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breakingsomething · 4 years

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Dawn Station - Pilot

Basic summary: Video game developer Jack Mcloughlin is finally releasing a new game after a ten year hiatus.

Content warnings: Murder, dismemberment, body horror

It comes as a shock to everyone, including you, when Jack Mcloughlin announces the release of a new game at the start of the second week of October.

There are several reasons why this is such a big deal. One: Jack Mcloughlin has been making games since he was twenty seven, and has released only five of them in the thirty years he's been doing it. Two: Jack Mcloughlin is world renowned for his fantastic horror games, all done in wildly different styles, but still notably his own. Three: Jack Mcloughlin has not, up til now, so much as mentioned working on a new game. The only social media site he's fully active on is Twitter - which you check regularly for any updates - and before the release of his last game, Ehrmann Lab, he had left a series of cryptic clues for two months leading up to the announcement. Those had been probably the most fun two months you'd ever had in your life, and even helped you make new friends. But this time around, there is no warning. The trailer is dropped at Purina Expo, one of the biggest American gaming conventions of the year. You were incredibly lucky to be able to snag tickets. Usually, this convention is where the hottest games that would be coming out the following year would be announced, trailers would be played, and developers would discuss - so everyone there on October 10th is shocked to not only be the first to see the trailer, but to hear from the man himself. Jack Mcloughlin takes the stage, gleefully announcing the release of Dawn Station on October 31st this year.

Now, the release of a new game from Septic Games - Mcloughlin's own software company, which he founded after his second game's release - is a big enough deal. But this… this is something else. Mcloughlin explains it before the reveal of the trailer, and you listen with great excitement.

"Dawn Station," says the man, practically bouncing across the stage with glee and shouting into his mic with a hoarse Irish accent. "is a feat of modern gaming. Now, I understand that when you play games, it can get boring to replay them later on after you've finished, because - well, you know how it goes! You know all the twists and turns, all the jumpscares, all the fights, all the spooks. But what if I told you that there was a way you could play where things were different each time?"

Behind the man, on a large screen, an image comes up. This is the first promo image for the new game to be shown to the people. The image is of a tilted hallway in what looks like a complex, broken down space station, overgrown with unusual plants that glow and spark. In the centre of the image is an astronaut. His helmet is on the floor, blood soaked. His face is half in shadow. All that can be seen is curly olive hair and neon green eyes - two on his face, and one embedded in his neck. The suit itself is torn, ripped open with a mouth and a dripping tongue where the being's stomach should be. A torch is on the ground behind him, attempting to cast light on the room. The words "Dawn Station" come up in solid, bright green font next to the being's face.

"This is Dawn Station!" cries the developer, over the many excited murmurs of the crowd. "The first ever virtual reality game with a fully developed artificial intelligence antagonist! An antagonist who learns from the players movements and choices, who grows and changes based off of what you do. You control the game, now more than ever! He's clever, he's learning, he knows where you are, and his objective is to kill the player - introducing... Alien X, otherwise known as… the Anti!"

Everyone cheers. Mcloughlin steps aside, a beam splitting his pale face, and allows the room to darken, and the trailer to play.

You're in awe. The trailer shows that you play as a character named Drew Oliver, an astronaut in their mid twenties who's aboard the Dawn Space Station, which has fallen to the planet you seemed to have been monitoring - the Othohiri 5RM. The game seems to revolve around attempting to explore the little bits of the planet that you can while repairing the ship and dealing with your descent into madness, all the while being chased down by the Alien X, a shapeshifting monstrosity who's eager to end your life before you can finish your goals. After watching it… well, everyone is absolutely blown away, especially you. This is unlike anything Mcloughlin had ever produced, especially to this scale. It's no wonder he hadn't produced a game in ten years if this was what he had been working on. You're practically vibrating with excitement at the breathtakingly beautiful scenery and realistic yet perfectly stylistic graphics, and the 8D sound design that seems to echo from all around you. It's incredible. The second you get back to your hotel room that night, you're one of the first to preorder the game.

Your week at the convention ends, and you go back home, counting down the days to the game's release. However, even more exciting things are happening. On Twitter, a few of your favourite youtubers are acting rather cryptic. KrisDoesGAMEZ and rrroadblock, two streamers you like, retweet Mcloughlin's announcement tweet with eye emojis and promises of the game being good. DUSSST, visualthursday and BroAverage make their own posts about it. PeachCheerio and TheSkinnerr upload short update videos promising exciting things to come.

On October 15th, it happens - ten youtubers each upload an early access demo of Dawn Station, having been chosen and given the code to play it by Mcloughlin himself. You don't watch the videos because you want to play the game yourself with no spoilers, but from what you've seen, it's fucking amazing. Critics are already calling it the game of the decade. The internet is thriving, and a few people have already cosplayed Drew, the main character. Your best friend uploads a joking cosplay of the Anti and walks around town with it on. He gets over a thousand likes and teases you about being too good for you now that he's internet famous. You're living for all of this.

On October 16th, youtuber PeachCheerio is murdered in his own home.

Everyone is shocked, rightfully. Here is a man who had streamed just the day before, chatting with his members and looking at Dawn Station memes on Twitch. Today, he was discovered by his girlfriend in his own home. Leaked police reports tell you that the man, whose real name was Ronald Murphy, had been messily dismembered, his organs removed, half of them missing. You're in shock. He was one of your favourite streamers, and maybe it's silly to mourn someone you've never met, but you're deeply, deeply saddened by the news.

However, it doesn't stop there. The very next day, youtuber DUSSST - or Louise Greendale - is found the same way Ronald had been. Louise's girlfriend apparently called the police in hysterics before panic tweeting about the incident. The posts were taken down an hour later. The screenshots of what she'd said trend of Twitter and Tumblr anyway.

This is when the conspiracy theories arrive. Two youtubers dead in two days, both brutally taken apart and missing organs? Some people mock the theorists for it. Who had even said Louise had been killed the same way as Ronald, anyway? That is, until more apparent police reports are leaked revealing the details of Louise's death. The internet goes wild. The Los Angeles police department posts a video begging whoever's causing the leaks to stop, to think about the families of the deceased. All this does is prove that they're true. This video, too, is later taken down.

You log off in disgust. Some people have no fucking shame.

Things heat up the next day, on October 18th, when user rrroadblock, or Aryan Jha, dies as well. The death is covered up for the first few hours afterwards, but eventually is leaked in the same manner as the last two murders. This time, the theorists are no longer labeled as crazy. In fact, everyone's getting in on this mystery now. Three popular youtubers dead now, each found in bloody states in their own homes, three days apart? No one knows what's happening, but that doesn't stop people from guessing. And while you refuse to involve yourself in any of this, you also find yourself wondering who or what - not what, of course it's not a what, that's just ridiculous - who is killing all of these people.

Day four. The internet is silent, waiting. And yes, sure enough, youtuber KrisDoesGAMEZ, or Kris Velvet, is dead.

This time, someone realizes something that makes everyone pause. Each of the dead youtubers are all the ones who were given the free demo of Dawn Station, and are even dying in the order that they played it in. Everyone goes insane. Even you're suspicious - of what, exactly, you don't know, because why would someone murder someone else so brutally over a video game? Despite that, this can't be a coincidence. People place bets on whether youtuber ducksontheroof, or Donna Campbell, is going to be the next one to be found dead. Donna herself makes a statement on her Instagram, expressing disgust at all the people who were spreading such information around. She then deactivated all her socials apart from her YouTube. The people who had been making bets were shamed, and you have to log off yet again. This is getting to be too much.

You stay offline until nearly four pm the next day. Your friend calls you up to give you the news, but you already know what they're going to say. Let me guess, you start, voice flat and tired. Donna Campbell's dead.

They confirm it. You don't know what to say.

Her family put out a statement asking people not to theorize about her death. People do it anyway. Reports state that the remaining five youtubers who had played Dawn Station, along with, surprisingly, Jack Mcloughlin himself, had been taken into police custody. For protection, you assume. Once again, the internet goes insane. This proves their theories about the game connecting all the deaths, and a silent dread and buzz of twisted excitement hangs over everyone. You're just disgusted. People are treating this like some kind of murder mystery game, like this isn't real, actual lives.

Two days pass without news. At the end of the second day, there's yet another leak. Youtubers Doomandgloom - Persephone Henry - and TheSkinnerr - Rodney Pratt - are dead. You're just numb. You're just so fucking numb.

This reveal, of course, inspires yet another debate. If the youtubers had been under police protection, how had they died? Had the police seen anything? Why hadn't the leak said anything about it? Who was killing all these people in so little time, how hadn't they been caught? Had, really, no one seen anything at all?

There are now three youtubers left who'd played the game. Hothothotstanley, or Stanley McIver, visualthursday, or Khia Herrera, and BroAverage, or Chase Brody. You met Stanley McIver, once, at a convention in London three years ago. You have a picture on your memory board of you standing in the convention hall, him with his arm around your shoulder, you with a grin and sparkle in your eye. You can see the picture from your bed. You turn away from it.

However, the next day is a surprise to everyone. A video is uploaded to someone's Twitter - a full, uncensored video of the murder of Stanley McIver inside the government safe house he and the others had seemingly been kept in. The video is immediately taken down and the Twitter deleted, but everyone has seen it. Including you. The video is… horrifying. Of course it is. Why did you watch it? But you do manage to see who it is that killed him. Everyone on the internet does. And this - this video, that's maybe five minutes long - is enough to make everyone go silent.

The killer looks exactly like the Anti from Dawn Station.

No one knows quite what to make of this.

Even less so when Jack Mcloughlin dies the next day.

He's murdered. Same way as all the rest of them, in police custody. Now this is enough to shock everyone into mourning silence. Only a few pricks are left, and their accounts, channels and blogs are swiftly deactivated. Nine deaths in nine days. Nine deaths. Nine. Jack Mcloughlin.

The next day, Khia Herrera - well, you know.

Chase Brody is the last one left alive. You never watched his channel that much - he's really into horror, and is known for his Walking Dead playthrough and his Undertale Genocide run - but you still already feel a strange sense of loss. A sort of emptiness. Something churns in your stomach that you don't understand. There's a lot that you don't understand.

The release of Dawn Station is cancelled.

You spend the night at a friend's house, and just bawl for hours. You shouldn't be so upset, you shouldn't! You never knew any of these people! But fuck, there's something about seeing all these people who you'd been watching online for so long, who have given you so many happy days, so many laughs and inside jokes… just die. How had this happened? Who was it who was doing this?

Your friend sadly suggests it's some sick Jack Mcloughlin hater who decided it'd be fun to cosplay as his newest character and kill people to scare everyone. But while you outwardly agree, you internally know it's not true. Because every time you watch that video, every time you watch Stanley die - and you watch it a lot, just trying to make yourself feel something, even if it's just sick - you can tell the person isn't human. You know that's ridiculous, of course. But there's something about its eyes. Its face. It glances up at the camera and makes eye contact, and grins with too many white, jagged teeth, like an anglerfish. The eye in its throat sees you too. It glows. You shudder every time, watching it shake with glitches and laughter.

You're scared. You feel sick and dizzy and you lock your doors out of fear. You stay inside and open Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram again.

Poor Chase Brody, says the internet. They're already mourning. Already accepted his death. Poor, poor Chase Brody.

You hope he's ok, wherever he is.

#dawn station #jacksepticeye #antisepticeye #boop writes

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robotslenderman · 3 years

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Still only partway through CP77.

Spoilers for the Death’s Head questline.

Warning: this involves my V ignoring canon, having a mental breakdown and expressing it by attacking poor, poor fucking Judy.

So like

My V was a complete fucking mess after the Heist and what happened there. Her best friend (and crush) was dead, she almost died, and she had a fucking terrorist in her head who could TOUCH HERRRR and had hijacked her body and hurt her, and she was going to die in a month and slowly lose control of her body to someone who wanted to hurt her.

She. Was fucking. Terrified. Even when Johnny offered an olive branch she didn’t trust him at all (something Judy would come to relate to, although my V hasn’t yet noticed the parallel).

So when Judy refused to give her any information on Evelyn?

V, who was absolutely scared for her life and having a mental breakdown after the death of her best friend, went to visit Judy.

With a baseball bat.

And used it.

I know this doesn’t make it better at all, but V did hold back a bit -- didn’t hit the head, pulled her punches on the body and spine, and mostly went for the legs. If any permanent damage was done, it wouldn’t be to Judy’s brain, it wouldn’t be to her hands or arms. Better she disabled Judy’s ability to walk if she went too far than fucking lobotomising her or fucking up her hands.

How fucking considerate of her, I know. V basically wanted to scare the shit out of her, made her think that other people were hunting down Evelyn (”if you don’t give me this information, I’ll just fucking kill you. I don’t need you. I can wait for someone else to find her first and drop in on them. So you better talk because otherwise you’re not getting out of here alive”), and made a big song and dance about how the only reason V wasn’t going to fucking annihilate Judy on the spot was because Jackie would never forgive her for turning into a complete monster.

Anyway. Poor Judy quickly blurted out the information about Clouds once she realised V was not fucking around. V threatened her again, then got the fuck out. And obviously hasn’t been back to Lizzie’s since.

When she calmed down she wrote Judy an apology letter. (I told my friend this. She was like “your V is fucking psycho.” Yeah.) She was like “look, I know an apology doesn’t mean jack fucking shit after what I did to you, but... idk man. send me what you owe the ripperdoc and I’ll square my debt to you.”

Yeah V, because contacting someone you fucking traumatised is a BRILLIANT FUCKING IDEA, I bet Judy wouldn’t be afraid AT ALL to send you a bill!

(Naturally, Judy didn’t reply and just sent some of the Mox. V gave them everything she could spare and told them to come back in a week for the rest. They roughed her up. She fought back enough to defend herself and eventually toss them out, but didn’t attack them because she knew that wouldn’t help Judy.)

Needless to say, when she ran into Judy at Fingers’ place Judy was NOT at all happy to see her and didn’t want to work with her at all. V basically gave her all the details she uncovered at Clouds -- by now she was actually pretty damn worried about Evelyn and she’d started coming to terms with the fact she was going to die, so she was far more concerned about finding Evelyn than getting anything from her, and was terrified Evelyn was dead.

But obviously Judy was still Mega Freaked Out and traumatised and wasn’t going to work with her. V didn’t offer, either. V didn’t try to scare Judy, but she was also a bit tetchy because Judy obviously didn’t want her looking for Evelyn still, and so V probably scared her a little still because V was like “look, I’m going to find her whether you like it or not, get out of my way. She is in big fucking trouble and I don’t have time for this.”

Judy followed her into Fingers’ room and watched her deal with Fingers. V was actually pretty calm when dealing with Fingers, then realised how fucked up it was that she beat up Judy but not this asshole, so she beat up Fingers too.

Nice, V. Way not to freak out Judy even more.

But obviously, Judy didn’t want to work with V like she did in canon. So V got the snuff film by herself. Unfortunately, she needed an editor, so this was the point where she reached out to Judy again. Sent her a text message that basically said, “This film could help me find Evelyn. Give me a time when you won’t be in and I’ll use your stuff to get into edit mode and track them down.”

V’s dumbass logic: “she probably doesn’t want to see me but I need this information, so I’ll just tell her to keep away from me.”

Judy’s response was “oh my god, even if you could do this without someone on the outside what the hell makes you think I’d let you on my tech unsupervised?!”

(V: “Oh. Right.”) “Do you want me to find Evelyn or not?”

“That’s not what I meant! Come in, but I’m operating the computer and I’m putting Mox in there with us, so don’t you dare try to intimidate me.”

“... Yeah that’s a much better idea. I just knew you wouldn’t want to be alone with me.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

(V, thinking a joke might put her at ease a bit, not realising it just makes her look like a psychopath anyway.) “It’s okay, I’ll leave the baseball bat at home.”

(Judy is not at all amused.)

So the questline continues the way it does in-game, except with a very jumpy Judy. It’s when they find Evelyn that Judy is freaked out enough to be distracted from V. V carries out Evelyn, speaking to her softly.

At this point V had totally come to terms with the fact she was going to die. And Evelyn was a complete fucking mess, and Evelyn was not going to talk even if V wanted her to. So my V didn’t even bother with that, just helped Judy get Evelyn the hell out of there.

Once Evelyn was settled in Judy’s apartment (it’s only later that Judy realises “oh shit, now V knows where I live”) Judy and V’s conversation went almost exactly as it did in canon, with the exception of the more trusting/loyal responses Judy gives you, which Judy simply omitted. V also elaborated on some of the stuff in her letter -- that V was dying because of the relic slowly overwriting her presonality, and she’d hunted down Evelyn because Evelyn could give her a lead to go on to reverse the process. But V still didn’t make any attempts to talk with Evelyn. V knew she was going to die. She wasn’t going to compound Evelyn’s trauma even more. When Judy expressed concern that other people were hunting Evelyn, V was like “oh, shit, no, actually, I was bluffing.”

“...”

“I wasn’t going to kill you. I just wanted to make you think I was. I don’t know of anyone actually trying to hunt her down, and I didn’t run into anyone at all while chasing up this information on her. So either she’s in the clear and nobody wants her, or they’re being damn subtle about it. Either way, since she’s in this condition she’ll be staying inside and lying low, so that’ll help her shake off any tail she might have.”

V gave Judy some more money, though not the full amount because she’s still scraping the eddies together -- told Judy she’d make sure she was fully reimbursed before she went. Told Judy if she or Evelyn needed anything more, call her.

...

By then, after seeing her with Evelyn, Judy is not sure about my V.

After the baseball bat incident, Judy thought that my V was an unhinged violent lunatic. I mean, V was an unhinged violent lunatic -- but she’d thought my V was that by default. But obviously my V showed Evelyn a lot of empathy and concern -- genuine empathy and concern, not V trying to go “LOOK HOW NICE I AM” to Judy. She knew V wasn’t trying to show false empathy to butter up Judy because V got pissed at her in Fingers’ office for getting in the way of her trying to find Evelyn to make sure Evelyn was okay. That is, pissed at her for that specific occasion of Judy getting in the way -- V was definitely not checking on Evelyn’s wellbeing when she visited Judy with the baseball bat, but Judy tried to discourage V from going after Evelyn again at Fingers’ office and V’s response was pretty much “oh fuck OFF, she’s in a really bad situation and needs help.”

So Judy was like, okay, there’s two possible judgements you can make about V:

V is one of those people who seems absolutely lovely until she gets in a bad mood, which is even more fucking terrifying because that makes her unpredictable.

V legitimately was in the middle of a mental breakdown and Judy just happened to be really fucking unlucky in that she was the convenient target. V had said this in her letter but obviously Judy was like “What the FUCK did you really send me an APOLOGY LETTER for almost BEATING ME TO DEATH” and hadn’t really taken it seriously, but now she’s starting to think V might have actually told the truth.

Judy is hoping it’s the latter but she’s not holding her breath, and also you have to remember that even if it was a mental breakdown... it showed her exactly what V was like when she was having a mental breakdown, and therefore meant V was perfectly fucking capable of doing it again.

(Meanwhile V was thinking “If she knows I was having a mental breakdown then she knows she doesn’t have to be scared of me doing it again.” No, V. You’re wrong.)

Judy is less spooked after seeing V in action with Evelyn, but she’s still very wary of her. But after V helped her with Evelyn, Judy told her not to worry about the rest of the eddies and just accepted what V gave her then and there. V almost pushed it, but realised Judy probably didn’t want to feel indebted to someone who beat her up with a baseball bat, so she dropped it.

V later sent Judy a weighted blanket for Evelyn to sleep under. “I’ve got one, it helps when I’m stressed. It won’t make her any better, but it might give her a little comfort.”

So right now, V and Judy have an uneasy truce. V keeps her distance from Judy unless she has to, except to occasionally ask after Evelyn, and Judy keeps her distance right back.

V is, however, not sucking up to Judy or grovelling to her. All she wanted was to let Judy know she didn’t have to be scared of her (although again, Judy is perfectly fucking aware that even if it was an actual mental breakdown then yes Judy should be scared of V having another one), that Judy didn’t have to worry about V going back to have another go at her.

V’s not going to make a huge deal about what a horrible person she was. She’s... well. Even if she thought it would help, she’s got a month to live unless the omega blockers give her more time. She’s not going to wear a hair shirt over this. She gave Judy some funds for the ripper doc, she’s apologised (even if an apology feels awfully pathetic), and she’s kept away from her.

Now she’s going to go back to chasing up leads, because Evelyn is in no condition to help. Because Judy released her, she’s been able to pay off her debt to Vik, and now she’s scraping up funds to pay Rogue for help and trying to talk Hakemura out of that fucking parade because that idiot keeps trying to get himself killed and she has to stand by to haul his ass out of the fire.

#Dusty plays #CP77 #violence cw #poor fucking Judy #my V's relationship with Judy parallels her relationship with Johnny #on account of the whole scaring-the-shit-out-of-Judy thing #like how Johnny did with her #optimistically #she's also getting along better with Johnny now #although she doesn't see the parallels AT ALL #I'm sure Johnny'll point it out later #just like how Judy is wary but relaxing with V #V is wary but relaxing with Johnny #Valentina

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 4 years

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so a smuggler walks into an orphan’s bar... - ONE-SHOT

When eight-year-old Rey's parents drink themselves to death, they leave her with nothing but a broken heart. Well, that and the only decent bar on the planet.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy, Han Solo gets a bad feeling about dropping his son off for Jedi training and decides to take Ben under his wing instead.

Ten years later, a smuggler walks into an orphan's bar...

So um, I might’ve gone a little overboard for my last canon-divergence fic of the year/decade/pre-TRoS era. Here’s twelve thousand words of smuggler!Ben and bar owner!Rey slowly but surely working toward their happily ever after.

Also available on AO3. And hey, maybe check out my Twitter or Ko-fi?

The first time Ben Solo stumbles upon Jakku, he is a man on the run.

With his mother furious about his first solo smuggling run and his father too scared to defend his life choices, he’s left with no choice but to stay away until the whole mess dies down. It’s a tried and true tactic for dealing with Leia Organa, passed down from one Solo man to another, and Ben knows in a week or two some galactic emergency or another will successfully divert his mother’s attention from his not-so-legal activities.

Until then, he just needs to lay low – maybe spend a few days visiting his uncle until he gets sick of Luke lamenting the lost opportunity to pass on all he knows to his own flesh and blood, then pop by Takodana to pay old Maz a visit until she traumatizes him with her musings on Chewie’s… attributes, and finally cap it all off with a nice few days in Canto Bight to scout out some new opportunities before returning home just in time for his mother’s birthday.

First things first, though: he needs fuel, and urgently. It’s not an ideal situation to be in when one happens to be in the middle of kriffing nowhere, drifting dangerously close to the Unknown Regions, but the Appenza’s navigation system offers him a ray of hope just before Ben starts cursing his luck: a tiny, desolate system with only one planet to its name, the infamous Jakku.

There are two things Ben knows about Jakku: one, that this is where the dying Empire made its last stand; and two, that that was the only thing of any importance that ever happened on and to the planet.

Well, make that three things: three, it’s about to refuel his ship and save his ass.

With no other viable options, he charts a course for the desert planet and soon finds himself landing near Niima Outpost, his best bet to refuel according to the HoloNet. His ship draws a few looks, new as it is, but Ben would take this scrutiny over all the trouble and danger he’d gotten himself into while flying the Falcon any day, every day.

It doesn’t take long to find the right people and strike the right deal; just ten minutes after making planetfall, Ben finds himself with a refueling ship and an hour to kill. There doesn’t seem to be much going on in this tiny ramshackle outpost, but a familiar flag catches his eye before he resigns himself to spending the next hour in his ship.

“It can’t be,” Ben mutters even as he chuckles under his breath and shakes his head in disbelief at the image of Maz Kanata so far from home. The flag bears an exact replica of the statue that welcomes all wayward travelers to her castle in Takodana, along with the name Maz’s Castle in stylized Basic. Why she would choose to set up a location here of all places is a mystery, but then again no one’s ever claimed to understand any of Maz’s choices.

He follows the flag to one of the very few solid-looking structures in the outpost, and a sign hanging above the double doors assures him that this is, indeed, a location of the popular galaxy-wide chain. Inside, the bar is smaller than most of the locations he’s been to, but the set-up is comfortingly familiar. He spots less than a handful of locals, easily identifiable by their worn-out and climate-appropriate clothing, along with a dozen or so traders and smugglers and passers-by scattered around the place. But none of them manage to capture – and hold – his attention the way the girl behind the bar does.

“Welcome to Maz’s!” she calls out with a grin, waving at him with the rag she’d been using to polish the bar. Hers is the first friendly face he’s seen since his arrival, and Ben can’t help but gravitate toward her, planting himself in the seat closest to where she stands. “Not often we get new faces around here,” the girl tells him as she sets down her rag, and something about the way she speaks doesn’t quite sit right with him until he realizes–

“Your accent,” Ben hears himself blurt out to his horror, and immediately shuts his mouth. “Shit, I’m sorry, I– I was just surprised to hear a Core World accent so far from home, that’s all.”

She laughs, and the sound is even more of a revelation than placing her accent, a little giggle all light and airy and brighter than the scorching Jakku sun. “It’s a long story,” she says as her laugh fades into a smile, and leaves it at that. “So, what can I get you?”

He’d reconsider his order if this were any other bar so far from the Core, but Ben can’t imagine any establishment of Maz’s without some top-shelf stuff, even one so far out in the Western Reaches. “Corellian whiskey please, if you’ve got it.”

The girl raises an eyebrow at him, but turns around to pluck a bottle off the shelf anyway. “Fancy,” she quips as she pours him a glass and Ben roots around his pockets. “You really are from the Core, aren’t you?”

“Chandrila,” he tells her as he slides a few credits across the bar, and accepts his drink with a murmured thanks as he takes a sip. “I’m Ben, by the way.”

“Rey,” she offers in return, and Ben can’t quite hide the way he smiles at how perfect her name is for her. It only grows wider when she says his name in that proper accent and cheery voice of hers. “So, Ben – like I said, it’s not often we get new faces around here. What brings you to Jakku?”

“Huh,” Ben says to buy himself some time, weighing exactly how much to reveal. Rey’s given him no reason to distrust her, but he’s spent far too long bearing the names Organa and Solo to just throw caution to the wind whenever he sees a pretty face. Never mind that her smile makes him want to do exactly that, that her laugh puts him at ease in a way nothing else can. “Really? Place like this, I figured just about everyone passes through.”

She scoffs, though her smile remains. “No one passes through Jakku, not unless you’re on a one-way trip to the Unknown Regions.”

Ben tilts his head. “Can’t imagine why,” he deadpans, looking at her with a completely straight face. “Seems like a charming place, if you ask me.”

Rey bursts into laughter – a proper, full laugh this time – and he takes in every single detail even as he joins her. She laughs with abandon, lips parted and head thrown back and eyes bright, and he can’t imagine a more beautiful sight. Her eyes are not quite brown and not quite green, a kaleidoscope of gold and olive shimmering in the sunlight pouring in from the windows on either end of the bar.

And in the Force… he closes his eyes for a brief moment, and feels nothing but warmth in the Force, set ablaze by her presence. She’s not quite Force-sensitive, not as far as he can tell, but her energy is so vibrant he’d easily believe otherwise.

That, above all else, convinces Ben to finally let his guard down. He’s no Jedi, but he knows the Force, has known it since the day he was born and will walk with it until the day he dies – and the Force has never led him astray.

“I’m on the run from my mother,” Ben says, and relishes the way Rey instantly rests her elbows on the bar and leans in closer, giving him her full attention. “She’s… let’s just say she doesn’t fully approve of my life choices.”

“So you are a smuggler,” Rey grins, sounding pleased with herself.

Ben, ever the victim of terrible timing, nearly chokes on his drink. “What– wait– how did you…?”

She reaches out as if to take his hand, only to stop herself at the last second and rest her hand next to his instead, almost but not quite touching. “Calm down,” she murmurs gently, though the proximity of their hands has the opposite effect. “You won’t get into any trouble for that here. It’s just– news spreads fast, here in Niima. News about a brand new ship and a well-dressed man who refuses to give out his name? That spreads even faster. But, like I said,” Rey shrugs, “there’s no trouble here, not unless you’re looking for it. We’ve got smugglers coming and going all the time – you leave us in peace, and so will we.”

His instincts, honed from nearly a decade with his father and Chewie, are at war with the Force. No smuggler is ever really safe anywhere, especially not a Solo, but… but if Rey says so…

“I thought you said you don’t get many new faces passing by,” Ben reminds her, relaxing despite himself as he downs the rest of his whiskey.

“Jakku’s not a particularly exciting place, not even for smugglers,” she tells him as she slowly inches her hand away. “We just get regulars, and even those are dwindling in numbers now that most everything from the big battle has been picked cleaned.”

It’s almost jarring, hearing her refer to the Battle of Jakku so casually; flying past the hollowed-out carcasses of downed Star Destroyers and AT-ATs on his way to the outpost had been equally surreal, after a childhood filled with history classes on the Empire’s doomed final stand.

“So you see why a new face around these parts has us all curious,” Rey continues, resting her chin in one hand as she looks at him. “Why Jakku, anyway? Core World smuggler like you, you could probably go anywhere else in the galaxy to wait out your mother’s wrath.”

Ben winces at the reminder, even though Rey had meant it teasingly. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But there are surprisingly few places you can hide from your mother when she’s a senator like mine is. And anyway,” he hurriedly adds, hoping to gloss past that little bit of information, “I’m not actually here to stay. Just needed to refuel so that I can make the jump to my next destination.”

The smile on Rey’s face is gone now, as she shifts away from him just the slightest bit. It’s the senator thing, it has to be. Realistically, Ben knows not everyone is a huge fan of the New Republic, not even those who’d suffered the most under the Empire’s rule. Here on Jakku, one of the struggling planets the new government has been accused of forgetting and turning its back on… well, he really should’ve thought twice before mentioning his mother’s affiliation with the government.

In his haste to change the topic, Ben completely forgets his earlier blunder and takes it even further. “What about you? How’d a young lady from the Core end up bartending here in Jakku, anyway?”

He’s got to be the luckiest bastard in the galaxy, because thankfully Rey doesn’t react to his rude prying by throwing his drink in his face the way he’d been expecting. “I’m no lady,” she says instead, with a little laugh, “and I’m not just the bartender, for the record. You’re looking at the sole proprietor of the finest – all right, only – bar in the whole Jakku system.”

It’s adorable, the little note of pride that enters her voice and the way she straightens up a bit, the way she gestures at their surroundings with a little flourish. “Probably the youngest one too,” Ben adds, playing along. “You can’t be… what, more than twenty?”

Rey gives him a knowing look, but subtlety has never been a Solo trait anyway.

“Less than, actually,” she tells him anyway. “I’ll be nineteen soon.”

Ten years. She’s a whole ten years younger than him, and Ben can’t really bear to focus on that right now. “Wow, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” And then, after a moment’s consideration of that life and all the possibilities it holds and the vast nothingness that surrounds her in this desert, he adds, “Are you… are you planning to stay here? It’s just– like you said, things are dying down around this part of the galaxy, and if people stop visiting then… well…” he trails off with a shrug, coming to the belated realization that he’s being rude and invasive yet again.

It’s like something inside of him is clamoring for every single bit about her, of her, that he can get his hands on, for the opportunity to get to know her even though he’s set to leave in… less than an hour.

The reminder feels like ice running through his veins.

Rey seems oblivious to his internal panicking. “This is all I’ve ever known,” she says, as if that’s all there is to it.

“But–” A desperate idea occurs to him then. “But is it all you want? Because if you want more– if you want to leave…” Ben takes a deep breath, tries to play it cool. “I mean,” he says with a shrug, “I do happen to have a brand new ship waiting for me just outside.”

She smiles at him, but Ben’s heart drops because he’s seen that smile, he knows that smile, his mother might not have been around for much of his childhood but she’d been around just long enough to drill that smile and what it means when a woman flashes it at him into his head.

It’s a polite smile, it’s a thanks but no thanks smile, it’s a no means no, Ben, even if she can’t find the voice to say so to someone with your size and your name and your power smile.

“And you probably shouldn’t keep it waiting much longer,” Rey says softly, and after a moment’s hesitation she does reach for him this time, rests her small palm on top of his hand and gives it an almost apologetic pat. As far as consolation prizes go… well, he’ll take it.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he turns his hand around to lace their fingers together, keeping his grip loose enough for Rey to pull her hand away at any time.

She gives him a little squeeze instead. “It was nice meeting you, Ben. Stay safe, yeah?”

“You’re acting as if we’ll never see each other again,” he says with a forced little laugh, trying to keep his voice light and teasing even as his heart grows heavy at the thought.

Rey shrugs, and takes her hand away, wraps it around herself instead. “You were never here to stay,” she reminds him, sounding almost… almost disappointed by the thought. “And no one comes back to Jakku. Can’t blame them, really,” Rey adds, throwing in a hollow laugh of her own.

And he knows she gave him the smile, knows and understands and respects what it means, but… but surely all of this – the hand-holding and the dim eyes and the hollow laugh – means something too.

The Force tells him it does, reminds him once again how warm and vibrant and familiar she feels to him. And because it’s never led him astray, because he desperately wants to believe in it, because Rey should be a stranger but stars, that couldn’t be further from the truth–

“Well, I guess I’ll be the first,” Ben says as he reluctantly gets up, and knows in that moment that nothing will keep him from fulfilling this promise. “I’ll see you soon, Rey.”

“See you soon, Ben,” she echoes weakly, with the mere ghost of a smile. She’s clearly not convinced, but there’s something in her eyes as she watches him walk away, something that he recognizes in himself.

Hope, Ben thinks as he walks back out into the desert, and prays it’ll be enough for the both of them until they meet again.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The second time Ben Solo lands on Jakku, he is a man on a mission.

News spreads fast, he remembers Rey telling him two weeks ago, remembers every single word and look and smile she shared with him. Still, he hurries over to the bar anyway, hoping to beat Jakku’s gossips to the punch and surprise her.

Judging by the look on her face when she glances up from the bar and sees him in her doorway, by the audible gasp that escapes her parted lips and the barely visible sheen of emotion in her eyes and the slight tremor in her hands as she sets down a glass, he’s somehow pulled it off.

“You came back,” Rey whispers as he comes to a stop just two feet away, separated by the bar between them.

“I came back,” Ben says with a nod as he slides into the seat he already thinks of as his, and rests his hands palms-up on the bar in a silent offering. Rey takes them in her own with a shaky smile, her touch warm and comforting and familiar even though it shouldn’t be.

In the past two weeks, he’s realized there are a lot of things about him and her and them that shouldn’t be – but over his dead body is he going to question any of them. Instead, he holds her hands until she pulls away, and watches her reach for the bottle of Corellian whiskey without prompting.

The bar is slightly busier today, with patrons calling Rey away from him more often than not. “They brought in a good haul this morning,” Rey tells him as she assembles another round for a band of scavengers in the far corner, “so it’s time to celebrate.”

“Good for them,” Ben says, though he wonders what exactly is left to qualify as a good haul in picked-apart wreckages older than him.

Rey smiles as she begins to load the drinks onto a tray. “And good for me,” she points out. “Between their endless celebrations and my favorite customer coming back for the good stuff, business is booming.”

It’s a good thing she heads off to deliver the drinks then, because Ben’s pretty sure she wouldn’t have believed him if he’d tried to dismiss the pink in his cheeks as sunburn.

Eventually, the scavengers grudgingly agree with Rey when she cuts them off after four rounds and suggests they keep their precious credits for more responsible uses. The place is left half empty after they leave, and a relieved Rey chooses to slump into the seat next to his rather than return to her spot behind the bar.

“Hello, stranger,” she grins as she moves her chair closer to his, playfully bumping his shoulder before she spins around in her chair so that she can keep an eye on the remaining patrons.

Ben takes a moment to adjust to the fact that she’s right next to him, closer than she’s ever been, and then turns around as well. This way, facing the door and the windows on either side of it, he can see the blinding Jakku sky slowly fade into a beautiful swirl of pinks and oranges as the sun begins its gradual descent.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Rey asks after a moment, and he turns to find her observing him with a little smile on her lips. “I know it isn’t much, this desert wasteland of ours, but even in a place like this… there’s beauty to be found, if you care to look.”

I wasn’t even looking when I found you, Ben thinks to himself, and nearly says so out loud.

Instead, he shrugs and smiles and says, “I guess it’s not so bad, after all.”

Rey laughs out loud, attracting curious looks from the handful of others surrounding them. “Oh no, it’s a hellhole, trust me. The view’s nice and all, but everything else?” She pauses for a moment, seems to weigh her words before she speaks again. “I wonder sometimes, what my life would’ve been like if I didn’t have the bar. I’ve seen how it is out there, how everyone else struggles day in and day out only to get the bare minimum, just enough to carry them through the next day of scavenging. I… I honestly don’t know if I could’ve made it through that,” she admits quietly.

Ben reaches for her hand without thought. “Rey… I probably don’t know enough about you for this to mean anything, but… I think you’re stronger than you know. I think there’s nothing out there you can’t do, if you put your mind to it.”

He doesn’t explain himself, can’t quite put into words how vivid and brilliant she is in the Force, but he doesn’t need to. Rey curls her hand around his, and her lips curve into a soft smile.

“And I think you’re probably the nicest person I’ve ever met,” she says, only to ruin the moment by adding, “Oh, except maybe Maz. Probably wouldn’t be alive without her, so I can’t forget good old Maz.”

Rey lets go of his hand and spins around, gestures for him to do the same before she points out a little statue of Maz sitting on the highest shelf of the bar. “Have you ever met her? They say all smugglers have, at some point or another.”

Ben can’t help but laugh. “Maz? I’ve known her my whole life,” he tells a stunned Rey. “No, really – she’s an old friend of my dad’s. And funny story, she’s actually why I decided to come check out this place the first time I was here. I saw the flag and I just had to drop by.”

“Small galaxy, I suppose,” Rey shrugs, her eyes dancing with mirth. “I’ll have to tell her about this the next time she drops by; you know she loves these little coincidences.”

“Coincidence, or fate?” Ben says before his brain can catch up to his heart, and instantly regrets it. He could play it off as a joke, could even spin it into something Maz would say, but… but it’s not a joke, not to him. Sure, Ben believes in coincidences – even with the Force flowing around and through every living being, sometimes things just… happen, and that’s that. But for him to have ended up in this system of all the stars in the galaxy, to have chosen Niima Outpost of all the settlements, to have caught a glimpse of Maz’s flag and then made the uncharacteristic decision to leave his ship unguarded in a strange place just to check it out…

He knows, with a certainty that his father would laugh at and his uncle would approve of, that nothing about him and Rey is coincidental. But maybe their second meeting isn’t the right time to tell her that, and so Ben settles for a change of topic instead. “How do you know Maz, anyway? I mean, apart from the obvious, of course.” He waves his hand around, gesturing vaguely at the establishment they’re in. “How’d you come to run and own the place?”

Somehow, Rey had seemed less unsettled by his suggestion of them being brought together by fate than she is by his seemingly innocuous question. He’s about to backtrack and tell her she doesn’t need to tell him anything she doesn’t want to when Rey lets out a little sigh and then squares her shoulders as if bracing herself for battle, fixing her eyes on the window beyond his shoulder as she begins to speak.

“When I was four, my parents heard that Maz was hiring, looking for people interested in exciting business opportunities. I guess there’s no business opportunity more exciting than running a bar for a couple of alcoholics,” she says casually, too casually, and throws in a bitter little laugh. “They got their shit together just long enough to pass the interview, and then uprooted our family from Coruscant and moved all the way here. And then… well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how that equation would work out, does it? Alcoholics surrounded by a free flow of alcohol every single minute of their lives.”

For some reason, it doesn’t quite surprise him that Rey’s an orphan. Maybe it’s just based on his perception of Jakku in general, and its reputation in the galaxy as the place where the lost and the lonely go when there is nowhere and no one left for them to call home. But her next words… her next words shake him to his core.

“I was eight, when it finally happened. And I… I didn’t even cry, Ben,” she whispers, her eyes finally meeting his with a glassy, faraway look. “I found my parents dead in a puddle of their own sick, and I didn’t even cry. I just… I knew it’d been coming, I suppose, so I just did what I had to do. I figured Maz would come eventually, if she realized something was wrong, so I boarded up the place and waited. And sure enough, she arrived a week later to find my parents barely hidden away in the shallow graves I’d dug out back and me surviving off bar snacks and water.”

Ben can’t help the way he flinches then, at the thought of little Rey trying her best to dig graves for her parents in the shifting sands of Jakku. He wants to hold her close and promise her nothing bad will ever happen to her again, he wants to rip apart the fabric of time and space to make sure nothing bad ever happened to her in the first place, he wants so badly to be able to do something, anything–

But Rey doesn’t seem to be in search of comfort. “I thought of leaving – I mean, I was just a child, I couldn’t fathom going on like this completely on my own, especially here of all places – but Maz stayed around long enough to set things up for me, arranged for people to come help and train and take care of me until I could take care of myself. And I’ve been running this place ever since,” she concludes with a shrug. “So um, to answer your question without the tragic backstory,” Rey adds with a touch of self-consciousness, dropping her gaze down to the bar top as she bites into her lower lip, “I inherited the place, plain and simple.”

That finally spurs him into action, the sight of her retreating from him. Ben reaches out for her hand, and waits until she turns to look at him to say, “You really are stronger than you know, Rey. Strongest person I’ve ever met, and I think my mother would kill me for saying that,” he adds in an attempt to lighten the mood.

It works, because Rey laughs and fully turns her body to him as she rests her elbow on the bar and uses her free hand to prop her head up. “You know, that’s only the second time you’ve mentioned your mother and I’m already terrified of her. Which senator are we talking about, here?”

And it’s stupid, it’s so, so stupid what he’s about to do, but how could he possibly lie to Rey after all she’s shared with him, after all she’s trusted him with? Ben takes a deep breath, and makes a choice.

“Have you heard about the senator from Chandrila?”

Rey lets go of his hand and nearly falls out of her chair as the arm holding her up fails her. “Shut up. Your mother is Leia Organa?”

In light of the obvious awe in her voice and her eyes, Ben is forced to reconsider his assessment of her political opinions from the last time he’d broached the subject. But if her reaction that day hadn’t been about the senate, then what…?

Before he can ponder it much further though, Rey’s punching his arm. “You’re Leia Organa and Han Solo’s son! You’re Luke Skywalker’s nephew!” she whisper-hisses, careful not to broadcast his identity to the rest of the bar. “Ben, you– you’re unbelievable! You let me think you were just some random guy!”

“I am just some random guy,” he insists, rubbing at his arm. Unsurprisingly for someone who’s had to fend for herself in the desert, Rey packs quite a punch. “My family are who they are, but that doesn’t mean or say anything about me. I’m not some war hero or Jedi knight or royalty–”

Rey, however, seems to think otherwise. “Oh my kriff, you’re a prince,” she gasps, though he appreciates the fact that she looks more irritated than starry-eyed by the realization.

“Only in name,” Ben tells her – and then, a thought occurs to him. A thought that is, as much as it pains him to say it, probably exactly the kind of thing his father would’ve come up with. “Though I do have a palace I can whisk you away to, if you want.”

To his eternal mortification, Rey does not laugh. She smiles, but just barely as she quietly notes, “That’s the second time you’ve offered to take me away.”

Ben gulps, and can only hope it was not audible. “No pressure,” he quickly assures her, not quite sure what to make of her reaction and the little smile that’s still playing on her lips. “Just, um… just letting you know that the offer still stands, if you ever change your mind.”

She’s quiet for the longest time, but the wait is worth it when Rey says, “Someday. Someday I’ll leave this place and go explore the galaxy, see for myself what oceans and forests and mountains look like.”

His heart aches for her, for the obvious longing in her voice and all the things she’s been deprived of and everything she deserves but isn’t ready for. “When you do…” Ben says softly, carefully. “I’ll be right by your side – if you want me to, that is, I’m not saying you’ll be stuck with me or that a ride off the planet comes with terms and conditions or–”

It’s worth the humiliation, the slight laugh Rey gives him as she reaches out and slowly, hesitantly curves her hand around his cheek. If he leans into her touch with a sigh… well, that’s between the two of them, and Rey has the good grace not to comment on it. “I’d like that,” she says instead, with a smile it physically hurts him not to kiss. “I’d like that very much.”

“Okay,” he whispers, his lips perhaps a touch too close to her hand, and they lapse into a warm, comfortable silence as the sun dips beneath the horizon. When it’s finally time for him to leave, to get back to his ship while he still has one, Rey stares at him with a look of intense concentration on her face until she suddenly throws herself into his arms and burrows into his chest.

“I’ll see you soon, Ben,” she murmurs against his racing heart, which skips a beat when he senses the hidden question in her tone.

“See you soon, Rey,” he promises, and leaves with the knowledge that this time, she believes him.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The third time Ben Solo visits Jakku, he is a man following his heart.

It’s barely been two weeks this time, but he can’t help himself. None of the jobs his father contacts him about seem worth his time, none of the sights he normally marvels at measure up to Rey, none of his family’s many properties across the galaxy feel like home anymore.

Jakku calls to him like a beacon, with Rey at the very heart of it all.

When he finally has her in his arms again, a part of Ben wishes he didn’t have to leave. It’s wishful thinking though, and he shoves the thought aside to focus on the present, on Rey and the way her eyes light up when she sees him again and the way her touches have grown bolder and more comfortable. The longer he stays, the harder it is to even consider leaving – and then, nature makes the decision for him.

Rey’s laughing as he regales her with the tale of a childhood dance lesson gone wrong, her setting aside clean glasses for the night and him stacking chairs up onto the tables, when they first hear it. Ben’s heard the wind wail before, but this is a shriek, a painful sound accompanied by the harsh grating of sand relentlessly battering the walls and windows of the bar.

“Oh no,” Rey says as she looks out the window into the darkened desert. “Ben, I think you’re stuck here for the night.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he teases even as he comes to stand next to her, their concerned faces reflected in the window. “Is the bar going to be okay?”

“It’s survived far worse,” she tells him with a shrug. “Your ship should be fine too; the storm doesn’t look too bad, just bad enough to keep everyone indoors.”

Ben casts a look around the empty bar. “I’ll be fine,” he assures Rey. “A blanket would be nice if you could spare one, but I’ve slept in worse.”

When he turns back to her, she’s looking at him with a barely suppressed smile. “Did you really think I was going to make you sleep here? On the floor?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure the bar’s not wide enough for me–”

“Ben,” Rey laughs with a shake of her head, and then reaches for his hand. “Come on, there’s plenty of room downstairs.”

He supposes it makes sense, building underground rather than upward in a place so susceptible to volatile winds, but Ben’s still a little too puzzled by the developments of the last five minutes to really pay attention or react as Rey leads him behind the bar and turns off the lights in the main area before she guides him down a staircase ordinarily kept out of view by the shelves.

“I turned my old room into a storeroom,” Rey tells him as the basement comes into view, a closed door ahead and another to their left. “And the cot was built for a child, so it’s not like you’d fit anyway.” He doesn’t quite realize what she’s getting at until she reaches for the door in front of them, and opens it to reveal a decently-sized room that has to be hers, clothes stacked in semi-neat piles on a threadbare couch and hardy little desert plants lining the walls and…

And one bed, just about big enough for two.

Rey shuts the door behind them. “’Fresher’s through there,” she says, letting go of his hand to point out a door next to her couch. “I’ve got an actual shower, so hopefully my humble abode will live up to your smuggler standards at least, if not your princely ones,” she adds teasingly.

Ben gives her a slight laugh as he curiously heads toward the ‘fresher and opens the door to find that she was serious about the shower. “How?” he asks in bewilderment as he twists a creaky knob that prompts water, actual water, to flow out of the showerhead. It’s nothing to brag about, not even by smuggler standards, but he imagines this has to be the height of luxury for a desert dweller.

“Not bad, is it?” Rey asks, coming to lean against the ‘fresher door with a smile. “What a lot of people don’t know is that this bar stands on the exact spot of Niima the Hutt’s original temple, and she spared no expense when she had that constructed. This is probably the only structure on all of Jakku with running water, courtesy of a pipe that runs deep into the planet, all the way down to whatever source of water’s left from before the Calamity.”

“I’m guessing Maz knew that when she decided to set up shop here?” Ben asks as they make their way out of the cramped ‘fresher and back into the daunting sight of her bedroom and its single bed. It’s not that he doesn’t welcome the opportunity to lie next to her, of course he does, but he doesn’t want Rey to feel like she has to invite him into her space.

But then again, he’d made it clear that he was perfectly content to stay upstairs and she’d been the one to bring him down here…

Rey turns her back to him and starts digging through her piles of clothing and sheets and towels. “Probably,” she says, carefully retrieving a small bundle of clothing from the precarious stacks. “I wish I had something for you to change into, but…”

Right. Clothes to change into, so that they can get to sleep. Together. In the same bed. “I, um,” Ben clears his throat. “I’ll be fine.”

“Right. Good,” Rey nods, suddenly bashful. “Do you mind if I shower first?”

“Go ahead,” he says, and waits until the ‘fresher door closes behind Rey before he closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose, and takes several deep breaths.

“She wouldn’t have volunteered if she wasn’t comfortable with this,” Ben reminds himself, and a cursory sweep of the Force reveals that Rey is comfortable, her presence warm and soothing and electrified by the slightest bit of excitement.

Sufficiently comforted, he makes it through the rest of the evening with little trouble. In fact, it’s all a little… domestic, Ben decides as he comes out of the ‘fresher to find the lights off and Rey already in bed, arranging two pillows next to each other and folding back the blanket on what he assumes is his side of the bed in invitation. She blinks at the sight of him stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, but invites him into bed with a pat on his pillow anyway. He switches off the light in the ‘fresher, plunging them into complete darkness, and waits until his eyesight has adjusted before crossing the room.

“It gets cold at night,” Rey explains as he holds up the blanket in a silent question, and promptly shuffles into his arms when he finally lies down next to her. “You’re much better than a blanket,” is all she offers up as explanation, along with a contented little sigh.

He takes that as permission to properly wrap his arms around her, and closes his eyes when Rey happily swings an arm around his waist in return. She’s so small and warm and soft in his arms, so comfortable and at home this way that he can’t help but relax into their shared embrace as well. Sleep is already beckoning when Rey suddenly whispers into the night.

“Ben?”

“Hmm?” he hums, lips brushing her forehead.

“The first time we met… why did you offer to take me off this planet, even back when we were complete strangers?” Rey asks, and suddenly every single part of him is wide awake and tense with nerves. He won’t, can’t lie to her, but there’s very little he can say to a woman he’s only met three times while holding her in his arms in her bed without scaring her off.

But first– “You’ve never felt like a stranger to me, not even that first day,” he admits, figuring that’s safe enough for now. “There’s just… there’s something about you, Rey.”

He can feel her smile against his chest. “I feel it too,” she murmurs, and presses a kiss to his neck.

And that’s when Ben begins to stammer. “I’m not… it’s just… I’m not saying you can’t look after yourself, I know you can, but… I was just worried, I guess. Is it safe for you here? And okay, I guess it is since you’ve been on your own since you were eight–” He cuts himself off with a wince then, wondering how his attempt to evade the true depth of his feelings for her had ended up with him reminding her of her painful loss.

For the first time in his life, Ben finds himself empathizing with the way his father always, always finds a way to make things worse when he tries to talk himself out of some mess with Ben’s mom.

Thankfully, Rey doesn’t pull away from him, doesn’t even tense up in his arms. “I wasn’t alone, not really,” she mumbles, lips warm against his skin. “I had Maz’s people, remember? They stayed with me for a bit, and then they’d come check up on me every once in a while. Besides, I wasn’t in any real danger. None of the locals would have hurt me, not back then.”

Ben shifts to get a proper look at Rey, careful not to jostle her in the process. “Why’s that?”

She lifts her head from his chest to return his gaze. “This is your third time here. Have you ever seen any kids around?”

He considers the question for a moment, runs through his brief time here on Jakku… and realizes that he has never seen anyone younger than Rey. “I… I never noticed.”

“Children are precious here,” she says. “Jakku is no place to raise a child, so barely anyone tries to. The kids we do have, we all take care of. So in a way, everyone you see here kind of played a part in raising me.”

It’s an odd concept, but one he’s certainly familiar with on a certain level. “They do say it takes a village,” Ben finally says.

“Especially when you don’t have parents,” Rey adds quietly, and it’s perhaps the first and only time he’s heard her actually sound forlorn by the fact.

His first instinct is to comfort her, and he rolls with it before he can overthink the execution. “Sometimes even when you do,” Ben says, and waits for Rey’s reaction to determine what comes next.

She turns on her stomach and props herself up with one hand, staring expectantly at him in the dark. Ben sighs and rolls onto his back, closing his eyes as he slowly gathers his thoughts and weaves them into words. “Turns out, growing up with a princess and a smuggler for parents isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be.”

He can’t believe he’s telling her his pitiful sob story about his parents when she grew up with none, but Rey reaches out and runs a hand through his hair and… and for the very first time, Ben feels like this story he’s kept close to his chest all his life might actually be worth sharing, and sharing with her.

“I’m not… I’m not saying they’re bad people. They’re amazing people, who’ve done amazing things, but… doing amazing things takes up a lot of time – time that normal people might have spent on comforting their kid after a nightmare or explaining the Force to him when he started lashing out or sticking around for a bit after dropping a bombshell revelation about his grandfather instead of running off to the senate to protect your reputation–”

Rey’s hand is still carding through his hair, soothing and grounding him before he can get lost in his own memories.

“They… they tried their best,” Ben says, more for his own benefit than Rey’s. “Eventually, my mother decided to send me to my uncle for training. She’s strong with the Force, always has been, but she’s spent her whole life trying to suppress it. So when my abilities started growing out of control, she thought maybe I needed Luke more than I needed her.”

She’d thought wrong, but Ben tries not to focus on that, on what could have been. “My dad… he agreed, at first. He still thinks all this Force stuff is mumbo-jumbo, but he just wanted the best for me. So I packed my things, said goodbye to my mom, and got on his ship. I don’t know if it was something in my eyes, or my voice, or maybe just paternal intuition kicking in eighteen years too late, but my dad, he just… he kept looking at me, and then just as we were about to arrive he turned the ship around. And then he said…” He turns to Rey, finds her hand in the darkness and allows himself a smile at the memory. “I’ll never forget it. He said Force mumbo-jumbo or not, you’re still my son. And I’m still your father, dammit, and it’s about time I start acting that way.”

Rey squeezes his hand, and smiles back at him as the hand in his hair slides down to cup his cheek. “And that’s how you became a smuggler instead of a Jedi?”

“And that’s how I became a smuggler instead of a Jedi,” Ben echoes with a nod, curling his free arm around her to pull her closer.

“Are you… are you happy?” she asks, still looking up at him. “With how life turned out?”

He shrugs. “If you’re asking if I’d rather be a smuggler or a Jedi, the answer is definitely, one hundred percent smuggler. I admire my uncle and all, but the life he lives, the life he’s chosen… it’s not for me,” Ben says, a realization he’s long since made his peace with. “Besides, growing up I always wanted to be a pilot just like my dad, and I guess this is about as close as it gets.”

Rey hums in acknowledgement, burrows closer to him to rest her head on his chest. “How about you?” he asks, resting their joined hands on her hip. “Are you happy with how your life turned out?”

She’s quiet for so long Ben begins to think that maybe she’s fallen asleep, or maybe she doesn’t want to answer the question. Just as he’s about to give up and close his eyes though, Rey speaks.

“I mean… most days, I’m okay with it,” she says, and he looks down to find her eyes open but fixed someplace else. “These days, I’m especially okay with it, now that… now that I’m not alone anymore.”

Ben holds her tighter, presses a kiss to her forehead. Rey sighs and looks up at him, gives him a smile. “I’ve got a better life than most people here, so at least there’s that. And… and really, this is all I’ve ever known, Ben. If I leave… when I leave… I won’t even know where to start.”

He pulls them both into a sitting position, looks her in the eyes when he promises, “I’ll be right there with you, every step of the way.”

Rey shuffles closer and reaches up, wraps her arms around his neck and slides her fingers into his hair. She looks at him, just… looks at him, for a short eternity. And then–

“I know,” Rey whispers, and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him like she can’t stop herself, like her life depends on it, like the floodgates have finally been opened and there will be no closing them ever again.

The storm rages for three days, but by the end of it Ben is sure they’ve barely gotten three hours of sleep combined. When they finally step out into the sun on the third day, they sport matching swollen lips and dark circles as Rey walks him to his ship, unashamedly strolling hand-in-hand with him in full view of the entire outpost.

When the Appenza finally comes into view, Ben can’t resist the urge to ask. Deep in his heart he already knows her answer, but everything else has changed, everything, so why not this?

“Sure you still don’t want to come with me?”

It comes as no surprise when Rey shakes her head with a small smile. “Not yet,” she whispers, but at least this time she softens the blow with a goodbye kiss.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The fourth, fifth, sixth, tenth, twentieth, thirtieth time Ben Solo comes back to Jakku, he is a man in love.

He starts taking jobs almost exclusively in the Western Reaches, so that he can visit more frequently and stay longer. After a while, her regulars don’t even blink at the sight of him behind the bar with her anymore, the two of them huddled close in near-constant conversation, almost always holding hands or brushing shoulders or trading playful kisses.

Rey’s bed becomes as familiar to him as his own, a little sanctuary where all their worries disappear. They share secrets under the cover of darkness, paint futures in the golden light of dawn, grasp at each other with all the desperation and want and joy of young lovers every spare moment in between.

Over bar snacks one afternoon, they laugh and bond over the fact that Maz had been the one to give both of them The Talk. In Rey’s case she’d simply had no one else to do it, and one day Maz just sat her down and told her everything there was to know before offering her a contraceptive implant. In Ben’s case, his mother had tasked his father with the responsibility, and his father had predictably pushed it to Chewie, and Chewie had promptly recruited the help of Maz.

Two months after their first kiss, a case of Jogan fruit on his ship opens up a whole new world of possibilities for Ben, and a whole new world period for Rey. He brings her fruit and flowers and all sorts of things she’s never had the chance to see or touch or taste, and tells her each time that her happiness is all the payment he needs. Well, a few kisses wouldn’t hurt either.

One morning, when Ben awakes with the sudden and terrifying realization that he’s overdue for a check-in with his mother as part of her very strict terms for allowing him to continue smuggling, Rey hands him an ancient, patched-together datapad and tells him the story of how she’d hacked into Unkar Plutt’s network one day just for fun, and continues to make use of the highly-encrypted channel for her own purposes.

Another day, when a sandstorm much like the one that had brought them together rolls in, Rey plops herself on top of him to keep him in bed, and asks him to tell her about everything that’s out there, every single world he’s ever visited. He tells her about the lakes of Naboo, the forests of Takodana, the beaches of Chandrila, even the lost mountains of Alderaan, and she promises him that someday, someday he’ll have the chance to show her all of it.

Eventually, her cajoling and pleading finally pay off and Ben acquiesces to a little after-hours display of his skills, using the Force to move bottles around on her shelf and even call some over to the bar, Rey asks him if he ever regrets it, not being a Jedi. And Ben… Ben tells her everything: about how brightly he’d burned even before he’d come into this world, about the tendrils of darkness that had started reaching for him then and hadn’t stopped until years later, about how ultimately love had been just what he’d needed to banish the voices once and for all, the love of his family and for his family. But love, he tells her, is not for the Jedi, not even in this new age – and what he holds in his heart, what he feels for her… he wouldn’t give it up for all the secrets of the Force, for all the power in the galaxy.

A few months later, nearly a standard year since they first met, he arrives to find Rey laughing her head off before she shoos a band of older women away. The people of Jakku, she tells him later, have a tendency to exaggerate; how else does one keep oneself entertained in the desert, after all? The latest story to take Niima Outpost by storm is the sordid tale of one Rey of Jakku and her revolving door of handsome, rich lovers, all of whom keep her business alive with their drink preferences and court her with priceless artifacts sourced from all over the galaxy and fall to their knees begging for her hand. It’s almost impressive, how much they got right aside from the lovers, plural bit.

“You are all there has ever been for me,” Rey assures him when he pretends to be put out by the thought, “and all there will ever be.”

And so life goes on around them while they settle into a new normal, parting every so often only to always, always come back together, finding love and acceptance and belonging with each other for the very first time in their lives.

Everything is perfect… until it almost isn’t.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

The last time Ben Solo arrives on Jakku, he is a man trembling in concern and anger and fear.

He’s four days early for his next scheduled visit, but somehow still too late. By the time he makes planetfall, a full day has passed since the message first interrupted his monthly check-in call with Luke. His uncle had been blathering on as usual, something about an awakening in the Force, when the feed of Luke probably bragging about a new student had been briefly interrupted by a single word: HELP.

And somehow Ben had known, even before he’d traced the anonymous message back to Jakku and Plutt’s network, exactly who it had come from.

He’d made preparations to rush to Rey’s side immediately, but an unexpected run-in with the Kanjiklub had delayed him by entire hours until he’d finally given in to the swell of fear and anger inside him and knocked them all out with a pulse of dark energy.

That’s probably going to get him an earful from Luke but frankly, Ben doesn’t really give a single flying kriff right now. Right now, he’s trying not to let his fear cripple him as he lands in an eerily empty Niima Outpost. The streets are deserted and so is the marketplace, even though by now it should be filled with scavengers cleaning up their finds of the day and getting in line to present them to the revolting Crolute. Even more worrying is the absence of said Crolute and his thugs, and the sight of Plutt’s beloved concession stand torn apart and thoroughly emptied of his precious rations.

A rising wave of panic threatens to swallow him whole, until Ben forces himself to close his eyes and reach out.

What he finds nearly knocks him to the ground.

If Rey had been brilliant before, now she is blinding. Even with fear and anxiety and anger clouding her energy, her presence in the Force burns brighter than a star, blotting out everything and everyone else. And with this transformation comes an undeniable truth, one Ben cannot believe it’s taken him this long to realize.

“Rey,” he murmurs, and breaks into a run.

Ben, she whispers back, in some secret corner of his mind that less than a handful of people have ever been able to find, let alone reach.

Ben Ben Ben, she chants – cries – pleads in the space between them until he comes upon the bar, doors and windows completely boarded up. But Rey’s already moving, already prying blocks of wood and sheets of metal off the door with a raw strength that cannot possibly be just her own, until finally there’s nothing standing in between them, until finally she’s in his arms again.

“Are you okay?” Ben asks, hands roaming up and down to check for injury even as Rey clutches him tight and sobs into his chest. “Rey, sweetheart, I’m so sorry it took me so long, are you hurt, what happened, I’m here now, I’m here,” he babbles in relief, his and hers and theirs, inseparable in the Force.

She’s quiet in his arms except for the wet sound of sobs and harsh, ragged inhales, and he holds her until her tears run dry and her breathing returns to normal. “Help me,” Rey croaks, her first words in Force knows how long, and pulls away from him to begin the arduous process of boarding the door up again. It’s a flimsy layer of protection, one that won’t actually do anything, but if this is what she needs to feel safe then this is what he’ll do for her. Together they replace all the layers of wood and metal, and then create an additional barricade using every single chair and table in the bar.

When it’s done, Rey wordlessly takes his hand and leads him downstairs, and she doesn’t bother turning the lights on before she pulls him into bed and curls up in his arms, her exaggerated breaths the only sound in the darkness that curls around them.

In, out, in, out, in, out – and with every repetition, the beacon that is her energy in the Force pulses like a gentle heartbeat, dimming and then flaring back to life in the most extraordinary, beautiful light show Ben has ever seen. He’s content to just stay that way, to hold her and mimic her breathing and marvel at her presence, until Rey finally speaks.

“I killed him,” she whispers, her voice painfully raspy; it’s only then that he wonders when she last drank, when she last ate. “I killed all of them,” Rey adds, her voice thick with regret and pain and fear as hot tears drip down his chest.

“Shh,” Ben whispers soothingly, pulls her closer and starts to rock her the way he vaguely remembers his mother doing once, a long time ago. “Shh, it’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re safe now, I’m here, Rey, I’m here–”

“He– he–” It’s painful, the way she gasps for breath with each word, the way guilt threatens to snuff out her light. He can only hold her close and pray she’s as attuned to him in the Force as he is to her, pray she can feel all the comfort and love and protection he has to offer. Maybe, just maybe, it works, because soon enough Rey calms down enough to fill him in without sounding on the brink of a panic attack.

“It was Plutt,” she whispers, a loose fist curling into the front of his shirt for comfort. “He’d heard about all the gossip the others were spreading, all the lies about my new smuggler regulars and all the business I was getting and the expensive gifts I was hiding in my place. That kriffing blobfish got it into his head that he deserved a cut of my profits, so he rounded up his goons and stormed the place two days ago.”

She’s shaken by the memory, just as Ben is shaken by the timestamp. Two days ago, two whole days ago and she’s been alone ever since, while he was in Naboo with his mother and rolling his eyes at his uncle and wasting time with the karking Kanjiklub.

Rey pauses, burrows impossibly closer to him. “When the fight broke out… it was me against twelve of them. Even with my blaster, I could only take down so many of them before they outnumbered me. They… they knocked it out of my hands, and then Plutt reached out, for my neck, and…”

Just hearing about it makes his blood boil, makes his heart bleed. But Rey is here, he reminds himself, here and safe and alive in his arms, and she needs him to focus on the present, not the past.

“And then… he was choking on thin air. They all were.” Her voice sounds so small, so scared.

“The Force,” Ben finally murmurs, willing her to feel the way his presence curls around hers, the way his soul instinctively reaches out for hers.

Judging by her quiet acceptance, Rey had come to the realization on her own at some point in the last two days. “I never knew, never even thought…” she whispers, sounding half-awed and half-terrified. “But Ben, I… I killed them all. I’m… Maker, Ben, I’m a monster.”

“No.” His response is immediate and forceful as he pulls away and wills Rey to look at him. “No, never. Listen to me, Rey, listen–” he all but begs when she begins to shake her head in denial. “You were scared, and in danger, and the Force chose to come to you in that exact moment, sweetheart, chose to save you no matter the cost. That wasn’t you, no, it wasn’t–”

“I could feel them,” she chokes out, eyes clouding over with tears once more. “Ben, I could feel them slipping away and I didn’t– I didn’t stop, didn’t know how, didn’t want to–”

He leans down and presses their foreheads together, wills her to breathe with him until she stops shaking. "Listen to me,” Ben says sharply, leaving no room for argument. “You were in danger, you had no other choice, and you did nothing wrong. Those men deserved it, and you know that, Rey.”

She’s quiet for so long, and even with their newfound closeness he can’t tell what she’s feeling, refuses to barge into her mind to see what she’s thinking. He can only hold her until finally, she continues her story.

“I buried them,” Rey tells him, her voice eerily flat and detached and steady. “I buried them out back, right next to my parents, in even shallower graves. I locked up the bar and hid down here, but it wasn’t enough. That night I heard the ripper-raptors tear their bodies apart for meat and I thought… I thought to myself finally. Finally they were of some use to this kriffing desert.”

And for a moment, for the most fleeting of seconds, Ben can see how the blinding warmth of her light could easily turn into something else, something that sends a chill down his spine.

But he of all people knows better than to let those possibilities cloud his perception. “When was the last time you ate something?” Ben asks quietly, brushing those thoughts aside before Rey can sense them and focusing only on her warmth, her light.

“I’m fine,” she claims unconvincingly.

“Rey, please, let me–”

She curls her arms around him tighter, trapping him like a vise. “I’m fine. I just…” She softens, voice and grip both, and relaxes into him with a sigh. “I’m just so tired, Ben, I haven’t slept in days.”

He thinks of the boarded-up windows, of the barricade, of the tendrils of fear that continue to stain her Force signature.

“Hold me?” Rey asks, with a voice like the scared child she never got to be.

Ben kisses her forehead. “All night,” he promises, and stands guard over her while she drifts in and out of uneasy sleep and dark nightmares and the prison of her own mind. They spend the rest of the night in silence, save for a few soothing whispers on his part when he slowly draws her out of her nightmares, Rey feigning sleep even when she’s clearly awake and Ben letting her as he draws soothing circles into her back.

Eventually, the chrono mounted above the ‘fresher door displays a dimly-lit 0500, the only source of light in the room. The sun has risen in Jakku, and with it so has Rey, finally giving up her act to roll onto her back and stare at the ceiling instead.

“The second time Maz visited after… after my parents,” she says slowly, quietly, her voice scratchy in that intimate, first-thing-in-the-morning way he’s come to cherish, “I begged her to take me back to Takodana with her. I was so lonely, and sad, and scared, and I just… I wanted to not be all of those things, any of those things, anymore.”

It doesn’t matter how many times Rey talks about her childhood – his heart breaks for her every single time.

“And she said… she said she’d like nothing more in the entire universe, but it wasn’t my time to leave yet,” Rey tells him with a little scoff. “Worst thing to tell a child who’s desperate to get off a planet, but you know how Maz is. She wouldn’t change her mind, no matter how much I cried and begged. All she told me was that I’d know when it was time… and I’ve been waiting ever since.”

And finally, finally all of the pieces fall into place. “So that’s why every time I asked…”

Rey rolls onto her side to look at him. “It wasn’t time. I thought it was at first, I hoped it was. I mean, stars,” she breathes, the faintest hint of a laugh in her voice, and relief crashes into him like a tidal wave. “A handsome smuggler shows up out of the blue and offers to show me the galaxy? That’s the stuff holodramas are made of. But even then, even with you… it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like it was time yet.”

The words are out of his mouth before he’s even consciously aware of forming them, a desperate man’s attempt to hold onto the first sign of light at the end of the tunnel that has been this endless night. “Handsome, huh?”

Ben regrets them instantly, chides himself for making light of her confession and teasing her when she’s clearly not ready for it yet, when this isn’t the time for jokes–

But then, in the darkness his eyes adjusted to hours ago, he sees Rey roll her eyes at him and feels her little hand shove at his shoulder in retaliation. He smiles in relief, and slowly, ever so slowly, so does Rey, a soft little curve of her lips that shines brighter than the desert sunlight breaking through the horizon.

They stare at each other like that, two smiling people appreciating a rare moment of calm, until Ben gathers his thoughts and his nerve. “You said it wasn’t time then,” he says carefully. “What about now?”

Rey’s smile fades, but she slips one hand into his as she slowly considers her words. “Now something… now there’s this thing inside of me–”

“The Force,” Ben reminds her and him both, still marveling at the truth, still berating himself for not realizing it that very first day. No one, no one, burns that brightly in the Force without having the kind of connection to it that he has, that she has.

“Yeah, that,” Rey murmurs, sounding worlds away as she considers her new reality. “I feel… I feel like it’s telling me to leave, to get the hell away from Jakku and never look back.” She pauses, squeezes his hand before she looks up at him with a dozen questions in her eyes. “Can the Force do that?”

“The Force works in mysterious ways,” he tells her, echoing the same bantha fodder he’s been told his whole life and finally knows to be true. How else would he explain ending up on Jakku of all the planets in the galaxy, finding Rey of all the Force-sensitives in existence? He’s always suspected that the Force must have played some part in leading him to Rey all those months ago, but now there’s no denying it.

She laughs, and it’s not quite the sound he’s come to love but it’s close enough, Ben supposes, given the circumstances. “Maz used to say that all the time. Maker, I’d get so irritated at her.”

“Everyone says it,” Ben shrugs. “Trust me, it never gets any less irritating. But… but it’s true,” he reluctantly admits.

Rey hums in acknowledgement, and busies herself by smoothing out his crumpled shirt for a while until she’s ready to speak again. “Ben… Ben, what do I do?” she whispers, and he doesn’t think he’s ever heard her sound so helpless, doesn’t want her to ever feel this way again.

And for that to happen… there’s really only one way, isn’t there? For the very first time in his life, Ben regrets not taking his heritage seriously, not knowing enough to help Rey now. There’s only one person out there who can help her… and he’s probably already waiting, Ben realizes, finally connecting the dots between Rey’s incident and the awakening Luke had spoken of.

Slowly, reluctantly, he resigns himself to the idea. “Luke… Luke felt it, your awakening,” he tells Rey, the words heavy on his tongue and his heart. “He can help you. I can… I can take you to him.”

Her reaction is instantaneous, Rey tensing in his arms and then pulling herself away to stare down at him. “No,” she says firmly. “No, I don’t want to be a Jedi.”

He can’t deny the relief that brings him, can’t deny that he wants nothing more than to go along with her wishes. But Rey deserves a proper teacher, deserves someone who’ll know what to do with her brilliance rather than just blindly worship it the way he has since the day they met. “Sweetheart, just because it wasn’t for me–”

“No,” Rey insists, and kisses him all hard and desperate and bruising before he can go on. “After everything you’ve told me,” she pants harshly against his lips, “do you really think I could ever live that life? To give up everything, to give up you–” Her voice cracks, and a strangled sob follows.

Ben quickly pulls her back in, his heart overflowing with love and awe for this woman. “Okay,” he murmurs between soft kisses, “okay, we won’t go to Luke.”

That leaves him with approximately zero other ideas, but Rey seems to have one. “Take me with you,” she says suddenly, lips barely parted from his.

“What?” Ben asks a little too sharply as he rears back in shock, in surprise, in hope.

“Take me with you,” Rey repeats with a shrug. “You could teach me, right?”

He wants, more than anything in the galaxy, for that to be true. But… “Rey, I barely have any training myself, I wouldn’t even know where to start–”

She silences his doubts by reaching out to curve her hands around his face, her thumbs gently caressing his cheeks. “Ben. I don’t need training. I don’t want to be a Jedi, I just want to be in control. You know that much, right?”

And… he does. Ben might not know much, not as much as he would’ve had his father decided to drop him off at Luke’s that fateful day, but he does know enough to stay in control, to stay away from the darkness, to let love and light and life balance everything out.

Most of the time, anyway.

“Ben, take me with you,” Rey says for the third time, and whatever objections he’d had before disappear into thin air. “Unless…” she adds before he can say yes, pulling her hands away from him, “unless the offer is off the table?”

“No, never,” he rushes to assure her, reaching out to wrap his arms around her waist and keep her close. “I want you with me, Rey, always. But are you sure about this? About leaving, for good, with me?”

Rey has a whole collection of smiles for him, but one of his favorites might be the one she flashes him when she thinks he’s acting like the stupidest creature in all the galaxy. “Ben, my heart breaks every single time I have to watch you leave without me. Do you really think I’m going to put myself through that again now that I can finally get off this godforsaken rock?”

This is happening. This is really, finally, actually happening. “I’ll never leave you again,” he swears, and pulls her closer to scatter kisses everywhere his lips can reach as Rey laughs and squirms away from him. “Never again, Rey. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She reaches for his head and holds him still, pulls him in for a long, lingering kiss. “I love you too. So get me the hell off this planet and show me the galaxy, Ben Solo.”

And so he does.

It takes them a while to actually get out of bed and pack up Rey’s things and make all the necessary arrangements, but later that day, as the sun sets upon Jakku, a smuggler and an orphan walk out of a bar hand-in-hand… and they never come back.

. . .

Some years later, Luke Skywalker receives an invitation to the grand opening of a new Force academy, one that exists in between – or maybe outside of – the Jedi and Sith ways.

The invitation is signed by none other than Ben and Rey Solo, retired smugglers and galactic adventurers looking to finally settle down and build a home.

⏳ ⏳ ⏳

Hello, friends! First things first: if you made it through all 12000+ words of this, I wish I could give you an actual cookie or some other prize because that's amazing, thank you for sticking around! This ended up being twice the projected word count and took double the amount of time allotted to write, but it's the first time in a long time that I got completely sucked into a story and wrote for hours on end in some sort of feverish need to delve deeper and get to know these characters better, so I hope that translated into the final product.

Next up, I'll be working on a much fluffier (and hopefully shorter!) one-shot to lighten things up before we head into TRoS. I'll see you soon! Until then: thanks as always for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and please don't hesitate to like/reblog/leave a comment!

#reylo #reyben #rey/kylo ren #rey/ben solo #kylo ren/rey #star wars #rey #ben solo #kylo ren #my fics #fic: smuggler bar #fic archive

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disasteromnia · 4 years

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a hoe really out here doing this huh…anyway this is the short version of her profile and I’ll edit it once I complete everything….god I hope that happens soon

☃ 【Alesia’s Profile】 ☃

❄ Name Data ❄

Name

Xxxx Xxxx Xxxxxxx

Alias

Alesia

Katakana

アリシア

Nickname(s)

Ali

Chaos Trio Leader, Headache #1 (by Crowley)

Mom (by Ace & Kalim)

Tsundere (by close friends, usually just to make her more flustered)

イーラ (a hint to her real name!)

Etymology

Alesia : “noble natured” ; a variant of the name Alice, which was derived from the Germanic name Adalheidis

❄ Personal Data ❄

Gender

Female

Sexuality

Birthday

"January 18th"

Age

Horoscope

Capricorn

Blood Type

AB (Rh-negative)

Hometown

According to Ali, it’s always snowing in her hometown

Race

“Human”

Song Themes

“It’s Not Like I Like You!!” (painfully obvious lol)

❄ Professional Data ❄

Affiliation(s)

Night Raven College

Dorm

Diasomnia

Year

2nd Year

Best subject(s)

Sciences

Hobbies

Calligraphy, playing guitar, singing, stargazing

Under the cut : Personality, Background, Relationship, and Magic

❄ Personality ❄

Ali is a very gentle and friendly person, often befriending most people easily. She can also be quite reckless, always doing whatever she feels at the moment instead of thinking things through. She is often out causing chaos in Night Raven College with others (notably, Choco and Wende) much to the staff’s chagrin. She is also self aware of her annoyance and proudly claims herself as a 12 yr old, as if it were some sort of medal.

Despite her usual childishness, Ali is very capable of stepping up to the responsibility when she feels like it. Usually, it’s when one of her friends is feeling down and needs someone to talk to. While she does allow others to come to her for comfort, she is very hesitant on relying on others for emotional support. She has a few people she openly cries to, but she never tells them why.

When she feels like the other party is comfortable enough with her, she will continue to talk to no end. Often, these conversations are without rhyme or reason as she just genuinely enjoys being able to be with friends. There is, however, a particular topic that she refuses to speak of. No matter how close someone may be to her, she will never talk about her time before Night Raven College. If anyone were to ask her why she refused to talk, she’d answer vaguely like how it was just a normal life before quickly changing topics. If someone were to try and pry the information out of her, she immediately acts cold and defensive, and the air around her starts becoming freezing. Depending on how hard they try to pry, she will not hesitate to cut off that person from her life right then and there.

As long as someone doesn’t try and dig into her past, she will remain fiercely loyal and caring for them, no matter if they were close friends or not. However, this blind loyalty is usually her downfall, especially when it comes to a certain contract-making dorm.

Ali isn’t quick to get mad, and is usually unaffected by whatever people say of her. Most times, she takes any insults as compliments. The only time she ever openly expresses anger, aside from someone trying to pry her past out of her, is when people point out her feelings for two certain individuals. She is very tsundere, openly expressing that she has no such feelings despite being beet red.

Alignment

Chaotic Neutral

Strengths:

Loyal, caring, is usually up to no good so it won’t be a boring time, does anything just to have a good time, great friend to bring along to buffets, unaffected by most things, either helps you or lets you copy her homework, has enough confidence to do stupid things in public, great for hugs during a hot day because her body feels cold

Weaknesses

Is usually up to no good so expect to get in trouble, tsundere, blind loyalty usually leads to her in very unfavorable situations. childishness that makes her look apathetic at times, horrible sleeping schedule, very reckless

Skills

Quick to learn (but never studies), decent flexibility and has good lower body strength, natural air cooler, guitar serenading

❄ Appearance ❄

Hair

“Dark brown,” her hair reaches down to her shoulder area and usually has a a portion of it tied up with a green or black ribbon.

Eyes

“Black eyes,” however when using magic there is a strange pale green tint.

Height

165 cm / 5 ft. 4 in.

Weight

120 lbs / 54 kg

B/W/H

35-27-36 in. / 88-68-91 cm

Chest

34C (US)

❄ Background ❄

Background story unlocks at Bond Level 10

❄ Magic ❄

Ice Magic

Ali is very proficient in using ice magic, and often uses it to cause mischief. However, when she becomes too flustered her will accidentally freeze anything within a 3 meter radius of her.

Freezing Arrows : an offensive-type spell that can be very deadly ; a large oval-shaped ice block appears in front of her and continuously shoots arrows made of ice. It is able to not only freeze anything it touches, but impale her targets. The spell ends once the ice block has been fully used up or if destroyed.

Hailstorm : an offensive-type spell similar to Freezing Arrows, but is not as deadly. Instead of shooting arrows, the ice block shoots chunks of ice, and at most it can give a concussion and some cuts and bruises.

Frost Flower Shield : a defensive-type spell ; she creates a large shield resembling a flower. Penetrating through the thick ice is very difficult, even if it is up against fire magic.

Ice Wall : a defensive-type spell ; often used to create an obstacle for whoever is trying to catch her. (i.e. Crowley)

Ice Floor : Ali freezes the floor underneath her, making it very hard for anyone to stand on it.

Snow Maiden’s Dance : A fighting style she created by herself, she creates ice sword projectiles imbued with other elements. It was based off the exotic traditional dances she saw as a child. She currently has 5 dances. She often uses these for show, but makes sure not to put too much power into it. (to be expanded with what 5 elements she can use it with)

Water Magic

She uses water magic as an extension to her Ice Magic. She doesn’t use it as much, and often uses water for healing.

❄ Relationships ❄

Canon Characters ; from Ali’s perspective

Diasomnia

Malleus Draconia : Ah Mr. Dorm Leader! Mhmm mhmm, I’m not all too close to him, but he makes it easy to tease Sebek.

Lilia Vanrouge : Ah, the grandpa! He’s much easier to talk to, we actually get along fairly well. I just wished he’d stop teasing me.

Silver : Has a VERY punchable face. I would kick him in the gut…What?! No, I don’t like that moron! DEFINITELY DO NOT!

Sebek Zigvolt : Ah, that brat. He’s fun to mess with. Any time I join them for tea time and Malleus isn’t there, I make sure to give him a heart attack. Heh.

Heartslabyul

Riddle Rosehearts : Listen, if you’re gonna threaten to cut my head off make sure to actually do it, coward!

Ace Trappola : MY SON! I love you so much you are my precious child I-

Deuce Spade: Also has a very punchable face. Of course I mean what I say- I DO NOT LIKE HIM EITHER

Trey Clover : Broccoli? I don’t talk to him much, but he looks really cool with his bike. I think his hair looks stupid tho.

Cater Diamond : HEEEEEEEEY BROOOOOOOOOO! We make lots of inappropriate jokes together and it usually ends in both of us choking on a drink or food (laugh)

Octavinelle

All three of them are the end of me. That is all.

Scarabia

Kalim Al-Asim : MY OTHER SON I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BOTH OF YOU ARE SO PRECIOUS TO ME (ugly mother tears)

Jamil Viper : Jamil I swear to god if you do anything to Kalim you better be ready to catch these frozen hands-

Pomefiore

Vil Schoenheit : I know he can be…a bit over bearing, but thanks to him my skin is clear even though I sleep horribly. His fashion tips tho…they’re 50/50 for me.

Epel Felmier : YOU ARE MY SON. DON’T ASK, NOW LET ME LOVE YOU MY CHILD-

Rook Hunt : The one time we talked he asked me to put an apple on my head while he blindfolds himself and try to shoot it. Thankfully, it really did hit the apple. Though truth be told, I wouldn’t mind doing it again.

Ignihyde

Idia Shroud : Honestly, sometimes I forget what actually looks like. Whenever I think of him I just think of his mains in our game. Ah- yeah, I play with him from time to time. You would not like to see him in competitive play.

Ortho Shroud : He’s such a good kid, but what’s with his feet-

Savanaclaw

Leona Kingscholar : HOW IS HE SO LAZY AND HAVE A GOOD BODY!? BOY SHOW ME YOUR TIPS-

Jack Howl : One time I punched him and he said I hit like a grandma. He was not wrong. Oh, and don’t tell him this, but I have his number saved as “Extra Virgin Olive Oil.”

Ruggie Bucchi : He’s basically…my spirit animal. Hah.

#twisted wonderland #twistedwonderland #twisted wonderland oc #twisted wonderland self insert

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arlingtonpark · 4 years

Text

SNK 125 Review

The only problem with this analogy is that being a snake implies a sort of sly smoothness, and, fun fact, Floch’s skin is made of sandpaper.

So Armin is basically the audience at this point. Everyone is tearing their hair out at the prospect of this or that happening. Armin is freaking out because now everything is happening.

That’s -1 for the fan theory of everyone teaming up to take down Eren. Armin isn’t even considering it; he’s just trying to do what he thinks he can. In general, everyone is in “picking up the pieces” mode. That Eren will succeed has essentially been accepted as a given.

Who could even rally the troops?

Armin is busy with Gabi. Shadis refuses to lead. No one even knows where Historia is. Hange is looking after Levi.

The only one in a position to step up is Jean, which is probably why he was especially in the spotlight this chapter. We’ll probably be seeing more of him next couple of chapters.

Jean character arc this whole series has been about leadership. He started as an asshole who didn’t give a damn, evolved into a guy who cared, then into a guy who increasingly led people who also cared.

Jean has taken on more and more leadership roles, usually because his superiors keep dying. Basically Paradis’ entire leadership was killed last chapter, so you know what that means: time for Jean to take on the ultimate leadership position and overthrow Floch.

It’s about time their relationship came to a head. Floch’s radicalism has grated against Jean for a while now. Jean cares about people. It’s why he fights. Floch fights too, but he doesn’t care about people. That’s why he grates so much on jean.

Floch is motivated by, in a phrase, identity politics. It’s not about helping your country or serving some higher good. It’s about your race.

Floch does offer to accept the volunteers as Eldians, but that highlights the BS that underlies his worldview. Being an Eldian may be a matter of blood relation, and Floch may preach the Eldians vs the world gospel, but in the end, its culture that determines who’s on who’s side. According to Floch, the non-Eldians can become Eldians by rejecting their prior identity as non-Eldian.

Thus, Floch is one of the final villains.

Like Zeke and the Marleyans, he rejects people because of their identity. Zeke and the Marleyans reject the Eldians for being Eldians. Floch is the same, except he rejects people for not being Eldians.

What’s interesting is what this means for Eren.

Zeke, the Marleyans, and Floch want to kill many, many people for the same reason: because of what they did in the past.

Zeke wants to kill Eldians because of the suffering Eldians have brought to the world.

Floch was fine with killing Marleyan citizens indiscriminately because of what Marleyans did to Paradis.

Marleyans are cool with killing Eldians because of Eldians did to their ancestors.

Eren is slightly different, and this marks a subtle shift in his thinking.

Eren used to be motivated by revenge. He wanted to avenge his mother and the memory of his happy childhood. It was past actions by the enemy that drove him, like with Zeke and Floch. That’s not so much the case anymore.

Now, Eren is more motivated by prospective future actions by his enemies than what they did before. How they’ve acted before informs his conclusions about how they’ll act in the future, but they are not the primary motivator for him.

So here’s the million dollar question: as far as the series is concerned, is this distinction meaningful?

This is a question about what the series will choose to emphasize, more than anything else.

If the series emphasizes the wrongfulness of genocide above all else, then Eren will be condemned by the story as all the others. He may take a (relatively) more “noble” viewpoint because he’s doing this to protect his friends from people who show no sign of letting them live, but he’s still killing people all the same.

If, unfortunately, tragically, sickeningly, the series decided to emphasize Eren’s motives over what he’s doing, then Eren could still be awarded some sympathy points. That would be awful.

There are no sympathetic mass murderers. There are no excuses. “He’s doing it for his friends” is a form of excuse-making.

Attack on Titan clearly thinks genocide is awful. That doesn’t mean the series isn’t about to equivocate.

The only time it’s good to focus on the motives of bad actions is when you’re trying to figure out a solution to that behavior. Attack on Titan hasn’t really proposed any solutions.

Would this war have happened if everyone just thought like Mr. Blouse and forgiveness was necessary for the kid’s sake?

No.

This fight is happening because of animosity over past actions, but also because of Eren’s warmongering, Zeke’s machinations, Marley’s quest for resources, and anxiety in Marley about losing their superpower status.

We got to where we are today because the incentives pushed everyone in that direction. This combination of circumstances mixed with this combination of personalities is what got us here.

If the facts had been different, then maybe things would have turned out differently, but it didn’t, so here we are.

Will the series just shrug its shoulders and leave us with a final message of “sometimes bad shit happens?”

Probably not. This story is about fighting even in spite of bleak situations. And ending that leaves us with everyone picking up the pieces would just be the series doing what it’s always done, flaws and all.

I’ve already talked about how flawed it is to say, as this series apparently does, that people are just prone to infighting.

People may act out of self-interest, but that is not the same thing as selfishness, and people may come into conflict with each other, but that is not the same thing as war.

An ending where Paradis repopulates a rumbled world, and maybe some final words about how conflict will arise again once the population becomes large and varied enough, would be a flawed ending, but still better than one that even hinted at Eren being more than a deranged lunatic.

Can’t We All Just Get Along is not a real solution to this conflict.

Something I considered when the last chapter came out was that the rumbling, after all this build up, would actually be a background event. That’s looking more likely now.

Everyone is already thinking ahead to a post-rumbling world. Eren hasn’t destroyed an acre yet and everyone is already jockeying for the scraps.

Armin’s top concern is winning over Gabi and preparing for a confrontation with Pieck and Magath.

It’s gone unstated, but Connie bringing his mother back now only makes sense if he assumes Paradis will be safe.

Floch is working extra hard to eliminate potential dissenters.

The only person who’s game to take on Eren is Gabi and she’s sidetracked rescuing Falco.

If everyone is convinced Eren can’t be stopped then…yeah, no one will stop him.

Making the rumbling a sideshow after all this anticipation is definitely something Isayama would do. This series revels in doing the unexpected and making it work.

While Eren lumbers about crushing everything, the ants will flail around. There’s enough dramatic potential in that to last the rest of the series.

Really stop and think about what Floch is up to this chapter.

Remember, Eren is about to wipe out all the other nations, leaving only Paradis to claim all the leftover land.

Floch is jockeying to rule Paradis.

So he’s not jockeying to be Floch Forster, King of Paradis; he’s jockeying to be Floch Forster, King of the World!

If Floch takes over Paradis, he will essentially rule the Earth.

Eren will be dead one way or another within a couple of years, so Floch is all that’s left to lead the island. This story could very well end with Floch planting his dumb ass on the throne and Jean is the only one who can fucking stop that from happening.

Thanks, Chadren! Wiping out your enemies and letting Floch inherit the Earth? Brilliant tactical maneuver, that!

Okay, so maybe Floch isn’t dumb. He’s an ass, but he’s not that stupid.

He tried to use fear to eliminate the volunteers as a threat. He killed one of their own as an example and he’s making a show of offering an olive branch to the rest to pacify them.

But his tactics with Jean are different. Floch knows Jean is tired of all the fighting, so he’s using that against him. He’s banking on Jean wanting to hang it up rather than question the murder that happened right in front of him.

In Trost, Stohess, against Reiner and Bertolt, in the uprising, Shighanshina, and Liberio, Jean’s fought hard, but it’s just been battle after battle after battle after battle.

He wanted to live it up in the interior because he wanted to know peace. He’s not as hedonistic as he was before because he knows that’s wrong, and he fights anyway because he knows that’s right, but still, he wants to know peace.

He wants to settle down. Maybe not live the big life, but definitely the quiet life.

This is Floch’s temptation. Ignore my murder spree and you can live happily for the rest of your life.

Will it work?

I think that answer has a lot to do with what you think will happen with Connie. A tragic ending where everyone gives in to their worst impulses at the worst time possible is definitely on the table.

Eren gives in to his zealotry.

Connie kills a kid to bring back his mom.

Jean just gives up and retires.

Even Shadis decides the life of a woodland freedom fighter isn’t for him and he’s just going to let Floch have his way with him.

Mikasa’s flaw is apparently that she can’t think for herself and that can easily become a problem.

I like how the series draws a line between surrendering and retreating tactically withdrawing retreating. We’re seeing a real possibility that things just go back to how they were at the start of the series: everyone living in willful ignorance of the injustice around them.

Floch’s whole pitch to Jean is that Jean simply pretend the bad things aren’t real and live his life blissfully ignorant.

Shadis takes it as a given that monsters will rule over them again, except the monsters are Floch and the Yeagerists. He tells his men to obey for now, but to prepare for a future struggle.

Floch is telling Jean to surrender; Shadis is telling his men to retreat.

The series may harp too much on necessary sacrifices, but a corollary to that is the series not supporting purely symbolic gestures.

Zeke was actually on to something there. Erwin’s suicide charge would have been an empty, arguably pointless gesture if it wasn’t actually part of a bigger plan.

Senseless sacrifices aren’t good, but I honestly hope everyone doesn’t back down from challenging Floch. It may look bad, but the best chance they’ll get to take him down is now. Floch hasn’t consolidated his power yet. They need to strike before that; it’ll only get harder as time goes on.

Lucky for them there’s an opening.

Eren had popular support before, but now the people are pissed because Eren is giving them exactly what they wanted. The rumbling has caused some incidental loss of life and property damage, and Eren’s approval rating isn’t as hot as it used to be.

The anti-Yeagerists could rally these people against Floch. They’re a small minority, but having any level of passionate support will help.

There would almost certainly be a civil war on Paradis, but it may be necessary to avoid a world where Floch is King.

…How many chapters are left in this story? Less than 12?

Connie’s segment was very straightforward this month. He wants to bring his mother back, but deep down he knows he’s doing it wrong.

He’s sacrificing a kid to bring back his mother. Mr. Blouse makes a good point. Connie is too nice of a person to go through with that. He’s already showing signs of desperation.

Becoming a good soldier was a goal of his, now he’s using the veneer of that ideal to rationalize Falco’s murder. He’s deluding himself.

He’s not a killer, he’s a soldier who protects people.

Throwing away Falco’s life will revive his mother, but really Connie is doing this for himself. Killing Falco and bringing back his mother is ultimately about restoring his life to some semblance of what it was, not anyone else’s.

Connie knows this on some level, so he resorts to this soldier talk to justify it. He’s a good soldier who protects people. “People,” implicitly, is limited to people he cares about.

Once again, parallels to Eren are everywhere.

Eren just wants to protect the people he cares about. Paradis is tied to the tracks and a train is about to run them over. Eren’s plan to stop the train is to throw a billion people into its path.

He’s sacrificing innocents to save people he cares about.

“He” here refers to both Connie and Eren.

Connie is depicted as delusional. He’s tricking himself with false justifications and putting on airs of nobility.

If the parallel is intentional, then Eren is doing the same. He’s delusional, tricking himself with false justifications, putting on airs of nobility.

CC: all the Eren stans.

Hopefully I’m not seeing things and this is a real thing Isayama is doing. Giving Eren as much sympathy as Connie is getting here would be appropriate.

I guess I should talk about Annie, but honestly I don’t care to.

Annie is in a weird place, fandom-wise. Her own supposed importance to the story is essentially a meme.

Really, there are two Annies: the real Annie, who isn’t important as a character, and the fake Annie the fans have concocted, who will play a key role story’s resolution.

Like everyone else, Annie isn’t concerned with taking down Eren. She just wants to make it to her father, implicitly so she can die alongside him.

Paradis is the only safe haven now that the rumbling has started. Annie is choosing to leave that sanctuary on the chance she’ll make it to her father before they’re both killed.

That’s how much she loves her father. She promised she’d live long enough to see him again.

Mission accomplished.

Annie made for a compelling character during her arc. She was the first enemy titan shifter our heroes directly fought. Her existence teased many secrets about the setting.

But that’s all she was, a tease. Her character was used to inform us of the existence of secrets to uncover, but she herself was never that important.

Annie was a tool to be used by the Marleyans and she gave herself over to that role in the hopes of making it back to her father.

I don’t think Annie will play a major role in the finale. She doesn’t care about Floch’s machinations, nor about taking down Eren, and does she even remember Connie?

Annie’s not going to give up on seeing her father. Seeing him again is how she rationalizes genocide. She can’t give up on it. If she does, she admits she killed all those people for nothing.

So she’ll try to make it to Liberio before Eren does, and she’ll fail, of course, because this is Attack on Titan, where dreams don’t come true unless they’re bloody awful.

#shingeki no kyogin #attack on titan #snk 125

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moonhatake · 5 years

Text

THE PROMISED NEVERLAND FUCKING THEORY (SPOILERS FOR THOSE NOT PAST 118 AND PAST 80 ish)

This theory is about what might happen soon and possibly the end of the story

**inhales**

THIS IS MY CONTRIBUTION AND I'M PUTTING MY HAND DOWN AND SPOUTIN OUT SOME THEORIES OKAY LET'S START.

**claps hands** THEORY RevIEw

First off ever since they found Norman things have felt a little icky to me and as we all know, a story like this doesn't give you happiness and let's it stay happy. People have said that Norman came back too early but I think that's intentional. The gangs all back together now, but there's gotta be a catch.

Let me also add how Norman looks much older than them. Idk if this is just the way the author drew him, but I think it could show how Norman isn't on Emmas and Rays level anymore since Norman hasn't spent all that time boogieing with them. (Inspired by a best buds theory) So him looking older could be a symbolism thing

He was experimented on at the place he was held captive at and now is older, which could be plausible once we gather more information.

Okay Back to the Trio

Okay everyone's back yes it's all great, but in chapter 120 Norman talks about his plan to eradicate all the monsters. Basically an all out war and everyone is on board, all except Emma. I mean look at this face.

Is this the face of someone who agrees with whatf Norman is saying? Okay we have that established and it is confirmed that Emma doesn't really want to kill the monsters in chapter 122 and is conflicted with that. Emma wants to find a peace for both worlds and that's a really interesting take since the monsters have been basically eating them, but Emma makes a good point in chapter 122.

Now I'm pausing here and going to

RAY TIME

Ray has gone through hell and back for Emma since Grace field to the forest to goldy pond and till now. He follows Emma and believes in her plan to create a peace, since time and time again, she has shown him there is another way. When Ray wanted to leave everyone back at Grace Field, Emma (With ghost Normans help I guess) showed Ray they could do it and save everyone. When Ray and them were in the forest it was Emma who was the light in darkness and believed that everyone can push on. And then at Goldy Pond. HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT. THAT. GODDAMN. ARC. THE AUTHOR AND THE ILLUSTRATOR ARE FUCKING MADLADS. Emma's goddamn plan on how to beat the monsters was so fucking cool, but in the end Emma gets hurt and they're all in the cave like "ooohh shit we gonna dieee too many peeps hurt" but then like Oliver is like, "leave us, we dead anyways" and everyone is like "Noooooo", but after all this Ray says

Nobody is being left behind. Emma's words are now his and since he's seen that Emma can do it, then maybe even he can do it.

Now back to chapters 119 and so on. Ray has been seen to be on edge and it looks like he doesn't even trust the place nor Norman

I mean he has the look of concern on his face and I think the authors are hinting something at us because they wouldn't add this in just because. In chapter 121 where everyone was having fun and stuff, we see everyone smiling and it's all nice but yet there are subtle images of Ray being left out.

I think now that Norman and Emma are fine and they're all fine, he feels like he's not needed anymore. His soul reason to keep on living and pushing was to protect his friends. They're in a way, his Ray of Light aahahhahaha **cries in a ball**

I think now, Ray feels left out and like I said not needed, but he's still willing to protect them because he loves them. Although there are some things Ray sees in Norman that is suspicious. Ray isn't stupid and sees more of a bigger picture. Obviously he knows that something is up with Norman, but is just playing along right now because Emma is happy. Basically I would like to say is chapter 121 is the

Calm Before The Storm

So I'm pretty sure we're going to get a spitfire of pain after these chapters.

Now to the Main Point

I think what's going to happen is that Emma's gonna go to Norman and tell him that war is not the answer and that they should go to the "Seven Walls" thing and Dragon eye, (idk it was kinda weird but...)

...because back around chapters 102 and 103 where they went to that creepy temple thing with all the ancient artifacts, Emma and them ALREADY found a way to get in using

But then they were attacked just then. :^( so sad we all know who yeets to heaven.

But when Emma tells Norman this it's one of two things, either Norman refuses to go and pushes his plan for war or Norman agrees to check it out JUST FOR EMMA and pretends to find nothing so he can push for his war. Because I'm sure Norman doesn't want to be goodie goodie with the monsters.

So here it is...

Emma might break from Normas party and might take a small group of people including Ray and find their own solution back at the temples. There might be some people opposed to trying to find a peaceful solution and that's when Emma's original party breaks up. Idk for sure who might stay with Norman (Gilda and that other dude? Probs? Cause with Norman it's safe?). As Emmas party breaks up and leaves, Norman plots for his war and the story soon becomes like a race to see whos solution will prevail

Because we have seen Ray feel iffy about Norman, Ray might make his own group and leave FIRST. Why? Maybe because he feels like he isn't needed anymore OR the fact that Emma wants to stick with Norman a little too much and isn't listening to him. Ray might take an even smaller group and leave to go find info about the monsters or go back to the Feilds to save Phil for Emma, because he feels like he can do it without her. Idk if he would tell her that he is going. I feel like he would but that would mean Emma wants to come. For most of the story it's always been Emma and Ray and now it's his chance to actually be an individual. And it might be a prove to himself thing. In the meantime Emma argues with Norman and that's when she splits from Norman. In the meantime, Ray and Emma try to keep touch as they both do different things, because they can't all go to save Phil and then run back to the temples. That's a lot of time and also Norman is planning his war. So Emmas going to temples, Rays freeing Phil and Normans plotting a war

Norman and their crew go to where Phil is and save him, but some arguments happens (maybe they were going to kill the mama of that house but Emma says like, "no don't kill her.") and BAM! As the house burns up with FLAMES, Emma decides to go to temples and takes some peeps with Ray, while Norman takes the rest of the kids and goes back to plot his war. Then it's a race.

**side note** if this does happen and Ray does want to leave in all of this and be his own third party and disappear to do his own thing, during the showdown in the end of the series, Ray will probs pop out and help Emma

OR?**kinda weird theory

Norman is trying to find the super human kids and make an army outta them and trying to experiment on kids to enhance them for an army. Ray finds out, almost killed. Tells Emma and Emma doesn't believe. Confronts Norman. Norman a hoe and lies to her. Ray makes his third party and leaves. Norman then comes clean like a little bitch. Emma leaves to temples (maybe after Ray leaves her a note on what he's doing)

Conclusion

Basically what I'm trying to say is I think the Trio is going to split and it's going to be where the kids have to choose sides and it's a race to find the right solution.

Just my opinion though, I could be missing a bunch of things but this is what I see. Oh and going back to way Norman is shown earlier than people think, this is why. To start the second phase of the plot. Let me know what y'all think, I'd really love to hear from ya. Thanks for reading till the end. I know it's long as hell.

#promised neverland #yakusoku no neverland #tpn norman #tpn ray #tpn #tpn emma #tpn spoilers #tpn theory

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batgirl-87 · 5 years

Note

5 through 10 for the shipping meme ;) [wilhelminafujita]

AH! Hi! I’ve missed you! 😄😳 And thank you for asking! 💕

MC Ship Asks

5. (Answered in previous post)

6. (Answered in previous post)

7. Did your MC or the character you ship them with date anyone else before them? What were those relationships like?

Rumour has it during the summer before Year 6 Keira dated someone in Canada but she has not confirmed nor denied this. The relationship may have also continued into the beginning of Year 6 but again she has not confirmed or denied anything. (But maybe he turned out to be an evil manipulative piece of shit who she doesn’t want to talk about and she’ll have to deal with him later. Maybe during the Battle of Hogwarts and even afterwards…Maybe she’ll just kill the bastard whatever =p Does she find out about him being a lying betraying arsehole around the time she threatens to use obliviate on Charlie? Perhaps) It doesn’t help that Keira can be naturally flirtatious and charming and charismatic so it can be easy to assume she’s flirting or interested in others more so than she actually is, are they dating? What’s going on there? =p

The fact that Charlie is interested in dating anyone is a shock! He has plenty of friends, good close friends, but never seemed to express an interest in dating any of them until Keira. Maybe because he was older? Maybe because other close friends started dating other people? Maybe there was just a better, close connection with her than others? Whatever it was exactly, there’s definitely a close bond and connection there, a good, strong, supportive friendship, and Bill likes to believe his advice and influence brought them together =p But no, no previous dating experience for Charlie.

8. Does their relationship have a rocky start? Or is it smooth?

Well…

When Keira first realizes her feelings for Charlie she was very taken aback and even scared and anxious. But then she managed to cope with it with her belief that it didn’t really matter how she felt about him because he would never feel the same way about her, no one is ever going to really love her for who she really is, and she has a mission to find her brother anyway. So she found it actually pretty easy to shove those feelings aside or at least not show them (unlike Charlie who doesn’t have a good poker face like her =p)

Then when he asked her to the Ball she still remained in denial (she’s amazing at it =p) and never imagined the possibility of him being interested in her more than friends until he suddenly leaned down to kiss her during the last slow song - but even after that still thought he just got caught up in the moment or something and he didn’t mean for it to mean anything, especially when there was no follow-up afterwards.

And then Charlie saw something he shouldn’t have and Keira refused to have anything to do with him for a few months which was torture for him and it could have gone on forever actually until he finally confronts her about it and makes her hash it out because she doesn’t even want to talk to him or have him involved in her life anymore - which she tells Bill who tells Charlie…. It’s a bit of a mess. And even after hashing it out she’s still a bit wary but he manages to prove he can be trusted.

Then Charlie eventually has a realization that he has to just be completely honest with his feelings with her and that goes well… Although he’s not really sure how to navigate this new situation but after a pep talk (or challenge? =p) from Andre their relationship is sort of announced and revealed to everyone. And things are good until Keira learns her team clinched a spot in the World Cup Finals which she surprisingly expresses her joy by basically hugging and kissing everyone she comes into contact with her (hide your girlfriends and boyfriends fellow Hogwarts students =p) and Charlie is like WTF =p She almost killed poor Oliver Wood!

But honestly once feelings are expressed and out in the open they’re good and things are relatively smooth. Before that, there’s some rocky points, primarily where Keira says she feels it’s just best to not have Charlie in her life (which poor Bill has to relay that message to his brother via a letter, not the best way to break that news) and acts like he doesn’t even exist after almost oblivating his memory but they get through it. Keira has enough stress and trauma with the Vaults and her brother and R and the Cabal and other things in her life, she doesn’t need more drama and issues from a relationship. And things can get tough when they graduate and go off to different places but they make it work.

9. What is their primary love language?

I love this question!

As stated in a previous answer, Charlie, and I feel all of the Weasley’s, are very Physically Affectionate. So expressing their love through Physical Affection is just a normal and natural thing for the members of the Weasley family, and therefore would be Charlie’s primary love language.

I think Keira’s primary love language is Acts of Service (and not just because it’s also my own =p) She’s clearly not a very physically affectionate person and struggles with showing vulnerability to words of affirmation may also be difficult for her. While she likes giving the perfect gift to her friends on birthdays and holidays, Charle in particular is the worst as receiving gifts =p And I don’t think it’s something she regularly does to show her care and love towards others. When she really cares about someone she’ll do anything for them to make them happy and reduce any stress and negativity in their lives. And when someone does that for her it means so much to her.

Not saying that Charlie doesn’t do what he can to be there for her and do whatever he can to reduce her stress and make her happy but he does sometimes need to be asked or told what to do to help or informed that she needs it when Keira seems to have a better ability to see or sense someone is stressed about something and act without having to be told or asked. So while Charlie may be upset or stressed about something, Keira would do something to help him feel better or relieve his stress, even if it’s just like cleaning up and organizing his things or making/getting him food. While if Keira was upset or stressed over something Charlie’s initial response would be to hug her and hold her close or rub her back - something physical.

I think Quality Time becomes more important to them as well when they graduate Hogwarts and he goes off to Romania and she goes to Egypt. Since they clearly don’t get to see each other much or spend a lot of time together that rare Quality Time they get is very important and meaningful to them and they make sure to see each other as often as possible or at least stay in contact with one another very regularly.

I do think, even though she struggles with Words of Affirmation, there are moments where Keira can express her feelings very well and in a meaningful way, although those moments may be few and far between, but I also think she requires more Words of Affirmation than Charlie. Charlie seems to pick up on Keira’s more subtle signs of love and affection, and if she cuddles up with him on the couch he knows she cares, she’s comfortable with him, and he’s happy, so he doesn’t need to be told so much verbally, outright from her how she feels (once it’s already said and out in the open). But Keira does need that verbal reminder and clarification more often than him (maybe because he’s a Weasley and is hugging everyone and helping everyone - such a good person and friend to almost everyone, is she something special or just like everyone else?) so he’s working on his Words of Affirmation.

10. (Answered in previous post)

#Anonymous #thank you for the ask!#charlie weasley #charlie x mc #hphm mc #my mc #Adelyn Keira Black #hphm #hogwarts mystery

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ahouseoflies · 5 years

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The Best Films of 2018, Part I

I’ll associate my moviegoing this year with two things: subscription models and superhero films. Realizing that I was the target audience, I signed up for Moviepass in March, then canceled just before they started extorting people in July. (I’ll remember you all semi-fondly, conniving alarmists in the Moviepass Reddit thread.) Thanks to Moviepass, I took full advantage of my free time over the summer, and I found some nice surprises that I wouldn’t have checked out otherwise. From there I joined AMC A-List, which is the rare corporate service that I cannot complain about in any way. Moviepass always felt like some kind of drug deal, whereas A-List is as easy and inviting an experience as possible. I get to seek out Dolby, IMAX, or 3-D showings instead of getting locked out of them, and the electronic ticketing helps with my last-minute availability. (I’ve mastered the art of lovingly putting my daughter to bed, only to desert her and my wife five minutes later. “You know, there’s an 8:10 showing of The Predator, which means 8:30 after previews...”) My overall viewing was up 11% this year, which I have to attribute to these subscriptions. Perhaps I saw too much though. After a self-righteous five-year ban on superhero movies, I caught up in 2019 like the madman completist that I am. On the plus side, I enjoyed Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy, and I vaguely feel more connected with the culture-at-large. But I could have been more selective. The diligence required to watch X-Men: Apocalypse late on a Thursday night took away from, say, my Orson Welles project or...reading books. To get some of the business out of the way, I haven’t seen Burning, Shoplifters, Destroyer, Cold War, The Sisters Brothers, Tomb Raider, The Wife, or The House That Jack Built. Not all of us get screeners or care about seeing The Wife. Mostly for argument purposes, I list everything I saw and divide the movies into the categories of Garbage, Admirable Failures, Endearing Curiosities with Big Flaws, Pretty Good Movies, Good Movies, Great Movies, and Instant Classics. Hey, speaking of superheroes: GARBAGE

123. Venom (Ruben Fleischer)- Venom was first announced as an R-rated film until it was neutered into PG-13 at some point in the development road. That was the right choice because this is a movie, in all of its broad, careless storytelling, for children. "So he's going to get married to her but then he looks at her email and then he interviews the guy and he gets fired so then she leaves him and he drinks now?" This is a dummy's version of what a journalist is or what a scientist is, and it never shades into more subtlety than exactly what is on the expected surface. I guess that Tom Hardy gets to jump into a lobster tank if that floats your boat, but the story is stuck on fast-forward for the whole movie, never relenting to develop character or do anything other than communicate information that we don't really need.

Venom is almost--almost--interesting as a new branch in the superhero economy. Why shouldn't Tom Hardy and National Treasure Michelle Williams trade the equity they've built for caring about their work into this trash? I don't begrudge them that for a second. I hope they make more money for the sloppy sequels. 122. The Equalizer 2 (Antoine Fuqua)- The first Equalizer was flat and pointlessly long with pedantic dialogue too, but at least it had the Home Depot sequence. This one makes very basic stuff incoherent and dawdles all the way to the end. Your boy is now an expert hacker too? I guess it's too late for Fuqua to start caring about scripts.

121. Mandy (Panos Cosmatos)- I need somebody to explain to me why, dramatically, this is good without something like, "It's so metal! What a midnight movie! Chainsaw fight lol!" If you want to talk about the visuals that are stylized within an inch of reality, then I'll listen. But there's nothing to hold onto dramatically. I think I've developed an overall irritation with revenge films, but this filthy dirge of a movie felt empty and endless by any standard. 120. Fifty Shades Freed (James Foley)- Its intentions are too guileless to upset me, but Fifty Shades Freed uses up the goodwill I sort of had for the first two by tugging the viewer relentlessly through conflict that always seems temporary. Part of the fun has always been how bizarre basic human interactions seem in this universe. (Has anyone ever returned from a vacation to be surprise-promoted?) But this entry expects way too much from its viewer's loyalty. 119. On Chesil Beach (Dominic Cooke)- There's supposed to be a disconnect to the behavior of the couple in On Chesil Beach, a movie that asks us to harken back to a time when newlyweds were so sexually innocent that they had trouble figuring out how to consummate a marriage. Their fumbling seems foreign to us, which is the point. But what's the excuse for none of the behavior in the movie ringing true to any human experience?

I'm talking about Florence refusing to tell her string quartet that she's engaged because she thinks they'll assume that her marriage will break up the group even though she's sure that it won't. I'm talking about her father, who feels the need to humiliate his son-in-law in tennis because that would prove that he's dominant over the boy in some way that being his employer does not already prove. I'm talking about a plot that literally would not exist if the characters had just engaged in one conversation that it seems like they would have had in the flashbacks, which frame them as a kind of open, reasonably affectionate, easy-going couple. But by all means, McEwan, change that whenever it suits you. 118. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J.A. Bayona)- I reject the whole premise of this deliberate lowering of stakes that never rises above obligation. To paraphrase a Griffin Newman joke, it makes Jurassic Park 4 look like Jurassic Park 1.

While we're here though: Can I have a movie about the guy who compiled the guest list for the dino auction? I want to see a guy looking at a spreadsheet--or is it an Access file?--and getting to, like, Mark Cuban and weighing the options: "He probably has the $27 million to spare on weaponized recombinant DNA. He would definitely appreciate the wow factor of having his own Indoraptor. But is he more of a neutral evil or a chaotic evil? I guess I'll reserve a seat for him and send the invitation. If he says no, then he says no. Okay, we're still in the C's..."

117. Tag (Jeff Tomsic)- Tag is going to show up on a lot of "worst movies to ever win an Oscar" lists when Jeremy Renner wins an Oscar for it. 116. A-X-L (Oliver Daly)- This is a melodramatic movie about a weaponized robotic dog and the dirtbike kid who befriends it. Nothing wrong with that; a ten-year-old boy might like it, and there aren't enough movies specifically for that audience. But what's weird is how nonchalant the main character is about the whole thing. He immediately starts training this one-of-a-kind "war dog" android and imprints it with his DNA like this is a regular Tuesday. It's one of many things that is just kind of off in this picture.

This being a cheap genre film, you do get treated to those L.A. locations that have been around the block. I think the nondescript complex that houses Craine Industries is also the one from Sneakers and The Lawnmower Man. You know, Craine Industries, the company that is working on a $70 million prototype for the military but, because this is a cheap genre film, seems to have two employees.

I do think there's an interesting movie to be made about motocross. The movie kind of works when it's just about an underdog father and son fixing bikes, before it gets into all of the robot stuff. ADMIRABLE FAILURES

115. The Little Stranger (Lenny Abrahamson)- Dr. Faraday: "Wanna marry me?" Caroline: "Maybe. Do you actually love me?" Dr. Faraday: "Probably not." Caroline: "Hmm, I think I would marry you only as an excuse to go to London to get away from my dying mother and this crumbling house that probably has a ghost." Dr. Faraday: "Oh. Well, glad we're discussing it now because I want to marry you specifically to give me a reason to stay in this crumbling house that probably has a ghost. I'm drawn to it for some reason." Caroline: "Is it because you grew up poor?" Dr. Faraday: "Yes. All dry, cold British stuff ultimately comes down to that.

114. Damsel (David Zellner and Nathan Zellner)- Had I done my research, I wouldn't have watched this Zellner Brothers follow-up to Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, one of my least favorite films of that year. Like that movie, Damsel is a story of two halves, punctuated by a shocking moment that happens halfway through. Unfortunately nothing interesting happens before, and nothing interesting happens after. 113. Suspiria (Luca Guadignino)- This is a movie about duality that gets extended. English, German, and just a sprinkle of French. Six parts and an epilogue. A dual role (and a bit part). Personalities that clash until one pulls ahead. There are ideas here. But, especially considering I don't like the original Suspiria, I didn't find much to hold onto as a visceral experience. It's a long, foreboding sit. Guadagnino knows how to end his movies, but he still doesn't have much to say for the long middle parts. Shout-out to Amazon; I hope that, in some circuitous way, betting on maximalist Italians helps them to sell paper towels or whatever.

112. Early Man (Nick Park)- I still love the Aardman aesthetic, but this material was thin. It's too juvenile for adults and too adult for juveniles. 111. Beirut (Brad Anderson)- The screenplay takes an hour to set up what should have taken twenty minutes. Some of that time is dedicated to developing Hamm's burnt-out alcoholic wheeler-dealer, but he's a character we've seen a hundred times before anyway. Some shorthand would have done some good. Once the plot gets going, it's serviceable, but I was bored by that point. Pike and Hamm need to fire their managers. 110. Upgrade (Leigh Whannell)- I'll admit that I owed the film more attention than I gave it since I was nodding off the whole time, but nothing in the gloomy programmer interested me enough to want to go back.

109. Red Sparrow (Francis Lawrence)- Good as a steamy blank check provocation from the director and star--not much else. I'm sure people will take down the easy target of Jen Larry's Russian accent, but they're ignoring just how much she tries in something like this. She is a gargantuan Movie Star who commands the screen, and a lot of that presence comes from the commitment of, say, learning how to ballet dance for what must have been months. She hasn't slept through a performance yet.

I didn't think this endless movie made much sense, especially near its conclusion. Perhaps it's my personal distaste for the way that spy movies introduce major plot points without so much as a music sting to guide you. As soon as anyone says the term "double agent," my brain turns off.

108. Hot Summer Nights (Elijah Bynum)- If you want to direct a music video, just direct a music video. I like all of the actors in this, but the filmmaker has nothing to say. 107. The First Purge (Gerard McMurray)- Even James DeMonaco seems to be admitting that the bloom is off the rose a bit, since he only wrote this entry in the franchise--and his direction is missed in the action scenes. Just enough of the political subtext remains, (The New Founding Fathers get funding from the NRA, and a character uses "pussy-grabbing" as an insult. Thankfully, a Black church getting shot up by men with Iron Cross flags happens off-screen.)

But there are more characters I didn't care about than characters I did care about. Since its prequel setting doesn't reveal much about the world that we didn't already know, the film needed to do a bit more with the survive-the-night scenario that we already saw in the second film.

106. Vox Lux (Brady Corbet)- A movie that, up to and including the last minute, keeps promising something better than it actually is. Everyone here is making...choices… 105. Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker)- I'm glad David Ehrlich liked this as much as he did. There are some intriguing ideas, most notably the suggestion that a mentally unstable person would be better suited for acting than a healthy person. What a debut for Helena Howard as well. But for it to add up to something by the end, I think I needed it to have more dramatic structure--the sort of fall of the Molly Parker character feels invented and insincere--or go all the way into experiment. 104. Shirkers (Sandi Tan)- One of those "you won't believe what happens next" documentaries that positions itself as an example of truth being stranger than fiction. But removed from a festival context, does it ever rise above its logline? Is it really even that odd?

#film #lists #movie reviews

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confusedunit · 2 years

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A Life Through Blue Green Eyes - Chapter 3

Crossposted from Ao3

Sen's so booooooored.

It's date night for the couple, and this time it's 'date night', so he and Pico have been kicked out of the apartment. And out on the roof where Pico's chilling now doesn't have any Wifi. And, to top it all off, Pico's refusing to share his Wifi hotspot.

He huffs, throwing his arms back over his head to thump against his bed. He still has access to everything he normally does home wise, but with no internet he can't listen to any music or watch this Youtube that Blue's been teaching him about.

With what Pico had said, Blue prefers nicknames, refusing to give his name at almost all costs. It makes his heart twinge in a way he doesn't like to think about. Blue is a basic name for him, but the guy had smiled when he said it so he's kept it since. Which left her being called Red, since she doesn't give her name either, though in her case he can't tell why. He just felt it was fitting to have the two match.

Sometimes he calls Pico Green when he's annoyed with him, which always riles him up. It's hilarious, honestly, and Pico never stays mad anyway.

But anyway, Sen shakes those memories out of his head, the most important thing is that he has nothing to do. He groans in frustration.

"Oh my god, be quiet kid." Pico grumbles, glaring at him. "The adults are trying to talk."

"I'm 17!"

"And I'm 20. You're still a kid, dumbass." He glances to the side, adjusting the phone against his ear. "Huh? No, he's not trying to talk to you. He's just bitching."

"You've been complaining to that phone for like an hour now!" He glares over at his laptop. "And you keep asking the same questions! And I'm assuming they keep giving you the same answers!"

"Oh my god, hold on." He looks back over at him. "Don't you have something you could be doing?"

"I have no internet, what am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know, read a fuckin' book or some shit?"

"I've read literally every book in the library!"

"Don't care! If you're really a teenager, figure out some shit to do. That's what I used to do." He quickly looks over to the side again. "No, you shut the fuck up. No, I don't- I'm not teaching him to be a criminal! Oh my fuckin' god, I hate both of you."

He throws his hands into the air. "Look at me world, I'm going to learn from Pico. Time to go steal a car."

"There weren't even cars in-" Pico growls softly. "Oh no you don't, Nene, don't you fuckin' hang up on- ...me." He closes his eyes, taking a few slow breaths. "...Fuckin' hell..."

He rolls over to pull his laptop closer, resting his head on his arms. "...You do know everything's okay, right?"

He startles, looking over at him again. "Huh?" He puts his phone to his side, checking for his gun.

"You've got a lookout up here for any danger. You know the entry points for the apartment. You've got your two other lookouts nearby keeping an eye on things you can't see, and they're close enough that they can get here if you need your help." Sen adjusts to prop his head up on one hand instead. "So what's the problem? Do you really think that he's going to have an attacker tonight?"

Pico shudders, closing his eyes for a moment again. He looks back over at him. "...Chrysalis."

They've both got trauma, and they both know they're currently walking on eggshells due to it. So they've come up with safe words, to let each other know when they're stepping too close to the fire.

He holds up his other hand. "Sorry Pico. Different question. Uhh..." He glances out his window, watching the moon rise. "...How did you meet these two, anyway."

He shakes his head quickly. "Nope. Chrysalis. Not tonight."

"...Okay. Uh-"

"They're my friends. We...go way back." He tries to reach out with an informational olive branch. "Darnell and Nene. Trust them with my life."

His voice gets quiet. "...You told them about me?"

Pico shrugs. "Told them I'm babysitting, that's it. Not gonna share your personal details without permission, that's fucked."

He relaxes a bit, slumping against his bed. "...Who are they to you? Family?"

"They're two of my closest friends." He scoffs. "Does Mr. Popular Kid not know what the fuck friends are?"

"I know what friends are. I hate you." He huffs again, looking back at the moon again. I have..."

He has several realizations abruptly. While there's contact outside, in his new world he lives in, there still has been no one within sight. He doesn't remember...hearing from his friends...even a while before he was pulled out. ...He doesn't remember...he...

"Kid?"

His hands shook, and he tried to hide them by resting on his hips with a nervous grin. It didn't work.

"What's gotten into you?" A tone of confusion, a raised eyebrow. "You're always chill, what's going on?"

"I've..." He couldn't tell, he couldn't say he's been seeing a red figure, hearing whispers outside his door at night. "...Had trouble sleeping. Nightmares, I think."

"Hey, you gotta take care of yourself better. How am I gonna beat you fair and square at the festival if you're not at your best?" A laugh, a smack of the shoulder. "...Seriously though. You know you can talk to me, right?"

He nodded. "...I know."

"Kid, do you hear me?"

"Hey!" A higher voice, annoyed. "What was that for?"

"I saw him- just outside! He was staring at you, how didn't you see him?" He gestured angrily at the door. "You told me you have no idea what I'm talking about, but he was right there! Looking right at you!"

"You really need to sleep more, dude. You're seeing shit."

"I'm not crazy!" He stomped his foot, teeth gritted. "He's been stalking me for days, and days, and days, and now he's looking at you!"

"What, you jealous?" A slam of a hand against a wall. "This is why no one's wanted to talk to you! You're paranoid as hell now! Mr. Popular's losing all his friends because he's having nightmares and lashing out at them, and now he can't take it!"

"I'm not-" He pressed his hands to his head, digging in his fingers until he can feel the pressure. "I just want you all to be safe! You know I can't go back home. You guys...are all I've got."

A sigh, a hand gently rested on a shoulder. "...We care about you too, we just think you need some space right now. Get some sleep. We'll bring you homework in a few days, okay?" A door opening, a footstep. "...You need to take care of yourself too."

"Kid!'

He panted, running, wind in his hair and sun on the skin under his rolled up sleeves, completing another lap.

"Heeeey! Big brother!!" Smaller footsteps, a quick pace. "Wait for meeee!!!"

"Sen!"

Sen snaps out of his thoughts at the sound of his name, shaking. It takes him a bit to realize the distressed sounds he hears are coming from himself. It takes longer to realize he's crying.

"Sen, what's going on?" It's Pico, Pico's holding the game keychain in both hands, looking down at him with a slight bit of fear in his eyes. "Are you okay? What-"

"Au-" His voice cracks. "Aurora."

"Fuck. I'm sorry- shit-" He glances around quickly.

Sen presses at his face, trying to calm his breathing. He'd forgotten...he can't believe he'd forgotten...

"...Hm, hm hm hmm, hm, hmmmm, hmmmmmmm."

His eyes flick over to the laptop. He knows that song. "How-"

"Repeat after me." Pico smiles a bit, humming the tune again.

Sen repeats the tune. They continue doing this for a while, time having never really had a lasting meaning to him, before he finally notices that he feels better. He stops repeating.

"...You doing any better, kid?"

"...Yeah." He moves to sit up and rest his back against the wall, sighing. "...Thank you."

"You're welcome. ...Sorry I set you off."

"...Pico?"

"Yeah, kid?"

He looks at his hand. "...When you get the chance...will you ask them if anyone else is still on the disk? If...if we can get them?"

"...Sure thing."

"Thank you..."

He finds out two days later that he was the only bit of salvageable code left on the disk. Everything else had been corrupted.

He can't even bring himself to cry.

#*confused fanfiction noises*#A Life Through Blue Green Eyes #ALTBGE

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our-legacy-rp-blog · 7 years

Photo

KARI has been accepted for the character LEANDER PARRISH

A thoughtful and detailed application, Kari! You went above and beyond with Leander, and I can feel how much you connect with the character - we can’t wait to see you get started. Welcome back for another round of OL, and be sure you fill out the checklist HERE.

OOC name & pronouns: Kari (they/them)

Age: 21

Timezone: PST

Note: Kari will be dropping Lyana and taking Leander.

IC INFORMATION:

Character’s name: Leander Parish

FC: Jacob Artist

Position request: None

Birthday: August 25th

Virgos are always paying attention to the smallest details and their deep sense of humanity makes them one of the most careful signs of the zodiac. Their methodical approach to life ensures that nothing is left to chance, and although they are often tender, their heart might be closed for the outer world. This is a sign often misunderstood, not because they lack the ability to express, but because they won’t accept their feelings as valid, true, or even relevant when opposed to reason. Though they are enthusiastic learners, Virgo’s tend to be shy so they don’t always bask in the limelight as well as others. They often prefer to work in the background

Sources:

http://www.astrology-zodiac-signs.com/zodiac-signs/virgo/

https://exemplore.com/astrology/A-Beginners-Guide-To-Astrological-Signs-And-What-They-Mean-For-Your-Personality

Wand: Birch and Phoenix Feather, 12 ½ inches

Birch wood is known for its good physical healing abilities and can help in recuperation and restoration of one’s own strength. A birch wand will never refuse any who are in need of its support and its properties make it good for expelling evil spirits and spirits of the past. However it cannot destroy them. This wand performs well in healing spells and charms, and is suited well for transfiguration - specifically in the creation of a new structure or rejuvenating an old one. It also performs well for spells dealing with light. This wand is successful in dispelling evil curses, whoever it is less suited for direct combat.

Source: www.unfading.net/wselen.html

Patronus: Praying Mantis.

To Leander the praying mantis represents the inner strength and patience that he practises. The praying mantis hides in plain sight, watching and waiting for it’s prey to come to pass by before it strikes. The praying mantis will not move until it is 100% sure that it is doing the correct thing. Leander takes inspiration and strength from it, knowing that patience is important until he is able to carry out his action. It reminds Leander to have patience in acquiring things they want and to remain balanced throughout the duration of the wait.

Source: http://www.sunsigns.org/praying-mantis-animal-totem-symbolism-meanings/

Boggart: Dead Werewolf.

Not only a dead werewolf, but a werewolf dead with the implication that Leander was the one to have ended its life. With Leander’s family history and the propaganda that he was fed through his life, he does struggle to see werewolves as people, but he still thinks that killing them mercilessly is wrong. What Leander fears most is turning into the person that his family wants him to be: a ruthless hunter following in their footsteps.

Headcanons:

Leander’s sorting was almost classified as a hatstall. For 4 minutes and 50 seconds the Sorting Hat and Leander fought over where the Sorting Hat would place him. Many children in the past had asked the Sorting Hat to place them in a different house. For many of the students whom asked, the Sorting Hat took their decision into consideration due to the fact that the child displayed traits of that house anyways. Leander showed so little traits of Ravenclaw that the Sorting Hat was hesitant to place him there. He would fit so flawlessly into Slytherin, cunning and ambitious, Leander looked out for himself above all else. Leander’s steadfast desire to not be placed in Slytherin is perhaps a testament to why he should have been placed in Slytherin. But as Leander laid out the evidence as to why he should be placed into a different house, the Sorting Hat decided that Ravenclaw would perhaps be the better suited of the remaining three houses and promptly placed Leander there, 10 seconds shy of a proper hatstall.

Leander’s wand is unsuited for direct combat, which he finds extremely ironic considering his family’s history. His wand is better suited for creation than destruction, and hates when Leander uses it for dueling or related purposes. At times it refuses to work for the particularly aggressive duels, and when Leander forces it to perform it will proceed to throw fits for days afterwards. The first time that he forced his wand to duel (in his third year) he thought he was going crazy and losing his magic since he was struggling with the most basic of spells. Since that day, Leander endeavoured to build a relationship of trust with his wand. He even goes as far as leaving his wand behind while going off on hunting trips, so as not to expose it to the horrors that it would have to face.

Leander’s magic has always been heavily influenced by his emotions, which means that as a child his magic was particularly volatile. Even when he first began Hogwarts his magic was unstable and he was prone to bouts of accidental magic. After a few incidents his first year, his head of house recommended that he find some way to control his emotions and pointed him on the path of meditation and yoga. Leander has come to rely heavily on these techniques to control his magic. He wakes up early every morning and goes through his yoga routine and then meditation before class every day. It helps hims feel grounded and more in control of his life, even when he really isn’t.

Extra Family Headcanon: Leander has always had a confusing grasp of how exactly everyone in his family is related to him. This mostly stems from the fact that his mother’s family had only 4 children, but they were spread out so that the oldest was 24 when the youngest child was born. It also stems from the fact that the two youngest children were mostly raised by their brother after their parents died. Samuel and Elizabeth Sinclair died, leaving their two youngest, Magnolia (7) and Juniper (1). To be raised by their oldest son, Aspen, who was 25 at the time. Aspen and his wife Renee had two children of their own, Laurel (7) and Jackson (3). Hudson was 2 years old when Magnolia and Juniper went to live with their brother Aspen, and Leander was born the year after. The six children were only 8 years apart from the youngest to the oldest, and were thusly raised and socialized together. They were the original Sleepover Squad as they began to call themselves, spending the night at a rotation of each other’s houses every month as their parents attended hunts. The six of them were educated together too, the families saving money on tutors who would educated all of the children together. The group was later joined by Tabitha (3 years younger than Leander), Georgiana (6 years younger than Leander), and Kenneth (5 years younger than Leander). These three were related to Leander on his father’s side instead of his mother’s, but as the two families were friends long before Jon and Olive got married, they too were enveloped into this group of children. These nine children all just considered each other cousins. They were playmates and friends, keeping each other company when their parents were away. This constant exposure to people made Leander very comfortable with interactions with others, and made him used to having constant noise and chatter. He loves to be surrounded by his friends at Hogwarts, because it reminds him of his childhood and growing up with near constant companionship. To the point where Leander grows very uncomfortable if he is completely alone, preferring to have at least one person around him at all times.

History:

Jon Parrish and Olive Sinclair were both raised and indoctrinated to believe that werewolves were a blight on society and unfit to live amongst the Wizarding community or around humans at all. The Parrish family was amongst a few Wizarding families who shared a highly specific and dangerous hobby - werewolf hunting. When Jon and Olive graduated Hogwarts, they were arranged to be married. Bound by honor and duty (and a shared love of hunting) Olive took the Parrish name and the two became a most fearsome hunting duo. They two could not sit by as the Wizarding World faced increasing attacks from werewolves on innocent wizards and muggles alike. Olive and Jon were among the few who pushed for more and frequent hunts, increasing the frequency from once or twice a year to almost monthly by the time that Olive grew pregnant with the couple’s first child.

The Parrish family wears their scars proudly, as trophies of a hunt well done. It pained Olive to give up hunting, even for a short while, but the whole family agreed that their family needed heirs. Olive gave birth to two sons: Hudson and Leander, but was always up fighting as soon as she was give a clean bill of health after the births.

Hudson and Leander were three years apart in age, but light years away in personality. There have been many times in Leander’s life when he wondered if he truly belonged in his family. Everyone in his family possessed a ruthlessness and a drive that he just didn’t. Even as a young child he was always more content with reading or quiet activities rather than join in with his brother and cousins rough-housing. Not that Leander never played with them. On the contrary, he possessed an exorbitant amount of hero worship for his older brother and cousins which meant he tried his hardest to fit in and play with them. Though he always did enjoy his books more. The Parrish house was always a revolving door of family members. Aunts, Uncles, and cousins were always over visiting which meant that Leander seldom had a shortage of people to play with. He especially loved when his cousins would spend the night over at their house when their parents would go out on camping trips. One adult or older cousin would stay behind with all of the younger children. It was always changing and it kept Leander’s life interesting and exciting.

When Leander was six, his world was tilted on its axis. One evening he hadn’t been able to sleep, and was wandering around his house. His cousins were asleep upstairs after another fun sleepover night when he heard a commotion coming from the basement. The door to the basement was usually locked and the secrets that it held were things that he’d “learn about when he was older”. This evening the door had been left ajar and he heard the voices of his parents and grandfather drifting up from below. What six year old could resist? For the rest of his life, Leander would wish that he could go back in time. Back to that moment that he began down the stairs and stop it. He wished that he could go back to the childhood where his family secrets stayed buried there under the house. That evening he learned a secret that all Parrish children learned at 10 years old. He finally learned why all of the Parrish children begun stamina and strength training at age 7 and combat training at 9. He saw the family’s trophy room, lined with the heads of their conquests, of the werewolves that they had killed. The most shocking thing that evening to little Leander was the dead body lying on a table, with his family standing around each other congratulating each other on a hunt well done. Leander was paralyzed, frozen in fear on the stairs until he was spotted.

Not too long after that, Leander and Hudson were sat down and told the dark and dangerous secrets of the Parrish family. Leander was 6, too young for that knowledge, and Hudson was 9, only a year before he would have been told anyways. Hudson, who had already begun combat training, was indoctrinated into the Parrish’s views of werewolves being horrible monsters that needed to be eradicated. Leander was too soft for all of this. He was the child that cried for the small rodents that they fed their owls. Leander didn’t see the heads in the basement as proof of the family’s good deeds for this world, he saw it as needless killing of animals that had their own thoughts and feelings. His knowledge was still warped by his family though, and even to this day Leander has difficulty seeing werewolves as people, but that doesn’t mean that they should be eradicated for merely existing.

When a Parrish child was 10, if they showed enough promise in their training, were allowed to attend their family’s monthly “camping trips”. On a child’s first hunting trips, they were allowed to watch the proceedings from a safe distance, guarded by more experienced family members every month. By age 11 they are expected to be able to help participate in the hunt rather than observing, and on the full moon closest to their 17th birthday they are expected to make their first solo kill. The scars that the family gained from these hunts were worn like badges of honor, proof that their family was contributing to this world. Even if the secret had to be carried with them to the grave. Leander seldom attended these hunts, feigning illness and volunteering to babysit the younger children as often as he could. Leander’s disdain for the family business was on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis. Everyone knew that Leander was not cut out for their way of life, but refused to acknowledge it. It was the white elephant in the room, and the family allowed him to take up the job of babysitter. They used to rotate, all hating to be left behind and held back from the hunt, so many jumped at the chance to leave their nephew behind and attend the hunt.

Leander packed up his room the moment that he received his Hogwarts letter. The call of Hogwarts was that of safety. A place where he could get away from the family business and be the person that he wanted to be without his family pressuring him to participate. There are still occasions where his brother would come barging into his dorm, pulling him out of bed and dragging him along on the family hunts. The Parrish’s knew passageways to sneak out of the castle and return before they were noted to be out of bed. The Slytherins never asked questions, so Hudson was able to move around with confidence. It was during these times that Leander wished that he had somehow managed to convince the Sorting Hat to put him into Gryffindor instead of Ravenclaw. At least then he would be protected from his brother dragging him off to hunts behind a password protected portrait not just a riddle that other students can answer as well. Nothing made Leander happier than when his brother graduated from Hogwarts and he was finally out from under the immediate watchful eye of his family.

Now:

Leander is one of the more powerful magic wielders in his family, and an adept dueler as well. Despite his absence on most hunts, his family still trained him along side of his brother and cousins. In order to not draw even more attention to himself in his family politics, he dutifully trained harder and longer than everyone else. He goes along with most things that his family tells him, not making waves to try to keep their gaze off of him for as long as he could imagine. When he trained he imagines that he was training to fight his family instead of the werewolves they were training him to fight against. Leander rarely showcases his talents at dueling, but rumours still circulate Hogwarts from the few times that he has attended and participated in duels around the school. The common consensus is not to mess with Leander, because despite his quiet demeanor lurks a fierce and powerful dueler. Leander does his best to reject these rumours. He might be quiet, but is the type of person to have a smile for everyone. Making friends and hanging out with people he cares about are very important to him. His friends receive the love that he stopped giving to his family when he was young, to a point where he might smother his friends with his love.

Starting in Leander’s 4th year, the first year his brother was not attending Hogwarts, he flourished. It was the first time that he had been truly free from the gaze of a family member, and now more free from the reach of his family than he ever had been. Leander still avoided the limelight, but smiled more and found that it was easier to have friends. He wasn’t worried about looking over his shoulder or having his brother remind him of his duties to his family.

It was in this time that Leander found the time to explore his gender and sexuality to find that they are not so easily contained into a box. He is not so fond of labels, but knows that the way that he relates to his gender is not the same way that other might. He identifies as genderfluid, somewhere in flux between male and female. He does not mind being called by male pronouns or by male identifiers, however he knows that the truth is somewhere slightly off center from male. Hogwarts is a more accepting place, and he found little resistance to his identification as genderfluid. For this he is thankful as he knows that his family would never find this acceptable.

This summer Leander will turn seventeen. Most wix eagerly await the day that the Trace is no longer in effect and they are considered adults in the Wizarding world, but Leander is dreading it. For a Parrish child, seventeen marks your first solos kill, the first time that they are expected to find, track, and kill a werewolf with minimal help from the members of the hunt. Leander has managed to avoid killing at all, and merely watches on the hunts that he is forced on. He knows though that this is one thing that his family will not let him avoid. To be a Parrish you must kill, so Leander would at the very least be forced to cut all ties with his family and never see them again. That is assuming that the family will be merciful, though with the collective ruthlessness of the family Leander wonders if he would be allowed to leave, or if they would eliminate him like the werewolves that they hunt for disgracing the family name.

#accepted

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