggled men in the dirt, cracking his knuckles in his gauntlets. "What is the meaning of this, Maxson?" He asked furiously, tone sharp through the speakers of his helmet. "You would disgrace trial by combat in such a manner? How dare you! You bring shame upon the Litany!"

"Stay out of my way, you meddling old fool!" Maxson ordered, getting shakily to his feet.

"Or what, you'll beat me to a pulp as well?" Brandis retorted. "You've turned against your troops, Arthur, the men and women you swore to lead with integrity. You've freely admitted to sending soldiers to their deaths because it suited you , not the needs of the Brotherhood. You've brought nothing but disgrace to our chapter, Arthur! Look around you! " Brandis exclaimed, gesturing at the crowd. "You're a tyrant , Maxson! Not one amongst the ranks would stand up to you, not one would shake you back to reality, and those that tried are now lying in the damn dirt ."

"Be quiet! "

"You cannot silence me, Maxson." The old paladin said calmly. "You've tried and failed before."

"What would you have me do, Brandis? He's a synth ."

"Perhaps." Brandis allowed. "But all I see is a man who obeyed your stipulations and threw you out of your circle, Maxson. According to our tenets and the Litany, his requests must be met. Release Vega to his custody."

Maxson snarled futilely. "You will regret crossing me, Brandis!" He warned. "Stand down now! "

"I have no squadron left for you to kill, Elder ." The older paladin scoffed a little. "What will you hold over my head? Retirement?" He tipped his helmet towards the knight who had Vega. "I said, release her ."

The knight who had been holding Backhand let her go with a mumbled apology, and without any hesitation she took off at a dead run for Danse. Her whole body ached from the heavy-handed treatment Maxson had inflicted on her, but in the light of getting Danse back it was an easy burden to bear.

She tumbled to her knees, her hands still bound in front of her as she called his name. He groaned in reply, grimacing when she touched his arm. "Danse, holy shit ." Backhand breathed.

The paladin exhaled a broken laugh, barely opening his eyes. "Did I win?" He asked blearily. "Everything is spinning."

Backhand couldn't help the sob that escaped her as Danse pawed blindly at her bound hands, the young woman opening her mouth to say something.

There was a commotion behind her, Brandis shouting " no Maxson! " and then a gunshot. Backhand froze as a plume of dirt kicked up bare inches from Danse's head, the paladin jerking away from the impact.

She pitched herself forward, bridging Danse's form with her own by propping her weight up on her elbows. "Don't move, Danse." She whispered, "I've got you, okay? If he wants to shoot you he's gonna' have to get through me ."

"Don't try to--Vega, I order you to get out of the way! How dare you defy me!" Maxson struggled against Brandis' attempts to take the service pistol from him, waving the gun wildly in the air. " Traitors! Let the synth meet its fate!"

"Vega, you need to... Elizabeth , he'll shoot you, please -" Danse begged, weakly shoving at her side. "The Brotherhood needs-"

" Fuck the Brotherhood, Danse!" Backhand yelled at him. "If this is how they treat you , someone who's spent his entire career fighting for their cause, then I don't want shit to do with them!"

The report of the service pistol cut through the air once more, and Backhand's body collapsed on top of Danse.

Part Sixteen

#spoilers #fallout 4 #fallout four #paladin danse #paladin danse x sole survivor #Eventual romance #canon-typical violence #paladin danse/sole survivor #paladin danse x f!sole #paladin danse imagine #fallout fandom #fallout fanfic #fo4 companions imagine #fo4 companions #fo4 paladin danse #elder maxson #brotherhood of steel

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kiridune · 3 years

Text

On Hallowed Ground

Sat, Sep. 07, 2002 Miami Herald

By DAVE BARRY (http://davebarry.com/misccol/hallowedground.htm)

On a humid July day in Pennsylvania, hundreds of tourists, as millions have before them, are drifting among the simple gravestones and timeworn monuments of the national cemetery at Gettysburg.

Several thousand soldiers are buried here. A few graves are decorated with flowers, suggesting some of the dead have relatives who still come here. There's a sign at the entrance, reminding people that this is a cemetery. It says: "SILENCE AND RESPECT."

Most of the tourists are being reasonably respectful, for tourists, although many, apparently without noticing, walk on the graves, stand on the bones of the soldiers. Hardly anybody is silent. Perky tour guides are telling well-practiced stories and jokes; parents are yelling at children; children are yelling at each other. A tour group of maybe two dozen teen-agers are paying zero attention to anything but each other, flirting, laughing, wrapped in the happy self-absorbed obliviousness of Teen-agerLand.

A few yards away, gazing somberly toward the teen-agers, is a bust of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address here 139 years ago, when the gentle rolling landscape, now green and manicured, was still raw and battle-scarred, the earth recently soaked with the blood of the 8,000 who died, and the tens of thousands more who were wounded, when two armies, 160,000 men, fought a terrible battle on July 1, 2 and 3 that determined the outcome of the Civil War.

Nobody planned for the battle to happen here. Neither army set out for Gettysburg. But this is where it happened. This is where, out of randomness, out of chance, a thousand variables conspired to bring the two mighty armies together. And so this quiet little town, because it happened to be here, became historic, significant, a symbol, its identity indelibly defined by this one overwhelming event. This is where these soldiers - soldiers from Minnesota, soldiers from Kentucky, soldiers who had never heard of Gettysburg before they came here to die - will lie forever.

This is hallowed ground.

On the same July day, a few hours' drive to the west, near the small Pennsylvania town of Shanksville, Wally Miller, coroner of Somerset County, Pa., walks slowly through the tall grass covering a quiet field, to a place near the edge, just before some woods.

This is the place where, on Sept. 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93, scene of a desperate airborne battle pitting passengers and crew against terrorist hijackers, came hurtling out of the sky, turning upside down and slamming into the earth at more than 500 mph.

That horrendous event transformed this quiet field into a smoking, reeking hell, a nightmare landscape of jet fuel, burning plane debris, scattered human remains.

Now, 10 months later, the field is green again. Peaceful and green.

Except where Flight 93 plunged into the ground. That one place is still barren dirt. That one place has not healed.

"Interesting that the grass won't grow right here," says Miller.

Nobody on Flight 93 was heading for Somerset County that day. The 33 passengers and seven crew were heading from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco. The four hijackers had a different destination in mind, probably Washington, D.C., possibly the White House.

Nobody on the plane meant to come here.

"I doubt that any one of them would ever set foot in Somerset County, except maybe to stop at Howard Johnson's on the turnpike," Miller says. "They have no roots here."

But this is where they are. And this is where they will stay.

No bodies were recovered here, at least not as we normally think of bodies. In the cataclysmic violence of the crash, the people on Flight 93 literally disintegrated. Searchers found fragments of bones, small pieces of flesh, a hand. But no bodies.

In the grisly accounting of a jetliner crash, it comes down to pounds: The people on Flight 93 weighed a total of about 7,500 pounds. Miller supervised an intensive effort to gather their remains, some flung hundreds of yards. In the end, just 600 pounds of remains were collected; of these, 250 pounds could be identified by DNA testing and returned to the families of the passengers and crew.

Forty families, wanting to bury their loved ones. Two hundred fifty pounds of identifiable remains.

"There were people who were getting a skull cap and a tooth in the casket," Miller says. "That was their loved ones."

The rest of the remains, the vast majority, will stay here forever, in this ground.

"For all intents and purposes, they're buried here," Miller says. "This is a cemetery."

This is also hallowed ground.

In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln was essentially trying to answer a question. The question was: How do you honor your heroes? Lincoln's answer was: You can't. No speech you give, no monument you erect, will be worthy of them, of their sacrifice. The best you can do is remember the cause they died for, finish the job they started.

Of course the passengers and crew on Flight 93, when they set out from Newark that morning, had no cause in common. They were people on a plane bound from Newark to San Francisco. Some were going home, some traveling on business, some on vacation.

People on a plane.

Which makes it all the more astonishing, what they did.

You've been on planes. Think how it feels, especially on a morning cross-country flight. You got up early; you're tired; you've been buckled in your seat for a couple of hours, with hours more to go. You're reading, or maybe dozing. You're essentially cargo: There's nowhere you can go, nothing you can do, no role you could possibly play in flying this huge, complex machine. You retreat into your passenger cocoon, passive, trusting your fate to the hands of others, confident that they'll get you down safe, because they always do.

Now imagine what that awful morning was like for the people on Flight 93. Imagine being ripped from your safe little cocoon, discovering that the plane was now controlled by killers, that your life was in their bloody hands. Imagine knowing that there was nobody to help you, except you, and the people, mostly strangers, around you.

Imagine that, and ask yourself: What would you do? Could you do anything? Could you overcome the fear clenching your stomach, the cold, paralyzing terror?

The people on Flight 93 did. With hijackers in control of the plane, with the captain and first officer most likely dead, the people on this plane got on their cell phones, and the plane's Airfones. They reached people on the ground, explained what was happening to them. They expressed their love. They said goodbye.

But they did not give up. As they were saying goodbye, they were gathering information. They learned about the World Trade Center towers. They understood that Flight 93 was on a suicide mission. They figured out what their options were.

Then they organized.

Then they fought back.

In "Among the Heroes," a riveting book about Flight 93, New York Times reporter Jere Longman reports many of the last words spoken to loved ones on the ground by people on the plane. They're not the words of people in shock, people resigned to whatever fate awaits them. They're the words of people planning an attack. Fighters.

Here, for example, are the last words of passenger Honor Elizabeth Wainio to her stepmother: "They're getting ready to break into the cockpit. I have to go. I love you. Goodbye."

Here are flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw's last words to her husband: "We're going to throw water on them and try to take the airplane back over. Phil, everyone's running to first class. I've got to go. Bye."

And of course there are the now-famous words of Todd Beamer, who, after explaining the situation on the plane to an Airfone supervisor in Illinois, turned to somebody near him and said: "You ready? OK, let's roll."

They're getting ready to break into the cockpit.

I've got to go.

Let's roll.

We'll never know exactly what happened next. Some believe that the fighters managed to get into the cockpit, and that, in the ensuing struggle for control, the plane went down. Others believe that the hijackers, trying to knock the fighters off their feet, flew the plane erratically, and in doing so lost control. Inevitably, there is Internet-fueled speculation that the plane was secretly shot down by the U.S. government. (The government denies this.)

But whatever happened, we know two things for sure:

We know that the plane went down before it reached its target - that the hijackers failed to strike a national symbol, a populated area. They failed.

And we know that the people on the plane fought back. On a random day, on a random flight, they found themselves - unwarned, unprepared, unarmed - on the front lines of a vicious new kind of war. And somehow, in the few confusing and terrifying minutes they had, they transformed themselves from people on a plane into soldiers, and they fought back. And that made them heroes, immediately and forever, to a wounded, angry nation, a nation that desperately wanted to fight back.

And now these heroes lie here, in this field where their battle ended. This cemetery. This battlefield. This hallowed ground.

Wally Miller, coroner, has walked this ground hundreds of times. He spent endless hours among those collecting human remains and picking up plane parts. Even now, he walks with his eyes down, looking, looking. Every now and then he reaches down and picks up a tiny piece of plane - a thimble-sized piece of twisted gray metal, a bit of charred plastic, a shard of circuit board, a wire. This is what Flight 93 became: millions of tiny pieces, a vast puzzle that can never be reassembled. Despite the cleanup effort, there are still thousands of plane parts scattered for acres around the crash site, just under the new plant growth, reminders of what happened here.

The site is peaceful; no sound but birds. Miller walks from the bright field into the hemlock woods just beyond the barren spot where Flight 93 slammed into the earth. It's mid-afternoon, but the woods are in permanent dusk, the tall trees allowing only a dim, gloomy light to filter down to the lush green ferns that blanket the ground. The woods look undisturbed, except for bright "X"s painted on the trunks of dozens of hemlocks. The "X"s mark the trees that were scaled by climbers retrieving human remains, flung high and deep into woods by the force of the crash.

Some of the hemlocks, damaged by debris and fire and jet fuel, had to be cut down. These trees were supposed to be trucked away, but Miller, who, as coroner, still controls the crash site, would not allow it. Some of the trees have been ground into mulch; some lie in piles of logs and branches. But they're all still here. Miller won't let them be removed.

"This is a cemetery," he says, again. And he is determined that it will be respected as a cemetery. All of it. Even the trees.

Almost immediately after the battle of Gettysburg, people started coming to see the place where history happened. More than a century later, they're coming still.

Some are pilgrims: For them, Gettysburg is a solemn place, where the suffering and sacrifice of the soldiers still hangs heavy in the air. Some are purely tourists: For them, Gettysburg is another attraction to visit, like the Grand Canyon, or Graceland - famous, but not particularly relevant to their everyday lives. You park, you look, you take a picture, you leave.

I think that most of the visitors to Gettysburg, even today, are some mixture of pilgrim and tourist. But as the battle has receded in time, as the scars of the war have healed, tourism clearly has come to dominate the mixture. Despite the valiant efforts of many to preserve the soul of this place, to explain to the waist-pack hordes why this ground is hallowed, Gettysburg, surrounded by motels and gift shoppes, accessorized by a wax museum and a miniature-golf course, is now much more a tourist attraction than a shrine.

But soldiers are still buried here. And people still come to place flowers on graves. And the sign at the entrance to the cemetery still makes its plea: SILENCE AND RESPECT.

Immediately after Sept. 11, people started coming to see where Flight 93 went down. The site is a little tricky to find, but they found it, and they're coming still, every day, a steady stream of people who want to be near this place. They're not allowed on the site itself, which is fenced off and guarded, so they go to the temporary memorial that has been set up by the side of a two-lane rural road overlooking the crash site, a quarter-mile away.

The memorial - the word seems grandiose, when you see it - is a gravel parking area, two portable toilets, two flagpoles and a fence. The fence was erected to give people a place to hang things. Many visitors leave behind something - a cross, a hat, a medal, a patch, a T-shirt, an angel, a toy airplane, a plaque - symbols, tokens, gifts for the heroes in the ground. There are messages for the heroes, too, thousands of letters, notes, graffiti scrawls, expressing sorrow, and love, and anger, and, most often, gratitude, sometimes in yearbookish prose:

"Thanx 4 everything to the heroes of Flight 93!!"

Visitors read the messages, look at the stuff on the fence, take pictures. But mostly they stare silently across the field, toward the place where Flight 93 went down. They look like people you see at Gettysburg, staring down the sloping field where Pickett's charge was stopped, and the tide of war changed, in a few minutes of unthinkable carnage. There is nothing, really, to see on either field now, but you find it hard to pull your eyes away, knowing, imagining, what happened there.

There will be a permanent memorial for Flight 93. The temporary one is touching in its way, a heartfelt and spontaneous tribute to the heroes. But it's also haphazard, verging on tacky. Everyone agrees that something more dignified is needed. The official wheels are already turning: Congress has begun considering a bill to place the site in federal custody. Eventually land will be acquired; a commission will be appointed; a design will be approved.

Wally Miller frets about the memorial. He worries that, in the push to commemorate this as The Defining Moment In The War Against Terrorism, people will forget that it was also - maybe primarily - a personal tragedy for 40 families. He believes that, whatever is done at the site, there should be a place set aide for the Flight 93 families to grieve in private, away from the public, the tourists, the sightseers, the voyeurs, and what Miller calls "the metal-detector assholes."

Tim Lambert, who owns the woods where many of the remains were found, agrees that the paramount concern has to be the families.

"They are forced to live with this tragedy every day," he says. "The site itself is, for the most part, the final resting place for their loved ones. People need to remember and respect that."

One of the most heartrending quotes in "Among the Heroes" is from Deena Burnett, the widow of Flight 93 passenger Tom Burnett, who is believed to have played an active role in the battle on the plane. Mrs. Burnett is describing what it's like to be the widow of a hero:

"In the beginning, everyone asked, 'Aren't you proud of him? Aren't you happy that he's a hero?' I thought, my goodness, the first thing you have to understand is, I'm just trying to put one foot in front of the other. For my husband to be anyone's hero ... I'd much prefer him to be here with me."

So we need to remember this: The heroes of Flight 93 were people on a plane. Their glory is being paid for, day after day, by grief. Tom Burnett does not belong to the nation. He is, first and foremost, Deena Burnett's husband, and the father of their three daughters. Any effort we make to claim him as ours is an affront to those who loved him, those he loved.

He is not ours.

And yet ...

... and yet he is a hero to us, he and the other people on Flight 93. We want to honor them, just as we want to honor the firefighters, police officers and civilians at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon who risked, and sometimes gave, their lives to try to rescue others. We want to honor them for what they did, and for reminding us that this nation is nowhere near as soft and selfish as we had come to believe.

We want to honor them.

And so in a few years, when grass grows once again over the place where Flight 93 hit the ground, when the "X"s have faded from the hemlocks, there will be a memorial here, an official, permanent memorial to the heroes of Flight 93. It will be dedicated in a somber and dignified ceremony, and people will make speeches. Somebody - bet on it - will quote the Gettysburg Address, the part about giving the last full measure of devotion. The speeches will be moving, but they will also prove Lincoln's point, that the words of the living can add nothing to the deeds of the dead.

Thanx 4 everything to the heroes of Flight 93!!

There will be expressions of condolence to the families, and these, too, will be heartfelt. But they will not take away the grief.

I'd much prefer him to be here with me.

And then the ceremony will end, and the people will go home. And the heroes, the people on the plane, will remain here in the ground of Somerset County.

And years will pass, and more people will come here, and more, people who were not yet born when Flight 93 went down, coming to see this famous place.

Let's hope, for their sake, that the world they live in is less troubled than it is today. Let's hope they've never had to feel anything like the pain of Sept. 11, 2001.

Let's also hope that, when they stand here, they know enough to be silent, to show respect.

Let's hope they understand why this is hallowed ground.

#9/11 #current events #life

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the-autisticats · 4 years

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Who becomes a special education teacher?

There is no singular answer to this question. When I volunteered at a school for autistic and otherwise disabled students, each teacher and aide was different. When I volunteered at an ARC adult daycare center, the staff were equally varied in their treatment of the individuals there. But there were some common threads I noticed across both locations, regardless of how different they were on the surface. And there were common threads that tied the teachers & staff together, too.

For the purposes of this post, I will be discussing my observations about the school, not the ARC adult daycare center. Also, before you continue reading, you should know that this essay will discuss suicidal ideation and sexual actions. Now, let’s continue:

Something very interesting I noticed was that the only white man I ever interacted with was the principal of the school. I’m sure there were a few white male teachers, but I never met any. The people who were with me in the aftercare classroom were all women and/or POC. This demographic data didn’t match my own school, which was only 10 minutes away. My own school had extremely few teachers of color, and had a decent amount of white male teachers. But looking back, I recall that the many of the one-on-one aides for the special education students at my school were people of color.

I’m pointing these things out because usually, jobs that women and/or POC do are systemically undervalued in society. Teaching is still seen as “women’s work,” because it’s associated with caretaking. The association with caretaking gets less intense as kids get older, which is why there are a heck of a lot more male secondary school teachers than there are male elementary school teachers. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (in the US), only 11% of elementary school teachers are male, whereas 36% of secondary school teachers are.

When you look at the stats on special education teachers as a whole, 86.3% are female (meaning that 13.7% are male). Despite being significantly outnumbered, the average salary for a male special education teacher is $53,855, which is $8,393 more than the average female salary of $45,462.

Then, looking at the statistics for one-on-one aides, things get even more stark. Almost 89% of paraprofessionals are female, and the average female classroom aide makes only $19,927 per year, compared to male classroom aides who make $26,453 per year. Referring to the previous paragraph, notice the significant gap between what the teachers are paid, versus what the aides are paid. There are also many more POC aides than POC special education teachers. Only 16.8% of special education teachers are POC, whereas 24.3% of aides are POC. (I did those calculations based on US census bureau data)

Okay, so we’ve discussed the demographics, the pay gaps, and the racial disparities. Keep in mind that the vast majority of people in these jobs are also neurotypical, and that all of the teachers and aides where I volunteered were neurotypical as well. Now, I’m going to discuss the pervasive ableism and problematic attitudes that existed at the school, keeping in mind all of the sociological factors that have contributed to these people feeling that they are not valued in society for the work that they do.

The culture of the school I worked at was what one might expect. The teachers mostly cared about the students, and were pleasant to talk to. But there were some things I noticed that weren’t particularly pleasant or enjoyable:

Most of the time, the teachers and aides talked about the students in the 3rd person, as if they weren’t in the room. Even if the students in question could speak clearly, they were still treated as though they could not contribute any meaningful input to a conversation. The problem was even worse for students who couldn’t speak. They were all referred to in the 3rd person, discussed by staff, and speculated about without any regard for the fact that they probably understood everything that was being said about them. I tried my very best not to engage in this behavior when spoken to (teachers would try to involve me in their conversations about the students), but in order to mask and protect my position as a volunteer, I couldn’t speak up about the issue or do anything to stop it.

Many of the teachers obviously didn’t want to be there, and didn’t like their jobs. There was one teacher in particular, I don’t remember her name, who would even “joke” about committing suicide right after a student did something mildly disruptive. She would vocally express (right in front of the students!) how much she hated her job, hated herself, and hated her life. She was at least 50 years old, and often turned to me (I was only 17 at the time) to vent and rant in distress about how awful everything was and how much she wished for retirement. This was incredibly uncomfortable to me, and probably very damaging to the students, but it was also something I couldn’t really do anything about given my unofficial status at the school.

Students were not given any intellectually stimulating activities to do in the after school program. This was a particular problem for one autistic student named Matt, who I could tell was bored out of his mind. To quell his boredom, he peeled the paper label off of crayons, peeled the name stickers off of other students’ desks, ripped up pieces of construction paper, stole food from the snack bin and shoveled it into his mouth when the teachers weren’t paying close attention, and masturbated in the middle of the classroom. That last part is something nobody had prepared me for when I started volunteering there. In fact, it seems to be something nobody in the special education world talks about at all. The only other person I’ve talked to about it until now is Laurel. And yes, it caught me off guard. But I very easily understood why all of this was happening- Matt was seeking intense sensory input to replace his boredom.

Sometimes his aide gave him picture books to read out loud, which he did. But when he was finished and said “Done!” his aide just told him to read it again. The only times I had seen him truly happy and engaged were the times that he was allowed to play the keyboard. Matt was an amazingly talented musical artist. I was shocked when I first heard him play- not because he’s autistic, but because the composition he was creating was worthy of being played in Carnegie Hall. During the days he had access to the keyboard, his sensory seeking and anxious behaviors significantly decreased. He sang along to the tune of the songs he created (they were extremely catchy), and chewed on a red chewy that was clipped to his shirt. He didn’t bite his hands, rip up his gloves, or ask to “go to the bathroom.”

Yet, he usually wasn’t allowed to use the keyboard. The reason I overheard was that the music teacher was afraid he would break it. And yes, he did have a history of throwing things during meltdowns, which I witnessed. So it was possible that he might try to throw the keyboard, too. But what nobody except me seemed to understand was that his meltdowns only happened on the days when he wasn’t given access to the keyboard. He was calmest when playing it.

These were the ways that each student was failed. They were treated as less than human, as non-thinking and non-understanding. Teachers spoke openly, in front of the students, about how much they hated their jobs. The knowledge and skills of students were severely underestimated. Students like Matt were not provided with real books, real intellectual challenges, or the ability to fully express themselves creatively.

And quite honestly, not all of that was purely a function of ableism. It was also a function of the socioeconomic status of the teachers, and the ways they were unappreciated, undervalued, and underserved by society at large. When these teachers and aides aren’t given proper tools and resources to understand and assist autistic people, they will inevitably fail. When classrooms don’t have enough books, when teachers have to buy their own art supplies, and when there’s only one keyboard in the entire school, the students aren’t going to get their needs met. When the school is understaffed, people are working overtime to pay for their mortgage, and teachers have to stop meltdowns during their lunch breaks, they’re bound to have negative attitudes about their jobs and lives in general.

The solution to this problem is two-fold: start funding the important work of educating and caring for disabled people, and start creating seminars and workshops for these teachers to learn about disability from the perspective of disabled self-advocates, so that they will be best equipped to serve their students’ needs.

I hope that dream becomes a reality someday.

~Eden🐢

#actually autistic #autism #autistic #aba therapy #ableism #autismacceptance #special education #special education teacher

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ejm513 · 3 years

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ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMESTRIS: CHAPTER TWO: WHISPERINGS OF HOPE

Chapter One

AN: HELLO MY LOVELIES! SORRY THIS HAS TAKEN SO LONG. I’VE HAD A LOT HAPPEN IN THE PAST THREE MONTHS THAT I REALLY DON’T WANT TO GET INTO BUT IT’S TAKEN A LOT OUT OF ME. BUT I FINALLY REALLY READY TO PUSH ON SO HERE WE GO!

I ALSO NEVER DO THIS BUT JUST TO BE SAFE AND BECAUSE I HAVE A FEELING I’M GONNA HAVE TO DO THIS MORE THAN ONCE...

TW: FOR TALK OF ABORTION. IF THIS TOPIC MAKES YOU SENSITIVE... DON’T READ I GUESS.

DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING LADIES AND GENTS SO THANK YOU MUCH!!

CHAPTER TWO: WHISPERINGS OF HOPE

Well Ms. Hawkeye it looks like congratulations are in order. You’re pregnant.”

It was funny, Riza decided, how one sentence could throw the entire course of your life in ruin.

There had been many thoughts spiraling through Riza’s head and emotions charging through her heart after she heard those two simple words.

You’re pregnant ….

First there was utter shock.

Then there was debilitating confusion.

After that came a wave of bitter rage that threatened to overtake her very being.

A bitter shock of cold terror quelled that rage before it had a chance to become all consuming.

And the guilt weighed so heavily she feared it would send her crashing below the surface and steal her breath.

It was only when she was alone in the confines of the four walls she called home something resembling happiness began to bloom. It lingered quietly, hiding in some deep place as if it was an unwelcomed guess no matter how hard she tried to shove it away.

Above all else, there was one singular thought that reigned supreme.

Roy.

Once the news had begun to settle in her bones, the picture of his pale face, ebony hair and dark eyes refused to leave her. She was all too aware of the weight this news held… how dangerous it was. Riza had mulled and puzzled over how to break such monumental news-though it had seemed despite her best efforts, her behavior and simple note had spoken more eloquently than she ever could.

Four hours upon hours she had tried to ignore the fear eating at her. It only worsened the ever-present rumbling and stewing in her stomach. At first, she had walked and walked, praying the thin, clean air would clear her senses. Yet when that same comforting breeze started luring her to a place of cold darkness Riza retreated to her four walls. She dove into books and the quiet companionship of Black Hyate to distract herself from the one worry she couldn’t escape;

________________________________________________________________

How would he react?

“You’re…. you’re….”

“Pregnant?” Riza chimed in, her voice quiet and thin. “Yes. Yes I am.”

For a man who claimed to have known what she needed to say, Roy began to spiral.

Riza watched as his eyes grew dangerously wide. They appeared on the verge of flying out of his skull. His tall, broad frame was visibly shaking. She watched calmly as he ran his fingers through is hair. Somehow, and Riza wasn’t sure how, his midnight mane became even more tousled. It only added to the frazzled, frantic expression on his face. His face paled to bone, his jaw falling into a large circle. If she listened closely, she could have heard his lungs stop and his heart speeding into oblivion.

The man looked on the verge of collapsing. One sudden movement or a gentle gust of wind threatened to break him into pieces. Riza sat up straighter and squared her shoulders once more, prepared to put the pieces back together as she always did. Miraculously, whatever force was holding him together was far stronger than she knew. He stood planted to the ground, even though his quaking frame resulted in weak, wobbling knees. His large, stunned eyes staid fixated on Riza’s anxiously guarded features.

A soft, strangled noise spilled from Roy’s gaping mouth as he gawked at the sight before him.

There was no sign of the changes occurring in Riza. The thin, baby pink cotton covering her made it clear there was still a firm body beneath the baggy clothing. Everything about her appearance was completely and utterly normal. It was so normal that the whole notion seemed to be one horrible, twisted joke. His thoughts rebelled against the notion that any form of life-let alone a life he was partially responsible for-was forming in that flat stomach. He was about to open his mouth to question if she was playing some kind of evil prank to watch him squirm.

Before he had a chance to even speak, Riza did something. It was seemingly harmless and innocent, yet her actions were enough to silence Roy’s childish notion.

Riza retained her infamous stoic gaze and still demeanor. The longer Roy gawked her, the tighter her muscles became and the more strained her face grew. As if her body had a mind of its own, Riza’s hands gravitated to her middle once more. Roy’s eyes slowly trailed her movements, his heart racing faster and faster. She held her arms across her stomach. In that instant her stoic demeanor gave way to a quiet, burning protectiveness reserved for very few souls. She seemed oblivious to the change in the way she held herself. She seemed to act on a deep, strange instinct she was not yet fully aware of.

That simple motion and change in her aura was that final gust to finally break the venerated Major General. It was enough to shatter any illusion this was some foolish notion this was all a twisted joke.

Against all rhyme and logic Roy’s eyes grew even bigger as any color that remained on his strong features vanished. The shaking became so violent it forced his knees to buckle, sending him falling to the floor. His adapt hands gripped on to the top of the couch before he had a chance to completely loose his balance. His chest heaved as he took long, ragged breaths. No matter how deep or how long he inhaled his lungs never seemed to have their fill. They screamed for more air that his nerves rejected at any turn. Naturally, this made his already revolving head even lighter and his thoughts even faster.

One simple sentence in one single moment threw the entire course of life into complete and utter wreckage.

His plans for the country…

His plans to reach for the highest prize of them all…

It would never matter that the late Fuhrer Grumman would have plucked Roy and hoisted him to that throne had it not been for a pesky heart attack. It wouldn’t have mattered that his ambitions were laid bare for the world to see. It didn’t matter that the whispers and gossip had been louder than thunder before the man was covered with dirt. As Roy had made his way through the numb days following Grumman’s sudden passing all eyes had been own him, watching and waiting. Throughout the preceding year he had sat patiently and quietly, waiting for the moment that grew further and further away. After years and years of one single man at the helm, there was a thirst among certain groups in parliament to avoid putting another warm body in that cold throne. A charming if naive notion. He had watched as the parliament and its embarrassingly green prime minister stumbled and fumbled, desperately attempting to uphold the vast changes the late Fuhrer had enacted;

Freedom of the press,

Freedom of Speech,

Freedom of Religion

A policy of Peace and Rebuilding

More and more power trickling down from the military into the hands of the people.

There were always those who clung to the days of old, when one man held the destiny of his land and people in the palm of his hand. They continued to fight tooth and nail against change, and against all odds they never won.

There was only one law all seemed unwillingly to budge on; fraternization.

Roy has seen it many times before; an officer charms his young subordinate. It’s innocent at first, nothing more than little jokes and lightning glances. The looks turn into touching and then the touching turns into lips against lips and then….

The circumstances never mattered. That little look would lead the officer and subordinate to be swept away with all the remains of a shattered career, relationship and life at their feet.

Roy and Riza had been different. Their souls became intertwined in the safety of the shadows, hidden under the minutest of gestures and simplest of words. It was cloaked under code and under far away spots. It was concealed in dark apartments, drowned in laughter and wine.

There was a rush of thrill as they indulged in the electricity that had been humming between their souls for years. It was enthralling to hide under everyone noses as their bonds busted out of the hearts and into something physical and beautiful. They had-so Roy thought-proceeded with the upmost discretion and cautiousness

In spite of themselves and their broken souls, they had managed to create something akin to happiness.

He should have known the laws of the universe would never let a pair with so much blood on their hands and death in their eyes be truly happy.

It only seemed comically natural that their whole lives were about to implode.

“Roy?” Riza said, dropping any pretense of rank and titles of past or present. Her voice was strained and distant, becoming lost within his chaotic thoughts. It did little to break through the armor of shock covering every part of his frame. At first all she received was a bone chilling silence and wild eyes. Then, as if the man had become so tightly wound that standing still was a chore Roy pushed himself up right. The small, barren apartment became filled with boots trampling as he frantically paced back and forth.

“I don’t… I… how did this happen?” He sputtered.

Riza raised her eyebrows, her arms crossing over her chest.

“Roy you are a grown man surely you don’t need me to”

“No no of course I know HOW it happened! But HOW and WHEN?” His hands gripped his hair as his pacing refused to slow or cease. His face was completely manic while he dived deep into his memories and dashed off a few rough calculations.

“It couldn’t have been… no no no but what about?”

Riza could only sigh, her chest filling with tight fear as the man she loved continued to fall apart by the second.

“The doctor said I’m two, maybe three weeks along at the most and due at the beginning or middle of November.” She claimed. As Roy continued to effectively tread the entirety of Riza’s home he gained enough self-control to nod.

“I see. So it was Breda’s birthday party wasn’t it.” He concurred, taking to running his fingers through his hair once again instead of holding on to it for dear life.

“Most likely…. That or the night not long after when we were stuck inside during that freak snowstorm.” Riza conceded, sending out a silent prayer that receiving a piece of concrete information would give his logical, methodical mind something to latch on to. She hoped in turn that simple act would give his soul even an ounce of peace.

He nodded, bringing his fingers to his chin as he always did when deep in thought. His pacing refused to end; his feet as loud as drums. They pounded in her ears, only worsening her already throbbing head. She could see his broad back tensing into one giant knot. Those same shoulders refused to quit their shaking despite the heavy jacket.

The sight sent a sharp, frigid shiver creep up her veins.

There had been one other time, four years before she had seen him fall. In a maze of dimly lit tunnels Riza had watched as Roy had begun to lose himself to flaming anger and scorching revenge. It was only with the barrel of a gun and a vow to end her life once the day was done that wrenched him back from the brink.

Once again, the Major General was in danger of losing himself in her box of an apartment under the rays of a setting sun. Instead of being blinded by red all he could see was the horror of what lied a head, and a life that would never be the same.

Riza felt her heart begin to crack. She automatically shoved the blanket on the floor and rose to her feet, darting to Roy. Her hands reached for his shoulders, to finally force his restless energy to still. Yet just as her fingertips brushed the thick, black coat her stomach flipped. The sudden and quick motions had awoken the storm in her gut, causing it to rage once more. It caused her to freeze as her fingers gently touched the familiar material as her cheeks flushed a sickly green once more. She felt herself began to sway, her fingers gripping tighter to the thick coat as a last attempt to keep her steady.

That weak, stiff touch was enough to freeze Roy’s frantic pacing. He whipped his head over his shoulder. His features were rigid and bone white. His dark eyes were wide with frantic panic and hopeless despair. Riza could feel his shoulder quaking under her fingertips. She felt her heart twist at the sight, her blood beginning to run cold a shiver climb up her spine. Her oldest and most familiar companion, guilt reared its head once again. It bloomed deep in her stomach, growing into an ever larger and heavier force until…

“I’m sorry.” Riza muttered, bringing one of her hands to her mouth. Before her words seemed to reach Roy she was dashing towards the bathroom. She had accidently pulled Roy’s coat with her, letting it collapse to the floor in a heap.

For a moment the Major General could only gawk at the pile of black on the floor as he listened to the sound of his pounding heart. He couldn’t escape the sensation that he had fallen into a dream. The simple furniture he knew so well, the ebony coat he wore day in and day out, even the setting sun seemed otherworldly. His eyes slowly moved to his hands. Even they seemed foreign and bizarre.

Had they been shaking this whole time?

Roy’s eyes twisted shut as they balled into fist once again.

“This has to be a dream. Wake up Mustang. Wake up Mustang. Wake-“

A chorus of shrill barking broke through the white noise blaring in his head. Roy’s head shot up, his eyes facing out to the setting sun. A cold, wet nose against his fist shocked his fingers open once more. Desperate wines and a paw pressing against his leg sent him crashing back to reality. He glanced down and saw Riza’s black and white dog beside him. Black Hyate stared into Mustang’s eyes as he continued to whine. His cold, damp nose pushed against Roy’s hand once more. When that only resulted in a series of stunned blinking, Black Hyate clamped his mouth on to Roy’s ample pants and began to tug.

It was only then that Roy became aware of the horrible retching hanging in the air. His glanced towards the sound and the direction he was being pulled. He laid eyes on the closed bathroom door, all but oblivious to Black Hyate’s valiant efforts to help his master. When another wretch hit Roy’s ears it flipped a switch in his head.

What was he doing?

Why was he standing there falling into pieces when the person he loved needed him?

With that new resolve Roy rushed to the bathroom, leaving Black Hyate in the dust as the dog trotted beside him.

He pushed the door open just as Riza gallantly attempted to push herself to her feet. He could see her arms shaking with the effort as they braced against the cold porcelain seat. Her long blonde strands spilled in front of her face. Her breaths were short and labored, making her back tremble. He didn’t need to see her face to know it had been drained of it’s soft, ivory coloring.

The sight made Roy’s heart begin to splinter and his stomach twist. It was difficult beyond words to watch his strong, iron willed Riza be reduced to such a fragile state. Yet whatever terror and fear that had held him in their claws had been shaken off, if only momentarily. Roy only stood in the door frame for a fraction of a second before he was on his knees, right by her side.

“Don’t stand just yet Lieutenant.” Roy whispered, gently grabbing hold of her shoulders. He moved her slowly and carefully, inch by inch, as if he was moving a slumbering bomb. She felt like a ragdoll under his touch. It was all to easily to move her to his side. He slipped the royal blue coat covering his shoulders on to Riza’s shoulders before slipping his arm around her and pulling her close.

“Colonel…” She breathed, her fingers wrapping around his white shirt. “I…” Roy slowly ran his hand up and down her arm.

“I know Lieutenant…” He sighed, hiding his lips in her soft hair. Silence fell over the pair as they sat on the cool bathroom floor, wrapped in the warmth of each other’s embrace. Riza fluttered her eyes closed as her breath grew slower and ever more steady. A little trace of pink began to flush her cheeks. She seemed to melt into his side, as if the weight on her shoulders was lifted for one blissful moment. Her lips even twisted into a the faintest of smiles when Black Hyate rested his head on her lap. Life was returning to her features once more.

Yet, as Roy gazed from the top of Riza’s mane, all he could see was her arm resting protectively over her middle. He could not help but allow himself the smallest of smiles into her hair.

“You know something Lieutenant?” He chuckled. Riza hummed, burying herself deeper into his hold.

“You’ve been holding your stomach a lot.” Riza’s eyes lazily blinked open, her face twisting ever so slightly in confusion. Her eyes trailed to her stomach, widening when she noticed her arm resting over her stomach.

“I have?” She mumbled, her eyes glued to her middle. Roy pressed his head against her hair. He nodded and sighed, attempting to hide the growing fear in his features. His hand froze against her arm and gave it a hard squeeze.

“What are we going to do?” Roy’s voice was gentle, weak and tinged with quiet panic.

Nevertheless, the question hung like a heavy cloud over the pair. It had been whirling around Riza throughout the hours, tormenting her and poising to blacken her thoughts. It whispered to Roy in the midst of his initial, debilitating panic, sending shivers up his limbs. It was even more deafening than the silence as all they could do was stare dumbfoundedly. Above all else, as the seconds ticked onward and onward it made them feel smaller and more helpless than the smallest ant.

What are we going to do?

Roy felt Riza stiffen against his side. The weariness that had plagued her pale features became hard and stoic. It was a face he knew so well; it was the face she showed the world. As always Roy could see straight through what would otherwise be deemed an emotionless face. He could see the tightness of her lips and her fingernails gripping to her pajama’s. He could see heavy guilt crashing on her shoulders. Her chocolate orbs became clouded with cold darkness and despair.

It was a look he had thought she left long behind her in the blood-soaked sands of Ishval. It was the same look he saw time and time again during the calm after battle.

Riza pulled her knees towards her and brought her gently laced hands to her forehead.

“After you sent me home, I walked around the city for a while.” She began, her voice low and steady. “I was trying to clear my head or distract myself. At a certain point I remembered the doctor explaining to me there were… options.”

Roy’s lungs paused for a beat as Riza attempted to gather her words.

“I see…”

Riza nodded.

“She also said I’m not too far a long to consider this option. After seeing how… how I reacted to the news… she gave me an address to a place that would do the procedure safely and discretely.”

A beat of silence fell over them as Roy’s frame became tenser and tenser, his heart beginning to feel cold. Riza eyes fluttered shut, taking a moment to sort through the jumble of emotions racing in her.

“I walked to the clinic. I don’t know why… I hadn’t considered going until that moment. When I found myself at the door it seemed like the only option. But…” her voice trailed off once more, disappearing into the thin air. She lapsed into muteness once more as memories of that moment flashed. Her face took on an of expression pure, unadulterated shame.

“You couldn’t do it.” Roy stated. Riza remained voiceless as her heavy shame slipped into her stomach, weighting her to the ground. The only reply she could give was a sharp nod. Her eyes remained close and her face colored with ashen remorse as her voice began to return to her.

“I…. I walked in and stood there for God knows how long. I… I don’t really know why I left. It would solve everything. I could have gotten it over and done with, take maybe a week to recover and no one would know. It would be easy enough to pretend I just had a really bad case of food poising or a stomach bug. This could have just been some mistake we would never have to think about again. But….” Riza paused, opening her eyes as she gave Roy a moment to say something. She was greeted with nothing but steady, patient silence and an unusually blank expression. When all she heard was silence, Riza gripped the thin, soft material of her pajamas as if it was the only thing holding her together. She only dared to keep her eyes a head at the open door as she continued to speak.

“Well firstly there’s the fact that what I was about to do is illegal and if I had gotten caught the results would have been the same. You would have been unceremoniously discharged at worst, and I could have ended up in jail. But there was more than that. All I could think was ‘How can I take another life when I’ve taken so many?’. My hands and conscious are forever stained with blood, and I couldn’t bring myself to stain them even more. However…” her voice suddenly became heavy and cracked, as if she was trying with all her might to suppress unforgiving tears.

“This is your child…. My child… Our child… I… I don’t know why… I’m not happy… I can never allow myself to be happy about this… but this is our child and I… I… I don’t know why but… I… I love it. I… just… I couldn’t..” Riza’s voice took on a harsh, quivering edge. Stray tears began to spill down her cheeks as she held her knees even tighter against herself. She remained eerily still as Roy’s thumb gently stroked her cheek, wiping a tear or two from her face. He pressed his forehead against the side of her head, placing a kiss to her cheek bone. It was a blessing Riza only kept her gaze forward. It was all the easier for Roy to hide his own tears that threatened to fall. He wrapped his other arm around her and very slowly began to sway.

“Sush. It’s okay Lieutenant it’s okay.” He murmured.

Roy had no idea who he was trying to comfort, himself or Riza. In the end it didn’t matter who he was trying to sooth, his attempts were wasted. His own heart refused to stop racing and his stomach continued to twist and coil. Riza’s limbs were tense under his hold, her own fear and dread radiating back to him. For a while, they never knew how long, the pair sat in complete and utter silence. Their eyes stared at nothing but the plain apartment spilling out of the open door. Only the sound of Hayate’s steady breathing filled the tense air. The world itself seemed to melt around them. All that remained was the warmth of their bodies, cold tiles and soft fur at their feet.

“This is your child…. My child…. Our Child…”

Riza’s words had sent his heart flying to his throat and all his senses screaming. He found himself blinking rapidly to keep puckering tears at bay. The very idea seemed holy foreign… maybe even unnatural. As he sat on that cold floor with Riza leaning against him, Roy couldn’t escape the feeling he was floating out of his body. The world around him morphed into a strange blur where there was nothing but the snug weight of Riza against him and the sound of the white noise in his head. It roared and blared, causing his head to ache. His limbs were strangely numb and heavy, like dead weights bolting him to the ground. Somehow his hand continued to slowly and gently rub Riza’s arm as if his appendages had a life of their own. Every little action seemed to be controlled by an invisible master pulling a string.

Even his own eyes slipped out of his grasp.

For better or worse his eyes seemed to have a will of their own. Before he had a chance to react Roy’s eyes trailed from the open door to Riza’s stomach.

His mind wanted to recoil at the sight of her perfectly flat stomach. It seemed impossible that anything was amiss with his Lieutenant, let alone that there was a life blooming underneath that flat stomach. He truly wanted to give into the notion he had fallen into some strange and horrible dream. Any moment he would blink open into a world where he wasn’t sitting on a bathroom floor with terror swimming throughout him. He would wake up in a world where everything he had toiled so hard for wasn’t slipping through his fingers.

A dream was the only thing that made sense. After all, in his own brutal reality he would never have a prayer of ascending to Fuhrer if the wrong ears heard whispers of a love child with his subordinate. All of his dreams and honor would be stripped bare. He would find himself back in the shadows once more with nothing but a prayer of one day climbing out or escaping. And Riza… heaven knows what would happen to her. For whatever reason women always seemed to baren the burden and scrutiny of an illicit relationship.

Yet Roy knew it was no dream. The fear and uncertainty clawing at his gut was far too real. The sheer guilt and pain pouring from Riza’s soul was far too unbearable. The hard, frigid tile below him was enough to shatter any illusion of having fallen into a dream. Riza was truly carrying his child… their child. They were truly huddled in an impossibly small bathroom, clinging to each other for dear life. Their carefully crafted lives and tightly held secrets were on the verge of being engulfed and destroyed. She would be forced to do away with the offensive creature one way or another in the cover of tightly sewn lips. Once the evidence was discarded then her life would be finished. If Roy only had a prayer of rebuilding his life, then Riza barely had a hope of coming out the other side. No matter what she did or how hard he would try to help, she would be left to drown in the shadows.

And all because of something that shouldn’t even exist… something that was no bigger than a spec of sand.

It boggled the Major General’s mind how one night of pure pleasure could throw everything into chaos. The longer he stared at that flat stomach the wilder his gut twisted and the louder his mind raced. He wanted to hate the life threatening to disrupt their world. He wanted to do the rational thing and quietly erase their little mistake. He knew he should lift Riza off her feet and guide her too that clinic. He knew he should comfort her and care for her as she healed, and then return to life as if nothing had happened.

More to the point what right did Roy Mustang have to feel any sort of joy or any sort of love? He had destroyed so many lives, leaving countless parents without children and countless children without parents. His hands had taken away the chance for many innocent Ishvalans to experience the thrill of falling in love and the bliss of holding their child.

What right did he have to have a child of his own?

Yes. He wanted to loath their mistake. He truly did.

Yet… as the seconds kept ticking something began to shift. Riza’s words slowly began to take a far stranger and different meaning, morphing into something softer and brighter. The twisting in his stomach turned into flutters. The terror freezing his blood began to warm and melt away. That warmth flowed to his heart, filling every inch of it and slowing it to a soothing rhythm. The white noise screeching in his head began to dim until there was nothing but the sound of gentle breathing. Every part of him suddenly felt lighter and freer.

He suddenly couldn’t escape the notion that, just as Riza had said, that was his child slowly growing inside of her. Even if it was unintentional, it was a life that he had helped create. Moreover, it was created out of a moment of pure exultation and love.

Roy swallowed, his gentle stroking stopping. He let his free hand lumbered towards Riza’s. He watched as it moved to rest on the hand that was still on her stomach, only to freeze and hover above it.

Riza’s brown orbs looked down at that still hand and then back up at Roy. She was greeted with a face as equally strained as it was full of longing. She felt a flutter of hope in her heart at the sight. His tense silence had been deafening and sharp like a knife. Even in her own despair Riza had been waiting to hear him say something- anything. It was clear the news had not been met with delight-that much she had expected. She still had no way to know what was running through his thoughts or what was filling his heart.

Was there some ounce of joy whispering through the darkness?

Was there something resembling love somewhere in his spiraling soul?

Was he scared?

Was he angry?

More importantly was he going to beg her to march back to that brightly lit clinic and take care of their little mistake?

The very thought made her heart run cold.

Riza knew it would be, in theory, the easiest option. She had never imagined slipping into the role of mother, nor she did she feel particularly worthy. Like Roy she too had ruined countless lives from the safety of roofs and her trusty rifle. She had robbed innocent people of the chance to embrace their loved ones and create a life of their own.

How could hands so stained cradle such an innocent creature?

How could a soul so violated be able to love the way a mother should love?

How could a monster be trusted to raise a child not to be the same?

How could a monster be allowed to raise a child at all?

Yet despite all her self-loathing and fear, Riza could not bring herself to march into that clinic. She could not bring herself to rid of her little mistake. The very thought made her turn cold and her heart climb to her throat. Her arm wrapped tighter around her middle, as if to protect the life in there from what may come out of Roy’s mouth. She hoped with all her soul he wouldn’t ask her to do what had become impossible.

No matter how hard reason screamed otherwise, Riza could not rid herself of the child she already loved dearly.

The sight of Roy’s hand hovering over hers sparked a light of hope. Riza couldn’t help but to grab hold of that spark.

“It’s okay. “She whispered, wrapping her fingers around his wrist. “There’s nothing there yet but you can feel if you want to.” Riza pulled his hand down and slipped it underneath her thin pajama top. The moment she rested it on top of her bare skin she felt a shock of thrill run through her. His hand was rough and warm against her smooth skin. At first Roy’s touch was stiff and still, resting on top of her like a small dead weight. His pale face matched his touch; rigid and unsure. Riza held her breath as she watched him, waiting to see any shift in the stunned and inflexible being.

It only took a mere moment for that shift to occur.

Riza felt his hand melt into her stomach. His touch became unspeakably tender and careful as his thumb ran across her soft skin. She watched his unbendingly shocked expression vanish into one of childlike wonderment and glowing adoration. It was an expression she rarely saw, only meant for her eyes only in the safety of the world they created. Riza felt her heart beginning to soar as the wonderment and love overtook his features.

Maybe it was an evil trick of the light or her eyes playing games, but Riza could have sworn she noticed tears puckering in the corners of his eyes.

“Our child…” Roy swallowed, his voice oddly dry and hoarse. Riza nodded, allowing her lips to turn into the smallest of smiles as she rested her hand on top of his.

“Yes. Our child.” Tears threatened to spill down the normally stoic soldier’s features as his lips quivered ever so slightly. It was odd seeing the normally controlled man in such a state-going from complete and utter terrified shock to what she could only assume were tears of joy. The man may have a thunderous spirit and she had seen him slip into despair and loose himself in his anger more than once, however, Riza had only seem him rocked to tears once. It was as he stood at the grave of a friend cut down in his prime. She could still see how they caught the sunlight as they trickled down his face. Sitting in that cramped bathroom Riza could see one tear escaping, catching the light above and sparkling. A moment later another tear slipped through and fell the other side of his face.

Riza couldn’t help but hold her small smile as she reached for his cheeks.

“I see it’s raining Colonel.” She said, brushing away the tears sliding down his face. “I hope it’s raining from happiness.” A low chuckle rumbled from Roy’s chest, his lips curling into a crooked grin. He circled his arms around her torso and pulled her as close to him as possible. He pressed his forehead against hers, letting their noses touch. Riza felt herself begin to melt as he brushed his nose against hers and felt his lips press gingerly on hers.

“I don’t know if I’m happy Riza.” Roy began, keeping his eyes closed as he spoke. “Hughes once told me that it’s a universal right for a man to raise a family with the woman he loves… but I don’t know if I can bring myself to believe that. If I’m being honest, I don’t think I deserve to be happy after everything I’ve done. I certainly don’t think I’ve done anything to deserve something…. something like this. To be even more honest I am terrified of what this is going to do to us.” His words momentarily vanished as his soul was laid bare. Riza nodded before placing her lips on his nose.

“I know…” Riza sighed. “I can’t allow myself to be happy either. I’m terrified of what’s going to happen to us as well. But…” Her voice trailed off, unable to scavenge for the words to give life to her intense emotions.

Roy however…

Roy always appeared to know what was buried deep within her without her needing to utter a word. Moreover, he always knew how to ease her soul without even trying.

Roy’s grin widened ever so slightly as his arms wrapped tighter around her middle.

“All I know…” He began, stopping and softly kissing the bridge of her small nose. “All I know is that I love you and that I have loved you for a long time. This child may be a mistake but it’s our mistake that happened because we love each other and… God help me I want to hate it Riza I really do. I wish I could say let’s just go and take care of it but I can’t. I may be crazy but…. I… I… I think I already love it.”

Riza’s tiny smile busted wide open as a laugh tickled her lips. She continued to rub his high cheek bones as she felt his chest rumble with laughter.

“It’s not that crazy Roy.” Her smile dimmed as she carefully chose her next words. “I know we would be crazy not to fix this or at the very least give them to a family who can actually give them a normal, happy life. We would be putting everything we have worked so hard for at risk. I don’t know if I can ever be happy either or even deserve something as wonderful as this. But I know that despite everything I love this baby… and the idea of getting rid of it in any sort of way is unbearable, Roy.”

Roy immediately felt his heart gradually crack as she spoke. Once her words had ceased, he peppered every inch of her face and neck with kisses. Riza’s hands slid away from his face and down his back until her hands were pressed against its strong muscles. She held him tightly as Roy continued to kiss her face until he found his away back to her lips. They hovered over hers, taking in their softness and warmth. She could feel him smiling against her face and his eye lashes flutter against her.

“I don’t want you to get rid of it either.” Roy claimed softly.

“I could just retire.” Riza cautiously suggested. “You could still continue on with your goal and”

“No.” Roy shook his head. “That would still look suspicious and even if we lied through out teeth it would still be clear that you were pregnant before you retired. We would still be breaking the fraternization laws.” Riza frowned, her fingers digging into Roy’s stiff white shirt and burying her face in his chest.

“It’s not fair.” She muttered as tears began to fall.

Roy felt himself begin to boil.

She was right.

She was ALWAYS right.

It was brutally unfair.

Even if one of them stepped away from their positions it would not release them from the walls that had kept them apart. They would not be safe from the eyes of the law no matter what they did.

Roy kissed Riza’s temple before he pulled her to his lap. The hotly independent woman didn’t protest. Riza nuzzled her head against his chest, dissolving into his warm strength. Roy’s chest puffed with a animalistic determination and will to protect. His gentle hold abruptly grew fierce and defensive as he pressed his lips on her temple once more.

“I love you and I love our child Riza.” Roy stated, digging his fingers into her thick sun kissed mane. “I promise will do whatever I can to protect you both.” He vowed

Riza blinked open her eyes and stared up at his alabaster face. There was something eerily similar about the way they were situated on her bathroom floor. The way Roy cradled her, the way she nuzzled her head against his chest as she smiled weakly. Even his soft expression and tender eyes brought her back to a dark room, and the relief she had survived a cold blade slashing her neck wide open.

In that quiet moment as he smiled lovingly at her and held her close to his chest, Riza felt that same rush of relief.

No mattered what happened, they would find a way to come out on the other side just as they always had.

No matter what happened, they would have each other and hopefully their baby… and that was enough.

#FMA #fmab #fma fanfiction #royai #roy x riza #Roy Mustang #riza hawkeye #dear god help me #idk what i'm doing #but at least i'm trying

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alarawriting · 4 years

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52 Project #28 / Writeober 2020 #8 Haunting: The Court of the Lion King

I returned to the apartment building where Daro and Anzali and I had lived before we went down to the sea. It had not changed in the way buildings change-- its paint was the same color, it seemed no more or less weatherbeaten than before. The railing on the 3rd floor balcony still sagged. But it had changed in the way homes change, because it wasn't home any more. Because different people lived there now, filling it with their strange scents, and because I had changed. The scent of the sea was still in my nostrils. I would never smell the comforts of home again.

Renting the third floor apartment did not present difficulties. I walked through the silence of the apartment, marveling at its emptiness. The furniture was still there, the faded rug, the great sagging bed, the tired appliances. But all the personality was gone. Anzali's bright prints had been taken off the walls, which themselves had been whitewashed again to remove our cheery yellow paint. White is a disturbing color, the color of bones and of drowned skin, pink human and green farla alike. Even the humans of other colors became gray, in death by water. If I needed to be here long, the white walls would glare in my eyes and drive me mad.

There was a knock at the door, startling me, and I almost fled. But it wouldn't be the Lion King, not here, not yet. He wouldn't know I was back. I opened the door.

A human greeted me. "Hi there, new neighbor. I'm Rachael from the second floor apartment. Just thought I'd come say hi. Need help moving in?"

Rachael was chubby – not just by farla standards, but by human – with short brown hair and a squeaky tenor voice. She had pale skin, which she covered with more makeup than most humans, and her chin and brow seemed unusually defined for a female human. "Hello," I said distantly. "I'm Ashmi. No, I don't need help moving in. Thanks for asking."

"Oh. Well, sorry to bother you. You want to come downstairs for a cup of tea or something? I like to get to know my neighbors. It cuts down on the insecurity, you know. Living in a place like this-- well, this isn't the best of neighborhoods, you know?"

"I know," I said bitterly, and wondered if this androgynous human knew the Lion King. I also wondered if I could still drink tea. I was afraid of my bone-white apartment, and loneliness. "I'll come downstairs if you want, but I don't know if I'll be able to take tea. I tend to be allergic to nearly everything."

"Well, come on down. You don't have to have tea if you don't want it. You're a farla, aren't you?"

I stepped out of my apartment and followed Rachael downstairs. "You can't tell?"

"You're a bit pale, aren't you? I never saw a farla so white. I thought you guys were all green. Not that I think it looks bad, I think you look gorgeous. At least, I don't know, by human standards or something, but maybe you don't feel good?"

"It's the color we turn when we're away from our Mother," I said. "The Sun. It is not a well color, and I thank you for your concern, but really, don't worry about me."

Rachael's apartment smelled like cats. Unsurprisingly, three came to greet Rachael, and another one sat on a moth-eaten armchair and glowered at me. The cats seemed unsure of me. Farla generally get along well with cats, sometimes better than with the humans who brought them, and I had always liked them. These, however, avoided me, and I avoided them. Rachael noticed. "Don't you like cats?"

There is one Cat that I despise. But I wouldn't say so. These cats were nothing of the Lion King. "They're all right. These don't seem to like me."

"That's funny. Normally they're all over strangers. What's wrong, guys? You being little bitches today?" Rachael turned to me apologetically. "They get like this sometimes."

"I don't blame them." I took a deep breath of cat-scented air. It was not quite enough to drown out the scent of the sea. "Forgive me for my ignorance. I'm not very experienced with humans, but... you are a woman, aren’t you?”

Rachael laughed. "Already? That’s great!"

"I don’t understand."

"I’ve been trying." The human went into the kitchen to put on tea. "Just managed to get on hormones two weeks ago. This place, well. Not a lot of doctors, and the mail’s not too reliable."

"What do doctors and the mail have to do with your – no. This is none of my concern, I’m being very rude."

"From a farla, I’m okay with it," Rachael said, coming out with the tea. “I’m a woman, but I only figured it out for certain a year ago, and it’s taken me this long to get the hormones I need.”

“I didn’t know humans could have an ambiguous gender," I said.

“Yeah, sometimes we’re born with the wrong genitals and hormones, and it can be hard to figure out what we really ought to be. I’m thirty-five. I don’t know if farlae age like humans do, but that’s, like, more than a third of a human’s maximum average lifespan, more than half of how long we usually do live when we grow up in neighborhoods like this. I didn’t grow up here, though, but just a few cities over, not so close to the water, but other than that it’s just like this. So that’s a long time to not know, but I know it now. Gonna start growing my hair out now that I have my shots.”

I doubted the other city was really just like this. This city was different from any I had known. "I see," I said, though I didn't really understand most of what she was talking about. I tried to smell the tea, but I could only smell salt water.

"Do you want something? Some water? I feel bad that you're allergic to tea and all."

What I needed, Rachael could not give me. Or at the least, I would not take from her. "That's fine. I'm all right." I had not been all right since we went to the sea. I no longer even knew how many years it had been. "How long have you been living here?"

"Oh, a year and a half or so. It's a bad neighborhood, but it's cheap. You know how it is. Hard to get work nowadays."

I didn't know how it was, but I nodded politely. "Yes."

"Now that I’m out, a lot of humans won’t hire me. This is the kind of neighborhood where they’ve got really old, traditional attitudes, you know? And I guess you've got it worse. Not many farlae here."

"This was a farla neighborhood once," I said. "An artists' community. It was poor, but it had a soul."

"Well, it hasn't got one now," Rachael said, with an edge of bitterness in her voice. "That's just like us humans. We wreck everything."

"You feel too much guilt. This may be a human neighborhood now, but its soullessness is not human doing." Panic choked me like seaweed as I realized I'd said too much. I had lost my old instincts-- I had no way to know if Rachael was the Lion's or not.

"You talk like you've been here before."

"I must go." I got up, hastily. "I'm sorry."

"Uh, okay. Health problems or something? Or was it something I said?"

"Health problems," I lied. "Perhaps we'll talk again. I'm sorry."

***

I locked the door of my apartment behind me. It wasn't necessary; what I feared could come through walls, and there were no mundane threats I did fear anymore. But it would disturb me if Rachael came upstairs and came inside while I wasn't watching. I wanted to be careful of what she might see.

I thought she was a sweet, harmless soul, if a bit strange. I would wish to befriend her, another time, perhaps, but not here. Not where anything might warp under the paw of the Lion. I could see the signs she'd spoken of now. This place no longer had a soul.

Once Daro had argued that humans could be rendered soulless, could be enslaved, far more easily than the farlae. Farlae, he argued, had been created as slaves, and would die free rather than live that way again. Humans, freely evolved, knew no better. Slavery was a sporadic thing in their history and was performed by groups of them on other groups, never something their race as a whole had suffered. So they did not notice being enslaved. They couldn't see the loss of their souls until after the precious stuff was gone.

At the time I had called Daro racist, but secretly suspected some part of his theory to be true. Now I knew better. Farlae had fled this neighborhood because they'd heard of our fate, I thought. And humans moved in simply by the laws of diffusion, there being more of them on this world than us. Unaware of the danger until it was too late. Farlae would notice an absence of farlae, and stay away, feeling unwelcome. Humans, the majority, had no such warning system.

And farlae could be enslaved, stripped of will or soul. Sometimes the choice was not between slavery or death. Sometimes it was between two forms of slavery.

I thought I could sleep. But the bed would not touch me. When I closed my eyes and lay down, I felt myself in my ocean bed once more, curled like a child in the womb, the green water penetrating me and washing my thoughts away. It didn't matter. I didn't need sleep anyway.

I left my apartment and went to explore the neighborhood by night. It had changed physically after all. No one I'd known would have allowed their apartments to become so run-down, let so much trash collect in the streets, or left broken, melted vehicles like mountains of plastic on the sides of the roads. Aside from me, no woman walked abroad, and I was invisible if I chose. Gangs of young male humans lounged about, predators waiting for prey. Empty drug vials and used-up dermal patches littered the sidewalks and the paths between the buildings.

The Lion King's place alone had grown in splendor. His nightclub, Heaven, looked positively palatial, glittering with light and music. He sat in the center of the neighborhood, with a vast spiderweb thrown in the air about him of parking for aircars. There were no longer any grounded streets leading to his court, and all the buildings that used to stand around Heaven had been swallowed by the glittering fibers of the parking web. From the ground, only someone light as a wraith could climb the web to reach the cars, as I did; the human children down below could see fat, juicy prey overhead, but had no way to reach it. They were driven sullen, reminded of what they didn't have and could never get, made impotent by the Lion. And so in impotent fury they raged against those that had no more than they-- which was why no one walked alone on the night streets, and no women walked at all.

This was what I saw when the Lion King first arrived. But then it was only a vision in a dream-clouded farla's mind. I didn't truly know what the Lion King truly was until the day he summoned me to his court. None of us knew. I tried to tell myself that, to remind myself that Daro and Anzali's fate was not my fault. I didn't believe my own reassurances at all.

The club itself was the last place I went, that night. Invisible to almost all, I wandered the two dance floors, peered in some of the upstairs bedrooms and slipped back out again. Heaven had grown more openly decadent since last I was here, with more bedrooms for the transactions of perversion and vice. They were no longer hidden away on the top floor, available only to members of the Lion's court. I saw businessmen cavorting in swimming pools with women who were no more than animated shells, the vivacity that seemed to pour from them as artificial as the sunlamp light that glittered off the pool. I saw humans and farlae both drugged out of their minds, performing obscene rituals of life and death for an appreciative audience of both races. I saw other humans and farlae voluntarily drinking down hells'brews, filling their bodies with a greater variety and concentration of drugs than even the poor victim-slaves had been poisoned with. And none of them saw me. I didn't expect humans to see me, but the fact that I was invisible even to farlae said that the farlae in this establishment were all spiritually dead.

None of this surprised me. It filled me with hate, but hate gave me strength. I remembered what had been done to me, what had happened to my husband and wife, and why I was here. I decided to risk finding the Lion King.

***

The topmost floor of Heaven was the Lion King's court. One could not get in without an invitation, but in a sense the Lion had tendered me an invitation all those years ago. In any case, only the Lion himself could have kept me out, and he didn't man his own doors.

I saw him on his throne, with four scantily-clad women serving him. Two were human, one was farla, and one was as he was, part cat. The humans once manufactured other humans with the blood of animals mingled with their own. Normally cat-humans manifested only with cat-shaped eyes and bodies far more graceful than a typical human body. The Lion King himself was thought a mutant or a throwback, or else something entirely inhuman, with his features subtly shaped to seem more cat than human, and his curly golden hair almost a mane. He was feeding from one of the human women as he held her in his lap. The others were massaging him or stroking his hair, oblivious to the bloody fate of their companion. Favored courtiers, men and unattractive women, competed for his attention, praising him and giving him information on his business.

He could not speak as he drank, but eventually he released the woman he was feeding from. She dropped to the floor in a heap, and I shuddered. In my time, his habits were not quite so open. I turned and left as I heard his voice. It was deep and mellifluous, no different than I remembered it, and I feared that my hate would choke me and I'd do something rash. I hadn't come all this way to throw away my best chance.

***

In the morning, I went to visit Rachael. My sight of the Lion King had fortified me, and I no longer cared if she was his creature or not. I needed information.

"Hey, Ashmi!" she said cheerfully, answering my knock in a bathrobe. "Want to come in and get some breakfast?"

"I'd like to come in, in any case," I said, "though I've already eaten."

"Oh. Well, if you don't mind watching me eat, come on in. I was kind of hoping you'd come in." She stared at me as I entered the cat-full apartment and seated myself. "God, you're gorgeous. I'd give anything to look like you."

"If you would give what I have given, you're a fool," I said softly.

"What?"

"Beauty is only a danger, in a place like this. I need information, Rachael; about the Lion King. What do you know?"

She swallowed. "Um. I don't think it's safe to talk about him..."

"It's safe. No one is listening, I am not an informant, and if you are I don't care. Tell me what you know about the Lion King."

"I don't think--"

I stood up again, and stared into her eyes. I let her see a small fraction of what I truly was. "Tell me."

"Oh, God." She stared at me with fear, not envy, now. "You're-- you're not--"

"I am not. Yes. I won't hurt you, Rachael, not unless you keep information from me."

"No wonder you didn't want to eat." She swallowed again. "All right. I don't know much-- I'm too ugly for the Lion and too poor to go to his club. But I know what everyone in the neighborhood knows. He's not human, for starters. I mean, more than the way you're-- uh, maybe the way you're not. Um. I mean, he isn't natural. He isn't just a catperson, he's something else. Something else totally."

"Yes. Something that can strip away a will, or a soul."

"And pretty girls have got to go to him, if he wants them. He doesn't take them all. And most of the ones he takes come back, though they don't remember much about what happened, and they're usually not so pretty anymore. Some of them, though-- some of them don't come back at all."

"How do the girls go to him? How are they chosen?"

"Anytime someone new moves in, his people check to see if there's a pretty girl in with them. They'll probably come to take you tonight. If there are any remotely pretty girls, they go with the Lion King's men, and they get presented to him in his court. And if he likes them, they stay there."

"Yes. It was not the same in my time, but it was similar." A fierce pain beat at me from within. "What of those who won't submit?"

"The Lion King's bullyboys don't give you a choice. You have to go with them."

I smiled bitterly and looked hard at Rachael. "You wanted to be my friend. Yet you made no attempt to warn me-- though you thought I was beautiful, and that must have meant you knew the Lion King's men would come for me."

"I was scared," Rachael whispered, looking down. "If I'd warned you, and you'd run away... and he found out..."

"You might find yourself walking to the ocean," I agreed. "No, I suppose it doesn't matter."

"Ah--" Rachael looked up. "Did it happen to you? Did you..."

"When the Lion King first came," I said, "I lived in the apartment I live in now, with my husband and my wife, Daro and Anzali."

"Your wife?" Rachael sounded startled, and then nodded. "Oh, right. Farlae live with two women and a man, don't they? I'd forgot."

"The Lion King summoned me. He had less power in those days, but he was less well known as well. I thought he would be a patron for my art, so I went willingly enough." I lost myself in memory a moment.

We had such bright happy lives then, and knew nothing of it. We had problems with bills, lovers' quarrels, emotional intrigues with the rest of the farla community, and we thought those were troubles. I was a naive innocent when I went to see the Lion King, thinking he had heard of my art. But what he wanted was not what I had created. What he wanted... was what I was.

The demand was for my body. I knew it went deeper than that. Farlae tend to be more sensitive to such things than humans; it was my soul he wanted, and I knew it. I refused. He threatened to kill me, to kill my husband and wife. I told him that all of us would rather die free than live as soulless slaves.

I looked up, shaking myself free of memory. "I was a naive fool," I said harshly. "But the Lion King has no more power over me." I stood up. "Rachael, I forgive you for not warning me. But if you tell the Lion King of his danger, or give him or anyone else any information concerning me, I will kill you slowly. Do you understand me?"

She nodded, shivering. She knew what I was capable of.

***

They came for me that night.

I feigned sleep, lying on the sagging mattress in the semblance of a nightgown, waiting for them. They unlocked my door and shook me, roughly, thinking they were waking me. "Get up. You've been summoned to the palace of the Lion King."

So even he called it a palace now. I looked at them with dazed eyes. "Do I have time to get into some clothes?"

One of them snickered. "Why bother? You'll just be taking them off again anyway." They all laughed.

I went with them in my nightgown and my artfully disheveled hair, out to their aircar and from there to Heaven. They brought me to the top floor, to the court of the Lion King. And I stood before the creature who'd destroyed my life, and felt the hatred surging in me, giving me strength. On the outside, I showed frightened, sleep-bewildered eyes, the face of a beautiful innocent.

"What is your name, girl?" he asked me. His voice was beautiful, rich and deep as the sea.

"Ashmi," I whispered, letting myself tremble. I looked down at my feet, at the enamel floor, and forced myself to see a reflection.

"Ashmi," he said reflectively. "I knew a farla named Ashmi once. Years ago... She looked much like you, but not as pale. And she gave me trouble. You won't give me trouble, girl, will you?"

"You should know what happens to those who resist the Lion King," one of his courtiers hissed.

"Disrobe," he ordered.

I stripped, letting the nightgown pool around my feet, and turned around for him like a bird on a spit as he ordered me to. Finally he smiled, showing sharp teeth. "She'll do. Take her to my chambers and have her wait."

I scooped up the nightgown and slipped back into it. Once I was in his chambers, alone, I let it disperse into mist. I sat on his bed, naked, and remembered our journey to the sea.

He had demanded me, body and soul. I'd refused, and he'd laughed. "You have spirit, don't you," he said. "Go home then. Go on back to your husband and wife. I have no shortage of beautiful women, that I need to trouble myself with you."

And gods help me, I thought I was free. I ran back to Daro and Anzali, to tell them what had happened, to seek their comfort. I ran up the stairs to the apartment, and into Daro's spotless kitchen, where the two of them had stayed up late, waiting for me.

But as I met their eyes, a compulsion struck, consuming the three of us. I explained nothing-- I couldn't speak. All I knew was that I had to go down to the sea and die, and that my loves felt the same way.

We left the apartment, holding hands, and began to walk. We felt as if we were in a dream, inexplicably shared. The empathic bond between us had twined around us all, dragging us down together. Perhaps this was intended to be my private nightmare, and the bond I had with my loves, the linkage between our minds, pulled them down with me. Or perhaps the Lion King had always intended to send us all. Throughout the night we walked, slowly, in a daze. The sea was normally half an hour's journey by aircar. On foot, holding hands and walking with dreamlike slowness, it took us all of the night and most of the next day. We were exhausted, but there was never any question of stopping. The sea pulled us with some strange gravity. Hydrotropic, we flowed down the path of least resistance, through the city and out, until we came to a cliff over the ocean.

I felt their love for me, and mine for them. I felt an overwhelming despair and exhaustion, a hunger for the ocean's balm. We looked at each other and nodded. Then we released one another, and separately we leapt into the sea.

Daro and Anzali were dashed against the rocks at the bottom, immediately. I fell into a deeper part, cushioned by water, and curled up in green darkness to sleep my despair away.

***

The Lion entered the room, awakening me from my reverie. "Good. You've got your clothes off." He smiled at me ferally. On him, it was more of a baring of teeth than a smile, and spoke of hunger. "Lie down."

He removed his own clothes and came to touch me, to cover me with his lightly furred body. "Gods of hell, you're cold, woman. What have you been doing, standing on the balcony with your clothes off?"

"It's a cold night," I whispered.

"I'll warm you, then." His hands had articulated digits, but furred fingers and pads on his palms. With these paws, he explored my body, finding no body heat anywhere. Alarmed, he licked at my neck, and when he found the reassuring taste of salt there bit in, drinking what ran through my veins.

What he needed was blood. All I had was seawater.

The Lion King jerked away, spluttering, and stared down at me. I smiled at him, the same baring of teeth he'd shown me.

"You knew me," I said. "Many years ago. And I gave you trouble."

He tried to back away then. But I grabbed him and pulled him down to the bed, pinning him under my weight, the weight of the ocean. I opened my jaws wide and let the semblance of normalcy fall from me, showing myself as I truly was-- a skeleton animated by seawater, a demon driven by hate. He screamed. I dove upon his throat and tore at it, drinking his hot blood as my claws dug into other parts of his body, tearing flesh away.

The Lion's life force was strong, fed by the blood of innocence and whatever demons he served. But my hate was stronger. He fought me, digging his teeth into my neck once more. All he drank was seawater. He tried to drink that, hoping to weaken me, but he might as well have tried to drink the ocean dry. I drank his blood and it was finite, though fortified with the blood of many victims. I ate bits of his flesh, torn away. As his struggles weakened, I released his neck and burrowed my face into his belly, chewing through the flesh. Drenched in blood, I reached my bony hand into the opening I'd made and clawed through his liver and lungs. Finally I tore out his heart and showed it to him. He died then.

The air was filled with a rustling noise. The souls he had stolen from young women, from men, from the neighborhood itself, fled from the punctured hole in his body. Some were partially consumed, and would never be strong again. The sight renewed my hatred, though my enemy was dead and his soul bound to the darkness.

For this moment alone I had the power. I had stolen the life force of the Lion King, and I had within me the strength of the sea and the energy of my hate. I could have called a tidal wave to destroy Heaven and all the tormentors within. The tormented would die as well, but that would be only a blessing, I felt. The neighborhood would be destroyed, but there was nothing in this blasted ruin of a hometown worth keeping anymore, was there? Destroy it all and let the survivors rebuild. Yes. I felt the charge build within me, and almost gave myself over to it.

But then Rachael would die as well. And she was an innocent, who had kept her soul, though the paw of the Lion had undoubtedly started to warp her. She had not warned me, but she'd tried to befriend me, as best she could with her fear of the Lion King. If I killed her with a tidal wave, I was no better than the Lion King, killing as it suited me.

There would be no tidal wave. I let the energy fade away. Let someone else save the city; I had done my part. I was so tired.

It was time to return to my ocean bed, and to my loves. I faded away, and let myself turn into mist, carried back to the sea.

#52 project #spooky 5 #writeober 2020 #tw: death #tw: implied rape #farla #galconfed universe #tw: mind control

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windup-dragoon · 4 years

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Faded Memories

|| FFXIV write - 2020

|| Prompt #17 - Fade

|| Post ShB

|| Kirishimi and Lani

|| 889 words

|| References - Girl with No Name, Shattered Memories, Pain, Spring

|| Kiri had always struggled with her memory loss as a kid. Without an inkling to the girl she used to be before Eyriwolk and Lynawyb took her in, Kiri adapted to her new life. But what happens when the Echo forces you to remember?

>> Warning!! Depictions of injury, bodily harm, and torture below!

She might as well be drowning. At least the burn of salt water in her lungs and the sting in her eyes would be indication enough that she was struggling to live. The ache in her muscles would be a testimony to how desperate she was to see the light of day once more. But here in this darkness, amidst slithering shadows and terrifying silence, she felt only hollow.

Her fingers tore at the curtains and veils that clouded her eyes while she choked on air. There was a sickening drumming between her ears, an ache that left her blinded, fading between worlds.

Gods, help her. The Twelve... the Kami... who ever was listening and spied on her mortal flesh, help her through this agony.

It came like waves beating against bluffs during a storm. Relentless and persistent. Fragments of worlds; these glimpses both existing in and out of reality. For a split second she could make out Lani’s figure, winding up for another sucker punch to her already battered body. And just as the blow would connect, knocking the wind out of her lungs in an instant, her Echo claimed her sight.

Stuck in a constant loop of awareness and unconsciousness, Kiri helplessly allowed her mind to yet again be pulled under the oppressive, demanding curse that everyone called Hydaelyn’s blessing. Hydaelyn herself might as well be holding her head beneath water for all the good these damned visions were doing.

The scene before her was much like the rest. A grand open field, a veritable sea of gold that rolled like the tide beneath the hum of a summers breeze. Two small children came into focus as the Echo submerged her further in the daydream. Both with silvery, moon touched hair and large, frightened eyes of prey animals. Together they trembled while the din of shouting exploded around them.

Smaller of the two girls, the one with her knees drawn to her chest, reached out for comfort with eyes overwhelmed with thick tears. The sight of her, so familiar and foreign all at once, made Kiri want to scream at the pain that drilled her skull. She wanted to cry out for this small innocent life, the both of them, and take them from this agony. Life was a cruel teacher and sparred no one a valuable lesson.

A cough tore through Kiri’s dream, sending the Echo’s scene scattering like broken glass in her mind. Pitched back into reality, the dragoon choked on a welling in her mouth, spluttering crimson and scarlet that splattered the marble floor of her recently acquired cell. Such vibrant color against chalk white stone. Laboring to breathe as she was, she still dared a grin at the sight.

“Yer going mad, aren’t ya’?” Hissed Lani as she stooped into Kiri’s view, the dragoon too exhausted to even lift her head. The only thing holding her up were the glittering chains pulled taut with her dead weight. “Look at ya’, no bark or bite left.”

All she could manage in her pitiful state was a simple glare beneath her lashes. Snowy hair had fallen across her brow, disheveled from countless blows of Lani’s fists and being tossed around like a sack of lifeless potatoes on and off the airship that had spirited her away from Eorzea.

It pained her to admit it... but Lani was correct in her assumption. The once famed Warrior of Light was beyond broken. Scarcely able to keep herself conscious, her mismatched eyes drifting in and out of focus like a broken lens. A simple lull of her head racked her body with what might as well have been knives. A failed experiment of hers was to blame for a vast majority of the blossoming pain that blinded her and left her reeling.

An attempt at her freedom by grabbing the Garlean man.

She had coaxed him close as he spouted a monologue of schemes and experiments he had planned for her.

‘Ya’know...” She had groaned to him, “I’ve got a bitch of an itch on my back...” And when he obliged and leaned close, she sprang and snatched him. Her chains came at his throat in an attempt to strangle him while she barked orders at Lani and Edea who merely looked on with mouths hung wide.

But this man... He was more technology than Garlean. All she remembered was blinding white light filling her vision as blades sprang out from his torso. A metal porcupine? Hedgehog perhaps? Whatever his muse had been for such a defensive mechanism, it certainly did the trick.

Even now as Lani laughed at the pathetic sight, Kiri could see the punctures that were left behind. Edea, the silent hyuran woman, knew enough white magic to staunch the bleeding at least. For whatever that was worth.

Fuzzy... Glitching... Her vision began to slip again. Another migraine chewed at her thoughts, drowning out the roe’s chuckle.

“...My name is Shun...”

Such a soft spoken voice calling through the haze. Kiri let herself collapse against her suspended chains, wanting only to drown in the shadows. At least this pain was hollow, accursed as it was.

“Shun... Where have I heard that before...” She murmured to the watchful void that swallowed her.

“...Ah, the mask slips! And I was so close to cultivating a winning persona...”

#ffxivwrite2020 #ffxivwrites2020 #ffxivwrites #|| Untold Stories #|| Tiger Prince & the Stray #hello you've reached Kirishimi Yasuragi and she's currently unavailable #please leave a message after the cries :V #Kiri is having the time of her life rn y'all don't worry #:////

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caeruleis · 3 years

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@shymaidxn asked:

“ i wanna be the one you go to. the first one you tell when there’s something good. the shoulder to cry on when it’s bad. and every mundane thing in between. i want to share it all with you. ” ( YO THIS AT GRAN )

Softer Prompts || Closed (feel free to turn into threads)!

★ ☆ ✮ ✯ ― ☽ ― ★ ☆ ✮ ✯

A smile flickers onto his features for a fleeting moment before his expression turns a bit more grave - devoid of the goofy grin, and playful shimmer in his eyes that are commonplace when he’s spending time with the crew. The tepid breeze licks at auburn locks that hang, a bit too long, in front of his eyes from simply not bothering to cut them as of late. It makes his sunburned legs sting where they’re exposed to the wind and blinding moonlight beneath the damp hems of his swim trunks - his arms, luckily, spared from sharing their fate thanks to the rash guard he’s waring, but he can very much feel the prick of dry skin on the back of his neck and his cheeks because he hadn’t bothered to put even an ounce of sunscreen on before leaping into the salty waves of the sea that kissed the golden sands of the beach. The warm water licked at the tips of his toes where they sat upon the smooth surface of a rock overlooking the ocean, his feet plunged into its crystalline depths as they swayed slowly back and forth - never had he been one for sitting still, even if his legs felt as if someone had personally set them aflame. And he would know, he’s set his own arms in fire with magic enough times to know what it feels like. He finds himself swallowing thickly to shove down the urge to wince at every movement of his legs, and the desire to groan at the lecture he was surely going to be in for once Katalina discovered how careless he had been. But if not for the searing pain that nipped at his calves, he would have found night at the beach rather peaceful. Most of the other tourists had turned in already, and those that were still awake were stationed far enough away from them that he couldn’t see or hear them. Not to mention that the clear waters reflected the night sky almost perfectly save for the ripples his swinging feet were causing upon the surface. If he wanted to, he could have counted every star glittering above them on the tiny waves he created.

While he had spent the vast majority of the day with Diantha, getting to have a moment to just the two of them proved to be far more complicated than he had ever managed. Though he should have known, it was rare for a day to pass without someone flinging open the door to his cabin to demand something of him, or inform him of something - the beach was not much different. With both of them constantly being pulled in different directions by various members of the crew to try this or that. She had looked just about as frazzled as he was, if he were being honest, when they had finally sat down here to spend a few hours in, hopefully, peace until they turned in for the day. And her words make him wonder what she had discussed with the others, or what she had done - he supposes she must feel the same, or she wouldn’t have spoken up. Though he understands her meaning is deeper than simply asking him what he had been up to during the day - that she wants him to be more open with her; to share bits and pieces that might bot be pleasant, alongside everything that is. It makes a frown cross his lips as he turns his head away from the water to look over at her. He’s never been good at being up front and honest with other people. He has a knack for lying, and keeping secrets. And he’s always used that to dissuade people from getting to know him too deeply. Diantha was different, of course, but that didn’t make the prospect of doing so any easier. She had willingly accepted the parts of him that were unsightly and a bit bruised, but he still feared sharing some of the uglier pieces he kept tucked away - still feared treading too close despite how his heart yearned to for he always had the budding suspicion he might die young, and she has a right to be aware of that. He knows he’s selfish for even accepting her feelings, and allowing his own to slip through.

Right now, though, he doesn’t feel much like admitting it. Not when the calloused pads of his feet are still covered in grains of sand, and rug burns from casing a volleyball around beneath the sweltering sun. Not when his back and arms are sore from being in the receiving end of more hits than he cares to count, and the knights in this crew have never heard of the expression holding back. His tongue still feels numb, as well, from the new drink flavor Lyria had tried to add to the beach cafe’s menu only for him to find out after he had choked on it that Katalina had been the one to make it. It’s not that he’ll never bring such thoughts up, but it feels like a waste when they’re on vacation. ‘All right,’ he signs back after a moment, leaning back a bit more on the rock, though not actually letting his hips hit the slick surface. ‘I will.’ And then his serious expression gives way to a smile as he yanks his feet out from the sea, splashing water all over his calves in the process, though careful enough that he didn’t actually manage to flick any on Diantha. The sudden chill of the breeze as it strikes against his yet skin sends a shiver down his spine, and the unwanted motion from his ailing legs finally forces that wince out. Lips pursing and brows tugging together until the unpleasant sensation has mostly run its course for the time being. Against the luminescent sea, and the bright shimmer of starlight, how red the skin on his legs is as it scabs is painfully apparent.

‘Well, you did say you wanted the good and the bad, so here’s the bad: I don’t think I’ve had a sunburn this bad before in my entire life, I’m pretty sure my arms are gonna fall off because I tried to receive one of Siegfried’s spikes, and I may or may not have been poisoned by the drink Katalina had made for the stall.’ When he’s finished, he plops his feet back into the water, relief flashing through his eyes as the cool waves licked at his burnt skin. His earlier signs, and serious expression is proof enough he intends to take her seriously, but, for now, he doesn’t have much to discuss other than the abuse he’s endured on this so-called vacation thus far, even if he’s smiling the entire time his hands are moving. ‘As for the good, I didn’t manage to get my arms sunburned, we haven’t been attacked by man-eating or oddly violent fish yet, and we have gotten to spent some time together.’ His cheeky smile fades a bit at the last line, turning into something softer, though it only lasts a moment. ‘The same goes for you too, you know? I want to be the first one you tell when something is good or bad. I want to hear about everything you feel like sharing, even if you think it’s boring, and I want to be the shoulder you cry on when you need to. So, you’re up next: what do you want to share with me?’

#shymaidxn #| ☩ Keep the memories you make along the way close at hand ☩ (ask) |#| ☩ You are a tidal wave ; violently alive when you reform the lives you touch ☩ (Gran: IC) |#| ☩ And captain ; the world is at your fingertips so guide it well ☩ (Gran: Verse: Default) |#| ☩ I showed you the parts of me that aren’t so pretty ; and you took my heart in your hands ☩ (Gran/Diantha: shymaidxn) |#{ Thank you for sending this! }

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brightideawritings · 4 years

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Ahhhhhh, I only finished "The Rise of Kyoshi" on Sunday but immediately my mind has been overtaken by Kyoshi's story. Especially, her lovely relationship with Rangi! So, in order to get this fire out of my head I wanted to explore some events of the books from Rangi's perspective. Here is the first chapter surrounding the events of the first few chapters.

------

Burning Thoughts

Chapter: Mansion

Ragni did not give her opponent the time to react to her attacks, her fists blurred in front of her in a storm of quick jabs, she felt the heat of her chi travel through her arms to her hands and burst forth as incandescent fire, “Yaaaaah!” she let loose her war scream as the storm of fire burst across the training room at a blinding pace. Any lesser bender would have balked under the sudden barrage - a non-bender would have ran for cover. Rangi’s opponent did not stand idle or run for cover but instead stepped into the oncoming attack. Her opponent raised a right leg in Crane stance and brought it down in a single motion - an arc of fire sprang into being and cut through Rangi’s barrage like it had all been nothing. She noticed with ire that the force of the new flame snuffed out many of her own fire jabs - again, as if they were nothing.

Rangi’s mother, Hei-Ran, former headmistress of the Fire Nation’s Royal Training Academy for Girls was not like most opponents.

Her mother’s fire cut came directly for Rangi, and she had to bite down a curse - due to the fact that she was acutely aware that unless she wanted to go up like a light torch she needed to move aside. Again she cursed to herself as she leapt to her right, as soon as she had cleared the flame she had already begun to move her body into a low body crouch for a counter-attack but as she had predicted would happen her mother had used the momentary lapse in her daughter’s offense to close the gap between them with blinding speed. Time seemed to crawl to a snail’s pace as Rangi’s body settled into a stable enough stance that she could use another firebending technique to produce a double wave of flame by bringing both of her hands upward - anything to force Hei-Ran away. The bout would be over as soon as the older woman was within arm's length of her - again a fact she was acutely aware of that seemed to nonetheless scream inside of her head.

No sooner had she let the chi ignite with her arms swinging upward she cut off the flow of flame which winked out as quickly as it had appeared. She had not been fast enough.

“I yield,” Rangi said, she forced herself not to wince - more at the disappointment and frustration in her own voice than Hei-Ran’s fist inches from her face - though her mother had not ignited her firebending she could still feel heat radiate from them. A common technique that Rangi knew how to do as did every single firebender - it was a threat, a command to surrender. Still, the emotions she breathed was nothing next to the controlled response from Hei-Ran.

“I’ve seen children half your age with stronger fire jabs than those fire lights, Rangi.” Hei-Ran looked down at her. Firebending did not come from an outside element like that of the other arts - but from the chi inherent in a firebender’s own body - the power to create fire at a whim was powerful and dangerous. The first lessons that were drilled into Rangi and every firebender she had even known was control over their emotions. To lose control was to become nothing more than a chained beast belching flame in utter futility.

“I apologize,” Rangi bowed in deference - Fire Nation society stressed hierarchy as a core social tenant. In failing today she had disappointed Hei-Ran twice - as a student and as a daughter.

“I know you can do better,” Hei-Ran sighed and nodded her chin down, a mix of pride and concern written over her face, “I’ve seen you do much better. Your calm is off. Something is bothering you.”

An altogether different emotion fluttered in her chest like a bird trapped in a cage. Something must have shown on her face as her mother raised an eyebrow almost immediately. By the spirits, Hei-Ran could be as persistent as a vulturehound - trying to run away from the subject would only leave Rangi tired and on her last legs.

“It’s just...I can’t stand, Kyoshi!” Rangi gasped in exasperation and immediately wished the words would crawl back inside of her mouth.

“Oh?” Hei’Ran’s mouth quirked with no small amusement, “I thought you two were such good friends…”

“I mean...how she acts so meek to those brats in the village!” Rangi burst with a huff, she ignored the fact that they were all just about the same age, “They taunt her and she just takes it like she was made of stone.”

“Hmm. It would most likely go better for Kyoshi in the long run if she had ambushed and destroyed the leader of her tormentors to send an example to the others.” Hei Ran had shifted down into a sitting position, which Rangi had unconsciously copied. Her earlier hesitation warred with the good sense her mother had spoken. She had given similar advice to Kyoshi earlier that day had she not? The moment reminded her that many saw Rangi herself as a smaller version of Hei-Ran, again a common social norm among the old, noble families of the Fire Nation. It was a sign of respect and honor to her mother - though she had to admit there were still a great number of differences between them.

“At times I feel tempted to do so on her behalf.” Rangi said and frowned. She had heard of Kyoshi’s...problems that lived in the village from snippets here and there in the form of gossip between other members of the household staff of Jianzhu’s mansion. Not that she was particularly friendly with many of the household staff - the vast majority of them were not worth the breath to talk to, an opinion she had formed rather quickly from their own whispered jealousies of Kyoshi and their fear of Rangi. Again, not that they had told her any of this directly - she had been trained in infiltration and evasion tactics - and she had learned quite a bit from the staff when they thought their employer or his guests were within earshot.

Today had been different from what she knew, the village idiots that taunted Kyoshi had either been too swept up in their petty bullying of Kyoshi or perhaps too hopeful to catch a glimpse of the Avatar. Rangi had spotted the them as they climbed the path back to the mansion, taken in that they had followed Kyoshi well past the the point that Rangi had noted previously they would normally turn back, and had wordlessly used her firebending to propel herself over the perimeter wall and sprint at a full pace around it and then unnoticed into a tree not far from the gate.

A part of her had been extremely disappointed when they had not burst into flame at the single, first look she had given them. That was a firebending technique it was said that could only be mastered by the greatest fire sages, but Rangi had still tried. Instead they had the sheer audacity to run away like the cowards that they were and hurl the jar of pickled kelp into the air. She had tried to get Kyoshi to use her own earthbending but no matter how much she had pushed her friend the taller girl had not moved at all - no, that was not totally true.

Kyoshi had finally acted - by jumping on top of her to save her from what would have been a shrapnel storm of kelp and pottery shards. The memory of it even hours later caused something inside of her chest to feel like it wanted to burst in protest - at Kyoshi or her own actions she still was not sure. She knew several ways to unlock an opponent’s grapple and had exercised their use at plenty of opportunities in the junior corps. When Kyoshi had shielded her Rangi had felt strangely paralyzed in the other girl’s long limbed embrace, she remembered the smell of sweat and earth and it had not been unpleasant at all.

Then she had snapped back into her head and had pummeled on Kyoshi until she had let them both stand. The jar had been fine, somewhere Avatar Yun had been watching them and had saved the day - not that a broken jar would have been a disaster the likes of villages burned and the spirit world falling into chaos. Still, it had needled her that Yun had to have step into the situation at all - it was beneath him. Though, perhaps her reasons were not totally fair. Then of course Kyoshi had gone and said the utterly cheesy yet also charming words of calling Rangi a strong hero that would always protect her.

Rangi had rolled the words over and over in her head so much that she had not even noticed that she followed Kyoshi into the kitchen. She had been surprised but in her mind had executed a well-ordered retreat, she had reminded Kyoshi of her gift duties, then complimented her on her rank of being above a scullery maid and had left. She had memorized Yun’s schedule and she had known he would be in his firebending training with her mother so she had returned to the barracks until they had concluded. Something though had happened to Yun though as when she had arrived to see him only her mother had been there. Before she could press further Hei-Ran had pushed for them to train together.

“You are the Avatar’s bodyguard, Rangi, not a servant girl’s” Hei-Ran frowned at her but she noticed there was something off, her mother had paused slightly as if something weighed on the older woman’s mind, before she continued, “You will be his sword and shield, his will and his guide. You must not forget nor waver from your duty.”

“I know mother.” Rangi bowed her head in deference once more. She paused before she continued, she wanted to find the words how important Kyoshi was...to the Avatar, “I just want to ensure harmony in the household around Yun. Kyoshi is...close to Yun” at Hei-Ran’s alarmingly inquisitive eyebrow raise Rangi knew she needed to backtrack, “That is, she often attends to Yun’s needs” a part of her blanched at the possible connotation she had uttered, “She is an ear he can talk to, we are all the same age and she is not someone who expects something from him or a servant who is over-awed by him.”

“I will...trust your judgement on that, Rangi” Hei-Ran replied, “You aren’t mistaken. Yun has requested that Kyoshi join us when we travel to the Eastern Sea to negotiate with the daofei Tagaka and the Fifth Nation.”

“WHAT? WHY-” Rangi stopped herself, she needed to control the volume of her voice. She had practically shouted the words, “Why...why would he want her to come with us to deal with those dishonorable, pirate scum!?!”

On force of habit her hands curled in and out, as if she was squeezing the life out of an invisible person. Yun! What game was he playing at? The Fifth Nation were slaving pirates and despite the promise of a peaceful accord Rangi had very little faith the affair would be bloodless. Why else would Jianzhu also want to bring a compliment of guardsmen with them? He was her charge and her friend but there were times when it boggled her mind about how impulsive and reckless he could be - perhaps he was a fine enough successor to Kuruk.

Her face scrunched together with worry as she thought of all the ways that Kyoshi would be in danger out on an iceberg in the middle of the sea. Kyoshi certainly cut an imposing figure with her height but how could Yun expect a girl who let the village brats walk all over her deal with the presence of pirates?

A thought brought her whirling mind to a sudden crash. If this was all some sort of clever scheme by Yun to impress Kyoshi...

“He said he wanted someone normal there. Kyoshi does fit the girl, besides her height.” Hei-Ran replied again, a measure of amusement entered her voice, “You will have to look out for her when I or Amak are not with the Avatar. Think of this as a new aspect of your mission Rangi. My little tigress”

“Mother!” Rangi blushed at the use of her pet name that Hei-Ran had always called her when she was a little girl. It certainly had become less amusing when the other students at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls had grown taller than her. Hei-Ran only used it now a days when she WANTED to fluster Rangi or distract her. Warfare took many forms on and off the battlefield.

“I am being serious,” Hei-Ran replied, one corner of her lips rose upward in more amusement, “You will have to manage multiple persons and weigh which ones are the greater priority should something occur. Do you think you can handle this?”

“Of course,” Rangi steeled her features, she vowed that no harm would come to Yun or Kyoshi. If anything did come between them she would burn it to ashes. They were dealing with a daofei after all, nothing they could do or say would rattle her.

#kyoshi #the rise of kyoshi #avatar the last airbender #fanfiction #rangi

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