#but mysticism doesn’t like that - you gotta be truthful to yourself | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

semischarmed · 3 years

Text

Detour

“Really Scott,” you say, as you run your fingers through your hair. “I don’t look familiar to you at all?” You take a mental picture of your high school tormentor’s face. Damn. ‘You’ve only gotten hotter these past few years haven’t you?’

“Nah man, sorry” He states as he moves to close the door to his apartment. You give a slight rub to a small gold medallion and his body starts moving on it’s own. You stare at him with a cruel smile as he tries to wrestle control back of his body. Your face strains but you are able to force him to let you into his place. Scott, evidently, was smarter than he looks as you notice him take a mental note of your struggle and the medallion. You’re gonna have to be careful around him.

You have to admit, this is a lot tougher than you initially expected. Much like his body, man has a will of steel, and even with this necklace’s little power boost, you can only barely contain him. But you have the power of raw emotion coursing through you. Envy. Lust. Unlike Scottie over here, lady luck has not been kind to the past few years past high school. That all changed when you came across this medallion. A strange, mystical, wonderful medallion with strange, mystical, wonderful powers. As soon it came into your possession, you instantly knew the first person who would have the privilege of witnessing its power firsthand. Scott reclaimed a bit of power over himself.

“What the fuck dude! You got the wrong guy! I really don’t know who you are!” You have to hold back a bit of your hurt. All those years of agony and fear, and it doesn’t even register a blip to him. ‘Fuck it, worth it for what I’m about to get.’ With another rub of the medallion you force him to freeze.

As you study his frame, still and glistening with a nervous sweat, you are overcome with a wave of lust- you can’t wait to possess the fuck out of this man. He’s only gotten bigger, beefier since the last time you’ve seen him. You are cut from your trance as you hear a soft “zzzz” sound.

His phone buzzes again and, rubbing your medallion, you force him to pull it out and unlock it for you. “Who is this?” You ask, as you take a closer look at the string of texts. “Almost back!” “Hey u wanna get some pizza tonight?” “Dude I gotta tell you about Sophie at the weights today.“

“I-It’s Alex, he’s my friend. He’s my best friend. We’re roommates. Also he’s coming back soon, so you should probably go. This-whatever the fuck this is man, I won’t tell anyone I promise. Just go” he states nervously. Try as you might, you can’t read if he’d genuinely let you go. Knowing the Scott you knew in high school, he’d probably beat you to a pulp as soon as you released your hold on him. Whatever. Not leaving anyway. You stare at more pictures of his friend from Scott’s social media. Fit, cute- hot even, easy on the eyes. Ok then, maybe a little detour is in order.

“I’m gonna give you a choice.” You state plainly, as you set his phone on the table. “And I know you remember who I am, so you can stop the act. You? Or Alex? Who’s it gonna be?” He probably thinks you’re gonna kill him. Not even close. If anything, he’s gonna be getting a new lif-

“Alex, Alex! Please dude, just leave me alone!” He says without hesitation. Damn. Cold-blooded. You smile with menacing compliance.

“Alex it is.”

----

Minutes later, a sweaty Alex unlocks the door to his apartment, eager to get quick shower in and order some dinner. “Oh, uh, I didn’t realize we’d have guests”.

Alex smiles warmly at you and greets you, “Hey, I’m Alex, Scott’s roommate. Good to meet you!” He looks at his hand. “Sorry, I just got back from the gym, so I’d shake your hand, b-” “So you’re Alex! good to meet you too!” you cut him off by extending your hand, which he awkwardly shakes out of formality. You use this to take a sneak preview of your future vessel’s hands. Calloused, but soft. Thin, damp. Vascular. Good.

“Yeah, I’m an old friend of Scott’s. From high school,” you lie. “He said he had to grab something from the store, so he’ll probably be back in a bit.”

“Aww well, I’m sorry he’s been keeping you waiting” Alex gives a warm smile. “He’s usually pretty good at this kind of stuff, so I’m sure he had a good reason. Do you want like a water or something?”

He starts to head to the kitchen. You stifle a moan as you quickly stick your hand in your pants and smear his gym sweat all over your dick. Sneak preview.

As he fashions himself a glass of water and glances back as you quickly take your hands out your pants before he notices. “Oh no, no! I’m alright! Thank you for the offer though!” you beam back. Close call.

‘Alex is such a nice, stand up guy’ You wonder to yourself, ‘why is he friends with that piece of shit’

“I’ve known Scott since college, so a little less than you, haha” he adds, as if hearing your mental conversation. “He always keeps it real and he’s even been helping me get toned”. He smiles and does a small bicep flex to demonstrate -hot- before he ravenously gulps down the entire glass of water and sets it down.

‘Fuck yeah, I can’t wait to be the one going down that tube’ you think, as you bite your lip. Alex starts to head your way. You then pick up on his scent, he smells clean- probably his cologne or deodorant. Mountains. Mint. Fresh rain. He’s like a breath of fresh air. Then the undercurrent of his scent hits. Raw, primal, alpha as fuck. You’re a bit surprised. Such a kind, clean cut guy and he apparently naturally smells like a filthy, raunchy, putrid motherfucker. You can hardly control yourself as you try to imagine where it’s coming from. Pits, ass, feet, ball sweat, all of the above?- wherever the fuck it’s coming from, it’s intoxicating. You smile in the joy that a little piece of you, even if it was just the dick that you rubbed his hand sweat all over, now smells like a diluted Alex. You struggle as you adjust your growing hard on in proximity to the pheromone bomb that is Alex.

Suddenly, Alex’s phone buzzes. You steal a glance at the sender. It’s Scott.

“Hey man, come to my room, now. We need to fucking talk. I have no idea who he is. Make sure he stays where he is. He doesn’t know I’m here .” Alex stares at his phone, a little perplexed, while you continue to stare at this fine, fine piece of ass in front of you. He gives a quick glance your way, to which you respond with a smile.

“Hey, uh, make yourself at home, ok? Im sure Scott’s coming back soon. I, uh, I gotta take care of something real quick with our, um, other roommate.” There’s only two bedrooms and he’s a horrible liar, but you still find it a little endearing. “Anyway, it was nice to meet you, maybe we can hang out sometime. Any friend of Scott is a friend of mine!“ he tells you kindly as you swoon. ‘Oh Alex we’re about to be much, much closer than friends. Closer than you can possibly imagine’.

“Hey dude, uh, so Scott’s friend is waiting for you in the living room. Also whatever this is, can it wait? I kinda have to showe-“ Alex cuts himself off as he sees Scott slumped over, tied up to his desk chair with his own dirty clothes in a neat little bow. “What the fuck!?! Scott! are you ok?” Alex rushes over to help his friend.

“So, I gotta say, Scott, you made a great choice sacrificing him to save yourself. Alex is definitely a catch.” You say from the doorway. Alex quickly looks your way in horror as his best friend breaks free from his fake restraints and pulls him into an embrace.

Alex tries to squirm free from Scott’s grip, as you make Scott say the truth to his friend. “He made me choose, between you and me. I chose you.”

“T-This is a joke, right? Scott?” Scott starts to force him into his desk chair. “Cmon man!” Alex pleads, as an emotionless Scott ties him to the desk chair.

“Some best friend” you chuckle, as you stroke Scott’s cheek and wipe away a stray tear -you can feel his revulsion internally- “he sold you out without a second thought”. You start to undress his lower half, starting with his gym shoes. Fuck it was potent. “Don’t worry, I’ll never do that to us.” You peel away his sweat soaked socks and take another whiff. Alex sits in confusion, probably speechless at what had just transpired.

“Let’s make a deal” you say with a chuckle. “I’ll show you a taste of me if you show me a taste of you.” Without waiting for a response, you start by kneeling down sucking on his scummy toes. Sour. Just how you like it. He’s still squirming in his bonds a little. “Step on me,” you say, as you smash your face to his sweaty feet over and over again, simulating him stepping on you. You catch a little movement in his crotch area. ‘Is he enjoying this?’ you ask, as you continue up Alex’s legs. You look back to make sure Scott is still in your control. He stands frozen, emotionless, but with a deep hatred in his eyes, twitching occasionally in his attempt to break free. You make him face Alex and force him to lift the corner of his tank top to give Alex a little tease, while you continue with your little treasure hunt.

You then peel away his compression shorts to reveal your prize. A concentrated bloom of Alex’s pheromones hit you. Ecstasy. You almost pass out on the spot. ‘Holy shit’. You can't control yourself as bury your head and greedily rub your face in his sweaty crotch. Alex is eerily quiet.

Rubbing the medallion, you issue your next command. You’re gonna need to divert a little magic to making this work, so you release some control of Scott as emotion and shouting return to him. It takes a minute or two but you’re able to get your bodies properly primed fro the next stage. You notice Alex shiver from a slight tingle in his body, while Scott continues his barrage of insults your way. “Shut up,” you command. His lips quiver and then shut. “Scottie, come tell Alex what his best friend is gonna do to him.”

Alex again looks at Scott with a pleading face as a twitching, emotionless Scott continues: “Alex, I’m gonna stuff you full of himm- full of my Ma,” you wince. Strong and stubborn as ever, you can’t even get him to call you master. “Man you’re gonna love it. I sold you out to save myself. Didn’t even have to think about it. Just like that.” You’re getting a little better at controlling his movements. “Now I’m gonna be the one to make sure I put all of him inside you” Scott continues, “I-I can’t wait to see him wear you like a s-suit, parading you around, s-swimming in your skin and no one will ever know. I can’t wait to see the new you, w-with a little fag pilot tucked safe inside, pulling on your strings, speaking for you, thinking for you, loving for you” Scott finishes with an unsettling, wide grin that you force him into.

Emotion and control rush back to Scott’s face. “Alex...” he states in an apologetic tone, but Alex doesn’t even look him in eye. Again, off the corner of your eye, you can’t help but notice a ghost of a smile on his face before it returns to its sullen look.

“Ok, ok, enough you two. Let’s go put on a good show for our best friend Scottie”.

-End Part 1-

623 notes · View notes

hyperion-moonbabe-art3mis · 3 years

Text

Virago 29. It’s a Trap

Summary: Y/N was sent to the ground after spending five years in the Skybox for stealing medical supplies and murder. How will she deal with her new environment and learn to survive on earth? Will she crack under the pressure of becoming a leader of the 100 or will she embrace it.

Post Date: 02.19.21

Word count: 1.4k

Based off: 03x03 "Ye Who Enter"

Pairing: Bellamy Blake x Reader

Masterlist

100 Master List

A/N: Trig is italicized

The next morning Bellamy asked if you could come help them on the Mount Weather run. With nothing else to do around camp you join Bellamy, Raven, Gina and Octavia to Mount Weather.

“I knew we should’ve taken out horses,” You say hoping out of the back of a rover. You unload the truck and get ready to bring the supplies into Mount Weather.

“Hey, you guys, did I ever tell you how I save Sinclair’s ass on the Ark?” Raven asks.

“Please don’t,” Octavia says annoyed.

“You mean the time you went rogue on a spacewalk?” Gina asks.

“That depends on your definitionog ‘going rogue’,” Raven replies as you head into Mount Weather.

“Really?” You say.

“I just hopped on a robotic arm and aimed at the solar ray. The whole time I was out there, the control room thought I was just fixing a loose wire,” Raven says.

“That is, in fact, the definition of ‘going rogue’. You dangled yourself within inches of an electrified array that could have killed you,” Gina says.

“Only time i’ve heard Sinclair lose his cool on comms,” Raven says. Raven and Gina continue to talk as we approach the dinning area, where other Ark membners were hanging out.

“Welcom,” Pike says getting up from his chair. “ Come. Join us,” Pike says.

“Someone’s made themselves at home,” You say quietly.

“There must be thirty of them in here,” Octavia says.

“36, but the more the merrier,” Pike replies. Bellamy walks up to Pike and shakes his hand.

“36? Wow! The grounders are gonna think we moved in,” Octavia says a little annoyed.

“Well, there was no room at the inn,” Pike says.

“And this was your option?” You ask.

“Y/N,” Bellamy warns.

“I’m outta here,” Octavia says. She hands you her bag before heading out of the room. Pike snickers but you don’t like what he’s up to either. Raven goes off to do what Sinclair told her as you and Gina help unload some of the items you brought. After you finished you decided to see where Octavia went off to. As you made your way out of Mount Weather you notice as two guards are escorting a grounder.

“Echo?” Bellamy says after he and Octacia come dow from the top of the ladder.

“You know her?” You ask.

“Yeah, she’s Ice Nation. She was in the cage next to mine,” Bellamy explains.

“Bellamy,” She says.

“Let her go,” Bellamy demands to the guards.

“She threated the summit,” One of the guards says.

“I was trying to help,” Echo says.

“Shut up,” The guard says and pushes Echo to the ground.

“Leave her alone,” Octavia says.

“I said get you hands off her,” Bellamy says.

“What are you doing? She’s a grounder,” The guard says as you cut Echo loose.

“What are you talking about?” Bellamy asks.

“The summits a trap. The assassin is already there. At sundown, your people will die,” Echo explains. The three of you rush into Mount Weather to gather others and get more information. “I was with the queen’s army hrading towards Polis. The war Cheif talks too loud,” Echo explains to Pike, you, Octavia and Bellamy.

“You’re one of them. So why are you telling us this?” Pike questions.

“We abandoned Skaikru in the battle for the mountain. It was wrong,” Echao says.

“And won;t they miss you?” Pike asks.

“Maybe. That’s why we need to hurry,” Echo says.

“Pike, she saved my life. We can trust her. Listen up. Okay, if we want to get to Polis before the attack, we have to move,” Bellamy says.

“Attack? Do we have confirmation of that?” Sinclair asks as he, Raven and Gina make their way to us.

“We radioed, but no answer,” Bellamy says.

“They may already be dead for all we know. And if they are, we need to be ready to respond,” Pike says.

“Don’t make this about the missiles,” Sinclair says to Pike.

“This is about survival. We don’t have the numbers, but the missiles in this mountain even the playing field, and you know i’m right,” Pike says.

“Even if I did agree with you, we still don’t have the launch codes,” SInclair adds.

“No, but we have me,” Raven says.

“And you accuse engineers of arrogance?” Sinclair asks Raven.

“I’m growing as a person,” Raven replies before walking off.

“Let’s go,” Pike says to Echo before pulling her away.

You wait as Bellamy talks to Gina, “ Don’t do anything stupidly heroic,” She says.

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t,” You say.

“Garden variety heroic., Got it,” Bellamy says looking between you and Gina.

“Come on, we gotta go before its too late,” You say. You, Pike, Echo, Bellamy and Octavia hop into the rover and head to Polis.

“Where are the guards? Protocol would be to leave someone behind,” Bellamy says as you all hop out.

“They did,” You say coming to the front of the other vehicle finding two guards with their throats slit. You and Octavia quickly pull out your machete’s, ready to fight.

“This was your people,” Pike says to Echo.

“Screw you!” Echo says in trig.

“Hey, she warned us,” You say walking up to them.

“This proves she was telling the truth,” Octavia adds.

“We don’t have time for this. The attack is at sumdown,” Bellamy says.

“I’m not leaving my blade here,” Octavia says looking at the no weapons sign.

“Me neither,” You say.

“None of are. We go in through the tunnels. The entrance is this way,” Echo says and leads us to the underground entrance.

“How much further?” Bellamy asks Echo as you all walk through the tunnels.

“We’re almost there. The elevator shaft is just ahead,” Echo replies. You all stop as you head gears turning. Bellamy peaks his head around the corner.

“Two guards,” He whispers.

“They raise the lift. The elevator shaft is our only way in. We have to climb,” Echo explains.

“Pike peaks his head around the corner, “ I got left,” He says before making his way towards the guards and Bellamy follows. Bellamy goes to fight the other guard as he saw no other choice.

“What is wrong with you? You didn’t have to kill them,” Octavia says as you make your way to the wheel.

“Yeah, I did,” Bellamy replies. You shake you head in disbelief, not knowing what went through his head. Bellamy opens the door to the shaft, “How many floors?” He asks.

“All of them,” Echo responds. You all start to climb, hoping to make it in time to warn them. As soon as you make you way to the top, Bellamy and Pike grab the guards and enter the room.

“Bellamy?” Clarke asks.

“What is the meaning of this?” The man next to Lexa asks.

“The summits a trap. We need to get you out of here,” Bellamy says to Clarke. Who is dressed up for the summit.

“What the hell is going on?” Clarke asks Lexa.

“I don’t know,” Lexa responds.

“It’s the Ice Nation,” Bellamy says.

“These allegations are an outrage. The Ice Nation never stormed this summit with weapons, breaking our laws, that was the Skaikru,” A man says.

“We’re right about this. The two guards you left behind are dead already. We need to go now,” Pike reassures.

“How did you come by this information?” Lexa asks. You all look around but Echo was nowhere to be found.

“Where the hell is Echo?” You ask.

“What’s going on? Where the hell is she?” Bellamy asks as well.

‘Bellamy, maybe we were wrong about this,” Octavia says.

“I don’t understand,” Bellamy says.

“Stand down,” Kane says taking Bellamy’s gun.

“Bellamy. Bellamy, come in. The grounders attacked Mount Weather,” Raven says over the radio.

“What are you talking about?” Bellamy asks Raven.

“It’s gone, it’s gone. They’re all gone, Sinclair and I are the only ones left. I’m so sorry,” Raven sobs over the radio.

“You should’ve never moved your people back into Mount Weather. The Ice Nation did what Lexa was too weak to do,” The man says to the room.

“This is an act of war. Sentries, arrest the Ice Nation delegation! Including the prince,” Lexa demands as the two Ice Nation members are dragged away.

“I hope you two kept up your training. You’ll need it,” Indra says to you and Octavia.

“Clarke we need to leave now,” Bellamy says.

“We need an ambassador from the 13th clan to stay here in Polis,” Lexa says.

“It’s not safe here,” Bellamy says.

“Clarke will be safe here under my protection,” Lexa assures.

“I have to stay,” Clarke says to her mom.

“Clarke--” Abby replies not wanting to lose her daughter again.

“I have to make sure she keeps her word,” Clarke says.

“Commander, we must convene the war council immediately,” A man says to Lexa.

“I’ll be right there,” Clarke says. You hug Clarke before heading out with Abby and Kane.

#The 100 #the 100 imagine #the 100 rewrite #the 100 series #bellamy blake #bellamy blake imagine #bellamy blake x reader #the 100 x reader #octavia blake #raven reyes #clarke griffin #lexa kom trikru #marcus kane #abby griffin #indra kom trikru #100virago

32 notes · View notes

stereostevie · 3 years

Link

LaKeith Stanfield Settles Into His Toughest Role Yet: Himself

As he heads towards his thirties, the electrifying actor is laying himself bare — and finding a new sense of balance

by Tirhakah Love Feb 12

For nearly a decade, LaKeith Stanfield has used his screen time reveling in the bizarreness of America’s racial consciousness. Whether Atlanta’s quippy street mystic Darius, or the code-switching sardonics of Cassius in Sorry to Bother You, his characters have always seemed to be in on the joke — and in his latest, Judas and the Black Messiah, Stanfield is closer to the secret than ever before.

Shaka King’s film, which chronicles the final days of Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) through the sullen eyes of FBI informant William O’Neal (Stanfield), finds the actor in his darkest, most nuanced rendition of the Black saboteur to date. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” the 29-year-old said over a Zoom call last week, “I just really wanted to make sure I was getting it right. But then also not getting it too right, if that makes sense.”

Stanfield has built a name on playing conflicted characters, but a figure with as much baggage as O’Neal — who was forced into his own role while still a teenager — demanded what he calls a “necessary nuance,” one that became, at times, overwhelming. The film set became not just a vision of radical Black politics, but a space for Stanfield to process his own upbringing in order to be a more “realized, holistic” person. LEVEL spoke with the actor about how playing O’Neal helped illuminate his path toward a healthier decade that included both therapy and meditation, heading into his thirties.

LEVEL: Judas and the Black Messiah was supposed to drop in August, but 2020 had other plans. How does it feel to know it’s coming out?

LaKeith Stanfield: I’m excited. I want people to learn about Chairman Fred Hampton’s story. It’s something that’s not spoken about enough. Everything has been such a question mark with this pandemic — not knowing how it was going to come out, or whether it would come out, period. So here we are with Black History Month, this story of Chairman Fred Hampton, and everybody gets to experience this in the most honest way we could put it in. I’m really happy. I’m going to host a screening at my house and just invite everybody… who’s been tested. [Laughs]

By my count, this is the second role that Daniel swiped from under your nose. Didn’t he get you for Get Out, too?

That’s right. You know what, for Get Out I auditioned for like every role. I came in and I read with Jordan Peele. And then I read for another — I think it was Rel’s role — and ended up eventually reading for my role. Damn, I forgot all about that.

How can we keep being friends with a dude who just steals roles from you, bro?

Nah, it’s all good. [Laughs] Ultimately, those decisions are made by people who have a better understanding about casting and their relation to the story than I do. If they’d asked me to play a hat in this movie, I would’ve done it.

It doesn’t seem like a Hollywood thing to do at all.

Hollywood is not always behind things like this. It took years to get it to the point where we could actually make it. These are stories people are yearning for. We have to always prove that time and time again, unfortunately, but it is what it is. We show and prove these kinds of stories are human stories. They’re specific to the Black experience, but it’s global. We hope that we can get these studios to understand that more and more.

How did you relate to [William O’Neal’s] isolation and paranoia he lived with? How did you tap into that?

I didn’t see him as someone I could connect to, so we started to design the character from the inside out. The thing is, we don’t have any information about O’Neal outside of his Eyes on the Prize interview, a couple of court transcripts, and other eyewitness accounts. We could create him from scratch and give him different dimensions. I wanted to introduce how he might be a thrill-seeker. He might get fun out of creating imbalance. He steals cars — he wasn’t very afraid to put himself in a line of fire — but he was also a person who eventually felt guilty about what he did. In the full-length version of his Eyes on the Prize interview, he says at one point, “I felt bad about the things I did, but I had to continue to play the role.” He contradicts that later by saying, “I’ll let history speak for me.” Clearly this guy has an internal struggle that we missed.

Wearing all these different masks.

In the scene where I had to poison him, a lot of it didn’t end up making it to the final cut, but we shot [me mixing it in] Kool-Aid, and I had to go through all those motions. With somebody like Daniel, who I just respect as a human and an artist, as Fred Hampton, it felt like I was actually poisoning Chairman Fred Hampton. One thing [co-star] Dominique Fishback mentioned to me is that your body doesn’t always differentiate the experience from your imagination. So sometimes your body thinks that’s real, everything you’re putting it through. It’s no wonder I’ve been feeling so stressed out and having panic attacks. I realized going forward before I step into something like that again, maybe have a therapist. [Laughs]

“There’s a dynamic between celebrity and the common man that Covid-19 has really lifted the veil on. We all gotta wear our masks or we suffer the same fate. You’re not special.”

For Black people playing an op it’s different. There’s real pressure. Especially for a character who’s never been portrayed.

That’s how I felt when I first figured out I found out who he was. But you don’t go into something like this not knowing that’s going to be the case. I hope I was able to portray him in a way that made people see themselves in the character. What decisions would you have made? Were you trying to go to jail for five to 10 years? Would you try to stay out? What does that mean? Those are the more important questions. Let’s say there’s a million people in the world: two of them are Fred Hamptons; the rest are William O’Neal. I want to challenge people to think about the ways they might be O’Neal-esque. And maybe through seeing this, you might distance yourself from some of those things.

If the pandemic has revealed anything, it’s the disconnect between the celebrity class and everyone else. People like Hampton and [Bobby] Seale are trying to do cultural work. We’re seeing that there’s disconnects here. How does a film like this impact your view of celebrity?

These roles are metaphors for so many things. Chairman Fred Hampton as a metaphor for socialism, selflessness, and O’Neal could be argued to be a metaphor for capitalism and selfishness, or perceived celebrity ego. There’s a dynamic between celebrity and the common man that exists, which Covid-19 has really lifted the veil on to a significant degree because we all sit in here on Zoom, right? [Laughs] We all gotta wear our masks or we suffer the same fate. You’re not special. This made everybody have to sit down and confront that idea.

[Laughs] Right.

One could argue that the fact that Fred Hampton died at a young age is justification as to why you shouldn’t try and put things outside yourself for the greater good, because it ends up being helpless and hopeless. I don’t agree with that. I think that Chairman Fred Hampton’s legacy lives on, like he said, “you can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill a revolution.” I remember being in that scene where Daniel was giving a speech, and I’m thinking, the things that Chairman Fred did all those years ago, today we are here experiencing this moment collectively because of him. While I’m doing this, I’m looking into the audience, seeing Afros, seeing Black people, seeing the beauty and the confidence and love, I don’t really even see that these days. So he zapped me back into a time where this is what people were on. We gotta find that in ourselves again and unlock it

You have a great way of playing chaos agents. Whether it’s a muted performance in Atlanta or muted in a different way in Uncut Gems, where your character was always on the fucking edge. Why do those roles as subversive figures speak to you?

I haven’t really thought about it but I know one thing’s for sure: I tend to lean toward characters who have internal dialogue or struggle. I like trying to find some groundedness and truth in the in-between of two extremes. These characters appeal to me on a subconscious level because that’s how I am. I like taking things to crazy extremes and then trying to find some kind of balance in that. I’m also attracted to characters being able to show the mirror to you and have you see something that activates something in you. Those characters that have you see yourself through absurdity.

You mentioned earlier how young these dudes were. Fred Hampton was 21 years old when he was killed. If he made 24, 25, I’m wondering how much more he could have gotten done. Being Black, we make it to 25, it’s a thing. You’re now about to make it to 30. How’s it hitting you? Do you think about age at all like that?

Not really. Not really, but to some extent, this is a landmark moment for me. I feel like I’m just starting to really get my shit together, like personally. And be the better version of myself for myself. I just started therapy just this year.

Yo, congrats.

Thanks man. Going into my thirties, I plan to continue to do it. It’s been helpful for me to unpack a lot of stuff. I’ve been through a lot of stuff, there’s a lot of things I just didn’t confront. Those things mount; you act out in different ways and they can become harmful to you. So I just said this year, I’m going to make the choice to try and be better. Like I was always throwing off therapy. I never wanted to try it. I was like, whatever. It was just something that’s bad in my family. Growing up, everyone’s like, “therapy, what the fuck are talking about?”

So I wanna continue working on that — working on myself and finding a better sense of balance, and by virtue of doing that, unlock more potential in my heart. And I’ll be able to express in a more realized, whole holistic way. Those are my ambitions moving forward.

There’s always a moment where you just know that you need it. That, there are strategies you just don’t have that you need to build to be a person. Was there a moment for you where it’s like, fuck I really gotta go to therapy. I really gotta get some help?

I wake up every day and I have the same thought: Fuck, I gotta go to therapy.

[Laughter]

I was kind of raised like a wolf. I didn’t have parents or people who were guiding me or told me anything. So I had to figure out everything on my own — try on masks and faces and hats and wigs — and try to figure out what my place is in the world. For a long time, I didn’t realize I was stunted because of that. Not having that at home, and at an early age being traumatized by things I was seeing. Just now, I’m starting to really find the tools to help me pull that young self out of that abyss. It took me a while to even realize there was a problem because I was like, “Oh, you guys are crazy. I’m not crazy.”

Were you shopping for therapists during the pandemic?

It’s all on Zoom now. I’ve found this really cool therapist. It’s great and perfect for me right now. Hopefully it continues to be the case. It’s helped me a lot. After doing press yesterday, I had another session and it was amazing. It helps you unlock things about yourself. It’s not even necessarily about the person that you’re doing therapy with, but like you said, perspectives and strategies and tools that you didn’t have access to before.

Especially in the work you do, it’s important to extricate yourself — that period of like, okay, I gotta get out of this. How have you come back to yourself in this period of time?

It’s been meditation. The one good thing about this pandemic is being able to sit at home by yourself and deal with yourself and just your inner voice. And even though that’s annoying as hell, beautiful clarity comes out of it. People would be surprised how many answers they can give themselves just by listening to themselves and not distracting yourself with so many things like social media or movies and stuff. Now, it isn’t easy, especially once you become hooked into a pattern, but it’s really worth it.

That’s been beautiful for me just to take those moments. It’s important and it’s taught me a lot about myself. And that’s kinda what pushes you. Now that you understand and recognize some of the issues that you want to make better about yourself, you can plan on ways to do that. Whether it means therapy or yoga, which I also started doing.

There’s a scene in the film that feels like the Last Supper, and it’s just gut-wrenching. That sense of dread is so hard to tap into, but it also feels of a piece with what so many of us have been going through — knowing that people are losing their lives, either from our government or from a virus, and living with that same dread.

It’s a real thing. I went to the hospital recently on some health stuff. When I was in there, there were a bunch of Covid-19 patients being moved about. Being in a hospital is pretty scary right now. People screaming and literally dying around you. There’s an overall energy. Like this feeling of loss permeating in the world today.

Before we started this movie, my best friend who I grew up with got killed by his brother. So I was carrying that with me the whole time. One thing that made those moments real for me is that I know what it feels like to lose somebody abruptly, violently. When we filmed me having to poison Fred Hampton, it was a really tough day — I was thinking about my own brother, just in a whole different place all day. On set crying. That sense of loss, knowing the violence of all of that, really informed everything for me. There was no distinction between reality and what I was experiencing in the moment. Most of the takes in that scene, I was actually bawling. I had to tone it back.

The worlds are just overlapping with one another. That’s fucking wild.

I hope having gone through all that, somebody watching it can be moved or touched. Maybe it helps put emphasis on Fred Hampton and why it’s so valuable to protect people like him.

As someone who lost someone close recently, some days it feels like your worlds are collapsing on one another. I just lost my dad this past summer. It’s weird to even talk about, but the fact that you have to just carry on, with your friend’s death sitting in the back of your head is…wild.

With movies, you never know if we’re doing the right take, or even if it’s ever going to be seen by anyone. Especially with something like this, you never really know. I’m so grateful for everybody putting their best foot forward. I want everybody to see it. I really want Black people to see it, especially Black kids in Chicago. I want them to see someone who really put things outside of themselves and put something first and gave in love. I just hope that somebody sees it and it touches them. It makes them think about something a little differently. That’d be dope.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

#black history #black men #black panther party #black panthers #black people #bobby seale #chicago #daniel kaluuya #fbi #film #fred hampton #interview #lakeith stanfield #shaka king #usa

5 notes · View notes

daylight-imagines · 5 years

Text

Miss Me?

Pairing: Kol Mikaelson x Reader Warning: Bits of violence. Nothing different than what’s in the show. Word Count: 4419 Request: del-rcys

Part 2 Part 3

You had a habit of getting yourself into bad situations. Sometimes it wasn’t your fault. Usually, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. For months you’d been traveling. You’d been all over the states and you saved your sister’s recommendation for last: New Orleans.

Caroline, of course, had never been there. But she said a friend had told her about it. You knew that friend was Klaus even if she’d never admit it. You didn’t even want to think about what the Originals were up to, and had every intention of avoiding them during your time there. Things were crazy enough back in Mystic Falls. You didn’t want to be dragged into the Mikaelsons’ drama as well. After all the last time you were around them you had died. Now you were one of the few hybrids left living.

You hadn’t wanted to leave Mystic Falls. But it was important to learn as much about siphoners as possible. The Twins’ powers were growing and you needed to be able to help them. That’s why you were traveling. You’d been all over the country talking to different covens and witches. Finding ways to help the twins.

Caroline and the twins were the only family you had left. It hadn’t been that long since your mom died. You were eighteen when she told you about the supernatural- a year before the Salvatore brothers came back to Mystic Falls. By then you had already known though. She’d died a human death even if it was too soon. That’s what she wanted, but that didn’t lessen the hurt. When you were young, the two of you weren’t close, but things had gotten better between the two of you. Now she was gone. That wound was taking a while to heal.

You and Caroline didn’t have the same father. Your parents had met in high school and had a short relationship that ended up with your mom pregnant at eighteen. Liz had granted your dad full custody because she thought it would be safer and happier for you. Even then she planned to be sheriff.

Your childhood had been amazing. Your dad had inherited his father’s business, and it didn’t require too much of his attention. He usually only had to go into work for a few hours each day. Once you were old enough those hours usually happened when you were in school.

Before you started school, most of your time was spent with your dad. He took you everywhere. It didn’t matter whether it was work, a business meeting, or town function you were with him. The only times you were really apart where during the weekends with your mom. Every other weekend he’d load you and your bags into the car. When you were younger, you’d be kicking and screaming. He always promised that if you really wanted to come home he’d come to get you. It didn’t happen often but every time you called he was there.

You were twelve when you had your first big fight with your mom. It had been a pointless argument. You wanted to spend the last few days of the weekend at your friend’s house, but she said no. You’d begged for hours. She wouldn’t budge. So you grabbed your bag and went outside to call your dad. He was there within twenty minutes. When you got in the car he didn’t drive away as you expected.

“Running away doesn’t solve the problem. You can only do that if you face them,” he said. “But it’s your choice. You can go back in and spend time with your mom and sister, or I’ll take you home.”

Of course, you were twelve so you went home. But it wasn’t the only time you heard those words. It was what your dad always told you, and eventually, it sunk in. You never ran away. It didn’t matter what it was: fights at school, bad grades, fights with your mom. You didn’t run away and you didn’t give up.

Sixteen was a hard year. You were in a car accident and the other driver didn’t survive. You hadn’t been the one that was drinking yet the universe decided that death was on your hands. The next full moon you shifted for the first time.

For three days you missed school because you were sick. Every muscle in your body ached, you had a fever, and you felt nauseous. The only times you had gotten out of bed were to use the bathroom. You couldn’t eat and you only slept for a few minutes at a time. On the fourth day, your dad came into your room a few hours before dark. He walked over to you and pulled you up.

“Dad, what’s happening?”

“It’s ok baby. We’ve gotta go downstairs.”

“I don’t feel good dad.” You stood up but started to fall. He caught you and picked you up.

“Everything’s gonna be alright.”

He carried you downstairs into the basement and laid you down on the floor between two columns while he went to lock the doors. You watched as he locked it and put a board across it. He did the same for all the doors. He came back over and bent down beside you. He grabbed your arm and locked a chain around it.

“What-“

“I need you to listen to me,” he said. “Something’s happening to you. There’s not enough time to explain it right now. I promise I’ll explain it tomorrow.”

He locked your other arm up then your legs and stood up. The pain in your body increased and you let out a scream.

“Dad what’s happening,” you cried. The pain kept getting worse. It felt like your bones were going to break through your skin.

Your eyes widened when your dad yelled. You watched as his bones started to break.

“It’s alright. Look away.”

You let out one last scream before everything went black.

He explained the werewolf gene to you the next day. He explained how the curse had affected your family for generations. It was a major shock. Especially since you had to hide it from everyone even your mom and Caroline. It hurt to think your mom would want nothing to do with you if she knew, but you understood that she was raised to believe that the supernatural was wrong. Sharing that secret brought you and your dad even closer.

Things changed when the Salvatore brothers came back to Mystic Falls. By then both of your parents had told you about the supernatural, and you immediately knew what they were when you met them. You just wished you’d figured it out before Damon had got a hold of Caroline. When she told you what he’d done to her you’d been ready to kill him. If she hadn’t asked you not to, you would have tried.

You knew when Caroline turned into a vampire. After her friends, you were the first to find out. She was terrified you’d reject her, so you told her your secret. She never told anyone which you were thankful for. But when your mom found out about Caroline you decided it was time to tell her the truth.

After that, you were dragged into all the drama your sister’s friends faced. You didn’t mind it since you got to make sure Caroline was safe, but sometimes it was irritating. Especially when their solutions were poorly designed.

Even though you had to deal with all the threats Mystic Falls faced, you hadn’t been directly harmed or threatened- minus a few wounds here and there. That changed when Klaus came into the picture. By that time you’d experienced nearly fifty full moons. Breaking the Sun and Moon curse sounded like a dream come true, but you’d never want someone else’s life to be the price. You weren’t surprised when Elijah told you all the curse was fake though. It also sounded too good to be true. Too staged.

Surprisingly you liked Elijah, but you also kept in mind that he was a threat. You also knew your friends wanted him gone, so you didn’t get attached. You had been at the dinner party Damon threw, and you hadn’t been thrilled when they’d daggered him. But you knew there was nothing you could do to change it.

The first time Klaus came to Mystic Falls you and your dad had luckily been able to stay off his radar. The second time you hadn’t been that lucky.

The two of you came home late after having dinner with your mom and Caroline. Everything seemed normal until you stepped into the living room. He was there sitting calmly on your couch.

“Hello. I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Klaus.”

Your dad stepped in front of you. “Why are you here?”

“Werewolves are hard to find, and there are two of you here. You see, I have a proposition for you,” Klaus said. “I want to make hybrids. And the two of you would make fantastic candidates.”

“No,” you said. He turned his gaze to you and smiled. That smile sent fear through your entire body.

“I wasn’t really asking love.”

He stood up and went to move towards you, but your dad stepped forward.

“Please. I’ll do what you want, but please leave my daughter alone.”

“Why would I do that?”

“If you do I’ll be loyal to you until the day I die.”

“Dad no-“

“Quiet.”

Klaus thought it over for a moment. A sire bond was helpful, but real loyalty was different.

“I can promise to spare her today. But if in a month or a year I need more hybrids our deal may change.”

Your dad wasn’t happy with that arrangement but it was better than the alternative. He agreed.

“If your loyalty to me falters. I’ll make you kill her.”

Within a second Klaus had fed your dad his blood and snapped his neck. You couldn’t help the scream that left your mouth. You dropped next to him and looked up at Klaus.

“Why are you doing this?”

He didn’t answer instead handing you a vile of blood.

“When he wakes have him drink that.”

He also handed you a slip of paper with a phone number on it and told you to give it to your father. Before leaving he turned back to look at you.

“If you ever decide you want to become one of us, you know where to find me.”

“Don’t count on it,” you said.

After he left you had called Caroline and she brought Stefan and Tyler over. In the end, it had been alright. Your dad hadn’t been too badly affected by his change of species.

Things calmed down for a while after that. Then an invitation to a ball held by the Mikaelsons arrived at your doorstep. You were afraid that if you didn’t go and Klaus found out he’d be angry and take it out on your father. The ball wasn’t awful. You got to spend time with your sister and friends. But you were surprised when Elijah came up to you later in the night.

“Y/n correct?” Elijah asked.

“I’m surprised you remember. We only met briefly and it wasn’t the best circumstances.”

“I did end up with a dagger in my heart.”

You rolled your eyes. “I had no idea about that plan.”

“You didn’t approve?”

“My friends’ plans don’t always have much thought in them.”

He laughed. “I have to agree.”

“My, my brother who is this lovely woman?” You turned to see a man younger than Elijah walking over. They shared very similar looks, but this one had a glint in his eyes that both scared and excited you.

“Y/n this is my brother Kol. Kol this is Y/n Y/L/N.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“And you as well.” He placed a kiss to your hand.

“If you would excuse me,” Elijah said. He left when you nodded.

“I don’t know why someone as beautiful as you would be talking to my brother.”

“I talk to a lot of people,” you said. “It doesn’t make them special.”

He smiled and was about to reply when Klaus walked up behind him. Kol watched as you seemed to shrink into yourself and lower your gaze to the floor. He turned and saw his brother was the reason. He didn’t like it.

“Brother, I see you’ve met Y/n.” He turned to you. “I’m glad you came, love.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Nik how about you go find that blonde you’ve been ogling all night instead of ruining everyone else’s fun.”

Once Klaus was gone Kol turned back to you.

“What’s my brother done to you darling?”

“My dad is one of his hybrids and that blonde is my sister.”

He nodded. “So you're afraid to anger him.”

“He’d take it out on my family.”

“Yes, he would.” He smirked. “How about we make him unhappy for a moment?”

“How?”

He held out a hand. “Would you dance with me Y/n.”

You smiled and took it. “I’d love to.”

The look on Klaus’s face had lifted your spirits.

You knew about the white oak your friends had found, but you didn’t get involved in what they were planning. You stayed out of any plans they had involving going against Klaus.

Your life continued normally until the hunter came to town. Klaus forced you to help find and capture him. Then you had to watch him. When Klaus let for Italy the hunter got out, and he was killed by Elena. After that things went back to what’s normal when living in Mystic Falls. You spent your time learning about the five, helping deal with Jeremy Gilbert, and trying to keep your family safe. Once again your normal was going to change.

You were sitting on the couch watching TV when there was a loud banging on your door. You opened it to find Klaus standing there. He wasn’t happy.

“You’re coming with me love.”

He grabbed your arm and pulled you along behind him. He took you into the woods. You stumbled along behind him, but he never slowed. You had already noticed the sword in his hand. You were afraid to think about what was going to happen.

“Klaus, what’s going on?”

“The fact that you don’t know means you don’t have to die.”

“What?”

“Quiet now.”

You could see people standing a few feet away. When you got closer you realized it was the hybrids. Your dad was one of them. Klaus let go of you and you leaned against the tree closest to you.

“Stay here and don’t move,” he said. “And stay quiet.”

You watched as he moved behind one of the hybrids and ripped his heart out. He moved from hybrid to hybrids not sparing one. Then your father stepped forward and you felt your heart stop.

“You would risk your daughter’s life for this?”

“I would risk mine,” your dad answered.

“You’re going to lose yours while she watches.”

He turned and saw you. You’re sure it was an awful sight. You had scratches all over from stumbling through the wood and tears ran down your face.

Your dad let out a sigh. He knew there wasn’t a way out of this. He mouthed I love you before Klaus ripped out his heart.

Your scream cut through the silence that had fallen over the woods. It was an awful type of scream that seemed to stem from your very soul. Sobs took over your entire body. You couldn’t breathe and you couldn’t think. Klaus followed the last hybrid and you stumbled over to your dad. Another scream tore itself from your throat when you saw him. You fell to the ground beside him. You were twenty-one years old, but you felt like a child. You sat by the body unable to move.

You watched Klaus come out of the crypt. He looked at you and threw the sword on the ground.

“Come here, love.”

“You killed them. You can leave now.”

Suddenly he was right in front of you and you stumbled backward. He grabbed your arm and pulled you up.

“I told your father if he ever betrayed me I’d kill you, but I have a better idea.”

You watched as he opened the vein on his wrist.

“No.” You tried to break free from his grip but he held on tighter. He forced his blood down your throat. You coughed and stepped back. “Elena’s human. If you kill me I’ll just die.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” he said. “You’ll want to go see your sister when you wake.”

He snapped your neck and left you in the woods. Tyler found you and took you to Caroline. It turned out Caroline had taken some of Elena’s blood and hidden it. She wanted it just in case something ever happened to you. You were glad she did. You’d be dead if she hadn’t.

So you became a hybrid. One of three in the entire world. You spent the next few days breaking your sire bond. After that, you locked yourself in your house. You didn’t leave and wouldn’t let anyone in. Three days passed before Caroline forced herself inside.

She found you in the living room. The room looked like a storm had blown through it. Furniture had been broken, glass was shattered, and you sat in the middle of it all.

“Oh Y/n.”

“Go away, Caroline.”

She stepped over larger pieces of debris and sat next to you. She grabbed your hand and frowned. It had taken a grey tint and there was dried blood from the times you’d gotten hurt during your fit.

“You’re starving.”

You didn’t answer. You knew that’s what was happening, but you didn’t care. Klaus chose to turn you into a hybrid, you could choose if you lived like one.

“You know I didn’t want to be a vampire,” Caroline said. “But now I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”

“For the rest of my life, I’ll be known as one of Klaus’s hybrids.”

“Don’t let him be the reason you don’t live.”

You stood up and ran your hands through your hair. “Why should I live Caroline?”

You walked slowly towards the kitchen, and she followed.

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t!”

“My dad is dead Caroline,” you shouted.

“You still have a family Y/n.” She was crying now. “I know how close you and your dad were. But we’re still here.”

You held onto the doorway to keep yourself from falling. You couldn’t cry anymore but that didn’t stop you from shaking with sobs.

“It hurts so much Care.”

“I know,” She said. “But it’ll get better.”

You took a deep breath and looked at her.

“If I look as bad as you we’re both in trouble.”

She laughed. “No matter how bad I look it’s always better than you.”

She walked over and put your arm around her shoulders.

“Come on. The funeral is tomorrow and you can barely stand.”

You made it through the funeral, and you even made it through the days after. Being a hybrid wasn’t awful either. You didn’t like having to drink blood to survive, but you never had to shift again unless you wanted to. You didn’t have to live in fear of the full moon. You didn’t have to be afraid to hurt someone.

Klaus hadn’t contacted you since the night he killed your dad. You were shocked. You assumed he’d try and make you his servent like his old hybrids. Not that he could, since your sire bond was broken. It was a shock that he didn’t try.

In the weeks after your dad’s funeral, you moved out of your house. It hurt to leave. You grew up in that house, but you couldn’t live there without your dad. You moved into an apartment in town and went back to taking classes at Whitmore. You tried to live normally, but you didn’t know if that was possible anymore.

For a while, you were able to pretend like everything was fine. But when Christmas time came you couldn’t pretend.

It was a few days before Christmas- the first one without your dad. It was his favorite holiday. That reminder made the pain of his death come back in full force. That was another downside to being a hybrid- the heightened emotions. So you ended up at the bar. You knew it was a bad coping mechanism, but you didn’t care. Other people deserve to be happy, and you weren’t in the mood to pretend like you were.

You were in the bar for hours before anything interesting happened. By then you were sure if you had still been a normal werewolf you’d be at the hospital due to the amount you drank.

The doors opened and someone walked in. You could feel his eyes on you before you turned around. Kol sat next to you, but you didn’t lookup.

“I hear you’ve been through the wringer since the last time we saw one another.”

You sighed. “Your brother sucks.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Why are you talking to me?”

“I enjoyed our past conversations. Especially the one at my mother’s ball.”

You smiled. “That pissed Klaus off.”

You regretted looking at him the moment you did it. It was like all the air had left your lungs and your heart sped up. That hadn’t happened before, but he also hadn’t been looking at you like that before. Your eyes met and it was almost like you couldn’t look away. He shouldn't have looked at you like that. You weren’t sure why he was looking at you like that. Flirting was one thing but that- shouldn’t happen. But if it did...no you couldn’t even think about it. Unfortunately for you, the sad emotions weren’t the only ones heightened as a hybrid.

“Are you alright darling?”

That damn smirk. Part of you wanted to slap it off his face. The other part wanted something very different. You let out a breath and realized your mouth was dry. You finished your drink and turned back to Kol determined to keep your composure.

“I haven’t seen you around lately.”

“Did you miss me, darling?” He asked as the bartender filled both your glasses. “I’ve been running errands for my brother.”

“You listen to Klaus?”

“To avoid being out in a box for an unknown amount of time that’s the price I have to pay.”

That made you stop and think. You couldn’t imagine having that kind of relationship with Caroline. You were always close and always looked out for each other. What Klaus did to his siblings, you’d never understand.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s been a thousand years. I’m over it,” he said. “How are you enjoying your vampire qualities?”

“Enjoying?”

“I forgot you’ve got prudes teaching you,” he said. “Imagine what it would be like if you embraced it.”

“Then how would you teach me?”

He moved to where his chest as pressed against your back. He leaned in closer to you and motioned towards the other end of the bar. There was a man there who’d been in the bar longer than you.

“See him?”

You nodded struggling to concentrate on what he was saying. But one of his hands was running up and down your arm leaving a trail of warmth everywhere it touched.

“Now listen, focus on his heartbeat.”

It wasn’t hard. Besides the bartender, he was the only other person in the bar. Staying in your seat was the hard part. The heartbeat was the first thing you heard but then you the blood flowing through his veins. You hadn't fed on a human, but you'd be lying if you said you didn’t crave it. Blood bags weren’t enough. There was a constant burning in the back of your throat.

“Are you listening darling?”

“Mmhmm.” You were fighting every part of your body to stay in your seat.

“You get him alone, compel him to stay quiet, take your fill of his blood, then compel him to forget it ever happened. Or till he’s dead if that what you prefer.”

You took a sharp breath and turned away. You leaned against his chest taking deep breaths. The veins under your eyes had appeared and you felt your fangs extend.

“Well well darling, have you never fed straight from the vein before?”

She shook your head. Kol’s arm was wrapped around your back and he was practically holding you up.

“Here’s your chance.”

You looked up into his eyes. He was different from your friends, he was even different than his siblings. There was none of the self-loathing or unhappiness you saw in the other vampires. He loved what he was. He took pride in it and made the most of it.

You realized how close the two of you were and couldn't help moving your gaze to his lips. You both moved forward slowly. Your lips were centimeters apart when the door to the bar opened.

“Y/n.” Your sister’s voice snapped you out of your daze. Kol was gone. After making sure you had control of your face you turned to your sister.

“Hey, Care.”

“Are you ok?”

You breathed a sigh of relief knowing she hadn’t seen you with Kol. Or she just wasn’t mentioning it. That wasn’t a conversation you were ready for.

“Yeah. Can you give me a ride home?

Caroline went to wait in the car while you paid for your drinks. When you stood up something crinkled in your pocket. You pulled out a piece of paper with a phone number on it. A phone number you were determined to use but shoved back into your pocket anyway.

Three years had gone by since your transition. That was the same amount of time that had gone by since you’d seen the originals. Kol died and you heard the rest ended up in New Orleans. You’d been in New Orleans for a week and had yet to see any of them. Of course, good things didn’t last.

A shop in the French Quarter was owned by a witch who could give you information. After your meeting, you left ready to get back to your hotel. Of course, when you stepped out of the shop you came face to face with someone you thought you’d never see again- the same smirk on his face he had three years ago.

“Hello darling,” he said. “Miss me?”

___

Part 2 Part 3

I want to thank @del-rcys for requesting this series and coming up with some great plot ideas. This is going to be a long series, so if you want to be tagged in future parts comment here, send me a message, or send me an ask. Thank you for reading!!!

#Kol mikaelson #kol mikaelson imagines #kol mikaelson imagine #kol mikaelson x reader #kol mikaelson x you

243 notes · View notes

cetaceans-pls · 4 years

Link

Relationships: Jason Todd/Bruce Wayne, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel Additional Tags: Resurrected Jason Is Found By Poison Ivy AU, Dom/sub Undertones, Vines, Bondage, Breathplay, Basically what it’s like falling in love after you’d already fallen into love, feat. soft JayBru

There’s something to be said about punching your way out of your own coffin, scared out of your mind and not remembering a single damn thing. It's a living hell in every sense of the word, and all in all having Poison Ivy knock him out after she found him wandering around was probably as good an outcome he could have hoped for.

Or, what happens when Jason's return is less a traumatic ordeal in the Pit and more a gentle blossoming under Pamela's careful care, and he finds himself looking at Bruce and thinking, yes.

Take care of yourselves, and please hang in there as best you can.

Fic on tumblr under the cut.

There’s something to be said about punching your way out of your own coffin, scared out of your mind and not remembering a single damn thing aside from a vague sense of there being a place you needed to return to. It’s hell on your hands, for one; he kept finding splinters in his palms for days afterwards. It’s hell on the head, what with the pounding, the complete lack of any memories, the then-dead-now-alive situation, and all in all having Poison Ivy knock him out with some sleeping pollen after she found him rampaging through the botanical gardens in the dead of night was probably as good an end to the day as he could have hoped for.

Pamela’s a lot of frightening, fantastic things. One of those things is that she has a tendency to be unflinchingly kind to scrappy little weedy things trying desperately to survive, and he certainly was a weedy thing that night, freshly pushed out through the earth. He doesn’t remember much from the first 48 hours; just remembers fear and terror and rage, a burst of something sweet-smelling spreading across his face, and then being cared for by careful steady hands that kept him cool and watered and fed.

He recovers in body but not in memory, and decides to just keep helping Pam out, fuzzy on everything except that Gotham is where he needs to be. He doesn’t have any powers aside from being pretty strong and athletic, and while he’d like to think he’s a damn good kisser he can’t literally brainwash people with his skills; trying to keep up with a bit of a mystical botanist almost-villain is really hard when their skill levels are so mismatched.

Pam never seems to mind though, just laughs his concerns off and tells him some vague bullshit about how plants don’t need to do anything more than just be to be good and important and necessary, and that’s all he needs to worry about.

Life at the overridden jungle-esque townhouse that is Casa Isley is pretty simple and extremely pleasant, even in the early days when he was mostly mute and spent most of his time sitting by the window in the living room, face to the sun, eyes closed. She leaves him to recuperate and find his centre and find the sun in the daytime, and at night they bomb massive multinational corporations that profit from the destruction of the rainforests, and it’s a good hearty living. Something doesn’t feel entirely right about a purely vegetarian diet, but the things Pam can do with lentils and roasted squash, Jesus. On the work front, she calls him ‘Sting’ when they’re out, even though he has issues with sharing a name with an elderly pop star, but it’s better than getting called ‘Netty’ instead of nettles, so he goes along with it.

Almost a year in and he thinks he’s gotten the hang of the concept of just being, that he’s found where he can live and grow, that it’s fine that in an absence of a name they both seem to have settled on “Dan” because it’s short for ‘dandelion’, before the Mrs. shows up all of a sudden in a flurry of colour and chaos, takes one look at him, and starts screaming “Robin!!!”

It comes down to this;

“You know I don’t like to look at men’s faces,” Pam tells Harley with mild irritation, even as flowers keep popping up all throughout the house at the absolute pleasure the doctor is feeling at having her wife home for the first time in most of a year.

If they FaceTime each other, he’s never gotten to see it, and if they don’t, he has no idea how they survive that sharp bite of absence. It rings awful loud in his stupid head, and he doesn’t even know what it is he’s missing.

“I know, pumpkin, it’s one of your defining features.” Harley hasn’t stopped laughing once in the past hour, through the fracas of him reacting badly to being screeched at and Pam getting everyone wrapped up neatly in vines while she went to put the kettle on. Harley’s still got vines running all over her, and the whole mass of them seem delighted. “Been wonderin’ who they were talkin’ ‘bout, when they said you picked up a new sidekick who’s some guy that prob’ly wouldn’t know his poppies from his pansies, and now I see you got yourself a zombie baby bird!”

He tries not to snap the handle of the dainty teacup he’s holding. 'Robin' feels closer, closer than ‘Sting’ and ‘Dan’, but still not quite right. “Do you know if I got a family waiting for me somewhere?”

Harley grins. “A whole freakin’ flock of ‘em, buddy. Any terror of the night you see out here in Gotham, they’re gonna take one good look at you and they’re gonna know! Look for a strong jawline or crazy good hair, it’s a giveaway for all of yous. Seriously, Pammy, I can’t believe your little sidekick and you haven’t run into B yet.”

“He’s still new, I wasn’t going to take him out on anything high-level, Harley,” Pamela tells her archly. “But Dandy, it’s up to you. What do you say we hit up a bank or a dozen and see if anybody who swings by recognises you?”

It's not hard to say yes to potentially unraveling his past.

That night they go out in threes, Harley and Poison Ivy looking dashing as all hell while he skulks in the background, trying to stay clear of all the shameless makeouts. He feels deeply uncool in his sweats and his safety goggles with leaves stuck on, but he couldn't really knock up anything that looks half as good as their costumes, so it is what it is, urgh. The plan is easy enough; target the City Bank and just hang around until a Bat or a Bird swings by, and ask if they know who he is. At Harley’s insistence, he’s left the bandanna he usually wears to cover his face at home, because she swears that they’re going to need a peep at his jawline, like a chin’s just as good as a fingerprint.

He doesn’t actually think it’s going to work, as he jumps from giant plant to giant plant to stick some explosives to the vault doors. He’s probably just some man who died in some excruciatingly normal way, and the strangest thing about him is just that he came back, somehow.

He’s probably nobody special.

So it comes as a bit of a surprise when they’re met by an entire battalion of masked vigilantes, held off by Ivy and every inch of chlorophyll in a mile-wide radius, but the fighting is interrupted by Harley whistling to catch everybody’s attention, and then very loudly going “Ta-dah!!” as she presents him, like he’s something grand and important.

He feels extremely put on the spot. He feels like an unasked-for baby picture flashed to acquaintances; inexplicably precious to Harley and astonishingly anti-climactic for literally everyone else. “No one’s gonna know who I am,” he hissed at her, frustration bleeding into his voice.

Of course, everybody does.

The custody battle between Batman and his many, many associates versus Poison Ivy and her wife was vicious and surprisingly bloodless. He can’t remember the number of times he gets abducted and re-abducted. In the course of two months he: gets taken out to an all-night cafe by a man in black-and-blue who seems anxious and keen to pretend he isn’t; has a costumed girl with wild blonde hair ask if he might consider giving her driving lessons, because B is shit; gets accosted by a boy with floppy hair who got real annoyed that Jason’s phone is an ancient thing with a keypad and everything, unhackable in every sense of the word.

In his defense, when Pam can send him a shopping list via leaves and he just needs to shout at the closest potted plant to remind her she’s supposed to get take-out on the way home tonight, a phone’s not really super necessary.

Pam and Harley become increasingly retaliatory after all the kidnapping attempts; he’s been followed by oak trees dragging themselves along the pavement like underpaid Ents, and Harley’s singular ability to show up when everybody least expects her means many a (family?) reunion gets broken up by a glitter bomb and Harley dragging him back, “‘cos Pammy’s gonna be real mad if I lost you. You accidentally buy real bacon instead a’ imitation one time, and your wife gets to hold that over you for f’ever, and you gotta take it kid, just ‘cos you love her, god.”

It’s a hectic couple of months.

He knows the Bat and Bird people know who he is, and that they worry about telling him the truth while he’s still living with Pam, who’s a designated villain, but right now it’s a lot easier to pick the side of the woman who found him when he was at his worst and helped him find his feet and screw his head back on straight than it is to believe a pack of vigilantes who stalk him and refuse to tell him his name.

Batman’s the worst of the lot; massive and hulking and lineless when he wants to intimidate a deeply-unmoved Poison Ivy in a fight, but furtive and silent and impossible to see when he’s on the fire escape right outside his room.

At first, he’d thought that the Batman was just straight-up creeping on him in his sleep, and he’d started cultivating a window box of cacti that he was slowly coaching into listening to him and taking instructions. Prolonged contact with Ivy and all the pheromones and secret magic that seeps out of her gives everyone in her vicinity a bit of plant magic, and where Pam’s mailman has gone from killing three succulents within the space of a week many years ago to becoming an award-winning pumpkin cultivator this last fall, Jason’s begun to be able to nudge and ask plants for help.

The cacti let him know that if Batman’s stalking him, it’s really fucking weird stalking. The Bat doesn’t peer through the window, never tries to climb in and get into close contact, makes no move to survey the lay of the land and liberate him. It’s really fucking weird, the cacti say. On random nights, at least twice a week, the Bat climbs up the creaky, ancient wrought-iron ladder in complete silence, and apparently he just sits there, back to the room, face to the world.

Some nights where everything feels a little off, Jason just lies in bed and stares at the black mass and wonders what he’s done to make him so important to Batman, and if the feeling’s returned.

He figures out somewhere along the way that the Bat’s standing guard over him. He figures it out because Pam tells him, with an exasperated tone of voice that informs him that this is why she finds men so damn intolerable. “He’s worried about you, and he hasn’t tried to do anything more than just creep around, so I thought I’d leave him to you.”

That’s where it (re)starts.

A week after that little conversation with Pam, he swaps out half the cacti for clumps of herbs in the window box instead. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t need to ward against the Bat anymore, and there’s something really freakin’ nice about his room smelling like rosemary when Gotham’s hit with her usual summer heatwave, dramatically transforming from a grubby city into a grubbier swamp. A week after that he starts leaving out lemonade for the man, because Pamela did a damn fine job instilling within him the urge to make sure to regularly water those things that need regular watering. A week after that, he starts unilaterally talking about what it’s like to be an apprentice horticulturalist climbing the corporate ladder, and how his trainer is extremely impressed with how even their most dire cases return to life under his green thumbs. There’s a course on technical botanical watercolours coming up, for staff only, and he’s fucking hyped. The Bat responds in quiet hums and grunts, and even the occasional word, but Jason and his plants collectively agree that the man is listening, intently even.

A week after that, Batman tells him that he’s Jason Todd, the name clicks like a neck breaking, and he’s on the ground screaming-screaming-screaming as everything comes pouring back, soothed and tinted green by Poison Ivy’s fundamentally restorative magic hanging heavy in the air.

When he comes to, Harley’s trying to knock Bruce’s stupid head off with her ridiculous mallet, and Jason sees at least 4 Venus flytraps manifesting, big enough to eat any man as Pamela checks his pulse. Bruce is dodging and ducking and weaving, but he doesn’t raise a hand to fight back. He just keeps staring and staring and staring at Jason, and that’s the culmination of the world’s most chaotic resurrection arc.

There’s a second round of flying batarangs and pollen bombs when Jason’s brought up to speed on the status of things (i.e. the Joker and his damn fucking state of being alive) and he tells his family (both sets of them) that he’s going to keep on being an apprentice horticulturalist and an apprentice Sting(ing Nettle), with Bruce accusing Poison Ivy of brainwashing him and Pam scoffing and telling Bruce that Jason doesn’t even like women, which, come on, why’s a man gotta get outed like this?

He loves everyone involved in this whole screaming mess, but for people who don’t actually have a claim to any part of him, it is wild how entitled both Batman and Poison Ivy feel to him. That’s the thing with growth, right? You might need to give a sapling a lot of support to help it get its bearings, but when it’s off, it’s off.

Jason’s grown up enough to know who he is and where he stands, and it might have taken well over a year post-resurrection to get to this point, but he’s tall and strong enough to stand up and get the sun himself, thanks.

This is how the custody battle ends;

Jason tells both Pam and Bruce that neither of them are actually his parents, and moves out to a shitty little flat close to Crime Alley. His house is chock-a-block full of plants; there’s always cereal in the cupboards for when Dick or Harley visit; the window is left unadorned for quick access by night-time crimefighters; he upgrades to a legitimate smartphone and joins several iterations of family group chats; and

he’s careful to pick a flat that has a fire escape right outside his bedroom. It’s a weird thing to have as ‘required’ when apartment-hunting, but the thought of Bruce trying to be a barrier between Jason and this whole awful world where he couldn’t before makes him feel some sort of way, and some sort of way is enough of a motivation. Bruce reminds him of himself fresh out of the ground; struggling to find his footing but trying desperately to carry on nonetheless. An extra 75 bucks a month is worth setting up space with plenty of sun for that, surely.

He puts a pitcher of lemonade instead of a bird feeder out a couple of months after moving in, when he’s nice and settled. When he pokes his head out and finds an empty jug the next morning, his aloe plant checks in with him to make sure that he’s cool with having a black wraith standing guard outside in the night.

Jason is.

A week after that he starts chatting at Bruce while he folds 2 weeks’ worth of laundry, and a week after that he starts joining Bruce on the fire escape.

Sometimes they don’t talk much at all because contact is what they actually, desperately need, and that’s the start of a different sort of resurrection.

The thing is, Bruce probably thinks he’s being super sneaky and discreet, but he really, really isn’t. Even if Jason didn’t have every plant in the tri-state area snitching on Bruce to him, it’s pretty clear that ‘Sting’s’ outfit has been getting upgraded. The goggles with the leaves haphazardly glued onto them suddenly have night-vision, and don’t even crack when Jason gets slammed into the side of a building face-first one night. His sweats look exactly the same, except they’re now three pounds heavier and are shockingly bulletproof. He even finds a long-sleeved shirt with a stylised ‘S’ shaped like a thorn in a gorgeous hunter green, and it makes him laugh like a complete idiot to imagine Bruce at the Manor, Windows Paint open as he brainstorms a new not-flying-vertebrate-related symbol.

He’s happier to wear a ratty shirt and a leather jacket out for nightwork, though. Jason’s working with Ivy, but that’s mostly because he just likes Pam; for every dirty corporate pig they almost kill, they spend as much time squatting in the woods somewhere eating vege tacos. He’s not anxious to become a new vigilante, especially not one under somebody else’s purview. Call him a coward, but as far as dead-end careers go, being Robin was, uh. Rough.

So he dresses in athleisure-meets-leather and mostly wears his special Sting shirt when the weather’s awful and Bruce still refuses to come inside for some reheated pizza. The shirt’s a little oversized, the lining is obscenely soft and warm, and it’s also waterproof, so in many ways it’s exactly perfect.

It’s on a shitty Gotham fall day, where it’s gone dark way too early and the rain comes down hard and somehow colder than fucking snow, when the milkweeds that Mrs. Faure three floors down grows in her window box yell up to say the Bat’s coming but he doesn’t seem well.

Delicacy and nuance are difficult things to pass along in the language of flowers, and ‘unwell’ could mean anything from a bit of a cough to literally on the verge of death, so Jason prepares accordingly. He shrugs into his armoured shirt and sweats, gets the gun out (because no matter what Pam says, it’s mighty helpful for a fledgling plant sorcerer to have something as fast as a speeding bullet, thanks) and finds his fully-stocked medkit. By the time Bruce is pounding on his window, Jason’s ready to handle everything up to and including a raging elephant.

Instead, it’s just Bruce with a massive gash in his side, mania in his eyes. Bruce looks Jason up and down and up and down, like he can’t quite believe his eyes, and struggles through the windowsill, almost crushing Jason’s carefully-cultivated wildgrass windowbox. “Jason,” he shouts, which is a clearer sign than anything else that he’s out of it, clearer even than a hole where the rest of an abdomen should be. “Jason, are you okay?” He lands on the floor, slips in a pile of dirty clothes and his own blood, and keeps struggling to head towards Jason.

Jason’s stunned one second, and shoving wads of gauze into the gaping wound the next. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,” he says for lack of brainpower to think of anything better, communing with All Plants Ever and being informed by a god (or possibly Pam) that cacti have blood-clotting properties. Powers heightened in an emergency, his succulents step up to the plate and grow to enormous proportions, allowing Jason to rip off a stem, crush it to mush, and plug Bruce up. “What the hell happened?”

Bruce doesn’t seem to hear him, more concerned with checking Jason over, trying to take his pulse through the gauntlets. Whatever he sees seems to be enough for him, and he abruptly staggers back, back towards the window. “You’re alive, you’re fine, it’s fine,” Bruce says to himself like he’s trying to believe it, as he tries to take his leave.

That’s not going to happen, of course. An obliging spider plant hanging by the window grows big enough to wrap its leaves around Bruce and draw him to a standstill, and Jason’s already hauling Bruce to the bed. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going, B? You’re lying the hell down while I call Alfred. Jesus, you’re a mess.”

“The wound is minor, I can lose another 15% of my blood volume without affecting my performance,” says the man currently outfoxed by some grass. “I just needed to make sure you were unharmed. There’s a fight I need to get back to.”

“Yeah, ‘course there is,” said Jason, completely unmoved. The cactus pulp seems to be doing its job, and the blood’s gone spectacularly gross and clumpy, but if that’s a Killer Croc bite infection’s going to be a bigger bitch than blood volume loss. He fires off a text to Alfred, then pauses. “Hang on, who’re you fighting, and where? Where’s your backup, anyways?”

Bruce is now sat on Jason’s bed, looking longingly at the fire escape. “It’s some sort of coordinated effort to set the city on fire.” He pauses, because they’re both looking out the window at the heavy rain and thinking, really? “We’re keeping on top of it, but that’s not going to last if I don’t stop Killer Croc and the Penguin from ganging up.”

“Uh huh, cool. Where were they, again?”

“Flooding out the hospital on 8th and Faber. Jason, I have to go -”

“Nope,” Jason tells him flatly, having sent a message along to Pam for a favour (at 8th and Faber). “You’re gonna wait till Alfie comes by to pick you up, and then I’m gonna go out and help mop up the mess.” He grabs the closest clean-looking shirt, and flicks a carbon fiber ear. “Open, I need to clean up your face and check for a concussion. What’re you doing here anyways?”

Bruce unlocks the cowl and pushes it off, and he looks about as rundown as usual, which is good. Jason wets his shirt with the plant spritzer that’s eternally on his bedside table, and rubs the dirt and debris off of Bruce’s face as he waits for a response that’s slow in coming.

“Penguin said that the Joker was rampaging across Crime Alley. It was just a distraction, but it worked,” Bruce says, sounding a little offended. “I was already heading this way by the time Dick radioed to say he’s got Joker contained with help from the Titans. I just. Wanted to check in with you.”

“Christ,” Jason swears, feeling that standard mix of irritation and mind-boggling fondness flood his brain in response to Bruce's blunt Bruce-ness. “You’re such an idiot. I shouldn’t be your first priority, B!”

Bruce just stares at him, shockingly calm for a man missing a lot of blood and bone. “Then what number priority are you supposed to be, Jay?”

There’s not much Jason can reply to that. For all the existential angst and the occasional roar of rage he feels towards Bruce, if he heard that something had gone terribly wrong with Bruce, anything short of god-level power would struggle to keep him away.

Sometimes when he thinks back to his resurrection, he wonders if he’d woken up in part because there’s an internal mechanism that kept worrying at him after his death, going What the fuck’s going to happen to the big guy with you gone, fuck, get up, get up, get UP!

Aw, hell. Pam was kind of a dick but also absolutely right when she said he’s got no interest in women, and to be fair his interest in men is pretty extremely limited too.

Bruce seems to take his silence as permission to go off and do something dumbfuck again, staggering up and surging towards the window, and in a moment of reactionary panic Jason grabs him by the cowl, tugs him back, and kisses him.

(“10 out of 10 times you’ll get your man,” Poison Ivy had told him as she rubbed at her lips with a wet wipe, CEO to an oil fracking company in a dead faint at her feet. “I can’t tell you how to know when your pheromones are strong enough for it to work work, but you’ll know when the time comes. Just keep disinfectant handy, because I have never met a man whose mouth was not a cesspit. No offense.”

Some offense taken, thanks, because he knows she’s kissed Batman before, and only a deeply ungenerous soul would describe the feeling of Bruce falling under your thrall as a ‘cesspit’.)

Bruce passes out in under 2 seconds flat, fall cushioned by a monstera coming in clutch. Jason looks down at him, thinks about what it means that the man with the most indomitable will in the whole stupid fucking world got taken out by a poison kiss, and screams “Fuuuuuuuuuuck!” until Alfred breaks in with a gun in each hand, asking if Masters Jason and Bruce are quite all right.

Jason is an absolute mess when he goes for Ladies’ Night with Pam and Harley, as repayment for services rendered on that shitty, bloody night a couple of weeks ago now. Pam picks a beer garden because this late in the year it’s cold enough that they have the outdoors to themselves, and none of them really feel give a shit in the weather (Jason's got The Shirt on, after all).

First round of apple ciders and a giant bowl of piping hot cheesy nachos delivered, Harley tucks in with her customary gusto in the face of hot snack foods, while Pam just stares at Jason like she knows something.

Of course she does, Jason thinks bitterly. Pam’s a Higher Power, and he’d be damn surprised if his houseplants haven’t already ratted him out to her. “What?” he snarls, trying to fend off an uncomfortable conversation by being a bit of a dick.

It doesn’t work; if anything both women just look more amused. “What’s eatin’ you, Jay?” Harley says around a mouthful of nachos. “You and Pammy are makin’ eyes and not lettin’ me join in, which, by the way, dick move. Just spit it out already.”

Pam’s barely holding in her laughter at this point. “She’s right, Jason. Just lay it on us.”

Oh, lord, Dr. Pamela Isley really just did wink at him, oh my god.

“It wasn’t anything, okay! It was just a knock-out kiss, you kiss like a hundred people a month, it doesn’t mean anything.” He can control the blush, just barely, but that’s thanks to Bruce’s training, and thinking about training Bruce is Extremely Counterproductive, fuck.

Harley’s just openly applauding at this point, clearly deeply entertained. “Awwww, you laid a wet one on Big B, huh? Can’t blame you, jeezus, the thighs on that man.” She sighs, eyes going distant. “Plus! He was plenty nice to me after the break with Mr. J, and he sent us some real sweet weddin’ gifts, didn’t he, Pammy?”

Pam nods, still radiating amusement. “A waffle iron and sandwich press for Harley, and several endangered species of begonias that haven’t been successfully propagated in captivity for me. The man has beautiful penmanship.”

He does, Jason almost says, which really clearly highlights just how damn moony he is at this point in time. “We’re not… like that. He wouldn’t want that with me, okay, so can we just drop it?” He miserably drains his mug of cider, and wishes it was something with a lot more kick instead.

They kind of fall into a maudlin little lull, before Harley breaks the pause. “Hang on, hang on. Why wouldn’t he want you, kid, you’re plenty good-lookin’. Did you even try to seduce the guy? Get him some top-notch chocolates and roses for valentine? If Pam could stick her neck out and one-hit K.O. Mr. J to win me over, how’re you just sittin’ there all sad-like and giving up before you even made one grand gesture?”

Times like these Jason is sharply reminded that while Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are usually rated Quirky Second-Class Villains by virtue of misogyny, they’ve both haunted and infected and protected Gotham for years and years and years, have PhDs, are weirdly unflappable and immoveable, and are in a loving, committed relationship. Times like these they catch him coming and going.

He knows that him being under Bruce’s care before he died makes for an awkward power dynamic that’s likely to stick in Bruce’s craw, even if it doesn’t really affect Jason’s intentions towards the man. He knows that it might break their slowly recovering relationship, might drive Bruce away, might shove a wedge in between him and the Bat family.

He knows all this, but fair play to Harley, he doesn’t know that Bruce is definitely, definitely going to shoot him down. He also doesn’t know what would happen if he sincerely makes an effort to make clear that he wants to be the steadying hand at Bruce’s back, the cacti pulp healing a festering wound, the window he clambers through when he’s in a blind panic.

“Ah, fuck,” he sighs, reaching over to steal Harley’s full glass, taking a deep swig of the sweet, fizzy cider. “I really fuckin’ hate it when you’re the one talking the most sense, Harl. If and when he breaks my heart, you two are responsible for wining and dining me for the rest of my depressing, shitty life, okay?”

“I’ll drink to that!” Harley toasts him, grabbing Pam’s glass to clink against Jason’s. “Go for it, kid. If anyone’s gonna make love grow in the barren ass desert of Big B’s moody edgy heart, it’s gonna be Pam or a Pam-adjacent. Grab that man by the balls, zombie bird!”

The rest of the night is filled by increasingly drunken plans to woo a man who can’t be wooed, and the brainstorming felt like it was going well to a bunch of tipsy dumbasses. How it ends, is that Jason wakes up the next morning in a hedge, head pounding and pocket filled with 5 napkins covered in incomprehensible scribbles and 3 separate iterations of a hairy cock-and-balls in lipstick.

Pretty tame, for Ladies' Night.

Life continues as normal after that. He gets needled by Pam and Harley for dragging his feet, but every time he opens his mouth to say something he imagines losing quiet time on his balcony with B, spiked lemonade resting between them. The kiss doesn’t get brought up, but there’s an almost literal itch on his lips whenever Jason looks at Bruce and the desire to take him and keep him rises up to his throat, and that’s just life now, apparently.

It’s a holding pattern that breaks unexpectedly one day, over the phone. Bruce almost never calls him, but they’ve taken to getting takeout whenever there’s enough of a lull in the night patrol to warrant a meal break for Batman, and sometimes there’s a call to check in on the general consensus re: Greek or Turkish food for supper.

His phone rings when he’s almost out of his flat, and Jason swears. He somehow hadn’t thought about Bruce tonight, not when Bruce hadn’t been around for the last anniversary. He answers, and tries not to sound like anything unusual is going on. “Hey, B, what’s up?”

“Jason. I am parked in front of that Chinese takeout by the greengrocer’s that sells lemongrass by the pound. Do you want the same dumplings you got last time?”

Be still my stupid fucking heart, it’s deeply uncool to mildly lose your mind when the man you’re deeply into remembers your takeaway order. “Sounds great, B, but listen. I have some stuff going on tonight, so I won’t be around to meet you. Sorry.”

Jason hopes and hopes and hopes that Bruce will just leave it, just take it as it is, but-

“There’s no significant criminal activity tonight, and none of Harley or Ivy’s usual targets are in the city. What’s going on?”

“Just a meetup with the two of ‘em, no big deal, B, nothing to worry about, it’s nothing,” Jason says, desperately trying to be cool.

Of course, it makes it worse.

“Jason, if you are in an emergency situation and a hostile is in the same room with you, say ‘I might go for the soup dumplings tonight’. I’m on my way.”

It’s rapidly spinning out of control, and Jason figures that if the gun’s about to go off he might as well pull the trigger. “You can’t, B, because I’m going out with Pam to get black-out drunk tonight ‘cos it’s the anniversary of me coming out of the ground, and if Ivy’s not near me I keep thinking I’m gonna get buried again. Do you understand why I have to cancel dinner now?”

He sounds harsh, he knows he sounds harsh, but something about the anniversary throws him back 6 feet underground, and Pam’s the only one who makes him feel safe when he’s got soil on the mind.

Bruce takes an eternity to respond to that, and when he does it’s just a quiet, helpless “Jaybird,” and Jason’s trying not to burst into tears right now, aaaah.

“It’s not the same as it was before. I’m not the same as I was before, B, and this is one of those things. You wanna hear another buck-wild thing, something new post-death and equally horrifying?” He hears his mouth, but doesn’t remember authorising any of these words.

“You can tell me anything, Jason. You can ask me for anything,” Bruce promises him, voice heavy and serious and trembling 'round the edges, clearly not reading the damned room.

Ah, he can’t stop the slightly hysterical laughter as he forces himself up and out of the flat, keen to get to Pam’s place before it’s fully dark. “The brand new thing, B, is that I’m pretty sure dying and coming back to life and living on my own kinda made me fall in love with you, and I kissed you and I liked it, and I just really, really want you to feel it back.” He sighs, and blinks his eyes dry. “But that’s a me problem, okay, and I’ve got a handle on it. I just….” Just want you to want me back, he doesn’t say, because it’s not ‘foist your problems onto Bruce who is quite often less equipped to handle problems than anyone gives him credit for’ day, contrary to how Gotham lives her fucking life. “I just need to cancel dinner,” he says instead, tired and dull.

“Jason,” he hears Bruce’s shock clear in his voice, and he just can’t take it. “Jason, I-”

He hangs up, because there’s a time and a place to deal with everything, and the time and the place to deal with Bruce’s rejection is not right here and right now.

Christ, no wonder some people become supervillains because of love; shit drives a man madder even than his resurrection.

Harley leaves on a big Birds of Prey mission to absolutely murder a gang of child traffickers the day after Jason’s anniversary, and she comes back a whole 4 months later with little more than a couple of chipped teeth, a line of stitches up her back, and a pet dingo.

Jason’s at Pam’s for lunch when she bursts through the door yelling “Honey, I’m home!” with zero irony, and he doesn’t even get to say hi, hello, before she takes one look at him and his myriad of hickeys and the mussed hair of a man getting lovingly laid on the regular, and screams “Robin, you sly freakin’ dog!”

Jason tries to vault to freedom and away from this mortifying encounter, jumping for an open window, but massive vines catch him by the waist, and he resigns himself to his terrible, terrible fate. “Hey, Harley,” he tells her, and prepares for the most excruciating lunchtime of his life.

“Jason, stop!” Bruce calls out, even though he’s suspended upside down, limbs spread apart by coiling vines thicker than his wrist. “I know you don’t want to do this! Let me down; whatever’s happened to you, I can help.”

Jason moves out from behind the long, sweeping fronds of a palm, green-tinted and mostly nude. “That’s where you’re wrong, B,” he says, stepping closer to caress Bruce’s jaw, scratching at barely-there stubble with nails sharper than thorns. “This is the truest me you’re ever gonna get.” He licks his lips, partly for effect, partly to check his pheromone levels. God, he almost doses himself up, and it’s a delight to imagine what will happen to Bruce when he gets a taste.

“Stop, no, I don’t want this-!”

Too late. Jason holds Bruce steady as he kisses him, messy and with teeth. He bites on Bruce’s lips till he bleeds, brushes tongue against tongue, scratches welts into the fine skin of his cheeks, and doesn’t stop until he can feel Bruce panting and writhing under his hands, breathing coming in quicker and quicker. “Now you do, B,” Jason tells him, gently tugging the cowl off.

The fingerprint scanner on the master lock still recognises his prints, oh, god.

Bruce looks dazed, more out of it even than when he’s concussed. Pupils blown wide, he clearly struggles to focus on Jason, and he doesn’t do much more than growl when he’s unmasked.

He’s a sight, and it makes Jason giddy all at once. “God, B,” Jason says, “I know what you want, I know better’n you.” He presses another kiss to Bruce’s mouth, lets it linger and lets it soak. “I’m going to take care of you. Gonna take care of you right here in the greenhouse, right where Alfie might just come by if he figures he needs some herbs.” He moves a hand to Bruce’s chest, feels it heaving underneath the armour. “Anyone could walk in and see you like this, and you’d thank me for that, thank me for showing you off, wouldn’t you?”

Bruce tries to mount a protest, tries to struggle as Jason pulls his gauntlets off one at a time, leaving sharp bites all over Bruce’s hands, lingering on his pulse, on his scars. Bruce tries to stop the full-body shivers, but the most urgent feeling assaulting him is a sharp thrill at being seen like this, vulnerable and completely under Jason’s thrall. He grasps on to a vine with his left hand, and holds on.

By the time Jason has Bruce maneuvered onto his back, still suspended by the vines but bare-chested now, Bruce is sunk. There’s a haze over everything, and he’s drowning under the strength of Jason’s powers, the muggy heat of the greenhouse, the forced capitulation in bondage. It’s been years and years and years since he had last been this pliant and helpless, and it burns him up inside that he has no choice in this, that when Jason puts his mouth to him, sets his teeth against Bruce’s collarbone and bites, all he feels is dumb pleasure.

“That’s it,” Jason whispers against skin, “go down, take what I’m giving you.” A thought sends vines curling around Bruce’s pants, tugging them down, baring him to the open quiet of the greenhouse. “You’re a good boy; you scowl and struggle, act like a big Bat man, but this ,” emphasised by a squeeze of Bruce’s cock, “this is what you need .” A kiss to a navel, a bite at a hip, a hickey on an inner thigh. “Trussed up and spread out, just for me.”

The words rock the dreamy state a little; Bruce doesn’t and has never equated anything about his pleasure to a need. There are far too many important things to legitimately need for him to ever prioritise his desires, and it takes him out of it. Bruce doesn’t need this , it’s just a ploy to let Jason’s poison sink in deeper! He starts to struggle, realising that he’s completely undressed now, Jason’s idle hands drawing little welts up and down his thighs. “That’s not true,” he snarls, trying to free his hands. “Let me go!”

A thin vine wraps around Bruce’s throat in a threat, and Jason digs his claws into a bare belly. “And what part of it’s untrue, B?” With his other hand, he leisurely strokes Bruce’s hard cock, slick with sap. “This?” He squeezes, a shade too hard. “You even notice that you’ve been trembling this whole time? Poor Bruce, I don’t think you even mean half the shit that comes out your mouth.” A slight gesture, and the vine around Bruce’s neck twines once, twice, and snakes into his mouth, filling it completely. “There, I’ve taken care of your lying for you. Shouldn’t you thank me?”

In a fit of desperation, Bruce squeezes once around the vine that’s trapped his right hand, putting all his strength into it, hoping it’ll work, hoping…

Jason just laughs. “Good enough, I guess.” The claws pull away, and he starts jerking Bruce off faster, delighting in the little twitches in the hips and thighs that not even the great Bat can contain. “Let’s fill you up a little more, yeah?”

Bruce groans around the vine that starts fucking his throat, tries to pretend that it’s from revulsion, that the lack of control doesn’t just make him harder and dizzier.

Nothing could stop him from groaning when he feels a curious prod at his hole, slick with sap and too cool to be human. The vine works its way in, slow and ceaseless, and by the time Jason finally gets it to stop Bruce struggles to do anything more than just gasp and bite down, teeth glancing uselessly off the vine in his mouth.

“You’re fine,” Jason soothes him, rubbing absently at Bruce’s stuffed throat. “You love this, I can tell. How’s about we get you off, B, and we can experiment more with your limits?” At that, Jason moves his hand down to curiously press on where skin is stretched taut around a wrist-thick vine, and the sensation, the threat of more has Bruce convulsing, squeezing down hard on the vines around his hands.

Jason pauses his hands for a moment at that, head cocked like he’s trying to hear something through the plants, but soon enough he’s rubbing his thumb against Bruce’s hole, thorny nails retracted and gone, just a point of warmth where Bruce cannot take any more.

“C’mon, B,” Jason coaxes him, grip tight around his cock, wicked sharp thumbnail teasing the cockhead with every pass. “Give me what I want, so I can give you what you want, yeah?”

The capacity to think about what he wants has long since escaped Bruce; all he knows is that Jason is asking him for something, and this deep under all he wants to do is give Jason what he wants. His body seizes tight, his breathing is far too fast, and the only real thing in the world is Jason holding him, round the neck and the limbs and his cock, and it’s overwhelming to the point of madness.

Without warning and without preamble, Jason pushes his thumb in and up, and Bruce is screaming as he comes all over himself, all over Jason’s hand.

“Oh, baby,” he hears Jason murmuring all soft and awed. Bruce doesn’t have the ability to think about how Jason sounds, because Jason doesn’t stop.

Bruce loses all he has left of himself and passes out some time around the third finger that Jason pushes in, choked and completely, utterly full-up, echoes of praise following him on his way out.

Romance is dead, and Bruce Wayne killed it.

Afterglow happens to other people, and Jason hates and envies all of them. He just gets a debrief, and it took weeks just to negotiate it into a proper conversation instead of a deeply alarming Powerpoint presentation. It took a couple more weeks on top of that to get Bruce to relent to a spot of naked cuddling during what counts as aftercare for Batman, though for that fight Jason had been willing to go all-in and wait Bruce the hell out because sometimes (often! times!) Bruce really doesn’t know best.

So no using the board room in the Cave, no projectors, yes bare skin. It’s fertilizer for the soul, bitch.

They're huddled together in a bed of moss, which is soft and springy but also unfortunately, worryingly damp. To keep dry and warm, Bruce is wrapped up in his cape and cradled in Jason’s lap, clear of the ground. At least, he’s as cradled as a man can be when a man is over 6 feet of battle-hardened muscle.

God help him, Jason thinks it’s fucking cute to see Bruce bare but for his cape, face serious, datapad in hand to do a play-by-play of their most recent scene. Nothing about his life now seems like a reasonable progression from him clawing his way out of a coffin, it’s a pretty giant leap even from the first night he found Bruce out on his stoop and started to think about more, but as Pam would (cryptically) say, plant-willing, all things are possible.

Jason gives Bruce the few minutes he needs to find his centre and record what he wants to keep, and occupies his time with an extra thousand or so sharp-toothed hickeys dug into taut shoulders. “Lemme know when you’re ready for a breakdown, B,” he says, mouth full of skin. A grapevine verdant with fruit manifests nearby, and he starts feeding Bruce some grapes to fend off Bruce’s almost instinctive desire to knock back coffee after exertion. The day he can figure out how to make hydrangeas fetch him a sandwich, he'll finally ascend to his rightful place as Best Dom in the World.

To be fair, he might already be, since he has a lap full of fucked-pliant Bruce.

“Overall, this was a very satisfying scene,” Bruce says matter-of-factly, as though he’s not still buck-naked and loose-limbed, head doing its level best to burrow under Jason’s chin despite the extreme lack of free real estate. “I believe in a few weeks’ time, we’ll be able to meet your target of dual-penetration in the same orifice.”

God. Sexiness has just now been murdered, also struck down by Bruce Wayne.

“B, we have definitely talked about using the word ‘orifice’, c’mon, stop fucking with me.” He tries to jog his knee and it goes absolutely nowhere, because Bruce is heavy enough that Jason hasn’t actually felt his feet in a while. “But I definitely noticed that you were all gorgeous and relaxed and loose. I’m gonna get to fuck you alongside a vine in no time.” Jason noses at the side of Bruce’s head, nudges him into a kiss. “You did so fuckin’ well, Bruce.”

That does the trick, as Jason knew it would. Bruce shudders in his hold, still far gone enough that praise goes straight to his head and out his limbs, and add another tick for that Best Dom in the world award, because Jason doesn’t even tease him about it. “Anything else? Used lianas this time instead of grapevines, how’re your allergies?” Jason’s already checked, of course, and there were no red welts on Bruce’s limbs, but a good horticulturalist knows that not all issues are visible.

Get you a case of root rot, and a plant that looks completely alright today could be completely dead the day after. For a whole host of reasons, Jason’s going to keep a careful hand and eye on Bruce; this is part of his duty of care.

Almost on cue, Bruce holds his hand up right to Jason’s face, showcasing a gorgeous rash-free bruise starting up around his wrist.

Jason kisses it.

“Lianas work. And three squeezes for red, one squeeze for green is a good system, especially with you checking in so often.” Bruce pauses for a moment, an internal struggle in a lifetime of internal struggles. Jason gives him space and time, and is sweetly, sweetly repaid with “I felt safe.”

Damn right you should, Jason thinks and carefully doesn’t say, but the grapevine’s sprouting grapes like its life depends on it, and little wildflowers are pushing up through their mossy blanket. Goddamn, discreet he ain’t. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, voice a little rough. “Don’t go soft on me though, big guy. Anything I did wrong?”

“Just the one,” Bruce says, missing Jason’s little scrape of emotion as he puts aside the datapad and sprawls across Jason’s body. With the debrief out of his system, it’s now time for a restorative nap. In Jason’s apartment with the plants doing their best to look as lush as they would in a greenhouse, he’s safe and he doesn’t need to get up and get dressed and get away as soon as possible. “The dirty talk could do with some work. I might need you, Jay, but I don’t need this.” He pulls the cape up over his head, because if he’s going to sleep he’s going to do in pitch darkness, thanks. “It’s just a want,” he gets out in a tired growl, already halfway asleep. “I just want it, with you.”

And Bruce is out like a light, already softly snoring, and Jason just has to sit there and endure, because he just wants to scream and also maybe take Bruce under again after that bitch of a confession.

Instead, he squirms and gets the vines to help him into a slightly more comfortable recline without jostling Bruce, and plans out just how hideously smug he’s going to be the next night out with Pam and Harley.

(The answer is Very Extremely Smug, thanks!!)

a/n: it’s been a mentally and emotionally grueling fucking year, and i just want to write stories where people love each other and they’re at least a little happy _(:3」∠)_ jesus, what a year (lemon, it’s fucking june)

#jason todd #bruce wayne #jaybru #batman #harleen quinzel #pamela isley #poison ivy #harlivy #whale writing #kinkmeme fill #i think i spent as much time formatting and spellchecking as i did on writing the fill itself god #i sure do like me some slow-build burst of dumb fluorishing love #it's been a shitty ole year #let's just try to hang in there #c'mon now

7 notes · View notes

francesderwent · 4 years

Text

part two: August Rush and spirituality versus religion

/ part one here /

Our protagonist, Evan, is strongly, almost mystically convicted of the truth and beauty of his origin. He believes he has a family to whom he belongs, that their love communicates with him through the music that he hears, and that it will be through the music that they’ll find each other again. But they’re taking a little longer than he wants, and there’s a whole world of wind chimes out there, so he sets out to look for them – following the music, because the moon told him to. Providence guides and protects him.

He hitches a ride to New York City, and, mesmerized by what seems to be the first musical instrument he’s ever seen, follows a young guitarist named Arthur home. Home is an abandoned, condemned theater, with young, homeless musicians scattered all over it, and lording over it all is a man named Wizard, who steals instruments for the kids, determines who gets which busking spots all over the city, and takes half of their tips. He is initially dismissive of Evan – “you’ve never played a note before in your life” – but Evan experiments with Arthur’s guitar overnight and then blows them all away. The music does speak to him, and he can understand it. Wizard takes him in, gives him Arthur’s guitar, Arthur’s spot in the park, and a new name, “August Rush”, which has a better ring for performing. Evan is enraptured – he’s making music for the first time, a part of the mystery he’s been listening to his whole life, but also, someone has given him a name, someone who means something to him. Wizard is the first and only father figure he has ever known.

But can Wizard truly be a father to him? Wizard believes that music is a harmonic connection between all living beings, echoing back and forth between the spheres, heard only by those who are listening. It’s reminiscent of a vague pantheism, a spirituality with “music” as the divine unity of the universe that you have to make yourself open to and one with. The trouble is, “harmonic connection” is a very tenuous connection, and at the same time, a very jealous connection. Evan tells Wizard that he hopes his parents are listening to the music of the universe, that what he most wants to be in the world is “found” – but Wizard repeatedly says in negotiation, “of course he doesn’t have parents, I’m his representation, I’m his guardian”. Real, interpersonal, permanent connections, like connections of family, have no place in his world of harmonic connection. And especially, Evan’s gift for music cannot be something that his parents gave to him, cannot be something that ties him to them and them alone. That kind of relationship is too concrete; it has a strength of its own that puts it in tension with the universal connectedness of everything else.

And more to the point, that kind of relationship cannot be manipulated. Music connects Wizard and all his strays, but in a business, not a real family. If music speaks something, communicates something, Wizard isn’t listening to the kids to see what they have to say. He listens enough to know whether he can profit off of them – Evan, especially, he sees as a payoff. He doesn’t want Evan to have parents, he doesn’t want Evan to be found, because then he can’t use him – he doesn’t want Evan’s insight that his music comes from his parents to be true, because then maybe it might be true that it will really lead him to them.

To be fair to Wizard, it’s hinted that he has his own, personal reasons for turning away from the societal structures that are meant to care for orphaned children. He gives an impassioned speech to Evan’s social worker when he turns up looking for him, saying that kids get lost in the system and they shut themselves off to the world, so that they don’t hear anything. Human relationships cause hurt, and hurt causes people to choose instead to make themselves totally deaf and invulnerable – like Lyla and Louis. But in rejecting imperfect relationships, Wizard has also rejected all real relationships – there’s only use, which holds its object at a distance.

Evan can see that Wizard isn’t perfect – but what brings him to tears is watching all the other children in the park with their mothers. Wizard is the only father he has ever known, and so he assumes fathers are meant to be distant and pragmatic, but he wishes he had a mother who would listen to him, would fill the need in his heart, still so unfulfilled, for closeness and unconditional love. He still wants to play music, still wants to be heard so that maybe his parents will listen – but Wizard is starting to warp his understanding of what it all means. It reaches its height when there’s a raid of the theater, and Wizard warns Evan that if he gets caught not to tell anyone his real name, because they’ll send him back where he came from. His deepest desire – to be found – has been turned into a fear instead.

But when Evan runs from the raid, he follows the music and he ends up at a church, where he meets a little girl named Hope, who lets him sleep under her bed at the church’s shelter where she’s staying with her grandmother. The next morning, before she goes off to school, she teaches Evan his scales and basic music notation. “You’re like an angel,” he tells her, sincerely. “Oh-kay,” she says, “I gotta go.” But it’s true – not only does she sing beautifully, but she’s given him new words to speak. She’s taken the thing that he felt and intuited and given him a way to make it concrete – and when the Reverend meets him, they bring him to Juilliard. The rules he learns don’t inhibit his natural gift, he’s still listening – but he says when he writes it all down, it’s like speaking back. Basically, he gets religion – someone to explain to him that all his deepest hopes and impulses are true, they can be explained, and a response is possible. He enters a community of people who are listening together, and speaking back together. He learns, he helps his much-older classmates with their homework, and he plays with music in a way that he’s never had the freedom to do before. The Dean of Juilliard asks Evan where the music he hears comes from – he says the ones who gave it to him, and she doesn’t dismiss him. His new worldview, his new community, includes the possibility of belonging to a family, of being tied together by giving and receiving love.

While Evan, or rather August, is at Juilliard, his parents have been orbiting ever and ever closer to him. Louis runs into an old bandmate, reconnects with his brother, and realizes that his life is suffocating him. He finds Lyla on the internet, discovers where she lives, and flies out to Chicago to wait around outside her apartment building. Finally he manages to speak to a neighbor, who tells him, “oh, the musician? she’s out of town, on her honeymoon.” Louis is hurt, but then, on an impulse, he flies to New York instead of back home, gets his old band back together, and starts writing music again. He couldn’t move on from Lyla, couldn’t get her off his mind, until he made peace with the fact that she was never his to begin with. Their love was a single, contingent moment, it wasn’t everything – but it wasn’t nothing either. He doesn’t need to turn his back on music and love altogether. It is love that requires that he let her go.

Lyla isn’t on her honeymoon – that’s her musician roommate – she’s in New York. Her father had a health scare and confessed to her the truth of what he’d done, and Lyla set off to look for her son. This is the confirmation of everything that she felt – everyone told her her son was dead, but she knew that wasn’t true, she has felt him in her heart and she never stopped wanting him. She says it feels like she just woke up; the darkness and loss was a terrible dream, this is reality. She gets in touch with Evan’s social worker, who figures out which child is hers – but she already knows. She saw his face on a bulletin board and recognized him immediately. He’s missing and at risk, all she can do to find him is print flyers, but she picks up her cello again, and agrees to play with the Philharmonic. Maybe he’ll hear her.

/ part three /

#meta whine and rant #august rush #I thought it was going to be two parts #I was wrooooong

12 notes · View notes

minnie-marvel · 5 years

Text

Crown fell (Peter Parker x Reader) FINALE

Asgard has been destroyed and the time has come for you to live on Midgard with your brothers Thor and Loki. They’ve decided in order to live among humans you must learn to adapt to them, and what better place to do that then high school? Don’t worry too much though, a very cute Peter Parker is ready to teach you and might be the Prince Charming you never thought you’d find on earth.

Peter Parker x Asgardian princess! reader

Words: 5k

A/N: FINALLY ITS COMPLETE!!!! I know i know it took like a thousand years but i finally did it and i can’t be any happier!! thank you all for staying along with me and being devoted enough to see this through to the end... I love you all so much!!! Now without further a dooooo..... the crown fell finale!!!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Peter stumbled over his feet as he croaked out your name. He couldn’t even lift his arm, it stung too much from the impact of being flung into a brick wall. It took all but a moment to see you take Percius’ hand, expression emotionless as you were beamed up in a harsh blue light. He wished he could scream for you, cry for you, do anything that it would take to get your attention, but his efforts were fruitless.

It took all but a moment, but it was still too late. Dark clouds billowed throughout the heavens and there was a clap of thunder that echoed throughout the streets so loudly that for a moment, Peter felt himself quaking, struggling to stay on his feet.

“PERCIUS!!!” Thor roared throwing his hands back as they surged with absolute power. He slammed through at least thirty soldiers electrocuting them and burning them to charcoal. He saw Loki rush behind him arms flying daggers into any enemy that dared to cross gazes with him. Even Stephen Strange, the cool and collected sorcerer, seemed to be in a rare form due to the panic thwipping magic whips keeping all who he could away, all while sporting a very menacing glare.

Everyone seemed to be fighting for you, pushing past the enemies without seemingly breaking a sweat. Everyone but him, Peter thought. He hobbled over to Thor and the rest panting heavily.

“Where…” He coughed furiously as he struggled to breath, pressing on regardless. “Where did they take her?”

Thor looked gravely at the sky his limbs going weak as he hung his head low suddenly.

“To his home, nearly galaxies away from us.”

---

You barely looked out the ship’s cockpit window as you sat second to the pilot seat, Percius resting his hand on top of your chained one as he used the other to punch in quadrants. You would like to think that being out in the universe away from Midgard and with alien races far stronger than humans would have made you felt familiar, but in truth, you had never felt more distant from anyone in your entire life.

The silence was deafening, but you’d rather have your tongue cut from your mouth than speak another word to this arrogant piece of shit. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to have the same sentiments.

“Worry not my dear, these chains will be gone from your wrists soon enough, and when they are, we will be married.”

You didn’t even have the energy to roll your eyes. What joy.

“We will have the ceremony at dusk, of course, that’s when the skies of my home are most beautiful. The people will be crowding by the thousands to finally see me rise as king of my kingdom,” he paused a moment to look at you, letting his fingers brush over yours. “With you, daughter of Odin, as my wife and queen.”

You only pursed your lips tighter now, hoping that if you bit into the bottom flesh you’d hold yourself back from saying anything that would cause you to end up choking him to death.

He lifted a slender finger and brought it to your cheek but before he could touch you, you snatched it from him squeezing hard almost enough to crunch the bone in your hand.

“I may become your bride, but I will not become your wife.”

He only laughed, enough to make you throw down his finger in anger. “You will find your way to me soon enough daughter of Odin. We have millennium to spend with one another.” He tapped away on the control board a few more times before pulling a lever sending you slamming back into your seat, the extensive speed of jumping fifty galaxies almost being too much. You felt your stomach fly into your throat and drop into your feet, the jostling of the ship causing you to feel slightly sickened. You hated space travel. It was nothing in comparison to your beloved bi-frost.

Soon enough the ship came to a halt, and an entirely new world sat below you. Your gaze turned to the new planet as Percius lowered the ship onto the ground, only feet away from what you assumed was the royal castle. When you first met, Percius had come from his planet to yours, so you had never gotten the chance to actually see his home. Now you were going to be stuck here for the rest of your life. You felt your eyes water at the thought but refused to let them come. You had done this for Midgard.

You had done this for Peter.

---

Peter stood in a circle of some of the Earth’s mightiest heroes and for the first time didn’t care about their status. The only thing that was racing through Peter’s mind wasn’t the fact that he was an insect compared to them, or the fact that they actually allowed him to stand nearby without giving him grief. The only thing Peter was thinking about, was you.

Were you okay? What was that creep doing to you? Were they giving you things to eat and drink? Were you even able to see the sun where you were? Each question felt like a stab to his chest. If only he had seen you sooner, he could have saved you he

it. Now you were light years away from one another, wallowing in the fact that you both had failed the other.

Peter wasn’t paying attention to the other Avengers, that was until he felt an oddly gentle pat from Thor’s hand on his shoulder. He looked up at him and wiped furiously at his face, mixing the grime from battle and his tears together.

“Rest assured spiderling...this is not the end.”

“Goldilocks is right kiddo, no need to admit defeat yet,” Tony started opening up a panel in his forearm’s armor and typed into some type of keypad inside. He heard a loud whirring noise that canceled out whatever Loki had clearly snapped at Tony. Soon the quinjet was floating down a little ways away from the group opening its door to allow boarding.

“All aboard the quinjet folks, we don’t have much time,” he said already making a steady jog towards its doors.

Peter tried to suppress his grunts over his aching limbs, but soon enough found his arm lifted over a very tall Thor’s shoulder. Thor tried his best to bend over so that Peter wouldn’t be lifted into the air, but due to his extraordinary stature, Peter’s feet still ended up barely touching the ground.

Soon enough, the team gathered into the quinjet seating themselves properly and buckling themselves in. Peter sat nearby the stranger in the red cloak. He would have properly introduced himself, maybe he would have even tried to give him a proper handshake but he was just so tired.

“Hey wizard man, up front and center, I need your magic expertise,” Tony called from the front. The stranger rolled his eyes sighing loudly.

“I’m uh… I’m guessing that’s you?” Peter croaked.

“I suppose it is.” The man said unclicking his buckle. “Dr. Strange,” He corrected before walking back over to Tony.

“I’m!! Uh, I’m Spiderman!! It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Strange,” he tried calling back. Peter sighed feeling his energy being zapped from him again. The most he could manage to do was try to listen to Strange and Tony converse to see if there was any progress in finding your location.

“She’s had enough tie to the mystic arts that I may be able to locate her through my sorcery, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the problem here.”

Loki nodded his arms tight against his chest. “We know where she is, but this primitive Midgardian technology will not be able to even withstand space travel, let alone a fifty galaxy jump from Midgard.” He hissed.

“Okay, seriously? You’re about one comment away from being dropped on your Asgardian ass outside this ship mid-flight, you oily weasel.” Tony turned to point a threatening finger at the trickster God.

“I’d like to see you try you half pint sorry excuse of a hero- what have you against me, a GOD?! Perhaps a gaudy suit that I could easily crunch into pieces with a single flick of my finger?”

“Really? Oh! Oh really!! See, I don’t really remember that herculean strength when I nearly beat your ass into the ground back in twenty twelve-”

“Can you guys please for the love of God, SHUT UP?!”

Everything went silent. For a second, Peter was glad that someone had finally said it, that was until he realized he was the one that said it. Every pair of eyes focused on him, burning holes into his body. He swallowed hard and suddenly felt his eyebrows furrow. Wait, why in the world did he give a single fuck about what they thought? It was you who was in trouble right now, who cared if he bruised a few egos in order to get their asses moving?

“Now is not the time to be fighting. I’m the actual teenager here and I’m pretty sure I’ve shown enough maturity than all of you combined- except you Mr. Thor and Mr. Dr. Strange, you guys are cool- the point is! We shouldn’t be fighting right now, we should be working as a team so that we can rescue the princess and get the hell out of that cumulo-jack ass’s planet.”

The whole room went quiet until a slowly scowing Tony tilted his head. “I’m sorry, but did you just swear? When we get home you’d better have a quarter in your hand to put in the curse ka-ching jar-”

Peter made loud groan and pulled at his hair shaking himself wildly. “Mr. Stark!! Not the point!! I swear it’s like-”

“Don’t worry kid, I heard you loud and clear.”

Peter looked up at him again fearing that he might have misheard. “Mr. Stark?”

“We’ve gotta work together if we’re going to get the princess back to Earth with her family, if that means zipping a lip to avoid being distracted then that’s what we’ve gotta do.” He gave his protege a final nod before turning back to the sorcerer. “Tell me you’ve got a plan, ‘cause I’ve got nothing.”

“As a matter of fact, I think I do. A moment of your time if you will,” Strange pounded his fists together in a shockingly fluid and quick motion, it almost looked like he was participating in a secret handshake by himself. Soon enough, a bright orange portal appeared before him displaying an odd sort of study. Peter tilted his head as the doctor stood up and simply walked in as if he had done it a thousand times before, which he probably had, and walked out with a small ornate looking brush colored in teal and decorated in golden embroidery. The colors matched perfectly with your armor and your royal robes, Peter had no doubt that it was yours.

“The princess, as intelligent and cunning as she is, can be quite forgetful sometimes.” He reached into your hairbrush pulling out a single strand of your hair. In an instant, he stretched it far between his two fingers and the hair illuminated as if it were kissed by the sun. Strange walked from his seat to the exit of the quinjet, soon making large motions with the hair and letting it metamorphasize from a small strand into a huge whip. With another whisk of his magic fingers, the whip had turned into a large ring, focusing on some sort of land that Peter could only describe as out of this world.

Strange walked back into the quinjet and sure he looked a little smug when he did, but Peter didn’t care. At least his cockiness was easily justified.

“Is that where she is?” Peter asked swallowing the lump that had somehow formed in his throat.

“Definitely,” Thor started to lean out of his chair when he spoke. “I recognize the kingdom, there is no doubt that the wizard’s magic has located her.”

“Actually, I’m not a wizard more like a supreme sorcerer-”

“Alright then kids, we have our heading, and we can’t keep this portal open forever,” Tony cut the ‘wizard’ off, looking back at his other teammates. “Anyone have a plan?”

---

“Daughter of Odin, you look absolutely stunning!” You looked into the vanity mirror of a large dressing room that had been provided for you for your wedding day. You stared at yourself silently, focusing over the work that had been done to you. A soft shade of pastel blue had been brushed on the lids of your eyes, along with a slick thick black line sharpening its way out of your eyelids. With a light touch of foundation, a nude lipstick, and a form-fitting wedding dress to complete your outfit, you undoubtedly looked like a bride, but in your heart, you felt nothing short of an alien’s prisoner.

“Do I?” You asked slowly standing up from the vanity taking a few steps back to see the entire look. The sweetheart neckline and underlying corset seemed to be conforming your figure in one that made your already beautiful attributes protrude into something foreign to you. A golden necklace adorned your neck covering almost the entirety of your shoulders and collar bones. Your hair wasn’t in its usual style but now was being pinned up in five golden rods, almost as if the sun’s rays were peeking over your head with a lace veil hanging from behind. Everyone else must have imagined that you thought yourself beautiful, but inside you could hardly feel yourself breathing.

There was a sudden knock at the door pulling you out of your grief for a moment only to recognize that someone was here. Your apparent handmaiden rushed to the door, opening it quickly only to bow so low that her entire body nearly touched the ground.

“Tell the daughter of Odin that the ceremony will begin in but a moment,” the gruff voice said. You couldn’t even be bothered to turn your gaze.

“Yes, milord. I will prepare her to walk promptly.” The door slammed again and the smaller alien girl came by your side again. “My lady?”

“What.” You didn’t mean for your voice to come out as cold as it did, but could you really help it? You were miserable. To this poor girl, you must have seemed like the evil queen getting ready to snake her way to the throne. Little did she know, how much you would have preferred to be anywhere but here. Even if it meant being in the wreckage of your homeland, that was, if there was anything left of it.

“Ah… well... it seems that the ceremony will be starting soon milady… your marriage ceremony.”

“So it seems.” You couldn’t even stand to look at your reflection any longer and turned your body towards the door staring at the open entrance.

“Shall we go?” She almost seemed afraid to ask you. Her fear wasn’t misplaced, if you still had fight in you, you could have undoubtedly sent her to her knees with less than a flick of your fingers. Lucky for her, you were extinguished, your passion to fight for Midgard utterly snuffed out. In your eyes, this ceremony was your fight for Midgard, it was the only way to ensure the realm’s safety.

“Tell me honestly,” You turned your icy gaze to her sending shivers down the handmaiden’s spine. “Do I have much of a choice?” Her reaction was almost instant, her head snapped in a lowly bow.

“Forgive me your highness...but we must leave.” She took a moment to grab a bouquet of foreign flowers. They were large and gaudy looking but this seemed to be nothing in comparison to the other problems you had currently.

You could have laughed in pity. “I see. It seems I don’t then. Very well, let us finish this foolishness quickly.”

The girl stood in front of you quickly taking the veil that was tucked away before over your eyes and soon you were walking away, moving towards the chapel’s hall. Your heart seemed to crack a tinge with every step that you took. As the grand chapel doors swung open with a loud creak, thousands of people rose to turn and look at you as the door slowly creaked back close. Your eyes may have been dead and emotionless, but inside you felt like vomiting all over the royal carpeting.

Regardless, you kept walking a choir of nimbans singing sweetly as you made your arrival. An alien orchestra swelled with passionate music. You looked through the veil’s lace to see Percius standing at the end of the aisle, hands folded contempt behind his back and an ever-present charming smile plastered on his face. You wish you could have slapped that stupid smirk clear off of him.

You made your way to the altar and stood opposed to him after the handmaiden lifted the veil off of your face. Your anguish started to mix with agony. Thor and Loki should have been the ones walking you down your wedding aisle, not this stranger. The music slowed and quieted down as the minister lowered his upraised arms signaling the guests to take their seats.

“We are gathered here today in holy matrimony, to bind both the kingdoms and souls of two individuals who are destined to bring our realm to prosperity.” You didn’t even look into your future husband’s eyes as the minister continued.

“Our kingdom has been blessed with a heaven that rains down visions of the future. The sky is our guide, and as evidenced by its brilliant color,” He took a moment to motion to it with one hand. Percius didn’t lie, the sky was absolutely gorgeous. “A bright future must lay ahead for our soon to be king and queen.” The sky looked like some sort of kaleidoscope, colors of orange, pink, red and violet continued to morph in the heavens. Barely a cloud floated past as your eyes glanced at the few planets that seemed to be in close orbit.

“Today is the beginning of a prosperous destiny, the skies deem it so!” He took a moment to look between the two of you. “And it all begins, with this ceremony.” He smiled quietly before continuing the service. “I ask you now to take one another’s hands.”

Percius couldn’t have grabbed your hands sooner. You guessed it was to keep the public from knowing how much you despised him. “You look absolutely ravishing, my love,” He whispered softly as you finally looked into his eyes.

“To you perhaps.” You replied your expression not faltering from its emotionless state. He only smiled in return, but you could see the toxicity in his smile seem to leak out of him, almost like an overflowing dam.

“As the heavens as our witness, as well as the entirety of our kingdom’s people, the time has come to bind these two lover’s hearts as one.” You felt your heart start to beat out of your body, and your chest began to rise and fall as if you had been running for miles on end. Oh god, it was happening, you were about to be wed to this monster.

“I only ask that if any parties deem this matrimony unfit to continue to speak now or forever hold your peace.” To anyone else, it might have looked like your eyes were leaking tears of joy. But you knew the truth, they were tears of sorrow.

“Shall anyone present evidence to ensure that this holy union cease to take place?”

There was a huge slam and the pair of doors that you had walked down only minutes before were now skidding across the floor as if they’d been flicked by a giant.

“Yeah, I’ve got a couple of words!”

Your heart dropped and your head snapped to the entrance to see Peter standing at the end of the aisle chest heaving heavily as your brothers, Tony Stark and Doctor Strange stood behind him.

“We’re here to take you home princess, away from this Strato-shithead!”

“Again with the cursing?! Kid, we need to have a serious talk when we get home about your language-”

“Peter!!!” You shrieked his name with absolute joy. For the first time during this entire ceremony you had finally showed a trace of joy, and it looked beautiful on you.

You picked up the front of your dress gearing yourself to rush forward to Peter so that you’d never have to let go of him again, but you felt someone grab onto your forearm digging nails into your skin.

“You will be going nowhere with my bride.”

You saw Loki’s face transform into something absolutely ugly, seething with rage you had only seen when he had been taken back to Asgard as a prisoner. “You’ll wish you never laid a hand on my sister, whence I slice that wrist from her arm!”

Thor said nothing snide in return, he only rushed forward along with the rest of the Avengers hollering with a bloody rage, hands, and arms crackling with electricity.

You turned back to Percius, seemingly having switched expressions; yours full of charm and spite, his grey and full of fear.

“You will regret ever laying your eyes on me.” You took the hand that was free and opened it quickly your dagger materializing in your hand. You swiped furiously with a scream causing the entire crowd to shriek in fear as Percius’s hand dropped from your arm onto the floor.

“YOU WENCH!!” He bellowed his other hand flying to his wounded arm as he dropped to a knee.

You started running again as the chapel erupted in a panic, soldiers suddenly leaving their posts to run after you and the Avengers. “Peter!!!” You cried again.

He called out your name while thwipping one web from each hand on a pew practically slingshotting himself into your open arms, hugging you so tight you thought he might have broken your spine all together. You didn’t care if he broke your spine or any other bones. As long as he held you in his arms, nothing could harm you. No injury or ailment could possibly compare to the pain that you felt when you thought you had lost him forever. Now, you were absolutely sure without a doubt, he was your one true love, no prince of a foreign realm could ever compare to him.

“I love you.” You whispered quickly your eyes scanning him with fear, joy, and affection all at once. You felt like your heart was spilling.

You rolled his mask above his nose and kissed him, slamming your mouth on him crying while you did. You held his face in your hands fearing that if you let go for even a moment he would disappear from you altogether. You parted from him, breathing heavily as you touched your forehead to his. He opened his mouth to confess to you, but not before Thor’s voice could be heard echoing throughout the chapel not giving him a moment to register what had even happened.

“Get her out of here spiderling!” Thor shouted as he barrelled into a group of guards thunder cracking on impact.

“Got it!” Peter grabbed your legs in one of your arms and supported your back in the other pressing you close to his chest. “Can you hold on princess?”

You threw the veil and pins from out of your hair and let it flow out against your neck. You shook it from its forced neatness and your crown formed on your head instantly as you reclaimed your identity. You were no Nimban Queen, you were Odin’s daughter, princess of Asgard and sister to the Gods of mischief and thunder.

You didn’t even bother trying to wipe away your tears. “Believe me, I will never let go of you again.” Your arms wrapped around his neck, and he started to use one hand to support you creating a web over the arch of the now busted doorway. Soon, you were in the air flying with him wind brushing through your hair as you moved through the castle. Peter created webs in a fluid motion, not stopping for a minute until you were out of the castle and back on your feet running towards the poorly parked quinjet that sat on top of what you could only guess was the royal gardens.

“As soon as I let the team know, Doctor Strange is gonna like portal us out of here and we can get back to Earth!”

“I’d like to see you try!!” You turned around to see Percius standing weakly holding a sword in his one hand, the other still dripping blood from where you amputated it. He had a crazed look in his eye and his once charming smile now looked demonic stretching from ear to ear as he fought back laughter.

“Now, I care not of our marriage,” He shouted walking forward. “The only ring I’d like to see you in my dear is one around your neck hanging from a six meter high gallow!!”

You grabbed your two daggers at your side. “Not that I care of what happens with you, but this could have been avoided Percius,” You snarled tossing them in the air and catching them again. “Had it not been for your blinding ego, you could have gotten married to someone else with your dignity and your hand still intact!”

“SILENCE!!!”

You both ran towards one another quickly but before you could collide you leaped into the air flipping over Percius to the ground behind him. “PETER!” You shouted quickly. Peter knew instantly what to do almost as if your thoughts were synchronized and sprayed him in web causing him to fall off balance face forward into the ground. You knelt behind him pressing a knee into his back causing him to scream in agony.

“I will show you mercy Percius if you allow me to.”

“Never,” he spat a glob of spit onto the floor as he continued to thrash and scream. “I will never allow a witch like you show me mercy,”

“You are blinded by your own foolishness again.” You hissed into his ear. “If you relinquish your chase of me you will still be able to rule your country, your people, your home.” You took your dagger pressing it into his back. “Don’t make me take all that you have away from you as you did me.” He said nothing only breathed heavily as you continued to restrain him.

“Princess, we’ve gotta go,” Peter said cautiously.

“...You will leave this place.” Percius said finally. “And never return.”

“That’s all I needed to hear,’ You grabbed him by the web roped that restrained him and lifted him by it placing him next to the nearest wall. Peter came beside you and webbed him to his castle before taking your hand looking into your eyes seemingly to start to pick up from when you had kissed him.

“I don’t understand…” Percius croaked. “What does this Midgardian have that I don’t possess… why do you love him and not I?”

You smiled taking your hand, brushing it against Peter’s cheek. You didn’t even grace Percius with an answer, you only started making your way back to the quinjet in a quick jog while Peter informed the rest of the Avengers that they had gotten to the ship safely and were ready to leave.

After sitting in the jet, the rest of the Avengers arrived via Stranges portal and you found yourself together again. You rushed towards your brothers and hugged them tightly.

“Thank the Nords you have returned to us….” Loki whispered into your hair. You nodded softly in their arms.

“Let’s go home…”

---

You returned to the compound, all in one piece and all much happier than when you had last left it. The rest of the team had gathered to discuss what needed to be done in order to restore the poor town that you all had helped destroyed thanks to Percius’ army, leaving you and Peter alone to talk. You stood outside on the balcony of your room with Peter overlooking the forest greenery of Midgard, breathing in the pine and relishing in it.

“So I heard you were the calm headed hero in the midst of chaos,” You said quietly your eyes glancing to his from the side.

“I was pretty confident I was going to get an Asgardian ass-whopping when I did but yeah,” he smiled at you. “If it was for you, I wouldn’t really care,”

“How heroic,” You beamed at him. You turned yourself to him fully and cupped his face in one hand. “You really are my knight in shining armor,”

Peter blushed a bright cherry red and placed one of his hands over yours leaning in closer to you. “I know I’m not some foreign prince who’s swimming in money but...for you…I’d cross an ocean, I’d give up my spidey suit, I’d… I’d even go to another flash party.”

You couldn’t help but snort, your eyes squinting as you smiled. “I know you would, I’d do the same for you, Peter.”

He leaned even closer. “I’d even…ask your two terrifying god brothers if I could date you and risk a knife to the leg and a thunderbolt to the chest…” He whispered suppressing a laugh. “You want to know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I love you…” He gave you a quick peck on your lips before pulling back and gazing into your eyes. “You do know that...right?”

You threw your arms around him kissing him quicker than he had standing on your toes to reach him. You pulled back breathless. “I do Peter…” You brushed his brown locks behind his ear.

“I do.

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

“Crown Fell” Tag

@itsyaboi-tom @marshmellowhat1 @deanilostmyshoe-blog @plethoraofpuppies @southsidejournal @sugakookiessss @einhcrjar @alienadvocate @alt-wildflower @im-the-nerdiest-of-them-a11 @person-without-a-life @vxidnik@vineisdeadiwishiwas @nikkalick @lilspooderboyo @kindflyer @42cat1387c @skullsinger @maddie-laufeyson @jellyfishyishy @we-are-band-sexuals @part-time-patronus @queeeenofscots @5sos-wdw @mbsgr @stevieboyharrington @thanosismybitxh @americasmarauders @royalestrellas @queeneliza108 @bluegirlusa1@cartwheelandfaceplant @skullsinger @kiera-hastings @cearuleusluna @idiotsinthegalaxy @spaceandstars @purplekitten30 @purpleshowers @supersoldier-of-asgard @starks-girl @abbytheghostcat @jerricainthebox @softiespidey @awkwardnesshabitat @letalexaplaydespacito @i-am-a-fandom-slut @xcyber-queenx @potterheadbbc @capttiger @zeldagirl332 @justagirlthatreads @caitlinf653 @futzingclint @fxckingfat @silverfountain @thehyenanerd @ale-the-jedi @getlostinthedark @djjffkd @xcyber-queenx @mellilla-rose @thatcrazybookwormgeek @eminem-owns-my-asshole @witchy-theatre @marvel-is-a-mood @suicidal-marshmallow @seasidecrowbar @starynight-love @a-hardcore-romantic @verymuchclosetedfangirl

Permanent Tag:

@memyselfandmaddox @fangirlftshipper @two-eleven-thirty-four @the-fifth-marauder-paws @shieldgirl95 @lostnliterature @lupe-55 @drinkingteandfangirling @sighspidey @laurfangirl424 @iwouldtakeascootertotheankle @sharingfanfictionandart @shutupyoumewlingquim @until2am @ellaisbutteredtoast @flaminghottaquito @american-cactus @spideypoolltrash @embrace-themagic @wantyoubackpeter@thumper-darling @multi-parker @spideys-jj @thedaughterofdawn@iickerr @starktower-is-my-home @lilcook2258 @mxrvel-imxginesblog @spodermanpete @goldenkillmonger @youtubehelpsmesurvive @strangenerdsstuff @twerkinglucifer @mylovefortomholland @thefallenbibliophilequote @ms-marveleous @lemonusa @elsasshole @theprinceoftheundead @oddlymurderousplant @futzingclint @imarockstar45 @decaffeinatedgiantbakerymuffin @ivyohmy @yafriendlyfangirl @thisismysecrethappyplace @bitchstolemynutellaus @dorcasmeadowslupin

Discount Avengers Tag:

@magic-marvel @lokis-sunflower-anna @holland-haven @celestialparker @highlady-ofthe-summercourt @who-the-buck-is-stucky @e-ms-world @hedwigthelegend @lucky-charms-writes @thatonefangurly @signed-potato @galaxy-parker @laurfangirl424

#peter parker #spiderman #peter parker fic #peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #peter parker x you #spiderman imagine #spiderman x reader #spiderman fanfiction #avengers fandom #avengers fanfiction #avengers x reader #marvel x reader #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfics #minnie marvel makes a fic

184 notes · View notes

alonely-dreamer · 5 years

Text

Dangerous Creatures | Chapter 16: The Ghosts of the Past

Summary: Mackenzie Alemaund is an unlucky 18 year old teenager whose life changes drastically after she gets kidnapped by two vampires and learns, in the same day, that she is not human.

Pairing: Elijah x OC

Words: 5142

A/N: Please, note that I am French so there might be some mistakes here and there, besides I couldn’t have it edited! I hope you’ll like it!

PS: I had to rewrite this chapter as well as chapter 17 because they disappeared from my laptop. I’m afraid it’s not as good as the first version but... I hope you can still enjoy it!

Masterlist

New Series: The Valuable Sun

Mackenzie should be freezing standing there in the cold dark night, but she was too hot with anger to notice. She was disappointed in Katherine and she was disappointed in herself for not only being surprised but also for not seeing it coming.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me!” she told Katherine.

“Has she been yapping like that all summer?” Damon asked, annoyed. “Why isn’t she dead yet?”

Mackenzie shot a dark look at the vampire who raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. But Mackenzie was beyond caring, if Damon wanted to kill her, he’d be the one getting hurt. Here was that fire Katherine had tricked Mackenzie into awaking. She almost regretted it.

The two vampires were standing next to each other, leaning back against a table of the resting area where they had stopped for a break after having driven for hours. They had their arms crossed over their chests and annoyed looks on their faces like children getting scolded.

“I get it, you’re mad,” Katherine sighed. “It’s no big deal.”

“No b-,“ Mackenzie threw her hands in the air, “you kidnapped Jeremy!” she yelled, pointing at the youngest Gilbert who was sitting on a picnic table behind her. He hadn’t said a thing ever since Katherine had let him out of the trunk. At that moment he was more scared of Mackenzie than he was of the two vampires that had taken him against his will.

“We need him,” Katherine tried to justify her actions.

“So? You ask him! It goes like this: ‘hey Jeremy, help us, please.’”

“’Please’?” Damon repeated with a frown as if he had never heard the word before.

“He wouldn’t have come with us,” Katherine said. “He’d have said no.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Um…” Jeremy cleared his throat. “To be fair I would have said no.”

Mackenzie put a hand on her hip and gave him a surprised look which made him look away.

“I liked you better when you were afraid of me,” Damon said. Mackenzie scoffed. Of course he did. “You’re a bad influence,” he told Katherine.

“I know. She has a conscience,” Katherine said like it was a bad thing. “It’s probably why Elijah liked her so much.”

Mackenzie relaxed when she heard Elijah’s name. She closed her eyes and took a breath. “So why do we need Jeremy anyway?”

“Finally asking the right questions,” Katherine said as she sat on the table she was leaning against. “I had a friend, Pearl. Damon you remember Pearl?”

“Vividly.” His tone told Mackenzie that she might have been Katherine’s friend, but she hadn’t been his.

“Centuries ago, she told me about a vampire who knew how to kill Klaus. Then she wouldn’t tell me any more.”

“Why not?”

“Because it was her leverage. She knew it was valuable information. And she wouldn’t share it with me.”

“Well, this is all great,” Damon nodded, “but she’s dead!”

“Which is why I never brought it up. She only ever told one other person.”

“Who?”

“Her daughter. Anna.”

“Also dead.”

“Which brings us right back around to…”

“To me,” Jeremy cut her off. “Back around to me.”

“Why?” Mackenzie frowned, confused.

“While I was…,” she paused, looking for the right word, “retrieving… the necklace from Bonnie, she said something interesting. She said Jeremy had been seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend, Anna.”

“You can see ghosts?” Maybe Mackenzie shouldn’t be surprised that ghosts exited. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised that some people could see them. But she was. She thought nothing could surprise her anymore, but she might soon learn that that would never be true.

“When I died…”

“You died?” Mackenzie cut him off, Jeremy gave her a reprimanding look for interrupting him. ”Sorry...”

“When Bonnie brought me back…” he shook his head, not sure how to say it, “I can see ghosts now,” he shrugged.

“Like… any ghosts?” Mackenzie asked. “Are there ghosts here right now?” she turned to look around.

“No, it doesn’t work that way. I need to want to see someone who also wants to see me.”

“Then want to see Anna,” Damon said.

“This isn’t gonna work.”

“Focus,” the vampire instructed him.

Jeremy sighed. He didn’t have much choice. He knew what happened when vampires didn’t get what they wanted. He closed his eyes and focused.

A couple of minutes passed and both vampires were getting impatient. Mackenzie was getting cold.

“It’s okay to help, they’re looking for a way to stop Klaus,” Jeremy suddenly said at someone behind him.

“What’s she saying?” Damon asked.

“She doesn’t want to help you.”

Mackenzie nodded. Of course she didn’t want to help. That didn’t surprise her.

Katherine got off the table and went back to leaning against it near Damon.

“My advice?”

“Hmm?”

“If you wanna make an omelet, you have to break a few legs,” she whispered so low neither Mackenzie nor Jeremy heard her.

Damon sighed. “Jeremy,” he said as he made his way to him, “I just want you to know, it’s nothing personal.” The vampire seized the teenager by the hair and knocked his head on the picnic table he was sitting at.

“What the hell?!” Jeremy shouted in pain.

“What are you doing?” Mackenzie tried to stop him, but Katherine gestured her to let it go.

Mackenzie gave her a disappointed look to which the vampire rolled her eyes. She was about to use her powers on the eldest Salvatore when Jeremy shouted: “Mikael!” Mackenzie froze when she heard the name.

“Mikael?” Katherine repeated, walking towards them. “Is that his name?”

“Who’s Mikael?” Damon asked.

“He’s a vampire and a hunter, and you guys would be idiots to wake him,” Jeremy answered. “What do you mean ‘wake him’?” he then asked his ghost girlfriend.

Mackenzie didn’t know what to do. Should she tell them what she knew? It would help. Though, Anna/Jeremy was right. They would be idiots to wake him.

“Is that my phone?” Damon then asked Katherine. “Is that my phone that keeps ringing?”

Mackenzie guessed he was hearing his phone vibrating in Katherine’s pocket because she couldn’t hear a thing.

“Maybe…” Katherine shrugged.

“Give me my phone, Katherine.”

“What? Is it missing Elena hour already?”

“Katherine. Phone. Now.”

The vampire sighed but obliged.

“Bonnie’s been texting me,” Damon said, worried by the amount of texts and missed calls.

“What is it?” Jeremy asked.

“It’s Klaus. I gotta go. Stay with her so Anna can guide you,” he told Jeremy as he gave him his car keys before he disappeared.

“Klaus is in Mystic Falls?” Mackenzie asked. “Why?”

“No idea,” Katherine said. “Let’s go.”

“Katherine…”

“What?”

“I… I know who Mikael is.”

The vampire raised her eyebrows. “You do?”

“Elijah told me about him. He’s… Mikael is his father.”

***

Of course Klaus would have daddy issues. Katherine wasn’t fazed by the news, though she did find it satisfying to think that Klaus, who had killed her father, would be killed by his own.

They drove all night. The sun had already been up for a couple of hours when they reached the cemetery in Charlottesville, where Anna had told Jeremy Mikael was resting. They found him inside a coffin in a mausoleum, enchained and desiccated.

“Any of you volunteer to wake him up?”

Mackenzie and Jeremy gave the vampire a look which made her roll her eyes.

“Relax. I’m kidding.”

“How are you going to wake him up anyway?” Mackenzie asked.

“That’s for me to know and for you not to worry about. You can go now. This isn’t gonna be any fun.”

Jeremy didn’t need to be told twice. He turned around and starting walking away but stopped when Mackenzie didn’t follow him.

“I… I have nowhere to go,” she told them.

“Get yourself a hotel room,” Katherine shrugged.

“That’s fine,” Jeremy said. “We’ve got a room at home. I’m sure Elena wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh no. I don’t want to…”

“It’s fine, Mackenzie. Come on. I just want to go home.”

The elemental gave a look to Katherine who waved her goodbye.

“Thank you,” she gave a small smile to Jeremy who smiled back.

They walked back to the car in silence. The drive back to Mystic Falls would be long and they wouldn’t arrive before noon. Mackenzie was already tired of it.

“How’s your head?”

“It’s fine,” Jeremy sighed, bringing a hand to his bloody hair. “So… you’re friends with Katherine now?”

“Yeah…” she said, ashamed that her friend kidnapped him. Feeling responsible somehow, like it was her fault. “Sorry she kidnapped you. I didn’t know you were in the trunk.”

“How did you two become friends?” he ignored her apology, like he didn’t care about being used, like he was used to this sort of situation. Like nothing surprised him anymore.

“I don’t know… It kind of happen,” she shrugged. “When Klaus left Mystic Falls, we followed him. We’ve been together ever since.”

“We thought you were dead. We thought Klaus killed you.”

“I’m sorry… I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t know we cared? Elena felt guilty for your death.”

“No… I didn’t know you thought I was dead. Katherine went to see Damon before we left. Elena was there. I thought she told them I was with her.”

“Well… she didn’t.”

Mackenzie felt bad now. In truth, she didn’t know they cared. It surprised her to hear Elena had felt bad for her. Though maybe it shouldn’t. She had just forgotten what it was like to have people care for her.

***

A mom. Literally. That’s how she felt, that’s how it felt like to live in the Gilbert house. Jeremy was right, Elena didn’t mind Mackenzie living with them, in fact, she welcomed it. Mackenzie figured the doppelganger wouldn’t feel guilty anymore if she knew she was safe at her house. Mackenzie felt weird to be staying in their dead parents’ room. She felt even weirder when she realized that it had also been Jenna’s room, and that it was the reason why Alaric was sleeping on the couch and not there.

As the only adult in the house, Mackenzie figured Alaric would be the more responsible one. While not being totally reckless, the history professor still drank bottles of whisky passed midnight and woke up hangover almost every morning. She didn’t know if he usually cleaned up after himself, but she did it anyway. It reminded her of when she was living with Robert, who usually drank his way to sleep at least twice a week. But at least now she didn’t have to fear for her safety. Now she lived with good people who had been through hell and back, and she didn’t blame the professor for how much he drank at night.

To thank them for letting her live with them, Mackenzie decided to become their housekeeper. She cleaned, she cooked, she took care of everything; their laundry, their grocery, everything. While Jeremy had no problem with that at all, Elena had told her several times it wasn’t necessary, and Alaric had just told her she was good at it. Well, she had practice.

Katherine was still in Charlottesville when Elena and Jeremy went back to school. Neither of them seemed excited for their first day. Maybe it was because Klaus had compelled Stefan to turn his humanity off before leaving town after Damon had name dropped Mikael, leaving Rebekah behind too. Poor Damon, Mackenzie had thought when she heard that they had both taken residence in his house. And poor her, she had thought, when they told her they wanted her to help stop Stefan.

That was how she found herself at the bonfire. She almost found it funny that she had never gone as a student but had to go now that she was a dropout. Well, not exactly a dropout. Katherine had compelled the system into giving Mackenzie her diploma but… still. There was some powerful irony in it.

She had one task: distract Rebekah. Mackenzie hated it. Not because she was scared of her, but because all the moments she had had with her had been forced friendship. She didn’t like lying. She didn’t like being fake. Rebekah was Elijah’s sister, she didn’t want to trick her or use her. She wanted to get to know her better, to ask her about Elijah, even maybe about Klaus. She wanted to be nice because she needed someone to be nice to her.

She found the original vampire sitting on a log of wood, in front of a fire, alone. She was eating marshmallows. Or rather, burning marshmallows. Mackenzie smiled.

“You’re doing it wrong.”

The blonde looked up and raised an eyebrow when she saw Mackenzie.

“Look who it is,” Rebekah said, not really happy to see her. “I was wondering when I’d see you again. Where did you run off to?”

“Here,” Mackenzie told her as she sat next to her, surprising her.

“Stefan never said how he lost you.”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“Well, it didn’t help his case, especially when he started talking about Mikael.”

“Stefan knows about your father?”

Rebekah snapped her head towards the elemental. “How do you know about my father?”

“Elijah told me about him.”

“Ah,” Rebekah nodded. “Right. Elijah.”

“Give me that,” she said as she took the stick of wood from the blonde’s hand. She removed the burned candy at the end of it and threw it on the ground, then replaced it with a new one.

“I didn’t see you at school today.”

“I graduated.” Almost.

“Too bad, I could use a friend.”

“I could always help you with your homework,” she joked.

“Do I look like I do homework?”

Mackenzie chuckled. “I will never understand why vampires want to spend their immortality going to high school.”

“Well I never went to high school,” Rebekah explained, “this is a new experience for me.”

“Well. Good luck with that.”

“So, how did you meet my brother? Nik never said.”

“Uh,” Mackenzie laughed. She hadn’t thought about that day in a while. It seemed like forever ago. “Around six months ago, I… was kidnapped by two vampires. They wanted to deliver Elena to Elijah, to earn their freedom, and… I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Let me guess, Elijah killed them both.”

“He killed one of them. The other died of a werewolf bite.”

“Nasty,” Rebekah grimaced. “What I don’t understand is how you became friends. My brother doesn’t usually get attach to humans.”

“Well…” she cleared her throat. “For one, I’m not human. And… well, he wanted me to help him.”

“Help him do what?” the vampire asked as she took the stick from Mackenzie and ate the hot marshmallow. “Mmh, good.”

“Kill Klaus.”

“You tried to kill Nik?”

“No,” Mackenzie shook her head. “I said yes, at first, because I wanted to help Elena. But then… well, I changed my mind. Because… I don’t like killing people.”

“How human of you.”

Mackenzie chuckled. “Sorry?”

“Oh, don’t apologize. That’s probably the reason why my brother liked you.”

“You don’t know if he liked me.”

“Would you have gone all this way for someone who doesn’t like you?”

“I guess not.” She hoped not.

“You know, I don’t want to be cruel but… you’ll probably never see him again. Nik won’t undagger him any time soon.”

Mackenzie’s heart turned in her chest. “And you? Can’t you undagger him?”

“So Nik can put that dagger in my chest instead?” she scoffed. “No. I know better than to make my brother angry.”

“Surely there’s a way for you to help your siblings.”

“Nik is the only one of us who can’t be daggered. Elijah knew that. That’s why he wanted to kill him.”

“He wanted to kill him because he thought Klaus had dropped your bodies in the sea.”

“He would never!” Rebekah snapped, making Mackenzie jump. She sighed. “Though I can’t blame Elijah for wanting to kill Nik. Especially to avenge us.”

“Elijah was ready to kill him. You’re not even mad he put you in a box for 90 years.”

Rebekah chuckled. “You know nothing of my relationship with my brother. I could run from him and it’ll end up exactly the same. With me, back in that box. I love my brother. He’s the only person I have left. He’s not perfect, he has a temper. But then again, so do I. What am I supposed to do?”

Mackenzie couldn’t understand. After all, she didn’t have anyone left. That feeling of loyalty, she didn’t know it. Or maybe, she did.

“Where is Klaus, anyway?”

“No idea. He left me here without even saying goodbye.”

“Does he do that often?”

“No, actually. He never does. He’s probably off making new hybrids.”

Right. He drained Elena of her blood before he disappeared. That won’t lead to anything good.

Someone behind them cleared his throat, startling the elemental.

“Time to go,” Damon gave her a fake smile. It was the signal. It meant Mackenzie’s job was done.

“Walk away, Damon,” Rebekah warned.

“I’m sorry,” Mackenzie said as she stood up. “He’s my ride.”

The vampire rolled her eyes and sighed. “Great. This is boring, anyway,” she said, throwing the stick on the ground before she walked away.

“What did you do?” he grimaced.

“Me? Nothing. It was going well until you interrupted.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, would you rather spend the night with Barbie Klaus?”

Mackenzie rolled her eyes. “Just… drive me back to Elena’s, please.”

“I liked you better when…”

“I was afraid of you, yes, I know.”

***

Illumination Day. Mackenzie would never understand where Elena and her friends found the energy to keep up with their normal life. She would never understand where they found the courage to leave their house. Caroline and Bonnie were helping hanging lanterns in the town square and Jeremy, Elena and Alaric were having lunch at the Grill. Leaving Mackenzie alone. She preferred it if she had to be honest. She wasn’t brave enough to face crazy Stefan, whom they hadn’t been able to stop last night. Or to run into Rebekah, who might have figured out that Mackenzie had been a distraction. She would have to make up for that one day, she thought. She probably will, that she wanted to or not. The thought made her shiver.

After finishing up in the kitchen, Mackenzie decided to take a shower. She enjoyed having a bathroom of her own again, Elena’s parents’ room had its own bathtub. Mackenzie liked taking baths, now more than ever since it was the perfect opportunity to use her water magic. Her plans changed, however, when she saw someone was standing in her bedroom.

She jumped, startled by the sudden apparition. She hadn’t heard anyone come in. It was a woman in a hospital gown, unhealthily skinny, with very pale skin. Her bald head was covered with a dark red silk scarf. She had her back turned on Mackenzie and was looking out the window. Mackenzie thought the scarf looked familiar, but it was the slippers she recognized first. They were her mother’s favorite. They were an old wretched pair of slippers that were good for the trash, but her mother had always refused to throw them away. She didn’t know if it was because of the soft lime color, or if they were just that comfortable, but she never took them off. She died in those slippers.

Mackenzie felt like time had stopped, like her heart had stopped. Even the world had stopped turning. She felt like someone was playing a cruel joke on her or maybe she was simply going crazy. The woman turned around and Mackenzie gasped when she saw her mother’s face.

She looked exactly like she had been on the day she died. Except for the bright smile on her face. Aella hadn’t smiled much during her final days. The pain was just too much.

“Hello, Mackenzie,” she said softly, as to not scare her.

Mackenzie was shaking. A tear fell down her cheek. Then another. And another.

“Mom?” she whispered with a trembling voice. She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t believe it.

Aella smiled again, then slowly made her way to her daughter. Mackenzie didn’t move, too scared that if she did, her mother would disappear. Aella slowly brought her hands to her daughter’s face and Mackenzie gasped again at the touch.

“Mom!” she cried as she threw herself at her.

“Oh, Mackenzie. I am so sorry.” She stroked her daughter’s hair as she cried into her shoulder. “We don’t have much time. I don’t know when the door will close.”

Mackenzie sniffed as she backed away. “What do you mean? How… How are you here?”

“A door has opened. But it won’t be opened for long. We have a lot to talk about, Mackenzie. I have so much to apologize for.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m so sorry about Robert. I didn’t know he would be like this.”

Mackenzie shook the thought away. “It’s not your fault.” Robert was in the past. He was gone. He was done. She didn’t want to talk about him now that her mother was here. There was a lot of things she wanted to talk about, but not this, not him.

“I am so proud of you, Mackenzie. And I am so sorry I wasn’t here to guide you. You shouldn’t have heard the truth from the mouth of witches.”

“You… you put a spell on me.”

“I did,” she gave her a sad smile, “I had to. I had to protect you. But seeing you with those witches… with that vampire… Oh, Mackenzie. It was my worst nightmare coming true.”

That vampire. Elijah. Mackenzie shook her head. “They were nice to me.”

“Indeed. But they weren’t safe for you.”

“Are you… were you like me? An ultimate?”

Aella laughed. “Oh no. Nature and wind were my gifts. You get your power from you father’s side.”

“Where is my father?”

“I’m not sure. He would have been so proud of you. To have an ultimate as a daughter? You would have been his biggest pride. Just like you were mine.”

“But… if you were happy about it…”

“Why hide it from you?”

Mackenzie nodded.

“When I got pregnant, it quickly became clear you were powerful. More powerful than me, than your father. I could feel it. I had to be smart. So, I went to the Holy Forest. I think you’ve heard about it.”

“Yes… I… I remember you telling me stories about it. You called it the Enchanted Forest.”

“Well,” she laughed. “You were a child. I had to adapt.”

“What happened there? Why didn’t we stay there if it was so dangerous out here?”

“It’s a long story. But when I got there, your great-great-great-...” she paused, “your ancestor, welcomed me. I hadn’t seen him in decades. He hadn’t changed one bit. His name is Cornelius Fay. He’d seen ultimates before, he knows all about them, and I thought he’d know if I was pregnant with one. He had his suspicions, but he had no way of knowing for sure. It was extremely important to know what you were before you were born. So, he asked Margo, the Queen of the Forest, to call her friends, Pandora and Ambrosia.”

“Wait… he… he knows the Queen?”

Aella laughed. “Everyone at the Forest knows Margo. She’s very proactive. And the Forest isn’t that big. Besides, she had interests in knowing what you were too. Ultimates are rare but they are good allies. When they are on your side.”

“So… you knew her too?”

“I did. She’s the daughter of the King Alfonso V of Aragon and of one of his mistresses who was a witch. Margo is a very powerful witch herself. And an ally. She’s helped many of us escape death.”

“Who are Pandora and Ambrosia?”

“Pandora and Ambrosia are sisters. They’re very old, maybe the oldest people on earth. They’re very powerful witches, way more powerful than Margo. They don’t live in the Forest, nobody knows where they are, where they go, but when you call them, they answer.”

“What did they say about me?”

“Well, they confirmed you were an ultimate.”

“And that was bad news.”

Aella smiled sadly. “No, Mackenzie. It was dangerous news. People couldn’t know about it, they’d try to kill me, they’d try to kill you. After they told me what you were, they left again, they never stayed around long. So Margo called other friends of hers, Heidi and Alexander. They were tasked to protect me.”

“I thought the Forest was a safe place.”

“You can never be too careful. Especially you, Mackenzie. Your… grandfather, Cornelius, and Alexander created a spell to protect you. To keep you safe from everyone and everything.”

“Cornelius is a witch?”

“Oh no. He’s an elemental of nature, like me. He’s a Fay. Alexander is…. Something else. A witch, of some sort.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll tell you later, if I have time. It’s not important right now. The day you were born, Cornelius, Alexander, Heidi and I cast the spell on you. The spell required an elemental and a witch to block both the elemental and witch part of you. We were successful. I left the following week.”

“Why?”

“I wanted you to have a normal life. If we had stayed there, everybody would have known who you were, what you were. Word had gotten around that an ultimate had been born. I had to leave.”

“And you never told me any of it…”

“No, Mackenzie. I’m sorry. I thought… I thought we’d have more time.”

“Who… who would come after me? If they knew.”

“Everyone. Vampires, witches… Mostly witches. They hate our kind. They’re servants of nature, it controls them, but us, especially us Fays, we control nature. They’re jealous,” Aella explained. “Mackenzie. You are one of the most powerful creatures on this planet. But if the world knew about it, the world would come after you. And no matter how strong you are, you will never be strong enough to fight the entire world.”

“That’s why you cast that spell.”

“Yes. And I tried to undo it. When you were taken by those vampires, I tried to undo the spell, to give you the tools you’d need to defend yourself.”

“That’s why… that’s why my powers started to manifest themselves.”

“Yes. That’s why it was so easy for that witch to free you from it. I was glad to see you practice this summer. You have to gain control of your powers. You can’t let your emotions control them.”

“Like fire. I need to practice my fire.”

Aella nodded. “Yes. Fire is one of the most powerful elements out of the primary ones. You have to control it, or it will consume you.”

“What about the element of darkness? What is it?”

Aella sighed. She went to sit on the bed, Mackenzie followed her. “There are such creatures as siphons. They are born of witches, but they are considered abominations because in order to use magic they need to steal it from someone, or something. They are so rare, very few people know of their existence.”

“How do you know about them?”

“Well. Alexander used to be one.”

“He…”

“Yes. But he was turned into a vampire 500 years ago. When witches become vampires, they lose their magic because a vampire is an abomination of nature and a witch is a servant of nature. You can either be one or the other, never both. But Alex, being a siphon, became both. He feeds on the magic that made him a vampire, that keeps him alive, and uses it. He’s a very powerful creature.”

“So… what is he called?” she asked, wondering if Elijah knew about such creatures.

“They’re called heretics. But you mustn’t tell anyone, Mackenzie. Nobody knows of their existence and they like it that way.”

“I… I won’t tell anyone. But… what does that have to do with me?”

“Well, that is the element of darkness. You can steal someone else’s magic. You could, for example, steal the magic that is keeping Klaus alive, and kill him.”

Mackenzie’s heart skipped a beat. “I can kill Klaus?”

“Yes. Your vampire friend knew that. That’s why he asked you to help him.”

“But… he never said…”

“No. When you told him you didn’t want to kill anyone he happily agreed. He didn’t want to make you do it, because he knew it would be too dangerous. In order to steal someone’s magic you need to get into physical contact with them. It is too dangerous. So if you ever decide to rid the world of Klaus for good… I beg you to be prepared. Because it would either be him or you.”

“Wait,” she remembered something, “when Alaric daggered Elijah that night… I did something, I brought him back.”

“Yes, you did. You gave him your magic to bring him back. I wouldn’t advise it, Mackenzie. If you give too much magic, you could die.”

“That’s why I passed out.”

“Yes.”

“What… what else should I know?”

Mackenzie and her mother talked all afternoon and beyond. They talked about the Forest, about how to get there, about her friends there, about Cornelius and how he managed to keep himself immortal. They talked about her father. Mackenzie didn’t know much about him. Aella had never wanted to talk about what had happened between them. She still didn’t want to say much. She gave her advice on how to use her powers, how to control nature and wind. She asked how she could cover her scent but was disappointed to hear there was no other way other than vampire blood. They talked, until they couldn’t talk anymore.

Midnight was about to strike when her mother stood up from the bed.

“It’s time for me to go, Mackenzie. Your friend Bonnie is closing the door.”

“Mom, wait!”

“I can’t wait. It is out of my control.”

“Wait, wait… What… what is the difference between a mermaid and a siren?”

Aella chuckled. “Don’t you remember the story?” she asked, and Mackenzie shook her head. “The mermaids saved the men. The sirens ate them.”

“I… I don’t understand. Why is it so important for me to know? What does it mean?”

Aella smiled. “It means…” but she didn’t have time to finish as she disappeared into thin air.

“Mom?” Mackenzie called, but received no answer. “Mom?”

Mackenzie cried herself to sleep that night, like she hadn’t done in a while. She didn’t hear Jeremy or Elena come home. Didn’t hear the wind outside her window.

Mackenzie dreamt of her mother’s words. Know that I’ll always be here, Mackenzie. I have never left you, and I never will.

The wind blew strong into the night, making the tree branches dance.

**********

Thank you for reading!

Chapter 17 is already available for early access on my Patreon page! Chapter 18 to 22 are available for instant access! If you’d like to support me here’s my page: patreon.com/alonelydreamer any support is highly appreciated!!

If you can’t, it’s okay! Chapter 17 will be posted on Tumblr next Wednesday!

Have a good week!

Tags: @thepoet1975 @nerdysandwichqueen @catchmeupimgettingoutofhere @raegan-hale @captainam-erika-trash @silver424 @monetfatalia @vaniileiinkeks @valeria-winchester @favimag @colie87@hamiltonmadesomemistakes @s0nh4dorasblog @poemfreak306 @white-chocolate-mocha-fan@thegingerthatwaited @therealwatermelon @dark-night-sky-99@aubri1313 @jardinsecos @gymnastgal1997-blog @thearaviagrace77blog

#the vampire diaries #vampire diaries #the originals #tvd #fanfiction #fanfic #oc #imagine #reader #elijah x reader #elijah x oc #elijah mikaelson #klaus mikaelson #elena gilbert #Bonnie Bonnett #damon salvatore #Stefan Salvatore #lily collins #dangerous creatures

72 notes · View notes

thesinglesjukebox · 4 years

Video

youtube

LADY GAGA - STUPID LOVE

[6.42]

Far from "Shallow" now...

Brad Shoup: Thudding sixteenths and vocal chop straight out of a Todd Edwards remix... it's always great when she visits. [8]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: It must be exhausting to be Lady Gaga. Here's a short list of her accomplishments since 2013's ARTPOP: winning a Grammy for a jazz duets album, winning a Golden Globe for her role in American Horror Story, headlining the Super Bowl, co-hosting arguably the best Met Gala in years, winning an Oscar for A Star is Born, getting a number one Billboard single from the soundtrack, launching a vegan make-up line, and starring in a Las Vegas residency. And yet, the dominant critical narrative has still essentially been: Gaga is absent from pop music. (For comparison, Katy Perry has been a judge on American Idol.) Of course, her self-mythologizing is partially to blame for this, but it's unclear what could have possibly satisfied her critics and die-hard fans outside of re-reinventing music à la 2010. So what's her move given the weight of the world's impossible expectations? To make simple, unpretentious pop music on her own terms. In a recent Billboard interview, she laughed while stating, "I would like to put out music that a big chunk of the world will hear, and it will become a part of their daily lives, and make them happy every single day." My first reaction upon reading this was: yes, we should hold Gaga to a higher standard because she's Gaga, but how can we balance that with the potentially damaging effects for her mental health and sanity? So on "Stupid Love" when she sings, "Now it's time to free me from this chain/I gotta find that peace, is it too late?" I like to hope it's meta-commentary on her rediscovering the joy in her music and being, free of expectation. Gaga tracks are often described as "huge" or "epic", but none has ever so perfectly embodied "fun." I'm definitely excited about how this track sounds -- an ebullient return to her earliest disco pop roots, at a time when radio is dominated by trap -- but "Stupid Love" stands out to me because of her embrace of radical self-love. This is the Gaga that I've always loved -- and she's always been enough. [9]

Leah Isobel: The production filters back an entire decade's worth of Stefani's influence into a three-minute Fruit Gusher burst of tang, but the lyrics are decidedly forward-looking, all declarative statements of "now is the time!" bullshit. In the middle of this past/present/future time-play, as the beat drops out beneath her, she asserts the key line: "all I ever wanted was lahv." If it's a disappointingly shallow retcon for an artist whose initial breadth and ambition was the entire point, the promise of it lingers in my brain. After all, it's not too far from a similar pop megalomaniac realizing that she "traded fame for love without a second thought" about 20 years ago. That rich vein of popstar self-examination writ large is so suited to Gaga's talents as an artist -- a provocateur, fake-deep philosopher, musical theatre nerd, and hook-writing master all at once -- that I have listened to this song five times in a row pretty much every single day since it, uh, appeared on the internet. My paws are reluctantly up, Stef. Don't fuck it up. [7]

Jessica Doyle: Fun, and otherwise unremarkable. If you've been a Gaga fan for a while -- if you're invested in the narrative of this hardworking woman, who has been through downs and ups and downs and then ups again -- I imagine the fun is enhanced by a certain comfort and relief in seeing her have fun; in imagining her feeling strong and secure enough to release a fun song that doesn't have to upend anything. But I am a heartless, acontextual consumer, for whom the marginal cost of listening to something else is zero, and I miss "Bad Romance." [5]

Tobi Tella: For an artist who at her peak overstuffed everything with too many ideas, there's really not much happening here. It's loud and upbeat, sure, but the lyrics are barely the thread of a coherent song, and the production reminds everyone who wants "pure" pop to come back to be careful what they wish for. Maybe that A Star is Born "pop music bad guitar music good" cynicism rubbed off too much? [4]

Katherine St Asaph: Just when I thought Gaga was lost to the land of Real Music™, or worse, flailing attempts to be chill by the least chill performer in pop music (yes, including Taylor Swift), she goes and releases this, 50,000 firecrackers on a Eurovision stage. The thicket of hooks is packed, with Black Midi levels of referential density. The whole thing sounds like "Born This Way," which is to say it sounds like "Express Yourself"; there's a juddering sequencer out of "Do What U Want" (reminds me more of "Weekend" by Class Actress, but which is more likely to be the actual inspiration?) and a touch of, of all things, September's "Cry For You." Gaga fills every crevice of the song with singing, throaty and belty and huge: a relief after years of songs filled only with half-assed #vibes. If it feels frivolous against much of Born This Way and The Fame Monster and some of Artpop, and far less ambitious, it at least pulls her out of the "Shallow" piano muck. [7]

Vikram Joseph: Perhaps a stupid song about making stupid choices is the Lady Gaga lead single we both need and deserve in 2020. The battering-ram synths feel like running down a hill into a gale-force wind; the best thing about "Stupid Love" is that Gaga sounds like she's having a lot of fun, and by extension so are we. [7]

Alex Clifton: "Stupid Love," much like "Born This Way" before it, is ready-made for pride parades, grown from the same mystical lab that gave Lady Gaga her incredible melodic sensibilities. Unlike its predecessor, though, it has more euphoria in it, presumably because it's not making a political point. Gaga's more focused on having fun here, and you can tell. The verses aren't my favourite, but the chorus hits as an overwhelming rush of dopamine, and now I can't stop dancing in my computer chair. Between this and Dua Lipa's album, we're in for a hell of a good time for pop music this spring, and I am extremely excited. [7]

Thomas Inskeep: She was doing this better a decade ago. A lot better. [2]

Joshua Lu: The narrative surrounding "Stupid Love" regards it a return to the Pop Gaga that's been mostly absent since 2013: A revival if you're a fan, a regression if you're not. The issue with this narrative is that "Stupid Love" lacks any key similarities to the Gaga of yesteryear; the only real sonic link is how the bassline brings to mind the since-redacted "Do What U Want" beat. Instead we have something that's somehow not a Kygo song, with vocal chirps that got old last year, serviceable but clichéd hooks (the entire pre-chorus has all the charm of a Taio Cruz album track), remarkably basic lyrics filled with platitudes, and a title that has no bearing on anything in the song -- there's nothing lyrically or aurally stupid about anything here, and Gaga has shown a deep capacity to be stupid in her past pop works. In reality, what we have here isn't a return to anything, but rather the continued flagging of Gaga's desire to develop genuinely off-beat or interesting pop music, whether intentional or not. Gaga's talents as a vocalist elevate the song beyond the usual pop pap, but it's not nearly at the level I once hoped she could remain at. [6]

Alfred Soto: Kudos to Jamieson Cox for catching an obvious forebear: the rattling sequencer recalls 2013's forgotten "Do What U Want," which was all set to do some business until radio programmers remembered R. Kelly had been a menace for years. Amiably confusing lack of affect with simplicity, "Stupid Love" flexes its pop strength with the expectation that fans will admire it. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The synths pack a punch but they never quite get me to where I should be. I wanna feel desperation, exasperation -- that love is worth looking stupid for. All I get is a familiar, quasi-stoic performance that sounds like Gaga's doing some excellent karaoke. [4]

Kayla Beardslee: Sure, it's competent, but Gaga is capable of so much more. Many other blurbs will discuss the song's aggressive datedness and bland lyrics, but what really bothers me is that the two halves of "Stupid Love" -- the dramatic vocals and the unrelenting gallop of the synths -- don't fit together. Gaga is giving her all with those signature "laahv"s, but there's just not enough empty space left for her in the production. Her performance ends up laying flat on top of the track, adding nothing except a sense of laziness from her producers and engineers. [5]

Pedro João Santos: Serviceable Max Martin bopathon scams its way into my brain again -- no matter how direly in need of an incubator this whole structure is. Gaga's weakest lead single feeds you Kygo, threatens to ascend during "All I ever wanted was love", and still can't fight the aura of afterthought. [6]

Jibril Yassin: "Stupid Love" is a giddy rush of EDM-pop fun, but it's the first time experiencing a major Gaga single entirely devoid of surprises. Bracing yourself for a twist that never arrives or a strange turn of vocals rearing its head from nowhere, "Stupid Love" makes up for its unremarkableness with a masterclass in songwriting. What Lady Gaga hasn't forgotten how to do is translate the feeling of having your initial gut feelings completely validated. "Stupid Love" makes its magic in casting the act of love as necessary and dare I say it -- radical. [7]

Jackie Powell: On "Stupid Love" Lady Gaga achieved a corollary. By trying to put her healing process into simple poetry, she also created an accompanying sound that's comparable to an analgesic. The function of the track is to heal and liberate. (Truth be told, Little Monster or not, the song has helped me get out of bed in the morning.) Gaga's latest cut is packaged into a familiar formula, and that's part of the reason why this track serves as a formidable lead single and symbol for the upcoming Chromatica. The equation is one that mirrors the "best of" Stefani Germanotta. What's brilliant about "Stupid Love" is that its visual and lyrical messaging and surrounding sonic arrangement and melody bring what Little Monsters and casual music fans with a Gaga fascination expect. And that's okay. She has told Oprah that her goal now isn't just to shock people but rather to exude authenticity. She stirs elements from all of her pop eras into the most hearty and flavourful version of Gaga soup (and that does include Joanne contrary to popular belief.) Each ingredient works and is soluble. She tossed in the elements of the The Fame that made fans want to Just Dance and sprinkled some catchy Swedish-sounding pop melodies (Max Martin, hello!) and sung onomatopoeia from The Fame Monster, à la the "hey-ah, hey-ahs." A suspenseful build, uniquely potent and soaring vocals are ounces of Born This Way. Don't worry, ARTPOP is doused on this track not only in color, but in sound. There's a reason why that sped up "Do What U Want"-esque bassline works. There's a contrast between her bright vocal performance and the electronic bass' darkness. Joanne comes across in the allegorical concept which once again can be interpreted to reflect the current American experience. Music video director Daniel Askill confirmed that Gaga wanted to portray the "warring tribes as a metaphor for the state of the world today." So, Mother Monster is on a mission to introduce the world to her new brainchild, ever-developing ideologies and honest ways to examine life. "Stupid Love" isn't the end-all but merely the beginning. Paws up and welcome to Chromatica bitches. [8]

Nortey Dowuona: NOPE! WAIT. wait. This is actually a welcome back for... the bass, who is joined by his drumming sister, his synth bros and Lady Gaga, who has come here from the Make A Wish Foundation to take him around New York. They have a wonderful day together, with the synth bros getting their percussive background vocal girlfriend an NYPD hoodie, and the experience convinces Lady Gaga to make bright, happy pop music again! (The bass, in the midst of a happy dance, got hit by her limo and had to go back to the hospital.) [8]

Scott Mildenhall: Between its hyperventilating over-excitement and ever-exciting hyper-sincerity, Gaga seems to have finally created a pop emergency. The false alarm of "Applause" was overstuffed and underpowered, but "Stupid Love" redresses that balance by going harder and clearer, like a newly thawed cut from a cryogenically frozen, course-correcting Artpop Monster edition. Time might seem to have turned in on itself, but no: the greater lyrical directness arrives in a way that feels culminatory. The plainspokenness of that indelible "all I ever wanted was love" makes it almost an epitaph, grounding it in a present in which all experience has been lived, and all realisations are realised. Undeniably, Lady Gaga is not dead, but this is what she knows. [8]

Will Adams: I defended "The Cure" and lamented the immense pressure on Gaga to make every release the Next Big Thing, however even that soured when it turned out to be part of A Star Is Born's ~superficial pop~ world. So where to next, when she's caught between turgid rock balladry and ill-fitting trop-pop? On "Stupid Love," we get the best possible outcome: whizzing past Joanne, making a brief stop at Artpop but ultimately landing on the dazzling excess of Born This Way. Like any good synthpop number, the synths display a wide range of textures: they tunnel, they drill, they poof, they gleam. Gaga is more than willing to match their energy. Noteworthy, though, is that she takes a brief pause only on the pre-chorus's "all I ever wanted was love"; even the way the title scans it almost sounds like she could be singing "I want just to be loved." This is the essence of pop: amidst the big dumb fireworks display, a human message at the core. [7]

#Lady Gaga #pop #music #music review

1 note · View note

linernotesandseasons · 4 years

Text

My 19 Favorite Albums of 2019

2019 is coming to a close. The entire decade is coming to a close. This list has been an increasingly comforting exercise the last few years. I guess this will be the eighth annual version of the linernotesandseasons favorite albums of the year list! Crazy how time passes. So here are the collections of songs that I used to mark my personal time & space this year. The lyrics that I learned by heart & sang out in dark & dirty rock clubs. I also made a spotify playlist with two songs from each album if you’re interested in listening along as you read.

This year most of my writing focuses on when & why I fell in love with a specific album. Sometimes the history is important, building a base or connecting some threads, so when relevant, I have also included my history with when I fell in love with a specific artist. And finally, as has become more important to my music chasing brain in the last few years, why this artist or album is important to music right now. What they’re doing to leave a mark on the world, in whatever small space or way.

So without any further ado, here it is, in no particular order (unless you’re particularly knowledgable or fond of the english alphabet) my 19 (well actually 20 cuz freaking Big Thief put out two!) favorite albums of 2019. It’s been a pleasure.

BETTER OBLIVION COMMUNITY CENTER / Better Oblivion Community Center

Spring 2019 in Denver was cold & breezy, sunny & exciting. I had spun the Phoebe Bridgers/Conor Oberst match-made-in-indie-emo-sad-folk-heaven record once through, but in late March I made a game time (like I bought a day-of ticket off stubhub at 6pm!) decision to drive down from work and see their show at the Gothic on South Broadway. I’d been up since 7am the night (morning?) before, watching opening day baseball live from Japan (on March 20th?!). Ichiro’s final game and I was feeling maybe a little emotionally fragile already. But anyway… Better Oblivion Community Center’s live show (they call them meetings) has all the potential to come off as cheesy or contrived. A recorded voice welcomes you, self-help-cult style, and invites you to “celebrate sound & light” & “travel the well worn pathways,” because “we are one.” A mystical backdrop gives a hint of what you’re in for (I didn’t know what I was in for...) with letters at the top reading “It will end in tears.” The band is brilliant, loose, & fun. They play all the songs. They play “Lua,” “Bad Blood,” & “Easy/Lucky/Free” from the endlessly varied Bright Eyes catalog. They turn Phoebe’s “Funeral” into a punk blast. They cover The Replacements! They wear shades and sing a song from lawn chairs! The show feels effortlessly cool and I feel like I’m part of something special again. Music has a way of doing that.

The record is perfectly equal parts Phoebe & Conor. From the opening lines, where Phoebe takes control with “my telephone it doesn’t have a camera” sounding for all the world like a gloriously mopey “Smoke Signals Vol. 2″ to the way Oberst sings the first lines of ethereal closer “Dominoes” sounding 100% like Cassadaga-era Bright Eyes. If you know & love either, you should know the other now. Phoebe carries a torch from early 2000′s emo with a sad-at-heart, genius songwriting style that emphasizes pinpoint autobiographical lyrics, a cutting, (even humorous at times) wit, and a teenage, feminist, internet, millennial heart. Oberst for his part has kept up a steady output since Bright Eyes, and (at least lyrically) doesn’t seemed to have cheered up much. Better Oblivion Community Center’s self titled debut feels fresh & catchy. While there is definitely an aching sadness in the duo’s songwriting, light hearted moments abound, and the writing often points to getting older, all hard work & growth. There is the bouncing outro to “Sleepwalkin’” where their voices rise in unison singing “Acting insane, playing it safe, I wasn’t sold on that plan anyways. Feeling afraid of making a change.” Or in the bright, rolling verses of “My City” where they go looking for “little moments of purpose.” But the one song I kept going back to; the one I recorded to cassette tape and played on almost every drive home from work at 4am through April & May, is the bittersweet closer “Dominoes.” Ironically, this one is a Taylor Hollingsworth cover (I think that’s him adding the random, spooky voice overs) but Conor takes the lead on vocals, singing a mostly lonely, hopeless tale, until the last verse when Phoebe cuts in. She’s “carpooling to kingdom come, into the wild purgatory.” Encouraging us to “Experience a magic rainbow, all you gotta’ do is follow. & if you’re not feeling ready… There’s always tomorrow.”

“The world will not remember when we’re old & tired / We’ll be blowing on the embers of a little fire…”

BIG THIEF / U.F.O.F. & Two Hands

2019 was the year that I finally finally got really really into Big Thief. A band’s band known for their live show (I still have yet to see them live) their following seems equal parts cult-y and universal. How a band that sounds the way they do, made it almost to the top of the indie-rock world is an exciting & inviting mystery.

This year, for me, the catalyst was “Cattails.” Released at the beginning of April, this song struck me and stuck with me, making its way onto almost every mix I made last Spring, Summer, & Fall (including this one for my Mom!) A real song of the year contender (& my #1 most listened to song of 2019 on spotify!), “Cattails” is a melodic, driving, beautiful tune, that finds singer & front person Adrienne Lenker marking Time (”riding that train in late June”) & Space (”going back home to the great lakes”) with grace & depth. There is a sacredness & mysticism tied up in a lot of Lenker’s writing and she refers to her writing experience with “Cattails” saying…

“It was one of those electric, multicolored waves of connectivity just sweeping through my body. I stayed up late finishing the song and the next morning was stomping around playing it over & over again. We thought why not just record it … & when James and I were playing it felt like a little portal in the fabric had opened and we were just flying. Listening back to it makes me cry sometimes.”

In truth, U.F.O.F. (the last f stands for “friend,” a way of humanizing the foreign) is a gorgeous record. Soft & gentle, full of songs about the constant tussle between things known & unknown. A real headphones-on-an-airplane record. And then, out of nowhere, Big Thief announced that they had a second (!) record on the way in the Fall. A dirt & earth twin for U.F.O.F., a special surprise gift for their burgeoning fan base. They announced Two Hands with the vicious single “Not,” a song very unlike “Cattails.” A brooding, ravenous rock song that made me remember why I love unhinged, well-written, unafraid rock & roll music. Another song of the year contender. If you’ve followed this blog the last few months, my well thought out comments to “Not” were “ohhhhhhhhhhhhh shit” & “oh my holy shit.” to the live version! But it was actually the second track on Two Hands that solidified Big Thief’s greatness for me. “Forgotten Eyes” is sonically similar to “Cattails” and rides the same effortless rhythm, driven by Lenker’s repeating guitar riff and James Krivchenia’s consistently impressive drumming. The riff seems to fall in & out magically, and the writing bookends “Cattails” with lyrics that speak to both a great pain & a great universal truth. While she wanders through homelessness & death, Lenker reflects beautifully on the life cycle we (& our planet, & maybe everything?) are all going through.

“Forgotten dance is the one left at birth / Forgotten plants in the fossils of earth / & they’ve long passed but they are no less the dirt / Of the common soil keeping us dry & warm / The wound has no direction / Everybody needs a home & deserves protection…”

BLACK BELT EAGLE SCOUT / At the Party With My Brown Friends

After finding Black Belt Eagle Scout’s debut album late last year, I soundtracked many a dusk, dawn, or midnight drive with her swirling vocals & entrancing guitar, usually in the cold & dark, through the early part of 2019. It made my 2018 favorites list, and her Larimer Lounge show in May was a highlight. I guess it makes sense then, that I didn’t truly fall for her sophomore album At the Party With My Brown Friends (released in August) until it got cold in November and I was able to take it out for some dark, snowy drives. Moody & serious at times, Black Belt Eagle Scout sounds every bit like the gray Pacific Northwest where front person Katherine Paul (KP) hails from. The lyrics are simple, repeating phrases, full of deep, important ideas. Family & friends. People & land. There are bursts of guitar coming out of rewarding slow builds, shredd-y, rhythmic, & melodic. Also, all the instruments on ATPWMBF are played by KP, and the drumming is fucking fantastic.

I have some sort of longer form writing building somewhere in the back of my mind about listening to music in cars, and both Black Belt Eagle Scout albums are perfect examples for that. I have always loved the feeling of having roads (highways or simply long straight dirt back roads) & music to listen to. In high school, we would sometimes get in the car simply to drive & listen to music (small town life ya know?) and I still relish any chance I get to take new (or old & long loved) songs & albums on road trips or just commutes around town. The time to sit with the songs, to focus on nothing but the words & melodies, instruments & voices, & the pull of the road, mystical & magical. Black Belt Eagle Scout’s songs have been a calming companion on a lot of drives over the last year, and I recommend you taking them out on a spin of your own. Drive to that coffee shop that’s 30 minutes away that you’ve been wanting to go to, drive out of town just to drive, alone with your thoughts & the road. You just might learn something about yourself.

“& I wake up / I love you / Screaming loudly / Screaming softly too / Am I here? / My heart dreams…”

BON IVER / i,i

Bon Iver is a long time favorite and if you’ve followed this blog at all, you know how much I love his albums and how much Justin Vernon’s Eaux Claires festival has helped shaped my musical timeline. Seeing 22, A Million (the record that precedes i,i) live in Wisconsin by the river for the first time, was something special. That record made my 2016 favorites list, but until this year, until i,i, my story of the music felt very insular. Special & secret for me, confined to very specific times & places. Only to make me feel certain things. It’s why I was hesitant to buy a ticket to see the Red Rocks show last September. Or why I questioned streaming the album early while I was on vacation in Holden Beach, North Carolina. I thought the songs were only meant to carry me back to the river, back to Wisconsin, back to the Summer. Back to a very specific, special place in my heart. But thanks to the wonders of spotify, and the Bon Iver crew just up and releasing the album a week early under the simple & generous guise of “wanting folks to have the album & learn the songs before the tour!!” I obliged and… YESSSS that’s how you do an album release in 2019! I had the album in my headphones as I ran and sweated on the beach in North Carolina, letting brand new songs transport me thousands of miles away.

i,i is a gloriously weird, perfected mess of a hit indie record. It’s everything I wanted the next chapter of the Bon Iver story to be. It feels personal & widescreen. Little moments stretched out and shared with family & friends. Lyrics about growth & hard work & life (& a few WTFs, it’s Bon Iver after all!) The gang’s all here again (the massive crew that worked on the album are all pictured on the record’s gloriously, weird inside gatefold!) recorded from Vernon’s home (April) base in Wisconsin, to Sonic Ranch in west Texas (also pictured in the liner notes) walking distance from our southern border. The sounds are all here again too. There are hints of For Emma’s Winter falsetto folk in the gorgeous acoustic guitar of “Marion.” There are the industrial swells & stomps, bleeps & bloops of bi, bi’s Spring in the warbling, green grass, warmth of “Holyfields.” Then there is the distortion, the choppy samples of 22, in the jigsaw glory of “iMi,” the way it starts & stops, all choruses & voices, real & programmed. Threads of new songs tied up with threads from long, long ago. There is a fullness to i,i, a generosity, a true front to back album, with hits & new favorites sprinkled everywhere. The second half blooms with the charging folk of “Salem” & “Faith” and the contentedness of closer “RABi.” These are songs that I will love for years to come. These songs make me happy. They make me think. They make me want to share them with friends. They make me want to work on relationships. Songs about life. Songs about true, unconditional friendship. As Justin said way back in 2015, when my journey with the Bon Iver story began “The story is history, nothing more. Only the music can rise anew. & it is gone as soon as it is sung. & so we sing again…” I am soo soo happy to sing again, with songs anew.

“Living in a lonesome way / Had me looking other ways / Cuz I am lost here again / But on a bright Fall morning I’m with it / I stood a little within it…”

EARTHGANG / Mirrorland

EARTHGANG’s major label debut Mirrorland comes in hot & dancing, a hip hop duo with a true tribute to Southern culture, and a whole world encapsulated in 14 tracks. My personal introduction to the EARTHGANG universe, came courtesy of a dusk till dark dance fest at Denver’s Underground Music Showcase on South Broadway back in sweaty July. Their energy was infectious, their stories hilarious, & their songs stuck in my head. Specifically the Young Thug featuring “Proud Of U,” a song that carries enthusiasm & positivity through to the end. Other standouts include colorful, bouncing opener “LaLa Challenge,” & the squealing horns of Atlanta hot spot, name dropping “Wings.” A concept album of sorts Mirrorland references “The Wiz” as a jumping off point saying,

“We thought about how, if we’re going to make a project sonically to rival The Wiz, we got to create another world for people to imagine & go to. You know when Dorothy got swept away and she met the Munchkins? That was such a beautiful thing. You could see Quincy Jones on the piano, just playing away. It’s really colorful. It’s really dangerous. It’s really trippy. It’s literally Freaknik Atlanta in the summertime—folks riding around in cars with big rims with paint on their faces.”

EARTHGANG was formed in 2008 by high school buddies Johnny Venus & Doctur Doc in Atlanta, GA. It’s impossible to ignore Outkast comparisons and for their part, EARTHGANG does their best to keep up the Southern hip hop tradition. Mixing in bits of soul, blues, & jazz, Mirrorland plays like an homage, a soundtrack to the South. A real reminder that the album is not dead. These songs sound best played together. Also, that the hip hop group, or duo, is not dead. And finally, that touring and playing live shows is most definitely not dead. I probably still wouldn’t have heard about EARTHGANG if it wasn’t for their primo UMS slot (at the same Import Mechanics stage where Leikeli47 & Kiltro played!) and infectiously positive live show. Speaking of their live show, see y’all at Cervantes on February 3!

“One time, one time for your baby moms / Two time for the hand in the candy jar / Holy Ghost showed up in my favorite thong / Three times in the car for the way we are / Another white man scared, another black man dead / Another rich man war, another red man bled / I been writing this album down way too long / When I drop my shit, pray it hit the toilet like lala, lalalalala...”

FRUIT BATS / Gold Past Life

In the Autumn of 2013, my coworker Cassandra Disney at Mile High Organics played me “When You Love Somebody” by Fruit Bats (had that song already been out for 10 years in 2013?!) on one of her early morning work mixes, and I immediately put it on one of my favorite (if embarrassingly bro-folk heavy) mixes I have ever made myself. Discovering a weird/cool indie band in the vein of all my other loves (Band of Horses, The Shins, Modest Mouse, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, etc…) but more underground (!) was hipster heaven. I subsequently forgot about Fruit Bats for awhile, but was reminded with their graceful “comeback” album Absolute Loser in 2016. Although that one missed my favorites list, it gradually became a constant road trip companion; from the mountains of Colorado, through the great American Southwest, and even on some epic Mexican back roads. All alt-country, lost 70′s AM radio classics, and wistful, witty, & wise writing about highways and scenery. A true classic.

I was therefore super excited for Gold Past Life (Fruit Bats’s seventh album?!) to drop on Merge Records this Summer, and fell in love pretty quickly on a late afternoon drive across the high road between Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico back in late June. Swirling guitar, bouncy piano. and Eric D. Johnson’s piercing, clear, impassioned vocals. Fruit Bats sound timeless & effervescent. Upbeat guitar rock with some weird twists, and Johnson’s consistently bittersweet, humorous, & big hearted lyrics. Growing up, growing older, & grinning a wry smile at a golden world. After catching back to back beautiful Fruit Bats shows in Fort Collins & here in Denver at the Bluebird this September, these folks are the real deal. Long live touring bands, long live seventh albums, long live music marking time & space! Here’s to many more Fruit Bats albums, Gold Past Life will be car stereo classic for awhile.

“Still waiting around for some mystical shift in the winds / So honey please, don’t go just yet / Cigarette fingers, a shake in the knees / A bit blue, kind of tired, but not broken… Anticipating a magical bend in the road / So hang on, take it slow / Your go bag is packed & your hangover gone / Another dawn at the edge of the known world…”

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER / Terms of Surrender

Durham, North Carolina’s Hiss Golden Messenger (folklorist, family man, & singer-songwriter MC Taylor & revolving crew) have become something of a mainstay on this music blog & in my car’s cd player over the last five years. I picked up a used (!), advance (!) copy of Lateness of Dancers in the $1 bin at a record store in Seattle, Washington. after having been passed a burned copy of his 2010 solo album Bad Debt by an old coworker. Lateness ended up on my 2014 favorites list. Two years later, Heart Like A Levee made my 2016 list, and the next year, Hallelujah Anyhow was one of my favorites of 2017! I referred to the songs on Hallelujah as Hiss “building a repertoire, creating a legacy.” This may seem like quite a bit of superfluous backstory, but believe me, it is essential to the story, a journal of the journey. Geographic art for a topographic heart if you will. But anyway, Terms of Surrender…

The title is cryptic, referencing (as Taylor puts it “what we are prepared to sacrifice in order to live the lives that we think we want”) and the songs are deep (& growing deeper) & timeless. Not so much timeless in the way Yola’s songs sound timeless (skip down a few albums on this list to read about Yola!) but timeless in the way the songs seem to seep their way into my bones and stay for years. Terms burst on the scene with the release of the first single “I Need a Teacher” back in stormy June. With bright, rolling guitar stabs courtesy of The National’s Aaron Dessner (whose upstate New York recording studio was home for the Terms recording sessions), “Teacher” is about “the search for infallible guidance in an ever-changing universe.” but it is also about everyday work. Dedicated every night of the tour to all the teachers in the room, a political statement wrapped up in the seemingly obvious sentiment of “Defend Public Schools.” See what I mean? Timeless songs written for the here & now. “Bright Direction” & “My Wing” are reminiscent of Hallelujah’s “Jenny” & “Darkness.” a 1-2 punch of driving, drifting major key numbers, written from a hillside in Virginia, high on mushrooms. They contain multitudes. With a murky middle (Brad Cook gets funky on “Old Enough to Wonder Why” & “Cat’s Eye Blue”) & the already canonical Hiss’ live fav “Happy Birthday Baby,” the back half of Terms spreads out the Hiss’ sound in new ways. New live favorite, the nostalgic “Down at the Uptown,” had me googling maps of San Francisco to find the mythical Uptown bar where Taylor first heard Patti Smith’s Horses.

In late October, Hiss played an absolutely glorious three night run at little Globe Hall over in Globeville, just Southeast of where Interstate 70 meets Interstate 25. I went to all three shows. The shows were special & career spanning; from “Jesus Shot Me in the Head,” to Dead covers (& a Jesus & Mary Chain cover!) to all the Terms songs. I spent the Saturday afternoon before show #2, walking around the disappearing & rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in & around Globeville (& drifting across the highway into Sunnyside) listening to Terms of Surrender on my headphones. Thinking about the things I’m willing to sacrifice, thinking about the life I want, what are my Terms? After all, “It’s a real live world & I wanna live in it.”

“Something drove me crazy / Love had me lazy / Backwards won’t get me to my destination / Move me in some bright direction / Looking to be captured, looking for my freedom / Oh, dreams will come to get you / So careful what you’re wishing / Your family might correct you / Your heart might take a pounding / Make sure you take a picture…”

JUNE JONES / Diana

I can’t remember where I first heard of June Jones, but I’d like to think it was from one of my many Australian music friends (thanks Camp Cope, Julia Jacklin, Middle Kids, Courtney Barnett, Gang of Youths etc…!) The music community is a wonderful thing. June’s songs can be hard to explain, but Diana is an epic album that burns with a steady, stately drama. Most of the songs ride swelling synths and measured, 80’s sounding drums and center around June’s unique, emotive voice and head turning lyrics. Jones had fronted the Australian rock band Two Steps on the Water and written songs on the guitar for many years, but it’s pretty clear from listening to the writing and sound on Diana that these songs were meant for piano, synth, and a solo album. Her own writing. Her own words.

The album begins with the brooding “Rome From Afar” and the opening line “I got drunk again last night & I fell down outside the bathroom at my little sister’s party.” It then follows a dancing bass line into an apocalyptic nightmare of a world ending. “Meryl” is a gorgeous, autobiographical (?) song, an ode to “complicated” hard working women everywhere. There are parts of Diana that nod to it being a break up album, like in the gorgeously melancholic “Boulder Falling Slow” (”I am a boulder falling slow / You’re a magnificent spiderweb”) but I have been viewing it as just a complex, everyday life album. Jones lets her magnificent voice trail slowly over seemingly uncomfortable or awkward topics that she strives to make… not so. Sorry Alex Cameron, your “eating your ass like an oyster” line in “Miami Memory” is only the second best “eating ass” line this year after Jones’ “Look at You Go!” Her voice often belies the emotion in her lyrics, she works it up & down, and lets it stretch out over words, like in lonely closer “Sixteen Horses,” but she also sounds almost matter of fact at times. There is a moment in the piano led “Thorn” where she glibly throws “Have you seen the moon tonight? No, me neither, who cares about the moon when everything is dying?” over an understated horn trill. Everything is dying after all, but I want June Jones to sing it to me like an Australian Lana Del Rey or Matt Berninger. Trust me, you’ll be hearing more about June Jones in the coming years. Watch out.

“I haven’t thought too much about family / Ain’t got no husband or a couple of kids / I’ve spent 26 years in this office / I said goodbye to my relationships a long time ago / What does the mayor of a small town heart do after she retires?”

JUSTIN PETER KINKEL-SCHUSTER / Take Heart, Take Care

My long time music friend Adam over at songsfortheday had been trying to tell me about Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster for quite a few mixes with songs I loved from his 2016 release Constant Stranger. But it somehow wasn’t until I needed Take Heart, Take Care, that Schuster’s work hit me right. It didn’t feel like a light at the end of the tunnel, but more like a light in the tunnel, something lasting, a collection of songs lifting up & out towards a light. As Schuster wrote upon it’s release…

“Here, I’ve fumbled my way, as always, and of necessity, into a collection of songs that hold a light to the joys & comforts of life not given up on, those that appear over time as we are looking elsewhere, to surprise & delight us when we need them most. Sure, it’s me, so there are glimpses of and nods to the dark, but the dark is not winning anymore. I simply mean to acknowledge its presence. To me, that’s the most fundamental job of songs, of stories, of all art — to be allies, friends, companions, when we need them most and it’s my hope that these songs can do that work in a world that seems to need it. If you are lucky enough to have something good to say, say it. Please. We’ll thank each other, now & later.”

So i guess it’s that second part that I have found solace in through my 20′s and into my 30′s. That songs (and stories & all art, but songs & albums seem to be my thing) can be allies, friends, & companions, and that sometimes (like Hanif Abdurraqib wrote in his brilliant collection of essays “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us”)…

“If you believe, as I do, that a blessing is a brief breath to take in that doesn’t taste of whatever is holding you under: say I Speak To God In Public and mean more than just in his house, or mean more than just next to people who might also speak to God in public, or say God and mean whatever has kept you alive when so many other things have failed to.“

Take Heart, Take Care is a straightforward, well written, indie rock album. The songs ring true with light & darkness, an uplifting take on growing older and finding “Plenty Wonder” still to be found in the world. Schuster played the Hi-Dive on South Broadway in November, the last show on the Take Heart tour. A show I had bought tickets for months in advance, and I found myself in a crowd of maybe 15 people, celebrating the songs of Take Heart, Take Care. Listening to a writer with something good to say. Trying all in our own way to hold our own. I have a feeling I’ll keep these songs with me for awhile.

“Time is the mender / Whose strange mechanics yet untold / Bid us rise entwined together / So take heart, take care / Be true but beware / & honey we need not be scared…”

KARA JACKSON / A Song for Every Chamber of the Heart

In only 10 minutes & 42 seconds, Kara Jackson creates an intimate, magical world with just her voice and a guitar on her debut EP A Song for Every Chamber of the Heart. Four intricate & intentional songs, none longer than three minutes, finger picked slowly & methodically, Jackson balances a poetic, whimsical wandering with a steely focus on the craft of songwriting. These are the bones of songs, played honest & upfront, with no adornment. There is room for Jackson’s lyrics to really shine, all aching & wistful, yet practical. Like the way she balances “I have a crush, I have an ache” with “I know that love’s just a pain in the ass” in the bittersweet “Crush.” Her songs buzz with a youthful energy & teen angst. Wise beyond their years, finding their way in the world. As a songwriter and a poet, Jackson writes about race, activism, social justice, self, bodies, & humanity.

At 20 (!) years old, Chicago’s Jackson is... oh also a poet. The 2019 National Youth Poet Laureate (!) in fact, and it was her absolutely breathtaking writing about being a teenager that first caught my attention. She quotes Gwendolyn Brooks (pulitzer prize winning American poet) in her Ted Talk saying “write what’s under your nose.” She says that Brooks took the mundane and put it on a pedestal. That she understood there are “poems in train cars, poems on front lawns, & poems in microwaves & tea kettles.” An almost obligation to celebrate the ordinary. Ordinary folks celebrating similar ordinary folks. It’s the way that John Darnielle howls on The Mountain Goats song “Werewolf Gimmick” (track nine on 2015′s Beat the Champ) about “nameless bodies in unremembered rooms.” In his prerelease essay for Merge Records, music writer Joseph Fink wrote that the entire career of The Mountain Goats has been about “giving names to nameless bodies and remembering unremembered rooms.” and what a worthy cause that is. That thought has stuck with me for years and I have always loved the specificity of it. Whether it is Darnielle resurrecting historical characters real or fictional, or the way Lady Lamb (keep reading a few more albums down!) celebrates the specifics of her friends & family, in all the messy details. Written in song, remembered forever. It is also essential that all cultures have artists who look like them and think like them, as the ones doing the remembering. It’s why it’s so important that Kara Jackson is the one doing the remembering for young black girls. The same way Eve Ewing did for her, and Gwendolyn Brooks did before that. I can appreciate the magic of the remembering, but I need to let them be the ones to tell the stories. Oh, speaking of appreciating, I bugged Jackson enough on social media and got a handmade PHYSICAL copy of the EP that I’m hanging onto forever cuz it’s probably gonna be like the next original pressing of Bon Iver’s For Emma! Thanks Kara!

“Don’t take my pillowcase, that's my place to be alone / Don’t take my lamp from me, it helps me read about places I don’t know / Don’t take a lot for me to be on my own...”

KILTRO / Creatures of Habit

My end of the year albums list usually has at least one local Denver band. The Lumineers way back in 2012, Gregory Alan Isakov & Covenhoven in 2013, Nathaniel Rateliff, Covenhoven (again!), & The Yawpers in 2015, Nina de Freitas in 2017 (hey Nina & the Hold Tight, new album in 2020 please?!), and Izcalli last year. Kiltro is a part Coloradan, part Chilean folk band that have been putting on one of my favorite live shows around town this year. The brainchild of Chris Bowers-Castillo, a native Coloradan who spent time growing up in Valparaiso, Chile, Kiltro is named after the Spanish word “Quiltro” meaning a mixed breed dog. A dog that Kiltro has taken for their logo. In their own way, Kiltro is a mix breed; both in the way they mix the sounds of South America with the folk music of North America, and also the way they mix organic, acoustic instrumentation, with electronic, looping sounds and effects pedals. Their live show is a masterclass in layers, with Bowers-Castillo adding loops of guitar rhythms (sometimes simply bare hands slapping beats on the top of the guitar) to steady bass & drums, until the songs swell & build into dramatic crescendos and almost EDM-influenced drops. The extended intros & outros are my favorite parts of their songs and the live versions (from their sweaty 2pm UMS dance party, to Lulu’s Downstairs in Manitou Springs) have stirred hearts & feet alike with dancing not usually found in the Colorado “indie-hipster” scene. Keep an eye on these guys and maybe come out to Larimer Lounge in January and witness the dance party for yourself!

“Somewhere down the bank where the dogs go / Por la calle que te lleva a Curicó / & down the beach, where no others can find / Ni por agua, piso, coche, ni avión...”

LADY LAMB / Even in the Tremor

As I have been writing this year’s favorites list, I’m realizing that so many of the albums I loved & learned, came hand in hand with experiencing the artist, and specifically that new album, live. Lady Lamb released Even in the Tremor, her masterful & moving third album, way back in April, and I had a Spring-y three weeks to learn all her intricate, visceral lyrics to sing back at her Larimer Lounge stop in Denver on the Deep Love tour. Maine by way of Brooklyn’s (by way of a bunch of other places) Aly Spaltro has always written songs for Lady Lamb like her hair’s on fire. Wailing & gasping about blood & guts & death over spiraling electric guitar, there is a realness to her writing that reminds me of the east coast emo I grew up on. But for all the blood red gore & messy heartbreak that colors much of the Lady Lamb discography, there is a light hearted tenderness as well. Tremor has songs written for & about friends, lovers, parents, & god. Quirky opener “Little Flaws” is a first-dance-worthy love song, while personal favorites “Strange Maneuvers” & “Emily” are odes to platonic friendships, mental health, & growing up. In the same way I wrote about Kara Jackson celebrating the ordinary, Lady Lamb has always celebrated specifics of people, time & space. Tremor’s characters are Spaltro’s real life people (Emily, Shervin, Kurt (Kurtie Bear), Isaac, & her Mom), and the places (the diner, the batting cage, Templehof Park, Midtown, Berlin, Montreal, Madrid, a fast food joint, the stage of a church, someplace upstate, Lavanderia & Graham Ave) are specific, varied, & globe spanning. Her stories are autobiographical and rewarding and the music is stirring, singer-songwriter rock & roll with some punch behind it. She is one of my favorite modern writers for her ability to not just tell a story, but to find wonder in the small things and to celebrate the ordinary. Like she tells Shervin, minutes before “Emily” closes the album on a gorgeous, uplifting high note, “No photographic artifact, but here is something better than that.”

“There’s a picture that I found, my first car in the falling snow / Seems like yesterday I drove down into low tide / & Isaac snapped a polaroid of me pretending I was sinking, pressed against the glass pleading / I misplaced it but I’m looking... / When we are young, if only we could see beyond our fears where we are free / When we are lonely if only we could know that in our stillness we are growing... / All the portraits we collected, while we were running around in the desert / We were trying to seem fulfilled to rewrite our New York City narratives / But Emily we were utterly dejected / We took turns crying on the passenger side of America / Too clouded to be empowered by towering Redwoods... / When did we lose the ancient truths? / Is it what we’re born bending our bodies toward?...”

LIZZO / Cuz I Love You

For much of 2019, Lizzo could be heard playing everywhere. The 31 year old Minnesotan’s third full length album Cuz I Love You, came out in April, after a busy three years of huge singles, consistent touring, & building a repertoire of songs capable of headlining arenas. When Lizzo finally exploded these last few years, it has been fun watching the whole world embrace her uptempo, bold, self-love anthems, and hearing them blaring from open Subaru windows in Cap HIll, from balconies & rooftops in uptown, and on the lips of countless joggers & bikers, loving themselves in the Denver Summer sun. I know for my part, I took Lizzo with me to the beaches of North Carolina & through the Southern mountains of Colorado, dancing, singing, & gleefully giggling along. Bottom line, the songs on Cuz I Love You are FUN! You try not to crack a smile as Lizzo romps through “Never been in love before, what the fuck are fucking feelings yo?” on the bouncing, brassy, vocal led, track one title track MOMENT. Or the way she makes up the word “accessorary” on the spot (“my ass is not an accessorary”) and then fires back with “Yeah, I said it, accessorary!” Lizzo has been an outspoken supporter of our generation’s version of the self-love, body positivity movement, and has put her money (and body) where her mouth is, inspiring legions of teens & twenty somethings to do the same. “Soulmate” is a loner anthem that finds Lizzo belting “True love ain’t something you can buy yourself / True love finally happens when you’re by yourself / So if you by yourself, then go and buy yourself another round from the bottle on the higher shelf.” The soulful slowdown “Jerome” is about being the bigger person and ending a relationship that isn’t working. Lizzo manages to actually address her own issues, focus on the work she needs to do (“I’m trying to be patient & patience takes practice.”) and still absolutely belt a singalong chorus that rhymes Jerome with “take your ass home.” Also, the deluxe version of Cuz I Love You tacks on three previous Lizzo singles that hadn’t found an album home. Those singles? “Boys,” “Truth Hurts,” & “Water Me.” Three songs totaling almost 555 MILLION plays on Spotify. With apologies to Ariana Grande & Billie Eilish (Billie see ya in a few months at the Pepsi Center!) Lizzo is the biggest superstar that I want on this list. And she 100% deserves every bit of it.

“If I’m shinin’ everybody gonna’ shine...”

ORVILLE PECK / pony

There is an appealing, theatrical quality to the dramatic country songs on Orville Peck’s debut record Pony. I spent my high school years growing up in small town Western Colorado so country music has been embedded in my brain since I was 11. I’ve gone through so many phases of loving it, hating it, loving it ironically, nostalgically, hating it for it’s sound, cheesiness, backwards politics, etc... But with Pony; these are true country songs written by a gay, masked cowboy anti-hero from.. Toronto? Maybe? Who is Orville Peck?!?! It’s like all the best parts of “country” music came together. And the mask? The fringe? All the packaging & theatrics? It makes it fun. Part Bowie, part Coheed & Cambria, part Grace Jones, part Ghost, part Brandon Flowers. Hollywood meets Vegas meets Carson City.

When I listen to Orville Peck’s songs it brings together so many feelings from my youth. From country radio & boxes of old country cds, to the dramatic side of theatre, play acting on a stage, dress-up, halloween, cowboys, loneliness, & the open road. From the tumbleweed roll & mournfully powerful coyote howl of opener “Dead of Night,” to the shoegaze rumble, autumn ride of “Winds Change.” Peck’s lyrics are honest & heartfelt, drawing on sweeping, western imagery, & idolizing the classic country ideal... the cowboy. Music marks time & place and Peck makes sure to reference the cities along his highway songs. Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Carson City, Kansas, a veritable Rand McNally road map of the American West. In the same manner as both Black Belt Eagle Scout albums, Fruit Bats, & Caroline Rose from last year, it wasn’t until a highway drive that I truly fell in love with Pony. It was a brilliant November sunset & still warm, but windy & changing, and we knew we had to hustle to beat the snow back to Denver. Highway 159 from the Southern Colorado border through Costilla County, on the way towards Fort Garland & then Walsenburg. Purple & Orange out the window to my left, Winter on it’s way. Peck’s songs sang with a heartache... a loss. a rhinestone loneliness that country finds a way to revel in. When “Kansas (Remembers Me Now)” statics out like a long lost FM radio. When “Hope to Die” fake ends at 3:30 and instead key change pivots like a washed-up Broadway starlet, shooting her shot on a dusty jukebox. When “Nothing Fades Like the Light” draws its last, peaceful breath, closing Pony like the last light of that November sunset. Thanks Orville, this one’s a classic.

“Fell in love with a rider / Dirt king, black crown / Six months on a knucklehead hog / I like him best when he's not around / He gets me high, oh, big sky... Fell in love with a boxer / Stayed awake all year / Heartbreak is a warm sensation / When the only feeling that you know is fear / I don't know why, oh, big sky...”

RAPSODY / Eve

Rapsody’s third album Eve is a masterclass on rap music, and the Snow Hill, North Carolina rapper sounds relaxed & loose, while still staying focused & on topic with an album that reads as, as Rapsody herself puts it “a love letter to all black women including myself.” She is at the top of her game right now, and these songs cement Rapsody as one of the premier rappers in an exciting field of rap talent both young & old.

Each track on the album is dedicated to one of Rapsody’s personal heroes, and I am going to focus these words & my research for Eve (besides listening to it nonstop, which I’m currently doing now!) on those black women. Track one is for Nina Simone (”without Nina there’s no Lauryn Hill, & without Lauryn Hill there’s no Rapsody.”) and features critically important verses about black heritage & culture over Nina’s terrifying & sobering classic “Strange Fruit.” Rapsody is recognizing her legacy and the importance of heritage, but she is clearly claiming her spot in that bloodline. “Cleo” preaches standing up for yourself over a Phil Collins sample (between Cleo & Lucy Dacus, “In the Air Tonight” is getting some serious love this year!) and is named after Queen Latifah’s character in the 1996 movie “Set it Off.” From there Rapsody recognizes artists (Aaliyah), philanthropists (Oprah & Michelle Obama), actresses (Whoopi), athletes (Serena Williams & Ibtihaj Muhammed), writers (Maya Angelou & Reyna Biddy), models (Iman & Tyra Banks), and historical figures & activists (Hatshepsut, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Sojourner Truth, & Afeni Shakur). Bottom line, ALL of these women are essential google material (you’re reading this on your phone or laptop, google and give yourself a five minute refresher if there’s anyone you don’t already know!) While you’re at it, google the lyrics for Eve (and Jamila Woods’ equally incredible, equally name dropping LEGACY! LEGACY!) and listen along. This is an important time capsule document for Rapsody and it’s just a damn good rap album.

“I am Nina & Roberta, the one you love but ain't heard of / Got my middle finger up like Pac after attempted murder / Failed to kill me, it's still me, woke up singing Shirley Murdock / As we lay these edges down, brown women, we so perfect...”

SABA LOU / Novum Ovum

When I listen to Saba Lou’s intoxicating sophomore album Novum Ovum, I am transported to somewhere magical & different. Maybe older, maybe out of place & time. Everything about Novum feels… classic. From the dusty, record-store-bin-find look of the out of focus cover photo, to the laidback natural way Saba Lou seems to dance along on top of a rollicking house band lifted from the 70’s. There are elements of surf rock, shoegaze, late night soul, and classic rock & roll on Ovum, but it is all driven by the singular writing & vocals of Saba Lou. In the liner notes of the record, a note can be found, claiming that this album is meant to be from the future. 2286 to be exact! Is a concept album?! Is it actually from the future & delivered to us by a time traveling band of Germans?!! Does it have songs about Star Trek??!! Maybe, mayyyybeee... & YES!

Yet to turn 20 (!), Saba Lou is a German born singer songwriter who has been making & releasing music since she was literally six years old! Novum Ovum is Latin for “the new egg” and features a hot four piece full band, and wonderfully fleshed out songs that bounce and swing with palpable energy. The lyrics span an awesomely wide spectrum from endometriosis pain (the title track obv) to a Star Trek mindmeld tune sung from the perspective of Gracie the pregnant whale (closer “Humpback in Time”)!! All in all, Saba Lou is an absolutely electric songwriter and her youthfulness & fervor are contagious. It’s the reason I love making this list every year, and what makes discovering new music so exciting. Can’t wait for the next one!

“A brick wall around your placenta / Cut them all off from her mother blood / The hounds call for appassionata / A phoenetic paste for the fetal bud...”

SHARON VAN ETTEN / Remind Me Tomorrow

Over the last few years I started the practice of making a draft favorite albums list in January and adding albums throughout the year, as I fall in love with them. This way I don’t forget the ones I loved in January & February, the ones that got me through the backend of the Winter. I’m able to track my year in music as it develops, a sort of captain’s log. A living, personal journal using music to mark time & space as I sprint my way through another increasingly faster, increasingly chaotic year. Sometimes, scrolling through the list acts as a comfort. “That album only came out this year?! OK, this year isn’t moving too fast, that feels like forevvverrrr ago!” Sometimes it helps to show me how much I’ve grown, how much an album has meant, or has helped with my mental & emotional growth. This year, the very first album I added to that list, the very first album that I fell hard & holy hell in love with... was Sharon Van Etten’s Remind Me Tomorrow.

A blast of energy. A weird synthy, pulsing red & blue darkness. Simultaneously club-y & indie rock vibey. Van Etten’s fifth album is supposedly written from a place of contentment. A marriage, a child, a life & happiness discovered. Less desperation, more introspection. I hear in her voice & words, how taking care of yourself, how striving to be your best self, can bring out the most powerful, most emotional art. She also isn’t afraid to let her voice go and I think her vocal performances are what truly take Tomorrow to another level. “Memorial Day” rides a haunting vocal loop & tumbles in nearly wordless, glimmering vowels, all ethereal magnificence. The chorus of the brooding “Jupiter 4″ spirals upwards & then rollercoasters, a late night drunken banger. But at the heart of Remind Me Tomorrow sits one of my songs of the year, one of my songs of the decade, “Seventeen.” I had heard it first live, way back in October 2018 in the rain in the mountains at Red Rocks. I got tipsy & wrote about it the day it came out, January 8, 2019, after a long, cold stretch working the night shift. This album & especially this song will stay with me for a long time. Sharon has taught me to keep working on myself. To look back in fondness. To think about how, with hard work, how much joy & peace & comfort await in my coming years. But she also taught me to lean into emotions. To embrace the ache of memories and the bittersweetness of growing up. Thanks for making this album Sharon.

“Downtown hotspot, halfway up the street / I used to be free, I used to be 17 / Follow my shadow around your corner / I used to be 17, now you're just like me / Down beneath the ashes & stone / Sure of what I've lived and have known / I see you so uncomfortably alone / I wish I could show you how much you've grown...”

TIM BAKER / Forever Overhead

I have a special feeling tied to the collection of intimate, swirling songs Tim Baker released this year from Canada. Forever Overhead carries a certain small town holiness, recognizable to those who grew up in small towns , but specific to his own personal, north-north-eastern-eastern “small” town, St Johns, in Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada. Growing up on the farthest coast of the Atlantic on the tippy, tippy point of Canada (seriously google it!), Baker fronted emo band Hey Rosetta! for four albums until striking out this Spring on his own with Arts & Crafts Records. There is a very Springsteen-esque bent to the way he writes about growing up somewhere (as someone) small & wanting to be somewhere very big and exciting. He captures the bittersweetness of growing up so perfectly. From the teenage romantic feelings in swaying opener “Dance” & the rousing “Mirrors,” to the friends & bars & singing found in the melancholic “Spirit” and the absolute hit “All Hands.” The latter is the core of the album, a bright, rhythmic guitar number that builds & swells with voices & instrumentation to a few huge, singalong choruses. A real song of the year contender. Baker isn’t afraid to let the songs go on journeys on Forever Overhead and they rarely finish where they begin. Horns & handclaps burst in at points, celebratory & fearless. The sexual tension of “Strange River” is lightened with a false start and a “sorry. In ‘D’” followed by a belly laugh, before restarting. The light & dark are present throughout Overhead and listening to these songs remind me of growing up. I feel like I’m being given a secret glance into Baker’s youth and the parts that mirror mine make me want to lift my voice in unison with those that understand. Sometimes small collections of well written & well played songs can do that, and to me... it’s sacred. Hopefully I get a chance to visit St Johns someday, and if I do, these songs will be playing as my soundtrack.

“A boy in bed, all the windows wide / You can hear the hot rods running from the light / From the light, into the dark / That's all I wanted in my cousin's car / To listen to the wind & to the lead guitars / & feel the reckless running of your heart / Now is that gone or does that all remain? / Can I go back and have it all again? / Well now I know it, where I'm going / I'm going back behind the river / I'm going back behind the rain / Cuz no matter where you're heading / You end up where you’ve been...”

YOLA / Walk Through Fire

It’s clear from the first minute & 30 seconds of Yola’s debut full-length Walk Through Fire, that this album is destined to be an all-time classic. She comes in slow & wistful with “wish I knew what you were wishing for...” over a soft wash of cymbals and mournful country-soul guitar. Then one minute in, her voice swells to gigantic proportions, seeming to lift the song right off the page, carried into another stratosphere, timeless & magnetic. That “Faraway Look” in your eyes.

From there, Yola (36 year old Yolanda Quartey from Bristol, England) takes her commanding voice through bluesy, fiddle-led country (”It Ain’t Easier” & the title track), and laid back soul (”Shady Grove” & “Deep Blue Dream”). Personal fav “Ride Out In The Country” became a backroads, summer anthem for me this year on multiple trips through Southern & Western Colorado. Through it all, her voice booms, whispers, & rocks gently, propelling the songs forward with warmth & light. Her lyrics are full of both dreamy memories & work-a-day stories about the challenges of life. It was fun this year to have different friends & family members get into Yola at different times, getting texts like “have you heard of YOLA??!!” Sharing songs, & collections of songs (like the ones on Walk Through Fire) is what makes making this list every year so fun, and I’m always excited to see what new, life-long favorites I will discover. See you in a couple months at the Bluebird Theater on Colfax here in Denver Yola!! Can’t wait!

“A little shady grove / A memory long ago / A tale too old to know the ending / I gave it all away / It takes my breath away...”

#yola #tim baker #Sharon Van Etten #saba lou #Rapsody #orville peck #lizzo #lady lamb #kiltro #kara jackson #june jones #hiss golden messenger #fruit bats #earthgang #bon iver #black belt eagle scout #big thief #better oblivion community center #justin peter kinkel-schuster

1 note · View note

shizen-hime · 5 years

Note

Omg u do free readings?? i really want to understand my chart but is so confusing I WOULD LOVE IF U COULD DO MINE... I was born on June 10th 2001 in greensboro NC at 6:13am 🥺🖤 if u don’t do them like that that’s ok thank u so much hehe

Okay so I was writing your chart and I was almost finishing and everything disappeared :_____D

But let’s make a resume: you’re highly mental and your head is going 200 km per hour all the time. You’re never satisfied with anything and you must search for info of everything. You feel you need a puruse, a philosophy, a career, an investigation all the time.Basically because you’re all air, you’re all communication and information. Mercury on the first but retrograde and in opposition to Mars can make you not able to communicate right, though. And since you’re so air you need to do this well and this kinda hurts you. You’d be a great teacher because opposition aspects are not very hard and easy to surpass to be stronger.

You might feel you want to write or talk about yourself but at the same time it hurts you or you feel you’re bad at it (tho you’d be the perfect teacher -Mercury opposed Chiron). You might feel all your life you’re being criticized or all the world is against you and that others will always be better. You might have a lot of trouble with your lovers, best friends or people you deeply know because of that Chiron/Mars on the 7th house. You might feel you’re unable to make first steps on anything (same aspect as one of my friends which brought a lot of trouble to her, she stayed with the same toxic guy for a year because she was unable to tell him he was being a dick). You’re also someone who might cause a hard or a strong first impression.You’re someone who needs to express yourself though. Definitely writing would be super healthy for you. Maybe talking in a camera if you’re more comfortable. You need to write about yourself, your thoughts.

Your Jupiter in the Asc makes you someone jovial, cheerful, optimistic. You’re a Gemini in a Gemini Asc so you might be someone tall and slender, but maybe the Jupiter makes you someone who can gain weight easily. I felt like pointing it out because of your blog, which is mainly skinny girls and as I see it “anorexia propaganda”. I might feel you might be someone who is conscious about the weight. I can’t say anything except to take care of yourself and eat healthy. I find it so stupid to search for happiness in anything that is physical (body, money, food, idk whatever like this). Jupiter opposed Mars makes you someone who rushes stuff, acts before thinking and this might hurt you or others. Although that, almost all your planets are retrograde, which makes you someone who’s thinking by themselves all the time and overthinking or that doesn’t really know when it’s time to act or to say anything. Meditation would be the best thing to do as I see it. To learn to express what you gotta express and keep to forgive what you don’t.

Your Moon! Very mental too, but dreamy! I said before everything got erased that you should investigate Carl Gustav Jung, a psychologue that used dreams, synchronizations, tarot and the unconscious to trait his patients and search for a way to learn about the unconscious and his own dreams, etc. SUPER interesting. But anyways, this Moon will make you search, travel (mentally basically), investigate, study, search for a religion or a psychology. You need to search and not settle down in anything, since you’re SO Aquarian and you need freedom. You’ll be changing all your life, though sometimes you might feel you don’t wanna. You’ll be needing to demand a lot of freedom from your lovers because you’ll be unable to be with only one person but this will be difficult to you because of what we said earlier about your Mars/Chiron and also they’re retrograde, so you might end up just feeling this for yourself and feel guilty or just bad. DON’T! You need to get what your heart is telling you.You’re very responsible and socially over-conscious. You have this thing about the houses 1-7 which are you and the others and traits that will make you feel you need (and everyone does) to interact, to socialize but at the same time you think everyone hates you or something similar. I have the same issues and in the end you have to learn not everyone will like you, you just need to be yourself. House 7 acts as a mirror: if you don’t like people, people won’t like you. If you think everyone is so nice and cool, you’ll feel you’re so nice and cool to people too. Trust me, this works a lot. You’re younger than me, so you’re probably now “waking up” from the teenager years.

Oof I think I made a good resume! We haven’t talked about the Sun in the 12th house, your Venus in Taurus (yaaay) and your North Nodes + other stuff!

Let’s see, so you’re actually veeeery wise because of Saturn in the 12th as well as your Sun. Your Saturn/Moon trine makes you very responsible but also responsible in socializing, which is perfect for such an air person! Sometimes so much air makes people talk talk talk talk and oof! This Saturn will make you very capable of sacrificing yourself for others and study anything psychological and mystical (PLEASE just take a look at Carl Gustav Jung!! You won’t study him in any career and that’s sad!). Very interested in helping others! Having the 10th house in Pisces also makes you someone who might feel a need to make something to help others as a career. Since you’re a true investigator too and you have a bit of Aquarius on the 10th, searching for new ways to help others would be amazing for you too! You’re such a Gemini creative thinker so go ahead!

Let’s end up with your Sun, which is weird to not say this as a first thing lol.Okay so what we said about you sacrificing for others your Sun is also there! This could make you someone who’s rather... hmm.. “brought” by others, so you’ll have to use your fire stuff (tho it hurts you and it’s difficult) to put yourself behind! Since you got Jupiter in the first house, it can act a bit as a Sun, but it can also act “too much”. Jupiter gives a lot and sometimes is bad.You’re very air and your head goes to 100000000km/hour, but your Sun will demand you to relax as well, to be introspect and MEDITATE. Isolation from time to time will also make you good! You’re very social but it also gives you a bit of anxiety so it’s ok to take rest! Working for others and make charity work would make you feel very good too. Anyways, you’ll need to socialize with others, so isolating yourself forever is not good too.

Oh my, I forget about your precious Venus and the only earth you got :__cYou’ll attract a lot of socializing and you’ll also need that in your life. You feel a A LOT and you actually enjoy all mundane pleasures, such as food, massages, stuff like that. In this house, you’ll receive a lot of help from friends and co-workers! Maybe they’re not your best friends but these type of people will make you realize and make you feel good, like a group more than only one person. Once you enter to a one to one dynamic, you enter to this 1-7 house thing, which is actually very easy to surpass as we said. We see the sextile with your North Node in Cancer. So your Venus will help you feel better and happy. We finish with this North Node.Being it in Cancer, it’s kinda difficult, since you got like 0 water lol. And Cancer are FEELINGS, but feelings that are put into your face and into other’s faces. So this Node is telling you to express these feelings, especially to those friends we said earlier. You’ll need to develop a self-expression and leadership qualities too. You’ll have to surpass this fear of not wanting to make first steps and putting yourself towards others, but nicely!! You’ll grow a lot of confidence, power and self-determination by being yourself and creative!You’re 0 water so for yourself feelings might be like “what’s this I’m not saying that lol” but we all are human potatoes with stupid feelings! Use this amazing Venus you got to be a bit more stable and feel secure to express your feelings.

So again, my recommendations:

- Carl Gustav Jung pleaseeeee!!- Write, talk to yourself! It. will. make. you. so. good.- Meditate too to relax. You need it too. Take long walks by yourself (leave or shut your phone off!!). Your Venus will love if you take her to nature places!!- This is because of your blog, but EAT HEALTHY PLEASE! Aghh your Venus would kill you if she sees you not eating :c It might be because of this Venus you got, or you’re too mutable energy, or this Sun in the 12th house, but you might find yourself being carried by others, being carried by stupid, not healthy fashion stuff and ashhjjhghghgh nooo! >:c- Be. Yourself. You. Will. Fucking. Love it. You’re such an amazing person, very dreamy, very mental, but with really good intentions. You’re just a bit.. unbalanced because you got 0 water and basically 0 earth. So expressing feelings or knowing exactly what you need and want is something that might just not exist. But that’s perfectly fine!!!! You’re a searcher!! Maybe you’re an inventor of a new philosophy!- Never stop investigating or studying stuff! Your Moon will demand you new knowledge, as well as your Gemini nature. You’ll probably never set up in anything, but that’s alright? There’s not a true truth, right? Search for yours! Maybe you’ll find it when you’re 90 and you’ll be like “cool, I loved my life! c:”.- IDK, have fun??? You might be someone who never settles down, but that’s alright too. Since you’re so mutable and so mental, maybe you end up thinking stuff that society and friends tell you it’s what you gotta do, but maybe this is not what you feel deep inside you. Follow your heart! But don’t try to use this excuse as an escape, since you might be a bit like that too xD.

Hope this helped! For any question or anything just tell me

4 notes · View notes

lovehaswonangelnumbers · 5 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/karmic-tools-weekly-forecast-july-7-13-2019/

Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast: July 7 – 13, 2019

By Kelly M. Beard

The video version of this forecast, as read by Kelly, is available here.

The Karmic Tools Weekly Forecast covers the current planetary transits which affect people in different ways and to various degrees of intensity. Take notice when it is a Personal planet (Sun / Moon / Mercury / Venus / Mars) interacting with a Social (Jupiter/Saturn) or Collective planet (Uranus / Neptune/Pluto). And pay extremely close attention when it is a Social planet interacting with a Collective planet because that means something *big* is brewing that will move large groups of people along their evolutionary paths. Tuning in to the energy and rhythm of the planets can serve as a useful *guide* as you move along your Individual Path. It also helps to understand your place within the context of the larger Social & Collective Story. Below, you will find out how these energies tend to manifest, as well as guidance and direction.

*NOTE* There are some days when there are NO CONTACTS (besides the Moon), please note that there are no missing entries, we just list the actual Activations of each week + the day they happen.

Weekly Forecast: July 7 – 13, 2019

7/7 ~ Mercury Retrograde in LEO Mercury is going to go backwards in Leo, asking us to review our creative projects and reconnect with the Heart. This is a chance to rewire your magnetics in a way that is deeply supported by it spending more time reviewing late Cancer. We are being asked to release childhood traumas & dramas, stop letting them color the present and start taking responsibility for our words, thoughts & deeds. This energy reminds us we cannot be superficial with no substance, beauty with no heart, love with no trust. This is also one of three times a year that we get to give our Mental Body a much-needed break. Yes, mechanical breakdowns & miscommunications abound, but conversing with your Soul Self, communing with your Invisible Team (Angels, Ancestors & Animal Spirit Guides) and more right-brain activities are much more supported, and often magical, with Mercury Retrograde. This feeds into all the Solstice/Eclipse advice I have already given to dedicate some time to self-care. The initial stop in Leo tells us that the Heart is involved and if it doesn’t “feel” right, it is best to hold off until it does. Obviously, you cannot stop the world for any retrograde, so the caveat with this one is to check, re-check, triple check the details and the bottom lines; thoroughly read through any contracts and don’t be shy about asking folks to clarify if you are still not clear. Usually, the attention to detail (and following your own instincts & intuition, which is also better supported at this time) will help you catch any mistakes before it is too late to correct them. That said, retrogrades, especially Mercury, are actually great for finishing projects (not necessarily starting them) and fixing or finally addressing something that has been on the back-burner. Finally, it is also recommended to take as many personal time-outs for some “me-time” as you possibly can throughout the Summer of 2019 because the Summer of 2020 is going to be something else entirely.

7/8 ~ Chiron Retrograde in ARIES Last year, Chiron took its last dip into Pisces for 50-years so for those of you born 1960-1968, you have now completed a very deep healing process, while those born 1968-1977 are being initiated. This retrograde is his first full retrograde in Aries and so we have all been put on notice, especially those with this placement. We can all consciously honor the healing, education & personal transformation that Chiron facilitates. Pisces taught us about sensitivity & boundary issues, being a spirit in human form. Now, in Aries, we are opening up to the new directive of self-healing, self-assembling & self-mastery going forward. Chiron is best known as the Wounded Healer, the aspect of Self that came in with a wound to address this lifetime and in your chart, it represents your *Healing & Educational Path* – it is all that you learn on the journey to wholeness & integration and the healing & education that results from that journey. This 5-month period is going to reveal where you’re at in your own process. This time is deeply supported for a personal inventory or inner review. You have to be willing to face the fears & hurts, accept the losses & defeats, and then get up, dust yourself off & try again. Chiron can help guide this process. It’s time to be brave & pioneering (clearly, the old ways no longer work), it’s time to follow our instincts (though first we may have to connect to them properly), it’s time to face challenges head-on, and remember that though we have to do for Self (be self-sufficient & self-contained), we do not have to do it alone. So this time is really going to support the evolution of the individual within the context of the community or their relationships. It is all connected, if one evolves (Self), the other (Relationship) has to evolve too (or dissolve & go away).

7/8 ~ Venus (relationships, love & money) ~sextile~ Uranus (clarity & inspiration): This energy, thanks to Uranus, activates a certain spark of electricity in the air. New relationships will have an unusual aspect to them and old ones can break-to-realign in a positive, even fun way with this energy. No monotonous routine, humdrum people or boring collaborations with this one. Use it to access your own unique genius and deep well of creativity and then share if you can, with other like-hearted Souls. Take advantage of this energy to tap into areas you may not have realized were available to you before now. Keep it light and upbeat; socialize and enjoy the experience of different people or new activities. Keep in mind, however, any relationships begun this week may not be based on qualities needed for long term survival. It is more of a time to enjoy the people and experiences that pass through and accept it as a gift!

7/8 ~ Mercury Rx (thoughts) ~conjunct~ Mars (energy): I have to preface this with two things: (1) is when Mercury is involved, it is a relatively fast-moving energy. (2) is when Mars is involved, being the lower version of power (Pluto being the Higher version), it reminds us that with power, also comes responsibility. Now, that all said, the positive expression of this energy is that you can control your mind and direct it with passion, getting tangible results. This heightens your intellectual ability and mental capacity (for better or worse). You will be able to clearly articulate your thoughts and you should have quick, effective responses. If you maintain your integrity, this is an excellent time to ‘fuel’ major creative expression. If this energy manifests its negative side, it can make you petty & combative, arguing over nonsense and wasting precious time & energy in ego control-dramas. And if it is not coming FROM you, it is just as possible to be coming AT you (from others). This is the best time to put your energy (Mars) behind your thoughts, ideas and words (Mercury) and get creative. The power of this pairing is that they are occupying the same space, essentially energizing each other and initiating a new 2-year cycle.

7/9 ~ Sun (core essential Self) ~oppose~ Saturn (physical limits & definition of reality): This is an annual process of development. The Sun makes it personal and about you the individual. Saturn helps move your timeline along and build the literal aspects of life, the basics of providing for yourself (food, shelter etc) and your own personal limitations. What renewed aspect of Self got activated about 6-months ago and how do you want that to fully develop over the next 6-months? This is a potent midpoint, the most powerful course-correcting time in any cycle, this one being an annual meeting between Sun & Saturn, a check-point between you and your responsibilities. Each year, you evolve, some years more consciously than others so this is a good time to check in with your own personal definitions of what you are or are no longer responsible for. Often, this energy activates a push-pull between who you are and who you want to be; between what you want to do and what you have to do. My age-old advice is to: do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do. And while it may not be the easiest path, it’s usually worth it for the peace of mind that it brings. You may swing between extremes of fulfilling all your obligations to the neglect of your own Truth & Purpose -or- neglecting your obligations and doing whatever you choose, which only means those obligations will be there when you get to them and they will have most likely increased by the time you do. Balance is the key! Practice, there is no perfection and it’s time to practice handling business before pleasure.

7/10 ~ Sun (authentic Self) ~trine~ Neptune (intuition): This energy triggers your idealistic, altruistic inclinations, but remember that help has to be invited. But if you have the energy to share & to spare, then dedicate your Self to something greater than you. Choose a cause to support or help those less fortunate for the sheer pleasure of giving. If your energy is low at this time, it may be better directed inward. If you can, take some extra time in intentional solitude, praying, meditating and connecting to Spirit this week, you will be rewarded with deep revelations & mystical discoveries within you. It’s a great time to do divinations, ritual or ceremony if you’re into that. Your intuition is heightened also, so pay attention to any ‘messages’ that come through or to you. Try to use this energy to reflect on where you are and dream a little about where you want to be, mentally, spiritually and physically in 6-months to a year from now.

7/11 ~ Mars (action) ~square~ Uranus (freedom): This is the “Rebel” energy – what’s your “cause”? If you are clear about your own authentic Truth & Purpose, then this energy is refreshing and uplifting. You acknowledge that change is necessary (and inevitable) and you co-create with this energy to transform your current life. This is a rebirth energy too and being “reborn” is never easy. Worth it – but not easy. However, if you are NOT clear about who you are and what you’re capable of, this energy shines a light on that aspect of your life which you instinctively already know needs an overhaul but for whatever reason you are still holding on to the old habits/patterns. Unwilling or unable to embrace change at this time, you only increase the feeling of being restricted by external energies. Your life is a direct reflection of what’s going on inside you. How’s it lookin’? Check your ego, recommit to your Truth and remember that change is GOOD! And if you don’t go voluntarily (read: consciously), then you’ll get dragged to the new level, kicking and screaming and you’ll be so exhausted when you get there that you may miss the beauty in evolving to that next level. (This IS what you’ve been working toward, correct?) Remember, conscious, effective action creates freedom.

*****

LoveHasWon.org is a 501c3 Non Profit Charity, Heartfully Associated with the “World Blessing Church Trust” for the Benefit of Mother Earth

Share Our Messages with Love and Gratitude

LOVE US @ MeWe mewe.com/join/lovehaswon

Visit Our NEW Sister Site: LoveHasWon Angel Numbers

https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/

Commentary from The First Contact Ground Crew 5dSpiritual Healing Team:

Feel Blocked, Drained, Fatigued, Restless, Nausea, Achy, Ready to Give Up? We Can Help! We are preparing everyone for a Full Planetary Ascension, and provide you with the tools and techniques to assist you Home Into The Light. The First Contact Ground Crew Team, Will Help to Get You Ready For Ascension which is Underway. New Spiritual Sessions have now been created for an Entire Family, including the Crystal Children; Group Family Healing & Therapy. We have just began these and they are incredible. Highly recommend for any families struggling together in these times of intense changes. Email: [email protected] for more information or to schedule an emergency spiritual session. We can Assist You into Awakening into 5d Reality, where your experience is one of Constant Joy, Wholeness of Being, Whole Health, Balanced, Happy and Abundant. Lets DO THIS! Schedule Your Session Below by following the Link! Visit: http://www.lovehaswon.org/awaken-to-5d/

Introducing our New LoveHasWon Twin Flame Spiritual Intuitive Ascension Session. Visit the link below:

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-twin-flame-spiritual-intuitive-ascension-session/

Request an Astonishing Personal Ascension Assessment Report or Astrology Reading, visit the link below for more information:

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-ascension-assessment-report

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-astrology/

Experiencing DeAscension Symptoms, Energy Blockages, Disease and more? Book a Holistic Healing Session

https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-holistic-healing-session/

To read our Testimonials you can follow this link: http://www.lovehaswon.org/testimonials

Connect with MotherGod~Mother of All Creation on Skype @ mothergoddess8

Visit Our Online Store for Higher Consciousness Products and Tools: LoveHasWon Essentials

http://lovehaswonessentials.org/

Request a copy of our Book: The Tree of Life ~ Light of The Immortals Book

Order a copy of Our LoveHasWon Ascension Guide: https://lovehaswon.org/lovehaswon-ascension-guide/

Donate to Love:

We are a Donation based service for the Planetary Ascension. Thank you for showing your support and keeping our website and Love Energies moving forward! Thanks for supporting your family of light in their time of need to fulfill mission. We are Eternally Grateful!

Donate to Love: http://www.lovehaswon.org/donate-to-love/

*Please Indicate the Purpose of Donation: Session or Mission

Donate to Love

Top of Form

~~~When donating via Paypal please select “personal payment”, as opposed to goods and services, this in turn gives more of your donation to LoveHasWon~~~

Bottom of Form

Use Cash App with Our code and we’ll each get $5! FKMPGLH

Cash App Tag: $lovehaswon1111

Cash App

Donate with Venmo

VENMO

Support Our cause in the creation of the Crystal Schools for Children. Visit our fundraising link below:

LoveHasWon Charity for Crystal Schools

Support Our Charity in Co~Creating the New Earth Together by Helping Mother of All Creation. Visit our fundraising link below:

Support Mother Earth!

Support Us on PATREON

PATREON

Support Us Through Our LoveHasWon Wish List

LoveHasWon Wish List

We also accept Western Union and Moneygram. You may send an email to [email protected] for more information.

***If you wish to send Donations by mail or other methods, email us at [email protected] or [email protected]***

**** We Do Not Refund Donations****

MeWe ~ Youtube ~ Facebook ~ Apple News ~ Linkedin ~ Twitter ~ Tumblr ~ GAB ~ Minds ~ Google+ ~ Medium ~ StumbleUpon ~ Reddit ~ Informed Planet ~ Steemit ~ SocialClub ~ BlogLovin ~ Flipboard ~ Pinterest ~ Instagram ~ Snapchat

#5D Astrology #Astrology Updates

1 note · View note

puyohero · 6 years

Text

Puyo Puyo/Darkwing Duck AU fic “proto-prolouge” chapter

Alright, I’ve got a sort of “prototype-prologue” to my Puyo Puyo/Darkwing Duck AU fanfic up. I’d like to remind everyone that this isn’t exactly final, but I’d like to hear what you all think. Please remember that I’d appreciate it if there was NO flaming and/or harsh criticisms. I spent almost the whole day working on this, you know.

Welcome to Pwurp City. A quaint and relatively peaceful metropolis. However, like all metropolis…metropolises? Metropoli…? Meh…like any other CITY, that’s only what you see on the surface. The truth is, it unfortunately has a bit of a…” problem” with the criminal element…

As the moon lights up the night sky, we see what appears to be a pair of imp-like creatures currently in the process of stealing from a store filled to the brim with all kinds of doodads on the outskirts of Pwurp City.

“Hurry up, will ya?! Ugh…I KNEW this was a bad idea…!” exclaimed a Kosatan, a little blue imp normally seen guarding the depths of Lyla’s Ruins. A massive plot of property owned by none other than the Dark Prince himself, Satan. This particular one was carrying an unusually large bag of golden accessories.

“Hey, hey! Don’t rush me! With our small size, do you wanna try carrying 60 pounds of gold back and forth? Sheesh!” retorted yet another Kosatan.

“I’m just saying, I’d rather we get the heck out of here before someone contacts the authorities. Honestly, why are we even doing this again?”

“Do I really need to go over this again? Lord Satan’s one stingy fella...and hecka powerful. If we asked him to give us a raise, I can’t imagine that conversation would go over so well, could you?”

“…Good point. So now what?”

“Well, we’ve already gotten all this loot, right? I imagine this’ll hold us over for, what? 15-20 years? Heh-heheheh…”

“Well, come on. Let’s move before we get into bigger trouble. Huh…?”

“Hmm? Hey, what are ya standing around for?! Weren’t you the one who was just squawking at me to get a move on? What’s the matter?”

“It’s just…Look, I’m sure this is going to sound REALLY cliché, but…have you ever gotten the feeling you’re being watched?”

“Well, no…but if we stay here any longer, I’m sure I WILL feel it. Which why we should be hightailing it out of here!"

“Huh?…Oh, yeah! Right, right!”

Not too far from the Kosatans, we see a dark shadow watching from afar. It appears that the Kosatan that felt like there was a third party to their little gathering may have been a bit justified in his suspicions feelings after all…

In a large puff of red smoke, the Kosatan reel back in shock.

“Wh—What the heck?! What’s going on?! I—I can’t see worth a darn! Hey, where are you?” exclaimed the more nervous Kosatan.

“Agh! You’re stepping on my foot, idiot! Get off me!” yelled the braver Kosatan “Urgh! Where’d all this red smoke come from??”

“I am the terror that prowls in the night!” shouts a booming voice.

“What—what the heck?! What was that?! Is someone there? No…Lord Satan?!”

“I am the dark shadow that haunts your nightmares!”

“Huh? Wait a minute…that voice…that’s not…’OY! Who’s out there?! Show yourself, punk! Hey, be on your guard, man. I don’t know what we’re dealing with, but we should be fine as long as we hold our ground, and don’t show this jerk that we’re scared.”

“Are you scared right now?”

“W—What? Of course not! What’s there to be scared of? Aside from whoever this is trying to steal the gold we so rightfully stole, this is nothing! That doesn’t sound like Lord Satan, and it’s obvious this isn’t that blue-armored magical chick with the weird pet bunny-thing, so who else is there?”

“So…just WHY are you vibrating like a massage chair...” asked the timid Kosatan in a deadpan manner.

“What? I’m not…” the braver Kosatan notices that his body really IS shaking at an unusually high speed. “Wh--?! Oh, shut up! Heck, I’m more surprised you haven’t wet yourself 10 times over already!”

“Hey! I told you that’s a condition that runs in my family!!” cried the timid Kosatan. “AND I told you that in complete secrecy, you jerk!” he hissed.

“HEY!!!” exclaimed the voice, still hidden in the red smoke and startling the two Kosatan. “If you little trolls are done? I was in the middle of my introduction, thank you very much! Now, as I was saying, I am the terror that prowls in the night! I am the dark shadow that haunts your nightmares! I…am Darkbag Chop!!!”

As the dark shadow finally reveals his true form, we see that this paragon of the dark doesn’t have white hair. He wasn’t even drooling. No, this particular shadow wore a paper bag on his head, wearing slightly oversized black-framed glasses on top of THAT.

In terms of his clothing, he appears to be wearing a blue fedora on top of the paper bag, along with a blue t-shirt with a white tank top over that. He also wore what appears to be blue and red shoulder pads over his left shoulder and torso. It all seem to come together with the help of a blue cape with a red trim. If one didn’t know any better, one would think this mysterious entity resembled that of…

“What the h--- Arle Nadja?! Quick! Run for your—wait, wait. Hold on now. Di---Did you say…DARKBAG CHOP??? Pppfftt…BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! What are you supposed to be? Some otaku grocery clerk who got lost on the way to the supermarket?” asked the brave Kosatan. “Dude, do you see this chump? Man, and here I thought that perverted Dark Wizard could make himself look like a fool just from opening HIS big mouth! Hey…Hey, did you hear m--Uh…buddy?”

Unfortunately, the timid Kosatan, unlike his comrade, is frozen in fear. Losing the ability to bolt away, there’s only one thing he can do now…

“Waaaagghh!!!! Please don’t hurt us!” cried the timid Kosatan. “Look, we’ll give you whatever you want! I beg of you, please don’t hurt me! I bruise as easy as a Puyo!!”

“Oh, boy…” said the brave Kosatan.

“Please, we only did this to get some extra cash! We didn’t want to do it, but we didn’t have much of a choice! That stingy miser Satan barely pays us anything, and we guard Lyla’s Ruins 24/7!”

Darkbag Chop could only look on surprise at the timid Kosatan who suddenly blew up in a panic in front of him. To say that this was NOT how he pictured fighting some of Satan’s minions…was an understatement.

“Heck, there’s been times where he’s given our paychecks to OTHER Kosatans! We all look the same! We can’t help that!”

“Well,” declared Darkbag Chop. “It still doesn’t change the fact that you little imps were trying to steal all this gold! Sorry boys, but it looks like someone’s going be put away for a while.”

“Like heck we are!” shouted the brave Kosatan. “Come on, bud! Let’s mess him up good!”

“Right! Let’s do this thing!” the timid Kosatan agreed.

“Alright, so we’re doing this the hard way, huh? OK then…come at me!”

The brave Kosatan led the charge, swinging a large wooden club at Darkchop.

Darkchop hops over the club, and lands on it, taunting the Kosatan all the while. He performs a flying backflip off of it…only to get a face full of thrown wooden club, courtesy of the timid Kosatan.

Darkchop, realizing these imps won’t be pushovers, decides to get them separated from each other, to avoid any more team attacks.

Darkchop gets the brave Kosatan to follow him into an alley, and as it attempts to track the paper-bag wearing hero, it doesn’t realize that he’s right behind him preparing to karate chop him into submission.

That is, until Darkchop clumsily trips over a rock, alerting the imp to his presence. It swings its club at him once again, leading to D.C. just barely avoiding getting his head knocked off his body. D.C. decides to stop playing around, and whips out a pistol-like weapon.

The weapon releases a canister containing of orange powder which lands on the brave Kosatan.

“Huh? Orange powder? Ha! What’s this? Are you gonna paint me to death? You’re mine, ya paper-bag wearing dork!” shouts the brave Kosatan. ‘ The Kosatan rushes at D.C., but starts to scratch the arm holding his club. And more. And more. Until he can’t stop!

“What the---? My body…My skin feels tingly…Why am I so…? Ah…ah…. Ahhh!! Oh, jeez! Oh, my…What the heck is going on?! Why do I feel so…” inquires the brave Kosatan

“Itchy? Tell me, imp boy. You ever heard something called, Oh, I don’t know…ITCHING POWDER?” Darkchop asks in a taunting manner.

“Itching pow…ITCHING POWDER?!?! Oof…Ahh!! I can’t stop!” cried the brave Kosatan.

Darkchop knocks the brave Kosatan out with a timed chop to the neck, and tosses him in the sidecar of his custom-made Vespa-like vehicle, the ‘Mystical King’.

The brave Kosatan was sprawled out along the ground. The timid Kosatan, who had been watching the entire exchange from a distance was shocked to see how D.C. was handling his comrade. He decides to bolt from all the action before Darkchop figures out that he’s disappeared. All the while, panicking over what to do.

“Oh, man! I gotta get the heck out of dodge before this jerk comes after me too! But where can I hide? Puyo Hell is WAY too far to make the trip. Besides, I doubt Lord Satan will be all too happy that we even caused all this commotion and brought it to his domain.”

Suddenly, the ‘Mystical King’ comes racing down the same path that the timid Kosatan is on, with Darkchop preparing to scoop the little Kosatan up in a net. “Time to go-a-hunting!” yells Darkchop as he grabs the Kosatan just as it notices it’s being chased.

“Waahh!! Wha—What are you gonna do to us?” the timid Kosatan asked, although it was practically dreading the answer.

“Oh, don’t you worry your pretty little horn. Besides, I already I have an idea as to how I’ll be handling that...” Darkchop explains, in a cryptic manner.

Next thing the Kosatan knows, the ‘Mystical King’ seem to go into overdrive, speeding off into the night.

(Not even 15 minutes later, at Lyla’s Ruins)

Now at Lyla’s Ruins, Darkchop talks to a rather large demon guarding Satan’s castle after handing off the two Kosatan to it.

“Here’s the pair of dastardly little delinquents! Delivered on your doorstep, courtesy of Darkbag Chop! I found them trying to steal some gold from Mr. Oshare’s store.” says Darkchop.

“Thanks, pal. It’s a good thing you took care of this before Lord Satan found out.” said the guard. I’m pretty sure he’s busy in his Carbuncle shrine, and believe you me, he does NOT like to be disturbed when he’s in there, and I don’t want to have to be the poor soul who tells him about all this nonsense.”

“Say, speaking of which...” inquired Darkchop. “While I don’t condone what those imps were doing, have any of you demons ever thought of asking Satan for a raise? As lovestruck as that guy may be more often than not, he never came off as the type to be all stingy and whatnot. Arle and her pet rabbit-thing notwithstanding...”

“Well...would YOU ask Lord Satan, or any demon for that matter, such a question?” asked the guard in a deadpan manner.

Rubbing the back of his head with his right hand, Darkchop sheepishly replies, “Heh-heh...uh, g---good point there.”

Darkchop,prepares to leave, but remembers something he should mention to the guard.

“Oh, hold up! Heh, almost forgot. Soooo…. In the event that any, I don’t know…news stations just HAPPEN to come by here and ask about tonight, just tell ‘em who sent these troublemakers packing…Darkbag Chop!”

“Uh, wha—"

“Oh, and that's two words, not three; the D AND the C ARE capitalized. Here's my photo. If the papers need more glossies, my numbers on the card.” Darkchop chuckled.

“Oh…well, O…K? So, again…thanks for bringing these guys in.” inquired the guard.

With a billow of his cape, Darkchop dramatically spun around and faced the guard.

“Don’t mention it, my good demon! Now, I must go! The despicable odor of crime and general evil-doing…is in the air!!” yelled Darkchop.

“What a self-promoting weirdo…I mean, DARKBAG CHOP? What kind of a stupid name…?” said the guard.

Darkbag left the premises of Satan’s castle, trying to make himself look presentable for the news cameras, only to find…

“What the---So, where the heck’s the press? The news reporters, the journalists, the Twatters?? I THOUGHT this was the new age of high-octane media!

Where’s the action news when you actually need ‘em? Sheesh…and just after I spent all morning to ironing out my cape and cleaning up my shoulder pads…”

Darkchop boards the ‘Mystical King’, and rides off into the night. Eventually, he makes his way to his hideout, Darkchop Tower. A tall tower located in an uncharted portion of the woods. He flips a small switch on the M.K., causing a long ramp-like structure to shoot out the side of the tower wall, allowing the ‘Mystical King’ access to the tower’s interior.

As he rides in, Darkchop makes his way to the top of the tower, and rides into a large room that appears to be the hangar where he parks the M.K. He leaves the hangar, and enters a corridor leading to the kitchen of the tower.

“Honey, I’m home!” shouts Darkchop. The room is deathly silent, not another soul to be found. Honestly, it’s a little depressing.

“Woof…yet another night cleansed of the criminal element, thanks to…Darkbag Chop! Oh, man…I swear, one look at my Puyo pillow, and I’ll be out like a light. But FIRST!...Some breakfast. I’m starving here…”

Darkchop heads over to his kitchen, which looks somewhat unkempt, but mostly because of all the gadgets he has lying in the tower.

“Alrighty then, let’s see what we got here…Sunny-C, some pink stuff, leftover sake from that little get-together at the Skeleton Bros.’ place, but where is—ah, here it is! Chocolate-chip pancakes, buttered toast, and to top it all off, eggs and bacon! It might mean indulging a bit, but after all that craziness last night, treating myself wouldn’t too much of an issue...”

After making breakfast, Darkchop reads the newspaper to see if he made any headlines recently. Unfortunately, what he sees doesn’t exactly delight him, to say the least.

“Aw, what?! Still nothing?! ‘Arle Nadja foils schemes of Dark Prince yet again’? Foil evil schemes, my aunt Fanny! Unbelievable! You know, I put my neck out to keep these towns safe from any harm from REAL monsters almost every night!” Darkchop starts up from his chair, marching around angrily while clutching the newspaper.

“What kind of evil scheme is this newspaper even talking about? Knowing the song-and-dance between Arle and Satan, that lovestruck imbecile probably tried to do something to impress her, only for it to end up endangering the planet, and I’ll bet they played Puyo, with her winning yet again!”

Annoyed, Darkchop starts to chug down some orange juice, skip breakfast due to his sour mood and heads to bed. He starts to feel a little bit down in the dumps and goes to change into his pajamas, preparing for a couple hours of deep sleep.

“Arle and that blonde girl and the redhead, they usually seem to have the big stuff handled, and that’s just from popping a bunch of blobs from time to time! Heck, they even seem to have some pretty interesting adventures. Traveling between dimensions, going into space, fighting demon kings and space creatures alike.

“But still, it’s not like I haven’t done anything special! I mean, I kept tabs on that kid with the red arm for almost 3 months…although I DID end up getting flack for it when his teacher reported me to the authorities for bugging her classroom… I just can’t believe it. Me, a superhero getting upstaged by a bunch of Puyo-popping teenage girls! I mean, what the heck?!”

“Hmm…there’s times where I wonder if what I’m doing really matters in the long run. I mean, I fight monsters, spirits, and the occasional mischievous demon every now and then, but does it ever really amount to anything if no one’s aware of my good deeds? I’d like it if I got a chance to take on a big-time baddie like Satan or the Count.”

Darkchop gets up with a start, surprised at himself.

“What am I saying?! Just because I don’t get a headline in a newspaper, or even a short section about my exploits on the news, it doesn’t mean I should just quit the hero business! This town needs a protector, and I’m it! For I am the terror that prowls in the night! I am the I am the cholesterol that clogs your arteries! I…am Darkbag Chop!”

“Besides, it’d be a real shame to have all this cool stuff go to waste. Not to mention, how it was so nice for Wish and her husband to let me rent out their tower. They really are good people. I should probably send them a gift basket. I wonder what they’d like…”

#puyo puyo #choppun

8 notes · View notes

swanqueeneverafter · 6 years

Text

11. What Happened to Frederick, Pt.5

Storybrooke. Storybrooke Wishing Well. (Emma and August pull up to a wishing well on the bike.) Emma: (Dismounting:) “A watering hole? Literally?” August: (Dismounting:) “Well, say what you want about me. I always tell the truth.” Emma: “I always thought a drink was, like, wine or whiskey.” August: “What, do you want me to get you drunk?” Emma: (Smiling:) “No.” August: “Next time.” Emma: “You are optimistic.” August: (Grabbing two cups from the motorcycle:) “They say there's something special about this well. There's even a legend. They say that the water from the well (Draws up water from the well:) is fed by and underground lake, and that lake had magical properties.” Emma: “Magic? You sound like Henry.” August: “Smart kid. So this legend, it says that if you drink water from the well, something lost will be returned to you.” Emma: “You know an awful lot about this town for being a stranger.” August: “And you know very little for being the sheriff.” Emma: “How do you know all of this? You've been here before?” August: “I know all of this for one very simple reason: I read the plaque.” Emma: (Chuckles and walks over to an engraved plaque on the side of the wishing well:) “You actually believe that?” August: “I'm a writer. I have to have an open mind.” Emma: “Yeah, but magic?” August: “Water is a very powerful thing. Cultures as old as time have worshiped it. It flows throughout all lands, connecting the entire world. If anything had mystical properties, if anything had magic, well I'd say it'd be water.” (Fills a cup with water.) Emma: “That's asking a lot to believe on faith.” August: “If you need evidence for everything, Emma, you're going to find yourself stuck in one place for a long time.” Emma: “Maybe. Or maybe I'll just find the truth before anyone else.” August: “Well, Miss sceptic, (Hands her a cup of the water:) there's one thing I can tell you for sure that requires no leap of faith and I know you'll agree with me.” (Takes a drink.) Emma: “What's that?” August: “It's good water.” (They clink cups together and drink.) Storybrooke. (Having returned from her ‘date’, Emma is brushing the leaves off of her yellow bug, when she notices a red metal box in the gutter. Realizing it’s the same box that Henry’s book was hidden in, she opens it. The book is inside, fully intact. Emma looks around confused as August watches her from a discreet distance.)

Enchanted Forest. Past. (Prince Charming is riding through the woods on horseback until he reaches a clearing with a cabin.) Prince Charming: “Snow! Snow White! Snow! Are you there?” (Red Riding Hood emerges from the field next to the clearing.) Red: “She’s gone. She never came back after she went to find you.” Prince Charming: “Then I’ll find her. I will always find her. And I will convince her that we belong together. I will always fight for her, no matter what comes between us.” Red: “It won’t be much of a fight.” Prince Charming: “What are you talking about?” Red: “Snow wants to be with you more than anything.” Prince Charming: “Don’t mock me. Snow told me that we can’t be together because she doesn’t love me.” Red: “She left here to break up your wedding, because she’s in love with you. Unless, something changed her mind along the way…” Prince Charming: “Not something – someone.” (The sound of horses is heard in the distance. King George and his men are seen charging towards them.) Red: “Who are they?” Prince Charming: “That’s someone – King George.” King George: “Bring me his head!” Prince Charming: “Come on!” (Prince Charming gets back on his horse and extends his hand to Red. She grabs his hand and he pulls her up. The two of them take off as King George shoots arrows in their direction.) Storybrooke Elementary. Present. (Henry is playing his video game on a bench outside the school. Emma walks up to him with a bag and sits down beside him.) Emma: “Wow, I love that game. Space Paranoids, right?” Henry: “Yeah, my mom got it for me.” Emma: “I used to play that all the time when I was a kid. Relax – it’s all in the wrists.” Henry: “My mom said she’s picking me up in, like, five minutes.” Emma: I know, I just have something I’d like to give you.” (She takes the book out of her bag and gives it to him.) Henry: “You found it! Where’d you get it?” Emma: “I found it in a gutter. Somehow, it made its way back to me.” Henry: “Wow. That’s crazy.” Emma: “Yeah, pretty lucky.” Henry: “Operation Cobra is back on. It’s a sign. Things are going to be better.” Emma: “Whatever you say, kid. I gotta go.”

Granny’s Diner. (Mary Margaret is having a drink at Granny’s Diner. Leroy comes in and sits next to her.) Leroy: “I’ll have what she’s having.” Mary Margaret: “Well? Did you get it?” Leroy: “What do you think?” Mary Margaret: “I think you’re right. I was dreaming if I thought the town harlot and the town drunk could accomplish anything.” Leroy: “Yeah. Just dreaming.” Mary Margaret: “Leroy, you understand that a relationship between you and Sister Astrid can never happen?” Leroy: “Yeah, yeah. My whole life people made it their business to tell me what I can’t do. She was the first person that said I could do anything. Who believed in me. I didn’t want to disappoint her.” Mary Margaret: “But there are consequences to following through when the world tells you not to. I mean, look at me. I am a pariah in this town.” Leroy: “What about your good memories?” Mary Margaret: “What do you mean?” Leroy: “Didn’t you have moments with him that you love? Do you regret them?” Mary Margaret: “No, of course not.” Leroy: “Isn’t that what life’s about? Holding on to your good memories? All I wanted was a moment with Astrid. One moment to give me hope that any dream’s possible. You’ve had all that, Mary Margaret. So, stop feeling sorry for yourself and enjoy it. Because I haven’t.” Mary Margaret: “Well, if I had the dream, I’m sorry to say, it wasn’t worth it.” Leroy: “And sitting here drinking won’t end this pain.” Mary Margaret: “What will?” Leroy: “I can only think of one thing.” (At the Miner’s Day festival, Leroy, who has a pick axe, is on the roof of one of the buildings. He sees a transformer near him.) Leroy: “Perfect.” (Mary Margaret also climbs onto the roof.) Mary Margaret: “Leroy! What are you doing? Please, don’t do it!” Leroy: “I’m not going to jump.” Mary Margaret: “You’re not?” Leroy: “No, are you crazy? I could hit someone. You know how much damage I could do? I’m solidly built.” Mary Margaret: “Leroy, what are you doing up here?” Leroy: “I’m going to get my moment.” Mary Margaret: “Wait! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! What?” Leroy: “You might want to duck.” (Leroy hits the transformer with the axe. The power goes out at the festival.) Mary Margaret: “What are you doing?!” Leroy: “I’m selling candles, sister.”

(All of the people at the Miner’s Day festival mob Mary Margaret and Leroy to buy candles. Mary Margaret then notices that all of the boxes are empty.) Mary Margaret: “Leroy. We sold out. (The two of them hug. They see Astrid standing with the other nuns:) Well, go on – give her the news. Have your moment.” (Leroy brings the box of money over to the group of nuns.) Astrid: “Excuse me.” (The other nuns leave, leaving Astrid and Leroy alone.) Leroy: “Five thousand bucks. Piece of cake.” Astrid: “You sold them all?” Leroy: “I had a little help.” Astrid: “You made it happen.” Leroy: “You have no idea.” Astrid: “I don’t know what to say.” Leroy: “You’re welcome. Listen – that boat of mine? I’m going to fix it up. And, well, maybe you could be my first passenger.” Astrid: “I’d like that.” Leroy: “Well, then, that’s what we’ll do, sister.” Astrid: “Oh. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” (They look around the festival and see everyone holding the lit candles.) Storybrooke. Sheriff’s Station. (Emma is looking over Kathryn’s phone records at the station. The name ‘D. Nolan’ is highlighted. Regina enters.) Emma: “If this is about the blackout, I’ve got the guys from the power company down there working on it.” Regina: “That’s not why I’m here. I wanted to thank you for finding Henry’s book.” Emma: “Oh. Yeah that was crazy. Must’ve got swept up by the storm somehow.” Regina: “A fortuitous find indeed. Tell me, did you discover it before or after you rode off on that man’s motorbike?” Emma: (Folds her arms and leans back in her chair:) “How did you- you know what, doesn’t matter.” Regina: “I’m told you two looked quite cosy together.” Emma: (Smirks:) “Why, Madam Mayor, if I didn’t know better I’d think you were jealous.” Regina: “We don’t know who that man is or what his intentions are.” Emma: “Actually we do. His name’s August and he’s a writer.” Regina: “And that’s it? (Emma nods:) All right, what about Kathryn, have you found anything?” Emma: “I found something. I just don’t know what it means.” Regina: “Well, what is it?” Emma: “At this point in the investigation, it’s best I don’t divulge that information.” Regina: “I see. Well, if you have something you’re better off acting on it. They say the first twenty four hours are crucial in missing person cases. But, far be it for me to tell you how to do your job. (She begins to leave:) Should I expect your call later, Sheriff Swan?” Emma: (Watches the older woman a moment, then sighs:) “No. There’s something I’ve gotta go do.” Regina: (As Emma goes to grab her coat:) “I’ll walk you out.”

Storybrooke. Miner’s Day Festival. (Mary Margaret makes a ‘sold out’ sign and puts it at the front of the candle booth. She walks to her car, which still has the word ‘tramp’ spray painted on it. She stares at it for a moment, and then decides to go back to the Miner’s Day festival. Granny stops her and re-lights Mary Margaret’s candle in a heartfelt gesture. David watches Mary Margaret walk past as Emma arrives. Emma approaches him.) David: “Emma.” Emma: “David, we need to talk.” David: “Did you get a hold of Kathryn?” Emma: “No, I’m afraid not.” David: “Then, what is it?” Emma: “I need you to come to the sheriff’s station with me and tell me everything.” David: “I’m sorry. I thought I already did.” Emma: “So did I.” (Emma leads David to the back seat of her squad car. Mary Margaret looks on worriedly.)

The End.

#swan queen #sq #swanqueen

7 notes · View notes