#stellamcu

[stelladjarin]

daylight masterlist

Think of any story you've ever been told. Any history textbook, photograph, movie, documentary, they all leave out earth's most important protectors. The Eternals. These are their stories, their triumphs, mistakes, and most importantly, their journey to find themselves on a planet not their own.

Pairings: Druig x Eternal!OC, Sersi x Ikaris, Thena x Gilgamesh

Ongoing, Eventually Mature, Spoiler Alert for Eternals (2021)

King Arthur’s Court, 537A.D. 

New York City, 1978

New York City, 2012

London, 2015

[stelladjarin]

Daylight | Chapter 4

Word Count: 700

A short blurb referencing Sokovia and Age of Ultron

“Are you okay?”

“Of course I am, my gorgeous girl. Why wouldn’t I be? Wait,” Druig paused, “are you okay?”

I laughed. “Well, I know you don’t have a TV, so I thought I’d call and  let you know a fucking city is flying in Eastern Europe. The Avengers are there, but Phastos called, and he doesn’t seem too confident.”

“A city is flying?” He asked. “How is that fucking possible?”

“I don’t know. From what I gathered, Tony Stark built a murderous robot that wants revenge. I don’t know,” I sighed. “Ajak made sure to text all of us and let us know for the five hundredth time that we aren’t allowed to intervene even if the world might end.”

I heard Druig sigh loudly from the other side of the phone. I knew he had something he wanted to say, but he had honestly calmed down a lot since he left the group in 2012. 

He’d been living in the Peruvian Amazon, built up his own village of people looking to get away from conventional society. He enjoyed it, and I saw how happy it made him to be able to live his own life.

Not long after that dreadful day in New York, we all went our separate ways. I kept in contact with nearly everyone, checking in on them, encouraging them to find what made them happy. And every so often, I would fly over to Peru and spend a week or two with Druig. 

He was always so happy to have me, and I felt at peace being by his side again. He’d ask me all about what I was doing, the job I had as a professor, what the others were up to. We’d drink and laugh and be ourselves for a while. I’d asked him a few times if he’d come back with me, leave his life of solitude behind, but I was always met with the same response. You could leave your life behind and live with me. I always rolled my eyes and said it wouldn’t be that easy. He’d echo my words back to me, so I stopped asking. 

“Are you really going to do nothing?” He asked me, bringing me back to the present.

I hummed. “Well, I can’t fly, and the city is so high, Phastos wonders if they still have oxygen to breathe. I don’t think I’d be much help.”

“I always said you’re the strongest Eternal. I’m sure you could figure something out,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “Anyways, enough about the world ending. When are you coming to visit me again?”

“Well, assuming the world doesn’t end, my flight leaves in three days, so I’ll be there in four.”

“Good,” he breathed. “I’ve missed you.”

“We talk every day,” I laughed.

“I know, but it’s not the same. I can’t see those beautiful eyes of yours when we talk like this.”

My eyes rolled at his flirty comments. “You know, if you listened to me and got a newer phone, we could FaceTime,” I sighed. 

“I only use this thing to talk to you,” he replied. “Besides, I think I like waiting to see you. It makes it all worth my while.”

“You’re so annoying.”

“You enjoy it.”

“Whatever,” I said with a stupid grin plastered to my face. “I have to go. I’ve got work to do before the planet blows up. I’ll see you soon, Druig.”

“Okay, Aura. Be safe.”

“You too.”

I hung up the phone and tapped my desk with my nails. Only four days until I’d see him again. Maybe this time I’d tell him I’ve been head over heels in love with him for 7,000 years. 

Maybe.

Probably not. 

The thought made me sick. What if he didn’t feel the same? What if in telling him, I ruined the relationship we had, the trust and bond we shared. It was stupid to think so, but I was never one to take risks. 

I could cherish what we had. I didn’t need any more from him. Being around him was enough. It was all I could ask for.

[stelladjarin]

Daylight | Chapter 3

Word Count: 2.8k

The humans are handling an alien invasion. The Eternals seem to be handling each other.

“So what are we supposed to do?” Ikaris shouted. 

The room fell silent. 

He stalked over to the large windows that overlooked New York City as it was set ablaze. Fire and smoke outlined his frame as he watched the city’s destruction. Aliens of some species zipped past his face on their hovering bikes, all of them with only one mission in mind. 

Humans were screaming so loudly, we could hear them from the top floor of our building. Heart-wrenching, guttural screams.

“We can’t just abandon them,” Sersi said softly. She took a step closer to Ikaris, her delicate fingers reaching for him. “We’re meant to protect them.”

“Protect them from the Deviants,” Ajak said. “Those are not Deviants.”

This was wrong, but there was no use in fighting it. Ajak was clear in her instructions, and any sort of defiance against it would just create more fissures in our group. We were already so fractured. I couldn’t bear to hammer in another nail to the coffin. 

Phastos sat beside me on the couch, twiddling with his fingers like he always did when he was anxious. “So we just do nothing?” He asked.

“The humans are doing something,” Kingo supplied. He was watching something on his phone, and he turned the screen so we all could see. A man in a red and yellow armored suit was shooting at a Leviathan as it barrelled through skyscrapers that toppled to the ground. “See? They’ve got it handled.”

Druig barked a laugh. My heart sank, knowing he didn’t care about the cracks in the foundation of our family. He’d dig his own grave until we all fell in. 

He stood and walked over to the window Ikaris still stood at. His arms were crossed, and I didn’t need to be able to read his mind to know what he was going to say next. “The humans can’t even fend for themselves, and you’re okay with them engaging in intergalactic warfare?” He asked. “Kingo, I thought you were smarter than that.”

“They’ve got a big green monster. I’m sure they can hold their own.”

Druig clicked his tongue. “I forgot, you’re more lazy than you are intelligent.”

Ikaris turned to Druig slowly, his eyes piercing. “Shut up,” he said simply.

“Or what? You’ll have no problem putting me in my place? How about you go do something useful and direct all that pent up aggression towards the fucking aliens invading our planet,” Druig shouted, his voice growing louder with each word that crossed his lips. “Why the fuck are we just sitting here? Why aren’t we doing our jobs?”

“It’s not our job,” Ajak answered quickly as she stepped between Ikaris and Druig. “We fight Deviants. We can’t come running to defend the humans every time they need it. If this is what is meant to happen, then it’s what needs to happen. Arishem has not instructed me to act, so we will not act. I understand that may be difficult for you to understand, Druig, but we cannot play God.”

“Over 7,000 years here, and you still can’t wrap your head around the fact that you’re not their fucking savior,” Ikaris spat at him. “Get that through your thick fucking skull.”

Druig huffed a laugh at them, shaking his head in disbelief. “Over 7,000 years here and you still don’t give a shit about this planet or anything on it. Why are you here?” He asked. “Why are any of us still fucking here?”

“Uh,” Kingo interrupted with sudden urgency. “Guys? Are we about to die?”

“What? Let me see this,” Phastos said, snatching Kingo’s phone from his hands. I leaned over to look at the screen, and I felt Thena crowd behind me. 

The headline at the bottom of the screen caught my eye. World Security Council to Detonate Nuclear Missile in Manhattan. 

My jaw dropped. “We need to go,” I whispered.

“It’s too late,” Phastos said.

“What’s too late?” Gilgamesh asked. He had stayed silent for most of the fighting, only speaking up now when he noticed the ghostly look on Thena’s face. 

Sprite was beside him, and she leaned forward, her eyes narrow. “Aura?” She asked. 

“A nuke is coming our way,” Phastos replied. “They're going to kill everything in the city to stop the invasion.”

It was so silent, I could hear my own heart hammering in my ears. Nausea thrashed through me like a tsunami, and fear paralyzed me. I had no thoughts, no solutions, nothing but panic inside my heart. 

Druig didn’t help. “So we do nothing, and we die like the humans? Great choice. I’m sure Arishem will be thrilled, don’t you think Ikaris?” He asked sarcastically, tapping the man beside him on the chest. 

Ikaris was quick to slap his hand away before Ajak could stop either of them. She pushed them apart again and looked at Phastos. “What do we do?” She asked.

He shrugged, stunned. 

“There has to be a way for us to stop it,” I said. 

Phastos laughed. “Stop it,” he echoed. “I tried for years to shut down the Manhattan Project, to stop the humans from blowing up entire cities, and you think we can stop a nuke that’s already inbound to our fucking address?” 

We can try, Makkari signed firmly. That is all we can ever do. Try. 

“Oh, but mommy dearest says we can’t try. It’s not our job,” Druig mocked. 

“Enough,” Ikaris shouted, lunging at Druig. Ajak stumbled away from them as I rose to put my abilities to use, forcing them apart, but Ikaris was faster than I was. He gripped the front of Druig’s shirt and slammed him against the windows. “One way or another, you’re going to learn to shut your fucking mouth.”

Desperate to stop the fighting, I wrapped ropes of energy around Ikaris’ body, hoping to physically pull him off of Druig. In his struggle against me, Ikaris forced Druig against the windows again, harder this time, so hard, in fact, that the glass broke, and both boys stumbled out of the loft.

The group screamed as I held on tight to the energy looping around Ikaris. Gilgamesh wrapped his arm around my waist while Sersi and Ajak leaned out the window to try and pull both men up. 

Ikaris had different plans. I felt him fly forward, his strength outweighing my own and Gil’s. I stumbled to keep hold of them, my feet sliding against the hardwood floors until I came to the windowsill and was able to leverage it against him. He was still holding Druig by the front of his shirt. They were arguing, throwing punches at each other, and I knew Ikaris’ would hurt a lot more than Druig’s. 

“Gil,” I warned, panicked, “I can’t hold on any longer.”

“Are they insane?” Sprite cried. “We’re all about to die and they’re doing this?” 

Ajak’s eyes were wide as she looked at me. “Can you pull them back in?” She asked.

“Ikaris is pulling too hard,” Gil answered, wrapping his arm around me again and trying to step backwards. “I can’t pull them in without hurting Aura, and she’s not strong enough on her own.”

“Then let them go,” Ajak said simply. “We need to figure out our next steps. If this is what is more important to them, then so be it.”

I stared at her as she walked away to join Phastos’ side. There was stunned silence in the air, and the energy in the room made me sick. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I mumbled to myself. “Gil, let go.”

“What?” He asked.

“Let go.”

He hesitated for a moment, but he did as I said, and I lurched forward without him holding me back. I readied myself and let Ikaris pull me out of the window as well. 

It wasn’t a pleasant experience, being tethered to an enraged Eternal as he flew through the city, beating at your closest friend and decapitating buildings with his glowing eyes. I struggled to hold onto the energy ropes I had, climbing up them when I wasn’t being thrown around like a rag doll. 

In the chaos of Manhattan, I wondered if the humans had even noticed us. Or did we just look like another destructive group of aliens? To be fair, that’s what we were. 

“Ikaris,” I shouted as I finally reached the top of my rope. I slapped his leg, hoping to gain his attention, and I suppose I got my wish. He looked down at me and immediately shot golden energy at me. I dodged it just barely, the heat whizzing past my face. “Ikaris, enough!”

I lept for him, holding on to his clothes and wrestling with him mid-air in order to force him to let go of Druig who had gone limp. My hand pushed Ikaris’ face away in order to direct his energy elsewhere, but that also meant we were flying blind, and he was in the driver’s seat. 

We crashed through a building, glass shattering all around us as people screamed. Narrowly, we made it through to the other side, slamming through more glass as we made an escape. 

“Ikaris, please,” I begged. “Have some fucking sense!”

“Why did you follow us?” He screamed in my face. 

“I wasn’t going to let you kill Druig!”

“He’s tearing us apart.”

“I think you’ve done that on your own, Ikaris.”

He glared at me for a moment, and then he let go. 

I screamed, falling several stories as I tried to hold on to Druig and encase us in a bubble of energy. We landed without a scratch, my abilities ensuring a safe meeting with the asphalt. 

“Druig?” I asked, panic flooding through me as I finally got a good look at him. His face was bloodied and bruised, his hair matted with sticky red blood from where Ikaris had hit him so many times. “Druig?”

There was so much happening around me that I nearly missed the pin-whistle sound of the missile flying overhead. That man in the red suit was carrying it. Perhaps the humans did have it handled. Or perhaps we’d all die any second.

My hand held Druig’s limp fingers, and I felt white hot tears fall across my cheeks as I waited for whatever would happen next. There was the faintest boom of an explosion. The broken glass that littered the streets rattled for just a moment. A few car alarms went off. But we were still alive. 

The streets grew quiet as the aliens I could see stalking the streets suddenly dropped like lifeless puppets. 

The humans had it handled.

My attention turned back to Druig as he laid silently beside me. I pressed my hand to his heart and breathed in deeply, forcing my energy through his ribcage in one swift motion.

He gasped, his eyes golden from my influence as he sat upright and grabbed my shoulder for support. He coughed violently, spitting out the blood that had stained his white teeth. “Fuck,” he breathed. 

I ran my hand gently down his back, cooing softly and encouraging him to breathe slowly. “You’re okay,” I whispered. “You’re safe.”

“Ikaris tried to kill me.”

“Well, to be fair, you did encourage him.”

He glared at me, and I narrowed my eyes to him. “Don’t look at me like that,” I snapped. “You antagonized him instead of doing anything useful. There was a war going on outside, a fucking nuke about to kill everything in this city, and you two decided then was the best time to compare dick sizes? Give me a fucking break, Druig.”

His eyes dropped to the destruction around us, avoiding my gaze. “Thanks for saving me,” he mumbled. 

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed. “Come on. We need to get back.” I stood and dusted myself off. Shards of glass and debris fell to the ground around me, and I began to walk to the edge of the block to determine where we were. That is, until I noticed no footsteps had followed me.

I turned to see Druig still sitting amongst the clutter, his eyes downcast. “I’m not going back,” he said. 

“What?” I must have misheard him.

Our eyes met, and I knew I had not. He was being serious. “I’m not going back. Ikaris just tried to kill me, and I would have died without you, Aura. I’m not going back there. Not now, maybe not ever.”

“Druig,” I breathed, though I knew there was no changing his mind. He had been talking about this for decades, and Ikaris had presented him with the perfect opportunity to leave. It would be so simple. 

He raised his hand to me, as if he were begging me to stop. “I won’t,” he said firmly. “Please, don’t ask me to do otherwise.” 

Slowly, my feet carried me back to him. “So that’s it?” I asked, frustration, fear, anxiety, sadness all spilling out of me at once. “You’re just going to leave us? You’re going to leave me? Why? Why are you so unhappy? Why can’t I make you happy?”

His head shook, and I watched the way his jaw tightened the way it always did when he was angry. “Don’t do this, Aura,” he said softly.

“Why not?” I shouted back, tears falling freely now. “I’m supposed to just let you go and return on my own?”

“You could come with me.”

That made me laugh. His audacity in thinking it was that easy for me. He may have thought it was easy to leave the only family you’ve ever known, but I didn’t. 

I tore my eyes away from him and glared at the building beside us. “Where will you go?” I asked in an attempt to calm myself down.

“Anywhere you want.”

He managed to stand on his own, gasping in pain as he clutched his side. I wanted to help him, but I was so angry, I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed by my own fear of losing him. 

“What if what I want is for you to stay?”

“I can’t do that, my darling girl,” he said. He limped towards me, extending his free hand to me. I glared at it, bloodied and cut from glass. I wanted so desperately to take his hand. But I didn’t. He held it there as he began speaking again. “Come with me.”

In my 7,000 years on this planet, there are a million things I regret. I didn’t want losing Druig to be one of them. 

Another tear slid down my face, and Druig caught it with his thumb. He stepped closer to me. “You’re all I have,” he said. 

I pinched my eyes shut and cupped his hand as he cradled my face. “Don’t make me choose between you and them,” I whispered.

He brushed hair away from my face and coaxed me into his arms. “Okay,” he hummed. His face buried into my neck as he held me close. “What if you didn’t have to choose? What if you could have both?”

“How so?” I sighed, letting myself melt against his frame. 

“You could go back and forth.”

“Like some human with divorced parents,” I laughed. 

I felt him smile against my skin. “No,” he mumbled. “Like someone with a heart bigger than mine, caught between ideologies.” He pulled away slowly, his hands resting on either side of my face, and I found myself not caring about the blood stains he would leave behind. “I am leaving, Aura. I want you to come with me, and I know it’s hard, but I’d never force you to stay. Just come with me. Just for a little while.”

My breathing evened out, and I felt less anxious and angry at him than I had a few minutes ago. This is what he wanted, and I was happy he was at least asking me to join him. The thought of losing him forever had terrified me. So I nodded. I would go with him, wherever he would take me.

He grinned, wide and truly happy. “You’ll join me?”

“Yes.”

“You swear?”

“I swear, Druig.”

His arms pulled me into another embrace, tighter and more desperate than the first. “Good,” he breathed. 

My heart skipped a beat as I thought of where we could go. The lives we could live away from our lifetime mission, away from the rules and watchful eyes of the others. I’d miss them, but I wasn’t saying goodbye forever. I’d see them again soon. 

For now, I had to ensure Druig was safe. 

We made a plan. Druig wanted nothing else but to live away from the confines of modern society. There was no place as perfect as the Amazon. He’d spend time finding somewhere to start a new life, perhaps have humans with similar ideologies join him, and he’d send for me when he was ready. 

We’d stay in contact. We’d have each other.