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queen-scribbles · 3 years

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The Long Burning Torch ch 2

Oh, look, there more! :D Second chapter for my Ryn/Red 20s AU brought you by @shepherds-of-haven ‘s summer event

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True to his word, Red called just a couple days later--with supremely perfect timing, too; Xaeryn had just returned from following a lead. She was in the process of unpinning her hat when the telephone rang and she ll but dove across the room, hatpin in hand, to answer it.

“Shrike Investigations,” she said with that borderline-cheerful professionalism people expected from anyone running a business.

“Xaeryn?” He sounded curious verging on concerned. “Everything alright?”

“Oh, hittin’ on all eight,” she assured him with a breathless laugh. “I just got back from chasing down a lead.” She left off how literal that was this time as she glared at the mud on her shoes. “He was... more help than he meant to be, I think. I’m just grateful it didn’t turn into another dead-end.”

Red laughed. “Glad to hear it.” The line crackled a bit in the moment’s silence before he continued, “I had a chance to do some research, turned up a few interesting things.”

Generally interesting, or Red-interesting? Xaeryn wondered with a fond smile, remembering his fascination with even the minutiae of everything he read. “Like what?”

“At least some of what happened to the pendent after the Solimer lost it, and it’s a bit of a mess.” He laughed again, sheepishly this time, and Xaeryn pictured him running a hand through his hair. “It’s better explained in person. Should I come to you--”

“I’ll come there,” Xaeryn offered. “You’re doing me a favor, it’s the least I can do. And besides” --she grinned, even knowing he couldn’t see her-- “it’s a long drive and I wouldn’t want you to forget any of your notes.”

There was a long-suffering sigh, punctuated by a chuckle that made the line pop. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“No more than you let me live down the apple tree,” she retorted sweetly. “Does it work for me to come today? The guild’s getting antsy with the exhibit date drawing closer, but if you’re busy...”

“I have a lecture in... just under an hour.” Red paused, likely doing the same travel time vs lecture time calculations she was. “If you left soon, you’d probably get here just as I’m finishing, we could talk after?”

“Sounds good to me,” Xaeryn said scraping mud off her shoe against the chair leg. “I’ll see you in a couple hours, then.”

“Mm, see you then.”

She took a moment examining her shoes after they hung up and decided it would be best to change them before she left. Wouldn’t want to be tracking mud through Solhadur’s halls.

---

She couldn’t entirely bite back a laugh when she arrived and found Red behind his desk, the pencil woven between his fingers tapping against one of the three books open across the desk’s surface. “Well, I just lost a five lyss wager.”

“Huh?” His hair fell in his eyes when he looked up. “Over what?”

Xaeryn smiled as she leaned against the edge of the desk. “I was certain you would get carried away with jawing about whatever your lecture was on and I would be here first. Fortunately it was a wager with myself” --she leaned over to peek at what he was reading--”so there’s no real loss.”

Red laughed and nudged one of the books toward her. “Normally you would have won. I thought of something I wanted to double-check before you got here, so I made sure to end on time. The students thank you for that, by the way.”

She snickered and skimmed through the presented history text. “They’re most welcome. What did you learn?”

Red pushed out of his chair and circled the desk to give them the same angle on the book she held. “There’s a decade or so immediately after its loss that’s unaccounted for, but there are records from travelers who mention encountering a warlord deep in Jalis territory with a pendent that sounds an awful lot like Solimer’s torch. Here.” He leaned over to flip a few pages back from where she was and pointed at a sketched illustration.

While rudimentary in nature, it did bear a striking resemblance to the photographs Mr. Syndran had given her. Xaeryn hummed a quiet agreement, noting the sketched pendent seemed to be on an armband rather than loose as it was now, as she started reading the relevant text around the illustration.

“Lean on details,” she frowned, tracing a finger over the words as she read.

“That one is,” Red agreed. “They were more concerned with other things, barely mention the pendent in their description of the warlord. It’s just the only one with an illustration.” He tugged the book away from her, swapped it for one of the others. “Going off the description, I think this is the same piece. But you can draw your own conclusions.” He sat in one of the chairs and Xaeryn stayed perched on the edge of the desk, one foot swinging idly a few inches off the ground as she read.

From the sound of it--bronze coiled around a jet black stone, said to be its owner’s lucky talisman--she was inclined to agree with Red. The territory of this warlord, however, was rather far from the usual routes ascribed to the Solimer’s desert travels. How did it get there? she mused. Likely during the decade it had vanished, but she couldn’t even begin to guess the method. She’ was just finishing with the account when she caught Red smiling out of the corner of her eye.

She let the book dip to look at him instead. “What?”

Red’s eyes twinkled as he nodded at the hem of her mid-calf skirt. “That lead you mentioned chasing earlier wouldn’t have involved mud puddles, would it?”

Xaeryn followed his gaze and groaned at the mud staining the dusky rose fabric. “I wasn’t expecting him to run,” she muttered, flicking at the mud with one hand as she moved to the other chair.

“Your suspects usually just wait around, obligingly, for you to interrogate them, then?”

She rolled her eyes at his teasing tone and briefly debated whacking him with the book. “He wasn’t a suspect, he was a witness,” she retorted primly, setting the book back on his desk. “Potentially. Though with how cagey he was being, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was guilty of something.”

“A mystery for another day,” Red said with a grin.

“Precisely. As for today’s mystery, have you found anything more recent than this?” She tapped the book. “It’s still several hundred years ago.”

“Not much, and some of it’s contradictory; that’s part of why I said in person was better.” He ran one hand through his hair. “That territory is so deep in the Jalis desert, not many go there and come out again. Those who don’t live there frequently die visiting.”

“Charming place,” Xaeryn said dryly.

“Mmhm. It makes getting records difficult, to say the least. There’s a mention of this warlord’s territory being conquered by another, but no mention of what was taken as potential spoils, and the next thing I’ve found resembling Solimer’s torch is is when it was discovered in the grave of a different chieftain, name unknown--though there are theories--a hundred years ago and almost two hundred miles from where the nearest previous records indicated it being.”

“How’s a chieftain’s name unknown?” she frowned.

“He was buried with the honors afforded warlords and chieftains, but any record of his identity had worn off in the desert wind, if it was there in the first place,” Red explained.

“And these theories about who he was?”

“Numerous and with various levels of support,” he said wryly. “But if you want the longer version...?”

Xaeryn chuckled. “Always.”

They spent the next hour or so discussing the myriad guesses people had made as to this mystery chieftain’s name, as well as the other details Red had unearthed about the pendent, and various sources’ credibility. They only got caught up in one or two rabbit trails of good-natured debate over peer review and scholarly reputation or historical patterns of desert travel. (Which was pretty good for them.)

“There are a lot of gaps,” Red acknowledged, thumbing the pages of one book. “But I have a lot more I can read to help with filling them in.” He twirled one hand to gesture at the shelves that lined the room.

“You don’t have to-”

“Xaeryn, have you ever known me to be unhappy reading a book?” he asked with a warm smile.

“Well, no,” Xaeryn laughed. “But you’re so busy now, Headmaster.”

Red arched a brow but didn’t further protest her use of the title. “I always have time for you,” he said with a shrug, then cleared his throat and pushed to his feet even as her heart pounded and she sternly informed herself he hadn’t meant it like that. (She was grateful his circling the desk meant he missed the moment of broken composure that surely flashed across her face.) “And research is even more fun when it’s for a purpose. Bottom line for you so far...” He picked up his dropped pencil and started shuffling through everything on his desk in search of paper.

She grinned and held out her notepad. “Here.”

He flashed a sheepish smile as he took it. “Thank you.” He flipped to the first blank page and started writing as he talked. “Descendants of either that unknown chieftain or the one whose wife originally found the torch would have the strongest claims of ownership.”

“If I can find them,” Xaeryn said dryly. “And if one of them’s not already the owner on record who lent the pendent to the exhibit.” She bit her lower lip. “I think I need to talk to Mr. Syndran again.”

And depending on what he told her, her own research into genealogy might be called for.

“Probably your best next step.” Red finished writing and handed back her notepad, several pages scrawled with bullet-points summation of what he’d found. “Here you go.”

“Thank you.” Xaeryn smiled when she saw the notes were in their shorthand. “Nice touch.”

He smiled and raised one shoulder in a shrug. “It takes less space, and you did say this is a secret...”

“Very true.” She flipped the pad closed and tucked it back in her handbag. “I really do appreciate your help, this wasn’t a a small request, and you got me some answers in very short order.”

“I’m not done reading, Xaeryn,” Red said, voice rife with amusement. He waved at the surrounding shelves again. “Like I said, there’s a lot more to check.”

I always have time for you.

“As long as you don’t mind, I would love to hear anything else you learn,” Xaeryn said with a smile. Far be it from her to stand between Liefred Antiqua and a research project he was excited about. She’d sooner snatch an ice cream away from a child.

“I’ll call if I find anything else useful,” Red promised, already shifting toward one bookshelf.

She nodded, biting back a laugh and hoping he had a very loose definition of the word ‘useful’. “I’ll look forward to that, then.” Her neck and ears warmed and she hastily added, “more information is always helpful.” She stood, flicking at the stubborn mud on her skirt again. Next time she went interview-hunting, she was wearing trousers. “Though you have me off to an excellent start.” She headed for the door, paused with her hand on the knob. “Thank you for that, Liefred.”

“Anytime.” He leaned against the corner of his desk. “You can still call me Red, y’know, Xaeryn. Everyone does, so it’s hardly going to seem too familiar.”

True as that might be here at Solhadur, Haven was a different story. And she wouldn’t want to slip up. “I’ll keep that in mind,” Xaeryn said softly. “Until next time?”

“Mm-hm.” Something flickered in his eyes as he rubbed the back of his neck, then flashed her an easy smile. “I’ll look forward to it, then. I’m glad we reconnected.”

She smiled back as she twisted the knob. “Me, too.”

She didn’t have many friends, it was good to get one of the best ones back.

---

It was edging toward evening when Xaeryn made it back to her office. Which made it a bit of a surprise --fortuitous as it was-- to find Mr. Syndran waiting for her.

“Did we have a meeting I forgot about?” she asked apologetically as she unlocked the door. (They hadn’t, she was positive, but it was a diplomatic way of probing for why he was here.)

“We did not,” Mr. Syndran replied, arching a brow in a knowing look. “I had some other business in the area and decided to stop by in person to see how you are coming along, Miss Shrike.”

Xaeryn laughed and gestured toward the same chair he’d sat in on his first visit. “Then you have very good timing, instincts, or both, Mr. Syndran. I had some things I wanted to ask you; background information.”

His brow creased ever so slightly. “Should you not be far beyond mere background information? Have you not made progress?”

She sighed and sat in her chair behind the desk, pulling her notepad from her handbag and turning to a blank page. “Not of the ‘I’ve narrowed it down to two blocks, I just don’t know which house’ variety, no.” She tapped her pen against the desk. “But I have leads on suspects.”

Syndran gave a grunt that may have been displeasure. “And your questions for me?”

“Like I said; clarifying background information. When the Couriers were contracted to handle transport, how much were you told about the pieces?”

“Only the relevant details.” He brushed invisible lint off his sleeve. “Each one’s value, recorded owner, any special care instructions.”

Xaeryn nodded, pen poised over her pad. “I don’t suppose you recall the owner listed for the pendent?”

He paused to think a moment. “I’d have to have my secretary check to be completely certain, but I believe it was a Ms. Aescar. The name didn’t ring any bells for me.”

“And would I need to speak with the Hall of History and Culture if I wanted to find out how to contact her, or do you know?”

Syndran shook his head. “Whitestone Couriers were merely transporting the relics, Miss Shrike. Any communication with the owners was the concern of the museum curators. Why would you need to talk to her?”

“I might not,” Xaeryn said, scribbling the information down. “I just like to have all my chickens in the coop ahead of time, so there’s no scrambling if something winds up time-sensitive down the road.”

“Smart.” Syndran gave a nod of approval. “So long as you don’t spend so much time preparing for unlikely eventualities that you lose more promising leads.”

She back back a tart ‘I know how to do my job’ and nodded. “Of course.”

He paused a moment, lips pursed in thought. “I did have a wonder, Miss Shrike.”

Xaeryn cocked her head. “Oh?”

“Given the... likelihood this theft occurred somewhere between city customs and the museum and the utter lack of details my drivers have been able to provide about that stretch of the journey” --his expression soured-- “would it be possible for you to... revisit the scene with your abilities?” His brows arched meaningfully. “You are Argentis, are you not? The benefit of hindsight might allow you to pick up on something relevant that didn’t register in the moment for my people.”

She tapped her pen against her notepad. “I can give it a go, Mr. Syndran, but I’m more a Scryer than a Sage; my strongest talent is finding things in the present, not viewing the past. Though this is the recent past,” she mused. “Perhaps recent enough that with a focus from the caravan I’d have decent luck.”

“I’ll see what I can find for you.” Mr. Syndran pushed to his feet. “Anything in particular that will work best?”

“For viewing the past like this... something from the event is necessary, and the closer to central it is, the clearer a picture I’ll be able to get.” She leaned back in her chair. “Frankly, if you don’t mind my doing so, coming to the Couriers’ garage and using one of the trucks as my touchstone would work best.”

“Oh, that’s very doable,” he said with a nod. “As it’s getting late, what say we do it tomorrow?”

“Nine AM?” Xaeryn suggested.

“Acceptable.” He headed for the door. “I shall see you then, Miss Shrike.”

“See you then, Mr. Syndran.” Xaeryn waited until the door closed behind him to let out a slow breath. Scrying was easy enough, even if she didn’t always succeed, but peering into the past was usually a draining exercise for her. Mr. Syndran was correct, though; it was very likely the best way to glean new leads. Even if it meant she’d need a nap after.

She pushed to her feet and locked the door. One more glance over her notes before she called it a night. So it was fresh in her mind and she could mull it over.

She tried not to get too distracted by the difference between her small, crowded shorthand and Red’s larger, loose scrawl--he had a dreamer’s handwriting, which she’d teased him about when they were younger(he’d rolled his eyes but hadn’t denied it). The memory had her smiling all through dinner.

---

The weather was nice enough the next day Xaeryn opted to walk to the Whitestone Couriers’ garage, though she did take an umbrella in case the rain that hadn’t threatened the last few days decided to make an appearance. Mr. Syndran was waiting for her, looking all the more proper in these rough-shod surroundings.

“Right on time, Miss Shrike,” he said with a tight smile. “This way.” He led her at a brisk pace to a gleaming black truck, the canvas cover a near-immaculate tan. “This is the one that was carrying the crate with the pendent, among other things.”

“Right.” Xaeryn circled to the passenger side, letting her fingers trail over the cool metal until they rested on the door. “I can’t make any promises, but let’s see if we can find anything useful.”

She pressed her hand flat against the side of the truck and murmured the correct ritual, felt her magic rise to do as she bade.

The scene around her--Mr. Syndran, the garage, everything but the truck--faded into shadow. Her view shifted, as if she were riding shotgun in the truck or hanging out the window as it crept through Haven’s streets. Tings were flickery and dim, the colors bled out and faded as she looked around. I don’t know how long I can hold this. Xaeryn peered intently at what she could see of the surroundings, the other vehicles, the people, buildings, noting everything she could, no matter how mundane. A woman with a red hat, brim hiding most of her face. A young boy and his dog watching the caravan with interest. A man with vivid green eye and a small smile lounging against a wall, following the trucks’ progress from under his slouched cap. The cat that almost darted in front of the preceding truck before it spooked. The flapper with an armful of bracelets, glancing surreptitiously across the street-

The scene flickered sharply, her grasp on the ritual fading, the images slipping away--

And Xaeryn was back in the garage, leaning against the truck as her knees went to jelly. The few prior occasions she’d played the sage had left her feeling like she stood up too fast when they ended, and this was no exception.

“Are you alright, Miss Shrike?” Mr. Syndran gestured to a nearby worker who’d stopped to gawp and the man scuttled off.

“Just fine,” she said with a nod, turning to sit on the truck’s running board as she tugged out her notepad and rapidly scrawled out everything she’d seen. “Sage work can be taxing if it’s not your main talent, that’s all.”

He watched in silence as she scribbled down the vision’s contents, only speaking again when she finished. “Did you see anything of note?”

“Nothing too blatant, or it would have stood out even to the drivers,” Xaeryn said, leaning her head back against the truck. “But there were some passers-by that caught my attention...”

Mr. Syndran listened to her descriptions with utmost focus, but interrupted when she reached the green-eyes lounger. “Do you remember any other details about him?” he demanded, his hands twitching to a fractionally tighter grip on the head of his walking stick.

“Tall,” Xaeryn said slowly. The worker Syndran had sent away returned with a tumbler of water, which she accepted with a nod of thanks as she dug through the memory. “I think brown hair, but he was wearing a hat. Bright red vest, blue and green scarf ‘round his neck-”

“Thieves guild,” Syndran muttered. Despite the distaste on the words, a panther-like grin curved his lips. “I should have known.” The distaste shifted to satisfaction. “That would be your next lead, Miss Shrike.”

Xaeryn arched a brow. “Do tell.”

“Thieves guild has been a thorn in our side for years,” Syndran explained, “They aren’t even a true guild; more a loose association of ruffians and cutpurses who only call themselves such in another jape at legitimate businesses.” He sniffed. “They make their base in the warrened streets of Ashtown, but I believe I have worked out where their true headquarters are concealed. I can give you some direction, if you’re recovered enough to follow me to my office?”

She nodded, pushed to her feet. “Lead the way.”

It was good to have something tangible to pursue. Hopefully the weather would hold so she could follow it up now. Ashtown was no fun in the rain.

#queens fic #xaeryn shrike #red antiqua #ryn/red #shepherds summer 2021 #shoh #20s au #tlbt

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felassan · 4 years

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TEVINTER NIGHTS details (new)

ohh shit ohh fuckk Not a drill! Under the cut because spoilers. Don’t look if you want to read these short stories unspoiled.

serious SPOILER WARNING.

also please bear in mind I was working from fragments and trying my best to infer, so it’s not going to be perfectly correct like an oracle!

Dorian is in it

Maevaris is in it

Vaea is in it

no Zevran from what I can see sorry :’( [but bear in mind I can’t see all of it] BUT there is reference to House Arainai

Solas is mentioned at least 4 times by the name Solas

Solas or his new cultists seemingly have ordered his/their agents “Death before capture” they fucking SUICIDE PILL rather than be captured WTF?? or at least one agent in a story does. (see quotes below)

it also reads like they’re blowing up/bombing/trying to blow up towns of thousands of people???

Felassan is mentioned

A FEMALE ELF WHO SHAPESHIFTED INTO A HALLA and then a falcon and a snowy owl. she has short hair, freckles and striking features; I’m love

STRIFE THE ELF.

a reference to the HoF; or more specifically an assassin family lost face when they failed to complete a contract on their life

An Executor is in it and talks, has interactions with several different types of characters

werewolves!!

in the first story a City Elf-turned-Dalish and a lowborn Tevinter mage are taken as slaves by invading Qunari during their invasion of Tevinter, escape and learn to work together to overcome their prejudices and such in order to survive (since they were chained together). Dalish/elvhen lore is quite prominent in this short.

The Qunari are moving into Rivain. “You need to get word to the clans before they land.” Clans in Rivain confirmed again?

Divine Victoria appears, seems to be kept neutral/non-specific i.e. can be any of the 3

Venatori mentions

red lyrium encounters

there’s a new Dalish clan name given, Oranavra

one story seems to deal with a clan getting back their precious ironbark halla statue

Andruil mentioned several times. Ghilan’nain mentioned

we’re going to Arlathan Forest. it has entities protecting it called Forest Guardians or sth

there is some sort of order or guild called the Lords of Fortune. they are treasurehunters, the order seems to be Rivaini in origin but like others can join?

also the first story features a Tevinter male mage (not magister) who is MLM

there’s a Qunari rank Bas-taar it means Keeper of Bas

Charter appears and she does gay pining for Tessa, twice

Sutherland and company appear and go on a mission. We get some insight into each of their pasts

Philliam, a Bard! appears. he argues with Genetivi

Varric as Viscount Tethras is mentioned

Kal-Sharok is mentioned

Cassandra is mentioned, seems to appear in Sidony’s flashback

Josephine is mentioned

we return to Skyhold as it is the setting for a story

more wiping out of Dalish groups fucks sake Bioware

a Rasaan is in it

Genetivi is in it

Dagna appears

Valya mentioned, doing new research into new weird darkspawn phenomena. and HOLY SHIT, the new darkspawn revelations in this book!!

the Antaam attacked without the permission of the rest of the Qunari govt

Sidony from DAMP is in it

without an army Antiva’s only line of defense against the Qunari is the Crows

Kirkwall’s events & boom referenced

Serault glass mirrors mentioned

House Danarius mentioned, a mage from the house was mentioned as having been up to something

a new type of demon I think, Regret. & the implication that there are spirits of Contemplation and Introspection. I think the Regret we see, “the regret of a god”, is Solas’ regret :S Sutherland and Co are dispatched to Skyhold to deal with it, it had like taken up residence in the deserted building or something. seems like all Solas’ regrets about what’s occurred and his choices like coalesced into this spirit (not literally but the spirit took the form because the feeling was so strong)

many cameo appearances from minor npcs who were Skyhold staffers

necromancers in Nevarra get skeletons to do their chores and its totally normal

there is an establishment called the Nug Queen

“hollix” means something like “irrepressible rascal” in old Tevene

no mention of live griffons from what I can see

Isseya is mis-spelled as Issenya

Quotes:

As though my good works were insufficient to draw compassionate spirits who might wish me protected, as though I were some common criminal binding spirits through blood magic, not the victim of the Dread Wolf himself! they returned with

[suicide pill entry] Her teeth clenched. Green foam started to fill her mouth. I dropped her to the ground and she started spasming, her legs drumming on the wooden deck. Her back arched once, twice, and then she was still. I knelt beside her and put my fingers to the side of her throat. Nothing. Dead. Damnit. “And that’s the other reason I didn’t join. Death before capture. Not my sort of thing at all.”

The words battered us like storm winds, and the Dread Wolf’s jaws closed upon the Tevinter mage, snapping him up in an instant as he screamed in terror. The lesser demons rushed down upon us, crackling with fire and lightning and our

us, and the demons that had accompanied the Dread Wolf burst into the world in righteous fury, shining warriors with blades forged from the raw fade itself and behind them, dimly visible through the crackling light, the shadow of the beast

“And now we know that the Dread Wolf has agents working for him,” the bard added, his mask glittering in the firelight as he tossed back his golden locks. “and that he has the power to kill those who oppose him as they sleep.”

“I act freely. For the Dread Wolf. To bring back what was once ours - what must be ours again.” Dread Wolf. Crap. I’d heard the rumors of course - dozens of elves, off to heed the call of some god. Guess I’d found one of them, at least. “The Qunari left sooner than I’d expected - their trail grew cold. But I had you. You found them for me.

All painted by Solas, the Inquisition’s expert on the Veil and the Fade beyond. It was his gift of record. At least, that’s what was claimed at the time. The rotunda they entered now was not fastidiously clean like the rest of Skyhold. The floor was

“Tevinter’s intelligence network declined to answer our request,” Charter said, “As did the Ben-Hassrath.” She grimaced. “The latter is especially disappointing. They had more knowledge of Solas’ movements than anyone else. They also”

“‘Solas’ is also not true.” “Pride,” said Laudine. “It means pride.” Rasaan stopped and cocked an eye. “Very good,” she said. Names were important to the Qunari. They were named for their roles, and roles defined their identities. Their actual

“Beyond that, the Inquisition knows little about what Solas intends. Much of his research involves the Veil that separates our world from the world of the spirits. He claimed to have created it, and he asked the Inquisition for help activating

A lone elf. My client. [...] The rune that she’d given me - she held it aloft, examining it critically. Muttering a single word over and over again. “Felassan, Felassan, Felassan.” There was a hum, and the rune began to glow a steady and unpleasant red. I’d been around enough magic to know that was probably not a good thing.

“But you are now known to Fen’Harel. He has eyes everywhere. Inside Tevinter, without a doubt.” “So where should we go?” Irian asked quietly. She had moved closer, and was standing directly beside me.

The Fen’Harel question. How many lives had ended, seeking an answer? Four more, if our turn chasing a legend fails tonight. But we’ve dragged truth from the darkness beneath Tevinter, found pages that will guide

of those damned Fen'Harel cultists. 'Ooh, if we blow up enough people, ancient Elvhenan is definitely coming back.'” She caught my questioning glance. “They tried to recruit me a few years ago. I said no.”

as the Avvar do. But whatever fear the name Dread Wolf carries, he has earned. While we might visit the Fade, it is his natural home, and the spirits there serve him gladly. They whisper in my dreams now, accusing me of crimes I never

the wolves. Each event that had shaped the Inquisition was being stripped of color.

The division of the mortal realm from the Fade was not a natural state that had always existed. It was an event, a moment in time that had literally shattered the elven empire. Pieces of that glory now drifted beyond dream and will, with the Dread Wolf stalking between. But other pieces remained, displaced in the physical world.

Elves are slim, but its their eyes and ears we recall. Humans have the most variety in the shoulders, and all anyone sees about qunari are height and horns

In our veins runs true Tevinter blood, passed down from the dreamers -

You all know that the Antaam invaded without permission of the other branches of Qunari government? We had assumed this would hobble them, but it appears the priests and workers were a moderating influence. Without them, the Antaam have crushed the Tevinter opposition in the east, and I fear everything east of Vyrantium will be under their control within a year, and northern Antiva as well.

The Inquisition had to be disbanded, they argued.. The Inquisition wasn’t the first army it had hosted. It would remain a distant beacon, so that all would remember when the Inquisitor had rallied the people of Thedas against a false god

He couldn’t be killed until his blighted dragon was dead, and the Herald had somehow countered with a dragon of their own. And there was a dragon on the panel, with an Inquisition blade in its neck. But according to the story

Every act of the Inquisitor recorded in masterful plaster and paint. From the explosion that had marked the Herald, to the triumph against a blighted false god

matter to her that Sidony wanted nothing to do with the fate of her home country? The Inquisitor does not want to see that happen to Nevarra. Or did it only matter that the Inquisitor was pleased?

The Inquisitor has taken a chance on his potential. But more than that, the Inquisitor had stood for him. Had stood for them all. Made them feel like they were worth it and could help. Made them look forward.

We bounced once, twice, jostling with the magical orb but it still held

Something huge trembled around us, a spirit so great that it shook parts of the Fade I had always considered to be neutral, devoid of life. - and high overhead, where the Black City shadowed the sky, I heard a great booming roar

So that’s what it was. “Supposed to be a piece of the Black City itself. ‘A reminder of man’s hubris, and of the unique and glorious divinity of the Maker’.” I snorted. “Seems like a bunch of nug shit to me.” “Regardless, the artifact has been stolen.

“Anything else?” “Whoever clips the Crows’ wings will walk by my side when we enter the Black City and take glory back for the Imperium.”

The Blight is over, or so it seems. Valya, a young elven mage recently recruited into the Wardens, has been tasked with studying the historical records of previous Blights in order to gain insight into newly reported, and disturbing, darkspawn phenomena. Her research into the

One of our best smiths has been studying red lyrium, and she says the blasted stuff is tainted by the Blight. A few families might’ve tried to keep smuggling it after that, but we shut that down. The Carta believes in business. Blight is bad for business.

So when this Dalish elf comes around asking can someone get the lyrium idol out of what’s left of the statue, our first thought was to send him back to his clan with a few new tattoos on his face, if you know what I mean. Plus, the idol is

“Or he could be a demon impersonating an elf,” the Mortalitasi said, sipping her wine. “What he does is not... especially Tevinter.” the Mortalitasi said with a sneer. “since most of it is built over where the ancient elves lived.”

“FROM THIS MOMENT, SHOULD YOU EVER BIND A SPIRIT, THEN YOUR LIFE IS MINE.” The hypocrisy almost made me laugh. The Dread Wolf forbade us from binding spirits, but why would these lesser demons attack us if not because the

but before the Tevinter mage could complete his ritual, the Dread Wolf arrived... burning eyes like a pride demon, and it came to us on wings of fire that resolved themselves into a horde of lesser demons as the Dread Wolf landed before us

The mark of the Pride demon, Audric realized.

“I would caution you in dealing with those across the sea,” he said, “they are dangerous. “More dangerous than the elf who threatens the world?”

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #dragon age #tevinter nights #bioware #spoilers #spoiler #tevinter nights spoilers #tevinter nights spoiler #dragon age: tevinter nights #dragon age: tevinter nights spoilers #dragon age: tevinter nights spoiler #tevinter nights anthology #tevinter nights anthology spoilers #tevinter nights anthology spoiler #strife

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sergeanttpoliteness · 4 years

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Spiderverse Gwen x Reader where The reader is out as les/bi/pan whatever and Gwen is scared to tell her she likes her?

AND➝ Gwen is ready to start letting people back into her life after the events of Spiderverse. MJ, aware of Gwen trying to open her social circle, tells her about a nice girl from her apartment building and brings the reader along at their next band practice to introduce her. Gwen sets eyes on her and is VEEEERY attracted to this VEEEERY pretty girl. In Gwen’s bisexual distress, she starts rambling nervously, and probably says something embarrassing about herself. MJ saves them from an awkward situation and starts band practice, Gwen doesn’t see reader outside of school again after that, but Gwen shamelessly stares at her during class. Gwen starts to overthink the situation and gets worried she blew her chance. Later, there’s a situation that she as Spider-Gwen saves reader from. Reader is minorly hurt but SG has to go before she can help reader as authorities arrive. Feeling guilty, her spider sense leads SG to the reader’s apartment, she goes to check on her that night. Confident with her mask on, she strikes up a conversation, compliments her and even drops a bit of a flirty remark about reader before taking her leave. I didnt know where to go from there I’m new to requesting so I hope this isn’t too long but I hope that’ll be enough to get the ball rolling? -🍀

deeply sorry it took me so long to get to these again! i changed a few things, but it’s pretty much still the same idea. i hope the nonnie who requested this finds it and doesn’t think i ignored them :( ily, y’all deserve better.

——-

➹she plays bass➹(spider-gwen x fem!reader)

That feeling when there’s a cute girl who plays bass in your band and you don’t know what the hell to do about it.

Gwen needs help figuring out her feelings. Like, immediately.

word count: 11.6k (oops i did it again)

a/n: i’m sorry this new fic is the size of the bible like the last one, i’ll try to make the next one shorter lmaooo. but it’s what my fave girl deserves due to the unacceptable lack of stories about her on this site. plus, i swear that once you read it it’s so much shorter than it seems. i’m hoping i can post at least one more story before the end of the year, but if i don’t, happy holidays and new year ! y’all were the best part about my 2019 :) hope whoever is reading this has a lovely week. mwah.

warnings: violence, guns, swearing.

——-

She played bass.

You played bass, to be more specific. And Mary Jane Watson took satisfaction in believing that she was nice. More than simply ‘just nice’ on good days, even. Being the most courteous person was a duty she considered to be hers ever since she was six-years-old and accompanied that girl who always seemed to be left behind in the playground, and years later, in high school when she punched a creep hassling one of her bandmates. Last but most certainly not least, Betty Brant, bass guitar player of the Mary Janes, slipped and fell backwards one unfortunate evening, and she shot out her left arm behind her to break the fall and save her ice cream from hitting the ground. Good news: her ice cream did not hit the ground. Bad news, however, her left hand did— in an odd, twisted position. Needless to say, Betty Brant now had a broken wrist.

At first glance, they’re all unrelated events, stars belonging to separate constellations, and they would have remained so— undisturbed, simply coexisting in the same sky. That was, until Gwen came into the picture and drew a line connecting the bright flecks when she opened her mouth.

In the moment that she admitted to MJ that the idea of meeting new people sounded more appealing each day, she scribbled down the equation in her bandmate’s brain and hit ‘solve’. The redhead’s face lit up, putting to shame a Christmas tree as that sense of responsibility called for her attention. Immediately, she felt obligated to make the Nobel Peace prize-worthy move of texting her neighbor she just met, who also played the bass, to join them on the coming Saturday for band practice. That night, as she prepared to go to sleep, Em Jay cracked an accomplished smile at the reflection in her mirror.

However, two weeks had passed since your first practice with the Mary Janes, and MJ’s pride dove off from where it sat on her shoulder as she observed from afar with furrowed brows how Gwen so fucking blatantly ignored you after you tried to give her a high five.

“What the hell was that?!” She hissed at Glory who stood beside her, cringing as you awkwardly dropped your hand and turned away from Gwen. Sighing, MJ rubbed her face with sheer desperation— a rather drastically different action from her naïve smile many nights ago. “I put an opportunity right on her fucking lap to make a friend, and she can’t act like a nice normal human being!”

Glory bit the inside of her cheek, sporting her own grimace. “I dunno, maybe they’ll click soon—”

“It’s been two weeks, Glory!” MJ whined. She crossed her arms across her chest, eyes narrowing into concentrated slits, and her gaze returned to an oblivious Gwen who shot at your back what she thought in her mind was a discreet glance. “I can’t let this fail. I gotta step in.” Glory raised a brow.

“Or you could just, you know, let them get to know each other at their own pace?“

“That’s dumb.”

Glory opened her mouth but gave up immediately, seeing MJ’s persistence as a lost cause she, in all honesty, did not want to waste any energy battling against that day. “Follow my lead,” MJ elbowed her, winking before she caught Gwen’s and your attention. “Who wants pizza? I do, and so does Glory. You guys want to go out and eat?“

“I don’t really feel like going out.”

“Glory, what the fuck?” MJ said under her breath, but later shook her head, a smile stretching across her face. “It’s fine! We’ll just go get it and we can eat here."

Glory frowned. "But—”

“I mean, sure. I’m definitely in the mood for pizza.” You shrugged, the corner of your mouth lifting upwards. Gwen, however, eyed Glory with suspicion, who in return flashed her an apologetic smile. MJ clapped her hands together, cheering.

“Great!” She grabbed Glory’s hand and dragged her out of the room, glancing back at the two other girls. “We’ll be back in fifteen!”

Not even five seconds passed after they closed the door before you jumped off the couch and muttered to Gwen that you were going to the bathroom, an action that Gwen chose not to spend any time analyzing for her own sanity; but even if she had decided to, the ringing of her phone would’ve interrupted her nonetheless. After she took out her phone and saw MJ’s contact name, she let out the longest sigh in her entire seventeen years of living.

“Couldn’t you have just called for the pizza?” She went straight to the point— no greeting or anything, which left MJ stumped for three seconds, and surprised she had caught onto what was going on in record time.

“No, otherwise my plan wouldn’t have worked. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“What plan and why am I welcome?”

MJ scoffed. “I’m giving you another chance to talk to Y/N, seeing as you completely blew every other one you had.” Gwen perked one eyebrow, confused.

“How come?”

“She tried to give you a high-five and you left her hanging, Gwendolyn.” She said with an obvious tone. “And that’s just one example of many.”

Gwen sat straight, her eyes growing wide. “Wait, I did?”

“Yes, you fucking idiot!” Gwen shut her eyes closed, covering her face with her hand. “How did you not notice, it’s so painfully obvious she’s trying to be your friend but you’ve gained the award of dickhead of the day.”

Gwen rolled her eyes, although let out an amused huff of air through her nose. “Did Glory agree to this little plan of yours?”

MJ took a moment of silence. “No, but her opinion doesn’t really matter right now.”

“Yeah, I bet she didn’t, because it’s fucking stupid, Mary Jane.”

“Em Jay.”

“You called me Gwendolyn.”

“Whatever,” MJ grumbled, “you asked for this, Gwen. Be thankful, ‘cause I’m really tryin’ here.”

Gwen heard you flush the toilet, and not too long after, the sound of the faucet running. “Hell, okay, fine.” She whispered into the phone. “She’s coming, I have to go.” Before MJ could utter a word, she ended the call right as you walked out of the bathroom and flashed her a tight-lipped smile. You sat back down on the couch, an obvious distance between you two. More time passed while you hunched over your cellphone and Gwen eyed you sideways, gripping her hands together in between her knees, her heart speeding up each time she dared to speak up, and her face heating up albeit she hadn’t directed a word at you yet.

She cleared her throat. “So!”

You made eye contact with her and she felt obligated to flash you a nervous smile after the silence continued. Eventually, the corner of your mouth lifted upwards. “So what?” You questioned, curious. Gwen’s smile gradually fell. She should’ve contemplated what she was going to say first before she spoke.

“…What’s your favorite pizza topping?” Gwen hit herself mentally. There literally was no excuse for why she was acting like this— hell, she herself couldn’t even find one. But, on the bright side (however, perhaps not so much for Gwen), whilst the girl was sure this was an agonizing and slow death from embarrassment, your amused grin widened with her visible anxiety.

“I don’t know. There’s a lot of options.” You shrugged, your attention moving back to your device. Gwen considered leaving you alone, seeing as this conversation very obviously wasn’t going anywhere, but that option disintegrated as soon as she imagined Em Jay intentionally delaying her arrival with Glory and the pizza so she could take full advantage of her ‘chance’, which she was ninety-nine percent sure was the case.

“I really like pepperoni.” She blurted out. Your eyes momentarily traveled up to Gwen and you pursed your lips, nodding slowly.

“Cool.”

My God, you really were not collaborating even an ounce— it was a reach, but it was as if you were voluntarily trying to make this as difficult and socially traumatizing for Gwen as possible. Gwen scratched her head, searching for more conversation ideas, but her brain remained as empty as a desert in the middle of nowhere, except for the one tumbleweed happily rolling along its way which was her last idea, and the main purpose of this sad conversation.

“I’m really sorry for that high-five you tried to give me earlier,” Gwen muttered, incapable of looking at you straight in the eye for long. “Em Jay just told me about it.”

Finally, you tore your concentration away from your phone and focused on Gwen. You didn’t know whether it was the seriousness of her voice combined with the absurdity of the sentence, but you found yourself struggling to hold back your giggles. Gwen’s eyebrows twisted with puzzlement as she saw your blushing cheeks and you biting your lip hard, your shoulders shaking ever so slightly.

“That’s… adorable. It’s alright. It happens to all of us, I guess.” You laughed out. In Gwen’s never-ending humiliation, she couldn’t discern your expression from simple amusement or judgment.

Gwen stuttered, brushing her hair behind her ear. “Okay, cool. I-I just didn’t want you to think that I hated you or something like that.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I did not.”

“Good. Because I don’t. Obviously.” She continued, forcing out a chuckle. “I really don’t.”

You smiled hesitantly. “Again… don’t worry, I get it—”

“I just, I wasn’t paying attention to you.” Gwen clarified but closed her mouth immediately, regret drying her throat. You pressed your lips into a straight line. “But I don’t mean that in a rude way, hah. I’m always looking at you.” She dug herself deeper and her eyes grew wide, a tense cough fleeing past her lips after you raised your brows.

“I mean, no, I’m not always looking at you, like, staring, but like, looking forward to whatever you have to say…?” She talked slowly, questioning her own words. “Why would I look at you, anyway?” Ah, fuck, that’s not what she meant.

Your expression transformed into an offended look and she rushed to correct herself. “No! I mean— you’re, like, very, very pretty, don’t get me wrong.” She let out a frustrated sigh, “Again, I don’t mean that in a weird way, I just—”

“Okay! I get it.” You stopped her and stood up, pointing at your phone. “I have to go, it’s pretty late, so I won’t be able to eat with you guys, but, uh… thanks anyway. Maybe next time.” You explained, uncomfortable. You both dubiously gestured goodbye to each other before you nearly ran out of the door.

From then on, Gwen kind of wanted to hide in her room for the rest of her life, or at least from you; but sadly, she couldn’t do either. She could’ve moved on and just let it be a memory she could laugh about in the future, but she couldn’t hide what had happened to MJ— she retold her and Glory the encounter, and the trauma returned as Glory burst out laughing right in her face and Em Jay simply stared at her like a disappointed mother. Again, she really was determined to forget the whole ordeal, but later in the evening, when all she wanted to do was plop down on her bed and call it a night after another day of patrol, she answered her landline only for her ears to be attacked with MJ’s pleas for her to go fix things since ‘she was so embarrassed for her she literally couldn’t go to sleep’. Gwen hung up on her.

As she originally had intended before MJ disrupted her night, Gwen jumped onto her bed and rolled onto her back, promising in her head that she’d take off her suit in a minute. She stared up at the ceiling for longer than a minute, thinking about MJ’s words. What was the point in going to apologize to you again, anyway? Gwen wasn’t going to do it simply to please her. MJ could gladly go and shove her microphone up her—

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Gwen said to herself as she stood outside your school building. She looked down at her watch. She could’ve been doing so much right then. Someone was probably getting murdered, or a robbery was going on, and she had homework to finish, but she was wasting her time waiting in front of a school like the creep of the block. However, she thought she might as well stick to it in the instant that students began to swarm out of the entrance doors.

She considered leaving. It was her first thought when she ultimately saw you walking amongst the crowd, talking to your friends. You hadn’t noticed her. It wouldn’t make a difference if she spun and ran out of there, like a scared child fleeing from the monster living in her closet. You turned your gaze away from your friend whilst laughing, and similar to the demon (no offense) peeking through the slit in between the closet doors, you found yourself staring into a familiar pair of blue eyes.

There was no going back.

Gwen breathed in profoundly and flashed you a sheepish smile, waving weakly with her shoulders raised. She watched you say goodbye to your friends before you hesitantly approached her, your eyebrow lifted in a questioning manner. “Gwen?”

“Yup. That’s me, hah…” She moved her hair away from her face after the wind disheveled it, brushing it behind her ear as she avoided your eyes. “I know you’re wondering—”

“What you’re doing here? Yes, yes I am.” You said, the humor distinctive in your voice, but Gwen scrunched up her nose, shaking her head.

“Don’t worry, I’m not… stalking you,” She laughed nervously and stopped herself before history repeated itself. “I would’ve texted you, but my phone…” Now has a bullet hole. “Broke. Em Jay told me I could meet you here.”

You folded your arms across your chest, shifting your weight to one leg. “Well, I’m here, you’re here, so what’s up? Did you want to continue talking about how you don’t pay attention to me?” You joked, tilting your head.

Gwen winced slightly, cringing. “Actually, no.”

“Okay, good.”

“I came here to apologize. A real apology this time.”

You let your arms drop by your sides, interested and waiting for what she had to say. “I was really awkward. Painfully awkward, and I made you uncomfortable. So, I was hoping that we could maybe… start over again?” She held out her hand.

You briefly glanced down at it before glancing back up at her biting her lip anxiously. You giggled, nodding. “You’re so dramatic, dude.”

You shook her hand.

“So… we’re good?”

You smiled. “We’re good.” Gwen grinned back, her tooth gap having a peculiar effect in your stomach. She peeked at her watch a second time with the intent of leaving; but before she could say goodbye, you adjusted your backpack straps and spoke up. “Actually… now that you’re here, how about we go get something to eat?”

Gwen blinked, her finger coming up to point at her chest. “M-me? And you?” You agreed with your head, laughing.

“Obviously, you dummy. I don’t see anyone else here.” You playfully punched her arm and she looked down at the spot, her eyes narrowed.

Ah, well. There was no going back.

If there was one thing, one enemy that constantly played with Gwen’s sanity, time was a top-three candidate which popped into her head immediately. Popped wasn’t perhaps even the correct word, for it remained there everlastingly as a nagging fear— a deafening, continuous tick-tock reminding her of how little, or what a painstaking amount of time she had in her hands, and all the things she could or could not do during it. Being Spider-Woman, pages and pages of school work, the Mary Janes, Mary Jane and Gwen’s duty to answer her messages the moment she received them, her aspirations, her dad— it messed with her brain, tangled all the connections into an indestructible knot she could purely helplessly stare at. But when she read the time and realized how late it had become, the panic merely bubbled and spread in her chest. Rather you laughed and she felt the necessity to look away from the numbers to focus on you, despite the tick-tock still present and blaring like a tsunami alert in her ears.

You sat facing her in the restaurant booth, smirking as you bit into a french fry. “You know, I gotta say, you impressed me quite a lot with your drumming.” Gwen bashfully moved a piece of lettuce around her plate, propping her chin upon the palm of her hand.

“You’re not so bad yourself.” She shrugged, smiling at you. You maintained your gaze on her for a moment until you shook yourself out of your odd trance, lowering your head.

“Thanks for hanging out with me. I was tired of hanging out with myself, you know?”

Gwen furrowed her brows, adamant on fixing her look on the most boring stray lettuce ever. “Why? You’re a fun person.”

“Really? ‘Cause it doesn’t seem like that’s what you think about me.” You teased her, masking the undeniable bit of hurt.

Gwen’s finger’s movements came to a halt and she placed her hands on the table, leaning towards you. “What?! What do you mean?”

“Alright, then what do you really think about me?” You put your elbows on the hard surface and mimicked Gwen, a crooked smile adorning your features. Gwen bit her lip in thought, raising one shoulder.

“You’re cool.” She said simply, trying to appear nonchalant. An ‘oof’ slipped past your lips and you clutched onto your chest, dramatizing the insulted expression.

“That’s it? Just cool? I’m a bit hurt.”

Gwen rolled her eyes, laughing. “What else do you want me to say?”

“I dunno, last time you said I was— and I quote— ‘very, very pretty’” You recalled, using air quotes. Gwen scratched her eyebrow, left blank on what to reply because— oh, yeah right— she did, in fact, say that.

The smugness lingered on your face as you waited for her to break down and repeat herself, but she composed herself and cleared her throat. “Hey, it’s not fair if you’re the only one asking questions! Being interviewed is hard work, you know.” She raised her hands defensively, her eyebrows lifted. You immediately caught onto what she was doing and pointed an accusing finger at her.

“You’re avoiding my question.”

“Well, where’s the fun in knowing all the answers to the universe?”

You had to agree. But you leaned back and crossed one leg over the other, accidentally (or was it?) nudging her leg with your foot. “I don’t know. I like honesty.”

Oh dear, Gwen narrowed her eyes, her chest throbbing. “Hey—” The both of you jumped and looked at the source of the greeting— neither of you knew when exactly, but the waiter stood there with a polite smile, holding three menus close to his stomach. “Just letting y’all know that since Valentine’s Day is coming up, the milkshakes are on discount for couples.” Gwen leaned far away from the table, from you, and let out an uncomfortable chuckle.

“Oh, no, we’re not—”

“Oh, great!” You exclaimed and grabbed Gwen’s hand. “Do you want to share one, babe?”

Gwen froze, her shoulders and the hand you clutched onto tense, prickling at your touch. You looked at her attentively, and your lovey-dovey eyes left her stunned, grabbed onto her voice and trapped it in her throat— intimidated her. She had to give it to you, though, your acting could fool anyone or leave anyone wondering…especially her.

Seeing as the seconds continued to pass and she never replied, you chose to take it as a sign that she was following you and you glanced up at the waiter. “We’d like a vanilla milkshake, please.” You smiled.

Following the waiter’s departure, Gwen looked at you surprised. “I thought you liked honesty?” She laughed in disbelief, pretending to judge you intensely. You innocently picked up another fry, hiding your growing beam.

“Hey, I’m not gonna turn down a discount.”

Gwen giggled, shaking her head. “Fair enough. But you’re crazy.”

“But you still love me, right babe?” You smirked and lifted your connected hands. When Gwen realized she hadn’t let go yet, she first thought about pulling away. But she didn’t. Instead, she timidly squeezed your hand, forcing out a scoff.

“Right. Of course, babe.”

Finally, you unclasped your hands and Gwen’s hand slowly curled into a fist as she considered something. “Hey, where are you headed after this?” She rushed out. You tilted your head.

“Home. Why?”

She swallowed her nerves, thinking about dismissing her own question and shrugging it off. She had to get back home as well, after all.

But she didn’t want to yet.

“Can I walk you back?”

The walk back to your place dragged on for longer than usual, and you both pretended to act shocked, as if it’d been a glitch in the matrix and time ticked away slower than normal; but in the back of your heads, the two of you knew it’d been no accident, that you weren’t too engulfed into your conversation enough that you ended up taking the long way back home without noticing. Perhaps the two of you wandered longer, slowed down your pace much more than necessary— clung onto the moon and kept it in its place in the sky with your excuses so the night would stay, last as much as you wanted it to. Your efforts were partly successful, but of course, it had to come to an end eventually.

Your meetings didn’t, though. No, they were just getting started.

On Valentine’s Day, you might have taken advantage of another discount for couples, but no one really needed to know that. After that day and after Gwen finally got a new phone (it took her a few days to tell her dad, since she knew he wouldn’t be the happiest once he heard how her phone got destroyed in the first place), you sent her a message which she couldn’t deny made her insides feel a type of way: ‘If you ever need a fake date, don’t hesitate in calling me’.

And a winky face. She couldn’t forget the winky face.

But, in all truth, neither of you needed a ‘fake date’ as a reason to see each other. Every once in awhile, Thursday and Saturday after band practice, the two of you would abandon the girls and simply hang out. It didn’t matter where— sometimes you didn’t even have a place in mind, but somehow, gladly for your brain fearing rejection, Gwen would agree nonetheless. She didn’t think much about it until one afternoon, once you were done telling a bad joke that embarrassingly enough made her laugh, she realized she hadn’t checked the time. Not once.

During band practice, MJ and Glory noted that something had changed. Mainly because they soon realized they hadn’t witnessed any new embarrassing events between you two for them to laugh at behind your backs in a while, but your peeks at each other weren’t fearful anymore. They were now… something which they couldn’t place their finger on, but it was different enough for them to share a look and raise their eyebrows. Naturally, it didn’t take long before Em Jay had to jam herself into your affairs and asked you what you thought about Gwen, using as a justification that you had gotten a month and a half to get to know the band.

If Gwen could’ve gotten the opportunity to travel back in time to step in and prevent Em Jay from getting close to you with her blabbering mouth, she would’ve taken it immediately.

“When were you going to tell me you two fucking knew each other?!” MJ’s shriek hurt Gwen’s ears and left her speechless for a few moments after she walked into the room. Then, she succeeded in processing her question through her brain, and her face was now considerably paler than before.

“Hello to you too?”

MJ glared at her and walked away from her. While she moved around the many cables on the floor with her foot, Gwen dropped her backpack near the door, eyeing her. “How do you know?”

“I talked to Y/N.” She simply responded. Gwen huffed, unbelieving, and crossed her arms.

“And why did you talk to her?”

MJ gave her an obvious look. “Because, uh, she’s my bandmate? And my friend?” Gwen rolled her eyes and crouched down to take her drumsticks from her bag; meanwhile, Em Jay wasn’t over the topic yet. “I can’t believe you kept that from me. Unbelievable. I’m the only one who knows about your little spider secret!” She threw her hands in the air, as if her attitude wasn’t already dramatic enough. Gwen looked up at her with squinted eyes.

“Because you found out on accident. Did you also tell her about that?” She scoffed, standing up. Em Jay followed her to the drums, pursing her lips.

“No. She wouldn’t believe me anyway. But in my defense, Glory and Betty never do either, so you’ve literally got nothing to worry about.”

Gwen sat down on the drum stool. “We met last year, but we never became friends, though. We’re just acquaintances, I’m sorry. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Em Jay shrugged, her expression unchanging. “Yeah, I guess. Now I’m embarrassed for you again, though. You have to apologize to her.”

Gwen’s mouth hung slightly open. “I already apologized twice! Why would I do it again?!”

“You acted as if you didn’t know her when you first met! Like, who does that?” However, before Gwen could explain herself, you and Glory walked through the door, carrying your instruments plus a milkshake in your hand.

“Sup.” Glory nodded her head at the two girls. MJ shot finger guns at her and you walked up to Gwen before you stretched out your arm, holding the milkshake up to her face.

Gwen quirked a brow. “What’s this?”

“I got you a milkshake, babe.” You joked, smirking. Gwen’s cheeks and ears reddened and she hesitantly accepted it, her mouth twitching. “Since we haven’t had the chance to hang out in a while.”

MJ and Glory shared another of their looks, the one with which they telepathically communicated with. After you left Gwen, MJ kneeled down beside her, grinning knowingly.

“She told me she thinks you’re great, dude. Do whatever you want with that information.”

Gwen chose not to do anything with it. At least not for now.

Summer break came along to free Gwen from the suffocating hold school had around her neck, and more importantly, to give her time to focus on patrolling, the Mary Janes, and, well, you. Texting you in the morning, texting you at noon, texting you in the afternoon after she managed to stop a robbery at Junction Boulevard, texting you at night; and she couldn’t forget, of course, spending time with you whenever you could. How could she forget? It seemed almost impossible now, for you had implemented yourself into her routine, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint in what moment. She didn’t even come upon the realization until you left the state for a week, and she found herself waiting for your texts.

However, once you returned and the band reunited, Em Jay wasted no time and suggested having a ‘girl’s night’ at her place, claiming it wasn’t because she ‘missed you all, or anything, but for band-bonding’. She sent you and Gwen to the store to buy snacks (and, unsurprisingly for Gwen, winked at Glory as you two walked out of the door), and right now you both stood in front of the freezers, Gwen observing you as you put all your concentration, your tongue poking out of your mouth, on combining two sodas into an empty water bottle. Gwen gagged dramatically, laughter escaping her throat nonetheless. “That’s fucking gross, man.” She grimaced while you giggled maniacally.

The new beverage fizzled and you analyzed it closely, your eyes following the bubbles dancing in the liquid. “I can’t believe they sell bacon and ranch dressing soda here. This place is nuts.”

“And you’re mixing them together.”

“You could say I’m a scientist.”

Gwen scoffed at your statement, a grin lingering on her face. You sniffed the soda, and held it up to her face. “Do you want to try it?”

Gwen pushed the bottle away with her finger, wrinkling her nose. “You could have me at gunpoint and I still wouldn’t try it.”

You pouted, screwing the cap closed. “Okay, your loss, I guess. I’ll have it here just in case you change your mind.” You waved the bottle and placed it on a shelf before you kneeled down to inspect the bags of marshmallows. Gwen shook her head, her smile reaching her eyes.

“Trust me, I won’t.”

You picked up a bag, eyeing her sideways. “You know what?” You stole back her attention and she hummed, tilting her head. “You’re my favorite member in the band.”

Gwen’s face softened, although she wondered if she was crazy, or if her hands were all of a sudden clammy. “Me? Your… your favorite?” She asked, her voice small. You looked down, hoping she couldn’t see your timid expression.

“Yeah. I mean, no offense to Em Jay or Glory— they’re both awesome, but… I really like you, Gwen Stacy.” You shared eye contact, the corner of your mouth quirking up.

Gwen searched for something to distract herself with, and wound up snatching a random bag of gummies and pretending to read the ingredients. “Are you just trying to get me to pay for all of this?” She joked, gesturing to the casket of food. You let out a dramatic sigh, grumpily looking away from her.

“Aw, man, you caught me.” You made a sad face, but it was fleeting. “…But, no. I mean it. For real.”

Gwen bit her lip, her face the shade of the cherry candy in her hands. “Yeah, well… you’re pretty cool as well, Y/N L/N.” She copied you, shrugging. You groaned in annoyance, staring heavenward.

“Don’t give me that ‘you’re cool’ bullshit again.” You warned, mocking her voice and she giggled, placing the candy back in its place.

“What? It’s the truth!”

“Is that really all you think of me?” You feigned disappointment, playing with her.

No. Most definitely not. Gwen had grown to form many opinions about you other than solely ‘just cool’. Her thoughts varied. Sometimes she liked the way you made her laugh so effortlessly. Other times she couldn’t wrap her head around how, with you, the concept of time was both nonexistent and eternal, a concept you took its meaning away from, for it became irrelevant. She loved how you played bass, and how you gave it a voice, personified it into a dancing body that mesmerized her. She liked the way the corners of your eyes crinkled when you smiled, and how you tilted your head sometimes when you were confused like a puppy. She liked your way of talking, your hair, how you dressed, your posture, your face and the flaws in your skin.

Maybe she really liked you. And that scared her.

When she didn’t answer, you gave up and stood up, stretching your legs. “Okay, at least I’m glad you think I’m cool. It’s what I’d expect from my fake girlfriend.” You winked at her playfully, but she wasn’t fully paying attention now. “Okay, last question, though—”

Gwen sighed, her shoulders dropping. “What now?” You moved your arms behind your back, drawing a circle with the tip of your shoe on the floor.

“You never answered if you really think that I’m pretty.”

Gwen almost choked. She thought she had escaped that question months ago. Without thinking, her gaze landed on the soda hybrid sitting on the shelf and she grabbed it. You didn’t know what was happening in front of you until Gwen was sputtering after taking a big gulp of the drink. “What the fuck?! Why did you do that!” You gasped, your eyes wide and the laughter daring to climb up your throat.

Gwen stuck her tongue out and coughed, her face scrunching up with regret. “If I drink the soda then I don’t have to answer the question.” You couldn’t believe she was willing to do anything instead of giving you an answer.

You doubled over, cackling and holding your stomach. “Since when is that a rule?!”

“Since now.”

For the record, Gwen did think you were pretty. Very, very pretty.

As time went by, Gwen couldn’t help but stare during practice. Stare at your fingers, sliding down and up the neck with ease; your head, nodding along to the music, lost in it enough that you didn’t notice the obvious ogling from her part. And your face. She tried focusing on it most of the time, but it resulted a lot more difficult than she originally expected. You either moved it too much whilst you played, or you faced away from her since—well— she did play the drums.

There was also the third reason. The unsettling burn in her chest that sped up her breathing if her mind went too far, which occurred if she thought about you too much. Too deeply. But, God, did she try, and God, did she take advantage of every time you looked back at her, because you inexplicably dissolved that uneasiness in her.

Late at night, with your blankets wrapped around you tightly, you stared at your phone screen, mindlessly scrolling and double-tapping every picture you came upon. Not a minute passed before you opened a conversation, however, perhaps for the fourth time— not that it was anyone’s business, anyway— awaiting for another text. Gwen’s text, to be more specific. You didn’t want to come off as obsessive, but it had been an hour and thirteen minutes yet she hadn’t responded, and you… were missing her? You shook your head. Well. There was a possibility that you were. Maybe, you couldn’t get her off your mind, and maybe, you wished you could simply think about her and she’d integrate right there in your bedroom—

A knock on the window disrupted your train of thought, and as if on cue, a notification rang from your phone. ‘It’s me’, you read. Gwen had sent the message. “What the fuck?” You muttered, confused. Needing to see it for yourself, you jumped out of your bed and ran to your window before you unlatched the window lock and slid it open.

Of course, as the text message said, it was indeed Gwen, in your fire escape, and not a prank she elaborated to scare the life out of you. “Hi.” Was all she said. You tilted your head, your brows knitted together.

“Hi? Is that all you’re going to say?”

She thought for a second. “…How are you?”

“What are you doing in my fire escape?”

“I got locked out of my house.” She shrugged.

You let out a huff of air in disbelief, moving out of the way so she could climb inside. As she threw one leg over the sill, you placed your hands on your hips, shaking your head. “You get locked out of your house, and the first place that comes to your mind is my place?” You questioned, amused. Yet again, Gwen raised and dropped her shoulders. You went to close the window, but not before glancing out, imagining all the struggle she must’ve gone through to lower the ladder and then climb up five stories. “And how the hell did you even get all the way up here?” You muttered to yourself, but Gwen heard it.

“It’s a fire escape, my dear. They’re there to, you know, get out of the building so you don’t die if there’s a fire?”

You rolled your eyes and sat down on your bed. “Okay, just be quiet, ‘cause I don’t think my family would be very happy about having an unexpected visitor this late.” Guilt sculpted Gwen’s countenance.

“I mean… I can leave if you want—”

“No.” You said quickly, too fast for your liking, actually. You cleared your throat and smiled, patting the area beside you. “No, it’s alright. You can stay however long you want. They don’t have to find out.” You waggled your eyebrows jokingly. She was grateful the sole lamp rested on your bedside table, far away from you and its amber touch embracing you alone, for she didn’t need you seeing the blood rapidly rushing to her warm face.

Gwen sat down where you motioned her to, although kept some distance, and squeezed her hands resting on her lap together. “Thanks… it’ll just be a while. My dad had an emergency, and I really don’t know when he’ll be back, so…” She explained and popped her mouth after her sentence died out. You nodded understandingly, shuffling somewhat closer to her.

“I’m glad you came here. I wouldn’t want you staying out there and freezing to death. Plus, I was pretty bored.”

Gwen raised a brow. “Bored? Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?”

You scoffed with a faint smile. “Shut up, hypocrite. You were out so late that you got left out of your house.”

“I was busy!”

“Doing what? Selling drugs?”

“Maybe. You’ll never know.”

You began to fan yourself. “Ooh, a drug lord, so hot.”

Gwen scrunched up her nose, giving you a judgemental look. “Is that what turns you on? Drug lords?”

“Nah, that’s not quite it…” You glanced at her out of the corner of your eye before your gaze shifted to your lap, your fingers playing with the hem of your shirt.

Gwen didn’t know whether she was reaching— but oh. She didn’t know what courage the universe granted her, either, for she then focused on her nails and pretended to be uninterested. “Huh, then what does turn you on?” Your eyebrows almost reached your hairline in surprise, but you quickly composed yourself.

“Why do you want to know?” You asked, leaning closer to her. She shrugged one shoulder.

“I mean, you never know. What if a friend of mine wanted to ask you out?”

You bit your lip. “Depends. Is she cute?”

“I never specified their gender. And it’s theoretical.” She cleared up, raising one finger. You laughed, moving even closer to her.

“Well, then, I really like blue eyes.”

“…Really?” Her shy voice made your organs jump, which you didn’t know if it was normal or a serious medical condition you should get checked out. You hummed, holding yourself up with your arms behind you. “They’re cool, I guess.” Again, she tried to sound as if she didn’t care, or as if your comment didn’t make her as happy as it secretly did.

“Short hair is also pretty cute.” You added. “Especially if it’s a cool hairstyle.”

“A cool… a cool hairstyle, huh? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Gwen now knew how frustrated you felt when she avoided your questions. “What about you?” You looked at her, insecurity threatening to overpower your current confidence.

“Oh. I don’t know. Musicians are hot.” She showed you a crooked smile. You wanted to squeal, embarrassingly enough.

“Do you like bass guitar players?” A bold move, indeed. Gwen faked entering deep into thought.

“…Eh, I think drummers are hotter.”

You shoved her playfully, laughing. “Rude!”

“Hey, you asked what I liked.” You both giggled, struggling to keep your noises down, but eventually, your laughter dissipated and she played with her fingers. “But bass players are pretty cute, too.”

You gulped, Gwen’s shoulder touching yours spiking your nerves. “Yeah, well, I agree that drummers are cute, too.”

You both glanced down at each other’s lips, holding your breaths. However, before you could do anything, Gwen got to her feet. “You should try getting some sleep. I don’t want you being sleep deprived because of me.” She laughed nervously, taking off her sneakers.

Disappointment invaded your brain, but admittedly, your eyes did feel a lot heavier than before. “What are you gonna do?” You questioned, remembering her situation. You definitely were more worried than her, who was unfazed.

“I’ll just wait I guess.”

“You should catch some Z’s as well.”

Gwen didn’t argue. She climbed into bed with you, although insisted she didn’t need any covers or blankets since she was just going to take a nap. After that, you couldn’t resist the sleep threatening to spread through your system and you passed out. It felt like minutes passed at most, until you were suddenly gently shaken awake.

You fought to open your eyes before you squinted and looked up at whoever had woken you up. Slowly, the indistinguishable figure transformed into Gwen’s apologetic smile dimly lit by your bedside lamp.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

You groaned, rubbing your bleary eyes and sitting up. “What time is it?” You croaked out. Gwen squinted to discern the numbers in her watch.

“Two in the morning.”

“Two in the morning?!” She nodded, laughing quietly. “Do you have to go?” You would’ve been embarrassed by the heartbreak in your voice, but you were too out of it to dwell on it.

“Yeah, but it’s okay, you can go back to sleep. I just wanted to let you know.”

You didn’t quite process what was going on until you saw her backing away to the window. Suddenly fully awake, your eyes widened and you threw your covers off of you. “What are you doing?”

Gwen opened the window and glanced back at you, lifting a brow. “Leaving?”

You yawned, shaking your finger at her. “No, no, no—” You rubbed your eye and laughed at her. “How about I lead you out of the door like a normal person?”

Gwen blushed, slowly closing the window. “Ah, well, I guess that’s an option.”

“I don’t want to wake anyone up, though, so just stay quiet, alright?” Gwen simply nodded and you wrapped your hand around her wrist, guiding her towards your bedroom door. You opened it as silently as you could, holding your breath, almost afraid that if you breathed, the entire house would be blown away. There’s only darkness, but you walked into it unbothered, while Gwen followed you like a loyal animal. Now that her sight was gone, she fully took in your touch as your soft hold tugged on her arm. You suddenly stopped and she mimicked you, patiently waiting for the sound of the unlocking of the door. However, all she picked up was the shuffling of your feet before you held in your breath. Then, she felt your other hand grab hers.

“Gwen?” You asked quietly, your voice so timid the darkness and the silence could’ve easily engulfed it. Without the view of your face, your skin against hers seemed too much, nearly unbearable.

“…Y-Yeah?”

“Can you see me?”

She shook her head, until she recalled that if she couldn’t see you, neither could you see her and the gesture was nothing more than useless. “Not really.”

“Okay. Cool.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

You giggled, and it didn’t knock over the walls, but it most definitely almost did her body. “No. Do you want me to?”

“Eh… no, thanks.”

“Ok, dork.” You chuckled, but it instantly came to an end. Your breathing wasn’t steady anymore— it trembled, sounded heavy. Then, out of nowhere: “If I kiss you, are you going to run away?”

Gwen just blinked. Despite the darkness, white dots exploded in her vision. “W-what?” Her voice almost failed her.

“Can I kiss you?”

In the room, there was nothing more. It was just your nervous breaths, your loud fridge, and Gwen’s heart. Her heart at full volume, pumping fast, doing its best to keep her awake, sane, on her feet. It was just you and her. Solely you, your gentle hands, and her. She blinked again.

“Okay.”

Your touch disappeared but then reappeared on her cheek, and absentmindedly, she placed her hand over yours. Your thumb, shaking, searched for her mouth, until it successfully brushed against her lips. Gwen gulped, her skin tingling as your breath fanned over it.

It was just you, her, and your lips. Your lips and her own.

You both remained with your eyes closed after your lips lost contact, although it didn’t make a difference in any way. But Gwen’s eyelids fluttered open, and a beam began to blossom.

“I’m glad you didn’t kill me.”

You kissed her a second time before she left.

It would be a criminal understatement to say that Gwen freaked out after she arrived back home. When she made the decision to start letting new friends into her life for good at the beginning of the year as another New Year’s resolution, she took a gigantic step. She then spoke to MJ, which was a leap in itself, and you joined the band. She stumbled, balanced herself on one foot at the edge for a while, but eventually, she managed to jump to the third step once she waited outside your school and apologized to you. She was convinced that would be it; the final and toughest stride, because if she managed to get past through all the previous ones, then it had to mean she was ready, right?

She was just finding out she was wrong, though.

The plan was to make a friend. A friend and nothing more nor nothing less. However, without being fully conscious of it, she continued to sprint up the stairs, past what her original intention was. And now, as she stared so far up at the next colossal step— at the feelings that kept growing for you, at your kiss, at you— she felt herself tipping backwards. There was no way she could climb that. She’d only slip and plummet down to her death.

Somehow, though, when you two agreed on meeting up at an arcade two days later, she decided she might as well go for it.

Gwen eyed the time for what she felt was the millionth time that day and her mask muffled the groan that followed. She had at least thirty minutes left of patrol and— she knew it was a dramatic statement— she didn’t know if she would be able to make it through them. I could call it a day earlier, she thought. It had been the most uneventful day lacking any major criminal activity, after all: all she did was help a little kid get back to his father and stop the usual theft, but other than that, she spent the day swinging around and even had the time to take a picture with a fan.

Her phone began to vibrate. You were calling her. “Hey… you…kid…” She cringed. How was she supposed to greet you from now on? Things weren’t the same.

She heard you snort at her hello. “Hi. Just wanted to tell you that I’m on my way.”

Gwen’s brows snapped together and she checked the time one more time. “Already? You’re early.”

“Yeah, I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to get started earlier so I don’t have to walk back home too late, but also so I can beat your ass and get more tickets than you.”

“Are you challenging me?”

“Not really, because I already know I’m gonna win.”

“Don’t sound so confident,” Gwen smiled and lied down on her back, staring up at the sky. “But if you do win, you better get me a prize.”

“Why would I get the loser a prize? I’m gonna get myself something cool and big and rub it in your face.”

Gwen scoffed but giggled nonetheless. All of a sudden, you went dead silent and she sat up, perking her ears for any further noise. “Y/N? Are you still there?”

It took you a few seconds to answer. “I just heard something weird.”

Gwen’s face drained of color and she jumped up, the tingling present in the back of her head. “Are you alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Get out of there. Now. Find somewhere that’s crowded.”

“Don’t be so paranoid. I bet it’s nothing. Could you imagine if I, like, got murdered, though?” You laughed nervously, trying to ease both of your nerves but Gwen’s sting in her head was only strengthening. “How tragic. Anyway—”

Your voice halted. A distant strangled cry left the speaker. “Y/N?!” Gwen called for your attention, frantic, her heart nearly breaking out of her chest. Something was not right.

“Hold on.”

It was all you said before you ended the call. She wasted no time nor hesitated— she ran to the end of the rooftop and jumped off, shooting a web. She swung as fast as she could, to the point where her aim nearly missed a building. Her thoughts were rushed, hectic, created the worst scenarios so vivid the bile began to make her way up her throat and she had to blink the dampness of her eyes away.

Hiding behind a dumpster nearing the end of an alleyway, you held your phone up to your ear, your legs aching from the speed with which you ran away. You could barely breathe. It was just a messy attempt of ragged breaths that despite how hard you tried to make them quiet, you simply couldn’t. “Please hurry up.”

“We’re trying to get there as fast as we can, miss. Are you hurt?”

“N-No, I’m fi—” A loud bang shook the dumpster next to you and you involuntarily yelped in fear. Your hand flew up to cover your mouth, but it was too late.

The woman and the man who chased you quickly found you, and the guy gripped your arm, yanking you out of your hiding spot. “What the fuck did you see?!” He spat in your face, holding you trapped against his body with his arm choking your neck. “Tell us or you’re fucking dead, hear me?!”

You sputtered and your fingernails scratched his arm, trying to get him off of you. When you realized you weren’t getting anywhere, your eyes flickered down to your hand. You blindly moved it up to his face, and once you grazed his eyelashes, you dug your fingers into his eye with all your strength.

He cried out and let go of you. Without thinking, you spun around and went in to punch whatever area of his face you hoped your hit landed on. But he recovered quickly and caught your fist in mid-air. All you could do was stare at him in horror. You didn’t quite process what was coming at you until he struck your eye.

“Bad move, kid.” The woman said and you glanced up at her with watery eyes, shielding the throbbing left side of your face. She took out her gun, pointed it at you, and your heart dropped.

You had lost all hope, until a ‘thwip!’ echoed in between the walls.

Out of nowhere, a web stuck to the barrel of the gun and, in the blink of an eye, snatched it from the woman’s grasp. Spider-Gwen came into your blurry vision before she spun the gun and smacked it onto the stranger’s head.

She stumbled backwards, grasping her head. Meanwhile, Gwen shot two webs at the wall behind the older girl. Holding onto the strings tightly, she pushed herself off the ground and knocked her down with a kick at her jaw. As she webbed her to the wall, her eyes suddenly widened. She swiftly ducked under, dodging a punch coming from the man behind her. Crouching down, she swiped her leg under him and sent him down.

After he fell on the ground, Gwen towered over him, her fists shaking with fury. As soon as he opened his eyes, she drew her arm back and smashed her knuckles into his nose, a painful crack resonating clear and loud.

She panted loudly, her chest rising and falling quickly as she trapped the now unconscious man’s hand to the gravel. She continued to observe him, her lip twitching, the sirens approaching in the background, until she heard a dry sob behind her. She looked back, only to see you backed up into the corner, hugging yourself.

Gwen ran up to you and kneeled down in front of you, holding your hand. “H-Hey, hey, you’re okay now.” She shushed you, her hand almost coming up to your cheek until she stopped herself. She wanted to stay with you and ask more questions, but two police cars parked themselves at the start of the alleyway. Her heart screamed at her not to. It cursed at her, begged for her feet not to move. However, she looked down at you one last moment and she shot a web up at the sky, zipping out of there.

She watched over you for an hour and a half as you talked to the police, and then when the paramedics attended you. She couldn’t stay long, though, since you furrowed your brows and then glanced up, your sight focusing on her. She instantly hid away, deciding that it’d be best if she just waited at your apartment.

Gwen tried telling herself that you were now fine. She saw you there, not missing a limb or anything, breathing and alive. But despite that, she couldn’t rest in peace. The image of you in the corner— your entire body shaking, your rough appearance, the tears that abandoned your eyes. Broken. It wouldn’t fuck off despite how many times she told it to.

She couldn’t help but recall Peter Parker’s face as she shakily held his corpse in her arms. And then she remembered why she had given up on letting anyone get close to her in the first place.

She had lost track of how long she’d been staring at your window. The window which she climbed through just three nights ago when she got locked out of her place. The night your warm smile greeted her. The night you first kissed her. The night that, perhaps if it hadn’t occurred— if she hadn’t forgotten to take her key with her, or she had left her window open, if she had gone to Em Jay’s, Glory’s, or even Betty’s place instead of yours— if she hadn’t been in the picture, you wouldn’t be in the situation that you were in now.

Because of her, you could’ve lost your life.

She’d texted you— as Gwen— asking if you were alright. It didn’t help that you straight up lied and said that you weren’t feeling alright so you decided to skip the night. At last, the light turned on in your room and she snapped out of a trance. It didn’t take long before she was trying to look through your window as discreetly as she could, her heart starting yet again with its running when she made out your silhouette. It moved around the room, until it stopped in front of the window. To her nightmare, your figure grew bigger as it came closer and closer, and opened the window. When she saw your face, her insides twisted.

You nearly screamed as soon as you saw Spider-Woman outside your window. You jumped back. It was the Spider-Woman. Unbelieving, you blinked at her— a bad idea, you then realized, considering your bruised eye.

“…Spider-Woman?”

“Uh, hi there.”

You touched your head, closing your eyes. Maybe the blow you received was worse than you thought. “Am I hallucinating?”

Gwen laughed weakly. “Nope. I’m very real right now.”

“Oh, okay.” You stared at her, disoriented, a million questions running through your brain. “Can I— can I ask what you are doing here?” You chose to ask first.

“I, uh, wanted to check up on you after the incident that happened earlier. I didn’t really have time to say anything.” It wasn’t fully a lie. You nodded slowly, tilting your head.

“How’d you know where I live?”

She couldn’t judge you for asking so many questions, but God, coming up with a lie on the spot was turning out to be problematic for her. “Uh… spider-sense?”

She tried.

You were yet more perplexed. “Spider what?”

“It’s a thing… I have…” She tapped her head. Again, it wasn’t a full-blown lie. Thankfully, you didn’t continue budging and instead hummed, nervously playing with the hem of your shirt. “You don’t have to answer— only if you want to talk about it, but…what happened?” She asked quietly, afraid of your reaction. Your body went rigid and you hesitated.

“I was going to meet up with a girl I like when I heard and then saw someone getting beaten to death.” Her white eye lenses grew big. “The two out of the three people doing it saw me and began to chase me. I tried to hide, but they eventually caught up to me.” You whispered.

Her fingers touched her mouth. “Oh God… I’m so… I’m so sorry. It’s my fault.”

You raised a brow. “…What do you mean? You saved me.”

“But I…” Gwen choked up and you furrowed your brows. She checked her watch, her body so weak she was surprised she was standing up. “I have to go. I’m sorry you had to go through that. You don’t deserve it.”

Before you could reply, she scurried away from your window and leaped off the fire escape. You watched as she swung away and eventually disappeared, feeling hazy and more puzzled than ever.

After she thought she had gotten far away enough, Gwen dropped down on a random rooftop, stumbling and falling to her knees. She felt trapped inside the mask. Almost as if it were stuck, permanently sewn to her skin, and if she tried to rip it off, she’d tear every last inch of skin off with it. She was the mask. She was Spider-Woman, and would forever be. It’s a responsibility she was doomed with for eternity unless she lost a fucking limb or her own life, and there’s nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t simply walk away, or dispose of all the criminals and villains, all the calamities and traps hurled at her which sent her defenseless body flying, hurting it, along with everyone else in the way. Everyone else like Peter. Peter and now you.

Her trembling hand ripped off her mask, her wet face nearly freezing as the wind attacked her skin. She took out her phone and searched for your contact, wiping her nose with her gloves. “Hey…” She typed, but stopped. Keep going, she urged herself. Just fucking write. Her thumb hung above the keyboard, her teary eyes fixed on the cursor blinking, taunting her.

“If you don’t do this, I’m going to hate you for the rest of my fucking life, Gwen.” She hissed at herself and hiccuped after. It didn’t matter if you hated her. It had to be done.

You inspected with a frown at your bruised eye in the mirror, your fingers ghosting over the swollen skin. But your grimace vanished and a faint grin took over your features when you received a message and read Gwen’s name. Rapidly, you opened the text, the overwhelming heaviness burning in your chest immediately flickering out.

It was only temporary, though.

Gwen read the message one last time, and her heart dropped down to her stomach the instant she saw you had opened it. Her own words repeated themselves in her head, slashing her skin with regret, mercilessly cutting her heart apart into unfixable bits.

“I’ve been thinking lately, and I think it’d be best if we’re just bandmates. You’re cool, so I hope that there are no hard feelings between us.”

She turned off her phone and closed her eyes, letting out a long breath. Somehow, she still hated herself.

You didn’t reply. Not a word, no phone call. Nothing. You explained to MJ and Glory what had happened and missed band practice for a week, saying you wanted your eye to heal as much as possible. You never told Gwen anything, though. The girls were in charge of doing it, and she had to act surprised and repress the regret that stabbed at her. Glory was shocked she wasn’t the first to find out and she questioned her about it, but Gwen solely shrugged and forced out a laugh when MJ joked that getting hurt was a curse running for bassists in the band.

The week had finally passed by and you came to Thursday rehearsal. You still greeted Glory with your secret handshake and MJ with the usual hug, as enthusiastic as always. But you ignored Gwen, and she didn’t fight against it. She had now made a promise to herself she couldn’t break.

You’d been practicing for an hour longer than usual, stuck on the same song since Em Jay would stop in the midst of it and insist that you started over again. Everyone knew who was— or, to be more correct— were the culprits, but no one dared to speak up. MJ broke away from the mic, rubbing her face in frustration, and raised her fist in the air to end the playing. “Okay, that sucked. Yet again. But it’s okay, let’s start over from the top.”

Glory let her fingers run down the keyboard, creating what you could say was the loveliest catastrophe of a melody, and sighed. “Em Jay, I think we should take a break—”

“No, no, no, we’ll get it right this time. Let’s just get it over with, okay?” No one agreed, but she continued nonetheless. “One, two, three!”

You began again. At first, no one was messing up, and Em Jay’s hope returned. However, a minute into the song, both the drums and the bass went their own ways and invented their own pace, and MJ turned around, her hands on her hips. “I didn’t want to say it, but you two really need to get your shit together.” She pointed at Gwen and then at you.

Gwen glanced at you. “Y/N’s a bit late.” You opened your mouth in disbelief and faced her.

“You’re going way too fucking fast!”

“No, that’s the right tempo.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Uh, yeah, it is.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Since when?”

“Since always!” Gwen exclaimed, sharing your scowl. “I’m the one who’s been here since the beginning, I think I know better.”

You couldn’t keep your mouth shut any longer.

“Shut the fuck up, you don’t know shit, okay?!” You yelled at her, taking an intimidating step closer to her. When MJ noticed Gwen gripping her drumsticks hard, she tried to intervene.

“Guys—”

“Leave it, Mary Jane.” Gwen warned her, her face stern, and MJ stared at her, expressionless.

“It’s Em Jay.”

“I don’t fucking care!”

“Yeah, you very clearly don’t, huh?” You said, laughing without humor and stepping even closer to Gwen. “You don’t know shit, and you don’t give a shit about anyone. It’s scary how you pretend to care about someone, but you don’t. You just fucking use them to keep yourself entertained for a while, until you get bored and then decide to leave.” You were now right in front of her, and you pointed an accusing finger into her face. Gwen tensed her jaw, fighting hard against the wetness of her eyes.

“That’s not true.”

“Oh, don’t fucking lie, Gwen.” You glared at her, shaking your head. “Don’t act like I don’t know you.”

You both shared eye contact for a few moments, and as Gwen began to blink hard, you scoffed and took a step back. “Whatever.” You muttered and turned away. “I think I’m done for the day.”

The room stayed dead silent while you packed your things up. Glory and Em Jay communicated with each other through their gazes, both equally as confused, but Gwen stuck her sight to the floor, her lip trembling as she curled her hand so tightly around the drumstick it snapped. You slammed the door shut, and Em Jay cleared her throat, biting her nails.

“What the fuck just happened?” MJ and Glory moved their stares to Gwen. “Gwen?”

Gwen rubbed her eye, sighing. “What?” She mumbled. MJ approached her slowly, frowning.

“You got something to tell us?”

Gwen shrugged. “Maybe.” Glory raised her brows. “I messed up long ago.”

“She seems too mad for it to have been long ago.” MJ laughed nervously, but Gwen wasn’t taking any of it anymore. She stood up and pulled her hair, groaning.

“God, Em Jay, this wouldn’t have happened if you had just fucking stopped trying so hard to make our friendship work. You don’t even care about me making friends, you just wanted to feel good about yourself for helping poor little me!” She shouted, nudging MJ with her drumsticks. Em Jay remained quiet, visibly hurt, and hugging herself.

“Gwen.” Glory repeated, her strict voice shocking both Gwen and MJ. “I think you hurt someone. And I think you owe them an apology.”

Gwen took a moment to breathe, and that was when she realized what she had done. She looked at MJ and grabbed her hand, squeezing it. “I’m sorry, Em Jay. I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. Thank you for trying. I should’ve tried harder as well.” She whispered sadly.

The corner of MJ’s mouth quirked upwards, and gripped her hand back. “Thanks. But I think you’ve got one more apology left.”

It felt like February all over again. Back when MJ called her to tell her the same thing, and one day later, Gwen waited outside your school. However, this time, she knew she had to apologize for real. For the correct reason.

Gwen let her drumsticks fall to the floor and she jumped over the cables. Speeding out of the door, she hoped she still had the chance to catch up to you and hadn’t lost you again. To her relief, you were at the end of the corridor, in front of the opening elevator doors when she called out your name. Your ears perked up, but your expression hardened when you saw her running up to you. “Y/N, listen—”

“Fuck off.” You laughed and moved to get into the elevator, but Gwen grabbed your arm and spun you around.

“No!” You stared at her, shocked. “N-No, I’m not going to… fuck off. Not this time.” Her eyes were big, begging.

You clutched her wrist and pulled her hand away from you. “I think it’s too little too late, Gwen. I’ve had enough.”

“I made a mistake.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Just let me talk, please.”

“No.” You shushed her, breathing heavily. “Let me talk, okay? Let me tell you about this little mistake of yours. Not only did you act as if you didn’t know me months ago and said we were never friends when I joined the band, but you acted as if you hadn’t already done this. You played with my feelings. Not once, but apparently fucking twice! And you didn’t even apologize!”

Your voice broke as you finally let out your repressed feelings, and you hated yourself for it. You despised yourself for still listening to her, for still caring about her.

You left Gwen speechless. “You wanted to talk, and now I’m giving you the chance. Say something.” You begged, prepared to be let down. But she looked up at you and let out a shaky sigh, sniffing.

“I don’t… I don’t know. I thought I liked you a year ago when we first met. I really did. The feelings were there, b-but…”

“If you never liked me, then why’d you come back?” You asked, broken-hearted. It hurt Gwen to see how much pain she had caused you, all because she was too much of a coward to own up to her feelings.

“That’s the thing.” She breathed out, shrugging. “Maybe I do.”

Your face softened. “What?”

“Don’t make me explain it, please.”

“You have to.”

“I can’t.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose, groaning. “For fuck’s sake.” Gwen shook her head and her shoulders began to shake.

“I can’t…”

“Why not—”

“Because it scares me!” She cried out, a sob finally breaking free from her system. You frowned.

“Why?”

“B-Because…” She wiped her nose, struggling to spit it out. “I really like you. I really do. And I don’t know if I’m ready for something like that. I can’t lose you.”

You gently grabbed her shoulder, while your other hand held her chin. “I’m not going to run away from you. I’m here.”

It wasn’t as simple as that. “I can’t.” She said again, even if she didn’t want to let go of your touch. You bit your lip.

“You can’t or you don’t want to?”

She didn’t know what to answer. Your hand slowly sneaked down to hold hers, and you looked at her for permission, your expectations not as high. But she clutched your hand hard. “You can do it, Gwen. You can’t spend the rest of your life like this. If you do, you will lose everyone.” You smiled sadly. You quieted down, pondering, but eventually, you breathed out and closed your eyes. “I really like you, too. I always did. And if I have to wait, it’s okay. Just… don’t disappear again, okay?”

Gwen analyzed your face. She wondered what you must have looked like that night back when you kissed her. And since she hadn’t done anything right before, she wondered whether she could try again.

In a second, she squeezed her eyes shut and pecked your lips. You were caught off guard as your fingers came up to touch your mouth. “Nah, you’re right. I think it’s about damn time.” She bit back her smile.

She took the big step.

#spider gwen x reader #spider gwen x you #gwen stacy x reader #gwen stacy x you #spider man: into the spider verse #sm:itsv #fem! reader #gwen stacy imagine #gwen stacy one shot #fan fiction #marvel

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power-rings · 3 years

Text

A Different Life

50 Years Ago...

Of what Shadow could see was all just a blur of colors as his escape pod entered the Earth’s atmosphere, the very thing that was keeping him from burning alive was falling to pieces as it continued to descend...very rapidly.

The events before he escaped his home - The Space Colony A.R.K, it was literally hell. Gunfire after gunfire, his Creator disappearing from his eyesight within seconds after they were ambushed. Why was this happening? He never understood. Among all of that, Maria was under fire as well. He had hollered from his escape capsule for her to get to safety. Before he knew it, she had been shot. In the chest. Words were exchanged between the two, and before he knew it, his escape pod was released. Was she... gone? Never to be seen again?

Shadow braced for impact as the ground grew closer and closer. He blacked out momentarily, he shook his head as his ears started to ring. Cringing in pain, he glanced up to the blue sky. The hedgehog would be awed by the beauty if the circumstances were different. He scanned his surroundings, it looked like he was on some kind of Island... soon he found the strength to roam the island. There was no sign of another escape pod. Perhaps she landed elsewhere... he quietly hoped. The sound of commotion distracted his search for his companion. There were more men dressed in the same attire that attacked their home. A low growl escaped the hedgehog. What did they want?!

“Commander! The lifeform just landed on the Island. Do you wish for us to capture?” Shadow’s ears pinned back, prepared for a fight. “Yes, sir! We’ll need backup...” The human tensed up, as he raised his gun, loaded and ready to fire. “Don’t do anything stupid.” He muttered, as more men in uniform joined him. He fired a shot at the target, Shadow quickly dodged, and ran in the other direction. Forgetting there was a unwelcoming sea. He may be the ultimate lifeform, but he did not know anything about the ocean, except the creatures that lived in it. He whirled around to face his enemy. Of course, they were quick to charge at him before he made a move. With the training he took at home, he was able to dodge every blow; only a few bullets brushing against his arm. The last soldier he kicked away, while another approached Shadow from behind...jabbing something sharp in his neck. Shadow swung a fist at the man, making contact with his jaw, he felt his neck. Odd. No blood? What did... oh wait, there it is. Everything around him started to spin out of control, he shook his head with no prevail. Before he knew it, he was shaking, and on his hands and knees while they gathered around him. Everything went completely black. He was out cold.

When he woke up hours later... or was it the next day? Damn, at this point he didn’t care. What woke him was a familiar voice... Prof. Gerald Robotnik, better known to him as his creator.

He was angry.

“This was not the deal, at all! She had nothing to do with this!” Gerald shouted from down the hall. “He... listen! Damn you.. I built that place to protect this world. I created...-”

“What about....” whatever was said, it was inaudible to Shadow’s ears.

“...I did exactly as you selfish fools asked for, and paid me millions for. What I get in response? My granddaughter was shot for Christ’s sake! I see I made a mistake striking a deal with the likes of you....”

If anything else was spoken between the two, was muttered to Shadow as they moved to another room further from the one he was currently in. There were so many questions he had, what did his creator mean? They paid him? For what exactly?! Quite frankly, he only wanted to know if Maria was still alive.

“Prison Island, really?” The elderly Professor scoffed, disgusted with the current circumstances.

“A perfect place for criminals, don’t you think?” The commander eyed the shorter human.

“I am not a criminal.”

“That’s what they all say.” Prof. Gerald glared, “besides, you should be grateful before you leave this world... that your granddaughter’s life was spared. Oh, need I remind you before you blame my soldiers, she did intervene in the capture of Project: Shadow. Therefore, my soldier did his job like trained beforehand.”

“She’s still a child!” Gerald was furious about his last statement, despite his hate against the commander, he was relieved to hear Maria was alive. The commander guided him to her room where she was lying in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV, and various machines to keep her stable. She was still out of it, but all her vitals read normal.

“In the upcoming days, you will be granted a trial. Lucky you. If you wish, you can say your goodbyes to your granddaughter. In the chair where you’ll be spend your last hour. Whatever you say will be recorded for legal purposes.”

“Do you have any questions, Professor?”

“I just want to see my granddaughter.” Gerald didn’t fight his consequences anymore, he had his plan ready for the years to come and that involved his greatest creation. He had requested to have some of his former colleagues to join him in the lab that he use to work at a lot before this island became a prison. He told Maria he loved her, and as him and the other Professors watched her vitals, “you’re gonna go to sleep for awhile, ok? Once you wake up... maybe you’ll still see the beauty in this world. Somehow.” He held her hand, “I love you, my dear..” tears stung his eyes. Young and innocent. She was so blinded to the sins of this world. Oh how he wished he had felt that way. Maria looked up at him, there was a hint of panic in her eyes before falling into a deep slumber. The last thing he requested before being sent away to his death sentence, he wanted her to rest someplace a little more comfortable instead of the eerie Island they were on.

Shadow too was preserved in a capsule, but remained on Prison Island because G.U.N was wary of how dangerous Shadow could be. He was sealed underneath the prison, to be remained untouched until the appropriate time came.

Today...

Approximately, 30 years later Maria was found in Mystic Ruins when a group of people were investigating, soon she was taken to the hospital to be checked out. She was perfectly healthy...

Maria searched the room, there was a t.v displaying the news, info about the recent events around the world. The longer she watched the more she grew confused. How long has she been asleep? What happened to Shadow? And grandpa? Neither of which she knew the answers to. She got up from her bed, and stumbled to the windows, tugging at the cord to open the blinds. She was blinded by the sunlight. Once her eyes adjusted, she took in the surroundings and was in awe. Not exactly the beautiful forest she saw in books, instead she was welcomed to the busy life of the city.

Hours, days and weeks passed by and Maria remained in the hospital, the doctors in awe of how she was still healthy after being asleep for roughly 30 years. They ran tests, poked and prodded her. Finally after the second week, the doctors left her be. Then, the cops came to ask her questions. She vaguely remembered much except her former home, save for the hellish events that almost took her life. Of course, she remembered her best friend... Shadow. But why wasn’t he in the hospital with her? No one knew who she was talking about, of course. Eventually, she was released from the hospital and sent to a foster family had a close connection to the local orphanage. They of course welcomed her with loving arms.

As she grew accustomed to her now current life on Earth, Maria attended the school located in Station Square, she fit right in with her classmates. She told them stories about living in space, but they didn’t believe her. Unfortunately, she had no evidence to prove her story. She would look at pictures they shared of space at school, then she would burst out where the A.R.K was located (to them it looked like a bright star). Her adopted parents listened to these stories, but was unaware of the existence of this creation.

No one took her seriously when she brought the subject up, that was until her “parents” met with her teacher at a local café to discuss her progress in school. “Yeah, she speaks about this place called... The Space Colony A.R.K, I’m not sure where she got this from-” They were interrupted by a tall gentleman in a uniform.

“Excuse me? Did you just say the Space Colony A.R.K?”

Slightly frightened, the wife confirmed his suspicions.

“...Strange. What’s your daughter’s name?“

“Maria...” The male at the table squinted at the taller individual.

“...R-Robotnik?!”

“Why does her last name concern you?!” He stood up from the table, his eyes accusing the stranger.

“Mr. Tower, what the hell? Leave them be. We must head back to headquarters.” The other gentleman joined them, their uniforms similar. This so called Mr. Tower muttered something under his breath before leaving with the soldier.

Roughly 10 years later, Shadow was found on Prison Island by Gerald Robotnik’s grandson...well-known as Dr.Eggman, his greatest plan was starting to unfold...

Author’s note:

chapter 2 is coming hopefully. Ok it’s bedtime... Haha

#shadow the hedgehog #maria robotnik #sonicthehedgehog #myfanfiction #mywriting

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atamascolily · 3 years

Text

Tyrant’s Test. Okay, we’re almost done here.

We open with Chewie on Kashyyyk having family time! I may re-read that section because I want to do a Kashyyyk thing later and there’s not that much detail in the TTT. Right now, I’m interested in Luke stuff.

. It’s impossible to work when the Current is in chaos. And it’s intensely uncomfortable to remain connected when the Current is carrying so much pain.

This is interesting - so the Fallanassi live the way they do by necessity as much as choice - they cannot function without peace and quiet.

We start to see more of Akanah’s perspective and realize she’s manipulating Luke to keep him with her. At least Luke is aware of it?

But that threat was also nakedly manipulative, and his reflexive resentment allowed him both to see the emotional blackmail and to resist it.

It was not that he gave no credence to the threat. Akanah’s conduct on Atzerri had made clear that she was perfectly capable of striking out on her own when her interests so dictated. But he had no compromise or concession to offer her. The old, familiar demon of Duty had reentered his consciousness during the conversation with the shipwright, and he could do nothing else until he either answered to his conscience or silenced it.

There was no point in seeking a rapprochement with Akanah until Luke knew his own mind—until he knew if he could allow himself to continue the journey.

Again, DUALITY. fuck. “my way or the highway” - LITERALLY.

For the question gnawing at Luke was not whether Leia wanted his help, but whether she needed it. If his presence might mean the difference between triumph and defeat, then he would go to her—as she had come to him in his darkest moment, aboard the clone Emperor’s flagship.

Leia had pulled him back from the precipice of the dark power, and joined her power to his to defeat Palpatine. If she had not been willing to sacrifice herself and the child inside her in confronting the reborn Emperor, Luke would never have broken the grip of the dark side—and the history of the intervening years would have been written with the pen of tyranny. He could not have done it alone.

But having seen not only the great strength in her heart but also the Jedi power she could summon, Luke was all the more loath to volunteer himself as a rescuer. He knew that Leia had within her extraordinary resources of will and power—resources she had of late become reluctant to draw upon. Luke thought that he was much of the reason, with both his example and his presence creating disincentives. It was important that she find that strength again.

It seemed to Luke that Leia had neglected, even abandoned, her own training, and that her training of the children had become unbalanced, with the disciplines of warrior and weapon excised as if they were dispensable. Luke had not spoken of it with her, but from what he had seen, it was almost as though Leia hoped to delay, training the children as Jedi clerics rather than as Jedi Knights—as if the path before her, the path he had followed, promised to take her somewhere she did not want to go.

It was her choice to make. Her destiny was no more clear to him than it was to her. But whatever that destiny was, it seemed that she was fighting it rather than following it.

And it was certain she would learn nothing from an errant Knight’s well-intentioned but unnecessary rescue—if she would even allow it to happen. Knowing her streak of aristocratic, self-reliant pride, Luke was not at all confident he could count on her to ask for help, even if she needed it—not after the fight they had had the night he left Coruscant.

No, those around her, the others who loved her, would urge Luke to return to her side, no matter what the circumstances. And Leia herself would insist that he stay away, no matter what the circumstances. It was essential that Luke make his own assessment of the situation, that the decision be his alone. And it was better that Luke stay out of sight and out of reach until the decision was made.

Hey, a Dark Empire acknowledgment! And also, again, duality: either/or. Either Leia saves herself or Luke saves her. There’s no middle ground, no compromise, not alternatives. Sigh.

As always, there were hundreds of blind messages—love letters and propositions, requests for personal favors, questions from amateur and would-be Jedi, the occasional diatribe from an Imperialist stubbornly resisting the idea that his world had changed.

Luke almost never looked at any of it. The novelty value of blatant proposals had long ago faded, and the one-two punch of praise and begging had worn thin even faster—it was as uncomfortable as being surrounded by a crowd in which everyone wanted to touch him.

So let me get this straight: Luke is constantly being bombarded with e-mail requests, yet he’s unaware that women want Jedi babies? UNREAL.

The young woman looked up at him with eyes widened by surprise. Her tattooed forehead and cheeks marked her as a follower of the Duality, a popular and benign Tarrack cult founded on the twin principles of joy and service.

Oh, wow, DUALITY AGAIN.

“My goodness,” Manes said, his steps slowing as he reached the main level and saw Luke clearly. “My goodness. This is an honor.” As an afterthought, he gathered himself for a salute. “Forgive me, sir—I don’t know your proper rank—”

“I no longer hold one,” said Luke, leaning over one of the data stations.

“Oh—I see. Then I’ll confess that I’ve never met a Jedi. Nothing unusual there, I guess—I don’t know anyone who has. Is there a proper form of address—”

“You can call me Luke.”

LOL.

The event had given both such inexplicable pleasure that he hated to take those memories away from them, but he had no choice. He had already blocked the machine records of his visit from being written to the logs. Compressing a nerve here, a blood vessel there, Luke brought on a moment of unconscious paralysis, and in that moment swept the memories from their minds.

Luke is very cavalier about mucking with peoples’ minds, I’m just going to say. Why not just mind-trick them directly?? Seems like that would be less invasive that cutting off blood vessels.

By the way, this is how we learn Luke and Akanah Did It:

He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “Have you ever had sex in hyperspace?”

This time she could not contain her bubbling laugh of bemusement. “Yes,” she said, and melted away into the night.

*shakes head*

“Where the Current touches self-awareness, there is a tiny ripple—as when you sense a presence with the Force. The metaphor is more different than the means.”

“But I can’t feel anything here—nothing more than the energy of the ecosystems on the fourth and fifth planets,” Luke said. “Nothing of consciousness—nothing of will.”

“It is not consciousness or will that matters—it is the profound essence of being, nothing more,” she said. “I can perceive the crew just as you would perceive a handful of sand I scattered on the far side of a pool. From a distance, sometimes you can see only the effect, not the cause.” She smiled. “But you must be very still to see even that, for you are also of the Current, surrounded by the ripples of your being.”

Yeah, okay, so the water metaphor is spot-on.

“Best for everyone if they never see us at all,” he said as he charted the course.

“Done,” Akanah said, looking on from behind Luke’s flight couch.

Luke looked up at her quizzically. “It can’t be that easy.”

“Why not?”

“Eh—don’t you have to know who it is you’re trying to hide from?”

“Why?” she asked.

“So you have a focus. So you know whose thoughts you’re trying to deflect. It’s done with precision, not brute force.”

“That’s coercive,” she said. “And invasive. You reach into another mind and bind its thoughts, or place your own there.”

“Well—yes,” Luke said. “But the use of that power is constrained. The purpose must be important enough to justify the deed and the consequences.”

“It seems the Jedi are always finding reasons to justify their violence,” she said. “I wish you would try as hard to find ways to avoid it.”

“Violence? What violence?” Luke protested. “More often than not, all that’s required is to induce a moment’s inattention, or reinforce a suspicion. No harm is involved. A sworn Jedi would never—oh, make someone walk off a cliff thinking there was a bridge there.”

Akanah shook her head in earnest disagreement. “You, who’re immune to your own tricks—who are you to judge the harm done? You do this in secret, to lead a suggestible mind, or compel an opposed one. Do you think that those you’ve coerced see the morality of it the same as you do? Besides,” she sniffed, “it’s inefficient.”

“What?”

“Inefficient,” she repeated. “It requires your constant attention and involvement.”

“If you know an alternative, I’m your eager student.”

“What about the way you concealed your hermitage?”

Luke frowned. “That’s different. I created it from elemental substances to have that quality—to blend in with the coastline as though it were part of it.”

“It was a powerful bit of work,” she said. “When I saw it, I knew you had the gift of the Fallanassi. But you didn’t go far enough and apply the principle to its ultimate conclusion.”

“Which is—”

“To make it not merely resemble its surroundings, but merge with them,” Akanah said. Closing her eyes, she drew a deep breath. She let the breath out slowly as she lowered her chin to her chest—and then she was not there.

“I’ll be a—” Luke reached for her where she had been standing, but his hand grabbed only air. “Cute trick,” he said, taking a step toward the refresher, away from the forward deck. “Handy for breaking into libraries, escaping arranged marriages—where are you?”

“Here,” she said from behind him. He turned to find her silting sideways in the right-hand seat, wearing a small proud smile. “Did I touch your mind?”

“No,” he admitted. “Not that I could notice.”

Akanah nodded. “A long time ago, one of the Circle discovered that when she achieved a particularly profound Meditation of Immersion, she would disappear from the view of others. Much later, we learned how to take an object in with us and leave it there.”

“Where do you go when you disappear?”

“Where do you go when you dream? It’s impossible to say. What does an answer from that context mean in this one?”

“Well—is it difficult?”

She shrugged. “Once mastered, it’s no more difficult or mysterious than concealing a cup of water by pouring it in the sea.” Then she smiled. “But achieving mastery is much like trying to remove that cup of water afterward.”

“And you’ve merged this ship?”

“Yes. Some time ago, while I was in meditation.”

“Will the engines still work?”

“Did the floors of your hermitage hold you, and the roof keep out the rain?”

Luke wrinkled up his face. “So we’re completely undetectable now?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing is absolute. But we’re safe from eyes, and from the machines that are like eyes.

gotta say, Luke totally deserves being dragged so hard here, given his behavior in these books.

“If I have to pick between your being an illusion and your being real, Akanah, I think I have reason enough to know that you’re real.”

OH COME ON WHY THIS COYNESS ABOUT THE SEX, LUKE??? Are you never even going to talk about it directly???

Oh, and Luke deduces that the Fallnassi are around him, and he can’t see them, which is clever. Not all of them are human - interesting. Luke convinces them to abandon their vows and help the NR against the Yevetha.

Leia goes to see Mon Mothma, which is kinda nice. They watch birds and it’s nice for Mon to be a mentor figure to Leia.

Leia turned and looked back at her mentor. “But I still don’t know how to choose between the other two.”

“I think you do,” said Mon Mothma. “What you don’t know is how to live with the choice. And there I can be of no help to you. That secret escaped you when the clarity left you.”

“When did that happen?” Leia asked, returning to sit on the edge of the stool at Mon Mothma’s feet. “I didn’t see it go—did you? Never before in my life have I struggled with decisions, or with accepting their consequences. It’s been so strange, watching myself from the inside, wondering why this woman was speaking for me.”

“Your clarity came from your certainty that our cause was just and our purpose worthy,” Mon Mothma said. “But there is little certainty of that kind to be had in a place like the Senate, in a city like Imperial City. Certainty is eaten away by the thousand and one compromises that are the currency of democracy. Causes fall victim to the building of consensus. Accountability becomes so diffused that it vanishes, and agreement becomes so rare that it startles.”

OH NO, there’s the duality again. Luke and Leia are mirrors of each other - see Luke’s ideas about isolation vs. civilization earlier. Sigh.

#star wars #eu fuckery #the black fleet crisis

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autisticalbert · 4 years

Text

the clothies

part two of my the office au! nearly 3k of race being love with a very drunk albert. this is based on 2x01 of the office, ‘the dundies’.

A studious person could say there were four types of managers. Jack Kelly was an exact combination of all of them.

The man wasn’t unlikeable, not in the slightest. In fact, he was almost funny whenever he wasn’t trying too hard. He cared for his employees and co-workers and gave his life for the company he worked in. He was determined to make a family out of the workplace, even if no one felt the same way. No one at all.

It didn’t come as a surprise that the New York branch was one of the youngest-employing ones in the company. Race was about to turn twenty-four and most of his co-workers rounded that number.

All except Les, of course. The kid missed out on all company parties and the blessed opportunity of alcohol. Such a shame.

Every February brought upon the New York branch the most dreaded celebration of all. The Clothies. That was its name. They didn’t even sell real clothes.

The mind of the great Jack Kelly worked wonders. In his first year as a manager, he got around the idea that if his employees got rewarded with worthless pieces of plastic once a year named out to ridiculous categories, then that would be an incentive for everyone and it would turn the New York branch around for magnificent results and numbers to come.

He thought it to be a success. People really just took every chance they got to get drunk.

Race didn’t even like the idea of getting drunk around his co-workers all that much. There were only a few people in there he’d actually call friends—there was Charlie, there was Smalls, there was Jojo…

“Hey, Racey!”

There was Albert, of course.

An arm was slung around his shoulders and he found himself smiling before even stopping himself. He tilted his head and saw a sea of freckles in a dangerously pale face.

“Hey, Red,” he said. Albert grimaced at the name and let go of him. “Excited about the Clothies?”

“Not really,” they said along with a long sigh. “Can’t possibly imagine what my award’s gonna say.”

For two years in a row, Albert had gotten the same award—World’s Longest Engagement. It wasn’t as funny as Jack thought it was. Race was sure Albert hadn’t even laughed the first time when it had only been six months. Now, it just seemed cruel.

Race nodded and patted their shoulder.

“Wanna watch the marathon with me? Twelve hours of footage,” they said, wobbling their eyebrows. “For free.”

Every year Jack made Albert watch through footage of his own video recorder of the many, many editions of the Clothies through the year. Albert and Race usually made popcorn and tried to guess the year by the number of layers Jack was or wasn’t wearing or how thick his New York accent sounded.

This year, however, Race had something in mind.

“You’ll have to live without me,” he said. Albert put a hand on their chest and gaped. “Gotta sort some things out with the boss.”

Albert shook their head, but stood up and headed to the conference room regardless.

“Traitor. Don’t get fired,” they exclaimed over their shoulder. Race smiled.

The closed door that lead to Jack’s office read a sign that said “all my gates are open 24/7”. Race couldn’t help but think, as he knocked on it, about how many levels of wrong that was.

This time, he was putting together a Rubik’s Cube. Literally. Piece by piece.

“Hey, boss,” Race said, peeking through the door as he opened it. “Got a second?”

With both feet on the desk, Jack perked up to see Race and immediately waved him inside, discarding his little do-it-yourself quickly.

“Anthony,” he smiled. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Still not my name,” Race said as he sat down in a chair in front of Jack’s desk. He looked at his hands for a moment and looked for the easiest possible way to formulate his request without messing it up. With Jack, one really never got a second chance at asking the same thing. The man had a surprisingly small attention span for a branch manager.

“Let me guess—“

“No,” he put a hand up. “See, tonight are the Clothies—yay, again—and I was wondering if you could maybe, I don’t know. Switch things up a little.”

“Yes,” Jack said.

“Because—” Race stopped and frowned. “Yes?”

The man in front of him nodded and shrugged. “I’m an entertainer. I gotta give the people what they want—I’m starting to think my Harlem Shake number is getting a little outdated.”

Race blinked his urge to sigh away. “That’s not—Yes, I mean, I think taking that number out would be good. But I meant something more specific.”

“Oh, sure. I’m always up to suggestions. What’s in your mind?”

“Well, some of the categories. Albert’s, in particular. Maybe you should change their award.”

Jack squinted at him. If it was anyone else, Race would feel busted.

“Why?”

“You know, man,” he sighed, glancing back at Albert’s empty desk through the blinds. “The whole thing with their engagement… It’s getting old.”

The man stopped to think for one moment. Race looked at him, expectant.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“No, Jack, you have to—“

“Woah, look at the time. I have a meeting in exactly—five minutes ago. Thank you for this, it’s been great talking to ya, I really need the room right now. See you tonight!”

And he was up on his feet and brushing Race out the door before any of them could get another word out. Race looked at the closed door before him and sighed thoroughly. He was feeling the trademark defeat and exhaustion that any conversation with his boss made him swim in when, from the room closest to him, Albert’s laugh filled his ears.

He sighed again. Fuck.

If anything could make the day before the awards ceremony worse, it was that by some silent agreement everyone had to stay an hour later than usual. As Race watched the clock strike five, he glanced at Albert with plead.

“I wanna leave.”

“Leave, then,” they said, not looking up from where they were typing out a form on the computer. “And lose your job.”

Race pouted. “You’re no fun today.”

“Not ‘til I get drunk, I’m not. Or drunk enough to miss out on the award, at least.”

That was hard to believe. Albert was never really one to drink in office parties—not that Race knew them all that well outside of office-related life and events. Which wasn’t the point. The point was that picturing Albert drinking their head off just to avoid having a human reaction to Jack’s jokes later in the day was an amusing idea. It would also be entirely justifiable.

Still, Race didn’t quite buy it until later that night, when Albert landed by his side with a tray of empty shot glasses.

His eyes went wide.

“Wow. Hey there.”

He’d been fashionably late, which was a fancy way of excusing himself into missing the first minutes of the ceremony. It didn’t do him any well in the end—he arrived in the middle of a fight between Jack and the audio system.

“Hey,” Albert smiled. “You’re late.”

“You smell like college.”

They shrugged. “I didn’t go to college.”

Race bit his tongue, but Albert just burst out laughing. The night seemed promising enough.

“Where’s—”

Oscar appeared into Race’s field of vision as if summoned. He sat next to Albert and put an arm around their shoulders as another man whom Race only recognized as one of Oscar’s coworkers from the warehouse sat next to him.

“This is Albert,” nodded Oscar before planting a kiss in their cheek. “And that’s Albert’s friend.”

Classy. Race turned to the stranger. “I’m Race,” he extended his hand.

“Snaps,” the man greeted.

“That’s your name?”

“No,” he smiled. “Is Race yours?”

“Ah, touché.”

Race didn’t have to put too much energy into ignoring the couple in front of him because just when the night seemed to never take off, Jack found a way to plug in the right wire and a buzzing sound made everyone cover their ears. As the noise faded away, Jack stepped up on the platform and tapped on the microphone two times before speaking.

It was like a car wreck. Race and Albert had talked about this many times over the years. The Clothies were awful, but they weren’t a thing one could look away from.

“Alright, New York, let’s get this party started!”

On company events, Les was usually Jack’s right-hand-man. Or, right-hand-boy, rather. It was on company parties, when Jack was all by himself, that the delivery of his jokes got more painfully awkward to watch.

As he narrated a story about some clearly invented hot date with an HR representative, Oscar turned to Snaps.

“This is lame. Let’s go to Jacobi’s,” he said.

Snaps nodded. “Yeah, man. I’m out of here.”

“Uh,” Albert looked between them. Race looked at them and saw conflict in their face. Part of him wished they’d stay. Part of him knew they wouldn’t.

Jack seemed to take notice of this interaction, for he stopped his skit to face the table. In the way, he nearly tripped over his foot, nearly knocked someone off with the mic stand, nearly poured his drink over his shoes. Because he was Jack Kelly.

Race sunk in his seat as Snaps stood up beside him and Oscar and Albert mirrored in the seats in front.

“Um, guys, where’re you going?” Jack asked. Oscar and Snaps walked towards the door and Albert glanced at Race before looking at Jack. “Albert, the party’s just getting started.”

They shrugged apologetically. Race felt something burn in his chest.

“Sorry,” they said before running after Oscar.

Jack blinked two times before nodding and resuming his job as an entertainer to a very unamused crowd. Race looked at the door for a moment before turning to the table next to his. Finch and Charlie were immersed in conversation.

“Is that seat taken?” He asked.

Finch smiled at him. “Nah. You’re staying?”

As he stood up to sit back down in his new table, he sighed. “Gotta eat somewhere, right?”

It was one of those nights where time flew by slowly and quickly all at once, and Race wasn’t exactly paying attention. In either fifteen minutes or an hour, Jack managed to tell thirteen jokes, wear two different pairs of fake teeth, and give out exactly one award—Busiest Beaver to Buttons Davenport. She didn’t seem especially flattered when she got up to receive an award that read “Bushiest”.

Race was waving at the waiter for another round and accepting the failure of the already fairly tough night he was facing when the door flung open.

Albert walked in, brushing a hand through their hair. Their entire face was red and their jaw was set, and they ignored the number of inquiring eyes as they made their way to Race’s table. He moved to the side just in time to leave a place for Albert to drop their full weight down.

Jack thankfully didn’t seem to notice their mood, and simply continued with the evening as Albert planted both elbows in the wooden table and stared at a fixed point in it. Finch and Charlie looked at each other and then at Race before slowly standing up and moving to find a new table.

Speaking to an upset Albert was something to be done carefully. Race was a master at the skill, or so he liked to think.

“I thought you’d left?”

Albert looked at him with words behind their eyes, but they dissipated quickly as the tension left their body only enough to let them rest their back against the seat. They shook their head.

“No, Oscar just—I decided to stay.”

“Oh,” Race said.

They reached out for Finch’s abandoned half-empty drink and gulped it down in two movements.

“I’ll get a ride from Jojo.”

“Oh—kay. Okay.”

Albert didn’t move from Race’s side even after the seat in front of them was freed. They just turned to watch Jack’s impressions and ordered a full new round of drinks, successfully ignoring Race’s worried glances. There was a science to drunk Albert—the more they drank, the funnier Jack seemed to them. Which showed how out of it they really were.

In the following hour and a half, Jack made two slightly-out-of-line impressions, gave out the award of Hottest In The Office to Finch, and the award of Tight Ass to Katherine, their HR rep. Neither seemed really excited and their speeches were awkward, but Albert cheered both of them on like there was no tomorrow.

The clock was nearing 11 PM when Jack gave Race one knowing look that made him want to drown in his glass of beer.

“This next award,” the man started. Race anything but hid his face behind his palms. “It goes out to our own little Albert DaSilva. I think we all know what award Al is going to be getting this year.”

Even with Albert not facing his way, Race could tell when the drunken elation in their moves faded and left way for realization. He almost wanted to throw something at Jack to stop it, but he didn’t. Mainly because smacking his boss in the head with bar snacks seemed like a bad decision, no matter how much he had it coming.

They watched in silence.

“It’s the Plant Junkie award—‘Cause their desk always looks like a goddamn botanical garden, ha,” Jack announced. Race’s eyes went wide, and the man winked in his direction.

For a second, Albert scrambled for a reaction inside their brain, but with a little push from Race they stood up and marched enthusiastically to get their award.

Jack stepped aside as Albert stumbled their way up on the platform. From his seat bare meters away Race could see the shine in their eyes and the flush of their cheeks—they wouldn’t remember any of it in the morning. Which only made the following speech more amusing for the sober bystanders.

Albert stood in front of the microphone and shook the award in their hand.

“Wow, um. I have so many people to thank for this award,” they said. Race laughed and shook his head. He wasn’t sure how much of his love was filtering through his eyes as he watched them. “Okay, first off, my plants. Because I couldn't have done it without them.”

People clapped. It was easy. Everyone liked Albert, they were a likable, genuinely nice person. Race cheered along.

“Thank you,” they continued. “Also, um, let's give Jack a round of applause,” they exclaimed. Race perked an eyebrow and Jack looked at them, surprised. “Y’know, for hosting this tonight. It’s a lot harder than it looks. And also because he deals with Les every day.”

Race laughed out loud as people cheered again. Albert was about to step—or fall—out of the platform, but then they faced the microphone again.

“Right. I wanna thank God. God gave me this Clothie,” they said, solemnly looking at the piece of plastic with their name written. “And—I feel God in this Chili’s tonight.”

They mimicked a mic drop and yelled a loud “woo!” in celebration. People cheered again as Jack took their place and they excitedly jumped off of the platform and nearly lost balance. Maybe to make sure they didn’t fall on their head and get a concussion, Race stood up and went to their encounter.

When Albert seemed to extend their arms towards Race for a hug, Race went to catch them and was surprised by a kiss on the lips.

It was short-lived, for Albert fell out of balance moments later and had Jack and Jojo on them immediately. Jack was rambling about killing Albert with his jokes, and Jojo was more worried about checking for a swallowed tongue.

Race blinked and shook himself out of his thoughts immediately. His mouth tasted like alcohol and he grimaced a little at it. He also felt something close to guilt set on his lower stomach. He looked at Albert and sighed before smiling and brushing everyone away to help them stand up.

Albert just laughed and let themself be carried to a stool by the bar.

“It wasn’t that bad,” they said. Race was sitting next to them when he turned and waited for them to continue. “This year, I mean. It was kinda great.”

“Yeah,” Race smiled and shrugged. He intercepted Albert’s reach for a refill of beer and they pouted. “It was actually cool. Jack outdid himself with the impressions, and he called Finch hot—very publically—which was touching. And, we didn’t have to hear him sing his rendition of Tiny Dancer.”

As he spoke, Albert looked at him and nodded with a small smirk. Race looked around, then back at Albert, and they were still staring. He laughed awkwardly.

“What?”

“Nothing,” they said.

“Okay.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Race said, frowning. “What?”

Albert bit their lip and started laughing with their head thrown back. They balanced forward and hit their head on the counter. Race started laughing as well.

“Oh, my god. You are so drunk.”

As his best friend flipped him off, Race stood to grab Albert by the shoulders with one hand and get their coat with another. He glanced back at where Jack seemed to be setting up a karaoke machine and then made his way towards the door.

“C’mon, let’s get you a cab home.”

#the office au #newsies #ralbert #racetrack higgins #albert dasilva #ENBY ALBERT #jack kelly #oscar delancey #snaps #(chaz's brooklyn newsie!!)#jojo de la guerra #finch cortes #crutchie morris #buttons davenport #the dundies ep is so :D

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gabrielxreader · 5 years

Text

Wingmates

Request: Hey saw requests open and I was wondering if you could do a oneshot or mini series on a wing soulmate au but it’s an au where everyone has wings and either you can only fly when you meet your soulmate or your wings match your soulmates?

Author: Holly

Warnings: None that I can think of

Characters: Y/N, Gabriel, Sam, Dean

Words: 2,049

Y/N = Your Name

A/N: I’m baaaaaaack!

Your feathers were literally ruffled. Sam’s long fingers combed through your wings, stroking feathers back into place following the windy storm you’d gotten stuck walking back to the hotel in. You stretched out your wings and yawned, pressing them back into his touch. Extending the muscles in your wings felt as cathartic as stretching your legs after being in the car for hours.

Dean entered the room carrying two stretched plastic bags of take-out containers and food. His wings were covered up by a rain coat draped over his shoulders. “Alright, party people, here’s what we got.” Dean put the bags on the table and started listing all the food he bought.

Sam quickly finished the perfunctory grooming of your wing and got up to claim food. You quickly followed. Dean’s stomach was a black hole, so you needed to take what you wanted before he had the chance. Once you had enough food, you all went to your seats and started eating. You felt like you were starving after missing lunch.

Sam waited until he had shoveled half of his food into his mouth, taking more vegetables than either you or Dean but eating just as fast. Once he wasn’t so hungry, he slowed down. “Okay, so we don’t have a very clear lead on this hunt yet, but whatever it is, it doesn’t have a clear victim preference.”

“Nah,” you agreed, “A teenager, a senior, and two adults, all different jobs, demographics… they couldn’t be more different if they tried.”

“Which they couldn’t possibly have done, because they didn’t know each other.” Sam added, nodding. “I checked everything. There is nowhere on paper where any of them crossed paths with any of the others.”

“So we look at the MO,” Dean declared, garbled by his food. Both you and Sam booed at his poor manners and he rolled his eyes. “What do we know of that kills people this way?”

The three of you went back and forth suggesting and striking down potential supernatural culprits while you finished your food. Personally, you were rooting for an angiak because you’d never seen one before, but with the victims, it seemed unlikely. By the time your dinner was all gone, your wings were fully dry, you were ready to sleep, and the three of you were making a game plan.

“Next morning, me and Sam can hit the morgue, and Dean, you can call Cas and see if there’s anything the police didn’t put in the official report.” You curled your wings around yourself in a comfortable resting position, like they were giving you a hug.

“Ah…” Dean glanced over at Sam. “Y/N, I think you should stick it out here and do some research. We could be dealing with something completely new.”

The highest arches in your wings slumped down towards your lap. “You just don’t want me to be seen,” you accused, preparing to sulk.

“Well, you’re… you’re pretty memorable,” Sam sheepishly admitted.

Your whole life, you had been teased and taunted for your wings. Sprouting from the edges of your shoulder blades and spanning six feet on either side of you when fully stretched, your wings were a source of both pride and shame. You would have loved them so much more if only they were a different color. The golden flight feathers and tawny, fluffier down lining the edges where wing met skin looked gorgeous together in any other context, but having the colors on wings? You stood out everywhere you went.

Hunting was hard when no one was quick to forget your unique coloring. Sam and Dean were reluctant to take you places, even though you were just as good at fighting and investigating as they were. Dean’s smoky, ashy wings and Sam’s rich, earthy shades were beautiful, but not particularly exotic or memorable.

You hated that your wings so often took you out of the action. They were a part of you, but so was hunting. The fact that the brothers seemed to think golden wings and hunting were mutually exclusive was easily your biggest problem with them.

You huffed and raised your wings angrily. “Okay, new plan, Sam and Dean, you guys go to hell again and me and Cas will solve the entire case.”

The thing about your wings was that they weren’t actually as unique as they appeared at first glance, because no matter how bizarre any person’s wings were, they had an identical match somewhere. That person was your wingmate, or your soulmate. You were kind of excited to meet your wingman (your favorite wing-related pun), but hoped he was older than you. If he was, then your birth wasn’t the event that had saddled you both with embarrassingly bright and obnoxious wings.

Having wings that stood out was a detriment in society. It really wasn’t fair, since actual birds had an easier time attracting mates when they had brighter wings. Humans saw it the other way around. The better you blended in with the rest, the more people liked you because you weren’t disrupting their precious status quo.

This was problematic for you on two levels. Firstly, you never blended in, so you were always interrupting the status quo. If you stuck around for more than a day or so, not even hotel staff would compliment the pretty colors. Secondly, you hated what it might mean for your soulmate. Did they resent their own wings? Would they blame you if they were the younger one? And was there ever going to be a place for the two of you where you could live comfortably together? Even assuming that one day you could leave the supernatural world behind…

But, when you stopped thinking about the coloring, you wouldn’t give your wings up for the entire world. They would help you find that one person you were meant to have.

“Y/N, it’s one angel.” Sam tried to convince you when bribing you with your favorite cheesy snack didn’t work. “Just one. Not even a violent one.”

Dean snorted loudly.

Sam glared at him. “Okay, so he’s a little aggressive,” he grudgingly admitted, “But only to people to piss him off! Which… we happen to have done. A couple of times.” You tilted your head towards your shoulder and looked at Sam judgmentally. “There was a misunderstanding,” he said defensively.

“A misunderstanding which repeated itself a couple of times?”

“Will you do it or not?” The taller hunter wearily asked, holding out a book and almost begging.

It was tempting to make him actually get on his knees and beg, and record the footage as blackmail, but since it was for an actual case, you reluctantly had to take the moral option. “Fine,” you sighed, furling your wings to your back. “I’ll summon him and then you guys can take over once he’s here and not feeling too stabby.”

Dean brought in a chocolate cake and a pie from the car, explaining them as offerings but taking the pie for himself when Sam had his back turned. Dean’s wings arched happily while he snuck into the other hotel room to eat the pie while Sam helped you to draw an anti-angel sigil, just in case. You stood in front of it and squeezed out some more blood to smear around on your palm to make sure it would activate if you needed it, then Sam left the room.

Summoning angels was an uncomplicated process; you just needed their name. You looked at the paper Sam had wrote it on and swallowed hard, your wings curling tight with some stray nerves. An archangel. Because summoning archangels had always gone so well in the past.

“Gabriel,” you said aloud, picturing a long-robed, long-haired guy with six white wings. You knew by now that angels never looked the way you expected, but you had no other mental image. “I pray on behalf of the Winchesters because they’re terrified you would smite them instantaneously. If you’d please come talk, we have some chocolate cake. And if you hurry, there’s no way Dean can finish all that pie on his own.”

The fluttering of wings not too unlike the sound your own made came from behind you, but when you turned to look, no one was there. Instead the silverware by the cake in front of you clinked and when you looked back towards it, a short blond man was picking up the entire cake platter to just go at it.

“Gabriel?” You asked, feeling a lot less intimidated now that an archangel was clearly so eager to get at the cake. Someone would be right at home in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

“That’s me, sweet cheeks,” Gabriel said, spearing a huge piece of cake onto his fork, looking up at you and stopping. “Oh, wow,” he noted, looking over your shoulders. “Nice wings.”

You held your wings tighter to your body. Angels had never complimented them before and it made you shy. “Oh… thank you,” you said, reaching behind your back to soothingly drag her fingers over a long primary feather.

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, putting the cake down on the table and stepping closer to you. You took a step back, and he put his hand up and stopped. “Hey, look, I just want to show you this.” He wiggled his eyebrows and the air in the hotel room ruffled. Then, with an odd popping sound, actual, physical wings unfurled from behind the angel – tawny in the downy base and gold shades along the long, graceful wings.

He stretched them like they’d been tucked down tightly for a long time and took a look at them over his shoulders. “Would you look at that,” he said, looking back to yours. You reached out with your wings tentatively towards his, the feathers along the tips and edges splaying.

“They match,” you gasped, snapping your wings back to your sides. “You have my colors.”

“Um, I’m literally older than dirt,” Gabriel quipped, sending you a somewhat chiding stare. “I think you have my colors. But anyway, enough with semantics,” he dismissively stated, ignoring the fact that he was the one to bring them up at all. “Sugar, my soulmate is a human and yours is an archangel. This is going to be a little complicated.”

“Yeah, duh, Sherlock,” you replied without watching your mouth. He was your soulmate – you weren’t afraid of him.

He raised an eyebrow. “Ooh, I love one with a spine, I was hoping for that,” he said, his grin widening delightedly. “Let’s go somewhere more private to talk about those complications. And we can finish this cake and go through whatever else sounds good.”

“I…” You almost leapt for it, but a shred of common sense remained. Serial killers had soulmates, too.

Gabriel flapped his wings impatiently and a gust of air breezed over your face and through your feathers. “Come on, ditch the bozos. I’m way cooler.” He winked.

Your mind made up, you reached for him while relaxing your wings and letting them extend closer to his.

After five minutes had passed, Sam wasn’t sure whether Gabriel was being stubborn, you had taken the cake and abandoned your assignment, or you were being yanked around on chains by the notorious trickster. It took a bit of cajoling, but Dean, who was still sore about the Mystery Spot, agreed to go back to your room and see.

Sam knocked and received no answer. Dean knocked harder. “Hey Y/N, open up,” Dean called through the door.

When neither of them got a response, Sam used the key card to your room to let themselves in. There wasn’t anyone there, but the chocolate cake was gone. So was the angel-banishing sigil. In the stead of the archangel and their hunting friend, there was a latticework pie on the single bed.

Dean immediately went for it. “Ooh,” he said, licking his lips.

Sam sighed. “Dean, no…” Obviously it was a trap.

Dean had barely touched it before the pie exploded, messily bursting and somehow managing to get cherry filling all over Dean’s clothing while leaving the rest of the hotel room pristine. A flag burst out of the center of the destroyed pie with “see you later, morons” printed on the little scrap of fabric.

#holly #oneshot #requested #fic #gabriel #gabrielxreader #gabriel x reader #reader #wings #wingmates #soulmate au #romance #fluff #2k

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hellyeahomeland · 4 years

Text

“The English Teacher”: an HYH recap

This mindfuck of an episode picks up about a day or so after last week’s episode. Carrie is being held in a “subbasement” (a basement in the basement?) at Langley and has started to disassociate a bit. I would too! This reality is fucked!

Anyway, a nice lawyer man comes to retrieve her and does a bit of plot exposition:

Saul hired him to represent Carrie at the preliminary hearing.

Saul arranged for Carrie’s release and also paid the bond.

Saul is letting Carrie stay at his house!

Basically Saul is being the coolest he’s been re: Carrie in like seven years.

There was a car bomb at the Afghan/Pakistani border that killed a whole special ops crew and injured one CIA officer named Jenna Bragg, who was sent back to the US out of an abundance of caution. Oh, and Jenna was called to testify against Carrie at the hearing.

Don’t fucking talk to anyone until the hearing, especially not a specific person who’s meant to testify against you, capiche?

In the West Wing, things are messy as hell. Evil Spawn John Zabel is arguing that Pakistan was behind the suicide bomb and that’s yet another reason to invade. Saul argues it was just Haqqani; after all Pakistan lost some guys too. Zabel is all, “IT’S THEIR FUCKING COUNTRY” and says Linus should resign. Mandy starts swearing at Hugh Saul starts swearing at Zabel, he’s really fucking mad. Linus envisions new ways to get swallowed whole. Maybe dinosaurs will come back from extinction? It’s just a massive screaming match—actually very entertaining—and Saul’s big solution is “backchannel talks,” and Zabel’s brain nearly short circuits at the suggestion of diplomacy instead of military invasion. Hayes just looks like he’d rather be literally any fucking place doing any fucking thing except this.

Carrie is settling into Saul’s very lovely DC home when Saul arrives, worn and weary from his no good very bad day. Although it can’t possibly have been worse than Carrie’s, which is saying something. Carrie makes her first move, pokes around a bit about the Russian asset. Saul flatly denies it, then pours himself a drink (same). He eyes a bookcase full of old, leather-bound red books and then—

It’s 1986 in East Berlin. A young Saul, played by BEN SAVAGE (that’s right, it’s CORY MATTHEWS), who does bear a striking resemblance to Mandy Patinkin, walks into a bookstore and picks up one of those same, old red books from the display. He heads into the back of the store and then a young woman enters and cocks a pistol in his direction. He brings his hands up in surrender.

The next day at Walter Reed Hospital, Carrie defies all good legal advice and pays a visit to Jenna, who’s being discharged.

Jenna: OH MY FUCKING GOD, LOSE MY NUMBER. Carrie: Ok I know you’re furious with me, just know you join a very large and enthusiastic club on that front. But please listen to me. Jenna: Furious? Dude, that special ops crew is all dead. That’s on you. Carrie: It’s horrible, I know. But a suicide bomber did that. Not me, and not you. Jenna: You’re delusional. Carrie: You join another very large and enthusiastic club in that position, but just hear me out! You have nothing to do for the next two minutes while you wait for your Uber. Jenna: Not if I speed walk! Carrie: I found the black box. Do you even care what was on it? Probs not, but I’ll just keep talking. The president’s helicopter was not shot down! It was mechanical failure. Jenna: Hm… that is interesting. So where is it now? Carrie: That hot Russian guy stole it from me. Jenna: OH MY FUCKING GOD YOU ARE A MESS. Carrie: I just need a few days to get it back. I know you’re supposed to testify and I truly don’t give two fucks what you say to them, but if you could just wait a week that would be awesome. Jenna: Well, what’s your plan? Carrie: They offered me a trade. But I can’t really say much more than that. Jenna: What is with you spies and your secrets? Carrie: Ok fine. Saul has an asset high up in the Kremlin. I need to find out who it is. Jenna: Good fucking luck getting onto a Langley computer. Not that you’d know how to use it. Carrie: [loaded silence] Jenna: OH MY GOD. I’m tattling to Saul.

And Jenna does book it straight to Saul’s office but has to wait a bit because Saul’s on the phone with Tasneem, who is in New York City at the UN and remains maximum pissed. From the time her plane took off to when it landed the US moved more troops right along their border. Saul says some things about how everyone in the US is crazy and it’s all very ~prescient~ but he thinks if they can just take out Jalal, Hayes and Zabel might back down. Tasneem once again claims they have no idea where he is. Saul asks for a target, any plausible coordinates. Tasneem agrees.

Enter Jenna. She is very prepared to expose just how big of a crazy person Carrie is when Saul is like, “hold up, little lady, it’s all true.” He’s taking this “back up Carrie at all costs” thing to a whole new level. He says that, no matter her mistakes, Carrie never loses sight of the bigger picture. Everything she does is in service of that. The tribunal will attempt to get Jenna to contribute to whatever bullshit charges they come up with, but Jenna needs to do like Carrie: decide what matters. Decide what kind of person she is.

Later, Carrie is at the arraignment, and the judge starts listing off charges. It’s pretty bad. Treason, accessory to murder, etc. She starts to have a tiny panic attack in the courtroom and thankfully holds her vomit for the restroom. There, she’s approached by a prim-looking woman named Charlotte Benson, “a friend of Yevgeny’s.” (Eagle-eyed viewers will recognize her from last season with Ivan.) Carrie’s like, “fuck that guy and fuck you too” but Charlotte is unfazed, hands her her card, and says they have resources. All you have to do is call.

In the simultaneously most and least surprising event of the season, at the tribunal, Jenna decides what type of person she is and it’s the type with a mind of her own. She gets about four seconds into the thing before she bolts.

At the White House, Zabel reveals that—whadya know!—the Pakistanis did know where Jalal was. At least, they said they do. They just provided coordinates and everyone’s in the situation room waiting to pull the trigger. Saul hurries down and watches as they bomb the entire compound. “Fuck yeah!” Hayes exclaims as everyone applauds, definitely 100% sure they just killed Jalal. Saul makes a beeline for the exit and tells Linus he’s going to New York.

Later, Jenna is waiting for Carrie at Saul’s with a folder full of information. It’s about the exfiltration that Carrie mentioned that went south. The man attended a KGB language school but he spooked and Saul had to get him out quickly. Minefields and shit. He’s been in Pennsylvania in Witness Protection ever since. So he can’t be Saul’s asset but maybe he knows who is.

Jenna: You sure you want to betray Saul? Carrie: I’m 100% sure I want to do the opposite of that, but I have no choice. Jenna: You’re right, I guess. But I’m done with all this shit. Carrie: “Done”? Never heard of it. Jenna: I’m through with this, the CIA, all of it. Carrie: Wait, so you finally used your brain and that’s the decision you came to? You don’t have the thrill of having figured something out? You don’t feel a physical and emotional high? Jenna: Uh no?? I feel sick to my stomach about the special ops team. That comes down on me. And whoever this asset is will be tortured too. That’s my big picture. I’ve tried to see it your way, but I can’t. I just don’t believe it anymore. Carrie: Believe what? Jenna/Quinn’s ghost: That anything justifies the damage we do.

Carrie ruminates on that for about 2.4 seconds before she’s on to the next thing, which is a road trip to Pennsylvania. She arrives in her librarian cosplay, hair in a ponytail, eyeglasses, the whole shebang. She’s at the house of Saul’s old asset, the one who’s in Witness Protection. She introduces herself as Heather Frith (great fake name) and says she works as an archiver for the CIA’s Chief Historian, which is a job just fake-sounding enough to probably be real. She wants details about what happened with his exfiltration, details that aren’t in the file. He is suspicious at first, but she calls his bluff, and he takes her out to his garage to relive the story.

He describes Saul then as something of a hero. He had everything in the exfiltration down like clockwork. When one of the mines exploded, he literally carried him over the border. Carrie asks what happened to the rest of the cadets in his class, and he says they were all killed for failing to prevent his defection. She spots a woman in an old photograph then. He didn’t know her name, she just went by Comrade Instructor. She was their English teacher. Then Carrie eyes an old red book. He explains it was their method for arranging a meeting. You move the book from the right to the left side of the display window. “Very Saul. He liked the old ways. Things hidden in plain sight.”

…Which makes for a nice segue to New York City. Saul’s at UN headquarters, where Pakistan has requested a vote against the US for being general dicks and warmongers. Saul then pulls a Quinn in “Q&A” (or maybe a Carrie in “Tin Man Is Down”) and makes a huge scene at the meeting, screaming at the Russian delegation about the flight recorder. An older blonde woman translates for the delegation as he shouts. Resident hottie Scott Ryan escorts Saul out and the Russians have a powwow within earshot of said woman. What was all that about a flight recorder? One of them says Yevgeny Gromov is running an operation and leaves it at that. Cue that woman later in a rare bookstore. She eyes another of those old red leather-bound editions.

We flashback again to 1986. That woman in the bookstore is the woman holding Saul at gunpoint. She is the English teacher at the language school. She is disgusted at what happened to her students—put up against a wall and shot—and wants to take the place of Saul’s asset. Saul feigns ignorance and says she must be confusing him with someone else.

The next five minutes are a masterpiece. Back at Saul’s house in present day, Carrie finally takes an interest in his unique collection of old red books. She flips through them and notes that each has a date on the inside front cover. 11.14.2009. 3.14.95. 3.5.1987. She lines them up in the living room, by year, next to significant events in the ongoing Russian/American intelligence battle. Chernobyl cover-up in 1986. Gorbachev coup in 1989. Aldrich Ames in 1993. Robert Hanssen in 2000. Crimea in 2014. Active measures in the 2016 election.

In his NY hotel room, Saul has a book delivery for one Professor Rabinow. Send it right up.

Carrie surveys her makeshift timeline. She picks up the next book, Vanity Fair. The subtitle on the inside reads “A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO,” in case the audience had any doubts. She picks up another and notices the Russian spelling of “Moscow” on the inside back cover. She begins flipping through others in the timeline looking for the same tag. No, no, no, yes. She smiles that same knowing, exhilarated smile. It really is like a high. She whittles the Moscow books down to just eight now.

Saul gets his package, which is—whoulda thunk?!—an old red book, and takes it into the bathroom. Carrie examines one of the books, flipping through the pages. She checks the back cover—maybe something hidden in the lining?—but no luck.

Saul flips this new book upside down, brings the covers up in a ‘V’ to expose a space on the spine. In his living room, Carrie does the same thing. There it is: an opening, just small enough for a message. Carrie exhales, eyes wide, at the discovery. Delicately Saul retrieves a small piece of paper and holds it up to the light. He reads: “THE PRICE HAS ALREADY BEEN ASKED. IT’S YEVGENY GROMOV’S PLAY.”

A middle-aged Ben Savage playing a young Saul Berenson walks through the streets of Berlin late at night before he’s accosted by some Soviets requesting his papers. They think he’s CIA. He gets a few punches in (yes, Saul!) before running down a dead-end alley. All of a sudden he hears gunshots, braces for injury. But it’s the men who’ve been shot, and by the English teacher Anna. “Do you trust me now?” she says.

In present day, Saul stands silently in his hotel room, contemplating this new knowledge. Carrie’s lied to him about Yevgeny, that much he knows. But what else has she kept from him?

Carrie also has new knowledge, and she’s taking it straight to Yevgeny. Charlotte Benson drives her to a huge, empty mansion to speak with him.

Charlotte: Empty for two years. Owners are asking too much. Carrie: Hey, just like our show!

Charlotte leads her to a room and computer where Yevgeny is waiting on a video conference. Carrie is not at all pleased to see her Russian boyfriend.

She says that the asset exists. Yevgeny is the opposite of enthusiastic. Saul probably recruited her in East Berlin in 1986. She knows how they communicate. “How?” Yevgeny asks. “That’s not how this works,” Carrie replies, trying to maintain the upper hand for as long as possible. Yevgeny asks for a name. Carrie doesn’t have it but can get it if he provides some KGB records. She needs some stuff from the language school, but Yevgeny explains it’s all lost, burned by the “freedom lovers” after the Berlin Wall came down. They’ve gone down this road before, did Carrie really think she was the first to figure out that connection?

Carrie gets frustrated and nearly walks out of the meeting when Yevgeny reminds her of the stakes at play: America and Pakistan on the literal brink of full-scale war.

Yevgeny: Besides, you haven’t done everything you can. Carrie: Meaning what? Yevgeny: Take out Saul. That will neutralize the asset. Carrie: Saul has a legacy plan. If he goes, he has a plan to pass the asset onto someone else. Yevgeny: Yes, exactly. And that someone else is … Carrie: [mind blown] Yevgeny: …you. Carrie: You… you played me. You knew it would come to this. How long have you been planning this? Do you derive extra special pleasure from fucking with me? Yevgeny: I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but like you said, you tried everything.

He tells her to do it—to kill Saul. Her eyes fill with tears as she shuts the computer and walks out. The lights go black behind her.

#homeland #an hyh recap #the english teacher #*#by: sara

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statusquoergo · 5 years

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Part I

Apparently Alex managed to sway Katrina with his last pitch, because here she is showing up in Faye’s office late at night to inform her that “if Harvey testifies tomorrow, so will [she].” Uh, okay.

Except that Katrina’s not threatening to testify to the truth or anything; she plans to accuse Faye of “[asking her] to use [her] friendship with the other side, and when [she] refused, [Faye] got rid of [her].” Faye points out that this is a lie, and Katrina counters that it doesn’t matter because “it’s also the third time [she’ll] be accused of wrongful termination, only this time, it’s a crime,” and I’m confused, is she talking about the three strikes law? Because that refers to persistent violent offenders, not civil disputes; Faye could be accused of wrongfully terminating a hundred employees, that doesn’t necessarily make it illegal. Or is she saying that this time she’s accusing Faye of committing a crime that led to the wrongful termination? I guess this is that perjury thing Louis was warning Gretchen about, and wow, of all the people I expected to try to pull it off, Katrina was way down there on the list.

Not surprisingly, Faye follows Harvey through the lobby to accuse him of putting Katrina up to threatening her, which Harvey denies, and that’s technically true, but no matter, because Faye called for a one-day continuance for Harvey to get Katrina off the witness list (even though that’s not appropriate cause for a continuance to be granted, not to mention the fact that if they didn’t keep rushing everything, they might actually have time to deal with this sort of shit in the normal course of business the way they’re supposed to). Harvey refuses unless she puts their “entire agreement into writing” so she can’t “move the goalposts another fucking inch,” and this is so stupid that it has to be on purpose but I still can’t figure out what the hell is going on.

The next day, Faye is surprised to find all the major players waiting in the conference room to bear witness to her signing this agreement with Harvey, making a big show of their united front, so I’m guessing that whatever their big plan is…this is it. Gretchen gives Faye the document for review, and right on cue, Mike and Samantha burst onto the scene to accuse Harvey of tampering with Mike’s witness (Katrina), prompting Faye to accuse him of “[playing] dirty in [her] name”; Harvey defends that he stopped her from testifying, just as Faye asked, and Mike demands to know if that’s true, and Faye tells him not to “twist this,” and like, is their plan just to create confusion? Because it’s working. It’s dumb, but it’s working. Harvey and Mike yell at each other until Harvey shoves Mike, Samantha yells at Harvey and pretends to punch him (she does “punch” him, it just looks super fake), Gretchen putters around furtively in the background, and oh my god are they really doing what I think they’re doing?

With a heavy sigh, Faye signs the document, informing them all that “[she] can’t wait to put [them] all behind [her],” thereby prompting Louis to smugly tell her to “get the hell out right now” because yes they did do exactly what I was hoping they hadn’t: They tricked her into signing the document Gretchen swapped for the agreement, “an order for Harvey to witness tamper by any means necessary” that, in combination with the facts that “Katrina came to see [her] last night and there’s a record of it in the lobby downstairs, and after she did, [Faye] went to see Harvey, and there’s a record of that too,” makes her look guilty as fuck. And sure, “it may be bullshit, but to a jury, it’s gonna look like a hot fudge sundae.” (What the fuck does that mean?) Faye proceeds to go off the deep end a little, shouting that she’ll never back down and that Harvey is a blight, and a real fight almost starts brewing until Harvey kicks them all out so he can “give [Faye] the thing [she’s] wanted since the moment [she] got here, but not the way [she] wanted it,” and I get that he needs to get the last word in and everything, but this whole “patronizing asshole” routine is really off-putting.

The motley crew bustles off to a different conference room to fret that even Harvey’s best efforts might not be enough to get rid of Faye, but lucky them, Harvey makes a hero’s return about five seconds later to announce that Faye’s “packing her shit as [they] speak.” Louis immediately hires Samantha back, seconded by Alex if for no other reason than “finally giving Harvey what he’s always had coming” when she punched him in the face, and Louis needs to know what Harvey did to convince Faye to leave, but Harvey’s not telling yet. Or ever. I bet it was something super scandalous. Anyway Donna makes a speech about how much they love each other and therefore they should go out for drinks even though it’s like, ten in the morning, and that’s something you can do when you’re your own boss, so off they go.

This episode is basically two episodes scotch-taped together, so I want to pause here at the end of the first installment to talk for a minute about what just happened.

For nine episodes, the looming threat over this firm, and all these characters’ livelihoods, has been Faye Richardson’s attempts to put their affairs in order, to stop their habit of “crossing lines” (re: committing disbarrable offenses) to win their cases. It’s not an unreasonable request; in fact, they could easily get rid of her at any time by bringing the firm up to code, so to speak, but these rebels with a cause can’t stand being told what to do, so no one’s going to be entertaining that option. Okay, fine; we’re not going to take the easy way out, so instead the entire season is twisted into knots to find new and increasingly ludicrous excuses for them to do battle, all the while trying to weave in all the backstory that could’ve been built up at any previous time but probably wasn’t even conceived of until the moment it was thrown into this melting pot.

This disjointed narrative leads to a serious problem in trying to craft a satisfying resolution to this story: There’s nowhere to go but sideways. Faye established right at the start of her tenure that she would have no qualms about demoting or firing anyone who she deemed to be acting inappropriately, so the question there has never been whether someone would be fired (Chekhov’s gun and all that) but rather who, and, to a lesser extent, why. Louis was demoted but remained at the firm in essentially the same capacity, Samantha was fired but kept right on working with all her former coworkers, Katrina was fired immediately before the finale and therefore only kept in limbo for half an episode; none of these actions have any weight because they don’t have any serious consequences, not to mention it’s so obvious that everything will return to normal when all is finally said and done. There is no sense of mounting tension; however they planned to get rid of Faye, it couldn’t result in a hero’s reward after a long and hard-fought battle because every time they’ve gone up against her, it’s just been another parallel version of them trying to get away with business as usual under slightly different circumstances. The entire game has been played on normal mode and we’ve barely even bothered to leave the training area; the thing that finally does her in isn’t even a particularly clever ploy or masterful legal maneuver, merely that the sleight of hand happened to work this time around.

Except that it shouldn’t have worked, because it makes no sense. And as much as that ought to be the slogan anytime Suits tries to pull any sort of legal shenanigans, if they’re ever going to pretend to know what they’re doing, shouldn’t it be now? I guess they’ve made it this far, they might as well go all the way.

So Faye signs one copy of a document which makes her appear to have directed Harvey to tamper with a witness; this document is not notarized, the only witnesses to its signing stand to benefit directly from the signatory’s expulsion from the firm, no one in their right mind, much less a veteran officer of the court, would ever put something like that in writing, and as I said, this is the only copy, and there’s literally nothing stopping her from destroying it. Their supporting evidence is a lobby record of Katrina’s visit to see Faye the previous night; while it’s certainly possible that this building requires listing a point of contact before admission, the fact that Faye was surprised by Katrina’s appearance (“Katrina, you’re not permitted to be here”) makes that unlikely, meaning Katrina was almost certainly documented as a visitor to the firm, meaning that, as far as anyone not bearing witness to these events knows, she could have met with anyone there for any reason. The next piece of evidence, that Faye immediately went to see Harvey after Katrina left, is even more ludicrous, if possible; she followed him to the lobby, so there would be no record of their meeting unless they’re talking about a video recording, but even so, it’s perfectly reasonable to think that two coworkers might be discussing any number of things in the building where they work, so that’s hardly conclusive. At best, this all boils down to a case of she-said, they-said, built on a teetering mountain of conjecture, hearsay, perjury, and fabricated evidence that would force any self-respecting judge to acquit, putting them all right back where they started, but with a lot less patience for each other’s bullshit.

Except that none of this matters anyway, because, spoiler alert, Harvey only gets Faye to leave by promising to leave as well, framing it as some big sacrifice even though this is how he planned to end things all along. So Donna can make her speech about them all risking everything for each other to get Faye out, and they can all go out together to celebrate a job well done, but when it comes right down to it, at the end of the day, none of their parlor tricks really worked, and the war was only won when Harvey made the decision to throw himself down upon his sword for the rest of them. And even then, he didn’t sustain much of a wound, having already lined up a position at Mike’s firm where I doubt he’s going to stay a junior partner for very long.

I’m just saying that after all the buildup, after all the manufactured tension…this is kind of a letdown. Or, well, it would be, but I said I was keeping my expectations low and this is exactly why.

Onto the second half!

Part III

#suits usa #s09e10 #season 9 #analysis

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koisurufortunecephalopod · 5 years

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A Comprehensive Guide to DESURABBITS

Hey guys, your friendly cephalopod here to tell you all about the group I’ve fallen in love with!

(ripping of shades sorry not sorry)

So what is this group?

Formed as DEATHRABBITS (デスラビッツ) in late 2013 when the idol group usa☆usa Shoujou Club (usa☆usa少女倶楽部) of Mochizuki Emi, Okawa Yuzu, and Yasui Karin did a crossover unit featuring the section chief of their indies label G-ANGLE RECORDS and vocalist of the digital hardcore unit AKIRADEATH, Kanzaki Akira. While “Bucho” supplies backing death metal screams and often stands around menacingly in the background, the girls sing and dance like any other idol group. Their style is often described as “Japanese Death Pop”, often compared to BABYMETAL and (OG) LADYBABY with how it has maybe a slight bit of an edge compared to other songs in the idol genre, plus metal influences.

For the past six years, they’ve evolved their sound in a variety of different ways, trying different styles with their latest released song “Sotsugyou Shoujo- Mirai E” taking on more of a rock influence. They’re one of those groups that tends to just throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks. One of these being “ramen editions” of their singles. Starting in 2016, the singles sold at their live shows are packaged with dry ramen, and purchasing one also sends packets of ramen to disenfranchised areas of Malaysia. Unfortunately as of 2019, this is being discontinued (although the members and staff have expressed interest in replacing this with ramen edition goods). They’ve also changed their name (confusingly) a few times as well-- to Desu.Rabbits (です。ラビッツ) in 2016, and recently to DESURABBITS (デスラビッツ) in February 2019. Either way, most fans affectionately refer to them either as “DesuRabi” or “Rabbits.”

Also fun fact, Bucho is bffs with Ladybeard because of course those two are friends. They crowdfunded a unit song that’s a collaboration between their groups called “DEADLIFT RABBITS”

Members!

Mochizuki Emi (望月愛実)

Currently 17 and about to start her final year in high school, Emi is the youngest member of the group and was only a sixth grader in elementary school when she joined. Her parents were both involved in the music industry, leading her to become interested in becoming a singer from an early age. She’s the lead vocalist of the group as well as the center of all currently released songs. She’s the one who gets all of the long solo parts and has always had a rather strong voice since she joined. Emi’s grown up A LOT since the early days (they’ve never posted heights on their profiles, so we’re not sure, but she has guessed that she’s grown about 15cm (~6 inches) and has gotten a much more mature hairstyle. As the baby of the group, in some of their older material, she would often come across as a little spoiled and quick-tempered and compared to that she’s really mellowed out, becoming more mature and cool-headed. Her English pronunciation is impeccable, but she actually isn’t very good at speaking it in conversation. Before member colors were abolished in 2019, her image color was pink! She also posts song covers on her personal Youtube channel, but it hasn’t been active for a while.

Okawa Yuzu (大川柚)

Yuzu is the leader and often the one tasked with leading MCs and acting as the spokesperson of the group. Since joining, her catchphrase has been “Always full of energy,” which is something that describes her well. While she isn’t necessarily a ball of sunshine bouncing off the walls, she has more of an intense “Let’s give 100% to everything” sort of energy to her. She takes her role as leader very seriously; consulting with staff about the direction of the group and recently dying her hair ash pink and requesting that her new costume look “strong and like she can fight in it” in order to really highlight how their new era is about taking a new direction. Since early childhood, Yuzu has aimed for a career in show business. Originally wanting to be a talent or a broadcaster, she eventually studied dance in order to become an idol. From there she made connections with singer-songwriter and producer of other idols and artists (such as KOTO, Terashima Yufu, and TsubasaFly), SAWA. She is the best dancer in the group, so look for her if there’s a dance break. Her voice is the deeper one out of the girls, although she doesn’t get as many solo parts as Emi. It was announced recently that she will be getting her first center song as the double A-side with “Sotsugyo Shoujo”, “Demo, Nigenna.” She’s also an avid bookworm and very studious, and will be attending university this spring. Her member color was previously purple!

Yasui Karin (安井夏鈴)

Karin is the oldest of the three girls and the mood maker. She’s carefree and my pace beyond my pace. If she actually speaks during an MC (and isn’t just staring off into space the entire time), she will most likely forget what she’s saying halfway through the sentence because she’s always off in “Kariko World” as she calls it. She has a very distinct way of speaking that’s very slowly rhythmic, so she will often get speaking lines in songs (and recently something of a rap verse). Her singing voice is also the most “idol-like” of the three-- high pitched and sweet-- but while she also doesn’t get many solos, it’s very easy to pick out. Also she has such sweet guitar skills. She and Tomo-zo should totally collaborate. Totally. I can’t find much about her background, but I do want to say on a personal note that she was the first member to remember my name and that I was a Bucho oshi after even the first time I saw them. And every time she’s the one taking the cheki, the camera “somehow” doesn’t have any film in it and you two just have to hold that pose for a bit. Karin will also be attending university in the spring and I am so proud of her. She used to be the green member!

Kanzaki Akira (神崎晃) Bucho (部長)

The 41-year-old section head (or “bucho” in Japanese) at the record label G-ANGLE RECORDS with a background in singing in metal, grindcore, enka, and classical styles who was a vocalist in a handful of metal and rock bands from high school that never went anywhere, Bucho officially emerged in the music world in 2006 with the underground digital hardcore duo AKIRADEATH. As such, Bucho’s role in DESURABBITS is to provide backing death metal vocals (and rap). At 190cm (~6′5′’) with his gas mask and body armor, he can strike an intimidating figure. Despite this, he usually plays the part of a bumbling goofball of an “uncle” figure to the rebellious teenage girls. He himself is a huge idol wotaku (which is really annoying at events when you’re trying to get a two-shot with him and he’s wandered off to get in line for a different idol group. The girls however seem to find it hilarious to yell across the very crowded room for him to get back here because Loren wants to take a cheki with him) and has done video streams talking about the state of the idol industry. While he definitely doesn’t dance (but is incorporated into the choreography sometimes), he does his best in the back to kind of furi-copy or give gestures for the wota-gei if he’s not bumping into things. As technically a part of the record label staff, there is something of a debate over his status of a member. Since the early days of the group, there was a theme of “Emi, Yuzu, and Karin vs. Bucho,” with even several of their one-man concerts being titled as such and given the caveat of “if tickets sell out, Bucho will be fired.” However, as of their 2019 makeover, it was announced that they will be “graduating” from this image and “allowing” Bucho to be a member. In the earlier singles, his involvement was a lot larger (often having full verses), but his vocal parts have been scaled down a lot since 2015. Since 2018, he has remedied this by often having a DJ set up behind the girls and DJing live along with their performances (doing some sick mashups while singing, it’s pretty sweet), and their most recent song plays this up. He also does solo DJing as “DJ Bucho.” Not to be confused with “DJ Akira,” which is just what he calls himself when he talks in an “ikemen voice.” His member color was black!

Okay, so what about their music?

WELL I’M GLAD YOU ASKED. HAVE A COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF MY OPINIONS.

“Idol STAR WARS”

Their very first song. The girls are at peak baby. Emi is a literal fetus.

I actually really like the instrumental for this, it has a bit of a gritty electronic edge to it. It sets the precedent for their style of “cute but with a screaming man”, but is a bit more so, because Bucho actually has verses???

The chorus is pure sugar pop though I love it

But what I love more is Bucho just hecking going off with the verbal keysmash screams after the final chorus. Fucking spectacular you funky bastard.

I’m pretty sure they only filmed like seven minutes of video for the music video. I’m not convinced Bucho and the girls were ever in the same building.

“Hell Near Bucho ~ Ugokisugi da yo Nihonjin 2013 ~”

The B-side off of Idol STAR WARS, so still pretty old form with the line distribution but

Bucho screaming about having a hernia for four minutes

ngl because of the title being partly in English and the album version having a random-ass intro with an American woman talking about Bucho battling an endless battle with the enemy of “hell near” i didn’t actually make the connection for months and thought this was like. DesuRabi Lore.

OKAY BUT THAT CHORUS IS SO CATCHY AND PEAK IDOL I LOVE IT

And A+ screaming I love it

I really want to see it live at least once because the “Hell! Near! Bucho!” chant part sounds like it would go so hard

“Koisuru Kisetsu”

Second single, getting into their style a bit more

But they still acknowledge that like... Bucho has a name.

I highly recommend checking out the subbed version because the things Bucho is screaming about are just. What.

Literal Rabbits to represent Emi, Yuzu, and Karin

Emi, Yuzu and Karin just being like “The lyrics are kinda dark... Bucho’s singing about his love life again lmao let’s just hecking change this song because we wanna sing something else

Just hecking shove him behind some fake cherry trees. He’ll be fine.

“Omatsuri JAPAN!! Kokuhaku Night”

This is probably their most straight-up idol song. Like you could legit just have this song without him grunting in the background, but why would you want that.

Like that sounds weird by itself but trust me it really pumps up the energy of the song

It’s one of the songs that’s an absolute bop at lives, especially when they shuffle around who does the “Daisuki desu” line. And then we mosh.

Listen it just has such a great energy that you don’t always get in the “cute summer love song” niche of idol songs and I greatly appreciate this

“DESURABBITS Gun no 7 Kajou”

Another one I highly recommend watching the subbed version for because it outlines the “Seven rules of the DESURABBITS Army”, and is basically the theme song and list of principals for the group and fans.

Music and MV aside, I want to say that this was one of the things that REALLY sold me on the group, as the rules are all “do your best at your life outside lives, be kind to one another and the live venue” and the fanbase really reflects that. Like they’ve welcomed me more than Gachamen/pinkos which is kind of an accomplishment.

Like you don’t gotta make your edgy idol group 2edgy4me, you can still be about respecting the fans of other groups and the other fans and just having a good time.

ANyways

Yuzu: Yeah we have no idea what the fuck Bucho is ever saying

Emi’s vocals in the pv are really great for her age and I wish there were better quality live versions for it recently bc dang she’s improved so much

This is another goes absolutely insane at lives with the “WE! ARE! DESURABBITS! DESU!” chant it’s amazing

I do kinda love the bit where it looks like they’re going to go into a dance break and all they do is... spin.

Also they call Bucho a mascot character

“Usagi no Kimochi”

Honestly this song is just kind of hilarious once you realize that it’s basically just “don’t talk shit online and come watch our shows”

Complete with Bucho fucking murdering the Twitter bird

They’re starting to change their styles a bit with many tonal shifts and fewer Bucho parts. I’m not personally too into the verses, but I do like the choruses

I really dig the way they go in on the “pyons” at the beginning as well as the piano parts

DJ AKIRA GA KONNICHIWA

“Chuuni no Natsu. Ojisan no Natsu.”

This is a very good summery idol song just in general and mood which I love, with that lovely piano, string, and Emi-solo intro. Very refreshing and nostalgic with a good energy to it.

THEY LET BUCHO SING!!!! About how much he wants to go to the beach but can’t because he has work just let him go.

But for real, I really love his singing voice here. It matches well and has a bit of a punk rock sound to it which is my jam outside of idols. Also in the last chorus the way all four of them harmonize is surprisingly nice!

Also as a song that really sums up the relationship between Bucho and Emi, Yuzu, and Karin, it’s hilariously fitting.

KUSAI, KUSAI!

O-Ji-SA-N!

“Nande?”

First things first the video is amazing like could you guys not shoot on the same day who came up with the story what is going on who believes Bucho could fight ninjas

But honestly that’s kind of the point

ngl this is my favorite DesuRabbi song, because:

A) HOOKS FOR DAYS. From the “nande naze nande naze nande naze” to the “chikirichi, chikirichi, chikirichi” to the “nande, nee, nande”

B) honestly joining the fandom I was in the mindset where I needed something to express my “why what what the fuck what why what”

and this song supports that that is okay. If you can’t have a happy idol song that is just like “lmao we don’t know what’s going on and that’s fine” idk you’re a stronger person than me I guess??

Also the video

This also really marks the shift into Bucho taking a backseat to the girls, which ye Emi’s voice is clearly getting stronger

But tbh the highlight for me is Karin’s solo at the start of the bridge. Her voice is perfect for the whimsical tone they’re going for at that part of like “hey it doesn’t matter my dude!”

“Shitsuren Shitara Wasabi”

Okay, just gonna be up front, I’m not the biggest fan of their 2016-2018 “です。ラビッツ” era songs. They tried experimenting with songs a lot more with tone changes and different styles, and honestly I just found them lacking the same energy. However, I love this song a lot as it has that with that same “throw a bunch of things at the wall at once”

The tone is a lot more mature than their older material, but you still get the energy, especially in that chorus

The girls are the focus, and even though Emi still has ALL OF THE SOLOS, Yuzu gets some spots too, especially her spoken line which kind of makes this “her song” among her oshis and I’m really happy that she got that since she was the only one who didn’t have that before this

The lyrics are just so hopeful and good??? Idk maybe I’ll translate someday

WASABI WASABI WASABI KURE

“Sotsugyou Shojo-Mirai E-”

Or as I like to call it “When the heck did you guys get a budget???”

This is the first song with a different producer and uh... yeah you can tell. It’s radically different with a darker, rock image, but the lyrics are really hopeful and nice. I translated them over on my jp twitter if you’re interested??

THAT BASS THO

Yuzu’s voice suits this well with her very short solos. I feel like Karin’s solo singing part barely sounds like her, but I do like her little “rap”

And of course Bucho’s rap. What a nerd I love him.

Seriously where did they get a music video budget

I’m more into their old stuff just because that’s what I like, but I do really appreciate that they went for a harder sound but keeping the hooks and the hopeful outlook and the weird old man who stands behind them

This is most definitely the most intense dance they’ve done. Emi and Karin tried very hard.

Okay we get it so how do we follow them?

Unfortunately, on one hand, DesuRabi very much are focused on live performances as part of the underground idol tradition. They don’t have a very active release schedule, and while their Youtube channel sometimes posts live videos, it’s a bit sporadic. HOWEVER, they are a group that if you somehow manage to get to Japan, I would HIGHLY recommend checking out, if only for the fact that they have lives almost every weekend which are very cheap and very easy to get tickets to. Unless it’s a larger event or through a different event planner, usually you just reserve under a name and email and pay at the door. The DesuRabi Army is super nice and accepting and I will possibly be there.

But other than that: uh yeah, social media.

Official Youtube

Official Website

Twitter (group)

Twitter (Emi)

Twitter (Yuzu)

Twitter (Karin)

Twitter (Bucho)

They’re all fairly active on twitter (although Karin will sometimes just kind of... fade from existence). Emi, Yuzu, and Karin seem to have SOME rules on when they can reply, but Bucho just replies whenever he wants, which is often. Even sometimes when he isn’t tagged in the conversation or following you. They’re always very excited to see foreign fans, so tell them Loren sent you!

#desurabbits #desu rabbits #death rabbits #this is a bucho appreciation blog #idols #idol #jpop idol #with the kind of person bucho is there is always a 60% chance he will find this #please do not #but anyways please love them

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