#how is it from the dawn of my life to now almost each individual amongst my family and friends has managed to do some shit

[samwisefamgee]

haven't done anything on Sunday for the past two fucking months because a friend has made plans for all of us then canceled them the day of or before every. fucking. time.

#this is great for my social anxiety btw #yes queen give us nothing #give us LESS than nothing by making absolutely sure we dont have plans on sundays specifically so you can tell us to fuck off each sunday #its not giving me the vibe that you dont want us around at all and it DEF isnt compounded by your recent behavior on the #FEW #FUCKING #OCCASIONS #we actually DO hang out #how is it from the dawn of my life to now almost each individual amongst my family and friends has managed to do some shit #that makes me think without a doubt that all the time I spent trying to connect with them was a fool's fuckin errand? #just get out of my life or tell me to get out of yours STOP FUCKING WASTING BOTH OF OUR TIME #how can they even fucking live like this #are all your relationships this shallow? why does every motherfucker in my life have the depth of a teaspoon No One Is Seeking Understandin #we spend YEARS building a relationship and you treat me like we've met like 4 times and kinda hated each other about it. why did you bother #we're friends right? right? you havent been fuckin with me for years now just because you dont care about any of your relationships right?? #TELL ME DIDNT I PUT ALL OF MY EGGS IN THE WRONG! FUCKING! BASKETS! FOR TWO STRAIGHT DECADES #i swear i've only taken the time to befriend people who arent shitheads but i think i fucked up by making that the only standard #maybe that is a waste of time of they're all 'good' people with no drive to build relationships in life #because this isnt a one way street and im getting tired of fighting traffic from your end #anyway this frustration miiiight be coming from more than just the sundays thing if that wasnt evident

[streetlight11]

Her Promise

Summary: It wasn’t a secret that you have disliked Sangyeon since you were in diapers. He was your mother’s best friend’s son. Though he was born just 27 days after you, it seems like he was a lot older than you in terms of his maturity. You don’t understand why the bad blood between you two. Until one day, you had been arranged for a marriage with him so suddenly.

Theme: arranged marriage au, enemies to lovers

Genre: angst, sad, fluff

Warnings: mentions of leukaemia, death, alcohol, swearing

WC: 10k

Pairing: Lee Sangyeon x Fem!Reader

a/n: Hello! This plot just randomly came to mind. It's kind of sad and a little angsty but you'll get through reading it. I promise! also, the words in italics is a flashback :)

Your family has been a close family friend to the Lee’s family and that was because your mother and Mrs Lee were best friends since high school. Also the reason why you were only 27 days older than Mr and Mrs Lee’s only son. However, not everyone has a happy friendship. In this case, it was you and the said son. His name was Lee Sangyeon and it was pretty obvious that you two could never get along since you were in diapers.

Despite your mothers being best friends and have been for the past 30 years, give or take. It’s no wonder that when they were pregnant with the both of you, they kept fighting with each other over small silly things when they barely got past even the slightest of arguments throughout their friendship.

And yet, it seems like luck was never on your side to begin with because throughout your whole education life up till today, he always ends up in your school or at least the school that you chose specifically hoping to be as far from him as possible.

It always baffles you how he would be the first person you spot amongst the crowd during the first day of school.

Did he do all these on purpose?

Why would he go to this extent just to annoy you if you both hated each other?

Maybe he didn’t in fact do this on purpose, but still, what are the odds that you end up in the same campus amongst the hundreds of schools available? That was a mystery you never plan on solving.

It was a bright Tuesday afternoon, students were scattered all over the large campus of Hangang University. You had just parked your car in a free space, exiting your vehicle before proceeding to lock it and walk towards the Computer Science building. You were halfway through the parking lot when someone suddenly swung an arm over your shoulder.

“Good morning my favourite person in the world!” Lisa giggled to your left as Rosie appeared on your right with her usual beaming smile that could melt hearts with just a glance.

“Hey girls, you’re early” You asked with a soft chuckle knowing Lisa was always late for class.

“Yeah, I wanted to leave my apartment now like I always do but Rosie begged me to drive her today because her baby is in the workshop.” Lisa huffs, only for the blonde girl on your right to defend herself.

“Hey, at least we got here on time. You’re welcome.”

With that, Lisa stuck out her tongue at Rosie, earning a laugh from you. The three of you continued to walk to the CS building, only to find Jennie and Jisoo chatting by the lockers while Jennie scavenged through her locker.

“Ew, is it just me or is the barbeque chicken a little dry today?” Jisoo scowls as she drops the chicken leg back onto her plate.

“No, I agree. It’s foul.” Lisa’s face contorts in disgust before you speak up.

“Do you guys want my salmon instead? I'm kind of full already.” You said, only to find them staring at you in concern. They began asking you if you were feeling okay and if you needed any medication of any sorts. To which you shook your head and just told them you were already full from the breakfast your mother made for you before she left for work with your dad.

Lisa and Jisoo ended up sharing your salmon piece, making you smile. At least your food wouldn’t be wasted, you thought.

A few hours later, your classes for the day were finally over. All you know is that your bed has been waiting for your arrival since the minute you left for school. You left class slightly later, telling the girls you had something to discuss with your lecturer regarding the assignment.

You told them to just head home first and not wait for you.

Almost 20 minutes later, you finally left the lecture room to head towards the parking lot where you had parked your car earlier. Your mind was clouded with the assignment requirements as you scrolled through the soft copy of the assignment through your email, too caught up in your thoughts to notice the group of boys walking down the hall.

That wasn’t until your shoulder roughly collided against someone’s back. It sent your whole body to stumble back from the impact. You were about to apologize when you heard a snicker coming from whoever it was.

So you glanced up and lord behold, it was just the person you were looking for…

Not really.

“Can you pay attention to where you walk? It’s not that hard to use your eyes.” Sangyeon’s voice was monotonous yet a pitch higher than others, just like his ego.

“That’s because you’re in my way, Lee.” You said sarcastically as you walked past him, not forgetting to purposely bump into his arm. He let out a scoff under his breath, fiery glare burning a prominent hole into the back of your head.

God, you can be such a pain in the ass sometimes. Him included.

A few days later, it was finally a Friday. You heard words going around campus saying that one of the seniors in the school’s football team was having a frat party at his place tonight. He invited everyone in the football team, and people that he knew. Turns out he also told his teammates to bring whoever they wanted whether he knows them or not.

Lucky for you (or maybe not), Rosie’s boyfriend happens to be one of the football players. If you remember correctly, his name is Yunhyeong.

And so you already know where this is going.

Hence, the reason why you were now standing right outside the house where the party was held.

No doubt the house was a beautiful landed property at the hills that overlooked the city, it still didn’t give you complete comfort knowing that you would be surrounded by drunk young adults who have no care in the world once the alcohol takes over their system.

Sure you sometimes go to these parties but you weren’t really that type of girl. It’s always an unpleasant surprise to others who aren't your girls, when you decline their offers of alcohol saying you don’t drink.

Though there were instances where you’d have some people still insisting on giving you a drink, you rejected them firmly whether they liked it or not.

And today was no different.

One moment, you were talking to your friends. Another moment, and you were suddenly left alone by the kitchen island. Isolating yourself from the countless intoxicated bodies, dancing freely without a single care in the world.

It suddenly dawned on you that you were indeed alone, with no other individual that you recognize in that huge house. Your friends were scattered around the main living area, each of them either with their significant other or just randomly hooking up with someone. Using alcohol as an excuse to be brave and approach someone at a party like this.

You sighed, reaching into your back pocket to fish for your phone. You were so close to texting them you wanted to head home first, when a deep voice broke your little bubble of thoughts.

“Hey… Y/N right?” The handsome boy asked as he smiled down at you softly.

He clearly didn’t seem too drunk, nor was he completely sober like you.

“Yeah… you are?” You asked, hoping you didn’t sound like a bitch.

“I’m Changkyun. I see your friends have left you so I thought maybe you’d want some company?”

Well, at least he’s being considerate enough.

“About that… I was actually about to-” As you were talking, your eyes were searching the room for at least one of the girls. But instead, your gaze was locked on a specific individual who was leaning against the staircase railings just staring at you with a subtle frown on his face, making your voice halt in your throat.

It was Sangyeon.

You should’ve known he would be there tonight. He’s the freaking midfielder in Hangang U’s soccer team for goodness sake!

For some reason, the moment you met his eyes, it was as though you got sucked into a black hole with no way to escape. That wasn’t until the warm touch on your arm made you jolt away and soon turned back to Changkyun who was now staring at you with worry.

“Hey? You okay? What’s wrong?” He asked, hoping he didn’t scare you away by that simple touch.

“Y-Yeah… Sorry Changkyun, but I think I’m gonna head home. See you around.” You gave him a sincere smile before turning to leave after he said his goodbye.

There is no way you’re gonna stay there any longer. It’s not like you were drunk or anything. Not like you’d expected him to show up in black leather pants, dark grey button down shirt tucked in, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his hair parted close to the middle to frame his face and show his forehead, attractively. And definitely not like you felt as though your stomach was doing a flip in your abdomen after seeing him there physically.

Right?

No. You still hate him. He’s just a walking nuisance in your life. You don’t feel anything for him. Maybe he needs to stop appearing in your line of vision every 5 minutes.

It’s been two weeks since that frat party in which you had texted your friends saying you were already at home. Of course you didn’t get a response immediately but they still replied to you the next morning, telling you they were safe and they were glad that you were too.

It was a rainy Wednesday afternoon where students were all stuck on campus with nowhere to go. You were just seated at a wooden table alone with your laptop and scattered notes on the surface when the ray of sunlight that was previously shining down on you, got blocked by a figure.

You glanced up and not surprisingly, it was Sangyeon. He was alone. For once. He was always with his friends, so you wondered why he chose to walk around alone today.

“What?” You asked nonchalantly before looking back down at your laptop.

You heard a scoff from him only for him to speak up, “Did your parents tell you?”

You got confused as you looked back up to him and blinked, incredulously at what he just asked you.

“Tell me what?” You asked. He wasn’t sure if he was faking it or not but he figured with how genuinely confused you look, it was quite clear you weren’t pretending to not know what he was referring to.

“My parents are coming over to your home this weekend to discuss ‘something serious’. I’m not going. I’m not about to sit there and listen to what the ‘something serious’ is, let alone sit there trapped and stare at you the whole night.” Sangyeon said blankly as he burned holes in your head.

“Good. I wouldn’t want you there anyway.” You scoffed, only for him to push himself off the table and smoothed down his shirt.

Sangyeon left without saying anything else, watching as he turned his head as though in search of his friends. However, the minute you looked back down at your laptop, it seems like you missed the way he glanced at you subtly before turning back in front.

That same day, you went home to find your parents in the living room. Your father was watching the news on the flat screen tv while your mother was just watering the potted plants on the shelves.

The minute you stepped into the living room, your father turned to you and smiled brightly, “Oh, sweetie you’re back. We wanted to tell you that Mr and Mrs-” but before he could finish, you did it for him, stunning them in the process.

“-Lee are coming over this weekend to discuss ‘something serious’... I know.”

With that, your mother and father glanced at each other before a smile appeared on their faces again. You already knew what they were about to ask so you beat them to it.

“Sangyeon told me… So what’s so serious that they wanna come over here and talk about it?” You asked, not knowing what to expect but all you got was silence.

“We have to wait till everyone’s there.”

“Not everyone’s gonna be there…” You said.

“What do you mean?” Your mother asked.

“Sangyeon said he’s not coming. He doesn't want to.”

“B-But, he has to be there. It’s important.”

“What’s so important that he has to be there for?” Your voice laced with annoyance at the thought of having to sit in a room with him for minutes too long. Your parents got quiet before your mother spoke up again but for some reason, her voice sounded weak.

“You’ll know on Saturday.” She gave you a weak smile. Too weak to the point that she almost looks… pale?

Why is she pale?

But your mind was too jumbled up with what the main topic for this said family dinner would revolve around. Hence, why you were now sprinting up the steps and to your room. You didn’t want to think about it anymore. You just hoped the weekend passes by before you know it.

Saturday came in a flash and to say you were ready for whatever family gathering this was, is definitely a lie. You were curious. You were desperate to know just what important business is there to discuss with you and Sangyeon. Despite knowing he won’t be there for whatever this meeting is about, it still rendered you curious on just how important this said matter is.

You were told to look presentable even though you’ll just be at home. So you pulled out the nicest outfit you could find and just opted for a simple blouse and your denim jeans.

Once you were done getting ready, you left your room only to hear your mother calling out to you from downstairs, “Y/N sweetie, the Lee’s are here!”

You made your way down the marbled steps, ready to greet the elder couple when your eyes fell on their son who clearly said he wasn’t going to be here. But of course, it looked like he had been forced against his own will to be here and you were right.

“Oh! My sweet Y/N! It’s been so long. How are you my dear?” Mrs Lee asked as you broke your gaze from Sangyeon only to smile happily when you looked at his parents.

“Hello Mr and Mrs Lee. I’m doing well despite my crazy uni life. I hope you’re both well and healthy!” You said as Mrs Lee hugged you warmly like how she had been doing since you were young.

After greeting them, the 6 of you began walking to your dining room. You then turned to Sangyeon who was walking beside you, only to ask out of curiosity, “Didn’t you say you weren’t gonna come?”

With that, he turns to you and shoots daggers at you through his glare but it does nothing to scare you away.

“Do I look like I wanna be here?”

“Clearly.” You said, just to get on his nerves and it did.

“Fuck you.”

“I’d gladly fuck myself too.”

Sangyeon frowns at your comment despite knowing it was sarcastic. But he still found it amusing that it came out from your mouth. Sure you’ve cursed him a lot of times when you fought with him, but this was a different thing.

All of you finally sat down in the dining room, you helped your mother set the table.

A few minutes went by and everyone was just chatting amongst one another. Well, more specifically the elders while you and Sangyeon simply sat there across each other in silence. You were absentmindedly picking on your food, suddenly losing appetite.

All you wanted was for them to start discussing the very important business. Which is why your patience has run thin, making you blurt out the question that has been floating in your head since Wednesday.

“What’s the important thing you called me and Sangyeon here for?”

The room fell silent as you kept your eyes on your plate of untouched food. Completely ignoring the way Sangyeon had his eyes trained on you. After what felt like hours, your mother finally announced it.

It made your heart stop for a moment.

“We have decided to marry you off with Sangyeon.”

That was the last thing you ever wanted to hear from them. Never did you expect it to be this. Why were they doing this to you? Of course you know you’re single and not dating anyone but still… How could they?

“What?!” Both you and Sangyeon said in unison.

Tension filled the air, thick in its wake. You couldn’t look elsewhere except for your mother who had announced the news.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” You mumbled under your breath as Sangyeon got up, letting the chair drag painfully across the wooden floor. His mother grabbed his wrist to stop him but he roughly yanked his wrist from her and simply replied with his firm answer, “There’s no way I’m marrying her. I’m out.”

Sangyeon stormed out and you were so tempted to do the same but all you could do was glare at your parents in disbelief.

“Sweetie-” Your mom began but you were quick to interject.

“No! That’s not happening! Mom, you know we hate each other! How can you ask me to marry him when I don’t even love him?!” Your voice was raised as you stood up from your seat. Blood boils in your veins, heart pounding rapidly in your chest out of pure anger. You wanted nothing more but to scream.

You turned in your heels to leave but your mother caught your hands when you were about to reach the stairs. You pulled your hand from her grip, throwing your arm behind your back from the force.

“Sweetie please, listen to me-”

“No mom! I’m not marrying him and that’s final!” You yelled, too furious to even notice the way your mom had clutched her chest as her breathing started to become shallow.

Before you knew it, your mother collapsed to the ground but you were quick to catch her body right when she was about to crash onto the hard wooden floor.

“Mom!” You gasped as your dad and both of Sangyeon’s parents rushed over to where you were.

Mr Lee called the ambulance in which they came just 10 minutes later, carrying your mother’s unconscious body onto the stretcher and bringing her into the ambulance. Your father followed her in the vehicle while Mr Lee offered you a ride there.

Hours passed and you were waiting patiently outside the ER when a doctor came out. Your dad rushed over so you could only guess that she was the one who attended to your mom.

“Doctor, how’s my wife?”

“Your wife’s still under constant checks but so far, her heart is beating stably. However, it seems that her abnormal white blood cells have rapidly multiplied since her last check up.” The doctor said, making you frown.

“White blood cells? What’s going on? What’s wrong with my mother?” You asked desperately, still not sure of what’s going on.

“Your mother was diagnosed with Leukaemia stage 2 but from what I saw today, I believe it’s now up to stage 4.” The doctor announced, making you even more confused.

“What?” You whispered as you stared at your dad, hoping that it’s not true. But all you got was a disheartened smile that broke you into a million pieces.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” You whispered to him sadly, upset that they’ve been keeping this a secret from you.

“I’m sorry baby, but your mother told me not to. She… She didn’t want you to get worried.” He replied.

You don’t understand. You knowing about this was better than keeping it hidden from you. If you had known about this sooner, you wouldn’t have shouted at her. Instead, you would have taken extra care of her. You would have given her more love than what she gave you. And you wouldn’t have to stand here, right now, hoping for your mother’s safety and health.

You slumped onto one of the chairs, staring into space as your father rubbed soft circles into your back to calm you down.

Three days passed and you have been visiting your mother at the hospital diligently after your classes. You stayed till night time, allowing your dad to fetch you from the hospital after he also came by to visit your mom.

You were currently alone in the room with your mom as your dad went out to buy dinner for all three of you.

She was just lying there sleeping peacefully after having a deep conversation with her about some things, her eyes now closed, breathing consistent, chest heaving up and down according to her oxygen intake.

You were just about to doze off when the heart rate monitor suddenly began beeping rapidly. It caused you to panic as you ran out of the room to call for the nurses.

When you came back, your mother was shaking on the hospital bed. Tears started streaming down your face as you found yourself curled up in the corner just watching the hospital staff do whatever is necessary to help your mother.

You didn’t notice your dad who had just come back, only to rush to you after putting the food down on the desk. It was when he cupped your face, that you finally realized his presence.

He pulled you against him as you couldn’t tear your eyes off your mother’s figure, shaking violently on the bed.

It was as though someone had dropped a bomb just a few feet away, a deafening silence pierced your ear drums followed by the single beep sound that was continuous without a pause. The sound soon became a mere ring in your ears.

You slowly brought your line of sight towards the heart rate monitor beside your mother’s bed and that’s when you saw it. The painful straight line with no spikes going up or down.

That’s when you knew, she was gone.

No. This can’t be real. This is just a dream. Wake up Y/N. Pinch yourself. Slap yourself. Do whatever it is to wake yourself up from this nightmare!

And yet, you’re still there in your dad’s arms listening to the nurse who wrote down the words you never hoped to hear.

“Patient is Jeong Hyemin. Time of death, 2143hrs.”

All the more you cried harder against your father’s chest. You were broken. Completely and utterly broken. Your mother left you before you could even say goodbye. She left before you could even tell her that you love her unconditionally even though you told her that everyday.

As much as your heart hurts, you knew you had to accept it. You knew you had to be strong for your mother. And that was exactly what you did.

The next whole week, you didn’t come to school. You emailed your lecturers personally and told them about your loss. They all sent you their well wishes for you and your dad, to which they excused you from school to attend your mother’s funeral. It broke you but you couldn’t collapse just then.

Your mother would want you to be happy, to continue living a wonderful life, with or without her. And that’s exactly what you were gonna do.

The next two weeks came as a blur and you were dreading for the day to finally arrive. You couldn’t bring yourself to look in the mirror and see what you looked like. Because at that very moment, you were in an item of clothing where you never thought you would wear anytime soon.

It was a wedding dress. Your wedding dress. It has finally come to this.

Your makeup stylist did a few touch ups to your eyeshadow whilst another lady adjusted the bow on your waist that separates your laced top with your beautiful silk gown that drops to the floor elegantly behind you.

If you were being honest, you had hoped for this very day to come when you would walk down the aisle with your arm linked with your dad’s while your mother stood at the front row, watching you proudly. Witnessing you entering a new life with your chosen partner whom you’d love with all your heart.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the case for you and it hurts you. But you kept telling yourself the same thing over and over again.

“I have to stay strong.”

That was the last thing you mumbled to yourself as you left the bride’s room, only to head towards the outdoor wedding ceremony where your parents had already booked an incredibly beautiful mansion located at the highest hills of the city.

It was a small ceremony with only your family and his, and very close relatives of both sides but that was it. None of your friends were there but you already told them about today.

Little did you know, his friends knew about it too.

You were approaching the outdoor garden where everyone was waiting for you when all of a sudden, your emotions started swirling in you.

A tear rolled down your cheek the minute you saw your dad standing at the doorway which leads you directly down the aisle. Your dad gave you a soft smile before cupping your face and kissing your forehead. He wiped the tear away with his thumb as he whispered, “You look so beautiful, sweetheart. I’m sure your mother would be so happy to see you like this.”

With that, you had to force your tears back, swallowing them as you nodded before linking your arm with his.

The song started playing and soon, both of you began to walk down the aisle. The first thing you saw was Sangyeon standing at the foot of the platform. He was wearing a navy blue tuxedo, looking quite handsome if you were being completely honest.

But the frown on his face was evident enough for you to know that he didn’t like this as much as you didn’t like this either.

Once you were standing just two feet away, you turned to your dad who kissed you again on the forehead before putting your hand in Sangyeon’s outstretched ones. After your dad left your side, Sangyeon guided you up the steps carefully.

His touch was soft, almost as if he wasn’t touching you at all. Minutes went by and right after you’ve both said your vows, it was time for the exchange of rings and sealing the deal with a kiss but of course, neither of you agreed to it. So when you were officially announced as husband and wife, you both looked at each other with a familiarity in your eyes which screamed “I hate all of this”.

Sangyeon lets out a soft groan before planting a chaste kiss to your temple, pulling away as soon as he kisses.

Both of you walked back down the aisle and once you were in the mansion, it took you less than a second to walk away from him and make your way straight to the bride’s makeup room.

Sangyeon didn’t bother to call for you as he too made his way to the common room, wanting to be as far away from you as possible. He hated every single minute of this. He never wanted this. But he was being forced to. And he doesn’t even know why.

When he heard from his parents that you accepted the arranged marriage, it baffled him.

You were both so adamant on rejecting this whole fiasco during that night of the dinner so what changed your mind?

That was a question he could never solve.

Days became weeks and you had moved into the new home that his parents and yours bought for Sangyeon and you to live in. It was a beautiful one story home that had 3 bedrooms, one study room, one living room and a backyard complete with a swimming pool. You were thankful for the home but you didn’t think it was necessary considering the state that you and Sangyeon were being put in.

Nevertheless, you didn’t want to disappoint the elders. Hence the reason why you moved in with Sangyeon without a single argument with your dad and in-laws.

Unfortunately, the fact that you two were now living under the same roof, it was quite expected of you to end up fighting over the smallest little things. If being within radius of each other on campus brought unnecessary snickers and curses to one another, living under the same roof only heightened those said things by 80%.

There wasn’t a day where you could walk around the house peacefully unless the other wasn't home.

It has been 8 weeks since you lived there with him. Despite the constant fights and heated arguments that the two of you often get into, none of it leads to the other doing unfaithful things behind each other’s back.

Before the marriage, it was quite clear that you weren’t in any sort of relationship with anyone nor were you the kind to sleep around with strangers you just met at a club or parties. Whereas, Sangyeon on the other hand was completely that, except he too was single. He tends to sleep around with girls he met at a party or the clubs he went to.

But never did he actually pursue any of his one night stands because he simply didn’t feel that way for them.

However, when he got married to you despite being against it, he made a promise to himself that he should not do all those things to you even if he doesn’t love you. Because he knows that it’s wrong and that he despises people who cheat on their partners.

For that, he told himself not to be that monster.

And he didn’t. Thankfully.

But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t storm out of the house after an argument just to get fresh air and be away from you at that very moment.

This goes both ways as sometimes, you would do the same if you couldn’t stand being in radius of him.

But tonight was different.

You were just washing the dishes when the front door opened to reveal a very drained Sangyeon who had just gotten back from the gym.

He strolled through down the hallway with his duffle bag strap resting on his right shoulder, the wet patches on his grey tank top sticking to his torso, black track shorts resting on his hips. His hair was slicked back from being drenched in sweat.

You spared him a quick glance over your shoulder before you turned back to the dirty dishes. Unfortunately for you, he caught you glancing just in time.

He walked past you to go to the fridge after putting his bag down on the floor, opening it and immediately grabbing the bottle of iced water sitting there patiently for him to take it. He downed half the bottle in less than 5 seconds, only to hear him let out a satisfied sigh right after.

You remained quiet as he looked at you for a moment, a small part of him wanted to ask you if you’ve eaten but a bigger part of him, more so his ego, was telling him to walk away.

For some reason, he decided to go with the former. Something he hasn’t been doing all these years.

“Had your dinner yet?” He asked, making you turn off the tap after setting down the clean dish onto the rack above your head before turning to him with a slight confusion on your face.

“Mhm. You?”

“Not yet.” He said as he leaned his hip against the counter top.

“What do you feel like eating?” You asked, wiping your hands dry with the towel hanging off the hook on the wall.

“I kind of have the feel for kimchi fried rice… I’ll just make do with what is there in the fridge. No worries.” Sangyeon said with a soft smile on his face before he left to take a long shower. Something he always did when he had a lot going on in his mind.

The minute he left, you stared at his descending back for a minute before turning back with a confused frown on your face.

Sangyeon was in the shower for almost 20 minutes. Taking a warm bath to calm his tensed muscles due to the intense workout he did with Juyeon and Hyunjae earlier. After his stress relieving bath, Sangyeon changed into a pair of sweatpants and his oversized shirt he normally uses to sleep.

He towel dried his hair, leaving it in an utter mess on his head with no care whatsoever.

He simply brushed through his wet locks with his fingers haphazardly before leaving his bedroom toilet. Sangyeon and you weren’t sharing bedrooms. It was just a mutual agreement right from the first night together.

You took the master bedroom in this house while he took the second bedroom.

Sangyeon was just walking down the hall, scratching the back of his head randomly when he caught a strong whiff of something delicious filling his nostrils.

“What the?” He whispered to himself as he cautiously made his way closer to the end of the hall. The minute he made a right turn, that’s when he saw you scooping out the contents of the pan into a clean plate. To his surprise, it was the exact dish he told you he was planning to cook earlier.

He finally stepped out of the shadows, only to startle you.

You flinched but that was it.

“Hey… I figured you’d be too tired to cook so I made it for you. Just leave the plate in the sink after you’re done. I’ll wash it later.” You pressed your lips into a small little smile before placing the dish on the kitchen island together with a spoon.

Right when you were about to leave the kitchen, his voice stopped you from walking any further only to hear him whisper a soft “thank you” to you.

You gave him a nod and soon left.

Sangyeon stares at your descending back before you disappear from his trail of sight, only to then tilt his head in amusement at your sudden kind act. For some reason, he found himself smiling as he took a mouthful of your delicious fried rice.

Another 3 weeks went by and you had just gotten back from your night study session with Lisa and Jennie, only to find Sangyeon slumped on the couch. He had his face buried in his hands as he looked like he hadn’t slept for days.

You frowned as you locked the door and soon went over to stand behind the long couch, diagonally from the couch he was sitting at.

“Rough day?” You asked quietly, but all you got was silence so you tried again.

“Have you eaten?”

Silence.

“Do you want anything to eat?”

Silence.

“Sangyeon, even if you hate me, at least say yes or no so I can-” And that’s when he bursts.

“Shut the fuck up!” Sangyeon yelled as he glared at you. His nostrils flared upon every heavy breath he took. You were stunned by his harsh tone, clearly not wanting any argument when you first asked the question.

“Excuse me?” You asked with a tone that was pretty obvious to anyone that you were clearly offended by his words.

“Didn’t you hear me?! I said shut the fuck up!” Sangyeon stood tall, his face red as you could only imagine he was stressed about something. A scoff left your lips, feeling the anger seeping through your skin with every word he said to you.

“Why? Why do you want me to shut the fuck up so badly?!” You asked as you stared at him with mixed emotions.

“God, you’re so fucking annoying!” Sangyeon growled as he began to storm off but you stopped him by grabbing his wrist.

“Answer my fucking question, Lee Sangyeon! I was just being nice and caring about your well being and all I got was to shut up? You’re a fucking asshole you know that?” You said, your words filled with venom as he gritted his teeth, jaw clenching tight.

“Who taught you to be such a brat? Your mother?” Sangyeon accidentally blurted that out of sheer anger. Your grip around his wrist left and the next thing he knew, your eyes were glossy from the tears threatening to fall.

“Don’t bring my mother into this.” You warned but he was still fuming with anger.

“Why? Why can’t I?! She’s the only reason why we’re in this stupid marriage anyway!”

You didn’t know what ran through your mind but the minute those words left his mouth, you couldn’t help but swing your hand onto his cheek. This shocked him to a certain extent as he simply glared at you but never did anything to hurt you physically.

“Do you know why I accepted the marriage proposal? Do you wanna know why I decided to walk down that fucking aisle and have myself being called as your official wife?! Well here’s the reason why. I promised my mom I would.” You paused as he remained quiet. You could almost see the cogs turning in his brain as though trying to process your words.

“My mom died wanting me to marry you. She told me she wanted to see me walk down the aisle one day and into your arms. Until now, I don’t understand why she specifically wants it to be you, but that’s what she wanted. So I promised her that she would be there for when that day comes. But she left me before she could even witness that for herself. She left before I could even say goodbye. It broke me. It fucking broke me Sangyeon! That’s why I chose to accept the proposal even when…”

You stopped for a moment, not realizing that you had been crying until you tasted salty tears on your lips.

“...even when I didn’t love you. I did it because I made a promise to her. I don’t want to let her down, Sangyeon.... I never wanted any of this to happen. And I know you feel the same so I’m sorry.” Those were the last things you said to him before going to your bedroom and locking yourself in there.

Sangyeon was left standing there, feeling completely shitty with what he said to you earlier. He never meant to hurt your feelings. He should’ve known better not to mention your mom but he only said that out of pure anger.

He knows it’s his fault but his ego was too high for him to simply give in to his mistake.

He was about to just brush this off when he heard the door click and soon, you were seen leaving your bedroom with a cross body purse on you. You didn’t give him the chance to speak as you just left the house with a soft slam of your front door. He watched as you took your white mini cooper and drove out of the driveway.

“Sweetie, why don’t you want to accept the proposal?” Your mother asked weakly as you sat on the chair beside her hospital bed.

“Mom, you know I don’t love him. We’ve been fighting since we were kids. I don’t see why I should marry someone who I don’t love.”

“Oh sweetie, you can only learn to love by loving.”

“Mom, that’s just fairy tale talk.”

“Do you wanna know something?” She asked as you stared at her quietly while you caressed the back of her hand with your thumbs as he took this silence to continue.

“Your father and I weren’t on good terms too when we first met each other. We always fought in high school and it went on for quite a while until Mrs Lee set me up on this blind date and it was with your father. At first we found it ridiculous, but after that first date, I realized that maybe your father wasn’t as bad as I thought. And so, we started to slowly understand the process of loving someone and soon enough, we fell in love. Love doesn’t always come to you directly. Sometimes, you need to find it yourself.”

She paused, studying your facial expressions carefully to make sure you weren’t angry or about to burst at her for the next thing she was planning to say.

“Can you promise me something sweetie?”

“Anything… Anything at all mom.” You said with a glint of hope in your eyes.

“Can you promise me that you’ll marry Mrs Lee’s son? I don’t care when. Just… as long as it’s him. Even if I’m not around anymore...”

“Mom-”

“Please? For me?”

Your heart broke hearing her pleading voice. You don’t understand why she was so persistent in you marrying him but for now, you couldn’t bear to say no. You couldn’t bear to break her heart. So, with a heavy heart, you chose your mother’s happiness before yours.

“Okay mom… I promise. But you have to promise me too that you’ll be fine and that you’ll come back to me and dad, okay?”

“I promise, sweetheart. I love you so much.” She said.

“I love you too mom.”

That night when you came back to your old house, your dad greeted you at the door with a shocked look on his face. He asked you why you were there at such a late time so you explained to him that you got into a big fight with Sangyeon and that you wanted to stay there for the next few days. Of course your father was happy that he would finally have someone in the house with him, but he was also worried that Sangyeon would be concerned over you.

You told him not to tell Sangyeon anything and that you wanted time away from him for now, in which your dad just nodded understandingly. The next few days, you spent your days diligently avoiding Sangyeon as much as you can despite being in the same campus. Lucky for you, he had very different schedules than you.

Which means, better chance for you to avoid him and not accidentally bump into him on campus grounds. And so far, your plan is working.

It’s been at least 3 weeks since you last went home to your shared place with him and you were starting to run low on your clothing supply back at your old house. Which means, you probably had no choice but to go back there now.

In all honesty, you weren’t mad at him anymore.

You were just too stubborn to face him after that argument. But it looks like you have no other choice now.

Hence, the reason why you were currently standing outside your doorstep at 8pm, noticing the vehicles parked outside your gates. By the looks of it, those probably belonged to his friends. And you were right. Because the minute you unlocked the door, you were immediately greeted by the chattering and laughter coming from the living room.

You walked in further, carefully after taking off your shoes and placing them in the shoe rack. Right when you had just made it by the end of the hallway and the living room was in full view, that’s where you saw the 6 figures scattered around the room.

The TV was playing a movie while the coffee table was filled with boxes of pizzas and other snacks for them to munch on.

Before you could speak up, two of them noticed your presence, making the blonde haired one to say hi, “Oh, hi Y/N.”

With that, the rest of them finally turned around upon hearing their friend greet you. Sangyeon, who was standing right in front of the TV, checking the cables, whipped his head around only to lock eyes with you. He froze in his spot, unsure if this was real considering you’ve been avoiding him like a plague the past 3 weeks.

“Y/N…” Was the only thing he managed to whisper under his breath as you awkwardly chuckled, hoping you didn’t create an unsettling atmosphere for them.

“Hey…” You whispered as he carefully made his way to you. The moment he was standing right in front of you, neither of you spoke. Both of you are afraid of saying the wrong thing which could potentially lead to another argument. But Sangyeon was smart enough to know not to make unnecessary comments to you after what happened the last time. So instead, he opted for an apology.

“Listen, about that night… I- I’m really sorry… I didn’t... I didn’t know.”

You could only give him a small smile that he could clearly see was weak and almost drained as you spoke up, “It’s okay. Anyways… I think I’m gonna rest.”

He simply nodded, resisting the urge to pull you into a hug and tell you how sorry he was for treating you like crap all these while. These past 3 weeks have made him realise that he wasn’t the nicest of people to you, that he said a lot of things that had definitely hurt you in the past, that he has been nothing but mean to you.

Upon hearing your bedroom door close, Sangyeon lets out a defeated sigh before walking back to his friends who then asked him if everything was okay. After he told them that everything was indeed okay, he plopped back down on the couch but it seemed to worry his friends seeing how sad Sangyeon looked at the moment.

Whenever he was with them, he has always been the goofy, savage, often picking on the others to get a reaction out of them, kind of guy. They’ve never properly seen this softer side of him.

It’s been nearly an hour since you came home and yet, he hasn’t caught a single glimpse of you anywhere. He got worried for you, not knowing whether you’ve eaten or not. So he decided to check on you. He got up from the ground to excuse himself, telling them to just continue what they were doing.

When he arrived at your supposedly shared bedroom, he found you seated on the window couch just staring into the night sky. However, before he could even knock on the door and push it wider, he heard soft sobs from you that gradually grew louder. He stayed by the door and unintentionally listened to your whispers.

“I miss you mum… I’m sorry if I couldn’t live up to my promise just like you wanted me to. I know I’m not the best wife to him, but I’m trying… I’m trying… for you. I wish you were still here beside me. To guide me on how to be a good wife. To love someone without feeling trapped. To love someone the way you and dad loves me. I’m so sorry mum… I’m so truly sorry…”

Sangyeon’s heart shattered into a million pieces for you. That’s when he realized that his feelings for you had changed. That all he wanted to do right at this very moment was to protect you. You were broken, fragile and yet, he’s been treating you horribly all these while.

He couldn’t take it any longer. With that being said, he carefully and quietly made his way to you. Not making a sound as you had your head buried in your knees, cries getting louder the closer he came to you. However, when you felt his soft hands caress the sides of your arms, you looked up. Your eyes glistened under the moonlight, your cheeks soaked with your freshly falling tears.

At that moment, you looked so vulnerable.

So when he pulled you into his embrace, you easily let him. Burying your face into his chest as he gently rubs circles onto your back, caressing your head comfortingly.

After a few seconds of silence, you finally whispered against his chest. Just loud enough for him to hear, but soft enough that nobody standing outside the door could hear.

“I miss her Sangyeon…”

Sangyeon wasn’t sure how to respond to your confession but he tried as best as he could to make you feel better.

“And I know that she misses you too. But it’s okay, she will always be with you. You’ll be okay… I promise.” He whispered and almost immediately, you pulled back as he frowned in confusion.

“You shouldn’t promise me anything…” You said, your tears slowly getting lesser and lesser by the minute.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the last time someone made me a promise, they promised me that they’ll be okay and that they’ll never leave me… And yet she did...” Your voice hushed. He could tell that that was your trauma. Making promises.

He felt a tear threatening to roll down his cheek but he managed to hold back. Sangyeon softly reached up to cup your face and caress your cheeks with both thumbs before he spoke up, “I’m sorry she did. I’m sorry that promise got broken. But it’s not her fault. You know it wasn’t. So let me make a promise to you now and this time, it won’t be broken.”

With that being said, you cried even harder as he just pulled you against his chest almost cradling you like a child. After almost 20 minutes in the room, he finally let go of your fragile figure and asked if you wanted to eat.

You told him you weren’t hungry and that you just wanted to rest. Sangyeon nodded, bringing you to the bed as he carefully tucked you in to make you cosy. He was about to leave you alone when you grabbed his wrists. Sangyeon turned around with such a soft gaze on you, it nearly melted you.

“Where are you going?” You asked with a soft voice, almost shy. Sangyeon found it so endearing that he couldn’t help but chuckle softly.

“I’m gonna go back to the boys and maybe call it a night early.” He smiled, to which you felt his other hand come to wrap its fingers around your extended wrist, gently pulling it away before caressing the back of your wrist with his thumb.

“Can you come back after… please?” You whispered as you saw him smile again before putting your hand down on the mattress softly.

“I will.”

Soon enough, Sangyeon left you in the room to rest for a bit while he went back to his friends and relayed the message to them. Thankfully, the boys were very understanding. They told Sangyeon to send their well wishes to you in which he definitely would. After they left, Sangyeon went ahead and cleared the leftover trash.

Silently thanking the boys for cleaning most of the mess up before he even came back into the living room. He was almost done cleaning, not forgetting to brush his teeth before going back to your room only to find you already asleep with your back facing the door.

Sangyeon couldn’t help but smile as he closed the door behind him and soon made his way quietly to the other side of the room.

He carefully pulled the duvet up, climbing into bed after putting the duvet back down.

He very gently lifted your head up to let his right arm slide under your neck as a pillow, proceeding to pull your body closer against his chest. Once you were both in a comfortable position, he gently wrapped his other hand around your waist. Caressing your side in a comforting manner.

“Goodnight Y/N.” He whispered as he soon drifted off into slumber.

Ever since then, both of you had stopped the constant arguments. You weren’t always annoyed by every little thing the other did. In school, when you’d accidentally bump into one another, either one would smile and acknowledge the other. Some people who witnessed this, found it strange but your close friends didn’t.

It’s been a good 4 months since you’d reconciled with Sangyeon. Though there were disagreements at times, those arguments would however, be resolved as quickly as it came.

But one thing’s for sure, is that during the past 4 months, you and Sangyeon had slowly found yourselves falling for each other. Neither of you said it out loud, but apparently those around you could visibly tell. Especially your friends.

It was a Thursday afternoon, you and the girls were just walking to the lunch hall when Lisa spotted Sangyeon and his friends just walking down the main building. It seems like they were heading towards the lunch hall as well. With that being said, Lisa called out to Sangyeon’s name, causing him and the rest to turn.

The minute Sangyeon’s eyes locked on Lisa’s and then on you, his gaze softened as you saw the corner of his lips curving upwards into a cute smirk.

They stopped walking to let you girls catch up and once you did, Lisa immediately went to Juyeon and began talking to him casually. The other girls went to walk with the rest while you came to a quick stop beside Sangyeon before you continued walking with the others ahead of you.

“How was class?” He asked, his arm accidentally brushing against yours as you walked further down the building.

“Horrible. Can you believe he wants us to submit 10 codes by the end of this week? I swear that man wants me dead.” You groaned in annoyance, only to hear him chuckle. But what he said next, caught you by surprise.

“But I don’t want you dead.”

With that, you turned to him as a small smile appeared on your face despite the frown you had. Both of you walked in silence, just basking in the conversations of your friends when you felt a soft tickling feeling on your fingers.

You glanced down to see that his hand was playfully brushing against your fingers, making you look up to catch him already staring at you.

Sangyeon smiled at you innocently, not sure if he wanted to say anything else until he felt you slide your hand into his, lacing your fingers with his easily. Now it was his turn to look down and then back up at you. All he did was chuckle, a sound you could definitely get used to.

A week passed and it was finally the weekend. You and Sangyeon didn’t have anything planned for the day.

Or at least you thought.

You were just lounging on the couch on a beautiful Saturday evening when Sangyeon came over to plop down beside you with a cheeky smile on his face.

“You’re oddly happy? What’s going on?” You asked with a raise of your eyebrow.

“I have a surprise for you but you have to go get ready okay?”

“Get ready? It’s already 7 o’clock. Where can we go?” You asked but all you got was a soft whine from him telling you to just do it. You opted to listen as he reminded you to wear prettily. You weren’t sure where you were going so you didn’t want to either overdress or underdress.

So you opted for simple denim skinny jeans, a baby blue sleeveless top, a white long knit cardigan and a pair of beige chunky heeled sandals.

When you left your shared bedroom to go to the living room, you were surprised to see him dressed handsomely in his black skinny jeans, a white button down shirt with the first few buttons undone, along with a navy blue bomber jacket. You saw him look at your outfit from head to toe, only for him to smirk playfully at you.

“Damn, who knew my wife could look this beautiful?” Sangyeon teased, making you giggle.

“Sangyeon, I literally wear jeans everyday.”

“Exactly.”

When you realized what he was trying to say, you soon found yourself blushing as you walked over to him and gently slapped his chest with your hand. Urging him to go before you slapped that cute smirk off his face.

Sangyeon couldn’t help but laugh but nonetheless left the house in his matte black Bentley. You watched as he drove down the street, bringing you to a part of the city where you don’t remember going to before in your life. The car ride was filled with jokes and laughter coming from both of you. He distracted you too much to the point where you didn’t even notice you were already at the location he wanted to bring you.

You looked out the window and that’s when you realize, “Is this an outdoor cinema?” You gasped when you saw the open field with a large screen at the centre, along with the endless rows of couples seated on their own blankets with snacks and drinks of their preferences.

“Sangyeon… This is…” You were speechless and he could see.

He chuckled as he just stared at you with such endearment in his eyes. Some people would just call it love.

“It’s wonderful.” You finally got to finish your sentence, turning to him with a smile.

“I’m glad you think so. Now let’s go! The movie’s about to start.”

Two hours had passed and you were now a few minutes in of the second movie. You noticed some couples were starting to get comfortable on their blankets. You were starting to get tired just sitting up straight and Sangyeon noticed your subtle shifts, desperate to find a comfortable sitting position.

“Hey, you okay?” He asked quietly.

“Yeah. I’m okay, just a little tired from sitting up.” You explained with a bashful little smile. Just then, Sangyeon thought of an idea that was completely beyond your imagination.

Hence, when he patted the space in between his legs, you glanced down and then back at him who was seen smiling softly to you. None of it was making you feel creeped out. In fact, you felt safe and that you could trust him. After all, he was your husband anyways. Of course you trust him.

“Come here.” He said as he stared at you calmly. He wasn’t sure if you were entirely up for this but before he could take his words back, that’s when he saw you carefully crawling towards the space he patted earlier.

Once you were seated in front of him, Sangyeon scooted forward a little before he slid his arms around your waist.

He soon pulled you against his chest, before he whispered in your ear, “Comfortable?”

You turned your head to look at him but instead got slightly flustered by the close proximity that led you to feeling his lips accidentally brush against your own. You got quiet for a moment, praying that he didn’t hear the way your heart was pounding against your chest.

You couldn’t trust your voice so you opted for a soft hum to answer his question. The next few minutes, you found yourself getting more and more comfortable in his arms, putting your hands on top of his forearms as you unconsciously caressed his skin in a calming manner. All the while, Sangyeon was behind you, completely distracted from the movie in front of him.

Instead, his mind was fuzzy with how close you were to him at that very moment. This was something he never thought would happen back when he was still young.

But now that he was here with you, just cuddling at an outdoor movie theatre, he couldn’t help but want more of this. Sangyeon found himself smiling as he couldn’t help but give your sides a gentle squeeze, telling you that he was there with you and that he would never leave you.

Thankfully, you got the silent message.

Because right after he did that, you turned your head to look at him. His eyes held the galaxy. You found yourself getting lost in his eyes.

Both of you were silent but it wasn’t awkward. You didn’t know what came over you but a sense of confidence washes over you. With that being said, you carefully leaned forward to close the gap and soon pressed your lips on his.

To say he was taken aback slightly, is definitely an understatement.

But it took him less than 3 seconds to finally move his lips against yours in a smooth rhythm. You brought your right hand up to gently cup his face as you kissed him.

Sangyeon tightens his hold on you, pulling away from the kiss only to look into your eyes with such adoration. He wasn’t sure if now was the right time to express his feelings for you, but he thought, what was there to lose. So with that thinking, Sangyeon took a small breath before he uttered the 3 words he never thought he’d say to you but he did. And every single word he said at that moment, was as sincere as ever.

“I love you.”

You couldn’t help but smile softly at him before you kissed him again in a longing kiss before pulling away and replying to him with the exact emotions you felt for him genuinely.

“I love you too, Sangyeon.”

~~~

#the boyz scenarios #the boyz imagines #the boyz x reader #the boyz sangyeon #lee sangyeon #tbz scenarios #tbz imagines #tbz x reader #sangyeon x reader #tbz sangyeon scenarios #the boyz sangyeon scenarios #tbz sangyeon fluff #tbz sangyeon angst

[littlemixnet]

Jade Thirlwall on Little Mix babies, learning the art of self-love & her first foray into the world of beauty.

As she releases an astrology-inspired eyeshadow palette with Beauty Bay. “I suppose I've got quite a hectic life – or had quite a hectic life, before lockdown," Jade reflects as we chat on the phone one (surprisingly) chilly end-of-September morning. “But lockdown gave everyone a chance to reflect and think about their priorities – and so I’ve come out of that experience with even more of a drive and more of an ambition to achieve all of the things that I want.” Outside of music? For 28-year-old Jade Thirlwall – one third of record-breaking girl band Little Mix – making moves in the beauty industry sits high on that list of priorities. “Whenever we do videos, I’m always the one that sends mood boards to the makeup artist and I’m like, ‘Ohhh we should try this look and we should do this eye,'" she laughs. So teaming up with Beauty Bay to release a 42-pan eyeshadow palette inspired by her passion for crystals, spirituality and astrology (who knew?) seemed like a natural step. "I knew that together we could create my dream palette, something which my fans can use to create out of this world of lewks.” Speaking from her London apartment, Jade is relaxed, open and oozing with passion – for her life in Little Mix, her personal life and her upcoming beauty ventures alike. And not to mention: very happy the weather is turning, so she can roll-out her autumn-appropriate palette on post-lockdown nights out, pronto. “I’m a Northern winter girl. I like the cold. I like feeling snuggly. Yeah. Summer is not my vibe to be honest.” I love beauty – always have done from a very early age. This is a bit of a throwback, but I did a makeup course at college back in the day, so I’ve always had a love for makeup throughout the years. I think Little Mix have tried every single thing you can think of when it comes to different looks and trends. I think it’s known amongst my fans particularly that I love experimenting with colour. And I love the whole glam of it all and all the different eyeshadows. Every time I do a shoot or a video it’s a chance to do a different look – and I’m very versatile when it comes to that. So yeah, it felt like once me and Beauty Bay started working together, they are known for doing the best palettes, so it seemed right. Over the past couple of years especially, me and the girls have started delving into more of the things that we’re individually passionate about or into whilst working together, and it has been really lovely. We’re obviously really supportive of each other’s ventures, and I suppose it gives the fans more of a chance to see what we’re into ourselves. And it gives people that don’t really know a lot about Little Mix or about us individually, it gives those people a chance to be like oh, actually… so Jade is into this sort of thing and Leigh likes this sort of thing and Perrie is into that and… yeah. It has been lovely, and I suppose the last sort of year and a half has given us all a chance to reflect and think about the things we want to do on our own as well as in a group. I’m at a point now in my life that I’m definitely so comfortable in my own skin. I know exactly what works for me. I’m not afraid to try new things and experiment with colour and stuff like that. I think as someone who loves art and stuff in general as well it just sort of lends itself well. It's an art form to me, makeup, and expressing yourself that way is really amazing. So it felt really right [to collaborate on an eyeshadow palette with Beauty Bay]. I suppose lockdown – it has given everyone a chance to gain a better perspective of all the things that they're into. The best version of myself in terms of makeup is just elevating my natural beauty. I think everyone should do that! I think when I first started out in Little Mix and as a teenager, makeup was worn as a mask to cover who I really was, if that makes sense. And as I’ve got older, I’ve realised that it isn’t a mask; makeup is more of an expression of who you actually are, and it’s not to cover yourself up. It’s to elevate yourself. And so, now, whenever I do a look, I don’t tend to cake it on as much as I used to. I do things that accentuate my features already and don’t try and hide it. I think my go-to makeup on a night out or something is just a classic bronze-y beautiful eye. That’s my go-to because it suits my skin tone and I feel like nobody can go wrong with a lovely golden bronze-y eye. And that’s definitely in the palette. I think this palette was an opportunity to show everyone a bit more about myself that may be they didn’t know – like my love for crystals and healing crystals; my spirituality which is definitely something I’ve become more and more passionate about over the past few years. I needed something that kept me grounded and kept me well, mentally and physically. And so, spirituality became a part of that and I’m obsessed with crystals. My mam is obsessed with crystals and so that was one of the first thoughts when making the palette was incorporating all of that. And so, that’s kind of the original inspiration. I feel like the palette – it was important for me to have something for everyone, because I’m well aware that some people don’t like experimenting too much or some people love having loads of fun. So when I agreed to do this with Beauty Bay, I wanted to make sure it catered to every kind of person and every different skin tone. No matter how much you want to be adventurous or not, it’s all in there. I always have crystals with me wherever I am. Certain ones are catered to certain aspects of your life or what you need in that moment. I’ve labelled a couple of shades in the palette after my favourite ones – tourmaline is my favourite, which wards off any negativity. I think no matter how much people believe in it or not, just from a psychological perspective, for me, it’s all about grounding yourself. I think it’s really important to get rid of any negative energy and constantly keep the positive coming in. I suppose I don’t really have a specific religion so I use that as a means to believe in something greater than me and that works for me. There have definitely been a lot of changes in my life recently. A lot has happened. Obviously me and the girls are a three – two of the girls have just had babies so there's been a lot of change in my life. I’ve met someone, fallen in love, and all of that soppy stuff, so – yeah! It definitely feels like, more than ever, a lot has been happening all at once. But it’s so exciting and as we’ve said before, lockdown gave everyone a chance to reflect and think about their priorities and think about things they really want to focus on. I’ve come out of that experience with even more of a drive and more of an ambition to achieve all of the things that I want to achieve and be there more for my family and friends – and obviously go out more and wear more makeup! 'Cos I’ve spent a year and a half in the flat with nothing on and lounging around so it has been nice to start glamming up again. The other girls are loving being new mums, honestly they’ve taken to it so well. I always knew they’d be great mams, I went to see Leigh last week and met the twins who are so beautiful, they just slept the whole time – but you know what, it was so weird because all I’ve ever known is being round the girls and it being us and just us. And for the first time it's actually dawning on us that they’ve had children – actually seeing them there in front of us, like they’re real; it wasn’t a prop. I feel like because of all the music videos we’ve been doing with them pregnant, I don’t know why but in my head I kind of just didn’t think it was real or like – every time we’d been doing a music video we’d base it around their pregnancies, so every character we’d play in a music video would revolve around them being pregnant as well so it was almost like a fun little act that we were doing. So seeing Leigh and seeing the babies was like, “Oh, they’re here and they’re perfect and you’re a mum now and you’ve got to do this.” But I’m so proud of them and they smashed the pregnancies. They were absolute Queens, working hard – and they had each other which I suppose really helped them. It’s amazing. I am hoping to see Perrie soon and be the best Auntie I can be. I’ve never thought about comparing myself - it’s not me, it’s everybody else. It’s other people around me that try and put that pressure on me, I don’t know if being in a group dynamic has may be meant that I’ve got used to comparison and so it doesn’t effect me as much. Everyone’s in different places in their life and sometimes it’s assumed that I should feel, ‘cos I’m a woman, that I’m behind and I should feel a certain type of way that I’m not at that point in my life yet… But I’m so unbelievably proud of where I am at in my life and what I’ve achieved and my career. I’ve got an amazing boyfriend, I’ve got amazing friends and family, and I’m a businesswoman –why would I feel left out?! But it's interesting… like every interview it gets asked like “Are you feeling broody?”, and I’m like “No, hun! Are you?! Do you want me to ask you if you want to have a child or children?". Like, it’s quite a personal question, isn’t it? So it has felt a bit invasive at times… I think that everyone moves at different paces and I’m happy with mine. If my beauty cabinet was on fire, there are three things I'd save. Obviously I’m going to say the palette because I’ve put far too much work into that to let it burn, so that has got to come with us. I feel so proud looking at it – when I see Jade on top of it and I open it and it’s all shades that I’ve named and it’s all colours that I like – there’s no way I’m letting that go up in flames. So that’s coming with us. Then I’d say maybe just a classic nude lip, I’d have to grab. Because I feel like if you’re having a no makeup day, as long as you’ve got a bit of a nude lip on and nothing else, you’re sorted – do you know what I mean? And then finally… third product… may be a brow brush? Which I never thought I’d say but brows are so big now aren’t they, hun? They’re a priority. As long as they’re brushed up and they’re all in the right place then we’re good. X-Factor Jade would've saved three very different makeup products. A fuchsia pink lip, a massive lash… and, what else… brows just weren’t a thing to me then it’s so wild to me like the change in trends and stuff… maybe a lip gloss or something? But I mean, back then, especially for us girls, I think makeup artists got so excited at the thought of a new girl band that anything went. It was just throw anything on our faces and hope for the best at that point. It was a hot mess. But it was also of that time, like pop stars were really doing the most – like you had Katy Perry… it was all really colourful wasn’t it? Nicki Minaj… all these artists who were doing like really bright bold makeup looks and the eye colour would be very different to the lip… and y’know we’d have feathers on our eyelashes. It really was throwing the kitchen sink in so we’ve definitely learnt to mellow down over the years for sure. In ten years time, I’d like to still be performing with the girls. We’ll be doing something together. I’ll have built more of my empire. Maybe more beauty things and more other things I’m into like art and my businesses up North. As it stands, every year I get older I get more confident in myself so I’d like to imagine in ten years time I’ll be at a place where literally no body is going to affect me when it comes to self-love. And maybe I’d be helping to support another girl band by that point as well. It’s getting a bit lonely out here. We need more. So, yeah – I’ll be helping flying the flag there, I suppose.

#jade thirlwall #jt: beauty bay #article #4oct21

[flameohotwife]

Happiness and Love

Here is my contribution to @kataang-week day 2: Blending Cultures! Aang and Katara are expecting their first child, and discuss how they want to pass down each of their cultures. Basically just shameless cloud family fluff. Enjoy!

ao3 | ffn

Katara sat on a balcony of the Southern Air Temple, resting her hand on her finally-swelling belly while she watched Aang going through his bending forms below. She missed being able to spar with him every morning; keeping her skills and reflexes sharp, but Aang wouldn’t risk hurting the baby accidentally. They would still do their waterbending katas together later, under the moon, at least. That was something to look forward to.

As she took a sip of the tea Aang had left for her, she thought about the child growing in her womb, and how they would raise them. She had known going into this relationship--long before she was old enough to think about having this family--what it would mean to marry outside the Water Tribes. That she may have to sacrifice some aspects of her culture to also let parts of her partner’s shine through their children; through their family.

Even their wedding had been a mix of Water Tribe and Air Nomad traditions, from their vows to their clothes and even the food. Aang had briefly tried to insist on a traditional Water Tribe ceremony, since weddings hadn’t even been all that common amongst the Air Nomads (though they did happen, despite what some propagandist Fire Nation texts may have said about the Air Nomads being…sexually promiscuous and allergic to commitment), but Katara had put her foot down. Their wedding was not about her, or Aang, individually. It was this new thing they had created with their relationship. A beautiful mix of water and air, just as their child would be.

She was brought out of her reverie by a warm hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, sweetie,” she said, looking up from her tea to catch Aang’s bright grey eyes. She wondered if their baby would have his eyes. All of her thoughts seemed to flick to the baby these days.

“Hi,” he returned brightly, pressing a kiss to her forehead before sitting beside her on the bench, pouring a cup of tea for himself. “Thinking about anything in particular?”

She caught a glimpse of the smile he tried to hide behind his teacup and knew he’d caught her daydreaming about the baby again. She couldn’t keep her own lips from curving upward or her heart from fluttering. She was so happy for the opportunity to bear his child; to create a family with him, and bring more of him into the world. Though she had truthfully considered him family since she was fourteen years old, this way of being a family was different, and new, and so, so exciting. Katara couldn’t wait to see what this family they created together would look and be like. She knew Aang felt the same way by the fact that he’d practically been floating around the temple, making extra time to pray for her and the baby, and waiting on her hand-and-foot for the last three months since she’d told him.

“Just the baby,” she sighed, setting down her now-empty cup. She fixed him with an apprehensive stare, and he set down his cup too to give her his full attention. “Do you think we’ll be able to do a good job… you know, passing down both our cultures? It’s soimportant to pass down their Air Nomad heritage, regardless of what type of bender they are, or aren’t, but… they’ll be half Water Tribe, too. I want to be able to celebrate our holidays, andyour holidays. Eat both types of food with meals just like we do now sometimes. Obviously we’ll be respectful about the meat just like I try to be now, but, I just… I worry a little bit that one culture or the other will get focused on, especially if they’re a bender, but they will still be part of both of us.”

Aang gave her a reassuring smile--he had always been so good at calming her when she was rambling and getting lost in her own worry--and took her hands in his. He couldn’t put into words why or how much he loved her for considering things like that, even if it bordered on overthinking sometimes. That she took his heart and his culture, which had been gone for over a century at this point, into account when planning how to raise their children.

He remembered how his heart had squeezed and felt lighter than the air he bent at the thought that she would even want to have babies with him, back when they were still discussing it as a theoretical. She had insisted that she wanted to give him his lost culture back, and he had argued that she was all he ever wanted, but that creating new life with her would be a privilege he would cherish forever. And now here she sat, with only a few months left to go before they could meet the child they had made together. His excitement was beyond measure, but his love--he never thought he would feel love this intense and all-encompassing, and he had loved Katara truly and deeply since they were still kids. He almost couldn’t believe how much more he loved her every single day. Almost.

“Oh, Katara,” he started, trying to find the right way to say it. He didn’t want her to think he was dismissing her concerns. “Sweetie, I love you so, so much. How did I get so lucky that you found me, and love me, and want a family with me? Just the fact that you’re even worrying about this… I’m sure it won’t be easy, but I know the two of us can find a good middle ground for our family. Like you said, we do a pretty good job of that already.”

He leaned over to kiss her gently, sweetly on the lips, feeling as if he may burst from the love he felt for her. He pulled back to see that she still didn’t look convinced, though the worry in her eyes had definitely lessened.

“You know what I think?” He asked, determined to return her to the confident, happy Katara he knew and loved.

“What do you think, oh wise Avatar?” She knew that, though he hated being called by his title in most instances, he didn’t mind the occasional teasing from her, since she had never seen or treated him like that was his only identity. He threw her an amused look before continuing.

“I think that we will consult your elders on naming our baby, using the name of someone close to us who has passed, in Water Tribe tradition. I think we will have a Pangsai--a birth ceremony, and a pancake feast after our baby is born to welcome them into our extended, blended, found family, in the Air Nomad tradition. I think you will wear our baby under your amauti for easy feeding and bonding. And I won’t be able to resist kissing their little head when I see it poking out. I think they will get to pick a bison from the new herd. I think they will go ice dodging. I think we will travel to your family’s home for the Winter Solstice every year. I think we will celebrate the Autumnal Equinox at an Air Temple. I think we will eat sea prunes--well, the two of you can, anyway--and seaweed noodles, and dumplings, and moon peaches, and sweet buns, and buttered tea, and bison milk, and all of our favorite foods from home.

“It will be a little bit of both our cultures, but it will also be something new. Just like when we bent the clouds over Makapu, combining air and water to create new shapes, our own little cloudbaby will be a little bit of each of us, but also their own person, with their own likes and dislikes. And I don’t know about you, but I am so excited to meet them and learn about them and nurture their wild and crazy dreams, just like we’ve done for each other all these years.”

As he talked, describing what he thought their life as a family would look like, tears gathered in both of their eyes. They had both come so far, and lost so much, to get to this point. Where a few years ago they were still in mourning for the loved ones and childhoods they had lost to war, here they were celebrating the creation of new life. Where they were both the last benders of their respective races, here they had the chance to birth a new one. Even if their child wasn’t a bender, they would still be carrying the heritage of both their people; people nearly or completely lost due to the war, and they both felt so lucky to be in this position. Together.

“Aang…” her voice was watery, and she couldn’t even begin to articulate what she was feeling. But she knew he knew. He always knew.

He pulled her into a crushing hug, careful to avoid squeezing her belly. “I love you so much, Katara. You have no idea what this means to me, to make this new life, with you.” There were tears streaming down both their faces, now, and he was reminded of a similar hug in the Serpent’s Pass a long, long time ago, when he had first told her how much he loved her, in his own way. “I can’t wait to see our own family, so full of happiness and love…”

She pulled back to look him in the eyes, knowing exactly what he was referring to, and it dawned on her that he may have known even then that they would be here one day. She wiped his tears tenderly and pressed a loving kiss to his lips before startling with a yelp.

“What is it? Is everything okay?” Aang asked, concern clear in his eyes.

“It’s… the baby! They kicked! Here, feel,” she took his hand and pressed it to the top of her bump, and within a few seconds he could feel something pushing back at him. “It still feels so weird to me.”

“Katara, it’s… that’s our baby!” It wasn’t the first time he’d been able to feel this, but it was still new. He looked shocked and elated every time, as if it was only a dream to him until he could feel the baby moving with his own hand.

“Mhmm, it is,” she beamed. Her cheeks were beginning to hurt from smiling so wide but she didn’t care. He was so childlike in his wonder, and she was incredibly excited to bring more of his spirit into the world. They would sit there for hours with his hand on her belly, and the joy would not abate.

They knew it wouldn’t be easy; nothing in their life had been. But they also knew it would be worth it. They wouldn’t be perfect parents, but they would do their best not only to raise this little one well, but also to teach them about both parts of their heritage. If they could have a little more of each other to love, a perfect blend of water and air, a new, beautiful human to add to this world, they would thank the Spirits every day for this life. And it would be enough, always.

#kataang week 2021 #blending cultures #mixed race cloud family #aang #katara #kataang #kataangtag

[spectrumed]

5. sleep

It hardly gets dark in the Swedish summers. Between dusk to dawn, you’ve got about an hour to fall asleep before the sun rises again. If you struggle to fall asleep that fast, you can invest in some good window blinds. Or you can do as I do and place one big pillow over your face. Then the birds start singing around three o’clock in the morning. You can practically hear the sounds of Edvard Grieg’s Morning Mood playing at around four o’clock in the morning. Around five o’clock in the morning, it is as bright as midday. Did you have a good time sleeping? Or did you pace around in a circle having one hell of a panic attack? I thought you took some of those sleeping pills you got prescribed, they should have helped you fall asleep… wait, you did take them? They didn’t work? Oh, they did work, you just felt your body falling asleep while your mind stayed awake? That sounds terrible, real terrible. Very well. It’s morning now. Want some coffee?

You could form a religion out of sleeping. Let’s have sermons where we fill a whole auditorium full of beds and have our congregates take a big collective nap. Sleep for the sleep god! Pillows for the pillow throne! Sleep is a billion-dollar industry, there’s a plethora of handy products you can buy that promise to send you on a luxury liner to dreamland. Pills, mattresses, dreamcatchers, whatever your snoozy heart desires. You can go to a proper doctor and they might help you, or you can settle for the placebo effect and go to some fraudulent quack, instead. He might make you swallow some pills that contain arsenic, but hey, arsenic is a naturally occurring element. It can’t be all that bad for you if it is natural. And you do want to sleep, don’t you? If you take this pill in your mouth and swallow it with a glass of water, I promise you, you will sleep for a very long time.

The esteemed former president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, claims that he only needs four to five hours of sleep every night. While Mr. Trump is well-known to be a paragon of honesty, I do doubt he’s telling the truth. No, I actually do believe him when says that he only gets about four or five hours of sleep each night, I just don’t believe him when he says that is all he needs. He doesn’t look very well-rested, does he? And Margaret Thatcher, the similarly adored former prime minister of the United Kingdom, claimed that she also only needed about four hours of sleep every night. Yes, while researching the sleeping habits of famous monsters, I’ve come to the conclusion that amongst powerful individuals, not getting enough sleep has become a proper badge of honour. The belief is that if you don’t get enough sleep, that must be because you are living such a vibrantly successful life, and are so career-driven, that you simply haven’t got enough time to sleep for the full eight hours. People who sleep for more than four hours are lazy liberals. Go-getters like Trump has got to be out there, working, making decisions, raping women, and showing daddy what a good boy he is. Sleep is for the weak. But maybe I am weak. I sure like sleeping.

It’s the cultural hangover our society has had since the 80’s. Back when the yuppies wearing jackets with obscenely padded shoulders would happily chuck down eight to ten espressos in one go while A Flock of Seagulls was playing on the radio encouraging everyone to go running. And to be fair to them, with the constant fear of the doomsday clock hitting midnight, they really had no reason to think that they’d survive the decade. The new millennia, it seemed, would have no cities, no nature, no humans, only radiated mutants scouring the rubble that remains of civilization for cans of preserved something edible. Self-destructive behaviour was in. It was fashionable. Doubt people got enough sleep back then, between snorting coke and wondering if the next pandemic that hits the night clubs would start killing as many straight folks as gay folks. Well, here we are in the new 20’s, and we’ve got a pandemic that does appear to kill people regardless of sexual orientation. Sure, the looming threat of nuclear obliteration has been lessened dramatically, but we’ve largely come to exchange that anxiety for the fear of total environmental collapse, instead. No wonder 80’s nostalgia is a big thing right now. History doesn't repeat itself, but It often rhymes, said Mark Twain (supposedly.) I wonder how much coke Mark Twain would snort if he lived in the 80’s.

I notice a palpable difference in my mood and mental state when I’ve been getting good amounts of sleep. Lack of sleep results in lack of clear thinking. Caffeine, though it is something I am chronically addicted to, does not help fix a sleep-deprived mind. There are no tricks of revolutionary “life hacks” one can employ to get out of sleeping. To recover from depression, one has to sleep. Sleep often and sleep well. I cannot understate the importance of being well-rested. You cannot process information if you are tired. I am reminded of my teenage years seeing friends of mine who’d stay up all night, then come into school shuffling like agonised zombies. They got so frustrated when the teachers reprimanded them for snoozing in class. Well, dummies, it is your fault for drinking several dozen cans of Red Bull every day! I know that sleep does not always come easy. I know the terror of insomnia. But, c’mon! At some point, you’ve got to realise that sleep is essential. Maybe most of your problems stem from the fact that you refuse to get enough of it? Here’s where the tough love comes in. If you wanna get better, kiddo, then listen to me. It’s bedtime. Yes, I know you’d rather stay up late playing monopoly with your friends, but I’m confiscating your dice and I’ll only give it back to you when you’ve gotten some good sleep. Okay? You hear me, missy? You listen to your daddy now, and go to bed. No ifs or buts about it, princess, I’ve made myself clear. I know what is best for you, and you know that I am right. I’m your daddy.

But what if I can’t seem to fall asleep? Normally, it takes a long time for me to fall asleep. It is not uncommon for me to stay awake for two hours, maybe more, before I finally begin to sleep. Fearing that I won’t fall asleep gives me anxiety. That anxiety keeps me awake. I turn my body. I try lying on my side. First my left side, then my right side. I then try to lie on my back. I’ve got a song stuck playing in my head. Not even the whole song, just a ten-second segment of it. It’s playing over and over. I’m worried about the future, will I ever find security, will I ever find a wife, will I get to grow old? I worry about death. I keep hearing the music playing, it’s grating. I rearrange the pillows, in hopes that will make me feel more comfortable. But no, I keep tossing and turning like a fish caught on land. I’m getting frustrated. If only I could shut off my brain. I’m constantly thinking. I turn to my side again, but now I notice I’ve moved arounds so much that now the bed has shifted away from its position next to the wall. There’s now a gap between the bed and the wall. I almost fall down that gap. I get up and I push the bed back against the wall. I lay down in bed. The song is still playing.

How am I ever going to become a successful businessman if I am wasting so many hours just trying to get to sleep? This is the time I should be spending on the phone, yelling at people and making inappropriate sexual comments to my female employees. That is what good executives do. I need to get my life in order. I need to exercise more. I should practice mindfulness. I should get a life coach, a personal trainer, a stylist, an accountant, an assistant, a trophy wife, and a mistress. I need people in my life to take care of me. It’s funny how rich people create the sort of environment around them where people will take care of all their needs, effectively infantilising them. These people don’t even get to decide how to dress themselves. They’ve got fancy apartments, but they don’t choose any of the furniture. They’ve got art on the walls that they don’t like, but the art looks expensive, and that is all that matters. They’ve got kids, but they don’t raise them. Their spouses are cheating on them, but in fairness, they are cheating on their spouses. They don’t really even know what their jobs entails, as they’ve gotten promoted so many times that they’ve ended up in a position that is totally outside their realm of expertise. But they’re so powerful that no-one is able to fire them over their pretty blatant incompetence. They’re successful. They’ve made it. But they still can’t sleep at night. They only manage to successfully fall asleep at night after swallowing a fistful of pills along with a swig of vodka.

It must be easy being a self-help guru. Well, what I mean to say is that all you really need is charisma, which is something you need to be born with. But you don’t need to do any actual studying, any real research, or any kind of soul-searching or deliberation. All you need is to state what is obvious. You go on stage in front of an anxious audience, mostly composed of middle-class salesmen and miscellaneous white collar ghosts. You smile, show off your eerily bright teeth, and they clap. You tell them to go take care of themselves, to eat more healthily, to take walks, or go swimming, and love their partners. You tell them to drink less, or maybe, if they feel like it, they could drink more. I am sure you could spin alcohol as a positive or a negative, depending on what crowd you’re talking to. Tell them to appreciate family. Tell them to appreciate others. Live, laugh, but most of all, love. Tell them to go clean their rooms. Tell them to remember that if they’re on an airplane that is about to crash land, they need to put their own oxygen mask on before they can help others put theirs on. If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else? Now, go to bed!

You know all this stuff. Me telling you that you should sleep more doesn’t really help you. You know that you should sleep more. It’s not like as if you’re too dumb to realise that. And it’s not like as if you’re too dumb to realise that it is better to drink in moderation, and that you should smoke less weed. There are many small little things you can do to improve your life, to stop being a terminally unemployed slacker. It’s like your grandpa who tells you stories about life after the war when you could walk into the biggest building in town, slam your fist against the table and demand to be given a job and a house and a wife and a couple of kids, and that was all you needed to do. He can’t comprehend the fact that society doesn’t work like that, any more. Most people my generation have given up hope of ever owning a home, at least if they happen to live in the vicinity of a larger city. It seems that, no matter where you live, the cost of homes has risen to an impenetrable degree. It seems just as likely that you will be able to afford your very own genetically-engineered pet dragon before you will get to be a house-owner. It’s the fault of those damn boomers, why bother changing your ways, when the boomers are still in charge? Others may accuse you of wallowing in your own depression, but you are perfectly aware that this is exactly what you are doing. You are self-aware. But self-awareness on its own is not enough to motivate anyone. You still can’t see the point in doing anything constructive with your life. Life just feels so aimless. It’s easier to sit, smoke weed, and watch cartoons.

Pop psychology is problematic. To say the least. Take all those self-help gurus suffering from their messiah complexes and put them through the shredder. Don’t buy books thinking that they’ll offer you the kind of treatment you would get from an actual psychiatrist. I know that, depending on where you are in the world, treatment can get very expensive, but you’re not going to get better reading the book of some self-aggrandising narcissist’s collection of wishy-washy platitudes. Dr. Phil has done great evil pretending to be a therapist on the TV, and Jordan Peterson (despite having once been an esteemed scholar) has turned a generation of young internet-savvy zoomers into proto-fascists obsessed with the monogamy of lobsters. Pop psychology has become a guise for cult leaders to reap new followers. Getting treatment should not feel like joining a new religious movement. Maybe I’m just one of those annoying atheists, but I dare say, psychiatry works at its best when it's secular. You should not look at your psychiatrist as a prophet speaking to God. They’re just a doctor, and you need treatment.

I do not aspire to create a self-help blog. I do not promise that reading this blog will help you in any way. I would be overjoyed if someone came up to me and told me that I had inspired them to seek help. You may tell me that reading my words have made you feel less alone, knowing that others have gone through all these things that you are going through. When I felt at my worst, I remember reading the memoirs of people I admired who had similarly struggled in their lives, and I felt less alone. But none of those books pretended to exist principally to help others. Those books did help me, through the candid descriptions of struggles that I thought I was alone in experiencing. Knowing that some people had pulled through, managed to find a light at the end of the tunnel, it made me think I could one day be like them. The books didn’t seek to fix me, but they offered me a perspective that came to be very valuable later on, when I started going to therapy, and when I later started taking medication. Sometimes that is all you need. Not someone standing over you and telling you to go to bed, or to clean your room, or to stop drinking. You know all that, already. What you really need is the reassurance that things can indeed get better. Sleep will come.

#neurodiversity #neurodivergent #autism spectrum disorder #autism #aspergers #mental health

[thelordofdarkreunion]

Magnificent Scoundrels- Grand Tour

I decided to write about Thomas Drake and his crew for this one.  As usual, I do not own any other characters except Drake and his crew.  Enjoy the story.  

“I am not a good person, but I am an honest one.”

-Thomas Drake

“You said you wanted to take a tour of my ship, so, here we are.”  Drake gave an elaborate, formal bow.  “Welcome aboard the Apocalypse.  You all have your engineers with you?”  He looked around the group of, who did, indeed have all their engineers with them.  “Good.  Everyone is invited, and if you are able to replicate anything you see here from memory, then I think it’s yours, fairly won.”  Which cut right into the heart of why everyone had their engineers here.  

Drake turned into the hangar bay, beginning the tour.  “The Apocalypse is an Apricus Industries 745-class light cruiser, heavily modified by us, of course.  Originally named the Summer’s Light, it was renamed something more appropriate for a warship after me and my merry band of maniacs stole it during the Jerrick War.  It was, uh, well, upgraded, as I said before, and now includes reinforced shielding on the hull, better engines, best in class, as a matter of fact, heavy railgun batteries, more point defense batteries, and nuclear launch tubes, of which I am particularly proud of.  Unique amongst most capital sized ships from my home galaxy, it can enter atmosphere, a fact that I have come to appreciate in my line of work.  Now, this,” he waved vaguely at their surroundings, “is the hangar bay.  We only need a couple of shuttles, so for the most part, it’s open and used by the armsmen for training.  Speaking of which,” he nodded in the direction of a group wearing a collection of military-looking uniforms watching two of their number spar, “those are the armsmen.”  Drake gave a sharp whistle, and the armsmen stopped what they were doing.  Three of their number walked over to the Scoundrels, while the rest milled around, apparently taking a break from what they were doing.  

Drake gave the classic back-and-forth gesture that has accompanied introductions since the dawn of time as he called out the three individuals.  “Derrick Saul, commander of 1st Squad.”  The armsman furthest to the left, a deeply sunburn man with hair cut so short he may as well have been bald, gave them a polite nod.  “Jean Garang, commander of 2nd Squad.”  The armsman in the middle, a tall woman with exceptionally dark-hued skin and short cut black hair also gave a nodd.  “And Rilgaldis, commander of 3rd Squad.”  A massive reptilian alien, well over seven feet tall, gave them a salute.  “Scoundrels, Saul, Garang, and Rilgaldis.  Rilgaldis, Garang, and Saul, the Scoundrels.”  Drake gave a moment’s pause.  “Well then, now introductions have been made.  Why don’t you three tell my glorious compatriots exactly where you come from and why you’re galavanting across the galaxy with an unstable mercenary?”  Drake’s joking manner broke the formal and somewhat strained atmosphere.  The Scoundrels relaxed, and Saul grinned.  

“Fine.  I’ll go first.  Born on Europa, joined the 317th Federal Expeditionary Division.  I’m here because, well, you pay more than the Federal Army, Captain.”

“Same thing with me.  Born in Sudan, joined the Army, got put in the 5th Guards.  Drake pays more than the Federation,” said Garang.  

“And you, Rilgaldis?”

“Born into the Dracus Army, left, joined the Imperial Foreign Legion, left, joined you because you pay better,” said Rilgaldis.  

“Yes.  The three leaders of my armsmen.  Matter of fact, it’s a wonder you two,” he indicated Saul and Garang, “get along as well as you do.”  

“Wait, what do you mean by that?” asked Kirk.  Saul and Garang grinned at each other.  

“You see, we are on opposite sides of one of humanity's oldest questions.  Matter of fact, Garang, let’s settle this once and for all.  You all seem like you know what you’re talking about.”  The Scoundrels looked at each other, hesitant about what the question would bring.  “So, here we go, and I know that you’ll all agree with me: 9 milimetre Parabellum or .45 ACP?”  

“What?” replied Vir.  The other Scoundrels seemed to be equally bemused by the question.  

“Are you not a soldier or a weapons enthusiast?  Don’t pick up guns like the rest of us?”

“I was a pilot, now an Admiral.”

“Oh dear me, the flyboys have their heads so high in the clouds they don’t know the answer to life’s greatest mystery.  Any of the rest of you?  No?  Bullets don’t exist where you come from or something?”  Kirk, Shepard, and Cain shook their heads to the negative.

“.50 cal.”  Master Chief added his input.  Saul whistled.  

“Jesus Christ.  Although,” Saul walked up and compared his height to the Chief’s, “if anyone can handle a .50 calibre handgun on the regular, it would be the two meter guy made entirely of muscle.”  

“Wonderful.  Now that we have that out of the way, onwards!” exclaimed Drake.  The rest of the Scoundrels followed, threading their way out of the hangar and through the winding grey passages of the starship.  Most were neat, clean, and paneled with easily cleanable grey metal, although one particular passageway they crossed was under repair, the panelling ripped away to expose a myriad of interconnecting pipes and wires.  A mixed group of aliens and humans, all wearing grey jumpsuits, were hard at work, fiddling with various tangles of sparking wires.  A short woman jumped from atop a ladder where she had been perched, examining the ceiling, and offered Drake a vague salute.  

“We’re almost done, Captain.  Wiring in this sector should be back up in no time.”  She seemed to notice the group following him for the first time, and gave them a cheery wave.  “Tor Herald.  In charge of...well...nothing in particular.  We,” this was accompanied by a wave encompassing the various workers, “are unofficially known throughout the ship as the ne’re-doers.  Unspecialized specialists, jacks of all trades, masters of none, we’re the crew that keeps the Apocalypse running.  This ain’t a military vessel, so we’re just on as regular crew members.  Nothing to do with most of the money and explosions that seem to follow the Captain around.”  One of the wires in the background started to spark alarmingly.  “Ah, shit.  Love to talk, got to fix this.”  She ran to the problem, an odd-shaped tool in hand.  

“Best keep going, then,” said Drake.  He gave the group a ‘follow me’ motion, and led them deeper through the halls.  “I get crew members from all over the place.  Most of the armsmen and specialists are ex-military, but the crew...I have from all over the place.  Which I said before.  Don’t really know how else to put it.  Got crew members from Earth, Vorketh, Aequalitas, Narcan, Delstrovic, and everywhere in between.  Now,” he turned and gestured to a section of more pleasant looking and open hallways, “as your esteemed colleague Jack Cooper can attest, these are the crew quarters.  They are located throughout the ship, so vital personnel can sleep next to their stations, but the bulk of them are in this area.”  He led them past the crew quarters to a pair of large sliding glass doors.  “And this is what we call the weapons room.  All our personal weapons are created, reparied, and tested here.”  It was a brightly lit room covered in stark white plastic, but what drew everyone’s attention were it’s two occupants, who, although fiddling with various bits and pieces, seemed to be in the middle of a fierce argument.  

“You see, the problem with your theory is, at the very heart of the matter, you’ve got it wrong.  The purpose of a government is to help its people by any means it finds necessary,” said a short, lean, black-haired man in the midst of inserting a new power core into a plasma gun.  

“No, the purpose of a government is to protect its people’s rights and protect them from foriegn invasion.  Otherwise, it should leave them alone,” replied a muscular, brown-haired man of medium height as he tightened the bolts on a massive machine gun.  

“Ah, but the thing is, the government can help people.  And at the basic level, why would you not help people?  You’re a Christian, and it is at the core of your philosophy to help others,” countered the black-haired man.    

“Individually.  It is our duty to individually help other people.  You’re a student of history, and you know what happens.  If the government helps people in the way you’re suggesting, then it gains control over them, and thus should it turn bad, the common people are helpless.”  The Scoundrels filed into the room behind Drake as the two argued, apparently oblivious to their presence.  

“The core problem with you is that you’re just an ignorant, uneducated farm boy who’s clinging to a dying philosophy,” sneered the black-haired man.  

“And you are a stuck up city student who has absolutely no idea how the real world works,” shot back the brown-haired man with a vengeance.  

“You’re a stupid moron who follows people who will plunge the world into despotism.”  At this, the brown-haired man threw down his wrench and cracked his knuckles.  

“I’d be very, very, careful if I were you,” he warned.  The tension in the air was almost like a physical being.  Several of the Scoundrels standing behind Drake tugged on their collars as if to escape from an oppressive heat.  Kirk stepped forward as if to mediate, but Drake held out a hand to forestall him.  

“Or what?  What are you going to do?” replied the black haired man snidely.

“This.”  And before anyone could react, the brown haired man stepped forward, wrapped his arms around the shorter man, and pulled him close into a passionate kiss.  They broke apart, and upon seeing the shocked faces of their various watchers, both started howling with laughter.  

“Oh, you should have seen your faces,” said the taller of the pair in between wheezes.  The other man was clutching his midsection and had tears streaming down his face.  He made some sort of strangled gasping noise and grabbed the edge of a counter for support.  

“We got ‘em!”  He broke down into hysterics again.  “We got you!”  Drake merely rolled his eyes.  

“Everyone, meet Mark,” he nodded towards the brown haired man, “and Oliver,” this was accompanied by a wave to the black haired man, “Danis-Holden, two of my three weapons specialists.”  The two, still trying not to laugh, stood up straighter and nodded as they were introduced.  Noting the still bemused faces of the Scoundrels, Drake sighed.  “So, you guys want to tell them who you are, where you’re from, why you’re with me and what was going on here?”  

“Sure!” replied Mark cheerfully.  “So, I was born on Enlalda, a colony world on the edge of Federal Space.  It’s an agrarian planet, and most people there moved from the center of Federal space because of religious persecution.  Like ninety-ish percent of the population are old school Evangelical Christian conservatives.  I was born and raised on a farm; grew up as a...well, old school Evangelical Christian conservative.  Always liked to tinker with things, got really good at repairing vehicles and the various guns you’ll find all farmers have on colony worlds.  But, I always thought there was more to life than just farming.  I wanted adventure.  I wanted to do something with my life.  So, one day a mercenary starship shows up,” he paused his narrative for a moment and looked queringly at Drake, “wasn’t that the Helidon job?”  Drake rubbed his forehead.

“Oh.  Yeah, it was.  Now that was a weird operation.  But I digress.  Please continue.”

“Yep.  So, as I was saying, the Captain here showed up near where I was.  I heard he was looking for a weapons specialist, and I had some experience in that area, so I decided to offer my services, and you accepted, and I joined the crew.  And that’s where I met this idiot.”  He gestured at Oliver.

“Damn straight.  But before we get into that, I have to tell you my story,” replied Oliver.  “I was born on Tyvander.  Metropolitan planet near the center of Federal space.  I grew up in a middle class family near one of the bigger cities, Menvander.  Like a lot of people, I went to college there: majored in political science, minored in specialized engineering.  Unlike some planets, Tyvander isn't super rich or famous, and there is no specialized educational infrastructure there, so if you want to go to college, you pay for it.  As it turns out, being a political science major does not pay the bills, so when the Apocalypse showed up looking for a weapon’s specialist, which I was qualified for because of my technical skills and engineering expertise.  So I joined up, and my debts and old, boring life didn’t follow.  The University of Menvander is not going to hunt you down if you declare bankruptcy and go galavanting across the galaxy with a group of mercenaries,” he finished.

“I’ll pick it up from here,” said Mark.  “How shall I put this…” he stopped to consider for a moment.  “Oliver was already aboard as a weapons specialist when I got here.  We worked together, got to know each other, and, as it turns out, the phrase ‘opposites attract’ is a very true one.  I always had the feeling that I was, well...gay, but, considering where I grew up, I never told anyone.  Didn’t really bother me.  I was perfectly fine doing what I was doing, and never saw anyone who peaked my interest.  ‘Till I met him, of course.”

“I’ve always been a hardcore liberal, been gay, and known I was gay.  Got here, met him, got married,” said Oliver.

“Wait, how did that work?” interrupted Shepard.  “You guys are all mercenaries who don’t really have legal residence anywhere, so…”

“Ah, yes.  We had a ceremony on the ship.  Was one hell of a party, actually,” replied Drake.  “Legally though…” he pursed his lips in thought.  “We’re all registered as Guild citizens for legal and infiltration purposes, so that might count...but for the most part, no legal or religious ceremony.  Doesn’t really matter though, all things considered,” he said with a shrug.

“Yep.  So now we spend all day repairing and creating weapons while bickering about politics,” interjected Oliver.  “It’s fun, actually.  Still don’t know why you support that outdated philosophy and religion when it doesn’t allow for homosexuality.  Which, you are.”

“Just because one part of a philosophy is wrong, doesn’t mean all parts of it are wrong.  Plus, you’re a hardcore liberal who supports the right to bear arms.  Like, all forms of weapons,” replied Mark.

“Eh, good point.  Goes with the job, I guess.”  They grinned at each other.

“Deviant freaks?

“Deviant freaks!”

“Goddamn right?”

“Goddamn right!”  They gave each other high fives then went back to their work.  Drake sighed.  

“Okay.  Let’s continue.”  They passed through the weapons room and into more of the winding grey hallways.  Drake spoke up as he walked.  “I should have probably told you, but everyone on this ship, myself included, is kind of nuts.  You see, being a mercenary means you kill people for money.  It does not attract the most...uh...stable of individuals.  Stable people stay near where they were born and go to college, or to some other form of school, or join the military.  Stable people do not go running around the galaxy and get into all sorts of weird things with me.”  He turned back to the Scoundrels and suddenly grinned.  “And by that logic, none of you are stable!  Welcome to the club!”  He turned another corner and walked into an enclosed room covered with constricting panels of all sorts of strange dials, knobs, and buttons.  The area was lit by yellow bulbs enclosed in metal cages, and the floor itself was made of metal grating, allowing one to see a series of tunnels underneath it.  The entire room was pervaded by a low, incessant humming noise.  “Now, this is the engine room.  It’s a lot bigger than it looks, but we need all the panels to keep the reactor functional, so it seems rather enclosed.  The engineers should be somewhere around here.”  He sighed again and gave a whistle.  “Oi!  Where are all of you guys?”  Without warning, a grey-jumpsuited woman slid from a small rectangular access hatch beneath one of the larger panels.  

“Right here, sir!  Fixing the 5130’s.”  She had a round, cheerful face framed with wispy brown hair.  She grinned up at the Scoundrels.  “Well, well, well.  Looks like we have visitors, everyone!”

“Pleasure to meet you,” said a muffled, echoey voice that seemed to emanate from the ceiling.  “I would come down to introduce myself, but I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“Visiters?”  A blond haired man poked his head from behind another panel.  “Pleasure to meet you.  Engineer First Class Boweman, at your service.”

“Engineer Baily,” said the woman, who had at this point gone back into the hatch.

“Engineer Khatri,” came the muffled voice.  

“K’rik Vhle’krik,” said someone else.  A large, brown insectoid alien turned the corner.  It looked like a cross between a centipede and a lobster, and stood on six hind legs, with eight more waving in the air in front of it.  Its back was protected by a large brown exoskeleton, and its eyes were mounted on two stalks on its head.  Cain tensed, his hand going to his sword.  Drake noticed the movement, but said nothing of it and instead made introductions.  

“Scoundrels, my engineering crew.  Engineering crew, the Scoundrels.”  He turned and addressed the ceiling.  “Are you busy at the moment?”

“A bit,” the alien replied in an odd, unnaturally exaggerated American accent.  “We’re trying to reroute the cooling systems of the 5130’s.”  

“Well then, I shall leave you to it,” said Drake in response.  “Moving on.”  The group walked through the engine room and through another hallway beyond.  “I would introduce everyone, but the cooling systems are very important in making sure everything goes un-exploded.”  

They passed into a large room covered with science equipment and what looked like the shell of a large bomb sitting in the middle of the room.  A woman with frazzled brown hair, wearing a welder’s face mask and a leather apron and gloves was standing over a strange device, pouring a red liquid into a stainless steel beaker.  She finished what she was doing, flipped up the mask and smiled at the newcomers.  

“Jennifer Muelka.  Ordnance and explosives expert.”  

“The remaining third of my weapons specialists,” interjected Drake.  “Brilliant at all forms of making things go boom.  A little too brilliant sometimes.”  She smiled sheepishly.  

“I do try my best to be careful.”

“So, I’m interested.  Why are you here?” asked Shepard.

“Oh that’s easy,” she replied with a laugh.  “No one else will let me do what I do here.  I create all sorts of nasty things.  Plasma, napalm...nukes, on occasion.”

“You...you, a mercenary, have nukes on this ship?” asked Vir.

“Yes.  No one’s complained, because if I do use them, I use them correctly.  I am very proud to say that the number of innocent civilians we have killed with nuclear weapons remains zero.”  

“That’s...kinda reassuring?” 

“Hey, if you’re hiring me, you get the best of the best,” said Drake.  Leaving Muelka to her work, they moved on.  THey walked through one long, spacious, and brightly-lit hallway before they reached a gleaming set of double doors.  “Now this is the bridge.  It’s located at the center of the ship to prevent anyone from targeting and destroying it.”  The doors slid open, revealing a large, spacious room lined with all sorts of computers.  The area seemed to be further divided into subsections, each with a semi-circular area accompanied with a chair.  Large windows adorned the entire length of the bridge, and upon noticing this, Kirk frowned.  

“You said we were at the center of the ship.  So what are those ‘windows’?”

“Computer screens, showing the space surrounding the ship.  Wouldn’t be a proper bridge if you couldn’t see outside, would it?”

“Fair enough, I guess.”

“Now then.”  Drake rubbed his hands together.  “I would like to introduce you to the two most important people on the ship.  Sarah Ordelphine and Eric Richter.”  He gestured to a lithe woman of medium height with short cut black hair and a man wearing a grey jumpsuit.  He too was of medium height, and his hair was brown, straight and cut short to the scalp.  A large scar ran across his forehead, the relic of some forgotten fight.  They both nodded curtly at the Scoundrels.  “Ordelphine is my chief navigator and pilots the ship, and Richter is my second in command.  So, why did you guys join with me?”

“I was and am the best capital ship pilot in the galaxy.  The Federal Navy and all of the corporations I was with before didn’t recognize that.  You did and still do, Captain,” replied Ordelphine.

“Damn right.  You’d think we were in a fighter, with some of the maneuvers you can do.  And you, Richter?”

“I didn’t have anything to do at the time.  Joined you.  Never had a reason to look back.”

“Fair enough.”  Drake spun around the room with a theatrical gesture.  “And so, the grand tour of the Apocalypse.  Met some new and interesting people.  I hope you enjoyed it.”

Hope you liked it.  The scene with Mark and Oliver might have been a little awkward or weird, but I am firmly of the opinion that most people are trying their best, and you can still like, love, or get along with them if you disagree politically.  If you have any comments, criticisms, questions, or requests, feel free to contact me.  And remember to sit back and enjoy your day!

#magnificent scoundrels #thomas drake #crossover #ultimate crossover #sci-fi #writing #story #humans are weird

[voltagesmutter]

Miss.Julia Hoffman

Victor x MC (Bella Swan)

*Smut and NSFW*

“Your room card Miss.Hoffman,” The concierge sliding across the sleek keycard to you. A charming smile, a light dip of your Dior sunglasses and swift hand movement, you snap the key up and leave the front desk. Pulling along the GUCCI suitcase, radiance and wealth radiating off your personality, no-man dare cross your path as they all stood aside for you, jaws dropping to the floor among the sea of wealthy businessmen. As you step into the glass elevator, hand firmly around your suitcase handle as your gazes meet a sharp flash of purple before the doors shut. Victor Li. You couldn’t help but contain the smile on your face at the success of your plan, no-one recognising you as you portrayed the life of Miss. Julia Hoffman, a complete made up persona. It had started as a teasing joke, ‘I should just become a different person since I can’t be myself around you,”. Your hands flew up in a fit, another headline creating a false story around Victor, ‘Mistress seen leaving Victor Li’s house at 6 a.m. as a bachelor caught with another woman this week’. It was you, just in different disguises leaving Victor's house in the early morning. Victor and you had been secretive about your relationship, you were exclusive, very exclusive. But you wished for privacy, as soon as the press caught wind of the woman in Victor Li’s life it would be non-stop for months on end, and while he never said it aloud. Victor cared more for your privacy and safety than his multi-million company and he would rather lose all his profit than see you suffer at the hands of the media. They would pull past history, investigating into your private past, each drop of information spilled across a headline like a fresh drop of ink on paper. Victor would rather take the full blow, leaving him a misogynistic playboy with a reputation of taking mysterious lovers, rather than see your name sprawled across a headline with a fade up rumour next to it. So you decided to create just one disguise, a successful businesswoman of the name, Julia Hoffman. 

Julia Hoffman was a well endowed business investor, always investing under false names so no-one could track her records, who broke into the world of investing amongst the businessman. You educated yourself by learning and using words like ‘Defensive Investment’, ‘Capital Expenditure’, ‘Arbitrage’ and Victors personal favourite ‘Persuasion’. Since you played the part, you needed to look the part, Victor giving you his black card to go shopping and ‘dress appropriately’. Julia Hoffman wore tight white shirts tucked into a leather tight skirt, showing off her curvaceous figure below the tailored in blazer. The red-bottomed heels screamed her wealth and power, each clack could be heard before she entered a room, pulling all attention on to her. “I’ll need a Porsche you know,’ You wink with a tease to Victor as you show him the bags of your clothes you had purchased. A chuckle from the CEO as he nodded approvingly at the outfit choices, you ensured not to show him the little number you had planned for your first meet up, which was only days away. The press went wild when they clicked Julia sneaking out, the dark shades over her face to block her eyes from view, power radiating in her walk. When she was then pictured shopping amongst the wealthiest shops in the city the previous day, the press clung to find out who this woman was. It became the hottest topic of the week news, who was this mystery woman and how could no-one identify who she was. 

The plan was for Julia Hoffman to check in first, the online booking being checked by the young man at the desk. From then Victor would turn up, so that the press wouldn’t know Miss.Hoffman was there, check in and meet in one of the rooms. Only Victor didn’t expect to see you radiating with a new found level of confidence, the gleaming smile on your lips, the skin tight dress framed your body perfectly. He wanted to knock-out everyone who was gazing at your beauty, sweep you up in his arms and take you to his room. But Victor couldn’t do that because you weren't Bella in that moment, you were Julia Hoffman. 

The doors of the elevators opened, you stepped out onto the business suit floor, room 409, the room on the end of the corridor. Perfectly private. Your eyes widened at the sight, wealth dripped from the room a chandler having from the ceiling, glass floor to ceiling windows that peered down on the bustling city below. You unpacked your bag, before texting Victor ‘Julia is settled’. You felt like an agent on a mission, unable to hold back the child-like giggles at the pure amusement of the situation.

Around an hour later you heard a knock at the door, running to quickly open it, Victor fled inside two tumblrs of whisky in his hand. “Mr.Li” A smile gracing your lips as you stepped back from the smartly suited man. “Such an honour to have a man of such wealth grace my presence’ you welcome him in, striding across the room. “I have a proposition Mr.Li’ You lean forward and press your hands against the window, letting your ass seductively sway. Victor takes bounding strikes to be within your proximity. “It must get lonely at the top, let me help you find comfort,” It falls so seductively from your lips, your hands bunching up your skirt before pushing down your silk panties, a small thud hitting the floor. A choke from the unflusturable CEO, placing the drinks down and pressing up fiercely behind you, pushing your body to lay against the window. Lips humming with a satisfying pleasure as he pressed kisses against the base of your neck, exposed from your high ponytail, a subtle moan falling from you. As his kisses continue, savouring each crevice against your skin, his hands tracing over your bare ass giving you a harsh squeeze. He wanted to undress you, see you at your most vulnerable, naked, trembling beneath him, your eyes shut tight to hold back the tears, that was Victor’s favourite moment of you. But that was saved just for him in the comfort of his home, right now both of you played the part of the needing-full business couple. The hardness of his cock, strained by his trousers pressed fiercely against your lower back, he was ready to tease you until dawn broke. But the lust fill moaned of his name as you ran a finger over your already dripping core was enough to snap the man's self-control.  

His left hand running up your body as his fingers wrap around your neck with a tight grip, his right pressing fiercely against the window, now fogging up with your heavy breath for support as he hilts himself within you. The heavy groans, hot against your neck sending raising goosebumps around your body, each individual hair sending a vibration through your body. ‘I will never be lonely with you beside me’ The strain in his voice as let the persona drop, speaking his words directly to you. The strangling grunt below the shell of your ear made you clench over his thickness, normal a reserved man Victor was rare to make noises whilst fucking. ‘Your so tight for me, your perfect’ The two final words leaking like a trickling fountain out of his mouth, your left hand moving up to reach around, tugging at his thick hair, the right slamming against the window you were pushed up against. Victor’s coming down a few spaces to interlace his fingers with yours. ‘Only yours Victor’ Through broken moans, throwing your head back against his shoulder, eyes tightly shut as the heated pressure growing with intensity bubbled. The hand around your neck pressed with additional pressure, not enough to hurt but slight enough to make you feel light headed as he thrusted deep inside you. Each harsh thrust against you slapped against your ass, the feeling of his balls slapping against you, tears forming as you clenched your eyes shut. Your head rolled back against his clothed shoulder as whimpers fell from your mouth, the feral actions of Victor as he slammed into you, your fingers clawing helpless at the glass window for something to grab. The depth of his angle as his head brushed against your g-spot, your head lightly spinning as the tightness within you began to grow. The muscles clenched over him, the pressurised build up rapidly increased as it almost reached boiling up, each thrust bringing you close. Until it finally snapped, like a glass shattering from being dropped, a million shards of pleasure shattering across your body with a warm wave.  A string of ‘I’s’ as a warning but unable to finish, Victor’s thrusting hips bringing you to a mind-blowing release, your head feeling as if you almost blacked out for a minute from the insatiable pleasure from within you. The hand around your neck loosens slightly, Victor’s face turns to bring his lips to yours, tongues wrestling against each other as his thrusts become sloppy, the slapping of his balls hitting your leaking pussy pulsed through the room. One, two, three final thrusts and he spills deep inside you with a deep groan, the hand interlaced with yours gripping tightly over yours. A tender claim between the pair of you, that you belonged to each other.

The pair of you spent most the night ravishing each other, a deep physical and emotional connection between you as soft spoken words were exchanged, the put up front of personas lost between your passion. You begged him to not leave as you yawned, finally spent and unable to take any more, legs physically trembling when you stood up. You curled up against his strong torso, his heart beat flooding your ears as you pressed your head to his chest, a strong arm wrapped around your waist. The faintest sweet words were whispered into your hair as a pair of warm lips pressed against your forehead as you drifted so peacefully, full of content to sleep. When you awoke the following morning you were alone, the faint trace of Victor's scent on the pillow, the growing coldness of where he had crept across the mattress. It hurt in your heart waking up alone, all you wanted was to be beside Victor, not sneaking around with your relationship. The months you had been together, enjoying each other's company in the privacy of his home, it was the best time of your life but it just wasn’t enough. You wanted to walk hand in hand down the street, enjoy time at festivals together rather than ‘coincidentally’ meeting, getting to enjoy normal activities as a couple. Rather than sneaking out of his house in the early morning, never being able to be comforted by him at work, all you wanted to scream from the top of the LFG building was that you were head of heels in love with Victor Li. But as soon as your relationship would be public, everything would change, but would it all be that bad? 

What you didn’t know was how Victor felt the same, pulling himself from your sleeping form to return to his room was agony. All he wanted to do was have you cradled in his arms as you slept so peacefully. Each morning when he woke up to see you had already left, the emptiness of his bed without you, all of it made his heart ache. Why should he live in fear of the media? Why should he sacrifice parts of his relationship, the woman who drove him mad with her at times simpleness, out of fear? Pulling himself from your warmth, just for the sake of not being caught was the final straw, Victor couldn’t do this anymore.

You flicked on the news as you woke up hazily from your sleep, pulling yourself grudgingly out of bed, trying your hair up as a knock came at the door. ‘Just a minute’ you yelled back but the repeated knocking drove you to answer it. 

“Victor?” You questioned, opening the door but he shoved you inside, a grip on your shoulders as his lips met yours, “Victor! People will- Hmph!”. You protested with concern but then took the angle to deep the kiss. 

“I don’t care, let them know,” His words fell into your mouth as he embraced you.

Your relationship came public after Victor released a statement, declaring your relationship in the form of a letter which was later published, a plea at the end to respect your boundaries. The press went into a frenzy, each media trying to snap you and Victor together, throwing themselves at you both for interviews. As a couple you did one interview, an exclusive for ‘Miracle Finder’ sending ratings to an eye-watering high. The rumours of his playboy life style was put to rest, the scandals of the women leaving his house all put down to you, the extended length of depths you went to protect your relationship. The press adored you both, comments flooding in about how happy Victor looked, the way his face lit up when he spoke about your relationship. Seeing the CEO so happy, the press left you both alone, something neither of you would have imagined would happen.

“Are you okay?” He asked, squeezing your hand as you nodded to him with a smile. Today you were finally visiting the festival of light, together, as a couple. The false persona of Julia Hoffman had been disbanded, allowing you to enjoy Victor's company as yourself. The pair of you stepped out of Victor’s house and walked along the street, other couples smiling and waving at you, a flood of happiness stifled through your body.

“Victor look!” You squealed, letting go off your boyfriend's hand and rushing to the stall with candies shaped like animals.

“Dummy,” He sighed ever so softly with a chuckle, coming to stand up behind you, an arm wrapped around your waist, “Entertained by the smallest of trinkets, I love you”. The three words stopped you in your track, three words he had never to you.

“You love me?” You couldn’t hold back the goofy smile as you turn to face him, a bashful look on his face.

“Well- I-” He mumbled, the colour rising on his cheeks.

“I love you too,” You gleefully giggle, leaning up to stand on your tip-toes and pressing a loving kiss to his lips.

Everything about Victor was perfect, your relationship was perfect but this, right now, spending quality time as a couple was the most blissful experience ever. 

#mlqc #mlqc victor #mr love victor #mr love queens choice victor #victor smut #mlqc li zeyan #mr love #mr love mobile #victor li #mlqc victor li

[elaz-ivero]

Poetry Fieldnotes ||Broken Artists Collective||

[image description: a block print with a bright red border around a greyish blue grainy image. Atop it is a pair of discoloured hands, palms facing forward, red and outstretched. Above the hands in white Garamond font are the words, Broken Artists Collective and in smaller font, and other poems. /end id]

Over the past week, I may or may not have fully embraced the concept of a broken artist finding myself unable to conjure up a single creative thought unless I'm lying on the floor surrounded by scrawlings and broken-spined books. For a long time, I have been trying to cater my work to a series of magazines that clearly yearn for a very specific 'type' of poetry that I am incapable of producing. These poems are ones that applied pressure, the ones that were crammed into inattentive submission boxes and were returned in empty emails.

Here are the poems,

[image description: a photograph of a boy laying down looking upward, a lit cigarette stands upright in his mouth and his features are overlayed with the shadows of ferns and other plants. He wears an orange collared shirt and around him are the words in white Garamond font, Floor Bound Echo Location. /end id]

Floor-bound Echolocation is a disjointed 403-word prose poem that is a coalesce of liminal spaces, chaotic ingenuity and a reversal of grief. Like many of my poems, it describes a series of small events and feels more like a corrupted scene from a novel than a stand-alone poem. It's a short tale of a brother and sister cleaning out the garage-workspace of their genius, estranged and recently deceased cousin. It opens as follows...

All the lines are in lowercase and of sporadic length, every so often a single random word is isolated and highlighted. These are the words that were isolated throughout the poem.

//enigma //a test of patience //satisfied //memorized

I adore this poem and it feels strangely personal (my own experiences often slip into my work unconsciously like fears finding their place in dreams) as a creative I fear the idea that a lot of my work and unwritten ideas will never be read or known. The poem focuses on one of the cousin's creations, a geometric pattern drawn in chalk on the concrete floor. This pattern, its design obsessive and laid out like a triggerless trap takes over the narrative of the poem. The characters wash it away and the pattern, the physical manifestation of this dead cousins genius clings to the idea of being appreciated, recognized.

[image description: a boy sits up against a wall in a barren green and blue-tinted room, to the right of the image, is a window showing trees outside and beneath it a gas heater is attached to the wall. The boy's wearing a similar orange shirt and on the wall beside him are words, 'it blends and swirls with the oiled water and tidals along the length of the driveway to passer-by's what remains of it asks, begs, to be, memorised.' /end id]

I wrote 'floor-bound...' in a day and made subsequent edits over the course of a couple of days, I tend to write out my ideas and make minor changes to word choice and sentence length before I add in the details that make each poem unique. The isolation of individual letters was a way to almost mimic the process of looking in a cluttered space you'll see something recognizable and latch onto it.

Status: Submitted

[image description: A girl with long black hair, olive skin and a tired solemn expression face forward, an unlit cigarette held loosely in her mouth. She stands in a red elevator, the doors are closed and on the left on the image is the metal switchboard showing she has reached level 12. On her right is the word, 'Peephole'. /end id]

Peephole is a mirrored poem and is split into 'Inside', and 'Outside' with Inside, aligned to the left and Outside, aligned to the right, they are reflective of each other, mirrored. Peephole is about a young drunk woman staying inside her boyfriend's cramped apartment inspired by the 43-Square-Foot rooms in South Korea and an image from the article below inspired the entirety of this poem.

She, aware that the apartment seems to reject her, steps out into the hallway, the 'Outside' which feels apocalyptic with a burning wining sun and a ghost standing by the elevator, a personification of her sickness silently assessing how she is still alive and if she could find her way home in this state. The women in turn assess how this hallway faintly reminds her of the one from 'The Shining' leading into a breaking of the fourth wall.

[image description: A photograph that looks similar to a corrupted piece of film, tinted red and showing a woman's profile looking toward the right. Words on the left of the image read, 'I take an imaginary drag as if setting the scene of some ninety's horror, slasher, mounting suspense with the final girl, alone, a lonely lamb how easy would it be to just end a film right here.' /end id]

The tone of the poem is gritty, realistic and almost elusive in its design. I love writing poems without intending to care about its audience, with no closure, no clarity, no kindness. This poem is an amalgamation of all the recent media I've consumed, 'The Shining', Final Girl, Wikipedia dives into the housing crisis and psychological horror. I love writing poems that reflect a blend of culture, using language as a way to implement distinctive voices in my writing.

[image description: Another room tinted green, on the bottom of the image head barely in frame is a women looking off into the distance, above the cigarrete she holds red smoke reflecting in the shine on her face twirls and unfurls. Text reads, 'Tiger balm and salt, "kapuahi ahi" his whisper hurts my ears and sounds like, toungue on velvet, tooth in cheek.' /end id]

Status: Submitted

[image description: a close up of a brides face covered by a sheer veil in front of a black background, her eyes are tinted with red eyeshadow and she looks forward with a bored stare. Large text in the upper left-hand corner reads, 'Chekhov'. /end id]

Chekhov, my most recent poem is- as the title suggests- from the perspective of a gun, a woman on her wedding day is left at the altar by a cheating groom and hunts him down in the orchard venue with an heirloom of a gun. I love the perspective of this poem, the way it slowly reveals the origin of the 'voice' and grows darker and darker as the wedding dress soils and darkens with dirt and blood. Few of my poems spur from ideas rather than images but the idea of a furious bride filled with anguish and horror brought this poem to life.

[image description: a young bride looking behind her as she runs toward a patch of dark trees in the middle of a field. One hand holds up the edge of her white dress, it's evening. Text on the left-hand side of the image reads, 'Darling when my steel feels soft, revoke your vows and kiss something just as cold and cocky. /end id]

This poem is split into three stanzas, before the wedding, during and the evolving aftermath. I feel like I could extend this into a short story saving the strange gunpoint perspective till the final scene.

Status: Completing

[image description: A black and white image of a boy looking up, his expression a mix of horror and fear while blades point down at him and hold steady inches from his neck. The image is a still from "Ivan the Terrible" by Sergei Eisenstein. Text aside it reads, 'The Sound of Hamlet Rehearsed. /end id]

The sound of Hamlet Rehearsed, inspired by my own recent exploration of scriptwriting and theatre. The sound of Hamlet Rehearsed is about a boy being held accountable during a faux court hearing, on stage on opening night. The narrative slowly switches from fiction to reality as it dawns on him that the punishment is about to be dealt and he struggles with understanding how much of his reaction is performance or authentic. It's structured in a sporadic unbroken series of words and moments.

Tone-deaf touchtone tipping point Ziplock bags and scented zip ties off script the boards atop the trap door tremble imagine the conductor beneath torch amongst teeth briefly making out direction from diction.

Status: Editing

Those are the poems I've been working on! I'm not going to write any more poetry until I come to my poetry course next trimester and instead are going to focus on short stories (I'm developing two right now, three-course meal and Wren versus the Russian Government) and continuing by Worldbuilding Diaries series.

-E

#poetry #brokenartistscollective #wip #bac #amwriting #writeblr #poems #poets on tumblr #writing #writeblogging

[lariskapargitay]

Brienne of Tarth is Lightbringer

Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow and Stannis Baratheon.

All three are grey heroes in the series, one of which is the most popular character in the book and especially the show. All three are legendary figures from their respected Houses- the one true king who should have been Lord of Stormsend, the secret prince born of ice and fire, and then there is the Mother of Dragons, Mysha, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains and the last (so far as we know) Dragon.

All three have been, supposedly, chosen by the Lord of Light, and all three are the leading choices for Azor Ahai with their individual weapons (dragons, a valyrian steel sword and a burning sword) acting as the legendary weapon Lightbringer.

It makes sense; the great leaders who’ve been prophesied to end the long night. One even has DRAGONS, it would be absolute folly to imagine anyone else’s from three big huge players, one of whom the series is named for whose story is so heavily linked to the Others, to act as Azor Ahai or the weapon prophesied to end the Long Night; Lightbringer.

This post isn’t to dissuade those three or others from being AA or LB, but rather to put forth a new candidate to act as the legendary metaphorical ‘sword’. Someone who was a supporting player for the second and third books, ignored in the show, and for some reason people consider boring when she finally gets a chance to shine in her own POV.

Brienne of Tarth.

The ugly girl who wants to be a knight, a noblewoman whose house isn’t a great one, who has blood ties to both the Targaryen and Baratheon dynasty and who were kings and queens in their own right once upon a time. Not much is known about House Tarth apart from their sigil, rose and azure quartered with yellow suns and white crescent moons, the name of their keep Evenfall. Their descendants were not always called ‘Tarth’ though, their family name was once ‘Evenstar’, which has been passed down to be the official title of the Lord of Tarth.

Their House seems to have a fond appreciation for the sky and all that comes from it, including naming the small little island off Tarth ‘Morne’ to stand for morning, with only House Dayne as a challenger in regards to their love and admiration for the celestial. All that to say; House Tarth values light, in all its natural forms. The sun, the moon, the stars, the morning dawn… Their sigil and title literally brings light *looks directly at the camera like I’m in the office*, and it is one of only sigils where no matter what; it cannot be killed. No matter if the Dead or Living wins the war, the sun and moon and the evenstar will rise day after day until the end of eternity. Dragons and krakens and crows and stags and direwolves and lions can be killed, but the lights in the sky can never be.

The title of Evenstar itself also has connections to Lightbringer. Lucifer means ‘Lightbringer’ and it is the Latin name for the planet Venus. Venus used to be called ‘Evenstar’, and Evenstar is, as covered above, the title of the Lord of Tarth. With Faegon attacking Tarth, it is safe to presume that Selwyn, her father, is dead and Brienne is now the Lady of Tarth making HER the Evenstar which literally, not metaphorically, makes her, Lightbringer (which is something no other contender can claim.)

Another language fact is Tarth means smoke or fog in the Welsh language. “Born amidst salt and smoke,” is a large part of the prophecy of AA & LB and Brienne, being born on an island that means smoke in the middle of a salt sea…

ACOK Davos I

“To oppose it, the hero must have a hero's blade, oh, like none that had ever been.”

AFFC Brienne I

>When she was small, her nurse filled her ears with tales of valor, regaling her with noble exploits of Ser Galladon of Morne, Florian the Fool, Prince Aemon the Dragonknight and other champions. Each man bore a famous sword, and surely Oathkeeper belonged in their company, even if she herself did not.

Brienne often thinks of Oathkeeper as a ‘magic sword’, and here she not only calls it a heroes sword, but she is humble enough not to consider herself amongst them. The sword is worthy of being a part of something great but not Brienne herself. And right after she refuses to call herself a hero, she kneels, blade in hand, and says a prayer to the Crone whose known to bring light *once again looks at the camera like I’m in the office* to help guide people who would ask for it.

>**AFFC Brienne I**

>Kneeling between the bed and wall, she held the blade and said a silent prayer to the Crone, whose golden lamp showed men the way through life. Lead me, she prayed, **LIGHT THE WAY BEFORE ME**, show me the path that leads to Sansa.

Now, onto a huge moment for Brienne, where a large bulk of this theory comes from. The dream Jaime has, the prophetic Weirwood dream where most of his prophecies have come true.

>**ACOK Davos I**

>“In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword.

>**ASOS Jaime VI**

>Brienne’s sword took flame as well, burning silvery blue. The darkness retreated a little more.

>Brienne moved her longsword back and forth, watching the silvery flames shift and shimmer.

>Then his sword went dark, and only Brienne’s burned, as the ghosts came rushing in.

Lightbringer is, in its most basic form, a burning sword. Brienne, Stannis, Thoros, Beric, Jon and Jaime are the only ones to use a burning sword. Stannis sword is proven to be a fake, Thoros uses tricks to get his sword to light on fire, and Beric had a legitimate magical burning sword but he gave up his life for Lady Stoneheart. That leaves Jon in his dream then Jaime and Brienne in Jaime’s dream.

Again, this essay is not to dissuade the other candidates, but I personally do not believe that GRRM is the type of writer to let the secret dragon prince, the just leader, the Aragorn of Westeros get the big prophecy fight in the end. Aragorn wasn’t the one to destroy the ring, it was the unsuspecting big footed hobbit who saved the day. In any case Brienne DOES carry a flaming sword she uses to fight the dead, and she is the ONLY LIGHT left in Jaime’s world and the world itself. And yes, Jon does carry a red flaming sword in his dream whereas Brienne carries a silvery blue flaming sword in Jaime’s dream, but Oathkeeper, her sword, is red and black. It’s spell forged, it’s magic, **IT COMES ALIVE IN THE SIGHT OF FIRE**.

>**ACOK Davos I**

>And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.”

>**AFFC Brienne VIII**

>In the light from the firepit the red and black ripples in the blade almost seemed to move.

Let’s move on to another significant moment in Jaime’s dream is when a naked beautiful Brienne touches him.

>**ADWD Jon III**

>Therefore after Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm.

>**ASOS Jaime VI**

>She put a hand on his shoulder and he shuddered at the sudden touch. She’s warm.

Brienne is warm in his dream just as Lightbringer the sword is warm, she carries a flaming sword, she brings light, she’s the only light in the world… The dream can be interpreted in a few ways, mostly done to either prove or disprove an eventual romance between Jaime and Brienne, (I 10000% proves it does along with all the other evidence but that’s another 2000 word essay for another time.) But I believes it also offered a substantial amount of proof to my theory that Brienne is in fact Lightbringer. Melisandre even says the Lord of Light created the sun and moon and stars to assist them in ‘keeping the night at bay.’ .

>**ADWD Jon III**

>The Lord of Light made the sun and moon and stars to light our way, and gave us fire to keep the night at bay.”

Once again; let me bring back the Tarth fascination with the celestial

>**AFFC Brienne II**

>The arms of Tarth were quartered rose and azure, and bore a yellow sun and crescent moon.

>**ASOS Jaime IV**

>“I am Brienne of Tarth, daughter to Lord Selwyn the Evenstar, and sworn to House Stark even as you are.”

Brienne is the sun and moon, she is the brightest star in the sky. Yes there was a magic comet that fell for the birth of dragons but it lasted only for a while then died off. The Evenstar will always stay in the sky, as well as the sun and moon. They will always bring light.

Now, branching off into LOTR territory for a moment, Brienne is given the exact same introduction as Eowyn was when she killed the Witch-King, as ‘no man’ could kill him

>**The Return of the King, book 5, ch. 6 "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields"**

>“But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter!”

>**ACOK Catelyn II**

>“He is no man, My Lady. That’s Brienne of Tarth, daughter to Lord Selwyn the Evenstar.”

Don’t you think there’s just the tiniest bit of coincidence that GRRM introduces Brienne using a VERY similar quote to another blonde shieldmaiden who is confused for a man right before she helps destroy the leader of a great and terrible undead army and helps save the day?

Now, all this isn’t to say she’s an absolute shoe in for Lightbringer. That’s not to say it won’t be the obvious choice and Jon and Dany or Stannis save the day and they get to rule Westeros for 100 years and they get to be the ones who tell the Hobbits they bow to no man. But what I am saying is Brienne is just as much in the running to be Lightbringer as them. And just how bards can slay dragons, and Hobbits can destroy rings; an ugly girl who wants to be a knight can most definitely be a Lightbringer.

#asoiaf #brienne of tarth #asoiaf theories #asoiaf thoughts #lightbringer #brienne the beauty #azor ahai #game of thrones #game of thrones theory

[novantinuum]

Fandom: Steven Universe Rating: General Audiences Words: 1100~ Summary: Garnet helps remind Rose of what she’s fighting for. (set during the Gem War)

Another friend prompt fic! This time, the prompt was “egg.” These so-called flash fics just keep getting longer and longer... XD

If you read this and enjoy, I’d greatly appreciate your support through reblogs here, or kudos/comments on AO3 as well. Thank you! <3

____

Despite her powers of farsight, despite the seemingly insurmountable strength of the Crystal Gems’ common enemy, it is a sound fact of the universe that certain elements of the future will always be vulnerable to change.

Certain elements. This is the nuance most other Gems can’t seem to grasp without experiencing some form of prophecy for themselves, that there exists a delicate boundary between elements in flux and foregone consequences. Laying just beyond every unique junction of free will and possibility is a tipping point where that precise junction can never be revisited, can shift no longer. After all, when a heavy stone begins to fall from a cliff side there is no force of nature that can hope to reverse it. It will fall, and the world at large will be forever transformed, no matter how small the ramifications.

For this reason, Garnet finds navigating the rivers of possibility less of a disorientating force while surrounded by nature. From her observations over the past few years, much of the life of this planet seems to be driven by base instinct. Plants seek water, sunlight, the sentient organisms seek food and shelter. Choices are made, and consequences stick. While she’s stumbled upon the occasional exception to this rule, the wildlife of planet Earth largely adheres to predictable outcomes. She could trace every last potential path within the lifespan of a butterfly and be reasonably certain its ultimate future would follow one of those she foresaw.

Gems, on the other hand... Gems are complicated. Sapphire didn’t think they were, once. She used to believe futures were set in stone, that only the will of fate pushed individuals together and tore empires apart. When she still read the future for the Diamonds, all she could see was a single stream. But when Garnet considers Gems now, she’s met with an infinity of tributaries, offshoots, turns, and waterfalls, each careening down paths unique from all others. She can sense realities beyond realities. All are possible. And all are vulnerable to changes even she cannot foresee. Rubies can break protocol to push their charges out of danger. Pearls can win victory over quartz soldiers on the battlefield. Rose Quartzes can bravely rise to lead an entire rebellion.

So many segments of the future are in constant flux, and on many occasions that can prove overwhelming.

But sometimes, the path is simple.

Sometimes, that simplicity can remind one of what they’re fighting for.

The bird egg she’s currently watching with intrigue, for instance. The mother is away— most likely retrieving food. The thin shell is speckled brown, a completely unique pattern compared with the other two sharing the nest. She smiles as she gently removes the egg out of the nest, cradles it in her hands nestled between her gems. A few steps away, Rose sits down on a fallen tree, her untamable curls shifting around her face as she allows her head to sink into her hands.

“I know you said leaving base might help me think, but I can’t fathom how a nature walk is supposed to improve morale at a time like this,” she says, muffled through her fingers. As she looks up, shards of anger shoot through her dark eyes, the fringe of her hair casting a shadow over her features as she continues to expound her frustrations. “Over five hundred of us, mercilessly shattered on the battlefield, and it’s all my fault. I gave the orders, I sent them to ground the landers in facet 4! They’re gone because of me.”

She sighs, heavy and despondent, her eyelids fluttering shut.

“There’s days I genuinely wonder why I’m even fighting anymore.”

Garnet’s gaze flickers downwards, towards the life she holds between the sum of her very being. (Its warmth is comforting, in a grounding sort of manner.) There’s definitely been cycles— dark, daunting excursions into terrifying possibility— where she emerged with the same doubt. She knows it can’t be easy, leading so many frightened, angry Gems in revolution against such a daunting power while carrying the expectation of constant poise, strength, and grace. What she also knows is that her friend shouldn’t let that expectation weigh her down so heavily that she feels unable to express vulnerability around the others, to take care of her own needs. And in this moment, when she peers into Rose’s future, there are so many paths where she collapses under this strain. Where she eventually buckles to the Diamonds’ will, where the rebellion is crippled at its knees. None of these paths are certain yet— the present is still in flux, decisions still lie at their junctions— but in number, they are many.

(There’s still time, though. There’s still a chance for change.)

Garnet joins her on the mossy trunk, still cradling the spotted bird egg. “Rose, I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else before.”

While still visibly sullen, the quartz lifts her chin to listen with intent.  

“Sometimes,” she begins, peering amongst the tree canopy to admire all the wildlife flying and scampering throughout the boughs, “when I’m using my future vision in private, I become so overwrought with inner instability over what I see that I almost fall apart. When that happens, I find myself turning towards Earth. I immerse myself in nature, in all the life of this world I’ve sworn to protect.” A serene smile crossing her lips, she lets the ambiance of her surroundings wash over her, briefly quieting that instinctual drive to continuously peer into the future. “It’s calming. I hoped it might be calming to you, too.”

Rose bites at her bottom lip, her fists grinding into the thick layers of her dress as she considers. “I suppose... I can give it a try?”

The egg in her hand vibrates, a small, yet irrevocably important thread of the future just beginning to slot into place. Suddenly catching wind of an opportunity to nudge her friend towards a happier dawn on her journey through leadership, Garnet offers the still-intact shell to her.

“Here. You’ll like this.”

Confusion flooding her face, Rose extends her hands to accept the gift. The moment her fingers wrap around the egg, however, her face glows in wonder. The chick inside begins to peck at the thin shell, cracks spiderwebbing from the center as it emerges.

By the time the bird has finally shed its old home, the look of pure awe on that Gem’s face is all Garnet needs to be certain that— no matter what else transpires— the future they create together won’t be one where they allow this breathtaking planet to die.

____

Notes:

A note on the portrayal of Garnet's future vision... I imagine she is still young, and that this takes place around the first half of the war, long belong Rose fake shatters herself. With this in mind, she hasn't lived amongst the creatures of Earth long enough to fully grow to appreciate just how complex life is for them as well. I think there's a point to be made in that conscious, self-aware creatures have a far greater capacity for both more potential choices and unexpected choices, (in comparison to, say... plants), but I also think she underestimates the animals of this world. She probably still underestimates humans, too.

As the years move on, I believe her understanding of her own future vision will evolve to account for this added complexity- just as her realization of Steven's emotional growth opened her vision up to a world of new possibilities.

#su #garnet #rose quartz #su fanfiction #my writing stuff

[ashleyswrittenwords]

Of Gods and Goddesses (I)

Note: This is my take on how Hyrule came to be! And, of course, a tale of Hylia and Original Link.

(Inspired by Greek God AU fanart by @royxhe !)

Next

---

Of Gods and Goddesses

The home of the Gods was a place no mortal could perceive. It is commonly described by priests and devotees as a heaven’s heaven. A place no mortal man can wander regardless of the quality of sin running through their veins. Only those so pure that their blood turns gold can they cross the border. The highest ascent was to dine amongst the divine. To cross the watery line of mortality and rise where no other has. Indeed, it was foretold to be a place devoid of the impurities of man.

Man was made in the image of the gods.

But the gods were far from devoid of sin.

Clattering voices that ranged from the tinkling of fairies to the deep vibrations of gods echoed against the walls of the large, thick stone structure. Floating lights lined the walls and the ceiling reached infinitely upwards. To a mortal mind, it would be a room of monsters. Most gods who traveled on the living plane adopted forms that would least overwhelm the inhabitants, whether it be in the bodies of their kinsmen or other familiar animate creatures. This was as according to the Doctrine. However, in the world of immortals, they were free to be pure without boundaries. A winged boar like being didn’t stray far from the center podium, they flew in a spiral while lighting the ethereal candles with a quick breath. A tall giant with a grimace complained loudly in the center of the hall over the lack of amenities, the goddess beside him glared upward. Her cheek bones strikingly lifted.

Gods and goddesses waited. And when immortals were innately impatient, antics seemed to blossom. Flower goddesses and their nymphs giggled incessantly as they adorned a chaotic, yet sleeping, god with bright roses and daisies.

Despite the loud, booming insanity that was the council of immortals, this was a symbol of governance. Just centuries prior, the lands below were a constant reminder of war and death. No life withstood the ravening of ancient, wild gods – forever barren until the Golden Sisters had had enough.

Thus, as the present ensued a loud bang was heard. It reverberated off every crevasse and inch of the building. The golden gavel lifted from the podium, which loomed above. A yellow, almost gold shine manifested. The crowd of restless beings settled almost instantaneously; their reverence shown in their silence. Lesser immortals bowed their heads, unable to do anything else in the presence of the goddess that stood above. Despite the four chairs behind her, she was alone. A long shimmering white robe clung to her frame effortlessly, almost floating in the air surrounding. Her hair was a striking blonde and created a halo around her veiled face.

In a voice of silk, Hylia spoke, “My brothers and sisters of the Pantheon, the presiding council humbly welcomes you. This convergence, as we know, is an open forum concerning the state of the living plane.” There was a blanket of whispers that smoothed over the hall. She raised her gavel and the odd sound signified the beginning of the forum.

One of the flower goddesses stood, smoothing out her bright dress. “With all due respect, Your Excellency,” she said, bowing her eyes slightly. “May I ask when the Trio will return?”

The veil was meant to symbolize the blindness of justice and equilibrium, but now Hylia was thankful for the shielding of emotions. Her sisters’ absence, as well as her isolation on the podium, had endured for two centuries now. Not long since the final creation of man, they declared they would be taking leave. Nothing else was said, not even to Hylia herself. With that, her shoulders were given the weight of governing the heavens.

“The Trio,” she spoke, banishing her uncertainty in place of the reverse, “has taken up arms in supporting the realm below and further sealing the Ancients. This will take… a considerable period of time.” Much to her relief, the goddess curtsied and sat satisfied. Mumbling quaked through the open space before settling once more. Several gods of the sea stood, arguing over territory and who would guide a new fishing tribe that had settled on the shore of the Dark Sea. After each party involved was satiated, there was a long wait. Hylia moved adjourn the meeting, thankful that there wasn’t much to smooth over.

“Your Honor. The reverent and glorifying Hylia of Light. I have a request to ask of you,” it was a voice she inwardly flinched at hearing. On the outside, she was stoic. Demise was never truly speaking with respect. His intonation was littered with sarcasm, deep-rooted hatred, and disgust. Why he had decided to attend today, out of all days, was beyond the goddess.

He stood, a clear divide between himself and the rest. The immortal was towering, and long dark robes cloaked him. The yellow eyes that peered out from underneath were unmistakable. There was a hush that moved throughout the Pantheon; even the light gossiping of fairies turned stale. Demise was a powerful god, one that rarely showed himself. At one point, long ago, he sat amongst the Ancient Ones and waged war against the driving force Hylia and her sisters garnered. At the last moments, he betrayed his cause under the guise of having a “change of heart”. It was a gross display of sudden loyalty, but it had also led to the end of a war that was long overdue.

They ended up giving Demise immunity in exchange for his promise of scarcity.

“If,” he started, his hair licked like flames. “If I may be so bold. These ‘people’ on our lands have achieved nothing but petty inventions. What possible purpose could they serve? They are the rodents they eat.”

With a hardened grip, Hylia could feel the imaginary presence of her sisters behind her. Of course, they were never there. The thrones made of wicking vines and sparking silver had been collecting dust for too long. Yet, their personalities lingered. Apart, they were on opposite spectrums. Their differences astounding. Din would shout and launch into whatever hit her mind first; probably mostly about the Doctrine as well as his insolence. She had always despised Demise. Then, Nayru would calm Din out of her rage (commonly tapping her hand lightly) and cite the Doctrine word for word. Nayru was soft-spoken, but her words held weight. Finally, Farore would appeal to the ultimate goal. Peace would only be achieved in his respect and why the gathering was called for.

Din, Nayru, and Farore were triplets that created a seamless person. So, Hylia did what she did best and forced them together in her mind and parted her lips to grace his undeserving ears. “Demise, god of the night and shadows. Have peace that your concerns do not fall upon deaf ears. Allow me to remind of our cause. For millennia our land has been tossed aside. Under the leadership of the Old Gods, we were misled into a state of misery and anger. We had forgotten our purpose,” she paused. Demise was glowering. A stagnant air surrounded him as the gap became more apparent. “Without purpose we lack meaning. After the War, every being in this room was present in planning this governance. The Doctrine was created as well as Man.”

“And what have these pitiful creatures done? More headaches! More confusion,” he growled. Hylia stopped her speech. Demise had interrupted her. A hot feeling rose in her throat and a deep swallow silenced her anger. Imagining Din’s reaction was deafening, but the silence could be cut with a knife. A chair slid forth and the slight sound of sandals on stone was heard. Someone cleared their throat, “Demise.”

The addressed god snapped his head around, his entire body turning when he caught a glimpse. Like a wave, the rest of the Pantheon followed. And with them, a sea of gossiping murmurs. Hylia gripped the podium harder than she expected, content with being concealed in her discomfort. “Interrupt Her Grace again and you will have a bigger problem than agricultural mortals.”

The god that spoke among them was one she hadn’t seen in quite some time. Alikah dawned a white toga and was staring across the room at Demise, who relented with a scoff. His gaze found the ground and his behind the seat. However, Alikah had met her eyes for a moment and she saw a whisper of a smile. Addressing neither, she spoke with a hardness she hadn’t had before, “Man does not live as long as us. They achieve little production individually. Yet, I implore you to look deeper. Collectively they have given so much. To nature gods, fields of new flowers and sprawling farms. Places of worship taller than their dwellings. In this very hall, gods have gained new titles with their development of knowledge and science. Pray tell, Demise, why would you wish to take this away from those who flourish? Even you can’t stop the sun from rising each morning and their fire from burning your darkness away at night.”

With the silence that followed, she adjourned them, and as the gavel hit the podium the Pantheon erupted in discussion.

#hylink #there aren't enough of these!! #legend of zelda #gods au #zelink #hylia #link #zelda #demise #ashleyswrittenwords #fanfiction #zelink fanfiction #loz #legend of zelda fanfiction

[musiclover2732]

Some Nyo! SuFin for the soul (did this for school so it’s a little long, but I thought I’d share it with y’all) (Sweden is narrating because reasons)

I gazed up at the fiery red neon lights of the sign. It boldly proclaimed the generic name of the all night diner. As I entered, my senses were overwhelmed by the aroma of stale coffee and the nauseating odor of day old tuna fish sandwiches. The waitress nodded lazily at a table by the window, welcoming me to sit so that she could take my order. I made a noise that I hoped she would interpret as a "thanks" and took my seat.

I glanced out the window into the empty night. No sane person should be out this late at night, but this was the only way I could make money while still being able to care for my two young sons. I delicately undid the lock on my briefcase and internally smiled at the photograph inside. Our micro family had gone to the beach one summer and the boys begged me to take a picture of them with the lopsided sandcastle they had worked all afternoon to make.

As I placed the picture back in the suitcase, I sensed a pair of eyes watching me. The realization that the waitress was still there pulled me back to reality. I closely examined the merry eyes that stared expectantly, waiting for me to answer the question I hadn't even heard. Understanding my confusion, she repeated herself a little louder than was necessary.

"Coffee?" Her voice had a higher pitch than I had anticipated and held a cheerfulness that contrasted the dull and dilapidated diner. I nodded in response, being much more exhausted from working every night that week. She hurried off to the kitchen which although seemed confusing since there was no one else waiting to be served, I still appreciated since I wanted to return home before dawn. I grabbed a menu from the table and reviewed each item.

"The blueberry pie's pretty good. If you can handle the sweetness," the waitress placed my coffee on the table and smiled warmly.

"Okay, then I'll have that," I said before I took a sip of the cheap, bitter beverage. She once again hurried away, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Despite the frigid winter outside, the diner was almost sweltering. I decided to remove my suit jacket as the thrift store quality polyester had begun to irritate my skin. The waitress finally returned with my pie and a fork. I was surprised by the fact that the serving was not just one slice, but rather the entire pie. That was until I noticed the extra fork she had tucked away in the pocket of her apron.

"Sorry, we don't have individual slices. Usually people share these types of pies." I knew what she was hinting at so I gestured to the chair across from me, inviting her to sit. I finally noticed her name tag, its bold black letters were partially covered by a faded and somewhat tattered daisy sticker that she had obviously stuck on herself.

"Your name's Tina?" I didn't really want to start up a conversation, but I commended myself on opening up to her, even just a little because she practically glowed at the idea of having someone to talk to. Despite her radiant smile and animated gestures, I could tell that she had been lonely before I walked in. I couldn't figure out why someone so alive was there in an almost abandoned place in the middle of the night. We had gotten past the general introductory questions that were appropriate for complete strangers. We could have let a comfortable silence settle between us, but I couldn’t let go of how out of place she looked amongst the vacant tables and dim lighting. “Why is someone as lively as you working at this unholy hour of the night?”

“That’s just my problem, though. My boss thinks I’m too blabby and cheerful; he thinks that I’ll scare away all of the normal customers. If I work the midnight shift, then I won’t be an inconvenience to anyone. See, I’m annoying you right now; I doubt you wanted to be chatted up by your waitress at,” she checks the time on her faux leather watch, “three in the morning. It is so late, how have you not tried to report me to my boss?” I was so enthralled by her shift in demeanor and the sadness that lurked behind her public service smile that it took me a moment to process how late it actually was.

The ghost of a smile tugged at my lips as I began to reply, “I couldn’t possibly leave you alone now you’ve said that. Didn’t you know that this is the witching hour? This is the time when all the spirits from the beyond can come to earth. Well usually that works to convince my two sons to stay in bed at night, but I assume that you’re a little too old for fairytales, right?”

“I love a good ghost story now and then,” she eyed my wedding ring wearily, “Shouldn’t you be home with your family? I’d imagine that your husband won’t want to be alone with those boys when they wake up in a few hours.”

“I expect I’ll be back before they wake up. As for my husband, my one and only marriage was with the most beautiful woman in the world, but she unfortunately passed away last year. She was the one who told all the tales of magic and spirits to tell to our adopted sons. I took a night job so that I would be able to spend my days with them playing board games and reading fables, while still making enough money to support us. That means I’m tired most of the time, but I would do anything for them.” I instantly regretted my monologue. There was no way that this mirthful lady wanted to hear me dump my troubles on her before the sun was even up. No person could be that sympathetic, well no except…

“I’m so sorry about your wife and just about your circumstances in general. Life is cruel and unfair. I wish I could do more to help you, but just know that I’m always here if you want to come by after work to talk or simply have a cup of coffee. My door’s always open; well my hours are from 22.00 to 06.00, but you know what I mean.” Her expression showed genuine empathy towards not only my situation, but also myself, which is something I don’t often experience. It was pleasant to know that this stranger was willing to offer kindness to a widow who was trying to make ends meet. I know that she could have been only offering her friendship as a way to reduce her own loneliness, but it didn’t matter to me. In that moment, all I knew was that I finally had someone looking out for me even if they didn’t realize the extent of their simple gesture. I knew I wasn’t alone anymore.

[finalfantasyxivwritings]

Of Friends and Feathers

Summary: Rurik plays pranks while in the Crystarium. The Scions are happy to see him so excitable but beneath all the smiles there is a bone deep worry for their friend.

Written by: @blood--hunter

Rating: General

Note: This was commissioned by someone who wanted to remain anonymous

The Crystal Tower was a spectacle that Rurik thought he would never see in its full glory. In the past it had stood over Mor Dohna like a memorial to the Allagans and all of their technology. Now, it stood as a reminder for what was to come. It’s familiar, flowing pathways and the glistening rooftops of the buildings that are small compared to the spiraling tower that sits amidst it all. It was all a reminder. A reminder of what had to be done in the next few days or risk losing it all. Risk losing their friends. Their new home. This world and their own.

To say it was a bit much would be an understatement.

The atmosphere of the Crystarium was grim without its leader. It was writ across every individual face within the city. The Scions were no different, perhaps they were the most upset of them all. Not only had the Crystal Exarch been captured but Rurik’s attempt to rid the First from the curse of Light had cost him much. His very being was on the line now, and all of his friends knew it. It was hard not to notice the solemn glances he received from both Urianger and Y’shtola, or the eerie silence that happened when he walked into a room with Ryne and Thancred, or the way Alphinaud and Alisaie hung around and clung to him, as if they were worried he would disappear in the blink of an eye. Yes. It was very hard not to notice.

Everyone was so gloomy. Something, or someone, needed to lift the fog that had fallen over his friends.

So Rurik took the responsibility into his own hands. But the question was, how could he do it? It was one thing to be the Warrior of both Light and Darkness, but another to be the friend they needed during these hard times. He was used to being the strong, dependent Warrior that slew primals and stopped the destruction of Eorzea. Rurik, despite everything he has ever gone through, is not used to being the one in peril. Well, not for extended periods of time, at least.

It is an effort to make his steps lighter, his smile bright. There is such a shroud of gloom upon all of those he encounters, it is hard not to succumb to grief himself. But he does not. Instead, he keeps marching on. Marching until he finds them. The Twins and Ryne.

They had gathered for lunch, apparently, as laid before them is a small meal of sandwiches and fruits. Though the light shines bright upon their spot amongst the lawn of the Crystal Tower, their faces show little to be happy over. The small smiles that take place on their lips upon his approach do not reach their eyes, and perhaps that hurts the most. That they are trying to be happy around him, for his sake.

Rurik is practically giddy as he stops just at the edge of the small circle they have formed, sitting down amongst them.

Alisaie is quick to raise a brow, “Rurik, I beg your forgiveness, but you look much like that cat that has swallowed the canary.”

“I believe that is offensive.” Aliphinaud says, forehead furrowing as he slaps his sister playfully on the shoulder, “At least, in Hrothgar culture.”

Rurik holds up a hand before the twins can start a fight amongst each other, “No need to worry. I suppose I am. I’m here to steal the three of you away!”

“Steal us?” Ryne says, clutching her hands close to her chest, “You don’t mean to run? Do you? Oh Rurik! Please don’t!”

“No! No!” He waves his hands, quieting their worried minds, “No! I mean to ask for your help in something quite benign! I promise!” That seems to get their attention, curious eyes and minds focusing on him. A mischievous smile slips onto Rurik’s face. “I plan to brighten our fellow Scion’s day. And, in doing so, perhaps lighten the hearts of the Crystarium as well.”

“A … prank?” Ryne asks, confusion evident. “Like the ones the pixies played on us?”

“Except more … fun and less … turning them into shrubbery.” Rurik says, a hand coming to scratch at the back of his neck. “Surely you’ve played pranks before, right Ryne?”

The young girl shakes her head and even Alisaie makes a strangled noise in her throat. “Truly? Not even once?” The Red Mage asks.

Ryne can only shake her head once more, fiddling with the lace of her skirt as she speaks, “No. Thancred and I were always fighting or on the run. And before that … Well, I was locked in a cage for most of my life.”

The Hrothgar cannot contain the growl that grows in his chest at the thought of Ryne’s previous treatment in the hands of Eulmore. But that was the past. This is now. Eulmore would be doing a lot better without Vauthry as its leader.

“Well then, I suppose we’ll have to fix that,” Rurik nods to himself, thinking, “The three of you can help me cheer up our fellow Scions. Small pranks, harmless fun, things like that.”

“I believe it would be well received, for the most part.” Alphinaud presses a knuckle to his lip as he considers the idea, “I, however, refuse to help you prank Y’shtola. It would be a wholly horrible idea.”

“I agree with my brother’s self preservation. Though Y’shtola is my dearest friend, I do not cherish the thought of having a meteor dropped on my head.”

“Agreed,” Rurik admits, “Y’shtola would be best treated to a small lunch and left well enough alone.”

Ryne smiles to herself, “So we are truly just cheering them up? Not being nasty like the pixies can be and making them forget things?”

“We’re only going as far as dropped buckets of water on heads and putting gum in their shoes.” Rurik confirms. “Nothing horrible.”

A wicked smile creeps onto Alisaie’s face, light shining in her eyes, “I have the perfect first candidate then.”

That is how the three of them find themselves in the Cabinet of Curiosities. The books seem to spiral up to greet them but there is just one tome in particular that they are looking for. Alisaie had come across it while they were looking for information earlier in their journey. Thankfully, nothing had come of it at the time, but it may just prove useful for their current “mission.”

“Here it is,” She says, plucking it from a shelf. The young Elezen holds it aloft from herself as if the distance would prove a hindrance to the book’s qualities. Her brother looks over the rough leather cover, raising a white brow as Rurik and Ryne join them.

“I suppose what my sister says is true.” Alphinaud murmurs, his curiosity obvious. Before Rurik can utter a word of caution the young Leveilleur flips open a page. For one, blissful, moment there is no reaction from anyone as they stare in awe at his stupidity. Alphinaud opens his mouth to speak but no sound comes from him. No sound at all, in fact.

Ryne’s hands go to her mouth in shock, eyes widening in fear. “Alphinaud!” She says, worry evident but all Rurik can do is press his face into his hands, scrubbing over his eyes.

“Can you Esuna yourself?” He asks, a chuckle leaving his chest as he watches his friend try to form words. Alisaie, for her part, seems more amused than exasperated and can’t help but laugh at her brother’s current predicament. He huffs at her. Unable to form his, usually, biting words he is reduced to stamping his foot like a child. With the wave of a hand over his own head, the spell leaves him.

Alisaie hides a smile behind her own fingers, “Ah, and here I thought I would be rid of your squawking for a little longer.”

Alphinaud has the courtesy to at least look embarrassed, his cheeks heating to red as he snaps the book closed. “Well, it works.”

Ryne giggles, worry deflating from her shoulders as she looks up at Rurik. “So, what now?” She asks, excitement bubbling in her eyes. Rurik can’t help the smile that sparks over his lips as he leans down, beginning to disclose his plan to the three younger Scions who surround them.

It does not take much to lure Urianger into the room of spiraling books and stairs. That he wasn’t already there was almost a miracle in and of itself. Ryne leads him into the Cabinet by hand, making sure to prattle on about some interesting fact she had discovered and wanted to show him. Though Urianger could be long winded and far too caught up in his studies, he was a keen man and it wouldn’t do for their prank to be discovered before it could even truly begin.

Rurik and the twins make sure to hide out of sight, each other’s hands clapped over another’s mouth to quell the giggles that want to slip from them even now.

“There’s this book that I’ve never seen before. Did you have it in the Source?” Ryne asks, slipping the large leather tome into Urianger’s hands. They all hold their breathing, hoping the Elezen man does not recognize the book.

He blinks, golden eyes laving over the cover with a measure of curiosity. “I have yet to come across such a tome before, no.” His fingers carve delicately over the pages before eagerly flipping them open. Rurik is the first to break for it, running out of the room before he can truly see the other Scion’s reaction. Ryne is quick to follow suit, an apology slipping from her lips as she darts out the door.

Urianger opens his mouth to question what in the realm was going on but his words die in his throat before they can truly begin. His face forms a frown as Alisaie and Alphinaud slip from their hiding place, laughter ringing from their lips as realization begins to dawn on the older Elezen man.

The four of them fall into the Crystarium’s courtyard piling on top of one another in a disheveled mess. Their laughter rings long and loud bouncing off of the stone walls and metal filigree with ease.

“You should have seen his face!” Alisaie chortles as she unwinds herself from the pile of bodies. “I’ve never seen Urianger so dumbstruck! I believe he wasn’t expecting it at all!”

Her brother is the next to prop himself up, having landed square on his behind, “I dare say that was the most conniving thing I’ve ever witness, much less been a part of.” He looks to Ryne, a cheeky smile on his face, “I believe we have our young friend to thank for it. Urianger had not expected such a thing from the likes of you.”

The Oracle of Light does her best to look ashamed but the gleam of glee is telling in her eyes, “I do hope he’ll be able to forgive us.”

Rurik waves a hand, retrieving himself from the ground to stand, “Don’t worry, he’ll forgive you. It’s no worse than that time I tripped and spilled ink all over his research. If he can forgive me for that, then you’ll be fine.” The Hrothgar offers a hand to the younger girl, Ryne readily takes it. As soon as she’s standing she wipes away the dirt that had sought to dust her white dress.

“Alright,” She says, a little eager now, “Who next?”

Rurik’s smile speaks of disaster.

The horrible thing about ever lasting light was that any task that took place outside became that much harder. It was as if the midday sun was always beaming down upon their backs as they stooped over the ground.

“Remind me again, why are we doing this?” Alphinaud complains, far too unused to manual labor. He had helped save the realm on multiple occasions, yes, but doing chores was far beyond his expertise.

Alisaie huffs as she stops in her task, giving her brother a plane look. “If we have to explain this again to you…”

Rurik waves a hand, tucking another bundle of feathers under his arm, “This is an old trick. We take some syrup and some Chocobo feathers. We put them in a bucket and then we-”

“Drop it on Thancred!” Ryne interjects perhaps a little more excited than she should be to tar and feather her guardian. Or maybe that’s why she was so happy.

Rurik nods, picking up another few feathers from the stable’s ground. “And I’m certain that the stable keep won’t mind us cleaning up a bit.”

It is in this moment, while the Hrothgar man is reaching down for yet another feather that a dark shadow falls over the four of them. A shiver runs down his spine as he stands, slowly lifting himself up to full height. It is the same feeling he got when a Eikon was standing over him. The feeling that he was in danger. The feeling that he was about to fight for his life.

“Rurik.”

He swallows, not daring to turn around. He recognized that voice. And that tone. He was in trouble.

“What … are you doing?”

Mysteriously, or perhaps not so mysteriously at all, the three younglings that had once been accompanying him had seemingly vanished into thin air. Rurik was alone in his facing down of Y’shtola.

He swallows, suddenly quite sure that he was about to meet his end here. Oh how would the tale be told. A great warrior being brought low by a single glare.

“We were…” He trails off, how did one even explain away what they were doing? Rurik wasn’t one for lying to his friends and lying to Y’shtola of all people was … a daunting task to say the least “…Cleaning up?” The Sorceress raises one perfect eyebrow as she folds her arms. She tilts her head just so. Rurik had to wonder if there was something about his aether that told her he was lying. Maybe it changed in hue? But Y’shtola was perceptive regardless of the state of her eyes.

“You three, come out from behind there.” Y’shtola turns her head ever so slightly to watch as the twins and Ryne tumble from behind a hay bale.

Case in point.

“Now, why don’t all of you come along with me. You can explain to me exactly what you’re doing over a cup of tea.” There is no argument in her voice and Rurik finds himself plodding along behind her not unlike a misbehaving child. There isn’t even a complaint from Alisaie as they all shuffle back to the Pendants.

Y’shtola had long ago refused her own quarters within the Crystarium. Rurik knew that she hadn’t trusted the Exarch. Hadn’t trusted G’raha. The memory of him makes his chest sing with guilt as he opens the door to his own apartment. It is fully stocked with all sorts of goods and the Miqo’te woman is quick to make herself at home. She rifles through his cupboards with ease, as if the task was as familiar to her as breathing.

Eventually, the tea pot is put over the fire and she turns to the four of them. They all sit at the counter, heads hanging as they wait for a talking to about what one should and shouldn’t do during times of crisis.

It doesn’t come.

Instead a sigh leaves her lips as she looks over the lot of them, folding her arms once more. “Now, what exactly had the four of you planned to do to our dear friend?”

Rurik’s head snaps up. Even he had heard the curl of a smile in her voice and sure enough there was one sweeping over her features, a mischievous glimmer in her eyes.

Alphinaud is the first to muster the courage to speak, not that it takes much; “Well, you see-”

“We were going to prank him!” Ryne nearly shouts the words and it causes all to jump, save Y’shtola.

She moves to the fire, bringing the pot off as it begins to steam. Five cups are filled to the brim with tea and placed before each of them. Silence persists over each of them as they watch her move gracefully through the kitchen. It is not until Y’shtola takes her seat that she finally deigns to respond.

“I see.”

Rurik breathes a sigh of relief.

“And how did you suppose to do this?”

He sucks it back in again.

Ryne pulls at the hem of her dress a bit, seeming to be thinking carefully. “We were going to get buckets of syrup and feathers and pour them on him….”

“And how did you suppose you were going to surprise him with such a thing?” She sips her tea, bringing the hot liquid carefully to her lips and taking a drink, “I remind you that Thancred is a very agile man.”

Alphinaud presses a knuckle to his chin as he thinks, “Y’shtola is correct. Thancred is perceptive. If we were to miss our target, all our hard work would go to waste.”

“It’s not as if we’re attacking him. His defenses aren’t impenetrable.” Alisaie says, brow furrowing even as she too thinks.

Suddenly this was more a war council than a fireside chat.

“May I suggest.” Y’shtola begins, swirling her tea in her cup slightly. For some reason it reminded Rurik of Master Matoya. Perhaps he shouldn’t be too surprised. “That you distract him? He won’t be expecting such a thing from the four of you.” Her light eyes turn to Ryne. “Especially you. If you were to somehow convince him that there was suddenly something of utmost importance under the catwalks of the courtyard…”

Ryne nearly jumps out of her chair in her excitement. “Yes! And then the others could drop the buckets on him!”

The three teens beam, beginning to talk excitedly amongst themselves as Y’shtola’s attention returns to Rurik. Her smile is soft, something that he didn’t wholly expect. Rurik can only smile back, “Well, it seems you’ve been a great help to our efforts…”

Y’shtola hums, taking another sip of her tea. “You have done much for me in my time of need, I would not turn my back on you during yours.” There was more to her words than Rurik liked. He wanted to lift the grief and heartache that rest on his fellow Scion’s shoulders. Not add to it.

So a smile spreads over his lips. “Speaking of my helping you…” He tilts his head as his smile grows wider still, “…Remember when you came back and-”

She gives him a firm look, peering over the edge of her cup in a way that only spelled death for him.

“-you were-”

Y’shtola glares harder.

“-In Runar’s arms.”

She deflates, shaking her head. Though Rurik notices the creeping smirk on her lips. “You four should go and carry out your plan before Thancred catches wind of it.” The children stop their animated conversation in order to peer at Y’shtola. “It won’t be long until he finds out. He is far more keen than he lets on.”

Rurik knew that. Thancred was capable of a lot of things. “We have to act quickly then!” He says, popping up and out of his seat.

Alisaie nods, “I’ll fetch the rest of the feathers,” She turns to her brother, “You grab the syrup. Ryne, plan your distraction with Rurik. We’ll regroup on the catwalks!” Her voice doesn’t broker much argument and her and Alphinaud dash out of Rurik’s apartments before he can get a word in edgewise. The two of them were far too used to working in synchronization.

Rurik watches them rush out he looks to Ryne shrugging alongside her.

“I’ll meet you on the catwalks!” The young Hume girl obviously holds back a giggle as she rushes out after the twins. It was nice to see her smile.

Rurik turns back to Y’shtola who still sits at the counter, tea in hand. “I suppose I’ll be seeing you?”

She smiles again, “I assume sooner rather than later.”

The Hrothgar laughs as he moves towards the door, mischief shining in his eyes as he takes the knob in hand, ready to use it as a shield if need be. “I’m sure Runar will be worried about you! Don’t forget to tell him hello for me!” He calls, waving gently before he dodges out the door as if he’s about to be struck. He hears a half hearted yell and perhaps, just perhaps, had seen a blush on Y’shtola’s cheeks.

Soon he is reconvening with the children on the catwalks of the Cyrstarium. Below them is plush grass and carefully hewn stone. They had selected this spot because very few passers by came beneath it. It wouldn’t do to accidentally dump syrup and feathers on some poor sod who was only going about their daily business.

“Alright,” Alphinaud says, standing as tall as he can, “Let us go over the plan once more.”

Ryne pops up, blue eyes bright with mirth, “I’ll lead Thancred here with something really important!”

“Rurik and I will be on standby with the buckets,” Alisaie says, cracking her knuckles as if preparing for a fight, “We’ll be waiting for Ryne to use the code phrase before we dump the buckets.”

“That will give you enough time to get away.” Rurik nods to the red headed girl, smiling at her eagerness.

Ryne nods, “Remember: Pixies! Then drop the buckets!”

The group nods in unison, seemingly prepared to take on a Behemoth with the amount of adrenaline flowing through them.

“Agreed!” Rurik puts his hand out, the other three put their hands on top of his. “On three. One! Two! Three! Break!”

Ryne rushes off as Rurik and Alisaie take their places. Both of them crouch, holding their buckets in the ready. Thancred could arrive at any moment and Rurik felt tense, ears twitching as he waited for the signal.

“Here comes Ryne!” Alphinaud half shouts and half whispers, fingers cupped over his eyes to block out the everlasting light that beat down upon their backs. “But I don’t see-”

“The four of you are rather sneaky.”

A gasp leaves Rurik’s throat as he falls back. Standing on the railing in front of him was a man. White coat billowing in the small breeze from the Crystarium.

Thancred.

“How did you-!” Alisaie is sprawled beside him, seemingly just as taken off guard.

Thancred folds his arms, standing on the railing as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. “I heard the strangest thing from Urianger.” There is the sound of footfalls against wood and Rurik turns his head to find Alphinaud having already run quite some distance down the catwalk. Thancred doesn’t seem too perturbed and continues. “He told me that a group of pesky children had tricked him into opening a book that had taken away his voice.” He turns silver eyes to the Hrothgar. “And can you imagine my surprise when I noticed the four of you slinking around the Crystarium with big smiles on your faces?” Another sound of footfalls. Rurik looks to find Alisaie having run the opposite direction of her brother. He has been left to his cold, dark fate.

“T-Thancred!” He raises a shaking hand, as if begging for mercy, “It’s not what it looks like-!”

He hops down from the railing, standing over Rurik now. “It seems as if you were about to tar and feather me!”

“N-No! Not at all!” He tries to give the Rogue turned Gunbreaker a dashing smile but it falls short.

Thancred guffaws, stooping over to pick up both of the buckets. “Don’t try to lie. You’re horrible at it.” The man raises a brow. “I can only assume it was you who began this charade?”

Rurik has enough sense to nod his head. He was not one to submit others to their own terrible fate. “The children had nothing to do with this.”

His friend nods his head as well, “I will take your word.”

Rurik is a brave and just man. Warrior of Light. Warrior of Darkness….

….Warrior of syrup and feathers….

Time goes in slow motion as, with a simple tilt of his hands, the Hyur dumps sticky syrup and dozens of feathers onto him.

Rurik gives a great scream. It echoes throughout the Crystarium and even causes some birds to fly from the roofs. “Oh Thancred!” He says, clutching at his (now uncomfortably sticky) heart. “How could you betray me like this.”

“Oh get up you great lug. Let’s find the others.”

They make their way back down and into the courtyard. Rurik draws plenty of stares and laughs with his current state. However, he can’t find the will to be upset or angry. Much the opposite. When they finally make it to the plush green grass near the markets his face is beaming with a smile.

Just as Thancred had predicted, Alisaie, Alphinaud, and Ryne rush up to them as soon as they appear. There are apologies in their eyes.

“Forgive me!” Alphinaud cries, a towel bunched up tight in his hands. He begins to wipe away at the syrup and feathers but they only manage to stick to the cloth.

Alisaie looks up to him, a frown on her face as she folds her arms. “You should have run.” But he can see the glimmer of a laugh on her lips as he shrugs.

Ryne seems to be next but her hands are balled up at her chest as she gives Thancred a talking to. “How could you! That was so mean!”

“In my defense, you were going to do it to me first.” Thancred tries to defend only to have Ryne glare harder at him. She seems half ready to give him an ear full when the laugh that Rurik had been holding in finally bursts from his chest. The group turns their eyes towards their friend, watching in bewilderment as the stands triumphant, hands on his hips, a long and boisterous laugh leaving him.

When he finally quiets, and wipes away a few tears from his eyes, there is a beaming smile on his face.

“What on earth?” Alisaie asks and Rurik is quick to reply.

“It would seem I achieved what I wanted to…”

“I’ll bite,” Thancred folds his arms, a brow raised, “What was that?”

“To make you all happy.”

The words are so simple and yet they seem to shoot through the very hearts of those gathered around the Hrothgar. Perhaps it was the stress of the situation they were in. Perhaps it was that they had gone through so much already. Or perhaps it was just that they had missed their dearest friend. Regardless of the truth those five simple words brings a tear to even Thancred’s eyes.

“Oh Rurik!” Ryne says, unthinkingly throwing herself against him to hide her face in his syrupy and feathery shirt.

“Ryne wait your-!” Rurik tries to gently pry her off but she is much stronger than she seems and before he knows it both the twins have joined as well, small sobs echoing from the three of them.

Thancred claps a friendly hand on his shoulder, a small smile on his features that is only somewhat presided over by his friends currently sticky state. There are no words between them, only a shared nod of understanding.

Rurik sighs as he leans down, giving the three teenagers a great big hug. That seems to remind them of his current situation and they all leap off of him, sputtering and shaking sticky feathered hands and arms.

“Rurik!” Alisaie shouts indignantly.

Alphinaud tries to wipe away the feathers with little progress. “I suppose this means we all need baths.” He says, a sigh on his lips.

“I don’t know, I think the feathers are a nice touch, don’t you think?” Thancred smirks, seemingly proud of himself for avoiding such a fate.

Ryne, however, has other ideas. With a speed Rurik had only seen her use during the most dire of situations she wraps her arms around Thancred, giving him an overly large hug. The older male sputters now, trying to pry himself away. Alas, he had trained his protege far too well and no matter how hard he tries, he cannot wiggle out of her arms. There is a short scuffle as he all but dances in the small circle of her arms, trying carefully not to get any feathers or syrup on him but wholly unable to with how much she’s covered in it.

“Ryne!” He yells, and now it’s Rurik’s turn to laugh, nearly falling over with the force of it Alisaie and Alphinaud are quick to join him in his mirth. When Thancred finally pries himself from Ryne’s arms he too is now covered in feathers. “Ugh…” He groans, “Do you know how long it takes to wash this thing?”

That seems to be the final straw and Rurik again lands on his hind end, bellowing a laugh as he rolls in the grass. The teens join him in the grass, laughing their hardest and brightest. Thancred also snickers, a few feathers falling from him as he watches the four of them roll around without a care in the world.

And though the times were hard and harder things were yet to come, there was much mirth to be had. For years yet to come there were tales of the Warrior of Darkness. About his courage. About his bravery. About how he single handedly saved Norvrandt. But in this small nook of the world there were other tales. Tales of how, on one sweet day under a sky of light that would soon fade to black and shine with distant stars, he shared in mirth with his closest friends and brought smiles to faces that had not seen one in years.

And that was the best kind of tale.

#commission #nonreaderinsert #writing #otherswriting #blood hunter #sfw #sfw nonreaderinsert #sfw writing #warrior of light #original characters #oc fic #oc writing

[kkintle]

Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story by John Yorke; Quotes

There’s no doubt that for many those rules help. Friedrich Engels put it pithily: ‘Freedom is the recognition of necessity.’

‘You need the eye, the hand and the heart,’ proclaims the ancient Chinese proverb. ‘Two won’t do.’

Delacroix countered the fear of knowledge succinctly: ‘First learn to be a craftsman; it won’t keep you from being a genius.’

We are capable of entering any kind of head. David Edgar justified his play about the Nazi architect Albert Speer by saying: ‘The awful truth – and it is awful, in both senses of the word – is that the response most great drama asks of us is neither “yes please” nor “no thanks” but “you too?”. Or, in the cold light of dawn, “there but for the grace of God go I”.’

As Peter Brook writes in The Empty Space, ‘In the theatre the slate is wiped clean all the time.’ Drama is a test-bed on which we can test and confront our darkest impulses under laboratory conditions; where we can experience the desires without having to confront the consequences. Drama enables us to peer into the soul, not of the person who has driven his father out onto the heath, but the person who has wanted to.

Our favourite characters are the ones who, at some silent level, embody what we all want for ourselves: the good, the bad and ugly too.

‘The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.’

‘Somebody’s got to want something, something’s got to be standing in their way of getting it. You do that and you’ll have a scene.’

‘Tell me what you want,’ said Anton Chekhov, ‘and I will tell you what manner of man you are.’

Cops want to catch the killer, doctors want to heal their patient; in truth it doesn’t actually matter what the object is, its importance is bestowed by those in pursuit.

What a character thinks is good for them is often at odds with what actually is. This conflict, as we shall see, appears to be one of the fundamental tenets of structure, because it embodies the battle between external and internal desire.

Characters then should not always get what they want, but should – if they deserve it – get what they need. That need, or flaw, is almost always present at the beginning of the film. The want, however, cannot become clear until after the inciting incident.

The crisis occurs when the hero’s final dilemma is crystallized, the moment they are faced with the most important question of the story – just what kind of person are they? Finding themselves in a seemingly inescapable hole, the protagonist is presented with a choice.

So the inciting incident provokes the question ‘What will happen’ and the climax (or obligatory act) declares – ‘this’.

As Shakespearean scholar Jan Kott noted before him, ‘Ancient Tragedy is loss of life, modern Tragedy is loss of purpose’.

‘good’ is a relative concept

Change is the bedrock of life and consequently the bedrock of narrative.

THE ROADMAP OF CHANGE ACT 1 No knowledge Growing knowledge Awakening ACT 2 Doubt Overcoming reluctance Acceptance ACT 3 Experimenting with knowledge MIDPOINT – KEY KNOWLEDGE Experimenting post-knowledge ACT 4 Doubt Growing reluctance Regression ACT 5 Reawakening Re-acceptance Total mastery

A well-designed midpoint has a risk/reward ratio: a character gains something vital, but in doing so ramps up the jeopardy around them.

JOURNEY THERE; JOURNEY BACK

All stories at some level are about a search for the truth of the subject they are exploring. Just as the act of perception involves seeking out the ‘truth’ of the thing perceived, so storytelling mimics that process. The ‘truth’ of the story, then, lies at the midpoint. The protagonist’s action at this point will be to overcome that obstacle, assimilate that truth and begin the journey back – the journey to understand the implications of what that ‘truth’ really means.

Stories are built from acts, acts are built from scenes and scenes are built from even smaller units called beats. All these units are constructed in three parts: fractal versions of the three-act whole. Just as a story will contain a set-up, an inciting incident, a crisis, a climax and a resolution, so will acts and so will scenes.

‘Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.’ Alfred Hitchcock  

Screenwriting is showing not telling; structure is the presentation of images in such a way an audience are forced to work out the relationship between them. Stanton had stumbled upon what is known amongst film theoreticians as the ‘Kuleshov Effect’.

I want to get an abortion, but my boyfriend and I are having trouble conceiving. American comedian Sarah Silverman’s joke is built on a classic subversion of expectation. But take a look at any joke, or any scene in any drama: the juxtaposition of opposites, verbal or visual or both, is the central plank not just of showing rather than telling, but of all humour, all narrative. Something, confronted with its opposite, makes us recast our notion of that ‘something’ again.

Everyone customizes, consciously or not, everything they do.

Every decision we make or action we perform when confronted with an obstacle is a choice that reveals – through action – our personality. In every scene, remember, a protagonist is presented with a mini crisis, and must make a choice as to how to surmount it. Meeting with a subversion of expectation – a blow to their established plans – a character must choose a new course of action. In doing so they reveal a little bit more of who they are.

as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.’

It was Kenneth Tynan who said ‘a neurosis is a secret you don’t know you’re keeping’.

The less back-story a character has, the more readily an audience is able to identify with them – the more we can see they’re like us and not like someone else. We may want to know more, but it’s the not knowing that keeps us watching. It allows us to fully experience the journey ourselves and actively join in the process in which a character pursues their goal, their flaw is subsumed into their façade, their need into their want, and the goal of all drama is achieved – a rich, complex, three-dimensional character appears in front of our eyes.

The three most important functions of dialogue – characterization, exposition and subtext – are all, as we shall see, products of character desire.

Good dialogue conveys how a character wants to be seen while betraying the flaws they want to hide.

Grammar, vocabulary, syntax, rhythm, sentence length, jargon or slang – when combined in a particular way, they all allow us to understand who a person is. Change one and the character changes. Dialogue isn’t just about what someone says; how they choose to say it is important too.

Exposition works when it’s a tool a character uses to achieve their desire. If this desire is confronted with opposition, conflict is generated and exposition becomes invisible. The greater the conflict, the less visible the exposition.

Silence of the Lambs screenwriter Ted Tally put the art of writing dialogue succinctly: ‘What’s important is not the emotion they’re playing but the emotion they’re trying to conceal.’

So masked desire is the main source of subtext.

Georg Simmel, the nineteenth-century sociologist, put it rather eloquently: ‘All we communicate to another individual by means of words or perhaps in another fashion – even the most subjective, impulsive, intimate matters – is a selection from that psychological-real whole whose absolutely exact report … would drive everybody into the insane asylum.’

‘No description is as difficult as the description of self.’

We watch stories not just to awaken our eyes to reality but to make reality bearable as well. Truth without hope is as unbearable as hope without truth.

Out of our quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry. - W. B. Yeats

the idea that ‘we crash into each other just to feel something’.

McGovern believed neither of the two arguments, but he’d mastered a very important principle: that whatever you believe should be tested to destruction.

As Andrew Stanton says, ‘You often hear the term “You should have something to say in a story” but that doesn’t always mean a message. It means truth, some value that you yourself as a storyteller believe in, and then through the course of the story are able to debate that truth. Try to prove it wrong. Test it to its limits.’

There is much to learn from the game of chess, whose individual engagements are all part of one long engagement seeking a condition not of adversity or conflict or defeat or even victory, but of the harmony underlying all.

Javed Akhtar, the co-writer of Sholay, the most successful Indian movie of all time, made a shrewd observation: You must have seen children playing with a string and a pebble. They tie a string and the pebble and they start swinging it over their head. And slowly they keep loosening the string, and it makes bigger and bigger circles. Now this pebble is the revolt from the tradition, it wants to move away … The string is the tradition, the continuity. It’s holding it. But if you break the string the pebble will fall. If you remove the pebble the string cannot go that far. This tension of tradition and revolt against the tradition … are in a way contradictory, but as a matter of fact [are] a synthesis. You will always find a synthesis of tradition and revolt from tradition together in any good art.

just why fairy tales hover on the edges of cruelty; it’s about how ‘baddies’ are the products of inner conflict 

‘All of us are potential villains,’ the legendary Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston once remarked. ‘If we are pushed far enough, pressured beyond our breaking point, our self-preservation system takes over and we are capable of terrible villainy.’

Storytelling, then, is the dramatization of the process of knowledge assimilation.

Like much that is briefly fashionable, it didn’t survive because it had nothing meaningful to say. A greater test of worth must be whether a work lasts for more than a generation.

an observation from Robert Hughes: ‘The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning.’

‘Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.’ G. K. Chesterton   

#John yorke #into the woods #storytelling #screenwriting #non-fiction #books #quotes

[shadow-lord-by-day]

Chapter 2, The Curious Life of Moira X

Long ago, in a small village in the Scottish Highlands, a little girl was born. Her name was Moira, and she was the apple of her parents' eyes. She grew up in that country as most girls did, with laughter and cheer and plenty of friends. She played in the brooks and tarns, and knew all the names of the flowers and tors that surrounded her. One day, when she was twelve, Moira grew gravely sick, and her parents and the doctor feared terribly for her. However, to their relief and perplexment, she woke up the next day as well as she had ever been, and was immediately back to her life.  Moira graduated school at the top of her class, and married her boyfriend. Her teachers said it was a shame that such a bright girl wouldn't go to university, but Moira didn't care, and soon she and her husband had three beautiful children all of their own, who themselves ran and played and laughed on their little farm. As Moira grew older, her own children eventually left home, to be married or in one case take on an apprenticeship in London. They all came to visit very often, and it wasn't long before Moira's seven grandchildren were playing with the toys that her own children had once forgotten.  Moira was growing old by this time, and she and her husband decided to take a holiday to America, to see a little of the world before they no longer had the will or the means. Not long after they returned from their trip, Moira complained of an astute pain in her gut, and a much younger doctor was sad to inform her that she had a tumor growing in her intestines. Moira died not much later, surrounded by her family and friends, happy at a life well lived, at the age of eighty-six.  At the instant that her brain activity ceased, the universe hiccuped, and slipped back roughly eighty-six years and nine months.  In her second life, Moira was conceived in her mother's womb remembering in exact detail every moment of her first life. The foetus was confused, astonished, and most of all scared, and spent the next nine months trying desperately to work out exactly what was happening to her. She was born, exactly as she had been before, perfectly healthy and without issue, and screaming in confusion as much as in a need for air.  She decided not to let on to anyone what had happened, afraid of the village's overzealous preacher, and instead set her mind to working things out for herself. Her parents quickly began to notice that she was different. She walked, talked, and read much earlier than any of her peers, as of course these were all things that Moira already knew how to do. She was called a genius and a prodigy, and found herself being pushed towards the sciences. She did not complain about this, as to her this seemed the best way to figure out her situation. She met her husband from her first life, but in knowing every flaw, every vice, and every imperfection that he held and would always hold, she paid him no mind, bending every effort towards a place at Oxford University.  To her relief, her efforts bore fruit, and on her second graduation from school Moira’s teachers and parents were practically weeping tears of joy over her place at the esteemed university. Moira studied physics, as much as she could, trying to find any possible answer to the conundrum of her continued existence. To her dismay, in none of her studies did she find the answers she sought, despite the multiple PhDs that she acquired over the course of her studies.  Disheartened, Moira resigned herself to a life of teaching, trying desperately to produce a life worth living from the existence of perpetual study that she had built for herself. She entered into a hasty and toxic marriage, exited it equally hastily, and turned to drink to slake the existential melancholy that she found herself wallowing in.  Then, one day after her teaching was done, she returned to her apartment and switched on her television. She was immediately gripped by the content of the news program that came on, as it showed the face of a man she vaguely remembered seeing on campus from her days as a student. A man named Charles Xavier. He revealed to the world that he was a mutant, an individual who had through random genetic mutation gained certain supernatural abilities. Moira, entranced and excited by an occurrence that in her first life had gone almost entirely unnoticed, booked a one way ticket on the next plane to Philadelphia, which went down over the Atlantic with no survivors.  In her third life, Moira took a similar approach to things, not to mention a sigh of relief that she was born again. Already knowing everything there was to know about physics, she studied biology at Oxford, the course that she knew Xavier had taken. She met him, and they quickly became close friends. She pressed him on the subject of potential for mutations such as those which they both harboured, and he did confide to her that he had suspicions of something similar. To her disappointment, he never read her mind to observe what she already knew about the subject, and she quickly exited his orbit after observing what she believed to be his thinly veiled god complex.  Instead of following Xavier, Moira left for a laboratory in Norway, where she put forward her theories of mutation to the scientists already working there. They were sceptical, but Moira more than met the lab’s requirements for hire, and her ideas were published in a section of their journal. Interest picked up when Charles Xavier and Sarah Kinney published their own theories, despite accusations from Xavier that Moira had plagiarised his ideas. Moira exchanged a series of letters with Kinney, whose theories went above and beyond anything that she or Xavier had speculated over in their university years. Two years later, when SHIELD’s Department K released evidence of mutant existence to the public, they were overjoyed, despite Xavier receiving most of the credit due to coming out as a mutant almost as soon as they did so. When reports of other mutants filtered in from the public, Xavier was yet further lauded with praise, although Moira and Sarah were well congratulated among their own peers. They gradually stopped mailing each other, and eventually Moira heard that Sarah had become a recluse, working on a project that she refused to share details of. Moira was saddened, but got back to her own work with her friends.  Experimentation on her own tissue samples was enough to confirm that she was herself a mutant, and she commenced work on a way to potentially rid a person of mutation, seeing the startling level of prejudice that humans expressed to mutants almost as soon as knowledge of mutation became widespread. This didn’t aid her standing amongst other mutants, but as far as she saw it, this was for their own good. Or so she thought.

Moira groggily opened her eyes. She could hear a crackling, as of fire, and flickering shadows danced over the wall of the lab. She was bound by thick ropes, and she lay in a puddle of her own blood and broken glass. She looked up, to see a woman peering down at her. She blinked. They were clad entirely in black and wore a golden face mask, showing an amused expression. Behind the mask, lips moved. “You’re awake,” she said.  “Who the fuck are you?” Moira hissed, wriggling and trying to break free of her ties.  “Don’t you recognise me, dear?” The woman asked.  Recollection dawned on Moira. She had seen this woman on the TV once. She was a mutant and a terrorist, going by the alias of Destiny. “You’re that mutant supremacist,” she said through a mouthful of blood. She spat it out. “I figured one of your lot would find me at some point.”  Destiny stared at her through that unshifting mask. “And you were right.” She bent down, examining Moira more closely. “Do you know what my mutant power is, Moira?”  “Predicting the future,” Moira replied. It was a guess, but clearly a good one, as Destiny nodded.  “Very good. Do you know something else strange, Moira?”  “I know lots of very strange things,” she said, trying to shrug. The bonds restrained her.  “I’m sure. I can’t see you, Moira.” Moira blinked in surprise. “You are entirely invisible to me. I can see the effects that you have, they burn themselves into my irises like the sun. But in their center is a person shaped hole. That’s you, Moira.”  Moira almost laughed. “What did you do with Johan?” She asked with venom.  “Your lab assistant? He’s dead. We didn’t find him as interesting as we are very much finding you.” She fumbled at Moira’s face a little before grabbing onto her chin and pulling them eye to eye. “What are you, Moira?”  “A mutant.” There didn’t seem to be any point in lying at this point. “And my mutant power, Destiny, is changing the course of history.”  Destiny cocked her head. “How?”  “This is my third life. I’m born in the same place, at the same time, to the same people, every time.” She grinned. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”  Destiny stood up, dropping Moira back to the floor. “Very interesting,” she murmured. “But not true.” She turned her back to Moira, and Moira for the first time saw the crowd of people who Destiny now faced. “If you continue along this path, you will always run into me. We will always come for you and this cure of yours, and we will always kill you for it. You will run headlong into our arms, and you will die. And if we don’t get you, the humans will.” She turned back to Moira. “Besides, one wrong step during your childhood, one scrape too many, and you may die before your mutation ever manifests. And you will be dead for good.” She gestured with her head. “Pyro, kill her. Slowly.”  A man stepped forward from the crowd. Flames licked from his hands, and when he stretched them out they engulfed Moira, who screamed in pain and horror and terror.

In her fourth life, Moira decided to give Charles Xavier another try. This time studying anthropology, she approached him at Oxford and quickly entered his good graces. This time seeing past the flaws and failings, and gently guiding him away from them, she eventually allowed him to read her mind, showing him her three previous lives and the things she already understood, and it radicalised him. He came to love her, and she him, and stuck by his side for the foundation of the X-Men, through persecution, through good and ill. She helped him to spread his message of peace and coexistence, which he now clung to almost religiously, she helped the X-Men grow to the greatest superhero group on Earth, and was convinced for a time that she had beaten Destiny’s warning. She stood upon a grateful world, in which humans and mutants for the most part lived in peace.  It was then that the sentinels emerged. They were human made machines, robots with the sole purpose of eradicating mutants wherever they appeared. Moira died in a rain of fire as the sentinels wiped out Charles’s school, desperately trying to shield him with her body.  In her fifth life, Moira decided to arm herself. As a child, she wrote a letter to Doctor Strange, explaining her situation and desire to meet with and learn from him. He soon arrived in her village, and Moira’s parents were delighted that the strange American man had realised such potential in their daughter. She went to his Sanctum Sanctorum in New York, where she learned every secret of the arcane that she could find hidden in the Sanctum’s recesses. When Charles Xavier visited one day, she quietly ignored him, and continued studying. Strange learned to work around her, understanding that Moira intended to spend every possible moment of this life learning magic, and she was an exceptionally fast learner.  When Bolivar Trask revealed his sentinels, much earlier than he had in her fourth life, the public was astonished when they immediately sought out the Sanctum Sanctorum, tore Moira out of it, and burned her alive.  In her sixth life, Moira had a holiday. She lived a comfortable life as a professor of psychology and philosophy at Oxford. She married a man named Joseph MacTaggart, who she loved very much, and for the first time since her second death missed the time that she had been a simple farmer’s wife, just a little. When the sentinels came, she used magic to make Joseph forget her, and went out to meet her death with open arms.  Moira spent the entirety of her seventh life hunting the Trask bloodline. One by one, each member of Bolivar Trask’s family died in bizarre and mysterious circumstances. This received a great deal of media coverage, as the Trasks were an affluent breed, but the searching of secret services and police departments turned up nothing. Doctor Strange did find Moira, however, and after a duel of magic she defeated him and sent him home to his Sanctum, before retreating into the wilderness, mutants finally safe.  The sentinels emerged anyway. She found and fought them, in an AI controlled factory beneath the French Alps. She realised then that to try and stop the AI was pointless. It was something more than a computer program, and more like a meme that took root in anything that would receive it, be it Bolivar Trask’s mind or an abandoned factory complex. Moira died frustrated and angry, and with a hunger for vengeance.  In her eighth life, Moira took an entirely different approach. She went to Oxford, studying chemistry, and ignoring Charles Xavier. She spent much of her life hidden away with Joseph, and when the time was right left him, with an empty promise to return, and went to the mutant super-terrorist Magneto, visiting him where he sat sequestered in Asteroid M, his hidden satellite, and revealed what she knew to him. He listened quietly, and it radicalised him.  Magneto gathered a great army of mutants to him, some who would otherwise have become X-Men, and attempted, for the first time in any of Moira’s lives, a total domination of humanity. Armies fell, nations bent the knee, mutants were set free. Moira again dared to believe that it could have worked. As she wove spells and magic to keep humanity chained, she heard songs of resistance and freedom, and Moira and Magneto turned to see the Avengers. They fought them for decades, but were ultimately overcome. Tony Stark executed Moira on public television, and she died with another option in her mind.  In her ninth life, Moira went to Apocalypse, the mutant immortal who had walked the Earth since the fall of Babel, and the champion of the survival of the fittest. They gathered a greater army than even Magneto had managed, and began the systematic extermination of humanity. Humanity fought back, and the sentinels were released earlier than ever before. The machines adapted and learned quickly, soon attaining sentience and approaching technological singularity, and Moira began to despair as the mutants were beaten back further and further. The sentinels subjugated humans, who began ascending to machinehood themselves. Soon, the destruction of mutants was only a secondary objective to the machines, as they ever approached their final ascent to singularity.

Moira stood upon the rubble of the mutant capitol Tyr, the sky red above her. Tears streamed down her face. A corpse lay at her feet, a nameless mutant who had died in fire and ash. Their skin had been burned away completely, and their skull showed through underneath. Behind her, Apocalypse let out a furious bellow, slamming his hands together. “Is there no way for us to live?” He roared. “Must we die like this forever?”  Moira did not respond. She stared down at the mutant’s corpse, rage burning in her belly. She and Apocalypse had built the city and the mutant nation surrounding it from nothing, and it lay in ruin and disappointment at their feet. A drone whirred above her head, and her hand instinctively struck upwards and took it out of the sky with a burst of magical force. She remembered Charles, and Sarah, and Joseph, and even Magneto. She had left them all in each of her lives, and her last ditch effort for mutant lives had been crushed under her feet. She clenched her fist, feeling her nails biting into the flesh of her palm. “Apocalypse!” She called.  “What, Moira?” He returned. To her astonishment, tears were in his voice. “We weren’t the fittest. We didn’t survive. We are doomed, Moira!”  Moira turned to him. His hulking form was hunched over, holding the still corpse of Xorn, the Horseman of Death. “But we aren’t all dead yet,” she said, voice full of simmering rage. “One last attack. One last bomb against Nimrod. I’m going out with a bang if I have to go out at all.”  Apocalypse stood. He placed Xorn’s body at his feet. “One last fight,” he snarled. “Very well. Let us go.” He approached Moira, who held out her arms. She carved magical runes into the air, and as Apocalypse approached her she shifted space, and they were deposited into the vast steel cathedral of Nimrod the Lesser. Bright lights turned on them, the machines rounding to face them, plasma cannons outstretched, eyes flaring. Some towered, as tall as skyscrapers, while others swarmed like flies around them. A wall of force was thrown up by the cathedral’s defence systems, encircling Moira and Apocalypse. Three iterations of Nimrod the Lesser approached, each as large as Apocalypse, each showing amusement on its synthetic face.  “You arrive,” it chuckled. “Soon to be the last organic beings on this planet.” It clapped its enormous polymer hands together. “This is excellent.”  Apocalypse released a wordless roar and slammed his fist into the wall of force. It failed, and his eyes flared and released a beam of bright energy that the Nimrod iteration he fired it toward simply shrugged off. Nano-sentinels burrowed out of the floor, encircling the mutants. Moira clapped her hands, creating a ring of arcane fire. The nano-sentinels shrunk back from it, but Nimrod strode forward, still grinning. Apocalypse swung a fist, knocking one back, but another came for him from behind, and soon two had him by the arms while the third slammed against the bubble of force that Moira was barely able to contain herself within. It turned away from her, and wordlessly released a blast of plasma from its cannon, which obliterated Apocalypse’s until now immortal body. The apocryphal mutant slumped to the floor, charred and dead. Moira released the bubble, eyes trained on Nimrod, fury filling her veins.  “That’s right,” Nimrod giggled, insultingly jovially. “Just die for me like a good girl.”  “No,” Moira spat, and with one of the only spells that Doctor Strange had told her never to use summoned a singularity.  There was an undetermined period of nothingness, and then Moira opened her fetal eyes for the first time in her tenth life. Fury filled her embryo form, and a new idea occurred to her in that fury. A new concept entirely. And it radicalised her.

A man sat in a corner of a musty Canadian bar. The wooden walls were covered in paintings and hunting trophies, not to mention a healthy coat of dust. A small television set was blaring over the bar, where the barman was serving the only two other patrons present. The man was nursing a beer, and had almost entirely given up on life. He sighed to himself, and took a swig.  A woman took the seat opposite him at the table. She was pretty enough, with shoulder length brown hair and sparkling eyes, but the man wasn’t in the mood.  “Not happening,” he grunted. “I’m broke.”  “I’m not interested in a drink, Logan,” she replied. Logan froze. His eyes tracked up to her, and his nostrils flared.  “Who are you?” He snarled. “If you’re Weapon X, you aren’t getting outta here alive, bub.” He maintained furious eye contact, and she sighed.  “I’m not with Weapon X,” she told him. “But I would like to offer you a job.” She pointed up at the TV, which was displaying a horse race. “The barman does some bookkeeping on the side. Bet something on Loving Hoops.”  Logan raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m stupid? It’s thirteen to one on that horse.” The woman sighed.  “Barman!” She shouted. “Ten bucks on Loving Hoops!” He noticed as the bartender nodded to her that she was Scottish. He took another swig of beer, and watched the TV with interest. After a minute had passed, his eyes widened in astonishment, and the bartender unhappily shuffled over with one hundred and thirty dollars.  “Ok,” he conceded. “I’m interested. What the hell was that?”  The woman smiled, and stuck out her hand. “Logan, my name is Moira X. How would you like to be my bodyguard?”

Note: Things start diverging from comic canon a lot more after this, so don’t worry if this has been feeling a bit much like something you’ve already read.

#x-men #en sabah nur #logan howlett #wolverine #moira x #moira mactaggert #charles xavier #sarah kinney #shen xorn #irene adler #destiny #apocalypse #fanfic #fanfiction #magneto #erik lehnsherr