#but in this context it feels better cause like… yeah shes just terrified | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

acmartin · 1 month

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Take Two: Scene Concept

Scene concept for my two main love interest characters in my WIP.

Context of Characters: Both characters at this point have strong feelings for one another if not in love with each other already. Character A is afraid because she has never been in a relationship before, she hasn't even ever been kissed. There is also the factor that her enemies would harm the woman she is interested in and it's a terrifying concept to put Character B in that position.

Character B has past relationship traumas and doesn't want to let herself fall for Character A, especially not in the middle of the war they are fighting. This causes her heart and brain to be in their own little war.

Scene:

Character A and B are getting ready on opposite sides of a door for a party that they have to infiltrate to get some information that will be vital to the war.

Character B: "Are you almost done getting ready for the party? We are going to be late at this point."

Character A:"Wasn't the whole point of this mission showing up late so we could capture our target off guard with our presence?"

Character B (clearly becoming irritated with Character A): We need to be late and not arrive after the party has ended.

Character A: "I- oh, sorry. I am just having some problems with my outfit. I should just be another few minutes and we can go."

Character B knows Character A better than that. It will be far longer than a few minutes if she doesn't intervene in some way.

Character B: "Do you need help with the dress?"

After some time passes without a response Character B calls out Character A's name.

Character A: "It's not that kind of problem with the dress. I'll be fine I just need to put on my heels and then I'll be ready."

Character B notices that Character A is doing a terrible job at deflecting.

Character B: "Is it alright if I come in?"

Character A: "I guess."

With the sound of the door unlocking, Character B opens the door to find something that she didn't expect. Character A was looking at herself in the mirror on the opposite side of the room, fidgeting with her golden and ruby dress. Seeing her fidgeting with the dress is not what she didn't expect, what she didn't expect to see was that with the open back design of the dress, she saw a back riddled with scars.

She knew Character A had scars on her back but she never laid eyes on them, Character A usually walked around with long-sleeved shirts or jackets and now. Now she is in a backless dress that shows off much more than just her scars. She has found Character A beautiful since the day they met, but she has never seen her like this and the only thing she can think is,

Character B: “Wow”

The second she said that she felt her body coil back in embarrassment. She didn't mean to say that, not that she didn't mean it, but that one word can be taken out of context and the last thing she wants is for that to happen.

Character A: "Yeah... I have a lot of scars. Sorry."

Just as she expected, it was taken out of context. Character B takes notice that Character A's eyes are closed as she is still facing the mirror. She knows that she has to tread lightly here, to not say the wrong thing.

She takes the last few steps to where Character A is standing. She is right beside her, close enough that the other woman can most definitely feel her presence but not so close that she is invading her personal space.

Character B: "Why are you apologizing for your scars?"

Another pause occurs before Character A responds.

Character A: "Habit, I guess? Sorry."

Character B: "Don't apologize for something that is a part of you. Your scars aren't what make you, you."

Character A: "I know that, but when I look at them that knowledge escapes me."

Character B takes a chance with something and moves in front of Character A slightly guiding her hand to her companion's face grazing the scar on her chin. She lifts Character A's head up slightly so that when her companion opens her eyes they will lock with her own.

Character B: "So don't look at them. Look at me instead."

Character A with her eyes still closed: "I don't want to."

Character B: "Why not?"

Character A: "I don't want to see the look on your face."

Character B: "And what look would that be?"

Character A: "Pity."

Character B: "Do you trust me?"

Character A: " What kind of question is that? Of course, I do."

Character B (as softly as she can): "Then open your eyes."

Character A does as she is asked and is not met with pity at all. She looks at Character B's eyes and almost gets lost in them. All she sees is adoration. Without hesitation, she takes a step forward and gives the other woman one of the biggest hugs she could.

The hug is reciprocated immediately and with just as much love and pressure behind it. They didn't know it but they both needed that hug. Once they separate, Character A takes a few steps back to properly take in what her travel companion fully looks like in her party outfit. She wishes that the look Character B was wearing would make her speechless but instead...

Character A: "You're terrifyingly beautiful."

A few moments pass before Character A realizes what she said.

Character A: "Wait, terrifying is the wrong word to use. I don't find you scary, I find you beautiful. I don't know why I said terrifying. Well actually I do, but that's not important. It is and I shouldn't undermine my emotions but, you know what. I am going to stop talking and just end this now before I keep going. Just forget I said anything, please."

Character B has known Character A for a few years now and has been rejecting the feelings she has for her for the last year. She knows Character A well enough to know just exactly what she meant by her first comment. Character A is afraid of her emotions, afraid of what may come from them. Emotions are a hard and difficult thing to wrap one's head around and in the midst of a war, it makes the difficulty tenfold. They are both lucky they have even gotten as far as they have.

Character B knows that this is a conversation neither of them are ready to have. Not yet, soon though. She begins walking to the door wondering if she should say anything or just leave in silence, but then she remembered something.

Someone once told her that when it comes to quiet moments of war where you can even look at someone the way they just finished looking at each other if something can be said, then say it. If you are in a war for the Gods' sakes and you don't know if you will be able to say anything later on because of the battles you will endure than say something. Say anything. So that's what Character B does as she walks through the doorway.

Character B: Take the time you need but I just want to say something before we move on from this. Something I think you need to hear as much as I need to say it. Is that fine?

She waits for Character A to give a small nod and look up at her.

With a sly smile, Character B says what needs to be said/heard.

"I find you terrifyingly beautiful too."

Character B turns as she states this knowing the message is well received and closes the door behind her.

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mercymaker · 5 months

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anyway, now that I'm awake it's malstarion hours in my brain and I've been thinking about it for a long while, occasionally brushing it away but the more I rotate it, the more it makes sense

especially with how their romance goes in act 3 and the contrast and the development is so succulent and juicy

BUT there's that one line after the first time sleeping with him that always made me think "damn, you're really ashamed you just fucked her, huh? you don't want others to know you touched her?" and while at first I tried to brush it away to not "ruin the moment", now I'm sort of starting to like it, considering all the context.

in mal's playthrough it happens pretty early too. way before she gets to do anything really impressive, before she becomes her own person. at first, she's just this drow freak that can do a bit of magic here and there, and if not for lae'zel being a literal alien, I think mal would be considered the number one candidate to be mistrusted and, if need be, betrayed.

then, she sorta lucks out that the goblins see her and immediately go "omg, a true soul!! welcome!! welcome!!" which pushes her into becoming a sort of a leader of the group and speaking for them. that gives her a bit more importance and leverage, enough for astarion to think that maybe sticking together is in his best interest.

so yeah, he does his little dance, turns on the seduction mode and goes after her, especially after the group finds out he's a vampire, so the need for allies and protection rises. and who's a better candidate than the resident drow who's also their leader? but he's doing it all for his survival, not because he wants her. quite the opposite.

so he does his best to seduce her, but mainly in private, because of the said shame.

aaaand then at some point a bigger problem overshadows that problem. he starts catching feelings. and I love that shift and all the turmoil it causes. for both of them.

because it's not like mal was this uwu innocent girlie swooning in his arms either. she was very much considering betraying and pushing them under the..uh. wagon if need be. when they first slept together, she was terrified, expecting him to try to kill her. but she was pretending and manipulating and hiding behind a mask.

I like the idea that their relationship starts not with innocent glances and soft kisses, but with knives and smiles full of sharp teeth. with shame and fear and reluctance. because of how it grows eventually.

because of the companion lines in baldur's gate after the conclusion of his quest. how he can't keep his hands off of her, even in public. and while I don't see them as being big on pda, if it's enough for their friends to comment on it, then he must do it quite a bit. because he's in love with her :')

#life #the bg3 adventures #oc: maleane #maleane/astarion #hi welcome to my ted talk #i am in love with them #and all the messy complicated shit they have going on #baldur's gate 3 #astarion #astarion x tav #astarion romance

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lonelyvomit · 2 years

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It's the anon from a few days ago that wrote about feeling lonely and forgotten. I just, I don't know, I want to say you are right. I know that I am the one causing this. But it is so hard to actually open up to people when all I have ever learned is that I am the problem. When I first opened up to my dad about my mental illness he actually said "How dare you to emotionally blackmail me with this". Then he went and told someone from the family about this, but I have never been asked about it. I also never told anyone about my self harming history but learned that they know from a worker at the youth welfare office (I google translated this so no idea if it means what I want to say). My mom told them this to make my dad look bad. Never once she asked me about it, or anyone else for that matter. My best friend who was the only person who I actually talked to about stuff like this, actually doesn't speak to me anymore, because they like you said that this is my fault. I really want to change, but I am so afraid of rejection.

first off, love, it's not your fault. I never wanted to say that, but I can understand why it might've come across that way and I apologise. I never wanted to put any blame about this on you, because it's not that you're doing anything wrong - you're doing what most humans in your situation do. I probably should've mentioned this in the previous ask, but I used to do the exact same thing myself. and I never realized the walls I was holding up were there until I learned to let them down, and I have since looked back and realized that during those years when I felt incredibly alone, I did in fact have people around me, I just didn't let them in. my intention was not to point fingers and make you feel guilty about where you are, because your situation is super common and what you're doing makes perfect sense. you're protecting yourself, I understand, and that's not wrong. but the ways in which we protect ourselves from getting hurt are rarely if ever easily split in right and wrong ways, because all of them have pros and cons and some are easier than other or fit our personal situation better. I just wanted to make sure you're seeing both sides of it so you can decide for yourself if this is how you want to go forward.

secondly, I'm so sorry your family has let you down like that and refused to listen to you or help you. you deserve a lot better, and you deserve to find people who care about you. and I know how terrifying that is, but that's the shitty part of life - you don't know who would be there for you until you trust them enough to give them a chance. and yeah, there's a chance someone will be hurtful about it. unfortunately it does happen. but the good people you can find who can actually make you feel like someone cares about you are worth it. in the end they will matter more and they will outweight the bad.

you have a valid reason to feel like you need to protect yourself when the people closest to you have failed you that badly. but that protective shield has it's down side too. you haven't done anything wrong - it's not that black and white. there is no right or wrong way to deal with these things, and I certainly am not the person to tell you how you should handle your life. your situation is much more complicated than the limited context I have, and out of everything I say I hope you're able to weed out anything that doesn't make sense or actually apply because of something I'm not aware of. you make your own decisions and I'm not trying to point fingers and pick out faults in any of them, I don't know your life and that is not my place. I can only offer a different point of view that may or may not help you.

and regardless of any of this, your feelings of loneliness are just as valid. where they stem from doesn't change the fact that they're real and hurtful, and I'm really sorry you have to deal with them. I hope you find a way to connect with people, even if it's scary. 🖤

#asks

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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years

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Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

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mbluee · 3 years

Text

Red - Thirteen x Reader

for @whumptober2021

No. 3 - STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES BUT…

Taunting | Insults | “Who did this to you?”

Word Count: 4,715

Warnings: blood, lots of blood, injury, near-death(ish), abandonment, so much whump, exhaustion, choking, bit of possessiveness...eek

Summary: The Doctor makes the mistake of leaving you alone, and now she must face the consequences - and so must you. Red is an awful color.

A/N: surprise! i’m doing pieces of whumptober and told no one! yes i do have a schedule!! hahahaa. hahaha. ha. you all know i can’t resist a “who did this to you?’ feat. a pretty blonde time lord. on that note, read it and weep. xoxo

✩✩✩✩

The floor below you is red, and what a pretty shade it is. Deep, glistening, red. Wine stained, rose colored. Red.

Wet, warm.

In a puddle of it beneath you, a puddle of red. How funny. A puddle of a color? Hot, fresh, new. Odd. Pretty, out of context.

Your hands are covered in it, like a paintbrush had been brought across your palms, drawn onto each knuckle. You could see the lines and creases in your skin, each dimple covered in that color. Red. Pools of it in your hands, on your clothes. Oh, not your clothes. What an awful day to wear white. Now it was red, red, all of it, red. Overwhelmingly red.

Surrounding you, red.

Beneath you, red.

The people on the floor are red. They were breathing, once, you think. Not people. Bodies.

Bloody bodies, in pools of blood, beside you, now red.

She said she was coming.

You can’t breathe very well, too caught up in the smell. No one told you blood smells.

Did she leave you behind?

Your feet are entirely numb – they only feel wet. You aren’t wearing shoes, you don’t think; Your socks are drenched. Soaked. White turned red – oh, they’re pink. Pink is a pretty color. Better than red.

She forgot about you.

Your fingertips are wrinkly. Blood was thick. It hung heavy, it weighed down your clothes. Weighed down your heart, submerged your mind. You were under the blood like you were underwater.

She left you alone.

You swallow, your mouth feels full of red. No, not red. Blood.

“She left me alone,” You think you say, but it doesn’t sound like your voice. It’s shattered, garbled. Bloody. Was that you?

Did she leave you alone?

In the sea of red comes lilac. A coat, whipping about the destructive battlefield, contrasting so sharply with the darkness of it that you almost have to close your eyes; Something tells you not to. That color, that presence. The vibrancy of it. Familiar. Safe. Home. You don't process ever saying her name, but when that bright figure whips around to face your crumpled body, you realize that you must have. A plea, a calling.

She said she'd protect you.

There was so much blood.

Her fuzzy figure breaks into a jog, boots thudding quickly across the rivers of red below. Red footprints left in their wake. It makes you sick, and your body aches; It burns red.

The Doctor kneels when she’s close enough. You want to move closer to her, to be comforted by her. She looks warm until you look to her eyes.

"What's wrong? Is this your blood?" She's demanding, her voice dark. Not light, not by any means. The color of blood, of destruction, of a deep and brewing storm. Her eyes weren't red, but they might as well have been. She says your name. A hand to your cheek.

"Who did this to you?"

Voice darker, growing bolder. Angrier. Her hand is hard against your skin, and you whimper involuntarily. You need her to be your home, and she was becoming someone you didn't recognize. The rainbows of her personality were replaced by thunder and malice. It scares you.

You startle.

She scares you.

And she stops.

It must be in your eyes, you think, or the way you flinch back at her sharpness and the cut of her touch. Usually so soft, suddenly so tight. You can’t understand it in this state of panic – maybe you would later – but right now it’s unbearable, and you just need her. Not whoever this was. Her.

“I’m sorry,” She says – guilty, regretful. Her hand softens just before it pulls away, and no, no – come back, you need her back, need that softness she just teased you with – and you reach up to grab her only to cry out in pain.

“No, no-“ The Doctor strains, falling to a pile beside you and ruining her clothes. Her knees stained red, palms turned wet. When she swipes the hair from your face, blood is left behind from the floor. You don’t care. You need her.

“I need you,” You say, without thought, automatic. It still isn’t your voice.

“I’m here.”

Her eyes are kind. Not red. Not dark, not hidden with something terrifying like before. Transparent, compassionate, home.

There she was. Your Doctor. Yours.

“Doctor,” You plead, and it is your voice – more than it was before. Bubbly, covered in stress and intensity, but it was yours again. She was yours again. “I can’t move.”

Her hands come to your side only for you to gasp in shock. It burns, sending a jolting snap through you as if her fingers shocked a painful current of electricity through your broken body, and it hurts more than it should because her hands should never cause you such pain. But it burned, and you didn’t want it to, and that fact hurt so bad that you crumble before her. The Doctor’s touch was always safe. She was safe.

But she left you alone.

And just as much as it hurts you, it burns straight through the Time Lord before you. The whirr of her sonic is all you can process through the blinding pain, and she looks at you as though her whole world is falling apart.

There’s a quick and final buzz, the flick of her wrist, and an analysis of results.

“Broken ribs. No open wounds. Oh, sweetheart-“

She catches herself, but still stares at you. Your eyes are weak and blurry when they meet her figure, but she’s so pretty against the backdrop of battle and blood, and she calls you such sweet things. Her clothes are ruined, her shoes red, and you whine without meaning to. Pathetic, maybe, but all it does is light a furious fire inside of her that you can’t quite see.

Behind that worried and gentle gaze was an impending hurricane; Eyes of lightning, steps of thunder. The Doctor pushed back that anger for your sake.

You were crumpled on the bloodied floor, and she had been ready to ravage galaxies to find you.

“I’m okay,” You tell her, trying to reassure the worried edge that covered her face with lines and regret. Your hand lifts, however slow, to touch her cheek. You’re lying to her. She knows. Your fingertips leave behind a bloody smear, and it only makes your tears fall faster – proves your false reassurance. “You’re here.”

She hushes you, leans into your desperate fingertips. You need to feel her, she needs to feel you. It’s unspoken.

You’re alive.

You found me.

“You’re here,” You repeat quietly, broken. “Don’t… Don’t leave me again. I can’t-“

“I won’t. No, never. Couldn’t.”

Each word is punctuated with a touch to your arm, your shoulder, your cheek. She leans forward, kisses your forehead so gently you must see stars. No – galaxies. Not just red. Rainbow.

“We need to move now. I’ll take you home.”

Home. When would she learn?

With her hand to your cheek and her lips to your skin, you were already there.

“Alright, then. Let’s get going. Can you do that for me?”

You could do anything for her, now that she was here. You almost forget about the blood, and so does she.

The Doctor begins pulling you to a stand.

“Slowly, now. That’s good, you’re-“

The words stop in her throat, eyes suddenly flickering down.

The Doctor freezes.

Along your neck are fingerprints. Crescent shaped marks in your skin from filthy nails, purples and blues mixing to ruin your perfect skin. Bruises. Indents. Clashing with your delicacy.

Someone touched you.

Someone who obviously didn’t know who the Doctor was, who didn’t know precisely what she was capable of. Someone who wrapped their fingers around your throat; Someone who left ugly, long-lasting marks. Someone who has just made a very, very bad enemy.

Someone who hurt you.

And her eyes go black.

“Who…” She’s straining, resisting. Body nearly shaking with the rage that suddenly ignites her, softness receding but trying desperately to keep it in place for you. You deserved that. She’d give it to you. “Who did this?”

Her fingers touch your jawline, so carefully trailing to your neck. You flinch back. Why did you do that? It’s her. Yet when The Doctor’s fingertips brush a certain spot on your skin, you cry out and drop your head against her chest before you. It hurts. You know it wasn’t her, but it hurts.

“Tell me,” She says then, tense. Withholding. She speaks through her teeth and forces herself to stay level, though you can feel her heartbeats echo rapidly in her chest. Her fingers are purposely careful against your wounds, yet you can’t help a sob when the memory returns.

His hands had covered your throat, squeezed your windpipe while you tried to scream. It was her name that came from your shrieking lungs, you think, before waking up on a blood covered floor. You needed her. She’d left you alone.

One of her hands is placed on the warmth of your cheek, the other now pressing your face into her chest. Her shirt is wet. No, wait – You were crying. Those were tears, on her shirt, making it wet. Your tears.

“Oh, no,” You say tiredly, mixed with sobs, muffled against her. “I’m sorry.”

You’re slightly delirious; Pained and needy. Her thumb grazes your cheekbone when she pulls you back, sliding across your face gently, keeping you grounded and perhaps doing the same for herself when she looks into your eyes.

“No, not sorry. Never sorry. What are you sorry for?”

You sniff again, louder, and collapse back into her chest. It’s safe there, hidden, and listening to heartbeats was steady in contrast to the terror around you.

“I’m ruining your clothes.”

The darkness in her subsides slightly, looking down at her shirt, looking down at you tucked into her.

“You…” She starts, head tilting almost in confusion before shaking it with a blink. “My clothes?”

“Yeah,” You sigh. Defeated, exhausted. You pull your head back up, straining with how heavy you feel. Your eyes are glued to the mesh of wet drops and splotches on her chest. “Messed it up. I like that shirt.”

“Do you now?” The Doctor responds softly, that sharp edge dissipating, being pushed back for another moment. Simply soft, now. Hard when she needs to be. Never hard with you.

She smiles slightly, just a tiny bit. It’s enough to brighten an entire galaxy.

“Yeah,” You tell her again. “Yeah, nice color.”

“Ah,” She settles on, smile growing. Oh, you liked that. You wanted more of that. “Nothing to worry your pretty little head over. Have got a closet full of them, and it’s certainly bigger on the inside.”

She brings a palm to your cheek, soft as can be. “Besides, you worry about the silliest things.”

You lean into her. She’s still crouched down beside you, knees on the red floor. Red floor. The feeling of dried blood covering your hands returns, and you wished you hadn’t looked down, wished you’d stayed in that moment with her and that beautiful smile. The tears on her shirt were nothing compared to the blood on her boots. You’d clean them, you think. When you got back. And you’d do laundry. Simple, soft, kind, for her. You’d erase this, rid yourself of red.

You hate red.

“Up we go,” The Doctor announces, interrupting your single-colored thoughts and filling them with iridescence. She comes to your side, slides her arm behind your shoulder blades. You lean the rest of your weight into her when she lifts your fragile form, but it still burns, and you still cry out.

The Doctor stays silent, jaw held tight. When she catches a side glance to your crumpled expression, it seems as though she’s going to say something, but she doesn’t.; It’s as though she can’t bear to speak. The hot tears that slide down your freezing face gather at your chin and drop to the red ground. Stop, no. Not red. Bloody. So bloody.

As you move forward, your eyes stay on that blood. It trails across the floor like a devilish painting, like a swift masterpiece made entirely of misery, and you feel suddenly sick. Dizzy. The red room is spinning, and the Doctor tries her best to keep you still. Her tight jaw loosens. If not for anything, just for you.

“Stick with me, alright? Got a ways to go, and I need you present. Let me get you safe.”

But you left me.

It isn’t until she stops, halts both of your moving bodies, that you realize you’d said that aloud. Your one hand is clutching to the fabric on her back. Blue. Such a lovely color.

The Doctor pauses and stares at you, taking the time to think before she speaks. Her face is furrowed, though her eyebrows have slightly risen, eyes scanning over you and looking between yours. Searching you and searching for her words. You’d never known the Doctor to do that.

There’s silence for a moment, a long second of contemplation and pain on both of your parts. Her eyes are reflective as her body stays still. You might’ve mistaken her for a statue, a paragon of grief and yearning, and something else you’re all too afraid to place. She’s as still as the dead that rest on the floor.

“I know,” She murmurs. Simple and with finality. “I know.”

You stare at her, the two of you stuck in red. The blood is tacky beneath your feet. The bodies lay limp, you stand still.

“And I’ll spend the rest of my existence vowing to never do it again.”

Your next breath is shaky. The depth of her words are deeper than the shade of blood staining your world, yet it suddenly feels blue.

“Thank you,” You tell her, because you’ve no idea of what else could suffice. Nothing could, but it’s enough for now.

The Doctor adjusts her hold, bringing her hand down from your shoulder to support your waist instead. She simply looks at you. And that’s enough, too.

Your side is melded into her hold even as you clench through the pain, not caring in the slightest because that pressure reminded you she was here. It was all red, before, but now it was blue, and lilac, and blonde; There was a rainbow on her shirt and the brightest stars in her eyes. When you’d meet her gaze, she’d smile comfortingly, like home, or a window of escape and peace. The blackhole of anger within the Doctor would dissipate slightly.

“Almost back! We’ll turn a corner there, then straight down. TARDIS is hidden in a perfectly-sized closet. Convenient, isn’t it? All spaceships seem to have TARDIS sized closets.”

You trudge forward and focus on her words, calmer than the sea of vicious pain coursing through your poor body. How did it ever get this bad? Tear stained cheeks accompanied only by grief and shock. Had it all hit you, yet? The pain was stark, but the memories were blurry. You remembered them as though it was someone else.

It had been a blast, a bang, a number of rapid shots as bright red beams of light shot through the walls. Silver weapons firing into bodies, causing casualties, missing only you. How had they missed you? Bodies strewn across the floor accompanied by your own, curled up in a ball pathetically and pitifully. What could you do? Could you have saved them, all of them? Could you have been the Doctor?

You tried. Forced yourself up from the floor as it first became bloody, faced the men who burst into the complex and reigned hell upon it’s occupants. You spoke with authority and you spoke like she would. You were the Doctor, you tried to be. And it hadn’t been enough.

“Alright there?” The Doctor asks, and she already knows the answer, but she asks anyway. Maybe a piece of her hopes it’s something it isn’t. When her eyes linger on your neck again, you have to shut your eyes and block the memory. How long did bruises last? Would the divots of fingernails leave scars?

Her hand raises, slowly, you feel it. She places it on your neck and tightens her hold on your waist as best she can without hurting you. It didn’t matter, because everything hurt. She just didn’t want it to be because of her.

“It’s foolish, really,” The Doctor says, suddenly sharp. Your eyes snap open in confusion, but her eyes remain kind as she looks to you. You blink twice and open your mouth to question her, but when she looks back down to your neck, her gaze eclipses into pure, unaltered darkness, and the words stop in your throat. “Did they think they would get away with this?”

You stare at her, her eyes still locked on the damage to your throat, and she doesn’t move an inch. Stopped in this less bloody hallway, the landscape of your pain physically behind you yet still leaving an underlying imprint. You blink, swallow.

“Away with what?”

Her eyes rise slowly, dragging across your injuries, up the span of your open neck with catastrophic analysis. She notes every detail, every prick and every discoloration, and finally reaches your eyes. They’re ruinous. Possessive.

“Laying their hands on you.”

Your lungs constrict suddenly with a tight hitch and the widening of your eyes. You think your heartrate spikes, or maybe it completely stops, or maybe it flies out of your chest. She continues to stare, and you continue to freeze under her glacial expression. There’s a warmth in the hand that wraps protectively around you, so contrasting to her forbidding eyes, so much so that you almost flinch. But you stay still, trying and failing to breathe, and waiting for her next move without knowing what to do with yourself.

She shifts. The hand on your neck comes up, thumb against the front of your chin, fingers beneath your jaw, and she tilts your head to the side in order to scan you further. Her head leans forward slightly in what you assume is a way to find any other points of impact upon your skin, but it only puts her closer to you, warmer against you, breaths on your bruised neck. You freeze entirely, not even taking the time to breathe. What was she doing?

Then she leans in. You can smell her, then, the comfort and warmth and kindness of her entire being overwhelming your senses and replacing the stale stench of blood. Your palms are wet with sweat and that devastatingly red liquid when she moves even closer, and her dark eyes glow. Really, actually, glow.

You feel an exhale against your neck before she presses her lips to that specific spot, and you gasp with a flinch. Her hand on your waist tightens once, a reassurance, and your body feels suddenly light. It’s that feeling when you first wake up after a good night’s sleep, or when you climb into a bath set at the most perfect temperature. It comes from her kiss against your skin. Igniting like a steady fire, a bright glow emitting from where she made contact, and you feel completely light once more just before the feeling dissipates. It’s rejuvenating, or fulfilling. It’s… Regenerative.

You push her away, even with weak arms, and you watch as her glowing yellow eyes recede back to their almost normal hazel. They’re abnormally grave, with an extra feign of confusion. Your hands remain on her upper arms and she keeps her body close to yours.

“Doctor, you shouldn’t have done that,” You almost snap, feeling much more alive what with the very risky regenerative energy that just coursed through you without your permission – without her better judgement. The Doctor shifts, looking between your eyes as if she never even heard you, before something with finality sets into them.

“You’re going back to the TARDIS.”

She steps forward, almost crowding you, hand still supportive on your waist in a now tighter grip. Her head tilts and leans purposely into your space, and when her eyes flicker down to your neck once more, you freeze, and she notices. Her gaze is ruinous when it returns to your own. Protective. No, more than that. Possessive.

“And before that, you’re going to tell me who did this to you.”

You scoff, blinking rapidly in complete shock at her near – no, complete – arrogance, and that twinge of something else you’d very much like to ignore during this inopportune moment. Yet you can’t help but admire her, in some strange way, even through the shock of her slightly pointed words.

You’d be lying if you didn’t admit she was a sight to behold. Emotions that had never been previously directed at you were now in the forefront of her analyzing view, and in the same way that your previous moments were tainted red, her current thoughts seemed to be covered in it. Her words were precise, sharp – not cutting into you, rather – cutting into the idea of anyone ever laying a hand on what was hers. What was hers.

It should scare you.

Up close and personal with the infamous Oncoming Storm, the same hurricane that just pressed a glowing kiss to your damaged skin. So quick to switch between holding the most immense amount of compassion for you, and then lacking any sliver of it for those who even dreamed of harming you.

It should scare you.

But look at her. Rainbow in a stripe across her chest, royal blue fabric clashing with the disgusting and tired red surrounding the two of you. Her boots are perfect for running, her pants held up by bright yellow suspenders, and her smile is like the sweetest sunshine on a particularly rainy day. You’d bask in the sunlight when it came.

For now, you’ll stand in this downpour of her and revel in that instead. Two sides of the same wondrous, unpredictable coin that is the Doctor, these two sides you’ve come to…

Oh. That could be saved for another day. Perhaps it’s simply best to ignore that tug of yearning and let her care for you in the best way she knows how. Defending you, acting as a shield – knowing well that you could stand up for yourself, knowing that you’d probably tried – and dealing her own doses of karma to those who deserved it. No, she didn’t simply interfere with time; The Doctor owned it. She could pretend all she wants about being avoidant, about keeping out of history, but you knew. When something hurt the Doctor – no, when something hurt you – there was no stopping her. It was an inevitable thing. A struck nerve turned vicious.

The nerve was struck, the damage done. So here came the storm.

“I don’t know,” You admit honestly, slightly quietly. Did you wish you knew, or did you wish you’d forget all together? Was the fleeting memory better left blurry? Or would the details help you cope with the truth of it all, and the security of now? “I’m not… I don’t know. He was cruel, and disgusting. His teeth were almost brown when he- he-“

You swallow hard, avoiding the Doctor’s gaze. “When he smiled.”

Your eyes can’t bear to raise and see her reaction, but you feel the grip on your waist tighten until you hitch your breath in pain. Only then does it soften, a thumb running over your side in subtle apology even as fire runs through her veins. Anger so hot that it was palpable. You still didn’t need to look at her to know that she was staring down at you, assessing you, mind running with every possible course of what you’d call vengeance and what she’d call retribution.

The words flow out of you now, unable to stop it when the hazy memory bombards all your previously calming senses. It burns in your throat when you speak. You hope she can’t hear the painful strain, or the clench of your teeth, but you know she does. That’s just something she knows. You.

“I tried to be like… like you,” You stress, body fatigued, worried eyes needing the comfort of the Doctor’s gaze; She was safe, though the current blackhole-like-state of her eyes reflected otherwise. “I tried so hard. So you’d be…” You take a shaky breath with your eyes closed, “So you’d be proud of me.”

You laugh, then, a dangerous thing, an almost angry thing. Pitiful, perhaps, was the better word. Embarrassed, maybe. Your head shakes in frustration. At your own failure.

“But I didn’t do it right, or I’m just not cut out for that certain thing, or they just thought I looked too… pathetic,” You ramble, eyes bouncing about the room now, looking at absolutely anything but her. You don’t know the exact expression that she wears. You worry it may be of pity. “I was alone.”

You feel her inhale take a pause, slightly, barely noticeable. A guilty exhale through frowning lips that follows.

You shift again, not acknowledging the pain of your side, or the pain in your heart. Alone. It left scars a lot deeper than the ones on your skin.

“Doctor, I don’t…“ You take a breath even if you know it won’t help. Your vision becomes fuzzy, like seeing through stained glass, and you realize that it’s the gathering of tears.

You swallow. And you look up at her.

“I don’t know why they didn’t just kill me,” You whisper. The tears brimming at the edge of your eyes simply spill at that sentence, at the assertion that you could be dead. Was it ridiculous, then, to complain about what happened? To complain that you had these bruises, because you had the privilege of being alive while others didn’t?

At least you were away from the bodies, now. But they were left alone instead of you.

The Doctor’s hard eyes soften just slightly. They still hold that impending danger, the oncoming storm you’ve come to know, but it’s gentler. Not pity as you had feared, but compassion. Kindness. Understanding. You revel in it, take that sweetness in while it lasted, appreciate the mercifulness.

But your words hurt her. Your words that told the story of fear and misery, words that told the story of when she couldn’t keep you safe as she always, always promised. You knew it hurt; You saw it in the way she didn’t know whether to step closer to you or back away. Because beneath the tender care was worry, and beneath that worry was pain, and beneath that pain was guilt. Guilt that pooled in the irises of her eyes, that tinted the hazel of them a gloomy blue. Guilt at breaking her promise. Guilt at letting someone do this to you.

“I’ll be okay,” You tell her, because what else could you say? It was true, and it seemed good, and with her by your side it was attainable. Beyond that. It was close. She healed your wounds in ways no one ever could, healed your heart even if she broke it. She fixed her mistakes, she made up for her faults – she cared about you. She cared about you.

And she hadn’t meant to leave you.

You knew that, now. You were reassured of it. The red had blinded you, but with her you could see.

“I’ve been worried about the wrong things,” The Doctor concludes, looking down at you in her arms; Her vengeance pushed away, her vibrance returning to the light. “Been so focused on who hurt you, I wasn’t even considering that you’re hurt.”

You just look at her. You know you don’t have to say anything; She’s chastising herself, replacing her actions to better suit your needs.

“Alright,” She continues, a new sweetness in her eyes, a soothing apology to your pains. “Home, then?”

You nod, and she takes a breath, and you take one too.

She hadn’t meant to leave you.

What had she said before?

I’ll spend the rest of my existence vowing to never do it again.

“Yeah, Doctor,” You say softly, and something about it is rainbow. “Home sounds good.”

#whumptober2021 #no.3 #who did this to you?#the doctor x reader #thirteenth doctor x reader #doctor x reader #thirteenth doctor #thirteen #the doctor #doctor who #doctor who fanfic #doctor who fanfiction #thirteen x reader #this is painful #do you hate the color red now?#xoxo #also hi willow i posted are you proud of me

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eulangelo · 3 years

Text

callout for @genderfluidlucifer

google docs

tw for transmisogyny + TERFs + emotional manipulation

Transmisogyny

Lucifer is a huge transmisogynist who will complain 24/7 about how TERFs hurt the ace community, but the moment @randomclustermissile , a trans girl (who is not an exclusionist at all) tries to point out transmisogyny in inclusionist circles (in the most vague and general way possible, without pointing fingers nor calling anyone names) Lucifer will immediatly jump to block her and so they did with me (another inclusionist) and i have to suppose to everyone else who agreed with that post, even arriving to vagueing about us in private group chats to suggest that we were “sympathizing with exclusionists”. all because we dared point out transmisogyny in inclusionist circles. lucifer is TME but apparently they think they’re the authority on TERFs and their talking points but actual trans women are not, according to them, since this is the stuff that they would go and spew to other people. (screenshots from @enbyoctoling)

here’s more examples of Lucifer (again, a transmasc person) going deep in detail about how according to them, TERFs/SWERFs hate aro/ace people and are an active threat to us

1. link

[Image ID: Three screenshots of a post by Genderfluidlucifer. The first screenshot is of a paragraph that reads, "Hey. So I can actually answer this. Anon your commentary about how you thought terfs would approve of sex repulsed aces is sort of it. Except...not. Basically terfs hate ace people for not wanting sex in the approved by terfs way. Terfs are actually extremely interested in [forcing] amatonormativity onto everyone. Because for as sex negative as terfs are...they don't want to actually acknowledge or change the fact that amatonormativity is at the root cause of rape culture and misogyny."

The second screenshot is a zoomed in section of the post that reads, "So yeah no I have NO idea where exclus allies are getting this idea from that terfs would even remotely care about the sexual rights of ace people. Terfs generally hate any sexualities in the LGBTQ+ acronym that aren't LGB because they can't force a gender binary onto those sexualities. At least, not as easily. That's why it's actually a massive sign of someone who doesn't call themselves a terf being a crypto terf if they use the term LGB in a positive manner. Along with the term SGA, as it is deliberately exclusive of nonbinary and not inherently SGA centric queer-aligned sexualities. /END ID]

link to the full post, these are just excerpts but the whole thing is just a very long rant about how TERFs hate ace people and so on (i think it’s worth noticing that although the actual post is kinda long, trans women are never once brought op in a conversation about TERFs issues and the only time transmisogyny is mentioned is not relevant to the conversation)

2. link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblog by genderfluidlucifer. The original poster is nothorses. It reads, "Because apparently I have to say it: Testosterone is not a 'violent' hormone. It doesn't make you 'more aggressive' or a worse person, it doesn't make you 'dangerous,' or 'toxic.' Transmascs do not need to be 'warned of the dangers of T.' We do not need to spend our transitions terrified that we're going to become a danger to those around us - that HRT is going to turn us into a monster.

Everyone experiences mood swings during hormonal shifts (pregnancy, menstruation, menopause, estrogen HRT, etc.) and while you might have grumpy moments or feel anger/frustration that you need to learn to handle differently, that doesn't make you a bad person.

Testosterone can change the way you access/process emotions somewhat, but if you're already thoughtful about how you handle your feelings and treat others, you're going to be fine. It's normal to lash out on occasion, by accident, then apologize and work to do better. It doesn't make you a bad person. Everyone on HRT is prone to this, and everyone experiencing hormonal changes is prone to this.

Getting HRT should be positive and affirming; you should not have to spend your entire transition terrified of becoming a monster."

The post then has a reblog by captainlordauditor that reads, "The big danger of T is that needle ouchy." /END ID]

here’s them reblogging from known transmisogynist user @nothorses (once again, the irony that a post about how testosterone is seen as the "aggressive hormone" does not mention transfem at all which are literally the main victims of this rethoric in the first place)

3. link (1), link (2)

[Image ID: Two screenshots of posts by genderfluidlucifer. The first screenshot reads, "Queer exclus: We're not repackaging terf rhetoric! Saying that is transmisogynistic! Also queer exclus: Remove the plus from LGBT!" and has tags that say, "I will pay these people to grow some god damn self awareness. Imagine being this dense. Queer discourse." The post has 15 notes.

The second screenshot reads, "Honestly it is so stupid and frustrating to see ace exclus continue to deny that the ace discourse was started by terfs. Proof was given countless times. And a big name terf like galesofnovember even admitted to starting it. Those of you who demand proof but ignore all of this never wanted proof to begin with." and is tagged with, "ace discourse. The post has 38 notes. /END ID]

heres another two post of theirs conflating TERFs with ace exclusionism

4. link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblogged post by furbearingbrick. The original poster is boxlizard, Lucifer's old account. The original post reads, "By the way for people still in denial about it, here's galesofnovember, a terf, admitting that she intended to start the ace exclus movement. She's taking credit for it. Normally if the victims of this behavior weren't ace/aro or other queer identities y'all be ready to rightfully lynch her. But since it's us, y'all just still wanna stamp your feet and go, 'Nuh uh!' instead of acknowledging facts." The part that says, "admitting that she intended to start the ace exclus movement" is a link to a galesofnovember post.

There is then a reblogged addition from furbearing brick that reads, "archived versions of the receipts" and has two links to the webarchive. The tags read, "Bringing this back since it's apparently still relevant. Terfism mention. Aphobia mention. Queerphobia mention. Blocklist." and has 1,455 notes. /END ID]

this is their post that ive already talked about but basically they found a 52 notes post made by a TERF in 2012 and this one person said "i dont know why i dont get to be the princess of the anti-ace-brigade" and apparently they are convinced that this means TERFs started the ace exclusionism movement and that this is one of their goals. which is insane when TERFs in real life only care about making life miserable for transfem people first and foremost.

5.link

[Image ID: A screenshot of a reblog by genderfluidlucifer. The original poster is yu-gay-fudo. It reads, “Just in case you happen to be unaware, some of the “radfem lite” they post to warm you up to their rhetoric, just off the top of my head:

- Ace/aro exclusionism

- Bi exclusionism or claims that bi people are “less queer” bc of “straight passive privilege”

- Saying you have to be dysphoric to identify as transInvalidating nonbinary people

- Calling queer a slur regardless of context, saying people can’t identify as queer, and saying that it can’t be reclaimed

- “Mogai hell”, “kweer”, or otherwise mocking less common labels and claiming they are “just cishets who want to feel special”

- Excluding sex workers from feminist discussions or claiming that sex work is inherently evil

- Basically anyone who thinks they can determine what other people identify as”. The tags read, "queerphobia tw. twerfs tw. no id." and has 70,727 notes. It was reblogged on March 22nd, 2021 /END ID]

another example of conflating radfems to things that, while wrong, have little to nothing to do with them because being a radfem, again, is something very specific that has all to do with transfem oppression.

Emotional manipulation

Lucifer has done nothing but block, break boundaries, spread lies and vague about people, some of which were even mutuals with them knowing they would see the posts. when confronted about it Lucifer's only answer was "just say you hate me and block me" but they actually ended up blocking everyone first, making it impossible for anyone to set some boundaries with them or even just to calmly confront them about anything.

[proof: Io(popncourse) and Lucifer had a disagreement in a shared discord server, which prompted Lucifer to vague Io in a vent post. Io confronted them, as being vagued is one of buns triggers, to which Lucifer initially agreed to delete the vent post, but then proceeded to victimize themself and immediatly blocked Io. later on, Jude(malewifedeckard) was confronted by Lucifer, then after Jude told them “I’m worried that you’ll vague me just like you did with Io” they proceeded to block Jude and vagued about him too. when Io made a post (which was not a callout, it was just bun setting buns boundaries) explaining what Lucifer did, Lucifer immediatly jumped to victimize themself, acting like they were being called out and straight-up lying, even going so far as to say that no one tried to hear them out, which is a blatant lie if you consider the aforementioned Io and Jude’s attempts at doing so, with Lucifer immediatly blocking and cutting ties with the both of them. ]

(screenshots taken by @popncourse and @malewifedeckard)

as seen in the proof above Lucifer’s behaviour is not ok because they don’t accept any kind of confrontation and immediatly jump to blocking, and after blocking, they'd immediatly go and vague about the people who confronted them pacificly, spreading more lies and painting themself as the victim and even arriving to say “no one hears me out at all” which is simply not something you can say when you block people who are trying to hear you out in the first place.

this is by no means an invitation to go and harass them, send them hate or anything like that. i absolutely don’t want anything even remotely hateful or negative to be sent their way after this post.

this post was only made because:

1. as an ace person who fully supports the inclusion of aspec identities in the lgbt+ community i don’t want to support an enviroment that costantly downplays transmisogynistic oppression in order to be taken seriously. there are hundreds of ways to make aspec activism without acting like we(as in TME aspecs)are the victims of a system that seeks for the annihilation of transfemenine people in real life everyday. i especially don’t want to support TME individuals who act transfem-friendly but then block any transfem who tries to speak on transmisogyny without a second thought.

2. Lucifer’s behaviour has hurt two friends of mine and i don’t want to associate with someone who actively breaks people’s boundaries without taking accountability when messing up.

3. i cannot associate with someone who spreads lies about me accusing me of sympathizing with exclusionists all while having me blocked so that i can’t see it nor defend me. they complain about people not hearing them out but they’re the very first person who does not try to hear people out, and instead jumps to spread baseless rumors. this is not someone i can nor want to associate with.

(image descriptions provided by @malewifedeckard)

#genderfluidlucifer #transmisogyny tw #terfs tw #ask to tag #txt #long post #ok to rb

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barbarianprncess · 3 years

Text

did you mean it?

read on ao3.

It’s a total of 3 significant events that led to this, her forehead knocked against his, breaths heavy and mingled, eyes wide and hearts bleeding.

The first event isn’t really an event at all. It’s a prologue, necessary context to truly understand the monumentalism of this moment. It’s the memory of her eyes, piercing and reproachful, being the first thing that he saw after losing his mother. It’s shared trauma and oreos while they’re young and naive. It’s truces and training and growing up too soon together. It’s stargazing and stupid jokes saving eachother in every possible way. It's the culmination of the years Percy spent growing, learning, and being with Annabeth, and the unknown and therefore repressed feelings that came with it. Feelings are like the sea in that way, they don’t take well to being restrained. Percy has found that you cannot box in oceans or sentiments, they always find a way to spill over and out, with no regard for the destruction left in its wake.

The second event is Dionysus deciding on a whim that the inhabitants of his camp are ‘uncultured pests’ and taking it upon himself to set up a field trip for campers to the Ancient Greek Cultural Center in New York. (Percy thinks it’s really just to distract kids that were still shaken up about the battle at camp and the losses it caused. But, Dionysus would never say so. He’s far too proud to admit to caring for the children he’s been assigned to look after.) Argus loaded all the kids he could fit into the strawberry vans, as Chiron listed all the reasons this was a terrible idea. As it turns out, his worries were in vain as miraculously, no monsters attacked, and no mortal asked too many questions. No, instead, the only hitch in his plan was the glaring inaccuracies of the Center sending Dionysus into a fit of rage. He ranted for so long, their 2 hour long field trip ended up lasting until the place closed.

Event the third is the ridiculously long line leading to the mens room at the rundown gas station they’ve stopped at, causing Percy to traipse into the woods, deep enough to know that no one other than the squirrels were watching, and pee there. Unbeknownst to him, Annabeth had decided to take a quick walk in the forest as well, (in the opposite direction of his peeing endeavor) with the purpose of clearing her head. Both returned to the parking lot after 10 minutes, with no truck in sight. The gas station lights are turned off on the inside and the door sign has switched decidedly to closed. They look at each other in disbelief.

“Percy?”

“Yeah?”

“Uh...did they…”

“They didn’t. They wouldn’t.”

“I think they would.”

“They would never-”

“I have pretty solid evidence to the contrary.” Annabeth deadpans, casually letting her hair loose and hopping on top of the miniature gas machine for motorcycles.

“But, how did-”

“No Argus.” Which means, no all-seeing eyes to double check the headcount. Percy begins to pace.

“Okay, but-”

“Two trucks.” Both of which are probably assuming Percy and Annabeth are on the other.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, gods.”

“Leave them out of this.”

“Those fuckers.”

“Which ones?” She asks. He looks up and she’s fighting a smile. He pointedly doesn’t notice the way her mouth curls up, or the way her hair falls around her shoulders and down her back, or how pretty she looks lit up by the neon red lights of the gas stations prices, which apparently doesn’t turn off when they close.

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“I know lots of things you don’t.”

“Ha-ha. I mean about how to get out of here.”

“Ohhhhh, let me think.” She wrinkles her nose in faux concentration, tilting her chin up towards the sky. Percy is too annoyed to think it’s adorable. “Nope, not a clue.”

“Your phone?”

“Left it on the truck.”

“Iris message?”

“Percy, it’s dark as shit.” The laughter she’s been holding in comes pouring out. Nevermind that he feels his chest sigh in relief at hearing it for the first time since their quest, this is serious.

“You’re laughing.”

“Just a little.”

“You’re telling me, you don’t have a brilliant plan to get us on a truck.”

“Yes.”

“So, we’re stuck here.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re laughing?”

“You’re just really funny when you’re stressed.” She giggles. He can’t remember the last time she giggled. He missed it. He hates her.

“Oh my gods.”

“Okay, okay, look, I’m sorry. We’re halfway to camp right?” He nods. “I’m sure they’ll figure out we’re missing before they get all the way back to camp, but let's say, worst case scenario, they don’t-”

“Not helping-”

“And they make it the rest of the way back to camp. It took us four hours to get to the center, which means camp is two hours away, so if they make it the two hours back to camp before they realize we’re missing, and they drive back up-”

“C’mon ‘Beth, you know I suck at math.”

“We’re stuck here for five hours at most.”

“Five hours?”

“And that's if no passing cars let us use their phones to hurry the process up.”

“Five hours.”

She’s laughing again. “Seriously, what is so funny?”

“It’s just-” Her cheeks are red and she’s very poorly attempting to suppress her smile. “You’ve been calm in so many life or death situations, and being stuck at a gas station is what finally breaks through.”

“It’s nighttime.” She stares at him for a moment and then she’s laughing again, full bodied real laughter, and he's laughing too.

And it’s as if this gas station became their own personal Ogygia, an oasis, a resting place for them to be stupid kids again. And they don’t talk about the battle, or Rachel, or the volcano, or any of the million things set on tearing them apart. They talked about his mom getting serious about his new boyfriend, about Tyson’s underwater adventures and Grover’s searching shenanigans.

They smack talk with no real heat about who the better fighter is (Oh please, Seaweed Brain, I've been training since before you could tie your own shoes.), and argue about which ancient hero had the greatest journey (Hercules, are you kidding? Did you even read the myth?). They break into the gas station for snacks (What the fuck, Annabeth, where’d you learn to pick a lock? No, I wouldn’t prefer you break the glass, you psycho. Oh my gods, can you really break the glass?), and dissolve into giggles as they try to fit five drachma into the cash register.

They end up back outside sitting on the gas machines facing one another from three feet away.

“Your mom called me the other day.”

Percy, who’d been lazily squinting up at the murky sky, searching for any sign of stars, whipped his head to look at her. “What?”

“She called me on the phone. We talked for a bit. She said she wanted to make sure I was alright.”

“That sounds like something she would do.” He sighs and hops down from the machine, turning away from her, hoping to hide his blush from the dim light. “She cornered me on one of my off weekends, asked what was going on with us.”

“Oh.” He hears the shifting of fabric and assumes she followed him in sliding off the gas machine.

“Yeah.” It’s silent for a long time before she responds.

“What did you say?” She asks, her voice smaller than it was moments ago. He hears her scratching at the flat metal top of the machine. “When she asked, what did you say?”

He runs his finger through his hair, and one gets caught in a particularly large snarl. “Doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” She whispers and gods he’s terrified but he really doesn’t have a choice when her voice wavers like that. Her words shake and every ounce of his being tells him to do whatever it takes to soothe it.

“I said we were fighting. That there wasn’t one sole reason for it, just a bunch of little reasons. I told her that I scared you when I….went away for two weeks last summer. And that you didn’t like bringing Rachel on your quest. I told her that we….. disagree about how to best handle Luke. That I probably wanted to protect you more than I wanted to listen to you.” She laughs softly and he blames what he says next on her laugh. It is the catalyst for everything that follows.

“I told her that we’d be okay. Because no matter what happens I’m always gonna love you.”

He hears her breath catch. He doesn’t have to look back to know she’s turned to face him fully. “Did you mean it?” She calls. He doesn’t answer. The words haven’t caught in his throat, they’ve spontaneously combusted in his vocal chords and he doesn’t think he’ll ever speak again.

The sound of gravel crunching gets closer until suddenly she's beside him, and he didn’t tell his torso to twist toward her, he thinks she might just be his center of gravity.

“Did you mean it?”

She’s looking up at him, and her hair smells like lemons, and her cheeks are pink, and her eyelashes go on for miles, and her sunspots are better than stars. And it’s as if she pulls the words right out of him, he’s hypnotized by everything about her.

“Of course I meant it.”

She exhales and closes her eyes and while he mourns the loss of the sight, his body moves on it’s own accord again and he’s edging closer and closer and she opens her eyes and here they are.

Their noses brush, and this time he closes his eyes, and their noses brush just so, and…

Whoa.

He was wrong, it wasn't just those three significant events that to her forehead knocked against his, breaths heavy and mingled, eyes wide and hearts positively bleeding. It’s clear he’s been waiting his entire life for this moment at this shitty gas station.

Waiting for this. Waiting for her.

They kiss for a moment or an eternity, and they fit. His hands are on her hips and hers clutch at his shirt before sliding up to his throat, and it’s like his soul is whispering, oh there you are.

And then she’s pulling back, so she has just enough space to shake her head without disconnecting from his forehead.

She's breathless when she whispers, “This is a bad idea.”

His hands trail up and down her forearm of their own accord, and when he whispers back he’s breathless too. “Yeah, really bad idea.”

Her hands slide up from his chest to his shoulders, and then she’s kissing him again, with purpose, and he’s kissing back like his life depends on it because he thinks it might, thinks if he lets go of her he’d die on the spot.

It seems his theory might get tested when she pulls back again just far enough to whisper against his lips, “Is it always like that?”

He kisses her again, once, twice, because he can’t help it and whispers back, “I don’t know, you were my first kiss.”

He’d released any serious hold he had on her the moment she hesitated, but then she’s rocking back up to meet him halfway and his entire body thinks thank the gods. He actually sighs his relief into her mouth, as his hands desperately reach for her face, some fingers tangling in her hair, and their lips are magnets, opposites that don’t have a choice but to pull together. Despite how much he wants to keep doing this forever, he has to tell her.

“I don’t wanna lose you, again.” He means not ever, but he figures she understands the severity in his voice. She’s running her hand through his hair, and his slide up and down her back, and she knocks her nose against his as she answers, “I know, me either. I’m confused, this is confusing me.” And she tilts her chin just so, like she did a million years ago, and this time he kisses her.

They kiss for an infinity, he gets to taste her laughter when she giggles at the absurdness of it all, and it’s better than ambrosia. He kisses her until he doesn’t know anything else, until his entire universe is Annabeth Chase, with her cheeks and her curls and her lips. She is everything.

And then headlights penetrate their universe, voices bring an end to their infinity, and Chiron is speaking but it’s nothing, it’s all white noise because she’s no longer in his arms, and his center of gravity is being ripped away and he hears someone ask, “What’d you guys do?”

He’s still looking at her face when she answers, “You know, tried not to strangle each other mostly.”

But, she looks back before she turns all the way around and her gaze is charged and her lips quirk with the secret they share.

He is so screwed.

#so i wrote this in like two hours and its probably a mess but. here you go ig.#aoah ch 3 will be out soon but in the meantime #heres this lol #percabeth #percabeth fic #my fic #my writing #if you comment or rb i will die for you

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yanderecandystore · 3 years

Note

hellu, can I request how would Delinquents, teachers, and bullies react to female reader pepper-sprayed the twins for self-defense when they try to beat up reader?

Hello, it's been a while, I'm sorry it took so long- I've been dealing with a lot of school assignments and I can't lie that I have frequent breakdowns over this-

I'll try and upload the requests that I already have and see if I should open up for requests again, or leave it be closed until the waves of work I need to do gets less overwhelming.

I hope y'all are doing great, stay safe everyone.

I'll make this a very short scenario boo.

TW: this is basically a civil war at this point- // for each pair, I'll add a different context (since technically the delinquents aren't from the same institution as the bullies) // female reader // bullying // self defense // anxiety // bullying (verbal and physical) // mentions of stalker behavior and brief mentions of distrust and paranoia

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

Triple Spice combo [Yandere!Teachers / Yandere!Delinquents / Yandere!Bullies x F!Reader - Scenario]:

🎇Let me set the stage for a quick sec!🎇

So I'll explain what will happen- This is basically a post with three different timelines, each one based on each character type you're more interested in (example: you want some sour delinquents? You can follow the delinquent timeline and see how they react). Each follows almost similar circumstances, but still a bit differently to be able to fit for each individual timeline.

Come with me boo cause this one is long!

🎆: 🍒Bully's Timeline🍭

You have been the target of bullying for some weeks now, ever since you crossed some rich kids while going to your college. Unfortunately for you, they seem to be heading to the same location as you, apparently they also studied there- Although it should have been quite obvious. You're not the type to confront people physically, and you don't really feel like capable of fighting people of on your own, but because with their constant presence in your life you started to feel the need to get yourself prepared for what was going to come- Especially since you didn't feel like you could count on anyone.

You bought pepper spray in hopes of being able to stop your tormentors from continuing with their sick game.

That's when the incident happened, you were minding your own business when they came looking for trouble. You took the opportunity to finally put a stop on this by spraying their eyes with it.

✳️🍒Bullies🍭:

→ Alexandra Coldwell:

It was so fast and so painful that she couldn't even understand what just happened- Like- How dare you?! How fucking dare you?!! You think this is funny? This wasn't supposed to happen at all!

"- AAAAH!- what?- OH MY GOD-" Alexandra wasn't able to even finish her sentence, the pain was too much for her to handle. As she dropped to the ground trying to clean her eyes out, she couldn't help but feel confused as to what had even happened.

How could you do something so cruel to her?? Yes, she followed you, bullied you, made rumours about you, pulled your hair a couple of times and maybe she did throw insults towards you- But she didn't try to blind you!!

The worst part isn't even the humiliation she is going through, it's the fact you thought you would be able to pull a stunt like this and go away without any scars- She is so, absolutely livid by your stupidity.

Alexandra knows you must be liking this- And you know what? Enjoy your last free moments cause she will make sure you'll pay for it. She'll make sure to have a proper revenge under her sleeve, a proper punishment for harming someone like her in public.

Darling, darling, I hope you start looking behind your back from now on, never know what could happen when the person who is obsessed with you is just as insanely pissed off as they're madly in love with you.

→ Adrien Coldwell:

It was so fast and so painful that he couldn't even understand what just happened- Like- How dare you?! How fucking dare you?!! You think this is funny? This wasn't supposed to happen at all!

"- What- Oh my God I'm DYING!-" Adrien would be a lot more dramatic about it, even if he can articulate in great detail how much it hurts. In his panicked state, he started trying to wipe the substance with his sleeves- Which only helped to spread it more.

How fucking dare you not only hurt his precious eyes but also humiliate him on public like this?! What has gotten into you?? Yeah- I guess he did say hurtful stuff, followed you around to torment you, did throw stuff at you- But ya know- He didn't try to take your eyeballs out!?? Now that he thinks about it, he probably should have.

Adrien has a very weird view on your "relationship"- He thinks you're above him and so he must push you down, he loves you but being gentle with you will leave you to pull this kind of shit.

You're probably laughing to yourself now, the man is temporarily blind and you are laughing at him, you're somehow worse than he thought.

Still, he'll make you pay for it, don't worry about it dearest- You're fucked regardless. You tried to stand against him and now sadly he'll have to put you in your place again. Don't worry, it won't be so early- He still needs to prepare his plan.

🎆: 🍎Teacher's Timeline📕

You have been the target of bullying for some weeks now, ever since you crossed some rich kids while going to your college. Unfortunately for you, they seem to be heading to the same location as you, apparently they also studied there- Although it should have been quite obvious. You're not the type to get physical when it comes to defending yourself, but you felt that you still needed to do something about it- You talked with the only person you could trust in this moment, since they were your mentor and you needed some guidance from someone that could potentially help you solve this out.

Their idea was to be able to personally see the harassment happening so they could have visual proof of who is doing what to you, hopefully being able to expel the ones causing you harm.

They personally gave you pepper spray in hopes that if they aren't near you to help you, you can at least defend yourself in some way.

That's when the incident happened, you were minding your own business when they came looking for trouble. You took the opportunity to finally put a stop on this by spraying their eyes with it.

✳️🍎Teachers📕:

→ Matthew Robinson:

Although you thought to be in a situation where no one would be able to help you- Causing you to use your only item of self-defense- That couldn't have been further from the truth, as Matthew has made sure to pay close attention to you after you came by and ask for his guidance. It was a call for help and he would have been a horrible mentor to not make sure you'll follow his instructions, and it seemed like you did perfectly fine.

He got to be present to not only see the ones causing you harm, but also to see how well you're able to take care of yourself. He was going to intervene as soon as he saw them come closer, but you managed to stop them all by yourself- Honestly he is very proud of you for being able to stand your ground.

Since Matthew was able to see them starting the aggression just like many other witness surrounding the scene, he felt like he had an argument strong enough to be able to properly punish your bullies- Of course he is aware that the Coldwells have a reputation for getting staff members fired for trying to reprimanding them, but honestly he has been inside this place long enough already.

Getting fired isn't his problem, his problem is not being able to give them what they deserve for frightening you, and even worse than that: He needed to make sure you would stay safe in and out of college- You came to him saying they were following you outside of your classes, so of course he'll be worried for your safety.

After expelling the Coldwells, Matthew will just need to find a way of keeping you safe and under his surveillance, you may need more guidance after all, and it would be extremely worrying to not have you by his side. He just needs to plan out a better schedule for you two, one where he can be more present in your life after you're done with your classes.

I wonder what plan comes to his mind.

→ Madeline Allen:

Although you thought to be in a situation where no one would be able to help you- Causing you to use your only item of self-defense- That couldn't have been further from the truth, as Madeline has made sure to pay close attention to you after you came by and ask for her guidance. Madeline has been following you while you walked through the school's halls as she recorded every interaction you had with any of the other students. After you called her for help she entered full protection mode, she was set on getting your tormentors expelled.

However, Madeline hasn't been inside the institution to be able to earn the trust of the other teachers, or even the principal themselves- She needed some evidence and better witness testimony than those from students who were terrified of getting in trouble with the bullies around this place. You could say she had a guess as to who could be causing you trouble but she wouldn't be allowed to take action unless she could prove their identity and involvement in bullying you.

She gave you the pepper spray hoping you would feel less worried, to feel calmer in knowing you had not only something that you could use against them but also to symbolize how she would be there for you if you needed. Seeing you using it for the first time as you spray in the eyes of the culprits made her realize that she was in fact correct. Of course it's them, right?

If there is something wrong happening in Amaryllis, you can almost always pin it for being the Coldwell's fault. Bullying it's probably the least surprising thing this little demons have been accused of- Still, their rein over this institution and your worried little mind ends today, she doesn't care if she lost her job or if they try ruining her life by blackmailing her and such-

They can try but she is pretty sure they won't have any luck finding her, what can I say, she is good at burning evidence. What worries her though it's what will happen to you if they ever try to take their frustrations out on you again. She can't allow that to happen, you'll end up getting hurt and she'll feel awful if it was because of her interference in the case.

You need her help after all, right? You did come to her asking for guidance, and clearly you know nothing about physical self-defense- You clearly need someone to take care of you dearest. She needs to plan this out carefully, not only so the twins aren't allowed in school's grounds but to hopefully be able to guide you even if she is not your teacher anymore. But how could she have you near her everyday after classes?

I wonder what plan comes to her mind.

🎆: 🍋Delinquent's Timeline🐍

You have been the target of bullying for some weeks now, ever since you crossed some rich kids while going to your college. Fortunately for you, they didn't seem to go the same college as you did- Yet what you should have known was that nothing in life could have been so simple, you would still see them again over and over again after that incident. You started to feel anxious knowing that they were probably stalking you to know exactly when and where to find you, and since you already have to deal with going to a horrible institution and fearing for your own safety everyday.

You bought pepper spray so you could defend yourself not only from your stalkers but also from any possible classmate that could end up trying something weird with you.

That's when the incident happened, you were minding your own business when they came looking for trouble. You took the opportunity to finally put a stop on this by spraying their eyes with it.

✳️🍋Delinquents🐍:

→ Jackson Macnee:

He doubts you noticed that he was there when that happened, he doubts that you even care if he is staring at you at all- He always thought you were probably too scared of him to even tell him to stop, most people aren't scared of his appearance but are at least aware of his title, so they at least respect the path he walks. He is already used to this.

But let me tell you, to see the Coldwells come so near his territory seemed pretty interesting at first- Until he discovered why they were dumb enough to come here. He didn't know you were being bullied, let alone by these brats- He did notice you had changed your behavior recently, although he didn't pay any attention to it because he thought you were just getting accustomed with the way things work around Saint's Bernard hellhole of a place.

He was hoping that maybe you were just having issues with settling in- It is a rough place after all, and although he wishes deep down to be able to help you feel stronger he still feels like he shouldn't make you do something you don't want to. If you wished to talk to him, you should just go straight to him (even if he is aware of how terrifying that could be).

However, Jack was so far from the truth. His assumptions were confirmed fake after he saw the twins Coldwell treat you like he treated him- It was unbearable to watch, it was like he was seeing his past collide with his present self, you were reminding him of all the things he hated about himself, while also bringing his blood to boil in a desperate need to help you out. Yet he didn't need to do anything about it, you managed to defend yourself on your own.

It wasn't as rewarding to watch as he wanted it to be, but you sure did crack their ego pretty badly- He shouldn't have doubted you, after all he has been stalking you for so long, he should have known what you were capable of doing. Still, he doesn't trust the Coldwells enough to just let them run away like that, they would probably come back soon.

In the meantime, this should be a good excuse to get to talk with you, right? You clearly need some actual training, some flimsy pepper spray bottle isn't going to stop them from coming back. I hope you're ready to be trained by a lovesick delinquent, he won't be soft until he knows you can stand on your own.

→ Jannette Sartorius

She doubts you noticed that she was there when that happened, she doubts that you even care if she is staring at you at all- She always thought you were probably too scared of her to even tell her to stop, most people are scared of her. She is trying to get used to it.

Janette thinks she has every reason to observe you from afar, you're beautiful and you seem too precious to be in a place as horrible as this one, it must suck a lot for you to be somewhere like this-Seeing people like her.

She considered calling you to join her gang, but she is sure that you'll probably deny the offer- Physical confrontation was never your thing right? She can respect that.

Although you don't talk with her, or even interact with the other students at all, she did notice you were acting a bit more- Reclusive these days. Something was wrong, and sadly she would have to find out about it way too late.

Janette didn't know the twins personally, she knew they were rich and famous but- Yeah, she didn't really care about knowing anything about them, they're just some pretty faces amongst the others in the fashion industry. She does envy them a little bit, but tries to avoid anything relating to them since she feels self-conscious looking at their pictures. Now she has a new reason to hate their porcelain faces, they were stalking you.

They were stalking you and taunting you, and if you didn't do anything to stop them she would have already jumped in. They were alone, and honestly she doubts they have any idea of how to go one on one with someone- There is no way these brats have any experience in fighting, right?

Well, she didn't get to know that since they ran away after you sprayed their faces with pepper spray, clever girl.

She knows this is probably not the end of this, they did threaten to come back and hurt you for defending yourself. But you know- She doesn't plan on letting that happen, not again. Consider yourself lucky cause now you just got a new best friend who I set on protecting you.

Is there something wrong with that? Aren't you happy with being her friend? Well, you could just go to "girlfriends" if that's what you want- She wouldn't mind it at all.

Janette prefers to take care of you without you having to watch her beat someone's ass- But she could teach you a few things if you wished to, hey, spending time with someone so cool it's always nice, so of course she'll take every chance she can to spend as much time with you as possible.

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

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somethingwritey · 3 years

Note

How is the Rangshi long fic coming? Id love an update on ittttt!

Hello! I'm so glad you're still thinking about my Rangshi fic! It's currently around 20k at the moment—definitely getting a bit carried away!

Because you asked, here's another little out-of-context snippet ;)

-----

“Do you think the spirits would mind if I assassinated a world leader?”

Jinpa jerked his head up at the question, risking a glance behind him at her. Kyoshi knew she must be a sight to behold, laying out across the wide saddle and staring up at the darkening clouds. In her hands, she opened and closed a fan in time to her pounding pulse.

“I don’t think that’s listed as an Avatar duty,” Jinpa stammered, thoroughly taken aback by her proposal.

“Bummer.”

Jinpa was quiet for a few moments, no doubt trying to edge around the subject towards her reasoning. “I take it that meeting with the Fire Lord went… poorly?”

Kyoshi propped herself up on her elbows to stare him in the face. She hoped he could read how absolutely stupid that question had been. She’d emerged from the Fire Lord’s palace by stomping, causing tiny earthquakes as she marched over to the stables. That should’ve been indication enough.

“He’s out of control.” Kyoshi shivered—Rangi’s absence making itself very apparent just then; she could always be counted on for a little extra warmth while traveling.

Kyoshi went back to staring at the sky.

Zoryu’s words about the Firebender still echoed in her ears, doing more to chill her than the night air ever could. She wished she could put more distance between Rangi and the Fire Lord, despite being hidden away in Yokoya.

For a terrifying moment, she wondered if Zoryu somehow knew. If he could see the girl in her cotton shift, laid out on the infirmary bed with her hands knotted in the sheets. If he had discovered a way to look at the bruises on her face and the way her breath still rattled slightly whenever she breathed. Maybe this whole meeting had been a distraction, a diversion to take Kyoshi away from the infirmary and Rangi. Maybe, it was too late.

“Jinpa!” Kyoshi felt her heart pounding in her ears. “Fly faster!”

She worked herself up as they flew, imagining horrific scenes of injury and destruction—rivaling the iceberg or North Chung-Ling - only this time, it would absolutely be her fault. If anything happened to Rangi, the Flying Opera Company, even Hei-Ran and Atuat, she would be to blame.

Kyoshi gripped the edge of the saddle, her knuckles turning white from the effort. She watched the ground grow closer and closer as Yingyong spiralled into a descent. Her chest tightened with every drop in altitude, and once, she almost slipped over the edge and plummeted the last several feet to the ground.

“Quiet evening.” Jinpa seemed on the whole unaware of her own personal panic. He landed Yingyong with ease and dismounted, walking around the side of the bison to assist Kyoshi like he always did.

She didn’t wait for the monk to make it over to her. She tumbled from the saddle, falling hard onto the ground and scrambling back up to her feet.

“Kyoshi!” he yelled after her in disbelief.

She didn’t turn around, stumbling towards the infirmary to what she knew would be waiting for her. Blindly, she pushed open the door and tripped over the doorway, panting and gasping for air, to find -

No evidence of violence. No ransom note or bodies or trails of blood. Just Hei-Ran and Atuat sitting in a few chairs with bowls of noodles, with the rest of the Flying Opera Company still bedridden, but looking more vibrant than before. Even Rangi looked, on the whole, unchanged, propped up in bed. Someone had even taken the time to put her hair back up in its usual topknot.

“Well,” Hei-Ran said dryly, taking in Kyoshi’s haggard appearance. “Are you being pursued by wolfbats? Lion vultures? Spider snakes, perhaps?”

Kyoshi’s face flushed red, and she tried hard to catch her breath - smoothing down her skirts to remove the ruffles.

“Did the monk get eaten?” Atuat asked calmly, taking another bite of her noodles. Clearly, the two women were enjoying the joke at Kyoshi’s expense.

Rangi covered her mouth, looking as though she was trying to keep a straight face for Kyoshi’s sake and failing at it. Kyoshi glared at her.

“Not you, too.”

A little snort escaped Rangi’s fingers, and her eyes went wide.

“Some bison ride you must’ve had,” Kirmia ventured, surveying Kyoshi’s windswept state. “What did happen to that Airbender of yours?”

Kyoshi gestured out the door. “Probably unsaddling Yingyong,” she told them all, still somewhat out of breath. “I, uh, just needed to check something.”

“The Fire Lord put you on edge?” Hei-Ran put down her bowl of noodles, staring hard at Kyoshi.

She forced herself to look back calmly. The last thing she wanted was to let everyone know that she’d gotten worked up over some unfulfilled threats. And now that she was here, even Kyoshi could tell how stupid she’d been. The infirmary was the safest place for Rangi right now, surrounded as she was by Hei-Ran and Atuat and unable to make any wrong move the Fire Lord could use to justify an attack.

Kyoshi forced a smile, relaxing her shoulders the best she could. “Nothing of the sort.” She tucked her fans back into her belt. “The meeting was simply to confirm what he already knew. Pretty big waste of time, actually.”

Hei-Ran was still studying her skeptically, probably trying to pinpoint the reason for Kyoshi’s sudden change in demeanor. Kyoshi dared to look over at Rangi again.

Her expression mirrored her mother’s, lips slightly pursed and head tilted to the side. If Kyoshi didn’t want Hei-Ran to discover the true nature of her meeting with Zoryu, she definitely didn’t want Rangi figuring it out.

Rangi’s station meant everything to her, and she took her job very seriously. If she knew that her own Fire Lord was pondering possible ways to strip the girl of her life - or worse, her honor - she would lose it.

Kyoshi had already seen how Fire Nation citizens treated their disgraced ranking officials. Hei-Ran had been pitied, patronized, pet like an animal. If anyone were to take that tone with Rangi, well, Kyoshi couldn’t promise that she would be able to keep her Avatar State in check.

“Care for some noodles?” Atuat gestured to her own bowl, holding it up for Kyoshi to see.

There was no way Kyoshi could turn down food. She hadn’t eaten since… well, Kyoshi couldn’t quite remember the last time she’d eaten, and she could feel Rangi staring daggers at her.

“Yeah,” she smiled at Atuat. “Noodles would be great.”

////

It was three days before Rangi was able to stand.

Atuat worked on her the best she could, trying to heal the internal damage caused by Yun. She told Kyoshi that bits of his earth dagger had broken off inside her wound, causing irritation and leaving a large possibility for infection. It didn’t help that Rangi was a terrible patient.

“I can get up,” she kept insisting. “I’m fine!”

When Atuat finally let her try, Rangi leapt at the opportunity, getting to her feet much too quickly and nearly doubling over from lingering stiffness and pain.

“Careful!” Kyoshi cried, hovering nearby. The outburst earned her stares from both Rangi and Atuat.

When Rangi straightened up again—slower this time—Kyoshi could see the imprint of the bandages under her shift - wrapped generously around her torso like battle armor.

“Are you sure she should be doing this?” Kyoshi asked Atuat, probably only fueling Rangi’s determination. “She’s still got bandages on! What if she starts bleeding again? We can try again tomorrow! Or next week!”

“Kyoshi, what’s your problem?” Rangi narrowed her eyes.

She was being far too overprotective, Kyoshi knew. She should back off. Let Rangi manage her own recovery. But even though it was inviting Rangi’s wrath, Kyoshi didn’t want her Firebender’s stubbornness to impede her healing process.

Rangi needed to take it slow. Make sure she didn’t make things worse with her rush to get better. As much as Kyoshi wanted to see her girl back on her feet, she knew it wouldn’t benefit either of them if it happened too quickly.

That’s what Kyoshi told herself as she watched Atuat support Rangi and instruct her to gently raise and lower her arms - stretching out her muscles. Kyoshi just didn’t want Rangi to overextend herself. To tear open her wound. To hurry an infection along. Her concern was born from love and care, not selfishness.

Or cowardice.

As if to poke holes in her reasoning, Hei-Ran entered the tent, arms crossed. “Jinpa told me your meeting with the Fire Lord ended… abruptly.” She glanced over at Atuat and Rangi for the briefest of moments. “Rangi, straighten your shoulders. Injuries don’t excuse bad posture.”

Rangi huffed, but obediently did as she was told. She respected her mother’s authority, whether she liked it or not.

Kyoshi picked her next words carefully. Lying to Hei-Ran was never a good idea, but neither was letting on just how badly the meeting had actually gone. “I think… the messages of both parties had ample time for sinking in.”

The words could’ve come straight from Yun’s mouth—vague with just the right amount of high-brow language. Maybe she wasn’t a hopeless cause after all.

Hei-Ran seemed surprised by the response as well. “I see. And what message did the Fire Lord impart on you?”

Shit.

Kyoshi tried to think on her feet. “Politics,” she said at last. “The importance of… political relations.”

“Sounds like the stuff Jianzhu used to preach,” Rangi offered, crinkling up her nose at the mention of the departed sage.

Hei-Ran sniffed dismissively at the mention of the man who’d nearly poisoned her to death. Kyoshi wondered inwardly if the woman ever mourned Jianzhu, despite everything. He had once been her close companion, after all.

Every one of Hei-Ran’s old friends were gone, she suddenly realized - swallowing hard. Kuruk. Kelsang. Jianzhu. The once-inseparable gang hadn’t stayed that way for very long. Hei-Ran was the sole survivor.

Killed after hunting dark spirits.

Murdered by Jianzhu.

Murdered by Yun. And me.

What terrible fates had been waiting for the previous Avatar team, often at the hands of each other. Was that what waited for her? For Rangi? For Wong and Kirimia? Was every Avatar doomed to bring failure and annihilation to the people who loved them most?

“Atuat,” she said sharply, turning to look at Rangi who’d made good progress accompanied by the Waterbender. “That’s enough for today.”

“Yes, Avatar.”

As Atuat moved to help Rangi back to bed, Rangi protested - an angry haze settling over her face as she watched Kyoshi move towards the door.

“What?” Rangi twisted in Atuat’s grip, trying to break free, to run after her. “Who let her call the shots around here? Kyoshi, don’t you dare walk away from me! I’m not through talking about this!”

Kyoshi didn’t turn around. She couldn’t.

“Fine! Go clear your head! See if I care!”

And then Kyoshi made it out of earshot.

She would delay Rangi’s recovery as long as she possibly could, drag it out until the spirits themselves were begging the Firebender to get back on her feet. Because at least here in the infirmary, tucked away in Yokoya, she had people to keep her safe. She couldn’t get herself thrown into another life-threatening situation while she was still recuperating from the last one.

Kyoshi wouldn’t be the reason for Rangi’s obliteration.

And neither would Zoryu.

---

more coming soon! my commissions are open (and so is my ask box!)

#rangshi #atla #rise of kyoshi #kyoshi x rangi #longfic #writing commissions #fanfic #shadow of kyoshi #kyoshi #avatar kyoshi #avatar the last airbender #rangi x kyoshi #fan fic #fic update

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newswcanonprompts · 4 years

Text

Anakin is sent to negotiate with Gardulla the Hutt bc of the success of the Jabba mission (no one in the Council knows Gardulla used to own him)

editor’s note: there is actually a fic that came from this, by the lovely @primeemeraldheiress! here is the link

this one is SUPER angsty, sorry in advance, i missed the original conversation about this prompt and when i got back online everyone was yelling about it, when i read what they did i was in *shock*. like ow. anyways have fun

After being so helpful in rescuing Jabba the Hutt's son, Anakin, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan end up being sent on a mission to help Gardulla the Hutt because Anakin hasn't told anyone about his history with her

Possible reactions from Gardulla:

"Skywalker? I owned a human like that, her brat always caused trouble. Good riddance!"

What if she decides that since he's back in her territory that means he belongs to her again

.....gardulla hears him try to call obi-wan master and tries to buy anakin from him (Gardulla asking if obi-wan is anakin's master and anakin being in such a messed up mental space that he says yes, trusting that Obi-wan won’t let her buy him)

Obi-Wan wondering why Anakin is being so specifically arsey with this Hutt. "Force you're worse with her than you were with Jabba."

"Oh yeah, she bought me and my mother. I think I have a reason to dislike her."

The council meeting afterwards where obi-wan rails on the council...

Obi-Wan suddenly getting a horrible feeling whenever Anakin calls him master because he's known the contexts were different but now it is real and in his face

Like it's a different thing for Obi-Wan to know his padawan used to be a slave compared to looking his padawan's former master in the eye and seeing her current slaves.

Anakin manages to control himself in the throne room but the whole way there and back he can't help worrying that one of the really old lash scars that curls around his shoulder will be noticed, that his identity as a former slave will be exposed

anakin not being able to call obi-wan master on tatooine like. point blank. he starts addressing him as master and just. flinches.

anakin usually wears his heart on his sleeves right?? always shows his emotions, feelings, all that. Well, the closer they get to gardulla's palace the blanker his face gets

Ahsoka calls Anakin master and Anakin just grits out a "Please don't call me that, not here."

Obi-Wan suddenly realising why Anakin comes across as arrogant as times. He's spent his entire life trying to up his value because there's safety in value.

Anakin telling them not to use the name "Skywalker" while they're in the palace

Anakin's accent shifts so entirely to the point where it almost sounds like Obi-Wan's because he's so determined to not slip into old roles

Anakin having to be physically held back from getting into a physical fight. Not even using his lightsaber, he just wants to fight

Or, alternatively, all the fight just going out of Anakin because he knows, here, it'll just make everything worse. So he's almost.... compliant and it freaks everyone out

Ex. from @youngcreativenerdgoddess: Obi-Wan is terrified. His former padawan is the most resigned he’s ever been. He looks so....defeated. A look one would never expect on the vaunted “Hero with no fear”. All the fight was gone from him, and that scared him more than anything else in this force-damned war had.

Obi-Wan actually being the one about to lose his temper and then Anakin just puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him there's no point.

Consider: instead of anakin being angry he was sent on the mission, being resigned because of course he was, he knew Gardulla bes

Anakin comes across as an almost perfect Jedi for once in his life and in the context it is horrifying

Anakin’s report to the council is so matter of fact because he thought they knowingly sent him on the mission because of his past experience with Gardulla

Obi-Wan finds Anakin writing what he thinks is a CV then he sees the numbers next to it and it is his estimated value--"for the gardulla mission, if she finds out who I am she'll try to rebuy me"

After the mission, from @jasontoddiefor: "Failed you, we have," Yoda said, his voice full of grief, and Obi-Wan watched in horror as Anakin only titled his head, for once looking his age and not the years the war has aged him.

"What do you mean?" Anakin asked, not understanding.

Examples of bits and pieces from this prompt:

Ex. from jasontodiefor: Anakin in the corner of her palace having a breakdown because he remembers memories he had thought gone, his mother's shouting and the tearful begging and the pain, pain, pain and he hadn't meant to break the vase, it had been an accident, please stop it hurts, Mom-

jasontodiefor: "A game of chance."

"What?"

Anakin doesn't look up from his hands, doesn't meet Obi-Wan's eyes. He hadn't since they'd arrived here. "I'd still be here like them if not for a game of chance. I'd be worth more than just a few credits too. Force-sensitive, young, good with mechanics, pretty-"

Ex. from Ro: Obi-Wan has never seen Anakin this silent before. There were nights before, when they were both younger, Obi-Wan himself still trying to heal from Qui-Gon's death and Anakin trying to get used to the temple. And Anakin would get quiet, but he was never this stone cold silent. Never this blank. He's so emotional, Obi-Wan's former padawan (his child), so open with his heart on his sleeve. There is none of that here, none of that bright boy. Anakin doesn't fight it, and that is the thing that worries Obi-Wan the most, because when Anakin doesn't like something he fights, he lashes out with teeth and sticks his heels in. But in this, he is resigned. (Anakin doesn't let Ashoka off the ship. She fights and argues but Anakin doesn't move, doesn't joke. He stands firm with it and Obi-Wan watches.

"Master, I—"

Anakin flinches, "You're staying on the ship, Ahsoka, that's final." She huffs and leaves, and the only thing Obi-Wan can see is how relieved Anakin looks. There is something wrong here, but Anakin has never liked talking about Tatooine, and Obi-Wan has never pushed.) Obi-Wan has never hated a mission more.

Another ex from jasontodiefor: "But-"

"You're young," Anakin interrupts her sharply. Ahsoka hates it when he cuts her off. It doesn't happen too often, mostly on the battlefield when he's barking orders at everyone. If anything, he lets her speak out of tune more often than he should or other Masters would, but right now his voice doesn't leave any room for agreement. "Young, underage actually, and female, that's the first 10K. Extra five if they don't sell you as inexperienced, and only stupid slavers would do that, but as a virgin."

Ahsoka pales. Anakin's voice is harsh, but there is an almost easy flow to his words, as if he had recited them in his head over and over again. "Force sensitive, that's next. Another 8K regularly, but you're a Jedi, so that's 20K. A Padawan, mind you, but you're a known face next to mine and Obi-Wan's. Obi-Wan would fetch 40 for his status as a Jedi and councilor alone. And you're a Togruta, you sell better than a human girl. I'd add another 6 for that."

You sell better. Not you would, there's nothing hypothetical about this, Ahsoka realizes. Anakin's narrowing down what would happen to her if somebody just managed to grab her lightsabers, to put a collar around her throat and cut her off from all that she had ever known. "Now, that's just your base value," Anakin continues. "You're also a pretty good mechanic and pilot, though the latter makes your flight risk much higher. Given how dangerous you are, let's say 10K. You're a strong fighter, so you could probably get another 8K in the arena, perhaps a little more depending on what planet you're sold on. Your political value also can't be overlooked. You fight at the front and know much more about the war effort as a whole and that's worth much more, probably another 15." Anakin holds up his fingers like he's counting apples and now how much people would be willing to brand her as theirs. "So we're roughly at 70. That's not bad at all. Not as much as Obi-Wan or I would get, but it's more than enough. You're not coming on this mission. End of discussion."

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jess-the-vampire · 3 years

Note

Sooooo whatya think of the new episodeee?

Oh it’s definitely my favorite episode of the series so far, i was having such a good time at every turn. I’m glad i went out of my way to avoid spoilers, cause i was glad to actually be surprised by some elements on first watch.

I think this had by far the best opening for an episode so far, we finally get back to the villians, we meet the coven heads, we get insight on belos’s plans-

and then belos gets constipated, which starts getting into the more character driven lore, which is the best part. You instantly can tell GG and Kiki have some bit of tension between them to be Belo’s favorite, though granted i wonder if hunter is the only one to know belos is cursed and actually just always insists to help belos with his fits to prevent others from seeing them.

Including kiki.

It’s honestly unclear how aware anyone is that belos is cursed, like him eating pailsmans is apparently not something he hides, but like....i feel him being cursed is something that people would know universally if it got out...so i’m left wondering if anyone knows besides hunter.

Regardless, belos turns into a goop monster with an angry side, and i guess his mask doesn’t transform with him compared to the rest of his body so he breaks it again because i guess he goes though masks like crazy.

Hunter turns away in this scene from his outburst and even though he’s masked here i can already tell he’s most likely pained in these scenes. Like he’s probably seen this happen so many times, and i can’t imagine it gets any easier for him, it’s probably awful to watch belos suffer like this for him (Regardless of the abuse)

And to be honest, it seems pretty painful for him, i think this ep seems to at least confirm whatever this thing is that takes over belos’s body.....belos never actually wanted it in the first place.

Yeah so after Hunter tells belos there’s not enough trees to medicate him anymore, we’re hit with the “UNCLE”. Which, when i first watched it i needed a second to even process the fact they confirmed their relation.

and i was like “CLOSE ENOUGH”, not his kid but uncle still works just fine for me, i’m just happy my assumption they were related actually came to ahead.

And i rewatched this episode a few times, and on second watch i realized more what happened in this scene. Hunter was talking about his interest in wild magic, and making more pailsman to help belos, and some method that could heal him and as soon as belos looked at him he instantly shut down.

He was clearly rambling about wild magic cures for belos because of his interest in it, and then suddenly remembered his uncle hates wild magic and felt super awkward.

It seems highly likely his interest in wild magic came from trying to cure belos and spending a lot of time reading up on the stuff.

And then we get hit with the whole “Our family is dead because of wild magic” line, which.....i’m curious to know what happened there. But it does at least explain why belos feels how he does, if wild magic both killed his family beside hunter AND cursed him in the first place. We’re just gonna need more info on what exactly happened.

Also while Belos is def abusive and does not treat hunter how he should, this scene actually does read off to me like belos does care about hunter to some degree. If belos is cursed and his curse works in similar ways to how Eda’s curse works, then it’s worth reminding ppl that eda mentions early this season how stress can amplify the curse even more.

And sure enough, belos goes goopy on hunter’s shoulder all of a sudden when he grasps him. Which could be considered a sign of stress and that the idea of hunter dying or being in danger actually does stress him.

You could very much also assume this is just due to his curse not being fully handled and just getting worse, or that belos only cares about hunter for selfish reasons....but i’m not taking anything off the table here.

Belos can still be a shitty uncle, and still care about hunter, these aren’t mutually exclusive traits. But we need more episodes for now on this.

But anyways he asks hunter if he can rely on him, kiki is pissed......and we move on.

So i’m glad luz’s impulsiveness is addressed a ton in this episode, they actually bring up a lot of good points. That luz has no plan, that the time she’s spending here might render moot if she goes back to earth, ect ect.

Hunter even calls her out a lot later for not thinking things through, it’s a whole deal in this episode. I’m glad it was brought up cause it’s actually worth asking a lot of these things.

the set up here works, they actually made a good reason for why a pailsman didn’t bond with her. Speaking of which the adoption thing is cute and i love it, it’s a great idea. The designs are all very cute and fun.

Bump face reveal was a lot for me to process, but i find the idea of his pailsman being a pet that can help with his disabilities a good idea.

Also like, i did find it odd that they got staffs so early because we’ve never seen kids their ages with them before, but i guess it’s a new tradition? Does everyone at hexside now have one?

Honesty not sure why batqueen left the nest there overnight, i meant i guess she assumed they were safe with that shield but in context i dunno why she didn’t take them home after the school day was over.

but whatever, luz stays there overnight hoping a pailsman will bond with her and GG just kidnapps them cause of pure luck on his part a bunch of pailsman were in a vulnerable spot tonight.

So GG continues to be charming, by whistling the theme song and then being blasted off his ship hilariously, before cockily teleporting himself right back on it seconds later. Like he and luz have great banter, he’s so extra like this it’s so funny, and god he’s so FAST with that staff it’s scary but so awesome.

Yeah so then hand dragon crashes them and i was so excited cause it meant face reveal. Poor dude looked so in pain and then we find out kiki tried to effing murder him because of course she did. But like, i think killing your boss’s nephew is the WORST way to get a promotion tbh.

(Also i got confused for a bit cause his mask has always been drawn as a mask, but now it’s a helmet in this scene for whatever reason but-)

Anyways, face reveal, Like honestly ppl weren’t too far off with their guesses, really the only thing people didn’t get was the tooth gap (That was fair tho, we couldn’t have guessed that). But it did make him even cuter.

like the banter is funny, he licks her hand, she slaps him, he looks SO pissed at her for this mess.

and i guess that outfit is his under armor apparently.

He’s lucky she didn’t run away immediately and followed him, but maybe he assumed she would since she had no where else to go.

Also his expressions in this ep are glorious, these had to be fun to draw.

Also we find out that the coven team members have never seen his face i guess? They just assume he’s a silly kid and are awful to him, so i guess he’s not only the youngest member of the coven but he never really shows his face much.

(”Call your parents”, ha ha.....whose gonna tell them who his uncle is?)

He is however, REALLY good at parkour and he’s fast even without his staff, so he’s well trained alright.

And then they reveal he’s not magical and i was SO happy cause i was so sure something was up when he wasn’t doing magic like the other witches despite his pointy ears. So they outright confirmed what i thought.

Hunter is pretty smart tho, like he can tell luz wouldn’t hurt him and wouldn’t flee so he knows he has the high ground here. Like he might be being a bit of a dick, but to be fair luz has been nothing but a dick to him throughout the whole episode (Everyone in this episode has been a dick to him tbh)

They team up and i get excited cause i love this kinda stuff and it gets more wholesome because hunter is super interested in her magic, he thinks it’s cool and you can tell how much he actually loves wild magic but then again...shuts himself down because of belos making him fear the stuff.

An then because luz asks, he tells her his backstory.

honestly with how this world treats people who aren’t magically powerful, living and growing up in a world that would find you useless sounds....awful. Hunter must be an anomaly around here, human blood or not.

Luz coming here to learn is different then growing up in a world and being the only one with no abilities and no future without them. Belos provides him with magic and a future, it’s no wonder he stays with him despite everything.

the whole “Found me” thing is weird, cause belos implies they’re blood related and hunter makes it sound like belos semi-adopted him. Which....if he did i dunno why “Uncle” and not “Adopted dad”, but ok....guess that’s for later.

Apparently hunter is important for something tho with the “Titan has big plans for me” thing, not sure what, but-

But yeah as soon as Hunter talked about wanting to make his own future and Rascal tried to land on him i knew EXACTLY where this was going, it was so cuteeeeee. The lil birb wanted to be with hunter, that’s so wholesome.

And he’s so terrified because of belos and what wild magic did to him, the poor bab.

But yeah, luz then trusts him with his staff back, because again....impulsive. But hunter does actually ask if she’s sure, so he might as well be asking if she trusts him.

The plan goes ahead, and hunter nearly betrays her.

though granted, hunter never promised her he’d stop and let her take them away, the truce was supposed to last till kiki was stopped and they were gonna fight out who got the pailsman. But it does bother luz cause she was hopeful he was better then this.

But just like he did before, she calls him out and he doesn’t betray her, because he’s ALSO too nice to do it, just like he said she was. He says his name (Which also took a moment to process), and then beats the crap out of kiki while letting luz get away and protecting her like a badass.

He might not have magic, but he’s good at fighting

like he can easily teleport to luz and take the pailsman, but he doesn’t, he lets them get away and luz knows this. Even though she also knows hunter has to go back to the emperor too and they have to separate.

It’s only slightly bitter terms, because in the end he came through for her and she knows it.

honestly, the worst part is i can’t even be mad at hunter for it, i’m sure he was terrified to fail belos. Both because he loves him and doesn’t want him to suffer....but also because of well...being punished. Really says something when his near betrayal doesn’t even make me mad at him, and i can understand why he nearly did it.

He let her go, knowing he’d be in SERIOUS trouble and that it would hurt someone he actually loves, so....ouch.

so yeah at this point i knew rascal wanted him so it was only of matter of what happened next.

Which was, luz getting the wood, which i like more anyway. Eda and King doing this offscreen and coming home like this is actually very funny, and honestly i appreciate the message of it being ok to wait.....means a lot to me.

yeah so belos is like...being an ass, like the kid tried his hardest, you don’t need to hit him with the “Is this the thanks i get?”. He’s a kid and he’s trying to cure you you dick, give him a break he doesn’t remotely have to help you like this.

Also apparently belos has not even told hunter HOW this happened, like...dude. Hunter is trying to be entirely reasonable here and belos spikes at him, which does imply some physical abuse though the only reason hunter doesn’t get a new scar is because he moves.

but how he reacts implies this has happened before, he is bracing for impact and he flinches. It’s pretty sad tbh, especially since hunter loves him and belos’s respect means something to him.

Belos is such an idiot, like c’mon dude, hunter is trying to help you and you don’t listen to him you dick. Kid shouldn’t have to say sorry for anything he did nothing wrong, he was just trying to help.

Anyways, he gloats at kiki (So at the very least she knows what he looks like under the mask), which he deserves a chance to do anyway. So i guess he didn’t rat her out for trying to kill him, personally my guess why is blackmail.....he was gonna hold it over her head to keep her from doing it again and threaten to tell belos.

But kiki quickly tells he LET the pailsman get away since he was the one to fight her (Curse his cute loose hair strand). So i guess now they have dirt on each other, so that’s fun.

His room is adorable, though the med kit by the bed is concerning.

Rascal comes for him and it;s so cute....though you can tell hunter nearly hurts him on instinct because of force of habit, but it’s so cute how he cares and how the birb loves him and is his new staff.

it was well hinted to as well, it’s so subtle, but the bird being cheery, curious, and his constant habit of escaping boundaries was perfect for hunter. He represents what hunter wants to be and why they got matched is done so well, all without explaining anything.

Hunter indirectly stated his deepest wish, to make his own choices, and rascal resonated with that.

can’t wait to see where this goes.

great ending shot, love me some conflicted shots looking out of windows like trapped birds.

also this title was a pun the whole time i can’t-

#the owl house #toh #toh spoilers #golden guard #toh golden guard #the owl house golden guard #the golden guard #the owl house luz #emperor belos #kikimora

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theclockworkmonk · 3 years

Text

Desire and Will

This is the most popular fic in my "Aang/Katara Missing Moments" series on AO3. This is the first time I'm posting it to tumblr.

Summary: With Aang still having trouble letting loose with his firebending, Zuko asks an alarming question:

"Have you ever kissed a girl?"

Words: 3,944

Read on AO3

FF.net

*******

Katara was awoken by what was, to her, the scariest sound in the world: the sound of Aang in pain.

"OW!" she heard him cry out, and she wrenched her eyelids open and rolled to face where his voice was coming from. There, she saw Aang still laying on the ground where he had been sleeping, rubbing his backside like it had been kicked. Towering over him, fists clenched and face scowling...was Zuko.

A jolt a fear cut through Katara's still half-asleep mind as she reached over for her bending skin and flicked it open with her thumb. She was ready to fight, ready to—

"You're burning daylight!" Zuko barked at Aang, "Get up! Twenty hot squats, now!"

Katara's sleep fog finally cleared and she remembered why Zuko was here in their camp. She remembered their whole reluctant arrangement to have Zuko teach Aang firebending, and the nerve-wracking few days they had disappeared together and apparently danced with dragons.

Katara groggily collapsed back onto her pillow, too tired to even growl at Zuko that the rest of them didn't have to train to defeat his evil dad, thankyouverymuch, so maybe bark his orders more quietly at absurd hours in the morning.

Aang seemed to be feeling the same way, because he just moaned in response. Zuko squatted down next to Aang and pointed out into the canyon that contained the Western Air Temple, where the sky was already turning blood red.

"You see that? That's sunrise, Avatar. That's the sign of a firebender's inner strength coming to life with a new day." He grabbed Aang by the shoulder and started shaking him, "Can you feel it, Aang? Can you feel your inner fire starting to reignite?"

"No," grunted Aang plainly.

Katara was remembering more now, and becoming more annoyed. Right, what had Zuko said to her at the north pole? "You rise with the moon, I rise with the sun?" of course it made perfect sense that on top of being cruel, bloodthirsty monsters, firebenders were also something far worse: morning people. Ugh, did this mean that Aang was also going to be a morning person from now on?

"Well we've got to fix that," said Zuko, and he practically dragged Aang to his feet and started pushing him off towards the courtyard that they used to train, that jutted out from underneath the rock overhang so they were actually in the sun. With their sleeping area quiet again, Katara tried to go back to sleep, but now the knowledge that Aang was off with Zuko, alone, at the other end of the temple was nagging at her brain. It wasn't like she thought Zuko would suddenly attack him or something; she had accepted by now that this wasn't some kind of absurdly elaborate plot against them—mainly because she didn't think Zuko was clever enough to pull off something like that. But still, whenever she thought about Aang with no one around him but Zuko, she found that she...didn't like it.

After a few minutes, she accepted that she wasn't getting any more sleep, so she got herself up and started making her way in the same direction Zuko and Aang had gone. As she was rounding the last corner before the courtyard, she started to hear their voices.

"So if my firebending wakes me up with the sun, and my waterbending keeps me up with the moon, when exactly am I supposed to sleep?"

"You slept for a hundred years, isn't that enough?"

Aang laughed, but Katara recognized it as his uncomfortable laugh. Aang never liked being reminded of all that time he wasn't there for the world, which Zuko would know if he wasn't such a heartless jerk and a terrible teacher. The fact that he barely knew Aang and had no way of knowing what he was uncomfortable with was entirely beside the point.

Katara decided to not announce her presence and instead leaned against one of the stone pillars within the shade of the overhang, while they were out in the increasingly bright morning sun. She was far enough away and in enough shade that they were unlikely to notice her, but if they did happen to look her way then she could plausibly deny she was snooping. She didn't like the idea of leaving Aang alone with Zuko, but she still realized hovering would interfere with them. Aang was always trying to impress her and Zuko was still visibly terrified of her ever since she threatened to kill him the day he joined their team (which she definitely didn't take any pride in).

Aang and Zuko finished their warm-ups and faced a target at the far end of the courtyard, a few wooden logs they had haphazardly nailed together in the vague shape of a human.

"Okay, let's see if that trip to almost get eaten by dragons was worth it," said Zuko, "set your stance..."

Aang positioned himself in a sideways battle stance in opposition to the dummy.

"Now, control your breathing…"

Aang drew in a deep breath and slowly released it.

"Now…STRIKE!"

Aang punched his right first towards the dummy, and a single fireball erupted from his knuckles, traveling about 10 yards to the dummy, briefly engulfing it in flames before dissipating. After the fire and smoke had quickly cleared, Katara saw that the dummy was slightly singed, with a few spots glowing orange for a few seconds before cooling down. Katara could feel the heat of the blast from where she was standing.

Zuko, however, didn't look impressed, "Well that was...certainly better, I guess."

"You guess!?" Aang incredulously asked out loud, and Katara incredulously asked in her head at the same time, "Come on, that was the biggest blast I've ever made!"

"Yeah, and if you were any other novice, we'd call that a really promising start. Heck, you might even be called a prodigy. People would be saying you could become a master in just a few years."

Aang's shoulders slumped in disappointment.

"But we don't have a few years, obviously, so sorry, but we need to find a way to fast-track this."

Aang threw his hands in the air, "Well what more can I possibly do!"

Zuko frowned and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "Well to be honest, I think you're still being too timid and restrained. You're certainly doing a lot better than before our trip, but I still sense a lot of energy in you that you're not letting out."

Aang looked confused and started to get defensive, "Well of course I'm holding a little back, I'm trying to stay in control! Jong Jong said that firebending requires constant discipline or fire will destroy you. He didn't even let me shoot fire, he had me try to stop a bit of fire from growing, and when I didn't listen to him—" Aang managed to cut off his own rambling and managed to take a deep breath and closed his eyes, "that was when I burned Katara."

Zuko's face cycled through several different expressions as a lot of things suddenly started making sense.

"...Oh," was the only thing he could say.

Aang continued, "I hated that version of myself, even more than when I've gone into the Avatar State. After that, I promised myself I would never firebend at all!"

Katara tried to keep track of all the different emotions she was feeling. She was touched by the fact that Aang cared about her so much that the memory of hurting her still got him to be this upset, annoyed at him for being this worked up over something that happened months ago, she had long since forgiven, and was really not important in the context of their mission, and guilty that her getting hurt and the way she reacted had caused him this much heartache, even while she knew that she hadn't really done anything wrong.

Zuko sighed, raised his hand, and after a few seconds of hesitation, lightly patted Aang's shoulder in the most awkward, panicked "there-there" gesture Katara had ever seen.

"Look Aang," said Zuko, "I can't speak to what this 'Jong Jong' guy taught you. Maybe his way is better, I don't know, but it sounds like it takes a lot longer, and we don't have the luxury of being patient and deliberate about this."

He pulled on Aang's shoulder and turned him around so he would stop looking at his feet in self-pity and look his teacher in the face again, "The people of the world don't need their Avatar to be a wizened sage right now, they need a stick of dynamite."

Zuko took a few steps away and tried his best to pretend to be a wizened sage himself, "I can only teach you how I was taught, and I was taught that even when it's not fuelled by anger and rage, all firebending is still fuelled by strong emotion. When teaching me about the elements, my uncle said—let's see if I can get this right…"

He started rubbing his hand on an invisible large belly, stroking an invisible beard, and speaking in an old man's raspy voice in his best impersonation of his uncle.

"Fire is the element of Power. The people of the Fire Nation have Desire and Will, and the energy and drive to achieve what they want."

Aang chuckled at the impression, his mood clearly improving, while Zuko looked really impressed with himself. Katara wouldn't have been surprised to learn that this was the first time in his life the dour prince had made someone laugh.

"See what I mean? Remember what we learned with the dragons. Fire is Life. And passion for life is what fuels firebending. You need to stop thinking like a monk and use your passion."

Aang didn't look frustrated or dejected anymore, but he did look puzzled.

"Um...okay," Aang said, thoughtfully scratching his head, "How am I supposed to do that?"

Now it was Zuko's turn to get frustrated. He hadn't anticipated one of his jobs as a teacher being having to explain how to feel things to this guy. That was something he was not qualified for.

"I don't know," said Zuko, not hiding the annoyance in his voice, "just think about it. Try to recreate those emotions when you're channeling your energy for your bending, and it might make your firebending more powerful. Hasn't there ever been something you...desired? Coveted, even? Something that you needed to have or to win more than anything?"

Katara almost laughed out loud, boy are you barking up the wrong tree.

Aang spent a few seconds earnestly considering Zuko's question, "I don't think so. My people believed that worldly material possessions were meaningless, and attachment to them was the source of suffering. We didn't really have anything beyond what we needed and a few toys that we shared. I played games with all my friends, but I didn't really care much if I won, I just tried to make sure everybody had fun."

Katara was grinning at what an unbelievable dork the mighty savior of the world was.

Zuko, however, groaned and dragged both hands down his face, "Yeah, of course you did." It seemed to Katara that this was the first time Zuko was having to relate to someone who was actually a good person.

Aang just shrugged at Zuko's exasperation, "Sorry, hotman."

"Stop calling me that!" Zuko thought for several more seconds before his eyes lit up and he snapped his fingers with an idea, but then immediately looked like he regretted having the idea, and started looking deeply uncomfortable.

"Hey...can I ask you a personal question? It's going to sound weird and unrelated, but just trust me, okay?"

Aang raised an eyebrow, "Uh….sure?"

"Have you ever kissed a girl?"

Aang's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, his face turning bright pink, and Katara's heart seemed to stop in its tracks.

After what seemed like an eternity, Aang finally found his voice again, but all he could manage was a weak, "Uh...what?"

"Just bear with me for a second," pressed Zuko.

"Um," Aang squeaked, "Yes. Yes I have." and his face moved past pink into deep scarlet.

"Okay," breathed Zuko, "Now, I know I'm sounding like a gossiping school girl, but I promise I'm going somewhere with this. Ugh."

He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose, like this conversation was physically painful. "Tell me about your first kiss," he finished in a too-deep voice, very transparently overcompensating.

Katara was positively screaming inside her own head, No Aang, do not, under ANY circumstances, tell him about your first kiss.

She felt like her heart and stomach had completely removed from her body. She refused to believe that these were the circumstances where The Incident between she and Aang was finally getting verbalized. Aang hadn't even bothered to talk to her about it yet, there was no way he was going to spill it all to Zuko. The fact that the main reason Aang hadn't talked to her about it was the fact that she had been avoiding him non-stop was entirely beside the point.

Katara started running through a hundred scenarios to try to find some way to stop this conversation. Should she rush in and pretend to be sick? Say that they're under attack? Just stay hidden and bloodbend them both unconscious? But before she could decide on one, to her horror, Aang started talking.

"Well," Aang began, his cheeks still red, "it was back at the Southern Air Temple—"

All of Katara's panic seemed to instantly vanish and be replaced with confusion.

Wait, what? Why is he telling him that? Katara thought, We barely knew each other at the Southern Temple….Does he THINK we kissed at the Southern Temple? I guess that would explain a lot. Did he hallucinate or something while in the Avatar State—

"—and she was part of a visiting caravan."

….Oh.

Oh.

"We got along really well while she was there, she was really good at all of my favorite games, and while we were saying goodbye she just kissed me."

OH.

"By the time I realized what was going on, she just giggled and jumped up on her bison."

Katara was simultaneously feeling unbelievable relief that her big secret wasn't being talked about and unbelievable white-hot fury at Aang. She had just spent several weeks believing that her first kiss had also been Aang's, and now she finds out that she's just the latest? Latest of how many? Exactly how friendly had he gotten with those fangirls on Kyoshi Island? She was two years older than him, by all rights she should be on at least equal footing with him in this mess between them, who gave him permission to have more experience with kissing than her? The fact that he had never once told her that he had never kissed a girl before was entirely beside the point.

But Katara cycled through all these thoughts in just a split second before calming herself down and realizing that she had no reason to care about this. What did it matter if Aang had kissed some girl a hundred years ago? It's not like she thought of Aang that way. Aang had clearly just misunderstood her platonic affections. It's not like she had ever seriously thought about kissing him (especially not during some of the more recent times she had kissed him on the cheek). In fact, she doubted that even he had given any serious thought to kissing. He just had a little crush and the intensity of the moment got to his head. So this is fine.

It's fine.

Seriously, it's fine.

It's completely fine. Whatever she was feeling certainly wasn't jeal—

"Wait, she kissed you?" Zuko interrupted Aang's rambling and yanked Katara back to reality, "I asked you if you had ever kissed a girl."

"Well you also asked me to tell you about my first kiss!" Aang yelled with his hands in the air, frustrated again, "Which one is it!" He was clearly angry that in his panic he had revealed an embarrassing story for no reason.

Zuko put his palms up defensively, "Okay, okay, sorry, bad wording on my part. So, to clarify: have you ever kissed someone else? Have you ever been the one to take the initiative?"

Katara's heart started racing again. Why couldn't Zuko get distracted and drop this?

"Um…" Aang's face had been red before, but now all the color seemed to drain from it and he looked like a ghost, "...yes. But I don't think dwelling on that will help fix my problem. In fact, it's kind of a downer, actually."

"Why, was she an airbender too?" Zuko asked. He supposed dwelling on a girl he had feelings for that had been killed a hundred years ago would be counterproductive in fueling Aang's inner fire.

Despite how angry she had gotten at Aang's kissing experience, Katara now found herself hoping this girl was another airbender.

"No," Aang responded, rubbing the back of his neck, "this was after I came out of the ice. Pretty recent, in fact…"

No such luck.

"Okay, so what's the problem?" asked Zuko.

"Well...it didn't exactly work out well for me. She didn't really kiss me back."

Katara scowled, well that's not fair, she thought with more than a little bitterness. It's not like she had a chance to. You're not allowed to act upset if someone doesn't kiss you back when you spring a kiss on them with no warning and then fly away before they even know what's going on. If he hadn't been so dramatic and used his actual words then she would have—

Katara let out a gasp of fear at where her train of thought was leading her. She would have….what, exactly? If she had known the kiss was coming ahead of time, what would she have done? Let him down easy? Told him to focus on the mission? Thrown him into the ocean?...or would she have kissed him back?

No.

Well…

Certainly not.

Maybe?

Perhaps if they tried again wow where did THAT thought come from?

Meanwhile, back in reality, Zuko was waving away Aang's concerns, "That doesn't matter. Don't think about anything that happened afterward. Just bring yourself back to that one moment, where you overcame caution and went after what you wanted. Set your stance."

Aang faced the dummy and resumed his fighting stance.

Katara couldn't help but inch a little closer away from her "hiding" spot. Now that Zuko had stopped pressing Aang for details and was doing his job, she felt like she could observe with a nervous curiosity instead of outright panic.

"Now," instructed Zuko, "take a deep breath, close your eyes, and picture this girl, how she looked in that moment."

Aang's eyes closed and drew in a breath.

Katara swallowed hard. At this moment, there was no more uncertainty about Aang. He was thinking about her, in that way, right now. And that knowledge made her hold her breath and made her face get a little warm.

"Try to remember how you felt immediately beforehand. How she made you feel. Try to recreate how your heartbeat was affected. It's starting to get faster and harder. How your breathing changed—remember, it's your breath that creates energy in the body for firebending. Yours is getting shallower and more intense. Remember how your stomach muscles reacted. They're tensing in anticipation. Now, in your mind's eye, make your move and kiss her, and at the same time….STRIKE!"

Aang punched his right fist towards the dummy, and his hand exploded.

There was no whoosh like with the previous fireball, but a roar as a conical wave of fire erupted from Aang's knuckles, completely enveloping the dummy 10 yards away and continuing onward to blast past the outer railing of the stone courtyard into the vast expanse of the canyon. And to Katara's alarm, it kept going. It wasn't a single blast but a continuous, monstrous stream of fire easily 15 feet wide at its biggest and so hot that Katara had to turn away and shield her eyes.

Several seconds later, the flames finally died down and Aang blinked his eyes open, looking equal parts proud and terrified of himself. The wooden dummy….did not exist anymore. There was no way to tell if Aang had burned it to ashes or simply blasted it backwards into the canyon. The previously white stones that made up the part of the courtyard that had been in front of Aang were now blackened and cracked.

Zuko had reflexively thrown up his arms to shield his face, stumbling backward. He was still sitting on the ground, eyes widened to the size of Appa's, and his mouth hanging open in shock. He sat there for several more silent seconds until Aang gave an awkward cough, then his face split into the biggest grin Katara had ever seen on him and he started cackling with delirious relief and excitement.

"All right!" Zuko exclaimed, jumping to his feet, "Now that's what I'm talking about!" he loudly clapped his hand on Aang's back, who had returned to looking embarrassed.

"No, don't you clam up again," warned Zuko, "hold onto that feeling. Come on, I'll show you how to make a flame whip."

Katara slinked backward away from her pillar and began a very undignified scurry back to their sleeping area. The fire had long since dissipated, but her face still felt hot and flustered, and her stomach felt like it was doing somersaults. Her mind was filled up by the same three words, repeating over and over again:

I did that.

Thinking about her made Aang able to do that. She could no longer simplify things by telling herself that this was just a confusing crush he had let get to his head. For most of the time she had known Aang, the thought that he would have any….desires like that for anyone simply didn't compute for her. He was too selfless, too kind, too pure. He was a monk for crying out loud.

But what she just saw Zuko coax out of her sweet, innocent friend was….not pure. Had he had this inside of him the entire time? And what brought this out of him was thinking about her. Thinking about kissing her. As much as she tried to deny it, when she thought about this power she had over him….she liked it. She was now able to see Aang in a new light, and at least consider the possibility of being more than friends with him.

But she still fought against it, because that realization was absolutely terrifying.

Katara shook her head and splashed some of her bending water on her face. She resolved to keep doing what she had been doing: focusing on their mission. She could sort out all this confusion when the war was over.

Although….

If the goal was to help Aang defeat the Fire Lord and end the war, then naturally they all had an obligation to assist Aang with his bending in any way they could, right? So she supposed it couldn't hurt to give Aang the occasional extra-tight hug now and then. Purely for training purposes, of course.

After all, she thought with a slight smirk as she arrived back at camp, everyone else still sound asleep, what kind of teacher would I be if I didn't give my student the attention he needed?

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