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shadowfae · 4 years

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One of my friends a while back asked for the explanation of how Chaos worked in Lore (my Ranisson / AdventureQuest Worlds canon) and what it’s like in a hivemind, so I gave them an explanation over discord dms. Since I don’t feel like writing up another post about it, I’m just going to copy paste under the cut. Bolded was their second question. It’s not formatted for an actual post, being in all lowercase, but eh.

As always, I take questions if any are thought up.

magic in lore works like a tiered triangle, in four tiers. the first tier up at the top is raw, pure, balance magic. it's very, very unstable and volatile, exceedingly rare, and kills most people to get near. i only know of three people who could use it, and only one who did so in a proper, balanced way. (his name was warlic. his magic ran in reverse - the more he used, the more he'd get. he was very very good at his job.) underneath balance on tier two are the two binding elements, order and chaos. they do exactly that, they don't really exist on their own but they can be used to hold other elements together. if met together without anything to hold, they cancel out. my theory is that if the two coexisted in a world properly and naturally, they'd remove all magic from the world entirely. hence why there are two versions of lore: the one i was in, and the one we called the mirror realm. (the mirror folks called us the mirror realm and they were the normal ones. as one does.) order existed in the mirror realm, chaos existed in ours. underneath them in the third tier are the eight 'pure' elements. they're called pure because people didn't know about the tiered structure until drakath's husband (he's important) figured it all out. you got water, fire, wind, earth, light, darkness, lightning, and ice. ice would be more accurately called chill, and fire more accurately heat. water's opposite is actually lightning, not fire. if you take one or more tier three elements and slap a tier two on it, you get tier four: every other element that exists. if you combine darkness and fire with chaos, then you get a type of death energy. bind them with order you'd get something else, change either element or hell, even the ratio of them relative to each other, you'll get something else.

that's how magic works. but it also works in tandem with people. the magic system was set up probably by lorithia, a creation-aligned goddess who's worshipped religiously but it's more cultural than religious tbh. she set in place three spots for mortals to take up regarding magic: the avatar, the champion, and the orb-bearer. the avatar of a given tier two or three element exists once, and only once. they're naturally immortal but can be killed, and once they're gone, you'll never get another avatar of that element without lorithia interfering, or something. their second in command is the champion: there's always a champion, or someone intended to become them. they hold the throne while the avatar's out, and while you can be both avatar and champion, avatars aren't that common and we don't know much about them, so. under the champion is the orb-bearer: the orbs exist for tier-two elements, and act as the conscience of the element. if you want to pick a fight with lightning itself, go find the orb-bearer and go yell at them, i guess. drakath's husband was the avatar of chaos. his name was daniel arkhane, and i refer to him only as the avatar because it's rude to say anything else. i'll specify if i mean another avatar, but literally no other one ever showed up in anything i had anything to do with afaik so i don't care about them. he became the avatar because for his final project in warlic's class at his university, he was handed a classgem (concentrated bits of tier two-to-four elements that tune your magic to that 'class', very similar to an rpg) of mysterious origin and told to figure out what it was and everything to do with it. except that classgem was pure tier-two chaos, which realized it was handling someone whose magic ran in reverse and who could probably handle balance magic without dying, and he ended up avatar. he took the natural chaos in the world and went about engineering it, seeing what he could do. he was pretty angry at sepulchure for trying to colonize his people (the lunaris sentinels, they're a canon thing) and killing his adopted mother, as well as everything sepulchure's ever done to drakath (it's like what dragonfable tells you, but with way more trauma), and he never got too far in it because sepulchure's raids dropped a building on him. the chaorruption i've got tells me his skull got crushed in, which i didn't need to know but okay sure. drakath is the champion of chaos. he took the avatar's research and went farther with it, until he had something past raw magic, that could actually take a form, and he went about using it and experimenting with what it could do. he wanted the war to stop, and figured if he had a classgem of the championship of chaos (as being the champion requires the classgem of the championship, and those fuckers teleport if they think they're not getting found), he might actually make it work. so he created a version of chaos magic that wouldn't kill you if it took you: it would just bind you to it. say you're a paladin, with a classgem of a paladin class, which is water-air-light bound with order? yeah, now he's binding water-air-light with chaos, and you're still a paladin but now you're chaorrupted. if you used raw chaos with water-air-light, you wouldn't get a paladin. idr what you'd get but it wouldn't be that. his version literally corrupted it magically. now, all the tier two and three elements can corrupt, if you tune them right. i've seen magicorruption from other elements and it's never fun, but drakath's chaos did it in a way that could be fun, if you were the right kind of person. drakath was, effectively, a uni student in his mid twenties who had seen too much and was basically a punk with anarchist leanings. so he needed an army to stop the war, and he needed to not get caught, and so he took those nobody would miss. those a moment before suicide, those who worked in swordhaven doing what nobody wanted them to do (gamblers, prostitutes, etc), those who were getting hurt. he took everyone that might be happier with him, and left nothing but a trace of his chaos magic - which was bright as fuck purple goop that sent you into a coma if you touched it and got infected when he didn't want you to. he made an army of the people nobody on either side wanted, and nobody save for a few adventurers noticed, because nobody cared. he also ended up with a few people from other worlds, because he wasn't the avatar and couldn't control it completely. (i showed up later. i have ranisson's memories and she has mine, but we're separate people who spent a bit of time swapping bodies for a bit. hence why we're now 'kin with each other. one of my longtime mutuals was also in this position. his name's lance and we're still bffs.) and then he went and chaorrupted alteon, straight up murdered sepulchure, and started an alliance between what was left of their armies as everyone turned on him. smug tall bastard. guy was 6'7" and already saved the world when sepulchure told him to gather all the orbs and he fused with the dragon of light to bind them to keep from basically nuking the world. that dragon was the aforementioned fluffy. he then lost the orbs in a volcano and we never went back for them, rip. but here's what chaorruption does to you: it's a hivemind, in the way that everyone's hooked up to a peer-to-peer database network. telepathy across the entire network. if you know a Fact, everyone knows the Fact. people know automatically what triggers those around them, without consciously knowing it: you just know not to bring it up if you get close to the topic. if you try really really hard, you can swap identities with others. this proved very useful when we had most of the army turn into drow (dark elves, who were virtually extinct) at the order of chaos lord vath, a pissed off drow who grew up with dragons after dwarves basically genocided his people. he wanted more drow like him and for a time we could make that happen for him, so we did. it also had the avantage of nobody knowing who the fuck actually just killed their little sister: all they knew is that a chaos drow did it, not that it was actually johnny mcgee who's actually a water draconian. we all knew who each other was, but nobody else did. it also meant that with our telepathy, we could and would confuse the fuck out of everyone. we could chatter and cross language barriers. didn't matter if you were yelling gibberish at me, i'd know through the chaos what you meant to tell me. if you explained some concept i'd never understood but another chaorrupted person would, then so long as i was actively using my magic and chaorruption, i'd be able to do it. not as well as the person who understood it normally would, but i'd be able to do a passing job. so what we'd do is yell everything at each other in various languages and out of order, and we'd know what was going on, and nobody else would. it really did reinforce the idea of chaos- if you weren't in the know, it was nonsensical and impossible to follow. we could change an entire strategy of attack in about five seconds, because the chaos was faster than we could be otherwise. the only way to defeat us was straight up overpowering us, which only happened if we couldn't move as fast as you could. it happened, but eh. so basically i'm very used to a hivemind and there's nothing quite like it. it's actually terrifying if you're not properly one of us, which is what minos went through in that fic - he was part of the hivemind, but he wasn't part of chaos, hence why it was killing him slowly from the inside out. if any of us had found him, we would've dragged him in to get initialized and he would've probably been fine. but ah, everyone i know who hears me talk about chaos knows it as this great, really nice thing, and i wanted to drive home that for everyone else, it was fucking terrifying. but for me? it was great, and it's such a huge part of what and who i am that i feel it'd be impossible to not notice if you knew what you were looking for, yeah?

"I'm curious though, does that mean that in the hive mind, you could change your appearance through chaos magic? Or was it a skill shared throughout the hive mind? I'm also curious as to what you mean by swapping bodies?"

if someone else had what you wanted, yes! you could kind of mix and match? like, if someone had straight snow white hair and yours was bright green and curly, you could take their hair entirely, but you couldn't get a light green or curly white hair, or straight green hair. but you could take just their hair and someone else's eyes. and if they changed their hair to someone's red buzzcut, you couldn't take their hair at all unless you own the red buzzcut, in which you can just swap with each other. if you wanted to make a triangle of swapping you could, but it'd take actual engineering of the magic versus just deciding to. and if you weren't using your magic actively you'd go back to your actual form, hence why if we died we'd transform back. and as far as the magic was concerned, your identity was just another feature. a trans guy and a cis girl absolutely could swap genders if they wanted to. but that part was kind of experimental, meant for those who generally had so much trauma they couldn't be themselves at the moment and needed a break, and there was bleedthrough. if you swapped to get someone else's gender, you were likely to get chunks of the rest of them, too. people absolutely tried to swap traumas and it kind of worked, though it wasn't very commonplace. and you couldn't just take, you had to give whatever you were replacing. so if you wanted to get rid of your curly green hair, someone had to take it, or you had to talk to someone who specialized in engineering (chaosweavers) to permanently alter you, replacing what you had with raw chaos. it wasn't perfect, but if you had raw chaos instead of something else, it would effectively spit out what a fully-chaorrupted person might look like. it had a template. spiky black hair, grayish-violet skin, bright purple eyes with white or black sclera, open sores with a layer of dragonscales underneath instead of flesh, purple blood, way too many teeth, around 5'8"-6'2", muscular builds with thick legs and upper arms. occasionally extra eyes. since this made for a better disguise than the drow thing usually did, a lot of people opted for that when they had traits that nobody they found really wanted. though if someone did eventually want the trait that the chaosweavers removed, odds were good they'd wake up with it unexpectedly and it'd be permanent unless the chaos was removed from them entirely. it was always fun to wake up in the morning and wonder if today was the day you rolled on that 5% chance you look different now. i don't remember if anyone was against it, but it was definitely unexpected, tbh

[and another tangent a few messages later]

people really liked their motifs in lore. like, morality was... surprisingly different. there was no "you're a good person" or "you're evil", because people referred to swordhaven as Good and shadowfall as Evil. you could be a kind, really nice person who was Evil, but by our terms, not necessarily evil. are you evil if you don't kill people, even if your friends all do and you're cool with it? are you good even though you throw people out of your city for trying to do illegal things just to survive? these aren't questions that you'll find in lore at all. your personal morality means nothing, it's what faction banner you're under. the only time that stuff matters is if you're an adventurer, because they only ally with who gets them the resources they want. (heroes are a type of adventurer, they have prophecies about them and are regarded as not real adventurers, because they didn't get a choice. i knew quite a few heroes who refused to say they were because the prophecy was secondary to their adventures.) adventurers are all over the place, but morality as a personal thing as we know it was... basically nonexistent? it was really different

#luteia laments #otherkin #fictionkin #violet mist

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mizu-writes-kumo · 5 years

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Just read your cool shance fic were they race cars in street races. Think you could please post more for that. Like maybe lance wins a race against sendak. Shiro so proud of him that he twirls him around in his arms and kisses all over his cheeks. Than if sendak tries to start something shiro smirks and says blue lion beat you fair and square while casually holding a crowbar.

Sorry this took some time to get too. Again it’s been a rather busy month and I’ve just been so tried from work.

It is also posted on AO3!

Warning: Gun violence, mentions of car accidents

—-

Shiro doesn’t like what was happening.

Not one little bit.

Not when Lance was so freshly released from the hospital after being struck by an unknown driver that sped away. Still on some strong pain medication to function. And not after the doctors had said he was lucky to have escaped with broken collar bone and terrible bruised and sore body. That his tucking and rolling with the hit, no doubt saved him from more serious injury. And definitely not after the representative that had been with Lance at the time had cover all the bills out of…thanks, Shiro assumed, for shoving him clear of the cars path.

At least Shiro had convinced Lance to say as long as he possibly could.

But the fact that Lance was racing…

Well racing after everything was a terrible idea.

But there was no choice.

Lance had been too cornered into things to even have a whisper of a thought of backing out.

Sendak had seen everything to that detail.

If Lance didn’t show and race, the title Blue Lion name would be taken from him. The streets would take it away from him with no chance for him to defend his claim to it. And he would be branded as a coward, despite being hurt to the understandable point of not racing by most. The whole race had been made into event before everything. And the only way Lance was getting out was if he was in a coma or dead.

Shiro knew the accident and everything was Sendak’s doing.

Everything was too conveniently close for it to be just a coincidence. And far too vague in facts to really link Sendak to it. Though it was all such clear sabotage, it’s crazy the crowds that adore Lance can’t see it.

That and Shiro just knows Sendak.

All the crap he pulled to get Shiro in his gang. The stuff that had cost Shiro just about everything, and made him run to his old stomping grounds.

There were other reasons, sure, but Shiro can’t lie it was a background fact.

And now Lance was racing him.

Lance and assured Shiro things would be fine.

All would work out in the end if he just raced .

Even if he loss, within a week, the crowds would whisper and talk of his condition during it all. Mutter how it wasn’t fair in the end. Sendak’s victory would become meaningless as they all saw the truth of it. Whatever standing he managed to gain would falter under it. For Lance nothing would be lost.

If he won, well that would no doubt solidified his Lion name.

Just like Shiro’s had been.

But Shiro doesn’t like it.

The whole thing makes him anxious beyond belief. So much so he feels sick to his stomach.

Yet the idea of leaving and not watching Lance made it ten times worse.

When Keith suggested they go to some other area for some air, and a less public descent into a panic attack, Shiro nearly bit off his head. He doesn’t fault Hunk though for taking the offer, and thankful that Pidge stay by his side. Quickly understanding leaving would just make things worse for Shiro.

“He’ll be fine,” Pidge assured flatly over the rumbles of car engines and cheers. “He can do this track blindfolded.”

Shiro hummed.

His eyes fixed to the girl making her way between the cars. She runs her hand over Lance’s old blue mustang as she does. The show of luck wished it felt like. Before she stood in the middle to call out the track path and terms of the race, one last time.

Shiro can’t see Lance in the shadows of his car.

But he gives him a hopeful smile on the off chance he was looking over at him one last time. Even if Shiro would much rather be bend over a trash can hurling.

“Lance will be okay.” Pidge repeated again as the countdown began.

Shiro watched as the flag is dropped.

The two car engines roared loudly as tires squealed for a moment. Looking for traction before they rocketed forwards. Sendak’s black Dodge quickly taking the lead over Lance’s beloved Blue.

Similar to how most races went for Lance at the start.

The crowd knows this and expectations nothing more

But Lance is at Sendak’s heels as they speed away. Approaching the first bend of the track. Red of brake lights flash as they both barreling into it. Quickly disappearing from sight around it.

Five minutes.

That’s how long it too to race the set track on average.

Meaning it was going to be five minutes until the race was over. Lance and Sendak would both return to cross the finish line. Hopefully close to each other’s heels, with Lance in the lead. It was just five minutes.

But Shiro could feel his anxiety spike with each passing second.

He didn’t trust Sendak to race… clean.

Lance was already in pain and a bit loopy from the drugs. Without a doubt his reaction time was diminished greatly. And Sendak was already willing almost kill Lance for any bit of an advantage.

There was no doubt Sendak would try something to insure a victory.

God, five minutes was so long.

And Shiro can’t be there to watch every turn.

The circuit is too big. And the idea of getting on one of the motorcycles that trail behind is paralyzing for Shiro. It always had been. Even if it’s so follow after the race and see. So he was blind to what’s happening out there. He was just left there to stand and wait.

“Hey! Earth to Black Lion!” Pidge voice snapped harshly as Shiro felt the younger shorter girl jab at his side painfully. Like he was ninety percent sure it would bruise, but she gave him little room to complain. “Here, look at this!” She stated as she shoved her a tablet at him.

On screen is just a basic street map with one little blue dot on it.

The dot following the track of the race.

Lance .

Shiro realized before Pidge started to explain beside him.

She put a tracker in his car. Or maybe more so a device that monitored every little thing could be hooked up to. Speed, gas, heat, gears, tear pressure, to name just a few. More than enough to monitor things from afar. A way to instantly see if there was a sudden shift in anything.

He doesn’t hear her talking beside him as he tore the tablet out of her grasp.

Eyes glued to the little dot.

There was no dot for Sendak.

Shiro can’t tell who was leading. Nor could Shiro really make out any maneuvers Lance might be trying to make to defend a lead, or gain it. Well he probably could guess something if he looked at the readout the device was tracking. Shiro knew how drive, and how to drive to race , and how he knew Lance drove to make a good guess at what he was doing. But he couldn’t tear his eyes from the little dot.

Watching it make turn after turn on the map until…

Shiro looked up as the roar of an engine sounded over the last bend.

And to his instant relief it’s the 70s blue mustang drifting in wildly.

Shiro doesn’t fault the slight over steer as the car corrected itself.

Hell he doesn’t care about anything once the race is over.

Just that Lance got out of the car completely okay.

Which he did…sort of.

It looked like he half fell out of the driver’s seat. Caught by some excited spectators that were close. They help him to his feet gingerly as everyone else starts to crowd around the blue mustang. Complete ignoring the black Dodge as it rumbled past the finish line and parked a bit away.

The crowd parted instantly as Shiro made his approach.

Lance instantly in Shiro’s tight hold.

Shiro could feel relief flood into him at the feeling of Lance’s familiar warmth against his chest. He gripped the back of Lance’s shirt as he held him. Mindfully being careful of how tight as he did so, not wanting to hurt Lance. Doing his best to kiss every surface of skin and hair that he can manage. And he could feel Lance holding him as tightly as he can managed, burying his face in Shiro’s neck.

“I did it, I won.” Lance repeated over and over in a soft laughing whisper.

It was something Shiro could barely hear over the cheers and excitement of the crowd. But he knew well enough to know when it turned to soft sobs of relief.

Shiro didn’t lessen his hold as it happened. Rather he took to assuring Lance with small whispered “Yes you did,” “You did so good,” and “I’m so proud of you” against Lance’s hairline. Over and over again. Coupled with gentle ‘I love you’s as the crowd started to dissipate for something else.

Letting his relief settled as he just held Lance.

The angry sound of a car door was heard. Along with the frustrated grumbles of Sendak snapping at his men.

Shiro pulled away a bit and turned to look at Sendak.

To glare at him one last time.

Make it clear that he could not expand his territories to their city. He was no longer welcome there, or near Lance. His men and him and overstayed their welcome. That is was just best to go in the night and never return.

Only…

Shiro’s blood ran cold at the site.

He was frozen for a second as he watched Sendak storm forward towards them. Hand moving behind from behind his back in all to familiar motion. The glint of the gun’s metal caught some light from a street light.

Sharply, Shiro spun them around.

So his back was to Sendak, and he could shield Lance from a bullet hopefully.

BANG!

Screams of panic erupted from a collect of spectators. Followed by the fury of movement everyone trying to scatter for safety. Shiro could hear the surprised yelps of his friends, and the sound of them ducking. And he can feel Lance half try to drop to the ground and take Shiro with him.

He waits for the pain but it never comes.

Instant he heard Sendak let out an engaged cry of pain.

“Have you no sense of honor!” Came a loud accented voice.

Shiro turned to the sound to see Allura. A sweet, kind, and rather rich woman, with a love and knowledge of cars that is so refreshing among the nuts that flock to the circuit. Lance had taken her advice about something when others had rudely blown her off, and she’d been a friend since. Her white hair and name brand clothes make her usually stick out.

The small gun in her hand did that more now.

She doesn’t waver under the snarl Sendak threw at her. “I expected you to be a sore loser. To complain and grumble. Refuse to fade away without the last word” She growled as she continued. Keith hurried to her side with a tire wrench in hand. Pidge follows his example with a tazer crackling loudly. “ But to stoop so low . To be so lacking in general decency of the streets, I have no words.” She huffed as she settled the gun back into her purse gingerly. “And against the beloved Lions, really shows the lack of your intelligence.”

Sendak growled roughly as he stood to his full bulk height.

Ready to advance towards Allura.

Despite the shifting tides against him.

“Leave this city as soon as possible.” Shiro snapped, pulling Sendak’s attention back to him and Lance. He rubbed gently at Lance’s back as he felt his love stiffen at his side. “You lost to a far better racer, one you tried to sabotage as well. With speaks more Lance’s victory than anything else. I suggest you take the loss, and go home and lick you wounds before the tides shift completely out of your control.”

Sendak growled roughly, but one of his men sees the sense in Shiro’s words.

A few of the spectators are seeming to take a turn on them. Being a Lion is a coveted thing in their town. In their world. Everyone there knows so, and they all love Lance one way or another. Sendak trying to hurt him would gain nothing for him.

He pulls Sendak back towards the black Dodge.

Piling him in before they hurriedly drive away.

Shiro doesn’t watch them drive away, knowing everyone else probably is. He turns to Lance with a soft and wide smile. He knows Lance’s claim to the name Blue Lion is safe. No one was going to think of taking it from him now. And he’s proud of his boyfriend for his accomplishment.

Lance smiled back tiredly.

“Alright, let’s get you back home to rest.” Shiro said warmly.

“That sounds nice.” Lance said tiredly with a sigh as Shiro carefully guided him towards the back seat. He let Shiro help in as best he could with the smallest of hisses and groans of pain at the movements. “Cuddling with you after today, that sounds nice.”

“Yes it does.” Shiro said warm as crawled in carefully beside Lance with a small signal for Hunk to drive. The sound of police sirens rang in the approaching distance as Shiro closed the door and Lance eased into his side.. “Yes it really does.”

—-

AN: I don’t know The ending is a bit rushed, but I didn’t really know how to end it. Sorry about that. But I hope you enjoyed this!

#shance #street racing au #vld lance #vld shiro #tw guns #tw gun violence #tw car accident #racer!Lance #ex-racer!Shiro #I don't know what this is #I hope you like it

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jerrykatt · 6 years

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Voltron/Percy Jackson Crossover Idea

Keith as the Son of Aphrodite (No no no HEAR ME OUT THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES!!! Krolia's badass self is the epitome of beauty and Papa Kogane totally knew it.)

Here's how everything began. The was an internal conflict among the gods, Uranus (Zarkon) and Gaea (Haggar) rose from the depths of their realms and had been in cahoots since 10,000 years ago. FAR LONGER than anyone could have anticipated. At first Uranus/Zarkon was a good leader just like in canon but was driven to insanity alongside his dearest wife. Now they are chess masters - maneuvering the world's fate by placing pawns in the right places, sending monsters after helpless mortals and defiant demigods alike. Cronus (Sendak) was given a Sickle/Wicked Weapon Arm by Gaea (Haggar) and was manipulated into "bringing down Uranus" just like in the myth - only it's just a ruse. Uranus/Zarkon had planned to step out of the picture to lure everyone into a false sense of security while he gathered strength in a healing coma. Haggar/Gaea commanded everything in his place, in the shadows of course, that damn wicked witch.

The curious and most fascinating part about this is that Aphrodite (Krolia) was still born from the foam of Uranus/Zarkon's castration. She is his child. But Haggar makes no move towards her because Zeus (King Alfor) had managed to fabricate her origins into being his daughter instead. Aphrodite became the daughter of Zeus and Dione just like it was described in the Homer's Iliad. Still even if Haggar had figured out it was a lie, she would have never accepted Krolia, after all, she had no use for a goddess of something as appalling to her as love. Such emotional vulnerability would have been nothing but a disgraceful weakness. Haggar would've killed Krolia in cold blood, no question.

Anyways, fast forward, and we have Zeus/King Alfor taking command of the gods after defeating Sendak/Cronus. Greece and Rome and every ancient civilization have been left behind in history books. Camp Half blood and Camp Jupiter have both been established in America and Olympus now resides in New York. Dionysus (Iverson) is the Camp Director. Chiron (Coran) is the activities directer. Argus (Antok) is the Security Guard.

Bonus: Slav is the Oracle

...

(Gods save us all from prophecies that include anecdotes about Alternate Realities. I'm so sorry Shiro.)

Moving on, everything in PJO and HOO and all the other series still happens but there are key differences. Thalia, Grover, Annabeth, and Luke had one more tagalong. Allura Altea had been just 14 when she had to escape the Monster (Robeast) that made a massacre of her mother (Zarkon and Haggar's doing). She had come across a 7 year old Annabeth Chase and took care of her until they were joined by Thalia Grace and Luke Castellan. Grover tried to get them to Camp Half Blood but Hades (Kolivan??? Maybe???) was not so kind. His resentment over his lost children and the hypocrisy of Zeus driving him to kill them, just as his own children had been unfairly brought down. He sent monsters after them. And in the end, Allura and Thalia found out that they were family in the hardest way. The moment they chose to stand together to protect their friends, the moment they fell and their souls were caught by the strangely familiar hands of the Ruler of Olympus, the moment their energies were twined together into the roots of a single pine tree, they knew.

They were sisters.

They were family.

(Now, as heartbroken as I am about writing that part, I must keep the show going.)

On to the main event, Keith's story, the one the inevitably ties everything together.

Keith was raised by his mortal father, a firefighter residing in Houston Texas. A firefighter who died in the very same fire that took the life of Esperanza Valdez. Kogane had arrived at the scene just a few ticks too late. Gaea/Haggar had turned Leo's pyrokinetic abilities against him, the mechanic shop was about to go inferno, and in the haze of flames that began to swallow Esperanza from the ground up, she met his eyes with a gaze that, regardless of already being blinded by the heat, held all the resolution of a mother. Of someone with a legacy to protect.

She mouthed to him in her dying moments.

"Save my son"

And he did. He saved Leo, but Haggar had lingered.

Enraged at the man who dared to sabotage her attempt at murdering one of the demigods destined to defeat her before her plans and Zarkon's could come into fruition, she commanded the earth to rise up through the flooring and trap his legs just as he was about to climb out the window and onto the ladder that would bring him and the crying boy in his arms to safety.

Kogane wasn't stupid. He knew by now that this fire wasn't set off by no gas leak. He also knew that other more powerful forces were at work here. He had tangled with the gods before, had even been left behind by the one he loved most with a son that he had yet to tell of his divine heritage.

This was planned. A God wanted the people in this house dead and sent to Hades without a by your leave.

He looked down.

The boy in his arms was just the same age as his own son, with a scruffy mop of curly hair and an impish face twisted in fresh knife sharp pain of a loved one lost.

This boy was a demigod, he realized numbly with a sinking surety, and right now the little one was the only one able to move.

"Go," Kogane told him as he bent over the windowsill and set him on the ladder, the boy's face looking back at him with startled confusion. Then those young eyes widened with nightmarish realization as he finished with the command, "And don't look back."

The flames consumed him. And his greatest regret was the fact he could no longer be a father.

(ILL FINISH LATER I PROMISE BUT I HAVE WORK AND MY BOSS IS SCARIER THAN HAGGAR)

Anyways here's the line up. I've gotta go to work. ILL BE BACK WITH MORE IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED.

Allura Daughter of Zeus (King Alfor)

Shiro Son of Jupiter (I'll explain later)

Keith Son of Aphrodite (Krolia)

Lance Son of Hermes (again I'll explain later but mostly? It's for character development)

Hunk Son of Demeter (Bless him and his harvest)

Both Matt and Pidge are children of Athena (Colleen). The goddess of wisdom just couldn't get over the man whom dared argue with her on double modulation.

#voltron #keith kogane #takashi shirogane #hunk garrett #lance mcclain #pidge gunderson #sheith #allura #vld #percy jackson #crossover #voltron legendary defender #krolia #papa kogane

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trliteraltrash-fics · 6 years

Text

Grin And Bear It - Chapter Five

Chapter Four: Respectfully, Fuck You

Ao3 Link

Inspired by @miss-conduct

Summary: You’re a 27 year old military Lance Corporal. You’d think that’d be good thing, but on a covert mission gone south, will you ever get to go home? Or will you adapt and find comfort right where you are? oh, and maybe you hadn’t heard, apparently time travel is a thing?

Catch up here! Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4

'I suggest you find a better place to nap.’ Soldier: 76’s voice echoed through your head as you sat by the window, colours thrown in a spectrum of reds and purples across the sky. Hardly anyone disturbed you here. It was quiet, and hell, sometimes you just had to get away from people. Away from the noise and the buzzing of electricity in wide hallways or places like the infirmary where there were so many devices running. Coming here had become part of your daily routine. Over the past week since your night of gaming with the ‘Tree Musketeers’ you spent each day training, going through drills and sets with 76. Thus far he had taught you basics – mostly things you already knew. It was familiar, and it brought a sort of calm as you threw yourself into it, the routine training becoming more and more like muscle memory.

After training you’d usually share a meal with the younger agents who had quickly become friends to you, more than you could consider yourself to them. Today, you had skipped the option to each with them. Watching the sunset, wanting to do so from start to finish today. The colours were more vibrant today, clouds covering the sky. You wondered if it would rain soon; you loved the rain. You sat with your arms wrapped around one knee, the other leg out straight in front of you. The world at ease for a few precious moments, these usually being the ones you would plug in your headphones and listen to Maris’ voice. Her picture sitting in your hand. Her face smiling brightly at you.

The window had almost become your ‘spot’ in a lot of ways. No one really walked by, it was just inside a blind spot of a security feed. It was disconnected from the crazy outside world of the future and it’s millions of things you couldn’t even begin to understand. Sitting there it didn’t matter if the other agents of Overwatch thought you were crazy for doing a chore or two when it needed to be done, nor did it matter how hard you would push yourself when you trained. At the end of the day, you still had this. The sunset.

Hell, if Hanzo could preach about meditation and finding peace, glorified bathrobe and all, you could certainly find it for yourself in these small moments.

You ran your thumb along the edge of the polaroid in your hand, the edges worn and middle starting to fade despite your careful folding to keep it from doing so. Her smiling face was still the most beautiful thing you had ever had the blessing of experiencing in person. The sun was starting to dip further behind the trees.

You’d find a way back home to her eventually or die trying. It was a promise you were making to yourself, you wouldn’t stay more than half a century into your future. You’d get back home and make a difference, even if that meant leaving the army, risking the loss of being paid due to the aim at the special pension reserved for soldiers who serve twenty years. You could get a real job that would still pay the bills, one that would let you spend time with your sister. Try to make up for lost time.

“Cadet.” You jolted at the sound of your Commander’s voice, his tone sending your mind reeling to images of memories you’d rather keep buried. You stood from the ground, at attention.

“Yes, Sir?” You stood with your shoulders straight and right arm up in a salute.

“At ease.” He started, you placed your arm down at your side. You were still rigid, fingers curled into fists.

You nodded at him when he hadn’t continued with your orders.

“Winston wants to see you in his lab. He’s got Intel he wants to show you.” Your eyebrows furrow as you grow confused, eyes turning towards the ground. It had been in the last week that they had stopped running scans. Could they really have sorted through everything that quickly? It was a hell of a lot of data. More importantly, what was so important that they had to interrupt you during the one thing you looked forward to each day?

“Can - - Sir, may I have a minute to - -”

“No. He wants to see you asap.” Soldier: 76 stood there, his arms folded over his chest with a coldness as though he were scolding a child making a stupid decision. You relaxed your fingers. Maybe it was stupid to look forward to something as silly as a sunset.

You nodded, a defeated sigh falling from your lips as you moved forward, following an invisible path to Winston’s lab. If it truly was that important, then you supposed the sunset could wait until tomorrow. Not like they thought much of the natural phenomenon anyway. You took note that 76 didn’t join you on your long walk towards the lab. Was it a private matter? They didn’t really exclude him otherwise.

You followed the stairs down to Winston’s lab, the electric buzzing faintly in your ears left you tense as you stepped through the doorway. Both Winston and Doctor Zeigler were in the lab, documents open on the electronic interface of the desk. The gorilla scientist looked up at you upon approach.

“Watson. Please, have a seat.” He started, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk. You sat, albeit hesitantly.

“We have some concerns.” Mercy told you, her eyebrows furrowed, looking over a type of chart. Your own concern only grew as you saw document after document glowing over the desk, each one having a single name written on it.

Watson.

“You need to listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you,” the scientist started, his gaze sympathetic. You nodded, urging him to continue. He brought up a document, your original medical report, it seemed. “When Tracer brought you in, we didn’t know what to make of you.”

“She insisted there was something special about you.” Mercy cut in, looking at the document hovering between the three of you. “She said that you were different from other civilians.”

“The tests we conducted over the past three weeks have concluded quite a few things.” Winston states, bringing up a 3D holographic image of a brain. “The first being that you have an abnormally high level of perception and processing.”

“Meaning?” You asked, wanting to prompt the conversation along when it looked like both doctor and scientist were going to hesitate.

“It means,” She sounded hesitant to tell you, walking over to lean against the desk and face you. “Your brain sorts through information at an increased rate, constantly taking in information in your environment and analysing it. Like a super computer that is constantly running, even when you’re not conscious.”

“Is that a problem?” your gaze flicked between them.

“Ordinarily, no.” She sighed, placing two fingers against her temple. “Watson, it seems that whilst your mind has amplified its ability to process information, this has also lead to an increase of each of your five senses.”

Winston separates the image of the brain into two, different levels of colours appearing.

“In the first scan, you can see that your mind is working and processing information at around thirty cycles per second whilst in your induced coma. The second shows the activity to be running at forty cycles per second.”

You looked at the images, it impressed you that your brain could be processing so much, so quickly.

“We believe this has something to do with your lost memory.” Winston adds, bringing up yet another series of scans that no doubt leads down to some chemical equation as you why you’re the way you are. “It has to do with the theory of time travel.”

You nodded. The change in subject taking your interest, they were only just now deciding to tell you even though you had already known for weeks. You weren’t sure if you should be thankful that they were coming forward with it, or offended that it took so long.

“Watson, we are under the belief that whatever happened before you were found in London, has led to travel through time.” Mercy crossed her arms, button down shirt and lab coat bunching at her elbows. “It’s both fascinating and concerning.”

“And, how does this connect to my brain?” Your question was pointed. You didn’t see how the topic concerned you other than the fact that it was your brain at work. It frustrated you. If they knew this, then what were you all siting around for? Why weren’t you looking for a way home?

“Watson,” Winston’s voice was full of compassion, hints of sympathy laced through it. “We know very little in terms of your condition or even how it came to be.”

“Why?” You stared at them, eyebrows furrowed and finger nails digging into your palms as you sat in the chair in front of Winston’s desk.

“We only know what you’ve told us. There are no records of anything that could help us to get you back to your own time. Please understand - -“

“Russia.” You ground out, hanging your head. The conversation pauses, your head felt hot, cheeks flushed with both shame of failing to keep mission details confidential, and the disgust you held. You were desperate to get home… But at this cost? The cost of potentially important information?

“What was that?” Mercy asked you, her voice so irritatingly calm.

“I was in Russia.” You bring your hands to your lap to grip onto the fabric of your pants instead of digging so hard into your palms. “I was working surveillance.”

You could hear the tell-tale signs of typing as what you were saying wa being recorded on yet more reports about you.

“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” You heard mercy ask, feeling as though there was a sort of condescending hint that probably wasn’t actually there.

“It’s classified. The whole mission… I’m not even supposed to tell you where I was.”

“Why?” Why? What did she mean, why? What part of classified information did these people not respect?

“Doctor.” You started, eyes trained on your shoes. “I am giving you all I can on the mission. It is my duty as part of the Australian Armed Forces to not tell you anything about it. The information I have supplied you so far would get me court-martialled alone.”

You blocked out their voices as best you could after that. You didn’t want the questions. Your heartbeat was rising, the feeling of being unsafe filling your chest as it had on day one of being in the facility. You weren’t supposed to tell them about the mission. And you couldn’t bring yourself to tell them the specifics, but you had given them a location. You were sure that was enough. God, you were so selfish. Selfish for wanting to go home instead of protecting the information as it was your duty to do. Selfish for wanting to see your little sister, for wanting to get home.

For wanting sunsets.

You slowly forced yourself back into the conversation, you had to deal with what was in front of you. Had to deal with the repercussions of leaking classified information to people who weren’t supposed to be privy to the information you just handed over. An image of blood coated the backs of your eyelids. Blood on your hands, on walls, clothes, limbs. You could practically feel your guilt sticking to you like drying blood.

You took a deep breath as you looked up at them.

“What is your point in all this?” You asked, jaw clenching, hands trembling in your lap, skin flushed in controlled anger.

“Watson, almost the entirety of your brain is working at any given time. Taking in information, analysing it, processing and presenting it to you with a speed that we have never seen before. It is simply faster than any human has been able to accomplish. It is likely that this will not ever happen again.” Winston tried to explain, hints of curiosity and excitement in his tone.

“So, what you’re telling me is that you’re focusing on my brain to see just how ‘spectacularly’ it works? See if I maybe have a few screws loose that maybe some duct tape can hold together long enough for you to just examine?” You were raising your voice, every syllable pointed with the precision of a fresh blade. Your blood felt like it was boiling, face burning with anger that you just couldn’t hold in.

“Watson, that’s not - -“

“I’m not finished!” You growled as you stood from the chair, legs scraping against the floor. “I’m not going to just hang out and wait for you to ‘fix’ me and send me home.”

“We don’t know if it was just your mind that has been affected.” Mercy tried to reason, bringing her hands forward to reach for your shoulder. You shove her hands away.

“I travelled into the – fucking – future. Which, by the way, I knew about a fortnight ago.” Your voice was venom now, acidic as your eyes focused on the doctor’s shocked expression. “But oh no ma’am. That’s not the best part! I get to have the equivalent of a ‘super computer’ as if that’s a blessing that I should be bowing down to some god for. And yet I still get to find out that you with all your fancy equipment and future tech – don’t have a single, foggy clue as to what the bloody hell is wrong with me?!”

“Watson, please, try to understand, we –“

“You What? Just want to help me? You want to try to understand my condition?” You shook your head, voice levelling out to a commanding tone. “I know your organisation needs new members because of the geographical spread of all of your soldiers. But I’m not a cadet, nor a private. I’m a fucking Lance Corporal. I don’t need to be talked to as if I’m stupid. If I have to be fucked up because of the sheer ‘concept’ of time travel, then I can sure as hell find my own way to get back to my own time and fix all of this absolute bullshit.”

You turned and stormed out. The scientist and doctor with all of their graphs, diagrams and data spread around the room had not a word to say. The display of frustration and anguish enough to silence them. It only took the edge off the amount of anger you had slowly piling on for weeks in the same halls, same rooms, same god forsaken building. You were probably less than welcome in their office now, you realised.

It wasn’t that what they said had made you mad to begin with. It was that they spoke with both the terminology of someone who was supposed to understand, and the condescending undertones of people who would regard you as stupid, or with no possible hope of understanding. A dull ache started in your chest, settling everywhere and nowhere at the same time. You pushed it down, not wanting to deal with it, not wanting to deal with anyone.

You were headed towards the window, knowing full-well that the sunset would be gone, and that you would have to last until tomorrow to see it. When you arrived at the window, the mood changed dramatically. The soldier was standing there, leaning against a wall by the window, staring out, a cup of coffee in his gloved hand. The sun expectedly gone as you approached, not wanting to back away and find somewhere else. You lent against the other wall, arms folded as you tried to compose yourself and rein in the anger before you opened your mouth and ruined things between the only other person of authority that you knew of.

After a moment or two, you felt his gaze on you. He could probably see the flush across your skin from being in the lab and snapping at his colleagues. You could feel it, even as you wondered how you would get the band around your wrist off and leave the facility. If you could find a hacker, they might be willing to get it off your arm. Although the idea was entertained, you knew it would never work, not only would you need to find a computer to do so, but you really had nothing to trade. There was no chance it would work.

“You lied.” 76 said from next to you, voice lowered.

“What?” Your gaze turned to him, the light of his visor emitting softly in the dark of the hall as he face you.

“Your name isn’t Watson.” He stated, the air turning threatening with the danger that seemed to radiate off him in waves. “You lied.”

“I didn’t lie.” Your tone was calm, level even. It surprised you how quickly the anger bubbled back up as your fingers curled to dig into your arms as you kept them folded. If he decided you were a threat then there wasn’t much of a future ahead of you, here or in your own time.

“If you didn’t lie, then what the hell is this?” He took a folded pile of paper from his pocket and held it out to you.

You took it from him, your gaze turning downwards as you unfolded the paper, reading over it. The basis of the accusation, and the information had a great many things running through you as you read over things you already knew. How the actual fuck did he get this? The man standing before you was much smarter than you gave him credit for, he had found your birth certificate, the school you went to, even the date you enlisted into the fucking army. He had the name of your little sister, Maris [L/N]. He knew who you were, and it showed in his cocky-arsed, military drilled attitude.

“Something wrong, [Y/N]?” His voice was like the distant rumble of thunder, promising lightning to come, it sent ice through your bones.

“How did you find this?” You looked up at him, was there really any point in hiding it anymore?

“Wouldn’t have had to go looking if you had’ve told the truth.”

“Yeah, because the truth is that your name is really ‘Soldier: 76’” Your voice was dripping with both sarcasm and anger. Fingers gripping onto the pages in front of you, heart beat rising. You almost regretted your decision to snap at him when he leaned down to your level.

“You’re digging yourself a grave - -“

“What? Be prepared to lie in it?” You finished for him, your entire body facing him, jaw set and shoulders straight, glaring into the ‘eyes’ of his face. “I constructed the fine print on my funeral the day I signed the enlistment paperwork. I’m already lying in it. I’m. Waiting. To. Fall. Asleep.” You hissed, shoving the papers into his chest as you turned, leaving with the last word, bitterness seeping into every last crevice of your body.

Deep down, you knew getting home was a stab in an inky blackness that could swallow you whole. Seeing your little start was as good as your chances of getting your next ‘headshot’ in one of D.Va’s videogames the next time you play. Near on impossible. If everyone around you could stop looking at you, your name and your family and start looking at your situation, maybe you would be home by now.

If they wouldn’t focus on what was important, then you would.

“Well done, mishka.” Zaryanova’s praise touched your bittersweet mood with a cheerfulness that had you feeling tired.

You had come to the training hall to blow off some steam, away from the infirmary, but still being productive, even if it was for your own gain. The Russian woman beside you handed over a water bottle as you sat up. You took it, stretching out one arm as you drank from the bottle. Your gaze turned to the weights, the total seated at about 180 pounds. Your goal was to bench 200 by the end of the month, if you were even still here at that point. You looked up when a shadow fell over your legs, looking up you saw the strongwoman standing over you, arms across her chest over a pink tank-top.

“Something is on your mind.” It certainly wasn’t a question, the stern undertone of her voice encouraging you to tell her what was bothering you in a very distinctively Russian way.

“It’s nothing too important.” You shake your head, shrugging your shoulders.

“You are happy with progress, no?” she sits across from you, taking a weight in her hand.

“My progress is fine – here at least.” You sigh, watching as Zaryanova uses the weight, doing bicep curls.

“Then, is an emotional issue.” She states, levelling your gaze with hers.

“Call it an altercation – an emotional immaturity, if you will.” You look out across the training hall, breaking eyecontact.

“What causes you to think that?”

“Over the course of the lax six hours, I’ve managed to be aggressively insubordinate.” You crack your knuckles, fingers giving as easily to the motion as you had to your previous anger.

“Is it important?”

“What?” Your gaze turned back to the woman sitting in front of you, working her muscles. Your eyebrows furrowed.

“Was it a necessary argument?” She was looking down at her arm as she completed another curl.

Was it?

You were a little stunned, did you really need to have the argument? Sure, you could’ve gone about it differently, but you had been so angry. You had felt like a child, everything down to something as trivial as a sunset stripped from you. It had made you feel vulnerable, defensive. Did Winston and mercy deserve to be yelled at? No, not really. But it was something you had to get off your chest. You didn’t think anyone would listen to you otherwise. Not even the soldier who appeared to take in your every word with a critical eye, he probably fact checked everything. You nodded.

“Yeah, I think… I think it was.”

“Then what is the problem?” She looked up at you.

“I…” You pressed your mouth into a line, looking at your hands as your shoulders sagged. “I think it’s going to severely mess up my shot at getting home.”

“Home is where you make it, mishka.” You felt a hand come to rest on your shoulder. “Is not home that is problem, yes?”

“I have… A family – a sister – to get back to.” You move your gaze to look up at her.

“You have much to learn.” Zaryanova sighs, running a hand through her bright pink hair. “Brothers and sisters are here as well.”

“How do you mean?” You were confused, just what’d she mean by that?

“To live, to fight in team. Would you not live and die for them?” She asks, giving you some ‘food for thought.’ “Are they not family in arms?”

You stared at the woman in front of you, giving you sound advice. Sure, you had to figure out the answer for yourself, but really you should’ve asked yourself that before. You’d not even been here a month and yet you had already acquainted yourself with new people, new friends. Were you being selfish by not accepting what was put in front of you? Throwing away the opportunity to do better?

“You might just be right, Zaryanova.” You decided. The two of you stood, her height allowing her to tower over you without a thought. You grasped each other’s forearms, the grin on her face was brilliant as it was cocky.

“Of course, I’m right, mishka.” She pats you on the back as you turn to leave. “I’m Russian.”

You left her in the training room, a calm sitting over you as you thought about what she had given you to consider. There was a lot you had to sort out.

The next morning, you were standing in Winston’s, having just interrupted a meeting he was having with Mercy and Soldier: 76. Which was unbelievably convenient. The issue certainly wasn’t going to sort itself out, and you had to get it over with. Standing there now, you felt small and insignificant, your eyebrows furrowed as you tried to compose not only your apology, but also your defence as to why you had argued and yelled at them in the first place. In a way, you felt as though they expected you to apologise, not that you had much of a choice. You didn’t want any more debts to pay.

“I want to apologise, for my actions yesterday.” You started, attempting to keep your voice even with their attention pointed at you. Your hands sat in front of you, one hand holding your other wrist. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. It was wrong, and immature. Especially when I’m here out of the generosity of your organisation.”

You took a breath, slowly, eyes scanning each of them to see if there was any disbelief or perhaps any hatred in the eyes of the trio that you considered judge, jury and executioner. You straightened your shoulders.

“Specifically, I wish to apologise for providing you a false name. I understand that there may be distrust of my position here, but by providing a pseudonym, I had a way to protect my identity… Not that it did much good in the end.” You looked at Soldier: 76, red visor light staring right at you. “I don’t mean you any harm. Not to your operation, families, or any information you have here. My name is [Y/N] [L/N], I am a Lieutenant Colonel of the Australian military… And I wish to formally apologise, and request that I take responsibility for my immature actions.”

Your long-winded apology didn’t go without its flaws, and you certainly hoped they would accept it, even if you highly doubted it. This was, realistically, the best wicket you had in terms of not only surviving in the future without any knowledge of how anything from income to shelter worked. It was also your best show at getting home. You didn’t know what was outside the perimeter of the facility, not with the Mad-band around your arm tracking your location.

You fidgeted as you waited for them to respond, your gaze turned down to your shoes as they looked at each other, the silent conversation running over your head. You were mentally preparing for them to drag your arse out of the facility with nothing more than what you had arrived with.

You hear Winston clear his throat. “Well, uh. This is a change of events, certainly. But your apology is accepted.”

Your eyes snapped up to look at him, you were surprised. The only other person in the room who even showed a fraction of sharing that same sentiment was 76, who had tensed as Winston spoke.

“However,” He continued. “we understand that mistakes are made, but as you said, you wish to take responsibility. I believe the best course of action would be to leave you at the hands of Soldier: 76 to levy the consequences.”

“Yes, Sir.” You nodded, turning when you were dismissed. Walking out of the lab you mulled it over; Soldier: 76, the American hard as nails Commander with a stick up his arse was going to deal your hand. Perhaps by the end of this, you wouldn’t need to find a way home after all.

Boots falling in step, Angela Zeigler and Soldier: 76 made their way towards the MedBay where Angela was looking to drop off some printed documents for filing. The topic of conversation was you.

“I know Watson had an altercation with Winston and I… But one with you,76? I hadn’t suspected that.” Her tone was thoughtful, her arms resting comfortable around the stack of files in her arms.

“A pointed conversation.” He clarified, opening a door for Angela to step through first. His thoughts on the content of the conversation he had shared with you.

“And that’s when you discovered that her name is, in fact, [Y/N]?”

“No. I have been looking into her from the moment she woke up.”

She hummed thoughtfully. “I have a few concerns about her.”

“General, or security?”

“Mental.”

He nodded, his mind flicked to the sight of you, anger so prevalent that you had been trembling with it. Eyes holding a darkness he had seen too many times in the mirror.

“I’m not certain of the extent of her condition… It’s… difficult.” She admits, eyebrows furrowing.

“It’s certainly something of an enigma.” He agreed, watching as Angela stepped through the entrance of the MedBay.

“I will have to test for Post-Traumatic Stress…” She sighs, placing the files on her desk. “One can only wonder what she has had to do with the old ideals.”

Soldier: 76 placed his hands in his pockets, the sight of you laying against the window appeared behind his eyes. The journal page that had been damp with tears, the note to a young child, and the way you were perpetually tense whenever you were anything but asleep. If he thought about it, perhaps he was being too hard on you from a security standpoint. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that you carried yourself the way you did due to your experience. What was it you had told him?

You were waiting to fall asleep.

He considered the implications of that statement. Being here, closed off from the outside would, admittedly, send even him stir-crazy. But he didn’t that was what it was, the only thing he really considered in your actions was that it consisted of an almost muscle memory that set you into a routine best to adapt yourself to the environment.

“Is there anything I should take into consideration, Soldier?” She was looking at him now, her tone suggesting it wasn’t just the facts she wanted.

“That soldier needs help, Angela.” He admitted, sighing. “Don’t push too much, too fast.”

“Understood.” She wrote something down, eyebrows furrowed. “I best be tending to her arrangements.”

You felt a pair of eyes on you as you pulled yourself up for your sixty-seventh consecutive chin-up, a weight seated on your calves that were crossed at the ankle. You had been waiting in the training hall for Soldier: 76 to show up and give you your orders. It was possibly a stupid idea to place yourself on the highest bar to do chin-ups in the training hall, however it ensured that your feet wouldn’t touch the ground. You huffed as you pulled yourself up again, adjusting the grip of your hands, feeling as though they were starting to slip. You left yourself down before pulling back up, bringing your feel up when they felt like they were dropping, keeping your focus on the bar.

“You have better form. Good to know you were listening.” A deep, gruff voice called from beneath you.

It startled you, not expecting whoever had come in to come by and talk to you. You tried to adjust you grip as your hands faltered on the bar you were pulling yourself up to. The surprise yelp you gave as you slipped from the bar was replaced with the immediate realisation that you could potentially be seriously injured when you hit the floor. You brought your arms out as if that would do anything.

The hard floor never reached you, your descent suddenly slowed to a careful halt as you heard the weight thud loudly against the floor. A pair of strong arms were around you, holding under your knees, and across your back. Your heart beating quickly to both exertion and the sudden slip. You looked up to see Soldier: 76, the red light of his visor up close not as intimidating in the light of the training hall.

You breathed in, realising that he had caught you as though you had weighed literally nothing. It would’ve made for a romantic moment if you weren’t in the army, or if the thought that he was your commanding officer only there to make sure you knew just how badly you had screwed up.

“Thank you - - sir.” You mumbled as he put you down.

“You need to be more careful, cadet.” He stated.

“Because falling for you is something I can account for.” You muttered.

“What was that?” There was an edge lace in his voice.

“Nothing, Sir.”

“Exactly. Drop and give me fifty.”

This was going to turn out just great.

You weren’t getting up there, no way your arms could pull your body towards the bar. Since when did you weigh this much? Your legs felt like mush, the muscles exhausted. Push-ups were fine, planking across two benches, you were okay with that. Fifty damn laps around the complex had left your legs turned into jelly. And after all that, you were back at square one; chip-ups. You were up to number 34 out of one-hundred. You couldn’t do it, you didn’t want to do it. But he wouldn’t let you down, not until you finished. Sweat was pouring off you in waves, making if that much harder to pull yourself up.

76 stood with his arms folded near you, watching as you pulled yourself up, grunting with the effort it took to simply pull yourself upwards. Your hair was a mess, having no chance to retie it for the duration he had been dealing with you so far. This form of cruel and unusual punishment confused you, originally, you thought he’d make you scrub the room, do laundry and other chores until he had thought you’d done enough to satisfy the grievance.

This hadn’t been what you had in mind at all. Did he enjoy putting you through training? Watch as you eventually struggled to so a basic set? You pulled yourself up, falling back to the full length of your arms before your chin could raise above the bar. Dammit.

“You can’t come down until you finish.” He reminded you, and you were sure you could hear a smirk in his stupid voice. You’d be hanging here for the rest of the century!

“I can’t get up there.” You groaned, trying again to pull yourself upward, muscles protesting with every centimetre.

“Then you’ll just have to hang there.” You pulled yourself maybe an inch higher, gritting your teeth at the comment.

“Sir?”

“What, Cadet?”

“Respectfully Sir… Go fuck yourself.” You quipped, pulling your chin above the bar.

“You told Soldier: 76 to – ha! That’s so great!” D.Va laughed at the comment you had made to the commanding officer hours ago, making your way down the hall with trembling muscles.

“I don’t feel great.” You groaned. He had made you clean the entire training hall after the smart-arse comment.

“Still. I wouldn’t have been brave enough to say it.” She smiled at you, “I can’t quite tell if that was a stupid or brave move on your part though.”

“Trust me, D.va, it was incredibly stupid.” You stopped at your door, the one with the sticky note on it, your name written down in neat letters.

“Hey,” D.Va turned to you, your gaze now on her. “Call me Hana.”

“You nodded at her. “Alright… Hana.”

You opened the door to your room and stepped inside. You were taken aback, it was certainly bigger than you thought, especially when you considered it housed a single person. There was a bed in the centre of the wall, too big to be a single bed, yet too small to be considered a double bed. Next to it on the right side was a desk, at the corner facing the wall, a window seated above it. The window just enough to let natural light in during the day. Next to the door was a dresser. There was still ample room for you to walk around, and have another person inhabit the space with you.

You looked at the room, your eyes widening. It might’ve been quaint, or small to some standards, but if filled you with a small sense of security. A sense of ease that came with having a space that was yours. Hell, you had your own bed.

When was the last time you had your own bed?

“At least something good came out of all this.” You sighed, walking over and running your hand along the covers. They felt soft.

“I’ll let you get settled into the new room.” You could hear the smile in her voice. “Meet us for dinner?”

“Yeah… Sure.” You nodded, hearing the door close behind her.

You turned and laid down on the covers, sinking into it, the mattress firm and holding you properly. It smelled like vanilla and something earthy. Not wanting to move, you laid there, staring at the ceiling, contemplating just how lucky you were in a lot of ways. Being here had improved you physically already, you were significantly more fit than you had been the first couple days you used to sneak off to the training hall. You had gained a sort of surrogate family born out of the battlefield rather than during the middle of it.

Tracer kind of reminded you of your sister, energetic and optimistic with an impatience that rivalled most. Hana was what you thought a ‘best friend’ should be, with her competitive nature and overly fantastic instinct to read the emotions of people. Lúcio was like a brother to you, his music was pretty good and showed not only his work ethic, but his big heart that you could see in each interaction you had. Even Zaryanova had made it into the mix, he solid advice had you in the position were in now, pushing through and trying to stick it out. To be patient and prepared for the possibility that you might not actually be able to get home.

Even McCree was on the list, only, he spent most of his time either in the firing range or doing god-knows-what somewhere else. He was always up for the company though, if you had time to give it. Your ‘acquaintanceship’ was more him openly flirting with you, like he did with most anyone (except Tracer – something about a girlfriend?) and you’d have a one-liner. It was kind of like going out drinking, without the liquor.

Your thoughts drifted to the American poster boy; Soldier: 76. Sure, he was your superior, but so was Zaryanova, and even Mercy. Both of whom would share a slice-of-life type story if it came up. With your commanding officer, there weren’t any conversations besides the regular Drill Sargent insults, and your smart-arse comments. Would he be the only one around who would almost outright avoid you outside when he had to talk to you? A small part of you hoped that wouldn’t happen. In a weird way, it felt like he could relate to you better, knew when to push you harder or to back off a bit. You shook you head, closing your eyes and sighing.

He was different to others that had trained you, sure. He treated you like he was supposed to, but there was a mutual respect there. The whole ‘I’m your superior but you’re still a human, kid.’ (why could you imagine him saying that?) You rub at your left wrist, feeling ghost pain rise up in an unexpected dull ache.

It was going to be one of those nights.

About two weeks into the hard and fast training Soldier: 76 had put you through since your apology in Winston’s lab, you found that you were allowed in the gun range. So far, you had been in there for about two hours. Mercy having just been by with a pair of hearing aids, only, to do the opposite to what you considered normal for your hearing. They adjusted automatically to the noises around you, gunshots scaling lower, and voices at a regular volume. You were immensely grateful to her for them, the sound of electronics in the area barely registering upon your ears now as you stood in front of a training bot that hovered above the ground.

You pulled the trigger to the rifle you had in your hands, apparently it was called a ‘Pulse Rifle’ and it had a far greater range to regular bullets. You looked at the training robot, some thirty yards away, you aimed, keeping your elbows from locking as you steadied the weapon. When you pulled the trigger, your arms moved, the force of the kick moving your hands, and the rest of you to the ground. The bullet missing the bot by a few metres, McCree chuckling to your right.

“You alright there darlin’?” He asked, a smirk in his voice as he watched you get back onto your feet.

“M’fine.” You brushed off your hands onto your pants. “Kick’s a bit bigger than expected.”

“Should’ve taken my advice.” He said, putting his cigar into the holder on an ashtray as he walked over. “It’s not enough to jimmy it against yer shoulder.”

You looked at him, eyebrows furrowing. “How’d y’mean, cowboy?”

“Well, missy,” He places his hands on your shoulders, turning you to face the bot again. He smelled of tobacco and stale liquor, whiskey mostly. “What it is yer doin’ is sitting the butt of the rifle against the wrong part of yer shoulder.”

You face the mark once again, eyebrows furrowing. “Okay, let me figure this out.”

You looked at the bot, adjusting your grip on the rifle as McCree stepped back. You moved the back end of the gun to sit better against your shoulder, and your side as you aimed it towards the bot and practice targets around it. You adjusted your stance to be more grounded, more centred as you pulled the trigger. The first few shots you tested missed. You readjusted and took to it again.

The shot hit.

Your eyebrows raised, and eyes widened as the training bots’ head exploded, the bot falling to the ground. Sure, you were adept at using weapons, or, at least those you could understand, but to actually hit a shot with this type of weapon? You were impressed with yourself. Your gaze turned to McCree, a smirk on his face.

“Looks like you’ve got the hang of it there all on yer own.”

“Yeah.” You breathed a laugh. “Wasn’t expecting it to just blow up like that though.”

“Best not stop while you’re getting the hang of it.”

You nodded, an affirmative sound coming from you as you turned to shoot, eyeing each target and shooting at it. Sure, anyone with a pair of hands could pick up a weapon and shoot, be it beginners luck or what have you, but it took training to get the amount of shots you were getting. You guessed it was perks of working your arse off when you were back home training or out on the field in a skirmish, that lead to your ability with this new kind of weapon.

A low whistle from beside you caught your attention, you lowered the weapon, looking for a way to reload it.

“Do I meet your expectations, darlin’?” you mocked his accent a little bit on the last word, raising an eyebrow as you found the release for the clip.

“Meetin’ and exceedin’. Didn’t think you’d actually start hittin’ the targets that quick.” He confessed, smiling at you when you looked at him.

“And they call you a quick draw.” You reloaded the rifle, looking back to the grounds as more targets rolled out. “Besides, I gotta set the bar somewhere.”

Aim, shoot, breathe.

Winston’s conversation with Soldier: 76 was going no where near the plan he had for it. The anger in the soldier’s features was evident as he presented the news.

“You want to put her out on the field?” 76 asked incredulously, voice low and seething as he stared down the gorilla from behind his visor. “She hasn’t got the training, let alone the bearings.”

“She’s been improving steadily.” The tone of Winston’s voice suggesting that he was trying to be reasonable. “She holds tremendous tactical advantage. Look at this.”

He looked at the live feed that was brought up. You were standing in the range, McCree smoking a cigar at the table nearby. You were handling a rifle half the size of you. When you took a shot and stumbled back, you turned, saying something to McCree, a smirk on your face as you adjusted your stance and took another shot. You hardly flinched with the kick, taking shot after shot.

“With her fighting for us, we could take care of Talon and its agents scattered over the globe. We could stop the largest crime organisation in the world. You don’t think she has the training? Look at her marksman skills.”

He watched as you took calculated shot after shot, until you emptied the clip. You brought the rifle down to look for the release. Just how many weapons had you tested so far? He discounted the thought. It didn’t matter if you could carry a weapon and have complete accuracy. It didn’t matter if you continued to exceed his expectations. It didn’t convince him that it would be the same on the field, he didn’t want to be the cause of more needless death. Especially when you didn’t even belong here.

“Handling a weapon in a controlled environment means nothing. It’s completely different on the field. Just because she’s able to stick something with a bullet doesn’t ensure she has the physical endurance required to take down Talon by any measure.”

“76,” Winston sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose. “You know her, evidently more than I do, but the fact is that with her, we may have a chance at bringing peace again. Making a difference again.”

“She hasn’t got the training.” He stated.

“I’m sorry, but the matter’s out of my hands. It’s already been decided.”

“By who?” His voice was stern as he folded his arms, you shouldn’t be on active duty. He watched as Winston brought up your file, or, what he had access to.

“These scans and diagrams show that she is physically stable. 76, Angela cleared her for active duty, everything in her files, from medical diagnosis to conversations they’ve had is strictly under Angela’s clearance.”

“You didn’t look into her files yourself?”

“Angela is a capable doctor. Her decisions have come to be an advantage to us more than once.” He takes her file from the display on his desk. “She will be accompanying you tomorrow. There isn’t any risk, the mission’s only reconnaissance anyway.”

“You’ll regret that decision when her blood’s spread across the pavement.” He said, standing and leaving Winston’s lab. He had preparations to reorder.

The next morning, you were guided to a hanger, located in a separated building from the rest of the complex. There were ACVs – Well, kind of. You could tell they were military vehicles, due to the reinforced tyres on most of them, the thick metal shell of them suggesting that the vehicles were built to be in a skirmish. You crouched to look at the wheels of one of the vehicles, your eyebrows furrowing. They weren’t touching the ground, and nothing was connected to them.

They had hover cars.

“Stop gawking.” Soldier: 76 said, standing beside you. You got up, looking around the base again.

The hangar was big, and it seemed every car had its own designated space. Your eyes turned forward when you noticed movement, a pair of familiar faces standing by what looked to be a dropship. McCree and Tracer stood by the door. It brought a small comfort, having familiar faces on your first mission, even if this whole thing felt like a test.

You’d have to place trust into people you hadn’t long met, only one of which you had actually train with, and they would have to place their trust in you. You’d have to be ready for anything that came your way. It felt like déjà vu, like meeting your squad back home all over again. McCree like Jenks, the Texan boy with a sharp aim. Tracer like Mouse, resourceful and extremely quick. Then there was Soldier: 76, and yeah, he was kind of like Sprint, quiet and to the point, if he didn’t have the metal visor for a face, you were sure he’d always have a scowl on his face. The revelation had you feeling as though you were in good hands, and it made you want to be better.

Being in the army did that, you supposed, trusting your comrades faster than any regular person. They were the ones you had to trust like your life depended on it, because, your life did depend on it.

“Get in.” 76 ordered, Tracer and McCree walking up and into the dropship. You followed them up, abiding by his orders. He was the highest-ranking attendant to the mission as far as you knew, and thus, all orders he gave had to be followed.

You sat down across from Tracer, McCree next to her and the Commander next to you. You were nearest to the back of the vehicle, wondering what the mission would entail. You were told it was a simple reconnaissance, which explains why you were even allowed to toe in the direction of the mission in the first place. However, in your experience, nothing was ever just recon. You were hoping it was an easy in-and-out mission. That wasn’t too much to ask for, right?

Your thoughts were interrupted when the ship lurched, lifting upwards before moving forwards. You looked forward to Tracer, a recurring thought came to mind that had your eyes widening, awe dawning on your face as she laughed.

“You have hover cars.” You announced.

“Of course, love! They’ve been around for ages.”

Setting foot on ground zero had an eerie feel to it, there weren’t any people around, not that you could see. You were on the outskirts of what you were told was a rundown city, which, in all honestly just looked like the grungy side of Sydney. There was graffiti over the walls over buildings, posters over noticeboards. The more you looked at the city, which was really more a town anyway, you found that it was fairly run down. A car had been stripped of parts nearby. Windows were broken, doors broken in.

“Group up over here.” 76 ordered, placing a bag of equipment down and crouching to unzip it.

You stood alongside your companions, McCree inspecting his revolver and flashbangs, Tracer adjusting her jacket before she took her weapons from Soldier, who unloaded a rather large rifle that matched what you were coming to assume was his unspoken aesthetic. He stood, turning as his gaze settled on you. He had another rifle in his hand, a scope sitting atop it.

“Your weapon.” He stated, holding it for you to take, which you did, pulling the strap over your shoulder, letting it rest comfortable. Your commanders gaze turned to face the three of you.

“This is a monitoring, reconnaissance, mission. I don’t want buildings going down due to a lack of tactfulness, or lack of care.” He stated, turning his gaze to you for a moment as if you would send a building to the ground. “We aren’t expecting any heat on this but be on your guard. Don’t get yourself killed.”

You nodded, watching as Tracer and McCree just listened along, probably used to this kind of quick, on the job briefing.

“Report back if you see anything. Tracer, you’re headed east. Watson,” His gaze was back on you for a moment. “East. McCree and I will head through the middle. Remember to use your coms. Move out.”

From there you spread out, taking the east side as you were instructed. You appreciated the fact that you were given all the information you needed to know and weren’t expected to know when and where everything was. It gave you a sense that you were still part of the team despite the obvious difference in authority. You crouched at the corner of a building, looking around before heading inside to start clearing it, attempting to find any information that could’ve lead to the call to come out in the middle of nowhere.

You ducked through a kitchen, dirty dishes still in the sink. A teddy bear siting beside a highchair. You worked through clearing each building you could get to on the way towards the east side, not spending too much time in a building; just enough to clear it before moving on. There were a few stores that you cleared, the one you were clearing now had a door siting ajar, leading to what was probably the office. You walked over, pointing your gun towards the door. You toed it open with your boot, scanning the room.

You had to turn away.

A family had been killed in there, mother father, and two little boys. The dried blood on the wall hand your grip on your rifle firm as you worked to clear the rest of the store before moving on, only pausing to take a lone roll of duct tape from a shelf. Never knowing when you might need it as you pushed down the failure and thoughts of being so useless that you hadn’t come at an earlier time to save the people in the store. Not that there was anything you could’ve done.

It felt the same, each building was empty of anything interesting, unless you counted the body count. A common theme was occurring to you as you worked your way through the buildings. It had to be an act of terrorism, or a measure of control that had left the few bodies you found, other places with a spray-painted sigil of a barn owl. You found your way outside, weaving past bins and cars that had been stripped for parts. This town was a horror show put on display, and you had to focus.

You were probably at it for about an hour now. You were growing concerned as you searched, you hadn’t received word from the others. You reached up to your ear and pressed the button on your communications device.

“Commander, status. Over.” You spoke as you cleared the street of any possible signs of movement. All you got was static.

Shit.

“Commander, status report- -” The sound of distant gunshots ringing in the distance caught your attention.

You hadn’t been expecting resistance on this mission. The line was dead on your commanders’ end. You had no way of contacting him. You made your way towards the sound, creeping behind bin, cars, even fences to find cover. You tried your coms again.

“McCree, do you read me. Over.” Static.

You got closer to the gunshots, loud enough to tell you that the fight was going on very much nearby. You swept the area before going into the closest building. A hotel. It would make for a good vantage point. You had your eyebrows furrowed in concentration, clearing the open halls as you took the stairs, running up them as quietly as you could manage. If you could make it to one of the top levels, you’d have an almost perfect vantage point given the heights of the other buildings.

You heard shouting in the street, someone was down there. You ran into the closest room you could get to, kicking the door shut behind you. The empty living room of an apartment facing you, everything set out as though a family had lived there. You jump over a couch, rolling to land against the far wall of the room, adjusting your rifle so you could see through the scope. You sat up, using the scope to look out the window, attempting to pinpoint the location of the skirmish.

You look over the streets, your gaze turning to find movement towards the north-west. You moved your rifle to the window and crawled over to the next window, not wanting to take the chance if there was a sniper. You looked through the next window, scope showing you that the boys; McCree and Soldier: 76 were outnumbered, a group of mercenaries facing them with what was the equivalent of automatic weapons. You tried to get a clear shot, they moved behind a building, out of your range.

You groaned and hurried out the door, back down the stairs. You needed to make clear shots or you would give away your cover. You almost tripped on the last staircase, catching yourself on the rail as you made your way through the foyer, legs carrying you with an ease as you cleared corners and roads on your way to a closer building. Your eyes found a higher building as you heard how loud the skirmish was. It was rather close. You sprinted towards the building, ducking and weaving behind anything and everything in the environment you could find as you got to the entrance.

The large broken window was enough for you to jump through and find the stairs going up. You heard voices as you climbed the stairs, they sounded like mercenaries. You made your way up the stairs, careful not to make an unnecessary amount of noise. You followed the sound of the voices as you made your way up the staircase, to the fourth floor. They were being rather loud.

Kicking open the already ajar door, you were met with a group of three surprised mercenaries. You aimed at the first, the one on the right, aiming and shooting him as your muscle memory of how to operate in the situation took control. He dropped to the floor with a thud, the one on the right was a girl, her face looking young, but not for long. The middle one had scrambled for his gun. He aimed for you, but the shot was too far to the left, whizzing past your ear. You aimed and shot him, the bullet sinking into his shoulder. Gritting your teeth, you took the second shot in a rapid succession.

Dead.

You stepped inside the room, which was wrecked. Furniture and miscellaneous items scattered everywhere. Jumping over a couch and near missing some glass bottles, the smell of old, and new alcohol mixing in the air was enough to make your stomach leave you feeling nauseous at the smell. You made your way to the window hoping you weren’t too late as you set yourself up, aiming.

Looking down at the field, you saw that there were at least six targets on the ground, shooting at your comrades, another two in the lower level of a building. You looked up at the top of the building, a sniper with a long pony tail on the roof. Setting up the shot, you took a deep breath in, squeezing the trigger. The sound of your shot was like lightning cracking as the bullet you sent her way missed your intended target.

The only bright side was that her scope was broken; a heavy disadvantage in the field of ranged targets. Your attention turned down to the heat on the lower floors of the building the sniper was on. As you ducked out of the way, you felt a hot pressure graze across your arms, looking down, you saw that you were bleeding, a hole now in your jacket sleeve. You looked it over, hissing in pain, the blood not enough to worry about, you pushed your sleeve up you arm so that it could soak up more blood that would no doubt seep from your arm.

You chanced another look at the battlefield below you on the ground. Your concern not only on the talented sniper you would have to deal with, but onto your team who was being pinned down. You saw a black figure down on the ground now, a white face under his hood. You didn’t have time to think about it as a bullet collided with the brickwork at the height of your head. You swore, ducking behind the wall further. You just caught the flash of blue on the ground, a British voice calling out, signalling Tracer’s arrival to the unexpected party.

Perhaps you could use her arrival to your advantage? You looked around the room, you took note of the electronics from earlier, the nails that were sticking into the carpet and various other seemingly useless items. An idea struck you, effectively lighting a fire under you as you took to the floor, taking wiring, nails, a liquor bottle and an empty soup can, as well as the roll of duct tape you found in one of the stores earlier in your search. You crafted a ‘home-grown’ grenade, all kinds of shrapnel put inside of a device that could very easily explode. You only had one chance at seeing if it would work.

Turning to the window you saw that the figure in black had the attention of your comrades, the other targets busily reloading their weapons. It wasn’t that far, maybe fifty metres. If you could throw it at the right angle it would land and (hopefully) explode at the feet of the enemy. You stood behind the cover of the brick wall, calculating the trajectory of your very dangerous concoction.

You took a breath as you stepped out of your cover, throwing the grenade and watching it’s trajectory, landing a meter out of proportion. The confusion of the targets on the ground matched your own disappointment as your contraption did nothing, your intended targets inspecting it. It was only the span of a few seconds, but the resulting explosion in a flurry of glass, nails and liquor left a sadistic, morbid side of you satisfied with your work. The screams of pain, and the sight of fire catching to the clothes of the targets below left you – wincing? Why was there a pressure in your abdomen? You move behind the brick wall, looking down as you lean backwards. There was blood seeping over your shirt. You placed your hand firmly over the wound as you pushed yourself forward, towards the door. The crimson covering your hands a result of the wound and your physical strain as you coughed, placing a hand on the wall, blood slick hand slipping as your shoulder slammed into the wall.

It hurt.

You clenched your jaw and kept moving, towards the stairs. You knew it was a bad idea, but you started running when you saw the stairs, bringing your hand up to your coms. The resulting static signalling that they were still cut. Fuck.

Your blood pumped faster, your legs moving overly quickly as you ran down the flights of stairs. Warm liquid cooling against your hand, leaking over your arm. It hurt worse than when your hand was broken, or the time you were beaten for a long close-minded belief.

Your feet lost traction on the ground as you tripped, hands flying to the hand rail, your body slipping and rolling down the stairs into the main foyer of the building you were in. The gunshots outside didn’t hold as many numbers, it left you guessing that the targets in your sights had been neutralized. It was a fleeting, yet comforting thought as you pushed yourself up on slippery, sticky, and crimson covered arms. A harsh cough sending more blood and saliva over the floor. Your blood quite literally starting the paint the floor. Your skin felt flushed with heat. It confused you, you were losing blood weren’t you? Fear made its presence known around your rapidly beating heart.

You didn’t want to die.

You caught a glimpse of bright red outside, pulling yourself to get closer. You groaned with the effort of moving, the pain causing tears to spring to your eyes. You squeezed them shut, taking as large a breath as you could, hoping he’d be able to hear you.

“I need a medic!”

The sound of your pained voice just barely reached Soldier: 76’s ears. He didn’t want you out on the field in the first place, and yet, here you were. The explosion had certainly caught his attention, had you been caught in the blast? He didn’t bet on it, your voice coming from behind him. He shot his pulse rockets at the man before him, now known as Reaper before turning around, sprinting towards the building as Tracer and McCree distracted him. He looked around for you, unsure of what he’d find, especially from a kid who had told him explicitly that they had wanted to die.

He stepped into the foyer of an apartment building, heavy boot falls pounding against the pavement. He saw blood covering the floor and the sound of raspy, shortened breathing coming from the corner, near the staircase. He jogged over, finding you leaning against the wall, your eyes dull. He was over to your side in less than a second, the recognition on your face only followed by coughs that had your shoulders shaking, and blood pouring over your chin.

Soldier: 76 leaned over you, putting his arms under you, one under your knees, the other across your back, his rifle against his back and he lifted you upwards, turning to get back to the dropship. He could hear your shallow breathing, could see the tears that collected at the corners of your eyes as you leaned your head against his shoulder, biting into your hand when he headed for the door, just barely muffling the whimpered groan that made its way up through your throat. He made a mental note to figure out why you did that when you were safe, back at the facility.

“I know you’re lying down, kid. But don’t fall asleep just yet.” He managed to saw as he called for an E-VAC.

There was a set of hands on you, a gruff voice talking to you, a hard surface beneath you. Above you was the roof of the dropship, the face of McCree looking down at you with concern hair falling around his face. Pain was shooting through your side, the wound at your shoulder doing the amount of a paper-cut in comparison. You could feel your eyes closing, eyelids heavy. Why did you bother trying to stay awake? It was so hard. Wouldn’t it be easier to just rest? A wet hand met your face, turning your gaze to a red lit visor, something sticky attaching to your face.

“Stay awake for me, [Y/N]. Don’t fall asleep.” The man in front of you said, almost pleading undertones in his voice. Despite his robotic face, he looked how you imagined your perpetually disappointed guardian angel to appear, if you had one. Maybe he spent his days drinking? You didn’t have time to entertain the thought, a retching sound hit your ears as you jerked, a splash of saliva and blood hitting the floor, doing nothing to relieve the pain in your abdomen and chest. You couldn’t breathe.

“Bloody hell - why does she sound like that?” a British voice asked.

“Punctured diaphragm, collapsed lung. We’re going to have to stabilise it ourselves.” The white-haired man said, taking some type of tool from a first aid kit.

A hand took yours, a flask of something put to your lips as you were made drink whatever burning liquid was in it. You thought you heard something like ‘just squeeze if it hurts Darlin’’ before immense pain hit your side, the ability to breathe becoming slightly easier, something putting pressure on your lungs as the hand in yours was set in a death grip. Weren’t you supposed to be good at this?

You felt hot, what was the temperature? Did it make a difference? The pain wasn’t so intense, so it had to be a good thing, right? There was more talking, but you didn’t pay much attention. Couldn’t pay attention. It felt like you were under water, everything blurry. You could feel your vocal cords vibrating in your throat, suggesting that you were speaking, or groaning – something that you couldn’t register. You felt hot, why was it so damn hot? An intense wave of tiredness washed over you, a fleeting memory of napping in the summer passed behind your eyes. Were you allowed to sleep?

Eight hours later, Doctor Mercy Ziegler was looking at you perplexed, her confusion evident. Your wounds weren’t as bad as the amount of blood on your clothing, nor Soldier: 76’s. You had only needed a few stitches and gauze, but only because she had to take out whatever was used to stabilize your lung in the first place. It was quite the ordeal, leaving you feeling stupid for wasting resources that someone else may have needed. But, in a way, it was the lack of care you required that scared you in the whole situation. Shouldn’t you be dead?

“You were shot, yes?” She asked, for the fourth time in the last hour to which you nodded yet again. You hadn’t understood it either and you didn’t like the alienated feeling it gave you in a room with both sets of eyes on you. “Hm. And there’s no extensive damage… Perhaps... no, that’s not it..”

“It’s not, what?” You asked, gaze on the doctor who was looking back through your files. Mumbling to herself about charts and scans.

“An effect of your travel in time and space.” She said, the gears of her mind churning, you could almost see the gears clicking into place.

“So, what? I get super powers now?” You asked, a sarcastic edge to your tone.

“No, not ‘super powers’. However, it seems likely that you may have gained some physical abilities – aside from the mental effects. Such as your apparent regeneration.” Her eyes were on your wounds. “I will have to and this hypothesis to your medical file.”

“So… I’m free to go? Just like that?” You asked, standing up and pulling your shirt down, Doctor Ziegler nodded.

“There isn’t much I can do for you now, other than suggest you take things easy and rest.” She had a rather thoughtful tone to her voice, profound confusion evident. “We may need to run another scan.”

“You’ll want to talk to Winston about that first.” You stated, seeing him as the head of all things to do with scanning and any other scientific developments in the complex.

“Yes, yes. I will.” She dismissed, waving her hands to signal that you could leave.

You walked out of the med bay, seeking a much-needed shower, hoping to get clean and release the tension in your muscles. Walking presenting a dull, but manageable ache as the stitches pulled on your side. The universe left you with more questions than answers. Was the mission a success? Was the point even surveillance? Who were the enemy? Did anyone else get injured?

What was with the sympathetic looks you got when you talked about you home country?

32 notes · View notes

aquaquadrant · 6 years

Note

WE HAVE BROADWAY STARS IN THE SHOW WHY ISN’T THERE AN ACTOR AU YET HOLY CRAP

THAT’S…. A VERY GOOD POINT. never fear! here’s what i’m thinking:

ACTOR AU

rapunzel: a young breakout actress, brand new to the film industry; no esteemed acting school, no experience, no connections. and yet her debut was a smashing success, a big-name director taking a chance on a no-name leading lady (after she totally nailed the audition) for a critically acclaimed drama. she’s now one of the most sought after actresses in the industry. very shocked by her success, gives practically everything away to charity after making sure the people who work for her are well-taken care of.

eugene: started out as a child acting in commercials, landed a long-time gig in a family-style sitcom where he grew into the country’s golden boy. after the series ended, and he was no longer a child, he started getting roles in blockbuster films and it never quite stopped. has a wide range; action movies, thrillers, romantic dramas, romantic comedies. the perfect leading man. does his own stunts.

cassandra: highly skilled stunt double, one of the best in the business, who has finally decided to break into acting herself, starting with independent films. hates actors who brag about doing their own stunts because some people are trying to make a living out of this, thank you, and you’ll get a massive paycheck whether you do the stunt or not.

varian: a child actor, got his start on broadway. probably played les in newsies, tbh. certifiably a genius, so schooling isn’t an issue for him (don’t let him touch any of the equipment, tho). very compelling actor, is frequently employed in horror/thrillers. he’s that kid in an R-rated movie who isn’t old enough to watch the finished product, lmao. has never been a ‘disney channel kid’ and would be offended at the implication. he’s an artist, mind you. (don’t be fooled, he’s still just a big old nerdy dork). also, eugene’s role as dashing rogue flynn rider inspired him to become an actor, a fact that makes eugene feel really old when it’s brought up, haha.

lance: big action hero star, but doesn’t take himself too seriously. takes lots of roles in family friendly movies to broaden his appeal. essentially, dwayne the rock johnson. also, totally went to juilliard. takes iconic costumes/props home with him just cause he can (not if it would cause serious problems for someone, of course, just stuff that he’s technically not supposed to have for dumb copyright purposes but nothing comes of it).

they’ve all probably met each other at some point, whether they were working together or at an award show. eugene and lance definitely did a war movie or two together. cassandra stunted for rapunzel’s debut movie. but when they all get picked up for a highly anticipated new TV series, an adaptation of a super popular medieval fantasy book series, they start to build relationships that go beyond co-stars.

rapunzel and eugene fall in love, of course, and varian gets like, four new parental figures to look out for him. especially when he has his mental breakdown after an accident puts his dad in a coma :( they’d become this tight-knit family, each helping each other out with their own personal struggles and family drama, and forming bonds that last them well beyond the length of their TV show.

(and they all have musical theater backgrounds/training, cause let’s face it, they all sing really well)

#tangled the series #tts #actor au #I REALLY LOVE THIS IDEA....

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eternalravendreamer · 7 years

Text

The Holographic Space-Grass is Always Realer in the Other Reality (WIP)

Another dimension-rift had shown up, possibly the work of Lotor. The team had gone to investigate, only for a strange, slightly-beat up cargo ship to come through the portal. When they asked for the crew to identify themselves, a familiar voice answered.

“This is Lance McClain and Alrim Blaw, of the Interplanetary Coalition for Peace and Coexistence. Our ship is The Ocean of Stars, code OOS-83. We have refugees and injured aboard, and we come in peace. We are also aware that we are in an alternate reality. We request only assistance healing the injured and time to repair our ship for the journey back to our reality.”

Before anyone else could so much as blink, Lance was moving the Blue Lion closer to the ship, curiosity getting the better of him, “Whoa, is that really another me?!” A squeaky fit of giggles erupted through the comm line as a reply.

“Oh my Flowos, is that really what you used to sound like, Lancey?! He’s got a baby voice! I can practically hear the squishy cheeks!”

“Alri, please. I’m right next to you.”

“Yeah but I pinch your cheeks all the time. I’ve got four arms, I can pinch two faces at once!”

“Whatever you say, Al.”

They weren’t sure what they had expected this strange Alternate Lance to look like, but it certainly wasn’t this. He was somehow even taller than their Lance (though only about an inch or so), and broader, with more muscle. His hair was still the same, but his face was harder-set, with a cross-shaped scar on the left cheek and three small ones breaking up his right eyebrow. He wore a tight black bodysuit with a dark blue and white shirt that looked like a long-sleeved crop top, and long pants of the same dark blue. His boots were thick and mostly white, with black accents. The shirt also had an emblem on it, presumably for the Coalition he’d mentioned.

Most noticeable about him, however, was the strange set of guns and knives dangling from his belt, as well as the way he stood. Tall. Stiff. Serious. With Lance’s face it looked wrong, all wrong.

The alien who seemed to be his co-pilot was an odd one. They had smooth, light grey skin with orange, gem-like protrusions across their face and backs of their arms. They were about shoulder-height to the Other Lance, and had light blue hair tired back in multiple small ponytails, each with different-colored hair ties. Their eyes were wide and dark blue like a night sky. Sure enough, they did have four arms - or rather, they had two biceps, but four forearms, creating a Y-shape. They were dressed similarly to Other Lance, but had a high-collared, sleeveless top instead. They beamed at Lance (the regular one), but glared and showed shiny black fangs with bright-blue gums to the rest of the team.

“Calm down, Alrim. They aren’t the same as our world’s Voltron. You can’t be mad at these people for something they didn’t do.”

“But--”

“No buts. If you’re worried about their Lance, check him over yourself. If they’ll allow it, that is.” There was a moment of tense hesitation from both sides, but when nobody moved to stop Alrim, they walked towards Lance, gait light-toed and yet decidedly grounded. Almost like how an ostrich moves, but less awkward.

“Uh, hey. The name’s Lance, but I guess you kinda already knew that.” Lance held his hand out for a handshake, but instead was pulled into a tight hug. Keith stiffened, hand drifting to his hip to summon his bayard if these strangers so much as dared to hurt Lance. Alrim stared the Red Paladin down, and smiled.

“Hm. Seems like the Voltron of this world is at least a little better than ours.”

“If I may ask, is there something wrong with the Voltron of your reality? Your reaction to us was...concerning.”

Alternate Lance flinched for a split-second, “It’s a long story--” Alrim’s hold on Regular Lance tightened and he could feel a sort of clacking growl rising in their chest and throat.

“They’re scum. Rotten scum who hurt Lance!”

“Whoa whoa whoa, we hurt him?!”

“Don’t worry, the fact that you care about him at all means you’re already a better team than mine was.”

“Wait, so you were still part of Voltron? Still the Blue Paladin?”

“...yeah. I miss ol’ Blue.” Other Lance paused, staring longingly at the hanger doors, “I know that you don’t trust me - I wouldn’t either. But could I...just once before we leave, could I just...talk to Blue?”

“Of course. C’mon, I wanted to talk to you in private anyway, have some Lance-Lance time.”

“You seem like this...this perfect version of me, the me I always pictured in my head that I had to become. Strong, brave, serious but still charming, loved by all, never making a mistake...but you seem so...lonely. Even with, uh...”

“Alrim. They’re my copilot, my partner. The best thing to ever happen to me.” Other Lance smiled fondly and blushed, but suddenly froze and blinked the emotion away, “Don’t tell them I said that. I’m not ready for them to know yet. I’m not...ready to be alone again.”

“Alone...again? What happened to you?”

“Listen, the Paladins of Voltron you know are...very different from their equals in my world. I used to be a lot more like you. Louder, softer, more emotional, more...” he took in a shaky breath, “...real. My team - Allura and Coran included - hated it. Hated me. So when they found out that Allura and just about anyone else could pilot the Blue Lion, they took the blue armor and bayard from me. They gave me some spare, generic space armor, a practice blaster, and all my belongings in a bag. Then they dropped me on the closest non-hostile planet and left, without so much as a goodbye. They...they left me to die.”

“WE WOULD NEVER!” Hunk stormed into the room, gripping both Lances in one of his signature hugs. Other Lance seemed stunned, especially as the rest of the crew ran up to them as well. Alrim didn’t look too happy about them being so close to him.

“Lance has been my best friend since we were kids! Why would some freaky not-me ever be mean to him...you...him-you?!”

“The Hunk Garret of my reality didn’t meet me until the Garrison. He was...definitely less huggy than you, that’s for sure. He pretty much wanted to fight anything that breathed, and held deep grudges. I was just a nuisance to him.”

“What about me?! Lance is like another big brother to me!”

“My world’s Pidge Gunderson was a living insult machine, and I was their favorite target, because I was always messing everything up. When I was being kicked out they even joked that I was probably never the Blue Paladin at all, that it was always Allura. I was just the delivery guy.”

“There’s no way I would’ve allowed that. What the hell was I doing?!”

“Our Captain Shirogane--”

“Whoa, whoa whoa. I made you call me Captain?! Who did that guy think he was, Iverson?!”

“Hey, whatever made you feel better, man. He had some issues. He’d been a Galra prisoner, and from the looks of it things you were too. But my world’s Shirogane got kind of...addicted to fighting. Winning made him feel powerful, in control. Whenever someone had to train one-on-one with him we pretty much had to have healing pods on standby. And I was the worst at hand-to-hand combat, so...he kicked my ass a lot. Probably not on purpose.”

“Oh god...”

“But point is, he wanted nothing more than to absolutely obliterate the Galra. And I was holding him back, trying to calm him down. Guess he, uh, wasn’t ready for amateur therapy hour.”

“I can’t imagine I could ever not care about Lance...was I different, too?”

“Oh, Coran...you’re so different from the Coran I know that I didn’t even realize who you were at first. My dimension’s Coran is a cold, cynical man. His son apparently died or betrayed Altea or something, I never found out for certain. He didn’t care about anyone besides the Princess, and avoided us as much as he could. I’m not even sure he ever learned my name.”

“In your world I am still a princess, and a princess cannot allow her team to behave so...cruelly!”

“To be fair, you spent most of your time grieving your father and Altea. If you weren’t mourning, you were plotting Zarkon’s downfall. With how much I messed up training and missions, I was just a liability. That’s why my world’s Princess Allura took over Blue. Not that Blue...seemed to mind.” The Blue Lion gave a growl of emotion above them. Frustration, anger, sadness, and shock, with a hint of desperation.

“I...” Keith glared at the floor, “Whatever Keith you know is probably nothing like me. I know Lance and I haven’t always gotten along, but he...I...we had a freakin’ bonding moment!”

“A what now?”

“Yeah, I don’t remember because I kind of had a concussion and was in a small coma before and after it happened, but uh apparently Hotshot McMullet, and I quote, ‘cradled me in his arms’.”

“Well shit, the Keith Kogane I knew was all business and order-taking, nothing else. Hell, he was the one who suggested getting rid of me in the first place!”

“I DID WHAT?!”

Slav paused his intense calculating and popped his head out from under the worktable, “I just detected a 78% increase in our reality’s Red Paladin getting into an altercation with the Red Paladin of another reality. That’s, eeeeeehhhhhh, a lot.”

“Yeah, because if I ever see him I’m gonna break his FACE!”

“Y’know, I change my mind. You guys are alright. You care about your Lancey and you even seem concerned about mine. You’re waaaaay better than the Voltron from our dimension!”

~Lance of the other realm...~

“B...Blue?! Holy--I didn’t think I’d be able to communicate with...wow, you sound the same as my--my world’s Blue Lion.”

~We Lions do not change much between the realities in which we exist. We can even communicate with our other selves, for advice or simply for the comfort. I have located and connected with my other from your world.~

“Did she say anything? I know I have a lot I wish I could’ve said to her.”

~She confirmed that you were mistreated. She tells me that you were the only part of that Voltron who hadn’t let their anger or pain consume them. Your world’s Voltron is unstable and unlikely to succeed - your Coalition is more likely to bring peace than they are.~

“Well nizquak, just when I thought our job was getting easier, now we’ve gotta pick up Voltron’s slack.”

~She also wants you to know that she does miss you. She allowed the Princess to pilot her hoping that it would help her to heal, but instead my Other was overwhelmed by the intensity of her emotions and had control torn away from herself. She watches over you always, and loves you dearly. You will always be her Paladin, no matter who pilots her.~

“I...I love her, too.”

“HALT!”

“Is that...the other Voltron?!”

“Good, looks like I’ll get my chance to kick my other self’s ass sooner than I thought.”

“We have no business with you. What we want are the Galrans aboard the ship you are escorting.”

“They’re not part of the Empire! They’re rebels from a group called--”

“We don’t care what they’re called. Do you honestly think we believe their word? Only you would be that stupid, McClain. All Galra must be treated with suspicion while the war is active! That means so supposed ‘rebel’ or ‘prisoner’ Galra go unchecked. None.”

“Are you even hearing yourselves?! Other Shiro, you of all people should see what’s wrong with that.”

“It’s different. They’re Galra. They deserve to know how it feels to be someone else’s prisoner, even if they’re innocent!”

“If any of you dare attack that ship, we will defend it. Voltron’s mission may be to defend our universe, but no matter what universe he’s from, Lance McClain is our friend! We cannot forgive the harm you have done him!”

“LANCE!”

They ran through the hall, skidding to a stop when Alrim came into view. They were crying, on their hand and knees and holding something in their arms. Something covered in red blood.

“I-Is that...Lance?”

“I...I think so. But which one?”

“Our Lance has his Paladin armor. The other Lance is in his Coalition gear.”

Nobody moved forward to look at the armor, and Alrim was too shaken and panicked to hear them. At that moment, it was Schrodinger’s Lance.

“Oh no...” Everyone looked up. Lance - the Lance who was still wearing the Blue Paladin armor (Hunk whispered a small “Thank god”) hesitantly approached his other self’s co-pilot.

“The...the other Altean, the older one, we didn’t think he’d leave the Castle control deck. He ambushed us and pulled a blaster, and then Lance...!”

“...he protected you. And the other Coran ran off somewhere, I guess.”

“He can’t die! Not to them, not to the people who already broke him once! He can’t...I can’t...”

“...I’m so sorry, Alrim. He...he really loved you. He didn’t tell you, and I think you already understand why, but he loved you. If he doesn’t pull through, you need to know that.”

“...Lance you dummy...you knew you could tell me anything...”

“Guess he forgot. How typical of him.”

“You monsters...you killed one of your own! A fellow Paladin! You’re no better than Zarkon!”

“Lance McClain is no Paladin.”

*BOOM*

A shockwave of energy pulsed through the ship. Powerful. Angry. Hurt. Betrayed.

“The Blue Lion...his Blue Lion!”

~YOU HAVE HARMED MY PALADIN FOR THE LAST TIME!~

“What?! No, I’m your Paladin now! Stop this immediately!”

The Red Lion appeared on Blue’s right, mouth brimming with flames.

~We TRUSTED you. We trusted that together, you would form a bond and work as a TEAM, PROTECT each other!~

The Black Lion drifted in on the left, movements eerily slower than normal.

~It appears that we were WRONG.~

“So he’s...he’s gonna be okay, right? My Lance?”

“There might be a new scar from the blast, and definitely psychological damage, but he’s going to pull through. I think finding out he has his Lion again will help, too.”

“Don’t you worry, Alrim! He’ll be out of the pod in just a few doboshes!”

“I can’t believe we’re gonna have to find new Paladins...man, that’s gonna take forever! I just wanna go beat up Zarkon so Lance can go home and show me all the cool Earth stuff he always talks about!”

“I think I’m starting to get why the Red Lion chose you. You’re not very patient, are you?”

“Rude, but true.”

#WIP #langst #oc alien #the alt paladins are based on a mix of 80s voltron and current fanon character muder #alternate realities

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mysterycantfindme9037-blog · 6 years

Text

Voltron: Legendary Defender paladin containing ships; reasons why people ship them and whether they would work out or not.

Allurance: Lance has confessed his love to Allura far too many times to count, he has supported and encouraged her, and their relationship development through the entire show is amazing. To the point where Allura finally begins to show a bit of mercy and affection towards our wonderful Blue Paladin. Their relationship would be beautiful and astounding if Allura took the time to notice how wonderful Lance really is. They would love each other so much, protect each oth at all costs, and encourage each other all the time. Of course, they would have some trust issues they would probably have to pull through first, seeing how Lance is very flirtatious. However, once he proved to her his loyalty, they would work out wonderfully.

My rating- 3/5 (Allura still has no interest or patience for him throughout the entire show. That’s the only reason I give them a 3/5)

Hallura: Hunk is the sweetest character in the entire show, no one can deny that. So it only makes sense why people would ship them. He’s kind and caring towards Allura and is delicate. She also reacts the same way towards him. They trust each other and never have any issues between one another throughout the seasons. The amount of care and mercy they have towards each other is astounding and would therefore make them a surprisingly great couple.

My rating- 4/5 (They lack bonding moments and both barely seem even remotely interested in each other. However, they would have a great relationship if they noticed each other in that manner. That’s why I give them a 4/5)

Hidge: Hunk and Pidge have been together since day one and have had a very great and well connected friendship. They often banter a lot and work together well. If had the chance, the friendship could easily bloom into something more. They even have the same interests and geek out quite a bit through the show and carefully display a well rounded friendly. Of course trust, care, communication, and defending one another would all be perks in their relationship.

My rating- 5/5 (The ship would work out amazingly if given the chance. I don’t personally ship them, but I respect and understand those who do. That’s why I give it a 5/5)

Hunay: Hunk and Shay were and are the sweetest people in the entire show. Put them together and it’s possibly the sweetest relationship! They have a lot of sweet bonding moments in the few episodes they were with each other and even ended it watching Shay’s first sunset together. Positively perfect, in most people’s opinion. They would be unconditionally patient, sacrificial, trusting, and caring towards one another- seeing how both seem to be looking for hearts of gold.

My rating- 4/5 (This ship would work out amazingly. However, they don’t really have any other moments except the few episodes where he’s freeing her. That’s the only reason I give their ship a 4/5)

Kallura: I must say that within the last few seasons, the chemistry between these two has been phenomenal. Their relationship went from nothing to something real fast, thanks to Keith’s Galra side. I really think that was the bonding moment for those two that really taught them both something. Eventually, Keith holds Allura in his arms briefly, they blow up a ship together, he cradles her in space and saves their rear ends, and they even hug. Their relationship development is something most writers strive for and is phenomenal. If they got together- which I dare say is a pretty big possibility with all the chemistry going on between them- they would be an unstoppable force to reckon with.

My rating- 5/5 (I have nothing to say except congratulations Kallura shippers on your ship’s development throughout the seasons. And yes, I may be a bit biased because I just found out about this ship and kinda ship it now, but whatever. I am honestly thoroughly impressed and that’s why I give it a 5/5)

Kidge: This ship’s development is also phenomenal to me. They went from yelling at each other in the beginning, to partners in crime real fast. They both are sassy and while Keith may be more reserved about it, Pidge certainly isn’t. Their friendship is funny to me and I think a lot of us- whether we ship it or not- would pay to see the snarky relationship they would have if they thought of each other as something more. Pft, and trust issues? Certainly none in this ship. They get each other and constantly hover around one another just in case the other needs back up.

My rating- 4/5 (Despite them having an awesome friendship, they still don’t have many bonding moments in the show. That’s the only reason I give them a 4/5)

Lotidge- Okay, I’m honestly genuinely confused on this one (my apologies dear Lotidge shippers), but I have no clue why anyone ships this. I’m sincerely curious as to where the idea sprouted up from in the first place and I don’t really know why people ship them. Maybe it’s their intelligence or their smart ass attitudes? I don’t know, but that’s honestly not enough for me. Reasoning for this ship is more than welcome so please comment if you ship them or have any idea why people do. I’m genuinely curious and feel bad I couldn’t find anything on this ship so I could elaborate.

My rating- 1/5 (Sorry guys)

Lotura: Alright, now this one I find interesting. They both are descendants of great empires that were once best friends. They both are completely bad ass and would make awesome companions if they ever became friends. Now, if they grew up together, they would be that feared duo that everyone would know not to mess with. Because not only are their mouths dangerous, but so is their strength and intelligence. Did I mention they both have scary dads? These two would punch you into the next century if need be. However, one thing that everyone would know is that despite them being feared royals, they would melt around each other. Towards one another, they’re soft and vulnerable.

My rating- 4/5 (I honestly don’t ship it, but I love this ship anyways. Congratulations to all of you geniuses who came up with it or just ship it. However, they don’t have any bonding moments whatsoever yet, so I can only give them a 4/5)

Mallura: We can all agree that Matt is hot and that his reaction to Allura is a priceless moment that we will all cherish. Not only that, but she blushed at his reaction. Rationally- because all fangirls and fanboys are totally rational- they would be awesome in combat together and would make a lovely couple. Not only that, but I think they would be very sweet towards each other. He would respect her and she would respect him. Pidge probably ships it too. The amount of care and love that goes into this relationship would be astounding. Oh, and if you ever meet one of their shippers, you would find that they’re genuinely nice people.

My rating- 4/5 (Can we get more bonding moments, please? Or just more moments of them in the same frame? Anyways, you know why I gave it a 4/5)

Plance/Lidge: These two were together since the beginning and are- in general- awesome. They have blushed at each other more than a few times in the show, have searched for money in a fountain so they could play video games, are best friends, Lance emerged from a coma just to protect her, she protected him, and they respect each other. They also are both THE definition of partners in crime and have the might of sass on their side. Trust may be a problem in the beginning, but these two would easily overcome it. They also put up with each other’s crap well- patience being one of this ship’s virtues- and would probably have one of the purest relationships.

My rating- 5/5 (They’ve had tons of bonding moments and are the best of friends. If given the chance, they would be an awesome couple. Anyways, this ship is a 5/5)

Shallura: This ship I think makes sense in everyone’s mind, even to the people who don’t ship them. These two work so well together, it’s actually hard to see why people would NOT ship them. They have had countless of bonding moments, they work amazingly together, they trust each other completely, and care deeply for one another. In fact, we even have given them the labels of Space Dad and Space Mom. The respect they have for one another is something we all could only dream of earning.

My rating- 5/5 (Bonding moments, check. Deep care for one another, check. Unending trust, check. Never ending respect, check. I may not personally ship it, but the Shallura ship has it all. Congratulations Shallura shippers, you earned your 5/5)

Shidge: This ship is kinda everyone’s first ship until they learn Pidge and Shiro’s ages. 15 and 25 is a bit big of an age gap. However, if you can get passed that and the father daughter relationship they seem to have, then you’ll love this ship. They’re bonding moments are phenomenal, trust is all there, encouragement is a constant between these two, unconditional care is a definite, and there friendship is wonderful. If the two got passed the point of friendship, then I think their relationship would be lovely.

My rating- 2/5 (I’m sorry for the low rating but a ten years difference is pretty big. They both are in different parts of their lives and it’s obvious that they won’t be getting passed the father/daughter relationship they have. Their bonding moments are a friendship and love that’s different. It’s a love and a friendship between a father and his daughter. To me, it seems kind of crude to ship the two. Sorry, I’m not usually this harsh on ships, but you guys only get a 2/5)

Hance: Hunk and Lance are obviously best friends. The garrison trio are awesome in general, but these two have been best friends since the literal beginning. They’re the only ones who are raw and have nothing to hide in front of each other. They never had anything to hide. They trust and care for each other and are always bantering back and forth. Can we talk about that time in the beginning of the show when Lance thought Hunk was dead because the cave had been blown up? Let the fluff begin...

My rating- 5/5 (They've had plenty of bonding moments, aren’t really argumentative, and understand each other completely. Congrats Hance shippers, you earned your 5/5)

Hatt: I get it. If you like Pidge and Hunk, then you’ll probably like Matt and Hunk. It is literally just the gay form of Hidge. You know, just with less bonding moments. Hunk would bring out the same things in Matt that he brings out in Pidge, and they’ve already been shown to get along great. In fact, their first moment together shows them geeking out.

My rating- 4/5 (Merely for the lack of bonding moments.)

Heith: These two were kinda neutral with each other since the beginning, but then the party came. I feel like they really hit it off there. Hunk brings out Keith’s smile and I feel like he’s delicate with him. Hunk is also very patient and we all know Keith would need plenty of patience. They’ve had plenty of bonding moments and work very well together- usually with little arguments as well. They would be adorable.

My rating- 5/5 (I have to admit, even though I don’t ship any gay ships- no offense to any of you lovely shippers or ships out there, it’s just not my thing- this ship is adorable. Y’all earned your 5/5)

Huntor: Sorry, but again, huh??? This ship confuses me, because it makes even less sense than Lotidge. I need reasons and answers, please. I honestly didn’t even know this ship existed until now and I can’t make heads or tails of it. Sorry, again, I apologize to all of you lovely Huntor shippers out there!

My rating- 1/5 (I think you guys get the picture.)

Katt: Again, I get it. It’s kinda like the gay form of Kidge? Except, Matt is a little more flirtatious as well which would probably annoy Keith a bit.

My rating- 2/5 (They would end up killing each other, no offense. They’re both headstrong, Keith would be annoyed by Matt’s flirting, and they’re honestly both kinda loners. Neither would really even try. I’m sorry, but they’re not very compatible. Matt is still different from Pidge and he would probably act more similar to Pidge around Hunk because Hunk would just bring that part out in him. Keith definitely wouldn’t. Sorry, but that makes me give this ship a 2/5)

Keitor: These two would probably actually hit it off. At first, they would HATE each other (classic). But then, once they got to know each other, they would realize they have a lot more in common than they think. They both are Galra, both of their parents aren’t there for either of them, they both are determined and live rather dangerously, also they would balance each other out. Keith with his moral values, and Lotor with lack there of. Also, just saying, but Lotor saved Keith’s life.

My rating- 4/5 (Since they’re lacking bonding moments or even moments when they’re in the same room together.)

Lancelot: Lance would HATE Lotor at first. They would argue and Lance would always point out how they can’t trust him and all that. However, eventually, I think they would get along. And I think it would happen when they have to go on a mission alone together and Lance would then quickly find out that Lotor is VERY seductive. Just imagine a tomato red Lance and a smirking Lotor and I think you got the picture of how their relationship would be. All in all: lots of sexual tension, Lotor would always offer Lance backhanded encouragement, and they would just know how to deal with each other, I think.

My rating- 3/5 (Of course, like usual, they lack screen time together. Also, it would be very hard for them to get passed their hatred for each other. Their personalities would definitely clash so that’s why I’m giving this a 3/5)

Latte- This ship is definitely an entertaining one. It would be that whole scenario where Lance and Matt would fight over Allura and then suddenly realize they love each other. There would be lots of flirting, encouragement, PDA, and probably a few trust issues. However, if they could get passed their hated for each other, then I think they would totally have a very lovely relationship. A funny one at that. Pidge ships it.

My rating- 4/5 (Their hatred for each other is something that would be a bit hard to overcome. Plus, they don’t have any bonding moments and they lack a whole lot of screen time. That’s why they get 4/5)

Shance: Lance has already stated that he looks up to Shiro, which is adorable. Shiro always has and I think always will be able to deal with Lance’s antics very well. He’s patient, even though he’s still like “Nope,” some of the time. However, he sees Lance’s potential. They both see the good in each other, but neither of them point it out because they think the other is secure enough to already know the fact. And maybe Shiro is, but we all know Lance isn’t. If they could really start talking, something would spark almost immediately. I’m sure of it. I completely understand why people ship these two.

My rating- 4/5 (They’re lacking conversation with each other, much less bonding moments. Sorry, guys. It’s a sad day for you poor Shance shippers. I feel you guys, and I wish I could give you more. However, for now, it’s a 4/5)

Sharkon: Okay guys, I’m just going to come out and say it. Even if Zarkon wasn’t bad, this ship wouldn’t work out. They’re WAY too similar in the fact that they’re too focused on the big picture rather than their feelings. Neither of them would notice each other, because neither of them are very emotional people when it comes to love. They need someone to bring that out in them and neither would do that for the other. Besides, now that Zarkon is bad, this would probably be a very abusive and sadistic relationship which is not something I support. I’m really sorry guys. I get why you ship them in the aspect of sexual tension and that they’re both similar. It’s just that they’re TOO similar.

My rating- 1/5 (Again, I apologize. You can ship it if you want, that’s fine with me. But thinking from a psychological stand point, I’m giving it a 1/5)

Shatt: These two were best friends from the beginning. They’ve trusted and cared for one another since they were in the garrison. They’d trained together, fought together, and Shiro was willing to risk his life so Matt wouldn’t have to fight when he was too weak. After that, Shiro was willing to help Pidge find him and his father. So, if Matt and Shiro got together, their relationship would consist of constant banter, lots of laughter, constant protection of the other, trust, encouragement- especially from Shiro’s end, and a relationship more like a super friendship. Just um, with a lot of sexual tension.

My rating- 5/5 (You Shatt shippers earned it.)

Sheith: This ship would hold all of the stuff that’s important in a relationship. Trust, encouragement, both are terrifying in battle, a softness none of us would be able to understand, good communication, and a love that’s both fierce and soft. They would protect each other until their dying breath (unless it meant risking Voltron) and the amount of care they would hold for each other would be overwhelming. If they thought past each other as brothers- seeing how they were with each other since the beginning- then they would have an amazing relationship.

My rating- 4/5 (Shiro has to get out of the brother zone. I understand why people ship them, even though I find it weird seeing how I can’t even get past them being only brothers to each other. But if you can, then good for you. However, that still gives them a 4/5)

Shendak: This is another one of those ships. I’m sorry guys, but this, if this became a thing, it would be sadistic and abusive. I have nothing else to say about it. I’m sorry.

My rating- 0/5

Shlav: I honestly didn’t know this ship existed until now, and I’m just gonna stop you right there and say no. I think it’s more of a joke, so it’s still a no.

My rating- 1/5 (I’m not giving it a zero. No way, I’m glad it exists because I’m laughing way too hard. Bless whoever made this ship a thing.)

Shotor: Shiro and Lotor? I need help now, because there’s gotta be a reason you guys ship this. I looked it up and got nothing but headcanons for how Lotor was the one that gave Shiro his scar (interesting by the way). So please, any information on this would be nice; however, psychologically this ship doesn’t make sense to me. Thinking about their canon attitudes and the way they react to certain things, they would constantly be silently wary of each other. Neither of them would say it and they would work with each other, but Shiro wouldn’t trust him for a single second and Lotor would know. Plus, Shiro isn’t exactly the romantic type so Lotor’s seductive behavior would simply come off as a threat. They wouldn’t get along. Anyways, I apologize to all of you Shotor shippers.

My rating- 0/5 (Again, I’m really sorry. You can still ship it if you want, of course.)

Zeith: So, if Zarkon was GOOD then this would actually be adorable. Imagine good Zarkon seeing tiny, human Keith for the first time. He would turn into a stuttering mess. Keith would be confused and probably a bit clueless, until Zarkon started visiting or asking for his presence more often. Then Zarkon would find out he was part Galra and he would find him even more wonderful. And we all know how Keith is delicate and tries not to overdo things and Zarkon would just LOVE that about him. Keith would begin to realize what’s going on and I think he would fall for Zarkon. Their relationship would be a proud one that holds awe striking power. People would probably fear to be their enemies; however, once the two are alone, they would melt for each other and I think that’s cute. So I understand why people ship this.

My rating- 3/5 (Sad part about this is that Zarkon is actually bad and he’s a lot- and I mean a LOT- older than Keith which makes it weird. So, since Zarkon is bad, it would probably end up in an abusive relationship where Keith dies, or it just would never happen. This leaves me giving it a 3/5)

Alluridge: Allura and Pidge have respect for each other. They’re both strong females who are beautiful and strong in two different ways. Allura is strong physically, while Pidge’s intelligence is her strength- Allura is tall and beautiful while Pidge is small and cute. They both care for each other and understand each other on a level that none of the guys could, seeing how they’re the only two females on the team. That leaves their relationship with a huge advantage of succeeding. Pidge and Allura already try to understand each other even when they can’t- they trust each other. They have plenty of bonding moments in the show and Allura is constantly showing her pride for the fifteen year old girl.

My rating- 5/5 (This ship is really positive and wonderful. Alluridge has definitely earned 5/5)

Klance: Lance and Keith have never gotten along very well, however, I wasn’t surprised when I got into the fandom and was overwhelmed by the ship. Nevertheless, I disagree with a lot of you. Yes, they have a bonding moment. One. That Lance still denies to this day. And so, when I began to look into this ship more, I realized they wouldn’t work out. They’re fights aren’t like the fights that build sexual tension between two characters. In fact, they’re quite the opposite. It’s an unhealthy anger they hold towards each other. Lance doesn’t like Keith for a reason and that reason is because he’s always compared negatively to him. Lance is never good enough in anyone’s eyes because of Keith, and for that reason, he hates him. So, in my opinion, if anyone kept comparing me negatively to a specific person, then I wouldn’t magically fall for them because of a single bonding moment. I would still hate them. And it’s not just a single person that keeps comparing Lance to Keith, it’s EVERYONE. And he wouldn’t be able to get passed that. I wouldn’t be able able to get passed that. Yeah, so he willingly stepped aside when Keith went to go take the Black Lion and even gave him a bit of a pep talk. So? Why wouldn’t he? Lance is smart and he knew it was best for the team, whether he liked it or not. And he knew he had to set aside his personal problems for the sake of the universe. I get why people ship them and it’s totally okay with me if you do, I just know that from a personal experience, it wouldn’t work out. No matter how much you had to work with a person you had to keep trying to be.

My rating- 1/5 (Sorry, Klance shippers. I really am, but I just can’t get passed how I personally relate to Lance in this way. And this personal experience has shed a new light on this ship for me. For canon and psychological reasons, I can only give it a 1/5)

Anyways, so that’s the end! Sorry I got so in depth at the end. Oh, and I’m sorry if you read through this and your ship didn’t get the comment and rating you wanted on it. Please tell me more about the ships I asked for, because some of them I asked for more info on. I hope you enjoyed this! Please tell me what your ships are down in the comments, or reblog and name your ship. I would like to know. Anyways, thanks again.

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fluffyllamas-23 · 7 years

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Okay, I had such a hard time writing this. I’m so tired and have so much homework to do, but I don’t want to do it, so this is the product of my procrastination. I saw these really great Hunk caretaker prompts from @itisasign and I need it in my life. Since I’m not great at writing Voltron in the context of in space where it’s set, I’m gonna make this an AU. I also combined it with this idea I had that @toosicktoocare added to

Shiro had a shitty childhood. His mom was emotionally unavailable, hugging and physical affection was frowned upon in their house, and she expected him to attend school, and keep up with all responsibilities no matter what. If he happened to get sick during the weekend, she was less irritated with him staying in bed. But, because he wanted her approval, he would keep any ailments to himself. He had a very vivid memory of going to school with a one hundred and three degree fever, and then bursting into tears when the nurse made him go home, because he was worried that his mom would be mad.

Because of how he was raised, he only admitted he was sick when he was practically in a coma, and he definitely wasn’t touchy feely. The friend group he had managed to fall into - Lance, Keith, Pidge and Hunk - were all very open with their affections. While he loved them all to death, and he was more comfortable being open with his affection for them, it didn’t come in the form of physical affection. He preferred to make sure they were silently taken care of.

They lived in an apartment complex near campus. Keith and Lance lived together, and Shiro, Pidge and Hunk lived together. Every Friday night, they would gather in Lance and Keith’s apartment and watch a movie, and they all sat in the same spots. Shiro had the arm chair next to the couch, sometimes he had a pillow and blanket, but most of the time he didn’t. Keith and Lance sat on the couch, Lance against one arm, and Keith against the other. Pidge was sprawled out. She was leaning with her back against Keith, and her feet in Lance’s lap. Hunk was sitting cross legged on the floor, leaning back against the couch with his knees to his chest.

Shiro had been fighting a bug all week. He woke up last Saturday with a headache and scratchy throat. By Friday morning the following week, after going to work and classes all week, he was miserable and felt like shit. He had spiked a fever late the previous evening, and had been unable to sleep. He spent the entire night tossing and turning, sniffling, and muffling chest rattling coughs into his pillows and blankets. His head was pounding mercilessly and felt like it had been stuffed with cotton, his throat felt like he had been gargling nails. He was stuffy, and achey, and freezing, and just downright miserable.

He dragged himself out of bed, though, regardless of how badly he wanted to stay in bed, and went to his classes. He stumbled through the door of his apartment at three-thirty, coughing harshly into the crook of his elbow. Pidge and Hunk were still either in class or at work, so Shiro had the apartment to himself. He pulled the collar of his shirt up over his mouth as he went into a sneezing fit. He sniffled thickly, his head throbbing as he walked to their medicine cabinet and rifled through it. He put the thermometer in his mouth as he fumbled with a blister packet of DayQuil.

The thermometer beeped, and he had to squint and rub at his eyes to be able to make out the numbers (103.2). Shiro had somehow managed to get the medicine open, and then decided to take a nap for the next few hours. Movie night wasn’t for another four and a half hours, and he was hoping he’d feel more human.

Spoiler alert: He didn’t. He felt worse, if possible.

But, because being sick wasn’t an excuse, he dragged himself to Keith and Lance’s apartment.

Twenty minutes in, Shiro was staring at the spot on the floor next to Hunk. The desire for physical touch was overwhelming, and before he realized what was happening, he found himself curled up next to Hunk, his head resting on his shoulder. Hunk was staring down at Shiro in complete shock, and once he recovered, he looked at his other friends, who were all wearing matching, dumbfounded expressions.

“What-” Keith started. “-He’s sick.” Hunk said, a frown making its way onto his face. “I’ve known him for years, the only time he ever does this is when he’s sick. Do you have a thermometer?” “Yeah, I’ll go get it.” “Hey, Shiro?” Hunk said. “Buddy? Can you open your eyes for me.” Shiro groaned, pressing his face into Hunk’s upper arm. Eventually, he opened his eyes and then slumped into Hunk, coughing weakly. “Nnngh.” “Ah, shit.” Hunk groaned after he had put a hand on Shiro’s cheek. “You’re really not feeling well, huh?” “M’fine.” “The fact that you’re cuddling with me totally contradicts that statement.” “I’m fine.” He rasped weakly. Hunk patted his back, and then Looked at Pidge and Keith who were looking on in worry. “Help me get him on the couch. We need to get his temperature down.”

Hunk hooked his arms underneath Shiro’s armpits, and Keith grabbed his legs, and they lifted him on the couch.

“Here.” Lance said, walking back in the room.

Hunk had been sitting up with Shiro all night, and realized what a restless sleeper he was.

Shiro tossed and turned, woke up a couple of times, and muttered unintelligibly for the greater part of the night. His fever was pushing 104, and despite all of the fever reducers and cool washcloths on his forehead, the fever didn’t seem to want to go away.

Finally, around four am, all of his restlessness stopped, and his breathing evened out as he fell into a deep sleep. Hunk checked his fever, and then sighed in relief when the thermometer read 101.

Hopefully he would be feeling better when he woke up next. Hunk walked over to his makeshift bed on the floor and laid down.

“Goodnight, Shiro.” Hunk mumbled sleepily, closing his eyes as he drifted to sleep.

#sickfic #voltron au #keith #hunk #lance #shiro #pidge #caretaker hunk #shiro is so stubborn #damn #just admit you're sick #pls my child #its 1:15 am and I have three papers I need to write for later today that I haven't started yet #send help

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ironinkpen · 7 years

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The Seventh Wheel: A Case for Black Lion Lance

Alternatively titled: Lance Deserves The World Because He is My Son and I Love Him

Okay, so Shiro’s gone and someone’s gotta fill his big ass shoes. In the toss-up between him, Allura, and Keith, I’m going to be arguing in this post that Lance could be the guy to do it. And, fair warning, this is going to be ridiculously (like, ridiculously) long lmao so here’s the TL;DR right now: I think that a) Lance already shows the character traits of a good leader, and b) there’s a good chance of him becoming one, given his impending character arc.

It also has a chance of not happening, of course, but who cares?? I already started writing this thing, so:

Alright, let’s begin at the beginning, because that’s always a good place to start.

Lance is first introduced to the audience as the classic loud, arrogant, goofy flirt. The perfect comic relief character. He rescues a guy because his “rival” was gonna do it first and he can’t have that, the first thing he does in the giant robot cat is fart, and he hits on a girl who just fell out of a pod in a magic castle. He’s there to make you laugh.

I can’t imagine anyone looking at a character like that and “You know what? This guy could be a leader.” Allura says it herself in episode 1. The black lion is supposed to be the decisive head of Voltron, a person who’s a natural born leader, who’s in control, and,

Basically, calm, collected, and respected. “A natural born leader.” So, definitely not Lance. Case closed.

But, not really. Because Lance actually is calm and collected. He’s just not respected. He has all the leadership traits– the problem is that he’s not treated as someone who could be a leader.

So you get scenes like the above, where Lance tries to tell another character what to do (in this case, Keith to not run off and blow their cover) and, despite his advice being relatively reasonable, isn’t taken seriously.

Allura talks about a “natural born leader” needed for the Black Lion. At first glance, it’s easy to be like “well, that’s not Lance,” but the thing is, Lance actually does have a lot of leadership traits. They’re just not being acknowledged, most of the time.

Why’s that?

Well there’s the fact that he can be arrogant, which kind of turns people off to the idea of him being in charge. Also, while the team clearly likes Lance (I’ve seen people saying he’s under appreciated by the others but I don’t really agree with that tbh), I don’t think the take him very seriously since he tends to make light of things. And there’s something else I noticed while watching Voltron: while everyone else has gone through some version of a character arc already, Lance… hasn’t yet. At all.

A character arc is the growth of a character over the course of the story, right? A character begins in one place and ends in another. So, from season 1 to season 2, Hunk goes from terrified to more confident in his ability to help others and protect the universe. Pidge starts off focused on saving just her family and grows to understand her role in saving everyone. Keith goes from a very intense, live-in-the-moment character who clings to the team for companionship to someone who explores, acknowledges, and faces his past and heritage. Shiro goes from traumatized to overcoming his trauma to defeat the ones who hurt him. Allura goes from grieving the fresh loss of her people to accepting that it happened and working with others (even Galra) to make sure it never happens again.

But Lance doesn’t change.

(tbh Lance…. same)

There’s no deviation from the starting point for Lance. His character traits have remained ridiculously consistent. So it’s deceptively easy to look at him and think: oh, he hasn’t matured at all.

But that’s simply because he hasn’t had his arc yet. So instead of watching him grow, we’ve just been… getting to know Lance better. Him not growing doesn’t mean he’s not a mature, respectable character (though he’s definitely immature at times). It just means we haven’t gotten a chance to see him do so yet.

And anyway, as we get to know Lance, here are the traits we find:

In his first appearance, Lance crashes their simulator because he’s too busy showing off to pay attention. This seems like the perfect introduction for a selfish character, right? Except that’s quickly reversed by the narrative. Immediately after they fail, Lance diverts Iverson’s attention off of a mouthy Pidge. He lets Iverson say awful things to him with a tight lip and says nothing back. And then afterwards, he doesn’t even get mad at Pidge for mouthing off. He takes the fall without so much as a complaint, and later on in the night tries to invite Pidge to go out with them.

The protective instinct we see in this scene is expanded upon later, when Lance jumps in front of Coran to save him from, you know, exploding.

And then even later when he wakes up from a coma to save Pidge:

Other moments that stand out where Lance is protective of others is in episode one where he tries to get the Galra ships away from Earth, later in the season when he tells Keith to be careful about hurting the Balmera because it’s alive, and when he fights Hunk in season two and makes it a point not to hurt him, even though Hunk is brainwashed and trying to feed him to a giant snake thing. Like I said, this protective trait’s been there since the beginning. It doesn’t change. He doesn’t grow with it and become more protective or anything. It’s just expanded upon the more we see of Lance.

Another example of this consistency in character is Lance’s deductive reasoning and creativity. In the first season, he’s able to figure out that the bot is a bomb almost immediately because Pidge isn’t with it. In the second, he’s quick to ask questions of the mermaids (”How did your queen know we were here?” “What is that garden?”). Lance is pretty good about paying attention to his surroundings and asking questions, and at noticing when something’s off (though he can still be pretty naive, re: Nyma). He’s also really creative!! Season 2 Episode 2 shows this off well. When he fights, he often incorporates his environment. He’s a resourceful kid!

He’s also very quick to change his mind when his first judgements about situations are wrong. Lance’s adaptability and emotional sensitivity make him able to make snap decisions in battle about who to trust and what side to fight for. In the beginning, he’s quick to trust Allura and Coran despite the fact that Allura tried to break his arm before. And then in season 2, not only does he quickly join up with the mermaid rebels when they ask him for help, but-

-he figures out that the queen is being genuine and immediately changes his strategy to accommodate this new information. He’s pretty attentive to the moods and needs of the people around him (like when he starts that space snowball fight so that everyone can have some fun, jumps into that fountain to help Pidge get the gaming system she wants, explains the plan to Hunk all theatrically so it seems exciting instead of absolutely terrifying, etc. etc.). He’s also able to sort through information and change gears easily.

Plus he just has good battle instincts in general, though in a slightly different way than Keith. Lance is a more plan-oriented guy. One notable instance of this in season 1 is when he holds back Keith from charging into that Galra control tower and suggests that they sneak in instead. And there are tons more examples of Lance’s little ingenuities in battle. It’s in season 2 episode 2 that he really gets to shine though. Especially in that scene where that giant worm thing is chasing him and Hunk through the ocean, and he says,

This line is gonna become relevant against Lotor next season mark my words.

But yeah! Lance has good ideas! He’s able to come with strategies and work-around solutions extremely quickly! And that actually brings me to this:

Lance is patient and decisive. He thinks things through (in battle at least, his thirst gets the best of him at other times lol). He waits until the time is right to strike. And he’s confident when he does, too. In the scene above, he says “wait, I’ve got this” and fires the shot at the perfect moment to save Slav, even as the doors are closing. And like just. The entirety of his Garrison backstory. He wanted to be a fighter pilot, but he was put in the cargo class. And yet he stuck with it. He kept working hard so that he was the top of his class, and then when Keith dropped out, he got his shot. We don’t really know when Keith dropped out, but it’s pretty likely that Lance worked for at least a couple months with no indication of whether or not a spot would open up at all.

Lance has been showing off Shiro’s “patience yields focus” thing this whole time!!

There are so many more leadership traits that Lance displays (and more examples of the ones I’ve already listed), but I’ll stick with these. Basically, a recap: Lance is and has always been protective, inquisitive and alert, adaptable and emotionally sensitive, instinctive, and patient.

And look:

Protective, like the Yellow Lion. Inquisitive, like Green. Adaptable and emotionally sensitive, like Blue. Good instincts, like Red. And patient and decisive, like the Black Lion.

(do you ever write an essay on the fly and then you start thinking “holy shit i might actually be onto something” because lmao)

Lance displays a combination of every lion’s traits. He’s completely well-rounded. Which is arguably the most valuable leadership trait of all.

But he doesn’t really see that.

He sees all of the people around him being great and talented (on another note, another great trait for a leader is an awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of his team, and Lance definitely has that) and fails to see his own worth in the team because doesn’t have his own special niche. This is actually one of his greatest strengths (ever heard the phrase, ”a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one”?), especially if he were to become a leader, because a good leader should be balanced. A leader doesn’t have to be most talented on the team– they just have to be the one who can best direct the team.

The thing is, Lance doesn’t really get that. He sees the leadership position as the position for like. The coolest, strongest, best person. His character is really preoccupied with the idea of gaining respect and notoriety. It’s why he’s constantly at odds with Keith at the beginning, because Keith is the best pilot and everyone always praises him and Lance wants to be that person. In season 1, we get that daydream where he’s waving a flag with his face on it and everyone’s giving him thumbs up. In season 2 episode 2, Lance jokes that when he helps free the mermaids, he’ll be a hero. Despite the humor in these scenes, there’s something more substantial under the surface– Lance’s number one fantasy is to be acknowledged.

That’s why he’s attached to the idea of him being the “sharpshooter,” gets sad that no one else thinks so, and is so happy when Shiro calls him that. Because he thinks he needs a “thing” to be praised for. He thinks that to be great you need to be the best at something. So he fails to see the worth of his own well-roundedness.

But, look at the scene above, where Lance is listing everyone’s strengths. Shiro’s special skill according to Lance is being an “awesome leader.” He’s not the best pilot like Keith, not the most handy like Hunk, not the cleverest like Pidge– Shiro’s… a lot like Lance. Well-rounded. Shiro’s main skill is that he can bring everyone together and keep them calm in hard situations. Lance is really similar to him in a lot of ways, though he doesn’t see it. He’s almost like a younger, more immature, less experienced Shiro. He hasn’t grown into himself yet.

To be honest, one of the main reasons I think Lance could actually end up being the Black Paladin is that the story arc is really compelling. With Shiro we came into this show with a stable leadership figure that didn’t really have to grow into his role. Shiro’s story arc wasn’t about becoming a worthy leader for Voltron, it was about dealing with what happened to him while he was in captivity and overcoming the ones who tortured him. If we’re going to see a new leader, it’d be really interesting to see someone who has to learn how to be a leader. And Lance, with all of his insecurities and his preoccupation with heroism, would be a cool character to unpack with a leadership arc.

Like, as I mentioned before, Lance is the only character who hasn’t grown yet. And that’s really fucking weird, narratively speaking. It doesn’t really make sense to have one of your main characters be static. But I honestly don’t think that this is a case of the writers neglecting Lance. I think they’ve been quietly laying the foundation for his arc since day one.

Lance has some insecurities that have been hinted at pretty consistently but never fully confronted. We see it in his weird “rivalry” with Keith, which is very out of character for a guy who seems to be pretty open and friendly with literally everyone else he meets (he meets the yupper in Beta Traz and fifteen minutes later is literally ready to fight to the death for it like??). We also see it in Iverson comparing him to Keith. And then we get several scenes in season 2 that continue to prod at the issue. We learn that he’s not super confident in his relationship with his lion (seen when Keith mentions the blue lion outside his door and Lance gets defensive because “me and blue are very happy together”), that he doesn’t actually see himself as a hero even though he’s preoccupied with the idea of being one (seen in his surprise when the mermaids called him their savior), and that he sort of sees himself as a “seventh wheel” to all the other paladins. But we never get a real resolution to the problem at all, just a steadily mounting pile of scenes where it’s present.

So the question that’s being set up here is: what does Lance contribute to the team? Lance is the only character that shows something of a lack of confidence in his value as a member of Voltron. He and Blue don’t seem to have bonded all that much (despite there being an entire episode where he’s in the water!! what the hell!!), and we’re seeing that affect his view of his worth within the team. Typically, insecurity storylines like this can go one of two ways: either the character who is insecure becomes secure in their position, or they are put in a new position and forced to prove themselves. Lance’s character arc is going to be that he starts off as sort of insecure and grows… somehow. More confident? More assertive? More secure? We have to see which route the Voltron writers will take.

Either way, Lance is almost definitely going to get an arc next season, given with how the writers have built up its foundation. With Voltron’s power structure about to be shaken up, the questions of where he belongs and how he’s going to grow are going to get answered. And I personally think the way to gives us those answers would be to have him step up and lead.

I mean, this isn’t all to say that he’s perfect for the role, though. He’s still distractible, somewhat insecure (which can translate into arrogance), can be impulsive, and he doesn’t have the same kind of authority in the group as Shiro does. He’d definitely have to grow into it. But I think that the building blocks are there, and I honestly feel like that’s the most riveting part of this set up: seeing Lance slowly come into his own would be so satisfying.

(And just like. Picture the Black Lion choosing Lance. Lance pointing to himself and saying, “Me? But I’m just a boy from Cuba” like!!!!!)

Of course, the other two contenders for the Black Lion presidency, Allura and Keith, also definitely have a shot. Allura especially. She fits the “natural born leader” thing to a tee:

The only issue is that I think that that kind of narrative would be almost… too easy? Allura is a lot like Shiro in a way– they’re both very put-together, authoritative characters. If the purpose of making Shiro go away for a while is really to challenge the power structures in Voltron, then putting Allura in as Black Paladin is kind of a strange move (even though she’d be an amazing Black Paladin and I really want her to be but that’s an essay for another day) considering it would just be swapping out one leader for another. Shiro didn’t really have to grow into his position as Black Paladin, because he was already respected and assertive. And so is Allura. So while the change would make sense, it might be a less interesting option.

Plus, in the beginning, when Allura is explaining the traits of the lions, this happens:

Lance cuts her off, and we never actually get to hear in the show what exactly the Blue Lion’s “thing” is. But a look on the Voltron website tells us that the blue lion is the friendliest, most confident, and also the most accepting of new pilots.

Hm.

The fact that this information is kept from the audience makes me think that someone new is going to be put in the Blue Lion. And Allura does match the traits of the Blue Lion as well. Alteans are diplomatic, so she has the friendly thing down. And she’s obviously very confident in her abilities.

(Wrote a longer essay on Blue Paladin Allura here lmao)

Of course, she could also be unable to pilot a lion at all. Coran’s often said that the castle runs on her quintessence, so if that’s really the case and wormholes aren’t the only problem, she might not be able to be a paladin, in which case it could be that Coran will be a paladin instead. But I think there’s a good chance that Slav will update the castle next season, so either Allura and the castle are gonna get some sick new weaponry, or he’ll make it so that Coran’ll be able to make wormholes while Allura fights in a lion. We’ll have to see which path they take.

Really, I personally feel like Allura doesn’t actually… need to be Black Paladin. Her plot next season is going to be really busy for her between her new powers, the mini-resistance she’s leading, and the whole Evil Alteans thing, so having her also bond with the Black Lion (which I feel like is going to be difficult for the next pilot given the loss of Shiro) would just be. A lot. It’s already pretty much universally acknowledged by the team that she’s the brains of this whole universe-saving operation– when Shiro was around, he was her second in command. The authority she has within the group won’t change just because she isn’t the titular head of Voltron. Plus, consolidating those two roles - the role the leader of the resistance and that of the head of Voltron - would be weird I think. While Allura could definitely handle doing both, it’s kinda like asking the President to also lead Congress. She could do it. But it’s just. Weird.

As for Keith, I think he could do it too!! But hmmm.

First of all, we run into the same problem we see with Allura. Shiro already choosing a successor? That’s. Kind of boring. Too “Chosen One.” I mean it absolutely makes sense for Shiro to think of something like that, especially when he’s dying from a poisonous purple wound, but from a storyline perspective it’s kind of dull. The transition of power would be too smooth, like “Shiro told me I should be leader so I am and here we go.” Also, it was just kind of weird that they made it a point to mention this? Again, in the context of the episode it made sense, but narratively, it feels almost like we’re being setting up for Shiro’s decision here to be challenged somehow.

On an unrelated note, Keith is hella reckless, which is definitely an obstacle for him, leadership wise. Sure in season 2 episode 1 he’s like “patience yields focus” or whatever, but then the poor boy just forgets that for the rest of the season lmao.

Like, the short list of impulsive things he’s done in s2 is: tried to run away from the castle, threatened to stab a guy, fought a knife dude at a mall, got the shit beat out of him for knowledge, ignored Hunk when he said they should go back and watch that video (even though there was no reason they couldn’t) and almost got them killed because they didn’t have the information they needed, jumped into a pool of stomach acid with no indication of whether he could get out before being digested, and jumped out of Hunk’s lion (which was such a bad idea that Hunk legit thought he was joking) and almost got fried by lasers.

(poor boy doesn’t even deny it slkdjfldskj)

And there’s also the fact that Keith’s a narrow-scoped guy. He’s gotten better about this lately (we see him looking out for Lance), but for the most part in battle Keith is mainly looking at the enemy in front of him. Which isn’t a bad thing!! It’s actually really to his advantage, and makes him the focused pilot we all know and love. But he’ll need to learn to keep better tabs on his team as leader.

So. I love Keith. And he definitely has the decisiveness, battle experience, and good battle instincts that the Black Lion needs. He’d be a fine leader (tbh any of them would, which is why I’m writing out essays like this to try to untangle where the writers are going with this)!! But his major obstacle would be being patient and learning to coordinate the team.

On a related note, though, Keith doesn’t seem to actually want to lead the team. He brushes Shiro off when he mentions it both times. He seems sort of uncomfortable with the idea of replacing him like that. I think that Keith might try to pilot Black because Shiro told him to and it’s his Duty or whatever, but… I don’t know. Between his grief of losing Shiro again and the discovery of his Galra heritage (galra mom! galra mom!! galra mom!!!) and the new powers he’s apparently going to unlock, he’s like Allura: he has a lot to deal with. So even though he’s definitely going to pilot Black for at least a while, I don’t know if he’ll stick with the role.

But if Keith does become the official Black Paladin, Lance is almost definitely going to end up being his second in command. The two of them have grown into something of a partnership this season (space ranger partners?) and I get the vibe that Lance’ll be the “woah calm down” to Keith’s “come on let’s go!” The pool scene is a good hint of what we can expect from them moving forward.

I remember seeing it the first time and thinking “why the fuck did they include this lol” but upon reflection it seems like it’s symbolism for both their personalities and their relationship. Keith always “shoves too hard,” whereas Lance doesn’t “shove hard enough.” Keith is always too intense in Lance’s opinion, whereas Lance is too cautious in Keith’s. But eventually they find a balance, and when they stop bickering with each other they find a solution.

In a way, their dynamic is really similar to Shiro and Allura’s. You know how I said that Lance was a less mature Shiro? Keith is basically a less mature Allura– they’re both hotheaded characters (re: their running away from the castle in s2), though Allura is a little more diplomatic and a little more willing to think things through. Shiro and Allura relied on each other to shoulder the burden of leadership, so there’s a chance that Lance and Keith will end up doing the same thing.

Basically I guess that no matter which one of them becomes leader, the other one is kinda gonna be co-captain, sorta.

On another note:

The bond between Keith and Red was really emphasized this season! It’d be weird if they put such a stress on how close the two of them have gotten and then rip it away the next season, I think. Like, if they wanted to set up Black Paladin Keith, I feel like they should have had less bonding.

(With that in mind, if they decide to go the OG series route and put Lance in the Red Lion instead, it definitely echoes the whole “you’re only here because the best pilot in your class dropped out” thing. If they do go that route, I hope they acknowledge that parallel and have Lance work past it!!)

Okay, god, this is getting to be a mess and some of it was probably reaching but basically!! Any of these three could be the Black Paladin while Shiro’s gone and there’s no possible way for me to guess what the writers of Voltron are thinking. The obvious choice is Keith given that he was leader in the OG Voltron, but they’ve already changed so much in this new series that Allura and Lance have a very good chance at it. But even if Lance doesn’t end up being the one picked, I get the feeling that he’s going to be the Right Hand Man character that calms down the new Black Paladin and encourages them to think things through (Allura and Keith can both be very…. intense).

Personally, though, I think that Lance has the goods to be a good leader but is held back by some insecurities, and that his storyline as Black Paladin could be the most compelling. And not just because he’s my son and he deserves the world.

(But also he is and he does)

#voltron #voltron meta #lance #black paladin lance #holy SHIT this is long #if anyone actually managed to read all of this you're ridiculous and also I love you

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dreamscript · 7 years

Text

The Fires Within: Ch. 7

a hellhound au twist on this request

This is seriously taking the concept of “inner demons” to another level. And, in all honesty, it’s a bit too literal for your liking.

8k words, yoongi/reader, hellhound au, action: violence

The sunlight is blinding.

You raise your arm over your eyes in an attempt to shield your face from the rays. A cursory glance around your surroundings tells you--that you have no idea where you are. Perfect.

“You’re in his mind,” comes a voice from--the skies? You look upwards, confused. “Describe your surroundings, by the way. As you go. I need to pinpoint just where exactly you are. You’re fine, right? The jump was kind of rough...”

Ah. Taehyung’s girlfriend. Back in the real world, outside of Yoongi’s mind, you’re strapped to the medical chair, one of her hands on your head, the other on Yoongi’s, and the rest of the squad crammed in room.

“Uh,” you say, tentatively. It feels strange just kind of standing there, talking. At something that isn’t physically there. “It’s--sunny. And--” you turn around in a full circle “--there are a lot of buildings--tall ones. It’s...cool. Clean. I see a few houses down this one alley and they are nice. Also, can other people like--hear me? I feel kind of stupid just standing in the middle of the street mumbling to myself.”

“No,” she laughs. “This is merely a memory. Other people can’t see you.”

“Oh, okay.” And, almost as if to prove her point, a child runs up from a nearby alleyway and, without even a moment’s hesitation, goes straight through you. The moment you had to marvel at the thought of being there but not really is immediately lost when you realize that the child is Yoongi.

Hurriedly, you make to follow after him.

He leads you down one of those pathways set with even, flat, white cobblestone, shrubs and small trees artfully planted at the peripheral. Houses rise from the hilltops, sprawling over the bright green grass. You can’t help but eye the luxurious estates enviously. Was this where he lived as a child?

The little boy in front of you continues to run. It makes sense, of course. For a mage as skilled as Yoongi, to have been a part of the League for so long, of course he’d probably have come from a long line of celebrated magic users…

A part of you wonders why you’d never known about this before. Another part of you aches with the realization that, despite all your thoughts, you really didn’t know much about him… at all.

Young Yoongi comes to an abrupt stop and you immediately slow down your steps so as to not run into him--except then you remember it doesn’t matter. With a huff, you run straight through his body. He doesn’t even flinch.

“Status report?”

You shrug, even though she can’t see. “Not much, really. Just a lot of running. I followed a child Yoongi--he’s adorable, by the way--to this affluent neighborhood. And now he’s--oh, he’s going down a path to one of the mansions. Did he come from a wealthy family? I know he used to live in the Capital but no one ever told me about--this.”

“Well, I asked Taehyung and co. about it just now, and yes, it seems that you are indeed approaching his house. Apparently he never really talks much about his past and origins though, so it would make sense that you don’t know.”

Even though she was probably trying to assure you, you can’t help the bitter taste in your mouth. The child approaches the doors to the mansion, only for them to swing open by themselves. A maid greets “the young master” and escorts him in, taking his well-fitted jacket. You almost fall over yourself when you see him smile happily up at her, mutter a cheerful thanks, and then practically skip up one of the sweeping staircases.

If it hadn’t been for the confirmation you received earlier, you would’ve thought you followed the wrong kid. Plus, it wouldn’t make much sense that his memory of some other boy would be this vivid and in-depth. No, this has to be Yoongi.

So then, what happened…? Did he experience trauma of sorts? Probably.

“How is he, by the way? His mind?” you venture. You hope she can hear you.

“He’s doing okay.” Then, after a pause, she adds on, “As fine as anyone in a coma, that is.”

“Can you--are you able to check for any signs of psychological trauma in his mind?” you ask.

“Unfortunately, with the hellhound rampant, and me already conducting this operation with you, I am not able to.”

“Ah, I see.”

Yoongi finally makes it to be what you presume to be his bedroom: a large, spacious area, complete with furniture of gilded gold. A set of large, wide windows outlook the city skyline, framed by fluttering curtains. The entire decor of the area makes you wonder just how rich he was. Or is. Maybe that’s why he told you that one time, in which you two were bickering over the mission, that he didn’t quite care for the money.

Young Yoongi flops down on his King size bed, shuts his eyes, and promptly falls asleep. You chuckle at his chubby cheeks, flushed with exercise, pressed into the plush pillow.

He’s awake. Young Yoongi is awake and is getting dressed to “go out and play.” The maid helping him fusses and then gives him a brief lecture on being fair, sharing, taking turns, and treating everyone nicely and with respect.

He nods, but his adult behavior makes you wonder if he ever even bothered to listen to those words. Or if he even heard them.

In any case, the maid finally lets him out of the house with a warning that if he did not return home by curfew, his parents would make sure there would be “severe consequences.” With a nod and flutter of clothes, he is gone, and you are left to chase after him.

For someone of such high status and wealth, Yoongi did not seem to let it go to his mind. He played with everyone, people of all social classes and races. The younger ones looked up to him and the older ones took part in playful rivalries. You watch as the race leaf boats down a babbling brook, shouting, yelling, cheering their boats on.

There’s an unsettling feeling in your stomach. Yoongi was so happy and full of life as a child. He seems so drained and closed off as an adult.

“I’m picking up a few disturbances up ahead,” the mind reader warns. “Stay alert. This could be one of the hellhound offshoots.”

“Right.” You grit your teeth and forge on with the memory, casting sideways, tentative glances about. You consider sending out one of your scouts but--if you’re up against a hellhound, you’re going to need as much magic as possible.

Yoongi laughs mirthfully as his own little leaf boat tips and sinks under, skipping over rocks to pull the drenched thing out. He dangles it between his dainty fingers, watching it drip water from its tips.

You sense movement.

And it’s not the other children clambering over rocks and skipping across the grass--it’s fast and dark and menacing. It skirts across the shadows and exists only at your peripheral vision…

Your lance of magic is up and glowing before you even know it, clashing with the beast’s claws and protecting you from harm. Eyes narrowed, you jump backwards, readying yourself for another attack. You note how the children continue to play, seemingly unaffected.

Except… Yoongi seems to flicker, body occasionally dissipating into mere static.

“Looks like you’ve found one. Or rather, it’s found you.”

“Yeah,” you say, staring down at the beast. It snarls. “It’s so formless--its body doesn’t even seem to have a definite shape. It keeps on changing and its eyes are the only thing that doesn’t look like black smoke.”

“That’s just how they look in the subconscious.”

You roll your eyes and dodge another attack. “Attractive.”

“So,” Hoseok says, turning to look at Yoongi. “What were you telling us about that beast thing again?”

Yoongi startles out of his thoughts and looks up; everyone is staring at him expectantly. “Um, it’s dangerous, it can change forms, and it doesn’t fucking die. Basically, we’re screwed.”

And also, he notes to himself, he seems unable to die as well… or maybe that was just the beast’s magic.

“Or maybe it can create some pretty damn realistic illusions,” Yoongi adds on, after a moment’s thought. Namjoon muses thoughtfully over his words.

“Um, guys?” Jungkook says. “Don’t you think we should wait for ________ to get back before we launch into our full scale discussion?”

“No need to,” replies someone. “I’m here now.”

Yoongi immediately perks up at the voice--and there you are. The person who he was missing but didn’t realize that he was. Still--he furrows his brows--something, no, everything about his current situation feels bizarre, way-off. He can’t seem to recall how he got here, or what he was doing before then… and for some reason he can’t stop thinking about his childhood days and when he would race leaf-boats down that brook.

And it’s not just him--there’s that weird beast thing out there. And everyone is acting way too nonchalant, way too dismissive about this entire fiasco…

“Hi, ________,” Taehyung says. “How’d it go? Find any leads? We were just talking with Yoongi here, and apparently he had a personal experience with the beast himself…”

You shrug and sling off your coat, draping it over your chair. “Nah, not really. All I ever learned were a few useless facts about the city, nothing much.” You turn to look at Yoongi, hands folded under your chin. “So, tell me again about this experience? What happened?”

Yoongi opens his mouth to speak--only to choke on his own words when suddenly everyone’s faces blur into a nondescript mass. The lights flicker. Somewhere out back the generator dies out.

And then--after a few moments of heart-pounding fear and apprehension--the lights come back on and everyone’s face is back to normal.

“Well?” you prod, completely unfazed. Everyone continues to look at him expectantly, as if nothing happened at all.

Yoongi swallows and thinks he’s going to be sick.

“I will admit,” you say, calling back your magic. “Out of all of the things I was expecting, the hellhound running away was not one of them.” You stare at the spot in which it’d disappeared, its shadowy form completely blown away by the vortex of wind that suddenly blew out of nowhere. Yoongi and the children continue to play. It seems the memory is back to normal.

“Well, you’ve definitely weakened it, that’s for sure. From here on it, the other shadows should be less… powerful.”

Panting, you sit down for a second, just to get yourself back together. There are multiple cuts and bruises all over your body, but in the subconscious, physical injuries tend to heal fast. Really fast. You study the cuts that are rapidly closing themselves.

“Reassuring,” you say. And it is, except you’re still not too keen on fighting multiple hellhound-shadow-things. Ones that can’t fucking die and are deathly fast. “Where to next?”

“Hold on,” she says. “I sense a few outcrops in his subconscious, but I need to locate them… God, his mind is all jumbled because of the beast. Ugh, this is going to take me a second. I’ll get back to you.”

“Okay.”

A minute or so later, the world around you warps and you can only hope that she’s found the right place, and it’s not the hellhound coming to exact its revenge on you.

Yoongi leans against the bathroom door, panting heavily. Just outside he can hear the dull chattering of voices, of everyone else discussing their findings and planning out what to do next. He envies them, how their minds are clear enough to even think and strategize. He can’t--he doesn’t even know what the hell is going on, why all these visions of the past are suddenly haunting him all over again…

How… How…-- Yoongi curses. He feels a ripping feeling in his chest. His breathing gets heavier even though the only thing he’s done is stumble from the bedroom to the bathroom. Is he going insane? Maybe.

“It’s gotta be him, you know.”

Oh god, he’s hearing voices now. Yoongi squeezes his eyes shut, snaps them wide open. He’s still alive, very much in the same place and certainly not dreaming or whatnot. He’s definitely going insane. As soon as they get back to the League, he’s scheduling himself for a psych eval.

“Really? Why?” Another voice floats in and he can’t help but shudder.

“It’s always the rich ones,” the first voice replies. “They can--”

“--grease palms, you see.”

You stare, quizzically, as the trow goblins discuss their theories in a back alleyway. So far, all you’ve managed to gather is that someone killed a group of their kind, and a few are a bit too eager to place the blame on Yoongi.

“Grease palms?”

“Yeah,” one says. “You know, bribing officials? I seen ‘em do it all the time! Happened when my daddy was killed. They didn’t even do an investigation.”

“God, that’s terrible!” a voice squeaks. “And are you saying that’s going to happen to them? That this--Yoongi--is going to grease the palms of the police department? That our friends will have died due to injustice? We--god, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” another voice grouses. “But we should definitely take this up to the Elders. They’ll know.”

“Alright then. Let’s go--we can’t waste any time now, can we?”

Their footsteps fade off into the distance.

Unbeknownst to them, Yoongi is crouched beside a barrel just outside of the alleyway entrance, frowning and frozen and looking absolutely terrified. You stare down at him with a frown. Did he try to fight back? To justify himself?

You catch sight of the bruises and cuts that peek out from underneath his dirtied clothes. Maybe he had. And maybe they didn’t listen.

Or rather, someone didn’t want him to tell.

Back at his home, he proceeds as normal. When the maids ask him what happened, if one of the neighborhood boys got a bit too cocky, Yoongi shrugs and replies that he had a few wrestling matches, here and there. They nod and then laugh about young boys and scuffles. You know it’s all a lie.

He’s always seemed to be an independent person, so the fact that he doesn’t immediately crack and spill the beans makes sense. You purse your lips and study him further. But still--to the point in which he suffers so much physical harm? Is he too scared to tell? Embarrassed? Or maybe, maybe he thinks that if he tells, he’d only be perpetuating the stereotype. That if his parents found out, they’d simply pay the goblins off just to get the whole ordeal over with.

“Careful,” the mind reader warns. “I’m starting to pick up something foul. It’s so close I can practically taste it. Eugh.”

“Got it,” you reply.

At night time, as the wind flutters through his curtains, he sits on top of his bed fit for a king and curls in on himself. He holds his hands over his ears and trembles with a desperate, trapped anxiety.

“I didn’t kill them,” he mutters to himself, over and over again. “I didn’t kill them, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me--” Slowly, he turns his heads towards you. Your body tenses. He shouldn’t be able to see you. Why is he turning towards here? “--IT WASN’T ME!” He stares at you full on and all of a sudden his voice is morphing, growing deeper, and his mouth is wide open with fangs and saliva.

“I DIDN’T KILL THEM!” He lunges right at you, eyes glowing and body forming into black smoke. You grunt, throwing yourself to the side as the Yoongi-hellhound thing craters the wall with a swipe of its fist.

His words devolve into primal snarls, guttural and low.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” you say, regaining your bearings. There’s a throbbing pain on your side but you pay no attention to it. “Just a little shaken, that’s all.”

The lights dim and flicker again. Yoongi groans and slumps down, sitting himself onto the bathroom floor. To hell with this mission. To hell with figuring out this damn beast. He doesn’t think he’s going to leave the bathroom alive.

“Yoongi?”

Your voice is muffled through the door. “Hello? Are you in there?” You knock on it.

“Mmfph.” He can’t manage much else. His chest feels too tight. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.

“Are you dead?” you laugh. “You’ve been in there for ages.”

Yoongi says nothing.

“Yoongi, if you don’t reply, I’m just going to come in,” you say, knocking again.

He tries to form a reply--he really does. But all he succeeds in is completely falling over, collapsing on his side like a ragdoll. Boneless.

You must’ve heard the thump of his body hitting the floor because the door almost immediately opens, you letting out a surprised gasp.

“Oh my god are you actually dead?”

You pant as you run down the darkened streets, eyes flicking from side to side. Nothing. There’s a throbbing pain on your side and you press your hand to it--only for it to come away bloody.

“Damn,” you mutter. “And the thing got away, too. Where the hell did it go?” You’re unsurprised when you receive no response from Taehyung’s girlfriend. Probably some interference or some shit due to the hellhound; that would definitely explain the fast-changing surroundings and random glitches.

Out of the corner of your eye, you catch sight of a dark shadow moving swiftly against the wall. Without a second thought, you shoot a lance right at it, effectively cratering the stone. Clouds of dust billow from impact. When they clear, the shadow is gone.

And, before you can curse under your breath, the scene changes--again. It must be your injuries, or exhaustion, or whatever, because you immediately collapse from vertigo, mind whirling and limbs feeling numb.

With a grunt, you put a hand to your forehead, trying to grasp onto your surroundings. And when you do, the first thing you realize is that the moon is red.

Blood red.

Red as the moon the night Yoongi turned into a hellhound, which could mean that--

“--lonely! He’s afraid to be lonely!” A wind billows over you and suddenly dark chants from a nearby alleyway catch your ears. You hurry to round an alleyway, stopping short when you come across a small niche, hidden right between two towering, rusted buildings. It looks like you’re in the slums, somewhere in the back alley--

When you finally register what you’re seeing, your heart stops cold. Yoongi, pinned to the ground by a gravity field. Trow goblins, everywhere, screaming and chanting and hooting in a cacophony of noises. You can only watch on as he thrashes under the weight of the world, tears streaming down his face, voice raw and torn with desperation.

There’s a hellhound. Or rather, it is the hellhound, being hauled in. It’s a lot smaller, but the feral look in its eyes, the gleaming sharpness of its teeth--its very snarl haunts you. It looks so feral you keep on thinking it’s the real one, the apparition in his mind. You tense on instinct, forcing your tired limbs to go into action, but none seem any wiser to your presence. It’s a memory. This is where it all started. This is what happened.

You want to look away but you can’t; you tell yourself over and over again that you need to know about his past to understand who he is now, and of all the defining moments in his life, this is probably one of the most prominent. You keep on telling yourself this as he screeches in pain as they begin to chant the sealing ritual, as the hellhound snarls and roars…

But then when the hellhound lunges at you, and now you know that the time for learning and reminiscing is over, and the time once again fight for the future has come. You jump into action against the hellhound: one on one, bright rays of magic and dark, shadow claws, reaching out toward each other.

“Ugh.” Yoongi turns over to his side and groans again. “Ugh.”

“Well, it’s a promising start.” He cracks an eye open and sees Hoseok, leaning against a wall. You and Jimin, hovering over him worriedly. “At least he’s not blacked out anymore.”

“Ugh?” His tongue feels thick. His mind feels like it’s somewhere else. He can’t feel his body. Yoongi wants to form words but at the moment all he can do is grunt like a neantherdal. Absolutely thrilling.

“Progress, not perfection,” Namjoon comments. “How are you feeling? Jin just went out to get some medicine for you. He should be back…soon. Are you sure it was a good idea to send him and Jungkook out? I mean, with the beast and all, a three man cell might have been better…”

Taehyung shrugs. “I think they’ll be fine. They’re pretty strong, after all.”

“‘M fine,” Yoongi finally manages. It’s kind of a lie, since he really isn’t fine, but it’s pretty obvious. He simply says it just to let them know he’s actually capable of human speech. “Wh’ ‘append’?”

“Well, I found you passed out on the bathroom floor, and then we got Jungkook and Tae to drag you over onto the couch. Jin did some diagnosis thing on you, was disappointed you weren’t dead or dying, and went out with Kook to get some meds...as Namjoon just said. How are you feeling though, by the way? We were just planning to go monster hunting and everything too…”

“I’m living,” Yoongi says, feeling his body beginning to function. Slowly. Painfully slowly.

“Well that’s good,” Taehyung says, fiddling with something that looks all too suspiciously like a bomb. “How you feelin’ going out tonight, though? Want us to stay behind and--”

“I don’t need to be babysat,” Yoongi mutters. He gets up and holds a hand to his head, as if trying to keep his mind from spinning. It doesn’t really help, as expected. “Ugh.”

Hoseok chuckles. “Well, if that’s what--” He freezes. “Something’s coming. It’s really large and sinister and--” The walls of the room explode and crumble, debris flying everywhere. Someone’s grabs Yoongi and makes a run for it. Hoseok is probably screaming, but Yoongi can’t hear much past the loud ringing in his ears.

“IT’S THE BEAST!” Taehyung yells, his voice somehow miraculously coming through the loudness of everything crashing and the surprised, fearful sounds of people being attacked. “YOU GUYS GET YOONGI TO SAFETY--HOSEOK AND I WILL HOLD IT OFF!”

Yoongi wants to protest, but he finds that he’s still unable to really move himself to be useful. He feels so...useless. His arms are so heavy, as if they weighed him down, wanting to drag him down into the earth…

...the gravity mage lifts their hands up…

There’s so much noise around him it’s hard to follow. Screams, for the most part. The grunt and screech of failing steel. Stones crumbling. A cacophony of chaos.

...they form a ring around him, chanting, screaming, and hooting…

“Stop it,” Yoongi mumbles, wanting the memories to go away. He thought he was over this, done with being haunted.

“What did you say?” The person carrying him--Namjoon, he realizes--asks.

“He said ‘stop it,’” Jimin supplies. “I think.” A chunk of crumbling debris comes flying at him and, without even flinching, shoots it clean through, completely unbothered nor surprised when it implodes after a brief moment of hesitation. He runs a hand through his hair to brush away the dust.

“I can walk by myself,” Yoongi says, forcing his mind to focus on something else. He shakes his head slightly to get dust from his eyes. “You can let me down now.” He doesn’t mention that Namjoon’s scroll is kind of poking his stomach in an uncomfortable manner.

“Honey,” you say, tone a mix of condescension and desperation, “We need you to do more than just walking. Ya gotta run. And fight. And right now, you’re just mumbling to yourself on Namjoon’s back. Chill a minute, okay?”

“I’m fine,” he grumbles. To prove his point, he shadow flashes off of Namjoon’s back, takes a step forward, and--promptly falls flat on his face. You roll your eyes and drag him up by one arm, hastily shoving him towards Namjoon.

“Right.”

“I’m taking you out.”

You immediately stop walking. Teenage Yoongi continues down the path without you. “What? Why? But--”

“You may be feeling fine right now,” she says, “but in the real world, 8 hours have already passed. You need to eat, and we both need rest.”

“But will we--will we lose any progress or--?”

“I can’t really guarantee anything, but I’ve marked the memory so it’s easier to return to.”

“Well,” you say, watching Yoongi’s back fade fast. “Okay, then.”

It’s pitch black outside the window. Taehyung’s girlfriend looks exhausted as she stiffly gets up from the chair, moving over to draw the blinds. The room is empty. A styrofoam container of half-eaten food sits haphazardly on the edge of the counter, while an unopened container is right next to it, half-hidden through a plastic bag with a crumpled smiley face on it.

“Did the others leave?”

She nods, tired. “It’s 4 AM in the morning, and they all have jobs to get back to. Also, it’s way too crowded in here, so that’s a definite ward violation. Tae dropped by with food earlier.” She nods towards the bags. “Want some tea while we’re at it?”

“Uh,” you say, as she shoves the container unceremoniously towards you. “Sure.” She smiles and discards her gloves, heads out the room. The scent of greasy noodles and ginger sauce perfumes the air. Your stomach growls.

8 hours. You turn to your side and see Yoongi, lying peacefully on the bed next to you. You’re about to lean over to brush a stray hair away from his face when you feel a sudden, sharp, pain. What the fuck…? You try moving again and--can’t. It feels as if your body is on fire, burning down to your bones. It’s a deep aching, straight to the core and you find yourself powerless, exhausted, tired. Your legs feel like dead weight.

“It’s exhaustion.” Taehyung’s girlfriend pushes off from the doorframe. “Happens to everyone. Seems only your lower half and the side where you took a pretty nasty hit from were affected. It’s okay--you’re not actually in pain. It’s just some coping mechanism from the body. Your brain is making it all up.”

“Fantastic,” you say, sounding terribly unthrilled. “Even sealed away, the hellhound still manages to hurt me.” It’s a really sad attempt at a joke but in your defense, you’re tired. Really tired.

She shrugs and walks over to you. “Shit happens. Welcome to my profession. Mind reading isn’t all that it’s cracked out to be. Inner demons can be a real pain in the ass--which is why we don’t try to pull this shit often, if at all.”

You nod, feeling numb. You swallow your noodles without really registering their taste. “You know, I was thinking,” you muse. “That thing inside of him… Can he not fight it himself? I mean, Yoongi seems to be pretty damn capable so…”

She shakes her head and hands you steaming cup of rejuvenative tea. “No, because it is inside of him. Much as you cannot kill your own soul, he cannot rid this new part of his… subconscious. Only others are able to help him in this. That is why, no matter how hard he fights, he will always lose.”

“Oh.”

The room falls into silence as you mindlessly eat away at your food. Taehyung’s girlfriend finishes hers next to you, checks on Yoongi. Her expression doesn’t change. Finally, you finish, take a huge gulp of tea, and set your container and soiled utensils aside.

“I’m going back.” You announce, pausing to look at her. “Are you fine?”

She looks back at you, slightly bewildered. “Yeah, I’m fine but--already? Are you sure you’re ready?”

“More than ever. Plus, the more time I spend out here, the longer that Yoongi is… well, trapped.”

She nods and gently pushes you back, snapping on a pair of gloves shortly after. “Alright, I’m resuming the operation.”

Fully awake and borderline functional, Yoongi leans--heavily--against the sooty concrete wall of the underground tunnel. Breathing. Trying to keep it together when all he wants to do is pass the fuck out. Jimin checks, reloads his guns. You stand to the side, arms crossed. Alert. Namjoon studies the end of the tunnel, jaw clenched.

“What’s wro--”

“Namjoon! Jimin!” Yoongi finally notices it--the shifting silhouette of someone approaching them. Their voice echoes and reverberates inside his head, but he knows it, but he can’t seem to quite put his finger on it...

“Jungkook? That you?” Jimin still doesn’t let down with his guns, however. “What did you see last Tuesday?”

“A pink elephant,” says Jungkook, completing the code phrase and jogging from the shadows. Jimin relaxes. “Jin and I got attacked on the way to the pharmacy--we managed to escape the damned thing, and were just about to send a signal before, well, this happened.”

You nod. “Where’s Jin, then?”

“Up ground, providing backup. We need to split up--the civilians are running around in total chaos up there.”

“What about the beast? What’s its status?” Yoongi prods. Jungkook shakes his head. He doesn’t know.

“Last time I saw, Hoseok, Jin, and Tae were holding it off, but the thing kept on changing forms and shit, just like you said… Anyways, ideas, Joon? You’re the strategist, after all.”

Namjoon presses his lips in a tighter, thinner line. “________, how are you feeling?”

“Fine. Little bit breathless from the running, if that counts as anything.”

“Alright,” he nods. “Okay, so I want you and Jungkook to go up to help with evac--your scouts are going to be critical to this mission. Make sure you leave not a single crevice unturned; someone may be trapped under debris. And Jeon, your heightened senses will also be useful as well. Try to avoid conflict--the civilians are priority for you two.”

“Got it.” You nod. Right as you leave, Yoongi notices you pause, shoot him a worried look. He finds himself hating it. It already hurts enough to see you go and leave him, but that look...god he wish he could wipe it off your face. Let you know that he’s fine. That there’s no reason to worry and hurt over him anymore. Instead, he remains passive.

“You’ll fine, right?”

Yoongi grunts. “Yeah. I’ve got two kids babysitting me, after all.”

“Hey--”

Jimin’s complaint is cut off by your laughter, light and breathless. “Well, I’ll see you later then.”

And with that, you and Jungkook are gone, running off into the shadows of the tunnel. Namjoon turns to him, Jimin offers a shoulder for Yoongi to sling an arm over. He declines.

“Okay, so our job is to get you to safety,” Namjoon informs, as if that much wasn’t already obvious.

“I don’t need two people--”

“Yoongi,” Jimin cuts in, running hand through his tousled hair. “It’s not just you. All of us had agreed--while you were passed the fuck out, mind you--that the thing out there is somehow connected to you. It’s like it’s trying to seek you out, or whatever.”

“What do you mea--”

“I’d like to get a move on, now,” Namjoon says. He grabs Yoongi roughly on the arm, practically dragging him down the tunnel. “If I remember correctly, this used to be an old subway track…”

As Namjoon drones on, Jimin narrows his eyes at Yoongi, a silent warning to just shut up and go along with it because it’s for your sake, dammit. Yoongi simply glares back defiantly. On the bright side, he supposes, at least he’s finally managed to walk/run properly without needing to worry about not falling on his face.

“...careful to not get run over by--LOOK OUT!”

Namjoon’s warning comes too late, however, as the tunnel ceiling spontaneously bursts open, blocks of concrete and dust flying everywhere. Yoongi just barely manages to whip out a blade, slicing a chunk in two right before it can crush his skull. The smoke and debris have just barely settled before a shadowy, fast-moving shape snarls and pounces towards him.

Without even a second thought, Yoongi shadow flashes away, vaguely aware of Namjoon’s shouts and the explosive bangs of Jimin’s gunshots. The beast snarls and jumps towards him again, Namjoon yells something again, Jimin dives to the side and then a wall of glowing runes shoot out of nowhere, blocking the thing’s advance.

“YOONGI, RUN!”

Yoongi wants to protest, yell back that he’s not some coward, but he knows why they’re so desperate to protect him. Even though he feels much better, he’s in no condition to fight. With him so close to the danger and on the verge of insanity, he’d only be dragging Namjoon and Jimin down rather than helping… He grits his teeth.

“HURRY UP YOU ASS!” Namjoon’s perspiring, hard. “I CAN’T HOLD ON FOR MUCH LONGER!”

With one last spiteful glare, Yoongi turns, and runs. He doesn’t even know where the hell he’s going, if it’s the right way, or where the exit is. All he knows is that he’s running away from all his problems just as he’s always done and the voice inside his head is railing against the confines of his mind, yelling at him to go face it. The more rational side of him reminds Yoongi of his exhausted body, the fact that he’s only been running for two minutes and already his lungs are burning.

A wretched, twisted screech echoes from behind him, and Yoongi wills himself to not think about it, don’t think about it, they’re fine, they’ve been through worse, we’ve all been through worse… He takes a turn, mindless, on autopilot. The tunnel is narrower, dimly lit. He doesn’t think this is the right way but it’s too late and there’s no turning back--or so he tells himself.

There’s another shudder from the ground--or was it from above? He doesn’t know anymore. Yoongi pauses, stops to catch his breath--gosh he’s panting so hard--and, to his horror, notices that the shadows of the tunnel aren’t just shadows anymore. They’re turning into beady-eyed, nightmarish creatures, hissing and growling.

“What the fuck are you guys, and what the fuck is happening?”

In response, they fly right at him. Sadly, it was more or less of the response he was expecting--it seems that many things have been preferring actions over words today.

He fights them, slashing endlessly at the shadows--because that’s what they are, right? He has no idea anymore. A part of him is beginning to believe that none of them actually exist, and that this is just some sick hallucination… but who cast the hallucination? Yoongi realizes that he doesn’t quite want to know--the illusion casters are always the craziest, he’s learned--and continues to battle the creatures of darkness.

They disappear, one by one, slash by slash, melding back into the shadows as Yoongi wills himself ever forward.

Through fighting the hellhound, you also learn a lot about Yoongi. You learn about the way he looks when he smiles, that he often turns his head to the side or looks down to conceal his grins. He never laughs anymore because he’s constantly haunted, but he tries, really tries, when he’s alone and feels that there’s so much more to live for.

He and Jimin and Hoseok have known each other for a long time; the duo would scheme and play and always make sure to drag a disgruntled Yoongi along. He meets the others through some way or another, either from interactions during missions or run-ins on the way to the mental ward.

You learn he always has a bored look on his face when others speak to him because he wants them to think he doesn’t care when he really actually does. He’s kind and caring and after every supplementary lesson or mission debrief he’s sure to push in the chairs just to make sure others don’t trip and fall. He wanted to take a mission far away not only to conceal his secret but also protect the ones he loves.

“Yoongi,” you say, watching him pour syrup over his pancakes. “You’re so much more than the monster you think you are.”

He doesn’t hear you, of course. He continues to tend to his pancakes, cutting them into small pieces and stuffing them in his mouth. Your stomach clenches and you feel a strong wave of nostalgia and longing wash over you; how you would kill--literally--to return to those days again. In which mornings meant going down to get breakfast and not a visit to the hospital to check on his comatose body.

From the wall, the hellhound emerges and snarls. Your fingers twitch. You continue to look at Yoongi. He looks so calm and collected. Healthy. His cheeks are not sunken, his features are not gaunt. His pale face is pristine and not littered with cuts and bruises.

As the hellhound rushes at you, eyes trained on your beating heart, you resolve to bring him back.

Yoongi…

I’m coming for you.

Yoongi whirls around, eyes wide.

I’m coming for you.

“________?” He says, testily. He edges along the narrow corridor, not really sure what he just heard. It was your voice, no doubt, but he was pretty sure you were on the upper levels, working with Jungkook to help out the citizens. Or were you with Hoseok? Yoongi groans. God, it hurts so much: his arm, his side, his brain. He’s almost certain he’s cracked a few ribs--if not broken one--ruptured an organ or something, and did something to his right arm.

There’s no answer to his call and he isn’t surprised; considering the fact that he’s lost all contact with his friends for who knows how long, he’s pretty much resigned to the idea that they’ve all disappeared. He’s experienced much stranger.

Another shadow-thing lunges at him--how many has it been? How far has he made it? Is this even the right way? There are too many questions, and no answers. With a tired swing of his good arm, Yoongi manages to dispel the beast, takes a step forward, and watches the world spin.

It wavers and blurs and turns upside down… He lands on the ground with a thud. Black, black, the world is fading to black, and the only thing that comes to mind is silent gratitude that at least it isn’t red...

As usual, you have no idea where you are. But unlike usual, you can’t find Yoongi.

“What the hell?”

Obviously, it doesn’t make sense. You can’t just exist in a memory that he doesn’t seem to have, and yet you are. Standing, confused, on the sidewalk of an eerie, peculiar city. A shudder runs through the ground, something big and loud crumbles in the distance. Commotion and chaos. Eyes wide, you turn towards the source, seeing only smoke and dust rising from an area blocks away.

“Well,” the mind reader cuts in. “Who knew that following the damned thing would lead us straight into his subconscious of all places.”

You furrow your brow, break into a run. You can clearly hear the screams of the anguished, now. “What do you mean? Weren’t we always in his subconscious…?”

“Yeah but like we’ve been in his memories,” she explains. You’re two blocks away. More crumbling, more chaos. Anxious, you charm yourself to run faster. “This is like, his subconscious subconscious. Like, you know, where the mind and soul exist.”

“Um, sure.” You’re pretty sure her words would make more sense if you could actually register them and concentrate on something other than dying civilians, demonic hellhounds, and Yoongi’s safety.

“Like, you know. You know how you’re always talking in your head? Or like, when you’re thinking of all these random situations, and daydreaming? This is where it happens. All the background stuff happens elsewhere.”

“Oh,” you reply, after a pause. “So what does that mean? For me? For him?”

“It means you better find him before the hellhound does.”

“What?”

“If the hellhound gets him right here, then it’s game over. The beast wins. Takes over the mind.” A shudder racks your body.

No fucking pressure.

“Uh,” you say. “Do you know where he is? This place is friggin’ huge.”

“I’m trying,” she tells you. “He feels so faint, though… It’s barely enough to tell me he’s alive. He may be unconscious, but…”

“But what?” You’re in the middle of the chaos right now, but whenever you try to step towards a person, they disappear. Step back. They’re back again, screaming and bleeding out on the pavement. You chalk it up to “weird mind things.”

“The hellhound’s presence is really strong. It’s making it hard to sense him.”

“So,” you say, “where’s the hellhound then? If I just eliminate it before it gets to Yoongi--”

“Under you.”

“Huh?” She doesn’t reply, so you decide to take her directions literally. You hope you’re not making a mistake--especially as you concentrate all your power into a dense ball of energy and beam it straight into the ground… you try to control your shriek as you fall into the wide opening, rocks and dust and darkness everywhere.

You twist and turn and land harshly on your feet. Your ankle doesn’t feel right. It’s probably just sprained--manageable. Inside the tunnel--or whatever it actually is--water and slime run silently down the curved walls. Soot lines streak across the concrete. It’s filthy and smells like mold.

“So,” you say, straightening up, dusting off your clothes. “Where is it now?”

No response.

Fan-fucking-tastic. With a grunt of resignation, a pause, and a nod of your head, you summon forth a scout. Two would be ideal, but unfortunately you’re a bit low on power… And you need to save some for your inevitable clash with the hellhound. For like, the fifth time. By now you’ve got a good idea of its attack patterns--but even that knowledge doesn’t quite mitigate its destructive power.

After a moment’s contemplation, you decide to send the scout into a dark and narrow corridor--like hell you’re going in there alone--and decide to walk down the main tunnel. You search and scheme at the same time. Strategize, lay out your plans. When the thing rears its ugly head, it’s going to pounce and then shapeshift. Or shapeshift and then pounce. Counter by aiming for its exposed neck. If it dodges--which is probably will--then get back. Prepare for next advance.

Light from above shines into your eyes. You blink rapidly...wait. Light. It’s a dark tunnel, so why--oh. You tilt your head up and are met with yet another hole, from which the early morning sky peeks through. The red rays of the sun just barely make it in.

If there’s a hole… You frown. There is no debris. No chunks of concrete. It’s as if someone completely vaporized a hole right into the tunnel… except there are fissures across the ceiling tell of a forced impact…

A soft tinkling noise momentarily pulls Yoongi from his stupor. He cracks open an eye and sees--a fairy.

What.

The fairy makes a tinkling noise and doesn’t disappear. He’s done it. He’s gone and crossed the line separating the sane and insane. He’s delirious. Why the fuck is there a fairy here? The thing flutters its sparkly, bright wings. Yoongi blinks. It’s gone.

Yeah, he decides, as his eyes flutter closed. Absolutely delirious.

Your scout has found Yoongi, which is good. But that also means the hellhound has also-probably-almost found Yoongi--considering you were told it was supposedly down here--which is, of course, bad.

You curse under your breath at your slowed pace, how the annoying pain in your ankle won’t stop and how the speed charm is starting to wear off. Anxiety gnaws at your stomach as the seconds tick by--will you make it in time? Where is the hellhound? Are you--?

“Are we almost there?” you ask. The scout tinkles. “Almost? You mean we’re almost-almost there?” Another tinkle. Yes. You roll your eyes. The fae always did have a peculiar way of saying things… You push onwards, squinting your eyes in the growing darkness of the corridor.

“How was he? Is he okay? What was he doin--”

You choke on your own words when you feel a ripping pain on your leg, stumbling forward. Blood is gushing from the cut but you haven’t the time to think about it, not when the shadows are turning on you, merging together into a conglomerate mass…

The hellhound makes a terrifying noise that’s a cross between a horrific screech and a guttural growl, its eyes unfocused and searching for a point past you. As it makes to charge you over, you retaliate by shooting open one of its paws.

As it howls, you turn to the scout. “Yoongi--he’s just past me, isn’t he?” It nods. And that’s all the confirmation you need to face the damned thing full on.

“It’s just us two,” you say, lowly, leaning heavily on your good leg. “And we’re going to settle all of this now.”

Light fades. All there is the darkness of the corridor--so dark that even fairy dust seems dull and faded. Blood and rubble, concrete smashed into a million pieces, decorate the inside. Smoke perfumes the air.

It takes everything inside you to not collapse; you plaster yourself to the wall in an effort to keep yourself upright, trying to remember what the consequences of dying in someone’s subconscious would be. Alarmed, the scout tries in vain to help. It tinkles frantically.

“Take me…,” you say, gasping, heaving, “Take me to him...we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta go. Home. Gotta go home, together.”

Solemnly, it guides you, pastel wings glowing bright in the darkness of the underground.

Yoongi. Yoongi.

He opens his eyes and sees you, hovering over him, which is weird because he could’ve sworn you’d disappeared just like all the others… His day just kept on getting weirder and weirder, didn’t it? Speaking of which, today seems to have gone on forever...would it ever end? Or maybe, just maybe, is this the end?

“Yoongi,” you call again, shaking him. He blinks languidly, dazedly up at you. A million questions swim through his mind but he hasn’t the energy to even begin to speak--hell, even breathing is becoming a labor-intensive activity.

“Yoongi, answer me,” you prod. Numbly he feels you try to pick him up, carefully handling his wounded body. He coughs lightly in response, trying to find his voice.

“Are you okay?” you try. Then, under your breath, you berate yourself. “No, no, of course you aren’t, otherwise you’d be snarking my ass.”

He reaches out to tug on your arm, just to make sure you’re real and he isn’t suffering any delusions. You look up at him, slightly surprised, at the contact. He stares at his hands, the fingertips that graze ever-so-slightly against your skin.

“________?” His voice is a hoarse, dry, cracked excuse of what it once was, but it still gets the message across. Your face softens, expression going from serious to--to relieved, or something.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

He furrows his brows, feeling himself become less numb, limbs thawing out by the second. “W-Why are you here?”

You smile. “I’m here to take you home.”

“Home?”

“Yes,” you say, your voice sounding increasingly distant. His vision is blurring. He feels himself drifting off and he can’t hold on any longer…

We’re going back home together, Yoongi.

UPDATE TAG LIST: @babydanixox

a/n: hi i would just like to say that: if anyone can find a cure to the endless amount of salt i have that would be greatly appreciated

also sorry this took so long. almost done...

#btswriters #networkbangtan #yoongi scenarios #bts scenarios #yoongi #bts #yoongi scenario #bts scenario #bts fanfiction #writing #the fires within #action #runeterra au #hellhound au #s: and the scariest part was WE was YOU and YOU turned into SKELETON and WROTE THIS STORY

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