#oh you mean the care HE FUCKING DIED UNDER BECAUSE OF YOUR NEGLIGENCE

[alltheangstmygifttoyou]

Hi I'm here once again to ask who's idea was it to make a loved ones death a never ending harassment campaign for their remaining family by literally every corporate entity they encountered?

#vent #tw death #personal post #i fucking hate it here #its been seven fucking months over half a year #and you fuckwits are still trying to send a dead man phone bills??? HE CANT CARE ABOUT HIS CREDIT SCORE THAT YOURE THREATENING HES GONE #first it was the fucking hospital sending survey's addressed to him asking about his experience and care #oh you mean the care HE FUCKING DIED UNDER BECAUSE OF YOUR NEGLIGENCE #then the bills from the hospital then the hospital that gave the death certificate demanding to see it to cancel the bills! #the non stop ads that still get sent with his dead name plastered on them to personalize it still come #looking at you credit card companies #heres a cool fun idea: leave me and the rest of us grieving family people alone! #the practice of patience to not fly off the handle at the wrong person is a very straining one

[vergess]

@autismserenity​ said: Your tags are the most American thing I’ve ever read, we are truly so screwed here   

May I interest you in a more complete, and more excruciating, explanation of what I spent the last 18 months doing?

It is, I need to emphasize, fucking nasty. Don’t feel obligated, especiallly if you’ve already had A Day(tm).

There’s a lot of disease, a lot of worker abuse including sexual and racial abuse, a fine portion of letting people die for not being white enough for real medical care, all leading to homelessness.

For NDA reasons, because my former employer was just as vile as any tech company has ever been, I cannot be super specific about who I worked for. However, I can say that we handled the records and patient contact for all COVID testing for several states, as well as 2 of the 5 largest metros in the US, and several dozen smaller ones ranging from the approximate population of San Francisco, down to little towns, as well as the testing for several public school systems and at least two government agencies that I am not at liberty to disclose.

I tell you this for a sense of scale. When I say shit like, “my boss was more than happy to let thousands or hundreds of thousands die” I am not exagerrating for effect. We handled hundreds of thousands of tests a week.

Again, I need to emphasize, government agencies. Ones you would know if I named them. Ones everyone in the country knows.

And we were in charge of getting their test results from the already over swamped labs back to the patients, who often were not allowed to quarantine while awaiting results.

The fastest we got our turnaround time to on any consistent basis was about 30 hours. Often it ballooned well into weeks.

There were a number of factors for this, but the big one was always understaffing.

The staff we did have were treated like trash. One of the big selling points of this company is how “trans friendly” it is to work there. That is a lie. Every trans employee on payroll had their dead name displayed to all other staff, and until I personally changed the system setup on my arrival, patient facing trans people’s dead names were displayed to patients.

Remember that thing about “hundreds of thousands of tests a week”?

I was able to change the way patient-facing names were displayed. I was not allowed or able to alter the way internal systems displayed trans people’s names. But I was assured that it’s fine, because once you get a legal name change, you’ll be given new system accounts with your new name!

Your old accounts with your dead name would still be displayed and associated with the new ones though.

This is the “trans friendly” working environment. We were allowed to be out of the closet, as long as we were willing to put up with that. And any attempts to get it altered were the result of those nasty little transgender ingrates not being thankful enough.

Meaning that by asking to use our own fucking names we were already in the disciplinary shitter.

Another big selling point is the ~racial diversity~. The CEO was a man of colour, and so were like four other people on staff!! Wow!!!!!!!

This, too, was laughable.

Once numbers started coming in about the care gap for COVID between English and Spanish speakers, and our Southwestern US service area began to have a separate and brutal backlog just of Spanish speaking patients, my employer encouraged me to interview potential hires who speak spanish.

Fair enough! We all wanted to do our part to help close the already massive mortality gap.

So, I found candidates, did interviews, hired them, trained them, etc. But I don’t speak Spanish. As a result, I appointed 2 assistant managers who do speak Spanish to assist me in managing, you know, like the job name.

So when my super contacted them directly, completely skipping me on the chain of command, and told them to stop all of our Spanish speakers from translating helpful simple messages to send to patients, and instead start translating medical and legal documents, they very reasonably assumed I was in the know and went ahead with it.

TO BE CLEAR, that could have ended my life, theirs, basically everyone involved. Everyone in the company would have been completely fucked. At that point, my subordinates, the people for whom I am wholly responsible, were doing everything from practicing medicine without licenses, to encouraging spanish speaking patients to enter contracts that no one on the fucking executive tier could even read.

The moment I found that out, I and the A.M.s immediately started trying to get actual medical translation services to do our documents. We collected them in a neat folder. We queried translation services. We got quotes. We contacted my super and the CEO, about this over and over again for months. In the late autumn, we received approval for one of the translation services.

The CEO decided at the last minute that having people with no medical or legal training draft medical and legal forms was fine and good actually, and refused to sign the contract or send the documents for translation.

The excuse I received was that the COVID emergency HIPAA relaxations would protect us.

That’s not how that works.

Throughout all of this, Spanish speaking employees were told to either keep doing medical and legal translation work, or lose their jobs.

Oh, did I mention everyone was working between 30 and 80 hours a week, and all of us were marked as “contractors” so the employer could tax evade? Don’t worry, we filed complaints with the labour bureau.

So the entire department was let go, and “rehired” as temps through a temp agency, which because it was a temp agency could keep them marked as contractors regardless of the facts.

This change was presented to all of us, myself included, as the company getting a new accountant to handle payroll.

So if you’re keeping score, we’ve covered racism, queerphobia, medical negligence, fraud, and a frankly uncountable number of deaths.

Let’s talk about the sheer negligence towards employees ourselves. If you’ve worked in near-death medical care before, or any number of emergency services really, you know that the standard benefit suite includes either a dedicated therapist for your staff, or access to peer support groups with other emergency and medical servants through your employer’s benefits program.

Do you know what our mental health benefits were for this company?

The CEO got on a fucking zoom call with us all one (1) time, and said that if we were feeling suicidal or traumatized by the work, to talk to him about it, and he would be our therapist.

Do you know how many people per fucking day we had to contact only to be told they had already died because our understaffing delays killed them? He doesn’t. He never listened when we told him.

But let me put the cherry on the “Oh baby, you can talk to me, oooh” sundae.

Anyone who “looked” or “sounded” female, regardless of actual or assigned gender, was subject to constant flirtations and slimy, overly personal compliments about our appearances. Fortunately, at 3 levels removed from the CEO (Executives > Department heads > Managers > Employees), most of the people under my management had relatively little contact with him.

I was not nearly so lucky.

The CEO of this company has a watersports (urination) fetish. I know this, because he told me so and attempted to get me to join him in it. I have no idea how many other people in the company he did this to. I mean, what the fuck was I supposed to do, risk losing my job to find out? I have a fucking family to support, people.

Not that it mattered.

Eventually, all of these abuses became too much for my subordinates. Productivity fell off a cliff. Delays were getting worse and worse. In a medical emergency like this, delays=deaths.

So, like a fucking idiot, when the department heads reached out to me to ask what they could do to improve productivity, I shot down their frankly insulting suggestion of raffling a $20 amazon gift card to patient facing employees, and instead suggested a very simple, “enroll us with a peer support group, every single person in this department has PTSD from working in this pandemic.”

They were confused by my assertion of PTSD. I was asked to compile a document of complaints, concerns, and weaknesses in our patient facing services.

I and the A.M.s did so. It was roughly 40 pages long, with each page given a known problem, the reasons why it was a problem, and some potential solutions that might inspire further solutions or be able to be implemented. We submitted it. There was no response.

A week passed.

I had been working 80 hour weeks for most of a year. I hadn’t even been able to take weekends. I took my first sick day, in a company with “unlimited vacation days.”

I received a call at 3PM.

I had been fired for “differences in communitcation.” If you’ve ever seen that “Problem Women of Color in the workplace” chart? Yeah.

So had most of my department, including every transgender member of the department, and several of our extremely limited in supply Spanish speakers, who were presumed to be “on my side.”

Some of them, I barely even knew beyond the formalities of the job, and they were punished anyway.

I lost my insurance, and as a result I lost access to my medications.

But the real problem? I lost my house. And not due to lack of payment.

I lost my house, because when I got the job we waited 6 months for stability’s sake, and then readied to move out of the area. I got a mortgage on the basis of my employer’s written guarantee to the bank that I would continue to be employed for the next year at a minimum.

With the mortgage approval in hand, we entered a sales contract on our existing home.

We got and accepted an offer just days before I was fired. To keep our house meant paying a 25,000 dollar broken contract fine. We didn’t have that. We had a 10% down payment for a modest fucking place in a cheaper area, which is less than half that.

But without a job, my mortgage approval was also voided, meaning we couldn’t buy a house either.

All of a sudden, we were homeless during the plague, because my employer wrote and signed a letter to a bank guaranteeing my future employ, and then changed his mind when too many people died due to his own negligence.

Oh yeah, one last thing: the job paid less than Pandemic unemployment Assistance.

...After that, well, it’s homelessness until just last month. I... if you’ve never been homeless it’s.

It blurs. Everything is happening constantly, except for all the ways in which you are endlessly, mind breakingly bored. Bored, overloaded, and always uncomfortable.

Obviously my health would have declined regardless. Malnutrition, stress, everything.

But I was also unmedicated.

It was hell. I was in hell. I don’t know if I can recover from it, to be honest.

I bounced back from being homeless as a child. Children are as resilient as they are stupid, and the monstrosity of homelessness was little more than a vaguely remembered loathing and a panicky fear that it would ever happen again.

A child who is dying is worthy of sympathy, even if it is meaningless coos from passers by. If they have family, they may be able to rely on them too.

An adult with the indignity to die homeless and crippled, according to the average passer by, is worthy only of disgust and perhaps even punishment for being such a worthless waste.

My reward for nearly killing myself in a desperate bid to help stem the tide of COVID was the destruction of not only my life, not only my entire family’s lives, but the lives of every single family of every single employee who worked with me.

And you know what’s worse?

Each one of us still did more to limit the lethal impact of COVID than the entire united states government.

It breaks something in you, going through that.

It makes you realize that hope is a fool’s game.

But, I have ever been a fool, and so, I continue to play.

[cblgblog]

So my issues with Irondad are well documented at this point, starting from their very first scenes. Specifically the utter tone deafness of Peter’s recruitment, by both Tony and the writers. Tony starts the movie being blamed for the death of a 20-year-old kid who was in the wrong place, wrong time in Sokovia. That accidental death that can be put down to negligence on his part, is pivotal to what happens next. So pivotal he uses it in his pitch for why the other Avengers need to sign the Accords.

Tony, midway through the movie, deliberately brings a 15-year-old child into this conflict. A child he blackmails into going with him, because if you don’t, I will tell your aunt.

Charles Spencer was an innocent civilian, wrong place, wrong time in Sokovia. He died. That tears Tony up, as it rightfully should. And yet, in the midst of his crusade about following laws and accountability, he lies to May Parker about taking her 15-year-old nephew out of the country and into a warzone. Ignoring some well-established laws about child soldiers.

Tony blackmailing a child who’s had his powers for 6 months into participating in this conflict makes no sense. Ever. It especially makes no sense in the context of Charles Spencer and his mother. Yet neither Tony nor the writers seem to comprehend this. Which is why Irondad has been bullshit from the start. Blackmail and kidnapping are not sweet, father-son moments, even if you ignore the fact, as the MCU wants to, that Peter had a father already, in Ben Parker. He has a loving adult parental figure in May Parker. Both of whom cared about him before he had spider powers that might be helpful to them.

All of this, I’ve said before, so have others. And then I realized that I actually hate Irondad more than I thought. That Feige and co. mishandled it even more than I thought, and why? Because of this.

We know the story. Peter was, supposedly, this kid Tony saved at the Stark Expo in Iron Man 2. Started out as a fan theory, and then was confirmed that yes, this is true, this is exactly what we intended.

Now, we know Civil War had different writers/directors than Homecoming or FFH did. We also know that, for all the lip service of, ‘It’s all connected,’ we know that the creatives in these different franchises do not always talk to each other, and that they often blatantly contradict each other.

Taking all that into account, acknowledging that…the dumbasses at Marvel did not think up the idea of Peter being the Iron Man 2 kid. They heard the theory, thought it was cool, then took credit for having meant that the entire time, yes, that was totally us.

We know this because it is never mentioned in canon. All those Tony and Peter interactions, all those times of yes, Mr. Stark, I just want to be like you, Mr. Stark, and Peter never mentions that? When Tony takes he suit from him in Homecoming and Peter says that he just wants another chance, wants to be like Tony, would he not mention that hey, you saved my life, Mr. Stark. You saved my life and I just wanted to be like you, and now I can be, now I can save lives like you, just please give me another chance.

If the Iron Man 2 theory were true, would he not say that? In FFH, when he’s all guilt-ridden, I didn’t save him, would he not mention that hey, he saved my life before I was Spider-man, before I was special, before I was anyone?

Now I know what you’re thinking. The Iron Man 2 thing isn’t that big a deal. It’s not a crucial thing. And you know what, you’re right. It isn’t, it’s just always annoyed me, in an eyeroll way, that the same people who couldn’t count properly between 2012 and 2017 (8 years later flashing in giant letters across our screens means that Homecoming was meant to take place in 2020), that these same people who let something so blatantly timeline breaking get through then took credit for a kind of cool, kind of clever fan theory. It’s annoying.

I’ve now realized, however, that it is far more than annoying to me. Because TPTB at Marvel did not think of that idea for themselves, but if they had, and if they’d run with that idea? If they had, it would’ve made Peter’s recruitment in Civil War so much more fucked up than it already is, but so much more interesting. So, so, so much more interesting.

I’ve talked about why Spidey’s own movies (as much as you can call them that given the level of Tony infiltration) prove that the theory isn’t true. Now let’s go to Civil War. Different writers, yes, but let’s talk anyway about why we can tell from CW that Peter was not that kid.

He gets home. May is like, look who it is, Tony Stark. Not, look who it is, the hero who literally saved your life. When Tony locks himself in Peter’s room with him (still fucking gross, Jesus Christ), Peter is just, nope, I got no idea what you’re talking about. That’s—no, I’m not a superhero, no. He’s defensive. He’s apprehensive. He’s trying to figure out what fresh hell this is. He’s trying to hide stuff from Tony. If this is the guy who saved him at the Stark Expo, why this reaction? Why not, oh my god, you saved my life, I thought I’d never see you again, not, not up close I mean. When Tony asks him to do a thing, why is it not, well yeah, duh , you saved my life, where do we start? Or even, okay, I don’t really wanna do this, but, you saved my life, I owe you?

So, nobody wrote a fucking word of any of Peter and Tony’s interactions under the theory that he was the Stark Expo kid.

But what if they had?

Tony shows up at May’s place. He does not know who Peter is, in relation to their “meeting” before. He’s expecting to have to do some level of smooth talk to get in here but, nope. May’s just, oh my god, you saved my boy’s life, come in, come in!

We don’t know for sure that Peter was orphaned by the time of the Expo, but if we base it on comics and prior films, he likely was. Most versions seem to have him fall under Ben and May’s care between 2 and 6.  O1’ birthday means he would’ve been around 9 at the Expo. So, more than likely, Ben or May or both were the ones there with him. They may credit Tony with saving their lives as well.

So, Tony starts the movie being called out by a grieving mother. Going down this route, we’re at the midpoint…and here’s a different mother telling him how great he is. How he saved the most important thing in her life. How if Ben were here (May’s wearing her wedding ring around her neck btw, you can see it in the scene), Ben would say the same thing. Shake his hand. Hug him.

Now, Tony’s got a sharp ass mind, when it’s not clouded with booze or drugs or the like. Since he wasn’t wasted at the Expo, there’s a good chance that, given some details, he remembers saving this kid. He remembers how small this little boy actually was. He remembers how light this kid was when he grabbed him. It was a few seconds in a long ass night, that he hasn’t thought about in years, but to May Parker, it’s everything.

So maybe at this point Tony’s rethinking this. He’s remembering that little boy, realizing how young he still is. He pulled that boy from danger. And now here’s this woman who invited him into her house, told him how her husband just passed recently, things have been hard, especially for Peter but God, he’ll love to see you. Maybe Tony’s rethinking this, coming up with a way out, when Peter shows up. And then, aw hell. The kid’s just a mess of excitement and shock, possibly tears…okay now it’s just gotten harder to make an exit.

Let’s pause here to say that May Parker is not fucking dumb (“Cut the bullshit. I know you left detention. I know you left the hotel room in Washington. I know you sneak out of this house every night.”).

May is not dumb. Letting the 50-year-old dude go into her nephew’s room with him, alone? Arguably dumb, even if it is Iron Man. Letting him grab the kid for some Stark…thing, and take him wherever Tony said he was taking him on 12 seconds notice? Even more arguably dumb.  CW as it’s written dumbs down May’s character for the sake of an already questionable plot point. Especially since she literally says she’s not a fan of Tony in Homecoming. Yes, her comment there comes after the “internship,” her noting Peter’s distraction and stress because of it. But still, it’s fucking weird that she’d let this man take her kid out of the country, alone, in CW. It makes her dumb for the sake of plot.

But if Stark saved Peter’s life not so long ago? It at least makes a bit more sense. He’s a hero. Peter literally wouldn’t be here without him. Why would Tony hurt him now?

So, back to the scene. Peter’s probably less paranoid about showing his stuff to Tony. Probably not spilling everything himself, but when Tony notices things, Peter’s probably less panicked over it, more willing to confirm. Yes, he’s got these powers, okay? And he hasn’t had them for long, but he’s trying to do good, like Tony. He’s trying to do the right thing, like Tony.

Now, this kid has such literal hero worship going, and he’s so damn inexperienced, he admits that. And Tony’s still got Charles Spencer’s mom in his head. He’s dead, Stark. And I blame you.

Can Tony really take this kid—actual minor kid younger than Charles was—take him and put him on the field against the goddamn Avengers? That woman out there with the dead husband and the ring around her neck, what’s he going to say if Peter gets hurt, or worse? Sure the kid obviously has skills but, can he risk another grieving mom?

So, maybe Tony’s rethinking this. Maybe he can still get out of this, improvise a Plan B. But then there’s a text from Nat or Ross. Where are you? We’ve only got a few hours, what’s the play?

Special circumstances, nobody in that group is really gonna fight to kill…it’s special circumstances, and he can keep the kid mostly sidelined.

This time, he doesn’t have to blackmail Peter. He doesn’t have to threaten to expose his secret. Peter’s willing, either because he genuinely wants to, or he feels he owes Tony a debt. So there goes the dick factor of Tony literally blackmailing a child. And the lack of questions Peter seems to ask about what he’s fighting for, the acceptance of vague answers, that’d also make more sense in this context.

In this version, Tony is both more and less of a dick. He’s doing less active threatening and manipulation…but he’s also being doubly manipulative. His genuinely good deed gives him an easy in with the Parkers. He’s playing on the credibility of an earlier, at least somewhat better version of himself. One who saved Peter Parker and hadn’t yet ended Charles Spencer.

Look, I won’t lie, I legit don’t know what I’m saying anymore, except that Marvel sucks for taking credit for a thing that they definitely do not have credit for. Which isn’t particularly new for them, and wouldn’t particularly matter if the thing they took credit for (and didn’t do anything with) could’ve offered some interesting story possibilities.

#anti tony stark #anti irondad #iron man 2 #peter parker #may parker #kinda fuck marvel though really #spider-man #civil war

[crystalirises]

The World Moved On, but You're Stuck in the Past

Ah yes, Villain Dream who does not see himself as a villain my beloved <333 Honestly, I'm not really sure what Dream and Wilbur's current evil (are they still villains??? Dream probably not cause the poor guy got tortured oof and maybe not Wilbur cause... I don’t know, is he being evil??? Is he okay??? I don’t know what these characters are up to) plans so just... have this flimsy idea cause I don't know what they're planning XD

TW: Mentioned Blood, Implied Murder, Villain Dream who does not realize he's the villain and so justifies the crimes he did, and Insane Revived Wilbur Soot

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28886223/chapters/80235868

He was free.

Wilbur was the first face he saw once he took his first step into the outside world, splatters of green blood decorated the obsidian floor and walls. The revived man was standing with a sword, leaning against it while he waved Dream over with a smile. He tried not to be disgusted by him.

“How does the sun feel on your skin? I remember the day you brought me back, the sun was rising in the distance and I never felt so alive. It’s good to be back, right Dream?” He met the man’s eyes, those dark pools seemingly darker than the day that he had died. He still looked like he’d just recently gotten out of Limbo, and Dream had no doubt that the man had been neglecting his own care. He could only hope that he didn’t have to drag the man’s ass out of Limbo again due to his own negligence. Besides, Wilbur had a point. He looked down at his fingers, basking in the sunlight that shone down upon them. It felt nice against his cheek. “The warden had been difficult to fight but, I guess I just got lucky. You know, I made a new country.”

“D-did… you?” He coughed, pressing a hand against his mouth. It had been so long since he’d spoken. He felt cool glass touch his skin, glancing over to see that Wilbur was handing him a water bottle. Dream didn’t hesitate to snatch it from the man’s hand, drinking the water quickly even if it meant he’d had to pause every now and then just to cough. He hadn’t had clean water in a while. Wilbur watched him with narrowed eyes, a smile on his face before Dream noticed what the man was now holding. His mask. He reached out to grab it. “Another L’Manburg—?”

“L’Manburg is now a fucking crater.” He flinched, a memory of Quackity flashing in his mind. His scars still stung, even if he was used to the pain. Wilbur pressed the mask against his hand, rolling his eyes while a sneer stretched across his face. “This new country will be better. It will.”

“... if you say so…”

“But, let’s not get on the wrong foot here. We’re friends now, allies even, right Dream? You brought me back from that shithole and I paid my dues by setting you free? But who’s to say that our little friendship should stop there, hm? Y-you know? I-I mean you’re all alone now, like me.” Dream gritted his teeth at the reminder, his hands curling into fists. How far he’d come. Now he was at the bottom with Wilbur Soot of all people. No best friends to hang out with. No mother to cry to. No fiance to love and hold. And all because of children who couldn’t realize their place in his world. “So I was thinking. You need a place to stay, hm? Well, why not stay with me!”

He raised a brow at the suggestion. Allies with Wilbur? And with a country involved? That was not going to end well. Dream glanced over at the prison, his throat drying and his knees buckling under the weight of his fears. He didn’t care for Wilbur, but what choice did he have? “Deal.”

“Good man!” He recoiled when Wilbur wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Wilbur’s stare stayed on him for a while longer, and Dream could already tell what he was thinking. He scowled at the thought. He didn’t need the man’s pity. So what if he was thinner? He could still beat the resurrected fool in armed combat. “Y-you know, Quackity has his own nation too.”

“I know.” Las Nevadas, he’d heard Quackity mention it before, and even the warden had mentioned it once. Wilbur had a determined look in his eye, a dark one that Dream knew all too well. Except somehow he felt that they had swapped roles, Dream had directed Wilbur to cause L’Manberg’s destruction, and now Wilbur was directing him. He sighed but followed after the madman. It wasn’t like he had anything else on his schedule. But he wasn’t sure if he could even face Quackity after… Dream placed the mask over his face. He would not let Wilbur see his worry or his doubts. He needed an ally, especially now more than ever, even if it meant having to help Wilbur in the destruction of another nation. “What plan of attack are you proposing? What did Quackity do against you? I will join you Wilbur but I would like to hear an explanation first.”

“He didn’t want me in his nation.” And oh how the world changes. Dream tried not to scoff at the ridiculous answer. He’d felt the same way when L’Manburg was made, who was he to judge a clearly unstable man? Wilbur had stretched out his arms, resting them against the back of his head like a man who had nothing to stress about. Dream didn’t like how it felt to stand next to him. He felt short, weak. He clenched his teeth together, feeling them grind against each other. Dream could only hope that Wilbur didn’t make him his lackey. He would kill the man and send him back to Limbo if he so much used Dream like that. “He let Purpled, Sam, Foolish, and some weird slime monster into his nation. He… he even stole my son from me… the fucking asshole.”

Fundy was with…

“You created a new nation to spite him?” Dream looked away, wishing that he had his old lime jacket instead of the dirty prisoner outfit that he wore. The warden had made sure that the uniform didn’t come with pockets… after the first incident. “Must you get into another conflict?”

Dream stopped listening once Wilbur began his tirade on Las Nevadas and how he wanted a rivalry with Quackity. He didn’t care for the resurrected man’s shenanigans. Dream was free, and that was all he needed Wilbur for. Getting a home and an ally were added bonuses. He nodded along, pretending to listen while his mind drifted to what Wilbur had mentioned. Fundy was in Las Nevadas, and he sided with Quackity. His heart began to beat even faster in his chest, an ache spreading over his entire body. How long has it been since he’d even last seen his fiance?

He should pay him a visit.

 ---

 “Should I add breaking and entering into your list of crimes or should I message Sam and let him see for himself?” Those weren’t the first words he had expected to hear once he’d managed to sneak into Fundy’s little cabin. He had tried knocking, a lot, but nobody had come to the door. Dream had checked through one of the windows and had found Fundy curled up in bed. He hadn’t come there to talk… not really. He just wanted to see Fundy again. The fox hybrid glared at him from the end of the small bedroom, his claws out while he clambered to a sitting position. His eyes were narrowed into slits, and Dream only had a second to realize why Fundy hadn’t begun to growl at him. There was a baby fox hybrid next to Fundy, but they were fast asleep. “Get the fuck out of my house. Don’t think I won’t hesitate to call the warden on your ass.”

“I wanted to see you.” Fundy rolled his eyes at his words, shaking his head before plopping back down on the bed, careful not to actually disturb the sleeping kid. Dream tried to keep himself from prying, but it was hard not to. He hadn’t seen his fiance in so long, and now that he has, there’s a lot of details to take note of. For one, Fundy was living in a cabin far away from where anyone could find him. There were dark circles underneath his eyes, and despite being threatened, Dream had noticed the fox hybrid’s sluggish movements. The way his eyes seemed to blink open and close like he was processing that Dream was really in front of him. Not to mention, Fundy had a kid. When did that happen? “Wilbur broke me out a few weeks ago—”

“Why?” He stopped, glancing over at Fundy who had curled up again, a hand resting on the back of the kid’s head. Fundy’s eyes were closed, his breath harsh and filled with controlled rage. Dream leaned back against the wall, shoes scraping against the floor while he adjusted his mask. He used to be comfortable not wearing his mask around Fundy, but now, he couldn’t even fathom what they were to each other. He swallowed down the bitter taste in his throat. He did what he had to. No matter what he had to lose in the end. Still. Seeing Fundy this way, seeing the world move on without him, it felt like he had been drenched in lava. How dare everyone move on? Did his words mean nothing? Did his actions mean nothing? Had they not thought of what he had meant at all? Everyone moved on, and didn’t bother to listen to him. Fundy had turned to glare at him, a tired yet furious look in his gaze. “Why the fuck would you bring Wilbur back?”

“I needed someone to help me escape from prison. Wilbur would have done anything if I’d asked him to—” He jumped before a pillow could slam into his face, glancing over at Fundy whose glare hadn’t wavered. He wasn’t sure if it was his reflexes or Fundy’s exhaustion that saved him from getting hit. Dream sighed, placing a hand against his chest. This is why he hadn’t wanted to talk. He wasn’t a fool, he knew how his own fiance would react to him being free. “None of you would have helped me, anyway. Wilbur was my safest option. Besides, I memorized the revival book and I wanted to see if it worked. I know Eret and Phil tried to bring Wilbur back before—”

“You’re playing god again. I’m not surprised, you’ve always been like this, haven’t you?”

“What…?” Dream glanced over at Fundy, slowly moving to pick up the pillow that had been thrown his way. He handed it over to his fiance who quickly grabbed it from him. “I don’t…”

“Since the start, we’ve all been puppets in this game of yours, haven’t we?” He watched Fundy hug the pillow closer to his chest, the fox hybrid burying his face. Maybe he couldn’t stand to even look at him. “This whole world, our lives, we were just dolls for you to play and discard once you’ve gotten bored. Wilbur had been the perfect doll, doing what you wanted in the end. Tommy is your least favorite, isn’t he? Since he’s always getting in your way? You hate him.”

“I hate the trouble he’s caused.” He huffed. It felt like no one really understood him. Dream leaned back against the wall, knowing that the longer he stayed near Fundy, the higher the chance he’d get his mask scratched. “Tommy’s with Wilbur over at his new nation. He’s untouchable if I want to keep my alliance with Wilbur, but I believe that I might be able to co—”

“You’re still the same Dream who got imprisoned, glad to know you haven’t changed a bit. Gods, what did I ever fucking see in you…” That stung. Dream glanced over but Fundy had chosen to lay back down again, nuzzling his chin on top of the younger fox hybrid’s head. A part of him couldn’t help but envy the display, wondering if he and Fundy would be married if he had only succeeded and hadn’t been imprisoned. Whose kid even was that? Dream stood up, catching Fundy’s attention again. In a better world, he could have shown everyone that he had been in the right. Then his best friends would still be his friends. Then his mother would still see him as her duckling. Then his fiance would have still married him and they could be living in a quaint cabin together. “What was I to you Dream? I was a puppet too, I know, but what role was I suppose—”

“I want you back.” He hadn’t meant to say that, but it was too late. He was only glad that his face was covered by the mask. Fundy stared at him, an incredulous look morphing across his face with every second that ticked by. He watched Fundy pull the kid closer to himself, like he was scared of… of what Dream would do. “Can’t we try again? I could show you my intentions. I-I could convince you why I’m in the right. We-we could work together! We don’t need Wilbur or Tommy, it could just be us! Everyone’s moving on, and everyone’s changing, so why can’t we try again? This would be a new chapter in our lives. Please. Please, come with me. Please, star.”

“You hurt my dad. You hurt my uncle. And now you’re asking me to go with you?”

Fundy laughed, shaking his head. “Fuck you.”

The fox hybrid sighed, turning away from him. “Get out before I call the warden.”

A heavy air fell over the room.

Dream sighed, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Fundy. Goodbye.”

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

Yogurt, you are there in spirit

AKA sleeping while dads argue in front of you

#dream dsmp #wilbur soot #fundy #fundywastaken #dream smp fanfiction #dsmp

[hashtagartistlife]

and then there were none

Ichigo Kurosaki, college student, gets roped into a dorm game with a long tradition and finds it a little more than he bargained for. Kuchiki Rukia, college student, has never done anything by halves-- and that includes stupid traditional dorm welcoming games. The r.a.s regret the day they placed her knife in his hands.

There was a tumblr post going around that I can no longer find about a welcoming game at an American college dormitory. The basic idea behind it was that everyone in the dorms get a plastic knife with someone else's name on it, and they had to find that person and 'stab' them with the knife (just a simple touch was counted as valid) to 'murder' them. The 'victim' is then out of the game, and they had to hand over their own plastic knife to their 'murderer'. Whoever is on the 'victim's plastic knife was the new victim for the 'murderer'.

My first instinct upon seeing anything vaguely amusing is always 'make it ichiruki'. So here's the fic about it.

(There's two chapters planned, and please don't ask me when the next chapter will be up, it's not high on my priority list. But it WILL come, some day. I don't make it a habit to abandon fic, even though sometimes it seems like I have. Promise.)

___________________________________________________________

So, college dorms were pretty wild. 

For small-town Karakura boy Kurosaki Ichigo, living in a co-ed dorm at a university in America has been nothing short of an eye-opening experience. There are people walking around barefeet in only a towel. Some girl set off the smoke alarm because she was cooking cup noodles in the bathroom at 2am. He’s pretty sure he’s heard his dormmates having sex through the walls on more than one occasion, and the food served at the cafeteria is only edible about half the time. All in all, it’s a little bemusing, but not at all unpleasant, and by the third week of his move he thinks he’s settling in ok. His room is mostly in order, and he’s made at least passing acquaintances with the people on his floor. His English is improving at a frankly astonishing speed, and classes don’t start till next week. He’s figured out which stall in the bathroom spits out the most reliable hot water, and he really thinks he’s got a good handle on this whole ‘dorm living’ thing—

that is, until he gets back to his dorm room one night to find a plastic knife shoved under his door. 

“The fuck…?” he mutters, trying to figure out if this was an American befriending ritual, or maybe someone was just attempting to threaten him (badly)? Did his room look like a trashcan? Did Chad (he thinks that was his name) from room 209 remember what he said about not having a grasp on American cutlery yet and decide to help him in a subtle way? 

He raps on the door next to his, and a muffled voice yells ‘who is it?’

“It’s Kurosaki from 206,” he replies, and the door cracks open to reveal a single brown eye and a strand of auburn hair. 

“Oh, hi, Kurosaki-kun!” Inoue Orihime from 207 was…. an odd girl. She liked putting parsley in her coffee and read astrophysics textbooks for fun. But Ichigo doesn’t remember her ever being this defensive— she’d always been enthusiastic about greeting people, so the way that she refuses to open her door more than an inch is uncharacteristic of her. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, I just got back from the library and there was this knife shoved under my door—”

At this, Inoue screams and slams her door shut; Ichigo is left more than a little bemused. “Inoue? What the hell— it’s only a plastic knife!” 

“I know that, Kurosaki-kun! As if I’m just going to let you win this— but by the way, this is terrible strategy, now I know to avoid you like the plague—”

“Strategy?! Inoue, what the fuck— wait, is this plastic knife meant to mean something? Is this some American etiquette thing? I have no idea what’s going on. Please explain to me what this knife means—”

Inoue opens her door a crack again, and looks at him suspiciously. 

“Wait, so you didn’t hear the murder announcement at breakfast today?” 

“Murder announcement?! Jesus FUCK, who died—”

“Nobody died, Kurosaki-kun, don’t be overdramatic—”

“AS FAR AS MY ENGLISH SKILLS GO, INOUE, MURDER MEANS SOMEBODY DIED—”

“Wow, you really don’t listen to the breakfast announcements at all, do you?” Inoue sounds supremely unimpressed, but at least she opens the door a bit further; except what the hell is she only wearing a towel—?!

“Inoue why the fuck are you only wearing a towel—”

Inoue waves her hand like that’s a negligible detail. “Just got out of the shower, but also murder strategy. You’re immune if you’re naked, and some of the second years recommended this. I’m in this to win, Kurosaki-kun, there’s a whole year’s supply of cup noodles in this for me—”

“Wait, what? Cup noodles?” That got his attention. Anything that scored him a whole year’s supply of free cup noodles was okay in his book. Questionable towel-wearing included. “Now you really gotta explain what’s going on.” 

“I should leave you to rot, one less person to compete against for me.” Inoue purses her lips. “But you were the first one to pour a bucket of water on that fire I started last week, so fine, I’ll let you in on the murder details.” 

“Not a sentence I thought I’d ever hear in my life, but cheers, America,” Ichigo mutters. 

“So basically, murder’s a game that the whole dorm plays every year,” Inoue starts explaining, and Ichigo’s still trying to get over the weirdness of the word murder being used so casually— “and everyone gets these plastic knives with someone’s name written on them, and the idea is you have to stab that person with the knife and ‘’’kill’’’ them. Then you get their knife, and you just keep killing people and collecting knives until you’re the last person left! Hmm, there were a couple of rules, you can’t kill someone in the dining room or their own rooms, and you’re immune if you’re naked, but I think that was it? Anyway. So yeah! That’s what’s going on here!” 

Ichigo squints at his knife in the half-dark of the corridor that, for some reason, has had all its lights screwed out. “Ok, that’s…. Great, I suppose? What happens if I don’t know who the person on my knife is?”

“Then you find out, Kurosaki-kun! This game was ostensibly devised so that we make friends, you know.”

“There are no friends when it comes to a year’s free supply of cup noodles,” Ichigo says, and Inoue claps her hands. 

“Precisely! You’re getting the hang of it now. Ergo, for the next week, I don’t know you, ok? Good luck!” 

Inoue slams her door shut, and Ichigo shuffles back to his room, feeling slightly more enlightened than before. 

But still— 

“Who the hell is Rukia Kuchiki?”

__________________________________________________________

By the second week of Murder, Ichigo’s seen enough naked butts to last him a lifetime. It seems that voluntary nakedness is a vastly preferable fate for many than losing a shot at a year’s supply of free cup noodles, and honestly if that doesn’t sum up the average college student mindset Ichigo doesn’t know what does. (He’d probably be a lot more judgemental about it, though, if he hadn’t spent at least a few hours earnestly contemplating the strategy himself.) 

Thankfully, he and Chad have an alliance of sorts that makes him wearing a towel round the place redundant. He’d enlisted the giant’s help in identifying his would-be target, and after ascertaining that he wasn’t the name on Chad’s knife either (Chad had one Asano Keigo as his victim, Ichigo only knows him as that guy who swallowed a whole tablespoon of cinnamon powder on a dare), the two of them had agreed to watch the other’s back. Chad was set to pull off his first attack tomorrow, but Ichigo still had no clue who or where Rukia Kuchiki was. 

Part of the problem was that the dorm was so friggin’ huge; there were four wings, each with five floors, and each floor had ten rooms. That was 200 potential students he had to parse through to find his victim, and it wasn’t exactly like he could go around asking people if they knew her. Murder had amped hostility on campus up by 300%, and almost nobody stopped for idle chatter anymore.

Whoever had devised this as a way of promoting friendliness and unity on campus was a giant fuckin’ moron. 

“Still no word on Kuchiki?” Chad asks, after another day of paranoia and stalking Asano to make sure the plan goes off without a hitch, and Ichigo shakes his head. 

“Are they even real at this stage? Are we sure I haven’t been given someone who doesn’t exist?” 

“Ghost student?” 

“Fuckin’ potentially? Who the fuck knows with America.”

Chad hides a smile behind his rickety old guitar and starts tuning. “I’ll ask around my bandmates tomorrow, if you’d like.” 

“Naw, s’alright. I don’t want word to get out that I’m looking for them. What kinda giant flashing beacon that says HEY, I’M YOUR POTENTIAL MURDERER, right?” 

“If you say so.” 

“I do.” Because dammit all, Ichigo’s serious about this thing. A whole year’s supply of cup noodles is no joking matter. Speaking of which, he wonders how Inoue is doing with her murders…

_______________________________________________________________

Inoue, as it turns out, is doing swimmingly. While Ichigo has done little more than sit around and twiddle his thumbs, Inoue has already racked up an impressive collection of plastic knives— three, she informs him that night, while cheerfully throwing him a celebratory can of leek soda (Ichigo gingerly sets it down behind her sofa when she's not looking). She was making good headway on her next victim, as well, and if all went according to plan she'd have her fourth knife tomorrow morning—

“But, you know, Kurosaki-kun,” she muses, sipping on her own can of beetroot soda (where did she get these concoctions from!?), “You're awfully cavalier about this whole thing. For all you know, you could be my next victim,but here you are, sitting on my couch. Or do you just not care about cup noodles?”

He snorts. “If you ever got ahold of my knife, I'm pretty sure I'd be dead before we even got to have this conversation.”

“True,” she concedes— credit where credit is due. “So nobody’s popped up to try to kill you yet?”

“Nope,” he replies, popping the p a little. Honestly, that was the only thing making him feel better about his complete inability to murder anyone— the fact that whoever had his knife was having just as much difficulty tracking him down. One week in, and he'd not seen hide nor hair of this Rukia Kuchiki person, and, big dorm or not, her (her? Ichigo assumes it's a girl, though Rukia is very unusual for a Japanese name) elusiveness is getting to be extremely impressive. “But Chad is watching my back for me anyway. I'm covered.”

“Hmm.” Inoue purses her lips. “That's a lot of faith in someone you've only known, for, what, three weeks?”

“Chad is trustworthy,” Ichigo says firmly. He stands and stretches up to the ceiling, stifling a yawn. “And speaking of Chad, I better get to bed. He's ambushing Asano tomorrow, I told him I'd be there for backup.”

Inoue waves. “Good luck to Sado-kun, then. I’m gonna stay up a bit to refine my own dastardly plans.”

He shakes his head and opens the door, peering out into the corridor to make sure the coast was clear. He and Inoue were literally next door neighbours, but you couldn't be too careful these days. “When you win this thing I'm gonna be expecting free noodles from you occasionally. Remember I stopped you from burning down the whole dorms last week.”

“I'll consider it.”

“‘Night, then.”

“Goodnight, Kurosaki-kun. Dream of Rukia Kuchiki tonight!”

“At this stage,” Ichigo mutters, as he slips back into his room, “anything to help me find out who the hell she is.”

_______________________________________________________

Drastic times call for drastic measures. The next morning, after a successful ambush on Asano (Chad is now +1 plastic knife; his new victim is called Yammy Llargo), Ichigo tracks down someone he'd been avoiding ever since his move to America and claps a hand on her shoulder. 

“Hey.” 

Arisawa Tatsuki whirls around and body-slams him into the ground. “Who the fuck do you think you— Ichigo?”

He winces. “Hi.”

Tatsuki puts her hands on her hips and does not offer him any help getting up. “Oh, so you're talking to me now?”

“I just said hi, didn't I?”

“You know, you're such a fucking asshole, did it ever occur in your pathetic little brain to apologise—”

“I'm sorry,” Ichigo mutters sullenly. “Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was also going to college in America, I'm sorry you found out only when you bumped into me at the dorm welcoming party, it's just that we had that whole farewell party for you and we had that touching goodbye and, look it's just awkward that I got a second round admissions letter the very next day, it's like saying bye to a friend and then finding out you're walking the same way to the carpark, ok, it’s embarrassing—”

“Oh my god, you drama queen. Were you ever planning on telling me? Ever? Your best friend since childhood?”

“... I might’ve planned to tell you at the beginning of the next semester by pretending I was on exchange,” he admits. Tatsuki throws her hands up in the air. 

“You were going to avoid me for a whole semester?!”

“Look, I didn't know I’d end up in the same dorm as you, ok? It's a big campus!”

“Un-be-lievable,” she says, turning on a heel and walking away from him. “You know what, keep ignoring me. Don’t hang out around here. I don’t want your incredible loser vibes accidentally rubbing off—” 

“I said sorry, didn’t I? Wait, wait, I had something to ask you!” 

“Sorry doesn’t pay my bills, Ichigo!” 

Ichigo catches up to her and falls into stride. “You don’t even pay bills! You’re on a full scholarship!”

Tatsuki manages a smug smile. “If you’re so jealous, maybe you should have kept up with karate.”

Ichigo grumbles. “Yeah, right, like I had a chance at a physical education scholarship with you in the same dojo.” 

“I’m glad you’re finally acknowledging my superiority—!”

“You beat my ass continuously from when we were six to sixteen, I threw away any pride I had a long damn time ago.” He makes a face at the memory, then shakes his head to refocus. “Anyway, this isn’t why I was here. Listen, have you heard of anyone around here called Rukia Kuchiki—?”

Tatsuki cocks her head to the side at that, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Kuchiki…? Name sounds familiar. Why?”

Ichigo feels his heart speed up in his chest. “What, really? Where did you hear it? Do you know her?” 

And now she was grinning again and— oh, no, Ichigo does not like the look of that smile. “Why do you want to know?” she asks, and the question is laden with suggestion. Ichigo flushes. 

“None of your damn busi— look, it’s not what you think—”

“Aw, my little mama’s boy Ichigo is all grown up, I remember when you used to go crying to your mom for a scraped knee and now you’re chasing after women—” 

“It’s for murder, you absolute pain in the butt! She’s my target!”

Tatsuki bursts out laughing, hearty peals of laughter bouncing off the courtyard walls. “Alright, alright, I get you. I was just teasing, Ichigo, geez. Anyway, the name sounds familiar, but that doesn’t mean I know her. I can’t remember where I’ve heard it before.”

Ichigo deflates as quickly as he’d been riled up. “Are you serious right now—?”

“Hey, you can talk, mister ‘I’m-really-bad-at-remembering-names-and-faces! And yeah, I’m serious. I don’t have a stake in murder anymore. I got killed two days in.”

Ok, that surprises him. He raises a skeptical eyebrow. “What, really? Who the hell did you in?”

“Some girl named Orihime Inoue,” she grumbles, kicking a nearby rock. “Tae-kwon-do black belt, apparently??? She doesn’t even look the type!” 

Ichigo makes a noise of sympathy and understanding. He should have guessed.

“Anyway, now I’m roped into helping her. So I don’t think I’d be able to tell you about Rukia Kuchiki, even if I’d known any more about her. Victims who are murdered have to help their murderer, and all.”

Ichigo frowns. “Wait, those are the rules?”

“That’s what Inoue said.” 

“............ I am about 95% sure that those were not part of murder rules.”

There’s a short silence between the two as they process this.

“...... scary girl,” Tatsuki finally says, in a grudgingly admiring tone.

“I’ll say.” 

The two of them stop their brisk walk in front of a huge pair of doors emblazoned with the words GYM, and Tatsuki waves him off. “Anyway, I gotta go train now. Any further questions before I go?”

Ichigo thinks a bit. “Yeah, why drama queen? Since I’m a guy, shouldn’t it be drama king?”

“Do I look like a linguist? You always scored better than I did at this stupid language. Take it up with whoever your hero was, Willy Shakealot or something?”

“Shakespeare,” he says sharply. “And Shakespeare wasn’t a linguist. In fact, I’m pretty sure linguists really hate him. He made up a lot of weird words and shit.”

“He did? Huh. Didn’t know you were allowed to do that.” 

“You’re not, Shakespeare just gave zero fucks.” Ichigo shrugs and takes a half-step back, raising his hand in a goodbye salute. “Why else do you think he was my hero?”

Tatsuki rolls her eyes. “Whatever. You’re still a loser.” 

“And you’re a bitch. Let me know if you remember anything about Kuchiki.”

“Only if we get to go halves on the cup noodles.” 

“I’ll think about it.”

“Then I’ll think about it, too.” 

That was probably the best he was going to get out of her. “Later, then.”

“If you can bear the embarrassment of us meeting again despite already having said goodbye, then sure.”

Ichigo shakes his head and lets her have that parting riposte. He hadn’t won a single match, verbal or physical, against Tatsuki since they’d been in diapers; he figures, what with the way his luck was going lately, that he wasn’t about to start now. 

__________________________________________________________

Just as Ichigo walks away, a tiny girl brushes past him on her way to the gym. Her black hair falls short and sleek, tickling her jawline and the nape of her neck, and the clean scent of cucumber and mint follows in her wake. She jostles him a little, bumping into his elbow, but Ichigo hardly notices the slight press of her body against his, small and light as she is. She mutters a hasty apology, and disappears into the building before he can formulate a reply. 

Ichigo shrugs and goes on his merry way. 

_______________________________________________________

The third week of murder brings about a calamitous change in the game as Ichigo knows it, due to several factors:

Orihime Inoue kills not one, not two, but three people in quick succession;

Someone finally stages an attack on him, but runs away without having completed the deed, and

Chad dies.

Not literally, of course, but Ichigo has to admit, the figurative loss still hits him pretty damn hard. Chad takes it as stoically as ever, with a shrug and twitch of his eyebrow, and goes back to working on music for his band. 

“Does anything faze you?” Ichigo wonders, after Chad hands his knife over to Inoue (because of course it was Inoue who took him out. Of course). 

“Puppies.”

“Fair enough.” 

“Kittens, too.” 

“... Right.”

“And birds. And rabbits. And small children—”

“So basically, you’re a sucker for anything cute?”

Chad shrugs again, which Ichigo takes as a yes. He crumples up his soda can and lobs it into the bin. 

“You were attacked today, too. Aren’t you worried?”

Ichigo considers it. “A bit, yeah. Sucks that you got taken out of the game. But you can still watch my back when you can, right? I’ll go halves on the noodles with you.” 

Chad nods. “When I can. I might be busier with my band soon, though.” 

“Understandable. I’ll try and keep myself alive in the meantime. At least I know who’s aiming for me, now. Neru? Nel?”

“Neliel Tu Odelschwancke.” 

Ichigo stares. “How the hell do you remember that?”

“She’s in my music theory class. And she has green hair. She’s not hard to miss.”

“Well, good. Should make it easier to see her coming.”

Chad smiles. “Your hair isn’t exactly hard to miss, either.” 

“Aw, shut up. I take back what I said about the noodles.” 

They sit in companionable silence for a while, the sounds of Chad tuning his guitar the only thing between them. Eventually, Chad breaks the ice. 

“And Kuchiki?”

Ichigo huffs a dry laugh. “No fuckin’ clue who or where she is. I’ve even been asking around, now that a lot of people have been dropped from the game by dying. But nobody seems to know who she is, even though everyone says her name sounds familiar. It’s driving me up the goddamn wall.”

“When I first heard the name, I thought that too.”

“What, that it sounds like a name that’s going to drive me up the wall?”

“No, that it sounds familiar.”

At this point, Ichigo is more tired than exasperated. “Yeah, s’what everyone says. Whatever. I’ll either find her or I won’t, right? No point getting annoyed over it. Better just focus on staying alive, because I swear to god if I die before finding out who she is I’ll be pissed.”

“You better hope,” Chad says gravely, “that Inoue doesn’t get her hands on your knife, then.” 

“You, me, and the entire dorm population, mate.” 

________________________________________________________

Ichigo drops by Inoue’s room that evening, just to check he isn’t next on her list. He’s lucky— he’s not. But some poor fucker by the name of Uryuu Ishida is.

“I waited outside his room all day and he didn’t even exit once!” Inoue’s saying, brandishing the knife with his name on it like a conductor directing Beethoven’s Ninth. “What kind of— of social recluse does that?!”

“Damn,” Ichigo replies, ignoring the fact that he did exactly that for days on end during the summer holidays, rereading The Compleat Works of Shakespeare in English and Japanese. “Sounds like a loser.”

“Apparently he’s like— the dorm cryptid,” she says, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Nobody’s— nobody’s really seen him in the flesh. They’re not sure he even exists. They think he’s second-year pre-med and that he was valedictorian of his grade last year, but nobody knows for sure.”

“Inoue, how did you manage to find out all this in the span of a day?” 

She looks at him like he’s insane. “I, uh, talked to people?”

“I talk to people too! But nobody knows who Rukia Kuchiki is. Nobody. Zilch. Zip. Nada. At this point I’m about 98% sure she doesn’t actually exist.”

Inoue sighs pityingly. “Kurosaki-kun, you’ve been talking to students, haven’t you?”

Ichigo’s confused. “Who else would I talk to?”

Inoue just puts a finger to her lips. “Can’t tell you. Trade secret. But really, Kurosaki-kun. There are much easier ways of going about this game, you know.” 

“Fat lot of good that’s going to do me, when you won’t tell me,” he grumbles. He takes another look at the name on her knife— Uryuu Ishida, may he rest in peace— and thanks his lucky stars that it isn’t him on there. “Anyway, I better be off. Good luck with the new guy. Not that you’ll need it.” 

“Good luck with Rukia Kuchiki, because you’ll definitely need it.” 

Hell, did everyone make a secret pact today to take the mickey out of him? Ichigo’s too tired to argue, so he just leaves Inoue to her planning and calls it a night. Maybe he’ll have better luck tomorrow.

____________________________________________________________

It takes Ichigo a few seconds to remember who she is, he’s been so tired lately. 

Green hair, he thinks, absentmindedly, before he remembers his conversation with Chad yesterday and yelps, scooting back a few metres. 

“You— Neliel?”

“That’s me!” His would-be murderer is bright and vivacious, and way too perky for this hour of the morning. Aside from the curious green hair, she’s also got a scar between her eyes and a reddish— birthmark? Tattoo? Ichigo doesn’t know— across the bridge of her nose. “Morning, Ichigo!”

Ichigo’s already halfway across the courtyard by the time she stops him. “Wait! Wait! I’m not here to kill you this morning!”

“Yeah right!” he yells back. “I’m not dying before I find out who the hell Rukia Kuchiki is! Try another morning!” 

“You idiot, I’m already dead! Check the morning lists if you don’t believe me!”

Ichigo stops and whips out his smartphone. “You stay right there,” he says, glaring, and Neliel complies, holding her hands up in a gesture of surrender. He scrolls through the dorm noticeboard, and, sure enough, there is her name: one of the last people to be murdered last night. 

“See? I don’t lie,” she says, reproachful, and Ichigo shoves his phone back into his pocket and approaches her cautiously. 

“What do you want?” 

Neliel shrugs. “I just thought I’d warn you about your new potential murderer? Thought that might be good manners, and all. Normally I wouldn’t bother, but, well. Your new murderer’s…… yeah.”

“My new murderer’s… what?” 

She looks intensely uncomfortable at this. “He’s. Well. He’s…. He’s not a friend, per se, but I’ve known him since we were little and I feel a bit responsible for him— uh, he’s a bit rough sometimes, but he won’t actually kill you. I think. Look, just keep your eyes peeled, ok? Anyway, enough of this depressing talk in the morning. Who’s Rukia Kuchiki? Why are you so keen on meeting her?”

Wow, that was so transparent a topic change that Ichigo’s almost impressed. “No, no, go back to my murderer, what were you saying about him?”

“— so, Rukia Kuchiki, huh, cool name, sounds kinda familiar, wonder where I’ve heard it before—”

“Neliel. You were talking about my new murderer and actual murder in the same breath. This does not give me a lot of reassurance, you feel?”

“—no, wait, actually, Rukia Kuchiki,” she mutters, her brow furrowing. Then her expression clears, and she looks up at him with a bright smile. “Oh! You don’t possibly mean Dia—”

And just as that happens, the lockdown alarms go off. 

_______________________________________________________

The loudspeaker in the middle of the courtyard bursts into life with a crackle of static. 

“Attention all residents. This is not a drill. Please make your way to the nearest lockdown location in an orderly fashion. Attention all residents…”

By the second round of the announcement, both of them manage to unfreeze; Neliel curses and starts to turn away, but Ichigo grabs onto her wrist. 

“Oh shit— I have to go find Donddochakka and Pesche—”

“Wait— Rukia. What were you about to say about Rukia?”

She shakes his restraining hand off with ease. “I’ll tell you later! I have to go find my friends!” 

“No, goddammit! Tell me now! It won’t take you that long!” Ichigo yells, but she’s already disappeared into the throng of people. Ichigo kicks a nearby rock and consults his phone to find his nearest lockdown location— the gym, apparently. He joins the crowd moving slowly in that direction, mind still grappling with Neliel’s last words.

Rukia Kuchiki? Oh! You don’t possibly mean Dia-

Dia? Who the hell was Dia?

But he’d have to deal with that later; he walks into the gym and spots Tatsuki, waving at him from a corner with Inoue. He makes his way towards them. 

“—n’t believe that he still won’t come out of his room, who does he think he is— there are safety regulations in place—” Inoue is saying, fingers curled around the knife that still says Uryuu Ishida. Tatsuki attempts to placate her with a long-suffering expression. 

“Maybe he’d already left before you came— hi, Ichigo.”

“Hello, Kurosaki-kun! And ridiculous— I was there at 6 a.m. in the morning. What sort of self-respecting college student wakes up before then?”

“6 a.m.?! Orihime, that’s. That’s stalking—”

“Stalking’s not stalking if it’s done in the name of free cup noodles—” 

“Stalking is always stalking! God, whatever, we’re continuing this another time. Anyway, Ichigo, did you hear? Some nutjob got onto campus with an actual knife.” 

Ichigo flinches. “What? Jesus. I hope Chad’s ok. Where’d you hear that from?”

“From the r.a. over there.” Tatsuki points with a chin, and indeed, several r.a.s are in deep discussion, all of them with a serious look on their face. “They’re gonna make an announcement about it soon. Apparently it’s a scrawny dude, black hair in a ponytail, wearing a dirty white hoodie and jeans. There’s police cars arriving, shit’s crazy.” 

“I’ll say.” At least it was a knife and not a gun, Ichigo thinks, toying idly with his own plastic knife. He halfheartedly scans the crowd, looking for any unfamiliar faces— surprisingly, he finds that he knows most of them already, by sight if not by name. He wonders if any of them are Rukia Kuchiki, and finds himself hoping that, wherever she was, she was somewhere safe. 

It’d be a bit of a downer if she was actually murdered before he managed to get around to it. 

The gym doors open again to let some of the stragglers in, and Ichigo allows his attention to be turned by the motely crew that walk in: a tall, thin man who is built rather like a stick insect, a hulking guy who looks about as wide as he’s tall, and a smaller, scrawny dude who is wearing nothing but a towel as a fundoshi around his waist (goddammit, Ichigo thought that tactic had died out by the first week). And, almost buried by the mass of bodies around her, a head full of green hair. 

Ichigo blinks, and then he starts pushing through the crowd to get to her. 

“Hey. HEY! NELIEL! WE GOTTA CONTINUE OUR CONVERSATION FROM EARLIER!”

Neliel looks up in his direction, and frantically starts mouthing no at him. Ichigo doesn’t give a shit. He’s going to find out who Rukia Kuchiki is, and he’s going to find out now.

“Don’t give me that crap! You said you’d tell me later! Well, it’s later now, so out with it—”

“No, I swear to god, Ichigo, not now—”

“Ichigo?” The stick insect dude suddenly looks viciously interested, and Neliel claps a hand over her mouth. “As in, Ichigo Kurosaki?”

Neliel shakes her head. Ichigo glares at stick insect dude. 

“If I am, who the fuck are you?”

Nel buries her face in her hands, and stick insect dude smiles— and shit, can people even smile that wide? Ichigo feels a chill run down his spine. 

“Your death,” stick insect dude says, and he lunges. 

Scrawny dude, black hair in a ponytail, wearing a dirty white hoodie and jeans.

Ichigo sees the glint of a knife held in his hands, and suddenly realises he’s going to die—

“No!”

That is, until a short, black-haired blur shoots out from the crowd and jumps in front of the knife meant for him. 

It sinks in to the hilt, and Ichigo watches the girl’s eyes widen in shock with a horror that robs him of his own voice. 

________________________________________________________

Both girl and assailant crumple to the ground, and Ichigo’s frantic with worry; he reaches the girl first, hoists her up onto his lap, expecting blood. She was so small; what the hell was she thinking, jumping out in front of him?! She coughs, great big hacking things that he wouldn’t expect from someone her size, and Ichigo holds her around her shoulders, worried out of his mind. 

“Are you ok? Hold on— where did he stab you? Are you bleeding—”

In response, the girl wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and lunges at the felled assailant. 

“You missed, you cowardly shitstain, I don’t know what you’re doing on a campus but you’re going to rot in jail for this—” 

“Young lady—! Enough! Back away and let the cops deal with this—”

“Nnoitra! I told you to leave that stupid knife behind, you idiot—”

“Ow! OW! Don’t just fucking watch, Nel, get this crazy woman off me, what the fuck—” 

“ENOUGH!” The r.a.’s have made their way over by now, and manage to separate the two brawling figures; stick insect dude is being held back by Nel and her two other friends, while the girl is being restrained by an r.a. Ichigo sits on the floor between them, feeling like he just missed something. 

“Wait, hang on, what’s— what just happened— didn’t you get stabbed?” he asks the girl, who is looking very un-stabbed. She glares at stick insect dude. 

“He missed,” she spits, and stick insect dude howls in indignation. 

“I did not miss!” he hisses, and throws a crumpled plastic knife onto the ground. “I had him! I would have had him straight in the gut if it hadn’t been for you jumping in for your boyfriend!!! The fuck, dude! This is sabotage! What have you got against me winning cup noodles?!”

Ichigo stares at the plastic knife bearing his name, crushed like an empty aluminium drink can, and slowly starts piecing the incident together. 

“Wait— so you're—”

“And now I've lost the element of surprise. You scrawny little bitch,” Nnoitra snaps, and Ichigo thinks, a little wildly, that he had no business going around calling anyone else scrawny. He eyes the limp black hair and dirty white hoodie of his assailant and attempts to make sense of the chaos around him. 

“You’re— you had my knife—?”

Nnoitra rolls his eyes. “What, can’t you see? You impaired or some shit?” 

“Oh my god, Nnoitra,” Neliel groans. “Can you keep your big fat mouth shut for half a second—”

“Oh,” comes a small sound from the black-haired girl, and Ichigo turns to see her slowly flushing crimson. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Nnoitra mocks, before Neliel smacks him in the head. “Ow! Nel, you bitch, she is clearly the one in the wrong here, would you knock it off—”

“Well, what the hell was I supposed to think?!” the girl demands, now completely red but with an indignant expression on her face. “You matched the description for the armed intruder perfectly! Not to mention, who plays Murder like they're actually trying to kill someone?!”

“This is why I was trying to warn you,” Nel says to Ichigo in an exasperated aside. “And those are just his last set of clean clothes.”

There's a short silence as everyone digests her words, Ichigo and the girl both eyeing Nnoitra’s hoodie like they seriously doubted Nel’s definition of ‘clean’.

The girl clears her throat and speaks for all of them. “Gross.”

Nnoitra flings himself against Nel’s restraint. “You bitch, I'll fucking cut you up—”

“Enough!” an adult finally makes their way onto the scene, and everyone looks at the harried professor with varying levels of relief. The girl, in particular, lights up at the sight of him. 

“Professor Ukitake—!”

“What’s going on here?” he asks in a tired sort of way, and the r.a.s hasten to answer him. 

“A minor altercation— you know our dorm tradition, Murder—”

“Ah, that damn game,” he mutters, looking extremely distracted. His gaze sweeps over all of them, assessing the situation. “Nobody’s actually hurt, then?”

“No sir,” the girl answers, prompt. The professor nods at her, before turning to the r.a.s for the full story. By now, the police have made it into the evacuation area as well; the three parties convene for a minute or two, discussing the details in hushed voices, before they all turn to Nnoitra and Nel.

“In any case, Mr. Gilga,” Professor Ukitake says apologetically, “although it may be coincidental, it is true that you fit the description for the armed intruder rather perfectly, I’m afraid. The police would like you to accompany them to the station, just for a little while, until the intruder situation is solved. If that’s ok with you—?” 

“Wha— the hell it is! I was just tryna murder Kurosaki over there—” 

The professor winces. “Mr. Gilga….. That’s really not helping your cause there.” 

“Oh, c’mon, it’s just a game—” 

“I told you,” Nel interrupts witheringly. “I told you to leave your damn knife behind, didn’t I? Just go with the officers for now, Nnoitra. It’s just til they catch the real intruder, and quite frankly, I don’t trust you around Ichigo right now.” 

“Don’t be a sore loser, Nel, just because I murdered you last night—” 

Two policemen place a hand each on Nnoitra’s shoulders and escort him out, Nnoitra complaining the whole time but not daring to retaliate. Nel shakes her head and makes an apologetic face in the direction of the smaller girl. “God, I told him… sorry about all this, Di. I might go with him just to make sure he doesn’t get himself arrested… you really alright? Not hurt anywhere?” 

“Who do you think I am?” the girl scoffs. “I’m fine. Never did understand why you’re friends with him, though.”

Nel grimaces. “Yeah, sometimes I wonder that, too. Anyway, I’ll see you later at the gym, we can talk about this then.” 

“Tell your stick insect friend not to lunge at people with knives in the future, whether they’re plastic or not.” 

“Will do. Bye!” with another apologetic half-wave, Neliel and her two other friends take off after Nnoitra. Ichigo, still feeling somewhat bemused by the proceedings, finally turns and manages to get a good look at his…. saviour(?), for lack of a better word. 

She’s short. That’s his first impression, the fact that she is so goddamn short and good lord, she might actually, literally be just half his size, if the way the top of her head only comes up to his chest is any indication. Aside from the height (or lack thereof), she seems fairly nondescript: short black bob, black leggings and a t-shirt with a flannel tied around her waist. She notices him staring and holds out a hand. 

“Diana. We could have met in less embarrassing circumstances, but I guess as first meetings go ‘jumped in front of a knife for you’ isn’t a bad start. You alright?” 

Ichigo takes the proffered hand and is promptly surprised by the firmness of her grip. “Fine. I feel like I should be the one asking you, though. You're the one that got stabbed.”

Diana rolls her eyes. “Please. As if anything wielded by a guy that skinny would ever be able to hurt me.” She grins, all teeth, and whoa, Ichigo may have to reconsider that first assessment of her. He’s suddenly flustered, red dusting the skin over his cheekbones as he tries to come up with a response. She has the bluest eyes he's ever seen. 

Thankfully, the professor from earlier spares him. “Miss Kuchiki!” he calls, and Diana turns— he wants to have a few words with her, it seems, and she gestures to him that she'd be over soon. She turns back to Ichigo to say goodbye. 

“Well, take care, I guess I'll see you around--"

Something clicks in his brain like lightning, and he catches her by the wrist. 

“Wait. Kuchiki—? Like, Kuchiki as in Byakuya Kuchiki Kuchiki? Kuchiki as in the Kuchiki Wing in the Main Library Kuchiki? As in one of the shareholders of our university Kuchiki? That Kuchiki?”

“Shut up, fool, not so loud—!” She snatches her wrist back and looks around worriedly, though by now people’s attentions have moved on from them. She answers him in a resigned tone. “Yes, that Kuchiki. He’s my brother. It's not something I like to advertise.” 

Ichigo’s mind is teeming like a nest of ants. “Why— no, never mind that question. Diana’s not a Japanese name, though--"

“It's my English name, obviously,” she snaps. “If you wanted my full name it is Rukia Kuchiki. Why are you so interested in my name anyway? Shouldn't you at least tell me yours first?”

A slow grin spreads over his face; the kind of grin that Tatsuki had once told him made him look like the supervillain in a bad shounen. He takes a step in closer to her, and Diana— Rukia, irritated, stands her ground. 

His hand slips into his pocket. 

“I'm Ichigo Kurosaki,” he tells her. 

In one fluid motion, he pulls out his own knife and taps her with it on the shoulder. Those blue eyes of hers widen first in disbelief, and then in outrage. 

“You— no. No, you can't possibly— you couldn't!!”

“Nice to meet you, Rukia Kuchiki,” he smirks, flipping the plastic knife over to display her name. 

Rukia closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose, like she has a headache coming on. 

Then she opens her eyes, takes a deep breath, and socks him in the face. 

#BLEACH #ICHIRUKI #KUROSAKI ICHIGO #KUCHIKI RUKIA #BLEACH FIC #WRITER LIFE

[crewhonk]

Only Happy Accidents (seven)

March 11 / 18th Week

Warnings: smut :), Steve? yeah, he has a daddy kink tbh, and a breeding kink, and an overstimulation kink, Steve loves aftercare, Steve also loves Gossip Girl

Songs: “Norman Fucking Rockwell”— Lana Del Rey / “I Need a Woman To Love”— Kesha

Masterlist

_______________________________

YN would have been honest to god exhausted from her day if she wasn’t carrying the small black gift bag in her hand. From almost having sex with her baby-daddy-fiancee-roomie-boyfriend to doctors appointments to bridal boutiques all the while four and a half months pregnant all she normally would have wanted to do was curl up on the couch with a blanket and a Steve and pass out until Steve carried her to bed. 

However, the bag she was carrying made her heart clench and her stomach flip and her knees weak. 

Steve wasn’t home yet— she had gotten a text from him about twenty minutes ago saying that he was leaving the compound. This meant she had ten more minutes to strip herself of her clothes, slip on the sexy sheer silk maternity neglige, muss up her hair and find a flattering position on Steve’s bed. 

It was thrilling stepping into his bathroom and stripping. She threw her clothes into the hamper (underwear and all) and pulled the pretty baby doll over her head, enjoying the way that the split up the centre showcased her growing bump. She had gained weight, sure— her thighs and arms and boobs and chin were rounder, but with Steve watching her every move like she ignited the sun made her feel as if she were the only woman in the world. She pulled a pair of lacy, thin underwear over her already-soaked core and ran her hands through her hair as she walked back to the bed, crawling on it and lounging against the pillows. 

And then laying across the bed. 

And then rolling onto her back and stretching herself out. 

And then waiting on her knees which lasted about a whole two seconds before she huffed and leaned back against the pillows. 

She was pretty sure that Steve wouldn’t care how she was waiting for him, but what she was waiting for him in and what it would mean for their night. 

Her heart thundered in her chest when’s he heard his keys rattle in the doorknob, and then his heavy biker boots step into the entry-way. She could hear him put his wallet and keys on the counter and she could hear the metal hangers in the closet jingling as he threw his coat on one and hung it back up. 

“YN? Ma?” He called out and YN’s voice shook slightly when she called back. 

“Upstairs!”

There was amount before she could hear him climbing up the stairs. He walked down the small hallway to his bedroom and opened the door and the question he meant to ask about the wedding dresses died immediately in his throat. 

“Hi.” She smiled slowly and he swallowed hard, shifting on his feet. 

“Hey,” He croaked, eyes raking over her person as if he was going to die if he didn’t do so. His fists were clenched just as hard as his jaw was and YN pushed herself up to rest back on her hands. 

“You gonna join me, or what?” She asked, the tone of nerves in her voice and underlying expression to her otherwise wrecked voice. The idea of Steve coming home to see her laid out for him had gotten her well and properly excited. 

He didn’t hesitate, pulling his shirt over his head eagerly and climbing on top of her, kissing and nipping her neck and then coming to hover over her. He kissed her nose sweetly and she smiled, cupping his face. 

“I love you,” He whispered and her breath caught eagerly in her throat and she lunged up to capture his lips with her own. Her hand rested on the back of his neck and held him to her. She wrapped her leg around his hip and pulled him closer to her, and both of them groaned heatedly at the contact. 

“I love you more, Daddy.” She whispered and he froze on top of her. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that—“ She tried to excuse herself and he thrust his jeans-clad self against her, effectively silencing her. 

“Say it again.” He growled, and she shuddered under him. 

“The daddy thing? Or the I love you thing?” She whispered and a dark smile read across his face. 

“Both. Say both.” He grinned and she moaned, throwing her head back as his lips sucked marks on her shoulders and throat. His nipped at the sheer fabric over the swell of her great and nipped her nipple, making her back arch and a cry fill the room. 

“You okay, Ma?” He asked immediately, eyebrows furrowing in worry. YN could only gasp and nod. 

“Yeah— I guess— holy shit. I guess your kid is making me super sensitive?” She wondered and he smirked, maintaining eye contact as he ducked his head down against and swirled his tongue over her clothed breast. She fell back against the mattress and rolled her hips up to his, scratching his shoulders and shuddering a breath. 

“More. Please, more.” She cried and he nipped her chin. 

“More what?” He teased and she rolled her hips again making him suck in a breath. 

“More of your mouth, please.” She whimpered, frustrated tears beginning to well up in her eyes. He chuckled and kissed her sweetly. 

“Please, who.” He whispered back and her eyes widened as a nasty smile spread across her face. 

“Please, Daddy. I need your mouth on my pretty tits.” She mumbled, rolling her hips again and beginning to completely soak through her underwear. His jaw dropped and he rut into her involuntarily. 

“Holy shit, I— okay.” He gasped and undid the clip securing the babydoll together and opening it, revealing her beautifully pregnant body to him. His mouth was hot, and their clothed hips moved together slowly as his mouth worked her. Her cries grew louder and louder until she mumbled something unintelligible and her back arched at an impossible curve. Her eyes rolled back into her head and her thighs shook around his waist as she rode out her first orgasm. 

When she came to, Steve was looking down at her in wonder and adoration. His hands rubbed her sides comfortingly and when her eyes focussed on him, he smiled. 

“Really?” He asked and she flushed red, covering her face with her hands and smiling bashfully. 

“I’m sensitive, okay? It’s your kids fault. And it’s been four months since we—“

“I know.” He laughed, pulling her hands from her face. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed. Her astonished smile made his heart flutter happily and he couldn’t help but kiss her soundly. Their tongues rolled together lazily and he pulled away after a few seconds. 

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. It’s just gonna make it easier for me to have my way with you over,” he kissed her collar bone. “And over,” he mumbled, kissing between her breasts. “And over,” He whispered, kissing her navel. “And over,” he said, thumbing the flimsy strap of her thong before pulling his finger and tearing the fabric away from her body as if it were as easy as breathing. YN shuddered as the realization that he was one of the most dangerous human beings on the planet and not the teddy bear who she had come to love. The man nosing at her pubic mound had killed many people— he had taken down institutions and been a government fugitive twice and she wanted nothing more than to walk down the aisle and spend the rest of her life with him. 

And she really, really, wanted him to get inside of her right now, but by the way he was eyeing her she knew she was in for a rather long, exhausting night. 

“This is so much better than Halloween.” He growled, pleased at the sight he was greeted with. YN was truly soaked, and his pride and ego swelled almost as big as his dick. Her hands curled themselves in his longer hair and scratched his scalp, making him purr. 

“Why’s that?” She asked breathlessly. He hummed and kissed her mound. 

“Cause this time I know you’re mine. My Girl. My baby mama. Mine.” He rumbled and licked a strip up her core, making her thighs shake and body jolt. His hand circled under her thighs and held the sides of her hips to stop her moving too much. His lips circled over her clit and sucked, kitten licking it and moaning at the sweet taste of his girl and the way her fingers tightened in his hair. 

“Fuck, Steve, Baby. You’re gonna make me—“ Her voice choked off in a broken moan and her thighs clamped over his ears. He moaned happily as she came quickly— everything in her body was sensitive due to the pregnancy— let alone from the Super Side Effects she was having because of him. He worked her down and let her catch her breath, smirking up at her. 

“That was what? Thirty seconds?” He teased and she flushed red again, giggling into her hands. 

“Keep humble, Big Guy. That was a solid fifty seconds, okay?” She laughed and he growled playfully, lunging up and kissing her soundly. She sighed at the taste of herself on his lips and tongue, holding him to her as she used her feet to push his track pants down his thighs along with his underwear. 

“Who am I?” He smiled, sitting back on his heels and fisting his cock in his hand. You wiggled eagerly, feeling the empty tingling of her core at the sight of him with her slick still wet in his beard and chest bare and dusted with light brown hair. His thighs were enormous, and YN wanted to pout over the fact that he looked so hot- not even conventionally attractive anymore. Steve Rogers was dirty hot and YN YLN was living for it. 

“Daddy,” she whimpered and his lips fell open. He scooted up closer to her and played one hand beside her head, as he swiped his cock up and down her core, making her jolt every time he pressed it against her clit. 

“Good girl.” He whispered softly and slipped into her. They both shook against each other as they felt how fucking perfect they fit together. He was able to move easily due to how soaked she was and he rolled his hips experimentally. 

“Oh, Steve.” She grunted as he moved once more. He raised his eyebrow and she rolled her eyes, kissing him again and making his brain stop working. If it had been Halloween, he would have landed a solid smack to her ass or thigh, but hitting her when she was carrying his child (even consensually) made him shudder. “Sorry, Daddy.” She whispered and he thrust harder at the title. 

It wasn’t long until her hot cunt was squeezing him again, and his thumb went down and pressed her clit once, watching smugly as her eyes rolled back in her head and her mouth opened in a silent moan. He kissed her neck as she came to, and he helped her roll over onto her side, lifting her leg back over his hip as he sidling in behind her and slipped in once more. 

“God damn, Ma.” He cried out, biting her neck and soothing the already-bruise with his tongue. “So fucking perfect for me. Pretty little cunt made for me, huh?” He grunted, circling her clit with his fingers, moaning as the tips of his fingers felt his dick plunging quickly and easily into her. 

“Yeah, Daddy— all for you, honey.” She sobbed, pleasure making her almost unintelligible. 

“Wanna come for me again, Ma? Be a good girl and come for me, again.” He rumbled in her ear and she did. The orgasms are coming harder and faster now that she was bordering on overstimulation, and he loved how boneless she went after she was spent. How easy it was for him to slip from her as he rolled her over again onto her knees. She folded her arms under her head, arching her back for him and wiggling her ass in the air as Steve sat back and admired the woman of his dreams. 

“Gorgeous. You still got one more in there for Daddy?” He asked, fingers rubbing her swollen, red pussy and gathering the slick. He lifted his hand to his mouth and sucked, cock aching at her sweet taste. 

“Fuck me, Daddy.” She slurred and he groaned, thrusting roughly into her again and making her cry out into the pillows. 

“You okay, Sweetheart?” He whispered as he curled himself over her back and nuzzled her ear. His left hand supported his body as he placed it beside YN’s head and his other arm curled around her waist, hand on her swollen belly and moaning at the feeling of her. Her body had changed so wonderfully—all for his child that he had put in her. 

“‘M so good, Stevie. Come for me, ‘kay?” She mumbled, fully fucked out. He nosed the back of her neck as he thrust rapidly and unevenly, his balls tightening with every pass and soon his grunts turned feral as his vision went black around the edges. She clenched down on him and his cries of her name seemed far away as he held her tight to him and emptied himself into her, painting her walls with his come. 

He jolted as wave after wave of orgasm flooded him, and soon, he was fully spent, only to realize that everything was soaking wet. 

“YN? Did you just-?” He gasped and she moaned as he slipped from her to get a full picture of their drenched thighs and the wet blankets and sheets. She had squirt for him-- the evidence was all over the sheets and their bodies and Steve’s spent cock twitched slightly at the notion. 

“‘M sorry,” She mumbled, exhausted and he turned her onto her back slowly, pulling her to his arms and getting up from the bed and walking to the bathroom. She wrapped her arms around his neck and hummed, nuzzling into his shoulder and letting his scent fill her senses. 

“Don’t be, my love.” He cooed, stroking her sweaty hair from her face and kissing her nose and cheek. “Now that I know you can do that, I’m looking forward to doing it again.” He set her on the closed toilet lid and turned on the jaccuzi tap, filling the bath with hot, soapy water and turning back to her. He fell to his knees in front of her and cupped the sides of her stomach. His eyes drifted over her torso, admiring the way the marks he left on her were so dark. He leaned up and kissed her, and his tongue brushed her lips as he pulled away. Her eyes fluttered one for the first time since he had picked her up from the bed and she offered a shy, tired smile. 

“Not tonight, though. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk for a week.” She mumbled, and let her head fall to the crook of his neck, and kissing his cool sweaty skin. 

“No. Tonight, we’ll spend in the tub and then I’ll get that expensive lotion you save for important occasions, and wrap you in all of the blankets and we can watch Gossip Girl until we fall asleep, okay?” He purred and her breath hitched against his neck. 

“I finished Gossip Girl yesterday.” She whispered, putting effort into making her voice sound the least bit ashamed. 

“What?” He pulled away, a look of utter betrayal on his face. She giggled tiredly at his adorable pout. She kissed it before pulling away. “Can you at least tell me who it was?” He begged and she snorted.

“That’s a secret I’ll never tell. XOXO, Gossip Girl.” She quoted and he threw his head back, laughing. 

“I love you, you huge dork.” He chuckled, kissing her again and rising to his feet. She blushed red and took his hands as he lead her to the bathtub, settling into the boiling water and settling back against the jets pointed at the small of her back. 

“I love you more, Steve.” She mumbled, head falling back and sighing happily. 

“I’m going to change the sheets. I’ll be right back, okay?” He said and she cracked one eye open. He stood in all of his naked Adonis glory and she eyed his soft dick briefly before slowly travelling up his torso (which had become less defined since Halloween— a feature she absolutely adored) and up to his blushing face. 

“I’d say I’m sorry but I don’t even remember doing it.”

“Trust me, there is no need for you to be sorry about squirting all over my bed, Ma.” He crooned and she sunk deeper into the bubbles and smiling at his quiet laughter as he left the room. 

‘He loves me,’ YN thought to herself giddily, kicking her feet like a teenage girl and making hot water slosh over the side of the tub. ‘He really, really loves me.

_______________________

Tag List (send me an ask, ONLY. must interact with the fic more than a like): yesfanficsaremylife / notyourtypicalrose /  laurxn-robinson / disaster-rose / lille-kattunge / wwecrazed2010 / vxidnik / chewingoffmyfoot / vitamingrant / captainamericasbeard / chrisgalore / songforhema / mmyepic / multifandommandy / tommyhoe / lostdarksoul6 / crist1216 / taeeemin / jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory / feelmyroarrrr / teller258316 / mrsdeanwinchester19 / qrangr / mariswritingforfun / nerdypinupcrystal / kittycatlover18 / laucontrerasv / printedpeterparker / @dumblani  / @captainomad / eversonaive / rainbowkisses31

#Steve Rogers #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers au #steve rogers angst #steve rogers smut #steve rogers soulmate #steve rogers series #Steve Rogers smut #steve rogers fic #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers fluff #steve rogers fanfiction #Steve Rogers fic #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x you #steve rogers x y/n #Dad!Steve #dad!steve rogers #Steve Rogers has a daddy kink

[evien-stark]

✧I Need You✧ Chapter 105

The lovely room you’d woken up in didn’t include a side bathroom. Perhaps you were getting a little too comfortable to the five-star lifestyle. SHIELD usually had nicer places than the one you’d ended up in- wherever that was- but considering you seemed to have been pulled out by rogue agents (a bare summation that you’d put together yourself) and shunted to wherever this was, perhaps you should forgive the whole no-shower thing. 

It did, at least, have a sink. So while Tony was busy with a few things that you could only guess what they were, you turned your back on him to let him work and took a very minimal amount of time removing your shirt and gathering up a handful of paper towels to try and wipe the dried blood off your arms and the sides of your neck. It hurt to move around, still. You weren’t sure how long ago you’d been shot, or how bad it had been… it felt pretty bad. So much so, in fact, that even though you were tempted to unwind the bandages from your chest, you thought better of it. 

Whatever momentary peace you’d had was broken when a soft knock came at the door. It made you hurry to put your shirt back on with a small call, “Just a second.” Although Tony’s ire was sharper. “Occupied.” 

A literal second was all the person on the other side waited, you were barely fully clothed again by the time the door opened. “We’re running short on time.” As you looked up you saw Maria Hill, arms crossed. “We’ve gotta start making some moves.” Her smile at you was extremely brief. “Can you move yet?” 

Tony answered for you. “Enough to go home.” 

“I’m not going anywhere.” In fact your grunt of pain suggested exactly that. “Where are we, anyway? What happened?” Things were understandably a little fuzzy. You might have asked Tony what he was doing there, or how he’d gotten here, too, but… seeing as you were glad to have him near, you didn’t particularly care. 

As Maria stepped aside, into the room, Steve was not too far behind her. “You jumped in front of a bullet meant for me.” He seemed… uncomfortable to say the least. And very solemn. 

Tony looked up at him. “Usually some gratitude applies. But I’m sure you’ll send her a note on some nice stationary when we’re done.” You couldn’t make out if he was angry with Steve. He’d have no reason to be- probably just misplaced.

And- the last voice you’d have ever expected to hear, brought up the rear of this little circus show, as Nat wheeled Nick-fucking-Fury into the room. She seemed injured, too. At least you weren’t the only one covered in band-aids. “We’re in the last unknown bunker. Off-grid.” 

“Oh.” You said, accidentally a little more loudly than you meant. “I died and went to hell. Is that it?” 

The laugh that left him seemed to hurt him at the same time, sending him into a soft coughing fit that put a stall in the room. “Good to see you, too.” But when he caught his breath and held up his hand, he directed a strange smile your way. “What was it I was supposed to say- you were right- and we’re personally destroying Project Insight?” 

“That supposed to make me feel better?” If you’d had any energy left, you might have growled this at him. 

Shifting back, Tony pulled a USB stick out of a laptop. “Payload’s ready. Shame we have to have three hands on the proverbial wheel. Would’ve been a lot easier to take out from the comfort of this lovely sewer.” 

Nick gave him a look. “If you’re gonna launch or unlaunch a project like this, you have to be very sure.” 

“I get it.” Tony answered pretty dryly. “Like simultaneous turnkeys to  launch a nuke- but hey- seems like you always knew exactly what this was, huh?” Anger successfully redirected. And to a person that deserved it. “That Zero Day on the backend is pretty cute. Also pretty useless considering you expected you’d need a present cocktail to activate it. Also not as hidden as you thought.” 

Fury rolled his eye. “We get it, Stark. You’re smarter than the rest of us. Now, if we could just move on to formulating an actual plan- we have to assume everyone on board those helicarriers is Hydra. The tough part isn’t inserting the keys, it’s getting past them to do it. And if we’re lucky we can salvage what’s left when we’re done.” 

“No.” You were surprised just how many people said this at the same time. But you didn’t wait for the silence to clear. “Let me get this straight- sorry I’m the last horse finishing the race here- so we have to get aboard all three of Project Insight’s helicarriers, insert keys with a payload- all at the right time- to try and take them down- and you want to take them back?” 

“Oh. I must have misunderstood.” Tony dropped the stick on the table so he could cross his arms. “Was that the plan? Sorry. I have a complete destruction order.” 

Steve waved a hand. “We’re not salvaging anything. We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick, we're taking down SHIELD.” 

This shocked you, if only a little. It was nice to have everyone on the same side- but to think Steve and Tony had talked, in your brief lapse of unconsciousness and recovery, about fully dismantling SHIELD? That was… 

Fury was getting pretty upset. “SHIELD had nothing to do with this.” 

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Tony’s smart sass cutting the room. “Seems like SHIELD had everything to do with this. Negligence and ignorance don’t exactly scream innocence to me.” 

Steve shook his head. “You gave us this mission, this is how it ends. SHIELD's been compromised. HYDRA grew right under your nose and nobody noticed.” 

Scoffing, Nick half turned to level an icy glare Steve’s way. “Why do you think we’re down here? I noticed.” 

Squaring up, Steve met him blow for blow, voice lowering. “And how many paid the price before you did?” 

You were grateful when Natasha stepped between them. “We don’t have time for another quarrel of ethics.” Then she looked right at Nick. “...and for the record-” 

Fury turned his head down. “You agree. Yeah. That’s the consensus, huh? We all agree?” Looking around the room then. 

“SHIELD, HYDRA, it all goes.” Steve giving the last order on this matter. 

                                                      ----

There was an very limited window to suit up- almost an impossibility for you, seeing as yours was extremely damaged. Tony had been working on it alongside getting those USBs loaded. He was nothing if not a genius- and a genius multi-tasker, at that. But even so… 

He looked a little beat up himself as he handed your Heart Reactor back to you. “We need a plan.” Not physically damaged- yet- but… for one reason or another pretty emotionally wounded.

Even though he pressed the device into your palm, he was reluctant to let go. From your position on the bed you looked up at him. “Isn’t that something we should do with everyone out there?” The team had left the two of you for some privacy, but it wouldn’t last long. 

And if it was time to start forming groups and figuring out who did what, everyone needed to be present for that. He frowned lightly, letting his fingers slip away from yours. “I did the best I could- given my extremely limited time, tool set, and inhospitable environment-” 

Trying to cut his grumbling off, you shifted off the bed, leaning up to press a kiss to his cheek. “I’m sure it’s fine.” Pushing the Reactor to your chest after. 

But he wasn’t able to let you go yet, as his hands came to your hips. “You know I’d never speak bad about my own work- but- it’s not enough. You get backed into another corner like that again- you might not make it out.” 

“Well- we have almost the whole team, right? It’s less likely to happen again-” 

“Be serious about this, for a second- and- that’s coming from me.” He was in that twisted mood he always fell into when you got hurt. When he had to come at the very end of a fight or a mishap, and you were in bad shape. It scared him straight to his core. It unnerved him, same as it made him angry. “You know I think you can do anything- and I know you won’t just go home- so can we please just split the difference and have you on civilian escort? These things aren’t going down without a fight, and there’s a lot of people in the giant radius we’re looking at that are gonna get hurt.” 

Innocent people, as always. That had nothing to do with any of this. And no chance to help themselves. No means, either. As fire rained down on them within seconds, without notice, and would trap them. Yes. Someone needed to be on civilian duty. You just… didn’t want it to be you. Not because you were above that sort of thing, you weren’t, that was one of the most important jobs there was. But… 

“I have fought with Nick and with SHIELD and with- probably all of this longer than I realized I was. And that guy, whoever the hell he is-” 

“We’ve got bad news on that front, too.” Interrupting you so suddenly that it cut your little rant short. 

“What now?” Who could it be? Who else could you possibly know that would make this a startling revelation at this point? 

“Haven’t heard the full story. But whisperings around the dingy water cooler out there are that it’s Rogers’ friend.” 

Alright. Not a startling revelation, being that you would have no idea who that was. But kind of… upsetting? Nervewracking? What was the right word here? “How is that possible?”

Tony crossed his arms after shrugging his shoulders. “We’re in a SHIELD sewer after Hydra just exploded out of the woodworks. Anything’s possible at this point, wouldn’t you say? Maybe he got a shot of the same serum. I don’t know. But the point is- this just got personal. So we should let Rogers handle it.” 

But this was just not convincing enough. One of Steve’s old war buddies? Back from the dead- now some crazy super powered killing machine? And going after Steve no less? Hired by the bad guys? There seemed to be a lot of missing pieces here. “You know- there are billions of people on the planet. Especially considering he’s also got a whole lifetime gap. Aren’t we doing the whole- thinking about a zebra when it’s probably a horse thing?” 

“I’m always of the mind to agree with you. But he seems pretty set on this.” “Then I need to talk to him before we leave.” The only way this would start to make any sense. It had to happen, anyway. While you weren’t entirely convinced he was someone Steve knew, you were sure you’d seen something… off about him. Then again. You’d been shot near point blank in the chest and had gone down pretty hard. It was hard to remember what you thought you’d seen. 

There was just a lingering feeling of something not being right. 

“Good luck with that. He could barely look me in the eye. He’s gonna give you the same flight plan. And probably skirt around everything else.” 

This was a fucking mess. And not exactly the right time to be in one. “You? Why? What happened?” 

Tony’s brows knitted before he aimed a dry look your way. “You walked directly in front of a bullet with his name on it- he said it himself. He’s feeling pretty rough about it.” 

There was a whisper here, almost too easy to catch: And he should. You tried to keep your own stare back not… judging or accusing, but… “Did you yell at him?” 

“Yell?” Almost as if he couldn’t believe you’d ask something like that. But as you continued to stare at him, not backing down, he broke, raising his hands in a sign of defense. “Not- I wouldn’t call it yelling- it was a very sternly worded ten minute monologue.” 

“And if he took a shot for me, you’d yell- sorry- ten minute sternly monologue at me, is that right?” 

His answer was quick and biting as he settled his hands on your upper arms in a soft hold, almost begging you to understand with the look he leveled your way. “Much as I like Steve- honey- I’ve known you far longer. And much as we’re all a team- you’re the one I’m worried about, at the end of the day. Because you’re the one that’s important to me. That I get to come home to, when things are settled. That I spend my time with. I didn’t come at him because you put yourself in a situation for him that he couldn’t get out of. Way he told that story- he has every right to feel bad about it. And if you’d died over it-” 

Sooner than either of you had realized, the grip he was holding you in had grown too tight, and you pressed your lips together once, reaching to soothe your hands up his chest. “Tony…” Softly, urging him to calm himself. 

It seemed to break him free of the dark storm cloud he’d been sucked up into. As he took a breath and relaxed his hands, he dropped his head, gathering his thoughts. His eyes were gentle but resolved when he found yours again. “Don’t ask me to explain why it upsets me- the danger you’re constantly in. You know why. I love you. And it’s not about doing the right thing. It’s that you had to make a choice. His life or yours. And he never should have needed you to do that for him.” 

Despite it feeling sort of… wrong to argue with him about this- especially considering how fragile he suddenly was over this, because it was you, you couldn’t bite it all back. This wasn’t Steve’s fault. “He thought it was someone he’d knew-” Right? That was why he’d frozen. 

“If Rhodey pointed a gun at me I wouldn’t just wait for him to shoot me, or for someone to step in front of that bullet for me-”

“You know Rhodey’s alive- if it’s someone that was supposed to be dead-” 

“What- how far you want me to go back- if my dad had dug himself out of his grave- I still wouldn’t-” 

“Alright- alright! Calm down- take it easy!” 

His words had grown sharp and almost terrifying. It was why you knew you shouldn’t have tried to argue with him- he wasn’t going to relent on this. But the darkness that had suddenly manifested was… not an easy thing to deal with. Reaching up, you cupped the sides of his jaw in your palms, easing him away from that edge. 

He took a breath. Stabilizing, almost. And then sinking into your hold on him, shoulders drooping. “Honey… I will sit by your bedside as many times as I need to. Just like you do for me. Because that’s what we’ve put ourselves in. That’s what we decided we were doing. But this was different. Shock or not. He picked a side, when the other side he was on was losing. And he’ll pick it again. I guarantee it.” 

“Why? Why do you think you know that?” Almost begging to understand why he was going in so hard on this. He and Steve respected each other. Got along. And even though you knew he loved you- so desperately so- that didn’t mean that this had to put a wedge in between things. 

As he almost slipped away from you, seeming like he didn’t want to say what he seemed to know, you held his face up. Not letting him escape. Leveling his gaze with yours again. Waiting. “I heard them in the hall, while you were out. Old buddy of Rogers- shows up out of the blue- working for Hydra. They’re leaning pretty hard on the assumption something’s not right upstairs- if it even is him. Who do you think they’re waiting to put in the ring again. On the off chance they’re right. Who do you think they’re willing to use as collateral damage?” 

It was quite a different feeling, your heart breaking over the mistrust of people you thought were friends. “Stop.” But it couldn’t be true. He was hurting. And maybe he’d heard some semblance of this plan- but this couldn’t be the whole of it. Nor did you think he would make it up. So the truth was somewhere in the middle. “We can just talk to them. And find out.” Which was your preferred method of doing things. Nobody ever won running whisper campaigns. 

“I’m not trying to start something. I’m just… doing what they are.” 

“And that is?” 

He answered with a startling conviction. “Picking my side.” 

“Tony…” It was as warming as it was unnerving. “It’s one guy. We don’t know anything yet.” 

You found a little relief as he nodded. “Yeah. I’m not trying to pick apart the team. I’m just… trying to make it clear. Where my loyalties lie.” 

At this- at the very least- you couldn’t help the twitch of a smile. “Never a doubt in my mind.” 

His head dipped in a little, voice lowering. “I will always pick you. It’s always you, for me.”

...at this, it was impossible to not let the unnerving part drift away and instead sink into the warmth, only, instead. His devotion for you touched you right at your core. Easing up on your tiptoes, and bringing him closer, you kissed him carefully, winding your arms around his neck, ignoring the quick spark of pain in your chest. His hands came to steady you, palming over your hips. While you wanted it to go on forever, at this point, having missed him terribly in that small time apart- 

There was work to do. And aside that, as you broke, you let him know quietly, “I’ll always pick you, too.” In the important things- the things where lines had to be drawn. That wasn’t now, you were sure. But… if there ever was a time… you and Tony were a team. Inseparable. 

That was the way it was meant to be. 

“I love you.”  A careful and sure murmur against your lips. 

One that was easy to repeat. “I love you, too, Tony.” 

#Tony Stark #Tony Stark x Reader #INY Chapter One Hundred Five

[thebluelemontree]

Why do you think Sandor wanted that song so much? What did it mean to him? Clearly the idea of her singing to him was on his mind for awhile. The song obviously carries symbolic meanings for the reader. But what was its in-universe significance to the man who demanded it? Why was it so important to him that she sing specifically?

It’s part of his childhood idealism and the knight he wanted to be.  The kind that saves fair maidens among other heroic deeds.  The day he saved her in the bread riot was a song come alive for him.  For the first time in his life, Sandor wasn’t just doing his job guarding and carrying out the commands of terrible people.  He was protecting an honest-to-goodness innocent person in need of saving, and Sansa is straight out of central casting as a fair maiden.  From Sansa’s recollection:     

The Hound leapt at them, his sword a blur of steel that trailed a red mist as it swung. When they broke and ran before him he had laughed, his terrible burned face for a moment transformed.  – Sansa IV, ACOK.  

You could read this as nothing more than bloodlust; however, it seems to me his expression was “transformed” from his normal anger into something else.  It’s the presence of anger that Sansa admits is what makes his burned face “terrible,” not so much the scars.  Now that Sansa has a chance to really think about it after some time has passed from the harrowing event, his face was different when he saved her.  I see it as Sandor having a brief moment of elation and pride.  This is what it feels like to be a hero.  This is what his grandfather did for Tytos Lannister.  It’s not all bullshit and children’s stories.  It also tells us Sandor is capable of romanticizing a terrible event, just as Sansa.  He will later fudge the retelling of events to make it seem like the song came as a result of saving Sansa’s life in the riot:  

“… I saved your sister’s life too. The day the mob pulled her off her horse, I cut through them and brought her back to the castle, else she would have gotten what Lollys Stokeworth got. And she sang for me. You didn’t know that, did you? Your sister sang me a sweet little song.“ – Arya IX, ASOS. 

Then later at his death, he will damn himself as no true hero because he failed to protect her from Joffrey.  He botched his own rescue attempt by scaring the daylights out of her.  Because of his frailty and fuck-ups, in his mind, he abandoned her to an even worse fate with Tyrion.  He is the “gutless fraud” he is talking about.  He never deserved that song after all and the way he actually got it shames him to the point he wants to die:

“I hate liars. I hate gutless frauds even worse. Go on, do it.” When Arya did not move, he said, “I killed your butcher’s boy. I cut him near in half, and laughed about it after.” He made a queer sound, and it took her a moment to realize he was sobbing. “And the little bird, your pretty sister, I stood there in my white cloak and let them beat her. I took the bloody song, she never gave it…”

Sandor tying Sansa’s song to the riot is important, but let’s back up a bit because the seed for the song idea was planted before that.

 . . . ah, you’re still a stupid little bird, aren’t you? Singing all the songs they taught you … sing me a song, why don’t you? Go on. Sing to me. Some song about knights and fair maids. You like knights, don’t you?“ 

He was scaring her. "T-true knights, my lord.”

“True knights,” he mocked. “And I’m no lord, no more than I’m a knight. Do I need to beat that into you?"  Clegane reeled and almost fell.  "Gods,” he swore, “too much wine.”    – Sansa II, ACOK.  [Real smooth there, Sandor]

The dot-dot-dots usually mean a character just had a gear-shifting thought.  This is from their meeting on the serpentine steps.  He’s just noticed she’s “almost a woman” then had to remind himself that no, she’s still too young and immature for that.  Sandor’s drunken, less-inhibited brain is bouncing around like a ping-pong ball between his just-awakened attraction and frantically trying to stomp it out.  He’s over-correcting by calling her a “stupid little bird” because (as reflected in his swaying) how off-balance he is thrown by interacting with her.  Not surprisingly, it’s Sandor who is actually showing his immaturity.  Those ellipses indicate a little light bulb has just turned on and it will become an idea that he really latches on to.  Oh, but he can’t just straight up ask for a song.  No way.  Better frame it as a halfhearted dare instead so she doesn’t think he’s actually interested in something so lame, stupid, and the antithesis of everything he’s preached at her.  She reminds him that it’s true knights that she likes, which he must then beat into his own head that he isn’t even a knight, let alone a true one at this point.  He couldn’t be further from the heroes she looks up to.  The song was a dumb idea anyway, right?  So why can’t he let it go?

I would point out just before Sandor brings up the song again, it’s Sansa that has coaxed a poetic “song” about a hero out of Sandor first without him realizing it (whether he willed it or no):

As they were winding their way up the steps, she said, "Why do you let people call you a dog? You won’t let anyone call you a knight.”

“I like dogs better than knights. My father’s father was kennelmaster at the Rock. One autumn year, Lord Tytos came between a lioness and her prey. The lioness didn’t give a shit that she was Lannister’s own sigil. Bitch tore into my lord’s horse and would have done for my lord too, but my grandfather came up with the hounds. Three of his dogs died running her off. My grandfather lost a leg, so Lannister paid him for it with lands and a towerhouse, and took his son to squire. The three dogs on our banner are the three that died, in the yellow of autumn grass. A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he’ll look you straight in the face."  He cupped her under the jaw, raising her chin, his fingers pinching her painfully. "And that’s more than little birds can do, isn’t it? I never got my song.”

“I … I know a song about Florian and Jonquil.“

"Florian and Jonquil? A fool and his cunt. Spare me. But one day I’ll have a song from you, whether you will it or no.”

“I will sing it for you gladly.”

Sandor Clegane snorted. “Pretty thing, and such a bad liar…”

Dot-dot-dot!!! Sansa doesn’t offer to sing about just any knight saving a maiden.  He never asked for a specific song.  It was her choice.  She offers to sing her favorite song, which makes it a deeply personal gift.  So this scene was actually about an exchange of songs, where Sandor gave one that was personal to him as well.  Sansa’s song is also a romantic one, specifically about a maiden who falls in love with an unconventional knight.  He wasn’t prepared for that, nor can he believe it, and as usual, reacts with knee-jerk cynicism.  She’s so pretty that she has to be lying that she’d ever “gladly” sing a song like that for him.  You might want to follow up with this post on those other connotations of the song too because Sansa dreaming of Sandor in her marriage bed gives another ironic twist on having a song from her whether she “wills it or no.”  Even without the sexual innuendo meaning, singing a song for a man is an intimate act which they are both aware of. It’s a piece of herself that she would give gladly to him “one day” in the future.

The problem that will prevent Sansa from being able to give the song gladly lies in Sandor’s immaturity, neediness, cynicism, and untreated PTSD.  Fast forward to the bread riot when he’s high on feeling like one of those true knights she holds in high regard.  He wanted that validation from her but feels deflated when he doesn’t get it in the way he hoped.

"The little bird still can’t bear to look at me, can she?” The Hound released her. “You were glad enough to see my face when the mob had you, though. Remember?”

…

“I … I should have come to you after,” she said haltingly. “To thank you, for … for saving me … you were so brave.”

“Brave?” His laugh was half a snarl. “A dog doesn’t need courage to chase off rats. They had me thirty to one, and not a man of them dared face me.”

So roughly two months have passed (according to the ASOIAF timeline) since the riot and this conversation.  Sansa never even attempted to thank Sandor for saving her, which she acknowledges after some thought that she should have.  For Sandor, it’s a twofold dud.  Not only does he have to remind her, but the thanks she gives is lukewarm and rote.  To be entirely fair, the riot was not a song for Sansa.  She was traumatized by it.  Even the manner in which she was rescued was rife with graphic violence that Sandor doesn’t seem to fully appreciate; however, I’m not sure Sansa would have been so negligent in thanking her rescuer if it had been Ser Loras.  In fact, her nightmare about the riot is an acknowledgment that it wasn’t one of her preferred heroes that saved her.  No one else put themselves between her and the mob.  She would not be alive if it weren’t for the rude asshole with the terrible face standing before her.  A little more gratitude was in order, but Sandor doesn’t make that easy either.  He can’t let on that he cared that much about being her hero or that he was hurt and disappointed by her oversight.  Again, he overcompensates by drastically downplaying it, acting like it’s dumb to make a big deal out of it, and just being an insufferable jerk about everything.  We can see from the way Sandor framed the story to Arya he had fantasized about Sansa reaching out to him post-riot to thank him with a song.  Florian and Jonquil, just like she promised.  It was supposed to be the icing on the cake for his very song-like heroic deed.  And maybe, just maybe, there was a little smidgeon of hope that she reciprocated his romantic feelings thrown in there as well.        

So that leads us to the Blackwater.  It’s always important to keep in mind that Sandor demanded the literal song.  He was never using the word as a euphemism.  He is also in the throes of a major PTSD episode and is not able to comprehend why his behavior is frightening to Sansa.  So why did he have to demand the song at knifepoint?  Why did he demand it at all?  Why was it that important to him at that moment?

“Why did you come here?”

“You promised me a song, little bird. Have you forgotten?”

She didn’t know what he meant. She couldn’t sing for him now, here, with the sky aswirl with fire and men dying in their hundreds and their thousands. “I can’t,” she said. “Let me go, you’re scaring me.”

…

“I could keep you safe,” he rasped. “They’re all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I’d kill them.” He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. “Still can’t bear to look, can you?” she heard him say. He gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. “I’ll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said.” His dagger was out, poised at her throat. “Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life."  – Sansa VII, ACOK.

Sandor has deserted during the battle after he could no longer go on fighting surrounded by wildfire. He’s been labeled a craven and desertion is a crime that can be punishable by death.  When he says he’s lost “all,” he means he’s lost his entire sense of self.  Sandor Clegane doesn’t know who he is anymore.  The fearsome Hound has been (in his eyes) unmanned by a half-man without any real martial ability.  His military career and reputation have been torpedoed.  He has no home or position anymore.  Gregor already took everything else.  Everything is crashing down around him, and he’s self-medicating the tidal wave of panic and humiliation with alcohol.  The one person he can go to for comfort and validation is Sansa.  If he can pledge himself to her, abscond from the city with her, be her hero again, then he still has an identity as a warrior and a man.

Sandor had been waiting for her in her room, lying on her bed like a scared little boy seeking some maternal solace.  The way he says “Little Bird, I knew you’d come” sounds more like he had been silently praying for her to rescue him from this place rather than the other way around.  To Sansa, the song is not only an inappropriate thing to ask for at this moment with all the chaos, violence, and uncertainty.  It sounds downright crazy.  He’s covered in blood, drunk, smelling of vomit, skulking around in the dark and grabbing her, but he accuses Sansa of being irrationally afraid as if she has no cause.  He thinks she’s carelessly forgotten the promised song as if that was an obvious and sane answer to her question of why he’s there.  All this suggests how greatly Sandor is disassociating from reality at this moment.     

Offering to protect her and kill anyone that tries to hurt her is as close as Sandor can come to articulating his feelings for her.  Some call it a declaration of love, which I agree that it is, albeit it’s a very misguided expression of love entwined with violence.  He interprets her response to that declaration as her still not being able to look at his disfigurement, even after all that he has done for her and still trying to do.  It makes him furious.  This is where Sandor’s severe PTSD, his desperation to reclaim a sense of self, and his perceived wrongful rejection by her cause him to take a sharp nosedive into his darkest and most cynical beliefs:  that Sansa has finally shown her true colors and she’s proven herself to be just another highborn brat.  All he wanted was just listen to a soft, dulcet voice spinning some beautiful imagery to drown out the sounds of all those screaming, burning men.  All he demanded asked for was to hear her sing about her favorite knight and recall a day when he felt brave and on top of the world.  But damn it, she denied him this one small thing that would help him feel better right now.  Even then he offers up everything he has to take her north, and she spurns it.  No real fair maiden of the songs would ever be so ungrateful and impossible to please.  When she said she’d sing for him gladly, she lied.  She’s a liar.  She saves her songs for handsome faces.  She never intended to keep her promise.  But fuck it, that song is owed to him.  Might as well just take it.  

Sandor is, of course, completely wrong and in the wrong here.  A fact that will dawn on him as soon as the Mother’s Hymn registers in his brain and he can see himself with clarity.  He came to her like a monster, not a hero.  Sansa was right to be afraid of him and to refuse him.  By Sansa touching his face, she is saying he did have her compassion and willingness to comfort him all along.  She even has the grace in her to give it to him now when he least deserves it, which makes her even more of a true lady than she was before.  It was the Hound she rejected, not him.  His anger, fear, and cynicism caused him to see fault in her when there was none. He hurt the person he cared for most in the world and for that he tears off his white cloak, leaving disgusted and ashamed.  The song then becomes a haunting reminder of his worst self rather than his greatest glory.  This is why he finds it so necessary to confess taking the song along with his other failures and bad acts.  To him, it was just as bad as letting Sansa be beaten if that gives you any indication of how seriously Sandor actually takes the meaning of the song.  It was a piece of her that he didn’t have a right to and wasn’t worthy of.  Songs from fair maidens are for heroes and true knights.  Not for a gutless fraud like himself.

#valyrianscrolls #sandor clegane meta #sansa stark meta #sansan meta #i'll have a song from you #the battle of the blackwater #trippyl0ngstocking #good thing Sansa understood and already forgave him #but he still owes her a sincere apology #and he must find a way to forgive himself

[pb1138]

Fictober Day 3: Bait, feat Blackwall and Gemma

“Milady… I must admit to having some… reservations… about this plan.”

Gemma tsked as she arranged her potions along her belt. “Oh, tush. It’ll be fine.” She flashes him a brilliant grin as she moves onto her quiver to count and straighten her arrows. “We all know the plan, right?”

The Iron Bull lets out a low chuckle, his whetstone grinding slowly against his sword. “Oh yeah. It’s gonna be sick.”

“I’m afraid I must agree with Blackwall, Inquisitor. This plan is riddled with danger.”

She rolled her eyes at that and hefted her quiver onto her back. “That’s why I asked you guys specifically along. Blackwall and The Iron Bull are our strongest tanks, and you’re our best healer.” She gave them a thumbs up and a cheeky grin. “We got this, guys. Relax.”

With that, she dropped a smoke bomb and disappeared into the shadows. Blackwall looked at the other two, his own worry reflected in at least Solas’s face, and the three men crept to the treeline to wait. Solas stood poised, staff raised to cast a barrier spell when she reappeared, and that at least gave him some small semblance of peace. A small, teeny, tiny, miniscule, almost nonexistence semblance of peace.

He could see her, just barely. The slight shimmering against the far tree line was just distinct enough to catch his searching eye. On bated breath, he watched as she made her way to her position in the field, in the far corner of the clearing from them but far too close to their target to ease his mind.

It happened quickly. With an explosive arrow, her disguise was cast aside and the signal given. Solas was quick to throw the barrier up around her, and not a moment too soon it would seem. No quicker than the barrier was up did the area around Gemma explode in a blast of fire before the high dragon let out an ear-splitting screech. Solas moved through the trees toward the center of the battlefield while Blackwall and The Iron Bull made their move, The Iron Bull to the dragon’s rear and Blackwall directly across from Gemma’s current position. It happened quickly—Gemma’s volley, Solas’s blizzard spell, The Iron Bull’s War Cry—all within what felt like the blink of an eye.

And then Blackwall was running, his sword raised, a battle cry of his own pulled from deep within him.

The diversion seemed to work, because while he and The Iron Bull charged, the dragon’s attention was kept squarely turned in the opposite direction, in Gemma’s direction. They both of them managed to strike fast and true, for all the good it did them. The only thing they seemed to be able to do was piss the beast off. The damage they were doing was negligible, no matter how long or hard the battle went.

“We’ve got to retreat!” he yelled over the roaring of the creature.

“Aw, come on! We’ve got it on the ropes!” The Iron Bull’s pout was practically tangible between his grunting.

“Inquisitor! We have to retreat!”

“No! We’re so close! I know it!” He cast a furtive glance in her direction, assessing her damage. Despite Solas’s best efforts to keep any of them from harm, her right arm was sporting a rather serious-looking burn that seemed to be causing her great pain as she knocked her arrow. Both her potion belt and her quiver were dangerously low, maybe a dozen arrows left and two healing potions.

“Gemma!” That got her attention. “Please. We cannot win this fight!”

She looked at him with no small degree of pain and turned her attention back to the dragon. No longer could he afford to give her his attention because the beast was lashing out at both The Iron Bull and him. The dragon screeched with such volume and high pitch that it dazed him, left him stumbling in a stupor until all of a sudden, he was in the air, and then he was sliding along the ground, a sharp, stinging pain in his side. Vaguely, Blackwall could hear someone’s voice, but his mind was having great difficulty sorting through the information at hand. When the world came back into focus at long last, he was greeted with the shiny dome of Solas, hovering over him, could feel the wash of magic across his body, stitching him back together.

“Inquisitor! We must leave, now!”

Well at least someone agreed with him.

“Go! We’ll cover you!”

Hands were on him, pulling him to his feet. His arm was swung over Solas’s shoulders as the (surprisingly strong) man helped him get away, casting a flurry of spells over his shoulder in their haste. They retreated into the thick underbrush, not stopping for several minutes until they found a small clearing. Groaning, Blackwall sat down with Solas’s help. Solas moved quickly to set up his healing equipment, muttering under his breath about hairbrained schemes and a lack of preparation. It wasn’t until then that Blackwall realized his plate was no longer on his body, and a quick glance at his wound gave him a good clue why:  he’d been cut cleanly where the dragon hit. Likely, his armor had been ripped from his body. Swallowing hard, he laid his head back and looked up at the canopy overhead. “I’ve had worse,” he tried to joke.

“You were nearly ripped in two,” grumbled Solas.

“Eh. Just a flesh wound.”

He could feel Solas’s incredulous stare and could not hold in the slightly hysterical chuckle that bubbled inside him. Solas shook his head and grumbled, setting about cleaning and treating the wound.

A rustling came from the underbrush, and as if on instinct, a barrier flew up around the two of them.

“Solas, quick!”

Solas was on his feet quickly, rushing towards The Iron Bull’s voice, and Blackwall pulled himself to sitting, an icy cold fear gripping his heart. Within moments, they burst back through into the clearing, but he couldn’t see. “We must get her stabilized, place her there—”

“What happened?”

The Iron Bull shot him a pained look over his shoulder as he laid Gemma’s small body down. “She wasn’t—We weren’t—”

It was growing hard to breathe through his fear, his heart pounding in his ears. “Is she…?”

“No, not yet.” Solas was leaning over her, his hands glowing with the efforts of healing, running along her small frame almost frantically.

“Not yet? What does that mean, ‘not yet?’ Are you saying she could—”

“If you keep distracting me, perhaps!” His voice was sharp, biting.

The Iron Bull came to sit beside Blackwall, looking a vision of misery. “I… I tried to get to her, but I wasn’t… I wasn’t fast enough.”

Blackwall shook his head, struggling to keep his cool. “It wasn’t your fault. We never should have attempted the attack in the first place.” Though he could not tear his eyes from the blood upon her lips, the red a stark contrast to her blue tattoos, he patted The Iron Bull’s arm reassuringly.

While they waited, The Iron Bull moved to stitch up Blackwall’s side to spare Solas the need to heal him. Once he was put back together, they both turned to watch in silence as Solas worked. It felt as though years passed before her lovely multi-colored eyes opened, even longer for her to look around, but when she did, they all three let out a collective sigh of relief. “Thank the Maker,” Blackwall whispered.

She swallowed hard, smacked her lips a few times. “I feel like shit,” she whispered.

“I should think so, Boss. That dragon fucked you up.”

At The Iron Bull’s bluntness, she smirked. “Not as bad as we did it, right?”

“Is that all you can do? Joke? Maker’s balls, I don’t believe you!” Blackwall threw his hands up. If he’d not been injured, he would’ve gotten to his feet and walked away, but as it were, he folded his arms across his chest and looked away.

The Iron Bull and Solas seemed to know what was coming, so they slipped away quietly. For a long moment, silence passed between Gemma and Blackwall, only the ambient sounds of the forest to fill the void. Then, finally, she whispered a soft, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry for what, Gemma? For getting injured? For almost dying? For taking us into that fight in the first place even though I told you I didn’t like it? For what?”

She sighed softly and reached out for him, her hand lying in the grass a good two feet away from him. “Yes. For all of it. I’m sorry. But it’s fine, yeah? We’re all alright.”

He sucked his teeth and cast her a glare, but at the open way she was staring at him, his anger softened. With a heavy sigh, he reached over and joined his hand with hers. “This time.”

She nodded slightly and squeezed his fingers. “I promise, love, I’ll be more careful from now on. We’ll be more careful.”

“That’s all I ask,” he whispered. It took some doing, but he scooted close enough to her to take her head in his lap. His gauntlets tossed aside, he ran his fingers through her hair and looked down at her, his heart swelling with affection. “I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you, Gemma.”

Grinning softly, she reached up and pressed her hand to his cheek. “Oh?”

He pressed his face against her palm and smirked. “Do you know how embarrassing it’ll be to carve your tombstone? ‘Died in the line of duty. As bait. For a bigass dragon.’”

She giggled then flinched and sighed. “You’re right. That would be a shame.” Then with a sly grin, “We’ll have Varric do it instead. He’s good at spinning stories like that.”

Blackwall rolled his eyes at her. “Yes, well, let’s wait a few years before we have to hire his services. I’m an old man, Gemma. My heart can only take so much before it’ll give out.”

She snorted and tugged on his beard playfully. “Is that another grey streak, I see?”

He laughed and pulled her knuckles to his lips. “With you? It very well could be.”

#blackwall #blackwall x cadash #fictober day 3 #thom rainier #blackwall x gemma #gemma cadash #gemma #inquisitor #blackwall x inquisitor #angsty fluff #cute #fictober #fictober 2019 #fictober 2k19 #gemwall #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #da #dai #da:i #thom rainier x inquisitor #cadash

[andavs]

Ooops I totally didn't follow directions. Let me try again. Fake married + Royal AU, sterek

This is definitely King Derek being threatened by the Argents and he needs an alliance, quick. Even if it’s just for show, he needs them to think his kingdom isn’t alone and an easy target. And I’ve decided that this will not only be fake married, but also a dash of fake royalty! Stiles is Aladdin without the genie! Or maybe Scott is the genie in this scenario.

Scott works with Derek in the palace. I’m going to say he’s an advisor or something. He’s the guy who’s constantly out in the countryside and villages, talking with the people, finding out what they need to live, and reporting back to Derek. Derek wants to do this himself, does it as much as he can, but he’s king. He’s got a lot of other things going on with the Argents looking for war, and he doesn’t have the time.

So knowing pretty much everyone in the kingdom personally, Scott’s the one who comes up with it all.

“You need a marriage alliance,” he tells Derek, who already knows this.

“And who do you suggest I marry, Scott?” All of the neighboring kingdoms, and even their neighboring kingdoms have their own alliances established and marriages planned. There aren’t many spare royals around. He tells Scott all of this, even though he knows he already knows.

“Then we go north,” Scott shrugs. “There are kingdoms beyond the mountains, there must be someone willing to marry.”

Derek raises his eyebrows dubiously. The north has an...interesting reputation. There’s a reason no one makes alliances across the mountains. It’s cold and wild up there, and the people are the same. Ruthless, hard, unforgiving in battle. They would be a good alliance when it comes to defending the kingdom, but awful the rest of the time. They can’t open up their kingdom to barbarians, and even if they could, there wasn’t enough time to arrange it.

“A messenger wouldn’t even make it across the mountains before the Argents attack, let alone find an ally.”

“Alright, then we fake it.” Scott says it as if it were actually that simple.

“A fake marriage? To a spouse who is always conveniently away on business?”

“We find someone to play the part.”

“Of course,” Derek says with biting sarcasm. “Round up all of our fair skinned subjects here in the far south.” The very few northerners who have crossed the mountains have a very specific look that isn’t found in the south. They’re pale with dark features, nothing like the tanned skin that comes to seafarers of the warmer climate. They’d never be able to find someone to play the part convincingly. “They would see through it in a second and kill us on the spot.”

That makes Scott pause.

And then his eyes light up. “Stiles!”

Derek has no idea what that means.

*

Stiles is really not royal material. Not even for a fake royal. He’s actually a bit of a thief.

“A bit?” Derek echoes dangerously. Scott winces and beside him, Stiles shrugs shamelessly. “You’re putting our lives and the entire kingdom in the hands of a bit of a thief?”

“I won’t steal your stuff, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Stiles says with an inappropriate smirk.

Scott kicks him in the shin and swears to Derek, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t do anything, but look at him! He looks northern!”

He does, and that’s the problem. He’s pale with dark hair and dark eyes, and he doesn’t look like he’s seen the sun a day of his life. Because he’s been running around at night to steal things and, presumably, sleeping during the day. Definitely not making an honest living around the docks and out at sea.

“He doesn’t look like royalty.” Derek has to point out the obvious, because Stiles is fidgeting and slouching, and his dark clothes have seen better days. The dark clothes are another clue that he doesn’t see sunlight because he would be baking in the southern heat.

“He doesn’t look like our royalty,” Scott corrects with a conspiring grin. “Who knows what our distant northern royals wear?”

And Derek is reluctant to admit that he has a point there. The northerners are barbarians, who’s to say that they don’t slouch and fidget and generally have a bad attitude?

He studies Stiles for another second, sizing him up, weighing the pros and cons. It’s dangerous and stupid, and if they’re found out then they will all be wiped out by the Argents, but...they’ll probably be wiped out either way, to be honest. What do they have to lose?

*

Following this is a montage of Scott and Derek trying to teach Stiles how to be royal without tipping off anyone else in the castle, kingdom, region that he’s not. It’s lucky that he’s spent his life off the grid in the shadows because no one recognizes him, but that also means that he hasn’t given much attention to etiquette or appearance or manners. They have to teach him royal table manners, how to eat fancy food, how to dress, keep him from getting lost in the palace, and Scott is constantly patting him down for stolen goods.

Even when he doesn’t know he’s taken something, if Scott holds out his hand and makes a disappointed face, Stiles will hand over something of value he’s not supposed to have.

It’s a disaster, and messengers really are dispatched to the north to find actual allies, but in the meantime, Stiles is all they’ve got, so they give it their all.

Now, obviously through all of this Derek and Stiles actually develop feelings for each other. They bicker and kick each other under the dining table, and Derek is constantly reaching into Stiles’ pockets to retrieve his family’s heirlooms, but they have fun with each other. And years of thieving have taught Stiles a little something about strategy and spying and whatnot, so he does a bit of that against the Argents. For the good of the kingdom, totally not at all because he really cares about Derek and wants him to succeed at this.

I haven’t decided if Stiles is actually a secret royal or not. On the one hand, his mother fled from the north while pregnant to hide from some enemy while his father stayed behind to defend the throne, but she died at some point and Stiles was left to fend for himself, and this northern king has been searching for his wife and son ever since. His father accepts this offer of alliance because he’s searched all of the north for his lost wife and son, and the only place he hasn’t looked is the south. There’s one hell of an upset when he recognizes his wife’s eyes in the husband of King Derek, and suddenly their alliance is real and not fake.

But on the other hand, I also like the idea of Stiles not being royal at all, not actually from the north. He actually is just a really pale thief. King John Stilinski of the north has bad history with the Argents. The Argents don’t even remember it, it was some negligible, small portion of their army that was sent north to scout, attacked John’s people and were eventually killed without ever reporting back, but he’s never forgotten the lives lost there. This foreign, cowardly kingdom that never even came to collect their dead or acknowledge what they’d done.

So the second he hears that King Derek is trying to stand against them, he signs right the fuck up and makes the journey himself with a portion of his own army, gets there around the time the Argents are looming and ready to attack. He goes straight to see King Derek and they tell him the pickle they’re in with their fake northern prince; the Argents aren’t really buying it, even with Stiles’ fake “northern” accent, and he nods and says with a wink, “Oh, you mean my son Prince Stiles Stilinski?”

Basically King John just adopts Stiles on the spot as a fuck you to the Argents, and somehow now Stiles is actual royalty? And he has a dad and eventually a real husband once they get married for real? And there’s a real alliance? What the hell?

Either way, they beat the Argents, and maybe the young Princess Allison overthrows her grandfather and ends the feud, and then there’s another alliance made because she’s got a thing for Scott and vice versa.

#this got a little out of hand #ficlet #prompt #sterek #now i really love fake royalty and want to see it everywhere #literaryoblivion

[werevulvi]

"It IS the transition that makes trans people men and women. And now you have to do it again. That sucks! I know you've already paid your dues with dysphoria, and having to do it from the other side has to be hell. You did in fact transition into a man, and now you have to transition into a woman. It's going to be hard work to live as a woman, even though you are a natal female. I know you're a woman, but there are people out there who are going to clock you as a trans woman, and some of those people are going to think of you as lesser for it.

I've met and interacted with a lot of people like you, Laura. Detransitioned, lesbian women. And several ID'd as lesbians while calling themselves men. They became distraught, because they were not interested in the straight women who were now interested in them, they were interested in gay women. Because they were gay women."

I don't know how to reply to that. So I did try to start a conversation about sexual attraction going to sex not gender in a transmed group few days ago and well... I did get replies eventually. I got this (chopped from a much longer reply) from a friend of mine, and although I know he means well, and althout I know it was I who brought up my detrans struggles in terms of my (and others) sexuality and I should suit my stupid self for digging into such a sensitive topic... but fuck this hit me so hard. Even so to the point I cried myself to sleep.

Cause I do struggle really hard to believe that I'm still somehow a woman despite my transition to male, so those words of his dug into an especially delicate wound.

I don't know exactly what his words did, but they upset me really deeply. I felt like crying, screaming, destroying things, it was as if my soul was shaking and rattling within my body. I wasn't able to put words into what I was feeling, but I felt upset both about my detransition situation and about being a lesbian.

His previous message dug into my internalised homophobia and how much I still struggle to accept myself and not hate myself for being a lesbian. And I said "Whatever 'lesbian pride' I wave around here [in that fb group] is about as shallow as my makeup. I don't want to be a lesbian, I'm just trying to accept that I simply am one."

It's tearing at me. How ruined my entire life feels. As I tried to fall asleep in my early morning cries, I felt like I've ruined my whole life so bad. Like beyond redemption, almost. Or I don't know if it is redeemable. What can I do, except from just keep trying? I fucked up my body and traumatised myself sexually for a decade cause of the traumas before that, and I lived lies upon lies in desperate attempts to escape from myself, but now it has all caught up with me. Everything.

And it felt like a mountain hitting me in my face. And I still can't get up from the impact. I can't. I'm just lying here. Defeated.

I've been a little better for the past couple of months, although still dysfunctional enough to not manage doing anything productive, but then yesterday it was like I fell down into a pit of despair again. Same pit as before. I hate my life. Just look at it?! It's a full on tragedy. And it breaks my ravaged heart.

Is it too late to try to love my body and connect with it? Or is it beyond saving? Is it too late to start over with my dating/sex life in a way that won't traumatise me and that only includes other women? Or am I too hopelessly traumatised and unlovable forever? Is it too late? Will this pain kill me?

I keep wondering. No I'm not suicidal and have no such intentions what so ever, but fuck yeah I do wish I was dead and it's possible I could end up dying out of sheer negligence. Unintentionally starve to death cause of my ever decreasing appetite and I just forgot to eat, or care to eat. Cause I don't know how to push through this, and I'm so, so despondent. I don't have motivation for anything, not even breathing.

Truth is I feel horrible about the way I look. I hate that I look so bad when not "dolled up" cause I'm no fucking doll! And I feel like I'm putting on a mask of more femininity than I want to, in order to "look like a woman" and the trans community's harmful views on manhood and womanhood being purchasable lifestyle choices dig wounds into me and make me wanna scream. Am I buying womanhood in makeup, razors, dresses and a new female name? Fuck no, it doesn't work like that! And nor will me getting permanent hair removal and boob surgery be like me buying womanhood either. Being a woman is my birth right as much as it is my birth curse. It's something I fought my entire life to stop fighting... but I have a feeling that fight will never truly end. That I will always have to fight society on that point, if not also myself.

And truth is calling myself a lesbian feels like a joke cause I'm not even a "real" woman anymore. I'm not anything. I shredded my femaleness for a fake maleness. Ripped off my skin for a plastic suit. I'm a hackjob. A failed experiment. A broken girl who never got to truly become a woman. I'm stunted in my growth. It feels like it's too late now. I know I love women, that my love is exclusively for women, that that's what I want and it feels so good to even just imagine it considering how lonely I am... but just how much of a lesbian am I really when I still disconnect so hard from other women and from seeing myself as somehow one of them? So to the point that I feel like I'm a drag queen, a kind of man toying around with femininity making a mockery out of being a woman with caked on makeup and padded bras... but I'm just sad. Trying to recreate what I've forsaken.

To some degree I can connect better to other lesbians, though. And that's a big reason I hold on so tightly to the lesbian community already despite being so new in it and not quite getting the in's and out's of it yet. The struggles I share with them, and that there is some mutual understanding in that feeling of being alienated from other women in general. And on that point, I think I even relate noticably better to butch lesbians than I do to feminine straight women. That gay struggle runs deeper than what we look like. Also, before, I used to think being gay and bi was like a similar struggle or even pretty much the same. But oh boy, was I wrong.

Back when I still thought I was bisexual and thought I had "internalised biphobia", I thought to myself that it would be better if I was a lesbian instead... I take back that stupid wish now! I wanna whack myself in the head over it! But I think, that I actually got so far in accepting my attraction to women back then, that I even started thinking it would be fine if I was actually a lesbian, was one of the reasons that deeply suppressed/repressed truth in me started finally surfacing.

So no, I really don't think I in any way "wished myself gay" but rather that the desperate wish made my actual homosexuality start to show itself to me, cause I had let down my guard and inner defenses enough to open that door slightly. But then bunch of months later of course the thought hits me that "that was a really dumb wish" as if it was somehow the cause although I know it wasn't and it doesn't work like that. I guess that's just my internalised homophobia beating me with its stick again. Laughing in my face singing "nana-na-naaaana you got what you wished for, have fun in hell!" cause it echoes truth in everything that's ever randomly happened to me in my life, or in the random ways I was born.

I know I keep questioning myself when I really should be questioning society and its questionable ways of treating people like me. But it’s easier to beat myself up cause I’m closer and more accessible.

When I thought I was bisexual I thought I had at least some shred of heterosexuality about myself that I could hold onto, which made my attraction to women... not less scary but more like... something I didn't "have to" accept about myself (I know that sounds bad, but as a coping mechanism). But since knowing I'm actually a lesbian, that slight sense of security got pulled away from under my feet and I'm suddenly left to rely on and only having my attraction to women, which makes it even more scary and daunting. Like I really have to accept this now or else I'll have nothing.

And I'm just floating around somewhere scary and unstable with no ground to put my feet on. Cause I walked on a glass floor and it broke.

But the image of myself and what I try to recreate becomes skewed and disturbed like a false immitation. Like a scary victorian doll meant to resemble a child. I can never truly become myself again, or the woman I was supposed to become. I'm stuck as a living doll, reeking of decay.

It makes me think of a horrifying case of necrophilia I once saw a documentary about. A man who picked up the remains of a former patient of his cause he was "in love" (obsessed) with her. She had died of tuberculosis and he was her doctor who tried to cure her (I think this was back in the 30's or something before a cure existed, and yeah, actually happened). He propped her up like a doll in his home, trying all sorts of techniques to keep her looks from fading as she decayed over time. The photos of what he had of made her body, 7 years after her death, still haunt me a little. Poor girl. (And yeah, there was more horror to the story considering it's said to be the worst case of necrophilia in history so far... but let's leave out those details, okay. Not relevant to my feelings.)

But why, oh why, do I connect that horrifying image to my own body?! Cause she had essentially been turned into a doll, made of her own human remains, plastic and paint. And very tragically sexualised, which erh... yeah is relatable on a highly metaphorical level. I felt really dead when I was traumatised sexually over and over, and I felt really a lot like I was just a sex doll for men's pleasure. Completely mindlessly so. And also... she too never became a woman. She was only 15-16 years old when she died. I often relate to tragedies, in general.

And I fear that kind of image. Of becoming something like a false immitation of my former self that will haunt me. It reminds me of my childhood nightmares and horror movies I've seen. It reminds me of my phobia of distortion and fearing my own mirror reflection for weeks cause what if it will look distorted and unnatural? What am I detransitioning into, a monster? It makes me dissociate again. My body doesn’t feel like my own. I'm not here. The number you have reached is out of service.

I don't wanna go through this pain. It's far too much and it suffocates me. I wanna escape this horrible hell in my mind. I want a time machine. Go back to my teens. Start over again. I really want to start over. Life went horribly wrong and there's no way back.

#personal #sad post #really morbid stuff too #detransition #message from a friend #lesbian #detransitioning lesbian #womanhood #transition regret #phobia of distortion #i dont have depression its natural that tragedies depress ppl #traumatised

[yoon-kooks]

A Prince’s Kiss

Pairing: Yoonkook 

Genre: SleepingBeauty!AU, Prince!Jungkook, Guard!Yoongi, Fluff, Crack

Summary: Yoongi “accidentally” falls victim to an eternal slumber in hopes that his prince will come to his aid with true love’s kiss. 

Word Count: 1.7k 

A/N: also posted on ao3 @yoon_kooks!

“Umm, Yoongi?” Jungkook, the youngest prince in the Bangtan Kingdom, looks at his personal guard with the biggest eyes and the most innocent smile.

“Yes, Prince Charm-… I mean… Jungkook?”

“You can let go of my hand now,” he chuckles, swinging the entwined fingers up and down as they walk back to the palace. “We’re safe and out of the woods now. Besides, I’m pretty sure the bunnies and deer were never going to attack us…”

“Yeah, but what about the dragons?”

“Dragons?!” Jungkook can’t believe his ears. In fact, he kind of wants to see it with his own eyes. “Yoongi, we have to go back. I didn’t get to see the dragons…”

“We just spent two hours searching the woods for Totoro, and you best believe we aren’t going back for the dragons.”

“But-”

“Look Jungkook, I was assigned as your guard to protect your cute little ass from anything potentially dangerous, and Totoro and dragons just so happen to fall under that category.” Yoongi pinches the prince’s cheek. “I think you’ve had enough exploration for today. Let’s go back home and rest, yeah?”

“You always treat me like a baby,” Jungkook tugs his hand out of his guard’s grasp. That’s never a good sign.

“I’m just trying to keep you as safe as possible,” Yoongi puts his hands up and gets all defensive like the guard he is. “Remember there was that one prophecy about someone pricking their finger on something and then they fall into an eternal slumber? That could be you. So don’t go asking me to save you with true love’s kiss when it happens~”

“I hope it’s you who pricks your finger,” Jungkook says with the sharpest of hmphs as they enter through the palace gates. Not good… not good at all. Yoongi dies a little bit every time the prince gets upset, and especially when the anger is directed at him.

So he backs away and sheepishly follows ten feet behind Jungkook, only to ensure his prince arrives back to his room in one piece before ending guard duty for the day.

But of course, an unforeseen obstacle pops up before reaching Jungkook’s room on the seventh floor of the palace.

“Watch out,” Yoongi calls out, jogging up to the prince to hold him back from proceeding until the coast is clear.

A tiny hermit crab scurries in confusion across the dark red carpet of the sixth floor. It appears the most well-read of the princes, Namjoon, has returned from his studies at sea. And knowing what a klutz he can be, he’s probably the one responsible for his own crab’s escape.

With careful fingers, Yoongi scoops up the delicate crab which apparently is a threat to Jungkook’s life and watches it crawl around the palm of his hand.

Jungkook lets out a very audible sigh and continues to walk up to his room, completely ignoring Yoongi and his act of heroism.

“Jungkook, wait u- OUCH!” Yoongi yelps as a tiny red dot appears right where the crab pricked his pinky finger. Wait one fucking minute. “Jungkook. Come back, I’m dying. I’ve been pricked.” The guard runs, perfectly fine, to the prince’s room.

“You look pretty alive to me…” The prince pays more attention to the hermit crab climbing on Yoongi’s head than at the negligible speck of blood on his pinky. He approaches his guard and places a firm hand on his shoulder, but only to reach and grab the crab. “I’ll return this little guy to Namjoon, so you can leave now, Yoongi.”

“Did you not hear me? I’m literally dying,” Yoongi scoffs, pauses, and then starts yawning like crazy, “I mean, o-oh no… I suddenly feel sleepy… I guess this is it for me… Jungkook, I always wanted to tell you this, but I lov-”

What cuts off Yoongi’s chatter isn’t an eternal slumber, but rather the fact that Jungkook has already left the room to return Namjoon’s crab.

Unbelievable. Yoongi yawns again as he crawls into the prince’s bed and closes his eyes.

“I know you’re not dead.” Jungkook’s voice is still as harsh as ever when he returns from Namjoon’s room. Does the boy have no heart?

“Of course I’m not dead, I’m just sleep-… s-sleeptalking… yeah…”

“You’ll be fed to the crabs if you don’t get out of my bed in ten seconds.”

“I can’t… I need… true love’s kiss…”

“10, 9, 8…”

“W-wait, just hear me out… I need someone…”

“Who?”

“Jung-”

“Ah! Jung Hoseok! Namjoon’s guard. He’s your true love, huh?” Jungkook gets a lot more cheerful than Yoongi would prefer. “Let me go get him for you~” he hums as he runs out to fetch the other guard. The fuck is he so happy about?

After counting to 381 in a failed attempt to actually fall asleep, Yoongi hears mumbles just on the other side of the door.

“Why the fuck do I need to kiss him?”

“So I don’t have to do it!”

“But I thought you l-”

“We had an argument, okay?”

“That’s your problem, Jungkook. Not mine.”

“Fine.”

The door creak open, but it sounds like only one set of footsteps is audible.

“Hoseok didn’t want to kiss you, so he left.” Jungkook’s tone is a bit softer this time.

No response. Yoongi finally decides to shut up for once.

“Actually, I don’t think there’s anyone out there who wants to kiss you.”

…Well that’s kind of rude…?

“It’s because you’re no fun. And you lie a lot. And you’re old.”

True, but he could’ve left out that last part about being old.

“I know you’re only that way because you want to protect me. So I’m grateful for that.”

That’s actually really sweet. But what does that have to do with being old??

“I guess I just wish you didn’t treat me like a baby all the time?”

Okay, the old thing kind of makes sense now.

“Maybe things would be different if you didn’t see me as a baby or as a prince.”

Different in a good way?

“So… just this once, I’ll be the one who saves you… Just this once!!”

Oh? Is it actually going to happen? Is Jeon Jungkook actually going to-

The softest pair of lips brush over Yoongi’s, leaving a tingling sensation—a sensation Yoongi would like to believe is the effect of true love’s kiss. There’s a long wait period after that subtle yet alluring tease, but once the lips return, he’s sure not to let them leave so soon.

He leans in, eyes still closed, and kisses back. The mere thought of Jungkook being the one to wake him up from his eternal slumber is enough to overwhelm the other boy with a warm tenderness and affection. Because truthfully, there’s no one else he’d rather experience true love’s kiss with.

At long last, the time may be right for Yoongi to express the love he’d always thought was unrequited.

“Jungkook, I…” Yoongi opens his eyes for the first time in what feels like forever. It’s surprisingly difficult for his eyes to adjust to the dimmed lighting because the body on top of him certainly doesn’t look like the prince he knows and loves. In fact, it kind of looks like Jimin, Bangtan Kingdom’s resident sorcerer and the most sought-after boy of non-royal blood.

Oh no.

Yoongi rubs his eyes in panic. This must be some kind of mistake, or perhaps a bad dream. It’s not that Jimin is terrible or anything remotely close to that—in fact, he’s the boy most people would dream about locking lips with. But not Yoongi.

Once his vision has fully returned, Yoongi can confirm that the soft plush lips he felt had indeed belonged to Jimin and not Jungkook. What has he done?

“Jungkook asked me to do it on his behalf.” Jimin slips off the bed and blows one last kiss before walking out of the room.

All that leaves is a woke Yoongi and a quiet Jungkook sitting at the edge of his bed.

“Why did you get Jimin to kiss me?”

“He was the only one in the entire kingdom who was willing to kiss you,” Jungkook shrugs. “And even then, I had to bribe him with nudes of Prince Taehyung and his knight, Seokjin.”

“…Why do you even have their nudes? Wait, don’t answer that lol.” Yoongi tries to wipe those wild thoughts from his mind. “I guess what I meant was, why didn’t you just kiss me yourself?”

“Because I didn’t want to.” He doesn’t even try to sugarcoat it.

“Not even after all the sweet things you said while I was asleep?”

“You were never asleep!”

“Okay fine, but… you knew I could hear your words, and you still said those things?”

Jungkook nods.

“Then why couldn’t you kiss me? You said you’d be the one to save me.”

“I was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Scared of you not waking up… and not responding to my kiss… and not seeing me as your true love.” He was scared of not being loved back.

“Jungkook, you know how I feel about you…”

“No I don’t. Because you’re a liar and a snake,” Jungkook huffs. “How am I supposed to know what’s real and what’s fake?”

Yoongi climbs to the edge of the bed where Jungkook sulks. With a deep breath, he plants a delicate kiss on the prince’s booboo cheeks. Rather than the tingling sensation he had felt with Jimin, Yoongi feels a mix of jitters and excitement, uncertainty and hope, love and bliss. And he only hopes that Jungkook, too, feels what he’s feeling. Euphoria.

The prince does his best to hold back, but a small smile still manages to slip as he nods in response to the bold move made by his guard.

“Jimin gets a whole tongue and I only get a tiny peck on the cheek?” he chuckles.

“In my defense, I thought it was you,” Yoongi pouts, “I wanted it to be you when I opened my eyes.”

“And I wanted to see dragons, but I guess we can’t have good things in this cruel, cruel world.”

“I’ll take you tomorrow.”

“Today.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tonight.”

“Fine, but only because you’re cute.”

“Thank you, Yoongi.” Jungkook gives his guard a good squeeze. “I’ll love you forever if we can witness a real dragon together~!”

“Haha… right… a real dragon,” Yoongi nods, painfully aware that he’ll need to do some shady bargaining for Jimin’s sorcery in order to pull off this miracle. But if it makes his prince happy, he’ll do his best to make it happen.

#bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bts fluff #yoonkook fanfic #yoonkook fluff #yoonkook #bts #bangtan #bts imagines #bts crack #yoonkook crack #bts royal au #bts sleeping beauty au #yoongi #jungkook #a prince's kiss

[tysonrunningfox]

Lost Chances

This is a super mean chapter.  I just almost cried editing it.  I’m so...invested.  

And I just couldn’t do this close to Christmas.  Don’t expect another update until after, probably, because I do want people to catch up and also, feel free to pillage my inbox with pitchforks because I half feel I deserve it.  But here.  

Tumblr | AO3

It’s quiet for a few days. Calm almost, except for Bang following Mom around like something bad will happen if he lets her out of his sight. He doesn’t even want to go flying, so I end up walking to cover about ten things for the chief when he opts to stay home to keep an eye on Mom.  I kind of get what she’s saying about not being able to live like that for almost a year, but I know better than to say anything about it.  It might finally be getting through my thick skull that having the same fight multiple times just for the sake of it never actually changes anything.  

Aurelia’s still being frosty and sticking closer to the chief than usual and I’m trying not to let it bug me even though it feels like I’m kicked out of some club.  A club I never accepted the invite to, because I was never one to hang out with the chief on purpose.  Maybe that’s what changed his mind, if I’d kissed up more he wouldn’t keep waving me to the door to take care of his stuff with that disinterested little head bob.  

I end up spending a lot of time with Stoick, which isn’t as awkward as I would have thought because he mostly just likes dragons and getting as covered in mud as is humanly possible.  That and we’re both banned from the house for being deemed too loud, except the number of times Mom checks on us makes me sure that it’s more the chief’s idea than hers.

It reminds me of the last time we were all living under the law of the chief’s idea, his whole brilliant marriage plan that didn’t quite backfire.  Except this time, Aurelia is inside and I’m not.  And everyone’s ok with it to the point where I can’t even try to shut up that little voice in my head that’s constantly reminding me that they’re all hoping for a second chance at a better version.  

And then, one morning, I wake up coughing, sitting bolt upright and wheezing against the incredibly pointy elbow jabbing into my chest.  It takes me a groggy moment to recognize the brick red of Aurelia’s hair tangled in my blankets and another second to realize she’s sobbing, her face wet against the side of my neck, back heaving. 

“Hey, it’s ok,” I mutter, clearing my throat and ignoring the fact that she’s practically choking me as I rub her back.  She’s fully dressed and smells like the woods, like she just snuck in.  For a moment I’m sure it’s Arvid, that he’s done something, and he may be my half-brother but he’s dead. 

Her fingernails dig into the nape of my neck, “it’s Mom.”  She barely gets it out between sobs and I sit up more fully, looking around at the quiet room.  The fire has died down to coals, and it’s not strange because I’m used to waking up next to a cold hearth, but in the moment I’m sure it’s gone because Mom couldn’t restart it for some reason. 

“Is she ok?  What happened?”  I try to pry my sister’s face away from my shoulder but she refuses, rubbing her snot on my shirt. 

“It’s…it’s the baby,” she whispers, shoulders tensing as she pulls away ever so slightly.  Right, I made an ass of myself, as always, and now she doesn’t think she can talk to me about it. 

Eret not-son of Eret, ruining sibling relationships for sixteen years and counting. 

“What happened with the baby?” 

She sniffs and presses her face back into my shoulder.  It’s not an answer but it’s everything I needed to hear. 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Shit.” 

That earns a snort, for some reason, and she pushes soggy hair out of her face and hugs me like she’s not trying to choke me, “you do care.  Did care, I mean.  You’re right, shit.” 

“Of course I care,” I’m suddenly aware of the house around me, the three people breathing in the other rooms, the weight of this all pressing down.  “Just because I’m an asshole doesn’t mean I don’t care.” 

“Could have fooled Mom,” her tone isn’t accusatory, not really, just matter of fact in a way that pierces my chest like a well-aimed Nadder barb.  “Sorry, that was too far,” she sniffs, “I’m just…I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.”  

I don’t have time to answer, which is probably a good thing because I have no idea what to say, because the bedroom door opens behind us and the chief appears in the doorway, looking gaunt and gray in a way I’ve never seen.  He stares at us for a moment before recognition flickers behind glassy eyes and one corner of his mouth quirks up.  

Aurelia pulls slowly out of our hug and stands, brushing her skirt off and crossing the room with an even, defiant gait, like it hurts her to do it.  She wraps her arms gingerly around his waist and squeezes.  I barely hear the murmured, “love you, Dad,” and it doesn’t sound like her when she says it.  It occurs to me that she’s saying it for him, not because she wants to or because it’s true, and I feel so impossibly helpless.  

What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey, chief, I don’t hate you sometimes’?  Is lying cool?  Is this one of those situations where I can fill the gaps in the conversation with fluffy, sweet lies and no one will call me out on it?  

“Love you too,” the chief kisses the top of her head and something stirs in my stomach, remembering Dad carrying me to bed and whispering goodnight in my ear because he didn’t know I could hear him.  I feel like an intruder.  

I don’t belong anywhere else.

Aurelia turns and walks into the bedroom with an admirable caution, her footfalls even and close together, and the chief looks at me, staring like he’s not sure what he sees.

“Uh…Aurelia told me,” I stand, wishing I’d slept in my shoes so I could bolt out the door.  The twin instincts to run and to face him, head held high, wage war in my head and I grind my teeth.  

“Yeah, she…Astrid told her first.”  He seems to shrink, lips pressed into a thin, pale line.  

“Oh.”  

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” he says it so quietly that at first I think I’m imagining it.  I don’t think I’ve ever sounded that quiet, that gentle, and for the first time I really see the ghost of a boy who trained a night fury inside of him.  “It was too literal.  Trying again like that.”  

I open my mouth to excuse myself but nothing comes out, and I don’t remember the last time I felt so silent.

“I guess there are just some things you can’t get back.  Some things don’t get second chances.”  

I know what to say then, I know the lie to tell, the one that fixes something, that bridges the gap between me and the sadness I’m so compelled to brush away.  You don’t need a second chance, you have me.  

But then it strikes me how true that is, that he has me, like a possession.  He saw me and wanted me and took me, married my mom, split apart what I used to call my family.  I want to be furious but I’m too tired, too overwhelmed, too weighed down by the unfairness and stupidity in the world to get myself riled up.  I wonder if this is what it feels like to grow up, if being an adult is nothing more than a million little decisions to be quiet when you want to be upset.  

“I—” I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to think.  “I’m…sorry.”

I wonder if he looked this devastated about me once upon a time.

“Me too.”  

I think of him reading to Stoick, of him staring after Aurelia with what I always took to be stern negligence but was probably always more misunderstanding than malice.  I think of him hugging me by a forest fire, with my burned feet and singed hair.  I think of him thwarting my plans at every turn, always talking about how dangerous they are, how I don’t know what I’m doing.  

Maybe…maybe all this Hel has been nothing more than a misguided asshole’s horrible attempt at rebuilding a family.  

“It sounds like you mean it.”

“I don’t,” he’s crying now, tears dotting those too familiar freckles together as he runs his hand through his hair, silver sticking up at odd angles.  “Gods, I’m not sorry at all, I did what I did and I’m here and this should have been better—it should have been different, you shouldn’t hate me so much, you and my daughter shouldn’t band together against me and—and—and I should have been able to build something instead of tearing everything apart.”  He sobs and it sounds like Aurelia, their pain has the same cadence and it reverberates in my chest like a Thunderdrum bellow.  

“Hey, it’s—I don’t hate you.”  I’m an awful liar, I didn’t used to be, but somehow I am now.  I flinch from my own insincere words as the chief flops down into a chair, elbows on the table, head cradled in his hands.  

“I deserve this.  I—I fucked everything up, a thousand times. In a row.  Just again and again and again.  But your mother doesn’t...”  His back is shaking, trembling really, and I feel anchored to the floor like my feet must be made of lead.  I take a faltering step towards him, looking towards the closed bedroom door, thinking of how strong Aurelia was to walk in there, chin held high.  As mad as we’ve been at each other lately, I can’t think of how to repay her for that.  

It takes a million years to cross the ten feet of room between us.  I set my hand on his shoulder, lightly, because I’m scared to touch him, scared of what it means.  If I comfort him, does ‘Dad’ follow?  Do I start thinking he’s right?  Does trying to absorb this indescribable pain build from here until I don’t recognize myself anymore?

Or is it worse than that? Will I run away from it eventually? Will I recognize myself perfectly because I’ll be just like him?

“Umm…it’s not ok, I’m not going to say it’s ok, but…”  I don’t know what spirit possesses me to keep talking, but I stare at the back of my hand, jarring against the soft wool of the chief’s green tunic.  “I don’t know what to say, I was never the one that gave pep talks.  That was always Mom or Ingrid, I was the one who needed them.  Ingrid always knew how to make me feel better, she can make any situation seem like a fight I can win if I just push a little harder but…but this isn’t like that.  I know it’s not.”  Gods, I wish Ingrid were here.  I miss her. It’s the only reason I don’t leave sometimes, I don’t want anyone missing me the way that I miss Ingrid.  

The bedroom door opens behind us and I jerk away, shoving both my hands into my pockets.  I expect to see Aurelia alone, but Mom is with her, eyes wide, face composed.  

“Eret, can you pick your clothes up off the floor?  I swear to Thor, you’re going to be chief before you learn to pick up your own socks.” Mom snaps at me, and she sounds so much like her old self, the one I haven’t seen since I was oblivious, that I jump to attention, scrambling to pick up my mess.  “This house is too stuffy, don’t you think?  I know it’s just spring, but I think we could open some windows.  It’s not that cold outside.”  

“Mom,” Aurelia’s voice is fragile as she rests a hand on Mom’s elbow.  “Maybe you should—”

“If I gave you some money would you run down to the market for me?”  Mom cuts across her suggestion, striding across the room and rummaging through the chief’s coin purse.  “We need…a lot.  We need everything.”  She pauses and I can see her façade splitting at the seams, sad but not unsurprised. Beaten but not lying down.  Guilty in a way she never should be.  

“Hey, Mom, why don’t you go lay down—” Aurelia looks at me like I might have the answer as Mom starts organizing a cabinet, tossing things haphazardly onto the floor behind her.  

I spot my axe out of the corner of my eye, her old axe, and it’s desperate and hopeful when I grab it and walk over to her, grabbing her hand and tucking it around the handle.  She swallows and turns towards me, taking it in both hands.  

“You’re right.  That’s better, isn’t it?  We need firewood.”  

“Yeah, the pile is looking a little low.”  

She stalks outside, axe over her shoulder and when I look back inside, Aurelia and the chief are staring at me, twin pairs of green eyes fixed on my face.  That crushing weight of responsibility is back with all of its charming heft and I backpedal, tripping on an uneven floorboard and stumbling back upright.  

“I’m going for a flight.” I’m not sure that they heard me but I leave anyway, trying to ignore the rhythmic hack of Mom’s axe, pounding along with my heartbeat.  

00000

I end up at Fuse’s shed, eventually, after a few lazy laps around the island, fighting the thought of going further.  It doesn’t seem relaxing anymore what with the dragons and Arvid and the fact that the quiet would just amplify the thoughts bouncing around my head.  But Fuse’s shed is quiet and the stool in the corner isn’t comfortable enough to relax.  She barely lifts her head from whatever she’s doing when I step inside and sit down and that’s better already.  I can pout without making it worse for anyone else.

I’m not even sure what I’m pouting about, honestly, I wasn’t excited like everyone else.  

“What are you building?”

“Testing a boring charge combination.”  She looks away from whatever she’s doing to exhale, like the force of her breath could disturb it.  

“For the chief or for our plan.”  

“Our plan.”  

“Have you talked to Smitelout?”  

“No, I haven’t needed anything.”  She carefully sets a clay lid onto what she built before spackling the seam with what smells like pine sap but is darker, mixed with something I don’t recognize.  

“I still can’t believe I told her.  Do you think she’ll tell anyone?”  

“We’ll know if she does.”

“Yeah.  I guess.”  

She doesn’t know and it was comforting at first but now it feels suffocating.  It’s not mine to tell and I don’t want to talk about it, necessarily, I just…Mom needed someone to hand her an axe.  I need someone to tell me that axing something wouldn’t do anything even though I already know.  

And I never had a problem going against the chief before, staring at the parts in front of me—the forbidden parts, the defiant parts—I can’t help but feel strange.  Almost guilty.  I think of how his face crumpled when he told me, how he looked so much like me in that moment that hurting him was suddenly akin to smacking my own head against a wall for sport.  

“What’s wrong?”  Fuse looks up from her project, a few heaps of jewel toned powders laid out in some cryptic organization on an old scrap of seal skin.  She’s methodical where I’m stagnant, a smoking stone bowl dispersing her day’s work into the air.  It smells awful, like tar and rotten eggs, and I have no problem believing it would explode flawlessly.  

“Nothing.”  It’s not something I should talk about, is it? It’s private and it occurs to me that I haven’t ever been in on a family secret before.  Ha.  

It’s a passing of the torch, I’m no longer the big whopping family secret, some concept of a dead little sibling of mine is.  

My eyes itch.  I don’t know why.  

Fuse quirks half an eyebrow, the short fuzz of regrowth catching the sunlight streaming through the doorway and glowing pink like her hair, “you’re an awful liar.”  

“Thanks. I try.”  

“You aren’t being as much of a nuisance as normal.”  

“I’m just thinking.”  

“Silently? What’s going on?” She walks towards me and the hair on my arms stands up.  

“Nope.  I’m good.  You just—you know? I might actually call it a night, take Bang on a flight or something just—are you ever just antsy?  Like there’s a hundred fireworms wriggling under your skin.  Yep.  I’m just going to go uh—“  I stand up and trip over my own foot, internally cursing my clumsiness and where it came from.  Maybe that’s why I didn’t leave, that would have made me feel more like the chief, it would have brought the memory of his unreachable sadness even closer than it already is.  That thought shakes that hard little ball of anxiety around in my stomach and I feel nauseous and Thor’s beard, it’s a good thing I never had to keep family secrets, I would have been floundering in Daddy issues by the age of three.  

Fuse’s grip is stronger than it should be as she catches me by my upper arm even though I’m not stumbling anymore.  She brushes some soot off of my shoulder but just makes it worse, rubbing it into the weave of my new shirt.  My clothes still feel wrong, crisp and un-stretched in the shoulders, constantly reminding me that Arvid didn’t wear them first.  

“You know I’m a good listener.”  She reiterates like she has so many times the past few months.  

“That’s what scares me,” I swallow, “I might just tell you everything.”  

“You could start with why you aren’t working on your master plan to help the dragons, because that’s all I’m really asking about.”  

“Gods, you make it sound so easy.”  

“You talk more than anyone I know, it is easy for you.”  

“Careful,” I snort, fumbling back for my stool and plopping down onto it, rubbing sooty hands over my face.   “You might convince me to talk your ear off and then I’d never stop.”  

“You always stop.” She shrugs, one shoulder, almost sad in that Fuse way that makes me suspect she’s reading my mind. “Eventually, at least.”  

She sits back down at her station, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye as she carefully scoops an emerald green powder back into a small, clay jar with a tight-fitting lid.

“What if this is all about me?”  It’s a rhetorical question and I don’t really expect her to answer, but when she doesn’t, I’m suddenly compelled to fill the silence.  I don’t like silence, it used to be because I was afraid I’d disappear into my siblings’ larger shadows, but now I know too much about what exists in the silence between people.  Between me and…this morning, I understand that whole people can disappear into the quiet. Suddenly I’m angry that the chief and Mom didn’t tell anyone, that they kept it secret just like they did to me all those years.  Like we couldn’t exist until we were a long lost miracle.  “What if I’m not trying to help the dragons at all?  What if I’m just…screaming into a void and hoping that the chief hears me.  That he knows I’m angry.  But he knows and he’s—I want him to be evil, I want him to be pathetic, but he’s just…what if I’m defying him just for the sake of defying him?”  

“So you aren’t worried about the dragons?”  She hisses, sucking on her finger when it glances across a candle flame.  

“You ok?”  

“Because those dragons look sick, Eret.  You didn’t make that up.  Hel, one died and washed up here, that’s never happened before that I know of—”  

“If it were about the dragons, wouldn’t I have argued more?  Wouldn’t I have fought harder for help?”  I sigh, “the chief is the one who knows the most, he’s the one I should be campaigning to.  I shouldn’t be playing matchmaker for my half siblings in the forge in the middle of the night.  I would be…I don’t know. Rallying.  I’m supposed to be chief someday, people should listen to me.  Instead I’m just in here playing teenage defiance.”  

“What happened between you and the chief?”  She asks, turning towards me, eyes narrowed, strand of long hair escaping her braid and falling in front of her face.  I get the impression she’s reading me, like a water-logged scroll, trying to see what I said before the elements got to me.  

“Nothing, alright? It’s just…don’t I have to grow up sometime?”  

“You tried with the chief, he didn’t listen.”  

“He admitted it’s a problem. I should have waited—”

“Growing up isn’t synonymous with laying down.”  

“F—“  For my mom it was.  I barely catch the words on the way out of my mouth, turning them into a cough and staring at my hands.  

I can’t stop thinking of her face this morning, sad but unsurprised, like the only response she had left was ‘not again’.  I can’t help but wonder how much she’s lost, can’t help but think of her loving the chief and then loving my dad and then waffling, each decision hurting one of them, but never as much as it hurt her.  

She has it worse than I do, and I’m in here whining and defying and making everything harder for everyone while they’re going through something I don’t want to understand.  I should be back there helping, but I don’t know how to help, I don’t know how to handle everyone grieving for something I never understood them wanting.  

Am I not good enough? Is it because I don’t call the chief dad and let him ruffle my hair?  I feel impossibly more replaced, like I have to try harder and be better just to prove that it wasn’t a loss, not really.  They didn’t need to try again, they’ve got me and I’m…

I’m both of them, all at once, they don’t need another.  They don’t need to be so shattered.  

I’ll shatter for them and they can put me back together and then maybe I’ll be what they want.  

I sniff, wipe an errant tear away from my cheek, and look up at Fuse.  She’s not looking at me, almost like she’s giving me privacy to fall apart, like I’m a bomb and she wants me on the other side of a barrier.  I like the way she deals with emotions, clinical, sure, calm.  She’s the calmest person I’ve ever met and it makes me feel safe and inferior all at once.

“I think you’re doing this for the dragons,” she says quietly, her tone assured and steady, “I think your methods might be for you, but I think that’s ok.  When you don’t do anything constructive, you end up fighting your brother and screaming at the chief and if you need a few things to blow up as an outlet, well hey,” she smiles at me, “I get that.”  

It’s too quiet and I open my mouth to say something but nothing comes out.  Maybe a sigh, maybe half a breathless laugh.  

“I think I should head home.”  I should go try and help.  Even though I don’t know what to do or how to do it.  She’s right, my methods are for me and I don’t want to be someone who runs and hides so now I have to prove that to myself.  

“Alright,” she nods, “I’m close to something here.  I’ll let you know if it’s anything.”  

I nod and stand up, “yeah, sure, I’ll…I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.  Or something.  Around, I’ll see you around.”  

She nods at me and I keep that quiet reassurance in my head as long as I can as I fly back up the hill to the chief’s house.  I think about knocking again, honestly, especially after I see Mom’s axe planted so deep into half a tree that I wonder if she stopped because she couldn’t get it out. I did that a lot as a kid, honestly, I was way better at swinging than I was at getting it back and I don’t think I’ve changed much.  I just didn’t know I got that from Mom.  She was always so in control, of us, of what she said and did.  Of everything.  

Until the chief came back into the picture and threw her back into chaos, I guess.  

I take one more deep breath before pushing the door open.  

Mom is cooking and she’d look completely normal if it weren’t for the splinters stuck to her skirt and the hair that’s out of her braid and stuck to her neck, like she was sweating from all the tree murdering.  Aurelia is at the table, stack of books in front of her, on her knees in her chair to see the book at the top of the stack.  She looks more frazzled than Mom does, face pale when she looks up and stares at me for a second before shaking her head.

“Oh, hi.”  

I know that voice. That’s the voice of someone who just mistook me for the chief.  I reach up and pull the tie out of my hair, shaking it out with my hand like that’ll make the difference more obvious.  

“Hey.”  

“We could have used your help earlier,” Mom stands up, “Aurelia nearly killed herself bringing the entire library home.”  She walks across the room, affectionately touching the top of Aurelia’s head and looking at me like she dares me to bring it up.  

“Sorry,” I cough, trying to think of anything else to say.  “I uh…needed some air?”  

“Mom, this says that dandelion greens—”  Aurelia starts in an urgent half-whisper, like she’s not quite sure she wants me to hear and Mom cuts her off.  

“I told Hiccup it was stuffy in here.  We’re Vikings, a spring cross-breeze has never hurt any of us.”  She goes back to the fireplace, fussing with whatever she has on the grate inside of it.  “Are you hungry?”  

“Always,” I blurt and she shakes her head like it’s just a normal day and that’s just a normal joke that wasn’t funny the first time, let alone the thousandth.  “That smells good.”  The second part is a lie because I can’t smell anything but fire and Aurelia’s anxious energy as she flips through pages.  I glance at her book and see drawings that aren’t Berkian and the words aren’t Norse.  She’s mouthing slowly to herself, face flushed with frustration.  

“Cold baths,” she mutters, looking up at Mom, “maybe it was the time of year?”  

“Put the book away and eat something,” Mom half snaps, dropping a plate of stew in front of her and putting one in my hands.  She sits back down on the hearth and starts eating out of the pot, idly brushing splinters off of her lap.  “That’s good. Yeah, Hiccup is never on cooking duty again, there’s a reason he’s so skinny.”  

“Maybe you weren’t eating enough.” Aurelia says louder, pushing the plate pointedly away.  “Maybe that’s it.”  

“You skipped breakfast.” Mom looks at the plate, “eat.”  

“I’m not hungry.” Aurelia crosses her arms and I shake my head at her as subtly as I can, because even though I’ve never seen Mom quite like this, I can’t imagine it’s a good idea to challenge her like that.  

“You need to eat something.”

“Not until I figure this out,” Aurelia’s voice cracks and she slumps back down, sitting on her heels. She doesn’t wipe the tear that spills out of the corner of her eye, doesn’t even try to hide it, and Mom’s expression freezes on her face.  

“I’m going to go get Stoick,” she stands up, leaving her fork on the hearth next to the pot of stew. “You can hold down the fort while I’m gone, right Eret?”  

“Uh…” I look at Aurelia and swallow hard, like I can physically stuff my own confused sadness so deep inside that it won’t spill out accidentally.  “Yeah.  Sure.”

“And check on Hiccup, would you?”  She says it like an afterthought, slipping on her boots and frowning when she pulls a splinter out of one.  “I don’t think I’ve ever known him to sleep this long at all, let alone in the middle of the day.”  Her laugh is hollow and numb and another tear slips down Aurelia’s cheek.  

“Sure.”  I feel like it’s somehow the same word I just said, like it floated around the unusually dead air in the room and came back to me, only to fall out under nearly identical, numb circumstances.  

“I’ll be back,” she opens the door and leaves like it’s a normal day and Aurelia sobs the second the door is closed.  

“Hey,” I set down my food, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and pulling her into a hug that’s almost intentionally smothering, like I can squeeze this out of her faster. “It’s ok—”

“She needs to talk about it!”  She snaps, wiping her face on my shirt and leaning into the hug.  “We need to figure out why for when…” she sighs, “in case…”

“She’s…” I want to say something comforting but all I have is the truth and I shrug, “she’s kind of old for it, Aurelia, it was crazy in the first place—”

“Just because you didn’t think of something doesn’t make it crazy.”  She shoves me off, leaning back over her book and slowly saying a word in a language I don’t recognize.  “Fuck. What’s that mean? Thor-dammit.”  She slams the book shut and wipes her eyes again.  “I can do this.  I can do this.”  

“What are you trying to do?”

“Read.”  She sits, letting her legs swing under the chair, and pulls the giant book into her lap.  “Of course we don’t have anything in Norse about this but that doesn’t matter. I can do this.”  

“Aurelia,” I put my hand on her shoulder and she shrugs it off, “look at me.”  

“I know the answer is in here, I just need to figure it out—”

“I know you’re upset, but that doesn’t mean you need to magically learn another language—”

“I know this!”  She jabs her finger at the page, a whole wave of tears falling down her cheeks at once.  “It’s my Mom’s language, I spoke it.  We spoke it.  She taught it to me and…and it’s gone.  Parts of it are gone and I need it—”

“Hey,” I bend down to hug her again, ignoring the weak swat of her hand on my forearm.  “Mom will see a healer, they’ll know what happened—”

“She already did,” she goes back to tracing over the same strange word again and again with her fingertip.  “They said it just happens.  Things don’t just happen.  If things happen it’s because something makes them happen and someone lets them happen. What the fuck is this word?  I know it, I know I know it.”  

I look down at my arm, the pale, freckled skin against the dark green wool of her shirt.  There’s the scar that I got falling off of Bang when I was eleven, there’s the dirt under my fingernails from cleaning my saddle. I just happened.  I am a mistake, an accident, an unlikely collision of things that weren’t supposed to happen and if they happened they weren’t supposed to work.  

And now I’m an isolated event.  I always was, of course, but it’s different now after lightning failed to strike twice.

“It’s a fish!”  She shouts, “it’s a kind of fish.  We didn’t have it here, my mom was always looking for it...”  She mutters a few more words in a strange, clunky accent, “and that doesn’t help us.”

“I don’t know how this would help anything.”  

“Of course you don’t,” she shrugs my arm off and it plucks at that nagging feeling of being replaced by something that died before it was ever alive.  

“What’s that supposed to mean?”  

“Mom needs to talk about it, I know you don’t seem to think she needs to, but you’re wrong.  And she can’t talk about it when everyone is just acting like it’s normal, it can’t be something she has to bring up—”

“I think you need to talk about it.”  I gesture at the closed bedroom door, “he probably needs to talk about it.  I…”  I don’t have anything new to say about it. It feels like I don’t have a single thought in my head that hasn’t been said a hundred times.  I feel empty and full of other people’s thoughts at the same time and I can’t figure out who would care if I said that out loud.  

“Mom should talk.”  

“Well, you can’t make her,” I let my hands fall against my legs with a louder slap than I expect.  

She glares at me and sniffs, wiping her nose on the end of her too long sleeve.  She looks younger than she has lately, puffy eyes and red cheeks reminding me of the sullen girl I moved in with, the one I just wanted to laugh so that someone would.  I get the odd feeling that I know her less now than I did then and then I was just guessing.  

We aren’t feeling the same thing.  Not even close.  We aren’t in the same book, let alone on the same page.  Our books are in different languages.  

Today’s the most I’ve ever heard her talk about her mom and I almost want to ask, to try and steer this back into something I understand, but I don’t want her to say the things in my head.  I don’t want to hear it out loud, that I’m always going to be a reminder of something they all lost.  

“I’m going to check on the chief.”  

“Yeah.”  She looks back at her book, “good luck getting him to talk.  Since you know what he needs so well.”  

I pause for a second, deciding against answering that and picking another teary fight before Mom gets back, and cross the room to open the bedroom door.  It creaks, and a bar of light falls across a lump of blankets that I assume is the chief.  I stand there for a minute and he doesn’t say anything so I clear my throat, hoping it’s loud enough to wake him.  

“I’ll be out in a minute.” He mumbles, barely loud enough to hear through the covers and I sigh.  I almost ask him to get up for Mom, because she’d like a little normalcy and that doesn’t seem like too much to ask.  

But maybe I’m the one who wants normalcy and my normal isn’t anyone else’s anymore.  

“Ok.  Yeah.  Seems likely.”  I shut the door and resist the urge to bash it against my head a few times on the way.

#eret iii #festerverse #tw miscarriage #aurelia haddock #fuse thorston #hiccstrid

[the-lady-frost]

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13365838/1/No-Hope-Left

Chapter One: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

-March, 13th - 2009 -

The heavy panting was too close to her ear. She couldn't turn her head. She couldn't turn her mouth. She couldn't turn away.

The panting was deafening.

If she could just move a finger, just one, she could reach the knife on the table less than a foot to her right. Her eyes stared forward, at it, frozen there as the panting in her head was nearly cacophonous. Lift your hand - grab the knife - end the pain.

But her hand wasn't her own.

And then? Then it was.

She grabbed it in her fist. She swung it up. There was a shout of horror. Someone started screaming. An alarm began to blare. But she was free.

She rolled to the floor splashed with blood. She ran for the door as the sound of the panting came from her own lungs. She just had to get there. She just had to getaway. She was free. She was ready.

She was still alive.

She hit the hallway in a skid. Her feet slapped painfully loud on the bare metal floor. Her lungs sobbed with every breath. The knife in her hand was dripping. The world flashed red and white and red and white.

But the elevator pinged as she struck the button. She just had to get out...get out...GET OUT.

The doors whooshed open. The face in the bright white light wasn't wearing glasses. She lifted the knife, she screamed, "MOVE! DO YOU HEAR ME!? MOVE!"

And the light flickered as the face in its explosive depths was familiar. Familiar...family. "...Jill..." He didn't touch her. He didn't have to. She felt the knife fall to the ground with a clatter.

She collapsed to her knees on the ground. The feet were rushing toward her. She looked up at him desperately and lifted her bloody hands, "Chris...don't...don't let them take me...please..."

He looked so broken. He put a hand down to her and Jill felt the stabbing in her back. The shocks hit her system and she started to convulse as Chris roared, "NO! NO! She's not a fucking threat! LEAVE HER ALONE!"

"She killed that orderly! RESTRAIN HER!"

She went to her side on the floor. The stun gun kept sending sparks into her body. Above her, the man told Chris, "Captain...she's not in there anymore. Whatever he did to her, she's a monster now."

"...no."

"I think you need to accept that Jill Valentine died in Africa."

She didn't. She hadn't. She was right here.

"Whatever you brought back isn't your partner anymore."

She was. Don't give up on me.

The dark slid over her vision and took away Chris' desperate face.

-June, 8th 2009-

B.S.A.A. Holding Facility - Washington D.C.

She was handcuffed to a single link on a big table. They were reading her crimes back to her. Her "crimes" as if she were a terrorist being brought up on charges. Her heart shivered.

"Jill Valentine, formerly First Lieutenant Jill Valentine of the B.S.A.A. Field Operations Division, you are here today to answer for your actions against the state. You are being tried under the Patriot Act, guaranteeing that you revoke your American Citizenship and all rights held within if these charges heretofore mentioned are upheld in a court of law. On the night of Mar-"

Jill laughed, harshly, "The Patriot Act!? I'm not a fucking terrorist."

The faces around the table were silent, dark, and judging. She looked for one friendly one in the bunch. None. No one. Was she alone? She'd spent months in isolation with barely a face but her own.

What was this now? Charges? Crimes? She'd had no CONTROL.

They started listing the things she'd done that they knew of under Wesker. They rattled them at her like it was nothing - as if they hadn't been trapped in her body forced into action by a madman -like they hadn't woken in the night and tried like hell to escape him. They didn't care.

And they didn't believe.

She tried again, "You're not listening. Listen to me - I was aware, but I wasn't able to control myself. He pumped me full of that compound, that fucking P-30. Test it, you'll see what I mean. He meant for it to make me a slave."

And the voice answered, "There were no samples left. What there was, was eradicated along with the plane that went down in the volcano. A convenient end for a madman, wouldn't you say, Ms. Valentine? A curious thing to know you directed it there."

Wait.

WAIT.

What were they implying?

"Hold on...I did that because Uroboros is sensitive to FIRE. I knew Chris had no chance without limiting Wesker's conversion. I had to. He knows that. Bring him in. He knew what I was doing."

"We've discussed this all with Captain Redfield. His oral report is on file. We're aware of his version of events."

His version.

Whose version were they using here?

Captain Redfield - they wanted her to know he was no longer her partner. He was her superior.

"Agent Alomar was unclear on her side. She made references to concern over your loyalty. She seemed unconvinced of your intentions. She suggested that if you knew about the fire limiting Wesker, why you simply didn't burn him at your own behest when not under the control of the drug."

Sheva Alomar.

Apparently, she didn't trust Jill either.

Not that Jill could blame her. Honestly, if someone had crashed her plane into a volcano, she'd have been unlikely to trust them again either. Honestly, it sounded retarded to hear it in her own ears. A volcano? If they only knew what she'd gone through to discover its whereabouts to begin with.

"I wasn't in collaboration with Albert Wesker."

There. Did they need her to say it aloud?

The voice returned, "Ms. Valentine, you were his accomplice for three years. You never escaped. There was no evidence in the compound of his that we raided that you'd ever even tried. You were found through leaked information that brought the BSAA to Kijuju to hunt down Ricardo Irving. The data was buried for years. Then? One day it just pops up. Poof. Like someone had planted it."

They thought she'd come back to spy for Wesker. They thought she was a sleeper agent.

They thought she was a bad guy.

Terrified of what that meant, Jill tried once more, "I was his captive! I was his slave! I was in a tank for half the time and in his control the other! I couldn't escape! I couldn't even take a shit without his command!"

There was murmuring around her. It went on until the voice said, "We are divided on our ability to rule one way or the other in this matter, Ms. Valentine. Until a ruling can be made, Captain Redfield has petitioned us for clemency."

Clemency?

Like she was on death row here?

Their faces said she was indeed.

The doors to the chamber opened and spilled light in. The face of the man speaking was familiar. Who was it? He spoke again into the quiet, "It would appear you have a guardian angel on your side, after all. The committee was inclined to place you in confinement at Rikers Island until your arraignment, but the Director of the DSO has convinced us to allow you to be placed under house arrest with a guardian barring completion of time in service."

Time in service?

Aloud, she wondered, "What the hell does that even mean?"

"Ms. Valentine - you are no longer a lieutenant in the BSAA. You are now the property of the United States Government. From this moment on, you will operate at the behest of your guardian in completing a required amount of service to your nation to atone for your crimes against her. If you refuse, you will be placed before the Supreme Court and tried with treason."

Treason.

Treason because she'd gone out a window to take down a madman and save her partner's life. Treason - for doing her goddamn job.

"The punishable offense for treason is death by lethal injection."

Jill felt her guts turn cold with lead. "I don't understand what you're saying here. Who requested I be detained with a guardian?"

"Captain Redfield. He's the only reason you're not on death row at the moment, Ms. Valentine. I would be grateful."

Grateful. He'd made her a ward of the state. She'd been one once, as a girl, she'd grown up in foster homes at the behest of her government. It was like being a child again and knowing you had no control. She'd spent the last three years without any control of herself. It would seem she was to be that way again. Her life - always in the hands of someone else. She was never, it seemed, destined to be free.

"You will be watched, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You will have no privacy, no leniency, and no rights. The Patriot Act reduces your wants and needs to negligible, Ms. Valentine, until further stated ...you are the property of the Department of Security Operations."

Her mouth felt like she'd been licking sand it was so dry, "What fucking idiot agreed to be my guardian?"

Out of the shadows, she got her answer.

She couldn't make out a single face of the assholes in the dark condemning her...but she could clearly see the face of Leon Kennedy.

Aloud, she cursed, "Oh, fuck you."

And all he did was laugh, "You have to buy me dinner first."

She hated him.

The car hummed like a jungle cat. Sleek, purring, and hugging turns with a predator's deadly grace. Cuffed to the dashboard, Jill watched the scenery race by as they left the city behind.

She didn't know where he was going. At this point, it didn't even matter. It could be the seventh rung of Hell and it would be the same. She said nothing as he handled the roads with a master's precision.

She'd heard somewhere he was a shitty driver. You couldn't prove it by the way he handled the Jaguar they were in.

Kennedy. She was his captive now it seemed. Like a prize that no one wanted, she was forced into his custody to be babysat until she'd proved herself. First a slave, now a prisoner. Her eyes watched the sun tickle down the horizon to head toward evening.

The collar at her throat beeped once to signal it was active. Like a fucking dog. As he'd secured it around her, Kennedy had said, "It's got a timer on it, Jill. If you go too far for too long, it will put you down."

Her brows had shot up, "Kill me?"

She saw the look on his face. The look that wanted to get smart with her about it, but he'd replied, "No. It will incapacitate you until you can be collected."

Collected.

Like a sample.

When he'd shifted the tail of her hair off her nape to snap it shut, she'd spat, "Enjoying yourself?"

Honestly, he couldn't blame her for the ire. She'd been naked. It was the way it was done in holding like that. She was stripped down, hosed off, thoroughly inspected by guards, and left naked during the placement of her containment device.

Her time with Wesker had left her in supreme physical condition. She looked like she could snap your neck without breaking a sweat. He'd arched a brow at her, "Sure. I love playing babysitter to a pissed off potential traitor."

She'd cocked her head, "No? I heard groping traitors was a favorite past time of yours."

Interesting. She knew about Ada. He'd felt his mouth twitch. "Not lately." As he'd turned away, the female guards stepped up to dress her again. She was cuffed and handed to him like a dog on a leash.

No one in their right mind would have agreed to what he was doing, but him. Of course, no one said he was in his right mind. Chris had asked. He'd said yes. The entire conversation was better left for another day...but it was done.

Karma would surely reward him for his good deed.

Surely.

The Jaguar rolled into the underground parking lot he guided it toward. He was curious about Jill's hyper-awareness. She was mapping in her head. He knew it, he did it himself, she was remembering everything.

Most likely, it was so she would know how to escape. Why? To reunite with her people?

He wasn't sure what he thought about her potentially playing to the other side. He understood the caution. She'd told a pretty tall tale so far about her captivity. First to survive the fall and not be crippled was impossible. It just was.

According to her report, she'd been in cryostasis recovering from massive internal injuries. During that time, Wesker discovered she'd had latent evidence of the T-Virus dormant in her body from her infection via the Nemesis in Raccoon City. The fall had killed her, officially, and the T-Virus wasn't wiped out by the prototype vaccine she'd received - it had just gone to sleep. It activated to save her life.

By trying to save Chris Redfield and sacrificing herself, she'd handed Albert Wesker the perfect weapon - the rare one percent of the population that was immune to the Tyrant Virus. It was the last piece he'd needed to finish his prototype for Uroboros. Jill was responsible for its final form. She was the key to its creation.

After its creation, why keep her alive?

He'd had what he wanted from her. Why spare her life?

But he had. He'd made her his handmaiden. He'd outfitted her with a device that Redfield had removed in the field and was never recovered. Without the device, they couldn't verify it had been used to control her via the alleged P-30 she spoke about.

The speculation from Redfield was that Wesker had kept her alive to torment him and revenge himself on her. It made sense, in a perverse way, but it was also vaguely narcissistic to assume the global aspirations of a megalomaniac had anything to do with a single former member of his failed S.T.A.R.S. unit.

It was more likely Jill Valentine had always been his disciple. A follower of Wesker to the point of being a sleeper agent when he knew his plan to use Uroboros might fail. He'd sent her back with Redfield to infiltrate the government and destroy it from the inside.

That was the thought here.

Leon wasn't sure what he thought. He was never inclined to agree with the majority because so often they were wrong with their assumptions.

He only knew that keeping her under constant surveillance was the only way to make sure she was just another victim of a horrible master of destruction. If she was innocent, she'd benefit from a slow reintroduction into society. Her adjustment to life outside had been traumatic. She'd responded like victim suffering from massive PTSD, but that happened with Stockholm Syndrome as well. She was possibly mourning the death of her master.

In this case, Leon was the best case. He had no family. He had no friends. He had no live in lovers or ties to the community. He was all work and no play. He was the Director of the newly formed bioterror response unit within the DSO. That meant tons of paperwork and prep work before missions, so he was often out of the field while he built the unit from the ground up.

If Jill was innocent, she'd make a helluva an addition to that unit. What was clear? She was done with the BSAA. She was no longer trusted in the organization. She'd been removed from duty, disavowed from the field, and taken out of play as an asset. Her only hope now was to find a place in the DSO with Leon's recommendation and that came with proving herself in his custody.

Sadly, it wasn't going to be a comfortable fit for either of them.

Valentine was an asshole.

There was no getting around it.

She'd taunted him, nagged at him, needled and poked at him to try to get him to snap before they'd left the facility. She'd called him names, suggested he'd slept his way to the top based on his looks, and remarked about his drinking. She'd read his file, clearly, so she knew what buttons were sharp and raw on him.

Now, she muttered, "Don't wreck, hotshot, because I promise you I won't pull you from the fire."

He laughed and steered the car into a private enclosed parking garage. A metal door lowered to seal them in as he killed the engine and stepped out. Two guards were waiting to help escort her to the elevator that would take her to his floor.

She said nothing again until he let her into his apartment. The whole top floor was his. Having a father who was a senator and a job at the right hand of the most powerful man in the world paid well. The old man was a waste of space as a parent, but he'd pulled the right strings to get Leon into a place to make a difference. It was the only thing he'd ever be grateful for.

Jill was quiet as she stood in the wide-open beauty of his massive penthouse apartment. He walked through it like a lord of the manor. He didn't even seem to stop and care about the amazing gift that was each corner. She'd never understood the kind of money and power that came with the blase acceptance of massive wealth.

His apartment was floor to ceiling windows on one side that opened to an incredible balcony. The view was the twilight magnificence of the New York skyline. The Empire State Building glistened like a Christmas tree. She watched a helicopter circle and land on a rooftop. She watched clouds filter over the ball of blazing beauty that was the sun starting to turn pink and red in the swirling sky.

Without thinking, she exhaled a heavy breath and remarked, "...fucking incredible."

Leon paused, brows arched, and glanced at the view. He couldn't remember the last time he'd bothered to notice it. He looked at it now as someone who might have been underground in a cement cell for years. He glanced at her face and the push of purplish light over her delicate features.

If she was acting awed and relieved, she was doing a damn fine job.

Softly, he returned, "Yeah. It's what they call a million-dollar view."

"Take it for granted, do ya?"

Surprised, he realized he did. He had, for quite some time. He started to say something and she added, "Nevermind. It's not like I care."

No Hope Left

[bubble--berry]

Some -OUTDATED- LL&F stuff from my google doc:

I wasn’t lying when I said they were all dead,,,

Drew needed more time; Drew can stop time for certain lengths. She had a heart thing like one of my irl friend does and y i k e s she was not actually expecting to go so fast???

Sabrina needed to not be noticed; Sabrina, my poor bitchy girl, can turn invisible. Barely anyone will get this but I’ll put it here as a reminder to myself for when I go into detail w/ all of this; Andre, Andre, Andre.

Breanna needed to persuade people; Now Breanna can change people’s opinions and thoughts on things. She can’t compLETELY do it but she can enhance and diminish how much they care about stuff. Now Presley and Breanna come from a very superstitious family and they’re very Addams family like. She basically dug her own grave by going to this rumoured crime murder house thing. She went- stupidly- alone but in her defence she tRIED to get others to go with her for safety reasons but “Don’t believe all that fake stuff. Stop being childish and gullible. Blah blah blah. That stuff is stupid no way I’m going with you.”

Maxwell needed to fight back; Max okAY he can move light. Oh wow you can see me can you?? Aha shame *moves light to some other place* now you can’t suCKER. He was abused. Abused because of his sexuality my b o y. Yes he had a loving accepting father but he also had a homophobic abusive mother and although they were split he still had to go to her house a lot. Now Max is pretty weak when he’s alive and can’t fight back. He ended up being beaten to death.

Adonis needed to go back; ADONIS AA okAY. He can go back in time. Not severely. More like Max from life is strange. Two things to say; abusive relationship & suicidal. He ended up kicking the chair away from under himself and regretting it immediately.

Marley needed oxygen; Marley. That boy can breathe underwater & in tight spaces with hardly any oxygen. He will eventually run out yes but it would take years. He drowned. Went on a beach trip w/ his family and never came out of the water alive. They loved him so much those poor fucking parents.

Presley needed people to be fair; prESLEY KIDDO. If he thinks you’re being biased, dat boy is going to manipulate you into saying something else. He got into some really big messed up crime shit after breanna died, and- was not innocent but- was being accused of shit he had not done. Major major shit that I’m too lazy to make up rn. Anywho OFC the other person won because yeah OFC this white man is telling the truth that this M E X I C A N boy murdered and raped people. Yes, we will send him to this horrible prison that we a s s u r e you is perfectly safe. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t safe and he d i e d.

Lina needed better parents; Necromancy. Their parents are serial killers. They saw a loT of death growing up. One of her parents’ victim’s acquaintances got revenge through killing them.

Spencer needed blood; Plasmakinesis. nOt only did the dude almost bleed out his insides once but he also needed a blood transfusion when he got older and,,, did n o t,,,, get it.

Elsie needed warmth; pYroKinEsIs. Awkward moment when you get yourself and your loving family frozen to death but are only one that comes back,,, y i k e s,,,

Theo needed water; dehydration & hydrokinesis. Her family was homeless and a drought happened. You can imagine how that went for them. She was in such bad shape, it took months after she came back for them to nurture her back into health.

Gabby needed control over her fall; She can control the gravity of herself, others & objects. sHe fell to her death,,, not suicide,,, just,,, stupid bitches???? She was drunk and being stupid & messing around and some reaLLY FUCKING DUMB FRIEND PUSHED HER OFF????? ITS STUPID BUT IT’S AN ACTUAL THING THAT DUMBASSES IN THE WORLD DO SMH.

Alex needed side-effect knowledge; They can summon & control hallucinations. By summon I mean they have a mental disorder so the hallucinations already appear ooft. They weren’t born w/ it. Long-term effects of marijuana. Negligent parents & Drug taking friends don’t mix well. When they died it stayed w/ them. The things are like spirits??? Some of them will do what they say whilst the others will just haunt and scare the crap out of them. It’s like a constant fight for control or die situation.

Bryce needed to get away; teLEPORTATION HELLO THERE. Kidnapping. Kidnapping and.. hm?? Oh yeaH KIDNAPPING. No matter how many times you run away from your new ‘parents’ thEY’RE GONNA FIND YOU. You can spend years running but if you get far it’s only because thEy’re letting you. Maybe if you stayed still you would have been able to live and find your actual parents when you got older.

#long post #outdated novelwork

[thiscrimsonsoul]

What did the mun think of Endgame? I was, sadly, very disappointed... They ignored Loki, Vision, Heimdall... Thor's depression and ptsd... no comment. They gave Tony a family just to kill him and including IW, they killed the two main women of each team (Gamora and Natasha) in the exact same way, same music, only to add that "Girl Power" moment later. Wanda fights a Thanos who didn't take anything from her. Whilst fighting this Thanos, they weren't the Avengers; they were the preventers!

{out of parikash}  So… I had a lot of problems with Endgame, but not as many as you might think or the ones you might think. This is gonna all be random, so let’s just get started, haha.

First of all, yeeeeah, I agree with you. No mention of those characters at all. Or Pietro after Ultron. So it struck me upside the head like a two-by-four to realize that some people seriously dislike or even hate Wanda because they think Pietro and Vision died and she didn’t care. Like… the fact that Pietro and Vision were never mentioned again in the MCU after their deaths (unless you count two seconds of his name on a baby’s shirt for Pietro and one indirect and possibly not even a reference to him at Tony’s funeral for Vision) are taken by some people as IC insensitivity from Wanda. Like… they think SHE doesn’t care. And that just like… hurts. Because she does, she cares a shit ton. See… I never ever took that as IC, or even real, haha. My brain automatically filled in like well okay… she does mention them, they do have funerals, she does cry for them… it just happened off camera between movies or during downtime where we didn’t get to see. That was 100% what I always assumed. So to learn that some people actually blame Wanda IC for not reacting at all to their deaths after their movies ended… that really shows the gross mishandling of their characters that MCU has engaged in, in my opinion. Yes, I went there. XD So yeah… I loved the way they handled Natasha’s and Tony’s deaths, but other characters also deserved such attention.

The portrayal of Thor’s depression and PTSD was… absolutely disgusting to me. I’m just gonna lay it out there. My heart broke for him, and he’s not even a favorite character of mine. To have a character break down that much and have it be perceived by other characters as annoying, crass, gross, funny, pathetic, or somehow negligent on his part and placing blame on him… was just… a slap in the face to anyone who has ever been broken down by trauma or grief in their lives. It sent the message that, if you react this way to trauma in your life, you’re lazy, no one will like you, you’ll be a failure, you’ll be a walking joke. And that is really not forgivable, Disney. Like honestly. What the flying fucking pancake. I would never treat any character I have ever written anywhere the way they did Thor. Boo. Not cool. Not acceptable.

Okay… Tony and Natasha’s deaths… here is where I’m going to lose followers haha. Let’s take Tony first.  I… was… never a fan of Tony until after Endgame, and I really didn’t understand him until I recently watched the first Iron Man movie. Yes… I haven’t seen 2 or 3. Yes… I didn’t watch any of them until after Endgame. I had no interest. I didn’t like the man at all. It wasn’t until Endgame that his death made me rethink him. His death, the way he interacted with Morgan, his message at the end… they all made me stop and go hmm a bit. In watching Iron Man, I suddenly realized that he had a very similar personality to and functioned mentally in the same way as a character I created over a decade ago. That character was also loud, crass, ran at the mouth, jokes that were funny, overly defensive, a little off, drank too much, the whole shebang… and it was because he had been traumatized during a war. Other characters around him accepted and understood that he was this way and why he was this way, and they gave him a lot more leeway and understanding than they would someone who had not been traumatized. To still other characters looking in, it was confusing as to why this totally abrasive asshole was being given all these free passes by his friends. Anyway, my point was that as soon as I realized that Tony was at his core the same type of character, I suddenly understood him a lot better, and that helped me to like him more.

In writing Wanda, that made me consider the nightmare/premonition she conjured in his mind in a different light. If you remember in Ultron, right after he wakes from his dream, Wanda is there and she looks… surprised. It’s canon that she saw all their nightmares, Lizzie said it so I buy it, haha. I have actually used her mulling over what she saw in Tony’s head as the bass for IronWitch (which I know is an extremely controversial ship, but somehow I make it work… off Tumblr though, I don’t need that kind of anti-ship hate on her blog), because Wanda was expecting something far more selfish and petty from Tony than what she got. And she doesn’t just see visions, she experiences what they’re thinking and feeling too. So she felt a lot of unselfish things from him that day that really confused her. The man who murdered her parents because he doesn’t care who he kills or he’s so rich that he doesn’t care who he sells his weapons to… which is who she thought he was… wouldn’t have had the kind of vision that he had. It changed her opinion of him, and I headcanon that that’s why she was able to tolerate him a lot more easily than Pietro.

Anyway, my tangent in going into this was that… his death actually made me, a late-comer to the movie-verse of Marvel, really examine his character and the core of his values and soul. In a good way, heh. I thought his death was good. BEFORE YOU KILL ME LET ME EXPLAIN, HAHA. I don’t mean I’m glad he died, because I’m not. That sucked, Morgan’s sad face sucked, everything about that sucked, haha. But… the way in which he died, the sacrifice he made, the way in which he was loved and honored afterward… I liked that. From a writer’s point of view, it felt like a very honorable and virtuous ending for a character who always had strived to be such and felt like he fell short. Well that time, he hit the bar, heh. I liked it. BUT I WILL COME BACK TO THIS ONCE I’M DONE WITH NATASHA SO HOLD THIS THOUGHT, haha.

Natasha… Okay, just like Tony, I didn’t overly like her until she died, haha, but whereas with Tony it was because I had misunderstood the character, with Natasha it was more a case of her completely flying under my radar. Bitch had been making me like her for umpteen number of movies and I hadn’t ever REALIZED it until she went and DIED on me and then I realized I LOVED her. XDDD I shit you not, I was literally like oh no I think I liked that character that just died, haha. It was a weird feeling. But not necessarily bad. What was bad, was the fact that it didn’t need to happen. I mean… was there a problem with just reversing our own timeline and grabbing the stones before Thanos snapped? I feel like there was a reason why we couldn’t’ do that, so I’ll let that one go, but even so… could we not have gone back to maybe when Thanos got the soul stone and taken it from him? Or I mean, my point is there were other options. Of course that would have screwed Gamora fans, haha, but I’m sure there was another way of getting that stone. But… that aside… new paragraph because long…

…as with Tony, I thought her death was well done. It was an emotional, honorable, brave way for again… a character who had often thought she wasn’t good enough or that she had too much red in her ledger. Well it all got erased at that point. It was a great venue, I thought, to showcase her and Clint’s relationship (which incidentally, have you ever seen a more beautiful display of platonic love in a really valid way before? Just ugh, it was amazing), to show how much they loved each other and how much that they were equally willing to sacrifice to set things right. Their commitment to saving the world regardless of what it meant for them was incredibly profound, poignant, and I thought the whole scene was really well done. If she had to die, I think it was a good death deserving of everything else we saw from her up until that point.

If… she had to die. If… Tony had to die. Here’s… where I start to get pissed off, haha. As I said, I feel like there were ways around Natasha dying. And with Tony… I mean… again, it was for an IronWitch thing… but I wrote a little ficlet off Tumblr about Wanda continuing to power the arc reactor herself after Tony did the snap. Now… granted… she couldn’t hold it forever and eventually got tired and distracted by her emotions and Tony ended up dying anyway and it was super sad, BUT… lol… the point was… I believe Wanda could do that. I believe Carol could’ve done that. Or, hey, you’re telling me they couldn’t find any kind of a temporary power source to fuel the arc reactor until they can fix or replace it? how many freaking times did Tony almost die from removal or failure of the arc reactor in Iron Man alone??? I’m not buying this, Marvel! Okay, maybe he died of a combination of the reactor failing and that he got fried by the power going through his arm and torso and head. Okay, that I buy. HOWEVER… HOW MANY OTHER CHARACTERS DID THEY BRING BACK IN SUCH RIDICULOUS WAYS BEFORE TONY AND NATASHA, AND YOU’RE TELLING ME THEY’VE GOT NOTHING THIS TIME? Some seriously ri-DONK-culous shit has happened in order to bring characters back in the MCU. I don’t buy for a second that there’s no way to do it. I just don’t. I personally can’t think of a way to do it, short of just grabbing another Tony and Nat from another reality into this one, haha, but I’m sure one of those giant brains at MCU could have thought of something.

Okay I ranted about Tony and Natasha enough. Now on to Steve. First, let me expression  my deepest sympathies to Captain America fans everywhere. They did him so wrong. I mean oh my holy gracious gravy pants, what the hell even was that?! First of all, in my opinion, someone who would selfishly go back in time to get what they want from a woman who otherwise had moved on and had a family and a life of her own and passed away already peacefully… was not worthy to wield Thor’s hammer. Worthy… to me… means… some kind of higher justice or morality that extends beyond self and into the greater good. There was nothing good about what Steve chose to do. It was selfish, it was really inconsiderate to this woman he claimed to love, and so much for all that junk about not being able to alter too much in the past or in alternate timelines, we have to just do pointed things and get out. Well Steve completely altered HIS OWN TIMELINE. Like. So why can’t  we go grab a mind stone somewhere for Vision? Huh? Why can’t we yoink a Nat or a Tony into this timeline? Why couldn’t we have brought back Pietro? For someone who was supposed to lead, keep order within, and direct prudently a team of people who have all lost and suffered and regretted things… he basically just said to them well nuts to what you want but Imma get what I want so see ya suckers. It was such a shitty thing to do and honestly I pretend like it didn’t even happen. Because no. Steve up until that point through umpteen number of movies would never have done what he did at the end of Endgame. He would have wanted to. He would have thought about it. But he would not have done it. That’s what makes him worthy. He doesn’t do what he wants, he does what serves the greater good, or truth, or justice. MCU dropped the vibranium shield on that one big time.

Okay all morality and character development that got trashed aside… sending Steve back to his timeline would have… changed… a lot more… than him just growing old? He wouldn’t have been encased in ice. Wouldn’t have been found decades later as a young capable person to help out with all the events of later movies. Civil War would never have happened. Lots of things wouldn’t have happened or would have happened differently because Steve would not have even been there. By all rights, when he came back old, everyone else there but Bucky should have been like… who the hell is this guy? They would not have had the history with him anymore. Am I wrong on this? I would love someone’s opinion because this really bugs me that they let this big of a plot hole go.

Now about Wanda... I do understand why that had to be set up that way, but as her mun, I can’t tell you how infuriating and heartbreaking it is getting inside her head at the moment at which Thanos casually tells here “I don’t even know who you are.” Like… here is a girl full of pain and grief and rage who has been so wronged by this guy… and he’s like… who dafuq even r u? At that moment she must have felt like exploding. Her feelings and pain were completely invalidated in that moment. Just… ugh, so painful for her. BUT THEN… MCU ROBS HER OF THE CHANCE TO KILL HIM. Wanda had Thanos. She was going to kill him and basically win things for everyone. But nope. We can’t have a woman do it, we gotta save that honor for Tony, heh. No offense to Tony, it’s just irritating to me heh. LET HER DO THIS, MCU. WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? LET WANDA BE THE STRONG VENGEFUL WOMAN SHE IS AND KICK THIS PURPLE RAISIN’S ASS. It was like they felt they had to do the fans a service of having that confrontational moment but then decided no okay lol but we have a better ending for Thanos so bye bye Wanda. That’s honestly what it felt like and I really hated it.

Aaaaand I have ranted ENOUGH about this, haha. I’m so sorry, I kindof let loose lol. Hope I answered all your questions though!