#wrote this

There were the Clockwork Stars, and then there was everyone else. That seemed to be the general consensus the people of The Milky Way had come to.

There were also the creations that the Clockwork Stars had made, and then there was everyone else. Legends say that Nova made the Nova-born in order to fight against the overwhelming spread of Dark Matter, when the universe was still young, and chaos overran. They say that is why Kirby of the Stars was born, when chaos once again overcame.

You did not try to make Clockwork Stars. You did not try to make the Nova-born. It was common sense.

Forty years prior to the Star Child’s birth, the Galactic Soldier Army’s war against the forces of Nightmare began. It was unknown what Nightmare truly was, or who he’d once been. Some said he was a wizard who’d made hellish deals with Dark Matter. Others said he’d simply succumbed to Dark Matter possession. Regardless of the how or why, he had taken the once peaceful Milky Way as a personal insult. At least, this is how it seemed to those raging against him. Nova had only watched on with disinterest, and it was time for ‘everyone else’ to take a stand.

Nightmare knew he could not make Clockwork Stars. He had some remaining common sense. But Nightmare was fascinated by the Clockwork Star’s creations. The Nova-born. He had studied them from afar, pondering the Ancients, and watching Sir Arthur closely as he led his precious GSA. Their sheer military was able to fend off his hoards of monsters, and yet, their little game was always a stalemate. Make monsters, send monsters away, kill monsters, kill the GSA. He grew bored with the back and forth, and as the endless war raged on, he began to wonder just what he could replicate, if not the Clockwork Stars.

If he could make a Nova-born—just one Nova-born, infused with the power of Dark Matter—it could be his weapon of mass destruction. He only needed one success.

And there would be hundreds of failures. Hundreds of test tubes of flesh and stardust and rot. There would be so many failures that he’d be driven to murderous fits. Nightmare would question his capability, his sanity, his power many times over until finally, one day—

—A starlight boy. Such beautiful midnight hair, such startling golden eyes. He opened his mouth to cry, and sharp fangs crawled from his gums as his tongue coated with amniotic fluid.

Nightmare held a hand out to the boy. The fluid drained around his feet, and he stumbled, catching himself on the glass siding. His eyes locked onto the exposed skin just below Nightmare’s sleeve.

In a blink he’d lunged. It was like thousands of micro-needles piercing his skin. Blood dripped from his hand as the boy licked it away, his nails clawing him apart.

Beautiful is better than ugly.

Explicit is better than implicit.

Simple is better than complex.

Complex is better than complicated.

Flat is better than nested.

Sparse is better than dense.

Readability counts.

Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.

Although practicality beats purity.

Errors should never pass silently.

Unless explicitly silenced.

In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.

There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it.

Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.

Now is better than never.

Although never is often better than *right* now.

If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.

If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.

Steph, looking at the wound: This looks so bad. Good news, I don't think you'll have an infection!

Tim: *winces*

Jason, pausing his movements: Tim, where the fuck is your spleen?

Tim:...

Tom: The League of Assassin's has it?

Steph: WHAT!?

Modern AU

Main Pairing(s): Bill/Augustin

Background Pairing(s): Eoin/Paddy

Rating: M

Full circle,chasing your tail not mine.

Content: short story, academic setting, academic rivals, stress, pressure, tw implied ed

-

“I know your secret,” he told her slyly, plopping his smug self into the seat next to hers in their school’s student commons.

“You’re going to have to be a tad more specific,” she sighed, not looking up from the laptop where she was working on her essay. This was one of the six major assignments she still had due that week, and it was only Wednesday. She figured he, of all people, would understand that and leave her alone, seeing as the two of them were long-time academic rivals at their fiercely competitive university prep school.

“A-ha. Go ahead, pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.” He leaned over to view her computer screen, tipping his head onto her shoulder. His sharp, alert eyes scanned her writing, picking apart the neat paragraphs of Times New Roman 12.

“I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.” She deadpanned, elbowing him sharply in the ribs. Her gaze remained fixed on her assignment, the word count displayed in a neat little box in the bottom left corner of the screen. Even as she snapped at him and tried to focus on her essay, several possibilities of what he might have figured out about her flickered in the back of her mind. Can’t be that— if he knew anything substantial, he wouldn’t be acting so smug. Then again, the cheeky idiot kind of always acts like this.

She tried to redirect him, already half-surrendered to the high likelihood that he’d keep her distracted for the rest of their lunch period.

“You’re not exactly being my favourite person today.”

“I’m not your favourite person any day.” He retorted, reaching over and correcting a typo on her screen. She tried to hide her annoyance, muttering offhandedly:

“Yeah, well, that puts you in second-last place, after myself.”

He used her pointer to make a selection on her screen, but she jostled him, and he ended up deleting a large portion of the text.

“Arghhh! What did you do that for?!” She raged.

“I was just trying to help!”

“Well, obviously you didn’t!”

“Hey, hey, calm down.” He soothed her, maneuvering over to the document page’s undo button. He clicked it, and the text he’d accidentally deleted reappeared in a blink. She released her tense breath in an exhale.

“What’s gotten into you lately? It’s like someone slipped bat guano into your breakfast cereal. Except you didn’t eat breakfast, did you? And you’re not eating lunch now,” he accused her.

Her heart skipped a beat. Did he…?

“I’m fine.”

A sudden flash of uncharacteristic seriousness passed over his angular features. “Oh, you’re fine, are you? You’re always fine, that’s your problem. I’ve seen it. It’s pretty obvious, if you pay attention. It’s okay to not be okay, you know.”

She lowered her voice to a sharp whisper, glancing around at the others in the Commons and finally fixing her glare on him.

“Why are you doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Treating me like a person.”

He blinked at her.

“... What?”

“Everyone else, they—” She felt her voice crack and composed herself. “They think everything comes naturally to me. Like, snap! Adelia knows everything. Of course she does, she’s got no problems whatsoever. Well, I do. And you should leave me alone.”

“I know that, I get it. We’re alike, like that. But— why are you doing this to yourself?”

“Shut up, Alan—” she flared.

“Fine! I will shut up. Just talk to me. Why—”

“Alan, I swear, if you— if my parents knew, they’d make me transfer, and I— I can’t—”

“Maybe that’d be better.”

She gaped at him. He continued,

“Maybe if you weren’t killing yourself over—” he tapped sharply on her keyboard to punctuate his point— “some stupid inconsequential essay, maybe you’d have time to deal with all the things eating away at your soul.”

Adelia opened her mouth to retort, but he spoke before she could:

“The pressure’s gotten to you, more than most, which is saying something, considering this place. You lash out, you’re clearly exhausted— look at yourself!” At that, he picked up her wrist and traced her forearm, which had become a limp, atrophied vessel of fragile bones. She winced.

She looked at him. In his eyes, dark brown, any trace of his usual mischief replaced with genuine pained concern. Breaths shuddered in her chest.

Fine.

“Okay, I’m not transferring. I’m staying here, if only to beat you out for that scholarship.”

He laughed at her weak jest, which she appreciated. She drew in a long breath and began, her voice a whisper:

“So, I…”

-

Note: tumblr keeps deleting my paragraph indents >:(

Wrote this partly to process some things of my own, but it is indeed fiction 😌