A snapshot of Neji’s reaction to any disrespect for Hinata among the Hyuuga. Unrepentant clan-kink with D/s undertones. Set after "Cloud Hands", when Neji and Hinata are, perhaps, in their twenties.
It was over, everything except for collecting the bodies of the attackers. Intellectually, Neji knew that was exactly why Hiroki said it; the wired exhilaration of having survived again did often unhinge people’s tongues.
Ayanami is more volatile than usual. This time, Hyuuga gets broken harder than usual. And then he has to explain the whole thing to Konatsu.
Ayanami turned away from where he stood at his window, and Hyuuga stilled abruptly at the icy distance in his eyes. Something very close to panic sizzled through him as he looked into the bottomless gaze of Verloren’s memories. If he were alone, he could tease or coax or yield, whatever it took to get Aya-san back from the depths of the past, but he wasn’t alone today.
Yamamoto wants some captains back. Hirako doesn’t trust him a bit. But there are other people who have a stake in the argument, and he has a harder time saying no to them. Alternate storyline, because if KT really intends to break them up, well I’m just not having with that.
Hirako Shinji sat very still on one of their salvaged couches, eyes fixed on the dapper First Division vice-captain standing calm and collected in front of him. “He wants us to what?”
Aomine reflects a bit on on the effect Kuroko’s had on him, and where Kuroko has brought him to by the season’s end. Spoilers for anime-only fans.
Looking back, he’d felt it first during the Interhigh preliminaries when he’d seen, when he’d experienced, Tetsu’s fierce rejection of despair.
After the finals of the Winter cup, Kuroko finds Aomine waiting for him. They finally have a long-overdue discussion about what happened in their third year. Implied spoilers for anime-only fans.
Kuroko Tetsuya walked the last bit of his way home alone, after Kagami turned off onto his own street, letting the quiet settle over him. As the echoes of his team’s voices, of exultation and disbelief and, really, quite a lot of screaming died away, they left one thing behind.
They had won.
Upon the retirement of the third years, Kise gets a bit of a shock over his captain’s plans for his future.
Kise Ryouta stood rooted to the polished floor of Kaijou’s locker room, staring at his captain and coach. “You… but…”
Kasamatsu-senpai gave him faint, tilted smile. “You think maybe Hayakawa is a better choice?”
After the Winter Cup, Kuroko is still dealing with old anxiety about his new team, and needs to be reassured that he isn’t the only one watching over his partner.
The feeling of familiarity was back, but it wasn’t pleasant this time. It felt more like something smothering him.
Aomine is straying. Kagami is enthusiastic. Momoi has a plan. And Riko is going to make this all come out right, no matter how many basketball idiots of either gender she has to wrangle to do it.
Riko rubbed her forehead. “Both of you shut up!” she barked. “Kagami, get back to work or I’ll triple your training drills! And you,” she rounded on Aomine, who had the good sense to look just a little uneasy as she marched towards him. “If you want a match with any of my players, you can just get your coach to set it up with me. Now out!” She body-checked him out the door, ignoring his squawk of protest. “You have your own practice to be at.”
Kiyoshi is recovering from surgery and now comes the hard part: making him take it slow. In the process, Riko decides it’s time to deal with the things she and Kiyoshi and Hyuuga haven’t been talking about.
Almost two months after the Winter Cup, Riko gathered her club around her at the end of practice, grim and serious. “All right, everyone, listen up. We have a problem.”
Imayoshi decides to return Riko’s favor by throwing Aomine, Kuroko, and Kagami together in a match. It’s a different kind of revelation for each of them.
Aomine Daiki was a cynical sort of guy these days, so he wasn’t really surprised when Imayoshi-san started showing up at club practices as soon as the national exams were over. Imayoshi-san was a bit like Daiki, really; he got bored without a challenge. Besides, Wakamatsu seemed happy enough to have his ‘advice’, so who cared?
At least that was what Daiki thought until Imayoshi-san decided his next challenge would be Daiki.
Kuroko wants a tangible marker of his committment to Kagami and Aomine, and of how they belong to him, and that’s when other people start noticing what’s going on.
It was Daiki who mentioned it first, stroking his thumb along the line of Taiga’s collarbone one afternoon when they were all tangled together in Tetsuya’s bed, still a little sticky but catching their breaths again.
“You’ve stopped wearing that necklace all the time.”
Kuroko hauls Aomine to Seirin, and Momoi comes with them. The team is delighted, if a little taken aback by Kuroko’s unnoticeability and Aomine’s lack of condition. Kuroko is all the more convinced he’s brought them to the right place after he meets Kagami, and sees the challenge he has the potential to offer Aomine.
The door of Tetsuya’s classroom slammed open and Aomine stood glowering in the doorway. “Tetsu!”
Ah. He’d finally heard. Tetsuya put down his sandwich and waited while Aomine stalked through his scattering classmates to slam a piece of paper down on Tetsuya’s desk. The header, as much of it as was visible under Aomine’s hand, said Sei. “What the hell is this?” Aomine demanded.
“A letter,” he observed, just to get things rolling properly.
Aomine is increasingly annoyed by the attention Kuroko is paying Kagami, and for that matter everyone else on the team, and annoyed by the restraints Aida puts on him, but Kagami does pique his interest a little.
Daiki had thought he’d gotten used to just how ridiculous it was that Tetsu had dragged him to this no-name school and dropped him into a basketball club that apparently had nothing going for it but enthusiasm. But this was where he put his foot down. The very idea of ‘announcing his intentions’ during morning assembly in order to ‘prove’ himself for this new team was laughable. He was the ace of Teikou, he didn’t have a damn thing to prove to a team that couldn’t even get to the Interhigh.
Kagami is pleased with his new team and his new challenge, though puzzled by the tension between Kuroko and Aomine. A practice match against Kaijou tells him at least a little of what the tension is over, and also gives him his first taste of working with Kuroko in a real game.
Taiga swatted his alarm clock into silence, rolled over, and smiled up at the ceiling. He woke up with a smile a lot, lately.
Okay, so his strongest teammate was a total jerk, and he honestly thought Kuroko liked scaring the liver out of people by popping up out of nowhere, and their coach was clearly some kind of demon. He could deal with all of that and more, because basketball was interesting again. A challenge again, and more than a challenge. A bone-cracking, tendon-snapping, nerve-burning hurdle to get over, like it hadn’t been for over a year since he came back to this country.
Momoi knows that the problems between Aomine and Kuroko and Kagami have to be ironed out before they start the Interhigh preliminaries, and she has a plan. That doesn’t make it easy, though.
Momoi Satsuki liked Seirin. They were a challenge, and she liked a challenge to her skills just as much as any of the boys did.
Aomine plays against Seihou, and the team that surprises him the most is his own. He watches Kagami and Kuroko play against Shuutoku, and understands some of what went wrong the previous year.
On the second day of the Tokyo preliminary finals, Daiki’s heartfelt comment was, “About damn time.” He shrugged off Satsuki’s admonishing look. “Oh, come on, I’ve been bored out of my mind. Shinsenkan was pathetic, and even those Touou guys weren’t exactly a challenge.” Which had been a great disappointment, after he’d hauled himself through the whole month of A-block matches on the hope that the ‘Kings of the West’ would be at least a bit of fun. Or at least that their first match in the final block would be. But no, not so you’d notice. If it hadn’t been ridiculous to imagine, he’d actually have thought Touou was holding back against him.
Kuroko gets a chance to play the way he wants to, again, with Aomine against Kaijou. When he has to play without his partners against Touou, though, he finds himself hitting a wall.
“All right,” Hyuuga-san called, waving them to gather close. “We’ve played Kaijou once, but don’t let that make you overconfident. I doubt they were going all out, not in a practice match, and Kasamatsu knows what we can do, now. Stay sharp.” He nodded as everyone chorused agreement, and then reached up to wrap a hand around the back of Aomine’s neck. “Except for you,” he added. “You need to calm down.” He shook Aomine a little, holding his rather startled gaze. “Kaijou isn’t running away, and you don’t need to hunt them down for pity’s sake. Breathe.”
Tetsuya was actually the one who followed that order, breathing out as one thread of tension uncoiled down his back. He had been right, so right, to bring Aomine to Seirin.
Al stumbles over the clue to finding his brother that he was looking for, in a way he didn’t expect. (Continued after a seven year hiatus, I recommend re-reading the first two stories in the arc.)
Al picked an easy path, down by the lakeshore under the trees where the light rain wouldn’t get him too wet. Sensei was probably right. His brain felt so full it might spill if he moved too fast, and his thoughts jostled against each other. He was pretty good at modern alchemical codes, but he’d been reading much older texts, and if you went back far enough it was as much philosophy as science and every statement seemed to mean at least three different things at once. Probably more, actually, but he had threes on the brain; it was Trismegistus’ fault. And Salmon’s. Mercury meant spirit meant animal, and where did that get him?
Al visits home and tells everyone about how his studies are coming,
and Rose talks sense to him.
Al ignored the rattle of the train wheels to scowl over his notebook, certain at the bottom of his heart that his notes weren’t going to do him any good. Plenty of people wrote about the Stone, but as far as he could tell no alchemist, in four hundred years and more, had written down anything about the Gate. Given his own experiences, he supposed he couldn’t blame them, but still…! And Sensei must agree that his books were a dead end, or she wouldn’t have loaded him on the train for a visit home without a single book to his name except one volume of poetry he’d bought a year ago and hadn’t opened since.
Al goes to Ishvar, searching for answers.
Al sighed. Getting to New Ishvar had been simple. Finding the temple had been even easier; it was the tallest building in the city and by far the most finished-looking one. The next step was proving a little harder.
Gil does his best to make restitution and finds himself being drawn out by Al.
Gil had not been surprised when Alphonse mentioned nightmares. The boy had died, been hauled back by his heels and bound to a suit of armor, tramped all over the country running after the false hope of the Stone, been transmuted into the Stone, and finally sacrificed those years of love and effort to be returned to true life. Nightmares were surely to be expected. He hadn’t quite expected his new houseguest to start up in the middle of the night, screaming, though.
He certainly hadn’t expected it to happen every night.
Al settles into closer company with Gil and, as the year draws on, finds the key he needs—if he can use it.
He frowned down at the sheaf of papers in front of him, the delicately colored and carefully labeled concentric circles and the dissertation below on their interrelations. "All these accounts and explanations… they all talk about joy," he murmured.
"Of course." Alec-san blew on a carefully copied page to dry it and pulled up a fresh sheet of paper, turning to the next page. "They speak of the pathways to completion, to perfection, if you will."
Al frowned some more, tapping his pencil against his chin. If that was so, then why was it only fear that he remembered?
Gil assists Al and has a bit of an epiphany, and finds some peace with his past.
Alphonse looked stubborn. "I need to not be afraid. If I’m afraid of the Gate, I’ll just keep running away from it and forgetting and I’ll never be able to find Nii-san through it." The stubbornness shifted into the earnest entreaty Gil was far more wary of. He had fewer defenses against it. "Please, Gil-san. I do think it should be you."
Gil stifled a sigh. He wasn’t at all sure he was ready for the burden of that trust, but if it was laid on him already he couldn’t bring himself to break it. "Very well."
Al finds his brother. In a way. LAST CHAPTER, INCOMPLETE
Even asleep, Al could tell this dream was different.
Four moments when Miyuki actually thinks about his hair, often to keep from thinking about something else.
His mother always combed his hair for school.
Miyuki spends some time contemplating Chris’ hands.
Miyuki Kazuya tended to watch people’s hands. He watched their whole bodies whenever they were throwing, of course, but especially their hands. It was the hands that told you exactly where the ball was going.
On a night, soon after affairs in the Water tribe’s territory are concluded, Hak, Yona, and Soo-won think about each other, what they’ve become to each other, and what may wait in their future.
Hak tried not to be grateful that Yona’s hands were as sure, now, on her bow and sword as they were, once, on her long sashes and bright over-robes. He tried hard not to be grateful for that.
It wasn’t because of the old king’s memory and his determination to keep his daughter and people free of blood, though Hak still respected that. It wasn’t because he was her guard, should be her sword, should never allow her to be in danger, though he still felt that. It was because of where the gratitude came from.
Joo-Doh tries for a long time to contain, or at least conceal, what Soo-Won’s anger at his father’s death might lead him to do, and in the process misses exactly what Soo-Won is doing and what part he may have to play in it.
Joo-Doh was beginning to worry about Soo-Won.
Months after his father’s funeral, the boy walked the halls of the palace as if he were still in the funeral procession, stumbling and uncertain. Joo-Doh was a little afraid that, if the princess stopped coaxing him to eat like a pet bird, he genuinely wouldn’t remember to do so. And Joo-Doh didn’t know what to do, now, any more than he had years ago when it was the queen who had been killed and Yona who was wild with grief.
Actually, that wildness had been easier to deal with than Soo-Won’s pale, stunned silence.
The anime’s ending leaves a great deal up in the air; this story takes up some of those loose threads. Picks up immediately after the end and throws everyone a little further into the future.
“Takuto is with him,” Wako said firmly, eyes fixed on the sky. “They’ll be all right.” Takuto’s look had promised her that, in that long, silent moment of fierce understanding they’d shared before she’d agreed to break the southern seal. And she was going to hold them both to that promise, if she had to regenerate Wauna and go up there herself to make sure of it!
Wako has an epiphany and decides it’s time to break the deadlock between her boys in a way neither of them anticipated.
Was that what they’d have to do, to stay together? Not let anything be romantic or… or anything, between them at all? Because, for all Shinada-senpai teased their schoolmates sometimes, none of those three had ever dated anyone. Certainly not each other.
Lin Shu survives, and, with a certain amount of salutary brow-beating, finds a purpose in doing so that moves him to enter the world again, seek out his loved ones, and start walking a meaningful path forward with them.
For a long time, or what might have been a long time, he was afraid he’d failed, each time he woke. He woke weak, groggy, never able to rouse to full awareness, and he knew that sensation from a decade worth of illness, fought stubbornly against it, as he always had, to push his thoughts past the fog to grip on the world again.
This time, though, he could never force himself past the cloudy uncertainness of almost-dreams. And what did that mean, if not failure, to fall ill again before his last task was done?
Lin Shu and Nihuang settle into life at court, in the field, and in Jingyan’s home while Lin Manor is repaired. The rest of the court may need a few stiff drinks to recover from the process, especially once a complex political scandal breaks in the middle of it.
Now Jingyan returned his gaze, steady and serious. “Even though you hoped to be done with being the strategist, after Prince Qi, my brother’s, and Lin’s and Chiyan’s names were restored?”
For a long moment, he was silent, because that had been true. “I did finish with it, though,” he said at last, slowly. “And I returned to my old self, my own world, long enough to die there. I thought that would be the end of it, and I still believe I was right about that. This,” he swept a hand around, at the palace, at the ministers and officials and ladies moving through the halls and gardens, each intent on their own ends and ambitions, and the three of them in the middle of it all, “this is what comes after that end, another new life.” He gave Jingyan a tiny smile. “Now, what I can do, all that I can do, is for you and with you, nothing held back. That’s as it should be, and I have no wish to be done with it.”
Jingrui is finding himself drawn back toward a military position, after fighting at the northern border, and Yujin follows along, as he always has, despite his own reservations. Along the way, the two of them get into trouble, politics, and eventually a deeper understanding.
Very few of Yujin’s reservations had ever held up in face of Jingrui’s smile. Not when they were little and stealing sweets off Aunt Jing’s table (with her amused connivance, Yujin had realized years later); not when they were a little older and Jingrui had dragged Yujin everywhere after their glamorous, if also sometimes alarming, older cousins; not when they’d come of age and Jingrui hauled Yujin out onto the roads to wander the country with that very same smile. He could barely imagine leaving Jingrui’s side, at this point. So there was really nothing else to do but elbow him back until they managed to shove each other into the shallows, laughing.
Their work finally pushes Akai and Furuya together once too often, and Akai forces the issue of what happened to Scotch. In the wake of it, they find in each other some of the understanding they’ve both needed.
"You see so clearly, most times," Akai said, very softly, almost a whisper between them. "Remember what you saw, Furuya-kun. He didn’t do it on his own, no. Think about what he would have seen and heard, up on that roof. Already sure that the Organization would be coming for him, what did he hear right before he shot?"
Shen Wei’s ten thousand years of watching Kunlun’s lives and, eventually, finding his own.
The humans were building a city around the sacred tree.
A city.
Over the gateway to the underworld.
Shen Wei wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or to despair.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
It wasn’t, Zhao Yunlan thought, anything like what he’d have expected. He didn’t feel any great enlightenment or sudden attack of wisdom. It didn’t feel like a scroll of ages unrolling in his head, or like he was about to burst with the weight of memory. Returning divinity didn’t feel like anything appropriately dramatic, in his opinion. It was just…
He recognized this.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
Knocking woke Yunlan up, and it took him a moment to figure out why, when he turned over to bury his head in the pillows, he wound up pressed tight against another body instead. “Ngh?” he asked, squinting at the expanse of chest in front of his nose.
“Do you want me to answer the door to your apartment?” Shen Wei asked, sounding both amused and far too awake.
Imagining the response of any of his team to that, Yunlan winced and pushed up onto his elbows. “I’m awake, I’m awake.”
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
Yunlan had seen Shen Wei fight and heal, entrance and command, but he’d never seen such delicate shaping as this—though that deep echo inside him felt like it had. Had even seen xiao-Wei play with his strength, perhaps—had coaxed or maneuvered him into it, most likely. Predictably, xiao-Wei looked entirely serious the whole time, as if this little whimsy was nothing but a functional test of control. Someone, at some point, must have convinced him that it was an appropriate test, though, and Yunlan was pretty sure that someone had been him. He gave his past self an approving internal nod.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
He dropped Shen Wei off at the university, even though it meant circling back to the SID headquarters, and took away with him the tiny, wicked curl to xiao-Wei’s lips when Yunlan wished him a good day. The thought of xiao-Wei walking through his campus, greeting colleagues and students with a polite smile and trailing shock and disruption in his wake like a more entertaining version of his black cloak got Yunlan through the morning without giving in to the urge to sneak up behind his dreadfully earnest new office staff to see who was paying attention.
Much.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
“You were always a morning person, weren’t you?” Yunlan asked from under his pillow, far too early the next morning. Why hadn’t he remembered that sooner?
“Just because we’re not going to the office doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do.” Xiao-Wei’s clear voice and unreasonably firm step approached, and something clinked on the bedside table. “If you’re not up in ten minutes, I’m going by myself.”
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
He was starting to understand, all the way up in his head, what xiao-Wei meant when he talked about the weight of gods in the world. He could feel the ground singing under his feet, feel the sky like it was something he could reach up and touch, feel the attention of the city’s river like it was alive and listening for his word and would rise if he just spoke.
Zhu Hong works on how to be Chief Elder, and falls hard for Ya Qing in the process. (Her uncle may have a point about her terrible taste.)
Zhu Hong had perfected the pout, the winsome look, and the hard fist as tools to make the world go her way, and she knew exactly how to use them. As time went on, and she’d started wanting to be stronger, she’d honed her natural abilities until she could do almost what any of her fully-transformed cousins could. She’d learned human ways so well she could blend in as completely as she wished.
None of that told her the first thing about how to be Chief Elder of the Yashou people.
The SID introduce Dixing to the police as ordinary citizens. The Supervisory Bureau may be having heart attacks in the background.
The first official visitor from Dixing had flown straight past “visitation” to a trial of citizenship, and Zhu Hong personally thought it had been planned to stress-test Minister Guo’s nerves. It would have done hers, too, if she hadn’t already known the whole thing was a put-up. As it was, she stood straight and serious beside the middle-aged police lieutenant who’d been assigned as her oversight partner, and carefully bit back her smirk when the gateway between realms misted into visibility and the man startled back.
“Is that it?” Tan Xiao asked eagerly, from behind them.
“Be patient, Mr. Tan,” she admonished. “She’ll be here in a moment.”
Four people are wakeful at night. Shen Wei thinks about Ye Zun. Zhang Shi thinks about her new life. Ya Qing thinks about Zhu Hong. Zhao Yunlan thinks about his own past.
Shen Wei leaned with his head propped on one hand and watched Yunlan sleep. Watched, on another level, the deep weight of him reach out to the world around them, touch the weave of the world with the same soft affection as he’d always had.
Watched how the brightness of Yunlan’s potentiality reached out to Shen Wei, in particular, now.
Professor Ouyang’s work isn’t through causing trouble, and everyone finds out why injuring Zhao Yunlan is an extremely bad idea. The Minster finds out a lot of things no one bothered to tell him earlier, and possibly wishes he hadn’t taken the job.
Shen Wei enjoyed the quiet times in his life, the times when he had no miscreants to chase down; when the humans were calm, not indulging in wars of conquest or moving their seat of government again; when his chosen profession had no crises and he could let himself be soothed by completing the small, daily tasks. He enjoyed those times very much, but he didn’t take them for granted.
Shen Wei has a judgement to make. Zhao Yunlan just wants to understand his family.
Zhang Shi opened the door quickly, at his knock, brows rising as she saw both of them waiting. “Did something come up at the Division?”
“No.” Shen Wei let the weight of his responsibilities settle over him, and saw the reflection of it in the half step back Zhang Shi took. “Things have come to my attention that must be addressed.”
Minister Guo and Zhao Xinci try to deal with some of the things revealed about Zhao Xinci’s past, and decide what it will mean for the future.
When Guo Ying knocked on the door of Zhao Xinci’s office, his Director of Supervision looked wary. Guo Ying wasn’t surprised.
Zhao Xinci invites Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei to dinner and an argument. Predictably, Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei are too busy trying to protect each other to bother about themselves.
“Yunlan?”
Zhao Yunlan looked up from his screen, a little startled. That was Li Huiliang’s voice, and Zhang Shi was usually careful to call him ‘Chief’ at work. “Yeah?” he asked, trying not to sound too obviously wary.
She stopped hovering in the door, at least, and came to hold out a folded sheet of paper. “This came for you. It’s from your father.”
Thirteen years of raising a child definitely cements Lan Wangji’s growing tendency to ignore the rules he was taught, especially when he’s trying to raise that child in memory of Wei Wuxian.
When Lan Zhan took Wen Yuan out of the wreckage of the Burial Mounds and brought him down off the mountain, he was thinking of grief and of the nature of righteousness, and of possibly saving one tiny glimmer of the hope Wei Ying had so unhesitatingly given his hands and life over to. The hope that no one else in Lan Zhan’s world even seemed to see, let alone cherish as he felt it deserved. He had not, as he walked carefully down the path to Yiling, trying to balance a fretful child in his arms with the clawing pain of his back, been thinking about making himself into a father in the eyes of the broader world.
That had apparently been an oversight.
Two summons that Wei Wuxian ignores, and one he doesn’t quite.
Yanked toward the edge of manifestation (again), Wei Wuxian dug in his immaterial heels (again) and reflected that he might actually have made it to the underworld if it weren’t that humans had an apparently unending need for someone to blame for everything.
