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monchikyun · 4 years

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17. creature most vile and despicable

(this is a sequel to “The Sun, the Moon, and all the stars”, the one when they are married with children and Connor is missing, aka the usual)

Time has stopped moving, for all the seconds Gavin has to live through have lost their purpose. He’s stuck in a void where the only thing that means something is the numbing pain that threatens to stop his heart and the only escape is through the girls and their sad faces that need to be comforted. Which is insurmountably worse. He wonders where he finds the strength to wake up and repeat the same torment of waiting. Waiting for the news that would put an end to this agonising uncertainty. It would be a million times more tortuous if the hope he so desperately clings to got ripped away from him, the hope that keeps them from breaking completely. But it has been three weeks already, and with each day the chance that Connor will safely return to them gets slimmer.

He wants to scream that it isn’t fair, that it should have been him who leaves first, for the sake of the children if nothing else. Connor is so much better at taking care of them, at making them smile and keeping them happy, and although they don’t say it, Gavin isn’t the favourite parent. Maybe it’s because he has little to no fond memories of his childhood and therefore has difficulty showing the good of the world to the girls, or perhaps it’s the fact the android is vicariously experiencing the joys that come with being a child for the first time, but the truth stays the same, everyone loves Connor a bit more than they love him. Other than the android himself, but he has Gavin to compensate for that. That’s why he has to try extra hard to prevent his family from falling apart during these testing times. He cooks a dinner every day, takes the girls to the park, reads them before bed, all the things he usually sucks at. These are Connor’s specialties, he’s the one who can handle the domestic stuff the best after all. And it’s not that Gavin is absolutely terrible at it, that he has abstained from these things, it’s just very painful to do it alone. It doesn’t feel right. It is supposed to be the four of them forever, no matter how unattainable this plan might be.

For how hard this is on Gavin, he can’t even imagine what the little ones must be going through. Their household has been lacking the usual sounds of life since this all began. No more laughter, no more friendly yelling over each other, no more out of tune singing being heard from the girls’ room. It’s like they’re living through a terrible nightmare, trapped in eternal sleep.

He puts away the leftovers and washes up, waiting for his daughters to finish cleaning themselves so he can put them to bed, to provide them with the only relief they can get while this bad dream lasts. It has been yet another day of barely surviving, empty of signs that they might get closure soon. It’s easier when he’s at work, he can busy himself with his case and lower the volume of the screaming ache. But here in their home, he is always surrounded by things that remind him of what they’ve lost, no matter how temporarily it might be.

“When is pappy going home?” A question that haunts him every single day. One that doesn’t have a right answer. Because they’ve decided to never lie to their children, as their relationship itself is built on honesty.

“Is he dead?” Ellie is the bravest seven-year-old he’s ever known, always looking after her younger sister. And Annie… she’s just the biggest sweetheart, a true definition of innocence. They deserve a much happier life than what he alone can provide.

“We have to hope he isn’t.” He dims the lights and sits by their shared bed. They’re too scared to spend the night apart, especially Gavin. “Tell you what, I’m gonna make a story about what might have happened to Connor, sounds good?” It really doesn’t, but that’s the best he can do right now.

The girls nod and huddle together under the blanket, making a space for their father to join in.

“Okay, let’s see… Once upon a time, there was a robot so kinds and so beautiful that the stars shone a little brighter when he walked under them.”

“Who’s that?”

“That’s Connor, you silly.”

He can see their lips curl up and the sight makes him lose about one pound of the weight he has to carry.

“And all the people in the land vied for his attention. But one person held so much affection for him, that none could compare and the robot had no choice but to grow close tho the raggedy man who would not give up on pursuing him. As time went on, the two of them became a proper family and eventually welcomed two pretty princesses into their home.”

“Is that us?”

“Obviously, princess Annie.”

They giggle and his heart is about to implode on itself.

“But one of those who were left ignored by the handsome robot wasn’t satisfied with the current state of events and planned its cruel revenge. It was a creature most vile and despicable, not afraid to do anything to have the robot for itself. It stalked his every move, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. One day, the vile creature succeeded. When no one was looking, it kidnapped the robot and ran away with him far, far away. And because it was so very large and so incredibly fast no one was able to stop it.”

The wide eyes focusing on his every word almost make him want to cut the story short and put them to sleep, but he owes the girls something that could manage to calm them down, at least for tonight.

“It took the robot to its secluded abode, locking him to a room the creature had prepared for him. But it didn’t want him out of malice or because of its evil nature, it just simply fell in love with the robot and was compelled to stay in his proximity. It didn’t treat him badly, but still, it did hurt him terribly. For the robot was denied the most important things in the world – freedom, and mainly, his family, who suffered tremendously from the loss of the person who lit up their lives. But they never gave up their hope, believing that the day would come when they would be reunited once more.”

“So how did it end? Was the robot saved in the end?” The younger one looks like she’s five seconds from slipping into dreamland, but her curiosity never relents.

“I… I don’t know. Maybe the raggedy man should go and defeat the despicable creature in order for the story to have a happy ending. What do you think?”

“Hmmm, I think he has to. The princesses are strong enough to take care of themselves and they would want to do anything to have both of their parents home again, no matter how long it takes.” He doesn’t doubt it. There are people who would be willing to look after the kids in his absence - friends, colleagues, his brother if there were no other options.

He kisses their foreheads and tucks them in tightly, praying for a better tomorrow.

Maybe he should take the risk and help with the search. Maybe he’s the missing piece of the puzzle of finding out what really happened to Connor. And if it the worst came to pass, Gavin wants to be the one to put his hand on the most vile and despicable creature that snuffed their light out.

@convinseptember maybe I’ll write a proper ending to this tragedy one day xD

#convinseptember #convin #this is not happy #sorry #reminds me of Annie from Not a thing #Gavin also invented a bedtime story for her there BUT #this story isn't as horribly tragic I swear xD

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etheralisi · 4 years

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Tʜᴇ Dʀᴇᴀᴍᴇʀ Iɴ Tʜᴇ Sᴛᴀʀs

𝙱𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝙸𝚗 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙴𝚗𝚍

𝚆𝚎’𝚛𝚎 𝙰𝚕𝚕 𝙹𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝙳𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚜

𝙸𝚗 𝙰𝚗 𝙴𝚗𝚍𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝚄𝚗𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚎

~𝙰𝚛𝚎𝚎𝚋𝚊 𝙼𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚘𝚘

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Some god!cor for you all.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24387511 Also available on ao3 -------

Alcor dreams.

Long has it been since any have recalled his time as a demon, remembered one who was feared by the masses, a night time terror who asked for sweets as sacrifice, abhorred the bloodshed of children as he claimed himself as their protector. Or was, above all else, a twelve year old boy, curious towards all supernatural, unfortunate enough to fall into the clutches of a particular triangular demon.

The twenty-first century exists nowhere but with him, hidden behind the doors of his shack, all handles worn where he’s gazed upon memories, time again and again. The triangle hardly a myth beyond the whispers of demons. Those few who remember, those wise enough not cross paths with the dreambender, daren’t invoke his name.

Neither do they of Alcor’s. For the boy transcended has ascended even demonhood itself. A higher state of being, he reaches from eons upon eons of steady building power until the abyss of black flakes away to reveal gold, and a god emerges from a cocoon, long since having left the summoning circle behind. The god can craft reality to his whims merely by thought alone, scoop through reality as easy as the waters of a freshwater pond, let it trickle out through his fingertips, send ripples as he picks out life’s greatest treasures, shining specks of life glinting beneath the surface. Stitch its fabric together as he so sees fit, using techniques taught from the first of his Twin Stars, her guiding light as bright as ever, as even past death her soul still thrives.

He is the shepherd to both this universe and his flock.

Yet, he chooses to watch. To wait. To sleep.

His very touch burns. Burns the ground where he scoops, leaves the water as steam, the pool a crater in a molten wasteland, bubbling, boiling rock that’s putty in his hands. The fabric chars, the threads slip, and the colours bleached by his sun.

He glows gold. But no one ever told him he could glow too bright.

His sun blinds.

And so he sleeps. The universe plays out in his dreams, him, for all his power, reduced to a spectator. The universe is like glass. A shatterable, delicate, fragile thing he can yearn for but not touch.

For he is no longer human and never can pretend as such again. There is no lie to live in anymore. He is as he is.

For better or for worse.

Alcor dreams. Beautiful dreams, star speckled skies, rolling hills and civilisations spread across galaxies and built up from the ground. Lustrous planets of lapping oceans, exotic and simply magical flora, languages of tongues he’s never learnt but understands every word of.

He sees all.

Knows all.

As he watches new terrains thrive, he’s witness to those which depart, of the genius loci who fade into oblivion. Planets of ash, and planets of life alike fall victim to the works of the universe, survive so long, have so much history only to be engulfed by black holes, one step into the spiralling abyss and nothing really matters. They’re wiped clean, a smear on reality’s glass, forever falling and crumbling through the vortex where even time strays from. The black holes are the end, never seen coming, never there at all.

Where they end up is a mystery some never solve. But Alcor sees all. Knows all.

There is no mystery in the universe to him now.

Alcor dreams. And his dreams are of solar systems encircling their suns, their orbits their way of life. A journey planets repeat in mechanical motion as their sole purpose until their course is hindered, and paths destroyed. Planets are brought to life as they travel, crafted from those glorious burning suns so close to death, until as the eons pass, the planet strays too close to the sun, and the fire giant decimates the planet by too close an embrace.

The universe is Alcor’s planet, and he the dying sun.

His touch may burn, but he knows it’s nothing infinite. Nothing lasts forever, not even he.

The god makes his decision.

But the time is not now.

Alcor dreams. He dreams of the stars as they implode, of dwarf stars as they snuff themselves into oblivion. Of planets as life signatures dwindle, and burn themselves out, their flames bright but candle wicks oh so short.

There is war, and there is not. Metal husks float as derby, lost and forgotten as disregarded carcasses of battles where the victor is none. Space is a wasteland in that regard, a place for the unremembered. A graveyard of infinite stretch. There is hope, there is hopelessness and survivors, they scramble from the rubble and pull themselves up. Wounds they tend to with nurturing care, lick them clean and cling to one another, unaware of what they are survivors of. They live to see another day and work with what they have.

Life rebuilds. It always does. Apocalypses may rain terror, but shoots and sprouts cannot be trampled. Until in the end, when the dust clears, even they are struggling.

Nothing lasts forever. Not humanity, not Al-V. Not anything.

It’s a cycle. The universe’s will.

So he waits.

Alcor dreams. And the universe scatters into thousands, tiny particles of everything and anything zooming across the vast expanse of space, its reaches infinite, its walls nonexistent, and the debris fly at a constant pace.

His universe crumbles, its last legs stumbling, and Alcor knows. He is ready.

His waiting game is finally at an end.

The god opens his eyes, gold and all seeing, awake for the first time in untold eons — there is no need for time here, not in this place where there’s an endless loop of nothing — and as he breathes, he breathes back in new life to the barren canvas.

He is the shepherd and guides his new flock of stars. He is the visionary and sees a new world. He is the musician and lets his universe sing. He is the painter and makes it so.

Where there was destruction, there is creation, his power melding as one. He’s supernova, brighter than bright as he sets to work, a cosmic force of unparalleled energy. He shines, and there is no one there left to blind. He paints this new world, scatters the essence of his raw power like a fine mist, gives it a life he shan’t live to see, but it doesn’t worry him.

He’s not felt emotion in so long.

He has not felt much of anything at all.

Alcor is awake, but soon again he is to dream. Of a new universe, an old soul brought back anew.

Of new hopes and dreams. Of new lives. Of his flock embracing their new existence.

Of two Twin Stars reuniting once more.

#Bread Fic #Transcendence au #god!cor

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skadventuretime · 5 years

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forever and a day

Happy New Year @starship--phoenix! I was your @noragamisecretsanta2018 Secret Santa, so here is your gift! You said soulmate and time travel aus were your jam, so given the otp, that just screamed reincarnation to me. I hope you enjoy, and had a warm and happy holiday!

She is lost in a sea of sterile white sheets.

Yato tucks in a corner of her comforter, snugs it against skin now puffy and wrinkled with age. The tightness in his throat has only gotten worse.

"Is that you, dear?" she whispers, breath whistling on each exhale.

He takes her hand and rubs gentle circles along the back of it, a hand he's held in grief and joy and the quiet moments that aren't notable at all until times like this. "Yes, it's me."

"Tell me again how we met,” she says, but is interrupted by a coughing fit that sends spasms through her body. Yato knows there is not much time, but he sets the thought aside.

He can feel Yukine’s tension from the other room where he’s keeping vigil with their Far Shore friends, face not a day over fourteen. They have all known this hour would come. No one is ready for it.

He waits for her coughing fit to pass, and then begins. “You saw me on the sidewalk when no human should have seen me...”

Yato tells the story until the very end, no matter that Hiyori’s breathing grows ragged and stills, no matter that tears obscure his vision. He’s still holding her hand and it takes Yukine, hours later, to get him to release it.

As a god, he knows this was all he could ever hope for; a human life’s worth of time in which to condense an eternity of devotion. It was never going to be enough.

Read the rest below the cut, or on AO3!

And so he spends the next two decades finding lost cats and reuniting lovers and doing all the things a former errand god turned god of fortune might do. Yukine remains by his side, and every year on the anniversary of Hiyori’s death they gather round Kofuku’s table to laugh and drink and cry to her memory.

He feels the first tug on the twenty-eighth anniversary of her death.

It’s a small thing at first, barely noticeable beneath the hafuri bond. Something more akin to a muscle twinge or a sour stomach. But as time goes on it becomes more insistent, a slow and steady pull that becomes impossible to ignore.

So one night once Yukine is asleep, Yato winks out of Tokyo and appears in the middle of a warm city where the sun has just set, boots set down on balmy pavement. The tug has a new urgency, like bloodhound who’s caught the scent.

Having come all this way for it, he follows the strange, gut-deep feeling across the usual city trappings, noting palm trees and a large, sluggish river as he bounded from building to building. The air is cloying and so, so hot; he must be somewhere tropical, or at least in summer.

He reaches a giant high rise in what looks to be the financial district. His gut is churning now, almost doubling him over in the pain of it, but it’s bittersweet, like the kind of pain you ask for.

From the feel of it, whatever he’s being led to is in this building. So up he goes, scanning the windows at each level and moving on when the pull contracts again, telling him no, no, not yet.

When he reaches the top floor, the pain vanishes. Inside is a lavish office, dark wood paneling with bright splashes of color. Two people are talking, one a stern looking man behind the desk, the other a young woman, no more than thirty, briefcase in hand and tailored suit like a sheath around her. A lawyer, perhaps. They are arguing; the woman’s gestures become more and more violent until she whirls around and begins to storm out of the room.

Past the window where he hovers, and improbably, impossibly, glances at him.

Deep brown eyes and bold cheekbones, skin black and shining like she houses the heavens themselves.

He has never met her. He could never forget her.

“Hiyori?” he whispers, and then remembers himself.

She scrubs at her eyes and he’s gone before she reopens them, hovering from a new vantage behind the stern man’s desk. A head shake or two and she’s off to the elevator, leaving Yato with a decision to make.

It was definitely Hiyori. Though her flesh may look different, the soul that burned inside was one that he had only just been getting to know, had loved for one precious human lifetime. But did that make it right for him to barge in on her a second time?

Part of him is tracking how long it would take the elevator to reach the bottom floor, where she’ll leave the building and become one of a teeming mass of city goers. It was never a decision at all. When he judges she should be walking onto the street, he teleports into the lobby to watch her go.

She moves differently, stops to talk to someone in a language he has never heard, but it’s really, truly her.

He follows before he can think.

She travels to a more modest part of town, where she enters a small and tidy apartment full of a life spent without him.

Yato wants to soak it all up, the pictures on her side table, the books on her shelf, but he knows he doesn’t have the time before she notices she’s not alone. He clears his throat.

She spins and is on him faster than a starving ayakashi. “Who are you and what do you want with me?” she says, terse but in control. His brain automatically translates the rich, rhythmic language into one he can understand, and allows him to respond in kind. Godhood has some perks.

“I wanted to see you again.” He can’t stop staring at her, drinking her in like a starving man.

She squints, and takes away her forearm from his neck. “Do I know you?”

“Yes,” Yato says, tears welling in his eyes. “You did.”

From there life becomes hectic, stressful, and so full of joy he’s fit to burst. At first Adaolisa, her name now, doesn’t believe him, but as time goes on and she meets Yukine and Kofuku and all their Far Shore friends, she does.

They spend decades together, and he gets another chance to worship the beauty of her skin and the fire of her soul.

And then, as all humans do, she dies, and it hurts more than the first time because now he has lost her twice. What a curse it is, to live forever.

But again, a few short decades later, that pull in his gut is back, and he rejoices. This time he follows it to a dingy part of a cold American city, and Yato finds Hiyori with close cropped bleached hair, slouched against a grimy alley wall with broken glass about her feet, inserting a needle into pockmarked skin.

Yato’s world begins and ends in that moment.

Hiyori’s name in this life is Paul, and he has been using for years after a rotten home life and a society that preaches meritocracy but operates more like a caste system. As in the last two lives, they come together suddenly, like a car crash, and Yato’s understanding of love expands. Her flesh is different yet again, but that determined spirit is the same, and he soon revels in the coarseness of Paul’s stubble against his lips and the assertive insistence of his affection, the night air and cigarette smoke scent of his skin. He does what he can to help her lead a better life, and gets to enjoy the company of her soul once more.

And so it goes. Yato finds her when her name is Marwa and her skin is like the desert at dusk, her voice sweeter than honey; when she’s called Pia and she bends like willow trees when she dances; when her name is Cheng and she only shaves her face once a week so he can feel the grit of her when they kiss. On and on, so many different outsides but always that same bright core, that same essence that he would recognize in any life.

Just as often, she doesn’t make it. He has held her broken body as a teenager, as an infant, body ravaged by men’s tools of war or their more insidious open palms of neglect. There are times he feels the tug too late, when she has a wife or a husband and a happy life, and he simply watches from the window, heart full to bursting; times he feels the tug too soon and must watch her, step by step, walk away from him, unable or unwilling to believe.

But each loss and each joy and each moment he has with her carves him deeper, expands the size of his heart until he understands why Bishamon has so many shinki and marvels at the gift of kindness. Is this what it is to be human? he wonders. So much feeling condensed into a few decades, a nuclear bomb squeezed into a form far too small to contain it.

The world changes around them, new troubles arise, new sorrows blossom, but always he finds her.

He could take a million human lifetimes, strung together until none are alive to believe in him or until the universe stretches so far as to disintegrate, to implode into a single speck of matter that will birth a new universe, and still never understand her the same way twice. Eternity is not long enough to know a human soul.

It is, however, long enough to keep learning. Every life they spend together augments his understanding of humanity and the fragile, defiant way they love. Yato no longer thinks of godhood as a curse; what is there to curse about loss, when it’s only ever temporary? The pain that had seized him the first handful of times she passed begins to lessen as he learns to find joy in endings, those heralds of beginnings. He begins to look forward to relearning her every time, what she’ll look like, what her mannerisms might be, how her laugh will sound; strong, deep, and rich like so many times before, or lighter, with a raucous snort, like her last one?

He lives his immortal life richly, sucking the marrow from the bones of his adopted humanity, humbled again and again at how many forms love takes, how different but ever the same it tastes on her (his, their) tongue. Not every life is easy, or happy, but such is the human way: they struggle, and fight, and cry, and when the dust settles and their needs are met, they love.

And love they do, until the heavens fall and the stars burn up, until all that ever is or was prepares to become something else entirely. In those moments before Time stills, their souls find each other and, like coming home, merge into the newness.

#noragami #yatori #noragami fanfiction #noragami secret santa 2018 #i chainsmoked the left hand of darkness and the lathe of heaven before finishing this so uh #sorry for all the existential angst #this is ur brain on uklg #madi tries words #life was nuts i'm so sorry this is at the 11th hour

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