#people ask why bruce falls in love with questionable women or keeps giving certain villains a chance and it's like. he's an idealist

[roobylavender]

those posts that talk about how dick did x or y to help rehabilitate Jason are so funny to me bc like only bat canon dick would do that. as in the dick who was brought closer to emulating bruce to the point he has no identity anymore. I don’t think he would entertain Jason for a second once he knew what he was doing. He would sympathize with the Jason who died but he would refuse to treat the Jason who came back as a child given his kill count.

Why would you leave that in the tags! Your brain is fascinating! Please tell me more!

mostly it is a consequence of developing a bad rep among a certain batch of dick fans on my old account bc if i were to say that a lot of the toxic behaviors bruce has come to express in the past twenty years or so (aside from the physical abuse obv that should never be attributed to either of them in any situation) were actually more emblematic of dick originally then i would probably be mauled by the equivalent of internet bears. but unfortunately this is my truth

this is something i said on twt the other day but the reason to me that dick falls out with people like bruce or kory or donna is bc he puts them up on a pedestal. his attachment to them is a segue to reverence and admiration that is sort of the equivalent to him standing inside a glass house that can be shattered at literally any moment bc his expectations for the people in his life are honestly a bit ludicrous given the work they do and the environment they operate within. not to say that he's wrong when he gets angry with people like he has reasons to be skeptical of bruce's wish-washy morality at times or of kory's inclination to jump the gun or of donna's inability to prioritize efficiently. but the way he reacts is still volatile and caustic and esp after observing the way he reacted to kory's arranged marriage debacle i think it's absolutely a consequence of people failing to live up to the expectations that he has of them. he's so set in his morality and the way he defines his work bc of how it's literally all he has that it bleeds into every interaction and relationship. if he doesn't have the heroes in his life then he has nothing. if he can't rely on anyone that he expects to rely on then he has nothing. it's why i think he's so entrenched in the idea of teamwork and partnership. reciprocated trust and faith mean something to him and are as good as bonds born in blood and if you test those bonds or the rites behind them then it's like, you're testing your faith in him and everything he believes you're supposed to stand for together. and he takes that very personally

with jason what is interesting to me is that like. obv dick did not know him very well. i know the last laugh or whatever retconned it to where they used to go on vacations together but i personally ignore that bc i think it's a narrative cop out and i'm not particularly bothered by the fact that dick and jason weren't close. dick had no obligation to sub-parent someone who was ultimately bruce's responsibility, esp since dick was long gone from the coop before jason ever entered it. but in spite of that lack of physical connection there was nonetheless a symbolic one bc they were two people wearing the same colors, pursuing the same ideal, operating under the same rites of passage. which i think is what makes dick's reaction to jason's death make so much sense and his reaction to jason's resurrection and subsequent mission make so little sense. ofc dick would feel a deep kinship with the robin who died considering he was once in that position himself. ofc he would be baffled and angered by how bruce subsequently receded into himself and refused to open up to anyone and began making a martyr out of jason rather than trying harder to remember him as the son whom he adored and loved. it's about the principle bc for dick the principle is what defines the love. love is a contract and a promise and a partnership and there are things entailed by that that dick explicitly sees bruce fail to deliver on. so ofc he's angry on jason's behalf for however little he knew him

but that's not to say that the symbolic love dick has for jason remains unchanged when jason comes back. the principle of it remains and is subject to test. the shared sense of identity and ideals remains. but for however much dick would sympathize with the deceased jason for not being honored properly as bruce's son and partner i can't imagine him extending that same sympathy to the jason who goes on a self-righteous killing spree in the name of justice. it's a direct violation of the principle that he likely believed jason upheld when he was once living. it goes against everything dick would have stood for when he was fighting bruce on jason's behalf. obv jason was a child and dick would defend him to bruce bc of that too, but once again, ultimately, dick is someone utterly entrenched in heroism and using it to define his relationships and his life to the point that he cannot withstand the expectations of that heroism being broken. so i don't think dick would look at jason as the red hood and be the one to extend a helping hand. i don't think he would try to say that with his help jason can start over and be rehabilitated and blah blah blah. that is 100% bruce's line of thinking and has been since his character started actually being defined in the 70s. dick would be the guy looking at jason with utter disappointment and regret and bitterness bc he spent years defending jason in every which way only for jason to come back and spit on every symbolic thing that might have connected them to each other in another life. he would be the guy tasking himself with bringing jason down (non-lethally obv, bc he's still even more of a control freak about that than bruce is) while bruce was probably having breakdowns somewhere in the cave bc comparatively his way of coping with things devastating to him is to shut down, while dick's way of coping is to take charge and act

#and like! i know i say often that jason is still barely an adult and mostly a child when he makes his grand debut as the red hood #but that's speaking objectively #dick is highly subjective (an amusing irony). look at the standards that /he/ had for himself at eighteen #he's not going to let age or trauma be used as an excuse for what jason is doing. that's something bruce would do #people ask why bruce falls in love with questionable women or keeps giving certain villains a chance and it's like. he's an idealist #i don't think dick is a cynic in comparison. but he's not as deluded. he'll judge you for making bad choices #bc it's what he's used to doing with himself in order to temper himself as a hero and as a leader #outbox

[langernameohnebedeutung]

suzuwarahikaru replied to your post “what happens at 5 am?”

where is the essay, OP!?

@suzuwarahikaru​ Honestly, it’s drivel and I didn’t feel like it particularly went anywhere and it was just me monologuing about one aspect of a bigger question so that’s why I didn’t post it. But ok, just for some context: You probably know how the MCU was often criticised for having “bland one off villains” and that’s true especially in their early films - and that was time when Heath Ledger’s Joker loomed very large and Ian McKellen was famous for his performance of Magneto and the idea for a Magneto solo film had just been scrapped in favour of XM First Class. At that point apparently the MCU guys walked up with the demand that Thor 1 only has to give them 1 thing: A villain as good as Magneto which they could use in Avengers. Now, obviously it had to be Loki, because Loki is Thor’s most famous antagonist and he was the first guy the Avengers ever fought in the comics, and Loki in Thor 1 is satisfyingly complex - but now that Loki’s dead and has a solo show coming out in a while, people dug up that old quote and started arguing about whether Loki actually became a villain “as good as Magneto” - which I honestly wouldn’t care about, except this argument spilled a few  “But Loki is great and Magneto is boring”-posts into the Magneto tag a while ago (which mixes with a lot of: Why did Cherik get a happy end but Stucky didn’t that’s so unfair!!!! posts) and then some comments started lowkey implying that Loki is a character who’s more attractive to sophisticated fans and that Magneto fans are usually men and Loki fans women (with the not so subtle implication being that Magneto fans are comic dude bros who like him for his cool powers and because he’s a Bad Guy(TM) I don’t really care about that, but over the course of this argument someone made a rather interesting post, wondering about what “went wrong” with Loki and while I love Loki as a character and as a villain, it made me ponder what could have been done to make Loki (even) better and to help him stand on his own 2 feet as a character and this was their post:

Now and this was going to be my response: Personally, I don’t think that having spectacular powers or anything make a villain good (they make good visuals though) but whether the hero learns something from fighting them, whether their motivation maybe reflects something that we experience as well and that maybe they unmask something that we usually don’t feel comfortable to address. And Loki has all these qualities.

I’m not going to try to objectively pinpoint where it ‘went wrong’ but it’s actually interesting to look at the XMCU and the MCU and to compare notes. The XMCU is often criticised for being too wordy, too slow-paced and “what’s with the constant time jumps and decade-hopping?” But I think that’s something the Thor franchise could actually have profited from, because…these guys are immortals and it just feels rushed in my opinion to watch their world fall apart in what is for them a matter of a long weekend. 

For example, a bigger distance between the events of Thor 1 and Avengers would have lent more weight to Loki’s disappearance and Thanos torturing and brainwashing him, Thor’s and Jane’s relationship would have been given more time to develop (making their reunion in Thor 2 more meaningful). They could also have given her more time exploring Asgard/battling the Ether. We could have learnt more about the Dark Elves, the Frost Giants, the Nine Realms in general. 

And that’s at least part of the problem, in my opinion: We don’t know enough about Asgard. You can’t just throw in an alien word without world-building and you can’t introduce characters who are millennia old by showing us 6 years of their lives and maybe 1 flashback. There is a reason why a show like Good Omens spent basically an entire episode on Crowley and Aziraphale’s lives through the millennia. Captain America got a film set in the WW2, Wolverine Origins covers over a century of Logan’s story. Magneto isn’t a better (or worse) villain than Loki, because as you said, the writing makes the character and both get pretty good and pretty bad writing at times. But a big difference is: We know a lot more about Magneto than we know about Loki. 

One example of this is personal relationships. Something I never realised before I started typing this is how little space Loki is given to let him form/have/maintain/test/strengthen meaningful relationships. 

Basically, all his meaningful interactions are inside his family. Magneto (to be clear, I’m bringing up so often bc the MCU apparently insisted on being rude af and asking Kenneth Branagh on drawing inspiration from a character who’s basically the opposite of Loki in every regard) gets a lot more screen time to develop his relationships with other characters, even if it means less CGI action scenes. 

In fact, I’m currently tempted to find out how many 1 on 1 dialogue scenes Loki gets per hour of film vs. how many Magneto gets. Loki enters the picture with a family, ‘friends’, a biological father, servants, an entire kingdom of people who know him, but he barely gets to have any meaningful interactions outside of his family environment. Seeing him interact with a friend or even someone who hates him for reasons unrelated to his relationship with Thor or someone who supports him would in turn show us a lot about how he sees other people, how he sees himself, how he treats them, what he values in a person, what kind of people trusts (if he trusts) – that’s a lot of potential that was left pretty much wasted in my opinion. 

One of the first things Agent of Asgard did was add Verity Willis to its main-cast so have a character for Loki to interact with, to serve as a moral anchor, and to call him out on his bullshit. Having relationships is powerful. In the MCU, Loki’s relationship with his mother is such an important, humanising element to his character. Also a lot of headcanons and metas and thoughts about Loki are inspired by those few scenes where we see him interact with the Warrior’s Three and Sif before Loki finds out about his parentage. 

And even when encounters the Avengers, they meet once, they talk once, then Loki he returns to Asgard and they never meet again, except Bruce - and even then there’s barely any time to talk about what happened in Avengers 1. He doesn’t get to form any meaningful relationships with his adversaries when he talks to them in Av1, these scenes just exist to present the Avengers in a certain light. And in the end it’s canonised that Loki was brainwashed so it’s all pointless anyway. (pls (don’t) make me write an essay on agency and the MCU, because honestly, between Bucky, Gamora, Nebula, Loki and everyone else was brainwashed it’s actually worth a conversation)

Even in Thor 1 Loki never meets Jane or Darcy, one of the main-characters. And we never see a single frost giant after the first film. Erik Solveig is the only Earth character from Thor 1 Loki actually meets and he’s brainwashed for most of that and in Thor 2, they don’t get to meet again. 

Imagine if Loki had had someone he trusted in Thor 1 and told them about finding out he’s a Frost Giant and they reject him and treat him like a monster. This could be three or four scenes that don’t throw off the film but would have been very powerful. Or imagine if Loki keeps his heritage a secret from that friend/trusted person and they find out in Thor 2 and confront him about it. Valkyrie and Loki never talk about him invading her mind or the things he saw. 

We never get to see him alone on Sakaar to deal with what he presumes is the end of his home world and the death of everyone he knows and we never see him interact ‘win the Grandmaster’s trust’. 

We never see him interact with the Hulk before they’re suddenly fighting side by side in Infinity War. We never find out exactly what the Aesir’s sentiments towards him are, what kind of prince he was in the past, how present he is in public, what reputation he has beyond silver-tongue mischief guy and which specific events shaped it.

If the MCU wants a villain “as good as Magneto” (which is already annoying bc they imply that Loki is not as good a villain which is such a subjective measure – Magneto done wrong is a horrible and downright offensive villain and trickster characters done right are amazing for revealing the flaws of a hero.*) then they have to give writers and actors the same means to do that with. The X-Men franchise, for all it flaws, always gave Magneto screen-time (so much that people criticised it). 

There’s a Charles-and-Erik dialogue in pretty much every film, allowing us to follow the state of their eternal argument at every step. We see his friendship with Mystique grow and fall, we see Wolverine call him out on his bullshit, his attempt to make young Hank and Mystique feel better about their visible mutations, we know how he treats his followers, his new recruits, his enemies, his students, his wife and his daughter, (daughters, if we count The Gifted and his legacy), his colleagues, his lovers, his ex-lovers, allies and former allies, politicians, police, prison guards, Nazis, soldiers, insane Egyptian gods – and we get to learn his feelings and thoughts about all of these through personal interactions, decisions and gestures. And in turn we know how they feel about Magneto. What do we know about Loki’s feelings about people outside his family? How does he feel about Fandral? What are his thoughts on the Valkyrior? How did his views on Frost Giants change and when? Did he challenge them at all or did he just become cynical about them? 

As I said, Loki is a formidable villain but I think that he suffers from the same problem as many MCU characters: We hardly know them. Think about Natascha whose been part of the franchise since Iron Man 2 but we hardly know anything about her. How much do we know about the family Drax lost? Or about Wanda’s family? About Pepper’s private life? We hardly know anything about them and especially when characters are thousands of years old and we know nothing about their past, it really creates a gaping hole in their biography and that really leads back to my original point: If we could spend more time with them, we would know them better and care more. One of the reason Dark Phoenix is a bit under-whelming is because we know very little about Jean and Scott in this time line. 

There are two DCEU films I actually own and watched more than once: Wonder Woman and Aqua Man. And while I personally didn’t find Aqua Man that good, this film actually tells us a lot about him and despite my lack of knowledge about the DCEU and me being a giant Marvel nerd, I preferred Wonder Woman over Captain Marvel and that is because I felt closer to her character. It really boils down to a “show don’t tell issue” and for me, that would mean: Maybe fewer giant CGI battles. more people living their lives. *(which should also highlight why setting Magneto as a mark for K.B. is so off-mark. Loki is about unmasking hypocrisy, Magneto himself is a hypocrite who regards himself as a hero but often does immoral things and that for example gets unmasked by Wolverine, another social outsider with littl care for social conventions)

#suzuwarahikaru #fandom #marvel #mcu #Loki

[cutsliceddiced]

New top story from Time: The Handmaid’s Tale Was a Warning. Three Decades Later, Margaret Atwood Is Back With Another

Margaret Atwood wants to know more about The Bachelorette. We’re chatting in her publisher’s office in Toronto when I mention the dating show where 30-some men vie for the affection of a single woman, all on camera. She has questions: “Why are they even participating in this?” “What if they’re rejected?” “I’m wondering if she’s just pretending to go along with it?”

There is an irony here, observing Atwood equate the show to Sartre’s adage “Hell is other people” come to life. She is, after all, known for a book that describes one of the most brutal mating rituals in the canon. In her landmark 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, a totalitarian theocracy has taken over the U.S. in the midst of a fertility crisis. Offred, one of few women who can still bear children, is forced to participate in reproductive-slavery ceremonies in the Republic of Gilead. Offred’s story ends with a notoriously ambiguous cliff-hanger: she steps into a van that will take her either to fresh hell or to freedom. For 34 years, Atwood, now 79, has deflected readers’ questions about her protagonist’s fate. But on Sept. 10, she will publish The Testaments, a new book that promises to resolve that mystery and many more.

The Testaments arrives at the peak of Atwood’s prominence. In 2017, her 32-year-old novel soared back to the best-seller list when it became one of a handful of classic dystopias that seemed to portend troubling themes of the current era and evoke prescient anxieties about women’s rights. Three months after Donald Trump’s Inauguration, Hulu premiered an adaptation with Atwood’s involvement that has won 11 Emmys. Women’s-rights demonstrators around the globe — at pro-choice rallies in South America and Europe, at Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in the U.S. — have donned the handmaid uniform of crimson cloaks and white bonnets to make their case. Atwood’s voice has become a rallying cry against climate change and threats to equality — last year she headlined a summit on the intersection of those issues, named after a reference to The Handmaid’s Tale. Protest signs at the 2017 Women’s March bore the slogan “Make Margaret Atwood fiction again,” her name now synonymous with resistance.

Atwood long rejected calls for a sequel because, she says, she knew she couldn’t re-create Offred’s voice. But as she saw the world change, she realized Offred wasn’t the only way back into the story. She began drafting The Testaments partway through 2016.

The anticipation has few precedents. The U.S. publisher announced a 500,000-copy first-print run, and the novel made the Man Booker Prize short list despite a strict embargo. Atwood will launch it with a live interview onstage in London, which will stream to 1,300 cinemas around the world. It’s a larger-than-life reception for a larger-than-life figure, one still a tad bewildered by the fanfare. She makes a point of stating the obvious: “It’s just a book.”

***

Growing up in Canada, Atwood wrote whenever she could — in the high school yearbook, in a college magazine under the pseudonym Shakesbeat Latweed. Her early jobs included a teen venture in puppeteering and later market research, and she published her first novel, The Edible Woman, in 1969. Since then she has published more than 60 works of fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, poetry and children’s literature. The Handmaid’s Tale was a breakthrough, landing her on the Booker short list for the first time. In 2000, she became the first Canadian woman to win the award, for The Blind Assassin.

Photograph by Mickalene Thomas for TIME

On the patio of her neighborhood café, Atwood glances over her shoulder to scan for eavesdroppers. “Things never used to be like this,” she says, peeking out from under a sun hat. Caution is justified: the plot of The Testaments is the closest-guarded secret in publishing since Harry Potter lived (again). Impostors posing as book agents tried to steal the digital manuscript, so publishers around the world agreed to go analog. Rare copies were distributed under fake names, like The Casements by Victoria Locket.

Atwood famously wrote part of The Handmaid’s Tale in Cold War–era Berlin, influenced by the fog of distrust that shrouded the East. That same atmosphere propels the sequel, which is narrated by three women. One was raised in Gilead, too young at its rise to remember a life before it; another is a Canadian teen with a past she has yet to understand; the third is Aunt Lydia, a villain in the regime and the only one of the three to have appeared in the foreground of The Handmaid’s Tale. In swift prose — lightened by winking references to American history, like a café named for anti–Equal Rights Amendment activist Phyllis Schlafly — Atwood weaves together three distinct narratives to chronicle the rise and fall of Gilead.

Over the course of several interviews, Atwood doles out measured tidbits about her experience writing the book. She admits to feeling some nerves about the highly anticipated project but closes the topic with a pat “What is life without challenges?” She often veers toward history and deadpans jokes; she’s not a “Dear Diary–type of person,” she says. When asked how she feels about the excitement surrounding The Testaments, she offers a few words but soon dives into a lesson on Icelandic manuscripts. Before describing her path to writing in terms of the politics of the 1940s and ’50s, she pauses to ask when I was born. “That’s hilarious,” she says. “You remember nothing.”

Atwood’s talent for capturing history’s tendency to repeat itself has led some to call her a prophet. (She insists she’s not — just ask her old colleagues at the market-research firm where she declared Pop-Tarts would never take off.) Certain scenes from The Testaments — children ripped from the arms of their parents, flights across borders, inhumane detention centers — track closely with today’s headlines. But Atwood can point to multiple historical examples for each. She has a rule that each of the dark circumstances, rules and customs in The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments and the TV show, which range from genocide to ritual rape, must have a historical precedent. “I didn’t want people saying, like some have said, ‘How did you make up all this twisted stuff?'”

She sees her role as the person who drops a flare on the highway — she wrote the new book in part because she worries the world is trending more toward Gilead than away from it. A child of the ’30s, Atwood sees authoritarianism tightening its grip in Europe, but also in leading U.S. Republicans’ response to election interference: “It just does not compute,” she says. “Unless of course what they really want is an authoritarian regime. If that’s what they really want, spit it out: ‘We hate democracy.'”

Yet even in Atwood’s darkest writing, optimism prevails. Both Gilead novels end with scenes that indicate common sense has triumphed. Their narrators record their stories for the benefit of history, a perspective that leaves room to hope for a better world. “If you are reading,” Atwood writes in Lydia’s determined voice, “this manuscript at least will have survived.”

***

One autumn, as Atwood was sweeping leaves outside her Toronto mansion, the man next door told her people refer to her as the “wicked witch” of the neighborhood. (The broom didn’t help.) Her mythology precedes her. Bruce Miller, the Handmaid’s showrunner, remembers every head turning as she entered a restaurant. When someone at the table asked her what it’s like to be a national treasure, she offered a perfectly Atwood response: “Exhausting.”

The author exists in a surreal intersection between her image and her life’s more stark realities, where caring for loved ones often takes precedence. Her partner, the novelist Graeme Gibson, is living with dementia. The morning after a doctor’s visit, Atwood runs through to-dos in the basement office in her home: there are appointments to schedule and bills to pay, a condo dispute to chase. (She stays in caretaking mode with me: “You were a naughty person, you didn’t eat any muffins,” she scolds, then sends me off with banana bread.)

Atwood has never been the type for superstitious writing rituals. She wrote The Testaments in hotels around the world, on trains and planes, wherever the phone couldn’t ring. Gibson wanted to re-create a voyage from his youth, traveling by ship to Australia. So Atwood did the first edit of The Testaments over the 21 days at sea while he slept.

She has a list of things she’d like to do but wonders if she’s too old: trek across Baffin Island, travel to Africa. She won’t say for sure whether she’ll write more Gilead novels (fans: it’s not a no) — in fact, she’s not much for discussing her future at all. Someday, she acknowledges, she’ll be “forcibly” retired. But she takes aging in stride. “There’s a lot of respect that comes with being the me that people recognize,” she says. “But if it’s the me that people don’t recognize, I’m just another old lady.”

In her office, Atwood strides past shelves of her archives — first editions, foreign translations, the original art from the best-known Handmaid’s Tale cover — pulling an item here and there to give away. Later she’ll meditate on the meaning behind our choices of what we keep and what we discard. What she’s really talking about is legacy, what we leave behind and how it may one day prove useful to our “Dear Readers,” whoever they may be. She asks me how many love letters from 1961 she should keep, and I suggest she hold on to the ones that speak to her, missing the point. “I don’t think it matters whether they speak to me or not,” she says. “Whether they speak is more interesting.”

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

#Time #top stories #IFTTT #news

[essayofthoughts]

New prompt: Pietro makes a deal with some kind of villain/higher power to come back to life - but not without a price. For every day/ week/ month of life he is given, he must kill. Can either start with him trying to keep it from Wanda to protect her, or he could let her in on it right away, but in either case, she is way too ready to help. Dark!twins, angst and violence ensues.

June 22nd 2017, 1:34:00 am · 3 hours ago

Send me fic prompts!

AO3 Mirror.

i.Pietro cheats. The deal he made was loosely worded, was agreed simply - death for life. He cannot kill people, will not, could never shame and disappoint Wanda so. He kills rats and mice, pigeons and gulls, spiders and flies and wasps and gnats, small things that no one will miss. 

He has to kill each day, kill many times, if it is insects, but with his speed it is easy, easy to keep to the deal he made with Hel, to feed her hordes in exchange for his continuing life. He runs, catches flies and birds with his hands, crushes the life from them and whispers a prayer in her name.

It has been years since he prayed, years upon years. The words feel strange on his lips.

ii.Pietro came back covered in dirt, clawed his way from his grave back to Wanda’s side. She woke, and felt his mind swirling at the foot of her bed, woke and saw her brother, pale and wan and covered in dirt, as though someone had taken his corpse and placed him at the foot of her bed.

And then Pietro had opened his eyes and croaked, “Wanda.”

iii.Wanda has not questioned his return. Doctor Cho, when asked for an assessment, said she did not know, but that her best guess would be his improved homeostasis, his altered metabolism. Vision concurred, and Doctor Banner and Thor were not there to voice an opinion.

Pietro makes his small sacrifices in Hel’s name, and keeps his secret.

iv.There are insect carapaces in the folds of Pietro’s clothes. There is blood beneath his nails. Wanda spots these small things, and knows no one else will see them, takes his hands in hers and scrubs under his nails with scarlet, stretches scarlet around him and pulls carapaces from his clothes.

There is none so close to Pietro as she and she will do all she can to protect him.

v.“Pietro,” she asks one evening. Her voice is soft, her hands dancing soft scarlet out to light the room. “Pietro, how did you come back?”

It spills out of him in a wave, words tripping over him as he tries to explain everything.

A deal, an offer-

Hel, goddess of the dead-

She said I could return if I fed her hordes-

I sacrifice. I sacrifice each day.

Wanda watches him, cups his face in her hands, runs her thumbs in hard lines across his cheeks.

“How?” she asks him.

vi.Wanda helps him. She catches flies in her scarlet, catches worms and ants, catches birds and mice and rats, when they fight she fights fiercely, when people attack she fights them off, snaps necks as though by accident and shows no fear or shame.

“You are my family,” she says. “My only family, all I have left. I have lost you once. I will not lose you again.”

Wanda kills in Hel’s name for his sake. Single whispered prayers each time, “Death for life, Death to Hela for Life for Pietro.”

She does not stint, she exceeds Pietro’s efforts. With more than bugs dying, with Wanda’s wilful sacrifice of cats and dogs that wander into the way of battle he is stronger and faster, less tired, more able. With a human life he thrives, with two he is almost as he was. Wanda smiles to see him so, takes his hands in hers, cups his cheeks and presses a kiss to his brow.

vii.No one notices the extra deaths. Or: they do, and they excuse it as growing power, ask her simply to try to keep at least one attacker alive for information. Steve is the worst, when he asks it of her, earnest and honest, pleading to a sense of morals she has sacrificed along with every life she gives to Hel.

She sacrifices still, finds ways to make them as often as she can. Three bugs a day can sustain Pietro. Two birds can last him a day and a half. A cat or dog, something well loved, that causes a small death of happiness in those who knew it, can last him almost a week.

A person, a person can last him a month, if they are cared for enough by those around them, if they are vital enough in energy.

When Wanda kills all but the leader of a squad, Pietro seems to shine.

viii.There is strife on Asgard, trouble in Wakanda. The world is warping around them when a ship comes sailing through the void of space and crashes into orbit around earth.

“Thanos,” says the one human of the crew. “Thanos, destroyer of worlds.”

“The Infinity Stones,” says the women of green and blue. “You must hide them. Our father will stop at nothing.”

The stones are these: the Tesseract, taken, and the Aether. The purple stone of power is claimed, the green of life, the orange of time, the yellow of mind yet remain.

“I hold the mind stone,” Vision says. “I will not let it fall into his hands.”

Time and life, however, those may yet.

ix.The twins recoil from Stephen Strange, recoil from the magic he wields as though burned.

“Wanda,” says Pietro, “It looks almost like your powers.”

It is not, but he speaks true.

“Pietro,” says Wanda. “If he knows magic, he may know that of sacrifice.”

x.The twins avoid Strange, help guard his stone as they do Vision, as they do the green-glowing vortex of power they discover with the life stone, but they do not speak to him if they can help it, turning into each other, away from all else, as Wanda finds more and more deaths to keep Pietro powerful and strong as Thanos draws nearer.

“He has the space stone,” Bruce asks Thor when the two arrive on Earth, charred and smoking with the remnants of a battle. “Why does he not just warp space to get here?”

“The effect,” Thor says. “He wants to make us afraid.”

“He wants a battle,” says Gamora. “He likes watching people fight for their lives before him.”

xi.The battle is…

It is glorious. Thanos has brought Chitauri to bear upon them, and every Chitauri on its own feeds into a yet vaster network, each one cut off is like voiding the eyes of some great behemoth, making it blinder and blinder until it falls to pieces. Wanda kills and kills and kills, breathes prayer after prayer, watches the death fill Pietro with life and strength far beyond the usual scope.

Pietro is killing too, tearing armour plates off the Leviathans, vaporising the other soldiery Thanos has brought to this place with nothing but his growing and growing and growing speed.

Thanos, it seems, was not expecting a blur that moved almost faster than thought to be his opponent.

xii. “Where did you come from!?” Thanos yells, trying and failing to target Pietro, warping space with his gauntlet only to find Pietro has evaded it once more. “You were dead!”

Hela, thinks Wanda. Hel brought him back against your vision.

Pietro is a blur, is almost invisible, if Wanda could not feel his mind, see him with invisible eyes, she would not know where to find him in the slew of death and danger of the battle. Pietro runs, Pietro leaps, life and life and life once more filling his veins until his blue shines as bright as the Tesseract.

Pietro tears the head from Thanos and, for a moment there is peace.

Then the shadows rise.

xiii.“Hel,” says Thor. “I killed you.”

“Me?” Hel asks. “You, kill me? I am the goddess of death Uncle. Death cannot hurt me any more than lightning could hurt you, or lies hurt my father. All they do is help us.”

Thor stands at the base of Thanos’ dais, Hel atop it, her helm of spreading horns spreading and spreading until they shadow Thanos’ corpse, until they seem to fade into the void of space itself.

“So much death,” she breathes. “I feel alive again.”

xiv.This is a different battle and the twins are torn in it. Hel can erase a life with a snap of her fingers, can throw a knife out of nothingness, turn shadow into a blade of steel and death. For all they have added to her power, given her soul upon soul to turn into Draugr to march at her side, they know she will not hesitate to kill them both if it comes to it.

She is goddess of death, after all, and she no longer needs them as pawns to make her stronger.

She stands above Thanos’ body, above his half-filled Gauntlet, basking in the power of all those dying beneath her. Her power sings storms onto earth, sings quakes into space, destroys ship after ship of Thanos’ people, until they stand in a mausoleum in space, just them, and the dead around them.

“You have a choice,” she says to the Avengers. “Fight me, and die, or let me rule you all.”

xv.It is not even a question what the Avengers will do.

xvi.No words are said. No words are needed. Thor lifts his hammer and even in the void of space, lightning burns, thunder sings out.

“Oh, Uncle,” sighs Hela. “You already failed once.”

The twins look to each other, Pietro shimmering with blue around the edges, still shining with the life bought from their sacrifice of Thanos - Thanos so ancient, Thanos so powerful - shining with the energy of all those they killed before that.

We kill her- Pietro thinks.

Can we? asks Wanda.

Sacrifice her to herself, Pietro thinks. An always loop.

Sacrifice her to what she is goddess of, thinks Wanda, feed her power, and yet end her.

Pietro vanishes from her side.

xvii.“We sacrifice you,” says Wanda, and Pietro is already gone from her side, the other Avengers left staring and confused. “We sacrifice you, Hel, goddess of death, goddess of the cairn, the wolf’s sister, and we sacrifice you to death itself.” 

Pietro’s hands blur into being around Hel’s head, grasp around the horns to cradle her skull, a hold at once delicate and like iron. 

“We sacrifice you to yourself,” says Wanda, adamant and certain, scarlet dancing out to hold Hel in place. “A sacrifice of always and for always, of death and into death, until forever are you ended.”

Pietro tears Hel’s head loose from her neck with a single, violent jerk.

xviii.Wanda runs up the dais, taking it three steps at a time, leaping over Thanos’ limp arm, the dangling gauntlet to embrace her bloodied brother.

“Wanda,” he whispers into her neck. “Wanda.”

The blood covers him, an unrestrained spurt from the stump of Hel’s neck drenching his body like that of blessing blood, a sacrament. Hel’s head still dangles from his hands.

Pietro buries his face in his sister’s shoulder.

#nanyoky #ask #wanda maximoff #pietro maximoff #mcu fic #my fic