“What?” Lily asked, his tone finally pulling her away from the reconciliations her head was trying to make.
“My uncles are here.”
“Uncles,” Lily repeated. Would Vernon count as an uncle, she wondered. She almost cringed at the thought.
“And my mum’s best friend, Lilika — my godmother.” James groaned. They’d have to pick out godparents. “I’m sorry. This probably wasn’t planned. They always just pop in unannounced. Though there is always the chance they popped in on purpose if mum spilled the beans that you were coming.”
“Right,” Lily said.
“And Sirius is here. Though he definitely planned it. Git.”
“Sirius,” Lily repeated, not able to tear her eyes away from the huge house in front of her. James’ other half. His travelling bud— oh, God, travelling. James travelled so much during summer right around when she’d be due. She’d calculated that in her head on the twenty-five minute drive to his parents house. She’d also been trying to figure out which deed was the deed. There were a few viable options really but Lily suspected one more than the rest.
Jesus, were her hands clammy again? She wiped them on her jeans as casually as she could.
“This is exactly what I was scared of,” James sighed. “If this is too much, we can go. I’ll make up some excuse and we can turn around.” She still stared at the house. “Lily?”
“You didn’t have to come, you know,” I said from my spot lying propped up on the examination table. My hands were folded over my stomach, forefinger tapping a nervous rhythm on my wrist.
“Shut it, you,” Dean replied, eyes bright and a smile wide on his face. “If those legs are about to start working again—you can damn sure believe I’m gonna be here.”
Seth chuckled, looked up from his phone. “Ro’s on his way, too.”
“My God, am I a sideshow now?”
Dean stood, sauntered across the room in that fluid way of his. His grin faded into seriousness as he leaned over, tucking his hand against the top of my head, thumb brushing against my forehead. “You’re one of us, dollface. And this is big. Every one of us is gonna be here when you get back on your feet again.”
A knock. Scrape of a wood door on tile. Squeaking shoes. A whiff of jasmine perfume. Dean stepped back, propped himself against the wall a few feet away.
“Someone told me you’ve got some good news, Llane,” Dr. Thurman said with a grin. She was a beautiful woman in her early forties, dark natural hair, eyes like onyx. Her skin was like polished ebony, her smile breathtaking.
Seth stood up as she came in, returning her smile with a handshake. “That’s what we’re hoping for, doc,” he said.
Dean chuckled. “If only that was all it took to get dollface on her feet again, I think you’ve waited too long to turn on the charm.”
Dr. Thurman laughed. “You must be Dean. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
He shrugged. “All of it bad and ninety percent of it true.”
I waved my hand in front of his face. “Hey, patient over here. You two aren’t the center of attention right now.”
With a final grin, Dr. Thurman turned toward me, her expression turning serious. “So tell me what’s going on.”
I recounted everything that happened—Rickon kicking me in the knee, the pins-and-needles feeling, the radiating ache ever since. She did a general once over to check my vitals. When she finally did get to my leg, she took her time. I sat up straighter, ready to watch her do the exam.
“Focus somewhere else.”
“On it,” Dean said as he slipped into place so that I couldn’t see what the doctor was doing. He grinned. “I came all the way from Vegas for this, dollface. Where we goin’ for dinner tonight?”
“You’re the idiot who took a redeye because Seth called you at one in the morning,” I sassed back. “But there’s a new coffee place by the school you might like.”
Dean scoffed. “Hate coffee. Think people who drink it are weak.”
“Hey!” Seth said from somewhere to my right.
“It’s true,” my former partner continued. “A man that needs caffeine to function is a man who just… ain’t a real man.” Dean leaned in toward me, continued with a stage whisper. “Probably a Bears fan too.”
“All right,” Seth said against the sound of his chair squealing against the floor. “You’re supposed to be distracting her not insulting me.”
“It’s one in the same most times,” Dean retorted.
“This is why I don’t take you two anywhere. You act like---OW!” I jerked instinctively, my hand wrapping around my knee, pulling it against my stomach. Clear, sharp pain radiated up my leg from a throbbing spot on the sole of my foot. “That fucking hurt!”
Dr. Thurman smiled proudly. “Good. I want to get an MRI and a CAT scan to see what’s going on. Most likely, the kick was coincidental.”
“You think she’s going to get feeling back in the other leg?” Dean asked hopefully. I reached out, squeezed his palm. He wrapped his fingers around mine. The tremble in them was evident.
“I’ll make that call after I see what the tests show.” The doctor scribbled something on my chart. When she was finished, she looked from Seth to me. “I’m going to see if there’s time to do them now so I can get you some answers sooner rather than later.”
Just before Dr. Thurman walked out of the room, Dean spoke up. “There’s this surgery I’ve been reading about—peri something nerve transplants. That an option for her?”
“We’ll talk about that when I see what the tests say.” With a faint smile, the doctor walked out.
Dean caught Seth’s gaze, the two of them sharing some silent communication. It was something they did—it made them so wonderful in the ring—even though I didn’t like how they sometimes they had these silent conversations right in front of me.
Seth crossed over to me, leaned over to press a kiss against my forehead. “I’ll go hang out by the desk, see what info I can get about those tests.”
He smiled at me, his brown eyes glittering. Electricity ran through my chest, jump started my heart into a thundering pace. Heat burned along my spine, that flame that had been so hard to find the last six months.
As soon as Seth was out the door, Dean had his phone out. It was an older model—the same one he’d had since the Hounds debuted on the main roster. He swiped, the faint tick tick tick sound following his fingers tapping in something. His foot hooked around the leg Seth’s vacated chair, pulled it to my side as he found what he was looking for.
“Here it is,” he said, turning his phone toward me as he started to talk. “It’s this surgery where they find where your spine is fucked up and they—I don’t know how they do it, but they move your nerves around so you can feel again.”
I read through the article he pulled up. It didn’t mince words about how dangerous the surgery could be, but it also talked about high success rates. Unfortunately, according to the article, it was only done in a few selective hospitals. And none of them were in Iowa.
“Dean, I know you want me back in the ring…”
“Fuck that,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t care if you never get in the ring ever again. This isn’t about that.”
I quirked a brow. “The what is it about?”
He shrugged. “I want you to be able to walk down the aisle when you get married.”
My throat tightened. Heat burned behind my eyes. Tears blurred my vision as they ran tracks down my cheeks. Something deep in my chest ached.
“Oh, Dean,” I said through tears as I tried to sit up. Dean helped me near the edge of the table then threw his arms around me.
I wrapped my arms tight around him, letting myself cry against his chest. Through everything, since the first moment when I set foot on the main roster, Dean had been my best friend. He understood me completely, knew how to shed light into all the darkest corners of my mind. I’d say it a thousand times—Seth had the whole of my heart and soul, but Dean knew me in a way that no one else ever would.
Seth had adapted to life with my chair. He had redesigned his entire life around my loss. He had rebuilt our relationship until I trusted him with my sadness, my fear, and my desperation. In the end, he had reclaimed our lives in a way that I never expected. He was The Architect—in the ring and out of it—and he had changed everything about who we were until we were better than we had ever been.
But Dean… Dean wasn’t willing to adapt. He wasn’t willing to wait for someone or something to come along to change what happened. He’d run the place into the ground until he found someone willing to get me back on my feet. There was a reason why some called him unstable.
He didn’t take no for an answer. And it didn’t seem like he’d be doing it for me, either.
This was it. TLC. Ronda Rousey was getting her shot at the title in a ladder match. Choreographed or not, I was nervous. The rest of the Hounds weren’t going to be with me since they had a full TLC match with Drew, Dolph, and Braun later. It didn’t feel the same knowing that I was going out there all alone.
It felt off… almost as if there was something heavy waiting in the air. It made me uneasy as I waited in gorilla, listening for the moment that my music began. A knot started in my stomach, one that I hoped would disappear by the time I got to the ring.
Twenty minutes into the match, it seemed that the knot in my gut had disappeared. Ronda and I traded blow for blow. Ladders littered the ring, the largest of them set up in the middle beneath the Raw Women’s title. All I had to do was incapacitate Ronda long enough that I could climb the ladder and get my hands on my title. That’s the way it was supposed to go.
Ronda lay knocked out on the apron. I crawled to the ladder, used the rungs to drag myself to my feet. Silently, I counted the steps, measuring my movement, knowing that I had to give Ronda enough time to get back to her feet, to drag me off the ladder. Halfway up, I stopped, making a show of trying to catch my breath.
Fingers around my ankle. Pulled out. Hard yank. Long fall.
A split second to notice something was off. Ronda hadn’t pulled me out far enough.
Before I could change my position, my chin hit the bottom step of the ladder. Lightning pain shot through my neck as it snapped backward. Spots danced in my vision. My head banged against the side of the ladder as I landed, the world going black around me.
Hazy memories. Flashes of light like a dark night on the highway. The strange sensation of pain and nothing—the almost-gone of pins and needles in a numb limb. Jostle. Sway. Sleep.
Slow. Heavy lids, eyes that didn’t want to open. Buzzing fluorescent lights dimmed over my head. White ceiling tiles and silver crisscross lattice. Metal track. Hanging curtain with mesh at the top. Beeping, getting louder, faster. Air rushing out of the room. A weight sitting on my chest. Choking, gagging.
“Hey! We need some help!” The voice was familiar, deep and gruff in a way that demanded attention. It faded away, the words getting harder to distinguish as each second passed.
“Llane, shhh. Calm down.” Another voice, as familiar as the first. This one smooth, the edges a little rough. “It’s okay.”
I blinked, tried to turn to see who was speaking. My brain screamed the command—it was so easy, just a little rotation of my chin—but it felt like nothing was happening. It was then that I felt the brace wrapped around my throat, cradling my chin and the back of my head.
The beeping accelerated, the shrill mechanical screeching setting my nerves on edge. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs wouldn’t inflate. My body couldn’t get anything in. The panic rose. I knew I was going to vomit.
A face appeared in my vision. Faint ginger hair, bright blue eyes. “Please, Llane. Calm down. Relax. Please.” Those blue eyes filled with tears.
Squeaking. The heavy rush of feet. I couldn’t breathe. I was choking.
Faces. Voices. Hands touching me in places I could feel and those I couldn’t. Instructions I tried to follow.
It took the doctors five minutes to calm me enough to remove the breathing tube that they’d put in. When they did, I thought they’d ripped my throat into hamburger. Tears burned down my cheeks as oxygen rushed into my lungs. The bed moved, folding me slowly up into a sitting position.
The Hounds came into view. Roman leaned against the wall at the end of the bed, his arms crossed over his chest and a worried expression on his face. A glance to my left revealed Dean, his face twisted up as he tried to keep the tears in his blue eyes from falling. To the right, Seth, who wasn’t even trying to hide it.
“What… happened?” I asked, my voice coming out raspy. Pain lanced through my vocal cords as I spoke. I swore there was blood running down the inside of my throat.
Silence filled the room. My eyes ached as I glanced back and forth between the three of them. Seth opened his mouth to speak, but closed it, sniffling as he wiped at his eyes. Roman tried next, but he couldn’t get the words out. His face was pale, eyes worried. My gaze landed on Dean. I knew my expression was pleading. And somehow, in this moment, all of us were relying on him to be strong.
Dean moved to the side of the bed so that I could see him clearly. One hand brushed hair off my forehead. Another wrapped around my wrist.
“There was an accident during your match. Do you remember anything?” His eyes were a dark blue—a hue that made my heart skip a beat in fear.
I tried to think, to sort through images that were blurred and hidden. Just the effort made my head throb in a way that turned my stomach. It became hard to breathe again. Tamping down the vomit that was crawling up my throat became a monumental task.
The sound that Dean made as he moved closer was enough to break my heart. I saw the tears rolling down his face, even as he clenched his jaw to try to hold it together. I felt the warmth of his palm against the top of my head, his fingers moving gently through the strands.
It was then that I realized I couldn’t feel his hand on my wrist.
“What happened? Dean?”
He leaned forward, brushed a kiss along my forehead. His fingertips trembled against my scalp. “Ronda messed up. You fell and hurt your neck. Llane…”
My eyes moved from his, shifted to Roman’s at the end of the bed. His black gaze looked to the floor. Seth wouldn’t look me square either, but his face was bright red with the tears that settled on his cheeks.
“I can’t feel anything.” My voice broke on the words.
Everything I’d worked for. My entire career went down the drain. One neck injury was enough, even if it had been surgically repaired.
There was no coming back from a second. Not like this.
“It might not be permanent,” Dean murmured against my hair.
I was suddenly devoid of tears. Ice crept along the edges of my soul.
It was over.
All of it.
My eyes fell on Seth, the man I loved. The man who loved wrestling more than anything else in the world.
The man who couldn’t even look me in the eye now.
I pushed down crazed laughter. It was all over.
Ronda had ended my career. And any shot I had at having a happy life.
newest chapter of Amateurs At War!!! It’s mostly jily fluff, read and tell me what you think! Preview of said jily fluff:
The ballroom glowed in the quiet light of the moon and the stars reflecting on its gleaming surfaces. They lay in the middle of the room, staring up at the glass dome because tomorrow everyone would know but this moment was just for them.
“Did you ever come in here when you were little?” Lily murmured.
“When we first moved here, I was terrified of this room. It was so big and I was so small. I was never tempted to sneak here until I went to Hogwarts then big rooms didn’t really scare me so much.”
“This was slim pickings compared to Hogwarts.”
“Exactly. What about Miss Lily Evans? Did she go sneaking off in the middle of the night?”
Lily snorted. “Only to the kitchen to steal the good chocolate but Petunia’s a light sleeper so she caught me sixty-four percent of the time.”
“That’s a very specific number.”
“I’m a very specific person,” Lily countered. “Like five.”
“Hmm? Five what?”
“One day, I’d like to have five kids.”
James turned his head to look at her, his brow raised. “You want to push five little humans out of you?”
“Well, I do admit that I’m not looking forward to that particular part but I want five.”
“Why five? Apart from the obvious reason that a family of seven makes a Quidditch team.”
“I suck at Quidditch.”
He kissed her nose, “The kids will obviously inherit my talent and pick up your slack. Besides, don’t sell yourself short. You helped me get back into shape.” He nudged her with his nose again and she caught his lips in her own. “Why five?” he repeated softly.
No spell could save her. She was well aware of that. No one had the power to stop an Unforgiveable and knowing she didn’t have the power didn’t make her afraid. She was insanely aware of everything; of Marlene sitting in a pool of blood as she leaned over someone performing spells with her wand, Adaline ferociously fighting a Death Eater, Alice and Frank fighting the Lestrange brothers and of James. She could see him over Voldemort and Bellatrix’s shoulders fighting side by side with Sirius.
He hadn’t spotted her yet and maybe that was better because if she died, he wouldn’t be able to blame himself like she knew he would. She could come back as a ghost and tell him it wasn’t his fault but he’d still insist to ghost Lily that he could’ve done something — taken the spell for her or helped her. Merlin, she couldn’t die. She didn’t want a ghost future with James.
His eyes suddenly caught hers and he froze leaving Sirius to pick up his slack. His eyes widened in absolute terror and even as James began to walk towards her, Sirius shouted, “Go!” and shoved James away from their fight and towards Lily.
On this blog I will be reading various tbhk fics and posting the audio directly here! I am a complete newbie to podfics, so things might be a liiitttle rough until I get my footing.
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Lily walked over to Petunia, standing in front of their parents’ graves. The service had been nice, well, as nice as a funeral service could be. They had her mother’s favourite flowers — lilies and petunias — on top of the coffin and Petunia had read out a sweet eulogy that had Lily in tears. At the small Cokeworth cemetery, the sun beat down on them as Rosie Evans was lowered into the ground next to her husband and Lily had felt it, that finality. It would be well and truly over now. This was it and she didn’t know if she could do it.
“This is the last time we’re going to see each other, isn’t it?” Lily asked quietly, breaking the silence. Merlin, knew Petunia wouldn’t.
“That would seem to be for the best,” Petunia agreed and Lily’s heart broke as her fears were confirmed. She wasn’t only saying goodbye to her mum today. She was saying goodbye to the very first family she had. She was the last Evans.
Being a transfigured vase of flowers wasn’t exactly Remus’ idea of a typical Saturday but here he was being carried into the Malfoy Manor posing as one of the many bunches of flowers being brought into the house for the big wedding. Sirius’ brilliant idea for undercover surveillance and Moody had jumped on it like a frog to a lily pad and so Remus’ next several hours were to be spent in the Malfoy Manor, thankfully, not as a vase of flowers.
A disguised Peter set him on a table and when no one was looking, slipped the invisibility cloak over Remus’ transfigured form. Remus untransfigured himself, sliding as silently as possible off the table and making sure the cloak covered as much of him as possible. Remus tapped Peter’s shoulder twice to let him know that he was fine before exiting the room to basically snoop. Remus had studied for this, it was why he was the flowers instead of Peter. Remus remembered every inch of this mansion like it was the back of his hand and per Sirius’ suggestion, he started with the room James found the diary in.
The diary was infuriating everybody. It clearly meant a lot to the Death Eaters which meant it was important to Voldemort but they tried everything and the damn thing didn’t spill a god damned secret. They all had theories. Peter thought it held all of Voldemort’s grand plans. Lily thought it might be a weapons creation journal and that it’d be full of deadly formulas. James suggested that it held names of all Voldemort’s Death Eaters and allies. Marlene agreed with Peter about the grand plans. Ella said it could be a daily planner and that “maybe Voldemort booked in hair appointments or something”. Sirius countered Ella and said “nah, it’s where he writes all his feelings” to which a fantastic debate begun about whether the Lord Voldemort had or felt emotions. The general consensus was that he was “a heartless Lord of Everything Miserable”.
