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birb-boyo · 9 months

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FHDHDHDDH

Thank you guys for asking about my Linksona(that word sounds so weird)

This is a very long post just so you all know

Everything is under the cut

The Hero of the Seas (:

My Link would probably fit sometime after Wind Waker, when there are still seas and actual pirates. I guess that I will start with the backstory

Before they were born, at least five hundred years, there was a prophecy, though, through the years, the prophecy has been lost to time.

The only part that Hyrule remembers is,

“A forsaken prince will redefine what it takes to be a hero”

Soon after that prophecy was heard, the king of Hyrule made a law that stated that any and all Gerudo princes were to be treated as royalty.

Time skip to soon after my Link’s birth, the current king of Hyrule disregarded the law and set it aside as if it never existed. This king put a bounty on the newly born Gerudo prince.

When Link was five, his home was stormed and raided by pirates. Link’s mother was murdered and he was stolen.

These pirates were only the first ones to see them out of many. They were traded, bartered, and sold into slavery many times until they were fifteen years old. When they were fifteen, another pirate crew bought them, though, they treated them like they were a human. They fed them nicely, told them thank you, they even cleaned and cooked their own stuff. It took them a full year to realize that they were free and that this crew bought them to free them of their shackles, even though they took off the chains as soon as he left the auction.

It took them a while to learn how to love and to learn how to smile again.

Their adventure started when they were seventeen. It started when the crew bought another slave. They looked to be Link’s age and they never spoke. They told the crew, in sign, that their name was Faro. It took a full month for them to speak, but when they did, it was in private with Link.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Link’s eyebrows furrowed at the new, foreign voice.

“I’ve never heard you speak before…”

“You’re that forsaken prince, aren’t you?” At this point, Link had no idea of the prophecy. He’d never heard of it before.

“I’m no prince, Faro. I was a slave until two years ago, princes do not scrub decks.”

“The world has forsaken a Gerudo prince. You are the forsaken prince.” Faro extended their hand to Link. “I need you more than anything right now.”

Link looked around the deck. It was the dead of night. Link and Faro were on night watch tonight. It was just the two of them tonight. Link wondered if this is what Faro came here for, just for him.

“What do you need me for?”

“The king is a tyrant. I only recently found out why he disregarded such an important law.”

Link tilted his head. “What law?”

Faro stood up straight and looked at Link with dumbfounded eyes. “What do you mean, “What law?!” That law would’ve protected you! You’d still have your family if my father was such a-“ Faro paused.

“Your…father?” There was a strict rule on the ship. A rule everyone knew but didn’t speak of. Pirates are outlaws. If any royal found out that pirates had bought the princess, their ship would sink in hours. The Marines were no joke. They did not allow anyone important on this ship, no matter how much they said that they would pay.

Faro grabbed Link’s shoulders. “Please! He is tearing this kingdom apart and we need a hero to stop him!”

“I’m no hero! The ones you compare me to all fought a Gerudo man named Ganondorf! If you really needed a hero, go find a Hylian to do it!”

Faro let go of Link. They took a deep breath before get on one knee in front of Link. Faro grabbed Link’s hand and pressed the back of it to their forehead. “Please, Link. I truly believe that you are the only one who can defeat him. Just please, you must help me…”

Link felt a tingle on the back of his hand and drew his hand away from Faro. Sitting a beautiful gold on the back of his hand, were three triangle. The one on the bottom right glowed brighter than the other two. He stared at it in awe. “…What?”

Faro jumped up and cheered. “I was right! It is you!” They laughed and giggled, but Link stared at his hand, a feeling of giddiness and dread filling him to the brim.

“What is this?”

“The triforce of courage Link! You are the next hero of Hyrule!”

Faro told the crew about everything on the next day, it didn’t help that the triangle still glowed brightly on his hand.

“Well, as I hear it, the king tried to murder his next hero. Why?” Nan, basically the crew’s mom, asked.

“Because he is the one the hero must fell.”

Link turned to Faro, his confusion evident on his face. “Aren’t the heroes supposed to serve the king?”

“There is a lot of things wrong about my father. One of those things are his name. His name wasn’t originally Rhodes. It’s a family secret, but he was born with the name Ganondorf.”

Nan hummed. “So the king needs to be dethroned. Tell me, Faro, does that mean that you’ll be leaving us after this?”

Faro sighed. “I would love to stay, really, but this kingdom needs a ruler. I don’t trust my father’s advisers with the throne. I find that my duty is more important.”

Link nodded, a new fire in his eyes. “Where do I start?”

Nan scoffed. “You mean, “Where do we start?”

Fast forward through two of his temples and puzzles and he now stands inside a water temple, the ship near the opening of the cave.

He defeated the boss and opened the chest. He saw a bracelet with what looked like a sapphire embedded on it. It was shiny, maybe made of silver. He could sell this for a good amount of money.

“What is that?” Faro asked beside him.

“You would think that I know?”

“Put it on…?”

Link thought about it for a few seconds before putting it on. Nothing happened. He even felt like the silver and blue didn’t match his darker skin ton. Gold paired with it better.

“So…?”

“Noth-!” Link stood up and grabbed Faro’s hand. They dragged Faro out of the way. Where they stood, a wave of water hit. The splash hit the both of them.

The two of them blinked more times than they could count. “…Did the water just attack us?” Faro asked. Link shrugged.

“The ship.” Link said as they made their way toward the ship.

Link explored this bracelet and found that it was an old relic of the Zora’s. It used to be a Zora heirloom. Did he return it? No. It was a very helpful item. Maybe he’d give it back after his adventure…anyways-

Link’s final fight took place inside Hyrule Castle. His crew stayed at the docks.

Nan decided that she was too old to lead a crew of pirates mid adventure, so she declared that Link was the new Captain.

The king knew that Link was coming, and yet, the king was alone in the throne room. The king laughed, stating that he couldn’t be the hero of he didn’t wield the sword of legend. He said that Link was too scared to touch it because Link knew that he had that same darkness inside him that the sword banished.

In truth, Link drew the sword, he was just better with his usual weapon, which was a double edged staff.

But don’t forget, Link had to go to Gerudo for a temple. They met their sisters and heard the whole story behind his childhood suffering. He knew that all of his problems, all of his trauma, was this king’s fault.

They fought with a straight face the entire time, letting all of that anger and frustration and pain that he held within their twelve year old body out.

He decapitated the king. It was an accident, but it felt so right.

Faro took the throne and left the crew. They were apparently called “Zelda” to the rest of the kingdom.

Link lead his crew through storms and sea monster attacks. Link knew that the crew loved monster hunting, so that’s what they became. His crew became monster hunters who slayed the horrid monsters that threatened the seas that Link called his home. It had been a year since his adventure ended when it happened.

Link stared at the ceiling. It was night, probably midnight. He should be asleep right now. The monster that they had just fought required him to go under water. The Zora bracelet allowed him to breathe underwater as long as he wore it, that wasn’t the problem. It was how much he had used the bracelet to command the water around him. It took a toll on his body. However, it wasn’t a big one, it only made him tired.

He heard a knock on the door before one of his crew mates opened it. It was Jasper, his right hand man. He was on night watch tonight.

“You might wanna see this Capt’n.” Link was on his feet in seconds.

“What is it?”

Link and Jasper stood on the deck. In front of them, on the firm wooden boards was a triangular shape. Link stepped closer to it and walked around it.

“It looks like a portal of some kind…?” Link mumbled to himself. It was a swirl of purple and black. It also blowed an ominous purple. It almost looked like the stereotypical poison.

“That’s what I was thinking.” Jasper said. “It’s been here for quite some time now. What should we do about it?”

“I’m going to go inside of it.” Something was pulling Link toward the portal.

“Wha-“ Jasper sighed. “Okay, just bring weapons and potions with you. You don’t know where it’ll take ya.”

Link chuckled. “I take my staff everywhere I go. Don’t worry about me.”

So, Link gathered his stuff. Potions and their weapons and some spare clothes and stepped through the ominous darkness of the portal.

*Cue Linked Universe*

_______________________________

Pause…I found a picrew with a Gerudo nose and lips?!?!?? You also know that all Links have worn eye liner

The only thing that let me down is that there were no scars…I loved everything else

@cal-the-duende @phthalo-ocorina @mishwanders (:

#linked universe #linkeduniverse #linked universe oc #linksona #here’s your infodump (:#SCREAMS FROM THE SHADE

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oodlyenough · 1 year

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last of us 1x09

wanted to sit on this one for a couple days and use it to sort of summarize the season overall. so this will probably be long af lol

I feel like I actually don't have all that much to say about the final episode itself. It was quite faithful to the game, and hit any note I would've wanted it to hit, I think. Minor adjustments in dialogue or character beat felt quite minor.

However, the finale felt a bit underwhelming to me. I'm not sure why. I don't know if it's just because I knew every story beat ahead of time so none of the shock was there, or if I needed another 15 minutes of runtime to really let some scenes marinate, or whether it was just actually so close to the game that I couldn't fully lose myself in it, or that passively watching Joel shoot people is different to doing it yourself, or what it was. But I ended up not being as impacted by this ep as I am whenever I've played the end of the game. I hope it hit harder for show viewers. It seems like it did.

The biggest change is seeing Anna and Ellie's birth. (Lmao @ baby Ellie just plopping out mid fight. Uh... sure.) I think, as far as immunity explanations go, this worked pretty well - I know fans had speculated as much for a while. It was great to see (and hear) Ashley Johnson -- those first grunts running through the woods were so surreal lol that's Ellie! I know those grunts! "You fuckin' tell them Ellie", from Ellie... wahh.

I think I was expecting more on Marlene and Anna. I feel like... the show attempted to substitute the Marlene gameplay segments at the start with this little bit of backstory and the brief Ellie-Marlene scenes in ep 1. But I think there's something lost in not giving them more bonding time, or making it clearer that Marlene has been aware of/keeping tabs on Ellie for all of Ellie's life. I think Marlene being not-exactly a mother figure but still someone important to Ellie, and someone who loves Ellie herself, makes Marlene's death more meaningful, and a bit of that was lost here. I love that Ellie specifically asks about Marlene in the car, for eg, but I'm not sure it felt as earned.

We substituted the Sarah picture with the Joel suicide attempt backstory, which worked -- lol and I honestly had spent no time wondering at all about Joel's scar, so it was a nice and unexpected callback for me and my gamer hubris.

I think the way they did Joel trying to reach out to Ellie using callbacks from the season worked well, even if it was kind of skincrawling to watch, like, in a secondhand embarrassment sort of way, watching him faceplant over and over with it. Spring Ellie is so rough, somehow every time I play I forget about that change and it's a slap in the face when it comes.

I knew there was no way they'd skip the giraffe but I did not expect them to have a real giraffe ?!?!?! Amazing lmao.

The Controversial Hospital Scene... I had some fears leading up to this ep, where like, if they pitched it wrong it could've ruined the whole thing for me, so I was glad we avoided that. Joel's choice is both horrific and understandable. I have complained at various parts of the series that I think the tv show softened Joel too much by leaving his violence off screen, but I do get the impression now they set it up to "tell" us for 8 episodes about what Joel is capable of and then only, finally, in episode 9 do they really show us. I'm a bit on the fence about this and whether it worked or makes it feel like he suddenly transforms into a superhero(/villain) out of nowhere... but I can see what they were going for, at least. And the slow version of the theme song was well placed.

Can't BELIEVE we didn't get the cameo I was expecting lmaoo honestly my biggest shock of this ep. Nurse Laura Bailey was fun though I can't believe I didn't recognize her lol.

Other, season overview stuff now that we're done:

I'm absolutely shocked there was no brick/bottle easter egg. Shocked and appalled!

I ended up agreeing with the "needs more infected" criticism, although I didn't at first. I don't think the show needs a ton of them, but I DO think the ever-present danger of them is necessary backdrop for the world, and you lose that in the show after episode 5. It seems like everywhere Joel and Ellie went was infected-free. I saw someone on Twitter joke "why do they even need a cure there's only like 3 infected" which... yeah.

Still hate Tess' death. My least favourite part of the entire first season lol

Don't agree with how the show's approach to FEDRA

Maria and Tommy's baby is a real wildcard going forward huh?

Overall I feel like I'd give this season ... I dunno an 8.5? Or 9? 8.75?... out of 10. Ultimately I do prefer the game, but I figured I would. I really enjoyed watching it weekly, will miss it, and can't wait for s2. I think part 2's story will need more retooling to work for television, and tbh that excites me, because for the MOST part the bits where the show deviated a little from the game were my favourites.

#the last of us #the last of us hbo

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fernrisulfr · 1 year

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Dorlen Undertow

This was a character I made for a One-Shot that was sort of an “interview” for a larger campaign. The DM wanted to see how well the new recruits got along with each other, as well as the existing party. He hadn’t expected they’d like all 3 of us, doubling the size of the group. We all decided however not to use these characters for the main game. I almost died in a Rug of Smothering. Dorlen Undertow (Bard 1) Sea Elf - Bard - Fishermen - Chaotic Good

- Father's name is Koriolis, he's either a politician or a bureaucrat. - What was the name of the Ship and Captain that went down? - Backstory, Fishing Voyage gone wrong. They caught/hooked something that didn't appreciate being so. Destroyed the ship and killed the crew. Dorlen survived purely on luck. It decided he could be useful and traded his life in return for a favour. Favour involves the compass pointing South East. - Fell unconscious. Got picked up by a passing ship literal miles away from where his ship had been. (What was THAT ship named?) - arrived at Seige town because he was heading South East from the Port he'd come in from. - Worships Deep Sashelas

Backstory Used: Dorlen had a relatively normal childhood got a Sea Elf, raised by his father Koriolis, and mother Torfiel. Then one day around his third or fourth decade he and several acquaintances decided they wanted to try their hand at traveling the ocean blue not from below, but above. Thus was formed the crew of the eventual ship the "Strange Horizon". His father of course considered it the height of foolishness, a waste of time, and a "phase". Time passed as it does, and for some of the Sea Elf crew it did prove to be a phase. Some even perished, as the sea can be an unforgiving mistress. Those who remained, moved on to discover what about life above the waves they loved most. It was on a ship known as "The Exuberance" that Dorlen discovered his love for fish and song. Of course he'd always been around fish, but the difference in how the 'landies' gathered the bounty of the sea was what he enjoyed. Once again his father thought it was the height of foolishness to waste time with hook, line, and net, when Dorlen was literally capable of going down there and getting the fish more directly. The young man, now Fisherman, didn't care however. The challenge was part of the fun. Decades passed, his skills and experience growing. Every few years he'd send word home, more as a courtesy so they knew he still lived; and when the completion ofe his first century came, he returned home briefly to take on the name Dorlen Undertow. It was just passed three decades after this, that disaster struck. He was sailing upon a fishing vessel known as "Mariner's Folly", under Captain Nolvadd. They'd sailed out a great deal further than most Fishermen would, following a tip that a shoal of rare fish would be passing through on migration from their spawning grounds. They found something rare alright, but it definitely wasn't a shoal of fish. The ship lurched heavily to port when they nets caught, as if snagged on a reef. Least till they ripped clean off. Than someone spotted a dark shape headed away. They didn't normally hunt sharks and whales outside of when times were tough, but they weren't about to look a gift seahorse in the mouth. They shifted the sails and readied the harpoons; biggest mistake of their soon to be very short lives. Dorlen never actually caught sight of the beast, but it ripped the ship to shreds. _Mariner's Folly indeed._ No one survived the assault but Dorlen, and not for reasons he's proud of. Harpoons weren't his thing, he'd come above the waves to stop using a Trident to fish. Instead he'd been leading the crew in a shanty and dancing upon a barrel...which meant he was flung overboard in the first minute and knocked out by debris. When he woke it was in the darkness of the deep waters, before the beast itself, a vague outline in the murk. It touched his mind, told him he'd been lucky to survive, and luckier still that it had use for someone like that. In exchange for his life, Dorlen would do it a favour. Well it called it a 'favour', but really it was compelling him. It gave him a compass, one that pointed vaguely south-east rather than north, and told him to retrieve what belonged to it. After which he blacked out, either from the fear, or some foul magic. When he awoke it was being pulled onto the deck of a freighter a great deal away from where the Folly had gone down. The moment Dorlen reached port, he gathered what supplied he needed and began following the compass South-East, finding no once did it alter direction. Wherever it was taking him it was far. He travelled the land, learning the local tales and songs as he went, and spreading his vast repertoire of shanties to others. Recently he arrived at the village of Ashwell on you way to the town of Elkhorn. Unfortunately his timing was terrible and the night he decided to stay at the inn was the same night the goblins attacked. Vastly out of his element in more ways than one, and terrified out of his mind on various levels, he managed to blend it amongst the villagers escaping to the fortress and just managed to gain entrance to the fortress before the gates were sealed. “You've spent the last several days in the formerly well appointed attic apartment of Lord Tilson's ward ("To be named at the Last Minute') and several of the other people who had helped the villagers make it into the fortress. Of course every sailor knows how to batten down the hatches and work with the crew, so once inside he was compelled to do what he could to help weather this storm and lighten the mood.”

Appearance: 5′10, 155 lbs, Blue Skin, Green Hair, Silver Eyes. Shoulder length hair swept back, always seems to be wet. Wears a purple bandana, low cut v-neck white shirt, two sashes (a large blue one and a smaller purple one), donning a worn sailor’s coat. Plays a concertina. I tried to make him using HeroForge, but this was back when they had fewer options than they do now, so it’s not quite perfect. I was never 100% pleased with the colours on his coat.

#dnd #D&D #Dungeons and Dragons #Character Concept #Bard #Sea Elf #DnD Bard #HeroForge #Personal #He came back for a Cameo in a One-Shot I ran for the same group #I spent the whole game I played him in singing nothing but Sea Shanties #and the spongebob theme #Dorlen Undertow

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one-piecee · 2 years

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#ONEPIECE1044

Okay, this chapter is so big I'm going to try and structure it a little differently, discuss things in parts 😭 😭

1. Chapter Events

Chapter title: Warrior of Liberation

So the chapter starts with Luffy saying: What's happening...? How can I still stand? I just lost... but I feel like I'm having a blast.

And music/drums (Doom Dut Da Da) playing all around him - And we've got Zunesha saying Luffy Is Joy Boy!!

(this panel is amazing by the way, wow!!)

And we cut to the Five Elders discussing Luffy and his devil fruit, the "Gomu Gomu No Mi", as we know it-

No matter the era, the world government has always failed to acquire the gomu gomu no mi, even after 800 years of trying.

The fruit Luffy has carries the name of a "God"... After all the gomu gomu no mi is actually a mythical zoan type - human human model Nika

It is allegedly the most ridiculous power in the world.

We cut briefly to Hiyori and Orochi talking, or more like Orochi begging Hiyori to spare his life-

((another BEAUTIFUL panel))

and Kanjuro comes (on his last breath, as the dying flame) and ends up killing Orochi. I have to be honest with you guys here, I wasn't focused too much on this part because LUFFY NIKA JOY BOY LUFFY NIKA JOY BOY LUFFY NIKA JOY BOY

AND THEN WE GOT LUFFY JUMPING TO GEAR FIFTH, ALSO HIS AWAKENING!!

WE GOT LUFFY LITERALLY SWINGING KAIDO AROUND

We also see Luffy literally pick up the ground, and bounce back Kaido's attack - this could be his awakening!! Playing around with all the space around him!!

IT LOOKS SO GOOD!! AND HE'S JUST HAVING THE TIME OF HIS LIFE HE'S LAUGHING AND HAVING A BLAST I LOVE HIM

And again, Kaido apologizing for CP0 (code of honour? I need his backstory!!)

He just looks great, it was an amazing chapter and i literally can't believe we actually got this confirmed. I've seen before (and even years before) that some people thought luffy's devil fruit might have actually been Nika and I need to find that theorist again because????

Okay well this is going to be long because I have three more points to talk a bit more about, I'll put a divider so it doesn't get too much-

2. Why did the Elders wait until now?

I've seen a lot of people comment on the fact that it doesn't make sense that the elders knew that the fruit they were looking for this entire time was called the gomu gomu no mi, and that they didn't go and catch Luffy immediately, or alert the people at marineford or whatever whatever well first of all - the actual devil fruit, nika, hadn't been used in 800 years - the only ones who knew about the fruit were the elders and they didn't know about Luffy!!

As (@/Huureviews) on twitter pointed out, after the conclusion of Marine Ford the elders said:

There was no way for them to know about Luffy's DF because they've never seen him use it, or even seen him at all, the only ones who see him use it are always surprised by his DF - and he always says "I'm a rubber-man", if you don't know about the rubber properties gained after eating the Nika fruit, you won't connect the dots and the only ones who could where the elders (who didn't know)

(+) which is why even more people are now seemingly convinced Shanks meeting up with them was about the fruit

3. Zoan fruits have free will

A very small point - In the chapter the elders say that all Zoan type devil fruits have a "will of their own" and that's why the Nika fruit always seems to evade them - could this explain how Luffy got a hold of it?

We know that Shanks had the DF, but he was also VERY upset when Luffy ate the fruit, and it doesn't make sense that it was that easy for Luffy to eat the DF (that he could just open the box, wouldn't Shanks have locked it up, or kept it away better?) SO what it, Sun God Nika, the devil fruit, in it's own free will wanted Luffy to have his powers? Too many questions, so little answers.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST

4. The true abilites of Model Nika

NO, the human human fruit - model Nika isn't the strongest power in the world, or the most powerful as some people suggest - it's the most ridiculous. Another word for it would be comical, that's Luffy's fruit. The user's body gains the properties of rubber, and in combat they are only limited by their imagination - to clear things up, this DOES NOT mean that Luffy's powers came solely from the fruit - it came from his own imagination, will and creativity.

Anyone with this fruit might have stretched a little, thrown some punches and called it a day but Luffy's imagination and his desire to grow stronger and stronger made him train even more, which made him unlock all of these different possibilities. His DF is strong, but Luffy controls it (not vice versa).

And that concludes my rant for the day!! What did you guys think? Some people think Shanks might have gone to the village wanting Ace to eat the fruit, knowing that Roger's son was somewhere there - what do you guys think`?

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rpd-rookie · 3 years

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After all things he saw and been through, Leon could use some rest... So how about Leon x reader on vacation in some remote, distant place, phone turned off, Hannigan banned from contacting him over new assignments? I guess it would be perfect for post-Vendetta? I don't really care it it's going to be fluff, smut or whatever - I just want him to take his time off and simply enjoy his leave, wherever he'd go. ^_~

Author’s note: Sorry about the long wait. This OS actually became so long I decided to make it a 2 or 3 chapters long fanfic. Here’s the first prt. Hoping you’ll love it.

Warning: Angst, Mention of Alcoholism and Depression, Language, Mention of sex.

Information : Y/SN = your second name

Holidays - Leon S. Kennedy x Fem!Reader

A fresh marine breeze entered the room through the ajar French window, flapping the white muslin curtains like two small sails. It caressed his clammy naked body and a salty smell came to tickle his nose, reminding him a time when, as a kid, he used to go visit his grandparents in their small beach house in South Carolina, a time that was far gone but that he kept close to his heart. And so he sprawled on the mattress, a bit like a funny starfish, his blue eyes still shut, trying to linger in his memory and in his bed a little longer, at least until Hunnigan calls him to warn him not to be late to another umpteenth appointment with his DSO colleagues or the president. Only when he felt a delicate hand brush his hair away from his face, tucking it behind his ear like his mother used to do when he was a child, and finally met a pair of gorgeous (colour) eyes did he realise two things. One, Hunnigan won’t call this morning. Two, holidays were awesome.

Part 1: THE MEETING

Scott Rossi. That was the name he had given when he had registered in this remote cottage-like hotel three days ago on the north coasts of Nova Scotia. Nothing original and probably too easy to guess – it was his father’s first name and his mother last name after all. A fake identity he had judged necessary to disappear from the DSO’s radar for a little while. He needed to be left alone. For his wellness and his sanity even though a part of him knew drinking his sorrow away wasn’t what was best for that so-called wellness he wanted back. But it was the only solution he had found to forget. Forget about New York. Forget about the car bombing in DC. Forget about that bullet he put in President Benford’s head. Forget about everything that had led him here, drinking in this bar. But the road to forgetting was hard and the escape too momentary. And the more whisky he poured in his glass to more he seemed to drown in his bottomless pit of pain and depression. “Tough day or you’re just not confident in your masculinity?” Usually, Leon would have ignored such a nosy question, the same way he would have ignored another over-curious judgy person, with characteristic stoicism. But there was something in that question, something in that voice - though he couldn’t pinpoint what - that made him look up from the amber liquid in his glass. Perhaps was it the strangeness of that question. Or perhaps was it that voice, confident and full of nerve, reminding Leon of old times, old friends, bold young agents and femme fatales. Or perhaps, was it simply because she was a woman and God knew how much Leon couldn’t ignore one, wasted or not. She was a (hair colour) with piercing (colour) eyes, wearing a long marine blue coat over a nice black dress. Elegant. Self-assured. Pretty. Very pretty … Actually too pretty to hang out in some lousy hotel bar like the one she was in right now. A city girl maybe. “Excuse me?” “The whisky. My father used to say it’s a drink for fags.” Leon’s eyes widened briefly and she added, unsettled by his surprise as if she had expected it. “But then again, my father was an asshole who didn’t know shit about anything. So tough day, huh?” Leon snickered and remained surprisingly troubled for a few second. Needless to say, he wasn’t used being caught off guard like that. “More like tough life” He finally corrected. She nodded and, unable to resist curiosity – even though she had the impression the man was certainly not the kind to easily open up to strangers - quickly went to sit closer to him bringing her tequila along with her. “I’m all ears.” “I don’t need a therapy.” His tone was curt and harsh and he took a sip of whisky looking away from her, thinking she would get the message and leave him to finish his fancy bottle of Glenfiddich in peace. But she did not move and simply waited, her observing eyes set on him as if she was trying to read his mind or something. He glanced towards her only to see her sigh and take off her coat like an insect would shed their skin, offering Leon the sight of her beautiful wasp-like body covered in black silk, a sight that didn’t leave him indifferent. After all, she had an exquisite silhouette. Curvy with a narrow waist that her skin-tight black dress could bring out with ease. “Let me guess, after fifteen years of marriage, your wife cheated on you with your best friend because you were the kind of man who lived for his job instead of his family and now he’s taking care of your kids in your own house and they call him daddy.” “Couldn’t be moooore wrong.” He had a quick laugh, not because he thought her soap opera-like story was amusing but because he actually never imagined someone would picture him married with kids. Did he look the type? He didn’t think so. “Maybe. But at least now I know you’re not married.” Leon glanced at her again, astonished by her audacity. No one had ever flirted with him that way. Though he wasn’t even sure she was flirting. “Are you sweet-talking me or something?” She shrugged her

shoulders leaving the place for any sort of answer and Leon said “You know, you could have just look at my hand.” “I did actually but I just wanted to make sure.” She had a quick seductive smile and smoothly bent towards Leon who peeped at her décolletage for a second before focusing on his drink again. “By the way, is shooting a hobby or part of your job?” Leon froze, his glass half way between the counter and his lips and stared at her. “How …” “The calluses on your fingertips. Only a shooter has that kind of hands.” He couldn’t help but be impressed and after drinking his whisky in one go, he naturally sat up straight on his stool to scrutinize her, suddenly more that interested in that mysterious girl. “You’re observant.” “Y/N actually.” She extended her hand and, after a short hesitation, he shook it with an amused smile, undeniably seduced by that cheeky attitude that suited her so well. Her skin was so soft and cold against his, he instinctively kept her hand in his to warm it up. A lovely gesture yet certainly a bit inappropriate. Either way, the girl said nothing and let him hold her hand. “I’m L… Scott. I’m Scott” He finally replied as he let go of her hand, slightly uncomfortable. “ Fine, then I’m Y/SN.” Leon frowned, his face showing a mix of confusion and amusement. “You just said your name was Y/N.” “Yeah but that was before you chose to lie.” She grimaced, emptied her shot of tequila and called the waiter with a small hand gesture to ask for a refill, not even slightly disappointed in Leon for lying. “I didn’t lie.” Not really. She put down her hand as she realised the barman, who was flirting with a man at the end of the counter, would not notice her. “Of course you did. But I’ll allow it. I guess that’s just another silly way to cope with your tough life for a night. Though, it seems it’s as useless as alcohol” She took Leon’s glass and emptied it without looking away from the agent. “I’m trying to enjoy my holidays at the fullest.” He confessed and that was the truth. “Is it working?” She placed the glass, now stained with her lipstick, in front of him and he shrugged, showing her the bottle of alcohol by his side before pouring himself another drink. “No, not really.” “Thought so.”

She took the whisky again, this time from Leon’s hand but he did not protest. He didn’t care about that damn liquor. He could definitely afford another bottle. The company however … He knew he would never find another girl like the one sitting next to him. “So, Y/N. What are you doing here?” He asked, his eyes fixed upon her face. “Who’s Y/N?” She replied with a cheeky wink and Leon smiled and chuckled. It hadn’t done that in a while. “Are we really gonna play this lie the whole night?” Part of him hoped so. There was something endearing and refreshing in that little game, the same way there was something terribly irresistible in that girl. “You wanna spend the whole night with me? Who told you I was that kind of girl?” She harrumphed, hand over her heart like an amazingly lame actress, an overly dramatic gesture that was certainly intended. “You’re impossible.” Leon confessed but there was no hint of criticism or annoyance, quite the opposite. He was actually having fun drinking here with that girl he didn’t know. “No. I’m just a girl pretending to be someone she’s not – aka Y/SN - talking to a man named Scott who just lost his wife and kids to his best friend.” “Not just his wife and kids, his dog too. A beagle. Poppy.” She laughed, getting the tiny nod to John Wick and he looked glad that she did. “And what’s Y/SN’s backstory?” “I found yours. You could at least found mine.” She retorted and let him think. And for a second, as she stared at him scratching his stubble, finding him insanely handsome, she realised he hadn’t touch his drink in a small while. Good. “Y/SN is a college student with unresolved daddy issues trying to get the attention of a man possibly twice her age to cope with the fear of abandonment his father left her with when he left her and her mom.” “Was Dad an alcoholic?” She declared on purpose, just to see if the word would trigger his desire to drink. It incredibly did not. “Might explain why you’re so interested in a loser like me.”

She stayed the whole night with him. Talking. Playing. Flirting in ways only she could do. Creating an undeniable connection, a sharp sexual tension that only a man deprived of all senses would have missed. She gave him a signal (if not more) with her eyes, called him with her lips. And he responded with a similar technique, a similar enthusiasm. And at the end of the night, when she got up from her stool and kissed him goodbye, right at the corner of his lips, she realised she could potentially spend the hottest night of her life if she chose to lead him in her room. After all, it was no secret for either of them. She wanted to fuck him and he wanted to fuck her. But a part of her decided to play hard to get, decided that this night would be a sweet game, a foreplay in their roleplay. And luckily for her, he was a player. Just like her.

#Leon Kennedy #leon s kennedy #fanfic #request #resident evil #leon kennedy x reader

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gumnut-logic · 3 years

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Callisto (Voyage - Bit 3)

Prologue Incident - Bit 1 | Bit 2 Fallout - Bit 1 | Bit 2 | Bit 3 Voyage - Bit 1 | Bit 2 | Bit 3

This has settled down to a once a week post at the moment. I am still writing, but I’ve been writing the Prologue because I realised that I hadn’t written enough backstory to support the main story. So expect 4000-odd words of Jeff landing on Mars in the near future.

In the meantime, here is a little terrible twos being good bros.

As always, many, many thanks to @tsarinatorment @scribbles97 and @janetm74 for all their patient help. I’ve been a pain lately, so they have suffered greatly for my fic :D

I hope you enjoy this last bit of Part Two.

-o-o-o-

Gordon sat back and watched his father and Virgil leave the cockpit. John followed a moment later.

Gordon wasn’t hungry, not by a long shot. His stomach was still protesting the jump and he was quite happy staying where he was.

He wasn’t surprised that Scott, after reassuring himself that Alan was okay monitoring the course correction, disappeared after John. Gordon did not want to be in the room when that encounter happened. Not that he didn’t have his own beef with the astronaut over this. He couldn’t believe John would support their father going into space. John, of all people knew the health ramifications.

Speaking of which…

He unbuckled and pushed off his chair in the direction of his father’s chair. Formerly, his chair. He was of two minds regarding that fact, but considering he didn’t think Dad should even be in space, where he sat was of the least importance.

He hooked his foot around the base of the seat and pulled himself in beside his little brother.

Gordon’s eyes danced over the flight controls. “How’s it going?”

Alan glanced at him. “Computer is performing perfectly. We’ll stop to drop the buoy in about twenty-five minutes.” A raised eyebrow. “How’s the tummy?” And yes, there was a small smirk accompanying that.

“It’s fine.” As if to penalise him for lying to his little brother, his gut twisted.

Gordon let out a groan.

The smirk turned to a worried frown. “You sure you’re okay.”

He grunted at his brother. “I’ll live.” And he remembered that there were four more jumps there and likely five more on the way back. “Maybe.”

“Get Virg to drug you up. You’ll enjoy it more.”

‘Enjoy’ was rarely in the same sentence as ‘space’ in Gordon’s book. “Might do that.” Puking in zero-g was just messy and not to mention gross. “How come you aren’t feeling it?”

Alan shrugged. “Been playing with g-forces since I was a kid? This isn’t much different.”

Gordon grunted at him again.

They sat there together for a moment or two. There was something about hanging with his little brother that was different from hanging with his older brothers. More relaxed maybe, or just…different.

“Not often my ‘bird carries yours. This has to be only the second time.”

Gordon blinked. “Yeah? I think so. Not too many oceans in space.”

“Tell that to the Jupiter system.”

Space oceans were a thing. After the mad dash that was their trip to Europa, Gordon had made a point of reading up on all the extra-terrestrial oceans he could find.

Earth, of course, was the only body in the solar system with surface liquid water. There were buckets of ice on many of the other planets and moons, but none of that interested the aquanaut. He preferred his water well above zero degrees celsius.

Europa had been fascinating and he was still basking in the accolades from the scientific paper that he, Alan and his heroes, the Pendergasts, had jointly written. Readings from Four’s scanners had recorded everything and Earth’s scientific compliment were still going nuts years later. Tracy Industries had helped fund a proper scientific expedition to the moon.

Hmm, come to think of it, they should probably drop in and say hi on the way back. Would be interesting to catch up with Gwen and her team in person instead of over holovid.

Would be hilarious to knock on their door as a surprise. Hi, we were just in the area…

He grinned.

“What are you up to?” Alan was eyeing him suspiciously.

Gordon snorted. “Just thinking we should drop in on the Europa Extra-terrestrial Marine Expedition on the way back. I owe Gwen a jump-scare.”

His brother tilted his head, obviously calculating the possibility. “Could do. You should speak to Scott.”

That dragged him back to reality. “I guess it depends on Dad.”

Blue eyes darted in his direction. “Dad will be okay. You know that, don’t you?”

Gordon found he didn’t have the energy to get angry. “How can you know that?”

“I don’t.” Alan went quiet a moment. “But then how do you think I manage each time you go out on a mission?”

The aquanaut stared at him. “What?”

“Well, your health has never been and never will be one hundred percent, yet you still dart down to the bottom of the ocean, jump off high places and do things just like the rest of us. Do you think I don’t think of losing you all the time?”

Gordon froze a moment digesting that his little brother still worried about that… “That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“Dad…okay, I get your point. But I’m also worried about Scott.”

“What?” Alan stared at him.

“Can’t you see what this is doing to him?”

“Er, what?”

No, Alan hadn’t seen. “I have never seen Scott so terrified.”

“I repeat – what?”

“When Dad told us he was going. Scott just…” He swallowed. “Dad is hurting Scott and I, for one, am not going to stand for it. Virg isn’t either.”

Alan was staring at him. “You said Dad was cold and didn’t care. Abrupt, yes, that’s Dad, but I can’t believe he doesn’t care.” The astronaut shook his head.

“If he cared, he wouldn’t have come.”

“Gords-“

“Alan, trust me on this.”

His little brother stared at him again. “I trust you, Gordon, you know that. It’s a given. But I also trust Dad. He knows what he’s doing.”

Gordon pressed his lips together. “He doesn’t know everything and I really wish you guys would stop worshipping him as a god.”

“He’s not a god! He’s just…Dad.”

“Yeah, and that’s the problem.”

There was silence after that. Gordon not willing to berate Alan any further. It wasn’t Alan’s fault. He didn’t have the history with Dad Gordon did. He hadn’t had to fight to swim. Hadn’t seen Virgil struggle with his choices.

Hadn’t seen Scott give his everything to his father only to have it…ignored.

But no, that was history. Long ago. Before the Oort Cloud. Gordon had his issues regarding his father. He loved him, but he was a difficult man under all that passion. Being the son of a hero wasn’t everything it could be.

Scott worshipped the ground his father walked on. Gordon, not so much.

To see his father hurt Scott like that…Gordon’s blood just boiled.

“Is Scott okay?” Alan’s voice was smaller than usual.

“That’s just it, Allie. I don’t think so. You know how he gets. Like before the Oort Cloud. I, for one, don’t want him going there again.” ‘There’ being more a mental place than a physical.

Alan’s head dropped. “No.”

A voice rumbled behind them and both jumped. Michael was talking into comms, to Scott, something about the aft sensor array.

Crap. It was a sign of his distraction that he had forgotten the Mechanic was there. He glanced over, but the tattooed man showed no sign of even knowing they existed.

Gordon sighed.

A hand landed on his knee. “It’s going to be okay.” Blue eyes sought his. “It will be, Gords.”

He let out a breath, suddenly wishing he had Alan’s faith.

If anything happened to Dad…

“It. Is. Going. To. Be. Okay.” The hand on his leg squeezed tight.

But Gordon didn’t answer.

-o-o-o-

The drop of the communication buoy saw all of them back in the cockpit. John was the mastermind behind this little exercise and Virgil was, as usual, very proud of his space brother.

The design was ingenious, of course. John had taken a portion of the T-drive technology and applied it to communications. The same Tunnels created by the engine could be used to push what would otherwise be a simple comms signal through to the next buoy at a vastly accelerated rate. His brother had been working with Brains to realise this technology. Back in Earth orbit, a satellite connected the new network to the planetary network. On the way out, they would connect the Jupiter system. On the way back, they would connect Mars. Time delay communications would be a thing of the past.

Possibly as a tension reliever, John’s first signal went straight to Lady Penelope.

Gordon’s demeanour shifted immediately. His excited babbling did much to lighten the atmosphere in the cabin. The uninformed wouldn’t have been blamed for thinking he hadn’t spoken to her for years. Virgil knew for a fact the two of them had had a conversation shortly before they left.

The concept of ‘young love’ made him feel old.

And indicated just how tired he really was.

But sleep was something he couldn’t see happening very soon. Sure, he could try to take a nap en route. Hell, he had to. But his head was full of worry that likely wouldn’t let him rest.

Scott let Gordon babble for a full minute before cutting him off with the mission. Perhaps the commander saw how much the atmosphere needed to be lifted from the black depths they had fallen into.

Virgil hated it when his family argued. It didn’t happen often...okay, maybe they did quarrel every now and again - it came with the territory of working together. But nothing deep like this. Nothing that cut into the core of their very foundation. The surety that held them together.

Virgil sighed.

“Ready for jump.” Scott’s voice was all command and it forced Virgil to focus.

Pre-jump checklist as his brother called out to each of them.

“Airframe?”

“Craft secure. We are go.”

Blue eyes flickered to Michael. “Propulsion.”

“T-drive ready.”

“Helm.”

Alan’s back was tensed, his hand on the lever that would propel them further away from Earth. “Ready.”

The familiar countdown, such a part of their lives. Scott’s voice carried security...and Virgil’s faith.

Alan’s arm moved.

And the Excel jumped.

-o-o-o-

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds fanfiction #thunderbirds #Gordon Tracy #Alan Tracy #Virgil Tracy #callisto

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mantra4ia · 3 years

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Debris: speculation and what we know so far about...

Bryan

The character is from Texas, has no siblings, and his parents are both alive.

He served in MARSOC (Marine Special Forces) in Afghanistan, where he was in a military prison in some capacity (officer or detainee unclear, but an alternate reality he's called a war criminal, so he's likely detained).

FWIW, I'm a little surprised that in an alternative reality Bryan wasn't a part of Influx. He shares a similar kind of backstory with Anson Ash.

He carries a baseball on the plane like a momento stress ball (1x03).

He eats...a lot, literally thinks with his stomach, seemingly indiscriminately (#you could just pull up a chair to the buffet). Stale Peeps, weeks old sandwiches, rewarmed burritos, anything from the minibar, etc. Maybe he was a smoker in the time before and it killed his sense of taste. Or he just has an iron stomach from his time on active duty. In any case, food seems to be his unconditional OTP. I request a GIF supercut.

He seems to know a bunch of field operatives (Lester, Sharon, John the ME, Muntz, Beck from containment) from various Orbital teams, perhaps even worked cases with a few, along with everyone in Maddox's office. He's very cordial so presumably he likes them, but in stark contrast at least half seem to decidedly dislike him with baiting antagonism, some openly hostile. Sharon: "why are you smirking at me Bryan?" Muntz, the Laghari lab tech: "I've come across plenty like you...men who play by their own rules." Beck: "They only send in the A-team when they want the agents to survive...easy for you to say, I'm the one who had to tell his wife". No wonder he feels a bit ostracized. Perhaps his reputation (impulsive?) proceeds him or perhaps he's been labeled an "unlucky" partner that misfortune follows so he gets kept at a distance?

The exception to the above seems to be Gary Garcia, the former scientist that helps hide George. May be former partners if the audio during credit rolls is any indication, and knows about Bryan's health / injections. They appear close. Perhaps because they share a mentality: both presumably injured in their line of work at Orbital, and they know what it means to have to rely on yourself.

When we meet Finola and Bryan, it seems like they've been working together for a few weeks, stateside at least (Finola's quote 1x02: Been here 3 weeks, feels like 3 years) and that he's had at least two Orbital partners prior, one (Julian / Jules) that died on duty, and the other creepy Dutch guy still living, Niels. How many more partners has he been through? Is it protocol that they get reassigned/shuffled so often to follow the debris, or so as not to form attachments "This job is about being alone, it's supposed to be...we're a blip in other people's lives", or does his personality not play well with others, like from the pilot when he tells Finola "it's been a long time since I've worked with somebody who's looked at me like another human being."

Also in 1x01 when Bryan says, "So are we now saying the debris pulled [Kieran] from the ground and added meat to his bones" and Finola says no, he was cremated, Bryan looks almost disappointed like he was momentarily more hopeful than pragmatic. At first I thought this was just a lead up to introducing the fact that George Jones was alive, but maybe another plot point is that Bryan has lost someone in duty he wants back.

He carries a picture in his front pocket of a woman with some Persian/ Farsi(?) or Urdu(?) written on the back. It's hard to tell by the script, it could be neither. When confronted by that, his clone says "I can't let it go." Old flame that was lost? Or a partner of a fallen service member killed in action —I've lost brothers— that he couldn't save (is that part of Bryan's dark guilt / grief)? Civilian casualty of a Marine mission? In the pilot when he tells Isla "you have to tell her how much you need her, I know from experience...You will not be able to forgive yourself if you don't" is Bryan thinking of this woman?

EDIT: considering the next episode is called "Asalah," which could be a woman's name, maybe that's part of the text on the back of the photo. Pure speculation.

He counts on himself to be level and composed when it comes to his emotions and apologizes when he isn't. He loses that composure in the pilot when Isla talks about family therapy and fighting with her mother after Kieran's death: "I knew someone like her once." Was Bryan referring to himself, has he been through post-service therapy? Perhaps he developed a rift with his family or left home at an early age like she did?

Bryan would be great at pub trivia night. He always seems to have an odd fact ready about NASA tech, native legends, an article about a historical building that he read, Fleetwood PA, etc. He doesn't seem the type to keep facts on standby to impress, so perhaps he's a secret bibliophile even though Finola hassles him for not reading case files.

"Fin: Maybe we should run some more tests before we continue/ Bryan: I will cut bait if you want to / Fin; let's just look out for each other" 1x02 Bryan seems more cautious than impulsive, he does a good job of listening to Finola's concerns. Is that from experience? Did he get overconfident, mishandle debris, and get permanently injured, hence the frequent blood work and injections?

"This man saved my life." Why does Bryan trust Maddox implicitly? And when Maddox says in 1x07 "Investigate quietly. I want to keep the lights off. I don't want to lose anymore lives, Bryan, okay?" is that a word of warning specially for him? Does he have a body count? (see afforementioned question of frequent work partners turnover and having an unlucky reputation)

Bryan in protective of Finola when the CIA taps her apartment. It's the straw that turns his allegiance from his agency to his partner.

I still can't place why Bryan carries a baseball — it seems like it could be a red herring, but I can't get over the visual of Maddox playing catch with Dario and reading into it as some sort of surrogate bond — or why he has a chain around his neck (1x05). It's not service tags and probably not a ring, it's some kind of pendant: a large loop encircling a dull, perhaps tarnished, gray metallic disc. A patron saint? A piece of shrapnel? A piece of debris? Unclear, but it definitely has texture or an etching.

Top Bryan Quotes

"That's the job. Impossible." 1x01 Pilot

"We are supposed to be blips in these people's lives, not memories." 1x04 In Universe

"It's been a long time since I've worked with somebody who's looked at me like another human being." 1x01

"Zippo lighters, Pyrex glassware, Crayola crayons, and of course Peeps. Insane for peeps, cracklike...we owe the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania a great deal of gratitude and I am not afraid to say it." 1x02 You Are Not Alone

"I've been thinking, [about] Finola.. if MI6 knew her father was still alive they would take her out of here. We need to get home before this becomes an issue...this is going to affect her." 1x03 Solar Winds, when he's not sure how her father will affect her empathetic-based decision-making

Craig: "You hated the creepy Dutch guy." / Bryan: "He was adorable."

"Well, one of my tips for survival, Muntz, is always let the other guy touch the debris first." 1x03 So is that what happened to Garcia?

To Finola "I realize I tend to forget that there's still magic to discover in the world. But not you." 1x03

"There are things that you understand about life that I don't, and I respect that. But there are things that I know that you will not find very palatable...I am going to focus on the people that we're saving and not the ones that we can't." 1x04

"If we don't act, we might not be able to stop the terraforming. There's no way we're going to be able to win all these, and I know that every cell in your body right now is screaming for you to do what you think is right. I need you to go against that. I need you to trust me." 1x04

"Finola's capable. I trust her instincts." 1x08 Spaceman

"I'm running on sugar and coffee for the rest of the day" 1x07 You Can Call Her Caroline, but really isn't that Bryan everyday?

"When I tell you that I understand, it's not empty...I lost brothers. It destroys families. There are people who can help you with what you're going through right now...There is a way to get back from this pain. I was where you were, and the darkness almost ended me. And somebody put out his hand... I want to be there for you." 1x07

"I'm trying to get back to someone. It's very important to me." 1x09 Do You Know Icarus?

#nbc debris #bryan beneventi #character study #finola jones #craig maddox #sci fi #also shout-out to his Jay Kulina Elvis glasses in 1x04 #can somebody read that photo?#renew Debris

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show-choir-gal · 3 years

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"Smart Talk" Zach Dempsey Imagine

Requested by anon on Tumblr: "Hellooo c: could you write a fic on zach dempsey from 13 reasons why? Specifically the reader being a biology nerd and has aspirations of becoming a doctor some day, and zach being interested in her because he wants to be a marine biologist? Thanks! Love your blog btw ^^"

A/N: Heyo! I just wanted to pop in and see how y'all were doing and to say that I kind of switched it up and made the reader want to be a biochemist when she graduated so I hope you don't mind that little change! I cried writing this, so I’m sorry if you cry too

Warnings: mentions of death due to disease, absolutely sad backstory about a father with ALS

Word Count: 6,624

Guide: Y/N - Your Name Y/L/N - Your Last Name

Masterlist of Mastelists

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The first day of school was always filled with nerves and excitement. But I am new, and a sophomore and that didn't make this transfer any easier. I had moved away from Ohio with my mum at the beginning of the summer, my father passed away after a long and tough battle with ALS. I'm 16 now, he was diagnosed when I just about turned 10. He always wanted to live in California, it was his dream to have a beach house with just the three of us. I was always his little girl. Even when his ALS progressed, he was always working so hard to stay as long as he could. He was such a fighter. Mum and him worked hard on finding a house in California before he would pass, get to live out his dream. We had found a house, the house mum and I now live in, a year ago but had to finalise the selling of our other house before we could move. But that hope soon cam tumbling down due to my father quickly getting worse. We were so close to moving, but it got put on hold. He was deteriorating faster than ever before and it was hard to watch the fighter I once knew look so defeated. Before he lost the ability to speak he told us, "Well if Stephen Hawking can do it, so can I." He was always so strong in front of me and mum, but we knew better. Every day after school I went to my dads hospital room and told him about my day and school and do my homework with him. I came in one day, a big smile on my face as I looked him in the eye and said, "I know what I want to be when I grow up dad. I want to be a Biochemist. I want to make medicine that will help you and the others that come after you. I want to do this for you dad." He smiled as best as he could and got out a shaky, "I love you so much", and then he couldn't speak after that. As days turned to weeks, he just got worse and worse. We had the hope that he could wait until after Christmas, but there were no Christmas miracles this time. He passed away the day before Christmas eve, and I was heartbroken. My dad, my biggest supporter was now gone. Gone but never forgotten. I held his cold hand before the coroner and doctors shuffled him away from us and said through broken sobs and tear stained cheeks, "I'm going to make a medicine that cures ALS. I'm going to make it for you, daddy. I love you so much." I finished the rest of the year and we finalised the selling of our, now old, house and we made the flight to California. A few weeks in and we were finally settling and making this house our new home. I sat out on our enclosed balcony with a cup of tea and cozied up in my hammock chair. I listened to the birds chirping as I took a sip of my tea. My mum came out a few moments later with her own cup of tea and we both stared upon the city for what seemed like an eternity until I decided to break the silence, "Dad would've loved it here." "Yes he would've sweetheart. Yes he would."

Mum drove me in for the first day, mainly because she wanted to pick me up especially if I had a rough first day. We had our usual conversations and I went over my schedule out loud with her. "Honours Chemistry AND Honours Biology huh? Why didn't you get put in the AP sections of those?" Mum asked, noticeably a little insulted that I wasn't placed in the AP classes. "Relax mum, they don't allow sophomores taking AP classes, and this was the best I was getting with them. I could've gotten regular Bio and Chem." I reassured her. She reluctantly calmed down as she pulled up to a parking spot in front of the school. Mum kissed me on the cheek and said our 'I love you's' as I got out of the car and headed up to the front of the building. I tried to blend in and just seem normal. My first class was English so I immediately made my way to the classroom located in the second floor. I sat in the front row like I always had in my previous schools. The teacher went through attendance and stopped on me, "Y/N Y/L/N? Are you the new student?" The teacher asked. "Yes I am ma'am" I replied, all eyes on me. "I was wondering if you would be here today! Please come up in front of the class and introduce yourself! Say your name, where you moved from, and your favourite book." I made quickly got up and walked the short distance to be next to the teacher. "Well, I'm Y/N. I moved here from a small town in Ohio at the beginning of the summer, and my favourite book is The Theory of Everything by Famous theoretical physicist, cosmologist Stephen Hawking." I said to the class with a smile. "That's interesting Miss Y/L/N! And why is that your favourite book?" "I look up to Mr.Hawkings work and I want to be a Biochemist." "That's quite interesting. You may sit down now dear." She said with a smile as she started to clap, the rest of the class followed suit. I sat down and the girl next to me tapped my shoulder, "Nice to meet you. I'm Jessica. I think we could be great friends!" She said with a smile on her face. We talked after class and she said she would meet me after my Bio class to have lunch with me. I'm so relieved to have a friend, or someone I can consider a friend at least. It's still early to tell. Next up I had maths, and pretty much the same thing happened with going in front of the class and explaining who I was. I was pretty much creating and reading a script for the beginning of every class. After maths I had my Honours Biology class. I sat at the work bench like I normally did, as I watched all the students pour in they all looked so much older than I did. The class began at the ring of the bell and the same thing happened like all the other classes before me. I made my way up to the front of the classroom and smiled as I introduced myself, "I'm Y/N, I moved here from a small town in Ohio at the beginning of the summer and I'm a sophomore. An-" "A sophomore? I don't normally have sophomores in my class." The teacher interrupted me, and I just gave an "are you serious?" look and some of the class laughed. "Yes, the school wouldn't let me take AP Biology and AP Chemistry so I had to even fight to get honours." I replied. "AP Bio and AP Chem? What would you want with those courses? They're pretty difficult on their own, let alone together." I cleared my throat, "I want to be a Biochemist." "And where would your concentration lie?" "Degenerative diseases." "Wow that's incredible Miss Y/L/N! I look forward to seeing your work. You may sit down." I took my seat and a few of the "nerdy" kids started to chat me up and we all had a great conversation about what we wanted to do in the future. The bell rang and almost immediately Jessica was outside my classroom waiting for me. "Honours Biology? Girl, you've got to give me your study tips!" We walked to the lunchroom as she talked my ear off about the school and everything I would need to know. We sat down at a table and a boy joined us, him and Jess kissed and then a bunch of other guys started to swarm the table we were at. "Y/N this is Justin, my boyfriend! Justin this is-" "You're Y/N! We have maths together." Justin said as he stuck his hand out. Justin started to introduce me to all the boys at the table, all his teammates on the basketball team. "Y/N why did you move here all the way from uhm..." Jess started to ask. "Ohio." I replied with a chuckle. "Right! Why did you move here from Ohio?" All eyes were on me now and I smiled just thinking of the memory of my dad, "I moved here because my dads dream was to move out to California with my mum and I." "Oh that's so sweet! Why did he want to move out here?" She asked. The smile fell from my face and just the thought started to burn my eyes, "That's a bit of a touchy subject. Can we not talk about that?" "Oh my God of course! I'm sorry, I didn't know girly." She said as she shot me a reassuring smile and rubbed my knee. Eventually I went to the rest of my classes and met some really great people. I knew I had nothing to worry about, it seems like I'll fit in perfectly. The dismissal bell rang and I made my way to my locker. I got all my stuff I needed and closed my locker, Jess was standing right next to my locker with Justin. "Did you have a good first day?" She asked. "It was great, especially because of you. Thank you for like, accepting me and being nice. And thank you as well Justin." I said with a smile. "That's great! We definitely need to keep in touch, hand me your phone and I'll give you my number so we can hang out soon!" She said enthusiastically as she took my phone from me and punched her number in. Her and Justin walked off and waved and said their goodbyes and we parted ways. I made my way to mums car. I placed my backpack in the backseat and hopped into the front and we drove off. "So..?" Mum started. "It was great! I already made a bunch of friends and they're all so nice there!" "That's awesome honey! Celebratory dinner tonight? And you can tell me absolutely everything, you can even spill all the deets!" "Ew mum, don't ever say that again!" I said as I joking slapped at her arm. "What?! I have to stay hip somehow!" We both erupted into a fit of laughter. "Oh by the way, the piano got to the house and is all tuned." Mum said, almost full of sorrow. That night we went out to a fancy restaurant a few towns over and I told her everything about my day and how excited I was for school and making new friends.

A month has passed and I've settled in quite nicely in Crestmont. It was a Friday and Jess is sleeping over for the first time. We quickly became really close friends, I even would say she is my best friend. My mum picked us up from school and I showed her around my house. "This house is so beautiful Mrs.Y/L/N!" Jess said in awe. "I'm glad you like it, you're always welcome here sweetheart!" My mum replied with a smile. Jess picked up a picture of my mum, my dad, and I when I was about 11. She examined it. "Awe Y/N you look so adorable! Is this your dad?" She asked, pointing to the man in the photograph. "Yeah, but that's an older photo of him." "Do you have any more recent photos of him?" "Of course!" I said as I lead her to the living room where a lot of the newer photos of him were. She examined them quite closely, noticing his state of being deteriorating, she was confused. I brought her out on the balcony and she sat in the hammock chair right next to mine. "Where is your dad?" She asked and then looked like she wanted to take it back. I grabbed her hand and smiled, "No no, don't worry about it. It's okay to ask!" I replied with a warm smile, "He passed away right before last Christmas. He had ALS." "Y/N I'm so sorry for your loss." "Jess it's okay. He was a great guy and a great dad." "Is this why you didn't want to talk about it on the first day?" "Yeah, it's just a touchy subject especially since we planned to move out here with him." I told her the whole story, everything. I was comfortable enough around her to tell her. And she listened and took it all in. I reassured her I was as okay as I could be even though some days were better than others and she understood. We headed up the stairs toward my room when she spotted the baby grand piano at the top of our stairs. "Wow this is beautiful! Do you play?" She asked, awestruck by the beautiful Yamaha piano in front of her. "I guess. My dad was the one who played and he gave me lessons and so now when I want to feel closer to him I just play and play until I feel okay." "You're one tough cookie, could you play something for me?" I smiled and pulled out the bench and immediately started to play Op. 28: III. Vivace G Major by Chopin as it was a relatively fast lively piece. I lifted my hands from the piano and her jaw was on the ground. "Girly I didn't know this! You NEED to play in the orchestra! They would love you!" She exclaimed as she brought me in for a hug. The night was great and I finally felt normal again, I felt like a normal high schooler with a normal life. And man did it feel good to feel normal again.

Monday rolled around and Jess dragged me down to the music hall to talk with the orchestra teacher. I played the same piece I did for Jess and the teacher looked beyond impressed with my playing. "Some of the best piano playing I've seen from a student in years! I would love to have you in the orchestra Miss Y/L/N!" Jess and I walked out of the music hall and screamed and jumped and hugged. "I'm so excited for you! I'll go to all the practices and concerts I can!" Jess promised as she stuck her pinky out "And I will go to as many cheer practices and games as I can!" I replied and interlocked our pinkies as we made a pinky promise. And both of us kept our promises. As long as I didn't have to tutor someone or practice, I was in the stands supporting my best friend, even doing her hair for her. As long as she didn't have practice or homework, she was at orchestra rehearsal.

Mid-November rolled around and so did basketball and other winter sports, but that also meant mid terms were fast approaching. In biology, we were doing a partner project and our teacher chose our partner. The rest of the class groaned, but I had gotten 100's all year so I didn't see an issue with it. He read off the names in alphabetical order by last name. "Zach Dempsey and Y/N Y/L/N" My head turned to look at Zachs face to judge how he felt, and he had a smile so wide it stretched from ear to ear, which made me smile as well as blush. After partners were announced we all moved to sit next to our partners, I got up and sat next to him. "Well look who we have here, the smartest girl in this school paired up with me." He said with a slight chuckle. "I wouldn't say I'm that smart. More like, I'm just determined to do really well...all the time." I said with a chuckle. We started to plan our project and then suddenly the bell rang. I was about to get up when Zach gently grabbed my arm, "Can I have your number? So we can plan our project?" "Oh, of course. Why didn't I think of that?" I wrote my number down on the top of his project syllabus and waved goodbye as I headed to my locker. I had one more class before I met up with Jess to do her hair before her short practice so they can get ready for the game. I had a free period next so I headed down to the music hall so I could practice. I walked by the teachers office and he ushered me in to talk to me. "Y/N, how would you feel about doing 4 solos for the concert?" He asked, not looking up from the program he was trying to make. "I would love to!" "Great! I'll have you start off the very beginning of the concert with a short but fast piece, we'll have a few group pieces and other solos and then you end the first half with another short but fast piece. Does that sound good?" He asked, I nodded. "Then you can start the second half with a long and slow piece, sprinkle in a few group pieces and a few other solos, then you'll have you last piece which is pretty slow and long as well, and then finish off with our group closing piece? Sound good?" "That sounds great sir! Can I ask one thing though?" "Of course, what's on your mind?" "Could I dedicate the last piece I play to my dad and have a picture of him with me at the concert? It's okay if not, I just figured I should ask." "Of course you can. Don't be silly to ask for something like that. The counselor told me about what happened. I'm so sorry for your loss and I would be honoured to have you dedicate your last solo to your father." He reassured with a smile. I started to leave the room, "Thank you Mr.Blanc! I'll be in the auditorium in you need me." "Y/N, just make sure to get me your sheet music with the order you're performing them in as soon as possible." "You got it!" I nearly shouted as I opened the side door to the auditorium to turn on all the stage lights. I practically came down here every free period I had unless I was working on Zach and I's project. It was always so calm and quiet and made me feel like my dad was still there with me. I made my way over to stage left and pulled the piano out into the centre of the stage. I sat down and just started to play piano covers of popular songs before I started to try figure out what I was actually playing for the concert. I just wanted to calm down from my exams I had today. I decided to just wait and ask Jess which songs I should pick before the first game of the basketball season occurred tonight. I went from Fantasie Impromptu by Chopin to Flight of the Bumblebee before I noticed anyone else was in the auditorium with me. I heard a throat clear which made me jump, I looked up from the piano and it was Jess and Justin. "I didn't mean to scare ya." Jess said with a chuckle, "Justin and I were making out in the back and you couldn't see us but Justin really wanted to watch you play especially after that really fast one." Justin nodded his head in agreement. "Aww, I'm flattered!" I said with a smile. I went down my arsenal of some of the toughest songs to play on piano, Moonlight Sonata, Little Red Riding Hood, Etude Op. 10 No. 4, La Campanella, and ending with Hungarian Rhapsody. I looked at the two who tried to keep up with my hands, Jess had a smirk on her face when she saw Justin's jaw on the floor. "I told you she was good." Jess said, almost cockily. Her and I laughed and before Justin could even say a word, the dismissal bell rang. "I'll meet you in the locker room Jess, I have to put a few things away in my locker." I waved to Justin sense I wasn't going to see him until later in the afternoon. I put my stuff in the locker and shut the door and headed downstairs, I headed toward the locker rooms where Zach caught up to me. "Good luck at the game tonight!" I said with a wide smile. "Thank you! Are you going to be there?" He asked. "Of course! I promised Jess and Justin that I would always be at the games." His face lit up like a Christmas tree, "Awesome! I'll see you later then." He said as he rubbed my arm. I thought his action was strange but just chalked it up to him being friendly. California is different from Ohio after all. I entered the locker room and greeted all the other girls when I took my place next to Jess. We told each other about our days while she changed into her practice gear. I told her how I was given 4 solos for the concert and she was so excited, maybe more excited than I was. "Oh my God that's amazing! I'll invite everyone so that can see how amazing you are!" She jumped up and down as she hugged me. We chatted our way into the gym and I took my usual spot on the bleachers and watched the practice go on like usual. I finished up my homework for the night just as they had finished practicing for the game tonight. I headed out and stood by the lockers and waited for Jess. As soon as she came out she grabbed my arm and practically skipped the entire way to the auditorium. I took my seat on the piano and told her my ideas and played them in the order I would play them at the concert. She wasn't too keen on a few of my pieces so I switched them with similar pieces and those seemed to fit like a glove. "Those! All of them! They're perfect!" She said with a huge smile on her face. We headed to the library and I photocopied my pieces and labelled them and dropped them off at Mr.Blanc's office. We had some free time before she had to get ready for the game so we just walked around and chatted. "How's your bio project going?" Jess asked as we walked around the football field. "Great! Zach and I are pretty close to being done." I replied as we passed the bleachers. "Basketball Zach? Like, Zach Dempsey?" "Yeah...why?" "Oh, nothing. I just didn't expect you to pick him as a partner." "Mr. LaPierre paired us, but he looked fine with it so I didn't mind." Jess was silent for what felt like a few minutes. "Jess, is everything alright?" "Yeah, I was just thinking about the other day when Zach was talking to Justin about a girl in his biology class he was crushing on." "Awe that's cute! She's lucky, he's a smart kid." "She's probably jealous of you Y/N. I just don't want you to get hurt. Because if she hurts you, many people will hurt her." Jess winked as she nudged me. "I have a perfect grade in the class, it seemed like everyone wanted to be my partner." I winked back. "Okay smarty pants, let's get back so I can get ready and you can help me with my hair." We both giggled and walked back into the school. I grabbed a seat on the bleachers right behind where Jess normally sits. The cheerleaders started to file in along with the basketball players. I was too busy looking for her hair ties and brush in my bag to notice her and a few of the basketball players walk in. I found her brush just as she sat down in front of me. I brushed through her silky hair and parted it down the middle.I looked up to a pair of soft brown eyes staring at me, they belonged to Zach. I shot him a smile and a wave before I returned to Jess' hair. I braided her hair into two tight Dutch braids. I secured the last one and put her brush back in my bag. The bleachers were filling up pretty fast when I was done. The players were back in the locker room so they could make their entrance in front of the whole student body. The cheerleaders were just about to head onto the court when Jess turned to me and waved to my mum who appeared suddenly next to me. "Hi Mrs.Y/L/N! Glad you could come!" Jess said as she hugged my mum. "Of course sweetie! I couldn't miss out on cheering on Y/N's best friend!" My mum replied with a smile. "Knock 'em dead Tiger!" I said as I hugged her before she made her way onto the court to welcome our team onto the court. Each player erupted one by one, and suddenly Zach emerged and he searched the stands and then his eyes landed on me and he waved and smiled in my direction. I smiled and blushed back. My mum tapped my leg and I moved my ear closer to her where she whispered, "Is that him? The boy in your biology class?" I nodded to her question and blushed deeper. The game started and Zach and I would steal glances at each other every now and again, nothing to major...or so I thought.

It was now the week before the Winter Concert, but Zach and I needed to finish up the prep for our project. We were in the library alone after school working on the final prep we needed before we could call the project 'finished'. A few hours had passed and we finished up the last component, but we finished earlier than expected so we started to finalise the project. We were finally done, and we were early. That's not a bad thing though, nothing wrong with finishing early. I was putting my stuff away when Zach cleared his throat, I zipped my bag and looked at him. "What do you want to be when you graduate?" He asked. I smiled, "I want to be a biochemist." "Why?" "Do you want the real answer or the short one I use to not have serious questions?" "The real one." I took a deep breath and then exhaled, "Because of my dad." "Why don't you talk about him? You avoided it when we first met." "It's just a touchy subject, that's all." "Can we talk about it? I want to get to know you more." I was shocked at his response, but it's fair since we've worked a lot together this year. "He passed away almost a year ago. Right before Christmas, to be exact." "I-I'm so sorry Y/N." I took his hand in mine, "It's okay, we expected it. He had ALS. He was diagnosed when I just turned 10 and he's the reason I'm here. He wanted to move to California before he passed." "We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I would understand." He said as he gently swiped his thumb back and forth against the back of my hand. "Honestly, it's okay. I'm not ashamed, he was and still is my hero. He was deteriorating slowly so we thought we had time. We bought the house and just had to wait on our other house to sell so we could move. But about Septemberish of last year he went downhill quite fast. So, plans got pushed back as he got treatment. He was always so strong, as supported me even when he didn't want to admit that he couldn't really support himself. Some of the last words he said were "If Stephen Hawking can do it, so can I." which is also why I lookup to Dr.Hawking so much. I want to be a biochemist because of him, for him. I want to find the cure to ALS." Zach was staring in awe. I stood up and he stood up and pulled me into a bear hug. A hug of solidarity, a hug of understanding. We both pulled away and looked into each others eyes and smiled. He looked away and grabbed his things. "I'll drive you home." He said as he motioned for me to follow him. "Oh, you don't have to." "I know, but I want to." We made it to his car and he pulled out of the parking lot and opened up to me. "I want to be a marine biologist." He said. We talked about his aspirations and life on the way to my house. He parked outside and I hugged him. "Thank you. It's great seeing others be themselves too." I said as I pulled away. His arm moved behind me and rubbed my back and he started to lean in and so I leaned in as well but we were interrupted by my mum yelling my name. We both laughed and I got out of the car and waved goodbye and headed into my house. I watched as he drove away.

The day of the concert arrived, and the whole school day was just a blur. The dismissal bell and I headed to my locker where I was greeted by Jess. "What's the plan for today?" She asked with a huge smile. "Well, the group pieces are going to get a run through, then the solos, and then we get to get ready." I replied grabbing my music bag out of my locker and we headed to the auditorium which was pretty much already set up for the concert tonight. Jess sat front row. The group numbers were rehearsed, then solos, and then I had to get ready. Jess and I headed to the locker room. I changed into a long sleeved black maxi dress with my mums pearl necklace. I put my hair half-up half-down and Jess straightened my hair and chatted me up. "There's going to be a big surprise for you at the concert. All because of moi" She said as she smiled. "Should I thank you now or later?" I asked. "Def later." She said as she scrunched her nose and raspberried me. We laughed and chatted until she finished my hair and I finished my light makeup. I put my stuff away in my bag and we both walked over to the auditorium. People we already shuffling into the auditorium. I took out the framed picture of my dad before I let Jess go off and I get ready backstage. "He would be so proud of you." "You think so?" "I KNOW so. Break a leg out there." Jess said as she hugged me and we went out separate ways.

*THIRD PERSON* Jess waited until she saw Mrs. Y/L/N. She rushed over and hugged her. "I have a plan." Jess began to tell Mrs. Y/L/N her whole plan. Jess bought a bunch of flowers so everyone could give her something in support. She explained how she got all of the cheerleaders and basketball to come and support her. Mrs. Y/L/N was almost brought to tears, not truly grasping how quickly and wholeheartedly her daughter was loved at this school. Jess and Y/N's mother sat in the front row by the piano on stage left. Jess looked back every now and again to check to see if her plan would be followed through. And just like that, the cheerleaders and basketball players shuffled in and sat in the first three rows by the piano. Zach sat next to Jess. "Mrs. Y/L/N, this is Zach." Y/N's mum reached out her hand, "Are you her biology partner? She always talks about you. She really likes you, ya know?" Jess chuckled and placed the palm of her hand over her mouth while Zach blushed, the whole team started to be all "Bro we told you she liked you back. You have nothing to worry about." In between laughs Jess responded, "I don't think she wanted you to tell him that Mrs. Y/L/N." "Oop, you're probably right sweetie. I'm sorry to embarrass you Zach. I got really excited when she told me she likes you." "No no, it's okay Mrs. Y/L/N. I'm flattered because I really like here too." A few more minutes passed and it was time for the concert to start. *END THIRD PERSON*

The concert was about to start and I just held the picture of my dad closer. My teacher and conductor was doing his introductory statement before we all came out of the wing of stage right and into our places. I walked across the stage and spotted...all of them. Mum, Jess, Zach, everyone I grew closer with this past semester. A smile drew across my face as I saw my mum first, almost in tears already, and then to Jess, and then to Zach who shot me a wink and my heart could've fluttered out of my chest. I placed the photo of my dad on the piano at an angle so both me and the audience could see it. I heard my mum gasp and then cry a little at the picture, which made me tear up a little. We did the classic orchestral warm up before I spoke into the microphone right in front of the piano. "My first solo piece is Op. 28: XII. Presto in G Sharp Major composed by Frederic Chopin." I took my place at the piano and played the one minute long piece. I took my hands off the piano and bowed in my seat. We had a few classical group pieces followed by a few solos and then a few pop songs arranged for the orchestra like Without You and Fight Song/Amazing Grace and Tour De France. I was the last solo for the first part of the concert, I once again stepped in front of the microphone to announce my solo, "My second solo piece is Op. 28: XVI. Presto con fuoco in B flat minor also composed by Frederic Chopin." I took my place at the piano for a second time and played the other one minute long piece. I took my hands off the piano and we all stood up and bowed and walked off as it was announced that there was a 15 minute break. I took the opportunity to use the bathroom and relax a little. My fellow peers were complimenting me left and right and I did the same back. The 15 minutes were almost up and we took our seats once again. Once I got my cue, I went up to the microphone and announced my third piece, "My third solo piece is Op. 28: IV. Largo in E minor also composed by Frederic Chopin." I once again took my place at the piano and played the two minute long sorrowful piece. I played with much more emotion than I did in the first half of the concert. I took my hands off the piano and bowed in my seat. More group pieces and solos and finally it was my last solo and my longest. I walked up and grabbed the picture of my dad, "Before I announce my final solo piece, I want to take the time and dedicate this to my dad. I lost my dad almost a year ago to ALS or Lou Gherig's as most of you may know it as. He was a wonderful pianist and he's the one who taught me how to play. Not a day goes without me thinking about him or playing a song to remember him. I came rushing into his hospital room one day just ecstatic and I told him, "I want to be a biochemist when I grow up. I want to help people like you." And the day he passed away, I held his hand and promised I would be the one to discover the cure for ALS. And I intend on keeping that promise. My final solo piece was his favourite to play for my mum and I, Op. 28: XV. Sostenuto in D flat major." I placed his picture back on the piano, but fully facing me this time. I wiped the few tears I had running down my cheeks already from before as I looked over and saw her sobbing into Jess who also tearing up along with Zach and everyone else. I looked up at my teacher and peers who were all wiping tears away. He motioned for them to stand and the audience soon followed. I played with more emotion and drive than I knew I even had. I played the piece with passion. I made it about 2 minutes in before the tears started to roll down my face as I played with pure love and passion. I hit the last chord lighter than I thought was even possible. I sat for a few seconds to just absorb the moment. I stood up to bow and noticed I had a standing ovation. I shed a few tears before we all sat down and played our final piece. The concert was over and we all bowed and hugged each other. I grabbed my dads picture and whispered, "I did it daddy, for you." before I went to get my bags and head to my mum, I left the music hall and found Jess who ran to me with flowers. "I knew you were going to be amazing!" She lead me to the people I have grown close to and they all had flowers for me. "Here's your surprise! I told you they all had to hear how amazing you are!" They all were giving me a flower or two and telling me how amazing I was, but then there was my mum who still had tears streaming down her face. We hugged in silence for what seemed like an eternity. Jess took my bags off me and grabbed the flowers so I could hug my mum even closer. We let go and all that was left was Zach who held a huge bouquet in his arms. He gave them to me and I thanked him. He was in awe. I let out a giggle as I gave Jess the bouquet and wrapped my arms around his neck and his hands went around my waist. "Wow, that was just- wow." He barely even got that out of his mouth, he started to lean down but I told him to hold on. I looked over at my mum, "Mum are you going to interrupt this kiss?" "No, not this time sweetheart." I looked toward Zach who had a huge smile on his face, I returned the smile, "Alright, it's go big or go home." Zach, almost like he had rehearsed this very moment, held me tighter and dipped me and kissed me. Our lips crashed and the world felt still, it was just us in that moment. Just us, in love.

#zach dempsey #zach dempsey imagine #imagine #13 reasons why #13rw #13 reasons why imagine #13rw imagine #show-choir-gal

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pigeontheoneandonly · 3 years

Note

For your WIP list: Childhood Friends AU and Collateral Damage?

Thank you!!

Childhood Friends AU answered here.

Collateral Damage is a one-shot fic about Nathaly’s first real deployment after training, on a planet called Aonia, which was mutually claimed by both the Alliance and the Hegemony. Their two colonies were separated by an open battlefield, and locked in a stalemate. (Laine is her C.O., which is how they got to know each other well, though they met in N1.)

Shepard, who is still enlisted at this point, but working her way towards being admitted to OCS, eventually comes up with an idea to break the stalemate, based on exploiting a tactic the batarians have used to great effect on other battlefronts. The Alliance is victorious, and are in the process of mopping up batarians, when the batarians learn who orchestrated their demise-- and that it was a lowly corporal. Furious, they decide to take revenge.

The story is told after the fact, as Shepard relays it to Anderson. It came out of a challenge to write a story backwards, and became a key part of her backstory.

(It’s also how Nathaly caused Laine to lose his leg, if you remember that little anecdote from one of the early flashbacks in Labyrinth-- he got hit by a grenade during the action, and he playfully blames her because it was her idea.)

Excerpt:

Shepard plunked the cigarette between her lips. Her lighter flared against the twilight. She inhaled, to convince the flame to catch, and blew out smoke. “Where the hell is Cheng?”

Private Brill scratched under the neck of his hardsuit. “Only thing less likely than us getting daylight patrols again is Cheng strutting out on schedule.”

The fourth member of their squad, Kozlow, snorted a laugh and stubbed out his own cigarette, grinding it into the Aonian dust. The trees carpeting the Relagris river valley undulated in the light breeze. The wind was welcome; local high summer at this latitude usually meant steaming flat days that left even the water too hot to offer any relief. Body armor only made it worse.

Shepard took another drag. “Last time we had a daylight, three guys got shipped back to Arcturus with missing bits. The colony brass may be thick but they’d never be that stupid.”

“Never say never. You are talking about the guys who backed the L.T.’s crazy-ass plan to get at the batarian base.” Brill paused. “I’ll grant you it worked, though I don’t know that Lieutenant Laine’s too happy about sitting tight for a few months growing out the new leg.”

Shepard buried the flinch of guilt, and tapped off the cigarette. “Cheng had better get her ass in gear. Bravo Squad left more than ten minutes ago. If I have to order a hold there’ll be hell to pay.”

Private Cheng emerged breathless from the barracks, slapping together the last pieces of her grenade launcher. Shepard rolled her eyes. “If you bothered to oil that thing once in a while, it might not take eons to assemble.”

“Fuck off.”

“I wouldn’t want to encroach on your specialization.”

“At least I’m not some bitch who thinks she’s an officer ‘cause she got some kind of probationary MOS change to N. They give you little spec ops training wheels with that?”

Shepard regarded her evenly. “Keep talking, and I’ll show you just how much of an officer I’m not.”

Cheng held her eyes a brief moment, and glanced off. Shepard drew her rifle. “This patrol won’t walk itself. We’re due for rendezvous at Checkpoint Delta by 2100, so let’s move it.”

At approximately 2015, Shepard ordered a halt. Two months after putting boots on the ground, the navy built a bridge over the river. Since then, the batarians had blown it up three times. The bridge was currently in its “intact” phase, and after the beating their main base recently took, Shepard doubted the batarians had the appetite to try again. But it remained a choke point, albeit one she’d traversed a hundred times, and tonight something about it made her uneasy.

Kozlow’s brow furrowed. “Shepard, what—”

“Shut up.” She took a few steps forward and raised her gun. The wrongness was an itch at the back of her neck. The bridge wasn’t much to look at— a cheap composite span three marines wide, no railing, maybe thirty meters long. Thick shrubs clustered near the riverbank. Further back, where they stood, trees rose up, their roots nibbling at the path and the thick march of trunks obscuring line-of-sight.

Cheng hiked her pack up higher on her shoulders and made a sound of exasperation. “The longer we stand here the more my boots hurt.”

A puddle sat near the edge of the span. This time of year, the river ran low and sluggish. She could smell the algae bloom from here. “Why is the bridge wet?”

Shots exploded out of the bushes on the far bank. There was a pop as her shields collapsed. She dove for the trees and plastered her back to a trunk. A quick scan showed her team likewise positioned, all still standing, returning fire. Her hand pressed to her ear, activating her comm. “Alpha squad taking fire by the bridge! Requesting backup!”

She knew full well this would be over before help arrived. Shepard snuck a look over her shoulder. Batarians pounded across the span. It shook with every step, drumming the water up around their knees. One slipped. His comrades leapt over him and kept charging.

She angled her rifle low and let off a stream of shots at knee-height. There was no aiming, just as many bullets as her weapon could supply, enough to overwhelm their shields and do some damage. They were outnumbered two-to-one. “Cheng!”

“Working on it!” The private couldn’t leave cover for even the few seconds it took to set the grenade launcher and light them up.

Another batarian collapsed, a victim of Shepard’s kneecapping. Her cooling indicator slid towards the red. She cursed, and switched to targeted shots, quick bursts to avoid overheating and losing the weapon entirely. A lucky shot to the head took out a third. Almost at even odds.

Cheng took a breath, swung out of cover, and sunk to one knee to brace herself, bringing the launcher up to her shoulder as she moved. Even this economy of motion was too slow. She fell back with a scream, her grenade launching high into the air.

Shepard never saw it explode. A bag dropped over her head. She whirled in place, wielding the rifle like a club at anything in range, felt it connect and heard a grunt. But then other hands had her arms. Something wet and foul pressed against the bag, over her face. The fight disappeared, and though she started to fall, she never felt the impact of the ground.

Velvet black. Fuzzy pinpricks of white light. Blink. Stars. Sour stench— slime on her face, vomit— and the acrid tang of scorched grass. Murmuring voices. Alien. Batarian.

The urgent realization was a shot of adrenaline. She blinked again, trying to clear her head, trying to ascertain even a little of what was going on.

She came back to herself flat on her back, in a small clearing she didn’t recognize, with no sense of time at all beyond “later”. Much later, judging by the darkness. The bag was gone. Someone had zip-tied her hands and feet. Shadows moved in the meager moonlight, none of them paying her any mind at all. Her translator was useless at these volumes. After eighteen months on this rock, she’d picked up a decent amount Dherak— the Hegemony state language— but not enough to catch much meaning from whispers.

Somewhere to her left, she heard the low hum of a shuttle. Her heart’s pounding accelerated. She wriggled her hands, but found no slack in her bonds. Shepard could get her feet under her and stand, she was certain of it, but hopping away would never work. If she could reach her knife…

She rolled onto her side, ignored the nauseous lurch in her stomach, and curled into a ball so her hands could reach her boot. She could have died of relief when her fingers brushed the haft. But the position was awkward, trying to grip it with her arms lashed behind her, and she fumbled it into the grass. Shepard sucked in a breath and wriggled in a circle, searching.

“Stupid bitch,” said a voice from across the clearing, loud enough for her translator to pick up. Not that she needed it for curses. Everyone learned those first.

She scrabbled at the ground. If she could just get her legs free before he reached her—

Her fingers closed around the handle. She bent backwards, slashing at her bonds, not caring whether she stabbed herself, because that was better than staying here and much better than being packed onto that shuttle. Footsteps stomping towards her. The blade stuck in the dirt. She tried again—

A hand grabbed her wrist, none too gently, and jerked the knife away. Shepard stared up at him with eyes that could burn holes through steel. He turned the knife over in his hands. “Clever. I won’t ask where you hid it.”

She spat at him, but lacked the necessary projection. It fell on her shoulder. He chuckled. “You won’t make a fool of me twice, little girl. You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

“Moon’s just about set,” said a second batarian. “We need to move.”

“First things first.” He shoved her shoulder, hard and without warning, pushing her onto her stomach. Before she could roll any further, his knee crushed into her spine with all his weight behind it. The air went out of her. She couldn’t move.

“Fuck you,” she wheezed.

That he ignored. His burly hand gripped the back of her head, holding it still. “Can’t have your pesky Alliance tracking you.”

She felt cold steel press against her ear and had barely a moment to comprehend what was about to happen before he began to cut. Her body bucked with all its might, as much a reaction to the searing fire engulfing the right side of her head as a fight for survival. He grunted his irritation and increased his grip. “Blame your navy for wiring you with an internal comm.”

Blood spilled down her face, filling her mouth with hot iron. She made a second, feebler attempt to throw him off.

This time, he lifted her head by her scalp and slammed it full force into the ground. Her nose splattered. An odd ringing filled her head, and she found she couldn’t focus her eyes, or string even half a thought together.

“Stop squirming,” he said.

She lay still, too dazed to offer even a curse, as he resumed his work. At some point she blacked out, and the second time she came around, she was bundled on the floor of the shuttle, staring at batarian legs.

They’d wrapped wire about her, an improvised rope to prevent all but the smallest movements. She took some grudging pride in that. Her ear and nose still hurt terribly, but that had gone on awhile now, and she found she could think past it. A similar, less urgent pain in her forearm suggested they took her omni-tool as well. And she was dressed in only her thin undersuit. Her hardsuit, and its biomonitoring suite that was perhaps her last hope of being quickly located, was nowhere to be seen.

The same batarian spoke a few sentences, to general laughter. She caught maybe a third of it, her translator gone with the rest— something about a woman, her, and something about not being dead.

Shepard concentrated on counting her breaths. Once they got wherever they were going, when they had to move her again, she’d find an opportunity. She just had to hold together until then.

#ask me anything #nathaly shepard #wip meme #torture tw #whump #ljandersen

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sineala · 4 years

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The Old Guard

This post comes to you courtesy of the generous support of one of my Patreon patrons, who wanted to know what I thought of The Old Guard. This post contains some spoilers for both the movie and the comics.

So, a few days after it came out, my wife and I watched The Old Guard on Netflix. Tumblr had said a bunch of good things about it, and both of us basically cut our fannish teeth on Highlander fandom so we already had an automatic buy-in for a story about immortals. I knew it was based on a comic by Greg Rucka, but I had not, at the time, read the comic, although I am now reading it in order to write this post.

The premise of the film is as follows: a four-person team of immortals (Andy, Joe, Nicky, and Booker) makes a living hiring themselves out as mercenaries, fighting for causes that they believe are right. They are successful at this basically because their grasp of tactics appears to be (1) die, followed by (2) come back to life and (3) murder your attackers who are no longer paying attention to you because they think you're dead. Honestly, at this point, you wouldn't really need to be very good at the actual fighting part, I would think, but the film establishes that all of them are -- especially Charlize Theron as Andy -- because presumably it wants you to watch action sequences of everyone being badass, which they are. So, yeah. They take all the good-guy mercenary jobs that no one else can do because it would kill them, which is not a problem for them!

Anyway! The group's routine is interrupted by two major events: the discovery of Nile Freeman, a new immortal, who is a Marine serving in Afghanistan who survives getting murdered; and also the fact that one of their employers, Copley (played by Chiwetel Eijofor, whom you may remember as Mordo in Doctor Strange) has sold them out to the movie's Actual Villain, a Big Pharma CEO named Merrick (played by the guy who played Dudley in the Harry Potter series), who has (as far as I can tell) been given instructions to play this role just like he's Martin Shkreli, who is interested in finding the secret of their immortality, and whom you can tell is evil because he has his name in giant letters on the side of his building.

ME: Look, it's the villain! I've found the villain! MY WIFE: Other than Tony Stark, who actually puts their names on buildings like that except villains? It's just villains, right? ME: Uh. The president? The president definitely does that. (We make horrified faces at each other.)

Because we are Extremely Pedantic, we also spent a lot of time picking at how the characters' names and language abilities match up to their stated background. They all know a lot of languages, as you might expect, and the movie was determined to get through them without subtitles, which is an interesting choice but also kind of left some linguistic plot holes.

For example, Joe and Nicky claim to have met each other in the Crusades, with Nicky as (presumably) a Crusader and Joe as (presumably) a Muslim occupant of the area, although the movie doesn't specify this; Wikipedia gives Joe's name as Yusuf Al-Kaysani, which would at least fit that. Nicky is clearly Italian (as is Luca Marinelli, the actor who portrays him) and when he speaks Italian to the rest of the group we see that he definitely speaks modern Italian as spoken in Rome... which is absolutely, definitely not the language he grew up speaking, given that, among other things, Wiki lists the character's full name as Nicolò di Genova. I don't know if the writer of the screenplay (who I see now is also Greg Rucka) didn't know how much Italian dialects had changed in the last thousand years, if he thought that was good enough to be a nod to the character, or if there's some kind of backstory that didn't make it in where every so often Nicky decides to learn a modern dialect and keep his hand in, and also decides that that's the language he wants to use among his friends who would presumably understand several different dialects.

Also, the reveal that Andy's real name was in fact "Andromache of Scythia" was indeed badass but was slightly undercut by my wife yelling BUT THE SCYTHIANS DIDN'T SPEAK GREEK at the television.

Additionally, I feel like the movie could perhaps have been aware of the ways it chose to label on-screen locations, in which the countries were spelled out in large fonts with the cities above them. Places like LONDON, ENGLAND got their entire names spelled out, as did small French villages whose names I can no longer remember, but I guess AFGHANISTAN and MOROCCO and SOUTH SUDAN have zero cities, huh? However, the end of the movie did take place in PARIS which I guess unlike London is its own country now.

So the actual plot features the group of immortals trying to explain this whole immortality thing to Nile while being on the run from the people who are trying to turn them into Big Pharma, who wants to capture them and exploit the secret of their immortality. This is where it falls down a little for me, because the worldbuilding... gets a little shaky. They dream about each other when they're apart. Okay. Why? Sometimes they just stop being immortal and lose the capacity to heal and are dead in their next battle. Why? Why do they even exist? I just... wanted more answers than the movie gave me, and the pacing where I kept expecting there to be explanations wasn't there. There were a couple of scenes where Nile sat there in silence contemplating the fact that she would outlive her loved ones and my brain kept trying to insert Queen's "Who Wants to Live Forever?" Granted, the Highlander canon explanation for immortality is deeply, deeply weird, but at least it tried. No, I can't believe I'm defending Highlander II either.

The characters, too, could have been more fleshed out. The bulk of the character development is given to Andy and Nile, and I'm not complaining about that -- they were great -- but Joe and Nicky and Booker only got maybe a few lines each. They would have felt so much more real if they'd just had a little bit more to them. Also I didn't understand Copley's arc at all, but saying more about that would be spoilery. I do like that they have definitely set themselves up for a sequel.

But even with what we got, there's a lot to love about the characters. If you're here for canonically queer characters, you will enjoy Nicky and Joe, who have been in a relationship for probably about a thousand years. They are minor characters as far as the overall plot goes, but what they do have is lovely, and there is a romantic declaration between them at one point that is absolutely beautiful and possibly the most fervent love declaration I can remember seeing in a movie since maybe... ever. If you also like your queerness more subtextual, though Andy is never portrayed as explicitly queer, her past friendship with a fellow immortal Quynh was shown as very intense, as is the role she takes here mentoring Nile into the world of immortality. Also she has a double-bladed axe (yes, we kept yelling BRING ME MY MAN-KILLING AXE at the television) and as we all know, the double-bladed labrys has in modern times become a symbol for lesbians. So there's that.

In addition to the characters of color who play important roles here -- Nile was my personal favorite, but there's also Joe and Copley and (in flashback) Quynh -- there's a lot of diversity behind the cameras as well, or so the internet informs me. The director (Gina Prince-Bythewood) is the first Black woman to direct a superhero movie, and the same is true of her editor (Terilyn Shropshire). And, furthermore, apparently 85% of the post-production crew were women. They didn't have to do that, and yet they did. It was nice.

I don't watch a whole lot of action movies these days because I usually find R-rated violence too... violent, but I found myself really liking almost all of the action sequences here. None of them felt gratuitous, and a lot of them really focused on the physicality of the immortals fighting in a way I liked, because I feel like people are probably going to fight differently if they know they can survive every single hit, and I think the movie portrayed that in a way that a lot of superhero comics and movies don't. My favorite fight scene is definitely the one between Nile and Andy at the beginning, when Andy has trapped her on a plane and it's extremely close-quarters fighting and also extremely brutal. They don't stop basically until Nile breaks enough bones that she can't get up anymore, because until then she's going to keep trying, which is both kind of horrifying and a great character note. And they didn't film it like it was a Sexy Catfight! It was so good.

Also, the soundtrack is really good, and I've found myself streaming it on Spotify all week. I didn't know any of the songs in the movie, but there's a lot of hip-hop and -- okay, I don't even know if this is a genre? -- specifically a lot of hip-hop with an electronic/industrial sort of beat, which I thought was really great and livened up the fight scenes even more; "Going Down Fighting" did a really good job getting me in the mood for the final confrontation with the villain, and... yeah, it's all good. Someone made a playlist on Spotify that will come up if you search for it.

So, yeah. It's on Netflix. It's not without flaws (mostly, explaining how the hell immortality works, and a couple of pacing issues), but it's a really satisfying superhero movie.

That's the movie. Onto the comic, which I am just now starting to read as I write these words. Whee!

So The Old Guard: Opening Fire is a 2017 five-issue Image Comics series written by Greg Rucka, with art by Leandro Fernández, and there's also a 2019 sequel, The Old Guard: Force Multiplied, by the same creative team, also with five issues. I have not actually read any of Rucka's work before now because he is mostly famous for his DC work, but I have heard good things about it, especially his Wonder Woman run.

Anyway. The art is very stylized, with a minimal color palette, and it's very pretty but I honestly found it hard to parse sometimes. Many of the characters have very weird noses. Yes, noses. It's basically mostly in Andy's and Nile's POVs, like the movie, and as far I can tell Andy is explicitly queer, because unless I am entirely misreading this panel in issue #1, here she is in bed with a woman in one panel. Whee. Also there are some nice epigraphs at the beginning of each issue.

Okay, so, the plot here is basically the plot of the movie. There is still no explanation of why immortality exists. But even so, there are some fun character moments that didn't make it into the movie -- for example, Andy saying smartphones are too hard to use and she liked the old ones better, only for the rest of her team to say that she couldn't use those either. I think you get a better sense of Andy's world-weariness in the comic. There are also other, now-dead Immortals mentioned, like Noriko, who "went overboard off the Horn." Quynh is not one of them; Quynh basically is Noriko, which is because they cast a Vietnamese actress who asked if her character could be Vietnamese too, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. But anyway, in the comics, she's Noriko. Weirdly, Andy's full name, as she tells Nile when they meet, is Andronika ("man-victory") rather than Andromache ("man-battle," in case you were wondering); I think the movie made a better choice because Ἀνδρονίκα has exactly two attestations in the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, whereas Ἀνδρομάχη has all that shiny name recognition of being shared by the wife of Hector and also the queen of the Amazons and will ping viewers as a Greek name, and therefore ancient, even if it can't be the name she was born with. (There are five for "Andronike" and four more for "Andromacha" so they actually have about the same number of total attestations, as far as I can tell, when you consider the alpha/eta alternation in how various Greek dialects mark feminine nouns.)

(Yes, you totally wanted a review by someone who looks up character names in the LGPN. Don't lie.)

Plotwise, Andy gets all of the initial exposition in for Nile before they get to the safehouse, which Copley has already gotten to before they get back, so Booker is bleeding on the floor and Nile doesn't get to meet Joe or Nicky at this time, and I am also glad they changed that for the movie. But, don't worry, Joe and Nicky's romantic declaration is still in here. We also get Andy pondering the last time she was in love, with a human who grew old.

Oh, and we get Andy's age: 6,732. And by issue #5 her name has changed to Andromache, because what even is continuity? I guess Andromache is her name now.

So Nile finally meets Joe and Nicky when she rescues them and also, uh, that plot point where Andy might die? Totally not a thing here. Nope. And no "surprise! even more immortals!" end-credits moments either.

Basically, I feel like every change they made to the script for the movie really strengthened the story, and even though I thought the movie could have used more character moments, it's way better than how the characters are separated for even longer in the comic. Nile rescuing the team means a lot more when she has met them before, you know?

So Force Multiplied starts us off with Andy, Joe, Nicky, and Nile, because Booker is still on time-out. They are in the middle of a car chase, and Booker's off getting himself kidnapped by someone who wants to know where the others are. The villain of the piece turns out to be Noriko, who is still alive, whom Booker had never had a chance to meet and apparently had never heard of. So, basically, a lot like the Quynh plot that the movie is teasing.

Overall it's a little less action-filled than the first one, which had multiple splash pages of nothing but violence; this one is a little more character-driven and explores the relationship, such as it is, between Andy and Noriko, as well as Nile coming to terms with her immortality, as well as with what everyone else has done over the years. It does have a bunch of violence at the end, though.

I don't want to spoil the ending, but I definitely wasn't expecting where that was heading. There's apparently going to be a third volume, and I am looking forward to it, whenever it exists.

(Although, now that I think about it, the ending is a lot like a fan-favorite moment of Highlander: The Series, but I think if I said which episode you would know exactly what the ending was.)

So, yeah! The Old Guard! I can't say as I feel particularly fannish about it -- there's nothing that makes me yearn to fill in the gaps in canon -- but the movie was really good and you should see it. And you should read the comics if you're into that.

#posts i actually wrote

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noodlecupcakeswritings · 4 years

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Ownership - Chapter 16 (A Kylo RenxOC AU)

Cora Ardmore and Kylo Ren work for rival companies, but they don’t know that until after they spend the night together. Once their identities are revealed to each other it’s a question of who will cave first?

This fic is pure porn, pure kinky porn.

Please leave comments, kudos and reblogs if you like it. If you would like to be tagged let me know.

Warnings: Language, Implied smut, Implied oral sex, More backstory and world building and plot

Chapter 16

Kylo Ren

After breakfast the next morning, Cora and I got comfortable in the bedroom. She didn’t want it to feel too much like an interview, more like a conversation. Sitting together on the bed with some coffee and snacks, she opened an app on her phone and hit a button. Placing the phone on the bed, she met my gaze with a soft smile. “Where do you want me to start?” I asked. “When and how you met Snoke.” Thinking about it, I knew this has been coming. I knew I’d have to tell her about my past, but there was one big thing I could skip.

“When I turned eighteen, I left home. My parents and I didn’t get along, so I wanted to get out as soon as I could. I couch surfed for a little while before a friend suggested I join the marines. I served for four years before I met Snoke. He was the arms supplier and one day it was my job to go with my sergeant to pick up supplies. He’d served in the military before. People spoke of him like a war hero, so when he spoke to me, I listened. He said he saw potential in me and that he could offer me a better job. One that was safer, gave me more money and would still ensure I was protecting the country,” I started.

Cora listened intently, hanging on every word without an ounce of judgement on her face. This surprised me, I thought she would have at least asked some questions by now. Maybe she was saving them all till the end. “After serving four years as a lance corporal and not progressing to higher ranks even though it had been promised to me, I saw the opportunity and took it. Within the week, I handed in my notice and called Snoke. He set me up in a shitty little apartment before I started my job. My first real home that was mine to do whatever the fuck I wanted with. It was like Snoke became my father figure, helped me when I needed it,” I continued.

“He didn’t have to do any of the things he did for me, he didn’t have to spend so much money on me, but he did. Because he saw something in me and for the first time in my life, I saw that something too. I trained under him for five years until he decided I was ready for my own office, that I would lead the security team. That ranges from home security, business, cyber and the country.” Cora looked at me sympathetically and laced her fingers with mine, pressing a kiss to the back of my hand.

“It sounds like you two were really close,” she finally spoke. “Yeah. He still thinks we are, but I can’t sit back and let him do the things he’s doing anymore. That’s a part of my job, protecting this country, and if that means from him then so be it,” I replied. “That’s really admirable, Kylo. There are so many people that stay quiet about these kinds of things because of sentimental reasons or fear or their bribed. I’m glad your speaking up about this. Do you mind if I ask some questions?” “That’s why we’re doing this,” I teased. She smiled and shifted closer to me, kissing my cheek, “I know. I just wanted to make sure you were ready after telling me something so personal. So first question when you trained under him was there anything that seemed off?”

“Not at first. The first three years he kept me out of anything potentially illegal, probably to see if he could trust me. The first red flag was when I saw him bribing staff members. Ones in accounting who would see any anomalies in the books. Or some members in human resources when staff had threatened to speak against Tarkin.” “Why would they speak against Tarkin?” “He’s old school. Very old ways of thinking. Believes women are incapable of doing a man’s job, so if you notice in his department, the only female member of staff is his assistant. You’ll also notice it’s a lot of white men. He hired one black American in the past five years to avoid a racism scandal.”

Cora cringed as I told her this, “let me guess he’s homophobic too? The full package?” Cora asked. “Yeah. The member of staff was with him for a month before Tarkin fired him and made homophobic comments. Snoke paid the guy off to stop him complaining and taking it further. I could probably find him if you wanted, he’d probably have texts or emails from Snoke and Tarkins lawyer.” “That would be helpful, thanks. Any ex-employees numbers that you can get for me would help a lot, actually. It would cause a minor scandal, at least until we can get the big evidence. I’m just I’m thinking worst-case scenario, we’ll at least have something.”

I shook my head, “Cora, we need him taken down. If you were to write a small piece on this, it would make you his first target. He’d have you fired somehow, or you’d go missing. I’m not having something happen to you because of me.” “You understand with the big evidence you and I may have to do risky things to get it right? You can’t stop me then, Kylo.” “I know, but until then I can if you let me.” Her expression softened again, and she nodded in agreement, “I’m going to need to tell the rest of the team about this soon. That doesn’t mean you have to reveal your identity, I can still keep that a secret, but I won’t be able to do this stuff alone.” “I understand. But throughout this entire process you are the only person I will do this with.”

Cora thought about it for a moment and nodded, probably thinking it was because she was the only one I trusted with this. That was part of it. The other reason was if my mother started poking her nose in which would become likely I didn’t want to risk having to see her. Having finished up the interview, Cora pressed the recording button on her phone to stop it. “The next step will be chasing up that lead you found. And maybe you should consider getting closer to Snoke. If he trusts you like you say he does, he may proposition you with something we can use as evidence,” Cora explained. “I can do that. Am I gonna need to wear a wire at all for this stuff?” “You make it sound like some kind of spy film. I’m sure I can ask Finn to get hold of one for me if you feel it would be helpful.”

“Next thing you’ll be telling me hacks computers too.” Cora opened her mouth to say something, but then thought better of it. I raised my brow at her. There was no way she could leave me hanging like that. “He does, doesn’t he?” I asked. “He’s only done it once, and it benefited us majorly. If he hadn’t we have had to scrap month’s worth of work and criminals wouldn’t have been brought to justice,” Cora excused. “I’m not opposed to it if the occasion arises. We want the same thing in the end, and we’ll use whatever means illegal or not to get it.” She still looked somewhat bashful, avoiding my gaze a little, “Its just that my boss doesn’t know. We’d get in big trouble if she did.”

Smirking softly, I responded, “what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” leaning over I started to gently kiss her neck, “you can keep a secret can’t you Kitten?” There was a small hitch in her breath as she melted into my touch. She gave me a soft nod, her hands on my shoulders as I gently pushed her back against the pillows. Continuing to kiss her neck, I started trailing my lips further down her body until I was between her legs. “Didn’t you get enough breakfast?” Cora asked, peering down at me with a soft smirk. I shook my head, “not nearly enough.”

Taglist: @sweetfictionalworld, @sweetsec-93, @cltex84, @jana-banana-fana, @dark-night-sky-99, @little-laamb, @jynzandtonic, @blackredrose27, @neeharlow

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strangeandforlornbooks · 4 years

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best books with morally ambiguous narrators!

all y’all’s problematic faves and villains! :) also included are third person narrators but in books with morally ambiguous leads/themes

Sci-fi

Scythe by Neal Shusterman: in a future free from pain, disease, and war, people can live forever. ‘scythes’ are given the power to decide who lives and who dies to preserve the balance. sad and kinda gives of hunger games vibes, if you like that.

Neuromancer by William Gibson: basically invented the cyberpunk genre. strange and removed protagonists. (a team of computer hackers have to face off against an evil AI). you kind of dislike everyone and suddenly you’re crying over them. one of those trippy sci-fi classics.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut: very beautiful and very very sad (same author as slaughterhouse five). the richest man in america has to face a martian invasion. more about free will and bad people doing good things than a plot that makes any kind of sense.

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick: set in an alternate universe where the germans and japanese won world war two. not really like the tv show at all- it’s not an action story, and there’s not really the hope to somehow fix the world that drives a lot of dystopia stories. instead its about how people survive and connect to one another in a hopeless society.

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow: a supercomputer convinces the leaders of the world to keep the peace for hundreds of years by taking their children hostage and obliterating any city that disobeys. what happens to the hostage protagonists when war seems inevitable? lots of morally fraught decisions and characters slowly losing their identity. (plus a fun lesbian romance)

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson: a brilliant mathematician and a dedicated marine fight to keep the ultra secret in world war two. fifty years later, a tech company discovers what remains of their story. one of the most memorable sequences in the book is a japanese soldier slowly becoming disillusioned with his nation and horrified by the war even as he continues to fight.

Blade Runner by Philip K. Dick: another one of those sci-fi classics that’s not at all like the movie. there is a bounty hunter for robots, though, as well as a weird religion that probably is referencing catholicism and a decaying society with a shortage of pets. kind of a trip.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power: girls trapped in a boarding school on an isolated island must face a creeping rot that affects the animals and plants on the island as well as their own bodies. the protagonists will do anything to survive and keep each other safe. very tense (and bonus lesbian romance whoo)

The Fifth Season by N K Jemisin: three women are gifted with the ability to control the earth’s energy in a world where those who can do so are forced into hiding or slavery. some veryyyy dark choices here but lots of strong female characters.

Historical Fiction

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters: two victorian lesbians fall in love as they plot to betray each other in horrific ways. lots of plot twists, plucky thieves, gothic settings, and a great romance.

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiwicz: a powerful roman soldier in the time of Nero plots to kidnap a young woman after he falls in love with her, only to learn more about the mysterious christian religion she follows. very melodramatic but some terrific prose.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: a blind girl in France and a brilliant German boy recruited by the military struggle through the chaos of the second world war. ends with a bang (iykyk.) very sad, reads like poetry.

Boxers by Gene Luen Yang: graphic novel reveals the story of a young boy fighting in the boxer rebellion in early twentieth century china. the sequel, saints, is also excellent. beautifully and sympathetically shows the protagonist’s descent into evil- the reader really understands each step along the way.

Fantasy

Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake: three triplets separated at birth, each with their own magical powers, have to fight to the death to gain the throne. lots of fun honestly

Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo: everyone in these books is highly problematic but you love them all anyway. a ragtag game of criminals plan a heist on a magical fortress. some terrific tragic back stories, repressed feelings, and revenge schemes.

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King: idk how to describe these frankly but if you can put up with King’s appalling writing of female characters they’re pretty interesting. fantasy epic about saving the world/universe, sort of. cowboys and prophecies and overlapping dimensions and drug addicts galore.

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud: lots of fun! a twelve year old decides to summon a demon for his cute lil revenge scheme. sarcastic demon narrator. lighthearted until s*** gets real suddenly.

Elegy and Swansong by Vale Aida: fantasy epic with machiavellian lesbians and enemies to lovers to enemies to ??? to lovers. charming and exciting and lovely characters.

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen: an orphan boy must compete with a few others for the chance to impersonate a dead prince. really dark but very tense and exciting and good twists.

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu: fantasy epic. heroes overthrow an evil empire and then struggle as the revolution dissolves into warring factions. interesting world building and three dimensional characters, even if they only have a small part.

Circe by Madeline Miller: the story behind the witch who turns men into pigs in the odyssey. madeline miller really said, i just used my classics degree to write a beautiful gay love story and now im going to write a powerful feminist retelling because i can. queen. an amazing and satisfying book that kills me a lil bit because of the two lines referencing the song of achilles.

Heartless by Marissa Meyer: the tragic backstory for the queen of hearts in alice in wonderland. a little predictable but very fun with a compelling protagonist

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George RR Martin: ok I know we all hate GRRM and rightfully so but admittedly these books do have some great characters and great scenes. they deserve better than GRRM though. also he will probably never finish the books anyway....

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket: not really fantasy but not really anything else either. plucky, intelligent, and kind children fight off evil plots for thirteen books until suddenly you realize the world is not nearly as black and white as you thought.

Classics

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: gothic romance!! a new wife is curious about the mysterious death of her predecessor in a creepy old house in the British countryside...good twists and lovely prose.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles: not really morally ambiguous but one awful decision suddenly has awful consequences and certain people are haunted by guilt forever.... really really really beautiful and really really really sad. boys in a boarding school grow up together under the shadow of world war two.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: while imperial russia slowly decays a beautiful young woman begins a destructive affair. a long book. very russian. the ending is incredibly tense and well written.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding: I think you know the plot to this one. the prose is better than you remember and the last scene is always exciting.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie: one by one, the guests on an island are slowly picked off. one of Christie’s darkest mysteries- no happy ending here! very tense and great twists.

Contemporary

The Secret History by Donna Tartt: inspired the whole dark academia aesthetic. college students get a little too into ancient greece and it does not end very well. lovely prose but I found the characters unlikable.

Honorable Mentions

The Dublin Saga by Edward Rutherford: has literally a billion protagonists, but some of them are morally ambiguous ig? follows a few families stories’ from the 400s ad to irish independence in the 20s. beautifully captures the weight and movement of irish history.

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer: how morally ambiguous can you be if you’re, like, eleven? a lot if you’re a criminal genius who wants to kidnap a fairy for your evil-ish plan apparently!

Redemption by Leon Uris: literally my favorite novel ever. the sequel to Trinity but can stand alone. various irish families struggle through the horrors of world war one. the hero isn’t really morally ambiguous, but the main theme of the novel is extremely bad people suddenly questioning their choices and eventually redeeming themselves. sweeping themes of love, screwed up families, redemption, and patriotism.

The Lymond Chronicles and House of Niccolo by Dorothy Dunnett: heroes redeem themselves/try to get rich/try to save their country in early renaissance Europe. if I actually knew what happened in these books I'm sure it would be morally ambiguous but its too confusing for me. in each book you spend at least a third convinced the protagonist is evil, though. lots of exciting sword fights, tragic romances, plot twists, and kicking english butt.

Bonus: Protagonist is less morally ambiguous and more very screwed up and sad all the time

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt: you know this one bc its quoted in all those quote compilations. basically the story of how one horrible event traumatizes a young man and how he develops a connection to a painting. really really really good.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: hard to describe but strange... not an action novel or a dystopia really but sort of along those lines. very hopeless.

#book recs #morally ambiguous protagonists #dark academia #book recommendations #mine

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tsarisfanfiction · 4 years

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Thinking thoughts and wanted to know your opinion law went from this seemingly laid back almost easy going personality to this brooding serious man during the time skip do you think he’ll slowly ease back into his old personality once this emperor stuff is taken care of and do you think his crew miss his laid back ways?

Ooh, hello Anon! This is an interesting question for sure, but honestly? I don’t think Law’s personality really changed. What changed is his situation (and two years of additional experience).

Aaaaand my explanation/character study got super long so it’s under a cut. Oops. Vague warning for Wano spoilers at some point (I give an actual warning when I get there but a few other things may have slipped in earlier so watch out if you’re anime-only, I guess?)

Okay, so: Sabaody. Laid back, taunting so-and-so noted by Kid of all people to have zero manners and perfectly happy to poke fun at Drake (note: Drake is also former North Blue, we know their backstories intersected - although whether they know that is another matter entirely, although I headcanon that Drake knows and Law doesn’t but that’s a whole other thing, just like I headcanon that Drake, Penguin and Shachi totally knew each other as teenagers. I mean, neighbouring islands? Pirates? Don’t try and tell me the Barrel Pirates never visited Swallow Island when it was literally right there, and what little we know of pre-Hearts Penguin and Shachi they would totally have been in the pirate kid’s face, but I’m getting off-track).

Law spends a lot of time in Sabaody watching. When we first see him, he’s watching Killer and Urouge duke it out, and doesn’t do anything to influence what’s going on until Drake arrives (again: Drake, North Blue, a Known Quantity. Killer? South Blue. Urouge? Sky Islands. Unknown Quantities, and possibly the first time he’s seen either of them in person). Then we see him in the Auction House, and we all know he wasn’t there to make a purchase. One of Oda’s brilliant tie-backs - the Auction House is one of Joker’s things. Joker is Doffy. Law is tracking Doffy. It’s not rocket science that he’s there to get more info.

Then the Strawhats happen. Law sits there amid all that carnage, seeing the entire crew reunite in the middle of the Biggest Thing Ever To Happen on Sabaody (I mean… punch a tenryubito, nice one Luffy). Doesn’t join in, doesn’t try to leave. Sits and watches. His interaction with Luffy is more info-gathering: this guy just punched a tenryubito and now the Marines are here. What next?

I love the Three Captains Beatdown. (I am delighted we finally have the Part 2). Luffy and Kid are being Luffy and Kid. They’re crazy, they’re strong, they’re not backing down. Law has his pride. He’s the ‘weakest’ of the three (by which I mean he has the lowest bounty and in pirate-speak that means weaker) and both Kid and Luffy are completely not his type of pirate (again, revisited in current manga events and thank you, Oda). If he doesn’t act then, he’ll lose a whole load of respect, and also put his crew in danger because, you know, the admiral is coming and Shachi already admitted Rayleigh’s haki nearly took him out. So we have three of Law’s big traits coming out in Sabaody (imo): Protectiveness of his crew, Scheming, and being an Intentional Pain in the Ass (with a subsection of Pride but all pirates have that one so I’m not gonna focus on that too much).

As for Marineford, that’s really a case of sticking his tongue out at the World Government, let’s be honest (plus the whole Will of D schtick we still don’t know the full depth of). What better way of saying ‘screw you’ to the WG than saving someone who just broke out of Impel Down and has made themselves out to be a royal nuisance but hey it’s okay because he’s dea- dammit Trafalgar came in and now he’s not dead? Also really got his name on their radar for Shichibukai fun later.

All three of these traits still show themselves post-timeskip, but up until Zou/Wano there is one big factor that’s changed.

Law is alone.

He’s sent his crew off somewhere safe (there is no other reason for ditching most of his fighting power all the way to Zou other than to just keep Doflamingo’s strings away), his scheming is reaching its peak, and then the Straw Hats come in and make a mess of everything.

I don’t know about you, but I’d be much more serious when I’m alone in a keystone of my greatest enemy’s lair with my nakama too far away to help, and then the Strawhats crash the party.

He’s met them once before, presumably also read about them in the News Coo, so he knows they do unpredictable things at the worst times. He also knows they’re strong, so Scheming Law comes in again, allies with them to both try and stop them from messing everything up, and also get some additional firepower in to replace his crew’s strength (or at least a bit of it - considering the Strawhats are half the size of the Hearts and if anyone tries to tell me Law, Bepo and Jean Bart are the only powerhouses in that crew I will fight, how much exactly it compares is a grey area).

Too bad Luffy is, well, Luffy, and it doesn’t quiiite pan out the way Law planned (but he’s learning! Latest chapter is gold). But again, Punk Hazard: we see Pain in the Ass Law (vs Smoker), Scheming Law (basically main Law right now), and Protective Law (Heart Pirates hidden away safe).

And this continues into Dressrosa, with of course the addition of Tragic Backstory (it’s One Piece, he was going to have one. Even if Law’s ends up particularly nasty). Law is facing his greatest enemy, the one he swore to defeat after thirteen years, and then he gets outsmarted. So we have out of his depth, defeated Law - although he’s still being a Smartass to Doffy because he can. Again, I think being tense, snappy and generally not a happy guy is pretty fair in that situation. Luffy simultaneously makes things better and worse - Law has to rely on him to get him out of there, and we know Law’s not one for trusting easily (Jean Bart’s recruitment is an interesting case and I wonder if he was planning on keeping him straight away or if it was another FU to the tenryubito plus ‘hey, fighting power’ moment but then Jean Bart was actually loyal and also a goof). But Luffy does it, they win, hooray.

But now? Now we have Law alone with the Straw Hats forming a Grand Fleet and he’s really back-footed here in terms of power balance. It is Not Smart to rib the pirates who a) outnumber you like hell and you have no hope of backup anywhere and b) are the ones that are going to get you back to your own crew. This isn’t like Sabaody, where there’s Luffy and Kid and he needs to prove himself to them as well as keep his crew safe. His crew are safe (he thinks… we’ll get to that in a minute), Luffy’s seen him at his absolute worst in the last 13 years, and all his scheming for the last 13 years has reached a conclusion.

He’s lost, he’s tired, and really he just wants to go home to his nakama now. Can you blame him?

Then, we get Zou.

Zou is fun. Zou is really, really fun. We get the reunion! Which we see literally 1% of and I’m mad because that would have been so good to see. Bepo literally jumps on him and he lets him. I bet the rest of the crew did, too. We see Law with his crew of idiots and he loves them and there’s so much scope in there for Law finally being able to relax for the first time since Time Skip. And the Hearts get on well with the Straw Hats. We see Penguin and Usopp dancing together later on, we see Law teasing his crew (not introducing them? Their reaction to that is the sort of thing we would see other pirate captains punish for mutiny but he just shrugs it off. He knew they’d react like that).

But there are two big elephants in the room here (unintentional pun whoops). Number one: Sanji’s disappearance and his ally’s reaction to that. We see that covered pretty well in canon, Law realising that his ally is about to have two yonkou after his head at the same time and the problem that poses for him, Law getting dragged into a new alliance with the Minks and Samurai (Law being a total goof about Raizo but Keeping Up Appearances because Strawhats). Law presumably making the executive decision that breaking his alliance now would be a bad idea (Kaido is still annoyed with him, the Minks adore the Strawhats, Luffy is a clingy rubbery bastard that won’t let him go anyway), and once more we have a back-footed Law.

The second elephant is fun for me. It’s never fully stated in canon, but. Jack attacked the Minks. The Heart Pirates were living with the Minks. The Heart Pirates fought with the Minks (we saw that). Bepo was treated by Nami (we also saw that). The Heart Pirates got caught up in that whole mess. At the minimum, the whole crew got poisoned alongside the Minks. I reckon some of them were probably tortured, too. Law came home to his crew expecting them to have been safe and they weren’t. And now he’s asking them to go straight to the lair of the crew that did that to them. That’s not going to settle particularly well with him, either.

We don’t see the journey to Wano (disclaimer: I haven’t seen anything past WCI in the anime so I have no clue what fillers may have been added), but there’s still four Strawhats and the samurai on board, so even back in his own ship Law can’t fully relax, but I bet he’s still like Zou-Law. A little peeved, trying to work out how the hell he’s going to deal with Kaido with or without Luffy and the half of the Strawhats that have gone on a suicide mission, but genuinely happy to see his crew again.

Then he manages to kick all the intruders once they arrive at Wano, and the first we see of him, he’s chilling out. Watching. He even has his crew on info-gathering/watching (we see Penguin, Shachi and Bepo but I bet they’re all doing it). Hello, Sabaody!Law! Chilled, keeping an eye on things, scheming (just no-one to irritate because they’re trying to keep a low profile).

And then Luffy returns and we’re back to Punk Hazard, except this time, Law’s crew are in the mess, too. Law’s plans are crumbling, Luffy is being a royal nuisance, and then things go from Bad to Worse.

I don’t know how far the anime has got so vague blanket manga spoiler warning from here.

Luffy gets captured. Kaido knows they’re there. Kaido attacks his crew. If it wasn’t for Shinobu having a devil fruit useful in that situation, that would have been bye-bye Penguin, Shachi and Bepo. So there go Law’s plans and his crew are in danger. Punk Hazard but worse.

Then, thanks to the traitor, Penguin, Shachi and Bepo get captured. They’re also accused of being the traitor, and Protective Law rears his head big time. The Heart Pirates in effect leave the alliance. Not officially, because Law knows he’ll need them later even if it’s only as bait while he gets the hell out of there with his crew, if required, but he strikes out and they hear nothing from him until voila, Penguin, Shachi and Bepo are back!

And this was the return of Pain In The Ass Law. He’s smirking at Hawkins, and someone else I’m currently running with the theory of Drake. Oh look, North Blue buddies! Known Quantities. Some scheme is hatched (looking forwards to that one). He’s also protecting the hell out of his crew, because Hawkins hit him where it hurts (North Blue not-so-buddies. Known Quantities. Works both ways).

Now? Now, we’re looped right back to Sabaody again. The Three Captains are back, Law is back to being surrounded by idiots but still proving himself whilst protecting his crew and scheming (and this time knows how to include Luffy and Kid into his schemes! Character development!).

It’s been two years, he’s been through hell (again, Oda please give him a break), but the core things we saw back in Sabaody? They’re still there, and the closer he is to his crew the clearer we see them.

So to answer the question will he go back to that? No, because that’s not how character development works, but I do think we’ll see the Pain In The Ass Law more once Protective and Scheming Law aren’t needed in earnest (unfortunately, as long as the Strawhats are around, he’s always going to have some sort of guard up because he’s learnt and he’s not stupid. As they’re our protags, that means we’re probably only going to see Law much while he’s with them).

As for his crew? We know, thanks to the SBS, that Penguin, Shachi and Bepo have known him since basically the day he lost Rocinante. Whatever hell of a mess he is at the moment, it’s not going to be anything like 13yo Law after his whole life crumbled again. It’s not known exactly when he meets the rest of the crew (except Jean Bart), but it’s somewhere in those 11 years between Minion Island and Sabaody (and maybe some again in the time skip).

So some of his crew, at least, have seen him worse and basically learn to love again (as cheesy as that sounds). They might not like the blip, but they’ve seen him worse, so they’ll know that it’ll pass. And as I’ve been saying, we’ve seen him far more without his crew than with them. There’s a high chance that how he acts with them hasn’t changed as much as the change we’ve seen as readers.

This basically turned into an Essay on Law oops. But it was a very interesting question!

#ask #trafalgar law #character study #heart pirates #i tried to keep headcanons out of this and stick to the manga facts but I know a couple slipped in #essay on law #tl;dr i don't think his personality has changed just the situations he's been in #Anonymous

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brachylagus-fandom · 3 years

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12 Days of WIPmas - Day 4

Honor Harrington, the one where there are treecats on Haven

With fic excerpts this time!

Okay, so this is not an AU where treecats are native to Haven; they’re still to Sphinx.

Long ago, back when there were still normal diplomatic relations between Manticore and Grayson, there were ambassadors.

And one of those ambassadors got adopted.

And that treecat made a bunch of baby treecats.

So now there’s a bunch of treecats living in Napoleon Park, which we are going to pretend is a chunk of protected woodland large enough to sustain a treecat colony for the purposes of this fic.

Let’s call them the Fast Falls Clan

This also technically originated as a tangent of an AU where the treecat-snatching plot in the Star Kindgom prequels was successful and a Havenite ship stumbles upon (part of) what the SFS has termed the Lost Colony, but I’m not writing that right now!

Suffice to say, it makes for a great Harrington Family Vacation (including Harrington Cousin In the SFS).

Being adopted is still a huge honor, but Legislaturists also try to capture them as a status symbol.

You can technically declaw a treecat, but like with normal cats, it’s not great for them. (But it does save your fancy Legislaturist furniture.)

So far, I have three adoptees: Theisman, Foraker, and (sorta) Pritchart

Theisman:

With bonus Tourville backstory, oops

Makes Honor trust him more initially, also ideally the “Dreams of Peace“ reveal happens right after treecat sign is developed (while they’re still at war).

When he entered Napoleon Park as part of his Naval survival training, Thomas Theisman wasn't expecting to see a treecat, let alone bond with one. But, as soon as he had found a nice, dry spot to spend the night, Jeanne was there, perched nobly on top of his pop-up tent. The second he laid eyes on her, the moment her startlingly green eyes flicked up to meet his, the instant she began to purr in recognition, Theisman knew they were bonded; he was hers and she was his.

Then, in attempting to leap off the tent, she brought it down, and Theisman thought, this is going to ground me planetside forever, isn't it.

It wasn't that the Havenite navy didn't have a protocol for servicemembers with treecats; it had happened a handful of times over the years, mostly through trapping. It was just that that policy was "give treecat to a good Legislaturist owner"; if (when, in the case of most adoption bonds) that failed, the human was drummed out of the military or sent to a nice, safe, dull, unrewarding posting like Pegasus or Tambourin or, if Theisman was really lucky, Gaston, where there were still insurgents, scattered in asteroid belts and in remote parts of the system's inhabited planets, fighting a war lost before he was even born.

(Theisman was not lucky; he did not help Lester Tourville crush a revolt on Vedastus, the most populous planet of the Gaston system. He did not smell burning flesh and taste blood and watch as nine marines - nine kids, half of them barely sixteen and none of them even twenty-one - were executed for refusing to destroy a hospital. He did not see Lester Tourville break down and rebuild himself behind an outrageous facade. Instead, Theisman was sent to Barnett to manage DuQuesne Base's traffic and combat readiness and, sporadically, participate in some simulation exercises. Not nearly as boring as doing the Navy recruitment pitches and serving as some Legislaturist's aide back on Haven, but still dreadfully safe. At least, safe until Barnett became a staging ground for the invasion of Trevor's Star and Theisman gained enough combat experience to be assigned to convoys in Silesia like a proper midshipman.)

Foraker:

In this one, Shannon’s from the Refuge System because Trauma and I think it’d be interesting to have the Havenite characters not all be from one of the many planets in the republic.

This also makes the stuff in In Enemy Hands more personal and less conjecture (and means that Nimitz’s lack of telepathy is discovered much sooner).

Shannon Foraker had often been told that she was lucky. She was lucky to have been born on Sanctuary less than two years before The Expedition arrived, young enough to be recruited to the Cultural Adjustment Program once the Treaty of Incorporation was signed. She was lucky to have been given the gifts of a proper Dolist education on Haven itself - a far cry from whatever schooling her inegalitarian and isolated home planet could have cobbled together - and a career in the Navy and a promise of citizenship after ten years' service and everything else the Program had given her, and she was lucky to have been invited to Mrs. Harris' commencement party. It was a privilege granted to precious few ensigns every year, most from well-known Legislaturist families, and a girl with nothing from nowhere must be very lucky indeed.

(Not that Shannon considered herself very lucky; the other invitees were some of the same people who had yanked her pigtails and had stolen her scrounged circuit parts and still said "you're so lucky" the second words came out of her stupid mouth in her stupid Refuge accent and had ripped her last picture of Mom to shreds and had shot at the wall behind her just to make her jump and-)

Shannon Foraker was very lucky to attend Mrs. Harris' party, to sip the only drink she knew hadn't been tampered with and make awkward small talk with people who sneered at every accent that wasn't Haven Standard and pet Mrs. Harris' treecat and get told that she was very lucky. She was very lucky because, an hour before it would be acceptable for her to leave, a gray-and-cream blur leaped over the stair railing. Shannon felt something warm pool in her gut as the second 'cat landed neatly on six feet and then bounded towards her; before she could blink, he had leaped onto her lap and was purring against her cheek. Cat, the treecat that had been downstairs to begin with, looked mildly offended, so Shannon set her drink down and swept a hand between his ears as she cradled the other to her chest.

"Deux!" Mrs. Harris shrieked. "There are guests here! Here, Fourrier-"

"Foraker-" Shannon whispered into Deux' ear. (She was very lucky Mrs. Harris had gotten the first sound right; half a dozen teachers had told her that to ask for more would be ungrateful.)

"-Let Mrs. Capet take the mongrel back to where he's supposed to be." As the maid grew closer, Deux rose up on his back legs and hissed at her, then laid himself around Shannon's shoulders like a blanket when she backed off. Cat jumped off the couch with a disdainful sniff and stalked off to find someone else to pet him as Deux purred into Shannon's neck, his solid, warm weight the closest thing she'd had to a hug in years. She closed her eyes, hoping to forget Mrs. Harris' indignation, forget the party, forget everything that had happened to her in the last decade, forget that she wasn't at home with Mom, forget…

"Did Shannie just get adopted?" Her fellow ensigns gathered to gawk at her and the treecat on her shoulders, elbowing each other to get closer even as Deux hissed at them.

"Cool!"

"No way she got adopted! I bet that 'cat lets anyone pet - motherf-"

"You're so lucky, Forester!"

And as she left with Deux in her arms, Shannon felt that she was.

Pritchart/Glory to the People’s Republic

Obviously, if treecats are a status symbol, the Hereditary President needs one. Glory is the last of a long line of cats with that name.

This particular Glory is all black, a rare trait in treecats and probably also a sign of the bottlenecked gene pool of the Fast Falls clan, and has survived longer than any of the others of his name. He was captured as a kitten, and his teeth were filed down and claws removed to shape him for the role.

It turns out that when removed of their natural weapons, ‘cats get inventive with how they try to maim owners they dislike. Harris wears an eyepatch, and when Glory makes an appearance, he is always drugged.

Glory’s probably from the same litter Mrs. Harris’ Cat is from, which explains how the latter is so well-socialized.

Just after Glory reaches adulthood, the Harris assassination occurs, and he disappears from official newscasts. There are rumors, though, of a pitch-black ‘cat brought out at Committee Parties, rarely awake and barely touchable when it is.

When Theisman shoots Saint-Just in his office, he finds a cage beneath the desk full of a snarling, spitting thing more fur than animal. He gives it e-rats and opens the cage; in gratitude, Glory doesn’t claw Theisman’s eyes out.

No one sees the treecat again for another two weeks, when Pritchart wakes up from an unplanned nap to see him, slightly less ragged, staring at her with bright green eyes. He rapidly scampers off.

Some days, he naps in the sunbeam of Pritchart’s office, and recieves only the skritches and celery he desires. Things are good.

#honorverse #fic brainstorming #12 days of ficmas

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