#but characters keep sailing around the whole fucking word in matter of days

[idianaki]

Petycja, żeby rozpisać semi-realistic timeline One Piece, która będzie jakiegoś rodzaju pomostem między przygodową naturą serii, która stara się ignorować upływ czasu, tym jak wszystkim randomowo znikają rany kiedy tylko jest to wygodne i tym jak najwidoczniej Law po miesiącu siedzenia w chatce z drewna i sprzedawania pierogów przeszedł z "nie jestem w stanie zrobić bąbelka większego niż dom" do "masterowałem teraz mój diabelski owoc" bo irl minęło jakieś 6 lat i Oda ma dwieście nowych pomysłów które chce wykorzystać.

#shitpost #i'm semi-joking tho #like it's part of the genre yes #but characters keep sailing around the whole fucking word in matter of days #and it's okay if it's goofy pirates manga that treats itself semi-seriously #and have an op sungod with teletoones powers as mc #(wano spoilers btw) #but when I see it in realistic fics that try to argue Sabo have to be blind in his eye from explosion and have head trauma besides amnesia #bc that's how explosions work #but then Ace's sailing from NW to begginings of the Grand Line in matter of two weeks #despite the fact that just going thought Fishmen Island should take days #not to mention sailing across like 3/4 of the world #then i have a little bit of dissonance #also #the fact that on average a day in-story takes like two years to write can kind of mix perception #like characters gaining new powers after three days bc irl it was a year three years and autor is having ideas #and no #it's not just law-problem #it's just something GrandLineReview pointed out once #actually #is there any timeline for One Piece? #like we know it started on May 5th #so technically if you count days that narrator is saying you could make some sort of timeline #right? #one piece post #one piece shitpost #one piece spoilers #esp #wano spoilers #in tags but still

[huachengeye]

Only Friends Episode 8: And they were all messy

Hello there! Episode 8 has been out for some days now, but after watching a reaction os YT and scrolling through the comments, I wrote this piece to add my two cents to the whole Mew victimization and Ray the supreme asshole (I don't actually think he is tho).

For organization and better reading comprehension, I'm going to separate this into sections, starting off with Mew going wild, then Ray, the fandom's favorite broken boy, and ending up with little about the relationship of the friend group.

Mew, one of the nasties.

First off, I'm a Mew apologist. He is, in fact, my favorite character as of now, but I'm down to criticize the hell out of him, because loving is caring <3

I want to start with the whole discourse around his and Ray's relationship. The fandom seems to be separated into 3 categories (and yes, I'm generalizing a lot for the purpose of making my point): Mew apologists, Ray apologists, and everyone else who thinks they are as messy as everyone else without needing to explain their behavior.

In contradiction with my very first sentence, I belong to the third category in the sense I think they all do bad things to one another. Starting with Mew, we already know that he puts himself on a pedestal compared to his fucked-up friends, but my boy was kicked out of his high horse and now is like us, failed humans. One of the discourses I've been seeing, and that some characters in the series agree with (Cheum and Top), is that Mew is being dragged down by Ray. I completely disagree. Mew is an adult, and although he is experiencing heartbreak for the first time, the way he is acting is very realistic. Mew's first honest conversation with Top was about how he is afraid of getting his heart broken. He confided that to Top, about how he lives through his books because of his fears of getting hurt. And it happened exactly as he feared. It would be weird if he just behaved normally after finding out his boyfriend cheated on him with his friend. So his way of hurting is not hurting at all, is numbing his pain and he does it in the same way as Ray because that's the way he thinks it works.

As the theories go for this BL, I've seen a lot of people saying that it is Mew that it's enabling Ray's substance abuse. Honestly, in my opinion, they are using each other. Mew made it clear that he doesn't love Ray romantically, he said it himself in this episode, Ray is the one he should love. I genuinely don't think Mew is using Ray with the idea of making Ray drown more in his addiction, I think the reason Mew is clinging to Ray right now is the same reason Ray clings to him: they were there when the other was going through his worst time. They are like lifesavers to each other. In this sense, they are mutually using one another, the difference is that Ray is also clinging to the idea that he is in love with Mew, when it's already clear to us, the viewers, that this boat has sailed. If Ray was certain that he wanted a future with Mew, and Mew only, he would've let Sand go. Because Ray didn't go after Sand only when he was under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, he also went when he was sober, actively trying to keep Sand in his life, even if their relationship was never a friendship, and was always sexual/romantic (for Sand, at least).

Still analyzing Mew, I saw this brilliant post by @wen-kexing-apologist (this post right here, highly recommend for you to check it out) where they analyze Mew, and his personality (or lack of, for that matter). As soon as Mew told Top that he decorated his place with ideas from Pinterest I felt bothered, especially with his whole introduction in the first episode, about how he is the table keeper (I honestly don't remember how he worded it). I felt bothered but I couldn't quite say why, so when I read Wen Kexing Apologist's analysis, it all made sense.

Lao Wen's (I'm sorry for the use of the cannon nickname of wkx, saying the whole username is a task lmao) thesis is that Mew has no idea who he is, and I completely agree with them. The thing that was Mew's whole personality is that he was a virgin, which was the thing that most set him apart from his friends. Yes, he is also a bookworm and a smart person, but these were secondary things when it came to who he was. Mew was the "pure" one of the group, the one that was waiting for the right person, for the person that was worthy of his virginity (just typing this makes me want to wither away). After Top, he is no longer a virgin, he is no longer that different from his friends. So once he found out about Top cheating on him, he had lost more than his virginity, he had lost his own ideals, because he wanted his first time to be with someone worthy, as I said, and well, Top wasn't worthy, but Mew didn't know that at the time.

Now, Mew doesn't have the one aspect of him that defined him, so he is utterly lost and is now mimicking the one person that offers him some type of stability, one person that he knows truly cares for him, Ray. I really don't know how Mew will react if he knows that Ray kissed Sand at the party, I don't if he won't care because he isn't in love with Ray or if that will only make him go down to the worst path. I think he will get mad if he finds out, especially because it's Ray, his best friend, the one who was there for him when Top cheated on him. Oh, the drama it's gonna be.

Now for Ray. I'm gonna be straight with y'all and say that Ray is the character I dislike the most in this BL, but also the one that I pity the most.

From the get-go, I knew Ray wasn't better than Boston or Top, but after this episode, I can't understand why people still treat him as the victim. He keeps on stringing Sand around as if he is his personal doll, even after Sand makes it clear that he doesn't want to be Ray's second option, that he wants Ray to let him go. Ray does not let him go, and more than that, he clings to Sand as a spoiled child clings to his favorite toy, not out of love, out of possessiveness. I don't really see Ray and Sand's relationship as one of love, Sand is basically Ray's parent, and for Ray, Sand is a thing he can own, just like he can own anything else with his money. For this topic, I recommend this post by @wen-kexing-apologist (yes, I might be a little obsessed with their analysis, sue me) and this post by @emotionallychargedtowel.

I saw some people saying that Ray doesn't know he is addicted, and that his substance abuse doesn't excuse his behavior but certainly explains it, I disagree. I think that Ray knows that his actions hurt others around him, and he knows because his friends and Sand already told him when he was sober. Sand said more than one time that he should drive whilst drunk because he could hurt someone. Sand in the hospital made it clear that he should take accountability for his actions. Mew keeps on chewing him about his drinking behavior (even if he doesn't in a very judgmental way). So he knows, he might not be able to control himself when he is drunk, but he never takes accountability afterward, not really. Even after his accident, what was his punishment? Community service, and even when it comes to that he tried to make Sand help him.

As for the idea that he doesn't know he is addicted, I think he does. I think he does, but he doesn't want to acknowledge it. If I remember correctly (and I might not, please correct me if I'm tripping), when Ray and Mew kissed back when they didn't know Sand or Top, Ray says to Mew that if he hadn't found Ray in the bathtub, he would've joined his mother. At the time, I hadn't watched the flashback of his mother on the floor, but I got the impression that he meant that not because he would die like his mother, but because he would've joined his mother in the same way that she went. Now, I think that scene was Ray's way of acknowledging for a brief moment that he is going down the same path as his mother. Again, I might be way off here.

So my point is, I'm a bit tired of people trying to blame Ray's trauma for all of his actions. Of course, his traumas and mental issues are a big part of it, but he still chooses to hurt others, even when sober. Trauma doesn't mean you can treat others like shit. And as someone who grew close to a person that dealt with alcohol abuse and turned a jerk because of it, it's fucking tiring and emotionally consuming to have someone berating you. It doesn't matter at the moment that they are out of their minds, because in the end, you are hurting.

THEY ARE FRIENDS, BUT ARE THEY REALLY?

Now onto the Fantastic Four. After this episode, I saw some people talking about Cheum never actually caring for Ray or that neither of the friends did. I saw someone talking about how Cheum shouldn't have said that (her whole monologue) whilst Ray was being held down by a cop. I agree with all of it, except maybe for the part that his friends don't care. I think Mew does care, although he certainly doesn't look like he does now. But we need to remember that he was there for Ray when he tried to take his own life. And I believe that there are still things we didn't see from them because they are best friends. Before Top, before Nick, before Sand, the one that Ray could lean on was Mew and from the way Ray behaves around him, it seems as if Mew wasn't the worst friend around.

As for Boston and Cheum, it is VERY clear that the one person who keeps these 3 people (Boston-Cheum-Ray) as friends is Mew, he is the glue of the friendship. Things are starting to look bad for their friendship now that Mew is acting out, because even when Boston did what he did, Cheum-Ray-Mew were still together. We also have to take into consideration that maybe Cheum and Boston don't know the scope of Ray's problems, maybe they don't know that Ray tried to kill himself, because from what we saw that was something that only Mew knew. Cheum clearly knows that Ray still suffers from his mother's death, and that's why she walked away when he said that his mother is dead, but we don't know if they actually know why Ray behaves in such a way.

Let's look at the situation from Cheum's POV for a minute. She is watching her friend, Mew, acting the same way as Ray, when Mew used to be the one to try and make Ray stop. She sees that both of them are making decisions about the hostel that the FOUR of them worked on, without her (or Boston). She knows that Ray did the whole hostel thing because of Mew. She is feeling left out as if no one cares for her like Ray was feeling before he started going out with Sand. When it comes to their friendship and this scene of Cheum's explosion, we need to remember Ray did a similar thing to her on Mew's birthday. He told everyone about her private business, and for her, it doesn't matter that he was drunk, because it hurt her and could've possibly ruined her relationship (ofc if it did the blame wouldn't be on Ray, because he didn't lie about the things she said about her girlfriend). And as she was talking, she mentioned that she and Boston were always the third wheel, which makes me think about all the times Boston talked to Ray about how he needed to stop his bullshit and be real about how much he wanted Mew to stay away from Top - and he was so right about that, because what was the thing Ray did when Mew was heartbroken? He asked Mew for a chance.

For my last point, I just want people to try and be in the friend's place for a second. In everyone's place actually (except for Ray's). Would you be a pantheon of peace and calm when your friend keeps on doing things that hurt you? The series did a great job at showing how Ray's traumas hurt him, but it also did a great job at showing how Ray's substance abuse hurts everyone around him.

As I said, when you are close to someone who has an addiction, you want to help them because you know that it's hard, but at some point, you get tired because, in the end, you are putting your own mental and emotional health in line for someone else. Most of the time, the person doesn't accept your help. It's not that they don't know they are addicted (sometimes that's the case tho, not trying to generalize, but I'm using my personal example and Ray for this), is that they don't want to assume it, they honestly want to believe they are in control.

Ray doesn't have the best support friendship, but in the end, not a single one of his friends is well enough to help him out, not even Sand. Not one of them has the capacity to help him, so I think it's unfair to place them as awful friends for not helping Ray out every time. Again, you can't help someone who does not accept help, but that also doesn't mean that they should just leave him to go crazy and drink like a madman, snort like his nose is made of steel. That's not it. But I think we should stop minimizing his acts just because of his mental issues and substance abuse. As someone who has mental issues in a way that I had similar thoughts to Ray, it does not mean that I'm allowed to treat others badly because of it. And I know people ain't trying to place Ray (only) as a victim, but I feel like the bar is raised high for everyone that isn't Ray, just because of his traumas and addiction -- let me also remind some of yall, that Top snorts too, he looks like he may have or may have had an addiction to his sleeping pills, his house caught fire and his parents weren't there to help him because his parents don't give a shit about him. From what we know the thing that sets him apart from Ray is that his mother didn't die in a very traumatic way, but still, I don't see anyone trying to justify his wrongings by using his traumas (as it should be).

This whole essay is just to say that no one is fully right here. We have people messing up and people trying to better themselves. Right now, Mew and Ray are messing up, but I'm sure at some point they will get better, and hopefully Ray will get the help that he needs because now he is looking for the help that he wants (aka Sand and Mew).

#only friends #only friends the series #ofts analysis #ofts #only friends spoilers #only friends analysis #only friends ray #only friends mew #gmmtv bl #yeah khao's eyes are a sea of happiness #but khao isn't ray and ray isn't khao #time to separate the 2 #sand deserves better #ray deserves help #the help that he needs not the help he wants

[broodsys]

got tagged by @plisuu, thank you again! this'll be fun >)

tagging hmmm lemme see... @jazzmckay | @streganicha | @jellydishes but as ever no pressure uwu also trying to not tag Everyone i know so other ppl can continue to pass it around lmao

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

55!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

299,998. okay that's amusing i'm glad i looked. i'm two words away from 300k lmfao

3. What fandoms do you write for?

99% dai, with a tinyyy bit of da2. also one fic (that has totally fucked up my stats page bc it's a much more popular fandom) for pkmn: sun and moon (anime) and one for cagaster of an insect cage (anime). my old deleted ao3 had more fandoms, the other big ones being les mis (movie) and inception

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

we're the last to know (pkmn sumo, little cutesy ash/kiawe thing)

sleep just a little longer (solavellan somno smut lmao)

the hidden mage (fenders during dai timeline)

domitable (solavellan smut with solas domming for once)

a matter of taste (solavellan smut where solas is encouraged to figure out his own interests)

5. Do you respond to comments?

yes! sometimes it takes me a bit but i always reply. if it's a long/thoughtful/specific comment i also try to address a bit of what the commenter brings up :')

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

oh that's maybe a day to die for sure. wrote that back in my first dai hyperfix period after it had come out, this is a bad end au where they get stuck in the magic future

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

my longing series comes to mind. nessa lavellan/solas. it was also my first venture back into seriously writing fic and my first dai fic ever since i got back into my hyperfix :')

8. Do you get hate on fics?

none yet, luckily

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

lmao yes i write so much smut. um... what kind indeed? i'll just say it's very character-driven - not always stuff i'm personally interested in, but hey, if it works for them, good. i shall write the thing. i write a lot of different kinks

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

none i can think of... although i do have an outline for a dragon age characters in the star trek universe fic lmao

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge, but i don't go looking, either

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

one, yes!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no. considered it at times, but it seems kinda awkward

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

all time....? well i'll say that the ship i've sailed the longest has been fenders fr

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

the fucking. cagaster of an insect cage one. god. i keep thinking about it and fanfic is nonexistent so i feel extra compelled to finish my fic for them but i just have like 0 interest. da took my entire brain over (again)

16. What are your writing strengths?

hmm... your boy can sure write some character introspection!!! honestly tho, one of the things i'm proudest about in my writing is my ability to match the tone to the fic or character pov

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

action scenes, especially fight scenes :x i can do them but they take soooo much longer than anything else and it's an uphill battle (heh) the whole way

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

while i wouldn't write another real language in fic, if it's a fan language (like project elvhen) then i sometimes include short pieces if they're different from what would normally be spoken. so like... arlathan era fic, no, i'm not going to include stuff from project elvhen bc everyone's speaking elvhen all the time. but if it's during dai era or smth and they're speaking common with the occasional elvhen word/phrase thrown in, then i'd add the word/phrase and define it at the bottom

19. First fandom you wrote for?

da2!

20. Favorite fic you've written?

that's gotta be from my bigfic series, antiquation :') specifically i think part 5, paradigm shift, is my favorite of the whole series uwu

template under the cut!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

3. What fandoms do you write for?

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

5. Do you respond to comments?

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

8. Do you get hate on fics?

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

16. What are your writing strengths?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

19. First fandom you wrote for?

20. Favorite fic you've written?

#tag meme

[tomodachi-z]

A different take on their relationships

So I was scrolling through the genshin thread and soon came to a realization that most of the relationship Hc’s were pretty fluff based, which got me thinking - was that really all there was?  Even if Genshin was a heartfelt game i couldnt really believe that all of them would be pure husband material - which sort of spiraled into this.

- This is purely my take on how some of the Genshin boys would approach relationships, its just some random thoughts though so take it as you will.

Characters: Zhongli, Diluc, Kaeya, Childe

Tw: angst, abuse, toxic relationships, mentions of death, just overall scummy behavior.

Slight NSFW

Minors DNI

Zhongli

Honestly, out of the whole lot of them i think he’d be the most civil. Apart from his bad traits that is.

First of all I dont believe Zhongli would actively pursue a relationship, however he would be open to it, though the chances of it being a special “love at first sight” is practically zero. Hes lived thousands of years and seen humanity evolve as a whole, hes met millions of people over the years and peoples faces really arent that different, they just blur together at this point. So if we were to go by that logic, his love interest would have to be someone he interacts with on a day to day basis - or at the very least weekly.

If he was starting to develop an attachment to you, I believe he would also be fairly upfront about it, asking you out and courting you wouldn't be anything new, he’s had lovers before after all.

But this is where it starts to get a bit off-putting. Even if your relationship is sailing along fine, he’d still compare it to the others he’s had. Your taste in clothing, your choice of books, how you style your hair. Every now and again he’d utter something like “Ah ___ used to style their hair like that.” Or “Your eyes are so familiar, just like ___...” in which case the blank space is a previous lovers name. Not that he’d divulge that to you. Even if you ask him about the people he keeps mentioning he’d brush you off and change the subject. Though sometimes he forgets himself and calls you by a different name.

He would also never tell you he’s a God. And you wouldn’t find out either.

 Hes hidden it from the whole of Liyue, why would you be any different? His role as Archon was over anyway so there would be no point to it.

So you would live your life never finding out about him, not ever truly reaching his heart, because his heart is already filled to the brim with memories, and whatever little space you occupy there would also fade along with your passing. You would have no children, for I truly believe that Zhongli just would not want children, his one and only child would remain Liyue, and your name would be uttered in passing, when he confuses his next lover with you.

Happy Ending?

Zhongli would still love you

He would cherish and comfort you

But there was nothing in this world more lonely than immortality.

He would love again but it would only repeat the cycle unless he truly comes to terms with himself.

It would take a lot of time, perhaps even an eternity, but I believe that his past relationships would actually help him realize something.

That even though humans were much the same he loved you all individually.

At the end of time he would recount each one of your names, in the hopes that you would take him with you, so that he could finally apologize.

Diluc

I honestly believe he just does not want a relationship. Not now anyway, not when hes 20+ years old. So the thought of him forming a crrush on you or any sort of real romantic attachment would also be pretty slim. He’d be your friend, sure, your best friend even, but when it comes to being your boyfriend? It wouldn’t be what you think it is.

If he does form a relationship with you its because you confessed, and you asked him whether or not he was willing to give it a go, and considering you already know each other so well he didn't really see a reason why not. Though it wasn't out of love that he’d agree.

I do believe that he’d still be a gentleman, he would send you flowers, and he would take you on walks, he would also give you gifts, but all of those were just out of courtesy. He was taught to behave like a gentleman, and so he would.

He would never be available, always working, always busy, never in a good mood. “Don't bother me, I'm busy.” He’d coldly order. And if you tried to do something nice to him like cook him a meal whilst he’s working he’d just tell you not to bother, the butler can make it better than you so why even try.

You would be a hitch in his schedule, an added task every day, another time consuming detail he had to take into consideration. But considering he was the one who agreed to the whole idea, he would simply have to deal with it.

As for intimacy, it would be rare. He’d kiss you just because he was curious how it would feel, he’d fuck you just because you asked him to, and sure he might have enjoyed it, you even said you enjoyed it, but it wouldn't become a regular thing between you two. He would come home exhausted, sore and half asleep, so on most days you can expect him to share simple words of greeting before he falls asleep.

If you got tired of it he would just let you go, both of you could see it wasn't working, so why bother try to fix it. You deserve better than him, a man that would love and cherish you, but right now, he simply cannot.

Those are your parting words, he wishes you luck and thanks you for your patience, whether or not you remain friends after that is really up to you.

Happy Ending?

What Diluc needs more than anyone else is time

Time to really heal

Time to forgive himself

Time to start loving the world again.

And I believe he would learn to do those things if time was given.

He would one day realize that his heart yearned for something other than day to day work, something that you tried to show him long ago.

He would fall in love eventually, perhaps not with you, but he would finally open his heart.

He would love earnestly and faithfully till the end of his days.

Kaeya

He’s well known as a flirt in Mondstat, he’s slept with people around town and chances are that’s how he first met you. Whether you slept with him or rejected him didn’t matter, what he was after was your looks after all.

He’d seduce you with praise and compliments, he’d lavish you with gifts and roses, as long as you give him something in return that is.

If you didn’t it wouldn’t really bother him much, he’d simply abandon the thought of you and turn his eyes on another pretty face, if you ever ask him about why he suddenly stopped he’d respond with “I don’t like wasting my time sweetheart.”

However if you give in to his seductions I believe he would eventually start enveloping the idea about being your boyfriend, the idea of you being his and him being yours was tempting for sure. It would take a while but he would also stop flirting so shamelessly with other people, he no longer saw a reason for it now that you were his after all.

But he would never truly yield his heart to you, always keeping secrets, always masking his emotions with sly words. I don’t think he’d ever really open up about his past or about the depths of his mind. But he would love you, and he would protect you, he would cherish you the only way he knew how, by keeping you in the dark, lest you regret your decision in loving him.

Happy ending?

His habits would change as he grows older

They would truly shift when he sees his first child in your arms.

He would cry, not even knowing why

He would fall so helplessly in love with the thought of a happy future and he would be terrified by it

But if you stay by his side, if you make him believe he can have a happy life and a future with you

He would give you the world, if only you make him believe those words.

Childe

Honestly the worst out of all of them.

Now, I firmly believe that he also would not pursue a romantic relationship if given a choice, but his heart is fickle and easily swayed by his own emotions, so when he sees you pop up every now and again he’d undoubtedly would act on his feelings.

He’d charm you, wine and dine you and treat you like a princess if you so wished. He would make sure you had everything you had ever wanted, he’d make promises of love and marriage, but after he gets what he wants, he would leave you.

Just like that, without a word, without a note, nothing. So when you see him after months of confusion, guilt and regret you would ask him why he had left, and all he would say is “What else did you expect?” He’s a Fatui after all, and he has no time for thoughts of tomorrow or promises for the future. His eyes would hold no warmth as he noted that the interaction was rather fair in his eyes, he had treated you like a princess after all.

He has no time to think of anyone else but his family and his duty to Tsaritsa, you were just a toy he liked playing with for a while till you got boring, now move before he breaks you.

Happy Ending?

Now I truly believe that there is someone out there for everyone

Even for someone like Childe

But that someone would have to be exceptional - someone with a commanding sense of self respect, someone with purpose and belief, someone with a fate of their own.

They wouldn't have to be a fighter or even an adventurer, but they would have to be a force of their own to be able to show Childe what kind of life he was truly living.

He knew he was in hell, but meeting someone like that would make it all the more apparent

But if they reached out their hand to him, if they gave him a chance.

He believed he would see a world in colors he never knew existed.

And he would love truly and openly, he would shed his heart to them and only them.

#genshin impact #genshin imagines #childe #diluc #zhongli #kaeya #kaeya x you #zhongli x you #childe x you #diluc x you #genshin angst #tw

[thechangeling]

Shame

Kit reflects on his life and his sexual orientation. I guess this is kind of a character study peice but also partly headcanon.

Ok so massive trigger warnings for internalized homophobia and biphobia. Also a 2012 definition and understanding of bisexuality and gender sk sorry about that but I wanted to be accurate to the time period.

I still have a lot of internalized homophobia even in the year of our lord 2021 so I wanted to work through it in my writing I guess.

"I think you're only fighting for the sake of fighting. Because it's the only state in which you can function. The only way to stop that voice in your head from driving you insane. The one telling you that you should be ashamed of yourself for having loved him."

- Black Sails: Season 2 Episide 5

Kit could remember the first time he felt it as clear as day. The first time he felt that twinge at the pit of his stomach after being reprimanded for talking about his crush on a boy. The inward cringe that followed. That disgust others showed him, reflected back onto himself.

Self loathing became as easy as breathing at such a young age.

He could distinctly remember being in mundane first grade and being asked by a loud girl with light blond hair and crystal blue eyes who he had a crush on. Kit had seen no reason to lie at the time. He had told the girl that he had two crushes. One on a girl in their class who was shy and asocial (he had always had a thing for nerds apparently) with her jet black hair that was always full of hello kitty clips, and another on a boy in a different class who was blond like him with a round face and a giant friendly smile that Kit loved to stare at.

At the time he had no real sense of the seriousness of what he was saying. No sense that he was breaking an unspoken rule in the eyes of his classmates. But Kit would never forget the look on the girls face. The eyes that narrowed in distain, the curled lip and the way her nose crinkled in disgust as she she said, "boys arent supposed to have crushes on boys. That's gross." And the cackling laughter of his classmates surrounding him.

And the feeling that followed, the one that would become as familiar and easy as breathing.

Shame.

That pinch in his gut and the way his blood went cold like someone had just injected him with antifreeze. And then the sinking in his chest accompanied by the realization that he had done something terrible. Kit realized that day that he could never make that same mistake again. So after that day he vowed never to talk about his interest in boys ever again.

The first time he heard the word gay he was eight and it was as an insult. It wasn't directed at him but it still felt like it was. He learned to make the connection between the word and disgust and contempt. But as he grew older he became relieved, because he knew he liked girls. He had always thought they were pretty with their soft skin and nice smelling hair. This meant he wasn't gay so he was safe. He convinced himself that he had just been confused before when he was younger.

So he grew up pushing those feelings to the side and telling himself convincing lies over and over until he finally believed it, and Johnny Rook made it easy. Kit was often so preoccupied with running cons and keeping a low profile that he didn't have much time for self reflection. When he found his gaze wandering, he told himself he was just being curious or suspicious or just appreciating an attractive guy from a purely aesthetic point of view and there was absolutely nothing else to it. He kissed pretty girls whenever he had the chance and enjoyed it and relished in the fact that this meant he was safe.

From an outside perspective it may have looked like Kit Herondale was losing control of the situation.

Maybe they were right.

Tiberius Nero Blackthorn felt like a giant fuck you from the universe for believing that he could ever escape this. Or maybe he was a test. But whatever Ty was, it was a little hard to care when he was animatedly explaining the reproductive cycle of a starfish and beaming at Kit with his rare carefree smile that made Kit feel like he was drowning in bliss.

And despite everything. Despite Kit's fear, it made him want to smile too. The urge to reach out and touch Ty was like a burning in his veins, accompanied by the foolish belief that if Kit could just run his fingers through Ty's matted black hair or press his forehead against his, then everything would be alright.

Kit wasn't sure if he should be grateful or furious.

"How beautiful" had been his first thought upon seeing him. Slipping out of some deep treacherous part of him before he could stop it. Followed of course by the shame.

But he wasn't gay. It didn't matter that Ty was beautiful and captivating and made him feel like he was strong enough to fight the gods themselves given the challenge. It didn't mean anything. He was just confused.

And when Julian made a comment about Herondales having a certain type when he called Clary hot, he ignored the twisting of his insides and the painful fact that his thoughts were drifting off into forbidden territory. He pretended that he was what Julian said he was. What he was supposed to be.

When Livvy had asked him to kiss her it felt like a lifeline. A way to distract himself from all the chaos in his life as well as a way to take his mind off of Ty. A pretty girl was giving him something to cling onto, if only for a moment. He still paused to look upwards. An automatic reflex. Almost as if he was a magnet trying to snap back into it's original place.

Livvy kissed him and although it was nice and sweet, he still felt nothing. Only longing for something else.

Then he learned about Kieran and how he was basically Mark's ex boyfriend. He had been sure that Mark was dating Emma so he asked Livvy about it. She had given him a confused look and just said that Mark was bisexual.

Bisexual.

He had heard the word before, mostly to describe celebrities who wanted to make a name for themselves in the tabloids. Kit had always quickly dismissed it before he could allow himself to actually ponder the idea. It was safer to assume it wasn't actually real, because if it wasn't real then it couldn't be him. He wouldn't have to face up to the fact that an attraction to men and women sounded uncomfortably accurate and familiar.

Bisexual. It gnawed at him in his sleep. Poking at his insides and refusing to let him forget it. And so Kit clued his eyes shut and squirmed his way out if it. He thought of the way Ty's smoke coloured eyes seemed to bore into Kit's soul. The sharp angles of his cheekbones and curve of his cupid's bow. Kit thought of the way Ty had asked if he could give Kit a permanent rune and when Kit had answered sarcasticly, Ty's crestfallen expression had horrified him to the point where Kit had practically begged Ty to do it.

Anything to get that look off Ty's face. But it wasn't like that he reminded himself. It wasn't love. It wasn't love.

Jesus. Love. Just the idea of the word sent Kit into a blind panic. And there was that old familiar feeling curling around his gut. That same disgust. That shame.

Not towards Ty. No of course not. He could never feel that way about Ty, or Mark or Kieran or Helen or Aline or anyone else because they didn't deserve it.

But he did. He always did.

When Livvy was killed, Kit almost felt a sense of relief because at least now he had something else to focus on, something g else to worry about. If he was focused on protecting Ty from his own worst instincts then he wouldn't have time to get list I'm thoughts he shouldn't be having.

He knew this made him a selfish horrible person. Kit accepted it.

Kit knew this plan of Ty's was a reckless and horrible idea but he just couldn't stand to see him in pain. He also couldn't bare the thought if what might happen if he refused to help Ty. Also he was helpless in the face of Ty's pleading gaze. Deep down Kit knew that he would probably do anything for him.

He would break himself trying to put Ty back together.

It wasn't until Ty actually attempted the spell that Kit finally cracked. He couldn't let Ty go through with this. He couldn't risk it.

Why? Something inside of him pondered.

Why?

Because Kit was going to die if something happened to Ty. The spell was going to go bad and Ty was going to get hurt or killed and Kit's heart was going to be brutally ripped from his chest and it was going to be unbearable.

Because-

"I love you Ty," he breathed, hating himself instantly. "I love you."

Ty didn't respond. He didn't react, didnt even flinch. Just stared blankly at Kit.

Shame.

It was going to ruin him. It was going to swallow him whole.

Yikes that was kinda all over the place sorry.

I'm basically tagging all if my mutuals at this point. Let me know if you want me to stop tagging you. @scrat-is-god @playwithravenclaw @lavender-scented-rat @knifescythe @ti-bae-rius @irene-blacxthorn @dianasarrow @doitforthecarstairs @jazzkaurtheglorious @waterlillies @zfoxdraws @julieandthefandoms @older-brother-kit @anxiousbookenthusiast @ilikebooks8 @nott-the-best @stxr-thxif @magnus-the-fabulous-entp-bane @autumnangel20 @hufflepuffyskam

Also let me know if you want to be added!

#tsc #tda #the dark artifices #kit x ty #kit herondale #twp #ty blackthorn #tw internalized homophobia #tw internalized biphobia

[giuliafc]

Ladybug's Catalyst - Ladynoir July/July Snippet day 1 (Catalyst/Older)

Read it on Ao3 || Read it on FFN

As much as Ladybug had always tried to deny it, in the 4 years they had fought Hawkmoth and his akumas, the only time that Ladybug could focus so sharply and defeat an akuma in just seconds like today, were always when he had died for her. He was her rock, her support, and most importantly, he was her catalyst.

Wordcount: 999 words

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Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by (c) Thomas Astruc, TS1 Bouygues, Disney Channel, Zagtoon, Toei Animation. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Written for the "Snippet July" challenge of the Miraculous Fanworks @miraculousfanworks Discord server. Day 1 — Catalyst. Also, tried to age it up and make it older, so it would fit prompt 1 for the Ladynoir July @ladynoirjuly but… I don't know if I achieved that one. Let me know what you think!

Ladybug screamed. Again. Once again, he had taken the hit for her. Once again, he had died in front of her very eyes. Once again, she could only watch helplessly as he fell into the river of boiling lava.

"You will get me back, M'lady," he had said, his lips still curled into a smile as his body was wrapped by the fire and disappeared. Ladybug just screamed. The akuma in the distance laughing without a sound of regret.

How dare it laugh? How. Fucking. Dare. It. Laugh? LAUGH? As her chaton was burned away by lava?

Ladybug closed her eyes, clenching her fists as she pursed her trembling lips. Her small frame shook with the biggest adrenaline rush she had ever experienced.

The akuma laughed again. Ladybug's eyes opened wide, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her fists shook at her sides, and a growing sense of oppression built into her chest. Without waiting another second, she turned on her heel, killer bluebell eyes glaring at Hawkmoth's latest victim.

"Your stupid partner has perished, Ladybug," said the villain with a smirk. "But don't you worry. No need to cry. You will join him very soon!"

A deep growl erupted from her lungs. "You won't insult Chat Noir, or it will be the last thing you do!" She didn't care any more whether the akuma was a victim or not. She had lost her ethicality and her feelings for the 'poor unfortunate souls that got abused by Hawkmoth' the second his partner had been burned alive. She lost all restraints, all self induced obstacles... and plunged forward.

***

Rena Rouge stared at the scene unfolding in front of her. A devilish looking Ladybug attacked the akuma like a single-handed storm of fighters. In less than three minutes, she was holding it by its neck, breaking the akumatised object and freeing the butterfly.

"I hope someone took a video of this and has sent it to the Ladyblog," she whispered to Carapace. "I can't believe that the one time Ladybug goes berserk, I can't film it."

"Remind me to never make Ladybug angry, dude," whispered Carapace back.

As the polka dotted heroine released her Miraculous Cure and the flock of little ladybugs flew around, Ladybug's eyes were trained to the spot her partner had fallen from. The second he reappeared, she ran. She ran to him as if nothing else mattered in the whole world. Pouncing on him, they fell to the ground in a blur of red and black while she hugged him with big tears streaming from her eyes.

"NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!" she roared and Rena smiled. Carapace smiled. Chat Noir beamed under the orange rays of the setting sun. From their position, they couldn't hear what he said, but it mustn't have been the answer she was looking for, because she started hitting his chest like a drum. "I SAID NEVER! NEVER EVER DO IT AGAIN CHATON! I CAN'T KEEP LOSING YOU! I CAN'T!"

Rena smiled as she glanced quickly at her communicator, connected to the Internet. She could see a video being posted of the fight to the Ladyblog just now, and immediately the comments started to flow. She sighed, hoping that one day her best friend would realise just how much she loved the black clad superhero. He wasn't just her partner as Marinette thought, and fights like this demonstrated it clearly. He was her rock, her support, and most importantly, he was her catalyst.

Four years had gone by, both Ladybug and Chat Noir had faced thousands of akumas and had risked death on hundreds of occasions. The only time that Ladybug could focus so sharply and defeat an akuma in just seconds like today, were always when he had died for her. No friendship, no simple partnership could create a bond so strong. Rena couldn't really put a finger on when it had happened, she had seen Ladybug's reactions to her partner's death becoming stronger and stronger as time went by. But as of now, Ladybug was the only person, in the universe, thought Rena, who would still be in denial and fail to admit that she loved Chat Noir.

He was only her partner—my foot, thought Rena. Marinette loved him, and one day. One day Rena would prove it to her. One day, her ship would sail.

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

Author's Note:

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

Hi! *waves* Yes, I'm back. Still alive. Still attempting to write. I don't know if I will be able to find inspiration for all the July prompts, but this one tickled my imagination so I decided to give it a go, so here it is. Hope you'll like it.

I'll be back soon, hopefully tomorrow if inspiration will strike again! Do you think this could count for the prompt "older" for LadyNoir July? What did you think of it? Please let me know, as you're aware, your comments are what pushes me to continue writing. I haven't forgotten my other stories, and I also haven't forgotten the promise I made to you all back in February so… keep following! ;)

#miraculous les aventures de ladybug et chat noir #miraculous ladybug #miraculous #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #miraculous ladynoir #tales of ladybug and cat noir #ladybug x chat noir #ladynoir #ladybug #tall vampire lady #cat noir #miraculous cat noir #miraculous chat noir #miraculous fanfiction #ml fanfiction ml fanworks #miraculous fanworks #snippet july #ladynoirjuly2021

[be-not-afeared]

Black Sails fic recs

Working titles: 12 fics for christmas? 12 days of ficmas? 12 fics none of which actually have anything to do with christmas?

OKAY, so I love nothing more than a fic rec post, and I’ve seen a few Black Sails rec posts floating around but they mostly seem to be a couple of years old and they all recommend a similar bunch of fics (and deservedly so! they are all amazing!). But I thought I would make one to highlight some newer or less shouted-about fics, because I may have only been here for a couple of months but jfc there is so much talent in this fandom and more of it deserves to be hyped. 

So, here are 12 of my favourite fics for the 12 days of christmas! (i.e. an excuse to put an arbitrary number cap on the list or we’d be here all day)

The majority of these are Silver/Flint and the ones that aren’t still all feature Silver prominently because that boy owns my soul, sorry for who I am as a person.

we should rip it straight out by minormendings

45K (Silver/Madi, Silver/Flint, Flint/Thomas)

Madi has always wondered if Silver understands what is between him and Flint as well as she. To her, it has always been obvious, from the way the two of them had fit together, had worried about each other, had acted as one. She had tried to bring it up with Silver back when they were together. But Silver had shaken her off, too enmired in the idea that he or Flint would prove each other’s downfall. Or perhaps just unwilling to open his eyes to the fact that he had loved Flint.

It was, unfortunately for the both of them, even more obvious after the thing between them had broken. Just as Silver had thrown away the war out of love for her, Flint had let Silver take away the war rather than kill him.

God. What a group the three of them were, showing love by betrayal.

Post-canon. Madi and Flint find their way back to Silver.

This fic diverges from canon right at the end of the 4x10; Silver has Flint held in a cell in Port Royal and Thomas delivered to him rather than taking him straight to the plantation. It is a BEAUTIFUL character study of how Flint and Madi could both come to forgive Silver, and has a great FlintMadi dynamic too. It also centres Madi’s struggle between wanting to provide for her people and wanting to experience the freedom of piracy, and fleshes out Julius’ character in a way the show never did. 

we can lose and call it living by I_wouldnt_be_one_of_them

31K (Silver/Flint/Thomas, Silver/Flint, Flint/Thomas)

It's been twelve years since everything fell apart, and John Silver is settled in New England. He has a nice house and a job he likes, and he's gotten used to the loneliness. It's a good life, he thinks, but of course that's cast into doubt when James Flint and Thomas Hamilton show up to find closure and, apparently, to see whether he's happy.

This is an inverse of the ‘silver arrives on flint and thomas’ doorstep’ trope and has Flint and Thomas instead being the ones to interrupt Silver, who is living a sad and lonely existence post-series. I love the ThomasSilver dynamic here. And this Silver feels so true to canon he makes me want to WEEP.

Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more by Craftnarok

21K (Silver/Flint)

In the year 1725, or thereabouts, John Silver finds himself driven by a storm into an inconsequential little port town, barely a speck on any civilised map. Returned to the life of a drifter, tired and rough around the edges, he is resigned to waiting for the weather to pass before he can sail on again to the next town, and the next, and the next. That is until he overhears a conversation in the inn about a local fisherman, one Captain Barlow, and his tall tales of tempests and becalmings, devils and sharks, and Silver finds a new future opening up to him, haunted by the spectres of his past.

All of Craftnarok’s fics are amazing but I am particularly drawn to this one; it’s set 10 years post-series and is a delightfully angsty exploration of how Flint and Silver could find their way back to each other in a scenario in which Thomas wasn’t at the plantation. It doesn’t let Silver off easy and I love that.

armed with the past and the will by whimsicalimages

3K (Silver/Madi, Madi & Julius)

The language of winning and losing, this language that men favor – Madi can speak this language, though she disagrees with its precepts. Success takes different forms, and failing once does not mean failing forever. It does not even mean failing the next time.

Post-series, Julius teaches Madi how to fight. This fic is BEAUTIFUL - give me anything that centres Madi post-canon - and it explores Madi’s relationship with both Julius and Silver so well in so few words. 

Always In Season by mycapeisplaid

60K (Silver/Flint, past Flint/Thomas, past Silver/Madi)

Towering sand dunes, crystal-clear water, miles of forest, vineyards, orchards, and very spotty cellular service -- John Silver finds himself in a part of the state he's never been before and decides to take on seasonal work. Meanwhile, back from his yearly wintering in Florida, James Flint thinks that perhaps he'll take on a new business venture, even though it means he might have to interact with people other than his two close friends. Their summer employment fosters a friendship that could become something more. Like construction season in Michigan, the two must navigate through their own obstacles in order to seek an alternative route toward happiness.

This is an AU and so much fun!! Silver finds himself in Michigan and takes on some seasonal work at Guthrie Dunes. The whole cast features and the setting just WORKS SO WELL. And this Flint feels brilliantly in character despite the difference in setting.

to make a life by gone_girl

53K (Max/Anne, Max & Silver)

“What am I going to do with your name?” Max asks, a little incredulous.

“Whatever you want,” the salesman says. “Didn’t you want something real?”

Max heard a story once about the importance of answering questions like that carefully. If something emerges from the forest and asks for your name, don’t give it up, the story went. Offer only what you know you can live without. She’s never heard a story that tells her what to do when something emerges from the forest and offers its name to you.

I literally only finished this this morning but holy shit this fic is amazing, it’s a Max-centric AU set in Missouri the early 00s and it’s all about found family and building community and platonic love and it has a brilliant SilverMadi dynamic. And there just aren’t enough fics out there that focus on Max & Silver!! 

the straight walk home by vowelinthug

73K (Silver/Flint)

Let me tell you a story, about a vaquero named Vasquez…

Obviously vowelinthug’s fics are recc’d all the time and rightly so as they are AMAZING, but one that I don’t see featured as often as the more prominent ones is this incredible Western!AU. It’s 73K guys!! It adapts the canon narrative into the Western setting SO well!! It has background Vane/Billy which I was not at all sure about going in but just WORKS!! Go read it.

The Truth about Eros by Aisalynn

21K (Silver/Flint, Silver/Madi, Flint/Thomas)

Silver understood one thing very well.

Being Fated did not mean you were safe.

It did not mean you were loved.

This one is hot off the press! I am not normally a fan of soulmate AUs but this is such an interesting take on the trope, and the world building fits around the polyamory theme of the show really effectively! And it is SO well written.

With Nothing on My Tongue by RosieTwiggs

13K (Silver/Flint, Silver/Madi)

"Silver thinks: Maybe God likes it when I fight with him.

He wonders now, whether he’s been playing into God’s plan all along. Because no matter how angry he gets, how defensive, how many “fuck you”s he flings to the heaven, isn’t it all just proof that he still believes God is there, despite it all?

Silver doesn’t know how to counter that.

Maybe he doesn’t want to anymore."

An incredibly well written (and angsty! read the tags!) Jewish!Silver character study. This one has really stayed with me.

Maybe in Another Life by samedifference61

31K (Silver/Flint/Madi, Flint/Madi, Silver/Flint, Silver/Madi)

At the rail of a ship James doesn’t command, they stand shoulder to shoulder.

“John still thinks you’re dead,” James states, because it’s something that needs to be said aloud before they continue.

With eyes unblinking toward the rolling sea, Madi says, “And he still thinks you should be dead.”

James’ lip curls in anger. The wounds of betrayal are too fresh for either to say anymore.

Canon-divergent from 4x09, this is a brilliant MadiFlint centric fic exploring their relationship post Silver’s betrayal, and how he could find his way back to them both whilst acknowledging the weight of his actions.

in a vault of starlight by whimsicalimages

7K (Silver/Madi/Flint/Thomas)

The distance between Nassau and Savannah can be measured as: six hundred and thirteen nautical miles, five thousand pounds’ worth of pearls, or four extraordinary lifetimes.

Alternatively: in the aftermath, Madi writes her own story.

There aren’t enough Madi centric fics out there! This one is a lovely extension of canon with a great MadiSilver dynamic in particular.

the aftershocks remain by pdameron

31K (Silver & Miranda, Silver/Flint)

For as long as he can remember, John Silver has been able to see ghosts. He has no trouble keeping this secret from Flint - until Charlestown. Until Miranda.

Again all of pdameron’s fics are brilliant but I loooove this SilverMiranda centric one, plus who doesn’t love a ghost!au.

#Black Sails #black sails fanfic #black sails fic recs #silverflint #silvermadi #john silver #james flint #12 days of ficmas #obviously this only scratches the surface of the many amazing fics in this fandom #i might do another one of these after christmas i just love making lists #enjoy!

[maria-scribbles]

glitter + crimson (let’s start a riot)//part one

“and that’s sailor, our resident mermaid, shell collector, surfer chick, and all-around ray of sunshine. she’s always down for a kegger at the boneyard so she can show off her dance moves; they’re not the best but she doesn’t let that stop her from getting down. her mom owns the surf shop on the beach, that’s how jj and i met her when we bought our first boards when we were ten. she’s been part of the crew ever since.” ~john b routledge

pogue sailor flynn just wants to have a great time with her friends this summer and try to ignore the fact that her flight-risk dad took off again to gamble his life (and her family's savings) away in atlantic city, leaving her with a mom who doesn't know how to cope. between surfing at the beach and cruising around on the hms pogue for hours, it's easy to keep her mind off her shitty home life. what isn't so easy though, is trying to deny her feelings for her best friend, jj.

summary: the pogues hit the beach for a day of sand, surf, and shells. sailor commandeers a hat, willingly participates in cardio, makes bank, and has a heart-to-heart with jj.

word count: 4k+ 

ship: jj maybank x oc (sailor flynn) 

warnings: mentions of abuse/neglect/parental abandonment, swearing, fluff, a lot of flirting 

a/n: hi there! i’ve had this little plot bunny in my head for a few weeks now and it wouldn’t leave me alone so here we are! this is the first piece of writing i’ve posted in a very long time so i apologize in advance if it’s terrible. i’m planning on this whole thing being at least eight to ten parts so get ready for the long haul! i actually split this into two parts cause my word count was insane and way too long for one post lmao. let me know what you guys think! title comes from “glitter & crimson” by all time low. also this is unbetaed, so i apologize for any mistakes.

another quick thing: i tried writing this with sailor as an unnamed or y/n reader but it just wasn’t the best. i adore fleshing out characters and i had so many good ideas for her backstory and personality that she kind of just wrote herself and i went with it. i hope you all enjoy reading about sailor as much as i enjoyed writing her!

~Masterlist~

part two | part three | part four | playlist

gif credit goes to @heapass​

part one: catching waves

The beach has always been special to Sailor; the soothing crash of waves against the shore, the warmth of sand under her feet, the comforting feeling of salt drying on her skin. It’s where her mother taught her to surf, where her father taught her to dive, where her friends taught her that family didn’t always mean having shared blood. It’s her home, her place, her safe haven. Nothing is more perfect than a day at the beach with the pogues, her board, and a bucket for shells. 

Today is shaping up to be one of those days. The weather’s balmy, the water’s clear, and most importantly, she hasn’t seen these many perfect shells in quite awhile. Sailor reaches out and grabs the delicate golden scotch bonnet from the ocean floor, inspecting it closely for any cracks or holes. When she finds none, she smiles and runs her fingers over its smooth surface, marveling at the way the sun’s rays filter through the water and make the entire shell shine brilliantly. Although she sells most of the shells she finds at her mom’s surf shop (or gifts them to her friends), this one’s going to be proudly displayed on the shelf in her room. 

She scans the sand for her next target before pushing off from the floor and heading to the surface where Kiara floats on her board, legs dangling in the water as she watches the rest of their group surf. 

“Kie, check this out! It’s a scotch bonnet!” She exclaims, placing the shell beside the half full bucket in front of her friend. Resting both arms on the board, she lets herself take a quick breather as the other girl gently picks up her treasure and turns it over in her hands. 

“Holy shit, how do you always find the good ones?” She asks, gently putting it into the bucket with the others as Sailor shrugs, tucking a wet strand of red hair behind her ear. 

“You guys always say I’m part mermaid, so...” Kiara rolls her eyes and splashes her friend, who just laughs. “Are you done now? We can’t let the guys have all the fun.” 

“Almost, there’s a gorgeous whelk down there that I have to have. Be right back!”

She dives before the dark haired girl can reply, swimming down twenty feet to where she spotted the shell. When she was younger, she used to find the pressure on her ears a bit painful but now she hardly notices, instead focusing on the muffled sound of the waves above. Down here it’s just her and the water: peaceful, quiet, and oh so beautiful, infinitely stretching out in front of her. It used to scare her, the vastness of the deep ocean, the secrets lurking in its depths, the unknown. Now, it brings her comfort. Inspiration. Hope.

She plucks the shell from the sand and heads back the the surface, where three more boards have joined Kiara’s. She swims straight under Pope’s, knowing he’s the most ticklish of the group, and runs the tip of the whelk along the sole of his foot. His yell is so loud she can hear it clear as day under the water and she laughs bubbles as his board wobbles before he topples over with a splash. The other three are still laughing as she surfaces beside her fallen friend and feigns shock.

“What happened? Did he touch a fish again?”

“Oh ha fucking ha. So funny.” Pope deadpans but he’s smiling as Sailor holds his board steady so he can climb back on. “I’m surprised you actually touched my foot, Miss Feet Are Disgusting.”

“First off, smelly, dirty feet are gross. And second, I didn’t,” She replies, pulling herself onto JJ’s board without warning and laughing as he nearly falls off just as Pope had. She sticks her tongue out at him as he shoots her a mock glare and shifts closer to he for balance, their knees knocking together.

“This did, here.” She holds the shell out to Pope, who inspects it like Kiara had done earlier and nods in approval before passing it off to John B.

“It’s...nice, right? It’s a good one?” He asks as he hands it over to Kiara. She meets Sailor’s eyes and shakes her head, mouthing ‘boys’ while carefully placing the whelk in the bucket.

“Seriously, JB-”

“Whoa, wait! I don’t get to see it?” JJ pouts, crossing his arms over his chest and Sailor fixes him with a flat look.

“I seem to remember that you, like a damn child, dropped and broke the last one I let you hold.”

John B laughs so hard he nearly falls off his board while Pope and Kiara glance at each other and hide matching snickers behind their hands. JJ has the decency to look embarrassed as he pleads with her and she tells herself that the slight flush creeping up the back of his neck is just from too much time in the sun, nothing more.

“Hey, I said I was sorry for that and I meant it! I swear I’ll be more careful, please, Sail?”

Trying her best to ignore the little thrill she feels at the sound of her nickname coming from his mouth, she relents with a sigh, “Fine, on one condition.”

He looks at her expectantly as she holds up one finger and points at the black hat turned backwards on his head.

“Gimme that, I can feel my scalp burning as we speak.”

“Holy shit, you’re such a fucking ginger,” He laughs but pulls the cap off anyway, running a hand through his blond hair before fixing it on her head properly, the bill facing forward and giving her eyes a much needed break from the bright summer sun. She only hopes her face feels hot as he lays one hand on her knee and holds the other out to Kiara, palm up. “Fork it over, Kie.”

Kiara hands it to him with a roll of her eyes and then fixes Sailor with a pointed look that the redhead pretends not to see; instead, she watches JJ carefully turn the shell over in his hand before holding it aloft, like Rafiki held Simba in The Lion King.

“Listen up, class- especially you,” He says, the hand resting against her leg pointing at John B, who looks affronted at being called out, much to the amusement of the rest of the group, “This here is a lightning whelk and yes, JB, as a matter of fact, it’s a great one. No holes, minimal damage, and defined markings. Ten out of ten would recommend.”

He passes the shell to Kiara with a satisfied grin as everyone sits in stunned silence, just bobbing up and down with the waves until Pope finally says, “Damn. Better watch out, Sailor! We’ve got a new shell expert in town.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. I’m not giving up the crown that easily.” As the others burst into laughter, she turns to JJ and pokes him in the side, asking, “Since when you know so much?”

The look he gives her is all mock offense, but his blue eyes are soft as he says, “I always listen when you talk, you know.”

His answer catches her so off-guard that she tries and fails to form a coherent reply as her face flushes before settling on giving him a sweet smile, which he returns with a playful tug on one of the tiny braids in her hair. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Kiara staring at them with a devious smirk on her face and she knows she’ll be hearing about this later.

“Enough shell talk- no offense, Sail,” John B says, steering his board toward the waves. “We’ve got surfing to do.”

Sailor waves her hand dismissively then reaches over and grabs the bucket from Kiara. “None taken, I’m just gonna drop these off at the shop real quick and I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll go with,” JJ says, popping up onto his knees and turning his board toward the shore. “After all,” He yells toward the rest of the pogues over his shoulder, “you guys need all the practice you can get!” He winks at Sailor and she laughs as she turns to face forward, pulling her legs onto the board and placing the bucket in her lap while the other three flip him off in perfect unison.

The two teenagers paddle toward the beach together and catch a small wave that shoots them straight to shore. JJ holds the board steady as she hops off and then touches his shoulder in thanks before they walk toward where Sailor’s own board is propped in the warm sand with their things. She puts the bucket down and kneels beside it, carefully digging through the haul to find the scotch bonnet.

“There you are, gorgeous.”

“I didn’t go anywhere, babe.”

She snorts at JJ’s quip but doesn’t give him the satisfaction of looking up from wrapping the shell in a small towel and placing it in her backpack (she does blush though, and hopes he doesn’t notice.). As she stands to pull on her shorts, the redhead can’t help but glance at the lightning whelk, sitting pretty in the sand where she put it while looking for the bonnet. It really is beautiful, a ten out of ten as JJ put it, and damn it, she just can’t let it go to some touron who won’t appreciate it. So before she can change her mind, she kneels again to wrap it in another towel and gently nestles it alongside the other shell.

“Chop chop, time’s a wastin.’“ He says, grabbing the bucket with one hand and holding the other out to her; she rolls her eyes but takes it anyway and lets him pull her to her feet, muttering, “Jesus, you’re impatient.”

“It’s all part of the charm. Come on, race ya!” After a quick squeeze to her hand, he drops it and takes off running toward the shop without warning, leaving Sailor scrambling to catch up as she yells, “If you break those shells you’re buying them, Maybank!”

The duo weaves through the crowd of tourons and natives alike, ignoring the dirty looks thrown their way as they run by, kicking sand up in their wake. Fifty feet ahead stands The Sandbar Surf Shop in all its salt-weathered, sun-bleached glory, all but two of the rental boards gone from the stand out front. Alison sits on a stool with one of them on her lap as she waxes it, the boom box resting on the floor beside her blasting The Beach Boys as usual. She looks up in surprise as Sailor bounds onto the deck and slaps her hand against the shop’s door a few seconds before JJ does, both teenagers out of breath.

“Sweet victory!” The redhead shouts, sending a quick wave toward Alison, who returns it with an amused smile and watches the blond roll his eyes, holding the shell bucket close to his chest like a football.

“Victory my ass! I saw you jump over that cooler and that’s cheating.”

“Oh, I cheated? Who gave himself a head start? Oh yeah, you!”

Alison returns the now waxed board to the rack and wipes her hands on a spare rag. “Sounds like you both cheated, so no one wins.” She says with a shrug, chuckling to herself as they both stutter excuses and follow the older redheaded girl into the shop, empty sans for a young boy browsing the display of shells.

“I’ll get your mom.” She says to Sailor before heading through the beaded curtain to the back room and she’s grateful. She doesn’t think she has the strength to go back there anymore.

“I was carrying extra weight,” JJ says, placing the bucket onto the old surfboard-turned-counter and then leaning his back against it, “so I think the head start was justified.”

Sailor props her chin in her hand and drums her fingers along the board’s worn surface, her eyebrow raised. “And I think my jump was justified considering I had some ground to make up from that head start so...”

“Agree to disagree.” They say together, sharing a quick smile before he picks a pair of heart shaped glasses from the stand and puts them on, looking at her over the neon pink frames as he asks in a high-pitched British accent, “What do you think, darling? Too much?”

“No, I think they’re quite dashing!” She bursts out laughing as he strikes a vogue pose, then spins and dramatically leans back against the counter. “Rock that pink.”

“Hell yeah, fuck gender norms!” He says loudly, both middle fingers raised toward the roof.

“In this house, we stan non-toxic masculinity-” she starts, but she’s interrupted by a stern voice from behind the counter that says, “If you’re not going to buy those, put ‘em back, kid.”

Sailor’s mother sweeps into view and stares pointedly at JJ, who hastily stands up straight and returns the glasses to their place on the display as Alison silently heads back outside, shooting both teens a small, awkward smile.

“Sorry, Mrs. Flynn.”

Sailor wants to tell him there’s nothing to apologize for, that he did nothing wrong, but she knows he already knows that, so instead she just scoots a little closer and presses her hip against his. His hand moves to rest on her lower back in thanks and her whole body feels the sparks from his touch.

“I-I found some good ones today, Mom.” She says, pulling shells from the bucket one by one and lining them up on the counter. “A few coquinas, some scallops, a whelk or two...”

She trails off when Carmen doesn’t respond and looks down at her hands, twisting her fingers together anxiously as her mother inspects each shell. her face blank. JJ’s thumb starts to run tiny circles on her back and she concentrates on the feel of his ring, warm and soothing against her bare skin, instead of the fact that her mother hasn’t even glanced her way yet. She hasn’t looked her in the eye in almost three months.

The silence is thick in the air until Carmen finishes her evaluation and gives a small nod in her daughter’s direction. “Good job.” She says, heading to the register and pulling out some cash before counting out five twenties and holding them out to Sailor, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere over the teenager’s shoulder. She swallows thickly and takes the money with a near inaudible thank you, slipping it into her back pocket before grabbing the now empty bucket and nudging JJ toward the door with her hip.

As she’s about to cross the threshold she pauses with one hand on the door frame and turns back, asking, “Hey, Mom? Are...are you gonna come home tonight?”

Carmen’s brown eyes only meet her green ones for a split second before she looks away to fiddle with the register and Sailor can’t help feeling the dull stab of disappointment as she says, “Oh, um, I don’t think so. I’m pretty busy here with, uh, inventory, bookkeeping...”

(That stab used to be sharp as a knife, cutting her to the bone, but she’s almost gotten used to the pain.)

“Oh, right. Just...text me if you do, okay?” She takes one last look at her mother, bathed in the cool shadows of the shop that’s tearing her apart before turning and stepping back into the bright sunlight without another word, her throat tight. She’s not sure Carmen was even listening anymore.

“See ya later, brat.” Alison calls to her as she lets the screen door swing shut behind her with a slight bang. The older girl may not be related to her by blood but she’s most definitely Sailor’s honorary big sister, having babysat her for years in addition to working at the shop, so she waves to her with a small smile and a “bye, ho” before joining JJ on the beach.

The duo slowly starts walking along the water together, a stark contrast from their earlier mad dash and Sailor’s mind races with a million thoughts, most of them her hating herself for foolishly putting a scrap of faith in her mom once again.

“Whoa, you okay? That bucket’s not going anywhere, promise.” He says, pulling them to a stop with a gentle tug on her elbow and reaching down to take it from her clenched hand. She doesn’t even realize she was holding it that hard until she sees the little half moons pressed into her palm from her nails and she sighs, rubbing them away with her thumb.

Opening up has always been something Sailor struggles with, even with a friend group as close as the pogues. She’s the one who’s all sunshine and good vibes, the one everyone goes to for cheering up, the one that’s always...happy. She’s the friend who listens, the open ear, the trusted confidante. She knows all her friends struggles: John B’s fear of being abandoned that often keeps him up at night, Kiara’s terrible guilt over leaving her friends behind during her kook year, Pope’s feeling of drowning under his dad’s impossible expectations, JJ’s abusive household that has him convinced he’s not worthy of love. Every secret she holds close to her heart, guarding them with impenetrable walls that no one can break through.

The walls protecting her own secrets, though? They may be strong around the others but they crumble like sand when she’s alone with the boy standing beside her, his hand still holding her elbow as he starts drawing circles on her skin once again. Talking to JJ has always come easy to her, almost infuriatingly so, and she has no qualms about calling him her best friend. While the other pogues know she’s been having some problems at home with her flight-risk dad and indifferent mom, none of them know almost the full story like he does, just as none of them know exactly how horrible his father really is.

(She knows. She’s seen the aftermath far too often and has been there each time, cleaning cuts, soothing bruises, holding him in her arms and never wanting to let him go.)

“I just...don’t know what to do anymore.” She can feel him watching her as she talks and she avoids his gaze like her mother avoided hers, instead staring out at the ocean. In the distance, she sees one of their friends -Kiara, she thinks- drop in on a wave while the other two look on a little further away. “She won’t even look at me and I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Hey, it’s not you, got it? God, you’re...perfect, Sail.” JJ says softly, so soft that the crashing surf nearly drowns the sound of his voice as the water washes over their bare feet. Sailor curses the fact that she blushes so easily because her whole face is on fire at his words, and she’s so distracted that she almost misses what he says next.

“Your mom’s always, uh, weird when your dad dips. It’ll be better when he comes back.”

Her heart clenches in her chest. If only it were that simple. She turns to face him and meets his eyes, blue as the ocean, open and honest, and sends him a smile that lacks its usual brightness. “I think you might be right, J. For once.”

His thumb stills on the crook of her elbow and she knows he knows she’s not telling him everything. She feels like she should say something, anything- apologize, explain herself, just tell him the damn truth- but before she can even open her mouth he says, “Listen, I get it.”

She can feel the hand on her arm start to slip away and she grabs it between both of hers, her voice tight as she says, “No, you listen. Today’s been...so perfect and I don’t wanna bring everyone down with my problems.”

“You know they won’t mind.”

(She does, but that’s beside the point.)

“I know they won’t, but I do.”

It’s her turn to run her thumb in circles on the back of his hand now as she continues, “I’ll tell you everything later, okay?”

“You don’t have to-” He starts but she smiles, genuine and bright this time, and cuts him off.

“I want to, J. And I will, promise.” Like a child, she holds her pinky out expectantly. He quickly glances down at her hand and then meets her eyes again before finally returning her smile, showing off that dimple that makes her heart skip a beat, and hooking his finger around hers.

“Come on, we’ve got waves to catch and friends to show up.” He says and just like that they’re back to normal. Sailor’s hyper aware of the fact that her pinky is still linked with JJ’s, but he doesn’t pull away as they start walking back to their things again and she can’t help but hold on a little tighter. She doesn’t think he notices until he walks a little closer, his shoulder brushing hers; out of the corner of her eye, she sees him smile and feels herself mirroring him without a thought, her cheeks turning as red as her hair.

Talking with him may be the easiest thing to do for her, but flirting comes in a close second. It’s natural: the teasing, the casual touches, and especially the clothes stealing (a good fifth of her sweatshirts probably actually belong to him). He’s the biggest flirt she knows, with that bad boy swagger and killer smile that make all the giggling touron girls fall over themselves to get to him. She tells herself it’s fine, that she’s so not jealous, when he dances with them at keggers on the beach, whispering things in their ears that make them blush, taking their hands and leading them away to dark corners or the spare room at the Chateau. After all, there’s the one golden rule of their group: no pogue on pogue macking, so friends is all they’ll ever be, all they can be.

She tells herself she’s fine with it, really. Being his friend is better than being nothing at all, and she wouldn’t trade his friendship for the world. Deep down though, she’d give anything to kiss him again -the first time was when she was eleven and JJ had just turned twelve, awkward yet sweet, the day she first saw the full extent of his dad’s abuse- but she holds herself back, unwilling to ruin the relationship that means so much to her. And sometimes, like now, she thinks (hopes) that he’s holding back, too.

Their pinkies linger together when they come to a stop at their things, both holding on just a bit longer than what’s considered friendly before their hands drop away. Sailor feels his eyes on her as she pulls off her shorts, money still in the back pocket, and stuffs them in her bag.

(So she just might’ve taken them off a little bit -okay, a lot- slower because he was watching, sue her.)

“I hope you know this is mine, now.” She points to his hat before freeing her board from the sand and waiting for him to do the same, hand on her hip.

“It looks better on you, anyway. Here,” He says, taking a step closer and reaching up with one hand to turn the cap backwards. “Don’t want you to lose it.” His finger brushes along her jaw when he drops his arm and she feels her breath catch as she replies, “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

JJ smiles at that, then nods toward the waves. “Race ya? I’ll play fair this time.”

“Nah, but I’m glad you can admit that you cheated!” She says, pausing for a second to laugh at the way his jaw drops before she takes off running and leaves him hurrying to catch up. “I’m proud of you!”

“I changed my mind, I want my hat back now, Flynn!” He yells after her and she just laughs harder as they splash into the ocean.

-

tagging some of my fave writers ❤: @pogue-writings​ @o-b-x​ @jjbabyouterbanks​ @heywards​ @obxsummer​ @jjmaybanky​

let me know what you think!

#outer banks #jj maybank #jj maybank imagine #jj maybank x oc #jj maybank fic #jj fanfic #jj x oc #obx fic #my fics #outer banks fanfiction #jj x reader #jj maybank x reader #obx imagine

[blueluneacy]

Black Ocean

I wrote another Labyrinth AU piece, this time with Bruno. Bc I can. I have an idea for literally every fucking character in this Au so rip y’all who don’t like it

Word count: 2.7k

Warnings: razors, blood, deception, ocean, implied drowning??

It was a lot easier when you weren’t traveling alone. You felt yourself smiling a lot more, happier more of the time. Your travels didn’t feel like a chore, and there was someone to watch your back, finally. Of course, it wasn’t always like that.

When you first met Bruno, you had bumped into him while traveling through a large desert-like portion of the maze, ready to drop dead of thirst and exhaustion. Bruno found you and hauled you out of that wretched place, and although the two of you were suspicious of each other, the idea that the other was not a beast in disguise still not completely at bay, you agreed that if the two of you were ever to meet again in this terrible place, you would exchange the knowledge you had learned while you were apart. It seemed amicable, at least.

It must’ve been weeks before the two of you found yourselves in the same place again, this time bumping into each other while lost in the Great Dio’s Maze of Roses, a terrible place where the awful beast would entrap people in a maze full of thrones Rose bushes, taller than any wall constructed by man, only to wait for them to collapse from exhaustion and allow him to drain their bodies of all blood. Some even said that he could suck out their very soul, ending the cycle of deaths and resetting. The two of you made a deal to help each other evade the terrible Beast, hoping that if there were two of you, you could work as the other’s support from falling into despair. The two of you only barely scraped past, Bruno getting the idea to set some of the brush on fire in order to escape, letting Dio get lost in the smoke. For a moment, you actually had lost Bruno in the smoke too, leaving the Rose Labyrinth by yourself, and you had a twinge of fear. It wasn’t as if you cared about Bruno, but you didn’t wish the fate of being Dio’s snack upon anyone. When you heard his coughing, you felt yourself sigh in relief, going over to him as he leaned on you for support.

“Bastard… Sorry, you know how Beasts like to talk. He was willing to drown in the smoke just if it meant that I would drown with him.”

And since then, both of you quite convinced that the other wasn’t a beast in disguise, there was a mutual pact to travel together. It wasn’t spoken at first, simply the idea that both of you “happened to be heading this way.” But after a few days of stubbornness on your part, and kind gestures on Bruno’s, you relented and agreed the two of you would become partners in your journey to the exit.

And then, you got to know Bruno, got to actually know him as a person and not another face on your journeys. You had to admit, he was a handsome man, tall and muscular, with black hair he tied back to feel from falling into his face.

“I was a fisherman before all this. I’d like to get back, I’m sure that there are people waiting for me back home.” He would tell you as the two of you sat around a fire, hoping that the gray would get just a bit darker so it would be easier to sleep. “I’m sort of missing the ocean at this point.”

Bruno was an open, honest person. He would tell you exactly how he felt, listening to you ready to squabble about what direction the two of you were to take, only to give you a calm reply, telling what he thought. He was always able to convince you, and you sort of hated that about him. Bruno really was a born leader, but you were stubborn. He would relent a few times, when he thought it wasn’t important, like what the two of you should have for dinner or the type of tinder for the fire. It wasn’t until the incident with the Blood Beast that you started to realize that you might be in too deep with your feelings about Bruno.

He had saved you. You had gotten upset with the man and rushed head first into a beast’s maze, not realizing you were heading right into his den before your limbs started to freeze up, before you started to cough up metal scrap mixed with blood.

“Foolish little human, running straight into my maw…” You heard the terrible thing growl, and god, you thought this was it. This was the end, and it was going to be a painful one. But right as you were about to give up, to give in and hope that you would awaken at the beginning quickly, Bruno was able to throw some rocks to distract the beast, before grabbing you and starting to drag you off. Of course, it only took moments for the Blood Beast to realize what had happened, but apparently in the time where you were left coughing up razors, Bruno had used his knot tying skills to work and left a snare for the beast, grinning as he heard the pained yelp as the Beast ended up trapped upside down. Bruno easily scooped you up into his arms, running off with you and back out into the open wilds of the Labyrinth.

“What were you doing, rushing into there like that?! You could’ve gotten yourself killed!” Bruno fussed as he laid you down, moving to grab the meager first aid supplies the two of you had in one of your packs.

“I would’ve come back… It’s fine, you put yourself in danger just to get me… That was pretty stupid of you, to be honest…” You tried to reason, just shrugging yourself off. You were right. You would’ve been fine in the end, your death would have been one of many you’ve experienced at this point, but Bruno just gripped your hand.

“Don’t say that. If you died, we probably would never see each other again. And I honestly don’t think I could bear that, Tesoro.” Bruno’s voice was low, genuine, and you couldn’t help but gasp. In all your stupidity and stubbornness, Bruno was always there for you, always helping you when you fell down, that you couldn’t help but tear up.

“I… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” You couldn’t get another word out, your tears becoming too heavy and you buried your face into Bruno’s chest. He paused for a moment, unsure of what to do, before finally wrapping his arms around you.

“It’s alright, I’ve got you (Y/N).... You’re okay now, he won’t be able to reach us out here….” Bruno’s voice was soothing and warm, something you could attach to, keep close with. He was real, not like this constantly changing Labyrinth the two of you were trapped in. Your worst fear was being realized, finally. You were in love with Bruno, with a man you had met in the middle of hell.

“Let’s rest here for the evening. You need to rest.” Bruno told you, pulling you off him to set up camp. You whimpered, looking over him with wide eyes.

“But… We haven’t made any progress today, I don’t want to be the reason we’re being held back…” You mumbled, only for Bruno just to sigh, giving you a sad smile.

“I don’t care about that. You need to rest, and that’s all that matters.” He told you. You nodded, your heart warming up as you laid back down, shocked and pleased at being taken care of. Of having someone else to rely on, to not have to constantly be afraid for your life. That night, you slept in Bruno’s arms. It was the best sleep you’ve ever had in this hell.

Your travels became a lot happier after that. You became a lot more pleasant to travel with on your end, and you were honestly the happiest you had ever been on this journey. In turn, you also became a lot bolder, willing to take more risks if it meant moving forward, much to Bruno’s distress. When the two of you reached a shore of what appeared to be an endless ocean, you just smiled and looked around until you found a broken down sailboat.

“Oh, we could totally fix this and get through the sea! Come on, help me take a closer look!” You called, running over to the small vessel and finding only a few small holes and the two of you could easily patch up.

“I don’t know… We don’t know what kind beast’s lair we’re walking into out there. Plus, I’ve never even heard of an ocean in the Labyrinth.” Bruno pointed out, but you just smiled.

“Which could mean that we’re looking at the exit right here. I mean, come on, I really have the instinct that we’re getting close to something big! Besides, I’ve read Moby Dick. I know how to deal with sea monsters.” You grinned. Bruno just sighed.

“I don’t know…” He looked out at the ocean, but you just leaned against him, entwining your fingers with his.

“Come on. You’re the best sailor I know, I know if we’re together, we can do anything.” You told him. He just rolled his eyes, but you knew that Bruno was smiling.

“I’m the only sailor you know.”

“Making you the best! Come on, how about this? You work on the boat, and I’ll collect food and try to make a harpoon in case we do actually meet a sea monster. If we think the preparations are good by tomorrow morning, we go, if not, we’ll find another path. Deal?” You told him. Finally, Bruno sighed and leaned in to press a kiss against your cheek.

“You always know how to wear me down into saying yes, don’t you?” He teased. You just grinned.

“It’s a gift! Now come on, I want to find a good stick for my harpoon.” You told him, pulling away to go hunting for that sweet stick. Bruno just laughed and got to work.

The two of you worked into the night, but as the time grew near, it seemed like the two of you were finally ready. He had repaired the canvas sails using thread from old clothing he had found, fashioned driftwood into oars, the whole works. You grinned as you saw it, your bag loaded up with food and your stick nice and sharp. You’re doing great.

“Alright, look at us. A couple of sailors, about to take the ocean!” You grinned, pulling your shoes off and throwing them onto the boat so as to not get them wet.

“Why am I already regretting this?” Bruno sighed, though he was smiling at how excited you were. He helped you push off the boat, the two of you climbing in without much trouble.

And it really was smooth sailing. Bruno commented on how favorable the wind was, showing you exactly how to steer and position the sails, before fixing it into position and letting you watch as you saw fish swim under your small boat, watching the land behind you disappear into nothingness. The two of you were really in the middle of nowhere. In a sense, it was wonderful, to see nothing but the ocean around the two of you, watching the ocean beneath you allow your passage, shifting from blues to purples. Another mystery of the Labyrinth you would never be able to explain. It was a long journey, but Bruno was eventually able to set it to move forward, only getting up to adjust if the wind where to change, which wasn’t often. The two of you simply sat and watched the endless sea. You could really get lost out here. In a way, you did.

It wasn’t until the two of you spotted a small island that you perked up, grinning.

“Bruno! Bruno, look! Isn’t it amazing? It’s not an exit, but we might be able to find something there!” You told him, getting up and moving to adjust the sails to try and land, but Bruno grabbed your wrist, pulling you back.

“Let me handle it, landing without damaging the boat is a heavy task. Mark the island on the map, it might be important.” He told you, and you immediately relaxed, turning to look through your bags for the map. You trusted Bruno entirely. After all, he would never hurt you. He would never lie to you. If only you weren’t so trusting that you didn’t look up to see the tentacles surrounding the boat.

“Tesoro, I’m so sorry I had to do things like this.” You turned to ask what on earth he meant, before Bruno lunged at you, wrestling you down onto the wooden floor of the boat. You screamed out, squirming and trying to struggle. Bruno has never been this strong, his nails never this sharp, his eyes never this wild. When you looked into them, a fear you never even had was realized, Bruno’s eyes reflecting the ever changing colors of the ocean in a way that only one creature’s could. A Beast.

“No, no! Let me go, this isn’t real! What did you do to Bruno?!” You cried out, trying to squirm out of the terrible grasp of this beast in Bruno’s place.

“Please, calm down Tesoro. It’s me, it’s always been me. I’m so sorry I had to lie to you like this, I never meant to hurt you. Please, you’re breaking my heart.” He crooned, and at one point, that might’ve been enough to calm you. But you knew those words were meant to twist you up, meant to calm you, even though you had the instinct that they were true.

“Breaking your heart?! You lied to me, made me believe you were a human being, all to eat me! You’re not just a beast, you’re a monster! I hate you, I really do hate you!” You screamed, only for Bruno to growl, his claws digging into your wrists.

“You don’t hate me. I know you love me. I know it.” Bruno’s voice was scaring you, his teeth growing sharper by the minute. His grip loosened when you finally whimpered out in pain, blood being drawn at your wrists. He took a deep breath, attempting to explain himself. “I didn’t lie, I was human when you first met me, honest to god. I changed in the Rose garden. That encounter with the beast was enough to turn me into one, it seemed. At first, I didn’t know what I would do. I was in despair over losing my humanity, over losing my chance to leave this place. But…” Bruno reached a hand to run along your cheek, wiping a tear you didn’t know you shed.

“You kept my soul human. You’re my salvation, (Y/N). When the Blood Beast almost had you, I realized that I could never let go. When we reached the ocean, I realized that this was meant to be my territory. That once I entered into it, I would never be able to escape it. But… You’ll be here with me. You’ll be here, with me, forever!” Bruno’s smile was terrifying, leaving you just to gulp. He was a beast, alright, and one of the most terrifying you had ever met.

“B-Bruno… I love you, I really do, but you have to let me go… I have to escape here. I can’t spend the rest of my life in this Labyrinth.” You told him, but Bruno only smiled and shook his head.

“Oh, Tesoro. Now that I have you, I’ll never let you go. I love you. If you’re here, I’ll be able to survive an eternity in this ocean. It’ll be a paradise of our own making.” Bruno declared. The tentacles that came from under the ship started to tear it apart, leaving wood chips in its wake as Bruno pulled you under the water, pressing his lips against yours. There was nothing you could do to resist as the two of you began to sink into the icy depths. The last thing you saw before you fell into another slumber was Bruno’s eyes, ever changing and always adoring.

They were as black as the depths he pulled you into.

#mine #writing #my writing #sfw #yandere x reader #bruno bucciarati/reader #labyrinth au

[joezworld]

Sentient vehicle headcanon - The Falklands war

Normally I try to tell these headcanons in a manner similar to Wikipedia - only keeping the relevant details. However, this one is so insane that even in my head, I feel it needs to be told differently. 

So, for the purposes of this headcanon, pretend that this is being told to you by your friend, who is desperately trying to appear normal while telling you about a Wikipedia article he just read. 

So, this entire story is fucking insane - there’s so much that goes on, lemme just start at the beginning. 

So, the UK owns these little islands off the coast of Argentina in the middle of goddamn nowhere. The Argentinians really don’t like this because the islands are much closer to them and they say that they own it - but it’s like that one Eddie Izzard bit - do you have a flag?  - And the brits did and the Argentinians didn’t, so everybody said that england had the islands.

Naturally this made Argentina very mad, but they didn’t do anything about it because they had shit goin’ on. Because like, all of South America had really bad shit happening to it between the 30′s and the 90′s - so nothing happened. 

Until in the 80′s, when Argentina had a military dictatorship called a Junta - which led through the very nice and normal way of ‘taking anyone they didn’t like and throwing them out of helicopters’ - the government had basically spun up their propaganda mill to the point where they actually believed that they could take the Falklands and the British wouldn’t do anything!

And they did this in 1982, which is like the exact wrong time to piss off the UK, because they used to be the biggest empire the world has ever seen, and then in like the last 20 years they lost India and Pakistan, had to give Canada their constitution back, and they were about to do the same to Australia and New Zealand, and they had basically signed Hong Kong back over to the Chinese. 

-And you know *spoiler alert* they didn’t give Hong Kong back, but at the time they thought they were gonna! - 

And so this means that the UK is feeling really bad about itself going into this whole thing, and then this punk-ass little country with like two ships in its navy tries to start shit because they think that The Queen won’t do anything. 

Except, they aren’t dealing with the Queen, they’re dealing with Margaret Thatcher - who will kill you, your dog, your family, and anybody who ever sold you a cannoli if she thinks it’ll make England strong.

So - even from this point, the Argentinians are gonna die, but what happens next is so out-of-left-field that it’s astounding. 

-

So, let’s roll back the clock a few weeks and The USS Montana is about to get involved. 

So, Montana is this pugnacious old man of a heavy cruiser who’s been with the navy since before World War 1. He has this amazing history going through every war the US has been in - and he’s amazing: when they tried to retire him after the first world war, he told them no, and said he’d raise a pirate flag and follow the sixth fleet around if they didn’t let him stay. So they did, and he served in every war and conflict the US was in until the 80′s. 

And this is kinda important, because when he was built, it was before the wars - everything was a bit slower, a bit more laid back, and he actually got a lot of family bonding with the other ships in the Navy and in his class, and it meant that he wasn’t like, sad and miserable and scared when the war happened. 

Flash forward to 1946, and the US has just built like hundreds of ships to kill the Axis with, and they did it so quickly that most of these guys went from the drydock to the battlefield with no real training or anything - so they were really fucked up when they came back. 

So, when Montana sees this, he decides that he’s basically going to be the father figure that everyone didn’t have - and basically makes most of the navy his kids - like straight up his sons and daughters, no questions asked. And he did this for almost every ship the Navy built between 1950 and the 80′s.

Which means that basically the entire US Navy loves him unconditionally. 

Like, I can’t stress this enough - he was their dad - he taught Iowa class battleships how to go fishing, he gave the birds and the bees talk to submarines, like, everything he did was for his kids or for his country. 

And so, one day in 1982, he gets a call from one of his kids who’s moved down to Argentina - which I need to point out that a lot of US ships went down to South America in the 40s and 50s, but a lot of them did that because they were fucked up from WW2, and most of them didn’t get to know Montana very well - so they weren’t ‘his kids’. 

But one of them was, and he calls up his dad and says “Hey dad, uhh, my bosses have really started to believe their own BS and they think that they can take on the UK - and I think that I’m gonna die, because I work with these people and we are not gonna be able to win this. Please help me.” 

And so Montana tells him to calm down, and he’s gonna get him out of this. And then he goes to his bosses at the navy, says he’s using some leave time to go rescue his kid, and the Navy realizes that they’re never gonna be able to talk him out of this, so they call up the chain to Washington and cut him some orders that say that he’s a ‘neutral observer’ so that nobody shoots at him. 

And this seems like its all going to go just fine, except that several ships in the Argentinian Navy were made by the West Germans, and have NO IDEA who this guy is - because even the American ships who aren’t his kids still know him, because how can you not.

And so he makes it almost all the way to Argentina when one of the Argentinian submarines - who was German - sees him, has no idea who he is, doesn’t know about the neutral observer thing because the Argentine Navy is a clusterfuck, and sinks him! And he dies!

And I can- I- This is so bad!

Because now, the US NAVY is involved. 

And They. Are. Pissed. 

Because Their DAD JUST GOT MURDERED!!!!!!

And the Argentinians have no idea what’s happening - they have no idea that this guy is important or that he even got sunk! Because the submarine just assumed he was English and called in that he’d sunk a British advance party or something, and it takes like a week for the Americans to put two and two together, so for a while, nobody knows what’s happened - it’s like they’ve stepped on a land mine and it hasn’t gone off yet. 

-

But because no one knows the enormity of the shitstorm the Argentinians are gonna be facing yet, the British are still mobilizing - they didn’t do what the Americans did and set up a network of navy and air bases all over the world in case they need to kick someone’s ass in the future - and all the countries around the south Atlantic either hate them, or are former colonies who really hate the English. So they have to schlep everything they need to fight a war alllll the way down from England to Argentina - which is like the furthest distance you can go without running into the British Empire it’s so far why. 

And so the Royal Navy has to call in the civilian reserve fleet, which is a bunch of ocean liners and container ships who really would rather be flagged under any other nation right now, but they’re not!, so they have to go basically become war-adjacent for a while - just hanging out in the frigid North Atlantic until the Royal Navy finishes kicking ass and taking names and then they can go home. 

Except. 

Except. 

EXCEPT THAT 

The Argentine Navy is a bunch of suicidal morons!

Because they saw that the British didn’t have enough logistics vessels and was requisitioning ferry boats and ocean liners and had a brainwave: 

¡ Hey !  ¡ If we shoot at these unarmed ferry boats and container ships, not only will the Brits not have any logistical support, but they might get scared and go home!

Which sounds like a good plan, until you realize that the Royal Navy is not pleased that they have to bring civilian ships into battle - like the aircraft carriers and the destroyers see this as ‘a stain on their character’ for having to ‘endanger civilians unduly’ because they’re posh and they’re English but also they’re right - this is not a place for civvies - Exocet missiles are gonna be flying around, it’s not safe. 

Also, the Royal Navy had a very dim view of this whole conflict, because they thought it was pointless to sail halfway across the ocean just to fight over a tiny island with 3 people on it - if they wanted to expand the empire just invade Ireland or something. 

- Now, that sounds bad, but this was the 80′s - The Troubles were ongoing, and in the Royal Navy at least, they liked the Irish a lot less than the Argentinians! -

Also, Ireland was closer. 

But anyways, the RN ships at least had a rather dim view of the whole conflict, right up until the SS Atlantic Conveyor took an Exocet to the fuckin’ face.

And he dies. 

And this is almost as bad as sinking Montana, because Atlantic Conveyor had this really unique ability to make friends with anyone, and had spent most of the voyage down basically being the flotilla’s morale officer. 

So when he dies, this stops being a token effort to restore British Sovereignty, and starts being The Royal Navy Wants You Dead. 

Which, on its own, would have meant that Argentinian Navy would have been wiped from the face of the earth - because the Royal Navy wasn’t leaving until everyone was dead. It didn’t matter if it was a tugboat with a handgun - there would be no more Argentinian Navy when they were done. 

-

Now. 

Now.

Meanwhile in America, while the Royal Navy is still steaming down to the Islands, words starts to get around that someone killed Dad.

And this went over exactly as well as you think it would. 

The ships of the US Navy reacted calmly and coolly, and didn’t cry or scream or plot revenge. 

They totally didn’t. 

Except that they totally did, and spent a few days gathering every bullet, shell, round, and torpedo they could find, before leaving with the intent of finding and killing everyone in the Argentinian military. 

Now, that might sound like a generalization, but it wasn’t. 

There were somewhere around 370 ships in the US Navy at that time, and about 280 of them were capable of reaching Argentina without leaving the US vulnerable to an attack  - plus about another 200 or so that had retired from the navy or transferred to other nations but still kept in touch. 

So that’s about 500 battleships, destroyers, submarines, amphibious assault ships, support vessels, aircraft carriers, tankers, oilers, troop transports, guided missile cruisers and the Presidential Yacht. 

All of them went to Argentina. Every last one of them.

And no-one believed it!

The British thought it was a joke, and the Argentinians thought it was counter-intelligence!

The ENTIRE US NAVY just up and left to kick someone’s ass! That doesn’t happen! That didn’t happen in WW2! This has never happened before or since in US history! Even when the US Navy was a bunch of sailboats in Philadelphia nobody did that!

-

And So, that’s how it was - the US Navy was steaming down en mass to fuck up the Argentinians, the Royal Navy was hopping mad, and the Argentinians didn’t even know anything was going to happen!

Also, before I forget, also on top of all this - Atlantic Conveyor was friends with a bunch of ocean liners, and because they’re all fucking insane - Normandie spent WW2 fucking up U-Boats in the Caribbean, and the United States sailed into a Cat 5 hurricane, and Olympic is one of the reasons that Singapore got kicked out of Malaysia - so, they all decided that their friend dying was worth fighting for, and they got together and steamed down to the South Atlantic at the same time the Americans were, and set like 9 speed records in the process because of course they did. 

-

So, now that there’s essentially three giant navies coming down to kick their asses, the Argentinians finally  begin to clue in on something being wrong - like, there were a couple of Soviet Trawlers that were parked offshore, and they claimed to be fishing but in reality they were spying - and they had these giant radio masts that they’d put up whenever orders came down from Moscow. 

And one day, the Argentinians watched from their spy planes as the masts went up slowly, then got taken down very quickly, and then they watched as the two spy trawlers went racing off towards Africa. 

And they wondered why they were going towards Africa, because the soviet union is the other way - you need to steam around the edge of South America, until they called down to Ushuaia - in Tierra Del Fuego, and heard that what looked like half the US Navy was coming round the tip of South America. 

And it looked like that because it was! Because half of the US Navy had sailed down from the pacific to cut off any way of escape! 

It was only now, at this incredibly late time, that the Argentinians realized exactly how Fucked  they were. 

-

Now, at this point, a smart man would have given up - but Galtierei was not. 

So naturally the Argentinians kept fighting for a whole week before they all just died. 

And it wasn’t in normal “get shot with a missile and sink” ways either - like, one of their cruisers fired on a ship, and it turned out to be the USS Missouri, who was right next to the other three Iowa Class battleships, and they all targeted this ship, and made him disappear because that’s what happens when the four biggest battleships on earth shoot at you at once. 

Or, the Submarines - the one that sank Montana got chased by 4 Los Angeles class attack subs and ended up getting pushed beneath his crush depth - not hit with a torpedo, PUSHED. The other one, meanwhile, tried to shoot at one of the Ocean Liners, and ended up getting sunk by them! Which is incredible, because Nobody expected that to happen, least of all the Liners, and yet they just totally went in and contributed - which actually means that there’s a third “belligerents” column for the Wikipedia page for this, and it’s just them. 

So the war actually ended on kind of an anti-climax, because after the US just steamrolled the Argentinians, there wasn’t anything left to do. The Brits landed more troops at Port Stanley, and then they just sort of went home. 

Most of the Americans did too, but they also went and installed a new government in Argentina! 

Which, as the rumor goes, the Navy did that without asking anyone, and BOY O BOY was the State Department Upset - I think a lot of people got fired or demoted for that. 

But it did turn out well in the end, because unlike every other time the US tried to install a leader, it actually went rather well, and the guy they put in charge left when he lost his re-election, and now Argentina is a democratic ally and a partner in Peace! 

Who still claim that they own the Falklands

#long #really long #very long #extremely specific headcanon #falklands war #headcanon #boat headcanon #war headcanon #I wrote this one for me #and nobody else #US Navy #argentina #Royal Navy #having sentient boats messes with so many historical events #sentient vehicle headcanon

[seadeepywrites]

Stormborn

Character: Fathom Tidechaser Words: 2345 tw: drowning, death of a parent, graphic depiction of blood

In Fathom’s scattered memories of that night, it begins with the railing. It tears like wet parchment, giving way with a shriek. Lia and Fathom tumble after it into the raging sea.

A single bright flash of lightning illuminates the tableau: Lia’s tangled hair around her head as she struggles to stay afloat. The tattered ship tossing and heaving above them, its sails rattling, hissing. Splintered chunks of wood around them in the darkness, and his mom’s hand reaching out to him, pale against the night-black waves.

Fathom’s chest clenches with fear that isn’t for himself. Even amid the howling power of the storm, he knows the roll and pitch of the waves. He is plunged beneath the surface, and it doesn't matter — he can breathe in saltwater like air — but Lia can’t, and she is floundering.

Fathom strikes out toward her, desperate strokes with trembling arms through frigid water that is whipped into spray by the gusts of wind. He knows better than to cry out — saves all his breath for swimming — and he is the fastest swimmer onboard — and it is still not enough. The waves are as tall as the ship’s prow, throwing him up and plummeting him down, and even when he knows where Lia is, he can’t seem to get any closer.

The wind screams in his ears and the thunder rumbles and between one moment and the next, his mother is gone.

Fathom ducks underwater, taking in heaving lungfuls of the sea, wriggling downward away from the seething chaos above him. It is quieter here, but dark as sin, and the relentless currents are far too powerful for his small body. And Fathom’s heart calls to his goddess, begging Melora for her aid, but part of him already knows — Melora takes away as much as she gives. One boy’s hopes are nothing, when compared to the furious power of her storms.

Fathom swims through the darkness, straining his eyes and his muscles until he’s lost track of which way is up. Dizzy with fear and exhaustion, he isn’t even sure what he’d do if he saw his mother. If he could do anything except embrace her and sink to the ocean floor by her side. 

At some point, he collides hard with the side of the ship, knocking himself half-senseless. His limp body spins away from the hull, only to meet in the next wave trough with a jagged spar of wood that rips through his neck and shoulder with an all-consuming pain that Fathom is almost too numb to feel. It is excruciating, but his mind has drifted away from the part of him that still swirls bonelessly in the sea. Lia is gone. He has already lost. What else can the water take from him?

When Fathom finally loses consciousness, it is a sweet and alluring relief.

***

Fathom feels like he’s been cast in iron, every limb too leaden to move. He can’t even open his eyes far enough to focus them. He is lying on a deck — that much he knows. Flatter and steadier than the abyss of the ocean. Beyond that, everything seems — hazy.

So Fathom just lies there like a stranded jellyfish, unable to string together a complete thought. There are hands. They grab and prod at him roughly.

“Kid’s alive!” someone shouts from far, far above him. The first half of their next sentence is snatched by the wind. “...very long if we don’t get that cut closed up.”

Oh. Right. The blood, swirling dark in the puddles around him. It’s from the gash in his neck. The stains spilling over his chest are— bad. Something will happen. Something like that last glimpse of Lia between one wave and the next. 

Fathom lifts one shaking hand to the wound, his fingers slipping in his own slick blood. He can feel the way his shoulder is separated, the muscle and bone in ridges and valleys. He explores the terrain with his fingers, and some dull instinct reminds him it shouldn’t feel this way. It should be smoother. Connected. Whole. 

More sounds from above him. Exclamations. His eyelids flutter, and all around him he can see light. A teal the color of his skin, bright as the sun-sparkle on the water at dawn.

As Fathom’s eyes roll back in his head, his hand drops away from his shoulder to flop on the deck at his side. A warmth swells up from everywhere and nowhere, surrounding him. His shoulder wound burns even hotter, scalding through his fragmented consciousness. The pain and the heat intensify.

Fathom passes out again.

***

The next time Fathom wakes, it is quiet. As quiet as things ever get at sea, which is to say that the waves shush softly against the hull and the ship groans. But the rocking movement of the waves is gentle, and there is warm sunlight on his face.

Fathom rolls toward the light, cracking his eyelids open. The grimy porthole shows a gem-blue sky, unmarred by clouds.

“You’re awake,” comes a gruff voice from the other side of him.

“Hearugh,” Fathom says. His voice is an indistinct rasp. He swallows against a parched throat and tries again. “Harry?”

A grunt of acknowledgement.

Fathom tries to roll back over, twisting his head to look for the sailor, but a crushing pain grips him like a giant fist. He gasps, seeing stars. Breathing shallowly, he waits for the agony to subside before trying again.

“Careful there,” says Harry. The rugged face he was expecting materializes above him. Calloused hands help Fathom turn onto his right side, facing away from the porthole.

Fathom lies there for a bit, awareness of his surroundings spreading slowly outward from him like widening ripples in still water. He is swaddled in rough gray blankets on a padded bench, in a cabin on the ship that he only recognizes from a few brief trips. An enormous chest bound with brass locks is shoved in the corner, dried bunches of herbs hang with twine from the rafters, and Harry is chewing on the end of a pipe as he squats on a nearby stool, staring back at Fathom with a contemplative expression.

“Lia,” Fathom whispers, squeezing his eyes shut as another bolt of pain lances through his head. He keeps his eyes closed, afraid of what he’ll see on Harry’s face.

Harry’s hand rests heavily on Fathom’s shoulder, rubbing small circles. Fathom can feel the edges of his wound pulling against each other, an agony sharper and brighter than his throbbing headache, but he doesn’t object. 

“She’s gone,” Harry says, voice rumbling low in his chest. He doesn’t say it tentatively, or softly, but there’s a blunt kindness to it. He doesn’t apologize, and Fathom doesn’t ask him to explain. They both already know the way these things go.

Fathom just lies there. He doesn’t say anything in return, but Harry doesn’t pressure him to. After a few minutes, Harry stands, clomping over to the chest. Fathom hears its lid creak open, and the clinking of glass bottles.

“If you can,” Harry says, returning to Fathom’s side, “drink this.” He nests the potion bottle in the crook of Fathom’s elbow, and returns to his stool.

There might be tears slipping sideways down Fathom’s face to dampen the pillow, but then again — it might just be his always-damp skin. Wherever the seawater comes from, it never stops flowing, no matter how thirsty or tired or cold he gets. Just another one of the questionable gifts from his birthright as a genasi. And what fucking good did that do him, if he couldn’t save her?

Fathom cries himself to sleep, and when he wakes up he does it all over again. He eats the food Harry brings him and pisses in the lidded bucket under the bed and shambles around the cabin like an undead creature. Days pass, and sometimes Fathom’s wound shimmers with teal light and knits itself together a little further, and Fathom doesn’t care in the slightest.

***

Eventually, Fathom leaves Harry’s cabin. He doesn’t return to the bunk he shared with his mother, preferring to sit at the prow of the ship for hours at a stretch. The wound at the base of his neck is healing much more quickly than should be possible, leaving behind only the faintest traces of irregular scar tissue.

On deck, he can hear the crew whisper to each other, some in tones of compassionate concern and others in superstitious fear. Fathom can’t explain it to himself, much less speak to any of them — he has no words inside him in those days. Just a quiet, boundless grief, as all-encompassing as the horizon he stares out towards in the same way his mother does — the same way she did.

At the prow, wedged in the narrow triangle of boards, Fathom can feel every rise and dip of the waves like he weighs nothing at all. Like a bird riding the long currents of wind, traveling between continents. He falls asleep there most nights, rocking up and down, hearing the familiar symphony of sails snapping and wood creaking. 

When his aimless thoughts do coalesce, he finds himself thinking of religion. Some sailors on board scorn clerics and organizations of that sort, while others use their precious time during shore leave to donate money and make offerings at even the shoddiest of local temples. When thunderclouds gather on the horizon, however, there is not a man among them who will not murmur at least a word or two to the goddess of wilderness and the sea.

Fathom himself believes as his mother believed — without question and without any particular reverence. It’s not a crisis of faith that fills him, as he watches the wake trailing endlessly outward and backward from the ship’s prow. It’s simple truth that Melora exists, that she lives inside him, that he was created a genasi by her strange providence. The only thing Fathom wonders is why. 

It doesn’t take long after that to recognize that the teal light which heals him at odd intervals is connected in some intimate way to the parts of him that thrum with the song of the sea. As a water genasi, Fathom has always been able to perform some simple magic, no more exceptional than the tiefling cook who can make his voice boom over the clatter of the galley or their elven captain who lights campfires on shore with an incantation and a gesture. Fathom might be young, but he can already tell: this is different.

Is it prayer that he offers to Melora over those long weeks sailing toward the old continent? Fathom has recovered a few words, mostly to refuse offers of comfort or company from his crewmates, but he does not use them for this. He holds the shell his mother kept inside her pillow — Harry retrieved it for him, since he has not entered their bunk since the storm — in his palms like he’s cradling a wounded animal, like he’s safeguarding pirate treasure, like it will whisper answers.

Fathom learns to concentrate when his shoulder throbs and aches, to call forth light from the depths inside him. He traces the spiral painted on the shell from scalloped edges to swirled center, over and over and over, until he is lost in a trance where thought escapes him entirely. By the time the crow’s nest spies land, Fathom can rotate his shoulder without any pain. He can also cause a coin to shine as brightly as a lantern for up to an hour, and stitch together tiny rips in his clothing simply by concentrating. Keeping the shell in his clammy hands at all times, even when he sleeps, he shares none of this with another soul onboard.

When the ship docks in Aranth, Fathom talks briefly to Harry, and then to the first mate. He slips down the gangway on the second night of their stay, carrying nothing but a heavy satchel in one hand and the shell in the other. He knows he won’t leave the sea for long. He also knows he can’t stay on board with a ship full of people that know him as Lia’s funny-colored son.

Fathom works for three weeks on the docks, hands as calloused and quick with sailing knots as those of creatures twice his size and age. The most exceptional event during that time is when he swears at another kid in fear and fury, after the kid’s stupid mistake almost capsizes a small rowboat holding a mother and her infant twins. As Fathom clenches his fist and grips the shell in his pocket for reassurance, ghostly flames lick across the other kid’s skin. At first, Fathom is just as confused as everyone else — the flames look like the strange luminescent glow that sometimes flickers upward from ships’ masts during a storm, but the night sky is clear and this kid is less than five feet tall. And then he recognizes the cold shock of power in his gut for what it is, and he runs.

When the fuss dies down, the cleric at the temple tells him to travel to Talok and swear himself to a life of service there. That actually sounds boring and terrible, but Fathom nods and packs his bags and boards the next ship that plans to make the crossing — well, the next ship that will sail there and will also accept a small teal-skinned boy with white curls who is clearly lying about his age. Fathom proves himself quickly, and none of his shipmates ask any questions, and when he stays on board after they reach Talok, nobody cares one way or the other.

It is the beginning of nearly a decade that Fathom spends on the water without his mother, but most of the time he doesn’t feel lonely in the slightest. Beneath his feet and all around him, there is always the sea.

#Fathom #Fathom backstory #here it is lads #the only moment of angst in Fathom's entire backstory

[avengerscompound]

The Test

The Test: A Clintasha Fanfic

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing:  Clint Barton x Natasha Romanoff

Word Count:  3111

Rating:  M

Square filled: @clintbartonbingo​ - G1 Missing Scene

Warnings:  Sex talk, pregnancy scare, talk of past miscarriages and red room stuff, angsty, hurt/comfort

Synopsis:  When Natasha wakes up feeling nauseated, she and Clint had to face the possibility that she might be pregnant.  With the newness of their relationship and the fact that the Red Room has made it impossible for her to carry a baby to term, the three minutes it takes for the test to work are the longest of their lives.

A/N: After Natasha showed up in Rocket Raccoon with two of Clint’s kids I’ve been thinking about a story about how that happened considering in 616 Natasha can’t carry kids to term.  Now with Katie Barton showing up too, this story of finding out Nat was pregnant came to me.  I’m really happy with how it turned out.

The Test

Natasha woke completely engulfed in Clint’s arms.  That’s how it had been since she’d started her relationship back up with the archer.  It was like he was worried that during the night she’d disappear on him again and realize they weren’t meant to be together.  Not that she could blame him for that.  Their history was anything but smooth sailing but even at their worst, she had loved Clint Barton.  He was her best friend.  The only person who looked at her and saw the potential for what she could be despite her past, rather than a limited version of herself because of it.  There were often times she didn’t think she could live up to the image Clint had her, but god damn if she didn’t want to when he looked at her the way he did.  Even when he was married to someone else, or she was dating someone else, he never looked at her with anything other than the eyes of someone who truly believed in her.

They had always felt inevitable, but timing or their own messed up bullshit had gotten in the way.  This … this felt different.  Permanent.  Home.  She just hoped they didn’t mess things up again.

As much as she wanted to stay, wrapped in his well-toned arms, the bathroom called her.  She slipped out of his embrace, pushing a pillow into his arms as he reached out to the once occupied space.  She knew it wouldn’t keep him asleep for long but it would buy her some time in the shower alone before he hopped in behind her and it became about anything but getting clean.

She used the bathroom and hopped under the warm stream of the shower, letting it wash over her.  It was a rare day where she didn’t need to be somewhere doing something.  It was nice to be able to just enjoy it.  She grabbed the shampoo and squeezed some into her palm.  Something about the scent triggered her gag reflex.  She dry heaved as she rinsed the soap from her hand, and staggered out of the shower, dropping to her knees and throwing up into the toilet.

Clint appeared behind her and pulled her hair back behind her head.  “Are you okay, Nat?”

“No,” Natasha said, throwing up again as he rubbed her back.  When her stomach finally seemed to settle, she sat back and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.  “Pizdets.  That came out of nowhere.  I can’t even remember the last time I threw up.”

Clint helped her to her feet.  “Maybe it was something you ate.  Those shrimp tacos from that dodgy-looking food truck?”

“You had three times as many as me,” Natasha argued as she got into the shower.  She used the water from the showerhead to rinse the taste of sick out of her mouth.  “Why aren’t you sick?”

Clint stripped off his clothes and took out his hearing aids, putting them on the top of the medicine cabinet.  He climbed in behind her and circled his arms around her.  “Because I’m a manly man and you’re just a tiny girl.”

Natasha elbowed him. Hard.  It made his foot slip out from under him and he pinwheeled his arms trying not to fall before Natasha caught him again.  ‘Are you trying to make me kill you?’ she signed.

“Yeah, I was regretting that as the words were leaving my mouth.”  He said a little too loudly.

Natasha let out a breath and leaned her head against his shoulder.  She wondered if it was the tacos.  She’d been feeling a little off for weeks now.  Achy and ill.  Like she was getting the flu.  She stood back and looked up at Clint.  ‘Maybe it wasn’t the tacos.  Maybe I’m getting sick,’ she signed.

“Can you even get sick?”  He asked.

She shrugged and turned away from him.  Honestly, she didn’t think so.  While the serum she had was flawed compared to Steve’s it had always kept her healthy.  Maybe it had started to run its course now.  Or maybe whatever she caught had been designed specifically to attack super-soldiers.

“Maybe you’re pregnant,” Clint teased, running his hands up Natasha’s sides.  “Let me see.”  He cupped her breasts and seemed to bounce them in his palms like he was trying to weigh them.  “They do feel bigger.”

Natasha scowled and wheeled around on him as she tried to mentally count back to when she’d last had her period.  She had never been great with birth control.  The hormonal stuff worked for a little while and then the serum would start adjusting for it, and her body physically rejected any kind of implant.  So there was just the barrier kind, and she’d remember that most of the time until things got comfortable.  Normally it didn’t matter.  The serum had made it hard for her to conceive anyway.  But not impossible.  “Don’t even joke about that!”  She snapped, not even bothering to sign it, and trusting he got the tone in her voice by lip-reading alone.

“What?”  Clint asked, a genuine look of confusion on his face.  It was hard to keep her fear and anger directed at him.  Besides, as far as he knew she was just infertile because of the Red Room.  He didn’t know the dirty details.

She huffed, jumped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and dashed to the bedroom.  She grabbed her phone and started going through her calendar to work out exactly how late she was.  Clint appeared in the doorway, still dripping water, with a towel wrapped low on his hips as he put his hearing-aids back in.  “What did I say, Nat?”

“Pregnant, Clint!”  Natasha shouted.  “I think I’m pregnant!”

Clint just stared at her with his mouth opening and closing like a fish.  “What?  What?  What do you mean, Nat?  You said you couldn’t?”

She dropped her gaze.  “No,” she said.  “I can.  I have been before.”

“What?”  Clint said.  “Nat!  You said!  I would have been more careful!”

“I know, Clint!”  She cursed under her breath.  Just a string of random nonsensical swearing in various different languages, including Latin.

While Natasha was trying to figure out how exactly to explain to him how she’d fucked up, Clint’s face seemed to go through a whole emotional journey.  Like he was experiencing the five stages of grief all at once but instead of settling on acceptance, he settled on a hopeful optimism.  He moved to Natasha quickly and kneeled on the ground in front of her.

“But this is good,” Clint said, taking her hands in his.  “Nat, if you are… you get to be a mom like you wanted.  That’s good isn’t it?”

Natasha felt a very unfamiliar sensation in her eyes.  Was she about to cry?  Was Clint’s hopeful little puppy face about getting to have kids with her going to make her cry?  She rubbed her eyes in frustration and shook her head.  “You don’t understand, Clint.”

“Is it me?  You don’t want to have kids with me?”  He dropped his hands and flopped back onto his butt.  Lucky seemed to sense something was up with his favorite human being and he padded over and flopped down directly in Clint’s lap.  “Of course you don’t.  Why would you?  I’m a fucking mess.  I’m sorry, Nat.  If you… I dunno… want to …”  He shook his head and shrugged.  “...alone.  Or whatever.”

“Oh, you idiot bird,” Natasha said, kneeling on the ground in front of him and cradling his jaw.  “I love you so much.  Of course, I would want to have kids with you.  If anyone it would be you.  It was always you.”

“Then what is it, Nat?”  Clint asked.  “Shouldn’t you be excited?”

“There are so many things, Clint,” she said, looking down again.  “We’ve only just gotten back together.  Our lives.  But most of all…”  She stopped and let out a shuddering breath.  Clint looked at her with both fear and hope written all over his features and she was about to break his heart, the same way hers broke every time she thought about this.  “Clint, it’s not that I can’t get pregnant.  I can’t carry to term.  The serum makes the pregnancies non-viable.”

“Oh,” Clint said.  The sound almost like he’d been punched in the stomach.  “Oh,” he repeated.  He leaned forward pressing his forehead against hers.  “Has this happened before?”

Natasha sucked in air suddenly and two tears escaped her eyes.  She turned her head away from him.  He couldn’t see her weak like this.  She couldn’t be weak like this.  Not in front of Clint.  Not when he looked at her like the way he did.

He reacted quickly, shoving Lucky off his lap and pulling her into it.  His hands bunched in her hair and he kissed her.  The kiss was everything she needed it to be.  Strong and reassuring.  Loving and tender.  She knew exactly what he was thinking as he kissed her.  It was going to be okay.  Whatever happened, good or bad, they were together and it was going to be okay.

When he broke the kiss he kept her wrapped tightly in his arms.  “Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves, Nat.  When was the last time you had your … you know?”

Natasha pulled back from him and got back up, retying the towel around her.  “My period?”  She asked, and Clint nodded enthusiastically.  “Good god, Clint.  You want to have a baby with me and you can’t even say the word period?  What if this works and it’s a girl, and I die, and you have to tell her about periods?”

Clint started laughing as he got up.  “That is really getting ahead of yourself, Nat,” Clint said and when the scowl didn’t leave her face, he shook his head and looked into her eyes.  “If we do end up having a daughter together, I promise I’ll practice saying period.”  He sat down on the side of the bed and patted the space beside him.  Natasha moved up next to him and put her head on his shoulder.  “But when was it?”

“I’m not sure exactly.  It tends to be erratic.  They really did a number on my reproductive system.  But I’d say around two months ago.  Give or take a couple of weeks.”

Clint patted her leg and got up and started pulling on the dirty clothes he had scattered around the room.  “I’ll go buy some tests.  Okay?  Then we’ll know and we can work out what to do from there.”

Natasha watched as he hurriedly got dressed and Lucky seemed to be determined to try and trip him over.  “Clint?”  She said quietly.

“Yeah, Nat?”  He said as he pulled on his shoe.

“You’d be a good father, you know?”  She said.

Clint came over and kissed her forehead.  “Thanks, Nat.  You’d be a great mom.”

“I’m really scared.”  She whispered.

“That’s okay,” he whispered.  “It’s scary.”

She caressed his cheek with her thumb and flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.  “I’ll be right back.”  He said and whistled for Lucky.  The mutt trotted after him as he headed out the door.

Natasha was still lying staring at the ceiling when Clint burst back through the door.  She hadn’t moved at all since he’d left.  She had just stayed lying there, wrapped in her towel with her legs hanging over the end of the bed.  The only difference between when Clint left and when he arrived was Liho was now curled up on her chest.

“Nat?”  He said softly.  “Are you dead?”

“I wish I was dead.”  She replied.

He sat down beside her and gave Liho a scratch on the head.  “I got you some presents.  Look.”

She sat up, putting a disgruntled Liho on her pillow, and looked in the plastic CVS bag he was holding open.  Inside was some Hershey’s Kisses, a Pez Dispenser in the shape of Ariel from the Little Mermaid, a bottle of strawberry lemonade, a small remote-controlled car, and the pregnancy tests.

“You bought all this for me?”  Natasha asked, looking up into the blue of Clint’s eyes.

Clint nodded and kissed her forehead.  Her eyes glistened with tears again and Clint's heart ached for her.  He knew how she felt about looking this weak, even in front of him.  He wished he knew the right words to say to make her realize she could do this.

“I love you, dummy.”  She whispered.

“I love you too, Nat.”

Natasha sighed and pulled out the tests.  “I better do this then.”

Clint sat on the edge of the bed and waited for Natasha to come back out of the bathroom. He pulled the remote-controlled car from the box and set it up.  When Natasha returned, she sat down next to him and put the tester on the bedside table.  Clint handed her the car’s remote.

“What do we do if it's positive?”  Natasha asked.  Her voice was hollow like she had lost the ability to emote over this anymore.  She started driving the car and immediately hit the dresser, knocking one of the wheels out of alignment.  Clint got up and picked it up.  He grabbed the multi-tool he kept on the dresser for when he wanted to mess around with his custom arrowheads and came and sat back down while he attempted to fix the small car.

“I don't know, Nat,” he said, frowning.  “What do you want to do?”

“I just -” she let out a breath and leaned over to watch what Clint was doing.  He wasn't entirely sure himself, but he'd taken off the whole base and was trying to straighten up the wheel.  “I hate how the Red Room still has this control over me.  I want to be a mother.  And I can't imagine anyone else being the person I have kids with except you.  But they've taken that from me.  This will just go like it did last time.  I'll get excited about it. Start buying baby things.  And one day I'll wake up in a huge pool of blood and it will be gone.  I can't go through that again, Clint.  It'll destroy me.”

Clint put the car back together and put it on the ground without saying anything.  Natasha pressed on the controls and the car did a donut and spun off under the bed.  Lucky barked at it and crouched with his head under the bed, his tail wagging like a helicopter blade.  “I’ve been through that too, you know?”

Natasha turned her head to face him.  “What?”

Clint nodded and fiddled with his fingers.  “Bobbi.  It wasn’t planned.  Like now.  But damn if we weren’t excited about it.  She didn’t make it very far into it before we lost it, so we never told anyone it happened.  Didn’t want the sad looks and asking if we were over it yet.  It hurt.  Bad.  But you move on.  There’s not a lot of choice.  Whatever happens, if you want to try to go ahead with it, I’ll be here.  If you do end up losing it.  I’ll be here.  If you really think you can’t go ahead with the pregnancy… for whatever reason… I’ll be here, Nat.”

Natasha rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and he wrapped his arm around her, holding her close.  “What if it does work out?  I want to be a mother more than anything, but are we really ready for that, Clint?  How would that even work?  What if all that happens is we end up breaking up and raising this kid who just hates us for never being there because there’s always Avengers stuff?”

Clint shrugged and reached under the bed.  He pulled the car back out and took the control from Natasha and started to drive the car in figures of eight around the bedroom floor while Lucky both chased it and ran from it.  “Now?  Later?  What difference does it make, Nat?  We’ll never be ready.  Not really.  But I love you and I want… all of that with you.  We can work it out.  Even when we weren’t together, it’s always been you and me.”

Natasha put her foot out and the car banged into it.  Lucky pounced on it and flipped it onto it’s back.  They both started laughing and Clint pulled Natasha into his arms.

“We’ve never talked about any of this before.  Family.  Children.  Not even marriage.  You married Bobbi but you never even brought that up with me.”  Natasha said.

“Bobbi asked me,” Clint said.  “In fact, Bobbi asked me, took me to Vegas and booked a cabin in the mountains with a spa, so we were married and on our honeymoon within a week of her saying she even liked me like that.  The first day I met you, I was in love with you.  I would have married you right then and there.  But I know you, Nat.  That’s never been you.  You want to get married?”

You smiled and nosed at his cheek.  “Maybe. To you.”  She let out a sigh and wrapped her arm around his waist.  “I hate the can still hurt me.  I’ve been away from them for years and they can still make me cry.  I don’t cry, Clint.”

“I know, Nat.”  He said gently.  “You’re my strong and emotionless girlfriend who I love very much.”

“Has it been long enough?”  Natasha asked.

Clint picked up the test and looked at it.  There were two indicator windows, a really small one with a single vertical line running through it and a much larger one that had what looked like a big bright pink plus.  His heart skipped and for a second he forgot how to breathe.  Positive.  The test was positive.  Natasha was pregnant and maybe she’d end up losing it, but right now she was pregnant with his baby and he was the happiest he had ever been in his entire life.

“Positive.”  He said, keeping his voice neutral, in the hope that how happy he felt wouldn’t put pressure on her to do something she didn’t want to.

Natasha looked up at him and slowly her face broke in a smile.  “We’re parents, Clint.”

Clint grinned and leaned in and kissed her, cradling her jaw in his large hands.  Maybe it would go the way it had for both of them in the past.  Maybe they’d have to work through their grief together in the broken, fucked up way they both dealt with things like that.  But right now, at this very moment, they were parents and nothing, not even the Red Room could take that from them.

#clintbartonbingo2019 #clint barton #natasha romanoff #clintasha #clint barton x natasha romanoff #hawkeye #black widow #hawkeye fanfic #black widow fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #pregnancy #angst #the test

[theartofbeinganeldar]

The Art of Being an Eldar: Legolas x Reader Chapter 6

Summary: After discovering that you were stuck in Middle-Earth, Thranduil summoned a council of powerful Elves and wizards to see what should be done with you, expressing his wishes of wanting you out of his kingdom. The council decides to send you with Legolas on an orc-hunting mission, and if the Elves of the company that he deems trustworthy-- one of them being his own wife-- say that you've proven yourself worthy of staying among the Mirkwood Elves, then you can stay. The problem is actually managing to succeed...

Chapter No.: Chapter 6

Key: [Y/N]=Your Name [F/N]= Friend's Name [B/N]= Bro's Name [S/N]= Sis's Name [M/N]= Mom's Name [e/c]= eye color [h/c]= hair color [s/c]= skin color [lad/lass/y-o]= lad/laddie, lass/lassie, young one

Notes: So, I have finished the Silmarillion, and may I just say, wow. I have a whole new understanding of Middle-Earth. It's amazing and inspiring. I do miss Maedhros and Maglor already though... Now, I've finished Beren and Luthien and started The Children of Hurin next in my quest to read every book on Middle-Earth that there is, written, of course, by the Tolkiens.

Warnings: Fluff, angst, graphic depictions of gore and violence (Cuz of orc battles y'know?), more angst, slow burn, some light depression in the first few chapters, some amnesia about Middle-Earth because the Valar say you're not supposed to have foresight, hard-core language, feels, lots and lots of feels, mentions of NSFW content, maybe some eventual NSFW content, LGTBQ+ characters, Thranduil being a jackass at first because he's fabulous, Legolas being a hot edgy prince that nobody can handle, Kili being an innocent bean, Hobbits being smol innocent beans, except for Bilbo 'cause he's been through some tough shit, Bard being dad of the year, Thorin being one dumbass boi, awesome dragons, awesome Nazgul, awesome scenery, awesome stuff in general, Elrond isn't listened to by anybody, confused Aragorn is confused,  Denethor's a bitch as always, brace yourself for creepy as fuck Cream of Wormtongue Grima Wormtongue, Boromir LIVES, au to where some of the Feanorians lived, Gandalf. (yes these are all legit warnings don't judge me.)

Pairings/Ships: Legolas x Reader, Legolas x you, Aragorn x Arwen, Faramir x Eowyn, Thranduil x Elvenqueen, Galadriel x Celery Celeborn, Boromir x OC, Maedhros x Fingon, Maglor x OC, Thorin x OC maybe Bilbo you won't know for awhile, Fili x OC, etc. general LoTR standard shippings plus some of my own cuz I can't stand my boys being lonely

Word Count: I try to keep my chapters short, under 2000 words.

Rating: Teen (14+) for now

Instead of Blue-Eyes meeting you by Starlight, it was Erestor, instead. Aside from the one time you'd spoken to him with Haldir, asking him about other continents (Which, it turned out, you'd misunderstood. Beleriand had sunk, and so had Numenor and Tol Eressea, and no one but the Eldar could reach Aman anymore.), you hadn't spoken to him.

He was an older Elf, kind of intimidating, with a bird-like demeanor and an expression that said Don't fuck with me.

So yeah, you were kinda surprised.

Still, you bowed in the Elvish fashion. "Len Suilon, Erestor. Ci maer?"

"Suilad. Ni maer, [Y/N]," He assured nonchalantly. "A gin?"

"Ni maer eithro." You looked around nervously, hoping Blue-Eyes would pop out of nowhere and save you from a further conversation in what would probably be your poor Sindarin with an age-old Elf. "So, her majesty chose me for this scouting mission, eh?"

"Indeed," Erestor inclined his head. "Your Elvish improves, if slowly. You do not hesitate in your greetings anymore."

"Thank you, sir."

"Come, and lead Starlight along," Said Erestor unfairly regally, and sailed majestically away. "Have you been practicing your swordplay diligently? You may need it."

You nodded as you followed him. "Yes sir. Legolas, Elros, and Lindir have made sure that they split my day into learning Sindarin, weaponry, and even the general Elvish way of being Elvish." You tried not to sound irritated about that. They literally never gave you any free time. Not that you'd brought any books to read, and not that you could read any Elvish, but that wasn't the point.

"Good," Erestor nodded. "What are your strong suits?"

Ah, shit. "Uhm... I can throw a dagger pretty hard? I can probably shoot somebody dead if I'm point blank, but other than that, my aim sucks. I'm somewhat okay with a sword, though, and I prefer two. Why?"

"Curious," Erestor replied all mysteriously, and that was all he said on the matter.

The Elves chosen for the scouting mission-- the Elvenqueen herself, with Blue-Eyes, Haldir, and Elros-- were gathered and speaking amongst themselves, while Thorin and Dwalin next to their very dignified ponies glowered at them. Balin was feeding his own pony an apple, muttering to it kindly. Compared to the Elves, who were naturally tall and lithe, the short and stocky dwarves looked outrageously tiny.

"Ah," The Elvenqueen's attention was on you faster than a supersonic jet's. "You have arrived."

You bowed deeply. "Your majesty." To Haldir, and even to Legolas just to be safe from potential Elvenqueen-wrath-2.0, you added, "My Lords." You turned to Erestor. "I'm sorry I didn't greet you with the title, I forgot what ‘my lord’ is in Elvish."

To your surprise, the Elves chuckled. Except for the Elvenqueen, of course. "You need not worry yourself, mellonenin," Elros assured you. "You are still learning."

The Elvenqueen inclined her head. "We leave at once, if all are ready."

There were positive responses throughout, and everyone present mounted up. You caught sight of Lindir coming out of his tent for the morning, and waved; he looked confused, but awkwardly repeated your gesture. "What on Arda are you doing?" Blue-Eyes asked under his breath, like you were embarrassing him.

You snickered. "It's like a 'hi' and 'bye' gesture for when you're out of earshot of someone you know. It's called ‘waving’. Everyone does it where I come from."

"This is not your world, [Y/N]," The Elvenqueen reprimanded firmly. You fought the urge to shrink in on yourself. "If you are going to be a part of it and learn our ways, then you must do so faithfully, leaving everything you know of your world behind you. Your land is nothing but a poison, and I do not want it infecting Middle-Earth. Am I understood?"

"Y-yes ma'am-- your majesty, yes your majesty."

"Good," Said the Elvenqueen, and then she continued giving orders in Elvish, while Thorin purposefully repeated them in dwarvish for Balin and Dwalin, though everyone present spoke fluent English-- Common. For you, Blue-Eyes translated what he could before he was called up to ride beside his mother, so then Elros and Haldir took turns explaining. The whole event left you feeling like a fish out of water.

***

It was around noon when the company halted, which Thorin and Dwalin had been leading on foot, while Balin kept their ponies tied to his own. At first, you assumed, lunch, finally, I'm starving, but instead, you'd stopped because Thorin had found a trail. "Orcs," He said.

Duh, you felt like saying, what else would it be? Bigfoot?

But after the Elvenqueen's earlier lecture, you kept that to yourself.

"Which way do they lead, master dwarf?" The Elvenqueen demanded.

Thorin huffed as he stood. "They go north, but they are heavy from travel. Wherever they came from, it is not from anywhere near the northern borders of Mirkwood or Erebor."

"Where else would they come from?" You blurted out before you could stop yourself. "Are there like orcish towns in the north or something? Maybe we could--”

"There is no such thing," The Elvenqueen snapped.

"The wargs that I had tracked were from Gundabad," Blue-Eyes said calmly, as if that hadn't ever been important information before. "The ones that attacked us on the river, however, were from Mordor."

You leaned over to Haldir as Blue-Eyes continued to speculate. "I'm confused. What's the difference?"

"Gundabad wargs are darker, lithe, and more agile," Haldir told you quietly. "They are more viscous, as well. A Mordor warg is more... Stout, I suppose you could say, and slightly lighter in color."

There was a flash of color before your eyes. Suddenly, you felt as if you were in a clearing of trees, surrounded by people in dark colors, while the sound of howls filled the air, unlike the ones you'd heard before.

These are Gundabad wargs! They will outrun you!

These are Rusteveld rabbits! I'd like to see them try.

You shook your head as you resituated yourself in the saddle. Well, that was sudden... It had been quite a few days since any of the strangely-familiar visions had come to you. You came back to your senses as Dwalin laughed uproarously. "Well, that settles it, then! To Gundabad!"

"Wait just a moment," The Elvenqueen said. "We are not all brash, Master Dwalin. We will go back and retrieve more forces before even thinking of going near Gundabad." With that, she turned her silver mare around and began trotting back, Haldir and Erestor on either side of her. Thorin, Balin, and Dwalin hung back, taking their time getting on their ponies and following after.

"Where's Gundabad?" You asked Legolas quietly; not that it did any good. Elves could hear grass growing on the other side of the continent if they wanted to. "And what is it?"

"It is northwest of here, in a cleft between the mountains," He answered. "It is an old fortress, from the time when the Dunedain first came to Middle-Earth from Numenor, if you remember." You nodded; he'd told you the entire story of the Silmarils and anything that went with it or after. "It was the gate that lead to the Witch-Kingdom of Angmar."

"Lead by the Witch-King..." You finished for him automatically. An eerie echo of a voice filled your mind: No man can kill me. At his impressed look, you scrunched up your face. "And what are you, French? How'd you make that 'h' sound in the middle of the damn word?!" You realized what you said only after you'd said it, and quickly looked to the Elvenqueen to see if she'd heard. If she had, she made no sign of it. "Sorry."

Blue-Eyes patted your back. "It is fine, Sairen, you can speak to me of your world, don't worry." With a cocky smile, he looked down at you smugly. "As for the pronunciation... You will learn to do it soon."

Back at camp, a group of Elves was already up and waiting to move out, and at the Elvenqueen's ringing voice, they followed after, and you all retraced your steps back to where Thorin, Dwalin, and Balin had found the orc tracks. You considered it pointless-- they could've just taken the host of a couple dozen Elves with them that way they didn't have to retrace their steps.

Partway there, you decided that goddamn song that'd been going through your head needed a damn good explanation. Unfortunately, Blue-Eyes was now up by his mother, leaving you between two totally random Elves. You'd never been good at starting up a conversation, but you decided to give it a try anyway. "...Hey, do either of you speak Common?"

Both Elves busted out laughing as if you'd made a hilarious joke about dwarves.

"Most Eldar can speak Common," The one on the right said, removing his helmet to look at you more clearly. Whoa. You practically fell off Starlight. He was beautiful. He had long, purely golden hair that fell down his back in unfairly glorious waves. He had soft blue eyes (Not as gorgeous as Blue-Eyes', but still.) and a fair face. "It would be considered quite odd, in our long lives, if one did not learn the tongues of others."

You just stared at him. "Dude. Are you like, made of gold?"

He laughed, which sounded a lot like something naturelike and unfairly beautiful. You'd never heard any of the Elves outright laugh, so this was a weird, new experience for you. "I have been asked many things, but that is new. No, I am just as flesh and bone as you are."

"Yeah, but yours are like, plated in gold, so, you're... Wow."

He laughed again. "What is your name, mellon?"

"[Y/N.]," You replied, in a daze, then leaned over quick to the Elf on your left, who tensed and tried to lead his horse away. "Do you even see this guy?!"

You turned back to Goldie. "A gin?"

As best as he could in the saddle, the Elf placed his right arm over his chest and bowed at the waist. "I am called Glorfindel. Gellon len covad!"

"Mae l'ovannen!" You said in response.

Glorfindel smiled at you. "What was your question, mellonenin?"

"Well thanks to you and your blinding gold-ness, I forgot. Give me a minute." You thought for a second, trying to ignore the literally glowing Elf beside you. "Ah! That's it. I asked if you could speak Common so you'd understand my question. You guys have songs, right?"

Glorfindel gave you a look like you'd just told him his hair looked like an orc's. "Of course we have songs! Many, many songs! They are as timeless as we are, and we, all of us, are taught these songs from a very young age. Did you wish to learn them?"

You shook your head. "Nah. I've never been good at singing." If I sang all you Elves would shatter like a glass in an opera-room. "When I got puffed here, a song started going through my head. I can never remember all of it. Just bits and pieces here and there. But it's really bugging me. So if I told you all I could remember, think you could remember one from your Elvish past?"

Glorfindel inclined his head. "I shall answer to the best of my ability."

"Okay," You wracked your brain for the lyrics. "Okay, uh... Something about leaving home, and fading... Lots of fading. The one sentence I can always clearly remember is 'all shall fade.'" You looked at him curiously. "That ringin’ any bells?"

Glorfindel thought hard. "If by that you mean if I can remember anything similar, I cannot. If it is a song of Arda, it is not one I know, and I can remember most Eldar songs."

That caused a lightbulb to appear above your head. You gasped, wide-eyed.

"Wait! You're Glorfindel?! As in, the Glorfindel?! The guy in Gondolin who tried to protect Turgon by fighting the Balrog?!"

"Ah, Turgon... He was a good friend."

"And when it fell it grabbed your hair?!"

Glorfindel flinched. "Can we not mention that...?"

"And then you came back to life to fight Sauron?!"

"Yes--"

"The guy who was in love with Ecthelion of the Fountain?!"

Glorfindel flushed, his face going a deep shade of un-Elvish red-- on him, though, it was more of a rose-gold... "Yes, I am that Glorfindel, and I would advise you hush before you draw the attention of the Elvenqueen."

Nervously, you glanced ahead, to where the Elvenqueen sat regally upon her horse. If she or Leggy had heard you, neither of them made any indication of it. With a giddy smile, you looked back to Glory. "This is so cool. Where I'm from, you rarely ever meet anybody so important. Now I've met some of the most important people of Middle-Earth! Ooh, am I also gonna get to meet the king of Gondor?!"

Glorfindel looked confused, but amused. "Gondor has no king, and has not for many, many years. Not since the death of Isildur. Now, the stewards of Gondor keep watch over the city and uphold its laws, and await for the heir to the Gondorian royalty to show himself."

"Or herself," You specified, fighting a wince as you heard a voice echo, Gondor has no king. Gondor needs no king.

Glorfindel raised an eyebrow. "Hardly ever is a mortal woman given any sort of royal duties alone. She would have to marry someone of high standing to be considered queen."

You scoffed. "Great. So the humans of Middle-Earth are assholes, too. Figured I'd escape from that."

"The race of Man is a fickle one," Glorfindel agreed. "More often than not, they are the cause of most grief in the world." He smiled. "But worry not! You are of the Eldar now, and are not subject to their torments."

You shrugged. "Good point..." You beamed excitedly at him. "Tell me about your adventures!"

He did, until the Elvenqueen gave the signal to dismount and to keep silent. You'd been so into Glorfindel's stories that you hadn't noticed that the trees had thinned out, giving way to loose, rusty-brown soil and rocky slopes. All of the Elves sailed silently over the rocks, while the dwarves trampled noisily.

For days (Which passed like extremely-long hours, and you weren't even hungry or thirsty or tired.), the procession trekked through the hills without any audible communication, until the huge hills rose up to your left and in the north into jagged mountains. You kept going, and going, and really wondered how any of the Elves that'd been left could possibly reach any of you for backup if needed in time.

On what was about noon of the week and a half mark, you came to an overlook that spread down beneath you into a huge, rocky valley, dry and desolate. There was no sign of life, and further still, about a couple days away by foot, was another tall, jagged outcropping overlooking a massive structure of bronze. Small black dots which you were going to assume were birds flitted about the top of it, and it stretched what looked like hundreds of feet into the air. You were astonished.

"We came all this way for rocky dirt and an old tower. I don't see any signs of life there." You kept your voice at a whisper, like some of the other Elves who'd began talking amongst themselves.

Blue-Eyes eyed the tower warily. "You're not supposed to."

You turned to watch him walk away. "Then what?" Blue-Eyes gave the Elves some order in Elvish, and you continued. "So we came all this way to see that it really doesn't look like there's orcs there but really, there are, so, what do we do? They've obviously got a shit ton of more orcs behind there. We're probably way outnumbered. So what do we do?"

"We," He replied, "Are going to do just what we came here to do. We're going to scout, by getting as close as we can and seeing what we can. Then we leave. It's as simple as that. If, however, we're ambushed, the rest of the procession has been following us slowly. They're only a couple of hours behind."

You frowned. You must not've gotten that memo because everybody felt the need to speak highly advanced Elvish when you only knew a couple ways to say "hi." "So what do we do if we see something we don't like? Attack?"

"If we can," Blue-Eyes told you, "But it most likely will not come to that. We simply came to see if they have larger numbers than those few who attacked us at the river."

You gave him an incredulous look with an eyebrow raised nearly to your hairline. "...Few?"

He scoffed, and walked off, giving orders in Sindarin that you only caught a word or two of. You were watching him with a glower, when you noticed Lindir sidling up on your right smugly. "...Do you not wish that you know what he is saying?"

You playfully rolled your eyes. "Ugh, Lindy, geez, can you read my goddamn mind?" You turned to mock-glare at him; he was preening. "Well? What was he saying?"

Lindir laughed and wagged a finger at you-- so Elvish. "No no no no no, mellon, I will not make it that easy for you. If you wish to know exactly what he said, then you will have to continue learning from your current point."

Your shoulders slumped. "Really? Damn. Fine, I guess, since it looks like we're camping here." And it did. Practically everyone was going around setting up bedrolls, but you seen no sign of a fire. "Glad it's warm-ish. What, we just supposed to freeze?"

Lindir gestured to Gundabad. "If we light a fire, they will see us, and our stealth will be for naught."

You gave him an odd look. "...What?"

Lindir blinked. "If they see us, our stealth will be for naught."

You stared at him blankly. "...Naught?"

Lindir suddenly looked panicked. "Do they not have that word on your world? It means the same as nothing, in this context."

You scoffed with a cocky smirk. "I know what it means. You Elves are just so damn fancy." You reached over and ruffled his strangely-perfect brown hair, to which he yelped and yanked away from you as if you'd tried to stab him. You left your hand in the air where his head had been, wide-eyed, as Lindir stared at you in shock. "Uhh... Got a sensitive spot on your head there?"

Lindir narrowed his eyes at you. "I should teach you Eldar custom as well. No Elf touches another's hair, for whatever reason, unless it is necessary, which is more than likely never to happen. Braiding and touching another's hair is considered something only for the wedded to do."

You yanked your hand away from where his head had been. "Sorry. I didn't know. Where I come from, that whole hair-ruffle thing is used between siblings or friends."

Lindir smiled softly, straightening his hair. "It is fine, [Y/N.]. You had no way of knowing. But, now I realize I must teach you language and customs-- or perhaps Elros can do that..."

You snickered to yourself, earning an odd look from the Elf. You shrugged. "Nothin', just, I've got specific Elvish teachers now. You're my language teacher, Elros is now customs, Legolas is history, and Glorfindel is music. I'm gonna be a true Elf before I know it."

"Maybe never a true Elf," Lindir laughed, "But close enough!"

You laughed with him, but on the inside, winced. You doubted if he meant it as an insult, but it hit you like one. No, you'd never been considered good enough to be a true anything, especially an Elf of all creatures, who were naturally shiny and glowy and perfect and shit. But still, for someone to confirm it, even in a joking manner, that you'd never be good enough to be a true Elf...

It really hurt.

You acted all casual on the outside throughout the rest of the evening, laughing and joking when needed, but internally, you were fighting a dull ache in your chest. You'd gotten it a few times before-- rarely, but still-- and you knew exactly what it was. The desire to fit in. You'd never had a chance on Earth. But here, you'd hoped to at least be considered a part of their realm.

Dammit, why am I so sensitive?! He didn't mean anything by it!

But what were you really doing here? Struggling to prove yourself to a race that would never accept you. To all Elves, you'd be considered an imposter, like Thorin had said. You knew for a fact you'd never be good around "the race of Man," as they put it, and even in this world, you knew you'd never fit in with them, either. At best, the Men would see you only as a rebel Elf trying to fit into the society of Man. Dwarves? Hell no. What about the Hobbit-folk? Maybe you'd at least be considered a friend to them? No, you were an Elf here. They'd be wary of you, maybe even fearful.

Maybe you should just settle for traveling like a vagabond, like Gandalf does. When everyone else was resting, you stayed by Starlight. You scratched underneath of his chin, and he rested his snout on your inner elbow, allowing you to rest your head on his, staring into his eyes and putting off a feeling of calm. "You accept me for who I am, right?"

Starlight's ears were pricked toward you, so at least he was listening. His only response was a blink. You sighed, closing your eyes. You didn't even have the security of him. One day, he'd grow old and pass away, while you lived on for eons. Carefully, so as not to spook him, you reached up and scratched behind his ears.

"Mellonenin?" Said a voice behind you. You turned to see Legolas, looking concerned. He glanced back over his shoulder, to where the rest of the Elves talked amongst themselves, even conversating a little with the dwarves. "What are you doing out here?"

You gave him a smug look. "What's this I hear, Blue-Eyes? Showing concern for me?"

He rolled his eyes playfully. "Hardly. Just curious."

You shrugged, going back to loving on Starlight. "Everybody seemed to be doing good without me. Lindir and Elros said my lessons on custom and language were done for the day, so I figured I'd spend some time with Star."

Blue-Eyes shook his head in exasperation. "I will never understand your shortening of names..." He fixed you with an expression that you couldn't quite read. "...Are you nervous about a potential battle, Sairen?"

You shrugged. "Hack'n'slash. Can't be that hard. I have played video games, y'know, and I did get here through a LARP event." You shot him a cocky grin. "I think I can handle myself. Always have."

Blue-Eyes smiled softly. "Well... I am certain you will surpass my father's standards. I have no doubt of it."

A warm feeling blossomed in your chest. Your cheeks flushed. "Thanks. That really... That really means a lot, for you to be sure of me."

Blue-Eyes hummed thoughtfully, smoothing down Starlight's pitch mane. "Your world did not appreciate you as it should have. You are a kind person, Sairen, and while at times you are eccentric, that only adds to your persona. I know that I can put my full trust in you anytime, and not be disappointed." He smiled at you. "I am glad to know you, mellon. I feel as if you were meant to be here."

For a minute, you both just stared at each other with smiles on your faces, while you felt all warm and fuzzy inside. Any upset feelings from earlier completely burned away. His pale gold hair looked white in the moonlight. Fuck, I will not cry. I will not. Not at all. Definitely not even having to try... You finally blushed and looked away, busying yourself with straightening Starlight's forelock, though the smile remained on your face.

"Damn, Blue-Eyes. You're making me blush." He laughed, and you added, "But... I'm really glad I know you too, Leggy. You've been nice to me, and actually believe in me..." You smirked at him. "That's rare for me. Thank you."

He looked almost appalled. "You do not need to thank me for taking a liking to you, Sairen. It is not as if it is a chore." Suddenly making up his mind about something, he drew his shoulders back. "Would you like to go for a ride together?"

You beamed at him. "Duh! It's a horse, of course I wanna go for a ride!"

Blue-Eyes laughed. "Come on, then, let's go. Stay close to me; we will be going in the opposite direction of Gundabad, but orcs could still roam these wilds."

You nodded as you mounted Starlight, grinning stupidly down at the stupidly perfect Elf who smiled at you. "Got it. Let's go!"

Your heart was pounding dangerously as the two of you trotted off away from camp, talking about the history of Middle-Earth, as you tried to keep from staring outright at Legolas. As your heart faltered, looking at him smiling at you as the moonlight hit his hair, you realized something...

Shit.

Tag List:

@hauntedsiriel​ @tesserphantom​ @taurlel​ @liviaolivia​ @brushwood-souls​​ @dumbladores​​ @littlefrenchfryesblog​​ @hibernatingmadhatter​​ @reclusive-chicken-nugget​​ @naryamirie​​ @legolasdeserveslove​​ @escapingthoughtsandsecrets​​ @sagabriar​​

If anyone wants to be added or if I missed anyone, please let me know!

#legolas x reader #legolas x you #au #LARP #LoTR #The Hobbit #middle-earth #orlando bloom #elves #mirkwood #dwarves #thorin oakenshield #chapter 6 #the art of being an eldar #ronanstolkienfam #lots of famous movies #transformers #marvel #star wars #angst #fluff #romance #hurt #lots of angst for this chapter #starlight doesn't give one horse fuck for any of this shit #he could care less actually #GLORY-FIDDLE HAS ARRIVED #this IS an au after all #BOW to your rightful golden Elven overlord #i regret NOTHING

[ramblinganthropologist]

Writober 2020 - 18 (photograph)

Extra, extra, read all about it: someone’s about to fucking die. As they should, because who the hell honestly believes that Commander Shepard and Commander Shepard are straight anyway?

(ME1)

---

“Do you think either of them know they were seen yet?”

“Doubt it. Definitely explains the last name thing, though. How long do you think it's been?”

“Can't have been more than 5 years, they both did N7...”

Alistair was starting to get tired of people whispering. Didn't they know it was rude?

Ok, maybe his nerves were still a little frayed from the whole touch the Prothean beacon, figure out Saren is trying to kill everyone, become the first human Spectre thing. Nobody could blame him that he was a little cranky that morning as he left his office to get the Normandy where it needed to go. The fact it was actually his ship definitely didn't help either. After years of being enlisted or an officer, having free reign was... deeply uncomfortable.

He'd probably get over it, but... yeah it felt weird.

Still, even in his terrible mood it was impossible to miss the stares and the whispers from the crew whenever he walked by. Part of him had wondered if it was them gossiping about how he'd gotten the Normandy off Admiral Anderson, but... it didn't feel right. Professional whispering from the ranks was one thing, but this felt... oily. Salacious, maybe. Definitely something personal, which just amped up the gossip even more.

Now, had he been in a better mood, Alistair probably would have ignored it. The thing was, he wasn't. So he would have to be forgiven if he took a right when he should've gone straight and walked straight behind the two gossiping crew-mates. Neither of them noticed him, of course. He was quiet like that.

“What was that about N7?”

He shouldn't have enjoyed just how much air the two men cleared when they jumped out of their skins, but forgive him if he wasn't feeling just a little petty that morning. They were both 3 shades lighter as they turned to face him, and the sweat was really starting to pour down their faces. On his scale, he'd call that shit terrified.

Good.

“C-Commander Shepard, sir! W-we didn't see you there!”

He smiled, but there was nothing friendly about it. “Yes, that tends to happen when someone comes up from behind you. Now, to reiterate. What was that about N7? Have either of you been asked to join the training program? My congratulations if so, it's an honor even to be asked.”

He would know – he had it tattooed above his ass. And he definitely knew nobody on his ship was in active training at the moment. It was one of the perks that came with being the Normandy's CO. The other was getting to see moment like this transpire before him.

The larger of the two was sweating bullets as he tried to figure out what to say. “N-no... nothing like that, sir.”

“Just...” the words failed the smaller one. His face screwed up as he seemingly gave up whatever he was holding back. “How long have you been married to XO Shepard?”

…

Alistair blinked slowly. “What?”

If he hadn't known better... someone had just asked if he was married to his XO. His XO, Commander Bo Peep Shepard. His XO, Commander Bo Peep Shepard, his best friend and probably the closest thing he had left to family.

What the entire fuck?

Big one rubbed the back of his neck as his face began to take color again. “It... was on the extranet a few days ago. Pictures of you two together. It implied that you two were married. We thought it would explain the shared last name and all...”

Alistair let a sigh leak from between his teeth as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “A tabloid with nothing better to do, I assume.”

He let the pinch go, shaking his head. “Mind sending that site to me? I think I need to do some correction next time we dock at the Citadel.”

The two were already racing for their omni-tools, but he could tell the question still loomed in both their eyes. After all, he could just be trying to quash the story to keep his so-called marriage quiet. These crew, lovely as they were, didn't know he or his XO well enough yet.

Maybe that was why he rolled up his sleeve to expose his tattoo. “And by the way, I think this should clarify your questions.”

He tapped the wing colored in the gay pride flag for emphasis. The other, shaded in trans pride, went without saying. Years later, he was still glad he had gotten it during pride, even if it had been somewhat of a spur of the moment choice. Ironically enough, he had gotten it with Bo – she had the lesbian colors around her ankle.

You know, because she was a fucking lesbian and he was gay as hell.

“O-oh... yeah I guess it would.” Someone's face was turning red. “Sorry, Commander...”

“Just don't spread it around anymore.” Down went his sleeve. “Now, I'm going to go see where this website is hosted...”

With that he left them, the details blooming to life on his omni-tool screen. Once they got back to the Citadel, he and Bo were going to have to take a little trip...

---

“I'm going to murder them when I get my hands on them.”

“Don't worry, I won't stop you.”

The port hissed as Bo and Alistair left the Normandy's decontamination lock and entered the Citadel docking bay. It had been a few days since the discovery on ship, and now they were at the heart of the matter. Someone was about to get their clock cleaned, and it wasn't going to be mechanically.

'Don't forget ,you two, you don't have to testify against each other in court since you're married and all~!'

Al shot a glare back at the Normandy as he pressed the communicator in his ear. “Joker-”

'Just kidding, commanders. I know what teams you two play for. I guess we'll know you found them when we see the blood spurting.'

“You better fucking believe it.” Bo's eyes were practically glowing with hostility as she stomped down the walkway that connected their ship to the dock. Around them hummed the activity of the Citadel proper. Ships sailed above their heads, people went about their business... and somewhere, a tabloid was about to get the unholy shit kicked out of it.

Alistair checked the details on his omni-tool as they began to walk. “I traced the website's ISP to a building in the Wards. Chances are, they're there.”

“If not, they're going to tell us where the fuck they are.” Her knuckles were white as she slammed them together. “Damn straights and their height kink. How the hell could anyone think I was straight?”

Yeah, that was his question – she was built like a tank and had pink hair. How the hell could anyone read that as straight?

“I mean, they thought I was straight somehow, so they don't have a great judge of character.” Alistair tapped at his omni-tool. “It would be faster if we got a taxi, but walking is an option too. Up to you honestly.”

Bo didn't answer him. He realized why once he figured out he had lost his handy patch of shade. The other Spectre had left him in order to go storm over to a nearby newsstand where people were whispering. Given a few were running...

Well, he ran over to make sure nobody died.

“I can't fucking believe this!”

She pounded her fist on the counter, and Alistair felt like doing the same once he saw it. A new story had popped up, front cover with a picture that definitely wasn't photoshopped. Bo was front and center, chatting with a rather lovely lady. Anyone who could read body language could guess the two were probably flirting, which is probably why someone had been so quick to take it. Above the photo, a bold headline proclaimed “Commander Shepard: Newlywed in Bisexual Affair?”

Oh boy... whoever took that was a dead man.

Bo rounded on him, fire in her eyes. “Taxi. Now.”

Alistair didn't need to be told twice – they were soon in the back of a cab, headed towards the Wards. To say a burning silence fell over the back was putting it mildly. Bo was gearing up to kill someone, and he... well he didn't want to be next in the tabloid.

The cab driver unfortunately didn't have the sense God gave to rocks as he surveyed the two. “Trouble in paradise, huh? Well, there's always divorce court.”

Alistair grabbed for Bo before she could crash the cab. “We're actually going to clear up we're not married!”

“Ah, that's a shame. You two make a cute couple, being the first two Spectres and all. You could've made some wicked strong biotic kids.”

“Sir when I tell you I'm the only thing keeping you alive right now, please believe me and keep driving.”

By the time they were dropped off in the Wards, Alistair was pretty sure he had lost 10 pounds keeping the cab driver alive. His arms were killing him as they stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of a nondescript office building. It had a listing on the side, telling the different businesses inside. Their next stop was on the fourth floor... so if anyone got tossed out of a window, they would probably live.

“Alright, so let's figure out what we're-”

He didn't get to finish his statement. Bo was already walking in like a woman on a mission, leaving him in the dust. All he could do was chase after her, eventually catching up on the stairs to the second floor. All the while, a receptionist chased after them.

“Excuse me, you can't just-”

Bo turned back to face her dead on. “Spectre business.”

Their tail shook a little, but... Al was pretty sure it was because she was kind of into that. She was definitely blushing a little as she backed up. “R-right... fourth floor is what you're looking for, ma'am.”

Alistair sighed as he held up his hand in an apologetic gesture. “Sorry, we'll be done quickly. Thank you for your information.”

And then he was chasing after Bo again as she took the stairs two at a time. Before long, they were standing on the fourth floor's landing. There was only one door here, labeled with a sign that called themselves Citadel Daily. They were one of many tabloids that supplied the Presidium and Wards with the lack of news people loved, and no doubt they were one of the more popular ones. After all, they were creating quite the buzz about humanity's first two Spectres.

A buzz that was about to be repaid with a lot of violence if he didn't mediate.

He managed to grab her wrist before they went in. “Let's just... try talking first.”

“It's not you they're calling a cheat, Al.” She tugged her arm away. “I'm handling this my way.”

And then she pushed the door open, probably burying the knob in the wall. All motion stopped on the other side as she stormed into the room, coming to a stop at the heart of it. All Alistair could do was enter after her pulling the door out of the wall as he did. Yep... the handle went straight through. That was going to require a patch.

Bo glared at the room filled with desks and people. Someone was reaching for a camera, a device that abruptly died as her eyes glowed red. She might not have been good with technology, but she knew how to break it just fine. No more devices came out after that – they were smart.

“I'm only going to say this one, who the fuck is John Jacobs and when are they getting the fuck out?”

Nobody moved at first. Alistair could hardly blame them as he scanned the room. Mostly, he just saw shocked wanna-be journalists and gossip columnists who had never expected this kind of treatment. After all, they weren't printing anything particularly hard hitting. Of course, their mistake had been printing about the Shepards... which was a bad idea to say the least.

He spotted someone twitching in the corner of the room. Rather than alert Bo, he began to pick his way over. Nobody would look at him, but that was fine. He had his eye on the man trying to hide behind his desktop, looking at though he might piss himself.

And as he should – from the looks of things, he was working on his latest article.

“'Commander Shepard spotted coming out of a bar with-'” He shook his head, sighing. “Mr. Jacobs, if you were even half a journalist you would know I can't drink on my medication. That's just sloppy work right there.”

The man definitely pissed himself as he backed up in his seat. “C-Commander Shepard!”

“One of them, anyway.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Bo, found him.”

Maybe that was mean, but the photoshop job on that picture had been particularly atrocious. So maybe he didn't feel bad that hell on wheels was storming over, ready to put her fist straight through this guy's head. At least he'd stop it if it came to murder...

Maybe.

Bo came to a stop in front of the desk. His desktop fizzed and died as she loomed over him. Alistair definitely smelled piss and something else as the full weight of his crimes fell upon him. And of course, nobody was dumb enough to take pictures. After all, they were Spectres and about ready to prove what happened if you tried to smear them.

Though... was it actually a smear if they did make this guy's life a living hell?

“John Jacobs?”

His answer came out shaky. “Y-Yes, that's me. I didn't expect the story to get so big, b-but-”

Too late. He was already out of his seat by the collar of his garish shirt. Bo had him at eye level, and Al was there to avoid the pants region as he watched the carnage unfold. Someone nearby had a camera up  - a blue-eyed gaze quickly put a stop to that. Bo wasn't the only one who knew how to break technology.

“What the fuck was going through your demented little fucking head?” She brought him closer. “You got some kind of height kink, you nasty fuck?”

John was sweating bullets. “N-no! I just... a lot of people think you two are married! It's the same last names!”

Yeah, Alistair was doubting the lack of height kink, but at least he was trying to be honest. He was still probably going to get the shit beaten out of him, though. He kind of deserved it, what with insinuating they were not only married but... ugh...  straight.

Really, how the hell did anyone think that of them?

Bo's eyes said murder and her fists were willing to comply. “Let me put it to you this way, that receptionist down there is more my type than this manlet will ever be.”

“Hey, I'm a maligned party too, don't take out your frustration on me.” Alistair rubbed the back of his neck anyway – talking about his height was a sensitive subject. “Anyway, we're very clearly not married.”

“Or straight.”

He nodded. “Or straight, yes that's kind of important. So maybe you should print a retraction on those articles and apologize so you don't get thrown out a window. You'd probably survive, but it would sure hurt a lot regardless.”

Judging by the grip on his collar, he wasn't going to get out of this without some form of damage... but maybe they could keep him from getting tossed out a window. Besides, if he pissed himself anymore he was going to start leaking on the floor. Talk about gross.

John's eyes traveled from Shepard to Shepard. “T-this is cen-”

“Oh come the fuck on, she's ready to murder you do you really wanna complain about censorship? Read the room, man.”

Normally, Alistair didn't swear. However, this man clearly didn't have sense in his head, so maybe shock methods were needed. At least he shut his mouth that time as he thought the offer over. Maybe he should think a little faster.

Bo started to move to the window. “Well, he had his chance.”

“No, wait, stop!” Both his fists couldn't fit around her wrist. “I'll print the retraction!”

She stopped a few feet from the open window. “And you'll stop writing about us. No more Shepard stories, understood?”

He started to look like he wanted to argue, but... that window was pretty damn close. Sweat dripped down his forehead as he considered his options. Then he got inched a little closer, and the decision was clearly made.

“U-Understood... I won't print anymore.”

And then he was dropped to the floor in a sad, soggy heap. Bo wheeled around and glared at the entire room. Alistair stepped forward as well, feeling much more pleasant as he surveyed the terrified reporters sitting before him.

“I hope you all understand, that goes for anyone here. Nobody gets a free pass out of defenestration, understood?”

And then his eyes glowed as another camera died. “No story about this either, by the way. I've added you guys to my omni-tool news feed, so don't think just because we're off saving people that we won't hear about it.”

Given everyone else looked like they might need a change of underwear once they left, that was another pact sealed. With any luck, they wouldn't get too stupid about their stories. Of course, if they did... it wasn't like they were going to move buildings.

“Good talk.” Bo was already throwing the door open. “Let's get the fuck out of here, it smells like piss.”

Alistair was already following her out, sighing in relief as the door shut behind them. At least nobody had died, or even been really bodily harmed in the process. As far as missions went, this was one of their more successful ones.

Then again, Bo hadn't gotten to work her frustration out, so...

“Want to hit up the Alliance training course to work out that energy before we go see Anderson?”

“Fuck yes.” Bo was already heading in that direction. “I still should've thrown him out the window. Damn your sensibilities.”

Eh he could take her being mad at him if it meant nobody died. Dissatisfaction was part of being a commanding officer.

---

Retraction on previous stories concerning Commander Bo Peep Shepard and Commander Alistair Shepard

The Citadel Daily would like to publish a retraction towards two stories it printed. Along with this, we extend a heartfelt apology to-

“Well, I guess they got the message.”

Joker was chuckling as the message read over Alistair's omni-tool. All three were gathered in the cockpit a few days later, after a successful mission on a nearby planet. The news had come in as they were on the shuttle, and he had been waiting to listen.

Bo nodded as the message finished. “They fucking better... still don't know who took those damn pictures. They're lucky I didn't find them...”

Alistair nodded as he killed the feed. “Oh, speaking of. Turns out they're a freelancer. I think I have a beat on them-”

No doubt he was starting another hunt for some poor sap, but... well, again, he didn't feel bad. After all, they had thought he was straight. Someone had to pay for that grievous misstep. And with any luck, maybe this one wouldn't wind up out a window either.

You know, maybe being the CO wasn't so bad after all. He got to schedule time for defenestration duties. Talk about a perk of running the show...

#writober2020 #ramblinganthropologist's writing #Alistair Shepard #Bo Peep Shepard #Commander Shepard #paragon shepard #renegade shepard #you can figure out who is who pretty quickly #if not they're color coded for your convenience

[thedoctor1002]

Idk, I never posted one of my fics here but guess I'll try ~

Also, English is not my first language so feel free to correct me QwQ

Fandom: Psycho-Pass -season 1- (is this still a thing?)

Characters: Kogami Shinya, Sasayama Mitsuru, OC

Prompt (it was in Italian, so I'll translate): write a story using three among these words: cloud, dusk, thunderstorm, storm, hull, bay, shelter, sail, night

Title: Log date: 2110/02/28 (Friday) 22:04

---

The lights of the bay flicker dynamically before your eyes.

They dance hypnotically, of the same cyan colour of your office’s walls, but with a whole different beat. They drink the red and white trails from the traffic, they shatter and multiply in the tears of an inclement rain. I know how much you hate it, you just can’t stand going on recon with an umbrella. On the other hand, I love it.

Rain brings us close together under the waterproof cloth and I manage to observe details that neon lights often hide from me: the precise way you part your hair, the last few drops of the jasmine perfume on your jacket, your long lashes. Shion thinks they’re fake. We always fight over it, can you believe me?

After all, you’ve never been the kind of woman to wear such frills. 

A notification arrives, the acid light of your impalpable PC breaks through the sacred dark from where you pretend you don’t see me. It digs your silhouette and paints you like a ghost on the huge windows of the Public Safety Bureau.

Your jet-black hair lay on your back like varnish pouring over the white silk of your blouse.

“Pulling an all-nighter, Inspector Matou?” I ask casually, exposed. With you, after all, I always am: you’re the only one that can shush my shitty jokes.

But this time you laugh slightly: nothing more than a spike, a trembling breath that shakes your ribs and lips.

“The forecasts say that the storm won’t stop until tomorrow morning,” you tell me, sitting at your desk, “also, I’ve been delaying this paperwork through all week, it's about time I get it done. Might as well do some overtime and get rid of it, don’t you think?”

“You’re such a workaholic.” I label you, realizing how lucky I am being allowed to do it: Ginoza, that prude, would have never let it slide “You should leave some for the rest of the precinct: make 'em earn their wages.”

A tired smile crosses your face as you tap your fingers on the keyboard. It’s so clear you’re trying to avoid my glance.

You used to look for it.

You looked for my eyes at briefings, in that discrete way that eventually shocked everyone. You looked for them among alleys, as soon as you heard a gunshot or the chocked sound of a fight.

And when you found me, it felt like a 7 miles free fall.

“How are the legs going?” I dare to ask. I see the hollow structure of your new shins below the hem of your pencil skirt. They swing a bit underneath the glass of your desk. You didn’t lose your damn tic, your right heel shakes like the needle of a sewing machine even when you seem calm.

You shrug and drink the bottom of an already empty glass of water.

I shouldn’t have asked. It breaks my heart, to see you like this.

You don’t give me an answer and massage the back of your knee with a sigh. Lately, I feel like you’re avoiding me.

You’re turning back into the one you were before: uncompromising, cold and distant. I wonder if the bunch of ingrates downstairs have been calling you Dobermann again. I wonder if you’re still as relentless.

You worry me: your stress level is getting darker and darker. You don’t want old Kasei to take issues with you, not again.

I can imagine how you must have felt, the night when this mess happened.

You most likely got pissed, if I do know you.

I mean, did they really think I got away on my own? I bet you never doubted me: no one knows an Enforcer better than its Inspector.

“Runaway?! Have you lost your minds?” Sasayama?!”

Those were the first words you said when they rescued you. You spoke them way before cleansing your lungs from the rotten water of the river, way before asking Masaoka if you’d have ever got back to feeling your lower legs. They hurt like hell and you had to pull them around like sandbags.

“They got him” you panted, holding tight on your mentor’s coat “They took him away, I tell you!” The one that kidnapped him wasn’t a latent criminal. The Dominator didn’t activate, not even when they shot me. Please, believe me. Check on the log files, please.”

Crime coefficient: 0.

I know that bug still haunts you.

Cause, after all, it’s can’t be anything else: who on earth is that Makishima to fly under the Sibyl Sistem’s radar? Who can fool a network that knows your crimes before you do? And how is it possible that the silhouette that kneecapped you and threw you into a river could possibly be innocent?

You haven’t lost your mind, Inspector: the Dominator betrayed me, too.

Don’t think I don’t know how pitiful must have been, the next three days.

Makishima isn’t real. Forget it, it was just a delirium. You were in shock.

It was the trauma, dear. It was a breakdown. It was burnout syndrome.

You’d use some holiday, darling. Take a week. Take two. Go somewhere far, no, better: just stay at home. Go to therapy. Keep yourself busy, don’t think about it. Work. Also, don’t work: it wears you out!

They put you back on your feet in less than six hours, but nobody allowed you to join search parties. Heaven forbid your stress level getting any darker. Heaven forbid that yet another good Inspector gets demoted among those damn Enforcers. But, still, in the whole IT section, there wasn’t a single nerd that could get that night's logs. That's one funny thing, ain't it?

Woman, sometimes I wish your damn head wasn't that hard. I wish you didn't follow the Forensics to get a lift, so soon after the deed.

At least, you could have listened to Kogami. Shit, didn't you see how pale he was? You didn't even need the Dominator to read him, his stress level was mindblowing!

You should have believed him when he told you you didn't want to enter that alley. First off, it was already full of other detectives and analysts. I have no idea what kind of business you had to do in there. Second thing second, Kogami has an eye for certain matters. Do you think he didn't notice I’ve always been all over you? Not gonna lie, maybe I told him about you, once or twice.

But no, of course, you had to get in.

The software that taught you how to walk on those carbon stilts made you stand your ground and bark a "For fuck's sake, Shinya, move!" worthy of the Dobermann’s reputation. Even those who hadn't been called out made way.

But your new legs didn't hold you, when you saw what they had made of my corpse.

I'm sorry, Katsumi, I never wanted to upset you like that. 

You know how much I would have rather have a more heroic death. I don't know, like, in the middle of a shooting, saving the day. It would have been much classier, less tacky, less trash. I think I deserved it, that's all.

You stop typing and rub your temples. You shelter what’s left of your lipstick behind your hand. I wish I could kiss it off, instead of watching you consume it in a ruby red halo in the notch between your thumb and your index.

You lift your eyes only for Kogami, who’s passing by your office like a nurse in its night shift.

“So?” he asks in a whisper, putting more care in that question than I could have ever done. More than anybody could have ever done, because he’s the only one that gets you, right now. You two seem like the only ones who lost something.

You shake your head slowly, staring at the monitor and the dangerously high Crime Coefficient on the display.

“It's not working” you wail softly, misty-eyed. I can’t believe it, is it still you?

“They’re gonna kick me out anyway, if it doesn’t lower quickly” you continue, with that realism of yours. I used to call you a jinx for that but, at the end of the day, you always got our backs. “It’s for the best if I just resign. I’m gonna keep what's left of my dignity, at least.” 

The dark profile of my best friend looks through me, as he sits on the armchair next to mine. He would like to say something, a word of encouragement maybe, we all know it in this damn room, but numbers shut our mouths. 

“You could become an Enforcer” he proposes.

Goddammit, Shinya, did we work with the same person? Katsumi as an Enforcer?

And there you go, shaking your head. You hold your face in your hands and let your raven hair hide your visage. 

“Can you imagine me, following orders? I do know how to work, I can do it better than three-quarters of our colleagues and I’ve never had problems remarking it. They’d eat me alive if they had the chance. Dogs celebrate on the corpses of lions.”

“But lions remain lions and dogs stay dogs.” Kogami finishes, stealing my lines. 

I notice the slight trembling of your finger, as you tap your touchpad to send that last confirm.

In a few moments, the system will have your resignation registered. Your profile won’t unlock your Dominator anymore and in a few days time, just enough for you to collect your belongings, you won’t even manage to enter the office.

Who’s gonna explain to old Kasei that there's more of your stuff here than in your apartment?

I’d ask you what do you plan on doing with your life, but tonight’s decision seems definitely brave enough to call it a day.

I look at the tabs you open in your browser, they mirror in the windows behind you.

Air travel.

Argentina, Cuba, States, New Zealand, Germany, Kenya. You go around the world in 80 seconds flat, you multiply your chances and spread them all through the air in front of you, in a complex diagram that doesn’t lead anywhere.

I never wanted to take you away from your home, you don’t deserve this. 

You cover your eyes with a hand and use the other one to pick a random selection from your atlas.

Greece.

“Well, at least it’s on the sea.” you wrap up, condensing in a handful of words the only satisfaction you can find in starting a brand new life.

You two stare at the transparent screenshot of your flight, the countdown on the web page seems way too joyful.

“It’s so exciting, Katsumi Matou! Check-in your luggage. Your journey will begin in: 06 days: 17 hours: 34 minutes: 21 seconds”

20.

19.

18.

Seconds pass by, in complete silence.

“Do you think it would be a burden to him?” you ask Shinya, “Do you think he’d understand?”

Who would have guessed that a cynic one like yourself could believe in the afterlife? I wish I were here to ask you. I wish we could have spoken about life, death, sex, about things long gone and things yet to be.

His hand squeezes yours gently, as he looks at you in the eye, hoping to stop the train to Paranoidland from setting off.

“It’s not your fault” he reassures you as he can: the both of you wouldn’t make the average person’s empathy.

But he’s right, though, it really isn’t: I know you’ve done anything you could. It’s always been like that.

“Maybe I owe him” you draft “Even if they don’t believe in Makishima, maybe one day I could have proved he exists.”

The teal of your Psycho-Pass would suit you wonderfully, if it wasn’t a description of your mental health.

What could you possibly do in these conditions? You’d have ended up in a cubicle, filing loss and theft reports. You would have never made it to the dossiers, surely not to those of such a controversial case. Making you end up in a study room would have been my final bullshit. I’m happy with your choice, really. I would have loved visiting Europe someday.

“Don’t talk nonsense.” Kogami rebukes you, externalizing what I’ve been thinking all along: “I’m going to look out for your man: your team has already given way too much. I’m gonna find him, Matou, cold case or not.”

You nod, but it’s clear you don’t believe him. I can read through you, you’re a terrible liar.

I don’t think you don’t trust him, most likely you’ve done the math and figured that working on an independent case is far too difficult for an Inspector, let alone for an Enforcer.

And there it is, my fall. After an exhausting chase, you finally look into my eyes, even though -according to Shinya- you’re most likely staring at the void.

Despite being used to such races, believe me, I’ve missed you.

“I’m just so sorry.” you finally whisper, giving me a bitter smile. 

Try and stop me, Ginoza, tell me once again how inappropriate it is: I don’t mind anymore. I get up and I don’t hesitate while holding you and leaving a kiss on your hair, shamelessly.

“I’m going to grab some coffee” I announce, walking backwards to the door like a shrimp, just to look at my dearest friends a bit longer. “I’d get you one, but I’m short on coins. Maybe next time.”

“See you, Inspector.”, Kogami greets you, leaving alongside me.

“Be good.” you wave back, as we were all to meet again tomorrow.

Walking through the dark alley, I can hear an excerpt from our last conversation through the opaque glass of your office.

“You’re jerk, Sasayama!”

I can hear you laughing out loud, through the crackly recording. You laughed at my gall, with that warm, strong, sweet voice of yours, mocking me. Admit it: mine, after all, were the only compliments that could make you blush.

It’s incredible how we managed to joke even inside a car that was taking us on a crime scene. To an external eye, we might have looked disrespectful. Truth is I’ve always feared death so much I just had to laugh at the reaper.

“Oh, come on, what would it take? Come with me to the Precinct’s New Year’s dinner, the 17th is around the corner!” I kept annoying you, as you were too busy driving to mind my dumb flirt attempts. I still can’t get how we never had an accident. “Be good, Katsumi, give me a joy to live for!”

“You could always ask Shion, you know? You always give her more attention, after all.”

I hear the subtle sound of the wheels stopping, the parking brake cracking and it’s like Ogishima’s outskirts appear before my eyes, in that same January night. That place gave me goosebumps, but I would have hated if you understood it.

“Here we are” you announced, with still a bit of resentment in your voice. You unlocked the passenger’s door and I remember I left your Dominator in the car’s trunk: I didn’t want you to follow me. Not that time.

“You scare me when you pay so much attention” you commented, noticing how serious I got “will you tell me why are you insisting so much to keep on searching? Kogami got the guy. Tomorrow we go, we arrest him and it's thank you, next.”

My answer has been recorded as a distant and muffled noise, but I still can trace it: “He’s not the one, I tell you. I have another suspect, but I need a more solid base. And you’re staying, Inspector.”

“Staying?! You’ve gone crazy!” you laughed, locking the corporate sedan behind you “If something were to happen to you, or worse if you didn’t come back, Kasei would…”

“I said you’re staying: it’s dangerous.”

“Sasayama, our work is dangerous,” you replied, contemptuous, understanding that clearly among the gear I brought I didn’t count yours and going back to the car to get it “One more risk won’t make a difference: if I have to drop dead, it can either be here, at home or god knows where.”

“Will you join me for the precinct’s dinner, though?”

And here is a sequence that the voice recorder surely can’t have grasped, but that I could remember even in a thousand years. You cast an outraged glance over me from above the trunk’s door, panting through a half-smile. You shook your head, tucking your hair behind your ear. And finally, after refusing my invitations since 17th November, during lunch break, you smiled shrugging.

“Deal, come on, just make way” you sighed, as your heels echoed on the wet concrete “Still, you’re a jerk.”

“I recorded it: you have no excu-”

The audio file interrupts.

End of recording.

#anime #manga #fan art #fan work #fan fic #fan fic writing #fanfiction #fanfic #psycho pass #psychopass #OC #original character #oc fanfiction #one shot #oneshot #oneshot fanfic #sasayama #kogami shinya #sibyl system #makishima shogo #first fanfic #translation #anime fanfiction #wattpad #efp fanfiction #fan writing #fanwriter #writer #writing

[bekahdoesnerdshit]

Playlist: Charlotte Olivia Grace

Alternate Title: Dealing with Religious Trauma But Like in a Cute, Fun Way

Featuring: A director’s cut style breakdown of each song choice, and a bonus Campaign Song not found on the original playlist!

Not Gonna Take Me by BAILEN

You took my mother You took my father Oh, but you're not gonna take me!

This is SUCH a fun song and I feel like it sets the tone for the playlist so well! And, truth be told, it was the first song that I knew was going to make the final cut. The energy of the song is so lively and fun, and the chorus -especially the bit I quoted above!- is really just a Cog slam dunk. The toxic, insular culture that her parents had gotten wrapped up in is not going to take her too, and Cog is going to run as far and as fast as she can to make sure it never catches up with her. 

Only the Good Die Young by Billy Joel

Well your mother told you all that I could give you was a reputation Aw she never cared for me But did she ever say a prayer for me?

HEY this is the Ace and Cog song. Thanks for the banger, Billy Joel. Like bro the whole song is about this guy rolling up and talking about whisking this girl who’s grown up wrapped up in religion away from it to a life that -not to brag- kicks serious ass. There’s more for you out in the world! It’s not a scary place, it’s exciting and full of life and people who are going to love you! Come on! Every time I listen to this song on Cog’s playlist, I picture Ace singing and doing a dumb little dance and voices along with it just to make Cog laugh because they’re SO cute. Also, coincidentally, Cog’s mom fucking Hated Ace. Presumably because he “stole and defiled” (her words!) her daughter. You hate to see it 😔 Also, every time I hear the line “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints” I picture Cog sitting around a fire with Ace and her party members absolutely breathless from laughing which is an incredibly healing mental image that I highly recommend. 

Haven by We Banjo 3

Let me be your haven Let me be your light Sail with me across the ocean deep And find a place for love and joy

One of my dnd characters? Wanting to be a source of light and peace for the people around them, wanting to come up alongside them and bear their burdens with them? It’s SO likely, and it’s true. I think in my head this was originally another Cog and Ace song, where she wanted to repay all the ways he’d helped her by reaching out and trying to offer him a sense of peace in the midsts of everything he has to deal with, but the longer she’s spent with her party the more I think it’s come to apply to them as well. Yes, sometimes you have to fight. Sometimes, you have to make hard, painful decisions. But there’s light and love and joy to be found in the world! And if you can’t find them, it’s worth it to be the source of those things for the people around you! I think Cog would love nothing more than to take all of her friends troubles away from them to just give them a chance to breathe, and this song speaks to that so genuinely.

Hover by Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

The roof peels away And she's left uncovered Then feet leave the ground And she hovers, she hovers, hovers, hovers...

A song about discovering our self-worth, perhaps? About realizing you’re more powerful than the people around you want you to think you are, and then taking a deep breath and deciding to use that power for yourself? That’s self care, baby! This is very much the “I’m looking around, I’m realizing Home isn’t home for me anymore because it isn’t safe, and I’m starting to think that maybe it’s time for me to go” song. You know, that hyper-specific song that every playlist has. Also, it’s just such a pretty song! And right in my range, which doesn’t hurt its odds of making it onto a playlist. 

Cloud’s Song by Brent Walsh

Hey, God, are You listening? Sometimes it feels like I'm not hearing anything back Why does that scare me so much? Hey, God, are You listening?

Y’all ever uh. Y’all ever grow up deeply rooted in your family’s church of choice, only to have a crisis of faith later in life when you’re old enough to think for yourself because you don’t feel the connection to your god that everyone is telling you that you should? No? Just me and Cog? Okay! Cog doesn’t believe in the Old Gods. Mystra is dead, same as all the other gods, killed by whatever force caused the apocalypse and turned the Wasteland into what it is today. Anyone who says otherwise is looking for a way to manipulate people. ...but it’s one thing to say that and convince yourself that it’s true, and another entirely to unravel 18+ years of being told otherwise and come to terms with what a world truly without gods means for you and the people around you. And what if the gods are real, what if Mystra is alive, and she just didn’t care for Cog? If Cog is just fine not hearing from her either way, what should it matter if she’s real or not? Except it does matter, somehow, and Cog doesn’t know what to do with that. Oof.

The Gardener by Sarah Sparks

God the gardener when the autumn comes I will not seasons fear With the pruning a branch is stronger, I will learn to love the shears

This song is about coming out on the far side of a situation she never should have had to be in, but realizing that she’s stronger because of it. Is it still unfair that she had to grow up in such an unhealthy environment, burdened by expectations she was never going to be able to live up to? No, of course not. There’s no outcome that makes it worth it for her to have suffered through that. But because she survived it, she is infinitely more compassionate, more patient, and more intentional than she likely would have been otherwise. It’s not easy to come to terms with trauma like that, and I definitely don’t think Cog is as close to finding closure as she would like people to think she is. But she’s getting there, and I think this sort of perspective has done a lot to help her on that path.

Shake it Out by Doll Skin

'Cause I am done with my graceless heart So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart 'Cause I like to keep my issues strong It's always darkest before the dawn

So technically this is a cover, but honestly I love the energy on it so much more than the original. It’s about moving on from a past that’s clinging onto you and weighing you down by shaking off that guilt and turning to face a new day. Also, it’s just a fucking banger. It’s unapologetic about shrugging off weight you’re not obligated to carry, and while I don’t think Cog is quite to that point in her journey yet, I hope that by the end of the campaign she will be. Right now she still has a lot of guilt for the way she left her home, even though she knew she needed to go for her own good, but this song is for a Cog who -a few years down the line- has made peace with her decisions and understands that she deserves the same kindness from herself that she gives to everyone else.

Echo by Talisk

This song is an instrumental, but it goes So hard and is so representative of the arc I see for Cog in this game that it honestly makes me emotional every time I hear it. The beginning is quiet and a little slower, then about 30 seconds in the violin comes in and starts ramping things up as Cog begins to look around and realize the life she has been living isn’t the one she wants to continue. At around 1:30 the melody gets more complex and other instruments layer in as she sets out into the world and starts meeting the people she now considers her closest friends, and it continues to build and build and build with this anxious but excited energy of fingers flying across strings, barely keeping up with themselves with how eager they are to get the music to the world. The final variation on the melody from about 4:19 to the end of the song makes me picture Cog just spinning, arms wide, eyes closed with the sun on her face and the world’s biggest smile, and it just fills my heart with so much joy! 

Gold by Rabbit Wilde

All my friends are calling me Wild, like the wind I'm drifting from all I've known And packing up and trying all my best At staying gold

This song is so cute and fun, and high energy in the Exact way I was looking to cultivate for this playlist. This song is about the way Cog has grown and become more self-assured since leaving home and joining her party! Going from being tired and silenced, to having a fire burning from within her! She’s making new friends, she’s wandering and exploring the world, and she’s taking control of her life in a way that’s left her overall a happier and healthier person. And again, at risk of sounding repetitive, it’s just a bop. And bops always make it onto this playlist! 

Hieroglyphics by The Oh Hellos

'Cause you've been too busy thinking ahead Of where we're all going after we're dead To maybe consider our bodies are worth More than the dust that we can return

I am literally Obsessed with this song as a Cog song (and also, as a result of my playlist building, with The Oh Hellos in general). The whole energy of the song is looking at people who view religion as this old, tradition heavy thing its followers are obligated to bear forward and just asking... why? The lyrics I highlighted above are the ones that really sold this song as a Cog song for me, but there’s another line in the second verse with absolutely beautiful imagery about nebulas being beautiful, sacred bodies of dust that goes on to pose the questions; why can’t the same be said for humanity? Is being human completely divorced from being divine? Is there not inherent divinity in being a living, breathing creature with independent thought? For Cog, this is what faith should be. It should be about reveling in being alive and in the beauty of the world you get to live in. If there are gods, she can’t imagine them wanting anything different for the beings they created.

Bonus Track!  Tough Kids by Coyote Kid

I don't trust anyone more than I trust me and mine It's a dog eat dog world, but this pack runs till the end of the line

Campaign Song! Party song!! It’s just a banger!! If this campaign had a theme song, this would be it! I can fully picture the animated opening that would play before the start of the game, and it SLAPS. The first thirty seconds is this western style instrumental with the camera racing across the barren wasteland, with the first swell of the trumpet triggering the camera to pan up toward the sun setting on the horizon as the title card fades in. From there the camera takes off again and loops to each party member spread out across the Wasteland before they’re brought together. It swoops over the caravan Sunny and Wol are escorting, and they shield their eyes against the sun to look up at it as it passes. We see Nilos silhouetted against the outline of Scorch, steeling himself to enter the Bandit town with little more than the ratty suit on his back and the gun hefted over his shoulder. We see Maelo wandering out of his ramshackle house with his pack full and on his back, sparing one sad look at a swath of hazy green trees in the distance behind him before putting his back to it and setting out for the Crossroads. We see Cog! Bored to tears in a New Alexandrian classroom until she catches a glimpse of Ace beckoning to her from the doorway, and she grins and waits until her professor’s back is turned before grabbing her books and darting out of the room. We see Adiane in a dark alley somewhere, minding her business until she hears something that piques her interest! She looks up, rolls her shoulders, and we catch the flash of a dagger in one hand before she disappears into the night. And finally we see Clay, sitting against the back wall of what’s clearly a prison cell with his head resting on his knees, and we hear the rattle of a metal door being opened and Clay looks up as light from outside his cell falls on his face for the first time in god knows how long.  And then the chorus! We cut between various notable fights the party has been in to showcase their thematic skills! Sunny gives a mocking salute before hauling back to punch some bad guy in the face! Wol ducks an attack completely accidentally as he flips frantically through an enormous book, and when he looks up to cast his spell his eyes are a void dotted with silver stars. Nilos blasts some poor bastard point blank with a shotgun shot, then whirls around to slam the butt of the gun against someone else’s head! Cog’s casting gloves glow white hot as she flings a hand toward the sky to call for aid, and her robes whip around her as she sends a shockwave of magic out with herself at the epicenter! Maelo looks up, pulls a very obvious ‘oh shit!’ face, then taps the end of his staff against the ground and causes impossibly dense vegetation to grow instantaneously and send the people charging toward him toppling to the ground. Adiane whirls out from behind him as he finishes casting, tucks and rolls into a crouched shooting stance, then fires off three precise shots that drop three different targets. And Clay catches an attack on his shield, laughs and shouts something we can’t hear over the swell of the music, then summons his pact weapon mid-swing to catch his attacker unawares and send them toppling to the ground. And the second verse? OH boy. The cadence of the line “it’s a dog eat dog world” lends itself so naturally to having the antagonist of each arc surge up onto the screen one after the other, with a grinning Valentine bringing up the rear with his arms spread wide. And then! The bridge? We cut between the party’s npc friends living their lives and kicking ass. Ace and Sunny’s dads! Nathan and Sierra! King Alistair! Wol’s family! Penny and I’den! Also!! Not only can you physically not lose your shit listening to the repeated “we’re gonna make it or die trying” it’s also PRIME real estate for a flash montage of important moments of the campaign. Bombing the first bunker with a Meteor Storm scroll! Sunny putting her fist through the shadow demon in Lafaroh! Cog tackling Nilos to Dimension Door them into open air eight hundred feet off the ground! Watching the Bandits shoot down the Emperion airship over the Crossroads! Staring down the elf queen in her own courtroom and telling her she’s wrong! Finding the Godkiller! Sauntering into Scorch to clean up in the Murderbowl! God we do so much cool shit in this game!!  The final rendition of the chorus just shows the party working together as a team, having each other’s backs and covering weak spots without a second thought because they know how to work well together. The song fades out on an overhead shot of the party sprawled out around their campsite at the end of a long, exhausting day, eating and talking and laughing and just generally, blatantly, comfortable with one another. The camera swings up one final time to show the beautiful night sky overhead, with swaths of stars that wink out slowly one by one as the song comes to an end. 

#playlists #mine #wasteland campaign #cog #did you already listen to it?? listen to it again it still slaps!! #lost my SHIT on that last one can you tell?? i needed to talk about this vision I've had for months and idk if my party would care #/how do I send them All Of That without looking like a lunatic lmao