guys i love daisuke as much as the next person but it hurts that none of my friends really talk abt anya…pls i need to find people who love her as much as i do. please i beg
THE MOUTHWASHING FIC YOU WROTE!!! SO GOOD!!!! god i am such a big fan of endings where they find family within eo AND ANYA AND DAISUKE BONDING!!!
RAHGFYGHFDKJGH HII THANK YOU SM HAHAHA. im glad u liked it!! i did originally write a fic which was canon compliant and anya based and it made me so sad i needed to see her happy. so bam. new fic!! happy anya and daisuke <3
“Come on, Anya!” Daisuke laughs, already kicking off his shoes, tossing the bags of groceries to the side. In the moonlight he looks almost younger, Anya thinks. “Live a little!”
She wants to protest. Anya has barely had time to live, let alone survive, let alone even think for so long— Curly is waiting for them, Swansea is waiting for them, for the groceries too— but the boy seems so…happy and carefree, that the argument dies in her throat. “Oh…alright. Just for a while, okay? And then we—”
“—have to get back or else Swansea will grouch, yeah, yeah,” he smiles, holding his hand out. “Dance with me, Anya?”
(3 times daisuke asks anya to dance with him.)
LINK TO THE FIC HERE!! chapter 1 under the cut :))
chap 1: beach
It feels almost like a long, never-ending dream.
Anya doesn’t really process any of it. It goes faster than time on the ship ever did, and every single day is a blur. For some of it, she wishes she had gone down with the ship.
“It’s normal,” Swansea says, somewhere in the meddle of her memory, “to feel a little sick, girlie— just hol’ on for a moment longer, yeah?” He had held her with one arm and Daisuke with the other, a hand on each head, his voice gruff from overuse. One of Daisuke’s hands was splayed against her back. The position was slightly uncomfortable, but even so, it was the best comfort she’d felt in years, and she wouldn’t let go for the world.
Both Daisuke and Swansea were elated to return home— to their families, even if the latter refused to show anything other more than a smile at the thought— but Anya? She had nobody to come home to. Hell, the ship was the only home she’d known for so long, and even then she never truly felt safe within its walls.
Neither did Curly. Curly, who Anya didn’t quite hate. Curly, who Anya almost loved. Curly, who was so close to death and yet she held, in a sick way, a resentment towards him— not a fear, she never truly feared him like she had Jimmy— almost like a grudge, or as close as one as she could get. It felt too cruel to call his state a retribution or even something as violent as revenge, it hurt her to see him like this, but it was…
…she wasn’t sure how to name it. But, Anya wasn’t expected to. Curly had been taken to a hospital. She had been taken to Swansea’s and told to rest.
~
It brought them around to where they were now. Daisuke and Swansea, still living with their families, helped move Anya and Curly— Anya from Swansea’s daughters’ room and Curly from the hospital— to a close by apartment. For safety, Swansea said, but Daisuke said it was because they would miss being with the two of them if they were too far away. The thought made her smile. The notion of being loved was simply so strange.
The apartment was about as good as good got. She had her own room (with a lock! Swansea had pulled her aside gently, a hand on her wrist, and made sure she knew), as did Curly, slowly recovering and regaining what little voice he had left. The speech tablet had been brought from the hospital and remained fixed to his wheelchair.
Daisuke brought a few old posters he had lying around, Swansea brought kitchenware, and before Anya knew it— it had become home. Home, a word so foreign before, familiar now. It was a beautiful thought.
Even Curly thought so. She spent her days at work—a new job as a nurse at a nearby hospital that saw nearly no patients, but it was enough to keep them going— and she spent her nights at home, with Curly, in the excruciating journey to give him back his autonomy. There was an irony to it, she thought— that the two of them had their own bodies taken from them, hers with the marks stretching across her stomach from one agonising night on the ship, and his with the skin and flesh that had been torn from him— but also a beauty, maybe. They would survive together.
~
“Ah, look how pretty it is!”
Anya, shaken from her thoughts, glances up to where Daisuke is pointing. Swapping the grocery bags she’s holding to her left side, she rolls her right shoulder to relieve its tension. Moonlight sparkles over the distant ocean, and the shore glows silver under the night. “Oh…it’s a beach.”
Daisuke, holding onto the second bag of groceries to fill Anya and Curly’s fridge, grins and pulls her with his opposite hand, tugging her towards it. “It’s so pretty! I’ve never seen it at night.”
It was quite pretty, she had to admit, as the hard cement beneath her feet slowly turned to sand. Anya had never actually been on a beach before in her life. It was considered a luxury when she was young, and remains as faraway and unfamiliar now as it had then.
“Come on, Anya!” Daisuke laughs, already kicking off his shoes, tossing the bags of groceries to the side. In the moonlight he looks almost younger, Anya thinks. “Live a little!”
She wants to protest. Anya has barely had time to live, let alone survive, let alone even think for so long— Curly is waiting for them, Swansea is waiting for them, for the groceries too— but the boy seems so…happy and carefree, that the argument dies in her throat. “Oh…alright. Just for a while, okay? And then we—”
“—have to get back or else Swansea will grouch, yeah, yeah,” he smiles, holding his hand out. “Dance with me, Anya?”
Anya always believed that a person’s worst moments didn’t define them as a person. A monster didn’t do one bad thing that branded then as such. That then leads her to the conclusion that a good moment in someone’s life didn’t mark them as a good person, either— that this moment here, the wind in her hair, the scent of salt drifting from the ocean, Daisuke’s laughter ringing out for miles, wouldn’t define her, as beautiful as it was. A
s much as she wanted to think of herself as good, it was difficult. One good moment wouldn’t define her. A thousand bad ones would.
But…it was about time that Anya learned to live.
“I don’t know how to dance,” she says meekly, pulling off her shoes and placing them next to Daisuke’s. It was true. She was anything but a dancer, but it didn’t seem to deter Daisuke, who still incessantly tugs at her hand.
“It’s fine! You don’t need to know— just follow how I do it!” He makes it sound so easy. He makes so much sound so easy, this young boy, this young man. This kid who had barely seen the beginning of his life. Daisuke beamed with the age of the sun and the joy of the sky, barely a scar— physical or mental— from their time on the Tulpar. Anya bore the marks of something that haunted her across her stomach, eyebags from countless sleepless nights, and he bore nothing but a bright smile.
Anya tries. She tries to follow his movements, follow the beat— he hums and sings a song unfamiliar to her, grinning and laughing between the words— and he takes her hands and guides her along. “How do you do this?” She says breathlessly as he spins her around.
She could be talking about anything— about grief, about tragedy, about living and laughing and breathing, or about dancing on a beach— but all he does is grin and finally finishes his dance with a dramatic flourish.
“Well, that’s the thing, Anya,” Daisuke brings her in for a tight hug. Months after everything, she’s finally comfortable with being held, and Anya sinks into the embrace. “We just keep going.”
~
“Took you young’uns long enough,” Swansea huffs, when the two of them make it back to the apartment. There’s sand uncomfortably wedged in her socks, but a smile on her face, one that Curly seems to notice as his face stretches and he smiles back at her. “What kept ya?”
Daisuke grins and takes Anya’s grocery bag from her, piling them both on the counter, much to Swansea’s chagrin, who starts picking up the groceries and putting them away. “We stopped at the beach! Anya’s never been, did you know? It’s so pretty at this time of night!”
Anya nods, before moving to Curly’s chair. Coming out of recovery, he is no longer as restricted in voice and movement as he had before. She’s glad— he had always loved expressing himself.
“We should all go together one day!” Daisuke laughs, tossing the milk carton in the air and catching it again. “Maybe if we renovate Curly’s wheels, so he can come too. Real big ones for the sand. What do you think, Captain?”
Curly wheezes out a laugh and gently wheels himself towards the kitchen. His voice is hoarse, but it becomes stronger by the day. “Sure, Daisuke, if…you stop calling me captain. Do…you need help at all, Swansea?”
“Wheel your ass back over there,” Swansea scolds him. “You’re on bed rest. I s’pose we could pay the beach a visit one of these days…if Miss Anya’s up for it.”
Daisuke tilts his head, smiling. “You in, Anya?”
“Yeah,” Anya smiles, thinking of moonlit waves and silver sand. “That…sounds like fun.”
chap 1 (here) | chap 2 (coming soon)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
i think anya and daisuke deserve to be happy. i think they deserve to go to the beach and daisuke will ask anya to dance with him on the moonlit sand. i think they should be best friends. i think anya should slowly learn to love life and i think daisuke should slowly learn to help her. i think they should be best friends.
yes i am writing a fic about this no i am not normal about them. thanks for asking <3
summary; She didn’t feel like the canary in a coal mine, as much as she wishes she were. The canary was useful, at least, and in a sick sort of way it was loved. She felt a little bit more like the last miner that they would have left behind— forgotten, invisible. They would find her bones when the dirt crumbled to dust. Anya was okay with that.
a/n; basically just a small anya fic. no happy endings here, unfortunately. mostly pre-crash. minimal jimmy.
AO3 FIC LINK HERE, full fic under the cut also <3
Anya had heard of, sometime within in the long and almost torturous period of growth that coloured her youth, a story. It was of a small bird, and it chirped and sang in its little cage. It was important until the final breath.
In a roundabout way, she had always thought of it as something beautiful. As macabre as it was, the canary had its use. It sung until it couldn’t, and it saved lives, even at the cost of its own. There was a saviour complex to a small creature that barely knew what it was doing before it died, a beautiful notion.
She didn’t feel like the canary in a coal mine, as much as she wishes she were. The canary was useful, at least, and in a sick sort of way it was loved. She felt a little bit more like the last miner that they would have left behind— forgotten, invisible. They would find her bones when the dirt crumbled to dust. Anya was okay with that.
Anya was okay with that. A lie is easier to bear than a truth, the more times one says it. Human nature is to be seen, to be heard, but survival is to keep yourself quiet. She feels like a fawn hiding in a shrub, waiting for a mother that will never come to find her.
~
Every moment is an eggshell and every move she makes, she can feel the cracks beneath her feet— stay alive. Stay safe. Listen for the singing, for the safety. Stay at the back of the group, where none of them can watch you, but where none of them can leave you behind. Unless you so desired.
A doe is hunted by gleaming white teeth from the shadows. A canary sings until it cannot any longer. A human person, of mind and body and soul, survives in much the same way. Is that all she was? A creature? Something to be pitied? There are no locks in the bushes that conceal the prey, Anya’s room is no different.
Survive. Survive. Survive, not live. It didn’t matter what happened to her as long as she stays alive.
(Her hands shake as she takes the gun and hides it. He can’t hurt her without his teeth, can he? Can he?)
~
Daisuke is as close as safe as safe gets. Not a friend, but not an enemy. Little more than a coworker. A kindness that beamed like the sun, maybe. The rays of sunshine that shone through the earth and welcomed you outside with open arms.
Swansea complains, sometimes, of his absent-mindedness. His childishness. A brain not developed for the body it has grown. She didn’t see that, at least not as much as he claimed it to be so. Daisuke could be smart and was.
“You okay, Anya?” Daisuke asks, more often than not.
No, she thinks, never. The sleeplessness clings to her skin like sweat. Claws at her eyelids.
“Yes,” she says. Daisuke smiles and nods, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. This time, before leaving the room, he tentatively— carefully— touches her shoulder. She jolts, as she usually does to any form of physical contact, and then he speaks.
“Well, um. Do you wanna play something with me today?” It sounds, to most, like a juvenile answer. To her, it’s…much, much more. Daisuke wins, of course, he always does, but she smiles for the first time in what feels like forever.
~
Daisuke’s mother used to tell him about angels. He believed her, in almost a juvenile or childlike way, and that belief followed him from childhood to what could possibly be described as maturity, or as close to it as he got.
The night after his visit to the medbay, he dreams of the stars. Surrounded by them every single day, they are more than familiar to him already. What is not familiar are the figures flying beside the Tulpar.
They are angels. Long, white wings, eyes that sparkled the same way the stars do in the night sky, a beauty that was so great it barely registered in his eyes.
One of them has Anya’s face. Gentle, soft features, there was no mistaking it.
Daisuke wakes up after she scoops him up in moonlit wings and brings him through the galaxy. He considers telling her, the next time they cross paths, but there isn’t exactly a not weird way to tell your coworker— because that’s what they were; not quite friends yet, as much as he would love to be— that you dreamed about them. I saw you last night, he thinks to himself, and you were an angel. Just like the ones my mom used to tell me about.
He doesn’t tell her. He wants to— and he almost does— but her eyes are so sad and she doesn’t ever play games with him anymore. It’s difficult, he knows, a job like hers. He wishes he could make her feel better.
Daisuke spots a small drawing in the corner of a loose page, one day, rubbed out until only its skeleton is left. It’s a bird and a cage, he thinks. The bird has Anya’s eyes, but is yellow like Curly’s hair. He will ask his mother about it when he makes it home, he thinks. Daisuke’s mom always loved birds.
~
Swansea does not like it in the medbay. Anya can see it in the way his eyes shift around, watching the white walls and white floors. It unsettles him, maybe, the fluorescence of it. The only colour comes from the yellow post-it notes on the wall, little doodles to keep herself sane.
Nonetheless, he is cooperative. Anya likes him because he doesn’t ask too many questions and he is incredibly easy to beat in all their games. He’s older and has seen so much more. A little rough, but kind in his own way.
He doesn’t like Jimmy. He doesn’t know, but even without it he knows that there is something wrong with the man. For a moment, the words rise to the tip of her tongue and she wants so badly for him to know. Please help me, a miner begs when he is left behind.
She doesn’t. It’s almost laughable, the cowardice, the fear. She lets him go.
“Anya,” Swansea says before he leaves, his voice gruff as it usually is. Raspy voices could be a sign of past or recent smoking, she remembers idly from one of the hundreds of medical books she’d pored over, or inhalation of other particles. Smoke. Dust. Coal.
She waits, patiently, for him to speak. Blinks when all he does is shake his head.
“Nothing,” Swansea murmurs after a moment, turning to the door. “It’s all right.”
~
Anya does not talk to Swansea very often. In fact, Anya barely talks at all, to any of them, save for Curly, and Daisuke whenever they play games together. He knows this, and leaves her well enough alone. He respects her and she respects him. It’s a mutual acknowledgement.
He is, however, a father. He has three daughters. His youngest has downturned eyes and a voice that seems barely audible over the sounds of everything else. When she was little, she would clasp Swansea’s hand and hide behind him whenever they went out. The memories make him smile.
Anya had looked at him— with such wide, sad, doe-looking eyes— and if he blinked it felt like he was home again, wiping one daughter’s tears or bandaging another’s knee or holding the other before she fell asleep. Anya was older than them all, but seemed so much like his smallest daughter that for a moment he almost tries to reach out for her, the urge to comfort stronger than anything else.
He does not. Of course he doesn’t. It wouldn’t be proper. They are coworkers and nothing more. He fixes the ship to take them home, and she fixes them. A mutually beneficial transaction, somewhat.
In the night, he dreams of his daughters again. Daisuke is there, too, of course he is, the little rascal. Never could leave Swansea well alone. His children ask if he missed them, and he says that he has, of course he has. He’s never loved anything more than he’s loved them, even if his heart yearned selfishly for a life away from theirs.
His youngest asks him if he missed her. Swansea smiles, and nods yes, and holds her, and when he pulls away, for a moment he sees the Pony Express jumpsuit and raven hair. He blinks and Anya’s face is gone.
The next morning, Swansea passes her while she slips quietly into the medbay. Wonders if he should say anything, and chooses not to. It would be strange. The notion of loving was a strange one.
~
Jimmy thinks of himself as the canary. He does so much for the ship, for the people, and he is repaid in nothing but blood and debt. In loss and darkness. It’s unfair. His death will not hurt, but by the stars, he hopes it hurts them all.
I hope this hurts, he says. His feathers are barely ruffled as he sings through the gas. A cruel trick, a broken cycle. A hero. I hope this hurts.
He will take them all with him.
~
In the night time, Anya curls up at the foot of Curly’s bed. He breathes, barely, on the cusp of the end. While she is locked in a cage of sliding doors and painkiller bottles, he is locked in a cage made of his own skin.
“I don’t—” she cuts herself off. It makes Anya sick looking at him, and that makes her feel even worse. “Oh, Curly…I’m sorry.” It’s the last thing she says before the takes the bottle off the shelf and grasps it in her sweaty palm. It feels like she’s choking on dust and coal, and she wonders whether Curly can feel it too.
Invisible until the final breath. The doors to the medbay were locked, and it was the only safety she could truly confide in, but it felt much more like the walls of a mine collapsing around her. Blocking her in. The dirt clogs deep and heavy in her throat, in her lungs, and as she tips her head back, Curly lets out a strangled wheeze that sounds somewhat akin to a dying bird.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
"why are you writing fanfic for that fandom you havent even been in" IDC. ive read enough tumblr essays i know these people almost as intimately as the ones i knew before. anyway anya mouthwashing centric appreciation fic be upon ye
id like to say some things about the mouthwashing game which i have not played and never will because i Will cry probably
justice for anya
who likes jimmy...who...
when i first saw the tag trending i thought people found some trend about mouthwash that got popular. imagine what happened when i click on the tag. imagine.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
You are the envy of the sun and the moon and the stars, Juliette thinks to herself, as Mallory’s voice becomes an ethereally calming background. The sky begs for you to come home, and yet you are here with me.
"azzie, are you studying for your exams--" NO. beast of hadingley hill fanfiction comes FIRST. okay but actually seriously, i love this webtoon so much. i WILL be writing more. this IS a warning. @squigg-les i do hope you enjoy this hehehe it was very fun to write! thanks for being an awesome author <3 <3
“why is everyone getting emotional over literal blocks” well look at them. at this point the next life series should be called family life and its filmed like a reality tv show and it becomes more dramatic than keeping up with the kardashians. because these people are so good at angst for some reason
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