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silkendandelion · 4 months

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My Own, Distant Home (Chapter 2), A Fears to Fathom: Ironbark Lookout fanfiction

Chapter 1, ao3 link

Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins Words: 16.6k Genre: Horror, humor, smut

Rated Explicit for sexual content, strong language, horror elements, frightening imagery and descriptions of violence.

A romantic, deceptively creepy, canon-compliant retelling of the game's narrative where Jack and Connor are more fleshed out characters, and not immune to the emotional threads that form when your only friend is a voice on the radio—until he isn't. The main story of the game remains relatively untouched, as well as carrying over horror elements and frightening imagery to surround the added subplot.

~*~

All Connor had offered him was some soup.

What luck could Jack attribute to his current predicament, standing between open knees while Connor leans against the cheap, peeling counter-top and allows him to kiss him?

His fuzzy thoughts, so captured by the arms around his shoulders, recall helping to clean the dishes so they would have clean bowls, some teasing comment from Connor about the size of his hands when he rolled up his sleeves. A polite but muttered “excuse me” as he placed his hand on the small of Connor’s back to get the hand towel, and the drift of curious eyes over Jack’s face when he does it again to get the spoons.

The soup was never actually served once Jack took the beer offered to him, downing half the bottle in one greedy, nervous swallow. He recalls a long moment of tension, standing too close, about to ask if Connor wanted one too when he takes the bottle from his hand, tongue pressed to the tip as he finishes it.

If Jack could wrestle his thoughts back, he might be horribly embarrassed he leaned in first, though how ashamed can he be for his enthusiasm when Connor answered by pulling him closer, fingers combing into his hair, and legs parting to make a space for him?

He moans into the lazy, welcoming kisses, surprised at the shiver that zips up his back when Connor answers him. If only he would let him, Jack would stay there for hours and kiss him until his lips are bruised, tongue sore, and drunk on all the genuine, little noises he offered up so freely.

“Hit the lights, will you?” Connor pulled away just enough to let those brown eyes take the rest of Jack’s reservations. “The stove gives off enough light, and I’ll be damned if some wet hiker thinks I’m on office hours and comes up here to see you inside me.”

Jack isn’t prepared for how hard that makes him, suddenly wrested for breath and tightening his hands on Connor’s sides. In his mind, Jack has already ravished him a hundred times, in all the lascivious and romantic ways he was too ashamed to admit. He nearly forgets the man of his most recent dreams is right here, wanting him, waiting for him to blink.

“You—is that no good?” Connor tries to backpedal when his distracted nervousness lends no answer, blushing hard as Jack stays frozen in the ‘v’ of his knees, almost nose to nose with their stares flicking between eyes and lips.

“We can do something else if you want, I’m down with probably most things you’ll suggest—” Connor gasps when both hands grip his waist, lifting him bodily and taking him to the bed to be dropped onto the mattress with a hard, ozone-tinged kiss.

Connor gives up a helpless moan into his mouth, having never been kissed with someone’s entire body: from the bold tongue coaxing him to moan again to warm palms skimming over everything they want to squeeze in the order they please. Down his thighs, up around the small of his back, leaving sparks on his heated skin as they flip up the hem of his shirt to dig fingertips into the soft skin of his admittedly ticklish sides.

“You brat,” Connor huffs out, shaking but not from the cold when he wrestles his lips back, and restless hips slot against him as his cheeky answer.

“Hey—new guy.” He slides his fingers into Jack’s hair and pulls him up from where he was getting distracted mouthing at the freckle behind his ear.

“You forgot the lights.” There it was, the smoke Jack remembered from his dream, deep as whiskey and just as hot in his belly, making his limbs all loose and cock prone to stiffen. But the smirk, the one declaring Connor is as willing as Jack is hard—that was new.

“Got it.”

He flies to hit the light switch—literally, giving it a little swat before he nearly trips over himself to be back on the bed, crowding into Connor’s personal space in what he considers record time.

“Took you long enough, Jack, now I’m cold again,” he teases quietly, bumping their noses to catch his eyes.

Surely, Jack thinks, he must be able to hear his heart racing from so close. Would he be pleased if he knew it races most times he speaks, every time he teases him? It might never slow down, now that he knows what Connor looks like, biting his kiss-swollen lips and working his body to heatstroke with only his inviting gaze.

“I’ll do better next time.” Jack pants, licking his lips for another kiss.

“Next time?” Connor chuckles, leaning coyly out of the reach of his lips, and pressing a plastic bottle of lube into his palm Jack hadn’t seen him grab.

When he speaks again, the smoke is all but gone, leaving a melancholy that didn’t belong in a warm bed on a stormy night with the closest thing they both had to a friend. “Guys like us… we don’t get a lot of next times.”

His answering sigh is grateful, soft and trailed by the quietest moan when Jack tries to chase the dark thought away with nibbles of kisses up his neck, stopping to speak into his ear. “I’d like to have a next time with you, if you’ll have me… and—did you get this lube from under your pillow?”

“I keep that up my ass, actually.”

“You’re—” Jack stifled his chuckle against the shoulder bared by Connor’s rumpled shirt. “Stop making me laugh, I don’t wanna get soft.”

“One laugh gets you soft? Well, I’m in trouble then—oof.” He grunts when Jack adjusts them to fit better on the small bed, admittedly not wide enough to condone most physical activity. But where there’s a will, and all that.

“What a gentleman.” Connor says, sarcastic but only teasing when Jack makes sure he gets the only pillow behind his head. There was something else in his tone, something genuinely adoring Jack didn’t have the allocated brain capacity to dwell on.

“Kinda makes me miss the bear who threw me down on this bed, though.”

“I should have apologized for manhandling you.” Jack admits shyly, fidgeting with the peeling corner of the bottle’s label, ‘For Men and Women, Made in the USA.’

“Don’t.” Connor replies, and the smoke returning to his voice has Jack meeting his eyes to admire him, the beginnings of a flush creeping down his neck, the excited tent of him in his sweatpants.

“I want all of you.”

It was the moment Jack realized he had a switch, somewhere, and Connor clearly got off on playing with the damned thing. He wanted to tell him to be gentle, but couldn’t deny his curiosity to find out how good it might feel to be held by someone who wanted your pleasure as much as theirs.

“Let’s get these off you,” said Jack, rough and needy.

But as their layers come off over disheveled hair, the appearance of more skin only makes it harder to stop kissing. Jack takes his lips back, what he believes is selfishly, to suck kisses into the dusting of blonde hair on his pectorals, his perked, dusky nipples, and Connor answers with the bite of his nails on his shoulder blades, then curling into the damp hair at the nape of his neck.

Jack waited for the inevitable switch, to be punished for being seen wanting, for asking, for taking, but Connor only encouraged him with revelry.

“More, Jack, feels—good,” he panted, raising his hips into Jack’s wandering lips as they leave wet marks across his stomach, and a hard suck over his iliac crest makes his back arch off the sheets.

“These too?” Jacks asks softly while thumbing their boxers, and Connor nods, both of their hands coming down to strip the other. He stills, and Jack briefly believes he’s being lazy, until he realizes he has a… stunned audience.

There, Jack laid against the length of him—thicker, longer, with an attractive curve, a head on him, peeking from beneath a velvety foreskin that made saliva pool under his tongue. Connor considered himself pleasantly average, he was, but Jack was… gorgeous.

“That’s a nice surprise,” he said, so quietly Jack figured he meant it more to himself than him. If he hadn’t, the pull of his teeth over his lip while he stroked him, gently and too loose was enough to communicate loud and clear he liked what he saw.

The sight of him gawking gave Jack all sorts of pesky ideas, of Connor coaxing him to lie back, swallowing him down at whatever mind-melting, teasing pace would drive him to insanity, the long line of his toned back arched up for Jack’s viewing pleasure. Ideas he really, really needed to shake away if he was going to last long enough to please him.

“Do you want to put your mouth on it?” An embarrassing question, one Jack regretted as soon as it left his mouth, but Connor just licked his lips. Seemed he was imagining it too.

“Next time.”

Jack managed, barely, to stay strong under the shiver that raced up his back. If Connor kept being so patient with him, pressing soft, overwhelming words like “please” and “wanted” into his skin, he wasn’t so sure he was going to be able to leave—he might have to ask to move in.

“Get inside me already.”

Maybe he could raise a tent down in the forest if Connor wouldn’t let him sleep in the bed.

“Okay. Yeah, all right,” he said with one more deep kiss, fumbling to slick his first and second fingers while Connor’s hips made impatient little circles.

“Start slo—ow,” Connor moaned when Jack busied himself with swirling around his rim, neglecting to dip inside, not even as his pulsing, ignored cock dotted pre onto the back of his spread thigh.

“Not that slow… C’mon, Jack, I’m sufferin’,” he murmured with the rural drawl that crept into his voice when he wanted something bad enough to beg.

Jack nodded, flushing shy at his unintentional teasing, though the moonlight and wood fire hardly gave away his redness. Below him, Connor’s eyes slip closed, head pressing into the pillow when he finally has long, calloused fingers inside him. Eager, decidedly not clever fingers that drove him crazy with their missing of his prostate. And yet they spread him gently, thoroughly, touching parts of his insides he usually ignores, and making his body simmer on a steadily rising heat. Against him, Jack’s growing need has become a steady, sticky dribble, with lips seeking any skin he can reach.

“A little to your left—let me show you.”

But Connor never gets the chance because Jack takes his instruction to the letter, suddenly all over the sensitive spot, too much too fast, capable only to cry his surprise as Jack grinds his fingers upwards in the same rhythm as his cock against the back of Connor’s thigh.

“Shit—” Connor moans for him, voice beginning to shake and rocking his hips down into his palm until the lightning in his belly is outpacing the storm outside.

“F-fuck me,” he hisses. “Fuck me already, Jack, I want it.”

“Yeah… Yeah, okay.” He leaves a last kiss on his shoulder and rearranges their limbs among the wounded gasp Connor makes when he slips his fingers free.

He uses his dirty hand to get himself wet, not that he needed anymore help (or stimulation). A pair of clean hands take ahold of him, one bringing Jack bodily forward to cover him with his warmth, and the other to guide him into his body.

To be seated inside him, his flushed body and glowing charm, is to find stars in a thunderstorm.

“Are you… all right?” Jack asks finally, both proud of himself for thinking to ask a polite question, and worried to watch Connor’s brow scrunch and twist. The breath he gasps out is decidedly pleasure, overwhelmed by the heat at the base of his spine while he wonders if Jack thinks he’s making an attractive face.

“Fuck me. Please.”

Connor swears to the rickety ceiling when he starts moving, urgent and honest moans worked up from his throat by the enthusiastic, steady throw of his hips. The little bed certainly wasn’t made for Jack’s eagerness to please, but there was little room in Connor to care when he was so full.

“Yes… Yes, fuck—” He grabbed at the mattress for leverage to rock back against him, stoke the fire that curled beneath his navel.

Damn the storm outside whipping around windows, damn the worry about what really lives in these woods, the only thought in either of their bloodless brains is to have more of each other, more of this raptured attention they didn’t know could light up their nerves with all the clarity of a lightning strike to the forest floor.

Connor’s audibly displeased when Jack pauses his stroke to lean up, perturbed at the cold air slipping between their chests. A soft “I’m sorry, baby” is only mildly soothing to his buzzing nerves, but the revised position promises strength, leverage, and Jack’s shaking fingers come down to grip like hot iron on his waist to yank him back into the snap of his hips. The liquid fire up their spines is immediate, as is Connor’s vocal appreciation, unable to keep his eyes open while he moans Jack’s praises in a litany of fervid gasps.

“G-god, that’s good, Jack. Jack, oh—my god.” His moans migrate to his chest, deeper, sounding fucked out already when his numb hands can no longer hold onto the sheets.

Jack swallows, his mouth is so dry but he can’t imagine not chasing this heat, not when Connor’s fluttering around him, getting tighter, moans suddenly caught in his throat as he floods the soft plane of his belly with hot cum. Surprise creases his brow as much as pleasure, among the bone-deep bliss of an untouched orgasm in the tears on the waterline of his lashes.

He fucks him through it, couldn’t imagine not answering those sweet, pleading gasps of “don’t stop, don’t stop”, prolonging his pleasure like it was his own to chase. The shivers he gets when Connor whimpers, stuttering out “too much, s-stop”, are worth his delayed gratification, as are the soft, sleepy eyes he turns on him when his legs quit shaking.

“Did you—?” Connor says as he swallows, moving up onto his elbows, though whatever concern he meant to voice was cut off by his startled gasp when Jack gently pulled himself out.

“What are you—oh,” he crooned, hands threading into Jack’s hair when he covered him suddenly, whimpering among fevered panting as his fist flew over his swollen, red cock. Connor cradled him in the open angle of his thighs, the fingers on his nape, his own stomach flipping at the wet, slick sound of Jack’s wrist working himself into shakes.

“Come on, Jack, you—” He kissed him hard to capture his startled cry, undulated his spine to catch his spend in the mixed pool of them on his abdomen. Among a muted, faraway rumble of thunder, he smoothed his palms over all the heated skin he could reach, quelling his shakes and letting him come down slow in the warm bend of his shoulder. “You did… so good.”

When Jack had come to his tower tonight, confessing he was worried, Connor found little shame in offering a little stress relief if he was also interested. It wasn’t a habit he made, to kiss the New Guy, especially not the one who believed there were people in these woods building fires for occult rituals.

But he could hardly feel embarrassed, not now that he felt… cherished was a good word.

“Hey,” he called, quietly but more than a little upset when Jack untangled them to try to leave the bed.

“I thought you were a gentleman. Or do people not cuddle anymore?”

“Uh—sure,” he chuffed with a little smile. “Let me get something to clean you up first.”

“Already on it, new guy. You think I keep lube close and not rags? I’m hurt.” Connor ran a flannel over their cum on his belly, though he found his hole too sore to fuss over.

Jack’s self-awareness returned to him with the feeling in his legs as his orgasm settled into a pleasant buzz. “Am I still ‘new guy’ after everything?”

“You’re ‘new guy’ whenever you say something dumb. ‘Jack’ is… he’s a little insecure, but he’s sweet. Always does his best.” Connor simpered at him, drowsy and warm as Jack scooted up to lay against his side.

“Are you saying that because you like me?”

“I’m saying that because you laid me like pipe, goddamn,” they both laughed quietly in the darkness. The storm outside was less thunder now, more white noise rain pattering on the old roof of the tower.

“And because I think you’re a good guy… Jack.”

For a long moment, there’s only the blanket of the rain and their slowing heartbeats between them, among the quiet blooming of something gentler, fed and watered by a moment of vulnerability in an inhospitable landscape.

“Don’t go chasing rumors. Don’t create monsters where there are none. Not when the world can’t afford to lose any more good guys. And when it doesn’t need any more monsters than it already has.”

When Connor spoke so confidently, the way he always did, so sure of his own opinion and trusting of his own eyes—Jack felt he could almost believe him.

For now, there was nothing he could do in the dark, nothing he wanted to do besides lie contented in Connor’s version of the world, relaxed and warm with a guy he didn’t need to know well to know that here—for now, he was safe.

“…Okay, Connor. You got it.”

“Night, Jack.”

“Goodnight.”

The two of them fell into a dead sleep for hours, long enough to rest until the sky is clear, the sun is up, and the birds are all that’s watching them from the trees.

5 DAYS LATER

Only hours after Jack leaves Tower 12 does Connor’s generator stop working completely, and for days after the solution continues to evade him. That’s nothing to be said about the piece of junk’s age, but Connor is nothing if not determined, though most everyone who’s ever met him has chosen to use the phrase “stubborn ass”.

The portable generator Billy loaned him, the one meant to jump-start his truck’s battery in an emergency, couldn’t hope to keep the lights on or the appliances running, but was thankfully enough to keep his radio alive for communication. Still, Jack was tasked with monitoring his sector for fires, as well as checking on him twice a day, appearing over the trail ridge every morning and night with a pep that Connor swore out-shined the sun.

Oh, the sun.

He supposed the wild temperature changes also explained the sporadic rain, but such unseasonably warm days during this crisis of utilities could only either be tragic luck, or one of his scorned ex-girlfriends had actually sought out a witch to hex him like they threatened. Well, not directly, but that’s what his sister said she would do if a guy ever broke up with her the way he had: callous words, an indifferent phone call, the attempt of a lonely man to forget everyone who wasn’t simply, absolutely perfect.

Were it not for his unfiltered hatred of MRE’s and granola bars, as well as his intermittent visits from the cute, new fire lookout, he would have already punted the ungrateful machine off a high cliff and down to a violent, splintering death.

“Got time for a break?” Jack smiled at him when he appeared in the afternoon, offering his metal water bottle with the hand that wasn’t in his jacket pocket.

“How can you wear that shit?” Connor said, hoarse and appropriately grouchy as he snatched the bottle to drink in greedy swallows, tiny streams slipping down his chin and lost in his tank top, the collar ringed by a shade of deeper gray with sweat.

“Forecast says rain. You’ll be forced to turn in early, hopefully.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” He dumped the rest out onto his hands to scrub at his fingers, dark with machinists grease, and his reaching for a nearby rag revealed a tattoo on the back of his left shoulder that Jack hadn’t noticed before.

“Is that a… bear?”

Connor shooed him away where he had leaned to see the faded art better. “Supposed to be. Dumb thing I got in the army—I forget it’s there most of the time, honestly.”

“You were in the army?” Jack took it upon himself to sit on the scaffolding of the tower across from Connor’s open toolbox.

“You think I was born this welcoming and sweet?”

His smile, nearly a smirk as it pulled towards one of his dimples, as well as the dusting of red on his cheeks is achingly genuine, shy despite all they shared. All of it summed up to glaring evidence Jack never had enough friends, never the kind of lover that might have taught him the nuances of misconstrued flirtations. “Welcomed me in pretty easy.”

“Hey, fuck you!” Connor’s temper was ignited in an instant, chucking the water bottle at the ground beside Jack’s dangling feet hard enough to dent the bottom and startle him off his perch with a thud as he fell back into the brush.

“Oh—shit, are you all right?”

Jack opened his eyes to Connor above him. His frown spoke of shame, perhaps at his outburst, perhaps at memories Jack wasn’t privileged to hear, and the hand checking the back of his head for blood is unexpectedly gentle.

An honest “I’m sorry” leaps up from Jack’s tongue before he can catch it, more evidence of his confusion at the harshness of which he finds most company, his desperation to be the kind of person they might want to treat with kindness.

Though none of them have ever bothered to check him for bruises afterward.

“You’re sorry? There’s no way you could have known.” Connor helps him to his feet, kicking aside more hazards in scattered tools.

“Know what?”

“I…” His brow furrows, lips poised to speak. “Now, let’s be clear—”

He stops again, the first attempt he’s made probably ever to try to be more understanding, if only because Jack gave it back. “Regardless of what’s happened between us, I don’t actually know you that well.”

Jack doesn’t want it to sound so much like a rejection, not when the clouds bursting open above them leaves little time to reconcile.

“Shit!”

“Well.” Connor’s flat, dispirited tone lifts up from where he tilts his head into the water, grabbing some semblance of comfort as he scrubs his face clean.

“Don’t say it.”

“It can’t get any worse.” Connor sighs, grinning before he can stop it, and Jack isn’t prepared for how handsome he finds him, all clean, white teeth and warm brown eyes beneath damp lashes. His soaked hair can’t manage to be unbecoming as it sticks to his forehead, and Jack just hopes he makes a better image than soaked hiking pants and pathetic. If he was better at managing his anxiety, he might be able to see Connor was admiring him too, gaze darting between bright, hazel eyes and smiling lips that were almost too red, always.

A shiver runs through him, one Connor can’t blame on the rain when he remembers how gentle those hands were on his scarred skin, as big as his own on the shorter man. The next shiver is sad, he realizes, hoping to whoever would listen that he hadn’t fucked this up. For all the times he had chased people away, deliberately and not, to count Jack among them would actually hurt.

“You’re gonna get sick.” Jack spoke up above the rain, already taking off his jacket.

“Keep it, new guy. You have to walk back to Tower 11.”

“… You’re right.”

Connor finds little courage to do more than pat his shoulder, squeeze it firmly. “Don’t look so kicked. You can come up next time it rains, I promise. I’ll even make dinner again.”

Jack hopes his face isn’t turning as red as he thinks—he really hadn’t meant to offer more than a jacket, certainly not an innuendo—though his anxiety is sufficiently quieted by his joy that Connor is back to flirting with him. Seems the rain washes away most ailments in this forest: fear, and even shame.

“I’ll call you later to check on you.”

“Get home safe, Jack.”

1:33AM

The rain has stopped when the radio wakes him.

Connor’s sigh fills the tower. ‘We got another one. Jack, do you copy?’

For all the fog holding Jack’s body, his eyes bleary and limbs weak, it must be some time in the small hours, confirmed by his glance at the little plastic face on his alarm clock. He manages to sit up slowly as the radio clicks on again, more apologetic this time. ‘I know it’s late but you’re going to want to see this. Jack? Jaack?’ I need you to wake up.’

“I’m coming,” he says to no one over Connor’s continued calling for him, and picks up the receiver. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

His mirrored words from weeks ago don’t register to him, or maybe he’s simply too irritated to entertain him. ‘Look, Jack, I don’t have the energy to deal with this right now. I’m exhausted, and we’ve got smoke in the north on your side.’

“Another campfire?” Jack yawns into his arm.

‘I think so. See if you can get eyes on it and call me right back, all right?’

The sleep finally manages to roll off his shoulders, and he wonders how Connor is even upright with the bags under his eyes he saw that afternoon. Yet here he was, still working on his junk generator, still watching the trees. “You haven’t been to sleep yet, have you?”

‘I napped a little during the rain. And I would like to have electricity sooner rather than later, new guy—so no.’

“Get some rest. I’ll update you in the morning on anything that happens. If they don’t run away, I’ll book ‘em and give their info to the authorities tomorrow. Everything will be fine, so go to sleep. Please.”

Static on the other end wavers between what Jack thinks could either be contemplative silence, or simply Connor falling asleep sitting up. ‘I think I’ll take you up on that, actually.’

“Real sleep. Not napping for four hours and deciding to stay awake after you’ve gotten up to pee.”

He huffs, almost a chuckle. ‘Yes, sir.’

His sleepy reply, slurred against the radio receiver, is too soft for the typical smart-mouthed and defensive Connor who prefers to not be seen through. To hear him acquiesce without fuss makes Jack’s heart flutter, sparking his memory of the tender, sweet man who pulled him into his bed.

‘Goodnight, Jack.’

“Night.”

The radio clicks silent as the transmission closes.

Outside on the porch, Jack spots the smoke easily, down near the lake and to the north—exactly as Connor said. He grabs the binoculars from the top of his dresser, though he has to swipe the lenses clean with the bottom of his sweater before he can actually see to use them.

What he sees in those lenses stops his blood in his veins.

His hands fumble to clean the binoculars better, wipe away the scene in front of him, but when he looks again they’re still there. Dressed in black robes, heads covered with hoods and concealed down to their feet. The hoods are peculiar, nothing he’s ever seen on late-night documentary TV or read about in 99-cent paperback novels: horned, all black, except for a singular figure that stands in matching robes on the other side of the fire, all white.

In the center of them is a large bonfire, stacked with dead tree limbs, arranged in a rectangular funeral pyre and elevating a long bundle, wrapped in white. A body? He had to assume so, no matter how it cramped his stomach. To think anything else would be stupid, even if he wasn’t sure he would ever sleep again knowing this was the truth about the woods that had eluded him.

How he envied the stupid.

He fished for his cellphone, mournful the little plastic lenses’ resolution would only cast doubt over his claim. Regardless of it’s quality, he thought surely the experts could tell the image was undoctored, at least. He cursed his hands to stop shaking, fidgeting with the focus button for long seconds until he clicked the shutter—

And a flash lit up the forest.

The hooded figures froze, spinning to face the tower and meet his eyes through the cellphone’s pixelated screen. He jumped, managing not to scream but not strong enough to keep his grip on the phone. It slipped out of his hands, bouncing off the knotty boards, and down over the edge to it’s assured death.

“Fuck!”

A bird breaking the treetops in flight alerted him to their position, and the crunch of the trail as he spotted them running up the path to his tower.

“Oh—shit,” he whispered. There was no time to flee, too many stairs, nothing to do besides stay trapped like a treed fox to hungry hounds.

So he would just have to be trapped.

He darted back inside, thankfully the tower was already dark, no electronics buzzing to imply a human had only been there minutes ago. The space between the bed and the floor was a squeeze for a grown man, but he managed to slide into his hiding place moments before the sound of stomping boots came flying up the stairs.

They paused at his door long enough to jiggle the handle, to Jack’s wracking unease when the knob yielded easily.

How could I not lock it?, he thought with his hand pressed tight over his lips, eyes wide to watch black boots with thick, muddy soles wander back and forth across his floor. No doubt they studied his radio, feeling for warmth on the stove, any signs of immediate habitation.

They came to stop beside the bed, close enough to scent pungent, black leather polish and the ripped grass that clogged the grooves of their tread. Jack held his breath, surely a collapsed diaphragm would be less painful than immolation—

And then they were gone. Out the door, beyond his sight, though without the clunking of boots on metal stairs.

I have to go now.

He bolted without hesitation, shoes skidding on the damp, uneven floor, out the door and nearly over the railing when he launched himself into the face of the cultist. They gasped, too surprised to suppress it as Jack braced—and ran.

He skidded down the steps, his leverage completely in the fulcrum of his grip on the railing, until he reached the bottom. Footsteps followed him, there was just too little time, all alone, nowhere to hide—

From inside the portable toilet, he waited.

The cultist appeared to know the trail as well as he did, no surprise there, as Jack watched them track down to the fork in the path. They paused, spinning, searching for footprints to deduce his direction of travel or listen harder to hear his running. In the quiet, Jack slipped away, out of the toilet and around the tower. North, to the only ally he had.

2:57 AM

Connor is as asleep as anyone had ever seen him, sprawled across the little bed, on top of the blanket and with his boots still on. He snores quietly, unaware how Jack scrambles up the flights of stairs to his door, until frantic, repeated knocking on the window panes rattles him awake with a snort.

“H-huh? Hello?” The room swims into focus, as does the pounding headache at being denied his rest.

‘Connor! Connor, wake up! Please!’ He hears a voice among the tapping, trying to be quiet despite their urgency.

“Jack? Jack!”

His body protests in cracking joints as he hauls himself up, the door slamming open the moment the lock’s hammer is flicked free.

“Whoa, Jack—” He staggered back to not be mowed down. “What happened? What are you doing?”

Jack hardly heard him with his heart hammering in his ears, eyes darting across the dark through the window panes, breath ragged as Connor gripped him by the shoulders.

“STOP. Jack, stop.” He repeated, gentler when he finally stood still. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you have a gun?”

“Do I—what?” Connor looked him over, his bloodshot eyes, clammy skin. Disheveled hair stuck to his face and neck with sweat despite the cool night, like he had seen a ghost. Or some kind of monster.

“There’s something really wrong in these woods, Connor, I—don’t look away from me! The smoke in the woods wasn’t a campfire, it was a bonfire! I think they were b-burning a body, a—we have to go. Now. They know I saw them!”

“Are you… drunk?” Connor asked, though he knew nothing of his friend’s haggard demeanor suggested he was anything other than horrifically sober, frightened for his life and seized by adrenaline.

“I’m not DRUNK, why do you always—why do you DO that?”

“Do what, Jack? Be sensible? You have to know how this all sounds.”

“Oh, you would, Connor. Of course you would,” he spat, his frown twisted by disgust while he worried if their friendship would survive this life-and-death difference of opinion. “You always do this.”

“I care about you, Jack, I don’t want to see you destroyed by this conspiracy theory. Look at yourself. It’s eating you.”

“It’s not a conspiracy theory. I’ve seen it!” He pleaded.

“Yeah well, I haven’t.” Connor’s dismissive wave made his stomach swim, a half-hearted gesture that didn’t reach the pull of his frown. “Why can you see it but I can’t?”

“Don’t you get it? They leave you alone because you’re the perfect skeptic. Why would they risk scaring off somebody who willingly covers for them at every opportunity?”

“That’s… bullshit,” Connor says, though he doesn’t sound nearly as confident as his words suggest, and he fidgets where he stands by the sink.

“That’s not possible. I’ve worked here for years! And this creepy stuff only started happening for the last few months.”

“So you HAVE seen things?”

“… No,” he backpedals. “I’ve found empty campsites, of course they’re empty because these stupid fucking kids take off and hide in the woods when they don’t want to get in trouble. People disappear because they mess with bears, or get lost because they went hiking with no equipment. It’s not ghosts, it’s not cults, there’s a reasonable, rational explanation for everything that happens out here.”

“Do you think I chased myself here?”

“Someone’s chasing you?” Connor’s eyes flicked over to the baseball bat he kept beside the door, and the rifle case beside it.

“You of all people, please believe me. I know what I saw, and I—if I hadn’t dropped my phone, I could show you.”

“You… took a picture? And lost it.”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“How else am I supposed to look, Jack?” He threw out his arms in a huff. “I’m willing to believe you if you could show me something but you can’t, very conveniently, which isn’t saying anything against you.”

“It feels like it, Connor. It feels like I’m alone in this, like I’ve been alone in—in everything else. Only now, I’m afraid for my life.”

Connor is quiet as he takes him in, all his thoughts and scenarios playing out visibly across his honest face in order of possibility. He had always been honest, above all else, to the point he became stagnant, ever unchanging when his stubborn nature left him pigeon-holed to become unchallenged.

“What do you want me to do?” He said finally, with nothing more than earnestness. Anything Jack wanted, from him or from the world, he would find a way to make it happen.

“… Don’t let them kill me.”

“Jack,” he whispers, a plea.

“Don’t.”

Connor ignores his quiet protest, crossing the room to fold him into his arms. He holds back some self-serving comment about “it’s okay to cry but it’s not okay to hide” in favor of staying quiet, a rock for Jack to cling to until his shaking subsides.

“Dawns a long way off still. Let’s get some rest, and tomorrow I’ll do anything you need me to, make any phone call you want me to make. Okay?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow. I would have left right now but I… I couldn’t make sense of the trails in the dark, scared as I was.”

He resists the urge to squeeze his hands into Jack’s fleece, reminds himself: this wasn’t about his feelings, and they could talk about everything else once Jack was somewhere he felt safe.

“You could have led a killer to my door, chasing up the stairs like that.”

“Don’t make fun of me—”

“I’m not. I mean, I don’t mean to.” He thumbs his cheek, as close to an apology as Jack was going to get.

“Come on. Bed time, Jack.”

He gets under the blanket without protest, mildly mournful the sheets smell of detergent instead of the night they spent together. Connor goes through his nightly routine with no input from Jack, though the latter notices how he checks the lock twice and props the baseball bat beside his alarm clock.

Even if Jack hadn’t managed to convince him of the truth, hopefully these seeds of doubt would carry them through.

~*~

A scream rips him from his sleep. Not a red fox, a real, frightened—Connor’s scream.

Jack flies out of the bed, feet tangled in the blanket, the old quilt almost ripping as he frees himself and looks back to see he slept alone. The flashlight from the desk is gone, the wood fire a semblance of embers. He ponders only briefly the rifle case Connor had moved to under the bed, deciding it would be more of a danger than help when he’s never shot a gun in his life.

He dashes out the door with the only two weapons he was qualified to use: bear mace, and the bat.

The scrapes and grunts of a struggle float up from the stairwell, all the while Jack poured more sweat with every stair, terrified he would get down to the bottom step in time to see Connor murdered right in front of him.

From the top of the last flight, he could finally see them: Connor splayed across the ground, felled from a wound Jack couldn’t see, and the cultist who stalked a few paces away. In the yellow of the floodlights, he spotted the silver gleam of a Bowie knife, probably flung away by a resourceful Connor.

“Connor!!” Jack hoped his shout would provoke him to rise, move, speak, but he laid still, and the cultist turned their attention to him.

To him, the bat seemed a decent plan to survive, until he realized a grown man wasn’t a practice ball shot from a pitching machine, and this was someone who overpowered Connor, a former soldier who was both taller and stronger than Jack. Their gloved hand clamped down on the end of the bat, enough to remove any kind of momentum from his swing, but couldn’t defend against Jack ramming the tip into their face with all his weight.

They go down in a heap, the thud of the cultist breaking his fall slamming in both their chests.

Panting and scrambling to make some distance, he immediately crawled over to Connor. “Connor! Wake up, please, come on. We gotta get out of here before he wakes up—”

“Pfft, fuck.” He spluttered in the dirt beneath his face, roused by Jack’s vigorous shaking. “Jack? Oh god.”

He winced, holding his face where his cheekbone was already splotchy and swelling with a scrape that oozed pin-holes of blood. “He—hit me… with one of my wrenches when I grabbed the knife.”

“It doesn’t look that bad,” Jack lied. “You’re okay. Let’s get out of here, can you walk?”

“Yeah, my legs are fine. It’s my head that’s killing me.”

“Come on.”

Jack recalls making the hike alone weeks ago, so unaware he walked into an underworld he couldn’t begin to understand, now forced to run from those woods and the job that was once his sanctuary. Beside him, Connor worked his jaw to assess the damage with one hand, his other clamped around Jack’s, worried he might be snatched away into the dark and never seen again.

“Did you park in this lot?” Jack asked.

“No, my… sister dropped me off. She has my truck.”

“Let’s take my RV then—”

His words were cut off by the snapping of twigs behind them, and the sudden, deafening crack of a baseball bat hitting the tree beside his head, the tip splintering off to fling into the bushes. Still reeling from his own wound, Connor stumbled, and Jack’s quick decision to duck, thus leaving his skull intact, took them both down into the dirt.

The forest is too crowded by trees to offer light, and the clearing of the parking lot—just at the end of the path—seems forever away as they struggle to process their surroundings. Jack feels the world slow down, thick and oily behind the lens of his panic, his legs pinned by the body of the cultist grappling him. He sees the flash of a knife, clear and silver, a spike of moonlight coming down in an arc towards the vulnerable rise and fall of his chest.

But pain never comes.

Connor cries out above him, the knife caught by the meat of his calf, a predicted outcome to his choice to kick the cultist away.

The world slams into fast forward, the coppery smell of Connor’s blood in the air and petrichor in his aching lungs when he reaches for his bear spray.

Anger seizes him, hearing Connor thud to the ground beside him—and empties the can into the cultist’s face. Behind the blood rushing in his ears, the can clinks against a tree when he flings it to the side.

“Let’s go, Connor, come on.” He reaches under his shoulders to haul him up with a groan that betrays how much strength it requires.

He doesn’t remember getting to the RV. Looking back, his memory stops at the open gate to the park, finding the guard shack empty, dark, and resumes on the road, the yellow headlights the only source of light on the two-lane blacktop, among the sound of Connor’s panting where he lays on the bench. His stinging eyes look to his hands, scratched and bleeding, white-knuckled around the steering wheel, until the road blurs and he has to stop.

~*~

The first call Jack makes is to Billy, that he was right and neither he nor Connor were ever setting foot into those woods ever again. That he could send their last paychecks to the addresses on file and donate their stuff to the little church he passed on the drive up there.

The second phone call he makes is to directory assistance, whose bored operator scoots their study materials aside long enough to locate the nearest hospital to the mile marker he gave.

He walks Connor into the emergency room with his arm around his chest, both men spattered with mud and dark, dried blood. A few hours later, Connor passes through the automatic doors a second time alone, squinting up into the bright light of the overhead sign and navigating around the cracks in the sidewalk with the finesse of someone who had used crutches at least a few times before.

Still double-parked in the fire lane where he left him, Jack smokes against the side of the RV.

“I would have come back inside if you called me, said they were releasing you.” He presses the rest of his cigarette out and opens the cabin door for him.

Connor regards the open door with suspicion, gaze torn between the concrete path and Jack’s waiting offer.

“You have my phone. And I didn’t… know if you would still be here when I got out.”

“I told you I was just going to smoke. They wouldn’t keep you for too long for a puncture wound, would they? I mean, unless you needed surgery but I would have just posted up by the road and taken a nap.”

“That’s not—” Connor cuts himself off with a sigh, a stuttering, weak thing.

“I know that’s not what you meant.” The sound of Jack’s voice, alarmingly sober and gentle, captures his vulnerable gaze.

“I’m not mad, you know. I was—worried, more than anything. Just let me take you home, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Somewhere safe.”

The last few months had been a nightmare, a long “based on a true story” tale meant to be told around a campfire, one that gossipy summer camp counselors will inevitably shorten to make more exciting. As he studies the softness of Jack’s open face: the hazel eyes struggling to hold him, the dried mud behind his ear that he probably missed while washing his face in the hospital restroom—he doesn’t want to cut them out. Of all the people he wanted to forget, Jack wasn’t one of them.

Behind the waiting room glass, the little collection of small-town locals (one stomach bug, a couple who gave each other the flu, and one who came in for a fireworks incident) all lean forward in their chairs to watch the two kiss, hearing the muffled clatter of Connor’s crutches falling to the sidewalk.

A nurse clears her throat from around the desk. “Next, please.”

ONE WEEK LATER

When Jack awakes, it’s to the gentle, filtered sunshine coming through the curtains on the RV, and the awkward tilt of his head on the bare mattress. He found out immediately that Connor sleeps how he lives: unapologetic, deliberately, a thief of pillows, not blankets, especially after they worked out a system to prop up his wounded leg for a better rest.

From where he’s curled around Jack’s pillow, his back is so warm, the shampoo from his midnight shower still strong behind his ears as Jack slides in close to wrap the blanket back over them both.

“It’s hot,” he hears a muffled rumble.

“Nah. It’s cold, actually.” Jack teases him quietly, placing kisses over the slope of his shoulder and the old tattoo while he tries to squirm away from warm breath and warmer lips.

“Are you hungry?”

“Sleepy.” His breath puffs across the pillowcase.

“Mm. Keep Just Jack company for me, will you?” He places a kiss behind Connor’s ear and climbs out of the bed to look for his clothes.

Connor huffed to himself, a half-asleep chuckle at Jack’s request, almost a joke if not for him cracking open his eyes to glance at the stuffed bear sitting on the windowsill beside a short stack of rented DVDs. A gift from Jack, the little card in his arms declaring “Get Well Soon” in a bright blue cursive, bought alongside a candy bar from the first truck stop they came to after crossing state lines.

Jack had stuttered to defend himself when he saw Connor’s unamused expression, one crutch under his arm and the receipt for gas in the other hand. He rushed off towards the trash can, thinking himself rejected, when Connor snatched the bear away.

“You said it was for me, right? So he’s mine… Thank you.” He said, as Jack bumped the gas nozzle on the RV’s paint at least twice trying to get it into the hole.

“What do we name him? What’s Jack short for?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “No secret government name. Just Jack.”

Connor looked to the bear in his hands, smoothing the ruffled fur on it’s ears. “Sounds perfect, actually.”

When Connor awoke the second time, it was to the digital sound of Jack answering his voicemails at the table. ‘Message saved. Please press 1 to return to the main menu, or press 3 to delete.’

“Jack?” He called over his shoulder, smelling breakfast and coffee when his brain finally came back. Yet, even after a week of nursing his wound, he never managed to remember not to stretch his bad leg when he wanted to shake off the sleep.

“Fuck, that stings.”

“You want a pain pill? I made some eggs, toast will only take a second.”

He huffed, a discontented, sweet sigh, his hair ruffled and good leg sticking out from the rumpled comforter. “I want you to come back to bed.”

“Miss me that much already?” said Jack, meaning it to be a tease but unable to hide how his throat suddenly stings.

Somebody wanted him. Not just somebody, actually, someone who’s company he also enjoyed. Framed by the sunshine in the curtains and the warmth of his eyes, he had to touch, needed to feel him—make sure he was real.

“I only left to make food and answer my phone.” His feigned confidence doesn’t fool Connor, a master of the art himself, and he makes a small, vulnerable sound against his lips when he pulls him in.

“Wait, I have to tell you something,” he gasps when Connor busies himself with the side of his neck, mischievous fingers opening his shirt as far as it went and pulling the collar away to give himself access to more skin.

“How important is it to you? Really?” His teeth pull playfully at the skin near his pulse.

“They offered me my old job back. At the other park.”

Connor’s mouth clicks gently as he releases him, pondering the statement for far less time than Jack had assumed he would need. “Do you want it?”

“Not really… but I wanted to know what you t-thought.” The kisses have resumed in double time, pinkening his neck and weakening his legs where he kneels above him.

“There’s a lot of parks, all over the country. How about we drive until we find one we like?”

“… We can.” He says, suddenly, as if Connor had proclaimed to have discovered a new science. Unlatching him from his neck is full of mumbled protests and one spiteful snap at his open collar, but he manages to gently lay him against the pillow to meet his eyes plainly.

“What do you say, Connor? Want to stay with me?”

“I just told you I—”

“Not that. Tell me what you want to do.”

No one speaks for long minutes, and Jack stays perfectly still to allow himself to be seen. All of him. For as long as Connor needs to see him, however he wants, because months of uncertainty, fear, and doubt have pushed him repeatedly into the first spotlight that hasn’t burned, the first firelight that feels like home. He isn’t prepared for Connor to break the stillness by pulling him close.

Strong arms, fit for chopping firewood and building houses, feel too much like the quivering arms of a scared young boy around his neck, the one who fled an iron home into the fists of the army, and then to the open palms of a string of lovers until he decided the middle of nowhere was the only place to get some peace.

Jack holds him without hesitation, drinking in his affection, what he feels is selfishly, to find peace among the embrace of a person who is suffering. It feels better than the drink, better than the cigarettes he fell into when the drink threatened to kill him, as filling to his heart and soul as the kindest, rarest words: “I’m proud of you.”

He is so proud of them.

“I want you to keep me.” Connor admits to the skin of his cheek, too prideful to say anymore, lest he risk drawing attention to the moisture he’s leaving on his shirt.

“And I want to be kept by you.”

Jack knows they are tears, of course he does. He knows because his face is wet too, and he is so happy, so proud they are alive to cry. Deliriously happy they cry together. Of all the choices they made to survive, to fight, to run—together is the reason they live.

AN: Thank you for reading, likes and reblogs are always welcome! ❤️

#Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins #jack nelson x Conner Hawkins #fears to fathom #fears to fathom ironbark lookout #ironbark lookout #fears to fathom fanfic #indie games #indie horror #indie horror game #rarepair #the rarest of pairs they don't even have a ship name #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #fanfic #mlm fanfic #Jack Nelson #Connor Hawkins

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tatterings · 7 months

Text

Lamentable is the Autumn Picker Content with Plums - Chapter 8 - "To Wrest Out the Weeds"

Pairing: Astarion/Halsin

Rating: PG?

Tags/warnings: Spoilers to mid/late Act 2. Some trauma discussion but overall no warnings.

Word count: 4,900

Note: This is the eigth chapter of first ever fanfiction!

I’ve also posted this on AO3. Fic under the cut.

Author’s note: In the interest of not getting burned out by the details so that I can complete this romantic saga, I’ve skipped the House of Healing quest to get Art Cullagh’s lute. Instead, he had it with him when the Fists found him. Yay! I hope the artistic liberty doesn’t take you too much from the storyline. We all wanna get to the good good in a decent time, I think? ;)

******

A deep rothé’s hooves in full-gallop was a whisper compared to the furious thunder that had been Halsin’s heartbeat, prior to pressing his lips to Astarion’s. His thoughts had poured like a spring storm’s deluge: all at once, overflowing the borders of creek beds and convention. He had felt like he nearly lost himself amidst a flash flood of desire.

The druid had seen a piece of himself reflecting in Astarion’s ruby eyes; the beast of uncertainty and fear that plagued him. Plagues him, with how tall his self-defensive walls had become. When the vampire had admitted his concern over the druid’s life, Halsin considered perhaps it was safe to let the brittle scaffolding fall.

Astarion had allowed their lips to touch with no resistance; no distaste. To the druid’s pleasant surprise, the vampire had leaned into the second tender kiss.

“I am here with you now, Astarion. And I will always return to your side,” the druid had said, in earnest, shortly after. Both men had huffed in silence for a few moments, lips an owlbear’s feather apart, before Halsin felt he had breath enough to speak again.

“Self-doubt is a devious thing, my heart. And rarely do we plant the seed of it ourselves,” Halsin said, pulling his face away slightly to speak. The druid’s hand rose to Astarion’s chin, his calloused thumb tracing the vampire’s lower lip. How beautiful it was, plump and reddened after their lips had met; he ached to kiss him again. “I have found that its roots grow to strangle one’s heart and mind. I do not wish that for you.”

Astarion had kept his eyes on Halsin’s lips as he spoke, snowy eyebrows knit upwards. He finally spoke after taking a breath; in and out, like Halsin had done in front of him hundreds of times. His breath was cool on the druid’s palm.

“Y-ou..,” stammered Astarion, his murmur so low that Halsin could barely hear it; or even feel the vibrations of the vampire’s voice in his palm. “You say you wish to be at my side, But you don’t want to acknowledge the…complications of who and what I am. I’m not a good person, Halsin. Not like you,” the vampire said, his effervescent, false laugh escaping him. “Truly, I’m barely a person at all; not as you are. The vast majority of my life I have been this,” Astarion said, his face momentarily obscured by a swoop of his delicate fingers towards himself.

His eyelids fluttered closed, ivory eyelashes resting on his now-rosy cheeks. Halsin felt heat rush to his groin as he cared for the man wrapped in his arms; not from lust, but from passion, desire, to care for the smaller man. He embraced the pale elf tighter and leaned his forehead against Astarion’s.

“You are the most incredible person, Astarion. And I want to be beside you. I want to know every bit of who you are, who you were, and who you will be,” the druid replied.

Halsin’s heartbeat slowed to a steady rhythm as he let fall his emotional scaffolding. “I want your humor, your playfulness, your lust for new experiences. I want to wake from my trances to your Blood Moon gaze,” Halsin said, his voice husky and low with fondness. “I want even your wounds, to know your scars, and I want to share with you my own. As my partner; if you would have me.”

Astarion had stared wordlessly as the druid spoke, His eyes had scanned over Halsin’s face with the same uncertainty of a wild deer ready to bolt. At Halsin’s gentle reassurance, as reliable as the changing of the seasons, the vampire’s shoulders drooped. Astarion had assessed his lack of threat to be true. The pale elf leaned his face into Halsin’s large palm, bumping into it with his nose and lips.

“I think…” Astarion said softly, raising his gaze to meet Halsin’s agonizingly slowly. “I think I would like that.” He pulled his arms from between their torsos and wrapped them around Halsin’s neck. Halsin relished in the feeling, goosebumps forming on his skin at Astarion’s cool touch. “May I stay with you tonight? Even.. even if it’s just to rest?” Astarion asked as he nosed into the crook of Halsin’s collarbone and his neck, the tips of his ears flushing near-violet.

Halsin blinked back moisture that welled at the corners of his eyes. “I would love nothing more than to wake with you in my arms,” he rumbled, pulling Astarion’s torso against his, nestling his face into the smaller elf’s snowy curls.

*********

For the first night since they had reached the shadow-cursed lands, Astarion had experienced a fully restful trance-state. Through feeding he was refreshed; through feelings, reassured.

Astarion had spent the night cuddled beside Halsin, with one of the larger elf’s arms wrapped around his waist. Prior to bedding down, Halsin had admitted, color rising to his cheeks, that he generally slept “as nature created him”. But the druid insisted on wearing at least his trousers while sharing the bedroll for the evening. Astarion had remained fully clothed; too raw of a wound was the idea of baring his back scars to the druid.

Before Astarion fell asleep, he’d found himself tracing his hands lazily across Halsin’s barrel chest, his fingers raking through the druid’s thick chest hair. He had no need for a pillow, when the druid’s well-muscled pectorals served just as well. His muscles had finally fallen lax from his toes to the tips of his pointy ears, as his mind dwelled on Halsin’s oaths of loyalty and companionship. He had found a smile forming on his lips. For once, someone desired Astarion as more than a beautiful night of distraction; and all the better that someone was the druid Halsin.

The pale elf had felt himself flush, at the memory alone. He’d shivered in delight and slight embarrassment, and had hidden his rosy face in the crook of Halsin’s arm. Astarion was intoxicated by the druid’s musk. The scent of cedarwood and lemongrass had been calming, allowing him to slip into his trance with no resistance.

Astarion had awoken with a smile for the first time in 200 years; no pollution rotted through his marrow, even after sharing a bed with another being. He had not been forced, nor asked, to exchange his body for companionship; it was freely given, freely received.

As they both exited the tent in the morning, Halsin had held the tent flap open for Astarion with one hand, waving a greeting to the other adventurers. Shadowheart was fully dressed, eager to get moving. She sat to the side, fidgeting with the relic that protected them from the mindflayers. Gale had prepared the most basic of flat breads, as flour and water made the most of their provisions. Regardless of the simplicity, Wyll had torn through several with great pleasure, giving Gale a thumbs up as he broke his fast. Karlach, ever kinder than she ought to be, had insisted the unseasoned pancakes were delicious, though she tossed most to Scratch when she thought no one was looking. Lae’zel had passed on breakfast, instead holding out for the promise of protein and more options at Last Light Inn; they would arrive by mid-morning if they kept a brisk pace.

****************

Their journey to Last Light Inn had been easier than expected; most of the trek had been downhill, with the main risk being trip hazards on jagged rocks and broken cobblestones. Shadowheart’s Light spells had dispatched the odd shade here and there; what she didn’t destroy had been felled by Gale’s Magic Missiles, tossed haphazardly over his shoulder as they trekked. They had seen a gigantic dome in the distance, glowing white on the horizon. Last Light Inn.

Upon their arrival, they were greeted by Jaheira and her unshakeable skepticism. Although her innate distrust of strangers in a strange land was well-warranted; even more so when the majority of them were infected by mindflayer tadpoles. But, at the urging of her Harpers who they had partnered with in battle, as well as a character witness from the Tiefling child Mol, the adventurers had been welcomed with open arms.

Jaheira had shared with Halsin and the others the intelligence she had gained whilst battling Absolutists: Ketheric Thorm was indeed resurrected; and even worse, seemed to be immortal. He and his forces had gathered at Moonrise Towers, so it was fortunate the adventurers had decided to venture to Last Light first. She informed them of their powerful allies at the Inn. The spell enchantment protecting Last Light and its visitors was cast by Isobel; a Selûne cleric who, despite Shadowheart’s complaint, had provided them a blessing to safely travel the shadow-cursed lands. She had shared Jaheira’s kind offer of a place of rest and respite for the evening.

Halsin had appreciated their generosity; including their kindness to the acquaintances he’d made in the Grove. Many of the Tieflings they had sheltered amidst his druid followers had made it to Last Light. It unburdened his heart to see that many had been saved from both the wrath of the goblins and ravages of the curse. They had reunited with Alfira, the Tiefling bard, as well as Mol, who’d perfected the pick-pocketing skills Astarion had taught her. A few hours after arrival, Halsin had been bemused when he reached into his pocket to retrieve his newest whittling project and only found a crumpled piece of parchment that said “Thanks bear man!”.

Halsin and his new friends took advantage of the Harper’s hospitality to enjoy a short rest in the center of the inn. Shadowheart pouted in the corner on a plush armchair, glaring daggers at Isobel who sat on the mezzanine above. Her fingernails picked at the pointed corners of the relic. Karlach, desperate for a frosted pitcher of beer, settled for a lukewarm glass of ale and joined Lae’zel and Wyll near the front of the inn. The trio listened intently as Jaheira shared stores of past triumphs. Gale pored over his spell books in the reading room adjacent, stroking a sphynx cat named His Majesty; he had won the hairless cat’s favor by offering him a saucer of milk.

Halsin enjoyed a mug of lemon balm tea at the bar beside Astarion, who sipped from a glass of wine as they both pored over their current reading material. The drone of tavern discussion and clink of the Harper’s armor was melodic white noise in contrast to the unnatural silence of the shadow-cursed lands.

The druid’s large hand slowly dropped from the well-polished bar top to rest on Astarion’s inner thigh. His thumb lazily stroked back and forth along Astarion’s leather-clad leg. He squeezed the vampire’s thigh gently, relishing in his partner’s well-defined muscles.

Astarion peered up from his book, a smirk pulling at his lips. He met Halsin’s gaze through his long ivory eyelashes. “Something the matter, darling? Did you come upon a word that is too long for you?” he teased, knowing full-well that Halsin’s skill in and enjoyment of the written word matched his own. Astarion crawled a hand up Halsin’s side to tickle under his armpit. Halsin squirmed to escape Astarion’s slender fingers as a chuckle burst from his lips; he was horribly ticklish.

“Astarion, you are incorrigible,” Halsin said, beaming at his companion, his voice effervescent with laughter. “No, I am quite fine, although I am struggling to focus on my research.”

Halsin wrapped his thick arm around Astarion to grasp the edge of the vampire’s barstool; with one hand he pulled it closer to his own. The druid’s hand lingered on Astarion’s hip; their thighs touched, and Halsin’s skin prickled with goosebumps.

“I find myself concerned that my imagination is playing tricks on me. I needed to touch you and make sure I was not in a dream,” Halsin said, his voice low and husky, lips brushing against the tips of the pale elf’s ears. “You have my stomach in knots, Astarion, like some heartsick ninety-year-old.” The druid pulled his hand from Astarion’s hip reluctantly, tracing his fingers up the vampire’s back.

Before Halsin could lift his mug for a sip of his tea, Astarion flashed the large elf a toothy grin and wrapped himself around Halsin’s arm, placing his cool cheek against the druid’s biceps. Halsin’s goosebumps flared again as they savored the intimacy of the mundane.

**********

Faerunian adventurers rarely enjoyed routine comforts for long; this day was no different. Their reverie was shattered by an anguished groan which echoed from elsewhere in Last Light Inn.

The druid started, jostling Astarion on his stool; the pale elf had almost slipped into a trance, so comforting was the druid’s body heat. Halsin immediately rose from his stool, bracing each of Astarion’s shoulders as he stood. The druid didn’t need to speak; his furrowed brows and lips drawn thin spoke volumes of his intentions to save the day.

Astarion set loose a groan of his own, his upper lip curling to bare his fangs. “Must we always go to investigate? Can’t we let some other person save the day?” he whined, throwing his head back in frustration.

Halsin’s fine auburn hair fell in front of his shoulders as he leaned forward to assess the origin of the sound. His movements were almost ursine; Astarion was certain that if his ears could perk forward, the druid would look even more like a bear in elven form. Halsin’s eagerness to help others was endearing until it conflicted with Astarion’s comfort.

“It’s coming from the room beside us,” Astarion drawled, nodding his head towards a nearby door as he rose from his barstool.

Since they’d arrived at the inn, his ears had picked up on softer, almost inaudible muttering and moaning. Another vampiric ‘gift’: heightened senses that benefitted a night-walker. But it was not his business to investigate whether the utterances were from lovers under covers or someone lying on their deathbed. Until, of course, his noble fool dragged him into yet another situation. He could not resist prodding at the druid.

“You know, Halsin, with how often you insist on indulging your curiosity, I’m surprised your preferred wildshape isn’t some sort of wildcat,” Astarion said as he strode to the door, kicking his shoes along the wooden floor. It was smooth beneath his leather-soled boots, polished from hundreds of years of visitors.

Halsin’s intense focus broke as he followed his partner. “Ah, but it is said that curiosity kills a cat. As far as I’m aware, no one has ever rhymed about what it could do to a bear,” the druid said with a deep chuckle and jovial grin.

“If it would deter you from playing hero, I would happily author one,” Astarion replied, a laugh falling from his upturned lips. He winked at Halsin and opened the door, stepping back to allow the large druid passage. Astarion stifled another snicker when Halsin dipped his forehead to not slam it into the doorframe.

The room was mixed use; maps and battle plans littered the top of a large table that took up half the room. Members of the Flaming Fist were scattered throughout the large space, presumably planning. A dozen beds flanked the other side of the room, only one of which was occupied. Several Fists stood around the bedside of a man who hummed deliriously, tossing about his sweat-drenched linens. Astarion exhaled forcefully and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger; this was not his business.

Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back, Astarion thought. Butting into others’ business obliterated the bear? No, that saying won’t do. He leaned against the wall, his pink lips in a pout and arms crossed.

“Who is this man?” Halsin asked gently of the female Fist at the bedside. She recognized Halsin’s demeanor and clothing as druidic - a potential healer. The spark of hope provided a flurry of animation to her speech as she informed the duo of how they found the man - stumbling, delirious, wandering in the shadow-cursed lands.

Halsin nodded intently as she spoke and inspected the man’s condition. They only knew that he was a fellow Flaming Fist, and that his name was Art Cullagh.

“Art. Hail, Art!” Halsin beckoned, gently shaking the shoulder of the unconscious man. There was no response from him, besides a groan that morphed into a hum. Halsin hovered his great hands over Art’s prone body. Magic manifested in a viridian glow, dancing about his hands before settling along Art’s body. The sparkles melted like snowflakes onto his feverish skin.

He seemed to rouse only slightly, his groans transforming into intelligible words. “Thaniel and me, climb climbing up a tree… and see what we see.. do as we.. please.”

Astarion had intended to brood moodily in the corner while Halsin played hero; but he nearly lost his balance as the word “Thaniel”. He swooped to Halsin’s side, his steps so soft they were inaudible.

Halsin, too, had picked up the name, and he bent himself closer to the ill man. Art’s humming continued. “We see shadows, they get darker, but our hiding place is brighter. We are fearsome black and red, we are living, they are dead,” Art sang, to no particular melody. Sweat poured from his brow, soaking his bandages and the bedding below him. The Flaming Fist at his side soaked his forehead with a cool towel.

“His mind has been gripped by the shadows, but he’s met Thaniel. There’s no other way he’d know that name,” Halsin said, his speech quick and breathy with excitement. “He must know something about where to find Thaniel. If he could escape the Shadowfell, it must not have been able to consume his spirit. Or not all of it, at least. We need to rouse whatever’s left of him inside his head. There must be something to trigger him - a word, a memory, an item.” The druid held his chin in his hands as he studied the delirious man.

“Did he have any personal effects when you found him?” Halsin asked the Flaming Fist tending to Art. His braids shook from behind his ears as the druid scanned the room for clues.

“Oh, yes actually! He had a few things with him. A letter, for one. And a lute, although it has seen better days,” she said, inclining her head to Art’s belongings on the opposite side of the bed.

Never one to pass on the opportunity to rifle through another person’s property, Astarion stepped to the bedside opposite Halsin. The head of a lute protruded from beneath the blankets; Astarion wrapped his hand around the neck of the instrument and pulled it free.

The wood of the instrument was weathered with age; its protective shellac had long worn off. Astarion’s nimble fingers traced the wood grain, pausing at an unusual pattern on the body. The initials “A.C.'' were inscribed on it in meticulous script. After his brief inspection, Astarion held it out to Halsin.

********

Halsin shook his head at Astarion’s offer of the instrument. “No, I need to have both my hands free, in case our friend here needs a healing spell,” he said, his expression apologetic. “Would you mind strumming its strings for us?”

“Darling, I’m no bard. Nor can I carry a tune; Cazador banned us from humming or whistling, even,” Astarion said, holding the lute away from his body as though it were a wild animal liable to attack him.

“It’s a better idea than anything else that has been tried,” Halsin said, feeling a smirk spread across his lips at the opportunity to fluster the pale elf. “Besides, you have dexterous hands, Astarion, I’ve seen how well you pick locks and mend clothing. Go on, play us a tune.”

“Fine,” Astarion replied, his pointed ears blushing. Halsin’s eyes were drawn to his plush lips, which protruded in a soft pout. Through half-lidded eyes, he maintained Halsin’s gaze; it was clear the vampire would only perform the request to humor him.

Astarion held the fretboard with one hand and strummed the instrument with his other. Art did not stir at the sound. The pale elf raised the lute to his side, and with a haphazard swipe of his fingers, pulled more noise from its strings. “Would you like an encore, darl-”

“Thaniel!,” Art Cullagh yelled, sitting bolt upright. “He’s still trapped there - he needs help!” Halsin’s shoulders had jerked back at the man’s unexpected movement. He lowered himself to sit at Art’s side and placed his large hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Calm, my friend. Breathe,” the Arch Druid said, giving Art’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “You’ve been trapped in the Shadowfell for a century. Take a moment to clear your mind.”

“A century…” Art started, and rubbed the sweat from his brow, “You must be Halsin. Thaniel said you find you! He’s somewhere in there still…you must find lavender. Whenever I saw Thaniel, I always smelled lavender.” Art’s eyes darted about to take in his surroundings; they were ringed with purple and wide in concern. Halsin nodded and helped Art recline back on the bed. Halsin’s stomach sank at how quickly the man tired; the Shadowfell had taken a terrible toll on his body.

“Thank you, my friend,” Halsin said, dipping his head low in appreciation. “If I ventured into the Shadowfell blind, I’d never find him. But I can work with that.” The druid raised his gaze to Astarion and nodded towards the exit. Astarion followed behind Halsin, his brows furrowed in confusion, and the vampire pulled the door closed as they left.

The druid’s long strides carried him quickly to the exit of the inn. Halsin paused at the entrance and raised two fingers to his lips. His eyes flickered to Astarion, who understood the intention; the vampire plugged his sensitive ears with his slender fingers. Halsin blew a sharp whistle to alert Gale, Wyll, and the rest. Once their heads turned his way, the druid waved them over, beckoning the other adventurers to follow him out the door.

“Devil’s teeth, Halsin, where are we going?” spat Astarion, nearly jogging to keep pace with the long-legged Halsin. He hadn’t intended on exercising, and his leather armor became sticky with sweat.

“To the lakeshore, my heart,” Halsin said, glancing at the pale elf at his side. Besides the Astarion, only Karlach was right beside the druid. The tiefling enjoyed her normal walking pace, while the other adventures tailed behind Halsin at a brisk trot, their armor and swords jangling with the movement.

As they reached the lakeside, they gathered atop a large rock outcropping. Halsin rounded to face his friends, raising his hands in hopeful celebration. “I have what we need to save Thaniel, my friends,” Halsin explained. He inhaled deeply before he continued; he made eye contact with each adventure. “I can infiltrate the Shadowfell, but the means to do so will sap my strength. I will need your help. This may prove… perilous.”

*********

Astarion’s chest tightened and felt heavy, as though an owlbear had landed upon it; he held one slender hand on his sternum, picking the stitching of his armor with his sharp fingernails. His ruby eyes darted across Halsin’s face, seeking reassurance once more from his druid.

“It took me years of study, of seeking the oak fathers favor to find a way to part the veil. Pray that this works, my friends,” Halsin said, turning to face the lake.

The large druid bowed in reverence, his palms facing upward in front of him as they glimmered with amber magic. “Oak Father, hear me, aid me! Force open the jaws of darkness, and make passage for your vessel of light,” Halsin said, and the golden light in his fists exploded, expanded, and shot from the druid’s hands. The portal between realms shimmered and hummed with druidic magic.

“Halsin, what in the hells are you doing?” Astarion spat, a scowl forming on his lips. The hair on his arms stood on end from the magic emitted by the portal.

Halsin sighed, his shoulders visibly dropping. “I assure you this is no druidic grandstanding,” Halsin started, his voice heavy and sober. He spoke loudly so his voice would carry to the rest of the adventurers over the thrumming of the portal. “I need you to stay here and keep the portal open. This magic is fragile. I…I must infiltrate the Shadowfell alone.”

For the second time in a matter of hours, Astarion nearly lost his balance as he stood in place. He adjusted his position on the angled rock and took a few steps to be within feet of the druid. “Alone? We talked about this. You said you won’t do things alone anymore,” he said, his voice pitched with worry.

Halsin held out his hand, nearly touching Astarion’s chest. “I am not alone, my heart. I have you to help me; outside the portal. This has to be me, and only me,” the druid insisted, his voice firm. “But I need your help with this. If there is any interference with the portal, then our once chance is lost forever. And so am I. You must defend this portal at all costs.”

“Absolutely not; going alone is suicide,” Astarion shot back, more venom in his words than he intended. He felt a mist forming at the corners of his eyes as he clenched his fists at his sides.

*****

Halsin reached Astarion in two wide steps, his brows furrowed deeply as he met the vampire’s blood-moon gaze. Astarion took a half-step back as the larger elf reached where he stood; the vampire seemed intimidated by Halsin’s severe expression. It was a harsh juxtaposition to his tenderness of their prior evening.

“Astarion, listen to me.I need you here,” Halsin paused, raising his large hands to rest upon the vampire’s shoulders. “I would rather have you by my side, but this is the only way.”

The larger elf slipped one hand to the small of the vampire’s back, pressing his body against the smaller elf’s frame. With the other hand he cupped Astarion’s angular jaw, his thumb gently brushing his bottom lip and cool cheek. Halsin leaned down, auburn braids falling from behind his ears as he pressed his forehead against his partner’s.

“I will return for you, Astarion,” Halsin said, his tone unwavering and gentle. He pulled back to gaze into the vampire’s ruby-red eyes, in which tears threatened to well over; they sparkled in the light from the portal. Halsin could lose himself in Astarion’s sweet, round gaze. But that would have to wait.

The druid tightened his hold on the vampire, pressing their bodies together with need. Halsin gathered the white curls at Astarion’s crown in a fist, and gently tilted Astarion’s head back. The pale elf rose to the tips of his toes, his slender fingers dancing up Halsin’s chest to wrap around his neck.

Astarion’s plump pink lips parted for Halsin as their mouths crashed together. The pale elf’s tongue couldn’t form the words to express how violent the vortex of anxiety engulfed him; but Astarion knew how to do so through his kiss. Astarion’s willing mouth held open, lips fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird. His eagerness for Hasin’s exploring tongue escaped him as a whimper.

Halsin lost himself in Astarion’s taste, the vampire’s cool tongue pulling a rumbled moan from deep in the large elf’s belly. Astarion drew back for a breath, peering at the druid with blown-out pupils. He then captured Halsin’s mouth once more, pulling the druid’s lower lip with his own, nipping at it with a pointed fang. Astarion whined softly into the kiss before releasing the druid from his embrace.

“Protect my way back to you, my heart,” Halsin said firmly; he would accept no argument, though his arms tightened around Astarion’s slender body. The druid placed a final kiss on Astarion’s forehead, the pale elf’s curls tickling his nose. He pried himself away from the vampire and held only Astarion’s chilly fingertips in both his large hands.

Halsin realized if he lingered any longer, his resolve would falter; he squeezed Astarion’s fingers, then turned on his heel to charge into the portal. He disappeared into its magic, which sparkled as it permitted his entrance.

*****

Astarion stood alone, facing the portal, willing his body to move. His hand was still outstretched where Halsin had held his fingers; he felt the portal’s magic crackle around his fingertips.

The vampire’s lips tingled still with the taste of the druid's kiss; faintly of plums and honey. Preemptive grief ate through Astarion’s insides and his knees threatened to collapse beneath him.

Behind him, shouts of spell names and the crunch of a mace on a shield signaled that the shadow-cursed creatures had spawned. They came for the portal.

#halstarion #halsin/astarion #astarion/halsin #astarion x halsin #ursaminor #halsin romance #astarion romance #astarion fanfiction #halsin fanfiction #halsin fanfic #astarion fanfic #bg3 #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fanfic #halsin x astarion

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methvapes · 5 months

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your art is so good but every post you make is a literal mindfuck what is even happening here

i wrote fanfiction about us

it was a dark and stormy night

being a criminal justice mastermind i dont often bring my skillset into the real world

and yet sitting here, in my private investigators office, 73rd floor atop the highest skyscraper in new york city, i can appreciate the intellectual high ground it takes to make it this far, in a world gone mad. its 1972, and yet my minds still stuck in the past, in the could haves and the what once was

a drag on my marlboro brings me back into the present. a knock on the door. another knock. i exhale a foul smelling line of smoke out my mouth and flick the butt of my dart outta the window. let some other poor schmuck deal with it. ive got enough on my plate

adjusting my melancholic overcoat, and sleazing my way over to the door, i can see the silhouette of a greasy, stout man infront of it. a piercing voice carries through my office and out into the streets of the city. his speech wrests its way through my ears in an attempt to make them bleed, surely, even the street dogs would be whining at the shrill pitch of it. and yet… i know who this is. anonymous.

a scowl makes its way to my face, from my 5 foot 11 stature. distaste registers in my mind. i knew this guy as kids, when he used to bathe in grease and shit every day and then roll around in the streets, looking desperately for a thing he called, "asks". accompanied often with a flattened stone, or a piece of paper, with buttons drawn crudely onto it. we all assumed he was an escapee of the nearby mental institution as children, and i was the only one patient enough to be kind to him, enduring his insane prattling about something or other, or his blatant disregard for the female sex, and juvenile objectification of women

"my MINECRAFT mods wont LOAD CORRECTLY! i sense that SOMEONE HAS MEDDLED WITH my STATE OF THE ART gaming PC and LARD SOAKED CHAIR!"

he seems to be writhing on the floor of my waiting office, and throwing a tantrum similar to that of my 3 year old daughter

"anon, anon, my friend, what could be the issue?" i attempt to quell the insane beast to no avail. often he would lull into some breakdown or another, freakouts that wouldnt pertain to our world

"oh mister investigator sir! you gotta help me!" i can hardly understand him through his blubbering tears. "you gotta help me i saw a very scary monster in my room, and he went under my bed! you gotta help me kill him mister investigator sir! he meddled with my future device! i need my fix of asks!"

what a world we live in. do i help a childhood acquaintance, and attempt to quiet his babyish outburst? my illustrious supermodel big breasted booty cheeked up rich successful atheist businesswoman wife and supergenius 3 year old daughter would surely miss me on my adventure, and yet i find myself hungering for the hunt of the game yet again, even as the hunt is little more than a search for a round object in a ball pit, with the mental limitations of my good friend anonymous. i decide to help him with his journey free of charge. i know hes rather broke after spending all his time at the local casino. i told him he didnt know how blackjack worked after he tried to bluff a win, and got beaten senseless by the guards. tsk. whats a man of my caliber to do?

"ill help you anon, if its the last thing i do."

grabbing my '66 colt diamondback, and my silky fedora, i stride over to the door with purpose. my bumbling sidekick tottering his way over to the exit and falling over immediately upon walking through the doorway. i always did forget he had the object permanence of a toddler. we make our way downstairs

the rain pours out upon that damned, dirt filled city. taxis and cars blazing by my office in hurried races

stepping onto the pavement, anon rushes forwards, step after shortened step. in horror, i watch as he trips on one of his homemade "mobile devices" and falls into the street. a taxicar's yellowed paint feels like a slap in the face as the dark street fills with the blood of my childhood friend. heroically flagging down traffic in the tense night of the city, i race to his side. the man who was like a distant cousin to me. an eccentric nephew, or odd sort of relative, gone in the blink of an eye.

but yet! hope! as anons labored breathing grew more stagnant by the second, i knew i only had moments to spare. jumping 15 feet into a nearby vehicle, i hotwire the wheel in mere seconds, racing my way to the hospital. i knew i could save him… if only… if only i had more time…

a race against the clock, i could feel the ticks of milliseconds pound against my skin like the judgemental gavel of a courts closing. like a stampede of hooves amid a horserace. like a thrumming engine, ready to blow at any given moment. i needed to get to that hospital

minutes later, there i am, pulling into the crowded parking lot. carrying his frail and short four foot two body into the intensive care, i knew there would be lasting damage. a man doesnt play modded minecraft all day and be left with the highest condition of physical ability, after all.

"nurse! ready a room for my friend! immediately!" i shout, as i shed my private investigators coat and reveal a second doctors coat underneath. i also pull out a surgical liscence from my back pocket, where it had been digging into my ass all night which hurt really bad. it also explained why i looked so bulky and puffy under 2 coats. from anonymous comes faint mumbling.

"need more… need more fried mushrooms… radishes…. the jade door… collapsing… oh… the sand… help…" it seems he had been having some kind of nightmarish hallucination, spurred on by him getting run over by a fucking car. i rush to the operating room. the rest of it is but a blur, as i endlessly repair damage thought to be deadly, and attempt to restore function to his marred body.

its 7 hours later, when he is finally placed in a visitation recovery room. maybe his 4 moms could come and visit him, it might help with this apparently insane state he had been put in. mutterings about, squids, of all things. squids? who likes squids? those damned creatures from the sea?

anons odd ramblings only seemed to continue from there, to my eternal dismay. "the truth… im unclear of the truth… 2003… cleopatra.. wife boobs…" i was deeply unsettled by this, and forever in grievance of the loss of one of my friends. as a strong male figure, i emotionally was unsure of what to do from here… a loss… devastating to this world.. one soul less among the masses of our earth… lifes but a walking shadow, a power player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more

#thnx

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wbficaholic · 8 months

Text

Bad Boy, a SessKag Fanfiction

Written for @gilded-sapphire's SessKag Fest 2023! -> Read on Ao3

Summary: He was the type she never knew she had, the type she couldn’t resist.

Excerpt:

It had been there from the beginning, if Kagome thought back on it. From the first time she’d seen Sesshoumaru smirking down at her from that monstrous oni’s shoulder. From the first time he’d disdained her as a ‘creature,’ and then, still looking down his nose at her in disbelieving contempt, had the gall to demand of her, ‘What are you?’—even after she’d done what he couldn’t and pulled Tessaiga from the stone.

It had been there later, when she’d shattered the spiked pauldron of his armor with her sacred arrow. When he’d plucked her next shining shot from midair and slanted his golden eyes toward her in a glare that could have scorched through solid stone. When he’d phased from view with a flicker only to reappear just before her, looming over her in open menace, and she’d met his searing eye dead-on—and if it hadn’t been for Inuyasha coming to her rescue, she didn’t know even now just what might have gone down between them.

She had the sense she wasn’t the only one who still wondered darkly about this.

Because it couldn’t just be in her head—of that, she was becoming increasingly certain. It was too tangible, too electric, this shared current of scintillating animosity that sparked to life between them whenever they were near.

It was something that went beyond the frisson of youki and reiki, something more primal, more raw and visceral than that kind of elementary clash. Something deeply personal.

He knew her name, and he called her ‘miko’ anyway. How could she not take that personally? The more their paths crossed, the more he chafed at her. His arrogance, his demonic condescension. He thought he was so powerful, so high and mighty. With flashing eyes, Kagome traced the smug, aristocratic lines of his inhuman face, and felt his own slit-pupiled stare scoring over her mortal self just as keenly.

No one else noticed these unspoken, heated exchanges. This was a private cold war they were waging, though why and to what end remained unclear. But the focus seemed to sharpen a bit more each time they crossed paths, pointed glance on pointed glance.

He’d taken in a little orphan girl. He'd stopped trying to wrest Tessaiga from Inuyasha. By and by, he’d turned his bloodthirst on Naraku instead. Sesshoumaru wasn’t a total monster. But he was still an infuriating prick. He made her teeth grind in indignation when he spoke about her to others as if she wasn’t standing right there. He made her blood boil with his cool glinting looks and scathing half-smiles.

The worst of it was, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

He made her furious, and it made her even more furious that she was so furious in the first place. She resented that just by being a jerk, he’d hijacked her emotions in this nefarious way. It was maddening. The only silver lining to her internal fuming over him was that it distracted her from the fact that Inuyasha was still hung up on Kikyou.

Kagome didn’t even realize he’d gone off again to meet up with her until she and her friends were sitting around the campfire, and she felt everyone’s eyes resting uncertainly on her. She’d been scowling again without realizing it, re-hashing the last time Sesshoumaru had gone out of his way to subtly antagonize her. She could only imagine the dark stormclouds that were shadowing her features and disconcerting her friends, who could only assume she was ruminating over Inuyasha and Kikyou.

“Oh,” she said suddenly, dispersing her thunderous expression with a smile and a wave, “sorry—I’m okay.”

“Are you sure, Kagome-chan?” Sango asked, frowning.

Kagome nodded, beaming back at her. “I was just lost in thought, that’s all. We’ve had a long day, haven’t we?”

Over the course of dinner, she managed to reassure her wary friends. The last thing she wanted to do was worry them, especially over something she couldn’t begin to put into words anyway.

This ratcheting whipcord of tension between her and Sesshoumaru—

Kagome felt there was nothing for her to do except to wait for it to break.

⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆ Read the rest on Ao3!

Photo by Ilias Chebbi on Unsplash

#sesskag #sesskag fanfiction #sesskagfest #sesskagfest2023 #sesshomaru #kagome #creator: wonderbug #inuyasha #inuyasha fanfiction

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red-hemlock · 22 days

Note

"Love Story with Zsasz" (good lort, sorry River, lmao)

Send “love story with ____” for my muse’s reaction on finding a romantic fanfiction about themselves paired with that character @sanguine-salvation

"Goodness, there's really more under this thing? Maybe I should change my name, and splurge for a brand new look." But alright, who's the next 'lucky duck' to be sacrificed upon the Altar of Ship with another piece of her sanity?

...Viktor Zsasz.

Okay-... She can kind-of see why some heart-eyed Gotham shipper might want to pair the two of them up. They both like knives, they both like knifing things, they both probably dance and finger-paint a little in the bloody-red aftermath. Tale as old as time and all of that good jazz, what more could a super-fun relationship need?

But is the fic any good? Now that's the million dollar question... Though considering Wattpad was batting 0-2 in her tag right now, River's not sure how much lower the bar can even go at this point.

"Well, here goes nothing, I suppose." She muses with a soul-steeling sigh, tentatively clicking the title.

But in the end, to her absolute shock, it was-... Quite the good read. Amazing even, considering the competition raised against it. A multi-chapter cross-over set in the world of that crazy car movie her daughter wanted to watch, Mad Max: Fury Road. It had the knives and knifing, madness and blood by the bucketful of course, as she and Zsasz wrested control of some clan called The Buzzards from their former leader.

Two Warlords, tearing across the dusty desert dunes in rusted, spike-covered Hell-cars. Raising chaos and the group up from the muck, from crusty scavengers into the greatest and most fearsome faction the Wasteland had ever seen. Sure, there might've been one too many hot n' handsy make-out sessions over corpses, that were more tooth than tongue; and the whole part of them choosing to die together, in a Bond-esque explosion-death ending was a bit ill-fitting. But at this point, River's just happy to see that neither of them were insultingly woobified; it could've been so much worse.

Witness them, indeed.

River never backed-out of a website so fast, how quick she was to pull-up her text messages.

2:30am [Tally Apple]: Hey.

2:30am [Tally Apple]: Hey you! ᕕ༼⌐■-■༽ᕗ

2:31am [Tally Apple]: Sleep is for the weak lookit this now [LINK]

2:33am [Tally Apple]: Be my hypothetical apocalypse bestie, Y/Y? I'll let you sit shotgun sometimes. ( ͡° ε ͡°)♥

#sanguine-salvation #Long Post #River: 8T #River: “Welcome to the fanfic harem I guess Viktor! Here's ur gift basket or something.”#(YOOOO BUT THESE TWO COULD PROBABLY LEGIT TEAR SHET UP IN MAD MAX LAND???)#(MAYBE NOT SO MUCH TOTAL WARLORDS LIKE FANFIC WRITER-PERSON DID. BUT THEY'D EITHER BE ABSOLUTE BADASSES.)#(OR TOTALLY SINK INTO THEIR MURDER-VICES AND BECOME EVEN WORSE VERSIONS OF THEMSELVES IN THE ABSOLUTE CHAOS. 8'D;;;;)

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shanie-the-komania-toyaddict · 1 year

Text

Shanie's Creation Masterlist!

Updated 04/18/24

Masterlist of all the fanworks I have out there.

Quick Link: My Steenerico Disney Fic, "The Happiest Luchador on Earth" is located HERE, while the rest of the in-universe stories, "Of Masks, Mice, and Men" are located HERE.

For anyone interested, both THLoE and OMMaM make up what I refer to as "The Generico!verse" due to the fact that the entire universe hinges on the singular notion that El Generico is NOT Sami Zayn and, in fact, Sami Zayn never existed in this universe, nor does Kevin Owens. There are only Steen and Generico in this universe and the stories are about the two of them meeting, falling in love, realizing they are in love, realizing how much they need each other, and really, just the two of them navigating the world together as best friends and eventual lovers, trying to get by despite their various neurodivergencies.

The rest of the fanworks are beneath cut

Music Videos

Wrestling

Wrestling - Zowens/Steenerico - You Grew On Me

Wresting - Zowens/Steenerico - Open Arms

WWE - Shane McMahon - Kings

WWE - Shane McMahon - Feet On The Ground

WWE - Shane McMahon - I Am The Fire

WWE - Shane McMahon - You're Gonna Go Far Kid

WWE - Shane McMahon - Written In The Stars

Doctor Who

Doctor Who - The Pond Family - Elevation

Doctor Who - The Pond Family - Who Wants To Live Forever

Doctor Who - The Brigadier Tribute - Hero

Doctor Who - The Companions - Never Say Goodbye

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Buffy - Dark Willow - Down With The Sickness

Buffy Episodic - "Superstar" - The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest

Read more at thewalrus.ca.

#Books #A Sentimental Education #Harry Potter #Podcast #Witch Please #Secret Feminist Agenda #Criticism #Academia #Fall Books 2022 #Illustration #Hannah McGregor

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imaginarydragonling · 2 years

Note

18 and 19 for the weird writing asks

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

With a cry, Shigeru wrests the blade from Kyoutani’s hand, twisting his arm while bringing a knee up into Kyoutani’s unprotected stomach. Kyoutani lets go with a grunt, and Shigeru’s shield clatters to the floor. He grabs Kyoutani by the collar, slams him up against the wall, and points the tip of the sword at Kyoutani’s exposed neck.

The shock in Kyoutani’s eyes fades into acceptance, shutting Shigeru out.

"You did it." Kyoutani’s voice is calm—too calm. He raises his chin to Shigeru, exposing his throat to Shigeru even more. "Do it." Kyoutani’s gaze holds his, unyielding. "Don't hold back. Like we promised."

The sword in his hand trembles and Kyoutani closes his eyes. Shigeru bites his lip and tastes blood. "How can you accept this?" he all but shouts. Kyoutani’s eyes fly open. Shigeru’s fist holding Kyoutani’s collar tightens. "Why aren't you trying to fight back?"

Kyoutani blinks. "You won. Fair and square.” Shigeru hates the next words that come out of Kyoutani’s mouth. “It was always going to end in one of two ways. Those are the rules."

"Since when do you care about rules?" Shigeru hisses.

"I've been fighting alone all my life. Until I met you. I'm glad I met you, Yahaba."

"Fuck you."

Kyoutani's face fills with grief, acceptance, and understanding. Shigeru can’t bear to look at it. He closes his eyes, closes the distance between them, and presses their lips together.

It's a reckless and desperate act. Shigeru fully expects Kyoutani to pull back, to wrench the sword from Shigeru's grip and plunge it into his breast. But even upon pain of death, Shigeru chooses this. Kyoutani will kill him for it, but Shigeru decides that he'd rather die and tell Kyoutani how he really feels than leave these feelings unspoken. It’s a stupid way to tell someone you love them. So prone to misunderstanding and rejection from surprise, suspicion, or plain old shock. At any moment now, Kyoutani is going to recover from the shock. And that will be the end of Shigeru’s life. So be it.

This is from my most recently published fic on Ao3, Champions. The backstory for this moment is largely in the subtext (there's exposition on it just before this passage but I was trying to convey most of the emotional story between Kyoutani and Yahaba in the passage itself).

The fic itself is a KyouHaba enemies-to-lovers story that is based on a Greek legend where each is a champion for a Greek god and they are supposed to fight to the death.

They've had to compete in several challenges before this and Yahaba's feelings have changed and grown over time.

I think the spirit and core of this passage has stayed the same from idea conception to final draft, but getting the thoughts out in paper and into prose I'm happy enough with to post has been more of a struggle than you would expect just from looking at the draft versions 🥲

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

It started with me watching the Haikyuu!! anime and absolutely falling in love with the series. This was back in 2015, I think, and after watching season 1, I wanted more content.

Cue Google which led me to fanfiction.net where I stumbled across an IwaOi fanfic. I found it again on Ao3 (which made it easier/nicer to read), got hooked on fanfiction, and the rest is history :)

Fanfic seemed like something I could do decently well (as opposed to, say, art) to contribute to the fandom so I started writing. I always knew writing itself wasn't as easy as it sounded, so I initially wrote and posted to Ao3 as a way to get feedback and improve my writing.

That didn't go so well because I really just heard crickets and the comments that I did get on my fic were all complimentary as opposed to critical (which is great, but didn't help me that much to grow as a writer).

So to keep learning, I followed writing advice on Tumblr, followed writing advice blogs, and just tried to keep writing. I found that asking a friend directly for feedback was helpful, and I've been fortunate enough to find one or two fandom friends who like me enough to read my stuff and give me feedback on it.

Other than that, I've tried joining writing servers, organising writing exercises to do with a group of writer friends, and participating in exchanges and bangs in an effort to figure out ways to write better/faster/more.

These days, I mostly write for myself. I find it a calming activity and it's satisfying to me just to be able to say I've completed writing a story. I've kind of given up on connecting with fandom. I just want to write and tell the story that I want to tell.

I'm not sure where I'm going with my writing. I have to think of writing as work and I try to write everyday to turn it into a habit. Maybe it will always just stay as a hobby. Right now, it's an accomplishment for me to just be able to finish a couple of long fic stories that I've spent a lot of time thinking about, so that's what I'm focusing on right now.

Thanks for asking!

Weird questions for writers

#joeys-piano #asked and answered #weird questions for writers #my writing #kyouhaba #kyouhaba champions #champions #writing

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vibestovibes · 2 years

Text

time fuckery | fanfiction recommendations

time fuckery includes: time travel, time loops, dimension hopping / isekai, *character* being displaced in time, power au (wherein a power having to do with time is a major theme), etc

*heed the tags and warnings.

*list may be changed and/or updated.

My Second Life as an Anti-Heroine - Anommalcolm, Palhinhaea, mariagonerlj - 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… - 山口悟 | My Next Life as a Villainess - Yamaguchi Satoru (Light Novels) [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24740635/chapters/59811412

Chapters: 43/44 Fandom: 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… - 山口悟 | My Next Life as a Villainess - Yamaguchi Satoru (Light Novels), 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… | My Next Life as a Villainess (Anime) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Katarina Claes/Jeord Stuart, Katarina Claes/Self Respect, Katarina Claes/Keith Claes, Katarina Claes/Sirius Deek, Katarina Claes/Rafael Walt, Maria Campbell & Katarina Claes, Mary Hunt/Alan Stuart Characters: Katarina Claes, Original Katarina Claes, Jeord Stuart, Maria Campbell (My Next Life as a Villainess), Keith Claes, Sirius Deek, Rafael Walt, Mary Hunt (My Next Life as a Villainess), Alan Stuart (My Next Life as a Villainess), Marchioness Deek, Luigi Claes, Miridiana Claes Additional Tags: Katarina Has No Effs Left to Give, darker than canon, Justice for OG Katarina!, Eventual Romance, But She'll Burn the Whole World Down First!, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Reverse Harem, More realistic than canon, Time Travel, Fix-It, Political Alliances, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Development, POV Female Character, Female Protagonist, Black Comedy, Comedy of Errors, Slow Burn, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Women Being Awesome, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Multiple Relationships, Multiple routes, Story Structured Like Otome Game, Story Structured Like Visual Novel, Multiple Endings, Maria Ending is Finished, Raphael Ending is Finished, Keith Ending is Finished, Jeord Ending is Being Written! Series: Part 1 of My Second Life as an Anti-Heroine - Extended Universe Summary:

Being murdered had a way of changing even the most stubborn person’s view of the world... and Lady Katarina Claes, for all her good breeding, was no exception. But now that she's been reborn a year before her first death, she's vowed to burn away her weaknesses, wrest control away from her dark-hearted fiancé, and finally become the mistress of her own fate!

...Now if only she could stop accidentally seducing her would-be pawns...

(Note: This story will act like an otome game and will begin with a common route that eventually branches into multiple routes, 1 per suitor that Katarina has. All of her suitors will eventually get their own solo paired ending with Katarina, with a few more endings thrown into the fray as well. You can ship all the ships here!)

see you yesterday - glyphic - 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25530661/chapters/61944979

Chapters: 9/? Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn Characters: Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Niè Huáisāng, Luó "Mián Mián" Qīngyáng, Lán Yuàn | Lán Sīzhuī, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín, Wēn Qíng, Mò Xuányǔ, Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén, Ā-Qìng (Módào Zǔshī) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Ghost Hunters, Time Loop, Case Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Angst with a Happy Ending, Slow Burn, time-loops as a metaphor for [waves hands] Summary:

On Halloween night, an exiled demonic cultivator and a Lan disciple get stuck in a time-loop, find each other, and try to figure it all out.

Living Memory, My Fate to Follow - Chapter 1 - elsa3beth - Star Wars - All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29262768/chapters/71858484

Chapters: 30/40 Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Original Clone Trooper Character(s) Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda (Star Wars), CC-2224 | Cody, Original Clone Trooper Character(s), Clone Troopers (Star Wars), Original Jedi Character(s), Qui-Gon Jinn's ghost, Mace Windu, Jedi Council (Star Wars), Anakin Skywalker, Bail Organa, Garen Muln, CT-7567 | Rex, 212th Attack Battalion (Star Wars), Even Piell, Dooku | Darth Tyranus, Padmé Amidala Additional Tags: Politics, Military Background, News Media, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, The Force, Time Travel Fix-It, Fix-It, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, BAMF Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Hurt Obi-Wan Kenobi, Slow Build, seriously the angst takes a while, but it's gonna be better for it, Protective Obi-Wan Kenobi, Protective Clone Troopers (Star Wars), Jedi Culture & Tradition (Star Wars), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Military Slice of Life, Grief/Mourning Series: Part 1 of Living Memory Summary:

Ben Kenobi expected his tutelage on Tatooine under the force spirit of Qui-Gon Jinn to yield a new perspective on the galaxy and his place within it. He just did not expect his last lesson to be so…literal. Finding himself back in the early days of the Clone Wars, Ben, now once again General Obi-Wan Kenobi, must struggle with the failures of a past he has long suppressed, while others conspire to give him hope for a future that might yet be.

It is a road paved with military campaigns, media faux pas, too many OCs to name, good Jedi, and a very very slowly developed angst that will eventually come to a boil. An exploration of war and friendship, and the moral grays of the Star Wars universe.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Time-Travelers - blackkat - Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27518230/chapters/67294180

Chapters: 16/27 Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Mace Windu/CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives, Depa Billaba/CC-10/994 | Grey/Styles, CC-8826 | Neyo/CC-6454 | Ponds, CT-21-0408 | CT-1409 | Echo/Lando Calrissian Characters: Mace Windu, CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555, Depa Billaba, CC-6454 | Ponds, CC-10/994 | Grey, Styles (Star Wars), CC-8826 | Neyo, Spar (Star Wars), CT-21-0408 | CT-1409 | Echo, Lando Calrissian, Han Solo, Chirrut Îmwe, Baze Malbus, CT-782 | Hevy Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Humor, Action/Adventure, Fix-It, Kidnapping, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Time Loop, Temporary Character Death, Eventual Happy Ending Summary:

Mace's morning starts with far too much paperwork. Being kidnapped at blaster-point is honestly an improvement.

Unexpected Awakening (The Rewrite) - Rhiw - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15436701/chapters/35831454

Chapters: 17/? Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Qui-Gon Jinn & Feemor, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Feemor, Qui-Gon Jinn & Xanatos (Star Wars), Bruck Chun & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Rael Averross & Qui-Gon Jinn, Dooku & Qui-Gon Jinn, Rael Averross & Dooku Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Feemor (Star Wars), Xanatos (Star Wars), Yoda (Star Wars), Bant Eerin, Garen Muln, Reeft (Star Wars), Bruck Chun, Quinlan Vos, Siri Tachi, Master Kant, Count Dooku, Ky Narec, Mace Windu, Depa Billaba, Cin Drallig, Rael Averross, Komari Vosa Additional Tags: Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Grief/Mourning, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Healing, Jedi Training, Jedi Culture, Jedi, Family Feels, Qui-Gon's Former Padawans, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Poor Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan Needs a Hug, Feemor Also Needs a Hug, Qui-Gon did a number on his padawan's okay?, But he's not a bad dude, Protective Feemor, Reluctant Protective Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan is Super Overwhelmed for a bit, Slow Build, No Real Romantic Relationship, Depression, Father-Son Relationship, Brotherly Bonding, Mandalorians (Star Wars), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Forgiveness, no beta we die like men, No character bashing, Jedi Culture & Tradition (Star Wars), Mandalorian Culture (Star Wars), Stewjoni Obi-Wan Kenobi Series: Part 2 of Unexpected Awakening AU Summary:

The life of General Kenobi is cut short at the hands of his Padawan, but the sight that greets his eyes upon awakening is not that of blinding light of the Force, but the Jedi Temple he knew when he was still a youth. As he struggles to understand the path laid out before him, Obi-Wan unwittingly captures the attention of a singularly unusual Temple Guard, and that of a reluctant Qui-Gon Jinn.

Harry Potter and the Greatest Show - shadowscribe - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15087428/chapters/34983008

Chapters: 24/? Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort Characters: Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy, Neville Longbottom, Hannah Abbott, Susan Bones, Blaise Zabini, Mandy Brocklehurst Additional Tags: do not copy to another site, Time Travel, Master of Death Harry Potter, Slytherin Harry Potter, Harry living his own life, Harry has no idea what he is doing, but he tries, Moral Ambiguity, Gray Harry, Neutral Harry, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, but he also tries, it just doesnt work out the way he wants, Slytherins are people too, Work In Progress, irregular updates, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Paganism, Pagan Festivals, papa snape, Slow Burn, But does it count as slow burn if we are just waiting for Harry to grow up, no beta we die like men, monstrously long fic, seriously, the sort of fic where you sink up to your eyeballs and marinate for a while, it is 120k words before Harry and Tom even talk, this started out as crack but then it got serious, The Author Regrets Nothing Series: Part 1 of Look At My Life Summary:

The last real thing Harry remembers is standing across from Voldemort and watching the killing curse fly at his face.

Then he visited a fluffy white limbo that somewhat resembles King Cross Station and instead of choosing to move on or go back he does something else entirely.

And wakes up in his cupboard on the morning of Dudley's eleventh birthday.

Because that makes sense.

(No. No it doesn't.)

But Harry is going to roll with it anyway.

A Spanner in the Clockworks - All_five_pieces_of_Exodia - 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24794752/chapters/59962396

Chapters: 37/? Fandom: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Bakugou Katsuki & Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku & Todoroki Shouto, Midoriya Izuku & Yagi Toshinori | All Might, Midoriya Izuku & Uraraka Ochako, Midoriya Inko & Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku & Shinsou Hitoshi, Midoriya Izuku & Everyone, Class 1-A & Midoriya Izuku, Iida Tenya & Midoriya Izuku, Eri & Midoriya Izuku, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead & Midoriya Izuku Characters: Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Inko, Bakugou Katsuki, Yagi Toshinori | All Might, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Tsukauchi Naomasa, Shinsou Hitoshi, Uraraka Ochako, Iida Tenya, Eri (My Hero Academia), Nedzu (My Hero Academia), Shuuzenji Chiyo | Recovery Girl, Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Todoroki Shouto, Asui Tsuyu, Kirishima Eijirou, Class 1-A (My Hero Academia), Akaguro Chizome | Stain, Chisaki Kai | Overhaul Additional Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, BAMF Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku Has One for All Quirk, Midoriya Izuku Tries His Best, Midoriya Izuku Needs A Hug, Vigilante Midoriya Izuku, Secrets, Missing Persons, Good Parent Midoriya Inko, Worried Midoriya Inko, Midoriya Izuku never receives One for All, but he still has it, Time Travel, Misunderstandings, Izuku has to search for himself, Planner!Midoriya Izuku, Paranoid Midoriya Izuku, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Self-Doubt, Bakugou Katsuki Swears A Lot, Bakugou Katsuki will eventually be a Good Friend, Bakugou Katsuki Redemption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, but like, Not too much, Parental Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Parental Yagi Toshinori | All Might, Midoriya Izuku cries a lot, Midoriya Izuku is a Mess, Things Go Wrong, things go right, Time travel is hard, dimensional travel is harder, Dimension Travel, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Midoriya Izuku Goes to UA High School, Midoriya Izuku's Hair Is Fluffy Because It's Full Of Secrets, saw this tag and couldn't resist, Multiple Pov Summary:

When Izuku wakes up in the forest not far from his home, he isn't prepared for what's about to come next. Izuku's never dealt with time travel, after all, but that seems to be the least of his worries. He's not in his own timeline, for one, and he may or may not have been missing for the past few months.

With the threat of a future only Izuku knows about, a strange missing persons case, everyone around him getting suspicious, and a quirk he shouldn't have, Izuku has his work cut out for him.

Ouroboros - NovusArs - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20913215/chapters/49716056

Chapters: 23/? Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Characters: Harry Potter, Salazar Slytherin, Petunia Evans Dursley, Arabella Figg, Vernon Dursley, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff, Godric Gryffindor, Neville Longbottom, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Hogwarts Founders, Hogwarts Ghosts, Helena Ravenclaw, Hogwarts Students, Hogwarts Staff, Draco Malfoy, Florean Fortescue, House-Elves (Harry Potter), Hedwig (Harry Potter), Tom Riddle | Voldemort Additional Tags: Harry Potter is Salazar Slytherin, Harry Potter is So Done, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, POV Neville Longbottom, POV Multiple, Kneazles, Hogwarts, Assuming Hogwarts was built before William the Conquerer, Founders were all born sometime between 1010-1025 ce, Original Character(s), Reincarnation, Time Travel, sort of time travel, Unreliable Narrator, POV Harry Potter, Harry might be a cat person, he doesn't understand how he became a cat person but blames Mrs. Figg, Magical world has a wizarding council which is like the house of lords - sort of, There is also a house of commons but that might not show up much, I guess that makes Harry sort of a lord, Harry is a Lord, Harry is Lord Slytherin, Execpt the lord title isn't used, Harry might come across as a grumpy old person some times, he just wants to tell people to get off his lawn (away from his school), Worldbuilding, Diagon Alley, druid magic, Hogsmeade, runic magic, Temporary Mental Issues, Neville Longbottom is a Good Friend, Why is everything constantly trying to kill Harry?, Scenes of child abuse and torture Series: Part 2 of Ouroboros Summary:

Salazar Slytherin woke up in the body of a three year old boy with the most ridiculous head of black hair & a runic scar craved into his forehead. The last thing he recalled was dying. Now it is over 900 years in the future. There are a million things to deal with between new inventions, lost knowledge, missing spirits, & parasitic dark lords.

Spread your Wings - Araceil - 人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35856568/chapters/89409262

Chapters: 4/4 Fandom: 人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Original Shěn Qīngqiū/Tiānláng-jūn, Tiānláng-jūn & Zhúzhī-láng Characters: Original Shěn Qīngqiū, Tiānláng-jūn, Zhúzhī-láng Additional Tags: Slice of Life, Adventure, Drama, Humour, Romance, shen jiu happiness agenda, timetravel, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Rebirth and Reincarnation, alternative universe - everyone lives/nobody dies, This is not always a good thing, Everyone remembers SVSSS, Everyone remembers PIDW, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, mostly comfort, Shen Jiu Letting Go of Resentment, Moving On, Crafter Shen Jiu, Rogue Cultivator Shen Jiu, Historical Inaccuracies, but less than you'd think, Gremlin Tiānláng-jūn, Long Suffering Zhuzhi-lang, Himbo Tiānláng-jūn, Demon Lord Tianlang-Jun, (Not as dumb as he pretends to be) Summary:

When Shen Jiu opened his eyes, once again staring at the detestable ceiling of the woodshed within the Qiu Estate, he decided to live for himself. He got to his feet, shook off his shackles, and walked away from his nightmares, his hatreds, his resentments, and all the people who ever wronged him. He walked away from all of it. From promises broken, from people who betrayed him, from a life he had never wanted, and from a life that had never wanted him.

In one lifetime he had been a lowly, greedy, grasping creature. Consuming everything around him, ugly, small, and pathetic.

In his second lifetime his body had been stolen from him, and he lurked in the back of himself, watching as his body was puppeted, as his life was stolen.

In this life, he vowed not to make the same mistakes. In this life, he would be free. He would throw off the shell of Shen Qingqiu, Shen Jiu, and find freedom.

Resurrect The Living - fascinationex - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13978644/chapters/32183310

Chapters: 34/? Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort Characters: Harry Potter, Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Severus Snape, Peter Pettigrew, Quirinus Quirrell, Sirius Black, Dursley Family (Harry Potter) Additional Tags: Master of Death Harry Potter, Slow Burn, like very very slow burn, Violence, Necromancy, Mental Instability, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, dead things, A lot of dead things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, It's au before we even get to the time travel, don't think I can't see you putting spoilers in the bookmarks smh, Minor Character Death, This fic is tagged for its pairing but pls note it is gen for a long time, Body Horror, Again this fic is very slow paced!!!, Time Travel Series: Part 2 of harry potter works by fascinationex Summary:

Circumstance makes Harry an offer he can't refuse.

“I can get you the Elixir of Life,” Harry says. “But I need your help with something else.”

“You,” says Voldemort, cautious now, wary now that this confrontation hasn’t gone at all like he expects, a little incredulous, “need Lord Voldemort to help you?”

Harry looks right past him for a second, jaw tense. “Yeah. You’re the only one who can, apparently.”

Burn Your Biographies, Rewrite Your History - phlintandsteel - Marvel Cinematic Universe [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16356734/chapters/38275286

Chapters: 30/30 Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Howard Stark/Maria Stark Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, Howling Commandos (mentions), Bucky's sisters (mentions), Steve & Peggy's kids (mentions), Edwin Jarvis (mentions), Maria Stark, Nick Fury, Phil Coulson, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, Happy Hogan Additional Tags: Time Travel, Dimension Travel, canon divergence like whoa, tags to be updated as I go, depictions of ptsd, Peggy remains a badass, stay at home dad Steve Rogers, Bucky passes through the crucible, Peggy will always be a badass, Howard does not drink responsibly, warning for emotional Steve Rogers, some implied period typical homophobia, but no violence because of being gay, explicit 1960’s gay sex, Bucky Barnes/OMC - Freeform, but this is still very much a WinterIron endgame fic, OC death, Howard is an ass, Grieving Bucky, The Vietnam War, Bucky has empty nest syndrome, Army Ranger Bucky, Colonel Bucky Barnes, Familiar Faces, Coming Out, MAJOR INJURY TO A MAJOR CHARACTER, Marjie is a badass, Fate, passing the torch, Student Bucky, Bucky Barnes defender of drag queens, Tony Stark is a genius and don't forget it, Going Home, Lust at First Sight, Howard continues to be a drunk, Marjie feels like she should have seen this coming, Steve gives Bucky a flat look, Honesty is the best policy, Bucky is kind of a slut if you haven't noticed, canon Tony was a total slut at 20 and nothing about this fic changed that, my use of the term slut here is affectionate, Maria is fine with it, Jarvis ships it, who cares what Howard thinks nobody asks him, Rogers' family Christmas traditions, Developing Relationship, meeting each other's friends, Sex on the Beach, Bucky is a romantic sap, malfunctions, emergency surgery, Tony designs a new arm, the move for moon independence, Tony solves the gravity problem, relationship milestones, Edwin Jarvis will be missed in every universe, Howard fucks up, Tony pays the price, Uncle Steve is PISSED, welcome to the super family, confronting the past, Bucky's book tour, funerals are for the living, the wedding of the century, Portals, Emotions everywhere Summary:

This is a companion fic/sequel to syriala’s amazing work, The Looking Glass Self. You should definitely check it out or reread it before starting this one ;)

SUMMARY:

The fall of the first domino, the flap of a butterfly’s wings, or James Buchanan Barnes. Only a time traveler could hope to figure out which one of those things had the greatest cascade of impacts on history.

Good thing this story has one.

Bucky survives HYDRA’s experimentation just to get stuck in the future (of an alternate dimension) for a week. He’s supremely thankful for the warnings he got there, that prevented the ‘Winter Soldier’ from ever becoming one of his titles, and prevented Steve from earning the nickname “Cap-cicle”. He’s pretty sure he’s dodged both those bullets. Now he just has to make it far enough into the future to meet his alternate-future-self’s fella, and maybe help out with an alien invasion or two along the way. Piece of cake, right?

The Desert Storm - Chapter 1 - Blue_Sunshine - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18206480/chapters/43070102

Chapters: 9/9 Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Shmi Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, Shaak Ti, Mace Windu, Qui-Gon Jinn, Yoda (Star Wars), Tahl (Star Wars), Bant Eerin, Gardulla the Hutt, OC Healer Ni Hiella, OC Padawan Essja Chias, Quinlain Vos Additional Tags: Time Travel, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Tatooine Slave Culture, Tatooine (Star Wars), Jedi Temple (Star Wars), Jedi Council - Freeform, Jedi, Mandalorian Culture, Jedi Culture, Old Ben Kenobi, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Young Obi-Wan Kenobi, Young Anakin Skywalker, pre-TPM, edited by Kurukami, Wordcount: Over 100.000, Wordcount: Over 500.000 Series: Part 1 of The Desert Storm Summary:

In Tatooine legend, the sandstorm is Lukka, the Fury, both cleansing and damning. Lukka, the slaves believed, was Justice, was he who remade the world, and remade the soul.

The storm screams at him, and Obi-Wan Kenobi screams back.

Lynchpin - ShanaStoryteller - 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24213475/chapters/58330003

Chapters: 12/12 Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín & Jiāng Yànlí, Jiāng Yànlí & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín & Jiāng Yànlí & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín/Wēn Qíng, but only at the end - Relationship Characters: Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Jiāng Yànlí, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín, Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén, Niè Huáisāng, Niè Míngjué, Luó "Mián Mián" Qīngyáng, Jīn Zǐxuān, Mèng Yáo | Jīn Guāngyáo, Wēn Qíng (Módào Zǔshī) Additional Tags: Time Travel, Fix-It, jiang cheng fixes everything through the power of brotherly love, knowing everyone's secrets helps too Summary:

He can’t get Jin Guangyao’s words out of his head.

If he’d only believed in Wei Wuxian, if he’d only been willing to stand up for him, could it all have been avoided?

All of Tomorrow's Yesterdays - glimmerglanger - Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31021475

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Obi-Wan Kenobi Characters: Padmé Amidala, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Clone Wars Characters Additional Tags: Brief Physical Abuse, Canon-Typical Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Time Travel of a Sorts, Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Past Canonical Anidala, Trauma Related to Death, Mentions of Canonical Character Deaths That Don't Happen Summary:

Padmé had thought she was dying, but she was obviously still alive. And the pain in her stomach seemed to have gone. In fact, everything seemed to have gone. There was no stench of sweat and burned skin. No smears of blood to be found. And there were no medical droids.

OR, the one where Padmé wakes up in the past after the events of Mustafar and does her best to fix all that once went wrong.

Written for Star Wars Big Bang 2021!

Binary Star - esama - Star Wars - All Media Types [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12722319/chapters/29013018

Chapters: 11/15 Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Obi-Wan Kenobi Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Other Character Tags to Be Added, Dooku (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Torture, Character Death, Psychological Trauma, Time Travel, Self-cest, yep, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Out of Character, Soul Bond, Alternate Universe, Domestic, Family, Sexual Content, Do not repost, Don't copy to another site Summary:

In which a Master Kenobi and a General Kenobi emerge to replace a dying Knight Kenobi.

a lesson you should heed (try, try again) - aloneintherain - 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21775378

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Midoriya Izuku & Shinsou Hitoshi, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead & Midoriya Izuku Characters: Midoriya Izuku, Shinsou Hitoshi, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead Additional Tags: Time Loop, Angst, Temporary Character Death, Suicidal Thoughts, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, izuku's issues with trust and sacrifice, Miscommunication, in that izuku doesn't think to tell the adults around him that he's going through the unthinkable, and tries to shoulder the burden on his own, Midoriya Izuku Needs A Hug Summary:

Izuku doesn't know why the day keeps resetting. He doesn't know why he's trapped on campus, or why there's no phone reception, or why Aizawa and Shinsou keep losing their memories of the Saturdays they've already lived, while Izuku remains constantly, painfully aware.

But he does know this: Aizawa and Shinsou keep dying, over and over again, in more brutal and creative ways. And it's his job to save them.

Morning Light - FallenBrie - 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25159957

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Dazai Osamu & Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs), Kunikida Doppo & Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs), Akutagawa Ryuunosuke & Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs), Nakahara Chuuya & Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs), Armed Detective Agency Ensemble & Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs), Edogawa Ranpo & Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu & Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu & Kunikida Doppo (Bungou Stray Dogs) Characters: Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu (Bungou Stray Dogs), Kunikida Doppo (Bungou Stray Dogs), Edogawa Ranpo (Bungou Stray Dogs), Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs), Akutagawa Ryuunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs) Additional Tags: Hurt Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs), Time Loop, Time Travel, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Armed Detective Agency (Bungou Stray Dogs), Armed Detective Agency as Family, Character Death, but obviously he keeps coming back because time loop, Suicide Attempt, Kunikida and Dazai are Atsushi's parents don't @ me, everyone loves and protects Atsushi, As it should be Summary:

Atsushi stares for a long moment, taking that in. “That’s it? I just have to die and I’ll be let go?”

“You’ll exit the loop. Sounds fairly simply but remember the time limit, your healing ability is going to be working against you here,” Ranpo corrects.

“I almost die all the time - “ He laughs, a weight in his chest lifting. “I’m going to get out of here!”

Atsushi gets stuck in a time loop and severely underestimates just how dedicated his family is to keeping him alive

moments from his grasp - lilithiumwords - Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime) [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12737454/chapters/29047671

Chapters: 6/? Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov Characters: Katsuki Yuuri, Victor Nikiforov, Yuri!!! on Ice Ensemble Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Slow Burn, Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Vicchan Lives, Ice Skating, Past Relationship(s), POV Alternating, Mutual Pining, Friends to Lovers, Rivalry, Anxiety, Time Travel, Mild Sexual Content, Social Media, Texting, Depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Supernatural Elements Summary:

Yuuri dies in a tragic accident -- and wakes two years in the past. He can't go back home.

He has to decide whether he wants to live it all over again: Sochi, the Grand Prix Final, Viktor...

Viktor, who doesn't know him.

C'est La Vie - Chapter 1 - cywscross - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3390668/chapters/7419224

Chapters: 9/? Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter Characters: Harry Potter, Hadrian Evans, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Orion Black, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Fleur Delacour, Viktor Krum, Cedric Diggory, James Potter, Lily Evans Potter, Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Bathsheda Babbling, Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, Theodore Nott, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Gabrielle Delacour, Hogwarts Students, Hogwarts Staff Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Time Travel, Dimension Travel, Original Character(s), Language, Violence, canon only until end of fifth year with an extra six-year wartime period thrown in after that, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Don't copy to another site Summary:

The war ends on Harry's twenty-first Halloween, and, one year later, with nothing truly holding him in that world, Fate takes this opportunity to toss her favourite hero into a different dimension to repay her debt. A new, stress-free life in exchange for having fulfilled her prophecy. A life where Neville is the Boy-Who-Lived instead, James and Lily are still alive, and that Harry Potter is relatively normal but a downright arse. Dimension-travelling Harry just wants to know why he has no say in the matter. And why he's fourteen again. And why Fate thinks, in all her infinite wisdom, that his hero complex won't eventually kick in. Then again, that might be exactly why Fate dumped him there.

Again and Again - Athy - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439865/chapters/749908

Chapters: 44/? Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Potter/Voldemort, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle Characters: Harry Potter, Voldemort, Tom Riddle, Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy Additional Tags: Do-Over, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Dark!Harry, Slash, TM/HP, HP/TM, LV/HP - Freeform, HP/LV - Freeform, Time Travel Series: Part 1 of Again and Again Summary:

The Do-Over Fic - a chance to do things again, but this time-To Get it Right. But is it really such a blessing as it appears? A jaded, darker, bitter, and tired wizard who just wants to die; but can't. A chance to learn how to live, from the most unexpected source. Story is high on Political intrigue. Dumbledore!bashing slytherin!harry, dark!harry, eventual slash, lv/hp

If We Had More Time - FalconLux - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6151330/chapters/14093896

Chapters: 5/? Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape, Harry Potter/Cedric Diggory(briefly) Characters: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Severus Snape, Cedric Diggory, Luna Lovegood, Albus Dumbledore, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Remus Lupin, Molly Weasley, Ginny Weasley, Other Weasleys Additional Tags: Snarry Final Pairing, Eventual Snarry, Time-Turners, fast pacing, Increasingly Dark Harry, Increasingly Dark Hermione, Homosexuality, Heterosexuality (not Harry), Work In Progress, Tags May Change, unfinished work, AU after Prisoner of Azkaban, slight ron bashing, Top Harry, Frottage, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Azkaban Series: Part 5 of W.I.P. Collection Summary:

Inspired by the existence of time-turners, Harry and Hermione conspire to always have one on hand, a fact that will change much as events unfold.

WARNING: This is a W.I.P. It is not completed and it may never be finished or even continued. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Beyond the Breaking Point - FalconLux - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6573724/chapters/15040960

Chapters: 8/? Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Younger Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy, Severus Snape/Lucius Malfoy, Remus Lupin/Sirius Black Characters: Harry Potter, Harry Potter 2.0, Albus Dumbledore, Lord Voldemort | Tom Riddle Jr., Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Weasleys - Character, Other canon characters, minor OC characters - Character Additional Tags: Tomarry/Harrymort, Drarry, wolfstar, snucius, Harry Adopts Harry, Powerful Harry, Intelligent Harry, Independent Harry, Slytherin Harry, Gray Harry, Slash, slight ron bashing, Slight Molly bashing, Manipulative Dumbledore, mentions of child abuse, Work In Progress, unfinished work, Tags May Change, rating will increase Series: Part 7 of W.I.P. Collection Summary:

Certain that he’d been about to die, Harry is mystified to find himself alive and healthy, and somehow in 1981. Disillusioned to Dumbledore’s meddling in his life, when he discovers his fifteen-month-old self in a basket on the Dursleys’ doorstep, Harry does the only thing he can. He takes the child with him.

WARNING: This story is a W.I.P. It is not finished. It may never be finished. Updates will be sporadic. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

The Difference A Soul Makes - FalconLux - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22945375/chapters/54848749

Chapters: 7/? Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage Relationships: Harry Potter/Voldemort | Tom Riddle, Severus Snape/?, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Malfoy Characters: Harry Potter, Remus Lupin, Lucius Malfoy, Severus Snape, Lord Voldemort | Tom Riddle, Narcissa Malfoy, Albus Dumbledore, Sirius Black, Draco Malfoy, Assorted Weasleys, Neville Longbottom, Augusta Longbottom, Abraxas Malfoy Additional Tags: Genius Harry, Ancient Harry, Sane Voldemort, Decent Malfoys, Reincarnation, Minimal Bashing of anyone, Possible Chan, But nothing below 15 or 16 at worst, And only physical age, Necromancy, Magical Theory, world building, Brief mentions of child abuse, Dursleys are awful, BAMF Harry, Work In Progress, Rating May Change, Tags May Change, Tags may be added, Dark Harry, Or maybe Dark Gray Harry, Slice of Life Series: Part 15 of W.I.P. Collection Summary:

Thanks to a ritual in his first life, he’s been reincarnating for millennia. Every death has resulted in being born anew nine months later. He’s always magical, always male, and always in possession of all his memories, but always in a different body and of a different family. This time, he has been born to a naive young couple with high ideals and little understanding but an enormous well of love for their son that he cannot fault. This time, he is called Harry Potter.

This story is a Work In Progress. It is not finished. It may never be finished. Updates will be sporadic. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Reverti Ad Praeteritum - Batsutousai - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6226465/chapters/14265793

Chapters: 30/30 Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang, Gracia Hughes/Maes Hughes, Mei Chan | May Chang/Alphonse Elric, past Edward Elric/Winry Rockbell Characters: Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric, Winry Rockbell, Mei Chan | May Chang, Roy Mustang, Maes Hughes, Gracia Hughes, Nina Tucker, Elicia Hughes, Basque Grand, Alex Louis Armstrong, Original Characters, Scar (Fullmetal Alchemist) Additional Tags: Series Spoilers, Explicit Language, Canon-Typical Violence, Mute Edward Elric, Original Character Death(s), Fluff and Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Adultery, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Guilty Edward Elric, Edward Elric Swears, Time Travel Fix-It, Podfic Available Summary:

Unwillingly forced to serve as a human trial for a crazy alchemist experimenting with time travel, Edward Elric finds himself standing across from Truth in the moment it takes his leg from him. Armed with the knowledge of what's to come and burdened with guilt for the choices he'd made as an adult, Ed sets out to fix every mistake he ever made and save every life they ever lost, no matter what it takes.

Visionary - esama - Naruto [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6782338/chapters/15497542

Chapters: 12/? Fandom: Naruto Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Uzumaki Naruto & Hatake Kakashi & Uchiha Obito, Uzumaki Naruto/Hatake Kakashi/Uchiha Obito, Uzumaki Naruto/Hatake Kakashi/Uchiha Obito/Orochimaru Characters: Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Obito, Hatake Kakashi, Other Character Tags to Be Added, Jiraiya (Naruto), Orochimaru (Naruto), Original Characters, Tsunade (Naruto) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Time Travel, Not Canon Compliant, Body Horror, Body Modification, multiple eyes, Sharing a Body, Crack, Ridiculously Over Powered Character, Out of Character, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, vitiligo, Sexual Content, Teacher-Student Relationship, Self-Esteem Issues, Body Image, Do not repost, Don't copy to another site Summary:

A last desperate measure, last foolish hope, last chance. Of course it went wrong.

(It's your usual time travel fic and then it just isn't.)

Sidelines - Chapter 1 - esama - Katekyou Hitman Reborn! [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5645389/chapters/13001206

Chapters: 16/16 Fandom: Katekyou Hitman Reborn! Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Sawada Iemitsu/Sawada Nana Characters: Sawada Tsunayoshi, Hibari Kyouya, Sasagawa Kyouko, Kurokawa Hana, Sawada Nana, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sawada Iemitsu, Kusakabe Tetsuya, Reborn, Yamamoto Takeshi Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Apocalypse, Time Travel, BAMF Sawada Tsunayoshi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Angst, Do not repost, Don't copy to another site Summary:

The world ended and Tsuna survived.

Sailing the Stars - Chapter 1 - esama - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28949799/chapters/71035644

Chapters: 32/32 Fandom: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game), Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Desmond Miles, Eno Cordova, BD-1 (Star Wars), Original Clone Trooper Character(s), Original Droid Characters (Star Wars), Barriss Offee, Luminara Unduli, Shaak Ti Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Time Travel, Epistolary, Don't copy to another site, Droid Feels (Star Wars), Clone Feels (Star Wars), Brotherhood, Rebuilding, Trans Clone Troopers (Star Wars) Summary:

Desmond accidentally strands himself in distant future, where the Solar System has been long ago abandoned, and humans have spread themselves across the stars.

Rock Bottom - esama - Final Fantasy VII [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179471

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Cloud Strife/Vincent Valentine Characters: Cloud Strife, Aerith Gainsborough, Vincent Valentine, Angeal Hewley, Genesis Rhapsodos, Sephiroth, Cid Highwind, Barret Wallace, Yuffie Kisaragi Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Time Travel, cross dressing, Makeovers, Destruction, Explosions, Human Trafficking, Crack, so much crack, Swearing, Do not repost, Don't copy to another site Summary:

In which Cloud is so not doing this again. Except then he is.

The Straight Path (Until The End Of My Days) - RayShippouUchiha - Marvel Cinematic Universe [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26262460

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark/James "Bucky" Barnes Characters: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes, James "Rhodey" Rhodes Additional Tags: V Shaped Poly Stuckony, Stuckony endgame, Time Travel, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Angst, Murder, Dark Steve Rogers, Major Character Undeath, Character Death, Time Travel Fix-It, Sort Of, Obsessive Behavior, Steve Rogers Backflips Out Of Canon, Because Tony Stark Dies, honestly same, Angst with a Happy Ending, Mildly Dubious Consent, Because Of Identity Issues, Steve Commits A Few Murders For Reasons Summary:

“Buck,” Steve whispers then, voice low like a secret, “I don’t … I don’t think I want to live in a world without him. I don’t think I can.”

“Ah hell Stevie,” Bucky laughs, soft and fond and just a bit sad. “I always knew that.”

backslide - blackkat - Naruto [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1382857/chapters/2895346

Chapters: 32/32 Fandom: Naruto Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto, Hatake Kakashi/future!Uzumaki Naruto, Namiashi Raidou/Shiranui Genma, Platonic Uzumaki Naruto/Uchiha Sasuke/Haruno Sakura Characters: Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke, Hatake Kakashi, Shiranui Genma, Namiashi Raidou, Sarutobi Hiruzen, Uchiha Obito, Haruno Sakura, Mitarashi Anko, Yuuhi Kurenai, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 (Naruto), Uchiha Itachi, Tsunade (Naruto) Additional Tags: Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, slow build romance, Angst, Humor, Fluff, Friendship, (Joking) Marriage Proposals, lots of them - Freeform, Gratuitous Fluff Story (Not Really Meant to Be Taken Seriously), You've been warned, Schmoop, Fox Summons!, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Families of Choice, Kurama adopts all the things, no really all of them, Genin Puppy Piles, team 7 fluff, Lots of that too, Kakashi is ridiculous, so is everyone else though, Self-Indulgent Ficcage Fluff Summary:

Naruto’s friends are gone, his lover is dying, Konoha is destroyed, and Madara’s second return has pushed the entire world to the brink. Hunted and harried, Naruto is sent back in time to upend Madara’s plan before it even starts, and sets about changing everything. Butterfly effect nothing: the world is at stake, and Naruto is hardly about to let it fall to ruin once more. Not while he’s still breathing.

Resurrection - Spork_in_the_Road - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23832304/chapters/57268621

Chapters: 9/9 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort Characters: Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Albus Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall, Severus Snape, Quirinus Quirrell, Tom Riddle | Voldemort, the various Hogwarts cast Additional Tags: technically a Time Travel AU, this fic is very Dumbledore critical, Hogwarts Redo with a Twist, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Harry is 3 mental disorders in a trenchcoat, like he is dissociating hardcore, memory loss may or may not be temporary, hints of PTSD, overpowered and badass Harry, but i like to think I balance him out pretty well, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, the story diverges from canon the more it goes along, Canon Typical Violence, Strong Language, do the deja-vu brain and the lizard brain count as characters, the relationship tag refers more to the rest of the series, because Harry is 11 here jfc, Golden Trio Friendship for the Win, no overt character bashing, slow slow slow burn btw, rating changed to mature for gratuitous language and some violence, better safe than sorry, tags to be added or changed at my discretion Series: Part 1 of A Dead Man's Guide to Reliving Your Youth Summary:

It was a bone-deep almost-ache when he opened his eyes and spotted the light flitting through the slats of his cupboard, both a familiar sight and at the same time distant like an old memory. It was a twist in his chest when he sat up, expecting—strangely—to hit his head on the sloped ceiling only to pause when he realized, of course, that he was far too short for that to happen.

Harry was struck with a strong sensation—which had no apparent reason at all—that he should not be here.

--- In which Harry Potter returns to his 11 year-old body after “dying” in the Forbidden Forest, given a second chance to change the ending of his story and the fate of the wizarding world. Except with the memories of his previous life buried deep in his subconscious, Harry must rely on his ever-present sense of deja-vu to guide him down a different path.

Changing Fate - Wix - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12597200

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Tony Stark, Loki/Tony Stark Characters: Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Clint Barton, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Pepper Potts, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Phil Coulson, Thor (Marvel), Loki (Marvel), Wanda Maximoff, Bruce Banner Additional Tags: Pre-Slash, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Time Travel, Healing, B.A.R.F. | Binarily Augmented Retro Framing, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Winteriron Bang, One-Sided Attraction Series: Part 1 of Changing Fate Summary:

Tony dies in Siberia under the hands of Captain America, but fate doesn't leave it there. He opens his eyes several years earlier amidst the threat of Loki's invasion and the first assembling of the 'Avengers'. Tony may not understand why he got this second chance, but he's going to do better with it - and he's decided that he's going to share it. With a Winter Soldier who could really use a different hand than he was dealt.

Never let it be said that fate doesn't have a sense of humor.

Fuck the Apocalypse - Whispering_Sumire - Teen Wolf (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14157774

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con Relationships: Isaac Lahey/Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale & Isaac Lahey & Stiles Stilinski, Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Lydia Martin/Jackson Whittemore, Allison Argent/Malia Tate, Malia Tate & Peter Hale, Vernon Boyd/Erica Reyes, Erica Reyes & Lydia Martin Characters: Derek Hale, Derek Hale's Pack, Stiles Stilinski, Isaac Lahey, Sheriff Stilinski, Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Allison Argent, Erica Reyes, Vernon Boyd, Jackson Whittemore, Lydia Martin, Danny Mahealani, Malia Tate, Chris Argent, Victoria Argent, Gerard Argent, Peter Hale, The Alpha Pack (Teen Wolf), Stalghot (OC) Additional Tags: Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Canon-Typical Violence, Alternate Season/Series 02, Established Relationship, Isaac Lahey is a Little Shit, Stiles Stilinski is a Little Shit, Stiles & Isaac are puppetmasters, Scott McCall is a Bad Friend, Good Alpha Derek Hale, Heartfelt Conversations, Pack Dynamics, Puppy Piles, Idiots in Love, Texting, Group Hugs, Molestation (off-screen mentioned), Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Cora doesn't exist, Light BDSM, Light Bondage, Spanking, Sensory Deprivation, Subspace, Aftercare, Cuddling & Snuggling, French Pet Names, BAMF Pack, Coming Out, Minor Character Death, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Feels, Isaac Feels, Breathplay, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Happy Ending Series: Part 2 of Time Traveling TW Fics, Part 2 of TW Bingo♘ Summary:

"This is weird," Isaac says, and, yeah. Yeah, it fucking is.

"Hey," Stiles says, clapping his hand to the other man's- boys, they're young again, here- shoulder, "we've been through worse. Can't be that bad, right?"

"Dude," Isaac says, narrowing his eyes, "my dad's alive."

"Fair, but... No zombies?"

"Ugh, touche."

[Or, the one where Stiles and Isaac go back in time to stave off the apocalypse, only to end up solving everyone else's problems.]

Leon Potter - Chapter 1 - Lomonaaeren - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21277262/chapters/50662577

Chapters: 2/2 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Potter & Harry Potter, Sirius Black & Harry Potter, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter Characters: Harry Potter, Sirius Black, Albus Dumbledore, Bartemius Crouch Jr., Hermione Granger Additional Tags: Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter Raises Himself, Harry Potter was Raised by Other(s), Angst, Drama, Humor, Present Tense, Horcruxes, Master of Death Harry Potter Series: Part 2 of From Samhain to the Solstice 2019 Summary:

The moment that Harry’s name comes out of the Goblet of Fire, a stranger appears—a Potter relative that Harry never knew he had. The stranger stands up for Harry, adopts him, and makes sure that no one can touch him. It’s only later that Harry knows why.

Earning His Notice - Lomonaaeren - Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15243312

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Albus Dumbledore & Harry Potter Characters: Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle, Abraxas Malfoy Additional Tags: Angst, Time Travel, Pre-Slash Series: Part 8 of July Celebration Fics 2018, Part 1 of Earning His Notice Summary:

Harry has almost accepted that he won’t be going back to his own time, and he’s working in a small apothecary in Diagon Alley to make ends meet. Then someone tries to blow up his employer’s shop, and that brings him face-to-face with Tom Riddle, who he successfully avoided during his time at Hogwarts.

The Family You Choose - Chapter 1 - TunaFishChris - Avatar: The Last Airbender [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20383669/chapters/48345097

Chapters: 7/7 Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar) Characters: Zuko (Avatar), Aang (Avatar), Katara (Avatar), Sokka (Avatar), Toph Beifong, Suki (Avatar), Ozai (Avatar) Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst, obligatory "gaang finds out about Zuko's scar" fic, love those fics, Soulmates, Soulmarks, Platonic Soulmates, kind of confusing though, Like, There's time travel, it's a thing, ozai's shitty parenting, Swearing Summary:

Some people are born with soulmarks. Zuko has them, but his grandfather burned them off because they "make you weak."

Team Avatar has a few things to say about that.

Love-Letters in the Form of Dresses - Whispering_Sumire - Teen Wolf (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14120175

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Chris Argent/Stiles Stilinski, Chris Argent/Peter Hale, Chris Argent/Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Chris Argent & Stiles Stilinski & Peter Hale, Peter Hale & Talia Hale Characters: Chris Argent, Peter Hale, Stiles Stilinski, Talia Hale, Laura Hale, Derek Hale, Cora Hale, Cat Hale, Kate Argent, Gerard Argent, Victoria Argent, The Hale Pack Additional Tags: Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Polyamory, OT3, Angst, Fluff, Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Crossdressing, Domestic, gratuitous dresses, Canon-Typical Violence, Minor Character Death, death of a child, Confinement, sorta - Freeform, Disabled Character, Scars, Burns, Magic, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Werecreature Stiles, Dream Sharing, Chris Feels, Good Peter, Idiots in Love, BAMF Stiles, BAMF Peter, BAMF Chris Argent, No Smut, Peter is secretly a marshmallow, Laura is a little shit, Chris joins the Pack, And fuck the rest of the Argents, Alive Hale Family Series: Part 2 of Time Traveling TW Fics, Part 4 of TW Bingo♘ Summary:

"Ah!" Stiles cuts him off, scooting closer to the wooden bars that seemingly make up his prison, "No! You're both here for a reason, okay? Don't be a speciest bigot, Chris, you're the best of a bad lot, I expect you to act like it," Chris is shocked to actually feel chastened, he puts his gun back in his waistband, "And Peter, you are smart enough to ask questions first. Sane enough, too, might I add."

"Well, then," Peter says, still glaring, and Chris wonders how this boy all dolled up in a dress, knows all this about them. "I suppose my first question would be: Why did you invite a Hunter to join us, hmm?"

"Same reason I asked you to join me, Peter," Stiles answers, and doesn't even bother hiding how coy he's being, "I'm lonely. I wanted people to talk to, and I wanted said people, specifically, to be useful to a certain cause, later."

"And what cause would that be?" Chris asks, wary.

"That," Stiles beams, "is a secret."

[Or: The one where there's a boy in a dress, a werewolf, and a hunter. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it's all fairly serious business... Mostly.]

Beautiful Like Birds - Whispering_Sumire - Teen Wolf (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13879719

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Sheriff Stilinski & Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski & Everyone Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale, Sheriff Stilinski, Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), The Hale Pack, Alan Deaton, Erica Reyes, Vernon Boyd, Isaac Lahey, Danny Mahealani, Jackson Whittemore, Lydia Martin, Allison Argent, Gerard Argent (dead), Kate Argent (dead) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Depression, Minor Character Death (Mentioned), friendships, Family, Domestic, Angst, Fluff, Overprotective Scott, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Sheriff Stilinski Finds Out, Nightmares, Consensual Underage Sex, Falling In Love, Idiots in Love, Feeding, through the phone, because that is a thing, Pet Names, Frottage, Phone Sex, Heartfelt Conversations, talia is kind of a bitch, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dissociation, sorta - Freeform, Happy Ending, Getting Together Series: Part 1 of Time Traveling TW Fics Summary:

"Stiles?" he asks, turning on the light, and Stiles looks at him- eyes wide, a flicker of utter devotion and heartbreaking joy passing his features before his whole face crumples and-

"Daddy?"

John has never seen his son like this, or maybe he has, when Claudia died, but it's different somehow, more, and terrifying because he has no idea why. He's closed half the distance between them before he even has time to think it through, but it doesn't matter because Stiles has bridged the rest and flung himself into John's arms.

He falls apart like that, holding onto John so tightly that it's hard to breathe, but he can't care about that right now because his son is sobbing and chanting "Daddy," desperately into his shoulder.

[Or, the one where Stiles goes back in time to save the world, and surprisingly, survives to tell the tale.]

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep - Rarae - The Umbrella Academy (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19398361

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Umbrella Academy (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Diego Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Everyone, Klaus Hargreeves & Reginald Hargreeves Characters: Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves, Allison Hargreeves, Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Luther Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Temporary Character Death, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Post-Canon Fix-It, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Family Bonding, Allusions to Suicide, the major character death is temporary and more or less follows canon, Klaus Hargreeves Whump, Time Travel, rated mature for language, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Experimentation, Torture, No Incest, no smut either, Pansexual Klaus Hargreeves, though it's not really relevant here Series: Part 1 of I am not there, I do not sleep Summary:

What if when they had went back in time Reginald found out that Klaus couldn't die and, in true Hargreeves fashion, decided to test this new ability. Over and over and over again.

Klaus, determined not to let his siblings down again, goes along with it and submits to whatever new tortures Reggie comes up with. Cue concerned siblings and family bonding.

If You Had This Time Again - Chapter 1 - dls - Marvel Cinematic Universe [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10920276/chapters/24286317

Chapters: 100/100 Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Loki/Tony Stark Characters: Tony Stark, Loki (Marvel), Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Thor (Marvel), Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Pepper Potts, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Jane Foster (Marvel), Darcy Lewis, James "Bucky" Barnes, Guardians of the Galaxy Team, T'Challa (Marvel), Shuri (Marvel), Thanos (Marvel), Stephen Strange Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Civil War Team Iron Man, Comic Book Science, Canon-Typical Violence, Tony Stark-centric, Slow Burn, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Translation Available, Podfic Available Series: Part 1 of Would You Do It All the Same? Summary:

Tony Stark closed his eyes in a wrecked Siberian bunker and woke up on a demolished New York street. Four years earlier.

[Translated into Mandarin Chinese by Oxalis & Polish by Every_Moment_Matters & Russian by Isenbo and continued by MaliceCrash & Brazilian Portuguese by Thefoxandthewolf & Spanish by goldenhazz & Korean by uay1004.]

[Text-to-speech podfic by saltyunicorn.]

Magic Fixes What Apologies Won't - Whispering_Sumire - Teen Wolf (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14337276

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski & The Hale Pack, Peter Hale & The Hale Pack Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale, Talia Hale, The Hales (Teen Wolf), The Hale Pack Additional Tags: Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Guilt, Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, One Shot, Mistakes, Redemption, Heartfelt Conversations, POV Outsider, POV Multiple, Background Relationships, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, well- except for the bad guys, peace in our time, Age Regression/De-Aging, Sort Of, and it's temporary, First Kiss, Alive Hale Family Series: Part 4 of Time Traveling TW Fics, Part 6 of TW Bingo♘ Summary: "Uh huh, and you're an ass. Look, just- don't go killing anyone, okay?"That is an odd thing for a child to be- and, seriously, from what she can tell- asking an adult. Even odder asking it of Peter who, despite his interest in the macabre, is a fairly gentle soul by all accounts, at least, that she knows of, because he actually seems to be thinking about it."I make no promises," he finally says, softly, honestly, and Stiles just gives him a long hard look before sighing and nodding in understanding."Well, I guess it isn't fair to ask that of you, really, under the circumstances, so, how about... Don't kill anyone who doesn't deserve it- by my standards, not your own, you fucking psycho.""Hey, I'm not that bad," Peter sniffs, and Stiles narrows his eyes, "anymore."[Or: The one where Future Stiles and Future Peter astound everybody.]

Rise Up - Chapter 1 - Wix - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531151/chapters/38725052

Chapters: 15/15 Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Daredevil (TV) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Tony Stark & Avengers Team, Tony Stark & Vision, Stephen Strange/Tony Stark Characters: Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Clint Barton, Sam Wilson, Vision (Marvel), Nick Fury, Pepper Potts, Phil Coulson, Friday (Marvel), Stephen Strange, Wanda Maximoff, Christine Everhart, Christine Palmer, Matt Murdock, Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Karen Page Additional Tags: Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Team Break Up, Team Dynamics, Toxic Team, Moving On, not team Cap friendly, Time Travel, Sort Of, Team Tony, Magic, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pairings Subject To Change, Tony Stark Has A Heart, And People Need To Stop Breaking It, BAMF Tony Stark, BAMF Team Tony, not SHIELD friendly, Gen or Pre-Slash, Open Ending, Hints of Alternate World Relationships, Pre-Relationship Summary: Tony leaves the Avengers in the wake of Ultron when he refuses to standby and approve of their choices. Fate's quick to step in though and show that where one door closes, another one just might open.

The Best Laid Plans - Chapter 1 - Palhinhaea - 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… - 山口悟 | My Next Life as a Villainess - Yamaguchi Satoru (Light Novels) [Archive of Our Own]

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25098322/chapters/60801223

Chapters: 9/? Fandom: 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… - 山口悟 | My Next Life as a Villainess - Yamaguchi Satoru (Light Novels), 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… | My Next Life as a Villainess (Anime) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Katarina Claes/Everyone, Katarina Claes & Anne Shelley Characters: Original Katarina Claes, Keith Claes, Jeord Stuart, Mary Hunt (My Next Life as a Villainess), Nicol Ascart, Sophia Ascart, Maria Campbell (My Next Life as a Villainess), Sirius Deek, Council of Katarinas, Katarina Claes, Alan Stuart (My Next Life as a Villainess), Anne Shelley (My Next Life as a Villainess) Additional Tags: Black Comedy, Polyamory, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-graphic Murder, Non-graphic suicide, PTSD, Pets, Minions, Attempted manipulation, Accidental BDSM, Villainess doing villainess things, Implications of past abuse and neglect, Family of Choice, Plans, So Many Plans, Some of them work?, maybe? - Freeform, How do you get people to not murder you?, Katarinasexuality, Lady Friends(TM), Feral Murder Children, Secret Babies, Suicidal Thoughts, Deliberate BDSM Series: Part 1 of Best Laid Plans Extended Universe Summary:

Sometimes people are given a second chance. Sometimes those people are Katarina Claes. There are lots of lessons a would-be villainess could learn from remembering all of the varied ways she could die. What if she learned all the wrong ones? Or… all the right ones?

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silkendandelion · 4 days

Text

Two Drow From Sembia

A Baldur's Gate 3 fanfiction, a story of two Tavs (ongoing, series), ao3 link

Pairings (Eventual): Tav Dayedan x Astarion (M/M), Tav Badril x Shadowheart (M/F) Genre: Fantasy, adventure, humor, drama, eventual fluff and romance Words: 3.2k

Rating Teen and Up Audiences for graphic descriptions of violence, mild blood and gore, mature language. Rating subject to change, published per chapter.

Summary: For the last 50 years, Dayedan Vernal, an Eladrin artificer from Sembia, has traveled Faerun looking for unique materials. The last 10 of those years have been beside his hired bodyguard, Badril Lightward: a drow with sun-kissed skin and black hands, who introduced himself as the Chosen of Lathander. After months of walking and multiple dead-end leads, they had only been in Baldur’s Gate for less than a day when the Nautiloid attacked.

AN: I've been sitting on this one for awhile, but I felt guilty for not posting anything in awhile (bc I'm eyeball deep in long fics), so here. Dayedan's backstory is posted as well, but it's being rewritten currently (bc it's poor quality embarrasses me terribly). The title is a joke from the groupchat, Day is constantly mistaken for a drow and he's quite chuffed about it

Likes and reblogs are, as always, welcome and please enjoy 💙

Chapter 1 (below)

~*~

Journal Updated: The Sembian Artificer

Muffled, incoherent shouting rouses the elf, barely, unable to be understood beyond the cotton in his ears. He manages to push beyond the ice-pick ache threatening to split his skull, enough to open his eyes and see Badril on the other side of the greasy, smeared glass of the mindflayer pod.

The drow’s angular face is stricken, white ponytail falling off his crown, and panic written in the pull of his frown after hours of fruitless searching for his friend. Black hands, dark and smooth as obsidian glass, swipe the sides of the pod, seeking a switch or lever.

“He—help… Badril,” Dayedan called weakly, hands pawing the glass in response. His bag is gone, he can only feel himself inside the humid, sweltering pod when Badril’s shape disappears. The beginnings of dread rise in him, bile creeping up his throat, ready to spew the next time he tried to shout. For 10 years, the darkness had kept quiet, banished by the dawn’s favorite, who was just here—

“Don’t leave me!” His fists bang on the glass, again, again, lungs wrested for breath, when—CRACK—he screams, terrified enough to halt his panting when black hands slam into the glass. Clawed, un-bloodied fingers punched clean through in ten jagged holes.

Those monstrous hands are too familiar, the pride of a warrior monk, soot-black nearly up to the elbow, so prone to be found spinning a cooking spit or picking his lute that Dayedan often forgets their divine purpose is to kill. They are the hands of his most trusted bodyguard and friend, who with frightening ease flays the entire front off the pod in one screeching, fleshy rip.

He falls with no more support into Badril’s arms and the drow grabs his jaw, turning his face back and forth to better examine his fragile state.

“Are you all right? Does your head hurt?”

“Bloody pounding,” he huffed. “How did you know?”

Badril tilted him, one thick arm tight around his waist until he could stand proper. “Then they’ve infected you already... I’m sorry, my friend.”

“Did they get you too?”

“No.”

“Then, how did you—”

He held up a wet hand—soaked with gore, Dayedan relays to his queasy stomach—silencing him before the artificer could spiral, as he was prone to do, or worse: over-analyze their situation into a stupor that neither healed him nor helped them both to escape.

“Hear me now: you were grabbed because you wandered off,” he chided with emphasis and Dayedan’s ears wilted, shoulders flinching.

“In order to follow you, I allowed myself to be captured. They could not get me into a pod.”

Dayedan watched him flick the blood off his hands, silvery and congealing as it joined the streaks running from the nearby door. Mind you, a door that hung savaged and drooping from the rest of the wall, as mangled as his pod. He recalled Badril’s words from their travels, how Lathander’s most faithful are sworn enemies of the evil, undead and soulless... Suddenly, he had only one more question.

“Are you going to put me down?”

“No,” was his simple reply.

“But I’m going to become a monster,” Dayedan insisted, yet Badril ushered him to get moving, one hand on his arm and the other pointing towards the door (the flesh ribbons), their only exit.

“You are not a monster yet, so until then you are my friend.”

As Dayedan’s headache persisted, the acuate pain flaring from what he deduced was the tadpole making itself bloody comfortable against his frontal lobe, an ache only negligibly reduced by the adrenaline of waking up on an actual, real, stinking, fucking Mindflayer ship—he had no mind to argue.

“Let’s get the hells out of here.”

~*~

“Where is it? Where IS it?” Dayedan picked through the belongings of other kidnapped victims, tossing away things he decided to be useless and absently slipping loose gold coins in his pockets.

“Don’t make so much noise,” Badril replied from where he observed the pod at the center of the room, and the transformed body inside.

“I’m allowed to panic, I think, that bag is the most valuable thing I own.”

“Your soul?” The drow said while studying the runes across the attached control panel. Surely, he wondered, one of them must be able to kill the thing. The soulless, tentacled monster scratching clawed hands down the glass, who moments ago was a human woman, and even fewer moments ago had her screams mangled as the bones in her neck twisted, tongue useless as her teeth fell from her jaw down to the feet of her coffin.

His metacarpals ached with the restraint to not rip the pod open and perform his best imitation of the transformation on the finished creature, piece by piece.

“It’s not here, come on. What are you staring at—egh.” Dayedan appeared beside his shoulder, recoiling. “Kill the thing, already.”

“To release it is a danger to you, even for a moment.”

“Then—scoot over.” He elbowed Badril but the enormous drow didn’t move until he meant to, staying close while Dayedan pulled his goggles down off his black, wavy hair. The multiple lenses lay stacked, flush in various colors of rainbow glass until he flipped them into the proper orientation with a practiced flick of his fingertips.

‘Identify,’ was the key word as he hovered his hands above the console.

“The thing about scientists is: we’re predictable. Our needs our simple, complex only to those who don’t know us, and we cannot continue our work if we are dead. Therefore, everything dangerous we make needs the capacity to be destroyed.”

His analysis allowed him to decipher the functions of the buttons on the console, a cruel smirk sliding over his lips when his hand depressed a command for ‘annihilate’, and the console hummed to life. The decontamination took mere seconds, unmaking the Mindflayer in a wash of goo that only didn’t slide out over the floor because of the pod’s tight seal. Nearby tubing glugged, slurping the remains to wherever the unlucky went. Or lucky, depending on who was asked.

“I’m sure that’s not what they intended that button for.”

“Doesn’t change how good it felt, or—ah!” Dayedan cried out, brought down by a sudden wound to his ankle, forced to lean on the console.

His attacker, an intellect devourer, stood a pace away, clicking angrily and swiping the air with it’s claws (a warning—shouldn’t warnings be given first?), feelers spread wide to give the illusion of a greater height and weight.

“You little—” Dayedan raised his foot to stomp the creature flat before Badril grabbed his good ankle and flung him away, landing on his back with a dull ‘thud’.

“Don’t hurt them!”

“EXCUSE me?” He coughed at how hard he twisted his vocal cords for that one. Nothing could have prepared him to be literally thrown by his bodyguard, or for the excuse to be Dayedan had tried to swiftly—but violently—squish the creature that bled him.

“You frightened them, I think. Using the machine, possessing a tadpole. They don’t understand you didn’t mean to attack me next.”

“Why are we psychoanalyzing the bloody thing?! I’m bleeding, that shit hurt!”

“I am sorry. I will heal you, but I couldn’t allow you to hurt my friend.”

That’s it. He must have actually died in the pod, and this was his asinine excuse for an afterlife: attempting to escape the situation that felled him, complete with Badril saying the most outrageous things with a straight face. Then again, he’s always done so—but not about aberrations, that one was new.

“Am I high? Or did you really say it’s your friend?” Dayedan said from where he lay, leaning up to watch the little brain scuttle behind Badril’s leg, nails clicking on the metal floor—and did the thing just hiss at him?

“I freed them from a damaged skull. They are grateful.” Badril knelt beside them, the tiny creature, and offered his finger for a bit of affection. The brain quivered, seemingly in delight, one of it’s feelers reaching up to coil around his first knuckle. A handshake, maybe? Or perhaps it was better to be interpreted the way a cat undulates against the ankles of a person it trusts.

‘You are our friend—you saved Us. That is our name.’

“He can’t hear you, brain. He doesn’t have a wriggler.” Dayedan tapped the side of his head.

“They can speak to you? Through the parasite?” Badril said as he reached to stroke the creature’s damp cerebellum, watching it shiver, feet tip-tapping happily, likely as close to feline excitement as they were capable.

Dayedan pulled his lips in an off-kilter pout, displeased he was beginning to find the fleshy, pointy, slimy creature adorable. Those weren’t deal-breakers, not at all, he was actually partial to less-than-fluffy and off-putting beasts with propensities for a good pet—but the only other intellect devourers on this ship had all tried to kill him. Some suspicion was warranted.

“They want to be called Us.”

“Us? So it shall be, little friend. Us.”

“Hm.” Dayedan huffed, nose in the air. “Let’s keep moving, we must be getting close to—something. Some way to drive this thing? Hopefully it has enough power to get us back to Baldur’s Gate.”

The moment Dayedan showed them his back, he allowed himself an almost-smile, hearing Badril’s encouraging “Let’s go, Us”, and the happy skittering of claws.

~*~

They didn’t have to wander far along the ship’s halls before they came to open air, with nearly one entire room of the ship eviscerated and gaping strips of fragmented flesh. Their lungs stung, suddenly smothered with the hot belches of sulfur-tinged ash rising from the Blood War beneath them.

Gods, they were in Avernus.

“Perhaps I was being optimistic,” said Dayedan.

“You?”

His tadpole twinged when he tried to roll his eyes. “We have to hope this ship can get us back to Toril in the state it’s in.”

But Badril didn’t answer him, dashing forward to meet a blur of chartreuse and the screech of the woman’s silver sword as it was blocked by the flat of his hand.

“A Githyanki? This really just gets worse.” Dayedan blanched, reflexively fingering the golden cuff on his left arm.

“You recognize the instrument of your demise? More than I should ask for—unh,” the woman staggered back, struck by the hammer in her skull of her tadpole communing with Dayedan. Memories rush passed, shared but hardly understood, except that the men before her were not actually thralls.

Yet she did not holster her sword, the arms barring her like unwavering mountain rock when she surged forward again. “I will not concede, so long as your friend remains in his stance.”

Dayedan waited behind him, ready and hardly willing to move or dim the spell circle in his palm. “You first, Githyanki warrior.”

“Dayedan, do not be obstinate,” Badril scolded him.

“He does not appear to take orders from you.” A cruel smirk slid over her speckled cheeks, teeth bared as she pushed—faltering when he did not move.

“His safety is my responsibility. Think about what that means for you.”

The streak of a red dragon near the broken maw of the ship shook the soft, unsteady floor beneath them, whipping the air into a hurricane. Their stalemate was broken by Lae’zel losing her footing, and Badril’s wide palm shooting out to protect her from toppling over the jagged edge.

“I don’t have a tadpole, so I don’t know what either of you saw, but I know we are more likely to survive together.”

Lae’zel swatted his hand away, leaving the hand un-perforated in her version of gratitude, though to her horror the drow seemed gently amused at her batting him. “On that, we agree… If your magical charge is willing to cooperate.”

“The magical charge just wants to find his bag and hopefully survive this ordeal. I care little about how we get there.” Dayedan crossed his arms.

“I’ve never fought alongside a Githyanki,” Badril smiled. Even standing in Avernus on a Nautiloid could not hinder his personality, and Lae’zel made a mortifying grunt—one she would never admit to—when his big paw shot out to shake her hand. She considered stabbing his palm anyway, her grace could only persist so long under a steadily shrinking measure of tolerance.

“Do try not to be—too pathetic about it, and don’t fall behind!” She stammered while yanking her hand back, not completely unlike a cat’s paw stuck on a bit of flannel.

“Get moving,” she huffed at both of them.

~*~

“The helm should not be far,” Lae’zel surveyed the next room for an exit, refusing to regard the pods dotted around the room with more than indifference.

“Wait.” Badril held up his palm. “Listen.”

Dayedan’s ears perked up to focus his hearing, before pointing to the pod along the wall. “There.”

“We don’t have time for stragglers—” Both elves shushed her, to her chagrin that was beginning to nudge up alongside homicidal rage.

‘Get me out of this damn thing! Please!’ A woman’s voice shouted quietly, muffled by the thick glass of the container, her fists barely making quiet thumps as she pounded with what looked like all her strength.

“I can get this open, it’ll only take a moment—” Dayedan pulled down his goggles just to be outmaneuvered by the splintering snap of glass shattering, of flesh ripped apart as Badril shredded the front of the pod off.

“Or he can do that.”

The woman inside fell into Badril’s arms, too exhausted to protest until her bearings came back to her. She stared up at him, the white hair falling free from his hair leather, the dusky brown of his skin what spoke of an under-dweller touched by the sun.

“You’re—a drow?” She smothered her embarrassment with a pissy frown, pushing at his chest to both be released and dust off the links of her armor. Dayedan appeared by Badril’s head.

“Two drow?” She scoffed, and spied Lae’zel standing off to the side, arms crossed and wearing a much pissier frown.

“A… peculiar little company,” she decided, with all the barest restraint to not say “horrendous” instead.

“Hang on, I’m not a drow!”, declared Dayedan. “Lae’zel was right, we have no time for stragglers.”

“Don’t mind those two. Are you hurt?” said Badril, faithfully sitting by her side.

“I’m all right, nothing a little healing spell can’t—” She tried to flinch away as his obsidian hands began to glow, ghosting over her knuckles until the bones stopped aching and the cuts sealed, dried blood beginning to fleck away.

“A cleric? As am I: Shadowheart.”

“Badril. Don’t mind them, really. Lae’zel and Dayedan. They’re both terrible at meeting people, even if we’ve already had this talk about needing allies to leave this realm.”

His tone spoke of scolding, as did his hard golden eyes, but both companions only gave their own “tch” and “chk” to express their reluctant acquiescence.

“Oh, and that’s Us.” He pointed to the Intellect Devourer following them, sniffing (did they have noses?) at Shadowheart’s boot, and not deterred at all by her startled gasp.

“… A most peculiar company, indeed.” She winced, wondering if perhaps being rescued had been a mistake.

~*~

Us bounced on their little clawed feet, feelers waving wildly as they shouted into the telepathic connection. ‘The helm, the helm! In here!’

“The helm is beyond that door,” Shadowheart translated.

“Then be prepared for a fight,” said Badril, more ominously than he meant to when his words were punctuated by the cracks of his knuckles in his fists.

“Oh Gods, I don’t want to fight,” Dayedan groaned, his long ears pinning back in moderate annoyance.

“By all means,” Shadowheart raised her eyebrow at him. “Do let them know, so we can sit down to tea and sandwiches instead.”

“You little—” Their imminent volatile clash became a near-miss when Badril grabbed Dayedan’s face, specifically ignoring his yelp of panic when he realized those hands had yet to be washed free of Mindflayer ooze.

“Think clearly, you foolish scientist. Your bag could be in there.”

Dayedan blinked at him. “… Oh,” he said, the wires visibly connecting in his eyes, amber bulbs on strings behind his lenses spelling “Motivation Acquired” with all the fanfare of an oath renewed.

“I’m ready.”

~*~

On the far side of the helm’s chamber, a set of controls, mounted to both the ceiling and floor, waved where the tendrils to determine their destination and speed flung about, unattached.

A lone Mindflayer noticed their entry, though they could hardly turn his back from the cambion general swinging his burning sword with the intent to cleave them in two.

“You: thralls. Leave the devil to me. Connect the transponder, so we may leave this realm.”

Lae’zel spoke to their entire little group. “Do as it says. We can deal with the ghaik once we have escaped.”

But of course, Dayedan didn’t have his ears on, instead consumed wholly by a table halfway across the room, loosely populated by various runes, a few brain jars—and his bag of holding. Badril knew to act fast, even if the ladies were unfamiliar with the peculiarities of their temporary companions.

‘Patience,’ came his ringing voice, and a single rune on his cuff began to glow, the same white glow that slid around his thumb and into his palm, materializing into a golden revolver with a silver hammer, it’s long barrel and wide grip carved with the forests of the Feywild in chased murals.

“Dayedan, don’t—” Shadowheart’s protest was cut off by Badril bodily snatching her up to dash away, only moment’s before the artificer flicked back the hammer, the pistol glowing momentarily before it fired off a volatile, exploding shot in the cambion’s face. Two more shots, two more tiny, powerful blasts, and Lae’zel was at Badril’s side to complain.

“Is he insane?!”

“No, he’s just—he’s REALLY protective of his bag, here—take her.” Badril handed off Shadowheart and the two woman scowled at each other before scrambling wide steps apart, wiping their hands on their armor.

“You idiots, do you have any idea how many man hours went into this bag? You—” Dayedan fired off one more shot, downing a stray imp as he walked over to the table to snatch his property and arrange it safely over his shoulder.

“Enough!” Badril waved to him. “We need to—” The ship lurched to one side, threatening to knock them off their feet. From across the control room, Badril could see Lae’zel on the controls, clearly unimpressed with their tactical priorities, and Shadowheart taking out her flustered frustration at being carried like a princess out on the intellect devourer beneath her boot.

The second jerk of the ship was hard enough to send them all flying to one side of the control room, and Badril reached out to snatch Dayedan to him by the strap on his precious bag.

He shouted over the alarms and crashing of the cambions into various equipment, the rest of the imps clinging their feet to the walls of the ship. “Don’t tense—!”

“Are we going to die?!” Dayedan shouted back.

He clamped a big hand over his mouth. “We’re going to crash! Don’t tense your body!”

“Mmfrr!!” He heard the artificer cry against his hand as he tucked him under his chin.

Alas, blackness and silence would come before any impact they might have expected. Soft and beguiling, like the double-edged reward of divine intervention.

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