#he does not have the tact to explain it to a teenager Do Not Let Him Try. or let him it'll be funny

[todayisafridaynight]

masato being grossed out by jo and masumi being together is so funny because. who do you think gave him The Talk? masumi braces himself to teach his son about safe sex and masato cannot leave the room faster. third worst day of his life

NOO BECAUSE THE OTHER DAY I WAS THINKING OF THE INEVITABLE SCENARIO OF MASATO GETTING 'THE TALK' AND IT MADE ME UGLY LAUGH

#snap chats #THIRD WORST DAY OF HIS LIFE #UNDOUBTEDLY arakawa gave him the talk. To Them Both arakawa is masato's DAD dad right #would be funny as hell if sawashiro was there too tho.... whole family's getting a sex ed class ☠️ #the mental image of masato desperately trying to wheel himself out of the room is going to make me throw up laughing #he tryna be lightning mcqueen SOOOOOO badly with how hard he tryna push his wheels #i could only burst a lung at the thought of sawashiro /trying/ to explain sex. like son HE barely understands how it works #he does not have the tact to explain it to a teenager Do Not Let Him Try. or let him it'll be funny #THE COMEDY OF THE POTENTIAL OF THE WHOLE 'remember to use protection' BIT IS LAVEKJLKJVE #1.) we're revisiting the Can Masato Fuck discussion 2.) Neither Of These Two Used Protection. Not Sawashiro Anyway #sawashiro sweating in the corner just. Yeah Uh. Yeah It's Pretty Important. You Don't Want To End Up In A Situation Youre Not Prepared For #and he got a fuckin thousand yard stare im gonna throw up #SEE IF THEYRE BOTH IN THE ROOM AND MASATO IS LIKE 'oh theyre definitely together' THEN THE PROGRESSION OF HORROR #EVEN IF THEYRE NOT BUT MASATO STILL HAS SUSPICIONS HE'S JUST 👁️‍🗨️👁️‍🗨️ never looks at them the same again #god. the more i think of it the dangerously close i get to opening google doc #its just so funny... ive never gotten The Talk as a kid tho so. uh. i have research to do

[escapiste123]

17yo Mob asks Reigen for massage lessons. His training regimen is a lot more intense these days and he’s looking for a good way to relieve soreness that he can do himself and help his club members with.

Reigen is very professional about it. He sweats a normal amount.

Putting his hands on Mob’s bare skin under Dimple’s judgmental stare is uncomfortable at first. But muscle memory and Reigen’s unflappable composure quickly take over. He works out the knots in Mob’s back, helps him stretch while explaining the names of the muscles and their function.

It’s a… different experience for Mob. All the dearest things about shishou – his confident teaching voice, his patience with Mob, the way he knows Mob better than Mob knows himself – suddenly connect with physical touch and body heat and all the other things Mob has been putting off thinking about.

The first time he gets a hard-on during a massage is mortifying. Mob lays face down on the table, red from the tips of his ears all the way down to his chest, frantically willing his floating hair (and his dick) to calm the fuck down.

Thinking this way about shishou, wanting desperately for his hands to linger longer, to stray lower, feels like a breach of trust, a violation of the deep friendship that they share. Mob’s eyes sting with tears.

Reigen is quite tactful. He ends the session with a pat on Mob’s shoulder, leaves the room for Mob to get his bearings and get dressed. The thought that Reigen just might know him well enough to figure out what happened is humiliating and Mob cries for real after the door closes.

He doesn’t come back to the office for a while after that.

But now the floodgates have been opened and keeping himself away from Reigen does no good. Every night Mob dreams about big capable hands exploring his skin, about familiar voice murmuring reassuring words in his ear.

He wakes up every morning with an erection that feels almost painful and the only way to relieve himself is by allowing the guilty fantasies of Reigen with his sleeves rolled up exposing strong forearms, his tie thrown over his shoulder and a look of concentration on his face.

The universe spared Mob from the worst of teenage hormones during his turbulent middle school years, but now they wreak havoc on his body, leaving no memory of Reigen untainted. Mob’s brain seems intent on ruining his life by conjuring inappropriate images at inconvenient moments.

When Mob feels himself growing hard while showing a stretching routine to the BIC members, he has to come to terms with the fact that there’s no avoiding his burgeoning feelings and he would have to face them head on.

He takes several more days to consider it, lets himself explore the fantasies instead of suppressing them with guilt. What would it be like if Reigen touched him without any pretense or excuse? Would he be cocky? Teasing? Or achingly gentle? What would it be like to touch Reigen?

The more Mob thinks about it, the less it feels like this infatuation has come from nowhere. It was always there, for years, waiting for the final piece to slide into place for Mob to realize it. He feels stupid for ever thinking it would ruin their friendship.

Their bond is stronger than that, it has endured so much worse. Perhaps it was always leading to this, a natural evolution of people who care for each other in every possible way. Giddily, Mob thinks about the way his and Reigen’s thoughts are often aligned without need for words.

Maybe Reigen already feels the same way.

Mob shows up at the office on Friday night, right as Reigen is ready to lock up. Reigen greets him as usual, doesn’t mention his prolonged absence, but Mob can see the uncertainty behind his eyes. He feels a different kind of guilt.

The whole time that he was struggling with his own hormones, he has left Reigen in the dark, thinking that he has done something wrong.

Mob has a lot to make up for.

“Shishou, your lessons have been really helpful. But I’m still struggling when I try to give massages to others”

Reigen tilts his head. There’s a suspicious crease between his eyebrows but it doesn’t look hostile. More like – he already knows where this is going and is waiting for the confirmation.

“So I thought,” Mob continues, “that it would help if I gave you a massage. As practice.”

#mobreimob #feelings realization #twt fic #mp100 #it's only a little bit risqué #hope tumblr doesn't nuke me for this

[kyberphilosopher]

Fensterln

“I can’t get up. You’re sitting on top of me.”

Warning(s): some allusions to sex, explicit-ish language, fluff, reader has a whole ‘Black Cat’ thing going on. Word Count: 3273

Notes: This is a requested work. This is a headcanoned canon version of Superboy, meaning he is no version in particular and simply the character I figure as a whole. Reader can be any gender.

“Fensterln is when you have to climb through someone’s window in order to have sex with them, without their parents knowing about it.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

You know, most people think that climbing up the side of a building is easy. Like it’s nothing. They see it on TV, and in the movies, and in cartoons even, and they think, “That doesn’t look so bad!” because it doesn’t. Cartoons and actors don’t have to deal with the wind whipping their hair, constantly pushing their whole body all around, the butterflies of anxiousness making their heart thump, threatening the scenario of falling to their death. It’s terrifying. It takes a lot of skill, a lot of courage, and a lot of luck. 

“Shit.”

Your right hand releases from the glass, arm slowly swinging back until it’s at your side. The same sides foot follows this pattern of rotation, until only your left fingertips and toes are stuck to the wall of the building, suctioning you to life. Below you, hundreds and hundreds of feet, is an island of grass and sand, encompassed by a large body of water. Over the tidal waves chip chopping away, there’s a distance. And in that distance, is the city, just under the inky blackness of the midnight sky. 

Jump City, it’s called. You’re not too familiar with it. Most of your time is spent in Metropolis, or Gotham. Luckily, both of those cities have plenty of skyscrapers to practice scaling. One could say that you’d perfected the art of this sort of thing. The finger pads on your suit are sophisticatedly sticky, seamlessly letting you latch onto anything with grace. Your feet are the same. 

The wind hits your face like sharp needles, amplified by the cold air and the incline. Your hair whips around wildly, also different from how it flows, softly, in the movies. The harsh breeze roars in your ears, louder than the thousands of explosions you’ve heard in your lifetime. Although dangerous, nothing beats the view. Those thousands of lights in the distance, the cars, the buildings, this building that you’re on now. Titan’s Tower is far larger and closer and more important than anything else at the moment. 

“Okay then,” you mutter, twisting your body over to the right twice more, until finally both hands and feet are connecting against the glass in a stealthy, perfect crawling position. 

You work your way up, one foot and hand at the time. You resemble that of a spider, or perhaps a cat. One, two. One, two. 

His room is on one of the top floors, if not the top floor. From the two other times that you’ve done this, you remember the number of steps, the distance, the little cracks in the glass panes to look for so you know you’re close. Even from the outside, hundreds of feet up, hanging above death tantalizingly, you know exactly where you are and where you need to be. And you know, of course, that you are close. 

Your right hand leaves the wall once more and reaches down to the belt on your hips. “Coming, my love,” you mutter as you flip open a small pouch attached. From the inside you pull out a slim switchblade, made specifically to cut through glass walls like this- designed it yourself. 

The knife springs open. In a circle big enough to fit your entire body, you trace the blade in a wide arc from up to down, left to right. Then you flip the blade back inside, place the whole thing back into the pouch on the belt, and shove your left elbow against the middle of the glass in front of you. 

It pops free immediately. The circle of wall falls forward into the room, with you not far behind.

Landing like a gymnast on your toes with your arms overhead, you are immune to the sharp pain in your femurs that comes from a sudden pressure like this. The glass pane is still intact on the floor ahead of you, which is coated with a red carpet that you recognize so well. It’s much warmer inside than it was outside, although you can still feel the night wind from behind you.

“Silent,” a voice remarks from beside you. It’s not an amused tone, really. It’s genuine and full of awe, surrounded by something casual. 

You hum as you stand before throwing a look over your shoulder. Sure enough at your back, splayed casually on a bed against the wall you just broke through, is your favorite boy toy. Dark, curly hair framing his classically handsome face, nose scrunching slightly on instinct. He’s wearing the black and red super shirt he always does, coupled with the plaid pajama bottoms you’d gotten him as a gift in spring.

You want so badly to quip something back, but you both know you can’t right now. Not when you’re so close to the door. And yeah, that’s partially Conner’s fault, if not all. Too much noise would attract the attention of his team mates, the Titans, and then something probably not that great would happen. Maybe they’d throw you out. Maybe they’d fire him. Maybe things would just get weird. It’s not as if you and Connor are an official couple, even after all this time. You could stop sneaking around to see each other at any sense of danger.

You take a step towards the bed he lays on, noting the big, bright smile that lights up Superboy’s face at the motion. “Can you fix the hole?” you whisper, just loud enough for him to hear.

Conner’s eyes go wide and the smile gets bigger.

“In the wall.”

The smile turns into an eye roll. “Yes,” he sighs, almost dramatically, pushing himself up. The boy crosses to the center of the room a few feet from you and begins picking up the perfect circle of cut window- wall while you look around the area.

You’ve snuck into Conner’s room before. Twice, in fact. It’s not clean, not horribly messy. His leather jacket is usually hanging off the dresser or door handle. Sweatshirts of different colors are littering the floor in a collective pile. It looks like a normal teenage boys room, really. It just feels very ‘Conner’.

First, he pushes the glass back into place in the wall, then he takes a few steps back. You throw him a smirk, nudging your head to encourage him to do the thing.

Conner’s eyes heat up. Little at first, as a soft yellow. Then into an all consuming scarlet that hisses out in two beams meeting in the middle between them. They move in a circle around the pane until you can’t even tell it was ever not there, and the wind you once heard no longer exists. The wall is perfectly in tact.

“Thank you, Superboy,” you tell him, tone laced overly sweet. Your hands, freezing from the cold even through the gloves of your costume, wrap around Conner’s upper arm.

“Yeah,” he tosses, back, voice low. His cheeks are turning pink.

You unhook your arms and saunter over to his mattress. As you throw yourself on and relax as you sink into the pillows, you let your eyes close. “You’re lucky I like you so much,” you tease. “Mm, do you know a lot of people who would climb up the Tower for you? I don’t.”

Upon hearing him take a single step forward, one eye pops open. “I know you missed me,” you continue.

Conner lays himself on the bed beside you, hands behind his bed with his arms bent. You turn to face him, propping your head up with your palm.

“You never answer my texts,” Conner says, Adam’s apple bobbing.

“You text me?” you smirk, watching Superboys eyes sink close as he releases a sigh of defeat.

Your left leg slips over Conner’s hips. Then you pull your whole body up and over into a straddle over him, looking down at him. He’s handsome in the way nobody can argue with, so perfect and soft and structured. When you squint, he looks like Superman. But Conner’s not Superman, he’s better. You can’t explain why, or how, but he just is.

You place your palms forward on his chest at first, then backwards, behind your back, on Conner’s thighs. Your chest puffs out at the slight change of position.

Below you, the boy bites his lower lip softly in thought for a second. “What if I got you a phone?” Conner asks you. His light eyes holding yours through thick, dark lashes. “Just so you can text me back sometimes?”

“Us?” you gasp with wide eyes. “Talking? During the daytime?”

Conner glances away. “Message received. Very funny. Forget it.”

“I’m messing with you,” you promise with a smile. “Loosen up Super-Annoy.”

“So you’ll let me get you one?” Conner pushes himself up with a snap, eyes wide with some kind of excitement.

Well… would you? You haven’t had a lot of long term partners, if any. Your time with Conner has been the longest with anyone, and he’s not even really your boyfriend. He’s just… you know… the guy you kissed on a rooftop one night. The guy who once surprised you with a cone of ice cream, again on a night time rooftop, whilst you were sitting on the side of the building to watch the city below. The guy who remembered your birthday, the guy who keeps sending you the many, many texts reminding you that you can watch your favorite show on the TV in the tower. The guy who once lied to get you to ice skate with him.

Something about Conner has been enough to keep you hooked for months and months, always coming back. Sneaking into the Tower, taking more and more trips to Jump City, keeping notes of events throughout your week to tell him about when you see him. 

How silly. Never giving the time of day to any other partner of yours, but for Conner? Conner has gotten at least eight months of it. 

“I’ll think about it,” you roll your eyes. 

“You promise?” Conner urges. 

“Yes. Jeez, I promise. I will think about letting you get me a phone that only you have the number to.”

“Please don’t laugh at me about this.”

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“It feels like it.”

“Connor,” you clasp a hand on his shoulder, pushing back laughter. “Have I ever laughed at you?”

“W- Is that- is that a serious question?” Conner’s eyebrows raise. 

“Get up,” you roll your neck. “I want to change positions.”

The boy below you shifts. For a quick moment, something pokes between your hips from underneath. Your pupils dilate in response, but by the time they finish, the movement has ceased. “Tell me about your day.”

“I want to lay down,” you say as you stretch. “I just scaled up the side of the skyscraper-”

“You love it.”

“-and it was oh, so cold. I’m tired.”

“That’s not your day.”

You just stare at him expectantly, not quite sure what it is you’re waiting for. 

“I can’t get up. You’re sitting on top of me,” Conner concedes. “You chose to be up there.”

“Prove it,” you challenge.

“Yeah, yeah,” the boy below you hisses as if annoyed. “I get it,” he says, but his arms are already snaking around your torso to pull you close and slowly pull you into a new position. 

You lay on your side, back against Conner’s broad chest. His arms stay wrapped around your middle as he curls up against you on instinct, legs quick to tangle with your own. You know he must really be interested in you if he’s not going to mention that your ‘work’ shoes are still on while in bed. 

“You’re an ass,” he mutters into your hair. 

“What was that?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Ha,” you chuckle once. “Douche.”

“Please tell me about your day now?” you hear Conner almost plead. “Please?”

One of your hands, your right one, rests on top of Conner’s against your stomach. “Oh, you know. The usual. I helped out a small jewelry store today, snuck into a big building, currently hiding from Nightwing- you know how it is.”

“There wasn’t much crime today. I mostly just stayed in. You know that big building you snuck into?”

“Such a douche,” you breathe.

“Jealous much?” Superboy rumbles against your ear. 

“I’m gonna tell Dick,” you tell him. “I’ll send an anonymous tip that one of the Titan’s is a big poop face.”

Conner puts his whole face in your hair. “Shiver me timbers.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s not fair you guys get a whole building to yourselves. What are you even using half these floors for? People in Gotham are struggling.” You frown. “Well, except for Wayne. But you know what? He’s a douche too. You’d get along.”

Conner squeezes you once. Then you feel him still from behind you, not even breathing. And then-

“Move in then.”

At once, your brows furrow. “What?”

Your companion squeezes you once more. “Move in. Move in with me. In the Tower.”

Your mouth opens and closes a couple times, eyes looking around. You can’t see Conner, but you can feel him out. His eyes are closed, still inhaling the scent of you shamelessly. It’s hard for people to catch you off guard, not just like this, but at all. You just have that sarcastic, witty, sultry reputation. And for him- Super-Annoy, of all people- to just throw you off so easily?

“I’m not a Titan,” you decide on explaining, almost asking. 

“Become one, then.”

“I don’t have the money to move in. The rent must be crazy.”

“I’ll pay for you.”

“Conner,” you swallow. “This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not joking.” His head pops up. When you turn yours a little, you can look up at him, and he can look down at you. “Move into the Tower.”

Now your eyes are wide, and his are relaxed. No, Conner’s are focused, drilling into your own. “I’m... hardly Titan’s material.”

This was true. You’ve been skirting the gray line far longer than you’ve known Superboy, and he’s been super since the beginning of his creation. The first time you’d met was about ten seconds before you’d robbed a bank and sent him a wink before disappearing. 

“You just told me, not five minutes ago, that you helped a small business. Helping people is what heroes are all about. You can do this, Y/N. You are Titan’s material.”

Shit. He’s right. 

“Why not?” Conner questions. 

“I... um...”

You’ve never lived with another person before. Your family, once upon a time, sure. Not friends. Not Dick Grayson, or Kori, or Rachel fucking Roth. And certainly not Superboy- Super-Annoy. Not someone you have a ‘thing’ with. What would that mean for the two of you? And when things go terribly, terribly wrong, what then?

Gotta’ think fast. 

Your face is wiped clean, replaced by your signature smirk. “Get me a phone first. Then I’ll consider it.”

Conner doesn’t budge though. You wonder if X-Ray vision can see through lies too. “I mean it,” the boy tells you. “I want you here.”

“I have to survive the night in the building with boy prodigy and star flame.”

“Starfire.”

“Whatever. I have to do that first. There’s a reason we sneak me in, you know.”

Your free hand reaches up and cups Conner’s cheek without you telling it to. You ask your brain why, but yet, your palm doesn’t move. It feels over Conner’s cheekbones, encouraging you to look deeper into his somehow soft eyes. Your fingertips can even feel his hair, which is in need of a wash, as they get comfortable. 

“For you,” you finish the sentiment, voice now genuine- also not predicted. “Sneaking in for you.”

“I don’t want you to feel like a secret,” the boy above you whispers, pouring his entire heart into it. 

You answer with a snort. 

If anything, Conner’s the secret. If he had his way, the two of you would probably be on your honeymoon at this moment. Hell, your whole relationship and subsequent marriage would be a honeymoon. You’re the one letting him follow you around. You’re the one never giving him just what he wants. 

But then again, you’re the one who keeps coming back. Conner’s the one that never left. 

“Trust me,” you nod with a humored grin. “I don’t.”

Conner sighs and falls back down to rest behind  you. “Good.”

Besides his breathing, then there is silence. 

Really? Telling you to move in? Of course it doesn’t seem like such a big deal to him. Of course he has the solution to all the reasons why not. Your fairly certain that Conner hasn’t thought about this until mentioning it, but even then, how did he have all the answers so fast? Where would you stay? With him? Sandwiched between Conner and Wally West playing video games for the rest of your life? Dying after Donna Troy catches you accidentally stealing her lunch?

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Conner begins, “but you should really stay the night.”

In response, you practically burst. “You hate being told what to do!” you say as you squirm in his arms. “Now you’re giving me suggestions?”

Conner sits up again so he can look down at you with a little frown. Luckily, it’s too nice of a view to be really scared of anything he could do. “Shh! You’re gonna get caught, Y/N.” Then Superboy’s eyes widen a little. “If you lived here, you wouldn’t have to be so quiet, either. You could just come through the front door.”

“Oh my God,” you squeeze your eyes closed. “Conner...”

One battle at a time. 

“Fine,” you begrudge. “I’ll stay the night.”

Conner tightens his grip around your form happily in response. “Will you need any help in the morning?”

“No. No, I got it.”

Silence. 

Say it. Say it. Say it. 

“Conner? I, uh...”

Say it. 

“I don’t have any sleeping clothes,” you lie. 

“Sleeping?” you hear the boy behind you whisper. “I didn’t think we were going to be sleeping.”

“Now who’s going to get us in trouble?” you smirk. “Seriously though. I’ve been wearing my suit all day.”

“I can get you out of it.”

“You can’t just see through it?” you question. “Don’t you have X-Ray vision?”

Conner groans. “You’re ruining it.”

You smile. Conner’s the only partner of yours you realize you’re actually happy to be around. “I think you just want us to get caught.”

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Yayyy. Request finished. Next I have a Reverse Flash request, and then I should be good with the DC requests for now. Other than that I have some Jason Todd things, something for Damian and 2 fics for a character I haven’t written for before but are looking pretty good. I hope this satisfied the prompt that I was given in the request. Let me know anything you want or whatever. 

#superboy x reader #superboy imagine #superboy imagines #conner Kent x reader #connor Kent x reader #connor Kent imagine #connor Kent imagines #conner kent imagine #conner Kent imagines #fluff #x reader #superboy fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #superboy fanfic #superboy fic #connor Kent fanfiction #conner Kent fanfiction #dc comics x reader #dc comics fanfiction #connor Kent fluff #superboy fluff #Titans x reader #Titans fanfiction #Titans fanfic #connor kent #conner kent #superboy smut #connor kent smut

[iliveiloveiwrite]

The Mirror of Erised // Draco Malfoy

Summary: Curious professors, treasure hunts, romantic feelings.

A/N: This idea gripped me and I couldn't let it go. I haven't written for Draco in so long, I forgot how much I love this character. 

Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Female!Reader

Warnings: fluff, pining, mutual pining, kissing, treasure hunts, humour, swearing, mentions of food and drink

Word count: 4.4k

The air of the greenhouses was always humid; thick with moisture, creating the perfect environment for the magical plants of Hogwarts to thrive and grow. Tended by all students, the greenhouses saw an abundance of visitors every day.

The collection of greenhouses had been your solace as a teenager studying at the enchanting school. Too anxious from the state of wizarding society, the greenhouses became a place of calm for you. Professor Sprout had taken you under your wing after your fourth visit to the unconventional classrooms. From there, your knowledge of magical plants and their properties grew until you were the one they called when the school was destroyed, and students were injured.

It wasn’t long after the Battle of Hogwarts that McGonagall offered you a teaching position, wanting a trustworthy, welcoming soul to take over from Professor Sprout. Sprout hadn’t worried; she knew she had left her beloved greenhouses in safe hands.

Days in the greenhouses always flew by. You constantly found yourself entranced by your work; the potting and repotting of Mandrakes, the drying of nettles, the harvesting of Asphodel root – it was enough to keep you thoroughly occupied as well as a hive of information for the students that line the greenhouse work stations.

However, today you found yourself occupied not by the Aconite plant that also went by Monkshood and Wolfsbane. Instead, you were caught up in a rumour delivered to you this morning by Nearly Headless Nick. The resident ghost of Gryffindor had flitted over to you, already grinning with excitement at the information he had to share. By the time such information had been imparted onto you, your excitement rivalled his.

There was only one person, however, that you wanted to share this rumour with.

Draco Malfoy followed you into teaching a year after you began your position at Hogwarts. He hadn’t wanted the job at the ministry; his name scorned by most witches and wizards. McGonagall had seen something in him and had offered him the position of Potions Master, knowing how comfortable the Malfoy heir would been in the subject.

The friendship with the Slytherin Prince happened over many shared meals; breakfasts, lunches, dinners in the Great Hall in which you always found yourself saving a seat for the blonde in case no-one else at the table did. Draco’s allegiance in the Second Wizarding War was a well-known fact amongst staff and students.

After a while, the two seats became reserved for the both of you. An unofficial seating plan in which you would save a seat for Draco, and he would save one for you if you were running late. It was a friendship you so dearly cherished, and if you happened to have recognised the familiar stirrings of love in you as you glanced at the blonde, then that would be your secret to bare. Draco didn’t need to know how he made your heart race and sent your head into a spin; he didn’t need to know how often he featured in your dreams, waking up with your arm outstretched as if reaching for him in the deep of your sleep.

The man occupied your mind as you left the greenhouses, wandering to the Great hall where you caught sight of the shock of blonde hair amongst the rest of the staff. It’s as if he senses your presence, Draco looks up from his plate of food to meet your gaze. A slow smile spreads across his face as he waves at you, hurrying you over.

“Have you heard?” You smile, remembering your earlier conversation with Nearly Headless Nick, childish excitement written across your face as you reach out to grip Draco’s forearm.

The blonde indulges you with a wide smile of his own. “Have I heard what?”

Your grip on Draco’s arm grows tighter as your excitement peaks. “It’s back at Hogwarts – the Mirror of Erised.”

Shock pulses through his body as Draco tries and fails to keep the alarm from showing on his face. “What? Where did you find that out?”

“Nearly Headless Nick who heard it from Professor Binns who overheard Professors Flitwick and Trelawney discussing the subject matter outside of McGonagall’s office.”

Draco’s grey eyes narrow as he takes in the admittedly weak and confusing chain of gossip. “Are you certain that it is back here?” He asks; curiosity burning through him, but not wanting to risk falsities.

“There’s only one way to find out,” You tease, biting your lip as you peer up at the Potions professor through your lashes. You knew that Draco would be apprehensive about such a magical object, but even he couldn’t resist catching a glimpse into his own soul – his own heart.

Draco groans; repressing the urge to let his head fall into his arms. “Another treasure hunt?”

He didn’t remember the last one too fondly. You had heard whispers of the Necklace of the Lady of the Lake being housed in an offshoot of one of the many tunnels that lay undisturbed underneath Hogwarts. They had remained undisturbed for over a thousand years until you had chosen to find the necklace. You had no interest in wearing it; you couldn’t be bothered about being unfathomably loved, but you had simply wanted to see whether there was any stock in the legend preached by Professor Binns in History of Magic.

Unfortunately, whilst the tunnels did exist, the necklace did not, and it was left to Draco to pick up the pieces of your disappointment as well as heal numerous scratches and welts covering your limbs after an ill-timed fall.

After that, Draco had made you swear that your treasure hunts would remain above ground and somewhat safe.

“Please, Dray,” You plead, shaking the arm which you still hold in your grip. “Help me find the Mirror of Erised.”

“We were warned away from it as students,” Draco argues, desperate for you to see sense so he can protect you from further injury, “Why should we find it now?”

“Because we are no longer students,” You protest, gesturing to your seats at the teacher’s table in the Great Hall where you both currently sit.

“What do I get out of this?” He asks, already feeling his resolve crumbling as he takes in the excitement shining brightly in your eyes.

“You get to spend time with me, of course,” You laugh, anticipation curling in your gut.

“Well, if you’d led with that,” Draco begins, his voice trailing off as he watches your eyes grow wide with the realisation of what he is saying.

“You’ll help?”

“I’ll help,” He nods, unable to keep the smile of out of his voice and off of his face.

“Thank you!” You cry, releasing your hold of Draco’s arm to throw your own around his neck, pulling him in for a tight hug. “I knew I could count on you.”

Draco laughs; his arms coming to wrap around you. “I’ll come to your rooms after dinner, deal?”

“Deal,” You answer, pulling your head out of his neck long enough to reply to him. You stay wrapped up in each other for another moment; enjoying the closeness of the other until you begin to feel the gaze of colleagues and students alike – all curious to whether the two of you had gotten your act together yet.  

-----

Draco knocks on your door an hour after the end of the dinner. The many students at the school had been sent off to bed though many still roamed the halls despite the nearing toll of curfew. Draco had passed many teenagers on his way to your rooms; each either greeting him verbally or offering him a nod as he passed. He wasn’t going to remind them that they needed to head back to their dorms; he was out after hours too, and despite being an adult, he still sometimes felt like the student he was so many years ago.

At this point in this teaching career, Draco had spent countless evenings in your rooms. He could explain the layout like the back of his hand from the personalised tapestry backing the wall behind your bed to the bookshelf in your living room whose shelves are bowing from the weight of the books laid upon it.

He could picture it all in his mind’s eye as he knocks twice more upon the faded, wooden door.

“I wondered when you’d be dropping by,” You greet as you step to one side to let the potions professor enter.

Draco rolls his eyes at the mock impatience in your voice. He toes off his shoes before following you through to the small living area where he spies a mug of his favourite tea waiting for him on the coffee table. He reaches for it as he settles down on the worn couch.

“What’s the plan?”

“Find the mirror, look into it, try to achieve our desires.”

“Very thorough.”

“Piss off, Dray,” You laugh, hitting him with a couch cushion.

“In all serious, do you know where the mirror could be kept?”

“I have three ideas.”

“Enlighten me.”

Holding up your hand, you show Draco three fingers as you count off the locations in your mind. “The Room of Requirement, the Chamber of Secrets, and the place where Harry found the Philosopher’s Stone in our first year, just off the Third Floor corridor.”

“All difficult places to get into,” Draco notes wryly.

“Your point being?”

“You never make this easy for me.”

“I’ll repeat my words from earlier: piss off, Draco.”

“Why do you want to find it so badly?” Draco asks; finally voicing the words that have been sat on the tip of his tongue since dinner.

You shrug, messing with a loose thread on a dark red cushion. “Why not? I’d like to see what I truly desire.”

Understanding that he isn’t going to get a longer answer, Draco changes tact. “Which room do we hit first? What’s the plan?”

He’s rewarded with a smile that lights up your whole face and sets his heart pounding in his chest.

Draco does his best to listen to you; he does his best to pay attention to every word leaving your lips and every gesture of your hands, but he finds it hard when all he can see if the excitement in your eyes and the pure happiness written on you face. If he already didn’t think you beautiful, he would think so now.

As Draco watches you, he finds himself thinking back to the time he first realised his feelings for you. It had been at a quidditch match – Ravenclaw vs Hufflepuff. Draco had attended only because you had asked him to; Hufflepuff had been your house when you were student, you were an avid supporter of the team. Parents had been attending this match as well; many of them old enough to remember the first wizarding war, his parents and his side in the second wizarding war. It had awkward until one parent made one too many comments. You had defended him, embarrassing the parent until they had no choice but to leave. When Draco had asked you why you had done such a thing; you had simply reached for his hand, squeezed it and told him that that is what friends do.

Draco had fallen in love with you then and there.

“You weren’t listening to a damn thing I was saying, were you?” You ask, a wry smile curving your lips as you settle back against the many cushions on your couch, pulling Draco from whatever daydream he found himself in.

Draco bites down on his bottom lip to keep the smile from spreading across his face. He shakes his head, “I’m sorry, I got distracted.”

“Thinking about what?”

He blanches; feels all colour leave his face as he’s put on the spot. Draco isn’t ready to confess what he feels for you; he hasn’t quite figured out whether it would ruin the friendship he so dearly cherishes or whether it would create something more between you. Either way, he isn’t ready. Instead, he offers, “I was thinking about the treasure hunt we went on for King Arthur’s sword.”

You groan dramatically, pulling a cushion over your face. “I didn’t know King Arthur’s sword was going to be that sharp!”

Draco snorts, “It’s a sword! What did you think it would be?”

“How many times do I have to apologise?”

“As many times as it takes for the scar to fade,” Draco states, lifting his pant leg to show you the puckered skin of a three inch scar running up the length of his shin. You wince at the sight of it.

“Still,” You whisper, sheepish from Draco’s reminder of the danger these hunts pose, “Will you help me?”

Draco sighs, settling once more against the many cushions on your couch. He takes a sip of his tea, pretending to mull over his decision. He knew he would help; he would follow you to the ends of the earth, but he wouldn’t be a very good friend if he didn’t make you stew over it. Ultimately, Draco smiles, turning to you, he asks, “Where do we begin?”

------

The Third Floor corridor is searched later that same week; the two of you coming up empty handed as you stride through the various tasks completed by Harry Potter in his first year of schooling at Hogwarts. You cannot stop the disappointment from flooding your veins when you come up empty handed; no sign of the Mirror of Erised when you reach the end of the path.

“We’ll find it,” Draco promises, an arm wrapping around your waist in comfort, “We’ll try the Chamber of Secrets next, see what that brings up.”

The Chamber of Secrets also has you both coming up empty handed. Draco had paused momentarily as you opened both doors to the chamber; shocked at your use of parsel tongue.

However, both of you felt the keener sting of bitter disappointment when all that is left of the Chamber of Secrets is a Basilisk skeleton. Fascinating though it may be, the chamber doesn’t hold what you seek so you leave the place, hoping never to return.

------

The Room of Requirement can be located on the seventh floor corridor; its entrance appears across from a tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy, but it only ever makes itself known to those who need it. On your list of locations for the Mirror of Erised, the Room of Requirement was your last option.

“What if it isn’t here?” You worry, standing next to Draco at the supposed entrance of the room.

“The mirror or the room of requirement?”

“Both,” You cry, chewing on the inside of your cheek.

“Hey,” Draco hushes, touching a finger to your chin briefly. “It will be. I’ve entered the room of requirement plenty of times.”

“Did you ever see the mirror?”

Draco shakes his head. “I didn’t, but I wasn’t searching for it then. I am now. Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” You reply, steeling yourself with a deep breath.

Draco takes your hand in his; tangling your fingers together for extra security as you begin the walk past the rumoured entrance. Three times you both walk past, thinking only of the Mirror of Erised and not of the way Draco’s hand feels in yours.

The grinding of stone is what makes the both of you pause. Draco squeezes your hand in hope as you turn to see the appearance of an ornate, dark wooden door. A glance at the blonde has further hope blooming in your chest when you spy a glimmer of familiarity in the eyes of the Slytherin Prince.

Taking the lead, Draco guides you through the door.

The room can only be described as cavernous; stone columns hold up the large room, all circling the Mirror of Erised which sits in the centre of the room, only accessed by walking down stone steps.

Excitement settles deep within your gut as you reach out for Draco’s hand only to find that he’s reached for you first. Turning to the blonde, you find triumph and happiness written across his face. “We’ve found it,” He whispers, not wanting to speak louder in case he disturbs the peace of the mirror.

“We have,” You reply just as quietly.

In sync, you both look out towards the mirror. It stands impressively in the centre of the room; its stature demanding any and all attention. It’s hard to look away with the knowledge that it could show you what you truly desire.

“Who looks first?” You ask, keeping a tight grip on Draco’s hand.

“I’m not sure,” Draco states, wanting just as much to look into the mirror now that he’s standing in front of it. He can feel its pull; he’s desperate to answer its call.

“Rock, paper, scissors?” You suggest, offering the childish game as solution to your problems.

“Alright,” Draco replies, letting go of your hand to offer it up as a fist. “Ready when you are.”

“Rock, paper, scissors,” You both chime, voices echoing off the stone walls. Draco laughs as loud as he dares when you lose for a second time in a row; he tries to offer you another go but it is clear you’ve lost this round.

“Just go stare into the glass, you arse,” You huff, shoving at his shoulder. Draco blows you a kiss as he steps down into the pit where the mirror awaits.

“Well,” You hiss, keeping your voice low in case Filch happens to walk by, “What do you see?”

Draco stands before the grand Mirror of Erised. He had heard of its prowess; Harry had preached so often about it that its legend only grew in Draco’s mind. He had never thought for one second that he would be standing in front of it, watching the ancient glass swirl and whirl as his deepest desires are reflected for him.

“Draco?” You call, voice louder, breaking the blonde from his pre-occupation with the mirror. He turns to you, eyes beginning to focus on the room around you. “Hmm?” He asks, “What did you say?”

“What did you see?” You ask, hands settling on your hips as you fix the man in front of you with an unimpressed but desperately curious stare.

Draco glances back to the mirror; his right hand twitches by his side, needing to know that if he reached out towards the immemorial glass, he could step right through and live his true desires.

He must stare at the mirror too long for he feels your hand slip into his; he feels your fingers tangle with his and tug once, pulling him from his yearnings with an ever-growing sense of urgency. “Draco,” Your voice calls though it sounds muffled as the grey swirls of fog in the mirror begin to take shape once more. “Draco,” You call again, “Come back to me.”

The words are muffled, but the pleading note to your voice cuts through the fog surrounding him. Draco comes back to the present with a start; his whole body jolting as he registers the feel of your hand in his, the weight of your fingers tangled with his.

“Where did you go just now?” You ask, concern tightening your voice, making it hard to speak.

Draco blinks once, twice, three times before whispering, “The mirror is very powerful. You can see why witches and wizards have wasted away in front of it, their desires played out for them as if on a stage.”

“Are you okay?” You ask, bringing a hand to Draco’s cheek, registering his drop in temperature. “You’re freezing cold.”

“I feel fine,” The man murmurs, sounding very far away as his grey eyes glaze over once again.

“This was a mistake,” You spit, hating yourself for dragging him along every step of the way.

“No,” Draco states firmly, “Not a mistake at all.”

“Draco, you’re freezing cold and you’re barely present enough to have a full conversation with me. You’re not okay.” You shake your head in frustration, “We’re going back to my rooms. With any luck, we won’t come across the mirror again.”

Draco goes to argue; he goes to scream and shout, but he takes a look at the stricken expression on your face and chooses to close his mouth. It’s a look he hasn’t seen in years; a look he hasn’t seen since you took in the sight of the destroyed courtyard after the Battle of Hogwarts, registering the dead bodies lined up at the side, knowing there was nothing you could do to help them. It was a look Draco had hoped he would never see again, but as the look ages your features, any argument Draco wants to pose dies on the tip of his tongue, the bitterness seeping its way to back of his throat. Instead, he holds on tightly to your hand and lets himself be led back to your rooms where warm blankets and hot tea awaits.

--------

Having barely slept after your first encounter with the mirror, you closely resemble a ghost as you take a seat at the teacher’s table for breakfast the following morning. Draco’s seat next to you is empty as you pour yourself a hot pot of tea, needing the warmth to replace what you lost in that awful room last night.

As you reach for a piece of toast and the pot of raspberry jam, you wonder whether Draco felt well enough to come down for breakfast. It had taken numerous mugs of tea to bring his temperature back up to what it was, and he remained infuriatingly tight lipped over what he had seen in the mirror despite your deluge of questions.

You only look up from your food when you catch sight of Draco out of the corner of your eye. He settles in the chair next to you, looking as if he had barely slept a wink either. He had left your rooms looking close to a corpse, the tiniest hint of colour in his cheeks. Your concern for him had interrupted your own sleep; tossing and turning all night to try and stop yourself from kicking down his door.

“How are you?” You whisper, not wanting anyone to overhear this conversation.

“Better,” He answers after a brief sip of his hot drink. “Thank you for last night.”

“Always, Draco.”

“I want to go back,” Draco announces over his breakfast, “I need to go back.”

“Why?” You ask, aghast at his decision.

“I need to be certain of what I saw.”

“And you can’t be certain without having to go back to the mirror?”

“Look,” Draco sighs, resting his teacup back onto its saucer, “I’m going back to the Mirror of Erised. Now, you can come with me and find out what I saw the first time which I know has been killing you to find out about. Or you can stay here and worry about me and not find out what I saw. What will it be?”

You purse your lips, keeping any and all barbed retorts behind your locked lips. Draco had you in a bind and he full well knew it. Eventually, after much deliberation, you roll your eyes at the blonde. “Fine,” You huff, “I’ll come with you. When are you going?”

“Tonight. I’ll come to you after curfew.”

------

The excitement upon finding the cavernous room the first time had quickly faded upon your entering the second time. You remain two steps behind Draco, watching him intently from the back as he takes a deep breath, stepping further into the room.

The Mirror of Erised remains unmoved in the centre of the room; the stone steps leading to the ancient, powerful object have a slight sheen of frost over them. Draco pays the frost no mind as he steps down to the mirror; the heels of his oxford reverberating loudly off the stone walls of the room. You wince slightly; safe in the knowledge that Filch wouldn’t be passing this room tonight, but still not wanting to take any chances.

Had the Mirror always been this foreboding? You ask yourself as you watch the man you’ve slowly fallen in love with get closer and closer to the archaic magic trapped inside the glass.

Draco pauses long enough to flash you a smile that you suppose is meant to relieve you of some of the stress and worry you feel, but it does nothing to calm your nerves as Draco steels himself to stare into the mirror again.

You remain close by as Draco watches the fog; you watch out for any signs of Draco losing himself like he did last time. As he had said previously, the mirror had turned scores of witches and wizards into bumbling fool, obsessed with watching their desires play out in front of them but refusing to act upon them. You couldn’t help but harbour some hatred for the mirror as you watched Draco fall under the mirror’s spell once more.

It takes only a moment for it all to become too much. Taking a tentative step forward, you call out his name only to receive no reply. Worrying your bottom lip, you call his name louder.

Draco’s right hand twitches as he pulls himself from the mirror. “You called,” He smiles, a poor attempt at humour.

You glare at the blonde; your heart pounding as Draco walks back to where you wait. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” He answers, “Nothing like last time.”

“What did you see?”

“Us,” Draco answers; the single word tumbling from his lips as a smile begins to grace his face.

“Us?” You repeat, eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

“I love you,” Draco states honestly, plainly as if the very fact had been common knowledge for a long time. “I love you,” He repeats, arms slipping around your waist to hold you near.

“You love me?” You squeak, unable to comprehend such words after an evening as eventful as this one.

He nods; his nose brushing yours as his lips barely graze over your mouth. “I love you,” He repeats almost breathlessly as the need to kiss you tries to overtake his body.

“I love you too,” You murmur quietly, letting yourself fall further for the man holding you so tenderly.

Draco’s only answer to that is to kiss you.

*****

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#draco malfoy x reader #draco x reader #Draco Malfoy #draco malfoy fanfic #draco malfoy fanfiction #draco malfoy imagines #draco malfoy imagine #draco malfoy fluff

[kashimos-hajime]

no regrets (8/8) | r.b.

summary: For the first time, he thinks of a future he could have, and someone who loves him, and there’s something bright in his heart. Or, Reiner finally understands what peace is.

WARNINGS: MANGA SPOILERS!!! angst, mentions of violence, we get our happy ending :) pairing: reiner braun x fem!reader word count: 6.7k

a/n: welcome to the last chapter!! thank you so much for being on this journey with me. there are a few callbacks to previous chapters so see if you can catch ‘em all heheh 

masterlist

crossposted on ao3 x

Few months ago ymir asked if I could let her write one last letter to krista, and I did let her. I stood over her shoulder the whole time, watching her pen down all this sappy shit and I kept thinking about you the whole time, behind those walls. What you were doing, what you were thinking. Maybe if you thought about me. I dont know.

I’m starting to see the appeal of wrting what youre not strong enough to say to a persons face. I never thought Id find myself on the other end of this stick. for some reason, I thought that I could stop myself, resist the temptation, or maybe that I didnt feel for you as strong as I thought I did once I was away from you. I was wrong.

What do I even say? I mean shit, I can barely see, my limbs are barely in tact, and all of it—shiganshina, it haunts me, even though I cant really remember it that well. Half of it goes black and then I remember hearing your voice, I remember Bertholdt, I remember you screaming.

You couldve walked away. why didnt you walk away? It doesn’t make sens. Why did you think to cut me out? Why did you try to save me? Im trying to make it make sense inmy head. It’s not working.

Fuck I dont know what I was thinking when I asked for a paper and pen. Why am I asking you questions? Its not like ill ever understand. At this point, I think it’s pity thats letting Zeke let me waste ink on trying to write straight. He doesn’t know what im doing, but thats better this way. Better than sleeping—better than eating. I just wanna talk to you and this is as close as I can get. Its my own damn fault, but I dont care. 

I completed my mission. After this, im done. ill give up the rest of my term. I dont want any of that glory anymore. I dont want to be a hero. Im just done.

Fuck, my head hurts so much. I dont really know if what im saying is making sense. Im hoping you never read this.

im sorry. I wish I could explain it to you some day, but chances are, ill be dead soon. Whether for treason or because they need to pass on the Titan, and I wont be able to see you again. Which means youll never know how sorry I am. How much I

Thats okay. I dont think youd believe me now even if I did say anything.

I remember your dream to live by the lake with a bunch of kids. You know I started to wonder if youd mind if they were our kids, not just some orphans who needed a home. I’d imagine one of them with blond hair. Imagine them swimming in the lake.

Never told you that was my dream too. Never knew i could have a dream of my own, something only I wanted and not just something to further marleys damn agenda, til I knew you. Sounds stupid but its true.

I think youd like Marley, if we weren’t sworn enemies. Just want you here with me right now. make me sleep easier knowing you’re there when I wake up. 

Dont want secrets either. Fuck I miss you so bad. I feel s o tired all the time. 

I rember when i first saw you all could think about was how you were the most prettiest girl id ever seen. I don know if you know thats why I tried to distance myself. Knew I couldn’t get distracted from my mison. happened anyway. Wish I could tell you that. 

wish I could tell you I love you. Wish I could see the look on yur face when you try lobster for the first time. Youd love it. Not sweet, but tons of desserts here too.

Shit. And the ring on your finger. ill put a ring on your finger. I promised. i swear ill go home and buy a ring for the moment I see you again. Might not be pretty but will do the best I can.

Olnly wnat only wnat only want to see you again and beg for your forgiveness. Let you know if I had a choice, I wouldnt have done it. Would take it all back, nd stay. i wanted to stay, stay with you and the others. I used to want to spend the rest of my life in those walls, now I think im sick and tired of them dividing people who arent even that differnet.

My eyes are beginning to burn. Worse because the skin is sitll growing back. Fucking hell god I miss you. miss your smile more.

I know i dont deserve your forigvneess forgiveness. I want you to be angry with me. I deserve as much, and I cant ask you to, but 

With love,

Rienr

You fold the letter, eyes closing as your fingers trace where the ink bled, the old tear stains wrinkling the paper beyond measure. Some are older than others, and you trace over his name again, your eyes burning, your throat tight enough to suffocate.

You’re leaning against the wall as everyone disembarks. They had taken Eren off first, Hange and the others getting ready to depart for the city while Connie and Jean lift a covered stretcher too white for the vivacious girl that lays dead beneath it.

They pass you silently, and you catch sight of a certain captain approaching, his pale eyes nearly swallowed by the shadows haunting his face.

“Captain,” you say, straightening. Placing the letter back into the tin, you slide it back into your pocket as he folds a green jacket over his shoulder. You give him a nod.

“You made it out alive,” Levi observes. He stops beside you, eyes more focused on what’s ahead. No doubt he’s not looking forward to having to take Zeke to wherever he needs to go—somewhere far, far away from Eren. You cross your arms. 

“It’s good to see you, too, Levi,” you intone. Sighing, you step in beside him and look out at the Walls you can’t see in the distance, your entire body wrought with a strange fatigue that’s only sewn into muscles by adrenaline leaving the body. “I think I’m going to stay.” He tilts his head to you, eyes flickering to your face, and you mirror the shift, your arms tightening. “I can’t leave this unfinished. Not after Liberio.”

“The farm will have to be abandoned,” he points out. “The kids, too.”

“I’ll make sure I move them where someone can take care of them. Somewhere north, far away from the brothers,” you assure, although still, your heart begins to sink and you close your eyes, exhaling deeply. “I have to hope they understand.”

Levi only nods, and you open your eyes as he wordlessly takes the jacket off his arm and offers it to you. Grasping it wearily, you open your mouth to ask questions but he only sets off, back towards the cabin where Zeke is still being held, and you snap your jaws shut, looking down at the jacket.

When you unfold it, you swallow the hard rock in your throat at the blue and white slipping beween the folds of olive green before there’s a sharp whistle. Looking up, you see the carriages already beginning to load up, and you glance back at the door where the captain has disappeared through before jogging down the ramp.

You slither your arms through the sleeves and shuffle the fabric along your frame as something thumps against your thigh, and you frown, reaching down into your pocket and coming into contact with something smooth and hard.

Withdrawing, your lips part at the green bolo tie gleaming in the lights of the port and you, without another thought, pull it over your head, letting it fall against your breastbone. 

“For your services to the Survey Corps.”

There’s no time to second-guess now. No time to debate.

“Good to have you back,” Hange murmurs as you walk towards the carriage taking Mikasa, Armin, and the others back to the city. You tug the lapels of the jacket tighter around yourself and flash them a weak smile. 

The Wings of Freedom on your arm feel like a brand, and it prickles your skin as you climb in after them.

.

Distantly, he remembers flashes. 

Eren reaching forward for Zeke, the exhaustion ripping him every which way, the sound of ODM gear whizzing in his ears as he tries to make sense of the punctured sensation in his armour.

How he had softened his nape, intending to die then. At least, let his death have some meaning, he had thought. Let him make one last effort to repent for everything he did to Paradis, and to his friends who’d been more family than his own mother.

He slips in an out of consciousness for the next few days. He doesn’t know what is up, what is down, but he does recognize his surroundings blearily, the way his head spinning somehow slowing when he presses his temple to the wooden floor.

How can he almost hear your voice in the echoes of the panels, countered by someone who almost sounds like Annie before he drifts off again.

When Reiner finally regains consciousness again, he wakes to someone crouched down in front of him. Jerking up, he lets out a sound before a palm slaps over his mouth and your face is shoved against his own.

“Shut it,” you whisper fiercely. “It’s just me.”

Your name muffled by your own hand, his eyes begin to burn and you lift your palm away as he sits up and you draw back. You’re dressed in clothes that look like they’ve seen better days but you’re relatively uninjured as you pull back. New lines adorn your face—one of the many prices of their damned war—and you only look exhausted. 

Sitting up, Reiner’s whole body groans as he leans against the wall, but he can’t tear his eyes away from you. Your hands are hovering around his body like you’re scared he’ll collapse and there’s a fracture in your mask.

Something gleams on your finger and his eyes flit to it, his heart lurching when he realizes what it is.

The ring. You’re wearing it. You…

For a moment, a glimmer of their teenage selves shine through and he wants to reach for it—touch it so he can remember what it’s like to be happy. He thinks it’s an awful like now; the swelling of his heart so big he can’t breathe; the way his lungs are static in his chest; how he can’t say anything because there are so many words that want to come out first.

“You’re here. You’re alive,” he finally settles on raspily. Your eyes glint with a youthful pain as you nod.

“So are you.” 

And he doesn’t know who moves first—you or him. Nothing is forgiven as their bodies crash in an embrace that lacks grace, but they cling onto another like the world is ending and they’re the only ones left standing. 

Maybe they are.

He buries his face in your neck, and your arms are so tight around him your fingers dig into his shoulders as your body melts against his and his skeleton sags in his own body.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against your skin, eyes fluttering shut. “I‘m sorry.” A hand against your neck and an arm around your waist, he wraps his legs around your own and traps you against him. You seem to only sink into him even more.

Is that enough? I don’t want you to hate me.

You suck in a breath, and then it comes out shuddering. “You can spend the rest of what life you have left repenting for making me fall in love with a man who was always supposed to die.”

Softly, in his mind, your voice cools the searing heat of hatred inside him. It’s enough. It has to be.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. It’s like they’re the only words he knows. He can’t remember ever meaning it this much. For him dying, for making you love him, for ever coming to Paradis. For loving you. For loving you. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know. I know.” Your face turns to press against his own. Your lips brush against his jaw and his eyes slide shut, tears rolling down his face. “I read every single one of your letters.” Drawing back, you cup his face in his hands and your fingers smear his tears all over his cheeks as his palm rests against your neck. Thumb stretching up to touch your chin, he feels sobs shuddering in his throat at seeing you again—looking at him almost like you used to. “I can’t begin to understand, but I know you are. And I know you love me.”

Choking, he gasps, “You should hate me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I should.” You’re crying, too, voice thick, tears stubborn on your cheeks as you give him a watery smile. “I should hate Marley, too. But it’s beautiful there. The water by the sea… I want to be there with you next time. We need to go together, before you leave me alone, okay?”

Reiner doesn’t quite hear you. He hears Marley, and beautiful, and he’s never noticed how beautiful you are when you cry, but right now, it’s the simplest truth he knows. 

“Okay.”

When you tilt his chin up and kiss him softly, something inside him explodes from the gentleness that makes him want to crack in the palm of your hands. It sears him from the inside out, makes him grab onto you like you’ll disappear—this is another dream, isn’t it? 

It has to be. 

You can’t be kissing him again after four years. He doesn’t deserve it. You’re an illusion, something his mind made up to deal with the pain. He’s finally cracked for good, just like Bertholdt said he would, and he’s the devil, not you.

But then you pull away just for a moment to smile, eyes barely open as you look at him with a sad tenderness that wraps him in an invisible embrace, and he is faced with the heart-wrenching reality. 

The sky is falling, you are holding him tightly again, and they’ve lost their years. But you’re here. With him. 

He knows that this isn’t a dream as he feels the coolness of the silver band on your finger and the heaviness in how he knows he hasn’t repented a damn thing. 

Why him?

As you run your hand through his hair, you press their foreheads together.

“And I do want a family with you, by the water if you’d like,” you murmur fleetingly against his mouth and his eyes widen, cheeks burning, entire face crumbling as he turns his face in to your shoulder, crushing you in another brace. Sobbing into your neck, his fingers dig into your shoulders, wrap tight around your waist, squeeze you so close he isn’t sure where you end and he begins and your lips brush the shell of his ear. “Reiner, say it.”

“Please,” he whispers thickly into your skin, and you cradle the back of his head with a hand. He’s nothing more than shambles. “Please, don’t go.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight again,” you promise. His breath is hot against his own face as you pull his head back and cradle his face again, thumbs brushing away the tears from his red face. “Just a bit more. A bit more and then it’ll be all over, you know?”

And he understands, then, what you want from him. Struggling for breath, for his lungs to stop seizing in his aching chest, he cups your face that turns into his palm on instinct, your face wet with your own tears as, for a moment, they try to pretend this isn’t where they really are.

Like they’re still in that afternoon in Trost, a thousand years ago, with the kids flipping coins into the water fountain and a cream bun between them. Like they’re under the tree, apple juice on your wrist and his lips on yours.

Like it’s those trips to the city, the walks on the Walls. Honey is dripping down your chin and he’s pretending he doesn’t want to kiss you, or there’s grease smeared on his forehead, and you’re reaching up to wipe it off his skin.

Like a thousand moments all at once, and he nods to himself as you brush your hand over his temple. The world outside is startlingly quiet, as if the universe itself stopped everything itself to watch this moment, and Reiner takes a breath that bruises his sternum before he’s holding your left hand where that ring still sits.

And slowly, he pulls it off, whispering as firmly as he can. He’s sure he fails—he’s shaking all over from your presence alone.

“When this is over, I’ll put that ring back on your finger. I promise.”

The smile that splits your face is dazzling. It’s the smile he’s missed since the day he left it.

“We have a lot of things to work out, Reiner Braun.”

And your fingers barely brush his jaw before you’re leaning to press a sweet kiss against his mouth. It’s sugary on his tongue, like honey and apple slices.

.

Your back is warmer when you’re pressed up against Reiner’s. The ship is quiet, and their pinkies are just barely hooked on oen another’s as you stare blankly at the empty space between Connie’s boots. You don’t speak, and Reiner’s gaze is only on you. He can’t look at anything else now that you’re back by his side again.

There’s a cut on your cheek from the fight just half an hour ago, and there’s dried blood along your hands where your knuckles had split open, but everyone seems too exhausted to clean themselves up. 

Reiner himself has a blanket pulled over his shoulders, and he sighs, slouching in his own sack of flesh.

Your head tilts towards him, enough that your temple presses against his cheek. His eyes close and he leans into your touch. Not a word passes by, but their hold on each other’s hands tightens. And Reiner thinks. 

For the first time, he thinks of a future he could have, and someone who loves him, and there’s something bright in his heart. Something that hasn’t burned since he left Marley as a child.

Reiner thinks he doesn’t want to die anymore. He doesn’t want to miss you for another moment.

.

Raising from the steam, you groan, your hands searing from the inside out as you touch your face where you swore every inch of your skin had been stretched, but nothing seems out of sorts as you glance around. Everywhere, all your friends who had turned just as you had are in various states of disoriented. The air is still hissing, crackled with surprised screams and shouts of names as people look for one another across the field. 

It smells like cooked meat and burnt hair, a none-to-pleasant mixture that turns your stomach.

Getting to your feet, you wipe at your face, trying to ignore the weird feeling underneath your nails and the ache seizing your muscles. Trying to ignore the remnants of Eren lingering like a ghost that won’t really leave you alone. You shiver, and a strange cold sweat takes over your body.

He had taken you to the sea, except it wasn’t the shore you were familiar with. There was a cabin nearby, with blonde children running, chasing after one another and a man with golden hair standing on the porch, firewood in his arms as he calls out silently. Or maybe you had been standing too far to hear.

“Eren… where are we?”

“Wherever you think you are,” he had said. “I just brought you where you wanted to be.”

A voice, quiet as a memory, catches your attention. “Here let me help.” A soft wind blows throw the mist, cooling your scorching face as you feel a presence stand behind you.

“Oh, thank you.” You look over your shoulder to see a tall boy, and your heart stops. Mouth dropping open, you stare at his foggy image, but he only smiles fully, a smile so tender it reaches every corner of you as you stumble forward, fingers stretching for him. “Bertholdt!”

His smile grows only that much more, eyes squinting a bit and a flash of teeth before he’s looking at your hand that passes through his chest. All at once, all the hope built up in your chest crumbles, and your hand snaps back, trembling just before him. He lays a hand over your own and your eyes begin to burn, tears slipping down your cheeks.

And then, softly, you barely whisper, “I miss you.”

Bertholdt’s smile merely grows, as if to say everything he couldn’t say before. As if to show he’s at peace now—that your last memory together isn’t every part of him, and your lips press together, trying to stop yourself from shaking.

 Shadows form in the fog, and together, the two look as a freckled boy and another girl steps out of the mist a distance away, beaming like the sun. Connie and Jean stagger to their feet just behind you, and your heart lurches into your throat when you recognize them.

“Marco! Sasha!”

Someone calls your name and you turn around just as arms scoop you up and you let out a surprised noise before settling into Reiner’s arms. Looking over your shoulder to look at Bertholdt, your heart only sinks.

He smiles and Reiner lets out a sharp breath beside you, settling you down. “Bertholdt…” More shapes emerge. A shorter boy accompanied by another taller one, both alike in their features. You recognize one as the Jaw Titan holder before Falco, but the other—

“Marcel!” Reiner chokes out the name, hand stretching out to the fog, but the boy merely tilts his head and waves.

Closing your eyes, hot tears streak over your cooling flesh as you fling your arms around Reiner again and press your face into his neck. He cradles the back of your head, and he feels… somehow weaker, but still, there is that impassable strength in his core that wraps around you as he watches over your shoulder, still clinging on despite your clothes hot enough to burn.

I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive. It’s the only thought in your head. Your last clear memory had truly been the others taking flight, and the pain that had ripped apart your body before sewing it back together again in unjust proportions. Your limbs had been too big, your blood racing too warmly through your head as your legs pumped but your brain screamed to stop. 

Your fingers had sank into Reiner’s legs to pull him down and you had watched—watched Jean take a bite out of him—

You shiver and Reiner’s arms tighten around you instinctively, constricting enough to let you know that his attention isn’t on you quite yet.

Boots shifting on the ground tentatively, your knees feel gummy as you draw back long enough to look at him. He still looks over your shoulder, and you follow his gaze to watch the mist retreat. Bertholdt and the other two boys fall into a pool of fog, and your lips part in a farewell, but it’s already too late.

He’s gone.

A wind sweeps through the battlefield, tickling your sweating neck and cooling your boiling blood.

“Hey,” a soft voice croaks.

Their eyes meet in tandem. He regards you softly, like you are the reason the sun rises and the stars hang at the sky. Overwhelmed, you can only cup the back of his neck and pull him into a deep kiss. Your other hand along his jaw, it takes all you can not to pull him into a bone-crushing embrace that’ll send them both to the ground.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” you whisper hushedly against his mouth, throat swelling as he lets out a soft noise of surprise as you pull him into another tight hug. You don’t care that you’re crushing him, just that his heart is pounding against your own chest. “I couldn’t stop myself. I’m so sorry.” 

His eyes widening, he wraps his hands around your wrists and pulling you back just enough to kiss your fingers that crumple against his mouth. Clasping one of his hands in both of your own, you close your eyes and he uses his free fingers to brush the tears off your cheek before reaching into some dented tin you don’t recognize.

Eyebrows furrowing, you feel the heat leave your entire body, sapping your energy too, and your eyes snap to Reiner who steps back, cracking it open and presenting it to you. 

“You’re not the one who has to be sorry. I don’t think I’m the Armoured Titan anymore,” he whispers. “I don’t know if I get the rest of my life back, but either way, I want to spend the rest of it repenting to you in any way I can, if you’ll allow me to.” A weak smile. “Truth.”

Your throat closes up, and you stare down at the ring so protected, gleaming despite the destruction around them. It looks almost out of place amongst the grime smearing your skin, the sweat drenching their skin, the smell of blood and metal clinging to their clothes, but Reiner only watches you with a tenderness you can barely meet. It’s so overtly overflowing with devotion that your heart is resting on your tongue, seizing control of everything. 

You barely nod, chewing on your lip, trying not to cry even harder as his eyebrows rise in relief and he lets out a long sigh.

He lifts the ring out of the tin, snapping it closed before sliding the band back home onto your finger and all at once, everything floods you. The exhaustion, the pain, the hunger, thirst, grief wrapping around your bones and chaining you to the ground.

It’s over.

The minute he put the ring on your finger, it would mean it was over. No more blood, no more fighting.

Just like he promised.

You barely croak out his name before you fall to your knees. You trust him to catch you, and he does.

[THREE YEARS LATER]

Just after the Rumbling had stopped, you had gone back to Paradis alone and came back with three children to a man who was still uncertain in a world that was changing. 

Since then, you’ve learned so much about the world, about yourself, about Reiner. 

How he’s seized by night terrors even now, just like you, and how one thing that soothes it is going out for a walk while the sun still simmers below the horizon, the sky a dark navy blue spliced with orange rays. The intricate details like him making a point to tie his own tie because his father never taught him how or the way he has to chug his coffee so he has enough energy to get through the day.

And some days are horrible, haunting, but now, it is far outweighed by the good. He teaches Xav how to dress smart, takes the girls out shopping. Sometimes, he’s spotted around Liberio with a flame-haired boy riding his shoulders, you trailing behind hiding a smile behind some ice-cream.

Different nations, foods, cultures surround you now—citizens of countries coming to settle down roots, spread cuisine to Marley. The idea before, of humans so different than you but still similar at the root of it all, existing, still blows your mind. The technologies that you had never seen before, languages you’d never heard, sights you’d never seen, had all swarmed you as you stepped into a new world with him.

But there is always one thing you’ll come back to.

Leaning against the railing in the port city Reiner told you was the harbour he had left twelve years ago, and returned to seven years ago, you watch the clouds travel in slow drags across the pale blue canvas hung high above your head. The water spans for as far as you can see, glimmering under the sun and gorgeous enough to take your breath away. You pull at your coat across your chest absently, ignoring the tender growl of your stomach. 

Breathing in the salty wind, you feel your chest expand at the litle fishing boats a little ways out.

Reiner was right. You don’t get sick of the sea. You never will—not of this much water. You still remember the first time you had swam in it, the salt-water making your hair crisp, the cold sweat forming on your your sun-warmed skin.

You feel a hand on your shoulder. Looking up, you spot blonde hair and warm eyes and smile. Your heart flutters a bit. You shift on your feet.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Reiner leans down beside you, and you clasp your hands, letting the sea wind curl against your neck. Reaching to slip his hand in between yours, he sighs and you lean against his shoulder, glancing at their pile of interlaced fingers. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” you whisper, although even still, you can feel a numbing at your fingertips. You remember what it was like to be a Titan, even now. The sensations haunt you—flashes of your own mutated body, the grotesque meat of your hands sinking into the ankles of the man beside you, the bloodcurdling roar spilling out of your throat.

Glancing at their fingers, you watch the flashes of silver of the rings play in the sunlight, your band now having a matching counterpart on his own hand. You grasp his hands tightly, bringing them up to your lips and his own grip tightens when you dust a kiss gently along his scarred knuckles.

“No,” you finally say at length. “I’m not okay. Going back to Paradis makes me nervous as hell, but we’ll manage.” He nods slowly, and you let go of his hands to wrap your arms around his neck. His own encircle your waist, pulling you flush against him and your eyes close at the familiar warmth—a warmth you’ve woken up next to most days for the past three years. 

“Have you eaten yet?” he murmurs, and your fingers play with the soft edges teasing at your pads as his nose presses against your cheek. Your eyes flutter at the soft heat emanating from his skin, and you shake your head, melting against him. With one arm still around you, he slants his body away from just enough to pull a bag out of his pocket and it crinkles as he hands it to you. Taking it, you frown and look inside.

A cream bun. You can’t help the crumbling in your expression and Reiner holds your face in his hands carefully, kissing the corner of your mouth.

“Let’s stay positive,” he whispers. “We don’t know the situation until we get there and Historia briefs us.”

“I know,” you whisper and his entire expression eases at your words. His eyes gaze at you as if you’re the sole centre of his universe, and he cups your jaw more insistently, pulling you in for a gentle kiss, one you ease into, your eyes fluttering shut as his tongue traces the seam of your mouth. Laughing, you feel his little nose scrunch and your heart bounds up into your throat as he pulls back only to kiss you again, softer this time.

“Get a room!” A sharp female voice ruins their moment and you pull back just enough to see a red-headed boy running towards them and Reiner crouches down just in time to scoop Xavier up.

“When are you getting married?” he demands. “I was promised cake when you guys got married.”

“I dunno. When you move out of the house I guess,” you tease and Xavier pouts, rubbing at the side of his nose with the heel of his palm.

“Besides, you got cake for your seventh birthday, buddy,” Reiner groans as the boy twists in his arms. “You’re getting heavy. What are you feeding him?” he adds, smiling roguishly at you and you roll your eyes as Alina and Anya approach, sun hats protecting them from the glaring sun. Alina, grocery bags in hand, waves. Anya, who’d been the one to shout, tucks her coin purse back into her bag before flashing you a great big smile.

Only fifteen and seventeen. You can barely recall what it’s like being that young anymore, but you’re grateful they didn’t spend it the way you did. They get to know beauty, and no limits at all. The former comes naturally, the latter is partially because Reiner spoils them rotten.

Alina picks a flower with velvety purple petals from a bouquet she cradles in her arm, extending it to you.

“For good luck,” she says. “And protection.” Your heart melts at her words and you pause for a moment, looking from the gorgeous bloom to Reiner, occupied with the boy in his arms making silly faces at him. Then, without another moment, you sneak the flower behind his ear and he reaches up immediately to hold it against his head, turning to you in surprise. 

“To protect the both of us,” you explain.

“Thank you. I’ll be extra careful now.” He looks at the girls, setting his free hand on Alina’s head heavily and she flushes, smiling grandly. “You three behave while we’re gone, alright?”

You nod. “Listen to Levi.” 

“And listen to your sister,” Reiner adds to Alina and Xavier. The former rolls her eyes, the latter sticks out his tongue. “I’ll miss you.”

This is their home—their family that tumbles together into a huge hug, and you can’t help but stand back, watching how they all seem to merge into one unit, unaware of where one part of their reach ends and another begins.

As Reiner pulls you into the hug, your heart soars through your body, effortlessly pounding in your throat and in your fingers and everywhere at once. Liquid heat pools everywhere as Xavier screws up his face when you kiss his cheek, the same way Reiner does after he’s eaten something sour.

And maybe it’s a bit different, or a bit broken, the shards of their bloody history still poking at their heels whenever they think you’ve forgotten them, and it’s most definitely not perfect, but you would rather have it like this then anything else.

“Hey, guys!” Breaking apart, the family look over to see Armin, Annie, and Pieck walking over. Gabi and Falco meander a little bit behind, pushing Levi in his wheelchair, and Jean and Connie are running not far behind them, shouting at one another. You stifle a laugh and Xavier shimmies out of Reiner’s hold to run towards them. The girls follow after him, trying to hold back their runs but the closer they get, you can tell the more frantic they are to say goodbye.

So this is what they’ve made a peace. Something, you hope, is good.

Annie bypasses them quickly, making her way over to you and you survey her face as Reiner squeezes your shoulder, walking over to their friends. Her blue eyes are fixed on your face, and you feel your lips curving into a smile as she shoves her hands in her pockets. Her hair is swaying in the wind, gleaming flaxen, and you remind yourself, not for the first time, that Armin and Annie’s kids, if they ever decide they want them, will be gorgeous.

Hope for the future, and all that.

She stops in front of you, tucking a strand behind her ear.

“So,” she says at length, “we’re going back to Paradis. I’m surprised you decided to come with us. You don’t owe any of us anything.”

“I know. But… you’re my best friend. You do the talking, I fly the getaway plane, right?”

“Yeah. There used to be a time when it probably would’ve been the opposite.”

You nod, and they stand in silence for a moment, watching each other. Two women who should not have been friends, but were against all odds. You don’t think you would be here today if it weren’t for Annie.

Your heart lurches and you take a step forward just as she does, her mouth open to say something. You throw your arms around her and she lets out a noise in surprise as you close your eyes. Arms coming underneath yours, her hands dig into your shoulders and you smile against soft hair as she sighs, easing into your hug.

“Finally working together on an actual assignment,” you mumble and her head tilts as her small frame shifts, a hand patting you on the back as a sign for you to back up. “Just like we always said we would.” 

Bluntly: “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

“You, too.” Pulling back, the two look at one another for another soft moment before you remember the bag in your hand and you shift the bun up in the bag, extending it towards her. “Want some?” Her eyebrows rise in faint delight, before she’s reaching over, pinching and tearing a piece off. 

You grin and do the same and you gesture for her to come stand by the rails with you, stuffing the bag into your coat pocket. Leaning against the warm metal again, you hear a seagull call. The plane you’ll be flying to Paradis floats on the water, the technicians giving it the final check before you take off.

If anything goes wrong while you help prepare and oversee accommodations for the rest of the ambassador group, you’ll remember to fire the black signal flare, but you trust Historia. You trust your friends.

You glance over at them, all laughing, and you notice that the flower has gone from Reiner to Pieck, who’s taking it out of her dark hair to tuck it into Jean’s, and his cheeks redden as he brushes it more securely behind his ear.

Annie catches your attention again, pointing out idly that they’ll have to separate soon when they finish with the plane, and you tell her to just wait a couple minutes more as Reiner catches your gaze. Setting Xav, who has somehow wormed his way back into his arms, down, he walks back over to you, and his hand trails purposefully over your back before resting at the nape of your neck, a reassuring weight on your body.

“You guys okay?”

“We’re fine,” Annie replies. “You have a clingy boyfriend,” she tells you. 

“I think it’s charming.”

She rolls her eyes. Reiner smiles, and you pat the railing beside you—silent invitation. He leans in on your other side, clasping his hands and watching the fishermen pull themselves to shore, singing a tune to each other—one familiar to all three of them and one that you wish you could get out of your head. 

“Soon may the Wellerman come…”

A faint breeze tickling at your fingertips as a sharp call for embarkment splits the harbour, you simply sigh and look over at Reiner. “I just want these last few moments to last.” His eyes meet yours, and he leans forward to press a kiss between your eyes. Annie lets out a soft noise of disgust and you bump your hip against her as Reiner pulls back.

Closing your eyes and lifting your head to the wind, you can almost imagine the one person missing standing on the other side of Annie, dark hair like spun, stained bronze and eyes like warm chocolate. He’d smile and tell them not to worry in that sincere way of his that makes you believe every word he says—as long as they were careful, they wouldn’t walk into any traps.

Your chest aches, and your lips tug into a heart-wrenching smile as you begin to sing along. Reiner slips a hand in between yours, pressing his temple against your head and you loop your other arm through Annie’s.

She rests her head on your shoulder, listening to your voice, eyes on the sailors bringing in their haul below them. Reiner hums the shanty softly, distractedly, eyes cast across the sea.

You tilt your head up to the sky, at the stars you cannot see but will join one day, and smile.

#fic: homebound #reiner braun #reiner braun x reader #reiner braun x you #reiner braun imagine #reiner braun fic #reiner x reader #reiner x you #aot #aot x reader #aot x you #attack on titan #attack on titan x reader #attack on titan x you #attack on titan fanfiction #snk #snk x reader #snk x you #shingeki no kyojin x reader #my writing

[bigskydreaming]

Doing some writing today off and on between errands and work, and jumping around various Kings of the Sky installments, specifically Dick, Jason and Cass stuff, so probably gonna post snippets from a bunch of them as I go. 

(Kings of the Sky is an AU that goes canon divergent from the point of Jason calling Dick for advice for dealing with Bruce after the Garzonas case and where things end up going dramatically different from that point on. Including Jason not dying, being part of his own lineup of Titans between Dick and Tim’s, Dick being adopted not long after the Church of Blood incident, Cass being the third Wayne kid to be taken in and adopted and with Tim and Duke being next and then Damian coming along later once they find out about him. This is basically my ‘the family’s alright’ AU with largely ‘Good Dad Bruce’ except for Dick and then Jason yelling some sense into him about the other, respectively, in the first two installments, just FYI).

Anyway, this bit is from a story called “In Their Shadows Grow Trees Of Good and Evil,” set about a year after Cass has been adopted, when she and Jason are both sixteen and Dick’s twenty-one. Also just FYI, because canon has never been specific about what ways Cass is neurodivergent due to the comic-book style ‘rewiring’ of her brain so that she could learn to speak later in life, I tend to go with her being dyslexic and having aphasia. She sticks exclusively to sign language and being a silent presence in her costumed personas, so that there’s no chance of people connecting the dots between Black Bat and Cassandra Wayne, as she mostly speaks verbally in her civilian persona and doesn’t hide her aphasia. The reason there’s not likely to be any obvious signs of aphasia in the snippets of her I post is because I wait until I complete something to choose words at random to replace with aphasia-born mixups, so its more realistic and I’m not gearing her dialogue towards deliberately placed moments. Just in case you were wondering.

In Their Shadows Grow Trees of Good and Evil

“Hey Todd,” sneered an exquisitely obnoxious voice. “Why’s your sister so fucking weird?”

Jason sighed the sigh of a soul a mere century into its eternity of damnation as he rose from the lunch table he’d been studying at and crammed the rest of his books into his backpack. Then he pasted a cheerfully bland smile on his face and turned around, geared for academia warfare (teenage prep school edition).

“Hey Craig,” he said brightly. “Why’d you come out of the womb so ugly your parents had to tie a piece of steak around your neck just to get the family dog to go near you? Mysteries abound.”

The advancing junior slowed a step, momentarily rocked by his truly impressive return volley. The grimace Craig’s already gargoyle-esque features twisted into made his face even more unpleasant to look at than usual, which was quite the feat. Jason would have applauded if just looking at it hadn’t already turned him to stone.

But the bargain basement basilisk kept on towards him rather than turn tail and skulk off to pop his emotional blisters, so Jason sighed a sequel to his first one. Looked like it was one of those days where Craig felt up to powering through. Guess someone had eaten their self-esteem Wheaties that morning. Joy.

“You think you’re pretty hot shit, don’t you, Todd?”

Jason shrugged. “I mean, to be honest I kinda have a one track mind, so right now I’m mostly just thinking about punching you in your mistake.”

“My what?”

“Your face,” Jason elaborated with exaggerated patience.

“Huh?”

“Oh my god, I’m saying your face is a mistake. See, its not as fun when I have to stop and explain it to you. Ugh, you ruin everything.”

He neatly sidestepped the older boy as R2-Dumbass stayed frozen, smoke coming off of his internal CPU while trying to catch up. For a second Jason thought he was home free, but then he remembered the universe fucking hated him so haha, sucks to suck. Also, a small crowd had gathered to witness the verbal jousting match, and nothing invigorated an asshole like Craig more than an audience of like-minded peers. So there was that too.

“Whatever. Laugh it up all you want, you little shit,” the junior rallied. “But just remember, mocking your betters will never change the fact that you were born street trash and you’ll be street trash until the day you die.”

Honestly? Not his best effort. Jason almost felt bad using any of his good material. Seemed like overkill at this point. But he did have a strict Scorched Earth policy to maintain, so.....

“Yeah but my dad could buy out and ruin your dad so that means I still win, right?”

He smirked as the barb landed and Craig’s face set into a sunset vista of strangled purple and furious red. Bam. Direct hit.

“Listen, you - “

“Oh for fuck’s sake, it was rhetorical,” Jason interrupted. “I don’t actually care what you think even a little bit. Nobody does. You don’t matter. Please go be irrelevant elsewhere, you’re fucking dismissed, you loser.”

“Speak for yourself, charity case.” Oh goodie, Craig’s backup singers had finally arrived. Now if only he could remember to care enough to learn their names in the first place. Seriously, who told the extras they could have lines? “All the jokes in the world can’t change who and what you are.”

Jason shrugged and continued nonchalantly up the hill to where his sister was standing with arms crossed, staring down at something on the other side.

“True genius is never appreciated in its own time,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll be immortalized in song eventually.”

The mob of morons deigned to let him go without further incident. Though he suspected that had less to do with his scathing wit and more to do with him being headed towards Cass. She was immaculately presented as always, wearing the Gotham Academy uniform like she was born to it despite hating its uncomfortable stiffness every bit as much as he did. But that was just Cass for you. 

For all that she still struggled at times to engage verbally or speak up in social settings, her mastery of body language remained without peer. She could chameleon-camouflage her way into matching poise and posture with anyone - a skill that had allowed her to walk into school on her very first day with her head held high as though she owned everything in her sight. Exuding so much Queen Bee Intimidation Factor even the other hive queens were afraid to approach her  themselves. Sending forth their drones to try and woo her into an alliance, only to see her remain oh-so-casually above it all, a slightly contemptuous smile adorning her lips.

Basically, she scared the shit out of their classmates without them having anywhere close to a true understanding of why, and Jason was outrageously jealous. Rude. Unfair. Why did his siblings always get all the cool toys when all he had was his rakish charm, scintillating intellect and debonair.....nah, who was he kidding. He was fucking awesome. 

“Sup, sis,” he said, cresting the hill to stand beside Cass. “Just FYI, I just took a popularity bullet for you, which means you owe me your dessert tonight. Its a family rule that’s totally a real thing and definitely not something I just made up right now because Alf is making chocolate soufflé.”

She made no acknowledgment and remained stock still, a Colossus at Rhodes peering down into the shifting shadows of the parking lot below.

He peered down as well, though with absolutely no idea what they were looking at. Solidarity, yo.

“So are we staring fixedly at anything in particular, or should I just pick my own spot and commit?”

His humor was totally wasted on her as always. Instead of laughing and telling him what a lovable goof he was, she just inclined her head in the direction of a blonde girl where she was standing next to the driver’s side door of a Mercedes-Benz, dictating final commandments to her peons before departing. Well, probably. Jason was just guessing, based on his own body language reads, and like, general disdain for literally everyone at this school that wasn’t related to him.

He made a face. An extra special one reserved just for this classmate in particular. “Ugh, Madison Dunleavy? She’s the worst.”

Cass raised a cool eyebrow. “I thought Craig Hendricks was the worst.”

“He is. They’re both the worst. Its a hotly contested position here at Gotham Academy.”

She rolled her eyes and nodded back down at the Queen of Air and Darkness. “So. You know her?”

“Nope,” Jason said. “Come to think of it, I’ve actually never seen her in my life. No idea who that is. Can’t help you, sorry. Shall we go home?”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition speared him with clear intent. Who the fuck needed words when you could pack the Encyclopedia Britannica into a single facial expression?

Jason sighed gustily. 

“I had a slight altercation with her freshman year that led to her declaring her undying enmity for me until the end of time. The word nemesis may or may not have been thrown around once or twice. I can’t recall.”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition lowered nary an inch. Ugh, she wanted more? Why did everyone in his family hate privacy, with the obvious exclusion of himself when snooping through Cass and Dick’s rooms for blackmail material, which was actually intel-gathering and thus another matter entirely.

“Okay so basically what happened was my first week here I overheard her talking shit about me and not even twenty minutes later she was pretending to kiss my ass in homeroom, like probably because of Bruce, y’know? So I just busted out laughing and told her to fuck off and die and she has inexplicably loathed me ever since.”

Avoiding further Eyebrow Inquisition-ing, he made a show of peering around aimlessly. When the silence extended and it was clear Cass was absolutely not going to break first, Jason waved a hand in dismissal and took to peering oh so casually at his fingernails. "I suppose I was less tactful back in those days.”

He chanced a look up, finally, and saw his sister’s eyebrow had somehow managed to mighty morphin power ranger its way into a configuration evoking both judgment and disbelief, with the latter perhaps aimed at the idea he was significantly differing in the tact department these days either.

“I don’t love the implications your face is making right now,” he told her.

She ignored him, because of course she did. 

“Does she know Dick?” She asked instead. Jason shrugged.

“I mean, maybe? She’s probably seen him around at one of those stupid galas we have to go to, and actually I think maybe she has an older brother who was either in Dick’s grade or like, one above or below it? I don’t know.”

Now both eyebrows were doing the dance of disbelief. Okay, so maybe that was poor situational awareness on his part, since it wasn’t like Gotham Academy was a big school with a ton of other kids and also he’d only been in the same class as Madison for like over two whole years, but whatever. There were extingent circumstances.

“Look, she’s a total snob who’s always looked down on me and in return I willfully ignore both her existence and that of everyone and everything even tangentially related to her. Its called equality, Cass.”

She pursed her lips and went back to the peering, because of course in the mind of Cass it made total sense that the Grand Inquisition didn’t need to be followed up by any explanation on her part, what the hell. Like was he supposed to have inferred it?

“What’s this all about anyway?”

“I heard her talking about Dick earlier,” she said without peeling her eyes away from her personal recon mission. “I don’t know what she said though, I just heard her say Grayson, and then I was busy looking at what her body was saying. I know it was about Dick because she shut down when she saw me. And I didn’t like the way she....looked....before that happened. The way she was talking. It was.....”

Jason frowned but held back any follow-up questions while he waited - with total patience because he wasn’t an absolute cad, thank you very much - for his sister to find the word she was hunting for. It was a major source of frustration for her, that whatever neural map her brain followed put body language and spoken language in totally different regions of her brain, separated by a fairly great divide. Meaning she usually had to make a conscious choice to focus on body language or conventional languages - whether verbal or sign. But it tended to be one or the other; she’d yet to master taking in and comprehending both forms of ‘language’ at the same time. And none of them had quite figured out how to convince her that she wasn’t actually missing anything when she chose to focus on one specific form of communication - that she was still observing far more than most people ever would.

“Proprietary,” Cass settled on at last. She nodded her satisfaction with her choice of word, and Jason waited a whole two point five seconds before sticking  his whole foot in his mouth.

“Proprietary?” He asked with a scrunched nose as he weighed that for possible context and implications. “You sure?”

She glared. He winced. It was a whole thing.

“Yeah, I know, sorry, sorry, I heard it the second it was out of my mouth. We don’t actually have to experiment with the legitimacy of if looks could kill.”

Cass rolled her eyes, but eh. That could’ve gone worse.

Jason swiftly redirected attention anyway. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all.

“So. The Queen of Air and Darkness was talking about our big bro, and her mood was.....proprietary, huh?” He recapped while digesting the info like a boss. “Well. Definitely not loving that, I gotta say. Hold please.”

Pulling out his phone and pulling up his most recent texts, he began typing furiously.

“What are you doing?” Cass asked.

“Texting Tom,” he replied, because duh. Hah, now it was his chance to have the answers that should be patently obvious and thus make with the ‘are you kidding me’ when she asked obvious questions she should know the answer to! How do you like them apples, sis?

“Why are you texting your boyfriend right now?”

Jason rolled his eyes, because fair is fair, but never ceased texting for a moment. Time was of the essence here, probably. Well, maybe. Okay probably not. But it’d still been like half an hour since he and Tom had last texted and that’s a very fucking long time in teenage years.

“To be our getaway driver tonight, obviously.”

She stared at him. He didn’t look up, but he could feel it anyway. He was very intuitive like that.

“What?”

Jason heaved another sigh, one keyed to tones of ‘oh my god, do I really have to spell this out,” exasperation. He was just racking up the bonus points here. It was really too bad this wasn’t an actual competition he could actually win and this was all just pettiness taking place wholly in his own head. Lame. 

“Well, clearly we now have to go snoop in Madison’s house aka lair to see if its actually a house or a full on lair. Because she’s either a creeper or like, legit evil, and its important to know which one before we proceed, because obviously we can only bust her for being a weird creeper about our brother as Jason and Cass, whereas if she’s legit evil, that’s gotta go down as Robin and Black Bat. I’ll handle the snooping, you’ll take look-out, but we still need a wheelman and that’s why I’m texting Tom. This is all very mission-oriented, okay. I’m a professional.”

“Right,” she affirmed, while sounding anything but convinced. “Why don’t we just tell Bruce?”

Without looking up or breaking stride, he said: “I’m going to give you til I finish typing this sentence to figure out what was wrong with what you just said. Remember that we are talking about hypothetical danger to our brother, and also Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response to any of his children being in even hypothetical danger. And also our brother’s idea of a proportionate response to Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response. Look, you’re still new so I’m gonna need you to just trust me on this one. Its gonna be a no on telling Bruce without further intel.”

Cass said nothing in response to that, which meant that she was conceding the point and recognized the wisdom of his words. Or maybe that she was just gonna go ahead and do what she wanted anyway and just wasn’t bothering to fight about it, but it was probably that first thing.

“Well you better not just make out with your boyfriend all night,” is what she said at last, and that got his attention reeeeeal quick like.

“Umm. Wow. Okay. So, first off, you’re not the boss of me and who I make out with and when, so jot that down. And second, now I’m definitely going to make out with my boyfriend extra hard, with the exception of when we are actually on our recon mission because as previously established, I am a professional. And also, again, you’re not the boss of me.”

Jason ignored her Eye Roll With Extra Emphasis, and instead just held up his phone to Text With Extra Emphasis, as he read along with what he was typing.

“By the way babe, we have to make out extra hard tonight,” he said, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth while he dragged out his dictation with the kind of focus that usually led to Bruce asking why he couldn’t apply as much intensity to training as he did to pettiness. “Cass has suddenly decided she can dictate terms to me and I need to shut that shit down ASAP, so thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter. Smoochies and other gay stuff to the best boyfriend ever.”

Jason frowned as a response pinged back seconds later. 

TheCatsMeow: ....the things I put up with for the sake of your weird family dynamics.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah, yeah. You’re a saint among were-panthers. Must you mock? Why can’t you just tell me I’m pretty instead?

TheCatsMeow: Sorry. Let me try again. OMG you’re so pretty Jase how did I get so lucky xoxo.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: No. Its too late. It feels forced and unbelievable now. You’ve ruined it forever.

TheCatsMeow: Got it. From now on I will only tell you that you’re repulsive and hideous.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: I’m breaking up with you.

TheCatsMeow: But after I help you with your mission tonight.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Obvsly. I’m a professional. Why do people keep forgetting this?

TheCatsMeow: And also the making out to spite your sister.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah we should do that first too. I mean we already penciled it in.

[nightowlwriting]

summary: sometimes relationships aren't made to last. sometimes years later, it still hurts. sometimes closure comes where you least expect it.

word count: ≈900

warnings: mentions of a rough breakup in the past.

note: requested by @taylortheeshowpony

masterlist - request - support my work? - ao3

When Elliot Stabler shows up at the boarding school you teach at, you know that nothing good is going to come from it. You were called out of bed in the middle of the night, and now you’re standing outside of a dorm, robe tucked tightly around you as you talk to a detective from the Special Victims Unit. From Manhattan. You are definitely not in Manhattan - or New York, in fact.

You’re in Vermont, where you moved after high school. (After high school where Elliot Stabler broke up with you in your junior year, leaving you devastated while he moved on to bigger and better things.) You’re in Vermont, at your school, while detectives from another state tell you that your students are in danger. In fact, you don’t even register that it’s Elliot Fucking Stabler standing in front of you until he puts a heavy hand on your shoulder, calling you a nickname you haven’t heard since your junior year in high school.

On instinct, you push his hand off of your shoulder, taking a quick step back. “Don’t,” You snark before your brain can catch up to who’s in front of you. When you realize it’s Elliot, the hurt that you thought had closed up opens back up and suddenly you’re seventeen, learning that Kathy is pregnant and that they’re getting married (-he told you that he never wanted to get married, ever-), and that he’s joining the Marines and shipping out. Seeing the hurt look on his face when you pull away so angrily is almost vindication for all of the pain you felt all of those years ago.

But, really, you’re still just hurt. You’re pretty sure you were in love with Elliot Stabler at one point in your teenage life, but that seems so far away now and… Well, how much do teenagers know about love? So you take a deep breath and shake your head, “Sorry, Elliot. This is a lot.”

“I get it,” He shoves his hands in his pockets and takes a step away from you. “It’s been a while.”

“Let’s not do this,” You purse your lips and look around at the detectives and officers crawling around the school that you’ve come to call home, “But you can explain to me what’s happening here.” He smiles, ducks his head, and you want the hurt inside of your chest to go away but it won’t. There’s something to be said about a first love showing up out of the blue, especially when you haven’t thought about them in a while. Elliot is exactly that - he was, is, your first love and you’re not sure that you can get over that. Does anyone ever get over that?

Still, he leads you into the room the dorm parents stay in when they’re running their shift overnight and takes a seat next to you. It’s strange being in a room with him, but you’re an adult and he’s wearing a wedding ring. He explains something that goes sort of over your head about an online hate group targeting your school because… It’s a private school? And people have to pay to enroll their children? You’re not sure. It’s still early in the morning - before the sun has come up. It’s when they hand the case over to the local precinct that Elliot hangs around where you’re talking to another administrator, waiting for the conversation to end so he can swoop in and talk to you again.

You know that, so you quickly end what you’re saying and turn back to him. “What?”

“I just wanted… I just wanted to apologize.” He sucks his teeth, looking away from you and squinting into the distance. He does it with such ease and familiarity that you know it’s a habit even though you've never seen him do it before. But, before he can say anything else, the hurt in your chest disappears. You hold up a hand, smiling softly at him.

“You don’t have to apologize, Elliot.” He whips back around at your sudden change in tone, “Listen, I’m sorry for how I’ve treated you tonight. This is too fucking much and I had just gotten to sleep when I was woken up.”

“You, uh, seem happy.” He rocks on his feet for a moment, “I should still apologize for how I left things… With us. I should have had more tact.”

You think about that for a moment, letting Elliot stew. When he had broken up with you it had been nothing more than a casual passing comment in the hallways of your high school. He had left you there to puzzle out what he said, process the meaning, and then mask your reaction in front of most of your mutual friends who had also heard what he said. It was awful, hurtful, and most of all - humiliating. You purse your lips before speaking, “I forgive you. I’ll have to admit, it was the shittiest way you could have possibly gone about that, but we’re different people now. You’re not that kid from school, and neither am I. We’re adults. You’re married. You have at least one kid, and we both have decent careers. I think what happened in high school has to be water under the bridge at this point.”

Elliot smiles and shrugs. “I guess. Kathy, um, Kathy and I are getting breakfast tomorrow near here. Would you - I know it’ll be awkward, but we were friends before we-”

“I’ll join you,” You cut Elliot off, “But we should make it brunch. It’s five in the morning and I will not be awake for anything that we could remotely call breakfast.”

#svu imagine #elliot stabler imagine #law and order imagine #special victims unit imagine #svu #l&o: svu #l&o: svu imagine

[witchofrvnswood]

a thorough rant on why i despise awwp // part 1

TRIGGER WARNING: EATING DISORDERS, FATSHAMING, AND BAD BODY IMAGE ARE DISCUSSED IN A LATER SECTION OF THE POST

It’s been a long time coming guys,,,

But here it is.

I don’t know how this is going to end but it won’t be pretty.

So, AWWP is the sequel to SGE, a book in which the author claims he addresses themes such as feminism, girls vs boys, and what not. 

I feel like the book fails on many counts and does not even follow what Soman Chainani has described it as and intended it to be.

The first part of this rant will be centered around the themes of this book. The next part will touch on the plot and some of the characters in this book.

Let’s dissect this, shall we?

Toxic Feminism

God, this one drove me beyond insanity and is probably the worst plot point this book has to offer. I don’t even get what the author achieved by writing this ?? Instead of showing girls being progressive and realizing their true individual power and potential after an entire school year of being told they were objects and being trained to be beautiful and submissive to buys, he decides to show extreme feminism where girls just disown anything, ANYTHING that relates to femininity. 

Of course they don’t have to wear makeup. Of course they don’t need long, luscious locks. But to claim that girls only have these assets to impress boys is sexism in itself. “Third, we debeautified makeup as a pawn of patriarchy designed entirely to attract men,” the teacher went on.” Not to mention, Evelyn Sader, the woman pushing this agenda, isn’t following any of these rules herself and is running this sexist school while trying to trap two teenage girls just to get a man’s favor ??? What ?????

And of course. The whole enslaving boys thing. So many people falsely believe that feminism is about hating boys and that girls are supreme which is why so many people scoff at it. Because if this is the way feminism is being represented in media, in a CHILDRENS’ book, of course people are going to misunderstand it! This puts such a bad name on feminism and is just downright insulting to everything the feminist movement has worked for and now the author is pushing this idea into young children and teens. 

This entire book is set up to tell the readers that girls cannot be independent because they’ll end up enslaving men which cannot happen because they need men and can’t live without them! This idea is even pushed by Hester, HESTER of all people, who is said to hate boys. The way she says it makes absolutely no sense to her character whatsoever. ““Shut up,” Hester boomed, spinning back to Agatha. “No one likes boys! Even girls who like boys can’t stand boys! They smell, they talk too much, they mess up everything, and they always have their hands in their pants, but that doesn’t mean we can go to school without them! It’s like stymphs without bones! It’s like witches without warts! Without boys, LIFE HAS NO POINT!” 

What,,, why,,,, why would you make Hester say something to that effect ? She basically said that girls need boys to function and that “their lives are pointless without boys”. I’m sorry,,, I just,,,, guys, I lost it at that point. Take a shot every time this book makes me lose brain cells, much?? :p

The ending really defines this theme in this book. The last book ended with two girls choosing each other and this book went on and on about how that was WRONG, how only a girl and boy could be together. And then this book ends with a girl and a boy choosing each other and now that is supposedly “the right ending”. We know it’s not from Book 3, but does what’s said and done in Book 3 even matter since they ended up together anyways??

Overall, I just,,, I just don’t know where Soman was going with this. I just don’t. He doesn’t seem like an anti feminist but I feel like what he does is, he takes a controversial issue, puts his own problematic spin on it, tries to write it as overdramatic and satirical and just ends up writing a really close minded take on it which ends up affecting his readers, whose age demographic is usually 8-12.

He means well, he really does, and I know that. But he needs to step up his game. I honestly don’t know why his editor, who is a woman, let him publish awful messages like these,,, maybe he’s really convincing? We know he can’t take criticism though (*cough* instagram live *cough*)

But this leads to my next point: The body image messages in this book.

Body Image

TRIGGER WARNING: I DISCUSS GLORIFIED EATING DISORDERS, FATSHAMING, BAD BODY IMAGE, ETC. IF ANY OF THESE ARE TRIGGERS FOR YOU OR MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, STOP READING. THE RANT ENDS AFTER THIS SECTION.

Whew wee, where do I start. 

Here is another example of how Soman’s self claimed satire goes way too far and ends up being destructive.

The way the Evergirls are looked down upon by Sophie and Agatha for starting to eat more and not care about their weight or beauty is appalling to me. Sophie has always prioritized looks, which makes sense for her character to be disgusted by the Evers (not okay though!) but Agatha’s disgust makes no sense. This girl refused to take showers or brush her hair just a year ago, so I don’t know why she’s so disgusted by the Evergirls carelessness of their appearance.

Reena is even described with clear disgust in the book about how she had acquired a large bottom by eating chocolate and even candy is found repulsive by Sophie and Professor Anemone and the judgement they show towards the Evergirls for eating these is just awful. This message is really destructive and choosing whether or not to consume sweets is every individual’s own decision. Adding in the idea that eating sweets will make you gain lots of weight to your book is so harmful to young minds. And writing about how the protagonists, who the characters the readers look up to, are disgusted by girls putting on weight is horrible.

But the biggest victim of this theme is Dot. Dot, who was bullied endlessly for being overweight in the previous book. Dot, who somehow lost so much weight over the course of nine months that she went from being rotund to skinny with hour glass curves.

Okay, let’s break this down: there is no way, absolutely no way, that a person can lose THAT much weight in less than a year and still be healthy. Dot was not shown to have any health problems. When explaining how she had done this, she claimed she was “hungry all the time” and was solely snacking on vegetables such as carrots or celery. She further claimed that all of this was “worth it” as she is now popular and has a great social life.

I’m not,,,, I can’t even,,,, this. This is what you call glorifying an eating disorder. Are you going to read that above paragraph and tell me that people won’t feel inspired by Dot? That a self conscious girl won’t read about Dot’s “amazing” weight loss story and how “amazing” her life is after becoming skinny is not going to feel jealous and most likely try something to that affect,,,, I,,,, Soman, WHERE is your tact?

This is so disgusting and I am so sorry to anyone who was affected by this. If you don’t know, there was a movement of sorts on Instagram where the sge fans confronted Soman for how his way of writing eating disorders and weight problems seriously affected them and ended up making them self conscious or develop their own eating disorders.

This is all made worse by the fact that he just laughed it off, said he wrote it for humor, and was offended we even accused him of writing bad body image into his stories because he’s been teased for being skinny before.

This book has the worst problems with body image and glorifying eating disorders. This itself is enough to ruin the book for me.

Dot is a kind and humble character who’s only addressed in the story through her weight, it’s made into such a big plot point in her character arc, her weight and how she gets bullied for it, or how skinny she is, and what she did to get there. Her entire character is defined by her body and that is not okay.

This book did her and the other Evergirls so much injustice and it is so upsetting.

I would like to say this is it for the rant, but no, there are a lot more qualms I have with this book, ahaha :/

Stay tuned for Part 2: my issues with the characters in the books :)

#awwp #a world without princes #soman chainani #me explaining why mr. author is a coward :) #the rant is finally here

[black-streak]

Waiting for the Worms - Hey You

Part 15

I had planned to be so much further in the plot by this chapter and yet here we are. I don't want to say this is a filler chapter, because the reunion of the team and all is important but like, nothing exciting happens here. Very tame. Don't expect anything crazy. That's next chapter.

Special thanks to @cassiopeiathequeen for reading this over for me when I second guessed if I should even post this one or not.

CLOSED list of dinner specials (I'm tired, shush): @northernbluetongue @thethirdwheelfriend @shizukiryuu @theatreandcomicfreak @michellemagic @karategirl119 @moonlightstar64 @my-name-is-michell @mystery-5-5 @zalladane @queen-of-the-trash-planet-tm @miraculousdisapointment @dorkus-minimus @jardimazul @allthebooksandcrannies @g-arya @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @persephonescat @mycupisbroken @luciferge @18-fandoms-unite-08 @dawnwave16 @alwaysreblogneverpost @kris-pines04 @mysteriouslyswimmingfan-blo-blog @weird-pale-blonde-person @you-will-never-know-how-i-think @kokotaru @naclychilli @slytherinhquinn @clumsy-owl-4178 @ladybug-182 @darkthunder1589 @evil-elf16 @dast218 @lysslovsanime @emilytopaz @naoryllis @iloontjeboontje @thepeacetea @danielslilangel @finallyaniguana @i-like-fairytail-and-stuff @vixen-uchiha @yuulxd @bleeding-heart-romantic @magic-inthe-stars @st0rmy-w1th1n

~---~

It took a moment for anyone to move, all still looking back and forth between Jason and her, as though unsure how to proceed.

While they took their sweet time figuring it out, Damian glanced at Jason, then back to her, "I see what you meant now. This will take time to adjust to."

"Oh?" She inquired, a quirk to her eyebrow.

"I keep looking to him, but that isn't correct, is it? It's annoying to think I might accidentally treat him as I treat you just because his flesh prison is the one I am accustomed to."

"Would that be so terrible?" She offered, face barely hinting at amusement.

"Yes."

Chuckling, she drew him closer into her lap where he allowed himself to huddle close, turning to watch the masses once more.

Jason, a state of content shock, kept their hands tightly bound, watching the two before him interact with such ease. Meanwhile the others only just now found the nerve to move fully into the living room, very aware of the two sets of eyes observing them. One pair, they thought they were used to, had seen almost everyday for years, but the glow to them was different. Electric green seemed to spark through the vivid blue, dangerous and wild. 

Kagami never felt fear as a civilian, especially after having been a superhero for so long. Had never felt threatened or like an easy target, but those eyes on her suddenly made her feel like prey in the sights of a killer. The dark green eyes set below only added to this.

Juleka couldn't explain how on edge the little boy put her. His hardened eyes never strayed from their little group, harsh and judging. No child should be so intimidating or coiled so tight, as though to pounce. The protective arms wrapped around him seemed less for their safety, but rather hinted at more than one opponent should things go downhill.

Marc suddenly had a new idea for a story about a lone wolf and her wolf cub, living in the wilderness, avoiding conflict but capable of taking down even the mightiest of warriors. They could wager a guess where that idea came from as they stood behind the armchair Kagami placed herself in, Chloe sitting on the arm of it, Juleka sitting on the carpet between her feet.

As for Chloe, she simply stared at who she could only assume was Jason. That tall, ridiculously muscled man, with his white streak and swimming teal eyes was who they had fought alongside so long? How in the hell did he pull off a tiny little teenage girl for so long? How old was this guy even to have such a scarred, built body? What had Mari been through in her time as him? She couldn't help it, she needed to know.

"Jason, how old are you?"

He startled in his seat, turning to look at her, "uh, well I was a year older than her, so eighteen, I guess."

"Seventeen and a half," Marinette corrected.

"But he said-"

"You don't continue aging in a dead body."

She answered so matter of fact, so flippantly, they fell silent once more. Kagami was the first to regain her bearings.

"Must you be so blunt about it?"

Those eyes swung to focus in on her, sharp with challenge, "Why not?"

Chloe rose to it first, "Because it hurts okay? Your acting like it means nothing, but it does. It hurts-!" 

"Like a crowbar to the face?" She cut in, a dark little smile twisting her face as the green seemed to flash in her eyes.

Damian snickered at the playful jab, adding on, "Such cutting words, Mari, how do they compare to the autopsy?

"Like a gentle caress, little one," her grin becoming more wicked as she nuzzled the top of his head. Right then the hand she forgot was gripping her own became nearly crushing as it shook.

"Fucking hell, Mari," his voice rattled out and as her head jerked in his direction, she saw his crumpled expression break into a broken laugh. He ran his free hand through his hair, "I only found out you were alive an hour ago, could we maybe hold off on the morbid humor?"

"Hey, that means I was alive two and a half more years than you thought though," she attempted to comfort him.

"Yeah? And how were those two years spent?" He snarked back, though she could hear the desperation in his voice, begging to know why she hadn't come back sooner. Hadn't looked for him.

"Curbing my bloodlust," she easily replied, not outwardly reacting, eyes searching his for understanding. The flash of green in his own answered. 

He shook his head and nudged Damian, the boy instinctively moving at the nudge from a familiar hand and looking pissed upon realizing his mistake as he dropped onto the other end of the couch behind where Mari had ended up. Jason heeded him no mind as he pulled Marinette closer until she moved herself into his lap, letting herself marvel at how small she now was.

"Excuse me? Do we just not exist over here?" Chloe snapped into their little bubble.

"I wish," Damian muttered.

"Watch it brat."

"Chloe," Marinette growled out the warning.

The blonde teared up, "Mari, we're friends. You remember right?"

Sighing, she clamped down on the anger, "Of course I remember. Please try to refrain from calling him names though," swiveling towards Damian, who had started smirking, she snapped him out of it, "And Damian, learn tolerance. More people will be entering our lives now and we'll have to navigate around those the other chooses to associate with." He hunched in on himself at her reprimand.

"She lashed out at you. Her feelings about your death are not your fault."

"They aren't, but I also have zero tact about the topic of my demise. Maybe I cannot be blamed for her feelings over my dying, but I could control how hurtful my words are. Then she wouldn't have felt the need to lash out, just as you wouldn't. I won't become more tactful and I'll understand if she doesn't wish to talk to me because of it, but I could have," she turned back to Chloe with that, noticing the contemplative look to some, sadness to others. Jason simply looked like he understood and sympathized.

"So how exactly did this group come to be?"

"It took less than two months for Jason to fire Chat," Juleka spoke up, gripping Kagami's calf from her spot on the floor, purposefully drawing attention to the person she held, " choose her as the new black cat."

"Fair enough, and the rest are holders as well, I presume?"

At this moment, kwamis began to reveal themselves, Longg peeking out of Chloe's bag, Trixx popping out of Marc's hoodie, Mullo showing off their spot amongst Juleka's hair. Tikki eventually floated out of Kagami's blazer, looking at her with forlorn, yet hopeful eyes.

Feeling a purr start up against her neck, she twisted to look up at Jason.

"You two switched?"

"We switch often," Kagami spoke here, cradling Tikki who sat her palm holding back tears at the lack of reaction given, "good for confusing the enemy. They never knew which of us it was until the fighting style gave it away."

"It also became necessary due to my not being a very good fit for Tikki despite my body being the proper match," Jason cut in here.

"Juleka and I switch often as well. Fits us better that way."

"I stay the same, but I have three different forms, so I suppose it's fair," Chloe added.

"And Hawkmoth?"

"Gone. We ended it about a year or so ago," Jason reassured.

Only then did a tiny, happy smile slip onto her face, lightening the atmosphere and allowing everyone in the room to relax.

"Tikki? I've missed you sweetie bug," Mari cooed, the little goddess perking up and launching herself forward into the other side of her neck to cuddle close.

"Mari? I'm so happy you're alive! I missed you so much, you don't even know!" Tikki sniffled then immediately begin to scold her, "don't you ever pull a stunt like that on me again, do you hear? I can't lose you again."

"I know, I'm sorry. I cannot promise that."

"What does that mean?!"

"I might not have known I would die in that moment, but I would do so again," she looked over to Jason now, "I would take that hit again without hesitation. And I'm sure my life being threatened isn't going to suddenly stop. I will however do everything within my abilities to prevent another unnecessary death." 

The kwami gave a little huffy sniffle and ducked back into her neck once more, as Kagami gave a cough. "Don't worry, I have no intention of taking back your miraculous. You fit Tikki quite nicely from what I can tell."

"You.. Don't want me back?" Tikki spoke up.

"It's not that I wouldn't like to have you back by my side, but tell me truthfully Tik. Looking into my soul, could you see me being able to use your miraculous?"

The kwami deflated once more at that, knowing her to be right. At that moment, she felt a small hand softly tap her back before reaching up by her neck and slowly cupping the sleepy cat resting there. Sitting perfectly still until Plagg had been completely extracted, she turned to watch Damian slowly pet the God, the surprisingly docile kwami watching the boy out of the slits of his eyes. 

"What is he?" Damian looked to her, wide eyed and curious.

Chloe spoke up, trying to amend the static from earlier, "He's a kwami. They're like pocket sized Gods, bonded to pieces of jewelry. The person who wears that jewelry is granted the ability to use the corresponding kwami's power. His name is Plagg and he's the kwami of Destruction."

Damian nodded along, eyes filled with wonder as the others took turns introducing the other kwamis in the room, Tikki joining them as Plagg floated back over to Mari. For her part, Mari relaxed further as the others became purposefully distracted so as not to overwhelm each other any further, while also keeping Damian occupied.

Turning to greet Plagg, she offered a considering look, "You were on my person in the cafe."

He nodded.

"You adjusted my aim during the attack."

"You were going to kill them," he tensed up, tone defensive.

"I know."

"Marinette-"

"I'm glad you stopped me. They were not lives that needed taken."

"You've changed so much," the cat kwami sounded remorseful and desolate, taking her in, soul and all. 

"I have. You still love me though?"

"Course I do, sweetheart," the big green eyes teared up, never good at hiding his real feelings around her, especially now that he could see his own destruction magic in her soul and consuming Jason's body.

Taking a deep breath, she spoke out to the room, informing them that she'd be in the kitchen, making lunch. They all nodded in agreement, knowing they all needed the space to figure out their thoughts.

Jason followed her, "Mind if I join you?"

Turning around, knowing they no longer had an audience, she let her tears fall freely, speaking softly to not alert the others "Jay? This is real isn't it? You're really here?"

Holding her by the shoulders, he leaned down to meet her eyes, "shouldn't I be the one asking that?" He teased, smiling at her small laugh, "This is some surreal shit, isn't it?"

"Yeah," she choked out, rubbing her eye as she pushed forward and pressed her face to his chest, wrapping herself around him, feeling his arms hover a moment before pulling her in tight.

"You're being strong for him, aren't you?"

Grabbing his hand, she led him into the bedroom, closing the door softly, "He doesn't have anyone else, Jay. I'm sure he told you about the league?"

"Yeah, something like that."

"Didn't happen to mention what he was doing there, did he?

"He slipped a bit, but I'd rather hear it from you."

"Talia is his mother. She took me in so I could get him out. Trained me to be the perfect protector, gave me the means to leave, disconnected from him completely so he wouldn't argue. And of course I agreed. He was being abused, Jay. It was so terrible, the way they were raising him. But I don't know what I'm doing."

"I don't know, you seemed to be doing a pretty amazing job out there," he brushed tears off her face, still amazed that he could, "How do you want to handle this? With me having taken my body back. I'll follow your lead here."

"About that… You and I have joint custody."

"What?"

"Legally, you're his older brother, who adopted him after your parents died, since you were of age to do so. Marinette Todd is your wife who adopted him with you."

"Wh-why would you- I mean-?" He cut himself off, confused.

"Well I mean, I didn't think the connection would ever come back, but in case it did or if I felt it safe to find you. I didn't want to take a chance. We can go back and change them?"

"It's fine, just, how old did you make us to be married and able to adopt a child?"

"Well he's your brother, so the adoption part would be easy despite age, plus we forged documentation for cps check-ins for two years, so they won't be checking now."

"And how old does that make us?"

"You're twenty one and I'm twenty. We've been his legal parents since you turned nineteen. We married the year after I graduated high school. You looked old enough to pull it off and I wasn't sure what I looked like anymore but doubted anyone would look twice."

"Well alright then," he blinked, pulling her close again and setting his head on top of hers, "It's going to take a while to get used to being this tall," he admitted.

"How do you think I feel," she rested fully against him, blown away by the ability to lean on someone for once.

A knock sounded on the door and Damian peaked in, "Mari? You need to come see this."

#jasonette #maribat #ml x dc #WFTW #part 15 #pacing is going to be weird now since time skips arent really an option anymore #next chapter will be fun though

[lo-55]

Shattered Chains of Fate Ch. 3

The Rift

 Ichigo wonders, more often than not, why it is that even though he can see ghosts, he never sees the ones he wants to. His mother, and now his friends from Chaldea. He can’t see them anymore. The singularities are gone, and humanity has returned to the way it always was. But it’s missing so many people, from his own point of view. Olga Marie isn’t bound to him anymore. She’s moved on.  And the rest…

 Ichigo sits in front of his mother's grave with his dad at his side. Karin and Yuzu have gone for drinks, leaving them alone for the time being. Rukia, and Kon too, sit on a hill, watching over them and waiting for trouble. He doesn’t want to admit it. He’s carried the guilt in his heart for so long, but now… it’s possible that Rukia is right. That the reason his mother is dead is because…

   “Hey, old man,” Ichigo looks towards his dad, who’s been acting weird since he’s come back. More than once he’s caught him just staring. Like he’s trying to figure out what changed his kid so much. As if they were ever that close in the first place. Ichigo let’s him. There’s no way for him to understand what’s changed Ichigo into the person he is now. It’s not something that can be easily explained, and in any case the Mage's Association was pretty clear. No one is supposed to know that magic exists. Including his own family. Anyone who finds out must be killed.

 “Yeah?” Isshin looks his way, away from the grave that reads his mother's name.

 “About mom. Could she ever see ghosts, do you know?” he looked right at him. Testing Isshin, watching his eyes. He’d never noticed before…

 That his dad was hiding behind a dozen walls. And they all started to come up when Ichigo asked his question. Ichigo has spent years with master assassins and traitorous knights. He can see clearly now, for the first time ever. His dad isn’t such a colossal goof off after all.

 “Why are you asking this all of a sudden?” he asks and it      hurts    . It hurts more than Ichigo thought, to know that he was keeping this secret for so long. To know that he could have told him, that both of them could have told him when he was young and he couldn't tell who was alive and who was dead, that he wasn’t alone in it. Karin had always had him, and they’d learned together after their mom had died, who was real and who was not.

 Why? Why had they hid these things from him? And could he trust their dad to tell them the truth now?

 “... No reason. I was just thinking about her.”

 No, he decides, looking back at the headstone. He can’t trust his old man to tell him the truth. So, he’ll have to learn it some other way.

 *

 Sometimes, Isshin looks as his son and he sees a complete stranger.

 He’s still brash and angry, and he would die for Yuzu and Karin, might have while Isshin wasn’t looking, but he’s not himself. He isn’t the same son that had climbed onto a plane for what should have been a simple job months ago. He’d only been gone for a week. How could he have changed so much?

 He was taller, for one thing, and yeah teenagers have growth spurts but they don’t grow three inches in seven days. Their hair doesn’t grow out in a week either, and they don’t get so strong or so self assured that fast.

 More than that, his son has this look in his eyes…

 A terrible age, even though he’s only fifteen. He looks at them like he’s afraid they’ll disappear. He looks like he’s always waiting for something. For something to go wrong, for the other shoe to drop.

 Even before Rukia had shown up and given her powers over to him, and then started living in his son’s closet of all places, he’d been the same. On edge. And the way he’d greeted them…

 Ichigo did a lot of things when Isshin attacked him. Hugging him wasn’t one of them.

 On top of all that, he’d gone to see Kisuke, to ask what was going on in the spirit world, where he could no longer see, and it turns out that Kisuke agrees. There’s something strange about Ichigo. He’s stronger than he should be, and stronger than he ever was, even without Rukia. And he doesn’t know what exactly happened between Kisuke and Ichigo, but it’s enough that now the old captain is interested in him.

 It’s not nearly as comforting as Isshin wishes it was. When Kisuke got involved, things rarely went well. No matter how good his intentions were.

 Then he asked about Masaki, and Isshin had faltered.

 It was time, it was the perfect time for him to tell him the truth. To sit him down and explain what had happened all those years ago, and tell him about the kind of heritage he had, and what it might mean. He’s wondered, whose power did he get? Isshin, or Masaki. Shinigami, or Quincy? Or both? Or hollow? It’s hard to tell.

 But he chickened out. The words got stuck and the world closed off and Ichigo turned away from him. The moment was lost, and now Isshin doesn’t know what to do. It’s so much easier raising daughters than sons.

 * *

 By the time his ridiculous duel with Uryu is over, Ichigo is willing to bet money that his mother was a Quincy.

 Ichigo ends up sitting on a bench, breathing fast but he’s not so exhausted nor so beat up as Ishida, who sits patiently while Ichigo carefully stitches up his arm. It’s easy enough to pass this particular skill off as one he learned from his father and not knee deep in a war, trying to help Roman with the dozens of injured Chaldea staff.

 “Isn’t your dad a doctor? Wouldn’t it be better to have him do than let me?” Ichigo finds himself asking They’re lucky Uryu had a needle and thread on his person, even if they did have to bend the needle in an awkward, sloppy approximation of the ones used for real stitches.

 It’ll do for now.

 “It’s best if my father doesn’t know about this,” he says simply.

 “Oh yeah?” Ichigo grins at him. “I take it that means he doesn’t want you doing this kind of stuff then.”

 “I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Uryu sniffed at him stubbornly. Ichigo glowers at him, and pulls the next stitch harder until Uryu yelps. “Hey! Watch it!”

 “Of      course    it’s my business. This whole stunt that you pulled was insanely dangerous.”

 “Are you admitting that you’re weaker than I am,” Uryu lifts his chin, his nose in the air, and Ichigo has to stop himself from karate chopping him in his throat.

 “It doesn’t matter if I’m weaker or not! What matters is that we’re not the only people in town that you could have gotten killed with this stunt! Didn’t you notice? There’s hollows that disappeared that neither one of us took out.”

 He snaps the thread and grabs Uryu by the front of his shirt, watching his blue eyes go wide and realization dawn for what is apparently the first time. “That means other people are fighting. Other people might be dying. My sister has high spirit levels too you know?! When you pull shit like this you’re putting the lives of everyone around you into the same danger, without even telling them about it! How can someone with top grades be so damn stupid?!”

 Ichigo forces himself to lean back, anger still bubbling under his skin. All this trouble because Uryu hates shinigami, and Ichigo isn’t even a real one.

 “      Listen    ,” he leans in , forcing Uryu to bend backwards over the back of the bench, “I’ll fight you one on one any time you want. But this hollow fighting isn’t a game. And if you ever put other people in danger unnecessarily again, I’ll beat your goddamn face in.”

 “Y-you!” Uryu pushes against his chest but Ichigo is immobile, stone and still.

 “Do you understand, Uryu Ishida?”

 “I. Yes,” he says at last, looking down and away. Only then does Ichigo let him go, leaning back and letting out a grunt when it pulls at his shoulders. He’d over strained himself, just a little bit.

 “Hey, Kon!” Ichigo waves his body snatcher over to the pair. “Gimme my body back already, huh?”

 “Ah, you’re no fun,” Kon whines, but he sits on the bench and lets Ichigo slide back in without a fuss. Ichigo pulls Uryu up off of the bench and gives him a shove.

 “C’mon. I’ll walk you home.”

 “I don’t need you to do that!”

 “Well I’m doing it anyways. You’re injured, what if there’s still a few more hollows lingering around, huh? Just shut up and start walking.”

 Uryu scowls, but starts walking forwards anyhow, with Ichigo in his shadow. During his whole trauma speech and background story Ichigo’s mind had been turning over and over. His dad was a quincy too, even if he didn’t want to admit it, and if Uryu was to be believed, they were the last of them.

 Goat-face isn’t going to answer his questions, so Ichigo follows Uryu home, to a house that far too big for just two men alone. He feels old, walking into it. It’s fanciful, but he’s seen the theatres of Rome and the courts of King Arthur.

 Ichigo will never be a sensor, but he’s gotten used to trusting the sense inside him that says when someone else is around, and even though it took him a while he’s good enough to be able to follow it if he has to. He didn’t know about the spirit ribbons. Ichigo is used to being clueless, but he’s not stupid. He files the information away for later, and quietly memorizes that feeling of Uryu. It’s more like a taste, clean and sharp, and vaguely like citrus.  

 His father is much the same. And he is utterly unimpressed by Ichigo arriving on his doorstep with his son in tow.

 His eyes are colder than ice, not exactly something Ichigo would want in any doctor he has.

 “Hey, old man,” Ichigo raised a hand and, with his usual level of tact, asked ever-so-discreetly, “Did you know my mom?”

 * * *

 “Do you know where you are?”

 The scent of roses and daffodils and the feeling of soft worn wool brushing against his cheek. A ribbon made of magic brushing his nose.

 Ichigo opens his eyes and looks into a pale blue sky, wisps of cotton candy clouds stretching across from one horizon to the next.

 “I am in a dream,” he says dutifully.

 “Very good Dolores.”

 Ichigo punches him in the stomach, sending the mage doubled over in a fit of coughing and laughing together. A smile that’s far too mischevious to be soft is aimed at him.

 “You have an amazon prime subscription out here?” Ichigo asked, sitting up slowly. The tower still floats, through the sky at the end of the world.

 “Well yes. I do run a blog, you know?” though it’s said with a straight face he can see a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth, where even eternal youth hasn’t been able to curb laugh lines. He’s good humor, and a good company.

 “Seriously?!”

 That gets a laugh out of the mage of all mages. He lays back in the flowers that climb and bloom, thriving in his very presence. He is life and light and mischief, a watcher and a strange sort of guardian.

 “Well yes. I can’t spend all of my time merely      watching     people. The internet made things much more fun! Humans are such innovative creatures, even without magic to help them along.”

 Ichigo nodded along with him. “Does that mean that you can email me instead of hijacking my beauty sleep?”

 “Oh, you mean you don’t enjoy my company, oh great Master of Humanity?”

 Ichigo scowls at him, but there’s a smile trying to pull at his mouth. He struggles to squash it, and he can tell from the glint in his companions eyes that he fails.

 “Stop calling me that,” he says for a millionth time.

 A firm hand pushes him back into the flowers, under the warmth of the sun in the soft crush of fragrant petals. There’s no perfume that could ever compare. This is a strange place, a beautiful cage, and Ichigo doesn’t fully understand how he can be here and home at the same time. Not that that’s new. He’s been in two places at once more times than he cares to count, and he still only vaguely understands how it’s possible.

 “I understand that your life is interesting once more.” The mage stretches out beside him, taller than he and cloaked elegantly in his same old robes. He’s showy and modest at once and it hurts Ichigo’s eyes to look at him for long.

 Ichigo groans. “If you mean my entire existence is one giant clusterfuck then yeah. It’s real ‘interesting’ again. But I’m not time travelling again yet so…”

 “Poor little master. Your life is so very hard…”

 “I’ll hit you,” Ichigo threatened. “Master mage, but a shit fighter. I can take you.”

 The laugh that he is granted is bells on the wind.

 “True, true. But I believe that things will get worse before they get better. Perhaps you should begin your mage craft training once more.”

 “You know I always sucked at that. I could only use real magic if I had a mystic code. Every other time, it exploded in my face. I’m a secondrate mage, that’s how it’s always been,” he says it all simply.

 “That is true… Isn’t it funny how that works out? A boy who cannot cast a single spell without assistance ends up defeating the most powerful mage in history. You really are a remarkable human, Ichigo.”

 “And you’re trying to get me to do something for you, aren’t you?”

 “Aha! You do know me! Yes, I need you to mail something very important to me…”

 “You get mail here?!”  

 * * * *

 It’s the tenth time he’s been thrown into the dirt today.

 A normal person would have given up and packed it in. A normal person would have humbly accepted that the strength of these titans was beyond their abilities to keep up with.

 Instead, Ichigo stands again.

 He picks up his borrowed practice sword, dulled so no one can get hurt, and faces his opponent once more.

 Mash, Cu, and Medusa, his constant companions, watch him narrow his eyes and plant his feet again.

 “One more time, Nero!”

 “He’s stubborn, if nothing else,” Medusa mused, not quite out of his earshot. Cu nods his agreement, his eyes never wavering.

 “Tha’ll help him,” he said simply. Ichigo didn’t know why but his accent seemed to change just a little each time he opened his mouth. Sometimes he was barely understandable. Sometimes it is perfect english. Or whatever language the magic was auto-translating it to. Japanese for Ichigo, english for Mash, and probably latin for Nero and the surrounding soldiers.

 “ ‘He’ can still hear you!” He glared halfheartedly at the pair of Servants, who looked perfectly innocent. The longer he was around them, the more familiar he was with the small changes in disposition and expression, their likes and dislikes. And, to his eternal surprise, the      feeling    of them.

 Cu Cullain felt like trees. Like thick moss on a stone, and early morning mist rolling through thick, ageless trees. His presence was as familiar as an old, trusted hound. They’d only been together for a few months, but his spellwork and the steady draw of his mana felt as natural as breathing to him.

 Medusa was the deep ocean, power beneath every surface but beautiful to behold. A crash of waves against the stony shore, her every touch fleeting and feather light while her chains lashed with horror and the chthonic strength born in the age of gods. She was the smooth brush of scales against his wrist, the flash of teeth behind a sweet smile, and gold eyes in the darkness that Ichigo alone did not flinch from.

 Theirs was a tenuous relationship. She kept looking for him to stab her back, to cut her head and use it as his weapon. Ichigo was still half expecting to wake up as a statue one day. They only had the barest trust between them but…

 She hasn’t let him down yet, and Ichigo endeavours to repay that much if he can.

 He raises his sword and barely blocks a vicious strike from Nero. She was shorter than him by far, but he had no chance matching her for raw strength. Or speed. Or her damn near perfect swordplay.

 “Focus on the performance at hand,” she orders, her mouth curved in a strange smile. Ichigo didn’t totally understand her. They’d been travelling with her for over a month now, on the way to reach what would one day be london.

 “Right,” Ichigo lunges for her, his strikes quick and hard. He’s not worried about hurting her since he can’t even      hit    her.

 It’s graceful, elegant, and nearly effortless for her to knock him flat on his ass again, smacking the flat of her blade against his chest so hard he sees spots. He’s left sucking desperately. His nails bite into the dirt and his grip on his sword tightens until the leather wrapped around the hilt creaks.

 “That’s enough for today, I think,” Nero decides. Ichigo wants to argue, but he doesn’t have any breath for it. So he groans like a dying whale and lays in the dirt, his hands shaking, his body refusing to move at all.

 Nero lowers herself to the ground, on her knees beside him and how strange is that? A goddamn emperor kneeling with him in the dirt. A demi-goddess, and a druid, and a demi-servant. And Ichigo, just human. But Nero is human too. She’s as alive as he is and she is wiping the fucking floor with him.

 “You’re a - fuck,” he wheezes and finally gets his elbows under him so he can sit up.

 “Now that’s very rude to say, considering that I’ve been training you out of the goodness of my own heart,” Nero sniffs at him, tilting her chin to the sky.

 Why did Ichigo always get stuck with these kinds of bewildering people? Everyone he knew was so weird…

 “Yeah, I guess. Thanks, Nero.” A perfectionist and slave driver, but Ichigo was getting better every day. By the time they reached their destination, maybe he’d even be able to land a single blow per bout. Ichigo had never expected to get along with a roman emperor of all people, but even outside of fighting Ichigo has always been, if only mildly, interested in the arts, and Nero only stokes those embers.

 Nero smiles beatifically at him. “You have the makings of a fine performer. Even without an Imperial Privilege. I enjoy teaching you.”

 Her smile is interrupted by a pinch of her brows and purse of her lips.

 Ah, another headache.

 It’s very strange, trying to reconcile the young woman in front of Ichigo with the tyrant from history. She’s put her people ahead of her at every turn, and helped Ichigo and his friends. She’s under no obligation to teach Ichigo swordplay but she does, even after long days on the march.

 At the same time, there’s a reason Boudica is only her reluctant ally. Nero cared for her people but she was, in another word, a merciless bitch when she put her mind to it. But she was on their side, for now, and Ichigo is learning not to look gift horses in the mouth. So he gets up and goes to her side, and shows her how to press her fingers into pressure points on the back of her neck, and hold it for a few seconds until the headache goes away.

 He’s made an archduke for that one.

 * * * * *

 A rift forms in the Kurosaki household.

 It’s always been there, a cut stitches tenuously together by blood and loyalty, and reinforced by love, but now it’s split.

 A gaping chasm, and Ichigo doesn’t know what to do with it.

 It feels like it’s not something he can bridge. Like this is one obstacle that even he cannot conquer. Master of Chaldea, Final Beacon for Humanity. Commander of Heroes, Beloved, the First Guardian.

 He is a hundred things but at the end of the day he is still.

 A teenager.

 Fifteen and eighteen and four thousand at once.

 His dad had lied to him. If not directly, then by omission. For years, for so very long he’d let Ichigo hold the responsibility of Masaki’s life in his hands, had kept quiet when he grew frightened and dark and closed off from the living, so preoccupied was he with the dead.

 Never once did he offer reason. Never once did he show his care or cradle his son, or tell him that the monsters were real and it      wasn’t his fault    .

 Not once, in six, seven, eight, nine years did he tell Ichigo that he was not alone. That he and Karin were merely Masaki’s children. That they were born of quincy blood, even if that never put a bow in their hands.

     Half the blood means half the power,”     That was what Ryuuken had said. And how sad is it that Ichigo had had to hunt down a veritable stranger, once who’s son had spent the entire day bickering and competing and hating his guts, to get answers from?

 “      Does my old man know all of this?”    Ichigo had asked.

 Ryuuken was honest, even if he didn’t want to get into the tangled web of family drama.      “Yes,”    He’d said, “      But it’s more complicated than that. Isshin has the entire story.”  

 And he wouldn’t tell Ichigo.

 He didn’t tell him on the bloody banks of the river, when a child wandered in desperate hope of finding a phantom of his mother.

 He did not tell a ten year old at the foot of a grave marker. He kept silent at eleven, at twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

 Fifteen. Under the watching grave of his mother Ichigo had asked. And Isshin had not told.

 The house is tense like it hasn’t been since Ichigo got back. It’s tense like a storm, cracking along the edges of the walls and windows. Tense like there’s no coming back from this and Ichigo cannot take the building static in his veins or the hissing of betrayal in his ears, like snakes.

 He misses Medusa, suddenly. She would take his pound of flesh for him and then some.

 Ichigo go knows, for certain, that if he stays in this house he’ll go mad. Yuzu and Karin, they know something is up. Ichigo’s pretty sure Karin saw the hollow, Grand Fisher, at the grave site. Dead now by his blade, but the vengeance tastes like ash on his tongue. His mother is still dead. His father is still a liar.

 His sisters still love them both.

 Ichigo loves them, too. More than anything in the world, he fought gods and demons for their sake. For them to be born for them to have a future.

 But he can’t spend all of his time at home, and Chad is starting to ask questions that Ichigo has a difficult time answering.

 Not ‘was that a demon ghost you just punched in the face’ hard. That answer is ease. ‘Yes’.

 But ‘is everything alright at home’ hard. Chad had asked the first time he saw Isshin launch himself at his son in a surprise attack and he’s about to ask it again, Ichigo can feel it in his bones.

 So he makes a phone call.

 The rest of the world will never know what they did.

 The world will not know about him or Mash or Roman or Olga Marie, or the countless others that built Chealdea and kept her running. They’ll never know how much they fought, how much they bled, how much they sacrificed for the sake of the future.

 It’s fine with him.

 But there are some who know. The Mage's Association, and the United Nations. And a select few people from the Clock Tower in London, where Ichigo has already been offered schooling and job. They know that he stopped the incineration of humanity.

 And they      owe    him.

 Three years of pay for working in Chaldeas, and even more for everything else he’d done.

 He finds a backpack while he waits for a familiar voice to answer.

 “Do you have any idea what time it is?” There's a shuffle of sheets and a groan in the background and Ichigo barely pays it any mind as he stuffs a hoodie into his bag and goes looking for his running shoes.

 “Not a clue,” he said blandly. “But listen, Waver. I need a favor.”

 * * * * * *

#Ichigo Kurosaki #BAMF!Ichigo Kurosaki #Ichigo Kurosaki is Ritsuka Fujimaru #well sorta #bleach #bleach fanfiction #bleach/fate grand order #olga marie animusphere

[terry-perry]

Avengers: The Next Generation (A.J. Rogers)

I told myself I wasn’t going to make another one of these, but inspiration struck me. So here’s a little something for the littlest Rogers!

Enjoy!

“A.J.?”

At the call of his name, the boy looked up and locked eyes with Steve.

“Oh, hey Dad,” he greeted him softly, going back to making his PB&J.

“It’s late, son. We’re supposed to be up in a few hours.”

“Yeah, I know. But I couldn’t sleep.” When he was done with his sandwich, he slid it in his father’s direction in offering. “Do you want half?”

“Sure,” Steve walked over to the fridge. “Do you want some milk with it?” 

“Yeah, thanks,”

A.J. cut the sandwich in two and then made his way to the kitchen table while Steve poured the glasses and joined him not long after.

“Are you worried about your sisters?” He asked.

“A little. But I know they’ll be all right. They’re really good with their powers, and they’ll be fighting alongside some pretty powerful people too.”

“So is there something else that’s bothering you?” Steve continued to probe.

“Dad-”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But you know you can, right?”

A.J. only let out a slow breath in response, taking a bite of his sandwich next as a tense silence fell between them. Steve knew that there might have been something going on with his youngest child. For the past several weeks, he had been having some trouble with his magic. Unlike Daisy and Nat, he had developed them later in life. It wasn’t until the past year when he had begun to sprout sparks out of his hands and make certain objects appear. 

But so far, that had been the extent of his skills. It didn’t matter if he trained with his mother, his uncle Thor, his sisters or any other magic wielders like his Aunt Wanda. There was still little to no development.

“I’m worried about him,” Y/N had expressed one day to Steve while they watched A.J. train with Daisy in the backyard.

“He’ll get there, honey,” Steve assured her, wrapping his arms around her from behind. “He’s just a little late with learning this stuff.”

“That’s not what concerns me. I think this goes deeper that that.”

“Why do you say that?”

She turned around to better explain and rest her head on his chest.

“Remember when I told you that certain emotions can affect your magical abilities?”

He remembered, and he had seen some of it firsthand with the girls. For Daisy, it was the way she had completely shut down as she struggled to come to terms with her feelings for a girl in her class. For Nat, it was the opposite when her boyfriend had broken up with her to date her now ex-best friend; making her lose control of her magic every time she broke down about it. With A.J. now being a young adolescent himself, was he perhaps going through some similar turmoil?

“Do you think there might be something going on with him?” Steve said these thoughts out loud.

“It’s a possibility...”

“I overheard what you were telling Daisy earlier?” A.J. finally confessed in a low voice. His head was dipped down shamefully, like a little boy getting caught breaking something. “You told her that you didn’t care if she wanted to be an Avenger or not. Does that apply to all of us?”

Steve narrowed his eyes in question.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think I want to be a super hero,” A.J. admitted finally and so abruptly, catching himself off guard. He knew this was something that had been plaguing his mind since he got his magic. But he didn’t know he’d be able to talk about it so openly. Especially to his parents.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he carried on. “I’m proud of the stuff you and Mom did. And I’m happy for Daisy and Nat. I just don’t think it’s for me.” 

He spent another second quiet, contemplating the best way to explain himself. “I’ve been able to live without magic for a long time. I want to keep doing that. I just want to mainly spend high school with my friends, and figure out what I want to do afterwards.”

“Like a normal teenager,” Steve finished for him, but saying it more to himself. He had been silent throughout this whole confession so he could lend a good ear to his son as he opened up to him. But as he continued to stay quiet, A.J. began to worry.

“Are you disappointed?”

That got Steve to break himself out of his thoughts and look back up at him. He shook his head with great insistence.

“No,” he answered. “Not in you. A.J., your mom and I never want you kids to think that you have to live up to something. You know the stories with your mom and her family. And you know all about the expectations that were made for me before I joined the Army. Last thing we want is for you to think that we wouldn’t love you and be proud of you no matter what.”

A.J. was his mother’s son, for sure. Daisy might’ve been the one to have inherited {NAME’s} tact and fair-mindedness, but their youngest had gotten her humility and mostly gentle nature. The traits that had been more visible during her childhood when she did her best to keep up with her older brothers. Now here was A.J., afraid of becoming his own person after all the praise Daisy and Nat garnered from mastering their abilities. It didn’t help that he also inherited his father’s naturally skinny stature that he was doing his best to work on with Jack Barnes.

“You’re only 15,” Steve continued. “You have a lot of time to figure out what it is you want. Just remember that the only thing we’ll care about is if you’re happy and leading a good life.”

A.J. seemed to perk up a little at that, though he also seemed to still be a bit uncertain.

“I’d still want to train,” he said. “Just so I can have a good control over my magic.”

“We’ll talk to Mom about it tomorrow after we see your sisters off,”

“Are you sure she won’t be mad?”

Steve shook his head some more. “Just the opposite. She was more worried about something going on with you that we didn’t know about. She’ll be happy that you’re sharing this with us. And it should also make things easier with your training.”

“I hope so,”

They finished their late night sandwiches in peaceful silence. And when Steve glanced up from his plate, he saw a lighter, smiling face full of optimism and hope across from him. A smile he was all too familiar with.

#dad!steve rogers #series #mcu au #Steve Rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers imagine #asgardian!reader #marvel #marvel cinematic universe #child oc #Marvel MCU #marvel imagine #Avengers #avengers imagine #MCU #MCU fanfiction #captain america x reader #A.J. Rogers

[angelsandacceptance]

After School Special

“So?” Dean asks. 

Sam shrugs. “I think she's telling the truth. I mean, the way she talked about being there mentally but not physically -- kind of sounds like demonic possession to me.”

“Kind of?” Chase asks. “How is it kind of a demon possession?”

“She didn't see any black smoke or smell sulfur,” Sam explains. 

“Maybe it's not a demon. I mean, kids can be vicious,” Dean says. 

“Yeah, they’re terrifying,” Harley says. 

“You were one of those terrifying ones, Harley,” Chase laughs. “I’ve heard the stories.”

“Well, I mean, we're already here. Might as well check out the school,” Sam suggests. 

“Right, the school,” Dean says shortly. 

“What?” Sam asks.

“Truman High, home of the Bombers,” Dean says with distaste. 

“What’s your point?” Chase asks. 

“I mean, we went there, like... for a month a million years ago. Why are you so jazzed to go back?” Dean asks.

“We were only there for a month, so why are you so opposed?” Chase asks. 

“Because it’s school and we have a connection to it. Why should I want to go back?”

“It’s worth looking into,” Sam points out. 

“All right, well, what's our cover? FBI? Homeland Security? Swedish exchange students?” Dean asks. 

“Yes, Dean, because you, a thirty year old grown ass man, can pass as a high school student. From Sweden.”

“Do you even know Swedish?” Harley asks.

“Don’t worry,” Sam says. “I have an idea.”

“That’s worrisome,” Chase says. 

“How?” Sam asks defensively. 

“Because it’s you. And I don’t trust either of you,” Chase says, pointing at the boys. 

“Do you trust me?” Harley asks.

Chase regards her with a cautious look. “Only on Tuesdays.”

“So, Sammy, what’s this idea of yours?” Harley asks.

Sam shoots Harley an annoyed look. “It’s Sam. You know it’s Sam.” He shakes his head. “Whatever. So, get this.”

***

The Impala drives up in front of a large school, Truman High School boldly proclaimed on the building’s entrance. Dean, Chase, and Sam climb out of the back, backpacks tugged around shoulders, wary looks on their faces. 

“Thanks, Dad,” Dean says, taking lead and walking in front of the younger Winchesters. “You two got your books?” Dean asks them. “Lunch? Butterfly knife?”

“Yeah, Dean,” Sam says, rolling his eyes. 

“You two are being quiet. You okay?”

“Sure,” Sam says at the same time Chase answers, “Better than your face.”

“My face is beautiful, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Seriously, you okay?”

“Sure,” Sam repeats with emphasis. 

“Sammy…” Dean starts. 

“I mean, look, this is the third school we've been to this year, and it's only November. I'm just sick of always being the new kid.”

“It does kind of suck,” Chase agrees. “I’m never able to make friends. No one wants to be friends with the freak who doesn’t know how to keep quiet, and if they do, I can’t keep contact with them longer than a couple weeks.”

“Who needs friends when you have us?” Dean smirks.

“You’re boys. I can’t exactly talk to you about all my problems, Dean.”

“And people pick on me!” Sam exclaims. 

“You'll be fine. If anyone gives you any trouble, you let me know. Relax. Dad said this hunt will take him two weeks, tops. As soon as he gets back, we're out of here.”

“To another school. Awesome,” Sam says, tugging his backpack tighter to his body. 

Once separating from her brothers as they each go to their individual classes, Chase finds herself alone in front of the classroom, twenty pairs of eyes staring her down. Judging her. Inspecting her.

God, she hates teenagers. 

“Is there anything you want to tell us about yourself, Char-”

“Chase. My name is Chase Winchester. Please address me as such.”

“Of course,” the teacher hesitates, unused to being talked to by students like that, but she continues quickly. “Well, go on and tell us three facts about yourself.”

Chase turns to the class, a half smile on her face. “Hi! I’m Chase. I like learning but hate school, love cats, and fighting.”

“What kind of fighting?” A boy in the back of the class asks. 

Chase looks to the teacher out of the corner of her eye, only to be encouraged by a wide smile. 

“Y’know,” Chase mumbles, suddenly shy. “Like fist fighting and shooting and stuff.”

“Shooting? Like guns?”

‘Great, Chase, go ahead and label yourself the freak. Why didn’t you say something normal?’

“Uh,” Chase stalls for time. “Yeah? My dad takes me and my brothers to the shooting range.”

“That’s great, Chase! Go ahead and take your seat.”

Chase does so quickly, face slightly red from embarrassment, and pulls out a notebook, hastily busying herself so she can avoid questions and eye contact. 

***

Harley’s students enter the class room. “Hello everyone, I’m Ms. Wyllt. Today we will be joined by Ms. Scourie and her 3rd period Creative Writing class. You’ll be grouped together in fours, and yes, you can choose your partners.”

A wave of excitement rushed through the class. “You’ll be writing your own unique scenes and acting them out! This project will be due two weeks from now.”

A knock comes from the classroom door, and Harley goes to open it revealing Chase and her class. Everyone enters the theatre room and Chase and Harley go off on their own.

“We’re like the best teachers ever,” Harley says, seeing best friends pair up immediately.

“We are,” Chase agrees.

***

High school was an interesting place for Harley. It was simultaneously the worst and best years of her life. She was depressed and suspended from school, but she found someone who she would give anything, just for her to be happy. She found a daughter. The light of her life and her best friend in the universe.

She found a wonderful friend group who she would die for. Discovered music and made many a memory. At this specific moment she was remembering staying the night at Adina’s.

They were in her basement, Adina was giving Harley a stick and poke of a treble clef.

“Does that hurt?” Adina asks.

“Honestly, this is the most relaxed I’ve ever been. Maybe it’s the sauna, maybe it’s being out of the house, or maybe it’s you. I don’t really care, I might fall asleep before you finish,” Harley responds.

Adina laughs.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I’m adopting you. You are now my child,” Harley says mostly serious with a hint of joking.

“Okay?”

“I’m serious, you are the light of my life and you make being alive worth it.”

“Aww, thanks!”

“Any time.”

***

Winchesters and Co. sat in the teacher’s lounge eating sloppy joes.

“So, Harley and I are the best teachers.”

“Why, what’d you do?” Dean asks, mouth full.

“Dean, really?” Chase asks. “You’re a pig.”

“Sounds like one at night too,” Sam laughs. 

“I mean not really,” Harley defends.

“Yeah!” Dean exclaims. “It’s Chase that’s bad!”

“I’m not that bad!”

“None of you are bad or I’ve just gone deaf?” Harley says unsure.

“Deaf. Definitely deaf,” Sam says. “These two are both awful.”

Chase sticks her tongue out at her younger brother. 

“So, Sam, did you find any sulfur?” Harley asks.

“I've been over the entire school twice. No sulfur,” Sam answers.

“No sulfur, no demon. No demon, no case,” Dean states.

“I don't know. Maybe I was wrong.”

“Well, it happens to the best of us. I say we hit the road, huh?”

“Fine by me,” Harley adds.

***

“How’s the nonviolence school assembly going?” Sam asks, as though joking.

Chase smacks his arm. 

“What?” Sam asks. “Too soon?”

“Yes, Sam. Too soon.”

“Apparently, shoving a kid's arm into a Cuisinart is not a ‘healthy display of anger.’ So, the kid had ectoplasm leaking out his ear?” Dean asks. 

“Which only comes from a really pissed off ghost,” Chase says.

“It’s got to be ghost possession,” Harley concludes. 

“Yeah, but that’s pretty rare,” Dean hesitates. 

“Yeah, but it happens. I mean, they get angry enough, they can take control of a person's body,” Sam says. 

“Alright, so what, we got a ghost in the building?” Dean asks. 

“Yeah, but where? I mean, there's no EMF. Maybe we could find out who it is, at least. You know, check and see if somebody died bloody around here or something.”

“Way ahead of you. I had to break into the principal's office to get this. Oh, and FYI, three of the cheerleaders are legal. Guess which ones,” Dean smirks, pulling a paper out of his pocket. 

“No,” Sam deadpans.

“Oh!” Chase exclaims. “Is the cute black haired one with the hazel-y green eyes?”

“Yes,” Dean smiles, giving Chase a high five. 

“Knew it.”

“I love you,” Harley laughs.

“Why thank you,” Chase and Dean chorus. They turn to each other. “She was talking to me! No, she wasn’t. Yes, she was!” They turn back to Harley. “Harley?”

“I love when y’all talk at the same time.”

“That doesn’t answer our question,” They both say. They turn to each other again, but say nothing, opting to stick their tongues out at each other instead. 

“Are you sure I’m the youngest?” Sam sighs.

“Pretty sure, Sammy,” Dean says. 

“Moving on,” Sam replies. 

“So, there was only one death on campus. It was a suicide back in '98. Some kid named Barry Cook,” Dean notices Sam’s face fall, “What?”

“I knew him. How did he die?”

“He slit his wrists in the first-floor girls' bathroom.”

Harley swats Dean on the arm, “Even I have more tact.”

“And that’s saying something,” Chase mentions. 

“Right where the chick got swirly-ed to death, exactly. So, what? This ghost is possessing nerds?”

“And using them to go after bullies,” Harley adds.

“Well, is that something Barry would do?” Chase asks. 

“Barry had a hard time,” Sam says. 

“Didn’t we all?” Chase asks.

***

Chase walks down the hallway, shooting a smile at her brother, Sam, who is walking with a boy his age. He waves back to her. ‘At least he made a friend,’ she thinks to herself.

Unlike her at that moment. Ever since her slip up in her first period, all of the girls avoided her, and the boys only talked to her if they wanted to make fun of her. Well, for the most part.

“So, are you sure you don’t want to go out sometime?” a boy in her science class, (Lucas?) asks her.

“For the last time, no. I’m not interested,” Chase says, opening her locker and putting her books away. She grabs her textbooks for the next class, pointedly ignoring Lucas (Definitely Lucas, Chase thinks). 

Lucas grabs her wrist, pulling her towards him. “C’mon, one date.”

“I said no. You have one second to let go of me.”

“Not until you say yes.”

“One,” Chase says. Lucas has enough time to narrow his eyes in confusion before Chase’s fist meets his face.

***

“You punched him?” The vice principal asks.

“Yes,” Chase responds, not missing a single beat. 

“And you say the only thing he had been doing was holding your wrist? Because he wanted to get your attention?” He looks down at the written report of the situation, which both students had to write.

“No,” Chase says, confused. “He wasn’t just holding my wrist. He was touching me without my consent. And he had my attention. He just didn’t like my answer.”

“You could have pulled away.”

“I tried to, but-”

“I’m sorry, Miss Winchester, but violence is not the response to unwanted attention. I know you’re new here, but this is your only warning. If something like this happens again, you’ll be suspended. For right now, however, you have detention everyday for two weeks and you have to have your guardian sign this copy of the report.”

“But this report says I punched him, but doesn’t say what he did.”

“Because what he did was not enough to warrant a report. What you did was.”

“Bullshit.”

“Language. Last warning. Suspension is on the line. Now, go.”

***

“Hey,” Harley greets her mom.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“You got suspended.”

“That’s bullshit. I’m suicidal, that’s not exactly against the rules.”

“You did mention jumping down the stairwell.”

“I know, but it might not kill me. I want to know I won’t come back.”

“Claire,” Harley’s mom sighs.

“I just want to be done. I’m so tired of living.”

“I know.”

“What’s wrong with me? I have so little empathy. Or sympathy? Whichever one it is. And the voices never shut up always, always, always telling me to kill, kill, kill. And I want to. I want to hurt people. To see them scream. I want to watch the light leave their eyes and hear that final breath escape. I want to feel the warmth of their blood across my skin.”

“They’re just thoughts, Claire.”

“They’re not though. They’re voices and feelings. They’re primal urges that I have so much trouble controlling. They’re proof I’m a monster.”

“You aren’t a monster.”

“Then why do you insist on me eating raw steak instead of buying me blood?”

“Because drinking blood is evil.”

“But I need to do it to survive. So doesn’t that make me evil?”

“No.”

***

The four hunters, each pair in their own vehicle, drive to the graveyard where they know the remains of Barry Cook lie. The air is thick with tension in the Impala, while the girls don’t think much of the situation. 

“So, after this, you want to get pie?” Chase asks.

“Umm… Duh?” Harley answers.

“Do you want to invite the boys or do you want to avoid Dean still?”

“I think Dean and I are fine, I mean he hasn’t said anything since we talked it over.”

“That’s good. I was about to suggest couple’s therapy.”

“We aren’t a couple.”

“Close enough,” Chase waves her hand, shrugging. “Anyway, we’re almost there. I don’t know about you, but I don't want to dig up a grave. How do we get the boys to do it for us?”

“Rock, paper, scissors?”

“Coin toss?” Chase pauses. “No, I like rock, paper, scissors. I always know how to win against Sam. He always does rock.”

“And Dean always chooses scissors.”

***

Sam and Dean dig where the grave of Barry Cook is, while the girls watch in mild amusement.

“Why did we agree to this?” Dean asks. 

“I didn’t,” Sam says.

“Less talking, more digging, boys,” Chase calls to them. They both turn to look at her with a bitch face, before turning back to the dirt. Suddenly, two shovel-fulls of dirt fly through the air to land on Chase, most of it getting in her hair. “You bastards!” she swears, spitting dirt out of her mouth. 

“Less talking, more digging,” Dean says.

“And we’re digging,” Sam finishes. 

Eventually, after about an hour, there’s a loud clunk as a shovel hits the hard wood of a coffin.

“Okay, our turn,” Harley says, nudging Chase forward. Chase grins and takes a matchbox out of her pocket.

“That smile means we should definitely never trust you with fire,” Dean says as the boys climb out of the hole. 

“Oh well,” Chase shrugs. 

Harley pours salt and gasoline on the remains, while Chase  lights a match, her grin growing in width. 

Dropping the match, Chase and Harley step back as flames leap into the air. The smell of charred bones and flesh and gasoline looms over them as the four hunters walk away from the scene. Going back into their individual cars, the group is quiet. 

***

Jack and Baby were parked on a hill a little ways away from a bridge. Sam is shirtless because Harley is sewing up the stab wound he sustained from a girl possessed by the ghost.

“Only you are nerd enough to get stabbed by a compass,” Chase scoffs.

“Compass? Compasses can’t do that,” Dean says.

“A math compass, Dean. As in, an instrument to draw circles.”

Dean pointedly ignores Chase. “Here, this will make you feel better,” he says. Sam nods, taking the beer. “That ghost is dead!” Dean practically growls. “I’m gonna rip it’s lungs out. Well,” he pauses. “You know what I mean.”

“You do realize the most we can do is put it to rest,” Harley points out continuing her work.

“It knew my name, guys. My real name. We burned Barry’s bones. What the hell?” Sam says.

“Maybe we missed something. We could have been wrong about Barry,” Chase says. “We just got to go back.”

Dean, looking through paperwork, suddenly gasps. “No way, how did we not see this before?”

“See what?” Harley asks.

“Check it out -- Look, Martha Dumptruck, Revenge of the Nerds, and Hello Kitty -- they rode the same bus.”

“Okay, so maybe the bus is haunted,” Sam suggests. 

“Well, that would explain why there's no EMF at the school, but not the attacks. I mean, ghosts are tied to the places that they haunt. They can't just bail.”

“Actually,” Chase starts.

“Actually,” Dean mimics in a high pitched voice. No one laughs. Chase gives him a look, unamused. Dean sighs, “Continue.”

“Actually,” Chase says again, emphasizing the word and shooting Dean another look, “there's lore about spirits possessing people and riding them for miles, then whenever they leave the body, they're bungeed back to their usual haunt. But until then, the ghosts can go wherever they want.”

“So a spook just grabs a kid on the bus and walks right into Truman?” Dean asks, not convinced.

“Well, yeah,” Chase says.

“Ghosts getting creative -- well, that's super,” Dean says sarcastically. 

“Sounds possible,” Harley says, agreeing with Sam and Chase. 

“You’re supposed to be on my side!” Dean pouts. 

“I’m on my side,” Harley says, sticking her tongue out at him.

***

“Do you see anything?” Chase calls to the boys, who are inside the bus. 

“It’s definitely not clean,” Sam responds. 

“Here, ghosty, ghosty, ghosty! Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Dean calls.

“Yes, Dean, because saying ‘Here, ghosty, ghosty’ is sure to make it appear. Maybe it’s Casper the friendly ghost!” Chase says in a heavily sarcastic tone.

“Or the Boo Brothers,” Harley adds.

“Got anything better?” Dean asks, before adding, “Nice one,” at the end of his statement.

“Man, I don't get it. No one ever died on this bus, and it's not like there's a body hidden in here,” Sam says.

“Or is there?” Chase asks ominously.

“Yeah, but a flap of skin, a hair, I mean, hell, a hangnail -- something's got to be tying the ghost to this place. We just got to find it.”

“I really hope it’s not a hangnail,” Harley says.

“I dunno,” Chase says. “Hangnail’s better than a ‘flap of skin’.”

“I’d rather deal with the skin, thank you very much.”

“Got a new driving permit. Issued two weeks ago,” Dean says from the front of the school bus. The girls go over and peer at the papers in Dean’s hand.

“Isn’t that just before the first attack?” Chase asks.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Name of the bus driver is Dirk McGregor Sr., 39 North Central Avenue.”

“McGregor?” Sam asks.

“Yeah, why?”

“I knew his son.”

“Did you know everybody at this school?” Dean asks.

“How’d you remember his name?” Chase asks incredulously.

“And his last name, at that,” Harley adds.

“Just because your guys’ attention span is that of a gnat and your memory like a goldfish, doesn’t mean I can’t remember things.” He pauses. “Besides, do you not remember anyone you went to school with?”

***

Harley spent her Valentine’s Day junior year watering a bouquet of purple roses from every water fountain she could find. Everyone wanted to know where she got them and every time she had the same response, “They’re for Julia.”

She was careful and tore off every faulty petal in order to make sure the bouquet was perfect. It was at the end of the day when she finally could give Julia her gifts. One of which was a card asking her to be Harley’s girlfriend.

“Hey,” Julia says.

“Hey,” Harley responds.

“I adore the card.”

“I’m glad. So what’s your answer?”

“I really don’t want you to feel like I’m stringing you along, I’m moving in four months, back to Washington. I just don’t want to get attached and hurt you.”

“It’s fine, I might move too, but who’s to say we can’t make the most of the time we have here?”

“I just don’t want to waste time on something if I know it has a deadline. You know? I still wanna be friends.”

“Yeah, I guess, do you mind if I take a day or two though?”

“Take your time. I’m here though.”

“Thank you,” Harley says before leaving as her heart silently breaks.

***

“So that’s it then,” Chase says, disbelief written on her face.

“Well, yeah,” Nathaniel says. 

“You’re just done. With us. With everything?” Chase’s voice is drenched in desperation, as though if she argued her way through it, he’d change his mind.

“There isn’t anything there anymore.” Nathaniel’s face is like stone- like always. His blue eyes guarded, mouth in a thin line.

“Well, you could’ve fucking told me that in the beginning instead of leading me on!”

“I never led you on!” Nathaniel says, finally showing some semblance of an emotion, causing a surge of pride in Chase’s chest. Not many people were ever able to get under his skin, let alone in a way for him to care enough to defend himself.

“Then what do you call two days ago? Saying you liked me. Spouting that bull about talking to my dad and brothers!”

“I just decided that this isn’t working out.”

“Decided,” Chase repeats. “Decided? You don’t just decide these things, Nathaniel. They’re emotions! You can’t just flip off your emotions like a switch!”

“I didn’t. I’ve felt like this for a while.”

“Oh, so we’re backtracking to the leading me on part, are we?”

Nathaniel groans, running a hand through his hair. 

“No, you don’t get to be frustrated. You’re the one that promised you’d be there. You’re the one that promised you wouldn’t leave. You said nothing I said or did could make you leave, so what the hell? What do you call this?”

“I call this deciding it’s not working out!”

“Fuck you, Nathaniel. You’re a poor, pathetic, useless, spineless, son of a bitch! Everyone who ever said you weren’t worth it, were right! You weren’t! I thought you were different, but whoops. Guess the joke’s on me, huh?” Chase turns to leave.

“You don’t get to have the last word in this.”

Chase turns back to look at Nathaniel over her shoulder, tears falling down her face. “You knew full well. No, you know full well that I am in love with you. That all I wanted was for you to be happy, and for you to be in my life. I didn’t start this romance shit. You did. So, if this is the end of so much time, so much fucking time and effort, of my life I spent fighting with you, hating you, loving you, and being on and off friends with you, then know this. You’re ending this. You’re the reason this got fucked up. Not me.”

“You and I both know that this is your fault,” Nathaniel says.

Chase just ignores him and walks away, backpack slung over her shoulder, and her heart on the pavement behind her.

***

The four hunters sit on McGregor’s couch; Chase and Sam on the left side of the couch, while Dean, who has his arm around Harley as they are holding hands, takes up the right alongside Harley.

“So, you were friends with Dirk?” McGregor asks.

“Yes, sir, in high school,” Sam replies.

“I don't recall Dirk having many friends at Truman.”

“When did, uh -- when did Dirk pass?” Dean asks.

“He was eighteen.”

“What happened to him?” Chase asks.

“Well, there was, first, drinking, then drugs, and then too many drugs. And then he just slipped through my fingers. It was my fault. I should have seen it coming, you know? Dirk, he, uh -- he had his troubles.”

“Troubles?” Harley prods.

“School was never easy for Dirk. We didn't have much money, and, well, you know, kids -- they can be cruel. They picked on him.”

“They picked on him?” Sam asks, surprised.

“They called him poor and dirty and stupid. They even had a nickname for him -- Dirk the jerk. And after what happened to his mother, he…” McGregor cuts himself off.

“His mother?” Chase asks.

“Yeah, Jane, my wife. She died when Dirk was 13. Cancer. I was working three jobs, so it fell to Dirk to take care of her. And he was a great kid. He made sure Jane got her medicine. He helped her, cleaned up after her. But, you know, you -- you watch somebody die slow, waste away to nothing... it does things to a person. Horrible things.”

“I didn't know about his mother,” Sam says quietly.

“He -- he wouldn't talk about her, not even to me. Lot of anger in that boy.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, we'd really like to pay our respects, Mr. McGregor. Um, you mind telling us where Dirk is buried?” Dean asks.

“Oh, he wasn't. I had him cremated,” McGregor states.

“All of him?”

“Well, I kept a lock of his hair.”

“Oh, that's -- that's nice. Where do you keep that?”

“On my bus, in my Bible.”

***

The brakes squeal loudly as Chase slams on the brakes, swearing. Moving off to the side of the road, the two girls hop out of the car, following quickly behind Sam and Dean. Sam walks up to a man getting out of the bus, while Dean sneaks around the other side of the bus, to be behind the man and anyone getting out. 

“Dirk!” Sam yells. The man who’d gotten out of the bus first turns to Sam with a cruel smile on his face. 

“Winchester, what are you gonna do? Shoot me?”

Dean sneaks up behind Dirk and wraps a rope around his body, while Harley rushes into the bus. “This rope is soaked in salt water. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Alright, everybody. Stay where you are and everything will be fine,” Harley says. 

“Aren’t you the drama teacher?”

“No, not really. More like ‘21 Jump Street’. The bus driver sells pot. Yeah, that’s it.” She starts to shuffle through the front of the bus, looking for the hair. After a moment, she looks up in exasperation. “It’s not here!”

“Where is it?” Sam demands. Dirk simply smirks. 

“Nowhere you’ll ever find it.”

Sam, obviously done with the situation, puts the gun directly against Dirk’s chest. Dirk struggles against the rope for a second. “Where is it?”

“Sam Winchester. Still a bully. You, you jocks... you popular kids... you always thought you were better than everybody else. And to you, I was just Dirk the jerk, right? Now you evil sons of bitches are gonna get what's coming to you.”

“I'm not evil, Dirk,” Sam says. “I'm not. And neither were you. Trust me. I've seen real evil. We were scared and miserable, and we took it out on each other -- us and everybody else. That's high school. But you suffer through that, and it gets better. I'm just sorry you didn't get a chance to see that... you or Barry.”

“Nothing is going to get better for me. Never.”

Dirk breaks out of the rope, knocking Dean to the ground easily. Sam shoots him with a salt round and he goes flying. A student, within moments, climbs out of the bus, obviously possessed by Dirk. 

Chase rushes over to the passed out bus driver, making sure he’s alive. 

Harley tries to shoot at the student, but misses, as the ghost beats Sam up. 

“Chase!” Sam calls. “Find the hair!”

Harley takes this moment to check on Dean, who’d been knocked out moments earlier. 

Chase pats down the man, trying to find where the hair had been hidden. Finally finding it, she reaches into his pocket and takes it out. “I swear, this isn’t what it looks like,” She mutters to herself, grabbing a lighter. She lights the hair on fire and the Dirk-possessed student screams. 

The student slumps forward onto Sam, who struggles beneath the weight of the larger student. Dean laughs from his spot on the ground, next to Harley. He winces, holding his head in pain. “He’s giving you full cowgirl,” Dean laughs.

This breaks the tension and the four hunters begin to breathe normally again, glad to be done with Dirk-the-Jerk.

[skvaderarts]

Hiraeth Chapter 8: Accursed

Masterlist can be found Here!

Chapter Eight: Accursed

Note: Oh boy, this chapter was fun to write. It also comes in at my quickest chapter so far, and it’s five-hundred words longer! Two hours! Wow! I’m getting a little bit better at this! But I hope that wasn’t at the cost of grammar… I’ll have to double-check that one.

-~-

There was no need to look to the sky for the answers that they sought. It didn’t take very much intuition to tell that darkness would be upon them within the next two hours or so. The snowy conditions that they found themselves in didn’t help that in any. Cloudy weather always helped make things darker quicker than they normally would be, and that wasn’t something that they had planned ahead for. Still, neither of them was willing to take this little adventure of theirs to the road, light or no light. It simply wasn’t a very good idea.

“At least it’s snowing, right?” morgan asked casually as she wrapped her arms tiger around herself, trying her best to keep the cold wind out. The colder she became, the harder it was to walk, and they needed to get out of there as fast as possible. “What I mean is, the sky is always a little bit lighter when it snows. That might help us see a little better, right? Even if we’re in the woods?”

V considered her statement as he hurried forward, trying his best to ignore the wind that had gradually started to pick up as they carried on. His coat wasn’t thin by any means, but it was getting gradually colder the further the sun sank below the horizon. They were going to have to get out of the open air sooner rather than later if they didn’t want to develop hypothermia or frostbite. But either way, he was at least somewhat sure he understood what she was saying. Or he thought he was.

“You may be onto something there. It does tend to be a little bit lighter, and there isn’t really any meaningful foliage to speak of, especially on the trees.” V glanced up towards the sky, noting that the sun had started to fade, even behind the clouds. A slight glimmer of panic suddenly shot through him. Suddenly the idea of being in a cold, dark forest unnerved him. Perhaps he was just late to react and he’d felt this way all along, but he wasn’t sure that was important right now. “Things might be in our favor in that regard, but the real danger comes from the elements. It’s quite out, isn’t it? Much colder than it was a few minutes ago. I’m not sure what to make of it.”

“I know, right? It is super cold out here all of a sudden, isn’t it? I mean, it was never that warm to start with, but this is another kind of cold altogether. Almost reminds me of the curse I was talking about before.” She shivered, forcing herself to hurry forward and closer to V in a hopeless bid to steal a little bit of his residual warmth by being in closer proximity to him. “Oh yea, I didn’t go into that yet, hu? You wanna hear about it now that we’re further from the road?”

He nodded, shivering along with her as he tucked his head down and drew his arms around himself closer. “I’d be willing to believe that there is something supernatural going on in regards to this weather. It feels at least a good ten or so degrees colder than it was before, and that is a lot for the temperature to drop all at once.”

Morgan shrugged and nodded, agreeing. “I’d check my phone and tell you, but I don’t have any reception out here. All I can really do is look at the time. This whole town is a dead zone for my carrier. Grandma used to blame the forest. She blamed everything she couldn’t explain on the forest. It was kinda annoying but funny all at once. I’m gonna miss her.” She looked mournful for a moment, her eye hazel eyes brimming with unshed tears. She wiped her face, the uncomfortable sting of cold air helping to pull her out of her momentary slump. She’d have to save her grief for when they escaped. “It’s probably rude of me to ask, and you don’t have to answer, but do you ever miss your family. I know you never met them, but do you?”

For a moment, V paused, taking several deep breaths. After a moment he wordlessly carried on, looking down towards the ground and then ahead again as though here were physically trying to put the past behind him. It was a touchy topic, and she’d been as tactful as she probably knew how to be when approaching something so sensitive, but it still hurt to contemplate. There were some things that he liked to keep private, and this was one of them. It was very much unlike him to indulge in such deep personal conversation with someone that he genuinely didn’t know very well, but there was something about her that almost compelled him to do so. Maybe it was just the part of him that didn’t like to see a sad child, and he hoped to distract her from the recent tragedy that she’d experienced first hand with his own somewhat painful experiences. He couldn’t imagine what kind of effect seeing your grandparents being murdered in front of you might have on someone. It was a wonder she’d escaped with her life.

Almost instantly, the superstitious corner of his mind considered that outcome a little harder than it needed to, putting him further on edge than he needed to be. Was it possible that she was…? No. There was no way. He’s seen enough horror movies to be able to say with certainty that he was simply falling into the depths of his own paranoia. She’s probably killed one of the men who she’d have to be working with the night before. That wasn’t at all conducive to the kind of tricks she’d have to be pulling on him in order to be in on this entire situation. If anything, they might have let her go in order to follow her, but it would be very illogical for him to believe that she was knowingly in on this plot to destroy the town. He needed to get out of that part of his mind. It didn’t help either of them.

In his momentary lapse of cognizance, he realized that he hadn’t given her any sort of answer. V mentally chastised himself for being impolite again, despite the fact that manners should have been at the bottom of his list of concerts at that given point. “... I tend to get lost in my thoughts, Morgan. Hopefully you’ll forgive my lack of conversation skills. It’s not often that I have long conversations with other people. Or conversations at all.” A sad smirk spread across his face for a moment as he considered the fact that this young teenager probably had a much more active social life than he did. But nothing about his upbringing had encouraged him to make small talk with other people. Quite the opposite. He was simply socially inept to some degree, and that was a fact that he was going to have to reconcile within himself. “I… I do think about them from time to time. And it never becomes less painful. If anything, it hurts more the older I get. It’s the not knowing, I think. Having no answers as to what happened to my parents weighs heavily upon me, but I don’t think I will ever be allowed such closure.”

Morgan gave him a hurt, sad look, taking a moment to brush her sandy brown hair out of her face. The wind refused to allow her to privilege of being able to see clearly, and her hair didn’t help that. She extended her hand with no hesitation, tapping him on his right side as if to gain his attention. V looked back at her, clearly unsure as to what her intentions were. When he noticed that she’d stopped for a moment, he halted and turned to face her, somewhat confused. “I’ve said too much, haven’t I. Forgive me.”

She shook her head, folding her arms. “You have to stop doing that to yourself. The blaming thing, I mean. It’s not your fault. People are just people sometimes. A lot of them are bad, but you deserve to be happy, too. Just don’t wait around for them to give it to you. Nothing good comes from that. Trust me, I know.” She started to walk again, hurrying past V as she tried to step through the deep snow that he normally helped flatten somewhat for her as a result of him walking ahead of her. There was a part of V that actually found it very funny how high she had to step in order to get her legs out of the snow, but he couldn’t imagine that she enjoyed having snow in her boots as a result.

After a moment to consider her words, he hurried after her, quickly supplanting her lead in order to make things easier for her. As much as he enjoyed watching her struggle pointlessly in the snow, he had to admit that it slowed them bot down significantly, and they had fought very hard to make sure that those hooded maniacs stayed as far behind them as possible. Any further delays only helped in their enemy’s favor. “Your right. Maybe a change is in order for both of us. We can start with a change of topic. I’ve love to hear that story now if you’re still willing to tell it to me.”

She shrugged, indifferent either way. “Sounds good to me. I’ve had enough sadness for one day. It’s not a super long story, but I think you’ll probably like it. It’s super spooky!”

V watched as she rested her chin on the backs of her nickels, raising one eyebrow. He wasn’t entirely sure if she was doing this just to mess with him, but he found it entertaining nonetheless. Morgan had a vibrant and interesting personality, and that was something that he appreciated in a situation like this. It helped distract him from the awful reality that he actually did have to walk through this forest and hope that the residents of the next town over were willing to help them. Or that there were any residents left at all. There was still a part of him deep down that had to wonder if there were simply working towards another worse deathtrap. He was pretty sure that neither of them could contend with that outcome in their current state. It was a terrifying reality that he was unable to face at the moment despite the obvious need to do so, and as such, he would redirect his attention to things that scared him considerably less. Once she was done with her story, he would revisit the bleak reality that they currently found themselves in, and try to come up with another contingency plan. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

Morgan nodded in agreement, clearing her throat as quietly as she could. The super-chilled air wasn’t helping her breathing in the slightest, especially with all of this physical exertion added onto it. “Ok, so if I remember correctly it goes something like this. Basically, the land that this town sits on used to belong to a coven of witches like four or five hundred years ago. I think it was more like five hundred years ago. They came here because of some sort of witch hunt or something and they were hiding out to avoid being hunted down and killed wherever they came from. They stayed here for like a decade or something with their families, and then one day a group of settlers tried to move into town and they didn’t want them to so they asked them to leave. Long story short, the locals told the church or something that they were up here, and they were forced to flee, but when they left, the sealed some kind of cursed vault or something in a cave up in the woods, and they cursed the locals. Now every winter when the black clouds roll in, things just kinda go wrong for the town.”

V had to admit that this story was more interesting than he originally assumed it would be. “What kinds of things happen? In what manager do things go “wrong” for the town? I noticed that no one lives closer to the forest than half a mile or so. That’s how I was able to move here so cheaply. The woods weren’t an issue to me, and my landlord was eager to offload the property to someone.”

She nodded, taking his words into account. “I noticed that you lived super close to the woods. Your house is really old. One of the oldest ones around her. People moved into the inner circle decades ago when people started hearing voices in the middle of the night and just started sleepwalking into the woods. They’ve never found anyone who went into the forest alive. And then the farm animals just break the fences at night and run into the forest like something is making them do it. Well, sometimes. Other times, they find like a whole barn door torn off in the night and all the animals are missing their blood and stuff. Supposedly, someone kid went into the woods looking for their missing dog, and when they came back, their family shipped them off to some insane asylum. From what I’ve heard, they didn’t talk anymore. They just sat there and stared at the wall and didn’t move and didn’t react to anything that their family did. It creeped them out really bad. Then one day the dog came back, but they couldn’t find it. They would just hear it barking constantly, but there was never any indication that it was actually there. No paw prints, fur, nothing. It’s super creepy. They moved out after a year or so, and no one has heard from them since. And as for going into the forest…”

He noticed that she’d stopped to look around, an uneasy look on her face. He wondered for a moment if he should ask, certain aspects of her story making him uneasy. “What does the legend say about that?”

Morgan shook her head. “You sure you want to know? It’s pretty creepy, and it affects you way more than it does me.”

V gave her a funny look but nodded in agreement, now more curious than he was before in a morbid sort of way. “You have my attention, so yes. I would like to know.”

The young girl shrugged, seemingly resigned to her fate. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Supposedly the leader of the witches left behind some sort of prophecy. Apparently one day her henchmen would, and I quote, “descent from hell and search for a vessel for their lord, and their lord would rain hellfire down upon the lands, corrupting and rotting everything they touched in recompense for the crimes that they’d committed.” I hear that the original “vessel” was supposed to be that witch’s son who she had with the devil or something, and that because he was killed in the raid that ran them out of town, she said what she said. Either way, it’s spooky because that kid was like your age or so, and guys from the town like to go missing into the woods around their 20th birthday. That’s why all the guys between sixteen and twenty one leave every winter. Your like the only one who’s in town right now, and they tend to just walk off into the woods at night. It’s never really happened with the girls. Just the guys. Some of them said they were called to the place where the vault is located, and then they just disappeared during the night. Some of them even fell to their deaths after being locked in their rooms during the night to avoid this situation. They broke their windows and that was that. Others mysteriously died after being left in their rooms, and none of the doctors were able to figure out why. Those people lived a lot closer to the woods from what I remember.”

Despite his general resolve to consider folklore as just that, he was suddenly very uncomfortable. “They just… disappear? And this has been going on for hundreds of years? Have you seen it happen?”

Morgan looked very creeped out, but nodded in agreement. “My grandparents lived next to the house that the dog people lived in. I used to watch them run around the house looking for it, and I talked to their son once after the accident. He just stared at me, grabbed my arm, and pointed to the woods. Took like ten minutes for his parents to get him to let me go. Left a really bad bruise on my arm. The next day I swear I saw that dog. I’m not kidding. It was just sitting in front of my living room window, looking in at me. It didn’t move or anything, and I swear it was bigger than it had been before. And his eyes were just… black, and ash or dust or something came out of his mouth every time he exhaled like his breath was hot or something. Scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. That was the only time I’ve ever been sent home early, and I didn’t get to come back the next year. Most people got rid of their dogs after that, and from what I’ve heard, cats hate it here. They never go near the windows, and they are always stressed out or scared. A law was passed like three years ago banning them from the city for “health and safety reasons”, but we all knew the real reason.”

V found himself staring at her, actually unnerved by her statement. While it could easily just be the osmosis effect of an active imagination and living next to a house full of people that were clearly going through something mysterious and having to hear about constantly from the adults in her life, there was a part of V that believed that what she said was true. “... I believe you.”

A look of utter shock came across her face as they both subconsciously hurried forward, jogging towards the tops of chimneys now clearly visible ahead of them. They were close now, closer than they’d even been. But to what, neither of them knew. But what they did know was that there was only one way that they could ever find out, and that was to go down the embankment into the area and see for themselves. Even if everything in them was too scared to know the truth, they still needed to know. “Why do you believe me, V. My own mother doesn’t believe me. You have to have a reason, right? Tell me. Please.”

He looked away from Morgan for a moment before turning back towards her as they reached the edge of the woods, stopping to catch their breath for a moment. A sudden feeling of dread gripped V like a chest, threatening to crush every bone in his chest. “Would you believe me if I told you I’ve heard whispering coming from the woods at night recently? That I woke up leaned against the fence that surrounds my backyard and couldn’t remember for the life of me how I got there? Because I have. I’m certain that the only reason I wasn’t on the other side of it now is because it’s nearly twice my height.” He shuttered slightly, unwilling but unable to believe anything else. He was far from superstitious, but there was no denying what he’d experienced. I must confess that I’ve been seeing strange things like what you just described seeing with that dog for as long as I can remember. It stopped for a few years when I went to school, but ever since I’ve moved to this town, it’s started again. It’s infrequent, but it still happens. And the strangest part is that for a long time, I forgot that it ever happened. It comes back to me little by little, and I’m not sure what to make of it.”

Morgan stared at him, a concerned look on her face. It was as if he’d just informed her that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She looked down at the roofs below her and then back at him, something unreadable in her eyes. “I won’t pretend to know what’s going on in this town. I don’t know if I even believe in the curse. But I’ve seen enough spooky stuff in this place that I can’t explain to say that if you’re not lying, then we need to walk a little bit faster because that doesn’t sound good. And once we get out of here, I don’t think that either of us should ever come back.”

V nodded, assessing the quickest route forward that wasn’t straight down. They were on uneven ground, and neither of them needed to fall fifty feet to their deaths after coming this far. Mental and physical fatigue suddenly set in as he exhaled heavily, shivering both from their conversation and the elements. “I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with anyone more in my entire life. Let’s get out of here before it’s too late.”

-~-

Hey everyone! I hope you liked this chapter! I loved reading your comments on the last chapter! It’s always nice to hear from the people who read my fics. Well, unless they are those lovely people that contact me at least once a month to tell me how much they hate my au, but still. Just needed to get that off of my chest because dear god, it gets so old. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! I’d love to talk to you about them. Maybe I’ll even throw a few inspirations and such for where I got the ideas for this in the notes for the next chapter. I hope you’ve all had a good week so far, and I hope to see you again on Friday. Take care!

#V #Vitale #Devil May Cry #V's Backstory #Post Devil May Cry 5 #Hiraeth #DMC #DMCV #DMC5 #A03 #A03 FanFiction #Devil May Cry FanFiction

[doof-doofblog]

"You And Me, We're Done, For Good!"

Double Episode Catch-Up

Monday 1st March - Tuesday 2nd March 2021

Hello again everyone! Hope your week is going well so far! I've decided again today that in a desperate attempt to catch up, I'm going to do another post reviewing two episodes. I feel my last post went well and the way I wrote it felt really good, so I'm hoping this one will be the same. So I'll be reviewing the episodes of Monday and Tuesday this week,

Wow, wow, wow!!! An emotional dramatic roller-coaster that's for sure! Okay so I feel there are two main things to focus on, but before we start on them I'm going to start with Whitney and Gray. So after Valentine's Day it looks as if Whitney and Kush have been having a secret fling. Their romance hasn't come to knowledge for everyone yet, as they appear to be enjoying each other's company, Whitney is ushered away as Gray contacts her to look after the children. Of course, being how kind, caring and understanding Kush is, lets her go to do her job at childminding. Whitney goes a out her day looking after the kids, but when Gray comes home asking where the children are, Whitney informs him that they're playing with Raymond over at Denise's, now I get Gray would be concerned as Lucas has returned, but he has no knowledge about Lucas, plus the children wouldn't be there unsupervised, Denise wouldn't allow that considering what she knows, so I feel Gray getting angry with Whitney was completely unnecessary - but then again, when has Gray ever done something which is necessary?! Something tells me if he flips about Whitney letting his children go out to play, how the heck is he going to react when he learns she's been building a relationship with Kush?! It's been known that Gray has hold a spark for Whitney, but it looks as if she just sees him as a mate - I fear what's going to happen when Gray learns about Whitney and Kush, what do you guys think?!  

--

Awwwww Isaac and Lola?! I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy this relationship? I always did love Lola being with Jay, but I'm beginning to think that this could really go somewhere! It looks as if Isaac really does have strong feelings for Lola and after recent events of confronting his Mother to deal with his diagnosis, he's ready to tell Lola about his condition. As they enjoy another date, they were discussing movies and I have to be honest, I loved this moment, I enjoyed how natural it was. The banter, the laughing, genuinely getting to know each other more, but the interesting moment when Lola tells him to reveal something to her that she doesn't know about him, he does look a bit scared, a bit hesitant to tell her the truth, but eventually he admits that he has schizophrenia.

Now understandably, this would worry Lola. But I think she dealt the news brilliantly! Very understanding, caring - almost as if it didn't matter. She's still willing to go on dates with him and even move further into a relationship. However when she's back home after the date, maybe just to put her mind at rest, she tries asking a type of "Alexa" whether schizophrenia is dangerous, but it looks as if it doesn't work and the device doesn't respond. Just then, Isaac arrives with desserts with huge happy smiles across his face, but Lola kind of digs herself a hole when the device has a delayed response, informing her about schizophrenia right in front of Isaac. I do feel this was a little awkward, predictable maybe, but it made for brilliant viewing. Even Isaac finds the funny side and admits that he understands her concern and reassures her about any worries she may have for the future. Even the following scene where they're enjoying their dessert together, I love how Isaac is reminiscing about his teenage years and informing Lola of the time he told a friend about his diagnosis, I found it really really moving.

As I explained in my last post, I don't know the full detail when it comes to schizophrenia, I had to do a bit of research to understand, but I'll be interested to see if Isaac's condition deteriorates or becomes worse. Isn't it a bit predictable? Isaac finds happiness with Lola, only for his illness to escalate and go out of control? This is EastEnders after all, nothing is ever simple or easy and happiness doesn't last for very long. I'll be interested to see if they do an episode which focuses completely on Isaac and his mental health, as they've done with Stacey and Bobby in previous episodes, I think it would be great for the viewers to learn and understand what schizophrenia entails for those suffering with it.

--

Okay so finally I know the name of character, it's Stas!!!!! After how many episodes now? Three maybe? His name is pronounced loud and clear! (Also thank you to a few subtitles!). Okay so this story regarding Ben, Kheerat and Stas kind of makes sense. So Ben and Kheerat have joined forces in a way to do business with Stas. Did anyone else feel for Vinny though? I felt bad the way Vinny was dragged into all of this. I think Vinny hesitates when he learns that his brother is doing business with Mitchell's but also states that it'll be a bold move to get their family name out there and heard of.

Things seem to be going well for a Panesar's, that is until a dodgy shoplifter is spotted in their shop, both Kheerat and Vinny take it upon themselves to lock the shoplifter in the shop and confront them. Can I also just mention how brilliant Kheerat was in this scene, it was a strong and powerful performance from Jaz Deol. I don't know why I loved it so much, but I felt like it was a type of speech that we've never seen before, well maybe apart from Masood a few years back. I kind of see Kheerat as a younger version of Masood in a way, what do you think?! Eventually a plan is put in place for Ben, Kheerat and Stas to meet at the Arches. As far as I can make out, Stas is expecting for receive his money - money for what, I don't know? But either way Kheerat tries to reassure Stas that his "Dirty money" will be delivered. The one moment that did grab my attention though is when Stas basically insulted Ben about his sexuality, I mean - how dare he!

As time drags on, Stas seems to get a little impatient for his money and from the looks of things, Vinny is meant to be the one who's delivering the money. Stas starts to lose his temper and pulls out a gun, in an attempt to hurry things along he puts on some music as a timer for when he wants his money to be delivered, but unbeknown to everyone, as Vinny is rushing to get the money to the Arches on time, he gets approached by the shoplifter along with a huge gang, cornering him in his path. It's far to say that as the music is continuing to play, both Ben and Kheerat are fearing for their life as Stas threatens to blow up the building as a he points a gun to a gas canister. Poor Vinny is trapped, he tries his best to fight his way out of the brawl, backing into the Vic. Luckily as he enters the pub, he sees Callum sat at the bar, in a desperate attempt to get away safely, he asks Callum for his help. But little does Callum know what he's getting himself involved in, especially considering his job role.

Only, how Callum does help Vinny remains to be seen, as we don't see exactly what Callum does. But eventually, Vinny makes it to the Arches, even though he's late and music has stopped playing, both Ben and Kheerat have managed to talk Stas round in the meantime. Ben admits to his ex-business partner that he had called him "Mad" in the past, but that does not mean that he's stupid. I have to admit watch all this drama unfold, it was pretty exciting stuff, dramatic and very suspenseful. Eventually, Vinny arrives safe and sound with his money still all in tact in the bag, I guess you could say Kheerat and Ben are more than relieved to see his appearance. Kheerat mentions that everything can be forgotten if Stas leaves with the money now and he'll make sure that Stas is given his money every month. As things begin to settle down and Stas leaves with his money, everyone else returns to the Panesar business, Kheerat questions Ben as to whether Stas has always been so erratic in his ways, to which Ben admits he is. Has Kheerat got himself in too deep? As Ben turns his attention to Vinny and questions why he was so late, Vinny reveals to them that he had to ask Callum for help, which completely sends Kheerat in a panic! Considering Callum's job role, who knows what would've happened if Callum had found out the truth? Kheerat voices his disappointment in his brother, claiming that if anything comes back to haunt them, then it's on his head! I do kind of feel for Vinny at this point as well, and when he bumps into Callum later on in the street, it looks as if he's beginning to question his involvement in his brother's business. Does he really want to be handling dodgy deals with his brother and Ben Mitchell? Does he perhaps want to take a different route and do something different with his life? Even Callum admits he could become a police officer, PC Vinny Panesar - who knows?

As Ben returns home after his eventful day, he bumps into Stas for one last time. Showing a bit of interest, he questions who it was who told him the Mitchell's were backstabbing him. It's then that Kat is seen leaving the pub, Stas clocks on to her and informs Ben that it was actually her who blabbed. But the interesting is, how is Ben going to react when he learns Kat has been sleeping with his Dad?! THAT I am looking forward to seeing! Are Phil and Kat actually a serious thing? Or simply just a bit of fun?

--

Okay, so we have to talk about Ruby don't we? Poor Ruby! I think I'm beginning to feel more sorry for her as time goes on. I don't condone the lying and scheming that she's done, but no one deserves to go through losing a baby, it's the most heart-breaking thing anyone can go through. It's the day after her miscarriage and it looks as if she just wants to carry on, heading to work might even take her mind off of a few things, but Martin tries to persuade her to stay at home. But as Ruby is adamant she wants to go to wrong, she gets an excruciating pain. As Ruby is rushed to hospital, it looks as if Stacey is at home feeling nothing but guilt, does she fear that it's her fault that Ruby lost her baby? I mean, she didn't do anything to harm her, but due to all her stress, could that have caused Ruby to have a miscarriage?

It's eventually revealed that Ruby has suffered a haemorrhage after her miscarriage and they need to empty her womb. I have to say the performances from both James Bye and Louisa Lytton have been brilliant during these episodes, having to watch a young couple grieve for their lost baby, it's devastating! Poor Martin doesn't know how to console his wife, he simply can't find the right words to comfort her. He returns home to get her some more comfortable clothing when Stacey approaches, of course she's riddled with guilt and remorse, she deeply apologises to Martin. I think after everything she and Martin have been through, they know each other better than anyone, so when Martin admits he doesn't know how to be there for Ruby, Stacey tells her ex-husband that all Ruby needs is for him to talk to her, to know how he's feeling, it'll give her some comfort that she's not having to go through this all on her own.

Returning to the hospital, Martin finally finds the courage to open up to his wife. Earlier she questioned why he wasn't angry for losing his child. But he admits that he hasn't gotten past the sad stage, he's still upset and grieving for the child they've lost. He admits that when Ruby announced she was pregnant, he was terrified to begin with, but then he came comfortable with the idea and it made him happy to be a Dad again and to bring up a child with her. It would've completed their family. It looks as if this is what Ruby has been waiting to hear, she's needed to know exactly how her husband has been feeling, it seems this is the first time he's been completely open with her. I found this whole entire storyline so touching you know, upsetting as well as touching, dramatic. Performances from everyone involved have been incredible!

I kind of feel Stacey also as she's having to deal with the knowledge that she was there when Ruby fell, could she have done something more to help her? If they hadn't been arguing, she probably wouldn't have fell? All these questions would understandably going round and round in her head! As she stands on the Square with a bunch of flowers, she watches as Ruby and Martin return home from the hospital. Kush notices her and offers to go with her for support. As they enter their house, Ruby is pretty much stunned to see Stacey walking in with a bunch of flowers, I think she almost takes it as an insult. Stacey pleads for them to stop fighting and arguing, too much has no happened because of their horrendous arguments. But Ruby seems to have none of it, maybe she feels that there's too much water under the bridge for them ever to rekindle their friendship. Ruby then drops the false blow that Stacey was to blame for her miscarriage because she had pushed her down the stairs.

Now this is a false accusation, I don't how guys see this, but Stacey did not push her. Ruby followed Stacey up the stairs, but as Stacey turned, Ruby's ankle gave way and she fell. Stacey denies the allegation and pleads for Martin to understand that she'd never do something like that. But then Ruby takes it one step further by revealing to her husband that both Stacey and Kush locked her in the office and forced her to take a pregnancy test to prove to them that she was in fact pregnant. As awful and disgusting that was, Stacey tries to fight her corner, claiming that she was just looking out for her ex-husband. Ruby had been lying about so much and they feel they had good reason to check whether she was telling the truth or not.

As everyone continues to argue, poor Martin is just sat there as everything seems to sink in, the loss of his child, the accusation against Stacey and then revelation of how they treated Ruby. It all gets completely too much for him, causing him to completely explode. Telling them all to stop arguing, he exits the room and leaves the house, Kush following to console his best mate. But Martin appears to be absolutely furious, lashing out at Kush and punching him to the floor. Kush tells his friend to punch him again if it makes him feel any better, but he also reminds Martin that he knows exactly how he's currently feeling. Kush has been there! He's lost a child! I think some people do sometimes forget about that, it was one of the most tear-jerking moments I have ever seen on EastEnders, when Kush and Shabnam lost their son, Zaair.

The next scene between Martin and Kush is really loved, it was sad, moving and to be honest, it was nice having Kush remember holding his still-born son. Devastatingly, Martin never even got the opportunity to hold his new child, but I think this brief talk with Kush does help him in some way. Kush even asks him whether he's cried for his loss yet, but when Martin admits he hasn't, Kush informs him that that's where he needs to start. If Martin is worried about Ruby and trying to be there for her, he needs to make sure that he can also grieve himself before he can look after his wife. He voices that he's finding it hard to believe that Stacey would purposely push Ruby down the stairs just so she would lose their baby, I mean anyone would find it hard to believe that anyone would/could be that cruel! The final scene of the episode, Martin is sat on Arthur's bench in the Square, he looks to be in deep thoughts of the days events, but as Stacey approaches him, he realises that things between them can't be as they once were. He needs to be there for his wife, she is more important than anything right now and maybe the best thing for everyone would be if Martin and Ruby had nothing more to do with each other, he reassures her that they'll be civil for the children's sake, but the kiss they shared at Christmas was a huge mistake. He's been over her for a long time now and Ruby is his priority, as far as he's concerned, his relationship with Stacey is over, for good!

Overall a very emotional and dramatic set of episodes! I apologise for this post being so so late, I have to admit I've been a little distracted and had a few breaks during the day whilst I've been writing this, but I'm glad to have finished and have it up now! I'm looking forward to seeing where these different stories go, please feel free to leave me a comment or a message letting me know what you're think, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Thank you everyone! I love you all xXx

#eastenders #rubyfowler #martinfowler #staceyslater #benmitchell #kheerat panesar #vinnypanesar #stas #kushkazemi #lolapearce #isaac baptiste #whitneydean #grayatkins #katslater #callumhighway #shabnammasood #masoodahmed #philmitchell #soapfan #soapblog

[javierpenaspinkshirt]

Other Lives

Chapter One: Deal

Mando x OC

Warnings: Loose Star Wars Lore. Pre-canon story. Gross formatting.

Words: 2.4k

Summary: A ship crash lands on Jakku and is spotted by a young metal miner who sees it as an opportunity to procure some scrap metal. She gets more than she bargained for. So does Mando.

A/N: this is the first chapter of what will be the Other Lives series (title based on this song). The story centres around Mando and an OC and is the story of their meeting and adventures together as told by a narrator. Thanks for reading 🖤

Chapter One: Deal

Listen well and get comfortable. This is a long story but it’s a good one. You’ll learn a lot about our friend from this story, I promise you. This one, my dear, is the story of how a Mandalorian fell in love.

She was on her way to a shift in one of Jakku’s many metal mines when she saw the ship faltering above her, engines stuttering and smoke billowing, heading towards the desert. She would be late for her shift if she went to explore but she knew that fresh scrap metal would earn her a lot more than a day in the mine. So she prepared herself for the berating she would get from the warden when she showed up late, if she bothered to show up at all, and headed out across the dune to see where the hunk of junk had crashed.

She had recently turned 25 but she hadn’t lost the impulsivity that had so often got her in trouble as a child. Her life was uneventful and monotonous so she would grasp any opportunity to break the cycle of mining shifts, and if that meant getting yelled at? Well that was a price she would be willing to pay.

A ship arriving on the planet was rare now. No one came to Jakku on purpose anymore, let alone by accident. It was such a dump now it barely registered on maps and was visibly baron from space. It had been pillaged and wrecked by Imperial forces and just a matter of months ago the battle that, according to the New Republic, had ended the Galactic War had been fought on the very dunes she was now climbing over.

It was no place for visitors. Whoever had crashed here must have been truly desperate.

Scrap metal was usually salvaged from old Imperial cruisers or the old strong holds the Empire once had there. But fresh scrap? That could earn her a week of reasonable food and minimal labour.

She summited the sand dune she had seen the ship fall behind and looked down on the smoke pouring from the engines. To her dismay the ship hadn’t crashed. In fact it had landed well, landing gear still in tact and the only visible issue being the plumes of thick smoke now floating her way. The fact that it was well landed meant that the pilot was good and, problematically, probably still alive. No scrap for her today?

She watched for a few moments more. No movement. The pilot and crew hadn’t emerged. She had to weigh up her options. The black smoke would act as a beacon to other scavengers, alerting them to the ship’s whereabouts and it’s bounty. Should she risk going and collecting what she could and potentially run into a crew prepared for a fight, or should she just go to work at the mine?

She made her decision as she tightened the straps of her bag and tied her boots up so she could slide down the dune towards the ship. No way was she letting those thieving bastard Jawas get ahold of this without her having pick of the scrap first.

She kept low as she arrived at the bottom of the dune, just feet away from the ship. The sun was climbing and the temperature was soaring with it. The thick protective overalls she wore for work in the mines would soon cause her to overheat, so she didn’t have long to collect what she could and race back to the town before the heat cooked her alive.

She stalked around the ship, keeping in its shadow, and placed a tentative hand on the hull. It was warm, probably not long out of hyper drive. She encountered further disappointment as it became apparent that the ship had been landed expertly. If she was going to collect any metal from it she would have to pry it from the ship’s body herself. In the protective shadow of the hull, below the stuttering engine she lay her bag in the sand and pulled out a crowbar. It shouldn't take long, she was a pro.

She lay on her back and pulled herself under the hull and prepared to start chipping at the metal when a hand wrapped around her ankle. She yelped as she was yanked from under the ship back into the shadow. The hand was rough and strong and pulled her like she weighed nothing.

Still on her back she was greeted by a what looked like a Storm Trooper. Her body hollowed and her throat closed up. The Trooper was clad in what looked like brown durasteel – that would fetch a decent price. His helmet was metallic but not durasteel, something stronger and majestic almost. He had a firm grip on her ankle and was knelt down on his haunches towering over her. He was head to toe in weaponry, a blaster, grenades… and what was that on his shoulder? A Pulse Rifle.

She shrieked and instinctively kicked out with her free foot, landing a brutal kick right in the dark T of the Trooper’s visor. He growled and let her ankle go, bringing his gloved hands up to his face.

She couldn’t out run him, she knew that. But what the Trooper didn’t know was that she was no ordinary scrapper. There was a reason she was the only girl that worked the mines. There was a reason no one gave her hassle or tried to steal her earnings from work. No one dared mug her on her way back from a scrap haul. They had all seen it, too afraid to bother learning anything more about her, only knowing her as ‘the girl with the power’. It was her curse and her security.

She stumbled back into the sun and watched as the Trooper began to reach for his blaster. She stilled and focused. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes. There was a choked scream from the Trooper and she opened her eyes. He was hovering a few feet from the sand, dangerously close to the smoke of the engine. She kept her fists clenched and kept all her focus on the Trooper writhing in her mind’s grip.

She had never been able to explain how she did it. It happened occasionally, mostly when she was threatened. She had discovered it as a child when she had accidentally broken her bully’s arm by throwing him against the wall of the hut he was attempting to mug her against. She had run home and told her parents, but unable to demonstrate it they hadn’t believed her. It hadn’t happened again until much later when a collapse in a mine’s support structure had threatened to seal her and her company in the dark tunnels. She had moved rubble twice her size and 10 times her weight with her mind and had lead the crew to the safety of the sand above. No one could explain how a teenager of only 16 had done it, but there had been too many witnesses to deny it.

Then when the Imps came she had been hidden. Her parents had begged her not to use her supposed power for fear of her being captured. Who knew what the Imperial forces would do with someone like her? So she had watched helplessly, hidden away, as her family and friends were slaughtered for sport.

Now she only used it when she had to. Only in the mines to help move product along the dark and narrow tunnels. Only if it was necessary. So what was she doing now?

She snapped her mind back and the Trooper dropped to his knees. Her chest heaved as she watched him clamber for breath. He was doubled over, clutching at his chest. The T stared at her.

‘What the hell did you just do to me?’ The voice was modulated. Angry but fearful, she wasn’t really surprised. She fell down on to the hot sand, it was a good question.

Before she knew it he was on his feet and gripping the collar of her overalls and dragging her back to hers. She could hear shaky breaths through the vocoder but his grip was iron like.

‘What did you do?’ It sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth.

‘I wont die at the hands of an Imp’ she sputtered back at him.

He threw her on to the sand with more force than intended. She coughed as she landed, the air knocked out of her lungs. He towered over her now, his form was intimidating and powerful, the sun glinting off the steel. She blinked up at him with tears in her eyes.

‘I’m no Imp’ he said it with such disdain that had he not been wearing the helmet she would have expected him to literally spit the words at her.

He turned his back on her and walked back to his ship. Either incredibly brave or incredibly arrogant considering she had almost killed him mere seconds ago.

‘Who are you then?’ A small voice squeaked at him from the sand. Her voice giving away the terror she was feeling.

He didn’t look back at her, just up at the engine above him. His shoulders sagged in silent defeat and he looked down at the ground and spun round to stare at her once more.

She had gotten to her feet and was doing her best to look strong and brave. Her shaking fists betrayed her.

‘I’m a Mandalorian’ the modulated voice called, ‘I am no damn Imperial’ there was the hatred in his voice again.

‘I hate Imps’ she responded, her tone flat and sincere, ‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have attacked you… I thought you were a Storm Trooper’.

She had no idea how her comment had landed. He was still and the steel was unyielding. But then he beckoned her over as he turned to stare defeatedly at the engines again.

‘If you can help me get out of here I can pay you handsomely’ the hate that laced his voice had dissolved and was replaced by a hint of kindness.

‘I work in a mine, I’m used to fixing engines, make it worth my while and I’ll help you’ she crossed her arms, hoping to look convincing.

He looked down at her, his body language giving nothing away.

‘You… you work in a mine?’ The statement was chased by what sounded like a soft chuckle.

‘You saw what I can do, yeah I work in a mine’ she didn’t share his amusement and he simply nodded in response.

‘I want credits, and a decent amount, you’ll want to be out of here soon before scavengers start coming and giving you hassle’.

‘You mean more hassle than they ready have?’ he looked down at her again.

Who knew Mandalorians had a sense of humour?

She allowed her eyes to meet his visor and let out a shy smile of apology.

He held his hand out and she shook it, the deal made.

‘I’m Teeyanora by the way’ she held his hand firm, ‘but everyone calls me Tee’.

‘Nice to meet you, Tee, I’m not a Storm Trooper’.

She laughed at his response and waited for him to open the hull and let her at the ship.

*

It took her a few hours, mercifully uninterrupted. No other scavengers had arrived yet but Tee was experienced enough to know it wouldn’t be long before they saw the Jawas’ crawling fortress on the horizon.

The engines had stopped smoking and were sounding smooth. She had been able to remove the debris that had caught in them using her ability and had the knowledge from fixing the mine’s giant fans to know how to repair the damaged rotary blades.

Mando had helped where he could but he had largely taken a step back, letting her work at her own pace. He watched her silently from behind the Beskar.

‘Alright, Mando’ she said as she put her hands on her hips, little beads of sweat on her forehead, ‘That should do you, now pay up so I can get out of here before my least favourite little thieves arrive to pull apart your ship’ she let out a coy chuckle.

He stood next to her at the top of the ramp to the hull, admiring her handy work.

‘I could use a crew mate with your ability’, he said it so matter of factly Tee almost snapped her neck spinning to look up at him.

‘What?’ She scoffed.

‘I could use a crew mate with your skills, I can’t maintain the ship on my own, you would be a great asset to me’.

‘Mando, a couple of hours ago you were going to kill me-’

‘A couple of hours ago you were trying to dismantle my ship’.

A fair point.

The sun was high now, and the blistering heat could be felt even within the confines of the hull.

‘What exactly is it that you do, Mando?’ Tee looked at him, eyes meeting the visor.

‘I’m with the Bounty Hunter’s Guild’ he said it with a quiet sense of pride, ‘Done it for a year or so now, I don’t ask questions, I just catch who they need me to catch, then I get paid’.

‘Do you travel a lot or do you stay in this system?’

‘No I go everywhere, as far as the Outter Rim and back’ his gaze was fixed on her, ‘I need a crew mate I can trust’.

She laughed, ‘oh you think you can trust me? After what I did to you? I could have killed you’.

‘But you didn’t’ he looked out across the dunes again, ‘even though you though I was Imperial you didn’t kill me, I need that, Tee’.

This was complete insanity. But the impulsive little girl in Tee was leaping at the opportunity to leave Jakku. There was nothing here for her. Her family were gone, the closest thing she had to a friend was the scrap droid she’d drop her findings off to. The community feared her. But to leave to go bounty hunting with a stranger? What would her mother say?

She looked down at her feet and sighed, ‘okay how about on a trial basis? How about I come with you for a few weeks and if I decide I don’t want to stay any longer you bring me back here?’

‘No one comes to Jakku on purpose’ the laughter was back in his modulated voice.

She beamed up at him, she liked his sense of humour.

He turned his body to face hers and held out his hand.

She took it and looked into the Visor, hoping to get a glimpse of his eyes. Nothing.

‘You have a deal, Tee’.

‘You have a deal, Mando’.

Tag list: @opheliaelysia

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x oc #the mandalorian fanfic #the mandalorian fanfiction #mando x oc #mando fanfiction #din djarin x oc #din djarin fanfiction #star wars #star wars fanfiction #mando #din djarin #other lives #javierpenaspinkshirt

[it-will-not-last-the-night]

Maruki Therapy with Ryuji really could have been done better

With the English version out I have begun to watch LPs of it so I can get the official translations. Two little things I wanted to mention with connection to Ryuji are that I’ve now seen the Maruki Therapy scene with him and his scene with Makoto prepping their showtime.

So the Maruki therapy scene: The scene is inoffensive and fine but...it really underscores to me how much I hate Ryuji’s regression in the third trimester. Within the therapy scene Ryuji never lets down his guard with Maruki and is barely ever even engaged in anyway with him. Beyond a brief stint of finding Maruki amusing at the close of the session Ryuji remains guarded throughout and clearly doesn't connect with Maruki at all.

What’s worse is this ‘track dream’ is something Maruki literally has to lead Ryuji too, by the nose, because it clearly ISN’T what’s most important to Ryuji. To give a brief summation:

Ryuji enters the room, clearly reluctantly and annoyed at the prospect. 

Maruki tries to tell him that he’s on his side and won’t chew him out like other teachers. Ryuji clearly doesn’t believe him and asks if he’s here to be interrogated about Kamoshida. 

Maruki tries to console him again and says they don’t need to talk about anything he doesn’t want too. 

Ryuji, obviously, has nothing to talk about then and literally comments on how awkward this is.

Maruki then asks if they can talk about someone he likes. 

Ryuji is clearly weirded out by this and tells Maruki there is no-one in his class he likes and even if there was he wouldn’t talk about it with him. 

Maruki then tries to spin a ‘you’re a teenager, aren’t you always thinking about love,’ yarn and Ryuji turns it back on him and just asks if he was like that in High School, shutting him up. 

Then Maruki changes tact again, asks Ryuji what he does in his time off. 

Ryuji comments that he spends time with his friends, though only lately, and that before that he was just angry and that before that he did track. 

Importantly, in this, he attaches no special significance to track and his actual answer as to what he does to enjoy himself is ‘hanging out with my buds’. 

Maruki latches on to the track and asks Ryuji to talk about it. 

Ryuji basically explains he enjoyed the validation of performing well and that he wanted it to be a vehicle to support his mother (I’ve touched in my previous post on this how this ties into the wish missing Ryuji’s character arc). 

Maruki then brings up Ryuji’s broken leg, something Ryuji didn’t know he knew and which clearly upsets him. 

After this Maruki just talks about wishing for something and making it come true, Ryuji disbelieves him, he pulls a joke about a drink, and Ryuji laughs at him and calls him weird.

This scene, somehow, is meant to reflect a deep and earnest wish of Ryuji’s, despite coming long before the completion of his character arc in the Velvet Room and, also, never once showing Ryuji actually opening up to Maruki.

For these scenes to have been effective they really needed to make Maruki have a more emphatic bond with the PTs, this looks incredibly shallow. 

Maruki basically leads Ryuji by the nose to a conclusion he wants, Ryuji barely expresses any enthusiasm for it, and this is used as the cornerstone of his wish even though it doesn’t acknowledge any of his character growth, coming several months before he completes that. I just do not like it, personally.

#persona 5 #persona 5 r #p5r #persona 5 the royal #persona 5 royal #p5r spoilers #persona 5 the royal spoilers #persona 5 royal spoilers #ryuji sakamoto #sakamoto ryuji #ryuji