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yourlocalshittywriter · 3 years

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The Duty of a Hero

Author’s Note: Howdy folks! I’m here with my first proper fic and I really hope that y’all like it! This will be exploring what could’ve happened if the Dabi that Aizawa fought wasn’t one of Twice’s clones. Since this is a fight, I advise the folks that are sensitive to things like that to click off and read another fic. Also, since this story does change scenery and moods a bit, I included some songs that change along with the the stories mood! This is mainly just because I like showing off my music taste and shit. Here’s Part 2!

Songs to Go Along: The Fighter by In This Moment, Acid Bubble by Alice In Chains, The Great Gig In The Sky by Pink Floyd

I felt extremely at peace for once in life. I felt the normal crackling of my joints silence into a warm nothingness. My aching muscles that had been torn to shreds time and time again, the ones that had been strained and stretched beyond the limits of the human body seemed to reform perfectly as they melted into the rest of my numb form. My skin, a forest of calluses, scars, stitches, and open wounds felt as if it was no longer there. I was no longer confined to the space of my body, and instead moved around as freely as water or air. I was a sort of goo, unmoving, stationary, simple, yet free.

With a quirk as self-destructive as mine, becoming a hero was a sort of death wish. My quirk was known as “pain transfer.” Anytime I made eye contact with a person, I could activate my quirk and subject myself to pain only to have them suffer the pain of the injury for as long as I was looking at them. I could also transfer existing pain to my target. Although I may have had a wicked high pain tolerance and quick recovery period, my humanity was bound to catch up to me eventually. Quirks like mine, “villainous quirks” according to most people, should be kept hidden and the people born with them should go on to live normal lives as ordinary civilians. My parents were among these people. When I told them that I was enrolling in the hero course at UA, I was given the choice to either become a hero and be disowned, or ditch my pipe dream and stay their beloved child. I packed my things that night.

It was a miracle that I passed the entrance exam the next day. I was running on little sleep, the loss of my financial support, and the trauma that came with the realization that your parents didn’t love you anymore because you didn’t live in a way that they approved of. I had trained since my will to become a hero first arrived, a sort of passionate drive that crashed into my life so unexpectedly that the impact nearly gave me whiplash.

I supposed that that inferno of, what? Spite? No, not spite, something deeper, hotter, and more righteous than spite. Let’s say ardor. This ardor was what drove me to take out as many robots as I could, despite the fact that my quirk was utterly useless in this situation. I took out a decent amount of robots, at least, decent enough to get into the hero course. A lady by the name of Recovery Girl healed me before I went on my way. I thought that I just had a few scrapes and bruises, but apparently I had a broken wrist. Surprisingly, I wasn’t the worst-off there, some poor kid broke both of his arms and one of his legs.

The time between this moment and when I got into UA seems to have flown by. I came into UA, a semi-blank canvas, and now here I was, bleeding out on the campsite that I planned to spend my summer at with my classmates. Dying feels far less painful than one would assume; you really don’t even realize that you’re dying at first. It’s sort of like that feeling you get after eating a warm meal after starving for so long, sickening at first, but comforting after you grow used to it. It’s like taking a hot bath after spending a day in the snow; it burns at first, but the burning subsides into a comforting numbness. Your senses slowly dull into nothingness but your brain is left to conjure whatever image it pleases. I could have seen dead relatives, met idols, or even pictured an alternate life where my parents still loved me, but I didn’t.

I didn’t want it. Fame, fortune, admiration, acceptance, rebirth, none of it. I wanted none of it. I wanted to live. I wanted to do what I swore to do as soon as I got into UA. I wanted what I signed up for when I packed my bags and left my parents’ house at age fourteen. I wanted what I fought tooth and nail for. I wanted my ambitions and goals fulfilled.

Of course I wanted what I had worked for, that was beyond obvious, however, I also wanted the small things in life. I wanted my afternoon tea with Yaoyorozu, Sato, and Todoroki. I wanted my fashion shows with Aoyama, Ashido, and Hagakure. I wanted my midnight conversations with Shinsou and Tokoyami. I wanted my video game sessions with Kaminari and Sero. I wanted my morning meditation meetings with Shoji, Ojiro, and Koda. I wanted to watch pro-wrestling with Bakugou and Kirishima. I wanted to train with Iida, Uraraka, and Midoriya. I wanted to swim with Asui. I wanted to listen to music with Jiro and Mr. Present Mic. I wanted inappropriate jokes with Ms. Midnight. I wanted to make Mr. Aizawa proud; I wanted to make myself proud. So, with so many incredible things to live for, I opened my eyes, and attempted to move.

Much to my distaste, it turns out that my relief from pain, as well as the disassociation from my body was nothing more than a thin veil that was easily permeated as I rose from near death. The forest was nothing more than a verdant blur, one that was far from easy to navigate. However, all things end eventually, so I decided to run from death and wherever I ended up would be the least of my worries. I sprinted through the disorder and dysfunction, and wound up walking in on my teacher fighting the son of a bitch who had left me to die a lonely death with only the company of insects and whatever plants were to take over my wilting corpse.

As Mr. Aizawa tackled the cremation villain, I rose from the forest, stared at the man in restraints, and activated my quirk. As the pain transferred from me to him, I felt the veil of insensibility slip over me once more. The villain howled out in agony, the very agony that he had inflicted on me only minutes before.

“Whatever you do, don’t break your gaze Eraserhead!” I chimed as I finally straightened my form, not wanting the hero to see me in such a state, “You’ll just have to trust me on this one!” Mr. Aizawa nodded, keeping a steady gaze on his target.

“Tried to kill me off?” I snarled as I made my way towards the sadistic bastard and beloved teacher holding him in place.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” the captive growled through gritted teeth, still under an amount of pain that would knock-out any average human. He looked beyond pissed that I survived, as if he took offense to the fact that I didn’t appreciate his work. I waltzed over to him, just far enough from Mr. Aizawa, but just close enough to the charred villain.

“Surprise, I remain,” I cooed, low enough for only the villain to hear. He bared his teeth at me, looking at me as if he were some sort of rabid animal. I wanted to taunt him. I wanted to make fun of the fact that he had been taken down by a high schooler and their teacher, but I knew that it was never good to brag, because Karma would usually come to bite you in the ass for it.

I stared at the man covered in staples, every blink I took releasing him from the effects of my quirk. Every blink motivated me to continue staring at him, to immobilize him so Mr. Aizawa could use his eye drops or blink, to buy him some time. However, I knew that this game of “pass the villain” could only go on for so long. Something had to be done. Eventually, the patchwork villain would catch both of us off guard and use his quirk, or one of his buddies would come and back him up. Mr. Aizawa and I were miles away from my peers or the rest of the pro-heroes. It was just the two of us up against this villain, and we were growing tired.

Only minutes after the realization had struck me, the villain escaped from Mr. Aizawa’s scarf when the two of us accidentally blinked at the same time. The human crematorium stood before us, and before I could use my quirk to disable him, he shot out a flurry of blue flames my way.

I dodged this attack as Mr. Aizawa ran towards the villain, yelling out the name “Dabi.” Before Mr. Aizawa was able to restrain him, Dabi grabbed the erasure hero and threw him headfirst into a brick wall, effectively knocking him out. I desperately wanted to check on my partner in battle, but I knew that I couldn’t let my guard down, because now Dabi was staring me directly in the eye.

I could attempt to charge at him, but I would be charred to bits, and even if I somehow managed to avoid his flames, I would meet the same fate as Eraserhead, knocked out and at Dabi’s mercy. I was screwed, I had no back up, my teacher was unconscious, and I was face to face with one of Japan’s most notorious criminals. I was dead meat.

That was until I devised a plan, one that would take out the cremation villain for good. One that would end his reign of terror once and for all. However, there was only one downside to this plan, and that was the fact that this plan would result in two casualties, Dabi and me. However, if I went with any other plan, Mr. Aizawa and I were to become the victims while Dabi walked off scot free.

I was destined to become a martyr.

With that realization, I turned to my teacher who was slowly coming to his senses and gave him a gentle smile,

“Eraserhead, it has truly been a pleasure,” I announced as Dabi’s arrogant gaze turned to one of confusion. As Mr. Aizawa slowly faded back into his previously comatose state before he had time to be confused, I focused my gaze back on the blue-flamed bastard. It was time to end it, to end his rule once and for all.

I reached into my pocket, grabbed a tiny weapon that fit perfectly in my hand, locked eyes with the villain, smirked, and painlessly slit my neck. As Dabi grasped his neck and choked on his unseen blood, which was truly my blood, he fell to his knees.

As I took what I knew were my last steps, I came face to face with the first half to my murder-suicide. He glared at me, an amalgam of agony that felt nothing at all, and snarled.

“I’ll see you in hell, you cunt.”

I laughed, of all the things he could’ve chosen to be his final words, he chose to give into the childish desire to have the last word with me. As his oddly-familiar eyes drained of life, I felt the pain I had so carelessly inflicted upon myself finally hit me like a freight train.

I began to choke as I fell to my knees, similarly to how Dabi had fallen only seconds before. I knew that my time was up soon, I would succumb to my injuries and lose the thing I had fought tooth and nail for only moments before. I looked to the horizon to find the sun casting his loving gaze upon my battered body. It was as if Apollo himself was granting me a warrior’s death, like he knew I had made some kind of a righteous sacrifice that warranted a soothing transition from death to afterlife.

The sunrise was something like I had never seen before. The blues burned brighter than the flames I had defeated minutes before, the yellow pooled around my weary being like an evening gown to a death dance, and the red painted a comforting scene in the clouds, as if to distract me from my own red that painted my body and the ground around me. I smiled my final smile as I walked into the loving embrace of the sun.

My duty as a hero had been fulfilled.

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burnedbyshoto · 4 years

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quirk mastery

— In which Mirio gets his quirk back and he’s desperate to show you just how well he’s remastered permeation.

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pairing: togata mirio x fem!reader

warnings: 18+, smut, cursing, pwp-ish, semi-public sex, clothed sex, anal, size difference, finger sucking, fingering

word count: 4,021

a/n: day three of kinktober and here we be!!! this was based on the concept of mirio being the perfect candidate for have clothed penetrative sex LMAOOO. make sure to comment (even if its a simple emoji) on any fics you like, authors super appreciate it.

main kink: anal

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To be quite honest, you never thought Mirio was going to get his quirk back.

You remember when it happened in high school.

The cold fall morning as you had woken up earlier than usual for a school day, deciding that maybe you should get a cup of tea given that it had been cold and something just felt off.

Nearly three years ago, when you had arrived through the doors of UA as a hero student, you had taken your seat in class 1-B, and almost immediately, your class became your family. Everyone was so talented, lively, and brimming with their own excitement of being here, but one person always just seemed to be brighter than the rest.

His smile captivated the first moment he looked at you, his blue eyes so precise and accurate you knew immediately he was someone to trust.

His name was Togata Mirio, and true to his sunshine hair, his own sunshine personality allowed the entire class to address him by his first name within hours of meeting him. It was no surprise that you felt your heart skip a beat when he placed a strong arm around your shoulder later in the year because you had fallen for your classmate.

As a third-year, you still harbored deep feelings for your classmate and now best friend. But you knew better than to enact on them at the moment. You were busy with your hero work, and his latest work-study with the former All Might’s sidekick kept him busy nearly every day.

He would still be there once you graduated, you always liked to remind yourself. But as energetic as Mirio was, he definitely was not an early riser. So it shocked you that as you reached the dorm's kitchen area, he was standing there quiet and fully dressed in his school uniform. His eyes were concentrated on his phone, and his face was serious, for a moment, the off feeling you had seemed to make sense as you stared at his solemn face.

“Mirio?” you had called out, suddenly feeling a bit underdressed in your pajamas, and you held onto your elbow as you stared at your flirt of a classmate. “You okay? We still have an hour and a half before classes start.”

It seemed that he had not even heard you enter the room based on how he startled just the bit before turning his gaze towards you.

Blue eyes murky with regret and guilt. You hated that they weren't clear, and you always hoped they would be cleared soon.

“I’ve got my work-study today,” Mirio answers with a soft smile that doesn’t clear his eyes. “Something came up, so I'll be gone for the morning. We’ll probably be back before classes end today.”

You nod your head, already knowing who belonged within that we.

“Are you doing okay? You’ve been looking a bit… uh, worse for wear, and I don’t want you getting hurt because you’re distracted by other things,” you admit, venturing further into the kitchen so that you leaned against the opposite side of the counter of where Mirio stood.

The smile on his face grows just a bit, a small spark dazzling in his clear blue eyes before he shakes his head good-naturally.

“You admitting you care about me?”

“Have I ever denied it?”

Mirio laughs softly, his hand rubbing the back of his neck before a heavy sigh passes his lips, “I guess not.”

You keep the frown off your face at those words, his inability to flirt back slightly concerning, but you stop before you can frown. By the front door of the dorms is none other than Tamaki and Nejire from class 1-A, two other close friends of yours, and equally involved in this case of theirs that they all refuse to tell you about. Guess that’s what happens when you join Edgeshot’s agency.

Mirio follows your gaze and motions to your friends that he’ll be joining them in just a moment before he turns back to you.

“Well, looks like it’s time,” Mirio speaks with finality, his shoulders as stiff as his smile, and your heart aches just the slightest bit.

“Be careful, Mirio,” you say firmly, your eyes locked on his that have become emotionless. That pit in your stomach is unignorable as you speak up on your concerns. “I know you’re strong, but please be careful.”

Mirio stills for a moment before he nods, and he walks around the counter. His arms stretching out, pulling you into a tight hug that you more than willingly return. It seems like the two of you stand there hugging each other for centuries before Mirio makes a soft noise in an unwilling attempt to tell you to let go.

“I know, I know,” you sigh, pulling away, your eyes meeting his for the millionth time. “You’ve To-gata go now.”

And for the first time in weeks, his blue eyes clear up, and a proper genuine laugh breaks through his lips as he shakes his head, already walking away.

“You’re pretty amazing, y/n-chan!” he shouts as he opens the front door, and you can hear Nejire calling her hellos to you. “I’ll be back before you can even blink!”

“You better!” you call out, waving at your three friends who bunch up and walk off.

As you watch their retreating backs, the pit in your stomach remains as you whisper softly: please.

It’s within twenty-four hours that you find out the case they were working, and you feel sick when Mirio doesn’t return, confirming to you that he was the one to have lost his quirk that day. When Mirio returns two days later, it’s not with good news as he admits to you that he’ll be leaving UA now that his quirk is gone.

His eyes are clear again, not at all like he was two days ago as the two of you seem to only be talking to one another within the crowd of both class 3-A and 3-B. It’s later once everyone is gone that he admits that a young girl who was responsible for his quirks erasure could potentially bring it back, but it’s unknown at the moment.

You remember holding his cheeks and promised him that even if it doesn’t come back, he would always be a hero who, in the end, did what he set out to do, saving a million people. It was almost shocking to you as you watched for the first time since his teacher died in front of him, Mirio crying yet again, his face buried into the crook of your neck.

But that was five years ago.

Five long years of being a Pro Hero in a society that no longer looked the same.

Three years of finally being able to call Mirio your boyfriend.

One year of organizing the current hero gala, the two of you are attending right now.

One month of Mirio finally regaining his quirk.

In a heavily watched attempt, Eri-chan, who had been able to figure out a way to train her quirk. It was all due to the help of a young yet brilliant support engineer, Hatsumi Mei, without having to interact with real soul-having things. It took almost ten hours, but the young girl was both resilient and determined as you watched as she sat with her fingers pressed to Mirio’s cheeks and a warm yellow glow surrounded her.

The shriek that ripped through you when Mirio suddenly fell through the floor, your initial fear of Eri completely rewinding him from existence flaring in your chest, and undoubtedly hers as she gasped in horror. You watched his clothes dropping from where he once sat, and then you could hear the familiar, distant sound of Mirio being rejected by matter, and you bolted at Eri. It was a frantic team effort response to make sure Eri would not see him in his naked glory when he resurfaced, and that memory still sent you in a round of uproarious laughter.

But a Heroes Gala was something that was occurring recently, and it wasn’t quite what it had once been before. Pro Heroes were not recognized within these events; instead, the common man was, and more importantly, helping those deemed as outcasts within society. With the reign of AFO gone, and the destruction of what the heroism did to society, it had been a weird shift in energy, but a needed one.

Pro Heroes Deku and Ground Zero being the trailblazers on that front, pushing to look at the reasons the world deemed villains as so, and doing their best to fix it at the source.

It definitely wasn’t perfect, far from it actually, but these galas helped to keep energies high on many different fronts.

Speaking of high energy, if your face was able to emit heat energy similar to that of a sun, right now, you would be a supernova.

Located in some hallway in the back of the event, you sat on a marble table. Your legs somehow wrapped around Mirio’s waist, arms thrown around his neck, pressing his gliding lips even closer to you as he enthusiastically, carefully, and completely dominated your lips. To the rest of the world, it just seemed like the two of you were simply indulging into your horny twenty-three-year-old needs. There was nothing conspicuous about what you both were doing, not if your clothed states had anything to say about it.

But that was just the thing.

Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, the large, voluminous skirt of your evening gown easily covered Mirio’s powerful, thrusting hips, blanketing his ulterior motives with fabric from the rare eye that managed to come and look at the both of you.

Maybe if they had x-ray vision, they would know the truth; they could see it too.

For not even five minutes ago, you had teasingly whispered just how hot Mirio looked in his get-up. Your teeth nibbling on his earlobe about how excited you were that when you two would inevitably get home, his clothes would be gone in a matter of seconds. It seemed that your boyfriend wanted to jump the gun and just show you what both of you had been missing these past three years.

You could barely keep up with his quick, long strides. Your heels caught onto the length of your gown multiple times until he had brought you into this hallway and picked you up without so much of a grunt and planted your bottom on the exceptionally sturdy table. It still hadn’t hit you just what he had intended to do when his lips crashed against yours, and the world exploded into white static as he kissed you, consuming your mouth with every fiber of his being.

A gentle moan left your mouth when his tongue entered your mouth, but the prominent, hard bulge pressing between you and the many, many layers of fabric made you yelp. You pulled away from his lips, your eyes, wide, impossibly frantic.

“Togata Mirio!” you hissed in shock, your hand slapping across your mouth as you simply stared at your lover who was smiling at you brightly.

The smile and the clear blue of his eyes let nothing indicate just how fucking hard he was and how much he craved your cunt around his cock just as you had teased him about earlier.

“What is it, sunflower?” Mirio asks, brushing a loose strand of hair out of your face. Your spine stiffens up as he leans in close, his mouth pressing against yours for a small, seemingly chaste kiss before he presses the corner of his mouth to your ear. “I think I’m having some issues with my quirk control, and I think this is the perfect way to practice the uh… fine-tuning of my quirk. Right?”

“Mirio…” you warn as he softly begins to grind against you, his large hand shifting from your shoulder blades down to your lower back. The pressure of his hand provided such numbing heat to blaze through your core, and it only added to the feeling of his cock against your slowly seeping cunt.

“Dontcha want to help me practice?” Mirio asks, his teeth biting onto your earlobe, and a wanton moan reverberates from your chest at the feeling. “Help me master my quirk again?”

You’re not sure what makes you cave, what makes you say fuck it under your breathe. It could have been the heat of his breath on your ear, the way he kissed down your jaw, the clear blue of his eyes glazing over darkly with lust, and maybe it was the way you could manage to feel his cock through the miles of fabric between the two of you. It didn’t matter now anyway, it couldn’t because you turned towards his face, your lips desperately seeking his, and thankfully Mirio met you there immediately.

Hot desperate mouths clashing together, tongues meeting in the middle, and you could feel his hands shoving you towards him until there was no space between your meeting hips if you ignored the dress and his pants.

Your hazed over mind chanted to be ready for anything, to be prepared for the feeling of his cock against your already soaked cunt, and to not be surprised. Nevertheless, when you felt the hot, heavy, and stupidly thick head of Mirio’s cock pressing between your desperately needy folds, going against all of your brain's logic of how this shouldn’t be possible with your panties still on.

“M-Mirio!” you cried, head knocked back at the feeling of his cock pressing through your tight, clenching hole. His cock thick, veiny, and hot, even in your inner walls as he kisses you. You couldn’t focus on him, your mouth agape and lax, his lips pressing against your teeth, tongue curling on the roof of your tongue, and you wantonly moaned as he shifted outwards and slammed right back into you.

For the past three minutes, the two of you had begun this desperate, needy, over your clothes public fuck. Your hands feeling so small, pressed onto his back. Your mouth biting into his neck as he slammed into you over and over again.

The heat in your stomach was throbbing, the soft thrumming of your orgasm about to tip as Mirio claimed you like this.

“So cute like this, baby,” he laughed as if his cock wasn’t stretching you out despite all your clothes still being on. You felt his cock head press up against your cervix, and a loud pathetic whine stumbled out of your lips. “Did you like that? Finally, got to that little spot you like despite this angle?”

He hit it again, and your eyes rolled to the back of your head, all noises that so desperately wanted to be heard getting cut off.

“Look at you! You’re so cute like this, sunflower! You can’t even look at me, and you’re babbling! I think I’m doing great… job… at this, fuck, quirk control…”

Your eyes flutter shut, a gasping, needy breath expelling into his mouth as he kisses you greedily, and the heat grows exponentially when his hand permeates through your dress to pinch and pull at your clit. You’re so close, so deliriously near that, you begin to seize up, your walls fluttering with the actions that you know mean that you’re about to nosedive off a cliff into orgasmic bliss.

But there were always issues with having sex in public with a man who could not shut up.

“Togata-senpai, Y/l/n-senpai!” A voice yells at the two of you. Even with the thrumming warmth of your pre-orgasm, the voice washes coldly over you. Rippling the start of orgasmic bliss right from beneath your feet as you snap your head away from Mirio.

A loud, choked gasp escapes you when for a split second, his cock disappears from your clenching, denied cunt in an experience you could not begin to explain.

“Iida-kun!” Mirio exclaimed jovially as if the two of you weren’t at all fucking moments before, but as he did so, he seemed to deactivate his quirk on his cock.

“What are the two of you doing here! It is quite preposterous for the two of you to be… canoodling within the gala when we are all awaiting your presence!” Iida exclaims, his hands cutting and chopping at the air as he seems to frown at the both of you.

But you were busy with other thoughts.

With his cock completely solid back inside of you, tears were leaking from your eyes as white, hot pain erupted in your stomach and curled all the way down into your toes.

Mirio returned his cock into your ass, and the lack of any warning due to his quirk nearly had you throwing up in this new sensation. Your fingers curled roughly into Mirio’s shoulders, your ragged breathing “I’m-in-so-much-pain” breathes alerting both of the men before you who turned their attention to you.

“Are you okay, sunflower?” Mirio asked, his voice filled with genuine concern as he brushed a tear that managed to streak down your cheek. “What’s going on?”

“Yes, what is going on? What can I get for you, Y/l/n-senpai?”

“It h-hurts!” you cry, eyes locking onto Mirio’s, who seemed to gather just what was going on as his eyes grow with worry and also knowing actions.

He shifted slightly, and his cock that was already so big moved within your ass, and you balked. You leaned forward onto Mirio’s chest, feeling absolutely dwarfed by your boyfriend as you held onto him with trembling arms and soft groans of pain and growing, intense pleasure.

“Ah, Iida-kun, would you mind if you could possibly give us some room? I promise we’ll join the gala in less than ten minutes?”

You can’t even see Iida’s reaction given that your eyes are leaking with your tears and the fact that you can’t even raise your head to look at your old younger-classmen.

“Of course, I’ll leave y/l/n-senpai to you, but if anything happens, please come and get me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you!”

Your sniffling doesn’t seem to stop as Iida’s loud footsteps confirms his exit, but Mirio’s mouth is by your ear again, his hips taking a tentative, shallow thrust that sends you whining like a bitch in heat. Anal was something that Mirio loved to do. He always confessed to you each and every time as his cock would line up to your muscled rim that there was just something indescribably hot about you taking his cock that way.

Mirio was a big dude with a bigger cock, and you usually could, in fact, handle — thoroughly enjoy — anal with the proper steps to lead into it, but this was a cock appearing in your ass without warning or knowing of it happening. You could feel your tears streaming down your neck, but bubbling moans of pleasure had already started again. The pain of the surprise was already wearing off by the time Iida had disappeared, and Mirio was once again shifting his hips for your best pleasure.

“God, I can’t believe you took my cock in your ass that calmly,” Mirio whispers in pure admiration, his hips taking longer, deeper strokes into you. “That was so fucking hot, I’m sorry I lost control like that.”

“S-Shut up…” you gasped, hands fisting into his coat as you tried to ride out the waves of pain instead. “Fuck m-me already.”

The laugh that seems to grow right from Mirio’s stomach makes your skin crawl as he nods his head, his hands grabbing your chin to stir you into a kiss as he begins to thrust into your asshole with much more daring conviction.

“I always forget how much you like this!” he sighs against your lips. “Always so ready for my cock no matter where it is.”

You whimper loudly, teeth burying into your lower lip, the slick from your cunt slowly gliding down to his cock, allowing for partial lubing.

In and out, he moves, his hips moving faster than a manageable speed. Even without him being a hero, Mirio had kept himself in pique condition, and moments like this proved it. His fast rutting and delirious power into every slam of his cock into your ass was commanding and revolutionary. Your eyes welled with tears at the constipated feeling in your asshole, your mouth pressing back into his neck, sobbing his name. His fingers dive down and permeate through your dress and panties, and you swear you’re drooling when his calloused, hot fingers tweak and pull at your clit, savagely teasing it.

Mirio laughs softly at the way you’re trying to hide your cries of pleasure. How you’re burying your head into his shoulder, teeth biting into his clothed skin. His thrusting movements became quicker, harder, and more consistent until a familiar sensation of his balls slapping your skin burned your mind.

He was—

Holy shit—

He was making sure you could feel his once concealed balls against your skin and the warbled, shameless scream that he interrupted by shoving his fingers in your mouth.

“More,” you beg around his fingers, staring straight up at him. Your saliva coating his fingers, lips sucking around his fingers in hopes that he’ll heed your command. “Fuck my asshole harder.”

Mirio merely groans the pinch on your clit, making your hips buck awkwardly and pathetically against his cock and balls because of the table. And he began to barbarically slam into you so that the soft thudding of the counter hitting the wall shudders down your spine.

Your body shifts with his every movement, the counter rocking with the force, your slick pouring from your cunt, and he let go of your tongue. In your crazed state, you sob at the loss of contact, but his hand that had been playing and teasing your clit shifts so that his thumb resides on your clit, and three of his fingers curl into your throbbing, orgasm denied cunt. The force alone nearly sends your eyes flying open, your vision still blurred with tears when his fingers drag against your puffy walls that you knew would let you squirt if he manipulated it just enough.

His fingers work at double the speed of which his hips slam into you. His fingers pushing the limits of your heat radiating walls, dragging them deliciously against your clenching heat. Then there was his cock, and at times the thin walls that separated his fingers and his cock brushed together, sending you into a new frenzy while you sobbed his name.

Begging for more, pleading to make you come.

“You needa come, sunflower?” Mirio huffs, his sweaty forehead pressing against yours, and you moaned loudly, knowing that he was also close. “Then come for me. Come against my cock and my fingers!”

“I-It feels so fucking good, so good baby,” you garble. Your jaw is unable to move for its slack against his shoulder. Your cooes only adding to the electrifying pleasure singing through your nerves, and with a loud squelch from your pussy, you come hard against his fingers, your ass instinctively tightening up at well.

You could feel the more foreign sensation of wet heat fill your ass as Mirio collapses against you, his heart hammering in his chest as the two of you just sit there. Your hands shifting to thread into his soft, fluffy hair as his limp cock disappears from within you, and you groan at the loss of feeling.

“Gross…” you mumble as Mirio stands straight up again after some time.

“Wha—”

“You came in my ass,” you sigh, although not at all displeased with it.

“Oh, sorry! I got a bit overexcited!”

It takes an additional three minutes for you to be willing to move to return to the event, but as you do, Mirio has an arm around your waist, readying to keep you upright all night if needed.

“Ne, Mirio?” you call as the both of you return to the main stage.

“Hm?”

“I think you’ve pretty much mastered your quirk again!”

#togata mirio x reader #mirio x reader #mirio smut #bnha #bnha x reader #mha #bbs kinktober 2020

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pocketramblr · 4 years

Text

Rainbow glow

aka yall feral followers wanted the angst and i cannot help but to deliver. so in a role reversal, today Kitten wrote you lovely friendship rainbow eyes- and the start of trust with other colors entering green. have something terrible from me in the ‘rainbow eyes are evil death pain’ version of the au

Shouta felt cold. Not an icy frigid- just. Empty. the cold of an unused storage space behind dirty concrete and thin metal. The cold of a grey sky that won’t even give you the relief of rain or snow. The kind of cold when you had nothing in your pantry, when you had to explain that to your child.

A child- God, how was he going to explain this to Eri? To his other students? To All Might, to Midoriya’s mother?

Hizashi shut off the car, but didn’t move to get out yet. He stared ahead, silent. He shouldn’t be silent. He shouldn’t have tears streaked down his face, his eyes bloodshot behind the glasses.

Should, that didn’t matter. Could, would, didn’t matter. Those were excuses. He had to do this.

“Do you think- you want to just, be in the teacher’s commons for a bit?” Hizashi finally asked. “Don’t think there would be anyone else there who’d mind. The kids are taking care of Eri, right?”

The kids- the ones who almost weren’t, anymore. Mirio was going on about a tea party.

“Yeah.” Shouta finally spoke. It sounded wrong. It felt wrong, in his throat.

“Then we can go to the commons, for a bit?”

“No.” Shouta had to commit. He had to do this. It was what was rational. It was what would protect the others. He couldn’t fail more of them. “There’s something I have to do.”

“You can pick up the kids’ work to grade later, Sho.” Hizashi tried. He really wanted him to be there, didn’t he. He didn’t want to be alone.

“I- it’s not that. There’s just one conversation I need to have. Then I’ll meet you in the commons.”

Just one conversation. Like this morning had been ‘just one conversation.’ It was still the first time in maybe years that he’d cried. Maybe he’ll cry again. No, he couldn’t let himself. Not yet. Not until after. There might be a fight, after, there might be nothing. But he had to do it, still.

“Ok.” Hizashi nodded, squeezing his shoulder before he climbed out of the car and shut his door. Shouta took one moment, one deep breath, before getting out himself.

With the long drive to and from Tartarus, plus the meetings inside, his students were long out of class and practice for the day.

He hoped Midoriya would be alone.

Hope was not on his side. He should have known that, by now. Midoriya was in the middle of the couch, between Todoroki and Tenya. Uraraka was on the floor, leaning against his legs, Asui sitting on her lap as she braided her hair. They were focused on the tv, where Mina, Kaminari, Ojiro, and Tokoyami were fiercely battling it out in some racing game or another, and apparently all the students had picked sides.

Asui noticed him first, and though the amused, watery glow of her eyes flickered, they didn’t dim. He nodded to her.

Her eyes wouldn’t be glowing happily after this.

But they wouldn’t be rainbow, unseeing, at least. He had to focus on that. He had to think rationally.

His hands were shaking, so he shoved them in his pockets.

“Midoriya.” He called. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

The green e- the green-haired boy jolted, surprised to turn and see him. A nervous smile twisted his lips. “Uh, sure? Is there something wrong?”

All the other students were looking at Shouta now.

Well, he had been the one to miss an entire school day earlier. He hadn’t even missed a class period before that, so he was already going to be drawing attention for that.

Dimly, he was glad Eri wasn’t here. Glad Shinsou and Aoyama weren’t here. That All Might wasn’t. This was hard enough.

He shook his head and tried to keep his voice normal. “No, nothing wrong. Just need to talk to you alone, if you’ve got a minute.”

“Oh, sure, yeah.” Midoriya began the process of detangling from his friends, grabbing his jacket from the back of the couch and pulling it on as he made his way to the door, looking up at Shouta.

He looked completely guileless. His eyes looked green.

But Kurogiris eyes had looked yellow. Yellow, alone, until they peeled him back and saw the rotting corpse of his friend, of his- Oboro. Glazed, unseeing eyes with the same rainbow light that all nomu had.

With the rainbow light that Midoriya’s got, when he was brainwashed. Shouta hadn’t let himself think about it too much before today, because he just didn’t have information. He just didn’t have reason, when three simple incidents that were completely different, and one late at night with no other evidence.

No, there had been evidence. The ruined room. The strange new technique- new quirk, with a new color.

Shouta had just not wanted to believe it. Had wanted to trust All Might had it handled, like people always trusted in the man.

And now he didn’t need to believe it- he had seen something, seen proof so terrible it would haunt what little sleep he got for the rest of his life, probably.

Shouta nodded at the boy, heading outside.

Whatever he saw from Midoriya today would probably haunt him too. Would he drop limp under questioning, like Kurogiri had? Would he simply be warped away in some shadow or goop? Would he start fighting Shouta, go violent, like other nomu did?

Don’t think about that. Don’t dwell, don’t feel. Don’t lose yourself, because you have to think rationally.

He didn’t speak, for a while, just walking away from the dorm buildings. Where no one could see out a window, if they were looking.

“Aizawa-sensei? What is you wanted to talk about?” Midoriya asked after a while.

Shouta stopped.

“Midoriya, you’re…” A good kid, learning, a hero chickling in the making, already so strong, already- no, stop. It felt like saying a eulogy over a body. Even if that was what this was, for all he still looked alive. Even if that was what this was, Shouta didn’t deserve to say it.

“Yeah?” Midoriya asked.

Shouta moved, flicking his capture weapon around Midoriya.

The boy yelped, that instinctual squirming away before it stopped a moment later. “Sensei?” He asked again, higher pitched, panicked- scared. “No- you’re not Toga, are you?”

Shouta activated erasure just as his eyes light up green, sparks flying out. “I’m not.” He says. He feels so tired. “It’s me. Midoriya, I need to ask you about your quirk.”

The boy went still again. “My- my quirk?”

“Your quirks.” He corrected himself. “You have more than one. Your eyes glow with so many colors, sometimes. Like only nomus’ do.” Midoriya’s face was pale, and not just for the cold weather. “So I want to know- when did you get these quirks, what other ones do you have, and what did you do to my student?”

Midoriya gaped, a second of silence, two seconds- then he shook his head. “No, no Aizawa-sensei it isn’t like that-”

Shouta tugged him closer, leaned over him. His eyes were stinging so much, and he hadn’t even been erasing for that long.

“It’s not! It’s not, I swear Sensei, it- they were given to me. They were given to me, not stolen. By heroes.”

“Who?”

“I- I can’t tell you, right now, but-”

“The only person who has the ability to give quirks- and take them- is All For One, who’s currently sitting in Tartarus, and that villain who attacked Nabu where your class was- who was never found, dead or alive.”

“No, no it wasn’t them.” Midoriya shook his head even more. “I just- Sensei, there are six and a half billion people on this planet who have quirks, there are others like that and they aren’t all villains!”

Shouta’s mouth felt drier than his eyes, and he snapped. “Midoriya. This isn’t about the insanely rare chance of another person in this country with the same quirk who actually has a hero license and is giving you more quirks for whatever reason they have, it’s about how I had to see a dead UA student today who had been killed and turned into a nomu that looked like a normal person, until they cracked him open and saw his face, his eyes.”

“I- what? What?” Midoriya spluttered, eyes blown wide. “Who?” He glanced, panicked, towards the dorms and school and Shouta could have kicked himself.

He shouldn’t have told him that. He shouldn’t have, rationally, because he didn’t know who was listening in through Midoriya. He didn’t know if they already were aware of what the heroes had found concerning Kurogiri or not. He shouldn’t have, less rationally, because now the kid was freaking out even more.

Midoriya always was more concerned for others’ sakes…

“No one you would have known.” Shouta tried to say it calmly, free hand up peaceably. “He was killed- and captured- a few years ago.”

Fifteen years ago.

This boy would have just been a baby, then.

“And that’s why I need to know the truth about you, and your quirk, Midoriya.” The capture weapon felt so sharp against his fingers in the cold air. The knife on his belt felt so heavy against his back.

The student dips his head.

“It’s called One For All.” he admits, softly. “It was All For One’s brother’s quirk, once. But it wasn’t exactly the same- he could give his quirk, and then that person could give it and their original one to someone else, and then that person could pass all three on, so on and so forth. He could give quirks, but not take them. The person who had it last gave it to me. Th- they were better at hiding it, than i am. I didn’t think the other quirks in it would cause problems, until Black Whip was already out.”

Midoriya hadn’t had a good grasp of his quirk at the start of the year. He’d been registered as quirkless before that. It… could be possible. Shouta hoped it was possible.

Shouta had learned today, again, to not trust hope.

“Who gave it to you?”

Midoriya shuddered, and Shouta’s heart almost stopped. Don’t drop, don’t drop now-

“All Might.” The boy whispered. “All Might gave it to me.” He looked up, eyes blazing in every sense but literal. “You can’t tell anyone. You can’t tell anyone, please.”

“I won’t.” Shouta says, quicker than he should.

He blinks.

He pulls out his phone, dials a number.

“Who are you calling?” Midoriya’s voice is sharp.

“All Might.” He answers, just as the man himself does.

“Aizawa-kun! Are you back-”

“All Might. Are you in a place I can ask you questions of a sensitive nature?”

“Um. What sort of sensitive do you mean?”

“Pertaining to All For One.”

“Give me one moment.” The hero said, voice now as serious as Shouta’s was. In a few seconds, he spoke again. “I am now. What’s wrong?”

“What does ‘One For All’ mean to you?”

It’s quiet, very quiet, for what feels like a very, very long time. Shouta’s heart thumped. Midoriya looked silently on.

“It’s the name of my quirk. Aizawa, is… young Midoriya all right?”

“So he does have it, now. Your old quirk. And others.” Shouta felt something blooming in his chest. He wasn’t sure what it was, he didn’t have the time or energy to examine it. It wasn’t important, it could wait until later.

“Yes. Is he all right?”

“Yeah.” Shouta let the capture weapon drop, arm still out to steady Midoriya if need be. “We need to talk, later, about this.”

“When?”

“Tomorow.” Shouta said, and then hung up. Tomorrow is a weekend, right? That’s why the kids hadn’t been busy this afternoon. Good. he had new plans for tonight. And tomorrow morning.

He drops his arms, and sighs. Exhaustion, and relief. So much relief.

“Midoriya…” He started, looking over at him. He couldn’t read the expression on the student’s face. He lifted a hand, slow, then dropped it over Midoriya’s head.

His hair was thicker than Shinsou’s, but just as soft as Shouta ruffled it.

He wanted to say something. He wanted to apologize, he wanted to promise everything would be all right.

He couldn’t truthfully do either, and while he normally had no scruples about deciving his pupils… well, Midoriya had just been very, very honest with him.

“Thank you.” He said, instead, because that was true.

“Aizawa-sensei? Are you… crying?”

He was, huh. Shouta wiped his cheeks. “No.”

Midoriya let out a sound that wasn’t really a laugh, but for now, after everything, was close enough.

“Sensei, I-”

His phone rang- Shouta’s. He dug it out with a sigh. Hizashi.

“One minute.” He said, then answered. “Yeah?”

“Shou, it’s Eri.”

“What’s wrong?” Energy snapped back into him. It hadn’t been a misdirection, right? If All For One and his league knew about his brother quirk, if he was just letting Midoriya unknowingly distract the heroes while-

“She’s not feeling well. Very upset, says her horn is hurting her.” Hizashi says, and he’s not calm- just tired too. A line of fear under that. “It’s sparking a little bit, Shou, though I can’t tell if her eyes are lighting up.”

“Tell her I’ll be right there.” He hung up, slid the phone away. Then he looked to Midoriya. “Eri’s feeling sick, think you could get me to the teachers’ dorm faster?”

Midoriya looked concerned, then relaxed with a nod, a tiny smile.

In a moment, Shouta was moving in the biting wind, the world a blur. He was held in small arms, and when he looked up he saw Midoriya’s face focused ahead.

Sparks over his skin, black whips out to speed him along. His eyes shining both green and maroon. Two colors, which he thought minutes ago meant his doom.

It still could, the rational part of him reminded. He’ll be a target. For All For One, for the villains. For some other heroes, too.

Later. He can worry about that later. Once Eri’s settled.

He’d have time later.

#*posts this and dies*#my writing #eye glow au #glowing eyes au #dadzawa #oh man that got long #im so tired #and im still supposed to be writng completely seperate whumptober story right now ahhhh kjhghjk

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clumsyclifford · 3 years

Note

OKAY. how about "This wasn’t meant to be a date, but we’ve had such a good time and now it’s 2 a.m. and I should really go home…" with ur teacher alex/ambiguous office job jack? (or any version of jalex) (we just love jalex in this house)

well hello, she said casually, nine months later. thank you for the excellent prompt, sorry it took me so long to get to it, but you can thank yourself for that too considering going to ssf is what inspired me to finally write this one. bellawritess clumsyclifford pictures is proud to present: the tshirt jalex meet-cute :)

read here on ao3

Later, Alex learns that the boy at the barricade who’d elbowed Alex in the face trying to snatch the thrown guitar pick out of the air is named Jack.

“I’m so sorry,” Jack says for the millionth time, even though Alex has laughed it off every other time. He laughs it off this time, too.

“Seriously, it’s fine. And hey, you caught it.”

Jack holds up the guitar pick, triumphant. “I did catch it,” he says. The blink-182 logo flashes its dead and frozen smile at Alex. Alex finds himself smiling back, though not so much at the pick.

The leaving crowd parts around the two of them. Headlights flood the night, filling the street before them with light and noise. There’s a line of cars backed up further than Alex cares to imagine. Those at the front must have left the show significantly before the set was over. Quitters.

“What I didn’t catch was your name,” Jack adds. His lips quirk, like he’s proud of such a smooth line.

“Alex,” says Alex. “We should probably get out of everyone’s way. Are you waiting for someone, or…?”

“No, no, I came alone.”

“Yeah, me too. Was supposed to have a friend but he bailed on me last-minute.”

“Seriously? Bailed on a blink concert?”

“I know, right?” Alex grins. “Eh, whatever. If he’d been here you probably never would have elbowed me in the face and then we’d never have met.”

“But I would’ve never elbowed you in the face,” Jack says. “Don’t you think you’d have preferred that?”

“Not if it means we’d have never met.”

Jack’s smile slowly grows. “Fair enough. Did you know there’s a 24-hour diner literally five minutes from here?”

“Oh, man, I like the way you think,” Alex says, shoving his hands into his pockets to protect them from the cool late-night breeze. “I didn’t want to sit in this traffic anyway.”

“And I don’t blame you.”

“Well, lead the way,” Alex says, nodding down the sidewalk, and he falls into step with Jack as they both start to walk.

The Tastee Diner is charmingly diner-y — neon lights, stools at the bar, the whole nine yards — and, more attractively, it’s mostly empty at this hour. It’s past midnight, later even than Alex’s usual bedtime, but between the buzz from the concert and Jack the attractive stranger across from him, he’s not really feeling tired. If he’s going to flush his sleep schedule down the drain, a post-concert Friday night seems like the best time to do it.

And Jack is really cute. So that helps.

“Breakfast,” Alex says reverently when they’re seated. “Oh my God, a fucking giant waffle.”

“Wow, everything you say makes me like you more,” Jack says, leaning his elbows on the table. Alex glances over the top of his menu but Jack’s eyes are focused on his own menu on the tabletop. He’s smiling a little. So is Alex.

“It’s a giant waffle, Jack! How the fuck do I say no to that?”

“You don’t. This table is pro-giant waffle. At the exclusion of anything else.”

“You’re damn right it is,” Alex says. “Do we also happen to be pro-chocolate milkshake?”

“We’re pro-vanilla milkshake.”

“Ew, seriously?”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I know, how can I like vanilla when chocolate is right there—”

“Yeah, how can you?” Alex reaches over the table and covers Jack’s hand with his own. Their eyes meet. Very seriously, Alex says, “How do you look at yourself in the mirror, you monster?”

A beat. Jack chews his lip, clearly trying not to smile. “With great difficulty,” he says. He’s humoring Alex, but sincerity sparkles in his deep brown eyes. His earnest gaze holds Alex’s and he doesn’t pull his hand away. After a moment, Alex does.

“Well, if I looked like you I’d never stop looking in the mirror,” he says instead, and brings his gaze back to the menu. A laugh escapes Jack.

“You can’t turn it off, can you?”

“Turn what off?”

“Your flirty brain-to-mouth pipeline?”

“I could,” Alex says breezily. “I choose not to.” It feels like a subtle rejection, a quiet dig, but it’s hard to be sure. Jack’s smirk seems to suggest otherwise.

The waitress comes by to take their orders of two giant waffles and two milkshakes — chocolate for Alex, vanilla for Jack, though Alex is sure to give Jack a judgmental look as he’s ordering. When she goes, Jack laces his fingers together and leans back in the booth. “So,” he says. “Your name is Alex, you’ve got fantastic music taste, and you seem to be more or less my age, but that’s about all I know about you. Are you from around here? What do you do? Likes, dislikes?”

“Are you trying to build me a dating profile?”

“That wouldn’t be very opportunistic of me, would it?” Jack smiles innocently. Alex’s heart gives a little leap. “I’m trying to get to know you. You know, like any normal stranger would if they found themself at a diner with another stranger.”

That’s fair. They are effectively strangers, although Alex can think of a shorter word to describe what they’re doing right now. He glances around at the jukebox-esque machine bolted to the wall next to their booth, at the empty swivel stools at the bar, at the marble tabletop where Jack is absently tapping his fingers. The decor of the diner is very classic, and he and Jack, both dressed in blink merch and black jeans like the perpetual emo teens they’re no doubt trying to emulate, stick out like sore thumbs.

However unintentional, it sure as hell feels like a date to him.

“I’m from Baltimore,” he starts. Jack lights up.

“No shit! Me too.”

“Really? Whereabouts?”

“Well, I work by the harbor.”

“No shit, I work in Highlandtown,” Alex says excitedly. “Highlandtown Middle. I’m a teacher.”

Jack whistles lowly. “That’s fucking awesome. What do you teach?”

“Music,” Alex says, and Jack groans, although he’s smiling as his hands move to cover his face.

“Of course you do,” he says.

Alex tilts his head. “What, are you not a fan of music teachers? That’s insane.”

“No, no, it’s not that, it’s just.” Jack laughs. “Of course the hot guy I meet at a blink-182 concert is a middle school music teacher. I feel like God is punishing me for refusing to play anything but bad drums in middle school band.”

Alex also laughs. Being called a hot guy by a hot guy is making his stomach do gymnastics. He’s too old for his stomach to be doing things like that, but his stomach clearly doesn’t care. “Well, if I’d been your teacher, trust me, you’d have been playing solidly mediocre drums. But I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Jack’s hands fall to his lap. “I’m sure I’ll get over it,” he says with a slanted smile.

Alex swallows and grins. “So did you look up surrounding diners before you came, or are you just…inexplicably familiar with Silver Spring geography?”

“I come to a lot of concerts here,” Jack says, nodding in the general direction of the venue they’d just vacated. “Venue’s awesome.”

“Yeah, it really is. Honestly, I’m still amazed that you caught that pick.”

“I have a lot of practice. From aforementioned many concerts.”

“I can see that.”

“Trust me, it’s a very specific skill. I’ve got awful hand-eye coordination,” Jack says with a chuckle. “My dream of being the youngest Oriole inducted into the Hall of Fame was crushed at a young age.”

Fizzy champagne fills Alex’s chest. He can’t stop smiling. “Fuck yes, you’re an Orioles fan?”

“That’s my team,” Jack says, looking excited. Possibly at the prospect of meeting another person who’s equally interested in both music and baseball. That’s why Alex is excited, anyway.

“It’s my team,” he says enthusiastically. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, they fucking suck—”

“Oh, no, yeah, they’re the worst—”

“But I’d take a bullet for them. I happily go down with ‘em every year.”

“Yeah, they’re my boys,” Jack agrees. “Here’s hoping this season is better than every single other one.”

“Yeah, all my fingers are crossed, but between you and me I don’t have a lot of faith.”

Jack shrugs and nods. “It’s good for my ego to be so loyal to such a bad team. Keeps me humble.”

“That’s the best attitude I’ve ever heard,” Alex says, and Jack’s smile is so radiant Alex could swear he can feel the glare off the shiny marble tabletop.

“Between ‘All The Small Things’ and ‘Going Away To College’ how the fuck am I going to choose ‘Small Things’?”

“Yeah, but it’s such a classic! ‘College’ is, like, emo and…emo.”

“No more emo than ‘I Miss You’ —”

“That one is a classic—”

“I’m not saying it’s not, I’m just saying ‘College’ is their best song and it deserves its spotlight.”

“That’s ‘Feeling This’ erasure and you know it.”

“Besides ‘Feeling This,’ but they always play ‘Feeling This.’ I stand by what I said. I’d swap ‘Small Things’ for ‘College.’ Deal with it.” Alex tongues his milkshake straw into his mouth. “Your turn.”

Jack glares at him for another long moment, like he has to properly make his point about it. “Fine,” he finally huffs. His gaze shifts sideways, off into the distance like he’s thinking, and he swirls his own straw around his milkshake cup. Alex can kind of see his reflection in it. While Jack is thinking, Alex quickly checks his phone.

(21:47) Rian Dawson: How’s the concert? Fuckin bummed I couldn’t make it :/

(21:48) Rian Dawson: Hope you’re having a good time anyway. Text me whenever you get home so I know you didn’t die or get trampled by a mosh pit or whatever the case may be.

Alex smiles and turns off his phone again.

“I feel like I can’t choose a song off Enema now that you did,” Jack mumbles.

“You can,” Alex says. “It would just be kind of a lot of Enema.”

“No, but Enema is a legendary album. I’d go to a show that was literally just all of Enema.”

“Why were you complaining about ‘College’ then!”

“I’m not complaining about ‘College’ itself, I just would never trade it for ‘Small Things’!”

Alex scoffs. “They play ‘Small Things’ all the time. I’ve never seen ‘College’ live. I’d literally kill.”

“Oh my God, I know what I’d do,” Jack says. “‘Shut Up’ instead of ‘Down.’ That’s the only thing that could make this set list more perfect.”

“Ohhh,” Alex says, “that would be fucking sick. Imagine two thousand people just shouting ‘shut the fuck up, she said’ at the top of their lungs.”

“I cannot think of anything cooler than that.”

Alex hums thoughtfully. “So you went with Take Off Your Pants instead of Enema in the end.”

“Alright, don’t get it twisted. If I could add the entirety of Enema to the set list, I would. But if I only get one song, it has to be ‘Shut Up.’ More Enema is never a bad thing.”

“Why wouldn’t you trade ‘College’ for ‘Down’ then?”

“Because that was your set list move, and this is mine,” Jack says. He slaps the table. “Yeah. This is the answer. Someone get Mark Hoppus on the line, stat. I have to tell him I’ve figured out the formula for the perfect set list.”

“‘Shut Up’ live would be awesome,” Alex concedes. “Good move.”

“What can I say, I have extremely good taste,” Jack says airily.

Alex snorts. “Okay, Vanilla Milkshake.”

“You’re just afraid to taste it because you know deep down that it will be better than your chocolate one,” Jack says, pointing his straw accusingly at Alex. Drops of milkshake fall onto the table. Alex sweeps a napkin over the mess.

“You had an advantage over me, though,” he observes. “You said your favorite blink song is ‘Feeling This,’ which was already on the set list. My favorite song wasn’t, so my hands were kind of tied.”

“It’s among my favorite blink songs,” Jack says. “I have many. Most of which are set list staples, yeah. But that’s on you for only having one favorite song.”

“Wait, what? You can’t have many favorites, that defeats the whole point of having a favorite.”

“I can have multiple favorites, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“No way, man. You only get to have one favorite. You can have second-favorites or close favorites but there’s always one that’s better than the rest.”

“Sorry to burst you bubble, Al, but I have more than one favorite blink song,” Jack says, shrugging. “I also have more than one favorite color and more than one favorite food and more than one favorite song.”

Alex shakes his head through Jack’s speech. “I reject this out of hand.”

“You can’t.”

“Well, Clearly Enema is your favorite blink album.”

“Tied with Take Off.”

“Seriously?” Alex narrows his eyes. “Come on, there must be one thing you have just one favorite of.”

“Yeah, there is,” Jack says. “My favorite movie is Home Alone. No other movie comes anywhere close.”

Of course it is. Alex grins and inclines his head in accordance. “That…is extremely good taste.”

“Thank you,” Jack says graciously, and slurps loudly from his milkshake.

The next time Alex checks his phone, his brain takes a moment to catch up. “Holy shit, it’s already one a.m.?”

“Oh shit,” Jack says, checking his phone as well. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

That adage has never felt more true. Slowly working through giant waffles and milkshakes while exchanging questions and random conversational topics with Jack has been the most fun Alex has had in a long time. Diners, he muses. There’s something about diners. Time feels frozen within these walls, and Alex kind of wants to stay in the time bubble forever, laughing with Jack until the sun comes up.

He could do it. Tomorrow’s a Saturday. Nobody works on Saturday, not even Jack at his “boring office job” (his words).

But he knows there’s a reason that nothing gold can stay. It wouldn’t be valuable if it lasted forever. The night will crystallize as something special in Alex’s memory, but it can’t do that until it ends. And it has to end eventually.

“We should probably go,” Alex says reluctantly. Jack nods once.

“Yeah,” he says. He signals for the check and looks back at Alex. “My treat.”

“Uh, no way. I’m paying.”

“Nope, not happening. I will elbow you in the face again if I have to. I’m paying this check.”

“Jack—” Alex wavers. Jack looks so insistent, eyebrows raised like he’s daring Alex to argue, and there’s nothing to do but smile. “Okay. If you insist. We’ll call it even for you assaulting me earlier.”

“Exactly,” Jack says, and he happily accepts the check when the waitress hands it to him.

“Did you guys get everything you need?” she asks the two of them.

Alex glances at Jack, but Jack’s scanning the check. “Pretty much, yeah,” he tells the waitress. She leaves them with the check, and they vacate their table to go pay it at the front.

Alex wonders what someone might think if they saw this table. Whether anyone could even begin to illustrate the story of the night using only two empty milkshake cups and two plates that formerly held waffles. It would be impossible. Not even Sherlock Holmes could work this one out.

Alex smiles. They’re a fossil in amber, preserved in memory. Even if it turns out not to be a date, Alex knows he’ll look back on tonight fondly, and he can count on this exact same smile every time he does.

Jack finishes paying and turns to face Alex. One arm outstretched, he says, “Shall we?”

Alex links their arms. “After you, good sir.”

They’re laughing as they leave in a glow of neon light.

“This is me,” Alex says, gesturing half-heartedly at his car. They both stop short behind it.

“Ah,” Jack says, nodding. “So I guess this is where I leave you.”

Alex swallows. “I’m glad you elbowed me in the face,” he admits, which sounds strange to say out of the blue. “I had a good time tonight.”

“What, at the concert?”

Jack is obviously teasing, but Alex doesn’t mind being more clear. “Actually, I think I had more fun after the concert,” he says, smiling a little. “You’re good company, JB.”

Jack smiles, and if Alex isn’t mistaken, he’s also blushing. “Same to you,” he says. “Despite your wrong opinions about the set list.”

“I hate sounding like a cliché,” Alex says, ruffling a hand through his hair. Jack cocks his head. “But, um, I’d like to see you again. If that’s okay.”

“So okay,” Jack says. “And totally plausible, considering we apparently live within twenty minutes of each other.”

“True,” Alex says. “The universe really wanted us to meet, I guess.”

“Thank you, Universe, for putting Alex in harm’s way,” Jack says solemnly, looking upwards. Alex laughs. “Can I have your number?”

“Yeah, yes, of course.”

Alex recites his phone number for Jack to enter into his contacts. “I promise I’ll call,” Jack says. His gaze flits around Alex’s face like it can’t find a good place to land. He drags his index finger diagonally over his chest. “Cross my heart and everything.”

“I have to ask,” Alex says, shifting on his feet. “Were you— was this supposed to be a date?” He hesitates; maybe that’s the wrong question. “Was it a date?”

“For the sake of anniversaries, let’s say yes,” Jack says. Immediately his face puckers in regret. “Pretend I didn’t say that. I’m— my brain gets ahead of me.”

“No, it’s all good.” It’s more than good; there’s a horde of butterflies in Alex’s ribcage that won’t fucking quit, not now that he knows Jack is thinking of anniversaries when this is only maybe their first date. A person who is not only anticipating a future for them but preparing to celebrate it. So far, so fucking good. “You’re a practical thinker. I can appreciate that.”

“And I appreciate that you aren’t deleting your number from my phone even after I just said that to you,” Jack says, grinning. His grin melts away when he sighs. “I should go. It’s late.”

“Yeah,” Alex echoes. “Late.”

“Please drive safe,” Jack says seriously. “If I’m the last person to see you before you die, that’ll make me look really bad.”

Alex laughs. He likes that Jack keeps making him laugh. His friends make him laugh, too, but Jack makes him laugh in a different way, like he can’t stop himself. Like the delight refuses to stay trapped.

“I promise to drive safe,” he vows. “I owe you a date. I would hate to lose the chance to impress you.”

“Oh, wait, that reminds me.” Jack reaches into his pocket and presses something into Alex’s hand. It’s the guitar pick, warm from Jack’s pocket. “You’ll probably use it more than me,” Jack explains, ducking his head. “You know, being a music teacher and all.”

“Oh,” Alex breathes, flipping the pick in his palm. “That’s, um…thank you. Thanks. I’m…”

“Yeah,” Jack says, licking his lips. “Of course. Um, okay, now I really should go. But like I said, I’ll call.”

Alex nods, still staring at the guitar pick in his hand. His head snaps up and he breaks from whatever trance he’d fallen into. “I’m counting on it,” he says, stepping closer to Jack. He hears Jack inhale as he leans closer, brushing his lips to Jack’s cheek.

When Jack speaks, it’s a hoarse whisper. “I had a good time too, you know.”

Alex leans away and starts walking backwards to the driver-side door. “Good,” he says, smiling warmly. He’s not really trying to smile so warmly but he can’t help it. “Get home safe, Jack.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “You too, Alex.”

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queenangst · 4 years

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did you say angst? how about traitor aizawa paired with him adopting eri and bring forced to choose between them at some point after he grows fond of eri

If there was something Shouta had apparently yet to learn, it was that things never went to plan.

By experience, he should have known it. People had a way of turning situations around, to win their own favors, villains and heroes alike. Shigaraki’s withdrawal at USJ hadn’t been the plan; neither had All Might’s survival.

It was supposed to be a quick death, as kind as Shouta could imagine for him, but through the bloody haze right before going unconscious Shouta realized he could see the faint outline of a man survived.

Nothing went right after that. Shouta was a step ahead of U.A., but they managed to win. He’d never felt colder surrounded by the flashing lights of cameras, distracting, disarming, speaking to the crowd of reporters, and hearing in his ear, the villain is defeated. All Might won.

Eri was not part of any plan.

She was too unexpected, too small to fit in any meaningful outline, but—there was something about her.

“Aizawa-san,” she whispered, three nights after Shouta told himself he couldn’t care for a child. Eri tugged at his hand.

“Why are you here?” he asked, and felt her small fingers in his.

“I don’t want to be alone,” Eri said.

Shouta didn’t want to understand that, the loneliness. The dark pit, the endless gap... but he did. When morning came and Eri slumped into his side breathing evenly, completely trusting, completely safe, Shouta thought I don’t want to leave you alone.

He was late to his next meeting with Shigaraki, and late again the meeting after.

“And the alley cat is back for scraps,” Shigaraki drawled when Shouta dragged himself in. His shadow was still curled around a little girl, asleep.

“And you don’t know what you’re doing, do you,” Shouta replied. “Make it quick. I have other arrangements.”

“I could kill you.”

Shouta met Shigaraki’s eyes and activated Erasure. “You think so?”

You still need me. The League was on the verge of falling apart and every person in the room knew it. Shigaraki was no real replacement for the villain called All for One.

“Stay where you are. We’ll call you when you’re needed.”

Shouta stayed where he was. The League shifted, moved, changed. Shouta walked the length of his room again and again, caged. A new investigation began; Nomu.

At the heart of it was a hero-villain named Eraserhead. At the heart of Eraserhead there was the memory of a child named Eri.

In the end, there was no blood, no knife, and no fight. Just a quiet conversation.

The next time Shouta was contacted, he watched Eri draw. The large packet of markers was a gift from the other U.A. teachers, with vibrant colors, but right now she’d chosen black to draw him.

“You have an appointment to attend,” the doctor reminded him.

“Hm,” Shouta said. “Can I reschedule?”

Eri glanced up at him and moved on to drawing herself, brows furrowed in concentration.

“Unfortunately not. We’d like for you to review your files and bring a copy of your Quirk registration.”

“I see.”

Out the window the sky darkened. Shouta took out his hero license and thought about how deceptively simple it is to access the Hero Commission, or U.A.’s records, or many places just by pretending.

“Are there any concerns?”

Eri finished. She brought him the drawing, and he rest a hand on top of her head.

“Just one,” Shouta said. Breathes in. “I don’t think I’d like to work with you again.”

Shouta hung up. He might pay for that, once Shigaraki heard.

“What was that?”

“Nothing important,” he responded, and took Eri to the far wall to tape up the drawing.

“Someone needed you?”

Shouta hummed and reached down to take her hand. A pressure trapped in his chest released.

“I need you more.”

#asks #i duno what this is and i dont want to see it anymore #bnha #aizawa #eri #dadzawa #yeehaw baby #traitor aizawa #anonymous

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hey-hamlet · 4 years

Text

BNHA AU Ideas : Milk Light of Moon

Also on AO3!

TL;DR:

Somewhere lost in the clouded annals of history lies a place that few have seen—a mysterious place called the Unknown, where long-forgotten stories are revealed to those who travel through the wood.

Midoriya and Aizawa realise they've been walking through these woods for a long time, with only hazy memories of the events beforehand. Convinced they are lost only, they walk ever onwards, but it doesn't take long for them to realise just how strange these woods really are.

This AU takes place during the training camp mess and after the Muscular fight, Izuku and Aizawa get stuck in a ring of fire and have no choice but to jump through, ending with a fall off a cliff neither of them remembers. They awaken in the Unknown with memories from roughly the time of the test of courage, leading them to believe they got lost in the forest. Stuff gets confusing and fast with Aizawa slowly losing hope they’ll ever get free. Izuku ends up pushing them forwards towards the end, even after Aizawa has totally lost face, trading his own soul for the chance of his teacher’s freedom. Aizawa kick’s the beast’s ass, grabs Izuku and they finally break free.

Key: the Unknown isn’t a quirk, it really just is the space between life and death.

In this AU, Izuku and Aizawa end up very close, mostly as they just spent approximately 2 weeks in a strange liminal space fighting off death together. The only people either of them tell about the whole thing are Mic and Nezu on Aizawa’s end, and All Might on Izuku’s. Everyone else gets the story sans the whole time in the Unknown.

Aizawa is pretty badly beat up from the fall they both took and Izuku is only just alive. Aizawa has to haul them both back up the cliff with his capture weapon, then make his way back to the camp all without knowing if his other students are ok, or if the student in his arms can even still be saved. They make it back the next day, Izuku is rushed to a hospital. The other heroes, despite what they may have said to the students, are shocked they’re alive.

The Unknown is a strange, autumnal forest with plants and animals they only half recognise.

Part of Izuku is screaming “This can’t be a quirk, this makes no sense, where was the activation? Who did it? This must be something else.” and the other half is covering its ears and running through every type of deactivation condition he’s ever heard of for a quirk.

He’s partially refusing to admit it’s not a quirk because he knows that’ll crush Aizawa’s slowly dying hope they can just find the person in the middle of this forest, use erasure and go home.

Aizawa isn’t an idiot and this doesn’t feel like any type of quirk he’s ever come across, but if the kid obsessed with quirks is still classing it as one, he may as well too.

Aizawa finds out a bit of Izuku’s past, more accidentally than anything, just a few too many offhanded comments and a shirt removed to dry better exposing a back covered in very old scars leaves Aizawa with a lot of questions.

Izuku clams up tight as can be so he had to be more subtle about his questioning, which barely works either. They eventually settle on an informal ‘answers for answers’ type thing where they trade questions back and forth while they walk.

Aizawa tells Izuku some stuff that’s more than a little above Izuku’s clearance level because he’s pretty sure they’re going to die and if the kid wants answers, the kid gets them. Not like they’ll be alive to use them.

Izuku, who has taken up optimism as an Olympic sport and is convinced they’ll get out in time, is a little more tight-lipped with his answers. He leaves out a lot of names, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out Bakugo was one of the offenders.

The Unknown is just one ham-fisted metaphor after another from me because I love them and I’m not great at subtlety.

In this little mess of horrors Bakugo is actually a will ‘o wisp that only burns Izuku. He originally doesn’t mention it because he assumes it must be burning Aizawa too and he’s just being a baby about it, but it gets to the point he can’t stand it any more and he cries out in pain. Aizawa is horrified to see the blisters bubbling down his student’s arms.

A small list of other things they run into on their travels: a sentient fog, a monster made of bits of different animals complete with a pair of red bat wings, a tall thin man whose face they can’t make out chasing down the beast despite the fact his chest is filled with Edelwood, and a cat that follows them the whole way through and gives Aizawa a strange sense of Deja Vu.

FYI the Beast is just the Beast, designs a little different but it’s the same schtick. The frog is a kitten and the running name gag is Izuku naming it after different pro heroes. The cat is the spirit of Sushi still following around too-heroic children.

Our Beatrice replacement is a pale field mouse – the first wielder. All the wielders are trapped in the forms of mice, eternally running from an innocent looking cat hiding a horrifically mutilated second form under its black fur coat. They will be trapped there – immortal but able to feel pain - until the quirk stops being passed down.

The first wielder, trapped in the half life with the strange amalgamation of all the deaths his brother should have died, is at first trying to lead Izuku to his death. There is only so much more he can take of this. It doesn’t take long for him to realise he just cant – this kid is a hero to the last breath.

In this particular AU Aizawa and Mic are engaged at the time, and its one of the things Aizawa tells Izuku to try and keep his spirits up - even though Aizawa is really the one who needs help in that area. Izuku latches onto that with both hands and it becomes one of their fall back topics of conversation; “Can 1A come” “what colours are you using” “do you both have rings” “what was the proposal like”.

It’s actually one of the reasons Izuku tries to trade his life for Aizawa’s; Aizawa has a whole class and a fiancé waiting for him. Izuku just has his mum and maybe All Might.

The beast, while trying to get Izuku to just give up and die, tells him Aizawa isn’t looking for him because he’s not worth anything to the man. He really doesn’t want to believe him because Aizawa is wonderful and protected them and stayed with him in the unknown, but also no one before UA ever even tolerated him, let alone went out of their way to help.

It doesn’t really work for the beast though - it doesn’t break Izuku because he half expected it anyway. When Aizawa does come for him, as the Edelwood grows around and through his ribs and the scars on his hands, he cries. When Aizawa picks him up, apologising for giving up and for not trusting him with tears in his eyes, quietly offering a name for the kitten in his scarf? Izuku finally lets himself drift away. Someone is there for him; he doesn’t have to fight any more.

The kitten ends up with the name Loud Cloud. He follows Aizawa and Izuku out of the unknown, fiercely trying to scare away anyone who dares step too close, despite the fact he’s barely the size of Aizawa’s hand.

#milk light of moon au #bnha au #bnha #aizawa shouta #midoriya izuku #otgw bnha au

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dcwomenofcolor · 4 years

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I've been reading a lot about the whole BOP Cass Cain discourse and was thinking, wouldn't having an Asian female director and writer benefit handling an Asian female character? Where did it go so wrong?

I do believe that, looking at the interviews Yan & Hodson have done, they had the best intentions in mind. But at the end of the day, we’ve got our own privileges and our own experiences which lead to ignorance of our own. Cass isn’t just E.Asian and female. She’s E.Asian, female, AND disabled. It’s an intersection that we already don’t see represented in media enough, and this was a missed chance.

And even if we just took out the erasure of her neurodivergence, under the hands of two E.Asian women, our sole Asian main character had the least amount of character development and complexity. The bare minimum is achieved though: she’s not of the dreaded E.Asian stereotypes of China Doll, Dragon Lady, or One-Dimensional Martial Artist. It’s tough for me because I don’t expect the bare minimum from fellow E.Asian creators. If we don’t deliver complexity and development to our own Asian characters, who else will? Still, I understand there is only so much screentime for a team made up of FOUR other women. But if I do have to have the bare minimum, I would at least rather not have it at the expense of her disability.

Because let’s say that this “character reinterpretation” by Yan & Hodson was indeed to avoid a stereotype. (Which, from what I’ve been seeing, has been commonly misconceived by one too many people to be associated with Cassandra Cain in the comics.) The idea that you can’t have a disabled non-verbal E.Asian female character who isn’t either a China Doll or a Dragon Lady or whatever negative stereotype is, for lack of a better word, shitty. It’s lacking creativity and insulting to real-life disabled E.Asian women. Comics!Cass defied a lot of stereotypical traits, and even when she did exhibit one or two, it was never a defining permanent feature. She was allowed to be complex. She was allowed to be snarky, funny*, petty, cocky, defiant against authority, and basically not here as your Model Minority. She was allowed to be expressive and showcase an array of emotions one would expect a real life person would experience.

(*Seriously, I’ve seen at least one take about how BOP Cass can’t possibly be as amusing if she was non-verbal. Do you think non-verbal, Deaf and/or mute people are 100% serious and don’t tell jokes or use sarcasm, like ever? Yikes.)

I’m not saying all her comics appearances were perfect (NO character in comics history is). But to chuck out the good that did come with a disabled character, of which we don’t have that much positive representation in this franchise/genre, is not something I can justify.

I’m a Chinese woman myself, so I had trusted Yan & Hodson when it came to Cass. I was rooting for them. For the longest time, I gave them the benefit of the doubt even after the trailers because I believed they were going to deliver something spectacular for a beloved character. I don’t even mind the lack of martial arts. I’m not here for 100% comic accuracy; just that a disabled E.Asian girl with deep, unwavering compassion & empathy was done justice. I’m not here to trade one of these aspects for the other. And we shouldn’t have to pick between them, either.

This got longer than my initial first paragraph, but my closing statement was I do hope Yan & Hodson will do better. I still am rooting for them to.

#ask #1 #2 #3 #cassandra cain #birds of prey #/editted: substituted 'blind spt'

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builder051 · 3 years

Text

Run my river dry

A commission fic for Ketturukka. A Captain America Powers/No Powers story.

⚠️WARNING ⚠️ for suicidal thoughts/actions. (Everyone is mostly ok in the end.) Tumblr currently won’t let me do a cut.

——————————————————

Bucky doesn’t say goodbye when Steve leaves. Instead he says, “I’ll be fine.” He doesn’t wait for Steve to ask the question. They’re too deep into the valley of habit for it to matter.

Steve just nods and heads for the door. “Sure you will,” he says, a slight sigh in his voice. Bucky can’t tell if he’s being truthful or a little sarcastic. His ears have gotten bad at telling the difference, but it’s not like it matters. Day in and day out, it’s all the same. Steve goes to work, and Bucky stays home. Maybe eats breakfast, maybe doesn’t. Maybe tosses it back up. Then he goes back to bed and wishes he doesn’t exist.

As soon as Steve closes the door, Bucky lets out the breath he didn’t realize was bated as he held it deep down in his throat. He pulls it in and out for a moment, almost panting, until a wave of lightheadedness passes. It’s stupid, because he’s sitting down, but Bucky hasn’t been feeling well lately. He hasn’t been doing well.

There are meds upstairs, good ones. Bucky knows this because he happened to wake up, sweating and shaking, the night Steve moved them from the bathroom cabinet to the linen closet. He’d intended to go hang his head over the toilet for a minute and see if it made him feel better, but the sight of Steve with a half-dozen pill bottles in his hands had stopped Bucky in his tracks.

Steve had been forced to explain, and Bucky forced to listen. “It’s just to be safe, Buck,” he’d said, showing him the shiny new doorknob and the key he had on a chain around his neck. “And it’s not forever.”

Bucky knows the setup is supposed to be reassuring, to let him know Steve cares about him, and that he cares that Bucky’s safe from himself. He can’t help feeling like a toddler, though, stripped of autonomy and any semblance of self-care.

Steve doesn’t know it, but Bucky fosters a mild obsession with the linen closet and its perpetually locked door. He only lets it show when Steve’s not around, detouring to the downstairs bathroom or borrowing blankets from the back of the sofa just so he’ll have a reason to pass it and try his luck at opening it.

It never budges, of course, for Steve’s diligent about Bucky’s care and upkeep, or maybe that of the house. He parcels out meds at scheduled times, and that’s all. He can occasionally be wheedled into a Tylenol here or there when a headache comes on, but nothing unless Bucky’s symptomatic. He’s good that way. Though from Bucky’s view, it’s more of a negative than a positive.

When Steve’s bike leaves the driveway and buzzes off down the road, Bucky returns his never-filled coffee mug to the cabinet, then pulls his hoodie more tightly around his body. He’s never warm anymore. Not even when under the pile of blankets in the bedroom. It’s as close as he can get, though, so Bucky turns toward the stairs and starts the trudge upward, grasping the railing and dragging his way.

At the top of the steps, Bucky looks to the bathroom, considering whether a detour is worth it. He’s had nothing so far today, so there’s nothing to piss out or vomit up; his churning stomach is just a farce.

Across the short hall is the linen closet, the more enticing option. Bucky blinks at the gleaming silver door handle, takes a slow breath, then crosses to it in two shaky steps.

He tries not to get his hopes up, or at least he wouldn’t if he had any hope in him to force up to the surface and into his chest cavity along with his heavily beating heart. Whether from nerves or some perverse kind of excitement Bucky knows not, but the hammering behind his ribcage gives him something else to focus on at least.

With his eyes locked onto the door handle, Bucky grips the cold metal in his fist and makes an attempt at turning it. It’s lackluster and light, but to his utter shock, that’s all that’s required to make it turn. The door creaks open as Bucky pulls, feeling as guilty as he does eager.

He’s had nary a glance inside the linen cabinet since Steve’s redone it, so the change is somewhat shocking. The upper shelves remain crammed with sheets and towels, but the lower two are now overtaken with rows of pill bottles. Bucky’s surprised to see they have so many medications on hand, and he wonders how they accumulated. Is it normal for a household to have so many drugs?

Bucky sinks to his knees and continues to survey the collection. He realizes only half or so are prescriptions, and that makes him feel a little better. But then again, if Steve doesn’t trust him enough to be around the ibuprofen and Sudafed, what does that say about his current state of mind? Or Steve’s perception of it? An ache of remorseful desire squirms at the bottom of Bucky’s gut, and he reaches toward the grouping of over-the-counters, caressing their lids with one finger.

Most of the bottles have safety lids locked in place, effectively keeping Bucky out. Steve’s gummy vitamins and caffeine supplements have regular screw-off tops, which Bucky supposes he can open with his singular hand, but overdosing on those probably wouldn’t induce anything but an episode of paranoia and vomiting. Bucky scoffs and decides it’s not worth the trouble.

He moves his fingers forward and scans through the rest of the bottles, these glowing orange behind their large typewritten labels. Bucky squints at the text, trying to recall which of the long words is meant to treat which ailment. He can’t, but he does recognize the name of his psychiatrist at the top of each label, representing tiny blows to his sense of self as he taps the locked lids.

He’s broken. With every parceled out dose, Steve tries to fix him. The meds aren’t enough, though. The combination is wrong, or perhaps the dosages are too low. Things aren’t working. Bucky wishes he could take matters into his own hand and just purge himself from his place on this earth.

So why doesn’t he? Bucky runs his knuckles along the fronts of the row of bottles, rattling them slightly until he stops on one at random. He tilts his head as he realizes its lid is slightly askew, the cap set just barely off its threads.

Bucky’s heart begins to pound in his chest, and his palm goes sweaty. He lets out a shaky breath as he pulls the bottle forward out of the row and grasps it around the neck, holding it up so he can examine it properly.

Yes, the cap is definitely presenting a problem. Or, rather, an opportunity. Bucky’s shoulders shudder with anticipatory excitement as he plants the bottle between his knees and inserts his fingernails below the ridge of the cap. He digs in and gives it a hard twist, and, to his utter astonishment, the flat white lid comes off in his hand.

“The…?” Bucky murmurs, his breath stopping any further words short in his throat. His heart flutters with a sudden burst of elation, of happiness, but also with tremendous guilt over what he’s about to do. For that is what he’s about to do, isn’t it? He can’t turn back now, not after he’s gotten this far.

Bucky gulps, tasting bitterness in the back of his throat. Then he shakily raises the bottle of pills to his mouth and tips it back as if he’s taking a shot of whiskey.

Bucky recalls the first time he took a shot, sitting at the bar with Steve at his side. He’d wrinkled his nose and tried not to vomit as he’d swallowed down the stuff, feeling Steve’s slightly sloppy hand patting him hard on the back. There’s no encouragement this time; if Steve saw what he was doing, he’d certainly snatch the bottle away. But Bucky shuts his eyes hard and shoves the memory away, then takes the softly coated pills on his tongue and tries to swallow.

The capsules stick to the inside of Bucky’s dry throat, but he forces them down with a swish of spittle that tastes sour and chemical all at once. Almost immediately he feels his esophagus try to close up, but he clears his throat with a cough and pours more pills down, now emptying more than half the bottle.

A dizzying feeling starts to rise from Bucky’s core. It’s too early for the medication to be taking effect, so it must be something psychosomatic. Something emotional. Bucky’s head spins, and he tips sideways to rest it against the doorframe of the linen closet. It takes a moment for him to get his bearings again, and when he does, a thin sheen of sweat has gathered on his brow. He takes another breath, swallowing the thick saliva that coats the pills threatening to rise back up in his throat, and raises the bottle to his lips again.

It takes three tries to get the entire bottle down, and twice Bucky belches a couple of capsules back up into his mouth. He re-swallows them, though, determined to follow through with his choice. The tremor running through him grows in intensity, and he has to drop to lie on his stomach to keep his arm and legs from giving out.

Once Bucky’s finished the bottle, he continues gulping at the bitter flavor that covers his tongue and throat. It proliferates through his mouth, spreading with the saliva washing over his teeth and down toward his stomach.

Time takes on an odd texture, ebbing and flowing and moving in fits and starts. At first Bucky feels fine, save the tremor that prickles through his skin and the vertigo that plays around his ears.

Then, all of a sudden, a darkness descends upon him. Bucky’s vision drops to a dull blur and a ringing grows in his ears. A feeling of raw sickness creeps from his stomach to his throat, making him gulp down warm bitter wetness.

If this is death, Bucky thinks, it seems slow coming and not much distinguished from nightmarish sessions of illness he’s experienced before. It’s not that ne necessarily thought his erasure from the earth would be an easy experience, but he didn’t think it would be horrific, considering the method he’d chosen for his departure.

A metallic taste grows in between the gumlines behind Bucky’s teeth, and he begins to cringe involuntarily. He feels his eyes roll up in his head, and his head jerks sideways, cricking his neck in painful spasms.

Bucky’s jaw opens in a retch, and foamy saliva forces itself through the gaps in his teeth. An involuntary inhalation brings a choking feeling, and he sputters and vomits down the front of his shirt. The warm wetness feels odd, and he wonders for a moment why it seems to reach down his legs as well. Then he slowly realizes the seizure’s released his bladder muscles as well.

There’s no time for shame, for the world flickers before Bucky’s eyes. Stars dance in the corners of his visual field, threatening to take over everything he sees. Bucky pulls in his breath, feeling strings of mucous drag across the back of his tongue and prepare to choke him once they have their chance. It barely matters now, though. Bucky’s exhausted. He’s ready.

The sound of a door squeaking on its hinges, ten slamming against air pressure interrupts the quiet rhythm of Bucky’s heart beating in his ears. His breath, which has been slowing, catches in his chest and speeds up, grabbing a flicker of moisture that makes him sputter and cough. Unable to turn himself onto his side, Bucky lays there as a tiny spurt of liquid rises from his throat and forces itself between his gently parted lips.

“Hey, Buck?” Steve’s voice calls.

Bucky wonders if he’s hallucinating. That would make the most sense. The pills, whatever he took, might initiate a high before they kill him. They might make him hear voices, see things. Bucky opens his eyes and blinks a few times, just in case there are some visual illusions he’s missing. He only sees the ceiling, though, partially obscured in blotchy patches of yellow and lavender aura.

“St…?” Bucky manages to cough out. It’s not loud enough to be heard, but the voice downstairs continues in an inexact reply.

“I forgot my coffee, didn’t pack any lunch. And I was kinda, um, worried about you…”

Come upstairs, Bucky thinks. Or, really, don’t come upstairs. Just go…

“Buck?” Steve’s boots move through the entryway and into the kitchen. “Did you go up to bed?”

Bucky’s heart beats hard and slow, a sure sign that he’s losing his strength. He shuts his eyes hard. What if he dies, right now? What if Steve doesn’t get to him on time? Would that be the perfect ending, or the worst? Bucky doesn’t know. And he’s about to run out of time.

“Bucky?” Steve’s heavy footsteps move up toward the stairs.

Bucky bites his lip, tasting the chemical vomit and now a little blood. He prepares for hands on him. His body goes hot, then cold, cold as death, cold as the morgue itself…

“Buck, oh my god.” Steve’s knees hit the ground hard enough to shake the entire house. He plants both hands on Bucky’s chest and starts compressions, tilting his ear toward Bucky’s face to listen for a trace of breath.

Bucky stays still. Not necessarily because he wants to, but because paralysis seems to come upon him, forcing his breath to catch in his throat and his fluttering eyelids to squeeze shut.

Steve continues to move his hands up and down on Bucky’s ribcage, until, all of a sudden, a wash of vomit comes up, thick with not only foam, but also with pill casings and yellow bile. Steve scoops Bucky’s floppy form onto his side, arranging his knees into a recovery position so he won’t fall to his back again.

“Ok, ok, get it up,” Steve murmurs frantically. He percusses Bucky hard between the shoulder blades, forcing more of the frothy vomit up and onto the floor.

“Steve—“ Bucky sputters, reaching for Steve’s sleeve and clinging on. For dear life, he thinks. Is that what he wants?

“Yeah, I’m here.” Steve wraps his arms around Bucky, holding him tightly to his chest, paying no mind to the mess coating his clothing and the floor. “I’ll always be here.”

Bucky rests his chin on Steve’s shoulder, the tremor running through his body again. He’s grateful for Steve to hold him tightly together, lest he ooze out all over his lap.

Steve’s arm shifts, and Bucky sees him pick up the pill bottle from where it’s landed on the floor. He grabs it and squints at the label, then lets out a breath and presses his lips together.

“This is what you took?” Steve asks, his voice devoid of tone. “Is that all?”

Bucky stays silent.

“Buck?”

Tears fill Bucky’s eyes, and he isn’t sure what to say. He needs to tell the truth, of course. But won’t Steve hate him? Won’t he be upset?

“Buck, you have to tell me. So I can help you.”

Help him. Steve wants to help him. Bucky needs help. But does he want it? He isn’t sure. Now’s not the time to decide, though, for there isn’t much of it left.

“Just nod or shake your head, Buck. That’s all you have to do,” Steve says. “I won’t be mad at you, I promise.”

Bucky sobs, and a mouthful of foamy vomit slips from between his lips. Then he slowly moves his head up and down.

“Ok.” Steve pauses for a second. “Ok. We need to go to the hospital.”

Bucky lets out an involuntary high-pitched moan as his eyes flood with fresh tears. He shakes his head so hard it makes him dizzy, the hallucinatory lights and colors dancing around the edges of his visual field.

“We have to,” Steve repeats. “I think you got a lot of it up, but we can’t take any chances.” He looks Bucky up and down. “You’ve gotten really slim lately. I don’t know what max dose you can tolerate before there’s permanent damage. This could stop your heart, Buck, I—“ Steve breaks off, tears filling his eyes as well.

“I don’t wanna go…” Bucky drops his forehead to Steve’s chest, long strings of sour drool dripping from the corners of his mouth into Steve’s lap.

“I’ll try not to let them keep you,” Steve promises. “It’s a… a… poison control problem. You have night terrors and sleepwalk. It’s true enough…” Steve looks at Bucky, as if to test whether the story seems believable.

Bucky has no idea. His head aches, and nausea still crashes in waves against the insides of his body. Only half of what Steve says seems to penetrate the feelings of illness and make it to his brain, which, in turn, seems to be only half in tune with what’s going on around him.

“Do you think you can move?” Steve asks. “We kind of need to go.”

“I…” Bucky swallows the desire to be sick again. “Go now?”

“Yeah, Buck. “ Steve rises to his knees and pulls Bucky up along with him. “I want you to be ok. I need you to be ok.”

“Are…you ok?”

“Buck—That’s—“ Steve shakes his head, then presses his lips together. “No,” he finally says. “And neither are you. But we’re going to work on that. And the first step is to have you come with me. Right now.”

Bucky hesitates. He barely has control over his body, but he can at least maintain some autonomy around his words.

“Unless you want me to call an ambulance?” Steve gives Bucky a hard look, but Bucky sees his lower lip trembling. He sees how hard this must be for him, to come home to see Bucky practically dying in the hallway.

Bucky shakes his head a fraction of an inch to each side, the movement making him sick as well as sad.

Steve sets his jaw, then wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist and drags him to his feet. “We’re going now, ok? We can probably make it as fast as a squad…” His eyes look hopeful. Almost wistful.

He doesn’t know if Steve is stating a fact or gearing himself up for a challenge, but either way, the sick guilt bubbling up in Bucky’s chest presses against the back of his tongue, and it’s all he can do to keep himself from sicking up all over Steve. He lowers his head and forces out a sound that may or may not seal his fate.

“Ok.” Steve nods. He cups Bucky’s cheek and uses his thumb to wipe at a wayward tear. “Come on.”

They slowly move toward the stairs, ignoring the mess in front of the linen closet. Steve doesn’t even bother to close it; Bucky supposes he’ll deal with it later. That they’ll deal with it later. For certainly now they’re in this mess together, and they’ll swim their way out of it together as well.

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donewithcapitalistfrayers · 4 years

Text

cw: description of the violent repression after U.S. led coup in Haiti in 2004

From the Introduction of The Lie of Global Prosperity, by Seth Donnelly

"On February 29, 2004, one year after the United States invaded Iraq, an unnumbered aircraft bearing a U.S. flag flew out of Port-au-Prince. Inside were President Jean Bertrand Aristide and his wife. This was part of a carefully orcestrated regime change that Haitians refer to as the coupnapping of their democratically elected president [1]. In the months that followed, U.S troops, together with their French and Canadian counterparts, began to occupy the Caribbean country. Meanwhile a U.S.-backed "interim" regime systematically waged a war of repression against the country's poor majority, and especially against activists associated with Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas movement."

"Following the coup, the U.S. government was able to secure a UN Security Council resolution establishing the Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH)."Stabilized" by UN "peacekeeping" soldiers (Blue Helmet troops), the intermin government ramped up its reign of terror. UN troops began directly collaberating with the Haitian police in violent actions against civilians in popular, pro-Aristide neighborhoods such as Cité Soleil and Bel Air. Thousands were murdered, as bodies piled up in the streets and morgues, in what amounted to a systematic campaign to eliminate Lavalas followers [2]. This human rights disaster was largely ignored by the international press [3]."

"A public high school teacher in California's Bay Area, I was able to spend much of the summer of 2004 in Haiti, investigating prison conditions in Port-au Prince as part of a small human rights team. We found the country's penitentiaries to be overflowing with political prisoners from the Lavalas pro-democracy movement. They were there together with random people from poor neighborhoods whose crime had been to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The prison conditions were abysmal, far below the most basic human rights standards."

"The next summer I returned to Haiti to continue this same work in prisons and also to participate in a Haitian labor movement conference. On July 6, a young Haitian journalist, activist, and friend—gaunt from malnutrition—tracked down our delegation with a view to sharing his video footage of a massacre by UN troops conducted earlier that morning in Cité Soleil, his own neighborhood. The next day, he skillfully guided me and a small team of Haitian human rights activists into this huge, pro-Lavalas community of approximately 300 000 people. At that time, the interim government and MINUSTAH had laid an all-out siege on Cité Soleil. The young journalist was clearly trusted by people of all ages who came forward to meet with us. His graceful way of relating to children, peers and elders, combined with his energy to fight injustice, are still with me as I write this."

"Once we got inside Cité Soleil, people came forward to tell us how MINUSTAH troops had surrounded, invaded and fired indiscriminately into Cité Soleil, killing civilians. We saw bodies strewn on the ground, including those of twenty-two-year-old Sonia Romelus and her two children. Blue Helmet troops had shot and killed them in their home, according to the testimony of Romelus's surviving husband. Over the next forty-eight hours, our small team gathered comprehensive evidence that UN troops had carried out a massacre in Cité Soleil. We corroborated our eyewitness evidence with testimony from medical staff at the nearby Médecins Sans Frontières Hospital. [4]"

On July 8, our team decided to confront the MINUSTAH high command. They were working from the luxurious Hotel Montana, once a symbol of decadence under the Duvalier dictatorship. Inside the hotel, we managed to speak with Lt. General Augusto Heleno, head of the Blue Helmet mission, and Colonel Morneau about the events of Cité Soleil two days earlier. The two officers defended the MINUSTAH intervention, claiming it was a successful anti-gang operation, targeting local leader Dread Wilme. They denied that the UN Peacekeeping Force had killed any civilians. Apparently, it was not worth their trouble ti dispatch any investigators to Cité Soleil after the assault nor to the Médecins Sans Frontières Hospital that treated more than twenty civilians shot that day. To these MINUSTAH officials, it was simply an a priori truth that there had been no civilian victims."

"We had to try another approach. During the fall of 2005, our team worked with volunteers from the National Lawyers Guild to file a legal complaint against the United States and Brazilian governments for their roles in facilitating MINUSTAH and police massacres in Haiti, especially in Cité Soleil. We submitted the complaint to the Inter-American Commision on Human Rights. There was, however, no response. Apparently, the crimes in Haiti's killing fields never happened, and the victims did not exist. The reuslt was that MINUSTAH and the Haitian police would continue their lethal activities in total impunity."

"Years later, in 2013, I was in Haiti with a delegation of my high school students. We got word that our friend, the journalist from Cité Soleil, had fallen ill. To check on him, a small group of us went into Cité Soleil. We eventually found him, lying on the dirty floor of a shack, obviously in pain, and with his feet extremely swollen. Pooling resources, we took him to a private hospital where he died several days later from an immunological breakdown. He was not yet thirty years old."

"How could one describe his living conditions? LIke so many in Haiti, he lived in a community without access to adequate water, electricity, sanitation, education, health care, employment, and food, among other necessities. He lived in a makeshift hovel and died.young of a treatable illness. Yet World Bank opinion makers would deny that this man lived in poverty. That's because, with his sporadic income from courageous journalism and occasional remittances, he likely earned slightly more than $1.25 per day in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) currency (in fact, far below $1.25 in U.S. hard currency). As such, his income would be above the World Bank's then prevailing International Poverty Line, and so he could figure in a statistic as part of the alleged decline in global poverty."

"There is, in fact, a macabre coincidence between two parallel methods of record-keeping. ON the one hand, the MINUSTAH high command erased the crime of their troops murdering people in Cité Soleil: the massacre never existed. On the other hand, the World Bank erases the crime of his proverty. It is this latter crime and its erasure—just as much a manifestation of imperialism as the "coupnapping" of Aristide and the MINUSTAH repression in its wake..."

1. "The U.S. role is well documented. For example, see Paul Farmer, The Uses of Haiti (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2006); and Randall Robinson, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2008).

2. "For thorough, unrelenting documentation of the UN role in this brutal repression, see the documentary film Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits, Haiti Information Project, 2009"

3. "To gain a sense of the scale of the violence, see the excellent reports Hidden from the Headlines: The U.S. War Against Haiti (Berkeley: Haiti Action Committee, 2004); and Thomas Griffin, Haiti Human Rights Investigation: November 11-21 (Miami, FL: Center for the Study of Human Rights, University of Miami School of Law, 2004)"

4. "See our report Growing Evidence of a Massacre by UN Occupation Forces in Port-au Prince Neighborhood of Cité Soleil: A Summary of Findings of the U.S. Labor and Human Rights Delegation to Haiti (July 12, 2005)"

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oldadastra · 4 years

Text

Letter to Lucasfilm

So, I’ve written a letter to Lucasfilm. It could be better, but this is what came out this afternoon. I hope others who are writing will share what they are putting into the mail. I was trying to be concise, but it still ran to several pages. Find it in its entirety below the cut:

***

Lucasfilm, Ltd. Attn: Fan Mail PO Box 29901 San Francisco, CA 94129-0901

December 30, 2019

Lucasfilm/Disney:

I am writing to express my anger, shock, disappointment and deep sadness with the final installment of the Star Wars saga, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.

I was ten in 1977 when the original film was released and have loved Star Wars ever since. I was thrilled by the reopening of the saga in The Force Awakens, and delighted by the excellent script, rich visual storytelling, nuanced character development, and thematic direction of Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.

Disney took on a sacred trust when it acquired Lucasfilm. Star Wars is deeply important to many people, and if you couldn’t do justice to the characters and themes of the saga, I’d argue that you had no business being involved in these stories. There is so much Disney/Lucasfilm got wrong in Rise of Skywalker, I’m struggling to gather my thoughts or express them coherently, but here goes:

Ben Solo. You created the most compelling character in the new trilogy by destroying the happy ending of the original trilogy. I was willing to go along on the ride Abrams and Kasdan began in The Force Awakens, because the fate of Ben Solo felt like it mattered. The questions raised in the new films: the nature of good and evil, the degree to which one’s family legacy defines a person, whether a one can atone for past sins; all of it felt alive and urgent in the person of Ben, a character I loved like one of my own children from the moment we so traumatically met him in The Force Awakens. His story was the beating heart of the new trilogy. His story is the one that mattered. His life was the one to be saved.

Ben solo was never an exposition device, cool villain, or disposable baddie to me. He was Han and Leia’s only child; loved, targeted, broken, lost.

The Rise of Skywalker redeems Ben Solo in the final act of the film, only to destroy him. Was it always your plan to kill the last Skywalker in the final installment of this story, to render the overarching message of all nine films as tragedy? If so, I wish I’d known this was your intent; I would never have engaged with these stories and made an emotional investment in them. If tragedy was your goal, that was certainly your choice to make, but I’d argue that you owed it to the audience and the cast to do a better job of it.

For example: You give us evidence that Han and Leia’s child was targeted by evil old men from before his birth. It’s a disturbingly explicit allegory of grooming and child abuse.

You give Ben Solo a backstory which implies he is guilty of vile, Anakin-style crimes against other young people, coding him as a school shooter, and then chose to exonerate him of this crime in a comic book, where the general audience will never know he was innocent. It’s a form of character assassination.

You consigned Ben Solo to the darkness for almost the entirety of three films, then denied him his voice in the final acts of his own story. “Ow?” The only words the redeemed Ben Solo will ever speak. Apalling.

You brought back Palpatine for this film (arguably rendering the message of the first six films meaningless), identified the Emperor as Ben’s tormentor all along, then denied Ben the opportunity to fight his enemy in the final act of the film. Rise of Skywalker literally throws Ben Solo into a pit, and forces him to climb out alone and unaided while Rey is whispered to by “all the jedi,” offering her words of encouragement. It’s grotesque.

I’m getting lost in rage and sadness again here, so let me just say that even if you inexplicably didn’t care about the last Skywalker in the Skywalker saga, you have done a grave disservice to Adam Driver in your treatment of his character in this these films. Perhaps you’ve heard of Driver’s non-profit organization, Arts in the Armed Forces? He’s deeply committed to the importance of stories as a way to make meaning out of the inexpressible. Did he really sign on to this project thinking that the final message of his character would be to say that even if you are able to come back from the darkness, your final act must be to die? That imperfect children don’t deserve compassion, forgiveness, life? You owe Mr. Driver an apology, but you can never really atone for what you’ve done to him.

You ended a nine-film, forty-two year saga with all the Skywalkers dead, and a Palpatine the last one standing. You spent three films tormenting Han and Leia’s child, only to kill him in the final act. What you did to Ben Solo (and frankly to us, who loved him) feels more like a horror story than anything else. In my dreams, I walk right into your offices and flip over tables.

There’s a lot more I could accuse Rise of Skywalker of bungling, but I assume you are hearing this feedback from others besides me, so I will summarize:

Rey Palpatine. Was is all about the midiclorians after all? By making her Palpatine’s granddaughter, you deny Rey everything that made her special; you deny her agency, and you negate the beautiful message I thought you were trying to communicate in the first two films with Rey Nobody: that the force belongs to us all, and that anyone can be a hero

The erasure of Rose Tico. It’s difficult to interpret this as anything but a capitulation to a loud, racist, and misogynist element of the fandom. It’s a very bad look, Disney. Please pay attention to the message you are sending.

Character development in general and a truly horrible ending: Rey goes back into her child-like costume, Ben Solo spent much of the film forced back into his stupid mask. Ben disappears at the end with no one to mourn him. Rey ends the film alone in a desert wasteland.

Rise of Skywalker is the most bleak, hopeless, and depressing Star Wars film ever made. As days go by, it’s becoming clear that it was also poorly written and edited. These stories matter to us, and we pay close attention to them. Disrespect us at your peril.

I don’t expect anyone will ever read this missive, or care at all about what an old shepherd on a mountainside thought about the execution of your multi-billion dollar movies. This is a personal exercise in catharsis as much as anything.

But here are a few notes in a language you might understand. I made some quick calculations about how much money I’ve spent on Star Wars over the past four years, and I’m sharing that with you now.

Movie tickets: I’m one of those people who sees movies I love more than once (I saw Empire Strikes Back eighty-one times in the theater!). I saw The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi at least ten times each. I’m not counting the cost of tickets for my extended family, whom I brought along to a number of screenings, or tickets for birthday party guests we treated to these movies. My teenaged daughter came along for all the screenings I am including, so I calculate I spent about $360 on tickets. We also bought tickets to Rogue One and Solo, so it was actually more, but you get the idea.

Books, tie-ins, DVDs, merchandise: I invested in The Art of the Force Awakens and The Art of the Last Jedi books, as well as at least one SW Visual Dictionary. I bought DVDs of the films of course, and CDs of John Williams’ beautiful scores. I bought and read a number of books; Boodline and the Leia novel, The Force Awakens novelization and Junior novelization, Aftermath, and a couple others whose titles escape me. At least seven action figures. Toy light sabers for me and my daughter. Posters. T Shirts. I know I’m not remembering everything, but it adds up to an expenditure of at least $347 in books and other Star Wars merchandise.

Star Wars Celebration: I splurged on passes for my daughter and I to attend Star Wars Celebration in Chicago this past spring. It cost me about $400, and a last-minute family emergency meant we were unable to attend, but the tickets were non-refundable, so it was money I spent on Star Wars nonetheless.

Total: $1,107

A laughably small amount to you guys, I’m sure. Perhaps a contrast is useful:

Total amount I have spent (tickets for my daughter and I on opening night) on Rise of Skywalker: $22.

Total amount I plan to spend on Disney Lucasfilm merchandise in the future: $0

I invested quite a lot of my time in Star Wars over the past four years. I’ve written thousands of words in essays, appreciations and analyses (mostly on Tumblr), where I amassed a modest following of just over a thousand people. I’m sure I occasionally bored my friends and family by going on and on about Star Wars. This kind of ‘work’ has no dollar value of course. I will say that it was great fun while it lasted, though I feel foolish in retrospect, remembering all the times I came to your defense, arguing that the saga was in good hands, that you had a plan; that you were going to tell a good story.

Sadly, I don’t think you can fix the damage you’ve done to the Galaxy Far Far Away with The Rise of Skywalker. You made this film, made your choices, and put it out into the world. I have no control over where you go from here, but as a person who has loved Star Wars since I was a child, I beg you to take some time to reflect before making another Star Wars film.

You’ve broken so many hearts. Mine was one.

Andrea ____

...my full name and address, blah blah, I live in Vermont

#letters to lucasfilm #Lucasfilm #tros #reylo #ben solo #tros grief #hit them in the wallet #disney lucasfilm

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anistarrose · 4 years

Text

Parting Words (Forduary Week 2 - Trust)

AO3: archiveofourown.org/works/23122360

Summary: In the aftermath of Weirdmageddon, Ford writes Bill a letter.

Characters: Ford Pines, Bill Cipher, Stan Pines

Relationships: Bill Cipher & Ford Pines

An extremely late submission to @forduary Week 2: Trust/Paranoia. I got this idea about a year ago, and apparently forgot all about it until yesterday.

***

August 30th, 2012

To the late Bill Cipher:

You will not be missed.

On account of the circumstances under which Stanley killed you, I wasn’t able to share any direct parting words, as it would have obviously revealed our con. This doesn’t rank especially high on my list of regrets — for example, all the individual times I could have spat in your face but failed to do so rank much higher — but it is a regret nonetheless, hence this letter. It’s not quite the same as calling you an arrogant little brat in person, but it will have to suffice.

Stan is doing well, by the way — certainly far better than you. Thanks to Mabel’s stubborn optimism and scrapbooking enthusiasm, he’s made almost a complete recovery. Though some of the details of Weirdmageddon still elude him, I trust that he shared some choice words and a solid left hook with you when the two of you clashed in his mindscape. I’ve seen him get in enough schoolyard fights with cruel, childish, overconfident bullies to know how these things usually go.

But that reminds me, Bill — I’ve been learning some things about trust that I’d like to tell you about.

I was a fool for trusting you, for allowing myself to become a pawn in your scheme, and the blame for accepting your deal lies solely in my own hands. This is no novel realization.

But only within this past week have I began to think about just how much that decision to trust you has skewed my view of trust ever since.

Your betrayal drove me to paranoia; I saw your eyes everywhere I looked. To this day, I still don’t know if you really did manifest in the truck stop, or if it was all a sleep-deprived hallucination.

But you were planting the seeds of distrust even earlier than the reveal of your true nature. You told me that Fiddleford lacked the resolve to follow through with our experiment, and so I kept my secrets away from him and ignored his warnings. He could have foiled your plans, but you knew this — and because you’d seen my memories and nightmares, because you knew how protective I was of my inventions and how paranoid I was about treachery disrupting my research, you knew what to tell me to effectively take Fiddleford out of the picture before we ever openly argued.

Earlier still, you told me I was single greatest mind of the century, that you had chosen to inspire me because of my unmatched intellect — and I bought into that lie without a second thought.

The implication was that everyone else was lesser, not worth my time. Less consciously and more subtly, I bought into that, too.

Even as my self-esteem plummeted like Icarus falling from the sky, even as I regretted every choice that had led me to my current lot in life, that internalized implication stubbornly persisted. “Being a genius means being alone” evolved into “being a hero means being alone.” You said genius happened with occasional help from a friend; my definition of heroism had no such addendum. Friends were vulnerabilities, and confidants were potential backstabbers.

In my mind, I was Achilles, and trust had been the weak spot on my heel. I resolved to never expose that weakness again, except for in the most dire of situations, and it took me far too long to realize how that resolve had been to my own detriment.

Because of you, I spent so many years afraid and alone. I now know that I made myself alone, with my own self-isolating choices — but all too often, they were choices that you conditioned me to make.

I will not, and should not, absolve myself of my deserved share of blame for the apocalypse. But I will not, and I should not, forget that far more of that blame lies with you.

It’s thanks to my family that I’ve been able to recognize all this. It’s especially thanks to Stanley.

He saved the world, and he didn’t do it alone. He is more of a hero than I had ever believed that I could be. He is a liar, and a charlatan, and an identity thief — and despite all this, I trust him unconditionally.

I’m not worried about you coming back, Bill. Stan’s memories have returned, but I don’t think you’ll return with them — because I trust Stan not to let that happen. I know that he is stronger than you, and I trust that he’d never let you out of his mindscape unscathed.

Which brings me to the point of this letter, really. I could (and in the past, I have) hurled expletives into the void, hoping you’ll hear them wherever you are — but today, I have something I want you to know.

I want you to know that I am no longer the isolated, paranoid wreck of a man that you made of me. There are some things you did that I may still take years to recover from, but today, I am surrounded by friends and family new and old, and I trust them all completely.

You are no longer my Muse, Bill. And I am no longer your pawn.

My family and I will be celebrating your death this evening. I would call it your funeral, but that implies a certain degree of both respect and grief, two emotions that no Pines has ever felt towards you.

At Dipper’s suggestion, I’ll be tossing my journals into the Bottomless Pit — but this letter will be going straight into a fire once I’m done writing. I think it has the best chance of reaching you that way.

You’ve never been quite as restrained by linear time as humans are, after all. So maybe there’s a chance these words could still reach you in your dying moments — and if they don’t, it’ll be alright with me. You will know you’re dying and I will know you’re dead, and that’s the important thing.

I would tell you to enjoy hell, but I don’t think that’s quite where you’re headed. Instead, enjoy erasure from existence, leaving behind a world that has bounced back from the havoc you wreaked on it. Enjoy knowing that all your plans to raze our dimension have been for naught. Enjoy knowing that your pawn is free of you, and has learned to trust again. Enjoy knowing that this will be your legacy.

This is Stanford Pines, happily bidding you farewell forever.

P.S.

Pdbeh qrz brx’yh ohduqhg vrphwklqj derxw wuxvw dqg orqholqhvv, wrr.

#gravity falls #forduary #stanford pines #bill cipher #stanley pines #rosalia writes fic

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mss4msu · 4 years

Text

Call Me Doctor. (Chapter 20)

Summary: Fresh out of graduate school, you had somehow landed a spot in the faculty of a prestigious university. The small anthropology department has too many faculty and too few offices; sharing an office does not go as you expected.

Pairing: Professor!Steve x Professor!Reader

Words: 1543

Warnings: ANGST IS BACK BABIES

A/N: Picture that photo of the “you know I had to do it to ‘em” guy and that’s me writing this lmao

Catch Up on the Story Here

“Please enjoy the exhibit,” you managed to choke out with a gesture to the space behind you.

As the crowd began to swarm towards the exhibit, you made a bee-line for the bar. Your mind was racing with what your next steps should be; Should I warn Steve? Should we just get out of here? Do I go up to her first? Do I avoid everyone and hide in the bathroom all night?

You hurriedly asked for a drink and immediately downed it. As the bartender refilled your glass, you felt a tap on your shoulder and your stomach flipped. You looked up to see Steve smiling at you.

“That went well!” he enthusiastically told you.

You took a deep breath, “Yeah…. Hey, Steve, there’s something I need to tell you,” you took another breath, “Sha--”

“(Y/N)! Steve!” The sound of Loki’s voice interrupted you.

You turned around and were met with the sight of Loki coming towards you, walking arm-in-arm with Sharon. Your heart sank when you hazarded a glance at Steve who looked like he was going to be sick; all of the color had completely left his face.

“Fuck,” you muttered under your breath, “Hi, Loki,” you put on as cheery a smile as you could manage in an attempt to save face, “And Sharon, what a surprise!”

Sharon put her hand out and you hesitantly extended your own to shake hers. She stayed linked to Loki as she shook your hand vigorously.

“I know! Huge surprise,” she laughed, “But when Loki here,” she put her hand on his chest in a way that made you slightly wince with disgust, “Told me all of the big work you were doing, well I couldn’t not come to see it in person!”

Steve looked like he was going to throw up, and you resisted your urge to lead him away as fast as you could.

“Steve, you know Sharon don’t you?” Loki interjected gleefully, his eyes glimmering with malice.

“Yes,” Steve’s voice was barely over a whisper and acknowledging Sharon seemed to bring him physical pain.

Fearful of what would happen if you all stayed there any longer, you quickly made up an excuse, “Oh shoot! It looks like James is waving us over. As you probably know, Steve and I worked on the exhibit together, so I’m sure he needs us to go answer some questions. So sorry,” you raised your eyebrows at Steve and he nodded sheepishly in agreement.

“Alright, bye! We’ll find you again later!” Sharon’s cheery voice grated at your ears and the laugh Loki gave as you and Steve walked away was like nails on a chalkboard.

“What the fuck was she doing here?” Steve growled once you were far enough away to be out of their earshot.

“Steve, I don’t know and I was trying to warn you because I saw her in the crowd right at the end of my little speech,” you grabbed his arm to stop him and held on until he finally made eye contact with you, “Steve, I really didn’t know she was going to be here.”

He took a deep breath, “I know. It’s fine, I’m fine,” the slight softening of his eyes made you almost believe he was telling the truth, “Did James really want us?”

“No,” you hazarded a light chuckle, “Just needed to get out of the danger zone.”

No sooner had the words left your mouth than a very out of breath James suddenly appeared next to you.

“Speak of the devil…” your smile fell as you saw the look on James’s face.

“You’re never going to believe this!”

Steve inhaled deeply, and you could tell he was preparing for the worst. You sent up a quick prayer to Horus as James opened his mouth again.

“The news is here, like the actual news, not the cheesy University newspaper, and Tony is currently giving an interview about how he took on this huge project himself. He’s saying he planned the exhibit, did the installation, and set up this whole party.”

You let out a sigh of relief, “That’s all?”

“The fuck you mean, ‘that’s all?’ That’s some bullshit! I did not spend 20 minutes hanging that damn sign for this erasure. I don’t care if he doesn’t give you pleebs any credit, but I deserve better.”

“You’re right, James, that is some bullshit for you,” Steve let out a low chuckle.

“Damn straight! I wonder if Nat knows he’s doing this,” James looked around the room trying to spot her, “What fuck?” he muttered before quickly turning back to you and Steve.

“What?” you asked hesitantly.

James looked pale, “Noth--nothing.”

“Buck, we know,” the sound of defeat in Steve’s voice broke your heart.

“Why?”

“That we don’t know.”

You stood there in silence, wishing you had something you could say to make everything better or to just make Sharon go away.

“Fuck, man.”

“Yup.”

“And why is she with him?” James emphasized the last word with an incredible level of disgust.

“Make me Department Chair if I’m wrong, but I think he invited her here.”

“Why would Loki do that?” you asked naively.

James and Steve both rolled their eyes at you, and then looked at each other as if daring the other to answer.

Steve apparently won, as James growled, “Because he’s a piece of shit.”

“James!” Sharon squealed from behind you causing you to jump slightly and interrupting any further questions.

“Haha, what the fuck,” James muttered to you with a fake smile before turning to greet the intruder, “Oh Sharon! What a surprise, what brings you here?”

“That’s what everyone keeps saying and that seems to be the question on everyone’s mind. Haha! I’m here to see the work of (Y/N) of course. She was my brightest student, as I’m sure you’ve already found out.”

“Yes, we have,” Steve said, you couldn’t help feeling proud when noticing how he slightly puffed out his chest when answering.

Sharon’s face fell briefly, but she soon recovered, “Anyway, I’m here for the week, so maybe we can all go out for dinner to celebrate her achievements? And mine too!”

“You have achievements too?” you tried not to sound snarky, but you were genuinely taken aback.

“Why of course! You don’t think I’d be invited here to lecture if I hadn’t done any relevant work do you?” Sharon said all of this with a tinkling laugh.

“Invited...to...lecture…?” James asked slowly.

“Oh, Jamie, I mean, of course I wanted to support you all, but you don’t really think I would’ve flown all the way here just for...this...do you?” She waved her hand nonchalantly around.

A fake smile spread on your own lips at the backhandedness of Sharon’s words, “So where are you lecturing?” you tried to keep your voice even and not let the anger beginning to bubble inside of you escape.

“This is so funny that you all don’t know. I’m lecturing here! I think Loki called it the ‘Friday Lecture’ or something trivial like that? Apparently (Y/N) started off the season, so Loki thought it would be just precious if I were to end it, and I totally agree. It’s a fabulous opportunity.”

While Steve had been white as a sheet on his first run in with Sharon, looking at him now he was beet red. You wanted to grab his hand to reassure him, but you stopped yourself.

“Really Sharon? It’s a fabulous opportunity?” Steve sneered at her, disdain dripping from his words.

“Aww Stevie, you’re not still upset about what happened all those years ago, are you?” Sharon asked, sticking out her lower lip in a faux pout and tapping him on the chest.

“Fuck you, Sharon,” Steve spat before turning on his heel and leaving the room.

“Hahaha, poor Stevie, still not over the heartbreak I guess? Did you know we use to go out, (Y/N). Of course, I was too successful for him and he was threatened, so I just had to break it off.”

Of course, you thought to yourself, anger bubbling inside of you at the way she talked about Steve.

“Go to hell, Sharon,” James snapped, “(Y/N), I think Natasha needs us in the exhibit.”

“Really, Jamie??” Sharon called out in mock disappointment.

James didn’t give her a second look as he took you by the hand and lead you away.

“James, I want to go check on Steve.”

“Not now, (Y/N). Trust me.”

You yanked your hand away, “James. I have to go check on Steve.”

James saw the look in your eye and gave you a nod. You ran out of the exhibit and out of the building. You were shocked to find yourself in the middle of a downpour.

Fucking great, you thought to yourself as you scanned your surroundings for any sign of Steve.

You heard the sound of an engine revving and ran to the edge of the sidewalk, searching for Steve.

“STEVE!!” you screamed out as a motorcycle drove past you.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t even look at you. He just drove away into the dark and stormy night. Under the cover of the rain, you broke down and began to cry.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Call Me Doctor. Tag List:

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razorblade180 · 4 years

Text

Code Black

[Lasting Embers Au] [Warning, it’s dark]

Atlas, three o’clock in the morning. A lone airship soars across the barren tundra to an unmarked Atlas warehouse that had been abandoned for years, until recently that is. Inside, Sienna sat in silence with a deep seeded anxiety that went to her bones deeper than the frigid cold that made its way through the cockpit.

Today was mission 0, final exam day. Every recruit for The Shadows has to take it before actually making it in. They took it one at a time and weren't allowed to speak about it. Not that mattered since each test tailored to the recruit, but none of them were aware of that fact. Everything was so bizarre and mysterious more than usual, even the close. Sienna was in specialized gear for the first time today. A black form fitting bodysuit covered by white military style cargo pants, and turtleneck that would be disposed of once she got out of the snow. Sienna put on her black leather gloves and picked up her very own Shadows mask, which was simply a full face White Fang mask that was painted completely black with specks of grayish white to match her ears. She even had a change of shoes in her duffel bag once the snow boots served their purpose. The bag also housed extra ammunition for her party as well as her chain for the time being. This was a standard op it seems. This was…

xxxx

“A code black, what is that?” Sienna said to Adam in his office, clearly confused by the code. Normal recruits weren’t allowed in the office since only actual members and a few others knew he was alive, but Adam raised her so there wasn’t a real reason for her not to ask directly.

“Yes,” he said. Adam stood up and moved in front of his desk and sat on the edge with his legs stretched out. He found it a little funny how his daughter stood in front of him at attention. “You know it’s just the two of us, relax.”

Sienna shoulders dropped immediately. “Sorry, I was practicing for when we’re in public. It would cause trouble if the others suspected something.”

They already know but I’m glad she’s thinking ahead. “Did they go over the different color codes for recruits by any chance?”

Sienna stood up straight and cleared her throat. “Every mission for The Shadows is given a specific color depending on what kind of operation it is, that way members can have an idea of what’s entail and if they think they are qualified.”

“Did...was that in a handbook or something? Since when do you use words like entail?”

Sienna let out a sigh as she stared at her feet. “Ilia is a very strict instructor.”

Adam immediately felt her pain. Even in the old days, Ilia was always the kind of person to cross her t’s and dot her i’s when it came to just about anything.

“I guess that means you could name a few of those codes.”

“Oh of course!” Sienna perked up immediately. She loved flaunting her knowledge “Red is assassination, white is deep undercover, green is theft, gray tends to be more head to head confrontation, pink is torture…” that last one always creeped her out. “I could name a few more if you like?”

“No you’ve proven your point. I gotta remember to thank Ilia. Teaching was never really my strong suit.” Adam started thinking about how he tried teaching Sienna and Jael to swim. Jacquelyn might’ve actually killed him that day. He still thinks floaties are for the weak. Just dive right in!

Sienna got a little bit more comfortable and decided to sit on his desk next to him. “I’ve memorized almost all the codes and I’m positive I never saw black. Could she have forgotten it?”

Adam turned his body to his daughter. Suddenly everything felt like it had gotten more serious, even the air. “No, Ilia probably didn’t think it mattered since they’re rare. Code black, erasure.”

Sienna’s body went cold. “E-Erasure? As in no evidence, or witnesses?”

“I think you already know the answer to that.” Adam rubbed his hand through his hair. “When it comes to the codes, all the other ones deal with small groups or even a single person that’s typically a key player or just beginning to cause trouble, so completing those missions usually puts whatever plan they had to a complete stop.”

“Like taking a gear out of a machine. Each mission takes a gear out and it gets too complicated to get new pieces.”

“Hey that’s a pretty good way of thinking about it.” Adam smiled. He’d have to remember that analogy.

“So what makes code black different from the rest?”

“Well following your logic, let’s say the other missions were machines that were being built. Many different things are in the progress of creating it and nothing is finalized, there’s not a true system to mass produce the machine. Black codes are for situations where the machine is already up and running. You can take a part out but it will be replaced eventually. So you break the machine along with the factory, with all the workers inside. As well as the inventors.”

“Oh…” was all Sienna could say to that. She could tell he wasn’t just talking about the grunts. If you want a machine to not be built, then even people who know if the idea has to go. “So, can I get specifics?”

“To put it briefly, a terrorist group's main base has been discovered. They’ve been doing things for a while now and with efficiency to boot. They’re incredibly dangerous and though we’ve dwindled their numbers, there’s still a lot of them. People keep joining their ranks which is the very reason we know all about them now. A recruiter slipped up and we got information. Down to the letter. They’re regrouping in two days.”

“So my final exam is to go to the base and…let it all fade to memory, erase it from history.”

“Mass murder, a slaughter.” Adam said it out right, like ripping off a bandaid. Sienna looked down at her hands and clenched them tightly. He had a pretty good idea what was going through her head. Seconds past before she looked back at him with a will that refused to break.

“What else do I need to know.” The anxiousness in her voice was being pushed back with all her strength. She knew what this job was about. Turning back was not an option. It was never an option.

“Code blacks are only carried out by the absolute best here, all of them. With the exception of me this time because it’s a test. I don’t trust myself to not baby you.”

At least he was honest about it.* Sienna honestly wished he was going but yeah, it would totally be cheating. Well, possibly. What she was being graded on was a mystery to her.

“Wait...” she replayed what he told her. “The absolute best? Do you mean-”

Adam put his hand on her head and rubbed it. “Yep. Just follow their lead and you’ll be fine. Do your best Sienna.”

xxxx

Turbulence hit the airship and the mask slipped out of her hands. Right before it hit the ground, Mercury’s foot hooked the inside of it and he sent it back up into her hands. “Careful, can’t have that breaking on us.”

Emerald sat right next to him and hit him lightly on the head. “If that’s your worry then maybe don’t use your feet?” She said, deadpanned. She might’ve hit him again if Neo didn’t turn around from steering and motioned towards their clearly one edge recruit.

Neo didn’t even have to speak for them to know she wanted them to do something. Mercury gave Emerald a look and shrugged his shoulders.

“Got any ideas?” He whispered.

Emerald shrugged back. “Maybe what Nora does for Tenzen? That calms his nerves.

Mercury thought about it for a minute then nodded. Sienna had completely zoned out, caught up in her mind when the feeling of Mercury’s hand ruffling her hair shocked her out of it.

“What the!? Hey!”

Mercury smiled. “There, now you can worry about your hair instead of anything else.” He watched the girl fix her pixie cut while giving him a pouty look that hid a small smile.

“That was so dumb” Sienna muttered. “Thanks.”

Mercury gave her a thumbs up then sat back down next to his wife. He peeked over at Neo who also gave him a thumbs up. So far so good. Missions could get tense so it was important to stay loose.

The ride continued for another twenty minutes before the ship finally landed. Sienna didn’t say anything but had decided it was best to mimic some of their movements. Checking shoes, stretching, putting on the mask; no way was she going to look like a complete noob. Though she did almost gasp from shock when she all three entirely suited up. There was something really cool about the only differences was the speckled pattern on the masks. She hadn’t seen herself in a mirror so she wondered if she looked just as intense.

Mercury opened up the door,letting in a rush a cold air that snapped Sienna into focusing. One by one they hopped out into the tundra. There was nothing but snow for miles, except for a cliff in the distance. Not extremely far, but far enough for Sienna to ask the dreadful question.

“We’re heading to the cliff by foot, aren’t we?” She really didn’t want to complain but the idea of it was really making her consider failing. Neo laughed at the girl though.

“I don’t need to see your face right now to know what you’re thinking. As entertaining as it would be to say yes, I need you in high spirits. That cliff is our destination, however….” Neo pulled out her scroll and started texting. “We’re on a tight schedule so we’re gonna cut a corner or two.”

A red portal opened up in front of her. Mercury and Emerald walked through immediately while Neo grabbed Sienna’s hand then led her through. Red and black consumed everything before she saw white again. They were on the cliff, just like that!

Sienna turned around to see the portal closing. Before it did, she caught a glimpse of a figure in red and black. It was easy to see that they were a woman by their outfit but Sienna couldn’t think of one person from what little details she saw. The hair did remind her of the blonde woman she met once. Yang was it? She couldn’t remember. Sienna turned back around to see an extra person she did recognize. Ilia was on her stomach at the edge of the cliff and looking through the scope of a sniper rifle. She was geared up like everyone else and seemed to have been here for quite awhile. Her hair had changed white but Sienna could see plenty of snow in it. Sienna walked over to her and went into a prone position as well.

Down below was the abandoned base. It looked like a base and more of a Frankenstein’s monster. The structure had looked part warehouse and part oil rig with how many pipes and beams there were, not to mention the size. The building was pretty huge from this far away but that made sense. There’s supposed to be a lot of these terrorists here. If it wasn’t for the wind then she could probably hear most of them. A good thing to keep in mind for later.

“See anything?” Sienna asked.

Ilia perked her head up and looked at the girl confused? “Wait, this is your test?”

Now Sienna’s face matched Ilia’s. “Dad didn’t tell you?”

“No, he just said this mission was extra special. Now I see why. Did the flight here agree with you?”

“Yes ma’am, I’m ready” her voice held a certain apathy to it that Ilia noticed right away. She gave Sienna some binoculars and turned her head towards some large busted pipes.

“See that? That is an old pipeline that was used for transporting dust. This base should still have plenty inside and even residue all up through it.”

“So… we’re blowing this place up?”

Ilia nodded. “That’s half right. They’re big enough for someone to go through without much of a problem. No doubt they lead somewhere inside.” Ilia takes the binoculars back. “That’s where you’re going.”

“I see…” Sienna bit her lip. If I understand this right, I’m taking out people from inside, I assume Neo disguises herself and goes through the front door, you’re picking off anyone who tries escaping if things get loud…” she turned to look at Em and Mercury. “I guess one of you goes for the higher up places?”

Emerald almost wanted to clap. “ Not half bad with these guesses, any rhyme to your reason?”

“It’s not like I don’t know what you all are particularly good at. That being said, Mercury, what are you doing?”

“Hmm what do you think I should do?” He cracked his knuckles. “If you were running this op, what would be your orders?”

Gears in her head were turning. There was a high chance that this was the test portion and the others would compensate accordingly. They were pros so no doubt they could actually fill any role. She however could not. Sienna knew she was bound to make a mistake. A slip up that might make things more challenging in the long run. Sienna needed a safety net.

“You’re with Mercury. If I’m going right into the lion's den then I might need help when things eventually get loud.”

“Roger that. Consider me your extra muscle.”

Glad to know my lessons got through to her. Ilia thought to herself. She looked back at everyone, they were all ready.

“What are y’all standing around here for? You heard the lady. Remember to keep calm and take off the snow camouflage when you’re inside. There could be hundreds in there and I’d like to do this quietly for as long as possible. It’ll make my life easier. Sienna, would you like to do the honors?”

Sienna nodded, “Let the operation begin.”

xxxx

“This operation stinks.” Sienna said while holding her breath in. These old pipes were disgusting! Her and Mercury must’ve been traveling down them for at least ten minutes. Both were now in black and besides from Mercury’s hair, it was pretty damn hard to spot him. Sienna was confident in her decision.

“Yeah stealth tends to have the smellier routes. They typically put us in sweet spots though.” Finally they reach an exit point in the form of a vent opening on the ground. Sienna looked down and spotted crates of old dust. The lights were dim and she could faintly here one, no, two people.

“Two people, far end of the room. They sound like two guys,older guys.” She whispered.

“One for you and one for me then. You ready?”

Sienna ignored the smell and took a deep breath to calm the last bit of her nerves and removed the vent. Mercury saw her ears fold down.

“Word of advice, it helps if you make it brief. For you and-”

“I’ve killed before Mercury.” She briefly takes off her mask to let him see her blank expression. Her eyes almost looked devoid of anything. Almost like a broken doll. Sienna put her mask back on. “Let’s get started.”

Sienna hopped down and immediately rolled behind the crates. Mercury followed suit. They poked their heads over them to see two people with rifles simply chatting. It would appear Sienna and Mercury had entered through the basement and the guards were meant to keep people from getting inside this room. Too bad for them. Sienna pulled out and looked at Mercury. He gave her nod and held up fingers, then two, and finally one. He dropped the last finger and they immediately vaulted over the crates, kicking off the edge of it to propel themselves right out the guards. The one on the left didn’t even register the blade gliding across his throat while the one on the right found himself trying to breathe desperately as his neck was in a deadly choke hold. In seconds they were both gone, two down. Sienna looked down at the body for a second before picking it carefully and placing it behind the crate. Mercury grabbed his duffel bag and pulled out a timed bomb that would blow in forty minutes.

“Shouldn’t take us this long to wrap this all up but it gives us wiggle room.”

“I can hear twenty more right above us, then another thirty above them. Anything above that is too muffled to tell.”

“Interesting, grab your chain. We’re gonna get creative.”

xxxx

Ilia watched the outside carefully. She can see Emerald taking down terrorists on the roof and Neo was visible a few minutes ago through a window. She was wearing her favorite disguise. The one with green eyes and black hair. “ She should really switch things up sometimes.” Illia thought aloud. Ilia kept watching. Twenty minutes had passed.

I wonder if Sienna is holding up? Mercury won’t baby her but I hope he shows some kind of compassion. That girl, she’s…

Ilia couldn’t help but think of Sienna’s eyes when they first met. The coldness, the complete lack of light they had. Sienna was in many ways still that girl. No matter how much love Adam and Jacquelyn has given her. That’s why Adam must’ve chosen this code for her. He knew Sienna had to traverse her demons, not block them off. Even if he hated the idea of it.

“Anyone got any info for me?” Ilia said, pressing a button on her earpiece.

“Top floor has forty, the main floor has about sixty.” Emerald responded. “What about you Neo?”

“I’m on the main floor. From what I can see there’s no one here huntsman grade. I doubt these people have aura honestly which makes sense. They keep trying to replenish troops because of us so guns are all they really got. Anyone know what the leader looks like?”

“All I know is that they’re a woman.” Emerald scanned the area. “Which means nothing without any features. Mercury, you and Sienna make it inside?”

There was no response. “Mercury?” Emerald said again but still didn’t get an answer. “Could they be held up?”

“Well we at least know they haven’t been made. Everyone would’ve been alerted if they had.” Neo looked along the worn down walls and followed the trail of pipes with her eyes. “ Want me to go look for them?”

Ilia bit her lip and looked at her scroll. Their aura was still full. “Don’t poke around too much. They should be-”

“Basement is full of live ammo, the floor above has seventeen, and the one above has thirty. The woman in charge has red eyes? White hair, and in a yellow suit.” Mercury said, abruptly. Ilia started looking through the windows of each floor she could until a woman with that description briefly passed by the top floor.

“Second floor, right side of the wall.”

Neo looked up and spotted the middle aged woman. What really caught her eye was the five people in black tuxes that made to stay several feet away, but close enough to keep an eye on things. Three of the five were also women who looked almost as stone cold as Cinder was. The two looked like loads of fun as well.

“She has five bodyguards, and I’ll bet my favorite hat they are huntsman level, or military trained at the very least. If this woman called this whole group here then she’ll probably make a speech. Could be a good opportunity to take her down.”

“That aside, Mercury, why did it take you so long to answer? Ilia asked.

xxxx

Mercury took a moment before responding. He stared at his that were thankfully covered by his gloves to avoid blood stains and evidence. He then looked at two more dead bodies that had piled with the first two. “I was trying to get some answers.” He finally answered.

“And where’s Sienna?”

“Sienna….Sienna is the one who got the info.” He said, with a bit of shock. No one said anything after that for several seconds, until Ilia spoke again.

“Do I even wanna know?” A bit of concern was in her voice.

Mercury looked towards the middle of the room to see their third victim on top of one of the crates, his toes barely scraping the top of it. The only thing stopping the man from screaming is the chain around their neck that was thrown over a support beam and being held tightly by Sienna.

“No, just know it’s handled. Say I was thinking we might need to speed things along, and I’m not just saying that because the time on the bomb has about half the time on it. Probably should’ve made it remote detonate.” He said, looking at the bomb options.

Sienna finally let the body drop now that it had expired. She made no attempt to hide her displeasure in doing torture, her hand clenching her stomach out of obvious disgust. It was one of the few things that truly ate away at her. “The only reason Mercury and I haven’t sent off anyone is because they know better than to shoot in a highly explosive room.”

Mercury walked over to her and rubbed her back. Suddenly she felt a lot less nauseous. He couldn’t see her gentle smile, the wiggle of her ears said thank you on their own. “Sooner or later they’re gonna realize five people are missing, and get suspicious.”

“The point of a code black mission is erasure right? You also said it’ll eventually get loud. May I suggest something?” Sienna asked.

“It’s your test squirt.” Neo replied.

“Let’s just blow everything up now. The explosion will at least get the floor below us, but this place doesn’t look too stable. Won’t the cold kill any stragglers trying to escape? Picking them off wouldn’t be too hard and if Neo or Em can kill the boss in the middle of the chaos then we’re on the up and up. I know it’s risky, not to mention completely chaotic…”

Sienna looked out the basement entrance and could see dozens of feet and shadows constantly moving. “But there’s just so many of them. They need to panic.”

Ilia looked around the building and saw several airships. Maybe, just maybe… “Emerald, can you be a dear and make sure no one can fly away?”

“We’re actually just blowing this place up?”

“Yes we are. It’s fucking cold out here and I’d like to get this done before sunrise. Sienna…”

“Ma’am?”

“The hard part starts now. Stay focused, and safe.” Her tone carried a sense of maternal love that made Sienna’s chest warm. Ilia caring about her was something she always knew but it was nice to actually hear it in a way that wasn’t a lecture or intense drills. It was weird when Sienna thought about it. Ilia must’ve known how on edge this was making her. They all seemed to.

Mercury pulled out his combat knife and handed it to Sienna. “Here, you’ll use it more than me.” Sienna twirled his and her knife in each hand. The weight felt good, unnervingly good.

“I know this isn’t the same, but all of us here have done some pretty dreadful things at extremely young ages. So if this is too much or you need to vent, we’re all ears. Except Neo. She’s really chatty.

Sienna couldn’t help but chuckle at that comment. “Thanks” Her attention turned towards the door filled with looming threats just outside of it. “I might take you up on that offer.”

xxxx

Life, a precious thing bestowed to all but never in equal shares. That’s how Mercury saw it anyways. To him, the world was always a place where your life depended on robbing that precious thing from others in some shape or form. He still believed that to a certain degree. Even while his own was fading.

The bomb had gone off several minutes ago. Thick smoke and immense heat from the rapidly spreading flames surrounded each crumbling floor as bullets flew in every direction, the screams of panic constantly attacking his eardrums. He felt a little bad for how much he couldn’t care less. Especially since he’s been on the wrong side of the law most of his life. He was more jaded than he thought. Emerald would say otherwise but she was just being nice. He’d miss that about her.

Mercury leaned against a broken wall clenching his left side. A lucky aimed grande had gone off inches away from him and took almost all of the shrapnel. Even with aura, his ribs didn’t enjoy that one bit. The pain was almost too much to bear. Between that and the heat, Mercury’s vision was starting to blur. Halfway across the room he could still make out a figure, that obviously wasn’t friendly, point a gun at him with deadly accuracy. All he could do was cough and try to stand, but his legs gave out on him. For once he missed the prosthetics.

“Well Em, looks like you don’t have to deal with my terrible sense of humor anymore.” He wheezed. Mercury held his arms in front of his body, hoping he had enough aura left to take a few more bullets. He never got the chance to know as the marksman gun got snatched from his hands by a chain and was quickly used against him, ending his life. It all happened too fast, or maybe it was because of his mission, but Mercury didn’t know what just happened.

“S- Tigress?” He said, barely catching himself from using her name in the middle of a fight. He couldn’t see her. All he saw, were the sway of flames. They flickered almost like a dying candle each time before he heard a scream or saw gunshots stop in a direction. A shadow on the walls contoured and flowed like a wave that engulfed other shadows like a predator on the hunt.

It was only when that shadow lunged out of the flames did he see what it was. Sienna crouched several feet in front of him on a body, someone in a suit that was breathing their last breath as Sienna pulled knives out of their chest. She didn’t appear to notice him, not at first. Her head was too busy swiveling to locate her next target. Mercury felt his soul leave his body the moment their eyes locked. The absolute hunger and lack of anything but fiery bloodlust made her look like a demon than anything else. Not even wild animals or grimm showed this kind of evil, this overwhelming desire to kill. Her blood soaked clothes and mask didn’t help either. This was Sienna? This was the same twenty year old girl he comforted earlier? One thing was for sure, nothing was robbing Sienna of her life.

She approached him slowly. The way she stayed low and never blinked made Mercury almost wish she stayed away. Sienna didn’t though. She got closer and closer until he was in arms reach. Mercury closed his eyes tightly in fear. He could feel her hand press against his mask gently, then adjusted it slightly.

“Icarus?” He heard her call out his code name. He opened his eyes slowly to see the soulless eyes replaced with the warm and sincere eyes he had gotten used to. “Are you okay?” She spoke again.

“I-I uh, can barely stand.” The lump in his throat was serious. It had been awhile since he felt this level of fear. That’s all he could think to call it. Sienna had managed to terrify him. A feat only achieved by a select few. Salem, his father, Neo, and his first encounter with Jacquelyn, to name a few.

Sienna lifted his arm and used herself as a crunch to support him. “Lady Em would be really upset if my plan killed you. Can’t have that now can we? Let’s get you somewhere a little bit cooler.”

“You should be...more concerned about completing the mission. Complete erasure remember?”

“I remember. I also remember you saying I could chat with you later if I wanted. I’m a ‘have your cake and eat it too’, kind of gal.” Sienna took no further protest from him and began walking. One of the good parts about a blown up building was the many holes leading outside. It took no time at all to find a sizable one to get through. Sienna placed by some debris out of reach of the flames but not too far to get cold. She looked to the right of her to find an abandoned rifle and gave it to him.

“Play dead or fight whoever you can. I’ll let our resident sniper know where you are to watch your back. This won’t take much longer by the sound of it.”

Mercury said nothing. He simply watched her walk back into flames, the faint sense of her intent to kill returning to her before she was out of sight.

Sienna could feel her body go numb again. It was only moments later when another person jumped out ready to fight and quickly regretted the idea as they saw a knife fly into the air, and get stuck in their windpipe. All of this felt so familiar to her.Blood, fire, tears, screams; what ruled her nightmares was back again happening in reality. How many have died by her hand now? At least forty five by now. In a single day, the blood on her hands had gone up forty three, yet that first two still clawed its way to the front of her mind. She could never forget that day. It wouldn’t allow her to forget that day. The day she died twice by her own hands. Sienna continued walking through the flames, looking for the next target.

xxxx

The ride back home was quiet. Ilia had decided to be the one flying since she didn’t have to fight up close while Mercury was fast asleep in his seat. Emerald clung to his arm, sleeping as well. The woman was almost moved to tears when she saw how battered he had gotten. Mercury tried to play it cool but Sienna got the feeling he was so relieved to be in Emerald’s embrace again. Sienna could see the love between them as clear as a shining star. She was happy that they were together again. Sienna hoped she too would find a love like that. A love that took the pain away. Not that her family didn’t do that, but she hoped that she'd find it from a stranger as well. Adam did it, so it was possible. Neo was awake for the whole ride but said very little. Ilia told Sienna that Neo tended to fall back into being mute after missions like these. As if they brought back the old her from days long past. Maybe that’s why she was so good at what she did. Even the shining pink in her eyes held a different presence to them. Somehow Sienna understood it perfectly.

Sienna wasn’t in a chatty mood anyways. She calmly waited for the airship to reach its destination when she realized it was landing in Menagerie, but not in town. It had landed by her house.

“It would be pretty awful for you to have to walk home or not sleep in your own bed after tonight.” Ilia commented.

“You could’ve dropped me off at my bunk.”

“What bunk? Those are for recruits, not full fledged members. I’d say congratulations but that sounds a little inappropriate so..” Ilia held out her hand. “Welcome to The Shadows.”

Sienna didn’t know what to say. She went to shake Ilia’s hand but realized she had never taken off the gloves that were now covered in dried blood. Almost all of her was like that. Sienna hadn’t even realized her mask was still on. She took it off and finally breathed her first breath of fresh air in hours. She removed the gloves as well and shook Ilia’s hand.

“Thanks” was all she could muster to say. Sienna turned around to hop off but not before exchanging looks with Neo. They raised their adrenaline filled fists and bumped them before Sienna finally left.

“What do you think she’ll do now?” Ilia asked

“I don’t have to think, I know exactly what comes next.” Neo responded before standing up and walking to the restroom inside the ship.

Sienna took the several foot walk home before staring at the front door to see both her family standing before her. Sienna suddenly started to feel hot. Her stomach churned and her throat tightened before tears welled up frantically. The adrenaline in her body left and Sienna dropped to her knees, vomiting hard into the sand. Adam quickly ran to her side while Jacquelyn stood by her second daughter.

“Jael go get your sister some water.”

“Yes ma’am.” Jael ran inside, taking the hint.

Jacquelyn walked over to Adam who was rubbing Sienna’s back as she wept. Jacquelyn followed suit by hugging the girl tight, silently shushing her and rubbing her fingers through her hair.

“Why?” Sienna gasped, “Why did it feel so good? My head went back to that day and everything just felt so wrong yet so...so natural! I felt… comfortable even. Like I finally got to take all that anger and give it back tenfold! How do you deal with that feeling!? How do you live with it!?”

Sienna balled her eyes out into her mother’s chest. If her voice wasn’t so horse then she’d probably scream her lungs out. Everything she did should’ve felt disgusting and it did to a certain degree, but not the way it should’ve. Sienna knew she’d do it again in a heartbeat. The feeling of Adam’s arms wrapping around here back controlled her breathing a little. The embrace of both of her parents somehow only brought more tears. It’s like she had forgotten what it’s life to feel safe until now. Adam let go briefly and turned her head in his direction. Her distressed face was enough to break his heart a thousand times over.

“I can’t say I have an answer for you, but know I’ll be here as long as it takes until we find the answer.”

“We both will.” Jacquelyn chimed in.

Sienna pulled them back into her arms as physically possible and simply wept. She opened her eyes briefly to see Jael watch from the door and Sienna extended her arm for the girl to come rushing in, giving her big sister all the love she could give. At last...

Daybreak came.

#rwby #rwby au #emercury #rwby lasting embers #sienna frost #jacquelyn frost #adam taurus #jael frost #ilia amitola #neo politan #mercury black #emerald sustrai

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fakeyellow · 4 years

Text

Kamilah faces the consequences of her actions. The Ending(s) of Forget Me Not.

I wrote three different endings. If you don’t want to read all of them, just read the third one.

Kamilah watches from afar as Isla puts her life back together, piece by piece. There’s a bit of confusion, adjustment needed as Isla comes to terms with the missing gaps of her memory but she’s always been strong and she picks herself up.

Kamilah follows Isla’s career as she becomes Grant Emerson’s campaign manager and successfully gets him elected as Mayor of New York. And although she knows it’s old fashioned to cut out newspaper clippings, she does exactly so, collecting all the snippets in articles and photos that include even the slightest mention of her.

When Isla seems to decide that she doesn’t want a future in politics, she looks into jobs with financial corporations, and at one point, her resume crosses Kamilah’s desk via the mistake of an intern.

Her hand pauses over the small, professional headshot included in the resume and Kamilah can’t help but stroke it tenderly, as if she were stroking the woman’s actual face.

She’s changed her hair since the campaign and it suits her. Although the picture is still Isla, there is a remarked maturity in her face that reminds Kamilah bitterly of just how much time has passed.

She can only imagine how much Isla must have grown, how much she must have changed, how much she must have gone through. The new connections she must have made, the new interests she must have discovered, the new relationships she must have formed...

There is only so much her guards can tell Kamilah, from their positions in Isla’s neighbouring apartments, and besides, she had placed them there to guard Isla, not to spy on her.

She forces herself to be content with what she does know of Isla and she continues to scour the newspapers for new mentions of her.

—

A few years later, when Isla’s become established in her own career, Isla falls in love.

Kamilah discovers this all by chance one day when she’s meeting with the lawyer representing a business Ahmanet Financial is in the middle of acquiring.

The lawyer’s phone lights up with a call and although the woman quickly apologises and puts it into her pocket, Kamilah catches a glimpse of the lock screen.

It is a photo of Isla and the woman, dressed in a beautiful white dress and a white suit respectively. They’re kissing and Kamilah suddenly notices the shiny, new wedding band on the lawyer’s finger.

The meeting finishes without any other complications and Kamilah is left alone in her office.

There is an unspeakable pain in her heart, a sudden pang of loss even though she had always known this was likely to happen, and she closes her eyes, the photo branded onto her mind.

It’s in the middle of her grief that Kamilah then hears the voice.

It’s small, even with Kamilah’s heightened senses, and she realises it must be coming from the lawyer’s cellphone as she makes her way to the elevator.

Words of affection are exchanged between the two women and Kamilah listens to Isla, hearing the happiness, the warmth, the love that flows in her voice.

Although it still hurts, Kamilah smiles.

“I’m happy for you Isla,” she whispers into her empty office.

And that is the last time Kamilah hears Isla’s voice.

—

For all intents and purposes, Isla lives a long, fulfilling life.

She thrives in her career, leading numerous initiatives that help the lives of thousands of people. She flourishes in her marriage to the lawyer, and they spend a happy 50 years together.

Isla passes peacefully in her sleep at the old age of 84 and her funeral is filled with all the people who’s lives she touched.

Speeches are made of her great deeds, her loving nature, her unrelenting determination to do what is right.

And when the last funeral-goers finally trickle out and Isla’s body is laid to rest in the ground, a single figure dressed in black appears.

The figure walks slowly towards the newly engraved tombstone and bows her head, tears trickling down her cheeks.

Kamilah kneels and places a single stem of forget me not flowers on the grave of the woman who will always hold her heart

2. Short ending if Serafine’s memory erasure hadn’t held.

Some background information: When Isla awakes without any memories or clues of the past year, she becomes determined to never again be left with nothing. She gets into photography, a way to forever capture moments of time. Even if her memories disappear once again, she will at least have her photographs.

One day when she’s developing her photographs, she notices a woman appearing over and over in her photos. She’s always in the background, with her face partially obscured, but Isla finally finds a picture where the woman’s full face can be seen.

After doing some research, Isla figures out that it is Kamilah Sayeed, the elusive CEO of Ahmanet Financial, and she goes over to the corporation building.

In the place where so many things had happened, Isla’s memories suddenly return and she goes to confront Kamilah in her office.

—

“How could you?” Isla burst out.

The shock on Kamilah’s face disappeared, giving way to a deep weariness and shame.

Kamilah sighed heavily, “I know. I did terrible things and I have been paying the price every day since.”

“No,” Isla shook her head as her eyes began to water, “How could you do that to me?”

“You were tearing yourself apart, Isla,” Kamilah said desperately, needing Isla to understand why she’d done what she had, “I wasn’t going to just stand still and watch as a small part of you died each day.”

“Still,” Isla’s voice broke on the word.

“It should have been my choice,” she continued fiercely, “And I would have told you that no matter what happened, I would always love you. I would always choose you.”

“We could have gotten through it together,” Isla cried out before turning silent.

It was after a long silence that Isla eventually asked, in a small voice that conveyed the weight of all of the hurt she carried, “Didn’t you trust me?”

She gazed probingly into Kamilah’s eyes, as if searching for something in its depths. But finding them lacking, Isla finally sighed and whispered.

“Goodbye Kamilah.”

3. If Serafine’s memory erasure hadn’t held: Version 2

“How could you do that to me?” Isla asked, her face crumpling as she grappled with the full realisation of what had happened.

And although Kamilah wanted nothing more than to sweep her up in her arms and never let go, there was also a part of her that wasn’t sorry for what she’d done.

“You were tearing yourself apart Isla!” Kamilah burst out almost in frustration, desperately needing Isla to understand why she’d done what she had done, “I wasn’t going to just stand still and watch as more and more of you died with each day.”

“So what,” Isla scoffed, her watery eyes burning furiously at Kamilah, “You thought you’d erase my memories? You thought that if I didn’t remember you or anything else from the past year, I’d just return to my normal life, as if nothing had ever happened?

Kamilah remained silent, unable to say anything as Isla’s voice grew in intensity.

“Well you were wrong,” Isla bitterly said, “When I woke up, I was alone. Do you know how it feels to have woken up only to realize that you’ve lost an entire year of your life?”

“You even took Lily away from me,” Isla cried out, tears streaming down her cheeks, “You took Adrian and Jax and…”

“You all were my family and you took it all away” She continued, “I couldn’t even remember you. I just knew that there was something essential missing.”

Isla paused now, her voice growing quiet as she stared directly at Kamilah, “I cried myself to sleep every night. Did your guards tell you that?”

Kamilah flinched but Isla continued.

“Did they tell you that every day I woke up wishing I hadn’t? Did they tell you that I felt like a shell of a person, that sometimes, it felt as if I would drown in my loneliness?”

“Isla, I-” Kamilah began hoarsely.

“Did you even miss me?” Isla cut her off, searching probingly into the depths of Kamilah’s eyes.

A thousand words swelled up in her chest, begging to be released, but in the end, Kamilah could only breathe out, “Every day. Each and every second, I never stopped missing you.”

A fresh wave of tears spilled over and flowed down her face even as Isla forced herself to harden.

“I don’t forgive you,” Isla softly stated and Kamilah closed her eyes in response. There was pain written in the lines of her face but she nodded, as if she had expected this.

And then, suddenly, warm arms wrapped around Kamilah, Isla’s head nestling into her chest.

“But you’ve punished yourself for long enough,” Isla finished tearfully, “You have to forgive yourself. You deserve happiness too Kamilah.”

And Isla’s words finally caused Kamilah to break down in long, overdue tears. She’d repressed her emotions for so long in an attempt to atone for the weight of her countless sins, a weight that she’d constantly carried with her.

The redemption in Isla’s words were more than she’d ever hoped for.

Isla leaned back in their embrace, tenderly wiping away Kamilah’s tears. Kamilah grabbed onto Isla’s hand, leaning into her touch.

“Everyone is allowed to make mistakes. To mourn over something they wish they could undo. The important thing is that you come out of it a better person. You face up to what you did and you make amends. That is how you make up for your actions. Not by punishing yourself out of misplaced guilt,” Isla said.

Kamilah nodded and stared wondrously at Isla, almost unable to believe that this remarkable woman had come back to her, that Isla still believed so strongly in her.

“I still don’t forgive you for what you did to me,” Isla interjected sternly before softening, “But I will. And I will never stop loving you.”

Kamilah’s heart swelled with affection and it seemed impossible that one person could love someone so much.

“I love you too.”

—

A/N: The first ending was what I originally had in mind for the story and is why I titled it “Forget Me Not.” I thought it’d be sad to imagine Kamilah watching over Isla from a distance, seeing her have a happy life even if it broke her heart to not be with her.

Then I wrote the second ending where Isla isn’t able to forgive Kamilah for what she’s done to her. I really just wanted to end it on “Goodbye Kamilah.”

Then I thought about the second ending again and I thought the MC should be angrier at Kamilah at first, so that transformed into the third ending, which I think I like the best. I had a hard time coming up with what Isla’d say at the end so I used the long, italicised quotes from BB Book 2 Chapter 12 and 15.

Which ending was your favourite?

#bloodbound #kamilah x mc #kamilah sayeed #playchoices #playchoices fanfic #my writing

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talpup · 4 years

Text

Erase the Shadow: 12

Summary: Despite sharing dreams with Teris for as long as he can remember, Aizawa Shouta never believed in soulmates. That was until he met Teris in the real world on his first day at UA. Trouble is, Teris doesn’t know anything about their shared dreams. And the one time Shouta tried to tell her, he nearly lost her completely.

Five years after graduating from UA, Shouta still believes Teris is his soulmate. But things have only gotten worse. Teris moved to another town shortly after graduation. And now she’s dating his best friend Yamada Hizashi.

Please remember, this fic is rated explicit and has warnings of sex, violence, and other possible triggers.

***If you prefer reading off AO3 here’s the link for that: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22027552/chapters/55261261

If you enjoyed reading this at all please comment and let me know. Since I post for free, think of it as nice way of leaving a tip. And since comments are the only thing that encourages me to keep editing and posting, it’s also a benefit for you.

Thank you to those who have left hearts. And a VERY special thank you to those who have recently left comments or re-blogged. They REALLY mean a lot.

As always, an extra special thank you to @inorganicone2230 for their encouragement and friendship. Also for them helping plot bunny this story out and reading through a piece of this chapter before its posting. This fic was my personal guilty pleasure, and without them never be getting posted.

12.1

“Babe! Do you really have to go on patrol tonight?” Hizashi was getting ready to go to a party the radio station was putting on and was still trying to convince Teris to accompany him. “You’ve been livin’ here for almost a year and still haven’t met anyone. Everyone at the station is startin’ to think you don’t exist.”

“I’m an underground hero, Zashi. It’s better if people don’t know I exist.” Teris replied from the en suite bathroom.

“But you wouldn’t be going as a hero, Babe! You’d be going as my girlfriend.”

Teris pulled up the other bra strap and sighed at her image in the mirror. She could hear the hurt hidden beneath her boyfriend’s cajoling whine.

Damn it. Was she really that bad a girlfriend? Why was it that she couldn’t go a single day without proving to herself and Hizashi just how terrible and unworthy she was of him? It was a wonder he had stuck with her this long. It wasn’t as if she were anything special.

As much as she didn’t want to meet a large group of loud, extroverted people, Hizashi was right. She had been living with him in Musutafu for nearly a year and one of his greatest excitements, other than living and working together, had been that she would meet his friends and colleagues at the radio station.

Grabbing the dark grey shirt of her hero costume, she exited the bathroom. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Sunshine.”

“Does that mean you’ll come?”

Teris gave a scoffing chuckle at Hizashi's theatrical pouting expression.

“Please, Ris Wren. It’ll be fun. I promise. And if you hate them we can leave early and have the rest of Saturday night to ourselves.”

“I can’t, my Love. I’m scheduled to do patrol.”

“So call in.”

“Eraser’s counting on me.”

Hizashi ducked and turned his head, hiding his frown. “Eraser will be fine.”

“I have no doubt he’ll be fine without me. But he was gonna introduce me to this CI that’s apparently a wealth of information.”

Hizashi lifted his head, green eyes fixing on hers. “You’ve been working every other weekend with him for how long and you still haven’t met all his contacts? Sounds like he’s holdin’ out on you.”

Probably so he can claim that there’s still a reason for you to do these stupid joint patrols with him, he thought sullenly. He really should've pushed Teris harder on cutting down her patrol hours before Nemuri had the chance to suggest Teris and Shouta team up.

Teris stepped closer to him, explaining. “The underground doesn’t work the same as regular heroing.” Her hands trailed up his chest. “People in that life are skittish. It takes time for someone new to prove themselves and gain their trust. Honestly, I’m surprised Shouta got this woman to agree to meet me so quickly.”

Hizashi perked up at that. “Woman?”

Teris rolled her eyes. “Oh. Now he’s interested.” She gripped his shirt and tugged him closer. “You’re taken. By me. Remember?”

“I remember that greatest top hit every millisecond of the day, Ris.” His arms snaked around her waist, knees bending to better line up their hips. “But, Eraser? Working with a woman?”

Teris tired to ignore the tiny swell of jealousy at the thought of Eraserhead working with another woman.

She fiddled with his shirt collar. “I wouldn’t call it working. She’s a CI. It’s not like she does jobs with him.”

“Still...” He kissed a trail from her cheek to her neck, rubbing his semi-hard cock against her. “Don’t CI’s usually require payment for their information? And not always in cash.” He nipped at her neck. “I wonder how he pays her.”

12.2

Hizashi's words stayed with Teris as she walked with Eraserhead down a narrow pass through between buildings.

“We usually don’t meet at her place of work, but I think she wanted the extra protection the bouncers bring when meeting you.” Shouta gave a small, sideways smirk expecting Shadow to scoff at the thought of her being a threat to a possible informant.

When she didn’t, his lips thinned. It wasn’t that Shadow was distracted. He would have called her out on that. But she had been distant since the first moment they had greeted at their usual meeting spot.

“What do you pay her in?” Teris asked, softly.

She kept her eyes straight ahead, focusing on him out of her periphery. She didn’t want him thinking she was bothered.

Why did she even care how Shouta paid the dancer, come call girl? He was a grown man and could do whatever he wanted. It wasn’t as if he were her boyfriend. No, she told herself. But if the woman’s to become my CI, it’s something I should know.

That’s right, she reason. She wasn’t asking because she was worried and jealous. She was asking because the woman would likely expect the same sort of payment from her and she needed to know if she could, or was willing to deliver.

“Various things depending on the level of information and her mood.” Shouta answered.

She wouldn’t even glance at him. Had he done something wrong? He reminded himself that he was introducing her to a new CI. One that had helped him with many a case, and could do the same for her. It was logical that Shadow would be focused and not in the mood for friendly banter. He shouldn’t read too much into it.

Teris’ thumb rubbed against the dull obsidian point at the end of one of the metal knuckles bars. She carried two of them. Each of the slender ‘u’ shaped weapons had one long end slipped in the front pocket of her black jeans. The other long silver line merely appearing an adornment to the average eye.

Eraserhead’s words looped in her mind. Various things depending on… her mood.

Would someone who was paid for sex want sex as payment? She glanced at Eraser and swallowed. She was with Hizashi. She really shouldn’t care how Eraser paid his CI’s. She needed to focus, not wonder if this woman sought sex from Eraserhead as payment.

Would Eraser even agree to such a form payment if asked? He didn’t have a girlfriend...

Stop it! She silently scolded herself.

Shouta stopped in front of a door with no handle. “We’re here.”

He looked at her, gauging her readiness. Why did she look distracted now of all times?

“You ready?” He questioned, lowly.

Teris tried to ignore his deep rumbling voice and inhaled deeply, staring at the metal door.

“Yeah.” She exhaled.

Shouta saw her focus return. He waited a beat, making sure. Finally he took a fortifying breath of his own and knocked the short coded beat into the door.

They were shown to a rather spacious dressing room.

For a moment Teris wondered about privacy, thinking the room was for all the dancers. But she quickly took in the single vanity and comfortable lounge seating, and realized this was all for one person.

“Big Boy’s gonna stay by the door if that’s alright with you, Eraser.” Said a feminine voice from behind a dressing screen.

“Whatever makes you comfortable.” Shouta said, his deep rumbling voice a stark contrast to the high sweet one that had just spoken.

Even her voice was lovely. Teris quickly shooed away the troublesome thought.

She noticed the name above the vanity mirror. “Your name is Delphin?”

“Eraser didn’t even tell you that much?” The melodious voice questioned. “Why am I not surprised. The handsome devil doesn’t easily give out information. He only seeks it. Yes. I’m known as Delphin. I took the name based off the pretty but deadly little flower cluster Delphinium. And you are known as Shadow. Correct?”

“And I thought you said Eraser wasn’t good at giving info.” Teris’ smirk cut short when a lacy bra was flung over the shielding screen.

She stole a glance at Eraserhead, upset at her own gladness when she saw his head tilted and lowered, black hair curtaining off any hope of a view.

“Oh, Eraser didn’t tell me.” Delphin said, pulling a silk robe from the screen. “You were clocked the moment you moved into town. Well, at least the moment you started patrolling here. Your darkness quirk had quite a few folk worried.” She stepped out into view. “They thought you were working for this Void that some are whispering about.”

Teris blinked at the woman. She was… beautiful. Hell. If Delphin asked her for sex as payment she, at the very least, would be tempted to consider it.

Delphin glanced at Shouta, red lips turning up into a smile. “But when you started working with Eraser here. Most peoples concerns were put to rest.”

Shouta lifted his head. “Most?”

“Come now, Eraser. You know people aren’t won over so easily. New opinions take time to form. Trust must be earned.” Delphin caught the slight pinch of worry in the Erasure Hero’s brow. “You can’t make everyone fall in love with Shadow. No matter how cute she is.”

The furrow between Shouta’s eyebrows deepened a fraction, but a fraction was all Delphin needed. This would be fun.

“Come. Sit. Let me and your partner get acquainted. Delphin looked the female pro hero over as they all made their way to the small sitting area.

She was a pretty thing, even in dark grey and black with no make-up. Delphin could tell her clothes weren’t picked for the purpose of flattering. But since they fit properly, unlike Eraserhead’s baggy garb, the hugging jeans and cotton, scoop necked tee definitely did flatter her heroes body.

“So this is who you’ve been ignoring me for, Eraser.” Delphin saw the barest tightening in Shadow’s shoulders.

Oh. This was definitely going to be fun, she thought.

Shouta opened his mouth to reply that Delphin hadn’t left any messages on his work voice mail saying she had information worthy of a meeting. But before he could make a sound she went on.

“Not that I blame you. Pretty, new hero comes to town. No doubt you’ve been showing her everything Musutafu has to offer. Tell me. How just how well do you two know each other? How deep does the partnership go?”

Teris stared. Was this woman capable of making every sentence she spoke have a sexual connotation? She’d hate for Delphin and Hizashi to meet. The two would no doubt have a blast trying to out do each other.

“That’s not your concern.” Shouta told.

“Protective, are we?” Delphin played, her laugh as clear and beautiful as a crystal.

Teris had never felt so dull and ugly in her life; and given all the reprimands she received as a child about her habits and state of dress, that was saying something.

“You know I don’t tolerate personal questions.” Shouta stated, without emotion.

“Oh! So your dealings together are personal are they? Should I be jealous?”

“I don’t see why. Our contact is work based and both party’s can end the deal at any time.” Shouta said of his and Delphin’s agreement.

Delphin’s sparkling eyes raked hungerly over him. “But one can derive so much pleasure from work, Sugar. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I find fulfillment in my work.” Shouta admitted.

“Do you find fulfillment working with me?” She asked, voice as smooth as silk.

“You provide good information.” Shouta replied, oblivious to Teris’ rising ire.

It wasn’t that he didn’t catch Delphin’s suggestive teasing. He wasn’t an idiot. But he was use to her ways and, tiresome as all of it was, at least Delphin wasn’t as blatant or forward as Ms. Joke.

“Only after sufficient, satisfactory payment, Handsome.” She turned her shimmering eyes to Teris. “Has he ever drilled you for information? He can be rather ruthless. Can’t he. Then again I like at man who knows what he wants and is willing to work long and hard for it.”

“Are we gonna get to the point of this meeting anytime soon?” Teris questioned, shortly.

Surprised by her sharpness, Shouta looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

“Don’t like being ignored, Sweetness?” Delphin asked. “Then again I know all about Eraser and the point of tonight is to get a feel for you. To decide if I like you enough to let you use me too.”

Shouta swallowed. A flash of an image shot through his mind before he could stop it. It made his blood pump with desire and possessiveness.

Shit. He knew how Delphin talked and teased. Why hadn’t he thought that she would do the same with Shadow? Not that being prepared would have made him feel any better about the woman talking to his Love that way. Still, that didn’t explain Shadow’s annoyance with Delphin.

“It took me a long time to let Eraser tie me down and pump me for information.” Delphin continued.

Teris gritted her teeth. The woman was trying to toy with her. No. She was toying with her. Because you’re stupid enough to let her, she thought. Some hero your are. Letting a possible CI get to you like this.

If Delphin had been talking about any other hero Teris wouldn’t have cared. But Eraserhead was different. Eraserhead was Shouta. And Shouta was-- Not yours, she reminded herself harshly.

How is it that you don’t like it when Hizashi uses terms of ownership, but are sitting here wanting to claim a man that you have no right to try and claim? Shouta's not your boyfriend. He’s your boyfriend’s best friend. You’re such a hypocrite. You’re an idiot hero, and terrible girlfriend.

What kind of person desires their boyfriend’s best friend? You don’t deserve anyone. But you certainly don’t deserve someone as sweet and caring as Hizashi. He was either blind or kind enough to date you in the first place, and here you are nearly three years in your relationship with him wanting Shouta.

Do you really think Hizashi would stay with you if he had any idea how you felt about his best friend? You sick, disgusting fuck. No wonder your family didn’t want you. They might've said they disowned you because you wanted to become a hero; but let’s face it, they were looking for an excuse. You were a disgrace of daughter. Just like you’re a disgrace and despicable girlfriend. You lost your name and your family to be a hero, and here you sit being a discredit to that as well.

“So tell me, Shadow. What kind of hero are you? You must be something special to get the normally lone Eraserhead to team with and vouch for you.”

Short as the meeting was, Shouta was glad when it was over. He didn’t think himself a jealous person. He had managed to tolerate Hizashi hanging all over Teris without hitting him yet. But Hizashi was his best friend. And Delphin’s constant subtle sexual turn of phrase set his teeth on edge.

Shouta and Teris got to their feet.

Big Boy, who had silently stood at the rooms entrance, opened the door.

“Eraser. Stay a moment more if you would.” Delphin smiled, coyly. “I have something special for you that you’ve been wanting. Something that you’ll pay me real good for.”

Shouta glanced at Shadow, inciting Delphin to tell Teris.

“Oh, you can wait out in the hall or go get a drink at the bar, Sweet One. Big Boy will make sure they know it’s on me.”

The way Shadow paused and looked at him out of the corner of her eye told Shouta that she wasn’t keen on leaving him alone with Delphin. But Shouta trusted Delphin well enough to be comfortable. He had been getting intel from the woman for a couple years. He knew she wouldn't try anything.

He gave Shadow single nod.

Teris reluctantly followed the large Bouncer out of the dressing room.

As soon as the door closed Shouta questioned. “What do you have?”

Delphin noted how he didn’t step back to the sitting area. He probably didn’t want to leave Shadow alone out there for too long. A smart, all be it protective, move on the hero’s part.

She rose to her feet. “You asked me to keep an ear out for this Void people are whispering about.”

Shouta’s eyes met hers as she stepped to him.

Despite his studied efforts, Delphin was able to see the hungry hope he felt for any sliver of information. It wasn’t his fault. Eraserhead was rather good at hiding his emotions. He was excellent at it in fact. It was one of the main reasons she continued their agreement. He was a challenge that kept her people reading skills sharp.

“What have you learned?” Shouta asked, not liking how she entered his space.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what this information will cost? You usually do.”

“What do you want?”

“Since you brought me that cute hero to play with, and this is clearly something important to you. Why don’t we call it even.”

Shouta's eyes narrowed. “Even the smallest information costs with you.”

“Fine then. Since you insist. How about forgiveness?”

“Forgiveness?”

Before he could wonder what she wanted forgiveness for, Delphin kissed his stubbled cheek.

It was closed mouth and quick, but purposefully messy.

Shouta jerked his head back, scowling.

He didn’t step back or push her away; but the tension in his body told her that she had crossed a line.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” Delphin lied.

Far from pacified by her apology, Shouta frowned at her.

She stepped back out of his space. “It won’t ever happen again. I promise.”

“If it does, our arrangement is over.” He told flatly.

Delphin swallowed.

Okay, maybe she had misjudged Eraserhead this time. Yes, she had expected him to be upset; but she hadn’t thought that he would threaten to end their bargain. He must’ve liked Shadow far more than she thought.

“I swear, Eraser. I’ll be good.” Delphin ducked her head and pouted, a contrite look that always worked on lesser men.

Shouta sighed roughly, well aware that she wasn’t truly sorry. But so long as she didn’t do it again he would let it slide. Forgiveness was an easy price to pay for any information on the Void.

“What do you have?”

“Turns out that this Void has someone with a sleep or dream quirk working for them.” Delphin told.

Shouta felt stupid that he had never considered such a thing. If the Void had someone with a somnambulist type quirk working for him it would explain how he was able to enter his and Teris’ shared dreams. He would have to look at the quirk registry and see how the various somnambulist quirks worked. Maybe even met and ask Nemuri. Though he would have to be careful if he did. He didn’t want to chance Nemuri learning about and getting involved with the Void.

“I really am sorry, Eraser. I know I overstepped. I swear I meant nothing by it.”

Shouta’s neck stiffened at the memory of the pecking kiss. “No need to mention it again.”

“If I get anything else I’ll call and leave you a message.” Delphin promised, wanting to make amends.

Eraserhead was more than a fun visitor that kept her people reading skills well honed. He was one of the few people she saw that didn’t want her for sex. She doubted the man had ever looked her over with anything more than an initial appraising glance to make sure she was well and not a threat.

Shouta opened the door just as Teris got slapped across the face.

He rushed over to her, while another man pulled the attacking woman back.

“Fucking Slut! He’s mine! Bitch! Get your own man and stay away from mine!” The woman raged.

“You best leave.” The Bouncer told, already crowding them in effort to usher them out the back door they had entered through.

Shouta wrapped a steadying arm around Shadow’s waist and led her down the hall.

Once outside, he stopped. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” In truth Teris was still dazed by what happened, but that wasn’t what Eraserhead was asking.

“You’re bleeding.”

“What?” She lifted her hand to her stinging cheek.

Shouta grabbed her hand before she could touch and smear the blood. He moved her to a small, low crate beside the door.

“Sit down.” He helped her sit and squatted in front on her. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I’ve been hit harder, Eraser.” Teris said, more embarrassed than hurt.

Shouta's heart squeezed.

He knew she had taken harder hits. Much to his distaste, he had seen it happen during their patrols. It was something that stayed with him. Though he was able to lock the images and guilt that came with those instances away.

She looked down at his still holding hand. His skin was warm. Fingers calloused. Touch gentle but firm. Just as she had imagined.

“Looks like the bleeding stopped.” He commented, worried eyes focused on her cut cheek.

Her fingers began to close around his. No! This was wrong. She pulled her hand out of his and tried to stand, but Shouta stopped her.

He had been about to apologize when she pulled her hand away, but then she started to get up. “Stay.”

His hands hovered over her, afraid to touch her and cause further offense.

Teris’ eyebrows furrowed in question.

“We need to disinfect that.” He explained.

“It’s a scratch, Eraser.”

“It still needs treating, Shadow.”

They stared at each other.

It was clear from his expression that he wasn’t backing down, so Teris gave in.

She relaxed and Shouta opened a pouch on his utility belt. “Stubborn.”

The word was mumbled so softly that she questioned. “What?”

“What happened?” He asked, pulling supplies out.

She eyed him pretty sure that wasn’t what he said. “Some guy started hitting on me.”

Shouta needlessly busied himself with the alcohol and antibiotic packets. “What did you say?”

“What do you think I said? I politely told him I wasn’t interested. And when he kept on, I told him to get lost.”

She normally would’ve said she had a boyfriend; but since she was on patrol, details like that were guarded.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“I can handle myself, Eraser.”

Shouta smirked at that. He lifted a hand, tucking her hair behind an ear, better exposing the scratch on her cheek. “Sure looks that way.”

Teris rolled her eyes.

His hand remained. Her hair was so soft. Focus, he scolded himself.

His fingers trailed the line of her jaw.

Her eyes fluttered closed. Try as she might to hold still, her head slightly tilted into his touch.

Not wanting to pull away, Shouta, used his teeth to tear open the alcohol swabs foil lined packet. With his other hand, he pulled the swab free.

He caught her chin between his fingers and gently guided her face closer. “You alright?”

She opened her eyes. How and when did he get so close? That’s right. He had moved her. And like putty in his hands she had went easily. Too easily.

“Yeah.” She breathed.

Shouta's thumb lightly brushed beneath her lip. “This might sting a bit.”

It was silly warning to give. Small as the scratch was its cleaning likely wouldn’t cause her any discomfort. But he was doing everything he could to extend this moment.

She was so close. He could feel her breath on his face. It was the most glorious feeling in the world, to breath the same air.

“I’ll be fine.” She whispered, eyes locked on his.

“Will you?”

Would either of them be fine without the other? Everyday was more difficult than the last. Try as he might to hide his feelings he couldn’t help but think he was failing miserably.

He had told himself that he would wait. That he would let Hizashi ruin things with her and then take his chance. But nearly three years later, Hizashi and Teris were still together. He didn’t want to betray and risk losing his best friend, but…

A breeze ruffled Shouta's hair.

Something on his cheek, hidden by his dark, wavy locks, caught her eye. A flash of color that shouldn’t be there.

Teris’ hand lifted, tucking back his hair. For a moment her heart squeezed, thinking he had been hurt. But the red was too bright. Realization dawned. Her heart clenched for a completely different reason.

At Teris’ contact, a soft groan sounded from the back of Shouta's throat.

It was one thing for him to touch her, but this… That single touch felt so much better than he ever could’ve imagine.

Too soon, her hand pulled away.

She rose to her feet and stepped to the side.

“Shadow?” Shouta stood and stepped after her. “I’m sor--”

“You got lipstick.” She muttered, unable to look at him.

Why did her heart ache so much? She was with Hizashi. She shouldn’t care.

Shouta heard the crack in her voice. His hand raised to his cheek. Delphin, he thought. Her lipstick must’ve transferred when she--

“She kissed me.” He tried to explain.

“Whatever you do with your CI’s is your own business, Eraser.”

“Shadow. No. It’s not like that--”

Her phone rang.

“I gotta take this.” She said without looking at the screen.

Shouta watched her step further away. He wanted to explain. Wanted to tell her that he hadn’t expected the kiss. That he hadn’t wanted it.

It turned out the call had been important. One of her former students needed her help.

Teris quickly explained that the student would have graduated last year if it weren’t for the Hero Commissions order and that the young man said he was injured. Lucky for them, he had moved to Musutafu soon after the Hero Commissions order and wasn’t far away.

Teris had tried to talk Eraser out of going with her, but Shouta insisted on accompanying.

He didn’t like the idea of her meeting anyone, even an ex-student, alone. More than that, something about this wasn’t right. Why wouldn’t the young man simply go to a clinic?

He had a feeling that Shadow wondered that same which was why she had fought so hard against him going. But Shouta could be just as stubborn as Teris, and in the end the two were walking to the given address.

The walk gave Shouta time to think, and he came to a realization that excited him with gladness despite the circumstances.

“This is the address.” Teris said, turning into a small run down apartment block.

The unlatched apartment door swung open at her knock.

“Sensei?” A voice called cautiously from within.

“Kiro?”

Teris entered, Shouta at her heels.

“Sensei! I—I’m sorry. I heard you accepted a position at UA and didn’t know who else to call. I was wounded but can’t go to a clinic. They’d ask too many questions. I’m sorry, Sensei. Please. Help.”

While the young man talked, Shouta gave the place a cursory check. He peeked over the bar style counter-top into the kitchen, and then in the bedroom before closing apartment door and locking it.

“It’s clear.” He told Shadow, who was already looking over the young mans injuries.

“Sensei. Wh—who’s that?”

“A colleague.” Teris answered simply, urging the young man to sit. “It’s fine, Kiro. What happened? Why can’t you go to a clinic?”

“You’ve turned vigilante.” Shouta stated, dark eyes on the young man.

Kiro stared at the man’s unfriendly expression.

Teris paused in her assessment. “Kiro?”

“I—I—I’m sorry, Sensei.”

Shouta moved by her kneeling frame. “Shadow. We need to leave.”

Teris turned and looked up at him. “What?”

“A former student of yours turned vigilante. You can’t be here. You could lose both your hero and teaching license if they found out.”

“We can’t leave him. He’s injured.”

Though he felt for her and the young man, Shouta's expression remained dispassionate. “Are his injuries life threatening?”

Teris’ sense of failure and concern for her student mixed with her earlier jealously at the lipstick on Shouta’s cheek.

“Are we heroes or not?” She snapped.

She took a steadying breath. This wasn’t Shouta's problem. He could get in trouble just the same as she. He shouldn’t be here.

She turned back to Kiro, dismissing him. “You should go, Eraser. I don’t want you getting in trouble over this. Leave. Please.”

Shouta ground his teeth, exhaling through the nose. He had said she could get in trouble. He wasn’t concerned about himself.

“Help him.” Shouta told her, fighting a growl. “You,” he pinned the young man with a brooding glared, “don’t say a word. Unless you want to see your Sensei in trouble, don’t tell us what you were doing or how you got those wounds.”

Teris worked quickly. As much as she wanted to ask Kiro questions, she didn’t. Eraser was right. The less they knew about what happened the better.

Soon she had popped Kiro’s dislocated shoulder back in place, cleaned and steri striped two deep, sizable puncture wounds, and wrapped an ugly looking burn after applying ointment from the small first aid kit she carried on her belt.

The moment she was done, Shouta had a hand on her arm, tugging her to her feet. Once she was standing, he moved to the door unlocking and opening it.

“Thank you, Sensei. I’m sorry.”

Teris looked away from the young man’s watery eyes and exited without a word.

She didn’t know why he had apologized to her. She was the one who should’ve apologized. She wondered how many other students of hers, effected by the Hero Commissions ruling, had turned to vigilantism. Had she failed all of them?

Shouta paused just outside the door. “I’ll be right back. Gotta use the bathroom. Stay here.”

He left Shadow outside and stepped back into the apartment, closing the door.

Before Kiro could fully rise to his feet, Shouta was pushing him back down with a heavy hand. He didn’t know what the young man’s quirk was, and doubted that he would use it, but his hair rose, eyes burning red as he activated his own quirk.

“You’re going to listen. And listen well.” Shouta rumbled, the barest hinting of the anger inside him edging into his voice.

Kiro nodded, fearfully.

“Lose her number. Shadow’s not your Sensei any more. And when you find yourself in trouble again, don’t you dare think about calling her for help. Lacerations and dislocations will be the least of your worries if you do. Understand me?”

Kiro nodded again.

“Answer properly.” Shouta's hand tightened on the young man’s tender shoulder.

Kiro squirmed in pain, his hand futilely trying to pull Shouta's off.

“I’d answer fast. Your shoulder’s about to dislocate again. If it does, who won’t you be calling?”

“Teris Sensei!”

Shouta blinked, deactivating his quirk. “I told you she’s no longer your Sensei. Don’t make me repeat myself. I don’t like it.”

He released his grip and patted Kiro’s throbbing shoulder.

“It wasn’t suppose to be like this.” Kiro called after the retreating hero. “I was suppose to be a pro hero. The Hero Commission took that away from me. Made me waste three years of my life. I would’ve done whatever stupid test they wanted to prove myself so I could graduate and become a pro. Instead they said we all had to start over again. As if private heroics teachers weren’t previously seen as qualified, and trusted to teach us. It isn’t fair.”

“Life’s not fair.” Shouta said, thinking that if it were Teris would remember their shared dreams and they would have been happy together since their days at UA. “Heroing is dangerous enough when you have support and back-up you can call on. Being a vigilante might seem the answer. But it’s not. You have three options. Find something else to do with your life. Retake the hero course. Or continue down this path and find yourself dead or in jail within the three years it would’ve taken you to redo the hero course. The choice is yours.”

12.3

Their patrol time was almost over so Shouta decided to simply call it an end.

Teris didn’t put up much of an argument, proving just how upset she was. Though Shouta couldn't say if it was solely from learning that a previous student of hers had turned vigilante, or if it also had something to do with what he had recently figured out.

She liked him, romantically. It was the only logical reason for her earlier jealousy. And she had been jealous. He would’ve been able to reason what he saw away if it had simply been Delphin’s word play. He had done so before with various looks and touches Teris had given him. But when she had seen the lipstick on his cheek…

Displeased as he was by Delphin’s pecking kiss, he was grateful for what it had brought about. The sure realization that his Love loved him in return.

Sadly, the knowledge didn’t allow him the freedom to do anything about it. She was still with Hizashi. But the fact that Teris wanted and cared for him gave Shouta hope that she and Hizashi might not be together much longer.

He told himself that he would have to tread slowly after the two broke up. He had suffered through the near three years of Teris and Hizashi's relationship because he respected both of them. He didn’t want to lose his best friend. He told himself that when he and Teris got together, he would mindful. He didn’t want to rub his relationship with her it in Hizashi's face the way Hizashi had unknowingly done with him.

There was a subtle smile on his lips as he walked beside her. Teris had told him he didn’t have to walk her home, but he had insisted. Even though their patrol had ended early, he didn’t want their time together to end.

“Do you think it’s my fault?” Teris asked, voice cutting into his thoughtful planning.

Shouta’s eyes turned to her.

He took in her lowered head and slumped shoulders, and immediately scolded himself. How could he be so selfish? While he had been pleased and excited during their walk to her and Hizashi's apartment, Teris had clearly been blaming herself for the turn one of her former students had taken.

“No. Not in the least.” He said, firmly.

Teris sighed.

She wasn’t sure what she had wanted him to say but that wasn’t it. One thing was certain. If the ‘tell it like it is’ Aizawa Shouta was sparing her feelings, then Hizashi and Nemuri wouldn’t give it to her straight either. Not that she would readily tell them that a former student of hers had turned vigilante.

“Hey. Listen to me.” Shouta reached out and grabbed her arm, stopping them in front of the apartment complex.

“Shouta. I just--”

He stood facing her, hands on her shoulders. “People make their own decisions. You can’t control them.”

No, she thought. But I could have taught him better. If she were half the hero ethics instructor Shouta was, than maybe--

“It’s not your fault Teris. You didn’t buy and persuade the Hero Commission into making that decision. You didn’t encourage Kiro to turn vigilante.”

No. But I could have done more than try to keep tabs from afar. I could have called. Checked in on him. On all of them. I just felt so guilty that I--

“Do you really think he would have told what he was doing?” Shouta asked.

He knew her well enough to know exactly where her mind would go. He knew that her favored private pastime was beating herself up.

Shouta's hand cupped her face. “Look at me.”

He gently turned and lifted her head, waiting for her eyes to follow.

“How long have you known me?” Shouta asked, when her gaze finally met his.

Silently he wished that she would say, for as long as she could remember; but he knew it was a silly hope.

“Near twelve years.”

“And in all that time have you once known be to lie to spare someones feelings?”

She shook her head.

But this was different, she thought. Shouta had--

“Ignore that inner argument in your head and answer me, Teris.”

“No.” She swallowed.

“No what?”

“You’ve never lied to spare someones feelings.”

“Then, special as you are, why do you think I’d start now?”

“Special?”

If he hadn’t so recently realized her feelings for him, Shouta likely would have lamely flustered his way around the telling slip. Instead, this newfound knowledge gave him a surety with her that he had only ever shown in their shared dreams.

“You have no idea how special you are.” He told, thumb caressing her cheek.

He wanted to go on. To tell her just how amazing and special she was. How treasured and precious she was to him. But he didn’t. He had patiently waited this long for friendships sake. He could hold out a little while longer till she was no longer with Hizashi.

At least that’s what he thought.

His mouth, on the other hand, had other ideas. “You’re amazing, Teris. Kind. Tenacious. Generous. Smart. You bring people up. Make them better. You make me better.” His cradling hand moved, tucking her hair behind an ear. “I hate that you think so little of yourself. That you can’t see how wonderful you truly are.” His knuckles smooth down her cheek. “You’re beautiful, Ris.”

He glanced down at her lips, and found her staring at his when his eyes lifted.

As if by some silent accord they both inched closer.

The tips of Teris’ fingers brushed the top of his hero costume.

Moving a bit more sure than her, Shouta's other hand slid down her arm.

Teris’ gaze met his.

Shouta tilted his head.

Her eyes fell closed, lips parting softly.

Shouta felt the first whispering touch of her lips.

Teris’ phone rang.

Her eyes snapped open.

She pulled back, cursing under her breath.

“Ter--” Shouta tired.

“It’s Hizashi.” She said, taking another step back.

What had she done? No. She hadn’t done anything. They hadn’t done anything. But you would have, she thought. If Hizashi hadn’t called. You would have let him kiss you. No. She had been moving in just the same as Shouta. It would have been a shared, mutual kiss.

Fuck! She was such a horrible girlfriend. Shouta was wrong. She was a terrible person.

“Teris. I’m sorry. I didn’t...” Shouta fell silent.

There wasn’t much he could say. He couldn't tell her he didn’t mean it. That would be lying, and he wouldn't lie to her.

Teris stared into Shouta's eyes. Eyes that were filled with want and concern. Eyes that likely mirrored hers.

She hesitated, wanting nothing more than to step back to him and bridge the gap between them.

The sound of Hizashi's ring tone stopped, his call going to voicemail.

“Shit.” She muttered, stuffing her hand into her pocket and taking out her phone.

She took another step back. She needed to get away before she did something that couldn’t be undone.

“I--I gotta go.” She said, turning away.

“Teris!” Shouta called after her.

He could’ve easily caught up with her hurried steps, but he didn’t give chase.

12.4

Hizashi wasn’t drunk but he had had enough drink at the stations party to feel good. That good feeling evaporated the instant he turned the corner and saw Shouta holding Teris by the shoulders. Her head was down and at first he thought she was hurt or upset.

He had taken a step intent on comforting his girl but then Shouta cupped her face and…

Hizashi had watched in breathless heartache. Waiting. Hoping. That Teris would slap Shouta's hand away. That she would back away from him and leave. But she didn’t.

Hizashi took another step, intent on pulling his girl to his side and challenging Shouta. He wanted to yell at his best friend. To hit him. Teris was his girl. And Shouta was his friend. His best friend. But his whirling mind thought better of it.

Teris was accepting of Shouta's touch. Her sweet, beautiful face was moving closer to Shouta's at the same rate as Shouta's was moving toward hers. She wanted Shouta to kiss her. More than that, she wanted to kiss Shouta.

I think I’m losing her. The words he told Nemuri a couple months back floated through his mind.

Would this be how he lost her? What if he went over there and blew up at Shouta for making moves on his girl and Teris pulled away from his side and moved to Shouta's? What if him going over there and confronting this was what caused her to break up with him? He couldn’t have that. He couldn’t lose her. He would come up with a way to keep her. But first he had to stop this.

He quickly pulled the phone from his pocket and blindly called her.

He heard his ring tone echo across the quiet street as it played from her phone.

Teris pulled back. It looked like Shouta was apologizing. She turned and rushed away.

Hizashi was able to breath again.

He watched a left alone Shouta. It looked like his friend was upset and berating himself.

Good. Hizashi thought. Shouta should be mad at himself.

It was bad enough that Shouta had entered Teris’ dreams and had been caught watching his girl countless times. But this… To try to kiss her.

He wondered if it had happened before.

No. He told himself. Teris would've said something. She would’ve stopped patrolling with Shouta. Her constant self deprecation and sense of unworth wouldn’t have allowed her to look him in the eye if she were seeing Shouta on the side.

Still, Hizashi couldn’t help but imagine the two of them hanging out, snuggled up together at some cat cafe instead of patrolling. Would they lay in each others arms in Shouta's apartment on Friday nights and listen to his radio show, laughing and making love to the music he played?

Hizashi shook his head trying to expel the image from it. But it didn’t go away. Instead it kept on playing.

Nemuri's advice echoed in his mind. You should share her.

Could he share her? If it meant keeping Teris he could. He would do anything to keep her. Shouta was likely desperate enough to go along with it. But would Teris agree?

Damn it! He didn’t want to share her. Teris was his.

Then another thought came to mind, brought on by a different memory.

Teris had been having a sex dream and practically said Shouta's name. Once awake, she had claimed she hadn’t remembered her dream. Well I guess it couldn't have been that good. He had replied.

What if Shouta really wasn’t that good in real life? Hizashi had never seen Shouta so much as flirt with someone. Shouta certainly had never had a girlfriend. Considering how little the man went out and that Shouta had never hinted at any escapades, it was highly likely he was still a virgin.

Hizashi knew that he was a great lover even without his vibrating tongue. If he could show Teris that Shouta was a clumsy virgin fool…

A plan began to form. And while far from pleased, Hizashi did feel better as he entered his shared apartment with Teris.

#bnha #aizawa shouta #shouta aizawa #eraserhead #hizashi yamada #yamada hizashi #present mic #yandere hizashi #yandere #my hero academia #erase the shadow

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