#with everyone else being more of a secondary character

[butterflydm]

wot reread: a memory of light (chapter 38-epilogue)

spoilers for a memory of light!

Well, the rest of the chapters have fewer pages in total than chapter 37 did, so this is going to be my last full reread post, though I do have a couple of follow-ups planned.

My timing ended up being pretty good, even though my original intention was just to reread books 1-3 in anticipation of the second season of the show. And now I’ve still got over a month to get good and excited about everything the show will be bringing to the table.

1. We go back to Rand, still deep in his conversation with TDO. The chapter “the Last Battle” really revolved around the battle between the forces outside Shayol Ghul, because it ended when the commander of the other army finally was killed (though there are still a ton of his forces to take care of, the head of the snake was cut off and so was the person who fancied himself Demandred’s replacement).

2. The ‘let go’ that Rand is hearing in his mind is in his father’s voice, and the meaning expands here -- let them sacrifice. it is their choice to make. And then Egwene’s voice -- am I not allowed to be a hero too?

Because this is something that Rand has been resisting over the course of the books -- basically ever since he accepted that he will be the sacrifice, he’s struggled with knowing that he’s not the only one, with knowing that other people are sometimes even sacrificing just to get him here, to this place. And, I imagine, with his tentative plans to maybe even survive this ‘sacrifice’, that’s going to make him feel even more guilty about other people giving up their lives in this fight.

3. He talks in dialogue with Egwene’s voice in his head (given that he’s existing around and between reality, it might really be Egwene’s voice too). He is not in charge of protecting her. He decided to take that charge on himself, back in EotW, but it was never his to claim. Let us die for what we believe, and do not try to steal that from us.

4. And so Rand takes himself through his list again, backwards, this time, releasing his feelings of shame for failing to save them, releasing his need to protect them. Letting go of the mountain that has been crushing him for the majority of the series.

He hadn’t realized how large it had become, how much he had let himself carry.

...

Ilyena was last. We are reborn, Rand thought, so we can do better the next time.

So do better.

5. And now Rand, as he stands surrounded by all time and nothing at the same time, comes to understand that the Darkness was never a being, never an entity of its own. It is the between of everything. It can only win if no one is willing to keep fighting against it.

6. Mat gets the news of Lan’s reported death. As he did with Egwene and with Elayne, he swallows the grief and doesn’t let it show to anyone else, instead using the news to spur the army onward to attack the now-stunned foe.

7. Rand tells TDO that he can’t win, and TDO argues that it has Rand in its grasp right now, and Rand says that that’s missing the point, because it was never just about his victory. The people he lists:

Morgase (?) - a woman, torn and beaten down, cast from her throne and made a puppet

Thom - a man who remembered stories and took fool boys under his wing

Moiraine - a woman who hunted truth before others could

Perrin (?) - a man whose family was taken from him, but who stood tall

Nynaeve - a woman who refused to believe she could not Heal those who had been harmed

Mat - a hero who insisted with every breath that he was not a hero

Egwene - a woman who would not bend her back while she was beaten and who stone with the Light for all who watched

Rand realizes -- “it was never about beating me. It was about breaking me.”

8. Okay, I have to say. I have to! But this is... this is literally also how the Seanchan work. This is their philosophy of life -- to take people and break them to the Seanchan’s purpose. As I’ve said before, there really is no way around the fact that the Seanchan are going to be the Great Evil of the Fourth Age. There are just too many Shadow-Seanchan parallels! Maybe Mat and Min can slow the train slightly but I don’t think they can actually put the breaks on it.

9. But back to now -- Rand and TDO watch the battlefield, where Mat is fighting -- Tam at his side, then Karede and his suicide-slave troops, then Loial and the Ogier. “Outnumbered three to one”. Mat is shouting in the Old Tongue: For the Light! For honor! For glory! For life itself!

I will take a moment to be glad that, despite the first half of this book trying so hard to align Mat with the slavers for whatever fucking reason, he’s not fighting for the slavers in this battle. That he actually did become the General of the Forces of the Light, not primarily the General of the Slavers. Looking back, it really does feel like the change was signaled when Mat first took off his Seanchan clothes and put back on his Two Rivers coat*. That seems to have been a visual cue about his change in characterization -- how he started pushing back more against Tuon, forcing her into more compromises, and standing more aligned with the Forces of Light rather than pandering to the slavers all the time. idk, maybe forcing Mat over to Ebou Dar at the start of the book was Sanderson’s way of trying to finally create a synthesis between the horrible Mat of CoT & KoD and the non-horrible Mat of the earlier books, and he felt like he actually had to take Seanchan!Mat to his worst conclusion before bringing him out again? It still really sucks that the Mat and Rand reunion happened during our low point of Mat’s characterization, though.

(* which appears to have been triggered by the ‘not pleasant’ conversation that Mat and Tuon had after Tuon berates him for not telling her that Egwene was briefly enslaved by the Seanchan. After that (off-screen) conversation, Mat starts being much more combative re: the Seanchan -- after that conversation is when he has his bitter/sarcastic thought that he’s not done much to convince Tuon to stop using damane and when he suggests to Min that she mislead Tuon about her viewings to try to soften her stance on Aes Sedai; so I think we can safely give Egwene credit for the turnaround in Mat’s characterization -- I wish that that conversation between Mat and Tuon hadn’t happened off-screen! like so many important emotional moments!, but it seems like perhaps that was a watershed moment for Mat)

Rand and TDO watch, and TDO taunts Rand “the son of battles. I will take him [Mat!]. I will take them all, adversary. As I took the king of nothing [this is Lan, I assume]”.

10. Mat thinks about how he knows he can win this battle, despite the horrible odds. He just needs “a favorable toss of the dice”.

And, not too far away, with the Trollocs outside his hiding place, Olver gives up on the idea of trying to get the Horn to Mat, and lifts the Horn of Valere to his lips.

11. First Mat, and then everyone else, hears Rand’s voice -- he calls out Shai’tan as wrong, telling everyone that Lan isn’t dead. And just after he says that, Mat hears the familiar golden and clear note of the Horn of Valere.

...wow, the Seanchan feel so superfluous to requirements right now. They didn’t show up until after the final combat was engaged, after Rand had his final necessary epiphany, after the Horn was blown (they have still not shown up, technically).

I’m going to take a moment to daydream about a world where Tuon’s nature as marath’damane was revealed and accepted, so she really did flee with the Seanchan (so that she can try to recover from this blow to her powerbase) and the Seanchan never returned to the Last Battle. This would be a much easier way to de-tangle Mat from the Seanchan than whatever he’s gonna need to actually do post-canon.

12. The Heroes of the Horn return and our first sight of them is Birgitte coming to save Elayne from Mellar, with a shining silver arrow. 😍

Birgitte standing over her own corpse kinda cracks me up. Good for her! It’s also probably the first time she’s felt like herself in books and books.

“That was the bloody Horn of Valere!” Mat announces to his troops. “We can still win this night!” Inside, he marvels over how the Horn was sounded without him, showing that one of the things that he’d believed that he was permanently tied to isn’t tied to him after all.

Well, if that knot can be untied, Mat, maybe another one can be as well.

13. Between losing Demandred and the appearance of the Heroes of the Horn, the Shadow are now the ones who are on the defensive, with some Trollocs breaking and trying to run away.

The mist of the Heroes forms near Mat and he feels a moment of worry, wondering if maybe someone on the side of the Shadow summoned them. Hawkwing rides up to Mat, and tells him, “Do take better care of what has been allotted you. Almost, I worried we would not be summoned for this fight.”

I know, right? The lack of urgency in the Mat-in-Ebou-Dar half of the book about actually getting him to Merrilor to blow the Horn was really frustrating to me too!

When Mat confirms that this mean they’re fighting for the Light, Hawkwing tells him, “We would never fight for the Shadow.” The rumors about the Horn are wrong -- I feel like we learned this back in TGH as well but, you know, Mat was dying at the time, so I don’t blame him for not remembering.

Yeah, here’s the line: “We have come to the Horn, but we must follow the banner. And the Dragon.” So it was Rand, Perrin, and Mat who learned that. But, like I said, I don’t blame Mat for not remembering.

14. Hawkwing and Amaresu both scold Mat for not showing Rand enough appreciation for saving his life. Honestly, so fair and legit for Mat to finally be on the other end of a scolding like that. “I have seen you murmur that you fear his madness but all the while you forget that every breath you breathe - every step you take - comes at his forbearance. Your life is a gift from the Dragon Reborn, Gambler. Twice over.”

Mat feels so scolded. As he deserves.

He’s told that they can fight here because they have Rand’s banner and because Rand is... technically sort-of kind-of leading them... from a distance.

Amazingly, Mat takes a moment out of this encounter to marvel at how pretty one of the heroes is and then Remind Himself again that he’s married. He really does have to keep Reminding Himself. One of these days, he’s not going to remember to Remind Himself until after he’s already slept with someone else. It’s been more subtle in this book than in ToM, but Mat is still constantly checking out Every Other Lady around him.

15. Olver gets dug out of his hole by Trollocs but Noal, now one of the Heroes, arrives to save him. I don’t care about Noal, and Jordan definitely didn’t do enough to build up their relationship in CoT & KoD, but I still got a little misty at the tiny orphan child feeling grateful that one of the people who ‘abandoned’ him has finally come back.

16. haha, this next chapter is called ‘wolfbrother’ so I guess that Perrin is finally gonna wake up. But first, we have Elayne!

She’s able to wriggle lose enough to make the medallion copy shift away from her skin and fall to the ground, and now she can embrace saidar again. Elayne apologizes to Birgitte but Birgitte laughs it off, “Why do you mourn, Elayne? I have it all back! My memory has returned. It is wonderful! I don’t know how you stood me these last few weeks. I moped worse than a child who’d just broken her favorite toy.” Ah, yeah, that confirms that Birgitte’s spiral into bitterness was not meant to be a reflection of Elayne but on the dark place that Birgitte was in, with her loss of memories, I think. But it’s a shame that it feels like parts of the fandom just took Birgitte’s unrelated bitterness as a reason to slam on Elayne more. My girl gets so much undeserved hate.

And Elayne and Birgitte will ride back into the battle together. Not as Aes Sedai and Warder, but as friends. 😍 😍 😍 😍 

17. Aviendha! I’ve missed you! Her timeline isn’t advancing as quickly as it has been for those further away from Shayol Ghul, so not as much as happened here in the valley. She can feel the channeling inside the Pit of Doom - “a quiet pulse”. Oh! The wolfbrother of the chapter’s title is actually Elyas, who Aviendha runs across now. The Darkhound Wild Hunt is happening, and hundreds of wolves have come to fight back against them.

Aviendha is about to go fetch channelers to help bring down the Darkhounds, when she spies Graendal a bit higher on the slope, with some Turned channelers, and Aiel guards under compulsion. Aviendha alerts her companions (Amys & Cadsuane) and then begins the fight against Graendal.

18. Elayne has a sword again. Where is she getting these swords? I’m just gonna assume it’s made out of Air or something. More useful than the sword, Elayne creates a banner with the Power, the red lion of Andor, lighting up the night.

19. [Mat] remembered, within those memories that were not his, leading forces far grander. Armies that were not fragmented, half-trained, wounded and exhausted. But Light help him, he had never been so proud.

...

This was the moment he had been seeking. It was the card upon which to bet everything he had. Ten to one odds, still, but the Sharan army, the Trollocs and the Fades had no head. No general to guide them.

...

Elayne’s death had been a lie. Her troops had been in disarray - they had lost more than a third of their soldiers - but just as they were about to be routed by the Trollocs, she rode into their midst and rallied them.

20.  Catching up with Moggy! Hi, Moghedien. I bet your Last Battle is going pretty shitty. She kicks Demandred’s abandoned corpse. Oh, his devoted Shendla just left his body there to rot? Yikes. For Moghedien, she discovers that now that so many of the Chosen have been killed off, TDO is ready to let her have a taste of that sweet sweet True Power.

She disguises herself as Demandred and heads to the Sharan forces. I have to admit, given how open Min has been about her Talents, it’s kinda astonishing that Moghedien doesn’t know about her viewings. Min will tell anyone who stands still for five seconds, plus Tuon announced her as a Doomseer and has been plumping her up for the past whatever-number of chapters.

Moghedien starts to gear up for her role as Fake Demandred...

...and then she gets a blast of cannon/dragon-fire in her face from the Band’s part of Mat’s plan.

21. Instead of the Band leaving their caves to fight; channelers are opening them up brief windows to shoot through. Aludra is placed up on a high location with a spy-glass, giving orders to the channelers for the next locations for the booms. Honestly very clever.

22. As Aviendha fights in the valley, plants grow to cover her passage.

They had come right when she had needed them to hide her approach. Happenstance? She chose to believe otherwise. She could feel [Rand], in the back of her mind. He fought, a true warrior. His battle lent her strength, and she tried to return the same.

Determination. Honor. Glory. Fight on, shade of my heart. Fight on.

😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 

23. Aviendha kills a Compelled attacker, only realizing it’s Rhuarc after she has struck the fatal blow. She kills him moments before he would have killed her, and only her shoulder gets injured.

She does her best to convince herself that she only killed a shell. That Rhuarc was already dead.

There is a burst of determination from Rand (Strength, Aviendha) and her fatigue leaves her, and she refocuses on the fight.

24. Aviendha studies Graendal and decides on her approach -- she creates a spear made out of fire and light, and some other weaves in reserve -- and charges for Graendal. See, this makes a lot more sense that Elayne randomly having a sword, because this is a weapon and Aviendha knows and has trained in most of her life. I think that Sanderson Just Likes Swords tbh.

I really love the description here because of how it brings back Aviendha’s Maiden roots as she launches her attack on Graendal. The ground explodes underneath her (her legs get pretty destroyed, it sounds like), but she’s leaping up already aimed like a spear herself, and she sinks the spear into Graendal’s side just as Graendal is using the True Power to Travel... and because they’re touching, she goes along with Graendal when she Travels.

25. Mat rides with the Heroes of the Horn. He gets them to confirm that he isn’t one of them. He can see Elayne from where he is.

Mat saw Elayne’s banner glowing above them in the sky, crafted of the One Power, and caught a glimpse of someone who looked like her riding among the soldiers, hair glowing as if lit from behind her. She seemed a bloody Hero of the Horn herself.

26. And then the great battle is over, at least here on the battlefield.

He would have to thank Tuon for returning. He did not go looking for her, though. He had a feeling she would expect him to perform his princely duties, whatever they might be.

Hmm.

27. He does feel that tugging. Rand needs him. He tries to convince himself that this was his part, out here, and whatever is going on where Rand is... that’s Rand’s business. The dice are still tumbling in his head. This part here manages to capture Mat’s double-think in a way that I didn’t feel like came across in the actual chapter when we had the Rand & Mat reunion.

After trying to talk himself out of it, Mat ends up saying that he’s a fool because “I need to go to Rand.”

As a parting note, he asks Hawkwing to go have a conversation with “their Empress” (Tuon), and hmm, interesting. Okay, I need to break this down a bit.

So, one of the things that gave Tuon the big jollies back in the negotiation chapter with Rand was Mat referring to the Seanchan forces as “our forces”, which she basically interpreted as “haha you’re mine now, no take-backs”. And here, he does not call the Seanchan empress “my” Empress. He says she’s “their” Empress. The Empress of the Seanchan, who he is not currently identifying with, it would seem. So. That’s interesting.

We don’t get to see the conversation between Hawkwing and Tuon, of course, but what would Mat assume about what Hawkwing would tell Tuon? Why would Mat send Hawkwing to talk to her? The Heroes of the Horn follow Rand, pretty explicitly. They literally just recently scolded Mat for not appreciating Rand enough. They are aware of current events in the world and of the Seanchan Empire.

Which is to say... of course, Mat is assuming that Hawkwing will try to set Tuon straight on how to be an Empress without abusing millions of people under her power. Hawkwing told him that they would never fight for the Shadow. I think it’s reasonable for Mat to assume that he would disapprove of slavery. And Hawkwing’s hatred of Aes Sedai in his lifetime was canonically influenced by Ishamael, if I recall correctly, so the idea that Ishamael’s corruption is still influencing him in his Horn-form just seems like kinda silly to me. So. That’s my stance on that. Mat has clearly stated in recent chapters that he disapproves of the damane system, in particular, and that he wants to influence Tuon to soften her stance on Aes Sedai. So we know what Mat’s motivations are in sending Hawkwing off to talk to her. And it kinda fits Mat’s pattern of trying to use other people to influence Tuon to be less awful.

28. Rand has thought about Mat often, here in the battle with TDO. He thinks of him again -- Beneath them, on the battlefield, the Trollocs had fallen, beaten by a young gambler from the Two Rivers.

29. Oh, hey, Perrin just woke up. Page 853. He went to sleep on page 670. Nice long nap. Missed... a lot of stuff.

He learns that the battle at Merrilor has been won, but the battle at Thakan’dar, outside of Shayol Ghul, rages on. He gets his exhaustion washed away by one of the Aes Sedai and goes physically back into TAR (where he left Gaul to guard the cave where Rand fights).

30. In the waking world, Thom is the one guarding that cave entrance and he ponders the various ways that the ending of the world can be turned into a song, once this is all over.

31. Mat goes to Grady and tells him that he needs to be taken to Shayol Ghul. He’s brought Rand’s banner with him. Hanging out with Grady are Olver and Noal. The dice are still tumbling in Mat’s head. As far as I can tell, they haven’t stopped since Elayne asked him if he knew what he was doing.

Mat, on thinking about Noal/Jain becoming a Hero of the Horn:

Well, you wouldn’t find Mat trading places with him. Noal might enjoy it, but Mat wouldn’t dance at another man’s command. Not for immortality itself, no he wouldn’t.

Another data point that I’m placing into the pile.

Grady says that Traveling is wonky in that direction. Can’t be done.

Mat won’t accept that as an answer, and he gets Grady to take him (and Olver) as close as they can get -- a Seanchan scouting camp, a day away.

32. lol, we get a tiny glimpse into Fain the mist god-demon here. This just feels so anti-climatic, to still have Fain around at a time like this. Anyway, he’s basically a walking Shadar Logoth at this point. Fain kinda suffers from the same issues as Slayer, in that it feels like he’s a villain that the story grew past and yet he hung around anyway.

33. Gaul has been standing alone against Slayer all this time in TAR, fighting against him and protecting Rand, on his own, while Perrin was taking his restorative nap. But now Perrin is back to help. On the plus side, because of the time dilation stuff, only two hours has passed for Gaul in here.

34. Since he couldn’t take a gateway to Shayol Ghul, Mat is going by dragon to’raken. And, yes, Mat takes time out of his terror at being up so high to notice how pretty the morat’to’raken is, even as he thinks that anyone willing to do this must be “completely insane”. Olver, who is riding with them, is having a great time, though.

From up high, Mat sees a mist covering the valley below and gets a tingling that tells him... it’s about Fain and the dagger.

35. Then their to’raken gets hit by arrows, killing the rider or knocking her out. Mat undoes his straps and climbs over to take the to’raken’s reins. So he’s... he’s riding the closest thing that this world has to a dragon. Subtext, fun for the whole family.

He does his best to give them a gentle landing. It is not terribly gentle.

36. In the aftermath of the crash, Mat thinks that kidnapping Tuon (aka marrying her) is the worst decision that he’s ever made. Hmm. And this is after she ‘returned’ to the battlefield per their plan.

“That,” [Mat] finally groaned, “is the worst bloody idea I’ve ever had.” He hesitated. “Maybe the second worst.” He had decided to kidnap Tuon, after all.

And he doesn’t undercut that thought with any kind of caveat. He just lets it stand as he moves on to the next thing. Another interesting data point.

37. Mat literally panics when he realizes that Rand’s banner has gone missing during their dragon to’raken flight. Why does it seem like Sanderson is so much better at writing Cauthor-related scenes when Mat and Rand are separated from each other?

Olver points out that the swirling clouds above them are forming Rand’s sign, and then he blows the Horn again, for good measure.

38. Rand breaks out of his frozen battle with TDO and re-enters his own body. “From his watching of the Pattern, he knew that although only minutes had passed here since he’d entered, in the valley outside this cavern, days had passed, and farther out into the world, it had been much longer.”

He points Callandor at Moridin, and Moridin promptly throws a knife at Alanna.

Broke back to consciousness by Nynaeve’s herbs, Alanna pulls herself together long enough to release the bond she forced on Rand before she dies.

...I kinda feel the need to point out that Moiraine has done nothing but be a battery for Rand since she entered the cave with him.

I also feel bad for Alanna, who really disappeared from the story once Min was bonded to Rand and could take over as Cadsuane’s Rand mood-ring, and now is only here so that she can die. I have extremely large beef against Alanna for forcibly bonding Rand but it feels like the story really should have used that beat even more than it did, rather than it disappearing after WH.

39. Perrin kills Slayer. Finally. And then he pulls back out of TAR and is “on the rocks in the valley of Thakan’dar”, near where the Aiel are gathered.

40. Mat leaves Olver with the Heroes and meets up with Perrin at the mouth of the cave. So, yes, Mat and Perrin get another reunion. Why does Perrin! Get all the reunions! This is what I was talking about when I said how annoyed I was that Mat thinking about Rand tugging on him wouldn’t end up with any good payoff. All we get is yet another Mat and Perrin reunion.

That Rand is literally inside that cave and yet the three ta’veren do not reunite here is honestly somewhat infuriating for me. Genuinely those two things: the Emond’s Five reunite and the ta’veren three reunite should have been at the TOP of Sanderson’s priority list! There is a lot that I have enjoyed about AMoL but there are just way too many important emotional moments that were either skipped or didn’t happen at all but should have happened.

And, fuck, letting Mat and Rand have a scene that doesn’t take place during Mat’s weird Ebou Dar adventure. That would have been nice! Once Mat decides that he’s not going to be a lapdog for the Seanchan/Tuon anymore, his storyline and his PoV get so much better and so much more enjoyable and I am just... eternal bitterness that our only Mat & Rand reunion was plopped into our most lapdoggy-Mat era.

Mat came here specifically to protect Rand and then he never sees him! That is just fucking awful. They deserved a better reunion. What was the point of having the Heroes scold Mat if we didn’t actually get to see Mat and Rand interact again after it? This is kinda a place where the epilogue is mostly at fault -- Mat just strolling off to plan a fireworks show for Tuon post-Last Battle conflicts pretty hard with him spending time with his dying best friend, tonally-speaking -- but that really just makes it all the more frustrating that the only Cauthor reunion took place when Mat was in his worst Seanchan-era.

41. Aviendha attacks Graendal with an exploding gateway; and Mat kills Fain/Mordeth/etc.

And Perrin almost takes off to go searching for Faile but manages to resist the urge: If Rand died, then he would lose Faile. And everything else.

Yes. I have tried to yell this at the fictional characters so many times: if the world dies, then so does your sweetheart! It’s nice that Perrin finally listened.

42. And for his final trick, Moridin grabs Callandor, and Moiraine and Nynaeve spring their trap, using the flaw in Callandor to take control of the ‘circle’ that Moridin has accidentally formed with them. With Moridin having pulled the True Power, Rand is now able to enter the link, and Moiraine and Nynaeve can feed him all three sets of Power: saidar, saidin, and the True Power. Light explodes from him, and from Shayol Ghul, as Rand uses the True Power to protect himself as he reaches through the Bore and grabs onto the Dark One.

43. We get a quick beat of people reacting to the light:

Elayne is on the battlefield of Merrilor, as they search for the living among the dead. She feels the “swelling of power in Rand” and her attention focuses on him.

Thom shields his eyes as the light bursts from the entrance to the Pit of Doom.

Min appears to have managed to get away from the Seanchan for now, changing linens for the wounded, perhaps also on the Field of Merrilor.

Aviendha is drawn back from the darkness of near-death by the light and the warmth of Rand inside her, and realizes that her explosion twisted the compulsion weave so that Graendal compelled herself to worship Aviendha. Awkward!

Logain sees the light and knows that it’s what was meant by the message that Egwene sent, and he breaks the seals on the Dark One’s prison.

44. In TAR, Perrin runs across Lanfear. Together, they walk into Shayol Ghul, and we learn that she apparently compelled Perrin a little while ago? He’s able to pull out of it by reminding himself of his duty and of Faile, and he snaps her neck, killing her.

*squints at the scene*

Yeah, I mean. That’s certainly still what looks like happened? Sorry, Sanderson, I’m not seeing your hints here about Lanfear tricking Perrin and surviving.

45. Rand holds the Dark One in his hand. Or the representation of his hand. And, once again, when Rand tells TDO how pitiful he is, all I see are echoes of the Seanchan:

You would have enslaved me as you would have enslaved the others. You cannot give oblivion. Rest is not yours. Only torment.

Rand can feel himself dying, his life blood slipping away. Realizing that the world that he’d seen without the Dark One would have been the truth, he knows that he cannot kill it. So he thrusts TDO back into his prison, braids saidar and saidin together to reforge a new shield onto the Bore.

With this new form of the Power, Rand pulled together the rent that had been made here long ago by foolish men.

He understood, finally, that the Dark One was not the enemy.

It never had been.

(because it only reflected the evil that people were already capable of)

46. The black hole inside the cave expands, as Moiraine and Nynaeve run for the safety of the cave entrance.

47. And now we are at the epilogue.

Much like I did with The Last Battle chapter, I’ll take the epilogue in sections by character. Rand & co will go last, this time.

Perrin

The spirits of the dead wolves fade back into the dream. Perrin voluntarily worries about Rand? Wow, that feels kinda out of character for Perrin, who has always been way better at pushing away thoughts of Rand than Mat has been, but I guess let’s go with it. It seems to exist to tell us that Perrin no longer sees color swirls and no longer feels any tugging towards anything. “Those seemed like very bad signs.”

“Have you sent for the three?”

What a weird way to ask “do Rand’s girlfriends know that he’s dying?”

I’m going to take a minute and count up the PoV & page counts everyone gets in the epilogue.

Rand: 3 PoVs (4 pages total)

Mat: 2 PoVs (1 1/5 pages)

Perrin: 3 PoVs (6 1/5 pages)

Loial: 1 PoV (3 pages)

Moghedien: 1 PoV (1 page)

Nynaeve: 1 PoV (2 pages)

Birgitte: 1 PoV (1 page)

Tam: 1 PoV (1 page)

Min: 1 PoV (1/2 page)

Cadsuane: 1 PoV (1 page)

That’s a lot of Perrin, comparatively-speaking.

Anyway, Perrin finds Faile, happy ending, etc.

...oh, I just looked it up and Sanderson answered some questions about the epilogue (tor[dot]com/2013/01/23/brandon-sandersons-wheel-of-time-answers-from-torchat/)! He added Perrin’s and Loial’s scene(s). Ha! I knew that Loial was a Sanderson addition because he uses “Matrim” instead of Mat (that is, imo, by far the easiest ‘tell’ of a Sanderson scene -- someone using ‘Matrim’ when they normally wouldn’t). And the Perrin scenes make sense too because it really builds off of and finishes the narrative thread that was at play earlier in the book for Perrin, which was presumably all written by Sanderson.

Mat

Mat strolls away from the aftermath of having killed Padan Fain, calling the dagger “a gamble I don’t want to touch”. The dice stop rolling in Mat’s head after he decides not to pick up the dagger. Hmm. Mat avoiding becoming the new Fain for the Fourth Age?

After that, we skip to his scene with Tuon. And there are only those two scenes with Mat in the epilogue -- killing Fain and finding out that he’s been baby-trapped into the Seanchan Empire. Though Perrin confirms in his own PoV scenes that he no longer gets the swirls or the tugging, we don’t get the same kind of confirmation in Mat’s (very short) scenes.

I will say that there is more subtlety in Mat’s ending here than I had remembered -- I was extremely unhappy about his ending but this marriage is pretty troubled already in the text, and so it’s not really the book that tries to pretend this is a happy “babies ever after” ending for Mat; I feel like that’s maybe more of a vibe that I got from fans at the time, rather than from the text. There are a lot of “male power fantasy” fans who just really like that Mat ends up married to an Empress and commanding vast armies, I think, at least from what I’ve seen around the internet (and especially back when the series was originally published).

And Mat specifically forces a grin at the news that Fortuona is pregnant, so he’s not genuinely happy about it (and we got things in recent chapters like Mat thinking that kidnapping Tuon was the worst idea he’d ever had).

But, honestly, I do still hate that it happens. I hate it up one side and down the other. It sucks as an ending for Mat so much. Miserable marriage, awful wife, horrible shackles tying him to a terrible fascist empire built on slavery.

That being said... just Tuon’s rule is incredibly fragile, this marriage is also incredibly fragile (which is probably why Jordan slapped a baby in there to begin with -- otherwise, given his general misery level in many of the Seanchan-related scenes, it’s difficult to see how Mat could bring himself to stick with Tuon for long enough to do whatever plot-related things Jordan was imagining would have happened in the outriggers -- the baby is a trap for Mat, not from Tuon but from Jordan).

There are still so many things about the Seanchan that could end up being deal-breakers for Mat if he finds out about them!

(ex. Bodewhin Cauthon is never mentioned in the books after Knife of Dreams, so it is entirely possible that she is among the new damane who were taken by the Seanchan in recent days, and Mat might end up seeing his sister with a collar around her neck post-canon. How would he react to that? And to Tuon’s unwillingness to let her go?)

In addition to Mat potentially seeing people he knows and cares about in collars, we also have the possibility of him learning just how brutal Tuon’s attack against the White Tower was (there isn’t any indication that he knows about the attack at all yet); or Talmanes telling him about Verin’s letter and Mat realizing how damaging his fear of Aes Sedai has been for the world; or further in the future there’s Mat’s potential reaction to the lethal political wrangling that Imperial heirs are meant to get up to (he was disturbed enough that Galgan liking him only means that subpar assassins will be sent against him -- when he realizes that Tuon might well encourage their own kids to kill each other to win her favor, it’s very hard to see him brushing that off). Plus he’s regained his sense of disgust over the damane system. So there are a lot of powderkegs waiting to be blown sky-high for Mat, post-canon.

idk, Mat’s storyline is maybe the one where I most have to untangle whether I dislike it more because I feel like it was executed poorly or if I dislike it because it sets up a situation that will never get resolution. And how connected are those things?

A big frustration that I’ve had with how Jordan and then Sanderson handled Mat’s storyline over the course of the last few books of the series was how many shortcuts were taken with his character and how artificial forcing him into the Seanchans’ arms has felt to me.

a. Mat getting trapped in Ebou Dar and then all the characters involved taking a vow of silence when it came to telling Rand about it. Mat getting trapped in Ebou Dar is plot nonsense: relatively forgivable. But having multiple characters being given the opportunity to change that situation and just... not bothering to do it is... that’s a characterization issue. It severely impacted my feelings about Nynaeve for Jordan to turn her into the kind of person who just doesn’t bother to tell Rand that his best friend was left behind in that kind of perilous situation. Plot manipulations... that’s just how the plot works. But over and over, characters got broken or bent for the purpose of jamming Mat into the Seanchan storyline.

b. Setalle Anan is a minor character, so I get why people don’t care about her, but she’s a character who pretty much completely reverses her characterization between WH & CoT (in WH, she is anti-slavery and finds Mat charming and trustworthy; in CoT & KoD, she protects and waits on Tuon while treating Mat like the dangerous one, including betraying Mat’s secrets to Tuon -- and her betrayals are never acknowledged by the text in any way; she just keeps on being treated as if she’s a friendly supporting character) and, from what I could see, it’s just so obviously done in order to protect Tuon from ever having even a sliver of character growth rather than it making sense for Setalle Anan’s character.

c. We keep tiptoeing up to the brink of Actually Having A Plot Happen with the Seanchan and then backing away at the last minute without really having a good reason to do it. Incredibly frustrating. This was one of my main annoyances with CoT & KoD. And in AMoL, both Rand and Egwene inexplicably back down when they have Tuon on the ropes and off-balance.

d. Mat’s teleportation to Ebou Dar in-between Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light. I’ve talked about this one a lot but yeah. It’s just... really bad? I do suspect that Sanderson couldn’t figure out any way to actually make it believable that Mat would go to the Seanchan and that’s why he had it all happen off-the-page. But the careless damage that it does to Mat’s characterization is just horrific. Mat gets ripped out of the action of the first third of the book, and doesn’t get to the Last Battle itself until the book is more than half over. Once Mat is actually engaging in the Last Battle, his characterization steadies a lot but especially those first four chapters with Mat, it feels like we’re only working with half of his characterization and the other half has vanished somewhere in-between ToM & AMoL.

(and if Mat hadn’t been cut-and-pasted from the Tower of Ghenjei over to Ebou Dar, then we would have had a full reunion at Merrilor. So I’m annoyed/bitter about that too)

I could keep going but... let’s keep it at four issues for right now so that we’re not here all day, lol.

All of those issues are problems that I had with the execution of the storyline.

I am not inherently opposed to depressing endings for characters that I love but... it has to be done well. It has to make sense. And Mat’s ending just... required cutting away too many parts of him (and other characters) for it to make sense to me.

But though it is not always handled well (to put it mildly), Mat’s storyline with Tuon (and Tylin before her) is an example of the ‘typical gender roles are swapped’ done in a way that is more down to the very core of his storyline than a lot of other storylines, which are more on the surface.

He’s much less politically powerful than his spouse and needs to use guile, intrigue, and manipulation to get his way and try to persuade her to a gentler and kinder path than her warlike nature naturally aligns towards.

He undergoes something of a gender-swapped version of “The Taming of the Shrew” storyline, in which a fiercely independent person gets coerced/’tamed’ into being a properly submissive spouse (or, depending on your interpretation, into pretending to be one) -- many of the tricks that Tuon and Tylin use are similar to what Petruchio does to Katherine in the play. Mat gets publicly humiliated and starved by Tylin into submitting to her (which is what Petruchio does to Katherine during/after their wedding), and isolated away from his past connections during his time with Tuon, where he constantly has to act to try to figure out how to appease her without provoking her temper (Petruchio compares taming Katherine to falcon-taming, but Tuon would probably compare it to horse-training or damane-breaking), and Petruchio changes her name from ‘Katherine’ to ‘Kate’, which fits pretty well with Tuon’s insistence on never once calling Mat ‘Mat’.

Plus Mat getting his name changed to indicate that he now ‘belongs’ to Tuon’s people fits into this general category --  and historically, in the culture that Jordan belonged to, that’s normally a role given to women, to be given a new name that shows that they are now of their husband’s people and not their father’s; it’s usually their last name but, in the not too-distant past (and maybe currently in some places as well, idk), at least in the USA, women were often referred to as Mrs. “husband’s first name” “husband’s last name” with none of their own name making it into the address.

But a lot of the issues that I have with how this was written is that it felt like Mat was behaving like his hand was forced even when it wasn’t. Which is definitely a writing issue -- it’s a similar issue to the one that I have with the Rand & Min romance, for example, where Min desperately chases after something even though she doesn’t really want it at the start. Prophecy gets used as a way to skip actually writing important character or relationship beats, instead of prophecy being one of many tools in the writer’s kit.

So, yeah, it really is the execution of the storyline that is the biggest problem for me with Mat & Tuon, and the way it feels like he is pulled away from his other attachments whether or not that makes any narrative or character sense.

I really hope that the show does better with them, and with Mat in his endgame (should we get there, etc.).

I will say that I do think that Sanderson handled the romance better than Jordan did; the main problem was that it was already fundamentally broken by how the relationship was written in CoT & KoD, imo (the KoD collaring chapter in particular made me despise them as a pairing and my feelings never recovered from that moment). But in Sanderson’s books, we actually see the effects of Tuon compromising with Mat during various points of the Last Battle (though we see don’t actually see their private discussions and/or arguments that lead to those compromises), and there’s always a throughline showing how miserable the Seanchan lifestyle is for Mat, and those are two things that were majorly missing from CoT & KoD for me, but that make sense as the only way to make the romance even half-believable for Mat’s pre-established characterization from WH and earlier.

The three big issues that I have with Sanderson’s Mat are: the terrible first chapter of TGS (with the gross sexism); the terrible first chapter of AMoL (now featuring inexplicable teleportation); and the deep deep disservice done to Mat and Rand’s friendship (Rand got a personal goodbye with EVERYONE important to him EXCEPT Mat! And Mat got a personal reunion with everyone important to him, except Rand! All they got was the negotiation scene that was ultimately all about Fortuona and the Seanchan treaty, with Mat and Rand’s friendship being the set dressing around the scene).

But the relationship with Tuon honestly... makes a lot more sense in this book than it did in CoT & KoD (once we work past the brain-breaking logistics of the first chapter or so). There are TONS of hints that Mat has uncomfortable vibes going on underneath his casual exterior, plus Tuon actually does make some attempts at compromising with him, and if the well hadn’t been poisoned by how much I despised CoT/KoD-era Mat & Tuon then... I might have had a chance at enjoying AMoL-era Mat & Tuon for the toxic trainwreck that it is.

But, like all the characters & relationships in AMoL, we skip some pretty big moments in the Mat & Tuon relationship -- we see the effects of them compromising but we never actually see them coming to that compromise in private, which I feel like we needed after how unyielding and frankly how annoying Jordan made Tuon about everything.

We do end up with a Mat & a ‘Fortuona’ who remain at cross-purposes -- Mat continues to think of and refer to her as ‘Tuon’ while Fortuona has kinda reversed from thinking of him as a ‘buffoon’ to instead believing that he has the same kind of practical motivations behind his choices that she does, which is also not accurate. But Sanderson did add in some actual give-and-take to their relationship, which Jordan never seemed willing to do, so the AMoL-era Mat & Tuon is a lot more genuinely engaging for me, even if I do still think that they are one of the most obviously doomed fictional marriages that I have ever seen.

Final Mat-related question for the moment: the Seanchan Empire is based on authoritarian governments throughout history, so does how the Seanchan Empire operates mimic the behavior of a cult?

The popular model for cults is the BITE model, which was developed by a man who was deprogrammed from the Moon cult in 1976 (Steve Hassan). It’s an acronym:

Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion control. BITE.

Do the Seanchan seek to control people’s behavior? (yes) Do they seek to control the flow of information that the people under them learn? (yes) Do they seek to have their members reject critical thought and only apply to the group-think? (yes)  Do they manipulate the emotions of their followers, usually instilling fear or paranoia about outsiders? (yes)

We know from earlier books that the Seanchan culture =/= the Seanchan Empire. There are constant civil wars and uprisings in their native land. This is explicitly why they are such good soldiers, because they are always fighting each other. Yet they present themselves as a monolith when they come to the Westlands, bragging about how they’re here to bring ‘order’ to a lawless continent. What they say about themselves does not match the truth of what else we know about them.

How does the Seanchan Empire exercise its control over its people? Everything I included here is something I think we’ve see the Empire do, but I did bold ones that are particularly blatant in the text.

Behavior control: Control types of clothing and hairstyles; permission required for major decisions; rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors both positive and negative; discourage individualism; encourage group-think; impose rigid rules and regulations; punish disobedience by beating, torture, burning, cutting, rape, or tattooing/branding; threaten harm to family and friends; encourage and engage in corporal punishment; instill dependency and obedience; kidnapping; beating; torture; murder

Information control: Distort information to make it more acceptable; systematically lie to the cult members; minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information; ensure that information is not freely accessible; control information at different levels and missions within group; allow only leadership to decide who needs to know what and when; encourage spying on other members; impose a buddy system to monitor and control member; report deviant thoughts, feelings, and actions to leadership; ensure that individual behavior is monitored by group; extensive use of cult-generated propaganda

Thought control: require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth; adopting the group’s ‘map of reality’ as reality; instill black and white thinking; organize people into us vs them; change person’s name and identity; use of loaded language and cliches which constrict knowledge; encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts; thought-stopping techniques to shut down reality testing: denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking; rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism; forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy; labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful

Emotion control: teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt; make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault; promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness; instill fear, such as fear of: thinking independently, the outside world, leaving or being shunned by the group; ritualistic and sometimes public confessions of sins; phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority, no happiness or fulfillment possible outside of group; shunning of those who leave; being told there is never a legitimate reason to leave.

“Destructive mind control can be determined when the overall effect of these four components promotes dependency and obedience to some leader or cause; it is not necessary for every single item on the list to be present.“ (in this case, that would be to the Empress, ~may she live forever~)

(all taken from freedomofmind(dot)com -- not linking because sometimes outside links make tumblr act weird about posts)

On the page, we witness the slow process of Leilwin née Egeanin pulling away and deprogramming from the Seanchan Empire, and then in this book, it feels like Mat has begun that process as well. And it feels like they started the same way -- because of a massive overreach by Tuon, the leader of the cult/Empire. Leilwin née Egeanin gets humiliated and punished by Tuon for no reason; just because Tuon felt like being a brat that day, and that moment of humiliation -- the re-naming and the forcing of the jewelry on her in a way that treated her like a slave -- was really what made Leilwin née Egeanin start to pull away from the other Seanchan and go into the path that eventually led to her being, however briefly, Egwene’s Warder.

For Mat, it really seems like whatever happened in that ‘not pleasant’ discussion that he and Tuon had after she berated him for, essentially, prioritizing Egwene’s privacy over Tuon’s desire to get information from him... that discussion (that we didn’t get to see) really seemed to lead to the more combative Mat who refused to back down and roll over for her. Mat still feels a level of protectiveness and affection for Tuon through the rest of the book but he stops letting her push him around and he starts acting like he cares about doing something about the slavery system in the Seanchan Empire again, which was a part of him that we lost at the start of CoT and I have hated so much that we lost in his character. But it slowly grows back over the course of the second half of AMoL.

Again, my big regret here is that the Mat & Rand reunion happened before Mat started his spine regrowth program. Even though Mat does start to push back on Tuon more here, he still never finished several of his character arcs that were set up over the course of the entire series: namely his own mistrust of Aes Sedai and his fear of Rand as a channeler. Both of those fears were things that he was actively working in the text and that he abruptly backtracked on when Tuon was introduced into his life (because being chill with channelers and being chill with people who enslave channelers is contradictory and so Jordan decided... to go with being chill with slavers). So those are two flapping loose ends for his character at the end of this series that never got to fully be addressed because the ‘romance’ was prioritized over Mat’s characterization.

Loial

Loial is looking for people to help him with accounts for his book and “Perrin ignored me and Mat cannot be found”.

Mat just completely disappearing from the Westlands side of things to go set up a fireworks show for Tuon (and asking Aludra to be the one to set it up, which just seems kinda mean, considering that the Seanchan pretty much completely eliminated the Illuminators) is just... frustrating. Apparently Mat visited the battlefield here “smiling and healthy” but then vanished. So, in theory, there’s an empty place here where Mat might have visited Rand and talked to Elayne & co one last time, since Rand is in the main healing tent on this battlefield.

Loial also notes how odd it is that Elayne and Min don’t seem to feel any urge to go in to hold Rand’s hand while he’s dying (Aviendha is getting her legs looked at). I know, Loial! They’re the worst fake-grievers who ever lived, I swear. If the whole point is to trick people into thinking Rand is dead, then it might be a good idea to... actually try to trick people?

Moghedien

In which Tuon’s people are already breaking the terms of the treaty by snatching up channelers from the battlefield at Merrilor. No hundred years of peace, Rand. I’m sorry.

Rand (& all those who say ‘goodbye’ to him, or who don’t)

Rand leaves the mountain, slipping on his own blood and carrying a body. Shayol Ghul is trying to close before he can leave and he only barely makes it out in time before the cave snaps shut behind him.

Moiraine tells Rand that he did well, and Nynaeve tries desperately to keep him alive, but eventually, and without ever waking back up, ‘Rand’ dies.

Elayne, Aviendha, and Min do the absolute worst job of playing grieving widows ever. Like, if Rand had actually died, I could understand this better. Because they might really be in shock. But they know he’s alive! And their whole job is to convince people that they absolutely believe that he’s dead! Just... pinch your arm until you start crying! This is literally the most suspicious way that they could have gone about things -- Nynaeve is already extremely suspicious of how they’re acting. Seriously, she’s gonna wiggle the truth out of them pretty much five seconds post-epilogue.

Birgitte comes to say goodbye to Elayne because she’s about to be reborn... and to mention that she’s tossed away the Horn of Valere. Sure hope that Elayne doesn’t regret that in ten years when they’re at war with the Seanchan!

Tam hopes that now his son can get some rest. My hope is that Rand will, you know, go and talk to his dad after he’s had a chance to recover from the stress and trauma of the Last Battle. Also, Tam... you’re gonna have grandkids. No thoughts on that, I see. Still no thoughts on that.

The funeral scene frustrates me to pieces.

Honestly, the most frustrating thing about the funeral scene is how easy it would have been to casually mention that Mat and Perrin were there? Like, that’s ONE SENTENCE. Just... the erasure of those years of friendship, because heterosexual marriage, in Jordan’s fictional world, meant that close male-male friendships just stopped existing. It’s depressing. That CADSUANE is considered to have more right to be at Rand’s funeral than his childhood friends who were also vital parts of the Last Battle. It’s insulting. And apparently Tam organized it? But he couldn’t be bothered to invite his kid’s best friends. Definitely a place where Sanderson should have done some editing of the original epilogue. One sentence is all that was needed.

*sigh*

I do think that Sanderson did try to set up why Mat wouldn’t have gone -- we have seen Mat, in several of his recent PoV scenes, swallowing his grief over losing people he loves and not letting it appear to affect him openly, even as it rocked him deeply, so Rand’s death would be another of those gut-punches that he would do his best to pretend didn’t happen. But, fuck... it just sucks that the friendship between Mat and Rand is such a sublimated thing in this last book, when Rand and Mat both got to much more openly deal with pretty much every other important relationship that they had (though I will note that Rand and Sulin never got a reunion either! Rude!).

Perrin didn’t get anything like that kind of subtextual explanation, but Perrin actually did visit Rand’s healing tent while he was dying, so at least he got that much. *shrugs*

Min thinking here about how the assembled people expect a ‘show’ of grief -- yes, they have all found it exceedingly odd that none of you appear to be grieving the man you said that you loved.

Rand wakes up in his new body, washed clean of the wounds that he’d taken over the course of the series. No more missing hand; no more agonizing pain in his side. 

I have to admit “she left me some money” feels like a pretty anti-climatic way for Alivia to “help Rand die”? She wasn’t really involved in his “death” at all -- it was really Moiraine and Nynaeve who were the ones who ‘helped’ him die. I mean, any one of Min, Elayne, or Aviendha could have left him some money, since they all know he’s alive. I wonder if Jordan was originally thinking that Alivia would be the one joining Rand & Nynaeve for the cave journey, and it was Sanderson who decided that Moiraine would be more appropriate? Nothing distinctively Moiraine happens in that cave, not the way that Nynaeve was needed to be there to heal Alanna without using the Power. Like, this poor woman was harassed by Min for a handful of books because of that prophecy and all she did was leave Rand some money! Min better find her and apologize to her! (I already know that she won’t)

Haha, so confession: my brain edited out that new!Rand had lost saidin. My brain was just like “nope, of course he can still channel”. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Rand not being a channeler at the end of the story, so that part I’m not thrilled about. He does have his newfound ability to use the threads of reality to basically channel anyway, though. Or at least I assume that’s what the pipe scene is about.

And then his thought, too, about ‘which’ of the women will follow him - yeah, you’re right that thinking that means you’ve gotten a swollen head! They all have responsibilities! Though since Rand leaves so abruptly here, there’s a lot that he doesn’t know, and the two things that most affect this specific question are: the extent of Aviendha’s injuries and the extent of Min’s involvement with the Seanchan. Literally zero of them is in a position to go chasing after Rand, even if they wanted to! Rand is the one who has no obligations and can easily visit them if he wants (well, maybe not ‘easily’ if Min does end up in the Empire).

But I can still remember, wow, what a relief it was that he was alive at the end, and free and unbound. The rest can be... adjusted by post-canon theories.

In terms of ‘things that aren’t covered but that we can probably assume’:

It does look like Elayne ended up with all three of the medallion copies -- the one Mellar used on her, the one that was on Birgitte’s body, and the third was with Lan and she probably reclaimed it (there’s nothing to indicate that Mat spoke with Lan and got it back), so the slaver empress never gets that medallion that Mat wanted to give her back in ToM. Tragic.

Despite Elayne and Tam speaking frequently over the course of AMoL, they somehow never speak about the whole grandkids issue. I feel like we can assume that this happens at some point, post-epilogue? Elayne and Aviendha both seem like they would go back to Caemlyn to rebuild. And Tam doesn’t really have a reason to go back to the Two Rivers at this point, so I can see him ending in Caemlyn too because: grandkids.

Technically, Min has slipped the Seanchan net at this point and could just not go back if she wants, so she can either go back to the Seanchan or she could go to Caemlyn with Elayne & Aviendha, but if she does stay away from the Seanchan, Tuon is going to try to get her back. Unless she was super-turned off by Min actually standing up to her in front of all the Blood and hastily makes Selucia her Truthspeaker again. That’s another possibility.

Ah, since we were told earlier that Melaine was about ready to give birth and Birgitte tells Elayne that she’s about to be reborn: Melaine might be her mom. I feel like Birgitte being reborn as Aiel sounds kinda fun.

I feel like Rand would not actually enjoy traveling all on his own after a while, given what we know about him, so he would probably end up visiting Caemlyn. And given how suspicious Nynaeve already is in the epilogue, I’m going to guess that she knows the truth by the time Rand goes to Caemlyn.

If Mat decides to leave the Seanchan behind at any point, he will probably also go to Caemlyn, and Mat and Rand can finally have a good reunion.

All in all, there are things about the ending that don’t thrill me but there are also things I really like. And having an ending at all helps in terms of sparking the imagination for fanfiction or meta or... an Amazon Prime television series. I don’t think we would have ever gotten the series if the books had stayed unfinished.

The epilogue checklist (and my theories about how it affected AMoL)

So, while reading AMoL, it felt like Sanderson took a couple of shortcuts in order to bruteforce the characters into reaching their epilogue endpoints, because there simply wasn’t enough time for it to happen naturally. This is my list of things that I believe got shortchanged due to “writing to the epilogue”:

Fortuona is pregnant in the epilogue: at the start of AMoL, Mat gets teleported to Ebou Dar without any kind of narrative or logistical explanation (contradicting his PoV chapter in the ending of ToM, where he was planning to return to Caemlyn, which would have thrust him directly into the main stories at play in the prologue & early chapters). I feel like part of it is that Sanderson really wanted to get that bun in the oven as quickly as possible.

“they expected something from the three of them; a show of some kind” : There’s just a wide acknowledgement in the epilogue that literally everyone knows that Rand has three girlfriends, so everyone just already knows in AMoL that Rand is in a relationship with three women now. No need for anyone to have emotional reactions to it, please! (not even Rand’s literal dad!) This one also ends up being weird because it seems to change from moment-to-moment whether or not the whole army knows that Rand has three girlfriends (if everyone knows already, why is Rand playing spy games with Elayne?).

Min is Fortuona’s pregnancy test: Min instantly respects ~Fortuona~ as an empress even while thinking that she doesn’t normally respect nobility. Bizarre, considering Min’s own history with the Seanchan from Falme.

Mat kills Fain: we got two super-quick glimpses of Fain earlier in the book to set up this moment but Mat had so much other stuff to do that Sanderson couldn’t really do more than say: yeah, Fain exists and he’s bad, lol.

Minor elements I think were affect by the epilogue:

Rand is still pondering over the idea of choosing between Elayne, Aviendha, or Min: we get Rand’s going “am I allowed to love three women? idk sounds fake” when he and Aviendha sleep together in chapter 4, which just was kinda silly. I think the epilogue is also the genesis of the vibe where Rand appears to consider “having sex with Min for months” to not be any kind of “choice” when it comes to the three women, but having a romantic interlude with Aviendha or Elayne would signal a choice -- because the epilogue acts like the situation between Rand and each of the three women is roughly equal, so “months of sex with Min” appears to hold the same emotional weight to Rand as “pining from afar with two nights of intense passion” does when he thinks of either Elayne or Aviendha.

Mat has no thoughts about any of the Westlands characters: I think that this is more of a subconscious effect -- as he focused more on the final book, I think Sanderson focused on the relationships highlighted in the all-important epilogue... and the only person that Mat cares about in the epilogue is himself *cough* I mean, Fortuona, of course, lol. In both TGS and in ToM, Mat’s deep affection for various Westlands characters was constantly on display, as shown in his own ‘loves lying to himself’ way. This gets curtailed in AMoL, especially in the early Ebou Dar chapters.

I think I’m going to let myself might let myself marinate over the various books before I post a final list of my personal ranking of the books.

One thing that I’ve really noticed is that, more than any other character, the quality of Mat’s storyline has a huge impact on my overall enjoyment of the book. In CoT & KoD, Elayne and Egwene (both of whom I love), got pretty good stories. But Mat’s story was so bad that it made it difficult for me to enjoy the good parts. But maybe some time just letting myself think about the series as a whole will balance out my thoughts. Does that make Mat my favorite character or just my most impactful character? idk. I feel like Elayne or Rand would more consistently hit the top of my favorites.

Overall top five characters throughout the entire series:

1. Elayne

2. Rand

3. Egwene

4. Mat (might be higher if not for CoT & KoD)

5. Nynaeve (might be higher if she didn’t basically disappear after she married Lan)

Then, moving on to the next favs, I think there’s more uncertainty there for me:

6. Verin, probably, but it could be Moiraine. Let’s say they tie.

7. Aviendha and Siuan can both go here. Both generally very good and interesting characters.

8. You know, I had a real turnaround with Gawyn in this reread of the books; I’m gonna put him here. He can share this spot with Leilwin née Egeanin.

9. Loial, probably. Needed more PoV; that would have been nice. I’ll put Faile here with him.

10.  For more minor characters, I gotta give a shout-out to Narishma (favorite Asha’man), Sulin, Pevara during her Black Ajah Hunter phase, Olver is really good in his sections here in AMoL, Asmodean for being my favorite fail-Forsaken and Moghedien for sticking it out until the very end, Elaida honestly very fun PoV as far as villains go, Teslyn and Joline for being troopers and enduring Mat Cauthon at his very worst, my girl Berelain who always deserved better, the ‘Finn in general always lots of fun, Aludra and Juilin who always kept their integrity intact.

#wot #wheel of time #wot reread #wot book spoilers #wot spoilers #wot amol spoilers #wot a memory of light spoilers #mat cauthon #rand al'thor #elayne trakand #so it really feels like the 'main characters' of the actual last battle #were rand mat egwene and elayne #with everyone else being more of a secondary character #who helped the one of those main four storylines #posting this today because ao3 is being slightly iffy right now #so i'm going to post the next chapter of voice on thursday #and just give ao3 some time to work out whatever the connection issues are

[chisatowo]

Got another new oc!! This is the eel girl's adopted sister, Brady!

#keese draws #oc art #ocs #oc posting #eyestrain #she/he/it prns btw #Ive gotta settle on pronouns for everyone else I wanna make them lil bios on toyhouse #but yeah brady was raised by the side of the eel girl to do some fun political assasinations for their parents but brady ran away #he initially wanted to bring his sister with him but assumed that shed be better off without him thanks to a bunch of internalised shit #meanwhile her dear sister had previously believed that they always were gonna have eachother's backs so she felt super betrayed #honestly a big reason that she went with the main crew without putting up a fight is that she wanted to find her sister and get revenge #because shes like that #but by the time she finds it shes had ~character development~ and isnt sure if she even wants revenge #she still feela deeply hurt by brady's abandoning of her but honestly at that point she more so just wanted to know why than anything #she still wanted to make her feel the pain she felt but she also didnt want to hurt her at the same time #but before she could decide what to do abt finding him he freaked out abt her being there and glaring at him and he attacked her while she #was out on a night walk to think abt stuff #he quickly ended up hurting her much more than he meant to though and as he was freaking out the rest of the sister friend squad found them #still deciding how that particular series of events ends for it but Ill probably give it some side character stuff afterwards #its probably not gonna like join the main crew or anything but it might become a secondary pov idk #she has Issues lol

[thingswhatareawesome]

just could not get that 12th star in pure fiction. have retried so many times, ended up playing until way fucking longer than i should have. and yet i see people clearing the whole thing with fucking 70s. partly this is what i get for not having prioritized traces on my buffing characters. also this i guess is what i get for not pulling every single uber ranked 5 star even though part of it is getting fucked over by rng (I SEE YOU STANDARD WARP AND GEPARD AND FX). but also i guess this is what i get for rng fucking me over on so many halfassed to lousy relics? i think that's what gets me--is that it's just never enough. never enough 5* never enough pulling the RIGHT ones, never enough traces done never enough truly good relics bc the game won't GIVE me them

and it's not that i'm ftp anymore, i'm doing that little monthly jades subscription and the occasional bp here and there. but it's just never ENOUGH.

#seriously i've got 80s with 80 lcs and i am pushing so many of my dps traces to completion #stats and main traces (and secondary ones on many) #but i was prioritizing dps so much that my buffers aren't the best #and ofc the chars that are perfect for this i haven't put as much work into bc they're not great otherwise??? #ie himeko and well idc if herta's great for this i don't like her or her animations/vocalizations/girl design #but like it's not enough to have argenti and jingliu and jing yuan and dhil and now blade #i guess i'll look at more guides on teams tomorrow but it always comes down to buffers #and every guide wanting tingyun and pela on every damned team well they cant' be on two at once come ON #it's like i'm being punished for daring to not like herta or topaz or rm as well as for my rng fail luck #please ignore my sr bs #no matter what i do or how many hours every day or all the info i look up and read i just am never good enough #and for everyone else it's ez even at much lower levels and i just #frustration frustration frustration everywhere i turn in this game no matter how hard i work at it #sometimes i get so fucking tired of how much HOMEWORK i'm expected to do for xiv and star rail #like you can't just have fun or play to relax everything has to be researched and minmaxed and improved to the nth degree #and you have to memorize fucking encylopedias of theory and meta and rotations and i am TIRED #can't i play to have fun without this expectation that means i get left out of everything and can't participate bc you're only allowed in #if you spend every waking gaming moment perfecting EVERY tiny miniscule tidbit about every character ever skill ever gear piece #i wish these games had a fucking middle ground and not constant casual/fun/get left out of all content vs HARDCOOOORRRRREEEE #like why are there only two extremes

[masterhallmark]

Rant incoming

I feel like the problem with a lot of Disney's live action remakes (and arguably Wish) is they're trying to appeal to a crowd that no longer exists, namely the people who used to claim that the Disney Princesses were sexist.

All the interviews tend to include, "Well she's not chasing a MAN anymore" which...almost no one sees the princesses like that, anymore. Virtually NO ONE still believes the princesses are man-chasing sexist caricatures of women.

Cinderella is now hailed as an abuse victim who stayed strong long enough to get help to get out of her situation. Anyone who says she should have saved herself is basically regarded as a victim blamer. And it's very clear in the film she wasn't looking to marry the prince, she just wanted a night off. She was the only one who wasn't in line to meet him. She didn't find out she met the prince until he went looking for her!

Snow White is now hailed for her negotiation skills, ability to calm down after extreme stress (she had a moment of panic and had to cry for a bit, but who wouldn't after finding out The Queen hired someone to kill you?), and ability to take charge of a house of adult men. And again, she was an abuse victim, this time trying to escape ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS. While she dreamed of her prince, it was secondary to her main goal of SURVIVAL. There are also entire video essays about how Snow White gave hope to people during The Great Depression.

Everyone acknowledges that Ariel wanted to be human BEFORE meeting Eric. We all know she was a nerd hyperfixating on humans, and also standing up to her prejudiced father.

We understand Sleeping Beauty wasn't the main character, the Three Good Fairies were, AND PHILLIP WOULD NEVER HAVE BEATEN MALEFICENT WITHOUT THEM! He literally depended on them! WOMEN SAVED THE DAY! But even then, is it really such a sin for a girl to fantasize about romance and fall for someone with corny pickup lines?

We all understand Jasmine just wanted someone to treat her LIKE A PERSON. She rejected every Prince before Aladdin because they treated her like a prize. So why did they need her to want to be Sultan? How did that make her more feminist when she already wanted to be treated like an equal and have a say in her future? Is it only empowering if you want a career in politics?

We admire that Belle, despite living in a judgemental village, was kind to everyone (even though she found the village life dull), and her story teaches girls that the guy everyone else loves isn't always a good guy. What's sexist about teaching girls about red flags? And she didn't start being nice to The Beast until he started treating her with respect and kindness.

Do I really NEED to defend Mulan or Tiana? I think they speak for themselves.

Rapunzel was yet another abuse victim who just needed a little help to get out of her bad situation. In this case, she also needed to learn that she was an abuse victim, and that what Mother Gothel did WASN'T normal, much like many victims of gaslighting.

And don't get me started on the non-princess animals.

Perdita had a healthy relationship with Pongo to the point she was open to express her pregnancy fears to him, and was ready to TEAR APART Cruella's goons for daring to touch her puppies as well as adopting the other puppies. Like, she was so ferocious the goons mistook her for a hyena! She's basically that "I AM THAT GIRL'S MOTHER!" scene from SpyXFamily if Yor were a dog. She and her husband were a TEAM.....but they made a Cruella live action to turn her into a girlboss?! The literal animal abuser!? THAT'S the woman you wanted to put on a pedestal when Perdita was RIGHT THERE!?

Duchess kept her kittens calm after they had been catnapped and was classy as heck. Nice to everyone regardless of social class during a time period where that was uncommon.

Lady stood up to Tramp when she believed he had abandoned her and didn't really care about her. She found out he was a heartbreaker and was like, "Nuh uh. No. You are not doing that to me! You put me through enough."

Miss Bianca from The Rescuers was IN CHARGE the whole movie, and was willing to risk life and limb to save an innocent child. THAT TINY MOUSE TOOK ON ALLIGATORS! And she picked Bernard to accompany her because he was the only one who wasn't ogling her. And then in the sequel SHE DID IT ALL AGAIN! I wish I were as brave as her.

Like, the public haven't accused these ladies of being sexist caricatures since 2014 (Actresses and actors don't count, they're out of touch like the rest of Hollywood) yet Disney is operating under the assumption that the public still thinks that way, hence all the "sHe'S nOt AfTeR a MaN iN ThIs VeRsIOn" talk.

The live action remakes are trying to attract an audience that doesn't really exist much, anymore, and back when it did exist, was comprised mainly of people who didn't actually watch the films. The Disney princesses are no longer seen as sexist, and feminine qualities are no longer seen as weak or undesirable.

#the rescuers #disney #101 dalmatians #perdita #miss bianca #rapunzel #tangled #princess and the frog #tiana #the three good fairies #flora #merriweather #fauna #snow white #sleeping beauty #Cinderella #ariel #the little mermaid #beauty and the beast #belle #aristocats #duchess #lady and the tramp #jasmine #aladdin #long #wish

[azulock]

doing something simple to ease myself back into writing as my hand is finally healing

fell first vs fell harder

Reo Mikage - falls first

If asked this question he would deny the answer to the ends of the earth - in his mind it's the other way around, he is the one who fell harder. But that's obviously coming from his own issues with his self worth, he can't fathom the idea of someone loving him more than he loves them back. It's utterly delirious. But he is such a hard worker that it just comes true.

He falls quick and easy, he isn't quite so good at putting up emotional walls like he thinks he is. Anyone who knows him can see it too, he's a sucker at hiding it too cause when he falls for someone he puts his all into it. It's not about the money, it's about the effort, the care, the dedication. No winder it's easy to fall harder for him, but it's harder to convince him of that.

Michael Kaiser - falls harder

It's kinda hard for someone like Michael Kaiser to ever imagine loving someone other than himself. He's the main character and everyone else is secondary to his existence, so it gives that he's the only one deserving of love. He just never takes into consideration that being loved can be like a drug.

Kaiser seeks sex like a need for the body and the ego. But if someone is patient enough to stick around and treat him like he's truly loved, his walls come down pretty badly. When he loves someone, it's with twice as much intensity as anything he does. He'll never be caught saying it out loud, but when he falls for someone, he loves them more than his own self.

Shidou Ryusei - falls first

Shidou is a weird guy, with strange tastes, not someone that easy to impress. Tho, that comes from his best quality, being true to himself. And in this way, he knows exactly what he wants, and he isn't scared of it, nor is he scared of confronting his feelings. He's the type that when someone points out his crush to mess with him, he shoots them down to just owning up to it.

Tho, that's not to mean he falls easy, and beyond that he is something of an acquired taste. But he's a good one, a guy without fear of making the first move and showing his hand when he feels the time is right. It's actually pretty candid in a weird to see someone who looks like a maniac admit his feelings so easily. It's just makes this weird more of a catch.

Oliver Aiku - falls first and harder

It seems like a far fetched possibility to everyone, including himself. Anyone fucking this guy who still has two functioning braincells knows better than to let their feelings get swayed by his easy charm. Too bad, that's what attracts him - Oliver is drawn to the challenge of someone stoic to his charms, a prize that's worthy of effort.

Tho, saying he fell first comes with a caveat: he's the last one to figure it out. All his friends notice but his brain can't see it - when the truth sinks in, he's already waist deep. He does try to manwhore his way out of the problem, but like quick sand the more he fights the deeper he sinks, and in no time he's neck deep. By then, even he knows the only way out is through.

@tinnaagine @loser-vxbez @kiurona @bentolover @bevernats @weirdbutpr3tty @ada7201 @vollereix @rinitosh @kum1ko-chan @romanticizemai @oneandonlykuronacuddler @borisbq @priv-rose @eliezeer @elisacarynia @gigiiiiislife @isagispuzzlepiece @wishiknewwhatiwasdoingwithmylife @qichun @fivenightsatwhoreville @geemyfirstluvstory @lecrow-y @yunxbin @mariyumemi

#oliver aiku x reader #michael kaiser x reader #mikage reo x reader #ryusei shido x reader #blue lock x reader #bllk x reader

[cassandraclare]

*sighs a bit* Okay. Guys. I have been asked this question a lot, and answered it a lot. I don't know how to give a better answer — Dru & Ty&Kit share significance as main characters — so I guess I'll talk a little about comparison and structures.

First, all series have different structures. I don't think it's super useful or predictive to try to map an upcoming, unknown book series onto an existing series. In TLH the main character was Cordelia, everyone else was secondary to her, and people's roles and the significance of them altered from book to book. It was a big ensemble cast and they mostly stayed put in London especially in book 1.

TWP focuses on a smaller group of people. It also has a very different structure. In book one, Dru is not with Kit and Ty. They are in different places, both of which have their own stories that are significant to the plot. There is no way to see Place One without following Dru. There is no way to see Place Two without following Kit and Ty.

I know that TWP is a long way off. I know there are people who are very angry with me that there's such a gap, but there isn't anything currently I can do about that, or about the fact that I don't yet have the schedule for my upcoming books. That rests in the hands of several different publishers who must coordinate the release times and production schedules for four different series. I am not withholding any information about when these books come out. I simply don't know it yet.

I understand that TWP being a long way off makes for anxiety, and that those who are worried Kit and Ty will somehow be secondary are looking for tiny clues in microscopic details — micro-reading the of placement of the word "and" in my newsletter and such — that are meaningless, but I get that it all comes from anxiety. (FTR, those worried Dru will be secondary are equally anxious.)

I think there is only so much I can say. Because there's a big gap between TLH and TWP everything I do say or every image or hint about it is freighted with a weight of assumption it can't really support. Anxiety is always going to trump reassurance. And truly, at the end of the day, if you only care about Kit and Ty and find the idea of a Dru story tiresome, you will feel like they got shafted because when you absolutely hate a plotline, you will always feel like it's taking up way too much space. That's just how our minds work.

I've been doing this long enough that I know no book can survive a hostile reading. I know that Book Three of a trilogy is the one people hate until they don't. (When Clockwork Princess came out people hated it so much I considered quitting writing!) I know that it's wonderful to love a character but can also be a problem for people when I put out books that aren't about that particular character or dynamic. I know that for a lot of people, Sword Catcher and Ragpicker King are just tiresome things that have no business on my schedule because they're not Shadowhunter books. And I get it. But I also have to block it out, because I've been writing a long time, and I've gotten to a point where I know that I have to write the thing I want to be writing, because if I don't, if I sit down and try to force myself to write something I'm not feeling like writing at that time, I'll be making myself physically and mentally sick. And that's no good for anyone, really.

I suppose the positive thing is that, while this would not have been true five years ago, I am at the place where I want very much to be writing Wicked Powers. I missed these characters and am glad to be back with them. I consider this a story in which there are three main characters. And that is all I can say right now because it's all that I know.

(And this was much more of a general response to a lot of things than a specific response to this question, but I did feel like it was stuff that I needed to say. Creators are at the end of the day, just people. Sometimes we are powerless to reassure. Sometimes we are tired. Sometimes we are wrong. Sometimes we try things and they don't work. Sometimes we can't explain to you what our story is going to make you feel, because only reading it is going to tell you that. This may be one of those times.)

#the wicked powers

[laroserie]

— character : yandere!omega oc

— content : x beta gender neutral reader , bullets point , yandere , unhealthy / toxic behavior , omegaverse , yandere!omega oc is a he / him pronouns && he is described as feminine , reader is 'you' and is kinda obvious

— authors note : this is more like small headcanons mixed with a bit of story. i had a shit ton of daydreams about it but urgh i hate it but i haven't posted in a while so

⦁ you and yandere!omega have been friends since childhood ! you both lived close, went to the same primary school so it was not surprise that you both became friends. up until high school you both had a pretty regular friendship, yes you were close but not too close.

⦁ at least it's how you saw it, to him you were his precious dear friend. he used to get bullied a lot because of his 'feminine' body and face but you were always here for him, to support him, telling him 'Asper, you are so handsome, they tell you that kind of stuff because they are jealous of you !'. he started loving you from that time onwards. he kept his feelings for himself wanting to keep being friends, just being at your side was enough for him

⦁ in middle school you both learned more in depth about 'secondary gender' and ... Asper had this fantasy of you both becoming a pair, he honestly didn't care either he'd be the alpha or omega, he just wanted you to be his counterpart so you could form a bond together and be linked together for ever.

⦁ and it was during your first year of high school that you got tested to know your secondary gender. Asper was ... ecstatic to say the least when he got his result - sure, being a omega may mean facing a bit of discrimination but he was a omega ! which mean he could be your mate ! he was so sure you were an alpha, he was so ready to confess his love to you and ask you to bite and claim him, for him to be your and for you to his.

⦁ after reading his result he directly turned to you - you were seated in the seat behind him, and he showed you the paper with the result, smiling at you.

"Look ~ I told you I was either a omega or an alpha right ! Soo what are you ?" He asked you, expecting for you to answer 'alpha'

"I'm a beta, I mean it was to expect so I'm not disappointed or extremely happy" You answered, showing him

⦁ it's at this moment that his world shattered. the future we prepared for the both of you got ruined. he wasn't expecting ... this outcome - in his mind it could be impossible for you, his beloved friend, to be a beta, he didn't have anythings against them but ! you both were made for each others, you both needed to form a bond, needed to be a pair !

⦁ it changed his behaviour toward you - he was being a little bit more on edge when you were talking to others people. he know that forming a bond could be impossible and so he needed to protect you ! from everyone, mainly others betas but also alphas and omegas !

⦁ to ensure that you could not get snatched away by anyone else, he could rub his scent all over you and yours clothes and of course get your scent all over him too.

⦁ anytime an alpha could start talking to you, Asper could get in between you two and start flirting with the alpha, it disgusted him and he felt so ... dirty doing that but he didn't know how to have them give up on approaching you others than making them put all of their attention on him - he thought that he may as well use being an omega to his advantage

⦁ he also used being an omega to manipulate others into leaving you alone or talk about how you and Asper are made for each others and that your secondary genders shouldn't matter

⦁ he showed you stories about omega and beta being together to send you 'hints' - he even directly told you,

"Honestly ... I think I could prefer dating a beta more than an alpha ~ They are such big pricks that think they are sooo much better because of their secondary genders. Betas are so much softer and kind ~"

And was quite distraught when you told him that you hoped 'he could find a good beta partner then !'

⦁ on the topic of you being obvious to him 'clearly' giving you hints, Asper steal your clothes and make a nest with it, and he doesn't hid it from you, directly asking you for your t-shirt or hoodie even if you are currently wearing them.

#Omega. 🐇 #a magic piece ? #yandere x reader #yandere male #male yandere #male yandere x reader #omega yandere #omegaverse #omega yandere x reader #omega x reader #yandere #yandere imagines #yandere headcanons #yandere scenarios #yandere insert #yandere x you #yandere blurb #yandere oc #yandere drabble #x reader #darling ... you bewitched me

[i23kazu]

GENSHIN MEN & BEING YOUR COLLEGE CLASSMATE .

characters. xiao diluc kaeya childe ayato alhaitham kaveh scara x gn!reader genre. romantic fluff. an. some professors, some students!!! come n see my headcanons hehe . | please reblog!! im getting back into writing and reblogs with tags and comments will make me want to write more :D

xiao

a history major. specifically in liyue studies – sometimes he corrects the professor. "were you there in (time period), xiao? do you want to say something about it?" the professor asks sarcastically. the whole class is shocked when xiao nods and takes over the class. the professor has nothing else to say. of course, after class — it’s a little hard to get xiao to agree to tutor you — why should he spend his time teaching someone who doesn’t give their 100% in class? it’s only when you bring up the point that your professor sucks that he agrees. and maybe, just maybe after all that time the two of you spend together… maybe something will happen?

diluc

business major, but does a double degree with political science. he's a force to be reckoned with in class, often standing his point with ease and with the obstinacy of a mule – especially when it's something that he holds close to his heart. the first time you fell in love with diluc was when he had passionately entered a debate regarding mondstadt and snezhnaya's diplomatic situation. for a man of few words, diluc's speech can turn heads – even yours. you did well, for your first debate, you tease. he barks a laugh and turns back to his laptop.

kaeya

fashion major... he comes to class in the most immaculate outfits. some might say he looks goofy, but that's just his thing! nothing looks goofy on him and he can absolutely pull off everything. he's definitely the class flirt, using measuring tape to pull the ones he's set his eyes upon closer. you roll his eyes as his tablemate, often trying to focus on your own creations – but how can you focus when he looks like... that? measuring tape around his neck, pencil held sticking out of his mouth and his hair covering his eyes. he may not have been objectively attractive at that point in time, but there's something about him that makes him so fascinating.

childe

childe is a occupational therapy major, with a minor in social science! he has a heart for the people and he wants to do his best to serve them ... although his ways of "serving" can look quite different sometimes. he lives, breathes, eats and drinks fitness and maybe half of his body mass lies in the protein powder he takes every morning. he's buff, but he's definitely a sweetheart – and a heartthrob, in his major. he's happy to help people out, just that... ah, his group of friends may not exactly seem the friendliest around. childe is different from his friends, though; give him a chance! he's plotting so many ways to ask you out.

ayato

ayato is definitely a business major! just like diluc, he does a double degree – his secondary major is international relations. after stepping up as the CEO of the kamisato company ( at age 20?! ), ayato had decided to take his studies further. ayato is definitely an overachiever and he was turned down from taking another sociology course because he had gone over the amount of credits needed for the next four years. the thing about ayato is that he isn't exactly the most approachable or the friendliest – or so you think. no one approaches him for him for him, but everyone knows that he's the most reliable one around. perhaps you'd like to be the first to make a move?

alhaitham

linguistics ( obviously! ) and also a social science student. he's the senior that everyone is entranced by – he's absolutely fascinating. there's something about his aloofness and yet an ability to connect to people he wants to reach out to that makes him so ... interesting. alhaitham is a man of little words, which means that whenever he opens his mouth – everyone will listen. alhaitham is definitely the classmate you envy; his life always looks so put together! when you ask him to tutor you, he says nothing else except for the date, time, and location. but he is there at the date, time, and location – and that's what matters.

kaveh

he's definitely the struggling, caffeine filled architecture major. he burns his wallet buying ice cream sticks and cardboard each week, and his hands are almost always full with his materials. honestly, at some point, kaveh had almost set his mind on dropping out – until you had convinced him to stay. it took a long walk and a trip to the nearest art store to remind him of why he had chosen architecture in the first place – and it's safe to say that kaveh had fallen head over heels for you after that. you're his safe place in a course so exhausting.

scara

a dropout definitely a media student! scara takes no shits from his clients, but that's part of his brand. he's the brooding guy at the back of the class, with his signature hoodie – it's one of the seven mysteries of teyvat university; of how he and childe are best friends. grumpy black cat and sunshine orange cat. scara doesn't enjoy interacting with anyone. at most, he talks to you when he needs to, because of the seating arrangement. there are rumours surrounding him, saying that he was kicked out of the law school because of his affiliation with... certain people, rendering his reputation hopeless. nevertheless, you treat him as you would with anyone else – and maybe, just maybe: that wins you a spot in his heart.

taglist: @tiredsleep @loptido @raincxtter @chichikoi @ladyadii @soulsanta @sheiiths @genshinparty @eowinthetraveler @moonbyunniee @legitnoi @lemontum @manager-of-the-pudding-bank @starz222 @ilyuu @cherry-colored-petals @mondaymelon @tartaglia-apologist @soleillunne @m1shapanda @aimynx @smokipoki @adeptuscharm @diorlumx @vennnnn-diagram @ryuryuryuyurboat @yuminako @st0pthatsgay @aqualesha @sixtynintharchon @supernova25 @kunikuda-simp @starglitterz (send ask/comment to be added to taglist)

reblogs w/ tags & comments help me lots !!! if you liked this, please consider dropping me a follow as well :-) they all go a long way!

#long post #[📝 stewardess' notepad!] #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin x gn reader #astronetwrk #genshin impact x gn reader #xiao x reader #xiao x gn reader #diluc x reader #diluc x gn reader #kaeya x reader #kaeya x gn reader #childe x reader #childe x gn reader #ayato x reader #ayato x gn reader #alhaitham x reader #alhaitham x gn reader #kaveh x reader #kaveh x gn reader #scara x reader #scara x gn reader

[letrune]

Why I don't like the "X is perversion"

So, let me give you the short version. I am a polyamorous transgender furry woman, likely asexual (jury is still out on that one), coming from Hungary. Every single one of these was called a perversion in one time of history, but especially now, they are treated like being either, like just being a furry, is to be at best ashamed of, and most a reason to isolate people like me from society forever - and that I should be thankful for nobody calling for my extermination at the government levels.

Except, you know. Some do. Some US and Russiand jerks had been calling for building what amounts to be gulags for being queer and furry and foreigner, and stuff people in for that alone; simply because "you are a pervert and want to harm the women and children because you are queer or a furry".

So... What do these people actually think? Someone likimg cartoonish anthro characters is to be throw into prison? Asexuals to be throw in some cell in a panopticon? Asexuals to be sent to a forced labour camp? All of us to shut up forever and never even peep online?

Because I heard thrse proposals and yes, actual ideas on how to exterminate us. To have death squads like it's Pol Pot's Cambodia. To round furries up and shoot them. To break into homes in the middle of night and drag people away for public executions. You know, this is like "let us murder anyone who likes Star Trek!".

Back in 2017 if I recall correctly, maybe 2016, I was at a protest. LGBTQ+ people wished to be tteated equally. A man from the government came over and told us: "Come on. Stop it. Be happy you are not shot into the Danube.", which is like telling anyone wishing queer equity "be happy you are not sent to Dachau.". That same sort of "just shut up and be happy we are not murder you, secondary citizens" attitude came out again a lot of time.

Furries who want to claim being a furry is inherently perverted, some queer people wanting to throw the rest under the bus to secure themselves some secondary citizen rank, and so much more...

Just feels like these people want to go "please Mr. Government, let me kill people you don't like as long as I can keep my life, I am happy to be beaten up if I step out of line but please do not hurt me, I am willing to beat others up, please just spare me". You know, quislings. People who happily handed out blindfolds and then realised there was one for themselves and got pushed to the wall too. People who happily rounded up others to be shot into the Danube, or stuffed into a cornhopper to Dachau, or called the secret police on.

This puritanical "destroy them, because being X is perverted" is obvious when you consider that they said the same of homosexuality, trans people, furries and asexuals. That they are inherently a danger and should be removed from society, any means necessary, just like how they also wanted to remove people of other countries, religions and skin colour.

These people are a danger to society and themselves, as they want others dead for simply existing. They want everyone else to fall in line to some cis-het-compulsory, patriarchal, no-creativity allowed, it-is-all-about-me world.

Furries and being queer predate agriculture. Being a xenophobe is relatively new, especially xenophobes who think the only solution is "kill anyone in this group".

#cw vent #cw mention of death

[cheapshrimpysheep]

When Can I See You Again?

SUMMARY: After classes you go with Ortho to Ignihyde to play with Idia. You end up eating noodles with him for dinner, and before you leave is when your conversation warms up a bit.

CHARACTERS: Pairing with Idia. Ortho and other characters as secondary.

TAGS: Fluff; GN Reader; Flirting; Kissing

WARNING: Spoilers from: Book 6; The Phantom Bride; Twisted Halloween (1st and 2nd parts); The Harveston Sledathon; Camp Vargas 2: The Art of Survival.

WORD COUNT: 2.640

COMMENTS: This is for the @briarvalleyarchives “Anthems of Old” event. I was invited to join this twst writers network and this is the first thing I write for it. I took this more as a challenge to myself. I was happy with the result and I hope you like it too. And it wasn't until later that I realized that I chose a song from a movie about villains not really being villains.

Check out the Song I chose -> Owl City - When Can I See You Again? (From Wreck it Ralph)

You and Grim were having lunch with Ace and Deuce. Until Ortho showed up and asked if he could sit with you. He wasn't carrying a tray.

“We can arrange a sit for you on one condition.” Grim said “You don't eat because you're a robot, right?” Ortho confirms. "But now you're a student right? Aren't you entitled to a meal too?"

“Aaah, I think I know what Grim is getting at.” Ace comments.

“I think I know too.” Ortho says. “You want me to go get my meal and give it to you, correct?”

“Yah! If you do, you can sit with us.”

You tell Ortho he doesn't have to do that and Grim starts to protest.

“Ha ha. It's okay, prefect. As far as I know, the necessary amount of food is prepared for all students. If they do it with me as one of the students who will consume the food, that means at least one meal will be wasted. So maybe giving it to Grim is the best thing to do.”

Everyone approves of his point of view. Some for better reasons than others. He goes to get his meal to give to Grim and sits down with you.

You start chatting and, eventually, Ortho starts talking about a new game that Idia and him started to play and that a lot of people say it’s good. It was a cute and fun co-op game about a couple. And when you see some parts of the gameplay that he shows you, you show interest in playing too.

“So why don't you play with my brother? I'm sure he will enjoy playing with you.”

“Don't you want to play?” You ask.

“Hmm... yes, but I would like him to play in real life with someone else besides me. You know?” You do. “Why don't you come with me to Ignihyde after school to play? We can reset the game for you. We haven't made that much progress anyway, don’t worry.” he was clearly very happy about it.

“I pass.” Grim says with his mouth full.

“Hum? WHY?” Ortho asks.

“Because this guy always wants to treat me and pet me like I'm a cat! I'd rather take a long nap in Ramshackle Dorm with the ghosts.”

Ortho sighs, but he says it's okay. The truth he won't reveal is that it will even be better that way.

After school, Ortho accompany you to the Ramshackle Dorm to drop Grim off. And then, you two go to the Hall of Mirrors to go to Ignihyde.

When you arrive at the door of Idia's room, upon recognizing Ortho, the door opens without any problems and you two enter. Idia was sitting in the desk chair with his back to you at the door, with headphones in his ears. Ortho chuckles mischievously.

“Hey, (Y/N)?” he whispers to you. “Do you want to surprise him?” And you do! He gives you an idea and you execute it.

Idia was focused on the screen. You approach slowly, lean in beside him, and give him a quick peck on the cheek. He jumps off the chair and lands on the ground. And as soon as he sees you, the ends of his hair turn pink.

“WHAT? WHEN... W-when did you spaun here?”

You laugh. "Didn't Ortho tell you I was coming to play with you?"

He looks at his younger brother.

“Surprise!” Nope, Ortho didn't tell him. But now he tells him about your lunchtime conversation. And about you two playing from the beginning.

“But I like to play on hard mode.” Idia mutters, thinking you can't hear him. “In that case I'll have to beat the game on easy mode.”

“If this is so painful for you then why don't you just tell me you only play with pros?” You say, crossing your arms and raising an eyebrow.

“Hep!” he genuinely hoped you hadn't heard. “No! That's not- I didn't- I wasn't-” he seems unable to finish a single sentence.

Seeing him so flustered is so funny to you, to the point of being a little cute. You can't hide the urge to laugh and that makes him revert to his gloomy self. And sulking a little bit that you're laughing at him.

“So... you're not upset?”

“Oh, I am. But seeing you panicking is revenge enough for now.”

“Oh yeah? Let's see who panics when we're playing.” he smirks evilly.

You turn serious all of a sudden and worn him: “Don't put it on-”

“I'm not putting it on hard mode.” he answers you slightly intimidated. One of the sides he likes most about you and something that he will never admit.

It's a co-op puzzle game. Which means he becomes a cocky bastard for solving puzzles in seconds. He annoys you with his arrogance and you annoy him by messing things up in the game. While you're playing, Ortho left you two alone and none of you noticed.

You were having so much fun that it wasn't until your bellies rumbled that you realized you hadn't eaten yet and it was past dinnertime. You start to worry about Grim. Not because you think he would have been starving without you, but because he could eat who knows what without you around.

“It’s been fun but now I’ve got to go.” you say and your belly growls again.

“It's still going to be a long time before you get to your dorm and still have to cook dinner.” He says “If you are as hungry as I am, you should eat as soon as possible.”

“I know. That's why you should go now.”

“I have a lot of instant noodles. And I would say your best strategy right now would be to make yourself a cup of them and eat before you go. If you leave now with your hunger bar that low you could collapse halfway through.”

“Thank you for showing me the worst case scenario.”

“Oh, believe me, this isn't the worst I can imagine.” he smiles in a slightly creepy way, like someone who prides himself on predicting the worst. But then it goes back to normal. “Hey, it's just an offer. I'm going to make myself a cup now. If you'd like to come.”

You accept his offer and follow him into the kitchen. He asks you what kind of noodles you like best. If you ask him what kind of noodles he has, he will reply: "All kinds. Meh heh heh... Take a shot!" You say which one is your favourite. “IN STOCK NOW!” He says in his best Sam impersonation. It was so good that it surprised you and made you laugh.

He takes out two cups of your favourite noodles, one for you and one for him. He places them on the table where you sit while he goes to prepare the water in the electric kettle. He starts talking about the game you were playing together, but you're paying more attention to his small gesture of "making dinner" for you.

When he turns to you and sees your face, he shuts up and then says: “W-why are you looking at me like that? Has my hair turned a weird colour?” You chuckle but say no. “Then why that look?”

“Cause I think you're cute.” His hair does a PUFF in surprise and the ends of his hair turn pink and his face a little flushed. “Now yes, your hair is in a funny colour.” And you keep smiling at him.

“Meh heh... I may be a noob at this game but I still know how to play it.” He says, with a smirk and that confidence you only see once in a while.

“What do you mean?”

He puts his hands behind his back and slowly walks towards you while smirking. And you feel yourself blushing a little. When he gets in front of you he leans in, his face so close to yours that you almost feel hypnotized by his strong yellow eyes.

“Heh heh, looks like we're both cute when we're flattered.” He's speaking in that deep voice of his. “What's the matter? Not so confident when it's my turn?” He takes one of his hands to your face, thumb on one cheek, three fingers on the other and pinky under your chin, because his hand is relatively big compared to you. He's not hurting you, but he manages to gently get you to form your lips into a kiss pose. “(Y/N), dear, hon, you know very well at this point on a PvP between the both of us, I win. He he he...” he whispers, as he gets even closer “...cute...”

POP! He jumps and straightens up when startled by the electric kettle's signal that the water is already hot. And you laugh. He sulks, but turns and goes to get the water to put in your noodle cups.

Meanwhile, other Ignihyde students started to enter the kitchen to also prepare their dinners and eat. So, you couldn't continue your "little game".

You finish eating and he walks you out of the dorm.

“When can we do this again?” You ask before you leave.

“Well, that depends.” He answers. “When can I see you again?” and then he starts talking very fast. “I mean, I'm always at my room. In the best case scenario. You're the one who's always busy solving the problems of an incompetent headmage. And having fun with those two single brain celled of friends. And having meeting and stuff with the other housewordens. So, hey, you're the one who should text me whenever your free.”

That sounded a little suspicious, didn't it? You look around. You don't see anyone else but you two.

“Idia?... Was that a jealous speech?”

“What? Jealous? No, of course not.” He's still speaking quickly “This is just the speed up speech I use to spit facts and vent in someone's face with the expectation that even if they hear me they won't understand what I say and will just be confused and think I'm weird enough to leave me alone.”

“You want me to leave you alone?”

“W-wha- NO! I-I-I-...” He sees you start to lift the corners of your mouth. In fact, it's funny to see him flustered. “*Sigh*... It's a blessing and a curse to have a weirdo who can understand me even when I speak in my turbo speech mode.”

“I'll take that "weirdo" as a compliment.” you say, smirking.

“As you should.” He says, a little lower and with that sweet little smile. You cherish that smile until you remember what you two were talking about.

“I wish you would go out more often. Ortho too. Wouldn't you like to take a walk with me one day?”

“Surrounded by normies who wouldn't take their eyes off us? No thanks.” He says and you sulk. “Oh, come on. You know very well I'm not saying I don't want to be with you. I will not continue to fall on your sulking face.”

“But you didn't like the other times you left Ignihyde?”

“Oh yes. Being kidnapped by ghosts into a forced marriage was the most romantic experience I've ever had. Getting kidnapped to a Halloween party in the Spectral Realm and being possessed? What an adrenaline rush! Go to a camp and get kidnapped by Couch Vargas and forced to squad until my legs are in agony? The outdoor exercise I've been needing. I just realized I have a problem with being serial kidnapped.”

Even his sarcasm makes you laugh. “Can't say you don't have a point there. But what about the Halloween before you were kidnapped? For example?”

“Ah, what delightful visitors Magical Monsters are.”

“First, what about the normal visitors? Wasn't it good to see them appreciate your work? And second, you're not going to tell me you didn't enjoy terrorizing Magicam Monsters, are you?” He answers you with his smug smile. “And what about that gaming afternoon at Ramshackle Dorm? Everyone was so impressed with your gaming skills.” his sweet smile comes back. “Aaaaand...” you were going to play your trump card and you tried to imitate him in his fanboy mode “Epel's grandma is the inspiration for the team leader os the show I'm obsessed about? DUUUDE. SHE'S BEST GIRL BY FAR! Would you autograph my guidebook? And can I take a picture with you?!”

“OKAY OKAY, I GOT IT!” He was so embarrassed, for both of you. Fortunately, no one was there to see it. “And BTW, the show is called Sled Over Heels, the team is called Beauties Sleeping and the character is called Ai. Thank you very much.”

“Did you regret leaving the dorm that time?” you ask, knowing the answer. But he doesn't answer, he doesn't like to give the other person reason so soon. “Would you regret taking a walk with me one day?”

“Maybe.” He says, you sulk. “Not because of you, because of everyone and everything else. Can't we take this getting me out of the room thing slowly?”

“That reminds me of a phrase. Life is way too short to take it slow. But in your case, yes, we can take it slow. What if you come to Ramshackle Dorm and play together then? Maybe you can pet Grim.”

“That's very appealing. You're good with deal, I must say. Perhaps you can compete with Azul.”

“So, is that an yes?”

“*Sigh* Fine, I will... try.”

“Just try? What if i buy some candy?”

“Damn, you really are persistent. But since you're raising the offer” he smirks “what if I try to see how far it goes?”

“Do you want a kiss?” your cheekiness makes his hair explode in pink, and he blushes a lot.

“I-i-i-is that an a-actual offer?”

“Perhaps. But with such a high offer, do you really think just going to my dorm is enough?”

“Hum...” he thinks for a second. “How about that walk with you? There are not many people on the beach at this time of year.”

“But don't you need permission to leave college?”

“Heh heh heh. You remember who my family is right? Do you really think I can't bribe the headmage? As if it were difficult.”

You two were smiling like partners in crime.

“We have a deal then.” you say “so... what kind of kiss would you like?”

“Any one I want?”

“Any one you want.”

He looks around again, there's no one there, but he still pulls you into a corner. Lift your chin with his fingers and bring his face closer to yours. You were lit by blue and pink fire lights.

“Then why don't we finish what we started in the kitchen?”

You kiss him as your answer. You feel the warm his hair emits and his delicate but passionate lips on yours. You just broke away from the kiss early, because you were in a place where someone could show up at any moment.

When you get to Ramshackle Dorm, you find Grim and Ortho sleeping on the couch in the Lounge. The ghosts tell you that Ortho showed up there to keep Grim company and feed him dinner. He got some cans of tuna for himself. They also say that Ortho commented that his batteries were running low when he went into sleep or economy mode.

You wake Ortho up gently. And asks if he wants to spend the night there. You can arrange a place for him.

“It's ok. I was saving my energies to have enough to go back to Ignihyde anyway.”

He really wants to ask how the afternoon went with his brother, but it's late and he can ask you the next day. Or simply see in what mood Idia is in when he gets to their bedroom.

If you would like to read more from me, you can find it in my pinned post: INDEX

ABOUT THE SONG: "When Can I See You Again?" is one of the 3 theme songs from Disney's 2012 animated feature film, Wreck-It Ralph. It is an uptempo dance-pop and synthpop song written and performed by Owl City.

The song is played during the credits showing Ralph, Felix, Vanellope, and Calhoun's game-jumping adventures.

The song is the main theme of the Paint the Night parade at Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland, and is played at the end of Move It! Shake It! Dance and Play It!.

SOURCE

#Twisted Wonderland #twst #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #disney twisted wonderland #twst imagines #twst wonderland #twst fluf #Twisted Wonderland Fluf #Idia Shroud #Idia Shroud x Reader #Idia x Reader #briarvalleyarchives #Anthems of Old #twst fluff

[4izawas]

𝐈 𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔’𝐑𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐘. | 𝐉. 𝐊𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐈𝐍.

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: more than anything, he just wants her to be happy.

𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐦: attack on titan | 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: jean kirstein/f!reader, former eren jaeger/f!reader, mentioned background eren jaeger/jean kirstein | 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: nsfw ; minors dni | 𝐰/𝐜: 17.94k.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: canonverse, spoilers for chapters 131-139, angst, character death, previously established relationship ( eren jaeger/reader), smut, slow burn?? maybe kinda, jean has ptsd, formerly unrequited love, terminal illness, lovemaking, gentle sex, kissing, hand holding, slight scratching, missionary, mention of animal death.

— 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐦𝐞 !!

𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 in what felt like a long time, Jean didn’t know what to do. 

It had been a few months since their hellish lives had come to a head, and while the remaining members of the secondary Levi Squad and their Captain were happy it was all over, the realization that Y/N knew Eren’s plan months before he went through with it was crushing to them. 

Armin and Mikasa had suspected, of course — they all had, if they were honest, she and Eren had been so serious that they were more than willing to murmur back and forth about wedding plans when everyone else was around, and every time they did it warmed their friend’s hearts ( and made another’s hurt, but he was too content with the fact that Y/N would be happy to even think about fighting for her now ). In hindsight now, though, Jean guessed, it was all a mask for them to keep Eren’s plans all hush-hush. He knew that if he’d found out, even he would have definitely fought to keep Eren on their island where it was safe regardless of how often they’d bickered back and forth, because whether he admitted it or not, Jean did care about Eren and he wanted him to live.

“You’re all leaving?” Her voice is shaky and quiet, a stark difference when compared to how she’d been hoarse for two weeks from the way she’d screamed when Eren’s Founder had collapsed. 

The Captain scoffs, and Jean winces at the sound. He’d always been more than tolerant of Y/N, more so than he’d ever been of the rest of them even, but ever since she’d admitted that she knew what Eren was going to do before he did he’d held her at an arms’ length just like the rest of them had. He doesn’t say anything, of course, because he hadn’t spoken to Y/N even once in the months following her confession, and every time he avoided talking with her Jean could see how much it hurt her — he’d even say with confidence that she’d prefer being struck by him than ignored, but the Captain didn’t even look at her anymore unless he absolutely had to, so that wouldn’t happen any time soon either ( and honestly Jean had a strong feeling in his gut that their Captain was hurting far more than he wanted to admit, not only about her confession but about both Eren and Commander Hange as well; everyone knew that the Captain had a soft spot for them both regardless of how he spoke to them ).

Jean could admit that he understood how betrayed the Captain felt if he was honest. 

“We don’t belong in Marley, Y/N,” Conny mutters, refusing to look at her. He’d avoided her completely since they’d found out, almost as much as the Captain, even; Jean immediately looks down at his shoes when he sees the way her face falls. It hurt him to look at her, hurt to see the way she was desperately searching all of their faces for some hint that it was a cruel joke as a means of some sort of revenge on her for holding her tongue while remembering how she’d blurted out a confession to being aware of Eren’s plan for mass genocide. “There’s no way we’d ever stay. We’re going back to Paradis.”

“But the peace treaty—!“ Y/N argues softly, mentioning the treaty that had come about thanks to Eren’s actions coupled with their own, but no one there really gives half a shit about the treaty but her at that point. they’re all far too impatient to get on the boat and leave Marley for good. 

“Deal with that yourself if it’s so important to you,” Mikasa says through gritted teeth, interrupting the other woman. “We have to get back, Historia’s still on bed rest from giving birth so Armin’s holding down the entire island right now.”

As Jean boarded the boat, he remembered the look on Y/N’s face when she found out Armin had left without saying goodbye to her specifically, and he recognizes that same look on her face as she watches Conny push the Captain’s wheelchair over the onramp to board the boat. “I’ll wait here for all of you,” she whispers, her eyes never straying from the Captain’s back, “even if it takes a whole ten years, I’ll wait—“

“You’ll be waiting a hell of a lot longer than that,” Conny grumbles under his breath, not intending for her to hear it but her hearing it all the same. Jean’s heart plummets in his chest when he sees the look in her eyes shatter and a barely visible veil wash over them.

The same walls she’d lowered with them one by one back in their cadet days had just gone back up. 

She whispers gentle goodbyes to all of them, getting huffs from the majority of the group, a single muttered complaint from Mikasa, and a quiet “Goodbye,” from Jean himself, but the last person she looks at still won’t look at her. Regardless, she bids him farewell in the only way she can now even though she knows he won’t answer. 

“Goodbye, Captain,” she whispers softly, a heavy silence filling the space between them all, and as the boat pulls away from where it was onced docked at the pier Jean sees the tears form in her eyes; they’d all hurt her by leaving this way, he knew that they had, but what were they supposed to do? She could have talked Eren down, she was always able to talk him down, but she didn’t — instead she ran off with him to Marley and helped him trick Falco before starting the Rumbling and a mass march for genocide. 

Regardless of this, though, Jean still has an aching feeling in his chest telling him that he wasn’t making the right choice. 

He looks up at her again, the breeze making her hair move ever so slightly with each soft burst and her skirts dancing around her legs as she stood there watching them leave her, her arms hanging limp at her sides as she stood alone for the first time in her life. She wasn’t making a single sound, just watching them go with tears running down her cheeks before she looks down and lifts one scarred hand to wipe them away with the backs of her knuckles, tearing her eyes from them for the first time all day today. 

Go. 

Jean didn’t know who or what told him to, he just knew he needed to get back to her, and he ignored the strange surge of familiarity that came with the urge. 

Go back onto the pier now. Go, before you’re too far. Before it’s too late. 

At the last second — and with everyone he’d boarded the boat with shouting for him to come back in clear panic, even the Captain ( something he took a silent pleasure in later, because apparently he did care about them all after all despite the facade he always put on ) — he makes a mad dash for and hops the railing on the deck of the ship then jumps again, barely catching himself on the edge of the  pier. Splinters puncture his fingers as he claws at the wood and his feet kick at open air as everything from his shoulders down dangles off the side. He looks up, his hair wild and poking into his eyes, and sees that she’s still not noticed thanks to the bustle on the rebuilt pier. The voices of his friends echo behind him as he finally finds a foothold and pushes himself up and onto the pier, resting on his hands and knees for just a second to catch his breath before looking up so quickly his hair flips out of his eyes and then pushing himself up. 

He’s running to her now, pushing his way through the crowd in his desperation, and Y/N looks up just as he throws his arms around her, cradling her close to himself and whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry — I won’t leave you too, Y/N, I promise…”

He feels her hug him back tightly and start crying into his chest, and he just holds her and repeats himself while petting her hair gently, neither of them looking back to the boat that was still ever so steadily getting further and further away from both of them, and for the time being they don’t care at all. They just hold one another, taking comfort in the familiar warmth they both gave off even as it began to rain and people around them started pulling out umbrellas. Jean carefully pulls her over to a stand and buys one, opening it up while letting her keep her arms around his waist before offering his arm. 

“Let’s go back to the apartments, Y/N,” Jean whispers, referring to the apartment set  gifted to them by the Marleyan government as reparations, and she just nods tiredly before linking her arm through his and resting her head on his bicep. 

I hope this makes you happy, runs unspoken in his mind, but he shakes it away and they walk away from the pier in the rain together, their backs to the ocean in a way they both wished Eren had chosen all those years ago. 

It  had been so long since he’d had the time or privilege to notice, but Y/N was an exceptionally hard worker. 

Maybe that was why Commander Smith was so fond of letting her help him in his office with his paperwork that he’d send into the Capitol in Sina; she wasn’t one to make mistakes, and it showed as she worked hard in her government issued office in Marley as she worked tediously going over the peace treaty offered to Paradis by all of the major nations that had formerly condemned it and it’s residents’ existences. It took hours of the day away from her, forced a worrisome amount of exhaustion to overtake her normally breathtaking features, and in between every little fix to the documents she made, she had what felt like endless visitors from hizuru and other countries popping in to add their own pieces and request slots to sign the treaty at the upcoming celebration of three years’s peace that Marley was hosting. Marleyan officers were, of course, also among the foot traffic that made its way in and out of Y/N’s office, only the majority of them now had a different respect for her in a way Jean hadn’t experienced in his years in Marley undercover.  

“She’s beautiful for a devil,” one had muttered, his friend chastising him immediately for calling her such a name after three years of such easy, unparalleled peace, and then his eyes had widened in shock when he rounded the corner and realized Jean had heard what he’d said and was staring him down in an anger he’d not been on the receiving end of in years. 

“She’s so kind! She’s nowhere near being the devil we were told they’d all be, and you know it,” his friend had hissed, bowing to Jean immediately. “I apologize for what he said, please forgive us both.”

Jean had looked at him half in disgust and half in hesitance; this was the first time a soldier from Marley had bowed to him despite the three years of peace their nations had shared, and he didn’t really know what to do. On the one hand he was grateful that the soldier spoke up for her, but on the other he didn’t know whether or not this was all a front to save face since he’d overheard them. What to do?

He was about to answer when his attention is caught by someone else. “Oh, let them alone, Jean,” Y/N’s voice had called from the doorway to her office, and everyone turned to look at her. She was leaning against the doorframe, and the brightness in her voice and the way she looked hadn’t managed to betray the exhaustion Jean saw clearly in her eyes. Absently he wondered if Armin was half as tired running the military back home in Paradis, but he shook it off in favor of quietly huffing towards the two soldiers then striding past them to join Y/N at the doorway to her office. She smiles at him once he reaches her, and says, “Thank you,” before ushering him inside her office and closing the door behind them both. 

Sighing heavily, she tiredly walked towards the chair that stood behind her desk and then practically collapsed into it, her head in her hands, which was where they were now. “I’m so tired, Jean — I don’t know what to do anymore,” she admits, “Why did they have to choose me as the standing foreign ambassador for Paradis? I’m going to make a mess of everything.”

Jean sends her a soft smile and strides over to her, leaning against her neatly put together desk. “No, you won’t — you’re doing a great job, I promise. You’re just tired is all, because frankly you haven’t been sleeping enough.” It was true; most nights after he forced her to go home and to bed he’d hear her walking around downstairs absentmindedly even at the wildest hours possible, whether he’d woken from some nightmare of the past or he himself had stayed up working. 

“You think so?” she asks softly, looking up at him with slightly widened eyes. He nods, and she sends him a fond smile. “What would I do without you here with me?” she asks sweetly, squeezing his hand, and he practically melts. 

“I — I — I have no idea,” he murmurs, looking down at her and how she held the back of his hand to her cheek with his own burning in an almost violent blush. She chuckles softly, a smile curling the corners of her lips upwards ever so slightly. 

“I think I’d be a wreck,” she whispers, squeezing his hand again one last time before letting go and standing from her seat. She strides back to the door and opens it, popping her head out and politely asking a maid, “Would you mind readying a pot of tea and a cup of coffee for my office?” Jean hears the other woman ( she was much older than Y/N, he knew, and she’d worked in the building for years before the Rumbling had reached Marley’s shores — despite that, though, he’d heard her telling the other maids that she’d never been treated as kindly by anyone else as she was when she worked under someone dubbed ‘a devil’ by the government ) give a swift affirmative and take off as fast as her middle aged knees would allow her. 

“That woman’s a saint,” he mutters, sitting down in one of the comfy leather chairs in front of Y/N’s desk. “I’m only twenty-two and my knees and hips seem to want me dead for what I've put them through — and don’t even get me started on the pain from my back!”

“That’s because of our use of the 3DM gear,” Y/N replies from the door, closing it gently and striding back over; Jean hears the heels she insisted on wearing to work ( no matter how many times he told her they were impractical and she’d agreed ) clicking against the dark hardwood floors as she approached him. She slips in front of him and sits on the lip of the desk with a soft smile on her face. “They’ve always caused physical issues with the bodies of Scouts, retired or otherwise, due to their prolonged use in the field. Captain Miche used to complain of it often.” She smiles wistfully, and Jean remembers that before she was on the Levi Squad with Eren and himself she fought under Captain Miche Zacharias — at least she did until her own squad was wiped out thanks to the Beast Titan, and starting with Captain Zacharias himself. Jean frowns as he also remembers that Y/N had witnessed the entire thing, the Beast Titan letting her go after recognizing her as ( unbeknownst to them at the time ) ‘the girl his little brother was smitten over’. She’d been forced to watch from the back of her horse in horror as he was ripped to pieces by titans right in front of her; she’d told Commander Smith in front of everyone that Zacharias’ last words to her were for her to save herself and warn the others of what they’d seen, and she’d not spoken of him since. 

“So you’re still as smart as Hange said you were,” Jean says through a tired grin of his own instead of what else he was thinking of, and he places a hand on Y/N’s knee as she looks away from him seemingly to hide the look on her face; unbeknownst to him her face is burning from embarrassment, but regardless of whether or not he’d ever notice ( would he feel the heat she could swear was emanating from her cheeks? Y/N had no idea, therefore the safest bet was to look away while she regained her composure ) she looks away and out the window, watching the bird that always seemed to be nearby fly past. 

“Being good at making observations doesn’t make one smart,” she mutters quietly, and Jean just laughs. 

“Well, I think you’re smart, and you can’t change my mind — if you weren’t smart, how would you keep all the old politicians in line as well as you do?” he asks, raising an eyebrow, and she scoffs playfully. 

The sound of a knock on the door rings through the room, the sound of the maid just sent off for tea and coffee having come back with it coming through it, though her voice was muffled. Y/N stands back up and walks to the door, replying teasingly as she does, “Those old men aren’t exactly focusing on my smarts as much as they are my physical attributes.”

Jean stews over this information with a pout on his face and his arms crossed as Y/N takes the heavy tea tray and thanks the maid, who closes the door for her since her hands were full, then carefully walks back with it to her desk. She picks out the dish filled with fresh chamomile leaves and flowers and sprinkles equal amounts in one of the pyramid shaped teabags before carefully placing it in the teacup the maid had brought for him. Noticing that Jean’s been quiet, she decides to mention it. “Something on your mind?” she asks lightly, focusing on pouring the steaming water into Jean’s cup, and he sighs. 

“I just… just thought that thinking all those old political codgers staring at you was just me,” he admits, and she just chuckles in response and begins adding the perfect amount of honey and milk to his tea with a small shake of her head. 

“They don’t actually look to me as a figure of authority, Jean,” she says quietly, “And they never will. They just know that if they hand me more paperwork that they don’t want to do, I'll do it — and before you say it, yes I’m going to continue to do it.” She’d interrupted him before he even managed to get his protests for her to tell them all to do their own, and he just silently takes his cup and stews over this information as well while she begins to sip at her coffee.

It wasn’t fair. She was amazing, her work ethic unparalleled, and as a reward they objectified her like she was nothing but a slab of meat and they treated her like horse shit. It made him want to burn everything to the ground in her name, just so the bastards would realize that she deserved better. 

Is this how you felt, Eren? he thinks, sipping the honey chamomile tea in his hand. Is this how it feels to want to burn everything to the ground for the one you love when you know their life will be a hard one?

Jean finds the celebratory banquet following the peace negotiation beyond extravagant. 

Several large tables stood in front of the walls of the dining hall in the capital, an almost endless line of chairs ( but really only a few hundred — seven, maybe? ) and candles filled golden sconces along the walks and a series of thirty candelabras or so per table, and the food was more than anything Jean had ever experienced before. The men and women around him were dressed their absolute best in silks and velvets and fabrics he’d never even seen before — but that was only after everyone had joined him downstairs. The night had initially started off seriously with around three hundred and seventy or so politicians, ambassadors, and rulers of various nations gathering in a large meeting room and taking a seat at one of four tables along each wall so that they could face everyone in the room. Jean had not been one of these people unfortunately, considering he had no political power and no longer was a member of the Paradisian military, and because of this he’d been forced to follow a few members of staff downstairs to wait in the dining hall with the delegations that had come with each person who did go inside. 

As the long hours passed by with no sound coming through the doors of the room upstairs, waiters went around the room, offering wine to the waiting companies, and Jean’s hand shook without him intending it to as he took a glass from one man and accepted a rather generous pour of the red liquid into it. He hesitated to drink it, memories of past allies turned beasts because of poisoned wine flickering in his mind like one of those novel motion pictures that had started becoming popular in the last few months ( Jean himself wasn’t much of a fan of them, but his heart twinged every time he saw a flyer for them and he thought about how much Conny or Sasha would have loved them ). He still remembered staring down at a monstrous Pixis, damned to a hunger that even Jean knew after what had happened in The Battle of Heaven and Hell ( as people who weren’t there had dubbed it; Jean supposed it fit, seeing as Eren’s name had morphed from what it was to whispers of ‘The True Devil of Paradis’ once they’d been saved and the rebuilding had started ), a hunger that couldn’t ever be sated. 

Eventually loud crashes had sounded as the doors above them closed, and footsteps echoed overhead as everyone in the meeting hall began making their way downstairs and to the dining hall. Y/N was one of the last to enter the room, taking her place by the leaders of Marley, Hizuru, and a handful of other primary nations as they announced with bright, fake smiles that the peace plan was a success and that starting from that moment all gathered nations had allied themselves with one another. Cheers had filled the room, and Jean had seen Y/N’s sigh with relief before taking a glass of wine for herself ( also with a hesitation, he’d noticed ) before he made the decision to make his way through the celebrating throngs to stand by her side. 

“So I’m guessing everything went well?” he asks after finally sidling up to her, motioning to imply his intentions to tip some of his wine into her glass to refill it once he saw she was getting low ( despite holding it for only a few minutes as Jean struggled to get to her through the crowd ) then just shrugging and swapping glasses with her. She chuckles and nods her thanks to him, taking a sip. 

Swallowing the wine in her mouth, Y/N licks her lips slightly. “Yes, thank Ymir,” she replies, leaning against him slightly. She sounded absolutely exhausted, but she continued so she could bring him up to speed. “Signatures from every person present in the room were laid on the document I wrote; no one had any issues with the wording or anything.”

Jean’s eyes widen, and he lets out a shocked bark of a laugh, “That’s amazing! I’m so proud of you.”

She smiles at him softly but doesn’t say anything, sipping at her ( his ) wine quietly after tearing her eyes from his and looking out over the raucous crowd. He stands closer to her, careful to not let himself get bumped by the people rushing past, which is how they spend the next two or so hours ( in between visiting dignitaries rushing up to speak to Y/N and congratulate her on a wonderfully written treaty ). 

By Ymir, I hope you’re happy, he thinks, sipping at a glass of champagne and watching Y/N flit sociably around the room. He could tell by the way that she smiled at each person that came up to her and vice versa that she was uncomfortable, and that the look in her eyes wasn’t excitement like everyone else clearly thought but anxiety. Y/N hated large crowds of people, but somehow she always managed to work her way through them better than any extrovert he’d ever met; it had always been something Jean admired about her, if he was honest. 

Another hour passes of Jean in a corner and Y/N speaking with various men and women before it’s announced that they’ll be moving again. Jean looks for Y/N in the crowd and notices once he spots her that, despite being dressed just as prettily as the other women ( more so, in Jean’s opinion, but this was a celebration of a peace treaty being signed so he couldn’t very well insult the citizens of visiting nations ), she’s obediently following the people who’d signed the treaty without hesitation. She doesn’t look back for him, not even once, and it makes something ugly-feeling twist in his belly as he sullenly follows her as well as the rest of the crowd. 

He’s led into a massive ballroom, and above them all hung an enormous chandelier made of crystal and gold that lit up the room; Jean remembered Y/N complaining that it would take months to be handmade because she was given a specific deadline before the time that the chandelier would be done, but the artists who had made it had forgone all other projects in order to focus on it when Y/N had offered them extra payment if they could please get it there even a half hour before the following dining began. They’d gotten it finished a week early, and Y/N had gone out of her way to praise their work and time efficiency, and they’d smiled as Y/N gave them payment even more than what they’d been promised ( they’d argued at first, but Y/N insisted that they keep it and after a lot of pleading from both sides they had ).

As all of this runs through his mind, he’s startled by a hand being placed on his arm. It’s touch is instantly familiar and as soon as he locks eyes with Y/N he relaxes, calmed by her presence alone. 

“Dance with me?” she offers quietly, holding her other hand out to him. He takes it up immediately and leads them both to the dance floor amongst the other pairs that had settled together. Resting one hand on her waist and holding one of her hands in his other, they gently sway and swirl around the room to the crooning music that quickly becomes an afterthought. 

“You didn’t wait for me,” Jean mutters, still a bit hurt that she’d not even bothered to make sure he’d been able to keep up. Y/N just smiles almost coyly and shrugs. 

“I knew that you’d follow me,” she replies with ease, allowing Jean to spin her to the beat of the song the musicians were playing. 

Jean’s eyebrows furrow at her words. “You knew I would?”

Y/N nods, a pleased look on her face as they move around the dance floor as one. “Mhmm; you never left me alone longer than an hour unless we were sleeping when we were cadets you know, and nothing changed once we were full fledged soldiers.” Jean’s cheeks heat up in a blush, slight embarrassment filling him once it hits him that she’d noticed all these years. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, looking down at their feet and only making his cheeks burn hotter when he accidentally looks down the front of her dress instead of at his shoes like he’d honestly intended. 

“Don’t apologize, I thought it was cute!” Y/N says soothingly, and he looks up at her just as their dance finishes. They bow to one another, and Y/N sends him a gentle smile. “I have to go — more people to speak with,” she explains, backing away. She pauses before she disappears into the crowd, though, and looks back at him with a gentle look on her face. “Wait for me?” she asks through a genuine smile, and he nods. 

“Always,” he whispers as she hurries away, taking her place beside the leader of Marley and joining their conversation as easily as a duck swam in water. 

After a few more hours ( and well into the night ) she finally makes her way back to him again and, leaning so close it made his heart race, whispers in his ear, “Let’s get out of here — there’re too many people in here for either of us to really be comfortable.”

Placing his and her empty glasses on a nearby table, he allows her to take his hand in hers and lead him out of the room, rushing down the stairs and out the doors behind her, helping her over puddles in the streets so she didn’t ruin her dress, wandering around outside and finding citizens of Marley, Eldian and otherwise, celebrating loudly. 

It appeared the news of the peace treaty had reached them as well. 

They made their way through the celebrating throngs and finally they stopped in front of an old coffee shop that ran all day and all night. Choksing it to take shelter in for the time being, they  go in quickly and order two coffees with a breathless smile before rushing off to sit at the windows. Fireworks crackle, pop, and light up the sky through the window and they both watch in rapt attention — Y/N the fireworks through the window, and Jean the colors of the bursting fireworks in her eyes. A warmth fills his heart as it usually did when he gazed at her, and the only thing that shook him from his stare was a waitress placing their coffees down. 

After a while the celebration continues on and Y/N and Jean just decide to bite the bullet, paying for their coffee and rushing out the door and home, each of them talking avidly about how much they liked the coffeeshop. It was fashioned on the inside after the ones in Trost, after all, and run by an older Paradisian woman that Y/N mentioned was married to Pixis before he’d died; her name was Dolores, and she laughed as she remembered how gleefully Pixis had laughed about it with her when Y/N had made the joke that he’d ‘connected the Dots’. They both start laughing, and still are by the time they’ve reached the house they’d bought after leaving the apartments. They dance around gleefully for a bit, drunk on life itself, before they both finally call it a night. 

“Goodnight!” Y/N calls softly, kissing his cheek gently before disappearing into her room while humming, and Jean sighs and staggers into his room, drunk on the feelings that had bubbled up all night and the way she’d kissed his cheek. He closes his own door before wobbling over to his bed and collapsing on it with a light laugh. 

“Goodnight…” he whispers, closing his eyes and falling into a much deserved sleep. 

That night, despite the fun he’d had, Jean’s head is filled with the worst kinds of nightmares. 

It wasn’t as if it was anything new, of course; nightmares are a nightly occurrence for Jean, and he’d learned to live with them over the past few years. 

 He dreams of Sasha often. 

His mind frequently reminds him as he sleeps of the face she’d made after she was shot, and the way she’d looked at him once she realized what had happened. How a mixture of shock and fear and also… of apology had flashed through her eyes all at once, and all within a few seconds. He’s plagued with the sounds she’d made as blood bubbled up in her throat, of the way she’d attempted to gurgle out some string of words that none of them had ever managed to translate. 

He still wonders what she was trying to say. Who was she speaking to? What was she thinking? He knew she was scared, he’d seen the raw terror in her eyes, saw when she realized that she was going to die. 

Other times he dreams of the brief time he was a titan, of being a mindless beast with no self control— just hunger. Those dreams give him a more out of body experience, and he watches himself attack everyone he loved that was still with them. He has more fictionalized nightmares of being unable to stop himself from devouring Y/N, or the Captain, or Mikasa, or Conny ( despite the fact that Conny was turned with him ). The thoughts that come afterwards once he wakes up always include the phrase ‘what if?’. What if he’d actually attacked Mikasa? What if he’d eaten the Captain, bitten and chewed and swallowed him up? What if he’d trampled Y/N as she begged for Eren to let everything go?

He also dreams of the Rumbling. Of the sounds of thousands of giant feet stomping across the ground. Of the screams of enemy soldiers and the sounds made by the colossal titans’ feet as they stepped on and crushed them, ending the screaming. Jean dreams of the devastation that the Rumbling had caused, of all the lives that had been stolen — innocent men, women, and children, of all ages. Infants. Sometimes Jean would hear a baby’s cry echoing to him from somewhere out in the burning devastation, a cry that — no matter how fast he ran to it, trying to find the source — would always be snuffed out. 

He hated that one. He always ended up waking up sobbing inconsolably, and primarily because he knew it had happened. Children had died — little kids. small, pure, humanity’s future. Their lives had been snuffed out like a freshly lit candle, and it killed him inside. 

Then there are the nights he dreams of Eren. 

Those are some of the most difficult. he’d grown up with him, had known he had anger issues, but he’d never actually expected the other man to take things as far as he did, had never expected him to murder so many people, and a part of him — ugly and poisonous — wonders if maybe he’d not been such an obnoxious ass to him, would things have turned out different? If he was just a better friend — or a friend to him at all, really — would any of the results of that changed his mind about the genocide? Would he have listened when they begged him to stop? 

Whether Jean ever wanted to admit it out loud or not, he knew he’d loved Eren. The other man was a part of his life for so long, regardless of however much the two of them bickered back and forth. He was his family. He loved him dearly, loved him as much as he did Conny, as he did Sasha, as he did Y/N ( although in vastly different ways, and if he had the tiniest crush on him back in their cadet days that was his fucking business and he’d take it to his grave ) and Mikasa and Armin, the Captain and both Commanders Hange and Erwin, Historia and ( begrudgingly ) Reiner and Annie, and Marco—

God. Marco. 

After all these years, he couldn’t even remember what Marco looked like anymore. He had freckles, didn’t he? Jean wasn’t sure. All he could remember of him now was the mixture of scattered, burned bones and ash. He couldn’t remember any of his features anymore, or how tall he was, or what his voice sounded like, and it killed him. Yes, he’d forgiven Reiner for what had happened, but that didn’t change how much the memory of him hurt, or how the knowledge of how he’d been murdered felt like a knife to the gut whenever he thought about it. 

Back to the initial point, though. Eren. Jean had mourned alongside Y/N when Eren died, albeit silently, unlike the rest of his comrades. They’d pushed Eren’s existence to the backs of their minds, the series of events that they’d just gone through just being way too much for them to handle… so they didn’t think about him. Didn’t speak for him. They just declared him dead to Paradis and the rest of the world, and that was the end of it to everyone else, but Jean remembered how Y/N had cried when she’d finished listening to the announcement. She’d been an absolute wreck, speaking to everyone and no one all at once asking why they’d had to say that, apologizing to her dead boyfriend for not being able to stop them, and no amount of comfort had been able to console her, not even from Armin or Mikasa or the Captain. 

That was the night she’d confessed that she’d known, and they’d all withdrawn from her at once. The night she’d been reminded yet again of her dead lover, she’d lost everyone she loved most in one fell swoop. It was horrible… but time passed, everyone but Jean left, and over the three years that had passed since the two of them grew closer because of it. Jean learned things about her that he’d not known before, things that she’d only reserved for Eren’s ears, and he felt proud. 

Of course, there were a few things she refused to speak about, and her dead boyfriend was one of them. Y/N told him that he wasn’t the issue when it came to Eren, she swore it, and Jean understood and didn’t blame her. He knew that even thinking his name hurt her, much less openly talking about him. After all, the scream Y/N had let out as the Founder had fallen rang through his ears every time he closed his eyes and was transported back to their final battle. He remembered the way she’d looked, soaked in blood ( hers and that of others ) and half dead, wailing like a dying dog. 

Jean didn’t think she’d actually said his name out loud since he died, even after all these years — four whole years, she’d not said his name, not even once, after devoting nearly her whole entire life to loving him more than her own life. 

Memories and thoughts of Eren aside, by far the worst nights are when his brain won’t let him even have a second’s rest and he dreams of all of them. Sasha. The Rumbling. Eren. Y/N. 

All of these nights end with him screaming in his sleep and Y/N coming into his room and carefully waking him. She never asks him what he had dreamt about that made him act that way, and he never tells her. He doesn’t have to. He knows she has the same dreams. No, she just holds him, and she rocks him. She hums soft lullabies she’d been sung as a child in Shiganshina. She tells him of the trouble she and Mikasa and Armin and Eren had gotten into as children, as cadets, and everything after.

Most nights it was easy for her to wake him, but others weren’t, and he’d struck her before. Once he was fully awake and she’d calmed him down fully she excused herself and he went back to a fitful sleep, none the wiser because she’d acted like usual. She’d cleaned herself up and tended to the area so it only bruised minimally, but Jean still felt guilty for it the next morning regardless and cried and cried until she miraculously managed to calm him down again. 

Tonight was one of the harder nights, and Jean had nearly punched her while panicking ( she didn’t tell him this, just ushered him out of his stuffy room ). Afterwards, once she’d managed to get him breathing fine again, she’d poured them both a hefty glass of wine and they’d huddled together in the kitchen quietly. Jean had pulled out a chair and sat himself down by the table and she had leaned against the kitchen counter just over the sink in front of a window. Both had a death grip on their overfilled wine glasses, and after a long silence filled only with the sounds of their breathing, Jean speaks. 

“Tell me a secret,” he says simply, taking another drink of his wine. Y/N quirks an eyebrow up at him. 

“A secret?”

“Yeah. Something you’ve never told anyone else,” he replies, swallowing a big gulp of wine and shivering slightly. “Anything to take my mind off… that.” He spoke, of course, of the memory of Eren’s decapitated head in Mikasa’s arms and the screams Y/N had let out at the sight of it, and of the way she’d pulled it from Mikasa’s hands and cradled it close then fallen to her knees in absolute hysterics as the other woman stood over her crying. Armin had come running and had collapsed next to her, throwing his arms around her and holding her tight while sobbing himself, and Mikasa’s legs had given out beneath her and she’d succumbed to her own pain, weakly crawling over to her remaining two friends and allowing Armin to hold her as close as he was Y/N. Y/N wouldn’t let her touch her, and Jean remembered how, when this actually went down, it ushered a sudden surge of fresh tears and hiccuped sobs because Y/N was pushing her away. This time, though, Y/N had woken him before it had gotten there, so he’d not had to watch Mikasa crumble all over again. 

He refused to tell her what that night’s dream was about. 

Y/N looks out the window, seemingly thinking until a sad smile twists her lips and she takes another sip of her own wine, tears slowly welling up in her eyes and glittering like pain-filled diamonds. “Eren and I got married before he decided to destroy Marley,” she admits, not seeing how big Jean’s eyes got at her confession. How ironic was it that he was learning something about her relationship with Eren when he’d just had a nightmare involving the both of them?

“Married?! When?!” he sputters, drops of wine sliding down his chin until he uncaringly wipes them away with his shirtsleeve; he knew that it would stain, but that was the last thing on his mind at the moment. 

“Before he decided to destroy Marley,” she says, repeating herself, and Jean mentally kicks himself for such a stupid question. His attention is brought back when she continues speaking. “It was a really small thing — no one we really knew was there. An Eldian licensed to marry other Eldians was in the refugee camps, and Eren and I met with him that night we all drank together and had fun… we got married that night while the rest of you were drunk and came back before Hange and the Captain came back and found us all asleep. The man who married us was killed in the Rumbling, along with our two witnesses, so I can’t really do anything about it anyways; I suppose his name isn’t mine to claim now.”

In the back of his mind Jean notes that Y/N’s just said Eren’s name not once but twice for the first time in four years, and that she’s still avoiding saying Captain Levi’s. He’d never really noticed it before, but just as she’d never said Eren’s name she’d not said Captain Levi’s in a long time either. Levi avoiding her after she admitted to knowing Eren’s plans must have hurt her more than she’d admitted. Maybe she’d tell him about that another time.

He never gets to ask more questions, instead being prompted by Y/N to give her a secret in return.“I — I— I-“ he stutters, then shakes his head, “I only have one, and I don’t think that it’s appropriate.”

“Tell me,” she murmurs, still not looking at him. 

“Y/N—“

“C'mon, Jean, I promise it’s okay,” she murmurs, her eyes locked on something outside the window — was it a bird? 

Something in her tone of voice made him relax, and he sighed heavily before tossing back the rest of his wine and groaning. “Hmm. Okay — um…” he rubs the back of his neck, beyond nervous. After her confession about marrying Eren, was this really okay? 

He jumps when the feeling of something covering his hand reaches him, and he looks down to see that it’s Y/N’s. He looks up at her with wide eyes, but she’s still not looking at him — she’s just staring out the window with tiny tears in her eyes from talking about her dead boyfriend ( husband, Jean corrects himself, still somewhat reeling from this; was he really the only person that knew? ) and holding his hand. He takes another deep breath, then just decides to spit it out. 

“I’ve been in love with you since I met you in the 104th,” he says quickly, squeezing his eyes shut. Hetenses up when she pulls her hand back from where she was holding his and he tries not to cry, just knowing in his gut that he’s an idiot and he’s ruined everything. His mind begins to race as he desperately tries to think up ways to save face, to fix what he’d just colossally fucked up, but he can’t think of anything.

While Jean’s going through this mental turmoil, Y/N has never looked away from the window. She’s watching the bird fly back and forth, tipping its body this way and that before finally going towards the window. It flies by slowly, tilts its body up and down once ( almost in a waving motion ), then turns and flies off and away from her. Y/N lets out a shaky breath, her heart racing, and she places her wine glass on the counter in favor of using the hand to cover her heart. The tears start falling now, and she can’t stop them; she couldn’t even if she wanted to. 

“Goodbye… Eren,” she breathes through her tears, and the second his name leaves her lips the figure of the bird disappears into the sun. 

They stand together in silence for a while after that, Jean numb to the world around himself as he panics, but her laying her hand on his face brings him out of his mental ramblings, and his eyes shoot open and lock on her. She’s standing in front of him, a soft look on her face that Jean had only ever seen her wear around Eren himself. 

“I know,” she whispers, looking not quite into his eyes with the sad smile she’d worn speaking about her dead husband still on her face — only this time it’s different. 

“You… know?” he whispers, his eyes wide as he swallows hard. 

Y/N nods. “Mhmm, always have,” she admits quietly, rubbing along his cheekbone with her thumb. They stand together in silence for a long moment, the only change being Jean leaning into her touch and one of his hands coming up to gently cup the one Y/N had on his face. He closes his eyes and just basks in the moment, not knowing if he’ll ever get her touch this way again, and is promptly startled when she says his name after a long while of  the two of them standing there. “Jean…” she breathes lightly, and his eyes open to see hers shining with something he didn’t recognize. 

“Yeah?” he asks in a whisper just as quiet as how she’d breathed his name. 

“Kiss me,” Y/N replies, and his eyes widen. She, the woman he’d been in love with for over a decade, wanted him to kiss her? And after everything they’d just talked about?

“Are — Are you sure?!” he asks in a strangled voice, and she smiles softly and nods, placing both hands against his cheeks so she can cup his face. She tilts her head to the side ever so slightly and a fond looks overtakes the sadness in her eyes as she smiles up at him. 

“I’m completely sure,” she murmurs, running one thumb along one of his cheekbones like she’d done before, and with that final piece of permission. Jean slowly, gently, leans down and captures her lips with his own. 

Her lips are soft and she tastes sweet, a sweetness that came partially from the wine they’d both been drinking but that also just came from her, a taste singular to herself, and he relished it. All his life since he’d joined the military back on their home island he’d been desperate for even a scrap of the romantic attention she showed Eren, for some sliver of love that was different from the love she showed their other friends, and now he had her completely. She was, for all intents and purposes in this moment, his and his alone. 

He pulls back from her lips with a gasp, his chest heaving from the lack of oxygen, and she takes the initiative and begins peppering kisses across his revealed chest and neck. “Take us to bed,” she whispers pleadingly, and he only has to look down into her eyes for a second to make the decision they both desired. 

They stumble into his room in a mess of wandering hands and desperate kisses, Jean’s shirt long forgotten on the kitchen floor and Y/N’s shorts kicked off somewhere in the hallway. After struggling for a few minutes with the buttons of her shirt, Jean just lets out an annoyed growl and rips it down the middle, buttons popping off of the cloth and scattering everywhere as Y/N unties the string to his pajama bottoms and giggles when the buttons go flying. Once they’re both in nothing but a pair of panties and boxers they back up until the side of the bed catches at Y/N’s thighs and she falls back, taking Jean with her. He’s got her pinned to the bed, holding himself up with his elbows and with her body between them. Her legs are spread and his own rest between them, and he just stares at her for a moment before her face lights up with a radiant smile. 

“Hi,” he whispers, and she giggles breathlessly. 

“Hi!” she replies, a genuine smile on her face, and Jean grins and begins kissing her again. They gaze at one another for a minute before Jean asks her again, sounding concerned, if she was sure that she wanted to do this, and she just smiles softly and nods. “I am,” she whispers softly. “Please, Jean… I promise, I want this. I want you.”

To hide the sudden rush of euphoric tears that fill his eyes at the words he’d waited to hear her say for what felt like his entire life he drops to his knees so his head is between her thighs. She sits up on her elbows on the bed and looks down at him in curiosity as he slowly traces the hem of her panties with one long finger before slowly letting her head fall back as he covered her clothed warmth with his own mouth and licked gently at her through the fabric of her panties. His tongue caresses the fabric, his saliva seeping into the cloth and mixing with what wetness she’d left on them already as her body instinctively prepared itself for him. Her thighs tremble on either side of his head as he carefully sucks at her clit through the fabric, and she lets out a cry that has him stopping instantly and looking up at her in alarm amd in fear that he’d somehow hurt her. 

“O-Off,” she whispers shakily, pushing at the top hem of her panties. “Want ‘em off — please!”

Jean obliges easily, wanting this moment to be as perfect for her as possible, before pressing back against her slick cunt. His tongue gently parts her lower lips and draws a line up the length of her heat until he reaches her clit, and he begins drawing various shapes and writing out several different words to see what she liked best ( Jean found that she most enjoyed stars, circles, and, oddly enough, the word ‘cantaloupe’ ). Like a seasoned musician he plays her like a finely polished instrument, and her body sings underneath his touch. “Oh—by Ymir, please!” Y/N wails, her hands grabbing desperately at his hair. She tugs at it gently, pulling his face deeper into her core as his tongue toys with her dripping entrance and rolling her hips up into his face to get some sort of friction against her needy clit. She lets out a short, sudden scream and clamps her legs around his head as she cums hard in his mouth, Jean making a clear effort to take in whatever she gave him. He gives her a moment to rest, watching her breasts heave and almost hearing the way her heart races, before delving back into her, his tongue swirling expertly around her clit and dipping teasingly into her hole. Before long, though, her want for his cock supersedes the feeling of his mouth on her pussy and she wants him covering her again. 

“Fuck — up here, Jean, come back to me!” she pleads softly, and he’s back on top of her in a second. His face glistens with her juices, and she tangles her fingers in his hair before pulling his face towards hers so they can kiss again. It’s slow and sweet and gentle, and Y/N melts happily into the mattress as his lips meld against hers. 

When they break away for a moment, both of them breathless, Hean speaks to her. “What do you mean?” he asks quietly, rubbing his nose against hers affectionately, “I never left you.” She whimpers softly in a wordless request, and Jean obliges by carefully easing her panties off as her arms drift down from his hair to rest around his back then creep under the waistline of his boxers, her nails slightly scratching at the skin of his ass as she pushes them down. His hard cock slaps softly against her belly, soft and warm and the weight of it more than pleasing; the soft pink head was leaking an almost endless stream of precum that quickly made its way to pooling just above her navel. 

“I-In — fuck, please, put it in!” Y/N begs, and he kisses her again in response before taking himself into his own hand then pressing the tip of his cock against her entrance and pushing in, gritting his teeth as her slick heat envelopes his length. Both of their eyes roll back as they slot together almost perfectly, Y/N’s nails digging into his back slightly and Jean’s hands fisting in the sheets as they rest together there, basking in the feeling. After a moment, though, one of them breaks the pleasant silence that was once punctuated only by their shaky breaking. 

“Move. Please,” Y/N asks quietly, and Jean withdraws for a second, hissing as the cool air hits his wet dick, before pressing back inside slowly. He watches Y/N’s eyes widen and her pupils grow even larger than they were before as she’s filled, and a shaky smile makes its way onto her face. He smiles back at her, his smile morphing into a blissful half grin as their shared pleasure builds and he creeps closer and closer to orgasm himself — then he notices it. 

She’s crying. Crying and smiling and even laughing a little. 

“What is it? Are you okay?” Jean asks, alarmed yet again. She shakes her head and lifts her hand so she can press it against his cheek like she’d done in the kitchen. His movements slow to a stop and he starts to get off of her when he sees her shake her head, his eyes widening in a panic, but she throws her other arm around him and holds him as close to her as she possibly can.

“N-No! Don’t stop!” she cries, then sniffs a little and lets out a single, short laugh. “It’s just… This. It’s so good, it feels so perfect.”

“So… So you’re okay?” Jean asks, unconvinced, and she nods. 

“I’m more than okay,” she says quietly, and she smiles up at him. “I love you, Jean.” It takes a second, but then the words hit him, and his world stops all at once in the best way. 

She loves him. She loves him. Him, Jean Kirstein. Love. This… he’d been waiting for it since he was thirteen, and now she’d just told him the words he’d wanted to hear for so long. This was beyond better than her telling him that she wanted him, this would be a moment he never forgot — because how could he? The woman he’d been in love with for over a decade had confessed that she loves him — and just as he’d known when he was fifteen and she’d saved him from a titan during a recon mission and again when he was nineteen and leaping from a boat to rejoin her on the docks, Jean knew that nothing could ever change the way this woman made him feel. 

The two of them start up again, Jean’s hips rolling against hers and his balls slapping against her ass in a perfect rhythm that had them both letting out cries of pleasure. Endlessly the same thoughts ran through Jean’s head as he pleasured the love of his life, never changing: He loved her, and she loved him. They loved each other. 

And later that night, once everything was done and while she sleeps, he watches the way her chest rises and falls while she sleeps comfortably next to him, and he absentmindedly rubs his thumb over her upper arm and whispers, I hope you’re happy. 

A soft hum and Y/N pressing closer to his warmth is the only response he gets, and once the darkness that came with sleep overtakes him he doesn’t have a single nightmare. 

After that night, Jean moves all of his things into Y/N’s room; he’d forced her into taking the master bedroom when they’d gotten the house, and since they were together now she’d insisted he sleep with her from then on. He was more than willing to move his things, and now he got to spend every night in a peaceful rest and every morning he got to wake up to the sight of her either still sleeping or dressing quietly so she could go downstairs to make breakfast. His favorite ways to start the day were when he woke up first and got to see her sleeping for a little bit or when he woke up to the feeling of her lips peppering soft kisses across his face. The years pass this way, and he loves every minute of it

During all of this time together, the same thought that he’d had as they drifted off races through his mind as they spend time together more often than even before. They frequent the coffeeshop they’d stumbled upon after the signing, and discover that it’s a great place to pass the time and enjoy each other’s company while dozens of people mill around happily outside. They spend hours of their lives there, just talking and watching and embracing the feeling of having one another, and it’s absolutely perfect. 

They board trains to visit Annie and Reiner where they live alone together out in the middle of nowhere in a farmhouse ( the two were desperate for quiet after everything ended, and with Annie’s father having died around ten months ago she and Reiner had packed up and moved out ). Days are spent with the two blondes, reminiscing over the good times they’d had in the past or memories they’d made since then. Jean didn’t forget about what they had done to Marco, but after all this time of knowing, he’d made some headway into forgiving, so after Y/N visited them about a dozen or so times on her own he’d joined her, and he’d been more grateful to see familiar faces than he’d expected. Now they went by train to see them around once a month and had the greatest time. 

He’s annoyed when they’re invited to a hero’s banquet hosted by Marley and funded by Hizuru because it’s to be held on a night he’d promised to take her out on a date, but she just laughs and tells him that it could still count, and that maybe even the others would be there considering they were a part of the group of ‘heroes’ that had saved the world from the Devil of Paradis. They meet Reiner and Annie at the doors and the four of them stay close to one another, Y/N dancing the night away with all three of them and drinking her fill of the wine supplied by their hosts. Watching her dance so happily while completely unaware or uncaring of the world around her other than Annie laughing as they spin together makes him smile sadly, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her that their Paradisian friends aren’t there, and he carefully carts her home once she’s tipsy enough to persuade into bed to sleep. 

During all of these little excursions, he hopes desperately in his mind that she’s happy, and thinks likewise when she’s scrawling out letter after letter to Armin and the others telling them about her week, what she’d seen or heard on the streets, new recipes she’d tried, how her work was going, and then she’d move on into asking about their own lives, wanting to know what they were getting up to or if they’d gotten married in the years that had passed. 

She never got any letters in return, but she didn’t stop writing — at least, until the mail carrier told her that all of her letters were being burned by the recipients, sometimes right on the spot as they received them.  He could tell how much it crushed her, but discovering that even their former Captain himself was letting her unopened letters hover over an active candle flame until they were nothing but ash falling from his fingers had her in tears. Jean knew why, of course; she’d told him all about her late night rendezvous with the Captain to drink tea and speak of their days, pasts, or whatever else piqued their interest of conversation that day, how they’d started around seven or eight months before the attack on Trost District after she’d quietly gone to comfort him after a member of his original team had died regardless of his snarls for her to leave and how she’d known that he cared for her in return when her own squad leader, Zacharias, had been killed and he’d purposefully sought her out and looked for her until he found her quietly crying on the roof where she’d hidden away from even Eren, who’d been searching the compound for her himself. He’d just… sat there, she’d told him, in a silence that wasn’t so awkward as it was equally mournful before he hesitantly pressed their shoulders together and let her lay her head on his right one to cry. 

“We were close,” she told him through small tears in bed that night, “I swear that we were… but some things can’t be forgiven, I suppose.” Jean didn’t have the relationship she did with the Captain and before she’d told him he’d been completely oblivious to it, but regardless his heart hurt at the blatant heartache in her voice. He’d held her after she said that, and she’d cried into the crook of his neck until she fell asleep. 

She didn’t send any more letters after that, and she didn’t write for what felt like forever after Jean would come home every day to her writing. She would sit quietly at her desk and look down at a piece of paper before eventually getting up and abandoning it, unable to find anything that brought her enough joy to write about it. 

One day he comes home, expecting to find her sitting silently at her writing desk, unmoving, only to find a trail of mud from the front door to the guest bathroom, and he goes inside to see he washing dirt from this absolutely massive ( and clearly old ) street dog who’s just panting happily as she cooes to him that he’s handsome while sitting in the tub with him and washing him off, and when he laughs and she sees he’s there she just grins at him and tells him that she’s ‘named him Gerolf, so they definitely have to keep him now’, and with life in her eyes and smile finally on her face again Jean couldn’t bear to tell her no, so he didn’t. 

The days from then on out pass with ease as he watches her dance and sing happily around the living room with the dog, the huge thing’s paws on her shoulders as she laughs and sways with him before kissing his nose. He would have joined her, but the sight of her enjoying life so fully was something he couldn’t bear to tear his eyes from, much less interrupt. 

A few months or so after they took in Gerolf, Y/N began to write their former comrades again, but now she chose instead to put the letters away in the closet in the room with her writing desk in it, clearing it all out just for the purpose of storing the letters there. She never really answered Jean when he asked why she didn’t send them, instead skirting around the questions and changing the subject. Jean never pushed, because not only was it not his place since she didn’t want to tell him but because he also knew she’d tell him in her own time should she ever desire to do so. 

Their lives for the next three years or so ran smoothly aside from a small handful of minor bumps ( dips in work, some new furniture being lost during shipping, Jean breaking Y/N’s favorite cup, the small cake they’d ordered falling when they got married in private ), and they were happy. They’d made their home in Marley and in each other and they fell asleep in one another’s arm’s with Gerolf, as old as the hulking monstrosity was, in the bed at their feet. 

Throughout the years, Y/N opened up more about her relationships with her first husband and the Captain, and Jean made sure to listen attentively as she did so. He listened closely when she described nights she’d shared with Eren, curled together in front of fireplaces and under covers, of kisses stolen in passing and quick ruts in abandoned corridors, and of confessions of love given daily that always felt like the first. She spoke of her time shared staring up at the night sky with the Captain on the roof of the Scout Corps. headquarters, of the times he let himself rear his head back and genuinely laugh with her on horseback as they raced through the open plains within the walls, of the endless stories shared between them over tea drank at midnight and the warmth between them when they leaned together on cold nights spent outside while on the run from the Military Police.

It didn’t take much for Jean to finally realize just how much the Captain shutting her out hurt her even before she’d told him this, and now after having peered at least a little into the deep extent of their private relationship his heart stung for her. She’d just lost Eren, and then she’d lost her closest friend as well as the rest of her family only a few weeks later. 

“Armin and Mikasa were more Eren’s friends than mine,” she’d admitted while cooking once. It had been sudden and had surprised him into turning around from his place chopping vegetables at another counter, but she’d just sighed and continued. “I love them dearly, really I do, but our relationship just wasn’t the same. It felt wrong to complain of my troubles to them when they had their own, so I just tried making money every way I could to support the four of us while we were more or less on the streets after the fall of Wall Maria. It wasn’t until I was drafted a year before the rest of you that I met the Captain, and you’ve heard the majority of how our relationship started.” Of course he had, she’d told him that what felt like forever ago; how she’d found Captain Levi after a member of his squad had died around seven months before Trost had fallen and she’d comforted him even though he’d yelled and screamed until his throat was raw, and then held him after he fell to his knees crying because the soldier had been a long-time comrade and he couldn’t take any more death and hold it in. She’d told him how Captain Levi had tried to weakly push her away before just melting into her hold and sobbing into her shoulder because it was just all too much, and she’d told him how they’d spent the night together on their knees on the floor mourning — and then, come morning, how she’d said nothing about what had happened even though the Captain had wept himself into exhaustion in her arms and had slept there for hours. Her knees had ached for a week, she’d remembered, but it had been worth it. All of this was said with a fond but wistful smile on her face, a look she usually had when thinking about Captain Levi. She laughed a little when speaking about the looks he’d sent her way when he’d thought she’d tell others about his sudden show of emotion, then her eyes had softened when she said that that, once he realized she wouldn’t utter a word of it, was when she’d earned his trust. 

Her eyes always grew sad when speaking of the Captain’s trust in her, and Jean always felt bad for her when he noticed she was missing the man. She’d been his right hand for what felt to Jean like their entire time in the Scouts, always seeming to know something about him that no one else did that got her an in on his life — and he supposed that she did. 

It also made sense now, why Armin and Mikasa were unable to console her after Eren’s death, Jean realized in silence, but he still didn’t understand why the Captain’s soft words and even gentler touches hadn’t worked either. She later voiced that the guilt from the knowledge of what she’d done to contribute to Eren’s assault kept her from accepting his comfort, because she felt she didn’t deserve it. She still hadn’t said his name. It had been around seven years at that point. 

Jean didn’t push it. 

After that, she didn’t speak of the Captain again for a long, long time and avoided Jean’s questions about him, but she was more than willing to answer those he had about Eren. It made Jean feel accomplished, knowing he was helping her heal from the loss of her first husband, and honestly learning more about Eren made him heal too — but it also made him realize that, despite all of the teasing and time spent with him, the majority of what he thought he knew about his character were nothing more than childish ideations of a crush he believed unrequited; when Y/N had told him over coffee ( she hadn’t drank tea since her fallout with the Captain, she’d mentioned once that the reminder hurt her heart too much and he’d never offered her tea again ) in the living room while sitting in her favorite chair that Eren had actually returned his little ‘crush’ for around two and a half years, starting sometime in the middle of when they’d been knee deep in their military training. Jean had turned bright red and tried to argue that he didn’t have a crush, but she’d just giggled into her drink and gotten comfier in her chair to the sounds of him sputtering out protests. 

The nights spent with warm drinks in front of the fire with Gerolf at their feet and the radio softly crooning behind them were his favorite, if he was honest. He’d never felt more loved or at home than he did with a cup of coffee ( he’d sworn off tea for his wife’s sake ) in one hand and one of Y/N’s clasped in the other, his toes buried under the warmth of Gerolf’s furry stomach and the sound of one of Y/N’s wild stories from her days under Captain Miche’s command reaching his ears. Every night spent this way ended with a smile on his face and warmth in his heart, and he knew that he never could have possibly been happier than he was in these moments and with the life he’d chosen the day he’d leapt from that damned boat. 

Of course, everything changed for them when Y/N got sick. 

They didn’t know what it was, and she’d brushed his worries off at first when he’d mentioned how he didn’t like the persistent cough she’d had for two or so weeks. He tried to relax, to accept that it was just a stubborn cough, but after two months of worrying when he’d come home from getting groceries one day to Gerolf barking in panic and her unconscious in a lump on the floor he’d had enough and taken her to a doctor. That’s when they found out she was sick — and it was also when they found out that Marleyan doctor’s didn’t know what the hell she had. Jean had, despite Y/N’s insistence that she was okay, taken her to every doctor feasible and had called upon doctors he couldn’t take her to, hosting them in their home as they checked Y/N over. 

They all came to the same conclusion in the end though: they had no idea what sickness she had, just that she was terribly ill and that the outlook was grim. After the thirty-ninth doctor came to them, then reached the same realization and shared his findings, Jean had stopped calling doctors to the house. Y/N tried comforting him, tried telling him that she was grateful for how much he’d tried, but nothing she said worked and he grew depressed as things got more and more difficult for her. 

The winter and summer months were always especially rough, when the cold practically seeped into her bones or the heat made her sweat the flesh wrapped around them off. The cold air made it difficult for her to breathe and made her lungs ache, and the heat did the same but even worse. They couldn’t go on long walks with Gerolf together anymore, and their visits to the coffee shop they both loved so much grew fewer and farther apart. She didn’t take the train to visit Annie and Reiner any more, and they’d written their worries to them when the second meeting was missed, but Y/N had eased them with mentions of being tight on money; it wasn’t exactly a lie, as Jean had used up the money she’d put away for travel expenses for her doctor’s appointments and other medical expenses of hers, and she couldn’t travel anyway so what use did they have for a travel fund at the moment? However, where it wasn’t exactly a lie, it wasn’t true either. They weren’t low on money in the slightest, not with all of their funding from their years in the military back on Paradis that they’d saved and the money that the Marleyan government had given them along with properties as reparations and then more money they’d earned through their jobs here, but neither Y/N nor Jean told them that and allowed them to take comfort in the belief that money was the sole reason Y/N didn’t come to see them anymore. 

Two years pass this way, with Y/N ill and the doctors with no clue as to what was wrong with her. Jean didn’t want to tell anyone about Y/N’s illness, no one but doctors, because he wouldn’t have to, not since she would get better — why worry them when Jean could handle it? He would take care of her on his own just as he had for the past nine years, it was his job. And if the handful of years that followed were spent with her still sick, what of it? Things had to get worse before they got better, Jean of all people knew that. 

Eventually he does admit that Y/N’s not feeling her best to Reiner and Annie, but he doesn’t tell them the full extent of her medical issues — but after the three and a half year mark, however, he was forced to tell them everything. They’d come to visit Jean and Y/N instead of the other way around and when Jean had run out to grab food Y/N had fainted into Reiner’s arms when trying to make coffee for everyone. When he’d caught her and seen her eyes rolled back in her head with only the bottom of her irises showing and Gerolf barking worriedly they’d panicked, and Reiner and Annie’s panic had only gotten worse when she wouldn’t wake up. Jean had returned home right as they were about to rush to the hospital, and he’d stopped them and taken Y/N from Reiner’s arms despite the protests of both blondes, carefully lowering her to the floor and cradling her close to himself, quietly murmuring requests for her to come back to him before quietly admitting that her illness was much worse than the little chest cold he’d written them about. 

They move back to the city after that, intent on helping where they can. Annie cooks for the four of them, and Reiner does some extra shifts at a bar in town. Jean works just as hard, trying so desperately to make extra money for just… more time — even if Y/N didn’t expect much more. 

In the year that had passed where she was her illest she’d written three more letters: the first telling them that things had taken a turn for the worst, the second when they’d hit that bright spot that made them think she was getting better, and finally the third when she’d realized that no, things weren’t getting better, and that it was most definitely her final run, which she’d separated into several split letters for each of their former friends. Those she’d put in the top drawer of  her bedside table, still unable to make the walk to her desk. 

It had taken her an entire week to finish them, and when Jean had asked what was in the last letters and she’d told him that it was full of her goodbyes to everyone they loved on Paradis he’d nodded understandingly then excused himself to shower, where he’d sat beneath the hot spray and just cried for what felt like only a few minutes but what was really hours, because it had finally hit him: no miracle was going to happen for them. After nearly twenty years of living in close quarters together every day,  Y/N was going to die. He was actually going to lose her. This wasn’t like when she took those few week and a half long trips alone ( at her own insistence )  to visit with Reiner and Annie in the country where they’d moved to escape everything before they’d moved back, this time she wouldn’t be coming back to him. He would really be alone. For good. 

When he’d finally gotten out, she’d not said anything to him. She could see how puffy and pink his eyes were after crying for so long, and she’d heard one mournful cry before he was able to cover his mouth properly, but she never mentioned it. 

Jean had appreciated it, even if he’d never said so. 

Life carried on regardless of the way Jean felt about Y/N’s illness. On the Days he didn’t have extra work, Jean did whatever he could around the house to keep his mind off of the impending hell he would be forced to face. He’d eye Gerolf, and the way the mutt kept constant contact with her, or spend hours cooking special meals he knew Y/N would enjoy. Other times he would stand at one of their bookshelves in the living room for hours, perusing his options but never making a decision on what to read. 

“I want you to know that it’s okay for you to move on,” Y/N says one day from her place on the couch while he stood at the bookshelf; she’d been crocheting a blanket despite the shakiness in her hands. “Once I’m gone, you know. It won’t hurt me for you to love again and remarry.” Jean, once pacing while deep in thought over his next move, freezes once the words register in his mind, and his heart burns. Despite being the one in agony daily, according to the endless doctors, still Y/N thought of him first; how was it that she managed to love so selflessly? Jean knew by this point that he was being greedy and selfish, doing all of this when the outcome had already been made clear; Y/N had taken the diagnoses with ease, almost welcoming death in a way Jean hadn’t understood. He’d been angry about it at first, before she’d explained that she’d already lived a life better than she thought she deserved, followed by admittance that she wasn’t surprised that she was dying young and rather had been expecting the universe to cut her life short; “It’s only what I deserve,” she’d said, “for the horrific atrocities I assisted Eren in creating.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re okay with it or not,” he whispers, his chin shaking and tears filling his eyes as he looks down at his shoes. He hears her make a questioning noise from the couch, and a clink as her crochet needles clack against one another, and he continues, knowing she wasn’t offended. “They don’t compare — I couldn’t — it wouldn’t be…” The words won’t come out alongside his shaky breathing; he watches through blurry vision as the wooden floorboards between his black shoes darken with teardrops he couldn’t keep from falling. It takes him a long moment to get his breathing back in check, but he eventually manages it. 

“They wouldn’t be you,” he finally grits out, new tears joining the old on the wood flooring. His fisted hands shake, and his heart twists when he hears her sigh; it isn’t mocking, or ill-intended, but the way she’s resigned herself to her death hurts him. 

“I said the same about Eren,” she whispers after a long, near-silent pause that had been filled only by Gerolf’s snores and the crackling fire. A sound of pain leaves Jean’s throat without him meaning to, and he turns to her with tears streaming down his face. She’s placed her unfinished blanket to the side and is just… looking at him, and it breaks him. Her eyes are soft and kind, and he can see that she’s unafraid — nothing like him. 

“But I — I can’t,” he whispers, the words coming out in a breathy sob in time with fresh tears. He staggers over to her weakly before falling to his knees before her, clutching her skirts tightly in his hands and burying his face in her lap before collapsing into his grief. She wasn't even dead, and yet there he was, crumpled on the floor at her feet and sobbing into her dress like a mere child. He was a soldier, he’d fought in and helped end a war, he’d battled immeasurable monsters and demons, but he still mourned, and before she was gone — and through it all she runs her fingers through his greying hair and whispers softly that everything would be fine. 

One evening, months after he’d dissolved into tears and after a day spent with her unable to leave the bed for how weak she is and how painful it is for her to walk,  when she’s at what feels like her healthiest yet and Jean feels safe sleeping in bed with her rather than in a cot by their bed, she begins speaking to him. 

He’s not actually asleep. He's taking the time to bask in what life she had in her still, to spend as much time with her as he could even if it meant exhausting himself. The feeling of her heart beating against him and the sound of her breathing in his ears keeps him from losing himself in the fear of what was to come. 

He felt himself a coward. 

One of her hands gently combs through his hair, spotting a few greys here and there as she does so; he can’t see it, but they make her smile weakly. He'd survived long enough for grey hairs to settle in, albeit at thirty-one. she swallows hard, sudden tears popping up in her eyes and threatening to fall. “I hope you’re happy,” she whispers softly, holding his hand with the one not petting him as she lays almost uselessly in bed.

She jolts slightly in surprise, the sudden movement making her very bones ache, when he starts crying as soon as the words register in his mind, Jean lifting his head as the salty fluid treks down his cheeks and leaves slick lines in its wake. “I could have never been happier than I have been with you,” Jean whispers back, smiling lovingly down at her through the tears in his eyes that made his vision beyond blurry. She smiles, squeezes his hand, and weakly tugs him on top of her where she lay on the bed to carefully balance himself on his elbows above her. 

“Make love to me,” she whispers to him, small tears in her own eyes as she clutches at one of his shirt sleeves desperately. He’s not seen her cry since before she’d been given the initial diagnosis, so it stuns him for a moment. The unspoken ‘one last time’ echoes through both of their minds, but both refuse to say it and ignore it in favor of slowly getting undressed one Jean regains his wits — because moving too fast would hurt her, despite today being one of her best days in years, and neither of them wanted that. 

Jean rests his forehead against hers, fresh tears welling up in his eyes as he smiles softly. “You’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever been blessed enough to see,” he breathes, and he hears her breath hitch in response. 

“I love you,” is her only reply, and that’s when he presses inside. Jean’s hips slowly rolled into hers, ever so careful to not jostle her and keep it feeling good for them both. It had been so long since they were together like this; her body was just too weak to handle it, but now they were trying — Jean could hardly believe it. 

 “O-Oh my God,” Y/N whimpers, swallowing the spit that had accumulated in her mouth as pulses of pleasure filled her body, “Oh — oh, oh, J-Jean-!”

“Shhh, I’ve got you,” Jean whispers, reaching a hand up to gently cup her chin before leaning down to kiss her softly. Her arms come up and wrap around his neck as he slowly fucks into her, her tiny gasps and his low grunts filling the room. Gone were the days of the headboard banging against the wall so hard that paintings and photographs fell off of it, but present still was the love shared between them. 

Before long both reach orgasm, moaning out declarations of love and utterances of one another’s names as they do. The rest of the night is spent silently shared between the two of them, naked and intertwined in a warm, perfect mess. 

Happily. 

She was gone by dawn the next morning.

Jean hadn’t woken when she’d passed, he’d only woken to her body in his arms. He’d not known at first, not until he’d kissed her forehead and discovered how cool her skin was; she’d been so beautiful at the time, soft and sweet and peaceful looking — but then he’d realized, and he’d screamed. The neighbors had woken to the sound of his raw, agonized yelling, and they’d broken the door down getting in before realizing what had happened once they saw how he clutched her to his chest, her arm limp against the bed as he did. 

There had been no consoling him, this they knew. They just alerted medics and the police and quietly went to mourn as well, already missing the woman that often offered parts of the meals she made to them, even going so far as to cook them both entire portions while the woman had been pregnant and her husband overworked leaving both exhausted. 

Many good memories were had of the Kirsteins; the two would miss Mr. Kirstein’s wife. 

It had taken nearly an hour for the medics to convince Jean to let them take Y/N’s body, and both before and after he was an absolute wreck. She’d been fine only a few hours ago, she’d been so warm and happy and alive — and suddenly he wakes up and she’s gone? Just like that? It’s not fair. 

For the first time in seventeen years — ten at her side as a friend, and seven as a husband — he’s without her. He’s lost. 

In an almost cruel act of irony, the owner of the coffee shop they went to every morning put it up for sale the day after her funeral. Apparently the only funds they’d been getting recently were from the Kirsteins themselves as well as about four other regulars, so slowly but surely the funding had just… run out. Before long the place was dark and quiet, and looking at it hurt him. All it helped him remember was Y/N, when all he wanted to do was forget. 

He locks himself up in their home for months, his only company being an also-mournful Gerolf, who whined whenever he was near something she favored. Most nights are spent sleeping in his chair in the living room as well; how could he possibly sleep in the place where she had died? And he couldn’t just sleep on the couch either, her blanket was laying there — she’d not finished crocheting it, so he couldn’t touch it. Instead, he just slept in his chair with his hand in Gerolf’s fur, lazily scratching at it where he knew it would please the also depressed dog. 

Just before the sixth month passes, Jean quietly creeps back into the bedroom he shared with Y/N, and promptly bursts into tears. He sits on the floor with his back to his side of the bed and his face to the doorway and sobs into his hands. He must be loud, because Gerolf is roused from the deep sleep he’d been in and the old dog brings himself into the bedroom before pressing his way between Jean’s legs then slumping against him, massive and warm and so comforting that Jean can’t help but throw his arms around him and sob into his fur, whimpering about how he misses her and wants her back. Gerolf remained silent, of course, unable to speak in anything but barks and grumbles, but his presence alone is enough to comfort Jean. 

They slept in Jean and Y/N’s bed for the first time since her death that night. 

After that, Jean begins to acclimate to life without her. Clinging to their dog like a lifeline, he rebuilds his own mental strength and gets back to everyday life. He begins cooking again, and he stops being so timid around Y/N’s usual areas of the house. He carefully folds the unfinished crocheted blanket and puts it on Y/N’s pillow, and he never allows anyone or anything to sit in her chair, but other than that? He begins to live in the house again. 

And then comes his newest problem. 

Jean doesn’t know whether or not he wants to visit Paradis or send letters to the others who’ve been burning the ones Y/N had been sending all these years, informing them of her death and burial, because regardless of whether or not he’s happy with the fact that they’d ignored her for years ( he’s not ), they still grew up with her, fought beside her, lived, ate, and slept alongside her. They should know, he thought to himself, and, leaning back in the chair at Y/N’s writing desk that had now become one of his favorite seats since her passing ( since she’d loved it so much before ), Jean eyes the closet that Y/N had kept locked since she’d become too frail to even walk to the aforementioned writing desk. Swallowing hard, he blinks away sudden, unexpected tears. More letters were in there, he knew that there were, because she’d started storing them there when she found out the others were burning hers upon receiving them. 

He began thinking back on all the times he’d seen her sealing letters, and begins doing the math, only getting angrier as he does. Once he adds up all the letters in his head that they’d burnt that Y/N had sent ( one hundred and sixty-eight of them ) that led to her just writing them and filing them away in her closet,  it was a lot easier for Jean to decide not to visit Paradis to tell them, or to even write a letter. 

Then three months pass, and Jean’s thirty-two. 

He’d never expected to make it this far when he started his life in the Scouts, but he’d made it out. Then, when he’d married Y/N, he’d thought they’d die old and happy together — but then she was gone, just like Marco and their other friends, leaving just him and Gerolf. 

And now Gerolf was gone. 

Jean and Y/N had both been expecting it, even before she was gone, especially since the old street mutt was at least fourteen when they’d found him. Regardless, the loss of his last living domestic link to his wife sends him into a spiral, and he locks himself away again. Reiner and Annie, who had tried endlessly to get him to let them in so they could comfort him, are shut out again with no means of getting him to talk to them. Why would he make the effort? The world had taken everything he loved most from him. He had no reason to make an effort anymore. 

Then, after another two months, Jean goes out and buys the coffee shop. 

They reappear in Jean’s life and ask for her a year later. 

He’d turned to greet whoever had come into the coffee shop, and once his gaze locked on their easily recognizable figures he couldn’t believe his eyes. Almost immediately as the disbelief came anger, and he forced himself to turn away with the greeting dying on his tongue. He snatches a dirty glass, almost breaking it against the side of the wide sink, and begins to wash it. He’d heard through the grapevine that they’d come to the mainland, but he’d steadfastly refused to seek them out, still angry on Y/N’s behalf. 

He can hear them all chattering brightly behind him, two of them ( which sounded like Mikasa and Armin ) asking where Y/N was so happily that it made Jean’s heart twist in an ugly way inside his chest and he barely could resist the urge to throw the glass he was rinsing at their heads wherever they stood behind him. 

No ‘hello’? No ‘sorry for ditching you and then burning your only sources of communication because we were mad and refused to let go of a grudge, do you think you can forgive us’? Alright. Fine. Two could play at that game. 

“She’s been dead a year,” Jean answers without turning around instead, a swift twinge of cruel satisfaction striking through him as a sudden quiet falls over the familiar voices behind him. He doesn’t bother looking after that either, choosing instead to continue cleaning the glass in his hand as a shaky ‘W-What?’ reaches his ears, coming from behind him in an aged rendition of Conny’s voice ( a voice that, despite his own internalized fury, he finds that he’s missed ). He doesn’t answer right away, just like last time, and finishes cleaning that glass then puts it away before reaching for another and speaking again. “She died. Two years ago almost to the day, now — four more weeks and it will have been,” he laughs bitterly. “What a morbid turn of events that would have been, had you come then, wouldn’t it?”

“H-How — Why?!” It’s Mikasa’s voice, shaky and startled and hurting, and Jean takes a wicked satisfaction in it. It was good; they deserved to hurt like he’d hurt since she’d died, deserved to feel pain after abandoning their friend for years. It was nothing short of karma. 

“Sick,” is all he replies with, and he can almost hear their heart’s plummet. Everyone present knew that Y/N’s mother died of a hereditary sickness a few years before Maria fell to the titans — hell, Armin and Mikasa themselves helped Eren comfort her as she cried over her at her mother’s funeral. Jean even knew for a fact that she’d gone into more detail about her mother’s death with the Captain, who hadn’t said a word but who Jean knew was shaking ( which he could see in the reflection of the metal shaker he was washing now ). The sickness Y/N had died from was something that commonly ran in families from the Underground where the Captain had come from, and considering Y/N only saw the sun for the first time a week after she turned six and her mother dropped dead from the illness two years later, Jean wasn’t surprised that it had startled him — and he didn’t feel sorry for him, either. 

Like with Mikasa, he considered the Captain’s current  feelings deserved. 

He throws the rag down and gingerly places Y/N’s favorite glass on a shelf of it’s own, swallowing hard and taking a deep breath before letting it out all at once. “I’m done here,” he mutters. “Follow me — or don’t. I don’t really care.”

He leaves after that, the group following single file and waiting patiently as he locks up the building early, and the sounds of their footsteps against the sidewalk have him fighting of the urge to whirl around and yell at them to just fuck off. This was all Y/N had ever wanted, to see them again, and now they were here — almost two years too late, but here nonetheless. 

The group stop outside of the house Y/N and Jean had ended up living in, having desperately needing to escape the damned reparation apartments that only held bad memories, and they wait in silence as Jean unlocks the door and goes inside. He leaves the door behind himself open, and after a moment’s hesitation Levi is the first to enter, the others following like faithful but hesitant hounds in his wake. 

It’s dark inside the house, and Jean’s thrown his overcoat onto one of the stylish but comfortable-looking black couches in the living room and is sitting in an armchair. It looks like he’s not paying them any mind, but Levi can feel the younger man’s eyes on him as he moves to sit down in a chair that looked unused, as he didn’t want to appropriate anything Jean preferred, especially in the man’s own home; he owed him that much. 

“No!” Jean snaps suddenly, making everyone jump and Levi freeze in place. Jean sighs, but doesn’t tear his eyes from his former Captain and the chair he was touching. “Not that chair. That — That was Y/N’s favorite chair.”

His explanation was enough for Levi at ‘that was Y/N’s’ to make him jolt away from it as if it were on fire; he carefully makes his way over to the couch and grunts as he sits down next to Armin, who takes his cane from him helpfully and leans it against a side table. Y/N’s chair is given a wide berth by everyone else who takes a seat or stands in the living room. 

The room is silent for a long time, no one saying a word. The tension filling the spaces between them was almost thick enough to bite without being able to break through. 

“She never stopped writing them,” Jean says suddenly, his words spoken in a low tone and volume as the people in the room listen silently, “She kept going up until the last year; couldn’t — she couldn’t make the walk to her desk…” he stumbles over his own words when he remembers the last day she’d tried, the day she’d fallen to the ground and hadn’t gotten back up. She’d never walked again after that, and she’d hated it. 

“I… Jean I’m so sorry. It must have been so difficult losing a friend you’d known for so long and dealing with all of this by yourself,” Armin says softly, his voice shaking. He was hurting too — all these years he’d wasted being angry, and for what? A woman loyal to her lover? A close friend loyal to another close friend? He was a fool. 

The previous silence overtakes the room once again, but this time it’s different, an unexplainable anger filling Jean’s body at the mention of the word ‘friend’ then disappearing just as suddenly only to be replaced with something that couldn’t be explained as anything short of exhaustion for life.“Wife,” he corrects quietly, making them all freeze and go silent again, “I married her seven years ago.”

No one seems to know what to say. 

Getting up, he disappears into the bedroom and quietly walks over to said desk, gingerly taking the key hanging from the crooked nail he’d messed up accidentally that she’d begged to keep just because she wanted to remember his wild cursing before going to unlock the closet holding the letters. Picking up the case she’d asked him to put them in a month before she’d passed, he lugs them into the living room before dropping them on the table with a loud thud. 

“Take the box and get out,” he mutters venomously, leaving no room for argument as he retreats to his and Y/N’s bedroom and locks the door; his own letters had been placed on Y/N’s writing desk, left untouched all these months — but maybe it was time for him to read them. 

As he unties the brown twine holding them together, he hears everyone in the living room leave, the door shutting ominously behind them as they do, and Jean’s surprised at first that it doesn’t hurt as much as he’d expected it to — then again, he’s pretty much dead already without Y/N, so what did it matter?

Shaking as he holds the first letter Y/N had written to him tightly enough to strain the paper but not crinkle it, he begins to read, but he only makes it to the third before he finally breaks. 

“‘Think of me fondly’,” he reads aloud, laughing breathlessly in a way that slowly and painfully turns into heavy sobbing. “How couldn’t I?” he asks pleadingly to the letter, almost as if he thought it would be able to answer him. It, of course, didn’t, and he cast it across the desk and away from himself in favor of leaning on his elbows against the top of the desk and burying his face in his hands to cry longer, his tears falling and landing on the smooth wood of the desk top, slowly but surely forming small puddles that seeped into the pores of the wood and disappeared, just like she had all those weeks ago. 

Y/N was gone. 

Gerolf was gone. 

His comrades? They’d not been a part of his life in years. 

Jean was alone. Just like he’d feared for years. He’d told Y/N that years ago, even before she got sick, and she’d still left. 

He pushes himself up and staggers away from the desk, one of her letters clutched in his fest while the other wipes furiously at his face as he wails like a child. “It’s not fair,” he whispers, his entire body wracked with sobs. “IT’S NOT FAIR!” 

He shakily collapses to the floor and falls against the bed again, just as he had a year ago — only this time, Gerolf wasn’t there to comfort him. This time, he was alone with his pain and fear, and it showed in his tears and words. All night long, he screams and cries and mourns his losses — Marco, Sasha, Eren, Y/N, and he mourns his comrades, the people who had abandoned him just as surely as they’d abandoned his wife. 

After the sun rises and shines through a window, he blearily looks outside. A sparrow sits on the windowsill, a large bird he faintly remembers seeing years ago ( but that he’s unsure of where he saw it ) at the sparrow’s side, both looking through the window at him inquisitively. He stares at them, unsure of what to say and afraid to move should he scare them off, when the larger bird takes off, circling around the house judging by the fact that it keeps flying by the window. For three loops of the larger bird’s flight, the sparrow stays on the windowsill, just staring at him, before finally pecking at it and taking off to join the larger bird. They disappear into the light of the rising sun, and suddenly Jean doesn’t feel the urge to cry anymore. Instead, he gets to his feet and pulls out a suitcase before beginning to pack his things, ready for a trip out to see Annie and Reiner. 

It was time to start over — even if that didn’t mean falling in love with someone else again. 

𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 © { 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑 } 𝐛𝐲 𝟒𝐈𝐙𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐒. 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐲, 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞, 𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭.

#jean kirstein x reader #jean kirschtein x reader #jean kirstein x you #jean kirschtein x you #jean kirstein x y/n #jean kirschtein x y/n #attack on titan x reader #aot x reader #attack on titan x you #aot x you #attack on titan x y/n #aot x y/n #shingeki no kyojin x reader #snk x reader #shingeki no kyojin x you #snk x you #shingeki no kyojin x y/n #snk x y/n #— 𝐈 𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔’𝐑𝐄 𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐘. | 𝐉. 𝐊𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐈𝐍.

[david-talks-sw]

What "The Hidden Fortress" (1958) tells us about the Jedi's status in the Prequels.

In 1999, George Lucas had this to say on BBC Omnibus: A Long Time Ago: The Story of "Star Wars" and then The Phantom Menace's director's commentary.

“I greatly admired Kurosawa, especially the film Hidden Fortress, which told a story from the point of view of two serfs, two slaves...

... peasants who tag along with this famous general and a princess-- y'know, royalty. And the whole story is told from their point of view. And I like that idea. I like the idea of telling a story from the lowest person's point of view, uh, in the food chain, and that's how the story got to be told by Artoo and Threepio.”

“[The Phantom Menace] is told primarily from the Jedi's point of view, but the story that's being told is essentially the story of Queen Amidala and her plight of having her planet blockaded. As in, say, Episode IV, where the story is told through the eyes of the droids, in this one, it's told through the eyes of the Jedi.”

“But [from the moment we get to Coruscant, Anakin and Jar Jar] are standing on the sidelines. It's a little bit a riff on the very first film where the story is told through the point of view of the droids, who were sort of the lowliest characters.”

“And in [Phantom Menace], I'm doing it through - primarily - the two Jedi, but then the secondary characters are also carrying a lot of the weight when the Jedi aren't around.”

George Lucas draws a comparison between lowly characters like Hidden Fortress' peasants Matashichi and Tahei, the droids in A New Hope, as well as the Jedi in The Phantom Menace.

What do they all have in common? They are all the lowest-ranking characters in their respective films. Repeat: the movie frames the Jedi as almost at the bottom of the food chain.

Because of course they are. Functionally, they're just diplomats. They hold no political power whatsoever and barely have any authority .

What little authority the Jedi do have in TPM comes from the Queen's young age, which allows them to ease into a more advisory position, and Qui-Gon's rebellious streak. And even he's explicit about the fact that his mandate has limitations.

The only characters "below" them in status are Jar Jar, an exiled Gungan, and Anakin, who just yesterday was still a slave kid, Artoo the literal object and that's it!

Also the other Prequel films are consistent with this portrayal. Who do we see lower in status than the Jedi? Dexxter Jettster and the clones. Everyone else is pretty much above them.

Yes, the Jedi are part of the system, but they're not as high-ranking as you'd think. Yes, they have Force Powers, but that means squat when put against political power. So, like, to expect the Jedi to...

influence the decisions of the Senate,

wage a war against the Outer Rim to end slavery,

or blatantly refuse an order to join the war effort,

... is incredibly unreasonable.

They're not meant to be seen as "the elite, peering down upon the people from their ivory tower".

They're the servants! Servants of the Republic.

And they're seeing their higher-ups destroy what they should all stand for, but are unable to stop them.

Later on, with The Clone Wars, we are introduced to civilian characters and from their point of view, the Jedi are ultra powerful and are highly placed and "should do more but don't".

It makes sense that these characters would see the Jedi as 'the elite'. But they don't have the full picture.

We, as the audience, do.

So we know that the reality is more along the lines of the Jedi "should do more but can't".

After all, we are made privy many instances of the Jedi speaking up and trying to change politicians' minds, only to be dismissed and overruled at every turn.

↑ these aren't even all the times we see it happen, btw, there's more examples...

So at some point, if you - as an audience member - see all this and are still saying "the Jedi should've done more!" I really need to know... what more could they have done?

Take control of the Senate?

That'll result in a dictatorship, there's a reason they waited as much as they did before trying to take down Palpatine.

Power corrupts and they're wise enough to know it.

Don't join the Republic in the first place?

George Lucas never frames the Jedi's involvement with the Republic as a bad thing. In the foreword to Shatterpoint (2004), he says their being part of the Republic led to 1,000 years of prosperity.

Where's the issue, then? Well, it's a two-man job and the Jedi's bosses, the Senate, grew corrupt and stopped doing their part. They stopped carrying their end of the couch.

But “no Jedi in the Republic from the get-go” means the Sith will rise to power even faster. Fun!

Stay neutral in the war?

The Separatists were killing civilians and testing weapons on neutral systems, or enslaving them.

The choice put before the Jedi was "do what we tell you and fight, or let people die".

But also, out-of-universe... do you really think Palpatine, genius politician, master of spin, can't re-frame the Jedi staying neutral in a negative light?

When they joined the war, he unleashed propaganda that either directly (on the Separatist side) or indirectly (on the Republic side) framed them as "warmongers who corrupted their values". If they don't join, they're "apathetic cowards who care more about their own values than the lives of the people they're supposed to protect".

So either way, Order 66 comes around, wipes them out and the Republic goes "good riddance".

So what else could they do?

The answer is "not much".

Because the whole point of the narrative is that Palpatine checkmated them by taking the fight to a field the Jedi had no experience in or right to meddle with: politics.

So if you look at these characters who are nowhere near the top of the food chain, and say "well, why didn't they fix things?" I'm sorry to say you're missing the point of the narrative.

Or maybe you do get the point of the narrative and just aren't trying to be fair...

... in which case, at least be consistent and also argue:

"Why didn't Threepio & Artoo do more to save the Rebel crew of the Tantive IV from the stormtrooopers?!"

"Why didn't Matashichi & Tahei do more to save the Akizuki clan?!"

#HINT: the answer to both those rhetorical questions is “there was nothing they could do” #Also while we're on 'Hidden Fortress' - it's also worth pointing out that Qui-Gon and Padmé's dynamic on Tatooine in TPM #is very similar to the dynamic of General Rokurota and Princess Yuki in 'Hidden Fortress'. #The older warrior looking after the royalty teenage girl who is dressed as a peasant so as to not draw attention because she's on the run. #The Hidden Fortress #Akira Kurosawa #George Lucas #Artoo #Threepio #c3po #r2d2 #lucas quotes #meta #on the jedi's involvement in the clone wars #in defense of the jedi #jedi order #qui-gon jinn #the phantom menace #star wars #long post

[tumblingxelian]

RWBY V9 Epilogue Response

I LEGIT STARTED CRYING!!!!

Seriously this was freaking amazing, I need RWBY to continue, to be finished by these amazing people!

(Swallows back tears)

OK, OK, OK, but like, this was such a brilliant way to show the passage of time, less one sequential event after another and more via a collection of different character perspectives that let us see how things have been going, each one colored by the various characters unique perspectives.

The contrast of Winter's despair and Qrow's optimism, of Nora taking the world on her shoulders & Ren trying to ease his loved one's burdens. Oscar & Ozpin actually being on the same page and fighting the merge. It's all so good and I love all the shots with secondary characters in each scene helping give us a stronger idea how they and by extension everyone else is coping or not coping with things. Seriously, just brilliant storytelling!

Also the fact the massive air fleet & Amity arrived at the same time as RWBY & Jaune, that fits the turning of the tides theme of V9's ending so perfectly and I can see why the Blacksmith sent the team back 'then' given that means a bunch of good things are going to happen at once and do a lot to restore hope.

I also love the general world building, discussing Vacuo's history of colonization, how settlements are being upkept, and gods the loss of Vale, S-assy girl on tumblr predicted it years ago but I still didn't see it coming to this extent. Low key glad Tai's not there cos I'm me and very intrigued about what Glynda is up to. Plys Tyrian, my favorite bastard man, he's here and the Crown is evidently not done with yet either!

Also is Ruby gonna have a cult? I think she should have a cult. It wouldn't help but it'd be interesting, also nice seeing the Happy Huntresses, love them. Plus Raven bringing the team in, ooh I just LOVE THIS!

Gods this is all so good and I need so much more, I have not felt this energized in a long time, thanks so much for sharing this with us, I love the directions everyone is taking!

#RWBY #rwby spoilers #Epilogue Spoilers #Save RWBY #greenlight volume 10

[thelightsandtheroses]

Two: there goes the fear again

Your Hand In Mine | Joel Miller x female reader

Summary: When Joel finds you on your self-assigned insomnia bench one night, it sparks an unexpected friendship that quickly develops into more. Finding peace in the middle of an apocalypse always seemed impossible, but being with Joel feels natural, like a missing piece has fallen into place at last. When a ghost from your past threatens to destroy the peace you’ve found in Jackson, everything will change.

Word Count – 4.3k Chapter Warnings - 18+ blog minors DNI, description of a nightmare, insomnia, mentions of Salt Lake City, reader had a backstory and her age is not specified but an age range is lightly implied in this chapter, secondary characters and ocs, reader is a parent. Notes: Thank you so much for the kind feedback and comments so far - I’ve been honestly quite blown away by it all. As it's Joel's birthday today, I wanted to push myself to get this chapter out. So happy birthday Joel, sorry about the outbreak? 😂 Chapter title is from There Goes the Fear Again by Doves.

Previous | Series List | Next

The memories come back to you in flashes, framed with distorted static like an old VHS. They usually start in the years Before, nostalgia tinged memories that lull you into a false sense of security that tonight may not be so bad.

Sometimes you welcome it, the reminder of your family and life before. It was normal, it was filled with love and normality and peace. You had problems, like anyone else, but schoolyard bullies, your roommate and class assignments seem so trivial compared to what the world is now.

You’re by the beach, listening to the soothing rhythm of the waves, watching Sean surf as you pretend to study, scrunch your toes in the sand. You can feel the heat of the sun of your skin, the way you scrunch your toes in the sand and want to soak in every moment of this summer. You daydream of what’s going to happen once you start college. Will Sean still be your best friend as your paths start to digress? Will anyone even like you there?

You were still agonising about those trivialities on the night that the world ended right in front of you. In hindsight, you’ll notice the signs in front of you that day that something was coming, something was wrong. It was just a normal day though. The last one. You remember it all. So much loss, so many mistakes, so much fear. The memory of your family; of the last conversations you had with them, of how unsatisfactory that was.

Then it’s you and Sean and his little sister, Isabella, and you’ve got to find a new path. College feels like lifetime ago now.

It’s here the replay of your past becomes distorted; all black and white static and poorly compiled edits after that, time jumps and skips and sequences completely out of order. 

You’re in the woods and there’s blood stains on your clothes and you’re running and it’s never going to be far enough, it’s never going to leave you. It doesn’t matter how far you run; it’s buried under your skin now.

And then your mind goes to that place. To every nightmarish thought and the memories you avoid. It’s too much.

The blood. The flames. The shame.

It’s the fact you’ve bought a child into a world where monsters are real and you don’t know if you can keep them safe.

More memories.

Then it’s the fear; the unspoken terror that one day soon you’ll lose everyone, that you’ll just watch it unfold in from you. That you’ll be the only one left, doomed to loneliness and emptiness. That you’ll watch as everyone you love is taken from you; by illness, or violence, or such an innocuous looking fungus.

You’ll be left all alone and then they’ll find you.

Tendrils of anxiety twist around your body, constricting with each thought, each memory, each possible future, until you feel like you’re suffocating and your heart is racing and surely you can’t wake up from this.

It’s not real.

It’s not real.

It’s not real.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Joel asks placidly as you walk over to the bench, your rucksack casually slung over one shoulder. It’s clear that he’s been here for a while already but he’s left one side clear and ready for you.

“Just here for the view,” you say calmly, stuffing your hands into your pockets as you try and push away the lingering unease from your sleep.

“Aren’t we all?”

You sit next to him, playing your bag by the edge of your feet.

It’s been more than a week since he first came to your bench and since then you’ve had more run-ins with Tommy’s brother.  The two of you have seen several sunrises together in a wordless peace. Neither of you have truly acknowledged each other outside of the bench, nothing beyond polite nods in the community hall at mealtimes and the pleasantries you both would surely afford to any other member of this community.

You’ve spent each night on the bench observing Joel. You’ve quietly noticed his features; the freckles and sun marks, the way his eyes warm when he smiles or and the depths in them when he’s avoiding a subject.

There’s a lot you still don’t know about him.

Neither of you have talked much about the substance of your lives before Jackson. It’s to be expected though. These days, it’s safe to assume that if you’re still alive, it came at a cost and perhaps you don’t need to dwell on that.

You know Joel a little more now - each of you have given small hints about the person you are. Not a lot, not everything, but it’s just enough that Joel feels more real to you.

“I heard it was a rough patrol yesterday,” you say after a moment. Beau had told you all about the horde of infected they’d bumped into. He told you that him, Bonnie, Tommy, and Joel had almost been surrounded at one point.

Sometimes you almost forget about the infected. For a little while anyway.

For the past twenty years, most of the true terror you’d felt was at the hands of humans, not cordyceps. Were you frightened of losing people to it? Of course. Had your few encounters with clickers or runners been terrifying? Yes. Were you terrified of the world you’d leave your son one day? Naturally.

It was just in the QZs, in the worlds you’d moved in between then, you always encountered more humans than infected. The outbreak had changed everything and it had amplified so much; there was no court of law now, no shallow allusions of propriety no order outside of dictatorial QZs, so in some places, the anticipated lawlessness and loss of humanity was your true fear.

Jackson is an exception.

Joel looks down for a moment after you speak and you wonder if you shouldn’t have bought up the patrol at all.

“It was fine,” Joel says gruffly.

“Okay.”

“Do you go on a lot of patrols?” he asks.

“Sometimes,” you say. “Only when it’s my rotation. I’m mostly based in the library and sometimes I help Sean in the greenhouses too.” You pause and wonder if you should add more that you’re good with a bow and arrow now, but you still freeze in close contact.

After a while, as the breeze reaches your fingers and you regret not packing gloves, you reach down and pull a thermos out of your rucksack. You take a long sip, savouring the hot liquid and warming your fingers on the container.

You look over at Joel and then down at the flask in your hands.

“It’s just chicory coffee,” you say, offering the thermos to him politely. “A little dandelion root too I think.”

He looks at you curiously.

“Why?”

“I’m getting chilly, and it seems rude to sit here and drink coffee and not offer any to you.” Jackson has burrowed its way under your skin now; there’s no way you would have done this a year ago. Or perhaps it’s the bench, the magic of this place in the middle of the night. It’s like the rules you’ve built over the years can ease slightly here. The air feels just minutely lighter.

“Thanks.” Joel accepts the battered thermos, takes a long look at it, and then takes a tentative sip of the drink.

“Still nowhere near as good as the real thing,” you say wistfully. “And it’s caffeine free, but sometimes I can pretend it isn’t.”

“Better than nothing, I guess.”

“Exactly.”

“Where do you get it from? I know FEDRA had regular supplies and they grew it out in one of the QZs.”

“It grows wild around Wyoming and Sean’s cultivated a patch of it in the gardens too. Esther, in town, she makes it all. Esther’s definitely a good person to befriend if you want to keep a supply of it. She’s nice too.”

“Yeah, Tommy mentioned her.”

You smirk, imagining exactly the nature of the conversation between the two brothers.

“What’s that for?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure it is. Just you really seem to be settling into Jackson now.”

Joel shakes his head with a smile. “Don’t you start.”

“Okay, I won’t. So, how’s Ellie? I saw her in the library today, well, yesterday now,” you say lightly.

“Oh yeah?”

“Uh huh, she’s going through our space section pretty quickly. We’ll have to see what we can find on patrols.”

“Yeah, she’s really into space.” You can hear the affection in his voice; the deep love he has for her and that sense of pride that he knows this about her, knows about her interests.

“If any new books come in, I can put them aside for her.”

He looks at you with an unreadable expression. “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing.” You pause. “I think I get it. I never had a space phase, but I spent several months really fascinated with deep sea exploration when I was a kid. We moved to the coast and suddenly it was right there and I’d never thought about it before. I mean that I get where she’s coming from.” You have no idea where this sudden burst of honesty came from and you feel your face heat at what you’ve said.

“We’re a long way from the coast now,” he says softly. “Don’t think I’ve seen a beach in years.”

“No?” You smile sadly. “Me either. We’ve mostly only travelled inland since - well, since everything and sometimes I really miss it. Sean and I, we’ve been friends since we were kids and we used to just spend every weekend by the water.” You remember the start of your dream and fold your arms around yourself.

“What about you?” you ask, eager to change the subject and curious about the man beside you. “What was your thing?”

“I um,” Joel pauses as though he’s genuinely bewildered by being asked this question “I was into, uh -” He looks away from you. “The usual stuff, football and uh, all that.”

“Really? Just football?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joel asks, folding his arms.

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

He exhales and stretches his long legs out on the bench more. You follow the line from his feet up to his body and eventually his face. He looks uncertain, as though there’s something he wants to add, but he’s not sure.

“I wanted to be a writer, or to work with books, or words in some way. Had all these ideas about being an investigate journalist, or an editor, or just ... I think I just wanted to make art of some type. It’s probably why I’m so focused on the library now.”

“Music,” he whispers. “I was really into that.”

“So, you played … something? Guitar?” You look at him and decide he was most definitely a guitarist. He has the look, might even have the hands for it.

“Maybe,” Joel says,

“Please tell me you were in a terrible garage rock band at one point?” You smile at the image this conjures of the broad and elusive man next to you.

“In high school, for a brief moment. Then uh, things changed for us all and I - I had other priorities in my life than music.”

“That’s a shame.”

“It was the right call.”

“Still, if you loved it … it’s never too late? Did you know, they sometimes do open mic nights at the Tipsy Bison, but it’s … ropey, some of it.” You grimace at the memory of the last one that Sean and Beau had dragged you to a few months ago.

“You’re really selling this to me, sweetheart.”

“Hey, until you’ve heard Seth sing karaoke, you truly haven’t hit rock bottom.”

Joel scoffs, a small smile on his face that crinkles his eyes and warms every feature.

You thought you would hate sharing your bench, or having an intrusion on your solitude, but you don’t.

Over time, you’ve perfected sneaking back into this house. There’s a way to shut the back door just so to prevent anyone hearing you wander in. You avoid the bottom stair which creaks, and the other creaky floorboards on the landing.

Every time you do this, you feel like a teenager again. You grew up reading books and watching movies where teenagers snuck out to and from parties, but that had never been your life. You were studious, deferent to the rules. Your focus was singular; college, success, making a name for yourself. Sean used to try and persuade you to join him at parties or even just when he and his friends would hang out at the beach in the evening after surfing. You had thought you had time.

The world had different plans for you all though.

By the time you’ve crept back to your room, changed, and got ready for the day ahead, you can hear the familiar sounds of cupboards being opened and closed in the kitchen below.

“Mornin’ sweetie,” you say, squeezing Gabe’s shoulder as you walk into the kitchen.

Your son squirms but smiles lightly when he meets your eyes. The last twenty years have been an unending endurance test, painful and exhausting, but now you have Gabriel. You weren’t ready for him; you felt too young, too scared, too everything. He means everything to you now though.

He wears so many of your features and mannerisms, or features you remember seeing in your family. You find it uncanny; that mix of uniqueness and familiarity all at once.

“Is anyone else up yet?” you ask, stifling a yawn as you scan the kitchen for additional cups or plates, any sign the others are awake.

“Beau’s still asleep but Sean said he’d be down in five -”

“Which means he’ll be down in ten,” you both say together.

You were offered separate houses when the four of you first arrived in Jackson. There was an entire house that Maria told you could just be for you and Gabriel.  After almost a decade of living in a small, crapped apartment in Kansas with too thin walls and continual threats it had seemed unbelievable. Sean and Beau had been offered the house opposite you too. Maria had recognised how close you all were.

There’d been too much death along the way though; too much loss. You and Sean had been together so much of it all too. You were close friends before the outbreak and now hopelessly and hideously co-dependent on each other. Even back in Kansas, your apartment had been next to his and Beau’s. For more than a decade, you haven’t had more than a single wall separating you.

The idea of being so separate, of being more than a wall away, in a new community prettified you. You were frightened about what Jackson really could be; what it could be hiding, how quickly you may need to run. You felt like a deer in the headlights, a wild animal being stalked by prey. For the first weeks in Jackson, the town itched your skin and filled you with anxiety. There had to be a dark side, it couldn’t be that simple. You all needed to be ready to run.

The four of you had decided to stay together, to stay close, just in case. It was meant to be temporary.

It’s been two years now.

It also means you never have to worry about Gabe when you sneak out at night, it means your son has his uncles in his life every day. It means you’re not alone throughout everything.

They’re only people you have left now - the family you both found and made. They are the ones who have shaped the last twenty years of your life.

You take a sip of your tea and smile at your son.

“So, small bit of news I asked if Uncle Beau could take me on patrol next week,” he says quietly after a moment. “He said yes.”

“No. Gabriel, you’re -”

“I’m sixteen.”

“I know.” You swallow and look at him carefully. You remember him being so small you could hold him in one hand but now he’s sitting opposite you and he looks both so young and like a man all at once. Patrols? That’s normal for him now, that’s the way of life in Jackson. He’s still so young though.

You hear a creak on the staircase and listen carefully as your son continues making his case.

“It’s time I started learning about this and Beau will watch out for me if you’re worried. He said the route next week is the best to get started with,” he says, brow furrowing with concern at your reaction. “I’m ready though.”

“I’m sure you are. I know Uncle Beau will be there with you, I’m glad of that.” It’s better if he goes with Beau. You know him, you trust him and he will ensure that your son is safe.

“So how do you feel about that, patrol? Is this your idea or have you been volunteered?” Your son starting on this path is one thing if it’s his choice, but if he’s only going along with this because he thinks he’s supposed to, or because of teenage peer pressure? Well, the consequences are a lot worse in your son’s world, than chunky highlights or double denim could ever have been.

“It’s my idea. I’m fine with it,” he says quickly, avoiding your gaze.

You put your cup down and raise an eyebrow at him.

“Ergh, look, okay Jesse did his first patrol last week. Please - I can do it, I know I can. I want to.”

You’re tempted to reply, ‘and if Jesse walked off a cliff, would you?’ If you say it out loud though, there is no way you can deny you are turning into your mother, so instead you take a long sip of your drink.

It feels like a losing battle. Patrols are part of normal life in Jackson. However, if he’s with Beau then maybe that’s okay.  If you know anything about Beau it’s that he is fiercely protective of the people he cares about. These days, that’s pretty much only Sean, you, and Gabriel.

“If you feel you’re ready and if Uncle Beau agrees and it’s a sensible patrol route … It needs to be in daylight, and just a short one.”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay.”

He beams in response.

“I’ve got classes, I better go.” He stretches and stands up, downing the rest of his drink.

“Okay, I’ll see you later. Love you. ”

“Yeah, you too, mum.” he says quickly, looking around as if one if his friends could secretly be listening by the window. He looks back at you and his face turns softer before he quickly moves away. “Hey Uncle Sean,” he says as they cross in the doorway.

“Morning Gabe.” Sean looks over at you and says good morning to you, says your name with a cheerful smile as he pours himself a tea and then sits down opposite you at the kitchen table. 

“How much of that did you hear?”

“I started eavesdropping when Gabe mentioned Beau and patrols. I thought you handled it beautifully, by the way.”

“You’re only trying to make me less mad at Beau.”

Sean raises his hands in mock surrender and then leans back against his chair.

“Anyway, are you going to tell me about where you went last night?”

“Where I went?”

“Heard you leave, sweetie.”

“I … shit. Sorry, I thought I was quiet.”

“You are.” He sighs heavily. “So, where’d you go? Got a late-night Jackson booty call I don’t know about?”

For some unknown reason an image of Joel fills your mind, his unruly hair particularly. He often comes to the bench with mussed up hair from where you imagine he was in his own bed, trying to sleep. You imagine other ways his hair could get messy like that; your hands in his hair as he ...

No.

No.

Absolutely not.

“You do have a hook up?” Sean asks incredulously.

“No. No. I don’t. I just go for a walk is all.”

“Alone?” Sean waggles his eyebrows mischievously.

“Yes.” Technically you walk to the bench alone and then you and Joel only walk back together so that doesn’t count … and his house is before yours anyway  It really doesn’t count, right?

“Okay,” Sean says, frowning. “Are you having nightmares again? Do you need to talk about it?”

You shake your head, biting your lip. “Do you?”

“I’m okay.”

You and Sean have been friends since you first moved to the beach town you spent your teenage years in. The bond between you is irrevocable. He’s your brother, your best friend, one of the people you love most in the world.

You share scars.

The same turmoil and trauma and ghosts have buried under both of your skins in different ways. He’s been there through it all for you. You’ve been there through it all for him.

He’s the only person in the world who will ever understand the parts of you that you keep locked in boxes you can never open. And for him? For him, you know the secrets that he hasn’t even told Beau.

“Gabe … he’s been asking me and Beau about … before. He’s asking questions again,” Sean says after a moment, looking around the kitchen carefully and speaking in a low voice. “I wondered if this patrol thing was about that at first, about what we all said and … it’s getting harder to not give him any specifics.”

“Me too, but I think it’s because Jesse went on his first patrol recently.” That’s what you’re hoping anyway.

“Huh, how about that? Look, it doesn’t matter because this isn’t going away. He’s going to keep asking.”

“This all seemed so much easier when he was a baby.”

Sean raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, I remember sixteen years ago, I wouldn’t say any of it was easier back then. It’s just the kid believed whatever we said with no questions.”

“Sean, tell me he still thinks …”

“Yeah. He just needs some details, honey. I know it hurts to talk about, but you have to give him something. He’s almost a man now and he’s got valid questions. I can - I would have been the same, so would you.“

You swallow and look out of the window. “I’ll handle it, Sean.”

You don’t flinch when you hear the crunch of Joel’s boots. You’ve come to expect it, anticipate the sound.

It makes you smile.

The bench doesn’t quite feel the same without him anymore.

“Howdy,” he says, the slight twang of his southern drawl more pronounced than usual.

You wave for him to come and join you on the bench.

“I didn’t see you here yesterday,” Joel says softly.

“Oh, I uh - was wiped out and I - I guess I just slept?” You notice how surprised your voice is there; you’re surprised you had a good night’s sleep for once, and you’re surprised that Joel noticed you weren’t there. In fairness, you had been due a night’s sleep as the exhaustion from your insomnia finally won out over your overthinking and anxiety. Gabriel had been on patrol with Beau that day and you’d worried yourself to the point of complete exhaustion.

Joel noticed though. He noticed you weren’t here.

“Were - were you here?”

Joel nods.

“Guess I’ve got sorta used to you being here too now.”

“I mean, it’s more the other way around. This was technically my bench first.”

“Really?” he says your name in a low, teasing voice. “You really wanna go there, huh?”

“I’m just saying. I’ve been here longer, technically and I’m saying this as a mere technicality, I have dibs on this bench.”

“An’ here I thought no-one truly owned anything in Jackson.”

“Benches are exceptions, everyone knows that.”

The two of you laugh, it’s light and somehow more soothing to you than the cup of herbal tea you’d drank before bed in the hope of repeating the night before and sleeping for once.

“I’m willing to consider joint custody or a small timeshare though,” you say.

“Oh wow, I’m real lucky.”

“I know. I wouldn’t bestow that right on just anyone.”

“I hope not.” Joel smiles and oh, you love it when he smiles. It’s so captivating.

“It got me thinkin’ though-“

“Sounds dangerous.”

“You know it. Anyway, I was thinking,” Joel looks away from you, towards the horizon and he wrings his hands together. “I guess it reminded me we have this whole world outside this bench.”

You’d thought the same thing, but you can’t say it. The words fall heavy on your tongue, your mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton.

“I wondered if maybe, you wanted to get a drink one day?” He’s not looking at you. “It’s a stupid idea.”

“No, no, it’s not. Why? Why would you want that with me?”

“Maybe I just want a drink with you,” he says.

You pause. Deflection is your standard response to something like this. The idea that Joel could want to spend time with you outside of your insomnia ridden nights surprises you. Why would he want that?

You can’t lie to yourself  though; there’s something about Joel that draws you in. He’s easy to talk to and despite appearances and town mumbling, you can tell he’s not a bad person. He’s kind to you, thoughtful and you’ve thought about him.

You’ve thought about him a lot.

“Technically we’ve shared my thermos of coffee multiple times now,” you say weakly.

“That doesn’t count, sweetheart.”

“Wow, now you’re spurning my chicory coffee now, huh? That’s not good enough for you?”

“A real drink.” You can hear the meaning behind his words and it doesn’t fill you with the caution you would normally anticipate.

“And does this drink happen to be served somewhere this isn’t this bench?”

“As long as it ain’t karaoke night.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Joel Miller.” You pause for a moment, tilt your head in mock contemplation. “Okay, a drink.”

You meet Joel’s smile this time.

Tag List

YHIM: @orcasoul @pedropascalsbbg @yoursoulsunbreakable @iamskyereads @genetics4life @everyth1ngfan @frickatives @perennialdoll247 @darkroastjoel @noisynightmarepoetry

Everything Pedro tag-list: @harriedandharassed @pedrostories @hiroikegawa @pedrosaidsheispunk @pastelnap

If you want to be added to (or removed from) one of the tag lists, let me know or you can get notifications for @thelightsandtheroses-fics if you prefer. If you do not have an age or age range showing you are over 18, I will not add you to this list. I block ageless and blank blogs

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x female reader #joel miller #the last of us fanfiction #pedro pascal character #joel miller fanfiction #the last of us #your hand in mine fic

[riacte]

So like, are we gonna talk about how there is a problem in this fandom about some creators, mostly female ccs, being critized by fans whenever they "overshadow" the more famous hermits? No shade to any of the hermits, they are wonderful and i am sure this is the last thing they wanted to happen, but i am starting to notice a pattern. And it s always with the same excuses! "They did not play by the rules" "Someone else did the work for them" "It was boring and anticlimatic". And although I can think of some cases of this happening to male ccs (well, one case, and it was to a non-hermit), women have to deal with a looot of shit every time they score a victory, and it s terrible that this is just a routine at this point. And like where do the critics come from? Are these ccs supposed to lose in purpose and act as secondary characters to those who have more views or subs? I just don t understand

Oh yeah there's definitely a misogyny / popularity problem. It's always been around, got a bit better, and now post-Covid, it's getting worse.

Women can do everything and anything and they'll be criticised by some assholes. If False was proactive and killed every reaper who came near her? She would be "mean" and "a bully". If False kept her distance? She would be "barely online" and "not deserve a win". If False was on all the time, "the trappers wouldn't have time to lay traps". If False wasn't on because of work purposes (the meeting) or to EAT (because women are human beings who LIVE), "she wouldn't have a chance to die". I found it sad to see False explain herself and justify her jokes and actions. AND that is wholly dismissive of any irl things that may or may not have been going on.

Also... the popularity gap is getting worse. Some hermits have stagnating or even negative growth in terms of viewership and subs. It's unfortunate because everyone is free to watch who they want, work with who they want, everyone has limited time and attention span, so there's no real solution. Which is why I'm all for spreading propaganda. And I feel like my mains False and Ren are in the middle in terms of this— not the most popular, not the least either, so they kind of get left out when it comes to "underrated hermits" discussions. Idk. I know this has been a problem since the birth of Hermitblr and I know from the pov of a fan I do have it much, much better than some other fans who main other people. My main duo interact alllllllll the damn time. And I know I am guilty of sticking very closely to my main povs.

We have to drown out the trolls. Be vocal about what we love. I love seeing all the nice comments on vids. <3

#ask box #answered #discourse #negativity #salt

[xehanortsreport]

i love love love ansem but a lot of it is kinda in spite of how he's written and not because of it.

now, most of this is as a consequence of the franchise simply growing far outside of kh1 and ansem being shifted to a secondary antagonist as a result, but the change in his writing is still stark.

he's always been a darkness obsessed weirdo, but pretty much every game after 1 treats him as only this, or otherwise kind of relegating him to a physical manifestation of riku's trauma. and like, that's fine, he plays the role well.

but in kh1 there's this...mystique, and regal bearing, and a distinct intellectualism around him that kind of gets lost in later depictions. billy zane's performance is equally as dramatic as richard epcar's, but a lot more toned down. (though to be fair to epcar, he seems to adjust closer to this performance from DDD onward.)

he fairly whispers at times, a lot of the power in his voice comes from the restraint and controlled use of volume rather than just kinda. yelling all the time, which he does more of later.

you can tell he was and still is a researcher. he's observant and patient and even cordial, though condescending. it comes across less as uncomplicated malice and more as him just being upset that no one else grasps his magnum opus, no one else can understand him, everyone else is just /beneath/ him.

in later games, his taunts are just centered around "succumbing to darkness" and pretty much every line circles that same drain. but in kh1, it's more like he's gloating about his own superior understanding of the universe, of which darkness is but a piece.

like, just compare his lines from KH1 with his later lines. Here's KH1:

Yes he's throwing out his Darkness Lines, but I can't imagine DDD Ansem saying "perhaps this will enlighten you" lmao. Here is DDD and KH3:

i think a lot of it is because kh1 ansem was supposed to legitimately be a fallen sage king who went mad from The Horrors and like. i will die on the hill of that being a way better character than splitting him between xehanort and ansem the wise imposter. in my ideal world that plot point was never erased. anyway - they still could've kept that cool, cruel intelligence in him a little more.

to their credit, KH3 does kinda backpedal and restore some of his KH1 personality - as previously stated, Epcar cranks back his performance, and they even allow ansem to dabble in science again with his discussion on subject x (wow!) it's not perfect, he still gets pigeonholed into Guy Yelling About Darkness for half his scenes, but it was at least nice to see him with his original personality peeking through before he got banished into the void.

idk how to end this. ansem slaps if you're kh1pilled as much as i am. he should've been the one and only ansem. mad king truther over here.

#and i really really miss billy zane #that man gave such a haunting performance. miss billy zanesem every day.