A/n: Hi surprise! I've decided to do some drabbles for angstober!! They won't be every day and it will be very informal, but I feel like this is a great opportunity for writing! I'll be making a masterlist for these drabbles soon. Enjoy!! :)
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“What’s wrong?”
His voice was broken, anguished. You were sure you’d never heard the tone before, the way the words cracked over each other and crumbled into a rasp.
Nothing was wrong. Nothing felt wrong.
“Please, what’s wrong?” he tried again, and somehow those words hit you harder than the first time.
Nothing was wrong. Nothing hurt. But—you thought, as words refused to pass the parting of your lips—nothing was right either. You were stuck, immovable. You felt hands on your face, and there was still the ache that blossomed in your chest as Bucky’s voice echoed there, but there was nothing else. You couldn’t move.
You couldn’t move.
“Baby, come on.” The hands on your face were moving in untraceable patterns, rushed and illogical. “Come on. Come on, please.”
How did you get here? There wasn’t a clear path. You’d been alone, there had been darkness, and then there was this strange, stagnant air that refused to leave you. You’d been alone for such a long time.
“I don’t wanna hurt you. We found you, baby. We finally fucking found you. Please snap out of this. Tell me how to help you.”
You weren’t sure if this unbearable pain invading your lungs would be livable long term. You weren’t sure how to follow Bucky’s request. You were seeing him but you weren’t. He was talking to you but he was really talking to a brick wall.
There was another light in the room, a door opening and more footsteps echoing in whatever chamber you had found yourself in. How long had that door been closed? Days? Weeks? Bucky would tell you if you had the capability to ask.
“I love you so fucking much. Please. Please.”
“Barnes, we can’t take her like that.”
The deeper voice was alarming—recognizable but distant in your memory. You preferred the gentleness of Bucky’s tone.
“To hell with whatever Shield expects me to do here,” Bucky seethed, eyes never leaving you. “We’ve been looking for her for over a year. You really expect me to leave my girl hooked up to this thing?”
“She’s gone, Sergeant. No life signs reported on the scan. No activity.”
That wasn’t true. You were hearing everything. Some part of your consciousness was still here.
“Her heart’s beating. She’s there. Get someone. Help her,” Bucky demanded, the breath from his words on the skin of your face. He was so close and you could do nothing about it.
“That’s all she has left. Hydra’s had her hooked up to this machine for months with no brain activity other than what they’ve created. We can’t bring her back to the tower, Barnes. She’s already gone.”
A cry—no, a sob—reverberated against the stone walls.
No. No. You weren’t gone. You were screaming at them but no sounds were escaping you. You were here, you could feel Bucky’s lips as they trembled and pressed to your temple. What scan were they reading? It was wrong.
“No,” Bucky denied with thick, heavy words. “No, Fury, you can’t say that. You don’t get to say that to me. I’ve made her my top priority since the moment she went missing and it’s been like pulling teeth getting help. I finally get someone to pay attention to me and you give up? No.”
You were being compressed now. Bucky was wrapping himself around you, coveting you as if you were a possession he needed to protect. You wondered if it was due to the finality in Fury’s tone—if there was something you were missing. Something you couldn’t see.
“Barnes, there’s nothing we can do. She’d be a danger if we got her out of here.”
Another kiss was pressed to your skin, damp this time, tears soaking into your cheek. They weren’t yours. You weren’t sure if you could cry anymore.
“I’m not giving up on you,” Bucky whispered against your ear. More footsteps entered the room. “You’re gone, so am I.”
So much noise.
The small, echoing chamber erupted into a cacophony of uninterpretable noises.
And you couldn’t see, but something was wrong now. You would tell Bucky as soon as you woke up.
The cab ride home was silent, neither of them said a word. Back at 221B, Sherlock sat in his chair, while John busied himself in the kitchen. Some moments later, he fell down in his own chair across from Sherlock, sipping his tea. “So...” he said, eventually breaking the silence. “You didn't seem very frightened. Earlier, looking directly into the barrel of a weapon.” It wasn't phrased as a question, but Sherlock knew what John was referring to, and he was too tired to start arguing with him. “No,” he just said instead. This evening, they had chased a suspect through the streets of London, running through small alleyways and climbing over walls. Sherlock had been some steps in front of John, and when he'd approached the suspect, he was facing a gun, aiming at his brow. For a moment nothing had happened, then John had arrived, grasped the situation and tackled the man to the floor, all within a few seconds. He'd looked horrified, far more dishevelled than Sherlock, but they were both fine.
“No anxiety? No... I don't know, fear?” John pressed, but Sherlock simply shook his head. “But you were facing death!” John blurted out. Sherlock looked at him with a blank expression. “You're not afraid of death, are you?” John asked, his exasperated tone morphing into real interest. Sherlock shook his head. “What are you afraid of, then?” he asked, and Sherlock frowned. 'Of you,' the answer floated through his mind. 'Of the amount of love I'm capable to feel. I'm afraid to let it show, afraid to lay me bare. I'm afraid of loosing you, afraid of being left behind. I'm afraid of you, finding someone else. Every time you're on a date, I'm scared. You're frightening. I'm scared of you leaving, I'm scared of you staying. I'm afraid of myself...' He blinked at John, taken aback from the unexpected question. “I...” he started. “Well, I think what scares me most, is the abyss of the human soul. That's the only thing you should really be afraid of..." Now it was Johns turn to frown at him. “Is this so?” he asked, but more to fill the silence, to cover his utter surprise. Sherlock shrugged. John looked at him for a moment, as if he was not sure whether he could believe him or not, but then he nodded and excused himself for the night. 'I'm afraid, John,' Sherlock thought. 'And I don't know what to do...'
Her tone was, to Luke’s hearing, deliberately even, nothing to read into the words except stark fact.
“I shouldn’t have let him go on the mission, that’s what you mean?”
“Not what I said.”
“What you meant,” Luke repeated.
“It’s the Sith coven all over again,” Mara said. “Sometimes I wish Ben hadn’t inherited your reckless optimism. We can’t save everyone; he should know that by now.”
“That’s a hard lesson to learn,” Luke admitted. “Even for me.”
“But a necessary one,” Mara retorted. “Now go teach your son, Master Skywalker.”
This drabble is sort of a sequel or cousin to three from my #yearofluke2023 drabble series, for April and May and June, which Mara refers to here.
"Ian said he wants to talk. After school."
"About what?"
"He did not say."
And that was the problem, wasn't it? The words had been said in passing, a fleeting moment between the carefully orchestrated breakfast rush and ritual boarding of the school bus, and yet they were all Fergus could think about.
- OR -
Fergus struggles to navigate life at Lallybroch without Jamie and Claire. Modern Day AU.
Summary: Nilenna loses her cool with Ciri and must mend fences if she’s to perform her duty.
Word Count: 259
Warnings: Angst
Gif made by @valiantwerewolfluminary
"Do you think I want this job? Do you think I asked for it? Leading some poor little princess around is hardly my idea of a good time. It’s my duty and it’s how I survive." The words were flung with such venom and rage that spittle fell from Nilenna's mouth as she spoke them.
"I—" Ciri began, already fighting to suppress the crack in her voice that she could feel was coming. Tears welled up in her eyes and she looked down at the dirt where she stood, "didn’t know you felt that way. I’m sorry for being such a burden to you."
The genuine hurt in Ciri's eyes wounded Nilenna in return, and she stepped backward, no longer able to meet Ciri's green eyed gaze. She’d been too harsh. Had she truly even meant all she said? Perhaps it had been true in part, but a burden was something Ciri simply was not.
Nilenna came to rest on the other side of their shared quarters for the night, keeping her distance. Ciri could run off in the night after what she’d just heard. Hell, Nilenna wouldn’t even blame her. But she couldn’t let that happen.
"You’re not a burden, Cirilla." All the hardness in her tone was gone, replaced by her sorrowful admission as it permeated the tense air between them. She needed Ciri to trust her, to feel safe with her while she got her to where she needed to be. Fuck her feelings, ill or otherwise. She had a duty, and she would fulfill it.
I probably spent way too much time making sure my sandhi were accurate in this one. Hooray to the one semester of Sanskrit I'd once taken - never thought it would come in useful.
The Flame of the Countless Deaths
The connection between the leylines is tentative, volatile. Hard as he tries, Kalidasa cannot fully feel the other locations, but it’s better than nothing.
Breathe in, breathe out. His heart beats in sync with the weak, dying magic of the world.
He is about to cease to exist. He is everywhere.
Keeping track of time is hard. There is no time where his mind is, and yet the time is everything now. Sounds of fighting reach him, and he isn’t sure if it is his brothers and sisters fighting at the Mrtyunamjvalah temple below, or if it’s echoes reaching him from across the world, the last cries seeping in through the unstable network.
It hardly matters.
The first seals are barely beginning to settle when the first interruption rocks the leyline.
Kalidasa frowns, breathing steady as he tries to pull closer, figure out where the disruption is coming from. One of the second seals comes with a delay, and with it, Qiao Xiu’s unusually terse voice in Kalidasa’s head, “Got off schedule, but we’re fine.”
And it is fine. The seals should be done simultaneously for them to be stable, but on the cosmic scale, some minutes are a minor issue. The disturbance caused by whatever happened on Qiao Xiu’s end dies down as the rituals continue, and Kalidasa keeps hoping. “Take care,” he replies, and listens to the silence once more.
Time passes through him. More hours, more seals, more fighting seemingly everywhere. The powers that don’t want their divinity sealed off are not going to let it go smoothly – those running the rituals were prepared for it, each group made precautions for it.
Some hid the sites, some set up traps, some placed guards. Below Kalidasa, surrounding the circle where the ritual is taking place, are the monks that do not expect to make it to sundown.
Kalidasa wonders – no, hopes that it will be enough.
After four seals have taken root, things go downhill.
“Hoards of demons,” Zamani’s voice follows the tidal wave of unstable magic. “We’ll try to get back on track.”
He isn’t sure why they report to him. There is nothing he can do, he cannot even send the word out without breaking his connection to the leyline. Perhaps, Kalidasa muses, they just want him not to worry, aware that he’s watching over them.
“Do your best,” is all he can think of replying.
Perhaps there is some comfort they gain from knowing he’s still there, for however much longer it might be.
To his sorrow, the leylines do not have the time to stabilize before the next big interruptions. With each seal, it seems, the price of mistakes becomes greater. “Man down. Will try to finish with eleven.”
The few words of comfort Kalidasa can give don’t seem at all sufficient.
He utters them anyway and watches in dismay as the perturbations grow stronger and stronger, no longer needing their missteps to feed themselves. Something is bound to crack, Kalidasa worries, but the fighting seems to have stopped for the most part.
The air is thick with death, and Kalidasa keeps repeating the same prayers for departed souls over and over again. It is all he can do.
Most have completed eight seals when another shock makes Kalidasa jerk, almost throwing him out of his trance. Something goes wrong, somewhere above and on the inside, and Kalidasa isn’t sure where it is in the real world, but he watches helplessly as the connection to one of the leylines breaks, sending ripples through the entire network.
He hadn’t realized before that there is noise in his ears, but it’s growing more and more uncomfortable to the point where he cannot easily ignore it. It is so loud that he almost misses the voice reaching for him through the void.
He barely recognizes Remi.
“I’m sorry,” is all he hears, and perhaps there was more to the message, but it’s gone, dissolved in static as waves of uncertainty wash over the leylines.
Four more seals to go.
The cut off leyline returns slowly, and he knows it’s Remi’s group giving it one more try, no matter how desperate the situation looks on their side. The rituals continue, exhaustion bleeding to Kalidasa instead of finesse as the hours of work take toll on everyone.
The rituals finish in an unsteady cacophony, a rough patch rather than neat embroidery on the fabric between the planes. Kalidasa feels each backlash and winces, knowing they mean more deaths he will probably never learn about.
His magic feels weaker and weaker as more leylines are cut off, but it’s not fully gone. The seals are still fluid, like unfinished stitches, but Kalidasa holds on to hope.
It’s the only thing he can do.
The people of Mrtyunamjvalah leave, knowing better than to disturb him. His own skin feels frayed, and Kalidasa wonders what is happening outside, but dares not open his eyes.
There is still time. There is still hope.
Whatever the outcome, he will be there to witness it.
