#I really do think that his character is just outright Stronger under this framing
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you know, with hindsight now what it is I really do think a more literal reading of c!techno's chat would have helped his characterization a Lot
and mind you, this was originally intended to be the case, and very well may have been intended all along even if it wasn't usually emphasized within the lore
youtube
and don't get me wrong, I Get why it fell out of favor within the fandom. it coincides with a Very storied ableist trope that demonizes DID and disorders adjacent to it, and Can be spoken about in a way that is essentially indistinguishable from it depending on the word choice.
but the thing is ! not only does it not Have to be an allegory for DID, I straight up don't think it is At All.
because we Know what it's an allegory for. It's His Chat. there's technoblade playing the game, and there's the thousands of people watching with expectations and wants that he's compelled to meet (or, at the very least, pacify through Entertainment).
and this makes much Much more sense when conceived of as Supernatural. be that spirits, gods, demons, or anything that could fill that role. separate entities that, for whatever reason, only techno can sense the presence of and be affected by.
and of course, to an extent this is true for all creators. everyone had an audience that they were meant to entertain and the choices they made were influenced by that fact.
but technoblade came in with a Very distinct set of expectations that heavily impacted the choices he was Expected to make and the kinds of stories that he could tell. he was more or less a living legend in real life just as much as he was in roleplay, and these things were inherently connected.
and it's like !
when c!technoblade says he was peer pressured into killing tubbo at the red festival he Is technically talking about what happened within the roleplay. schlatt was demanding it from him, there's a sort of pressure there. but schlatt was also the dictator they were set to kill, and techno has never had any trouble fighting people he considered a dictator before, and certainly not Schlatt of all people.
but he WAS being peer pressured By His Audience. by thousands of people, most of which were demanding blood Because It Was The Expectation, because it'd be Fun.
out of universe technoblade made the decision he thought would be the most Entertaining, and he was right! consistently he made choices that would let him do the most bombastic Spectacles possible. And It's Great. he's Excellent at pulling dramatics and making a compelling scene that give other people room to work off of. in that sense I'd consider techno an Excellent actor, and I have to imagine that he was fun to work with.
the problem is when you then have to justify it from an in character perspective, grounded in those mushy things like Feelings with characters that can be traumatized and sustain lasting damage, Especially Without acknowledging the out of character incentive.
mind you, it's not Impossible to Create a backstory that could justify it. why a character as consistently powerful and feared as technoblade would feel pressured to kill an ally by someone he not only Can kill but Wanted To Kill. why a character as seemingly secure and in control as technoblade would lash out the way that he does to perceived betrayal, and yet consistently puts no weight onto having killed and permanently scarred an ally that trusted him.
what that'd need is tragedy. a storied history of being hurt and having to survive. building up To an untouchable god from a much much more vulnerable position. Long Lasting trauma that's lead to this deep insecurity and paranoia. and that's Possible and that's Compelling.
but it's just not in the text.
not only did we never learn basically Anything that c!technoblade was up to pre-series, we actually know Less by the end than when we started because of the sbi retconning.
it's a Theoretically Possible interpretation that's technically never Contradicted by canon, but would have to be created by scratch. it's a compelling idea for a fan fic (and one I'd like to read) and it's compelling for a theoretical recontextualization of the character, but it's just not In The Text.
meanwhile, we have the video above.
we have the Objective Fact that technoblade's decision making was often subject to the rule of cool (very Very effectively) to entertain his audience.
and most compellingly, these concepts Don't Need To Be Separate. in fact, in my opinion they're Stronger when you put them together.
because the thing is. it's Difficult to imagine techno as ever being in a vulnerable position. he is just Objectively more powerful than everyone else on the server, both in real life And within the lore. How could he have ever been afraid when he was stronger than anyone and everyone combined? when we saw with our own eyes that techno could face nearly the whole server at once and win.
but he Is a tragic character, at least he's meant to be. and that tragedy makes much Much more sense as something Inward.
technoblade as a character who Needs connection, who Needs stability, who Needs security, who Needs friendship and community and Love. but Lashes Out, Obliterates to the core of the earth, because of something that's not only out of his control but that other people Cannot Understand.
how do you explain to a child that you killed their best friend because a chorus of the undead called for his blood and you (in all the glory that he'd idolized) were unable to do anything but comply? how do you explain to that child that you beat him senseless in a pit as the restless dead jeered and laughed?
That's interesting. That's Compelling.
technoblade is idolized like a god, feared like a force of nature, and in an instant cut himself off from nearly everyone who'd considered him an ally. and that seems to be a pattern, over and over and over again. he's left isolated, and in return he faces retaliation, and in return he's always Waiting for retaliation.
and what do you say to someone who wants to kill you for being a monster? that it's Fine Actually because you only did what you did because you have a curse that compels you to? that the supernatural guided you to destroy their homes and kill their people? (rip jack manifold you will be missed)?
That Doesn't Quite Help Your Case.
technoblade as someone who is beholden to this literal cycle of violence and Loses those things that could ground him, community, stability, People, as a result. who Tries to overcome this very fact (to become a better person, in his own words as per the clip above), but is pulled back into it as a consequence of his own actions.
that's a tragedy !! that Makes Sense. that allows him to be Both this force of nature that other characters have to survive And A Person Who Is Hurt By The Same Conflict.
"I'm a person!"
that fear of dehumanization makes So So Much More Sense when you see technoblade as someone who Already fears himself. who fears being a monster, who fears losing control, who has faced isolation again and again and again.
and, importantly, it doesn't have to be anyone else's Fault.
by making the source both Internal and Completely External (something that none of the other characters have any awareness or control over), you can Have techno as a tragic character without demonizing anyone else Or erasing the impact that c!techno had on them.
and in that sense, it Can be an allegory for mental illness, but not in that direct "oooooh how scary he hears voices" kind of way that people fear it looks. but in that sometimes people Will do things that can hurt others while not feeling in control. anger and mania and paranoia, things that you can't always Control and yet that impact that you have on other people still Matters.
and the answer to that is, often, vulnerability and accountability.
I think a lot about technoblade isolating himself so near entirely from the rest of the server, and slowly gathering a support system Back by the end. and I Really Do think that framing of it through this lens is a Very impactful way of breaking it down.
tubbo, tommy, wilbur, ranboo, niki, I think they'd All understand not feeling in control. lashing out, maybe even feeling justified in the moment, but hurting people they care about and furthering their own isolation.
There's Something There, and it's already In The Text. it just needs to be expanded on.
and why not do that ourselves now?
#dream smp#dsmp#technoblade#tommyinnit#tubbo#meta#long post#back on my bullshit#I really do think that his character is just outright Stronger under this framing#and I genuinely think everything post doomsday would've been stronger if he'd leaned into this#that said this is probably messier than some of my other techno analysis#because I've been chewing on it for a few days rather than my usual of rehashing the same idea for two years in a row#but I'm rusty so give me a break#also derivakat voices is a straight up banger and you can all pry it from my cold dead hands
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Decided to rewatch Psycho-Pass (season 1) because I didn't remember the ending entirely and got worried it pulled a Makoto Persona 5 at the end and decided that being a cop is based actually, which made me hesistant about recommending it to people anymore. But surprisingly I came away from it liking the ending more.
Spoilers under the cut, this is mostly ending discussion so it's also not going to make sense if you haven't seen it - if you want a recommendation, I think it's definitively worth the time, especially if you like cyberpunk dystopias and/or thrillers. Be warned that there is a lot of graphic violence so you might want to look up content warnings
"Being a cop is good actually" is technically what happens, Akane does stay with the CID by the end, but it's also a lot bleaker and conflicted then I remembered. In one of the conversations with Sybil she does outright say "I'm not interested in dying needlessly", making it clear she's going along with their bargain because refusing would be pointless, and from the scene where the chief tries to kill Kougami in the parking garage all of her interactions with Sybil are Akane trying to push against the rules to get consessions from Sybil and it doesn't even work. She doesn't manage to save Kougami and when she gives her final speech to Sybil ("One day, someone is going to come down here and turn the power off"), Sybil just laughs at her and taunts her to keep struggling because it will make them stronger. And then it ends with a repeat of the first episode except several of the characters are dead now and Ginoza got demoted to enforcer, just like his father and Kougami before. (sidenote: that they decide to portray this visually by removing his glasses is hilarious)
Akane definitively comes down on the "no violent revolution I will work within the system" side of things but I'm not sure the anime does and even if it does, the ending is bleak enough that I can respect that it's aware that that decision isn't neutral and has a heavy price tag on it.
There is something to be said about how the main agent of change is a dangerous serial killer, and the non-serial killer outcasts are generally glossed over in favor of the crazy schoolgirl using bodies as an art supply store, but I do think they're generally framed as sympathetic. Maybe ineffective or terminally online but not misguided? It rings very true that Sybil is so ingrained that it seems impossible to change.
There is a more complicated discussion about how much the series buys into true crime ideas about profiling and how sociopathy works (Sybil is clearly flawed, that's what the whole story is about, but the behavioral science unit profiling shit Kougami does is real and works within the fiction of the story and there sure are a lot of weird quirky serial killers around in this one city) but I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy serial killer fiction and this is a much bigger discussion then this one ten year old series. It's kinda problematic but it's not more problematic in this regard then any other thriller and it at least does something interesting with it. Same with how easily the people in the helmet episodes are pushed towards heinously violent crimes just because they can get away with it, but it's also maybe kinda implied that this is Sybil's fault because everyone is really bad at managing their impulses and dark thoughts now? And it's not really remarked upon but the first guy was trying to steal psych medicine first so it's also plausible he was trying to self medicate to avoid getting flagged. Not sure if that read is intended but I appreciate that it's open to interpretation like this - the same thing I liked about the ending. Akane does come to a decision by the end but it feels more like a tentative answer then a final conclusion.
There's a scene where the criminal psychology professor guy gives a definition of anarchism and it's very brief and glossed over but it does correctly point out that it's about rejection of hierarchies, not about having no rules whatsoever. So that's nice considering how often media gets this wrong and it makes me like Akane's monologue about laws a lot more because it seeds the idea that "law" is supposed to mean any kind of socially agreed upon rule here, not necessarily one dictated by the ruling class.
Finally though the show does have an issue with using women as the default victims for a lot of its graphic violence, the first episode has a rape scene, the murder sculptures are made up of school girls, Boogie Woogie getting strangled while the male V-tubers die offscreen, the person getting slowly beaten to death by the masked guy is a woman, the chief (woman status debatable due to dude brain cyborg bullshit but definitively a female body) has one of the most graphic deaths (death status debatable due to cyborg hivemind brain room bullshit) of any named character. I don't have a problem with these scenes individually, at least not conceptually - with some of them I do have some notes on the execution - but all of them taken together it's a lot. Obviously the show is really dark and violent overall but it does sure feel like there is a disproportionate amount of screentime and detail allocated to women being brutalised while men get comparatively quick or offscreen deaths and I don't think the show is aware of this. The longest discussion of gender is around the sculptor girls fixation on killing schoolgirls, who Makishima later calls shallow and uninteresting (before killing her brutally too I forgot her in the list actually) but the show also does this - focusing on despoiling women because they're supposedly more pure. Again individually I don't have a huge issue with any of these scenes, but when you take it as a whole it becomes uncomfortably even.
Really enjoyed the rewatch overall, I didn't think the show would hold up to my memory of it because of the serial killer bs and the ending but I think I actually came out of it liking it more. Let's see if this holds if i watch season 2 lol I remember approximately two scenes and a feeling of boredom from it
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Marvel Comic moments and character points that deeply inspire my MCU-flavored Lokiverse, followed by some of the exerpts that result from that influence. Because someone in my discords asked, and said I should.
LISTEN (Vestibule HVRA-0616.04.03 - Door/Universe 3)
" They all are; the last safe pieces of me left; that none of them, or the ones they left me in the hands of to torture.. to be made to give it up just to survive because they knew, and they saw; and.. " that sharp breath in and the slow breath out: audible. Reaching for control when that and his words had sped up with the edges of anger was forced to drop off. " They left me there. Watched through Heimdall's eyes and did nothing, nothing to stop it. That's how valuable a son I was as what I am. What they lied and told me I wasn't, for all my life. How loved a brother. A year of .. all, that. Left to be tortured and definitely killed without that deal, once he was done with me. "
Oh.. god Thor. You big stupid idiot. That had better not be true. He had better be lying..
" If you don't wanna talk about-- " Tony, badly wanting to backtrack. Natasha wanted him to too, just hearing the way, never mind the words coming out of his mouth.
" I say the summary of it now or I won't get through saying any of it again any time soon. " was just as quick and .. a little defiant. " I refuse. And refuse to refuse this to you especially, if those words are real. " was almost clipped. And she got it.Nat almost wished she didn't. " Do you love this me. Aaron? "
" I love you. "
" You love the last pieces of me that still matter then. The man still left that took that deal with every, malicious, vindictive intent to kick it back in his face and steal everything that bastard wanted as repayment; and keep what was left of me, and all of you who had the memory whether you knew it or not, safe. Or as much as I could under the stone's influence, with Ultron still running around inside it. Or the Other constantly in my head as a reminder and near constant watch. A few hundred, for a few billion lives. The whole of everything left I loved here, to keep that alive? Stay me regardless of him? Or of Odin? Or of any of the rest? Worth it. Always, forever; worth it. No matter how much I missed coming here the way I used to. At least it's here still to keep growing. Even if it's a few people short, it's a few heroes greater too after I pushed you. It's all I could manage. "
Cue Clint rushing the back door. Cue the bang of it being all but kicked open as that registered. She only looked up and after him stomping and kicking at the gravel on the side of the road when he stopped to snap a particularly hard kick of gravel across the grass in the ditch. Because what else was there to do, but rage, and squat down like that with your back to the road? How could you not, grip at the back of your head when you learned that the man you had been blaming for the blackest marks there were in your recent history; had been tortured and left to it and dying that way by his much more capable intergalactic family to force him into it, and doing what his torturer wanted?
Who was there left in reach to blame now?
What was there to ask? Why he hadn't chosen to just die? In a way they didn't understand, for people who had all but abandoned him to that, and from the sounds of it more?
GROUNDED (Vestibule HVRA-0616.01.08 - Door/Universe 8) Book 2: Chapter 11
When the clash came, Bucky barely caught it. The pressure grinding their blades against each other. He’d have to sharpen his again after this. “ There are times when the faces beyond that particular threshold are all we have, and all we can have. “ Loki was stronger, but Buck noticed the control too. It wasn’t that he was holding back; it was that he was measuring a limit to set himself to; when Buck was half pushed back by the shove. “ For some of me, I am better family to myself than any other in our own worlds. “
“ Is that how it is for Gin? “ Not even a nod when they clashed again; Loki wrestling by half with his prosthetic arm; the even catch of their calves wrestling below for the imbalance turning into a stalemate. “ You’ll know it anyway on your own, but aside from one particular person; yes. His world is ..far harsher. Things did not go as planned. Many more died. He bears the brunt of it. The rest, you should find mostly on your own if you want it. “
“ You think of him like a brother… a real brother. “ surprised him a little bit as those tones registered and they conceded that draw, a step back for both of them. Adjusting grips, assessing movement; potential strikes.
“ Yes. You’ll probably understand why before long. It’s rare he takes to anyone not one of us. And he never claims as much outright, even in the exceedingly rare occasions when he does. “
Roll Call - Vestibule HVRA0616.01 (aka The Inbetween [platovember prompts FINAL BONUS ENTRY])
" I think I heard enough.. " was the bile rising with that last one. Tony didn't think he could do that, even if Loge looked at Gin's door fondly. His eyes ended up on his mug.
" Have you really? " in that tone, oddly sympathetic; tugged his browns up to silvery, too-blues quicker than he thought he should like. And put a pause on the thoughts he had there for the expression. " The point is.. all of us are different, but all of us are the same man, somewhere. "
" Yeah, I know. Same Loki.. different choices. "
" The same Anthony Edward Stark, before you choose differently; too. " was what cocked his head back a little. Knocked the breath out of most of the downward thoughts. More so when he slid the point of that finger fully around the room looking right at him. " Twenty one of you. And every single one a champion. Perhaps not always on our side. Perhaps not always finding themselves with the option to choose to step into this room or not. But still you, the same way every one of those who opens the door in the first place is still me. Every single one.. " pointed still, along the turn of the walls to land on him. " Could have been you, but wasn't. Just as easily as you could have been any single one of them; but you aren't. Very few of them, have the balls or desire to face this room and what it is and what it means; and what it represents. This is why we call our others Mirrors. And why the universes connected are also called shards. These are the stories of your life, and our lives too yes; that you were never able to tell. The pieces you missed catching; and the pieces you have caught. The care, and passion, and handsome defiance still remains. You are you and separate. But you are also much more than what anyone sees, that doesn't come into this room; peek into it's doors: and see or hear for themselves. "
" ..so basically; Fate has the ball: so you may as well roll along with it? "
" Or learn her habits so you can shift her direction. " came with a soft huff of a laugh before Loki finished off his coffee. " I'm saying; whatever brought you in here to take my usual stance and sit against the door frame to sulk, or distract yourself from eyes that know you better -- " made Tony look at this one differently, but then : he was pretty sure that was the point. " -- will still be there when you go back. But; if you must come in here to steal my internal drama time: at least make certain that while you do you take note that whatever it is that brought you here, it could as easily be worse rather than better. "
#Loki#Lokiverse#Lokiverse (Mixology)#Lokiverse inspiration#Lokiverse feels#Multiverse#GROUNDED#ESCAPE#FARTHER#EXTENSION#LISTEN#our Multiverse#images not mine#images provided through discord#thanks to graive for scans & cleanup#comic references#character references#the pieces we keep#one multiverse; one loki; in all his forms
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Ch. Fifteen
⚠WARNING: Mention of previous character's death
• ────── ✾ ────── •
You set your phone down and look at Oikawa’s prone body lying next to you.
Once you returned to your apartment Oikawa was 99% asleep - you’re really not sure how he was able to put one foot in front of the other, but he did. You were going to deposit him into your bed but Oikawa was clinging to you like an octopus. So instead you let gravity do the work and you both had fallen backwards onto your comforter and pillows.
Oikawa didn’t even bother moving to get underneath the blankets before he properly fell asleep, mouth open and everything. He remained clutched to your arms, and you were helpless to try and escape from under him.
Ever since they were children, Oikawa always had to cling to someone and he’d be especially clingy when he was upset (which given today wasn’t surprising that you couldn’t pry yourself from his grip.) Since you, Oikawa and Hajime all lived in the same neighborhood since elementary, you had frequent sleepovers at each other’s homes. And sure enough, every time Oikawa would subconsciously choose you or Hajime to cling to while sleeping.
Hajime absolutely hated it but you didn’t mind.
Watching your friend sleep you can't help but give a sad little smile. He looks peaceful and so young in sleep. You know he’s the furthest from innocent right now, and he has a lot of work ahead of him to fully earn your trust back. But you wish that he wasn’t tortured with the troubles that plague you all.
A knock at the door makes you sit up. Oikawa’s face pinches at the motion, and you speak to him. “Mattsun and Makki are here, but you can sleep if you want.”
His reply is a sleepy grumble but he too sits up. You know that despite him only getting a few hours of sleep he won’t want to be left alone in your room. Together, with Oikawa leaning on you, you walk to the door and let in your friends. Mattsun raises his eyebrows at the sight of a clingy and exhausted Oikawa hanging off your frame but you just shrug. Makki seems to take pity on you as he drags Oikawa off and over to the couch, handing his coat off to Mattsun to hang up.
“Thanks for coming over,” you tell Mattsun. “I’m gonna put the kettle on and order some lunch.”
Mattsun nods. “Whatever you need to do.” He gives you a small smile and leaves you in the apartment entrance. You can recognize that he’s giving you space and letting you set the boundaries for the conversation to follow, and you appreciate his tact.
After you order the take out and make tea you enter your living room and see Makki and Mattsun sharing your couch. Oikawa is slumped in your armchair, eyelids drooping as he tries to stay away.
“Oikawa you can go back to sleep if you want.” You offer after setting down the tray with tea. He shakes his head at you as you pass out mugs but doesn’t verbalize.
“Okay, if you’re sure.” You settle on the ground by the coffee table, choosing to face your friends instead of sitting next to them. It’s quiet for a few minutes while everyone relaxes in their seats and sips the jasmine tea you’ve made. There’s a tangible tension in the air, stemming from the second Oikawa opened his mouth at the restaurant last night to this very moment. Mattsun and Makki are waiting for you to initiate, for in their eyes you were ready to tear Oikawa limb from limb yesterday and today you greeted them at the door with your tall friend clinging to you.
Plus there's the whole you loving Hajime thing that should be addressed.
You know that your friends would never, ever push you to discuss it. But they’re probably wondering why they weren’t privy to the info, why Oikawa was, and if you don’t trust them or something. The last thing you want is to make your friends doubt the relationship you have with them, so you’re ready to clear the air and address the elephant in the room.
“I love Hajime.” You say. Everyone looks up from their tea to you. “I’ve been in love with him since the first year of high school, I think.”
Predictably, you’re met with matching sad looks. But even though you knew it was coming, you still can’t squirm uncomfortably at the pity you feel coming from them. This was exactly why you didn’t want anyone to know, especially now.
“Were you ever going to tell him?” Mattsun asks quietly.
You shrug, both at his question and the uneasiness settling in your gut “I didn’t feel like I needed to at the time. We were still in high school, still living life. I was happy with our friendship and I didn’t think anything more.” You smile ruefully. “If anything I think I was more worried about not being friends with him anymore if a confession went south.
“Honestly, I didn’t think that there would be a day that I wouldn’t be able to tell him how I felt. Even if I grew out of those feelings, part of me thought I’d be able to confess some day. I don’t regret our friendship, not when I wanted more. But I do regret not being upfront about my feelings with Hajime. He was my best friend, and I should’ve been able to tell him anything.”
You feel tears prick at your eyes and you look down at your tea. “We all have wonderful memories with Hajime, and I will never ever forget him. But it sucks, because while the memories are wonderful I can’t help but think how much better they could’ve been if I told him how I felt about him.”
You sniff, holding back your tears. You look back up and see Oikawa wiping his eyes and Makki sniffling.
Mattsun is looking at you with a serious expression. “I don’t want to go through hypotheticals or explore ‘what ifs,’ but I don’t think I’m alone in saying that Iwazumi cared for you differently than he did us. And I don’t think it was because you were best friends growing up with Oikawa, because he hated Oikawa.”
“Hey!” Oikawa pipes up from his spot, but there’s no real heat behind it.
Mattsun shifts, clearing his throat. When he speaks again his voice is rough with emotion. “You were precious to him, and his actions reflected how much he cared for you.”
You recognize that Mattsun is not outright saying the L-word but his careful alluding makes you smile tearfully. “I know, and he’s always going to hold a special place in my heart.”
Nobody says anything to that, and the room is blanketed with silence again.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Makki asks quietly, subdued. “Oikawa knew, but me and Issei didn’t.”
You sigh, your chest tight at the wounded look on Makki’s face. “I didn’t mean for Oikawa to find out. And I didn’t want to hide it because I didn’t trust you. But I just didn’t know how to bring it up, especially after Hajime passed away. I just,” you pause, sighing. “We’re all struggling, and I didn’t want you to think differently of me, or I didn’t want you to think that your feelings weren’t valid.”
It’s a lame excuse, but it’s probably the best way you can explain your thoughts. You’re not sure if their feelings are stronger or lesser than yours but you don’t need to know. The varying levels of grief people feel do not need to meet a criteria to be judged. Just because you love Hajime beyond the level of friendship that Oikawa, Mattsun or Makki probably love Hajime doesn’t mean that you “win” the game of grief.
“Y/N,” Mattsun says softly. “We’re your friends, and we want you to come to us with anything. Well, anything you feel comfortable sharing, which I guess in this case you weren’t comfortable with.” Mattsun pauses, it looks like he’s struggling to pick his words. “I do feel pain for you, but mainly because you’ve been dealing with these thoughts alone. I’m sorry if we ever gave you the impression that you couldn’t talk to us.”
You shake your head. “It’s not that, I swear. I just didn’t want to burden you all.”
Mattsun sighs. “I understand, and I don’t want to push you to share anything you don’t want to. But we love Iwaizumi, and if you want to talk about him or need to talk about him, know you can always come to us.”
Makki and Oikawa nod in agreement. You feel your eyes sting again but you smile, because you have the most kind and generous friends you could ask for. Hindsight is 20/20, but your heart does feel lighter knowing that your friends won’t ostracize you or anything because you love Hajime.
“We should’ve known that Oikawa would’ve just confronted Y/N straight on, he’s always been a jerk like that.” Makki says teasingly, trying to lighten the mood.
But instead of squawking in protest or complaining dramatically, Oikawa nods. “Yeah, I’m an asshole.”
Makki’s smile instantly shifts into an uncomfortable frown. “Oikawa, I was just joking -”
“But you’re right.” Oikawa cuts him off firmly. “And I’ve been even worse the past few months. I haven’t been taking care of myself like I should, and I’m sorry taking my frustrations out on you guys.” He takes in a breath. “I’m going to take a break from volleyball so I can make time for my therapy sessions.”
You, Mattsun and Makki all share the same look of surprise. “Oikawa, are you sure?” You can’t help but think back to Oikawa’s reason for not wanting to quit volleyball, and part of you feels guilty for suggesting he take away the strong connection he had to Hajime.
But Oikawa gives you a weak smile. “If Iwa-chan were here, he would call me a dumbass for not taking care of myself.”
“Yeah, he’d probably call you a dumbass and throw a volleyball at your head.” Makki adds. Oikawa squawks at the tease, making everyone in the room laugh.
You smile as you watch Oikawa snap back at Makki, with Mattsun egging them both on. They fall into a routine they’ve established since high school. The one missing component - Hajime either ignoring Oikawa’s calls for backup or sharing comistering looks with you - is obvious, but it doesn’t hurt as much. Your friends’ presence in your apartment fills you with warmth and comfort, like a warm blanket at the end of a hard day.
A knock at the door disrupts your thoughts and you stand to grab the takeout. Mattsun goes to the kitchen to grab plates and utensils, while Oikawa and Makki continue to squabble in the living room. You and Mattsun return to the living room at the same time, causing Makki and Oikawa to call a truce and grab food. There’s a comfortable silence in your apartment as you all fill your plates and settle. As you dig in, an errant thought comes to your mind.
“Oikawa, how do you know where Osamu lives?”
Oikawa speaks around the noodles shoved in his mouth. “I have a fan who works in the registrar’s office and it wasn’t hard to bribe her to look it up.”
“Yeah, that’s something we haven’t talked about yet.” Makki notes, looking right at you.
You avoid his gaze. “About Oikawa’s fans? Yes, it’s ridiculous how crazy they are.”
“That’s not what I was talking about and you know it.”
You glance up, sighing at the looks of intrigue on Makki and Mattsun’s faces. “I was upset last night, and I left my keys at his place. He let me stay because I was upset. We’re just friends.”
Mattsun purses his lips at you, but Makki has a thoughtful look.
“Well, he’s pretty cute. If Mattsun ever gets tired of me I might have to give him a call.”
“Shut up,” you hiss. You know you’re just playing into his trap, and hell would have to freeze over before Mattsun and Makki broke up but you couldn’t even hold back your distaste at the idea.
The smirk on Makki’s face only grows. “Oh, is Osamu into possessiveness?”
“Excuse me?” You ask darkly.
“He said you were possessive.” Oikawa helpfully supplies with his mouth full of food. You’re about to yell at him for manners when Mattsun speaks up.
“You’re different around him.”
Uh oh, he’s using the same voice he used earlier when talking about Hajime and you. He’s not teasing you.
“Different how?” You ask quietly.
He shrugs. “Different, like how you acted around Iwaizumi.”
His observation is met with silence, Makki glancing at Mattsun nervously and Oikawa gazing directly at you.
“Do you like Osamu-kun?” Oikawa asks.
“Wow, yet again Oikawa is not scared to ask the hard questions!” Your attempts at deflection do not go well, as Mattsun serves you an intense look.
“Do you like him?”
You push back, rolling your eyes. “I think you guys know more than anyone that I’m in no state to be in a relationship right now.”
“That’s not what we’re asking.” Oikawa replies. He’s still staring at you, but it’s not a mean look on his face. Neither Mattsun nor Makki are looking at you meanly either, but all three of your friends’ eyes bore into you. Oikawa speaks up again. “Do you feel differently about Osamu compared to me, Mattsun and Makki?”
Your first instinct is to say no because you do see him as you see your friends. You think of all of the conversations you’ve both had about school and classes. And you think of all the stories you’ve shared about growing up in Sendai and your likes, dislikes.
You would even say that you and Osamu are best friends, given how much you’ve relied on him when it comes to dealing with Iwaizumi. A twinge of guilt twists in your stomach as you worry that maybe you rely on him too much. He has his own burdens to carry.
But at the end of the day, you just know that he’d be there for you. And he’s shown time and time again that he will be there for a late night phone call or a shoulder to cry on.
Even those late night text conversations when you’re too scared to fall asleep. Or how the way he supports is different to Makki, Mattsun and Oikawa.
But why? Why is it different?
Is it because he didn’t know the Y/N you were when you were younger? He didn’t know the Y/N that existed before high school?
He doesn’t know you from before Hajime died. He’s seen this raw, broken-down version of you. And he still wants to talk to you. He still wants to hang out and get coffee and be with you.
And in return, you know this raw, broken-down version of Osamu. Honestly, you could care less if the Osamu you never knew was the richest man in the world, or the smartest man alive. The Osamu now has been shaped and has grown from every experience he’s lived, the good and the bad. And everytime you talk you find out more about him that draws you in more. You’re never going to be satisfied until you find out everything about him. You’re not sure if it’s obsession or infatuation, but every little fact you unearth brings you a joy that you haven’t felt in some time.
You revel in the small expressions he shows around you and your ability to decipher his mood based on those looks. You shine when he focuses on you, his intense gaze indicating that he’s giving you his full attention on you and only you.
You felt safe with the strong arm around your shoulders when you felt like breaking. You felt comforted when he wiped your tears from your face.
You felt loved.
You look up at your friends, amazed.
“Oh my god, I think I like Osamu.”
The boys nod their head at you, none of them surprised by your revelation. You look down at your full plate, appetite long gone. You honestly can’t believe you’ve been so blind. Looking back it was so OBVIOUS that you’ve had feelings for Osamu for a long time.
Another thought crosses your mind, much more displeasing than your realizing your feelings for Osamu. “I don’t think I’m ready for a relationship though.”
The boys nod at you again. This time Oikawa isn’t able to hold back his eyes roll. “Well obviously.”
You shrink down, feeling a new level of low. There’s no way you could try to pursue a relationship with Osamu, not now. But what if he wants to? What if he returns your feelings and wants to date you? Or worse, what if he doesn’t accept your feelings and doesn’t want to be your friend anymore?
“Y/N-chan, get out of your head.” Oikawa sing-songs, and it does bring you out of your head. You look at him and frown.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Babe, you don’t have to do anything.” Makki replies.
“But I want to.” You say instantly. “I mean, I think I want to, or I should?”
“But you know that you’re not in the right headspace to pursue a relationship now.” Mattsun reminds you gently. “And making sure you’re healthy enough to give the relationship all that you can is important.”
You nod sadly, agreeing. But your face must display your disappointment, so Oikawa sets his plate down and comes to sit by you.
“Look, just take it day by day. Nothing really has to change, you just have a different outlook on your relationship with Osamu.” He grabs your hand and holds it in both of his. “Instead of looking through a plain window, you’re looking through a stained glass window, right? It’s still Osamu out there, and he’s still the same person you like and want to be with. But now your relationship with him is richer and more vibrant. Even if you can’t act on your feelings now, you still have this new and beautiful view.”
You stare at Oikawa, dumbfounded. Mattsun and Makki look equally surprised at the deep and meaningful comparison Oikawa pulled out of nowhere.
“Wow,” Makki eventually says. “I didn’t know you could be so romantic, Oikawa.”
“Excuse you, I’m very romantic!” Oikawa snaps back indignantly. “Anyway, Y/N-chan, I guarantee that Osamu will be willing to wait. He’ll be patient, especially with you.”
“What would you know about patience?” Makki asks, genuine confusion in his voice.
Oikawa snaps again wordlessly, his tone shrill. You and Mattsun laugh, and the rest of the day is filled with everyone laughing and teasing each other.
At some point you take a second to look at your friends and smile. Your lives are unimaginably hard, and Hajime missing from these get-togethers still makes your heart ache. But with Oikawa, Mattsun and Makki here to soothe the pain, you know you can get through the worst of it.
• ────── ✾ ────── •
A/N: Okay, so all the cards on the table - I cried during the entire writing process with this chapter - planning it, drafting it, writing it, finalizing it AND even reviewing it. It’s not the first time I’ve had emotional reactions to my own writing, but it’s the first time it’s been such a visceral reaction. Not only is it so satisfying to see that small character growth from Oikawa, but the character growth from Y/N was oh so satisfying. She is FINALLY opening up to her friends, and they are FINALLY having a conversation that has been MONTHS in the making. She isn’t scared to suppress her feelings anymore, and she FINALLY trusts herself to open up to her friends, despite her subconscious trying to protect her from being vulnerable in front of those she cares about. If you’re reading this now, please know that there is NOTHING wrong with being open and forthcoming about your feelings. The people in your life who love you unconditionally, including me, will THANK you for it. 💖💖💖 Okay, gonna go cry again after writing this A/N LOLOLOL.
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Loki (2021) Positivity from an Anti
Ok so all of my mutuals know I’m extremely anti-Loki (2021), anti-sylki, and anti-sylvie. But at a certain point, even we antis get tired of all the negativity. So! Here’s some Loki series commentary in the opposite direction! This is a list of all the things about the show that I loved :)
Also adding a disclaimer that all of this is just my opinion and some of my fellow antis (or even people who liked the show) might disagree, and that’s fine! I’ve been planning this post for awhile. I always say in my other posts that I don’t entirely hate the show and I wanted to be a little more specific about what I think are its good aspects. Feel free to leave your thoughts!
• Mobius is a gem (Owen Wilson owns my whole heart) and his relationship with Loki is so so great. He’s not one-dimensional at all, he has conflicted loyalty and is morally complex, and he has the tragic backstory- which makes him a perfect choice for eventually becoming Loki’s first genuine friend.
• The casting was really really great. Lots of women and people of color. Most of the female actresses (as well as the males) are over 30, which isn’t very common and is fantastic!
• Superb acting all around. I can’t think of a single scene where the actors under or oversold it.
• Beautiful set design, incredible cgi, and gorgeous cinematography overall. It looked more like a movie than a tv show, which is really good.
• Kang being the big bad was a huge plus for me. Johnathan Majors was perfect in the role, his vibes were immaculate, and I was honestly pretty worried that the man behind the curtain would end up being another Loki variant, which imo would’ve been boring and predictable and counter-productive, so it was a big relief when that didn’t happen.
• I like that it sets up a bunch of future marvel movies, rather than being contained to its own little world. It gives it more importance and (hopefully) will encourage writers to not just toss Loki’s character aside in future projects.
• All the Loki variants were delightful. All of them except Sylvie. Kid Loki has my heart. Boastful Loki is a fashion icon. Alligator Loki is a savage. President Loki is the superior variant. Classic Loki became my fav character in less than half an episode.
• It showed some more variety in Loki’s magic. A lot of his powers we’ve seen before, but it feels like they were portrayed a bit more blatantly in the show. The energy blasts, the telekinesis, the teleportation… Outstanding.
• It also implied that Loki has the potential to be waaaay more powerful than he knows he is right now, which? Yes.
• Some of the quotes- and the themes behind them- are just profound as hell. Such as:
“I think we’re stronger than we realise.”
“It’s never too late to change.”
“You can be whoever you wanna be, even someone good.”
“We’re Lokis. We survive. It’s what we do.”
“Loki, God of Outcasts.”
“The universe wants to break free, that’s why it manifests chaos.”
• Technically Loki was Marvel’s first canon lgbt (bi) character, which is a win. His genderfluidity is also technically canon, even if it wasn’t really acknowledged on-screen.
• There were a lot of throwback references to Thor 1, Avengers, and Thor The Dark World. Which I loved.
• Sylvie’s so pretty. Her hair and makeup and costume were all perfect.
• Big fan of Loki finally getting Laevateinn.
• Sufficiently slutty imagery, courtesy of a female director (Loki in a collar, kneeling to Sif, President Loki looking down into the bunker, the hair flips)
• The music was Excellent Wonderful and Superb.
• I love that Loki being a good singer is now canon.
• I love that Asgardians having their own language is now canon (even if it’s basically just Icelandic).
• I also love that they disproved all of those “Loki was a shy nerdy wallflower pre-canon” theories in Episode 3. The drinking/eating/singing scene was fun, if a bit wacky.
• There’s a million different reasons why Loki does what he does, especially in regards to the New York attack (I’m literally writing a huge meta on them), but somehow I never considered that Loki being desperate for control was one of them. It makes a lot of sense, and I always love getting new insights into his motivations.
• I love that Loki finally outright acknowledged that he doesn’t enjoy hurting people. We Been Knew™️ but it’s still nice to hear it out loud from his own mouth.
• The TVA outfit wasn’t as hideous as some people make it out to be. It could’ve been A Look, even. You know, if he’d just accessorised a little better. And kept the jacket on. And not gotten sweaty. And not gotten dirty. And maybe had at least one other costume change… But it had potential, though!!
• Even though I despise the Obvious One, I did actually like some of the other romance crumbs they tossed us (sifki, Loki x the flight attendant).
• The whole DB Cooper thing was iconic idc idc.
• Loki’s hyper sort of overly excited puppy attitude in episode 2 was actually pretty refreshing and funny (for awhile). And now I can headcanon him as adhd, yeehaw.
• “We’re all villains here.” That quote was iconic, my favourite one in the show. And the entire theme that it summarised was really great as well. When you think about it, every single main character in this series has been the villain at one point or another. I mean, I know all marvel characters do bad things etc, but none of the Heroes are ever narratively categorised as Bad. This show did just that with all of them, though. . Loki was framed as the psychopath that attacked New York. Sylvie was framed as the murderous fugitive. The TVA/Ravonna/Mobius were framed as the murderous fascists. Kang was framed as the crazy totalitarian. It’s made clear that all the Loki variants were the villains of their stories.
However, every single main character in the series is also framed as the Hero at a certain point. Loki is framed as the main protagonist who throws a wrench in the TVA’s dastardly plans. Sylvie is framed as the persevering freedom fighter who wants to take down the fascists. The TVA/Mobius/Ravonna are framed as the ones who maintain order for the greater good. Kang is framed as the weird but ultimately benevolent wise man who’s just trying to prevent something worse from happening. The Loki variants are framed as generous allies who befriend the main character and help him on his journey.
Everyone in this equation is openly acknowledged by the narrative to be morally corrupt, but not entirely morally bankrupt. There are no Straightforward Hero Figures (like the Avengers) in this entire scenario at all, and that makes for a super interesting dynamic that marvel has never done before. So yes: “We’re all villains here.” But also: “No one bad is ever truly bad, and no one good is ever truly good.” I loved that.
• Even if it wasn’t really enough imo, I still treasure the crumbs we got of Loki being competent and capable (him putting the collar on B-15, him figuring out Sylvie’s hiding place, him teaching himself to enchant on the fly while fighting a giant cloud beast of eldritch proportions).
• I love that B-15 was the one who stepped in and saved the day in Episode 4, when we all thought it was gonna be Mobius. What a queen.
• Marvel usually has a bit of a problem with creating compelling and memorable side characters. But aside from Sylvie, I genuinely got attached to every single character in this show. Like Casey, C-20? I was seriously emotionally invested in them and they were only in like 2 episodes. Wtf.
• Introducing the TVA storyline in the Loki series specifically was a really good move. I’m not saying they executed it well, just that it had a ton of potential. A lot of people have wondered why marvel even thought to put those two (the TVA and Loki) together, when they had literally nothing to do with each other, nothing in common, and essentially no connection at all. But when you think about it, it’s a really interesting twist on both of those stories. Forcing the embodiment of destructive chaos and the pillar of rigid order to interact could make for some seriously entertaining and compelling television. And as far as meshing these two completely unrelated entities together goes, I thought they did it pretty well- at least just the bare bones of the story (loki being arrested by the TVA and being one of their most common variants).
So that’s it! If you guys (fellow antis) wanna add stuff you liked, feel free. If anyone wants to discuss (or debate) my list, feel free to do that too!
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The Witcher: The Games vs the Books part 2 – Characters and Accents
So, I've already talked at length about the relationship between the Witcher books and games, but how well they captured individual characters is its whole own subject – and you’d better believe I have enough thoughts on it for a whole extra post.
Andrej Sapkowski's skill for creating vivid and engaging characters really is so much of what brings the books to life, and no matter how much work an adaptation might put into worldbuilding and plot, it's the characters you've really got to nail to get the long-time fans on board. Especially when you’ve done what the games have, framing themselves as a direct continuation of Sapkowski's story. Nothing invites comparison to your source material like basically forcing fans to read the original novels to understand even half the backstory alluded to in-game.
So how did they do? I can only offer my opinion – characterisation is necessarily going to be a lot more subjective than just telling you what plot points the games contradicted outright – but like any fan, I have opinions in plenty.
Of the main cast, I feel Yennefer is the character they've captured the best. They've done just as well with some supporting players – I have no real complaints about Dijkstra or Phillipa, for example, who are favourites of mine in both games and books. For the main players though, Geralt and Regis seem to be the ones who's differences I'm most inclined to forgive, whereas I don't feel like they've done Ciri justice at all. Book!Geralt is much less of a smartarse, for one thing, whereas Book!Ciri is much more of one. But if we're talking about the differences, I’m afraid we really need to start with Dandelion.
Dandelion
For all the genuinely good work the games do with characters, old and new, I don't think I can overstate what a disservice the they've done Dandelion, who I could not stand in TW3, but is now one of my favourite book!verse characters. Alas, Dandelion is a prime example of something the Witcher games really don't do well: camp. Being the archtypical bard, Dandelion is about as flamboyant as any enthusiastically-heterosexual man can be: you should be able to spot this guy by body language alone, he should be flouncing around and he should talk like a spoiled noble auditioning for Shakespeare. Book!Dandelion is over-the-top and ridiculous and just so much fun, and I loved him well before I'd even really gotten into the rest of the books around him.
Here's just a bit of dialogue from one of his first appearances, to give you a sense of how he and Geralt play off each other.
The bard seized the fingerboard of his lute and plucked the strings vigorously. ‘How would you prefer it, in verse or in normal speech?’
‘Normal speech.’
‘As you please,’ Dandelion said, not putting his lute down. ‘Listen then, noble gentlemen, to what occurred a week ago near the free town of Barefield. ‘Twas thus, that at the crack of dawn, when the rising sun had barely tinged pink the shrouds of mist hanging pendent above the meadows—’
‘It was supposed to be normal speech,’ Geralt reminded him.
‘Isn’t it? Very well, very well. I understand. Concise, without metaphors. A dragon alighted on the pastures outside Barefield.’
Though TW3's Dandelion certainly looks the part, you have to go hunting through art from the Gwent cards to find much that comes close to really capturing his personality (see left pic below – though even there, a Dandelion who'd voluntarily break his treasured lute is a very hard sell). Though a lot of fanart does better (right-below – credit goes to Tatiana Ortaliz).
But as poorly as the games capture his flamboyance, they're not that much better when it comes to taking him seriously. TW3 left me thinking he was all talk and no substance; the books make abundantly clear that he really is renowned enough to be welcome in courts across the continent. Though he often overestimates what he can talk himself out of, he isn’t stupid either: he's lectured at Oxenfurt, spied for Dijkstra, and then there are the moments where the frivolous playboy mask slips and you realise he's sometimes much better at understanding people and relationships than Geralt will ever be (which is honestly kind of funny considering how many of Dandelion’s relationships end with plates being thrown at him from an upper story). He's not at all above mocking Geralt when he deserves it either (and especially his personal and relationship issues) – Geralt will happily mock him right back.
We never do learn how they became friends (I'm pretty sure the incident listed in the wiki is just the date of their first expedition together, not their first meeting), but Geralt just doesn't form lasting friendships or romances with anyone he can't have an intelligent conversation with. And Dandelion is a damn good friend to Geralt – one who, despite being a helpless, squishy little bard, will keep Geralt's secrets under torture, or will follow him into Nilfgaard in the middle of a war simply because you don't let a friend make a trip like that alone. (Seriously, I don’t ship it nearly as much as some, but hot damn there is some material in here if you do.) In short, it's basically inconceivable that he'd leave an amnesic Geralt wandering around Vizima alone, as he does in the first Witcher game – which is the kind of thing I can mostly forgive as a gameplay conceit, only it doesn’t really get better from there.
He’s also supposed to be blond, something I don’t think is technically specified until fairly late in the novels, but 100% what I’d been picturing since his first description as a man in a colourful bonnet with cornflower-blue eyes (let’s face it: Dandelion’s hair isn’t the only thing about him that screams ‘blond’). It’s a shame no-one from the games to the show to the novels’ cover artists seem to have noticed – but at least there are some fanartists out there who were paying attention (credit for these goes to Asphaloth, Ghostcupdraws, Hvit-ravn (tumblr deleted), 94355 and itsmespicaa).
As for the games? Well, I cannot speak to how Dandelion came across in the original Polish, but I think it speaks worlds about the priorities of the English version that they didn’t even bother to cast someone with a halfway-decent singing voice as their master bard. There are isolated moments of dialogue that come close to sounding like book!Dandelion– mostly in Witcher 2, which comes closer to capturing the spirit of the books than either 1 or 3, or his attempts to convince his captor he's a disguised noble when you rescue him TW3 – but his voice actor is just painfully ill-suited to the role.
Geralt
Geralt fares much better than Dandelion, though he’s still a little hard to square with the Geralt of the books. Book!Geralt spends a lot more time sulking, just to begin with: he sulks because his job is complicated and gets him no respect, and because the world is unjust and unfair – and, most of all, he sulks because Yennefer has dumped him again. He also gets mocked for sulking, and usually deserves it. Book!Geralt is generally a lot more taciturn and a less prone to making smart comments just to have something to say – arguably because in book!Geralt's world, making smart comments often ends at the gallows, or at least with some corrupt official making your life much harder. Book!Geralt's world kind of sucks, and he's just got to put up with it.
As much as he often plays into the expectations of being an uneducated monster hunter, he's also got a more of an intellectual streak than you’d guess. He may prefer to stay out of politics (because damnit, his job is to save people from monsters, not people who are monsters), but he attended school at Nenneke's temple and has even taken classes at Oxenfurt academy, and there's a lot of thoughtful nuance to his opinions – his speech to Ciri about why he can't in good conscience take a stronger stance against the Scoiata'el contains a wealth of historical perspective, just for one example. Even his smart comments tend to be, well, somewhat smarter in the books.
Book!Geralt’s explicitly a lot younger than Yennefer – around 50 is the usual estimate, falling far short of the 100-ish the games suggest (the scandal of having a man fall for – gasp! – an older woman clearly didn’t bother Sapkowski one bit). You don’t see nearly as much "I'm getting too old for this" from book!Geralt, who's really not that old by witcher standards, and is apparently still hunting monsters long into his future. I'm also a little annoyed by the way they play off his hatred of portals like he's a grumpy old man who doesn't like mobile phones, when his distrust originally came from having seen the gruesome deaths that result when portals go wrong. This is not to say Book!Geralt lacks other ordinary human flaws, however – twice in the last two books of the main saga, he gets severely sidetracked after his ego gets the better of him (in the adulation he receives after being knighted, then after arriving in Toussaint), and it's quite some time before he properly gets back on track for that whole rescuing-Ciri thing again. He’s also pretty hopeless when it comes to romance and relationships – breaking things off gracefully is really not in his skillset.
So why does game!Geralt not bother me more? Well, he's the main player character of a game franchise, and one who has to carry the experience largely solo. Some adjustments for genre are pretty much inevitable in that position. He's certainly fared better than Meve, for example, who's been softened far more from her book characterisation for her PC role in Thronebreaker. Then there's the whole amnesia thing – it's easy to believe that sort of experience would change a man – and if he doesn't sulk so much as he used to, maybe he's grown up a bit. Geralt's also in many ways the straight-man of Sapkowski's Witcher universe – there largely as the reliable centre for other, louder personalities to play off. But I expect the real bottom line here is that I do still like game!Geralt enough to forgive him a lot of what he lacks.
The books never do describe Geralt as being very attractive – something book-based fanart often tries to reflect. The point has been made before that the rather-alien-looking Geralt of the first game (left pic above) is probably a lot closer to his book-description. However, the main distinguishing factor you’ll see in book-based fanart is probably the ubiquitous headband, which genuinely is what book!Geralt wears to make his hair behave (the example on the right above comes from Diana Novich).
All that said, if Sapkowski really wants me to believe that nearly so many women are eager to jump into bed with him, I’m going to have to shallowly assume our witnesses are unreliable on this front, and Geralt is at least as attractive as Witcher 3′s take on him. Nothing else makes sense. *g*
Regis
Regis varies mostly in that book!Regis is a lot more smug, sometimes verging on obnoxious – and a lot keener to make fun of Geralt (who generally deserves it). But then, Regis is old and wise and superpowered enough to dance rings around most everyone else – can you blame him? By Blood and Wine, Regis' overconfidence has been recently smacked down hard after his near-death-experience at the hands of Vilgefortz, and that kind of thing could knock some chips off anyone's shoulder. Throw in the fact that with Dettlaff, we have a situation not even Regis could make light of, and the changes to game!Regis make a certain amount of sense.
I do feel it's a bit of a shame that the vocal direction didn't work just a little bit harder to capture some of Regis' smugger side, or emphasise that his long-winded philosophising on human behaviour is supposed to sound a bit pretentious. This is actually something I suspect they were going for a few times in the script, but which didn't come through in the dialogue quite the way it was meant to. Still, again, I'm sure I'm biased by the fact that I like game!Regis far too much to find much fault in what they've done with him. They've done a lovely job capturing his friendship with Geralt too.
Looks-wise, there's a tendency in book-based art to portray Regis with long hair (even some pre-Blood-and-Wine Gwent art did so – see the two pics on the left above, from Gwent and early B&W concepts. The right-most pic is cover art from the books). I couldn't rightly tell you where long-haired-Regis comes from, though – perhaps it's described more explicitly in the original Polish, or perhaps it comes up in passing in some passage I've forgotten, though it may just as well just be a fannish meme.
The books do describe him as looking rather like a tax collector, slim, middle-aged, with an aquiline nose, prone to wearing black, and his hair as 'greying' or 'grey streaked', so presumably somewhat younger-looking than the game would have it. The hammer-horror-esque sideburns are likewise a game-verse addition, though I do like the look they went with – it's distinct from Geralt in a way that making him another long-grey-haired man wouldn't have been, and that's probably the point.
Being the hopeless Regis fan I am, I have quite the folder full of different fanart takes on book!Regis, so have a selection – art here is by gellihana-art, justanor, greysmartwolf, Nastyaskaya, NatalyLanier, beidak, natalliel, ellaine and afternoon63. For what it’s worth, I feel beidak’s (bottom pic, second from the left) comes the closest to what I’d have pictured personally, based on how he’s first described.
Ciri
I find it much harder to rationalise the changes to game!Ciri, who I didn't exactly dislike, but found stuck too close to the role of generic-macguffin-girl-who-just-wants-to-be-normal to be very interesting. Having read the books, not only do I much prefer book!Ciri, I'm not sure I can emphasize enough how much the game did NOT prepare me for utter gauntlet of whump and misery that girl survives in the last four titles. Book!Ciri is a character who works for me mostly because of the same flaws the game mostly strips her free of – TW3 makes some token noise about how you can't tell her what to do, but she’s an utter little royal brat when we first meet book!Ciri, and it’s so much of what brings her to life. She throws herself into her witcher training with the enthusiasm of a kid going completely native, but still revels in getting to be girly for a change when Triss first arrives at Kaer Morhen. She hates Yennefer at first, but soon bonds with her just as strongly as she ever did with Geralt, picking up some of Yennfer’s haughty mannerisms along the way. And then she gets thrown through a portal and lost in the distant wilderness, and the whole world comes down on her head.
The build up to the first time Ciri actually has to kill someone is intense... and things only get worse from there. Steadily. For another couple of novels at a stretch. Seriously, a major caveat that pretty much has to go into any rec for these books (and I will absolutely rec these books) is that Ciri's story gets heavy. So heavy one finds oneself using phrases like, "that time that one guy died of his wounds on top of her while semi-consensually feeling her up was honestly one of the less traumatic incidents in the period."
By the end of the novels, Ciri has nearly died of thirst, been beaten, tied up, dragged around the country as a prisoner, run with bandits and killed innocent people for the fun of it, done fantasy-cocaine and got a tattoo, fought off more than one attempted rape, been drugged, lain for multiple nights next to an impotent elf who completely fails to impregnate her, watched the bodies of her friends and girlfriend being mutilated in front of her, and did I mention where she got that scar? She has survived hell, and it is absolutely a testament to her own strength that she somehow comes through it and puts herself back together at the end. When Geralt finally arrives to rescue her, what matters most isn't that her ordeal is over, but that she finally knows she hasn’t been abandoned by everyone who’d ever loved her after all.
The Ciri of the books is fierce and wild and arrogant, but she's learned her morals from the best, and she holds onto them until she can't, then picks them back up again when she can, and above all she survives. For all that her story turns arguably too much of the last two books into a slog of misery, oh boy does it pay off at the end. And that's probably about as much as I can say about her Big Moment in the last book without spoiling too much, so suffice to say that by the end of the saga, Geralt has pretty much become a supporting character in Ciri's story, not the other way around. (Seriously, you’d be surprised how few chapters of the last two books he’s actually in.)
Finding art which captures the aspects of Ciri’s character and history which are missing from the game has turned out to be pretty hard, though the fanart above from her bandit phase takes a decent crack at it (credit to Loles Romero and NastyaSkaya). I do rather like that one shot of her on horseback beside her girlfriend too, which comes from Denis Gordeev’s illustrations for the novels (below).
How much of this does TW3 get across with her portrayal in the game? Well, she's still pretty headstrong, I guess. And they let you give a 'sorry, I like girls' answer in one bit of dialogue, so they remembered her girlfriend existed. That's nice. But game!Ciri still has a kind of wide-eyed innocence that book!Ciri lost years ago, while book!Ciri is a little force of nature in ways the games hardly even hint at, and that's a really shameful loss.
You'd think, with a character so young, it ought to be easier to imagine she's simply grown up since we saw her last, but so much of what's changed about Ciri feels like a step back rather than forwards. I can shrug off Geralt and Regis' differences and still enjoy their game-verse-selves, but Ciri leaves me genuinely disappointed.
I’d say the official art that comes closest to capturing book!Ciri is that one portrait of her as a very grumpy young child (right above). Some of the early concept art (left above) feels a little more like it has her attitude, though she’s rather too yellow-blonde – not to mention too pretty. I think it also bears pointing out that Ciri isn’t really supposed to be the kind of beauty she is in the game – even before she gets what’s meant to be a seriously ugly and disfiguring scar. (Fanart below by justanor and bobolip)
But of course, the male gamer fanbase can’t be expected to give a fuck about a girl they wouldn’t want to fuck, so game!Ciri must be generically gorgeous. Le sigh.
Triss
I suppose I should at least touch on Triss, too, though she's a very odd case. She's so out of character in the first Witcher game that I am wryly amused that the biggest thing they arguably do get right is that taking advantage of Geralt the moment he showed up with amnesia is... pretty well in-character for her (look, I gotta be honest here, I'm not much of a fan of Triss in any of her incarnations).
The second game does a much better job with her – she actually feels like book!Triss, she has some good dialogue, we're finally dealing with some of her conflicted loyalties to the Lodge and to Geralt – though by the third, her characterisation has been so softened into “the nice one” that none of that potentially meaty conflict is ever resolved, or even really mentioned. Perhaps there's more buried in the Triss-romance path, which I've never bothered with, but the writers seem to have just given up on dealing with anything that might make her look less than wholly sympathetic. Heck, we hardly even get a clear statement about why she and Geralt broke up between Witchers 2 and 3.
Even speaking as such a not-a-fan of Triss, I promise there is more they could've done with the character the books give us. There's her ongoing trauma in from the Battle of Sodden, where she was injured so badly she was memorialised as one the dead: the 14th of the hill. There's her furious impatience with the neutrality of both the witchers and the Lodge: Triss has fought and died for a cause, and is ready to do so again. The second game sort of gets into this, but by and large, the games really aren't up to tackling the moral complexity of having such a theoretically-sympathetic character as Triss, who was still broadly willing to go along with the Lodge's plans to pair Ciri off and get her pregnant as soon as possible – her own wishes be damned. No, instead, Triss has conveniently left the Lodge before the rest of them go spiraling into abject villainy in the second game, clearing all that messy grey stuff out of the conflict.
Of course, the really big unresolved plot point still hanging over book!Triss is how badly she needs to terms with the fact Geralt's just Not That Into Her, and never has been – but since the games want Triss to be a serious romantic option, that's definitely not getting the resolution it could've used.
Book!Triss also pointedly avoids any outfit with a plunging neckline because her chest is covered with the ugly scars she received in the Battle of Sodden, something the games did not have the guts to reproduce. In a more confusing note, the books do consistently describe her hair as 'chestnut', which we'd usually think of as meaning 'brown' – though it turns out the games actually may not have been wrong to make her a redhead, since in Poland 'chestnut hair' apparently mean dark red hair (google some pictures of actual chestnuts, and you'll see why). Still, the firy-red-haired Triss of TW3 who wears nothing but plunging necklines remains a bit of a stretch, however you slice it. Once again, TW2 gets her best (and I must say, gave her the nicest outfit) – though even here she's conspicuously unscarred in all her sex scenes.
(Leftmost pic above is official Witcher 2 art, whereas Triss-with-scars fanart comes to us – once again – from nastyaskaya)
Shani
Shani sort of falls into a similar category as Triss as someone who isn't terribly well-served by any of her appearances, given that both exist in the first game largely to compete for Geralt's attentions. But I can't honestly say I find Shani’s portrayal in the Hearts of Stone expansion to be much better – the degree to which either version exists solely to fall all over Geralt is a bit painful, especially given that their relationship in the books is limited to a single, undramatic hook-up. Book!Shani really only appears in a couple of chapters: we meet her as a medical student friend of Dandelion's, who's been surreptitiously selling pilfered university supplies to fund her degree, then later see her again in the final book, where she proves herself as a battlefield medic during the climactic Battle of Brenna. She's pragmatic to a fault, and I really can't see her as the type who needs Geralt to point out to her that her patient is dead, for example, or who'd subject a guy with Geralt's problems to such an extended feelings-dump as you'll get out of her during the wedding.
Shani is a reasonably logical book-character to bring back, if only because she’s one of those who explicitly survives the ending, but for my money, "serious contender for Geralt's affections" is just not a role she works in.
Anna Henrietta
The duchess of Toussaint, Anna Henrietta, is another case who differs more from her book counterpart than you might think. In the books, the duchess is by far the least competent of the (pleasantly many and) various female leaders and rulers we meet – she comes across as rather young and naive, and every bit as absurd as everyone else in the ridiculous fairy-tale duchy she rules. She is, for example, most displeased to learn that Nilfgaard's war against the north is ongoing (something her courtiers have carefully avoided mentioning in her presence), because she'd long since sent the Emperor a stern note demanding he brought it to an end. She promptly has one of her ministers sent to the tower for misinforming her, and demands the others prepare an even sterner note for the emperor, which will surely do the job.
After Dandelion (inevitably) cheats on her, she has him repeatedly sent to the gallows, only to change her mind and send him a reprieve at the very last minute each time. Picture yourself a much younger and prettier version of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, and you've about got her general vibe.
Blood and Wine sort of waves at this part of her character when she first speaks about Dandelion, and again in suggesting there's a widespread feeling she lacks compassion, and once more as she proves utterly immovable on the subject of her sister. But the generally sensible and insightful woman you deal with for most of the main story is a far cry from her book-verse characterisation. That’s a bit of a shame, because I feel like there's a lot more they could have done to blend the two versions of her. Still, it’s hard to argue the duchess we get suits the story being told around her.
Other characters
Much as I love Yennefer, Dijkstra and Phillipa, I don't really have much more to say about them because I feel the games have done such a good job. The Yennefer of the books gets to show a lot more depth and complexity simply because she has more scenes and more space in which to do so, but when ‘there isn’t more of her’ is your biggest complaint, the game is officially doing pretty well. I could certainly gripe her about how “dresses in black and white” seems to have been taken as “dresses in black with maybe a trace of white trim”, or how Yennefer and Triss seem to be the only sorceresses in the world capable of wearing pants, when Phillipa (just for one) is in sensible men’s clothing the very first time we meet her, but that’s getting into serious nitpicking territory.
(Not that Yen can’t look amazing in outfits with more white – art by Emily Caroll, theclashofqueens, BarbaraRosiak, and cosplay by greatqueenlina)
Vesimir, Lambert and Eskel, Geralt's fellow witchers from the School of the Wolf, fall into a similar category for me – though we spend far less time with them in the books, everything we see of them in the games feels like a fairly logical extension of their book-roles. Vesimir is somewhat over-played as the old fogey, and his death is painfully cliched, but the impact on the characters and Kaer Morhen still hits home – and the games do some especially great work expanding Lambert into a much more complex character. To my mind, the only shame is that more of the book-original characters didn't get the same treatment.
Who have I missed? There's Avallac'h, of course, but I think I've got him pretty well covered by that last post. Zoltan, perhaps inevitably, has had his personality largely flattened into 'generic dwarf', with nothing better to do than hang around Geralt and Dandelion. You wouldn't know Book!Zoltan was apparently incapable of turning away women and children in need, for example – even human women and children with the chronic inability to say thankyou for his help. Or that he eventually admits to Geralt that the luggage he and his friends are carrying comes from a decidedly unsavoury source for such a supposedly charitable, upstanding guy. Yes, even Zoltan gets to be a morally complicated character in the books – who knew?
Speaking of dwarves, pleased as I am that Yarpen Zigren gets remembered in TW2, he's an odd one to talk about, since even in the books, he appears to have had a substantial personality transplant between his two main appearances. Yarpen’s a largely comedic figure in The Bounds of Reason short story, where he cheerfully admits to having considered letting his men knock down a particularly pompous aristocrat and piss all over him to teach him a lesson, but he’s evolved into a studious voice of reason against the scoiata'el by Blood of Elves. TW2 doesn't do a particularly good job of capturing either version, which I suspect probably bothered me more than most people – I liked the later book-incarnation of Yarpen immensely (and not even just because he's one of few ever to really call Triss out on just how much she needs to stop misreading Geralt's friendship as anything more than it is). His chapter in Blood of Elves packs a hell of a punch.
On the subject of accents
I do have to wonder if I'd have warmed up to characters like Triss, Shani and Dandelion (or even Letho) more if they'd only had halfway decent voice actors. It's not just that none are exactly leading the talent at the acting part of the job, it's that their American accents stick out in TW3 like a sore thumb.
Geralt mostly gets away his own US accent by dint of being the very first character we meet, so we've gotten used to the way he talks long before we notice how he stands out – hell, maybe that's just how they talk down in Rivia (hilariously, book!Geralt eventually reveals he's not even from Rivia, but simply picked the place and taught himself the accent so he could feel a bit less like the abandoned foundling he is, which only gives us yet more excuse for why his accent might sound a bit weird). More importantly, Geralt is meant to stand out, to be the outsider wherever he goes, so having him sound like no-one else fits the character.
But neither Triss or Dandelion are "of Rivia", and by the time they show up we've had dozens of hours in a game where literally everyone else sounds British, or Scottish, or Irish, or vaguely-eastern-European in the case of the Nilfgaardians. So why do these weirdos sound like no-one else on the continent?
The short answer seems to be that every character with an American accent in TW3 is someone who had an American accent in at least one of the previous games, which were way looser with their casting and had enough incidental American accents around that they didn't stand out. Clearly, by TW3, consistency with prior games has been prioritised over consistency with literally anything else we’re hearing.
Gaetan is an exception to the rule as the only new character (at least that I caught) with an American accent – presumably because between Geralt, Eskel, Lambert, Berengar, and Letho (and cohorts), some sort of 'witchers have American accents' rule has been pretty well established (another random American-accented witcher shows up in Thronebreaker, just to underline the point). We're going to mostly ignore Jad Karadin here, since his British accent is presumably a recent affectation to go with his new identity, and so makes sense.
This still doesn't really work though, since Letho’s school is all the way down in Nilfgaard (land of the Eastern European accents), while the oldest witcher from Kaer Morhen (Vesimir) is the one guy with a British accent. He sounds nothing like any of his students, despite the fact he's logically the guy they ought to have learned their accents from. So the logic falls in a heap however you slice it, and I'm thrown right out of the game.
With TW3 as your intro to the series, it feels almost as if characters like Triss and Dandelion have been assigned American accents because they're just too important to be saddled with the same pedestrian British accents as everyone else, which did nothing to endear them to me. The only one I eventually warmed up to was Lambert, and then only because he's just such a bitter asshole that he eventually goes full circle and comes out the other side (somewhere around when you've heard his miserable backstory, then gotten drunk together and told him how much you love him, man). Gaetan similarly snuck in under the same clause – American accents clearly work better for me in this series when attached to characters you're supposed to find pretty insufferable on first impressions.
Some final notes
To conclude, it seems only fair to throw in a quick nod to some of the more memorable book-characters who don't appear in the games. Neither Mother Nenneke (Geralt's sort-of-surrogate mother) or Vissena (Geralt's biological mother) ever appear either, alas – Vissena doesn't even merit so much as a Gwent card, which seems quite the wasted opportunity.
Milva, Cahir and Angouleme – the three remaining companions of Geralt’s who died alongside Regis but who were not so easily resurrected – naturally don’t appear. But nor are even really mentioned in all the games, which seems rather less than they deserve after giving their lives to Geralt's cause.
Cahir and Angouleme do at least have pretty badass Gwent cards to their names, though I am properly offended that Milva (who has the dubious honour of being my very favourite book character who doesn't ever appear in the games) is stuck with a card of her freaking death scene – which not only gets the scene wrong (believe me, there was no grimacing and gripping the arrow buried shallowly in her chest for poor Milva), but doesn't even bother to get her hair the right colour, for fuck’s sake. Basically, Milva was a stone cold badass and absolutely deserves better. #justice4milva
One can only guess how I'd have felt about some of these characters had I read the books before playing the games – I am obviously biased towards forgiving changes to characters whom I liked in their game incarnations, regardless of how they compare. Still, I think it does speak wonders that there still all these characters who suddenly made sense only after I'd met them in the books.
Even if only for Dandelion and Ciri, I can only dream of seeing a bit more of the book-original characterisations make it into the collective fannish consciousness. There's nothing wrong with getting into the canon purely based on the show or the games, but having read Sapkowski's novels, it's no longer any mystery how they spawned this massive franchise. That the saga wasn’t even fully available in English until well after Witcher 3 was released – a solid couple of decades late, and long after it had already been translated into Russian, French, German, Spanish and more – is a real shame. For once, it’s us in the anglophone world who’ve been missing out: these books deserve so much more than to be thought of as a footnote to the games or the show.
#Dandelion#Witcher novels#Jaskier#Ciri#Regis#Geralt of Rivia#meta#The Witcher#long post is even longer this time#I blame everyone who gave me such lovely feedback on that last post *g*
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Girl Group | Pepper Potts, Laura Barton, Wanda Maximoff, & Sharon Carter
Hi y'all— I was going to work on other things and then I saw this post from @imaginearyparties and got inspired to write about these women having a support group of sorts. I hope you enjoy this heal piece— I spent too long today writing it LOL
Synopsis: The story of four not so unlikely friends and how their girl group saves them.
Characters: Pepper Potts Stark, Laura Barton, Wanda Maximoff, Sharon Carter
Tags: Angst, mentions of death, funerals, toxic men, alcohol, girl friends, positive female relationships, Laura Barton being a mama bear, Pepper and Wanda and Sharon losing their shit
Word count: 3.2k
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It starts as an accident— it starts at a funeral. Three funerals, actually; Tony would have wanted to share his with the Widow and the Robot, after all.
Pepper Stark, Sharon Carter, Wanda Maximoff, and Laura Barton stand in a broken line in front of the water, all suspended with the same overarching, mixed feelings of dread and peace. For four women who look strikingly different from one another— especially Laura as she stands shadowed under Pepper’s goddess frame— they all do look quite indistinguishable. Maybe that’s just the black, though— maybe mourning blurs individuals into masses.
“I don’t think I can do it.” Pepper doesn’t cry when she admits her fears— she doesn’t have any tears left. “I don’t think I can raise her on my own.”
Laura, who’s been holding her hand for the better part of three days, squeezes it gently. “You aren’t alone, Pep. You’ll never be alone. You’ll always have a home with me.”
Laura and Pepper may be vastly different— an off the grid, stay at home mom and a business tycoon CEO— but the brunette means every word; she has since Tony introduced Pepper all those years ago.
Pepper nods. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“She’s something special,” Sharon pipes in from the other end of the line, her shoulder brushing a silent Wanda. “I could never.”
Sharon doesn’t know either of them as well as they know each other but still she stands by their sides, her own black dress just as itchy as theirs— sisters now branded together in the inevitabile uncomfort that comes with loss. She can’t stay long— she knows that— but Wanda had called her out of the blue, somehow, sounding more lost than ever, and the blonde has never been one to turn down a girl in a spiral.
Or, in this case, three.
Laura laughs lightly, sounding just as tired as she looks, and Wanda rubs her arm absentmindedly, her own voice a whisper compared to the other, stronger women. “I think I would have wanted children. Vis and I spoke about it a few times. Thinking about it now, though, it seems silly.”
Barely twenty-six and basically a widow herself, Wanda can’t feel her fingers shake as she tightens the cardigan around her shoulders. Sharon notices and acts— she’s good at that— taking her fingers and wrapping them in her own.
“It’s not silly— you would be a great mother.” She then projects her voice back to Pepper. “And you’re already a great mom, Pepper. You have a great kid.”
She’s not very good at comforting people but she has to try. Neither of the women comment back, but that’s okay. Sharon isn’t really expecting them to.
Instead, Wanda rests her head on the blonde’s shoulder. “When do you have to leave again?”
Sharon sighs— both from the way Wanda tries to hide her disappointment and from her own disappointment that’s bubbling in her throat. Because she is— disappointed— in the world and in some of the men in their lives. How Sharon Carter always manages to surround herself with men who can save the world but can’t find a spare moment to save her, she doesn’t know, but she can’t find it in herself to feel guilty over her anger.
“Tomorrow, probably.” She says bitterly. “You’re okay with me crashing one more night on your couch, right?”
Wanda could scoff— in fact, she does— Sharon should already know the answer. “I’d be okay if you crashed the rest of your life on my couch. I’d be okay if you all did.”
There’s more silence— it’s becoming a staple in their renegade band of misfit moms and runaway fugitives— and in that silence they unknowingly take a collective step closer together. Mourning gravitating towards mourning, women gravitating towards each other— Pepper throwing her arm around Laura’s shoulders and managing to give Wanda an I hear you scratch.
Laura— soft, sweet, tired Laura— is the one who breaks the silence—
“I have two bottles of Moscatto?”
— and for the first time in three days, Wanda laughs.
“I have a bottle of Stolichnaya— and every season of Bewitched.”
It progresses into a semi-regular thing after that— branching from funerals (and the sleepovers that follow them) into more casual, running-from-the-law type gatherings.
Wanda and Sharon stand once more in black, only this time they aren’t mourning— they’re getting ready for a party and standing around a shiny macbook air.
“What’s this function you two are going to again?” Laura’s voice— still tired but this time in a significantly less existential way— crackles through the speaker.
Her video, which is taking up half the screen, displays that of a full grown woman in a pink and darker pink striped onesie and a steaming cup of coffee in her hands. In the background, just visible enough to read, her stovetop flashes 5:46. Similarly, on the other side of the screen, Pepper’s messy knot of red hair— and her significantly more adult pyjamas— are illuminated by the glow of her alarm clock. 6:46.
“It’s just an art show—” Sharon answers, smiling into the camera for a quick moment before going back to righting the studs in her ears— “You know you didn’t have to wake up so early. You should both be getting as much sleep as possible— I hear being a mom is tough work.”
Both Laura and Pepper share a laugh at that and Wanda smiles too, not missing the tinge of you’re crazy for having kids in Sharon’s voice.
Laura takes a sip from her mug, humming her agreement. “It is but you know I wouldn’t miss our calls for the world. Besides, Clint is worse. The lug woke me up at five on his way out the door to check the frost damage. Husbands are more work.”
For a moment no one says anything and none of them can tell if it’s because everyone’s in their own little world of coffee and clothing or if it’s to give the two red heads a moment to clear their throats.
“Don’t I know it.” Pepper sighs.
Laura’s eyes, even through the screen, flash with sympathy but she doesn’t retract her statement or apologize. She knows she doesn’t need to— that’s not how their little group works. There’s no use in apologizing for things you can’t fix— especially not to Pepper.
Instead, Wanda turns to her sister-in-hair and asks her outright: “How are you holding up?”
Directness is always the best approach— it always garners an honest answer.
“I feel like shit.” Pepper laughs. “Half the time I can’t sleep and the other half I can’t drag myself out of bed. If it weren’t for Morgan I don’t know what I’d do. Rot, probably.”
Wanda huffs, turning so that Sharon can zip her silk dress. It’s significantly more comfortable than the one she had worn half a year ago. Bless Sharon Carter and her affinity for designer clothing.
“Can we consider Sharon my child then? Because without her I’m pretty sure I’d be in the same boat. Making sure she doesn’t burn down the apartment when she makes dinner is the only thing keeping me going.”
“Hey!” Wanda receives a light whap for the comment but it’s landed lovingly— after all, Sharon knows she can’t cook.
“You ladies are eating enough, right? And properly?” Laura chimes in, ever the mother in a group of moms.
Sharon and Wanda share a look that has Laura groaning from her dark kitchen table— not even time zones can stop her from worrying about the youngest members. She stands quickly to refill her mug and, as she does, hears the giggled response of—
“Does red wine and leftover burgers count?”
Laura doesn’t think it can get worse until Pepper chimes in. “I see we’re all on the same diet then.”
For a moment Wanda and Sharon disappear, most likely to look through Sharon’s collection of jewelry, and in their absence Laura and Pepper share a short, but very much needed, conversation.
“You’re still off work right now, right?” Laura asks, resting her heavy head in her hand.
Pepper nods once, rooting around the top of her side table for the damn remote— it’s like Tony’s still here, misplacing all her things. “Yeah— I don’t know when I’m going to go back. It’s just— it’s too soon, you know? I don’t know if I can. I don’t— god where’s the fucking remote! I could have sworn—”
Laura cuts Pepper off as her voice begins to turn frenzied— begins to crack. “I think you and Morgan should come stay with me for a little while. Like, for a few weeks. I think it would be good for you.” She watches Pepper cringe and before she can object, adds— “and for me. Clint’s been working a lot recently. I could really use some good company.”
Laura may be the simplest woman in the group but by no means does that make her the slowest— she knows the only way to get Pepper to agree to her idea is to play to her own motherly instincts.
As she’s expecting— it works. “Are you absolutely sure we wouldn’t be putting you and Clint out in any way?”
Laura can hear the exasperated relief starting to drip into her friend’s voice and has to swallow the lump in her own throat. “Of course it wouldn’t be— you’d never be putting me out, Pep.”
Pep. She hasn’t heard that in a while. She misses it— she misses a lot of things. A lot of people. The Bartons being some of them. It’s why she caves.
“Okay.”
Just as Laura nods— and finishes the last of her second coffee— the two fugitives that have been absent come ambling back, now dripping in flashy gemstones and expensive watches. Time has passed, enough that the girls have to scramble for the finishing touches of their outfits— something which can be heard when Sharon asks Wanda where she left the lipgloss.
“It’s already in my bag— your lips are glossed to perfection, stop worrying.” The red head fluffs her mane quickly before turning to the screen with a slight pout on her lips. “I can’t believe we just started the call and now we have to hang up. I hate time zones.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Pepper coos, “you both look incredible.”
“Edible.” Laura chimes in, giggling. “Go enjoy yourselves.”
The girls echo each other’s thank you, dallying with their goodbye’s but reiterating their I’ll call you later’s.
As an afterthought, right before Sharon can hit the power button on her macbook, Laura also adds— “Make sure to drink water!”
In no time semi-regular becomes regular and soon they all have a favourite hangout spot. Unfortunately, none of their favourite spots coincide with the others.
“You know—” Laura groans as she plunks down in her seat at the high up table— “I still don’t know what a gastropub is?”
“Tough—” Pepper rolls her eyes, taking a sip of her diet coke and tutting at her friend. “We all know you would rather be at the Starbucks down the road but some of us need more than coffee to run, Mrs. Barton.”
She’s decided to lay off the rosé for a little while and, in a show of solidarity, so has everyone else. Laura hmphs into the ginger ale that had already been waiting for her on the table but can’t keep the grin from turning up her lips— after all, Pepper’s right; she does want coffee. Wanda swirls her own cherry coke, giggling at their antics. Secretly she’s thinking the same thing but it was Pepper’s choice this time and she’ll eat just about anything.
“It’s a fancy word for comfort food—” Sharon snorts, actually answering, her eyes glued to the menu between her and Wanda as they decide which appetizer they want to share— “an easy way to cheat you out of twenty-six bucks for mac n’ cheese… Hey, look at these— buffalo cauliflower bites— you wanna’ try them?”
The red head nods enthusiastically. “You know I’ll take any chance to pretend to be healthy.”
The blonde laughs, shaking her head. “You’re literally perfect, Wan— all those fancy spells have to be burning, like, what? A thousand calories an hour?” Sharon turns her eyes to the other women who’re already listening with knowing grins. “You should’ve seen the men in Madripoor— and the women! Falling all over her— it was incredible!”
“Oh says you.” Wanda giggles back, catching the other red haired woman’s attention.
Pepper reaches across the table, swatting Sharon’s hand gently and whining. “You didn’t tell me about any men! Now I feel left out.”
“Don’t—” Sharon assures her, sobering suddenly at the topic change— “there are no men. I’m done with them— they’re more trouble than they’re worth. Even the ones you think are good.”
Especially those ones, she wants to add but keeps it to herself. Everyone here already knows how she feels anyway, mostly towards a certain golden-boy super-soldier. She lost everything for him— her home, her job, years she could have spent with her family— and for what? Just so he could turn around and literally fight time itself to be with her great aunt? To think, some women get a man who will invent time travel to be with them and she had to all but beg a man to clear her name for aiding a super hero.
Yeah— she’s still bitter, even after Sam worked his Captain America card to get her off the bureau’s watch list. It sure is funny how the literal Winter Soldier got his pardon before she got hers but— hey— that’s misogyny for you. She chases the acid in her mouth with a sip of orange soda. Fuck men.
“You know you can talk about it.” Laura reminds her gently, setting her own menu down— she doesn’t really need to look at it, she orders the same thing everytime.
“What’s there to talk about? I risked my life for him and he screwed me over. I get it— he’s more of a hero than I’ll ever be— but I guess I was kind of figuring I would get saved with, you know, the rest of the world. Sue me, I guess.”
Wanda slips her fingers between Sharon’s, nodding along. “I think some people forget that he—” she avoids saying Steve’s name; it’s for the best— “was as human as the rest of us. That he could be just as selfish as the rest of us.”
“And that they can get tired, too.” Pepper adds, her mind on Tony— her mind is always on Tony.
“And that they’re just like us— even if they think they’re not allowed to be.” Always the mother, Laura frowns at Wanda because, although she’s also thinking of her husband, the ginger needs to hear it as well.
“Whatever.” Sharon grumbles as she spots their waiter approaching, her mind shifting from her fallout with America’s golden-boy to the twenty-six dollar mac n’ cheese she’s going to obliterate. “I think I hate men. I’m happy just being with you.”
As has become custom, she receives three reactions: an awe from Laura, a me too from Pepper, and a kiss to her cheek from Wanda. It’s in that moment that she knows she isn’t lying— she really is content with her small group of girls.
They even— eventually— go on vacation together.
Four girls— two gingers, one blonde, and a brunette— lounge around a deliciously quiet poolside, soaking in as much of the Grecian sunshine as they can. One of them— the youngest— soaks in a little too much. Thankfully her friends are keeping a closer eye on her than she is.
“Wanda, you’re going pink. C’mere honey.” Laura sits up on her deck chair, patting the spot next to her. “Let’s touch your sunscreen up.”
Wanda— warm with sleep and sun— doesn’t put up a fuss, slipping in front of the brunette and pulling her hair into a sloppy bun to save it from the zinc cream. She sighs into Laura’s touch, her eyes closing as the woman works her thumbs into her shoulders. Laura Barton gives quite possibly the best back rubs on the planet. Well, besides Vision— his were better.
Wanda doesn’t realize that she’s balled her hands into fists until Laura’s soft voice breaks past her barrier. “What’s on your mind, sunshine?”
Sighing, the witch answers her friend honestly. “I miss him. Vis, I mean. It’s not fair. It’s just—”
“It’s not fair.” Laura finishes for her, hearing the crack in her facade and pushing— sometimes you just need a little bit of a gentle push. “It’s not and you don’t have to pretend like it is.”
Okay— maybe it’s not as gentle as she thinks it is.
“I hate it!” Wanda snaps, her tiny hands balling once more and pounding against her thighs. “I feel like I’m dying all the time— I feel like I died when he did! And no matter what I do now I screw it up! I hate it, Laura— I hate everything!”
The small witch’s furious rage quickly fizzles into heart wrenching sobs and Laura— just as quickly— plasters herself to Wanda’s back the same way she had done with the sun cream. She trembles in Laura’s hold— a mini storm in a cage of limbs and hair— and Laura just pets her head because this has been due for too long.
“I know, sunshine— we’re alone now, though. You can cry it out. No one’s going to hold it against you.”
“I— I hate— I—” Wanda can’t even finish her sentence— she hasn’t been able to for a year now.
Soft hands land on her knees and she cracks an eye open to a more composed— but still crying— Pepper. “I hate it too, hun. I hate everything.”
Pepper’s skin— unlike Wanda’s— has gone a golden brown in the sun, her freckles emerging one by one over the week which Wanda gets a closer view of when Pepper wraps her arms around her. She smells like strawberry daiquiris and salt and Wanda cries harder, clinging to the woman who is stronger than she ever will be.
A cold, wet hand lands on the back of her neck— the cold, wet hand of Sharon Carter— and with it comes one more— “I fucking hate everything.”
And, for some reason unknown to her, Wanda laughs.
She can’t help it— life sucks. Death sucks. Men and calories and loss suck. But her friends? No, they don’t suck. Not even when they’re with her at three-in-one funerals— not even when they’re half a world away. Especially not when they’re in Greece, holding her while she cries and laughs like a complete and utter maniac.
No— their little girl group doesn’t suck at all.
“I hope you all know how much I love you.” Wanda laughs around a particularly raucous sob— “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Laura is the one who answers— the universe wouldn’t be right if she wasn’t— “We know it, honey.”
The universe also wouldn’t be right if it wasn’t Pepper who gets the last word.
“Is anyone else feeling some pizza right about now?”
#Pepper Potts#Pepper Stark#Sharon Carter#Laura Barton#Wanda Maximoff#The Scarlet Witch#Scarlet Witch#Pepper Potts fic#Wanda Maximoff fic#Sharon Carter fic#Laura Barton fic#mcu#marvel cinematic univers#marvel#marvel fic
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all that’s left in the world | chapter five
Title: all that’s left in the world—
Synopsis: —is me.
Neku’s been shot and Shibuya is threatening to go the same way as Shinjuku, but just because the first Game is over doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten how to play.
Or: Neku deals with a nightmare city and his most annoying (and mathematical) partner yet; Shiki and Joshua commit an escalating number of illegal moves, Beat and Eri hunt down a stray Reaper, and Rhyme watches and waits for the counter-attack. Shibuya refuses to go down easy.
Fandom: The World Ends With You | TWEWY
Warnings: references to past canonical character death, self-esteem issues, vague descriptions of an apocalyptic event (Shinjuku at the moment of Inversion, etc), and Joshua, again. Please let me know if there’s anything I missed.
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AO3 Link is here!
Previous chapters are here!
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part five: joshua
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Joshua opens his eyes to a wasteland.
Beside him Shiki Misaki has fallen to her knees in the dust and dirt, hacking up half a lung; Joshua politely gives her a moment to collect herself like the very considerate and understanding person he is, and steps forward, scanning their surroundings with a frown. Empty streets filled with white dust that clings to his hand like snow; the air smells of nothing, devoid even of the stench of smoke. A low fog has settled over the city, so gray and dense it could be mistaken for a storm, the buildings vacant shells and the roads worn smooth and featureless. It’s more than a ghost town—it’s a city hollowed, its heart destroyed, and Joshua frowns momentarily, picking up his phone, fiddling with the settings.
For the first time, no call goes through. “Interesting,” Joshua decides, and tugs at one lock of hair, twining the strand around his finger.
“W-what is?” Shiki asks, and Joshua tilts his head and snaps his phone closed. Her breath catches. Ah, she’s noticed the city. “Where are we?”
“Shinjuku, I believe,” Joshua says, and even though he’d guessed as much the sight makes him frown, disgruntled. Joshua’s always liked a good Game, but this one promises to try his patience. “Well. What’s left of it, anyway.”
Her eyes scan the wasteland, expression faltering. “That’s impossible,” she says, though she seems half-convinced already. Quick to adapt, isn’t she? Maybe this partnership 2.0 won’t be so boring after all. “That’s... how could this be Shinjuku?”
“Inversion,” Joshua sighs, and when Shiki’s brow furrows at the term he giggles and waves his hand. “A UG phrase. The RG and UG have merged here. The planes have gotten all tangled together—too many frequencies at once.” And, actually, liable to give Joshua a headache. He misses Shibuya’s song already. Ironic, considering his plans for it just last month. “Noise manifest in the RG, reality gets unstable...”
She’s pale. “And this is where Neku is?”
“Mm-hmm.” Joshua shrugs. “Unfortunate, isn’t it?”
“Yeah...” Joshua blinks at her, but Shiki has already stepped away, looking up and down the empty street. “I don’t understand. Where are all the people? And the stores...” She peers into a shop window and blinks fast. “Huh?”
“Oh?” Joshua steps up beside her, peering through the window, and then leans back, hands in his pockets and eyebrows raised. “My, my. That’s certainly something.”
The shop is empty. Not just devoid of people, but of anything—the mannequins stripped featureless and bare, even the fake features wiped away. The hangers hold nothing. The stands are empty. Even the picture frames on the wall, the art and decor put up just for flavor, have become hollow, the frames undecorated, the pictures turned to white noise.
Joshua lifts his hand, curious, and presses it against the glass. Against the blank slate of the store, he and Shiki and the colors they wear seem almost like a spotlight. Shinjuku is grey and cold around them, featureless and repetitive. Scrubbed clean of any life at all.
Joshua takes his hand back, frowning outright now. “Hm.”
“That’s so creepy,” Shiki says, drawing back a step. She shivers. “It’s like... anything that would have stood out, or anything that would have meant something...”
“A clean slate,” Joshua agrees, and rests his chin in his hand, thoughtful.
Shiki looks away, apparently unable to keep looking into the empty shop for long. “Is this... normal?” she asks, squinting up at the sky, like if she tries hard enough she’ll be able to see the sun. “For, uh... Inversions?”
Joshua giggles. “I have no idea.” It’d be a delightful mystery, if the situation weren’t so dire. He sobers. “This is the first time I’ve seen it myself. Though, I will admit...” He casts a glance at the sky, too. His eyes narrow. For a moment, there in the clouds... hm. “This doesn’t quite match up with the stories I’ve heard.”
“Creepy,” Shiki repeats.
“Quite.”
She rubs at her arms. “...Let’s go look for Neku.”
Ah, yes. Neku.
Joshua looks back at the shop, no longer smiling. His reflection in the display glass is pale and dim, faintly opaque. As if he isn’t quite there at all. He rubs at his arm, and wonders what Shiki would say if he told her Composers weren’t meant to stay outside of Their city.
Well, what’s done is done—he’s agreed to this, after all, and her reaction probably won’t be all that entertaining. Shiki Misaki, Joshua thinks, is too accepting. Adaptable to an annoying degree. At least Neku had a few moments of wanting to strangle someone before he compromised.
How funny, he thinks. The memory almost makes him want to smile, except he doesn’t feel like laughing at all.
In the dusty glass of the shop window, his own expression looks strange to him. Joshua turns away. He shakes his head and tugs at one bang, then drops his hand and sighs. “Yes,” he says, light. “Works for me. Lead the way, dear.”
She frowns at him, and he smiles back at her uncertain side-eye. And as Shiki picks her way across the city, and Joshua trails after her, he curls his hands to a careful fist, feeling the quiet tremor in his fingers with every step away from Shibuya, and cheerfully pretends that it hasn’t started after all.
.
It doesn’t take long for the first problem to rear its head. Ten minutes into the Game, Joshua and Shiki encounter their first Noise—and unlike how Noise are supposed to act, this one attacks on sight.
Joshua would suspect Taboo Noise, but no: normal Noise, just ten times more bloodthirsty. Shinjuku is getting more bothersome by the minute.
It takes a moment for them to work together—Joshua is back to summoning beams of light from his cellphone; Shiki apparently likes using her stuffed animal to rip the opposing side to shreds—but in the end, they sync up rather well, if Joshua is any judge. The Noise are nothing but static by the end. Joshua is half-way pleased. He’s missed this.
Shiki doesn’t look nearly so happy, however. At the end of their most recent battle, she kneels in the dust with the cat toy in her lap, staring down at it almost despondently. Joshua weighs his options, sighs, and goes to stand over her shoulder.
“Is this going to be a problem?”
“Maybe.” She opens her hands, glumly; Joshua looks down and tilts his head. “I forgot. Mr. Mew has a ripped seam. He’s fine for me to carry him, but...”
On second look... Joshua can see it. He presses his lips. “I hope you don’t expect me to do all the work,” he warns, coolly. “I hate working up a sweat, and this endeavor was your idea, Shiki.”
If she’s bothered by the over-familiar use of her first name, it barely even seems to register. Then again, she did offer. “Maybe I could stitch him up?” she wonders. “But I don’t have the right thread... I was going to buy some tomorrow...”
Joshua frowns at her, but Shiki isn’t even looking at him, mumbling under her breath. After a moment, he sighs—and reaches out, picking away one of the pins she’s clipped to her cardigan. He turns it in his hands, thoughtful. “Do you have any idea how you control him?”
She glances at him, startled, then looks uncertain. “Eh...”
He giggles, and flashes the pin at her. “Groove Pawn,” he tells her. “It’s a form of psychokinesis. You didn’t know?”
“Really?” She glances at the stuffed toy in her hands. “It always felt more like Mr. Mew was just doing his own thing.”
Interesting. “Maybe so, but without you to provide guidance, it wouldn’t be nearly as effective. It could be that your familiarity with the medium creates a stronger control of it... less direct commands, and more obeying of the implied commands—what you know you need?” Joshua tugs at his hair. “Hmm. You made him, yes?”
“Mr. Mew?” She hugs the stuffed animal to her chest. “Yes. Why?”
Joshua’s getting an idea. He smiles. “And your clothes?”
“I made those too, but why...?” She trails off, eyes widening. “You think—?”
“Worth a shot, isn’t it?”
She studies her sleeves, frowning slightly, considering. “I don’t know...”
“Try it,” Joshua cajoles. “Your pins will work here. The one nice thing about the merge between planes is that the Noise frequency isn’t needed to activate the pins. Lucky you.” Which is perhaps the only advantage they have in all this. But, regardless.
Shiki looks uncertain, but one last glance at Mr. Mew and her jaw firms. “Okay. I’ll give it a shot.” She rises to her feet, hand outstretched, and takes a breath. “Here goes!”
Silence. Nothing happens.
Joshua spins a strand of hair between his fingers. “...Have you considered—”
Thread cuts through the air like a whistling blade. Shiki screams.
Joshua, for his part, blinks over at what used to be a wall, and whistles through his teeth. “Wow,” he says, honestly impressed. “That’s going to be incredibly useful. Nice to see that you can pull your own weight after all, hm?”
Shiki doesn’t appear to be listening, but then, that’s little surprise. Her cardigan has been unraveled up to her elbow; the loose thread of the sleeve has reached long past its actual length and cut apart the air, slipping through stone like a hot knife through ice.
It’s like a net, Joshua thinks, and circles her, intrigued. It really is something. If she concentrates the threads, and focuses the force onto one impact point, she could cut right through the core of a larger Noise. Even the net of thread could cut apart quite a few of the smaller Noise, too... my, he thinks. Could she catch one? Fascinating.
His musing gets cut off by the loud, creaking groan of breaking stone. Shiki’s eyes go wide. Joshua looks up, startled, and steps back just in time to avoid a bit of rubble falling on his foot, as the building Shiki hit creaks, tilts, sways, and then ultimately tips back and falls apart into a burst of dust and debris.
Silence. Joshua stares. The building just behind the first, now walled off with ruin, also creaks, and then caves inward with a crash.
“Oh my god,” Shiki says, eyes wide and horrified behind her glasses. “Is that okay!?”
“…It’s fine,” Joshua says. A beat. He considers the rubble. “Well, maybe.”
There’s another pause, almost thoughtful. A wall on a third building goes loose and spills out onto the road. In the distance there is the sound of falling rocks. A small pebble rolls from the pile, taps Shiki’s shoe, and then falls sadly on its side.
Shiki covers her face.
“Useful, anyhow,” Joshua decides.
“Maybe this was a bad idea…” Shiki sighs, rubbing at her face. Then she lifts up her head— and at last seems to get a full look at her unraveled cardigan, because she blanches, and holds out her arms in horror. “Oh, no, my sleeve! I spent days on this!”
“I’m sure you can put it back.”
“Oh, you think?” She takes a breath, focusing again, and Joshua watches with interest as the thread pries loose from the rubble pile, pooling together and re-weaving back into the cardigan. Shiki peeks one eye open. “Did it work?” Pause. “It worked!”
Joshua claps for her. “Well done.”
She beams, then seems to remember who she’s smiling at and visibly falters. Joshua giggles at her. What a face!
“Um, thanks.”
“No problem at all.”
She tucks the stuffed cat in her arms, hugging it close as if in comfort, staring down at the ground. She bites her lip, then shakes her head and exhales hard. “I… never mind. I guess we should keep moving.”
He gestures. She looks at him for a very long moment, then nods and takes the lead, walking down into a small back-alley street.
Joshua follows leisurely behind her, one hand in his pocket and the other fiddling with his phone. He tries to place another call, but isn’t surprised when it fails once again. Well, he’s glad to still have the camera, at least, though he’ll have to be careful of its use. If he could find Shinjuku’s Room of Reckoning… though unfortunately, he has no idea where the Composer of Shinjuku might be located.
Hm.
He fiddles with it some more, as they walk, and the rest of the day passes by in routine—travel, fight the Noise that converge on them, move on. Joshua gets more in-tune with this new partner, and finds to some delight that their attacks mix well. Shiki is focused, direct, and methodical, as expected of her talent as a seamstress; she attacks her enemies one hit at a time until it falls, and then moves on to the next. Matched with Joshua’s habit of just blasting a general area and catching as many Noise as possible in the light, it covers a lot of ground. He flattens the ones he can without frying his phone—and she, in turn, picks off the stragglers.
After one such battle, Joshua touches to the ground and turns to smile at her, far more genuinely than before. He can say this for Shiki Misaki— in addition to being a living wrench in the works of Joshua’s plan, she’s also just a genuinely talented Player.
“This might just work,” he tells her, cheery, and toes a line in the soft dusting of ash lining Shinjuku’s streets. “I’ll admit, I had my doubts.”
She glances back at him, looking more confused than offended. “Then... why did you agree?”
“Hm.” Joshua tilts his head. “Why indeed?”
Silence, for a moment. Shiki’s expression flattens a little. “Okay. So you’re not going to tell me.”
It’s a little cruel, maybe, but this girl’s already thrown the first stone, back in the Shibuya River; really, this should be expected. “What makes you think you deserve the answer?”
His word choice is deliberate, and Shiki, of all people, sensitive enough to catch the subtext—her steps stutter, and she tugs the stuffed cat closer. “I... I didn’t mean it like that.” She eyes him again. Her fingers tighten. “You’re rude.”
He shrugs. “It’s an honest question. Really, Shiki, you haven’t changed much at all, have you?” He eyes her. “Wanting recognition is all well and good, but don’t go expecting it from me.”
She falters, steps stuttering in the dust. Joshua keeps walking, humming lightly. She doesn’t follow. He turns around. “We don’t have much time to waste,” he chides. “If you could, Shiki...?”
“How did you know that?” Her voice is tight. “How did you—”
“Composer,” he reminds her. “It’s my Game. I put in the entry fee requirement in the first place, you know.” Not for the reasons she probably thinks, but then, Joshua’s never claimed to teach kind lessons. “And you were Neku—my proxy’s—partner. Of course I kept an eye out.”
“Of course,” she echoes, a little hollowly. “So—so you know...”
That she is jealous? That she wants to be more than herself? That Shiki Misaki wants to be popular, and important, and at the center of it all? That she wants so much for herself she came to seethe at others who she thought stood above her?
Joshua knows a lot of things people wish he didn’t know.
“I do, yes.” He considers her, and sighs a little. She’s stepped on his toes, so to speak, but Joshua can relent where need be. “If it’s any consolation, you have changed.” Neku’s choice hadn’t been the only factor influencing Joshua’s unintended change of heart regarding Shibuya, though Joshua is never going to admit that out loud. “If this Game had an entry fee, yours would no longer be yourself.”
Green is a good color for Shiki Misaki. She’s still envious, even now. But it doesn’t fester in her anymore. She has come to learn her own strengths, started to realize her own Imagination— the value of herself. And Joshua will never, ever say it aloud, but he can admire that, a little. If all the world is secret gardens, then hers is finally growing again, no longer crushed beneath her own heel.
Shiki looks down like she can’t decide whether to be happy or offended about his words. Joshua shrugs and turns away. “It would probably be that ‘friend’ of yours,” he continues knowingly, and grins, a little wry. “Or maybe Neku?” The idea of Coco’s plot getting upended by something as a simple as an entry fee makes him snicker. “What a plot twist that would be, hm?”
“W-what?” And then her head snaps up, eyes wide behind the lens. “Wait, oh my gosh—entry fees— I completely forgot—” She stops, and visibly rewinds the conversation in her head. “There isn’t one?”
“Thankfully.” People really aren’t meant to play the Game more than once; Joshua shudders to think how much of Shibuya would have vanished if Neku’s fee had been taken again. “It’s more than the RG and UG merge. Whatever Game we’re playing...”
Shiki looks stunned. “There’s no Reapers.”
“Did you just notice? Well, anyway. That’s right. No Reapers, no walls, no mission mail...” Joshua frowns a little. “I’m... a little uncertain if anyone’s in charge of this Game at all.”
“What about that Reaper girl? Coco?”
“Let me reword. No one official, at any rate.” He leaves it at that, but deep down, Joshua can’t deny he’s getting uneasy. There is too much off—too much lack. A Composer encroaching on another’s territory is a heinous crime, and bringing an illegal Player with him? Even with his powers limited by sheer virtue of being outside Shibuya, that should have warranted some interaction, if nothing else. But no— instead they have been walking undisturbed, the city silent as a grave.
The Music gone.
It’s as if there is no Composer at all, Joshua thinks, but then—how is that possible? If the Composer were killed, both power and title would transfer to the killer; if the Composer were captured... well, the city still wouldn’t be like this. The power would live on and the Music continue. But this... what has happened to Shinjuku...
For once, Joshua can honestly admit he has no idea what’s going on. It’s kind of annoying.
“Either way,” Joshua says, with finality. “It’s not for you to know.” He smiles at her. “May we get moving again?”
And just like that, her hackles are back up. Sigh. “I’m just trying to be nice!” she snaps back, fierce. “Though I’m not sure you deserve it.” Her voice lowers. “You’re as bad as Neku was. We’re partners.”
“That’s a bit rude,” Joshua says, amused.
“Still. We made a pact. You could at least act like it. We have to work together!”
Joshua stares at her, a little disgruntled; Shiki crosses her arms and tilts up her chin and glares right back. For a moment Joshua considers pushing the issue, or perhaps ignoring her and continuing on anyway... and then, just as quickly, his annoyance fades, dull and tired. Joshua looks away first.
Shiki Misaki, Neku’s first partner in the game. Neku has learned a lot from her. And Joshua, though he is still only just able to admit this to himself, has learned from Neku in turn.
Joshua sighs heavily, the sound as loud as he can make it, and lifts a hand to his hair, tugging at the strands. “Oh, fine,” he says, only a little sullen, because he has learned something from his time playing his own Game and to pretend otherwise is probably beneath him, or something. “If you really want to know, I’m beginning to suspect this Game doesn’t have a Composer at all.”
Shiki looks a little stunned. Possibly she never expected him to admit anything; Joshua tries not to feel too offended about that. After all, if this were a month ago, she’d be right. (If this were a month ago, he wouldn’t have accepted her deal in the first place— but that’s not important either.) “Oh,” she says. “...Oh. Someone—someone killed Shinjuku’s Composer?”
Joshua clicks his tongue. “Not quite,” he says. “Killing the Composer wouldn’t cause an Inversion. Neither,” he adds when Shiki opens her mouth, “would kidnapping, or anything else of the like. This city has no Music. It’s silent. It is…” And this Joshua doesn’t like to admit, because the very idea is enough to make his skin crawl, but it’s the truth: “It’s as if it has no Imagination at all.”
“Um,” Shiki says. “Which is... bad?”
“You remember that storefront?” he asks her. “Yes, it’s bad. Imagination is what the entire UG runs on.”
“Oh. Oh.”
“Exactly.” He huffs, irritated. “Unfortunately, whatever happened, I’m rather in the dark. This event has very thoroughly erased any clues left behind.”
Shiki frowns, looking thoughtful. “Is there a place for Shinjuku like there was for Shibuya? A river?”
“Of sorts. I don’t know where it is, though.” Unfortunately. Joshua likes mysteries, actually, but it’s a bit more fun when there’s actual clues to follow.
“I remember the Noise around the river were pretty strong. The station underpass in general, too. Like they were just drawn there…” Shiki holds the stuffed cat in both hands, looking down at it. It’s almost as if she expects the cat to talk back to her; Joshua stifles a grin. “I wonder if we could ride on them.”
Joshua blinks. Backtracks. “On. The Noise?”
She looks a little red, but shrugs. “I mean, could we?”
He almost laughs, but then he makes the mistake of thinking about it. With the thread… and, well, Joshua understands the Noise better than anyone else, so…
There’s a long pause. Joshua looks over to the Noise, far off down the street. He thinks about it some more. And it is with great regret when he says, at last: “Mm. Better not.”
Mr. H would never let him live it down. Also, less importantly, “While stronger Noise tend to gather around the Composer’s place, it’s not exactly a homing beacon. It won’t lead us to the Composer.”
Disappointing, though.
Shiki hums, but seems to accept that, tapping her finger to her chin. “Then maybe...” She trails off, brow furrowing. “If not the Composer, we could find where it all centered? Like the Inversion? It had to start somewhere, right...?”
She sounds uncertain, but Joshua straightens up. He’s not entirely sure the issue of Shinjuku’s Composer and the Inversion are so directly linked, but if one mystery can’t be solved, it stands to reason they should move on to the next. “It must have.” He tilts his head, then grins. “Ah-ha. I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
Joshua is already on his phone, flipping through the settings. When she approaches, he generously doesn’t shoo her off. “Here,” he says, and tilts the screen to her. The idea has emboldened him; his foot taps lightly on the ground. Finally, a place to start. He has no doubt they’ll run into Neku on the way there, if he gets this right. Neku usually finds himself in the center of a disaster. “A while back I had a few... adjustments made to my phone. I never did remove them. This camera can take pictures of the past.” He waves the phone at her, grinning outright now. “Pick a direction, dear.”
Behind her glasses, Shiki’s eyes are wide. She claps her hands in front of her face. “Oh! So if the Inversion started somewhere, we can see what direction it came from?”
Her excitement is rather charming. Neku never got nearly as involved in the everyday mysteries as Joshua did; this response feels pretty gratifying, honestly. “Exactly! I’m impressed.”
She giggles, a little. “This is so exciting. I feel like I’m in a detective movie.” She spins on her heel, stuffed cat swinging from one hand, finger tapping her chin. She points down a random street, a once-main road turned hollow. “How about there?”
“As good a place to start as any, I suppose.” Joshua snaps the photo—he already knows the time they need, thankfully. Shiki leans over his shoulder; Joshua eyes her briefly, then sighs and lets it go. He opens the photo.
Oh, how fun. White light, the buildings crumbling, terrified people beginning to fade out... but it is vague, source-less, and impossible to tell the direction from which it’s coming from.
Shiki blinks at it, though, her eyes flicking from photo to the ruins and back again. “Oh, I know that building! Isetan department store… I went with Eri once.” She frowns a little. “Hmm. So we’re near the station?”
“Valuable info, but not quite what we were looking for… Well, two more photos left.” Joshua tilts the camera. “Choose wisely.”
“Uh... well, if we’re near the station, um, maybe the government building? Oh, where was it…” Shiki squints down a street. “There?”
Joshua snaps the photo, then sighs. Shiki frowns too. He’ll give her this much: she’d been right about the direction; he can see the tip of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and even some of Park Tower, but beyond the vague reddish light and screaming people, nothing indicates the epicenter of the event. Tsk.
“Last one,” Shiki checks, and at Joshua’s nod, worries at her lip. “Hm...”
Joshua considers it. His finger taps against the case. After a moment, his eyes flicker up. He’s never known Shinjuku too well, even when he was alive; he’d stayed in Shibuya most of his life, and then the entirety of his afterlife. “Have you been to Shinjuku before?”
“Well... once or twice. Not as often as Shibuya. Uh, mainly around the station. Why?”
He frowns at the screen, not really seeing it. “Can you guess where the center of the city might be?”
“That’s...” She trails off. Her brow furrows. “Um. Maybe? One second.” She takes a deep breath. “Er... where’s Shibuya from here?”
This, Joshua could answer in his sleep. He is so aware of the city it nearly dizzies him; he smiles to hide the sudden tremor in his arms. Ah, it really does set in quick, doesn’t it?
“To our right,” Joshua says lightly, and cheerfully ignores the headache spiking behind his eyes.
“Okay.” She bites her lip. “Then... from there, to... and then turn left... by Golden Gai, maybe…?” She trails her eyes across the ruined landscape and finally settles for a direction slightly north-east from them. “There? I think. It’s hard to tell, with the buildings all... you know.”
“That’s good enough,” Joshua decides. He lines up the image. Then he pauses. For a moment he frowns. And then, not entirely sure why, he lifts the camera, taking in not just the street and the buildings but also the sky, high above.
He takes the shot.
His fingers tighten. His smile widens, but there’s no joy in it at all. “Bingo.”
“Yes!” She looks at the photo. Her eyes go wide. “...What?”
The photo is exactly what they need, but neither is it a welcome sight. The distant high-rise of the buildings is turning to dust and ash. People are cowering in the streets, covering their heads. A pale white light, tinged faintly bloody with red, shines out through all the streets with a piercing glow.
And high above, settled in the sky like a brand, the Reaper’s skull bears down on the city, blood red and burning bright.
“Interesting,” Joshua murmurs, and thumbs the phone off. “I believe we just got our first clue.”
Shiki bites her lip, then seems to shake herself. “We know where to start looking, now. So that’s good.” She brightens, a little. “And Neku’s sure to be there! He gets in too much trouble not to find it himself.” She’s smiling outright now, and pumps a fist to the air, triumphant, turning to Joshua with delight. “We did it!”
He giggles at her enthusiasm, and her smile falters, falling awkward and flat. Her eyes catch on his face and she seems to remember who she’s talking to for the first time. Her smile fades. Her fist lowers.
Joshua considers her, shrugs, and turns away to mess with his phone. His hands are still annoyingly shaky from earlier. He doesn’t speak. Shiki doesn’t say anything either. The silence stretches.
When it’s clear she’s not going to break, Joshua sighs again and closes his phone, looking down at the case briefly before tucking it back into his pocket. “You really don’t like me, do you?” Joshua muses, and tucks his hands in his pockets. “What stories Neku must have told you, I wonder.”
“He told me enough.” Her voice is quiet again. “But you already knew about that.”
He hums, not really answering. Another silence. This time, Shiki looks away.
“I can’t forgive you,” she announces, apropos of nothing, eyes on her stuffed animal. She hugs it close. “Which sounds silly, doesn’t it? Considering you never did anything to me. But even if Neku does forgive you, one day, I don’t think I ever will.” Joshua keeps his eyes on the skyline, and half an eye on her; he sees her fingers tighten. “I don’t know why you did it, and even if I did, I don’t think I really care.”
Something hardens in her voice. Joshua waits, patiently, for her to finish. “Your point?” he prompts.
Her jaw clenches, and for the first time she seems truly angry with him. “You hurt Neku. You hurt him— a lot. I remember that much. He was crying. I’d never seen him cry before. You did that.” I’m aware, Joshua thinks. Her eyes are fixed on the ground, now. “And you hurt him after it was over, too.”
Joshua frowns, briefly, the barest flicker of an expression, and Shiki looks up and smiles at the sight, an expression that is half-hearted and small and not very happy at all. “Yeah. I figured you didn’t know about that one. Neku doesn’t either, I don’t think. But he— he wanted to see you again, you know? No matter my feelings on it, that’s still true. Maybe he just wanted to hit you, or yell at you—um, maybe he just wanted answers?” She shrugs. “Maybe all three. But he did want to see you again. Whenever we meet up, he’s always getting distracted, looking for someone else. And I’m not stupid. I can guess.”
He has stayed silent thus far out of some amused hope of getting this out of her system; now Joshua is regretting that. There is something ashy on his tongue, settled cold in his throat. He takes a thin breath and exhales it slowly, like a test.
“You never came,” Shiki says, simply, a little harder. She’s looking at him, Joshua can tell, but he keeps his gaze turned away, fixed on the sky. “Maybe you meant that as a kindness? I don’t know. That doesn’t really matter either. Because it hurt him either way.”
Another pause. Joshua closes his eyes, opens them, and then finally looks back at her. She glares at him—not angry anymore, not really, just stubborn, stiff and holding her ground. He considers her.
“I don’t think you’re a bad person,” Shiki says, at last, reluctantly. Joshua raises an eyebrow at her. She huffs. “Which kind of makes it worse, maybe. But I don’t. Neku doesn’t either, otherwise he wouldn’t be trying so hard.” Her chin lifts, determined. “You probably aren’t sorry for what happened. You’ll probably never say it; it’s not really my business. But Neku’s trying. I don’t know why, but he is—and you know, if nothing else, you could stand to try too.”
Joshua doesn’t say anything. She’s caught him off-guard with this—of all things, this is not what he was expecting her to say. And maybe that is Joshua’s fault. Hasn’t he learned this lesson already? Isn’t that why Shibuya’s still standing? They lost the Game, all of them, Neku and Shiki and the Bito siblings; they lost the game, but they had changed his mind. They had surprised him. They had changed him in turn too, even if Joshua still doesn’t quite know how to admit it.
“Just a thought,” Shiki says, hotly, and this time she’s the one to turn away. “I don’t know if you even… N-never mind. This was stupid, I told myself I wouldn’t— let’s just go.”
How silly. All of his little asides, and yet this is what riles her up. It probably shouldn’t surprise him. She’s broken into a Reaper’s Game just for the chance to help; likely Joshua should have seen this coming. It’s still annoying, though. Why has he agreed to this again?
But he doesn’t move. He feels weary, and strangely drained, and he pinches at the bridge of his nose with a quiet exhale. Hah. He could say he’s still not sure why, but then, that would be lying, wouldn’t it? And while Joshua is rather good at lying to himself, he prefers not to make a habit of it.
He thinks, once, he would have been angry at this. He’s not sure what to make of the fact he’s not. He’s not sure what to say at all, actually—and isn’t that funny? That doesn’t happen often either.
Mostly he just feels tired.
Joshua watches Shiki walk away, and lingers there, at the edge of the sidewalk. His gaze draws back, turning away toward Shibuya; he looks past the ruined buildings to the streets that are His and His alone. He taps his fingers against his thigh. Trying, he thinks.
But there is no time. And so Joshua pulls his gaze away, and leaves Shibuya and his thoughts behind him.
#twewy#the world ends with you#joshua kiryu#yoshiya kiryu#shiki misaki#neku sakuraba#joshneku#twewy fic#iza fanfic#fic: all that's left in the world
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Oh
My god.
I just found a really old logicality one-shot I made when I was very very very new in the fandom and dear god- I didn't think there was a time i wasn't a Janus Stan but here we are I guess
°•.•°•.•°•.
Patton PoV
As long as I could remember, I'd had a tattoo on my wrist. It was a cute little pair of glasses! My soulmark. There would be one other person in the world with that same pair of glasses on the same spot on their wrist! The thought had always made me giddy. There is someone out there destined to be with me, we've been looking at the same little picture all our lives! Like a secret museum just for us! Whenever I went out in public I would always look for peoples wrists. I didn't think about how weird it was until someone pointed it out to me. I didn't do it anymore after that. I was just scared of missing my soulmate! Imagine if you never found your soulmate! Knowing that you were destined to be with someone, and spending your whole life looking for that person, and then... I don't want to think about it. I was so so happy when I found out I needed glasses! I chose ones that looked like my soulmark, obviously! Then if my soulmate looks at my glasses, they would be reminded of their soulmark. I was on my way to the cafe to meet up with my three best friends. Logan, Roman and Virgil! I was scared I was going to be late so I was running. My cardigan fell off and I had to go back to get it. It was around my shoulders, as usual. It was cold outside, but I hated covering up my soulmark! And hate is a strong word. I just thought that if my soulmate had their mark covered, then them seeing mine could be the only way to find out. So I almost never covered it up. I was just glad my cardigan didn't fall into a puddle!
Logan PoV.
as long as I could remember, I'd had a tattoo on my wrist. A pair of glasses. It was my soulmark. I despised it. It was honestly a flawed method of finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. You could end up being the opposite of compatible. You could constantly argue and that would be an unhealthy relationship. I just think the whole thing is a falsehood. How can a mutated birthmark show the person you are going to be in a relationship with. It makes no sense and I just ignore the whole... Mess entirely. I have never intentionally shown anyone my soulmark and I never hope to in the future. It will always be covered, if not by a shirt then by that concealing makeup. I refuse to acknowledge my consentless tattoo other than when hiding it. I disregard it that much that when I was choosing my glasses, I found some particular frames rather familiar and didn't realize why until I was at home with too pairs of the same glasses. That was one of the few times I have face-palmed in my life. The other times are normally when Roman or Patton do something stupid. Like now, where I can see Roman at the counter trying to take three cups at once. I sometimes wonder how they are still alive. Probably because they usually have Virgil and I to reel them in from doing something overly dangerous. Like now, when i can see Virgil going over there to help him out with the other cups. With a ding from the shops bell, I watch Patton run through the door, hastily tying his cardigan around his shoulders.
Patton PoV
I rush through the door and meet Logan's eyes. I smile at him and go over to our regular table. I felt other eyes on me, but that was probably me almost running into the door in my hurry to get to my friends. I pull out my chair and sit down opposite him.
"Hi!"
"Hello."
"I told you you couldn't pick up all our drinks at once!" Virgil (that was the 666th word. I thought it would have been another character tbh ;) ) and Roman come over from the counter, each holding two cups. Roman has a chocolate milk and a black coffee, and Virgil has a mocha and a hot chocolate.
"I would have been fine!"
"Romano, buddy... you only have two hands." Virgil hands the hot chocolate to me from his seat, but Roman walks round to give Logan his drink. But there was someone walking past and -im sill not sure how it happened- Roman tripped, spilling the coffee all over it's the guy who was ment to receive it (logan). Oh no!
Deceit PoV (yea that's right! boom!)
From the moment I saw Patton pull out his chair I new what I had to do. He used his left hand. And on his left wrist was a pair of glasses. Just. Like. Logan's. I knew that wimp wouldn't do anything. When I saw his wrist he got all defensive. It's not like I did it on purpose! Jeez. Roman carrying the drink round just made my job even easier- I didn't even have to waste my drink! I stood up and knocked into him, and in an 'attempt to steady him' I pushed the drink out of his hand and onto Logan's left arm. Simple. He would either have to roll his sleeve up or take off his shirt- it was unbuttoned and he had a vest on, don't worry readers, I'm not making him strip (oi shut it you! Be grateful I added you into the story! Don't go turning into Deadpool) . Sure, I look like the bad guy, but I'm helping them, whether they realise it or not!
"The Empire has fallen!" Virgil sweetie, as funny as that was... Leave the puns to Patton. He knows there's a time and a place. This isn't it.
"Ooh ya-"
"Logan! Are you ok?" At this point I can see the barista run around the counter with a cold cloth. He will be fine, just a little angry.
"Oh! I'm so sorry!" I've got to pretend to be at least a little remorseful. I can't look like a complete villain! Then I lean closer to Logan and hiss in his ear "you're welcome!" He knew what I ment. I kept on walking to the bathroom so that it didn't look suspicious, and to stop Logan from going in there to sort out his arm. This was fun. I should help people With their Soulmates more often.
Logan PoV
That snake! Why did he do that! He knows full well how I feel about my soulmark and he is making me show it for no reason! I should never have trusted him with something like that!
"You're welcome!" What? Why would he say that. I'm stronger than him. I can show my soulmark just this once, nothing bad is going to happen, right? I roll my sleeve up and take the damp cloth Remy is handing to me.
"Well he was rude.. anyway! lo, are you like, good? That was some hot coffee, girl!"
"Don't call me lo, or girl. And you don't need the 'like' in there."
"That's the Logan I know! At least it had no, like, permanent side effects!"
"What does that even mean? It's coffee! Not a potion!"
"What do you mean by 'potion' ?" I'm not even listing to the conversation anymore. Patton is staring at the table and looking distressed. Before I can ask, he blurts out
"GLASSES!" He now has almost all of the shops attention. I take off my glasses to check if something has happened to them when he slams his arm down on the table, making all of us jump. Then Remy squeals. Drawing even more attention and confusing me even more. Then I notice Patton has a mark on his arm. It looks like a tattoo. His glasses? Wait. Oh..
I don't think he was looking at the table.
°•.•°•.•°•.
This is my first one-shot and overall I'm happy with it. And I don't really know what else to put here.. so..
~Cyan 🖤
°•.•°•.•°•.
bonus scene (3rd person)
Patton is babbling nonsense, Logan is flushed and completely unresponsive, Remy reluctantly hands a very smug Virgil 5 dollars and Roman keeps repeating something under his breath. Deceit comes back from the bathroom, struts up to the table like he owns the place and just
"You're welcome~*"
And then Roman, slamming his hands on the table and screeching.
"SEE IT'S JUST LIKE A DISNEY FILM!"
°•.•°•.•°•.
3.9 pages
1435 words
°•.•°•.•°•.
O O F
First person PoV! I outright talked to Deceit! He didn't even get a name! I'm going to regret posting this but growth is important y'all!
#i hate this#with every fiber of my being#welp#logicality#if anyone actually reads this I'll probably cry#lmao
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How to make Hawk's childhood even worse. As you do.
(TBH, this is just me placing all my thoughts about Hawks down.)
Fandom people such as ourselves like making or reading about our favorite characters suffering, you know it, I know it, (and if anyone denies it, they're probably a liar.) It's basically a psychological need at this point.
So, onwards:
We all think Hawks is a great character; one who's been pushed into a position he's not really fond of, in part because the Hero Committee control over him and in part because he can't stop himself from helping people however he can.
A lot of us take to these great (angsty) headcannons(or just cannon):
We can infer from the manga that Hawks’s parents were alcoholics, (leading to the likely possibility that he was also neglected or even abused.)
- Additionally, we know the Hero Committee approached his parents to take him in, and there’s a lot of feels to be had with the idea that Hawks’s parents essentially sold him.
- (Bonus feels for baby!Hawks being a sweetheart who just wants to help people, including his parents, so he just goes along with everything.)
Because he was so young when he was taken in by the Committee, Hawks does not have (or remember) an ACTUAL human name besides his hero one. (Gold star for our feels and angst desires achieving peak point.)
The Hero Committee prevented Hawks from having an actual childhood, instead it was always pushing him to be a Hero; just day after day after day of training his body, his quirk, and his public persona. (A persona that never comes off to the point Hawks doesn’t even know if that was always been the real him, or if he lost himself a long time ago.)
Now onto some more original thoughts I’ve had;
OP Hawks is something I really like; already in cannon, he’s got a basically OP quirk with a mishmash of abilities that potentially belong in different quirk-types.
His wings suggest a heteromorph-type quirk.
However, his feathers also have a hardening ability that is more similar to transformation types.
Additionally, he’s got an amazing telekinetic ability over his feathers which I think is more along the lines of an emitter-type quirk.
He’s got a lot of bases covered that help boost his overall performance; wings allow him speed and flight, his telekinetic ability allows his feathers to actively help multiple situations at once while he’s just casually walking along the sidewalks, and he can harden his feathers to the point of having sword-like weapons.
All of this, does not stop me from thinking about how I could add more depth and abilities to his already OP quirk.
This is my Concept: Hawks’s feathers are formed from his own blood.
(I’m just going to tag it as WingsOfBlood Quirk...)
Where his wings attach to his back, is where blood automatically flows to form said wings/feathers.
- It shouldn’t affect anywhere else of his body, (say if his hands got cut, then he wouldn’t start automatically blossoming feathers from them...)
- Though, if we wanted to take his abilities a step further, then maybe he would be able to form feathers from his cuts if he SPECIFICALLY thought about it, but otherwise it’s only his back that does so.
It would tie in as a major reason why he can’t just replenish his feathers and it takes so much longer in recovering them; since he’s literally loosing his blood when he sends them off.
- He has to recover all that blood, so if he goes overboard or forces his blood into forming more feathers than he can handle; it leaves him shaky, light headed, disoriented, and overall not fit to help out in battle. Which means he’s got to stick to his feather limit...
I mainly think about this as a reason why he wouldn’t just use his blood to form more feathers during his fight with Endeavor vs. the Nomu.
- Making more feathers to help, wouldn’t do much good if it just resulted in him being further too exhausted physically, along with mentally not being able to fully control or direct his feathers in a battle where it matters most.
- So keeping himself at his feather limit, and preventing himself from worsening his shape to the point of passing out, is the best shot he has at still having the potential to pitch in a hand.
Hawks’s Hero Committee Training:
Already I’ve mentioned that we headcannon the Hero Committee essentially owning Hawks, that he’s just constantly training to become a hero without access to leisure time or normal things for people his age.
We know that Hawks was picked up when he was really young to start training, I personally feel like he was around 5 - 7 during his appearance as a child in the manga, (Probably older tbh, but hey, it’s free real estate if you don’t give me the exact numbers.)
Time-frame wise, this would give me about 11 years to mess with his background. (If he left to train at 7, then started a hero agency at 18.)
- [As a note, I’m not sure if opening a hero agency is the same as his pro-hero debut, but I’ll headcannon it as Hawks became an official pro-hero around 17/18 too.]
There are two ways, (though I’m more partial to mixing them together,) that I can make his Hero training worse;
The first idea comes from my “Hawks’s wings are made of his blood” concept.
- Since I decided using feathers = blood loss, but still with the ability to forcefully create more feathers if needed, this gives me the potential for Hawks’s training under the hero committee to be outright APPALLING.
- Imagine his handlers just telling him to keep going, test your limits, go past them, JUST KEEP GOING.
Forcing Hawks to keep ripping his own blood from his body until he hits the point where he blackouts from blood-loss.
Teaching him that it doesn’t matter how bad his body gets, he HAS to keep going.
(Teaching Hawks its alright to purposely destroy his body in the name of getting stronger.)
The second idea is that before debuting as a pro-hero, the Hero Committee had him work as an underground hero.
- I’d assume, (and if not, then there is for this,) that the bnha universe has an official age restriction on when kids could officially become pro-heroes. (Not a very high one, considering Hawks could debut at 17/18... so maybe it would be possible to debut at Hero-Academy age, but very much pushing it.)
- But the Hero Committee want to use Hawks’s talents NOW. So they keep it very hush-hush, to prevent possibly being charged for child endangerment, (yeah, because all the other training totally wasn’t already, right!?) or breaking the age-restriction law.
- Snaking their way around actual laws in addition to their already questionable training practices, the Committee could start sending out someone as talented as Hawks to join in some underground missions as young as 11 and upwards.
- You want to know what the higher-ups use as his underground hero-name? ICARUS.
(Icarus holds a special place in our hearts as one of the ultimate angst-factors we could include due to the parallels we all notice... I can’t NOT use it.)
- Hawks specifically avoids being too flashy with his quirk; working at night to better hide in shadows, and sending his telekinetic feathers to do most of the work for him.
I feel like as an underground hero, Hawks would be used more for scouting missions or infiltration, (not to be confused with undercover work like with the LOV; nope, I mean straight up breaking into an enemy’s base.)
An example: If the police were working on a case where they needed to go in for a siege of a mob boss’s house at some point, Hawks’s feathers would be incredibly useful.
- His feathers can sense vibrations and the like, so he could send them into a building, and inform the people he works for exactly where “hostiles” are in a building. Saving a lot of time, effort, and better informing his allies so that there’s less risk.
- Alternately, Hawks might just straight up break into that mob boss’s house without anyone being the wiser, to find some incriminating documents or the like. (I’ve read some fanworks that have the idea of Hawks being able to pick locks with his feathers, which is absolutely something he would do in this situation.)
- Then on missions where he needs to actually take out people, in real-time pro-hero work he’s already so fast that people are left disorientated about what exactly transpired between them being rescued/captured, so it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say he does something similar with underground work.
Striking so fast that criminals only know they’ve been caught, and Hawks being extra careful to retrieve all his feathers and wipe his presence from the crime scene.
The last bit to underground hero thing is that I’d like other underground heroes such as Aizawa to be AWARE of Icarus existing, but maybe later on, it hits a lot of people to discover that Hawks and Icarus are the same person, (and furthermore that the Hero Committee had a CHILD doing the same DANGEROUS hero work they they’ve done.)
(I’ve made a monster ramble and I apologize to anyone who went through and read this entire mess of ideas in one go.)
#NamiHello's original content#bnha#boku no hero academia#bnha hawks#underground hero! hawks#WingsOfBlood Quirk! Hawks
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The Freshman: Book 2-11c
The Freshman
Book 2-11c
Chapter 11c: Stronger
***Labeled as 2-11c in my masterlist - new chapters added to include more***
Masterlist - go here for other chapters and related original fics
Disclaimer: The following are fics (adaptations from actual game chapters AND original works) to Choices: The Freshman series. It is a fictional adaptation. I do not work for Pixelberry Studios, the game developer or own the rights to the characters Chris Powell, Nicole or any other IN GAME character. All of the ORIGINAL characters, storylines and events were developed, by me, for this adaptation of The Freshman story.
Comments: I enjoyed playing Choices: The Freshman… But it needed more. I’ve included certain things that aren’t really full fic size in order to add more substance to the story. I ALSO have quite a few full size fics throughout. I wanted to see MC and Chris through their college years, and more… with additional angst, fluff, sweetness, real life and overall detail - so here you go.
Word Count: 10,927
NSFW moments in some chapters - Mature Readers Only Please
Paring: MC x Chris
POV: ~MC~ or ~Chris~
~MC~
The leggy freshman nuzzles into her pillow, her movements making the unique scent of one Chris Powell float into her face. She takes a deep breath, her eyes still closed as she begins to wake up. Her eyes crack open and she remembers why her boyfriend’s scent is so strong as a long, heavy arm tightens around her middle. Ethan and Steph made it to Hartfeld about an hour after their last text communication the night before, and she insisted they take her room this time.
One, it was clean, and two, it wouldn't have any possible germs in it. Ethan didn't argue with her this time, instead giving her a wide smile as he thanked her and dropped their bags next to her bed. MC hadn’t felt ill or anything close to it, but she didn't want to risk the possibility of their friends picking something up during their visit.
MC knew how busy Ethan and Steph usually were, but was grateful they took the time to visit. Chris was right when he said he would get a little crazy if confined for too long. She had slipped out from under his weight when their arrival text came through, quietly letting them in the suite before her boyfriend’s cranky, rough voice interrupted their conversation at the door.
She smiles against the pillow as she recalls how his face scrunched up with irritation for being left alone, then for not being informed of their arrival. Once the Boston College pair arrived, MC was unable to keep Chris from insisting they get some food and hang out for a few more hours before Ethan forced his hand and ending the evening by retiring to MC’s room with Steph.
Chris gave in then, his tired frame finally showing his exhaustion as he gave MC a goofy grin. “Okay, I’ll go to bed now.”
Still smiling, she turns over in the bed and faces her quarterback. His face was previously pressed against her shoulder blades, but her movements placed him directly in front of her chest. Without opening his eyes, Chris pulled her closer, burrowing his nose into the warm space between her breasts. Unsure if he was awake at first, MC let out a soft laugh when he sighed once and started snoring lightly into her shirt.
She runs her hands through his hair while glancing at the clock on his desk to see what time it was. The night before, Chris had insisted in getting up early, possibly working out with Ethan or taking them out for a big breakfast, but he missed the silent conversation that occurred between the other three.
During Chris’s theoretical planning, Steph flashed two full hands for Ethan and MC, indicating 10 a.m. as a good start time for the morning. Ethan wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed her temple as MC gave them both a quick nod and a small smile. She was thankful they were there to back her up.
It was almost 9:40 a.m. and Chris was dead to the world. She runs her hand though his hair a few more times as she remembers how insistent he was at getting up early to visit with their friends. He needed this time though, this rest. They all knew it; Chris just wouldn't admit it.
He begins to stir next to her, rubbing his nose into her warm shirt and tightening his grip around her body. MC reaches up and rests her wrist on his forehead, sighing with relief when he feels like his normal self. Chris was naturally warm, so it was a little unsettling when he had a fever. She wasn't used to someone feeling like they had been walking on the sun when they had a high temperature like that. His head rolls back and she looks down to find two very sleepy blue eyes peering at her as a smile slowly slides across his lips.
“Morning, beautiful.” His voice is rough, raspy from sleep and the occasional coughing from the day before.
MC smiles back and kisses his forehead, making him grin until he opens his eyes wider, finally seeing how bright the light from the window is as it illuminates his room. “Wait, what time is it?”
“It’s almost 9:50.” She says, wrapping her leg over his hip to hold him to her in hopes to slow him down.
Chris jerks a little and tries to sit up, frowning at MC when he feels her resistance and lays back down. “What are you doing… Ethan and Steph are--”
“Not even up yet. Or at least not out of my room yet.” She says simply, loosening her hold on him as she feels him relax from her words.
“Huh? But we said last nig--”
MC cuts him off with a sweet smile. “No, you said, but the rest of us planned for 10-ish so someone could get some rest.”
Chris’s eyes search hers and she nods. “Yep. Now, let's get you some calories and figure out the rest of the day.”
He grins and pulls her quickly into his chest, making her squeal from the abrupt move as he wraps all of his limbs around her this time, kissing the top of her head. “You look good enough to eat. Does that count?”
She bites his chest and he sucks in a sharp breath as he recoils, making her smirk. “What was that?”
Chris shoots her a weak glare and snorts, making them both laugh. “Alright woman, let’s go… Ethan usually gets up earlier than I do yanno.”
Zack, Steph and MC worked in the kitchen to make enough food to feed the suite. Kaitlyn made a brief appearance, greeting the guests and thanking the trio for making breakfast. Zack had been the one to knock on her door that morning, after seeing MC glance down the hall when her door was the only one still closed. Their unusually quiet friend ended up taking her plate back to her room and shutting the door once more, causing the suite-mates to share a round of frowns and small sighs.
~Chris~
They decided to turn their attention back to their guests, the group taking turns telling funny stories from home about their family and friends. Abbie made everyone laugh when she told a few about the friendly pranks she and her sister used to do to each other. She made sure to emphasize that they used to, because one day their dad got caught in the crossfire, and the embarrassment on his face when one of their bras ended up on his head was enough to call a truce.
Ethan started telling a story involving his younger brothers Donny and Declan, including Chris’s brother Kyle since they were usually together. The Hartfeld quarterback briefly interrupted to point out that Declan is basically a mini Ethan, and his own brother Kyle was an even more reserved version of Declan. The two were the same age and were often attached at the hip, much to Chris and Ethan’s delight.
Chris has always hoped that they would grow as close as he and Ethan had over the years, making their own unbreakable brother-from-another-mother bond. He frowns for a second when he thinks about Ryan, their missing link in their Cherryfield trifecta. He gets a sudden urge to visit Coach Cohen and check on the possibility that he will actually get to transfer to Hartfeld his sophomore year.
A loud round of laughter interrupts his spiraling thoughts, snapping him back to the present where Ethan is finishing his story. He was telling the group about a time where his youngest brother Donny just about ruined a school project that Kyle and Declan had spent weeks on.
“He is clearly taking advantage of being the youngest. The kid gets away with just about anything.”
Chris laughs. “You sound a little jealous there Clark.”
Ethan snorts, raising his eyebrow at Chris as Steph laughs and places her hand on his thigh as they sit together on the couch. “Yeah? Well, between you, Hawkins, and Donny… let’s just say the entire town of Cherryfield has paid its dues.”
“Hurtful Clark, hurtful.” Chris places his hand on his chest a little too hard, doing his best not to outright cough from the jarring impact. The last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to his condition.
Chris was feeling better, but even he could tell how tired it had made him. Everyone had been too distracted to mention it, especially MC, and he wants to keep it that way. He has things to do, places to go, and many things to accomplish over the next week or two. Most importantly, he was getting a little behind on his presidential campaign and he was not going to let Sebastian take the lead without a fight. Someone had to stand up to people like him.
He looks down at his hands for a moment as the group continues to talk, thinking about his odds of actually winning the election. Sebastian was hard to stand next to. He was highly educated, had way more worldly experience, was well spoken, and clearly used to getting his way. He had made it clear that Chris was just about his complete opposite, making the freshman quarterback feel the pressure to put in double, possibly triple the effort to keep up.
His eyes shoot around the small shared space with some anxiety and MC frowns as her eyes meet his. Without drawing the others attention, she leans over, placing her hand on his as she whispers into his ear. “You okay babe?”
Chris fully turns to face her, seeing the concern in her eyes before he gives her a genuine smile back, all previous worry and anxieties evaporating. “Perfect.”
He reaches up and slides his fingertips across her cheek before tucking a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “Just thinking.”
“About the campaign.” She assumes correctly.
The tall freshman laughs softly, almost forgetting there were others in the room. “How do you always know…”
She smirks and he feels his chest tighten, his eyes drifting down to stare at her lips, wishing he could cover them with his own this very second. It had been too long since he had tasted her. This being sick stuff was for the damn birds.
“How is that going by the way?” Steph interrupts his distracted thoughts, making them both turn to look at their friends.
“Oh, uh… well, slow at the moment since I’ve been detained.” Chris laughs softly as he glances at MC’s unamused expression, doing his best to not cough as he takes a deep breath.
“Well, we’re here. How can we help?” Ethan offers and Steph nods enthusiastically, the excitement evident on her face.
Zack grins widely at them both before turning to face Chris and MC. “Count me in too. Sebastian is going down.”
Abbie and Tyler share a sweet smile before they nod in unison. “Us too.”
Chris looks around the room, the corner of his lips curling slightly. “Thanks you guys. I really…” He swallows as he feels his nose burn a little, quickly standing to shift the mood and get things moving. “I really appreciate it.”
MC also stands and snakes her arm around his waist, followed by Ethan who then reaches over and pats him on the shoulder. “That’s what family is for. So what’s the plan man?”
Zack and the follow suit. “Yeah, Cap… let’s do this thing.”
The group makes up a list of promotional tactics and splits up. Abbie heads up the visual pieces, planning posters, flyers and more with the help of Tyler. He becomes really excited when he comes up with the idea of a campaign video, saying he was sure he could get Edgar to help.
Zack proclaims he will be managing Chris’s social media accounts, holding out his hand and motioning for Chris to give him his phone. “I need to know all of your logins. I’m already behind. We should have started this the day Sebastian was kicked out.”
Chris laughs and glances at MC. Seeing her face he grins and shrugs, fully trusting his shorter friend with anything, as he knew MC also did. Zack was the friend that would keep your darkest secrets, forever. Something he had actually already proven many times over their short friendship.
“I only have an Instagram and Facebook account…” He grimaces when he sees Zack’s mouth fall open in shock.
“What.”
“I don't really use them… I just… I look at pictures some people post.” His eyes shift, searching for MC’s briefly, noticing her tuck her bottom lip between her teeth when she realizes he specifically means her. “Sometimes.” He clears his throat and looks back at Zack.
“Okay, I can fix this. One Twitter account coming up… I might even make a blog to track your progress and help with promotions.” He chews on his thumbnail for a second. “Just need to figure out which platform. Ugh, Tumblr has been such a mess lately…” He continues to mumble to himself and the others snicker as he goes back to his spot on the couch as if they no longer existed.
Ethan nods. “I have an idea.” He turns to Steph, “I think your experience can really help with it, if you wouldn't mind.”
She stands straighter, doing her best to match his height as she gives him a tiny salute. “Wonder Woman at your service.”
Chris glances towards the tall blonde at his side and beams when he sees her try not to stare at the couple across from them as she grins like a fool. He loves the way she… well, loves. He always knew her heart was big, but she continues to surprise him more each day. MC was tough in a lot of ways, but she was also one of the most caring people he had ever met. He loves that about her.
She actually reminded him a little of his grandmother Louise. They both kept him on his toes, kept him motivated and made him smile. Chris loved his grandmother deeply, though she also scared the hell out of him on occasion. He and his siblings learned at an early age to never leave food they put on their plates, because if they did, they would end up sitting there until it was finished, or it was time for bed.
He realized as he got older that it was just one of her many ways to teach them restraint, to help them make solid decisions and plan ahead, instead of reacting without thinking things through. It became less of an issue for him personally as he grew thought, usually unable to get enough food most of the time thanks to his never ending physically demanding activities.
Even to this day, he will silently motion to his siblings with his chin when his grandmother isn't looking so they can quickly rake their leftovers onto his plate, finishing them off without her becoming wise. Something tells him that MC would know when he did it though. His grin grows as he thinks about introducing his girlfriend to his family. He really can't wait, already feeling that she would fit right in.
Chris shakes MC a little, his hand tightening on her side as she looks into his eyes and blushes from being caught. “Sorry.”
Chris shakes his head. “Don’t ever say sorry for that.”
Her brow furrows a little. “For what…”
He leans closer and kisses her temple as he speaks just loud enough for her to hear. “For being you.”
They break apart when Ethan clears his throat. “Steph and I are going to work on our idea for a few… what do you guys say about meeting back up for a late lunch?” He glances around the group and once all attention is on him he continues. “To regroup with our ideas and progress so far?”
MC nods and clasps her hands together. “Great idea. We can all meet at the campus cafe in a few hours if that works for everyone...”
They all agree and take off in different directions, Chris catching his phone when Zack tosses it back at him, mumbling about having his work cut out for him as he heads to his room for his laptop.
MC suggests Chris show his face around campus, stopping by popular places such as the cafe, the campus library, the recreation center, and other popular Hartfeld locations to meet more of the student body. Chris watches as she gets more excited with each mentioned stop while reaching for their jackets near the suite door.
When she pauses and frowns Chris can't help but frown also as he steps closer, gently holding her shoulders between his wide hands. “What’s wrong beautiful?”
She shifts her pursed lips to one side as she looks into his eyes. “I just realized you walking around in the cold might not be the best idea.”
Chris smiles and takes her jacket, holding it open for her. “I’m okay MC. Remember, I’m used to much worse weather-wise… and we will be inside most of the time. Brief moments in the cool air won't kill me.”
Her eyes search his and his smile widens. “Seriously. This is a great idea. I need to move around more after the last few days, and I’m feeling alright… scouts honor.”
MC’s eyes narrow. “You weren't a scout...”
His right eyebrow lifts, “You sure ‘bout that, baby?”
~MC~
She tilts her head and continues to study his face, making him chuckle and continue before she can ask. “Come on Miss Cherry. We’ve got work to do.”
They make their rounds across campus, introducing themselves and their purpose as they build new relationships and let students voice their concerns. MC takes notes as Chris asks questions and listens to each student’s ideas. She watches as he honestly digests their words, his eyes focused on each individual as he puts genuine effort into his campaign.
Pride. MC was full of it as she watches him work so hard, doing his best to meet everyone he can, introducing himself to complete strangers and putting himself out there over and over again. She wasn't sure she could do it if the roles were reversed. She always felt fairly confident, but there was something about meeting strangers, especially one after the other after the other, and baring herself like he was doing that made her heart skip a beat. It made her body hot, almost sweaty with apprehension. Sure, she had learned how to to be seen in and give public speeches over the years, but it never felt as natural as it looked with Chris.
The more she watches, the more inspired she becomes. MC is so proud of him. Watching him in action begins to make her feel invincible herself. Especially with him by her side. Ethan, Ryan, Zack… they were all right. He was Captain Steve Rogers. A natural leader.
Just then, as if she said his name, Chris turns and looks at her when the last student walks away, giving her a small anxious smile. “Think it’s going okay?”
He just needs to believe in himself.
MC gives him a huge smile, almost making her cheeks hurt from the pressure. “Sebastian has no idea what’s coming.”
------
Just as planned, the group of friends regroup at the cafe for lunch a few hours later. Each give an update on their accomplishments so far, making MC so proud to have them as friends. Abbie and Tyler had designed a few started flyers and posters. They even decorated a few donation jars and a handful of basic “Chris Powell for President” notices to leave in the local shops and other popular campus locations. They gave out what they had to the rest of the group, instructing them to spread everything around to places they knew well.
Zack grins as he picks one up and walks straight towards the cafe counter. Brandon tilts his head as his curly haired boyfriend approaches, taking the jar from him without a word and proudly placing it in the most prominent spot near the register.
The shorter freshman turns towards their table and nods sharply as Brandon chuckles behind him. “One down. Now, how many more do we have…”
They continue to work on their ideas, coming up with plans on how to raise some extra funds while making the best of what they had currently. Tyler updates everyone on Edgar’s masterpiece, or that's what he started calling it anyway. When Tyler tried to help, Edgar insisted that he had it covered, and it would be better than any presidential campaign that ever was. Tyler complied, moving on to work on where the video would play across campus and local shops.
Zack proudly informs Chris that he’s now active on all popular social platforms. He had taken the liberty of posting some information already and setting up more to post on a schedule. Advising Chris that he was going to have to add more himself, Zack reassured him that he would be there to help and ghostwrite as needed. MC leans across the small table and crushes her best friend in a serious hug as the last word falls from his lips.
He laughs at pats her back a few times. “I just want you to know that we’re going back to that vintage clothing shop some point in the next week or two as a reward for all of this work.”
She can’t help but laugh as she releases him and sits back down before flashing him a broad smile with a wink. “Pulling my leg… but deal.”
Steph perks up. “Oh, what about a vintage clothing shop?”
They make quick plans to swing by and show Steph that afternoon or the next day before she and Ethan head back to Boston. Ethan arches an eyebrow and Steph playfully rolls her eyes when she notices, turning the conversation back to the task at hand. She had done her magic as requested, using her connections from Boston College to reach out to local organizations and set up some volunteer work for Chris over the next few weeks in the name of Hartfeld.
MC watches as Ethan’s eyes stay focused on the strawberry blonde next to him. The Hartfeld freshman’s lips occasionally curl at the ends, unable to tear her gaze away, watching the red-head’s gaze adoringly glide across the fair face next to him. Feeling the side of her own face burning, MC turns towards the source and finds a pair of beautiful blues focused on her with just about the same expression.
She sits back suddenly, her face instantly warm at being caught staring once again. Chris just chuckles and lowers his arm from the back of the bench to drape across her shoulders, pulling her into his side as she leans closer, burying her embarrassed face into his shoulder.
After a quick kiss to the top of her head, she sits up and they focus on all the connections Steph had made over the last few hours. MC writes down as much as she can, making sure to ask Steph to review it later once they are back in the suite so she doesn’t miss anything.
Ethan finally manages to tear his eyes from her when she finishes and faces Chris. “I also spoke with Coach Cohen.”
~Chris~
The Hartfeld quarterback leans forward, curious where this is going. “Ayuh?”
Ethan nods, glancing at Steph briefly, the expression on their faces making Chris’s eyes narrow with curiosity for a moment before the thoughts leave in a flash. His red-headed friend looks around the group slowly before his gaze rests back on his best friend.
“I remembered something we did at Cherryfield one time and mentioned it to Coach briefly when I went to talk to him earlier.”
Chris’s brow furrows as he tries to think back, nodding slowly as Ethan proceeds to tell them all about briefly talking with Cohen and how he asked to meet up again later in the afternoon once he had worked some things out.
When Chris asks what it was about, Ethan just smiles and shakes his head. “You’ll see.” He tilts his wrist to see his watch. “But we’ve got to get going soon if we’re going to make it in time.”
Fully trusting his friend, Chris nods and stands to leave. The others being to do the same and he reaches over, surprising Abbie as he pulls her into a big hug. A rush of air leaves her lips from the force of it and he laughs, stepping back as he holds her shoulders between his large hands.
“Sorry Abbs, I forget how hard I hug and stuff sometimes.”
She laughs softly and pushes her hair up and out of her face. “It’s okay Chris. Tyler kind of steps on me all the time.”
Her boyfriend moves next to her as his mouth falls open. “I do not.” He frowns when he sees her serious expression. “Tell me I do not...”
Abbie’s eyebrow arches and he groans. “Really?”
Zack snort-laughs as he moves to Abbie’s other side, now standing across from MC as he glances at his raven-haired friend. “Well, you step on me. So yeah… odds are in Abbie’s favor.”
Tyler grimaces at Zack before shifting his gaze over and giving her an apologetic smile. “I’m so sorry.”
She laughs and hugs him, placing a quick kiss on Tyler’s cheek. “It’s okay. I’ve learned how to move around you and Chris.”
Zack laughs. “Uh, we all have.”
Chris tries to turn his smile into a pouting frown as he turns to his girlfriend, hoping she will deny the claims. “MC...”
She gives him an awkward smile and shrugs, making him laugh and pull her into his chest while playfully pretending to step on her feet and making her squawk into his shirt. He’s pretty sure he doesn't actually step all over people, generally very aware of his surroundings and the people in them. Especially MC. Chris always knows where she is, or rather where she isn't. It was something he realized he could feel in his core soon after their first kiss on the roof.
He also knows that she will take any chance to screw with him. Digging his fingers into her ticklish sides, he grins when he feels her jerk against him, her muffled squeal soaking into the fabric of his shirt. Tyler starts laughing and holds out his hand.
Chris peels one arm from her body and firmly shakes it. “Thank you guys… and Tyler, thank Edgar for me too would ya?”
“Oh, he has already told me he will let me know what his desired payment is for his contribution.” Tyler sighs and laughs anxiously. “I’m almost a little scared to ask to be honest.”
Zack cackles and high fives Chris’s same free hand on his way out before turning towards Tyler. “You just had to befriend him, didn't you Tyler… I told you that first week he was an odd one, but yooooou didn't listen.”
Tyler and Abbie wave goodbye as they pass the others and he scoffs at Zack. “What are you talking about? You told me that he was a character, and we should all have characters in our lives…”
Their conversation trails off as they leave the cafe. Chris shakes his head and glances at Ethan. “So, where are we going?”
It didn't take long for the four students to arrive at the Hartfeld Knight’s practice field. When they walked in and Chris saw the entire team sitting on the benches he turns to Ethan, finding his friend still looking forward as they walk closer, but with a small smirk in place now.
“What are you up to Clark?”
Ethan shakes his head. “It’s not me Chris.”
He gestures in front of them and Coach Cohen turns from his position facing the full benches to greet them.
The young Head Coach of Hartfeld University extends his open hand and Chris automatically takes it. “Powell. It’s good to see you out and about again. I was starting to worry...” He turns his head slightly to look at MC with a thankful smile. “...but it looks like I had no reason to.”
Chris turns to look at his girlfriend as his hand falls back to his side after they shake. Nudging her gently with his shoulder she turns and gives him a tiny smile and he can’t help but grin wildly. “Yeah, I’ve got the best family a guy could ask for.”
Cohen nods with a wide smile and pats Chris on the right shoulder. “I agree, and speaking of family…” He grips the same shoulder enough to pivot the tall freshman to face the stands, placing his other hand on Ethan’s left shoulder as he raises his voice. “Who here is ready to help Powell with the Student Council campaign this week?”
Chris watches in amazement as the stands erupt with loud cheers and yells. Each of his teammates from this season, along with their partners, roommates, best friends and more, stand and add to the deafening roar. His mouth falls open with shock as he takes the time to look at each and every one of them, astonished by the devoted support they each are ready to provide. He lets out a breathy laugh and turns to look past Coach to where Ethan and Steph both stand.
The Hartfeld quarterback can't help but laugh once more, mouthing “Thanks man.” to Ethan, who smiles so hard his eyes disappear as he nods back.
He then turns and looks to his left, finding a pair of large hazel eyes already focused on his. Chris swallows hard and takes a deep breath. His chest was heavy all of a sudden.
~MC~
Her eyes search his, moving back and forth as she watches him try to contain the love and joy she can see shining in his beautiful blue eyes. Chris was ridiculously happy, but also obviously stunned by their tremendous gesture. To do her best to ease the increasing pressure building inside, MC quickly reaches up to grasp his face between her hands and kisses him. Hard.
Chris laughs as she releases him just as fast, blinking a few times to regain his composure as he gives her a thankful smile. She knows he’s truly stunned when he doesn't get upset about their first real kiss in days, thanks to his being sick. MC can see then, that he believes it’s really happening. That this group is ready to help him in any way they can. They both turn to smile at the cheering stands, her own chest heavy with appreciation as she does her best to memorize as many faces as possible.
Without a second thought, MC pumps her left fist into the air and yells. “GO KNIGHTS!”
Ethan, Steph and Cohen do it only a fraction of a second later, causing the stands to tremble with enthusiastic response, each student mirroring their actions and words. “GOOOOOO KNIIIIIIGHTS!”
Chris starts laughing, his entire body shaking as he flashes all of his teeth in the largest smile MC has seen to date. His eyes sparkle as he laughs, the blue pair shifting across the group in front of them before they land back on MC. His astonished expression makes her breath catch as she struggles to breathe as he holds her gaze with his.
He wraps his arms around her and spins them around, lifting her feet from the ground as he kisses the top of her head as he places her back down before thrusting his right fist in the air. “HARTFELD!”
“HARTFEEEEEEELD!” The crowd yells back.
“Let’s do this! Let’s show Hartfeld what really matters!” Chris roars, stepping forward a bit as MC moves to stand back to the side with Ethan and Steph. Her face hurts from the enormous smile on her lips. She can feel her own heart beating rapidly in her chest, only able to imagine what his feels like right now.
She watches as Darren makes his way towards Chris from the first row of benches and turns to face the crowd as he throws his left arm over the freshman’s shoulder and yells. “Yeah! For the public school kids!” They cheer more and he continues. “For the athletes who love the game.” They cheer even louder.
Chris laughs and lays his right arm across Darren’s shoulders. “For the comic book nerds, the gamers, and the artists!”
Logan jumps down from the stands as Madison stands and begins clapping excitedly. He races towards the pair and spins to face the stands, throwing his arms wide. “For the dancers…” He swivels his hips and MC and Steph laugh as Cohen shakes his head and covers his eyes. “...and the lovers!”
Everyone laughs even more, banging on the bleachers. Everyone except Coach Cohen, who groans loudly instead. MC hears the disgust and glances over to see him rub his face with both hands as he shakes his head. She swears the corner of his lips curl as he tries to hide a smile though.
One of the Knight’s defensemen, MC believes his name is Mac, joins the growing group on the field and cups his hands over his mouth to project his deep voice towards the stands. “For the rock stars!”
MC jumps up suddenly and calls out. “For the bookish, the quiet kids... and the weirdos!”
Chris’s bright blue eyes find hers and he claps slowly, holding her gaze while smiling as he takes a few steps forward to separate himself from the guys and cause the crowd to refocus. MC silently laughs as he winks at her, making her toes tingle a little before he turns back to face the bleachers. They quite down some as he raises his voice once more, placing his hand on his chest as his smooth, deep tone projects easily across the area.
“Yes, yes. For all of those things… and more.” He pumps his fist once, knuckles white from the force of his grip.
“Let’s make sure Hartfeld stays a place for everyone. For anyone. This is a school for all types, not certain types.” He pats his chest forcefully as the group grows seriously silent. “This is our school!”
MC watches as he stands even straighter somehow, clenching both hands into fists before pumping his right one with each word for emphasis. “We. Are. Hartfeld!”
The group jumps up in a thundering roar once more, everyone rushing the field to join the small gathering on the lined turf. MC smiles and leans over to give Ethan a hug. “This was amazing… how did you know this would happen?”
A small smile crosses his lips as he returns the hug and turns to watch the excited mass of students surging a few feet away. “I didn't... but I know Chris.”
“He really is Cap.” MC says in awe as she follows Ethan’s gaze.
He laughs. “Maybe one day he’ll believe it too.”
“Impossible. That’s one of the defining qualities of Steve Rogers. He stands for many things while shunning the limelight.” Steph shrugs as she looks out across the crowd.
MC grins at her, reaching over suddenly to cup Steph’s face with both hands. “I think I love you.”
The shorter strawberry blonde laughs softly as MC briefly hugs her before joining the celebration, barely hearing Ethan mumble something to his girlfriend as MC searches for her tall, blue eyed Man of Justice.
~Chris~
The swirling forms and voices around him were exhilarating, but also exhausting. It had been a long day already and there was still so much to do, but he could feel how much it had drained his already sluggish body. Chris now needed to figure out how this group of thoughtful teammates and friends were going to help with the campaign, what his suite-mates needed to help finish the projects they started earlier in the day, and how he was going to manage all the volunteer work that he had lined up.
His chest starts to feel tight and his breath a little short as his mind continues to race through his immediate to-do list. He hasn’t considered the homework and assignments that would due in the next week on that list. His heart begins to race, the anxious feeling he’s grown familiar with over the years coming back suddenly, putting his world on a tilt.
The moment he sees them though, everything slows however. Two large, bright hazel eyes find his in the crowd and he feels like he can finally breathe again. The moment she reaches him and lays her hand on his, everything instantly rights itself. Time slows down as his lips stretch into a wide smile.
Her hands come up to cradle his face, her own expression mirroring his. Without a word he reaches around her, wrapping his arms tight and pulling her against his body. He hides his face in the crook of her neck, letting her hair feather over his face as he breathes deep. It was calming. She was his rock. She was his guiding star.
------
After some quick organization of the large group, assignments and tasks are given out. Some will be on advertisement duty, handing out flyers and hanging posters around campus. Others will be on poll duty, collecting concerns, asking questions and getting a general feel for what the student body is looking for from their student council. Many sign up to help with the volunteer work Steph had setup, increasing the level of impact for the community and campus in the name of Chris Powell, Hartfeld’s future President. Others volunteer to make buttons and additional wearable merch to hand out with his name, picture and info on them.
He just needs to get the designs from Abbie, his unofficial head of marketing. MC takes more notes, gathering phone numbers, emails and other contact info for each group of volunteers so they can send instructions out as soon as possible. Chris thanks everyone, taking time to shake many hands and give friendly hugs. Many of the female students that were there took their time with the hugs, a few requiring Chris to physically peel himself from as they cling to his frame.
It was starting to make him feel uncomfortable, especially after a few particular students got too close for comfort. He knew it was clear to them that he was with MC, seeing how she kissed him in front of the bleachers just minutes earlier.
His eyes search for the only pair that can hold his own in an effort to find balance again. MC was by Steph, laughing about something the Boston College student said when he reaches over and threads his fingers through hers. She spins around and gives him a soft smile when her gaze lands on him.
He leans close and kisses her forehead, receiving a cute look of confusion in return. “Chris?”
Giving her hand a squeeze, he nods towards Ethan and Steph. “Let’s see if they are ready to go back.”
When he asks, the Boston couple tell him they have to make a stop first, but will be back at the suite soon, so not to wait for them. Chris nods and says his last goodbyes to the remaining students on the field. His eyes scan for anyone he might have missed, not wanting to be rude to anyone who offered to help.
That’s when he notices a few female students shooting little sneers and looks of judgement at MC as they whisper amongst themselves. He lets out a muted disgruntled snort and shakes his head, assuming he’s the only one who sees them, feeling sorry for the little group.
He was wrong.
When Chris turns to ask MC if she’s ready, he immediately notices the expression on her face. Her brow furrows a little, her eyes scanning the same handful of ugly expressions he just noticed. Chris feels his heart drop. Those girls don’t know anything about MC, but they are judging her because she was different from them, and even more because he’s with her.
It pissed him off.
They have no right to make her feel this way. She has worked so hard to help him with the campaign, she took care of him when he was sick, and has done so much more. He turns and narrows his eyes, shaking his head in disappointment at them when their eyes met his. Some look away guiltily, others hold their ground and try to make some type of point. Chris scoffs and turns to face MC, turning her to face him with his finger under her chin.
“Hey.” Her eyes find his and he sighs. “Don’t.”
MC tilts her head as her eyes study his. “Don’t?”
“Don’t let them in.”
“I’m not. I just… I don’t get it.” She shrugs and glances over to their last location, eyes searching once more.
A small smile slips across his lips as he makes her turn back to face him. “I do.”
She opens her mouth to ask what he means, but he shakes his head and grabs her hand instead, guiding her away from the crowd and towards the suite. They walk in silence until he feels they are far enough away from the remaining group. Chris reaches into his pocket and pulls out his ear buds, connecting it to his phone before opening his music library.
MC tries to see what he’s doing, but he tilts his screen away with a smirk. “Cheater.”
Her nose scrunches up with mild frustration and before she can say anything, Chris hands her one of the buds. He puts one in his right ear while she places the other in her left and looks back to him with a curious expression. He presses play and slides the phone into his pocket before slipping his hand into hers and looking forward as they continue to walk.
~MC~
Watching Chris turn his gaze forward, she does the same, knowing she’s supposed to listen to the words that were about to come.
I want this forever
Just you in the grotto
With nothin' but your nights on
Keep the fuckin' lights on
Same again tomorrow
We don't need no bottle
Purple-colored lip gloss
Room with the Saguaro
Ain't nowhere I would rather be
Right between your holidays
Coffee on the Flintstone
Jewelry on the ottoman
Baby, let me in
'Fore I get way too adamant about it
She turns to look at him and finds his eyes already on hers. The intensity she finds there makes her knees weak.
Love the way you shiver
Dig into my shoulder blades
Feel it when you quiver
Higher level, elevate
MC licks her lips, suddenly feeling very dehydrated as his eyes slowly glide down her body and back up to her eyes. His hand squeezes hers gently and her body heats up in response.
You could be the renegade
Bonnie to a Clyde
Harrelson and Juliet
Legends never die
Chris smirks at her, their previous conversation of similarly paired couples like Superman and Lois Lane, or Cyclops and Jean Grey obviously popping into both of their heads at the prompt.
The TV hasn't worked in ages
Probably got a shorted cable
Way too busy fucking on the sofa or the kitchen table
MC playfully gasps softly and covers her mouth with her free hand, earning a pleasant chuckle from Chris.
Is my vision hazy?
You look like you're someone famous
He winks at her and the corner of her lips curl slightly. She lets out a startled squeak when he stops walking and pulls her to him, holding her to his chest as he tucks some of her now fluttering platinum hair behind an ear.
'Cause you're the next Drew Barry
And I want more, yeah
Chris pops his eyebrows up a few times and she can’t help but grin wide.
And all these other girls keep wonderin' what I fuck with you for
That’s when she understands why he chose this song.
'Cause you're the next Drew Barry, yeah
And I want more
And all these other girls keep wonderin' what I fuck with you for
Chris leans forward, gently placing his forehead against hers. They both close their eyes and continue to listen as she runs her arms around his waist. Everything suddenly feels sobering as her stomach fills with butterflies.
'Cause you're something like the summer
Kinda like a hurricane
Sweepin' through the desert
Hot Americana rain fallin'
Wearing nothing but my Lauryn Hill shirt
“Or Henley.” Chris snort laughs. MC grins and opens her eyes, seeing his already focused on her.
It's kinda baggy on you, baby, but it work
The AC hasn't worked in ages
I could prolly read the label
Way too busy fucking on the counter or the coffee table
Chris leans back slightly and gives her a frisky curious look, wordlessly asking if she was interested. MC laughs and lightly slaps his broad chest, receiving a fake sigh in return.
Am I hallucinating?
Why do you look hella famous?
'Cause you're the next Drew Barry
And I want more
And all these other girls keep wonderin' what I fuck with you for
'Cause you're the next Drew Barry, yeah (next Drew Barry)
I want more
And all these other girls keep wonderin' what I fuck with you for
I wanna make
Every single moment for you great
Fly away to Cairo or L.A
Girl, I want it now
And I don't wanna waste time, waste time
MC’s stomach fills with butterflies again as his expression turns serious once more. She swallows quickly, unsure how she can feel this way after knowing him for such a relatively short period of time. She knew Peter for years, but Chris... only months.
I wanna make, yeah
Every single moment for you great, yeah
Fly away to Cairo or L.A
Girl, I want it now
And I don't wanna waste time
'Cause you're the next Drew Barry
And I want more, yeah
And all these other girls keep wonderin' what I fuck with you for
Needing to lighten the mood, she shakes her head and smirks mischievously. “So uh… you have a thing for Drew Barrymore, huh?”
You're the next Drew Barry, yeah
And I want more
And all these other girls keep wonderin' what I fuck with you for
Chris tilts his head back and lets out a spirited laugh before reaching up to softly grasp her chin with his large hand. “Not quite, baby.”
As the song ends he leans close, gently rubbing the tip of his nose against hers. She bites her bottom lip, knowing what she’s about to do will get a reaction out of him, one way or the other. Without a word she presses forward, covering his lips with hers.
~Chris~
He gasps and pulls back quickly, eyes wide as he licks his lips as panic floods his body, worried that he just contaminated her. “MC! Are you crazy woman?”
She arches an eyebrow and waits for him to breathe a few times before she speaks. “I already kissed you today, you dork.”
Chris freezes, his mind whirling as he digs through his memories of the day to see that moment. Being stunned in front of the crowd falls into place and he blinks. “Oh.”
MC laughs and pulls from his slacked grip, tugging his hand as she starts towards the suite again. “Come on. You need a nap.”
He doesn't argue, the day’s events immediately catching up to him in one large avalanche. They get back to the suite and she does her best to force him into bed, but he hesitates to check with their friends before he gives in. Abbie and Tyler are sitting at the kitchen table, creating flyers and other documents on their PCs while Zack mumbles something about needing to post all of the volunteer events on Chris’s brand new Twitter to MC, greedily taking her notebook when she pulls it from her shoulder bag. Chris glances at the screens on the table and freezes, instantly recognizing some of the images he sees there.
“Where did you get those?” He points to Abbie’s screen and she looks over her shoulder at him curiously.
Before she can reply, Ethan and Steph enter the suite and take off their jackets, effectively interrupting their conversation. They walk over as MC moves next to Chris with a very telling smirk on her face.
His eyes narrow. “MC.”
She gives him her best innocent look. “What…”
Ethan joins them as Steph goes to sit with Zack. Chris points at the screen for emphasis as his red-headed friend leans over to look at the images and laughs. “How did you get your hands on these?”
Chris arches an eyebrow at MC, waiting for her to respond and she shrugs. “A little birdie came to my rescue when I said we needed some images for your posters and stuff.”
Ethan laughs and stands back up. “Little birdie.”
The Hartfeld quarterback crosses his arms in front of his chest as he continues to hold her gaze. “Hmm, a bird huh? Maybe like... a hawk?”
Tyler and Abbie both look up with matching grins as they watch things unfold between the pair. Ethan chuckles and leaves to join Steph and Zack on the couch. MC bites her lip and pulls out her phone, quickly typing on the screen before handing it to Chris and moving to sit at the table with the others.
He takes the phone and reads the name across the top as the ringing stops and the FaceTime connects, providing a video with a matching loud, happy voice. “Rogers!”
Chris closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Is nothing sacred Hawkins?”
The cackle that comes through the speaker makes everyone giggle in the suite. “Oh come on Chris. These are harmless. Now, if you want me to show MC the ones fro--”
“No!” Chris quickly interrupts, glancing at MC who arches an eyebrow curiously.
“What’s that Ryan?” She yells so he can hear her from her seat at the table.
“MC! There you are… Can you tell this guy that I didn't give you guys anything that bad?”
She laughs and continues to speak loud enough for him to hear as Chris turns the camera to face the table. “I don’t think he's going to listen to me at this point Ry.”
A snort comes out of the phone and Chris turns the screen to face him again. “Do you see this face?” He points at himself. “I swear, if I come across any of the pictures we agreed should never see the light of day…” He trails off, his expression filling in the rest.
Ryan laughs. “You’re safe Chris.” He pauses for affect. “I’m totally saving those for when I can show them to MC in person and see her face.”
Ethan shakes his head and laughs from the other side of the room as he speaks loudly. “You’re asking for it Ryan. Keep going and I’d bet money that a shiny red Jeep will be on its way to Kentucky soon.”
Chris shoots Ryan a look of conformation and his raven-haired friend’s mouth snaps shut. “Got it. No vault pictures will be shared. Scouts honor.”
“Oh come on!” MC pouts and Chris shakes his head at her, trying not to laugh at her cute expression.
“Hell no.”
MC straightens up and leans over, searching for someone behind him. “Ethan! Help me out!”
He quickly shakes his head without looking at Chris. “Staying out of this one. Sorry, MC.”
Chris smirks as she turns her gaze back to him. “Sorry babe. Not happening.”
She grumbles and goes back to working with Tyler and Abbie, both amused with the conversation if their expressions say anything. Chris playfully rolls his eyes and walks down the hall, focusing his attention on the FaceTime call once he’s away from all the activity.
“Is Kentucky so boring that you let her drag you into this too?” He jokingly smiles until he sees Ryan shrug as an odd expression crosses his features.
“I just wanted to help. That’s all I could really do from down here.”
Chris gives him a sad smile when their eyes meet again. “Thanks Ryan. I uh, I wish you here man. We all do, yanno...”
Ryan quickly puts up his normal cocky smirk and looks away from the screen for a moment. “Yeah, yeah… don’t go soft on me now Powell. I’ll be home for the summer… and then at Hartfeld in the fall. You’ll regret those words before long.”
The Hartfeld freshman laughs. “Impossible.”
Ryan’s expression turns very serious suddenly. “Chris.”
His brow furrows as he holds the phone closer with anticipation. “Ayuh?”
Shaking his head, Ryan sighs. “Ethan told me what happened today.”
Confused, Chris frowns as his mind races through his memories once more. “...what?”
“You completely missed the opportunity to yell ‘Avengers Assemble’ and I am pretty disappointed with you right now.”
-----
After a few more hours working on the campaign, a forced nap thanks to MC, and some dinner with the group at the suite, Chris was ready to get out and stretch his legs again. He thought he was dead tired earlier, but her required nap really helped re-energize him.
He goes to his room to change and opens his dresser drawer to pull out a change of clothes. A pair of long arms snake around his waist and he grins as their fingers start crawling up his abdomen before flattening their palms against his chest.
He tilts his head, resting his chin on his chest as he chuckles at the curious hands. “Can I… help you?”
Chris turns to look over his shoulder and a platinum blonde head tilts into view. “Nope. Just getting some random fondling in while I can.”
His body shakes with amusement as he spins in her grasp. “Alright then. I’m available whenever you need to hit your quota.”
She snort laughs and releases him, much to his disappointment. “Come on Cap, we’ve got a movie to catch.”
MC disappears into the hall, closing the door softly behind her. Chris takes a deep breath and rubs his free hand across his chest where hers were moments before. Her touch left a burning trail in its wake. It always did. His skin still tingled wherever her hands had been. It was something he hoped would never change.
Rushing to change and grab his phone, Chris meets the others out in the shared living space. His best friend was already waiting near the window, his own girlfriend in the kitchen with MC and Zack. Chris could hear them chatting about the vintage shop they were talking about the day before as he joined Ethan.
He stepped next to his friend and gazed out across the dark quad, neither saying a word for a bit as the soft chatter continued behind them. It was familiar, comfortable. Ethan’s presence was always calming to Chris. No matter where they were, who was there, he was able to bring peace to the people around him. It was a natural gift that the Hartfeld student had always been fascinated with.
Chris didn't understand how someone could always be so calm, so collected. Sure, he had his own agitated moments, but Ethan was usually the rock in every situation. He was the perfect counterbalance Ryan’s spontaneous nature too, the pair creating harmony in Chris’s life over the years.
As if reading his mind, the red-haired Boston College student interrupts the taller student’s thoughts. “It’s strange… not hanging out with you and Ryan just about every day.”
Chris gives a breathy laugh. “Ayuh. Ryan’s working on transferring to Hartfeld this fall, so it will be like that again.” He glances at Ethan, seeing his brow furrowed in concentration. “Well, kinda. I mean, you’re… close.”
Ethan nods slowly as his eyes stay focused on some unknown spot in the dark. “Yeah, about that Chris. I talked to Cohen today, and--”
Their conversation is disrupted by a loud knock at the door. They both turn to see what’s going on as Zack rushes to answer, leaping into the arms of his boyfriend the moment the door swings wide.
~MC~
She grins at the two in the doorway before turning to look at the pair of wide bodies near the living room window. Their expressions make her hesitate for a moment before speaking. “Are… you guys ready to go? The movie starts in about 20 minutes.”
Chris and Ethan share a look as they nod and join the others. She hadn't heard any of their conversation, but if their expressions said anything, it was at least semi-serious. Chris seems to notice her curious eyes and quickly smiles, making her forget any questions she may have wanted to ask. He would tell her later if it was important. Chris helps her with her jacket as the others get ready to leave and head toward the Hartfeld Theater.
MC had been to the theater only two times during the first quarter, once alone when things were getting a little stressful in the suite with Chris, and another time with Kaitlyn to watch a Paranormal Activity marathon during Halloween week. It was located in the Student Rec Center and Hartfeld students could get tickets for cheap. The University wanted to offer its students a safe entertainment option on campus grounds.
The tickets MC got for tonight were even cheaper than usual too, since a friend of hers from history class couldn't use the ones she bought earlier in the week and just wanted to get rid of them.
As they enter the front doors and step into the lobby area, MC watches as Chris and Ethan rush to the concession area, laughing as Zack quickly does the same only a second later, leaving an amused Brandon standing with Steph. The tall blonde takes her time joining the trio in line, trying to decide if she wanted to get anything.
As she arrives at the counter, Chris had already ordered a large bucket of popcorn for everyone to share. Zack and Ethan decided on a few other snacks to add to the list and Chris points to an item in the display case before she can see what he’s getting.
The student attendant pulls out a bright green and yellow package, setting it down in front of his wide frame and MC peeks around him to see what it is, but he quickly shoves it in his pocket and gives her an innocent smile. She doesn't get the chance to prod him for more information before Brandon and Steph join them and they all head into the dark theater.
The group decides to sit in the higher rows in the sparsely populated space. MC was glad it wasn't a new release so the place was not as busy as it had been in the past. She knew Chris seems energized now, but it’s only a matter of time before the day catches up with his tired form.
Zack follows Brandon down one of the rows and waves for Steph to take the seat next to him. Ethan stays close behind, taking her jacket and laying it in the chair one row down before putting his with it and sitting down himself. Chris stops on the stairs and looks down the row, holding his hand out for MC to take the next seat so he can sit in the last one.
MC stops and turns before sitting down and whispers, not wanting to disrupt the others. “You should sit next to Ethan.”
Chris shakes his head and smiles. “No baby… you sit there. I’ll take the end. Need protect you from random suitors and admirers anyway.”
She snorts out a laugh. “What.”
He shushes her and makes her spin to take her jacket and lay it down with the others below before sitting down himself. Brandon and Zack pass around the popcorn as Ethan hands out the water bottles he got for each couple. MC hears plastic crackling and looks over to see Chris digging into his left jean pocket. When he looks up and finds her eyes on his, he gives her a mischievous smile.
“Surprise.” In the darkened theater, he lays something down on MC’s lap. She looks down and waits as her eyes focus in the dim light, her hands doing their best to identify the small package.
When she recognizes the distinct Sour Patch Kids logo she can’t help but grin and look back up. He remembered her favorite candy. Even in the low light, MC can see how brilliantly blue his eyes are. With each flash of the previews on the screen, her eyes shift to another area of his face, enjoying the little crinkles at the corner of his eyes, the curve at the end of his full lips, the slight stubble across his strong jaw.
Without letting another moment pass, MC drops the bag into her lap and reaches up to cup both sides of his face. His eyes widen slightly with surprise as she leans in and presses her lips to his. The kiss starts soft, but it only lasts maybe half of a second before she presses harder against him. She can feel his smile against her own, obviously enjoying her version of thank you.
Before they can go any further, someone clears their throat loudly behind her. “Cut it out. We didn't come here for that kind of show.”
Ethan.
MC pulls away from Chris with a laugh, one that only grows when she sees the pouty expression across her boyfriend’s handsome features.
The tall quarterback hisses and leans forward to shoot his best friend a glare. “Thank you. Really.”
Zack smirks from his seat as he reaches into the popcorn bucket currently in Steph’s lap. “I don't know. That might be way better than this movie.”
Brandon mock gasps as he raises his arm towards the screen as the opening credits begin. “But… Henry Cavill…”
At the mention of that name MC’s attention snaps from her boyfriend to her best friend’s boyfriend, eyes wide as she nods. “Right?”
Brandon chuckles as Zack shrugs. “I can't really argue with that.”
Hearing an exaggerated sigh, MC turns back around, finding Chris with his arms crossed as he glares at the screen. His chest bulges through his snug long sleeve shirt as a small sneer crosses his lips. Ethan must have noticed too, as he lets out a hearty laugh.
Feeling a little bad about it, MC reaches over and wedges her hand in between his tightly folded arms. He doesn't budge at first, his eyes staying glued to the screen as the movie begins. Trying to hide her amusement, MC presses her lips together tightly and shakes him a little.
When his eyes finally shift to meet hers in the dark, she smiles and leans over, brushing her lips across the edge of his ear as she whispers. “I’m more of a Marvel girl… especially for the patriotic types.”
She leans back a little just in time to see one side of his lips lift and curl slightly at the end. Knowing he wasn't really upset, she leans over and kisses him on the cheek once and sits back in her seat. Only a moment later does she feel a large warm hand on hers, his fingers wrapping around hers as his thumb rubs across her knuckles.
About halfway through the movie, Chris lifts the arm rests between the two of them as well as between the next few seats on his other side. MC is about to ask why when he stretches out across the seats, lifting her arm up and laying his head in her lap. She runs her hand through his hair, knowing that she was right before about Chris finally running out of energy for the day.
The couple had already seen the movie on its release weekend, but the others had not. They didn't mind watching it again though, being a comic movie involving some of their favorite characters. Really, they just wanted to hang out with their friends and thank them for all of their help over the weekend by treating them to a movie. She was sad when Abbie and Tyler had plans, but they would make it up to them later.
She continues to drag her fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp and tracing the edge of his jawline as her eyes stay on the screen. It only takes about a minute before she feels his body grow heavy as his muscles relax and he finally falls asleep. She glances down and slides her hand towards his neck, pausing to feel his slowing pulse as she strokes his warm flesh.
When MC looks up she finds Ethan looking over with a small smile. “Finally passed out huh?”
She gives him a tiny smile back. “Yeah. Long day.”
His smile morphs into a flat smirk as he reaches over to hold the hand of the strawberry blonde next to him as his eyes focus back on the screen. “You’re telling me.”
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#chris x mc#Chris Powell#TheFreshmanChronicles#the freshman chronicles#chris powell fanfic#Christopher Powell#chris powell x mc#chris powell fan fiction#christopher powell x mc#ethan clark#ethan x steph#ethan clark fanfiction#ryan hawkins#ryan hawkins fanfiction#The Freshman#choices the freshman#the sophomore#choices the sophomore#the junior#choices the junior#the senior#choices the senior#choices fanfiction#choices fan fiction#maxattack-powell
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Rating: Teen Audiences and Up
Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Fandom: Haikyuu!!
Relationships: Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi, Michimiya Yui & Sugawara Koushi
Additional Tags: Sleeping Beauty Fusion, Flashbacks, Past Relationship(s), Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Fae and Faeries, Minor Kiyoyachi, Minor Iwaoi
Ayaka goes back to Miliwyn the next day. Shimizu and her guards go to formally see her off, as well as Suga. They all stand there as she promises to have two candidates for exchange very soon and kisses Suga on the cheek and then steps through the portal that Shimizu creates with several sweeping movements.
As soon as it closes, all of the faeries save for Ushijima slump against opposite walls, all fight and tension draining out of their frames. Shimizu’s stance still appears somewhat rigid, and she tilts her head back with her eyes closed. Something about her looks younger. Shirabu looks more tired than he has in weeks. Tendou looks like if he so much as laughs, he’ll fall over. Even Ushijima looks strained as he stands upright.
“Your mother is a handful, Sugawara.” Tendou says. “Think you can tell her to stay in her own kingdom for a while?”
“She shouldn’t be coming down here again.” Suga says firmly, and he turns to Shimizu. “Your Majesty, since my mother is finding a person to replace both my husband and myself, may I bring him up from the mines?”
“I can’t tell if this is a scheme of yours or not, but the Queen of your kingdom has given us your word that she will have new humans to exchange within the week’s end, so the answer is yes.” Shimizu cracks open one eye to look at him, and gestures at her guards. “Take any one of them with you.”
“I will go, Your Majesty.” Ushijima says. Suga’s not surprised-he’s the only one who doesn’t look dead on his feet. What he’s more surprised about is the fact that his mother, a mere human such as himself, has had such a toll on the Queen of Faerie and her Royal Guard.
“Very well.” Shimizu says. “If you aren’t back by sundown, we’ll send someone to fetch you. Understood?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Ushijima bows low, and then he begins to walk towards the cliffs that lead to the mines. Suga runs a bit to catch up with him, trying not to let happiness bubble up in his chest, because it’s so likely that this is a trap, that he won’t get to see Daichi again, that something will go wrong. But Shimizu would have told him no outright if that were the case.
That means he’s really getting to see Daichi again.
He hasn’t really understood how much he’s missed him until now, but now it feels like there’s been an aching weight in his chest that he can’t remedy. It’s slightly lighter now, and as he and Ushijima walk in silence he wants to yell to the forest that he’s going to get to see Daichi again.
What he doesn’t want to think about is what his mother is doing to get two innocents down to Faerie.
They reach the cliffs, and Ushijima jumps over neatly, Suga following him a moment later. They land hard on the floor of the mines, where it’s bumpy and rocky and dark.
Ushijima leads him through various twists and turns until they reach the cave that contains Suga’s husband. Ushijima neatly parts the dull curtain that Shimizu had put in place the last time they were here, and there’s Daichi, in the middle of the cave. He looks deathly pale and completely unconscious.
Suga stops short. Ushijima keeps moving.
He walks to where Daichi is and picks him up easily, slinging him over one shoulder and turning back around. Suga has one hand over his mouth by this point.
“What are you doing?” He asks, voice cracking halfway through.
“I am returning Sawamura-san to you, as was your request and the request of her Majesty.” Ushijima says. He sounds confused. “Was this not what you wanted?”
“No, but-yes-be careful!” Suga says, and he runs forward to check Daichi’s pulse. It’s sluggish, but there, and Suga wants to collapse, because he’s alive.
“Ah, yes.” Ushijima says, and he transfers Daichi to his arms instead. “Sometimes I forget how fragile you humans can be. Death can claim you so easily.”
A germ of an idea begins to form in Suga’s mind at Ushijima’s words.
“Like with Yui.” He says slowly, and Ushijima turns to him.
“What?”
“Like with Yui.” Suga says again, stronger. “I need to talk to Shimizu. I need to talk to Shirabu. I need to talk to Death. Now.”
“That’s impossible.” Ushijima says, brow furrowed. “Death does not-,”
“Where can I find him?” Suga asks, and he looks at Ushijima expectantly. “I must speak with him.”
“Sugawara.” Ushijima says, and he sounds exasperated, which is to say that he sounds exactly as he always does with a touch of irritation in his voice. “I thought you had gone over these details with Shirabu and-,”
“It appears I need to go over them again.” Suga says, voice somewhat icy. “As there are more important matters at stake now. I would rather not sacrifice any more innocents than I need to, Ushijima-san.”
Ushijima doesn’t say another word, affirmative or negative. He stands as he is, and looks at Suga for a moment before giving him a quick nod. They head back up in silence.
***
“Yachi Hitoka’s mind is a maelstrom.” Shirabu says, nose wrinkled. “Are you sure you’d like to visit it?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Suga says. “It’s her life on the line. I’d like her to know what she’s agreeing to, or even if she’s agreeing to it in the first place.”
“Very well.” Shirabu says, and he reaches out to touch Suga’s shoulder lightly before the world dissolves into a dark mess of thoughts.
The only mind Suga has ever visited is Yui’s. It was comforting and strong. It felt like warm rain and stone under his fingers. It felt like something that he knew. He’d only assumed that Hitoka’s mind would feel familiar as well.
It does not.
Hitoka’s mind is a trembling, cold thing. It shivers and yearns for things it cannot have, things it will not be granted. Its thoughts are jumbled, confused, terrified. It feels a little like Faerie, and Suga enters it with caution.
Hitoka is sitting in the corner of a small room. It’s worn through, the walls look like they are collapsing, and the image of Helnian guards in full armor is still present. She is fearful. It is not unwarranted.
“Hitoka?” Suga says tentatively, and she looks up from her position.
“Sugawara-san.” She says, and there’s a weary look in her eyes, as though she knows what’s going on. “You’re here. Was it Shirabu-san or Kiyoko?”
“Shirabu.” Suga says. “Hitoka...I have a request to make of you.”
“Yes?”
“Daichi and I are being allowed to return to the surface.” Suga says, and he keeps reminding himself of Shimizu’s words as he speaks. “But Death is asking for two humans in exchange for our lives, as my parents’ bargain is still intact.”
“You want me to go.” Hitoka breathes. “You want me to go back?”
“Only if you’re comfortable.” Suga says quickly, reaching out to her. “I don’t want to press this on you, especially considering that it’s my fault that you went down in the first place, and-,”
Hitoka lurches to her feet and throws her arms around him.
The hug is a shock. He doesn’t remember hugs or embraces as a child, unless they were customary, and Yui rarely hugged him, despite her teasing. Tooru was certainly never going to be the one to do it, and it would never have occured to Shouyou.
The physical contact is nice, and Suga lets himself relax against Hitoka’s tight hold. Her hands shake slightly as they fist in the fabric of his shirt, but she holds on tight until he feels something wet on his shirtfront.
“Suga-san,” Hitoka says, pulling away and bowing low to him. “Thank you.” There are tears on her cheeks, and Suga blinks.
“You don’t have to go back.” He says, leaning down to wipe them away. “I promise you don’t have to if you-,”
“I have wanted to return to Kiyoko for so long.” Hitoka says, voice trembling. “They’re accusing me of being bewitched. They want me to be brought on trial. I’m so afraid, Suga-san. The human world is not kind to people like me.” She takes a deep breath.
“Oh, Hitoka.” Suga whispers.
“And I love her.” Hitoka continues. “She was kind to me when no one else was. She was caring. She did not care about her position or mine. She would sing me to sleep.” She says, somewhat wistfully. “Some nights. It was in some language that I couldn’t ever understand. Her voice is beautiful.”
Suga thinks about Kiyoko’s stark reaction whenever Hitoka is brought up. He thinks of her recessions to her chambers. He thinks of the loneliness of being a Queen of a foreign land, and he thinks of her outburst when he suggested that she’d enchanted Hitoka.
Perhaps love can be found under a darkened sky with a lullaby in a language that no one knows.
“I’m going to miss you.” Is what he says instead. “Hitoka, I’m going to miss you so much.”
She hugs him again as a response. “I’m going to miss you too, Suga-san. But it isn’t as though we’ll never see each other again. We have all sorts of magic, and we can visit you.”
They stand there in the room for a long time, holding onto each other.
***
“Hitoka is coming back.” Shimizu says, voice vibrating with happiness. “Sugawara, I underestimated you.” Her grey eyes are gleaming.
“You still need one more human life.” Shirabu says. Suga glares. Shimizu’s shoulders slump just a fraction of an inch. Tendou cackles from his corner of the room.
“I’ve thought of this.” Suga replies. “And all Death said was that I needed a human life, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Then Yui will be my second human life.” Suga says. “It was never specified whether the human needed to be alive or dead.”
There’s dead silence and then Shirabu starts to laugh. It’s really more of a cackle, but he tilts his head back and laughs and Shimizu’s eyes gain a little more of their light.
“You can probably get away with that one.” Shirabu says. “Congratulations, Sugawara. You’re on your way back up.”
***
“This is where I leave you.” Shimizu says. She keeps looking over her shoulder nervously as though something is coming after them, even though the real danger is in front of them.
They’ve been allowed all this way by Ukai. Shimizu has accompanied him back down to the mines to see Death. This is the final hurdle. They’ve even spoken beforehand to arrange what Suga’s going to say, what he won’t say, how he’ll present himself. Shimizu and Shirabu both have coached him on this. The room in front of him is shielded by a single, worn curtain that looks like it’s unraveling at the edges.
Suga steels himself and nods. This is what he’s wanted, isn’t it?
“How should I signal you when I’m ready to come back out?” He asks, and Shimizu looks at him, puzzled before breathing out.
“No need.” She says shortly. “I’ll know.” She twists her hands together into a knot and looks at him for a moment.
They’re both silent for a long time, and then Shimizu looks at him.
“Be careful.” She says, and then she’s backing away, tiny steps at a time. Suga thinks, somewhat darkly, that it’s the first time that he’s seen her when she’s afraid.
He pushes the curtain in front of him aside and steps into the room.
Shirabu has given him several lectures and warnings and things of the sort. Don’t stay any longer than you must, keep a handle on yourself, don’t raise your voice. The standard things that should be normal for somebody to remember.
Suga looks at Death and he blinks several times.
Death takes the form of a young boy with silvery hair who is surrounded by dead flowers. His eyes are hazel and innocent and the pupils are black enough to swallow a room. They remind Suga of the lake that he fell through to reach Faerie to begin with.
Death takes the form of Suga at age seven.
“Sugawara Koushi.” He says, and it’s in Suga’s voice but there’s something just slightly off and it makes Suga flinch. “Why have you come here?”
“I want to talk.” Suga says, and he tries not to let his voice shake but it’s inevitable. The room feels cold and too bright.
“So talk.” The boy in front of him says, picking up one of the dead flowers and picking the brown petals off. “I assume that Kenjirou and Kiyoko let you down here for a reason.”
“I-,” Suga breaks off as the petals gather at the boy’s feet. “I-,”
“You’re not very articulate.” Death tells him. He sounds disinterested. “Perhaps another form?”
Suddenly Tooru is sitting in front of him, brown eyes wide and curious as he studies him. It’s such a split-second transformation that Suga doesn’t even register it for a moment.
“I want to bring my husband up to the human realms again.” Suga says quickly, before Death can say anything else, and in front of him, Tooru raises an eyebrow.
“I agreed to that.” He says, and picks up another flower. “As long as you are willing to exchange another human for his life.”
“I’ve already done so.” Suga says, and he closes his eyes.
It seems like everything in the room stops. The circulation of air, the soft rustling of dead flower petals, the movement of Suga’s hands. Everything freezes as Death takes in his words.
“Pardon?” Death says in front of him, and there’s something low and dangerous in his voice. “Sugawara Koushi, I can assure you that you have not.”
“Michimiya Yui died on her way down to Faerie.” Suga says, and he cracks one eye open to see Shouyou there instead of Tooru, flower petals crushed in one fist, brown eyes furious. “A human for a human. That the human in question was living was never a condition.”
It’s exactly what Shimizu has told him to say, word for word. He speaks quietly and evenly, just as Shirabu has told him to. He’s done everything right. He hates that he’s even arguing this. It was never part of his plan.
He just wants Daichi, now.
“Michimiya Yui.” Death spits out the name, and the room feels hot and stuffy all of a sudden, so much so that Suga can’t breathe. “I reaped her life once. She was not supposed to be back in this world. So tell me why, Sugawara.”
“I don’t know.” Suga gasps. “I can’t tell you.”
“Uninteresting.” Death says, and the heat dissipates by degrees. “That’s what you are. Uninteresting, Sugawara Koushi. Both of my lovers have been far more exciting than you.”
Suga doesn’t say anything.
“Michimiya Yui,” Death says thoughtfully. “I met her, in another life.” He runs a hand through Shouyou’s bright hair. “I loved her. But not quite as you did.”
“Please,” Suga says. He doesn’t want to listen to this right now. “Please let me take my husband and leave this place.”
Death looks at him scornfully. “Life for life.” He says. “You’ve made your case for Michimiya, which Kiyoko probably came up with. Bitch.” He curls his lip. “But you’ll have to convince me, and fortunately for me, you’re rather bad at that, Sugawara.”
“You can’t disobey a contract.” Suga says, and anger slips into his voice, betraying him. “Life for life. Daichi for Yui. You can’t-,”
“Michimiya is dead.” Death repeats.
“She was still a life.” Suga says. “You must accept her.”
“Must is a strong word.” Death says, scoffing. Shouyou is gone in an instant, replaced with Yui, and Suga wants to sob and hug her and at the same time he knows that it’s not real. “Did you know Michimiya Yui? Really?”
“Of course I did.” Suga says, stung. “She was my best friend.”
“Interesting.” Death says with Yui’s mouth. “Very interesting. Well, Sugawara, I knew her before. I knew her when she was still living as well.”
“That’s not possible.” Suga says. “She’s been-,”
“Resurrected is my guess.” Death says, and Suga stops talking. “Kenjirou did it, most likely. Nobody else has the guts. He loves me, you know.” He says after a moment. “Though it doesn’t seem like it.”
“I want my husband.” Suga says, because it’s all he can manage at the moment. He can’t deal with trickery and deceit or to think of if Death is telling the truth.
“You and your husband.” Death says, twirling a lock of Yui’s hair between her fingers. “Ridiculous, that’s what I thought. It was a marriage of convenience, wasn’t it? Why do you care for him?”
“I want-,”
“Answer the question, Sugawara.” Death says, voice dangerously low.
There’s silence for a beat, and then Suga speaks.
“Yui was my best friend,” He says. “And she told me that someday, somebody would wake me up and I would have to marry them. I was woken up. I was married. I don’t feel like explaining the intricacies of my relationship with you. All I need from you is Daichi, and you are the only obstacle left standing in my way. I have fought through faeries and my mother and…” He trails off for a moment. “I have gained permission.” He says at last. “Please let me pass.”
Death tilts Yui’s head and for a long time, they consider each other.
“Bring me Yachi Hitoka, take Sawamura Daichi and leave my realm.” He says coldly, and Suga bows before running away from the cavern as quickly as he can possibly go. His lungs feel like they’re bursting, and his chest wants to explode because they’re going home. There’s no more hardship ahead of them.
Hitoka will spend her life with Kiyoko. There will be no needless war. And he and Daichi can relax for a while.
There are no more curses or bargains. There is no more talking with Death, and no more begging Shirabu to teach him this and that and everything in between. There is no more rationing with Shimizu. There is no more waiting in his rooms for the blackness of day to come.
He can tell that Shimizu knows the minute she sees him, because her face breaks open into a smile and she drops her staff with a loud clatter onto the floor of the cavern.
“We contacted her today,” She says, and they walk quickly back towards where the exit out of the mines is. “She’s coming down tomorrow evening. That’s when you and Sawamura will be allowed to leave. Once the exchange is complete, the bargain’s terms will be fulfilled.”
“Is Daichi awake?” Suga asks, because after all of this, he’d like to know.
“Not yet.” Shimizu tells him. “Ushijima is working with him now, though. He should be awake soon.”
“Thank God.” Suga breathes, and as they rise out of the mines, he swears Shimizu’s eyes are glistening with tears.
Neither of them comment on it.
***
True to Shimizu’s word, Daichi is not yet awake. Ushijima is gone, but there’s a glowing mark on Daichi’s wrist, so Suga figures it’s okay. He’s not leaving again, at least not until he’s conscious again, even if that lasts through tomorrow.
The bed that Daichi’s on is just large enough that Suga can gently push him to the side and curl up against his side. He feels like a cat in some ways. Daichi’s skin is cool from the mines and the night air, and his breaths are steady. This, more than anything, is reassuring-knowing that Daichi is still alive and breathing. Each breath feels like a promise. The sky is bright outside with night. Months ago, this would have felt foreign - sleeping next to Daichi in Faerie as the sun slept with them.
Suga feels sleep bogging down his eyelids.
After everything that they’ve been through, his feelings for Daichi seem remarkably clear.
That night, Suga does not dream. It’s the first untroubled rest that he’s had in a long time.
***
When Suga wakes up, he is surrounded by warmth.
For a moment, he struggles to place it. And then fingers curl against his back lightly, and he forces his eyes open to look up at Daichi, who’s looking at him with open eyes and a half lit sky through the window. It’s a striking picture.
Suga doesn’t say anything for a while, just drinks in the sight of Daichi, awake and alive and so warm and present that he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. Daichi doesn’t speak, just draws him into an embrace that feels halfway desperate and halfway longing and entirely filled with fondness.
They cling to each other like that for a long time.
“You’re awake.” Suga breathes when they separate. “We came down to get you and your pulse was nearly gone.”
“I’m awake.” Daichi confirms. His voice is slightly raspy from disuse. “And so are you.” He leans down to kiss Suga gently on the forehead.
“We’re going home.” Suga says, all in a rush. “Shimizu got it confirmed. We can leave, finally. We don’t have to ever come back. And I’ll understand if you don’t want to stay with me, when we return. I got you into this entire mess, and I won’t be-,”
Daichi stops him with a gentle kiss, this one against his lips. It feels like a promise and Suga lets his eyes close as he savors the feeling of kissing Daichi without any sort of urgency attached, without the feeling that he’s about to slip away at any moment.
“I love you.” Daichi says simply when they separate. “So no, I’m not leaving you when we reach the surface. I’m staying with you, Koushi. Maybe we can go somewhere - somewhere that isn’t Miliwyn or Helnia or Faerie. Somewhere quiet.”
The door opens.
“They awaken!” Saeko crows from where she’s standing on the threshold. “Sugawara, Shimizu is all set to make the portal. Yachi-chan will come through first, and then you two can head through the other way.”
“Saeko-san.” Suga says, because as much as he desperately wants to go home, he knows that Shimizu can wait another few moments and he’d really like to continue kissing Daichi. “We’ll be along in a moment. Thank you. For everything.” He adds, and hopes that it’s enough.
Saeko waves it off, but she leaves soon enough and Suga leans up to kiss Daichi again.
Their first kiss is always going to have the memory of Hitoka’s disappearance tied to it. Suga doesn’t want that, doesn’t want his first kiss with Daichi to be weighed down by the memory of curses and bargains.
This, he thinks, is good enough to be a first kiss. Daichi’s lips are soft and he cups Suga’s jaw with one hand and it feels right. It feels like this is how they were meant to start out.
Eventually, Saeko comes back in. “Sugawara.” She says. “You and your husband really need to get going.”
Suga breaks away from Daichi with a small whine of annoyance, and Saeko snorts.
“Sorry,” She says, not looking remotely sorry. “Now get off your ass. You’ve got a human realm to get back to.”
When they reach the main hall, Shimizu has the portal open. It’s a swirling mess of color, and through it, Suga can see a small figure running. The figure draws closer and closer until finally Yachi Hitoka throws herself out of the portal and into the Queen of Faerie’s outstretched arms, embracing her tightly and kissing her deeply.
Shimizu’s face is alight with pure joy. She holds Hitoka as though she’s holding something precious, and her grey eyes seem less like storm clouds and more like molten silver today. They gleam when she and Hitoka break apart, and Hitoka sobs something that Suga doesn’t catch. Shimizu murmurs something in reply, and then Hitoka spins around to face Suga.
Thank you, she mouths, and then she buries her face in Shimizu’s shoulder.
Shimizu gestures with one hand to the remnants of the portal disinterestedly. Daichi looks at him, and Suga nods. They’re about to step through when he remembers something.
“Shimizu?” He asks. “May I speak with you?” When she nods, he looks around. “Privately?”
“You may.” She says, looking somewhat displeased. They walk into a side corridor and she faces him expectantly.
“When I was down there, with Death.” Suga says. “He told me that Yui had been resurrected by Shirabu. He said that she had been alive in a previous life. He said that he loved her. I am asking you now to tell me the truth about my friend.”
“I remember Michimiya Yui.” Shimizu says after a pause. “She was full of life. She loved many people. She loved Death. Everything that he told you is true. Yui was resurrected by Shirabu as a bargaining piece to use against Death when the time came. He loves Death, true, but loving someone does not mean that you are not afraid of them. Shirabu is terrified of dying.”
“But faeries are immortal, aren’t they?” Suga asks.
“Not quite.” Shimizu replies. “We live ageless lives. This much is true. However, there are ways of killing us. Shirabu lives in fear that someday his life will be claimed by his lover and he will cease to exist. It is not a pretty truth, but there it is.”
“So he brought her back to life.” Suga says.
“And now she is dead again.” Shimizu says. “And I doubt he’ll be attempting it a second time. When Death does finally take him, it will not be violent. He will live many days yet. He’s not going anywhere.”
“I see.” Suga says. He smiles. “Thank you for telling me, Shimizu-san. I hope that you and Hitoka are happy together for many years.”
“And the same to you and Sawamura-san.” Shimizu says. “Speaking of which, aren’t you supposed to be heading back to your realm right about now?”
“Yes.” Suga says. He shakes his head for a moment. “It’s strange. I feel like I’ve been in Faerie for several years and yet it’s only been a few weeks.”
“Time moves differently in our world.” Shimizu says with a mysterious smile. And then they’re walking back out into the hall, where Daichi and Hitoka are waiting. Hitoka looks slightly intimidated by Daichi, and Daichi looks only at Suga, who smiles and steps forward to take his hands.
“After we get back,” He murmurs, pressing a kiss to Daichi’s kiss. “We are taking a long, long honeymoon. Very far from Miliwyn.”
“That sounds wonderful.” Daichi says, and immediately backtracks. “Not that Miliwyn isn’t lovely too, it’s just that-,”
“Miliwyn is nothing but forests.” Suga says, wrinkling his nose. “It’s quite worn out its charm for me. I’d like to go somewhere different. I hear Helnia is nice this time of year.” He adds, shooting a sly look at Daichi.
“We’ll see.” Daichi says, looking like he’s suppressing a smile. He turns toward the portal. “Wherever we go, it’ll be somewhere nice.”
“Refreshing.” Suga says. “Relaxing. I think it will be a nice change of pace.”
“I think you’re right.” Daichi says, and he turns around to bow low to Shimizu. “Thank you for everything you’ve done, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you.” Suga echoes and he turns to Hitoka. “I’m going to miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too, Suga-san.” She says, and she grins at him. “But I can visit. Now, go! I want some time alone with Kiyoko!” She waves her hand as if shooing them away, but her cheeks are red as she says it.
“As the lady commands.” Daichi says, and he steps into the portal, tugging Suga with him. The last sight Suga sees of Faerie is Hitoka smiling at him and Shimizu smiling at Hitoka.
Stepping into the portal is like stepping into thin air, and Suga has the sensation of falling, tethered only by Daichi’s hand. It seems like they fall and fall and fall for hours but then they’re hitting the main hall of the palace in Miliwyn, hitting cold carpeted stone and everything is over.
There’s a moment when Suga opens his eyes and looks around, taking in the shocked expressions of the people around them. His mother looks triumphant, eyes bright. Tooru looks shocked, and he turns to Iwaizumi who is sitting next to him and wearing a mask of emotion that looks like a mix of relief and confusion. Shouyou isn’t present, but all the members of the formal court are completely silent.
“We’re back.” Suga announces, exhausted, and closes his eyes to bury his face in Daichi’s shoulder as the room explodes into chaos around them.
Tooru is yelling something at him, and his mother is laughing half-hysterically. Iwaizumi appears to be saying something to Daichi, and the members of the court are all firing questions at them, but Suga doesn’t want to answer them.
They’re back.
That’s all that matters.
#poppy writes#skies of black and gold#all we have left is the epilogue and then#we're done#gosh that's still so weird to think about#aaaaaaah
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A Proposal || Gwen + Owen
Format: Chatzy
Timeline: Several days after St. Patrick’s Day
Location: Owen’s apartment
Characters: Owen Burke (@owen--burke) and Gwen McGuinness
Summary: Following the hospitalization of Gwen’s father and finding out the status of their immigration, Owen proposes a plan that could offer a solution to her problems.
Owen: Owen was pacing the length of his living room, Rocky sitting on the couch watching him as he moved back and forth. What he was thinking about was crazy, absolutely crazy and after some more research, probably illegal. After learning that his friend was an illegal immigrant, Owen's brain began thinking about ways to help. Applying for citizenship outright would take years, time that Gwen's father didn't really have. Continuing to live life under the radar, like Gwen already was, would be challenging, a life of worrying about being discovered and deported back to Ireland. The idea that Owen was thinking of.. well.. was crazy. Absolutely nuts. It had started off as a joke at first, one that made him laugh but lingered in his mind long after the chuckle had disappeared. Waiting for Gwen to show up at his apartment, he was finally going to tell her the idea that had been stewing in his brain for the last few days. Now all he could do was find the right words for it.
Gwen: Gwen hadn't been walking with the same spring in her step that she usually did the last few days. Though her father was getting stronger, a little bit back to his old self, the weight of everything seemed to be sitting directly on her shoulder. She'd gotten an invoice from the hospital when they'd escorted her father out, showing just exactly how much they'd owe without insurance. Rent and earning money for it was burning a hole through her brain, so she was taking on as many shifts at the diner as she could -- really only going home to sleep for a few hours and then return. She hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about the secret she had dropped on Owen -- one that she hadn't told another soul in Boston. She hadn't seen him in a few days, or texted him -- maybe she was avoiding him subconsciously. Owen, however, had reached out to her; texting her near the end of her shift. She had took a bus over to his place, remembering the street from when she stayed after visiting the ER. She arrived at his apartment still in her uniform, sending her dad a quick text to keep himself out of trouble (a sizable request) before knocking on the door, giving the peephole on the door a quick wave in case he was looking.
Owen: There was the knock at the door, the sound kicking Owen out of his own head. Rocky was running to the door first, barking at it as Owen followed, rubbing the dog's head and telling him to knock it off before finally opening it. Who else would be visiting him today besides the person that he had invited over? "Get down," Owen muttered to Rocky, who was immediately trying to jump up as dogs did when someone knew showed up. "Sorry about that," Owen apologizing out of reflex at this point. Rocky wasn't a big dog by any means, but always seemed to think he was bigger than he actually was. Finally looking back up at his guest, Owen could practically see the tiredness that was in her eyes. He remembered that look in himself when he had been working nights for months. "Hi. You want anything to eat? Some coffee or something?"
Gwen: Gwen gave a tired smile at the barking that greeted her when the door was opened, kneeling down once she stepped inside to greet the dog, scratching behind his ears and cooing to him. "Hey, good boy. How you doin'? Such a good puppy, yes." Because all dogs were puppies to Gwen -- didn't matter a single bit how big they were or how old. It made her miss Butter; sure she would see him when she got home, but all the extra work she was doing was making her feel guilty for not spending more time with him. "Hi," she gave Owen another worn smile, rising to her full height again. "Yeah, I think coffee would be good, I'm dead on my feet. Wha' abou' you, are you alrigh'?" she asked, slightly concern in her voice as she was unable to help but wonder what he'd asked her over to talk about.
Owen: "I'll get you some coffee then." Owen was trying to distract himself and he knew it. Why did he have to be so awkward? Why couldn't he just be confident and forthright with what he wanted to say? Right, because he was basically going to be proposing marriage to someone was practically a stranger. Yep, that was going to be difficult to say. Heading into the kitchen, Owen didn't notice that Rocky was tailing him as he heard the beeping coming from the coffee maker. He had taken the initiative to already start a fresh brew once he had worked up the courage to invite Gwen over. He hadn't talked to her in days, not since she slept over and dropped the bombshell, but with how worried she had been about money, he had assumed she was probably working like crazy and would need the boost of caffeine to make it home in one piece. There was a manila folder on the island, a folder that contained all the forms that would need to be filled out, if Gwen took him up on his offer. The rest of this all depended on what she said, if she was willing to take the risk. Pulling out two white mugs from one of the cabinets, Owen filled the cups before heading to his fridge and bringing out a gallon of milk, followed by sugar. Preferring the additions to his own drink, Owen began adding the milk to his coffee when he finally spoke. "So, I was thinking about the last time that you were here and what you told me about your... status. And I just kept thinking about how much I really wanted to help and I think I found a solution. Maybe."
Gwen: It felt like St. Patrick's had been weeks ago, not just days. Her thoughts had been running constantly since then, trying to figure out how the hell she was going to get herself and her father out of this mess this time. (Of course it all fell on her, her father wouldn't do a damn thing.) "Thank you," she answered, reaching up to pull the tie from her ponytail, ruffling her hand through her hair as it fell over her shoulders as she followed him to the kitchen just steps behind Rocky. She watched as Owen filled the mugs, taking in a deep inhale of it brewing, as if the smell alone would be enough to revive her. She helped herself to the milk and sugar as he set it before them, pouring a splash into her coffee and once scoop of sugar -- she usually drank it black, but she figured she deserved this small treat. Gwen wanted to be optimistic, at least for Owen's sake -- but she doubted he'd have been able to find a loophole that she hadn't in the last two years. She took a drink and raised her eyebrows with interest, leaning her elbows on the island. "What did you find?"
Owen: It seemed that Gwen was interested in knowing what he had learned and researched. For a moment, Owen wondered if Gwen had done her own research in the time that she was here, but that wasn't the point of this meeting. The words spilled out of Owen as he grew more excited about what he had learned in his google search. "So, normally for someone to get a green card, it can take anywhere from five to seven years, especially if it's not high priority. But I found something where the waiting time is on average six months to a year and the green card is approved. And it wouldn't even matter that your visa has expired. It's still the same time frame. It's filling out two forms, sending it to the USCIS, and once the application is filed, your stay is legal, even if your visa is expired. Then it's finger printing and an interview and you have your green card." It was a lot of information, most of it that had been gathered in the manila folder that was still laying on the island in the kitchen, but there was a catch, the pause in his voice showing that. "The only thing is... it involves a marriage. To a U.S. citizen. Like me."
Gwen: Her visa expiring had been it's own set of sleepless nights, when she had dropped out of college and her student visa lapsed. She'd spent hours on library computers, reading until her eyes were sore or until she had to retreat to bathrooms to cry just from purely being overwhelmed by laws and information. Yes, of course, she knew a green card was possible through marriage -- she'd seen The Proposal -- but it never seemed like a possible option for her. She listened intently to Owen's words, the lingo and the wait times more than familiar to her, before he reached his conclusion. She released the cup of coffee, leaving it resting on the island counter top as she took a deep breath, pressing her index finger to her lips. She was silent for a moment before she spoke, watching Owen's face as she did so. "So...Okay, I'm just checking tha' I'm not misunderstanding -- Would you be suggestin' tha' we --? You n'me--?"
Owen: She was getting the hint, which was a good thing and a bad thing. She understood what he was suggesting, the fraud that they would be committing together. Though it wouldn't be completely fraud, would it? They were friends and Owen did enjoy spending time with Gwen. It's just that they weren't interested in each other romantically and here they were, talking about a possible marriage. Owen had been trying to avoid eye contact as he explained, but now that she asked her own question, his eyes flicked up to meet hers. "Yeah. That's what I'm suggesting." His stomach was in knots, Owen unable to drink the coffee that he had poured for himself. "Look, it's a crazy idea, I know. But I work for the government and I'm a military vet, so I have even higher priority. You and your dad can get citizenship faster and healthcare under my plan at work. And you can both stay here, rent free. I have the space for it. And we stay married for a few years and once we are done, we get a divorce and you get to remain a citizen. I don't really see the harm in all of that."
Gwen: Gwen took a step back from the island, finger still on her lips as she listened to Owen. Her ears were getting warm, and she wasn't quite sure why. She inhaled through her nose, letting out a breath through parted lips, eyes still on Owen as he laid out his plan. A green card, healthcare, a place to stay without rent...It all sounded too good to be true, but she knew it wasn't. It was just how good Owen was, how much he genuinely wanted to help. She almost regretted telling him now, but she never would have ever dreamed he would suggest doing this. "Of course there's harm in it Owen, it's a felony. It's marriage fraud, if you get caugh' in it it's something like..." she wracked her brain, trying to remember the figures she'd read years ago. "Five years in prison or two-hundred thousand dollars in fines. Or both. I--" Gwen let out a breath, stepping back to the island again. "God, Owen, I can't ask you t'do tha'..."
Owen: "You're not asking me." It's true. Gwen wasn't asking him to help her with this or trying to manipulate him into doing this for her. Hell, that was part of the reason why he was so willing to go along with this. Owen was someone who always wanted to help in any situation that he ran across and here was something that he could help with. Sure, it was outside of the box of what he normally did, but life was an adventure, wasn't it? "I'm telling you I'm okay with this. And really, you're a beautiful woman. I'm a good looking guy. We don't really look like the kind who is gonna be committing marriage fraud and on top of that, we are already friends, so we are already winning half the convincing battle to begin with. The choice is yours, Gwen."
Gwen: Sometimes, immigration felt absolutely impossible. There were mountains of paperwork, endless forms with dizzying codes, and the waiting only made all of it worse. It was no simple thing; sometimes people waited decades to only be halfway to being a citizen. And here Owen was, out of the goodness of his heart, offering Gwen a path that was way smoother than what most people got a chance at. It didn't feel so impossible when he said things like that because it was true -- They were young, and attractive. They probably wouldn't raise many red flags, from what she could remember. It would be foolish to turn him down outright,but she didn't want to take advantage of his kind heart or willingness to help. She wouldn't be able to forgive herself for that... "But Owen, think abou' the long run here," she told him, placing her hands on the island. "Okay, let's say we do get married. Let's say we have to bank down...Three years," Gwen swallowed, tilting her head at him as her voice came out softer than she intended. "Wha' if you meet someone in those years -- someone tha' you truly wan' t'marry. For real. And have a life and kids with and a home and everythin'. But you can't because you're stuck bein' married t'me--?"
Owen: Three years. Three years was a long time to remain fake married to someone. One of Owen's faults was that he thought in the short term more often than the long term. Short term, this idea made a ton of sense. Gwen's father needed health insurance, Gwen needed to start some process toward citizenship and Owen had the time and space available to help. Long term... well long term, he hadn't really thought about it. Gwen brought up a good point. What if he met someone that he really wanted to marry while they were in the middle of all this? It wouldn't be the first time he wanted to get married for love. Three years from now and Owen would be 39, almost 40 years old. There were plenty of dudes who were that age and starting their lives, so it wasn't all that weird. It was all hypothetical. No one really knew what the future held. "If I meet someone, then I'll explain what I'm doing and if they really love me and want to be with me, then they'll understand why I felt this was the right thing to do. And I mean that. This is the right thing to do." Owen was one with his convictions and morals and throughout his life, they had never let him down. "And really, it would be like we're roommates. Roommates with a wedding license."
Gwen: Gwen couldn't help but let out a soft laugh at his words. Roommates with a wedding license. Well, that was one way to put it, that was for sure. Part of her wanted to refuse him -- what he was offering was too much, a sacrifice of himself more than what she felt she deserved. But then she thought about her dad, the way his skin was starting to yellow in a telltale way in certain places. The words of the doctor. His liver was failing, he was a lifelong alcoholic, and there wouldn't be much time if action wasn't taken. Maybe this was the action that Gwen was supposed to take. Looking through her options (and there weren't many), this was certainly the best one being offered to her. This is the right thing to do, Owen said, and if he believed it..."I..." she swallowed, bobbing her head once as she more and more seriously began considering the idea. "Your family. They won't think it's weird? You getting married out of the blue?"
Owen: She was considering it. Gwen wouldn't have been asking all of these questions if she wasn't ready to cross her t's and dot her i's. When she asked about his family, Owen couldn't help but laugh. "My mom will be excited about it and not too surprised, I think. She's told me before that I'm the kind that falls 'hard and fast'," Owen using air quotes around the words that his mother had told him whenever he had his heart broken. "My sister will be happy that I'm settling down. I mean, I don't think we'll be able to tell the full circumstances of everything, but I'm not too worried about them." Tapping his fingers against the counter, Owen paused for a moment before finally asking the integral question. "So.. are you saying yes?"
Gwen: "Well, tha's good. There'll be tha', at leas'," she nodded, almost smiling. Her own family -- well, her father would know what was going on, obviously, especially if he was going to live with them. And, seeing as it was his ass that was on the line, she was sure he'd keep his big mouth shut. Her own sisters, well, what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. She would tell them she was getting married, they'd be so blindly excited that they probably wouldn't question the reasons much further. Gwen hadn't ever been one to share what was going on in her life romantically. "I'm not sayin' no," she said slowly after a moment, finally reaching out to take another drink from her coffee. "Wha' abou' friends? Coworkers? I only ask because, you know, if we do this it had to look...real. People have t'think it's real or else someone could report us..."
Owen: "I think you are overthinking this," Owen bursted out, finally laughing at how gung ho Gwen was to find someone who would somehow get them into trouble. Sure, it was important to try to make sure that there wasn't anyone that they had to worry about, but Owen really couldn't think of anyone who would actually want to do something. "There isn't really a lot of people I talk to that closely and I just started a new job. My co-workers don't really know me." Walking over to the other side of the island, Owen had to make a show as he leaned against the counter, his free hand pushing back an errant blonde curl that had landed against Gwen's cheek behind her ear. "I can make this look very real," Owen reassured, his fingers lingering against the delicate skin for a few moments to prove the point. Standing back to his full height, Owen needed to hear the answer so that they could begin whatever planning that they needed to do. "So, what do you say?" Kneeling down on one knee was not something that Gwen anticipated, but what the fuck, it felt right in the moment. "Will you, Gwen McGuinness, fake marry me?"
Gwen: Gwen filed through her mind over people who might raise eyebrows over her getting married suddenly. There were coworkers -- the girls at the diner -- and friends from bars and the music scene. She'd done some pretty stupid things in her life, so she was sure no one would be too shocked if this was the next wild stunt that she pulled. Well, Scott would take some convincing. And then there was Sam...God, that would be...Well, a mess. It seemed to be the theme of the way her life was going currently. But if she made this choice...Well, by 27 she would have a green card and she and her dad would be back on their feet and on the path to being irrefutable citizens. It was more of a future than what she had woken up with that morning. Her eyes stayed trained on Owen as he made his way around the counter, practically holding her breath as he brushed his fingers over her cheek. Was he going to kiss her?! Fuck! But no, he was making a point -- and damn if it hadn't been an effective one. "Owen wha' -- Wha' are you doin' -- Oh god," her confusion turned to a laugh in spite of herself as he sank to his knees in front of her. Well, if they were going to pull this off, why not start committing to it now? "Fake yes, fake yes, a thousand times fake yes," she answered.
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Toronto International Film Festival 2020 Movie Round-Up
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It really is a festival like no other. That’s something critics and journalists probably write every year about the Toronto International Film Festival. After all, TIFF (along with Venice) is considered the kickoff of awards season. Studios and independent distributors alike bringing their biggest hopes and brightest dreams to Canada, where a positive reception can make or break early Oscar buzz. However, in the case of TIFF 2020, there really has not been a film festival like this.
In the wake of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the entire press component, including our attendance to the festival, was virtual; the red carpet was permanently rolled up; and even the stars and filmmakers stayed away, giving rare publicity one press conference on zoom at a time.
In this environment, and with studios keeping their traditional highly marketed end of year wares in indefinite stasis, some worried that the show couldn’t go on. But as glimpsed in our notes on the handful of movies we screened during this year’s festivities, there remained as great a range as ever of cinematic stories and triumphant debuts. Some of these projects shined, and others revealed illuminating facets of talent we only thought we knew. Despite so much other anxiety in the world, Toronto’s show did, in fact, go on. Here’s why we can be glad it did.
Another Round
In the abstract, most people are smart enough to know they shouldn’t stare at the carnage left by a wreck. It’s unseemly and never leaves you feeling good about yourself. But that sensation of indulging what you should know better about permeates director Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, both for audiences and its protagonists. As Vinterberg and star Mads Mikkelsen’s reunion after the masterful The Hunt, their follow-up once again documents the fragility and unspoken lunacies of upper middle class life.
Take Mikkelsen’s Martin in Another Round. As a history teacher, he should know better than to think alcohol can fill the void of years of encroaching ennui. But when his old school buddies and fellow teachers buy into pseudo-science that claims keeping a buzz up at 0.09 BAC will wake you out of the doldrums, it’s drinks in the morning and evening. Martin leans on historic figures like Churchill and Grant to excuse his mistakes, but we all know where this is going. Vinterberg’s intelligence is that he gets there in an immersive and morally ambiguous, if not outright indifferent manner. The excellent ensemble cast, and Mikkelsen’s slick jazz ballet dance moves (really), also make this stiff drink go down all the smoother.
Concrete Cowboy
As the other artful indie that relies on real people from a real subculture to give its film texture (see Nomadland below), Ricky Staub’s Concrete Cowboy is fascinating whenever it’s about the actual culture of Fletcher Street Stables. A last holdout for a Black population of horsemen and women in north Philly, these stables are where honest to God urban cowboys still ride. And they pass like ghosts in a city that left their community behind nearly a century ago—and is now coming for the last few blocks.
That is the documentarian aspect of Concrete Cowboy that is, at times, engrossing. Unfortunately, it suffers from being background to a rather generic and aloof coming-of-age story that is the film’s center. Both Idris Elba, as the laconic father who hasn’t seen his son in years, and Caleb McLaughlin, as the wayward lad who’s been unexpectedly dropped on his doorstep, do fine work. McLaughin is especially good in a part which is outside Stranger Things’ nostalgic suburbia. But every narrative beat in his and Elba’s relationship arrives minutes or hours after you’ve guessed the whole familiar yarn. And it makes you wish the film belonged more to the horses and their real riders.
Get the Hell Out
In this day and age, it’s easy to feel like politicians have turned us all into monsters. People who once went about their day helping their neighbor are now ready to attack them over a bumper sticker, and cheer on the verbal theatrics in legislatures in seemingly every seat of government in the world. Wouldn’t it just be better if these pols had it out already? They finally do with maximum amounts of bloodlust in I-Fan Wang’s Get the Hell Out, a bizzaro horror comedy where the Taiwanese Parliament is infected with a zombie virus.
It’s an amusing premise that could make for terrific sketch comedy or a YouTube video, which is about how long Get the Hell Out works. Opening with a bugnut montage of MPs ripping at each other’s throats and spilling blood on the floor, the movie promises midnight madness, but you may be asleep much earlier with the often cliché-riddled script. The film attempts to make up for its narrative thinness by using stylish graphic introductions for characters, and freeze frames that wouldn’t be out of place in anime or video games, but all the hyper-kinetic energy here ends up being hyperbolic.
Good Joe Bell
If you lived only in social media threads where like-minded people discuss the need for inclusivity, you might convince yourself the world really has changed. But take a few steps outside of that safe space, and reality will inevitably rear its messier, and often tragic, head. And it’s a messy reality, indeed, that Jadin Bell (Reid Miller) and his father Joe (Mark Wahlberg) are forced to confront in Good Joe Bell.
A well-intentioned drama about a traditional American father in the Oregon heartland trying to understand and then honor his gay son, the movie casts Wahlberg in perhaps his quietest and most circumspect performance to date. But that is of course Joe’s parat of the tragedy: He mistakes silent resignation to his son coming out of the closet as loving support; and then after his son’s suicide following years of bullying, Joe attempts to make sense of his child’s life and death by again stepping out, now by walking from Oregon to New York in his son’s memory. It’s a noble gesture, as is the film, even as they both leave you wanting.
Written by Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana (Brokeback Mountain) and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men), Good Joe Bell is a sweet but emotionally distancing experience. Told in a nonlinear fashion in which vignettes of Joe and Jadin’s relationship are interspersed with Joe walking in his son’s name, the mounting awareness by Joe in the present, or despair of Jadin in the past, is consistently fractured and strangely muted. There are moments of grace, especially when the very strong Miller as a distraught youth can (or can’t) connect with his father. But as even Joe admits late in the picture, “I just made this all about Joe Bell.” That’s a problem when the movie’s stronger with his son.
I Am Greta
“I shouldn’t be here.” It’s a refrain teenager Greta Thunberg repeats time and again, whether she’s speaking before the UK House of Commons or the General Assembly at the United Nations. And yet, here she is: one of the most effective advocates for addressing the climate change crisis in the last 30 years. It’s a painful paradox that the all-too-young public figure struggles with in I Am Greta. She’s aware that nothing changes year after year, applauded speech after applauded speech.
The power of Nathan Grossman’s new documentary is not that it only chronicles Greta’s high points of speaking truth to power (though it does), but it also undercuts some of the nastiest criticisms lobbied at her by certain world leaders and their supporters. By following Thunberg’s journey from speaking with random disinterested Swedish adults on the side of a Stockholm street to standing before the world, we see how her message has remained as laser-focused as her love for her family, their dogs, and being a kid surrounded by stuffed animals and often sudden bursts of hyper energy.
She really shouldn’t have to be in these places and focused so severely with having the weight of the world on her shoulders. Really. As the film documents the growing stress this child is under while crossing the Atlantic in a boat that’s little better than a skiff, one is forced to question the healthiness of such pressure. But her ability to actually grab attention is as evident as the endless loop of world leaders, legislators, and one bodybuilder turned Governor of California line-up to extol their admiration… and then change nothing. That’s the real honest takeaway, though the doc errs on a cheery message in the last few minutes about how children will save us all. I suspect the real Greta might have her own doubts about those attempts at uplift.
I Care a Lot
Not since Gone Girl has Rosamund Pike been so perilously irresistible. All toothy grins and smiling eyes, Pike’s Marla Grayson enters every room in I Care a Lot as a ball of sunshine. But also like the sun, if you get too close to this woman, she’ll burn you alive—all while dipping into your savings account and selling the family home. That’s literally her job as a legal guardian: She takes care of people the state deems incapable of caring for themselves… and she’s made a hell of a mint doing it.
Read the full review here.
MLK/FBI
The FBI spied on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a simple fact, but the uncomfortable implications of the federal government attempting to undermine and eventually intimidate a Civil Rights leader are unpacked in full, disquieting detail via this Sam Pollard documentary. In this way, it’s a sobering record of the salacious details about King’s private life that the feds unearthed and a chance to remember perceptions of King during his lifetime.
As the film strikingly reminds viewers, during a public dispute between FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the Nobel Prize winning King, polls showed 50 percent of Americans believed Hoover when he called King “the most notorious liar in the country.” Only 15 percent of Americans believed King’s protestations. It’s a glimpse into how a figure now considered saintly in U.S. history could be smeared as a radical in his time when juxtaposed with the self-anointed gatekeeper of American values. It also helps understand why Hoover thought he had the right to anonymously tell King he should kill himself.
This sordid shadow conflict between one of the most influential leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and the feds is examined with the precision of an anthropologist’s chisel. But what’s most surprising about MLK/FBI is what it doesn’t show. Until the end of the film, the sources and interview subjects remain unseen and uncredited, while only the most sordid words from the FBI’s declassified documents tease the extent of King’s apparently numerous infidelities. Yet the film doesn’t ask to judge King so much as consider a broader portrait, bigger than the tabloid muck the FBI peddled, but maybe more complex and dimensional than what our marble statues also suggest. It makes him loom larger.
Nomadland
Frances McDormand’s Fern is a gateway into a 21st century heartache, representing thousands of similar stories of Americans who’ve turned to a nomadic lifestyle of transient existence and seasonal gigs. One of the most fantastic actors of her generation, McDormand is searing as the hardscrabble heroine, yet she is matched by a troupe of real-life nomads whom Chloé Zhao has populated her film with. Images of these displaced Americans persevering in the margins where they’d been pushed can at times make Nomadland feel like a modern day Grapes of Wrath, save McDormand’s version of Ma Joad travels only with her ghosts. And yet, the beauty of the movie comes from her visible enjoyment of that specific kind of company.
Read the full review here.
One Night in Miami
These are the benefits that come from Regina King and Kemp Powers—the latter drawing from his stage play of the same name—using extreme artistic license to put Ali (El Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and football star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) alone together for most of One Night in Miami’s running time. But while the situation may be fictional, the textures and paradoxes it reveals among these four real-life friends is luminously authentic. It’s also a feat more lasting than traditional biopics, which posit themselves as allegedly true accounts of a person’s entire life. Instead One Night in Miami prefers examining the legion of pressures facing Black artists and leaders who hold the double-edged sword of America’s undivided attention.
Read the full review here.
Pieces of a Woman
If movies could win awards for their first 30 minutes, Pieces of a Woman would be a shoo-in. With a single tracking shot that details the anxiety, terror, and (brief) joy of giving birth over nearly half an hour, the movie begins with a stunning piece of emotional whiplash and theatrical bonafides from its leads, particularly Vanessa Kirby as the expecting mother. But as her home birth goes awry, and the worst fear of every parent comes true, all the vital oxygen escapes Pieces of a Woman’s balloon, never to return save for a brief, devastating monologue.
Directed by Kornél Mundruczó, working from a screenplay by Kata Wéber, the movie remains watchable due to the strength of its ensemble performances. As the anchor, Kirby is sure to be a frontrunner in the Oscar race, while Shia LaBeouf does fine supporting work as her partner Sean. My personal favorite performance, however, belongs to Ellen Burstyn, who’s late in the picture speech is the single other time the movie sizzles—even if it’s out of absolute fear of this wrathful, denied grandmother-to-be.
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Yet performances alone cannot carry a movie, and beyond that early opening salvo, Pieces of a Woman is a movie left adrift, unsure of where to go, or how to keep the viewer engaged with getting there. It wants to be a chilly intellectual melodrama in the vein of latter day Ingmar Bergman. Instead it’s just chilly.
Shadow in the Cloud
Yes, there is a gremlin in Shadow in the Cloud, and like the claustrophobic verticality of the movie’s setting, its presence is always felt like a breath on the back of the neck during a stormy flight. Granted this makes for a more effective first act than second (there is no third). Yet when the film turns into an all-out creature feature with more pulp than an orange grove, there’s still enjoyment to be found for horror fans who always wanted to know what would happen in one of these old school gremlin stories if the monster got through the glass.
Read the full review here.
The Water Man
David Oyelowo is another actor who tried his hand at directing this year via The Water Man. Decidedly family friendly in his first behind-the-camera effort, Oyelowo offers a sweet and gentle children’s adventure story that will land right in the sweet spot for distributor Disney’s target audience. It’s a ghost story for all ages, and like the best spectral yarns from your youth, it is about setting the imagination free to look beyond its backyard.
Oyelowo has a supporting part in the film as a second-guessing father, but The Water Man belongs to the impressive Lonnie Chavis as Gunner, his sensitive son. Gunner is a kid more inclined to sketch his graphic novel than engage with his father, but after realizing his mother (Rosario Dawson) is ill, Gunner and cool girl next door, Jo (Amiah Miller), set off into the woods to find a local legend: to find the Water Man, who’s discovered a way to cheat death. More classical Walt Disney than modern day Guillermo del Toro, there’s still just enough shadow in Oyelowo’s direction to give The Water Man shading. And in those dark pools, young ones can carry much out after the closing credits.
The Way I See It
So much of our collective memory of the men who’ve occupied the Oval Office in the last 50 years is shaped by the invisible hand (and eye) of the Chief Official White House Photographer. Most Americans don’t know the job title, but ever since the Kennedy administration, we’ve known the work. Lyndon Johnson standing next to Jackie Kennedy while being sworn in on Air Force One; Richard Nixon shaking hands with a spaced out Elvis Presley; Bill Clinton blowing hot air into the saxophone in front of Boris Yeltsin; and everything from Barack Obama playing Spider-Man with a young boy to being wound tighter than piano wire while watching the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.
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More than any other president, Obama’s tenure was defined by a cornucopia of history-making photographs taken by one man: Pete Souza. An old school photojournalist who’d been freelancing around D.C. for decades, Souza made his bones as a White House shutter fly during the much more private second term of Ronald Reagan. But even in his younger days, Souza dreamed of one day getting to go on the full ride of a presidency as its visual historian… little could he suspect he’d do that with the first Black President of the United States.
The Way I See It showcases some of Souza’s most famous images and unpacks the stories behind them, just as Souza unpacks his own life story and career. Directed by Dawn Porter, this documentary offers an astonishing bit of whiplash by transporting us to the Obama Years—an era which feels like four years and a lifetime ago. Warmly nostalgic, the movie ultimately acts like a wonderful exhibition for Souza’s artwork while rarely diving deeper than museum placards with bite-sized information and background. Thus the film is mostly a chance for Obama lovers to get wistful, and for Souza to hone his own political attack ad against Donald Trump by reminding us how much better the world used to be. Which… fair.
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i couldn’t tell you why, but i was thinking about merlin in the shower this evening and some of my main Problems with it. warning, under the cut is me ranting about the stuff i don’t like about merlin, which i haven’t watched in three and a half years so i might not be right on the details. warning for salt and foggy memories of a show i haven’t seen in three and a half years
when thinking about merlin, the main problems that come to my mind are
the rapid speed of morgana’s character “arc”. one moment she’s season one morgana, passionate, caring woman fighting for the rights of those around her then BOOM she’s Evil. i don’t remember there being much of a progression
parts of it are really confusing and muddled (might just be that my memory is getting bad because it’s been so long but i remember a lot of the plots jumping around kind of nonsensically)
the tone problem. the first season has a bright, fun, happy tone which WORKS for the subject matter but as the seasons progress, that tone becomes less beneficial.
the black and white morality. the narrative cuts uther pendragon breaks left and right as he slaughters people for practicing magic and for only having the ability to, then cuts arthur breaks for being an asshole, going along with his father’s way then outright perpetrating it himself because he’s Arthur and he’s ultimately a Good Guy and the Once and Future King so it’s cool he can do whateves he wants. merlin grows darker and darker in his pursuit of protecting arthur and the narrative excuses it every time because he is the protag and is doing it for the Greater Good. morgana, meanwhile, is turned into a heartless, crazy villain while she should have remained a sympathetic one.
the thing that i feel the show failed at most was making merlin and morgana proper foils. morgana wants to bring about change, no matter the cost and no matter the risk. she’s the armed revolutionary with an understandable and righteous motive. the narrative could have shown her going too far in pursuit of these goals and maybe losing sight of where the line is and of her former friends, but it would have been stronger if she remained a sympathetic figure fighting for her cause. merlin, by contrast, is... i don’t know what the right word for it is. maybe the apologist? the race traitor maybe? merlin has lost sight of the plight of both his people and himself in his pursuit of making arthur king and keeping arthur safe (arthur, arthur, arthur), whether this is because he believes arthur will save the world or because he just loves arthur is up for debate, but the show always frames merlin’s viewpoint as Just. supporting arthur wholeheartedly is what needed to be done. if it would have allowed merlin to be the HELLA gray character that he was by the end of it and embrace that moral ambiguity between him and morgana then we would have gotten this amazingly ambiguous conflict. both sides are arguing that the ends justify the means, they’re just trying to achieve different ends through DIFFERENT means (both of them wrong for different reasons, one trying to shatter the status quo and the other trying to preserve it wholesale). and with heroes and villains that look that similar you could get into some really interesting talks about human nature and conflict and oeaprjadfdasf it could have been great
the themes, like the tone, were all over the place.
a lot of the narrative wasn’t cohesive, but i’m trying to cut it slack for being a tv show and how tv shows don’t always know how long they have to tell a story and have to make do. they did, however, build a mythos that felt too big and felt as though it collapsed in on itself. i can’t tell if this was because they thought they were going to get more seasons or if they just pulled a moffat and couldn’t fulfill on the promises of the narrative.
i feel like gwen’s character had a lot of missed opportunities and was very angry about how much of s5 was spent with her having literally no agency. i also didn’t think that she and arthur really clicked but that might have been the merthur glasses. i’m not exactly gonna deny that i shipped that a lot and still do
#personal#sarah rants#wowza every time i think about this show i have more problems with it#ijaujfad#fdadfasfasdfasd#okay now i can finally use tags again without fear of people finding it#merlin#morgana#merthur#sarah rants about merlin
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At the end of Triple Zero, Kal and Ordo have a conversation about the earlier argument Ordo overheard between Kal and Etain. Frankly, it’s a little stunning: two men decide without Etain’s input, and the decision is framed around Darman rather than Etain. That’s an important conversation for a different post, however. I want to focus on Ordo because while he seems like an active player in this decision, he doesn’t have as much freedom as presented.
Please understand I’m not trying to diminish Etain’s suffering in this particular moment nor what Darman is deprived of as a result of this conversation. I’m simply trying to outline what happens to Ordo in this conversation, which I’m suggesting isn’t as easy, free, and straightforward as it appears. I’m making the argument that Kal, inadvertantly or otherwise, plays on Ordo’s emotional vulnerabilities to lock him into agreeing with Kal and that Kal uses Ordo to shoulder the burden that Kal is unwilling to bear himself.
tl;dr
The issue Ordo raises here is that Kal has potentially broken Ordo’s trust, and the trust of the other Nulls, by keeping secrets. Kal, realizing he may lose the Nulls’ trust, tries to argue that their trust has not been broken: he kept secrets, but he never lied. When Ordo is unreceptive to this argument, Kal asks Ordo to make the decision about whether or not Darman should be told Etain is pregnant.
Kal questions if he has the right to even keep this secret, and he fears losing the trust of those around him. Rather than bear the potential consequences of his decision, he pushes the decision onto Ordo, who can take the blame for it if it becomes inconvenient.
Kal frames the issue as agree with me or shoot me, posing a choice that Ordo absolutely cannot make. It’s unreasonable to expect that Ordo would actually choose to murder Kal. It’s emotional blackmail. Generally, the thread of the conversation plays on Ordo’s emotional vulnerabilities with regard to Kal, including Ordo’s inability to disagree because of his intense need to have Kal’s approval.
Ordo isn’t even well-equipped to solve this issue in the first place. He lacks the life experience to make a properly considered decision. Kal knows this. He comments on Ordo lacking in this department multiple times.
Ordo, disadvantaged in many ways in this conversation, has little option but to acquiesce and defer to Kal’s position.
The scene itself
It’s a simple scene: Ordo confronts Kal over what he overheard in the earlier argument between Kal and Etain, and Kal and Ordo come to a decision about what is to be done regarding Etain’s pregnancy and when Darman should be told.
The following is the scene quoted in its entirety. After it is a summary of the narrative beats; skip to that if you prefer.
The scene comes in the chapter directly after Etain and Kal argue and is set in the CSF bar a handful of hours after. Kal narrates. Ordo enters the scene, there is a short exchange about Besany, then it moves into:
“I have a question for you. I need to get hold of Jinart. How would I do that?”
“Easy. She’s a spy. She monitors the GAR troop movements to and from Qiilura. I can put a message in the logistics system that will get her attention. Something subtle. Give me a time and place, and leave the rest to me.”
Skirata had to smile. Almost everything was easy for Ordo. “Back to the barracks then.”
“I have a question for you, too, Kal’buir.”
“Okay.”
“Is it true what Etain said? Did your sons disown you because you stayed on Kamino with us?”
Ordo wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t deaf. Skirata’s family shame was the one thing he never wanted any of them to know about, and not only because it might make them feel guilty. He didn’t want them to fear he might abandon them with equal ease.
“It’s true, Ord’ika.”
“Why would you even think of paying such a terrible price for us?”
“Because you needed me. And I never regretted it for a second. My relationship with my… former family was as good as dead before you were even thought of. Don’t you ever give it a second thought, because I’d do it again in a heartbeat. No question.”
“But I wish we had known.”
Do I have the right to keep another secret, then? “I’m sorry.”
“So apart from Darman’s unborn son, is there anything else you keep from us?”
He’d heard him arguing with Etain, then. Skirata felt the most agonizing shame he had ever experienced in his life. His whole existence now rested on the absolute trust between him and his clone family. He couldn’t bear to lose that.
“So you know what I’m going to ask of Jinart, then. I heard the news when you did, Ord’ika. And no, there is nothing else. I swore I would never lie to you, and I never have.” Skirata pointed to Ordo’s matched blasters. “If I ever do, I’d rather you used those on me. Because being there for you was the only decent thing I ever did in my life. Understand?”
Ordo just stared at him. Skirata put both hands up on his shoulders and stood there in silence.
“Okay, son, tell me what I should do about Darman, and I’ll do it.”
Ordo still had that look of blank appraisal, the expression he adopted when dismantling a new and fascinating puzzle. “I don’t think the time is right. We have to do what’s best for our brothers.”
It was the pragmatic thing to do. Skirata fastened his jacket and checked that his knife was in place, his ritual for leaving any building and walking out into the unknown night. “Agreed, Ord’ika. Now all I need to do is have a little chat with General Zey.”
The narrative beats are as follows:
Kal asks Ordo for advice on contacting Jinart. He does not indicate why he’s contacting Jinart. Ordo gives him an answer, which Kal finds satisfactory, and Kal intends to end the conversation there.
Ordo (gently) confronts Kal about a secret he learned he overheard Kal and Etain talking about, that Kal was disowned by his biological children, and asks for confirmation. Kal confirms.
Ordo expresses that he doesn’t like that Kal kept secret something so important and so informing of their relationship.
Kal wonders to himself if he has the right to keep another.
Ordo, without verbal prompting, confronts Kal about the intent to keep this other secret from them all, Etain’s pregnancy. Kal realizes that Ordo heard the argument with Etain.
Kal realizes that he stands to lose the trust of those around him and resolves that he cannot lose it.
Kal tells Ordo that he never lied to any of them and assures Ordo that if he ever lies to them he would prefer Ordo shoot him.
When Ordo isn’t responsive, Kal asks Ordo to make the final decision.
After some consideration, Ordo finds that the time is not right to tell Darman about the pregnancy and says they must do what is best. Kal agrees and says he will talk to Zey to implement the plan he outlined to Etain earlier.
Secrets, lies, and whether the difference matters
“I hope so. But in the end, who are the only people we can really trust?”
“Ourselves, Kal’buir.”
His trust was transparent and absolute. “You’re our protector and we’ll always serve you.”
Skirata winced. Faith was devastating if you weren’t up to being a god.
We can trust nobody but our brothers and Kal’buir.
Here, the introduced issue is whether or not Kal can be trusted. He has kept an important secret from the Nulls—Kal’s reasoning aside, that isn’t the issue here—and Ordo had to learn it from someone else during an accidentally overheard conversation. At the same time, Kal intends to keep another secret, one that Kal isn’t immediately forthcoming to Ordo with. Kal, Ordo feels, doesn’t trust the Nulls enough to tell them everything. This is what is at stake for Ordo in this conversation.
That Kal would be forthcoming to all of the Nulls is something not only Ordo and the other Nulls expect, it’s something other characters expect as well; later in the series, Jusik is operates under the false assumption that Kal told all the Nulls about Etain’s pregnancy, and Mereel is plainly hurt that he wasn’t informed.
Ordo, despite his apparent calm, is understandably upset. He’s not antagonistic, but he carries an edge of an accusatory tone, especially in his second statement: Is there anything else you keep from us? Kal asks the Nulls for their trust ever since he met them on Kamino, and Ordo continues to display a trust that is “transparent and absolute”—as described in Kal’s narration only nineteen days earlier. This is a trust so complete that Kal compares it to the faith that one may have in a deity. The idea that Ordo can only trust himself, the other Nulls, and Kal is a recurring one. This breach of trust is serious.
Kal, realizing he stands to lose that long-held trust, immediately begins to convince Ordo that his trust has not been broken. Ordo should continue to trust him because while he kept secrets and intends to keep more, he never outright lied to any of them.
His whole existence now rested on the absolute trust between him and his clone family. He couldn’t bear to lose that.
“So you know what I’m going to ask of Jinart, then. I heard the news when you did, Ord’ika. And no, there is nothing else. I swore I would never lie to you, and I never have.” Skirata pointed to Ordo’s matched blasters. “If I ever do, I’d rather you used those on me. Because being there for you was the only decent thing I ever did in my life. Understand?”
Ordo just stared at him. Skirata put both hands up on his shoulders and stood there in silence.
It’s an attempt to split hairs on the issue and get away on a technicality. Generally, it’s a terrible thing to do; someone comes to you saying they feel hurt and you argue they shouldn’t because “Technically—” Kal is trying to laser focus the trust issue into very specific parameters, even though Ordo directly states that the issue is Kal keeps secrets and Kal fails to return the Nulls’ trust and share information with them. Kal is actively trying to change the rhetoric and terms of the conversation to move himself into a stronger arguing position.
It’s okay because I didn’t outright lie. I don’t have to lose your trust because I didn’t lie.
To reinforce the supposed sincerity of this statement, Kal offers that Ordo take up an ultimatum: should Kal lie to Ordo or any of his siblings, Ordo will shoot Kal.
Even after a silent plea, Ordo doesn’t bite. He makes no motion to accept this new line of argument, implicitly indicating that he believes the difference between lying and keeping secrets doesn’t matter here. The issue is a breach of that absolute trust Ordo gave. However, the remainder of the conversation operates under the hanging rhetoric and threat of Kal’s offer.
Loaded rifles and emotional blackmail
With his offer apparently rejected, Kal puts the problem to Ordo: “Okay, son, tell me what I should do about Darman, and I’ll do it.” It appears to be another show of good will and an appeal to Ordo: if you feel I have broken your trust, and the trust of your siblings, in keeping secrets, then you make the decision if I should keep this one. It’s put forward as an appeal to appease Ordo’s hurt sense of trust, however, it’s not that simple.
While Ordo may not have accepted the line of rhetoric that Kal was working with a minute ago, Kal has still set up the choice: agree with me or shoot me, help me keep a secret from everyone else, including the other Nulls, or kill me.
It goes like this because that’s how Kal has framed the issue. Kal argues that he will not break their trust until he lies, and Ordo is to shoot him if that happens. Ordo, since bringing the topic up, has maintained his trust was broken because of keeping secrets.
The two choices before Ordo now are essentially:
Tell Darman: maintain his original position—the difference between breaking trust by lying and breaking trust by keeping secrets is negligible in this case, they are both critical breaches of trust—and shoot Kal, as Kal asks
Don’t tell Darman: acquiesce to Kal’s position—the difference between between breaking trust by lying and breaking trust by keeping secrets is an important one in this case, keeping secrets is not as terrible as lying
Technically, there is a third option: tell Darman, maintain that Kal deeply broke Ordo’s trust, and not shoot Kal. But, please remember that Ordo’s strengths do not lie in the rhetoric department. Kal connected the ideas in the way presented in the above two choices.
Ordo cannot make the decision to shoot Kal. He’s entirely incapable of it. The choice left to him is to cede to Kal’s position.
Generally speaking, Ordo is also not in a position to disagree with Kal, and it is a long time before Ordo can bring himself to criticize Kal. They do not have an equal relationship by default, and their relationship is especially imbalanced in this moment in Ordo’s life.
It was all too easy to swagger out of the meeting full of aggressive confidence and forget that Ordo—muscular, lethal, the ultimate soldier—was vulnerable to the approval of one person alone: him. [...]
His [Ordo’s] trust was transparent and absolute. “You’re our protector and we’ll always serve you.”
Skirata winced. Faith was devastating if you weren’t up to being a god.
Somewhere, no matter how much reassurance Skirata gave him, he still seemed to fear that not being good enough meant a death sentence.
Only nineteen days earlier, Ordo regards Kal with an almost religious devotion. While it’s apparent Ordo’s faith has been shaken, that still has strong bearing on his ability to criticize and disagree with Kal.
In Triple Zero, Ordo is emotionally dependent on Kal and reads Kal’s disapproval as the end of the known universe. He needs Kal to like him. As a result, he is eager to please Kal and to give Kal what he wants. Ordo, when it comes to Kal, is in a very emotionally vulnerable place, and Kal will always have that leverage. Ordo is not in a position to disagree with Kal.
Ordo almost desperately seeks Kal’s validation. Nearly all of his emotional stability and self-worth depends on Kal’s constant approval.
Early in Ordo’s life, Ordo failed standard—essentially failed to gain the approval of Ko Sai and Orun Wa—and was told to die for it, and Ordo sees himself as rescued from death by Kal. After, Ordo pretty much operates on the belief that he continues to live so long as Kal continues to approve of him. Due to this trauma, Ordo lives under a draconian perfection or die rule, and part of this is striving to be always deemed good enough by Kal. This means no mistakes, no disappointments, and, insidiously, no disagreements. To disagree is to risk losing approval.
Ordo cannot remotely risk this. He’s in too emotionally vulnerable a position to do it. Kal, inadvertantly or otherwise, is hitting Ordo’s emotional vulnerabilities and is, arguably, emotionally blackmailing him.
If Kal wanted properly cared about cultivating Ordo’s trust in a healthy way, he should have asked Ordo, “What can I do to make it up for you? How can I regain your trust? What do you want me to do to prove you can trust me?” But, this give control of the conversation completely to Ordo, and Kal is generally unwilling to let control out of his hands. (That’s a post for another time.)
Ordo is pretty much locked into a single decision.
We all decide what those we love should know and not know, and think we’re being kind. Isn’t this where it all started? —Ordo, preparing Etain’s funeral, Order 66
Really, one can argue that Kal looping Ordo into helping make a decision that deeply affects Etain’s life and her relationship with Darman without her input is telling Ordo that Kal will make decisions regarding anyone’s life without their input. Ordo’s realization that Kal is going to make everyone’s decisions for them and his constant pleas for Kal to stop this forms Ordo’s narrative and character arc from True Colors through the rest of the series. Outlining that is for another post, but arguably, it starts here, with this moment.
The pragmatic thing to do
Ordo still had that look of blank appraisal, the expression he adopted when dismantling a new and fascinating puzzle. “I don’t think the time is right. We have to do what’s best for our brothers.”
It was the pragmatic thing to do. Skirata fastened his jacket and checked that his knife was in place, his ritual for leaving any building and walking out into the unknown night. “Agreed, Ord’ika. Now all I need to do is have a little chat with General Zey.”
It’s well-known fact that Ordo, especially at this point in his life, is not equipped with strong social skills. The whys and hows of that aside, it is clearly established he has difficulty navigating emotional problems and often cannot grasp the intricacies of non-professional relationships. He’s only just beginning to learn how to deal with these situations.
He could feel the other part of him, the Ord’ika who wanted to cry for his brothers, but he was very distant, as if in another life: there was just absolute cold detachment in the physical shell where his mind was situated now.
What Ordo is adept at is operational needs, logistical problems, and practical concerns. His decisions tend to be based more in pure logic and pragmatism, operating in what is described as an unemotional, cold, and detached manner. That’s not to say that Ordo isn’t an emotional person—he very deeply is—he just often doesn’t factor emotionality into his decision-making process. He isn’t a good person to ask to solve an emotionally fraught delimma.
Kal knows these things. Kal himself notes multiple times that Ordo is socially lacking and, even in this passage, notes that Ordo solves things like puzzles, from a detached and unemotional place.
He assesses problems from an unemotional place, and he has difficulty with social situations. However, the specific problem put to Ordo, should Darman be told that Etain is pregnant with his child, is a deeply social and emotionally fraught one. The crux of the issue is an emotional one: How distracted will Darman be if he is told of this? How hurt will Darman be if he learns this was kept a secret from him? How will keeping this a secret strain Etain and Darman’s relationship?
Ordo’s process of decision-making not only is unsuitable for this particular issue, Ordo himself lacks the life experience, perspective, understanding, judgment, and deftness to make an informed, emotionally sensitive, and considered decision. This situation is complex and difficult, even for those with more experience and skill in handling these things.
On top of that, Kal doesn’t give Ordo time to make a considered decision. There was time; Ordo may have already assigned Omega squad to an op, but they don’t leave Coruscant for another seven days. Kal asks Ordo for his judgment on the spot. If Ordo’s carefully considered opinion was truly of that much importance, it would’ve been better to give Ordo time to think about it—but again, this gives too much control to Ordo. And, it may not really matter; Ordo still lacks the perspective to make a properly informed judgment, and he cannot ask others for advice due to the sensitive nature of the situation.
Ordo has little choice but to defer to Kal’s experience. Or, he can’t be expected to make a good decision. He simply isn’t equipped for it.
Whose fault is it anyway? (And why does it matter?)
In the end, the explicit decision Ordo makes is to not tell Darman at this point or in the immediate future and that they must do what is best for “our brothers”. The problem Ordo isn’t weighing is how to treat Etain over the course of her pregnancy, the extent of her involvement in any decisions, where Etain should go, and similar issues.
Ordo’s executive decisionmaking extends to whether or not he, Kal, and Etain should keep this a secret from Darman. Kal implements his own plan about what should be done about (or to) Etain, a plan he already told Etain he would be implementing. While, technically, Ordo could have had input about that—we don’t know, that all takes place off-screen—what we do know is that in this scene, Ordo doesn’t. It simply appears Ordo decides to agree with Kal that Darman shouldn’t be told, and then it appears that Kal takes this as agreement to go ahead with his plan.
But if Ordo made the executive decision, shouldn’t it be his fault? It isn’t Ordo’s plan, and again, Ordo is in an emotionally vulnerable position and is ultimately being emotionally blackmailed by Kal. It’s difficult to speak up in defense of others when you yourself are gagged.
Do I have the right to keep another secret, then? “I’m sorry.”
“So apart from Darman’s unborn son, is there anything else you keep from us?”
He’d heard him arguing with Etain, then. Skirata felt the most agonizing shame he had ever experienced in his life. His whole existence now rested on the absolute trust between him and his clone family. He couldn’t bear to lose that.
Kal questions his right to keep this secret and fears losing the trust of his children. He’s unwilling to make the risk himself and shoulder the responsibility, and he quickly asks someone else to make the decision for him.
By asking Ordo to make the final decision, Kal shifts the moral and emotional responsibility onto Ordo, circumventing Kal’s need to answer the explicitly posed question: Do I have the right to keep another secret? He doesn’t have to answer if he has the right; he’s only doing as Ordo asks. He can blame Ordo.
And Kal briefly does in True Colors. In both narration and in his interaction with others, including Mereel, when it is inconvenient to shoulder the blame, Kal is willing to push the blame entirely onto Ordo rather than accept any of it himself. Kal constantly treats everything that happens as a joint decision, as if he and Ordo are on equal footing, even though throughout True Colors, it’s clear that what happens is per Kal’s decisions and Ordo is doing as Kal says.
In the interest of keeping the length of this post down, I defer to the analysis @izzyovercoffee wrote on the specific scene in True Colors: Kal and abuse: inability to shoulder responsibility (preview). The short of it is: Kal is willing to carelessly destroy one of the most important relationships in Ordo’s life because Kal is unwilling to shoulder the responsibility and potentially destroy his own relationships.
And since Ordo is in a disadvantaged position in this conversation, Ordo is going to let Kal do as he wanted while suffering the consequences if they become inconvenient.
In summary
This section is the same as the tl;dr one at the beginning, but it bears repeating.
The issue Ordo raises here is that Kal has potentially broken Ordo’s trust, and the trust of the other Nulls, by keeping secrets. Kal, realizing he may lose the Nulls’ trust, tries to argue that their trust has not been broke: he kept secrets, but he never lied. When Ordo is unreceptive to this argument, Kal asks Ordo to make the decision about whether or not Darman should be told Etain is pregnant.
Kal questions if he has the right to even keep this secret, and he fears losing the trust of those around him. Rather than bear the potential consequences of his decision, he pushes the decision onto Ordo, who can take the blame for it if it becomes inconvenient.
Kal frames the issue as agree with me or shoot me, posing a choice that Ordo absolutely cannot make. It’s unreasonable to expect that Ordo would actually choose to murder Kal. Generally, the thread of the conversation plays on Ordo’s emotional vulnerabilities with regard to Kal, including Ordo’s inability to disagree because of his intense need to have Kal’s approval.
Ordo isn’t even well-equipped to solve this issue in the first place. He lacks the life experience to make a properly considered decision. Kal knows this. He comments on Ordo lacking in this department multiple times.
Ordo, disadvantaged in many ways in this conversation, has little option but to acquiesce and defer to Kal’s position.
#Kal Skirata#Ordo Skirata#Republic Commando#Kal critical#Repcomm things#Eh. I feel like I missed points and I'm not expressing it well in certain places
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