#sometimes strange things happens when fixations converge

[redrobin-detective]

Wanna hear another of baby Robin’s never written DP fic AUs? So when I was a freshman in high school and on the tail end of my first DP hyperfixation, I also became obsessed with the Indiana Jones trilogy (not to date myself but this was before that awful fourth movie). I had a pretty decent outline so here’s what I remember* (IE the bare bones are same and I uh tweaked it a bit)

So! It starts in an AU world where the ghosts attacked the human world and caused society to splinter a bit. Neither side won but they kind of aggressively co-exist, humans interacting in the Zone and ghosts haunting the real world. During the invasion, Jack, Maddie and Jazz were killed by one of the powerful ghosts who led the initial uprising, Plasmius. Danny had been young (I think I said 10) and had hid, watching his family be murdered, unable to do anything. It really affects Danny and he vows to find the ghost that killed his family.

Years later, Danny is in his late teens-possibly early twenties and he is an experienced ghost archeologist (I distinctly remember this title being in my notes lmao). He spends a lot of time researching ghosts and working with them, he’s as well known in the Zone as he is in the human world. He has many ghostly allies as he primarily seeks to understand ghosts and find a way for humans and ghosts to coexist but also not so secretly hunting Plasmius. His sponsor and basically foster parent is Vlad Masters, his parents’ former partner. He’s very encouraging of Danny’s pursuits and need to find the six fingered man Plasmius and often provide information.

The first arc would vaguely follow the plot of Raiders with Danny getting a tip about Plasmius seeking to open Pariah’s sarcophagus in order to gain the power to take the human world once and for all. Danny recruits Valerie to help him stop the ghost king from being unleashed. Val had trained under his parent as a hunter and she and Danny aren’t on the best of terms given how generally passive he is with ghosts. Uh middle bits, middle bits. The sarcophagus was opened but they managed to prevent the ghost king from awakening. Danny and Val part as friends and Danny gets his first look of Plasmius before he vanishes. It spurs him onward.

The second arc followed Temple of Doom as Danny ventured deeper than he’d gone before into the Ghost Zone. He finds the girl he’d crushed on in high school, Paulina, is working as something of an indentured servant in a Zone bar. Danny rescues her along with Danielle, a quirky girl living on her own within the Zone. Danny, Paulina and Dani get trapped by a ghost cult of uh some sort. Danny is suspicious of Dani who not only looks like him but has weird knowledge of both him and ghosts. They all escape, Danny risks his life to protect Dani despite her behavior. She reveals as thanks that she’s not really human, she’s a hybrid clone made using Danny’s DNA by Plasmius to throw Danny off his trail. She flees deeper into the Ghost Zone to escape both Danny and Plasmius leaving Danny wondering how the ghost got his hands on Danny’s DNA in the first place and why.

The third arc revolves around, you guessed it, the Last Crusade. Danny can feel himself getting closer and closer to Plasmius. He’s realizing that things about the ghost aren’t adding up entirely and that he has a special interest in Danny though he can’t figure out why. Masters, sensing Danny’s frustrations, finds another ghost archeologist, Samantha Manson. Danny and her click right away and make good progress. The existence of Danielle proves there can be a middle ground between human and ghost so Danny thinks Plasmius may be in that category and he may be closer than he thinks. Suddenly Danny is nervous of the people around him and for good reason. Sam ends up being another spy to lure Danny into a trap by Plasmius. He promised her access to so much ghost knowledge if only she led the boy along. She instantly regrets it and goes to get reinforcements to save Danny. 

Danny awakens in his parents’ old home, uninjured and confused. He soon discovers that Masters and Plasmius are one in the same, a human with ghost powers created by Jack and Maddie. The ghost who killed his family, who Danny has been hunting half his life, was also the man who gave him a home afterwards. The cruel irony infuriates Danny and he confronts Vlad. He asks why he spared Danny, why the charade? Vlad killed the Fentons in a rage when he learned they were trying to make a portal to the GZ (the same portal that half killed Vlad). He turned on humanity as part of his broader revenge and planned to use the Fenton Portal as a way to mobilize an army. To his fury, he learns that the Fenton portal was DNA activated. That’s when he discovers that he accidentally left one Fenton alive and takes Danny in. Only, somewhere along the way, Vlad comes to love Danny as a son and he’s afraid that activating the portal will hurt/kill Danny. Vlad made the clones to try and find a way to activate the portal without hurting Danny, Danielle was an attempt who fled before she could be killed.

Sam shows up about then with reinforcements, human and ghostly allies Danny has acquired over the years. Vlad is split between wanting to kill Danny for his interference and just, being unable to hurt his sorta son. Plasmius is too powerful and ghosts are wearing out being in the human realm, access to the Ghost Zone would help. Danny doesn’t really think, he just activates the portal and receives a massive shock of ectoplasm to his system. Danny Fenton steps in, Danny Phantom steps out. Vlad is devastated bc he felt Danny die and, deciding the battle isn’t worth it right now, retreats. Only Danny isn’t wholly dead instead a human/ghost like Vlad.

But yeah the story would have essentially ended once Danny became half-ghost with the implication that he would confront and stop his sorta foster father and put the Zone and earth back in order. Blah Blah something about Vlad being the human/ghost to throw the worlds out of whack and Danny, with his foot in both worlds even before his powers, being the one to help the worlds coexist.

#danny phantom #danny phantom au #I swear on 10 bibles the notes outline I had was called Dandiana Jones bc its an absolutely stupid name #honestly this idea was surprisingly interesting and well thought out for 14-15 year old me #I remember being really intrigued by the idea of Danny having ghostly adventures pre-powers #that getting his powers would be *the* end and he was acting as a sort of bridge long before he got them #also the fucked up relationship of Vlad & Danny good job past brain that one hurts #also just the idea of like ghost archeology (as stupid as that name is) #just danny understanding it was ONE ghost who hurt his family and using that anger to gain better clarity into ghost culture #pointedly refusing to be a *hunter* and instead keeping an open heart and mind #sometimes strange things happens when fixations converge

[copiegrandeurnature]

Imagining our alternate selves can be fuel for fantasy or fodder for regret. Most of us aren’t haunted so acutely by the people we might have been. But, perhaps for a morning or a month, our lives can still thrum with the knowledge that it could have been otherwise. 

“The thought that I might have become someone else is so bland that dwelling on it sometimes seems fatuous,” the literary scholar Andrew H. Miller writes, in “On Not Being Someone Else: Tales of Our Unled Lives” (Harvard). Still, phrased the right way, the thought has an insistent, uncanny magnetism. Miller’s book is, among other things, a compendium of expressions of wonder over what might have been. Miller quotes Clifford Geertz, who, in “The Interpretation of Cultures,” wrote that “one of the most significant facts about us may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one.” He cites the critic William Empson: “There is more in the child than any man has been able to keep.” We have unlived lives for all sorts of reasons: because we make choices; because society constrains us; because events force our hand; most of all, because we are singular individuals, becoming more so with time. “While growth realizes, it narrows,” Miller writes. “Plural possibilities simmer down.” This is painful, but it’s an odd kind of pain—hypothetical, paradoxical. Even as we regret who we haven’t become, we value who we are. We seem to find meaning in what’s never happened. Our self-portraits use a lot of negative space.

“You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife,” David Byrne sings, in the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime.” “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’ ” Maybe you feel suddenly pushed around by your life, and wonder if you could have willed it into a different shape. Perhaps you suddenly remember, as Hilary Mantel did, that you have another self “filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that wouldn’t work after the opening lines.” Today, your life is irritating, like an ill-fitting garment; you can’t forget it’s there. “You may tell yourself, ‘This is not my beautiful house. . . . This is not my beautiful wife,’ ” Byrne sings. Swept up in our real lives, we quickly forget about the unreal ones. Still, there will be moments when, for good or for ill, we feel confronted by our unrealized possibilities; they may even, through their persistence, shape us. Practitioners of mindfulness tell us that we should look away, returning our gaze to the actual, the here and now. But we might have the opposite impulse, as Miller does. He wants us to wander in the hall of mirrors—to let our imagined selves “linger longer and say more.” What can our unreal selves say about our real ones?

It’s likely, Miller thinks, that capitalism, “with its isolation of individuals and its accelerating generation of choices and chances,” has increased the number of our unlived lives. “The elevation of choice as an absolute good, the experience of chance as a strange affront, the increasing number of exciting, stultifying decisions we must make, the review of the past to improve future outcomes”—all these “feed the people we’re not.” Advertisers sell us things by getting us to imagine better versions of ourselves, even though there’s only one life to live: it’s “yolo + fomo,” a friend tells Miller, summing up the situation nicely. The nature of work deepens the problem. “Unlike the agricultural and industrial societies that preceded it,” Miller writes, our “professional society” is “made up of specialized careers, ladders of achievement.” You make your choice, forgoing others: year by year, you “clamber up into your future,” thinking back on the ladders unclimbed.

Historic events generate unlived lives. Years from now, we may wonder where we would be if the coronavirus pandemic hadn’t shifted us onto new courses. Sometimes we can see another life opening out to one side, like a freeway exit. Miller recounts the sad history of Jack and Ennis, the cowboys in Annie Proulx’s story “Brokeback Mountain,” who are in love but live in Wyoming in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, and so must hide it. They disagree about how to understand their predicament. Ennis has no “serious hard feelings,” Proulx tells us. “Just a vague sense of getting short-changed.” But Jack, Miller writes, “is haunted by the lives they might have led together, running a little ranch or living in Mexico, somewhere away from civilization and its systematic and personal violence.” Jack tells Ennis, “We could a had a good life together, a fuckin real good life.” The existence he has is spoiled by the one he doesn’t.

It makes sense for Jack to dwell on how things might have turned out in a better world. And yet we can have the same kinds of thoughts even when we’re basically happy with our lives. The philosopher Charles Taylor, who has written much about the history of selfhood, has a theory about why we can’t just accept the way things are: he thinks that sometime toward the end of the eighteenth century two big trends in our self-understanding converged. We learned to think of ourselves as “deep” individuals, with hidden wellsprings of feeling and talent that we owed it to ourselves to find. At the same time, we came to see ourselves objectively—as somewhat interchangeable members of the same species and of a competitive mass society. Subjectivity and objectivity both grew more intense. We came to feel that our lives, pictured from the outside, failed to reflect the vibrancy within.

A whole art form—the novel—has been dedicated to exploring this dynamic. Novelists often show us people who, trapped by circumstances, struggle to live their “real” lives. Such a struggle can be Escher-like; a “real” life is one in which a person no longer yearns to find herself, and yet the work of finding oneself is itself a source of meaning. In Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” Anna, caught in a boring marriage, destroys her life in an attempt to build a more passionate, authentic one with Count Vronsky. All the while, Levin, the novel’s other hero, is so confused about how to live that he longs for the kind of boring, automatic life that Anna left behind. Part of the work of being a modern person seems to be dreaming of alternate lives in which you don’t have to dream of alternate lives. We long to stop longing, but we also wring purpose from that desire.

An “unled” life sounds like one we might wish to lead—shoulda, coulda, woulda. But, while I’m conscious of my unlived lives, I don’t wish to have led one. In fact, as the father of a two-year-old, I find the prospect frightening. In “Midlife: A Philosophical Guide,” the philosopher Kieran Setiya points out that, thanks to the “butterfly effect,” even minor alterations to our pasts would likely have major effects on our presents. 

Sartre thought we should focus on what we have done and will do, rather than on what we might have done or could do. He pointed out that we often take too narrow a census of our actions. An artist, he maintains, is not to be “judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things also help to define him.” We do more than we give ourselves credit for; our real lives are richer than we think. This is why, if you keep a diary, you may feel more satisfied with the life you live. And yet you may still wonder at the particular shape of that life; all stories have turning points, and it’s hard not to fixate on them.

Miller quotes the poem “Veracruz,” by George Stanley, in full. It opens by the sea in Mexico, where Stanley is walking on an esplanade. He thinks of how his father once walked on a similar esplanade in Cuba. Step by step, he imagines alternative lives for his father and for himself. What if his dad had moved to San Francisco and “married / not my mother, but her brother, whom he truly loved”? What if his father had transformed himself into a woman, and Stanley had been the child of his father and his uncle? Maybe he would have been born female, and “grown up in San Francisco as a girl, / a tall, serious girl.” If all that had happened, then today, walking by the sea in Mexico, he might be able to meet a sailor, have an affair, and “give birth at last to my son—the boy / I love.”

“Veracruz” reminds me of the people I know who believe in past lives, and of stories like the one David Lynch tells in “Twin Peaks,” in which people seem to step between alternate lives without knowing it. Such stories satisfy us deeply because they reconcile contrary ideas we have about ourselves and our souls. On the one hand, we understand that we could have turned out any number of ways; we know that we aren’t the only possible versions of ourselves. But, on the other, we feel that there is some fundamental light within us—a filament that burns, with its own special character, from birth to death. We want to think that, whoever we might have been, we would have burned with the same light. At the end of “Veracruz,” the poet comes home to the same son.

As Sartre says, we are who we are. But isn’t the negative space in a portrait part of that portrait? In the sense that our unled lives have been imagined by us, and are part of us, they are real; to know what someone isn’t—what she might have been, what she’s dreamed of being—this is to know someone intimately. When we first meet people, we know them as they are, but, with time, we perceive the auras of possibility that surround them. Miller describes the emotion this experience evokes as “beauty and heartbreak together.”

The novel I think of whenever I have this feeling is Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse.” Mrs. Ramsay, its central character, is the mother of eight children; the linchpin of her family, she is immersed in the practicalities of her crowded, communal life. Still, even as she attends to the particulars—the morning’s excursion, the evening’s dinner—she senses that they are only placeholders, or handles with which she can grasp something bigger. The details of life seem to her both worthy of attention and somehow arbitrary; the meaning of the whole feels tied up in its elusiveness. One night, she is sitting at dinner, surrounded by her children and her guests. She listens to her husband talking about poetry and philosophy; she watches her children whisper some private joke. (She can’t know that two of them will die: a daughter in childbirth, a son in the First World War.) Then she softens her focus. “She looked at the window in which the candle flames burnt brighter now that the panes were black,” Woolf writes, “and looking at that outside the voices came to her very strangely, as if they were voices at a service in a cathedral.” In this inner quiet, lines of poetry sound:

And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be Are full of trees and changing leaves.

Mrs. Ramsay isn’t quite sure what these lines mean, and doesn’t know if she invented them, has just heard them, or is remembering them. Still, Woolf writes, “like music, the words seemed to be spoken by her own voice, outside her self, saying quite easily and naturally what had been in her mind the whole evening while she said different things.” We all dwell in the here and now; we all have actual selves, actual lives. But what are they? Selves and lives have penumbras and possibilities—that’s what’s unique about them. They are always changing, and so are always new; they refuse to stand still. We live in anticipation of their meaning, which will inevitably exceed what can be known or said. Much must be left unsaid, unseen, unlived.

Excerpt from: Joshua Rothman, ‘What If You Could Do It All Over? The uncanny allure of our unlived lives’, in: The New Yorker (December 14, 2020).

[hyperesthesias]

Loki x Sigyn

Love Never Dies | Part X 

Rating: G

Words: 3.533

Summary: Loki’s suspicious behaviour sets Jane and his mother on edge -- but will Sigyn be kept a secret for long?

Notes: my apologies for not posting for a while. i hope this makes up for it!

Days turned to weeks, and Doctor Jane Foster had been very nearly trapped in her room while Loki refused to come out of his. She’d read through every book that she’d been allowed to bring back to her room, she’d studied as much of the Asgardian written language her brain would allow, and she’d mapped and scrutinised every star that she could see from her veranda. She had written Thor a few letters, knowing there was hardly a way to get them to him until he returned, she had written reminders for herself of things she needed to complete when she returned to Earth -- including, but not limited to, adding to the constellation map she’d begun to piece together before, during, and after the Convergence, and calling the plumber about a stubborn drain, something she hadn’t gotten around to before she’d left. She had knocked, pounded, and prattled at Loki’s door to no avail -- he would answer it for nothing. Sometimes he would yell at her from the jamb, sometimes he would ignore her, but never would he open it. And she would have been worried about him had she not been able to hear his deep and quiet voice rumble through the door’s wood -- she knew he was in there, and she knew he had a guest. A prisoner, she was more apt to describe her as -- for as long as Jane had been stuck in her room, that mystery woman had been harboured in his. But the first time she had worried about him was when she heard a quiet, obscure, yet repetitive sound: and after much thought -- and eavesdropping -- she came to realise he was...laughing. Truly laughing, not the mirthless chortle of which he was so well known, not the sinister snickering, neither the mocking chuckle. He was laughing, with heart and joy and happiness beneath the strange blanket of sound. She had never heard such a thing from him, and, she was only somewhat ashamed to admit, she hadn’t thought him capable of such purity, if only by his reputation. 

Nonetheless, no matter how long she would linger by the conjoining door, no matter how hard she would press her ear to the wood, or try to spy through the keyhole, she could not figure out who he had with him, or why. She could, of course, presume the obvious: that this woman was some sort of concubine -- a substitute of happiness for the woman he truly loved, who would be absent from his arms forevermore. For this assumption, she pitied him, though she still thought it odd -- all his pining after he woman to whom, he said himself, he was bonded in both life and death, and yet he took solace in another. But she supposed that aspect of his wife’s culture was not his own, and many people mourn many different ways. And she would have excused it that he was hurting no one -- but that was not true. He was holding Jane hostage, and for this, she was resentful.

On the eighth day she had been kept in her room, she heard the sound of someone knocking on Loki’s suite’s main door -- there was a muffled exchange of words, but still, she could not hear his door open. The conversation was strained, a woman and he holding their tongues as much as they wished not to, and just as abruptly as the visitor arrived, the words ended, and there was quiet again. Save for the sound of footsteps that then approached her door. 

A light knock, and Jane jumped at the chance to open the door -- only to be startled at the presence of the Queen.

“Queen Frigga!” she exclaimed, eyes widening with shock as she clumsily bowed with a curtsy -- she still hadn’t mastered that yet.

“Good morrow, Jane,” the Queen smiled at her with a subtle nod of her head, finding amusement in the Midgardian’s fumbled attempts at respect. “May I have the pleasure of your company for tea?” she tilted her head as she asked.

Another wave of surprise overtook her, and Jane nodded as she agreed fullheartedly. “Of course! Yes! I just...” she looked around behind her, catching a glimpse of a reflection of herself in the Asgardian clothes she’d been granted. “Should I...change?”

Frigga smiled again as she shook her head once. “No, dear. Come,” she beckoned, and ushered the younger out of her suite. “I have not seen you, neither Loki, at dinner for some while,” she began, leading her down the grand halls towards the dining area.

“Yeah --” Jane stopped herself, swallowing thickly as she pursed her lips, careful to choose which words to speak about her son. “Loki...hasn’t been feeling well or...something. He hasn’t come out of his room in days. And since I’m not supposed to go anywhere without him, I’ve been in my room as well,” she figured that would suffice as an explanation for now -- hoping not to offend either Loki, Frigga, or the King, especially for snubbing his dinner table.

“I understand,” she graciously accepted her answer, “I had not wished you to be shut from what our Realm has to offer, but it seems Loki is unwell. I thought perhaps a refreshment might do you well,” she offered a seat at the tea table at the dining hall’s veranda to the younger, as servants came beside them both eager to make them comfortable.

“Thank you,” she sighed and took her place when the Queen did. “It is nice to take a breath of fresh air. The quiet is nice, too,” she looked around her -- the view off the balcony the opposite of her own; she saw the water that coiled its way around seemingly the entire realm, all the way to the Bifrost, a speck in the distance, where the Great Beyond lay at fingertips’ touch. A smile she hadn’t known managed itself upon her, and she took in a breath, listening to the breeze that whirled its way through the palace, and the cities below; a deceptive silence to the business that lay beneath them, it was a feeling of which she had never felt before: so grand, yet so small. Perception did not exist so high up, where she nearly felt dizzy as her mind drank in every shadow and beam of light. 

“‘Quiet’?” Frigga raised a brow as she poured them both tea. “Have you and Loki not been at peace with one another?” she had not been ignorant to his and the Midgardian’s small bickerings throughout the time she had been there, and she knew her son had the tendency to make things much more difficult for himself than they needed to be -- both of them. And yet, with the punishment Odin had placed upon him of caring for this woman who resembled much the woman he loved with a passion and a terror, she wondered if it had been too much for him to bear. 

Jane caught the words as Frigga repeated them, eyes going wide once more, she looked back to the Queen who held her teacup with such grace and poise as she studied her without mercy. A deep breath in, Jane picked up her own teacup with a smile and drank its contents in its entirety to keep from answering -- a mistake. A very bad mistake. It was hot. A twisted grimace, she tried to keep her composure in front of the Queen, but found she was failing miserably. Once the tea was swallowed, painfully and regrettably, she took a few more moments to recover her mouth -- looking back to Frigga as though nothing at all had happened, who was only still watching her, trying not to smile too much. “’Peace’?” she echoed, a little more raspy than the last time she’d spoken. “I’m...I’m not sure the word exists in Loki’s vocabulary,” she attempted, suddenly feeling very awkward under her potential mother-in-law’s gaze. “May I have more tea, please?” she asked and looked away. 

“Of course,” Frigga agreed, without a word to the girl’s blunder, and graciously poured her more. “Is something troubling you, dear?” she asked, instead, keeping her sight fixated on her, trying with every nuance to catch what it was the girl was hiding -- for she was hiding something, and she wanted nothing more than to see and know the character of the woman who had stolen her Thor’s heart.

Jane had no excuse now -- she couldn’t very well burn her mouth a second time, and the Queen hadn’t taken anything onto her own plate, and, as she’d learned, it was bad form to take anything before a royal does. She was backed into a corner: gossip about Loki’s supposed doings behind closed doors, or offend the mother of the man she was with, not great options. Either way, she would get an earful from one of the brothers, she just had to choose which. And she decided to take advantage of the fact that Loki seemed to grant her mercy because of the woman he loved. “I’m not...sure it’s really my place to say, Your Highness,” she finally admitted. 

This surprised the Queen. “Oh? And why is that?” 

“Well, it’s about Loki,” she could barely get the words out, “he’s not...sick. He hasn’t come out of his room because...someone’s in there with him,” the words were sticking to the roof of her mouth. Loki was not a forgiving man, and if he found out she’d ratted on him, she was sure his projected mercy would only go so far; but she was much more afraid of his mother. “It’s a woman.” She closed her eyes for the last bit, tightly, dropping the weighty admission on the table between them, hoping she hadn’t shattered anything. “So, I’m not exactly happy that he’s left me in my room while he does...” she looked up at his mother, and back at her tea, “who--what--whatever he’s doing.” Social skills had never been her strongest quality, passable, but not fortified. 

Frigga remained quiet for some time, passing her sights from the girl, to the table, where she looked nothing in specific, recalling memory instead. Eventually, she shook her head, her brows furrowed painfully as the past crept upon her. “That...cannot be,” she decided, and looked up to Jane.

“I know. It didn’t...really make sense to me, either,” she said, setting down her teacup. 

Frigga only bestowed upon her a gaze of bemusement. 

“He...told me. About his wife -- she who shall not be named,” she answered the wordless question.

The Queen’s expression only melted into quiet shock. “He did? Was he inebriated?” Such a far-fetched notion it was to believe he would be honest about a part of his life he’d kept so secret that he had told not even her the furthest extent of his time on The Lost Realm, his mother believed the only feasible explanation would be drunkenness, a rarity for him in of itself.

“No,” she breathed. “He agreed to tell me if...well, he agreed to tell me.”

“If what?” Frigga raised a brow.

“If...I helped him with something. But, he never did finish telling me everything. Only about his wife and sons; how they died. I can understand why he dislike my Realm, my people so much, if she was killed there,” a sudden shadow of shame overcame her, and she let a laboured sigh.

“It is not your fault, no matter what he might say,” the Queen reassured her. She knew he had the habit of placing undue blame on another, on the Midgardians especially, because the truth was: he blamed himself. It was not a surprise to her that Loki had not finished his tale, she hardly believed him capable of uttering even as much as his wife and sons’ names, and not because of the ban that was upon them. But because of the guilt. She had one son who blamed himself far too much, and another who was learning the adamance of responsibility. 

Frigga had seen all she needed to know: the girl was honest, brave, to say something she knew might put her in undue graces of the man she was afraid of, she was respectful, if not a bit awkward -- but that was easily fixable. She was kind and humorous, but she was young. Very young, that was not something that could be fixed, only something to keep in mind. 

Nonetheless, the Queen enjoyed her afternoon excursion with the girl, the rest of the tea going smoothly once the subject was changed, and she felt younger, herself, by her presence. It gave her just enough rejuvenation to attempt Loki’s door once more, once she’d had a guard escort Jane wherever she wished to go. She wished privacy whilst she spoke with her son. 

This time, she knocked much more heavily, trying to keep her confusion and upset at bay enough to get him to open up -- both quite literally and otherwise. “Loki, may I come in?” she asked once more.

She could feel his presence on the other side of the wood, before she heard his voice: “You may not,” calmer than before, but still insistent. 

“Loki,” she spoke once again, this time much more sternly. “You know I may appear wherever I wish, I am giving you the courtesy of opening the door for me willingly. I am still the one responsible for your doings.”

There was a lengthy pause, but she could still feel him on the other side of the door, deliberating the way he did -- the biting of his lips inside his mouth, the way his eyes searched the ground and the air about him with his head down, the way he would pick at his fingers and hands, very much the way she did, even then on the other side of the door. She could hear that sigh of his -- quiet and sad, yet frustrated: “That is why you may not come in, mother. I wish you not to hide anything from the Allfather.” 

She could only let a small but strained chuckle. “There is much I keep from Odin, you do me no favours.” But she softened herself, clawing at the root of what troubled her in her heart: “I wish to see my son.”

She could hear another lull, but within it, there was a woman’s voice -- quiet, as a whisper from the back of the room. This woman, whomever she may be, presumably the woman of whom Jane spoke, did not sound well. She sounded ill -- but Loki was not one to take pity on another so frivolously, and certainly he was not known to invite any one to his chamber, even to recover. 

But even as she speculated, she heard the latch from the door disengage, and the hinges began to creak open; Loki’s eyes appeared from beyond the dark behind the door, and beckoned her in the small space he’d made -- careful to look behind his mother to ensure she was neither watched nor followed. 

“Mother,” he stopped her, a gentle hand rested on her arm before she went any further. “You must speak of this to no one -- not even Heimdall knows what lies behind my door, and I intend no one to know.”

The earnestness in his eyes -- quiet pleadings she had not seen since a lifetime, that it sparked worry in her more than a need to agree, but she did so nonetheless. “Of course, my son.”

He nodded once, and took a deep lungful before he turned about and began to lead her through his suite. 

She noted the untidiness from his refusal of the servants to clean, yet there seemed some organisation to the impending mess, as though he’d tried to tidy up once or more. But he led her further and further into his suite, where they came to his bed, the bed curtains closed -- just as every curtain in his suite was closed, just as every light in his suite was unlit. 

He urged her to come beside him as he placed one hand on a curtain. “I must ask you to be as quiet as possible -- she is not well.” 

Darkness clouded the Queen’s features, fear shadowing her as she thought on what lay beyond the obstruction. 

He pulled it aside, just an inch as he peered in -- she could hear him ask the woman inside whether she was ready or up for a visit, to which a hoarse, but feminine voice agreed. A nod from him, and another pause as he pulled back the curtain just a few more inches, enough for her to see. 

“Sigyn!” Darkness that shrouded her fell away to a pallour of disbelief. “This cannot be!” Frigga took a small step backwards, a chill running through her as she laid eyes on the dead woman -- or, rather, the woman who was once dead.

“Mother, please,” he quieted her, and took her hand to bring her closer.

Frigga sat on the edge of the bed, beside her resting daughter-in-law, a shaky breath drawn in as her own warm hand outstretched to Sigyn’s, still cold. “Is it really you?” she asked, reaching her other hand to cup the edge of her face.

“I am afraid it is, Frigga,” Sigyn spoke quietly, the hoarseness overtaking her voice as she couldn’t help a rumbled cough expel from her. But still, she smiled.

“I do not understand,” his mother gently sniffed and looked to Loki, as she still held onto her daughter-in-law, in fear that she would simply vanish should she let her go.

Loki said nothing, staying still in his seat beside the bed, averting his eyes from her as they fell on him.

“Loki saved me,” Sigyn explained meagerly. “He will not tell me how...but he tells me it was some...ordeal,” she coughed again.

Frigga’s fingers tightened lightly against her hand, as she looked back to her son -- who still refused to look at her -- and slowly, she put each singular piece together into a vague formation. He had wreaked his revenge on Midgard as recompense for his wife’s life; he had used the Tesseract’s power to revive her; but still, she could not understand why it took him so long.

“Do not speak, dear,” she hushed her tenderly, stroking her forehead -- cold and dry, it was as though she were still under the spell of Death. “Then it is you he has been harbouring all this time,” she smiled, a pained, yet relieved levity coming over her. “He has been caring for you?”

Sigyn nodded as best she could.

“Very well,” Frigga felt a warmth in her cheeks as she watched the woman breath steadily once again and fall to rest. “Is she alright?” she turned to her son once again.

This time he returned her gaze. “Barely. To work backwards from Death is no easy feat, and I have not everything I need to ensure her well being.”

“Say it, say what you need, and you shall have it,” Frigga insisted, standing.

Loki rose to his feet as well, towering over his mother as he shook his head. “She needs her people. I have only a few small bags of things that we took on the goodwill mission to Midgard all those years ago, but those supplies will not last long.”

“Is there anything here that can help? Anything at all?” his mother beseeched, for she had loved Sigyn as the daughter she never had -- sharing in bother her plight and joys of being Queen, of honesty, of political predicaments, of war and ruin, of the desire to rebuild the Realms into something greater, and, of course, their understanding of Loki.

Loki stood before his mother, his thumb tracing the outer edges of his lips, searching his mind, searching every list he’d made to himself of what could help his wife, and he came to a singular conclusion: “Bone broth.”

“Bone broth?” she repeated.

“Yes. The leg bone of a deer made to broth,” he replied. 

“Very well, then you shall have it,” she murmured, looking back to the woman lying on the bed. “She is so pale. And cold.”

“I’ve tried everything I can to keep her warm -- but still, she remains chilled,” his own sights had returned to his wife, where he felt a shudder within him. “I cannot lose her again, mother. I will not survive it.”

His words unsettled her very soul, for she knew them to be true. Yet still, she remained insistent upon hope. “She will be well. She will recover, I know she will. She has always been strong -- I have faith in her,” she looked up to her son, hoping just the smallest glint of truth in her eye would keep him believing.

And he did -- he always had faith in Sigyn; she was his goddess, the one in whom he put all his faith. And while that reassured him, it frightened him as well.

#logyn #loki x sigyn #sigyn x loki #fic: love never dies #ship: logyn #*

[lilacflamesss]

Falling

Ayahina Week Day 3 (March 28th): Insecurities / Comfort 

Summary: Hinami falls for Ayato when he saves her from Cochlea. More so insecurities that comfort because she thinks she’s always a burden on him and nags at herself about it quite a bit. I love Hinami. (2274 words or something, WHOOPS)

This is an interpretation of Ayahina that I never actually like or subscribe much to-- that Hinami sees him only as a substitute for Touka when they were in Aogiri. But I explored it a little in this fic and I did have fun writing it. Though the part that was the best thing to write was the falling in love part. :’) And!!! This is officially the fic I’m the proudest of??? Maybe aside from Wronged Impressions. 

Hinami had… never thought much about him, to be honest. She was always close to him. She was always paired with him. She stuck to him. That was all true. But it wasn’t anything like what the whole of Aogiri thought, actually. Sure, his scent lingered on her and hers on him but that happened naturally when they’re always right by each other’s side for hours during missions.

But rumors wafted about. As much as Aogiri might be that terrifying organization ghouls and humans both feared, the members weren’t all that different from normal people on the streets. They grasped onto whatever dirty gossip their bloodied hands could reach, blowing it up like a balloon until it finally exploded. It wasn’t too long before everyone was at it, wondering what exactly Ayato-san and Fueguchi-san-- two probably hormonal teenagers-- were up to whenever no one was there to look. Hinami’s hearing didn’t exactly help either. The group of hooded Aogiri men huddled at the corner passing them dirtied looks while whispering among themselves probably thought that they were being silent enough to keep to themselves. But Hinami could hear every single word being said far too clearly. She could hear the twisted fantasies they shared of the two superiors, both in suggesting positions, roles and situations.

And Hinami hated it. She hated the looks she got from those members whenever she and Ayato passed them. She hated the way she could hear the snickers that left those blasphemous lips whenever she had her backs to them. She hated the way they always thought of her as the completely obedient dog whom Ayato could use for every sick, demented fantasy they believed he had. It was detestable— how they pictured their relationship to be something so superficial and physical. Something so disgusting and sinful. Because it was nothing like that. Because to Hinami, Ayato meant a whole different thing altogether. He wasn’t the superior she looked up to and obeyed out of fear. He wasn’t the superior whose morals she easily questioned. He wasn’t the superior whose cruelty and violence disgusted her. 

He wasn’t anything like that. To her, he was the sole connection she had left to her almost-forgotten past.

He wasn’t just Ayato. He was Kirishima Ayato.

He wasn’t just the brutal and powerful Aogiri Executive. He was Touka’s precious little brother.

His relation to Touka was the only thing that brought Hinami comfort when she was in Aogiri. She could close her eyes sometimes and pretend that Touka was there with her. If she tried hard enough, Ayato’s quips and reassurances sounded just like Touka’s because even if the voices were different, the words were the same. His eyes were the same midnight blue as Touka’s were and if she just focused her attention on them, she could pretend she was looking at Touka again. His hair was the same as well so she could imagine delightful fantasies when she watched the back of his head as well.

Sure, she felt bad about using him in such a manner. But she knew it was something that wouldn’t hurt him anyway— or at least it was something she believed it wouldn’t hurt him. He couldn’t care less about her. Ayato probably saw her as a burden that he had to bear. He had to kill for her. He had to hunt for her. He had to fight for her. Because aside from scouting Hinami was a complete and hopeless potato. She couldn’t do anything but rely on him and desperately cling onto the support he silently offered to her. He never said anything but she figured he was being mindful of her feelings, or maybe he found her too much of a bother to even bring the topic up with her.

And as she spent her time in Cochlea, confined within the white walls with nothing to do but sob, read and think, she found her mind wandering less to his well-being than to that of others from her long, distant past. Ayato was probably better off without her. He was probably freer without her. He could do whatever he wanted, command whomever he wanted, without having to consider the extra burden called Fueguchi Hinami. He didn’t have to go the extra mile to kill for her. He didn’t have to be extra alert around the superiors to protect her. He didn’t have to be extra mindful of his harsh words that could easily shatter her fragile heart and mind.

He was probably better off without her. He was probably happier without her. Their paths had converged for a short while, but it was probably never going to meet again. This short time had moments she treasured, of course. But it was something she knew would fade away quickly. Nothing like what those Aogiri members suspected had happened between her and Ayato and she doubt anything would happen. She doubted that she could even call him a friend. As cruel as it sounded and as much she hated to admit it, the most she could call him was a substitute to Touka. But for Ayato, she was probably nothing more than a burden.

She held on strongly to this belief. But whether it took a small or big action to break it was debatable. What made her change her mind was one thing— his face. It was the face he made when he turned the corridor and saw her crouched over. After a year of not seeing him and barely thinking about him, the next time she did see him, she saw a sight she hadn’t ever seen before. Ayato was just as she remembered. He was still tall and his shoulders were still broad and sturdy. His posture and stance spoke of the determination and bravado of a soldier of the night. His messy dark hair still framed his angular face, which was still holding his strangely soft and borderline feminine features. He looked just as she recalled and she wondered in awe for a moment over how she could actually remember every detail of his face.

And as they continued to stare at each other from opposing ends of the corridor, she began to notice other things. The most prominent things to her were strangely the eye bags under both his eyes. Normally, these would be things she could easily miss from someone’s face unless she observed them thoroughly. But looking at him, the first thought that came to her mind was, when did he last sleep? Ayato looked completely exhausted and the fact he was breathing hard due to his lost stamina from battles after battles in Cochlea wasn’t really helping him look any better. She started noticing other things as well, like the bruises and scrapes all over his face, the long gash on his right shoulder that was still leaking blood and staining that jacket he wore so much that she had assumed it was his favorite and the fact that when he started walking up to her, he was trying his best, yet failing terribly, to conceal the limp every time he took a step with his left leg. Her eyes met his and she could see the hints of exhaustion, worry and pain slowly leave as his face softened into a gentle smile. Ayato had shown thousands of expressions when he was with her before but there was never once she saw him watch her in silence, only for a look of complete relief and tranquility cross to cross his face.

He didn’t say anything either, fixated merely on staring at her-- just like she was with him. It felt like the surroundings was quietly fading off into a blur of blacks, whites and greys. She was no longer in Cochlea, neither was he. They were someplace else-- a deluded and haphazardly constructed fantasy out of their restless minds. There was no one around but them. The people trailing behind Ayato weren’t there either. It was just her and him. 

Ayato finally opened his mouth, only for her name to slip out between his dry lips. Hinami watched him silently, wondering just why his lips were so cracked and dry. Had he been keeping hydrated or had he been working too hard to drink and eat since he did have that habit of losing himself in his work? It took a minute for her to gather herself from that brief moment of surprise— How had she noticed something like that?

It didn’t take much to get her back into the moment. His words were enough to knock her completely back into her senses. His usually rough and demanding voice, used over and over again for barking orders and spitting insults at slacking underlings and slipshod work, was soft, gentle and unsure this time. Hinami didn’t hear it enough but she could swear there was a slight tremble in it. Without really thinking much, she stepped closer to him as well.Her heartbeat started to pick up, the thumping in her chest resonating throughout her body. His name slipped out of her mouth at some point and just the sound of his name, even from her own voice, was enough to accelerate her pounding heart. She realized that both of them were slowly taking a step at a time, narrowing the distance between them. She could see so much more now. She could see how deep each scrape on his face was, the thin red lines and splotches marring his golden, fleshy cheek. She could see the flayed fabric at the edge of the torn segment of the jacket, with each strand of the blood-stained thin threads sticking out in awkward directions a lot like his hair did. She could see just how deep the relief and joy was rushing through him just from staring into his eyes— Had his gaze always been so captivating and alluring?

Ayato stopped right in front of her, hesitating as well and openly wondering if the sight before him was merely a mirage built out of his deepest desires. He raised his hand slowly and Hinami’s eyes trailed over the long length of his firm arm to the edges of his trembling fingers. There was a nagging inclination from the back of her mind for her to reach and grasp the quivering hand, to hold it tightly and reach for his face. Hinami found herself longing to press her hand onto the side of his cheek, to lightly stroke his skin and assure him that everything was okay and he didn’t have to worry anymore— Huh? Worry? Over what? Her? No way. She was safe now that he was there. She wanted to run her fingers between the unruly hair, to smoothen out the mess and tangles from the battle, and to cradle him in her arms to thank him for all that had had done and will do for her. She wanted to run her fingers along his thin lips, to cup his face, to.. to…

His hand rest lightly on her shoulder and Hinami felt a tremble run through her. Her mind went blank, her breathing hitched and she felt herself choke on the air lodged in her throat. She couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t speak. All she wanted to do was cry and scream, to press herself against him and melt in his warm embrace.

But she couldn’t. She didn’t want to. What would he think about her if she did? It was the first time they saw each other in a year and the first thing she did was to cry. He’d get annoyed. He’d snapped at her— Would he, though? He’d remember what a burden she was to him and start wondering why he wasted time and effort to risk his life for this pathetic girl. She felt her head hang forward and she was glad she could hide her trembling features from him. She wanted so badly to appear strong. If only she could smile at him.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” he said, chuckling awkwardly to ease the tension in him. He felt so bad. He felt terrible and it was making her feel bad for making him feel that way.

No, no, it’s okay you can take however long you want. I’ll wait. I can wait. You—

“Let’s go home.”

She wanted to sob and scream. She wanted to tell him to pick her up right there and carry her home. She didn’t care about the strong girl act anymore. She wanted to be close to him, to bury her face into his jacket and drown in his familiar scent and to cling on him and never let him go.

She knew she was falling. It wasn’t the strong, tough Aogiri Executive who overflowed with charisma and authority, standing above underlings and instructing them with the calm of the natural leader who she was falling for. It wasn’t his comforting, presence as Touka’s younger brother, the constant connection she had to the light of her past life even in her darkest times, that she was falling for. None of that. Because what she saw and what she desired right there and then was nothing really too impressive.

She was falling for the boy standing in front of her, eyes clouded in worry and fear that he was possible dreaming. She was falling for the person who, even while battered and exhausted, was reaching out to her with a calming smile. She was falling for the warrior who had been bred in a whole rough life of fighting and bloodshed, and yet was looking at her with the sheepish embarrassment and unnecessary guilt of making her wait so long.

She was falling for Kirishima Ayato-- the last person she expected to see as her savior. 

#tg #tgre #tokyo ghoul #tokyo ghoul re #ayahina #ayato kirishima #hinami fueguchi #ayahinaweek #fanfic #tg fanfic #my writing #far writes stuff #i actually wrote more but decided it got too long #the whole crying part when he was almost dying and being healed #and the jacket #and him stepping aside for yomo and touka #i had to cut it all out urgh