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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 3 years

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Canary, Part 1

It was a good day. Why did stuff always have to go wrong on ‘good days’, Marinette thought bitterly as she rushed through the city, the rough edges of her phone digging into her palm. The message she’d been sent was burned into her eyelids.

She pushed the spiraling thoughts from her mind as she stared at the street sign nearest her. Only a minute and she’d be there and her fears would be either confirmed or denied.

She leaned against the wall to gather her thoughts. If she had messed up it had to have been today because, otherwise, he would have done something earlier. Did she mess up? She allowed her eyes to flutter closed as she thought back.

She’d woken up on an uncomfortable mattress on the floor and rolled off of it, the sheets sticking to her sweaty skin. It had been a particularly hot day for Gotham and she had been too concentrated on typing up a report for work to turn up the AC before her impromptu nap (translation: she’d passed out).

She rubbed her eyes until she managed to get her brown contacts out and set them in the weird not-quite-water that she had never bothered to learn the name for so her eyes could rest while she took a quick shower and changed.

Then, she’d waited. She sat in the window, eyes barely poking over the sill as she watched the building across the street. She didn’t feel like moving for a long while but, alas, the meeting was supposed to be that day and she was running out of time for that thing with Calendar Man and… yeah. Unfortunately, Marinette had to be productive that day unless she wanted more enemies.

She saw movement and her face lit up. She might get everything done soon, at least, and then she could pass out for a hundred years like she oh-so-desperately wanted to.

She checked that her gloves were firmly in place, pulled on the plague doctor (gas) mask that had accidentally become her trademark, and toed on her boots.

Then, she made her way up to the alleyway next to the building she had been watching. She’d been lucky enough to have a job right next to one of her safe houses and she kinda wished that it would happen again. It was nice to not have to travel a half-hour or more just to listen in on one boring conversation.

She pulled out her knives and, after testing to make sure they were still strong enough to hold her weight, began picking her way up to the roof.

She set everything up for the thing with Calendar Man. It took approximately five seconds. Yay her.

Alright, next thing: listening in on a boring conversation that, if she was lucky, would end in someone getting shot so it wouldn’t last too long. It was going to be even hotter inside the vent and she did not want to end up cooked. That would be embarrassing.

She crawled into the vents and dutifully wrote down everything they said on a notepad. They were negotiating a drug deal and her client wanted to intercept it to try and get both the money and the (… Big D? What the fuck is Big D?) drugs. From the sounds of it, it wasn’t possible but, hey, her job wasn’t anything more than gathering intel. If her clients wanted to die stupidly that was on them.

… maybe she’d kill her client herself, she thought angrily as she readjusted in the vent in hopes of not getting stuck to the metal. It was easy money but wow was it awful.

Or, at least, it was awful until a hand grabbed her by the hood of her leather jacket and started dragging her out. She tipped her head back, grin on her face in seconds.

“Signal. Hi.”

He sighed and pulled her the rest of the way out. She let herself hang from his grip like a reprimanded cat.

“So, what’s up?” She asked brightly, as if hadn’t just caught her listening in on a private conversation.

“Great, thanks for asking,” he said. “Even better now that I’m taking the famed Canary to Arkham.”

“We both know that’s not going to happen.”

He leveled her with a cold look for a few more seconds before splitting into a grin. “Yeah. Probably not. Got a backup plan?”

“Of course.”

“Is it even worth trying?”

“Probably not. But who knows? You could get lucky.”

She waited for a minute as he mulled over the idea in his head before he sighed. “I gotta ask: what’s with the egg?”

She swatted at his hand until he let her down and then led him over to her science experiment. “Know how there’s that expression that says ‘it’s so hot out you could make eggs on the sidewalk’ or something?”

“Yeah…?”

“Well, the pavement physically can’t get hot enough to do that and also we’re up north so: aluminum foil to try and get the process to work a little better.”

He stared at her for a while before snickering. “Need a magnifying glass? We can ‘kid with an anthill’ this.”

“Sure.”

He reached into his tool belt and started looking for his spare. Unfortunately for him, it seemed to be gone.

She could feel his sharp gaze turn on her even if she couldn’t see his eyes behind his helmet. He wasn’t stupid and magnifying glasses don’t usually just disappear into thin air unless they’re Plastic Man in disguise. She held up her hands for a quick search but, when he couldn’t find it on her, he just sighed and looked down at the science experiment. It didn’t seem to be going well. The egg was still distinctly not cooked.

Eventually, he groaned and sat down. The light around him flickered and started to move at his will. Marinette watched intently.

Ten minutes later, they had a cooked egg. They high-fived, delighted. They weren’t going to taste it, obviously, it had been out for a while without supervision and who knows what could have happened to it… but it was an egg! Yay them!

“My old science teacher would be so proud of me,” Marinette joked.

“My current science teacher would be proud of me.”

“Oooooh, going back to school?”

He smiled. “Yep! Robin is finally in college and Red Hood convinced me to go with him. You should, too, it’s actually not that bad.”

“Please. If I was going to do that I’d go back to my home country. American school is expensive and not all of us are sponsored by billionaires.”

“... aren’t you a millionaire?”

She grinned. “Of course. But why would I want to spend that much of my own money?”

He hummed his understanding. Then, she pushed herself up with a groan. “Right, we both have jobs. See you later.”

He hesitated and then held a hand out for her notepad. “Is it bad?”

She held it out of reach with ease. “Nah, just drugs. Unless someone got shot while I was gone but I doubt it. They’d been almost as bored as me last I heard.”

“If it’s nothing then let me see.”

“Ugh, do you really want to fight? It’s too hot for that,” Marinette complained. He started to square up and she, after a second’s thought, added a little something to convince him: “Also, there’s going to be a breakout today so you should really save your energy.”

“... really think I’m going to fall for that?”

There was an explosion in the distance.

“Yeah. I’d hurry. I’m pretty sure it’s Joker’s turn to get out.”

She waved him off with a smile… only for her smile to drop when she remembered her other job. She groaned again and stretched out while she still could.

Tikki floated over the side of the building, a magnifying glass as big as her head in her tiny paws.

Marinette rubbed the kwami’s head. “You’re the best.”

Her kwami sighed. “That I am,” she said.

Marinette grinned and sent the film of Signal using his powers to her computer so she could give it to Calendar Man when it was due.

People were always so predictable in Gotham.

She supposed she really had been tempting fate when she’d thought that. Still, that didn’t mean she liked it that Fate had called her bluff.

But, actually, it seemed that Fate was the one that was bluffing. That had been her entire day. She had finished up her work and then went to one of her more stocked safehouses for a nap. She’d woken up to the buzzing of her phone when she’d gotten the message. She didn’t think she had messed up anywhere…

Her shoulders relaxed. She was probably fine. Which meant it was just Oswald Cobblepot being annoying. As usual.

Marinette flung the doors to the Iceberg Lounge open. Every eye in the room fell on her, but she only cared about the eyes of one person.

She stalked through the lounge, pulling one of her twin karambits from its sheath and pointing the curved blade towards him.

“What the fuck do you want? You really think that, after almost seven whole years of rejecting your wrinkly ass, I’m suddenly going to say ‘oh, yeah, I guess I’ll work for him now’? Leave me alone!”

Cobblepot wasn’t concerned even as her knife came to rest under his chin.

“Canary,” he greeted, regarding her cooly through his monocle.

Guards surrounded them. Marinette somehow managed to look unimpressed without anyone being able to see her face.

Everyone present held their breath… except for the two with weapons pointed at themselves. They knew that they would never follow through with it, especially not in a place as public as this. It was little more than a warning, a reminder, that either of them could kill each other at any given moment and chose not to.

For now, at least.

Cobblepot dismissed the guards with a wave of a gloved hand and she, after a few seconds, lowered her knife.

“What do you want?”

“Currently? For you to get off my table,” said Cobblepot.

She snorted but hopped down with ease. “I meant: why did you call me here?”

“... we should go somewhere else to discuss this. I assume you don’t do all of your business meetings in public?”

“Only if I know ahead of time that I’m going to say no,” she said.

He motioned for her to walk with him to a private room and, reluctantly, she followed. He had to think he had something on her, otherwise he wouldn’t have tried calling her there. She was curious.

They came to a room with a metal door and she cringed a little. Fun.

She dropped eight knives down into a tray and Cobblepot put down a gun, a knife, and his umbrella. She let a female goon pat her down and then checked Cobblepot over herself. Nothing she could find, but she was sure he had found some way to hide one somewhere.

They stepped inside as a pair and each took a seat on opposing ends of the wooden table stationed awkwardly in the middle of the room. She leaned back in her chair and propped her feet up.

“So, what’s the job?”

“I’m surprised you’re even going to hear it.”

She shrugged. “I’m curious.”

He nodded slowly before leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers in front of his face.

“Power poses don’t actually work, you know, that’s just lies so companies don’t actually have to deal with all the discrimination.”

“Is that true?” He asked.

She shrugged again. “Probably. I’ve never worked for anyone, so…”

He chuckled. She didn’t like that.

But he didn’t say anything on that subject. Instead, he just smiled a smile that looked weird on his face and gave her her mission briefing: “I want you to figure out the bats’ identities for me.”

Marinette stared at him for a minute before breaking out into laughter. She couldn’t seem to stop. She stood up to leave, still giggling. Really? Did he really think that would work? People had asked many times, of course, and the bats’ identities weren’t common knowledge so she had to have said no. Why would she suddenly do it for him? She didn’t even like him.

She rested her hand on the knob but held off on leaving for just a second. She flashed a grin at Cobblepot. “Interesting offer. Bold. But no. Couldn’t pay me enough to do that.”

“Good thing I have no intentions of paying you, Marinette.”

~~~

And behold a new section I call ‘Marinette is a menace to society why would anyone let her on twitter’

(… the name may need a little work)

OliverQueenOfficial: Why does that one Gotham villain go by Canary? Black Canary already exists.

TheBetterCanary: if youre gonna vague tweet maybe dont put my name in it

TheBetterCanary: but anyways someone else named me that and it stuck before i could think of something to change it to

ScareCrane:… @/RiddleMeThis she’s dissing you

RiddleMeThis: LISTEN UP. IT WAS THEMATIC. DON’T ANY OF YOU KNOW ANYTHING OF DRAMA? EVER HEAR ABOUT CANARIES IN COAL MINES? FUCK ALL OF YOU AND YOUR UNCULTURED, UNEDUCATED ASSES. NOT TO MENTION IT WAS MAKING FUN OF THE BIRD THEME ALL THE VIGILANTES HER AGE SEEM TO HAVE. (1/14)

TheBetterCanary: @/ScareCrane why would you do that you knew he was going to do this

ScareCrane: Joker just broke out so Arkham is boring… needed to entertain myself somehow

TheBetterCanary: fuck you im not visiting this weekend

OliverQueenOfficial: Wow do I regret asking. I didn’t need all this family drama in my comments.

~~~~~

Perma taglist: @nathleigh @peachmuses

#alright strap in babes it's another longfic #no one is surprised #why do i change my format with every fic?#no clue #im dumb #anyways ive finally started writing this #canary #maribat #timari #timmari #timinette #shutterbug #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #tim drake #red robin #i like timinette best as a ship name #idk why

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letters-from-the-three-houses · 5 years

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i saw you shipped edelgard and felix, could you tell us something more about it ?? 👀👀👀

sure! :D it’ll be under the cut since it’s kinda long

tl;dr: it reminds me of another pairing i like, which i think works because there’s way too much tension between them and being together staves off their loneliness

okay, so to properly explain this i’ll need to dial back to my freshman year of uni, where i took a classics course for mesopotamian and egyptian mythology. our final assignment was to basically write a fanfic using the source material, and i chose to do it on the tale of nergal and ereshkigal. a rough, crude summary of the myth is:

ereshkigal is the ruler of the mesopotamian underworld (irkalla)

she has a strong sense of duty and a powerful presence, but she’s practically alone in irkalla because she’s one of the only deities there and can’t leave the underworld due to the rules of the universe

one day, she’s invited to a party in the heavens. since she can’t go, she sends her vizier, namtar, in her stead

nergal is a stubborn, self-destructive war god who has a mean streak and cannot for the life of him learn when to shut up, so he starts off the whole conflict by disrespecting namtar (therefore ereshkigal) at the party, causing ereshkigal to summon him to irkalla for judgment

depending on the version you read (either the short or long one), nergal can either

a) storm into the underworld and defeat ereshkigal, sparing her life when she takes him as a husband and they become co-rulers. this is the short one

or b) be an absolute idiot because enki (the god of wisdom) warns him to not sit, eat/drink, bathe, or uh, ‘lie in bed’ with ereshkigal during his stay there. this is the long one

nergal manages to resist the other warnings but can’t seem resist ereshkigal herself, so they do the do for six days and he runs away from irkalla on the seventh

this causes ereshkigal to become upset, so she sends namtar to find him and bring him back

he does eventually, on his own(?) accord, but acts like a whole jerk and a half, coming back like an absolute madman and wreaking havoc to poor innocent doormen to get to ereshkigal, where they more-or-less make up and uh, do the do again—this time for seven days, completing the symbolic initiation of his transition to the underworld

and the ruler of the gods says, “okie dokie, he can stay there”

the end of the myth is unfortunately missing, but it’s probably just wrapping everything up so it’s not a major loss

depending on your interpretation, this can be seen as ‘nergal the jerk: the saga’, the submission of a god who gets overpowered and must therefore share their domain, or a romance between two lonely beings who find love in each other. or all three, because they’re not mutually exclusive

(this analysis yonder is a great read that sums up my thoughts on the subject, if you’re curious about reading more on it!)

i think about their relationship from time to time to wonder about character dynamics, so one day, i was thinking about what roles the fe3h cast would play if they were in nergal and ereshkigal’s place. then i realized wait, aren’t they basically eddie/felix??

ereshkigal: independent, cool-headed, unforgiving to those who have wronged her, an important authority figure

nergal: headstrong, has a sharp tongue that gets him into trouble, likes fighting, runs away from feelings

both: kind of lonely (depends on interpretations!) because they’re alienated from others, extremely powerful, proud, passionate

like, it’s not perfect (eresh is more honest than eddie, nergal is more impulsive than felix), but i can see some parallels between them. and since i’m really fascinated in nergal/ereshkigal’s relationship, i started thinking about eddie/felix too much that it somehow wormed its way into my heart

you see, nergal/ereshkigal’s a fun ride because it’s basically a hollywood drama. the cool ice queen and resident bad boy fall in love but because they’re not good at coming to terms with their feelings, there are some twists and turns before they get together

they have a bumpy start, sure, but from the moment they meet, the tension is almost palpable?? like it’s some kind of instant magnetization. they’re attracted to each other from the start that once they do fall for each other, their whirlwind romance becomes intense and fervent. there’s a similar fire within them that, once the other finds, could potentially draw them together—if i take nergal/ereshkigal into account

the problem is that eddie and felix are different characters from eresh and nergal, so getting together the way the latter two did is probably impossible. for example, i can’t imagine eddie being drawn to felix from the get go, nor can i imagine felix flirting

but! i do think that once they do (no matter how it happens), they could serve as a source of strength for their otherwise isolated selves. both being independent, eddie wouldn’t coddle felix and leaves him alone whenever he needs his space, and felix would let eddie do her own thing because he knows she’s capable. but when they are together, they’d be way too powerful—fit to be rulers on the underworld

i’m actually tempted to rewrite the story so i can insert the students in their place (the childhood squad as enki, one of the black eagles as namtar, etc.), but haha, i dunno if it’d translate well

i hope this answers your question! i’d be pretty pumped if this starts spurning people to make mythoo adaptations for fe3h (pygmalion and galatea au for ingrid and her love interest please and thank you??)

bonus:

here’s a snippet of the myth fic that i wrote, so you can judge if eddie + felix would fit yourself! (got rid of the names to make it easier to pretend)

—

“Are you lying to me?”

She was confused. “What are you talking about?”

He trailed a hand across her jawline, landing under her chin as he leaned closer. He seemed angry. “Were you pretending? Treating me like a pity case? Laughing whenever I looked away?”

“What?” she repeated. “No, I—”

He pushed her away. “You and everyone else. I should’ve known.”

Confused, she reached out but he slapped her away. Pain etched in her chest.

“Don’t play with me! I told you why I wasn’t close to anyone! I trusted you!” His voice broke. He sounded miserable. “I thought you were different.”

That did it. She marched right up to him and grabbed his wrists. He escaped her grip. But every time he did, she latched herself onto him again.

“You,” she said, “Are. Acting. Like a child! Listen to me!” When he struggled against her hold, she wrapped her arms around his neck and knocked her head onto his. She felt him take a sharp breath. “What are you trying to say?”

He gritted his teeth. “That you’re faking.”

“Faking what?”

“This.” He placed a hand on her arm. “This.” On her cheek. “This.” On her heart.

Couldn’t he feel it? Her erratic heartbeat? He was being ridiculous. She could hear it in her ears. She started to laugh and he scowled, hurt flashing through his eyes.

She hated it.

So she kissed him.

And when she drew back, her face was flushed and eyes hazed. She asked, “I care for you. More than you realize. Does that answer your question?”

#fire emblem three houses #fe16 #fe3h #edelgard von hresvelg #felix yugo fraldarius #asks #misc #user #prerelease #(are there any other ships that people want to ask my thoughts on??)#(i'll do it for free!)

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