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bluewhale52 · 3 years

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The History of Us - Ch. 16

Synopsis: You have built your career and you have 2 rising hip hop superstars as your besties. Life is pretty good, until one drunken night that derails your life plan. How would you survive?

Pairing: ?? x OC , main characters are mostly Namjoon, Yoongi and Tae, but all 7 are present now

Fic type: social media au + text

Genre: Strangers to Lovers!AU, fluff, angst.

Rated: R

Warning: swearing, talk about sex and unplanned pregnancy

Disclaimer: photos are not mine, and of course characterization and scenarios of the boys are purely of my imagination

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Ch. 16 - 3some

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10 March, 20:15

You and Taehyung sit nervously across from Seokjin. He still has not said anything since you broke the news that you are in fact, carrying Kim Seokjin’s baby, and not Kim Taehyung’s. There are probably a million questions that will need to be answered, but Seokjin has not shown any indication that he has processed the jawdropping news.

“Maybe you should wait in the bedroom,” you whisper to Taehyung. At the raise of his eyebrows, you pat his cheek lovingly. “It’s OK, Tae. It might be easier for him to talk to me alone.”

Your heart aches with the way Taehyung looks at you. A flash of jealousy, possessiveness then understanding, one quickly replaces another. He kisses the top of your head and gently rubs your belly, before excusing himself and heading to your bedroom. Watching him leave, you immediately blush at the memories of what you did last night and this morning.

You and Taehyung had not talked in a month, since you told him about the identity of your baby’s father. All the frustration and anger finally boiled over last night at Yoongi’s birthday dinner. Annoyed at Taehyung’s cold demeanour towards you, you openly started flirting with Seokjin all night, which resulted in you and Taehyung shouting at each other across the table.

When a particular barb Taehyung threw at you finally broke the dam of tears you had been holding back, Namjoon dragged you out of the restaurant and held you as your cried into his chest. Minutes later, however, Taehyung came out to pull you from Namjoon’s arm, flagged a taxi down, and you both ended up going back to your place together.

The taxi ride was quiet, but once you both entered your apartment, you were anything but. Lips smacking, skin slapping, pants and moans filled your living room then your bedroom. And it was at your fourth orgasm of the night, when you screamed his name over and over again, that he claimed you as his, and you gladly accepted it.

This morning was no different, instead of talking, the two of you were going at it again, and you both apologised, cried and promised to be honest and to communicate better, all said between orgasms. Spent, a decision was then made that Kim Seokjin needed to know- that the baby growing in your belly is his. Which led you to inviting him to your place for dinner, to break the news.

You turn to the man in front of you, wondering how long more you need to wait before Seokjin is able to say anything at all.

“Seokjin,” you reach out and rub his knee, “are you OK?”

He blinks at your touch, and clears his throat. “Uh, let me just get the facts straight.”

You nod, silently encouraging him to talk. In the short amount of time you have known him, you realise he has a habit of talking his thoughts out loud.

“So, we met that night, at the Halloween party, then we came here, and you know, and somehow our protection was faulty..” his hands are flapping and you nod at him, “and you’re pregnant.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And i was the one night stand guy whose identity you didn’t know, until the whole partnership thing with Namjoon and Yoongi.” You nod again.

“But you told me last week that Taehyung was the father.”

You shrug your shoulders a little. “Well you caught me off guard, I panicked and just said the first name that came to mind.”

This time it is Seokjin who nods. then he chuckles, “You know I thought you were going to offer me a proposition, like for a threesome.”

You choke on your own saliva at his blunt confession. “Excuse me?”

Seokjin laughs loudly, his shoulders shaking. “Turns out I’m going to be a father.”

You stare at him wondering how his mind could go from ten to 200kph in an instant. “Yeah well, no threesome. I think we have enough spice in our lives as it is now.”

You wait till Seokjin stops laughing, and when he buries his face in his hands, you start to worry. He must be going through a hell of a rollercoaster of emotions right now.

“So... what now?” he finally looks up at you and asks.

“I don’t know, really,” you helplessly answer, “Tae and I agreed to tell you because all eight of us will be working closely. And not only that, you’re becoming friends with Joon and Yoongi too. And then Hoseok and Tae seem to be forming this bond over fashion, I just didn’t want to ruin any of these relationships you guys are building.”

You take a deep breath. “I didn’t want to tell you, but Tae insisted that you need to know,” you confess reluctantly.

“I see.”

Seokjin and you awkwardly stare at each other. Something seems to hold him back from saying anything, so you continue talking.

“I don’t want your money. I swear, this is not why I told you about the baby. Before Tae was even in the picture, I was ready to have this baby and raise them on my own. My relationship with Tae just happened, and I’m grateful for it. And he was planning to move in here so he can help, you know he loves children, and I know he’d be an amazing fath- I mean, he’s amazing with kids...”

You stop talking when you see Seokjin tilts his head at your almost referring Tae as the baby’s father.

“So it’s like a parenting threesome.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “What?”

“You know, two dads, one mom. Is that what’s going on here?”

You sputter, lost for an answer, and Seokjin feels agitated by your lack of response.

“Are you expecting me not to be involved? Do you want me not to be involved?” he asks, voice firmer now.

Your heart is beating faster. “I’m not... it’s up to you Seokjin, I-”

“Jin.” he says firmly, interrupting you. “You’re carrying my baby so call me Jin.”

You swallow, getting nervous now. “Jin,” you repeat his name, “it’s up to you. It’s your choice how much you want to be involved. I’m not expecting anything from y-”

Jin abruptly stands up, startling you. “Well I’m telling you now I’m not expecting to be a third wheel in this, it’s my child!”

He runs his fingers through his head in annoyance. “You can’t just tell me and expect me not to be involved.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” you speak gently, trying to ease down the tension. “I’m just saying it’s entirely up to you. If you want to be involved, that’s great. If you don’t, that’s fine too. I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

“Because you have that knight in shining armour, right?” he gestures towards your bedroom. You groan inwardly, praying Taehyung is not eavesdropping. You stand up and grab Jin’s arms and direct him back to his seat.

“What do you want then, Jin?” you ask, forcing your voice to stay calm.

“I want to be involved, and I want the baby to call me dad. The baby can call Taehyung whatever you guys want, but the baby will call me dad.”

“OK, that’s absolutely fine.”

“And I will pay for the baby.” He shushes you as you shake your head. “50% of the baby is me, so whatever medical costs of this pregnancy, and when you give birth, and whatever the baby needs later in life, I’m also responsible for it.”

“OK, if that’s what you want.”

“If you don’t mind, I will start a fund for the baby. For financial security. My parents did it for me, and I want to do it for my child too.” Jin continues, “there’ll be paperwork involved, to ensure the money goes to the child and the child alone.”

You nod, it makes sense. He has money and he wants to ensure his child’s well being. As an expectant mother you feel somewhat relieved, and as a CPA, you know it’s the right arrangement if one can afford it. “OK, that’s a good plan and I’m really grateful for it. But Jin, do you want people to know you’re the father?”

Jin stares at you blankly. You have thought about this question long and hard. You are fine admitting your child is fatherless, or when an answer is needed and you can’t circle around it, you know Taehyung is ready to step in. Your inner circle knows who the real father is, and that’s all that matters.

But if Jin wants to be openly involved with the child, it would be his reputation on the line. He is too much of a public figure now- the whole situation will definitely be seen as a scandal, tainting his name and very likely will cost you your job too.

Jin seems to understand the dilemma. “If your firm finds out...”

“... I’ll probably lose my job.” You finish his train of thought.

“So we’ll be discreet. We’ll just tell those who need to know. Wait, does everyone in Bulletproof know I’m the father?”

“Just the guys, and you know we can trust them completely.” You assure him, and yourself.

Jin nods. “So your job should be safe then. As long as no one from outside finds out. Though you know, most first borns tend to look exactly like their fathers. One day people will put two and two together.”

“Well then,” you chuckle, “let’s hope our child is going to be a boring accountant like me, and not famous like you.”

At that Jin smiles at you, a real genuine smile, and you feel hopeful that this strange arrangement- this parenting threesome as Jin puts it- may just work out.

Jin and you both whip your head at the sound of Taehyung clearing his throat. You freeze, wondering when Taehyung came out of your bedroom, and how much has he heard? Then you realise you are sitting very close to Jin, and you start to worry if Taehyung misreads it. The fight you had is still fresh in your mind and heart.

“Sorry to disturb you, and to burst your happiness bubble,” Taehyung walks closer to you and Jin, “but you need to see this.”

Taehyung holds out his phone, and Jin and you quickly read what is on the screen. Jin groans, and you grab the phone from Taehyung’s hand, reading the screen over and over again. Taehyung bites his lower lip nervously.

And then you let out a blood curling scream.

“WHAT THE FUCK?”

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yeonchi · 3 years

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Doctor Who 2021 New Year’s Special Review: Revolution of the Daleks

Air date: 1 January 2021

New Year’s Day is the new Christmas Day for Doctor Who. Two years ago, I was writing the review for the 2019 New Year’s Special, Resolution. One year ago, I was writing the review for the first episode of Series 12, Spyfall Part One (which essentially served as the 2020 New Year’s Special). Today, I'm writing this review for the 2021 New Year’s Special. Whether the change was because of political correctness, low ratings or just to change up the status quo, I think we should be glad that we even have a festive special, unlike the English dubs on Koei Tecmo’s Warriors games.

Amazingly, this special was filmed alongside Series 12 last year and kept on hold to today, meaning that production was largely unaffected by the coronavirus. Even with the anticipation and uncertainty for Series 13, which has already been reduced to eight episodes (with festive special status unknown), this episode serves as a good icebreaker given everything that’s happened in 2020 and the Timeless Child arc of Series 12.

Here is my spoiler-free thought for this episode: “It’s epic, heartbreaking and ridiculous at the same time.”

Spoilers continue after the break. Also, please don’t forget to check out my look at Doctor Who: Lockdown and the hiatusbreaker update for some post-Series 12 review thoughts.

Introduction

Chibnall mentioned that the recon scout Dalek from Resolution give birth to the new Dalek variant that was seen in this episode, thus making this episode a sequel to said episode. As such, this was the case.

367 minutes (about 6 hours) after the Doctor and her extended fam fought the recon scout Dalek at GCHQ, its shell was recovered. Jo Patterson, then Technology Secretary, tipped Jack Robertson (he will be referred to by his surname hereafter to differentiate him from Jack Harkness) off about it and managed to acquire it. After acquiring the plants of car firms that had abandoned Patterson and Rugazzi Technologies, Leo’s company, Robertson had defence drones developed (and 3D printed) based on the design of the Dalek’s shell.

The production of this episode was concluded by April 2020, with Chibnall stating that post-production work was continuing during the lockdown. This was before the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, meaning that the scene showing the testing of the defence drones was likely inspired from the Hong Kong protests. We see people throwing bricks and molotov cocktails, and the Dalek is shown to be fitted with a water cannon, CS gas sprayer and a sonic deterrent. That’s about all the allusion we get - if we had any more then we would have had a serious problem.

Doctor and companions separated

At the end of The Timeless Children, the Doctor was sentenced to life imprisonment in a maximum-security prison, while Graham, Ryan and Yaz were brought back to Earth along with Ravio, Yedlarmi and Ethan. We don’t get to see those three in the episode, sadly.

Over the next ten months, Graham and Ryan had moved on with their lives while Yaz became obsessed with finding the Doctor (yeah, just forget that you have a family and a job as a policewoman lol). Graham shows Yaz some leaked footage of Robertson at the defence drone testing. They go to confront Robertson, but are turned away by his security guards.

Meanwhile, the Doctor had been in prison for decades, accompanied by a Weeping Angel, an Ood, a Sycorax, a Silent and even a Pting. Unbeknownst to her, Captain Jack Harkness had managed to get into the same prison as her, spending 19 years just to get the cell next to her, before making himself known and breaking out of the prison together. The Doctor and Jack head to Graham’s house, where they catch up and set out to find Jack Robertson.

There are a couple of one-to-one scenes that really got me thinking. When Jack and Yaz investigate traces of Dalek DNA in Osaka, they talk about their separation from the Doctor and what their time with the Doctor has changed them into. Jack tells Yaz, “Being with the Doctor, you don’t get to choose when it stops. Whether you leave her, or she leaves you.”

Let’s break that line down with information from the TARDIS Wiki page on companions. There are several ways that a companion can join the Doctor - they stow away on the TARDIS, they were “kidnapped”, or were assigned by higher powers, like UNIT, the Time Lords or the White Guardian. Just like that, there are several ways that companions leave the Doctor - they might choose to leave, the Doctor decides or is forced to leave them behind, or they die.

The interesting thing is that Jack says that they don’t get to choose when they leave. In the case of companions who decided to leave of their own will, you might think it was an easy decision for them, but in truth, there is context behind their motivation to leave. In Series 2, Mickey Smith stayed on Pete’s World to help defeat the Cybermen after that world’s counterpart of himself (Ricky) died and he became increasingly disillusioned with Rose favouring the Doctor over himself. In Series 3, Martha Jones decided to leave the Doctor after seeing her family enslaved by the Master for a year, travelling around the world to get people to think of the Doctor, and realising that her feelings for him would never be reciprocated. In the classic series, Tegan Jovanka left the Fifth Doctor after being sickened by the death and destruction she witnessed. From this, I can deduce that what Jack meant to say isn’t that the companions don’t get to choose when they leave, but that they don’t get to choose the circumstances that lead to them leaving. In some cases, that also applies to the companions who get left behind by the Doctor or killed.

The other one-to-one is between Ryan and the Doctor in the TARDIS. The Doctor apologises to Ryan for leaving him, Graham and Yaz behind for ten months and Ryan tells him that during this time his relationship with his father has improved and that he got to catch up with friends. Ryan asks the Doctor what has changed with her since they last met and the Doctor tells her that she isn’t who she thought she was (that storyline’s never going to go away, isn’t it? Hope to learn about the full story of the Timeless Child in Series 13). This scene really highlights how the companions can be a source of support for the Doctor, just as the Doctor is a source of support for them.

Ryan tells the Doctor that she is the same as she has always been. The Doctor comforts herself by saying that nothing’s changed, but Ryan says that it wasn’t what he meant; things change all the time and we might be scared of the new, but in the end, we have to confront the new, or the old. This bit was definitely made with the Timeless Child twist in mind. Yes, things change (particularly when it comes to Doctor Who), but some changes can be good or bad; just as there are people who saw the Timeless Child twist as good, there are people who saw it as bad (including myself). It’s like what I said in the hiatusbreaker update about The Timeless Children pulling an Ultraman Orb and trying to lessen the impact of the twist when it didn’t make sense and caused more damage than expected.

Human-created Daleks (sort of)

When the recon Dalek’s shell was salvaged, some traces of its DNA remained in it. Since, according to Missy in The Witch’s Familiar, every cell of a Dalek is genetically hardwired to survive, their consciousness can live within the tiniest fragment of their DNA. Leo managed to clone the recon scout Dalek out of those traces and hooked it into the neural network. Disgusted after being shown the creature, Robertson tells Leo to incinerate it, but when he tries to do so, it escapes and takes possession of him. In a way, the recon scout Dalek was resurrected in this episode, but it didn’t feel like the same character.

While hooked into the neural network, the Dalek managed to make more clones of itself using Robertson’s resources, feeding them with the liquefied remains of the people who worked on them. After being confronted by the Doctor and the others, the Dalek uses the UV light to activate the Daleks, transport themselves into the shells that it augmented, then kills Rob and begins subjugating Earth.

Just as Jo Patterson introduces the defence drones in her first speech as Prime Minister, she gets exterminated by them quickly after they are activated. If Jack Robertson is an expy of Donald Trump, then Jo Patterson is an expy of Theresa May - a forgettable Prime Minister whose claim to fame (defence drones for the former, Brexit for the latter) backfired on them. To be honest, when I heard that they would be in this special, I almost thought that they got married or something.

There was a similar situation like this in the Series 3 two-parter, Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks, only this time, the Daleks were more involved. In that story, the Cult of Skaro were attempting to find a way to survive beyond the Dalek shell, to the point of creating Dalek-human hybrids, a new race with the intelligence of Daleks but with the emotions of humans. In both cases, the new Dalek variants were considered impure due to the human elements within them.

I’ve compared this episode to Victory of the Daleks when the trailer came out. With the addition of the conflict between the two Daleks (as I will outline below), there are additional contrasts to the Seventh Doctor story Remembrance of the Daleks and the Big Finish Eighth Doctor audio story Blood of the Daleks.

The nuclear option

With thousands of defence drone Daleks on the move and no weapons to deal with them, the Doctor seems to do the only thing she can think of that doesn’t involve destroying the Earth ala the Moment (which was what I was thinking) - signal a ship of Death Squad Daleks (SAS Daleks, but more brutal) to Earth to deal with the impure defence drones.

The two groups of Daleks confront each other on a bridge (specifically the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol). After seeing his Daleks get exterminated, Robertson takes his nuclear option - part with the Doctor and side with the Daleks. That’s right, Jack Robertson does an Utsumi (Nariaki Utsumi from Build, if you didn’t know) and sides with a race that would kill him the first chance they got. Give him a cane to break and we would have gotten the first tokusatsu meme in Doctor Who.

For someone who seems to be so obsessed with protecting himself (normally by using other people), I must say that this was a strange step for Robertson to take. Given that Robertson is an expy of Trump, one can only wonder what Chibnall and people like him think of Trump. Would Trump sell himself or humanity out to invading aliens? Personally, I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to do so. I think he’d bomb them with everything he has.

Robertson convinces the Daleks to take them aboard their ship and meet their commander. Meanwhile, Jack, Graham and Ryan board the ship and plant explosives on it. Graham tries to get Ryan to fistbump him, but he just tells him to “stop talking weird”. We’re back, fellow kids. Missed us?

Robertson tells the Daleks that the Doctor summoned them. The original Dalek returns and offers to be purified, only to be exterminated. Graham, Ryan and Jack find Robertson and they get off the ship together just as it is destroyed.

The Doctor floats her TARDIS in the sky among the Daleks and lures them inside, which would normally be an impossible feat if it weren’t for the fact that it isn’t actually the Doctor’s TARDIS, but the other TARDIS from earlier. She sets it to fold in on itself and send itself to the heart of the Void, thereby destroying them.

Soon after that, Robertson claims that he was acting as a decoy and so, he is lauded as the saviour of humanity. A honorary knighthood and a revived presidential run is mentioned after the toxic waste scandal (Arachnids in the UK) ruined his previous attempt. This is where my comparison to Utsumi weakens - Utsumi pledged himself to Evolto so that he could find a way to bring him down, but there doesn’t seem to be any ulterior motive in Robertson’s actions. Frankly, I’m surprised that he wasn’t exterminated at all.

Parting ways (for now)

By the time Graham and Ryan return to the TARDIS, Jack has left and is on his way to see Gwen Cooper, who has apparently had another child, a son. Honestly, his departure feels quite lackluster.

The Doctor offers to take the fam to a restaurant apparently named the Meringue Galaxy, but Ryan decides to leave the Doctor since he believes that his friends and planet need him. Graham struggles to decide, but in the end, he decides to leave with Ryan, leaving the Doctor and Yaz on the TARDIS. The Doctor gives them some psychic paper as a parting gift.

The final scene is a throwback to the beginning of The Woman Who Fell to Earth. Graham is helping Ryan ride his bike when they bring up some strange incidents around the world, like a troll invasion in Finland or gravel creatures in Korea. Ryan begins riding his bike one more time when they see Grace looking back at them in the distance. This is the last episode where Ryan’s dyspraxia is explored. Shame Chibnall never managed to do a lot with it.

We’ve known that Graham and Ryan would be leaving the series for months now, and we’ve also known that there would be opportunities for them to return. Let’s hope we see them again in Series 13.

Going back to my discussion about companions leaving, the major factor in Ryan and Graham’s decision to leave was that they had spent ten months away from the Doctor and unlike Yaz, they had already moved on with their lives. Additionally, for Graham, he doesn’t want to leave Ryan given the relationship they built up during their time with Doctor and possibly also for fear of abandoning Ryan, given how his father wasn’t there for him previously. This doesn’t feel as deep compared to other companions’ motives for leaving the Doctor, but it’s still quite deep.

At the end of Can You Hear Me?, we see Ryan talking to Yaz about spending their lives with the Doctor and forgetting everyone back home. I’d always thought that the human element of being a companion was annoying, but we have to remember that companions are people too and they had their own lives before they met the Doctor.

Other general thoughts

I know this is kind of irrelevant given that this episode was produced at the end of 2019, but could Leo be considered an Uncle Tom for inventing something designed to suppress protesters? By the way, don’t let China know about this or we’re all screwed, even in Hong Kong or Taiwan.

Jack gets a gold star for rescuing the Doctor. That puts Jack and Graham at 10 points and Yaz and Ryan at 20.

Jack also has his sonic blaster back as well. Will Jack also be back for Series 13? We’ll just have to see it to believe it.

The title cards are jarring again. Can the production team not be inconsistent with their fonts?

I swear, all the Yaz favouritism in the last two series must have given her Stockholm syndrome. Who’s to say that Mandip Gill wanted to leave, but Chibnall asked her to stay?

Taking a look at the designs for the Daleks, the defence drones are alright. They glow a bluish-white colour normally, but they glow red and shoot red beams when the Dalek creatures took control of them. You could probably mistake them for being red in the dark, which is highlighted when they are shown shooting people in the streets. As for the Death Squad Daleks, they’re basically just the basic bronze Daleks, including their leader. They should’ve brought back the multicoloured New Paradigm Daleks just so the Death Squad Daleks could be differentiated from ordinary Daleks.

Following the premiere of this episode, a new companion was announced for Series 13, with John Bishop playing the role of Dan. Honestly, with the Timeless Child mystery still looming and the lack of character development for Yaz, a new companion is the last thing this series needs, particularly since Series 13 would be Jodie Whittaker’s third series and possibly, her final one (if we’re going by previous Doctors). At the moment, Bishop is currently isolating after being tested positive for the coronavirus. I wish him well and look forward to seeing him in Series 13.

The reduced number of episodes in Series 11 or 12 may have contributed to the lack of focus on Ryan’s dyspraxia or character development on Yaz, but that’s no excuse. Chibnall had plenty of opportunities to factor them in, but he was too focused on not having a story arc in Series 11 and destroying canon in Series 12 to even think about it (Graham and Ryan got more character development in those two series than Yaz did). Now that Series 13 has been reduced to eight episodes (not counting the possibility of a split series or another New Year’s Special out of the eight), I fear that Chibnall won’t have enough opportunity to factor in Dan’s character development with Yaz’s character development, the Timeless Child, Ruth and/or the Master, particularly when he delegates half of the series to other writers and does very few good things in the remaining episodes he writes (or co-writes). Honestly, Series 11 and 12 felt like a waste of time in some aspects.

Summary and verdict

Like I said at the start, this episode acted as a good icebreaker in the long break between series. However, ever since my red-pilling in The Timeless Children, I’ve started to see this series in a new light, particularly with the help of YouTubers like Bowlestrek or Nerdrotic. Despite this, I’m reluctant to hop on the #RIPDoctorWho bandwagon because we still don’t have the full details for the Timeless Child arc, so I’m reserving most of my judgement until we get it.

Most of the episode was good, but the ridiculous part for me was when Robertson Utsumi’d himself and somehow managed to survive. Jack’s departure felt lackluster, Ryan and Graham’s departure felt lackluster to other companions’ departures and Jo Patterson was just... ehh. Let’s not forget that we didn’t see or hear a mention of the surviving humans from the previous episode because Chibnall just forgot about them.

Rating: 6/10 Series 12 total: 77/100 (77%) Series 12 total with Revolution of the Daleks: 83/110 (75%)

Overall, this special brought down my total score for Series 12, but it still did slightly better compared to Series 11. If it weren’t for Jack Harkness, my score for the episode would have been lower. Robertson, being a Trump expy, essentially represented all the SJW red flags in this episode; pointing them out is unnecessary at this point given my red-pilling.

That’s it for my review of the New Year’s Special. There is a certainty that Series 13 will premiere this year, so the next time I return with another review will presumably be in late 2021. As long as Jodie Whittaker is the Doctor, my mission to review her episodes will continue. Follow me on Facebook and/or Tumblr and keep an eye out for my future posts, Doctor Who-related or otherwise, such as the Kisekae Insights series where I give insights on my personal project, which was heavily influenced by Doctor Who.

Stay safe and I’ll see you then.

#doctor who #doctor who series 12 #thirteenth doctor #doctor who series 12 review #thirteenth doctor review

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mtvswatches · 5 years

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Wynonna Earp 2x06 Whiskey Lullaby

Spoilers disclaimer (please read before sending messages or writing comments.)

Click here for previous recaps!

Stray thoughts

1) “Don’t talk about my partner’s ass” Hearing Doc say those words in regards to Dolls gave me so much joy!

2) So, Black Badge indeed no longer exists, at least not in the same shape and form as we knew it. They’ve cut Dolls, Purgatory and the Earps loose and they are now left to their own devices. If they’re not a government agency, then what are they? Who else would be interested in fighting the supernatural institutionally? Anyway, the dude told them that when Doc freed Dolls, other things escaped, too.

3) Who or what are these women? Are they widows? Is that why they dress in black?

4) So Wynonna is pregnant. And she’s also in denial mode. I get it, I mean this was definitely not part of the plan. I mean, she really doesn’t have a plan per se, but you know what I mean. She’s refusing to deal with this right now, but who are we kidding? That’s not something that you can really postpone dealing with. You have to make a decision either way. Also, is Doc the father? I’m trying to remember if she slept with anyone else after that, but I think she didn’t? Or is this like a supernatural pregnancy? And what about the goo? Did the goo affect the baby? Is Wynonna going to have the baby? And if she does, will it be an actual baby or are they going to turn it into a Connor? So many questions! I am really interested in seeing where this show is headed with this storyline…

5) To distract herself, Wynonna goes begging Nicole for a case, but there seems to be no supernatural activity lately. Well, except for…

6) So, there are rings and they’re talking about wives and husbands, so they must be widows, but whose widows are they? They’re looking for the location of a seal, and they mention Bobo and the Stone witch, none of whom are available. And when they mention Juan Carlos, they mention that they’re not strong enough to face him. Huh.

7) Hypnos? And the Creepster is asking for more time for the Widows (yes, they are widows, I got it right!) Does this mean this Hypnos guy will hypnotize everyone in Purgatory? Will he turn back time? Make time go slower? He’s doing something alright…

DOLLS: We are free agents. Free to make our own rules and to pursue our own objectives. DOC: Welcome to the club. I've been here a while. I'll show you what areas are off limits. DOLLS: Well, that's my point. There are no areas that are off limits anymore. ME:

Seriously, though, last time we saw them they were getting along just fine, so what happened between then and now?

9) So, this is what was happening…

DOLLS: Hey, Wynonna. You wanna grab coffee with me? There's something I wanna discuss with you that's personal. WYNNONA: Yeah, sure.

Does this mean that Dolls and Wynonna will be a thing? I truly can’t accept that Doc/Wynonna are over? How? They were even barely started!

10) Okay, Waverly just suggested Doc is the baby’s father… This can’t be the end of Wynonna and Doc. I’ll Calcutta bitch!

Even though I agree with Wynonna in that it is her situation and it is up to her who to tell and when, Waverly does make a great point that it’s not fair to either Dolls or Doc not to let them know about her “situation.” I’m guessing Wynonna is going to handle it in true Wynonna fashion and it’s gonna be messy.

11) Oh, Nicole and Waverly are so beautiful and hot together?

And I’m super glad they addressed this because it was kind of tormenting me not knowing whether Waverly was really Waverly when they were together while they were possessed…

NICOLE: You taste like my Waverly again. WAVERLY: What's wrong? NICOLE: I was just thinking how much of the other times were you, you? You know, because you said things, and we did things, and I don't know what was real. WAVERLY: No. It was all real. Okay? It was all me. NICOLE: How can you be sure? WAVERLY: Because I don't remember much about when it was in control. But I remember every second I was with you. Each touch. Every kiss.

12) I guess Hypno dude just put them all to sleep?

And the timing couldn’t have been more perfect for Wynonna, she was really dreading the “personal” conversation with Dolls. But why? Is it because she doesn’t see him in that way? Or is it because she truly does and it scares the shit out of her? I’m guessing it’s the latter, but I don’t want it to be. I have nothing against Dolls, but I love Wynonna and Doc!

13) I guess the Widows did get some time. A few months, actually…

Damn, this means the choice to be pregnant or stop the pregnancy was taken away from her.

How did people survive, though? I mean, Wynonna was covered in dust, and all the food is rotten, which means that time literally went by, it’s not that they just fastforwarded…

Also, damn, their breath must be AWFUL!

14) They need to take drugs to keep themselves awake, but Wynonna obviously can’t take any… and Dolls is making heart eyes at her, and I just realized he still hasn’t seen her baby bump…

15) “The whole town has been asleep for weeks.” Okay, exactly how many weeks? I need to know! So they kept up the whole town asleep this long by threatening with hurting Poppy, who is… Hypnos’ daughter? Lover? I have no idea. But now that Wynonna is awake he can’t make her and the gang fall back asleep… She’s too strong. Damn straight she is!

16) And if people stay asleep too long, they’ll never wake up. Cool. Cool cool cool. Waverly’d better fucking hurry up and wake up Doc yesterday!

17) What are these bitches doing to Wynonna? They’d better not hurt the baby!

18) And this is how Doc fell asleep…

19) Jeremy just woke up and went straight to business. The second seal is apparently in Shorty’s, so they’d been sitting on it this whole time. The problem is that the Widows stole all their plans and research and probably know this already.

20) And Dolls just realized Wynonna is preggers…

I’m guessing now the million-dollar question will be asked – who’s the father? Wynonna insists that nothing has changed and that she can still kick some evil ass, but… that’s probably the last thing in Doll’s mind right now?

21) And this is everything I didn’t know I needed in my life?

A pregnant lady kicking ass? HELL YES!

22) Okay, Poppy is Hypno’s daughter, and the Creepster has obviously taken her to rape her, so Hypno agreed to help Wynonna if she makes sure his daughter is safe, which I think it’s something Wynonna could relate to.

23) The Widows just fucking froze Waverly and Doc? Are they going to eat them up?

24) Bless Nicole, she’s been tracking the Creepster’s phone because she knew he was gross and evil. Bless Wynonna for her reaction, too.

25) Well…

Then he says she’s amazing and tries to save face or a bit of his ego by saying she’s an amazing agent, yeah, right.

26) Please let Jeremy save the day. Pleasepleaseplease.

27) He so didn’t.

28) Oh my God, the fucking Creepster is asking Poppy to role-play as Waverly before he rapes her? PLEASE SOMEONE MURDER HIM!

29) Ugh, Nicole, why would you shoot him in the shoulder and let him run away? Straight between the eyes! And what the fuck else did he do that will get him killed? Worse than what he’s already done?

30) The Widows managed to break the seal, but there’s a third one…

31) And this is how Wynonna told Doc about the baby…?

He’s all teary-eyed, omg, is he happy? Sad? I guess there will be one relationship in his life with strings after all, and I’m not talking about Wynonna. But damn, he didn’t handle the news well, he just walked away and didn’t say anything…

32) So… no time has really passed except for the baby… How convenient for the plot...

33) Damn, Dolls just shot Hypno in cold-blood and forced Wynonna to off him. He’s truly butthurt about the baby, isn’t he?

34) Doc wrote a note for Wynonna. And Jeremy knew Wynonna was pregnant all along hahaha!

35) Clootie?

Oh. This is what he did. He killed Clootie.

36) Damn, this whole scene…

WYNONNA: Am I a screw-up? Yeah. I've also been on two types of birth control since I was 13 years old. But the universe doesn't give a damn. It's never given me a choice, it's never… not whether I wanted to be the Heir or a m… a mother. WAVERLY: I know you're overwhelmed, okay? But not everything is because you're an Earp. WYNONNA: Yeah, it is. It always comes back to the curse, Wave, always. I really, I… I can't do this. WAVERLY: Hey. WYNONNA: No. WAVERLY: Hey. WYNONNA: This poor asshole! WAVERLY: Hey I'm not saying it's gonna be okay. But I'm just saying I'm here.

I’m just, wow. There are so many things that I love about this scene and this plot and what it means for Wynonna. First of all, I’m so glad it’s not a supernatural pregnancy and that it wasn’t the result of rape – magical or otherwise. It’s the result of consensual sex, which is sadly unprecedent in supernatural shows. Think about that for a minute.

There’s the question of choice, too. Wynonna didn’t choose to get pregnant nor did she choose to remain so. I doubt she would’ve ended the pregnancy, but the fact remains, she was deprived of that choice. It’s easier to understand her initial denial and reluctance to discuss the pregnancy in light of this final scene. It’s sad but I think it has to do with the fact she doesn’t think she’s fit to be a mother. Wynonna handles herself with a lot of bravado and self-confidence, but most of the time, it feels as though she’s trying the old “fake it till you make it” strategy. She’s deeply insecure and she thinks very low of herself. On top of that, she’ll be bringing a child into this supernatural mayhem that it’s her life. She’s fully aware she’ll be putting a burden on her child, In a way, she fears she’ll be doing to that child the same thing that has been done so many times to her – depriving them of choice.

I’m just very intrigued as to how they’re going to deal with this pregnancy, and I can’t help but wonder again – will there even be a baby or are we facing a Connor situation? There has already been one time-jump, so it’s possible there’s another one…

37) Aw, Doc, this is why I love you…

He’s all fucking in!

38) Hope you enjoyed my recap, and, as usual, if you’ve got this far, thank you for reading! If you enjoy my recaps and my blog, please consider supporting it on ko-fi.Thanks!

#Wynonna Earp #Waverly Earp #Wynonna Earp 2x06 #Doc Holliday #Xavier Dolls #WE recap #WE 2x06 #mine

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misbhaves · 5 years

Photo

A K I: “MEGITSUNE.”

"SOME GIRLS ARE FULL OF [HEARTACHE] AND POETRY AND THOSE ARE THE KIND OF GIRLS WHO TRY TO SAVE WOLVES INSTEAD OF RUNNING FROM THEM."

FULL NAME: YOSHIKAWA AKI

MEANING: CLEAR, CRYSTAL

ALIAS: MEGITSUNE.

AGE: 18.

DOB: 04/04/2001

RELIGION: NONE

GENDER: CISGENDER FEMALE

PRONOUNS: SHE/HER

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: PANSEXUAL

HEIGHT: 4′10″

PLACE OF BIRTH: TOKYO, JAPAN

CRIMINAL RECORD: NONE

PERSONALITY TYPE: INFP-A

MORAL ALIGNMENT: CHAOTIC GOOD

NATIONALITY: JAPANESE

ETHNICITY: JAPANESE

+ DAUNTLESS, + TRUE-BLUE, + SINCERE

- HYPERSENSITIVE, - PETULANT, - NAÏVE

there are parts she still remembers. the sound of her mother’s laughter, the kindness of her smile, the way her eyes formed crescents whenever she saw her. the way the light hit her face as it poured through the kitchen window, the smell of breakfast hanging heavy in the air while she ran dishes underneath the steady stream of water. her mother: one of many misplaced memories. sometimes she wonders if she remembers anything at all - or if her reality is altogether pieced together by her father’s understanding of the way her life was. it was a troublesome thought, really, considering her father had only been in her life for the past year.

and maybe that’s why her powers don’t cooperate with her, no matter how hard she tries to master them. can she truly understand her powers if she doesn’t know who she is?

before.

+ aki was born to a single-parent household in tokyo, japan.

+ her mother was nineteen when she gave birth to her and had never gone to college. she was scouted right after high school to become a j-idol, but was promptly dropped by her label after becoming pregnant with an unknown man’s child. the scandal being too much to bear the brunt off alone, she fell off the map and changed her name so she could raise her daughter quietly alone.

+ aki’s mother is actually from nara prefecture in japan and moved to tokyo to become a famous singer. she didn’t want to go back to nara city after everything that happened, though, her family actually take care of the shine in nara and are deeply religious people.

+ though aki realised very early on that people didn’t look too kindly on the circumstances of her birth, she always kept a brave face in front of her mother because she didn’t want to make her think she wasn’t proud of her.

+ in school though, children were not the nicest to say the least. she was often called the mistress’s daughter, a bastard child, etc. she spent her adolescence fluctuating between total anonymity and scorn.

+ one girl stood out amongst the rest - and maybe this is because aki was admittedly rather envious of her. she was tall, had the body she wanted, the confidence she wanted, etc. aki would have liked for them to be friends at least. + unfortunately this girl was to become her chief tormentor. it got to the point where she couldn’t stomach going to school and would actually fake or cause illness so as to ditch school. + her mother started to notice this after a while and - especially as her grades started slipping (from A’s....to...B’s....) and demanded to know what was going on. + when aki confessed what had been going on, her mother immediately decided 2 go talk to the school and the girl’s parents.

+ the girl, shock and horror, started to cry and said she feels that she was misunderstood by aki and that this is just her way of playing. her parents are a Big Deal™ so in the end AKI ended up being asked to apologise and when she wouldn’t, her mother apologised and even got on her knees (a big deal).

+ this enraged aki because she had always wanted her mum to keep her head held up high and not bow down just bc someone more socially advantaged said to, so the next day she decided to take it into her own hands. she knew she couldn’t carry on living like a victim though. no matter what.

TW: HEIGHTS, SUICIDE, SUICIDAL IDEATION, INJURY

+ the next day, she left a note for that girl to meet her up on the school rooftop. though she’d asked to meet right after school, the girl kept her waiting for an hour before showing up and this made her even more miserable.

+ all the way fired up and shaking aki started telling her off for the way she treats her and how she makes her want to die.

+ jokingly and with the giant cojones of a 16 year old girl with no idea how much weight words hold, the girl simply tells her it’s not her responsibility if aki is weak and wants to die. + aki, in turn, gives this wet little laugh and wipes her face. “you’re right. it’s not.” + and with that she stepped up onto the roof and forward into the air. + what happens next is something of a mystery to all parties involved. the girl would later claim that aki pulled her down with her, but all of aki’s blurry recollections indicate that she had been trying to grab hold of her when she fell off two. + either way, and to everyone’s relief, they both survived - but at a price. + for aki, the price was six months in a coma, nearly a full year of physical therapy and three broken ribs, but that wasn’t the worst of it. this was: her memories. + for her schoolmate, whose body had partly broken aki’s fall when she grabbed her hand and fell off as well, was now paraplegic. aki was told, when she woke up, that her mother had to pay for her medical fees - something she isn’t sure how she managed considering their financial situation.

+ either way, when she woke up, it was to a world without her mother. + there were whisperings amongst the nurses that her mother had abandoned her, that she could no longer take care of such a problematic child, nor foot the steep medical bills her hospital stay was racking up. + others even said that she must have killed herself, somewhere, and were it not for the fact she couldn’t move properly when she first woke, that alone would have gotten her out of bed. + in her place was a man she had never seen before, who smiled apologetically for being on the phone and introduced himself as her father as soon as he ended the call. + and that was the end of her former life.

after.

+ her father, she later found out, was a record producer - and that was how he and her mother had met. he was still unmarried, despite his good looks and considerable wealth. + her father’s intentions were not clear at the beginning. he simply said he wanted to take care of her since her mother had up and left. + however, it would later become clear that there were other, more nefarious reasons for his sudden interests in his daughter’s life.* + aki took to streaming shortly after losing her memories as an outlet for her anger and loneliness. she didn’t know what sort of life she had before - had no friends to lean on, no mother all a sudden, and her father didn’t know how to be a parent so she felt very alone. + her personality and confidence totally blossomed during this period but she initially used to stream with a mask on because she had severe insecurities. + when she hit 500K twitch followers she did a face reveal (she’s at 800K now) and she’s only been doing this for a year so yeah - pretty badass. + her dad moved her out to the crystalline city after she got better so she’s been living here during that time. + her personality is pretty soft in general, she’s tenderhearted and very loyal to her friends. she’s just a fun-loving, hyper, quirky person. she’s very empathic so exceedingly mean people are not always her vibe. she is very hypersensitive and can become emotional rather quickly. + she likes video games, music (metal, hardcore, nintendocore, rock), anime lmao, comic books, and is just a generic nerd babe. POWERS Aki’s power is celestial manipulation. Which is basically space/heavenly magic. (Manipulate the divine skies and cosmos.) Specific variants: celestial combat, astronomical object manipulation, divine weather manipulation WEAKNESSES + I couldn’t find a specific weakness online so I’m going to go ahead and say black hole physiology/combat/manipulation/creation. + also being indoors with no access to a sky view+ also cats :/ + she also has emotional weaknesses like she’s not very bold and can easily be intimidated during combat. LIMITATIONS 1- While celestial manipulation allows you to manipulate gravity and ‘fly’, aki can only sometimes* manipulate gravity in order to “fly” (more like hover and badly) / Aki’s powers are underdeveloped so she can’t use them that well yet. 2- Depending on what is being manipulated, it takes a lot of stamina and can even knock Aki out if she isn’t careful. 3- If done improperly, self-injury is possible. 4- Is limited to the area of the sky visible to the user (does not work in rooms without windows / sky view) 5- Distance, mass, precision, etc. depend upon of the knowledge, skill, and strength of the user. * I totally headcanon her father as a supervillain - her father is really into DIAMONDS and money and valuables and I think he uses his powers in order to steal shit, mainly and he’s taking care of Aki so he can manipulate her into helping him get richer basically.

#gloryhqs.intro #new and improved #through the looking glass;aki.

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tonystarktogo · 6 years

Text

Tiny Tony Overlord Part 3

Part I | Part II | Read on AO3

Betaed by the amazing @folklejend. All remaining mistakes are my own. Enjoy!

Chapter 3 Recover

.Minor S.H.I.E.L.D. Unit.

Bix, whose birth certificate states the name Bianca Arlinda White, has had a terrible day so far. Admittedly, the good days have been few and far in between ever since Captain fucking America was rediscovered in the middle of fucking nowhere and successfully defrosted before the right people could get their hands on him. Like Iron Man’s creation hadn’t been bad enough—and really, who could have seen that one coming?

It’s not that Bix has an opinion on their existence one way or another, it’s just that superheroes tend to be, well. Messy. Not to mention that there are only so many high horses and moral bullshit speeches you can listen to before you want to take a nearby machine gun and shut them the heck up yourself.

[continue below the cut]

And then there are those days where they open their damn mouth and take control of your most precious weapon because they apparently eat shameless amounts of luck for breakfast every day. Which is just not fair. Just because Bix doesn’t play with the good guys doesn’t mean fate is allowed to mess up every single mission Bix is in charge of. That just isn’t right!

“Enter,” a voice calls out, and Bix pushes the internal rant aside to be finished at another time in favour of entering the small, clean office.

Walter Brickley is the supervising officer of SHIELD’s local strike teams. He is also meticulously dressed, single, in his early thirties, and filled to the brim with confidence and self-importance. In other words he is perfect.

Bix observes Brickley’s expression closely. The way he takes in the expensive high heels, the form-fitting blouse with the top button undone, the manicured fingers and the skirt an inch shorter than SHIELD’s dress policies allow. Brickley isn’t a pig, thankfully. He doesn’t leer, doesn’t even stare excessively. It might have made the job easier, but there is always a fifty-fifty chance Bix will snap and break someone’s knee, and that never helps. He is interested though, if his dilated pupils are anything to go by.

“How can I help you, Miss?” Brickley asks, the picture of friendly competence.

Years of practice allow Bix to repress the instinctive grimace and paint a honeyed smile on instead.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Agent Brickley.” Bix shakes the man’s hand. “My name is Andrina Flynn. I work directly under Senator Stern. I was hoping the two of us could come to an agreement.”

* * * * *

Bix leaves Agent Brickley’s office twenty-five minutes later, the picture of the calm and collected secretary. The closest bathroom is right around the corner, and it takes Bix all of four minutes to replace the skirt with rugged pants, exchange the heels with black combat boots, and pull the long, wavy locks into a high ponytail. By the time Bix’s cell phone rings, the last traces of deep red lipstick have been wiped away and the face inside the mirror starts to look familiar again.

“Yes?” Bix answers, careful to use a deeper voice.

“Agent White, this is Agent Brickley. There is a minor internal security issue that needs to be taken care of immediately. STRIKE team 2 has been authorised to liquidate a threat towards National security. The details will be sent to your phone momentarily. Get a hold of your people and be ready to go in five.”

Bix smirks. “Copy that, sir.”

It is high time to get rid of a certain bothersome—if currently child-sized—genius and reclaim the organisation’s favourite toy.

“But how did you get Brickley to agree to this?” Archie Denver whispers quietly in the back of the trunk half an hour later. “The guy is squeaky clean like no other!”

“Oh, Archie.” Bix patronisingly pats the man on the head. “You’re thinking too simple again. You’re still operating under the assumption that you need an army of corrupt soldiers to take on the world. But you don’t.”

The unconcealed glee on Bix’s face makes their colleagues, Hydra and otherwise, shift nervously.

Good. They may survive this retrieval mission after all.

“All you need is one corrupt mole amongst a sea of honest fools.”

“Ma’am?” an eager trainee speaks up from the other side of the truck, oblivious to Bix’s reflexive twitch. “The target has been located.”

* * * * *

.Zach’s B&B.

Tony is abruptly reminded why he’s chosen to spend the last couple of hours on the uncomfortable seat when he tries to stand and his knees almost give out under him. The dull ache in the back of his head intensifies as well, causing the world to tilt sideways, and for a long moment, it’s all he can do to remain upright and remember how to breathe.

Through it all, Dead-Eyes stays motionless in the shadiest corner of the room and watches him with a blank face. When Tony is aware enough to notice, he appreciates the man’s silence. Mostly though, he just prays for the piercing pain to disappear.

It doesn’t.

“Pepper,” he whispers, the word so soft he almost chokes on it.

She doesn’t smile at him like she used to, hasn’t smiled at all since they’ve lost Rhodey, but he reads the understanding in her eyes. Traces the affection in her scarred features. She is still here after all, still stands tall and proud, brimming with the same fiery determination that has first brought her to his attention so many years ago.

“Tony.” She takes his hands into hers, the touch warm and familiar. “There is no cure.” Her voice doesn’t break, doesn’t waver and god, she is beautiful like this. “You know that. You’ve done the best you can, you’ve done everything you can.”

“Not everything.” His eyes burn.

“This isn’t your fault, Tony,” she says with unshakeable conviction. “I love you.”

Their kiss tastes of the tears they’ve forgotten how to cry and he can’t let go of her, can’t lose her, not after everything, not ever, but when she asks, he can’t deny her anything.

She walks into one of their facilities the next day with her head held high, one of Tony’s most devastating, amplified Jerichos strapped to her chest. She takes over 300 Others with her.

The last of Tony Stark dies with her.

Tony is kneeling on the ground, palms pressed against the solid floor, desperately trying to anchor himself to the present.

He is in a motel. The images in his head, no matter how vivid, aren’t real. Or, a darker voice in the back of his head whispers mockingly, are they?

Tony swallows. Pepper’s face when she found out about the baby—too late, always too late—flashes before his eyes, a look of hopeless devastation so shattered, it tears him apart even now. He can’t recall the moments that have led up to this, nor what happened after. But does it really matter? At some point in time, it might have happened, and Tony can’t take that chance. Can’t allow his friend to ever feel pain like that again, not when he can still do something about it.

Stumbling towards the kitchen corner, Tony struggles to open a bottle of water with shaking hands.

His headache is worse than ever. A reflection perhaps of the utter chaos inside his mind, the strings woven too tightly together to be untangled without ripping them, the gaping holes in between that leave too many questions unanswered.

Tony sways back to the table. Takes another pill on autopilot. Swallows two gulps of water. He tries to set the glass down but his fingers are numb and the glass slips from his grasp. He doesn’t try to catch it. The glass shatters on the concrete with a clash.

“Feel better now?”

“No.”

“Throw another plate then. Maybe the world will magically become a better place. Maybe destroying what little we have left is the cure we’ve all been looking for.”

Tony glares at his oldest friend, who is entirely too blasé in the face of his fury. “What do you want, honey bear?”

“I just want to make sure you’re alright.” Rhodey steps a bit closer then, not close enough to touch yet, but close enough to remind Tony that he’s there. Rhodey is always there.

Almost against his will, Tony can feel some of the tension in his muscles dissipating. “Who cares?” he mutters, just to be a stubborn asshole. “I’m just the mass-murdering megalomaniac, aren’t I?”

“I take it the talk with Rogers didn’t go well.” Rhodey doesn’t look surprised. Truth be told, neither is Tony.

“Yeah,” Tony snorts derisively. “Turns out Captain America doesn’t abide to the, and I quote, ‘needless slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.’ Who would’ve thought, eh?”

For a moment, Tony simply stares at the remains of his destroyed kitchen. “He thinks there’s another way,” he whispers eventually, aware of how tired he sounds.

Rhodey’s hand squeezes his shoulder comfortingly. “What do you think?” he asks, face free of any judgement.

It allows Tony to say the words that have been drowned out by Steve’s single-minded determination far too often. “I think he’s right,” he admits. “There is another way. But we’ll lose people every day searching for it. And who’s to say that there’ll be anyone left to save by the time we’ve found it?”

Tony searches Rhodey’s eyes, wills his friend to understand.

“There’ll be collateral damage no matter which choice we make, and by—by not containing the damage, we aren’t saving the world, we aren’t even saving the people in the ghettos. We’re absolving ourselves of their deaths, nothing more.”

“Tones-“ Rhodey’s eyes are achingly gentle.

He is interrupted by an icy “‘Containing the damage’?” from behind them.

Tony feels sick. The memory is frightening in its clarity. He can picture the entire scene in his head, down to the colour of Rhodey’s shirt—red and yellow, because of course Rhodey would wear Iron Man merchandise for this kind of conversation—like it has happened only minutes ago, and the emotions it evokes are overwhelming.

There is only one question. Who the hell is Rhodey?

Out of the corner of his eyes, Tony catches a blurry shadow moving towards him but he can’t even muster up the will to shield his face. His headache is steadily getting worse. It’s impossible to focus on anything but the piercing pain deep within his skull, burning with an intensity that makes him want to crack his head open just to get it out. Pressing his flushed skin against the cool floor helps a little but the relief is short-lasting.

It feels like an eternity before Tony finds the will to turn onto his back. The only thing he wants to do right now is lie here and hope the world will stop turning around him at some point. He can’t though. Not when he doesn’t know what is happening to him and whether these symptoms will pass on their own. Who knows what the purpose of the weird energy that hit him was. It might work like a slow-acting poison. Hell, Tony’s physical self is decades younger than his mind; who knows what kind of effects such an imbalance has? What if his body can’t cope with the strain?

No, Tony can’t afford to waste more time. And once he has managed to formulate that thought in his head, he clings to it. Holds on with an iron determination that has been formed and shaped by terror and loss, left him unwilling to consider anything but success a possibility.

Somehow, Tony makes it back onto his feet and after he has blinked away the first bout of dizziness, things get a bit more manageable.

“Alright, Dead-Eyes,” Tony’s voice sounds about as terrible as he feels but he doubts his shadow will care. Actually, he’s starting to question whether Dead-Eyes is even capable of caring. “Clean this room out, don’t leave anything behind.”

The command sounds odd on his tongue, familiar almost, the way a song from your early childhood might be. Like he’s said it a thousand times before, often enough that the details of every occurrence blur and bleed together. Tony shakes the uncomfortable sensation off.

He will have to deal with Dead-Eyes eventually, but he is in no state to do a background check, never mind conduct an interrogation. Besides, so far the man hasn’t tried to kill him. That has to count for something.

“Ready?” he mumbles.

Dead-Eyes gives a sharp nod. He’s wearing his goggles and face mask again. The look isn’t as disturbing as it probably should be, but that seems to be a theme where Dead-Eyes is concerned.

“Cool.” Tony staggers towards the door. “Time to visit some old friends. Older friends. Urgh, whatever.”

They don’t even make it off the parking lot.

I’m enjoying this story a lot, hope you do too! Feel very welcome to share your thoughts and impressions!

#ReRe writes #Tiny Tony Overlord #fic #Tony Stark #Bucky Barnes #Winter Soldier Bucky #tiny Tony #Bix the HYDRA goon #background information #things are slowly developing #actually they're about to get interesting #cue evil laughter

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nikky-the-writer · 7 years

Text

More than friends

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Hvitserk x Reader, Ivar x Reader

Masterlist

A/N: Thank you all for comments and messages, you are too nice to me!!!

Summary: AU

Reader and Hvitserk are friends with benefits and they are both alright with that, but things will start to change when Ivar moves in with them.

Warning: nsfw, cursing, talking about sexual assault and more sad stuff....

It’s been three days since your fight with Ivar. You haven’t seen him since then. The reason for that is that you didn’t really leave your room, taking a few days off. Hvitserk tried to talk to you, but it ended up with you kicking him out of the room. He slept on the couch, he didn’t complain about it, but he did complain about you and Ivar to the only person that he thought could help. That is why you had to force yourself out of your room to see Floki. He and you were the only people to whom Ivar could confide.

Floki was leaning on the counter watching as you slowly drag your body to him. Your feet wouldn't listen to you to go faster. He was amused by your behavior. ˝You know...˝, Floki moved closer to you. ˝If you wanted to see me you could've called and not piss of Ivar.˝ ˝Yeah I could, but it's funnier this way.˝ Floki pulled you in his arms and you quickly moved your arms around his waist holding him close. He was like an uncle to you, you could even say that he was more of a father to you than your actual father. He always took care of you kids, teaching you stuff and playing with you. Although he didn't show it now, you knew that he was hurt that you almost never call him. ˝Why are you torturing that bastard?˝, Floki asked. He was smiling while pulling away. His eyes wander all around your face to see how you changed. ˝He started it!˝ ˝Seriously, what happened?˝, Floki took your hand in his guiding you to the couch. ˝You didn't talk to him?˝, you moved your legs on the glass table in front of you. You were avoiding Flokis' eyes just staring at your fuzzy socks. ˝I thought that it would be better if I talk to you first. You know his temper, it's easier to talk to you.˝ ˝Yeah˝, you placed your hands in your lap. ˝Well, about what do you want to talk? I have nothing to say. He was the one who got mad, not me.˝ ˝Really? Why were you avoiding him since then?˝, Floki asked placing his legs beside yours. ˝Can we talk about something else? ˝, you asked finally looking at him. ˝Mhm.˝ ˝Did you help him with his legs?˝ Floki shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ˝Yeah, but it wasn't my idea.˝ ˝Than whose? I know that he wouldn't do it without the reason.˝, you pressed your lips in a thin line waiting for his answer. ˝He had a reason.˝, Floki said staring at you. You just looked at him with your eyebrows raised hoping that he will continue. ˝You, Y/N.˝ ˝But I was already gone.˝, your voice was a pitch higher and your hands shake a little.

˝He convinced himself that if he was normal you would come back.˝ ˝He is normal.˝ Floki shrugged his shoulders not knowing what to say on that. He loved Ivar like he was his own son, but sometimes it angered him that he couldn’t accept his legs. ˝Floki..˝, you began silently. ˝ Is he aware that I didn’t leave from all of you because of him?˝ ˝I’m not sure, but I know that he blames himself for it. Why didn’t you tell him?˝ You looked back down ashamed. ˝Don’t do that Y/N, what happened wasn’t your fault, but all after it, was. You pushed everyone away except Hvisterk. Ivar loves you even more than him.˝ ˝If you would know how I feel every day because of what happened you wouldn’t be here. You don’t have any right on telling me what to do. You did help me and I’m grateful for it, but don’t preach me!˝, by now you were already standing screaming in his face. Taking deep breaths you tried to calm down. Floki took your hands in his. ˝I ….They left me. You know it. My parents couldn’t look at me like it was my fault. Was it?˝ ˝No, no, of course, it wasn’t.˝ Floki pulled you in his arms holding you tighter than ever. After all this time you still blamed yourself. ˝Look at me! It wasn’t your fault. It’s the fault of those who raped you, alright. Not yours.˝ Your face was red from crying and your eyes were sore. If Floki didn’t hold you, you would probably collapse on the floor. ˝It has to be me.˝ ˝No! We went through this when you came from the hospital. It wasn’t you, alright?˝ ˝Yeah..˝, you nodded, but he didn't believe you. One night destroyed your life. You carried so many scars on your heart and some on your skin. They were reminders from which you couldn’t escape. The only thing that helped you to get through it was your friendship with Hvitserk. ˝He can’t find out.˝, you whispered not letting go of Floki. ˝Would it be that bad if he does?˝ ˝I wouldn’t be able to look him in the eyes.˝ Pulling away you took a box of tissues from the shelf sniffling. ˝But now you don’t even talk to him.˝ ˝I know, but he can’t know.˝, you were persistent. ˝But Hvitserk does.˝, Floki was having troubles to understand you. ˝Hvitserk was one who found me. He helped me survive it. He was my rock and Ivar he...˝, you stopped throwing another tissue into the trash can. ˝He would see me as used. Like I’m damaged.˝ ˝You are underestimating him.˝, Floki moved fallen strands of your hair behind your ear so that he could see your face. ˝I’m not. Can’t you see what I see? Just look at his legs, he thinks that he is useless and damaged because of them. What would he think about me then? I maybe lost him as a friend, but he still sees me as a person, not a used toy.˝ ˝Is that what you are to Hvitserk, a toy?˝ Floki caught you off gourd by his question. It did surprise you at first, but the answer came straight from your heart. ˝He makes me feel loved. Only with him, I feel cherished, like I'm a human being. I can’t even go to the bar alone, afraid of being in the room with so many guys. I’m only safe with him. I can deal with Ivars’ temper, but not with his pity or anybody else.˝ ˝Y/N, as I’ve seen through all these years you were dealing with what happened better than anybody else would and for that, I know that your heart is paying price. You should understand that you don’t have to be tough from outside in front of your family, you should let them help you.˝ ˝My family...˝, you murmured. ˝I’m not talking about your parents, but about Ivar and his brothers. I would really want you to talk with him, but I will support you with any decision that you make. But before that I want you to think about this six years, about your sacrifices.˝ In the middle of his speech, you leaned against the wall lowering your body to the ground with tears in your eyes. Telling someone what happened to you was reliving it all over again and you weren’t sure if you were strong enough to go through it again.

˝Why did you do it?˝, Ivar asked Hvitserk as they both sat on Ivars bed leaned on the headboard. ˝What exactly, brother? You’ve been accusing me of a lot of things lately.˝, Hvitserk took the photo from the night stand that he didn’t move to your bedroom. He thought that Ivar wouldn’t mind it. It was a picture taken a month before you left. Ragnar took you all to the Disneyland. Hvitserk smiled when he remembered how you made his youngest brother laugh. He didn’t feel comfortable there with his wheelchair so you sat on his lap refusing to walk or to go to any ride that he couldn’t. All day you spent talking to Ivar and teasing him with plush toys you bought and placed in your lap. It was simpler times then for all of you, especially for you, Hvitserk and Floki who kept secrets away from everyone. He was grateful at the moment that you weren't home because he knew that at the end he and Ivar will start fighting. ˝That night when Y/N went to pick you up after prom. Why did you sleep with her?˝ Ivar kept his head low ashamed for asking that, but he had to know no matter if it breaks his heart more. ˝That’s what you think?˝, Hvitserk laughed dryly. ˝Do you want to know when was the first time I made love to her?˝ ˝Love?˝, Ivar scoffed, while anger was boiling inside him. ˝I love her Ivar. Since we were kids. I never fucked her, like you said. I loved her, with every touch I let her know that I care for her.˝ ˝I don’t really need details!˝ ˝If this will help your twisted mind, I’ll tell you. The first time we were together was four years ago and we’ve been only with each other since then. If you think that you could love her like I do, better ask yourself why she didn’t tell you why she left!˝, Hvitserk moved from the bed. ˝I know why she left!˝, Ivar said and that made Hvitserk stop suddenly. ˝She was pregnant.˝ At his words, Hvitserk turned to look Ivar. ˝Really? Is that what you tell yourself?!˝ Hvitserk yelled at him. The vein on his forehead was more visible than before. He wanted to punch him, to make him bleed. ˝You think that she left you that night to go fuck someone. If you are that sure tell me where is her baby? Tell me Ivar where you there holding her hand in the hospital?!˝, Hvitserk couldn’t stop himself from screaming at first he just wanted to talk to Ivar, but mentioning her baby, he lost it. You were pregnant, not by your fault and not for a long time. Your parents stop talking to you after you said that you are not pregnant anymore. They wanted you to give birth to that child, they even wanted you to marry one of your rapists, they said that’s what a good woman would do. Your rapists, you didn’t even know if it were three guys or two, but you know that they were never going to be behind the bars because of their parents and yours. They were in the same circles, you even think that they blamed you for what happened. ˝She was in the hospital? Why are you lying to me all the time? I’m sick of being left in the dark. I can handle the truth! I’m a cripple, but I’m not weak!˝ Ivar was breathing heavily, waiting for Hvitserk responded, but nothing could’ve prepared him for what Hvitserk said. ˝She was raped, Ivar. Basterds got her pregnant. A week after it happened she started bleeding. She was so scared and I couldn’t help her.˝, Hvitserk said through teeth. There was silence only thing that could be heard were Ivars crutches as he approached Hvitsark and sat next t him on the floor. ˝It was my fault that they were never put in prison. I found out who did that to her.˝, Hvitserk was talking quietly staring blankly. ˝Before they even arrested them, Bjorn, Ubbe and I beat the life out of them. I never told our brothers what they did to Y/N, but they helped me. When she decided to leave I had to go with her. She was my best friend and if I haven’t got drunk and called her she wouldn’t go through that horror.˝ ˝Hvitserk, I..˝ ˝I destroyed her life.˝Hvitserk closed his eyes letting his head fall on his knees.

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 7 years

Note

How do you think beginning of the series Ax would respond if his rescuers were actually trained child soldiers expected to go into combat at their age?

[Sorry that this is a little off-base from what you requested; I just didn’t feel qualified to write about child soldiers and so opted to write about child fighters instead.]

• Aximili has seen photographs of humans before, of course he has. He studied the single chapter of his xenobiology textbook that covered them (Yuri Gagarin, the text said, Neil Armstrong, and he did his best to remember) when he found out that he’d be accompanying Elfangor on the upcoming mission to Earth. Nonetheless, he startles when the five strange creatures emerge from the Dome ship’s airlock, firing his dracon beam in quick succession until they have all collapsed on the floor.

He takes a moment to study them before they awaken. They have artificial skins covering parts of their bodies, which he knew to expect, but some of them have decorations on the skin itself that are strangely beautiful as well: one of them with long yellow hair has dozens of tiny lines, arranged in groups of five, marked on the skin of its shoulder and upper arm. Another alien with a larger build and a darker shade of golden hair has what must be thousands of feather etchings covering its arms from wrist to wrist, the pattern continuing across its back as if it is permanently in the earliest stages of a morph to some kind of tan-and-brown bird.

The smallest one, whose skin is the darkest shade of brown, becomes the first to sit up. As it does so, Aximili registers the words written on the inside of its forearm: no peace without justice. The alien’s companion (long dark hair, perpetually suspicious eyes) name-drops Visser Three so casually that for a second Aximili panics, nearly taking the alien’s head off with his tail blade before he gets control of himself again.

• Slowly they all relax, and Aximili learns their names. The big one with the dark hair and just one tattoo—of a tiger sitting calmly looking out at the viewer—is Jake, or Big Jake as the others call him. His cousin with her dozens of tiny hash marks, her claw-shaped fingernails, and her metal-lined teeth is named Rachel, called Xena. Tobias, or “Hawk,” is the one with the wings and the shy grey eyes that almost disappear when he ducks his head enough for dirty-blond bangs to fall over his face, and Cassie (“Gaia”) is the small one with the words on her arm. Marco, or Mars, has the most, and the most beautiful, ink of all of them: words and shapes and images crowd his shoulders, his legs, his knuckles, the back of his neck. Dios no dio alas a los alacranes, his left forearm says, and James 2:13 splays across his ankle.

“Ax,” Marco says, when Aximili tells them his name. “Yeah, let’s call you Ax. Kinda violent, very edgy, I like it.” Ax sees another tattoo rolling up his left shoulder: Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest son of a bitch in the valley.

“You need a second name,” Rachel (Xena?) explains. “Otherwise no one will take you seriously.”

• And then they give him the news about Elfangor.

“I’ve lost a brother too,” Jake says softly. “He was killed a few months ago. Got caught in the crossfire of some random drive-by on his way home from work.”

“We found them,” Rachel says. She taps the first three tally marks on her arm in a gesture that Ax doesn’t understand at the time. “We got our revenge. You want help getting yours, pretty sure Jake’d be happy to take you on.”

«You are their prince, then?» Ax asks Jake.

All of them look around at each other in sudden uncertainty.

“My brother was the one who made sure we had somewhere to sleep, enough to eat, clothes to wear, the time we needed to stay in school,” Jake explains at last. “If anyone hurt us he’d hurt them, and if any of us got killed he’d wipe out as many people as it took to even the score. I inherited all that from him, and I’ve been doing my best to do the same. That what you mean by a prince?”

«Yes,» Ax says. «That is exactly what a prince does for his warriors. Very well then, Prince Jake, I will do my best to serve your mission until such time as my cousins arrive.»

• The six of them spend nearly an hour touring the Dome ship, asking Ax questions as they recuperate and as (he can admit to himself) he delays leaving the only tiny piece of home he has left in this strange world. He tells them what he can about the ship and how he came to be on it, and in exchange they tell him their stories.

Jake and Rachel were both orphaned three years back, all four of their parents killed when the plane they were taking home from vacation went down in the Caribbean Sea. All five of them—Jake and his brother, Rachel and her sisters—ended up shipped off to their aunt Ellen’s house, at least at first.

“And then Saddler broke Jordan’s arm,” Rachel growls, voice so hard with anger that Ax takes a step back in fear. “And Aunt Ellen believed that little twerp when he said it was an accident, that it’d never happen again. Accident my ass.”

The very next day, Tom had stolen their aunt’s minivan and run away with the lot of them to downtown Los Angeles. He’d worked three or four jobs while Jake and Rachel got in the habit of shoplifting what Sarah and Jordan needed, and together they’d been able to afford a basement apartment in South LA. He’d never wanted Jake and Rachel to get caught up in the violence the way some of the kids in their neighborhood did, but then no one planned on him getting killed either.

Marco still technically lives at home with his dad, but it’s not like his dad knows what he gets up to all day, and he and Jake started traveling together because they’re safer in a pair than alone. The two of them brought first Rachel into the group, then Cassie after Rachel realized Cassie had no one else to go home to at the end of the day. “I’ve been all over,” Cassie says, “or I was until my one foster sister started drowning chipmunks for fun. Then I punched her a bunch of times. Ran away. Settled down.”

Rachel jokes that Tobias followed them home after Jake made the mistake of feeding him. Ax later learns the real story of how they met, and it’s not nearly that cute: it involves Tobias being cornered by three larger boys in an alleyway. It involves Jake firing two shots from the gun he inherited from Tom, one into the air, one into someone’s leg.

The story of how Tobias ended up as a runaway in the first place is complicated as well. “My aunt wanted a niece,” he explains with a wry smile. “Wanted me to wear dresses and makeup, to have nice long hair, to pretend to be a girl so she wouldn’t have to tell the neighbors about my abnormality. There was this little typo on my birth certificate, see, and everyone’s been real confused about what to call me ever since.”

«I see,» Ax says, blatantly lying.

• They make a run for it, not too much later, and together they survive their first fight against the yeerks. Over that afternoon Ax’s respect for this odd group of alien children grows steadily: they never leave one of their own behind, they’re very good at hiding fear under anger, and they know how to scan constantly for danger and respond with a second’s notice. Eventually, with the help of an enormous sentient creature that lives in Earth’s waters, they wash up on the shores of Los Angeles Harbor.

«With your permission,» Ax says, «I would like to take DNA from each of you. With the frolis maneuver, I can create a human shape that is a unique mixture of your attributes.»

“Then again, maybe you should just take from Tobias and Rachel.” Marco smiles, but his eyes are colder than ever. “The cops’ll give you a lot less hassle that way.”

Ax looks around at each of them. «Human law enforcement will pay less attention to me if I have yellow hair, pale skin, and light-colored eyes?»

Marco laughs. “Now you’re getting it. Welcome to Earth, man—you’re gonna fit right in.”

“Just take DNA from all of us,” Tobias says, seeing Ax’s confusion and taking pity. “We’re all a bunch of rejects anyway, so you might as well.”

• Ax becomes closer to this group of aliens over the next several missions than he could have ever imagined. They open their home to him, even if that home is a nearly empty room in an otherwise abandoned building that contains a few sleeping bags and hotplates. They teach him to defend himself as a weak little human, using switchblade and semiautomatic when he doesn’t have a tail blade or claws.

Cassie walks a mile and a half to the nearest yeerk-owned convenience store to shoplift him a dozen cinnamon buns the day he finally contacts his family with news of Elfangor’s death.

Tobias takes Jake and Rachel’s gentle-but-firm scolding about his carelessness with time limits (which has already resulted in half a dozen close calls), but he also asks Ax to teach him how to be better at keeping track of time.

Jordan and Sarah—who know about everything, to Ax’s surprise—don’t know what to make of him at first, but pretty soon they’re bringing home backpacks full of grass clippings so he’ll have something to eat, while he’s teaching them the basics of andalite dance.

• Every time they go out on a mission, they follow the same routine. Jake solemnly hands Jordan a gun—the only time she’s allowed to handle one—and makes her go over the rules again. She and Sarah are not to leave, no matter what happens. She’s not to shoot anyone unless someone tries to attack her, or unless one of them comes back alone without explanation. If anything happens short of a direct attack, or one of them coming back as a controller, she’s to run to the pay phone down the street and call 911 instead. If three days pass and she doesn’t hear back from any of them at all, she and Sarah need to get on the next bus to San Luis Obispo and they need to go back to Aunt Ellen’s house.

• “We don’t kill unless we have to,” Rachel tells Ax, after he watches her tear a controller’s throat out. “But if we have to, we kill. Got it?”

He learns that that’s their blanket policy: the Animorphs (as they call themselves) don’t mess with other gangs in the area, but other gangs better not mess with them. They don’t kill randomly, and they don’t escalate, but if they get hurt they will find the perpetrator and hurt him back.

They don’t like killing—well, he’s not sure about Rachel, but the others certainly don’t—but they are nonetheless very good at it. If caught out of morph, Marco can shoot a hork-bajir-controller’s head off at 200 yards. Cassie can take down a human-controller with a single jab of an inch-long penknife.

• Each time they make it home alive, Ax watches in fascination as Rachel tattoos two, three, sometimes as many as eight fresh lines onto her rows of tally marks, which by now reach two inches past her elbow and wrap around her forearm. He’s learned by now that only the first three are pure black, and every one since then is black with a narrow white shadow.

“Black’s for enemies,” Rachel explains. “White’s for the innocent hosts that get caught in the crossfire.”

Ax assumes at first that they must be a form of penance—each one involves jamming a needle into her soft skin dozens of times and injecting foreign substances underneath the surface to create an off-colored scar—but the longer he knows her, the more he suspects they’re a boast.

• It takes him longer to find out about the row of raised bumps along the back of Cassie’s calf, or what they mean. “It’s cultural appropriation, probably,” she says with a self-deprecating smile, “but I got it from something they do in Ethiopia to signify growing up.”

She doesn’t make one for every kill, unlike Rachel; her system is more complex. Ax knows that she does it after all three occasions where they blow up a Sharing location during a meeting, and once after they dump poison into a yeerk pool. But she adds them at other times as well: when she finally demorphs in the long aftermath of her encounter with Aftran, when Aldrea nearly gets her killed.

“I could show you how to make them, and how to make them stay while you morph,” she offers to Ax. “It’s not that hard, or it wasn’t after Rachel figured out how her ears stay pierced every time she morphs.”

Eventually Ax agrees to just one mark, encircling his tail where it meets the blade. The symbol is simple—a curling series of lines whose ends intersect to form a circle—but its meaning is complex. «The placement’s about mourning, but specifically about respect for the one who is mourned,» he explains awkwardly. «They meet at the bottom to signify family, and the curl at the top is for a peer, but a peer from whom one has learned much… It’s not the kind of thing that translates well into words.»

“What you said makes perfect sense to me,” Jake says, bright-eyed. With Ax’s permission he imitates the pattern around his own left wrist.

• It’s Jake who keeps them all in line, Jake who insists they only shoplift from yeerk-owned businesses and give back the cars Marco steals once they’re done with the mission. Jake won’t let Rachel kill the girl from their class who called her a white trash bitch, or the boy who wolf-whistled her on the way home, but he shepherds the rest of them outside as she shoots David precisely between the eyes.

Ax catches him sitting on the roof of the abandoned building they inhabit, one night after a raid on Joe Bob Fenestre’s house goes wrong in about eighteen different ways. L.A. is far too light-polluted and smoggy to see any stars, but Ax knows that Jake is looking for them all the same because he’s done the same thing himself.

«I think he would have been proud of you,» Ax says softly.

“Your brother?” Jake asks, seeming to shake himself out of a daze.

«And yours.»

“You ever wonder if…” Jake looks down at the concrete of the roof, thinking for a second. “If every other kid our age trying to hold down a job, or a family, or, hell, an entire freaking gang… If they don’t know what they’re doing any better than we do?”

«Maybe they don’t,» Ax says. «But most of them find a way to survive anyway, don’t they?»

“Thing is, I’m not sure they do. Seems like every time I turn around there’s someone else I know getting shot, stabbed, hooked on heroin, thrown in prison…” Jake smiles faintly, the expression tired. “We were never supposed to live past twenty-five. That was half the reason we got involved in this fight in the first place, you know that? We all knew how to fight already when Elfangor found us, and we all figured that if we were going nowhere fast we might as well take down some aliens along the way. I don’t think anything’s changed since then.”

«You’ve hurt them,» Ax points out. «You’ve made Visser Three afraid. We have. Six kids, no real training, and we’ve killed more yeerks than most andalite warriors do in a lifetime.»

“But does it solve anything?” Jake asks. “If the war ends tomorrow we’ll still be a bunch of dead-end trash with no prayer of ever getting a real job between us. Tobias’ll still be stuck in a body he hates for the rest of his life, Marco probably won’t have his mom back, Rachel… I mean, god, you ever think about what Rachel would do if the war ended right now?”

Ax doesn’t have an answer.

• And as it turns out, he’ll never get one. Because, turns out, Rachel doesn’t live to see the war’s end.

• Ax knows what to expect when the press gets ahold of their story, or at least he thinks he does. There are nearly twelve hours of lag time between the yeerks’ official defeat and the first chance to land the Pool ship on Earth, during which time his teammates give him a crash course in all the nastiest sides of the American media. Therefore, he’s saddened but not surprised the first (or the tenth, or the hundredth) time someone refers to them as thugs, as superpredators, as hoodlums or delinquents. He understands in advance that when reporters call Eva an “alien” they’re not talking about extraterrestrials, that there’s a reason Cassie and Marco are “un-American” in a way Jake and Tobias are not, and that no one is going to bother to learn Tobias’s real name as long as they can use the one on his birth certificate instead.

However, as cynical as the Animorphs are, even they cannot anticipate just how awful people can become. No one anticipated the calls for Marco to “go back to” a country he’s never visited. They didn’t foresee that the baby pictures Tobias’s aunt sold to the press, and his subsequent misclassification, would mean that people suddenly had opinions about Rachel’s “lesbian influence” over future generations.

Just when Ax thinks he’s learned about every type of prejudice that could possibly exist, a heckler asks Jake a question (something about religion and money that Ax doesn’t understand) that causes Marco to punch the man so hard he breaks his own hand, and the lessons in all the ways humans suck start all over again.

• All five of them get a number of offers of adoption from concerned citizens, even Ax and Marco, which is weird because both of them have living parents and perfectly good homes already.

Most of the offers from concerned strangers are horribly condescending, the letters or introductory emails filled with phrases about how these self-righteous souls want to “get these children off the streets,” give Marco “a real home for a change,” help Tobias sort out his “confusion” about gender, and so on. Marco takes a great deal of delight composing extremely rude responses on his and Ax’s behalf.

Jake’s the only one who shows interest right from the start, but only because he’s got more people than himself to think about: Sarah and Jordan are his responsibility now. The way Jake approaches the whole process is somewhat off-putting to most prospective guardians, exactly the way it’s meant to be. The caregivers who expect to meet a helpless war orphan or a traumatized child instead find themselves confronted by a self-assured young man who approaches the contract negotiation process (which is exactly what it is, at least once Jake’s done writing the paperwork and getting a child advocacy lawyer to approve it) with more demands than concessions. Anyone who wants to have Jake absolutely must adopt Jordan and Sarah as well. Jake does not consent for their images or any personal information to be shared with the media or the general public. Any guardian who violates these terms can expect Jake to file immediately for emancipated minor status, and sue for sole custody of his cousins. The first thirty-seven candidates Jake interviews all leave shouting, sometimes in tears.

Tobias turns down all offers—not exactly hard to do, when half the letters aren’t even addressed to him—and is on the verge of simply becoming homeless again when Ax passes along his parents’ wishes to meet their grandson. There’s nothing left for Tobias on Earth anyway, so together he and Ax board the first shuttle they can find to take them to the andalite home world.

Cassie delays making a decision for as long as she can, but then one day she receives a letter from a local veterinarian. The vet, whose name is Michelle, talks about how Cassie is an icon for all African American women, one with whom it would be an honor to share her home. She and her husband Walter don’t have children, but they do have horses and birds and an entire clinic of wild animals, and if Cassie’s willing to be patient then they’re willing to do whatever it takes to learn how to care for a girl as well… Cassie accepts on the spot.

Candidate thirty-eight is a single woman in her fifties that Jake, despite himself, likes almost right away. He relaxes a great deal when he finds out she was an involuntary controller during the last months of the war, which means that even if she doesn’t understand what they’ve been through she can come close enough. The first real glimmer of hope comes when she approves of the contract (mentioning that his aunt would doubtless be proud of the good work he’s done with it) and even suggests a few clauses of her own. They talk frankly for nearly three hours, during which time the woman agrees to set aside tuition for the highest-quality (and highest-security) private high schools and colleges for all three children. Jake learns, too, that she had a son who like her was taken by the yeerks during the war: Rachel killed him on the deck of the Blade ship, and his body was never recovered.

• Ax returns to his homeworld, where he is made a war-prince almost before he sets hooves to grass. Where he isn’t treated as a “controversial figure” and no one whispers about how he is a psychopath and an animal who should be put down. Where celebrations in his honor are uncomplicated and never met by protests. Where he and Tobias can be themselves and no one tries to simplify their complications into a story that makes for a good headline.

• Global War I, the history textbooks on Earth call it a hundred years later. The parallel to World War I is deliberate: just like then, the writers say, there was no reason for it all. There might have been bad guys, but there were no good ones. There were no thanks for the people who ended it all, only thanks that it came to an end. Some kids had something to do with hurting the Yeerk Empire, but their names have since been lost to time.

#animorphs au #animorphs #oh look there's ax #transphobia #homophobia #racism #sexism #classism #antisemitism #cultural appropriation #seriously this one is about how americans suck #would you look at that: i managed to take an entirely unrelated post and make it ALL ABOUT TOM #so unlike me #long post #au #child abuse

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