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sighingstarbeam · 5 years

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Spies and Gods - Chapter 7

Summary: Reader wants to try and befriend Loki, but turns out he's a bit more difficult than expected.

Word Count: 3,051

A/N: Hi starlights (that's what I'm calling you lovely people for now on lol)! Sorry for the super later update, classes have gotten busy and quite a lot of personal mishaps occurred, but don't worry! I have a lot of plans for fics including this one, I'm even going to have a schedule to try and upload at least once or twice a month until I can get stabled with my irl schedule, then I could try and go for every other week. Thanks for reading!

Chapter 6 | Chapter 8

The next day you woke up with a to-do list fresh in your head.

First, you were going to fulfill your promise to Tony by helping him with his prototypes. He’s been working on new gear the last month for the team, he wanted you to jot notes down and maybe try one of the devices that won’t blow you up.

Secondly, you wanted to try and decipher your new neighbor, find out what it was that made him so mysterious. You could go with the direct approach, but you didn’t want to seem like an idiot and bug him. Perhaps inching your way little by little into his circle you could eventually discover more about the tall, dark haired demigod.

Before you could check anything off of your list, your stomach begged for something to eat. You changed into a new set of clothes for the day while sending continuous text messages to Lilly and Maya about the deity next door. Their response was what you would’ve expected, with them wanting to meet him and if he was cute. You rolled your eyes and made your way to the kitchen for some breakfast.

There you found the god of thunder drinking coffee from a mug that looked puny with his hand wrapped around it. Thor grinned ear to ear the moment he saw you walk through the doors, “Good morning, daughter of Stark!” He boomed, taking a sip from the tiny mug. “I hope you rested well.”

“Morning.” you forcefully smiled, you didn’t want to tell him of you and his brother’s awkward encounter the night before. You mentally cringed at yourself for going to Loki’s room in the first place. Speaking of which, looking around the room you didn’t see Loki, or frankly anyone else. It was just you and Thor, the god of thunder. This moment sparked an idea, since Thor grew up with Loki he could tell you everything you wanted to know about this god of mischief living next door.

“So, how are you and your brother adjusting here?” You asked, nonchalantly. You didn’t want to appear desperate.

“It’s been splendid!” Thor beamed, “I learn something new about your people’s way of life everyday. Yesterday, Stark showed me this thing called an ‘app’ on my cellular phone where I can match these small, colorful candies and they explode if I match certain ones.” The look on his face when he explained something as simple as Candy Crush made you smile, it was like watching a toddler discovering their reflection for the first time. “As for Loki, he’s taking it steadily. It has not been easy since his first visit here was… unpleasant.”

“Right, with the whole alien invasion thing. Why’s he staying here then? These people kind of did fight and defeat him.”

“Wasn’t entirely his choice,” Thor’s smile slowly descended, yet he still kept his positive vibe and attitude, “since my people have been here, Loki and I have tried our best to get them settled in and accustomed to your culture. We are no longer a kingdom, but I will still visit at the end of the month to make sure everyone is sustaining. I entrusted my good friend Heimdall to keep watch over my people while I help here. After we were done, I wasn’t sure of what to do with Loki. Obviously I couldn’t let him roam on his own, for he is technically a war criminal on this planet, yet I don’t wish to see him locked in prison for eternity. I spoke with Stark and Rogers and they both agreed to keep him here where he will be watched closely but have some freedom.”

“Yet they will still treat me as a prisoner.” A voice broke between you and Thor. There stood the god of mischief in his black and green Asgardian attire, “Pardon me if I’m interrupting your gossip about me, brother.” This was the first time you heard his voice. It was smooth with a touch of roughness when he spoke certain syllables, his accent similar to his brother’s.

“We were not gossiping, Loki, lady Y/N was simply asking about our adjustment to her society.”

Loki looked at you as if he didn’t realize you were there in the first place. His green eyes shifted up and down examining you, “The daughter of Stark. I expected something, different, when I first heard Stark had a child.” The way he spoke was almost demeaning, as if he was deliberately trying to demoralize you.

“What kind of different?” You questioned.

Loki let out a single, breathy laugh, “All mortals are pathetic, but there are few who have exceeded my expectations since my first arrival, including Stark. I would imagine that if he were to have any offspring they would live up to his degree of glory, but I was mistaken. Underwhelmed, as a matter of fact.”

Your blood started boiling in your veins. Who did he think he was to say those things to your face? Loki’s a prince, big whoop. He’s not on his planet now, you’d think that he would have a little more respect to the inhabitants, especially the one across the hall. It took every ounce of your mental and physical state to not sock this guy on the nose. Instead, you clenched your jaw and grabbed your favorite cereal from the cupboard with more force than you intended to. You didn’t care, you continued to get the bowl and spoon while you tried to calm yourself down and ignore Loki’s comments.

“Loki, remember, we are guests. There is no need for such words.” Thor tried to alleviate your anger by taking your side, except it would take a lot more than a stern talk with Loki to calm you down, “These people offered you a home when you know well they could have taken you to their authorities where you would be locked away for the rest of your life. The least you can do is be polite to lady Y/N.”

Loki slowly shook his head, giving Thor a disapproving look, “Is there a difference whether I’m in this prison or another here on Midgard? Either option I am trapped on this wretched planet.”

You paused as you opened the refrigerator, your face hidden behind the door. He really did think of Earth as a prison. But why? From what the rest of the team told you Loki was taken back to Asgard after the attack on New York to pay for his crimes. He acted as if he wanted to be back home to serve his time, or anywhere in fact. Did he feel remorse for the devastation he conflicted all those years ago? No, that couldn’t be it. Still, you thought the same thing when you were with Hydra, desperately wanting to get rid of the cause of your greatest guilt. You didn’t care if you were sent to jail, as long as you were far away from Hydra, the facility you lived in, Kilcher, or anything that was remotely tied to your past. Loki was now stuck on the planet he tried to conquer, constantly reminding him of his own past.

Quit it, stop feeling empathetic for him. Not even a moment ago Loki mocked you, your species, your planet- now’s not the time to feel sorry for him.

Thor glared at his brother, “Brother, you may sulk all you want, but I demand that you apologize to lady Y/N.”

Loki turned his gaze on you, lips pursed in a thin line, “My apologies…” Loki’s eyes looked down before he revealed a coy smirk, “My apologies that my brother has fallen for your filth of a planet.”

The sound of Thor smashing his mug on the counter startled you, fragments of ceramic scattering everywhere. “Loki! I swear by the-”

If Loki was going to be difficult, might as well have fun with it. “It’s okay, Thor,” you reassured him, Loki gave you a puzzled yet intrigued look, “Earth might not be the greatest, and I might not be like Tony, but at least I get to leave the building whenever I want, to wherever I please.” You could see Loki’s jaw tighten, his eyes widen in anger and disbelief while he clenched his hand into a fist. You were able to leave the god of mischief with a silver tongue speechless. What you would do to get a picture of this moment.

You grabbed your bowl of cereal and headed towards the doors, not before giving a peace sign to the Norse gods while you used your foot to open the door. You couldn’t see it from the other side of the closed doors, but you knew that Loki would be throwing a fit. Then you realized you probably shouldn’t have pissed off the powerful being next door. So much for trying to be friendly with Loki.

You tried not to think about Loki or your “discussion” with him and his brother, instead you helped Tony all morning with new prototypes he’s been working on. Most of the devices were add ons for his suits, but you did get to witness a few toys for Steve’s shield like adding an extra force field like thing around it. It had a scientific name, but it was too long for you to remember even the first half of it.

Sitting on one of the worktables, you were doodling on the notepad Tony gave you to write down what happened during the tests to the prototypes. You would take notes, but everything Tony told you to write down were scientific words not even a spelling bee champion could guess to spell it right. So instead you put down words like “thingy” and “sciencey stuff” for every word you couldn’t spell and drew poorly drawn sketches of the devices as well as random patterns along the border.

You were so absorbed in one of your designs, you barely heard Tony call your name. “Hey, Y/N!” Tony snapped his fingers in front of your face, jolting your attention back to reality, “You alive? I’ve been rambling the last five minutes. Did you catch any bit of it?”

“Huh?” You let out, “Oh! Yeah, sorry. I guess I zoned out for. What time is it anyway?”

“Wanting to ditch class, can’t blame you.” Tony looked at his shining watch on his wrist, “It’s been a few hours, I guess we can break for lunch.”

Your stomach growled at the thought of food. Tony waved his hand at a few hologram monitors to turn them off, an idea sparked in your head, “Hey, if you want we could go out to eat. I know this great sandwich shop a few blocks from-”

“Sorry, can’t. I promised Pepper I’d meet with her and the wedding planner when I got the chance.” Something inside of you sank. You’d hope that you’d get to know your dad a bit better in an environment where he wasn’t fiddling with some device larger than a phone. “Okay… What about tonight then?”

Tony hissed in a breath of air, “That’s a no go either, got a meeting. Boring stuff for a mission, but it’s gotta be done.” He saw your obvious shift in mood, “But uh- We can rain check, if you want.”

You shrugged in disappointment, “Sure, rain check.”

Tony was clearly oblivious to your emotions, he winked and left as if nothing happened. You understood that he was a busy person, but he was the one who wanted to connect with you. For the past month you’ve only seen him about once every other day, every day if luck was on your side. When you did see him he was still working in his head, barely paying attention to what anyone was saying, but only chimed in with a snarky Stark remark. You wouldn’t be completely discouraged that he wasn’t paying attention to you as much as you’d hoped if the rest of the Avengers weren’t busy as well. The team either went on missions, meetings, training S.H.I.E.L.D recruits, or some sort of research. At the beginning of your stay you felt as though everyone was together, like a family. With your luck you should’ve figured there was a catch to living with the world’s mightiest heroes.

You left the lab not too long after Tony to find something to eat in the kitchen, suddenly not feeling the urge to go out for food like you intended. Walking down the long corridor with only the sound of your footsteps echoing off the walls filled you with a sense of loneliness. Even though you knew there were people scattered around the building somewhere, there was still that empty pit somewhere deep inside that felt familiar. The last time you’ve felt this hollowness was when you were with Hydra when the rest of the children avoided you after you were thrusted with the role of executioner. Your peers stopped talking to you, sitting near you during meals, even went out of their way to not look at you as if you were a monster who would attack at any moment. They were right. The fact that you are a monster created by monsters was what isolated you, not only from the children, but from becoming someone else.

The sudden twinge in your chest slowed your footing, the memories of Hydra, of Marcus, flooding back. All of those children... You took a deep breath. You needed to find someone to get yourself out of your head.

You barely remembered arriving to the kitchen, but the moment you closed the doors you felt a

moment of relief. Until you saw who was sitting in one of the lounge sofas with a magazine in hand.

“Oh, sorry.” you told Loki, his eyes only shifting at you for a brief second before going back to his magazine, “I didn’t think anyone was here, I thought everyone was out-” his green eyes glared at you as you stopped yourself from speaking anymore. You realized what you said now and your earlier conversation, you thought it would be best to shut it entirely before making things worse. “I’ll just… get something to eat.” You shuffled away as Loki rolled his eyes, going back to the magazine.

The kitchen was usually well stocked, but your stomach couldn’t decipher what it was in the mood for. You looked through the cabinets, drawers, fridge, nothing you saw sounded good, even your favorite leftover takeout. As you searched for your lunch, you glanced to Loki who was still silently reading. You were surprised he was out here instead of cooped up in his room like you were your first week. Maybe Thor forced him out as a start to bond with the others. Speaking of which, you thought you should try to make amends. Not that you were going to apologize since he totally started it, but an act of kindness might suffice.

“Did you want anything while I’m over here?” You asked, taking out the bread, “I think I’ll make a sandwich if you want one.” He didn’t say a word or even acknowledged you, Loki continued to read. You looked closer at what magazine he had, “I didn’t take you for a Cosmopolitan guy.” Still nothing. “I’d think you’d be more of a TIME magazine type.”

“I wouldn’t be reading this garbage if this prison had a decent library,” Loki snapped, “or even an actual book or two.”

“Oh.” Don’t pay attention to his attitude, play nice. “What do you like to read?” Good, small talk, that’s a start.

Loki scoffed, “As if you actually care. Did my brother put you up to this?”

You inhaled to try and keep your cool, as Loki was making this difficult yet again, “You don’t have to be skeptical whenever someone is trying to be nice to you.”

“You call mockery kindness?” He tossed the magazine on the coffee table before standing up, finally facing you, “You have a hilarious sense of humor for whatever game you’re trying to play.”

“What are talking about?” You question with folded arms.

“Don’t act so daft. One moment you act like an innocent creature, then the next you-” Loki paused, meeting your eyes with his. You could see rage building behind them, and something else? Could it be sorrow? No, it couldn’t be. Yet again, you don’t know his full story. But you do know that he was about to call you something nasty.

“Next I what? Act like a total bitch because you’re acting like a bratty kid complaining about their life?” You took a few steps towards him. Loki stood his ground as you approached, only a couple feet away from him. “You could be in a worse situation than this you know. You could be in prison with walls barely taller than you with no magazines or your own time to get food, or even the luxury of having a conversation, even if it’s just me getting pissed off!” You stepped closer until you were face to face with the god. You could see the details of his green eyes that are now filled with distress, his face remaining stoic. The two of you ended up in a staring contest for a few moments, both of you silent which was getting on your nerves even more, “Well? Please, say something!”

Loki opened his mouth as if to speak, when you feel something in the air shift. Not tension, but something you couldn’t explain. Physical? Emotional? Whatever it was, something lifted around the two of you like a heavy weight on your shoulders. Was it all in your head, or did Loki have something to do with it?

Suddenly, a faint sound that you couldn’t tell what it was began to form underneath you. By the look on Loki’s face he heard it too. As the sound grew louder, you both realized the source was coming right beneath not just you, but Loki as well. A ring of what looked like yellow-orange sparks formed at Loki and your’s feet, “Not again.” Was the last thing you heard Loki breathe out before everything went dark and you felt yourself falling through the air.

#spies and gods #spies and gods chapter 7 #chapter 7 #loki x reader #Loki Laufeyson #reader inser #marvel #the avengers #fanfic #fanfiction #my fic #avengers #mcu

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3laxx · 6 years

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Wind

After the fight against Hawkmoth - which ended completely not as planned - Marinette begins the way of healing. It's still a long path but her friends and family are on her side the entire way. Slowly, she finds back to her old self and despite a few backlashes, manages to get back onto her feet. Now that Ladybug is back she gets back to a balanced life, which is especially needed as finals come closer. Though, the evil does not sleep and so, Master Fu chooses anew...

Unbelievable, huh? I've left Breeze up and finished for almost 9 freaking months before uploading the Sequel. But hey, better late than never, am I right? So, and here we are, 14 months after I uploaded the first chapter of Breeze, and a new story begins. As you guys may have already read from the tags, this story will be a little more slice of life like, and while it may not be as dark or depressed as Breeze, it'll definitely be angsty enough to live up to the raise of the name, trust me ;) But the angst will come later! For now, it'll start slower than Breeze :D I hope to continue the upload schedule but since I'm now in school again I'll try to stick with a 4-day-upload schedule, eventually going up to 5 days if I need to. Also, again, Wind is - just like Breeze - based on season 1 of the show. I've got a few aspects of season 2 in it but because season 2 is only airing now (very veeeeeery slowly and irregularly) I can't entirely include season 2. It's based on my ideas and headcanons for the show after watching season 1, even before the Christmas special. With that being said, let's get right into the story and I hope you'll like it! Enjoy~

3laxx

Ao3 / FF.net

“Your friends just stay with you because they pity you…”, the voice whispered as Marinette shivered.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?”, another one joined in. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself and squinted her eyes, shaking her head. She was back there. Back where she never ever wanted to be again.

“You knew exactly that it’s true.”, the voices hissed and she groaned.

“So why didn’t you just falter?”, they asked, sharp and unforgiving, making her feel like she did something wrong, as if it was her fault to still be alive, “Why didn’t you just listen and end it right there?”

Sobs took over her body and she breathed through gritted teeth, shaking her head as not a word would leave her lips, not a sound would come from her mouth. She could merely listen and weep silently, powerless against the voices, the demands that held her captive with mere words.

She felt as if she was caught in a cage, a cage of nothing, a forced prison that held her but she didn’t see bars.

The voices haunted her and poked her, making her squirm and breathe faster as she tried to move. All her body did was huddling even more into itself, though. Her feet wouldn’t work, her mind was slowly stopping to resist. Her arms held herself like steel, her fingers digging into her shirt as if there was something to hold on.

“Why are you trying to live with that, Marinette?”, they whispered and yelled, brushing over her skin like feathers but at the same time bruising her, “Why are you trying to live with the hatred they gave you? Why didn’t you just give up?”

She sobbed another time, breathlessly even though she hadn’t run, her lower arms hurting like hellfire was ignited on them. Her lips formed words but her voice didn’t join, her desperate begging painfully blocking her throat.

She was back, she was back there when all she knew were hateful glances and swallowed words of injustice, spoken out behind her back, but still for her to hear. She was back and vividly remembered Alya’s back when she had turned, Adrien’s frown when he saw her.

She saw all the hidden and open glares, she saw all the pain and hurt in their eyes, the anger and the disappointment and the suffering grief they felt. The helplessness and fear and the suffocating accusation they threw at her, unjustified and at the same time she felt like she deserved it.

The responsibility of having condemned Paris to be destroyed by Hawkmoth, of having left alone Chat Noir and of having terrified all her friends to the point of them showing their back to her.

She was back there and there was no return.

Once again, she watched herself sinking, watched herself losing her footing and falling, as she reached out for a knife that wasn’t there. Adrien had made sure not to leave anything sharp except sewing needles in her room, ever since he had seen the new bracelets on her wrists and discovered that she hadn’t been over it.

She couldn’t help it. Sometimes, it backlashed at her, sometimes she couldn’t resist and in a lonely night, left alone to her own devices when Tikki slept, it all came back and tortured her.

He hadn’t been mad. He had merely kissed her wrists, the small cuts, and made sure that she got a private hour with her therapist, on his money. Of course, she had protested and scolded him, but she wouldn’t lie, therapy and especially his concern helped her feel more stable every day.

But this time she’d been back there, she didn’t even know why, and had longed for the day to end to let it all break in above her.

She hadn’t been on good terms with Alya about some homework, she hadn’t seen Adrien all day because he had been at a photoshoot, and her parents hadn’t had time for her since they drowned in preparations for some marriage they should cater at.

It certainly hadn’t been a good day.

And when she had walked through the streets to do some last-minute errands for her parents she had walked by the little alley again. Normally, Marinette had made a big way around that dark memory, but today she hadn’t paid any mind to it. Suddenly, all the gazes had been hostile, all the faces blank and hateful. She had felt herself shivering despite Tikki’s reassuring hug on her thigh, despite her mind telling her she was assuming, imagining things.

Tikki was on her desk right now, eating a cookie and not noticing her wielder’s breakdown on the bed above her. She kept it quiet, didn’t want her Kwami to know. Tikki tended to take it really badly when she noticed how much Marinette had become broken during her absence.

A knock startled her and she looked up, spotting Chat’s luminescent eyes against the darkening sky of the evening. He looked worried as he saw in which state she was in right now.

Quickly, he opened the window and slipped inside, hugging her before his transformation even fell. She smelled his wonderful, mossy scent, the subtle hint of camembert, and her tears fell against his shirt. She heard him saying something but didn’t process it, didn’t have the chance to separate his words, take them with their meaning, understand what he really said.

A constant waterfall of whispered sounds fell from his lips as he pressed her against his chest, his cheek resting on her hair and her forehead on his neck. She slowly managed to breathe through, hearing another voice joining as she wept against him, now finally letting it out.

Her conscious resurfaced and her shock faded slowly, leaving room for her to finally listen and partially understand what Adrien whispered in her ear.

“… Here for you… Safe… Promise… Not gonna let you get hurt… Ever again… Promise…”, her shaky breath got caught in her throat and she nuzzled closer before getting startled by a sudden outburst in Adrien as he whipped around.

“Why didn’t you look after her?! I’m trusting you with this, Tikki!”, he suddenly shot at her Kwami, his chest tensing as he unconsciously held her tighter, his voice agitated and angry.

“I-… I’m sorry, Adrien, I didn’t notice. She was so quie-”

“You know exactly what she went through! Imagine what could’ve happened if I hadn’t been close and decided to visit her! She’s still in danger, you’re obligated to look after her!”

Marinette shook her head, not wanting him to be angry at Tikki but she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

“I know! I’m sorry, Adrien, but it was just five minutes, I swear I was about to-”

“I don’t care, Tikki! She needs you, she needs you to look after her and care for her when she has a breakdown! Damnit, Tikki!”

She could feel the scared sobs vibrate through his chest and hear the tears in his voice. He was scared. For her. Not of her. He was scared of losing her again.

This gave her the last push to lift a hand to his chest, lightly brushing over his shirt to get him to listen to her.

“Adrien…”

His attention immediately was on her. His eyes soft and worrying instead of angry.

“Yes? Mari, are you alright? I’m so sorry I wasn’t here earlier, I had a bad feeling and when I saw you-…”, he babbled endlessly before Marinette lightly shut his mouth with a nudge of her nose against his chin.

“P-Please-… Don’t be mad at Tikki… She did her best today, she deserved a break. And I didn’t give her a clue. It was my fault.”, he shook his head but she pressed a light kiss to his lips, still feeling exhausted and scared but it got better and better every second he was here, “Adrien, please.”

His eyes were hard and stubborn but after asking once more of him to calm down he slowly breathed out, his shoulders sagging.

“Fine… I’m sorry, Tikki, I was just so worried… I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“It’s understandable, Adrien.”, Tikki reassuringly replied, holding a paw to Plagg’s muzzle to keep him from verbally killing his wielder, “We’re all worried. I should’ve been more considerate and I should’ve kept an eye on her more closely.”

Marinette shot Tikki a grateful gaze for calming Adrien down and snuggled against his chest once more, her breaths coming slowly and flatly since she was exhausted after this breakdown. Her boyfriend seemed to notice and sat up on his knees to lay her back down on the pillows on her bed, making himself comfortable next to her. She let him hug her tightly around her waist, their Kwamis joining them on top of their hair. She felt Tikki snuggling close, the poor small creature still shivering on her whole body as she rested atop her head. Marinette brought a hand up to her, brushing over her soft head before allowing herself to hug Adrien as well, bumping her nose against his sleepily.

“… You okay?”, she asked, her thumb brushing slight circles on his back. To that he laughed humorlessly and leant his forehead against hers, blinking slowly.

“I should ask you the same thing, even more so than you should ask me. So, are you okay?”

A tired giggle escaped her throat as she felt the tears dry on her cheeks, shrugging slightly.

“You’re here.”, was all she commented, a shiver going through her body, “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”, his deep voice drummed against her and she nodded softly, her other hand coming up to his jaw to caress him.

“You’re here.”, she repeated, “You’ll look out for me. I’ll be okay.”

Later that night, they ran over the rooftops for a patrol. Adrien had let her rest for a few hours before transforming again, wanting to let her sleep but she had woken up. After a discussion that was more playful than anything else he had let her transform as well, joining him on patrol.

Ladybug giggled as Chat hugged her with one arm from behind.

“Hello, my lady.”

“Hi kitty. Did everything go alright?”

She turned in his arm and placed a little kiss on his relatively cold and rough lips, from the chilly night air.

“Yeah, nothing special. Except…”

“What?”

He quietly laughed and nibbled at her lower lip, teasing her a little.

“Well, I got something for you.”

She rolled her eyes but smiled.

“Chat, this is patrol, not shopping-gifts-for-your-girlfriend, you know.”, she scolded but he had already gotten his hand between them, holding a little box. He flipped it open and a beautiful necklace came to light, a little golden Ladybug on a petite chained necklace.

She gasped and he broke his hug around her to pull the necklace out of the box and close it behind her neck.

“How do you like it?”, he asked, a big grin on his face. “I-… I love it! But seriously, Chat, it’s patrol and you know very well that I can’t-…”

“I know, but I love you too much and when I saw this, I just couldn’t resist!”, he pouted.

“Ugh, Chat! I’m not your girlfriend just to be gifted.”

He laughed, kissing the tip of her nose.

“Say that again, paw-lease. I like the sound of the word out of your mouth.”

“Girlfriend?”, she lifted her eyebrows.

He sighed and made a dreamy expression.

“Ah, my lady, you’re flattering me.”

“Sometimes I could just high-five you with a chair or something… And I feel like I’m the boyfriend right now.”, she murmured, snapping against his bell to try and get him back to the living again. He pouted but smiled as soon as she kissed him again. “C’mon, it’s getting colder. We should both get home.”

“Your home or my home?”, he grinned as she rolled her eyes yet again, shaking her head.

“As much as I may want, we’re writing a chemistry test tomorrow and I can’t afford being late or tired again.”

“Aw, princess, you don’t wanna kiss me a little longer? You sure?”

“I don’t just wanna kiss you, but I would only agree on that if the test tomorrow was about the human anatomy. So… No, kitty, you’ll have to go home alone today.”

He grinned as she threw her yo-yo, placed one last kiss on his cheek and hoisted herself away. She was right, though. He hadn’t learnt enough for the test yet and if he wanted to at least get a few formulas in his head and be rested tomorrow, he would have to get going.

“Until tomorrow.”, he whispered lovingly, extending his baton and lifting himself away.

He just wasn’t sure if he could concentrate when she would be sitting behind him in class, her scent winding itself in his nose, clearing his mind from everything.

“Plagg?”, Adrien asked as he got back into his room, flopping down on his bed after the transformation faded, his Kwami following him right after to curl up on a pillow.

“Yea, kid?”, his Kwami replied, opening one eye as he blinked over to his chosen.

“We haven’t had as many Akuma attacks as back then. Do you think Hawkmoth is giving up?”

The Kwami sighed heavily, remembering the confrontation with their villain back then, a few months ago.

“… No, I don’t…”, he finally replied, his words slowing down and his voice getting quieter. Adrien waited for a moment, probably curious if Plagg would add something but the cat remained silent. The boy slowly nodded, folding his arms behind his head as he stared up to the ceiling. A thousand questions swirled through his head, like what Hawkmoth wanted to do when he got the Miraculous or why he attacked less or such things but, in the end, only one question made it out of his mouth.

“Plagg, does Hawkmoth plan something?”

His Kwami huffed and sighed, finally closing his eye again to get some rest.

“Of course he does.”, as if the question was obvious.

“… What will the ultimate power grant him, then?”

To this, his Kwami remained silent.

If you wanna check out my other works, you can scroll through my profile on Ao3, my fanfiction.net profile which I keep updated along with this one - also 3laxx - as well as my tumblr profile here. I also have a Twitter account under the name 3laxx/@ToniWorz and an Instagram account with the name _3laxx_ on which I mostly upload art and a few pics I just make for fun, as well as my projects from work as a glass artist.

#miraculous ladybug #fanfic #wind #sequel to breeze #adrien agreste #marinette dupain-cheng #alya cesaire #nino lahiffe #djwifi #adrienette #ladynoir #chat noir #ladybug #angst #freckles writes

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fordarkisthesuede · 6 years

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At the Brink of Midnight - Chapter 9

*Arrives two days late with Starbucks* ‘Sup, guys! σ( ▼∀▼)σ These past 96 hours have somehow filled me with a weird chaotic energy, and I pumped out the longest roller-coaster of a chapter I’ve ever done in such a short amount of time!!! Thank you, whoever sent all the writing vibes my way!!!! ★>d(,,･ε´-,,)⌒☆ I’m sending out strong vibes to everybody in return! *May you get hit by the writing bug and have the opportunity and energy to completely translate your ideas to printed words!*

Buuut a big note before we get to the good stuff: I realized too late that the original events of S2 take place in Spring. Like…April. I was writing all of this with the thought that S2 took place in fall; I mean, the characters can wear a leather jacket or a couple of layers comfortably, so I thought “yeah that sounds like early autumn”. Nope! So that means that for this story’s timeline, everything gets shifted into where it should be. On the downside, that means I had to go through and edit all the bits where it said “it was totally spring, you guys”. On the upside… IT’S NOW OCTOBER!!!!! THE SPOOKY SEASON THAT COMPLETELY FITS WITH WHAT’S GOING ON!!! And coincidentally, it’s my favorite time of the year, so I love writing about it even more! I get to add in a thing here and there about the spookiest time of the year, so I’ll have a nice list of what those little changes are uploaded here soon if you don’t feel like re-reading the whole thing. A re-read isn't necessary though, just keep in mind that the humid air of rainy spring in the city is replaced with chilling fronts and even more cloud cover than usual. Why am I bothering with this? Because I’m a stickler for keeping with canon as much as possible and I feel like an absolute fool for not remembering what goddamn time of year it was to begin with. (I mean, I went so far as to download all of TeamFourStar’s play-through because I watched it so often, you think I'd remember to go back and watch the very beginning once in a while…)

Anywho, thank you all again for your continuously loving support!!!

♡~(ɔ ˘3˘)˘⌣˘ c)

Important Spoiler Tags: drugs (mentioned), swearing, canon-typical violence, electric shocks (mentioned), torture of flowers, flirting, almost an excessive use of emoji, crying, romantic dirty thoughts

Read on Ao3 or continue below:

Chapter 9: Grapevines

Bruce Wayne couldn’t remember the last time he’d conducted a meeting from his home office. It wasn’t as if he didn’t use it – the desk surface had hardly any dust settled on it and two empty coffee mugs he’d forgotten about on two different occasions just happened to be stacked behind the monitor – but it felt strange, like a lot of things did lately.

He knew part of the reason for that was watching houses down in the Batcave right now. Knowing he wasn’t alone in the house was comforting, but knowing there were two cops outside the Manor’s front door just waiting for a chance to grab his best friend-cum-houseguest was not, and knowing that they were both close to being thrown in hot water was even less so.

He figured the other reason he felt strange was because he was slipping back into his old habit as if it had never been shelved in the first place. He had time to kill before the video meeting started, so he’d been scouring for information on “Pam”, Jonathan Crane’s ‘old friend’.

There were a few Pamela’s in Gotham, but only one fit within Crane’s age-range and attended Gotham University at about the same time: Pamela Isley, a forty-four-year-old former botanist with a record that ran the length of his arm. Theft, assault, threats, and attempted poisonings all done in the name of extreme environmentalism and social activism were sprinkled in her history before and after her days as a researcher, and according to GCPD records, she was now suspected of running her own drug-ring under the moniker of ‘Poison Ivy’. (Bruce found several recorded instances of people claiming to be Poison Ivy, most of whom were already arrested.)

Bruce would’ve wondered why on Earth she hadn’t been thrown in prison when she made a bomb-threat at a wealthy businessman several states away nearly a decade ago if he hadn’t seen her mug-shot from back then. At thirty-five, she looked every bit as beautiful as a top-billed Hollywood star, with natural orange-red curls cascading over her pale shoulders and ample bust in chemically-tamed waves, flashing the camera a come-hither stare that made it look like she was trying for a part in a high-budget porn flick rather than standing in front of a height chart for her criminal record. Pamela’s charges were mysteriously swept under the rug.

The latest photo he found of her reminded him a bit of those ‘cougar’ dating ads he’d seen – the older Pamela was blowing a kiss to the camera with a mocking look in her dark green eyes. Bruce glared at it. There was little doubt she was using people to cover for her constantly, and when she was in trouble, she managed to wriggle out of it with her looks.

Not this time. She was friends with Dr. Jonathan Crane, and that meant she wasn’t going to get out of this unharmed. The second his virtual meeting was over, Bruce was heading towards Toxic Acres, and hopefully the wounded Crane would still be there to see Batman’s fist hit his –

Bruce snapped out of his thoughts at the buzz of his phone. A message from the BatComputer…?

I’m bored :/

Bruce blinked down at the screen. John had found the emergency messaging system. Of course he had. He was just grateful that the encryption software on his phone was still up to date. Just what else did John poke his nose into down there…? (There was the chance that John would see files he shouldn’t, but Bruce kept those under a thumbprint encryption. He shouldn’t even entertain the thought.)

Stake-outs are usually pretty boring.

It wouldn’t be so bad if you were down here tho! :)

Bruce hovered his thumb over the keyboard, unsure of what to say. The feeling was kind of mutual, if he was being honest; having another person around on a stakeout would at least keep his mind wandering into the worsts of what-ifs and double-checking every last security issue…

No movement on either houses btw. Been reading Crane’s docs in the meantime but it’s DREADFUL!!! I feel like I’m reading a sleeping pill… =_=

You finish your WE stuff yet?

Meeting’s not for another 20 minutes. Been looking up stuff on Crane’s “friend”.

Oh??? :o Do tell!!!!

Bruce couldn’t help but smile at the enthusiasm.

Pamela Isley, former botanist w/ criminal rec., mostly extreme protest kind of stuff. Good chance she’s the head of a drug-ring that moved here a couple months ago; their leader goes by “Poison Ivy”.

They went to college together, but Pamela moved back here recently.

hMmMmm…. That means no burning the place down if we’re stuck! Bad fumes everywhere xP

Bruce focused on the word “we’re”. He hadn’t been planning on bringing John along. He wanted him safe, at home, where no one had a chance of seeing him and he wasn’t put in harm’s way…

Oh!!! You’ve got a bunch of sticky electro-shockers around - do you mind if I tinker with them? :3c pleeeeaaasssee?

What are you thinking of doing with them?

Making one BIIIIIG shock-bomb, of course! ;D I can wire them together so the shock spreads evenly in the space while it’s discharging.

Bruce reconsidered bringing John. He was still learning to curb his impulses, so being outside in a fighting environment would be a serious gamble, but... Maybe that could be their advantage, too. Bruce made a mental note to go dig out the spare bullet-proof vest from his closet’s secret panel.

You can do that?

I played around with making something like it before, but……well, you know.

Time + supplies for that project were low att. I figured I could always go back to it later anyway.

Bruce felt like his heart had deflated and swelled in such a short time that it hurt.

I mean I’m fine with throwing knives around too but I figured that would be less discrete ¯\_(ツ )_/¯

He’d been thinking of different methods of entering the “house”. Most of them featured a silent slip-in and as little combat as possible, but he knew that there would likely be some muscle around to stop any would-be intruders, and getting a quieter jump on them would certainly be helpful. He would certainly be lying if he said he wasn’t impressed that John had thought that far ahead even back then.

If you think you can get it done within 1.5 hours, then yes.

Ha ha ha with these supplies I can get it done in like 40 mins! >:3 just you watch!!!

Btw have you seen the news?

Not yet. Why?

I was on the morning edition! At least they used a good pic ;D

But also saw a guy getting fished out of the harbor. Your handy-dandy invasion software said he’s a registered Ryde driver.

I told you not to fiddle with that.

Sorry, but I only used it the once! Promise!!!

Bruce sighed through his nostrils.

Besides I thought you’d want to know. Think Crane stole his ride and dumped him by the docks? :v

Probably. I can get the plate from up here to verify. DO NOT TOUCH THAT PROGRAM AGAIN.

Yes sir ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Bruce wasn’t sure if that message was supposed to be flirtatious or mocking.

The incoming call from Iman Avesta stopped him from responding. He figured it had to do with John’s escape and the extra security added at Wayne Tower this morning, but why was she calling him now, rather than several hours ago?

“Iman?”

“Hey, Bruce. Hold on a sec – there we go, now we can both -”

“Bruce, what the fuck?” Tiffany asked over the line. “Are you at home right now?”

Bruce almost sighed at the attitude. “Yes, Tiffany, I’m at home, in my office.”

“Uh-huh. I keep getting alerts that your basement’s messaging system is being used. Care to explain that?”

Oh. Of course. He’d forgotten Tiffany had linked her phone to that, too. It’d just…been too long, he supposed. (She couldn’t read them, though, could she? He was fairly sure it didn’t give out mass-texts unless prompted.) “…where are you right now?”

Iman responded instead. “We’re in your second office.”

“…the line’s secure?”

“Of course.” Iman paused, and Bruce knew his new CSO was choosing her words carefully. “I’m guessing you have John Doe in the Batcave?”

“Yes.”

“Bruce, did you fucking break him out?” Tiffany asked with no shortness of impatience.

“I rescued him,” Bruce said firmly. “I know what you’re thinking, and I have a pretty good idea of what you’re going to say, but listen: I had no choice but to take him with me. One of the doctors working at Arkham has gone rogue – he’d been doing experiments on patients, and I have a feeling he’s going to continue them on civilians. I need to find him before then, and John has been helping me.”

“Helping…? You’re not bringing him in the field with you?” Tiffany said disbelievingly. “After that psychopath almost killed us?”

Bruce could still see Joker running at Tiffany, knife in hand, his psychotic breakdown in full force. He could still see him being smacked against the railing, sheer madness played over his long, bloody face as he desperately fought to stab what was his hero.

But John and Joker were as much the same as Bruce and Batman were, and they were constantly changing.

The Joker in the Batcave wasn’t the same one from Ace Chemicals.

“I know what John did,” he answered, trying to breathe even as something wanted to hitch in his throat, “and I know how far he’s come since then. I know you both regret-”

“No, I’m not listening to this right now,” Tiffany scowled, her voice fading in the middle her sentence like she was leaving the room. “Talk some sense into him.”

Bruce heard Iman’s voice call after her, and then nothing for a beat.

Iman sighed. “I’ll talk to her. But Bruce,” she started seriously, “Tiffany isn’t the only one worrying about you. Six months can’t possibly cure everything wrong with a man whose spent his life in an asylum.” He could practically hear her chew over her phrasing. “I need to know… If John goes too far – if he shows signs of regressing…or just becoming more volatile – I need to know you’re going to put your foot down.”

“I’m more than capable of handling him, Iman.”

“Please, Bruce, I’d rather not have to pull you off another broken pipe lodged in your kidney.” She paused, and Bruce let her continue, feeling the scar in his side twinge at the painful memory. “I know you care a lot about him,” she resumed in a softer tone, “and I know you trust him. But if you doubt him at any time, you need you to step back and re-evaluate your choices. I don’t want him to regress back into the Joker.”

That was a different Joker, Bruce wanted to say. He knew that wouldn’t sound the way it should. “I promise I won’t let that happen.”

“Good to know,” Iman replied, sounding somewhat relieved. “This doctor you’re hunting – is there anything we can do to help?”

Bruce shot a look at the clock in the corner of his monitor. He didn’t have as much time left as he would’ve liked before his virtual meeting started. “Tiffany can fill you in a bit, I had her help searching Arkham’s records before. Can you run a plate for me? I think Dr. Crane is running with a stolen car; I’ll send you the details in a bit.”

“Sure. We can check traffic cams for it, too, if you’d like.”

“If you would. And the second I have anything concrete on Dr. Crane, I’m sending Tiffany the details – I need her pull as Oracle to get the word out to the GCPD before anything happens. They’ll listen to their number-one informant more than a vigilante coming out of retirement.”

“…you’re…?”

He could almost see the shock in her face. They’d had a short discussion about his alter-ego when he decided to quit the first time; she’d been incredibly understanding about the whole thing. It was almost as if she’d seen it coming.

“Are you sure?”

He was as sure. She didn’t know about the instincts broiling underneath his surface every day. She didn’t know he never really stopped being half of himself. She wouldn’t know or really understand that he just shoved it all down and aside like he did so much else just to get through things. “I don’t have any other options at this point.”

“…you know you can count on us if you need the help.”

“Of course I do.”

“Right. Well, in the meantime we’ll keep the fort over here running as smoothly as possible.”

“Thank you. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Good luck.”

The line went silent, and Bruce pulled his phone away, catching a glimpse of three unread messages.

Sorry, buddy, I was just kidding around, you know? Ha ha

Bruce???

Hello???????

Sorry, had a phone call and couldn’t reply. It’s fine.

Seconds ticked by, and Bruce began changing out of his black t-shirt and into his button-down. It wouldn’t do to appear as a CEO in anything less than a proper suit. He could leave the jeans on, at least.

“Oh! Uh…sorry, Bruce…”

He felt his heart stop for a second. That was definitely John’s voice, even though it crackled slightly from the speakers. The monitor didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. John must have been using the spy-camera feature on the Batcomputer; it was linked to most the devices in the house, and Bruce’s webcam was no exception. He’d almost forgotten it had a loudspeaker function, too.

“I didn’t realize you were…um, changing.”

Bruce glared at the webcam’s lens. “John, what did I tell you about fiddling with the Batcomputer?”

“…sorry. I was worried when you didn’t answer me.”

He sounded genuine, at least. Bruce could easily picture him running upstairs to find him, if there wasn’t a chance he would’ve been seen. “I answered you a minute ago. I was on a call with Iman,” he stated plainly, fixing the buttons on his sleeves.

“…oh, ha ha, there it is! Uh, I guess I’ll just…go, then…”

Bruce almost questioned why John was sounding nervous and distracted, but it wasn’t until he saw the webcam light wink off again that he realized his shirt was wide open, the scars littering his torso half on display from the waist up.

Thankfully, no one was around to see Bruce bury his face in the palm of his hand for a moment, feeling like his face was on fire from first and second-hand embarrassment.

It didn’t last long. Bruce took a few deep breaths as he fixed himself up, and dialed into the meeting with a fixed expression of calm, firmly ignoring the heat that had settled in his stomach that threatened to go lower at the thought that John was bound not to forget any of that.

Driving the Batmobile in full gear again was certainly something else. Bruce felt the weight of the Kevlar body armor press against his limbs as he sped down Gotham’s twisting alley streets, no one any the wiser that the Wayne’s red sports car was hiding Batman behind it. The city’s CCTV signal was scrambled with the flick of a switch as he came into driving distance of the alley’s camera, making him almost untraceable.

He’d given the Honda Accord a head-start; it couldn’t go nearly as fast as the Batmobile, and Bruce had to find a spot to safely change before going to go pick John up from his drop-off point, and the post-working-hours traffic had already gotten its usual early start. It was a slower drive than he’d like it to be, even with Bruce’s shortcuts.

The setting sun was completely obscured by a dark overcast. It made the orange streetlamps glowing over the decorations sitting here and there in windows and doors even more energetic, like every corner of Gotham was slowly growing with the energy of Halloween.

Bruce clicked the communicator in his cowl. “John, are you there yet?”

Silence for a few seconds, and then a rustling noise. “Sorry, I had to take this off for a bit. What?”

“Are you there yet?”

John giggled slightly. “Oh, yeah, I’m here. Just waiting on you, pal.”

He was already at the meeting point? How did he get there so fast? “You put everything back where it was supposed to be?”

“No, I stripped the seats and threw everything into the garbage,” John grumbled with dripping sarcasm. “Of course I did, it’d be rude not to put Jerry’s stuff back. What do you take me for?”

“…I’m just making sure you didn’t forget anything.”

“I didn’t.” There was a loud slurping noise, like the last of a liquid being sucked from a straw.

“John, where are you right now?”

“In the alley, waiting for you.”

“Did you make a stop?”

John giggled, a little louder, but not at all nervous. He was enjoying himself. “What can I say? Going out on the town with you like this makes me thirsty,” he said with a strange purr. “Besides, no one bats an eye at me when I look like this anyway.” He paused. “Well, no, I’ve gotten some eyes on me, but, uh, I think they’re more the appreciative type. I guess ZZ Top was kinda right about the sharp-dresser thing.”

Bruce felt his brows knit together. “You’ve always looked sharp,” he said truthfully, turning down a narrow alley.

“Yeah, but not thousand-dollar-suit sharp. There’s a difference! Plus I think this bullet-proof vest makes me look a little bulkier than I actually am.”

Bruce spotted him leaning against the graffiti-covered wall, a Burger Lord cup in one hand and a plastic orange bag in another. Just how much time did Bruce lose while he was changing?

John tossed the drink in the dumpster and practically jumped into the car, shoving the orange bag behind the driver seat and slamming the door shut as Bruce switched off the communicator. He took one look at Bruce’s questioning glower and gave a nervous sort of grin. “Hey, don’t look at me like that, there’s something in there for you, too.”

Bruce almost asked what, but decided that a lecture on keeping a low profile and not taking money from his house’s various hiding spots would have to wait. (Though he supposed whatever John got wasn’t expensive. He was quite frugal, and it wasn’t as if Bruce couldn’t afford to buy John whatever he wanted anyway.) He concentrated instead on heading down the twisting path towards Toxic Acres. At least the traffic over there was a hell of a lot lighter.

“Hey, when you drove me to the Batcave, did you go in fourth gear, or third?”

He wasn’t sure why he asked, but he honestly couldn’t remember. He just recalled putting his foot to the floor and keeping his eyes on the road, occasionally reaching over to check John’s pulse. “I wasn’t really paying attention to that; I concentrating more on driving as fast as possible.”

“Oh – so you didn’t know you could punch the shift down into third whenever you wanted? It was so fun! I can say I literally punched it out of the Batcave!” He laughed. “I’m guessing you can’t do that in this car?”

“…I’ve got paddle shifters.” They were starting to travel into the more deserted road leading into Toxic Acres. Bruce took a sharp turn onto the hill with the broken Do Not Enter sign, and checking that no one was behind him, flipped the switch to shift the car into armored plates and pressed the wheel-paddle for a lower gear.

They flew down the road with a whirring whine of the engine, John’s notorious excited laugh mixing with it, and Bruce allowed himself to smile a little at it, knowing his own little joyful thrill wouldn’t last very long.

John was soon tapping his fingers together in some kind of rhythm as they passed by more empty houses, Bruce moving a little slower to keep his eyes out for trouble. Sitting close to the river on the outskirts of the city, they were originally meant to be a long neighborhood for the middle and upper class to build their lives, but as the unemployment and crime rates rose, the place became abandoned. It didn’t help that the piping structure to carry water there had been faulty, making either lead poisoning or unfiltered dirty water a prominent problem and giving the section of Gotham its nickname.

“How do we know which place is the botanist’s?” John asked, his green eyes scouring the houses in front of them.

“I sent out another drone earlier for some aerial shots. There’s a place with camouflaged green-houses in the back on Aster Place.”

“Wow, you did that before I left? That was fast…”

“It was a quick job. I’m not picking up the other drone until later.”

They turned the corner onto Aster Place; the road would dead-end in a while, but Bruce knew the house wouldn’t be situated at the end.

“Oh, there’s the spot Jackie got shot at!” John pointed ahead. “I wonder if there’s a bloodstain left…!”

Bruce tightened his grip on the wheel. “We’re close.”

It was oddly quiet out there. There was no other sign of life in what was a hot-spot of criminal hide-outs. Bruce turned on the thermal vision in his cowl; a lot of the houses were actually empty for once.

Except for one. 1801 Aster Place. There were a group of people scattered around on the bottom floor and what appeared to be a lot of heat-lamps running on the top floor. If one of the people in the group wasn’t Pamela Isley, then she might have been holding up in the basement…

They left the Batmobile out of sight down the road, and Bruce and John moved swiftly behind the backs of the houses in the chilly night air, the taser bomb safely in John’s coat pocket; John was surprisingly quiet, only humming a familiar tune here and there. (Wasn’t it the theme from that old spy-thriller…?) Bruce managed to quiet him with a look, and John mimed locking his mouth shut and throwing the key away.

Two unknown people were standing in what used to be a kitchen; three more people were up in the front room of the house. There were no security cameras to be seen.

“Stick close to me,” Bruce whispered, the modifier in his cowl deepening his voice. “We go in through the back window, take out the two in the kitchen quietly and throw the bomb up front so we can cuff the lot. If none of them are Ms. Isley, we find the basement.”

John gave him a thumbs up, pulling out the riot baton he had hidden away. (Bruce had still not remembered when he or Alfred bought that, but vaguely remembered stashing it in the towel cupboard with some other emergency gear. He wasn’t surprised John found it.)

The bathroom window’s locks weren’t difficult to break. They looked like they had been broken several times already. Bruce slid the insect screen up and slipped in through the thin opening feet-first, twisting his limbs just right to softly land on the floor. He had to help pull John through the rest of the way after he smacked his head on the bottom of the window; thankfully he hadn’t made any noise, but he did give Bruce a strange look as brushed himself off where Bruce had gripped his sides.

Bruce didn’t have time to think about it.

The two people in the kitchen stood in semi-darkness, watching through the patio windows with rifles leaning against the wall. There wasn’t so much a bare bulb to give off light. Bruce figured their eyes might have adjusted to the dark, and signaled John to follow as he crept up behind the two goons.

“I dunno, with all the hype surrounding episode four, you just know those guys are going to mess up somewhere. Remember when they decided to let Celestyne drop to his death back in season one?” The one with dreadlocks asked.

“Oh, come on, that was just to test the game’s limits. Besides, Celestyne couldn’t die; I don’t think Jane can, either,” the second person responded in a higher voice with a casual shrug.

“Dude, you know the game’s gonna make her a villain in the end, though, right? She might die…”

Bruce was ready. John was gripping the baton with a widening grin…

“Are you kidding me? They have her affection meter up so high I’m surprised the game doesn’t have a dating opt-”

Bruce slammed dreadlocked goon’s head into the wall just as the baton crashed down on the other goon’s skull, little smears of blood marking the plaster and paint with a satisfying crack.

John clutched the collar of the goon he’d struck, gripping the slightly bloody baton a little harder in his other hand. He seemed to be thinking.

Bruce took a zip-tie out and cuffed the goon’s hands behind their back, and wondered just what John was staring at until he’d turned the person around and caught a glimpse of them in the light of the window.

They were both women with little tattoos of vines creeping along the back of their necks.

If Bruce guessed right, those were ivy leaves on the vine. Poison Ivy had a loyal gang.

John zip-tied the wrists of the woman he’d struck and patted the part of her head that wasn’t wounded. “Sorry,” he whispered as if she would hear it. “Lauren’s ex,” John mumbled, gesturing to the woman on the floor as if he knew Bruce had raised his eyebrow at him.

Bruce simply swept onward, spying the door for the basement. There was a light on in the front room, and three women who looked like they could be professional boxers of different weight categories were sitting in different areas. One was sharpening a knife at the table, and another was cleaning a semi-automatic rifle as the third kept watch over a monitor showing security camera footage; three looked to be by the greenhouses (Bruce recognized the Foxglove variety growing in one under an opening in the glass, sitting next to something that looked primeval), and two were watching over the plants upstairs (marijuana, by the looks of it) and in the basement.

There was a figure in the last screen, working over a row of potted plants with low lamps. A zoom-in with Bruce’s lenses showed long red hair.

Bruce felt a hand on his shoulder, and John crept ahead him, the taser-bomb in hand: it looked like a mass of the sticky-bombs grouped together, colorful wiring connecting them all like some kind of net, and before Bruce could do or say anything, John threw it into the living room, where it tumbled into the middle of the floor.

The group began to shoot out of their seats in a second, and in the next the ball seemed to expand like a geometric toy, the wired tasers being thrown in the air with a flash before smacking people and surfaces alike as they discharged. All three people fell to the floor in trembling heaps, and John dashed out and started to cuff them, Bruce close behind.

The electric bombs were safe to touch now that they had fully discharged, so Bruce had no qualm about stomping on the lightly-burning sections of carpet underneath some of them to prevent any spread of fire as he pushed them aside. The bulkiest goon wasn’t quite down for the count; she was still conscious.

She yanked John off her fallen comrade by his shoulder and threw him into the table’s edge. Bruce threw a Batarang at her arm just as she was about to punch, and John gave a swift knee to her stomach as she flinched.

She fell to the floor with a louder crash and a grunt, pulling the Batarang out from her arm and letting it drop to the floor. “You fucker…” She said, glaring up at John before looking over at Bruce, her eyes widening as he approached with more Batarangs at the ready. “B-Batman…?”

“Yup! He’s real,” John said playfully before smacking the side of her head with the baton. “And so am I,” he added with a growl. He decided to tie her wrists behind the nearest table leg. “I hate not being able to call myself Joker like this… Really sells it better.”

Bruce felt his heart twitch at the name. “You can call yourself that, if it helps,” Bruce said gently, tying the monitoring-station woman’s wrists together, “Just not to people’s faces.”

“Kinda defeats the point,” John grumbled.

Bruce shot a look at the security monitor – Pamela Isley didn’t seem to have heard anything. Still, precaution should be used. “Let’s go,” he said plainly, sweeping out of the room with a swish of his cape.

John tucked a hand into his pocket and followed.

The basement stairs were carpeted and quiet, but Bruce was careful to walk on the outsides rather than the middle. Spiders had clearly made themselves right at home in the damp corners of the walls, and he had to duck to avoid getting the tips of his cowl’s ears stuck in one of their webs. A soft sort of click was heard behind his back, and Bruce figured John had gotten out his grappling gun.

Pamela Isley was bent over a row of exotic-looking orchids posed under heat lamps, dabbing something into the center of a blue orchid’s petals. Bruce saw several troughs full of hallucinogenic mushrooms sitting on the other side of the wall.

“There you go, my darling,” she cooed in a honeyed voice, acting like she was carefully painting the center of the flower, “You’ll soon be the belle of the ball…”

Bruce eyed the electrical box on the other side of the room. It wouldn’t do to drown the place in darkness; he’d be able to see, but John wouldn’t. The best bet was to tackle and restrain her.

Or…

Bruce took out his own grappling gun, and aimed it at Isley’s collar. One click, and it snagged her shirt with practiced ease.

“What the-?!”

Pamela Isley was suddenly dragged yelping through the air at an angle, smacking hard into one of the tables and spilling several unusual potted flowers to the floor.

Bruce grabbed her and threw her to the concrete floor, standing over her with several Batarangs in his hand as John cackled beside him.

“Jonathan Crane,” Bruce growled out, “Where is he?”

Pamela Isley sat up, shock written all over her face as she processed exactly what happened – it quickly morphed to a steely stare. “Batman,” she said slowly in a sweet voice, “I thought you were an urban legend,” she continued, wiping the corner of her mouth where a dribble of blood leaked out. “Do you always treat a lady this way?”

Bruce dragged her up by her collar and threw her against the wall, keeping her at arm’s length. “I know he bought plants from you today. Tell me where he is.”

“Or what?” She taunted, smirking widely at him. “You think I haven’t been knocked around by men before? I’ve been in whole worlds of hurt, honey.”

There was the distinct sound of the grappling wire rushing through the air, and then an enormous crash – John had taken out one of the mushroom tables, the fungi now breaking and bouncing against the floor it the scattered in the dirt.

“Whoopsie,” John hummed, a wide unnerving grin on his face, “butter-fingers.”

Isley looked rather taken aback, but the expression quickly warped into a mocking glare. “You think destroying my inventory is going to intimidate me?”

John shrugged, leaning back against a table and knocking over a several small tropical plants with a slide of his hand, shattering the clay pots and sending the plants scattering to the hard floor.

That definitely got her attention; her face paled slightly and there was tremble in her. “Stop that!”

Bruce glared at her, mentally thanking John for his quick thinking. “Tell me where Crane is and I’ll consider stopping him from tearing this place apart.”

Her dark green eyes glared at him with a slow-boiling dislike. “Let me go first.”

Bruce did a very quick once-over; she didn’t seem to have a gun holster on her, and she was definitely a lighter build than the rest of her gang. Knives were still a possibility. He decided to let go, keeping a Batarang between his fingers just in case as he stepped just out of her reach.

Pamela dusted off her green turtleneck. “I don’t know where he is, and I don’t care. He bought a few of my flowers and left,” she said, crossing her arms.

John laughed, fingering the leaves of the blue orchid she’d been attending. “With a hole in his shoulder? You didn’t even offer a band-aid for that?”

Pamela was closely eyeing the plant in John’s hand. “What if I did?”

“I know he’s a friend of yours, Isley,” Bruce growled. “You’re the only one who could know what he’s planning.”

“I told you, I don’t know,” she stated, “and I don’t care. I’m not his mother.”

“I can see why you were paying such close attention to this one,” John hummed, fingering the petals with a gloved hand. “It’s so pretty. You put a lot of effort into keeping all these, huh?” He grinned at her, almost looking like his usual self. “It’s not just some financial scheme for you, is it?”

“Of course it is,” Pamela stared at him, trying to keep her voice level; Bruce noticed her eyes kept flicking slightly downward, like she was watching the plant. “I breed and sell rare plants to collectors on the side.”

“Oh good! So this won’t bother you!”

In a swift move, John cut the blossom off the stem with the bowie knife one of the group upstairs had been sharpening.

The blossom fell to the table, and Pamela Isley looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

John picked up the blossom. “Let’s see – she’s honest,” he said playfully, plucking a petal from the stem, “she’s not!” He pulled another.

“STOP IT!” Pamela shrieked, making to rush at him – Bruce pulled her back and pointed the tip of the Batarang at her face. She glanced at it fearfully, but then looked back at the flower being torn apart in John’s hand, and it looked like she was watching a child die before her eyes.

“Stop that,” Bruce instructed; John hummed and held it still. “Talk, or my partner and I crush every plant in this place.”

Isley stared at the flower in John’s hand. “I… I don’t know what he’s planning,” she said quietly, her voice cracking slightly. John only touched the tip of a petal before she spoke again – “But-! But I know… He’s building something. He didn’t say what, but he asked for some muscle - I hooked him up with some of Maroni’s old boys.” She shut her eyes and took a breath before glaring at John like he was a complete monster. “I hope the lot of them tears you limb from limb.”

Bruce forced Isley’s hands behind her back and zip-tied them. “Down on the ground,” he growled, pushing down on the top of her head. John pointed the grappling gun in her face with a smirk; a good insurance if she decided to try and elbow Bruce in the face.

Pamela shot them both a hateful glare as she knelt down, and it didn’t waver as her ankles were tied, too. “I won’t forget this,” she spat.

Bruce sent off a message to Tiffany regarding the coordinates of “Poison Ivy”’s headquarters from his gauntlet. He knew she’d get the word out before he could even get back in the car. “Tell it to the judge,” he taunted, leading the way out of the basement, not missing the sparkle in John’s eyes as he followed, the severed, torn orchid blossom having been carelessly thrown at Pamela Isley’s feet.

John gathered up the sticky bomb device before they hustled back to the Batmobile, and it wasn’t until the doors closed that he spoke, and when he did it was in a tone Bruce would almost call revered.

“So, what do we do now, partner?” He asked, a definite glow on his face.

“We go look at some of the Maroni gang’s old haunts and see if we can find anyone recently hired,” Bruce said, the voice modifier in his cowl now disabled. He glanced at his recent text messages: one from Tiffany giving the ok on Poison Ivy, and another from Iman with the last known location of the stolen Ryde car. “After we look into the motels in the red-light district. Crane might’ve stayed there.”

John laughed to himself, but for once he didn’t share the joke; instead, he pulled out a packet of jerky from the plastic bag he’d brought along. “I knew this would be a long night,” he said cheerfully, as if he was really looking forward to the whole thing.

It was well past one in the morning when Bruce arrived back home through the front gate, the Batsuit stowed away and the plates flipped back to red. The two patrol officers were only somewhat surprised to see him arrive back. Naturally, they reported nothing new, since John had been dropped off in the Batcave first.

Sore muscles were nothing new to Bruce. The old strained climb back up to his bed was just as annoying as ever. He honestly didn’t feel like he wanted to sleep, but after following several empty leads over the city and bruising a few heads alongside John, he did admit that he was physically exhausted. He knew lying down was better than nothing, and he still had to go to work in several hours like he didn’t have a double life. At least he wasn't starving, thanks to John thinking ahead and buying him protein-and-carb-filled snacks.

He forced himself to go through his usual nightly routine, despite the temptation to just flop into bed and lay there. He looked at the bruises on his back and ribs from where John had struggled against him under the influence of Crane’s drug, and decided not to bother putting the bruise-away cream on them, nor on the new ones forming on his shoulder from where one of the former mobsters had hit him.

When he did finally collapse onto the master bed in nothing but his boxer-briefs, his brain still decided to chat away at him.

There were no leads as to who exactly Isley had hired for Crane. Bruce cursed himself for not trying to work the specifics out of her. At least he knew she was arrested for drug possession and manufacturing, as well as smuggling illegal fauna.

There was no word on the whereabouts of Jackie Lant. Her car was missing, and she’d called into work sick. Her apartment hadn’t been visited in the entire time Bruce had his drone’s eye on it, and neither Tiffany nor Iman had seen anything when they looked into Jackie’s friends’ places, either. All Bruce knew was that she hadn’t called an ambulance to fetch her from Toxic Acres, that she hadn’t been admitted to a hospital, and that there was no sign of her body either in the Acres or in the Gotham River.

She was alive, somewhere, and Bruce didn’t know what she was going to do next. He hoped she was just going to lie low until he caught Crane.

Jonathan Crane was nowhere to be found. His house was still empty. He didn’t seem to be staying at any of the motels – or hotels – around the red-light district or its surrounding streets, and nothing had come of a quick credit-card check. The Ryde driver the GCPD fished out of the River that morning had been shot in the head, and his car was so common that if Crane could’ve switched the license plate with anything and been completely invisible. They’d done a quick search of the warehouse district and found no sign of him there, either.

Bruce had the nagging feeling that he wasn’t going to find Crane until the doctor reared his head.

The billionaire rolled onto his stomach, shoving the anxious thought away as he pressed his cheek further into the plush black jersey pillowcase. There were a couple more places he could check tomorrow…

The bedroom door creaked, and Bruce’s eyes shot open, a second away from grabbing the billy-club under his pillow – he could see John’s messy hair in his dark silhouette.

“Bruce? You awake?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

“…can I come in?”

“Sure.”

Bruce noticed he closed the door behind him. Like he was planning to stay there.

That definitely put a new light onto the situation. A tense thrill was building in his shoulders as John deigned to sit on the edge of the mattress, his back to Bruce.

John was only wearing his Arkham-regulated pants, and the pale white of his bare skin almost shone in the light streaming in from the window. Bruce saw several bruises forming, one of which was from where he’d gotten grabbed by the shoulder by a Poison Ivy goon, and several more where he’d gotten knocked into.

“…I don’t think I can sleep in that guest room,” John sighed. “I mean, I tried my usual methods of sleep induction, but… It’s too big…and empty. I’m really not used to that.” His voice came out quieter and more contemplative. “I know it’s weird, but do you mind if I sleep in here?” He asked, turning halfway to look right at Bruce.

He felt trapped. If he said no, at the worst John would sulk, and at the best John wouldn’t get any sleep, and that was definitely worse for his mental health. John had mentioned before about how regular sleep cycles were supposed to help with that.

If he said yes, though, he’d know he was sleeping next to John, and there was the tiny worry in the back of his head that John might…try something. Or at least roll over too much.

“I promise I’ll stay over on my side,” John muttered, not tearing his eyes away.

“Alright.”

A sweet smile stretched on his face. “Thanks, Bruce. You won’t regret this.”

“If you keep talking, I might.”

John giggled as he slid beneath the covers on the far side of the bed, flopping one of the extra pillows down between them. “There – a no-roll barrier,” he said as if he had to explain the concept to Bruce.

It did not escape Bruce’s attention that John had decided to lie facing him and rest his arm on top of the pillow. John had pulled the covers up to just underneath his armpits; Bruce could see John's sharp collarbone and the lean wiry muscle of his chest. (Bruce made sure not to look for more than a moment's curiosity would allow.)

God, John’s face was actually his for the first time that whole night. Bruce had gotten used to seeing it in the natural makeup, but it was almost a relief to see it in its normal borderline-luminescent white. He looked like the man Bruce knew.

Acid-green eyes stared at him, flicking slightly and growing soft. “I…did want to talk to you about something, though. If it’s okay.”

“I suppose I’m still awake,” Bruce said in an attempt to lighten the tension in his arms. “Sure.”

“Do you ever…look back on something, and think about the worst thing that could’ve happened in that situation?”

He didn’t like to admit it, but he had. Usually in his worst moods, he’d think about how everything could’ve gone wrong. He’d usually think about everything he could’ve done better, too. “I try not to, but…sometimes, yeah.”

“I’ve been thinking about our fight a lot, lately,” John confessed, “At Ace. I used to think about it a lot when I got recommitted, but… You started visiting me,” he said softly, a light smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You remember when I told you I thought I’d messed things up for us?”

“Yeah.” It was Bruce’s first visit to John. He never forgot the sheer hopeful joy on John’s face upon seeing him. It was practically engraved in his memory.

“Ever since I started sessions with Crane, I kept going back to that night. He always tried to weasel my worst secrets out of me,” he said with a low scowl, “but when he started using that…toxin on me… I kept…thinking about what could have happened back there. I… I know I almost killed you.”

The sheer pain reading in John’s eyes was enough to make Bruce want to wrap his arms around him. It was beautiful and raw and honest, and Bruce found himself holding stock still, almost captivated by the expression.

“I kept seeing it. Over and over – it was like I could see myself throwing you over the railing or-or stabbing you, or...” Bruce saw tears welling up as John clenched the pillow between them. “I don’t want to come close to that again, Bruce,” he managed to say, his voice starting to hitch. “I don’t… I don’t want to kill you.”

Bruce threw his pride away and grabbed John’s hand in his. “You won’t.”

“You…you don’t know that,” John said with a light sob. “If…if I…go back to how I was… If I mess up...”

Bruce squeezed his hand, feeling the soft skin twitch under his fingertips. “I won’t pretend you’re perfect,” he said, honesty seeping through every word, “but I know you, John. I know you’re not going after Crane out of revenge, like you did with Waller. You reached out to me for help – but you were already trying to find a way to stop him without resorting to just stabbing him with the nearest shiv.”

John sniffed, a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth like he was almost smiling. “Yeah…”

“So you’re not the same person you were then, are you?” He soothed with a supportive smile. “Even if you feel you are going backward, I know it won’t be to that same point.”

“Maybe…” he said with another sniff, looking more serious. “But Bruce, you know there are things I can’t ever really stop, right? The auditory psychosis is pretty much going to stay with me the rest of my life,” he started, clutching Bruce’s hand back, “and I’m not going to lie here and pretend my pulse wasn’t pounding a mile a minute when we were fighting those mobsters out there.” He sported a small knowing grin at him. “You know what that’s like, though, don’t you…”

(Yes, he did.)

“…you know what’s funny? I used to think one bad day could turn a person completely upside down.” John managed to stroke his thumb against Bruce’s knuckle, sending a little shiver over the skin, and Bruce wondered if John knew how incredibly intimate that gesture felt as he stared softly at him from the pillow. “Especially after Waller came to town… But…I never really thought things could go back up after it. I guess it just…takes a while.”

Bruce knew there was something right in John’s line of thinking. It only took one day to turn his life on its head, and he felt he knew, despite John having no memory of his life before Arkham, that something similar had happened to him. “Well…they say time heals all wounds.”

“How much passed before yours started to heal?”

He almost didn’t want to answer. The truth was that he wasn’t sure at all if he was ever going to fully heal, despite knowing what his parent’s really were. Maybe it was because he knew the terrible truth about them that they wouldn’t ever heal right. Maybe he’d always have that miserable note in the background of his life.

“…I’m still healing.”

“I didn’t say you stopped, buddy,” John chuckled with a knowing look. “Still…got good days and bad days, huh?”

“Feels like it, yeah.” Today…was definitely more of a mixed day. Looking at John across from him, though, all honest and open, and thinking back to how it felt to fight alongside him again, and investigate with him, with that warmth and instant familiar comfort between that never faded away, he almost felt like he wanted to call it a good day. “Today might have tilted things right-side up.”

John laughed, a genuine, humored one that was almost infectious. “Now I know I’m rubbing off on you; that sounds like something I’d say!”

John slipped his hand away and turned to lie on his back, still chuckling to himself. The warmth still burned in Bruce’s palm, and he found himself reluctant to pull his hand away at all.

John turned to him once more, an all-too-familiar affection shimmering brightly in the green depths. It pulled Bruce in and made him feel like he should inch close enough to feel the warmth and security it promised. “’Night, Bruce.”

“Goodnight, John.”

John turned over, leaving Bruce to stare at the bruises forming on his shoulders. There was the terrible temptation in his hands to shove the pillow between them aside and wrap his arm around the man’s middle so he could lean into that pale, battered back and bury his face in a head of soft, green hair.

There was a worse urge, one so vivid it almost made Bruce’s head spin – he could just reach out and touch the bruises, feather-light, and trail his fingertips down the curve of spine until it arched with a pleased shudder, and Bruce could follow that trail with his mouth as far as John would let him.

Bruce turned his head away, the memory of John’s lips on his coming to the front of his mind, and he shut out the mental image of repeating that kiss right then and there, telling himself that he really shouldn’t feel that way towards someone who desperately needed support, nor to his best friend who he’d left scarred in more ways than one, and certainly not someone who was both.

It had been a long time since Bruce shared a bed with someone, and far, far longer when he shared one with someone he didn’t have sex with.

He hoped that was all it was. Just the bed’s memory getting to him, and nothing else…

Notes: Super-sexy-plant-person-in-her-late-twenties Ivy is OUT. Cougar-aged-mobster-botanist Ivy is IN! >:)

I really wanted a different Ivy. I’m tired of the young, uber-sexy walking plant-human-hybrid that’s immune to all toxins and diseases; plants get diseases, too, and she’s so plant-like she should have some kind of physical humanizing weakness! It’s much more interesting to have a human who’s just built up an immunity and uses her babies for weapons and business; I kept her serious environmentalist trait, though, because while I dislike the anti-hero thing she’s got going on lately and would love to see her as a straight-up villain again, we do have to relate to her somehow, and her love of nature is always going to be a good part of her. Since Harley’s older, too, I figured it would be alright if they had a ten-year gap between them, so when Pam eventually goes to Black Gate one day, they’ll be pals. ;)

And Bruce you complete fool!!!! You should’ve kissed him!!! Why do you do this to yourseellllfff? D:

I'm sorry it took so long, but as you can tell, I had a lot to work on, and I’m doing my best to write the next chapter as quickly as I can while this nutty energy in my brain is still fresh. I’m trying to keep with my weekly schedule, but I hope you guys are okay with having a gap day, as appears to be the habit now. ( ._. ) I mean, no one yells at me or anything for being late, but I aim to please with my work, and part of that is being consistent.

I shall continue to try my hardest! (*｀へ´*) 彡3 See you next weekend!!!

#batjokes #telltale batjokes #juce #atbom #at the brink of midnight #fordarkisthesuede writes #I had a lot of fun coming up with a different ivy!#i like the idea that she heads her own gang despite being rather anti-people #like she doesn't even consider them when the JUCE force shows up #then again goons are rather expendable in the batman universes aren't they?#i can't believe i worked in a nod to TFS's playthroughs of TT bats #i still laugh when i rewatch the first season and they just let Selina drop #all because they were curious to see what would happen #so will ivy's info have an impact on future events?#only time will tell.........#also i'm serious about those writer vibes #i'm sending 'em all out #you'll all do great this week i can feel it #p.s. the ao3 chapters are already edited properly so i'll fix the tumblr ones asap

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epicfics · 6 years

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HUMANS one-shot: HEAVEN RAINING

So this is a scene I envisioned for episode 8, even though I know it won’t happen because we can’t have nice things. Anyways, if you haven’t seen episode 7 I’m not sure if you want to read this.

*This is the second time I’ve used first person POV for a Humans fic, the first time for first-person, past tense. I chose a Leo story because I really like writing for him...everything’s so serious and observant yet at the most random times he’ll say/think something hilarious. Plus, I found it really cathartic going inside his head and thinking about things the way I thought he might be.

HEAVEN RAINING

Dusk was fading in. Cloaking all that the sun touched with the colour of crushed forget-me-nots, I thought my eye caught the spark of a falling star as it took in the balcony jutting high above my head. The sight moved the ground under my feet, turning it to air and water until I was dizzied. And, as though by a time machine, I was home.

My mother was in front of me, pointing past my open bedroom window into a world of velvet black sky. Beaming down at me, she said, “Heaven is raining, love. It’s time to make a wish!” Then she scooped me into her arms and carried me outside to the balcony. Her laughter was contagious as the meteor shower soared like fireworks, and I must have wished for what any child would wish from a star. More toys, more sweets. Maybe a unicorn.

“Beatrice!” Strong as a brass bell, my father’s voice echoed from behind us. “Bring him back from the railing, now.”

Mother gave me a soft kiss on the cheek and turned us back to face him. “Don’t tell him what you wished for, Leo,” she whispered.

“Leo.” Another voice pulled me to the present. Another mother. One whose daughter I had, in more ways than one, ruined for life. Laura’s furtive glance at me said all of that, as well. When she’d summoned me from amid the power crisis at the railyard, she’d said almost as much. “I know what’s going on over there is urgent, but Mattie’s situation is – quite directly – your responsibility. So move it, I’ll give you an address.”

For sure, she had an admirable way of working a conscience. It must have made her a brilliant lawyer. Not that I’d needed so much convincing, granted – even with Max, Mia, and Sam at low battery life, I was ready to turn myself in for Mattie’s freedom.

But rather than the door to a police station, we were standing in front of one to a mansion.

“Who lives here?” I asked Laura.

“A scientist. I worked with him on the commission.” Her voice was both quick and hushed, like a small deer disappearing into the wood. “He helped engineer Operation Basswood.”

So we were seeking an audience with the man facilitating the murder of my family. My insides pained with a longing, torn between saving them and doing what was right. “I thought we were here for Mattie.”

“We are.”

“Laura, please, just hand me over to Scotland Yard.” I felt hoarse with nerves – with hope, really – to leave before Dr. Death opened his door. “Tell Mattie I’m sorry for everything, and that I want her to be happy. Just let me go.”

Laura Hawkins’s eyes held a shine under the starlight. It was both wary and thoughtful. “Do you love her, Leo?” she asked suddenly.

The words in my head were vanquished by her question. “I what?” I said, sounding as stupid as I felt.

Mattie’s mother sighed. “I said, do you love my daughter?”

I had no answer for her. Did I love Mattie? When there were so many forms of love, what did she even mean? My memories flashed from my childhood to a more recent one, of pleading with Mia to give me the location of her flat. To my surprise, she’d said no, and told me to figure myself out. Figure out what I wanted. As though by divine symmetry, I’d looked up at saw her. A girl who’d been there for me, in a way that few had been lately. And I enjoyed her company too, in a way that I rarely did with anyone. Mattie was my first real friend in this world.

But did I love her?

The door opened, revealing a greying, thin-haired man with a bottle of scotch in his hand. “Laura,” he greeted her while side-eying me, both of us receiving the tone I supposed was reserved for hikers that ran afoul of irritated grizzly bears. “I was sure you wouldn’t be back, now that you’ve got your answers about Basswood.”

“This is about something else, Neil,” Laura told him, and within moments of being ushered inside I had to suppress a wild urge to laugh. Marble countertops, satin curtains, and cherry wood everywhere. What was it with scientists and their lavish homes?

The scientist, Neil, waved an impatient hand at me. “Who is he?”

Before I could speak for myself, Laura said, “This is Leo. He’s a friend of my daughter’s.”

The man raised an eyebrow in realisation. “So this visit has to do with your daughter?” Laura nodded, and the oddest thought struck me at that moment. Neil and I both were learning why Laura had brought me to him at the same time. It could have been…was she expecting a decision from me that even I was not yet planning?

A shadow passed over Neil’s face, and I heard his words before they left his mouth. “I canna do a thing.”

Because he already knew about Mattie.

He half-shrugged, downcast. “Between the news on the telly and Lord Dryden himself calling, I heard about this an hour after she was taken in. Laura, I’m sorry, but you know what this is for me.”

“No,” she said quietly, “I don’t. What is this for you? Justice for losing your son?”

Neil shook his head, his neck taught as he drank from the bottle.

Though I was paying close attention to this interaction, my chest heaved with impatient breaths. What was I doing here? There was only one sure way to help Mattie, and Laura wasn’t letting me do it. Instead we were in a pointless session with a man who blamed my friend for the loss of his son, when it wasn’t even…

Ah.

I stepped forward, clearing the tickle in my throat. “Hey if you want to punish someone for that, try me.”

Although Neil blinked in surprise, Laura didn’t even cast a glance at me. She knew this was my card to play.

He folded his arms. “So that was your code then?”

More or less, though I wouldn’t say it yet. “Mattie got it from me. We didn’t know…we didn’t mean for any of the tragedy on Day Zero to happen.”

Finally angry, Neil snapped at Laura, “Why’d you bring him here? You should be telling the police, not me.”

I shot him a helpless, wry smile. “My thoughts exactly.”

Now Laura looked annoyed. She held up a “one moment” finger, pushed me to the foyer, and said, “What are you doing?”

I shrugged. “What am I supposed to be doing?”

“Open up to him!” she hissed, her eyes slightly wild with desperation. “Tell him your story.”

I frowned. Give the man who was throwing a lit match on everything I had left to care about an autobiography? Laura was a smart woman, but sometimes she made no sense.

She sighed. “I asked before if you loved Mattie. Do you know why? Because she’s heartbroken, Leo. I don’t think it’s going to make her condition any easier if she never sees you again. Neil’s a behavioural scientist, which means out of everyone we know he’ll have the best chance at figuring out how to keep everyone out of prison.”

Earlier, Max’s duplicitous friend Anatole had nearly bashed my head out, and my face looked like it met a bad day with a razor. But that was nothing to the wind Laura Hawkins had just knocked out of me. Then she threw at my unprepared psyche, “If you tell me that you never want to see her again, I’ll turn you in myself.”

Never see Mattie Hawkins again. Never share the jokes that we had about being friendless, never confide in each other the things that no one else would understand. Never share a cup of tea under a sky of shooting stars.

Did I want that?

I shook my head and marched past Laura into the kitchen. She was just starting to follow as I said to Neil, “My father gave me that code. His name was David Elster, and he created the prototypes for five conscious Synthetics for me.”

Neil squinted at me like I’d just dropped from his ceiling. “Excuse me? David Elster…?”

“Right,” I said, hoping he could keep up before I lost my nerve. “I was traveling with four of the conscious Synths three years ago when we got separated. After my father died, they were all the family I had, and then Mattie brought me one of them. Mia.”

I stopped then because he shot a startled glance at Laura, which meant he'd at least heard about the first Synth to rent a flat in London about as much as the next person.

He wasn’t going to break my momentum, though. “Mattie helped me figure out the code my father had left behind, and when she uploaded it, it wasn’t to create chaos or death. I’m sorry for your loss, truly, but when Mia’s system was crashing Mattie did it to save her. None of us imagined the consequences.”

I looked away from the scientist now, and the lawyer, and imagined it was just me saying this to myself. “But if you need a pound of flesh in the face of all this truth, it should be me. Mattie’s a good person – the best I know, in fact. The guilt of this has been eating at her for a year, and she nearly turned herself in last week for it. But in another year,” I drew a deep breath, finally ready to say it, “she’s going to be a mother. I hope the anger from losing your own child won’t destroy the life of another.”

Neil’s eyes widened at this revelation, and he said to Laura, “Why didn’t you just open with that line?”

Laura smiled at me, tentatively. “I don’t know. I wanted to cover all my bases with you, Dr. Sommers.”

He shook his head, half-marveling, half-outraged. He jabbed a finger at me and said, “Aren’t you dead, lad?”

I raised my eyebrows, not ready to go into that. “I’m not anymore.”

Neil groaned. “What a headache you’ve given me. I’ve finished my scotch. One of you owes me a drink.”

“Will you help us?” asked Laura breathlessly. For someone who was counting on it, she sounded like she could scarcely believe it now.

“Aye,” said Neil, but his gaze was on me alone. “It all falls to you, Leo. Coming out with this information will alter public perception, Day Zero will be seen as a misguided heroic attempt rather than as a cyber terror attack, and the girl will likely get pardoned. Especially with the child. Yours, innit?”

I nodded shortly, then repeated, “Likely?”

He scowled. “You like my odds, or the ones stacked against her right now?”

Laura said, “I’ll take it. Thank you Neil.”

But the scientist shook his head. “I’m not doing this for you, Laura. With all due respect, but you lied to me. You’ve used me for information, and you’ve used my loss against me. But your daughter dinna do any of that, and it sounds like if I’m gonna use my heart instead of my head for once, it might as well be for a pair of kids who dinna know any better.”

Truer words were never spoken. Mattie and I hadn’t known any better, and if we had then a lot of terrible things probably wouldn’t have come out of it. But then again, perhaps something good had come out of it too. Earlier, I’d been remembering my parents. A mother who loved me, but couldn’t care for me. A father who could have cared for me if he’d wanted, but couldn’t love me.

And if I had a child, was I really incapable of either caring for or loving it? Is that what I was afraid of? Because if there was one thing of which Anatole reminded me, it was that I wasn’t David Elster. I imagined going back to that balcony of my childhood and knowing my wish. It was the same wish I’d made moments before going into Dr. Neil Sommers’s house.

Meanwhile, Neil was staring at me. “You know, not to be a downer, but you will have to say goodbye to nearly any form of privacy you’ve ever known. Cameras in your faces twenty-four seven, doling your life story out to jurors, journalists, and random hatemongers alike. There’ll be death threats.”

Sounds like fun. I swallowed and said, “Yes, I understand.”

“Hmm. Mattie must be something precious to you.” Another knowing glance at Laura.

Do you love my daughter? she’d asked me more than once. Did I love Mattie, my first and only real friend, the one who’d stayed at my side while I was comatose and who’d shared her life with me…who’d shared everything she could with me? Someone who was a far better person than me, and made me wish I was better in return? Did I love the woman who was carrying my child?

I’d wished for a family, whole and complete. Don’t be an idiot, I thought as I saw her soft-featured face in my mind.

“I love her very much,” I spoke out, my voice clear, palms unsweaty.

And as Laura and Neil shared a smile, I knew things were never that simple. Did I love Mattie as a friend, or as family? Or was I madly in love with her? But there were many forms of love, and I didn’t have to pick which category Mattie fell under yet. The best thing that ever happened to me didn’t come from a shooting star. It came from her.

THE END

#humans #humans fanfiction #humans spoilers #potentially #leo elster x mattie hawkins #leo elster #leotilda #hcn #humans creativity night

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florrickandassociates · 7 years

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TGF Thoughts: 1x05-- Stoppable: Requiem for an Airdate

1x05 thoughts under the cut.

This is big, guys: the first five word title in The Good history.

Did I accidentally press play on an episode of Law & Order? Obviously I didn’t, but TGF isn’t even trying to disguise the inspiration for this week’s case. It’s very clearly about Unstoppable, an unaired episode of SVU starring Gary Cole (yes, Kurt McVeigh) as a Trump-like figure. It’s so clearly about L&O that they’ve used the same font and titled the TGF episode “Stoppable: Requiem for an Airdate.”

In this episode, the COTW explores what it would be like if there were a suit brought against an episode’s writer who leaked the full episode online when the network refused to air it. Julius Cain sees this as confirmation the firm is “anti-Trump.” Adrian believes this is a first amendment issue because, he believes, political pressure is the reason the episode has been postponed. I believe that argument (though I think it would be hard to prove) but I’m not sure how applicable it is to the network suing a writer for distributing copyright material.

“Simple matter of fact, you voted for the man,” Adrian retorts when Julius tries to argue against him. Adrian, you’re going to need a stronger argument than that for court. Also, didn’t you promise Julius you would not treat him differently because of how he voted, and that you wouldn’t tell others? I’m sure word’s gotten around, but a little discretion, Adrian?

Diane walks in late and Lucca explains the case to her. The writer is an acquaintance of hers, and he works on “one of those Chicago shows.” They’re deciding if they want to take it.

Ugh Julius.

“Have you listened to anything the man said?” Adrian asks when Julius tries to defend 45 on the particulars. Thank you, Adrian.

Julius tries the “if it was Obama or Clinton…” retort. Nah, DON’T EVEN. This devolves into overlapping political rants as Barbara tries to get the men to calm down and Lucca quietly explains the case to Diane.

The lawyers have trouble coming up with an actual argument to use against the network. Diane suggests fair use, which seems weird to me because, in my very limited knowledge of legal things relating to copyright law, that’s what people talk about when they make gifsets and fan videos, not when they upload full length episodes. But I will set this aside, because 1) I don’t actually know anything about the law, and 2) The important thing here is that Diane is contributing to the conversation, reminding us all that she’s a good lawyer.

Barbara calls Adrian outside. “Adrian. Why are we doing this?” she wants to know. This is yet another one of those moments where Adrian’s leadership style rubs me the wrong way. He always seems to be making decisions without Barbara, and then catching her up to speed as though none of her concerns are valid and she needs to have everything explained to her. Barbara shouldn’t have to ask the question “Why are we doing this?” as frequently as she does. If they’re partners, she shouldn’t ever be asking that question in this context.

Adrian’s explanation is that he wants to get his foot in the door with all the Chicago TV productions (of which TGF, of course, is not one). I don’t like that he has to explain it to Barbara, but I like this explanation… and for once, it actually feels like the show is kinda sorta tuned in to things happening in Chicago.

Barbara accepts this explanation and changes the topic to Diane’s capital contribution, which they still haven’t received. “Hey, can that wait a week?” Adrian asks. You mean a week on top of the several weeks real time it’s already been? “Not if we want to be consistent,” Barbara replies.

“Okay, I need you to do it,” Adrian says. Oh? “How come I always have to do all the dirty work and you get to go and have fun in court?” Barbara wonders. Good question. Also, how come Adrian gets to assign tasks? “’Cause you’re so good at the dirty work,” Adrian answers. “I hate when you disguise curses as compliments,” Barbara says. I like that line. I don’t like that she’s still saddled with having to do what Adrian says, especially since every discussion between these two tends to end this way.

Kresteva arrives at RBK. He’s looking for Maia, and he wants to discuss the fake news. Yesha is there, which means either Kresteva waited around long enough for Yesha to get to RBK or Yesha was already there talking to Maia. If it’s the latter, again, I ask: DOES MAIA EVER ACTUALLY HAVE WORK TO DO?

“This article is completely false. It is untrue,” Maia insists. Kresteva won’t believe that it’s false, because someone in the article said they sold her jewelry. “Did you try calling the store?” Maia wants to know. This is logical. Who cares what someone said? Wouldn’t there be, you know, a receipt? Some kind of record? Surveillance footage? Kresteva makes me so mad.

“I just don’t understand how this article could get so much wrong,” Kresteva says. Yes, Mike, and I don’t understand how the novel I’m reading right now is about people who never actually existed. It boggles the mind.

“It makes up stories to encourage clickbait,” Yesha says of Fake News, which seems like a weird use of the word clickbait. The stories are made up to encourage clicks, not to encourage clickbait.

Kresteva has more evidence: the story is on 12 other sites, some of which are well-respected. “How do you account for that?” Kresteva asks. Ooh! Pick me! I know! I know! It’s one of two answers: 1) The legit news sources offered proper context for the allegations and said they could not confirm them or 2) The legit news sources only reported on this because the writers needed to say they did (Fake News is a real problem, but to my knowledge, Real News outlets reporting Fake News as fact is not as much of a problem). I guess there’s always a third option, that Maia did go on a spending spree, but I doubt that.

Like, I really don’t think a legit news source would think a fake story is fun and then run it without a disclaimer that it’s probably fake? The main problem with legit news sources in this day and age seems to be how they frame facts and what makes the front page (THE EMAILS, YOU GUYS, THE EMAILS) and what doesn’t.

But even Kresteva knows the jewelry story is fake: once Maia’s agitated enough, he asks her about a different story: one about her visiting her father in prison. Yesha chimes in to say she was there for that meeting; nothing happened. But Kresteva’s ahead of her, somehow (he shouldn’t be, since we know Yesha has a Maia Chumhum Alert!), and he means the other two visits. Yesha denies it, but Maia has to stop her, and Kresteva knows he has something.

And, as much as I hate Kresteva and his smirk and his lies, this was entirely predictable. You don’t have to be a Kresteva-level super villain to question Maia about something risky and likely illegal that she did without covering her tracks well. Hell, there’s probably security camera footage of Maia with the Schtup List! Sorry, Maia. I hate to let Kresteva be right, but… yeah.

Diane observes Kresteva leaving his meeting with Maia, and Marissa observes Diane observing Kresteva. “What’s wrong?” Marissa asks. She also says that “Mrs. Kolstad wants to see you now.” And, yes, Marissa said “Mrs.” Did Sarah slip up, or is Barbara married?!

“Are we in trouble?” Marissa asks. “Because I need this job.” Before I can even think anything snarky about how Marissa could probably charm/network her way into a different assistant job pretty easily, Diane sarcastically replies, “Oh, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“We’ve had to make a difficult decision here,” Barbara begins. “Uh oh,” Diane says. “That’s what we tell associates when we release them.” You’re on the right track, Diane.

Barbara levels with Diane about the capital contribution, and Diane says she understands. If they don’t get the contribution in a week, Diane will have to be “of counsel” which means (I had to look it up because, shockingly, seven seasons of TGW didn’t teach me everything I could ever need to know about the law!) that she’d be affiliated with the firm but not an associate or a partner.

Diane accepts this too, and then warns Barbara they should get a lawyer for the firm because Kresteva’s questioning Maia.

Yesha asks Maia why she went to see her father. GOOD QUESTION. Maia explains the Schtup List.

“So you do know, by doing this, by helping your father, you’ve implicated yourself in wrongdoing?” Yesha asks. I FUCKING HOPE MAIA DOES, BECAUSE I KNOW THAT AND I AM NOT A LAWYER.

“He’s my father. What could I do?” Maia asks. I am sympathetic. But you could, like, not implicate yourself. Why would your dad ask you to implicate yourself for his benefit? Why would he need Maia to get the information? Why wouldn’t his own attorney’s investigator be looking into this?

“You can keep yourself out of jail,” Yesha says, which is more of a warning than an answer. The stakes have changed. Maia’s not looking at bad publicity that makes her look like a spoiled rich girl. She’s looking at jail time now.

I’m starting to have a Maia problem, show! I like the idea of Maia—a privileged young woman who’s gone through life without ever having to worry about making big choices or being able to provide for herself who’s suddenly faced with a scandal that destroys everything she thought she knew about the world, her parents, and the things she’s taken for granted. I like the way Rose Leslie plays Maia. I like Maia’s relationship with Amy (a lot, and I need it to come back on screen soon). What I don’t like is the execution of Maia’s plots. Outside of the first two episodes, where she had scenes with Amy (again, #BringAmyBack), Maia doesn’t seem to have an interior life. She doesn’t like being harassed—okay, but who does? That thread needs to be pushed farther. What is the harassment doing to her? Are her friends calling her up, wondering if all the bad things are true? Is the harassment feeding into the self-doubt she’s experiencing as a result of having her world turned upside-down? Is it making it hard for her to concentrate at work? There are so, so many ways the show could go deeper here.

Instead, we just see the surface. We see that there’s a lot of harassment and fake news, but not how Maia takes it. We see that she’s not working (no, I’m not letting go of this) but we don’t see any plots about why someone in her situation might, understandably, have trouble focusing. We see her getting involved in conspiracy drama a lot, but we rarely see her questioning her parents (y’all, we shouldn’t need to see Lenore fucking her brother-in-law and Henry implicating Maia in the scandal to understand why Maia might mistrust them). We see her sitting in the office, but we don’t see anything about what it’s like to be a 25 year old who’s been in school for as long as she can remember finally entering the workplace in her first job. We see that she and Diane work in the same place, but, outside of Inauguration and that scene in The Schtup List where Diane encourages Maia to talk to her mom, we don’t see Diane mentoring her and we don’t see how they interact.

The writing for Maia is just not there. And that makes me sad, because it’s like the writers aren’t even trying. There are no botched attempts at deepening her character—no, the attempts we’ve seen are actually quite good! The problem is there are very few attempts at all! How can a show that’s so good at characterizations so consistently miss the mark with Maia, and during the episodes where it counts the most?! Maia is always off in her own world, involved in a conspiracy I’ve known about for less than a month and am already tired of, and… why?

(I think I said this last week, but omg, PLEASE PUT MAIA ON A CASE ALREADY. COTWs are wonderful things, structurally, because they necessitate character interactions. Have Maia do some research for Lucca. Or have her in court, observing and offering her recommendations when appropriate. Literally anything that gets her feeling like part of the show and not like a girl who’s never faced consequences continuing to behave like she will never face consequences.)

(I don’t believe that’s necessarily how they’re trying to portray Maia. That’s just what I think the writers run the risk of by having Maia never actually working.)

Kresteva meets with Henry Rindell. Boy, that police brutality task force sure has a wide scope.

The woman representing the network in the COTW is someone that I suspect will become a recurring character if this show runs for longer than these first ten episodes. She feels both pleasant and aggressive. Her name is Amber Wood Lutz.

And the judge is someone who has apparently been in four episodes of TGW, but aside from thinking he looks vaguely familiar, I don’t have any impression of him.

Diane is considering downsizing her apartment again in order to get her capital contribution together. (Doesn’t she only have a week? She can’t sell her apartment in a week, can she?)

Someone’s there to see Diane: It’s Kurt!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Marissa offers to stay and take notes. Heh.

“She’s… chatty,” Kurt remarks after Marissa leaves. “She is that, “Diane replies. Diane doesn’t quite know what to say to Kurt, but she looks happy to see him. I really hope these two can work it out, because they’re so good together.

“You called?” Kurt reminds her. Diane denies it, but Kurt saw the call “last night.” Wait, that call towards the end of 1x04 was the day before 1x05? (I’m really bad at not nitpicking the timeline.)

Diane calls it an accidental dial, but we know the truth. (Last week, I wondered why Diane hung up after only letting it ring once. Guess that was intentional after all!)

Kurt’s there to ask a favor: he’s giving a speech to the police association and wants Diane to take a look at it. Couples revising speeches/pieces of writing is apparently something I am very, very into so this request makes me happy.

Kurt leaves Diane a gift, which she opens, curiously. It’s a gun, and I think she likes it.

Case stuff happens. Amber makes the point about fair use being about brief excerpts. Thanks, Amber!

Now they have a co-exec producer on the stand and there must be some inside jokes going on here. It somehow devolves into writer dude and co-exec producer dude screaming at each other about Yale and Princeton. I’m amused. Especially by the fact that the judge agrees that he hates Yale. For a second, I thought he must be the Harvard judge from 4x02, but he’s not.

Fair use doesn’t work, but Adrian isn’t ready to give up.

The next scene is simply bizarre. Adrian, Barbara, Diane, and Lucca (I guess because they’re ones Kresteva is targeting) interview a lawyer. It’s some white dude who rambles a lot, and then begins to rap??? I’m not sure what’s going on or why it is happening or what the hand gestures accompanying it are, but I’m here for the confused/stunned/trying not to laugh reactions it receives.

It’s Lucca who decides they should call Elsbeth. This is weird, as Lucca has not (as far as I can recall) ever dealt with Elsbeth and Diane has used Elsbeth to help several times. But, whatever.

At the restaurant where the interview takes place (which they’ve filmed at several times), Diane runs into Neil Gross. He calls her over. She asks how he’s doing. “Harried, angry, worried,” he replies. Diane tries to make conversation, but Neil keeps cutting her off—he likes the sound of his own voice; he likes seeming like a friendly guy but ultimately just talking about himself. He is interested in Diane’s firm because it’s all African-American.

Neil whispers to Diane that he’s looking for a “fighter” and wants to come to her firm. This feels very planned out, no? He happens to know where she works and happens to show up at the same restaurant?

Elsbeth is working on her own again, and now she’s rented office space in a children’s dentist’s office. We don’t know it’s Elsbeth at this point, but it couldn’t be anyone else.

Elsbeth still has the same laptop with the foam flower stickers that she’s had since season 1. Does that thing still work? Adrian finds this incredibly weird, which, fair.

And then Elsbeth appears! She greets Lucca like they’ve met before, which I’m 99% sure they haven’t. Elsbeth mentions that she’s been in the hospital, and that there was disagreement over whether or not she was sick. I just rewatched her first scene in 7x15 (skimming through for Elsbeth/Lucca scenes) and she mentions high blood pressure there—a connection?

Then she remembers to greet Adrian, and by greet I mean she says, “God, you’re tall” and while looking surprised.

I love Elsbeth.

“Our firm needs a lawyer, and Alicia once gave me a piece of advice,” Lucca begins. Elsbeth looks so delighted to hear Alicia’s name that it makes me smile even more than hearing Alicia mentioned usually does. Though Lucca is offering Elsbeth a compliment—Alicia’s advice is to hire Elsbeth when you’re in trouble—Elsbeth doesn’t respond to the compliment and instead responds to the mention of Alicia. “Alicia Florrick? I like Alicia. How is she?” Elsbeth asks.

But, TGF is determined to withhold that information. To that point: At the mention of Alicia, Elsbeth’s Alexa-like robot, Ada, begins to play Alicia Keys, interrupting our shot at hearing more about Alicia Florrick.

This moment made me cry when I watched it this morning. Yes—it made me cry. I knew TGF wasn’t going to give us updates on how/what Alicia’s doing, and I also know that’s exactly the approach I want it to take. But what I didn’t anticipate was that Alicia would be referenced multiple times in almost every episode and alluded to frequently. And I certainly didn’t realize that every time there’s a suggestion of an Alicia reference, I would move just a little closer to the screen, clinging to the hope that I’d find out just a little more about my all-time fave.

That’s why this scene hit me as hard as it did: when Elsbeth asked how Alicia was doing, I wanted to know, too. I was even a little hopeful we’d get something and nervous it wouldn’t be an answer I wanted. But before I could fully process my excitement, Ada began to play Alicia Keys. It was unexpected and funny, but it also took me out of the show. On the one hand, it’s Elsbeth quirk. On the other hand, it’s the show clearly maneuvering so that it doesn’t have to answer questions about Alicia. Ada playing Alicia Keys is reminiscent of the car horn that blares just as a witness is about to swear on the stand or the title credits in 5x10 coming in before Robyn can finish saying “holy shit.” It’s censorship on a show that’s uncensored. And it’s entirely self-imposed. Maybe I’ll be wrong about this, but my takeaway from this gag was that nudity’s fine now, the f-bomb can be dropped freely, and cases can be more overtly political: the only thing forbidden is sharing more of Alicia Florrick’s story.

And that’s why I cried, just a little. Because the set-up of this joke made me want more and then the punchline reminded me I can’t have it. And even though I know that’s for the best, I’m still sad.

I may also have cried from laughing at the absurdity.

Fantasia is still Elsbeth’s assistant—yay! I would love to meet Fantasia.

Elsbeth makes me happy.

Maia heads home; her dad’s been released on bail following his meeting with Kresteva. Maia asks why they changed their mind on bail. Henry replies with a lie—that he doesn’t know. Yeah, right.

I don’t know why Lenore is dressed the way she is, but alrighty then.

Henry says it feels like nothing’s happened now that he’s back home. Sure?

Maia says she can’t stay for pizza, she has to get back to Amy. This made think we would get to see Amy in this episode. Sadly, no.

Lenore steps away to answer a call, and Maia seizes the opportunity to tell her dad about her mom’s affair with Jax. Henry doesn’t seem to mind/understand fully. I would love to know what Maia’s relationship with her parents was like before the scandal. Did she always take her dad’s side?

Diane is looking at her lovely house in France again, and at the 1.5 million euro price tag. She then switches over to browsing cheap apartments in Chicago, and Diane, girl, whatever your search terms are, if that’s all you can find, THEY ARE THE WRONG ONES. There is a studio that doesn’t have a full kitchen for $1,500 a month, a room in a cluttered apartment with no furniture that’s $1,800 a month, a black and white picture of an apartment that boasts that it has “freshly painted walls” for $2,000 a month, and other options that are even worse. “Not happening,” Diane says. No, of course it’s not. I don’t know what kind of budget she’d be on after selling her apartment (I assume she owns) but I can’t imagine it would be so strict she’d need to live in a shitty studio that’s $2,000 a month. Try a different neighborhood, maybe?

Diane remembers she has to look at Kurt’s speech. It only takes a few lines before she realizes they’re going to need to talk this through. By the time Kurt arrives, the speech is covered in red marks, most of which say some variation of “SIMPLIFY!”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Diane reassures Kurt as she pours him a glass of wine. Diane explains her changes are all focused on one point: that the speech is too technical. She reminds him he’s able to explain himself well on the stand. What I love about this scene is its specificity. Not only is it a wonderful display of how Kurt and Diane interact—Diane is comfortable challenging Kurt’s opinions; Kurt is a bit obstinate but ultimately able to incorporate Diane’s feedback because he trusts her—but it’s also written in a way that makes sense given the strengths of the characters. Kurt knows how to describe the specifics with the precision required of a ballistics expert. Diane knows how to identify the main theme of a document, simplify it, and spin it into a story—because that’s what she does as a lawyer. And, not only does she know how to rewrite it, she knows how to work with Kurt, like she would if he were a witness, to get him to be the one to rewrite it. It’s collaborative, reminds the audience where both of the characters strengths lie, feels true to the personalities of both characters as well as the relationship they have, and we get to hear enough of the speech that it’s convincing—and apparent—that Diane and Kurt have significantly improved it by working together.

Case stuff happens. Network lawyer Amber ends up saying “fuck you” as she leaves a “settlement talk.” How professional.

Case stuff happens.

Elsbeth is creeping on Kresteva in a diner. Have I mentioned yet that I love Elsbeth? Whatever issues I had with overuse of Elsbeth or the shtick getting tired in the last few seasons have totally disappeared. I! LOVE! ELSBETH!

Case stuff happens and they go after someone important. Also, Colin appears to watch Lucca and he makes silly faces at her. Lucca gives him the finger behind her back, which makes me wonder if anyone sitting in the gallery behind her noticed.

After court, Amber warns Adrian that his strategy about going into entertainment won’t work if he’s going to embarrass important people in the business.

Meanwhile, Colin compliments Lucca and advises her not to be sarcastic in court. “This is so helpful, being graded, thank you,” she says sarcastically. “I think we have a sarcasm problem here,” he replies. Heh.

Colin tells Lucca he tried to get Kresteva not to go after her firm. Lucca just walks away. Colin calls her out on not thanking him, but Lucca explains that things have gotten worse and Kresteva’s still coming after them. Colin is not happy about this.

The TV writer is really pleased that Lucca was awesome in court, the kind of awesome you only see on lawyer shows. Not that we’re watching a lawyer show, or anything.

Adrian’s thinking about settling now, even though everything’s going well. He’s worried about what Amber said.

Meanwhile, Diane spots Marissa chatting with Neil Gross. Of course Marissa is chatting with Neil Gross. If Marissa was comfortable making small talk with Colin Sweeney, of course she’d be comfortable talking to Neil Gross.

“Look at this place! A real African-American law firm,” Neil Gross observes, sounding like he’s looking at a museum exhibit or something. LOOK AT ALL THE CUTE LITTLE MINORITIES, HERE FOR ME THE RICH WHITE MAN TO APPRECIATE! Ugh.

“Everywhere you look,” he adds. Um, just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you can talk about people like that. Marissa unhelpfully but hilariously points out that everyone involved in the current conversation is white. Funny, that. Gross reaches out to the one white lawyer (okay, the one white lawyer who actually does work, NOPE NOT LETTING THIS GO UNTIL THE WRITERS GIVE MAIA WORK TO DO) at the firm when what he’s looking for is diversity. How about that.

Gross likes Marissa and wants her to stay and take notes. I bet he doesn’t meet many people that act like that around him.

Neil Gross uses the word fight five times in this scene—and once in the earlier scene at the restaurant. He says it so many times I was wondering if he’d say “Keep on fighting the good fight” at some point. Anyway, he likes that RBK is fighting against the network in court. So, turns out they weren’t auditioning for the entertainment biz after all. Unfortunately for Diane, Neil is saying this just as Lucca and Adrian are advising the client to stop fighting the network. Diane rushes to stop that conversation.

Elsbeth sits down with Yesha and Maia. Yesha insists that some of Maia’s issues are only Maia’s, to which Elsbeth says, “then she should quit the firm, because her issues are hurting the firm’s interests.” Thanks, Elsbeth! I don’t think Maia quitting would get the firm out of this mess—from what I can tell, Kresteva’s strategy is “go after RBK for anything under the sun until they stop taking police brutality cases and word gets out what the DOJ can do to you if try to go into that business”—but I’m a little surprised Maia hasn’t offered to quit. Maia’s scandal is bringing all sorts of trouble to the people who were kind enough to take her on and it’s jeopardizing the business they’ve put their lives into developing. I don’t know how badly she needs this job (for financial reasons or for her mental health—hey show, if you showed her working you could show that it was a constructive escape for her, just a thought) but it’s almost weird to me she doesn’t feel guilty about the position she’s putting others in. Maybe that’ll come later? Or maybe she’s just having trouble believing she could be that much of a liability? Or maybe that kind of obliviousness is part of her entitlement.

Alternatively, what does it say about me that my first thought in this situation would probably be, “I need to offer to quit immediately”? Maybe I’m the strange one here.

“Why is your dad out on bail?” Elsbeth asks Maia. Maia doesn’t know. Maia tells Elsbeth about the Schtup List. Elsbeth’s next question is if any of the names are connected to the firm. They’re not—Maia already looked them all up (smart! Credit where credit is due—Maia’s first thought was to look up the names and that’s also where Elsbeth’s mind went. If you’re on the same page as Elsbeth that has to be a good thing).

Elsbeth compliments Maia’s lipstick in the middle of a sentence. It really is a nice lipstick. That color looks fantastic on Maia, and it’s just bright enough that I can understand why Elsbeth likes it so much.

As Maia explains that her lipstick is either Dior or Chanel, Elsbeth pieces it together: the names on the list aren’t the connection to RBK—Maia is. She downloaded the list and implicated herself. The only catch, Elsbeth reasons, is that that would “require your father turning on you, and wouldn’t turn on you, would he?” Maia isn’t sure. Arrrrgh. As I said before, I hate that Maia is in the wrong here, because she’s just trying to deal with family drama and it’s unfortunate that these very normal trust issues are playing out in the public and with lawyers involved… but she is in the wrong and did make her choices.

After Elsbeth leaves—after cautioning Maia to be suspicious of her dad—Maia looks upset and Yesha looks like she wants to say something. She decides against it.

It’s time for Kurt’s speech! He has, indeed, taken Diane’s advice. And, even better—Diane shows up to support him! He does a good job and his delivery is great. Diane looks on from backstage, proud. Once the speech is over, Diane compliments Kurt. He kisses her; she kisses back.

Fortunately for Maia, her dad has not turned on her. He still asked her to implicate herself, but he hasn’t given up her name to Kresteva. How do I know this? Because Kresteva says so in a vague, blink-and-you miss it line as he arrives home for the day. “Rindell’s still reluctant to give up her name.” And then, after a response we can’t hear: “No, just a more aggressive posture.” So, sounds like Kresteva cares about the Schtup List and causing panic at RBK than actually getting Henry to turn on Maia. But it also sounds like he strongly suspects that Maia is how Henry got his hands on the list.

So, fun fact about Kresteva’s house: It was once Jonas Stern’s house. I doubt it’s supposed to be that way in-universe, but it’s definitely the same one When Alicia, Will, and Diane went to after Stern died. I recognize the Frank Lloyd Wright inspired décor. (This also makes the show feel more like Chicago than usual.)

Kresteva arrives home to find his wife drinking and chatting with Elsbeth. They just happened to hit it off at Trader Joe’s when Elsbeth introduced herself as a “friend from work.” And now Elsbeth has all sorts of access to Kresteva’s personal life. But access isn’t the point: Elsbeth is showing Kresteva she’s not afraid, that she can make things personal too, and that she’s a step ahead of him.

Well, access might be the point too, since she’s been in Kresteva’s study.

And she left her business card on his desk (she calls her place of work “The Tascioni Firm”) so there’s no way he could possibly miss that she could have had access.

“Stay for dinner,” insists Deirdre Kresteva, who is currently drinking wine and eating ice cream out of the carton. You mean to tell me they haven’t eaten yet?

Mike walks Elsbeth out and threatens to have her disbarred. But Elsbeth doesn’t take uncalculated risks like that: she has something on him.

And, if you need proof that Elsbeth is the best ever (and that she’s perfectly suited to go up against Kresteva), she got an audio recording of Kresteva threatening her, which means he can’t lie about it! FINALLY. I wish everyone could say, “Yes, you did” and whip out an audio recording when Kresteva starts with his bullshit.

Kresteva calls it an illegal recording, and Elsbeth says it’s not because it’s used to contradict a lie. I’m pretty sure that of the three times we’ve seen Elsbeth make recordings, she’s cited three different reasons why it’s legal, but I don’t really care because I’m so excited about someone being able to refute Kresteva’s bullshit alternative facts.

In court, Adrian is now clearly auditioning for Neil Gross. This involves some hyperbolic comparisons that don’t impress the judge.

But the speech doesn’t matter. 45 tweeted about the case, and now it’s a First Amendment case. This is an important case for the show to have its characters win. It sends a clear message: it’s possible to fight back and win. (And the show is practicing what it preaches by being overtly political.)

Amber is pissed about her loss and tells Adrian it won’t help his business. Lucca wonders if that’s accurate—seems Adrian hasn’t looped her in on the Chumhum thing.

Lucca and Colin are having milkshakes, as promised. Colin asks Lucca to tell him about herself. He says he’s shared everything about himself and his family, but knows very little about Lucca. “There is nothing about me,” she replies. Nope, no way that’s true.

“Are your parents happy that you’re a lawyer?” Colin asks. “I guess,” Lucca replies. Colin complains that the conversation feels like a cross-examination. He has to ask if her parents are still alive, she’s that reluctant to share! (They are.)

He asks who her best friend is. Her reply is curiously phrased: “I don’t have a friend.” She doesn’t say she doesn’t have a best friend, and she doesn’t say that she doesn’t have friends (which would be the responses I’d expect). She says she doesn’t have “a friend.” I don’t know where I’m going with this; I just found her use of the singular “friend” weird.

And she repeats it, because Colin doesn’t believe her and makes her say it again!

Colin doesn’t believe her, and starts staring at her oddly. “What? Please don’t say you’re gonna save me,” Lucca teases. “No, I’m gonna kiss you,” Colin replies. “Okay,” she says as he leans in.

“Then I’m gonna save you,” he jokes. Heh. I can’t say I’m interested in Colin or learning more about him, but I don’t dislike him. My only fear about his character is that he’ll share the bulk of Lucca’s non-work related screentime, but that has very little to do with Colin as a character. And, I like that he has a personality outside of “Lucca’s love interest.”

They end up making out against a car, and the alarm goes off. They don’t care.

Cut to a really creepy shot of Lucca kissing Colin in bed. It took me a second to figure out what this was an image of (I must’ve had my screen on low brightness).

She decides to share some information about her life. To be more specific, she decides to share her feelings about her friendship with Alicia. “I had a best friend,” she begins. “Who?” Colin asks. “A co-worker,” Lucca replies. “He or she?” “She.” “Had? She’s not a friend anymore?”

“I think she is,” Lucca states. An odd thing happened when I watched this scene: I realized that the only part of TGF that’s actively harmed by Alicia’s absence is Lucca’s personal life. That’s not to say that Alicia needs to come back in order for Lucca to be complete or that this isn’t the right strategy—I trust that as Lucca and the show both get distance from Alicia, this will become much less of a problem, and it’s not a big enough issue to warrant an appearance from Alicia.

But, seeing how important to Lucca her friendship with Alicia was confirms something that many doubted in season 7: that Lucca didn’t just exist to be Alicia’s new friend without any interior life or problems of her own. Most of the discussion I saw about Lucca last year revolved around whether or not she was the “New Kalinda,” and it drove me crazy. Yes, Lucca was added to the cast because the show needed Alicia to have a female friend to talk to, and yes, she joined the show right after Archie left. But that was never all there was to Lucca. It’s just what dominated the discussion about her.

Watching Lucca in TGF feels like a counterpoint to those arguments. I’ve always thought Lucca’s friendship with Alicia was as much about Lucca as it was about Alicia (my 7x13 discussion of the laundry room breakdown scene makes this point), and I’m happy to see that TGF is embracing that aspect of the relationship. Nothing Lucca’s saying here feels new to me, and that’s fantastic. She’s mentioned before that she doesn’t have friends (she specifically says this in 7x13), and her loyalty to Alicia in season 7 suggested that she doesn’t take friendship lightly. It would be weird if Alicia’s absence didn’t affect Lucca, so I’m happy to give the show a little bit of leeway here. If the show has to be vague about Alicia’s whereabouts in order to develop Lucca without reopening The Education of Alicia Florrick, fine. I get why the writers would want to take that approach.

“I don’t make friends easily,” Lucca explains. “Why not?” Colin asks. “I don’t like to get hurt,” Lucca says. Lucca’s answer explains something I’ve been wondering about. Lucca is a friendly, nice person. She’ll stick up for others and offer her help. She has a social circle. She’s comfortable talking to people she doesn’t know, and she’s good at banter and small talk. Why, I wondered, doesn’t she have friends? It’s only after watching this scene that it clicked: being friendly and having friends are different things. And there’s a difference between being someone people would want to be friends with and actually being friends with people. I was missing the fact that Lucca intentionally maintains distance. (I know I keep going back to that 7x13 scene, but really: the certainty with which Lucca insists Alicia commit to their friendship is important. “I mean, do you have a ring or anything? I’ll commit,” she says. How fucking huge was that, for both Alicia and Lucca?!)

I don’t know what to make of “I don’t like to get hurt.” I don’t take that line to be about Alicia, since Lucca does say she thinks they’re still friends (maybe Alicia’s traveling and hard to reach?) and since Lucca’s reluctance to form friendships predates her first meeting with Alicia, so what’s she referring to? Is this a fear or did something bad happen? If so, what was it? Actually—I care less about what it was and more about when it was. Middle school? High school? College? After that? Did a friend actively hurt her, or was it a different type of pain? Some sort of loss? A best friend who moved? A friend who drifted away just when Lucca needed her to be there the most?

“You afraid I’m gonna hurt you?” Colin wonders. “No, I don’t get hurt by boys,” Lucca explains.

If we do have to sit through most of Lucca’s personal life screentime being shared by Colin, at least they’re using it to develop other elements of Lucca’s character, too.

Diane is looking at more real estate postings, and I feel the need to share that her search terms are even worse than I thought, since one of the places she’s looking at is in UPSTATE NEW YORK. It says it’s a 1.5 hour commute to the city, but I don’t think that means Chicago…

Kurt spent the night at Diane’s! He notices the moving boxes. Diane tells him she’s looking for a change. She doesn’t explain the financial constraints she’s under, but he can sense that she’s not packing up because she just decided to. He offers to let her move in with him.

She declines the offer. “It’s my problem,” she explains. Kurt accepts that answer and kisses her goodbye. As much as I’d love for Diane and Kurt to make it work, I’m glad they’re not moving in together out of desperation. They need to keep working through their issues, and I’m pleased (but not surprised) to see that Diane doesn’t want to rely on anyone to get her out of her current situation.

Diane shows up at work with an update on Chumhum. They’re going to get Neil Gross and his $58 million a year. Adrian wants to know if there’s a caveat, and there is. With a smile on her face, Diane explains that there’s a small one. “I like this firm a lot. I think it’s got a great future. But in good conscience, I can’t encourage Neil Gross to come here if I’m only of counsel.” I’m 100% with Diane on this one. Adrian, Julius, and Barbara want to postpone that discussion, but this makes complete sense to me. Why should Diane bother to bring in a $58 million/year client if she’s not going to have any equity in the firm? Out of the goodness of her heart?

It’s Diane’s next request I’m more skeptical of. She asks to be made a name partner. I have three very contradictory thoughts about this. The first is that Diane is not being unreasonable; she is a huge name, she’s landed a gigantic account, and shouldn’t be a junior partner in the first place. The second is that despite this, Diane makes this power play with little concern for the culture of the firm that took her in when no one else would. It’s the lack of awareness that concerns me more than the request. I take no issue with her wanting her old status back and wanting a seat at the table. I just wonder what kind of tone this will set for the firm, going forward, now that Diane’s suddenly gone from a junior partner with a moderate amount of influence to a name partner. As a junior partner, she’s already hired two white people without giving that a second thought; what kinds of decisions will she make as a name partner? Is she aware of how her presence on the masthead will change public perception of the firm? Does she care? The third thought is just that this is so fast. I was hoping to see more than five episodes’ worth of Diane fighting to stay afloat and adjusting to that lack of power. I was particularly hoping to see more plots about her interactions with Barbara, and while those plots won’t go away if she becomes a name partner, they’ll be different than what I was hoping for.

Adrian says they’ll have to check with the full partnership, but the answer is yes. I’ll believe this is really happening and there’s no last minute catch when I see Diane’s name on the wall and not a second earlier. Tbh, with this show’s track record, I might not even believe it then.

“She’s gonna be trouble,” Barbara says as Diane exits. Indeed.

#The Good Fight

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