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everafterfics · 2 years

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Unsaid Emily [Viktor x Reader]

I’ve been sitting on this one for a little bit now. It is inspired by the song Unsaid Emily from Julie and the Phantoms. I wanted to try something a bit different and write something thats got a bit of angst to it. The entire fic is written from Viktors point of view. It is a female reader, but there is no use of Y/N

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Summary: Viktor reflects on his departure from Piltover after he transforms himself using the Hexcore

Warnings: a little bit angsty, not an overly happy ending, but its not an angsty ending

First things first

We start the scene in reverse

She was the light of my life. The shining sun that brightened my darkest days. And she was the only thing on my mind as the council room ignited. I had felt pain before, but it was nothing compared to that day. The searing flames that enveloped me left me wishing for death, but I had spent so long fighting my own demise that I couldn’t let it end like this. Not for myself, and certainly not for her.

I was rushed to the hospital along with the other members of the council. Somehow Jayce and councilor Medarda made it out unscathed, if only I was as lucky. I could hear voices, of Jayce and the doctors, and hers most of all. She pleaded for the doctors to help me, but I heard them doubt that I was even worth it. My body was already dying of disease. Those burns and broken bones only helped to speed up the process. They were unsure if I would even survive.

That was not the first time I had heard doctors predict my end. The hardest part perhaps was hearing her reaction to the news. Wailing sobs that echoed through my heart. Unfortunately I could do nothing. My mind swung between sleeping and waking but my body refused to move nonetheless.

She spent countless nights at my bedside after that. Her soft hands grasped my own scarred ones, never letting go. I could hear her crying for hours. The final catalyst to will my body to finally wake was hearing her words, desperate and sorrowful.

“Please Viktor. You have to wake up. I’m not sure my heart could survive if you die. You were so close to curing yourself, it just isn’t fair!”

My eyes had finally opened to see her. I caressed her cheek with my hand, cold and metal from the Hexcore, but unscathed from the explosion. A thought passed through my head at that moment. She couldn’t bare to see me die, but I couldn’t bare to see her suffer at my tragedy. There was a solution, but one that would drastically change me forever…

No time for goodbyes

Didn't get to apologize

Pieces of a clock that lies broken

After weeks of me being in the hospital she finally left my side to sleep in her own bed, content that I was on a path to healing. This was a lie, I could feel my body getting weaker.

That night without her was dark and quiet. Somehow I was able to bring myself to my feet. My body could move just enough to walk, ehh limp, back to the lab. I had made a decision, a selfish one, but it was my only option.

I practically collapsed when I entered through the doors, but relief had struck me to see that Jayce had yet to destroy the Hexcore. I crawled my way towards it. Once I had reached the desk I weakly extended my hand to the Hexcore. Either it would heal or destroy me, but a deadman has nothing to lose. The Hexcore whirred to life with my touch, the scarred runes etched into my skin glowed, and I could feel it changing me. Magic coursed through my veins allowing me to stand. Strength returned to my whole being. I took the Hexcore in both hands, invigorated by my newfound health. It was working! Until it began to happen…

My muscles changed, encouraging my skin to as well, to become metal. The more I tried the harder it became to remove my hands from that cursed invention! The more the changes progressed the more my body was wracked with pain.

Was it luck? Or perhaps it was misfortune that there was nobody near the lab to hear my cries? Nobody to help tear me away from the Hexcore. Yes, it must have been luck. For anybody that tried would have ended up like Sky. With a final flash of light I found myself on the floor.

As I came to I noticed just how much I had changed. Like my leg and altered hand from my first uses of the Hexcore, it was as though my muscular structure and skin had merged. My body had become a sort of living metal, some sort of cyborg abomination. I quickly made my way to a mirror in the lab to see what changes had become of my face. Most of it seemed unchanged, aside from my sclera becoming black, my golden eyes now glowed in the dark room, and up to my cheeks retained the same purple metal as the remainder of my body.

It was an interesting development. And while I had felt stronger than I ever had in my entire life, I knew that here in Piltover I’d be seen as some sort of monster. And I feared that she might see me the same. So I took to Hexcore and ran.

I ran from Piltover to somewhere I presumed I would be alone, my old childhood home on Emberflit Alley… in Zaun. I was honestly surprised to see it still empty after all of these years. The structure was not the most sound, and cobwebs filled every nook and cranny. But I thought I could stay for some time. Until I decided if I wanted her to see me as I am now. Just some time…

If I could take us back, if I could just do that

And write in every empty space the words "I love you" in replace

Then maybe time would not erase me

How long had it been? A month, maybe two? Perhaps longer? Time was irrelevant when all that matters was progress. And I had made much progress since returning to Zaun. I adapted to my new metal body, creating augmentations to myself to improve my body and my mind. I augmented others as well, when they desired. Although only the truly desperate ever sought me out. Unfortunately my new position in Zaun earned me a strange nickname amongst the people, the Machine Herald. I didn’t mind the name so much as I thought it unnecessary to use such a thing. Not matter, all of this was simply a distraction.

While my goals to help the people of the Undercity had never changed, my reasoning had become warped. I simply longed for a way to distract myself from the thought of her. From my guilt of leaving.

I have hated myself for not leaving a note, for not telling her what happened. For not even going back to let her know I’m alive. I cant bear to think about the grief she must have suffered on my behalf. Perhaps she worried herself sick looking for me before Jayce finally convinced her to let me go. A part of me selfishly hopes that she still believes I’m alive.

As I tinker with a new project at my desk those thoughts echo in the back of my mind. How come the past never ceases to haunt me?

A light knocking echos through my small house. I stop my work and listen. Usually the knocking continues if someone truly wants my help. Instead I hear a voice that makes my blood run cold.

“Hello?”

For a moment I remain at my lab desk. The voice that resonated from the other side of my door leaves me paralyzed. Then it comes again. The wrapping of knuckles lightly on the front door followed by the familiar cadence that has plagued my mind since leaving Piltover.

“Hello? Is this where I can find the Machine Herald?”

I place my mask over my face and rise to my feet. My hands remain planted firmly on the desk, unsure if I can answer the door. How can I face you like this? As a man changed beyond recognition. As a man that was supposed to be dead. Surely if you find out who I am you will be furious. Perhaps it would be better to just ignore you. Again those knuckles found themselves knocking my the door, drawing me from my thoughts.

“Hello? Is anybody-“

I whip the door open a lot harder than I mean to. Immediately, I regret my decision to face you. You were like a small rabbit cornered by a wolf. I had forgotten that my augmentations came with an enhancement to my height. My looming figure must have caught you off guard. I try to soften my stance, but it is rather difficult to soften a figure made of steel.

“Are you the Machine Herald?” Your voice squeaks with terror the likes of which I have never heard from you before.

I have to take a moment to compose myself before I answer. “Yes.”

You hold yourself steady but there is no denying the trembling of your legs. How my heart aches to know that I frighten you so.

“Please… I need your help.” You sound so desperate. It takes everything in my power to not show how worried I am for you. Perhaps I should let you know who I really am? But would that help? Or perhaps make whatever you are coming to the Machine Herald for worse? I gesture for you to come inside. You spared a small glance as you pass into my home, one of fear and distrust.

I lead you into my lab, keeping a careful distance from you. I pull up a chair for you and take a seat myself beside my desk. “Please, what’s wrong? Why have you come here?” I ask, perhaps with more concern in my voice then I meant to add. And for a moment I see something in your eyes. A glimmer of recognition behind them. Perhaps my voice, though modulated by my mask, was enough to tip you off to my identity. But as quickly as I saw it, it faded into a look of hopelessness.

You open and close your mouth, take a deep breath, and answer. “I’ve heard that you can remove a persons emotions. I’ve been plagued by mine for too many months now. I can’t bear it anymore. Please mister Machine Herald, can you take them from me?!”

If you could only know I'd never let you go

And the words I most regret are the ones I never meant to leave

Unsaid Emily

I have to grasp my desk to stop myself from jumping to my feet and consoling you. “No. I can’t do that.” I can hear my voice waver, much to my own dismay.

“But I-“

“What you heard was merely a rumor. Nasty things… rumors” I avert my eyes so that I don’t see the disappointment that I’ve caused, though I can hear you start to sob.

“What can I do? I can’t live without him! I tried, truly I did. But I just can’t!”

My heart can’t bear to hear you sobbing, especially knowing that I am the cause of such heartache. Damn the consequences! Even if you hate me for what I’ve done, that hate would be better than seeing you in such despair.

“I did try to get rid of them.” At the sound of my voice you look up. “Not too long ago I decided to do something that I’m not proud of. Using a dangerous invention of mine I was able to save my own life from fatal injuries and disease. I didn’t intend to leave my home, but looking upon my changed form I knew that I no longer had a place in Piltover.” I stop to breathe out a sigh at the memory. “Unfortunately, in the process of saving myself, I lost the woman I love. How could I have left her behind?” I spared a glance towards you. The wheels in your head were clearly turning. I continued on, pain evident in my voice. “What I’d done caused me so much guilt that I wanted to get rid of my emotions. I had begun research on how I might achieve that, but in the end it was my emotions that convinced me to stop. I’d already hurt you so much, it is only right that I live with my guilt. It is what I deserve.” Your eyes widen and a stuttered gasp leaves your lips.

“Viktor…” you whisper, the recognition settling in your sad eyes.

I remove my mask and set it to the side. “Yes, my love.” I say as I look at you through my own teary eyes.

“How?” I expected anger from you, but instead it was like I had broken your heart all over again. Your words came out in sobs. “How could you leave me behind? Why did you let me think you were dead? Why did you hide who you were when I came here?”

I reach a hand out to you but rescind it. I don’t have the right to touch you after what I’ve done. “I’m sorry. I was afraid and I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” You say with surprise. But now comes the fury I’d expected from you before. “Look at me and tell me that what you did didn’t hurt me! You left me alone! You didn’t say where you went! You just disappeared from the hospital! Ive cried over you every night since you disappeared! Jayce and I assumed the worst. We looked for you for over a month.” It doesn’t seem like you can keep your rage flowing. The melancholy starts to seep into your voice. “I held out hope for so long that we’d find you alive. I think Jayce was at least hoping to find your body so we could put you to rest. To actually grieve you.” You stop and there is a deafening silence that I’m not sure I want to break. Finally you speak again, voice hoarse from shouting. “Why didn’t you come back for me? I would have left Piltover to be with you Viktor. You knew that I would’ve gone to the ends of the world for you.”

I let out a deep sigh. “I was ashamed of my new body. I feared that you might have seen me as a monster had I returned to your side.”

“I would never have-“

“I know. But it took me too long to realize that. I suppose I was projecting the feelings i had of myself onto you. It was my own way of punishing myself.” I looked to see some sort of reaction from you, but for the first time since entering my home I couldn’t tell what you were feeling. “As the days past I knew I should’ve gone back to you. But I also realized that if I did go back, you’d hate me as you do now. And as selfish as it was, I didn’t think I could bear you hating me”

“I don’t hate you, Viktor.” You look at me now with softer eyes. “I am upset, but I have every right to be. And you’re right. It was a selfish thought.”

“If I could go back and change the past I would never have left you.” I let a single tear roll from my eye.

“And I truly believe that Viktor.” You give me a quick smile before sighing. “But we can’t change the past.”

There is a moment of silence between us before I speak up once more. “What can we do? How can we fix us?”

“We could start over I suppose.” You shrug. Then you look at me with those doe eyes of yours, a soft smile gracing your lips. “Although, I never stopped loving you.”

With those words I felt a warmth in my heart that I haven’t felt since I left Piltover. I smiled at you, “And I never stopped loving you.”

You scoot a bit closer to me and place a hand over my own. I look down at you, again you’re on the verge of tears. “I missed you so much Viktor. I need some time to process all of this, but I want us to get back to where we were”

Placing my free hand onto your cheek I wipe away your fallen tears. “I want that too. Please take all the time you need.”

You smile at me before standing. “Id like you to visit me topside. Maybe dinner tomorrow? We can work on us.”

#arcane viktor #viktor x reader #reader insert #arcane reader insert #song fic #machine herald x reader #machine herald viktor #arcane machine herald #viktor x you #machine herald x you

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more-mitaori · 9 months

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Chapter 13

Yui had no expectations as she knocked on the front door of the Rinju family’s little house. Alice had assured her that there was nothing to worry about, since Esther had only just returned that morning, and she would likely stay locked up in her room the whole time Yui was there.

This had become something of a ritual for Yui by now. Her one little corner of peace despite the fights she used to get into, despite fighting Witches in more recent months, and all the drama that came with high school. Not to mention the band now eating away at the last bastion of her free time.

Her wounds had healed nearly completely, though if one knew where to look, the shadow of a scar remained. Yui was, in a way, finally taking Alice and Midori’s advice and relaxing, but the shadow of Esther even just being in the house during Yui’s weekly tea time didn’t put her at ease. What didn’t help was that Marian Rinju’s car was nowhere to be seen in the driveway.

As if to answer Yui’s thoughts and concerns, the front door opened, with Esther standing on the other side. Expecting a snide remark or hostility, Yui braced herself, but Esther’s warm smile caught her off guard. “Ah, Yui. Right on time. Please come in, won’t you?” She held the door open, standing off to the side to let Yui in.

Seeing Alice in the background, Yui let her hesitation go, and stepped past Esther with a polite nod. Kicking her shoes off into the corner of the entryway, she made her way into the dining room, looking around. “No Mama Rinju this time?”

“No. Mom got called into work for some kind of emergency.” Alice took a seat at the table, and a kettle could be seen on the stove behind her in the kitchen. Steam was starting to form and leak out of it. “It’s just us three tonight.” Her voice was laced with an uncomfortable tension, the same that Yui felt before arriving. Esther’s warmth, somehow, was not putting either other girl at ease.

“Chamomile this time, Yui.” Esther gave both her sister and her visitor a warm smile again, fluttering about with setting tea cups on the table, one for each of them.

“Er, thanks, Esther.” Everything within Yui was screaming, wanting to confront Esther about this inviting warmth. She held herself back, however, not wanting to upset Alice. She looked uncomfortable enough as it was, but seeing them all get along would inevitably help put her mind at ease.

It was Alice, however, that took the initiative. “…Esther, didn’t you kick Yui out last time she came by? What happened to that? N-Not that I’m complaining, or anything.”

Yui tensed up, but Esther simply chuckled. “Don’t be silly, Alice. It’s far better to have someone reliable like Yui around to help keep an eye out, isn’t it? Especially with all of my, erm… let’s just say ‘research’ trips.”

Once again, Yui tensed up, internally screaming every snappy comeback she were capable of, but seeing Alice take a couple deep breaths silenced her for a while. “Yeah, well… you can always count on me,” she managed to mumble out.

Soon after, the kettle began to whistle, and Esther practically bounced toward it, pouring three cups of tea. One for herself first, then Alice, and finally Yui, keeping the image of a perfect host the entire time.

Yui didn’t hesitate this time. Taking the opportunity to show Alice even more calm, and perhaps one-up Esther in this silly passive aggressive game, Yui gave a polite nod, reaching for her cup and taking the first sip. As expected, this had the intended effect on Alice, who visibly seemed to calm even more. Alice was next to reach for her cup, followed shortly by Esther.

Not poisoned, Yui mused as she took another sip. “Hey, not bad. Thanks.” The trio then sat in an awkward silence, yet a calm one. The tension in the air had loosened a fair bit, though glances between Yui and Alice showed that neither were abandoning their thoughts about Esther. They agreed to get the truth out of her, after all, and though this wasn’t the intended time, both girls seemed to be on the same page.

Esther, however, beat both of them in the race to break the silence. “Say, Yui. Would you indulge me for a moment?” Not waiting for her reply, given Yui was halfway through another sip. “If you’re not opposed, would you mind giving me a little spar out back?”

“Er… I mean, sure, but what good’s it gonna do you to kick my ass again?” Yui was, as always, blunt and honest. Especially after the last time they fought, Yui wasn’t in a rush to get beat down again, and if Esther used her powers…

“Just a little contest. I won’t even transform. Please?”

Alice looked between the two, her eyes starting to wide, but Yui simply shrugged. “Y’know what? Sure, why not? If it’ll make ya feel better to punch down…”

Esther giggled quietly into her soon-to-be empty cup. “Thank you. Alice, do you want to watch? I promise, it really is a friendly contest this time.”

Neither of them seemed to beat around the bush with Alice. Everyone here knew that Yui and Esther fought underground by now, and everyone knew that everyone knew this. Alice sighed and paused, kicking her legs under the table. “Eh… sure, I guess. Just don’t get competitive, okay?”

* * *

The bout lasted even less time than the underground fight against her grandfather. Half a minute and some change later, and Yui was flat on her back in the grass, staring up at the sky, a bruise on her shoulder beneath her shirt. “Fuckin’ hell, I couldn’t even get close…”

Esther simply nodded, showing no outward emotion to break her facade. “You got one decent hit in this time. I’ll be feeling that one in my ribs for a week.”

Alice sighed and reached down, helping Yui to her feet. “Feel better now, sis?”

Nodding again, Esther looked Yui up and down. “Your form is tightening. You have some experience, both with Witches and with other people, but you’re still letting people slip past your guard. Feints especially seem to still be your biggest weakness in a one-on-one fight.”

Ignoring Yui’s muttering, Esther continued. “Were we transformed, Yui, I think you would have stood more of a chance. Your weapon doesn’t afford a lot of room for a brawler like me, when used properly anyway. With a little practice, the second-eldest Magical Girl in Mitakihara—”

“So aside givin’ me pointers, what was the fuckin’ point of all this?” Yui had had enough by now, staring straight into Esther’s eyes with the dam of her patience finally cracking and spilling over. “Like, we both knew who was gonna win this, and if ya wanted to train me, you would’ve not spent all week trying to push me away from Alice. What gives now? An’ don’t bother lying, ‘cause we all know all of this shit by now.”

Alice leaned against the tree beside both of the other girls, shrinking back a bit. “I want to ask about that too. Why did you spend so much time and effort trying to push Yui away, just to… embrace her as one of my protectors now, all of a sudden?”

“It doesn’t make one bit of sense. Ya beat up Pops ‘n’ me for some quick cash after bein’ gone for like a week, ya drop this ‘stay away from my family’ shit, an’ now you’re servin’ me tea and givin’ me tips? Like, what gives?”

“A-And where have you been going, anyway, Esther? You still haven’t told me. You never tell me where you go… and your trips keep getting longer and longer. What would I have done if Yui listened to you in the first place?”

The barrage of questions finally cracks Esther’s mask, and her smile finally fades. “…The truth, then.” Despite her voice lowering, it still held no animosity. Perhaps this was what unsettled Yui the most, though Alice was listening intently. “The full, unguarded truth.”

“Let’s start with the obvious. Yui, you know what I wished for by now, right?”

Alice shuffled uncomfortably, opening her mouth to apologize, but Esther held out her hand in a comforting gesture towards her sister to stop her. “Don’t. Yui knowing this saves me some time. I would have told you by now, anyway, and I’m surprised it never came up sooner, given our history.”

“Y-Yeah. You wished for your mother’s bastard of an ex-husband to suffer, right? What, the daughter of a mob boss is supposed to judge that sorta thing?” Yui faltered slightly, but stood her ground.

Esther shook her head. “It wasn’t a moral reason I never told you. Quite frankly, you never asked. It never crossed your mind, did it? You wanted to beat me -first-, and then learn about my powers after. It’s a rather damning flaw of yours, truth be told. That sort of thinking might get you killed out there someday.”

Not waiting for Yui to argue, Esther continued. “But my wish is really important to all of this. If I hadn’t made it in those exact words, I never would have learned the truth about my family. Our family,” she added, sparing a glance to a very nervous looking Alice.

“The Rinju family is cursed, Yui. It has been, for a long time now. Countless generations. I have no idea how far back it goes, besides ‘very very long ago’. I haven’t yet figured out what caused it, either, but I know firsthand what the effects are. So does Alice, even if she doesn’t remember.”

Alice shifted nervously and uncomfortably, and Esther spoke despite this after a cursory glance. “Let me tell you a story, Yui. Once upon a time, we had a father. A real one. Tomozaku Rinju never really had much in the way of success. Not financially anyway. But he did have a special kind of love for his family.”

“One day, he gets back from a business trip overseas. He had himself a nice, long conversation, a pleasant one with a flight attendant who was thinking about moving to Japan. She was already acclimated to the culture, given her vocation and her usual routes with her job, and he was lonely, but never thought himself the type to ever actually find someone.”

“They get along well enough, and scrape enough money together to buy a little house and start a little family. Two little girls. He doesn’t seem to object to his wife giving them names from her homeland. In case you were wondering how two girls born in Japan had English names in the first place.”

“But he was a loving father, if not a little awkward and quiet. Played with us, kept us fed and happy. Over time, he found another love, one at the bottom of a bottle. I once thought that this was what made Tomozaku a fiend, but no. Even as a hopeless drunk who lost his job, he was still kind to us.”

“It was about the time that Alice entered elementary school that the serious changes began setting in.” Alice shuffled again, shrinking down until she was sitting under the tree, hugging her legs as Esther spoke. “Raised tones turned into raised fists. Late night arguments with our mother became nightly, then daily, then outright constant. Mom started getting real quiet, and started wearing makeup around the house to hide the bruises.”

“It only escalated from there. I don’t think I have to tell you both just how bad it got, or what -exactly- he started doing. First to Mom, then to me later down the line.”

Yui flinched, and the sour expression and budding rage told Esther all she needed to know. Yui knew, of course. She gleaned enough from conversations with Alice and Marian over the years to piece everything together, but to have it confirmed directly was like a punch to the gut.

“One night, after he left my room, that was when Kyubey first appeared. And in that moment, I was vulnerable and foolish enough to give -anything- to escape. But then I stopped and thought about it. Why run away from it? Why not pay that monster back for everything he had put my mother and I through? So I wished for him to suffer for as long as he was near me. If I could see him, he would suffer. And so Kyubey granted my wish without a moment’s hesitation.”

“And he really did suffer. His movements became slower. Sluggish. Spent more time in the bathroom. Coughing fits. I never confirmed it, but I swore I saw dried blood in our sink once or twice. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. I thought it would be enough for him to run away. It was how he lived before this, after all.”

“Unfortunately for me, the wounded animal was cornered, and I never knew just how hard he would lash out. He never really knew just what was causing his declining health, but he took it out on me, as if I had caused it somehow.” Before Yui could interject, Esther stared her dead in the eyes. “And it was. But he shouldn’t have known that, right?”

“Well, I decided to stop denying it. He thought me some sort of witch who cursed him somehow. I just told him the truth. I expected him to think I was insane or something, but his eyes told me that he believed me. Maybe his family dealt with Kyubey before or something. In any case, I told him that he had two choices now.”

“The first, he could double down and try to fight, but knowing what I was, he would suffer and likely die if he tried, and none of us would face any legal repercussions over it. His death would be ruled poor health, just like every other absent father of the time period before him who drank themselves to death.”

“The second? He could turn himself in to the police, confess his crimes, and if I never saw him again, he could at least live out and recover in prison. I don’t have to tell you which he chose, Yui. You know damn well that the fucking coward fled to the safety of prison.”

Esther had stopped talking for a moment. Yui’s fists were in tight balls, and she was struggling to keep her breathing calm. Alice, however, had been crying in her huddle beneath their tree, finally looking up after Esther had gotten quiet. “Why… why didn’t you tell me the full truth?!”

With a sigh, Esther turned and knelt down beside Alice, brushing hair out of her face. “You were so young, Alice. You always were. I… Mom and I both tried our damnedest to keep that bastard away from you. Part of that meant not letting you find all this out until you were ready. You loved him, all the way up until the day the police came for him, and you overheard his charges. I didn’t want you to hurt over it. I’m sorry, Alice.”

“Mom wanted to protect you from the abuse, but I couldn’t let you piece together the full picture, not like this. I didn’t want you to hate yourself for loving him, even after everything he did. I still don’t. You didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”

Alice simply nodded, burying her face in her arms again. Esther stood back up, looking at Yui, who finally spoke. “So then, you’ve been runnin’ around this whole time, lookin’ for clues on this curse your mom’s ex suffered from?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t pieced the rest together by now, Yui. Then again, maybe not. See, the Rinju family curse isn’t so simple to just target the firstborn child. It latches onto vulnerable souls born from the cursed. Man or woman, anyone can suffer. Men turn violent, committing horrible, unspeakable crimes on those around them. Women meet with Kyubey, and I don’t think I need to explain why that’s a bad thing.”

“…So then that’s why it’s after Alice so goddamn hard? She’s carryin’ this curse now?!”

Esther’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not a problem, so long as Alice never makes a contract. But you and I both know where our lives lead and end. If that were to happen to Alice—”

Yui shuddered and shook her head. “Y-Yeah. I get it, I get it. An’ here I was just tryin’ to keep her out of a life of combat. But uh… wait a sec, Alice knew about magic from awhile back. Before that bastard got pinched by the cops. How’d that happen?”

“Oh, um… I can answer that.” Alice took a minute to bring herself upright again, though she still leaned against the tree for support. “I found Kyubey talking to Esther one night. Mom and da— ...the fighting got really loud, so I went to hide in Esther’s room.”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hide them from one another fast enough. I did get Kyubey away, but I had to have a difficult talk with Alice.”

“That’s not too far from when you made your wish, Yui,” Alice meekly added. “I was surprised at how easy it was to figure out, and you were always surprised at how easily I accepted it, but it just kinda worked out. Harder part was… figuring out why Esther was hurt and upset all the time. But I never knew it was that bad…”

“It wasn’t an easy conversation. All I told Alice was that Tomozaku was heavy handed in discipline, and I was ‘emotional’ enough to wish for revenge. Alice wanted to know more about magic, and me telling her about it seemed to calm her down. It was a distraction from the harsh reality of living in an abusive home, but avoiding the actual abuse.”

Esther sighed again. “But I knew how crafty Kyubey was. You did too, Yui. It was always a blessing, that she had someone like you in her life to help keep that damned thing away from her. Once I felt safe enough, I set out to learn more about the Rinju curse.”

“I found our family tree in a public library. I visited older villages and investigated tales of families torn apart by seemingly supernatural disasters. Suicides, homicides, that sort of thing. Found trails from our ancestors, but no clues beside that.”

Yui folded her arms. “So you trusted me, then? To keep Alice safe while you were away”

“Not entirely. I knew how close you two were, but in our spars, I knew you were rash and impulsive, especially when it came to a fight. I could only go so far, be gone for so long before I would need to return and make sure that my baby sister was still in one, perfectly human piece.”

“It could have left me in these dead ends, but Kyubey met with me one day while I was out of town. I asked about the Rinju family curse, and as I suspected, it knew everything. Didn’t tell me everything, naturally, but it confirmed to me that the curse was real, that it went back countless generations, had a definite way to cure it without bloodshed, and…”

“…Kyubey told me that its goal was to get a contract out of Alice. Because the curse over all these innumerable years was concentrated on her. Yui, you know what that means, right? If Alice makes a wish… if she forms a contract with Kyubey—”

“Nothin’ any of us can do if that happens. Yeah, I get the picture. We’re strong, but… yeah, no. I was always on board keepin’ the cat bastard away from Alice, but you better believe I’m on overtime here. Esther, you can count on me to help keep Kyubey away from Alice.”

Esther visibly relaxed, hearing the determination in Yui’s voice. “Thank you, Yui. Seriously, thank you. That means more to me than you realize.”

“But you kept on searchin’, right? ‘Cause trust me, it doesn’t take a week to talk to the genie cat.”

“Well… how to put this? Yui, as delicately as I can say, you’re familiar with the concept of criminal underworlds and shady organizations, right?” Taking Yui’s murderous glare as an answer, Esther nodded. “Well, it stands to reason that people in our line of work would team up as well, form those same… circles, so to speak.”

“I haven’t signed any contracts, or pledged loyalty to any of them or anything. But I’ve been getting desperate. If I can’t dispel our family’s curse, Alice will be hunted forever. And we all know that life never gets any easier. My all consuming goal is to break our curse so that Alice can live a normal life. And Yui, you better believe that I’ll do -anything- to make that happen.”

“The part I don’t get, an’ neither does Alice, is that you told me to stay away from Alice. Why is that?” Yui folded her arms. This was the one thing that didn’t make sense to Yui. “You started countin’ on me to keep Alice safe, so you tell me to back off? If I’d listened, that’d be game over, you realize that, right?”

Esther gave a sad, sarcastic kind of smile. “Well, I have two reasons. On the one hand, have you ever been the type to ever do as you’re told? Worst case scenario, you’d still watch Alice from the shadows. Your little bluff at that arena shook me, sure. But I have learned how to pull my punches. Even if it went wrong, I knew there was no way you would have honored your side of the bargain either way.”

Yui glared again. Did Esther just imply that she let Yui win that bet? She still remembered those burns lasting as long as they did.

“But the other reason is… well, I finally have a lead. And if this goes sour, it risks bringing the wrath of an underworld on my head. I didn’t want you getting caught up in that—”

“Don’t do me any fuckin’ favors, Esther,” Yui spat. “You don’t know what my family did, or went through. Don’t pretend, and don’t pull this savior bullshit with me.”

Surprisingly, Esther didn’t confront this. She looked away, rubbing her shoulder. “…I’m sorry, Yui. But this lead, it’s the most promising avenue I’ve found yet. And I cannot back down now.”

“Then let’s stop pretendin’ to be enemies and deal with this together. You, me, and Alice.” Yui’s expression softened.

“I can’t. Yui, I have to do this on my own. Alice can’t make a contract, and this is a family affair. No, Yui. I have to do this alone.” Esther’s voice was becoming increasingly desperate and a little crazed. “Now that you know all of this, Yui… you have to promise to keep Alice safe while I pursue this lead to its conclusion, and in return, I’ll absorb all of the consequences.”

“I refuse.” Yui’s reply was instant, and Alice stared at Esther, telling her in her expression that she agreed with Yui. “Your head’s not on right, if you think you can just fight the world on your own. ‘Specially the criminal underworld. Nah, you’re goin’ about this all wrong. We need to do this -together- or nothin’ is gonna get fixed. Deep down, Esther, you have to realize that.”

“You can’t be serious!” Esther’s voice snapped up in volume, causing Alice to flinch. “If we go together, Kyubey has nothing stopping it from getting a wish out of Alice! Don’t you get it? It’ll do -anything- to get my sister’s soul! I was wrong to depend on you after all, Yui.”

“Were you, now?” Yui reaches into her pocket, pulling out an unsealed envelope. “If you got this whole underworld business all figured out, then how did Pops get this off of ya that night?” Esther’s eyes widened as the color left her face. Her gaze was fixed on the paper Yui held in her hands, recognizing it in an instant. “And you better believe that I’ve read it. It’s a rendezvous. Was interestin’ to learn why you needed the money so bad.”

“Or did you somehow think that I just never dug into -my- family’s history, Esther? I know where I come from. I know what we were about. And I can tell you right now that you have no fuckin’ idea what you’re getting yourself mixed up with. Gonna have to admit that you need me, aren’cha?.”

With a shriek, Esther lunged forward, a white flash taking her into her Magical Girl form. Yui, anticipating this, threw the envelope past Esther, over to Alice’s direction. Not seeing it reach its mark, Yui simply threw herself to the side, barely dodging Esther’s attack. The heat from Esther’s cursed, poisonous flames singed Yui’s skin, but she was quick enough to avoid a burn.

Yui transformed in a violet flash, several gold staves landing in front of her to block or redirect the next barrage of punches as white flames began to burn in places along the already uneven grass of the Rinjus’ backyard. Jumping back, Yui held a staff in front of her, creating a little distance.

Esther lunged again, only stopping herself with her fist an inch away from Alice’s face. Alice had jumped between the two girls, and held her arms out wide. In her left hand, she held the envelope that had once been addressed to Esther. “S-Stop! Esther, please… stop this! Yui’s right, you can’t do all of this on your own!” Esther quickly jumped back, falling to her knees as she realized what she almost did in a blind rage, but Alice continued. “I… I read that envelope too, Esther. Please, just… just this once, please stop trying to carry the weight of the world on your own!”

“Please… this is tearing me apart. Between having you gone for so long, worrying if you’re even going to come back, to watching you attack and fight with Yui like this… Esther, I can’t take it!” Tears began rolling down Alice’s cheeks, but she stayed in that protective position in front of Yui, who had dismissed her form soon after. “Between the two of you, only one of you is actually trying to be reasonable and helpful about all this!”

Esther took some time to compose herself, slowly rising to her feet. “You… neither of you understand a god damned thing. You don’t know what you’ve done. You have no goddamn IDEA!” Esther’s shout was accompanied by a sharp crack. She had thrown herself forward, punching a small hole into the tree Alice had been standing in front of moments earlier. A white flame illuminated the dent as Esther pulled her hand away.

“…Do whatever the hell you want then, Yui Arashi. God knows that’s what you’re best at. But if anything happens to Alice, you’re fucking dead.” Esther walked back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

“A-Alice, are you okay? That was crazy, you know that, right? She could’ve killed you!”

Alice shook her head. “No… Esther would never hurt me, no matter how mad she gets. After what we went through with Dad… not a chance she could ever hurt me. That’s how I knew I could protect you for once, Yui.” Alice took some time to calm herself with breathing exercises and muttering. “…You know you have to keep that date now though, right? All of this is for nothing if no one shows up to the rendezvous.”

“Whoa, are you out of your mind? Esther’s gonna be halfway to Kazamino or some shit by the time I keep that date. We can’t exactly leave you alone here, that part Esther was one hundred percent right about.”

“Then don’t be gone long, Yui.” Alice’s voice sharpened a bit as she turned to face Yui. “Because if Esther is gone too long, and I don’t have any information, not even you could stop me from finding Kyubey and getting those answers myself.”

Yui stared into Alice’s eyes for a pause that seemed to last for an eternity. “Fine. I’ll leave the morning of, and I’ll go meet with this ‘information dealer’ for answers. But do me a favor, never make that threat to me again, okay? This was your one freebie.”

Alice responded by throwing her arms around Yui’s waist, her resolve finally crumbling. “Thank you, Yui… if we can get to the bottom of all this, then maybe… maybe Esther can stop all this and just… come home again. I want my sister back…”

Yui wrapped her arms loosely around Alice’s shoulders and sighed, holding Alice as she seemed to melt. Alice didn’t have that much endurance after all, Yui thought. “Yeah, well… let’s just hope I’m up to a little dive into the shadows, eh? Maybe Pops’ll forgive me for breakin’ my promise.”

<= Chapter 12 ~ * ~ * ~ Chapter 14 =>

#MitaOri #Act I: Bipolar Nightmare #Fanfiction #PMMM

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sashi-ya · 3 years

Note

It is okay to request a part 2 of angst Ace? like their child is searching for s/o in Amazon Lily and asked Ace: "Papa, when is Mama coming home?"

I'm so sorry 😭

Hi my dear! I got too into the story, so I always end up crying a little 😅. But, either way I hope you enjoy this second part full of pure angst! Thank you so much for requesting and reading ~ 💖

PART 2 - Portgas D. Ace x F! Reader ~ Why isn't she here?

PART 1: https://sashi-ya.tumblr.com/post/652998156866486272/hi-may-i-request-a-one-shot-of-ace-x-femreader

TW: pure ANGST. Hurting, wounds, blood. Mentions of death

WC: 887

Boa is asking Law about the state of health of Ace, while Luffy stays by his side making funny faces, but Ace won’t wake up.

“Mugiwara-ya, let him rest, all the wounds have opened again. He is not ok, please. Plus, you should rest too”, says Trafalgar Law, who thankfully arrived to give them treatment at a crucial moment while escaping Marineford.

Boa looks at the ground thinking about ways to make Luffy head off a little, and she offers him some food. Even Law has a worried expression on his face. The whole Heart pirates crew is outside, really touched about the news.

Jinbei is on the coast with Rayleigh taking some fresh air, trying to calm himself. He is wounded too.

Truth is, so many lives have been lost in the war, but all of them were deeply touched by the loss of Ace’s lover… because Ace won’t be the only one suffering…

While inside, Ace still remains unconscious, yet salty tears flow from the outside corners of his eyes and has his fist clenched hard over his heart… Losing the love of his life, made a scar over his heart, almost as if he has a big hole in it. But somehow, he keeps breathing.

Luffy tries to act tough, he struggles not to fall because of his weak legs, so Boa helps him to walk away from the room. Some Kujas have brought a big pile of meat, but he is not eating. It hurts to see his brother suffering, plus, he knew his sister-in-law since they were little.

“This is going to take a long time to heal, and I’m not even sure if this type of wound could be cured completely, Luffy-kun. We should be next to him, as much as we can”, Jinbei tells Luffy while both are sitting on the shore looking at the sunset. “Yeah…”, says Luffy, with a tone so unusual, almost extinct.

The night comes, and everybody goes to sleep. Luffy, who can’t fight anymore against the exhaustion, falls asleep sitting next to Ace with his head over the mattress. Boa, who is at his side, also falls asleep. While Law sits on the ground outside with his back over the wall with his katana on his shoulder. He does not sleep, he knows Hiken no Ace’s life is hanging on a very thin thread, so he is ready -even if he doesn’t show it- to save his life if it’s necessary.

The sea and his sounds surround the darkest of all the nights. Law is watching at his submarine docked on the port when he hears some child shouting. He turns around and devises a little kid running towards the hut. The doctor stands up, and sees some Kujas running behind the child, who screams “Daaaddy!! Mooommy!!”. He gasps, he knows the little girl is Ace’s daughter.

“Oi, oi, kid, stop”, he tells her trying to tackle her to avoid her entering. “Let-Let me in!!”, she says and kicks Law. “Rouge, wait!”, everybody shouts at the little girl, but she is already inside. Boa and Luffy wake up scared. “Dad…?”, she asks at the foot of the bed. Rouge cries, without any sound, but with tears that could flood the world. Uncle Luffy is not moving, Boa hugs the little girl, she is not moving either.

“R-Rouge…”, a weak voice struggles to say. “Daddy!!”, the little girl says, and aunt Boa let the little girl approach Ace. “Daddy, what happened?”, she asks. Ace reaches for her and pulls his daughter to his chest. He needs to feel the warmth of his baby girl. He brushes his hair, while Rouge hears the heartbeat of his father slowly increasing. “There is a reason to keep living, Ace”, says Luffy.

“Daddy… where is mommy? I searched for her all over this island, I couldn’t find her… is she here? When is Mama coming home?”, Rouge asks. Ace shuts his eyes, once again, he feels a dagger to his heart, slowly but firmly stabbing him. “How am I supposed to tell my daughter her mom died protecting me? I am the one who should protect her mother… She is going to hate me...”, Ace thinks repeatedly.

The moment seems to be stopped in time; Ace can’t hear anything besides the words of her daughter asking for her mum. He needs to tell her the truth, even if that means he is gonna lose his baby girl, too.

“Baby… Rouge, my baby…”, he mumbles. Rouge looks at his aching father, perhaps already knowing what he is about to say. “Mommy… Mommy is in heaven now…”, he tells her, trying to sound as soft as he could. “Daddy… Mommy is dead?”, she asks. Ace cries, but swallows something that tastes like sand, mixed with blood. “Yes, baby. Mommy is gone… I’m sorry, I’m sorry she died protecting me. It was my fault, I’m sorry baby. I’m sorry…”, he tells her, trying to stand up, failing miserably.

“Daddy… don’t leave me, please. Don’t you ever go away, ok?” Rouge tells his dad while wiping his tears out of his cheeks. Ace gasps, and tells his little baby girl, “I won’t baby, I will always be with you…”, and daughter and father close their eyes as they melt into a tight hug.

#portgas d. ace x reader #portgas d. ace #portgas d ace #portgas d ace x reader #portgas d ace x y/n #portgas d ace x you #portgas d ace imagine #portgas d ace headcanons #hiken no ace #ace x you #ace one piece #one piece fanfiction #one piece x oc #one piece x you #one piece x reader #one piece x y/n #one piece angst #sashi ya #sashi-ya

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inkykeiji · 4 years

Text

i can take you there but baby you won’t make it back

character: dabi | todoroki touya

notes: stepcest (kind of—ur parents aren’t married yet) with dabi-as-touya x a very naïve and inexperienced reader, normal!AU (no quirks, dabi also has tattoos over his scarred + fully healed skin), university!reader, implied yakuza!dabi, excessive use of the words niichan and good, praise kink, fingering, face fucking, title credit = save that shit by lil peep lmao uhhhh yeah i hc dabi as a very intelligent and perceptive individual soooo i feel like he’d be a master at reading a person & their emotions and then adapting his manipulation techniques

warnings: 18+, pseudo-incest (stepcest), noncon/dubcon, slight somnophilia, emotional manipulation, toxic relationship, size difference, slight degradation, mentions of drug use

words: 7.1k

part 2.1 | part 2.2

synopsis:

“You want to be good for me, don’t you, sweetheart?”

“Of course,” you respond instantly. Later, when you lay awake in your bed, you’ll feel ashamed by your actions, by how readily captivated you were with him, by how easily he was able to manipulate you with those sapphire eyes and that rough voice—

But in that moment, you’ll do anything to pull that little smile from him, anything to hear him tell you you’re good. You just want to be good.

Something dark and primal flashes in those gorgeous eyes as they gaze down at you, a small grin spreading across his face. “Of course,” he repeats softly.

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

Your dad’s been dating Rei for a while—nearly a year, now—when things begin to get serious, and he proposes to her.

She accepts, so it’s not exactly a surprise when she suggests you guys move in with her—she’s got more than enough space, she tells you, it’s just her and her son in that big old house—and your dad seems pretty thrilled about it. This was the next step before marriage, after all.

You like Rei well enough, she’s always been nothing but sweet to you, and anyway, your father’s relationship really isn’t any of your business or concern.

It isn’t that you don’t want to move in with her—her house is in a better part of the neighborhood, a standard detached upper-middle class home, and just a short walk from a bus stop that’ll take you directly to university, which you start in a week.

It’s just…You’re a little apprehensive.

You know she has kids. She mentions them in passing every once in a while, but you can’t for the life of you remember their names, or their ages, or how many of them there are. You know they don’t all live with her, that her relationship with her ex-husband is complicated and rocky at best.

But you’re still surprised to hear that only one of them, her eldest, lives with her. She tells you he’s five years older than you are, that he’s a clever, smart boy, going off on a tangent about how disappointed she is that he didn’t go to university, because ‘he would’ve done so well—he could’ve shone so brightly.’ Something about the way she says that, the way her voice sounds almost sad, makes anxiety turn to lead in your stomach. She talks about him as if he’s already a lost cause, but he’s only in his mid-twenties, isn’t he?

You understand the moment you see him. The man standing in front of you as you shift from foot to foot unsurely in the foyer of this unfamiliar house is about as far from what you anticipated as he could possibly be.

He’s tall, skin pale as moonlight, with jet black hair and the most stunning blue eyes you’ve ever seen. But that isn’t what captivates you. It isn’t the lip ring curled around his bottom lip snuggly, and it isn’t the tongue piercing you’re about to find out he’s hiding in his mouth, either.

Every inch of the exposed skin of his arms is covered in intricate, seamlessly flowing tattoos—or, for a moment, you thought it was tattoos, plural. Upon closer inspection, you realize that each arm is actually covered in one giant tattoo, giving a new definition to the term ‘sleeve’. It’s all black ink, not a splash of colour anywhere, depicting an extremely detailed and anatomically correct mechanical arm, complete with what would’ve been joints, ligaments and bones in the form of wires and steel.

The tattoos extend onto the tops of his hands, made to look as if surgical staples are peeling his skin back to reveal the robot beneath. This same tattoo continues up his neck, along his jaw and onto his cheeks, all the way to his bottom lip, spreading across his entire face and disappearing into his hairline and onto his ears. Finally, there’s a small portion of the tattoo underneath his eyes, the surgical staples lining the edges of the face tattoos, too.

It startles you—you’re not necessarily scared, you just…weren’t expecting that. But there’s no denying the rush of breath that involuntarily escapes your lips as your eyes search his face, raking over his body in a brazen way that should make you feel shameful, travelling back up to find him smirking smugly at you, raising an eyebrow as your eyes meet again.

The look in his eyes tells you he knows, knows what you’re thinking about, knows how undeniably attracted you are to him, and scalding heat floods your cheeks.

He chuckles a little, which does nothing but add insult to injury, and sharp anger slices through your chest at the way that you stomach absolutely drops at his gravelly voice. You can’t believe yourself, can’t believe your body is reacting and responding so readily to this man—this stranger.

He introduces himself as Touya, in that rough, deep voice that forces a jolt of electricity to run through your veins. You idly wonder what your name would sound like on his tongue, how it might sound if his voice dropped to a growl, find yourself stuck thinking about this for the rest of the night.

✰ ✰ ✰

To your disappointment, and as much as you are unabashedly interested in him, you don’t interact much with Touya for your first few weeks in the house—in fact, you barely see him at all.

This only piques your curiosity about him more, finding that you’re unable to tear your eyes from him on the rare occasion that you are in a room together. He catches you staring every single time, and he has the audacity to chuckle to himself and shake his head when his gaze meets yours, your eyes quickly darting away and cheeks burning at his laugh.

You begin gathering little tidbits of information about him, purely sourced from interactions you witness in the house, desperately praying for something that’ll give you an opportunity to start a conversation with him.

Your efforts prove fruitless when, almost a month and a half since you moved in, you’ve still only spoken a handful of words to him. You do learn a bit about him through observing, though.

You discover that he’s a smoker, which really doesn’t come as a shock at all. Marlboro’s are his favourite, and he’s always got a pack in his back pocket or rolled up in the short sleeve of his t-shirt. He must have them imported—Marlboro’s are incredibly rare to find all the way in Japan.

Touya must have a lot of things imported.

You find out that every other Thursday, Touya discreetly stuffs an absurdly large wad of cash—all composed of ten-thousand-yen bills—into his mom’s hands, forcing her fingers to curl around it. She fights him on it, every time, but he’s firm and adamant that she take it. It always ends with Rei giving him a small, watery smile, Touya pressing a kiss against the side of her head and murmuring that he loves her.

After you witness this interaction for the first time, you begin to notice that, while the house looks relatively normal on the outside, it is stuffed full of luxury on the inside. Flat-screen TVs each complete with full entertainment systems, state of the art appliances that are somehow up to date with all of the latest trends (including a smart fridge—absolutely ridiculous), custom made furniture, ornate rugs, a housekeeper that drops by every Sunday…

You have no idea what he does for work, but you think you’ve got at least some sort of idea when you catch him one night, just past 2AM, exiting his room and using a thumb to brush excess white powder off his nose. His eyes catch yours, pupils blown and shining in the low light, and he smiles darkly at you, winking once as he walks away.

You don’t ask—no one ever does.

You don’t ask about the crimson splattered on the toe of his boot, or why he sometimes smells metallic, like copper, the strong scent wafting after him and invading the halls as he stalks leisurely toward the bathroom. You don’t ask why he leaves the house at odd hours in the night, and you definitely don’t ask about the soft clinking and clicking you hear through the thin walls every so often while he cleans his gun at 3AM.

You’re not sure if it’s really any of your business, anyway. So you stay quiet, and continue to wait.

The opportunity finally comes one Wednesday in October, two weeks before Halloween, when you’re in the kitchen after school busy fixing yourself an afternoon snack. Touya comes home uncharacteristically early—you rarely see him before 10PM, so his entrance scares you, and you jump a little.

“Sorry,” he murmurs as he passes by behind you, just an inch too close, just enough so you can feel his body heat radiating off of him.

“It’s fine,” you say quietly, shaking your head a little and trying in vain to stop your hands from trembling as you spread peanut butter across a piece of bread.

You can feel his eyes on you, and it makes you nervous, makes your skin crawl in a way you’ve never felt before. He laughs a little at your struggling, leaning against the counter next to you and crossing his arms over his chest.

“You don’t have to be so nervous around me, y’know,” he says with a smirk, eyes glittering at the way your lips part in surprise, your breath stuttering a little. “I’m your niichan after all, aren’t I?”

You hadn’t even considered using the honorific until he himself uses it.

Your hands freeze, hovering over your plate, and you look over at him slowly. “You…Want me to call you that?”

“You can, if you’d like,” he says smoothly, nonchalantly, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. It makes no difference to him, he tells you, but when he finally looks back at you, you think you can see it in his eyes—a sharp, small glimmer of…of something. Something that makes your stomach twist in a way you can’t decide if you like or not.

But this is it, you think, this is your opening to finally begin talking to him.

So you do. And the smirk he gives you the first time you address him by the honorific, voice quivering slightly as you ask him where Rei normally keeps the blender, is nothing short of predatory.

“It’s on the top shelf. It’s too high for you, though,” he says, voice so sickly sweet it almost sounds mocking. “Let niichan get it for you,”

It isn’t, but you let him get it for you anyway.

And he knows—knows he’s got you the moment you gasp at the honorific leaving his lips, trying to hide it behind your hand, nodding quickly and squeaking out a thank you.

It starts after that. He begins playing with you; a sick, perverse game of cat and mouse, hunter and hunted, and you play your part perfectly.

You’d be lying if you said you didn’t love it, if you said it didn’t send wicked sparks of excitement shooting up your spine and an intense fluttering in your stomach.

And it starts slow. It starts with gentle pet names—honey, sweetheart, princess—and fingertips trailing down your arm as he passes you. It starts with a large hand placed on the small of your back, guiding you—out of the house and into his car, out of the kitchen and into the living room, out of the hallway and into his bedroom—and with little pecks on your lips stolen when no one’s watching, quick kisses that leave you feeling exhilarated despite their chastity.

Suddenly, he’s home a hell of a lot more. He’s sitting too close to you on the couch while you curl up with a textbook, his thigh pressed against you and flesh burning hot through his black jeans. He’s joining the family dinner a few times a week, idly hooking and unhooking his ankle with yours beneath the table while smirking at you from across it.

Suddenly, he’s asking you if you need a ride to school, or if you need someone to pick you up. You don’t, you tell him, the bus is just fine, but he insists. It’s what niichans do, he says. He wants to take care of you, he says.

Who are you to deny him that, really?

✰ ✰ ✰

The first time you experience Touya angry is about a month after the inciting incident, when he catches you walking home with a few of your university friends.

He had texted you earlier that day, telling you that he—very regretfully, he said—would be unable to pick you up from school this afternoon because ‘something had come up’.

You didn’t question what it was—you knew he’d lie even if you did. So you accepted it obediently, reassured him that it was fine, that you’d find another way home.

You’re pretty sure if you had told him that you didn’t have any extra change on you for the bus suddenly whatever important thing that had ‘come up’ which so desperately needed his attention wouldn’t be so urgent anymore. But you didn’t want to be a bother, or inconvenience him, so you say nothing.

Two friends decide they’ll accompany you on your walk home, so you aren’t lonely, they claim. Normally, the walk from campus to your house is about thirty minutes, but that day it takes you nearly an hour, wasting time goofing around and walking slowly as you talk idly.

Touya’s already pissed that it’s taken you so long to arrive home, that you’ve ignored all of his extremely considerate texts asking if you’re alright, but when he sees you squished between two boys, giggling as the three of you stumble up your driveway—he’s fucking fuming.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he asks, voice calm and monotonous, leaning casually against the doorframe.

Your head snaps up—you swear he wasn’t there just a second ago—blood running cold.

His stance is relaxed, arms crossed loosely over his chest, lazily raising an eyebrow as your wide eyes meet his. Technically, the only indication that he’s furious is the blazing blue fire in his eyes, but your friends can read the tension in the air surrounding him, shuffling a little closer to you. This minuscule action does not go unnoticed by Touya, sharp jaw clenching once.

“You had niichan worried,”

You’re frozen a few feet away from the porch, unable to find your voice, to move your legs, to breathe at all.

“I didn’t know you had an older brother,”

Your eyes do not leave Touya’s as you speak, the words hoarse. “Oh, we’re—”

“Yeah,” Touya bites, irritation finally bleeding into his voice. “She does,” his eyes float back to yours. “Come here, princess,”

Your body snaps into action, moving automatically before you can even comprehend it, allowing Touya to tuck you into his side the moment you reach him.

Your hands are shaking, but you have no control over them as your fingers curl in his white t-shirt, clinging to him. To your surprise, the arm around your shoulders hugs you closer in response, thumb caressing you.

“Thanks for making sure she got home safely,” he tosses over his shoulder, managing to make the simple sentence sound like an insult, tone bordering on patronizing, while he turns on his heel, marching you both inside.

“I-I’m so sorry,” you’re rushing to say the moment the front door shuts behind you two, Touya’s arm still wrapped firmly around you.

He looks down at you coldly. “Don’t you dare pull shit like that again,” he tells you, eerily calm voice forcing spikes of icy dread up your spine. He pauses for a moment, letting his words sink in as his eyes bore into yours. “You had me worried sick,” he breathes out then, squeezing you again. You’re surprised in the sudden change of tone, feeling your chest swell at the thought of him fretting over you, a small smile gracing your lips.

“I…I did?”

Touya’s eyebrows furrow, as if he’s offended at your questioning, mood morphing in the span of a second. “Of course you fucking did,” he spits like you’re stupid, arm dropping. “Do you ever check your phone?”

“Wh-What?”

Touya rolls his eyes. “Check your phone,” he calls out airily as he begins walking into the kitchen, shaking his head a little, disappointment rolling off him in waves.

Hastily fishing your phone out of your bag, you’re astonished to see eight texts from him and three missed calls. You scroll through the texts quickly, each one making you feel more nauseous than the next. ‘Is everything okay? You should’ve been home by now’; ‘Please answer me, princess, you’re making your niichan nervous’; ‘Where are you? Answer my fucking calls already’. Guilt turns sour in your mouth and you hurry after him.

“I-I really am s-so sorry,” you force the words out, unsure as to why there are suddenly tears stinging your eyes. He isn’t even doing anything—his back is facing you as he nonchalantly begins brewing a pot of coffee.

But the thought of him being upset with you, of losing his approval, sends a sharp pain searing through your chest.

“Are you?” he asks, and although his voice holds no malice in it, it causes your whole body to stutter with a harsh breath.

“Yes,” you whimper out, latching onto his arm and tugging in an attempt to draw his eyes to yours, to see how regretful you are, the remorse written across your face. “I should’ve…That was so careless and inconsiderate of me,”

“It was,” he agrees simply, voice still light, as if he’s discussing something as mundane as the weather. “But you’ll never do it again, right?”

“Right,” you agree readily, breathing out the word before you even realize what you’re agreeing to.

“Tell niichan you’ll never worry him like that again,” he finally looks over at you.

“I-I’ll never worry you like that again, niichan, I pr-promise,”

His eyes hold yours for what feels like eons, before he finally twists his arm out of your grasp, instead wrapping it around you and tugging you against his body. You stay staring up at him, eyes wide and obedient, breath bated as you wait for your next order, so pliant and ready to serve him.

“Good,” he whispers, eyes finally softening, and you feel like you can breathe properly again. His free hand cups your face, thumb running along your lips, then your chin, then your jaw. “You want to be good for me, don’t you, sweetheart?”

“Of course,” you respond instantly. Later, you’ll lay awake in your bed, feeling ashamed by your actions, by how readily captivated you were with him, by how easily he was able to manipulate you with those sapphire eyes and that rough voice—

But in that moment, you’ll do anything to pull that little smile from him, anything to hear him tell you you’re good. You just want to be good.

Something dark and primal flashes in those gorgeous eyes as they gaze down at you, a small grin spreading across his face. “Of course,” he repeats softly.

✰ ✰ ✰

He begins to trust you more. You meet his friends, each one terrifying in their own right. Jin is alright, although his brain is fried from drugs, and he talks to and contradicts himself a lot, earning the nickname Twice from Tomura.

Tomura horrifies you to your very core—a tall, lanky man with sunken red eyes and sickly pale skin who looks like he’s one bad day away from death—and Touya tells you very sternly to stay away from him.

A university student not unlike yourself, Keigo is your favourite. Keigo is the most normal, with his wild blonde hair and enticing gold eyes that always look like they’re playfully holding the secrets of the universe just out of your grasp.

Keigo’s brain is always going a hundred miles a minute, although you’d never guess it with his trademark lazy drawl, speaking as if he hasn’t got a care in the world. But he can always keep a conversation going, knows exactly what to say to avoid awkward silences or lulls in the discussion, and you appreciate that. You think he’s so cool—he has so much knowledge about the oddest things, everything and anything, ‘a walking encyclopedia’, Tomura calls it, and it fascinates you to no end.

It’s the speed, Touya tells you one night while you’re laying on the couch, your body on top of his, the pads of his fingers dragging down your back in rhythmic strokes. Speed is Keigo’s drug of choice, you find out. Speed is the reason why Keigo knows as much as he does.

“Sometimes he doesn’t sleep for days,” Touya says. “That’s how he has all the time to memorize everything he knows—though that big overactive brain of his plays a part in it, too,”

The thought inexplicably makes your heart sink in your chest, and you don’t say anything else. If Touya notices your shift in mood, he doesn’t mention it. You idly wonder what Touya’s drug of choice is, but you’re too scared of the answer to ask.

✰ ✰ ✰

It’s only a few nights later when you wake with a violent jolt, breathing laboured as you absentmindedly press your palm to your chest, trying in vain to calm your racing heart.

A nightmare.

You sit in silence for a moment, listening to the sound of your own harsh breaths echoing off the walls and debating what to do next. A minute later, you swing your legs over the side of the bed, wincing when your bare feet touch the cold hardwood, and pad down the hallway.

You try to trick yourself into believing that you aren’t using this purely as an excuse to spend the night with him. It really was so scary, you reason with yourself, it really has made you all shaken up…

Who are you kidding? You didn’t even attempt to go back to sleep.

You’ve been in his room plenty of times now—sitting daintily on his bed as he introduces you to new music, new movies, new books. Stuff that reminds him of you, he says, stuff that he thought you might be interested in. You’re grateful for it; there are so many things you’ve learned in the short time you’ve known him.

That isn’t all, though. There’s no denying the warmth that spreads through your body, that tiny excited flutter in your chest, when he calls your name and interlaces your fingers, leading you toward his room and telling you he’s got something to show you.

Yes, you’ve been in his room plenty of times now. But this is the first time you spend the night in his bed.

He’s still up, soft golden light leaking from under his closed bedroom door. Your hand quivers a little as you lift it to rap your knuckles against the wood. He appears in the doorway a moment later, leaning against the frame in a black t-shirt that looks like it’s a size or two too small for him, riding up to reveal a teasing sliver of milky skin, tips of his hipbones jutting out from the waistband of his plaid pajama pants.

“Princess? What is it?”

You didn’t realize you were staring, and you jump a little at his gravelly voice.

“Oh. I, um—Well, I just…had a nightmare a-and I can’t sleep,”

You can barely look him in the eyes as you say it, your cheeks burning. You both know it’s a lie.

But he plays along.

“Aw, baby,” he coos, drawing you into his arms, into his room, into his bed.

“You’re trembling,” he murmurs as he turns on his side to face you, propping his head up with a hand. “Poor thing. Was it a bad one?”

Your mouth feels like its been stuffed with cotton, rendering you incapable of speech, tongue dry and sluggish. You nod in response, heat seeping into your cheeks again at just how loudly your heart is thumping while you roll onto your side. There’s only a few inches of space between your bodies now, his hot breath fanning across your face as he speaks again.

“Do you want niichan to help you forget about it?”

The question hangs heavy in the air, and you suck your bottom lip into your mouth, eyes searching his. Your thighs squeeze together at the way his voice has dropped an octave, low and husky, familiar heat pooling in the depths of your belly. He waits patiently, lifting a hand to caress your cheek, then runs his fingertips down your bare arm, goosebumps following.

Finally, you nod. You think you see the corners of his lips quirk up into the slightest hint of a smirk, but you blink, and it’s gone.

“Here,” he whispers, hooking an arm around your waist and pulling you against him. Hand cupping your jaw, he tilts your face up and slots his mouth against yours.

You’ve kissed before, of course—in his bed, in yours, on the living room couch, on the kitchen counter with his hips shoved between your thighs—but this…this feels different.

These are kisses with intent, with purpose, with a goal in mind. These are kisses that keep you distracted—slow, soft, messy with saliva—as his hand slips down your body and between your thighs.

Your gasp breaks the kiss, wide eyes blinking up at him then fluttering shut as he brushes a knuckle against your clit. He hushes you, nimble fingers spreading your folds before he drags them up your slit, huffing out a laugh at how wet you already are.

“Were you thinking about something naughty before?” he gasps mockingly, sliding the pads of his fingers back down as he speaks.

His hand withdraws from your shorts and he orders you to lift your hips, tugging the waistband down your thighs. You squirm a little, forcing them further down your legs until you free yourself of them completely, eyes gazing up at him again, awaiting your next command.

Legs part dutifully as his hand travels back down to the apex of your thighs, pushing a finger into your soaking pussy.

It’s slow at first, thrusting leisurely with his middle finger a few times and loosening you up a little before adding his ring finger. Sapphire eyes watch his motions, captivated by how your eager little cunt sucks his fingers in selfishly.

“Look at that, huh?” he breathes, looking down at you. “Such a pretty little pussy you’ve got,”

You open your bleary eyes to peer at yourself, mesmerized by the way his fingers are pumping in and out of you, glistening in the dim light of his bedroom. He curls his fingers and you inhale sharply, hips twitching toward his palm.

“Oh?” he chuckles darkly, knuckles nudging the spot again. “Did niichan find something, baby?”

You don’t know, you’re not sure, you try to tell him, but all you can seem to manage is pathetic little whines while you nod your head.

“Have you ever touched yourself?” he’s asking as the pads of his fingers tap against that spot, your entire body jolting.

“Y-Yes,” you whimper out, a little breathlessly. “But it’s never felt like this,”

“Aw, baby,” he coos, and it’s so condescending. “Then you weren’t doing it right, sweetheart,”

He quickens his pace, chuckles at the way you try to desperately fuck yourself on his fingers at such an awkward angle.

“Poor little thing, can’t even get herself off properly,” he tsks. “You need your niichan to do it for you, don’t you?”

Soft whines spill from your throat as you nod eagerly, your stomach coiling tightly.

“One day,” he breathes, curling his fingers with a vengeance this time, your hips rolling up off the mattress. “When we have the time, I’ll teach you how to make yourself feel so good,”

He’s talking too much. You want to tell him this, tell him to shut the hell up, but every time you try to speak he presses the heel of his palm to your clit and grinds against it, effectively scattering all of your thoughts, soft mewls of niichan the only sound escaping your lips.

Can’t deny his voice is fucking hot though, a form of foreplay all on its own.

And he knows this, can read you like a goddamn book, especially when he’s got his fingers two knuckles deep inside of you. He can feel it, he tells you. You don’t even need to speak; he can feel your thoughts when his voice drops an octave and your cute little hole flutters, when he chuckles and your pussy clenches around his fingers—a slut for his voice, aren’t you?

“Pretty baby, you can’t do anything but nod dumbly, can you? Been fucked stupid by my fingers alone, huh?”

Your head barely moves, lost all control of your body by this point, only able to whimper in response.

“Gonna come all over my fingers, pretty girl?” the knuckle of his thumb begins grazing your clit in quick strokes. “C’mon, make a mess for niichan,”

And it’s pathetic, how quickly your body obeys. Your pussy squeezes once, twice, three times and you’re gushing all over his fingers, juices collecting in his palm, running down his wrist. You’re embarrassed—you’ve never cum that much before, have you?

Breathing still ragged, you nuzzle into his sheets, partially hiding your face from him. Nothing could hide the involuntary grin that forms on your lips, though. Arms snake under your boneless body, tugging a bit.

“Oh no, baby, we aren’t done yet,” Touya’s saying while he hoists you up, letting you lean heavily against him.

Head tilting in confusion, your glazed eyes find his. “Wh-What?”

He looks down at his lap and your gaze follows, a tiny whimper slipping past your lips at the bulge straining against his pants. “Doesn’t niichan deserve a nice reward for helping you forget that scary dream?”

Eyes darting back to his, you nod slowly, whispering out, “Yes. But—But…” But you’re hesitant; you’ve never done anything like this before. Shaking hands reach for the waistband of his pants, beginning to pull them down but freezing when the head of his cock peeks out.

Touya sighs. “Come on, you wanna be a good girl for niichan, don’t you?”

Of course. Of courses you do.

Then he wants you to touch him, he says. He’ll help you; he promises.

“But you gotta get it wet first,”

You ask how, and he laughs at you. “With your tongue, stupid,” he tells you.

He instructs you to kneel on the floor and you comply immediately, trembling legs folding beneath your body as you situate yourself between his knees. He inches forward on the bed a little, shuffling himself to the edge and caging you between his thighs. Bringing his cock close to your mouth, he taps the head against your closed lips.

They part instantly, obediently, his eyes flashing with something sinister as you take the head into your mouth and suck hesitantly, big eyes staring up at him waiting for approval.

He curses, his hips twitching ever so slightly, skin stretched taut over bony knuckles as a hand forms a fist in the sheets. Starting with kitten licks at first, the tip of your tongue barely touches him, tracing veins, then begins to gain more confidence as he groans a little, telling you what to you, that you’re doing good, so good for him.

Watching him through thick lashes, you have the audacity to look bashful as your tongue laves around the shaft, drenching it in saliva. A hand tangles in your hair and yanks, pulling you off his cock when he decides it’s sufficiently wet enough. Long fingers encircle your wrist, bringing your hand to form a fist around him.

“Like this,” he says, jerking your hand up and down.

You’re terrible at it, movements awkward and uncoordinated, but in that moment he doesn’t really care. He’s irritated a little, wondering out loud how anyone can be bad at handjobs while a large hand wraps around yours and forces you to speed up. Bad? Your heart sinks at the small three letter word, a hard lump forming in your throat, looking as though you may start crying.

But he cums quickly after that, ropes of searing hot white painting your cheeks and face. You watch him the entire time, panting a little, lips parted slightly and your tongue darts out to lick them, tasting him.

He laughs at your bitter reaction, and it’s such a patronizing sound.

“Don’t worry,” he says, collecting the cum off your face and forcing his fingers into your mouth. “Someday I’ll stuff your throat full of it.”

✰ ✰ ✰

You can no longer mention needing—no, wanting—anything around him anymore, because within the next few days it’s sitting pretty and perfect on your bed, propped up against your lace trimmed pillows.

He’s so good to you; you should be grateful you have such a generous niichan, one who eats you out and spoils you with gifts. You’re so spoiled.

And he tells you this, in the dead of night when you wake to find him shoving his cock into you, snarling a little at your soft whines of protest.

“Don’t be a brat,” he warns. Just be a good girl and take his cock. He does so much for you, can’t you be good for him?

Yes, yes, you want to be good for him, you want to be the best for him.

By this point you’ve lost count of how many times you’ve woken up in the middle of the night with his head between your thighs, prepping you to take him.

“Stay sleeping, baby,” he’ll tell you, words whispered into your hair as his cockhead nudges against your hole.

As if you could ever stay sleeping when only a few minutes later he’s pounding you into oblivion, large hand clasped over your mouth so tightly his blunt nails are digging into your cheek, so hard that it’s yanking your head back, neck beginning to ache.

He tells you to be quiet, “You don’t want anyone to hear, do you? Then we’d have to stop, and you don’t want that, right, sweetheart?”

You don’t, you whimper. Of course you don’t—you want whatever he wants, you want to be his perfect little baby, you want to be told how good you take his cock, the praise mumbled against your skin in a low, strained voice right before he fills you with cum.

✰ ✰ ✰

He disappears for a few days near the end of December. You have no idea where, Touya answering your curious texts with playful quips at first before he grows tired of it and tells you to stop fucking asking.

But eventually, he returns.

The front door slams shut and your body flinches with a jolt of excitement. Adrenaline spikes your blood when you hear his heavy boots colliding with the hardwood, getting louder, louder, louder…

He passes right by you, not glancing at you at all. Moments later, the sound of water hitting the tiled shower wall echoes down the hallway.

And you wait. Patiently, you wait, like the good little girl you are, not daring to move a muscle. Eventually he re-emerges, hair still damp, a few strands sticking to his neck.

With a groan, he collapses on the couch next to you, flopping his head into your lap and gazing up at you with glazed, blown sapphire eyes.

“You’re high,” you say softly, not accusatory, just an observation. He giggles a little.

“So what if I am?”

“What did you take?”

“Oh,” he gasps mockingly. “Oh no, baby, I can’t tell you that,”

Why? The question is burning on the tip of your tongue, and you can tell that he’s anticipating that to be your next response, but you bite down on your bottom lip, holding it in. You know his answer already, can practically hear his patronizing voice—Because good baby sisters aren’t supposed to know about stuff like this.

“Can I try some?” you ask instead.

All of the mirth fades from his eyes in an instant, and he moves in a flash despite his inebriated state, so quick you can barely tell what’s happening. His large hand wraps around your bicep in a bruising grasp, pulling you towards him as he sits up, his face an inch away from yours.

“Absolutely fucking not,” he spits, cobalt eyes blazing and voice rumbling against your chest. “And if I so much as catch wind that you’re using, have a mere feeling that you’ve tried it—even just once—I’ll slaughter you and the fucker you got it from. Do you understand me?”

Surprised tears spring into your eyes and you nod jerkily, body beginning to tremble as your breath gets caught in your throat. You want to tell him that you didn’t mean it, honest, you promise!; that you were just kidding around, you swear!, but you can’t, voice mangling itself with the hitched little breaths on the back of your tongue.

He growls at your silence, his grip around your arm tightening and you cry out, terrified that he might actually crush the bone with his bare hand.

“Say, yes Touya, I understand,”

“Y-Yes Touya, I understand,” you manage to stutter out, voice returning only at the command of a direct order, tears spilling over and rolling down your cheeks in pairs. His eyes search your face for a moment, his features contorted in fury, before he sneers at you, squeezing your arm once then roughly letting go, shoving you away from him.

You fall backward against the arm of the couch, heart thumping so vigorously you’re sure he can hear it. He groans, throwing his head back and closing his eyes, exasperated.

“Fuck,” he sighs, eyes opening to glare at the ceiling. “You’ve ruined my high,”

You stare at him, breath coming out in uneven huffs, clinging to the couch.

“I-I’m sorry,” you whisper, terrified to move lest you upset him more.

He’s silent for a moment, still staring up, until he lolls his head to the side, glancing at you through the corner of his eye. A small smirk spreads across his face.

“C’mere,” he says, nodding his head a little in indication.

“Wh-What?”

“C’mere,” he repeats. “Come make it up to me,”

Your body’s moving before you’ve given it permission to, crawling into his lap obediently, thighs on either side of his hips. His smirk widens, and you love it—you love how much control he has over you without even trying, you love the way a quiet whimper slips through your lips as his large hands begin kneading your flesh, running up your legs and grabbing your ass.

Lips trail up the column of your neck, and you tilt your head back, a silent plea for more. You can feel the way his lips curl into a grin against your skin, nipping at it a second later.

“So, how you gonna make it up to me? Huh?” he shifts his hips under you, pressing his hard cock into your clothed core. You whine a little, grinding against him.

“I’ve got a few ideas,” you breathe out while sharp teeth mar your collarbone.

“The hell you waiting for? Show me,”

You begin sliding down his body and he pushes on your shoulders, forcing you to your knees between his spread thighs. He watches you through half-lidded eyes, gaping pupils outlined by a thin ring of blue.

Holding his gaze, you lean forward with your pretty little tongue hanging out and begin licking along the straining bulge, tracing it slowly, the denim rough against your sensitive muscle. You relent though, lapping at his clothed cock in slow, long strokes, and his jeans are just thin enough for you to feel him pulse in response.

A giggle bubbles up past your lips, muffled by the denim, already beginning to feel heady as you pull simple reactions from him. Your mouth forms a cute little ‘o’ and you suck on him the best you can through his jeans, drooling all over his lap and soaking through the material.

The hand in your hair tightens into a fist, yanking hard and pulling your mouth away. “Stop fucking teasing,” he warns, a hint of something ominous in his voice.

You obey, because you always obey, tiny fingers working to quickly unbuckle his belt, pop the button, yank down the zipper. He aids you, lifting his hips and allowing you to tug his jeans down his thighs enough for his cock to spring out.

His own hand wraps around the shaft, you pausing mid-action as you reach for it.

“Open,” he demands, your dutiful lips parting immediately, letting him push his cock into the warm, wet cavern.

He sets a brutal, punishing pace from the start, refusing to give you a single moment to adjust. His other hand fists in your hair, forcing you to stay still as he rams his cock down your throat.

Reflexive tears burn your eyes, blurring your vision. You blink quickly to clear them, desperate to watch him, to catalogue all of his micro-expressions and the sound of his voice as he grunts out your name, to burn it into your mind, etch it into your very soul.

Touya’s head falls back against the couch, Adams apple bobbling with his rough whimpers, long neck and sharp collarbone on full display. If your mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied, you’d love to lick up his smooth skin, to trace the dips of his collarbone with your tongue and sign your name in brilliant splotches of blue and purple.

You’re gagging around his cock now, starting to feel lightheaded and struggling to inhale enough oxygen. The ache in your jaw is beginning to spread, but you ignore it, stretching your mouth open wider, to take more, to be good for him, to make him proud. It’s worth it for the hoarse, throaty moans you’re pulling from him, to hear your name shuddered out, followed by a breathy, “Fuck,”

He forces hot cum down your throat a moment later, and you choke on it, sputtering around his cock, throat spasming as it tries to force the foreign object out. He won’t let it, though. He holds your head in place, nose pressed against his pubic bone, and you can do nothing but take it, like a good little girl, like he tells you to.

But it’s all worth it. It’s all worth it, to hear his broken whines like that, to have him look down at you and pull your hair and tell you you’re good, so good for him.

And you’re sobbing by the end of it, gasping for air the moment he lets go of you, wheezing violently as your head collapses against his thigh.

“Did I—” you cough, voice raspy from having your throat fucked raw, “—Did I make it up to you, niichan?” you gaze up at him, eyelashes spiky with residual water. You’re the perfect picture of obedience, strands of hair stuck to your face where your salty tears have dried and swollen lips gleaming with saliva as you watch him with glittering eyes, waiting desperately for his praise.

He looks down at you, eyes devious and diabolical, chest heaving a little. “Of course you did,” he tells you, corners of his lips tugging up into a sharp smirk as you melt into him. “You always do, don’t you?”

#todoroki touya x reader #todoroki touya #dabi x reader #dabi smut #touya x reader #dabi may be a scumbag but he loves his momma #tomura baby i’m so sorry #promise u don’t horrify me at all oof #pls come horrify me more #christ if dabi isn’t touya we’re all gonna look like goddamn fools #a buncha clowns #anyway this is my first time posting something like this #n i haven’t written smut in an extremely long time #so pls be nice #actually u should always be nice #so pls be extra nice #no one beta’d this so there’s a good chance i’ll come back to it n revise it or whatever idk i’m just sick of looking at it rn #the ‘he talks too much’ is inspired by ch 271 w hawks where he’s all ‘he’ll keep talking’#dabi shut the fuck up challenge #prone to monologuing this boy is #also sorry abt the crazy sentences with a thousand commas #apparently now i’m oscar wilde w these run on sentences #idk i still kinda like em tho #i like oscar #tw pseudo-incest #tw noncon #tw dubcon #tw emotional manipulation #tw somnophilia #tw drugs

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mimi-cee-hq · 3 years

Text

Wildfires - Atsumu x f!reader

Summary: You're burned from last year's rumours, now fearing any hint of smoke. Yet you can't help, but fall for the childhood friend who's a balm to your wounds.

Genres, tropes, etc: angst with a satisfying and happy ending, angst to fluff, hurt/ comfort, exs to lovers (but not the usual kind), secret dating, drama and romance, but it's still somehow cute because that's just how I write lol

Warnings: false rumours about cheating and an illicit relationship, so it still technically mentions those things.

Words: 1.9k

Author's Notes: Hi Lia (@chimielie)! I'm your ☀️ anon. 🥰 You suggested exs to lovers and hurt/comfort for this prompt and it still technically is those things, but it's probably not what you expected.

If anyone is new to my blog and doesn't want to read angst, here's a cute fluff Atsumu x reader instead. :)

This fic is for the Heatwave Fic Exchange (@heatwave2021). Thank you for hosting this!

~*~*~

"I hadn't realized you two were still together."

Not even the overworked fan's whirring can drown out the strained silence that follows.

"We're not."

The air is dry and sweat forms on your brow. With the sun beating down, it's the perfect combination for a wildfire.

Atsumu's chin sits on his fist as he avoids your gaze. Lowering your eyes, you stare at the wooden table.

"Did he still care?" you ask yourself.

~*~*~

Plaid skirts sway as two students peek into their new classroom, attempting to be discreet. You hear their whispers from a distance, waiting in front of your own classroom.

"Look! We get Kinjou-sensei this year!" one exclaims.

"Are you serious?" the other asks after letting out a gasp. "I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I might end up staring at his face all day."

"Maybe it'll help you pay attention," her friend snickers.

You clench your jaw as heat rises in your body. They're able to indulge in frivolous remarks, ignorant of how you're left scarred from one fleeting gesture, a tiny piece of kindling that ignited into uncontrollable flames.

Cool hands cover your ears from behind you. Your jaw relaxes and the tension dissipates from your shoulders. You turn around to see Atsumu wearing a scowl on his lips. Sighing as you cross your arms, you ask, "Atsumu, what are you doing?"

"Well if only there was a way to make 'em shut up," he replies with a sharp tone.

You lean away from him and swat his hands back. "You're too close," you tell him.

"Alright!" he says, holding his hands up in surrender. "I'll go!"

As he walks away, he crosses his thumb and index finger behind his back, forming a little heart. You smirk at his hidden gesture to you.

"I love you too, Atsumu," you silently tell him as a smile graces your lips. However, it vanishes like the mist in the sun when yet another person calls after him, someone he doesn't know.

You skirt around the other students, avoiding their path, and rush to your desk. There are too many dry leaves around; a single spark can burst everything into flames.

Why does everyone have to know Atsumu?

~*~*~

"I wish you could've been my partner for the project," you say.

Atsumu pours a glass of water and places it on the table in front of you. "You ended up with that new girl, right?" he mentions and you reply with a nod. "She should be safe to work with."

You're startled once again when you hear the chimes from the front door. A rattan room divider obstructs your view of it, but you hunch down anyway as you finally pick up your spoon.

Atsumu sits across from you, sharing something about his team. His eyes dim when he realizes you haven't been listening.

"This isn't working," he tells you. "I thought this restaurant would be better because people can't see us from here." He runs his fingers in his hair, a sign he's frustrated.

"I– I forgot people can still hear us," you say in a low voice.

Atsumu sighs. "Let's just watch a movie at my house," he says. "Osamu already knows anyway."

"You know we can't," you protest. "Not when Hana and Haku drop by so often. They're going to realize we're together."

"But how are we supposed to have any fun when you're so scared?"

"I–" You lower your gaze, eyes unfocused towards your untouched bowl of rice. "Sorry, Atsumu."

"It's not your fault," he reminds you yet again. This exchange has become all too familiar. "Maybe we should finally tell Hana and Haku what happened to you."

"And have them find out the guy in the rumours is their beloved brother?" You cross your arms over your chest and rub your hand on your sleeve. "I still want to be comfortable around them, Atsumu. Ignorance is bliss right?"

His mouth twists before a groan escapes from it. He slouches in his seat and stares at the food in front of you, which remains the way the waitress left it.

"Let's take the train to Tokyo next time," he mutters. "Nobody'll know us there."

Your eyes grow before looking up at Atsumu. "What?" you slowly enunciate just above a whisper. "Don't you know how expensive that is?"

He presses his lips together before sharing his next suggestion. "I know where 'Samu's secret stash of money is…"

You narrow your eyes at him. "No, we're not stealing from him to go on a date, Atsumu."

"Alright," he says, lowering his eyes and dropping his shoulders.

Seeing his expression, you offer another idea. "How about Osaka?" It's only one city away.

Atsumu's eyes light up, excited at the chance of finally getting to enjoy some time with you. Although your smile doesn't quite reach your eyes, you hope leaving the vicinity of last year's wildfires would be enough, for Atsumu's sake and yours.

~*~*~

Your heart beats faster and your throat becomes dry. You weren't getting enough air.

"You're okay," you tell yourself. "She's not talking about you."

"Seriously! That happened at my old school," your project partner snickers as she recounts her story to you. "They even got the kiss on camera too! I felt so bad for her, but it's her own fault for cheating on him."

You begin to feel dizzy, catching a whiff of smoke from another victim's fire. Her words add fuel to a fire that cannot be stopped. Wildfires burn and burn, and are never satisfied until they run out of kindling.

"Oh! I've been meaning to ask. Are you dating Atsumu? The two of you seem really close!"

Your throat struggles to take control, attempting to keep your stomach down; it doesn't want to burn either.

They'll say you're cheating on Kinjou-sensei.

The tongue is a powerful weapon, causing destruction by those who are both untrained and ignorant as well as the truly malicious.

Your knees buckle as you pant for air, your grip weak on the knob. You need to get out.

Atsumu's figure is before you and you relax as he catches you. You never would have imagined that this guy would be your fleeting oasis.

~*~*~

"Let's break up," you tell Atsumu.

You both knew this was coming, yet a bucket of icy water chilled to the bone regardless of whether or not it was expected. Speaking those words aloud shocked you back into reality.

You hesitated dating each other in the first place, but you couldn't help but caress his strong hands when he admitted his feelings for you. Growing up together in your group of five, he was by your side from snotty noses to acne breakouts.

You didn't expect to fall for the hot-head of your bunch when rumours of you dating Kinjou-sensei spread. Atsumu attempted to extinguish every flame he spotted, witnessing your anguish each time you got burned.

"Maybe we can still do this," you say, contradicting your previous words.

"And what? Have ya pass out again every time someone asks about us?" Atsumu protests. He lowers his eyes as he clutches your hand. "Do ya know how worried I was about ya?"

Your heart flutters for a moment before you remind yourself that you can't keep him, the boy who has been by your side for so long.

"Aghhhhh! This is so stupid!!! Why are we suffering because of this made up crap?! 'Kinjou-sensei' had put a bandaid on me a thousand times more than he did t' ya! But nobody gives a crap about that!"

"I'm sorry Atsumu."

"Why the heck are ya sorry?!" he says, raising his voice.

"I– If I was just strong enough... If I could withstand their stupid words"–your lip trembles–"maybe I wouldn't have to choose between you and having some peace."

There's another silence between the two of you. Your fingers are loosely intertwined together, barely holding the fragile string between the two of you, as if it were a wick that would combust and disappear in a split second.

"Maybe we should just run away," Atsumu mumbles aloud.

"What?"

"Ya know, transfer schools. Or even drop out if we need ta."

"Atsumu! You can't! We can't! You have volleyball! And I... this is the only school that gave me a scholarship."

"Agh! Why is this so frustrating?!"

"I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing, ya idiot! Ya did nothing wrong!" He presses and rubs his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I just… I wish I could do more for ya." His arm drops at his side. "I wish I didn't feel so useless."

Your tears drip down your face. Could they be counted any more? If only you didn't fear getting caught dating Atsumu, terrified that last year's fires would morph into a raging beast. But another wildfire would not only destroy you but also the man you loved. If only your sores healed by now, you could have shown off your boyfriend, disregarding any of the flames.

If only you were fireproof.

But you weren't and now you're forced to loosen your grip on Atsumu, the balm to your wounds, and let him fall out of your hands.

~*~*~

"I hadn't realized you two were still together."

Not even the overworked fan's whirring can drown out the strained silence that follows.

"We're not."

It was three years since you talked to Atsumu, four since rumours first raged through the school. The two of you went through cycles of getting back together and breaking up again every time you learned that fear was still crippling you. Cutting off contact was the less painful option.

Years later, you're at a friend's cottage and Atsumu comes along without knowing you're here as well. Now that high school has come and gone, the smoke has dissipated and the fires have finished their course. You can finally breathe.

But does Atsumu still want you?

To anyone else, Atsumu is bored out of his mind, resting his chin on his fist. Nobody sees his thumb and finger forming a tiny heart.

Your heart flutters and you blink back tears. You attempt to hold back your growing grin, but you have no reason to hide it anymore.

You wrap your arms around him, almost causing him to topple off of his chair, Atsumu letting out a yelp. "What the heck are ya doing?"

You can finally release your feelings for him, openly and freely. The dam opens and waters rush to engulf him before you settle into his embrace.

"I love you too Atsumu," you tell him without a care in the world.

Osamu tells you he changed when you cut off contact. He desired to be a man, not wanting to feel so powerless, and poured himself into things he could do. It paid off.

"Did ya want to go somewhere together? I could even take ya all the way t' Rome if ya want."

The two of you hold each others' hands as the ocean's edge cools your feet. You lean against his shoulder, cherishing the moment that at one point seemed like an inaccessible dream.

You give him a peck on the cheek and smile. "Tokyo seems like a nice place for a date for now."

~*~*~

I hope you enjoyed this fic. :) (And I hope you liked it Lia!!) I guess I can be poetic if I try. lol. I had a whole commentary written out for this fic, but I decided against posting it here and making my author's notes as long as the fic itself. 😂

If you enjoyed this fic, I don't really have any similar pieces of writing at the moment. The only one that's similar is the hurt/comfort Kunimi WIP I've put off writing for so long because I didn't think I could pull off this type of fic. (And also because I think only one person will read it.) The theme in that one is pity/pride because pitiful is Kunimi's most hated word.

Anyway, if you want to see my usual style of writing, I have a cute tooth-rotting fluff Atsumu x reader one-shot. I currently also have an ongoing fake dating chaptered Suna fic, which is probably my best planned fic with the hints and foreshadowing and a nice mix of humour, fluff and shoujo-type angst. :)

I also have a Google form for my taglist if anyone is interested.

#miya atsumu x reader #atsumu x reader #atsumu angst #atsumu fluff #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu angst #haikyuu fluff #miya atsumu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu #atsumu fanfic #miya atsumu fanfiction #haikyuu fanfiction #hihqnetwork #animehorizons #angelwalker’s virtues #atsumu scenarios

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nev3rfound · 3 years

Text

the other widow : b.b

natasha may have left what she once knew behind when she became an avenger, but there is still so much more to learn about her sister who escaped the red room with the help of a certain metal armed soldier. (3k)

masterlist / permanent taglist / etsy shop - requests open!

requested: yes! this has been a long awaited idea from @ateliefloresdaprimavera i hope you like it love :) warnings: mentions of violence, blood, nightmares. obviously, I haven't seen the black widow movie so this is just my interpretation!

In another life, things might've been different for you. Perhaps, you could have left your home country and followed many your age in their quest to find a better life in America or Europe. You might have met someone, a kind man who took care of you, who loved you deeply.

That would have been nice, in another lifetime. But it wasn't reality, at least, not yours.

Your reality was living in a world plagued by nightmares, of what was done to you for many years. It hurt to blink as you saw yourself, lying back on that table as Doctors crowded around you, muttering about the success of their work.

"No, she's still out there," Your ears perk up at the conversation behind you. The kitchen window remains open whilst you sit outside, tugging at the rose petals from the rose bush. It always was too pretty. Pretty things aren't designed to last for long.

Melina sighs heavily into her phone, glancing away from the window. "What do you expect me to do? She doesn't go anywhere." Disappointment laces her tone combined with the tiredness of her mind. She's been trying for months to encourage you to go out, further than the land you live on.

Faintly you can hear the other end of the conversation, Melina always had a habit of keeping her phone on speaker. "I might visit soon." That is all you managed to hear, but it was enough for you to drop the remainder of the rose and crush the petals beneath your feet.

"Oh good, you're awake." A pair of gloves snap against his wrists, causing you to flinch in your seat. "Now, Y/n, there's no point trying to struggle, you know what happened last time." Doctor Yeznik reminds you with a twisted smile, waiting for you to nod.

"They deserved it." You dare to mutter, only to hear Yeznik chuckle before he turns back to face you, gripping your face in his hand.

"And you deserve this." He seethes, stabbing a needle into your arm before you can fight back. "No one is coming to save you, Y/n, never forget that." Yeznik whispers, watching as your eyes begin to droop until you're unable to fight the urge to sleep.

Rising to your feet, you can feel a smile ghost your lips at the sight of a Blue Tit perching on the edge of the birdbath. One of his wings isn't quite right, and as you approach it, it remains perfectly still.

Holding your hands out, you ignore the scars from the restraints still marking your wrists and forearms. "I won't hurt you," You tell the bird as it dips its head into the water, shaking the excess off. "I can help you, little one." You add quietly, only to watch the bird retreat and fly away uneasily.

"There's always next time." Melina calls out from the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Yeah," You nod, lowering your arms and bury your hands into your pockets. "if it makes it through the night without being able to fly far."

Entering the kitchen, you pass Alexei in silence, despite him turning his head to speak up.

Once out of sight, Alexei averts his attention to Melina who simply shakes her head. "She's still working on recovering." Melina sighs, taking a seat opposite the broad man. "The, the red room got worse after Natasha escaped."

"You don't have to explain," Alexei waves her off, aware of you standing at the top of the stairs, listening in due to the creak of the floorboards. "it'll take time."

"I just don't know if that's something we have." Melina comments, passing a burner phone to Alexei with a text message on display.

Shifting in his seat, Alexei looks back at Melina before crushing the phone in his grasp. "We'll do what we can." He mutters before silence ensues and the pressure from the floorboard beneath your feet eases as you return to your needed solitude.

Opening your eyes, you knew something was off, something was different within the house.

Underneath your pillow, you grab ahold of your gun before traipsing out from your room which remains in permanent darkness.

As you exit your bedroom, light tries to seep through the gap in the door but you quietly close it, keeping the darkness concealed from the light.

Avoiding any creaking floorboards, you keep your gun aimed at all times before the faint sound of laughter catches your attention from downstairs. It was a rarity to hear anything joyous in the household, mostly arguments occurred or stories of fights Alexei shares that you can recite from memory if you were ever asked.

But this was different, something lighthearted shared for a brief moment before you turn the corner and hover by the kitchen doorway seeing all the seats taken at the table, Melina's now taken by a redhead.

"This is a surprise." You speak up, placing your gun on the counter, now catching everyone's attention.

Smiling to Yelena, Natasha quickly turns around in her chair, leaning her arm over the back. "Hey sis," She greets you, her accent replaced by an American version. "long time no see, huh?"

Everyone in the room remains still, waiting for you to make the first move like a scared animal. You'll either scarper or approach with caution, and even at that moment, you're unsure which route you'll take.

"What brings you back here?" You ask, crossing your arms over your chest as you remain standing, despite Alexei rising to his feet and offering you his chair.

"There's some unfinished business I have to deal with." Natasha states, and Yelena motions for you to come closer whilst Natasha has her back turned.

"And we're being dragged into it somehow?" You're quick to comment, remembering the last time it happened which resulted in your previous home being burnt to the ground and Natasha vanishing into thin air once more.

Rising to her feet, Natasha walks over to the doorway leading into the garden. She doesn't wait for you to follow, but she knows eventually you will.

"She means well, Y/n." Yelena tells you whilst playing with a knife, jabbing it against the table despite Melina swatting it away.

Humming to yourself, you force your feet forward until you're outside, listening to the peaceful presence of nature.

Whilst you're in your own world temporarily, Natasha can't help but take the opportunity to observe you, notice the changes since she last saw you. Melina explained the nightmares you've been having of late, how you wake up clawing at your own skin until it bleeds and you clutching onto a pillow, tearing into the cotton with ease as you sob.

You look visibly drained, that much Natasha can tell. She knew she should've brought you with her, away to America the last time she was here, but there wasn't enough time. She watched you from afar as the building fell into itself, devoured by the flames and you looking around for your sister, nowhere to be seen.

"There's a little blue tit who visits daily now," You begin to explain, opening your eyes as they remain trained on the empty birdbath. "he's got a damaged wing, can't fly very far but he always visits." Moving closer to the bath, you can see the reflection of other birds flying above in groups. One or two flies further back from the others, flapping their wings in desperation to not be left behind; something you know all too well.

As your hands rest on the birdbath, Natasha can see the scars across your skin clearly.

"Y/n, I never got a chance to apologise last time I was here," Natasha begins, stepping closer toward you, yet you seem oblivious to her words.

"And I hope at some point he'll let me help him, mend him back to his best so he can fly away." Your lips rise for a second at the thought before returning to a straight line, now allowing yourself to process Natasha's statement. "You don't need to apologise, Nat."

"But I do, Y/n." Natasha urges as she resists reaching out for your hand, knowing no one touches you anymore unless they dare risk a broken bone or two. "I should've found you in there and taken you with me. You were still a child, I,"

"I don't blame you, sister." Turning to face her, you force yourself to smile, an attempt to reassure her as she frowns deeply. "The only person I blame for everything is Yeznik." You can't help but shudder, hearing his voice in the back of your mind, one of the many who taunts you in your sleep.

"That's why I'm here." Natasha states.

You can't stop the scoff from leaving your lips. "You can't be serious, Natasha." Yet, you watch your sister nod immediately. "Do you want to get yourself killed?"

"I could ask you the same thing." She retorts, catching you off guard. "Don't think I don't know about the truth behind your escape, Y/n."

"What are you talking about?" You question, knowing better than to confess to your sister of all people. "I escaped that hell hole on my own. Killed several guards in the process and escaped with nine bullet wounds." You remind her, lifting your shirt to show the bullet wound scars that never properly healed.

"But you didn't escape from the Red Room. You escaped during a mission." She explains, watching your expression falter for half a second, but it was enough for her to know you're lying.

Shaking your head, you back away toward the small hutch hidden beneath an oak tree that currently houses three rabbits.

"That is preposterous, even for me, Natasha." You chuckle, opening the hutch and reach for the number one who happily hops out and stands beside you.

Looking away from you, Natasha can see the three others watching closely from the kitchen window. She can see Yelena mouthing something, but rolls her eyes when Natasha shakes her head.

"The Winter Soldier." Yelena marches over, causing you to tense up and the rabbit hops back into the hutch as you gently lock it once more. "Remember him, Y/n?"

"His name is Bucky." You mutter under your breath before slowly standing up. "And don't you dare talk about him." You spit at Yelena who spares Natasha a look.

"You helped each other escape, didn't you?" Natasha pushes her question, and this time to her surprise you don't object.

"Follow me," You sigh, walking around the garden to a set of stairs, leading you to the rooftop filled with trees and plants.

Admiring the greenery, Natasha hesitantly follows behind you.

"You going to stand there all day or sit down?" Raising a brow to Natasha, she breathes out a laugh and sits down on one of the seats dotted around that isn't taken by a plant.

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" Natasha leans forward, resting her forearms on her thighs and you mirror her action.

"Yes." You mutter. "But I can't remember everything it, part of it I blocked out." You admit, feeling your leg already beginning to shake beneath you.

"You will be accompanied this time, Y/n." Your tutor, Ms Ivanov tugs on your ponytail forcefully whilst you remain seated.

"I don't need company." Tugging your head forward, her fingers fall through the ends of your hair and she hums in response. "I'm capable of this myself."

Ms Ivanov chuckles under her breath before standing in front of your desk, resting her hands on the sides as her eyes fixate on yours. "That might be so, but not this time." Pushing her hands from your desk, Ivanov nods to the closed door.

Within seconds someone is forced through the metal frame with a bag covering their face. They're of a large build, but your eyes widen at the sight of metal making up their left arm.

"Is it?" Your question leaves your lips before you've fully thought about what this means, and Ivanov smirks.

Stepping toward the concealed figure, she tugs the sheet from their face, revealing a mass of brown hair.

He lifts his head up and stares at you immediately those pensive blue eyes you've heard whispers of. He fights against his restraints as two guards stand behind him with loaded guns.

"There will be plenty of time for that, soldat." Ivanov laughs, patting his metal arm. "Now, Y/n. It's time to go."

"I don't know what happened on that mission. But when I woke up, I, I was free." Unable to look at your sister, your focus lies on the breeze weaving through the branches of the trees.

Natasha leans forward, wishing she could tell you everything she knew. "You saved each other, Y/n." She speaks up, remembering the last time she saw him, a broken shell of the man he once was, his demeanour mirroring yours.

"I guess," You shrug. "but after everything, I, I have no idea what happened to him. I, I don't even know if he's still," Pursing your lips, the word never leaves as you curl your arms toward your stomach.

Looking toward the others, Natasha sighs at their disapproving glares. She knows they mean well, that they are practically family. But you're the only true blood family Natasha has left, and she can't lie to you anymore, not this time.

Standing in Wakanda, Bucky smiled truly for the first time in years. He was no longer plagued by the fear of becoming the Winter Soldier. He was finally free of it all.

But he still had a long way to go, to make amends for those he hurt, and amongst everyone, there was you. His Black Widow, Y/n.

"Hey, Barnes." Natasha stands beside him, looking out at the vast farmland that surrounds them. She can't help but think how much you would love to be somewhere like this, somewhere that is peaceful, tranquil.

"Hello, Natasha." Bucky turns to face the redhead, having not spoken to her since he was under Zemo's control. "I erm, I would like to apologise for everything I did, and for hurting you all those years ago." Bucky explains, and Natasha patiently listens, allowing him to get his full speech out. "And for what they made me do in," Furrowing his brows together, Natasha clears her throat.

"We don't have to talk about that." She tells him as she reaches into her pocket, taking out a folded piece of paper, well worn. "I wanted to ask you something before anyone knows where I am."

"Okay?" Bucky answers uneasily, tugging on the cloth that covers the remainder of his left shoulder.

Unfolding the piece of paper, Bucky can see a glimpse of a black and white photo.

"Here," Natasha holds the photograph out, face down to Bucky who hesitantly accepts. She watches intently as he turns the photograph over and can't help but smile as his breath hitches in his throat.

"Y/n." Bucky looks up to Natasha who simply nods.

"I was wondering if you'd remember her." Natasha crosses her arms over her chest, trying to hide the smirk forming on her face and amusement in her tone.

A playful scoff leaves Bucky's lips. "How could I forget her?" He thinks aloud. "I could never forget the person who helped me escape, who, who," 'Helped me realise I'm still human despite everything I've done.' Bucky thinks to himself, remembering the night before he left you as you lay in his arms whilst he listened to your soft reassurances. "Do you know where she is?" He tries to hide the hope in his voice, but it's useless.

"Yes." Natasha answers. "Y/n Romanoff." She states, and Bucky stares blankly at Natasha for a moment, before a light laugh leaves his lips.

"I shoulda known." He sighs dramatically. "Makes a lot of sense now." Bucky mutters, but Natasha doesn't pry. "Is, is she with you?" He glances past her, toward the jet she came on, but Natasha shakes her head.

"She's safe, in Russia." Natasha explains as she walks alongside Bucky toward the lake. "But she prefers the company of animals over people these days."

"Makes two of us then." Bucky comments. "I, I promised I'd find her." Allowing his mind to drift as the lake ripples, Bucky pictures your sleeping form in his arms minutes before he left you. He whispered you a promise, one he has yet to fulfil.

"Then let me help you keep that promise." Natasha places her hand on his arm gently, and Bucky snaps out from his thoughts. "I know you're still healing, and she is too. But I'll come back, Barnes."

Bucky nods. "Thank you, Natasha."

"James Barnes," Natasha slowly interrupts your prolonged silence. "is still alive, he, he's healing, but he remembers you, Y/n."

You reach out and take Natasha's hand in yours. For a moment, you simply stare, void of emotion before tightening your grip, beginning to crush her fingers whilst Natasha remains stoic.

"Don't lie to me, Nat." You tell her, keeping your eyes locked on hers.

"I'm not lying, Y/n." She responds, ignoring the pain you're inflicting before your grip begins to ease, but she doesn't pull away immediately. "He made you a promise, didn't he?"

"I, I don't know." You admit sadly, looking down at your lap, faintly hearing his voice in the back of your mind fighting through the horrid memories engrained there from the red room.

"He did, Y/n." Natasha asserts herself. "Would you like to see him?"

"I think so." You answer honestly as you uncurl your body and sit upright. "But only once this is over. Once Yeznik is gone. I don't want to be haunted anymore, Nat."

This time, Natasha extends her hand, taking yours in hers delicately.

"Okay, sis." She breathes out, helping you to your feet. "Let's get started."

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engie-ivy · 3 years

Text

Minerva isn't sure she can protect Remus Lupin any longer now a student has been injured the night of the full moon. Especially when Walburga Black is demanding repercussions for her son, after what was clearly a Werewolf attack. Sirius Black, however, tells a very different story.

Lupine Lawlessness

“This is outrageous!” Walburga Black immediately rounds on Minerva the moment the woman strides into the Hospital Wing, her voluminous robes billowing behind her.

Minerva notices Mrs Black barely spares her injured son in the bed a glance. She also notices how the boy slightly shrinks in on himself as he hears her voice. Then, Mrs Black is standing in front of her, and all her attention is directed at being on the receiving end of Walburga Black’s fury.

“I knew you and that old fool would be the ruin of this school. It’s one thing that the place is infested with Halfbloods and Mudbloods, but harbouring a Dark Creature?”

“Mrs Black,” Minerva says politely. “I understand this must be very distressing for you as a mother, and I’m very sorry indeed, but we are yet to establish what happened.”

“Do you take me for a fool?” Mrs Black spits. “That type of claw marks, on which Healing Magic has no effect, while yesterday was a full moon? It’s very clear what has attacked him, and that thing had no business being on school grounds.”

Minerva herself has put two and two together as well. It was easier for her, as she’s aware there’s a student infected with Lycanthropy attending Hogwarts. A student who also happens to have been a close friend of Sirius Black.

Oh, she had really thought they were going to pull it off. They had come so far. She had been sceptical at first. A Lycanthrope attending seven years of Hogwarts without any incidents, without anyone finding out? It appeared unlikely, but she had agreed to try. And then she met Remus Lupin, and she had been very glad she did so. The boy was sweet, modest, hardworking and clever, and he deserved to have a proper education, but also to be around peers, make friends, and have fun. Now, when she had really started to believe it was going to be alright, the worst had happened. A student had been attacked.

It’s not difficult to reason out what must’ve happened. Sirius Black must’ve seen his friend disappear into the tunnel below the Whomping Willow, and had decided to go after him, only to end up face-to-face with a full-grown werewolf.

Minerva’s first reaction had been relief. Relief that Sirius Black was going to be okay. Some nasty injuries that would leave some nasty scars, but no permanent damage, which is quite a miracle. It could’ve been much, much worse.

But relief had quickly been replaced with worry. While the headmaster and herself can get in serious trouble for allowing a Lycanthrope in the vicinity of children, her worry was mostly for Remus Lupin. The world is unfairly cruel to Lycanthropes. Graduated from Hogwarts, with his formidable grades and excellent recommendations from his teachers, the boy would’ve at least had a chance, but being expelled from Hogwarts... His only option might be The Werewolf Camps in the mountains, where Lycanthropes go if they have nowhere else to go, which, regrettably, is often. Stories about those camps make your stomach churn, and it’s not a place for a boy like Remus Lupin to be.

Sirius Black must surely know it was Remus Lupin who did this, and he has every right to be angry. School is supposed to be a safe place, not a place where an unsuspecting student can suddenly be mauled by a Werewolf. Minerva doesn’t know if, or how, she can protect Remus Lupin from the consequences.

“The House of Black is a highly esteemed family,” Mrs Black goes on. “A Black being attacked by such an inferior creature without any repercussions would be an insult to our family name. It’s already a great show of disrespect that you even allowed this to happen, and we do not tolerate disrespect.”

“I truly regret the situation,” Minerva says, hoping to sooth the other woman. “At Hogwarts, any student should be safe from any kind of danger-”

“But this was not just any student or any kind of danger,” Mrs Black interrupts. “This was the Noble Blood of Black being spilled by a filthy monster that should be removed from society!”

“Really, Mrs Black, we are yet to determine-”

Once again, Minerva is interrupted, this time by the arrival of a man.

“Lady Black, my apologies for my tardiness, but I came as you requested,” he says, ignoring Minerva in favour of focusing all his attention on Mrs Black. The man is short, with sharp eyes and a pointy face, and he looks at Mrs Black with reverence.

Mrs Black scoffs. “Quit wasting time then and get to work.”

The man starts opening his briefcase, taking out a quill and parchment.

“What is the meaning of this?” Minerva demands. “Who are you? What business do you have here?”

“Mr Hesner is from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures,” Mrs Black replies. “And he’s here at my request to make a report of the situation.”

The colour drains from Minerva’s face. Being expelled is bad, but nothing compared to an official Ministry report. If a Lycanthrope is reported to have somehow been involved in an attack on a witch or wizard, the Lycanthrope will get the annotation ‘Feral’ in the Registry. All hopes of ever finding a job or a place to live will be lost. The Lycanthrope will have to report at the Ministry at frequent and irregular times, and any failure to report will lead to the Lycanthrope immediately being locked away. The Lycanthrope will be out on the streets without any money or prospects, and even the smallest transgression will lead to being locked up. Almost every Lycanthrope with the ‘Feral’ annotation will be either locked up, or forced to flee to the mountains within a year. Remus Lupin certainly does not deserve such a fate.

“Is... is that really necessary?” Minerva asks.

“Very necessary indeed,” Mr Hesner replies. “If you had any sense of morality, you would’ve contacted us yourself, Ms McGonagall. Luckily, we could count on Mrs Black to do the right thing,” he says, with a grovelling smile in her direction.

“Can you imagine if that beast would’ve bitten him?” Mrs Black shudders. “What a stain on the family tree that would’ve been, to have a Lycanthrope in the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black!”

To make sure no one will make the mistake of confusing her fear for shame on the Black family name with fear for her son’s well-being, she doesn’t mention that her son might not have survived the bite, or that he would’ve had to live with an extremely painful, chronic condition for the rest of his life. She probably would’ve burnt the boy off the family tree herself, and sent him to go live in the mountains.

“That would’ve been such a waste,” Mr Hesner agrees, before turning to Sirius Black. “Well, young Mr Black, I need an official statement containing your description of the events.”

Sirius Black looks thoughtful for a moment. “I was... attacked. By some kind of creature.”

“Describe the attack please,” Mr Hesner instructs without looking up from his parchment, quill at the ready.

“Oh, the creature was... round.” Mr Hesner’s eyes snap up, but Sirius Black continues. “Like pumpkin-shaped. But huge. Like a huge pumpkin. Only covered in bright yellow feathers. With bulging eyes in between. And two glittering horns on top of its head.”

“You’re treating this like some kind of a joke!” Mr Hesner says accusingly, pointing his quill in Sirius Black’s direction.

“Why, sir,” Sirius Black says, pretending to be shocked. “I protest. I would never!”

“If you can’t be serious...” Mr Hesner says, gritting his teeth.

Sirius Black blinks innocently at him. “Ask anyone, Mr Hesner, and I’m sure they’ll all tell you that I’m always Sirius.”

“I’ve dealt with Magical Creatures for longer than you have lived, boy,” Mr Hesner spits. “And I know such a creature as you described does not exist.”

Sirius Black shrugs. “Who knows what creatures the Forbidden Forest hides?”

“Did the attack meddle with his brain?” Mrs Black demands.

Minerva shakes her head. “Madam Pomfrey has assured me that his mental state is unaltered.”

“So I have to believe he was attacked by a horned ball of yellow feathers?” Mrs Black snarls.

“Who knows what creatures the Forbidden Forrest hides?” Minerva repeats Sirius Black’s exact words. Sirius Black gives her a pleased smile, which she gladly returns.

Mrs Black, on the other hand, gives her a nasty glare, and then switches her attention to Mr Hesner, who shrinks in on himself. “His chest is covered in Werewolf marks the day after a full moon. It’s obvious what happened even without his statement.”

Mr Hesner gulps. “I... I’m sorry, lady Black. I’m not allowed to report an attack without an official statement from the victim. I mean, only if the victim had died I could’ve...” He trails off.

Mrs Black now directs her glare at her son, like she regrets the last isn’t the case. “I’ll make you pay for this.”

Sirius Black becomes even more pale, but he continues to defiantly meet his mother’s gaze.

“I do not tolerate anyone threatening my students,” Minerva speaks.

Mrs Black turns her head to her. “He’s my son. I can do whatever I want when it concerns him.”

Minerva takes a step forward. Her eyes are like stone and her voice is like ice. “Not in my school.”

To her great satisfaction, Mrs Black takes a step back and swallow. She quickly recovers though, and pulls her cloak tighter around herself. She gives Sirius Black a quick glance and hisses “I’ll see you this summer,” before walking out of the room in quick strides, Mr Hesner having to dribble to keep up, her robes billowing behind her in that way only purebloods ever seem to manage.

“Are you quite done?”

Minerva turns around to see Poppy standing behind her, her arms crossed over her chest. “Really, you don’t have to be a professional to know that a recovering patient needs rest, not all this uproar and noise. That goes for you too, Minerva. You might run this school after Albus, but I run the Hospital Wing. Now leave. My patient needs to sleep.”

A few days later, Minerva makes her way over to the Hospital Wing. Sirius Black has had some days to recover, and luckily, his recovery is going well. She hopes he has also been able to process everything that happened.

A difficult conversation still needs to be had.

She’s immensely glad Sirius Black hadn’t wanted to report Remus Lupin at the Ministry, but still, he could’ve been killed, and she can’t imagine he’ll be okay with there being no repercussions at all. She thinks she might be able to talk him out of demanding Remus Lupin to be expelled, and in the best case scenario, she can convince him to keep it quiet.

It’s not that she thinks Sirius Black is in any way cruel or anything like his family, not at all. She has a very high opinion of the boy. It’s just that Lycanthropy prejudice is very strong throughout the Wizarding World. Even the best person has some negative thoughts regarding Werewolves. The sentiment is especially strong among the pureblood community, and Sirius was raised with their norms and values. Regardless, she can’t imagine anyone would be okay with finding out a person they thought they knew is a Lycanthrope. Remus Lupin will definitely have to move out of the boys’ dormitory, maybe even to a private room. No one would be willing to keep sharing a dorm with someone that tried to kill them. Maybe she can-

Minerva stops in her tracks as she reaches the Hospital Wing, all thoughts of appeasing Sirius Black disappearing from her head.

Sirius Black isn’t alone. Remus Lupin is with him. Like actually with him on the bed. Remus Lupin is curled up at Sirius Black’s side, his hands gripping Sirius Black’s robes and his head resting on Sirius Black’s chest. Sirius Black has one arm firmly wrapped around Remus Lupin, and with his other hand he’s gently threading his fingers through Remus Lupin’s hair. The boys haven’t noticed her presence.

“I am so, so, so sorry,” Remus says, and probably not for the first time.

Sirius rolls his eyes. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I did it.”

“You can’t control it.”

“I could’ve stayed away from you,” Remus argues. “I can control that. A filthy monster that should be removed from society.”

Sirius huffs. “That’s just a bunch of pureblood bollocks only stuck-up twats with half a brain still living in the Middle Ages actually believe.”

“Your mother thinks so.”

“I rest my case.”

Remus chuckles and presses his face closer to Sirius’ chest. “I can barely believe you’re real. I don’t deserve you.”

“Moony,” Sirius says with a sigh. “I told you, The Wolf wasn’t even trying to hurt The Dog. You weren’t feral! The Wolf wanted to play, and didn’t know his own strength, and kind of forgot dogs aren’t as strong as Werewolves. Even transformed, you never meant to hurt me.”

The Dog? An absurd thought enters Minerva’s mind, a thought that surely sheds a different light on what may have happened. Absurd for sure, but also... plausible? And if anyone can do it...

No. Minerva firmly pushes the thought away. It might be true, or it might not be. Either way, she doesn’t need to know. After all, what you don’t know, you can’t report to The Ministry.

“And even if The Wolf fancied himself some Padfoot for breakfast,” Sirius continues. “I still wouldn’t have blamed you. It’s not you.”

“You’re going to have a scars for the rest of your life,” Remus murmurs against Sirius’ chest.

Sirius gently tilts his head up. “Then it’s a good thing I think scars are sexy,” he says with a wink, making Minerva wonder whether it might be more than just close friendship she’s looking at.

A faint blush spreads across Remus’ cheeks, and he slightly shakes his head. “You can’t accept my apologies that easily.”

“Oh no, Moony. Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Sirius says, tapping his finger fondly against Remus’ nose, which again makes Minerva question their level of intimacy. “I have, in fact, not accepted your apologies, as I refuse to accept an apology for something someone could’ve done nothing about.”

Remus scrunches up his nose. “You’re stubborn as a mule.”

Sirius chuckles. “I could teach mules in stubbornness. But if you insist on making it up to me, I suppose you can help me win the bet.”

“The bet?”

“I’ve made a bet with Prongs that I can make at least half of the Gryffindors believe I was attacked by a pumpkin-shaped yellow feather ball, while Prongs says I won’t even make ten.”

Remus shakes his head. “You’re an idiot,” he says, though it sounds fond.

Sirius grins. “But you love me.”

Remus leans forward and presses a kiss against Sirius’ lips, making Minerva blink, but confirming her doubt. There must be something more between those boys for sure.

Remus pulls back, but gently rests his forehead against Sirius’. “Merlin, I do love you, Sirius Black.”

“I love you too, Remus Lupin.”

Minerva smiles to herself. There’s no need to worry after all. If one thing is stronger than prejudice, it’s love.

#my tumblr writing #wolfstar #wolfstar fanfiction #wolfstar fic #marauders #marauders fanfiction #marauders fic #marauders era #sirius black #remus lupin #remus x sirius #minerva mcgonagall #hurt sirius black #lycanthropy #werewolf

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

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You Have to Let Go

For @whumptober2021′s Day One prompt, “You Have to Let Go” / Betrayal

CW: Forced vampirism, blood drinking, vampire whumpee, whumpee takes revenge, referenced drug addiction

1908, somewhere outside of New York City

“You can’t keep this up forever.” William, one of the oldest members of the pack at just over a century, lays on his back on a chaise, his head hanging off, looking upside-down at the newest vampire in the pack.

Blood does not pool in his head or redden his cheeks, although he’s been like that for an hour or more. He stays pale, his hair and skin and even his eyes all nearly the same shade. It gives him the appearance of a ghost, although he’s solid enough.

Cold, and solid.

More marble statue than man, now. And yet still more man than animal, though that depends a little on the viewer’s perspective.

“Watch, watch me try,” Tristan hisses back at him from where he sits, curled up in the corner of the room, arms around his bent legs. He stares at a mostly-healed scar on his left knee, from a time he tripped and fell in the dark of the basement downstairs. It’ll be there forever now, he’s told, a reminder for eternity of the wounds he wore when he died.

He pushes on it. There’s no pain.

Of course there isn’t. Pain is your body trying to warn you not to die, and he’s already dead. What is there to warn him of now? All the worst things have already happened.

There’s a soft cry from an adjacent room, woozy and almost sultry. An answering murmur in Malorie’s low voice. There’s a flirty laugh, and then the next sound is less cry than moan. He’d blush if he still could. Instead, he ignores the sound. Someone paying money for the oblivion the venom offers them, or paying in skin and blood.

Vampires aren’t picky, and blood renews much faster than coins, anyway.

“We gave you a gift. Wrapped it all up in a bow for you, didn’t we? ” William has an odd accent, like he’s a mix of Brit and something else that Tristan doesn’t recognize. There’s a mocking lilt to his tone that Tristan knows from his own childhood, the landowner’s children teasing him for his oddities and for the way they felt all the families working their land were more or less the same. Tris hadn’t been the favorite of the other farmers’ kids - there’d been whispers behind hands about all the bits of him that weren’t like other children - but they’d banded together against the landowner’s children still. He remembered with fuzzy affection the others picking up rocks more than once to throw in his defense.

There were still parts of home where there were rumors of changeling children, and his mother had angrily shouted down an accusation more than once, when he was young and caught lining up river rocks in perfect circles. But for all that there might be whispers from the old, the other village children had always stuck together when someone from outside came mocking.

He’d been so happy to get away from the town, going on the ship with his parents to America. Tears threaten at the memory of his mother holding him at the edge of the ship, the salt-spray in his face as they set off and away from home and toward what she promised would be a grand new one.

Her sister had gone ahead first, years before, and had written glowing letters about America as a land of chances that Ireland didn’t offer.

He wondered, bitterly, if his aunt had already been hooked on the venom by then. If she’d been writing those letters from vampire dens, with a pair of fangs buried in her other arm while she signed Your loving sister, Joanne.

Had she known she would try to sell him before she ever saw his face? Had she sold his parents’ lives, too, somehow?

He wishes, fierce and strong, that they had never left Ireland at all. That his mother had known not to trust Joanne as far as she could throw her. Too late, though. Too late.

Joanne the only one left standing, now. The rest of them are dead.

Even Tristan, who can be dead and still be separated from his parents by the gulf of their different kinds of death, who stares into damnation even if he were fully destroyed now. He remembers trying to confess his sins to a priest who chased him from the church with screams of demon, demon, begone. His soul has been handed over to evil, and all he’d ever done was try to be good.

Tristan wipes the pink tears from his cheeks before William can see them. “I, I, I didn’t want your, your gift.”

“Does that matter now?” William flips over onto his stomach and drops to the floor into a crouch, smiling. His fangs glimmer in the dimness, as the night stretches on and on towards dawn. Already the horizon is going lighter around the edges, a soft dove gray that will lead soon to pink and blue. Already, Tristan can feel an unnatural exhaustion weighing down his bones, the need to sleep while the sun is up.

“To, to me it does.” Tristan leans his head slowly against the wall, closing his eyes. The pulse of thirst is stronger than his heartbeat ever was.

“You’re not human any longer,” William says, and there’s a gentleness to his voice that Tristan is surprised by, turning to look at him. “You have to let go of all that. You’re not it any longer, and won’t be again. But isn’t this better?”

Tristan blinks once, twice. “No,” He whispers but fiercely. “I’ve, I’ve, been, um, I’ve been made a murderer, against my will. What of that is, is better?”

“All men kill, one way or another.” William shrugs, casual and unbothered. “We are only more honest about it and our reasons. But here, look, I’ve had one more thing done.”

He claps his hands. Tristan flinches at the sound, but the soft murmurings of the pack from other rooms goes silent. Then they drift into the parlor, one by one. Malorie is still wiping her latest partner’s blood from around the corners of her mouth, smiling.

There are seven in the pack, not counting Tristan himself. He tries not to count himself.

When he looks now he frowns, seeing only five. “William?”

“We’ve one more gift for you,” William says, and gestures to the open double-sized doorway.

Tristan stares as the last two members of the pack appear, with his aunt held between them, bound until she has to be dragged and cannot walk on her own.

Joanne’s eyes are wild, rimmed in bright white. She is gagged, cloth tied over her mouth until it bites viciously into the corners of her mouth. She sees him and begins to struggle anew, shouting as best she can. Nonsense sounds, muffled, pointless shouting.

He can’t tell if she is begging for her life or cursing him.

He wishes he could believe it’s the former.

“What, what, what what what is this?” His words are barely a whisper, as he unfolds himself, pushing up onto his feet. His gums begin to itch around where his fangs have grown, the venom ready.

“She’s behind in her payments again,” Alyssa says, laying her head on Joanne’s shoulder, her long brown hair falling half over her face. “In too deep. Chases the fang and doesn’t pay her rent, doesn’t pay us either.”

Tristan stands perfectly still, feeling nearly frozen. His aunt’s terror and panic are something he can smell, now, the sharp tang of adrenaline. It sours the blood, but there are vampires who prefer it that way. Who say the sour taste of pain and fear is a higher form of flavor.

William steps up to his side, running a hand down Tristan’s arm. He flinches away from the touch, but he knows better than to move away from the pack leader more than that. His chin tucks down in unconscious submission to William’s will. “You, you, you you you want me, to, to… kill her?”

“You miss your family,” William says, softly. “It ties you to your old life.” He smiles, something Tristan can see from the corner of his eyes, and leans his head slowly against Tristan’s, mingling white and red hair together. “She’s the reason they’re lost to you, right?”

“Yes,” He whispers in reply, turning slightly into the touch. William’s cool hands comes to cup his face, and he presses a soft kiss, light as air, against Tristan’s cheek, the corner of his mouth, finally presses their lips together.

It’s all sensation without temperature, and Tristan hums, opening his mouth for it, letting William take what he wants. His packleader’s tongue finds his fangs, presses against the venom glands just above and behind them.

A tingle of venom falls onto Tristan’s tongue.

William hums. “Good boy,” He whispers, making Tristan shudder, half-disgusted and half-grateful for the praise.

Joanne’s struggles kick up into a frenzy, but they do her no good. She’s bound so tightly that her wrists are rubbing raw to bleeding, and he can smell it. Saliva gathers in his mouth, his venom pulsing, sizzling on his tongue like a hot pepper eaten raw. He finds himself shaking, hands clinging now to William’s arms just to stay standing.

Joanne welcomed them when they got off the boat. But she’d snubbed Tristan’s father, had never liked him. She’d helped them find work, and all along she’d gone places at odd hours of the day and night.

All she’d said to him after his parents died and he moved in with her was that his mother was never meant to die. She’d been meant to be out of the apartment, but had decided not to go on the errand to the woman who took in piecework, and Joanne had told him, I didn’t know she’d be home, or I’d have changed the day, wouldn’t I?

Then she said he should stop mewling in his grief, and slapped him full in the face for it.

His lips pull back from his teeth, although he isn’t quite aware of it. Only of the taste of blood in the air on his tongue.

“Have your revenge,” William whispers, the devil tempting a boy who has never been a saint. Tristan wonders if his mother will hate him, in her eternal rest, that he isn’t strong enough to resist this chance.

He tips his head back and lets William mouth along the line of his neck.

“Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into hell.” The verses come easily, without stammering. He was always better at reciting what he’d been taught to memorize, the words his mother read and reread to him, than at speaking for himself. “For there is wickedness in their dwellings, in, in the midst of them. But I have cried to God: and the Lord will save me.” His lips twist, and the tears burn so hot it feels like they are boiling over his eyes and down his cold skin. “But, but, but I cried, Aunt Jo, and-... and and and no one saved, um, saved me.”

He turns away from William and meets his aunt’s eyes.

She stares back at him, still struggling, still fighting. The blood from her torn-open arms runs down her hands behind her back, dripping to the floor. He can hear each droplet hit one by one. He can smell the fear in her, and he can smell what she’s spent her day doing. That she slept late, and ate at a place down the block from their tenement where the old woman sells sandwiches, the big blocks of meat carved to order.

He can smell that she never thought of him at all, as she prepared to come here, to the den, for venom she can pour into a cocktail. He can smell even the way she was surprised when they told her there would be no more credit for her, she must pay now or perish.

She can’t pay. There is nothing left. She’s long since spent every bit of scratch that she gained from the deaths of her sister and brother-by-marriage, the extra cash that came from selling her nephew into… this.

He’s been moving across the floor and barely noticed. He’s only a foot or so away from her now, and the smell of her sweat is as strong as her blood. His pack members can see the fight in him fading, he’s sure, because their eyes are overbright and glittering with excitement.

He holds her gaze.

It’s easier, since he died, to look people in the eyes. He’s not sure why.

“You,” He says, in a low voice that no longer trembles. “You made it so, so, so so I won’t ever be seeing them again. As a cloud is consumed, and passeth away: so he that shall go down to hell shall not come up. If, if you had, if I had died with them, if I…”

His throat feels like it’s closing, his voice dries up.

“But, but, but, but you made me be damned,” Tristan manages, finally, his voice thready and barely-there. “Even if… even if I, if someone, if I am… I’ll still never, um, never see them again. We are, are, are, are both damned, now.”

William, just behind him, a cool presence the same temperature as the air around them, hums, interested. His hands rub up and down Tristan’s arms. “Will you kill her, Tristan? Have your vengeance? We’ll clean what’s left up for you.”

“No.”

Everyone inhales, although they don’t need to, in surprise.

Tristan stares one last time into his aunt’s frightened eyes. “I, I, I won’t, won’t kill her. But, um, but but but… but… I want… want you, your gift to be something else, William.”

“Name it, little brother.”

I’m not your brother.

He doesn’t bother with the protest. Not anymore.

“Turn her,” He says, softly. “And then, um, then then then wall her up in, in the cellar, and and and leave her, to, to starve.”

“A new vampire who doesn’t feed faces the true death anyway, in a month or two,” Malorie points out. When Joanne turns her head away, Malorie grabs her by the hair, forcing her to look back at Tristan with a cry of pain.

“I don’t care. I, I, I just want her to, um, to suffer.”

He walks away, moving around the little group, and out into the growing new light of the early dawn. His bones already feel weighed down by the promise of sunlight.

There is a workshop, a rickety wooden shed, in the yard. Tristan moves into it, closing the door to give himself a nearly-total darkness, and burrows down into the dirt, curling into a ball, closing his eyes. His hand grasps, instinctively, at a rosary he can no longer wear. Finding nothing, he finally goes still.

He hears one long wailing scream from his aunt from within the house, and then no more sound at all.

He wonders how long it will take her to have her first death.

He wonders how long it will take for her to feel her second death, the true death, as she is starved of the blood her body needs to fully become the monster she had Tristan himself made into.

His mother would care.

Tristan doesn’t.

He falls asleep as the sun comes up, at the same time his aunt’s body shuts down bit by bit. Her heartbeat is the last thing to still.

Tristan’s heart stopped beating nearly four years ago.

@mylifeisonthebookshelf @insaneinthepaingame @keeper-of-all-the-random-things @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @newandfiguringitout @astrobly @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @pretty-face-breaker @doveotions @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @what-a-whump

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blueskrugs · 3 years

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I Wanna Know You | Matthew Tkachuk

I heard this hannah montana song in a store at the beginning of december, immediately thought of Matthew, and then spent a week with it stuck in my head and trying to plan it out. sorry this isn’t a request, but I needed a break from writing them to remember why I loved writing. yikes. anyway, apparently I’m still incapable of writing fics that aren’t based on or inspired by songs. maybe one day...

length: 2.4k words

When I saw you over there, I didn't mean to stare But my mind was everywhere, I wanna know you

Matthew Tkachuk was magnetic. He’d always been like that, loud, the center of attention, lighting up whatever room he’d walked into. He thrived when all eyes were on him, and he lived to make people smile. That’s where you met him, at a party just before the start of the season, in Gio’s backyard on a night that wasn’t quite summer and not quite fall, either.

You were friends with Johnny's girlfriend, and she’d insisted that you come along. She’d told you that no one would care, and she had been right, because no one had paid you any mind other than asking what you wanted to drink. Besides, looking around, you were pretty sure other people had brought plus-ones or plus-twos and threes.

Matthew was holding court in a corner of the yard, always with a shitty beer in his hand and a small crowd of people around him. Your eyes kept being drawn to him, not just for the way whatever stories he was telling periodically sent up peals of laughter into the night sky, but for the way his face lit up when he talked.

He caught you in the kitchen when you were grabbing water.

“I don’t know you,” he said bluntly. You were taken aback. “I mean-” Matthew shook his head. “I’m Matthew,” he said, holding out the hand that wasn’t holding yet another Bud Light.

“I know,” you said before you could stop yourself.

Matthew laughed. “You a fan?”

“Would you stop talking to me if I told you I were an Oilers fan?” You mostly just wanted to see what he would say.

Matthew wrapped an arm around your shoulders and dragged you back outside. “Nope.”

There's a mark above your eye, you got it in July Fightin' for your sister's reputation

It was well after dark, and you’d had more than a few drinks. Which probably amounted to whatever courage it took to reach out and poke Matthew in the forehead where he was sitting next to you at a bonfire someone had built.

“Ow,” Matthew said, rubbing his forehead. You hadn’t even poked him hard enough to leave a mark, but there was something there, a cut just above his eyebrow that had barely healed all the way.

“How’d you get that?” you asked.

On your other side, Noah snorted. Matthew flipped him off. “I’ll have you know that I was defending my little sister’s honor.” Noah laughed outright now. “Okay, she and Luke Hughes were arguing about something dumb down at the Lake this summer, and I stepped in.”

“And?” you prompted, because you could tell the story didn’t end there.

“And I wasn’t paying attention where I was walking and fell off the end of the dock and hit my head.” Matthew somehow managed to look sheepish while grinning as the group sitting around the fire burst out laughing. He rubbed at his forehead again wryly. “My mom says it’s gonna scar,” he added.

“Maybe leave out the falling off a dock part next time you tell the story,” you told him.

Matthew grinned at you and winked. You settled back into your lawn chair and took a sip of your drink, watching as Matthew launched into another tale of something that happened at the lake over the summer, thinking that you could get used to this.

Matthew kissed you for the first time later that night, alone in the hallway as the party was winding down, still tasting a little of beer, and, yeah, you could definitely get used to this.

And valentines are lame So you bring me flowers just for no occasion

The first time Matt brought you flowers for no reason, you were suspicious. It wasn’t your birthday, or anniversary, or Valentine’s Day– and he hadn’t missed any of those things, either. But there they were, waiting on the table in your apartment when you got home from work. You knew they were from Matthew because the card had one of his dumb cheesy jokes on it, but you still didn’t know why they were from Matthew. You snapped a picture and sent it to him, simply asking, “what did you do?”

Matt called you instead of responding.

“What did you do?” you asked again.

“What makes you think I did something?” Matthew asked. You could hear him pouting.

“Why else would you give me flowers?” You were still a little anxious about it, and Matthew wasn’t exactly helping. “How did you even get them in my apartment, anyway?” The Flames were on a road trip, had flown out to Chicago that morning.

“Used your spare key and dropped ‘em off before I went to the airport this morning,” he said. He sounded a little proud of himself.

“Matthew,” you sighed. “I gave you my spare key for emergencies,” you chided.

“And I needed to give you flowers!”

“Matt!”

“Okay, I just-” Matthew cut himself off. “My dad used to send my mom flowers from longer road trips, and I always thought that would be something I would do one day.” Matt trailed off, and he sounded hesitant for the first time all conversation.

You reached out and ran your fingers over the petals on one of the roses in the bouquet. They were pretty, and it was cute that Matthew had wanted to give you flowers, had thought of it while getting ready for a road trip in the middle of a busy season.

“You couldn’t have at least put them in a vase?” you asked, grinning, though Matthew couldn’t see you.

Matt huffed out a laugh, surprised. “I was running late!”

“Yeah, well, now these poor flowers are half-dead,” you told him, holding your phone between your shoulder and your ear so you could root through your cabinets for a vase to rescue the flowers that were indeed wilting a little.

“Then I’ll just have to send you more,” he said.

“Oh my God, Matthew.”

The flowers kept coming throughout that first season together, with no real rhyme or reason: before some road trips, whether they were over a week or just two days, or when he came home from a road trip, showing up at your door and producing a bouquet with a flourish and a crooked grin. It always meant that Matthew had been thinking of you, no matter where he was.

You smile, nеver shout You stand out in a crowd

As Matthew got older, he had developed a habit of adopting rookies. It was entertaining to watch: Matthew, not really much older than a rookie himself, but with an A on his chest nonetheless, going full big brother-mode on all the kids fresh into the league.

Which is why you were woken up in the middle of the night by a phone call from one of said rookies. You listened to Matthew stumble out of bed and root around for a hoodie in the dark, grumbling under his breath about “idiot kids.”

“What happened?” you asked, still half-asleep.

“Fucking ow,” he said, tripping over one of his shoes. “Fucking Zary got in a fight at a bar or something, I don’t know. He asked me to come pick him up.” Matthew had managed to get matching shoes on his feet, and was now looking for his keys. “I’ll be back with him later if I don’t kill him.”

Matthew did not kill Zary, just drove him home and directed him to the guest bedroom to sleep it off, because he did love his rookies, though he would never admit it to anyone.

The next morning, Connor was waiting nervously in the kitchen when you both woke up.

“Coffee, kid?” Matt asked.

“I didn’t start the fight!” Connor blurted.

Matthew snorted. “I didn’t ask, but good for you, kid.” He started fiddling with his coffee maker.

“You’re not gonna, like, yell at me?”

“Do you want me to?”

You laughed softly. “Be nice, Matthew.”

“I’m always nice!” Matthew protested. “And, no, I’m not gonna yell, but you are bag skating after practice for a week,” he told Zary, pointing a fork at him. The piece of fruit he’d had speared on it fell off and hit the floor. “Ah, fuck.”

You're fragile and you're strong A beautiful and perfect combination

For the most part, Matthew didn’t let much bother him. He was good at leaving the game on the ice, not taking anything too personally. He did, however, take his game very seriously. He was always trying to be better, for himself for the team, and he prided himself on becoming a leader in the locker room over the years. He took bad losses to heart, and he was the first to blame himself for any mistakes he made.

The Flames were having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, well, couple of weeks. Okay, maybe you were exaggerating just a little, but it certainly wasn’t pretty. They were losing more than they were winning– they lost every game on a four game road trip, the games they were winning were sloppy, and they were losing ground in the standings. To make matters worse, in the latest game, Matthew had missed an easy goal on an empty net. Yeah, definitely not pretty.

You made it home before him and waited.

Matthew slammed the front door when he came in, but there wasn’t a lot of force behind it, like he was too exhausted even for frustration. You had been idly watching an Oilers game because it was on, but you turned the TV off when Matt came into the living room. He wasn’t wearing his suit jacket, his tie wasn’t tied properly anymore, and his dress shirt was rumpled.

“Oh, babe,” you said. Matthew made a face at you. “Do you want to change or just-”

“Cuddle?” Matt asked.

“Yeah,” you laughed. “Come over here.”

Matt wasted no time in coming over and flopping gracelessly onto the couch with his head on your lap. You ran your fingers through his hair, and he pressed into your hand.

Matthew sighed, long and loud, ending in “Fuck.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” you tried, but you both knew you were lying.

Matthew opened one eye to glare at you. “I hate this so much,” he said. There was a crease between his eyebrows, and he’d been chewing on his bottom lip. He sat up and pushed his hands through his already messy hair. “I don’t understand what’s wrong, we’re supposed to be a better team than this.”

You really weren’t sure how to comfort Matthew, but you hated seeing him like this. You reached out and took one of his hands, pulling him in for a hug. He slumped against you like his strings had been cut.

“I’m supposed to be better than this,” he whispered, and there it was. Matthew could grin his way through a game, letting chirps and insults roll off his shoulders, but when it came down to it, he would always be worried about being good enough, always wanting to impress everyone. To make people proud.

“Oh, babe,” you said again, but this time your heart broke a little for him. Matthew sighed again. “This is not your fault, you know that. You are good, and you’re a good team. You’ll get through this just fine.”

Matthew huffed like he didn’t believe you, but he didn’t argue with you. You sat quietly in the dark living room for a while, long enough you thought Matthew had fallen asleep.

“Hey,” you said quietly. Matthew stirred and stretched. “You have a couple days off next weekend. Do you wanna drive out to Banff and do something?”

Matthew perked up immediately. “Can we go dog sledding?”

I like how you are with me In our future history

It was the end of the season, and you were at another backyard party at the Giordano’s. You were idly watching Matthew chase some of his teammates’ kids around. Well, actually, Matt was being chased by some and chasing some others. You weren’t sure how anyone knew who was doing the chasing. The other girls were chatting around you, but you were only half-listening as you watched Matthew scoop up a giggling Tillie Backlund and spin her around.

You couldn’t help but think about how Matthew would be with kids of your own one day.

“I’m too young for baby fever,” you muttered into your sangria.

Annica laughed next to you, following your gaze. “He’ll be a good dad one day,” she commented.

“You are not helping!” The other girls were laughing, now, too.

“Have you two ever really talked about the future?” Meredith asked.

You scoffed. You hadn’t even been together for a year yet. “Not really,” you admitted.

Your eyes didn’t leave Matthew as he flopped into the grass and let the kids swarm him. And yet. Matthew hadn’t stopped talking about how much he couldn’t wait for you to come down to St. Louis this summer, to really meet his family, to spend time down at the lake with everyone. How much his family was going to love you.

You’d always dreamed of your future, of a picture-perfect wedding and a few kids and a dog. Growing up, the man of your dreams had always been just that, a dream, but lately when you thought about the future, Matthew was always there. That certainly felt like something important.

After a few more minutes, Matthew extricated himself from the small mob of kids and made his way over to you, pulling the empty chair next to you close and kissing your temple as he dropped into it.

“What’re you guys gossiping about?” Matt asked, plucking your glass from your hand and taking a drink. He made a face, but didn’t give it back to you.

“You’re great with all those kids,” Lauren said pointedly. Matthew beamed.

Your group dissipated a little not long after that, and Matthew tugged you out of your own chair and into his lap. He poked you in the side a couple times.

“You’re awfully quiet.” You made a noncommittal noise. “What’re you thinking about, babe?” he asked.

You nosed at his jawline, pressed a kiss there. “You ever think about having kids?” you murmured.

Matt’s arms tightened around your waist, pulling you closer into him. “Yeah, of course.” He was smiling softly at you. “Oh.”

You giggled a little. “Just one day,” you added.

Matthew kissed you, just a quick peck. “Yeah, one day,” he said.

One day didn’t feel so far away if you knew it would be Matthew by your side. Maybe you’d be used to his antics by then.

And maybe someday down the road I'll sit back and say to myself, "Yeah, I thought so"

#cait writes things #matthew tkachuk #matthew tkachuk fic #matthew tkachuk imagine #nhl fic #nhl imagine #hockey fic #hockey imagine

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pigeonp0st · 3 years

Text

Natasha Romanoff x Reader

#7 Part 2

Words: 2,365

Click here for Part 1

Warnings: love, angst, trauma

Notes:

A part 2 was requested so a part 2 is here. Thank you for requesting, and sorry for spelling mistakes. I’m not sure if anyone notices but here, and in the first part, i’m really experimenting with my writing. If anyone reads these notes let me know if you like it...(also sorry for the sorta abrupt ending. The Word count was getting far too high.)

—————

Natasha looks at you and sometimes she wonders how exactly they had broken you. She wonders how they put out your flames.

Sometimes she thinks that maybe it was simple, like they poured water over you and watched as the flames died into embers.

Other times, more commonly, she thinks it was more difficult than that, she thinks that maybe putting them out—your flames— was challenging, and that people got burned in their efforts. She thinks that maybe it had taken an entire crew of people who specialize in putting out peoples flames. Firefighters.

Then, one day, watching you sleep with peace that you now only have when you’re unconscious; she thinks she knows.

They poured water over an oil fire—you’re oil fire—over and over again, and left it to burn, burn, burn, until everything around you was ash. Until you finally stopped and looked around at the nothingness and wondered what you were burning for in the first place.

The thought makes Natasha furious. She wants to wake you up just so she can tell you, so that she can shout that; your strength isn’t a distinguishable flame, and that you are not as small as a forest, that you are an ocean, and your strength is the waves, your strength is a whirlpool, your strength is a typhoon, and you are simply infinite.

To Natasha—to Natasha you are infinite.

She doesn’t tell you that though, she can’t while you’re still so reluctant to talk about what happened, she can’t when her love and her reassurances are like water to the oil fire you limit yourself to, and you’re still so scared of burning everything away.

——

You’re so scared of what it will mean to be strong again, but you want it so badly anyways.

You muse with no small amount of humor if that makes you brave, then you laugh because what a funny concept.

You were brave, you remember, when Hydra began their abuse and their nightmare pills and their cruelty. You were brave, and you were strong, and it was so much harder than just giving in but it didn’t make you hate yourself as much.

You were brave and strong, and Natasha loved you, and then you weren’t and she still loved you anyways.

——-

Natasha’s been tasked to call you downstairs for the weekly ‘Avenger family dinner’. She checks her room (you’re there more often than not again), and when she doesn’t find you there she checked yours.

You’re not there either, and she can’t hear the shower to your bathroom but she pushes it open anyways—just in case.

She’s gotten used to not knocking...she doesn’t even consider it anymore. She doesn’t even stop to realize that she hasn’t seen you without clothes since you were rescued, and that maybe there’s a reason for that, she just opens the bathroom door and stops so completely when she sees you her legs hurt from the abruptness.

You’re there staring so blankly in the mirror Natasha knows you’re not really looking at it—you’re looking through it at things she can’t ever see.

You don’t realize she’s there, but she’s there. She’s there, and you’re naked with scars she’s never seen before littered across your skin like shells on a beach.

Scattered and many. Too many to count. Too many.

Natasha stops, and the world stops, and infinity stops. Everything stops—at least to her it seems that way, because how can anything possibly exist outside this moment.

How can there be other lives and how can there be more pain in the world than this when this moment feels like it is already too much more than Natasha can handle—too much for the world to handle even.

Natasha has known logically that they had tortured you, you are the evidence—you obviously told her too—but none of your evidence is...touchable. Physically.

It’s been visual—yeah—but not like this.

This is...this is violence, and cruelty, when since you’ve been back you have only been the exact opposite. This is red lines and scars not quite healed yet forming constellations and shooting stars and hope.

Hope because you have survived so much violence, and yet here you are, still so good. Natasha wants to reach out and touch them—touch your scars and make wishes against them because she thinks that maybe your strength has the power to do anything.

Tears fill her eyes and fall over her cheeks and suddenly all she can think of is how you shouldn’t have to be that strong. No one should have to be.

She wanted to protect you. All she has ever wanted to do is protect you, and yet here you are.

Here you are, staring into a mirror unseeing and conscious but not there, with a look in your eyes Natasha has only seen in nightmares where she’s failed you—and you’re trying. You’re trying even now and Natasha wants to be there for you but this isn’t something she can hold your hand through.

This isn’t something she can kiss and make better. There’s nothing she can do. There’s nothing she can do and the simple fact rips away at her heart and leaves it bleeding out with it’s helplessness.

And then, and then you turn around.

The world starts moving again.

It starts moving and her heart stops bleeding—stiched up with her love for you—and you have never looked so sad but you have always looked so beautiful.

“I think,” Natasha whispers, voice throaty and full of shooting stars, “I think I love you more than I ever have. I think—” she pauses then, thinking of infinities, “I think my love for you is infinite.”

Your mouth parts open just slightly, and your eyes widen just that bit more. “Nat…” you stutter out wobbly, eyes filling with tears.

Natasha blinks, shocked and guilty for making you cry, but then you release a smile so bright and simply glowing Natasha can only think of stars again.

You’re laughing in the next instant, laughing and crossing your arms over your torso, digging your fingers into your arms, and then sobbing. Sobbing but somehow still laughing, and Natasha is crossing the bathroom and wrapping her arms around you like seaweed being pulled in by ocean waves.

“I think,” you gasp out between breaths, pulling away slightly to meet Natasha’s eyes, “I think that you’re going to beat me to it.”

“To what?”

“To putting my pieces back together,” you answer like it’s obvious. “You seem to do it so easily, yet when I try the pieces don’t quite fit right.”

Natasha cups your cheek and simply smiles. “Oh baby, look at how many pieces you’ve already put back.”

You don’t know what she’s talking about for a moment, Natasha can tell, but when it hits you it’s obvious. “I...I don’t flinch anymore.”

“Not around your friends. Not in the compound,” Natasha confirms, feeling a part of your joy when you screech like a child on Christmas and tightly wrap your arms around her neck.

Natasha thinks that maybe she—you—will get by just by just fine without a wish upon a star.

——-

There’s a silent argument going on, an argument that only shows itself on the floors of the training room and seeps out of the both of you like it was never there the moment you leave.

Natasha’s begun training with you again but she clearly doesn’t want to be there.

You don’t want to be there with her either if the whole time you’re training with her she’s going to be so...loud. Loud but silent. You can hear her shouting at you—accusations, pleads, and why’s. Why, why, why, you can hear Natasha ask.

Why are you doing this?

You don’t have the answers she’s seeking, not any that would appeal to her anyways, and it’s exhausting—exhausting because this is you trying to glue some pieces back where they belong and all Natasha see’s is you forcing them together when they don’t fit.

It’s infuriating, and heartwarming, and tiring, and when you’ve finally had enough of it you decide to try and train with someone else—Steve—but you’re trembling the whole fight and your insides don’t burn, they quake, and your nauseous; nauseous because he moves too quickly, because he’s reaching for you but it’s not him, it’s not him, and you’re dying, you’re dying, you can’t breathe— Natasha is there.

Natasha is there, arms wrapped around your torso and angry, but this time it’s not at you, it’s at Steve, and it’s Steve again, not some Hydra agent. It’s your friend.

Steve is looking guilty and sad, like a kicked puppy, and Natasha is yelling, and then Steve says something, something and suddenly she’s looking guilty too, guilty and sad.

Not like a kicked puppy though, like a betrayed one.

“Why are you doing this, Y/N?” Natasha asks quietly. Steve is gone. Where did he go? When did he leave? “Are you...are you there?”

Oh. Had Natasha said that out loud?

“Doing what?” You rasp, despising the way that you hate it when your jaw shakes. It’s okay, you remind yourself. It’s Natasha, it’s okay to be broken around her. Even when she’s angry.

Natasha has broken pieces, and she has missing pieces, and you do too, so it’s okay.

“Why are you training, why are you doing any of this when you aren’t,” Natasha searches your eyes, desperate, “you aren’t going out there on the field again.”

And now, now you are burning.

——

You croak out a raspy; “What?” That has Natasha wincing like she’s already been burned. “Natasha, I don’t know what you think is going to happen, but i’m- i’m going out there again.”

“You can’t even fight anyone that isn’t me,” Natasha says, freezing the moment the words are past her lips.

She tries to cup your cheek but your wincing and stepping away, away, away, too far for Natasha to reach and she hadn’t meant it like that, it wasn’t supposed to be an attack, she hadn’t—

“I’m trying now,” you say, and your voice is shaky but it’s there, and it’s strong, and you aren’t backing away any more you’re moving closer— like this time Natasha is the ocean and you’re being drawn in.

You’re wrapping your arms around Natasha and she’s confused but she’s relieved because you’re still there. You’re still with her.

“I’m trying and I know things have changed,” you whisper, “I know you’re scared, I am too, but we...were heroes because we keep trying, because even when missions go wrong and we don’t want to—we go out there and we fight so that other people don’t have to as hard.”

And Natasha knows this. She knows but…

“I know this has been hard for you,” you say, and you’re the ocean, you’re the fire, you’re all of the stupid metaphors the two of you have made up to signify strength. You’re strength, and you’re bravery because she knows how scared you are of being strong and for it to mean nothing in the end, and yet here you are.

“I know it’s been hard for you to see me like this, I know it’s been hard for you to deal with what’s happened to me,” you pull away to clamp a hand over Natasha’s mouth so she doesn’t dispute anything, and Natasha couldn’t if she wanted to because you’re crying, there are tears running down your cheeks, and she’s been speechless since the moment you hugged her.

“I know that you’ve been handing me the little pieces of yourself that you have left, and that you’ve been ignoring the pile at your own feet, and I could never thank you enough,” you smile at her then, brushing away tears that Natasha hadn’t even known she let fall “you wouldn’t want me to anyways, but now—right now I need you to let me be strong again. Even though it’s scary, because Natasha…”

You pause, closing your eyes and letting your hand fall from her mouth. “Hydra took me on a chance. It could have been you. It could have been any of the Avengers. That’s the position you put yourself in, that’s the position all of us put ourselves in, but we take that chance. I let you take that chance. Let me.”

And Natasha kisses you. She kisses you, and you gasp against her lips because you hadn’t expected it, but she keeps kissing you, and kissing you, because you're her shooting star and she wants to wish for infinity to slow down.

“I’m so scared,” Natasha says when she pulls away for air, and a sentence has never resonated with her so much, but you’re strong, you’re strong even though you’re scared, and Natasha won’t let it mean nothing, because it means everything that you’re being strong for her. “But okay. Okay.”

The breath of relief you release against Natasha’s neck, and the way you sag into her like your strength has been sapped out of you makes her tense and swallow down a sob. “I’m sorry, Y/N. I’m so sorry.”

But you pull away from her grinning and tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Does this mean you’ll stop going easy on me?”

Natasha gets whiplash.

“I uh...I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she denies, wiping away the wetness on your cheeks only to have you start wiping away at her own. Natasha laughs because what else is she supposed to do.

“Hypothetically though, if I were to have been going easy on you, I'll try to be more fair.”

Your smile widens just that bit more and Natasha is put at ease.

The two of you will be just fine, Natasha knows. No matter what the two of you face, what the two of you go through, you’ll be okay.

“I won’t go easy on you either then.”

“...What…?”

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shatouto · 3 years

Text

@obiwanobi allowed me to write a sequel to this lovely raised-as-sith!anakin and jedi!obi-wan fic!! pls enjoy this tiny little 1.3k of hurt/comfort

content warning: description of injuries

capable de deux

The standard clock strikes half past midnight.

Obi-Wan sets the basin on the floor. The man who is no longer Vader sits against the wall like a broken doll, one arm bent in a sickening angle, hands lying palm-up and unclenched between half-crossed legs. He’s not uncooperative, just limp, when Obi-Wan lifts his hands or turns his shoulder to remove the broken armor pieces. He’s not unresponsive, just lackluster, when Obi-Wan decides that the clothes are too mangled to salvage anyway and announces it to him in a murmur. He’s not unfeeling, just very, very quiet. Worryingly quiet.

In the shadow of Anakin’s silence, the only light that comes through is his eyes. Obi-Wan feels Anakin’s gaze like a physical thing, following his every movement in weary wariness as the scissors slowly snips their way along the seams. It’s borderline suffocating, how the air is so thoroughly silent that Obi-Wan can hear exactly how shallow Anakin’s breathing is. He sets all of the blood-soaked scrap fabric aside and dips a cloth in lukewarm water. He meets Anakin’s eyes, before wiping a streak down his front.

Anakin’s body is littered with scars; if there is a patch of unmarred skin left amidst the glossy criss-crossing, it would be dark with bruises. So many scars for someone so young, Obi-Wan catches himself thinking, frowning deeply - because Anakin is young, younger now than any other time Obi-Wan has glimpsed him outside of his distinct helmet. Young enough to be a Padawan, even, had the Jedi found him before the Sith. Obi-Wan sighs.

A deep cauterized gash runs from the tip of Anakin’s shoulder to the middle of his chest, and a fresh burn spreads from his heart to diaphragm, all of which Obi-Wan quickly covers with bacta patches before cleaning the rest. The blaster shot wounds are a more pressing concern, as they are still bleeding. He bites his lip in commiseration, nearly holding his breath as he cleans the too-tender flesh as gently as he can. His lineage does not have a gift for the art of healing, and Anakin’s shields are still rammed up high and tight, so Obi-Wan opts to monitor Anakin’s reactions for any sign of sudden pain.

Anakin doesn’t make a single sound. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move. If it isn’t for his breathing sometimes hitching, Obi-Wan would have thought that Anakin is entirely numb - which would have been worrying. Whenever he glances up to Anakin’s face, their gazes touch; Anakin’s eyes train on his face rather on his moving hands, not alert, but not aimless either.

Water darkens in the basin. Obi-Wan has changed it for a third time, and is on his second washcloth. There is so much blood it’s a miracle that Anakin has made it this far, has dragged himself into the Jedi Temple without getting caught. Obi-Wan works his way down to the slippery patch on Anakin’s thigh, which turns out to be a wound that he can’t - and doesn’t want to - even begin to guess the cause: Raw burnt flesh just ripe for infection on the edge of a gaping cavity still oozing blood.

He whispers an apology as he has done for every touch, dabbing the cloth at the least damaged edge of the wound. This is by far the nastiest wound he’s seen, and Obi-Wan raises his gaze, worried that this might be where Anakin breaks.

Anakin doesn’t.

And somehow it’s even more disquieting.

“You can’t feel it?” Obi-Wan breaks the silence.

Anakin finally blinks at him. Even the confusion is better than the utterly blank look he has been sporting.

Obi-Wan breathes a sigh of relief, short-lived though it is. “Your injuries?” He specifies.

Anakin cocks his head a bit - almost cute, Obi-Wan thinks in passing - but then says in a voice devoid of emotions whatsoever. “It’s not that bad.”

Obi-Wan scoffs. “Anakin, there is blood and bruises everywhere on you and I think your arm is badly broken. Can you even feel it?”

Anakin shrugs with his unhurt shoulder. “No.”

“You can’t—” Cold dread bursts in Obi-Wan’s chest like a sheet of ice shattering. He places a hand on Anakin’s shoulder. “Anakin, you need to see a healer! Why did you let me—”

“No, I mean”—Anakin straightens up minutely—“I can’t feel it because it’s not there anymore. It’s just a mechno-arm. Dooku cut my real arm years ago.”

“…Dooku.” Obi-Wan stares at him, voice flat. “Dooku, the other Sith, who’s supposed to be your ally. He cut your arm.”

Anakin makes a vague sound of affirmation, and falls silent, letting Obi-Wan struggle to form a reply to that. Now it’s his turn to look at Anakin in the face, while those now-blue eyes turn towards the ground, lashes so long they cast shadows of their own.

“Don’t call a healer,” Anakin finally mumbles, not looking at him. “I don’t want healers. I don’t want… people. I don’t like anyone touching me.”

“Oh.” Obi-Wan’s eyes widen, realizing that he still has his left hand on Anakin’s shoulder, while his right rests just over Anakin’s knee, still clutching the washcloth. He makes to pull away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

Anakin’s hand flashes up in sudden, unexpected liveliness, immediately squeezing Obi-Wan’s hand on his shoulder. His eyelashes quivers.

“You’re not ‘anyone’.”

—

The entire living room smells like bacta with a hint of blood by the time Obi-Wan is done. He locks Vader’s lightsaber with its buzzing red crystal in a drawer, and wraps away the broken prosthetic and ruined armor and shreds of clothing; it’s not safe enough to discard them conventionally, and he will have to burn them later, ideally somewhere unfrequented. Right now, there is no way Obi-Wan can leave his quarters. Not with Anakin limping out of bed at the sound of a fresher door sliding open or shut.

By all rights Anakin should have passed out from lightheaded exhaustion by now, yet he seems even more awake now than even when Obi-Wan first found him on his knees in the hallway. Anakin pauses at the sight of him and sits back down on the edge of the bed. He fixes Obi-Wan with the gaze of a Loth-wolf.

Obi-Wan lets out a sigh, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. He takes a seat beside the former Sith. “Anakin,” he enunciates each syllable in a lingering rhythm, “could you please stop watching me like this?”

Anakin blinks at him; so far, Anakin seems capable of two states of being: desperate, and confused. “What do you mean?” He looks deceivingly innocent, covered in bandages and wrapped in Obi-Wan’s colors - a thought that Obi-Wan, startled, quickly shuts down. “I’ve always looked at you like this.”

Obi-Wan’s mouth hangs open, his mind running the sentence through. Always? Since before? And then it occurs to him that Vader wore the helmet along with his full suit of armor every time they clashed in battle. The few rare times they crossed paths outside of combat were all hair-thin ceasefires, too tense, too charged with fragile hope for him to notice. It dawns on Obi-Wan that Anakin has no concept of what is an appropriate amount of looking, of staring at someone.

“...Should I not?” Anakin ducks his head a little, and reaches for Obi-Wan’s hand.

By Force, this is a man who demanded surrender from Jedi only to open fire on them, who killed hundreds with just his hands and a lightsaber, who led operations that burn cities of civilians, who scorched the earth of whole planets and poisoned whole systems. This is a man who has done enough evil to make the core of a kyber mountain shudder. He has no rights looking like this, lamb-like in both colors and manners.

But could a child weaned on blood and brought up on broken bones know any better?

“Go to bed, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, in a tone distinctly reminiscent of that which he used with a younger Ahsoka in her rebellious day. (Not that she has gotten any less rebellious; she only moved on to matters more significant than bedtime.) He squeezes Anakin’s hand, and eases him down onto the pillow, and watches Anakin until Anakin can’t watch him back anymore.

And like all infants who fall asleep with a hand in their own, Anakin holds on tight.

#obikin #obi wan kenobi #obi-wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #is it still vaderwan if he’s alread an ex-sith #anyway #CLEM #SENT ME #THE DIALOGUE PART #AT 2:30 AND I WAS LIKE ‘ok there is no way i could keep myself from writing this’#i fuckin love this au man #like bless u clem #i was struggling to find a good way to bring a sith anakin back to the light and then you just #you just dropped this right in front of me #i totally hijacked clem’s au hngngnkdf #i have so much more i wanna write #so much #shatou writes

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stargazer-balladeer · 3 years

Text

Christmas Greetings from them [Genshin Impact]

Characters Included: Aether, Albedo, Amber, Barbara, Beidou, Bennett, Childe, Chongyun, Diluc Ragnvindr, Diona & Fischl.

Notes: .. AYE- TIME TO START WORKING- :DDD the child-like characters (qiqi, klee, diona, and paimon—) are all platonic. so no worries there- i also have to randomize Diona’s and Sucrose’s ;;w;; i’m just gonna imagine what’ll like if the two characters interact- some of this are long, some are short. So sorry abt the inconsistency :pp hope ya’ll like this! (Bc this is the first time i’ve done something like this- 🤧)

Ps: I have to cut this into several parts bc there is a maximum word count in one post- ;;w;; so i only added the ones that appeared here.

Additional Notes: based on the “wishes” thing. So like,, ya know, how we believe that if we make a wish on a star it’ll come true kind of thing? So,, when making a wish or prayer or something, they do it in a prayer position and think of it- and that person somehow receives it?? (I’m still not sure abt this part ;;w;; but let’s wing it-!). Also,, I refer “wish” as a prayer- 🤧 sorry if its confusing- hshs

Warning: some of the characters are OOC ;;w;; sorry-

Aether

With Paimon

“Oh? Is it already that time of the year again?”

“Of course it is! Don’t tell me you forgot-!”

“Oh-! Of course not, Paimon. Not with you constantly reminding me..”

“C’mon! Say your wishes! Oh.. also! You should probably say your wishes for your s/o!”

“Hmm.. you know what, Paimon. You could be useful sometimes.”

“Hey! What does that suppose to mean?!”

“Wishing stars.. this is for my beloved [Y/N], I wish that we can get to spend every Christmas season together. Though I may travel a lot, and may leave you one day, I hope that you’ll still love and cherish the limited time we have together. Always keep smiling that brilliantly for me, even if I’m gone. As much as this is becoming cheesy, keep me in your heart, okay? I’ll keep you in mine in return. Merry Christmas, [Y/N].”

Albedo

With Sucrose

“Sir Albedo-! Are you still busy with your research?”

“Hm..? Oh, Sucrose. Precisely, I’m almost done with it.”

“You should probably get some rest, sir! It’s almost Christmas Eve!”

“Christmas? Eve? Eh..? Is it already that late?”

“D-Don’t tell me you didn’t notice the time..?”

“I suppose so..”

“You should probably make your wish now! The stars are still out, so it’s not too late to make right now.”

“Ah, I forgot about that. Thank you, Sucrose.”

“Y-Your very welcome, sir Albedo-!”

“Stars that grants wishes, hear my wish. This is for my (princess/prince), my muse. How are you faring? I hope that you’ll come back soon so that we can celebrate this season of Christmas, and possibly more. Can you see the stars from where you are? Can you see how bright they are right now? I really do miss your presence.. I miss the sparkles in your eyes when I discover something new. I wish to see those again. Keep shining brightly for me, okay? Merriest of Christmas, my love.”

Amber

With Jean

“Amber? Are you still patrolling?”

“Acting Grandmaster Jean! Yep! I was about to head outside to patrol the area-!”

“You’ve been working very hard. I praise that trait though please don’t overwork yourself.”

“Hehe~ don’t worry, acting grandmaster Jean! I’m doing okay!”

“Well then, have you already wish?”

“Wish..? Ah! I forgot!”

“*chuckles* Of course. Better make that wish now before the stars vanish.”

“Okay! Thanks for reminding me, acting grandmaster Jean!”

“My pleasure, Amber.”

“Wishing Stars. I hope it isn’t too late to make a wish now-! I kinda forgot, so sorry.. hehe. Anyway, this is for my partner! How are you out there? Actually, where exactly are you? I kinda forgot where you went.. hehe, sorry. Make sure to eat plenty of food, okay? It’s important to eat 3 times a day to maintain a healthy body-! Also, you shouldn’t mind your weight! As long as you’re healthy, it doesn’t matter if you weigh alot! I’ll still love you no matter what! Merry Christmas, [Y/N]! Come visit me again!”

Barbara

With Noelle

“Oh? You’re still awake, Barbara?”

“Hm? Oh, Noelle! Good evening! Hehe, yeah. I was thinking of what wish I should make.”

“Ah. The legend of the Wishing Stars. I’m surprise that you believe in that sort of things.”

“Well.. it isn’t bad to dream, right?”

“I suppose. If I may, why not wish about your s/o?”

“[Y/N]..? Hm.. actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea-! Thanks so much, Noelle! You’re truly a good friend!”

“Hehe.. I’m just glad that I’m a help to you, Barbara.”

“O Wishing Stars, hear my wish. This is for my beloved [Y/N], of whom I wish to see again. Please let them be unharm. I wish I could accompany them in their journey but I have my role here as well. So I wish them the best in their travels. Please come visit though, I wish to see your face again, [Y/N]. And I wish to heal all the wounds that was cast upon you. Though I cannot heal the scars, you shouldn’t be afraid to show them. For they tell a tale of an adventure you went through. Come back in one piece okay? Merry Christmas, my beloved. Sweet dreams.”

Beidou

With Ningguang

“.. huh? Oh, what a surprise seeing you here, Ningguang.”

“I suppose it is quite a surprise, seeing as we coincidentally bump into each other in a hill. Tell me, what business do you have here?”

“I could say the same with you. It isn’t everyday you bump into a Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing, in a secluded place like a hill no less.”

“I believe it’s the same reason as yours, peace and quiet.”

“Ah, same. Though, there’s another reason why I’m here.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

“To see the stars. Have you heard about the legend of the Wishing Stars?”

“Ah, I’ve heard about it but never really took an interest on them.”

“Well, the simplest explanation is that when you wish upon a star, it’ll come true or be sent to that person.”

“Interesting. It is quite interesting what a human mind can come up with.”

“Hm.. myth or not, I was thinking of doing one anyway.”

“Go ahead. Don’t mind my presence.”

“Kinda hard when you’re the Tianquan..”

“Do you wish to make me leave then?”

“Nah, you can stay.”

“Alright.”

“I have no idea on how to do this but- o wishing star, hear my wish..? Can you send this wish to my second mate? I wish you were here, to celebrate the holidays with me and the crew. It’ll be a blast if you were here.. Though I understand that you can’t be here because of your personal reasons. Though it would be nice to see you again.. I hope that wherever you are, they are treating you well. Your health comes first, okay? Stop thinking of others for a change.. though that’ll be impossible knowing you.. just keep smiling, okay? Your smile is a treasure afterall, a treasure that I selfishly want to keep. Merry Christmas, my second mate. May we cross the seas together again.”

Bennett

With Barbara

“Oh, it’s you again, Bennett. Are you injured again?”

“Hey Barbara! Nope, not today!”

“Thank goodness. I see that lady luck decided to give you a break atleast.. anyways, if you’re not injured, why’re you here then?”

“Ah, I came to ask you on how to send a letter or something to [Y/N]! I don’t know what to get them, and I don’t have a clue on where they are either-! Besides, it’s almost Christmas..”

“Hm.. I’m not sure if this is true but why not give her a wish from the stars?”

“Wish? From the stars?”

“You know.. the legend of the Wishing Stars.”

“oh.. Oh.. OH! I see! That’s brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that?! Thanks Barbara! I owe you yet again!”

“*chuckles* I’m happy to help you whenever, Bennett. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas too, Barbara!”

“Wishing stars, can you please send this to [Y/N]? I know I haven’t gotten anything for you this year, but next year, I’m gonna make it up to you! I’ll give you the best gift ever! Hope you’re doing well! Fischl is doing great, along with the people in the Adventurer’s Guild. Oh, and guess what? I didn’t get hurt today! I guess lady luck decided to give me a break.. hehe.. you know.. it isn’t the same without you. But take your time! You don’t need to come back immediately! I’ll wait for you! Even if it takes years for you to come back, I’ll wait! So please, come back okay? Me and the Benny’s Adventure’s Team will be waiting for you! Eat healthy and smile more! Merry Christmas! Love ya!”

Childe

With Teucer

“What are you thinking of, brother?”

“! Teucer! You know it’s rude to sneak up on people-!”

“Actually, I’ve been calling you for the past minute. You just haven’t responded to any of them.”

“.. really?”

“Really really.”

“Well, now that you have my attention, what do you need?”

“Mommy is asking when we will meet your s/o.”

“Eh? They want to meet [Y/N]?”

“Yep! Their curious on who they are after you mentioning them a dozen times in the letters you sent for them!”

“.. I guess I’ve been mentioning them a bit too much.”

“So, when? When?”

“Well, not anytime soon I’m afraid.”

“Aww.. what gives?”

“Their on a journey afterall. When they get back, I promise I’ll let them meet [Y/N].”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Okay..”

“Goodnight, Teucer. It’s almost your bedtime.”

“Goodnight, brother..”

“Stars above, would you listen to my wish, I wonder? Will [Y/N] even receive this? Oh well, couldn’t hurt to try. How’ve you been? Hope you’re still alive. Actually, I’m pretty sure you’re still alive. You’re strong afterall. Anyways, my family wants to meet you. You’ve already met Teucer which made the rest of my family jealous because, for some reason, they also want to meet you. I mean, who wouldn’t want to meet you? You’re amazing in every way, [Y/N]. When you return, I’m gonna ambush you and kidnap you to meet my family. That sounds like fun actually.. hm.. might as well do that. Also, you better be getting some sleep. I don’t want to see any bags under your eyes. Hahaha.. Merry Christmas, [Y/N]. May the Tsaritsa protect you from harm.”

Chongyun

With Xingqiu

“.. oh, it’s you.”

“Eh? Aren’t you atleast excited to see me?”

“Not really..”

“Boo.. and here I consider you a close friend-!”

“Well.. you are certainly a friend. But are we really that close?”

“That’s cold coming from you, Chongyun.”

“.. did you just made a pun?”

“Yes. And I have no regrets.”

“*sigh* why are you here?”

“I came here to inform you about something I found!”

“If its a prank, then leave me out of it.”

“It’s got something to do with your s/o~!”

“..”

“I got your interest, didn’t I?”

“*sigh* on with it.”

“So, one of the books I’ve read contained a legend called the legend of the Wishing Stars.”

“The legend of the Wishing Stars? Sounds like a fantasy that someone came up with during story time.”

“Well, anyways. It says, if you wish upon a star during the night, your wish, or prayer, would be heard.”

“And how is this related to [Y/N]?”

“Well, since [Y/N] is out and about, why not make a wish for their safety?”

“But how would we know if that’s true?”

“Couldn’t hurt to try now, would it?”

“.. how would I know this isn’t one of your pranks?”

“I promise it isn’t! Most people know of it actually-! Even the traveller!”

“Traveller? Oh.. I guess it can’t hurt to try it out.”

“Hmhmm! I gotta go now though. Afterall, I just escape from home. See ya!”

“And off he goes. *sigh* he really does do what he pleases.”

“Xingqiu didn’t actually tell me how to do this so I’m gonna guess instead. Stars in the sky, is it true that you’ll grant my wish? Well, it’s not like you can answer so I’m just gonna guess that’s a yes. How are you, my snowflake? I presume that you have a safe journey in wherever you are. If you ever feel peckish, just eat some ice cream, it always works. Nothing exciting is happening right now. Xingqiu and Xinyan are their usual annoying selves, and Xiangling tried to feed me a new recipe she made. Say, when are you coming back? Where exactly are you? Maybe I can follow, wherever you are. But my duty as a exorcists lies here. I hope that pendant I gave you serves its uses to repel any ghosts that dare to haunt you. Oh, it’s almost Christmas. Merry Christmas, snowflake. I hope that next year, you would be here with me instead of somewhere else. Until we meet again.”

Diluc Ragnvindr

With Kaeya

“And what exactly are you doing here?”

“Is that a way to talk to a regular customer here?”

“Shouldn’t you have duties to fulfill, Cavalry Captain Kaeya?”

“Oh? We’re using our titles now, master Diluc?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“*laughs* alright alright. I surrender.”

“Are you really here for the wine? Or are you here to annoy me as usual?”

“Well, I will admit that I initially came here for the wine but I brought a present for you, for Christmas.”

“I hope it isn’t another vase.”

“*laughs* of course it isn’t. Do you know the legend of the Wishing Stars?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“So..”

“So?”

“Aren’t you going to make one?”

“Why would I participate in a childish myth?”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to try now.. especially to your beloved s/o.”

“.. you’re just trying to provoke me.”

“And it’s working~”

“Hrm..”

“C’mon~ don’t you want the best for [Y/N]?”

“What’s your end goal?”

“.. pardon?”

“What will you gain in the end if I do make a wish? Don’t tell me you’re doing this out of the ‘goodness’ of your heart.”

“... hm.. I still wonder that.”

“You’re just playing around with me, aren’t you?”

“Look, we all want the best for [Y/N]. If you want to do it, then do it. If you don’t want to do it, then don’t. I just came to inform you about that silly legend.”

“.. do you even believe in that?”

“Who knows?”

“..”

“I gotta go now. Merry Christmas, sir Diluc.”

“...”

“I can’t believe that I’m participating in a silly legend but, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try. Wishing stars, shining brilliantly in the night sky, would you hear my wish? I wish the best for [Y/N]. I wish they are faring well and that they aren’t having any problems with enemies like Hilichurls or Treasure Hoarders in wherever land they are in. But, won’t you guide them back to me? I admit that I miss them dearly and I worry about them constantly. I miss everything about them, their smile, their laughter, their eyes, their hair, their warmth, everything. I want to hold them in my arms again and kiss them. When I meet them, I’ll remind them of my love again. Hopefully, next year, they would stay by my side in the winter season. This is a wish I hold dearly. May Barbatos.. or that bard.. keep you safe. Merry Christmas, my love. I’ll be waiting for you here.”

Diona

With Mona

“.. who are you?”

“Me?! Why, I’m Mona! The famous Astrologer of Teyvat! I have mastered and know astrology more than anyone in Teyvat!”

“Yeah.. and I’m a dog.”

“I- You don’t believe me?!”

“Nope.”

“Urgh-! And who are you?”

“Hmph. I’m Diona. One of the bartenders in Cat’s Tail.”

“... how are you working when you look so young though?”

“It was honestly just a joke at first but big sister Margaret decided to hire me for real.”

“.. ah, I see.”

“So, why are you here?”

“Well, this is the best view of the stars of all of Teyvat.”

“Ah, I guess so..”

“Say, do you know of the legend of the Wishing Stars?”

“My dad used to tell me stories about that.”

“Well, I supposed it could be use as a bed time story.”

“Wait, it isn’t just a myth?”

“Who knows? There’s no proof of its existence but some people swear they could hear the person’s voice in their head. It’s still unclear on how this things happen, but that’s what makes it wonderful, don’t you think? So many mysteries yet so little answers..”

“.. I don’t think like that.”

“Really?”

“Hmhm.. All I wanted to do is to make a wine so disgusting that nobody would want to drink it. I don’t really see anything else besides that.”

“Ah.. I see.”

“Say, if I make a wish right now, would they receive it?”

“Well, it’s not certain but it wouldn’t hurt to try. Afterall, we humans just keep trying, never giving up. That’s one beautiful thing in humanity.”

“...”

“Why don’t you make a wish right now?”

“Hrm.. okay.”

“Just put your hands in a prayer position and close your eyes and wish in your mind.”

“O shining, wishing stars. I’ve only heard about you through dad and this random lady. But would you hear me out? I just want to know if my friend is okay. Their name is [Y/N]. I wanted to know if their safe and alive. It’s only been a few days, but I’m already missing them. They better be alright or else they’ll be in trouble when they get back! I want them back so that I can finally achieve the dream of ruining the wine industry! Hehe.. I hope they aren’t overexerting themselves out there, I know what their like and I’m honestly worried. Please bring them back to me in one piece. I still have to teach them the bow-! I want to give them the present I have for them. I made it myself, a bracelet! Dad help me make it! Merry Christmas, [Y/N]! Come back and be my partner in crime again!”

Fischl

With Bennett

“Hey! Fischl!”

“Hm? Ah, why isn’t it Bennett from the Benny’s Adventure Team. To what I owe a pleasure to?”

“I was just wondering if you’ll be going to the party that the Adventurer’s Guild is hosting. So, are you going?”

“Hm. If one has time, then perhaps. Not everyone has free time afterall.”

“Ehh? You’re still busy? Shouldn’t you relax for a bit? Whenever I talk to you, you always seem busy.”

“It is, afterall, a Prinzessin der Verurteilung noble duty.”

“Ah.. I suppose.”

“Is there anything else you would like to say before we part ways?”

“Oh yeah! Do you know of the legend of the Wishing Stars?”

“I am aware of it but how does this have any interest in our current predicament?”

“.. uh..”

“What mein Fraülein is saying is, how did this legend became an interest to you?”

“Ah! Well, it’s becoming popular among the people around this time of year. Maybe you can make a wish for.. [Y/N]?”

“.. perhaps.. we’ll try to find some spare time later on to do the wish.”

“Alright! Well, I gotta go. See ya later, Fischl, Oz!”

“Farewell, young lad.”

“Farewell..”

“Are you, perhaps, planning on making a wish right now, mein Fraülein?”

“There is no impending dangers around us, correct? Then perhaps, I can spare some time right now to get it off my mind.”

“Whatever you wish to do is what I’ll abide to, mein Fraülein.”

“O great, shining Wishing Stars, hear thy wish, one that is coming from heart. One wonders how the other fares? Have the Gods and Goddesses gifted them protection in wherever they are? Because making the Prinzessin der verurteilung worry like this is unheard of. Still, I would be utmost be grateful to find any sign of them still active. I, Fischl, Prinzessin der verurteilung, want them to return immediately in whatever journey they are in. Though I would still understand if they need more time to search for what they need to search. I.. honestly miss them and their warmth. I want them to hold me again, to reassure me that I don’t need to be perfect always. Ah-! I broke off of character! My apologies-! Anyways, since it is the season of winter festivities, I wish them a merriest of Christmas. May next year come and let us celebrate it together as one. I’m forever in love with you, please come back to me in one piece.”

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primrose-path-of-dalliance · 3 years

Text

on bren and feeblemind.

(cw: lots of caleb backstory. self-explanatory, i think?)

this isn’t something i’ve talked about on my blog yet, but since the campaign has begun drawing to a close, i want to make sure i say my piece on the popular theory that bren/caleb was institutionalized because trent ikithon feebleminded him to disable him.

my piece being that it’s exceptionally unlikely he did—at least as a premeditated plan. this kind of theory also falls prey to the exact beliefs ikithon has tried to exploit in caleb.

for our mutual reference, i’ll quote the spell description of feeblemind.

FEEBLEMIND (PHB) 8th level enchantment

Casting time: 1 action Range: 150 feet Components: VSM (a handful of clay, crystal, glass, or mineral spheres) Duration: Instantaneous

You blast the mind of a creature that you can see within range, attempting to shatter its intellect and personality. The target takes 4d6 psychic damage and must make an Intelligence saving throw.

On a failed save, the creature’s Intelligence and Charisma scores become 1. The creature can’t cast spells, activate magic items, understand language, or communicate in any intelligible way. The creature can, however, identify its friends, follow them, and even protect them.

At the end of every 30 days, the creature can repeat its saving throw against this spell. If it succeeds on its saving throw, the spell ends. The spell can also be ended by Greater Restoration, Heal, or Wish.

considering the characteristics described and implied by actors other than ikithon—caleb and astrid prominently—who are not motivated to deceive on ikithon’s behalf, feeblemind is not consistent with caleb’s mental break.

fact the first: when bren broke, he became violent and spellcasted.

when astrid describes the circumstances in which he was taken to the vergessen sanatorium (e89, 1:49:30), she refers to his lashing out as “creat[ing] a lot of sparks everywhere else” and rubs at burn scars across her neck. she says that they had to subdue him because he was too dangerous. all of these statements add up to a bren who was viciously spellcasting at his friends and mentor when he broke down.

this wouldn’t have been possible if he’d been feebleminded. feeblemind explicitly prevents the affected creature from casting spells or activating magic items. in that scenario, the only thing bren would’ve been capable of is throwing hands. from him? not very dangerous at all.

how do we know astrid wasn’t lying or intentionally deceptive? because she (and eadwulf) still cares so much for caleb that she risked her life multiple times to aid him. no one who would give caleb a map to a secret volstrucker vault with her own handwriting on it (e127, 29:29; and 30:57)—or intentionally fail to counterspell him when ikithon could’ve seen her do so—would lie to caleb about ikithon attempting to permanently feeblemind him if she knew.

to preempt the idea that astrid had set the m9 up: it’s very obvious she didn’t, since trent ikithon had clearly had no forewarning of a break-in. he would’ve at least been waiting in the vault, already prepared to subdue them quickly, if he’d known.

so it’s fair to determine that astrid would either be honest to the extent of her knowledge to caleb or make it clear that she couldn’t answer him. since she didn’t imply the latter, we can assume she was being honest. and because of astrid’s competence, it’s highly probable she would’ve noticed if his behavior was symptomatic of feeblemind over the years.

fact the second: bren’s mental condition repeatedly improved and regressed while he was institutionalized.

astrid states this in the same conversation about their subduing him after his breakdown (e89, 1:50:50). considering this with the context of their romantic relationship prior to his breakdown, her genuine care for him, and her rise to power that included accompanying ikithon frequently to the sanatorium (e127, 31:07)—astrid would’ve had the motivation and the opportunities to visit bren in person. she could’ve also kept well-abreast of his condition.

actual times of improvement and decline in the mental state that astrid first observed during his breakdown wouldn’t be consistent with feeblemind. although it reduces the victim’s intelligence score to 1, they still retain thought and their sense of identity without problems.

this is a maintenance of consistency and (relative) reason. feeblemind does not actually damage a person’s basic perception of reality. but the health of bren’s behavior throughout the years was instead very unstable.

fact the third: caleb doesn’t remember anything from the burning of his home up to his healing by the unknown cleric.

in the conversation with astrid in e89, he asks her what happened when he broke and explicitly says, “the last thing i remember is my home” (1:46:58). when he first tells beau and nott about his past, he explains that he doesn’t remember much of what happened to him there (e18, 2:51:54).

beyond the reduction to their intelligence, feeblemind doesn’t affect the victim’s ability to form memories. caleb’s keen mind feat and established narrative element of his eidetic memory would’ve still been present as well. therefore, feeblemind alone can’t explain such a significant, near-empty gap in his memory. he would still remember something.

even the possibility of trent ikithon altering them directly is precluded by the fact that the cleric’s healing removed the alterations to caleb’s memory. if all those years had been magically blocked away, they’d have returned when he was healed of everything else.

fact the fourth: sometimes, people really do just break.

nothing about caleb’s backstory is inconsistent with just... being a person living their life, even a terrible one. he was a young man that believed so zealously in his country and his purpose, abused by a powerful older man, that he did many horrible things and believed they were right. until finally he did something that he couldn’t process and broke down.

there’s two reoccurring, underlying assumptions i’ve noticed behind why this theory seems to be so compelling and popular:

caleb just seems so remorseful and traumatized by his double patricide. there’s no way he would’ve willingly murdered his parents. ikithon must have known and decided to preempt his inevitable betrayal.

everything we know about bren, especially from the horse’s own mouth, suggests that he had been willing (at least up until his mental break) to murder his parents. he was literally an extreme nationalist—a fascist, if you will. he was lawful evil (twitter source). he gratefully executed many “criminals” put in front of him, more than likely by burning them to death based on his ptsd. victims whom we now understand may not have been guilty of anything at all.

he was glad to do what he thought was best for the dwendalian empire, and he truly thought being volstrucker was the correct path. trent ikithon, his abuser, treated him as his favorite (e110, 3:30:58). because he believed.

that fervent faith, in fact, is the key to something like his breakdown in the first place. hearing the dying screams of his parents, bren was forced to confront a violent dissonance between his radical beliefs that condemned traitors (as he believed until the cleric’s healing) and the intuitive horror of murdering his parents that he couldn’t reconcile. this fathomless sense of betrayal is why caleb so deeply despised ikithon and himself.

a young evocation wizard who didn’t want his parents dead would’ve run into that burning house, feebleminded or not. someone magically compelled to set that fire would’ve understood what happened as soon as the charm left him and would definitely remember every detail once the cleric healed him.

caleb is remorseful and traumatized because he willingly murdered his parents. as well as many others.

it can’t be that simple. caleb was institutionalized for eleven years just because his abuser pushed him too far? there must be a more nefarious reason. ikithon even said he basically stored him for later.

putting aside the fact that bren having a breakdown in the way he did makes complete sense for his situation, ikithon’s “claim” that he orchestrated all of caleb’s subsequent years is not only something he never actually says (e110, 3:16:34)—it is a claim that’s patently absurd.

i’ve written meta that discusses this in the past (link here). essentially though, the number of moving pieces and assumptions that would be needed for such a series of events is ridiculously improbable. even assuming that ikithon feebleminded him—so that caleb’s mind would be intact when he ‘woke up’—even assuming that ikithon somehow procured the service of a cleric of the archeart—a banned deity in the empire that would oppose ikithon...

why in the world would he ever reasonably believe that caleb widogast, the man he viciously betrayed and lied to and abused, would do anything to benefit ikithon?

trent ikithon is a mortal man. he has power, yes; enchantment magic, authority, and a history of abuse and manipulation over caleb’s head, yes. but ikithon is a mortal man. not a puppeteer in the sky piloting people’s bodies.

he certainly wouldn’t have led caleb to a whole new family that would change everything about his life for the better. a family that would love him, truly—a family that would help him heal, bear the weight of his guilt, and find a real future waiting for him again instead of a self-destructive end. a family that would fight tooth and nail for caleb’s sake against ikithon.

abusers lie. their biggest lie, the one they always circle back to in the end, is that their victim is unique: that there is something which makes them deserving of abuse, and that their abuser is both right and inescapable.

ikithon is read as honest because he chooses his words carefully and has the self-confidence to believe it. everything he’s claimed about caleb and his past have either been implications that he encouraged others to reach for him or platitudes empty of everything except gaslighting intent.

caleb has escaped. and everything ikithon wants is to convince caleb and his friends that he continues to control caleb’s life, that caleb is special, so he can regain some influence over a man who’s come to command so much power.

the idea that caleb must’ve been feebleminded—that he couldn’t have just had a mental breakdown like so many other prospective volstrucker before miraculously, then strenuously, recovering to create a hopeful future for himself—falls into the trap of validating ikithon’s lies.

trent ikithon didn’t see and believe in caleb’s ‘full potential’ before anyone else did. he didn’t foresee a single ounce of the man’s struggle to put himself back together after what he suffered. caleb was not institutionalized to serve as a toy to one day pull back out of the closet. there was no feeblemind or other secretive plan that could only serve to obfuscate the brutal truth:

ikithon abused a boy until he shattered, and tried to hide the evidence. a crime that he’s committed against countless other children. plain and simple.

so that’s my piece.

caleb widogast—bren ermendrud—was not the victim of a premeditated feeblemind from ikithon, based on the mechanics of the spell. even more importantly, the narrative of his and ikithon’s stories would suffer if he was.

now,

A LOGICAL POSSIBILITY I WON’T DENY.

what if ikithon feebleminded him as a method to subdue him after the breakdown?

this is more or less an alternate theory that’s irrelevant to the points i actually wanted to make. but i want to talk about it anyway because it’s kind of fun.

fact the bonus: bren spent eleven years in the sanatorium.

eleven years is a long time. he would’ve been able to save every 30 days after the initial failed save. the exandrian calendar has about eleven 30-day periods every year. assuming a feeblemind spell cast on him just prior to his institutionalization, that’s somewhere around 121 possible save attempts, give or take a few.

what’s the likelihood of him actually saving? to go through the mechanics:

normally, feeblemind reduces a person’s intelligence score to 1, modifier -5. caleb, as a variant human, possessed the feat keen mind from the beginning both mechanically and story-wise. this would make his intelligence score 2, modifier -4, even after feeblemind.

as a level 1-2 wizard, he would’ve had proficiency in intelligence saves. this would be +2 to his save.

in total, the modifier to bren’s intelligence saves would be -2.

in order to cast feeblemind, trent ikithon would have to have been a minimum level 15 wizard. this leaves two possible proficiency bonuses to determine his spell save dc: +5 or +6.

it’s probably safe to assume that his intelligence score is at least 18–20, likely 20. this would be a modifier of +4 or +5. (his intelligence could be 22+ if matt wanted to be a real dick, but let’s assume otherwise.)

spell save dc = 8 + spellcasting score mod (for wizards, this is intelligence) + proficiency bonus.

this means trent ikithon’s possible spell save dc is somewhere from 17–19.

therefore:

at minimum—17 being ikithon as a level 15–16 wizard with an intelligence score of 18–19 at the time of casting—bren would have to roll a 19 or nat 20 to make the save with his -2 save modifier.

at a dc of 18—ikithon either being level 17–20 or having an intelligence score of 20, but not both—bren would have to roll a nat 20.

at a dc of 19(+), it would be impossible for bren to save without additional bonuses such as bless.

i don’t have the brainpower to calculate some real statistical probabilities, but depending on your opinion of trent ikithon’s probable capabilities at the time of bren’s mental break, he may have been able to save against feeblemind sometime during the eleven years he spent at the sanatorium.

naturally, this has the earlier-mentioned conundrum of remembering that return of clarity once he was healed by the cleric, should ikithon have been retrieved to recast the feeblemind and altered his memories. nevertheless, it may or may not be a fun thought to play around with.

#caleb widogast #trent ikithon #blumendrei #cr #cr meta #critical role #critical role meta #critrole #bren aldric ermendrud #bren ermendrud #abuse cw #mental institution cw #prim post #prim says some things #long post

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mari-beau · 3 years

Text

GIVE ME A REASON: PART SIX - A Rogue One Fanfiction

This is a shorter installment, and maybe pointless… maybe I’m dragging this out too long… But also, who cares, I’m doing this for fun. I just love playing with them!

Read on AO3

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Title: Give Me A Reason: Part Six

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

Characters: Jyn Erso POV, Cassian Andor

Pairing: Cassian/Jyn (mostly pre-ship?)

Spoilers: Rogue One; Episode IV A New Hope

Setting: Post-Rogue One AU (Cassian & Jyn live); Also during/post A New Hope

Warnings: Some coarse language. References to wounds. And… Cuddling?

Words: 1,720

Story Summary: Jyn’s entire universe has been turned on its head, so maybe she’s clinging a little too hard to the one thing she feels certain of (strangely enough) as she tries to figure out her place in the galaxy. And maybe she’s being a little overprotective of a wounded captain.

Also can be found on AO3.

The Death Star had come for them.

Again.

But Jyn couldn’t bring herself to care. It did seem a little strange to have been spared the last time only to probably be destroyed this time, barely a week later. But either way, it was the end to her life she now knew to be her fate, or whatever. It just felt right. It just was. Not the Death Star specifically, but,

Jyn Erso would die in Cassian Andor’s arms.

Whether it should’ve been on Scarif. Or it was here on Yavin 4. Or the next day. Or thousands of days in the future.

And there was a sort of peace in knowing that. One that allowed her to climb into his bed, slide her arms around him, and bury her face in his shoulder. He stirred and her heart skipped a beat. It was easier when he was unconscious, to consider how she felt about him, how she’d been attracted to men before, even had something akin to a relationship with one or two, but it had never felt like this.

“Jyn…?”

“Yes, it’s me. We’re on the base on Yavin 4. Safe. In your quarters.” It was easier to preempt any confusion or alarm Cassian experienced when he woke from his heavy, partially drugged, mostly just exhausted from his body’s healing, sleep.

“How long?” he asked, then realized there were static-laden voices broadcasting over the basewide intercom. “What’s going on?”

“You’ve been asleep for 12 hours,” Jyn said, moving closer and partially on top of him to prevent him from trying to get up in a rush and falling flat on his face. Also, she was admittedly afraid on some level, afraid to be alone and facing death. When he was near her, when they were physically entwined in some way, she felt like everything would be okay. Even if she died, if it was in Cassian’s arms, then everything would be okay. Irrational, yes. But that didn’t make it any less her truth.

“The Death Star is here,” she said, once she could tell he was awake enough to understand, not muddled by pain meds. “The Alliance is scrambling their forces to engage. They’re leaving the comms open, since you know…”

“We’re all dead if they fail.”

His arms wrapped around her and engulfed her in his warm embrace. Cassian Andor, a man who, she didn’t think she was wrong to guess, hadn’t received much at all in the way of affection in his life, somehow was so good at holding a person he made the pain of the universe go away, made the entire universe fade away except for his hands on her body, gentle and undemanding but also firm and reassuring, his breath hot on her neck, sending shivers down her spine, and his body beneath hers, so strong despite his injuries.

“Are you okay?” she asked, remembering the physical state of him.

“Mmm… Yes.” His hands tightened their grip on her side and shoulder, reflexively, a gentle squeeze as he murmured into her neck. “Feels good.”

He probably meant he felt fine, but oh, yes, it did feel good. Or maybe he was still quite medicated?

“My weight isn’t putting pressure on your injuries?” Jyn asked. “Maybe I should…”

“No.” Somehow he managed to pull her further into him, her breasts flattening against his chest, her hip practically fusing to his, her breath hitching momentarily and then joining the rhythm of his own breaths...in and out… in and out… in and out...

Cassian sighed, made a frustrated, growling sound.

“I need to use the ‘fresher,” he said, loosening his grip on her.

Jyn rolled off from him, swung her legs around to sit on the side of the cot and waited to see if Cassian could manage to stand. He slid to sit on the edge of the bed next to her and took a moment. She didn’t press him, though an instinct inside of her wanted to offer assistance, wanted to take care of him, wanted to ease the pain and struggle his recovery was.

He stood, again pausing for a moment, then walked slowly across the small room to his private refresher facilities. Apparently, it was one of very few benefits to his officer’s rank, for the small quarters were nothing more than a glorified closet. But she supposed it spared him from having to sleep in a large barracks with a bunch of others, not that it would’ve deterred Jyn in the least from crawling into his bed.

Part of her felt like she shouldn’t watch his laborious movements, out of respect, but she couldn’t look away. What if he needed her?

Force, what if he didn’t need her? Not like she needed him? Aw, fuck. She needed him.

She watched the muscles in his naked back twitch, stiff from inactivity and injury. But her eyes were inevitably drawn to the perfectly uniform lines of small circular marks running down his spine. She knew there was a matching sort of trail along his ribs. Injections of some sort of bacta cocktail meant to speed the fusing of the fractures in his vertebrae and ribs, injections straight into the bone. How painful would that have been if he’d been conscious, she couldn’t help but wonder, couldn’t help but want to wrap her smaller body around as much of Cassian as she could, run her hands gently over his scars, old and new, make sure his wounds were healing and his bruises fading, hear him sigh contentedly against her skin, hold him forever.

As he disappeared into the ‘fresher, Jyn realized she was hopeless.

Cassian Andor had taught her about hope. And had made her absolutely hopeless at the same time.

But why fret about it? What did it matter?

Jyn was used to dealing with life moment by moment, day by day. And she might not have many more moments, anyway.

The loud, static-laden voices crackling over the basewide intercom announced the launch of yet another squadron of fighters, then abruptly switched over to some ship’s communication officer announcing visual confirmation of the target. The Death Star.

Looming on the horizon like a moon, a harbinger of death, bringer of eternal night. Cold, austere, which made it somehow more terrifying, somehow worse than staring down an angry brute about to put a knife in you. It was just so inevitable, indomitable. Made her feel so small, insignificant, so alone.

“Do you mind if I turn this off?”

Jyn startled. How had she not noticed Cassian reappear in the small room? He pointed at the comm, which was broadcasting the prelims of a battle to determine all their fates.

She didn’t want to listen to it either.

“Please do,” she said, already feeling less… alone.

She watched Cassian lean over to switch the speaker off, wincing in sympathy with him as he straightened again, taking a deep breath that expanded his chest and shifted the muscles beneath his skin, mesmerizing her more than a little. His mostly naked body preoccupied far too many of her thoughts.

But what else had she been supposed to do? She’d woken up drenched in sweat that first night in his quarters, had to strip out of the heavy infirmary clothes, found Cassian tossing in his sleep, nearly feverish, removed the sweltering clothes from his body, as well. Little did she know, how enthralling she’d find his lean muscles, the shape of his body, the feel of his bare skin, his-

His hands cupped her face and Jyn looked up at Cassian Andor, his kriffing gorgeous dark eyes fixed on her. His fingers swept some stray hair from her forehead, tucked it behind her ear, returned to swipe gently over the nearly-healed scar above her eyebrow, in her hairline.

“Are you okay?” A knot formed in her throat. Cassian was a good man, despite every questionable thing he’d done and tortured himself over. Of course he would care about her wellbeing. It didn’t mean-

“Ow!”

“Your blaster wound still hurts?” His fingers feathered over her shoulder, not touching the freshly healed injury this time.

“It does when you jab your finger in it.” She grabbed his wrist and tugged his hand away, throwing him off balance so that he fell into her and she managed to catch him and ease him onto the bed, right where she wanted him.

A chuckle escaped him and he smiled, making something flutter inside of her. And then he was reaching for her, pulling her close.

His embrace was everything she’d never known she’d wanted. His hands stroked her back and he buried his face in her neck, nuzzling a sensitive spot just behind and below her ear.

She sighed, wrapping an arm around his middle and burying the fingers of her other hand in his messy, soft hair. She pressed gently as she massaged his scalp down to his nape, eliciting a hum of pleasure from him that vibrated against her bare skin and into her flesh.

If this was to be her last moment, Jyn held no regrets. It was a good moment.

“Jyn?” His voice had a lethargic but happy edge to it, thick and low and sleepy. She could sympathize.

“Yes?” She twisted her finger in a lock of hair curling about his neck.

“Please don’t let me sleep so long this time.” His whisper tickled her ear. “No more than 10 hours. Okay? Please?”

He wanted her to wake him up in 10 hours… Like there wasn’t a battle raging in space nearby… Like he didn’t believe they were quite probably going to die soon, incinerated by a weapon her own father helped design. Like he didn’t believe they were going to lose, after all. Somehow, he believed they would be there, together, ten hours from this moment.

Hope.

Such a man as Cassian… The most unexpected thing she’d discovered about him was his belief in hope. That he possessed any at all after all he had done, all he had seen. And then he’d given it to her.

And again, it warmed her, deep inside, that small seed of hope. She snuggled closer to the man, hoping for something she couldn’t even begin to conceive of. But yearned for it, with every fiber of her being.

#fic: Give Me A Reason #Rogue One #fanfiction #rebelcaptain #my fic #Cassian Andor #Jyn Erso #Cassian x Jyn

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