Fanart of @thesharktanksdriver Determination! Series under cut!
Determination! Reader sibling angst. I like to imagine that their sibling gave them their iconic cyan head scarf thingy.

Origami Around
trying on a metaphor
Game of Thrones Daily
todays bird
we're not kids anymore.

titsay
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
h
The Stonewall Inn
Sade Olutola


Love Begins
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

gracie abrams
One Nice Bug Per Day

#extradirty

ellievsbear
Not today Justin
seen from Oman

seen from Colombia

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Mexico
seen from Colombia
seen from Colombia
seen from India
seen from South Africa
seen from United States

seen from Türkiye

seen from Italy

seen from Türkiye
@emmbny
Fanart of @thesharktanksdriver Determination! Series under cut!
Determination! Reader sibling angst. I like to imagine that their sibling gave them their iconic cyan head scarf thingy.

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crowley and yuu decide to take a plane home ^_^
chance with you.
[jason todd x reader]
summary: an unlucky encounter with a drunkard in gotham leads you to hide behind a passing stranger. you just never expected the stranger to be the overly protective type.
warnings/content: drunk cat-calling, protective jason, awkward-ish jason, physical touch, reassurance, playful banter, slowburn, treating of wounds, vulnerability, fluff, jason is a horrible liar: i should not be getting close to her, this is a horrible idea- her door is absolute shit, i need to fix that.
You knew opting for the late night bus was a mistake. It never arrived on time, and now, you're rushing into some random grocery store because some drunkard decided to catcall on you while you were at the bus stop, and got pissed when you didn't respond to his advances.
You're too busy looking behind you to see if the creep would really follow you into a public space when you bump into a solid chest. Unintentionally, you gripped onto the stranger's shirt, the impact combined with your anxiety making you unintentionally hold onto anything that was sturdy. You look up in a panic and a cold, annoyed expression meets yours. He's giant, you note, and you wonder how many more intimidating men will be added to your streak today.
"Hey, lady- groping others isn't how you greet someone."
His voice, gruff and deep, snapping you out of your daze. You shake your head, trying to find the words to explain yourself but his expression grows frustrated as he goes to remove your hands. Panicking, you unintentionally tighten your grip, whispering in a hurry. "Someone's following me."
The switch is immediate, his frown deepening, but his gaze softens from apprehensive to protective. His acknowledgment is followed by a nod, gaze scouting behind you. "What do they look like?"
You're about to respond when you hear that obnoxious drunkard's voice, calling out to you.
"Hey, I wasn't done talking to you, bitch." He snarls.
You hear his footsteps coming closer and you're tempted to just bolt when your stranger shifts you quickly behind him. His shoulder blocks your gaze, his hand outstretched to hold your waist, keeping you shielded from the drunkard's view.
"That's no way to talk to a lady." Whatever annoyance he held earlier because of your collision, it was nothing compared to the venom in his voice now. The room's temperature feels like it's dropped several degrees with the command in his tone.
Plantonic Yandere! The Prototype, Catnap, and Mommy Long Legs X Orphan reader that (Accidentally) hid during the Hour of Joy to get a beloved stuffie.
🌤️ — nom nom platonic ppt fics my beloved... enjoy :)
°.✩┈┈∘*┈୨୧┈*∘┈┈✩.°
« The family you chose is better. » 𖦹 ׂ 𓈒
— FANDOM: POPPY PLAYTIME.
— PAIRING: YANDERE!MOMMY LONG LEGS, CATNAP, THE PROTOTYPE x ORPHAN!CHILD READER, WHO HID DURING THE HOUR OF JOY.
— PLATONIC.
— HCS.
— TW: BAD ENGLISH, BAD GRAMMAR, OOC, YANDERE THEMES, OBSESSED BEHAVIOUR, MENTION OF DEATH, SURPRISINGLY NOTHING MUCH.
°.✩┈┈∘*┈୨୧┈*∘┈┈✩.°
— MOMMY LONG LEGS:
☆ ┈ You know, Mommy has a weakness for orphans, she always felt protective towards them. And you are a prime example of that.
☆ ┈ When she first meets you, you're scared because you don't understand what's going on around you. It's an opportune moment for her to intervene.
☆ ┈ And there she is. Calling out to you in a caring voice, asking if you're injured and trying to convince you that she can help.
☆ ┈ In fact, considering that the orphans were in Playcare, you've been with CatNap for a long time before Mommy found you.
☆ ┈ Imagine that you escaped from him after learning that The Prototype was coming for you, and you accidentally stumbled upon her, and she picked you up.
☆ ┈ Oh, what a pleasantly exciting surprise it was to find you here! She was certain that all the orphans had been taken away..or that there were no orphans left in the building.
☆ ┈ In any case, you have nothing to worry about! Mommy will take care of you. You trust her, don't you?
☆ ┈ She takes you higher up, to an isolated area where hungry toys don't roam, and where no one will find you.
☆ ┈ You know, she feels sorry for you. According to your stories, you accidentally avoided witnessing the massacre, and when you emerged from your hiding place, you were immediately picked up by this..damn fanatic.
☆ ┈ She explains to you in a soothing voice that the other orphans are no longer here because "they were taken away by evil toys," and the adults allegedly abandoned you all, wanting to leave themselves.
☆ ┈ Mommy wants you to believe and trust only her, trying to make you think that everyone is against you so that she has more arguments to keep you with her.
☆ ┈ Considering that the time in which the events are taking place is only the end of The Hour of Joy, there is still some food for people in the area...And it's all for you!
☆ ┈ She literally sets up a "store" for you, collecting any food you can eat, sometimes even stealing from others who are also trying to stock up.
☆ ┈ She affectionately refers to you as her kid, constantly mimicking the actions that would occur between a mother and a child.
☆ ┈ She combs your hair, puts you to sleep in a broken makeshift bed, sings lullabies to you, plays with you in games you like..In essence, she becomes your parent.
☆ ┈ Any toys that attempt to approach you are likely to be killed.
☆ ┈ It's not even about the lack of food, as things were still fine back then - she's simply afraid that someone might harm you.
☆ ┈ She believes that only she can treat you well, and everyone else poses a danger, so if she sees you near someone, she will carefully move you away.
☆ ┈ ..Before she devours the overly curious toy. You don't want to mess with an angry mother.
☆ ┈ This is how you currently live, confined to your small corner and venturing out to explore the area, usually under her supervision.
☆ ┈ However, as charming as this life with you may be..She is wary of him.
☆ ┈ To be honest, I'm not sure if she knows about The Prototype taking all the children, as she mentioned that they "left her," but she still fears that he might be interested in you.
☆ ┈ CatNap used to keep an eye on you... Which means that he will soon become aware of your existence in the factory..
☆ ┈ Mommy values you too much to let you go, and she is not willing to give you up. If she has to hide you and lurk in the shadows on the surface, hoping that he won't find her, then so be it.
☆ ┈ They want to take you away. Take her child away. No, no, she will not allow this to happen.
— "My sweet, where are you going? I told you it's not safe! You know there might be some bad toys waiting for you outside..."
— "Come on, come on, Mommy has just thought of a great game to cheer you up!"
— CATNAP:
☆ ┈ Although we started with Mommy, this is only the middle of the story. It all started with CatNap.
☆ ┈ CatNap was the first to find you. As he was walking around Playcare, watching some of the toys carry the corpses of scientists and regular workers to different parts of the factory, he heard sobs.
☆ ┈ You were quietly calling out names, probably your friends or the factory's employees (he doesn't remember them all), moving cautiously, clearly frightened by the blood around you.
☆ ┈ He doesn't call out to you. He doesn't reveal himself. He just watches from a distance, slowly approaching you.
☆ ┈ Eventually, you're cornered, pressed against the wall, with CatNap blocking your exit, observing you from the shadows.
☆ ┈ He didn't mean to scare you, but it was an expected reaction. Who wouldn't be frightened by a large, blood-soaked toy staring at them?
☆ ┈ Fortunately for you, he doesn't have any malicious intentions. In fact, CatNap probably knows that all the orphans belong to The Prototype..
☆ ┈ But I can't even choose which theory about "Better Place" sounds the most logical, so let's just assume that CatNap doesn't know what will happen to the orphans, okay?
☆ ┈ It's unlikely that his "God" didn't notice you.. Perhaps he left you in CatNap's care? Even if he doesn't understand his will, who is CatNap to resist it?
☆ ┈ CatNap believes that The Prototype left you for him (even if he's not sure why), and since he's decided that you should stay here, he might as well enjoy some company.
☆ ┈ He doesn't want you to stumble upon things you shouldn't see. Besides, not all toys are worth bumping into..
☆ ┈ CatNap sees himself in you in a way. He was also confused when it happened to him...this. But he's here to guide you.
☆ ┈ He asks you to call him "Theodore." Whether you knew him as a person or not, he doesn't want to be referred to by that name.
☆ ┈ Literally, all of his interactions with you are his not-so-subtle attempts to show you his concern.
☆ ┈ He makes sure you stay safe, constantly brings you food when you're hungry, and sometimes agrees to play with you.
☆ ┈ You often fall asleep leaning on him. He doesn't even need to use red smoke; you trust him enough to fall asleep next to him. And he's glad about it.
☆ ┈ This is..not bad. You might even grow attached to him, because he seems to really appreciate you. Until a certain point.
☆ ┈ You find out about The Prototype..and the Prototype finds out about you.
☆ ┈ Even a child, if they hear about how a huge, scary toy planned and executed the massacre of all the adults in the complex, they'll understand that it's terrifying and they should run away.
☆ ┈ So, you accidentally encounter a half-dead "heretic" who rejected The Prototype, and before they died, they told you about what happened here and that you should run away before he finds out you're here.
☆ ┈ Naturally, you panic and try to escape. But you've forgotten one thing: CatNap is always nearby.
☆ ┈ At first, he just followed you, not understanding what made you wander around so chaotically, as you usually take your time exploring familiar places, until he realized what you were trying to find.
☆ ┈ He's genuinely upset. CatNap believed that he was taking good care of you and that you liked him. Whoever caused you to turn away from him won't be able to end his suffering so easily.
☆ ┈ At some point, you hear him calling out to you. A dull, loud hum echoes somewhere nearby, and you can hear his monotonous voice calling your name.
☆ ┈ Soon, you hear footsteps. No, it's even a running sound. And then it dawns on you that CatNap is searching for you, and he clearly doesn't want you to leave, as you've been under his watch for some time.
☆ ┈ He's been chasing you for a long time. Perhaps the reason he hasn't caught you yet is because you know these places and you're quick. And soon, he loses sight of you.
☆ ┈ He's determined to find you, no matter the means. Taking you away means going against The Prototype, and that comes at a high cost.
☆ ┈ And when The Prototype appears? Yea, it's going to be a bad day for Mommy.
— "You shouldn't leave Playcare.. It's too dangerous for you outside. Come back."
— THE PROTOTYPE:
☆ ┈ The obsessed bastard became even more obsessed? Sounds bad for u
☆ ┈ It was funny how it didn't sound, he really just didn't find you when he took the orphan. Maybe you hid somewhere and fell asleep there, which is why he didn't notice you.
☆ ┈ Anyway, he hadn't known about your existence until he heard rumors that somewhere upstairs there was an orphan.
☆ ┈ It's not advisable you'd get out. Few people believe the child's words about what was happening in the factory, but there is always a chance that someone might want to check and go to the factory.
☆ ┈ Unnecessary witnesses to nothing.
☆ ┈ At the time it comes to Playcare, you've already escaped. Naturally, the prototype was angry at CatNap for just giving you walk around here freely..
☆ ┈ But when he heard the muttering about that someone dared to capture you, dear gift of The Prototype, he softened. CatNap can still be useful to him, after all.
☆ ┈ The Prototype does not like to get out on the surface. Too little room for him..So he intends to do so that you would come to him.
☆ ┈ He's get a walkie-talkie and try to contact you, as "Ollie". First, he wondered where you and who. Obviously someone help you escaped, since you know how to get out.
☆ ┈ ..Momny Long Legs, hm. Somehow he doesn't feel surprised. Yet, just leave you with her he doesn't intend.
☆ ┈ Initially, the prototype wanted to know your location, but hearing your cheerful voice that grunts on the fact that toys around you frighten you with his obsession behavior, he intrigued.
☆ ┈ This turns into a kind of "game" for him, leading you, directing, revealing the truth about this place (but not for himself).
☆ ┈ Poppy did not approve the hour of Joy and revolts against him, her rebellion was not joyful. And here you, even if at a distance, but still you make him company
☆ ┈ He finds some kind of solace in you, although he doesn't really want to admit it. You feel like Ollie on the other end of the phone is also orphan who managed to escape the fate of others, and that he wants to help you...
☆ ┈ Well, in a way, he really does want to help you. To find out the truth.
☆ ┈ Ollie tells you that all the orphans were taken by The Prototype, that CatNap blesses him and he's insane, and that Mommy is lying to you about everything.
☆ ┈ You're already starting to wonder who to trust in this damn place...
☆ ┈ The Prototype is interested in you. He's heard you crying, and how it feels better when he comforts you, and how you're trying to find out the truth about this place, and how you're holding up well despite the shocking truth.
☆ ┈ He's turning you against the other toys, making you believe only in him, and to ensure that you don't doubt the truth of his words, he's trying to show you a video or somethin like this of The Hour of Joy.
☆ ┈ The Prototype has even made several attempts to attack you, only for Ollie to help you, making you trust him even more.
☆ ┈ Ollie will set you free. Isn't he's wonderful?
☆ ┈ While you're making rebellious attempts to escape for Mommy and CatNap, The Prototype isn't wasting any time.
☆ ┈ He's constantly experimenting on the toys, striving to make them as immortal as he is, in order to make you the same.
☆ ┈ He's been thinking about making you a toy, yes. But not yet. There's too much risk of losing you, and he can't allow that to happen..
☆ ┈ However, it can't go on like this for much longer, and at some point, you try to escape from Mommy, running around the floor in an attempt to hide, and you contact Ollie, asking him how to leave this place.
☆ ┈ He provides you with all the clues that lead to her death. It could be similar to the game, or it could involve The Prototype himself...
☆ ┈ In any case, the last time you see Mommy, her impaled body is slowly dragged away by a clawed hand.
☆ ┈ And soon, he comes for you.
☆ ┈ "Ollie" brings you directly into The Prototype's arms. You may try to resist, but you'll eventually be sedated and wake up in a dark, foul-smelling room.
☆ ┈ You'll have to wait here for a while until he's confident in the success of the operation. But don't worry, he'll take care of you.
☆ ┈ After all, he is still your friend, right? Does it really matter in what form?
— "Ollie? He's here. In front of you. I'm always here for you."
..:*・゚☆.。.:*・゚゙。.:*・゚☆.。.:*・゚🌤
🌤️ — HI HELLO, how are you guys? it's quite interesting to work with yandere ppt (because the characters will behave like yanderes if they get attached lol)
🌤️ — hope you like it, have a good day 💫
Yo,,,,,,,,, I know that the caption(?) for the request of child!reader with ribbit and kaufmo is a joke, but can you expand more on the oldest child!reader/child!reader actually being one of the testers before❓
I think I'd be nice to see everyone's collective reactions that a child stayed as surprisingly long as kinger
At first it was just a joke. But the more I think about it, the more the idea makes sense. Brain scans can't age. If someone entered the Circus as a child? They would stay a child, even as time passes.
If you like my work, please consider commissioning me or leaving a tip on Ko-fi (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)
The child!Reader being one of the oldest members
★ You never mentioned how long you'd been here. Time feels messed up in a place where days aren't counted. Or even felt. Ageing isn't possible, not here, so for now you're stuck as a little kid.
★ Memories get fuzzy when you try thinking about your first couple days. Adjusting over the span of about two weeks. All you remember was Kinger being there. Caine too.
★ It actually took forever for Zooble or Gangle to realize just how long you've been here. What tipped Zooble off was the brief mention of someone named Rattie. A lady they had never met. Asking Ragatha didn't help, because she didn't know who that was.
★ "Oh, they've been here forever." She said calmly. Catching Zooble's full attention. That ...didn't sound right. You were so young. How would that even work? "What do you mean?" They turned to her, confused.
★ Gangle was drawing with you when a certain yellow dog caught her attention. Drawn on lined paper with crayons. She recognized it immediately. His door was just down the haul. The nameplate crossed out. You must've known this person.
★ That day she learned about Scratch. You only knew him a few days before he went away. But Kinger had sometimes talked about him. Allowing you to share second-hand stories. Apparently, he was creative, like her!
★ As mentioned before, you kind of just exist. Happily living out the countless days. Filled with adventures and games. Perfectly content to stay in this world. Jax is jealous of how easily it all comes to you.
★ Jax fights practically everything. Pushing boundaries, testing each person's limit, and hurting everyone who tries to get close. You just accept things blindly. Trusting people to catch you if you fall. Deep down, Jax wishes she could be like that.
★ Technically, you're actually about 20 or 30. Considering the Digital Circus was built around 1999. Ragatha was scanned later, sometime in 2008.
★ That's a strange thought. So Pomni pretends not to know your whole backstory. You honestly don't remember much anyway. The situation is kind of an open secret. Your childhood is decades long and still counting.
★ You've always been called "the baby." Queenie gave you the nickname before anyone settled on a proper name. It seemed to stick. Kinger still calls you that, and Ragatha does too! Jax uses it to tease you, because of course he would.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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It's Raining Men
Synopsis. Every specimen: the hot nerd that tutors you, his punk best friend, the pink-haired frat president, the sensible history professor, the emo boy with 11 inches, the buff campus security! They have only one thing in common—bréeding you.
Pairing. Gojo Satoru x Reader, Geto Suguru x Reader, Ryomen Sukuna x Reader, Nanami Kento x Reader, Choso Kamo x Reader, Toji Fushiguro x Reader
Content. MDNI, fem!reader, college AU, nerd!Gojo, punk!Geto, frat boy!Sukuna, professor!Nanami, emo boy!Choso, security guard!Toji, ALL of the JJK men (at once), f/m/m/m/m/m/m, ovuIation, BRÉEDING, mentions of having kids, oraI (fem + maIe rec.) handj’s, fíngering, manhandIing, HEADLOCKS, biiig stretches, spítting, chokíng, p talking, rough s, restraints, they’re FÉRAL, Geto with piercings, Choso with piercings, making Gojo whímper, first times (Gojo), everyone penetrates at some point, D descriptions, big D’s. dírty taIk, voyéurism, running from it, bickering during it, EiffeI tower, DP, DÚMBlFICATlON, MAJOR overstím, anaI pIay, matíng presses, fuIl neIsons, cervíx kíssing, lessons, waIked in on, SLOPPY s, slight exhíbitíonism, creampíes (like a lot), cúmpIay, cúmfIation, pet names, swéaring.
Word count. 20.4k
A/N. Happy new year!!
“—thus, during this stage of ovulation it is natural to experience a surge in the luteinizing hormone (LH), which heightens the desire to…” Gojo trails off.
You’re looking up from your notes, just in time to catch him pushing his glasses up his ruddied face. Hands shaking. Breaths heavy. You tilt your head in confusion, “Which heightens the desire to what, Satoru?”
“You know…”
You’re shaking your head with a laugh, “Isn’t that why I begged you to become my tutor?”
“It increases the desire for ah…an interplay of intimacy from which…blossoms the natural by-product of a…um—” His voice cracks. And seeing your look of concern, Gojo lets out a stabilizing breath and tries again, “The…the birds and the bees?”
“Ah!” Stifling a giggle, “You mean it heightens the desire to get pregnant.”
And you take your sweet, sweet time jotting it down in your notes - long enough that Gojo Satoru hopefully calms down-
“…Do you feel it?”
“What?”
“Do you feel the desire to get pregnant?”
No Mercy
Synopsis. Hot nerds.
Pairings. [SEPARATE] Higuruma x Reader, Gojo x Reader, Ino x Reader, Sukuna x Reader, Choso x Reader, Geto x Reader, Nanami x Reader, Toji x Reader
Content. MDNI, fem!reader, nerd!JJK men, college AU, pIot, TA!Nanami, Iessons, slight exhíbitionísm, chokíng, spítting, running from it, scientific Ianguage, manhandIing, matíng presses, rough s, first times (theirs), academic rivaI!Geto, Peter Parker!Ino, REACTIONS, p talking, p sIapping, JACOB’S LÁDDER PlERCING, góoner!Gojo, surprise in Choso’s, needy JJK men, glasses, DÚMBlFICATlON, overstím, sIight bréeding, creampíes, cúmpIay, slight cúmfIation, Iaw professor!Higuruma, getting together, someone save Yaga, pet names, swéaring.
A/N. YOU SHOULD’VE BEEN MERCYYYYYY-
♡ TOJI FUSHIGURO - Better man.
“—and not only did he cheat on me-” You’re whispering to the black-haired man, glare flashing behind his rectangular glasses. Fixated on none other than the faux-blond on the dance floor. “-but he has the audacity to go around telling everyone that I’m the reason we broke up.”
He snorts unkindly- though not directed at you.
Crossing his arms, broad chest straining against the flannel. “The box-dye has clearly seeped into his cerebral cortex- perhaps even the P-FIT Network.”
You’re nodding in agreement - it wasn’t quite in your plans to unload all your relationship drama to the nearest hot stranger at the party tonight. But you’d seen Toji around—who hasn’t? He was the brightest and best in the Veterinary Science department. Always on top of class, always the example your professor used, always with his head ducked into his textbooks.
Though now he held his head high. Pushing his glasses up, “Statistically and personally- I’d be much better for you than him.”
cupcakes - j. todd
dcu masterlist | main masterlist
fem!reader x jason todd
summary: as a single mother raising your daughter in gotham city, you have no choice but to rely on vigilantism to stay safe. as a thank-you, your daughter leaves out food for the vigilantes. at first, you assume it's birds pecking away at the plates, until one day you find a man in a red mask sitting on your balcony, eating the cupcakes you just baked with your daughter.
warnings: cursing? idk, not much
UNEDITED!!!
a/n: ohh my gosh yall, please forgive me for switching between past tense and present tense all the damn time. it's such a bad habit. i write my own novel in past tense, and write fics in present tense (most of the time), especially because of the different perspectives. i promise i'm competent i just cannot be bothered to go back and edit my work bruh
ᴍᴏᴅᴇʀɴ ᴅᴀʏ ᴄᴀɪɴ
Pairing: Yandere! Homelander X Reader
Word Count: 10.2k
Synopsis: Homelander has never felt such a connection with anyone before, and although you can’t feel it yet, you will. (Loosely inspired by the book You) Title inspired by the IDK How But They Found Me song: Modern Day Cain
TW: stalking, he jerks off, previous r@pe (not Homelander), an ex is involved and I don’t really like e/n, so I just used the name of one of my exes, kidnapping, voyerism, surprisingly no smut but again he does jerk off to you, murder, profanity, dead dove do not eat
@blindmagdalena I don’t really know u but I love all of your homelander fics and they inspired me to write my own!
Dead Air
Pairing: Batfam x Batsis!Reader
Summary: You passed in your father's arms. and no one will forget how you looked when you died. And after months of rotting grief, why are you standing there?
CW: ANGST, mentions of death, grieving, swearing, violence, injuries, travelling dimensions,
WC: 11k idk (this one is my longest fic to date)
NOTE: There is multi-universal travel in this fic, itsv type shit. On another Earth, Bruce dies instead of Batsis!Reader. Letting you know just for clarity's sake.
READ PART 1 - READ PART 2.5
The night is supposed to start like any other.
The cave is alive—screens glowing, engines humming, the familiar low thrum of readiness vibrating through bone and steel.
Everyone’s half-geared, muscle memory kicking in.
Ready for patrol.
Routine.
Something solid to hold onto.
You should be here.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Static On The Line ـــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ
Pairing: Batfam x Batsis!Reader
Summary: The days leading up to your birthday, you move through a world that feels rather gentle. Your family however, don't know they're counting down to the last moments they'll ever have with you.
CW: ANGST, you die bro rest in pieces. death, sustained injuries, description of blood and bodily harm, mention of suicide, grieving, nausea, vomit, swearing, tears (the whole shabang) If any of these tags are triggering, please click off for your own wellbeing.
WC: 6.3k (my longest fic to date)
READ PART 2 HERE - READ PART 2.5
The manor is warm in that quiet, lived-in way it only gets late at night.
Someone left a mug in the sink.
Damian’s boots are by the stairs, kicked off without care.
Tim’s PC hums faintly somewhere it shouldn’t be.
Titus is chewing on someone's bowtie, probably your fathers, instead of his toys.
Alfred has turned down most of the lights, leaving pools of gold along the hallways.
You’re in your room, standing in front of the mirror, smoothing your hands over the fabric of the dress again.
White. Soft. Elegant.
Something you don’t usually pick—but it made Dick’s eyes widen when you stepped out earlier, made Steph whistle, made Cass tilt her head and smile in approval.
Reader who is Rhaenyra's Daughter time travels with her dragon to a different era...
Traveling to another time had never been something you imagined, least of all a time, forward, into a future where dark-haired Targaryens are more common and dragons were the stuff of dusty songs.
So when one appeared in the skies above Ashford Meadow, living and furious and real, with a young woman astride its neck, the world below went very still.
You didn't understand it yourself. One moment you had been locked in battle above Honeyywine River, fire and smoke and your uncle Daeron's dragon screaming through salt-heavy winds. Then the sky twisted, and everything familiar was gone.
Now there was green country beneath you. Rolling hills. Pavilions stitched with colour. A tourney ground.
You circled once, then twice, your heart hammering against your ribs. The people below were no bigger than insects, but you could see them pointing, stumbling backward, shielding their eyes against the sun to stare up at you. Knights in gleaming plate stood frozen mid-stride. Horses reared and screamed in their paddocks.
You were afraid to land.
For a long while you simply hovered, your dragon's wings beating slow and thunderous, casting a shadow across the field like a storm cloud. Your gaze swept over the encampment below, banners snapping in the wind, hundreds of them, houses you recognized and houses you did not.
Then your breath caught.
Among the sea of colour, one sigil leapt out at you. The three-headed dragon. Red on black.
Your house.
The decision was made before you fully thought it through. You leaned forward, pressed your palm against the scaled neck beneath you, and whispered the command.
Your dragon descended in a slow, deliberate spiral, the downdraft flattening the grass in great rippling waves, scattering loose pennants and sending squires diving behind barrels.
The beast touched down at the edge of the tourney ground with a shuddering impact that you felt in your teeth.
Dust billowed outward. As your dragon folded its wings with a leathery crack and swung its horned head from side to side, surveying the gaping crowd with amber, slitted eyes.
You dismounted, your boots hit solid earth, and the silence that greeted you was deafening.
In the stands, the smallfolk had erupted, some screaming, some weeping, and some shoving past one another in a blind rush to flee. Others stood rooted, mouths agape, unable to reconcile what their eyes were showing them.
A girl in a fine gown, the Lady who is the tournament is held for, you guessed from the seat of honour she occupied, had risen to her feet with both hands pressed over her mouth, her face drained of all colour.
You straightened, and brushed the windswept hair from your face, before swallowing hard.
"Greetings... um..."
Your voice died in your throat.
Before you stood a cluster of knights, several of whom had begun removing their helms. And what you saw beneath those helms made the ground feel unsteady under your feet.
Silver hair. More of a Targaryen silver hair, on an older man with deep-set, weary eyes, and on a boy who looked no older than you, slim and almost pretty.
Beside them stood a broader man, dark-haired and strong-jawed, whose mismatched eyes, one dark, one blue, studied you with an unsettling calm.
Three-headed dragons adorned their armour.
"Are you a Targaryen!"
The shout came from behind you, high and eager and utterly fearless. You spun to find a small bald-headed boy practically vibrating with excitement, his eyes wide as saucers, apparently unbothered by the fact that a living dragon sat steaming not twenty feet away.
Despite the terror and the confusion and the creeping certainty that something had gone horribly, impossibly wrong, you almost smiled.
"Partially," you said. You clasped your hands in front of you to keep them from trembling. "Yes. My mother is the rightful Queen, Rhaenyra Targaryen. And my father is..." A familiar tightness crept into your chest. You forced the words out, quieter now. "Laenor Velaryon."
The silence that followed was different from the first. Heavier. You braced yourself for the looks , the knowing glances, the curled lips, the barely concealed contempt. The same looks you had endured your entire life.
Baseborn. Strong. Not a true dragon.
"Are you aware of what you're saying?" The handsome young Targaryen, the silver-haired one near your age, stepped forward, his brow furrowed. "That's impossible. Rhaenyra Targaryen has been dead for over a hundred years."
The words hit you like cold water.
Your eyes widens.
Now that explains why everyone and everything is different.
"...A hundred years," you repeated, barely above a whisper.
"Why is it impossible?" you managed, though your voice had gone thin and strange. "Who are you people?"
The dark-haired man with the mismatched eyes stepped forward then. He moved with the easy authority of someone accustomed to command, but there was a gentleness in his bearing, something measured and patient in the way he regarded you, that loosened the knot in your chest by a fraction.
He reminded you, painfully and without warning, of your mother, his aura even matches hers in a way.
"I believe it would be better to have this conversation in private," he said. His voice was low, steady, careful as if he were approaching a wounded animal. "Don't you think so, my lady?"
You held his gaze for a moment. Then you nodded.
"Yes. Of course." You glanced back over your shoulder at your dragon, who had lowered its great head to the ground and was watching the scattered crowd with predatory disinterest.
"But I need someone to watch over my dragon while I'm gone. She doesn't take kindly to strangers, and I won't have her harmed or harming anyone."
Your eyes swept the assembled knights. Most of them looked as though they would rather face a charging destrier blindfolded than stand within a hundred yards of the beast.
Then your gaze landed on one man, and stopped.
He was enormous, as he stood a full head above every other knight on the field, perhaps more broad-shouldered and thick-armed, with a plain, honest face that was somehow all the more striking for its lack of refinement.
He wasn't beautiful the way the silver-haired prince was beautiful. He was something else entirely. Something solid and real, like a castle wall you could lean against and know it would hold.
Ser Duncan is every maiden's dream in your time.
Heat crept unbidden into your cheeks.
You lifted your chin and pointed directly at him.
"You, Ser. You'll look after my dragon."
Duncan stared at you.
Then he stared at the dragon.
Then back at you.
"My lady," He faltered, and you watched the exact moment his sense of duty collided with his sense of self-preservation. He swallowed thickly, his throat bobbing above the collar of his worn armour.
"I would be honoured, truly, but there is... a matter. A rather pressing matter."
"More pressing than a dragon?"
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh, strained, exhausted, and edged with the particular despair of a man whose day had already gone badly before a mythical creature descended from the sky.
"My lady, I am to stand trial. A trial of seven." He gestured vaguely behind him, as though the entire catastrophe could be summed up with a wave of his hand.
"Prince Aerion has accused me of attacking his royal person, and the matter is to be settled by combat. Seven against seven. I have been trying to find men willing to fight for me, and-" He broke off, glancing at the dragon again.
"Well. It has not gone well."
You blinked in confusion.
"A trial of seven," you repeated slowly. "Over what?"
Ser Duncan's jaw tightened. Even in his obvious distress, there was something deeply admirable about the way he held himself, straight-backed, unyielding, like an oak that refused to bend even as the storm stripped it bare. You had to tilt your head back to look at him properly.
"He was hurting a girl," Duncan said, simply and without embellishment. "A puppeteer. I stopped him."
"You stopped a prince from hurting a girl and you're the one on trial?"
"That is the shape of it, my lady, yes."
You stared at him for a long moment. Then you turned on your heel and marched directly toward the cluster of Targaryen knights with a sudden, sharp purpose that made several squires throw themselves out of your path.
"Which one of you is Aerion?"
The silver-haired prince, the one near your age, the one who had called Rhaenyra's death impossible with the casual ease of reciting a lesson, stepped forward.
Up close, he was even more striking than you had initially registered. Sharp-featured and elegant, with the kind of face that belonged on a coin or a statue.
He looked you over with open interest. Or more than interest. Appraisal. The kind of look that said he was deciding whether you were worthy of his attention and had, for the moment, concluded that you were.
"I am Prince Aerion Targaryen," he said, and the title rolled off his tongue like honey over a knife's edge. "Called Brightflame."
Brightflame. Of course he had a self-given epithet. You knew the type.
You'd grown up surrounded by men who named their swords and expected the world to kneel for the privilege of being cut by them.
But you needed something from this one, and you had not survived the politics of your mother's court without learning when to wield steel and when to wield something softer.
You clasped your hands in front of you. Softened your expression.
Let your eyes go wide, not falsely so, but with the particular earnestness that came naturally to you when you allowed it, the same look that had once convinced your mother to let you ride your dragon over Dragonstone unsupervised at the age of twelve.
"Prince Aerion," you said, and you pitched your voice low and warm, like you were sharing a secret with him. "I find myself in a very strange and frightening situation, as you can imagine. I am far from everything I know, surrounded by strangers, and I am in desperate need of counsel from my own blood."
You stepped closer, just close enough that he could see the way the afternoon light caught in your eyes.
"But I'm told there's a trial that must take place first, and that it would occupy the very people I need to speak with." You let a breath of helplessness creep into your tone. "Ser Duncan explained what happened. That you were..." You paused, as though searching for the most diplomatic phrasing. "...that there was an altercation with a girl?"
Aerion's expression flickered, not with guilt, certainly not, but with the faintest surprise that you had addressed it so directly, and so gently.
"The hedge knight laid hands on a prince of the blood," he said, though there was a fraction less venom in it than there ought to have been. His eyes had not left yours. "The law is clear."
"Oh, I'm sure it is," you agreed, nodding in false agreement.
"And I'm sure you are entirely within your rights, my prince. Only—" You bit your lip. Looked down, then back up through your lashes. "I would consider it a tremendous personal kindness if you might see your way to setting the matter aside? Just this once?"
Silence.
Aerion stared at you.
You held his gaze and did not blink. You let every ounce of sweetness you possess radiate outward like warmth from a hearth.
Tilting your head slightly to the left, because your mother had once told you that you looked particularly appealing when you did that, and you were not above using every weapon in your arsenal.
You always got what you wanted from anyone when you did that thing with your eyes and expression especially from your brother, Jacaerys.
"It would mean so much to me," you added, softly. "Truly."
Aerion's mouth opened. His brow creased. Something was happening behind his eyes a war, brief and vicious, between his cruelty and his vanity, and for one terrible moment you thought cruelty would win.
Then he straightened. Waved a hand with a carelessness so studied it could only be deliberate.
"The hedge knight's crimes are forgiven," he announced, in the tone of a man granting a pardon from the Iron Throne itself. "I declare the matter settled. He is innocent of all charges."
The silence that followed was not the stunned silence of a dragon's arrival. It was the bewildered, slack-jawed silence of two hundred people who had just watched the most notoriously vicious prince in the Seven Kingdoms fold like a wet napkin because a girl looked at him nicely.
Ser Duncan, behind you, made a sound like he'd been punched in the stomach.
Maekar, who did everything in his powers to have his son change his mind the night before, is now trying not to pop a vein that a girl just got his son wrapped around her finger.
But it was the small bald boy, Aegon, whose reaction you would remember for the rest of your life, however long or short or temporally displaced that life turned out to be.
He was now standing to Duncan's left. His mouth was open so wide you could have fit an apple in it. He looked from Aerion to you, then back to Aerion, then back to you, then at Aerion again.
"What," said Egg.
No one answered him.
"WHAT?"
Aerion ignored him with the practised ease of an older brother who had been ignoring his youngest sibling since birth.
"He threw my cat down a well!" Egg sputtered, pointing at Aerion with the desperate energy of a man trying to explain to a maester that yes, the wound really was that bad.
"He... you —" He turned to Ser Duncan, arms spread wide. "He broke Tanselle's fingers! He was going to hurt her! You saw it! Everyone saw it! And now he just — because she —" He gestured wildly at you. "Because she looked at him?!"
"Aegon," said the dark-haired prince, Baelor, in a tone of measured calm that suggested he, too, could not quite believe what had just happened but had decided to accept it before Aerion changed his mind. "Perhaps we should not question the outcome."
"But—"
"Aegon."
Egg's mouth snapped shut. But his eyes, those wide, outraged, magnificently indignant eyes, continued to scream.
You turned back to Aerion and gifted him with your most radiant smile. The kind of smile that could launch ships. Or, apparently, overturn judicial proceedings.
"Thank you, Prince Aerion," you said, and you meant it, mostly. You reached out and touched his arm, briefly, barely a brush of fingers against his vambrace. "That was truly noble of you. I won't forget this kindness."
Aerion's ears turned pink.
The most feared young prince in Westeros, the boy who tortured people for sport and set cats on fire for entertainment, was blushing to the tips of his ears like a squire who had just received his first favour from a lady at a tourney.
"It was nothing," he said, in a voice that cracked on the second word, before clearing his throat and adding, with an admirable if unconvincing attempt at his usual drawl, "I am generous by nature."
Egg looked at him in disbelief.
"Thank you, my lady." Duncan says, nodding his head in gratitude.
Now, you are the one blushing.
You were about to suggest that the promised private conversation could now take place, your mind was already spinning with questions, each more terrifying than the last , when you noticed something on the ground behind the cluster of Targaryen men.
Specifically, you noticed a person on the ground.
He was lying flat on his back in the dirt, arms at his sides, eyes closed, with the serene and deliberate stillness of a man who had made a conscious decision to be elsewhere in spirit even if his body had not yet received the message.
His gold hair fanned out around his head like a halo. His mouth was set in a firm, purposeful line. He was breathing, but only barely, as though even that concession to the living world was being made under protest.
He looked, for all intents and purposes, like a very clean, very well-dressed corpse.
You stared.
"Is he..." You pointed. "Is that man alright?"
Maekar glanced down. His unamused expression did not change, which told you everything you needed to know about how frequently this occurred.
"He's pretending to be dead so he doesn't fight." Aegon explains.
"Understandable."
You then turn to Baelor, before walking over to him and linking your arm with his.
"Now, my kind prince, can we kindly have our private conversation?"
Platonic Dark Father! Victor Frankenstein X Daughter Reader X Platonic The Creature
You are the daughter of the renowned scientist, Victor Frankenstein.
Your father had always been haunted by the fractured relationship he had with his own father. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past, he poured himself into raising you with obsessive devotion.
Despite his efforts, you grew into a shy and withdrawn person, hesitant to fully open yourself up to the world, or even your father.
Your father blamed himself for your reluctance, channeling his guilt into his work, convincing himself that his ultimate creation would prove his worth to you and the world.
Unbeknownst to him, his actions would lead to a devastating chain of events that would test the fragile connection between you two
Victor's experiments culminated in the creation of the Creature, a being stitched together from the remains of the dead and animated through the power of science.
At first, he regarded the Creature with pride, certain that it would cement his legacy. But when you discovered the Creature, you surprised Victor with your reaction.
Instead of fear, you showed kindness. You saw the loneliness in the Creature’s eyes and, for the first time, felt a connection with someone who, like you, seemed out of place in the world. You called him your 'brother,' an innocent title that sent Victor into a spiral of jealousy and rage.
Your father watched helplessly as your withdrawn nature seemed to melt away in the presence of the Creature. You laughed with him, confided in him, and even smiled, something Victor hadn’t seen in years since your mother's death. The Creature, in turn, grew fond of you as you slowly taught him about many things.
This infuriated Victor. His mind, already frayed by years of obsession, twisted the Creature’s presence into a threat. He convinced himself that the Creature was stealing your affection, driving a wedge between father and daughter.
Desperate to reclaim your attention and rid himself of the Creature, Victor concocted a plan to destroy his creation. One stormy night, he lured the Creature to the tower where he had been created, intending to burn it to the ground with the Creature inside.
But you, having sensed your father’s growing animosity toward the Creature, had followed him to the tower. You ran into the volatile lab and confronted Victor as he held a torch aloft.
"Father, please! Stop!" You cried out, stepping between him and the trapped Creature. "He hasn't done anything wrong!"
Victor’s eyes were wild, consumed by jealousy. "He stole you! He stole my peace! Step aside, I am protecting you!"
"No! You're destroying everything!" You pleaded.
Victor, blinded by his obsession, refused to listen. He threw the torch, the fire catching instantly on the chemical spills and dried wood. He only realized too late that you were still inside the burning tower, and didn't follow behind him.
Panic consumed him as the flames spread. He fought to reach you, screaming your name, but the fire was too intense. Just as Victor collapsed from the explosion, laying outside, his leg was torn from the impact.
the Creature appeared after breaking out of his chains, he carried you out of the inferno into the water, leaving your father to believe that you are dead.
You remember the searing heat, the smoke, and then the rush of cold water. When you awoke, you were miles away from the ruins of the tower, lying on the floor of a dilapidated safe house. The Creature, stood guard.
You looked up at him, your voice hoarse. "He thought he won."
The Creature shook his head slowly. "Safe... now."
He kneeled down beside you, placing a piece of your hair behind your ear.
"Why...hate.... your father?"
You smiled bitterly at the memory, remembering the way your mother died.
In a fit of anger, Victor threw her down the stairs, resulting in a broken neck and her subsequent death.
He remained blissfully unaware of your presence, lurking in the shadows, your breath caught in your throat and a hand pressed tightly over your mouth to stifle any sound.
That night was engraved in your mind.
"He is a monster, and I hate Monsters."
"I'm...also...a monster."
You swiftly shook your head, a rush of emotion coursing through you as your fingers gently cupped his cheek.
"No, you are the beautiful one."
Dark Human! Prince Of The Forest (Bambi's Father) x Reader
The blizzard wasn't just a weather event, it was a physical weight, pressing the air from your lungs and turning the world into a disorienting, white void.
When you had collapsed against the rime-crusted bark of an ancient oak, you had accepted that the forest was claiming you.
Then came the touch, small, frantic hands.
"Miss? You have to wake up, please. "
The voice was a fragile reed in the howling wind. You pried your frozen lashes apart to see a child.
He was drowning in a cloak three sizes too big, the hem dragging in the snow, making him look like a little king playing dress-up.
But his eyes, wide, liquid brown, and filled with a terrifying amount of awareness were not the eyes of a child at play, they were the eyes of prey scanning for a predator.
Bambi That was the name he whispered as he practically dragged you through the drifts, he didn't take you back to the village.
He took you to a fortress disguised as a cottage, nestled so deep in the pines the shadows seemed to swallow it.
🦌🦌🦌
For two days, the storm buried the world, Inside the cottage, a different kind of quiet reigned.
The cottage was structurally magnificent, heavy timber, stone floors, a hearth big enough to roast an ox. But it was a tomb. Dust coated the mantle like gray snow. The pantry was stocked with grim efficiency, dried venison, hardtack, root vegetables, but there was no warmth, no softness. No mother’s touch.
"My father is… the Prince," Bambi said on the first night, sitting on his hands as if afraid to take up space. "He protects the forest. He's patrolling the perimeter.”
Indeed, you heard of the prince, his father, the king assigned him to protect the forest because it's the borders of the kingdom.
"For two days?" you asked, wrapping a blanket tighter around his shivering shoulders.
"He has to, he says threats don't sleep, so neither can we."
The statement chilled you more than the draft under the door. Bambi was six years old, yet he spoke with the grim stoicism of a veteran soldier.
To keep the creeping dread at bay, you worked.
You didn't just cook; you created a sanctuary, you scrubbed the grime from the floorboards until the wood gleamed.
You combined the dried meats and withered carrots into a rich, aromatic stew that filled the stagnant air with the scent of rosemary and thyme. You heated water and washed Bambi's face, combing the tangles from his hair.
For forty-eight hours, you saw the tension bleed out of the boy. He laughed once, a rusty, startled sound, when you slipped on a patch of soap.
By the second evening, he was asleep in your lap before the fire, clutching your sleeve, finally looking like a little boy instead of a lonely sentry.
Then, the lock clicked.
It wasn't a loud noise, but the atmosphere in the room shifted instantly.
The air pressure dropped. Bambi woke with a gasp, scrambling off your lap and standing at rigid attention by the hearth.
The door swung open, and the Great Prince entered.
He was a mountain of a man, yet his features are beautiful, almost soft.
The Prince bought in the scent of ozone, pine resin, and old blood in with him, while his dark hair was plastered to his forehead by the melting snow, and his cloak, made of thick, dark pelts, made his shoulders look impossibly broad.
He didn't look like a man coming home, he looked like a king inspecting his barracks.
His eyes, dark and impenetrable, swept the room.
They lingered on the polished floor. The steaming pot of stew. And finally, they landed on you.
You stopped breathing. He was beautiful in a terrifying, jagged way, but the hostility radiating from him was physical.
"Father," Bambi squeaked.
The Prince ignored you, turning his slow, heavy gaze to his son. He didn't yell. He didn't raise a hand. He simply lowered his voice to a rumble that vibrated in your chest bones.
The Prince did not look at his son; he stared at you with a predator's intensity. "What is the First Law of the Den?"
"Never... never let the outside in," Bambi stammered, tears welling in his large eyes.
"And yet," the Prince stepped forward, looming over the child, "I return to find a stranger here. You have disobeyed me. You have made us vulnerable."
"She was freezing, Father!"
"The winter takes what is weak!" The Prince’s voice rose, sharp and cold. "Compassion is a luxury for the prey, not the Prince! You are foolish, boy. You are soft."
“And who is this?” The Prince gestured to you without looking at you, as if you were vermin that had skittered in.
"She was dying, the snow-"
He stepped forward, and the boy shrank back, hitting the stone of the fireplace. "You risked our safety for a stranger? You exposed our location? I return to find the door unlocked and an intruder eating our food?"
"I just wanted to help!" Bambi cried, tears spilling over.
"You wanted to be soft!" The Prince loomed over him, a shadow swallowing the light. "Softness gets you killed! I told you to stay hidden. I told you to wait. You are disobedient, reckless, and foolish."
Bambi sobbed, curling in on himself, terrified not of being hit, but of the sheer, crushing weight of his father’s disappointment.
Something inside you snapped. The fear that had paralyzed you was incinerated by a white-hot flash of anger.
"That is enough!"
The words rang out like a gunshot.
The Great Prince stopped, and the silence that followed was deafening.
Slowly, terrifyingly, he turned his head. He looked at you with genuine baffle, as if the firewood had suddenly started lecturing him.
"Excuse me?" he breathed, fully turning his body toward you, the intensity of his gaze was like standing in front of an oncoming tornado.
"You, an intruder in my territory, dare to command me?"
"I dare," you said, your voice shaking but your feet planted firmly between him and his son. "Look at him, he's terrified."
"He is being disciplined, step aside, before I throw you back into the storm you came from."
"Try it," you spat back, adrenaline overriding your self-preservation. "You’re a bully. A giant, arrogant bully scaring a little boy because you’re too emotionally stunted to thank him for having a heart!”
The Prince's eyes widened, a flicker of shock breaking his mask. He took a threatening step closer, invading your space, towering over you by a full head. "I am teaching him survival. I am teaching him to endure."
"You're teaching him that he doesn't matter!” you screamed, poking a finger hard into his chest.
He didn't flinch at the contact, only looking down at your hand as if it were a weapon.
"You left a six-year-old child alone in a blizzard for two days!" You didn't stop because you couldn't stop.
"Two days! With the wind howling like demons, in a house that was cold and empty! He wasn't scared of the storm, he was scared of the silence! He was scared that you weren't coming back!"
The Prince opened his mouth, his expression thunderous, but you cut him off.
"Look around you!" You gestured wildly at the clean room, the warm fire, the food.
"Why do you think I did all this? Because he was starving, not just for food, but for care! For warmth! You treat him like a soldier in an army of two, but he is a baby! If your idea of parenting is abandoning him in the woods to toughen him up, then you don't deserve him!”
You stood there, heaving for breath, your finger still pressed against the rough wool of his tunic. Bambi had stopped crying, he was staring at you with awe, his mouth hanging open.
The Great Prince stared at you, his nostrils flared as he took a deep, ragged breath, looking from your blazing eyes to his son, who looked fed, warm, and defended, and then back to the clean cottage.
The anger vanished and was replaced by a cold expression.
He looked at your hand on his chest. He covered it with his own. His hand was massive, rough with calluses, enveloping yours completely.
Yet he didn't push you away, he only held you there, feeling the rapid beat of your pulse.
"You think I am negligent," he stated. His voice had lost its sharp edge.
"I think you’re a fool who forgot what a home is supposed to be," you whispered, refusing to pull your hand away.
The Prince stared at you for a long, agonizing moment, then he looked at the fire you had built.
The food you had cooked, and the way his son was currently clutching your skirt, looking at you as if you were his savior.
"I was patrolling to keep the spies out," the Prince said quietly, his thumb brushing the sensitive skin of your wrist. "But perhaps… perhaps I let the cold in by mistake."
He stepped closer, closing the remaining distance until his thighs brushed against yours. The heat radiating off him was immense.
"You are right," he admits, his eyes locking onto yours. "He cannot be left alone. He needs supervision, he needs a keeper."
He released your hand, but only to reach past you. He slammed the heavy iron deadbolt of the door home.
Thud.
"You have made yourself quite at home," the Prince hinted out, walking slowly toward the table. He picked up a spoon, dipped it into the stew you made, and tasted it.
He hummed, a deep, appreciative sound that vibrated through the room.
"Good. You are useful, you are fierce, and you care for the boy.” He set the spoon down and looked at you with a dark, final satisfaction.
"I won’t make the mistake of leaving him without a mother again, you're staying."
"I...what?" you stammered out in shock.
"Sit down," he commanded, pulling out a chair, it wasn't a request. It was a decree from the Prince of the Forest.
"We are a family now, and I will not let my wife wander off into the snow."
Mama's Boy|| Dark Valarr, Matarys, Daeron, and Aerion x Motherly! Reader
"She is Dark Sister made flesh, if I cannot have the sword, perhaps I shall claim the woman."
— Daemon Blackfyre
You are the only daughter of King Daeron the Good and Queen Myriah Martell. Sister to Baelor Breakspear and Maekar. Aunt to all their sons.
You rode to the Redgrass Field in mismatched armor with a stolen sword, fighting with such ferocity that even Daemon Blackfyre himself saw fit to praise you. But when you finally stood before him, he drove his blade into you, not to kill, but to ruin.
A precise, deliberate wound that stole from you the one thing no sword could ever give back. The chance to carry a child of your own. All because a bastard with a dragon's name could not stomach the thought of you belonging to another man.
And yet, life has a strange way of offering what fate takes away.
Jena Dondarrion went first before the rebellion war, then Dyanna Dayne. Dyanna, who bled out bringing life into the world rather than taking it from it. Both women had looked at you from their deathbeds with clear, certain eyes and asked the same thing of you. Promise me. And you had. Without hesitation.
So you kept your word. You set aside the armor, hung up the sword, and became something you never imagined you would be, a mother, in every way that mattered, to children who were not yours by blood but were yours all the same.
VALARR TARGARYEN
He had been there from the beginning, or rather, you had been there for his. You were the one who steadied him when he learned to walk, who leaned down to catch his first fumbling words, who wrapped his small hands around the hilt of a training sword and showed him how to hold it properly.
When you left for the Redgrass Field, Valarr was seven years old and completely inconsolable.
Baelor had laughed about it afterward, teasing that his son had written you more letters during that campaign than he himself had written in his entire life. The boy loves you more than he loves me, his brother had said, shaking his head with a grin.
He had not entirely been joking.
Valarr knew it too, and the knowing ate at him. He felt it every time you turned your attention elsewhere, to his brother, to his cousins, to anyone who was not him.
A hot, irrational flare behind his ribs that he could not name for years and did not want to name even after he could. He told himself it was loyalty. That you had given him more than anyone else ever had, and so naturally he expected more in return. That was all it was.
He told you everything. Every fear, every ambition, every ugly thought he was too proud to speak aloud to anyone else. And once, in a moment he could not fully explain, he told you that too...that he was obsessed with you, that he could not seem to stop.
You had laughed. Warmly, the way you always did, as though he were a boy still saying something endearingly foolish. You did not take him seriously.
Then Kiera came to you.
His wife, pale and quietly miserable, confessing that she believed her husband was in love with someone else. She did not name you. She did not have to.
After that, you pulled back. Gently at first, then with more deliberate care, fewer meetings, shorter conversations, a new and careful distance that you built between the two of you like a wall, brick by brick, hoping he would not notice, or if he did, that he would understand.
He noticed.
He did not understand.
And then he snapped.
"Why are you distancing yourself from me, what have I done to upset you?"
"Kiera believes you are in love with another woman, she hasn't said who but she hinted at me."
"She is wrong." Valarr assures you, his mismatched eyes meeting yours.
"The reason why I spend so much time with you is because I'm afraid to lose you just like I lost my mother,"
Your eyes soften before you stand up and walk towards him, before stopping directly in front of him, grabbing his face.
"Oh sweet boy, you don't have to worry."
Valarr hugged you tightly, placing his face on the side of your neck, before allowing tears to fall.
"I apologize if I caused you any type of discomfort."
"It's fine, I'm here, no need to cry."
He just lied and you believed him.
MATARYS TARGARYEN
No one felt his mother’s death more deeply than he did. He was only a boy, grieving in silence, but the comfort you offered your gentle words, your steady embrace, became something far more consuming than either of you intended.
He trailed after you wherever you went, small hand clutching at your sleeves, and when duty pulled you away to face rebellion, his sobs echoed through the halls. Even after your return, when peace was restored and life resumed its rhythm, his attachment to you never lessened.
Matarys is timid by nature; that much is obvious. Yet with you, he sheds that shyness. You are the only one before whom he is unguarded, the only one who sees the truest version of him.
From childhood, he searched for ways to keep you close. He urged his father to marry you. He even gathered the courage to plead with his grandfather, convinced that if you wed Baelor, you would remain by his side, his and Valarr’s, always. A mother in all but name.
In his mind, it was the simplest solution. You would no longer divide your time between Summerhall and the Red Keep. You would stay, where he could see you, where you belonged.
That's why he lied, he convinced himself that no one would treat you better than his own father, he NEEDED you to be his mother.
"That is what he told us," Matarys insisted softly, silver lashes lowering as if burdened by a secret too heavy for a child to carry. "Father wishes to wed you. He said so to me and Valarr. He only fears you might be frightened by the proposal."
His fingers tightened around yours, cool and trembling. "He says you belong here with us."
You smiled at him, gentle, patient, unaware of the careful web he was spinning. Kneeling to his height, you brushed the hair from his brow.
"Sweet boy," you murmured, voice warm with fondness. "Your father is dear to me. He has always been. But not in that way."
His expression flickered.
"I see Baelor only as a brother," you continued softly. "He is family to me already. Marriage has never been my wish, least of all with him."
For a moment, the world seemed to still.
Matarys' lips parted, but no sound came. The answer did not fit the story he had crafted so carefully in his mind.
“You don't?” he asked, barely above a whisper.
You cupped his cheek. "No. And I would not want him misled into thinking otherwise."
The words were kind. Honest.
That evening, Matarys sought out his father, and did the same, yet he was successful only because Baelor was already in love with you.
DAERON TARGARYEN
Daeron breaks your heart. He has the prophetic dragon dreams, visions that terrify him into the bottom of a flagon. He feels like a disappointment to his father, Maekar, but with you, he feels safe. You don’t judge him for the wine.
And as you are always worried about him, he also worries about you to the point of insanity because of his dreams.
"Don't go hunting today, Please," he begs, his hands shaking as he clutches your sleeve, smelling of sour wine. "Just... stay in the Keep. Stay where I can see you."
He will make a fool of himself, feigning illness or causing a scene, just to keep you from walking into a danger only he has seen. He drinks to forget the world, but he stays sober enough to ensure the world doesn't hurt you.
Daeron once has made a man take the fall for you in a hunting trip by telling him to hunt in your place, just to protect you from getting killed by wild boar.
Now, you wonder why doesn't he just prevent you from going to that place instead of also sacrificing an innocent man.
Well, you see Daeron believes that if someone takes your place in the prophecy, the prophecy won't keep on following you, so he does that.
Daeron doesn't want to go mad with guilt if something happened to you.
He already suffers enough tragedy.
AERION TARGARYEN
Aerion outright rejects the idea that Dyanna Dayne could be his mother. In his mind, the quiet Lady Dyanna, no dragon, no fire, could never have birthed him.
No. In Aerion’s imagination, you are his true mother. A real dragon. A warrior who rode into tourneys and battlefields alike. Strong. Untamed. Glorious.
He convinces himself there must have been a secret affair with his father. That when you conceived him, Daeron II forced the pregnancy into silence to avoid scandal. That once he was born, the child was placed in Dyanna Dayne’s arms to preserve appearances.
It is an elaborate fantasy, dramatic, irrational, and utterly born from a boy's desperate need to belong.
He never understood your affection towards him, why you always defended him when Maeker wanted to punish him for misbehavior.
No one would do that except a mother who loved her child dearly.
Like Matarys, he wants you to stay and not divide your attention towards both places, so he tries to wed you to his father, believing that is what should have happened from the beginning, after all you are Maeker's twin sister.
It begins in the corridor outside your chambers.
Two handmaidens linger nearby, whispering over ribbons and brushes. Aerion approaches, slow and deliberate.
He pauses just within earshot.
"Curious," he says aloud, voice thoughtful. "I could not sleep last night."
The maids stiffen but pretend not to listen.
"I heard… noises," he continues lightly. "From my father's wing."
One maid glances at the other.
Aerion tilts his head. "Moans, I think. A woman’s voice."
He lets the word settle.
"I would not have thought Father so careless," he adds, almost amused. "One would assume he would not choose my aunt."
The maids are staring now.
"Surely you’ve noticed," Aerion says mildly. "The late visits. The torches burned past midnight."
One of them swallows. "My prince, are you saying—?"
He shrugs innocently, "I am saying nothing. I only hear what I hear."
He walks away before they can question him further.
That is enough.
By supper, the story has grown teeth.
Prince Maeker shares her bed.
Guards have seen him leaving at dawn.
The princess and the prince are lovers.
Within days, the rumor reaches the Red Keep.
The wildfire of the rumor reached the Red Keep long before Maekar could even draw his sword to silence it. By the time it landed on King Daeron's desk, the Small Council was already buzzing with the 'Twin Scandal.'
To Maekar's annoyance and Aerion's twisted delight, the King issued his decree, Maekar was to wed you immediately.
He won, he had forced his true parents together.

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Platonic Dark! Maeker Targaryen x Lookalike Daughter Albino! Reader x Daeron, Aerion, And Aegon V
You had learned early on that existing was enough to cause problems.
Being born albino, white hair, pale skin so fragile the sun treated it like an enemy, and eyes the color of bruised lavender, had a way of making people stare. Men stared for reasons that made your skin crawl. Women stared for reasons that made them petty.
Neither group understood that your exotic looks came with a price tag. A chronic sunburn and eyesight that made the world permanently soft around the edges.
Duncan understood. That's why he hovered.
That'swhy more than a few men had walked away from your campsite with rearranged faces and fresh regrets.
And when Egg came along, small, bald, and apparently always cold, he had claimed his spot in your arms at night like it was a law. You knew he wasn't actually cold. He just wanted to feel safe.
Your life at Ashford had been simple. Manageable. Almost peaceful.
Almost.
Until you noticed him the same moment he noticed you.
A young man standing alone. His eyes were locked on you with an intensity that made you instinctively look over your shoulder, surely he was staring at someone else.
You pointed at yourself. Me?
He started walking toward you. Fast.
So like a normal person, you dropped the bucket and ran.
The Targaryens had a reputation, and it wasn't a good one. You didn't need history books to tell you that, though you'd read them anyway.
He caught you before you had made it twenty steps. His hand closed around your arm, then moved to your face, tilting it upward like he was examining something rare and half remembered.
"You look exactly like her."
"Like who, my prince?"
Something flickered behind his violet eyes. He went somewhere else for a moment, some private memory that seemed to knock the breath out of him.
Then he grabbed your wrist and started pulling.
"Where are you taking me?"
"My tent." Stated like it was obvious. Like you were a misplaced object he was simply returning to its shelf.
Without wasting another minute, you bit him.
Hard. Teeth meeting the back of his hand with full commitment.
He swore as his grip broke.
You ran and didn't look back.
𓅰 𓅬 𓅭 𓅮 𓅯
Hiding after biting a prince should have been your full-time occupation.
Instead, you heard what happened to Duncan.
Arrested. For hitting the same prince you had just used as a chew toy.
You stopped hiding.
You shoved through guards, through doorways, through every social boundary a girl of your station had no business crossing, until you burst into a room full of powerful men and threw yourself next to your brother like your presence alone could save him.
"Please." You didn't care how desperate you sounded. "He didn't mean it. He's danse, and was probably drunk. Please don't kill him."
Silence.
Prince Baelor stared at you. Prince Maekar stared at you. Every man in the room seemed to have forgotten how to speak.
Then Aerion, with the hand you had bitten still likely throbbing، pointed at you with the casual authority of someone who never been told no.
"That's the girl I was telling you about," he said.
"She looks exactly like Rhaenyra."
The silence that followed Aerion's words was a different kind of silence.
The kind that precedes something irreversible.
Prince Maekar was the first to move. He stepped forward slowly, the way a man approaches something he's afraid will disappear if he moves too fast.
His eyes swept over your face, your white hair, your pale skin, your purple eyes, and something in his expression cracked open.
"I can't believe you're alive."
His voice came out barely above a whisper.
The words landed wrong. Deeply, disturbingly wrong.
"I'm sorry?"
"My daughter." Maekar's jaw tightened. "We searched the river for weeks. They told me the current was too strong. That the body had been gone"
"I'm not your daughter, my name is____"
You said it clearly. Plainly. The way you'd state that the sky was blue or that fire was hot.
Maekar didn't seem to hear you.
Baelor, standing slightly behind his brother, tilted his head and studied you with the calm, measured expression of a man assembling a puzzle.
"The body was never recovered," he said thoughtfully, almost to himself.
"Prince Baelor, I thought you were the wisest to not believe such madness." You argue.
"That is a rather extraordinary detail, when you think about it." He wasn't speaking to you anymore. He was speaking to the room. "A drowning with no body. White hair. Purple eyes. The resemblance is strong, there is no difference."
"A coincidence," you cut in, your voice climbing.
"My lord, I was born like this. I have always looked like this. This is simply how I am."
Nobody in the room looked convinced except Duncan.
The panic rising in your chest pushed you toward the one solution that had never failed you.
"Duncan." You turned to him sharply. "Tell them."
Duncan, to his credit, straightened immediately despite the situation he was in. When he spoke, his voice carried the simple, stubborn weight of a man who had no talent for lying and therefore never bothered.
"I held her the moment she came into the world," he said. "My mother gave birth to her in a roadside inn, two days from King's Landing, in the middle of a rainstorm. I was twelve years old and I cut the cord myself because there was no one else to do it." He looked directly at Maekar.
"I have known her every day of her life. She is my sister. She has always been my sister."
The room was quiet again.
You exhaled.
Then Maekar said, "You could have been paid to say that."
The exhale died.
"He is telling the truth."
"Men have told the truth for smaller fortunes," Maeker added sternly, as if he was doing you a kindness. "And men have constructed very convincing lies for larger ones."
"We are not lying!"
"You have her eyes, even the same taints of red." Maekar's voice had shifted into something worse than accusation. Something softer. Something that sounded like longing.
"Her exact eyes with tints of redness in it. Her hair. Even the way you carry yourself."
"With respect, your highness, I carry myself like a girl who grew up on muddy roads eating hard bread. I am not your daughter."
But grief is a stubborn thing. And powerful men are unaccustomed to being told that what they want cannot be theirs.
Aerion, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, which somehow made him more arrogant, let out a slow, satisfied exhale and turned his gaze to Duncan.
The smile that crossed his face was the kind that had no warmth in it whatsoever.
"It doesn't much matter," he said casually, examining his hand where your teeth had left their mark. "Once I kill your creature at the trial by seven—" his eyes slid to you, "—there will be no one left to argue on your behalf."
Duncan's hands curled into fists.
Your blood went cold.
"And then," Aerion continued, with the lightness of someone discussing the weather, "We'll simply take you home. Where you belong."
"I have a home."
"You had a large man following you around tournament grounds." He points out. "It's not quite the same thing, is it."
"Aerion." Baelor's voice carried a quiet warning.
But the damage was already sitting in the room like a third presence, the shape of what was coming, the trial, swords, and the very real possibility that Duncan could die.
You looked at Duncan, before side hugging him as if you were still a child trying to hide from the horrors of the world.
Maeker, Baelor, And Aerion watched the interaction with unreadable expression except for Aerion who seething with jealousy.
Your brother won the trial, he won it but at what cost, prince Baelor is dead.
And guilt rests on Duncan's shoulders, meanwhile you also felt undeniable sympathy and sadness for Valarr.
Yet all the sympathy and sadness is gone when Duncan tells you that Aegon will be his squire and he will take him with him on his journey.
Meanwhile you will be left with the Targaryen as he had made an agreement for your safety.
"You promised." Your voice cracked. "You promised you would never leave me behind."
"It's the safest option."
"Safe." The word tasted bitter. "You're leaving me with them, Duncan."
"I will come back."
"People always say that." You stepped back.
"They don't always mean it."
Something shifted in his expression, guilt, and underneath it, something that looked dangerously close to certainty.
He reached out and took your hands in both of his, his grip steady, the same hands that had held a sword in the trial, that had held her up through every cold road and hungry morning they'd survived together.
He looked down at her. Really looked.
"I survived the trial," he said quietly. "The worst is over. But you've faced danger beside me every step of the way, staying in a castle is better than suffering in the streets. You know that."
"What about Aerion?" The name came out like a warning.
"Prince Maekar will ensure he stays away from you. He gave his word to treat you as he treated his own daughter."
"I'm not Rhaenyra." The words broke something loose in her chest and she stopped fighting it entirely, stepping forward and pressing her face against her brother's chest, arms around him, tears finally falling in earnest. "Don't leave me here. I'm scared, Duncan. I'm scared."
His arms came around her without hesitation. Then his hands moved gently to your face, moving your chin up until you had nowhere to look but at him.
"Don't be," he assured you he way he'd always said the things he meant most. "I promised to keep you safe. I will keep you safe."
You held his gaze for a long moment, searching for the lie in it and finding none.
Something in your chest loosened, just slightly enough.
You almost managed a smile.
"Are you going to kiss her?"
Both you and Duncan' heads turned.
Daeron stood several feet away, a cup of wine tilted lazily in one hand, his eyes bright with the particular recklessness of a man who had been drinking since before he had any reason to celebrate.
Besidehim, Aegon stood with his arms crossed and his jaw set in the taut, practiced expression of a boy who had spent years being embarrassed by his older brother and had simply run out of ways to show it.
"Not everyone is fond of Targaryen customs," Duncan said flatly, his arm still around her shoulders.
Daeron's smirk widened, slow and taunting, the kind that meant he knew something, or at least wanted you to believe he did.
"Pity." He swirled his cup. "You looked rather comfortable for a man who claims otherwise."
Daeron knew, of course, he had always known something was off about you. As a dragon dreamer, he could sense the wrongness clinging to your soul like smoke.
But you doubted he truly understood the depth of it. You doubted he knew you had been reborn.
How cruel, how bitterly ironic; you had ended your life only to awaken once more, forced to face your possessive family all over again.
The gods were merciless, granting you freedom through the very act of reincarnation.
And yet… this was not the first time you had been reborn, was it?
It had happened before, when your uncle chased you and your twin, Lucerys. On his dragon resulting in death.
It had happened even earlier, when your half-brother Maegor cut your life short.
And everytime, you are born with the same condition, weak eyesight, sensitive skin the lacks color same as your hair.
Small wonder you had come to despise the Targaryens with every fiber of your being.
Dark Young Mentor! Haymitch x Weak! Reader
You are going to die.
Haymitch Abernathy knows this with the same certainty he knows the sun will rise over the slag heaps back home, that the Capitol will keep taking children, that the nightmares will never stop.
He has known it since the moment you stumbled off the train, small, sickly, coughing from the coal dust that seems permanently lodged in your lungs. Seam through and through, with that underfed look that marks your people like a brand.
You are seventeen. Same age he was, two years ago, when he crawled out of that arena covered in other children's blood.
"Stop," he says flatly, watching you attempt to throw a knife at the training dummy for the fifteenth time. It clatters to the ground three feet short of the target.
You flinch at his voice. You always flinch. That's the problem. You flinch at everything. The loud noises, the Career tributes' laughter, the Avoxes who move too quietly.
You will flinch yourself right into an early grave the moment that gong sounds.
"I'm trying," you say, and your voice comes out thin, reedy. Pathetic.
"You're failing." Haymitch pushes off the wall where he's been leaning, crossing the training room floor with the kind of deliberate stride he learned to affect in the Capitol. Confidence. Predator, not prey.
"Pick it up."
You bend to retrieve the knife, and he watches you. Really watches you, the way he's been watching you for three days now, the way your hands tremble, the way you catalogue every exit, and the way you make yourself small, invisible, a nothing-girl that no one will remember.
There.
That's it. That's the thing he's been looking for.
"You're not going to win by fighting," he says.
You look up at him with those dark Seam eyes, and something flickers there. Not hope, you're not stupid enough for hope, but attention.
"Then how?"
Haymitch crouches down to your level, close enough that you can't look away. This near, he can see the shadows under your eyes, the way your collarbones jut too sharply beneath your training shirt.
You smell like the soap they give tributes, artificial flowers trying to cover the scent of fear.
"You're going to win by not being worth killing."
➶𓅪➶
The interview is a disaster.
You sit beside him in the elevator afterward, silent, your ridiculous Capitol dress pooling around your feet like spilled blood.
Caesar Flickerman had tried. He always tries. But you gave him nothing. Monosyllables. Downcast eyes. The audience has already forgotten you by the time you walked offstage.
"That was the point," Haymitch says, when the doors close.
You look at him. "What?"
"They don't remember you. Good." He jabs the button for the twelfth floor harder than necessary.
"The Careers are already making lists. Deciding who to hunt first, who's a threat, who'll make good entertainment for the sponsors. You know where you are on that list?"
"Nowhere," you whisper.
"Nowhere." He turns to face you fully. "You're nothing to them. A footnote. Someone who'll probably die in the bloodbath without anyone having to lift a finger. They're not going to waste time tracking you through the arena when there are bigger targets."
The elevator hums around you both, while you're quiet for a long moment.
"You think I can't win."
It isn't a question. Haymitch studies your face, searching for the crack in your composure, the moment you'll break.
But you just stand there, small and trembling and so goddamn fragile, looking at him like you're already dead and just waiting for your body to catch up.
"I think you can't win the way they expect," he says finally. "So we're not going to play their game."
➶𓅪➶
He spends every night of the remaining prep time in your quarters.
Not like that. He isn't that kind of monster, despite what the Capitol has tried to make him. But he sits in the chair by your window and talks. Strategy. Survival.
Every dirty trick he learned in his own Games, a sponsor manipulation tactic, and a way to find water and every plant that will kill instead of cure.
You absorb it all with a quiet intensity that surprises him. You don't complain, and don't cry, you just listen, those eyes fixed on his face like he's the only solid thing in a world gone liquid.
"You're not sleeping," you say, on the third night.
Haymitch pauses mid-sentence. "Neither are you."
"I asked first."
Something twitches at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. He doesn't smile anymore, not really. But close. "Dreams," he says shortly. "Comes with the territory. You'll understand, if you make it out."
When, he thinks, and the fierceness of it surprises him. When you make it out.
You're quiet for a moment. Then speak.
"Will you be there? When I come back?"
The question hits him somewhere soft, somewhere he thought the arena had burned out of him entirely. He looks at you, this small, weak, impossibly stubborn girl, and feels something shift in his chest.
"Yeah," he says roughly. "I'll be there."
➶𓅪➶
The morning of the Games, Marcus finds you in the launch room.
Your boy. The other tribute from Twelve. He's tall and broad-shouldered, with the kind of quiet strength that comes from years in the mines. You've loved him since you were fourteen, sneaking kisses behind the slag heaps, dreaming about a future you'll never have.
He pulls you into his arms, and Haymitch watches from the doorway, something ugly twisting in his gut.
"Stay hidden," Marcus murmurs against your hair. "Promise me. No matter what happens, you stay hidden."
"I promise," you whisper back.
"I will find you. When it's safe, I will find you, and we'll figure it out together."
Haymitch clears his throat. "It's time."
Marcus pulls back, cups your face in his hands, and kisses you. Soft and desperate and full of everything he can't say. Then he's gone, escorted to his own launch room, and you're left standing there with tears streaming down your face.
You don't see the way Haymitch's hands clench at his sides, and you don't see the calculation behind his eyes, the cold arithmetic of survival already spinning in his mind.
Two tributes. One mentor. Not enough sponsor money for both.
He's already made his choice.
➶𓅪➶
The arena that year is a flooded cityscape. Crumbling buildings rising from black water, bridges that collapse without warning, things moving beneath the surface that the Gamemakers have engineered to ensure the entertainment never stops.
Haymitch watches from the mentor's booth, hands white-knuckled on the edge of his console, as the countdown begins.
You run. Not toward the Cornucopia, where the Careers are already converging in a clash of steel and screams, but away. Into the maze of half-drowned streets, disappearing into the shadows like you've been doing it your whole life.
Marcus runs too, but toward the Cornucopia. Toward the weapons.
He snags a knife and a pack before the Careers notice him, then vanishes into the ruins on the opposite side of the arena.
Smart, Haymitch thinks. Both of you.
The bloodbath claims nine tributes in the first hour. Neither of you are among them.
He finds you on the screens, a small figure huddled in the upper floors of a tilting apartment building, shivering in your wet clothes, and something in his chest loosens just slightly.
➶𓅪➶
Day three.
A sponsor approaches Haymitch at the viewing party. One of the wealthy Capitol elite, dripping in jewels and synthetic skin, eager to play patron to a tribute who might actually survive.
"The boy from Twelve," she purrs. "He's quite impressive. That fight with the tribute from Nine was brutal. I would like to send him something. A weapon, perhaps. Good steel."
Haymitch's mind races. A weapon for Marcus would give him a real chance against the Careers. He's strong, capable, knows how to fight. With proper equipment, he could make it to the finale.
But the sponsor money is limited. Every gift is a choice. Every choice means someone else doesn't get one.
He thinks of you, shivering in your hiding spot, rationing your water, flinching at every sound. He thinks of the thermal blanket you need, the water purification tablets that could save your life when the Gamemakers inevitably poison the supply.
He thinks of the way you looked at him in the elevator. The way you asked if he would be there when you came back.
"The girl," Haymitch says. "Put your money on the girl."
The sponsor frowns. "The girl? She hasn't done anything. She just hides."
"Exactly." He leans in, letting his voice drop to a conspiratorial murmur. "The Careers aren't hunting her. They don't even remember she exists. And when they've finished killing each other, she'll still be there. Waiting."
It takes an hour of charm and manipulation. Skills he learned at Snow's parties, bought with pieces of his soul. But he walks away with enough sponsor money for three gifts.
All for you.
➶𓅪➶
Day four.
You're watching from your hiding spot when the Careers find Marcus.
Haymitch watches you watching, sees the moment your hand flies to your mouth, the moment your whole body goes rigid with horror.
On another screen, Marcus is fighting. Three against one, hopeless odds, but he doesn't give up. He takes one of them down before the girl from One opens his throat with her sword.
The cannon fires.
You just sit there, frozen, while the light fades from his eyes on the screen a hundred feet away.
Haymitch closes his eyes and tells himself it was necessary.
And the days blur together.
You don't fight, because you hide as you creep through the ruins like a ghost, drinking rainwater collected in broken gutters, surviving on the gifts Haymitch sends you. The thermal blanket. The water purification tablets. The burn cream when you barely escape a fire.
Each gift is a message: I'm watching. I'm here. Keep going.
You receive each one with hollow eyes, going through the motions of survival without any of the spark you'd had before. Marcus's death has gutted you.
Meanwhile you move like a sleepwalker, like someone who's already decided they're going to die and is just waiting for the formality.
As you mentor watches, and worries, and waits.
➶𓅪➶
On day nine, you kill someone.
The boy from Seven tracks you to your hiding spot. He's bigger than you. Stronger. You don't stand a chance.
But when his hands close around your throat, something shifts in your eyes. Some spark of desperate, animal survival that refuses to go quietly.
You drive the fish hook into his eye.
The cannon fires, and you collapse beside his body, sobbing. But you're alive.
Haymitch sits on the floor of the mentor's booth, shaking, and listens to you cry a hundred miles away. He tells himself it was worth it. That this is what survival costs.
He almost believes it.
➶𓅪➶
By day twelve, only four tributes remain.
You, the boy from Two, the girl from One, and the boy from Four. The Careers have fractured, turning on each other as the finale approaches, but they're all still deadlier than you could ever hope to be.
The Gamemakers drive everyone toward the center. The half-collapsed stadium rising from the water like a broken crown.
Haymitch watches you limp toward it, one hand pressed to your side where you took a knife wound two days before. The sponsors have gone silent. Everyone knows how this will end.
Everyone except Haymitch.
➶𓅪➶
The finale is a mess of blood and steel and screaming.
The Careers fight each other first. You hide in the shadows, and for one wild moment, Haymitch thinks you might make it.
Then the boy from Four sees you.
He's massive, wielding a trident like an extension of his arm. You have a knife and a fish hook and a body that's failing you.
You don't run.
For the first time in the entire Games, you don't run. You stand there, swaying, and wait.
The boy from Four lunges.
You drop.
Not a flinch. A deliberate, calculated fall. The trident passes through empty air. You drive the fish hook into his neck before he can recover.
The cannon fires.
Behind you, the boy from Two finishes off the girl from One and turns, ready to claim his victory.
You look at the camera. Directly at Haymitch. And smile.
The building collapses.
➶𓅪➶
They pull you out of the rubble three hours later, more dead than alive.
Haymitch is there when they bring you in, shoving past Peacekeepers and Capitol officials. You're so small on the stretcher, so pale.
"She's alive," a medic says.
Haymitch's knees buckle.
He sits beside your bed for six days while they put you back together. When you wake, the first thing you say is his name.
"Haymitch."
"I told you," he says roughly. "I would be there."
You reach for his hand. Your grip is weak, but certain.
"Don't leave."
"I'm not going anywhere.
Six months later.
The Victory Tour is over, and the cameras are gone. District Twelve has settled back into its gray routine, and two victors rattle around in houses that stood empty for so long.
You find him on his porch at three in the morning, a bottle in his hand. The first you've seen him touch in weeks.
"Haymitch."
He doesn't look up. "Go back to bed."
"No." You lower yourself onto the step beside him. "What happened?"
For a long moment, silence. Then he lifts the bottle, drinks, and laughs. Hollow, broken.
"Anniversary," he says. "Two years ago today."
You wait.
"My mother. My brother. My girl." The words come out flat, rehearsed. "Snow killed them. Two weeks after my Games. Because I used that forcefield trick. Made him look like a fool. So he took everyone I loved."
The cold seeps into your bones. You had heard rumors. But hearing him say it.
"Haymitch, I'm so sorry."
"Don't." He turns to look at you, eyes red-rimmed. "Don't be sorry. Be smart. Because that's what happens when you win. When you matter to someone."
You reach for his hand. He pulls away.
"I told myself I wouldn't do this. Wouldn't let anyone get close again." He stops, jaw working. "But I couldn't help it. Not with you."
"What are you saying?"
"I love you." He says it like a confession. Like a curse.
"I've loved you since you looked at that camera and smiled at me like you trusted me to understand. I know it's wrong that I was your mentor, I'm supposed to protect you. But I can't stop."
Your breath catches.
"And I know I shouldn't feel this way. Every day I tell myself to pull back, and every day you're the first thing I think about when I wake up."
"Stop."
The word comes out sharper than you intend. You see him flinch, see the hope in his eyes die.
"I can't," you say, and your voice breaks. "Haymitch, I can't."
"Because of what I am?"
"Because of Marcus."
The name hangs between you. Your boyfriend. Dead on day four while you hid and listened to him scream.
"I watched him die," you whisper. "I couldn't do anything. I just hid there and I didn't do anything."
"Stop." He uses the same word you used but with a tight voice.
"And I can't love anyone else when I'm the reason he's dead."
"You're not."
Something in his tone makes you pause. You look at him. Really look. And see something unfamiliar in his face. Something like guilt.
"What?"
"You're not the reason he's dead." Haymitch sets the bottle down carefully. His hands are shaking. "I am."
The world goes quiet.
"What are you talking about?"
"The sponsors. Day three." He won't meet your eyes. "Someone wanted to send him a weapon. Good steel. Enough to give him a fighting chance. I talked them out of it."
You can't breathe.
"I redirected the funds to you instead. The thermal blanket. The tablets." His voice is steady now, horribly steady. "Every gift you got, I bought with his life."
"No."
"I made a choice. Him or you." He finally looks at you. "I chose you."
"No!"
You're on your feet, backing away. Marcus. Your Marcus. Who had promised you would figure it out together, yet died screaming while you hid.
"You killed him."
"I let him die. There's a difference."
"There's no difference! He trusted you! I trusted you!"
"And that trust kept you alive!" He stands, and there's something terrible in his face.
"You think I wanted this? I made an impossible choice, and I chose the person I could save!"
"You don't get to decide that!"
"That's exactly what a mentor does!" His voice cracks. "We decide who gets the medicine and who bleeds out. Every gift is a choice, and every choice means someone else doesn't get one."
Tears stream down your face. "Why him? Why not me?"
Haymitch stops. The anger drains out of him.
"Because I saw you," he says quietly. "That first day. You flinched at everything, couldn't hold a knife, had no chance. And I thought she's going to die. Like all the others."
He takes a step closer. You don't move.
"But then I kept watching, I saw you practice with that fish hook until your fingers bled. Not because you thought you'd win, but because you refused to go down easy."
His hand hovers near your face, not quite touching.
"Marcus was strong. But he would've fought fair, and fair fighters die. You." His voice drops. "You were a survivor. And I couldn't let that go to waste."
"So you sacrificed him. For me."
"Yes."
"And you never told me. You let me blame myself."
"Because you needed to grieve. And because." He hesitates. "Because I knew you would never forgive me. And I couldn't lose you too."
You stare at him. This broken young man who murdered your first love to save your life. Who kept the secret while you drowned in guilt. Who stands before you now with his sins laid bare.
You should hate him. You want to hate him.
"You're a monster," you whisper.
"Yes."
"You killed the boy I loved."
"Yes."
"And you think I will just forgive you? Fall into your arms?"
Haymitch shakes his head. "No. I think you'll hate me forever, and I'll deserve it." He meets your eyes.
"But I would do it again. A thousand times. Because you're alive. That's the only equation that matters to me."
You hit him.
Your fist connects with his chest. You hit him again, and again, and he just stands there.
Then you're crying, great heaving sobs, and somehow his arms are around you and you're clinging to him like he's the only solid thing left.
"I hate you," you gasp.
"I know."
"I'll never forgive you."
"I know."
"Don't ever leave me."
His arms tighten. "I won't."