Mar 25, 2025
Fourth Wing Masterlist
Go On Baby, Hurt Me Tonight | Ao3 (complete) Sloane Mairi x Dain Aetos, spanning Iron Flame to Onyx Storm
What I Wouldn't Sacrifice | Ao3 (complete) Violet Sorrengail x Xaden Riorson, post-canon
seen from Czechia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Russia
seen from Croatia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Croatia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Switzerland
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Russia
Fourth Wing Masterlist
Go On Baby, Hurt Me Tonight | Ao3 (complete) Sloane Mairi x Dain Aetos, spanning Iron Flame to Onyx Storm
What I Wouldn't Sacrifice | Ao3 (complete) Violet Sorrengail x Xaden Riorson, post-canon
𝐠𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫; { 𝐟.𝐰. 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 }
SYNOPSIS; after gifting fred a muggle contraption for his birthday, his fixation on the device is wholesome. he pays a visit to your botanical garden, hoping to put his new gift to better use with you as his main subject of interest despite what you assumed.
RESTRICTIONS; all ages permitted.
WORD COUNT; 2.8k
WARNINGS; fluff. agonizing fluff. enjoy.
This was the essence of home. The eight acre conservatory you maintained 3 miles off the Weasley plot of land. It was nearly akin to your own child. A place where nothing ever died. And it was the only thing in this world that you could call completely yours. To say that you were infatuated and made sure the garden was kept buoyant was a euphemism.
As you were admiring a delicate set of posies, speaking sweet words to keep them merry, a startling sound made you jump almost out of your skin. You nearly took a flower with you that would have ungrounded the poor thing. Angrily, you looked towards the sound of intrusion and sighed with a kind of vexation you were all too familiar with.
“Fred, I told you I don’t allow visitors so late.”
Fred casually walked towards you, swinging his arms a little dramatically. This usually meant he had a proposition of some sort. Around his neck was a muggle contraption called a ‘polaroid camera’ you had gifted him for his birthday a week ago.
“Oh, y/n. Don’t be cheeky. It’s nearly golden hour and I just was hoping you’d maybe let me snap some of these still photos.”
Without warning, he lifted the camera to align the viewfinder with his eye and snapped a quick photo of you. The flash caught you off guard as you attempted to shield your eyes. But the effects had already blinded you.
“Fred, I also told you not to do that directly in someone’s face unless you want some sort of a lawsuit.”
He ignored you, paying attention to the photo that was developing as it slowly retracted from the camera. When it was fully out, he began shaking it and blowing on it, just like you taught him to do. You smiled lightly, finding his curiosity modestly puerile. It was kind of adorable. It didn’t help you had a crush on him since your second year. You were adults now. It all felt slightly juvenile.
You watched Fred squint over the photo, gaping his mouth open a little as he patiently waited for it to fully finish developing. Fred let out a bemused gasp when the photo started manifesting.
“But look how pretty you are!” He held the photo up so you could see it.
It wasn’t quite finished, making you look more like a shapeless blob in the photo. You rolled your eyes.
“Oh, twat.”
You turned back to your flowers and knelt down to begin your nightly rounds before you’d head back home. Fred didn’t say anything else and seemed to fall deathly silent. When you turned around to make sure he hadn’t keeled over, he was gone. You furrowed your brows to yourself and huffed. You hoped he had left and wasn’t lingering around to be a hazard to your garden. The last time he kept past his welcome, an entire colony of roses reaped those consequences under the weight of his body when he fell on them. Helping him recover from the thorns was another worry in and of itself.
However, the sound of the polaroid clicking in the distance told you it would be awhile before you could get him out of your hair.
As you made your consecutive rounds, more clicking could be heard. Golden hour was now encasing the conservatory in a yellowish orange hue. This was your favorite part of your visit. And you supposed the plants also relished in all its beauty.
You ignored the sound of Fred clicking away on his new camera and developing photos. You figured he was taking photos of the plant life and as long as he wasn’t falling on anything, it was okay. For now.
As you weaved among the systematized rows of flora, your hand delicately brushed along the buds of each plant. The heat of the sun could be felt through the glass encasement of the conservatory and it was harmonious. Even with the sound of Fred’s venturing camera. You closed your eyes and smiled to yourself while monitoring your plants, amused that he was so taken by your gift. It was difficult to remember him being this taken by anything outside the relics and inventions of the thriving joke shop.
When you finished up, you half spun around to check your surroundings and make sure nothing was missed. One last click could be heard. You settled it was time to ask Fred to leave. You would be leaving ten minutes from now yourself. And golden hour was beginning to pass over into the sunset. He no longer had any reason to stay.
It took you a moment to find Fred, but when you did, he was still developing the last photo you just heard him take.
“Alright, Freddie. Don’t you have someone else to harass? I’m going home.” You folded your arms across your chest mirthlessly.
He looked at you briefly, though he didn’t say anything. He almost looked guilty. You raised up a brow and tightened your arms that were still resting on your chest.
“Did you fall on some of my plants again?” You asked.
“I hope you don’t mind. I started off taking photos of the plants. But —”
His cheeks began turning red. You tried to conceal a grin by biting down on your lips. For some reason, his fluster would beguile you at times. It wasn’t very often that Fred resorted to feelings of atonement. In fact, it was quite rare.
“Well, I took photos of you.”
“That’s what you’re fussed about?” You asked and let your arms fall to your side, slightly relieved he hadn’t killed more plants in his destructive path like last time. “Can I see them?”
Fred seemed to relax himself when he realized you weren’t mad. It wasn’t like the Weasleys were known to not take a thousand photos without asking. Especially Molly. But to you, it was endearing in a way. He search in the pocket of his camera sleeve and took out some photos. You noticed he kept the one that was still developing on him, but handed you the others.
Carefully, you sifted through each photo. And like he said, most were of you.
“Oh, Fred. I’ve ruined all these photos. The flowers are beautiful on their own.”
He didn’t say anything when you looked at him. Instead, he gave you a look that indicated he was marginally insulted by your remark.
“You’re always self deprecating.” He said. “And I don’t even think you realize you’re the most beautiful thing in the room.”
Your heart started thudding harder. You palms turned clammy and adopted a small shake where you still held onto the photos. Usually, by now, he would have told you he was joking. But that moment didn’t come this time. You were still half expecting it. Instead, now you were probably the idiot with the red cheeks.
“What did you say?” You asked, sounding dumbfounded.
“You heard what I said and I said what I meant. You gave me something very valuable. In our world, it’s not like we get single frames of a life usually. There’s just something so sacred about capturing that one frame.” He smiled to himself.
“You can catch someone making a funny face or a gleam in their eye when they’ve thought about something they really enjoy. All in one frame that you might miss in moving pictures. And the thing is that I can always remember you this way. Because of these photos. You also pose naturally. You’ve always walked like you half expect someone to be watching.”
You were definitely the one who was flustered now. Feeling your face getting hot, you handed the photos back to Fred and just nodded thoughtfully.
“What was that last photo you took?” You asked, looking at Fred’s other hand that held onto it.
“You won’t like it.” He half laughed.
“Then show me.” You chuckled back.
He shook his head.
“You’ll rip it up or something. It’s my favorite one.”
You knew that must have meant you looked absolutely dastardly and Fred was intending to use it as some sort of leverage because he thought it looked hilarious. You needed that photo.
“Hand it over, Weasley. Or it’s about to get real messy.”
“Make me.” His brows furrowed and the challenge was extremely enticing.
You appeared to concede by shrugging your shoulders and starting to walk away. But in an effort to deceive, you quickly turned on your heal and lunged at him. You knew that if you were too predictable, he had enough height on you to simply hold it over your head and you’d never reach it. However, a misstep sent you both hurling to the ground and Fred was already protecting the photo.
The two of you landed into a large bush that could take the weight of the impact. Fred struggled in trying to get up and you continued tickling his sides in an effort to distract him. That’s where he was most vulnerable. You were both laughing while playfully fighting one another off.
Fred carefully threw you off of him onto a patch of grass and quickly overpowered you by straddling your waist. He dangled the photo above you teasingly.
“Reach up and see what happens.” He taunted.
“Fred, let me go.” You were still laughing and began beating at his legs.
“I’ll let you look. But promise you’ll let me keep it and I won’t mercilessly start tickling you back for that stunt you pulled.”
“Okay, fine!” You yelled. Fred was a lot more concise with his tickling antics. It wasn’t something you wanted to test again.
Sweetly, he hand you the photo and you looked at it. You could see why he thought you would hate it. It wasn’t horrifying like you expected. But it was personal. This one was the only one that showed your face completely. Not just a profile or the back of your head. And it was likely that because you were so self deprecating, he anticipated you would think the worst of it. But you didn’t. And not necessarily because you thought you looked pleasing enough to be in it. But the way it was taken was nearly affectionate. Making you the main subject despite your beautiful surroundings and a particular focus on your face. This was the only one that looked meticulous and fond.
You looked up at Fred and smiled, still laying beneath him.
“Fred, really. Why did you take so many photos of me?”
“Because you’re just that beautiful.” He said plainly.
You looked at his lips and it was likely he saw you do this.
“Say it.” He said. “I know you’ve felt it for a long time. Even as far back as third year. I saw your note to Hannah Abbott.”
Your eyes widened. Hannah had been close to your little sister and you two formed a trustworthy bond in third year. You once wrote a note to her that somehow went missing. It detailed your crush on Fred and how you considered that hopefully, you could one day marry him. It was a silly letter, but Hannah misplaced it somewhere in the courtyard. Of course, one of the few people to recognize your penmanship would have stumbled across it. The subject of the note, no less.
“This long?” You asked. “You’ve kept that safe for this long?”
“I’d take it to my grave if you asked.” He smiled.
“But why?”
“Because I’ve felt the same, really.” He sounded so nonchalant. Enough to make you chuckle.
He leaned down closer to you and you could now feel his breath on your lips.
“Do you still feel the same way?” Fred asked you.
Part of you was terrified to admit this. But as you could see the moon in the sky overhead, you felt safe. You nodded.
“Then say it. Say you love me. Say it, and I’m yours.”
This was a profound level of commitment you had never known before that you were about to swear yourself to. Proclamations of love were sacred, but this was true.
“Fred, I — “
The words couldn’t come to you. Years of suppression of these deep sentiments took your voice away. And yet, he didn’t hesitate. He picked the camera up that was still dangling around his neck and snapped a photo of you beneath him. This time, it did not startle you. You just stared up at him curiously.
“And what was that?” You asked.
“The moment you realized I’ve loved you back.” He said with a wide grin, his fingers waiting to retrieve the photo from the camera. “A priceless memory. And a beautiful one. I think I’ll keep it forever.”
You turned your head to the side bashfully, observing your hand lain next to you. Though you felt tense, your curled fingers appeared so at ease. Your mind was the only thing resisting, you realized. Otherwise, loving him felt so natural. It wasn’t until you felt him tuck a strand of hair behind your exposed ear that you looked back at him with dewy eyes. Your cheeks would have been so red, they nearly looked sun-kissed.
“Yes.” You said. “Yes, I believe I do love you and have for a very long time.”
You slowly moved to shift weight onto your elbows, your glossed-over eyes still lingering on his. When you titled your chin up, Fred didn’t hesitate to meet with your lips. He dropped the photo that was still developing. His kiss was hungry. Years of dispossession, never knowing how ardent his desire was for you. All of that was contained in this one kiss that spoke a thousand words left ambiguous. You felt him relax into you. The weight of so much withdrawal collapsing. You meant that much to him.
Fred used his hand to tangle his fingers into your locks and support the back of your head. This gesture was so tender and amatory, you almost could not believe it to be Fred that was holding you.
The same boy who filled your panty drawer with nifflers that scratched holes into all your under garments. The same boy that punched Marcus Flint for spitting milk in your hair because he laughed too hard and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The same boy who was now a man that you still had trouble disassociating from your best friend upon learning he loved you, too.
Fred was always more brash when compared to his look-alike counterpart. But now, with you, his tenderness was uncontested. He was the most charming and tasted sweet.
He grumbled when you pulled away. As though it was not enough to satisfy his incessant desire of you.
“Is it supposed to feel scary? Admitting these things?” You asked him. “I don’t want us to lose what we have.”
“It can. But, the good news is you won’t have to do it alone.”
Fred fished around his pocket and pulled something out. Opening his palm, a jumping spider flew from his palm into your face and quickly evaporated into air before it could touch you. Of course, not before eliciting a loud yelp out of you. They were vanishing spiders; a physical jump scare that was all but palpable. Just a visual illusion. But, there was your answer. Things would be the same. You would never lose him. Before he could face his retribution, Fred quickly got up and began running for the exit.
“Weasley!” You cried out angrily.
Yet a part of you felt oddly satisfied with this response. It was still in character and reminded you that love isn’t terrifying. It can be as genuine and subtle as friendship remains.
When you got up, Fred already appeared to be gone. Also very in character. Dusting off your dress, you quietly began gathering your things. You smiled to yourself, thinking about the events that had just occurred. It almost felt surreal. You flexed your fingers a few times just to remind yourself it was real.
Your sight glossed over one photo Fred had forgotten. The one he took while on you. Gently, you picked it up and grinned. He was right about capturing a single frame. It spoke much more deeply in this circumstance where you could easily visualize the precise moment your world changed. For the better.
You placed the photo in your pocket, intending to give it back to him as he would find greater use for it. And he already claimed it as his. But as you began to leave, a loud pop behind you caused you to jump and arms wrapped around your waist. Again, you cried out.
“I forgot to ask what you’d like to do for a first date.” Fred’s voice enveloped you. “Preferably something where I can take more still pictures of you like this.”
am i supposed to be studying rn? yes. am i actually spending my time trying to write a piece of fanfic for the first time in two years? also yes.
scenes from a laboratory camera (fw secret santa 2k15)
scenes from a laboratory camera PG-13 Freedom Wars | Misaki "Crow" Yata/Tomoyuki "Dreadnought" Kanno A handful of laboratory dates from a shared past captured on film, so to speak, with apologies to tswift and Crow. 1.6k. (fw secret santa for @themisakis ! also pretty late in posting it here, I... couldn’t get into my tumblr while I was overseas lol. sort of an experimental format, haven’t written a whole lot of script so it was new and kind of fun to do.
crossposted to dreamwidth)
SCENE:
Laboratory INT., artificially lit fluorescent and will’o blue. Machinery hums in the background. On a work bench roughly in its middle, CROW BOY makes some manual tweaks to a gadget of somewhat indeterminate and arcane purpose. The FRATERNITY DAGGER is lying on the bench next to him, bare head in CROW BOY’s lap. His helmet is on the floor near the bench.
CROW BOY hums an aimless tune.
FRATERNITY DAGGER, sleepily: You’ve got a nice voice, crow boy.
CROW BOY startles.
CROW BOY: You were awake?
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Not that long.
CROW BOY: You didn’t have to come if you were so tired. I would’ve missed you, but…
CROW BOY makes a helpless gesture with his right hand, screwdriver still in his grip.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Wanted to, crow boy. Sleep better with you.
CROW BOY: Oh.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Mm.
CROW BOY leans down to kiss the FRATERNITY DAGGER’s temple.
CROW BOY: Go back to sleep.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Mm. Love you, crow boy.
CROW BOY: (beat) I love you too, Mr. Dread-Not.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: (drowsy chuckle) Mm. Mr. Dread-Not, huh? I’ve heard worse.
--
SCENE:
The same laboratory INT., artificially lit fluorescent and will’o blue. CROW BOY kneels next to the bare frame of something that might eventually be a wheeled robot, but is currently nothing more than bare metal and assorted parts. He hums a slightly different tune, louder for the absence of the hum of machinery in the background.
CROW BOY: I wonder if he’ll like you? I hope he does.
The still-disassembled robot is silent.
CROW BOY: I can’t tell what he’s thinking sometimes, but I can tell when he’s lying now. It’s good that he doesn’t lie to me so much anymore, right?
CROW BOY tightens a bolt, then puts down his wrench.
CROW BOY: Yeah. It’s a good thing. It means he trusts me, doesn’t it?
CROW BOY checks a large schematic laid out on the floor next to the robot parts and frowns.
CROW BOY: (mournfully) Oh, your chassis is backwards. Let me fix that…
--
SCENE:
The same laboratory INT., artificially lit fluorescent and will’o blue. CROW BOY leads the FRATERNITY DAGGER through the entryway by the hand, all smiles. The FRATERNITY DAGGER looks amused. A mostly-assembled robot sits dormant by the work bench in the center of the lab.
CROW BOY: (talking rapidly) And then I got it to move independently the other day! I had to deactivate its AI for a bit while I worked out the kinks in its problem-solving and obstacle detection, but—
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Easy there, crow boy, the story’s not gonna run away without you.
CROW BOY: (pouts) I was just getting to the good part!
CROW BOY lets go of the FRATERNITY DAGGER’s hand and cups the FRATERNITY DAGGER’s bare face in his hands instead.
CROW BOY: I… I really like you, even if you don’t want to listen to my robot stories.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: I’d love to listen to them in bed.
CROW BOY: (flushes) I… Who says that kind of thing?
FRATERNITY DAGGER: You don’t hate it, do you?
CROW BOY: No…
FRATERNITY DAGGER: C’mon crow boy, gimme some sugar.
CROW BOY leans in halfway to meet the FRATERNITY DAGGER’s kiss.
CROW BOY: (fondly) You’re really hopeless, Mr. Dread-Not. My sister warned me about men like you.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: (amused) She did, huh?
CROW BOY: Yeah. She said you’re only after one thing. (beat) I… I kind of like it, though.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: (thoughtful) Two things.
CROW BOY: Huh?
FRATERNITY DAGGER: You and a nap, preferably on you.
CROW BOY: Oh.
The FRATERNITY DAGGER neatly laces his fingers together with CROW BOY’s and tugs CROW BOY over to the work bench. He drops his helmet near it, lies down on the bench like he’s aiming to take a nap, and pulls CROW BOY down on top of him.
CROW BOY squawks.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Or the other way around. You’re pretty comfortable either way.
FADE TO BLACK—
--
SCENE:
The same laboratory INT. The robot is fully assembled now and rolling about the laboratory, beeping softly as it checks the machinery humming in the background. CROW BOY hums a soft tune, left hand stroking the FRATERNITY DAGGER’s hair while he makes edits to a schematic with his right.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Hear you’ve been poking around lately. My masters have itchy trigger fingers. You might not like what you find if you keep going.
CROW BOY: (momentarily confused) I… what?
FRATERNITY DAGGER: I’m saying this because I like you. Leave well enough alone.
CROW BOY: Oh. (pause) I just… wanted to know more about you, I guess.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Then you might as well fucking ask me. You’re kind of dumb for a genius sometimes, crow boy.
CROW BOY: (squawks) Hey!
FRATERNITY DAGGER: (soft) I love you, crow boy.
CROW BOY: … I love you too, Mr. Dread-Not.
CROW BOY’s left hand stills.
CROW BOY: … Does this mean you’d choose them over me?
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Don’t make me have to pick, crow boy. I like what we’ve got. It’s nice to have someone who won’t stab me if I fall asleep on them. (beat) Your kissing’s improving, too.
CROW BOY: I can’t believe I love you sometimes.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Mm. Want another lesson?
CROW BOY: … Yeah.
--
SCENE:
Laboratory INT. The robot hums softly in its charging station, at the same pitch as the rest of the machinery in the background. CROW BOY and the FRATERNITY DAGGER sit on CROW BOY’s work bench, trading kisses.
CROW BOY breaks the last kiss and sits back.
CROW BOY: I have a confession to make.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Oh? Is this the kind of confession that’ll make us both sad or is it something fun for the next time we make out in your lab?
CROW BOY: I—what? No! I mean. Yes? (visibly flustered) No, I just. I’ve been recording us the times you came to the lab with me.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Recording, huh?
CROW BOY: I just… sometimes you’re busy and sometimes one of my ops runs long and we miss each other and it helps to hear your voice.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Crow boy, you’re a sap.
CROW BOY bristles.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: It’s not a bad thing. You’re cute, crow boy. Sap and all.
CROW BOY deflates.
CROW BOY: Oh.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: (wickedly) So, does that mean you’ve got the time we—
CROW BOY flushes and covers the FRATERNITY DAGGER’s mouth with his hand.
CROW BOY: I… I mean I do, but it’s not like I watch it! Just everything else!
The FRATERNITY DAGGER kisses CROW BOY’s palm. CROW BOY trails off.
CROW BOY: I really miss you sometimes.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: I’m right here, crow boy.
CROW BOY: Yeah.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: I don’t mind.
CROW BOY: Huh?
FRATERNITY DAGGER: If the guy behind the camera’s you, I don’t mind being watched. Or recorded.
CROW BOY: Oh. (softer) Thanks.
The FRATERNITY DAGGER shrugs off his jacket and unbuttons his shirt.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: Least I can do is give you a show, eh crow boy?
CROW BOY squawks.
CROW BOY: Not like that!
--
SCENE:
Laboratory INT. Unusually, the FRATERNITY DAGGER is awake; CROW BOY’s head resting in his lap. The FRATERNITY DAGGER’s jacket is draped over CROW BOY’s slumbering form. The robot wheels about in the background, beeping softly.
FRATERNITY DAGGER: (singing softly) Say you’ll remember me, standing in a nice dress staring at the sunset? Red lips and rosy cheeks, say you’ll see me again even if it’s just in your wildest dreams—
--
SCENE:
Laboratory INT. The lab seems to have been neglected for some time. A layer of dust covers the work bench.
CROW walks in through the entry alone and sneezes.
CROW: What is this place?
The robot beeps and rolls up to him.
CROW: Oh! Hey, where’d you come from?
The robot beeps again.
CROW: Huh. That’s neat. Maybe I could make one like this. Who made you?
The robot wheels around CROW in a large-ish circle.
CROW: (mostly talking to himself) We could probably tighten up your turn radius too, and—whoa!
CROW nudges the robot away from the corner of the work bench.
CROW: Guess whoever made you didn’t quite finish your obstacle detection.
The robot beeps almost sadly.
CROW: Were you lonely in here by yourself? I guess I should make you a friend. (beat) You probably need a name, huh? How about Cat? Or… Carrot?
--
SCENE:
Laboratory INT. CROW walks in, tugging TOMOYUKI along gently by the wrist and talking animatedly.
CROW: --so I said “look, I’m just a sinner, what do I know, but you’ll probably want to swap out those parts for ones with less wear or the entire bot’s gonna blow up in your face one of these days.”
TOMOYUKI: Mm.
CROW: He didn’t listen to me, and then two days later apparently his robot had some wild malfunction. I don’t know how he’s planning to fix it, but I guess I’ll see if he’s willing to share notes afterwards. (beat) You okay, Tomo?
TOMOYUKI: Yeah.
CROW: Sorry. I guess I shouldn’t be talking about bad things happening to robots when Yukihime’s still missing, huh?
TOMOYUKI: ‘S fine. Everything’s fine.
CROW: (gently) Probably shouldn’t stay up so late at the Fueling Station, though. You’ll need your strength to get him back.
TOMOYUKI: (stubborn) Can’t sleep without him.
CROW exhales slowly.
CROW: Well, I’m not Yukihime, but you should try to catch a little sleep. I’ll keep watch, okay?
TOMOYUKI: … Okay.
TOMOYUKI curls up on the work bench next to CROW, head in CROW’s lap, and closes his eyes.
TOMOYUKI: … Warm.
CROW: Good night, Tomo.
TOMOYUKI: Night, Crow.
CROW: (distantly) Love you, Mr. Dreadnought.
TOMOYUKI makes a small noise of confusion.
CROW: … Sorry, I don’t know where that came from. Go to sleep, Tomo.
The robot beeps in the background and parks itself next to the work bench.
TOMOYUKI: Mm. (half-asleep) Okay, crow boy.
like brothers - twins vs fraternity
Twins’ POV of @con-kanno’s amazing Tomoyuki’s Fraternity adventures because I couldn’t help myself.
--
The Fueling Station always played host to a raucous of cheerful laughter and the sound of so-chlo cans clinking together after a tough op. Takedowns and kill counts were celebrated over a hearty cup or two, while other sinners looked on with mixed curiosity and envy and Jiro cleaned glasses in warm silence behind the counter. The self-proclaimed Liquidation Nation was not only the rowdiest, but also the most profitable. It was almost difficult to fathom how they had so much EP to drop on a gathering like this, but not if their stories of dismantled Dionaeas were to be believed. With their accessories left behind to watch an empty cell, it was almost like true freedom for a blissful few hours.
None of them noticed the figure that seemed to cling to Tomoyuki’s trail like an extra shadow when he left early that night, or the conspicuous absence of the usual Fraternity suit in the corner of the bar.
--
It’s afternoon already when Tomoyuki shows up in Citizen’s Promenade with a swollen purple splotch around his left eye and what looks like a freshly healing cut on his lip the next day. Red’s teeth nearly grind together into dust.
“Whose face do I fucking break?” she hisses, fists clenching at her sides.
“I didn’t get his name,” Tomoyuki answers, and her blood boils at the very idea that some uppity sinner had the gall to get the jump on him when she wasn’t there to watch his back. Immediately her eyes flick down to his hands—no knuckle bruises, but plenty on his forearms. He didn’t even fight back.
“What did he look like?” Crow’s voice interjects from next to her, steady as it always was (how the hell did he do that, honestly?), but Tomoyuki only shakes his head.
“He was wearing a helmet. Couldn’t see his face.”
The frown and concern in Crow’s next reply is obvious, though he lowers his voice when he does speak. “Someone from the Fraternity attacked you?”
Fucking rotten pests, Red thinks. Maybe the way they were swarming the Warren lately hadn’t been coincidence after all. She’d always hated dealing with the guys in the Cell Garden for those particularly elusive modding materials... maybe they got tired of skulking around in back alleys and finally decided to pick a good old-fashioned fistfight—but boy, she’d make damn sure they regretted their target of choice. “Maybe if I start breaking kneecaps I’ll find the right guy eventually,” she mutters dangerously.
“Red, stop.” Crow’s hand is on her shoulder before she can make a move. “We’re not going to start a war with the entire Fraternity.”
“Hey, Tomo’s your friend too!” she snaps, shrugging him off and turning to face him in earnest. She gestures aggressively at Tomoyuki, who seems to be at a loss for words. “Doesn’t it piss you off that somebody tried to rearrange his face?”
The corner of Crow’s mouth quirks up into a smile, a glint of mischief sparking to life in his eye. “I said we, didn’t I?”
Now that was more like it. “You have a plan then, Smiles?”
The grin spreads on his face in full force now, and Red can’t help but mirror it with one of her own. Tomoyuki’s eyes wander back and forth between them in the moment they share an unspoken agreement.
She and her brother were going to get them good. They were going to pay for this.
--
Crow’s glad for the company when Tomoyuki’s cell door finally slides open and its occupant steps out into the Promenade, blinking quizzically at him. Yukihime is close behind. Crow wonders vaguely if Yukihime was even a witness to the whole incident, or if he had been silenced, bright mismatching eyes dimmed to a dull shade while Tomo was...
“Morning, Tomo!” he chirps, quickly stepping up to his side.
“You were waiting for me?” Tomoyuki asks. He tilts his head slightly, almost as if it wasn’t just yesterday that the sight of his injuries was enough to send Red into a bloodthirsty rage.
“Not long,” he fibs. “I was just on my way to the Fueling Station to check up on your favorite bot. Er, well, your other favorite. Want to come with?”
Tomoyuki seems to consider this briefly before he nods silently, but Crow doesn’t miss the way he hesitates, frown half-forming on his brow before disappearing altogether. Ah. Well that certainly answered a few questions, most notably why Yukihime hadn’t been there to defend him. He fights his own look of worry from rising to the surface. Wearing his usual smile, he beckons Tomoyuki cheerfully along instead.
They fall into step together, the comforting presence of an all-seeing accessory at their backs. Crossing the Promenade, Crow can’t help but keep a watchful eye on the residents milling about: the weary sinners, the brisk step of the redcoats, the eerie stillness of the cell guards. It’s been a while since he felt on edge like this, he thinks. Not since his early CODE level days, when everything seemed so new and scary without—
A helmeted accessory in a dark coat passes by in the wake of a small sinner, and instinctively Crow draws closer to his companion, breath catching in his throat for just a moment.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Crow replies hastily. He relaxes once the pair has moved away. “Thought maybe one of the redcoats was giving me the stink-eye. It’s never a good time to rack up more years, right?”
“There you are,” Red’s voice rings out across the Promenade. In just as many seconds, she’s already caught up, seamlessly taking up her place at Tomoyuki’s other side. “No thanks for waiting.”
“Sorry,” Crow mutters. “Thought you’d already gone ahead.” She meets his pointed gaze over Tomoyuki’s head, giving the tiniest hint of a nod in return.
“Well, I’m here now,” she says simply. She straightens up beside them, her face set into the kind of expression an Abductor might make when it was on the prowl for hostile sinners. Crow can practically feel the floor clearing for their little group, a fortress of red around the smallest sinner of the team.
“You don’t need to do that,” Tomoyuki objects flatly, watching another sinner skitter off to the sidelines under Red’s glare. She doesn’t seem to hear him.
“Wuss,” she spits quietly at the retreating sinner instead.
“You know how she is,” Crow chuckles. He places a reassuring hand on Tomoyuki’s head, ruffling his hair gently. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t actually hit anyone, okay?”
Still, neither of them leaves his side for the rest of the day.
--
“Fucking cowards,” Red seethes, as she and Crow return to their own cell block after escorting Tomoyuki up to his cell door for the night. “They jumped him right outside the Station that night we went out for drinks? We were right there!” A snarl of frustration punctuates her words. “I knew I shouldn’t have let him go back to his cell by himself. He didn’t even have a stupid accessory to watch his back!”
“We couldn’t have known it would happen,” Crow chides, but Red can tell he’s kicking himself for it too. “Sinners and Fraternity usually get along, at least when it comes to trading. There’d be no reason for them to just attack someone like that. I can’t imagine Tomo would be someone to skimp on payments...”
“Not with his tin man always hovering around to make sure he doesn’t break any rules, no,” Red grumbles. “That Frat son of a bitch. He’ll have more than just a black eye when I’m done with him.”
Crow levels a frown at her. “We can’t just go around beating up every single Fraternity member we see, all right?”
“But—”
“Let me finish, will you? We’ve got to be more selective. Let’s try asking the one who’s always at the Station, see if he knows anything.” He breaks eye contact with her, expression darkening. “And if he doesn’t show, we hit the alleys across the way. It’ll be more dangerous there, and we won’t have the numbers advantage, but someone is bound to know something. And whatever happens, we can’t let Tomo know what we’re doing. There’s something bigger going on here, and I think it scares him.”
Red snorts. Boring, yet logical. Of course. “Fine. This plan of yours had better involve some punching, though.”
“Knowing you,” Crow sighs, “it probably will, whether I want it to or not.”
--
After five days of searching and questioning, the twins find themselves in a dark maze of alleys in the lower parts of the Warren. Rotting, handmade lanterns sparkle weakly from their posts on the walls, illuminating nothing of note on the grimy surfaces except maybe a small bloodstain or two. In the dim light trapped between two narrow walls of a dead end, the blade of Red’s shiv glints like teeth in the darkness.
“Let’s try that again,” she says, twirling the small makeshift knife in her fingers before repositioning it lightly at the middle of the Frat suit’s back. She’s got him pinned helplessly to the wall, arms stuck in her vice-like grip behind his back, but the inexperienced fear is holding him in place more than anything else.
“I-I don’t know anything!” the suit whimpers between small panicked breaths. Red rolls her eyes. She was getting really tired of these greenhorns.
“You already said that,” she sighs angrily. “I thought the Frat was supposed to be a bunch of organized weirdos. Listen up, ‘cause I’m only gonna say this one more time.” She leans in closer, voice low and deadly serious. “Where’s the bastard that thought it would be funny to clock Tomoyuki Kanno in the face?”
“Crazy K-Kanno?” the greenhorn squeaks, before yelping when Red presses her blade in just a little harder.
“Fucking fascinating. Anything else you’d like to share?”
“N-No! I don’t know what happened, I swear! I-I only heard that name from the other guys! P-P-Please let me go!” her victim begs.
The sound of running footsteps echoes from around the bend, and for a moment Red’s heart stops before recognizing the silhouette of her own brother hurrying towards her.
“We’ve got trouble,” he breathes through gritted teeth. “Patrol headed this way. You get what you needed from him?”
Red grips the suit’s helmet and gives it a firm, quick knock against the wall. He slumps to the ground, out cold. “Same shit we’ve been hearing all week. Crazy Kanno this, Crazy Kanno that, but nobody feels like spilling the salt.”
Crow bites his lip. “I don’t like it. I mean, there’s always those kinds of rumors floating around, but this is new. And the only people who call him that are the Fraternity members. There’s got to be some history there…”
“You’re not seriously suggesting Tomo was one of them, are you?”
The look in Crow’s eyes is a steely cold tinged with an uncertain fear. “We can’t ignore that possibility. Even we don’t know who we were before—“
Red promptly cuts him off before he can finish that unpleasant train of conversation. She doesn’t meet his eyes as she pushes past him, heading for the mouth of the alley. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s get the hell out of here before they find this guy.” Now isn’t the time or place for that kind of talk, anyway.
No sooner have the words left her mouth than three suits round the corner and block their escape. Crow inches closer to her, like a trapped animal.
“Oi!” one of them shouts. “What the hell is all this?”
“We came down here to find someone we made a trade deal with,” Crow lies after a beat, voice calm and not betraying even a hint of his concern from before. Red can feel his tension as if it were her own, however. She squints at the two suits taking point—slender, taller than both her and Crow. Man and a woman. Not particularly muscular. Their last member was of similar ilk, yet seemed a little more guarded in his posture. “But we just found him like this, and—”
“That’s a filthy lie, that is,” says the female suit. “We’ve heard about you two already. The redheaded terrors, eh? Just a couple of second-class kids is what you are.”
“He isn’t hurt, just knocked out,” Crow tries again. Red’s eyes are already darting around their surroundings, taking stock in mere seconds. The space. The walls. The potential weapons. “Look, we can pay you for—”
One of the front suits unsheathes a blade from nowhere, effectively interrupting him. Crow shrugs, but his expression is grim. “Well, it was worth a try, right?”
“It’s fine,” Red says, face positively bursting into a manic grin as she settles into a battle stance. “It’ll be more fun this way.”
Crow groans wearily at her reaction, but there’s still a gentle tap of his arm against hers. “Take point. Go for the rear. Watch the knives,” he whispers. She nods.
The two forward suits advance immediately, shoulder to shoulder in the tight passageway. Red eagerly springs forward to meet them. She ducks under a clumsy swipe to her face (how rusty their movements were, an obvious sign of a long absence from the field), bringing up the shiv in her hand to block another blow from her other attacker. The weight of her shoulder connects with his stomach in the same frustrated breath that the suit utters a strained curse. With her attacker doubled over, Red shoves her way past him as Crow approaches from behind, the female suit sandwiched unfortunately between them. She hisses, caught like an amateur, lashing out at the new threat. Undaunted, Crow slips around her blade, locking her wrist in a tight grip and twisting the weapon clean out of her hand. She gasps, barely registering when Crow kicks it away and throws her to the floor, tripping her teammate with her own body as he charges foolishly forward.
A few bounds away, Red engages the last obstacle. In the last step before she closes the distance between them, the suit draws a worn blade and neatly parries her incoming strike. She withdraws quickly, testing her opponent’s mettle with a series of hasty jabs and swings with her own knife, a dull clang marking each block by her opponent. Faster than those other scrubs, a quiet sense tells her, and with more room to maneuver. As the stalemate drags on, moments stretched into an eternity, Red’s jaw aches from the clenching of her teeth. She feints to her left, sliding into the suit’s limited peripheral helmet vision to attack again.
His second blade stops her, leaving a stinging bite on her arm.
“Red!” Crow shouts behind her, but his voice is barely a murmur above the blood humming in Red’s ears. She ignores his cry, choosing instead to continue her assault. Her eyes follow the suit’s movements carefully, taking note of how his arms seem to move in unison, a mirror of his own motions. Her lips curl up into a smirk.
In a flurry of motion, Red begins a rhythm of attacks and evasions, purposefully leaving herself open. One. Two. Step. Three. Four. Step. The suit takes the bait. She speeds up. Five-six-seven-eight. More blocks, more missed strikes. Abruptly she switches the pace, launching mismatched strikes from both her armed hand and her unarmed one. Nine-nine-ten-eleven-twelve-twelve-thirteen. The suit struggles to track both her hands at once, keeping his cool even though his frantic motions betray him.
Gotcha.
With his attention on her active knife hand, Red delivers a clean punch to his midsection. He falters, and she wastes no time in knocking aside his weapon arms to wrestle him to the ground.
Crow already has the other two suits completely beaten: side by side, face down in the grime, arms twisted awkwardly behind their backs, and weaponless.
The adrenaline has worn Red’s patience plenty thin. She puts her knife to the fallen suit’s neck. “Talk,” she demands hoarsely.
The Frat suit laughs bitterly, making Red’s grip on the knife tighten uncomfortably. “What’s wrong? Did one of our boys upset you?”
Red’s throat rumbles with a deep growl when she speaks again. “You Frat rats all look the fucking same to me. How about you tell me which one of you assholes tried to rearrange Tomoyuki’s face and where I can find him, and you won’t catch what’s coming to him instead.”
The suit chuckles. He seems calm enough under her hold, but his laughter stops suddenly when she applies more pressure. Just at the corner of her vision, Crow’s eyes are wide and fixated unblinkingly on the pair.
“’Crazy Kanno,’ huh?” the suit drawls. Red’s gut lurches disturbingly at the way he says the name. “I heard some no-name grunt who’s been around a long-ass time had some beef with him. Couldn’t tell you why. Probably got himself hauled off to be taught a lesson or two ‘bout picking fights in the streets.”
“Where. Is. He.”
Her prey does his best to shrug nonchalantly under her weight. “Dunno. But I can pass the message along for you to meet in about a week’s time at the old ring to have at it. Nice empty place, in the middle of nowhere… no eyes, no accs.”
“Red,” Crow warns sternly from the sidelines.
“Do it,” Red answers at once. “And make sure he’s ready for an ass-kicking.”
Even with the helmet hiding his face, it’s easy to hear the sneer creeping into the suit’s reply. “Oh, don’t you worry. I will.”
--
One week later, on the dot, Crow crams the rest of his nutrition bar into his mouth, wipes his face with the back of his glove, and excuses himself from Tomoyuki’s company to sneak outside on the pretense of fixing up Carrot. Red is already waiting for him in the shadow of a nearby building, boot tapping impatiently.
“Took you long enough,” she gripes, wasting no time in starting the walk to their destination. Crow wordlessly matches pace beside her. “Let’s hurry up and smash this loser’s face in. I’m tired of skirting the Frat like they own the place. He’d better not piss himself and bail before we get there.”
“Yeah,” Crow replies distractedly. “I hate to leave Tomo on his own, but it’s been long enough and we haven’t seen any Fraternity so much as look at him.” He pauses to cast a sideways glance at Red. “No thanks to your scare tactics, I’m sure.”
Red makes a show of cracking her knuckles. “Damn right. Operation: FU is a go.”
“We are not calling it that.”
Crow takes a moment to study her in the silence that follows. Her tone sounds confident enough, and her eyes are shining, mouth quirked upwards into a slight line of anticipation. But the way her brows are furrowed suggests that she has some reservations, too. He’s not sure if the sight comforts him or makes him more anxious than he already is. His stomach feels unsteady, like the way he always felt in the few seconds after an Abductor had sent him spinning across the ground.
The bustling scene of the Warren falls away behind them in the fading sunlight after just six blocks. There was no turning back now.
“Listen, Red…”
Red scoffs and keeps her eyes trained straight ahead. “What? Are you gonna tell me this might be a trap? We get a bunch of Frat bastards instead of the one we bargained for? I’ve been in the field too, Smiles.” She knocks his shoulder playfully. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep your nerd ass safe if we get jumped. I could take ten of those guys, easy.”
Not alone you couldn’t, prods a voice in Crow’s head, but he pushes the ugly thought back down with a smile.
--
Some of the younger sinners might say that the tunnels of the old ring were an ancient shelter from the angry rain of retribution in the earlier days of the PT era. Anyone with eyes and enough common sense could tell from the battered, crumbling outside and the way the ruined stands opened up to an endless stretch of sky that this was most definitely not the case, and might suggest that it had been built as a shrine to beg for On High’s mercy instead. Everyone could agree, however, that the old ring was nothing but a forgotten waste now, pillaged and picked clean of resources long ago and serving only as a meeting place with far fewer eyes than the streets of LAPT.
Crow swears he can hear their footsteps echo all around them as they navigate the dark corridors and as soon as they both step outside into the open air. It causes him to freeze for just an instant, dread seizing him as though caught in a Cell Garden patrol’s line of sight. He shivers. Open spaces like this were nothing but trouble. A crack in the torn up ground catches the toe of his shoe in the dark and he longs for a thorn, just for the freedom to move above it.
“Son of a bitch,” Red curses venomously from just ahead, her back to him. “I fucking knew he wouldn’t show.”
“I had a feeling this would happen,” Crow mutters. He glances nervously around the old stands, feeling very small. “We’d better get out of this open space. We’re in the perfect spot for an ambush.”
“You sure are,” a voice pipes up from behind them. Crow’s blood runs cold and Red spins on her heel, but the suit standing between them and the corridor they passed through holds up a hand peaceably.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, tone irritatingly casual. “And no, before you ask, I wasn’t the one who punched poor Kanno in the face. Saw it happen though. That eye was somethin’ else, wouldn’t you say?”
“You,” Red snarls, lunging forward before Crow catches her arms and holds her back. She struggles, but not hard enough to throw him off. “Fucking Frat scum—”
“Whoa there,” the suit jests, but he backs off slightly, as if genuinely afraid. “Take it easy, yeah? Look, see? I’m even unarmed.”
“Let us through,” Crow growls, “or I’ll let go.”
“‘Fraid I can’t do that,” the suit sighs. “Isn’t that right, boys?”
Crow feels his heart drop like a corpse as more Frat suits emerge from the darkness like ghosts on either side of the first. Five of them, all armed save their ringleader, advance in unison, forcing the twins to step back until they are in the very center of the ring, where even more suits appear to form a circle that fences them in completely. Their helmets, knives, and guns barely catch the weak artificial light from the distant Panopticon structure. Red takes the chance in his momentary lapse of composure to shake free of Crow’s grip.
“Heard about how we wiped the floor with your dumbass friends, so you brought more?” She grins, baring her teeth, and it’s not friendly. “Sucks for you, ‘cause it doesn’t matter how many you’ve got. I’ll take you all down.”
One of the new suits cocks his head at them. “Hey, ain’t’cha that sinner wut buys spares from our boy in the Cell Garden?”
“We won’t be buying any of your garbage again after what you jerks did to Tomo,” Red scowls. Some of the suits look at each other awkwardly at the name; others seem to tense up beneath the cover of their dark clothes. Crow frowns, eyes moving warily among them.
“What’s going on here?” he ventures suspiciously, trying not to sound desperate. “Why is the Fraternity so focused on Tomoyuki?”
The first suit tut-tuts behind his helmet. “You call yourselves his friends, but you didn’t even know what you were getting into, did you? Shame, that.”
“I don’t care what kind of bullshit you think you’re spouting,” Red interrupts. “All I’m looking for is an eye for eye, and if that means you all feel like getting in line, I don’t have any fucking problem with that.”
“Bitch punk,” one of the suits grumbles under his breath. “Kanno had it coming.”
Red’s fists are already flying, faster than Crow can move to stop her. In the next instant, the suit is staggering back, reeling from her furious blows, while a second suit supports him on the edge of the circle and two others are shoving Red roughly back into the center. Crow hurriedly snatches her from their clutches, pulling her protectively out of their reach. Someone on the opposite side of the circle snickers at the plight of his fellow Frat member.
“Lemme at that fucker!” Red roars. There’s a knife in her hand now. She tugs against his hold in earnest, but the thought of the suits’ hands on her again keeps Crow’s grip stronger. “You’ll be fucking lucky if you can talk again after I’m done with your sorry ass!”
“Red, calm down!” Crow hisses into her ear, a sick fear seizing him. The circle seems to tighten around them like a noose, and suddenly he feels like he’s choking. “They have guns, for fuck’s sake!”
“Wise choice,” the first suit says airily. Red reluctantly ceases her struggle, still glaring daggers at the unfortunate suit who’d spoken out of turn. He swears quietly, finding his footing and aggressively straightening out his jacket, yet seems to wilt under her stare all the same. “But you can relax. We won’t hurt you as long as you stay put.”
Crow narrows his eyes at him. “Why?”
The suit makes a vague waving gesture with one hand. “Details. Fraternity business.” He shifts his lax posture to a more upright stance, crossing his arms. “And anyway, while we’re on the subject of revenge, you roughed some of our boys up good last week. The greenhorns have been all but shitting their pants over you two.”
“Wouldn’t have to hit ‘em so hard if they’d just brought us the guy and let us have our fun,” Red states blandly. The unruly suit’s knife hand twitches.
“That’s the best you can do, then?” their ringleader sighs, sounding disappointed. “‘A sinner is a sinner is a sinner.’ I guess it’s true after all. All you people know how to do is fight like animals.”
“And you don’t?” Crow retorts.
“Please,” Red snorts, “if they’d been able to do that then maybe we wouldn’t have beaten them so easily. Guess they just have to make up for all that scrawn with filthy fuckin’ lies.”
The suit shakes his head, clearly not offended in the least. “You weren’t honestly expecting to get off scot-free for that, were you?”
A dull anger settles into the back of Crow’s mind. “Maybe you should’ve thought twice about picking on Tomo, then,” he answers coldly.
The first suit laughs. “You really have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?” At Crow’s startled silence, he leans in and lowers his voice. “I can see why he chose to stick with you. But Kanno doesn’t deserve you lot.” His tone darkens, sending a shudder up Crow’s spine. “And you don’t deserve what he used to be.”
Another suit jerks suddenly, like he’s been shocked. “What the fuck?” he sputters inelegantly, whirling around.
“Leave,” Tomoyuki’s voice says from outside the wall of bodies. Crow’s heart skips a beat, words freezing on his tongue. He sounds different; more commanding and firm than Crow’s ever heard before. It leaves an icy chill in the air.
“Tch.” If it weren’t for the helmet, he might have spat on the cracked ground at Tomoyuki’s feet as the Fraternity disperses, vanishing into the darkness from which they’d come. Once the sound of their footfalls dies, Red sinks to the floor with a huff, sitting down neatly, but Crow can see the tension leaving her every muscle. The spell was broken.
“Fucking cowards. I kept telling you I could’ve taken them, Smiles.”
He’s definitely glad she didn’t. The thought alone causes his hands to shake (or were they already shaking before?). “They weren’t attacking us, they just wanted to keep us here,” he muses aloud. “There were probably more where they came from. It’d be bad if they called for help.”
“Let’s go home,” Tomoyuki mutters beside them. Red blinks up at him, like she’s only just realizing he’s there.
“Are you okay, Tomo? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She pauses, taking in their surroundings without the circle of suits suffocating them. “Where’s your tin man?”
Crow stares intently at their friend. A million questions fight to be spoken, but he swallows them all, finding with an unpleasant jolt that he’s afraid to know the answers. “What are you doing here?” he asks instead.
“A Fraternity suit told me to come with him,” Tomoyuki says. “I got him to show me where they were keeping you.”
The twins exchange a split-second glance.
“Did you scrub Yukihime?”
Tomoyuki nods. “Yes.”
Red’s eyes flick to his neck. “You sure you’re okay, Tomo?” she asks again, still suspicious.
“Yeah,” Tomoyuki says simply. He seems to contemplate something else before adding, “I’m fine.”
She stands, brushing herself off, and Crow is surprised when she doesn’t press any further. “Well, let’s go find your tin man then.”
The walk to the ring’s exit proceeds in a heavy silence. Crow takes his place alongside Tomoyuki in a daze, mind buzzing with mysteries. Every so often Red flings an unreadable expression in his direction over their ward’s head, but he never returns it. It’s only after she takes point without instruction when the corridors narrow down to a single shoulder span, Tomoyuki positioned safely between them, that she doesn’t look at him that way again.
The sound of Yukihime’s plodding footsteps and strangely static voice breaks Crow out of his trance. “Sinner, your heart rate is elevated.”
“It’s nothing, Yukihime,” Tomoyuki replies, voice low and drained. “Let’s go home.”
“Wait,” Crow blurts out, suddenly. “How—” There are so many ways he wants to finish the question, but he can’t bring himself to dig any deeper than he already has. “—did you do that? Earlier. When you told the Frat guys to just leave and they went.”
“I made a deal,” Tomoyuki says without hesitation. A pang of fear twists itself uncomfortably in Crow’s gut.
“You made a what?” Red repeats. She’s frozen to the spot, too, midway through reaching out to pat Tomoyuki on the head like she always did.
“We don’t touch them, they don’t touch us.”
Something about his answer makes Crow even more uneasy. “The Fraternity doesn’t really seem the type to offer a truce,” he says flatly.
Tomoyuki either doesn’t notice his tone or elects to ignore it entirely. “Don’t want to deal with them anymore,” he says, with finality. “Don’t have to, this way.”
Red pulls her hand back at Crow’s expression, then shrugs ever so slightly and places it on Tomoyuki’s head. She, at least, has decided to leave the issue alone. “Guess Operation: FU is over, then,” she jokes. Crow sighs.
“I told you, Red, we weren’t going to call it that,” he protests weakly. Still, he hears the message behind it, and her pointed glance drives it home. He waits for her to withdraw her hand from Tomoyuki’s dark hair before placing his own in the warm imprint she left behind. The motion stirs a wave of relief in his heart, washing the remainder of his worries away when Tomoyuki reciprocates their gesture.
“Didn’t want to lose you two,” Tomoyuki says, and when Crow looks down to see why his voice sounds softer than normal, he finds an unusual smile has taken up residence on the smaller sinner’s face. “It’s a pain to find good friends on short notice.”
Crow can’t help the smile that spreads on his own face. Us too, Tomo. “Let’s go home,” he says out loud.
“Last one back to the Citizen’s Promenade is a non-resource!” Red shouts gleefully. However, she makes no move to pull ahead of their cozy line all the way back to the Panopticon.
In which Tomoyuki gets whacked solidly across the face by the history he left behind after losing his memory.
A while back I was talking with @themisakis about Tomoyuki’s backstory prior to losing his memory, and when I said “maybe he was a Fraternity enforcer before he got hard reset” she said “it’d be interesting if that popped up again after the fact” and then this happened.
love burns to ashes, dust to dust
a remix of “In which the Misakis don’t take Tomoyuki’s death very well.”
(thanks to themisakis for letting me do this, and also for reading it over to make sure I got the twins right lol)
--------- (the one in which they find him) In another timeline, Tomoyuki gasped out his last breath alone on the desert sand and was buried slowly by the howling wind. Some raiding party on their way back to their pickup point would stumble over his mummified remains and pick him over for any remnants of supplies, then carry on as if they’d never found him. It was a rare and unfortunate soul who was Lost and never reclaimed by a panopticon.
>>rewind
>>begin alterations
“Turn around! Turn around, I swear to fucking god if you don’t turn this goddamn thing around right now I will come in there and rip your hearts out!”
Crow looks like he has something like the pilot probably doesn’t have one sitting on his tongue like lead, or the kind of heavy metals they used to find in old industrial complexes that sank into your bones and killed you slow. It doesn’t fucking matter. Even if Smiles can’t say it (and he’s not smiling now, that’s for sure) she can read it all over him--the rest of him, anyway. His expression is paralyzed into how could this have happened?
“Sentence extended by 100 years for threatening direct superiors,” Saruhiko says. Red wants to slug him.
“Extend my sentence all you want, you pieces of shit! I will not just sit on my ass and let this fucking happen!”
She feels more than sees the look Crow and Nia exchange, the pall of despair heavy over them both. It weighs on her too, but the anger burning hot in her chest punches through it. The hilt of the Azoth she’d carefully spent so long modding feels good in her hands. Red slams it into the heavy, reinforced cockpit door. BANG. It’s a good sound. She does it again. This time leaves a dent. Again. BANG. BANG. BANG.
“Sentence extended by 100 years for attempted breaking and entering,” Saruhiko says. “If you do not cease, you will be restrained.”
Red raises the knife again and Saruhiko grabs her arm. “Get the fuck off me, you garbage monkey,” she snarls. “We are not leaving Tomoyuki behind!”
But they already have.
--
Smiles is slow with the communicator when they hit the ground back at home base. On his other side, Nia hovers, pale and anxious. Now that Red doesn’t have a reinforced cockpit door to wail on, sick fear coils in her gut. It’s an alien kind of fear, one she can’t stab until it stops moving or sever until it falls apart. For all that she’s heard some sinners get nightmares about all the blood on their hands, she’s always slept soundly. This, though? The image of the crumpled form of someone she likes lying in the sand and getting smaller as the transport pulls away? How could anyone forget it?
Smiles doesn’t have an excuse though, she’s seen his robots. How his own belt could stymie him when he regularly made fine adjustments to circuitry and servos alike with the same delicate touch baffles her.
“Hurry up!” she says, low and sharp.
“I’m trying!” he snaps back. She shuts her mouth. Crow’s scared too. It’s not the kind of scared he gets when he comes back from ops with Bear, still covered in blood and staring a thousand empty yards away at a scene she doesn’t recognize. Red doesn’t know how to deal with this kind of scared in him either. It’s new and unpleasant.
Nia’s shoulders go stiff at the exchange. Smiles glances at her and takes a breath before starting to work at the comm again. It seems to take him an eternity, but then--
A rough burst of static. Smiles cups a hand over one ear of his headset, like he’s trying to hear the comm line more clearly.
“Tomo? Tomoyuki?!” Smiles cries, a note of desperation in his voice. Static.
What had they expected? Red wants to take the long-distance comm out of Crow’s hands and smash the fucking thing. She would’ve done it if it weren’t important. If they didn’t need it. If Smiles wasn’t clinging to the thing like a fucking lifeline. “Fucking useless--”
“Wait!” Nia gasps. “I think I can hear breathing!”
Red snatches the comm unit. “Listen up, idiot!” she yells, probably louder than she needs to for anyone listening on the other side to hear. “We’re coming back, even if I have to kill an entire Panopticon to get to you! So you better hang on, okay?! And tell your stupid tin man that he doesn’t deserve you while you’re out there having some quality alone time, will you?”
The channel cuts out with a sound like a thorn snapping. There were still hostiles about when they’d left Tomoyuki, but if he was using his thorn he would be fine. He’ll be fine.
“You know,” Smiles whispers, “you probably shouldn’t say things like that.”
Red bares her teeth in a snarl and rounds on her twin. “What, you don’t think we can--”
He shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant. You know how much he likes Yukihime. He’ll be upset about that when we bring him back.”
Torn between snarling and smiling, Red stares at him. Fucking Smiles, full of goddamn surprises. And here she thought she’d have to hold him together by the seams.
Smiles’ voice only shakes a little bit when he says, “He’ll be fine. We’ll pick up all the missions we can get tomorrow and go back out there.” It gets slightly steadier after he swallows. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
--
On the second day, Red takes five missions, strongarms a group into coming with her, and grinds through them all, one at a time. At the very last, her party lay exhausted on the ground while she sawed through the limbs of one last abductor on her own. Smiles begged off after the third, claiming he had some maintenance to do on the comm unit.
She’d fucking take Damo’s help over none at all, especially when Smiles’ replacement is a shrinking CODE 4 sinner carrying a haphazardly modded Arisaka. Red almost tears the fucking thing out of the guy’s hand just to hurl it to the floor, she’s never seen such a disaster of a weapon before.
On second thought, she’s not that desperate yet.
None of the missions take her out to the desert where they’d left Tomoyuki.
As her teammates (some teammates they are, wiped out so soon) scrape themselves up off the ground in the city ruins, Red flips her Azoth and lets out a frustrated howl into the empty city. The shrinking CODE 4 sinner shrinks even more. After collection, she finds the seat with the best vantage point of the cockpit door and passes the time giving it her best death glare. The delicate CODE 4 flower flinches and moves to the other side of the transport, next to everyone else in the party. Saruhiko says nothing.
(She collapses into her bed that night and sleeps terribly, dreaming that they were too late, that Tomo had been Lost the same day they’d left him in the sand and that his Accessory hadn’t even been by his side when he went. Red jolts awake and counts weapon mods for a long time before the image of Tomo’s small, crumpled form fades from under her eyelids.
“Good morning,” Saruhiko drones.
“Shut the fuck up, garbage monkey,” she snaps, and rolls over.)
--
On the third day, Red grabs both her and Smiles’ breakfast nutrient bars and finds a spot to sit and plan. When Smiles shows up, she waves him over and tosses him his share. “How many did you get?” she asks, taking a bite out of her tasteless breakfast and chewing perfunctorily.
“Ten,” Crow says. It’s early for him to be so serious, but Red’s also never had nightmares about leaving a friend to die before either. “All retributions. I’m not even sure we can make it through them in one day. Do you think they’d even take us to the same location twice, after an attack like that?”
“They’d fucking better,” she says, taking a more violent bite out of her nutrient bar. “C’mon, let’s do this. The sooner we move out, the less time he spends out there with just that dumb robot for company.”
Smiles flicks his eyes down to her belt. “Are you bringing him a book, too?”
Red bites down the fuck you and settles for scowling at him all the way to the transport station. So what if she’d gone out to the Warren early and questioned some people to find out where the unauthorized library was. She couldn’t sleep for shit anyway.
--
On the fifth day, Red comes up with a plan.
It’s not a great plan. Smiles would tell her it’s a stupid plan.
She just has to pull it off while he’s still groggy from tinkering with the comm line late at night, is all.
It’s easy enough to find Natalia, at any rate, and easier still to walk up to her and stare her down.
“What is it, worm?” Natalia says at last, sneering down her nose as always.
“What was so important that you sent us out to the desert and then sealed it off when everything went sideways?” Red demands, because Natalia is the walking, talking face of everything that shrugged and just left Tomo there. Worrying about her tone would get her nowhere.
“That is not any of your concern, worm.”
“Fine,” Red says. “Get me a mission to the desert.”
“Are you presuming to give me orders?” Natalia asks.
“Do you have a deafen function in your goddamn headset?” Red snarls. “I said, get me a mission to the desert.”
“And why should I do that? I understand that even worms like you have the right to choose your own special operations, but that area is off-limits. You have your orders.”
“It has to be the desert,” Red grits out. There’s a crowd watching of sinners who gathered to rubberneck at the idiot heckling OPS. She hopes there’s at least enough of them that they’ll start something when she inevitably throws a punch, because Natalia is asking to get her stupid pompous citizen nose broken.
“Are you refusing orders from me? Shall I extend your sentence?”
“I said it already, you can extend my sentence all you want.” She clenches her fists tight, identifying targets. Tender places into which she can smash her fists and tear Natalia’s holier-than-thou superiority down a fucking notch. “But I need to get to the desert.”
“Oh good.” Natalia sounds bored. Her gaze moves to someone to Red’s side. “Take this unruly rat away. I’ve had enough.” She turns on her heel and shows her back.
Red winds up for a punch, only to have Smiles intercept it. She hurls her weight into it, tries to make him let go, tries to get him to let her fucking sock that Office of Peace and Fucking Stability asshole in the kisser where she fucking deserved it, and he digs his heels in. Curse his larger hands. Where did he get off, being stronger than her?
“Red, stop,” Crow says, brow furrowed in concern.
“I’ll kill her--”
“Red--”
“That bitch doesn’t care about us--”
“No, she doesn’t.” He pushes her hand back to her side, and she doesn’t fight him--she can’t, when under the firm insistence he sounds so tired. “Now let it go.”
--
On the eighth night, Red’s starting to feel the strain from running so many ops every day. Slowly, she does stretches in her cell. They would be easier with her twin, but he’s in the Cell Garden with the comm unit again. Maybe he’s not fixing it anymore, like he said. Maybe he’s just talking to Tomo now, whispering fluff into his headset in one of the dark sectors of the Cell Garden so Tomo can pretend he’s not alone and Smiles can pretend he’s looking at the same night sky that Tomo’s probably seeing--
--a flash of Tomo’s sightless eyes staring at the sky, glassy in death, like so many enemy sinners who had their masks and headsets blown clean off--
Red slams her fist into the wall. Then she shakes her hand out. It wasn’t a smart thing to do, but the smart thing is Smiles’ department and at any rate the physical hurt is better than the shit that she dreams about now. They have to hurry up and find him so she can hit him for ruining her sleep.
When she finally lies down, though, she thinks about how quiet it must be out in the desert at night with just sand and the odd rock formation for miles and miles. The fight drains out of her; maybe she’ll sock Tomo in the shoulder instead of really hitting him. She counts weapon mods until she slips into restless sleep.
--
Red’s stopped counting the days. Smiles has a counter on his HUD, for some reason. Every time he flicks his eyes to that corner his smiling mask crumbles a little more. She doesn’t know why he’s doing it. All that matters is that they plow through these missions as fast as they can to get to the next field of deployment, the next field even slightly closer to the stretch of desert where they’d left Tomo.
(That’s a lie, that she’d stopped counting. She knows how many days it’s been, even without Smiles’ reminders. She hasn’t slept well once yet.)
The fourth in their stack of retributions for the day dropped them in another abandoned sector of city, just close enough to the desert that Red can see the vast golden expanse of it in the distance but not close enough that they could conceivably go searching. OPS must be having fun at her expense, at Smiles’ expense. The thought of it fills her with rage. How dare they play with Tomo’s life like this.
She tears through enemy sinners until the twin howls of two Ramosas pierce the air. Smiles goes to pin one down, so she goes for the other, cutting off bits of it until it gives one last futile cry and collapses into scrap. Good fucking riddance.
The sound of staggered gunfire bursts in the distance means Smiles is probably still alive. Now that this Ramosa had been disposed of, she could go help hi--
Abruptly, the gunfire stops.
Fuck.
The streets would take too long. She scales a wall and starts to run, jumping gaps, thorning over them when she can’t make the jump, running over the vertical sides of buildings anchored by the length of it before she flings herself into space again. It would be fun, if her twin’s life wasn’t on the line.
(Tomo never had quite been able to keep up, when they got him to come freerunning with them--)
She scowls and ups her tempo, hurtling from building to building until she finds the T-Type and plants the end of her thorn squarely in its sparking, cracked front leg, flies in with her Azoth raised for a crushing blow. The cables and other bits and pieces keeping the leg attached sever cleanly, beautifully, in that one stroke. Red flips her Azoth around and cleaves through the remainder of the Ramosa’s wing, then the other one, then stabs the blade into the Ramosa’s face.
It screams and lashes out with its remaining front paw; Red’s one second too slow to disengage and tuck herself small and one large claw clips her head, pain blooming sharp and immediate. She howls a reply, adrenaline humming through her veins, and changes weapons. The ponderous weight of her Atlas’s Disaster drops into her hands, all of the crushing potential of it winding up to swing heavily as the Ramosa roars and charges.
(Half-dead Ramosa versus dense block of concrete constantly cycling an exothermic reaction: winner, block.)
Red turns to find Crow standing a ways behind her. He’s still on his feet, but he’s taken a beating and missing the telltale glow of his usual shield. What the fuck.
“Holy shit, Red,” Smiles gasps, the gun dropping out of his hands. He brings the (why is his thorn green?) healing thorn on his left arm up, starts to concentrate Will’O. “Hold still,” he says, walking up to her, “let me just--”
Her fist moves on its own. “Where the hell is your defense buff?” Red demands, livid. Healing charge interrupted, Crow gingerly rubs his face from the floor where she’d knocked him and stares up at her, eyes wide. “Look at yourself,” she snarls, “You’re a fucking mess. I leave you alone to fight one weak-ass tiger and you’re hiding like a baby. Do you want to die, asshole?!”
Smiles’ expression darkens from wounded surprise to genuine anger. “I’m carrying a healing thorn because you’re the one out there getting your head sliced clean open!” he hisses, climbing to his feet. “I’m trying to keep you from dying, idiot! So don’t take your anger out on me. I’m not Tomoyuki, okay?”
Red squeezes her mouth into a thin line and stalks off back towards the transport rendezvous point. Smiles says nothing when she finds a crumbling wall not attached to anything and completely demolishes it with her Atlas, and she says nothing to him when he fails to make any kind of effort to go through the parts they’d picked up and earmark any for his robots. When they make it back to the Panopticon, she brushes past him without a word and heads straight to her nearest weapons facility to mod a junk Aftershadow sixteen times.
It’s not any better when she’s done, but she can’t mod while constantly blinking blood out of her eye. She tracks down a packet of healing gel and slaps it on, so she won’t spend the rest of the twelfth day dizzy from blood loss.
--
“Good morning,” Saruhiko drones, on the fourteenth day, and promptly steps aside as Natalia lets herself into Red’s cell.
“Listen up, worm,” Natalia sneers. “You have new orders. Since you’ve so enthusiastically volunteered yourself for desert cleanup, you may begin immediately by clearing out Magallanica PT’s forces and recapturing the area.” She pauses. “Records state that a sinner was left behind there and presumably Lost the last time an operation was attempted. You may also retrieve whatever is left of him, if you should find him. Be ready to sortie in thirty minutes. That is all.” Turning sharply on her heels, Natalia strides out Red’s cell door.
Red unclenches her teeth. Thirty minutes was enough time to send a message to Smiles and grab a nutrient bar so she wouldn’t be fighting on an empty stomach. “Hey garbage monkey,” she says, “send a message to Misaki ‘Crow’ Yata. Message is ‘Gear up, meet me at transport station in twenty, if you’re late I’ll fucking tell Tomoyuki you were too busy crying to come save him.’ End message.”
“Message sent,” Saruhiko drones. Two minutes later, he says, “Message received from Misaki ‘Crow’ Yata. ‘If you’re late, Sis, I’ll tell him you were too busy crying while reading his favorite books to come save him.’”
“Fuck you, Smiles,” Red says, but she’s grinning.
-
It’s easy enough to destroy the half-constructed turrets Magallanica PT had left in their wake, and easier still to pick off the Magallanicans. Something has them spooked and sloppy, nothing like the heavy fire of the organized forces from before. Red cuts her way through enemy sinner after enemy sinner, halting those who would attempt to flee with her thorn and splashing the desert sand red with their blood.
Smiles’ face is grim as he empties clip after clip into sinners and accessories alike, killing most and driving the survivors towards the flicker of Red’s waiting Azoth. When the dust settles, there are no Magallanicans left, no movement. Silence.
Red stows her knife and sprints off. “Tomoyuki!” she yells. “Tomoyuki! Where are you, you dumbass?!”
“Red, wait!” Smiles shouts, behind her.
A flash of motion. A weirdly pale face, for how long its owner has been out in the desert. The telltale V, obscured by dust.
“Yukihime,” someone says, voice choked by dust and emotion, “I’m sorry. Forgive me.” Muddy tear tracks, too, now that Red is close enough to see him.
“Tomoyuki!” Red skids a little on the sand and changes course. He’s covered in dust and thinner than she remembers him being, his eyes dull and fixed on a similarly dusty Yukihime, whose hair reflects blindingly in the sun.
Yukihime has a gash over his green eye, neatly bisecting the silver star mark etched on his pale cheek.
“Tomoyuki?” Red asks. She crouches down next to him. He seems not to hear her. “Hey!” His Ea’s Knife lay nearby, blood dried on its edge and handle.
“I don’t think that’s going to work, Sis. He’s been out here too long,” Smiles says.
“Wake up, you moron!” Red shouts, and grabs Tomoyuki by the shoulders to shake him. He starts.
“R… Red?” Tomoyuki croaks.
“Yeah, it’s me. Told you we’d come back,” Red says.
“So… your voice was real, Crow?” Tomoyuki asks, voice small as if someone had tilted the world out from under him.
“Yeah.” Smiles rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm, like he’s trying not to cry.
“C’mon, Tomo, let’s go home,” Red says, through the sudden lump in her throat. She’s glad he’s alive. How he’d survived out here like this, she doesn’t know.
“Yukihime won’t talk to me,” Tomoyuki says, pleadingly. Red exchanges glances with Crow.
“We’ll take him to see Julian when we get back,” Smiles says, gently. “Let’s go home.”
“Okay,” Tomoyuki says. Red pulls him to his feet and tows him along behind her, grip firm on his wrist. They leave the bloody knife behind. Tomoyuki can always make another one. She’ll help him get the materials for it, if he needs the help.
(He falls asleep in the transport, muddy cheek resting against Crow’s shoulder, fingers laced with his tin man’s. Smiles fishes out the polishing cloth normally used to buff his robots and wipes Tomoyuki’s face clean, touch delicate, trying not to wake him up.
As they near the Panopticon, Tomoyuki’s grip on Yukihime’s hand slackens.)
heartbeat, heartbeat, flatlined blue
(in which bear finds damo and does not take it well.) 522 words.
The rain poured in sheets, soaking Bear to the skin and washing away the red pooled on the cracked, uneven ground. If he ignored the vivid red splatter staining Damo’s white hair or the fading trail where blood had trickled from Damo’s mouth, it looked like Damo was only sleeping.
(but Damo never slept so vulnerably, splayed out like this on the ground where anyone could come across him)
Bear scrubbed rainwater from his eyes. Rivulets coursed through his hair and down over his face, blurring his vision and running warm over his cheeks. He had to focus. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe it wasn’t too late. He knelt in the puddle of blood by Damo’s side and pressed a jolt of Will’O into Damo’s cold chest. Waited a moment.
“Please,” somebody said in the background, muffled by the drumbeats of rain. “Please. Wake up.”
Maybe he just hadn’t used enough Will’O the first time. Bear gathered more of it into his left palm and pressed it into Damo’s still form. Waited for the jolt, the gasp, the familiar snarl of curse words and half-hearted thanks, the wince from wounds knitting unnaturally fast.
“Get up, you liar,” the voice said. “You said you weren’t going anywhere. You said of course you were the best.”
One more time, then.
“Will’O levels at critical,” Aki reported, from wherever she’d gone. The sounds of battle, of gunfire, of Red cursing and Crow offering reassurances and tactical data in turns--all of that had faded into the hum of static and the heavy beat of rain over everything.
“Please get up,” the voice said, choked. “Please. You said… you said a lot of things. I don’t know which ones you meant yet. You have to get up and tell me.”
Damo didn’t move. He’d fallen with his eyes open, slit pupils staring emptily into a horizon Bear couldn’t see. The fabric of his shirt had been dark and sodden when Bear had found him.
With a shaking hand, Bear closed Damo’s eyes, unable to take the sight of them glassy and clouded any longer.
It was never meant to be like this. Damo was never supposed to go like this, without even his favored Wolf in hand. His tags lay half-submerged in blood.
“Bear? Bear, where the fuck are you? What’s going on?” Red yelled, over the comm channel. “What happened to that asshole’s signal?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but made only a choked noise, halfway to a sob.
“Are you okay?” Crow asked. “Did something happen to Damo?”
“Yeah,” Bear rasped. When he tried to stand, his knees refused to hold him. “He’s…”
He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Oh--” Crow said. Gunfire. The garbled noise of Red’s shouting, what sounded like a lot of enemy sinners.
“Stay where you are!” Red barked, through her own comm. “We’ll fucking finish up here without you, just--don’t fucking get killed!” A sharp burst of static. Quiet.
Don’t die, Bear wanted to say, but the words stuck horribly in his throat. He buried his face in his hands and let the rain wash over him in silence.