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#and if i'm not studying then i'm that much farther from getting the score i want :(
justabooknerdposts · 3 months
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Hey can i request Percy always saying can I ask a dumb question before actually asking something and Annabeth having enough and saying something Percy you are not dumb I don’t know why you have to always bring it up I love you and you’re not dumb and Percy just having self steem issues and being pessimistic but Annabeth being the best girlfriend ever
Hi! Great question and I like this idea, but I'm actually closed to prompts right now--too much going on in life to keep up with them at the moment. However, I kind of already did a scene like this in my story Study Break (follow the link if you want to read the full story), so I'm sharing that scene here!
From Study Break (posted on Fanfiction and A03):
The following Friday found them sitting on opposite ends of the couch in Percy's apartment. Annabeth's legs were tucked up under her and she was chewing on the end of a pen, trying to stay focused on her AP Government textbook, desperate to find any topic that might hold her interest long enough to write an essay about it. Percy had been sitting back with his feet on the coffee table, but now he'd set them on the ground as he hunched over his chemistry homework, nose wrinkled in concentration as he looked from his textbook to his notes and back again, occasionally muttering to himself. The noise of Sally and Paul getting ready to leave and go see a show drifted down the hall, reminding Annabeth that it was once again Friday night and maybe it would be nice to do something besides study. But she glanced at Percy, focused on his work, and decided not to interrupt him. Fighting back a sigh, Annabeth returned her attention to her own homework.
Ten minutes after his parents left, however, Percy swore and threw down his pencil. Annabeth jumped and looked at him as he dumped his chemistry stuff on the floor and cursed again. "I give up. I can't do this."
"What?"
Percy leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, his head in his hands. "I can't freaking do this. I don't get it."
"Chemistry?" Annabeth set her own book and pen down and cautiously scooted towards him. "Percy, I can help you. I mean, balancing equations is a pain and all but—"
"It's not just chemistry. Or physics. Or pre-calculus. Or whatever other stupid classes I'm taking." Because his face was still buried in his hands, his voice was muffled as he said, "I hate studying. I'm not—I'm not a good student. And no matter how hard I try, I'm not good enough."
"Percy—"
"I got my SAT scores back again. They went down." His shoulders slumped farther. His voice was almost inaudible as he said, "I don't know why I thought college was an option for me. I really am an idiot for thinking I could do this."
"Hey." Annabeth's voice came out sharper than she intended, but she thought maybe that wasn't a bad thing. "Stop it. Percy, look at me."
When he didn't, she moved until she was right beside him, then, as gently as she could manage, moved his hands away from his face and tugged him upright, though he still wouldn't meet her eyes.
So she took his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. She hated seeing the shame etched on his features, especially when she didn't think he had anything to be ashamed of. "Nobody gets to talk about my boyfriend that way. Not even my boyfriend." She kissed him, hard. "Test scores aren't everything. Neither is New Rome. I mean, I know that's what we'd talked about, but if they don't want you, then screw them. We'll figure something else out. I've been researching other places, state schools and community colleges, and there are options."
Percy swallowed. "But I don't want to hold you back from—"
She kissed him again before he could finish that sentence. "No way. You don't get to pull that guilt trip on yourself because it's not true. And you don't have to be good at school to be good enough. Percy, you're—you're one of the best people I've ever met. Plus you're really good at a lot of things. Who cares if standardized tests and homework aren't some of them?"
He lowered his eyes. "I just don't want to let you down."
Annabeth ran her thumbs along the fine, fragile bones beneath his eyes, which wouldn't meet hers. Emotion briefly choked her, but finally she said, "Percy, you have never let me down. And I'm proud of how hard you've been working. You can do this." She kissed him once more, gently this time. "I believe in you."
He nodded, but his shoulders were still slumped, his attitude defeated. An idea crossed Annabeth's mind and she decided to go with it. Standing up from the couch, she held out her hand. "Come on. We're leaving."
Percy looked up then in surprise. "What? To go where?"
"Just trust me. Do you have Riptide?"
He raised an eyebrow, then pulled the pen out of his jeans pocket. "Don't I always?"
"Good." She hauled him off the couch and to the front door, stopping to grab her drakon bone sword, and their sweatshirts, on the way. "Don't forget your key."
Keep reading here
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katierosefun · 3 years
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i’m so tired :(
#caroline talks#tried to take my second practice lsat test of the day#took too long doing the first logic game#tried to muscle my way through the second one#realized i had 14 minutes left#started crying instead and just closed out of the test#and i'm taking it on saturday but i might wind up taking it again in august :(#but i don't want to take it in august because lsac is gonna bring in the experimental section again :(#and taking the test online is already hard enough :(#i don't want to sit for 3 hours instead of 2 :(#i'm so tired and sad and my brain's not working and i just miss my friends and i miss being a human :(#i'm so tired and i'm so sad and i can't even write fic right now :(#because if i write fic then i'm not studying :(#and if i'm not studying then i'm that much farther from getting the score i want :(#i'm sorry this is kinda a downer post :(#but i'm very tired :(#i'm really tired and really scared and really angry with myself :(#i haven't cried at all over this test but i just cried for a solid five minutes because i'm so....:((#and the more i thought about it the sadder i got#and the angrier i got#like i have this one friend who wanted me to come over for her birthday#and i felt terrible because my first impulse was 'oh my god how can you be so selfish i already told you i'm studying for the lsat'#and then i felt TERRIBLE because ':((( oh but my friend's important to me too :((('#and then she was like 'oh don't worry i pushed it back for this weekend instead'#and then i got angry AGAIN because 'that's the day of my lsat so i can't come' and then i felt TERRIBLE for feeling angry#and now i've just been wallowing like if this is the type of person i am over a TEST#then who the hell am i gonna be when i actually ever go to law school or start WORKING#will i just turn into an absolute monster who doesn't care about other people's feelings#will i just turn cold and angry and annoyed with people all the time#and then i cried some more
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all-hallows-evie · 3 years
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Chapter 1: Marooned
Rating: T, for language, Canon Typical Violence/Action. Honestly, this chapter isn't that bad, the T rating is just in case I forgot about something lol
Wordcount: 3,776
Warnings: Canon typical violence and adventure, female OC with name × Tech slowburn, but not too slow lol, NOT BETA'D, because if I have to stare at this first chapter again I'm not going to post it.
A/N: HAPPY TECH TUESDAY, LOOK I'M FINALLY POSTING SOMETHING, WHEEEEEEEEEEE
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There were bad ideas, really bad ideas and then there was this.
The ship hums under her feet as it trudges through the far corner of the mid rim, chugging along on it’s route without any sign of trouble or disruption from it’s preplanned course.
It should have been a routine pillaging, something she had placed firmly in the ‘great ideas’ list but instead it had turned into a routine mutiny and finished the day as a routine marooning. She sighs as she lays her head back against the seamless panel behind her.
Fucking pirates. 
She has been stranded on the old freighter for at least two moons, but it was hard to say with certainty. The droids that man the ship have no need to eat so more often than not they forget to pass along anything to keep her mounting hunger at bay, adding along to the lack of any kind of panel to the outside world, getting her bearings is proving to be more difficult than usual. 
She hisses a swear to drown out the low growl of her belly and focuses her gaze on the far corner of the room. Another day, another chance to count the diamond shaped tiles above her cell, she swears the number changes every other time she counts. She doesn’t get farther than eighteen when the door of the maintenance room blows open. 
The dust fills the room, hiding everything under its grimy shadow. The grit in the air crackles as it’s pushed against the red of the electron walls that keep her prisoner with the ships cooling coils and a water filtration unit that has calcified and has never been fixed.  
"Well look at that, we found it! Lucky break!"
"Luck had nothing to do with it, if you had studied the schematics of this cruiser like I had asked-"
"Yeah yeah yeah." The first figure, a hulking shadow in the doorway brushes off the smaller one as he stomps into the suddenly too tiny room.
"The memory core should be at the end of the-" the smaller of the two figures stops in front of her cell as the big one charges towards the end of the room without stopping. They launch themselves into the piles of junk thrown haphazardly inside, "That's concerning."
"Concerning? You see someone in a cage and you go with ‘concerning’?" She replies as she pulls herself up to standing. She takes in his armor, modified clone armor from the looks of it painted pale with a bright red stripe down his chest, his eyes slightly magnified by the goggles on his face, the rest hidden by the elongated helmet.
"According to the intel we were provided there weren't supposed to be life forms aboard." He seems irritated to see her.
"Good old Republic intel, still living up to its reputation."
The other clone approaches, he rips open the metal box in his hands and yanks out the core as if the casing was made of thick flimsy and nothing more, "I've got the thing, time to go!"
She watches, dumbstruck for a moment as her ticket out starts to head for the gaping maw that used to be a door, "Wait, you're taking the old database?" The two of them stop and turn, "It's not complete! It's missing pieces of the coordinates!" Firefek she didn't want to sound desperate but she was.
"Likely story-" The big one chuckles.
"I was trying to steal it too, I almost got all of it before my crew turned on me!"
"A mercenary or a pirate? No matter, I trust you even less now."
She had never wanted to punch anyone's face as hard as she wanted to punch his, "Check the core Goggles, I swear to you! It's missing pieces!" He hesitates and in that baited pause she knows she has him, "Please, just let me out and drop me off wherever you dock next. You can have my data chip. No harm, no foul, just get me out."
The one with the goggles glares at her, the yellow tinted transparisteel of his visor snapping downl before he turns to the bigger man. Klaxons ring all around as he scans the core with a handheld device, but it's taking up time they do not have.
The two clones share a look, silently deciding her fate.
The bigger one caves first, "Aww c'mon Tech, we can't leave her! You saw what's on this ship, she'll be a goner on some mining planet!"
"Under normal circumstances I might agree but she's caged for a purpose, and I'm disinclined to put any trust in her."
"How much damage can she do? She’s smaller than you are!" 
Tech, the one in the goggles, sighs before he turns back around to face her, "If we spring you, you play by our rules. You follow our orders, no complaints, no rebuttals and if you put one toe out of line-"
"Out the airlock, understood." She nods furiously, hands pressed against the panel as she watches Tech short out the electron wall holding her hostage, the panel shudders and then it spews sparks on to the ground as the red fades and she's finally able to step through. 
"Lets go shortie!" 
"Wait, let me just grab-" She scrambles to the other side of the wall, trying to pull at something from the top of a shelf. The bigger clone reaches over and tosses the crate to the floor. She throws open the top and snatches out a bantha leather bag and a helmet.
"Run!"
Tech doesn't have to tell her twice, the three of them bolt out of the door and into the corridor, the lights above flash in time with the klaxons. There is a low rumble that joins the hum of the hyperspace engine, as whatever security droids are on board begin to activate.
"Back to the ship, short stuff!" 
The three of them book it down the darkened halls, ducking behind walls and crates as the first cluster of security droids pass through.
She tosses her bag across her shoulder, slinging it against one side of her hip, clipping it into place with snaps sewn into her jacket. They watch three more droids pass them by before she speaks again, "My name's Nox, by the way." 
"Doesn't sound like a girl's name." The big one chuckles, so deep and rumbling it almost feels like a growl.
"Well it's the only name I've got. My parents named me a bit of a mouthful, Nox just works better."
"Clear." Tech calls out and they continue on their way heading to the service hangar where their ship hopefully was waiting for them.
"How'd you end up out here?" The big one asks, with every flash of light above them she can see more of the large scary face painted roughly on his helmet, lines thrown on haphazardly only to be scraped away by carbon scoring.
She is about to answer when she is shoved back into a corner by Tech. He slaps a hand over her mouth before she can yelp, the leather slightly singed, it smells of electricity and grease.
“Wait.”
"I'm getting tired of all this sneaking around, I say we blow our way outta here!" The big one growls.
"We’re almost there Wrecker, it would be pointless to try now."
She shoves Tech's Hand away, "Blow your way out of here, are you insane? With the amount of baby on board you'd blow us into the next dimension!"
There are a few beats of silence before both helmets turn towards her.
"Baby?" Wrecker repeats but is shushed by Tech.
"You don't mean baradium-"
"Bisulfate? I absolutely do! There were containers of the stuff in the holding bay."
"This Imperial ship is headed somewhere to mine thorilide?" He repeats, tone stressed over every syllable in the word ‘Imperial’.
"That or some unlucky planet is about to be wiped from existence."
"The location of the Republic thorilide mines have been kept under the utmost security for ages, not even the Jedi Council was ever advised of its location."
"Can’t say I blame them, I barely trust them with those glowy sticks of death." She murmurs, making lightsaber sounds with her mouth as Wrecker snickers.
"Stop that. Do you know where this ship was heading? Do you have a copy of the manifest?"
"What, your amazing Republic recce didn't get you that information shiny?" He glares back at her, brows pinching together behind the dark frames of his goggles, "Maker! Did those cloners take your sense of humor? Yes, I know where this ship is going."
"Bet Cid’s contact would pay more for that bit of info." Wrecker’s grin can be heard even through the plastoid of his helmet.
Tech meanwhile has typed something to a com on his wrist, "Hunter, there's been a complication."
"What kind of complication?"
"There is more on board this ship than just the republic database-"
"What do you mean?"
"This ship is a mining vessel, out to mine thorilide."
Tech’s wrist comm goes silent, just quiet static while the voice on the other line thinks, "Ordinance?"
Both clones look at her, she nods emphatically, "Ordinance, med supplies, if there was coaxium on board I wouldn't be surprised, this place is the motherlode."
"Quite a bit of supplies on board, it would seem."
The comm goes quiet again for a few moments, "We don't have time for this, it's only a matter of time before they realize that your cruiser is stolen. Grab what you went in for and leave."
Tech shakes his head, it's so tiny and quick that if she wasn't looking at him in that moment she would have missed it, "Where is it being kept?" 
"Up, five or so floors unless I've miscounted."
"Tech, Wrecker, Get out of there, now!" The voice on the other end grows more and more irritable as they stand around in silence.
"We'll be out as soon as possible." Tech replies curtly as he cuts the comm. He makes it sound so easy like they were stopping by the nearest market to pick up fruit, instead of about to hijack high quality explosives from Imperial custody, "Lead the way."
"What? Just like that?"
"Are there, or are there not these items on board?"
"Yes." 
"You swear?" Wrecker leans in close, hovering over her.
"Yeah."
Tech nods, "Vital signs are stable, no signs of heightened stress-"
"What if I'm just a really good liar?"
"You can try all you want my dear, but the data doesn't lie."
"Does he do this to you too? I'm finding it a bit creepy-" She asks Wrecker as her eyebrow raises.
"You get used to it."
"Weird, so weird…" she mutters to herself as she turns and peeks around the corner. She looks around for anything that is familiar, when she sees a maintenance lift at the very end of the hall to the right. She motions them forward, and silently they sneak their way closer to the lift. She turns her attention to her side as she digs in her bag, her fingers grasp at the odd collection of junk in her pockets until her hand finally wraps around the cool metal of her code cylinder and she can finally stop holding her breath.
Tech's hand on her shoulder pulls her back to the task on hand as he drags her back a few steps. The catwalk above them from here to the lift is no more than a shoddy looking set of grates that creak as a group of security droids march along their patrol, oblivious to the three of them below. 
“The maintenance lift?" Tech sniffs as they come to a stop at its doors. He raises hand to push his goggles back into place, "Perhaps you have failed to notice but none of us are maintenance droids, the moment you try to access that panel they will -”
“They’ll what?” She asks as she jams the cylinder into the port, the lift clicks open silently and she steps inside. 
“The alarms-”
“What alarms? According to this," she snaps her code cylinder from the panel and drops it back into her bag, lost again to the chaos of the random junk held within, "I'm a maintenance droid doing routine inspections. How stupid do you think I am?”
"Hey hey, this one's pretty smart huh Tech?!" Wrecker is thrilled.
"Pirate." She reminds, "You don't see many my age that aren't intelligent and I'll give you one guess as to why."
The doors silently click open and before they can step out a team of at least half a dozen well armed sentry droids roll past. 
They all leap from the inside of the lift and fall into a crouch behind a stack of supply crates. They wait for a few moments before Tech quickly peeks over, "They don't seem to have spotted us."
"Fuck, there weren't this many when we tried this the first time." She swears a few more times under her breath.
"We should do this my way." Wrecker offers.
"What's that mean, what does he mean?!" Nox looks nervously over to Tech, "He doesn't mean-?"
"Explosives and violence? He absolutely does," Tech sighs, “ and I'm afraid we are running low on options and even lower on time. Wrecker, what does your ordinance look like?"
“But you said I couldn't bring any?”
“Yes, and when was the last time you actually listened?”
Wrecker, the fun if not absolutely homicidal one, pulls out a couple of detonators, a roll of plastic tape, a half dozen hand grenades and three droid poppers.
“Great, nice to know you could have turned us into a small sun if I hadn't told you about the baby on board.”
"Everything save for the poppers is far too dangerous to use around those crates." Tech hisses, "Any more of those brilliant pirate ideas floating around in your head?"
She chews on her lip for a moment, wracking her brain for anything else that might be useful as she ignores Tech's sarcastic tone. Apart from the crates on this floor littered with treasure, there didn't seem to be anything of any use...except for the busted water filter. “How big of a distraction do you think it would take to get all those sentries away from the haul?”
“It would need to be something quite large or destructive enough to threaten the integrity of the ship.”
“The water filtration system on board is completely calcified, I don't think it was ever fixed since there are only droids on board. If you could flood that with enough pressure the entire pipe should burst-”
“And flood the entire floor, along with the engine room, that might just do it.” He’s on his data pad before the words are even out of his mouth, he scans the room all around and matches it with the wireframe schematics on his screen. He stalks his way backwards until he finds the panel he is looking for. He pops it open easily and then begins to slice into the mainframe of the ship, “On my count, take Wrecker to wherever the baby is, let him handle it. You get your hands on as much of the medical supplies as you can, the security onboard is a little tighter than I would have preferred so I will have to stay here and continue to flood the filter.”
“Oh, easy.”
“Think you can handle all that tiny?” Wrecker’s thundering chuckle threatens to give away their location even with the steady moan of the alarms overhead.
She grins, Wrecker is back to being the fun one, “Try and keep up.”
There is a sound of roaring water all around them as tech funnels every liquid on the ship into the filter, then a sound like an explosion a couple of feet below them rocks the ship like a lightning strike. 
The sound of the alarm overhead changes as every droid on the floor turns away and heads to a lowering platform, all instructed to assist with the burst pipe.
“That’s our cue!” 
She shoves Wrecker forward playfully before they both break into a sprint toward the storage rooms where their bounty is being held. She points to one of the rooms as they approach, "This one's your big boy!"
The door is sealed shut, but not for long. Wrecker doesn't slow, instead he hunches low, bringing his shoulders down and tucking his chin into the collar of his armor before he barrels straight through, punching a hole through the doors with enough force to make even her teeth rattle.
She dips into the storage room across the hall, thanking the stars that her haul wasn't locked away like his was. She rips open any crate within arms reach, tossing open the tops and letting them scatter around the room wherever they land. She snatches bacta patches and hypos by the handful and packs the crate as full as she can, slamming her entire body weight against it to get it to close. She drags it out into the hall, placing it by the door before she bolts into the room right beside the one Wrecker is standing in. 
Wrecker watches her disappear into the room, the four small crates of explosives tucked carefully under his arms, “Wait, where are you-”
His question is answered as another crate hits the floor beside him. She comes running out of the room, grabbing this second crate by the handle and yanking it along, “Perfect! Not a single explosion! Love that for me!”
Wrecker bends down to offer her a hand but she has already snatched up the first trunk and is flying down the hall with them. She's faster than Wrecker would have believed she would be capable of with the two crates almost her height. She almost trips over herself as she stops and with a swift kick, the second crate lands at Tech's feet, “Come on 20/20, cut her loose, let's go!”
“What’s in that- I specifically ordered you to only carry medical supplies.”
“Yeah well, it sounds like you are used to not being listened to so, ship. Now!”
Wrecker races past, hopping off of the side and down to the level below, the halls are empty as all hands are called to help with the floor that is flooding. 
Nox peeks over the side, she watches as Wrecker sets the small boxes of baby down beside him, "Toss your crate!" He calls up. She nods and yanks the crates handle, flipping it up and off of the edge with a nudge from Tech. 
She helps him in turn, as they gingerly haul the crate full of ordinance over the edge before tossing it below. 
Wrecker sets the crates to one side before turning back to catch Nox, but she's already climbing down. Her fingers dig into spots on the wall where she should not be able to have any grip. She finds her own way down and with a little hop, lands right beside Wrecker as Tech lands beside her. The clang of his boots echoes down the empty hallway. "We'll need to make our way through the flooded floor of the ship in order to get back to the hangar." Tech types away at his data pad again before picking up the side of his crate.
Nox follows close beside the two clones, tossing the crate up onto her back to avoid making any unnecessary scraping sounds as they get closer to the flooded area, the sound of pouring water gets louder and louder with every floor. The next floor they walk through has the water barely deep enough to wash over the toes of their boots, but it rises rapidly after that. By the time they are on the same floor as the hangar, the water has risen up to their knees and Nox has a harder time trying to distract her mind from where all of this stagnant water has been hiding this whole time.
“Holding out ok over there tiny?” Wrecker chuckles. 
She turns to answer, when everything becomes...not alright. Her next step slips out from under her and she goes flying forward, crashing face first into the dark disgusting water, the crate on her back keeping her under the surface as she struggles to pull herself back up to standing. 
A hand at the back of her collar pulls her back up into fresh air, slimy water pours from her mouth and nose as she gags. She doesn't need to clear the water from her eyes to know what the dark figures that are starting to line the hallway are. Tech and Wrecker are on either side of her, blasters raised as the sentry droids file in.   
“I'm hoping you can fight better than you can swim.” Tech calls over as Wrecker leaps over them both and charges straight into one of the sentries.  Tech keeps a few of the others at bay, clipping them with bright bolts from his twin deecees, but it's not enough. She rubs the slime from her face and charges right behind Wrecker, using her entire body to check a droid in her path, she grabs the blaster from its hands as it goes tumbling backwards and into the water. Techs shots ring out around her as he stays behind, watching over the crates behind him. Wrecker tears through any droids that get within reach, sparks flying on to the water before they sizzle and die. She concentrates her fire on any droids Tech misses until the hall is clear.
"There'll be a second platoon on their way, we better get a move on." Tech calls back to them, she tosses the almost empty blaster into the water beside her.
"Are you always just, you know?" She makes growling and ripping sounds at Wrecker.
He laughs, "Not often enough." 
She stifles her laughter behind her hand as she walks back to where Tech is to retrieve the case of medical supplies, for a brief moment the last couple of days are forgotten and even the slime on her skin is the last thing on her mind. For a brief moment she was back with her men, waiting for that score of a lifetime, but when she grabs the handle of the crate and looks back it’s the clone armor that reminds her she is in fact alone. The sudden quiet of sadness doesnt last long as the doors behind them open and a new series of drods begin their march towards them. 
“Incoming!”
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Tag list: @themarvelbunch @agentwhiskeysdarlin @pascalisthepunkest @ashotofspotchka
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