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kiss-seokjin · 3 years

Text

Joke (RM Joke Spinoff)

Synopsis: The ‘mad’ wolf hybrid Kim Namjoon breaks out of his imprisonment in an asylum and lucky you, he’s now living in your house!

Pairing: wolf hybrid Namjoon x human reader

Word count: 7,545

Pairing: 18+

Warnings: Smut

Smut warnings: reader and Namjoon are actually kinky, foreplay, oral sex (both receiving), penetration, no protection

AO3 link

Wattpad link

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You close your laptop, sighing as you stand up and stretch after a long day of zoom classes for college. Feeling antsy after sitting for so long you Put in your earbuds and play music from your phone as you step outside for fresh air.

There is a grassy yard with a small pond, stream, and flowers in the yard, but beyond that, there is a forest that expands as far as the eye can see along the mountains that you are in. Ever since COVID-19 happened you have been taking online university on and off from the family home in Korea. There is a town close by, it is only a twenty or thirty minute car ride away, though due to living in the mountains you cannot see it from your home. But on a positive note it makes it easy to get groceries and supplies on your weekly trip from your safe space.

Since you cannot see your friends in person these days, and also considering you are in the mountains, you have a weekly chat with them during your free time to catch up with one another and to fill the void of not being able to socialize any more. You truly miss them but you know things will go back to normal someday. At least you hope so.

After relaxing to a few songs while admiring the view you go back inside to make your dinner. Shutting the sliding glass door behind you contemplating locking it. You do live far out in the woods so it is highly unlikely someone will break in, and besides, even if they did, they could just throw a rock through the window, so either way they could easily break in. You end up leaving it unlocked for tonight, deciding to forget about it over dinner.

While you let the ramen cook you take the chance to water some of your plants which include some bonsai trees, a rose bush, and an orchid. After the ramen finishes, you let it cool down before putting some in a bowl to enjoy. You scroll through your phone as you eat your meal, as it is one of your only visual as to what is going on out in the world these days.

After dinner, you sit down to read some of the book Damian by Hermann Hesse. You are very intrigued by the book so you have already read it a few times. You sit curled up on the couch with a blanket and some tea, one that doesn't have any caffeine in it since you want a good nights rest and not insomnia. After a long day of classes, you definitely needed some of the activities you did this evening. Maybe tomorrow you will go on a bike ride or drive your car when there is some time.

About an hour and a half of reading later, you mark where you have stopped in the book and put the book back on its shelf and turn off the lights before going upstairs to get some pajamas so you can shower. You won't be back down anyways so it is better to turn the lights off now.

A nice warm shower definitely will make this evening complete. Just thinking about it makes you want to take a self care day so you can have a long shower or bath, do a face mask, use hand and feet cremes or do a mani-pedi, paint your nails, listen to music, enjoy nature, read, and sip on some coffee, chai, or tea.

Turning on the water, you enjoy the warmth of the water as it comforts you in your temporary confinement at home. It is something that is oddly comforting these days. You used to take it for granted.

As you are taking a shower, you are completely oblivious to the stranger entering into your house, as he is of you at first.

"Hm, running water?" he asks himself, hearing the water running from the shower upstairs. He had stumbled upon this house and thought it was empty since the lights were off. How foolish of him. He didn't even try to smell or hear it out before entering. But then again who knows how far the nearest town, let alone another house is (or even rarer, an abandoned house), so stumbling upon this one was just his luck. He'll just force whoever is here into letting him stay the night or for how long he needs. It depends on the situation. From what he can smell, there is one person here; a female in her early twenties.

He notices the plants and book shelves, two things that intrigue him, as he has a fondness for such things. He can make out a TV in this living room of yours, and after a brief moment of thought, finds the remote and turns it on, soon figuring out how to get to the local news channel. He finds that he has already made the news today, and it won't surprise him if other news channels begin to cover him as well since he is such a well known name among the hybrid world, as well as to the Korean government.

"The werewolf, also known as Kim Namjoon, has escaped from the nearby asylum he was being held in today" says the reporter. "We do not know much about the situation, but from what has been released so far, it is believed he severely injured his guards and escaped wearing one of their uniforms. As you all may know, Kim Namjoon is an insane and powerful wolf hybrid, a type of hybrid that is very rare. He has been nicknamed werewolf for his ability to transfer from wolf, hybrid, and human state, and two years ago while working as a servant for the president, he had secretly been the eyes and ears for a resistance he was building up for hybrid rights. One evening he took out a premeditated attacked the president, nearly killing him in the process. Kim Namjoon was deemed insane and was sent off to an asylum and the president and vice president struck down on hybrids laws, making the old ones tighter and new ones that put on more restrictions then there was before. The resistance he had build up has dwindled with many leaving, getting disconnected, or being arrested. If you see Kim Namjoon, the man on the screen, please call the police immediately. Do not make contact with this man. Lock your doors and windows. Make sure he can't break into your house in any way, because any encounter could involve someone getting injured or killed."

Liars. He is not a blood thirsty madman. Has this really become his public image? He wanted justice and equality, not for hybrids to be put through more oppression than they already were. Hell, other places like the United States and the European Union have already greatly improved upon hybrid rights, but somehow East Asia is late to the party. Very late. He tried working along side the LGBTQ+ community in the country, but he doubts that even if he manages to start up a resistance again that they would want to help. If they want to do things peacefully, only for their voices to be ignored, then fine. He will actually make sure there is equality once he and his allies come to power. If he can get to them.

As you get out of the shower, you hear the TV from downstairs is clearly on. And you definitely didn't have it on today. You quickly put on your pajamas and rush to your room to grab a pepper spray. You quietly make your way down the stair hoping you can pepper spray whoever has come into your house. As you get near the bottom, a voice calls out.

"I'm afraid your plan of attack has already failed" says a male voice, right before he turns on the a light. He is a tall man with clear dimples, a flatish nose, and you can make out a slight widows peak, despite he cap he is wearing. He is wearing some type on uniform, though it is all messy. "I heard you turn off the water, as well as every foot step and tip toe you took. And I saw you coming down the stairs."

"B-but how?" you bring yourself to ask, not even a 'who are you' or 'why are you in my home'. You were being as quiet as you could, and with how dark the majority of the house is at this point besides your bedroom, you have to wonder how he even saw you when you could make out very little in the dark.

He man takes off the cap to reveal two animal ears, most similar to a dog or wolf. He's a hybrid. As you are piecing it all together, you hear something from the TV in the next room.

"As a reminder for this evening, beware of Kim Namjoon, the insane wolf hybrid who escaped from the nearly asylum. Call the police right away if you see him and keep your distance. Please stay safe."

You remember hearing this name a couple years ago and vaguely remember what he looks like. Tall, has dimples, has a flatish nose, and has a slight widows peak. It's him. The man in your house is him. You scream and run up the stairs, hoping you can make it to your phone to call the police, but he is faster and stronger than you, so he catches you and pins you against the wall.

"I won't hurt you unless I need to" he says. "I just need a place to stay for a bit and for you to not report me to the police and I won't hurt or bother you."

"But you're an insane criminal" you reply. "You tried to kill the president."

"That's what they want you to think. I was set up since they didn't like the power and attention I was getting. While I did have informants, I never worked under the president. I just want justice and equality, but none of those assholes in government seem to care about the rights of some citizens. You're lucky not to not be a hybrid, because you know what it feels like to be treated with respect. I can't vote or run for government, hell I could barely take a walk or bike ride down the street without receiving a glare from every other person, and just to buy a car or to get a loan in so damn hard, near impossible... Just please, let me stay and don't turn me over so I can finish what I started."

Something about this touches you. You care deeply about politics, the environment, and equality, so naturally you support hybrid rights, but from what you know the way this man has gone about getting the message across has caused more problems than solutions. But that all could have been false. You don't know anymore. You can't always trust the media. Hell, you don't know if you completely trust him either, but judging by his behavior, he doesn't seem like the type to harm people unless he needs too and he seems to be pretty genuine in most if not all of what he is saying. This causes you to think of something.

"As long as you are willing to peacefully protest and advocate I'll let you stay" you say. "And clear your name, if you can."

"Of course... I take this you won't turn me in and I can stay here?"

You nod.

"For now" you say.

"Well, if that's the case, can you provide me with some clean clothes and direct me in the direction of the shower? I need to clean myself off."

You are able to find some clothing that fits him and you show him to the shower.

"By the way, you can sleep on the guests bed room" you say before he shuts the door. "It is the one next to my bedroom over there."

"Alright" he says.

You head back to your room and can't help but think about how funny it was to see his tail stuffed into the pants he was wearing. It was ready to pop out at any moment. It makes you wonder how he will be able to fit it into the pants you gave him.

You get on into bed, grabbing your phone to scroll through it for a while to refresh yourself with Namjoon and his past, realizing he can easily make himself look human. How extra was he just to want to show you his ears?

From what you remember from biology class, a rare set of humans evolved to have animal traits, those being hybrids. Some got more useful skills while others got ones that were rather useless. Some even had rare traits such as Namjoon. After hybrids went through several atrocities they were given freedom, but they often still face discrimination in the eyes of others and in the law, especially in East Asia. It can be bad in the west too, but there aren't nearly as many laws against them that are so blatantly obvious.

About twenty minutes later you hear a knock on the door and Namjoon comes through, his wolf ears now gone.

"Anyways I just came into say goodnight" says Namjoon.

"Goodnight" you reply.

"And thanks once again" says Namjoon before he closes the door. He is much more polite than you thought he would be is what you think to yourself before you put your phone up to charge for the night.

The next morning you wake up to the sound of knocking on the front door. Who would be here so early that your alarm for nine AM hasn't even gone off yet? You reluctantly get out of bed to make your way downstairs. When you open your bedroom door you see Namjoon is near the top of the stairs.

"Stay here" you say. "It isn't safe for you to be seen."

You go downstairs to open the door to none other than two cops.

"Good morning ma'am" says one officer. "I am officer Choi and this is officer Jang. We are doing a check up on the area do to the possibility of a highly dangerous criminal being in the area."

"Do you mean Kim Namjoon?" you ask. You know the answer but you felt the need to ask. "I saw it last night on the news."

"Yes" says officer Choi. "We are just doing a check up to make sure everyone is safe and to see if there have been any possible sightings."

"Well I'm safe and I haven't seen anything" you half lie. You don't entirely trust Namjoon yet but you trust him enough to know he is unlikely going to hurt you unless he finds it necessary. And as far as these cops are considered you haven't seen Namjoon.

"If that's all I hope you have a good rest of your day ma'am" says officer Choi before he turns to leave with officer Jang following from behind.

You shut the door and turn around, only to see Namjoon in his full wolf form.

"Really," you say. "I had it handled."

He simply turns around and makes his way up the stairs. You roll your eyes and follow him.

"I'm going to make breakfast soon" you say. "If there's anything you want you can just tell me."

As you finish saying that, you turn at the top of the stairs to see Namjoon shamelessly changing into the close he had on the night before in the middle of the hall. You panic and turn around, hoping not to see anything you don't need to.

"Why are you changing?" you ask.

"I can't wear clothing when I go into wolf form" he says casually, as if you didn't nearly see things you really didn't want to see. "It just makes it awkward and I get stuck sometimes so I chance from human to wolf and vise versa without clothing on."

"Well next time change in a more private place please" you say. "I don't want to see you naked."

"Whatever. Make whatever you want. I'm not much of a breakfast person. Though a coffee would be nice."

You go throughout your day as normal. You have your classes online in your bedroom for privacy as Namjoon is doing who knows what. Once classes are done, you decide that maybe you can go out shopping for food tomorrow.

You head downstairs to see Namjoon reading a book. He looks up when he hears you coming down and shuts the book.

"You were awfully quiet today" he comments.

"I had online classes" you respond.

"Online classes?"

"Do you really not know?"

"Know what?"

"Namjoon... We are in the middle of a global pandemic."

He looks at you in shock.

"A... Pandemic?"

"Yes. Covid-19. Some people just call it Carona."

"Like the beer?"

"Yeah, like the beer."

"That's... A lot."

"Tell me about it. I'm sick of the pandemic. Everyone is. But we just have to wait it out. We've been in and out of quarantining for a while now. Whenever they begin to lift stuff cases always begin to spike again at some point."

"For how long has this been happening?"

"Since around March of 2020."

"And the date is?" You check your phone and tell him the date. "Wow that is a while."

"Yup..."

There is an awkward silence for a moment before Namjoon speaks up.

"Anyways I noticed you have a bike. I'm wondering if I can borrow it? I love riding bikes."

"Sure."

Before you know it Namjoon is out the door to go bike riding. He won't go too far so he won't be spotted, but you know he'll be back soon. That is when you remember your zoom meeting with your friends.

You quickly rush to log on. Your friends had already started since you were running late, and you all catch up with one another on life. One's boyfriend broke up with them, another lost their uncle to covid, and one make strawberry milk from scratch. Soon you here Namjoon enter your house, but fortunately your friends did not here it through zoom.

Once you hang up, you go downstairs you see Namjoon reading the same book he was reading earlier.

"Your friends?" he asks.

"Yeah" you reply. "It is kinda a weekly thing... Just wondering, now that you're out of the asylum, what are you going to do now?"

"Start a hybrid movement somehow. I don't know how, seeing as there are more regulations than before, but we must try."

"Well, the first place to start is trying to find some old supporters here and then seek international help. Oh and clearing your name."

"The only way I can clear my name is by proving that the president and his colleagues plotted against me and paid off the asylum to keep me there. And where would we begin to find followers? I don't know if there are secret connections still or if everyone is cut off or what."

"I wish I could be a greater help on that end, but I'm not exactly involved with things like that."

He chuckles in response.

"Anyways, I really want some samgyupsal and black been noodles. I haven't had those in so long. If it's possible for you to get them I would be grateful."

"Sure, I can order some for dinner" you reply, trusting him some more.

The next day you drive down to the town to go grocery shopping. As you are leaving the store, two hybrids pass you, a rabbit hybrid and a cat hybrid. You don't take much notice to them at first, but they both start sniffing in your direction, which you found strange.

"Excuse me ma'am" says the cat hybrid. "We are wondering if you have spotted any wolfs in the area?"

"Umm" you say, very confused.

"Have you perhaps run into a wolf recently?" asks the rabbit hybrid.

Suddenly the the pieces snap into place. They are talking about Namjoon.

"We are looking for a friend" says the cat hybrid. "A former colleague."

"Come with me" you reply. You lead them to your car, where you offload your groceries before you instructed them to get into your car. "What do you want with Namjoon?"

"We were friends of his" says the rabbit hybrid. "In the movement. Before he was taken away."

"I'm Min Yoongi" says the cat hybrid. "And this is Jeon Jungkook. When we heard he escaped we came searching for him. We were planning another movement in secret, and we could really use his help."

"Well he did say he wanted to start another movement" you say. "But you need to be careful, he's wanted. I don't mind letting him stay at my place for safety for now and helping the movement, but I don't want involvement on my record if the police arrest you all. I can't ruin my chances of success at becoming a politician or a political reporter."

"We get it" says Jungkook. "Being and supporting hybrids is a dangerous thing as of late. It can be hard to support in the shadows while trying to be successful in other areas of life."

"Don't get me started on that" says Yoongi. "Just having that you supported the previous movement on your record makes things so much harder, especially for us hybrids. "We had three security checks on the way here. Three."

"That's awful" you reply. At least they understood your worries and you felt sympathy for them. They don't deserve that kind of treatment for simply being different. "I can help you meet up with Namjoon if I can have your numbers."

You all trade numbers before they leave.

You get back home and Namjoon helps you unload the groceries. As you do you tell him about Jungkook and Yoongi.

"That's great!" he says. "Let's meet as soon as possible."

A few days later, Jungkook and Yoongi are at your house to have their first meeting with Namjoon. You had classes so you couldn't be present, but Namjoon filled you in when you were done.

"So they were planning stuff in a small group, but they are going to expand it so there can be a whole protest" he says. "We will make sure to get some international people involved. Hell, make it a whole peaceful protest with performers like idol groups and American singers for all I care. The more media attention the better. They do have some connections inside the government that could help clear my name, but it could take time. Those friends could even help put in a good word in other governments to get them on our side."

"That's great!" you say, patting him on the arm. "Let's drink some beer for that."

You both drink beer to celebrate the long road ahead to not only for hybrid equality but for clearing Namjoon's name. You fully trust him now.

"You know" you say. "I actually really like having you here for company... It's nice."

"Really?" Namjoon replies. "... It's nice to be out of the asylum. I may still be wanted, but at least I have some freedom now and... and that I am actually treated with kindness after so long."

You stare at him with caring eyes.

"You have my full support Namjoon."

"And you have mine."

You both glance away, taking a sip of your beers. Something felt different. Unknown to both of you, you had a slight blush, partly from the alcohol and partly from each other.

A few weeks go by, and in that time Jungkook, Yoongi, and Namjoon had more meetings. You were sometime present and sometimes you were working on university stuff.

As the sun sets, Namjoon feels stressed and unsure of what to do with himself. He knew this day would come, and it wouldn't be like last time since he actually took the meds for this. He watches the full moon slowly come out, and he can feel the power it brings him. But he can also feel the lust. The beginning of his heat. His damn once a month heat on the full moon. He wishes he grabbed some heat meds before he broke out, but he didn't, so he needs to find some relief. And fast.

As you both sit on the couch, you sipping on your tea with your earbuds in and him holding a book, trying to his that he has a hard on, he contemplates whether he should tell you or relief himself in the bathroom.

He heads to the bathroom, opting for the second option, not wanting to involve you, but when he jacks off, it doesn't bring the relief he needs or desires. He pumps harder and faster, trying to satisfy himself, but instead ends up having his first pathetic orgasm of the night. He can't spend the rest of the night like this. It will be pure misery. He'll have to ask you for help.

Awkwardly, he walks out of the bathroom and sits besides you. You still have your earbuds in, so you fortunately didn't hear anything from the bathroom. He taps your shoulder and you take out your earbuds.

"Hmm?" you hum softly.

"I have something to tell you" Namjoon says. "It's serious."

"What is it?"

"Once a month... On the full moon... I get stronger."

"Like the way how you broke out last month."

"Yeah. Exactly. But last month, even though I didn't take the meds for my strength, I did take it for something else, something that also happens during the full moon for me, but because I don't have those meds now, I am wondering if you... If you could help me fix it."

"Which is?"

"I'm in my heat."

There is a pause of silence as you are taking this information in. After a silence that felt like forever, you climb on top of him, straddling him as you place your hands on his shoulders.

"I'll help" you say. "Tell me what you need."

"M-maybe we can just g-grind for now" Namjoon says nervously but with anticipation.

You press into his bulge, feeling that he already has a hard on. You grind your hips into his, and soon enough he begins grinding back. With ups and downs and side to sides, you feel yourself loosening up and loosing yourself in the moment. You could actually enjoy tonight.

"Harder" says Namjoon. "Grind harder."

You do as he wishes, grinding him even harder. Any doubts you had before are now gone as you are in a fever of lust. Feeling his clothed member prod your clit is driving you crazy. You whimper a little. Without thinking, you go and kiss him in the heat of the moment. When you feel his lips pressing back, you passionately kiss him as you continue to grind. He opens your mouth and sticks his tongue inside. His thick lips and his clothed cock are driving you crazy.

"Hmm" he moans into the kiss before pulling away. "It's not good enough."

You pause for a moment, before climbing off of him.

"Lie down" you command, which he follows.

You slowly take off your pants and underwear, revealing your wet pussy to him. He feels himself grow even harder at the sight of your precum dripping down your thighs. You walk on over and place your pussy above his face before reaching down towards his pants.It is getting tight in there. Even you can see that.

You unzip his pants and push his underwear back, revealing his cock, which was bigger than you expected, making you excited. You lower your pussy on his face as you message his dick and balls, before lowering down and giving his member a long lick before wrapping your mouth around it, taking it in as far as your mouth would let you.

Namjoon sucks at your pussy as he puts is hands on your waist. He puts his tongue out, licking around your pussy and taking your juices before moving it up and down and side to side.

You bob your head up and down, feeling Namjoon's member roughly hit the back of your throat. Your tongue licks around him as your hands work hard on his balls and the base of his dick. It is a wonder you got as much as you did in your mouth.

You moan some when you feel Namjoon's tongue begin to penetrate inside you. He licks around and comes in and out. You can feel the heat building inside you as you do not have much longer.

You sway your hips on his face some as he digs his fingers into your sides as he moans into you, which makes you break. You cum all of over his face, causing Namjoon to begin to eagerly lick and suck on your juices.

With you cumming on him his member begins to twitch in your mouth and a few moments later he also cums. You swallow as much of his cum as you can, though due to his big and long cock some leaks out onto your face, dipping off of you.

When you are done swallowing his fluids, you slowly remove your mouth off of his cock. Namjoon spends a few more moments licking up your juices. When he is done, you remove your pussy off of him and slide onto the floor.

"That was amazing" you say. Definitely the best oral sex you have ever had. It makes you wonder what fucking him is like. Just the thought of you to being intimate like that together begins to turn you on again.

"I'm grateful for your help" says Namjoon as he slowly sits up. "It means a lot."

A couple minutes of silence later, Namjoon speaks again.

"I can feel another one coming again."

You stand up, your legs a bit wobbly from your first round. You reach out your hand, which he takes as you pull him up. You kiss him passionately.

"Touch me" you say softly. "Please."

Namjoon slowly reaches down and touches your clit. He rubs it in circles and back and forth, causing you to get a little wet.

"Harder" you demand.

He presses his finger harder into you, before sliding it into you, causing you to moan. He begins to pump his one digit into you before slowly adding a second. His spare hand slides into your shirt and into your bra, caressing and groping your breast. You help him out by sliding your shirt and bra off, becoming fully naked. You reach over and slide his pants and underwear down to his ankles, causing him to slip out of them.

He pulls his fingers out of you, causing you to whimper as he sucks your juices off of them.

"Hmm" he moans as he licks his fingers clean. "You're wet enough now, correct?"

"Yes" you squeak as he slides off his shirt, now fully naked like you. You begin to passionately kiss as you wrap your arms around each other. You begin to lead him to your bedroom as his hands search your body. One hand squeezes your ass as his lips begin to trail down your neck.

He pins you against a wall as his lips travel across your chest and shoulders. He leave hickeys all over you. You become bold and begin to kiss his neck, sucking and biting in the process. You leave a hickey on his neck before pulling away, looking at Namjoon, who is now staring down at you.

"Let's take this to the bedroom, shall we?" you say smirking at him.

He kisses you again as you continue to lead him to your bedroom.

When you get there, he pushes you onto the bed, where you plop before setting yourself up on the bed with your legs open, showing your wet pussy on full display.

Namjoon grimaces in lust. Being in heat made this desirable as is, but looking at you now, ready and willing on your bed, made him realize that all this time, he found you more attractive then he'd let himself admit. He secretly would be happy if you two can keep it up beyond this.

"Do you have condoms here?" he asks.

"Nope" you reply. "And I'm not on birth control either. We just gotta hope for the best."

Feeling his heat going crazy, Namjoon climbs on the bed and over you, placing his hands on either side of you as you wrap your arms around hims back, spreading your legs. You can feel his cock at the entrance of your folds, making you go crazy once again.

"Ready?" he asks one more time, giving you enough time to back out. He could always go back to pleasuring himself in the bathroom if worst comes to worst.

"I'm ready" you say to him, with eyes full of lust and passion. He slowly pushes his cock inside of you.

"So tight" Namjoon says as you grit your teeth. You haven't had sex in so long, but you could get used to living a life like this. Hell, you wouldn't mind at all, having sex with Namjoon once a month, maybe even more. You always thought he was attractive, but you never voiced your attraction out loud.

Once he is fully inside you, he lets your pussy adjust to his massive girth. When you feel ready, you give him a nod.

He pulls part way out, before sliding back into you. He is very slow and gentle with you, but you soon desire more.

"Faster. Harder" you demand.

Namjoon begins picking up pace and force until he is slamming his cock into your pussy again and again. There are such lewd sounds and you can feel his cock harshly pounding into you and you love every bit of it. Namjoon loves how perfectly your walls suck his cock. It is like your pussy, your body, or your bodies, were made for each other.

You wrap your legs around him, pulling him even deeper into you. As he rams deeper and harder into you, you look down to watch him slamming in and out of you. To see your pussy swollen with his enormous and long cock. A cock that somehow manages to fit perfectly inside of your pussy. He rams his cock into you again, causing you to moan.

"Moan like a good girl for me and I'll ruin your pussy even more" says Namjoon.

"Y-yes daddy" you moan out. You don't know where that even came from. Namjoon's hand wraps around your neck.

"What did you say?" he says as he chokes you some.

"Yes daddy."

"Do you need to be punished?"

"Yes daddy" you tease again with a smirk on your face. "The handcuffs are in the nightstand by the way."

"You have handcuffs but not condoms. You're wild."

He stops pounding into you as he reaches over to the drawer. His cock is perfectly fit inside of you as you can feel him on your cervix but you could also tell he was far enough in that his hips met yours. You move your hips around to grind his cock, causing him to hiss and cum into you, filling you. Sadly, the orgasm you were building is fading away. Namjoon pulls out the handcuffs and slides his cock out of you when he's done cumming, making you pout.

"I like you in me" you say.

"Oh you will get plenty more of that" Namjoon teases as he cuffs your ankles to the lower bedpost. He then climbs over you and handcuffs your wrists above your head. He then begins making circles around your clit, just like earlier. He kisses your stomach and begins kissing upwards until his face is in between of your breasts.

He moves his mouth over and begins to suck one of your tits as his free hand gropes the other. You feel yourself being turned back on by all of this as you moan Namjoon's name. Namjoon nibbles, licks, and sucks at your tit as he removes his hand from your clit and moves his cock over, teasing your folds. You whimper, wanting him to fuck you into oblivion. He removes his mouth from your tit with a pop and sucks his finger to taste your precum mixed with his cum which was dripping out of your pussy. He puts his hands on your waist as he moves up to have is face above yours.

"Are you ready do be a good girl so I can ruin you?" Namjoon asks as he teases your pussy with his cock some more.

"Yes daddy" you tease, causing Namjoon to ram his cock deep into you, causing you both to moan.

Namjoon doesn't wait in going hard and fast and he rams his cock repeatedly into you, harder and faster then before. He is like a wild animal that was let loose. He pounds into you as you feel your cervix being abused by his cock. You will definitely feel this tomorrow. A lot. You are screaming and moaning in pleasure at this point as Namjoon lets out some moans and sighs.

He is falling even more in love with this, felling your pussy wrap around him perfectly, hearing your screams and moans, and seeing your tits bounce with every harsh thrust into you. To see you chained up and giving your body to him. He sloppily kisses you, loving the way you taste. He kisses your neck and chest and leaves even more hickeys then before. Everything about you is beautiful.

You are wondering how you haven't ever had sex like this in your life. You are liking Namjoon more and more throughout this entire experience. Namjoon cums into you again, filling your pussy with even more of him. It is a wonder you can fit it all, he continues to thrust until he is done cumming and then he pull out.

"Hey! What the hell?" you exclaim. "I want to cum too!"

"Oh sweety" Namjoon says. "We need to keep this up all night. That's how long my heat will last. I can't have your pussy too sensitive to be fucked after a few rounds of cumming. I want to make this last as long as I can."

"But can you let me orgasm. Please."

"Eventually."

He said it in a teasing tone with a smirk on his face. You role your eyes and look away.

You look over at the clock on your nightstand. 2:00 AM.

"Let's get fucking then" you say.

Namjoon removes the handcuffs from you and puts them back in the nightstand drawer.

"Get on your stomach" Namjoon demands. You roll over onto your stomach. Namjoon hoists your waist up so that you are on your knees and elbows with your head in the pillow. He wants to angle you just right. To see it as he fucks you. He looks over at the long mirror on wall. You look over there as well as he pushes himself back into you.

He begins to thrust again as you feel your face being pushed into the pillow so you add some resistance in your elbows. Your a bit sensitive at this point but you don't care. You just want to help Namjoon through his heat and have some fun along the way. The pain will go away soon.

Namjoon is pounding into you and can see everything. How beautiful your pussy looks taking his long and large cock that he is ramming hard and fast into you. You both like sex this way. This isn't Namjoon's first time having sex, and surely isn't his first time having sex over heat, but this is the best sex he has had so far.

You continue looking at yourself in the mirror and watch Namjoon ramming in and out of you.

"It's beautiful eh" Namjoon says as he pumps his cock harder and faster into you. "Imagine how much I could ruin you and your pussy if we did this more often."

"Well ruin me" you say. "I want you to ruin me."

Namjoon slaps your ass when he hears that.

"Are you going to be a good girl or do I need to punish you again?"

"Punish me daddy" you say in a teasing voice to edge him on, knowing the word 'daddy' is his trigger word.

He slaps your ass again. And again. And again. All the while as he is pounding into you. You moan at his actions as it is building up heat inside of you. When he bends over and begins to bite your shoulder, it is the last straw for you.

You let out a long scream and begin cumming around his cock. You moan and scream his name several times as he is pounding you through your orgasm. With your pussy tightened around his cock and having you cum on him, it doesn't take long for him to cum into you for the third time. He continues ramming into you until the end of both your orgasms. He pulls out again and falls right next to you.

"That was amazing" you say as you roll onto your back, looking at the clock. 4:15 AM. You still have a few more hours. You spend a few minutes catching your breath on the bed, with the only noise being your breathing. "I call being the top this time."

"Aw common Y/N" says Namjoon. "I like being the top."

"Well maybe I can make you like being a bottom as well."

Before you know it, you are sliding down on Namjoon's cock, watching his lewd facial expressions. You grind into him to make him whimper and moan. You look down to see yourself swollen with his cock yet again. His cock tickles your cervix as you grind into him and you moan. You were always rather vocal during sex.

"Why don't you be a good boy this time and let the lady take the drivers seat" you tease as you lean over and put one hand on either side of his shoulders as he wraps hands around your waist.

You begin to move your hips up and down, feeling his cock slide in and out of you. It hurts some but soon the lust takes back over and the pain goes away.

Namjoon soon eases up after the sudden switch and begins to enjoy you pounding your pussy around his cock. His hands grip your sides as you move your hips up and down. Like Namjoon, you are going hard and fast with lust in your eyes. You sloppily kiss him before moving to his neck, where you leave hickeys all over his neck and chest.

Namjoon begins to push back up into you, turning you on even more.

"Common Joon, you can do me harder than that" you challenge him.

He begins pounding up into you as you are pounding down on him and soon enough he is cumming into you for the fourth time and you help fuck him through it. Quickly after he begins cumming into you, you are cumming around him for the second time of the night. You both fuck each other through it, and when you are done, you collapse on his chest, too tired to pull yourself off his cock and role off.

You look out the window and see the sun is beginning to rise.

"We did it Namjoon" you say as you lay on his muscular chest. "We got you through your heat... I actually didn't mind going raw. I actually prefer it raw."

"Really?" Namjoon replies. "I prefer it raw too." Namjoon lets out a small laugh. "And to be honest with you, that was easily the best sex I ever had."

"Me to Joon. Me too. I wouldn't mind helping next month. And the month after that. And for however long you need me."

"Honestly... After all that... After this month, I don't know if I want you to leave my side."

"What are you saying?"

"I... I like you a lot Y/N. Like a lot. I think I'm getting feelings for you to be honest."

"Really? I like you too Namjoon. I like you a lot too. But... I'm not ready for a relationship right now. My last one ended a few months ago so I'm not ready for another one, but I am open to the idea."

"Lets leave the option open. We can be fuck buddies. Friends with benefits. Whatever, until we figure this out."

"Sounds like a plan" you say, looking up at his face to see his wolf ears are back. You can feel his tail fur poking at your leg. You're definitely too tired to go to your online classes. You just had sex all night. It makes you think of 34+35 by Ariana Grande. And also her song Positions.

Secretly, you both hope you aren't going to be pregnant after this.

#RM #kim namjoon #namjoon smut #hybrid #hybrid namjoon #wolf hybrid #namjoon x reader #namjoon x y/n #smut #bts smut #rm joke

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peoniarose · 3 years

Text

Worry

Pairing: Bucky x Reader, Sam x Platonic!Reader

Word count: 1429

Rating/Warning: Angst, slight fluff (hopefully it came off that way, if not sorry)

Summary: As a last-ditch effort, the reader tries to voice her worries about Bucky seeing Zemo again, but her words don’t seem to make it out of her mouth. However, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make its way to Bucky.

Author’s Note: This entered my mind not too long ago upon watching the latest episode of TFATWS. I plan to expand upon this scene but wanted to get a feel about how you all feel about this. Also, the reader’s codename is Sparrow. (ALSO, if you read this before you will notice that there have been some changes. Nothing big just the usage of you, your, and Y/N. I haven’t written with these in use, so let me know if this is okay and if you jive with it. I wanted to try this out. I am thinking of making an OC for this seeing as my plans for this does include some last names. Let me know what you think.)

_________________________________

Before he could walk any further to the man who caused him so much pain, you reached for him. His gloved clad hand was being held firm within your grasp. You didn’t mean to, but your hand seemed to instinctively reach out to him.

Bucky turned to stare at you. He had to do this. He had to talk to Zemo in order to get the information they needed and your vice like grip on his hand wasn’t helping him achieve his goal. He tried tugging his hand back, but your grip only got tighter. His jaw tightened and his eyes hardened as he once again tried to pull away from you. He saw your eyes twitch as your grip didn’t let up.

You didn’t dare to let go. You couldn’t, wouldn’t. You saw the disaster of what happened last time. The hurt and pain that Zemo had caused Bucky. Zemo framed and manipulated Bucky to meet his end goal in destroying the Avengers. The thought of him doing anything to hurt Buck in any way again made your heart squeeze. You didn’t want him to go through that again. Your mouth opened ever so slightly as you tried to voice your worries and concerns. You knew Sam tried to last night, but maybe you could somehow miraculously pull them away from this dreaded place. They were on the tip of your tongue, wanting to sneak pass your lips, but when you caught another glimpse at his hard-set eyes you faltered.

“Let me go.” Bucky bit out, harder than what he intended. You flinched ever so slightly at those three words as well as his tone, hoping that no one noticed your subtle movement, but Bucky saw it and more importantly Sam saw it. Your hand slowly peeled away from his and found its new home on your opposing arm’s elbow. Your eyes found a peeling line segment on the ground and focused on that. You didn’t want to meet his harsh glare.

Sam’s jaw set as his gaze on Bucky made imaginary holes into his head. It was bad enough that they had to go to one of the worst villains they had gone up against, but making you upset because you were worried made Sam even more displeased. And he hoped Bucky could feel it.

Bucky knew he was in the shithouse when he felt a set of eyes boring holes into his skull. He didn’t mean to be harsh; he just didn’t know how else to tell you that he will be fine. That he can handle this, hopefully. He didn’t need you to hold his hand. His fist tightened for just a moment. Upon hearing the leather glove squeeze, he let out a sigh and let his shoulders drop.

Ultimately, he was fortunate with your kindness, your graciousness, your overall being. But how does he even voice that? How does he show it? He didn’t know how to fully process it. In the past he only had Steve worrying and caring for him, but then he lost him, and everything was up in the air. Having others show even remotely the same kindness and emotions as Steve did left Bucky off kilter. Who would want to do that for him? This is what made him unable to properly respond. This is what made him not answer about 98 percent of your messages that you had sent him.

Bucky struggled with wanting to try to do something to attempt to soothe you and wanting to continue his trek to Zemo’s cell. Looking over at you once again he decided that the latter was best. Turing around he made it not even two steps when he stopped. A vision of you smiling and gently squeezing his hand in reassurance in Wakanda suddenly entered his mind, and he wanted to kick himself. You had shown him nothing but your absolute best and he was acting like a world class jerk. Bucky let out another sigh and turned around. He could see the worry on your face even though it was trained to the floor. Why were you sticking with him? He knew it was nothing out of pity. You were a genuinely nice person who did things out of the goodness of your heart, and yet he still often times found himself questioning you.

At this point he wanted to pull his hair out. He needed to make up his mind at the moment and stick with it. They needed to get things done and he didn’t need his confused emotions getting in the way. Before he could turn away again, he allowed his eyes to soften ever so slightly and untightened the imaginary screws in his jaw.

You still had your eyes glued to the floor as you felt a set of eyes on you. You wanted to kick yourself. You often prided yourself in showing your emotions to your friends. It’s what made you feel settled and relaxed. You relished in this because you couldn’t do this around your parents when you were growing up. The thought of making Bucky uncomfortable enters your mind and your grip on your elbow gets tighter. You didn’t think your actions made Bucky feel uncomfortable, but it probably does, and you should have thought of that before.

“I’ll be fine, Sparrow,” Bucky said in a softer tone. Your name slipping his lips in a gentle manner. You snap your head up to him, unfamiliar with his tone. Bucky somehow managed to pull off having a stiff, tough exterior with eyes that have considerably softened only for you. A small intake of breath and slightly reddened cheeks later, you cut a glance towards Sam to see if you were hearing things. The Falcon had found a letter and number combo that was slightly peeling on the wall to suddenly be the most interesting thing in the world, which told you that you didn’t imagine Bucky’s words or his gentle tone. Your eyes met Bucky’s once again as the right side of your lips quirked up. To you the smile felt pathetic and too small, but to Bucky it filled his heart with a warmth that he hadn’t felt since Steve.

He wanted to reach out and grab your hand, but he felt that it would be too much. Besides the small smirk on Sam’s face let him know that he would most definitely get an earful later when you weren’t in their presence. He settled on a tiny smile that he hoped got his point across. Bucky turned around and this time stayed on his path to Zemo.

His point indeed did get across. His smile dampened some of the worry that wormed its way into your heart, but you couldn’t help but feel it getting tighter and tighter with each step that Bucky made, getting closer to Zemo. Your hands clenched in a fists near your hips as you thought about him talking to that man.

Sam picked up on your anxiousness and worry. It oozed from you in a way that he hadn’t seen since they went up against Stark at the airport. He sometimes still can’t believe how you manage to remain stoic and calm in front of an enemy or in the face of battle, but within the confines of your friends you let your walls come crumbling down and openly display your emotions. He remembers, from their time on the run, you mention that your parents, father in particular, were cold and closed off. It made you feel alone and in despair. Your parents’ attitude made you not want to make others feel what your parents made you feel. You wouldn’t even wish it upon your worst enemy. You genuinely believe that if villains had a great enough support system, then they wouldn’t turn into villains. Your heart bleeds for everyone which is why Sam has been so protective over you ever since you met. Sam would gladly bandage and guard your heart no matter what came your way.

You feel a gentle squeeze over your fist, breaking you from your thoughts. Looking down you sees Sam’s hand coaxing your hand from its balled-up fist form. His hand holds yours, giving it another gentle, reassuring squeeze.

You meet his soothing brown eyes and a sense of calm washes over you. A breath you didn’t know you were holding in releases and your shoulders ease ever so slightly. A small smile works its way over your lips, and you squeeze back, silently thanking him for his reassurance.

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes #the falcon and the winter soldier #tfatws #sam x platonic!reader #friendship #worry #reassurance #codename: sparrow #bucky x you #bucky barnes x you #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes x y/n

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razieltwelve · 3 years

Text

The Faunus Conclave and the Human Union (Final Effect)

One of the more unusual conflicts in the distant future was the long-running conflict between the Faunus Conclave and the Human Union. Both of these factions held supremacists position, and both sought to carve out their own territory in the Remnant Galaxy.

The Conclave and Union were both founded at roughly the same time in the aftermath of one of the largest Grimm swarms in recorded history. This allowed them to settle uncolonised worlds free of interference from the greater galactic powers who were otherwise occupied with rebuilding and rearming. Furthermore, it was long-standing policy for the greater powers to remain largely neutral toward independent factions. This stance was at least partially influenced by their own histories in which they were attacked by the dominant powers of the past.

The Conclave and Union proceeded to expand over the next several decades. With funding from their members, they were able to terraform several worlds while also laying claim to more inhospitable worlds for the purposes of mining and resource acquisition. Although relatively far from the galactic centres of power, they both managed to locate valuable nodes of resources to further fund their ambitions.

Despite their anti-human and anti-Faunus rhetoric, they continued to be largely ignored by the greater galactic powers. In essence, their position was that as long as it remained rhetoric and confined to within their own borders, they were reluctant to go to war. Indeed, the civil war waged by the Empire, Alliance, and Federation against the Four Great Kingdoms had left an indelible mark on their collective psyche. The Children of Remnant were supposed to turn their wrath on exterior foes, not on each other.

Nevertheless, over the coming decades, the Conclave and Union would ramp up the hostility of their rhetoric while continuing to expand. Events would finally come to a head when the Conclave and Union finally laid claim to adjacent star systems that contained extremely valuable mineral resources. This led to a war of words that eventually spilled into actual combat when both factions caught wind of each other’s plans to strike at the other.

The initial conflict involved corvettes and frigates but rapidly escalated to the deployment of destroyers and cruisers. To the horror of the galaxy at large, even dreadnoughts and carriers eventually took the field as both sides struggled for dominance.

It was at this point that the greater galactic powers began to, put it bluntly, get pissed off. Their forbearance had always been contingent on the Conclave and the Union playing nice. What little patience they had evaporated when the Conclave shot down a transport carrying civilians. However, the Union promptly erased any moral high ground they might have had by bombing a Conclave settlement into oblivion.

Simply ignoring the problem or attempting a diplomatic solution was no longer possible. Since the Union and Conclave were closer to the Empire’s territory, it was left to the emperor of the time, His Imperial Majesty Erik IV to deal with the situation.

In his own words, the Erik IV was ‘done with their shit’. Although not the most eloquent response, the emperor chose instead to let his actions speak for him. An Imperial suppression force was assembled comprised of a full ten thousand ships. Their orders were simple. They were to enter the warzone broadcasting a simple message, and they were to carry out the orders conveyed in that message.

The message was as follows:

“If any of you Conclave or Union sons of bitches so much as powers up a weapon, never minds shoots, we’ll blast you back into the fucking Stone Age. You can either go home, or we can send you back in boxes. Your choice, assholes.”

Now, Erik IV, was notable for his heavy use of profanity, which many attribute to the constant interruption of his agenda by Grimm swarms. Although these Grimm swarms were not large enough to pose an existential threat to the Empire, they appeared frequently enough and in sufficient size that his attempts to expand the Empire through a comprehensive terraforming program to settle previously inhospitable worlds were way, way, way behind schedule.

As a result, Erik IV became increasingly aggravated, and this was reflected in his orders to the suppression fleet.

Not surprisingly, the Conclave and Union both decided to retreat to their respective territories. Knowing full well that they would likely return to their warring the moment the suppression fleet left, Erik IV left the following message upon withdrawing the fleet.

“If I have to come back, I am going to find out who ordered you idiots to restart the war, and then I am going to kill them in the most awful way the Dia-Farron can think of them. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to start burning your worlds at random. I’ll use a bloody dart board to work out which ones to blast. Think I won’t do it? Try me. Go ahead. Do it. See how long you live.”

His threat served its purpose with no military commander or civilian leader on either side willing to risk death to continue the battle.

This peace would hold for the remainder of Erik IV’s life, allowing him to spend the rest of his reign and his retirement on his terraforming agenda. Thanks to his tireless hard work, the Empire would terraform thousands of additional worlds, providing homes for trillions of citizens.

Naturally, once word was received of Erik IV’s death, the Conclave and Union would resume their conflict.

This would lead to the incident famously known as “Cathal III stops giving a fuck” in which Erik IV’s grandson would famously order the capture and seizure of the Conclave and Unions fleets. He would then order those ships scrapped and recycled for Imperial use before sending the Conclave and Union a staggering bill for the cost of doing so.

- Excerpt from “The Remnant Galaxy Has A Crazy History, Volume II”

X X X

Author’s Notes

Sometimes, history is just crappy.

If you’re interested in my thoughts on writing and other topics, you can find those here.

I also write original fiction, which you can find on Amazon here or on Audible here.

#final effect #final codex #fanfiction

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aloesarchives · 4 years

Text

Agito Kanoh Headcanons

Behold, the 5th Fang of Metsudo and his enormous CAKE

Word count: 1531 words

Spoilers for Omega if you haven’t read it yet

To the anon that asked for it, here you go!

Being in a relationship with the fang of Metsudo is different than most, well close to all, really.

In order to be with him, you have to be very trust-worthy, patient and understanding with him. This is mostly due to him being involved in the Gu Ritual were he was the lone survivor and not really having anyone to rely on.

Meeting him outside the circumstances of Katahara Metsudo are slim to none so you at least are one of the body guards are know the Katahara family.

The man is pretty silent, he talks only when it’s you, the Katahara family, the bodyguards, or even some of the fighters that he made himself acquaintance with. He is just more in the background in Ashura than in Omega. Other than that, you mostly see him where the crowds doesn’t follow.

You kinda have to teach him everything of modern/mainstream media or actually anything in general. This, again, is mostly due to him only being confined to his master’s estate and nowhere else. He really is clueless with what’s going on in the world so it’s up to you to help and teach him to the best of your abilities. The man is welling to listen to you.

With that in mind, you do your best to help him become more human but you can tell that there are some chains that are holding him down. Although you’re no expert(unless you’re one idk, i’m sorry), you do everything in you being and power to help him regain human emotions and feelings.

Okay, I feel/headcanon that beside the Katahara family, you’re the only other person he will listen to and follow your requests that you ask of him. The man cares for you, so he’ll do it with some explanation on your part.

With the patience part, you have to coax Agito into hugs and kisses since he never experience affection in his life ever. It not just him being clueless or taking hints, you take your time to help him adjust and understand, it’s more of the uncertainty and hesitation he first has that makes him cautious of what you’re teaching him. He doesn’t want to accidentally hurt you with the kisses, hugs, any display of affection. He tries and that’s the best part.

Agito is kinda a rough kisser. Like not to rough, but it sometimes catches you by surprise. You know his initials are sweet and that he will never hurt you so you, on the most part, welcome his advances. After a while or sometimes, he does give gentle kisses to you. However, you enjoy his kisses nevertheless.

But Agito loves receiving (private) affection from you. He enjoys cheek and forehead kisses. Please give him those, it makes him feel at ease and more human/normal.

He LOVES to be held by you. He does like to cuddle after a while of getting use to the relationship. Your hugs are always well-received. He definitely like it when his head is laying on you chest, stomach, or lap. It give him comfort.

The man is literally a stoic teddy bear outside of the fighting ring.

Sometimes he can take a joke, but that’s like when he becomes more human and sentient later on. Other than that, you refrain from telling him jokes since it goes over his head or out the other ear.

It’s pretty obvious that he is loyal. With him being very loyal to Metsudo for practically saving his life when he found him, you can bet he just has eyes for you and no one else. But it’s safe to say because you’re the only person to have an effect on him that clouds his mind.

For some reason, he can’t handle any carbonation drinks. So rip him when he drinks beer or champagne. He does however, like Kahlua with milk and cassis and orange.

Hates a bath that any lower than 45 degrees. He will always take hot baths. If you’re not into hot water upon entering the bathtub/shower, beware of that.

Since you have to teach him things from the media, you make him go on wild goose chases to hunter for monsters. It’s funny at first but he gets a little too into finding the “monster” you told him and he’s gone for hours, you then have to break it to him that it’s not real. He’s like “oh, okay that’s fine. Nice joke, (Y/N).” But deep down he is disappointed that the monster is doesn’t exist.

You do watch his fights, of course. Some go by really quick, others are a bit longer but he always comes out of the victor. Until the tournament, he also won with ease. But when the tournament came, it was different. The fight with Gaolang prove a challenge for him and Gensai took his place as the most powerful fighter. It’s does amaze you when watching his fighting style and him evolving through them.

Since Agito is the most feared fighter in all of the underground, it’s pretty much safe to say no one, I mean NO ONE, messes, bad mouths, or touches you. If any of those happen to you, it is expected to see Agito’s looming daunting aura and monstrous glare at the person/people. It’s evident that the perpetrator/s were not be a bother to you once he’s done dealing with them.

You mean ALOT to Agito, so much. It’s to the point where if anything happens to you or, god forbid, if you got hurt, mercy is out of the question, out of sight, out of mind for Agito. He doesn’t go berserk nor fighting becomes reckless, it’s more of him going all out. If the perpetrator/s are fighters, you best believe that my boy is going to challenge them and pretty much not only destroy their body/bodies), but also destroy and eradicate their fighting spirit too. If the his damage to the body/bodies won’t make them retire/ fear him, then him crippling their mentality can. Basically, if people don’t want to die physically/emotionally/mentally at the hands of Agito, then you better believe that they won’t do or speak ill will of you.

Basically it’s “Oh... So you have chosen death then?”/”Peace was never an option.”

However, he’s not the person to be exerting his powers on fighters because he feels like it. He only acts when he’s challenge/force to fight, force to defend himself, orders from his master, or when you’re in some sort of danger. Other than that, he’s pretty chill and not intimidated by others.

After the events of the tournament, you can tell he has become more human like and not like a robot. He starts to show more visible emotions without you being around him. It makes you happy of his progress and how far he has come, which is a lot when you think about it. His decision to go to the US, to expand his horizons and mind, it was a hard one. He really didn’t want to leave you back in Japan, since he can’t protect you or be by your side, but you told him that this is a perfect chance for him to see the beauty of the world and it’s wonders. He takes your words and goes off. You check up on him once in a while to see how he’s doing and what has he seen and done. He tells you a lot and you can tell how fascinating it is to him, you can’t help but smile at him for doing so.

When you find out that he’s was coming back to Japan for the purgatory tournament. You were overjoyed to see him again. Once you saw him, you knew how much he has changed, the facial expressions and his aura, it says it all. You ran up to him and gave him a big hug to which he returned gladly.

Aight I haven’t talked about it yet, and it’s blatantly obvious. BUT, I have to say it like those before... AGITO GOT A FAT ASS!!! For the love of all things under the sun, you have never seen someone so thiccc in your entire life. I mean, fam/sis, this is it, this is endgame. The man has so much cake that he could make a bakery. The fact the suit really brings out his ASSets is a sight for sore eyes. You have never bear witness to something so beautiful. Fam, you’re fortunate to someone like that. Count your blessings when you are with Agito, fam.

He really loves nature walks. The two of you would aimlessly wonder the forest for hours just appreciating its beauty. It’s also a good way to clear his mind and to calm his mind when he is restless.

You’re what grounds Agito after he fights and goes stoic on opponents. Anything you do, hell even just your presences, always brings Agito back down to Earth and remember who he is, and he’s grateful to you in his life.

The man smiles only at you and anything/everything that you do. You are his pride and joy.

#kengan ashura #kengan omega #kengan ashura headcanons #kanoh agito #kengan ashura × reader

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moiraineswife · 3 years

Text

Worth - A Stormlight Fic

Back at it with my Jasnah/Wit crimes. Come. Feast on my content.

Title: Worth

Summary: Set pre Rhythm of War, probably fairly early on in Jasnah and Wit's foray into romantic territory (though tbh they're early on in RoW, so this is probably like...a month before or something). Anyway. Jasnah takes a moment to herself to Think Deep Thoughts about the world. Wit joins her and they Think Deep Thoughts together.

Honestly it's just them vibing with each other for the whole fic because I get a serious kick out of that aspect of their dynamic and I really enjoy writing it. I don't know how else to sell this to you. I feel like at this point if you're here you're here for good. So enjoy.

Teaser: "Jasnah was respected, certainly.

She might even be loved, by her family, whom she loved deeply in turn.

But she was rarely liked. And seldom wanted.

When the impenetrable tides of the Cosmere pushed someone towards her like Wit, though? Someone who not only seemed to actually like and want her, but also understand her? Well, then she was only human.

Human, and lonely. So lonely. Craving things others did not seem to believe she actually wanted."

Link: ao3

Commission Link: Have me write other cosmere characters

Sometimes, Jasnah forgot that the world was beautiful.

Academically, she knew that it was. She understood the quest of artists and poets to capture it, just as she sought to capture and unravel the mysteries of the past. Different types of scholarship, but both worthy, she now saw.

Yet practically, day-to-day, she did not often have the luxury of thinking about it.

So much of her life had been spent inside, enclosed by stone walls, buried in dusty books, surrounded by towering shelves, not mountains. The cold glow of spheres had replaced the warm kiss of the sun for her for so long now.

She had never resented her surroundings. They had made her feel contained, safe. The points by which she might have been approached, or attacked, could be easily identified, countered, and understood, when inside. It was a controlled environment, and that was the kind she preferred.

Strange, though, that close confines should make her feel protected now, considering…

Well, it did not do to dwell on that. Besides. It was the darkness that truly conjured up those particular Voidbringers.

She gave herself a little shake, refocusing on what unfolded before her, like a masterwork painting she had been included in. A single brushstroke in the centre of the piece, an afterthought, there merely to demonstrate how small humanity was in comparison to the expanse of nature.

Her chambers, by design, did not have a balcony. The danger it might allow in had not been worth risking for the sake of a pretty outlook and some fresh air. As a Radiant, she did not need to breathe, fresh air or otherwise. And if she needed something nice to look at while in her interior rooms, she’d ask Shallan for a sketch.

Still. It was pleasant to stand out here, for a moment.

The meeting she’d attended in Dalinar’s chambers had concluded, and the others had left almost at once to deal with other business about the tower.

This had left Jasnah to a rare moment of solitude and free time, when no-one expected her to be anywhere, so she had been free to simply be where she was.

In a rare impulse, she had taken the liberty of stepping out onto the balcony, and now she savoured this small gift she had afforded herself.

She missed the peace of being alone. Save Ivory, of course, but he was as much a part of her as her blood or bones, and did not count.

Urithiru was absolutely the place she needed to be. The goal of her long years of solitary research had been accomplished. It was time to move on to the next, and this tower was its natural staging ground.

Yet a part of her wished for those days. Solitude had been her blessing and her burden, back then, but now she only thought of it fondly.

She had been free, undisturbed by others and their needs, to do as she had wished to do. She had been unconstrained, unbound, save the pressures she had placed upon herself.

The burden of a dying world no-one else had noticed or heard screaming, as she had, had weighed upon her, and her alone. Like the Herald, Taln, for all those years, she had held the weight of Roshar and all those who lived upon it. Unknown. Unseen. Ignored.

Now that burden was shared. She had others that would listen to her, that could help. A good thing. For in bearing it alone, despite her torment, her pains, and her best efforts, she had failed. Again.

A part of her missed her peace, however. There was little of it to be found here.

She smiled wryly at herself, drumming her fingers on the balcony’s stone rail.

Wit would likely have had something to say had he been privy to her current musings. Something sarcastic, yet blended with enough insight to be profound all the same.

Satisfy a chull’s most basic wants and needs - food, water, shelter - and it would be content.

Satisfy a human’s most extravagant, outlandish and unnecessary wants and needs, and they would immediately discover new ones. Most likely contrary to the ones that had just been fulfilled.

Yes. he would like that idea. She tucked the thought away to share with him when he returned. He had been gone for a few weeks now, off doing whatever it was that he did. She did not begrudge him his travels. He had to do as he felt he must, and at her side was not always where he thought he was needed.

Though she did not chastise him, she did envy him, at times. What must it be like, to have the freedom to travel, not only across Vorin Roshar, but to other worlds.

He told her of it sometimes, at her urging. He would never say what he specifically was doing there, but she didn’t much care about that. She didn’t want the details of his adventures. She wanted to know of the places he had them. What other worlds looked like, felt like, what their history revealed of them, how they differed from Roshar, how and why culture had evolved there.

Some of their most stimulating talks involved these things. Jasnah had found herself dreaming, as she had as a girl, of fantastical places that felt so tangible, so real, yet out of reach.

Wit would return soon, she believed, and bring tales of other worlds. For now, she let herself simply watch her own as it turned around her.

Thick clouds swirled overhead, like blots of ink dropped into water, expanding and encompassing. They created a cavernous ceiling so far above, making her feel enclosed, but also free.

The vastness of it made her feel small. So small. So insignificant to this world she had tried to save. Likely it neither cared nor noticed. That gave her a strange sense of comfort. It was nice, for once, not to be seen, not to feel the weight of eyes and expectation upon her.

A wild songling flew past at her eye level, sculpting the sky with its wings, trilling in warning of her presence to others she could not see.

Wind blew through the mountains around her, rising, and falling, and echoing in a song that seemed just for her.

Yes. This world was beautiful. This was what she fought for. These quiet moments. The spaces between the words of the history books. The moments no-one thought to write of, but which they lived for.

She had become so deeply entrenched in saving the world, lately, that she hadn’t taken enough time to appreciate precisely what she was saving. It was good to look out, now, to take a moment, to remember.

This was her world. If Odium wanted it, he would have to pry it from her bloody, clawing fingers. And she would not make it easy for him.

The door behind her opened, and Jasnah felt herself tense, alert. Ivory, on her collar, always keeping watch for her, murmured, “Wit. He comes to find you.”

She smiled, in spite of herself.

“Thank you,” she told Ivory, whose careful observation of the world around her, covering her blindspots, was the only reason she felt even a little safety these days.

Excitement rose in her at the thought that Wit had returned. A part of her, that quiet, cautious part that whispered always of what might hurt her, warned that her eagerness in this moment was more dangerous to her than any blade or poisoned bread had ever been.

She acknowledged that. She would be a fool not to. She was no sheltered child any longer, believing that if a person loved her, they would be incapable of ever hurting her.

Yet, for all she valued her solitude, loneliness was something else entirely.

She would be a liar if she claimed to not have felt lonely these past few years.

Jasnah did not need people. She had built a life for herself that all but ensured she would never need anyone else for any reason ever again.

But she could want them.

That feeling was rarely mutual, however.

Oh, Jasnah was respected, certainly. She was renowned as a scholar and well-regarded in many academic circles. She was sought after and coveted as a means of cosying up to political favour or power. She was needed now as a queen, a thinker, a Radiant.

She might even be loved, by her family, whom she loved deeply in turn.

But she was rarely liked. And seldom wanted.

Jasnah did not often dwell on that. She would not waste her precious time wallowing in self pity like a hog in crem. She had far better things to do with herself than that.

Human, and lonely. So lonely. Craving things others did not seem to believe she actually wanted.

At times she had felt like the last member of a dying species. Alien. Unable to properly fit with anyone around her, no matter how hard she tried.

Then Wit. Another who did not fit his world. Someone who saw her, and knew, they were of a rare kind. And by some stroke of luck they had found another like them. Two topaz spheres in a basin full of diamonds.

She felt it as he stepped up behind her, slow, footsteps deliberately loud so she knew that he was there. Then he put his arms around her, clasping his hands in front of her, holding her to him.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, quietly, resting his chin on her shoulder.

“What makes you believe I’m thinking anything?” she replied, absently reaching up and carding her fingers through his neatly styled hair.

“When are you not?” he returned, smoothly, nuzzling at her neck. Not to entice, simply...For intimacy’s sake.

She had, incredibly, found herself missing his strange little physical displays of affection while he was gone. So she allowed this. He was always more prone to such bouts when he’d been away for a time.

“Mm, a point,” she allowed.

“Come then,” he said, breath pleasantly warm on her skin, “A clip for them?”

“A clip?” she repeated, frowning.

“Ah, yes,” he said, as if he’d just remembered something. Likely which planet he was on. Literally. “A small metal coin. Not from around these parts,” he explained, confirming her hypothesis.

“And what would I do with a small metal coin that’s not from around here?” she asked, amused.

It had likely been nothing more than an honest slip on his part, a forgotten habit, but she always liked to see what she could tease from these little lapses.

“Oh I’m quite sure you’d think of something,” he said, lightly, “Perhaps even something somewhat clever, knowing you.”

“Indeed,” she said, “And what will you do with my thoughts, should I give them to you?”

“Torment them,” he said, promptly, “Twist them, and turn them, and then make them dance for your entertainment while wearing that lovely purple havah that suits you so well.”

She smiled.

“Come then,” he said, “Tell me what wondrous, profound, revelatory thoughts the great Jasnah Kholin has been thinking on upon this lonely balcony of Urithiru?”

She breathed in the crisp mountain air, and said, simply, “I think that this world is beautiful, Wit.”

Another man might have made some empty comment regarding her own beauty, which would have done nothing but put her off. Fortunately, Wit knew better.

He only rested his head on her shoulder again and said, with uncharacteristic reverence, “Yes, it is.”

“Beautiful,” she repeated, “And worth saving.”

He perked up at that, and though she couldn’t see his face, she could imagine the expression on it as he planned to do with this thought exactly what he’d said he would.

“If the world were ugly,” he said, musing, “Would it then not be worth saving in your estimation, my dear? Very judgemental of you.”

“If I didn’t consider ugly things worth saving, I’d have allowed someone to assassinate you months ago, Wit,” she replied.

“How kind of you to forbid them,” he said lightly, not missing a beat, "It’s been attempted recently, then?” he added, with an indecent kind of interest.

“Yes. Three times.”

“Thrilling. A good assassination attempt every so often does wonders for one’s reflexes. Not to mention their sense of self-importance. After all, no-one ever tries to assassinate the unimportant,” he observed.

She might have noted how strange it was that someone was pleased to have been the subject of an assassination attempt. But this was Wit, and that was therefore expected behaviour from him. Not worthy of any special consideration.

Instead she drummed her fingers on the stone rail in front of her, considering.

“I’d permit the next one to slip through my defences to keep you on your toes,” she told him drily, “But I fear if your head becomes any more inflated than it already is, it may explode and ruin my new havah.”

Wit laughed loudly at that, and in so doing yielded their little verbal sparring match to her. A token of her victory.

He kissed her neck gently, and she could feel the smile on his lips as he did so. That made her feel warm.

“In any case,” she said, settling more completely against him, allowing him to hold her more firmly against him, their bodies melding more as she relaxed into it, “I don’t think a world is capable of being ugly, Wit.”

“That, my dear, very much depends,” he said lightly.

“On what?”

“On how you feel about sand,” he said, with a dramatic sigh.

“I feel that it’s coarse, stubborn, and irksome to find unexpectedly in your shoe,” she deadpanned in return, “Based on that I think we’d get on just fine, given that we seem very much alike.”

Wit huffed an amused laugh against her neck at that. “I assure you, I would be much happier to find you in my shoe than sand, Jasnah. Far more so were it my bed, in place of my shoe,” he added, his voice deepening as he said it.

She smiled faintly. She would not object to spending that time alone with him tonight after his absence. They always bonded more deeply afterwards, and she enjoyed the pleasurable distraction it provided. A nice reset for her mind.

“Later, perhaps,” she murmured softly, “If you earn your place there.”

“You wound me, Jasnah,” he said, allowing the mood of the conversation to flow smoothly back to light, neutral ground again, without the heat of loaded implications. “You know I always do my utmost to remain by your side as your Wit.”

“You have done satisfactorily in that area thus far, I will admit,” she allowed.

He did make a good Wit, and she had employed him on more than one occasion, to the general devastation of his target.

“And in other areas?” he prompted, resting against her once more.

“Mm, I’m still considering.”

Wit smiled against her once more, then stretched up and kissed her temple as he said, “I think that you’re right, dear one.”

“I may require you to be more specific, Wit,” she said, smiling slightly, “As I’m often right.”

He chuckled, “Quite correct. In this case, I believe that you’re right in saying that a world cannot be ugly. Not in a way that makes it unworthy of saving, at any rate.”

“No,” she agreed, softly, “Especially since this world still has heart, left, Wit, and that alone is worth preserving.”

He hummed softly in affirmation, then said, “Do you know, Jasnah, I do believe that I’ve missed you.”

“It’s been three weeks, Wit,” she said drily, “You’ll notice you survived my absence.”

But she smiled, in spite of her words, and that warmth flared in her again.

She believed him when he said things like that. In truth, she believed him when he said most things. They may be convoluted or misleading, but they were not outright lies.

“And you?” he said, nuzzling at her like an axehound puppy under a blanket again, “Did you survive without your Wit?”

“Barely,” she deadpanned.

Then she softened, because she enjoyed this game between them, this playful back and forth that kept them both sharp and engaged, but she was discovering something deeper that existed beneath the surface of it. And she felt that worth noting, too.

Placing her hands on top of his, she said quietly, “I am glad to see you back, Wit,” her smile genuine. “Life tends to be more interesting when you’re around.”

“My dear,” he replied, in mock outrage, “This almost implies that I have a purpose in being here.”

“Further evidence that you don’t count as art, Wit,” she said lightly, smiling.

“ Further evidence?” he repeated.

“Didn’t we already discuss your beauty? More specifically its lack?” she replied, falling comfortably back into rhythm with him.

“Jasnah!” he exclaimed, “I worked very hard when sculpting this face to make it as aesthetically pleasing as possible!”

“To chasmfiends?”

He snorted.

“You are truly irresistible, dear,” he told her, tone half genuinely fond, half playfully wicked.

“Really?” she prompted, expecting the follow-through.

“As irresistible as a man lashed to a chull being pulled irresistibly along behind it as it rampages freely through the plains,” he said, completing the sequence of their dance.

“Chulls don’t rampage, Wit,” she said flatly.

“Well then pretend that they do. For the sake of art , Jasnah,” he returned.

She smiled, then glanced over her shoulder at him, eyes bright, twinkling. He didn’t seem offended or at all hurt by her jibes but-

“Did I take that too far then?” she asked, bluntly.

She liked that she could ask him those kinds of questions, with the knowledge that they would be taken with the sincerity she intended, and without judgement. A part of her still feared the answer.

“Not at all,” Wit replied.

Though his tone was still light and jovial, she felt herself relax again. That was the truth, for he did not tell those sorts of lies.

“I haven’t had such a pleasantly stimulating conversation since, well, since our last,” he added, and there seemed a genuine fondness in his words.

She smiled again, as he punctuated this last with a soft kiss, which she dipped back slightly to receive. Then he pulled her close, hands resting comfortably against her, chin on her shoulder once more, following her gaze out over the mountains.

They stood in silence for a while, enjoying one another’s warmth and company.

Then he punctured the moment like a stray arrow to the lung by commenting, conversationally, “Have you considered that were I an assassin, this would be an excellent position from which to stab you?”

Jasnah tensed. She did not flinch, she did not . He was joking. She knew that he was joking. He had told her, quite openly, that he could not physically harm another living person. Curiously, she believed that.

She still reacted to his words as if they were an attempted strike at her.

Then she took a breath, and allowed her shardplate to manifest around her. It was always there, safeguarding her, protecting her, but it felt good to bring it into existence in this moment.

Wit laughed lightly, but the sound seemed to be lacking his usual humour.

She turned to face him at last, sliding out of his grip. He brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear and cupped her face with his hand.

“Always prepared,” he said softly, “Always ready for the worst to happen at all times. I know that. I know your fears, and I should not have made light of them with a jest. I apologise.”

She nodded, allowing her plate to fade back into the cognitive realm again.

Choosing to ignore the latter part of his statement, and its implications, she said, “We’re at war, Wit. It’s only reasonable to be on your guard at all times.”

Wit smiled again, that knowing, almost sad look. His hand rested gently against her cheek and he said, “What a convenient excuse that must be for you, Jasnah.”

She turned away, out of his gentle caress. Yes. It was a convenient excuse. He was getting in too close, learning to read her too well, he-

No. She shut those feelings down and took a deep breath.

He was right, of course. It was hard to trust a world that had dealt so much pain to her. Hard to trust people when they always hurt you. Even the ones that loved you. Especially those. She couldn’t articulate that to him yet, however. She was unsure if she even wanted to.

Wit seemed to sense that, and he slid his fingers under her chin, gentle but firm, and coaxed her to look up at him again. “There will be a time you can relax, Jasnah. It seems impossible to conceive of it now, but you will feel safe again. Some day.”

She leaned forwards, pressing her forehead to his. How sweet that would be if it were true. How nice it would feel. She said nothing, because she did not believe, but did not want to undermine his sentiment.

“We will save it, Jasnah,” he murmured to her, “Your beautiful world.”

She smiled, “Then perhaps we might actually enjoy it,” she said, thinking back on her earlier musings.

Wit smiled, “No, my dear,” he said, and she withdrew, frowning slightly, to look at him, “Then I will show you new worlds for you to study and learn of and feast upon.”

She smiled at that, very broadly, for it was the first time he had so directly stated, without flowery implications or vague hints, that he would like her to accompany him.

“Even the ones covered in sand?” she asked, amused.

“For you, Jasnah?” he said, eyes twinkling, “Why yes, we can even go to Taldain. If you insist.”

“I do, Wit,” she said, turning back to look out across the mountains, taking his arm and coaxing him to put it around her once more, enveloping her in his warmth.

Safety, even in the open.

“I wish to see it,�� she said, closing her eyes and allowing herself a moment to imagine, “I wish to see them all.”

#jasnah kholin #Hoid #stormlight archive #cosmere #rhythm of war #jasnah x wit #wit #jasnah fic #jasnah x wit fic #text post tag #long post #fic #my fic #mine #I FORGOT TO CROSS POST THIS HERE

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z3r0-f4ilur3 · 3 years

Text

The Record Begins With a Song Of Rebellion

First Draft Of the Capitalist Surrealist Writing Project. Steal and appropriate, critique and interrogate, with the author's full endorsement and permission. Looking (back)(for)wyrds After the Bush interregneum and the long, terrible, progress destroying Reagan years, the American empire had something like a moment of hope. Riding high on the peace dividend and a delusion of idealism among the donating classes, the economic aristocracy which in effect was the senior partner in “American Democracy” (and so duly represented in both parties) and the voter was a paternalized junior to be both petted and protected had selected the Clinton dynasty. The grand bargain between labour and capital against the state resulted in the bitter fruit of the Bush years, as Conservatives paternalists rightly mocked the Clintonian urge to middling action on domestic issues while gladly partnering with him to rob labour at large. While a wealth transfer had already been going on as part of a trend for the better part of a century, this phase in which a semi-coherent ruling class dynamic of the donating classes and the government service classes became visible. It is beyond satire now, but this was not always so visible, as racism, white supremacy, American exceptionalism, various fundementalist and conservative (as well as equally harmful, supposedly liberal versions of the same) religious beliefs; Turtle Island was rife with reasons for temporary cross class solidarity in order to oppose an other or to advance an idealistic goal.

And yet moments of class consciousness and solidarity have perenially emerged, from the “grassroots” as the insiders like to say. They frame the people as “the base” or “the grassroots” and narrowly target their interests to make people find conflict with each other. It is irrelevent (for this missive) whether this is a conscious, semi-conscious, or unconscious process; it is enough to notice it happening. Despite this, moments in the pre new-modern (to be defined later, promise~) politics that predate terms like Black Lives Matter or Trans Rights are Human Rights show that these movements represent an unbroken chain of revolutionary attempts at self-consciousness and conscience transformation that coincide and are just as important as any history of violence. The Ides of March, and the campaign of anonymous internet citizens against Scientology, represents such a moment. Occupy Wall Street was such a movement. “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used To It!” was such a phrase. The many quotes attributed to names like Mandela and James Baldwin; the Black Panthers, the revolutionary feminists, the Hippie movement, down back to the (In the American mind) hoary days of yore when the Wide Awakes would march a brass band around the houses of pro slave Senators.

It is a poor yet accurate summation to say that the ‘present’ (a dubious notion) political reality is the sum of all of these and more; a reader can orient themselves to the history of late stage capitalism by the growth of the donating classes influence and the acceleration of their detachment from society at large. Moments which also impact this reality are the donating classes sense of pessimism about the future; the devaluing of nearly all forms of labour, the increasing visibility of law enforcement brutality; the list can be referenced in the moment to moment, wide eyed and angry reporting of self-matyring, news-junkie amateur journalists found anywhere online, the shocked and angry expressions of young activists at protests and the weary, numbed faces of the old. Up and down the class system, there has been a wide spread death of hope.

Enter the climate crisis.

Before climate consciousness achieved real steam, our escatological fears were (mostly) confined to the realm of human action or cosmic events unimaginable (and unrelatable) to the modern person’s experience of life. For decades, the effects of climate change were reported to a world told not to care. As Terrance Mkenna said, ““The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.”

The impact of this can and will be expanded upon, but it is safe to say that the bubble has been popped. Whatever finds popular currency within the dialogue around it, that the climate is changing rapidly in ways inemical to human society at large/at present is true by material impact; people everywhere have experienced some negative result of the changing conditions, and there is a rising anxiety in the classes who cannot afford an escape pod or fortress bunker that the people they’ve entrusted themselves to intend to withdraw to safety and abandon them, or even expose them to more harm in order to “make more of the earth’s carrying weight available in the reclamation” (this kind of talk is not alien to them, though this specific quotation is my own invention.

It is important to acknowledge that the bubble has popped. It is the exclamation on Capitalist Realism; it is the moment of awareness, that encounter with a death of hope, in which Capitalist Surrealism, our phenomenological experience of the Capitalist Real, is born. While this Surrealist stage is both uncomfortable and has deleterious effects on the human condition, it represents the chink in the armour of banality and inertia, and the diminishing politics of the powerful. The sense that anything, absolutely *anything,* can happen to you, is both incredibly terrifying, and when looked at squarely, an opportunity for radical freedom.

It is this radical freedom that we see ourselves invited to in the many facets of human expression and convention which have experienced an awakening of new consciousness (or the restoration of old ones. Beliefs, ways of interacting with the world, and surviving are no longer benefited by or even neutrally treated by their operating environment anymore; if the complete weight of propaganda in circulation at the moment could be translated into sound, it would present an impenetrable and unlistenable wall.

It is that environment that individual ideologies not sanctioned by the operating environment have struggled against; all of them now have new life and vigor because despite that wall, and the spectacle societies which generate them, the literal truth of material impacts trump all prior arguments. With awareness of most likely outcomes of the climate crisis on a sliding scale, we see radicalization and existential depression of all varieties spike; the answers they attempt to generate to these apparent conditions lack hope in broad but uneven spikes along that scale of awareness, with the suicidally depressed expert climatologist and the radical anarcho-primitivist sharing the same ontological space in orientation to that crisis.

This project, among other things, is an attempt to generate an alternative answer (what that project consists of is entirely based in literature and mutual aid, the oldest Christian platforms for emancipatory action.) Terms like Solarpunk and Cloud City Futures approach but fail to capture the spirit of an alternative answer, mostly with an appeal to the world of aesthetics, a dubious method for summoning change at best. Terminology alone, or even in tandem with education, is also not sufficient; the noise environment they enter into immediately drowns out the creators meaning, especially if these terms are successful and gain currency with the wealthy.

Rather, we must articulate the positive from all our apparent negatives: The apocalyptic futures we anticipate cannot begin actually describe the terrain of the future, and the apparancy of our material conditions impact on our lives is now drowning out the sound of the standing ideologies. This is a brave time, where people blaze trails for others to follow out of the collapsing structures of the past and into the dwelling places of the new future. Our experience of reality, though surreal, has now unlocked an awareness of an apparent power: making meaning.

It is with the tools of meaning-making that these, who are the heirs of their elders, queer and colour revolutionary and indigenous land defender and abolitionist, pioneer the hopeful vistas of the future. It is necessary that they *be* hopeful; it was the Buddha who taught that people deceived by Samsara may be “deceived” by the apparent gifts of pursuing enlightenment, the majority of which are ancillary incidentals not to be meditated on. The king calls his indolent heirs out of the burning palace with a promise of gifts; when they arrive, they protest the lack of gifts, but it is in his embrace of them we realize they are the gift, and their survival was worth the promise of chariots and ponies.

But there must also be chariots, and ponies; luxuries, and finery; the grim tools of “defense” and all the things the human animal finds comforting in their resting environment to assure them of its stability. In the Dao De Jing, (Though Mueller butchers the poetry,) the Sage articulates this and describes how to create it: “Let there be a small country with few people,

Who, even having much machinery, don't use it.

Who take death seriously and don't wander far away.

Even though they have boats and carriages, they never ride in them.

Having armor and weapons, they never go to war.

Let them return to measurement by tying knots in rope.

Sweeten their food, give them nice clothes, a peaceful abode and a relaxed life.

Even though the next country can be seen and its doges and chickens can be heard,

The people will grow old and die without visiting each other's land.” A.C. Mueller Translation, The Dao De Jing, Attributed to Lao Tzu

It is as naked an appeal to a return to the life of the community and the village as can be found. A return to idigenous ways of being, which speaks to the preservation of folk ways, while the reality that the sage is administering them (even if only by moral teaching) shows a potential for new ideas to be instanced; innovation is not a property innate to the colonizing and walled world, and memetic culture and the society of truth-telling through representation around it reflect callbacks to this desire. The political movement around Land Back, while perennial to the causes of indigenous people, crystalizes an actionable answer for individuals and collectives to support. Its cousins in other colour movements, many of them representing indigenous people displaced by imperialism in the first place, are also generative of positive futures; it is a fact of history that as the rights of people classified as “minorities” are raised, the general quality of life for all in society rises, with the exception of those who could never be touched but by the highest tides.

These movements and moments of consciousness are their own inestimable goods, not mere ends for the would be conscious person to hijack for their goals. This is in fact a position inimical to the success of any of these movements; grifting starts at home, and it is the white leftist who is more easily conquered by the white liberal, since neither of them have conquered their own whiteness in the first place. But that supporting them generates positive benefits for all can only be argued against if you value the lives and comforts of some over others; those who value the general benefit first can see a clear path.

It is that clarity that gives meaning makers license to create the vistas of the future. It is the “Mandate of Heaven” that endorses the artists, a general operating license to create. Because the material impact of the present is louder than the noise of Capital, there an outburst of fertility and growth, the very seeds of hope, breaking out in the midst of this Surrealism. It is with the tools of meaning making, and the canvas of the crisis, that people escape the real.

#capitalist hell #Capitalist Surrealism #newfuture #say anything

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walviemort · 4 years

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hidden blessing (3/?)

Summary: Killian thought the only thing he was left with after Milah’s death was a broken heart and a thirst for vengeance. It’s not until he gets to Storybrooke, after so many years spent in stasis, that he discovers something else: he’s carrying her child. How does this new, tiny blessing change his path? (Canon-divergent from 2x12.)

rated T | part 1 | part 2 | AO3 | 2.6k

A/N: woohoo, another chapter! I have the next one written but past that is mostly outlines...hopefully I can keep this schedule. we’ll see (wish me luck!) and thanks for all the nice comments and hey to all the new followers! and also, thanks as always to @sherlockianwhovian <3

By the time Tamara got this apparently mythic “sign” to head to Storybrooke, his bump had continued growing as it should (he assumed). It was still only just barely noticeable, if one was looking for it, and thankfully hadn’t expanded the confines of his clothing; he’d get at least another month or so in his vest before needing to find something a bit roomier, he figured. Which was all the better for keeping things concealed.

He shouldn’t have been surprised that she decided to transport him in a cargo attachment to her vessel. He just hoped the bumping and jostling didn’t hurt the babe—nor the way Tamara had tied rope around his waist when she attached him to the chair, or the way they decided to haul said chair to the clock tower.

For someone who had been accused of dramatics in his life, these two definitely outmatched him in that department. What better way to show him that the sense of relief and accomplishment he’d felt for the past few weeks was built on nothing, than by dragging him up there to reveal that Crocodile still lived?

“No. No!” he had screamed; this couldn’t be happening. He struggled in vain to free a hand, instinctively trying to protect his child, to no avail.

They had a deal for him: help them get to Regina, and they’d show him how to destroy the Dark One. He had to decide—quickly—what would be the safest course of action for him and his child.

-----------------------

Not much later, free from his restraints and with a bit of food in him, he made his way to Regina’s office. She appeared to be waiting for him.

“Captain!” she greeted, scanning him with her eyes. “You look like you've had a rough time.” He didn’t miss the fact that her gaze lingered on his midsection, but he wasn’t about to address that.

“Indeed, I have. I've come to ask you for your protection.”

“From Gold?” she assumed. “I'm surprised you'd show your face in this town after you noticed your murder didn't take.” She always had a perfect way of rubbing salt in wounds.

“Well, we've got bigger problems,” he plowed on. “That man—Greg Mendell, the one who hit me the night I shot Belle—well, he's in league with some woman. She abducted me in New York and dragged me back to Mendell. They want me to make an alliance with you, and then betray you. That's why they let me go.”

“Mhmm,” she hummed; she didn’t quite buy it, and he didn’t quite blame her.

“Well, I say that you and I make an alliance, and we'll skip the unpleasant betrayal business.”

“Why should I trust you?”

He stepped closer, invading her space. “I took up with your mother for a reason. Perhaps the three of us could reestablish in our alliance.”

“My mother died.”

His stomach fell (or perhaps it was just the nausea stirring up again). “That is sad news indeed. I'm sorry; she will be missed. But I tell you this, Regina: I knew her well enough to know what she wanted most in the world was to see you win. Now I failed in my revenge. The best tribute I could give her is to help you with yours.”

Regina thought about it a moment, then said, “Well, can I... Let me show you something.”

She led him to a small terrarium filled with a plant he’d recognize anywhere—a beanstalk. And its fruit was ripe. As soon as he laid eyes on it, his mind began to consider alternate ideas for his next step. “An escape plan? Oh, she would have loved that. She brought that giant for the beans so she could go back and start over with you,” he recalled, now jealous at the thought.

“And now I'm going to do that with Henry,” she said. “If you'll help me. This is how we're going to escape the total destruction of Storybrooke, if I can trust you.”

The idea of heading back to their land—being able to raise his child in peace—was the most tempting offer he’d heard today. But he needed to know more.

“Now when you say total destruction, including the crocodile, yes?”

“Oh, yes. Rumplestiltskin will die. If you help me.”

Well, he could hardly pass that up, could he?

She led him to the library and down a shaky lift to an underground cavern. Maybe it was because they were on the cusp of such great change and upheaval, but he found himself feeling oddly reflective; and frankly, Regina was the only one in this town he could discuss such things with.

As they walked along the stone path, he said, “You ever wonder if this constant pursuit for revenge is the reason we have no one who cares for us?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” she snipped.

“I’ve seen a life now wherein my goals were met, my revenge sated. And you know who I could celebrate that with? No one.”

“Well, I know that’s not true.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“Stop playing coy; I know you’re knocked up.”

He sighed; there was no use hiding it from her anymore. “Aye, I am. And you want to know something? I spent so long on my quest for revenge, that I didn’t even know about it until recently. The mother isn’t here; nor are any of my friends, if I ever had any. Not a soul I could trust. What kind of a life is that?”

“That all sounds like stuff I can deal with when I’ve finally found my revenge.”

“All I’m saying is that, it seems to me, enacting revenge is an empty end; not a beginning.”

“For you, maybe. Not me. I have Henry. And destroying Storybrooke? Well, that seems like a small price to pay to allow us to live in peace. You can’t tell me you don’t want that.”

He couldn’t, so he sighed and extended his arm, inviting her to continue—until she noticed the cuff on his wrist. Or, rather, demanded it once he said it was Cora’s. For a queen, she was rather predictable.

“Now, follow me closely,” she said, once she’d affixed the cuff to her wrist. He felt minorly guilty for that, given what was supposedly inside it, but was truly considering reneging on his deal with Greg and Tamara. If Regina could get the two of them out of town safely, she was definitely his best choice in an ally.

Until she pushed him off a cliff a minute later and used him as bait, leaving him for dead. Never mind; he was more than ready to turn on her, assuming he and his babe got out of this scrape.

“Please be alright, little one,” he murmured as he ran from the remnants of Maleficent.

The shock on Regina’s face back upstairs upon seeing him alive was definitely worth it. He had no qualms with bringing in his associates to the proceedings and letting them take over. It was all he could do to not laugh at Regina’s failed attempt at using her magic. And he was more than content to watch her plans crumble around her.

He tagged along when they took Regina to their hidden base—after a quick trip to the lavatory to deal with nausea again (that was really getting annoying)—but didn’t stick around there long, especially not once he realized the goings-on there had very little to do with the overall plan.

From her prone position strapped to the table, Regina tried to bargain with him. “Whatever they're offering you, it's not worth it.”

“Well, considering they're offering to have me kill Rumplestiltskin, I'd say it is.”

“And you actually trust them? With everything you have on the line?” Her glance went to his stomach again. “You don't even know who you're working for.”

She had a point there—one that was sticking, as much as he didn’t want it to. He had rushed into this alliance somewhat blindly, hadn’t he? Was this what that book was talking about when it referenced ‘pregnancy brain’?

Greg invited him to stay for whatever he had planned next, but Killian declined. “Sorry, mate. Gonna have to say no. When you're interested in killing Rumplestiltskin and not torturing the Queen, find me.” And he left for the privacy of his ship.

-----------------------------------------

After getting some decent rest, Killian decided it was prudent to visit the doctor again. He’d been through quite a lot in the past few weeks; better safe than sorry. And Doc was thankfully able to find time in his schedule to see him.

“How have you been feeling?” he asked as he started his exam, checking over Killians abdomen and other parts.

“Nauseous, but otherwise alright.”

“That can linger sometimes, unfortunately. And you’ve been taking it easy? I haven’t heard your name in the town gossip so I assume you’ve been keeping a low profile.”

“Well…” Killian watched as Doc’s eyes grew wide while he described the past few weeks, from being knocked out by Cora to thrown off a cliff by Regina.

“Uh, I think we need to do an ultrasound,” he said nervously. “That’s...a lot.”

“I’m aware,” Killian sighed.

Doc left and came back with a machine that looked like the first one he used, but this time, he picked up a much larger instrument.

“Bloody hell! What is that?” Killian asked when he came closer with it, trying to scoot away; no way that was going inside him.

Doc looked at it, then seemed to realize what Killian was thinking. “Oh! No, no, no, it’s—this one is used on the outside.”

Killian sighed. “Good.”

“I just need your stomach again. Brace yourself; this will be cold.”

Killians breath hitched as Doc squirted a cold jelly onto the slight curve of his stomach, then flipped on the machine and started to move the probe against his skin.

On the screen, a similar image to what he’d seen weeks ago appeared almost instantly—but it looked much more human-like this time.

“There’s your baby!” he announced, pointing out its limbs, heart, and brain. “Everything appears normal; and looks like you’re around 16 weeks. But please, try to take it easier from here on out.”

Killian could do nothing but grin as he saw the image on the screen, wriggling in time with the flutters he could feel inside. “I’ll do my best,” he answered, which had more meaning than just answering the question.

As he walked away from the office with another picture (and more pamphlets), he started to think about his actions over the last day or so more. Was he really in the best company to set up a good future for his babe? Did he even know how to do that anymore? (Or ever?)

When he got back to the ship, he added the new image and info to the older stash and retired to his bed. But he had an unusually hard time falling asleep as he warred with himself, and he couldn’t turn to his usual vices to knock him out.

“I just want to do the right thing,” he said quietly, brushing his hand over his still-small bump. But he had no idea what that was, or where to find it.

And Regina’s warning lingered, and his doubts about Greg and Tamara grew. That left him with two options, neither of which were ideal: strike out on his own...or seek out Emma.

Thinking of her sent his thoughts in other, less polite directions, so he dealt with that, but he couldn’t shake the idea that Swan and her people might be better—safer—company. The one barrier, though: they likely wouldn’t take him.

At least he had plans, though, sating his captain-like desire to have a plan of action. With that, he was finally able to fall asleep.

------------------------------

The next day, he was headed into town, suddenly craving the greasy fare he knew was available at the diner, and praying he wouldn’t be shot on sight. But Greg was exiting upon his arrival outside the establishment and intercepted him. “Hook! Just who I was looking for. Come on, mate; we’ve got things to do.” Killian feared what might happen if he rejected the man, so cravings would have to be put on hold for the time being.

He did hesitate, though, when Greg invited him to board his vehicle—the same one whose front end he was well-acquainted with.

“Oh, right,” Greg said when he noticed Killian’s trepidation. “You’re much safer on the inside; promise.”

Killian arched an eyebrow in disbelief; the other man’s recovery from the accident took significantly longer than his own.

“I’ll be extra careful,” Greg added.

“I’ll hold you to it.”

Killian definitely gripped the handle inside the door incredibly tight as they made their way across town; it might be a more efficient mode of transport, but he didn’t trust it just yet.

Once at the entrance to the mines, where Tamara was waiting, Greg parked the vehicle and led Killian into the tunnels; though they were labyrinthine, the man seemed to know where they were going.

“It's just ahead,” he said as the walls seemed less and less stable.

“Are you sure whoever's in charge of you doesn't want you guys to die in a mine collapse?”

“Just keep moving,” Tamara scolded.

“Who is telling you what to do?” The more Killian thought about what Regina had said, the more he needed answers from them.

“You know what? That's not your concern. It's not ours, either,” Greg sniped back.

“Not your concern,” Killian scoffed. “So you're telling me you don't know who commands you?”

Tamara sighed. “Unlike you, Hook, we believe in something. We have faith in the sacredness of our cause.”

“We're here,” Greg announced before Killian could come up with a snarky answer; just up ahead, he pulled an axe off a rack bolted to the stone wall.

“So your sacred cause is pilfering a dwarf's pickaxe?” The churning in Killian’s gut had nothing to do with nausea or hunger; he didn’t like what was going on one bit.

“Regina had this in her pocket when you handed her over to us,” Tamara explained, pulling a dark brown gemstone from her coat.

“It's a trigger,” Greg continued, “and this ax, according to our people, is what activates it.”

Killian’s mind started to work quickly. “You're going to destroy an entire town, and kill everyone in it…”

“Yeah,” Greg confirmed. “Including your enemy.”

“Rumplestiltskin won't be immune to this?”

“None of your kind will be.” He wanted to protest the fact that he was being lumped in with the Dark One, but this wasn’t the time. “Once this thing gets activated, nothing can shut it off.”

Killian needed a new plan of action—fast. Quickly, he worked through his backup ideas and figured out what to do next as Greg set the jewel on a flat stone.

Greg said, “This whole town will revert to the forest it was. So tell us, Hook. We're willing to die for our cause. Are you willing to die for yours?”

He almost hesitated too long to reply; hopefully they didn’t notice. “Absolutely,” he lied.

They seemed to accept his answer, and then Greg hefted the axe aloft and swung down, striking the stone right in its center. It began to levitate and give off a blue glow; Killian just got his hand around his midsection in time for it to burst outward.

The mine began to shake as the failsafe began to work, and the three ran out of the tunnel. The couple shared a passionate kiss, and Killian used their distraction to stage his escape.

He had much more to live for than some unknown cause. And thankfully, he knew a few people in this town who’d feel the same. Hopefully, they listened to him.

-------------------------------------

thanks as always for reading! tags: @cocohook38 @wyntereyez @jennjenn615 @superadam54 @ashley-knightingale @justsomewhump

#cs ff #killian jones ff #mpreg #hidden blessing #my ff

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clevercatchphrase · 5 years

Text

You Monster Chpt. 36

(This story is also on AO3, under the same username as here! I am no longer linking the chapters, or else tumblr would hide the entire post from the search results!)

It feels like time has stopped moving. Maybe it had. A thousand thoughts flicker through your mind, but when you open your mouth, not one can seem to find its way out. You don’t understand.

Flowey. Your very best and oldest friend, enslaving your new friends in painful chains yet grinning at you as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. The juxtaposition doesn’t make sense in your eyes, and it’s downright unsettling. You don’t understand. You just don’t understand.

“Flowey…” you say, the name loaded with disbelief and pain and betrayal all at once. There’s so much you want to say and you don’t know where to begin. Your jaw works, your throat swallows, and at last you manage to choke out a single syllable word; ”Why?”

“What, it isn’t obvious?” The flower chuckles, tipping his head to one side in a nonchalant motion. “To get the six human souls of course! I know Asgore wouldn’t let me anywhere near them. Not after our last encounter. So I needed a distraction to occupy his attention while I nipped in and grabbed them from right under his nose! That distraction… was you~!” He winks and pokes his tongue out, smiling as if this was one big practical joke.

“Why?” you ask again, a bit more passionate this time as your wits slowly start to return. “What do you need the souls for?”

“Duh, to become a god, of course!” The flower scolds you for asking such a stupid question. “To become a being so powerful that I can control reality! To rewrite history! To unwind time and fix the past so nothing ever went wrong! But I’m not there yet. I need seven human souls to become a god, but the king only had six! So you know what that means, don’tchya?”

The vines of your cage start to shift and close in as Flowey brings you down to his level. Instinctively you try to shrink in on yourself, away from that cold, empty smile of his.

“I need one more. And you’re going to hand it over.”

Screams of outrage and protest ignite from behind the golden flower, and you hurriedly look up at your petrified friends. You had almost forgotten they were there.

“Flower, if you do not release us at once, I vow I will turn you to cinders!” Toriel warns.

“Weed, if you dare hurt MY FRIEND, so help me I will punch your petals off!” Threatens Undyne.

Promises of similar caliber are made by the rest of your friends, each swearing the flower would regret it if he dare harms a single hair on your head.

Flowey merely ‘hm’s a single snort of humor, and constricts his vines around their mouths to shut them up, not even doing so much as to spare them a glance as he silences them. The gags only make your friends fight back harder, but with a flick of a leaf, Flowey violently coils his vines, squeezing the air out of their lungs until they’re left gasping in his grip.

You find that you’re having trouble breathing yourself. He’s hurting your friends. Monsters you care about are suffering because of you. It’s your worst fear come to life.

“So what will it be?” He teases. “Are you going to cooperate and make this easy for me? Or will you make it painful for you?”

“Stop! You’re hurting them!” You beg. “Please, just let them go, and I promise you can have my soul!”

You can feel the eyes of your friends staring at you in horror and despair, but you refuse to look up. This had been your initial goal anyway, hadn’t it? To give up your soul so the monsters you had come to love and call family could go free? Wasn’t this much the same thing now? You can’t bear to see them get hurt because of you- get tortured for you. You won't allow it.

The flower blinks at you once. And then starts to giggle. Then chuckle. Next he doubles over in full-blown laughter, howling uncontrollably as if he’s heard the funniest joke in the world.

“Let them go?” Flowey says when he finally recovers from his fit. “And risk revolt when I’m finally so close to fixing everything? Oh, of course I’ll let them go! NOT! Besides, I’m going to need all the extra magic I can get to pull this off!”

“W-well, then you can’t have my soul then!” You challenge. “I-I’ll never give up fighting you until you release them!”

“Ah, I see you’ve decided to do this the painful way,” Flowey sighs. A low droning noise, like the wrrr of an engine steadily rises from the edge of your hearing until it becomes a shrill, deafening shriek. “But I think you’ll find there was never going to be much of a difference! After all, there is one other way I can get the equivalent power of a human soul!”

The sound gets louder and louder until it’s borderline unbearable, surpassing the barrier of “sound” and into the physical world that your whole body feels compressing every single one of your atoms until you can even see it crack the air in two-!

And then the world goes blinding white.

_____________________________________________________________

He absorbs the souls as easily as his roots absorb water, and the sheer lack of resistance they provide almost make him want to laugh. The few times he had tried to take them by force while the king’s back was turned had proved futile each attempt. The spells Asgore had placed upon them to keep them under lock and key had been too strong for him to break with what little magic he knew, but this was entirely different.

He had always assumed that merely getting to the souls would be just the first hurtle, while combining them into this sorry excuse of a body would have been the second, but instead they readily yield to him, he can’t believe it was this easy.

The second his roots come into contact with them, his whole world erupts with sensation. Emotions, raw and pure and unfiltered surge through him. Anticipation, curiosity, fear, reluctance, spite, confusion, all old but felt anew. It had not occurred to him just how far gone his memory of the feelings were until he had them all again.

Half a dozen minds blink awake from their limbo-like slumber as they combine with his own, and he spurs them into action before they can protest. With each soul he acquires, he feels his power magnify ten-fold. The magical prowess of Boss Monsters became pitiful. The ancient spell of the barrier? Insignificant. The confines of the earth? Meaningless. The grandeur of the cosmos and the very universe began to pale compared to his ability and soon- the very fabric of reality and time would follow suit.

Finally. Finally, after waiting so long he felt whole again. He felt alive again. He felt ready to finish what he had started.

Capturing them all had been so easy. Coiling his vines around them and tucking each monster in the room away in their own little box had hardly taken any effort. His magic felt limitless now. All he had to do was think an action- barely think any action- and it seemed like his vines were racing one another to finish the task first. Awed by his own ability, their cries of panic barely registered in his ears.

And then he saw the human’s face. That curious expression they wore tickled him- genuinely tickled his nonexistent stomach, bubbling up inside his stem and threatened to make him burst out laughing. They look so confused, so scared. So betrayed, as if finally understanding a joke, only to realize they were the punchline the entire time.

He tried asking them nicely for their soul, to give them a chance to cooperate, to surrender willingly so things didn’t have to get messy, but unfortunately (predictably) they denied his request, just needing to do it the hard way.

They had tried to bargain with him. To trick him to take a trade where he’d get the inferior deal, and he did laugh at that, wholly, genuinely chuckled and choked. As if they ever had a choice in the matter. So what if they wouldn’t willingly forfeit their soul to him? He had six human souls and the powers of a near omnipotent god. What’s more, theirs wasn’t the only soul in the room.

And taking those was oh so easy as well. With a single breath, he closed his eyes and expanded his essence, his very will, up and up, out and out, calling forth the monster souls that resonated back at him in turn. As simple as thought he ordered them to join him and they did so unquestioningly, the six in the room, the hundreds storming into New Home, the thousands in every corner of the Underground, flying to him like moths to a flame, compounding his power exponentially by the second. And with this new limitless well of magic, he began to transform, to change, to revert back to what he knew he once was- to what he should have been all along.

Asriel Dreemurr opens his eyes.

The barrier room, once ominously scored by the ever-present low hum by the impenetrable force field has gone eerily silent, and the foreboding overcast light of the noon-high sun has completely vanished. The entire world itself seems to have gone dark and cold, as if holding its breath and waiting for the silence to shatter. The entire fate of the world, for good or for bad, was hinged on this pivotal moment, just waiting for one side to tip. Only one thing pierced through the endless black, one small, fragile, insignificant speck that lay cowering before him. So tiny compared to his power that they didn’t even register on his awareness. Turing towards the vacant sky, Asriel spoke.

“Chara, can you hear me?” He says to the void, a nervous giddy in his tone. “I know I messed up. I know I let you down, but I’m going to make things right. It’s not much longer now. I’m going to back to unto my mistakes. I’m going to fix it! I’m going to fix everything!”

And with a great swell, Asriel lifts his arms and feels himself transforming again, into the god he now was, into a creature befit to wield his unfound power, vast and towering.

“Why?!” A tiny voice yells. “Flowey, why are you doing this?!”

The god of ten thousand stolen souls but no soul to call his own blinks and looks down at the unimportant ant before him. They were still here??? Ugh! Whatever! He guesses it's only fair to explain it to their tiny brain before they're wiped from the records of history.

“Isn’t it obvious?” The martyr prince bellows. “To undo time, of course! With this power, I can go back! I can make sure our original plan succeeds! I’ll make so I never let them down! I’ll show them I never doubted them!”

“Undoing time…” the child says, mystified, before their face becomes etched with horror. “But… but if you go too far back, nearly all the monsters will-!”

“Perish? Unfortunately.” Asriel says with airy indifference. “But don’t think of it as dying. Sure, their bodies and souls as they are may be destroyed, but they’ll have to chance to be born again, if fate allows. It won’t be permanent. They’ll all come back. Probably.”

Ten thousand identities swirl inside him, compressed into one until their sense of self is completely eroded away, leaving only their basal emotions behind. Their confusion and fear fed back into his own, and with a grunt of annoyance, he shoves the feelings aside as not to distract him, but the task was like sweeping away a puddle; no matter how hard he tried, their emotions kept trickling back into his own.

With a great effort, he ignores their feelings and instead focuses on his now-stolen magic.

Primordial magic, thrumming with energy and life, coils at his fingertips. Lifting both arms Asriel calls the magic to his forefront, picturing the place and time he needed to be. Shutting off all outside noise, he sharpens his concentration, focuses all his power to one point of singularity, and reaches-

And to his absolute amazement, he could feel it working! A numbing tingle radiating through his form as years and decades and centuries begin to melt away as he searches for his destination. He was almost there, and if he could just touch it-

“NO!”

With a violent jerk, his hold on the timeline is ripped from his claws, and suddenly he’s back in the present. Something- or someone- has denied him access to the past. Someone was fighting him. Resisting him.

Refusing him.

Looking down, Asriel Dreemurr sees that small speck, that single inconsequential human stand up and defy him.

“Flowey, don’t do this,” the human says meekly, barely able to maintain eye contact with him. “We’re… we were friends, right? Friends wouldn't do this to other people! Friends wouldn’t do this to each other!”

Anger, true unbridled anger, ignites within him, setting his nerves alight in white-hot rage. How dare they? How DARE they?! Trying to stop him when he was so close! Trying to thwart him when he was inches away from fixing EVERYTHING!

“NO! NOT YOU! I was never friends with you!” Asriel screams. “Don’t you get it? You were just a stand in! A place holder! I’m going back to the real Chara! MY Chara!"

ugh! How had he EVER put up with this irritating substitute for so long??? Thinking they're so high and mighty! Thinking they can do whatever they want, trying to ruin his plans after he's come so far! If they won’t give up their soul, if they won’t let him win, then they could just DIE! NO ONE would get in his way anymore!

With one giant paw, Asriel swipes the air, sending a compression wave with the force of a freight train behind it slamming into the human. And with no way to escape, the child is hit with the blast as full force and sent tumbling back one hundred, two hundred feet like a rag doll, where they lay unmoving.

A grim smile curls on Asriel’s lips at their motionless form, anticipating a sense of satisfaction to follow- but to his shock, he’s met with a gut-wrenching twist of horror that stabs deep in his chest like a lightning strike into the phantom hollow where once was his very own soul.

Howling in pain, the soulless god falls to his knees, desperately clawing at his chest in a vain attempt to gouge out the source of his agony.

“What?! What is this?” He pants, unable to draw in enough air. A small noise catches his ear, and he strains to look and finds the human struggling to sit upright with a tremendous effort. At once the bitter, crushing blanket of sorrow is extinguished by an icy wave of relief at the sight of them alive and kicking, leaving him weak-kneed and weary.

They’re alive. They’re alright. He didn’t hurt them as bad as he thought. They were going to be okay.

“What did you- how did you-?!” The soulless god demands, blinking in confusion, until, slowly, it begins to dawn on him what’s happening.

Even though not a one can recall a single thing about their individual self, the tumultuous slurry of thousands upon thousands of monster souls within him are crying out in regret and hope seeing their adopted human struggle in the fight for their life. These feelings of grief and joy at the sight of the human… they weren’t his. They were theirs.

“No, this feeling... I didn’t want this. I don’t want to feel this! Cut it out!”

“'Your Chara...?'” the human coughs, realizing what Asriel had said and piecing it together. And from where they lay, Asriel sees their eyes go wide with understanding. “No way... Flowey… You’re- You are-“

Like a nightmare, the human rises to their feet, calm and careful, and the soulless god desperately tries to scramble away from them. But no matter how fast they tried to scurry, the human inches ever nearer, closing the gap between them.

No… NO! He can’t let them reach him! H-he can’t let them touch him! If they do, th-they’ll steal his power and he’ll lose his chance for good! Not after all he had to do to get this far! He can’t let them get close!

Desperate for some kind, any kind of escape, Asriel reaches within himself, calling forth the first soul he could find. The cyan soul answers his call.

“Take me back!” he orders, mentally grabbing the soul with his will. The room flickers and time stutters and rewinds, until-

-the flower tears through every book in the library searching for even a single scrap of information on his condition. All the books in the capital’s library had been no help, and every report in Alphys’ lab had been filled with too much scientific jargon for him to make heads or tails of. From what he could gather, never before in monster history has a monster been brought back after dying. Dust, or no dust, soul or no soul, it was thought to be impossible. For all that he knew he was the first, last, and the only. A fluke. A miracle. A mistake.

He forces himself to be careful and patient, putting each book back on the shelf from where he took it instead of chucking it across the room in outrage when it proves to be useless to him, despite really really wanting to so some poor sucker got stuck with cleaning them up.

All of the monsters he had encountered since leaving New Home had not recognized him, and worse, he didn’t recognize them, which scared him more than he could handle.

Desperate and afraid he lashed out to the first and only monster that had approached him- a gangly skeleton- and had nearly paid the ultimate price when the brother of the skeleton retaliated back.

Those skeletons lived in Snowdin, and he’d be damned if the short one found out he trashed their public library.

He wants to yell when he’s gone through virtually every book in the library and learned nothing useful. Frustrated, he abandons his quest to undo this curse placed upon him for another day. In the meanwhile he humors himself with daydreams of what-could-have-beens and self-pitying wishes. He dwells a lot on the fantastical idea of rewinding time- a theory he just so happened to pick up from one of those useless library books he read. If only he could get his vines on a human soul…

The cyan soul fights against Asriel as soon as the memory ends, squirming free from his hold like a frightened bird and reclaiming its autonomy in the process.

“No!” the soulless god cries out, desperately reaching for it, but the soul is wary now and won’t be caught so easily again.

“Flowey,” A calm voice says and the martyr prince looks back to see the human steadily marching towards him.

“S-stay away from me!” Asriel roars, his terror barely covered by his rage. In a panic, the martyr prince twists his head around, looking for any place to flee and finding none. “I said stay back!” He warns, raining fire and stars and technicolored comets around the human, tripping them up once more.

Worry immediately paralyses him when they stumble, afraid he’s hurt them again, but after an agonizing minute, they shakily get to their feet and advance once more.

‘NO!’ the martyr prince thinks to himself, and searches for escape. Once again, he looks within himself and calls forth another soul. This time the orange soul answers his call.

“Take me back!” He demands, and once again time skips and stutters, until-

-his entire world was fire and pain ever mounting by the second. In a desperate attempt to end his own misery, he had returned to where it all began, where he had been unknowingly brought back against his will.

There were many unique ways one could have offed themselves down in Alphys’ true lab if they were willing to get creative, but he hadn’t much cared about presentation or the aftermath. All he wanted was something quick and hopefully painless. The various acids the Royal Scientist had access to seemed simple enough.

No sooner had he doused his soil in a dozen bottles of the liquid with names he couldn’t pronounce did he begin to regret his choice as the chemicals took their sweet time to soak to his roots. What if the poisons weren’t potent enough? What if it didn’t kill him and left him in a new kind of limbo of never-ending suffering?

He screeched in pure agony when the first drop of acid hit his roots, wanting desperately to withdraw into the earth, but knowing he couldn’t because he’d essentially dive face first into a torture of his own making. He continued to scream in pain for minutes on end as the deadly poison seeped up his stem, trying to tear his own roots out of the ground in a vain attempt to escape.

He didn’t want this. He didn’t want to die. What would happen to a being with no soul when it died? Where did its consciousness go, if anywhere at all? He was afraid to find out.

At one point he had stopped fighting against the pain, his xylem choked and starved of air from his chemical bath. Wilting over the lip of his pot, he half-heartedly resigned to his end, finally getting what he wanted as his vision began to fail and the world went black.

But then- just as the pain began to ebb, it started anew with a fresh wave of torture stronger than all the acid he had doused himself in, and he began to wonder if this was the afterlife- an eternal never-ending agony brought about by his own choice to die.

He begged to any god listening for mercy, please have mercy, and if they were not willing to be merciful, then to just destroy him for good once and for all so he wouldn’t have to hurt anymore, and then-

He realized he was shouting and his voice was working, and if his voice was working then maybe the rest of him could too, and the flower opened his eyes.

“Oh thank GOD I got to you in time,” the yellow lizard shutters with relief, placing down a needle and plunger labelled ‘DT EXTRACT’. “I-I w-was so af-fraid I lost you.”

“Why?” He croaks, unable to understand. Unable to comprehend. “Why did you bring me back?”

“Bec-cause e-everything’s going wrong!” Alphys cries, clawing at her own face as she trembles on the verge of tears. “I th-thought I h-had a cure! I thought I-I f-found a way to save them! B-but all the fallen monsters I injected w-with DT have m-melted together! I c-can’t return them t-to their f-families like this! I c-can’t let A-Asgore know about this! Y-you were stable. You’re the only one wh-who stayed stable! I c-couldn’t lose you too. I can’t af-fford another screw up!”

The royal scientist falls to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably into her claws.

He’s just about to demand he explain what she’s talking about when several melting creations lumber and lurch into the room. Mute with horror, he watches as they surround her in apparent concern, their bodies dripping and shifting as they try to hold her, and themselves, together.

When her episode passes and her hiccups have left her, Alphys finally wipes her eyes and looks up at the monsters surrounding her and apologizes to what she had done to them. She turns to the table to apologize to the flower too, but he is already long gone.

Sparking like a live wire, the orange soul rejects Asriel’s will, flying away as quick as it can from his control. The soulless god shrieks in a panic, only to notice the human has marched closer still. Shouting in terror, Asriel doesn’t even try to attack this time. Desperately he scrambles back to put distance between them, reaches inside himself one again, and calls out.

The blue soul answers his call, and he latches onto it like a lifeline.

“Take me back!”

The blue soul complies, and time begins to backtrack, until-

-he drops the skull of his long-dead friend and recoils screaming.

At first he thinks his shriek is echoing off the cavern walls, reverberating and bouncing back to him, but the sound is deeper than his, older, more mature, and his looks up just in time to dodge a jet of fire aimed at his head.

“YOU VILE CRETIN!” the former queen rages, summoning more fire to throw his way. “YOU WRETCHED CURR! Unearthing a child’s grave?! Have you no humanity!?”

He tried to talk to her, to explain that it was him, her son, and that he was back! But either she was deafened by her own fury or chose to ignore him, and his pleas went unheard.

“Mom! Please stop! It’s me! It’s Asr-!”

“GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!” Toriel screamed, setting the entire flowerbed alight, and forcing him to retreat underground.

Only once he was deep in the safety of the soil, did the flower let himself cry. Tears of shock, tears of panic, tears of confusion all watered his roots, perpetuating the cycle. How long he stayed there, he could not even begin to guess, knowing only that he wept until he was eventually crying for the sake of crying and not much else.

It was sometime around this moment where he began to notice that the feelings inside him were not as… intense as he expected. Surely he had feared for his life, but the sorrow from his own mother not recognizing him was not as sharp as he thought they would be. He… he should be upset that she had attacked him.

But then why… why was there this hollow apathy inside him instead? It would be ludicrous to accept and move on from a traumatic event like this. Deeply unsettled (and slightly relieved he could still feel unsettled) the flower tunnels away.

Spitting like a cobra, the blue soul recoils from Asriel’s weakening grip, and slips out of his reach.

Again Asriel screeches in dismay. Th-these treacherous human souls! Was it possible they recognized one of their own before him? Were they now defying him too? Teasing him with glimpses of his past before yanking him back? H-he would show them! He w-would remind them who was in control! But before he can beat them into submission, Asriel makes the grave mistake of looking up, only to see the human has shrunk the space between them. In a blind panic he calls out to the souls still trapped within him.

The purple soul answers his call, and again he is taken back to the past, where-

-he searches the house from top to bottom, he searches all of New Home inside and out, working his way down every street, around every building, in every alley and house, but his mother is not there. His father is not there. Chara is not there.

The last place he can look is the last place he can go in the Underground before the barrier prevents him from going any further.

Struggling to maintain control over his new body, the flower inches his way to the throne room.

The sight of what he sees takes his breath away. Golden flowers that had not been there before now carpet the floor from wall to wall. But that’s not what shocks him most. Not the sight of the flowers, or the realization that one of the thrones is missing.

It’s the sight of a single monster untouched by time that tends the garden, perfectly at peace when his entire family is missing.

“D-dad?” The flower’s voice cracks with uncertainty. “Dad… Dad! Help me! Please!”

The immortal king goes rigid at the title, and turns like a sleepwalker to face him. Recognition sparks in his eyes.

“Asriel?” he says the name delicately, as if doing so could shatter the illusion. But when the flower does not vanish like mist, Asgore cries out in awe and sorrow. The king of all monsters had always been imposing, but at a tenth of his original size, the flower found him even more so, and the ground thundered as he sprinted to the flower’s side.

“Asriel! You’re alive! But… but is it really you? How can this be? What happened to you?”

The questions, his closeness, the inexplicable change of everything around him is all too much for the flower to bear, and screwing his eyes shut, he violently shakes his head in an attempt to stave off tears.

“Dad I looked everywhere for Mom and Chara, but I can’t find them, and-”

With unbelievable tenderness, the king cradles the flower’s face in his paws.

“Shh, my son. Shh. A lot has changed since you were last here. It will be alright.”

“But everything’s different, and nothing makes sense anymore, and-!”

From around the king’s broad shoulders, an out of place glow catches his attention. Craning his stem, the flower peers around the lonely monarch and discovers six containers of human souls. The flower’s eyes narrow.

“Dad… where did you get those?” He whispers, fighting back the betrayal and accusation in his inflection.

“It has been a long time since you have been here last, my child,” Asgore sighs with regret. “But tell me, what happened to you? I… your mother and I never learned of your exact fate and… we never got to say goodbye.”

“I… I died,” the flower recollects, dredging up the memory of that fateful day, shouts of anger and fear ringing in his ears. “The humans… attacked me with everything they had. Bullets, blades, fire… I th-think they thought I-…. They thought I k-killed-“

Asgore shushes and strokes the flower’s petals to distract him from the memory.

“I didn’t fight back, I swear I didn’t. I could hurt someone who might be innocent!”

“There, there,” the king sighs, mourning for the martyr prince anew.

“B-but I should have! I-If I had, I-I could have freed everyone! I wouldn’t have died! I should have just stuck to the plan!”

“Plan? What plan?”

“Chara’s plan,” the flower sniffs, not noticing the new wariness in the king’s posture. “Th-they poisoned themselves so they would die and I could take their soul to cross the barrier-”

Abruptly the king of all monsters rises to his feet. The soulless flower cranes his head back to meet his father’s face, but there is only denial in the monarch’s eyes.

“No… No, I do not believe it,” Asgore says, shaking his head in disbelief. In rising crescendo, the king’s voice bellows as loud as a lion as he paces the room. “I refuse to believe it! I loved that child like my own! I gave them everything! They would… they would never take their own life like that!”

“D… dad?” the flower dares to venture. The old king turns to him as if seeing him there for the first time.

“Flower,” The king says low and threatening. “I do not know how you learned of my children’s names, but to impersonate them and mock a father so? I suggest you leave.”

“B-but! But Dad!”

“Do not call me that, imposter!” The king roars, and summons his trident. “Leave this place and never return before I cull you for your lies!”

The soulless flower is barely quick enough to escape before fire rains down, igniting half the vegetation in the room.

Too scared to scream, too scared to cry, he runs and runs from the scorching heat that surrounds him, and never looks back.

The purple soul recoils almost as soon as Asriel touches it, and he lets it go, his resolve crumbling more and more with each vision he’s forced to endure. Wailing in misery, the martyr prince yells in a desperate attempt to relieve the unbearable pain in his chest. Too distraught to speak, he snares the next soul he can find.

The green soul comes forth, and without even having to speak, time unravels until-

-he was Nothing. For how long he was Nothing, he could not say, for he lacked the ability to think and comprehend and react to the world surrounding him. It could have been minutes. It could have been decades. He didn’t even know he was a he at this point. But then, the strangest thing happened- he took his first breath, and went from Nothing to Breathing.

Slowly, as if awakening from slumber, each inhale of air chased away the grogginess that clouded his mind, and he opened his eyes for the first time. Now he was Seeing. Seeing and Breathing, but still not much else, but as time passed, his world came into focus and it struck him like lightening.

’Wait a minute, I can see,’ he thought, and then startled; ‘Wait a minute, I can THINK.’ and the revelation smacked him like a snowball that in turn started an avalanche as he went from Seeing and Breathing to Alive and, most importantly, Aware.

“Wait a minute, I thought I died! I thought-!”

With a gasp of existential panic, he straightened up and twisted around to look at himself with his very-much living, very-much seeing eyes. He froze in horror. In a span of a few seconds the flower had become many things; he was Alive, he was Aware, and now he was Remembering.

But now, cursed with understanding it became all too clear to him, one final truth when he looked down at a green stem and golden petals that framed his field of vision; the one thing he wasn’t…

… was Asriel.

The green soul leaps away like a startled deer as the soulless god shutters and chokes, gasping for breath. He doesn’t even try to look for the human approaching him this time. He knows they’re there. He knows they’re closer to him, still advancing, still calling out to him, but he can’t face them. He won’t.

Once more. One last human soul, one more try. With all his remaining will, he reaches out.

The yellow soul responds.

“Take me back,” he begs, and time flickers, until-

-he stumbles back through the barrier on legs as heavy as lead, the ichor of his kind trickling from the many puncture wounds and bullet holes inflicted across his limbs and back, his clothes coated in sticky flower seeds. A lifeless body is tucked to his chest, protected, untouched from any damage thrown his way.

“Chara, are you there?” Asriel pants, stumbling down the hall at a sluggish pace. “We’re back home. We’re… we’re safe.”

Whatever reply he was expecting did not come and his soul ached with remorse. His best friend’s voice had gone more than just silent- it felt like their very presence had vanished from his mind as they struggled up the mountain. After fighting so hard to keep him together, after fighting so hard against him to retaliate, it seemed the human soul had spent all its power and evaporated into thin air. That thing, that essence of their soul that had made Chara “Chara” had burnt itself out.

“Chara,” the dying prince said to the empty air, feeling very small and very alone. “I-if somehow you can still hear me, I want you to know I am so, so sorry.”

Asriel staggers into the garden. Numbed by his own overwhelming pain, at first he assumes that he has tripped when he suddenly collapses to the floor. The corpse in his possession tumbles out of his reach, and in a panic, he tries to leap to his feet, only to trip and fall again.

He whips his head around, expecting to find a vine or a root tangled on his foot, and winces in horror to see that his right leg has completely disintegrated.

“No… No!” He wails as the realization hits him without mercy. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna-! I don’t want to-!” Unable to say the word as if fearing it would speed up his inevitable fate, Asriel turns back to the body of his friend, crawling on hands and knee as they quickly deteriorate right from under him.

“M-mommy… Daddy! Someone! Anyone! Please help me!” He cries as more and more of him crumbles away like a sandcastle to an incoming tide.

But nobody came.

“NO!” The soulless god hollers as the yellow soul flees, abandoning him the moment the vision ends, and denying him its power, just like all the others had, locking him out from the past. “No! NO! NO!”

Falling to his knees, his fists pound the earth so hard that it threatens to crack and the human at his peripheries staggers and stumbles.

Even with the equivalent power of seven human souls… even with the unfathomable magic of every monster in the Underground, he still couldn’t go back far enough to undo his mistake. He. Still. Failed.

The soulless god howls to drown out his thoughts- to drown out the world, to drown out his despair. But it isn’t enough. Tears run rivers through the fur down his cheeks, burning his eyes and skin in shame. A voice- a human voice- calls to him, and he looks up with effort, and through his blurred vision he sees them, their pale skin, rosy cheeks, straight russet hair and cold, calculating scarlet eyes, judging him, summing him up for all he’s worth and not finding much redeemable in there. They don’t speak. They don’t need to. He can read their every thought in their eyes alone.

Without him even noticing, his façade begins to strip away as the souls take back their agency. The martyr prince begins to shrink, until he finds himself looking up and cowering before the human he had dwarfed only moments ago.

“Chara,” he whimpers, jaw working but unable to make words. “I… I-“

He wants to tell them that he is trying. That he is doing everything he can to fix his mistake, that he never doubted them and is still so, so sorry.

“Chara, I… I…” like a broken record, he tries over and over to speak, but his throat closes up and they just stare at him like he’s let them down again-

Finally, when he finds his voice, it cracks; “Chara… p-please don’t be mad…”

The human stops before him. A second that last a century passes- and then they all but collapse on top of him in a messy, full-body hug, shattering his hallucination.

“Oh Flowey…” They moan, embracing him with all the strength they can muster. “You were really Asriel all this time? All these years? Why didn't you ever tell me?”

It takes him several heartbeats to register that they’re hugging him, and crying on him- for him- despite what he’s just put them through.

He doesn’t understand. They shouldn’t be trying to comfort him. Not after all the lies he told them. Not after he used them. Not when he just tried to kill them! He… He can’t. He can’t stand it, but he doesn’t dare push them away either, and finally he caves in and hugs them back as tight as he can, bawling his pain until he weeps himself to exhaustion.

“I’m… so sorry,” Asriel says with a voice hoarse from crying. “I just… I just wanted to see my friend again. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I know… I know,” the human gasps between breaths. They rub his back and let him continue to vent. “It’s okay. I understand.”

“You… y-you do?” Asriel sniffs.

“Yeah. you wanted something back so bad, you didn’t care what you had to do to get it, right?” The human correctly guesses. “You can say I was the same. For the past week I wanted so desperately to go home. Then, after what happened in Alphys’ lab, I wanted my ignorance back, but since I knew that was impossible, I decided I didn’t want to exist at all. And for a moment I was almost willing to do anything to make that happen.” They pull away from him at last and sigh with remorse. “Knowing you messed up and can’t fix it hurts.”

Still confined within him, six human souls buzz with interest and send up a flare to the martyr prince. Asriel blinks in surprise wen the idea presents itself. Wringing his hands, he turns to the human before him.

“I… I think I can help you…” He says tentatively. “The six human souls in me... They m-must agree with you, or at the very least they want to be on your side, because they wouldn't allow me to go back far enough to undo my mistake. But... but I think they may let me go back far enough and undo yours, i-if you want it. I could make it so you never found the tapes. I could stop you from learning the truth.”

The human stares at him for a long minute, their expression unreadable as they digest his proposition. After a moment of silence they close their eyes and shake their head.

“Nah… I’d just find out again in a different way.” They decide. “I know the truth now, and even though I don’t like it... I accept it. Besides, I don’t think that kind of power, the ability to undo time like that, should be used by anyone. Even if it’s in the name of something good. It’s not fair to manipulate people’s lives or memories like that. And it can be abused so easily…”

“I guess you’re right,” Asriel absently agrees, and the souls within him sigh and dim at the human's choice. “Life’s gotta be messy and tragic and unfair for a reason, right? If not, we wouldn’t appreciate it as much, would we?”

“Maybe?” The human shrugs. “I don’t know. But I do know it's not healthy to obsess with mistakes you made in the past. Look where it got me.”

"Heh heh, I guess that's true. So… what now?” Asriel sniffs, wiping his eyes with one damp sleeve. “Even with the power of seven human souls, I still can’t go back in time to undo my mistake, and you don’t want me to undo yours, but… I also can’t face Mom and Dad again. Not after all I’ve put them through. Not after what I put everyone through. In the end, was everything I did pointless? Was this really all for nothing?”

Beside him, the human gives a small gasp. Their hand reaches out and gently squeezes his. “What did you say? You have the power of seven human souls in you right now?”

“Yeah. Well, more or less. Every monster soul together adds up to one human soul, plus the six Dad had. That’s roughly… the power… of seven...” Slowly, Asriel’s eyes begin to widen as his train of thought lines up with theirs. Beside him, the human bounces up down excitedly. “Asriel, you could-!”

“-Break the barrier!” The monster child finishes, voice awestruck and hopeful. “Y-you’re right! Maybe I can still make things right!”

Asriel gets to his feet, woozy from all his exertion, but still manages to stand strong with the countless number of souls in him now at his back. And this time when he closes his eyes and looks within himself, ten thousand souls resonate in tandem. He calls to them- not in demand, but in request, and this time every soul, human and monster, come eagerly to his aid.

In his ears, the pulse of the barrier syncs up with the pulse of his heart, and the hearts of every creature in the Underground, beating as one.

He lets instinct guide him, allows the magic to flow and form how it wants instead of trying to control it. Happily he permits himself to become a vessel for the incalculable swell of power within him to channel into one unifying force with a single objective.

There was no need for words or signals. Every thought, every hope, every dream in that instant was the same, and in one blinding flash, Asriel- everyone- unleashes their power onto the barrier. The sound of a million glass windows shattering in the world’s worst hurricane follows suit, echoing down the chamber and back again. And when the air settled, the thrumming was gone and the tunnel was clear.

The barrier was broken.

Exhaling, Asriel opens his eyes, a newfound sense of peace within him stronger than he had ever felt before. He turns to the human, grinning with pride.

“Thank you, Chara,” he smiles, before wincing at the faux pas. “Oh, that might get confusing. Um, I guess I shouldn’t keep calling you 'Chara' now, since you know the truth.” He steals a glance of them out of the corner of his eye, unable to work up the nerve to look them head on. “Um, speaking of that… do you… remember? Your true name, that is?”

The human hums, their eyes sliding shut and tipping their head back towards the nonexistent sky. They exhale, audibly long and slow as they think. “Yeah… you know what? I think I do. My real name is…”

_____________________________________________________________

“Frisk,” He tests their name on his tongue like an exotic fruit, grinning at its pleasant feel on his lips. “That’s a nice name.” His smiles, but it falters a bit in shame. “Frisk, I’m sorry… for trying to make you a replacement for my Chara. You two really are nothing alike.”

“What were they like?” Frisk asks.

“Huh?”

“The original Chara. They were human too, right? What were they like?”

Asriel closes his eyes and sighs, reminiscing.

“They were the smartest, funniest, coolest person I ever met. Or at least that’s what I thought at the time. I wanted so badly to be like them when I grew up. They always came up with these crazy ideas and they had a way of making you think anything was possible, which is why I guess I looked up to them so much. But…. In retrospect, they could also be kind of mean. Sometimes they made me feel like… like I wasn’t good enough. Which made me try to impress them even harder, but if only I knew then what I know now, that I shouldn't have constantly been trying to please them, we could have been spared a lot of grief.”

Before Frisk can pry, he changes the subject. Talking about Chara… it felt good to remember them, but also hurt at the same time, and the bittersweet feelings attached to the memories were too complicated for him to comprehend in the moment. He decides he’d reflect on it later, but right now there were amends to make.

“Frisk, I’m also sorry for lying to you. All this time you genuinely wanted to be my friend, and I just used you. Some friend I was.”

“It’s okay. You’re not the only one who lied to me. But… I forgave everyone. I can forgive you too.”

Asriel stares at them, baffled.

“How… how do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Forgive so easily. For the longest time I couldn’t. I couldn’t forgive Alphys for bringing me back, or Dad for rejecting me, or Mom for turning on me. I couldn’t forgive myself for letting myself and Chara die. I guess I could make an excuse and say I forgot how to forgive, but it doesn’t work like that that, does it? You make it look so easy.”

Frisk laughs at that, so deep and hard that tears spring in their eyes. It’s a bitter, exhausted laugh and it makes their voice quiver with tears.

“Easy? Asriel, forgiveness isn’t easy! It's a choice, and most times it’s a really, really hard one! But… sometimes you have to choose to forgive even when you don’t want to. Even when you don’t think you can. I didn’t want to forgive Mom for forbidding me to leave the Ruins, I almost didn’t forgive Papyrus for tricking me, or Alphys for using me, or Undyne and Sans for lying to me, but… I did because I guess, deep down, I knew that they love me. Every single one. Even if I don’t deserve it…”

“Don’t say that. Of course you deserve it,” Asriel gently scolds them. Now it's his turn to be the one to offer solace. He smiles warmly, placing a hand over his chest. “It’s weird, but most of these monsters knew you for less than a day. Heck, less than a few minutes, but I can feel all their love for you in every soul in me, and it’s so strong and real. I bet it could break a hundred more barriers alone.”

Their face still looks doubtful, but they smile appreciatively regardless and give him a hug. There was a pause of silence before Asriel went on.

"Well... I guess I'd better be going now..."

“What do you mean?” Frisk says neutrally, unsure yet if this was cause for alarm.

Asriel sighs and takes a few aimless paces away, mostly to avoid having to meet Frisk’s eyes, but ultimately he turns back around. He can’t run from this truth.

“The barrier is broken now,” he explains. “And monsters can finally go free! It’s what they’ve been waiting for for eons! And… Well, I can’t keep their souls inside me forever, can I? If I did that, they’d just be trapped in another prison.”

“Then let them go,” Frisk shrugs, not seeing the problem. “You had the power to take them, so you can return them, right?”

“Yeah, but once I do, I have this… instinctual feeling I won’t be able to maintain this form,” Asriel clarifies, gesturing to himself. “I’m just borrowing their magic, and whatever few memories they still have of me. Once I return them to their previous state, I’m afraid I’ll revert back into a flower.”

“Oh...”

“And once I turn back into a flower, I’ll be soulless and I’ll lose my compassion again, and I won’t be me anymore, if I’m really even me now, and not just a projection of someone who died long ago,” he rambles. “I… I’m really scared I’ll go back to being unsympathetic and manipulative again.”

“So… will you set them free, even if it means giving up your ability to feel?”

“Of course. I just… When all the monsters are restored, I don’t want them to remember what I did to them as Flowey. I don’t want their last memories of me to be of me capturing them, even if they don’t know it was really me.”

“Asriel,” Frisk says, with playful warning. “We just had a serious discussion about why obsessing with the past isn’t a good coping mechanism. I hope you’re not thinking about trying to rewind time so nobody remembers this.”

Asriel gives a little chuckle and turns away from them. “What, me? Noooo,” he says innocently and raises his arms one final time to let the souls within him go free. Slowly, like the rising sun, the silver shine of hundreds of monster souls began to drift out of his body at an unhurried pace. First there were only handful, but then they slowly trickled out by the dozens, each emitting a soft shine that gradually begin to turn the entire void into a bright blinding white as each soul found its way home.

Frisk swore they caught a smirk on Asriel’s face right before the mass of souls shot free all at once, and on the edge of their hearing, they heard the martyr prince saying; “Well… maybe just a little…” before they were both enveloped in a blinding ethereal light.

“Wait, Asriel,” Frisk starts to say, but the words are stolen right out of their throat as a great intangible rush sucks the air right from their lungs, leaving them inexplicably exhausted with a strange burning in their chest.

Frisk tries to reach out, to hang on to him, to something, to anything, but oddly their body becomes as heavy as lead and as slow as molasses. A sudden dizziness washes over them. What was happening? Was Asriel leeching strength from their soul? Was it their head spinning, or the world turning upside down? Frisk could no longer tell.

With the last of their strength, lost in the bright nothingness, they try in vain to call out... only to fall into unconsciousness.

#Undertale #Fan Fiction #You Monster #My Writing #Asriel #Frisk

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ovverwwhelmed-too · 5 years

Text

So, that Homestuck Epilogue huh?

aka I ramble on about the new update to my audience of precisely one. Spoilers lurk in the paragraphs below, obviously.

WHAT I THOUGHT OF IT

I have some mixed feelings!! It’s been a while since the last time I read through Homestuck, so maybe it’s because I’ve fallen a little out of familiarity with the writing style, but it felt a little different from usual? Although I did also hear that it was written by a host of people as opposed to mainly Hussie.

I did really enjoy the introduction to the epilogue being structured like an ao3 fanfiction, though! It was a very nice and concise way of saying “these characters have been living outside of canon for a while now and their experiences on World C are not regarded as canon.” It’s a very recognisable format and shows that the format of the story continues to be just as important to Homestuck’s narrative as the narrative itself.

I was also a little alarmed seeing the tags on the front page of the epilogue. I’m of the understanding that these are only to cover every single controversial topic that may be brought up, even if it’s only a single word absentmindedly brought up in a conversation, but I’m still a little bit on-guard about some of the things I saw. I really do hope that some of those topics aren’t dwelt on for too long. I did, however, see a tag for polyamory. As someone with a personal affinity for polyamorous relationships, I’m excited to see some representation, even if it is only for a fleeting moment in the afterthoughts of an online comic.

Anyway, I’m going to return back to that point about Hussie not doing the writing for the epilogue.

WHY DO I THINK THAT HUSSIE ISN’T CREATING AS MUCH OF CONTENT FOR HOMESTUCK AS HE ONCE DID?

Do I think that he’s working on something big for the epilogue? Is there something even bigger coming? Another animation? Maybe SBURB; the actual real-life game?

Personally, no. I don’t think it’s too implausible that Hussie just burned himself out over the course of his comic and is letting some other people take on the brunt of the writing and content creation. I do think of course that he’s in charge of directing the plot, it IS still his story after all, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more people contributing to the canon of Homestuck in the future aside from the big man himself.

WHERE DO I THINK THE STORY IS GOING TO GO?

The important question that John had to ask himself at the end of the latest chapter; candy, or meat? What do I think he’s going to choose? Considering the fact that, 1. The choice seems to be a very difficult one for him to make (despite the fact that this isn’t really one he NEEDS to make, since he could just have the best of both worlds and have a bit of both) and 2. We see that the cover for the epilogue is the Homestuck symbol split cleanly between black and white, ying and yang, essential and inessential, I believe that he is going to choose to eat both. This makes the other big choice he must make interesting as well. As an Heir of Breath, somebody who embodies freedom and choice, I don’t think I can see him really actually confining himself to only one strict option. I think he’s going to do what he needs to do (Defeat Caliborn / Lord English) and have fun along the way. He’s going to do things that aren’t entirely essential to the plot, just because he wants to. However, this may just be me projecting my own hopes and desires onto the story. There are many characters I would have loved to see be better developed and to properly complete their character arcs, characters I’m sure many others want to see more of as well, and a retcon would be a great way to do this. Maybe we will get to see more of these less-developed characters, since many of them had their names listed in the character list. But I don’t want to get too optimistic over the possibility. I suspect we’ll see some development for the main cast of characters, and not much for anybody else.

INSIDE CANON, OUTSIDE CANON, NON-CANON

To be honest, I kind of adored Rose’s descriptions of the different kinds of canons, and the clean-cut categories she sorted each out into. The definitions felt a bit stiff but made sense. I do personally think that the significance of one other type of canon should not be understated though, this type being fanon. I suppose it does fit more or less under the umbrella term of “non-canon,” but in a story as fandom driven as Homestuck, sometimes even this form of non-canon can carry some truth. There are some things that are regarded broadly within the fandom to be “true,” not because of it being confirmed by the creators of the series, but due to the overwhelming popularity of the facts that the fans have come up with. Things like LGBT+ characters, interpretations of the aspects, things like these. Leave the fandom to its own devices for long enough, and eventually, they will begin making their own stories, often more collaboratively than they realise. And ultimately, even these stories and collective headcanons stick with everybody involved. Though they may not be true in the official sense, they’re true in that they very heavily influence the way we view and consume the original media and the way we view each of the characters as a whole. Sometimes fanon can be just as important and influential as canon, and like I mentioned before, in a story that’s as heavily influenced by the fans’ wills and interpretations as Homestuck, sometimes what’s fanon can be true in the canon world just by virtue of its popularity.

I think it’s also worth noting that the truth of a canon fact is very dependent on the willingness of the fandom to take it as such. If the author ends up saying some batshit crazy stuff and the fandom as a whole ends up denying it, that fact can be regarded as untrue; one content creators word up against the volumes of people who make a story what it is.

So basically, Rose’s descriptions of various types of canons were basically true but failed to account for the importance of the fans. This is just my opinion though. Maybe we’ll see that description expanded upon in the future, or maybe I’ve gone batshit crazy myself at this point.

That’s all I have to say for the epilogue right now. I’m very eager to see the direction that it takes in the next chapter or however many chapters we may next get. See you all at the next update!

#homestuck #epilogue #413 #speculation #anaspec #homestuck epilogue #long post #john egbert #rose lalonde #okay to rb

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veliseraptor · 5 years

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2018 Fanfiction Round-Up

Total Year-Long Wordcount: According to my spreadsheet, it’s 523,355 words, which does also include some essay writing and original fiction but is by and large fic.

This year I wrote and posted: Roughly, 119 fics? This is not, probably, a correct calculation, as it probably includes multiple chapters of Life in Reverse/Halfway House as separate fics, and the entirety of like the restless sea (not all of which I wrote this year), but I don’t feel like doing more math. It’s almost 12 pages on Tumblr.

Overall Thoughts

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted? A little less than last year, but on the other hand...idk, I don’t tend to think about my year in terms of how much fic I’m writing while I’m in the middle of it. Honestly if I did I’d probably be a happier person who was less often like “OH NO I’M NOT WRITING ENOUGH.” That’s what’s nice about this meme - it really provides me with perspective.

So, like, technically I wrote less than I did last year, and that is not surprising considering the shape my life took this year (job meltdown, new job, three weeks of bedbug crisis), but...I still wrote a lot, especially with all of that considered, and wrote a lot better, I think.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? WELL I DIDN’T SEE MYSELF COMING BACK TO DOCTRINE OF LABYRINTHS IN FORCE BUT HERE I AM WITH FIVE NEW WIPS

What’s your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest? Man, I don’t know. There are a number of things that I’m pleased that I did for different reasons? Like, Will to Live feels like an accomplishment. But do I count finishing Life in Reverse for this year? Or the fact that I think Steve Rogers’ Halfway House for Notorious Supervillains remains one of the better written things I’m putting out (also possibly the best title)?

Maybe I’ll settle with it’s the season of possible miracle cures because that fic has been six years in the making and I finally got Steve and Loki married and it was the sappiest thing ever and I stand by it. Also I made myself emotional while I was writing it, which is usually a good sign.

OH NO ACTUALLY how could I forget? I think it’s the enemy of my enemy. I’ve missed writing Clint and Loki, and that fic was so fun to write, and now I want a whole AU of it. I’m like. Deep into a second chapter and have no idea where it’s going but I’m going with it.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I sure did write a lot of second person. I feel like that doesn’t count as a risk per se, though, because every case where I did it...I did it because it felt like the story needed to be in that point of view? I mean, I wrestled with off to the races trying to write it in third person limited like usual and it just...really wanted to be in second person. So basically - does it count as a risk if it wasn’t something I chose to do?

Otherwise...I feel like I’m not a very adventurous writer most of the time. It’s one of the things I don’t love about myself as a writer.

From my past year of writing, what was….

My most popular story of this year: Cutting out Life in Reverse and Halfway House, as fics that are ongoing and skew the scale significantly (especially the former): based on hits it was escalated almost to an art. Based on kudos, Reckless Self-Endangerment, and based on bookmarks the same. That...actually really surprises me.

Most fun story to write: Probably Will to Live. That fic...took me totally off guard and just - spilled out of me. It was a joy to write from basically start to finish, and other than a plot hole hiccup that was resolved with some invaluable beta help, really just...came together almost on its own. And it was, truly, so many things mashed together that I’m into. I haven’t ever written that much Thor POV, I don’t think, and that really caught me by surprise as far as how much I enjoyed it, too.

Story with the single sexiest moment: I feel like...hm. I’m not sure. I guess it depends on whether we’re going with “conventionally sexy” or “shit I shouldn’t be into this sexy” because those are two different answers. But I do feel like the sex in An Ever Expanding Circle is definitely up there.

Most “Holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” story: I’m still pretty sure nothing I do will ever live up to the bar set by The Vivisection Mambo, but...escalated almost to an art probably is up there. I mean, it was definitely the story where I was most “holy shit what am I doing” while I was writing it. Though making love with his ego was also pretty damn dark and also...had a much more downer ending than I was originally planning.

Actually, though, I feel like the worst is probably One Wrong Turn because of the set up (Remember This Cold AU) and where I went with it as far as breaking everyone involved (except, as usual, the Grandmaster).

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: uhhhhh. I always have a hard time with this question, because I don’t really know what it means? My perceptions of characters tend to shape how I write a fic, not so much the other way around. I guess maybe - oh, no, I’ve got it. It’s only one part in one story, but writing Shuri in Breathing Room gave me a better understanding of her character, I think, than I have before. Which is mostly down to @portraitoftheoddity, so I don’t know if I can actually take credit for that.

Hardest story to write: God. So many stories are hard to write in so many ways. always ready for a war again was definitely a challenge, as writing stories from a different character POV usually are. I struggled a bizarre and moderately hilarious amount with how fluffy the wedding fic ended up getting; I thought I might be going too far. (That’s such a me thought to have.)

Oh - writing like 500 words of Mildmay’s POV was absolutely one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of my writing career. And I’m going to keep doing it. Whoops.

Biggest Disappointment: Myself, for the fact that despite having 41 pages written, I’ve only managed to successfully post two chapters of Tear My Castle Down.

Biggest Surprise: Other than stumbling and falling face first back into writing for Doctrine of Labyrinths as a fandom? Possibly writing Crimson Peak fanfiction. I didn’t see that happening. Otherwise...the number of new kinks I wrote for reason of Frostmaster definitely caught me off guard.

Most Unintentionally Telling Story: I feel like everything I wrote for Loki/Grandmaster this year could be called “unintentionally telling.” It’s like...if you’ve been following me for the last few years, this might not have been something you were aware of, but hoo boy has it been there.

Favorite Opening Line(s):

Loki had a smile like an air raid siren: attention grabbing and screaming danger. (untitled)

His first memory was a silver mask with rectangles for eyes and mouth, looking down at him. “Attempt four-hundred and thirty-two,” it said, “success.” (how you gaze upon my bones)

When it was over, when all was said and done, the dust settled, the universe rebuilt, Steve walked away. (blackbird singing in the dead of night)

Away from Allerdale Hall, Lucille felt as though she’d disappear. (we too (three) could be glorious)

You were born with two names. (always ready for a war again)

Favorite Line(s) from Anywhere:

1. Loki slipped in and out of consciousness, clinging to life. Held back from the edge like he was a ship at anchor, wood groaning at the pull of the rope. He could almost see death, a reef where the waves broke, that he could break himself on. (your blood like ice)

2. The Void was not empty, as everyone had thought. The Void was full of monsters. One of them found Loki, and plucked his body out of space, and forced him back to life. He mended Loki’s fragmented consciousness with all the gentleness of a carpenter hammering together pieces of wood, and when he was a rough approximation of whole the being who had found him told him who he was, and what he wanted. (the years after the fall)

3. He pressed the thumb of his right hand into the palm of his left. The gesture felt familiar, and yet when he actually did it, strange. Someone else’s hands. Someone else’s lungs. (down to the bone)

4. Loki’s stomach sank. He recognized the feeling. It was the one that meant he was about to do something stupid because of Thor. He hadn’t felt it in a while, and he didn’t appreciate its return. (Captive Audience)

5. Your people bleed names. Names torn away by force, broken lineage, and even when you’re free the names you get aren’t really yours. I am N’Jadaka, son of N’Jobu, you said, and thought you were taking your birthright, but it wasn’t yours. You’re too much Erik Stevens, too much Killmonger, too much American. You don’t belong here. (always ready for a war again)

6. The Grandmaster did not just make his point (I own you, everything you are is mine to do with as I please). He hammered it home, wrote it in Loki’s flesh, crucified him with it. He pulled Loki apart, cooed over him and promised to put him back together only to break him down further into smaller and smaller pieces, and it occurred to Loki that up until now the Grandmaster had been merciful. (it’s a mean world that I’ve known)

7. As it was, even with the windows open he was still trapped within the confines of his skull - a far deadlier snare than even the cruelest jailor could devise. (Stitching)

8. “Getting yourself killed doesn’t prove anything,” Thor said, finally. Loki snorted.

“Wouldn’t it, though?” He said, eyebrows raised. “Everyone loves a good self-sacrifice. I wrote a whole play about it.”

Thor’s expression spasmed again. Still not amused. “I would rather have a living brother than a dead hero.” (Reckless Self-Endangerment)

9. In the winter, she thought distantly, they should go to the Alps. There, the snow would come down clean. (we too (three) could be glorious)

10. “I wonder,” he said, “if hounds hunt wolves with such alacrity, for envy of their freedom.” (Will to Live)

11. Loki's nostrils flared. "You say we," he said, "but I am not a participant in this. And you still do not understand. There is no making this better. This is what it is. My pain is part of its design, its purpose. And even if it were not, even if you somehow could prevent the binding from hurting me at all - it would still be a binding. You still own me. Coat that in honey as you will, but that will never be anything but wormwood." (Tear My Castle Down)

12. Thor. Even thinking the name was like a wound, so he held it there, letting it dig in. Could he, he would open his chest and carve Thor’s name on every one of his ribs. (half a league onward)

Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:

The scene from making love with his ego where the Grandmaster loses his temper with Loki and flexes those cosmic powers.

The Steve/Loki wedding from it’s the season of possible miracle cures.

Thor and Loki cuddling in we don’t know where tomorrow ends or drown my woes in a lake of fire.

Any part of the Steve/Loki/Thor smut from An Ever Expanding Circle.

The scene from I am frail, be you forgiven with Loki holding Thor’s hands, one on his heart and one on his neck.

Fic-writing goals for 2019:

Well, last year I said my goal for 2018 was finishing Life in Reverse so I’d be like “goal for 2019: finishing Halfway House!” but that is just plain not realistic. So, uh, on the more realistic front:

write and finish the next Remember This Cold plot-fic

be less scared of self indulgence

write less fic and more original fiction

get another essay published on Tor.com

try to chill out and remember that if you take breaks it doesn’t mean you’re worthless

#2018 year in review #sometimes i write things #fanfiction round up

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oosteven-universe · 3 years

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Infinite Frontier #5

Infinite Frontier #5 DC Comic 2021 Written by Joshua Williamson Pencilled by Paul Pelletier, Jesús Merino & Tom Derenick Inked by Norm Rapmund, Raul Fernandez & Tom Derenick Coloured by Hi-Fi Lettered by Tom Napolitano Roy Harper finds himself forced to do things on his own. He’s been through a lot since he was Green Arrow’s sidekick, and usually, the only person he can count on is himself. Hence, he’s hiding the fact that he’s back from the dead from his old friends. He comes across Jade, who has also been stranded by herself-can he help her while letting her help him? Because neither of them can handle Darkseid all by their lonesome. Meanwhile, Barry Allen sends out a call: it’s time for all the heroes exploring the Infinite Frontier to come to the Omega Planet! As much as I hate to say it, it is nice to see The Psycho Pirate playing a large role in this story. After all he did go crazy as one of the few beings who remembered the original crisis from before and after so that he’s instrumental in this story as well. I have to say that it’s also really nice to see Lady Quark again who has gotten lost in the shuffle for so many years among those that the Psycho Pirate appeals to when it comes to the worlds being coerced into helping him. I will say I love this new and improved costume of his as well. I am a huge fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceedingly well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter. Much of this can be summed up when Mr. Bones sees Chase and he’s in full Infinity Inc. costume. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story we are caught up in the whirlwind of it all. How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. These layers really contain all the great moments, Bones in that costume for instance, and the bulk of the characterisation with the plot twists which all add this delicious depth, dimension and complexity to the story. The way everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved exceedingly well. The interiors here are seriously fabulous. So with all the heroes that are now present it’s quite the assemblage of power. They are going to need it too but I’m getting sidetracked. The linework is clean, crisp and strong and how the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level & quality of detail within the work that we see is extraordinary. How we see backgrounds being utilised to enhance and expand the moments as well as how they work within the composition of the panels bringing out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is marvellous to see. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling, or sets of eyes more accurately. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a great understanding of how colour works. That we see this confined to the six issue series is what I dream events are like. Not company wide but self contained so that we can see the entire story without feeling pressured to buy other books. What will come out of this are books like JSA, Justice Incarnate and no matter how it’s worked in an All-Star Squadron that is from the previous Earth-2. Hey when I dream I dream big lol. This really is well written and the characterisation is spot on and the interiors are so classically DC that they really make an impact upon the reader.

#Comic Books #Comics Reviews #DC Comics

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violetosprey · 6 years

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TDDUP My thoughts on Marcus

Doing one of these for each of the 5 stars in TDDUP (yes, even the ladies). This is incredibly subjective, so I decided not to call this a review. Rant sounds too negative to me, it’s more a mix of gushing and analysis here. Anyways, MAJOR SPOILERS ahead because I may talk about stuff not revealed until the very end of a play through. In fact I’m probably going to talk in a way that just assumes the person reading this has completed TDDUP. Kinda like, “Oh I won’t give the whole story of this scene because you know what I’m talking about.” On to Marcus!

WARNING: This will probably be the longest post (I will be surprised if Aria or Ellen top this). Sorry about this.

Oh my gosh, I had to hold back hard not talking about Marcus first. He is my absolute favorite in this game. Why? Because I love me a good male yandere! Not just that, he’s my favorite flavor of yandere too: Tall, clean shaven, awesome tattoos, masculine, forceful, and in a position of power (a cop here). It makes him the absolute worst stalker you could possibly have. He’s a total a**hole and I love every minute of it. Is he the best made character in TDDUP? I don’t know, that’s debatable. Probably not the best judge on that myself because again, I’m being biased here based on my own tastes. If I weren’t playing favorites...I’d say maybe Jack or Ellen are more interesting, but I also just really love how straight forward Marcus is.

One of the first things you’ll notice about Marcus is he has the fewest endings of any character. I’ll admit, I was a little disappointed when I first saw this. But when I thought about it more, it started to make more sense to me. There isn’t a reason for Marcus to have a lot of endings because unlike the other characters, Marcus has complete control. In Chris’s case, he snapped after MC broke the last straw for him. In Jack’s case, MC got nosy and Jack (while remaining calm at first) was forced into a position where he had to detain you...which he never seemed to have been prepared to do. Marcus though, HE’S the one who pulled you over in your car, HE’S the one who killed John and kidnapped you, and HE’S the one who literally created a cage specifically for you in his own house.

Marcus doesn’t have a lot of endings because the MC was doomed to fail from the start. He’s a cop, so he knows how not to leave behind tracks to a crime, and he knows how to prevent people from escaping confinement. He’s smart, knows how to act in public, and there’s no way you’re going to overpower him. His goal is to keep you with him...forever. The only control you have over this situation is your actions that just determine how nice Marcus ends up treating you. And he only gets nicer if he completely breaks you. THAT’S scary. What’s more, he knows there’s nothing you can do against him, so why waste all his effort and kill you? He’s ticked off at you for leaving him and dating another, he makes that very clear, but he’d rather have you all to himself than kill you.

He’s not looking to court you at all (he probably thinks that he did that already, so he’s just trying to get things back to the way they used to be between you two), he’s looking for total submission. When you respond the way he likes, then he becomes pleasant and loving. It’s completely possible you could end up living comfortably in Marcus’s home. All you need to do, is accept the fact as the MC, that you will never see your family or friends again, that you will never see ANYONE other than Marcus again, and that you probably will never see outside of that house again (and depending on your behavior, perhaps even outside of the room you’re trapped in). Oh, and also that the most work you’re probably going to be doing is satisfying Marcus, because despite being almost 40 that guy has no off button. Better hope you can either keep up or that he’s got long work hours still.

What I like about Marcus is that there’s also a LOT of room for head canon here with his character. For example, I stated before that Marcus is the one that brings about this entire scenario. Where the MC “went wrong” really depends on when you consider Marcus’s love to have turned into obsession. If you’re optimistic, you could consider it back when you were filing the divorce. Puke mentioned in some answers that Marcus was blindsided by the divorce. Depending on how severe you believe Marcus’s possessive behavior was (or how rooted), talking it out properly with him could have solved the problem. This is if you consider the divorce to have been a trigger for his obsession (and however many months or years you were apart). If you aren’t that optimistic though, then your mistake with Marcus could have been as far back as: saying “I do” to marrying him, accepting his first date offer, to even just meeting him for the first time. You’re free to believe just how far back his obsession started. After all, all his roads lead to crazy anyway :P I don’t know where my head canon lies with him, but I think sometime before marrying him his obsession started.

There’s also a lot of ideas to play with how he treats you as he holds you captive. You know that he’ll resort to force and hurting you if you don’t do what he wants. He does drink a little it seems, so you can expand upon that. But there’s other little things like: does he ever give you anything for you to pass the time with in that room? This sounds like a weird question, but he could either try to gain your favor by providing you small things (that you can’t hurt him or yourself with) to pass the time while he’s at work. Or he could give you absolutely nothing, forcing you to be left alone with your own thoughts and to almost look forward to whenever Marcus comes home. I could easily see Marcus using this as a manipulative tactic.

I made a joke once about whether Marcus gave you anymore clothes or just leaves you naked :P Actually I could see him providing you, not any underwear, but JUST one of his shirts (a button down one) to wear if you’re short enough for it to almost be like a short dress. I totally seem him doing that because it’d look more like he owns you and he wouldn’t have much to take off when he wants to get busy :P

He could easily offer to get specific food as treats or incentives to the MC (even fast food might sound like a treat if MC hasn’t had it in a long time). Food’s great because it’s only temporary. Marcus could also occasionally let you out of the room supervised. He’d just have to close his blinds and lock all the doors and windows so no one saw MC in his house. I kinda doubt he’d ever offer to let MC outside the house for two reasons though: 1) If he’s framed MC for murder, he would not want to risk anyone recognizing you and reporting to the police and 2) Marcus is incredibly possessive and probably wouldn’t want to share you with the world anyway. If he can keep you to himself, why wouldn’t he?

I think this is pretty evident by the fact of how he brutally murdered John. Poor John! That’s the kind of man you’d want to marry. Doesn’t matter his physique, poor guy’s got a heart of gold. I actually liked that contrast how you left a very handsome and muscular man with a respectable/cool job, and started dating an overweight guy who works in information technology (Not to knock information technology here! It’s actually really useful in this day and age...just doesn’t sound as cool or courageous as a cop haha). Moral of the story: Marry someone for their personality, not their job or body. But getting back to the subject, I’d say it’s up for debate whether Marcus was caught off guard by John and just had to kill him to avoid witnesses for the kidnapping, or if Marcus purposefully went there that night to kill two birds with one stone. I lean towards the latter because he tried to kill John slowly and painfully at first.

Interestingly, I don’t consider Marcus a sadist. He IS rough, and he likes to dirty talk. But killing John I feel like was more out of a grudge than sadism. The scarring scene is pretty sadistic, but again depending on how you behave, Marcus will either be violent about it or really careful. I just consider Marcus incredibly unstable regarding the person he “loves.” It’s probably because we’ve had BTD characters who are very clearly sadistic like Strade, Rire, and Cain. Marcus isn’t nice, that’s for sure, but I think his ultimate goal is to live peacefully with MC, not to constantly torture you.

I like how Marcus’s red heart is also ONLY a bleeding heart. Again, that’s why it’s so funny to compare Jack and Marcus. Jack’s red heart feels more like a gentle love than what Marcus has towards you. I think the bleeding heart for Marcus was a good choice because it really shows that he’s taking this way too far. He probably genuinely believes he’s in love and you’re meant to be together, but it’s just all wrong. Even when he’s “falling out of love,” he still doesn’t kill you. Like I said, he’s got complete control. If you’re being too defiant, he’ll just get mad and start to treat you like a lowly pet. He’s set it up that he can take all the time he wants to train you. He knows he just has to wait for either something like stockholm syndrome to set in, or for you to become exhausted from the pain and misery so that you start obeying him to make life easier. And then Marcus’s heart would probably be back up to a bleeding heart when that happens because MC is responding the way he wants you to. Yeah I don’t think he ever completely falls out of love, just gets ticked off haha.

The first ending I got with Marcus was the one where he starts treating you worse than the cat :P I was kind of doing a mix of being defiant and obediant, just ended up with his heart too low. Made sense I guess. My favorite ending has to be the “Marcus framed you” ending. First of all, I just love the image in my head of MC tied up and gagged while Marcus looks triumphant over them, having just proved he’s pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. I’ll call that a story fetish I guess. Makes Marcus look even more devious and MC even more helpless. Also, I like this ending because MC has not lost all of their sanity. Which means...the misery gets drawn out longer. MC remains fully aware of their trapped situation.

I guess I should explain. I don’t know what people think of when they hear someone say “I like yanderes.” First off, I’ll be very clear that my love for male yanderes is only in fictional settings. They’re fun when it’s safe for you to just read or watch them in fictional media. Real life, they’d be horrifying. Basically, same rules with any horrifying/disgusting/unsettling fictional content someone looks at. Trust me, the thousands of people who have seen the “Saw” movies are not all either a) secretly wishing to put real people in those traps or b) secretly wishing to die in such a gruesome way. Have some faith in humanity :P

There is a “romance” element to yanderes I suppose. I guess it fills the “man I wish I had someone who was completely devoted to me alone,” or the “I wish I was the exception in the villain’s life” quota. And I kinda feel that way too. But really, I like the male yanderes similar to how people like Freddy Krueger, or Michael Myers, or Jason: they’re a HORROR character to me. And this particular kind of horror character is not often looking to kill the protagonist, but to control their life.

In my eyes, you’ve taken the concept of “love,” and a goal that’s honestly what most people have (finding someone to spend the rest of your life with) and turned it into something that will cause a person to shake in fear. I love that twist. I never get tired of it. You can also think of it like when you like two different genres and find they work well when you mix them together. It’s like mixing a shoujo romance with a psychological horror. Works well for me, but maybe not for other people. I guess it’s like, if you mixed carrots and honey, would you like it or hate it? All personal preference.

So I like the “Marcus framed you” ending because no matter how hard I try, I CANNOT see a yandere ever settling down in a “happy ending” with the main character. It depends on how far the yandere goes, and Marcus goes WAY off the deep end. Yandere’s just don’t make ideal love interests for rather obvious reasons. The best argument I’ve think I’ve seen is Yuno from Mirai Nikki, and I’m still torn about whether her and Yuki should have ended up together. I could see other people liking the “mind break” endings, but those aren’t my thing because I don’t actually want the MC to fully submit to someone like Marcus. He’s an awful human being XD

If I got a little creepy there, don’t worry. Next post entry I get knocked down a peg *shivers.* I did manage to find something that unsettled me in TDDUP. But that’s later.

But yeah, Marcus was a delight! He’s everything I want to see in a fictional yandere. Plus, with his extra scene, there may be a little hope for MC if a certain hot cop gets too suspicious of Marcus. Jason did show he wasn’t too sure about Marcus bouncing back so quickly. I fully approve of him being the one to rescue MC!

I actually really wonder how Marcus would act when confronted, either by MC or another cop like Jason. If they compared him to being the same as the criminals he puts away, is Marcus so crazy and unstable that he’d deny it? I guess I could see him thinking something along the lines of “he’s different.” Puke did mention that he’s generally supposed to be a good person because he’s a cop. He’s good at his job and very focused. Probably has saved lives. Really he’s just doing ONE bad thing...well two, he murdered John still in addition to keeping you captive. He might even think that because of all the good he’s done, he deserves to be with MC. Especially if he believes it’s because he’s in love with you. After all, it’s just two people’s lives he changed vs. however many he saved. Surely he can have this right? Sarcasm’s probably a low form of comedy, but oh well :P It’s dark humor here.

Man I should probably stop this now before I think of anything else. I shudder at the thought of how many typos are in here. I really just wrote whatever came to mind, haha. But thank you Puke, I really did adore Marcus. The only problem I had with this whole route...is I can’t think of a good MC design myself to put with Marcus *groans.* But that’s a personal problem XD Eventually I’ll find a design to settle on. I’m just too into male yanderes to claim if Marcus really is the best character development or story wise in TDDUP. It’s all personal preference I guess.

Man, next post will be such a blatant contrast to this one XD

#own post #credit source material to owner #tddup #electricpuke #marcus de la cruz #male yandere #fiction vs reality

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genyatta-ss · 6 years

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Hot Chocolate and Robot Love

from @punrat to @rawrrawrpandacakes:

~ I hope you enjoy it! I’ve never written Genji nor Zenyatta, or coffee shop AU’s for that matter, but I think it’s something small, soft and sweet like a nice chocolate. Happy Holidays! - Kimi ~

…Snow had been falling from overhead not for just minutes or hours, but for days now. The streets of the sweet smelling Japanese town had been layered over and over, time and time again now with thick piles of snow. Footprints showed stray cats and dogs walking along the sidelines, couples cooped up close against a harsh winters breeze, and most importantly a pair of oddly sharp, metal feet making their way down town, in hopes of finding something to warm up that ice-cold interior. Genji Shimada, brother only to Hanzo Shimada of the Shimada Clan- you can’t really get around Japan without hearing about them- was taking his leisurely stroll down Hanamura’s wonderful backstreets, now crowded with peoples from different walks of life, either having lived there before, or coming to see the absolutely delightful winter setting. Genji, whom usually didn’t bother with clothing found it especially hard not to really care, especially when the wind was blowing hard against his metal plates, and chilling the man beneath. He was so dressed up that, upon first glance, any normal passerby would not have been able to tell it had been the well known cyborg boy- he was brandished with a thick green scarf around his neck, an insulated black hoodie and light grey sweatpants to match. However, despite this Shimada walking with a sense of diligence, he really only had one task in mind: find some sweet, sweet hot chocolate- and if you were looking for Hot Chocolate, especially in the streets of Hanamura, there was only one place to go. For about 3 or 4 years now, Mondatta’s Tranquil Treats had been an establishment that did nothing less than rule the coffee industry. It started as a small coffee house run by a few Omnics that’d stationed themselves in Japan after a series of exploratory tracks from the Nepal mountains, but as the shop grew in popularity it had to grow in both space and staff. They expanded into making specialty tea and chocolate blends, and when a certain Zenyatta Mondatta came to the kitchen, he could make nearly any damn thing a human heart could desire, including the thing most priceless in the world- love. There was a soft jingle as the door opened, which besides having been minimally decorated with in store deals, or showing the shop’s times, brandished hand made Christmas decorations. The inside of the shop, as per usual, was warm- acting as a sort of reprieve from the harsh conditions only feet away. People sat at tables and chatted with one another, a lengthy line had piled up, and some had just come in to escape the cruel punishments of the wind. When Genji walked in, however, people turned heads- the thin slit in his mask had been glowing almost predatorily so as he let out a sigh at the sweet, sweet feeling of a warm relief. A few waved at the familiar mask, others tilted their heads in confusion or intrigue. Genji simply gave them a wave and, from behind the mask, a warm smile. It was somehow very easy to tell if the man was smiling or not. As he got in line and casually chatted up the group of friends in front of him- tourists that started asking him questions, having heard about the infamous Shimada reign- he made his way up to the counter slowly and with utmost patience. With slicked back shoulders and a surprisingly casual and relaxed posture, the cyborg that had been eyeing the menu changed it’s path of direction to the Omnic behind the counter, and as he went to order, he stopped dead in his tracks. Never, ever in Genji’s life had he seen someone so.. wonderful, absolutely captivating. I mean, sure, he’d been to Nepal on his journey to find himself, and he’d seen Omnics before absolutely everywhere but this guy? He was different. Something about the way the ports for his eyes slanted outwards and down gave him a soft, innocent appearance. The way the LED implants on his forehead emanated such a welcoming blue glow- even the way his body floated absentmindedly, bobbing up and down to the rhythm of someone’s breathing. Genji stared, and as he did he had felt a familiar warmth bubble up in his chest, and those silly butterflies began waltzing around within his stomach once more. “Excuse me, sir,” came the voice from the Omnic, Genji had been drooling over from behind his mask, “It appears you have not made your selection yet. Shall I offer you a form of recommendation based on your prior experiences here?” Even hearing his voice caused Genji to lean forward more, having made his way up against the other side of the counter, before he straightened himself up and realized probably just how stupid he looked leaning over the edge of a local coffee shop counter top. He had to get his act together, if not for his own pride that began quite quickly swelling within the confines of his real, and metallic chest. “I should be the one excusing myself,” Genji finally managed to choke out, tilting his head to the side a bit sheepishly, allowing an earnest chuckle to slip out from beneath the mask, “Where are my manners?” Genji leaned over the counter that separated him and the quite entrancing Omnic, taking the worker’s hand in his own, bringing it up to the hilt of his mask just beneath his nose, as if to signify placing a kiss on the back of his hand. This earned a soft breath of laughter from the server, whom also gained a soft pink glow to the usually turquoise orbs decorating his forehead. “Shimada, Genji Shimada.” Genji’s fingers intertwined with the Omnic’s before allowing it to slowly fall back onto the polished wood between them. “May I be so gifted as to know your name, hmm?” With a light nod of the head and a fold of the hands, the omnic spoke once again, “My name is Tekhartha Zenyatta, but please, feel free to call me only Zenyatta, as many people have found it more convenient to do such.” Zenyatta was one of the sweetest and purest people, or Omnics, that Genji ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on. Everything about him was perfect, from the way he spoke- just how soft his voice was- to the way he moved so slowly, with elegance, as if he was in no rush and the world would stop for him at any moment. “Zenyatta, well.. I think that, in my own humble opinion,” Genji cleared his throat, allowing himself to lean over the counter a bit further, but never enough to look creepy, “Me and you should meet up again, sometime, hmm?” “Well, if you have intentions of meeting with me again, I would be happy to print out a list of my work hours, and deliver it to you personally upon your next visi-” Genji cut Zenyatta off with a shake of his head and a small burst of laughter - that laughter also earned a light pink glow, which represented the Omnic’s own form of blush, to roll from between the small holes in his forehead. “I meant off of work hours, so that me and you could get to, well, know each other a bit better. How about after your job here is done, I will take you into the city and show you a fantastic night?” The mixture of what was almost a seductive tone coming from the cyborg ninja, and the honest to god good intentions mingling in his voice made it an opportunity that one could deny- if they were flat out stupid. So many people would kill to spend a night with Genji in any way, and here he was offering himself up to a worker, an Omnic from Nepal, in front of everyone. It wasn’t peer pressure, because honestly- Genji expected a sort of turn down. He hardly hit on people anymore, as his days of being a “player” had well gone and passed, but when he did make a move on someone as far and few between as it was, it was always just as genuine as the feelings he held within his heart. “If it is a date that you are trying to ask me on, Mr. Shimada..” Zenyatta started, and Genji let out a soft sigh in acceptance. He was ready to back off, order his drink and wander the cold, snowy streets wondering what he did wrong. “..Then I would be happy to take your hand later tonight, and to explore what you may call a ‘fantastic night’ in the nearest city.” Genji, in some form of purse shock, stopped in his tracks, letting out a soft and surprised ..Eh? . The glow of his visor became an extravagant shade of green, his shoulders perked up, and from behind the metal did his eyes widen. “..For real? Well, then, Zen- if I may call you that -I’ll pick you up at 8 sharp, Make sure you dress warm, it’ll be cold out tonight.” Zenyatta gave a soft nod, tilting his head to the side a little as well, and it just felt like he was smiling, between the softness of his voice and the way his shoulders slightly raised. However, before Zenyatta could ask Genji any further questions, including what he’d like to order, Genji nodded his head with a soft ‘yosh!’ in approval, before walking to the door with a newfound sense of accomplishment, and excitement. He gave the crowd that had stopped their jobs a few waves, before he allowed himself to bound out the front doors, a bounce to his step. Everyone watched through the large front windows as the cyborg jumped and cheered from outside, like nothing short of a nerd, before he collected himself, cleared his throat, stuffed his pockets with his own hands and made his way down the street. He walked all the way back to where he had been staying, closer to inner city, when he realized it- he’d been so excited, he left without the damn hot chocolate. It was an hour after Genji and Zenyatta met up again, and Genji had only just finished showing him around the city’s finest sights. It turns out that, when Genji said a fantastic night, he truly meant a fantastic night- he had showing Zenyatta around a fantastically lit city, one that embraced the Christmas spirit more than Saint Nicholas himself did. Between the piles of snow decorating the streets, the well hung multicolored lights and the bright displays of buildings and shops, there was energy absolutely bounding rampantly through the streets. Genji had come equipped with a separate scarf, just in case the Omnic came unprepared and quite thankfully he did. About thirty minutes in or so, Genji had caught Zenyatta experiencing a strong shiver, and decided to take the opportunity to lean in and slowly drape a scarf around his neck, tightening it to the point where it would keep his exposed metal warm, and protected from sudden violent whips of wind. At around 9:30 or so, Genji decided that he would absolutely wow Zenyatta with the main show. Genji took Zenyatta’s hand within his own, intertwining their fingers a bit tightly, before casually leading him between cities and down crowded streets, where other couples bustled, watching the robot pair with soft smiles and an occasional scoff. Although the Shimada brother got quite sidetracked, and ended up getting that hot chocolate he so desired, they did end up making it to the focal point of the city, especially around this wonderful wintry time of year. “Have you ever seen a Christmas tree before, Zenyatta?” Genji had started, and as he sipped his hot chocolate, Zenyatta could catch a glimpse of the flesh and blood that hid behind metal plates. “I have only seen them in fiction, never have I experienced a real Christmas tree, as you may call it. I have decorated trees in Nepal around this specific time of year, but it has never been a real festivity, or a specific tree that had been designed for this Christmas event.” Zenyatta looked over at Genji as he spoke, floating beside him at a pace slow enough to match Genji’s leisurely walk, neither of them had been in any rush. “Well,” Genji laughed, shaking his head as he took a smaller sip of the sweet chocolate based drink, licking his lips, “do I have a surprise for you, then. Every year, this place sets up the biggest Christmas tree in Japan. Go big or go home, right?” “Go.. Go big or go home, yes. What does that mean, exactly, Genji? To go big, or to go home?” Zenyatta inquired- he may have been a being of peace, someone with immense amounts of smarts, but Genji quickly realized that he didn’t know many common phrases or things like slang. “Well, It’s like.. If you’re going to do something, you should do it the best you can or you shouldn’t do it at all. Like, they could have just made a little tree, but they made the largest Christmas tree.” Genji politely explained, finding it a bit cute at the sense of innocence this Omnic had. “Ah, I see.. So, in a way, could you explain you asking me out as going big or going home, since you have decided to ask me out to a, as you said, fantastic night just upon our first time meeting?” Genji nearly choked on the hot chocolate he’d been drinking, swallowing it sharply as his cheeks flared up with blush, topping off the already cold-induced pink cheeks. This guy caught on fast. “I mean, I guess you could describe it like that, but I see it as taking a risk, going for something I really wanted. Turns out you seemed to have wanted it too~” Zenyatta nodded his head, floating up just a bit higher. “I felt the idea of meeting someone as unique as yourself, Genji, was.. very interesting. You are a cyborg, but at the same time you are also a man. You have a heart, and a soul, a voice and a mouth. I have never seen someone quite like you before. Nobody as unique, and nobody as bold.” Genji felt his heart stop in his chest for a few seconds, before it began to beat at insane speeds. His cheeks grew so, so hot at the almost emotionless words leaving his- well, or rather not leaving his lips, shifting as his fingers squeezed around the omnics only slightly tighter. “Y’know, Zenyatta, you’re awfully bold for an Omnic too. I’ve never met anyone so interested in things before, and also so curious.” The two talked like this for almost an hour on their own, in a separate universe created by nothing but the sounds of their voices, the warmth of their bodies and the snow falling around them, creating a snow globe of peace and tranquility. However, they were taken out of this serene world by sudden bright burst of light, the Christmas tree coming into view. It was extravagantly tall, easily topping the height of most shops. It was an evergreen, one that had been obviously planted centuries ago and cared for with such exact precision. It was covered in snow from head to toe, and each branch had a custom made ornament on it, making it unique. Zenyatta let out a small gasp, something Genji didn’t quite know he could do. “Genji, this.. This tree is absolutely magnificent. It’s taller than anything I had seen in the mountain scape, or the forestry that I have experienced. It is decorated with such culture, it is obviously very well cared for.” Genji gave a nod of agreement, and he slowly pulled the awestruck Omnic down, allowing them both to sit on a park bench near them, overlooking the tree that towered above them, if not almost intimidatingly so. The two sat like this, with Genji keeping an arm around Zenyatta, keeping him not only close but keeping his metal body warmer than it probably had ever been, between the scarf and the shared body warmth. Snow twinkled against both the city lights, and the ornaments of the gargantuan tree before them. “I think that I like this.. Go big or go home, way of thinking. It is very enticing, it is very outgoing, and I think that I would like to try it.” Genji raised an eyebrow behind his mask as he slid his face plate back on, looking over towards Zenyatta. “I would like to do this again with you next week, Genji. Allow me to take you on a date as well, and show you the parts of this town that I am knowledgeable about. Allow me to go big, so that I may not have to go home.” Genji smiled, and he smiled wide as his heart pounded just a bit harder. “..I’d be absolutely delighted to go big or go home with you, Zenyatta.” They sat there endlessly, enjoying just each others time with one another as the snow slowly fell, enveloping the ground around them as their own snow globe kept them frozen in time together, and kept them warmer than any hot chocolate ever could.

#fanfic #submission #genyatta

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sailorsaigas · 7 years

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“Substitute Guardian” (a Morgan Lives AU) Chapter 2

Author's Note: Chapter is after the Read More, so as not to clutter folks' dashboards.

A year ago, I wrote the first chapter of an AU fic about Morgan surviving the events of Turn Coat. Well, I know it's been a long time in coming, but here is Chapter Two of that AU, the title of which has been settled on. I only hope you will find this entertaining, and that it might help some of you stave off the boredom of having to continue to wait for Jim to finish Peace Talks. Enjoy. ^_^

Being in Chicago again was...odd.

I wasn't entirely certain how I should feel about my return to the states, having spent the better portion of the last year under house arrest in Edinburgh. The early months saw me hospitalized, recovering in an infirmary bed after pushing my already wounded body too hard apprehending the man who'd framed me for murder. A grueling process of rehabilitation eventually began when my mandatory bed rest order was lifted, though after regaining my previous strength, I continued with physical training as a means of self-improvement and killing time. One might be surprised how utterly boring being confined to a centuries-old castle can be. So I trained - trained and studied like a newly minted apprentice one-hundred and fifty years younger. I had no intention of being bested again by my enemies.

Over the course of my time under lock and key, I had a few brief but important conversations with Harry Dresden, who made it a point not to interact with the Council more than absolutely necessary. I understood that mentality far more easily, now, after having my eyes opened during the events of that last year. We discussed where we stood as associates, swallowed what we could of our pride, and made something of a halfhearted but honest attempt at reconciliation. There was a lot of bad blood there, and neither of us could really get over some twenty years of animosity overnight, but it helped that I'd been made aware of the unfortunate truth. The Black Council, a hidden force seeking to tear apart the wizarding community from within, was real...and it was high time somebody did something about it. And so, despite some reluctance from Ebenezar McCoy, I was brought into the fold of the Gray Council, a nearly treasonous body of our own that sought to prevent the enemy from gaining the upper hand in our shadow war.

Stuck as I had been in Edinburgh, I didn't have much to offer of my previous talent as a Council enforcer, but my copious free time gave me opportunity to put my experience to good use in other ways. I was permitted supervised free range of the hallowed halls, and since the only individuals experienced enough to be trusted to watch me were Wardens I'd had a hand in training, they'd rarely challenge me regarding what I did or where I went. Thus I made my primary purpose one of study and documentation, becoming something of a writer for Dresden’s project, the Paranet. The idea of networking the minor talents of the world so that they'd be educated enough to protect one another had been risky in many ways, but had so far been more than worth the risk. However, their information had been limited primarily to what Dresden and a few of his friends were capable of offering, so I made it my goal to expand upon that.

Such was how it became my job to transcribe my personal knowledge, alongside those of Edinburgh's ancient libraries, to create tools for use by the Paranet. To speak plainly, they were mainly pamphlets with a few illustrations, but Dresden and Anastasia said so earnestly that they could prove invaluable to the lesser talents of the world that I started taking pride in the work. It helped that there was little else to do, of course.

Now I stood back on the streets of Chicago, a free man of a sort, though the Doom still hung above my head. These were my old stomping grounds long before they had been Dresden's, and they'd been my area of responsibility as a Warden up until the war with the Red Court of Vampires. I'd hounded Dresden through these streets as I observed his own probation beneath the Doom, and now the shoe was on the other foot. Dresden, if he yet lived, was a Warden of the Council, while I was the one with a single mistake keeping me from summary decapitation. I'm certain there was a lesson in that, and it was one reason I strived to put aside the more petty and miserable aspects of myself.

Shaking off my reminiscences, I examined the building where I'd be staying for the duration of my time as a mentor to Dresden's young apprentice, Molly Carpenter. I knew the building, of course. Only a few blocks away from the ruins of Dresden's own home, the address on my note had directed me to what had once been a boarding house that had been converted into apartments. During our time trying to prove my innocence, a mortal private investigator had set up an observation post in this very building to stake out Dresden. I don't know when the Council had found the time or money to empty the building and remodel it, but they'd done so. It looked pristine, at least from outside, and I knew nobody lived here anymore from a notation on Ana's scrap of paper. The Council didn't want to risk more collateral damage after whatever destroyed Dresden's place nearly killed several mortal bystanders.

I headed into the building and opened the door to the ground floor apartment, though I had keys to all of them. I wondered if they expected me to house Miss Carpenter here while I trained her? That would be practical, but Ana had mentioned the girl would be at her parent's house, and I imagined she'd be more comfortable there. Undoubtedly so, considering what had apparently transpired over the past 48 hours or so.

The apartment was sparsely furnished, though it had necessary amenities like an ice box and a wood-burning stove. There was one bedroom with a bare twin mattress against a wall, connected to a small bathroom with a standing glass-door shower. A single recliner occupied one corner of the living room near the fireplace, and a small dining table that had no accompanying chairs filled space in the kitchen. On it rested a plain white envelope labeled 'Donald.' Inside the envelope was a crisp stack of bills, the first installment of my new monthly stipend. I noted with a small smirk that it was the same monthly amount I'd be making if I were still serving as a Warden. Though I wasn't a Warden anymore, and likely never would be again, I supposed that my time in-service had earned me something. I'd have preferred my blade to the money. Warden or not, Ana made the sword for me. Practically speaking, nobody else would be remotely capable of wielding it effectively. Sentimentally speaking, it was probably my dearest possession.

Placing the envelope of cash in the pocket of the overcoat I wore with today's ensemble of a well-tailored, tan three-piece suit (why couldn't Dresden see the obvious social benefits of not dressing like a hoodlum?), I decided to set aside all other thoughts in favor of the most immediate concern. I couldn't put it off any longer. It was time to pay a visit to my new apprentice. I stepped outside, hailed a cab, and was shortly on my way.

-----

The house I arrived at looked like something out of a Hallmark card, something I wouldn't have thought possible in this part of Chicago. Complete with finely manicured lawn and white picket fence, it was the absolute model of idealized American suburbia. I could feel a kind of power emanating from within the borders of the property, and I knew immediately that this was indeed the correct residence. Michael Carpenter, Molly's father, was the only living retired Knight of the Sword, an ancient group of warriors who served to maintain the balance between Good and Evil on behalf of God. I could only imagine a retirement package from such an occupation would be graced with ample benefits from the Lord.

I was cautious as I approached the front door of the home, being careful not to offend whatever sort of divine bodyguards might watch over the place. I knocked politely, three times, and awaited a response from within. A woman promptly answered, and I could recognize in her face that this must be Molly's mother, Charity. I could also see in her general stance and demeanor, a woman of fierce physical and mental fortitude. I'd hazard to guess she'd once served as the sparring partner for her husband, and Ana had mentioned to me before my departure that the woman was an accomplished smith, likely as a means of indicating someone from whom I could commission a sword. I bowed my head politely, and introduced myself.

"Mrs. Carpenter, I am Donald Morgan," I spoke. "I am a wizard of the White Council. I am here on the Council's behalf to speak with your daughter, Molly, regarding the disappearance of her mentor, Harry Dresden. And, if necessary, continue her training in our arts in his absence."

Mrs. Carpenter looked at me, her right eyebrow arched upward.

"Morgan?" she asked. "The Warden? Harry spoke of you before. Not nicely, either, I should say."

I sighed. I should have known one of Dresden's friends would know my name and my reputation, colored though it might have been by his own perceptions. I could believe she did not think very highly of the man I once was.

"Former Warden," I explained. "I am no longer a Warden of the White Council, Mrs. Carpenter. After a political incident about a year ago, I was removed from my position and consigned to the Doom of Damocles, much like Molly and Dresden before her. That being the case, Dresden has gone missing, and is presumed dead. The Council has but two options regarding your daughter's future: execute her under the order of the Doom, or send me to mentor her in Dresden's stead. I shall see her through to her graduation into a full wizard of the Council, or merely until Dresden returns."

I held my arms out to the side, palms up in a non-threatening gesture of sincerity. I don't do those much, so I doubt it looked very convincing.

"I'm not here to hurt Molly, Mrs. Carpenter," I said, plainly.

Charity continued to stare at me for a moment, sizing me up, gauging my honesty.

Then, her voice firm, she said, "I won't invite you in. Prove to me that you mean no harm."

I understood her meaning immediately. Wizards, and other supernatural entities, cannot pass through a threshold (the magical barrier that separates a home from the outside world) without giving up a significant portion of their power. Certain creatures, like the Vampires of the Red and Black Courts, cannot pass through a threshold at all without first being invited. The threshold of this home was one of enormous potency, and stepping through it would mean leaving nearly all of my magic at the door, making me incredibly vulnerable. It was a common and reliable practice among those who were 'in-the-know' supernaturally, and I applauded her in my mind for thinking ahead. She was clearly a sharp-minded and no-nonsense woman, and having apprenticed under Anastasia Luccio, that was something I could most certainly respect.

"Very well," I replied, and stepped across through the doorway.

It was an odd sensation, leaving my magic behind me. Stepping through the Carpenter threshold was like stepping through a wall of gelatin and coming out the other side disrobed. I felt diminished and exhausted, as if I'd dived into a pool of ice water. I bowed my head politely in her direction after crossing, and she nodded at me. Had I been one of the few harmful supernatural entities that might have crossed a threshold uninvited without trouble, I'd likely have been pulverized by whatever security force watched over the household if I'd intended harm.

Charity motioned to the staircase with a wave of her hand.

"Molly's sleeping upstairs," she explained. "She was wounded when she went to help Harry at Chichen Itza."

I didn't have many of the facts, but if Dresden had been at Chichen Itza, he'd been at one of the most powerful domains of the Red Court. I could only assume it bore some connection to his supposed demise.

"Would it be a problem if I woke her?" I asked. "It's important we get this settled as soon as possible."

"It won't be a problem, but she's not in any condition to talk for very long," Charity stated, matter-of-factly. "She's heavily medicated, patched up on a helicopter and brought here by some of Dresden's associates afterward."

"Field medicine? Why not a hospital?"

"Her wound wasn't severe, she'd mostly overexerted herself after being wounded on the battlefield."

"Well, I am relieved to hear that she is alright, but I will need to speak with her right away so that she understands what is to be done."

"Alright, then. This way."

Inside a room cramped with sewing equipment, Molly slept soundly in a small bed, an IV in her arm.

Charity gently shook her awake as we entered, saying, "Molly, Morgan from the White Council is here to see you."

I didn't miss how Molly's eyes shot open with fear at the mention of my name. Once again, my old reputation preceded me. Swiftly, Mr's. Carpenter calmed her daughter with soft, gentle words explaining that I wasn't there to hurt her, and that I just needed to inform her of some changes regarding her apprenticeship since Harry was missing. Molly was still groggy from sleep and pain medication, but the initial adrenaline rush had cleared her head enough that she acknowledged her mother's words and nodded at me to proceed.

"Hello again, Miss Carpenter," I began. "Your mother is correct that I'm not here to do you any harm. I can only assume the medicine is to blame for you forgetting I'm no longer a Warden."

I tried to smile to show I was being lighthearted, but I was long out of practice, and Molly got a somewhat sour look on her face. I awkwardly tried to recover momentum.

"Ahem, anyway, I have just been released from house arrest. I'm here because Dresden has gone missing, and is presumed dead. Whatever Dresden and the rest of you did at Chichen Itza has thrown the supernatural world into a frenzy. I couldn't begin to tell you even half the things I've heard, and my situation left me fairly out of the loop to begin with. Whatever it is, the Council is preoccupied with damage control, and wasn't sure what to do with you. After much deliberation, rather than have you executed under the Doom, I was chosen to act as your mentor until such a time as you graduate or Dresden returns. I was already under the Doom, myself, so it is no great loss to the Council, and it spares any needless bloodshed."

I paused to let Molly absorb what I had said, and then continued.

"It will only be a temporary arrangement, of course. Under my tutelage, barring Dresden's return, I imagine it would not take longer than a year or two to get you to full wizard status, in which case you would no longer need a mentor. And, of course, should Harry come back, he will be granted the opportunity to once again take over your training. As it stands, however, none of us has any idea what has become of him."

I looked at Molly sternly, though not bluntly intimidating, trying to put a kind of gentle, grandfatherly rebuke into my demeanor.

"What in the world was Dresden doing on the vampire's boat at the time of his presumed death?" I asked.

Molly let out a huff of indignation. "I should have known the first thing you'd do is be suspicious of Thomas."

"Why shouldn't I be? He is a member of the White Court--"

"He's more than just a White Court vampire," she interrupted. "There's a reason Harry was on the boat, and Thomas' offer to let him use it was made in good faith."

"You're the second person today to tell me that," I responded. I tried giving the girl a small smile. "I guess I'll take your word for it, for now."

"Thomas isn't responsible for Harry's murder," Molly said. "I know that for certain."

"You do?" I asked, arching an eyebrow at the remark. "That implies a great deal. If you know for certain that Thomas Raith isn't involved, do you know who is responsible?"

Molly sighed and shook her head. "No. But whoever did it didn't use magic."

"Captain Luccio was able to confirm as much to me before I came out here. Regardless, such discussion has no bearing on my purpose here. I won't trouble you with more questions. Get some rest, and I'll be back tomorrow so we can go over the details of your training."

Molly nodded, and promptly returned to sleep.

Afterward, Charity saw me to the door and wished me luck getting situated in town. She gave me the number for the house, as well as their cell phones, and told me that if I intended to continue investigating Harry's disappearance it would be good to get in touch with Harry's associates in town. A good place to begin would be with their mutual acquaintance Father Forthill at Saint Mary of the Angels, and Karrin Murphy of the Chicago Police Department, in particular. I thanked her, and made my way out the door.

No sooner had I closed the gate to the front yard behind me than I was very nearly run over by an emerald green stretch limousine that sped up to the curb in front of the Carpenter home. Immediately after parking, the driver walked around to passenger side rear door, opened it, and gestured for me to enter. I knew him for what he was the moment I set eyes upon him, and the voice that beckoned to me from within the limo only confirmed my suspicions.

"La! Mortal magi, always so paranoid," called a beautiful singsong from the dark interior of the vehicle. "You have my word of safe passage for the duration of a conversation, Wizard Morgan. On behalf of my Queen, I must needs speak with thee regarding the matter of Harry Dresden."

I looked from the driver holding open the door, and back to the waiting interior of the car. Stepping into the vehicle would be stupid, even with word of safe passage from one of the Fae. Then again, it was about Dresden. Considering that, I thought to myself: what would Harry Dresden do in this situation? The town, after all, needed someone to fill his boots for a time.

I got into the car.

#Dresden Files #Substitute Guardian #Morgan Lives AU #Donald Morgan #It's finally here #Sorry you all had to wait so long

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