#my fic: feral jasper

[goldeneyedgirl]

TwiFicmas23 Day 8: Mary-Alice & Feral Jasper

Good evening!

Tonight we're opting for some Mary-Alice & Feral Jasper because @sonyawix deserves nice things, and these two are so cute to write. It's a soft and gentle little fic where they get to be cute and awkward together.

This is a bit of a patchwork of bits and pieces from throughout the fic, and kind of establishes some of the dynamic.

I am off to sleep for eight hours and procrastinate over tomorrow's post! I hope you enjoy this!

She watches him from the bower of the tree, as he picks his path away from his coven. She’s lucky she’s downwind; her visions show her that they won’t scent her from this perch. 

And she finally gets to see him in person. 

He’s very tall and lean, but he walks slightly stooped and she wonders why. He looks like he’s waiting for a blow to fall, and she doesn’t like that at all. His hair looks clean and is pulled back from his face, and his clothes are … better than hers, at least. She had to rip up a shirt into strips and knot them tightly into a belt to make her dress sit a little better, and it was filthy and torn. His are ill-fitting and worn, but they aren’t dirty. 

His eyes are still black, and that worries her. She cannot think of any vampire whose eyes have remained black for so long, not even when Maria was holding hostages to get more information.

But she doesn’t know how long he was locked away, and she knows nothing about torpor. Mary-Alice has never been around a vampire that wasn’t healed up in a day or two. Or rather, they’d never kept any soldier that wasn’t healed that fast unless they had a special reason to keep them. This kind of injury is entirely foreign to her. 

//

The girl appears from the trees in a split second, as if she’s materialised from  thin air, and there’s enormous relief that he’s not imagining her, like the Cullens think, and he’s not going mad. There was someone watching him

He stares at her with unbridled fascination. 

She’s so … beautiful. Wide red eyes, a pale face framed in uneven black hair with hopeful little curls. She’s tiny, she doesn’t come up to the middle of his chest, and as thin as a dancer. Her clothing is shredded and filthy, there’s blood and mud on her dress indiscriminately. She’s a new kind of vampire, not like the Cullens, and not like the kinds that he can vaguely remember from his past. There’s something wild about her, like she’s just been formed out of the trees and dirt around them, and he likes that.

The scars take a moment for him to notice. They are littering her bare arms and legs, some of them faded and worn into the fabric of her skin, some of them fresher. There’s a nasty one over her eye, and he’s suddenly intensely aware of his own scars. He remembers the pain that came with them, the suffering, and he hopes this girl hasn’t fallen victim to the same misery he only remembers in fragments of agony and rage and fear. 

“Hello?” His voice is still more of a rasp; his healing is slow, and it’s embarrassing to show such weakness to her. He’s also not the one who usually speaks first, and he wonders if he should have waited. He doesn’t know. Usually, the Cullens correct him if he makes a mistake, but they aren’t here. 

It took him weeks to convince them that he was well enough to go on walks alone. He’s grateful that Emmett took his side. He’s got nowhere to run to; he doesn’t understand this world and how it works, and he knows that until he heals, he probably wouldn’t survive long. 

But Esme worried so much, as if the foxes and deer in the woods might be the thing that carried him off. 

He’s rather tickled that only his second time out alone, and he’s found… her. Except, she just studies him with a blank look; not anger but no pleasure or joy. Just quiet consideration, and he wonders too late if she’s planning to attack him. 

//

He looks better. 

She likes that. 

He’s clean and wearing new clothing, and not stooping any longer. His eyes are a funny gold-tinted colour but he’s been feeding - they’re lighter and they’re clearer now, no longer clouded over. Good, that’s good; she’s oddly grateful that the Cullens know how to help him because she had asked Maria casually about some of the injuries he’d bore, and Maria had not had the faintest clue about what she spoke of. It had made her suspicious, which had slowed down her escape exponentially. 

She might still be annoyed about that. She could have been here weeks ago if Maria hadn’t decided to be difficult. 

Jasper seems calm and curious as he moves closer to her; but he’s still limping. And it does frustrate her that the Cullens have let him out to roam the forest without warnings that he shouldn’t be approaching strange vampires. Anyone else might have taken his head before he realised they were even there. 

Something else she’ll have to explain to him then. She’s got a mental list of things already, and she wasn’t expecting to stay that long, truly - just long enough to make sure that he was okay and safe. Then she was going to go and see what snow was like. 

It looked nice in the pictures she’d seen. 

He’s getting worried now, at the silence since he greeted her, and that’s her fault. She’s not used to having people to talk to - unless she was fucking them or they had a particular gift (well, at least, one that was common knowledge), Maria liked her soldiers silent. 

“They’re taking good care of you,” she says abruptly and wonders when she lost the ability to converse with others normally, and not like a soldier. 

“Who? The Cullens?” He stops and gives her a strange look. “Do you… know the Cullens?” The words rasp and catch in his throat, and he struggles to form the entire sentence, as if he’s trying to find and catch each word. Definitely still healing, and it sounds painful and dry when he speaks. 

Perhaps she can convince him to hunt more often to try and speed up the process. There’s a town less than an hour’s run from this place, it wouldn’t be hard for him to slip away and return before the family even knew. 

“Mmm. I wanted to … I wanted to make sure you were safe.” Her words are flat and short, and she can see his uncertainty. 

//

Emmett recognises the longing in Jasper’s eyes as he stares after the small girl wading in the lake. It’s pretty much the same look that Emmett had on his own face when he woke up and saw Rosalie - properly saw her - for the first time. 

Mary-Alice is really strange, but it doesn’t take rocket science to realize she’s had a bad time - even just the overlapping scars on her arms tell a story of violence and fear, but it’s in every part of her - by the way she moves, the way that she watches and stares, the way she speaks in the flat, even voice devoid of emotion, in short sentences. Wherever she came from, it wasn’t a good place, and Emmett’s oddly pleased that she’d found them - even if she was only hanging around because of Jasper like a stray cat, a thought that made him chuckle to himself - and had looked vaguely disgusted with the idea of spending time with the rest of the family.  

Of course, the rest of the family still thought Mary-Alice was some kind of imaginary coping-mechanism for Jasper that they were tentatively ignoring, so maybe she was offended. 

He should be grateful, actually. It’s taken a few weeks for Mary-Alice to stop glaring at him, to stop prowling around like some kind of jungle cat and freeze up, the second he appears. She’s still distant and rigid whenever Emmett appears, but she doesn’t treat him like he’s a danger anymore. And maybe he’d believe that this was trust and the path to friendship, except he’s seen her with Jasper.

When she’s focused on Jasper, there’s a gentleness in every aspect of her. She’s softer with him, patient and sweet. And she revolves around him like she’s his bodyguard against the world. She almost fusses over him, demanding to know when he’s hunted and how he’s healing. Emmett’s nearly certain he’s caught her smelling Jasper’s hair and clothing - perhaps to make sure he’s clean? Mary-Alice doesn’t seem to give much thought to her own state of cleanliness or her clothing, but Jasper’s are clearly important to her. And the way she stares up at Jasper - Mary-Alice has to be the tiniest vampire that Emmett’s ever seen, and Jasper’s only a few centimetres shorter than him - with this look that he suspects might have human feelings behind them.

Jasper would know better than him, though. But on the few attempts Emmett’s made to ask about that, Jasper’s given him a flat, stubborn look and refused to speak. 

So the longing is probably reciprocated - maybe. Alice just hides it better, behind a wall of protectiveness and anti-social personality traits. Emmett honestly can’t work out why she’d be caring and smelling and fussing over his brother if she didn’t care. 

But Emmett also worries; Jasper was walled up alone for so long that they’ve practically had to resocialize him. He remembered so little of human interaction that it had been a war zone at home for a while. Even now, he still had so many behaviours that Esme politely referred to as ‘quirks’ that they had to correct every day (and now Emmett’s wondering how many of the newer ‘quirks’ had been introduced or encouraged by Mary-Alice, who is practically a wild animal). The idea that Jasper is pining for a girl and all that a relationship entails…

Emmett really, really doesn’t want to have to give his new brother the sex talk.  And he knows if he tries to convince either Edward or Carlisle to step in and have the world’s most uncomfortable conversation, they’re going to want toknow why and then remind Emmett that they aren’t encouraging the idea that Mary-Alice is real. And if Mary-Alice isn’t real, then Jasper doesn’t need to suffer through the indignity of a sex-talk. 

It’s a mess. And Emmett’s relieved that Carlisle has decided not to introduce Jasper to the cousins yet because they all know that the sisters are incorrigible flirts, and he’s got a fifty on Jasper (and Mary-Alice) being utterly humourless about that kind of behaviour. 

Emmett also knows that if he tries to push Jasper into introducing Mary-Alice to the rest of the family, it will be a complete disaster. She’ll refuse point blank and then he will be persona non grata around her and … he doesn’t want to piss her off, and he doesn’t want to piss Jasper off. 

He also doesn’t want to have to refresh his brother’s memory on the mechanics of sex and why waiting to be fully healed might be the best choice …

He’s overthinking this. He should really stay out of it entirely. The thing is, he really wants this to work out for Jasper. He’s a good guy, if weird as fuck, and he deserves to have a nice home and a girlfriend that he’s madly in love with - even if the girl happens to be some scary little traumatized gremlin who Emmett can’t imagine smiling let alone being in love with someone. 

He really hopes this works out. 

—

#alice cullen #jasper hale #jalice #the twilight saga #ficmas #ficmas23 #my fic: shadow to light #my fic: feral jasper & mary alice #two dorks in love #when jasper is healed he's going to be the most doting and overprotective nightmare ever

[therealvinelle]

Today I bravely ventured further than ere I’ve gone previously into the twilight fandom and discovered in no short order: Garrett and Kate winning a poll as a side couple; fluffy (?) head canons about Edward and Bella; discussion of wholesome Cullen family holidays where everyone more or less gets along and likes each other (including Edward and Jasper even!!!); and discussion of how cute an adopted cat could be for Rosalie to look after. And there weren’t master lists! Or many textual references at all! They thought the animal-eating Cullens with super strength who terrify animals could have a pet without a problem!

I have retreated to the ranks of familiar metas where I’m not made to feel unduly cynical about it all and everything makes sense (… unlike Edward and Bella as a functional, healthy, genuinely in love couple after no demon pregnancy and he turned her???). Soon I shall once again venture forth but I think recuperation is in order. It was a surreal experience like watching the Harry Potter films with someone who hadn’t read the books and them thinking Hermione was a well adjusted person socially (… she refused to acknowledge Ron had a right to feel bad his pet died for a good part of a year, I don’t know emotional intelligence is on her list of outstanding traits).

Well, the point of this blog is that I have very poor reading comprehension and therefore completely fail to get what I was supposed to from my reading material. Very bizarre interpretations of canon result from this, and we get blogs like this one (or @thecarnivorousmuffinmeta for that matter).

It's a significant and important not to forget factor that Muffin and I developed our understanding of Twilight canon during quarantine, we were sitting alone in our respective homes going a little feral in ways we are still coming to terms with. We weren't always like this, at least not about Twilight.

As for the Twilight fandom, the thing is that a lot of the people I see on my dash and who I disagree with on a lot if not everything, tend to write much better characterised Cullens than I manage. I'm very happy with my fics and wouldn't do anything differently, but the fact remains that even people who disagree with me on a lot on the surface level still characterise many of the characters (with notable exceptions like Aro, who is one of this fandom's characterisation chameleons. Everybody has their own Aro) very similarly, sometimes better (this especially pertains to Edward, a character I find difficult to write).

Also, I have to warn you- if this was what seeing the Twilight fandom did to you, stay far away from Harry Potter fandom and if you do venture into the Harry Potter fandom, the second you see a post tagged "Lily Evans" in the wild you run. Close the tab, turn off the computer, because the odds of the post being wildly and/or hilariously misogynistic are ten to one.

#twilight #twilight renaissance #twilight fandom #harry potter #harry potter fandom #about this blog #darkwinganimus

[bless-my-demons]

When I say that waiting for each chapter is literally what gets me through the week, I mean it. Jasper Hale has been my hyper fixation for the last few months, and honey you are SERVING CUNT with this series. It’s just pure chef’s kiss. You really just don’t see many good fics for Jas with great continuity and plot and this series has both. Thank you for giving me something to look forward too each weekend, and I can’t wait to see what else you have planned!!

And may I inquire if we’ll be getting any spicier or maybe insinuative scenes 👀?

Much love,

Clearwater-hoe

I squealed reading this, BABE-THANK YOU😭🫶

If someone would’ve told me at the beginning of this year that I’d be writing and posting fanfiction, I’d tell you you’re out of your mind because there’s no way in hell I’d ever come out of my shell enough to do it. Readers like YOU are why I feel safe and confident to write and share my daydreams. Having a schedule and a goal to do these chapters every week has given me a purpose like no other and I’m so excited when the weekend rolls around - something I haven’t had before. Up until I started posting this series I kinda felt like everything was happening to me, but now I’m writing down all my thoughts and ideas and you guys eat this shit up and it’s got me feeling incredible. “Thank you” honestly doesn’t cover it🥹

As for spice, wooo girly pop - I’m at the point where I require some level of spice in my reading and I have ideas about Mister Jasper Whitlock Hale… I’m just worried it’ll sound like straight ass because I’m so picky about smut writing style and descriptive words people use😅 I’ll give it a shot and probably send it to my bestie to proof read, but imma try my hand at it eventually and hopefully it doesn’t flop!

I desperately need to develop my smut writing abilities because I need to do my Paul Lahote ideas JUSTICE, I’m feral for what I have planned🤭

Redamancy Series Masterlist

#ask bless my demons #jasper hale x reader #redamancy series #jasper hale x female!reader #you made my day #this is incredible #im dyin rn #y’all hype me up so well

[ace-malarky]

Weekend WIP Game - Mist World Shorts

Hey y'know what, I'm going to like. make a few separate non-dated versions of this so I can have all the things? I've been working through my files etc so now they're organised better and I can see everything, so!

I'm also numbering out the scenes that are part written! so if you wanna chuck that into the mix. That is also good.

The WIPS

Alepir Holt (In the wake of magic coming back to Leritheyar, people finding out they are mages and werecreatures and coming together. Characters; Kaithr, Kestrel, Fin, Kane (and oh god so many more but these ones feature in the unfinished scenes)). Scenes; 3

Introduce Yourself (intro pieces for side characters in @dorksndisasters. Characters: Aster, Bituin, Citlali, Jiemba, Najm, Seren, Setareh). Scenes; 7

Mercenary Mages (a group of feral mages doing what they do best (annoy each other and become a really tight knit group). Characters; Llinos, Kaua, Jasper, Tamhas, Tadhg, Spence, Kitty). Scenes; 15

Superhero Twins (a group of uni-and-older friends with various magics that bounce around the city looking for the Crimes that brought them all together. Characters; Roxy, Clara, Cai, Oscar, Onni, Kite, Vivian, Seth, Lucy, Mint (technically a set of novels but I haven't written enough for it to merit being there rather than fun character shorts)). Scenes; 3

The Fair (a group of Welsh-inspired Fair Folk and their adopted/stolen children caught in the thros of prophecy. Characters: Brandi, Kamala, Scarlet, Gwen, Bran). Scenes; 1

The Guardians (a group of people from across the worlds all semi-dedicated to making the worlds a better place. Characters: Linus, Gen, Asin, Skilkran, Basil, Rhiannon, Razar, Akeri, Taerne). Scenes; 5

The Games

Three by Threes: For each filename you receive in your ask box, reply to the ask with 3+ NEW sentences on that WIP.

Lore Corner: Answer questions about your WIP. It can be anything from headcanons to backstory that you have for your WIP that don’t even make it into the fic. Askers - get creative with your questions!

#weekend wip game #this is in the wake of porting everything into obsidian #I went ''oh wow there's a fair few unfinished scenes here huh'' #and now I guess we're doing something about that #once they're done maybe I shall look at the ones that need edited but also. doubt. #anyway posting this now bc it's the start of my weekend? I guess? #technically yesterday but we're just having an extended run through to like. Monday. #(I say as I bolt out of the city for the day lmao but I'll be back)

[practically-an-x-man]

How long have you had your OCs, and how much have they changed since they arrived?

Oooh, very good question!!

Let's see....

(long ramble coming up. you've been warned lol)

Preliminary warning that I get a little time blindness for nontangible things like when I first created my OCs, so I'm going more off when I started posting their stories than when they first started taking shape in my mind. I've probably had these guys a lot longer than the dates I put down here, since I tend to let the stories develop and marinate for a while before I start writing them.

Rae/Mira: Okay, technically these two started as one OC, originating back when I was 13 or so and first getting into the McAvoy timeline movies (I'd been watching the original movies since I was a kid but got into the new timeline a little later). Originally, they were one OC who was given the power of healing from Apocalypse, used as a fifth Horseman, and gained silver eyes/silver magic as a result. At that point, it was mainly just a daydream I had to 1. help occupy my mind when I was bored and 2. fix a few movieverse deaths that always bugged me, like Angel's. I split them into two OCs when I started actually writing fanfiction, late 2020 to early 2021, and obviously they've gone through loads of edits and changes to make them the unique, distinct OCs they are today.

Robin: I started posting Symphony in August of 2021, so I created Robin probably a month or so before that. I don't remember any particularly distinct changes, though I know I decided to make her a Cassidy about the same time I decided to make her powers sound-based, so those two fell in line together.

Madison: I started Smoke and Mirrors in May of 2021, but Madison's gone through a few changes leading up to that. Her earliest inklings as a character were just as a slightly-feral fish mutant the X-Men ran into while out on a mission (which is actually pretty similar to her actual introduction in the fic). I wasn't even sure if she'd be a better fit for Alex or Sean (ended up with Alex of course), and originally I had her needing to be in water to survive. Obviously that's changed, and she filled out as a character little by little before eventually becoming the Madison we've got today. Bravo was also a spur-of-the-moment addition, but we love him :D

Ophelia: Started thinking about her as an OC in January 2022, just after No Way Home came out, and didn't make many big changes before I started posting her story. Hers was more a sudden burst of creativity where all the pieces fell together (mainly since I wanted to get her story started before the NWH hype died down), so it was a lot faster of a character-building process. I realized about 7 chapters into Catch and Release that I was very much writing her to be autistic without really realizing it, and decided to lean into that as an aspect of her character going forward.

Jasper: Started Heartstrings in August of 2022, but I know I had Jasper as an OC for at least a year before I started writing that story. I knew I wanted them to be an empath from the beginning, mainly to help Kyle once he comes back from the dead, and I had the general storyline already in place, but the smaller details (their love of music, roller derby, even their genderfluidity) fell into place when I started actually putting the fic down on the page. I also didn't have a name for them for the longest time, it was just a big [redacted] of indecision until I actually started writing and needed to pick a name.

Indigo: I started Bolts and Blasters in May of 2021, though I had Indie for a while before that. Most of her primary details haven't changed, and her story's also been constant, but originally her name was Blue instead of Indigo. I changed it because I wanted her to have a nickname/variation, since she doesn't use a surname. Zero was also a last-minute add - originally she had a raccoon as a pet, but I changed it to be Zero for a bit more Star Wars alien flair

Katherine: Started posting WWFA? in December 2021, and honestly, I struggled for a while with Katherine. I struggled a lot with her name, which is how I eventually landed on naming her after the astronomer Katherine Johnson. Other details, like her being linked to Bastet, her physical appearance, her friendships with Emily and Jace, built up slowly over time. The only thing I started with was her leaving the drawings for Ahk and him getting enamored.

AJ: I started posting Nom De Guerre in May 2021 (no idea why I started so many fics in that particular month), and I honestly can't remember how much has changed about AJ over time. I think she was another rapid development, with fewer changes over time.

Quinn: I mainly mentioned AJ because she led to Quinn. I started Desert Song in October 2022, but I actually created Quinn as a character while finishing Nom De Guerre - as much as I loved Billy and AJ's dynamic, I remember thinking how fun it would be to have someone who was once on his old crew with him (and fell with him in Kyiv), who was eventually who Quinn ended up being. I also wanted to be a bit more daring with her than I'd been with some of my other OCs, which is how the queer and disability elements became so prevalent in her story. It's a lot better this way, though.

Kestrel: I started posting Taking Flight in August of 2023, but Kestrel as a character was developed over about a week in July 2023. I was on a trip for marching band and rereading a few of the Fablehaven books, and all that travel and waiting left me with loads of time to ponder new OCs. I got home, starting writing the fic, and that's where we're at today. In general, I feel like I've gotten a lot faster and more definitive with OC creation over time.

Eris: I've only just started sharing parts of their story, and I don't have a core fic for them yet, but I've had them as a character since The Suicide Squad (2021) came out. Their power set and Amazonian identity hasn't changed, but originally they were a female warrior like Wonder Woman and had a different name (I remember naming her after a lion-themed myth, but I can't seem to find that particular myth now), and they were a lot more altruistic and good-aligned than they are now. I think they're more fun this way, though.

Nikoletta: Similar story to Eris - I've had her since The Suicide Squad (2021) came out, but haven't had a chance to write out her story until now. She's also been through a few changes, though not as many as Eris - namely, her backstory scamming tourists on the streets of New Orleans is new, though her experiences with STAR Labs and the shadows were always part of her story

I have a lot of other OCs that I haven't written out yet, and it's interesting. Some of them are years old, created a while back but without having a chance to write their stories yet, while others are brand new. And like I said, I've gotten a lot faster and more decisive in creating OCs recently. My most recent creations, Easton McKay (a mutant with the ability to make his tattoos/body mods come to life) and Gia Pantazis (a girl who had her life force bound to a patch of clover by HYDRA) , both took shape in a matter of days, and now seem to be well-developed characters.... at least in my head, since I haven't really shared as much of their bios or stories here yet.

#my friends!!! #answered asks #my ocs #madison douglas #ophelia octavius #jasper wilson #oc quinn/aces #rae mckinney #mira hart #robin cassidy #aj campbell #oc kestrel #oc katherine johnson #oc indigo #nikoletta bordeaux #oc eris

[raijae]

Red Snow

Summary: Alice is controlled by another being and does the unthinkable.

Word Count: 651

Warnings: Mentions of blood and violence

Tags: @flowerslut @twilight-secret-gift-exchange

Event: Twilight Secret Santa Gift Exchange

A/N- This is my fic account I enetered into the event with my other account @flesh--amnesiac I sincerely apologize for the late secret santa gift. This secret santa was ho-ho-horrible this year and should be put on the naughty list. For 10 plis years. Tumblr erased my original fic and moodboard that was queued and set to post on the 25 whilst I was on vacation. I came back this morning to find that nothing was posted. I had to rewrite it and honestly I wish I could've given you the long fic you deserved. It's a lot different and shorter than the original idea/work but nonetheless I hope you enjoy it. I am truly sorry.

He expected death to come for him at some point. Maybe in the form of Maria coming to take him back into her cold dead grasp. Maybe in the form of the Volturi trying to take his heart, Alice, away. But he never in his wildest dream thought it'd be by her hands.

Her beautiful delicate hands. The hands that once touched him so softly despite not needing to. The hands that comforted him at his worst instead of pushing him away. That touched him with such love and adoration. The hand that would tangle themselves in his hair. The same delicate hands that were now dripping a mixture of red and black onto the wet snow covered ground next to his head.

Nothing could have prepared him for this. Fate had finally decided it was time for him to pay for all that he had done in the cruelest way posssible. Alice stood above him drenched in blood and vemon. She was looking down at him, her eyes feral and as dark as vantablack. Her body was rigid like that of a wild beast it contrasted greatly to her normal carefree demeanor. The rage that radiated off her was thick and suffocating.

He couldn't do anything, for the first time he was at a loss. He couldn't bring himself to fight back not with the possibility of her coming back to him. There was always a possibility, he'd seen it happen before. Although, the chances of coming out of this alive were slim to none. Looking up at her, he couldn't help but think her rage was the most beautiful site he had ever seen.

"Alice... darling... please... hear me... come back to me..." he said his voice strained. She didn't respond it was as if he never spoke a word.

"Please, Alice, I can't fight you. I won't. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I maimed you. Please, darling, come back to me." He tried again but this time she had grabbed him by the neck. He tried to move but she just kept catching up to him. Whoever or whatever was controlling her made her faster and stronger than ever. He grit his teeth as she began to squeeze slow and hard. He could feel each and every crack that formed on his pale scarred skin.

He knew this was going to be it. He wouldn't and couldn't stop her. He would let her kill him if it meant he was alive. He knew the rest of the clan would take care of her. Once he was dead the spell would be broken and all control would be obsolete.

"Alice if you can hear me..... just know that this isn't your fault..... I wouldn't have wanted it to end any other way........ You being the last thing I see is the only thing I want...... I love you with every fiber of my being.....more than life itself..... Please just live for me........ I'm sorry I couldn't stop this.... that I wasn't strong enough to-"

Five days later Alice awoke from what she could only assume was some type of sleep. Carlisle was the first to greet her. He wore his usual calm smile but his eyes held something resembling sorrow in them. She assumed it was due to her current state. She also noticed that she couldn't see. Maybe her powers weren't fully there yet? He checked her reflexes and asked her a few questions which confused her. It was then that she realized Jasper wasn't in the room and she couldn't sense him anywhere.

"Carlisle? Where's Jasper?" She asked as she looked out the window. She hadn't noticed his sudden shift in demeanor or that Edward and Bella had walked into the room. When she turned around it hit her and then everything went blank. The last thing she saw was Bella rushing at her.

#twilight #jasper hale #jasper #jasper whitlock #alice cullen #jalice #twilight fic #jasper x alice #secret santa #moodboard

[sootyships]

yo.

i'm soot, my current main focuses are mcu ultron and eric from divergent, and i have written too many self-insert/savage opress (star wars) fics

in addition to self-shipping, this blog contains personal posts, finnish shit, judaism (i'm, eh, ~ yir'ei elokim for now) and the occasional finnish current events, but for the most part no heavy topics. tagging is inconsistent but i try to tag negativity as #negative.

pillowfort - cohost - bluesky

(his nickname here is vaash, and that's also his tag (#vaash).)

i also adore:

... and then some?

i don't mind sharing. AUs and polycules exist. ✌️

this is a discourse free zone. i'm not here to promote infighting.

no dni, i'll just block if i don't jibe with someone's vibe. apply the same principle to me, ty. 👍

i'm not here to parent other ppl's kids, i'm not getting paid.

i don't look for dnis unless i'm interested in following. sorry?

i may draw sometimes. and once i wrote the following:

my S/Is:

Gi Kast (Star Wars, with Savage since Aug 2019, married with children) #savalorian au #savagi

Vinnie (SU, with Jasper since July 2019) #serpentineverse

Mikitta (Marvel, in a polyship with Mayhem and Ultron since July 2023, may have a kid or a few in some 'verses) #ultimate mayhem

Bo (Divergent, Eric's fave Dauntless individual since March 2024) #cb2o au #boric

my fankids:

Cuyan Kast - Feral Kast - Nyn Kast - Nuhur Kast

Sidzla Ultron-Karamäki - Satu Ultron-Karamäki

rare fictional friend: Nasti Kravinov, a very AU Ana Kravinoff

i also platonically have several emotions about Rocket Raccoon

not a BYF but a FYB (for your benefit)

dnf if you suspect your dni might apply to me. it's just awkward.

I request that people please tag unfilterable shipcourse DNIs in the post body. If it's performatively censored or just an image, it won't be caught by filtering. Ideally, the DNI should be in its simplest form: for example, "p.r0/c.*m-sh.ip go away" gets tagged #proship dni and an "antis dni" banner gets tagged #antis dni. #shipcourse mention or #shipcourse dni are also good options. Thanks, I appreciate it. 💖

updated apr 4th -24

[lavender-lotion]

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and I’ll post a little snippet of it and/or tell you something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

thank you for the tag @stronglyobsessed!

I was really not sure if I actually wanted to go in and name ALL the files in my WIP folder, but then I realized I could use this as an opportunity to make sure that my WIP sheet is up to date, so... here we are. my entire WIP folder. organized by fandom!

Teen Wolf

chris/derek dom/sub

Deter -

deter marriage proposal

proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear

stiles/sam prompt sam saving stiles

Dressing porn

JR/Tyler

season 2 stackson

stiles in make up

July 19 - Smut

June 20: Relationship Reveal

June 23: Free Day

Stalion magic alpha pack

Together, We Belong

Stallison

Beach stanny

camboy stiles - stanny

gift for merwin

Gone and Past

Sr stalion And stennis

Stennis

Stennis sex

tattoos

You Fill My Heart (With Such a Gentle Love)

Soft steter->stetopher

Feral Derek

Kate takes video of essentially rape

familiar steterek

Set up on date

Steterek kisses

steterek sad derek

young steterek

young steterek

breathing you in seuquel

hornet au

continuation to fox!stiles

fox stiles installment

hale family

Sr. Steter

steter courting??

steter for harry--alpha rut

steter kidfic

alpha stiles omega john

De-aged Sheriff

Drunk dick pic stilinskicest

impregnation kink

john jacking stiles off when he can't use his hands

Possessive fox sheriff claims his son

stilinskicest absuive claduia

Stilinskicest tattoo

Twincest only fans

John/Jordan/Stiles

Alpha Twins/Stiles

Falling Together - Hale Orgy for Green

merwin bday fic - stiles/alpha pack?

peter/jackson

Sheriff Stilinski Gets Some Good Lovin'

X-Men

Alemando age play

Colleesive

kitney making out

Lonk pt 2 "I have never felt so content with unexpected discoveries"

vAzazel/Janos snowball fight for irene

azjanos

bobbyjohn discovering cherik

cherigan fic

bab smut

charles mom sucks

Erik goes back in time cause Charles is dead but overshoots

post dofp smut

they slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered

unbendable

Cherik Dating App

bamf emma kidnapped angel

for even if she flees, soon she shall pursue

you cast diamonds across the waters of my innocence

magnet smut

Mags Family

Nina

Peter/Weny POV

Hank and Alex bond during lab time

logan/emma

lonk patching up

Lonk awkwardly flirting for jasp

Lonk for lib

Lonk

peter putting himself down

first meeting

NightAngel

EnNightAngel

5 times Kurt makes Peter bust a nut in his pants and 1 time Peter busts a nut in his pants on his own

Angry Erik

QUICKNETO

quickneto identity reveal

original timeline grief fuck

scogan first meeting

scogan peach

Summerscest ANGST

incest continuation to jasper fic

war photo masturbation

xavierine fic

Cain Marko/Charles Xavier AU

Charles angst childhood telepathy

dadneto saves the day

Emma Frost/Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier

Erik/Shaw

kurt/hank

Lonkma

quogan

Jammy

phoenix peter

Charles waking up in Jakob’s arms

MCU

Ned/Peter 2

Rhodey/Tony

keenker kinktober 12

spideypool asexual gift for frosted goddess

Spideypool Big Bang

Spideypool prompt

Starker Big Bang

starker field trip fic

Starker Mob AU

I Built My Home, Inside Of You

Thorki

Thor/Peter

Bucky/Peter sex worker fic

Physiotherapy (I'll Be Your Baby)

winterspider date fluff

winterspider smut

5 times Happy patched up Peter and 1 time Peter patches up Happy

Jarvis/Tony

Twitter Fic

Bruce Banner/Peter Parker Dom/Sub

(hold me) steady

to love and be loved by you

Glee

take us, together, like the stroke of a bow

with puck pt 2

sam not backing down

sam/kurt

kurt picking up dave's call

Kurtofsky - long fic coming out

Kurtosky - after prom season 2

Ep 5:

Puckurt

Puckurt - visiting during juvie

Fives Time Denny Payson Comes in His Pants and One Time Kurt Hummel Gets Him Out of Them First

Kurt/Chandler

will/kurt

Kingsman

Touched starved Merlin

tattoo au

protective eggsy

Kingsman

Kingsman

emerging from the night and heart of me

eggsy/trans roxy

Eggsy/Roxy/Merlin

Dad Eggsy

Young Justice

YJ - 1

YJ - 8

Dick and Wally team up to seduce Conner

5 times superboy watches tv alone and one time dock watches tv with him

birdflash

YJ - 10

Dick and Wally team up to seduce Conner

Superbird

Misc Fandom & Cross Overs

X-Men / MCU

venom/eddie/peter

TW x Glee

bucky/stiles

CLINT/STILES

Ragnarok

Primal Laurits

Loki Laurits

Laurits finds Magne after the show

Fate: The Winx Saga

5 times Riven gives Dane a first +1 time Dane gave Riven a first

Riven/Dane/Beatrix

Criminal Minds

Reid/Morgan - S3 E2

Morgan/Reid - S2 E

Yu-Gi-Oh

Yagi

Weird City

smexy massage

Because I have more WIPS then people I know, I am tagging EVERYONE. Seriously, if you read this and want to list your WIPS, do it! even tag me in it!! i’d absolutely love to see if and pop into your ask box!

And if you’ve read this, please feel free to send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and I’ll post a little snippet of it and/or tell you something about it!

#lavenderlotion #my writing #writing #fanfiction #writing meme #tag meme

[thorne-archive]

fic recs!!

posting this because my percynet friends were practically begging me to post this with the pjo hyperlinks haha also featuring ridiculous fangirling comments by yours truly

features fandoms: HP, ACOTAR, PJO, and FMA

features (mainly) ships: drastoria, scorose, elriel, percabeth, jasper, and royai

— harry potter (I’m currently in love with draco x astoria and scorpius x rose)

warmth by littlemissmadness (drastoria oneshot!!! it’s so cute!!! a lil heartbreaking at first but i just - ugh!!!)

amor quod fecimus by jillian bowes (some consecutive drastoria oneshots, very cute!!)

a long time coming by helloimsabrina (drastoria comfort fic :)

finding hope by insertcleverandwittytitlehere (cute drastoria oneshot)

the way you look tonight by you-make-me-wander

shouldn’t by reppad98

blood, war and a touch of love by controlled climb

the dragon and the star maiden by boogum

the kiss thief by boogum

of sunflowers and rainydays by rosescor90 (scorose oneshot!!!!!)

the feeling of vindication by howlsatthemoon

worst of a bad bunch by graeliars (teddy/victoire oneshot fic hehe)

a kiss with a fist by superspy (jily oneshot :)

the smart one by nikkira (scorose oneshot, in which scorpius and rose are lowkey academic rivals; this is pure fluff)

off limits by livetodream (the! cutest! scorose! oneshot!!!)

when you grow up by drcjsnider (scorpius pining after rose? I think y e s)

the unnecessarily racy by anaela loves who (humorous jily oneshot feat. a jealous lily)

— acotar (mostly elriel fanfics sorry lol)

lover by @julesherondalex on tumblr! (an elriel roommates au!! okay but the angst and pining here made me SOB like three times over, 10/10 recommend!)

all of me by julesherondalex (I just love this writing style and there’s so much fluff and pining I cant-)

home in hogwarts by julesherondalex (elriel at hogwarts!! what more could you want?)

enchanted by julesherondalex (elain’s pining for azriel in this is 100/100 omg)

flight mode love by julesherondalex (elriel!coffee shop au!!!)

love me tonight by julesherondalex (you best believe I cried reading this! another elriel fanfic set in the canonverse)

the scent of you by julesherondalex (elriel au, angst with a happy ending! this one also made me cry really hard)

a little piece of your heart by julesherondalex (elriel confession in azriel’s pov!!)

a secret admirer by @florrama on tumblr! (short au elriel fic, very heartwarming!)

a seasonal love by florrama (more elriel? I think yes!!)

a shadow’s kiss by florrama (a collection of elriel oneshots!! they! are! so! soft!!!)

perfect strangers by @rosehallshadowsinger (short and sweet elriel au)

gifts from the heart by rosehallshadowsinger (the pining!!! so cute :)

stars hold no power over us by stardustsroses (a little explicit but so very cute :’) I love the concept of elain choosing who she loves and not having a bond define it for her)

this collection of short elriel oneshots by @a-novel-blog (so well written and so soft!!! I love gentle!elriel)

‘cause by @noodlecatposts (best friends feysand au that made me smile :’)

gingersnap! by noodlecatposts (this is so cute! and so soft! in which azriel is allergic to cats, and elain has one)

stay by noodlecatposts (I am. such. a sucker for best friends to lovers fics. the pining in this made me wanna cry I love this)

bite me, asshole by accidental_optimism (nessian oneshot! mostly revolves around cassian taking care of a sick nesta)

distractions by @rhysanoodle (a super cute and fluffy elriel coffee shop au!!)

is that my shirt? by rhysanoodle (a cute elriel oneshot that had me screeching!!)

perfectly aligned by rhysanoodle (over 200k word fic about elriel falling in love, includes smut)

dreams answered by @radientwings (a collection of oneshots, the elriel ones made me sob with joy)

songs of shadow by radientwings (a collection of elriel stories...the writing style is so perfect and I love it)

to flower by literarynonsensefics (short and sweet elriel oneshot hehe)

sharing sunsets by librarian of velaris (elriel & sunsets & fluff :)

navy suits & chelsea boots by feathery_malignancy (fair warning, the latter 2 chapters have smut but y’all...the pining in this? unmatched!!!)

call out my name by myownremedy (azriel pining for elain!!! so cute :’) but also pls be aware that the last like 1/3 of this fic is like. smut. but with like fluff mixed in lol)

long shot by myownremedy (listen. I will never tire of elriel coffee aus)

cake & kisses by @mehlisssa (in which elriel is expecting and display pure domestic fluff tHIS IS THE CUTEST ONESHOT EVER)

bloom by swishandflickwit (elriel fluff which is SO CUTE and also followed by smut, but at least it’s not too explicit)

— percy jackson

a storm in my best dress by herecomesthepun (percabeth soulmate au? say less! oh but also it’s lowkey enemies to friends and also a high school au! also jasper is the stable relationship 10/10 love that for them!! very long, very good :)

kiss me once 'cause you know i had a long night by herecomesthepun (GUYS THIS IS SO GOOD I ACTUALLY CACKLED LMAOOO the dialogue is *chefskiss* and jason fawning over piper is also *chefskiss* also this is an office percabeth/jasper oneshot, absolutely amazing)

‘cause you’ve been sinning in this city by @seaweedbraens (percabeth soulmate au in which percy calls everyone by some vaguely related nickname lol)

don’t you let it go by seaweedbraens (percabeth rebirth au with a twist; I SOBBED SO MUCH THIS WAS SO GOOD IM STILL CRYING)

if I were to pluck on your heartstrings by seaweedbraens (percabeth soulmate au with moodstrings!!)

would you strum on mine by seaweedbraens (companion piece to the fic above!!!)

and they were roommates by @bipercabeth (look. I’m a sucker for roommate aus)

I’ll go anywhere with you by bipercabeth (THIS IS SO FREAKING SOFT I COULD CRY OKAY??? ACTUALLY I AM CRYING!!! road trippin percabeth babey!!)

just because i had “spider” sense doesn’t mean i had common sense by bipercabeth (jasper spiderman au, ITS SO SOFT AND I WENT FERAL AT THIS LINE “She inhales, and Jason swears she takes the breath from his lungs. He’d give it to her, if she asked” PLS READ IT ITS SO GOOD IM SOBBING)

I like me better when I’m with you by @cressisaqueen (a tatbilb jasper au!!!!)

my yesterday was blue, today I’m a part of you by pastypirate (a series on how the HOO couples meet as soulmates hehe)

greek dramas and other spectacles by annabetncnase (a percabeth friends to lovers college au!!!)

california howl by suneater (I haven’t read this yet but it features werewolf!jason ans jasper content hehe)

if it’s you and me forever by lesbabeths (piper centric jasper soulmate au set in the canonverse that had me ugly sobbing at 4 am)

dream-like christmas time by @perseannabeth (annabeth gets famous and percy gets left behind, oneshot au)

number one by perseannabeth (percabeth roommate friends to lovers oneshot hehe)

back to the beginning by perseannabeth (percabeth proposal with ties back to the original series!! I loved it 🥺)

everythin' is icy and blue and you are here there too under the mistletoe by perseannabeth (a percabeth fake dating au!! I’ve yet to read it but Marianna is such an amazing writer I have no doubt I’ll love it!!)

sugar, sugar by perseannabeth (another tbr by Marianna on my list haha but the concept of percabeth and jasper meeting over chocolate is just :’)

— fullmetal alchemist (I’ve literally never watched this, but I somehow got obsessed with royai so Uh)

make me better by @lantur (bruh the yearning...I cannot, also beware this contains smut but it’s non graphic, but this fic is centered around roy being blind and riza helping him :)

side to side by lantur (in which royai practices hand to hand combat...the thirst and angst is real damn)

a little bit scandalous by lantur (I cried reading this...yeah)

got your back by lantur (roy’s yearning...I’m gonna cry)

love the way you shine in the night, like the diamond you are by lantur (it starts out funny...and then my heart broke lol)

if you were mine by lantur (so much angst...but take heart! there’s a fluffy ending in sight!)

learning as we go by megthemighty (high school teacher au!! fluffy!!)

are you asleep? by fullmetalscully (fma as a romcom? yes! I cackled while reading this LOL)

royai collections by fullmetalscully (royai oneshots, there’s a mix of angst and fluff. but mostly angst ;-;)

smoke and gunpowder by @eskalations (royai genderbend au!)

some things last a long time by akingdomofunicorns (royai coffee shop au)

against the run of play by bergamots (in which roy is a rugby player and riza is a neurotrauma specialist, I love how this fic includes tweets and articles!!)

you pull me through time by @ohmytheon (100 royai oneshots, so cute!!)

lessons in formality by @royai (royai valentine’s au!! iTS SO SOFT IM SCREAMING)

don’t let your students trick you into an equivalent exchange (a royai teacher au oneshot! say less!!!)

missed opportunities by ohmytheon (royai christmas mistletoe oneshot!!!!)

#fic recs #pjo #hp #acotar #fma #drastoria #scorose #elriel #percabeth #jasper #royai #usercali #tuserclaire #usercal #usershamina #HAVE FUN MY FRIENDS #okay to reblog #yes i know thats a lot shhh

[justinalovee]

Empty souls

0.01

Notes: Hello all, this is my first attempt at writing a 100 fic. It will stray from the original story, but I’ll try to stick to it best I can. Hope you enjoy.

“Not long now,” Jill grumbled to herself.

Huffing, she slumped against the wall opposite her tally marks. They sealed her up in the Skybox just after her sixteen birthday, and today she turned eighteen and would be floated for her ‘crimes’.

“Any minute now.” She mumbled to herself.

Talking to herself had become her new normal to make up for her lack of communication with others. Sitting with her legs crossed, hand shaking while poised over the side of her boot, Jill always had a knife hidden in it. Depending on what guard walked through the doors, she might need to use it. All she wanted was to tell the truth, but the ark's council would never let that happen.

As she heard the heavy footsteps getting closer, Jill prepared herself mentally. This was it.

“Prisoner eighty-nine turn and look at the wall with your hands behind your back.” A guard’s voice called in before they even opened the door.

Doing as she was told, Jill called back. “I’ve done it.”

It surprised Jill when the guard entered the cell alongside a young woman in a medical uniform. After the women inspected her vitals, the guard clamped a thick metal bracelet around her left wrist.

“What the hell is going on? You need to tell me? Jill demanded.

“You are going to the ground.” The guard informed her.

The ground? Was this some kind of sick joke? Nobody had lived on earth for a long time. It was physically impossible.

From then on everything happened so fast. Before Jill knew what was happening, she was among the one hundred being sent to the ground.

Jill tried to look at the bright side. At least she got to live a little longer. What she would be alive to see would remain a mystery.

On her way to meet the other ‘prisoners’ she walked past doctor Abby Griffin, and it took everything in her power not to try and rip her head off. The older women was supposed to protect them...she should have fought for them. Instead, she did nothing. Doctor or not, Jill would always think of the women as a coward. When Abby looked at her walking past, they shared a knowing look without saying a word.

______

When they landed on the ground a few things became clear, firstly the ‘no rules’ life would never work. Second, it was going to be a dick measuring competition to see who got to run the place. The third thing that Jill knew for sure was Bellamy Blake was hiding something. Behind his macho persona, he was scared.

Bored of listening to a girl called Clarke talking so much about how they needed to go find some mountain, Jill wandered off away from the crowds. She struggled to believe that all the surrounding greens were real. Even though she had read it in books, Jill had no idea how large the trees would be, or how bright the different colors would look. It felt surreal. Closing her eyes, she let her mind wonder to what it would be like to feel grass underneath her bare feet for the first, or...

“Jillian?”

Jill turned to see John Murphy running towards her. He picked her up and hugged her tightly, spinning her round. He had gotten so much taller than the last time she met him.

“What the hell are you doing here? I never even saw you on the way down” he said, still holding her.

“I got arrested not long after...you know. What about you? Why are you here, John?” Jill asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

She was so happy to see him that Jill never noticed the way Murphy changed when he saw Bellamy glancing over at them. He had let go of her and his excitement seemed to have died down.

Murphy never responded, he just pulled the woolly hat that covered her head down somewhat and chuckled. “I’m glad you’re still alive.”

Jill watched him walking away, smiling. Apart from getting taller and filling out a bit more, he still looked the same as she remembered. She was glad he was on the ground. John was a good guy, Jill just hoped he didn’t get too carried away being Bellamy’s ‘right-hand man’.

Turning to her left Jill saw someone else she recognized. “Steph?”

The redheaded girl looked up at her with tears in her eyes. “Jill? Is that you?” She asked quietly.

The young girl's breath was hitched and broken from crying so much. Jill kneeled down beside her. “Hey, are you okay?”

Steph couldn’t have been older than fifteen now and seemed distressed.

“She’s been like this since we landed. See if you can get her to shut up!” One of the older boys called Harrison hissed.

Jill stuck the finger up at him before helping the girl to her feet. “Why don’t we go a walk? Get you some space away from all the noise.”

Steph nodded. Jill knew Steph just needed some time to adjust to what had happened. They had only been on the earth for roughly an hour, anyway. Coming to earth from lockup was a lot scarier for some of them and being around asshole boys like Bellamy and Harrison wouldn’t help her feel any better.

“When did you get locked up?” Jill asked curiously.

“Shortly after you.”

Damn it, another life ruined for no reason.

______

As they walked through the forest, Bellamy was frowning. His sister had run off with Clarke and her band of merry men, instead of staying like he wished. All he wanted was to keep her safe, but as usual his stupidly naïve sister didn’t listen to him. He would need to find a babysitter for her at this rate.

Bellamy also couldn’t help but notice the foolish smirk that was on Murphy’s face, he didn’t know why but it was annoying him. He had seen the way Murphy had looked at the girl with the stupid wooly hat earlier. Jill seemed like trouble and a distraction. He wondered how far Murphy’s loyalty for her went.

“Who were you talking to before?” Bellamy asked with a flat tone in his voice.

“Just someone I know from the ark.” Murphy frowned. He didn’t want to talk about her.

“What was her name? Jill?”

Murphy responded, “Jillian Slate.”

Slate? “Slate? As in councillor Laura and Thomas Slate’s daughter?” Bellamy asked wide-eyed.

Murphy nodded. Bellamy had heard the stories about what happened at the ark's orphanage. The infamous Jillian Slate looked nothing like he imagined she would. He had pictured someone a lot bigger and feral looking.

“Right” Bellamy deadpanned. “Just remember no distractions. You can’t take your eyes off the prize for anything, you can screw her after we get everyone’s bracelets off.”

Murphy wasn’t sure why, but his hands balled into fists. Jill wasn’t some whore who he would ‘screw’. If anybody but Bellamy had said that about her, he would have put them on the ground without a second thought. Murphy didn’t want to go against him for any reason so soon...however he had his limits, and Jill was one of them.

“Is it true?” Bellamy asked without looking back at him.

“No.”

Bellamy smirked, knowing he was getting Murphy riled up. “You know, Wells and Clarke don’t trust her. They think she’s a danger to the rest of us.”

“Wells and Clarke better mind their own fucking business.” Murphy snapped.

Bellamy’s smirk faded as they walked back towards the camp. He could see kids gathering and yelling.

“Bellamy!” A kid called Monty yelled while running towards him.

“What’s going on?” He demanded.

“Octavia got bitten by something in the water and they have speared jasper.” Monty said before leading him towards Octavia.

No. No. No, this couldn’t be happening. Bellamy wasn’t ready to lose his sister. She was everything to him.

Next chapter

#the 100 #john murphy #bellamy blake #the 100 imagine #John Murphy/oc #Bellamy Blake/oc #clarke griffin #octavia blake #Murphy the 100 #Bellamy the 100 #john murphy imagine #the 100 fanfiction #the 100 fandom

[goldeneyedgirl]

TwiFicmas Redux: Shadow To Light

Happy New Year to everyone, and I hope 2024 is a beautiful and positive year for everyone - I think we've all earned it.

As promised, as an auspicious offering, the first 1000 words of the STL Ch 13 draft. Mary-Alice is being profoundly difficult about this chapter, but she's allowed to be a little bit messy.

Here's to a great year with more regular updates and more of my self indulgent nonsense ;)

Fourteen. Starved for so long of beauty

Once upon a time, a lifetime ago, she made a choice. It was an easy choice to make, because it was the right one. Because she didn’t truly know what came next; her certainty in her own visions, her certainty in who she was going to be - who the Major was going to be - had made her confident.

(She doesn’t regret it, she would never wish to go back and make a different decision. She just wishes… she just wishes that she knew better what was to come. What it was like to be stripped right down to the bone, layer by layer, from loneliness and violence and hopelessness. She wishes she’d read the contract she was signing in blood and tears and time, just so she could look fate in dead in the eye and make the same choice without a second thought.)

The Major smells like… he smells like something she doesn’t want to acknowledge.

(He smells like home.)

—

She feels silly after the worst of her panic attack is over, and the Major is there next to her with his arm around her. She feels utterly ridiculous, actually - the stolen t-shirt in her arms, curled against him so tightly… She almost feels ashamed.

(Except… she’s frustrated. She wants to demand answers - when is she allowed to fall down? When is she allowed to break apart and have someone else put together the pieces? In more than eighty years, it’s always been up to her to maintain control, to be the thing that bends but does not break and she’s so tired. But she’s also supposed to be better than this. Isn’t that what the Major always said? Why Peter always resented her? Even Maria noticed. Mary-Alice is sturdy, reliable, consistent. If she falls, she gets back up. It… it would just be nice not to, just once.)

“How are you feeling?”

The Major’s voice is warm and kind and it almost makes her feel less pitiful.

Almost.

“Present.” Her voice is quiet but her tone is clipped and distant, and she regrets it when she feels him withdraw slightly. She’s wrecking this, like she wrecks everything. It’s all she ever does.

(Maybe that’s why she was such a good soldier; she knows exactly how to ruin things.)

But the Major doesn’t leave. He just shifts so he’s not pressed quite so close, his cheek no longer resting against her hair. But his arm is still around her.

“Do you need to hunt?” He asks, and she doesn’t know. Everything feels odd and off balance and maybe she’s not as back as she originally thought.

So she doesn’t answer. She just rests her head back against the wall and closes her eyes.

The Major watches her for a moment before looking away. “When I met the Cullens,” he begins in a gentle voice, “I swear Esme only made Carlisle approach me because I resembled a drowned cat. Hadn’t stopped raining on the East Coast for weeks, and I’d been roaming the woods the entire time. I was disgusting. Maria would have thrown a bucket of water at my head weeks before if we’d been back home.

“And Esme took one look at me and whisper-bullied Carlisle into approaching me, like I couldn’t hear every single word. She kept saying that I looked cold.” The Major chuckles and she’s close enough that she feels the vibrations through his chest and it’s… it’s not unpleasant.

It’s strange being this close to another person and not being on edge. Not waiting for the killing blow, trying to figure out how to get to their throat first. Making sure that she knows exactly where their hands and teeth are, that she’s prepared for their next movement, for the tightening of their muscles before they lunge…

(It’s very strange being this close to someone, at all. She prefers to keep her distance normally. But this… it’s not the bad kind of strange, she doesn’t think. She’s just so intensely aware of him.)

“Just imagine it, will you - Esme wearing a tweed coat and riding boots and a hat to go hunting, and I look like a monster who spent a week sleeping in a swamp,” the Major continued, “And she was worried about me, like I was a soggy kitten.”

She can imagine it, honestly; his hair sticking to his face, and that gaunt, murderous look he got on his face when he was thirsty. Weeks of grime pressed into his clothing, his skin, looking like the monster from an old story or some mythological horror rising from the riverbed. Nothing sympathetic or pitiable about him for most people.

Right now, she feels oddly grateful to Esme for looking past all of that and seeing the Major as he could be.

“And you followed them home?” She tries to make the words sound light-hearted, but they fall flat and ugly, and she wants to take them back.

That makes the Major laugh out loud, a rumble against her side that is startling and she jumps a little.

“No. I told them to fuck off and leave me be; I had to tell them that a few times over the years until I gave in and talked to them. Let Esme convince me that taking a shower and accepting new clothing was a right and not charity. Let Carlisle remind me that I owed them nothing by ‘visiting’ with them. It took a long time for them to lure me over the threshold.” The Major takes her hand in his; his thumb smooths over a patch of scar tissue, a repetitive motion that feels… soft. Nice. “I think in the end, I hinted that I was ready for them to ask me to stay with them. I don’t think I was subtle about it either.”

“They didn’t ask you before then?” Mary-Alice feels the frustration boil for a second. She watched as much as she could bring herself to, for many years, and there are pieces that she’s missing. They just weren’t important enough for her to see, or something changed and recalling what she’d politely dismissed was too difficult.

(She had entrusted the Major to the Cullens. It didn’t matter that they had had no idea, all those years ago, her visions had made the contract. And even now, knowing that it all came together the way it was supposed to, it upsets her that he had to wait for so long to be taken home to his family.)

#alice cullen #jasper hale #twilight fic #jalice #my fic: shadow to light #ficmas23 #ficmas #mary-alice getting frustrated with the cullens for not immediately housing and clothing jasper on the spot #despite the fact that jasper had the house manners of a feral bobcat at the time #esme looking at a half-feral nomad and turning to carlisle - “can i keep him? i'll take good care of him. rose needs a new brother.” #meanwhile carlisle is nervous - does he approach peacefully or flee the state with his family? southern veterans are rare but dangerous #jasper's telling this story and wondering if anyone will notice if he just moves into the closet with mary-alice for the next few days #it's a sacrifice he's willing to make

[novantinuum]

Fandom: Steven Universe

Rating: Teen Audiences (I have upped the rating in consideration of sensitive topics I aim to depict later on.)

Words: 6.4K~

Summary: In another world, he doesn’t have his mother’s sword or shield to hide behind when Bismuth lands her strike. The bubble pops.

Steven falls apart.

Chapter summary: In which history is written on the walls.

Some of my other fics have been showing up in the tags when I use the link post option, so I’m doing an experiment this time. Fingers crossed it shows! If you read this and enjoy, I’d greatly appreciate your support through reblogs here, or kudos/comments on AO3. Thank you! <3

____

Chapter 12: Beta, Part 3

Having long since heeded Ruby’s advice to take a mental break, Steven sits criss-cross with his back pressed against the hodgepodge aquarium. If you ask him, this position is a two-in-one miracle, allowing him both an unobstructed view of the doorway, and sparing him from the deep rooted horror of the creepy dismantled plush still floating an aimless arc through the tank. He loves Peridot to death, but good golly, this latest meep morp is deeply unsettling. He shudders at the mere thought of its water-logged stuffing oozing out from the seams, and then— inhaling deep through his nose— steers his focus back to the phone clasped tightly between his fidgety fingers.

Back to the story, you doofus.

With nothing better to do for the moment and a hyperactive mind to satiate, he’s finally started to read the Unfamiliar Familiar fanfic that Connie sent him a link to a few days before. True to her words, it’s super, super good. Well written, great characterization, and best of all, the author keeps throwing in hints of future romance between Lisa and Archimicarus! Considering that, he’s almost surprised Connie likes this fic so much. She’s normally not much of a shipper. To be fair though, romance definitely isn’t the point of the story. Instead, it’s an AU focused on the mystery of the main character’s origins.

He can’t help but let out a sympathetic sigh as— in chapter 5– Lisa tries to calmly explain to her fellow Stonehearth Coven members that somehow her father, the revered founder of the coven, used to be a prince of the wicked Arcane Court. Most of her once-close friends don’t swallow the news well. As a result, Lisa is left alone to seek the truth of her father’s past, with no allies except her trusted familiar at her side. Lip quivering, he presses his thumb solid against his phone’s screen for a while, as if yearning to reach a healing hand beyond the barrier between fiction and reality and let the young witch know she’s not alone, that he sees and supports her. He makes a mental note to thank Connie profusely for sending along this really good fic, and presses on to the next chapter.

He’s halfway to the end of it when Peridot returns.

For someone who appeared super frazzled by Lapis’s terror-struck outbursts the last time she stood at his side, she sure seems fit as a fiddle now, walking with a slight bounce in her step as she crosses past the fence line and onto the property. At least, he assumes she is. He can’t help but immediately doubt this assessment when she spots him sitting against the inner wall of the barn with that piercing focus of hers and bounds through the doorway like a Gem fleeing the apocalypse.

“Steven, Steven, Steven, Steven!” she cries as she runs to his side, flapping her arms urgently.

Practically tossing his phone to the ground to free his hands for combat, he leaps to his feet so fast that his head grows woozy. His rose-thorned shield shimmers into tangible existence in front of his barred fist.

“What, what is it?” he exclaims, the pounding of his heart devolving into an untamable cacophony as all his darkest fears rear their ugly heads at once. “Is- is it Lapis? Did she leave anyways?”

“Uh, no…?”

“Or, or, or- are we under attack?!”

“Steven, I—“

“Who’s here for me this time?” he blurts, grabbing his friend’s shoulders. “Is it Homeworld? Jasper? The Diamonds? Tell meeee!” he whines, roughly shaking her.

“I- No one? It’s no one!” Peridot exclaims when her head finally stops jostling back and forth under his force, waves of confusion coloring her expression. “I’m… just happy to be back?”

His cheeks burn red as he drinks in her obvious statement and eventually catches his breath. He lets go of her. “O-oh,” he stammers, willing the shield floating before him to disappear into glimmers of light and desperately wishing he could do the same at this precise moment of existence. “Okay. Glad to see you back! Did, uh… did you find Lapis?”

She nods in confirmation, but visibly deflates a little at the reminder of her roommate. “Yeah, she’s perched in a tree in the woods. She said she wanted some ‘alone time,’” she emphasizes with air quotes.

Steven clasps his fingers together in front of him as he lets this news sink in, digits tussling without end for the most comfortable alignment. Bleeding heart that he is, he hates the idea of letting anyone be alone, especially after a revelation this jarring, but he must admit that he himself found some comfort in solitude the night his human half took for the beach, inert diamond in hand. If anything else, it was nice to retreat from all the noise, to allow himself the opportunity to form his own opinions about the situation. Perhaps it’ll be beneficial for her, too.

“That’s understandable,” he says, glancing out the barn door towards the forest his friend is taking refuge in. “She’s been through a lot.”

He squats to pick up his phone from the floorboards then, frowning as he notices a fresh crack on the glass at the corner of the screen. Knowing that— despite his desperate desires— there’s nothing he can do to fix this right now, he shoves it in his pocket and pushes against his knees to stand up. The bottom of his shirt catches on his arm as he does so, briefly exposing the unfamiliar facets of his rotated gem. Peridot’s brows nearly shoot above the upper rim of her visor.

“So,” she begins, nodding towards his stomach. “Your gem.”

With a tired sigh, he tugs his shirt back down. Boy, does he already know where this conversation is heading, and boy, is he sick of having to walk everyone through it. “Yup,” he replies, popping the ‘p’ and getting ready to deploy the exasperated eye roll.

“All this time everyone thought you were a hybrid quartz, but now you’re telling me…”

“...that I’m actually a dia—“

“...that I, Peridot, certified Kindergartener, a skilled specialist on every variety of Gem to ever exist, was wrong??”

“Hold on, what?”

She holds her hand over the diamond emblazoned on her chest as she passionately continues, wholly oblivious to Steven’s bemusement. “I was the brightest Gem of my cut back on Homeworld, and yet somehow I mistook a perfectly formed diamond for a quartz! Ah, hahahah!” Eyes glinting with what he can only describe as a borderline feral energy, she moves to clutch at the sides of her head, thick tufts of lemon yellow spilling out from between her fingers. “Oh, my stars. I’ve lost my touch!”

“Wait, who’s out of touch?” Ruby’s curious voice chimes from nearby. Overjoyed to see her again, Steven whirls to face her with a huge grin as she enters the barn and lounges against one of the support beams, propping a hand on her hip.

“I- it’s nothing important,” Peridot mutters, flushing as she smooths her hair back into place.

Immediately making note of the hint of shame dancing across her features, he nods. “Yeah, we were just chit-chatting! Hey, how’s Amethyst doing, though? You went to talk to her, right?”

Ruby huffs in frustration at the mention of the quartz Gem, grinding her boots against the floor so hard that for a second he’s genuinely concerned she might spark a fire under her very feet. “Tried to. But then she slashed her whip towards me and said I couldn’t help her, so ‘go away!’” she exclaims, throwing her arms in the air. “Can you believe it? I’m trying to provide some love and support, and she, she just- tells me to scram!”

“Aw, that’s not very nice,” he says with a frown, feeling his heart pulse in sympathy as she begins to pace back and forth across the wooden slats, grumbling under her breath.

“What’s her problem today, anyways?” Peridot asks, crossing her arms. “She’s usually much more amicable.”

Steven nibbles at the inside of his lip as he considers the concerning downward trajectory of Amethyst’s recent behavior. Sure, she can sometimes get snippy when she’s in a bad place, but this past week her outward attitude has built into a continuous problem. He himself has been on the receiving end of her acerbic words more than a few times, such as that afternoon they goaded each other into a duel at the Sky Arena, and that barbed retort she pierced him with at the fountain. Then there’s her fight with Pearl, her resulting emotional seclusion, today’s callous treatment of Peridot, Lapis, Ruby…

He desperately wishes he could pin all the blame for this on a single person, a single event, (because oh, wouldn’t that make his life so much easier), but when he tracks the evidence of her unrest it becomes blindingly clear that her problems began long before Rose’s betrayal was revealed.

“Well, beyond all the, uh… latest stuff, she’s been super insecure about Jasper,” he offers. Rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet with his flip flops rhythmically clapping against his heels, he rummages his brain for the easiest way to explain the root of the situation. “Basically, Jasper took Amethyst out in a fight a week ago, and ever since that she’s been training super hard a whole lot. I think she’s desperate for a rematch, to prove she’s good enough.”

“Wait, wait, wait—“ The green Gem holds her hands out, palms open. “You’re telling me she’s got an inferiority complex about Jasper? With where she came from?” She lets out a raucous peel of laughter, holding her sides. “Oh Amethyst! That’s ridiculous! She was made way better than that clod.”

He squints at her inquisitively, crossing his arms as he tries to make sense of the interesting new conversation thread that just flowed out of her mouth. “But what do you mean, where she came from? Isn’t she from Homeworld, like you?”

Ruby freezes in place upon hearing this question, clear worry threaded through her creased browline. Her mouth bobs open as if she’s gearing up to answer his question, but amidst her hesitation— a timidness that, the more he thinks about it, is bizarrely out of place from the bold, confident Gem Steven’s gotten to know from all the other times Garnet’s unfused— Peridot beats her to the charge.

“Pfft, are you kidding? She emerged right here from Earth, and not even from its good kindergarten!”

He slams his hands against his cheeks, internally reeling from this revelation. “There’s other kindergartens?”

“Well, sure! There was supposed to be one in every facet. Until the rebellion put a swift end to the Diamonds’ colonization efforts, that is,” she adds quickly, adjusting her visor. “There’s Amethyst’s Prime Kindergarten in Facet Five, but there’s also the Beta Kindergarten in Facet Nine. And that piece of work is where Jasper was made… poorly!” Giggling in excitement, she rapidly shuffles her feet beneath her. The glimmer of light reflected in her eyes is bright enough to rival a distant star. “You guys have to see it!”

Steven balls up his hand at his chin, deliberating. He has to admit, after the recent emotional upheaval that he now can’t help but associate with this place, he really likes the idea of spending time somewhere other than the barn.

“Huh. Might be worth asking if she wants to check it out,” he says with a shrug. “Ruby, you in?”

The Gem in question nibbles at the corner of her lip, humming low under her breath as she considers his offer. A small bead of sweat hangs above her brow. Sporting a good natured grin, he nudges her in the side with his elbow, hoping he can cheer her up a bit.

“A little more time with your favorite Steven and Peri? Eh? Come on, you know you wanna!”

“Do it, do it!” Peridot chimes in, pumping her fists up and down.

He eagerly joins in with her rallying cry, and in no time at all they’re both circling around their friend chanting those very words. Ruby stands center with her arms crossed and her back erect, desperately trying not to break her stoic facade with a smile. It’s ultimately futile, of course. After all, no one can resist the good ol’ Universe charm forever!

“All right, fine, fine, I’ll come,” she finally acquiesces, and with a smirk, plants both her hands on her hips. “After all, someone’s gotta keep an eye on all you trouble makers!”

Now that Ruby’s officially on board, the trio ventures outside to find Amethyst, Steven and Peridot giggling as they begin to skip around the perimeter of the barn side by side, arms linked together. Brushing a few flyaway curls out of his face amidst the comforting breeze, he glances over his shoulder when they reach the first corner to make sure they’re not leaving their friend in the dust. And thankfully she’s right on their tail, but he can’t help but notice her enthusiasm seems muted. He presses his lips together in concern. Does she not want to go with them? Is he only forcing her into this? His stomach twists with guilt as he ponders this quandary further. It’s not his intention to be pushy, but maybe— between coercing Amethyst to take a break and accompany him to the barn, begging Lapis to stay, and now, nudging Ruby to come to the Kindergarten— he’s only being selfish and manipulative about all this. He thought he was bringing people together, but what if he’s wrong? What if he’s only straining relationships, tainting the already tense atmosphere, making everything worse?

(What if this is the same sort of excuse his mom Rose used to make?)

With Amethyst slashing her whip at a few old rusted cans in the clearing before them, however, there’s no time to waste drowning within what-ifs. It’s like that day he learned about Garnet’s future vision for the first time: if he lets himself get tangled up in the possibilities he’ll never truly live. He sighs under his breath, lips pursed. Of course. Garnet’s right even when she isn’t here. As much as he’d love to go crazy psychoanalyzing the impact of every solitary step he makes, at this point he’s made his choices and whatever happens, happens. It’s time to live now.

Initially, the purple Gem is rather indignant at the idea that the three of them were gossiping about her behind her back— eyes clouded with hurt— but once Peridot explains that the point of their proposed Kindergarten field trip is to check out Jasper’s no-doubt lame hole, she blinks away her bitterness and seems to eagerly climb aboard.

“Sure, why not? ‘S not like there’s anything more fun than roasting your enemies.”

“I strongly agree,” Peridot says, nodding with pride.

But before the newly expanded Shorty Squad can begin their journey, there’s something Steven really needs to address. Something that’s been troubling him all day. Nervous butterflies filling his stomach, he leans up close to his sibling-in-crime and whispers so the others don’t hear:

“Amethyst, can I talk to you for a bit before we leave?”

Her expression curdles, but thankfully, unlike in Ruby’s unfortunate account, she doesn’t make a move towards her whip to push him away. Instead, she meets him with a gaze so hardened and difficult to read that his eyes can’t help but drift away, perhaps a little intimidated by the intensity of this contact.

“Yeah, I guess,” she mutters eventually. She flicks her wrist up at the other two, gesturing for them to get a move on. “Go on ahead. We’ll catch up.”

Ruby and Peridot nod, the red Gem with a good deal more sympathy drawn on her face, (but for him or Amethyst?), and promptly set off towards the warp pad. He continues to watch until they disappear beyond the curve of the grassy hillside, both conversing comfortably. The last he hears before the warp shoots its cyan stream of light into the sky is a hooting laugh from Ruby. Despite how non-ideal this visit has been so far, he can’t help the smile stretching across his cheeks, or how his chest grows all warm and fuzzy. It’s really nice to see Peridot getting along so well with the others now. She’s made such huge strides in the past few months.

Something metallic clangs behind him. Flinching, Steven whirls around. A crumpled, abused soda can lays overturned by the side of the barn. Amethyst— arms crossed tight just under her gem and her hair more spiked and untamed than usual— glares at that poor hunk of tin as if it’s solely to blame for all of this galaxy’s problems. She moves to lean against the barn’s outer wall and peers at him expectantly, like a troubled child expecting judgement from a parental figure.

“So. You wanted to talk,” she says, tone clipped.

“I… wanted to be honest,” he mutters, threading his fingers together as he grasps for how best to word this. “Amethyst… I know you’ve been going through some hard stuff lately. I know everything that’s happened in the past few days doesn’t help. But you’ve been so inconsiderate of like, everyone here.” He swings his arm in a wide gesture towards the barn. “Peridot and Lapis didn’t deserve the way you treated them earlier.”

No response.

Steven frowns, and— a glimmer of quiet frustration bubbling deep within him, the sort he’d never admit to out loud but can’t help but harbor whenever he catches wind of small injustices that he can never seem to fix— scratches an burgeoning itch at the nape of his neck. He… oh stars, he’s going about this completely wrong, isn’t he? He’s being too confrontational. Hmm. Maybe he should try a new angle. Time for take two.

“I know you only acted that way because you’re hurting and don’t wanna think about it,” he continues, “but please, you don’t have to box your emotions away like that. I wanna help. I wanna listen.”

Slowly, gently, he moves to place a hand on her shoulder. It feels like a small victory when she doesn’t shift upon his touch.

“Believe me, you’re not alone in feeling this way.”

Again, nothing. She’s not even looking at him right now, and her jaw’s locked. Even her form feels tense under his fingers, with hard light pulsing back and forth under her illusory skin at an alarmingly unusual pace.

He sighs, gaze dropping towards the ground, towards the battered can she kicked aside earlier. “I’m worried, y’know? But... I understand if you’re not ready to talk… about Jasper, and—“

“Oh, hoh! That’s rich!” she explodes suddenly, jerking her arm away. “You seriously wanna bury your head in the sand and pretend this is just about Jasper?”

He tiptoes away from her rush of anger, eyes growing puffy. “I—“

“You wanna know how I feel, Steven? About your mom, and the whole awful mess she made? Do you really? ‘Cause I don’t have a single CLUE what I should feel anymore!”

Amethyst pauses for breath amidst her tirade, briefly locking sight with him with a glimmer of hurt reflected in her violet irises, showing that deep underneath all those twisted layers of anger and resentment she’s just another scared, abandoned Gem like him.

“Rose was everything to me, okay?” she says, throwing her palms wide for emphasis. “And all this time, I thought she was the one Crystal Gem who could be real with me. The only one who wouldn’t sugarcoat things or treat me like a baby. ‘Oh, you’re perfect the way you are, Amethyst!’” she coos in a fake, silky-sweet voice, cupping her cheeks as she openly mocks the very Gem who gave her life so he could exist. “You’re such a strong little quartz, you mean so much to me!’ Hah!”

She pauses to force a bitter laugh, clenching her hands into insufferably tight fists.

“And wasn’t that just a huge load of silt,” she spits, staring off into the rosy distance as if it were but a cruel mirage, the pain more than evident in the taut features of her face. “All along I thought she was this great, faultless person, just like you did. Except she wasn’t. She’s a liar, like everyone else. I’m worthless, just like Jasper said… and Rose knew it.”

Hesitantly, compassionately— heart breaking for the internal struggle she’s caught within, a struggle he intimately relates to—  he tries once more to reach out in comfort.

“Amethyst…”

She sniffles, wiping away the leaking fluid pooling at the corners of her eyes.

(She does not, however, brush him away this time when he wraps his arms around her torso and nestles his head against her chest.)

“Just— forget it, okay?” she says after a quiet moment’s embrace, gently stepping back from his affection. “It’s whatever. Come on, Peridot and Ruby are waiting for us. Let’s dump this joint.”

__________

Ruby quietly shuffles across the loose soil, directing her eyes as low to the ground as possible to avoid having to stare at the Beta Kindergarten’s steep cliff walls. Red sandstone, Peridot proclaims a few feet away to their newly arrived sightseers, whirling in place with her arms extended wide. We’re lucky this place hasn’t blown away. Beta, am I right?

Steven manages a soft laugh at this. Amethyst continues onward with her arms crossed, unimpressed. But Ruby herself? Well, she’s the only Gem here who can say she crossed this infamous swath of sedimentary rock at its very beginning, on the day of emergence. The others may choose to laugh about how soft and unideal the soaring sandstone cliffs are, or about the uneven exit holes and curved walls, but in her opinion it’s no laughing matter. She’s seen firsthand how deadly even a so-called ‘imperfect’ Homeworld soldier can be. Even Garnet barely escaped with her gems intact.

Nervously flexing her fingers at her side as she tries not to dwell on that tragedy, she flashes her gaze upward, daring to catch even a passing glimpse of the top of the vast canyon. In an instant her vision swims with endless pillars of rusty oranges and reds.

Everything on this planet might as well tower over her without Sapphire. The once-welcoming arms of their temple? Monolithic. The vaulted ceilings of the beach house? Her eidetic memory can’t help but remind her of her early days spent marching through Homeworld’s diamond sized hallways with the rest of her squadron, patrolling the same route for well over five hundred cycles straight. The kicker? The Diamonds never had any reason to visit the shipment sector in person, anyways. The hallways were only constructed with such high ceilings to remind any Gem passing through of their rightful place under the Authority.

Over two hundred years, she adhered to their twisted rhetoric. Two hundred years of allowing everyone and everything around her to make her feel small, like she only existed for a singular purpose. Two hundred years of ignoring the tug of dissatisfaction at the core of her gem because of the misplaced belief that orderly subjugation under the Diamonds was simply the rightful pattern of existence. Then, in a beautiful bloom of light… she caught a glimpse of true freedom. And for the five thousand seven hundred years after that, Garnet didn’t feel quite so small anymore. She felt capable, confident, satisfied. Aided by Ruby’s physical strength and Sapphire’s future vision, she finally dared to challenge Homeworld’s rhetoric. She dared to live for herself.

Sighing under her breath, Ruby touches her fingers to the place in her right palm where her missing gem is, tracing the triangular shape of its illusory facets.

There’s no use arguing; Garnet was a better Crystal Gem than she can ever hope to be on her own. And now, because Rose just had to go and manipulate all of them, there’s a strong chance she’ll never get to be Garnet with her Sapphy ever again. Which means that until further notice, she’s stuck like this: short, stubby, and woefully insecure. Hah! Figures. All those years spent fighting against Homeworld’s warped notion that Gems had stagnant purposes and couldn’t grow beyond their stations, and now it’s as if she’s been dumped back at the beginning, like the past five millennia never happened.

It’s a cruel irony.

And yet it’s no crueler than this awful place: a cradle of birth manufactured as a tool of war, a Gem’s very existence leeching the life out of this once-fertile ground. The scars on the walls tell a mournful story, and as Ruby slowly trudges after her loved ones, fingers numb and fidgety in the wake of haunted disorientation, she can’t help but wish she wasn’t present for its prologue.

“Ruby…?”

Her sight trains on one of the tilted exit holes closest to ground level, on the messy silhouette it provides. She remembers this one, in fact, Garnet watched her emerge. She was a carnelian. By Homeworld’s standards, an imperfect one. That doesn’t matter, though. None of Homeworld’s lies matter. Running on nothing but the primary orders she was incubated with, (it wasn’t her fault, it was the Diamonds’, she reminds herself with a bitter growl), that Gem still emerged to poof three fellow rebels on sight. If Garnet hadn’t been so quick to retrieve their gemstones, they might have been shattered that day. Many of the others assigned to her squadron weren’t as lucky. Inhaling shakily, Ruby pauses to trace her fingers across a raised ridge in the rough, brittle sandstone.

“Hey, Ruby!” his energetic voice calls again, snapping her out of her intense focus like a fusion splitting in half.

“Aaaah!” she cries, swinging around and pulling both fists up in defense. Her hands uncoil rapidly once she catches a glimpse of that cheery yellow star.

Aw, scrap! she chides herself, repositioning her feet solid on the ground to regain some sense of internal balance. Damned startle reflex.

Unfazed, Steven grins boyishly, skipping a few steps away from the rest of the group to join her by the cliff wall. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Amethyst and Peridot are watching now too, she realizes, her brief but audible outburst thoroughly diverting their attention from their Beta Kindergarten roast session. Their quizzical glances pin her in place, her hard-light form heating in embarrassment as she struggles to organize the flow of her emotions in a way that might make sense to anyone beyond a fellow ruby. She scrunches up her nose and considers her next words carefully, attempting to strike the proper boundary between what is and isn’t appropriate to say in front of a half-human child. Stars knows Amethyst, Pearl, and herself haven’t had a great record with that over the past few days.

“Just thinkin’ about Sapphire, mostly,” she admits, offering him a saddened shrug. “Can’t seem to stop that, even half a world away.”

“Speaking of that... Why did you run after us?” Amethyst asks in a notably less cranky manner than earlier, lightly kicking at the dirt with the toes of her booties. “You never said.”

“Y’know, I…” She pauses, pressing her hand to her chin. “I’m not sure. I spent days waiting in front of the temple door. And eventually, I guess I figured that if she’s gonna make me wait no matter what, I might as well do something with myself until then. ‘Sides, I didn’t want to be lonely,” she adds, suddenly feeling just as small and vulnerable in front of all of them as her timid voice sounds.

She felt lonely enough when she ran away from home a few days ago, tears streaming in messy rivulets down her face, utterly spurning their attempts at comfort so she could pretend she was anything else than powerless amidst this nightmare. She never wanted to split, not at all. She begged Sapphire to give their relationship another chance, to believe in the strength of their love more than the fear of a diamond’s control, but tragically, her partner couldn’t hold up under the pressure. If one individual doesn’t wholeheartedly want to be Garnet, then Garnet cannot exist. They can’t synchronize. It’s simply the nature of fusion. And given her love’s avoidance, refusing to so much as leave her room to begin with, Ruby’s beginning to lose hope that their fusion will ever exist again. The crippling isolation that realization affords is the worst form of loneliness she can imagine.

Thus, the least she can do at the moment to mitigate these all-consuming feelings is to get off her butt, leave the temple, and ensure she’s surrounded by loved ones.

Peridot steeples her fingers together in front of her chest. “Well, what if you moved in with us?” she offers in a meek tone at first, her expression brightening as she continues to explain her idea. “The barn’s got plenty of room, and with two roommates you’d never have to feel lonely again!”

Steven’s dark irises practically sparkle. “Aww, Peridot, that’s super sweet of you to offer!”

“Wow, thanks,” she replies earnestly, puffing out her chest in a rush of personal pride. “I do try!”

“Yeah!” Ruby says with a hesitant laugh, scratching at the back of her neck. “That sounds amazing, but…”

“You should do it, Ruby!” he encourages, bouncing up and down on his sandaled feet amidst his excitement. “You should totally move in with them!”

“D’ya… d’ya really think so?”

“Yeah! It’d be like your very own vacation, but you’d only be a warp away!”

“And you’re sure you’d be fine with it? Y’know, with everything at home all…” She blows a juicy raspberry, jabbing her thumb down.

Amethyst serves her a big shrug. “I ain’t got a problem. Go crazy.”

“There’s no need to worry about me,” Steven says, smiling evenly. “I only want what’s best for you. And if you think not staying in the temple all the time would make you feel better, you should give it a try!”

Her concerned glance drops on the young half-Gem. Sure, it’s very compassionate of him, actively choosing to care so deeply for everyone’s emotional needs all the time, but home life for him hasn’t exactly been nurturing and hospitable lately. He already lost one of his pillars of stability when Garnet unfused. Pearl and Amethyst are at each other’s necks again. Sapphire hasn’t emerged from her room for days. Greg’s… doing whatever it is Greg does when he’s not hanging out with his son, probably keeping his distance from Gem business as usual. So with all that in mind, even if temporarily living apart from Sapphire is sure to be a beneficial move for her personal well-being and sanity, is now actually the proper time to consider a change in scenery? She purses her lips.

“I’ll think about it.”

Peridot lets out a sharp squeal of delight, apparently ecstatic about the prospect of possibly gaining a new roommate. Ruby can’t help but grin at this response. In truth, if she didn’t have to consider the well-being of Steven and the rest of the Crystal Gems, she’d say yes in a heartbeat. After all, she’s never gotten the opportunity to make many decisions on her own. Heck, she’s never gotten the opportunity to do much of anything on her own. Every time she’s unfused within the last five thousand years, her priorities have always been about what Sapphire would want, what Sapphire would do.

Well, what about Ruby, this time? Aren’t her desires important? What does she want?

Long term… she has no clue. But right now? She’d prefer to avoid dire reminders of old sorrows at all costs, thank you. So when Peridot declares that she’s 99.9% positive she’s found Jasper’s exit hole, Ruby declines to join them in their roast session. She never came here for sightseeing, anyways. She came here as their lookout. Just in case. She’s never trusted this awful tear in the ground one bit, and she’s not about to start now.

Running instinctively on old programming she was incubated with, she creeps deeper between the narrow mouth of the cliffs and summons her gauntlets at her side. Sure, so maybe they’re not as daunting in their size as Garnet’s, but they can still pack one heck of a punch. She’s still good at punching on her own, yeah? Hopefully? Stars, it’s been so long since she’s gone solo for more than a few measly hours.

And then, at the cliff base in front of her, she spots the most unusual exit hole she’s seen in this miserable canyon yet. For one, it’s low to the ground, like Amethyst’s. That fact alone is enough to set off alarm bells in her head. On top of that, its silhouette is almost comically wide and indistinct, not resembling any cut of Gem she’s aware of.

“Huh. That’s different,” she murmurs, pacing closer to investigate.

Maybe an off-color topaz could punch a hole as wide as this? But… no, no. That can’t be right. Hard light coursing wildly through her form, Ruby dissipates one of her gauntlets and runs the tips of her fingers across the crumbly inside surface of this hole. A few granules of sandstone break off upon her touch and clatter against the ground, and she jerks her hand away as if touching impossibly cold ice. Something about this feels... wrong. To be fair, she’s no expert kindergartener like Peridot, but she’s pretty confident the interior of exit holes should be smooth, with striated rock layers extending all the way back. Instead, this bizarre scar in the cliffs almost seems like—

“It’s dug out,” she says, eyes widening in dawning horror.

Which means they may not be alone in this rusted relic of a Kindergarten after all.

Her body suddenly feeling staticky and unbalanced amidst all this damning uncertainty, she tiptoes away from this mysterious feature, slowly at first, and then— as the fear begins to bubble up within her core like boiling water transformed under her power— transitioning into a sprint. We’re not alone, she repeats to herself in a harried mantra. Not alone. Not alone, we’re not alone, we’re—

Ruby’s foot catches on an uneven lip of stone jutting up from the ground, and she quickly plows headfirst into the coarse dirt, promptly ending her terror-stricken flight.

“Ow,” she whines as she recovers from this fall, rubbing at the side of her head. Not only is she a little dizzy, but her surroundings are made further hazy amidst the overbearing sunlight pounding indiscriminately upon the ground floor of this canyon. It’s enough disorientation to allow the jumbled code of her gem to begin to play tricks on her. For one, she swears she can hear this low, timid skittering, like thick claws rhythmically scraping against rock. Second, she’s half-convinced she can feel a surplus of physical vibrations radiating from the cliffs surrounding her. Squinting, she shields her eyes under a raised arm so she can begin to gain her bearings again. The blinding light recedes.

The red Gem gulps fearfully amidst the burning colors of the harsh sandstone landscape. “Wait, is that—“

She’s stumbled her way into a massive clearing, lined on all sides by stacked rows of holes physically dug into the sheer walls. Each opening is barred by a number of thick metal rods, stripped from the legs of the injectors that once incubated this hell in the first place. The thoughtful engineering imbued in this setup is impressive and terrifying all at once. Ignoring the tangible tug of hesitation at her core, she pushes herself back on her feet and creeps towards the closest cage to investigate further.

“Uh, you guys?” she calls loudly as she walks, the unusual curves of this canyon an undisputed blessing as they carry her message back to the others.

“Yeah?” Amethyst chimes back, her voice notably distant. Too distant.

“We’ve got, um—” her hand glides across one of the bent, rusty bars— “a bit of a problem here?”

“What?? Speak louder, we can’t hear you!”

Before she can even prepare to reply, a fur-covered monstrous creature leaps from the shadowy abyss of its prison and snaps its tusks at her. She yells, jerking her hand away from the cage and stumbling a few feet back. Her brow creases in abject confusion as she attempts to process what she’s seeing in front of her. It’s… it’s a corrupted Gem? This one’s most definitely a quartz; she recognizes the faceting, as well as the distinctive fur-covered quadrupedal shape of its corrupted form. But why on Earth is it being trapped within a cage in the middle of a defunct kindergarten instead of being placed in a bubble’s comforting stasis? The ground beneath her feet grows noticeably warmer as a rush of impassioned anger surges through her hard light form. She grinds her teeth together, flexing her fists at her side in the name of this cruel injustice. Caging isn’t part of Crystal Gem protocol for a reason!

Unfortunately, the horror show continues as her gaze passes over each and every cage in this clearing, finding scared, thrashing, corrupted Gems in almost all of them. Fluid builds up at the corner of her eyes as they scream and wail at her, riding a fresh wave of cacophony spurned by that Gem she spooked just a moment ago. How could anyone ever build such an awful place? And why?

Heavy, assured footfalls suddenly bounce across the acoustically encouraging slopes and surfaces of this ravine, magnified tenfold in their wake. Ruby gasps, wasting no time in ducking behind a tall rocky formation at the mouth of the clearing. That’s definitely not Amethyst or any of the others. It sounds too large, too bulky. She kneels low so she can still peek over the topmost layer of sandstone, a knot of dread coiling within as the footfalls continue to grow louder. Groaning, she clutches at her head. The unknown, the impenetrable shadow of the future… stars, it haunts her more than loneliness itself.

And then, the specter of her history reveals herself, making Ruby’s tangible form stutter in the sheer terror her appearance affords.

Jasper— her opponent, her nightmare, the Rebel Slayer herself— emerges from a plume of rising dust at the edge of this populous arena and enters the game.

#su #steven universe #ruby #amethyst #peridot #su fanfiction #my writing stuff #crack the paragon

[notquitetwilight]

character asks: Alice

Sexuality Headcanon: Either bi or ace

Gender Headcanon: I can see Alice using either exclusively she/her pronouns or she/they pronouns tbh

A ship I have with said character: Book!Jalice doesn’t really make sense to me like they are kinda flat chemistry wise and come across more as best friends (on Alice’s part anyway) in my opinion; I feel like Alice has the energy of a cool fashionista wine aunt who is hyper career-focused, values her independence and doesn’t care about marriage or kids lol. I keep joking that Jasper is the Jorah Mormont to Alice’s Daenerys Targaryen bc of that absolutely iconic “I know you love me. Thanks” line from Midnight Sun dhisshshskdhsos

But I do think Ashley and Jackson’s chemistry made them seem much more believable as a couple than they were in the books. I think Jasper in general is only really redeemed by Jackson’s portrayal of him though bc Smeyer wrote him in such a gross way. I can’t really picture Alice with anyone else so ship-wise I would say Movie!Jalice or single Alice or girl Alice with girl Jasper aka Jessamine?

A BROTP I have with said character: Alice x Bella (wish we got more of their book relationship in the movies), Alice x Edward, Alice x Emmett, Alice x Rosalie (for the love of god give me sister content or give me death), I even loved the Alice x Jacob companionship of Breaking Dawn, a book that offered very little to like!

A NOTP I have with said character: Alice x Aro, Alice x Jane or Alec (they are CHILDREN!!!!!!) I am not kidding when I was 13 I used to see people write romance fics for them

A random headcanon: Like I’ve joked about before, I think Alice would be the worst with Resume bc she doesn’t remember being a kid and hasn’t been around children as a vampire prior to Resume. I’ve also word-vomited some human/early-Cullen Alice headcanons here and some things I headcanon about Alice’s relationship with her adoptive family here 💞

General Opinion over said character: 13-year-old me based my entire identity on her during my first Twilight phase dhdhskskv so she will always hold a special place in my heart. I love her as much as I can love a Smeyer-written character and one thing that struck me about Midnight Sun was that I had forgotten just how major a character she is in the books because she doesn’t get much screen time in the movies. Books wise she’s arguably the most developed/fleshed-out character outside of the main love triangle but again I wish she could have been developed beyond purposes that mostly serve the love triangle characters. Where’s her trauma/fear over not remembering her human life? How did she adjust to a family dynamic when she doesn’t remember what it’s like to be part of a human family unit? How does she have such a strong personality/connection to and care for others/interest in typically “human” things (as opposed to living a fairly feral existence reliant on instinct) when she has never known anything but vampirism? There is so much about her that’s interesting and could be further developed/explored. But anyway forever my psychic fashion heux queen 3627291926820292820/10 would recommend 💕💓💘💖💞

#alice cullen #character tag #twilight #twilight renaissance #the twilight saga #the twilight series #the cullens #twilight revival #jasper hale #jalice #bella x alice #new moon #eclipse #breaking dawn #midnight sun #asks #anon

[mtwalker]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale Characters: Alice Cullen, Jasper Hale, Edward Cullen, Emmett Cullen Additional Tags: Christmas, Feral Jasper, Fluff, It's just cute, nothing else Series: Part 1 of Feral Jasper Summary:

Jasper's first Christmas with the Cullens.

A Oneshot associated with my other fic, Deep Within the Catacombs.

#jalice #jasper #alice #feral jasper #Deep Within The Catacombs

[another-dra-anew]

jasper told me “you can always just make hcs for the beta au” and now my power has gone out of control, part 4/??? aka: asher requested these this time

~*~ Beta Yuukei!

•please read the little fic thing i wrote. the yuukei is strong with this one (unintentionally) •openly feral and unhinged x secretly feral and unhinged •nikei has,, many targets on his back due to his work as a journalist, but yuuki is vv sure to keep nikei safe,,, sure would be a shame if the person trying to place a bomb near nikeis dorm room accidentally detonated the bomb,, •that doesn't happen, they just get caught before they can rig nikeis dorm. how lucky :) •they don't really know how they got together??? •one moment they were off working on a project in the library, the next, the librarian was yelling at them for pda •nikei: yeah my jacket is pretty thin, so i'm always pretty cold, but it's whatever, i'm used to it :') yuuki, constantly wearing 100 jackets: i swear to god, you are so dumb *takes off a jacket and gives it to nikei* just buy another fucking coat???? •yeah 90% of their relationship is just things like that •nikei calls yuuki explaining he may be a bit late coming back today because he spent all of his money making sure someone else could get home safe so now he has to walk back. as soon as yuuki saw nikei calling him, he was already on his way to go help •mikado said that them getting together was less likely than water catching fire •for their first date, yuuki somehow got water to catch on fire. mikado refuses to talk about this. •they both have. terrible self care skills, and are constantly trying to get the other to be safer while neglecting themselves •asmr yuuki and nikei bump into each other at 3 am, both returning to the dorms after getting into slightly bastardly shenanigans •it's such a reoccurring thing that they're now used to just. heading to nikeis dorm to get any bandaids/painkillers that may be needed before flopping down into nikeis bed •yuukis 500 siblings all adore nikei so much •like, yuuki goes to pick up some of his younger siblings from school and they just go "hi yuuki" before running straight into nikei and hugging him •yuuki jokes that nikei is a better big brother than him, and is very offended when his siblings start calling for nikei to become their new bro •nikei: oh well if u want me as ur big bro i guess yuuki will just have to marry me yuuki: what nikei: what? •for anniversaries, nikei goes. all out •he has a 30000 page document of all his favorite moment with yuuki since the last time they celebrated, he's sure yuuki feels like a king, etc etc •yuuki gives him a ring pop. he's happy enough to cry •nikei: this is my bf, yuuki. he is very angy and very aggressive. i'm pretty sure there's bloodstains on everything he wears. he is very sweet and i love him a lot •yuuki: this is my bf, nikei. he is very kind and helpful. i'm pretty sure he can't go 5 minutes without almost dying bc of how reckless he is. he is very sweet and i love him a lot. •bleh i'm trying to keep from spoilers •nikei usually wakes up before yuuki, so yuuki wakes up to nikei, already dressed, perfectly ready to go, all "good morning darling!" •"why the fuck are u up so early. how did u do eyeliner that well at 5 am. what the fuck" •there is. one time when nikei falls asleep first and yuuki just kinda. takes his alarm clock and turns it off •cue yuuki waking up first and hes vv hyped?? bc now he can uno reverse nikei! he can be all awake and ready first!! •if i write anything else on this subject i'm gonna expose myself as someone with homosexual thoughts so moving on •yuuki: i was walking along the road and i kept seeing flowers that seemed nice so here, for u! •it's just a handful of random flowers. there's bugs on 70% of them. nikei treasures them •the class is,, moderately surprised? •sora mourns the "loss of nikei to yuuki" and questions how yuuki tricked him into a relationship •shinji just hopes this means that yuuki will leave him alone now in favor of nikei. it doesn't mean that.

•hajime: hey nikei could you help me wi...

nikei: *cuddled up to yuuki and crying bc hes drained after three weeks of no sleep*

yuuki: do u need smthn?? bitch?

#sdra2 #au #nikei yomiuri #yuuki maeda #yuukei #lucky pen #beta au #another dr another #headcanons

[quilleth]

stories you want to write...

but for some reason haven’t

tagged by @ravenclawnerd and i apologize for the absolute chaos unleashed here

1) I still think a campaign 2 coffee shop au would be cute for critical role. But, well, bad shit happened and now i am conflicted about it.

2) The werewolf au idea that sprang up here has been growing in the back of my mind. I am conflicted over making that one cute and fluffy or making it angsty and possibly of an ot3 variety because of the horrible idea I have of throwing Elisabeth on both Jasper and Kade’s paths eventually...for the angst.

3) In a similar vein, a very fluffy idea of the witch and familiar one has been eating at my brain as well.  Because witches. Definitely of a fluffy, Ghibli esque aesthetic. For whatever reason, my brain is also demanding this involve Edwardian clothing a la Gibson girl style. Don’t ask me why; i have no idea

4) Ball shenanigans and their aftermath. I cannot write this because it’s spoilers and I don’t have enough self control to not want to immediately throw it into the ether so other people can share my feels.

There are several other spoilery things that are in similar purgatory. I will be screaming about them in fanfic form as soon as the early release comes out. You all have been warned.

5) I will finish the Mummy au fic....someday.............

6) So. Many. Prompts...festering in my inbox...making me feel guilty every time i look there....i don’t even know what some of them are for anymore!! T_T

7) I do know there there is one that @teaandinanity sent me that I have vaguely started but have not progressed far on. It’s one of the latin prompts and my brain went “wedding fic? Wedding fic!”

8) um...you know....writing things for the spring prompt event and for this fictober event....they’re not specific ideas mostly but um...i still *want* to do them if that makes sense

9) See also: Wayhaven Week prompts. i need to write that fic with Adam fixing things he’s broken, and Nate going feral, and I have a Halloween one I started for it!

tagging @mer-birdman @squarelyblue @timelord-in-hogwarts @awaylaughing

#tag games #my inbox is a source of shame and guilt and also i love getting things even though i take forever to get to them!