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#because that was the most dramatic possible way he could have relayed that information. fucking superb you funky little drama queen

coquelicoq · 2 years

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yessssss we have arrived at the night before the count's duel with albert! mercédès is here! she's calling him edmond! she's begging him to spare her son's life!! she's saying shit like "avenge yourself, edmond! but avenge yourself on the guilty; avenge yourself on fernand, avenge yourself on me, but don't avenge yourself on my son!" and he's roaring in despair and seizing handfuls of his hair and AGREEING TO IT even though it means HE will have to die instead (because albert threw a glove in his face in full view of everyone at the opera a couple hours ago and men are such babies about that) and he will be dying without having achieved his vengeance, which in his mind is akin to god making all of creation and then on the seventh day "extinguishing the sun and pushing the world back into eternal night" (this is literally how he talks btw) and she's thanking him and telling him she still loves him and two little tears are coming to his eyes (but they disappear because, and i quote, "no doubt god had sent an angel to collect them") and then she's leaving and he's sitting there head in hands ("as if his brow alone could no longer support the weight of his thoughts") saying to himself "i was mad not to tear out my heart the day i swore revenge"! YES! YES! YESSSSSSSSS!!!!

#THIS IS THE SHIT WE HAVE COME TO SEE!!!#when she called him edmond i would have gasped but i was reading aloud so instead i just made the count's response very emotional #which it was supposed to be anyway so that worked out #because i'm reading this one chapter per day i knew yesterday that this was gonna happen today #and all day yesterday i was imagining how the conversation would go #i've read it before so i do remember the result of the conversation but i didn't remember the details #and like. it's SO good. it completely lived up to my expectations #he tells her fernand put him in jail! she tells him she's been dreaming EVERY NIGHT for the last TEN YEARS that he escaped from prison #by disguising himself as a dead body (which is actually what happened!!) but then was killed when the jailers threw the body #into the ocean!!!!#he's saying you want your son to live? okay. he'll live. and she's saying yes yes there's the edmond i love!!#and he's saying well you won't have much longer to love him because tomorrow morning HE'LL BE DEAD!!#because your son insulted me publicly and the thing i love most in the world after you (!!!!) is my dignity #so if i can't kill him then the only other option is to DIE BY HIS HAND #because that was the most dramatic possible way he could have relayed that information. fucking superb you funky little drama queen #the count of monte cristo #my posts

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andmaybegayer · 3 years

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I know about the Dutch Tulip craze, but what were the rest?

The South Sea Company Bubble

is a messy one that involves a lot of Stonks and Econony, and if you want a really well researched but digestible video summary I would recommend the Extra History series on it. Really I highly recommend Extra History if you want an easy way to get a shallow but not dumbed-down introduction to a wide swathe of history.

Brief Summary: In theory, the South Sea Trading Company was a private trading company that would operate in the South Sea, which is basically the ports of South America. This was because the English government at the time was flat broke, so they intended to raise money by selling shares in the SSTC to their creditors in exchange for the debt they held. This consolidates the debt in the SSTC, allowing it to be paid at a much lower interest rate and on more favourable terms. The SSTC then makes money by trading and pays out dividends to the people who traded in government debt for shares. Because the stock the SSTC issues is theoretically equal to the debt of the government, this means everyone is happy and it all balances out.

There was just one problem: There was absolutely no way for the SSTC to actually do trade in the South Sea. All those ports were Spanish controlled, because of all the colonialism Spain did to South America. And Britain was at war with Spain, because, of course they were. Britain was at war with everyone. Using some political chicanery, they managed to end the war with Spain, but as a result of said chicanery, they got a terrible deal on trade to the South Sea. One ship per year per port (also they were exclusively trading slaves. Oops, I guess!) which is, of course, nowhere near enough to pay back the shareholders.

Ever more ongoing insane economic jockeying in an attempt to keep this company afloat long enough to pay off the English debt resulted in it basically being supported by the government that was supposed to be paying it, and its stock price rose dramatically. The value of SSTC stocks now exceeds the value of the debt being traded in for it, so now shares can be sold at market rates to anyone. Said jockeying involved consolidating even more government debt into the company and also putting members of the Royal Family on the company board, which eventually put The Fucking King, Yes The King on the board. So you can imagine, when The King, That Guy, owns a company in the 1700′s, you definitely want to put money in there! I mean, what could go wrong! The King literally cannot fail, he’s too powerful!

This basically continues, ever more hare-brained schemes are made up to keep the share price climbing because as said before, there’s no actual money in the South Seas, the only thing keeping this place afloat is selling stonks. Eventually the schemes got too hare-brained: selling stocks at ludicrously inflated prices but with loan and buy-now-pay-later deals that would make a we-finance-used-car-salesman cringe. The stock price collapsed almost tenfold in a single week, and kept going, resulting in colossal losses for share buyers, especially those who had taken out loans to get in on the action, loans which in many circumstances were actually offered BY THE SOUTH SEA COMPANY.

I’m not 100% on this statement but I believe this was one of the earliest share-based bubbles, rather than a commodity bubble like the Tulip Mania.

The Paris Stock Exchange Optical Telegraph Scam

is a particularly niche one, in that as far as I’m aware the only authoritative English language document on it is literally this YouTube Video by Tom Scott, where he paid a translator to go over the original French documents, which can be found here. The summary is: there were optical signalling towers across France that were used to transmit information very quickly, by signalling with oversized mechanical semaphore flags with rules for relaying information, and they were only for official government use.

In the 1830′s a pair of brothers in Bordeaux paid off some operators to transmit information about the movements of the Paris stock exchange, and made some smart decisions to make sure that the information they sent was not recorded by marking it as a mistake. The rest of Bordeaux would only get this information by messenger on horse, so few other steps later, the brothers had information about movements of the Paris stock exchange before anyone else, and they made bank by making what appeared to be shrewd investments.

This is notable for being very similar to how modern high-frequency trading companies will base their offices as close to where offshore fibre lines make landfall as possible and communicate with lightspeed microwave beams to ensure they have the most up to date information they can get.

The Cash for Ash scandal

was a perfect example of Perverse Incentives: The Northern Irish government wanted to push a renewable energy target, namely the use of wood pellets instead of coal or gas for heating, by offering to subsidise the cost of running a wood-pellet fired heating system. The fault was that they were paying at equal or more than the cost of burners, boilers and fuel in incentives, so in practice it wasn’t a subsidy, it was straight up paying people to run heaters. Several groups who owned buildings or land saw this and started running as many wood-pellet fired furnaces as they could get into a site, heating empty buildings and offices because they were making a profit on it, hence “cash for ash”.

#Anonymous #stonks #econony #economics

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misterbitches · 3 years

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I ship muren and li cheng bc i only saw it through gifs then i watched this episode cos i was like im only starting this show if they kiss im waiting and they did and it was nice and i got so anxious that i was about to fucking vomit. I really like them together. The top/bottom shit is dumb and i hope if they must mention it they all build a bridge and get over it so they can switch cos who gives a shit. I didnt realize how large they all are like most “tall” men on tv are lying. But bc that kid is so thin and tall and the other one (idk the stepbrother) is huge too. Li cheng is shorter than them both but more ~manly~ but still short so why doesnt he take a DICK UP HIS BUTT XD since that’s all that fucking matters and there’s only 2 genders and 2 eays to have sex lmao so nothing else otherwise ur screwed

Hd a terrible past couple of weeks personally and because i keep seeing my peopl eget murdered and things ripped from us ^_____^ anyway here’s Some libertatrian communist dumb bitch discoars so i’ll tag it:

keep in mind these are my opinions’”” when i engage in discourse. I am not the end all be all and I don’t need you to agree. There’s some shit I am non-negotiable on but thsi is just exchanging of information. Any authoratative tone I take on comes from my beliefs, my life, my experiences, and what I choose to cultivate as a person and an artist. I dont have control over your feelings, you do. If it hurts you then either tell me the issue and be PRECISE about it, understand that context matters which is why i type so much in engagement, and do not fucking lie or misconstrue my words. Do not call me western ever in your life either. I am a black-american. I have adhd and bc i am a black woman if ur automatically thinking im brolic i am accepting money in my paypal for ur wellbeing to get me to shut the fuck up.Thanks.

The stepbrothers storyline is stupid and lazy writing. I really want to counter people that say it’s written well and that it’s interesting because it isn’t. Even if it was illicit and fucked we can write a story out about this. Let’s rethink what they could have done shall we:

- become stepbrothers at about 16 and their parents mismanage the relationship and they fail in trying to get an integrated family together (this is what happened in the #iconic transit girls and that was fuckin’ weird but hey dude guess what we watched it and it was weird but not unethical and we know one is like 19 and the other is 21 and a girl so it’s like wow you avoided so much and handled their stepsister story very…….um lightly given the end lmao but it was there and people had AGENCY)

-OR you realize that freak is obsessed with him and then he realizes it and is like “bitch i swear to god” and in typical shtity trope BL fashion they can find a way from obsession, to loss and independence when you lose your obsession, to “love” if they choose

- have the fucked up shit but make it clear what the issues are and you literally cannot write your way out of it so do not try

But why can’t fucked up things be shown? Also this is realistic.

0. Well according to you but no one said that they can’t. So that’s on your interpretation of critique (that is, again, not bullying or harassment.) They can, i just gave plenty of scenarios in which it is affective and not just annoying to witness, trope-y, and frankly ridiculous and offensive. Sorry! They don’t do it well. You can come up with alternatives too. See #2 btw.

1. No it isn’t doing a good job of reflecting life because life has consequences. The exaggeration in drama doesn’t mean the arc shouldn’t be there. Almost always things that aren’t heavy with the message or meant to be sobering in a deep way are COMPELLING. The realism is the basis for art because we are human. This is not the way real humans act.

Someone said Tharn Type was mature and I had to laugh because no, no one acts that way and is “in love” if they act that way that means they fucking hate each other and they’re immature and frankly it’s just not that interesting for many of us to watch because the dramatization of the “realism” is fucking bonkers. That was such poor writing it is unbelievable and someone has the audacityt o say it’s how real adults act. Fucking murder me if I’m with someone for 7 years and we break up over a miscommunication and for some reason I am not as horny as my always horny boyfriend. The fuck? What kind of lives do you lead? Either you are not an adult or you are an adult who needs therapy.

I also hear the “realistic” argument but then people try and temper it with “but also it’s fiction.” What do you think fiction is? Why do you think filmmaking exists? Number one, it’s propaganda in the sense that you want others to buy into your presentation and see what you see. That means that the creators are telling people and influencing them WITH ART BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT IS about their feelings around a situation. That’s why it is imperative to be responsible as a filmmaker and artist and underline the deepness of creepiness if that’s what they want. If they want to relay that rape sometimes ok and psychos are crazy so they get boy (??!?!?!? BITCH?) then they achieved it with no innovative information. We know people get raped bc we are human beings and many of us live with that fear. You know, being the target demo and all. And bc BL loves that trope it’s rape fantasy peddled to young people and women. Just like shitty wattpad fics or NYT best sellers. Hooray, what now? Or are you trying to purport that this isn’t glorified fanfiction? Which it literally is

2. This is the issue with these shows. No one is saying that fucked up shit cannot be shown. There’s a film about a woman who is raped and she falls in love with her rapist (because he was masked but i think we find out later that she knows. Binoche is in it.) I have no desire for that film—i think it’s by a man and i extra dont care—but I hear it’s sort of powerful for many. I heard it was a good film. But the act itself is always eschewed and the conflict comes from how fucking ridiculous it is especially finding out that she knows. The power imbalance adn the possibility. They may not have handled it in a way I would have cared for but it was there.

There’s simply no imagination because these people do not care that much and aren’t great writers and filmmakers because they simply do not have to be. Sorry.

The industry doesn’t rely on the best they rely on efficiency (this is everywhere.) You can tell by the camera angles, the editing, the camera itself (idk if it is multicam but the flatness is typical soap flatness without the glowboxes to soften their faces.) Simple constant lighting. Now the surroundings are mostly beautiful. But even to some of the costumes. And those edits are abysmal, some of that camera work.

So with all that said even with the couple I extremely enjoy I see its (H4) faults. Add into that a lazily thrown together “shocking” love and if they are trying to get us to feel a type of way about its sexiness they fail. This is why movies like 50sog, 365 days, etc aren’t enjoyable to people because it’s fucking strange situations that they dont want to entangle or make enjoyable to viewers across the board. They know what people will take. It’s just that bitch what are we here for if even the sexiness isn’t there for ur stupid story.

At least with that teenager and 30 yr old man in MODC (which i do not love but i like them in theory if it wasnt totally repulsive to me and also if it was developed in a way that was good TO ME) they had their, er, “sex appeal” i talk about this as well the main couple in MODC to me, visually, was a miss. Not bc whatshisface was small and stuff but bc he was so sickly and they needed that to propel the story but it was just not appealing given how the story progressed. A missed opportunity in tying the two together besides making him look waif-y and sickly only to have the “did ur mom die in a car crash? No, cancer” type of move in not another teen movie. But the opposite. And not funny. Wayne tho????? GORL. Eggs. Cracked.

fandoms have a very warped sense of harrassment and discourse.

Most fandoms have harassers who are “protecting” the cast and crew who don’t need their protection (or maybe the crew does since they probably dont get paid well but why the fuck would anyone care about that lol) but very few have the people who have concerns or massive critique about the show are not going to be “bullying.”

If people are saying “if you like xyz, u suck” then sure it may suck for you to see but who fucking cares. Either talk to the person or don’t be friends with them. That is not bullying or harrassment. Things that are shitty get criticized. Fuck, things that aren’t shitty don’t. Get away from this idea of cancel culture and people misunderstanding the story. We have the ability to.

Think beyond your noses of personal preference. You don’t have to convince people of what you believe. Discussing it is good but critique is not bullying, harrassment, or hate. Neither is fucking roasting shit because even this shit I like (manner of death lets say) deserves it. Art is meant to be critiqued and if you dont fucking like the bullshit people make then say it. They know stupid stories like this are scandalous and they don’t give a shit in how to present them.

And guess what? You won’t like everybody. Many people can’t stand me i’m sure. Oh well. I mean frankly I don’t like that and I feel very unsettled when I don’t feel understood. That’s ok! I have to temper it. Sometimes calm myself down. I won’t get anything and everything I want. And you won’t like every opinion and sometimes it’s like “man am i a dummy?” But the part of growing up is fucking maanging that and beng honest about “bashing and harrassment” and “bullying” and growing up. Yuo can like what you want the “let people like what they want thing” is so fucking juvenile and THAT is not the real world. Which is probably why so many people feel that way, they dont want to live in the real world. Unfortunately, you do.

Think beyond our noses of personal preference and what we feel emotionally in conjunction with others. You don’t have to convince people of what you believe. And you can say things that you believe to be true but it doesn’t make them so or maybe it isn’t received that way to people. And many times we learn new things in the discussions “oh shit i didn’t see it that way” right? Discussing it is good but critique is not bullying, harrassment, or hate. Neither is fucking roasting shit because even this shit I like (manner of death lets say) deserves it. Art is meant to be critiqued and if you dont fucking like the bullshit people make then say it. They know stupid stories like this are scandalous and they don’t give a shit in how to present them. Usually the “opposition” in these situations aren’t the popular beliefs that permeate through society. Trust me lmao

Antiblackness

Antiblackness is a thing. It permeates everywhere. It permeates in this genre and it permeates in fandom. Get it the fuck together. Also do not conflate cultural relativism with being repsectful. They are not barbarians, they are smart human beings either making work or deciding to. We all have diff cultures but we have fucking sense in what is respectful and not. And if we don’t we fucking learn. You cannot excuse things and say “oh culture” when you have 0 idea of that culture or actual people who are radical etc and are fighting against it. Additionally the word westerner is an ignorant term when referring to people in the US or UK who are black. Because we are not. We extend sympathy to other groups and empathy since we know so there is no inherent power imbalance between a black viewer and their subject. Don’t suggest that because it’s wrong and ahistorical and contextless.

FIRST the fallacy of representation as freedom makes people fucking complacent, individualistic, and doesn’t let them think critically. Consumption and discourse around consumption is not helping material conditions of the marginalized communities in your home, the black ones who are ignored, those intersectionalized in these communities. Groups talk about art and what it means for them outside of just what we see and because we also don’t have access to a bunch of Thai reviews or what movements or going on we are less likely to know if we don’t FUCKING SEARCH for it. Because art is constant...which leads me to....

Representation is difficult. It matters and it doesn’t.

Tthese shows are not meant to overturn the LGBTQ+ community.

There are queer filmmakers and artists in these countries. Deep illustrious film careers or even TV that is moving and deliberate. We can even see it with the dude from “your name engraved” in their short series he was in beforehand. BL is no wa pejorative because it is simply not “qu**r” storytelling whatever that means. But know it has always existed everywhere and there are also out artists or radical artists in all these countries who do no respect mediums that are cash-grabs and poorly made.

ex: As much as “Like in the Movies” sort of isnt for me and is a bit hamfisted you can tell how much love goes into that. Love of the characters, acting, and message. Yes it’s cringey to see some of the lines (like very tbh subtlety wasnt exactly their strong suit) and yea naming them after lenin and marx is just 0ihgoaudgijposkagjihou BUT GUESS WHAT? THEY FUCKING DID IT. THEY TRIED. And class was a large component as well bc u cant fuckin ignore it. The show is aware of the machinations in its world as a show but also in the philippines and for a fuckin reason. And duatarte? Loooooooool so like yea not so sure bl makes him love his ppl but the show isnt trying to do that

It’s not a transgressive genre and it has no reason to be. No ethical anything under the way we live it’s just trying your fucking best to be. That’s it. They serve societal ills and capital’s purposes. Which is fine but it is not revolutionary.

These countries in SEA or even SA do not have as big budget for even mainstream dramas—though things are changing and that’s bc REVENUE like revenue from kpop is fucking huge for SK and again so much about that is bc of what happened in their history from japanese imperialism to WWII to the US—so for “queer” stuff it is sort of now important to make that an export and it sure is one. Not only globally or to the west but a lot of these places make their money within asia (duh!) outside of their countries. OBVIOUSLY. so BL is a way to output and gain money. The thing is, it doesnt seem to be put back into the industry at all. For people in all these countries to make works that aren’t for mainstream or wont reach as many people there’s a difference between trying and just shoving shit in your face and going here it’s gay you like it right? But dont antagonize the inherent patriarchal nature of BL.

Another thing: did you guys know thailand was never colonized? You should look it up. There’s little hints of things in ITSAY to represent french influence still. Isnt that fascinating? Find out why. It’s certainly interesting that the representation, though damaging and dubious many times and also incorrect like any media, is huge in asia and this isnt a commodity here (the US) exactly. A lot of that has to do with colonial ideas of gender of which I am sure. But listen………lmao

Sometimes people dont give a shit. And it very much shows. Here is the thing once again. GOOD TRANSGRESSIVE WORK exists.

Een within the capitalist Bs paradigm or you can see people trying (I can sort of applaud parts of lovely writer) also queer media has always existed everywhere the reason you don’t know about it is because it gets takena nd commodified into a mainstream product. We hvae little incentive, particularly if we are not fans of cinema or art in gen, to search fror others when the output is right here. Being dictated by others and the state and who will give you money. No longer an effort of a cast and crew who want to convey things. But google [any country] independent cinema, radical cinema, queer radical cinema, or even retrospectives on the cinema and rethinking what is queer and radical in film. What if we took that, diluted it, got rid of the creators who put themselves through all the work, ignroe al the nuances and do……………….two actors who are conventionally attractive with no chemistry making out.

It’s the same here lets say daniel kaluuya winning the oscar for the film about the BPP. I heard it was okay and not too offensive but it still isnt’ enough. It still isn’t like hwood isn’t trash, nnati black, misogynistic towards BW and women, and all that other shit. It was pushy but it can’t be enough where we are. Black KKKlansmen i think won an oscar, by circumstance i fuckin hate these award shows they mean nothing, and i like the film a lot but he has his misogynoir still resting in his films even if it is poignant. And it was a film that honestly wasn’t really made for black people. And should all art be a response to direct trauma or trying to make ourselves palatable when we’re just human?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and it’s importance (capitalism) but also sorta individual responsibility

Considering a lot of these actors are rich and then just dip that’s another problem. Mainstream isn’t what sustains marginalized art ever. It doesn’t change in the vast ways we think it does. What changes is the people of these groups pushing, fighting, forcing and then capitalism trying to make it work under capitalism. It will not. It cannot.

This is why artists and labels often don’t mix or you see people like Sonic Youth doing whatever they want and pissing off their label but making them give them money. Same with Nirvana. Vince Staples. The thing is they can fight and make good shit but what capitalism helps people….not care? They don’t respect the audience? We’re getting those returns on poor executed product placement, lighting, editing, framing, fucking acting. And you surewon’t see mixed black asians in these shows. WHY R U is the oNLY one i have seen it in and he just disappears (but that was pretty cool.) so who the fuck is this representing? And before you start: asian countries are not homogenous the way we believe them to be. There are marginalized communities outside of even mixed people that are harmed. So you can skrrt cause on that one: you’re wrong buddy. But it gives us the IDEA of a paradise which is what they NEED.With representation and visibility comes consequence and responsibility as artists. What it allows them to do is coast and not think complexly because why should they; it’s mostly the fantasies of some older woman who probably has money and much less interaction with the world. It’s bonkers. And what that allows even further is for them to say YOU ARE THE THING THAT YOU CONSUME and the THING THAT YOU CONSUME IS YOURS. It is not, it is not your identity, form a close bond but figure it the fuck out. Especially for adults who are hellbent on twisting their minds into pretzels and can’t acknowledge what’s just laziness in art and not giving a fucking shit. Truly.

There’s damage that has been done from Parasite as he was supported by CJE&M and the bullshit obsession america had and eveyrone’s poor interpretation of it if they are rich. BJH is a socialist and he is a filmmaker. He has made films that are outstanding and cost a lot of money. But now a fear for indie filmmakers is just not being able to raise that much or have that much attention. Getting funding that helps them instead of expecting the Next Big Thing that is a fad because capitalism is trash. Yes this funneling of money is absolutely harmful to us artists. Even buying in is strategic. Additionally, that film is probs one of the most radical films to have that wide release and accolade (unlike “Sorry to Bother You” which i have a lot of thoughts about. One being that asian exports are acceptable but black ones are not. This is an overall art critique and global media critique. Blackness is removed, not respected.) However, filmmaking isn’t green, it can’t be socialist, and it’s a lot of work. They used tons and tons and TONS of water to do a huge beautiful feat but we still know there is a cost. We have to figure that out because it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t go back into the crew’s pockets the way it should and the work becomes that of the director’s and actors solely. It’s fucking hard. We have to do our part but it doesn’t mean we are doing it perfectly. We just have to try to do better. So does BJH cos he needs to not be a misogynist but anyways i digress.

additionally and this is something some users fail to understand: people in the media sphere generally have fucking money. I went to film school that was international with super fucking rich kids. Taiwanese kids, kids from south asia, china, thailand. They had money. No not upper middle class money, not “rich” money, not some paltry 1m that’s chump change. Fucking money. Fucking RICH-RICH. MILLIONAIRES. BILLIONAIRES. WHICH IS DISGUSTING MIGHT I ADD. The domestic people didn’t have the money for school (in the UK) and i am in a massive amount of debt like every other black student that went there. You do not understand how much money is needed to survive so people who turn to these crew positions even casting etc need this fucking money usually. OKAY. A lot of the people that do well in these dumb shows or even on a larger scale HAVE MONEY. The reason these industries are small and struggling is because of lack of people and lack of resources to independent shit because oh gee it takes money to make things.

Why should I try? Well you don’t have to really if you have money or a name. Yet...

We can tell when like those Tik Tok shows or DCOMs dont give a shit (anymore.) You know how frustrated we get when content for young people is garbage? Well, see, BL is literally that under that system. Occasionally we will get something good now but there is virtually no need in any sector in the world at this point to truly figure out how to make it better and what to do to enhance artistic literacy, outreach, teaching people new things, getting people from these communities there and having true realistic says. Art and culture is IMPERATIVE TO WORLD LIBERATION but not when it is so stiffly trying to bend to capital’s idea of progressiveness. No. Neoliberalism. No.

That’s why in a way ITSAY is a huge feat; it takes from films etc and they clearly had money (the actors rae rich too which….lmaooooo j’aime pas) but it was a respected fucking script, acting was important, blocking, framing. There’s very little to critique as a visual medium for that because I understand what they are trying to do, their market is going to be mostly young girls, but they RESPECT THE FUCKING AUDIENCE. And guess what guys? You can make money from it!!!! WOAH! Since that may be the only goal which is disgusting and repulsive.

HOWEVER AND THIS IS WHAT IS SAD: itsay is an ex of a great show however knowing the actors backgrounds and the pseudo trouble it stirred when they weren’t supporting people protesting against the coup in the summer it really put a damper on my enjoyment. And this is how we can see that:

a) it’s honestly just a show and a good one but b) now what?

These kids (actors, who are like idk 19? 20?) are rich and not saying anything while countless actors, who were filming, did. Even tul who has $$$$ and the thing is the protesting against the coup legitimately attacks the rich. As it should. The protests going on were cries for help, against a dictatorship and fucking coup, asking people to get fucking help for covid, having kids be able to live. There’s a mini on VICE about this and it probably doesnt go too in depth but there’s a kid in there who talks about his friends getting into drugs and how he just wants to make music, have fun, skateboard. And it’s harrowing to see. This is a direct example of what these things do and don’t do. Yea we know a good show is here, we know growing up and slice of life, we know this is a bit of escapism and idealism but the idealism is reflected in the way these actors also choose to live their lives. So what progress? To who? For who? How is this helping me? What purpose does it serve? I say ITSAY serves its purpose as a piece and a glimpse into possibility of growing up but i do not say it antagonizes a broader issue that needs to be relevant in some sense but simply is not. It’s very singleminded and, well, it’s sort of like “besides my sexuality, what do i have to worry about?” But for real humans like....a lot. I do not respect their decision at all.

Why can’t we do our jobs and make something decent and respect our audience? No time, gotta make that sweet sweet sweet cash baybee. Look how progressive we are! Don’t look at history and material conditions. Thanks in advance, management.

History 4 does not have that respect. Many of these shows do not. Sometimes we hit good, sometimes we don’t. But in the end we cannot settle. And I won’t. If I am critiquing something I will not be shy and if I am meant to enjoy something as escapism then these shows NEED to highlight that and it’s rare sometimes (the best twins is a good reminder like that show is bad but man do i Brain Empty when i turn it on and i like that and there’s not much in it that makes me want to kill myself from annoyance but there are transphobic jokes i dont love however the whole show is a comedy about this dude’s crazy homophobic sister and she is constantly positioned as wrong and they talk about the aforementioned trans women as the actor was in drag. Interesting that they can manage that, huh?)

Oh btw.....taiwan has a very complicated history but ignore all the bad stuff it’s good now you can kinda sorta get married and stuff. KMT? You know how i learned that? I care about human beings and read about it lmao. I am not Taiwanese and look at that. So now I have historical and DIALECTICAL~**~*~****~*~*~ context so i can judge it as an artist, a black woman from america, and from the knowledge i have to pick up on their history to see if this fits into a broader picture besides the micro-one of sexuality on an individualized level. And this is kinda where it comes full circle: these shows are not you, you are not them, they do not exist in a vacuum because nothing does. The failure to critique now means continuing on as it has and it will still do so. History and time are not linear in the sense we think it is. Someitmes things are better, sometimes things feel more austere. We are not living under liberation though and these shows are not going to do so. So they are not US nor are they for a nebulous “us” of which the groups are all fractured and have diff opinions anyway (my opinion as a black american is going to vary from an asian woman’s say and that could really clash and i do not feel solidarity with all those in every community i am for several reasons.)

Final thots that have taken up my time and the only thing i actually wanted to write but got distracted:

Anyway my dissertation is that I ilke Muren and LiCheng a lot a lot and i like how cute they are and how truly dumb li cheng is. This is an example of mostly good writing, decent actors, nice chemistry, and sort of a calmness to them. And I super enjoy how Muren is pretty forward with LC in the sense that being together is like very important to truly be together. When he was like “no i didnt forget!” Or when LC asked him something in the office I forget it was 6 am and again i almost threw up and muren nodded and then LC leaned on him. Very cute. I want more of them tho i may have to skip that othre couple (the cameo the ones from MODC) but omfg the younger one HIS HAIR GREW SO MUCH HE LOOKS SO MATURE AND CUTE OMFGIJ0HUG9SAOGIJPKOAGJSIOHUAGIJP hahhaha the one good thing i will say about THEM.idk how old the actor is i figure he was young idk it makes me happy to see him he’s very cute. I hope he’s in something i can watch and not gag at. Is he hot? Who knows but he is a cutie!!

Anyway muren and lc have a good thing going it’s nice to watch ho\pe they dont fuck it up but im truly a sucker for some true finds 2 luvas i think some user on her\e was like i’m not a fan of friends ot lovers bc it doesn’t seem like they’re actually friends and maybe they were referring to this show idk. But it made me think and it was a very good observation. So i think they are friends and also luvrs <3

#history 4 #history 4: close to you #i told sunset about you #a thot #tharntype #lovely writer #bl fandom #idk #lol #long

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fireblaze5555 · 4 years

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Fire Away: Chapter 10

Chapter 10: You Know and I Know That I’ll Always Come Back for More

Also on Ao3: Fire Away: Chapter 10

Karen came awake slowly, a sensation on her cheek pulling her from sleep. She opened bleary eyes to see Frank, hair mussed and eyes hooded, stroking her cheek with a careful thumb.

“It’s a good thing you’re awake, I was two seconds away from dumping you in the floor, my bladder was startin’ to get impatient.” His voice was rough from sleep and Karen couldn’t understand how he managed to be sexy while also being annoying.

Scoffing she gave a dramatic stretch and pushed away from him. Once she was sitting on the edge of the cot, Karen felt Frank lay a quick kiss on the back of her head as he rose and padded barefoot to the bathroom.

Karen gave a jaw popping yawn and wondered about the time, it certainly felt too early to be up. Glancing at the surveillance monitors it looked almost pitch black outside, only a hint of graying sky showing here and there and when she looked at her phone it confirmed it was, in fact, far too early to be awake.

“Really Frank? 5:30 am? You really think that is an acceptable time to be awake?” She asked as soon as he re-appeared from the bathroom before she made a show of crawling back under the covers and pushing her face into the pillow noisily.

There was a soft chuckle from the direction of the coffee maker followed by the associated sounds of coffee being made, “It’s a hard habit to break. Doesn’t mean you have to be awake thou…”

She was asleep again before he finished speaking.

The next time Karen woke up it was to the demands of her own bladder. Pushing groggily out from under the blankets, she checked her phone to see a much more respectable 9 am, stretching as she stood and making her way to the bathroom. When she emerged it was with brushed teeth and a fresh face, shortly followed by her pouring a rather large cup of coffee.

Karen followed the sounds of exertion coming from somewhere in the small warehouse and came to an abrupt halt, nearly dropping her mug when she saw Frank. He had a chain around his waist and was doing pull ups on a crossbeam, straining with each rep. Karen’s eyes followed the movement, biceps bunching, abs contracting at every lift. He was actually glistening, sweat trailing down dips and planes of corded muscle and gathering at the low swung sweatpants and she didn’t think it was possible the man could be any more sexy.

That is until he dropped from beam lightly, stepping over to a punching bag to go through a series of punches to a suspended bag in the corner that allowed her to also appreciate the muscled expense of his back. Goddamn, that’s not fair…

“Can I help you with something, Miss Page?” He sounded breathless but she could still pick up the teasing lilt in the question.

Snapping her mouth shut, which she hadn’t been aware was slightly ajar, Karen took a sip of her coffee trying to think of something pithy to retort. Nothing came to mind quick enough so she just gave a grunt over her cup, continuing to watch him.

After a few moments, Frank glanced over his shoulder to see that she was still watching him, Karen gave him a smirk making a show of setting her coffee down to gesture to him to continue before crossing her arms over her chest.

Raising an eyebrow at her, Frank gestured in the direction she had come from, “Don’t you have work to do? Something more interesting than me?”

The small smirk Karen had grew into a full blown, devious grin. It appeared the big bad Punisher got a little flustered when he had an audience. Sauntering forward, she gave a helpful shrug, “I was just checking your form.”

Frank gave an incredulous laugh, watching her with increasing interest as she moved toward him with purpose. “You a boxing professional now on top of everything else?”

“I punched a guy once. I could probably give you some pointers.” She teased as she came to a halt beside him. She hadn’t really had any intentions when she came further into the room but giving Frank a hard time was too tempting to pass up. However, now that she was standing close to him, eyes trailing from his raised eyebrows, down the column of his neck, following a rivulet of sweat as it snaked down his chest, seeing where the a small dark trail of hair on his lower abdomen disappeared below the sweatpants, she found her intentions were shifting. Her eyes slowly slid back up to Frank’s and the hunger there made her blood spike.

He must have seen something similar in her eyes because in an instant, Frank had lifted Karen off the ground, wrapping her legs around his waist and pinning her to the wall. They came together in a kiss that was not gentle, full of nips and and lewd noises all while she was grinding into him and he was probably leaving finger shaped bruises on her hips where he gripped her and helped guide the motion.

It was frenzied and primal and Karen could barely keep up. Her hands scrabbled at his sweat slicked shoulders while he nipped at her collarbone; suddenly her underwear was being pulled aside and his pants jerked down enough to allow him to spring free and then he was inside of her, both of them groaning at the sweet friction. Karen’s nails left red lines down his shoulders where she was holding on and Frank’s punishing thrusts would no doubt leave bruises but neither were interested in slowing down or being gentle. Several minutes later, once she let out a soft shout and he let out a feral growl with their release, they stayed propped against the wall just breathing each other in.

After, as they both stepped into the small shower to clean off Karen marveled at how quickly they went from afraid to touch one another to fucking against a wall after some hot looks. She isn’t unhappy with development, mind you, but it was a pretty large shift in their dynamic. She supposed that is what years of repressed sexual tension and emotions will get you. Karen was pulled out of her musings by a cascade of cold water pouring over her from the shower head.

“Jesus Christ !” She sputtered and nearly knocked them both out of the shower in her haste to escape the frigid water. Frank steadied them both with a curse of his own, bracing her against his chest with one arm while the other swung wide to catch the wall.

He looked concerned and confused for a moment before he felt the cold water splashing against his legs. Karen gave him a dark look when he started chuckling.

“Sorry,I probably should have warned you that sometimes the plumbing is a little unreliable.” He didn’t sound apologetic at all as he carefully righted her and reached through the spray to turn the water off. Thankfully they had both been finished, Karen was just appreciating the warm water and Frank was just appreciating the view before it turned cold.

It didn’t take long before both of them were toweled off and dressed for the day, Karen settled at the small makeshift table with a renewed cup of coffee while Frank worked on putting something together for breakfast. He was efficient in the kitchen, just like everything else with Frank, there were no wasted movements as he threw together toast and omelets. She found herself staring again so as a distraction, Karen retrieved her phone to check for any messages. There were a few from Foggy just letting her know any tidbits he had picked up in his own research and one from Matt. It was simple and short, ‘ I’ll be there, let me know if you need anything’ .

With a small smile, she read the text a couple more times before returning to Foggy’s information so she could cross check everything after breakfast. Soon, Frank was placing plates in front of her, not so subtly scooting her phone and notes away in the process. Shaking her head, Karen picked up her fork and set to work on her breakfast. It was delicious, as it usually was when Frank cooked.

“So what is the game plan today, I mean before the game plan ?” She asked in between mouthfuls of eggs.

Frank regarded her carefully in between his own bites of food, his face pensive. He seemed to come to some sort of conclusion in his head because he set his fork carefully down and scooted the plate away. “Final checks on the gear and loading up the van are pretty much all that is left. And uh...convincin' you to sit this out and let me handle it?”

Karen sent him a withering look. Is he being serious right now?

“Look Karen, I can relay whatever information you need to the lady. You’ve already done so much, I can take care of the rest and you can be safe. ”

Her look never wavered, her voice hard. “Absolutely not, I’m seeing this through Frank. End of story. It is most definitely not up for discussion.” Her own fork clattered to her plate as she sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Also, I don’t think you have the diplomatic aplomb I do. Negotiations aren’t really your style.”

Despite her small attempt at a joke, Karen was incredibly annoyed. Why did the men in her life insist on having the same conversations over and over when she had already made up her mind? Judging by Frank’s face, this was going about as well as he expected.

He held up his hands in surrender, “Alright, alright. I figured I would give it one more shot. In that case, we will go through some safety stuff after breakfast. You just being able to shoot isn’t enough.” He sounded resigned.

“Fair enough.” Karen grabbed her silverware again and resumed eating. The remainder of their breakfast was quiet and it wasn’t long before she was waving Frank away, opting to take care of clearing the small table and washing the dishes since he cooked.

The day ended up being a strange mix of flying by and dragging on. Frank walked Karen through basic hand signals in the event they weren’t able to verbally communicate, drilling her until she could answer each signal without hesitation. Next, he showed her how she would be following him through the house, tucked closely behind him while he cleared the way.

“I don’t like the thought of using you like a human shield. I thought that is what the bulletproof vest was for?” She asked after they walked through it a few times, practicing movements, ensuring she would stay covered while he still had full range of movement. She really didn’t like the idea of him taking a bullet for her. Again.

It was Frank’s turn to give a hard stare, “Either you use me as a human shield or you stay here, that is not up for discussion.”

God she hated when he threw her own words back at her. Her face must have been obstinate because in a second he was standing directly in front of her.

“I said we’d do it your way and talk to this lady but we are going to get you in there my way. Besides, military tactics and infiltration aren’t really your style. ” His voice was serious and low but she saw his lips turn up.

Goddamnit he’s so annoying.

“Fine, but if you get shot I’m gonna be really fucking mad at you so keep that in mind. Seriously, I’ll have Matt carry you back and I’ll let him preach the whole way.” She was attempting to hide her nerves and failing. The corners of Frank’s eyes crinkled in the way they did when he was trying not to be amused.

Resting his hands on either side of her face, Frank tipped her head to give her a chaste kiss before muttering, “Deal. Go rest for a bit, we can run through it again later, I’m going to check the gear.”

The rest of the day went by in a daze for Karen, alternating between practicing with Frank, napping fitfully and thinking about how she wanted to handle speaking with Vanessa. The exhausted, scared, angry part of her wanted to threaten the woman with violence, to make her understand that Karen Page was not someone to just lie down and take it. However, the logical side of her knew that tactic would only cause more issues than it would solve.

They had a light dinner that Karen had to make herself eat, the closer they got to go-time, the less her appetite got and before she knew it, Frank was helping her strap into her vest and holster. They both knew she was capable of doing it herself but it made him feel better. Karen watched his hands, steady and sure as they checked straps and buckles and when he spoke his voice was strong with no hint of a waver. Overall he looked steady as a rock.

Karen, on the other hand, felt like her heart might explode in her chest. Her hands were jittery, she felt like she might throw up if her stomach wasn’t tied up in knots. She watched him strap into his own gear and took a moment to appreciate Frank in his element. She was not just seeing the Punisher, she was seeing the soldier. Anytime Karen could witness other sides of Frank she tried to soak it in as much as possible.

He caught her staring and raised an eyebrow. Clearing her throat to keep her voice from being shaky, something that was only moderately successful she asked, “How are you so calm? I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin.”

Frank gave an understanding nod, “Right before a mission is always the hardest, it’s hard to figure out what to do with all the nerves. It’s not that I’m calm, I’m just better at pretending I’m not anxious.” He positioned his earpiece and Karen followed suit. Before she could turn away, Frank ran a reassuring hand up her arm, “It’s going to be fine, Karen. I won’t let anything happen to you.” His voice was filled with such conviction, she couldn’t doubt him if she wanted to and it did much more to soothe her nerves than she expected.

Just as she was about to remind him he needed to make sure nothing happened to himself either, her earpiece crackled to life, startling a squeak out of her.

“ Hey Kids! Ready to get this show on the road?”

Frank let out a curse and stepped over quickly to turn Karen’s earpiece down before adjusting the volume on his.

“Indoor voice, David, Jesus Christ. ” Frank clipped before he opened the passenger door for Karen. Once she was settled he jumped in as well and started the van.

“Sorry about that.” He replied in a much more reasonable volume, only sounding a tiny bit remorseful. “ Everyone appears to be in their expected places so far, it looks like there was a staffing change for one of the security guards but nothing that should affect the plan.”

“Thanks David, we are leaving base now, I will be in contact once we have parked and are moving towards the target. Let us know if anything changes.” With that, Frank began to pull out of the building and start on the route that would take them upstate. The drive would take about two hours, give or take with traffic.

“ Roger that. ” The line crackled and went dead.

Karen, for her part, was doing her best not to let her nerves take over. She kept reminding herself that she had been in sketchier situations with much less competent people, so this shouldn’t be so bad. Those situations weren’t usually planned though, so she had never really had the time to fret before. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Frank glancing at her in between merging through traffic and following the route. He didn’t say anything but he did turn on the radio to a station she remembered mentioning to him being one of her favorites. It warmed her and helped soothe the nerves, if even a little bit.

It was nearly ten when they pulled into a small side street that was a five minute walk through a small wooded area to their destination. Closing her eyes, Karen drew in a long breath before letting it out slowly. When she opened her eyes again, her determination must have shown on her face because Frank gave her a nod, the pride clear on his face.

“You remember everything we went over today?” He asked, his tone clipped, all business.

“Yes. You remember what I said would happen if you get shot?” Her tone was just as clipped.

Frank’s eyes crinkled at the corners in that way that she was beginning to love.

“Yeah I remember.” His face softened and he stared at her for a moment before he spoke again, “Look, Karen…”

In an instant Frank was facing the windshield again, his .45 fixed on a point in front of the van. Karen’s heart was in her throat but when she looked out, a relieved breath escaped her in a rush.

“Jesus, Matt. You’ve gotta ease up on the ninja stuff.” She gasped and watched him hold up placating hands, the red suit imposing as he finished materializing out of the shadows. She wasn’t sure but she thought she saw a small smirk on his lips. Frank still had his gun trained on the other man and looked like he was having a serious debate with himself before he slowly lowered the weapon back to its holster.

“I guess that means it’s go time.” Frank said tersely. Karen gave a stiff nod and turned to open her door but she was jerked back quickly and into a lingering kiss, all of Frank’s worry and devotion poured into the embrace. Karen hummed, feeling bolstered by the affection but then it began to turn raunchy and she pulled back to see a smirk on his lips. She glanced out to see Matt trying desperately to hide his scowl. Shaking her head, Karen turned back to Frank and shoved him towards his own door.

“You are such a child.” Her voice was scathing but she was grinning at him over her shoulder.

The trio rounded the van so Frank and Karen could throw on the last of their weapons. In the off chance they had gotten pulled over, they didn’t want to be strapped down with several firearms and knives. It probably wouldn’t have gone over well paired with the fact they were both in bullet proof vests.

Karen checked her .380 and holstered it before securing something Frank had presented to her before they left in her dominant hand pocket in easy reach. It was a wicked looking contraption she held in her palm that had claw-like spikes protruding between her fingers when she made a fist. She began to go over he mental checklist, playing the hand signals Frank had shown her in her mind’s eye, thinking about their strategy and actively trying not to think about the many ways this could go bad.

“....Karen will be on my six so if you can bring up our tail to ensure no one is sneaking up…”

“I don’t really like the idea of you clearing the way Frank. That tends to leave a lot of bodies.”

“ Christ , Red. That is the safest way for her. I told you I would be on my best behavior, no fatal shots.” Frank was trying to control his volume and only moderately succeeding.

“How about, Karen stays with me and you bring up the rear, if anyone manages to get near us from there you can step in.” Matt’s tone was just this side of snarky and Karen was tired of listening to them.

“ How about we stop talking about me like I’m not even here before I shoot you both in the foot and handle it myself.” Karen meant to go on but there was muffled giggling in her ear.

“ She told you!”

“Can it Micro.” Frank ground out but he did have the good sense to look a little sheepish, though not apologetic. They had agreed not to use David’s real name while on the mission as additional safeguard for him and his family.

She fixed both of the men with a glare and made sure it was heated enough that Matt could feel it if nothing else. He seemed to because he squirmed slightly under her gaze. When she finally spoke again it was with authority and left no room for discussion. “Matt you go in ahead of us, you can hear more, let us know how many people there are or if there are more people than we expected. You can also take them down and restrain them more easily since I won’t be holding on to your belt. Frank, I’ll stay close to you just like we planned and I will make sure no one grabs me from behind. I will be aware of my surroundings. Now, if everyone is done bickering, let’s get moving.”

There was more giggling in her ear before the men standing before her both gave a slight nod, neither looked happy but they had the good sense not to argue. Before they started moving again though, Frank turned back to Matt, “Last thing, once we are on the second floor and Karen is in with the target, I will be stationed outside the door. I need you to ensure no one else gets to the second floor.”

“Got it.” Was Matt’s simple response before he stepped up to Karen and gave her arm a light squeeze and pressed a small kiss to her temple. Then he was stepping around her and dissolving into the trees once more.

Frank watched him go before pulling Karen gently to his chest and pressing an equally light kiss on her other temple. The sweet gesture from both of them had tears gathering at the corners of her eyes but she willed them away when Frank met her eyes with seriousness, his hand resting at the juncture of her neck and shoulder as he gave her a light shake.

“No heroics in there Ms. Page, ya got me?” His voice was pitched low and his words were edged with anxiety but he was fighting through it, respecting her wishes to see this through to the end.

“I got it Mr. Castle. Same for you, let’s both get out of this without any bullet holes, okay?” Karen was proud of herself for keeping the wobble out of her voice. Frank just gave her shoulder another squeeze and another, more lingering, kiss to her forehead before he stepped around her and she fell in behind him, moving toward the house.

“ You two are just precious. ”

“Shut up.” Said in unison, though Karen’s was filled with amusement while Frank’s was filled with annoyance.

The short walk felt like an eternity but in reality, just a few short minutes later they were behind shrubs to watch Matt move stealthily past the guard that was now unconscious and bound by the back door. With a final lingering look and a quick nod, Frank stood to a crouch and waited until he felt Karen’s hand at his back before he started toward the house.

Karen’s heartbeat was so loud in her ears she was sure anyone in a ten mile radius could hear it. Vaguely she heard a commotion directly ahead of them as Frank turned to a room to their right, confirming the threats there had already been neutralized. Micro confirmed through their comms that Matt was just up ahead and had nearly cleared the way to the staircase they were needing to access.

Heat was radiating off of Frank in waves, Karen could see his muscles were so tight it looked like they could snap at any second. Every corner or potential hidden threat he would pivot and turn, clearing each point. It was interesting to see Frank, the soldier, in the forefront. She had seen him as the grieving husband and father, the vigilante, then the Punisher and she had seen him as just Frank. If she hadn’t been so focused on following his every move just like they practiced and eyeing every dark place with suspicion she would have pondered on that more.

A man suddenly lunged at Frank and Karen found herself pinned to the wall at Frank’s back while the assailant attempted to wrestle the Carbine out of his hand. If she had thought her heart was beating quickly before, it now had blood thundering through her veins with enough force to make her lightheaded. An elbow caught her in the ribs and she only just barely avoided catching Frank’s head with her face before her instincts took over and had her in motion. Able to reach in to her pocket, Karen pulled out the spiked weapon and held it in her fist, striking out as hard as she could at the man's side. She heard the man grunt and material tearing but before she could try again she caught an elbow to her hand, knocking the weapon from her fingers. Karen thought furiously, looking for any other opportunity when she realized her legs were mostly free. Okay, Plan B. With concentrated effort, she managed to separate herself, her leg free enough to kick the man hard in the hip, forcing him to take a step back. It gave Karen enough room to sidestep the fray and pull her gun from the holster and hold it at the ready if someone else appeared.

When Frank felt her break free he reared back and headbutted the man with a grunt. It only took a few seconds after that for the man to be stunned and on the ground, Frank’s gun pointed at his head with singular focus and breathing heavily. Karen watched him carefully and was about to say his name when his eyes snapped over to her and she saw the battle raging in him. She’s not sure but she thought she heard a curse before Frank gave a terse command of “Watch my six” then used the stock of his weapon to knock the man unconscious before he bound him quickly.

Karen was scanning around them, gun at the ready, jumping only slightly when she heard a thump through the floor above them, watching for any other attackers. Her eyes moved in the pattern Frank had shown her and didn’t stop until he was at her side with an approving nod, tucking her back behind him and continuing their route.

“If you want me to stick to my ‘not killing shitbags’ promise you better do your fuckin’ job Red.” Frank’s voice was nothing more than a harsh whisper but they both knew Matt heard him. Karen squeezed his bicep appreciatively before tucking back into her position. She knew how difficult that was for him and needed him to know she saw the effort he was making.

Their earpieces crackled to life with David’s voice as serious as she had ever heard him, “ Daredevil has it clear all the way to Vanessa’s room, from my surveillance she entered the room 30 minutes ago and hasn’t left. ”

As if on cue, the staircase materialized on their right and Matt was descending, breathing heavily.

“Everyone is tied up, we don’t have long before they will start coming to, though.” He spoke quietly. Frank just gave him a curt nod and Karen squeezed his hand quickly as they went past. It was a huge relief to see that he hadn’t sustained any major injuries, at least that she could see anyway.

They reached the top of the stairs and just as Matt had said, five men were bound together and bleeding at varying degrees of severity. When she was able to tear her eyes away from them, Karen noticed the door to Vanessa’s room loomed ahead and a cold calm came over her. Weeks of turmoil and anxiety were coming to a head and she felt righteous anger giving her the strength to push forward.

Once Frank was certain the floor was secure, he turned to Karen right outside the door and asked quietly, “You’re sure you don’t want me to go in first? I can verify there are no other guards.”

Laying a gentle hand on his wrist where it clutched his gun, she gave him a reassuring smile, “Micro confirmed that all of the hostiles are neutralized for now so I can handle it. I feel like if the Punisher goes in first she may not quite believe that I am not here to hurt her.” She gave a small laugh but Frank remained stoic, every line in his body rigid and struggling to remain in place. Placing her palm to his cheek, Karen made Frank look at her and it made her breathing stutter unexpectedly. Having the undivided, full focus of the Punisher at the height of adrenaline on you was an exhilarating experience. But Frank was there too and she saw the fear underneath the heat of his battle hardened gaze.

“I’m going to be fine Frank. I have my .380, I’ll clear the room and let you know immediately if there is anyone besides Vanessa in there. Okay?” She knew it didn’t ease his anxiety at all but he gave a short nod, pulled the Carbine to his shoulder and began to sweep their surroundings, trusting her.

With a deep breath, Karen pulled her pistol out at the ready and took a steadying breath before she slid through the large door to the master suite. She swept the room with her firearm, only lowering it when she had confirmed there were no other guards stationed there. Karen took a few tentative steps further into the room, tucking her .380 back into it’s holster. She didn’t see Vanessa anywhere in the opulent room and had momentary panic that maybe the woman wasn’t there after all, despite what David had said. Maybe she had an escape route and made a break for it if she heard the commotion. Her thoughts took off in a gallop of dread, what if they had done all this for nothing? What if this only made things worse? However, a second later, Karen’s thoughts came to an abrupt halt as the beautiful brunette stepped from the ensuite bathroom in a silky looking robe with a brush in her hand. A moment of shock registered across her face before it was replaced with a cool mask.

“Well, I’d like to say I’m surprised to see you here Ms.Page but it isn’t too much of a shock really.” Vanessa said, voice low and lightly accented. She stood with her shoulders back and an air of nonchalance but Karen could see the unease in her stance as well. Good, you can be uncomfortable for a while after the shitty few weeks I’ve had.

“I didn’t have much of a choice did I? I have a job to do and I can’t really do it on the run, looking over my shoulder the whole time. Not easy to hold down a 9 to 5 when there’s a contract on your life, who’d have thought?” Bitterness was seeping into her tone so Karen forced herself to take a slow measured breath.

“That is an unfortunate thing but I am unsure of what it has to do with me.”

Karen rolled her eyes before leveling a hard stare on the other woman. “Can we skip the theatrics? I’m honestly exhausted and would like to settle this so I can go home.”

Vanessa raised a manicured eyebrow at her. Sighing, Karen stepped forward a bit and spoke matter of factly, “I’ve seen all of your files, one of which was the contract on my life. I know about your art shows that double as little club parties for the local mob families and that is just a few of the things I’ve found.”

Vanessa tossed the brush she was holding to the chaise to her side and crossed her arms over her chest loosely, fixing Karen with her own unflinching gaze, “So you came to threaten me?”

“I came here to get my life back. To make sure the threat to my friends’ lives is neutralized. I have no intention of hurting you but I will send you to prison, just like we did your husband. It may be a bit more difficult to have all those phone calls if you are both behind bars.” It was spoken matter of fact, no malice. It took everything in Karen not to spit at her like a viper.

The brunette scoffed, “And just how did you get in here Ms. Page? Is breaking and entering considered an acceptable method to speak with someone now? I’m sure the information you alluded to was found legally as well? Knowing your proclivity for violence and murder I’m sure you left more than a few dead bodies in your wake to get this far, so please, how do you intend on sending me to prison without signing your own sentence in the process?”

Karen was livid. She dared to call Karen a murderer? Did she have any idea what her husband had done? The people he had killed in his pursuit for power? Judging by the cool, calculating look in the other woman’s eyes, she did. Karen let the rage settle over her in a cold shroud, a sneer tipping her lips up at one corner, “There won’t be any record of my ever being here. The cameras you have set up, including the one hidden in the moulding over there above your dresser, won’t have any record. You’re right, some of the information I found was found in a questionable manner but enough of it was sourced legitimately to have you locked up and more serious inquiries will follow. What wasn’t sourced legally will be enough to raise suspicion and have you under surveillance at the very least. There are no bodies left behind, Mrs. Fisk, because I am nothing like your husband. I don’t kill indiscriminately or when it suits my needs but I can list at least a dozen innocent people who have died at Fisk’s order if not by his own hand.”

“You took someone very dear to him, shot him in cold blood.” She spat the words out at Karen, anger finally showing through her calm facade.

The sneer vanished from her face but Karen kept her head high, she would not show guilt on the account of James Wesley, “I did shoot him. Interesting that Fisk would tell you that but leave out the fact that Wesley had drugged and kidnapped me. That he had threatened to kill all of the people I cared about before ultimately killing me. I want to be very clear, I did not enjoy killing James Wesley and I wish it could have been avoided, but I would do it all again if it meant my friends were safe. Even so, I still lost people that were very dear to me because of Wilson Fisk.”

From the unsure look on Vanessa’s face, it appeared that part of the story had been omitted. She didn’t say anything but her arms wrapped a little tighter around her midsection and her face showed the barest hint of what could have been sympathy before her expression schooled again into defiance.

When nothing was said, Karen continued, “You can think of me what you will, either way I have no intention of hurting you. I am simply here to have the contract on my life eliminated and your assurance that my friends will be safe, from you and your husband. If you concede to that, I will not release the information I have to the police and you can continue on with your life.”

“Continue on with my life without my husband you mean? As he is still locked away, his efforts to better this city, ruined because of you and those lawyers.” She was still speaking softly but the bitterness was present.

Karen shook her head slowly, “Wilson Fisk put himself there. He is a criminal and a murderer.” She was trying to speak softly as well but a hardness was filling her words, “He had enough money and influence to better the city in legal, legitimate ways. Instead, he used fear, blackmail and murder to bring people to heel. I won’t ask for forgiveness because he deserves to be in prison, though considering the freedoms he is still enjoying, I would hardly consider that prison.”

She regarded Vanessa for a moment, eye scanning the woman then wandering around the room briefly, before uttering a question that had been eating at her, “You are a successful art dealer from a good family and you have a clean record. Why would you want to be with someone like Wilson Fisk?”

Vanessa seemed surprised by the question and took a moment to answer. She was ready to speak when the door behind Karen came open just enough to let Frank enter. The air of confidence left Vanessa when she took in the white skull emblazoned on Frank’s chest, her whole body tensing as she took several steps back into the room. She was a sensible woman after all, anyone with a healthy respect for their own life would be frightened when the Punisher entered the room. Those with a guilty conscience anyway.

Karen looked over to him and watched as his eyes scanned the room for threats before settling for only a second on the other woman who had put greater distance between them, finally turning to Karen herself. He was standing close, his vest brushing her arm and his gun held between them carefully. His voice was low so it would not carry over to the other occupant of the room when he muttered, “The perimeter is still clear but we need to get moving soon.”

She didn’t bother to point out that was something that could have been conveyed over the comm devices.

They held eyes for a moment, a million other things passing between them before she gave him a nod and placed her focus back on Vanessa. Frank took a half step back, standing at Karen’s shoulder but far enough back to raise his weapon if need be. Said weapon was pointed at the floor but there was no question in his stance of if he would be willing to use it to protect the woman in front of him.

Vanessa was now watching with interest, her previous unease bleeding into focus as her sharp eyes went between Karen and Frank before something seemed to click into place. “You keep interesting allies for someone who is against murder, Miss Page.” She held up her hand when Karen opened her mouth to retort, “I will rescind the contract on your life and I will see to it that your friends will not be in danger from mine or Wilson’s men. You have made a compelling case and I am not blind to your talent for finding information. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to finish up my evening and go to bed.”

Before Karen could say anything, Frank demanded, his voice low and gruff, leaving no room for argument, “Cancel the contract now.” Karen gave him an annoyed look for cutting her off but said nothing.

Reaching slowly into the pocket of her robe, Vanessa pulled out her phone, tapping away at the screen for a moment before holding it up to show them and placing it back in her pocket.

Frank’s head tilted slightly just as she heard David give a quiet ‘confirmed’ in her own earpiece. Frank gave her a small nod, the hacker verified that the contract had been cancelled, so they could go home. Sighing imperceptibly in relief, Karen made a conscious effort to keep her shoulder straight and not let them sag with the tension that left them. They weren’t out of the woods yet so it was not time to relax.

“Thank you Mrs. Fisk. I hope we don’t have to see each other again.” Turning, she made her way to the door while Frank divided his attention to the hallway to check for threats and also kept a careful eye on the woman across the room. Karen was about to step out and follow Frank when Vanessa spoke up from behind her.

“We don’t get to choose who we love, Ms. Page. It rarely ever is someone that we anticipate.”

For a moment the women locked eyes, a camaraderie of sorts between them. The moment was broken by Karen’s huffed, quiet laugh.

“That’s the fucking truth.” And then the door was closing as she followed Frank into the hallway.

----

Frank felt Karen fall in behind him and only allowed himself a quick breath of relief, they were in the home stretch but not out yet. He could hear mumbled curses and shuffling as some of the men were starting to come around and wanted to get some distance between them and the house. It went against everything in him to still have hostile targets alive, especially with Karen in tow but he knew how much it meant to her so he was doing his best, hyper focused on their surroundings to stop any threat before it could reach her.

He couldn’t wait to get back to the safe house. He was always tense when going into a mission but taking Karen into the middle of it had him so uneasy he felt like every muscle in his body was strung tight enough to snap at a moment’s notice. It did help that Karen had followed instruction perfectly. She was always in a defensible position, stayed close to him without impeding his movement and had her eyes constantly in motion. She would have made an incredible soldier.

They met Matt at the bottom of the stairs and followed not far behind as he cleared the way of any additional guards. They were making good time through the house, Frank knew around the next corner they would have a short hallway and then exit out a side entrance that would have them a little closer to the vehicle.

Matt had rounded the corner just ahead and they weren’t far behind. There was the sound of a struggle where Matt had just disappeared so Frank slowed as they approached but as they stopped there David’s voice cut through the careful silence.

“ Behind you! One of them is loo-...”

In an instant Frank was turning but not before a shot rang out. Pure instinct had him dropping to a knee and removing the threat with one efficient bullet to the head. He didn’t have time to think about that though because when he lowered his eyes from the target, he saw Karen bleeding on the ground at his feet, her hand gripping her neck where blood flowed through her fingers, and Frank’s whole world tilted and came apart.

#kastle #frank castle #Karen page #frank castle x karen page #fanfic #frank castle and karen page #I can't stop thinking about them #please help

16 notes · View notes

gukyi · 5 years

Text

a heart full of love | myg

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summary: people say that actors are the most dramatic people in the world but those people haven't met a certain min yoongi.

{enemies to lovers!au, high school!au, actor!au}

pairing: yoongi x female reader word count: 10k genre: fluff, angst so light a feather weighs more warnings: bad references to les miserables and memes, in that order. yoongi being outrageous. lots of caps lock. unrealistic portrayals of the arts. musical directors that are way too chill to be high school teachers. possible megaphone misuse. a/n: how long have i put off this fic? too long, honestly. but here it is, finally!! i wrote the majority of this between the hours of 10pm and 5am. forgive my mistakes. happy birthday to one of my closest irl friends, who literally requested i write this in april. i’m so sorry. it’s finally here. also happy birthday, but i said this already.

If you lived in some Black Mirror-esque alternate universe where every single human being lived their life and interacted with others as though they were merely profiles on a social media website, the first thing you would do is use the Block feature in your everyday life. And you would use it on none other than Min Yoongi.

It’s a massive shame that there’s no real life unfollow, blocked, reported feature because Min Yoongi, Unnecessary Nuisance Extraordinaire, is quite deserving of all three. Especially considering there is no occurrence in your life more unfortunate than the fact that Min Yoongi just had to waltz into the drama club interest meeting in freshman year, sit his ass down at one of the desks, and sign his name in ugly penmanship under the words Interested in Stage Crew? written in Comic Sans.

You didn’t know it yet, no, not when you barely knew his name and could barely see him under the massive black hoodie he was wearing, but Min Yoongi wrote his name down under the Stage Crew interest line and you wrote yours down under Acting interest line and it was like you signed off your soul. Like you said “I do” to the personification of the word irritation, committed yourself to a thorn in your side for the next four years. A thorn that seems to have a particular penchant for the dramatic arts. It’s a shame that Min Yoongi isn’t interested in acting, but then again, you think that if you had to stand on a stage next to him, there’s no telling what could happen.

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🅱️rama 🅱️lub 🅱️officers

you (12:46PM): are you guys good for the meeting this afternoon? you (12:46PM): in the choir room

namjoon (12:48PM): I still don’t have dues from half of the drama club

you (12:50PM): threaten them

namjoon (12:51PM): With what?

you (12:52PM): idk you (12:52PM): the wrath of kim namjoon ig

seokjin (12:54PM): i wouldn’t exactly call the wrath of kim namjoon particularly threatening

you (12:55PM): no one asked u seokjin you (12:55PM): you’re in love with him

seokjin (1:01PM): love is a great and wonderful thing y/n

min (1:03PM): yeah y/n ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

you (1:05PM): do not start with me min

min (1:05PM): i just want to love you y/n

you (1:06PM): fuck off you (1:07PM): i didn’t ask

namjoon: (1:07PM): Can you not make declarations of love in the drama officers group chat?

you (1:08PM): i am not the one making the love declarations here

min (1:09PM): <3

you (1:10PM): i hate you

seokjin (1:34PM): I will forever be shocked that Park and Bae let the two of you be officers in the same club

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When the bell rings you dash out of your last class of the day, making a beeline for the choir room so you can get there before the rush of the other drama students. It’s very unprofessional for the President of the drama club to be late to her own meeting. You quickly weave your way through the hordes of other students and arrive at your destination, earlier that mostly everyone else.

Mostly.

Min Yoongi is sitting at the shitty piano right by the door, the one that’s always out of tune no matter what your poor choir director does to try and fix it, playing a distant melody of a tune you vaguely know but cannot name. It would probably be nice if it weren’t for the fact that the piano itself sounds terrible and the fact that it is Min Yoongi who is pressing those keys.

He seems to perk up when he notices you’re here, just because he thrives off of your displeasure as any guy as dramatic and obnoxious as he is would. He begins to play the melody more forcefully, passionate and strong, like he’s trying to tell you something. The only thing is that you already know what he’s going to say.

“It’s called Liebestraume,” Yoongi says aloud as he continues to play, knowing that your eyes are trained on him.

“And?” You prompt.

“It means love dream,” he begins to explain, making you roll your eyes as you start heading over to the chalkboard obscured from your vision at the present moment. Though beautiful, you don’t want to hear any more of Min Yoongi playing it on that poor, mildly broken piano. It sounds off and with his fingers on the keys it makes you feel even more aggravated than you already are when you’re in his presence. Which, during drama season, is always.

As you round the corner in this L-shape of a choir room, you are greeted with the sight of a perfectly Not Blank chalkboard. In fact, there’s this horrific scrawl in all capital letters on it. It reads:

Y/N,

WILL YOU GO OUT ON A DATE WITH ME? CHECK ☐ YES ☐ NO

— MIN YOONGI

You turn around to glare at a wonderfully guilty-looking Min Yoongi, who’s smiling proudly at the monstrosity he’s written on the board. He’s always fucking like this, and it’s ridiculous and out-of-hand but you are powerless to stop it. The worst part is that he’s written your name and his so there’s no confusion whatsoever as to who this message is addressed to and who it’s from. Such blatant call-outage makes your cheeks heat up, both in mortification and fury.

“Are you serious, Min?” You ask, speechless. The rest of the drama club trickles in, including your fellow officers, Seokjin and Namjoon, and each person gets a nice good look at the chalkboard as they sit down in the choir chairs. By the time the room is half-filled, most people are looking at you, waiting for your response. You swear you can see Taehyung over by the director’s desk with his phone out. He’s definitely recording this whole thing to put on his Snapchat, because he’s one of those people that has ten minute Snapchat stories like the heathen he is.

“When am I not, Y/N?” Yoongi asks in response, cruising on up to where Namjoon and Seokjin stand, waiting for the meeting to begin. He takes his sweet time, relishing in the attention he’s receiving and the press he’s focusing on you. Your misery seems to fuel him.

Pretty soon all of the officers are standing up at the front of the room, ready to start the meeting and cover all of the bases before sending everyone home for the afternoon. Well, all of them besides you. You’re still staring, flabbergasted, at the message written on the chalkboard.

“Well?” Seokjin prompts, looking like he’s about to keel over with laughter. Him and Namjoon seem to be enjoying themselves quite a lot up there. “Aren’t you going to respond?”

The ever-growing drama club crowd laughs, looking at you expectantly. Half of them probably think you’re going to check YES and the world will end because it will be the first time you have ever accepted a date request from Min Yoongi, and the other half probably think you’re going to brutally circle NO before moving on with the meeting entirely. Taehyung’s filming you no matter what happens.

You reach down for the eraser on the ledge at the bottom of the chalkboard, and wipe the whole damn message away, word by word, line by line, until all that’s left is:

☐ NO

and that’s that. Not the best way to turn him down—you’ve definitely done better—but good enough for now and certainly good enough for Taehyung, who is absolutely laughing his entire head off in that back corner. When you turn back to the front of the room where the rest of the drama club officers await you, Yoongi’s pouting, puppy dog eyes on full display, pretending to be heartbroken at your rejection.

“Oh, stuff it, Min,” you chide, marching over to stand in between Seokjin and Yoongi as you clap your hands to begin the meeting.

It goes fairly well. Yoongi gives his instructions to his neck of the woods: the stage crew kids gathered in the top right corner of the seats, all of whom are on their phones and not paying attention to anything that the rest of the officers are saying. Quite frankly, you’re not even sure if they’re listening to Yoongi either. He’s their only representation in the republic known as the Drama Club Officers and they’re barely giving him even a margin of their attention. Namjoon manages to get dues from a couple more people. Seokjin is loud and reckless and everybody loves him, as per usual. You manage the whole thing, switching slides and relaying information from the musical directors.

When the meeting is over, Taehyung hangs back with the officers, partly because he’s your best friend and partly because he’s also your ride. Namjoon records the names of all of the students who gave him money and Seokjin waits around because they always leave school together.

Yoongi grabs his stuff and pulls on his black beanie, letting the thick wool cover his platinum bangs, looking longingly at the ☐ NO still left on the chalkboard. He stuffs his headphones into his ears and begins to head out, but not before shouting, “Don’t forget about me, Y/N!”

You wouldn’t be able to even if you tried.

Seokjin and Namjoon head out soon after, leaving you and Taehyung alone in the choir room as you pull on your jackets and adjust your backpacks. Taehyung’s keys jingle on the lanyard he’s got wrapped around his hand.

“I’d say that was a pretty successful meeting, wouldn’t you?” He asks on the way out, headed towards the exit that leads to the parking lot where his busted old car waits.

“Other than the Yoongi fiasco in the beginning, yeah, I think it went alright,” you say, only the slightest bit (more like a medium amount) bitter. Min Yoongi always has to be so… Yoongi.

Taehyung rolls his eyes. “I know you hate his guts, Y/N, but seriously. You’re playing Eponine in Les Miserables and yet when a love confession comes knocking on your door, you turn the lights off.”

“He doesn’t really mean it,” you insist like it’s obvious, because it is. No way in hell does Yoongi actually want to go out with you. He exists to torture you, nothing more, nothing less.

Your best friend sighs. His car beeps as he unlocks it. Some days you wonder what your life would be like if you had never met Min Yoongi, but then you remember that not even the kindest goddess could have prevented the firestorm known as your relationship.

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You’re leaning against the stage, rehearsing your lines in your head when you hear the heavy stage door opening then slamming shut, heavy footsteps ringing out throughout the theater.

There’s just enough time to spot Taehyung marching in, proud as ever, jumping from the stage ledge to the carpeted pit below, and shouting, “Guess who just failed his calc test!”

Nobody applauds. In fact, nobody seems to take any note of him besides you and the director, who is shaking his head as he writes something down on his clipboard. But you have to take notice of him because he’s your best friend.

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” you chide as he strides up to you. You don’t need to move your eyes from your script to know that he’s smiling. He reaches into his bag to show you the proof—a fucking satchel that cost him an arm and a leg at Urban Outfitters because he is a piece of shameless hipster trash and extremely proud of it—pulling out a crumpled looking thing stapled together in the top left corner. On the front, right next to where Taehyung’s scribbled his name (it looks like a goose has written it), a bright red 36/100.

“Look at her, Y/N,” Taehyung says, shoving the thing in your face. You fumble with it, trying to balance it between your fingers along with your thick (with two C’s) script. You leaf through it. There’s one page where Taehyung just drew a game of hangman. He didn’t even try to write anything down. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

“What were you trying to spell out?” You ask, showing him the hangman page.

“I suck at calc.”

“You weren’t even gonna like, beg for an A?”

Taehyung looks only a little affronted. “I may be shameless but I’m not that shameless. At least I have the dignity to know when even I can’t schmooze my way to a good grade like Cher from Clueless. I just don’t have that kind of skill, Y/N! Or a rotating closet! My life is awful.”

“You know what, I think the role of Marius will be a good reality check for you. It’ll teach you to be humble. And to cherish what you already have. And to sing your feelings away.”

Taehyung scoffs. “I do that regularly.” He’s not wrong. You’ve lost count of the amount of times you’ve found him singing a Billboard Top 50 song as a form of self-expression to achieve some sort of fake deep catharsis. He once broke out into a ballad version of Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never after missing a question while you were playing Kahoot in chemistry two years ago.

“So what do you have in calc now?”

“A 69.7%,” Taehyung declares like it’s an achievement.

“You scammed your way to a C? How?” You ask in shock. You can’t believe that Taehyung somehow managed to score enough points for him to not be failing that class. You’ve seen his test scores. His grades. He has used his un-handed-in calculus homework as a tissue before.

“My charm,” Taehyung boasts, making you cough up a laugh. At your skepticism, he adds, “and this extra credit review game we did.”

“You’re unbearable,” you tell him in disbelief, your voice still fond. You know that Taehyung doesn’t really want much to do with math, not when he happens to have a penchant for the arts. He’s just selectively studious.

Taehyung smiles to himself as he pulls out his own script, the edges of the folder bent and wrinkled and torn from being stuffed into and roughly pulled out of his satchel. “Bet my team members thought that too. Can’t say they were pleased with being paired up with me.”

“Who were you with?”

“Joy, Hana, and a certain guy whose name rhymes with Sin Boongi.”

“Very funny,” you deadpan.

“Yeah, I’m not really sure who that is either.”

His sarcasm makes you roll your eyes. It’s not so much that you can’t stand the mention of Yoongi’s name as it is you can’t stand him existing, specifically near where you exist. If living on Mars were possible and feasible and if you were as wealthy and scandalous as Elon Musk, then you would either send Min Yoongi on the first ship to the red planet or jump on yourself.

Bitterly, you realize that even if a whole fucking planet separated the two of you, he’d still probably find some way to bother you.

“I mean, Joy and Hana probably greatly dislike me for mooching off of their genuine hard work but I know for a fact that I am not the primary target of Yoongi’s attention,” Taehyung tells you pointedly, crossing his arms in front of you as he gazes at you. You roll your eyes, roughly handing back his crumpled test and going back to your lines. You don’t need a reminder as to how much of a pain in every muscle in your body Yoongi is.

“Don’t look at me like that! It’s not like I chose for this to happen.”

“Ah, yes, it’s not your fault that Min Yoongi has been trying to confess his undying love for you since freshman year and you’ve done nothing but brutally reject him each time.”

This is the part in the story where you’re supposed to say that it wasn’t always like this. You’re supposed to reminisce about some time where you and Yoongi were childhood friends, neighbors, lovers who kissed each other on the kindergarten playground. A montage of your past together is supposed to play and make everyone in the audience watching the movie coo at how close the two of you used to be. And you’re supposed to be narrating the story of your life before the music takes a dark turn and gets all dramatic and you reveal this friendship-crushing event that destroyed your relationship and is meant to make the audience feel sympathetic towards you because you’ve painted yourself as the poor, helpless victim while Yoongi is the evil and malicious person out for your blood.

The truth is is that Yoongi isn’t out for your blood. He’s just out for your mild embarrassment, the kind that makes blood rush to your cheeks and a little frown to etch itself onto your face but the same kind that makes you realize that there could be worse things he does to you. That if this is the price to pay, you’ll take it.

The truth is is that it was always sort of like this.

“Well, how else am I supposed to reply? It’s not like Yoongi means anything by it,” you huff out.

“Gossiping about me, are we now, Y/N?”

You whip your head around to find—speak of the Devil and he shall appear—Yoongi marching across stage with a bucket of nails in his hand for the set construction. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that it was there for him to toss at you. He’s wearing paint-stained clothing, black covered in red and green and brown and white, a beanie sitting atop his bleach blonde hair. He looks so… infuriatingly good.

“Only about you,” you say sharply. Min Yoongi is your one and only nemesis in the entire drama club. Not even that kid Jungkook, who, despite his sheer size, is about as clumsy as a butterfly with a broken wing. He has, multiple times, run into you because he is too busy looking in the opposite direction when in motion. You don’t really blame him, though. He’s the only one who seems to know anything about filming things, which means that the directors put him in charge of anything to do with a camera. Which is a lot.

“I’m honored,” Yoongi tells you, one hand over his heart. He places the bucket down by the wooden planks on stage, a drill already waiting on top of them. “Keep an eye out for me, will you?”

“Min Yoongi, what are you planning now!” You shout, but he’s already beginning to drill, the noise of the drill bit pressing into the wood overwhelming your cries.

They’re the only words he speaks to you for the entire afternoon, leaving you fuming in place once more. Taehyung does absolutely nothing to help besides suggesting that you should put one of the frogs that the freshman biology kids have to dissect into his backpack, a plan that would perhaps work if it weren’t for the fact that it is equal parts hilarious and disgusting. Go big or go home, and you would rather sleep.

The only difference between before and now is that then Yoongi was a scrawny kid who wore all black and played basketball in the gymnasium alone and now he is, apparently, none of those things. Somewhere along the line Yoongi turned from a freshman into a senior and you don’t really know how you feel about it because the boy you are decidedly mortal enemies with is not supposed to look that good. That’s the problem here.

Of course, you could never voice this concern to anybody. Not even Taehyung, because Lord knows you would never hear the end of it from him. Taehyung’s wonderful, but he’s a bit of a blabbermouth, and when Taehyung finds out something the entire drama department will soon follow.

“People’s Song, folks!” One of the directors calls. “Everyone into the choir room!”

On your way over there, you lock eyes with Min Yoongi. He grins.

Ugh.

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“Seokjin, are you even listening to me?” The choir director asks with a pointed look on his face, hands on his hips. Seokjin is too busy eating one of those snack packs of Nutella and breadsticks, turning around like a deer caught in the headlights, cheeks puffy and lips chocolate-y. Where did that come from? Is he even allowed to be eating in here?

“Vaguely,” he responds, making the director roll his eyes. “Can’t hear you over the sound of me quenching my hunger.”

All of the students in the room laugh over the sound of Seokjin’s teeth crunching down onto the snack.

Namjoon, with a tie around his forehead for some unknown reason (you know for a fact that the kids in charge of costumes did not put him up to this), strolls up to his boyfriend, disregarding the seating arrangement entirely to snatch a breadstick from the container. Seokjin takes notice of the accessory tied around his head and tugs on it slightly, making everyone close their eyes to shield them gross display of public affection.

The director sighs, paging back a bit in the score before hitting the pitch on his piano. “We’re starting at the top.”

He begins to play, the thick sound of the piano echoing throughout the room from the dinky speakers behind his desk. Seokjin clears his throat, coughing a little before starting.

“One day more,” he sings. “Another day, another destiny…”

Namjoon rests his head on his boyfriend’s shoulder as he sings, peering down at his lines every now and then just to see when his entrance is coming up.

“One day more,” Seokjin ends his phrase and the director continues to play, waiting for Taehyung to enter.

The only thing is that Taehyung’s been absent from school for the past two days after coming down with strep throat. You have no idea where he contracted that from, especially considering you’ve gotten strep every year since you were eleven.

“Marius?” The director stops on a clunky note. “Where is he?”

“He’s sick,” you inform him. “Strep.”

“Fine,” the director sighs, rubbing his temples. He definitely doesn’t get paid enough. “Anyone willing to fill in? You don’t have to be any good, you just need to sing.”

No one seems to be willing to take Taehyung’s part. Not that you blame them, because Marius has a fairly decent range and everyone in high school cares too much about their reputation to be willing to sacrifice their own pride for the greater good.

Well, everyone except one person.

“I will,” Yoongi volunteers from out of nowhere. You furrow your brows in disbelief as you watch him stroll over to the front of the choir room. Where the hell did he come from? Has he been here the whole time? Yoongi has almost no business being in the choir room during a practice for one of the songs when he is 1) not a choir student and 2) in stage crew. It’s like he just manifested from the dust particles floating around.

“Alright, fine,” the choir director says gruffly. “Need a script?”

“No, it’s alright,” Yoongi says, cruising over and taking the seat right next to your own. He smiles casually at you, like it’s no big deal that he just volunteered to take Taehyung’s part for this one particular song.

“What the hell are you doing,” you mutter to him.

“Using my resources,” he hisses back.

“Okay, we’re starting from the beginning again. Seokjin?”

Seokjin looks up at the call of his name with half of a baby carrot sticking out of his mouth. There’s a Ziploc bag full of them sitting on Namjoon’s lap. He chews the offending vegetable like a rabbit, quickly and furiously, before swallowing down what’s left and clearing his throat once more.

He gets through his verse with relative ease and for a brief second you think this might actually just be a normal fucking rehearsal when—

“I did not live until today,” Yoongi sings in his rough voice, gravelly yet smooth all at once. It shocks you a little bit, how decent of a singer he is. He really does have a calling for the dramatics. “How can I live when we are parted?” You can feel his gaze on your figure, even if he is glancing back and forth at the lyrics he’s pulled up on his phone. He’s waiting to see how you’ll react.

“One day more,” Seokjin continues, but you can see the way his eyes are trained on the two of you. He’s trying to be subtle about it.

“Tomorrow you’ll be worlds away, and yet with you, my world has started,” Yoongi continues, even as Eunbi—Cosette—joins in from across the room. She doesn’t seem to care that Taehyung’s not here and that Yoongi’s taken his place. You don’t really blame her—she thinks that Taehyung is the baboon of the music department and quite frankly, her thoughts are not at all misled.

“One day more, all on my own,” you begin to sing softly, barely audible over the sound of the piano keys clunking throughout the room. You don’t really know if you have the guts to look up at Yoongi.

“Will we ever meet again?” He sings, except his words aren’t directed at Cosette.

“One more day with him not caring,” the lyrics come naturally to you but the feeling of everyone watching you will always be foreign, even if you were born to be a performer. Born to be on stage.

This is different than being on stage.

“I was born to be with you,” Yoongi declares more than he sings, reaching his arm out towards you. Slowly, you begin to look up at Yoongi, who looks just about as expressive as Taehyung is whenever he serenades the goldfish in his room. He’s got his arms outstretched towards you and is singing like his life depends on it, kind of because you have the slightest feeling that you’re about to end it when you’re done with this song.

“What a life I might have known,” you sing through gritted teeth, glaring daggers at Yoongi. He is, to put it simply, wholly undeterred. This is supposed to be a romantic and wistful and hopeful tune and because of him, the entire damn song has gotten flipped—turned upside down. Marius isn’t even the one in love with Eponine. That’s the whole reason her character exists. Because he doesn’t love her.

Not that you’re implying that Yoongi feels any sort of romantic affection towards you. Impossible. There are plenty of reasons that Yoongi does shit like this but you doubt any of them are “because he loves you.”

“And I swear I will be true,” Yoongi promises, belts out with more emotion than you think you’ve ever seen him. This feels like it’s about to turn into a High School Musical scene from how dramatic Yoongi’s being.

“But he never saw me there.” It’s turned into a staring contest between you and him. Yoongi’s grinning wildly as he continues, making the tense press of your lips grow even tighter.

“One more day before the storm,” Namjoon jumps in, and it seems that he’s following Yoongi’s preferred plan of attack which is to sing like it is the last time he will ever sing. He jumps up like he’s literally part of the June Revolution, his fists curled in a power stance.

Yoongi joins in, leaping to his feet. Since when is Namjoon the instigator? “Do I follow where she goes?”

“At the barricades of freedom,” Namjoon follows, raising his arm in solidarity to whatever cause he stands for. Seokjin stands up as well, adjusting the tie around his boyfriend’s forehead as he does.

“Shall I join my brothers there?”

“When our ranks begin to form?”

“Do I stay, and do I dare?”

“Will you take your place with me?”

There comes a point where suddenly you are the only one who is still sitting in your chair, your feet rooted firmly to the ground in protest. Everyone around you is beginning to belt out the lyrics, even if it isn’t their part. You hate drama kids. Oh goodness, you hate them.

You think you might actually make it through this whole rehearsal without dying of embarrassment, but then Yoongi reaches down where he stands next to you and pulls you to your feet, making you gasp slightly at the tug. He’s gotten quite strong. It must be all of the carrying he does during stage crew.

“The time is now, the day is here!” Everyone shouts rather than sings. Yoongi looks right into your eyes as he says the lyrics and you wonder if he can see the disdain lacing your irises. If this is his attempt at another confession, it’s exceedingly poor.

“One day more!” Seokjin practically yodels before everyone dissolves into a fit of laughter. Even the choir director has a smile on his face.

“Won’t you love me, Y/N?” Yoongi asks you, closing his eyes dramatically as he opens his arms.

You look at him in disbelief. You hope he can’t see the way the fondness bleeds into your expression. “In your dreams, Min.”

It ends there.

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you (7:03PM): how dare you

yeontan’s daddy (7:03PM): what did i do

you (7:04PM): be sick

yeontan’s daddy (7:04PM): well excuse me for getting strep from a certain someone

you (7:04PM): idk what ur talking about ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

yeontan’s daddy (7:05PM): Okay™ yeontan’s daddy (7:05PM): what happened today yeontan’s daddy (7:05PM): did i miss something

you (7:05PM): yoongi

yeontan’s daddy (7:06PM): omg noooooo i missed it!! yeontan’s daddy (7:06PM): i wonder if jk filmed it

you (7:06PM): im distressed and the only thing you can think about is if jungkook filmed it???????

yeontan’s daddy (7:07PM): are you questioning my priorities

you (7:07PM): i hate you

yeontan’s daddy (7:08PM): just like you hate yoongi

you (7:06PM): you are the worst best friend i have ever had

yeontan’s daddy (7:08PM): what did he do this time

you (7:09PM): he SANG TO ME you (7:09PM): SANG!! WITH HIS VOICE !!! you (7:09PM): HIS LIPS MOVED AND MADE NOISE

yeontan’s daddy (7:10PM): that is typically how people sing

you (7:10PM): HE SANG !!! IS THAT EVEN ALLOWED !!!!! I DON’T THINK SO !!!!!

yeontan’s daddy (7:10PM): i didn’t know yoongi sang

you (7:10PM): HE DOESN’T

yeontan’s daddy (7:10PM): you seem very emotional about this

you (7:10PM): IM ANGRY

yeontan’s daddy (7:11PM): is he at least a decent singer

you (7:11PM): YES

yeontan’s daddy (7:11PM): wow you’re mad

you (7:11PM): IM RAGING!!!!!

yeontan’s daddy (7:12PM): what did he sing? imo he definitely should have serenaded you with take on me

you (7:12PM): HE SANG YOUR FUCKING PART

yeontan’s daddy (7:12PM): mine????

you (7:12PM): BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T HERE TODAY

yeontan’s daddy (7:12PM): I DON’T HAVE A VOICE yeontan’s daddy (7:12PM): MY DOCTOR SAID IM CONTAGIOUS

you (7:13PM): IM MAD AT YOU

yeontan’s daddy (7:13PM): marius isn’t even in love with eponine??? it’s the other way around???

you (7:13PM): I KNOW

yeontan’s daddy (7:14PM): what were you even singing

you (7:14PM): ONE DAY MORE you (7:14PM): AND HE SANG ALL OF HIS LINES you (7:14PM): WHILE LOOKING AT ME you (7:14PM): AND IM ANGRY ABOUT IT

yeontan’s daddy (7:16PM): im going to be extremely disappointed if no one filmed this

you (7:16PM): EVERYONE JOINED IN you (7:16PM): HE GOT UP TO HIS FEET AND SUDDENLY IT WAS LIKE SOME HSM BULLSHIT you (7:16PM): I HATE THIS

yeontan’s daddy (7:19PM): i just double checked my lines for one day more and that’s like? very romantic? a 10/10 even if the delivery was a bit off

you (7:19PM): ARE YOU TAKING HIS SIDE!!!

yeontan’s daddy (7:19PM): is your caps lock button just… perpetually on

you (7:19PM): YES

yeontan’s daddy (7:19PM): you can’t possibly be this mad about being serenaded

you (7:20PM): IM DISTRESSED

yeontan’s daddy (7:20PM): is this because you literally have no idea how to navigate your feelings for yoongi

you (7:20PM): my only feelings for yoongi are disdain and general disgust

yeontan’s daddy (7:20PM): i really do not think that is true

you (7:20PM): what else could it be

yeontan’s daddy (7:23PM): hmmm yeontan’s daddy (7:23PM): i wonder

you (7:24PM): what the hell are you trying to say you (7:25PM): i know you fucking got this text you (7:26PM): do not leave me on read!!! you (7:34PM): taehyung!!!! how dare you!!!!! you (7:40PM): im calling the police !!!!! you (8:45PM): taehyung!!!!!!

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It pains you to say so, but the set looks fantastic. As much as your petty grudges and general pride hate to admit it, Yoongi and his gang of gangly, uncoordinated, My Chemical Romance-listening stage crew students do a wonderful job each year, and this musical is no exception. On stage right now, in front of the background design of an unspecified French city in the early-to-mid 1800s is a pile of apparent rubbish. But it’s meant to be like that, old tables and chairs and even the damn piano from the choir room all mashed together, glued and nailed and enforced with random wooden planks here and there, meant to look like a real French barricade built haphazardly by students who most definitely aren’t gifted in the arts of engineering and invention. And if Namjoon, king of standing on top of things he shouldn’t be standing on top of, can climb to the top without either toppling over or bringing the whole construction down with him, then it must be sturdy as hell.

“You’re rousing, Namjoon,” the director tells him. The student in question is wobbling as he makes his way up the mountain of random household objects, Seokjin standing a couple of feet away on the sidelines and looking on fondly. “Be more… revolutionary. You’re calling everyone to action, right?”

“Right,” Namjoon nods, but the action makes him lose his footing for a quick second. He regains it nearly as fast, but not before Seokjin’s darting over, instinct telling him to protect the one he loves.

“Okay, so act like it,” the director says.

“Red, the blood of angry men!” Namjoon cries, his voice the slightest bit melodic that it needs to be. Seokjin looks on like a very pleased boyfriend.

“More! Angrier!” The director encourages. He’s been working on getting Namjoon to act more like a revolutionary in France in the early nineteenth century for a while now, most as a result of Namjoon’s insecurity of his ability to act like one. The thing is, you’ve seen Namjoon in debates in your political science class. And you’ve seen the way he protests the way that student minorities are always punished more severely than those that aren’t. And you’ve read his essays about the oppression of women’s rights in modern society. Namjoon’s about as revolutionary as they come, powerful, intelligent, noble—he just doesn’t know it.

“Red, the blood of angry men!” Namjoon says, getting provoked by the director. All of the students on stage are feeling the June Rebellion coursing through their veins, angry yet determined expressions lacing their features as they all engage in various revolutionary activity.

“Good, good!” The director emphasizes.

“Black, the dark of ages past!” continues Namjoon, getting a bit daring and moving to stand taller. He’s nearly at the top of the Mount Everest of rubbish. “Red, a world about to dawn!”

Namjoon takes one giant step, knee knocking into the edge of some table, and reaches the very peak of the trash pile. He balances himself on some sort of ledge and triumphantly raises both of his fists in the air, and with a great big, empowering grin, shouts, “Black, the night that ends at last!”

At this exact moment, ironically enough, all of the lights on stage shut off. The ones in the pit soon follow after a split second, and then the entire auditorium is shrouded in darkness.

“What the fuck,” you can hear Namjoon mutter to himself. He doesn’t dare move for fear of misplacing his foot and crashing to the stage floor.

“Go, Yoongi, go!”

The director doesn’t even have time to shout Hoseok’s name before you hear some random scuffling, rushed and quick and very disorganized. You whip your head around, hoping to spot the offending stage crew manager and the entourage he has somehow gathered to do his dirty work, but then the lights flicker back on, one by one from the back of the auditorium all the way to the stage, where Min Yoongi stands in the center with the megaphone held to his mouth.

Fuck. Oh, fuck. You already know exactly what’s about to happen and you try and hide yourself, sinking into the sweater you’re wearing as you quickly scan for any means of escape or disguise. Maybe you can go hide behind Jungkook, since he’s standing in the middle of the seats with a fat camera in his hand, filming the whole thing. You’re about to make a mad dash before Yoongi can do anything when you hear a crackling sound and—

“Y/N!” Yoongi shouts into the megaphone, his voice mildly unintelligible and cracked around the edges. He doesn’t really need to shout, not when he’s got a megaphone in his hand, but here he is.

“Oh my God,” you say in shock, your head slowly sinking into your hands. “Oh. My God.”

“IF I HAD TO CHOOSE BETWEEN GOING TO HARVARD AND GETTING TO DATE YOU, I WOULD DATE YOU,” Yoongi continues, voice blaring. “SORRY FOR CAUSING ALL OF THIS RUCKUS, DIRECTORS, BUT YOU KNOW I HAD TO DO IT TO ‘EM. SPECIFICALLY Y/N. BECAUSE I LOVE HER.”

“Christ almighty,” you continue to mutter, knowing fully well that Jungkook is panning back and forth between where you stand in the pit and where Yoongi stands on stage.

“I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH GRANDER I CAN GO WITH THESE, Y/N. I’M RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS. YOU SHOULD BE WORRIED.”

Taehyung snickers somewhere next to you.

“IN ANY CASE, NOW THAT I’VE CAUSED ENOUGH DISRUPTION, PLEASE DON’T FIRE ME AS HEAD OF STAGE CREW. WE FINISHED ALL OF THE SETUP. I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING LEFT TO DO. I HAVE ONE FINAL QUESTION.”

It’s a wonder that Yoongi hasn’t auditioned for any sort of drama show because he’d almost be guaranteed a main role. What with all of this nonsense.

“WILL YOU, Y/N, DO ME THE HONOR OF GOING OUT ON A DATE WITH ME?”

Yoongi then proceeds to hand the megaphone off to Jimin, who has seemingly appeared out of nowhere, who grabs it in his baby-sized hands and rushes towards you with it. He hands it over to you and points to the button you’re meant to press to get the thing to turn on.

“Is this the best you can do, Min?” You ask in response, a challenge that he’s definitely going to accept. You’re digging your own grave here but you don’t have the heart to just straight up reject him, especially not when he’s managed to corral all of the kids in stage crew and the tech kids up in the light and soundbooth to do this for him. This is like some twisted promposal gone completely wrong. “Step your game up and then maybe I’ll consider it.”

With that, you hand the megaphone back to a very disgruntled director and continue on with your day. On stage, Yoongi is handing out high-fives to his entire crew, considering this endeavor a success. Or at least, a not-failure. The directors are trying to wrangle everyone up again to rehearse but consider their efforts fruitless and give a ten minute break.

“I can’t believe you didn’t say no,” Taehyung says in disbelief as he comes up next to you, arms crossed over his chest. “I thought Yoongi was a goner.”

“I’m being benevolent,” you inform him. “Next time he pulls some shit like this and I’m locking him up in the catwalk. When they tear this school down they will find his skeleton, still wearing that goddamn black beanie.”

“Wow, you really thought that out,” Taehyung comments, mildly impressed. Then, because he’s got the attention span of a puppy in a park, “I can’t believe you said you’d consider it. Since when do you consider anything to do with Yoongi?”

“I told you I was being benevolent.”

“Don’t tell me you’re actually warming up to the idea of going out with him. I’ll die of shock.”

“You sure that strep throat didn’t infect your brain?” You tease, ruffling his head.

“I think it might have, considering I just had a dream where you said you might actually consider going on a date with Yoongi.”

“I’m getting his hopes up so that I can crush them with my bare hands,” you say, glancing towards Yoongi. He seems to notice your gaze upon him and sends you some classic finger guns and an incredibly greasy wink, neither of which you return. “Like a grape.”

“I have never seen you crush a grape with your bare hands before.”

“Bring grapes tomorrow.”

“Regardless, you’re not that cruel, Y/N. You told Yoongi to step his game up and he will and if you reject him, I won’t be able to figure out if it’s all in good fun or not. It’s a fine line to cross, Y/N,” Taehyung warns cautiously, giving you a pointed look. You sigh. This isn’t how you pictured this conversation with Taehyung going. You thought he would just applaud you for not being so heartless but now he’s off preaching.

“I don’t know why he keeps doing it,” you think aloud. It’s never-ending, the confessions, over and over again without any sort of break in between. They’ve become so common that it’s a part of your routine at this point, something you just expect to happen despite their general spontaneity. It’s not so much that they’re predictable as it is they’re nice surprises.

Taehyung frowns. “Have you ever told him to stop?” He asks you with his eyebrows raised, a valid point to be making. “You know that if you told him to stop he would, right? He’s not that much of an asshole.”

You open your mouth to defend yourself when the realization hits you. It’s never occurred to you that you’ve never told Yoongi to stop with all of this nonsense, even after year after year of it. You know Yoongi well enough to know that if something he was doing made you feel truly uncomfortable, he wouldn’t continue doing it. He’s a decent guy like that. Taehyung’s right. Yoongi would stop the moment you asked him to.

But why haven’t you? Even after four years of having to hear him proclaim his undying affection for you in elaborate and schemed ways, you’ve never once told him no. You’ve accepted it as reality and continued on with your life.

It’s come so far that now you just expect them.

Like you’re waiting for the next time.

“You’re thinking awful hard about this,” Taehyung notes as he pops a piece of white cheddar popcorn into his mouth.

“I’m distressed,” you tell him.

“Have you ever once considered the idea that you may, in fact, enjoy the attention you receive from him?”

You scoff as a knee-jerk reaction. “Don’t be ridiculous. I hate him.”

Taehyung frowns. “I don’t really think that you do.”

“Can you stop doing that?” You ask bitterly.

Taehyung raises a brow. “Doing what?”

“Being all cryptic and shit. Whenever we talk about me and Yoongi all you do is dodge my questions and be vague. Extremely unhelpful,” you pout. Taehyung’s your best friend—he should be the one telling you the things you don’t know. Every time you ask him to spell something out for you he jumbles up the letters like a child with a magnetic alphabet on his fridge.

“I’m not here to police your feelings for him,” Taehyung tells you.

“My feelings for him?”

“Tell me right now, to my face, that you hate him. If you can, I’ll believe you.”

You turn to him, glare into Taehyung’s deep brown eyes, and open your mouth. The words should come easily to you—after all, you’ve been repeating them to yourself for years now—but your tongue is dry.

You know you can’t say that you hate Yoongi. Because you don’t. You really, really don’t. Maybe he’s loud and obnoxious and spontaneous and outrageous but you don’t hate that about him. He cares deeply and works hard and always makes sure that the stage crew is organized and prepared and treats them with respect and you don’t hate him. You can’t.

“Knew it,” Taehyung says, shaking his head. “You’re awfully soft, did you know that, Y/N? Always have been.”

“I take personal offense to that.”

“You’re such a goner for him, don’t you know that?” Taehyung asks. He motions his head towards Yoongi, who’s laughing on stage with Jimin and Seokjin. They’re tossing Goldfish into each other’s mouth, and one hits Yoongi on the nose before falling to the floor. He’s laughing. They all are, but Yoongi beaming. He outshines everyone on stage even if he isn’t an actor himself. He’s wondrous.

You sigh. “Yeah. I know.”

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After your final dress rehearsal, everyone’s deadbeat tired. It’s nearing eleven at night and you think you’ve set a record for how long you can be in your school building in one go. Even Taehyung’s about to fall asleep, and the man downed a venti Starbucks coffee during the last period of the day.

“Good run, folks!” Your director shouts. “You guys will be amazing on Thursday, I know it! Get some much needed rest. No practice tomorrow, so don’t show up here otherwise I’ll have to hear about it from management!”

Everyone groans out their response as they gather their bags, wiping off the makeup on their faces with dried-out wipes and dampened paper towels. Right now, there is no place more enticing to you than your bed back home, sheets crumpled and warm.

“See you tomorrow, Y/N!” Taehyung shouts as he’s bounding down the steps outside, jumping into the passenger seat of his older brother’s car. Normally he’d be offering to drive you home but his car’s in the shop. The damn thing was on its last legs anyway. It needed some repairs.

“See you!” You wave back, turning to go back inside the auditorium. It’s oddly cold tonight, and you underprepared with just a t-shirt, so you’re trying to conserve as much warmth as you can before your ride comes.

The auditorium’s mostly cleared out, lights dim and hazy. But there in the middle is Yoongi, leaning down to clean up the remnants of the nonsense on stage. He looks so alone, up on stage without anybody else. Nobody seems to have stayed back to help him.

Your ride can wait a couple minutes.

You drop your backpack down in one of the seats next to the aisle as you walk up to him, strides longer to get you there faster.

“Need some help?” You ask.

Your voice catches him off guard, and he looks up with his mouth in the shape of a small ‘o’. He blinks a couple of times, like he’s processing the fact that you’re here, standing in front of him, offering a hand.

“Me? Oh, yeah. That would be nice, thanks.”

“Sure thing.”

You come up on stage and Yoongi directs you to the broom hanging up on the wall so you can dust away anything left on stage—not that there’s very much. In his hands, Yoongi’s got a couple stray pieces of paper and some safety pins that must have fallen off some of the costumes. Jimin will need those.

You fall into this silence as the two of you clean up what’s left. Most of it’s just tidying up, organizing the props on the tables backstage so that everything’s in order for the show in a couple days, but it’s important. Important enough for you and Yoongi to be the only two people left to do it.

This is the kind of thing that’s supposed to be awkward and romantic at the same time. You and Yoongi are the only ones left in this dark auditorium as the moon waits above your head for some miracle to play out. You don’t know what to say to each other but your company is enough of an icebreaker. His mere presence fills up the space, even if he’s one lonely man on a giant stage. Yoongi’s exhausted, the bags under his eyes deep and dark, much like your own. Alongside being part of the drama club as a whole, you’re also officers of it, meaning the two of you take on responsibilities nobody else in the club would dare to. You love this, love being on stage and acting and entertaining others, but days like this are draining.

“You should get some rest,” Yoongi breaks through the layer of tension in the air. You didn’t even realize that it had settled until he waved it away. He walks up to you with a damp rag in his hand from wiping down the set for the last time to clean it of any dust that might have settled.

“You too,” you tell him softly, holding the broom close to your body to give your hands something to do.

“I’m not the one performing on stage in a couple days,” says Yoongi, smiling to himself.

“Just because I’m under the lights and you aren’t doesn’t make you any less important, Min,” you say to him, looking down at your feet because you don’t think you could bear looking into his eyes. It’s dark, everything’s dark, from his hat to his clothes to the stage to the auditorium to his irises. “Without you, we’d have no show.”

“I—I mean I just move stuff off and on stage,” Yoongi admits shyly. Why does he think so little of himself? Doesn’t he know how much he matters?

“You built the damn stage,” you tell him, finally mustering up enough courage to look him in the eye. You signal to the rest of the set, designed and constructed and decorated perfectly, a display of all of his hard work, right in front of him. There’s not a thing out of place. At least, it doesn’t look that way to you. “This was all you.”

“I had a lot of help,” he whispers.

“So did I,” you tell him. “What you do here matters, Min,” you stress, hoping he’ll understand. Hoping he’ll know how much his work means to you. How much he means to you. “You matter.”

It’s then that Yoongi looks up. He’s got his dark pink lips in that little ‘o’ again, but then they shift into a small smile, miniscule. You’d probably hardly be able to see it if you weren’t so close to him. His eyes crinkle up ever so slightly. God, he’s…

“I’ll see you at the show on Thursday, okay?” Yoongi asks, eyes hopeful. He doesn’t need to be hopeful, not when you and him both have to show up no matter what, but he asks it like he isn’t sure. He should be.

“Yeah,” you say, nodding. For some reason, you can’t wait to see him again.

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“Eponine! Eponine, come on!”

Namjoon’s shouting your name as you rush backstage. It’s the finale for Act One and you barely had time to get yourself situated since your last scene, dirtying up your clothes a bit more and covering your cheeks with brown and black eyeshadow. Time passes by too quickly for this show, strange enough since it’s long as hell.

“I’m here, I’m here,” you whisper shout in response, coming up next to Namjoon. You look across the stage in the hopes that maybe you can catch a glimpse of Yoongi, but you’ve barely seen him at all since you arrived to get into your costume. Maybe a couple of glances, here or there, but other than that he seems to be entirely AWOL.

“One Day More, One Day More!” Namjoon tells you in a hurry and you rush on stage, hidden in the darkness as you stand, waiting for your cue.

The lights on stage come back on. Seokjin stands in the center in his Jean Valjean costume, looks out into the audience, and begins to sing. Soon enough, Taehyung and Eunbi join him on stage, standing a few feet away from him as they sing to each other. The spotlight’s on just them for right now as they share their song, but soon enough you feel the heat of the light on you and join in.

Just for now, any thought of Yoongi evaporates from your mind. You can’t really think of him, not as you stand on stage and sing for your friends, your family, anyone who has come to see this show on this rainy Thursday night. The Act One Finale is always your favorite thing to perform, just because it’s so energetic, inclusive, fun.

Soon the entire cast is on stage, each person singing their part as the pit plays beneath you. It’s your first showing but undoubtedly not your best, even as you accidentally stumble over your words when you spot Yoongi rushing around backstage, just a momentary glimpse of him. He looks awfully busy.

The song comes to a close and the lights turn off to a round of applause from the audience. The curtains close, the whirring of the machine that moves them barely audible over the sound of the cast members shuffling off stage. Intermission’s meant to last about fifteen minutes, just long enough for everyone to change and clean up and for the stage crew to set up for the next scene. You’re sweating from being under the lights, hair matted by your forehead where your perspiration collects, and you wipe away what you can with a paper towel as you head off stage to take a breather.

You’re barely out into the hallway when you feel someone grab onto your wrist at the same time a voice outside says, “Attention, everyone, could I just get your attention for a moment?”

It’s Yoongi.

Eyes wide, you turn to the person holding onto your wrist to find your best friend smiling guiltily at you, like he knows something you don’t. He definitely knows something you don’t.

“Taehyung, what on earth are you doing?” You hiss at him, but he shrugs.

“I’m being the best friend in the entire world,” Taehyung responds, before he pulls you down to the doors that lead to the pit, opening them and pushing you into the auditorium. Almost immediately, a light shines on you, and you wince as your eyes adjust to the glare. Taehyung waves up to Hoseok. “Go!” Taehyung shouts, motioning up to where Yoongi stands, rocking back and forth in his all black Converse, a microphone in his hand.

Your hardened expression softens into something grossly fond as you make your way up the stairs onto the stage, the spotlight following your each and every step. Yoongi waits at the top like a groom watching his bride come down the aisle. You can’t help but feel like that comparison isn’t too far off.

“Sorry to disrupt your, uh, intermission, everyone,” he says gruffly into the microphone. “This’ll be really quick.” You can tell that he doesn’t want to look into your eyes but he can’t figure out a better place to put his gaze. “Anyway, Y/N, you know that I do a lot of dumb sh—I mean, stuff to get your attention and then you said that I should step my game up so here we are.”

Even if this the most public any one of his elaborate confessions has been, it doesn’t feel that way. You’ve got an entire audience this time, both in the seats and backstage, everyone watching as Yoongi tries one more time. You can hear the doors leading to the pit opening as the entire cast tries to get a glimpse of what’s happening on stage.

This feels different.

It feels different because suddenly Yoongi’s the speechless one, cheeks bright red as he tries to curl into his clothing, sink into the fabric impossibly closer. You’re the one receiving whatever love confession is on the end of this but now he’s the one who’s unsure and embarrassed. It’s kind of endearing, really.

“You’ve probably heard me say this a bunch but I figured there was no better way to say it than in front of the audience for the first night of our show, right?” He forces a chuckle and it makes him cough a little. You can’t help but smile at him. “I don’t know, you’ve always been so wonderful and kind and strong and funny and you make everyone around you laugh, even me, and I make all of these elaborate schemes to ask you out on a date with me but I feel like doing this whole thing just for a date is a bit shallow, so I’ve decided on something else.”

It’s then that Jung Hoseok, decked out in a black hoodie three times the size of his torso and skintight pants, shuffles onto stage with a single rose in his hand. It’s a lavender purple rose. You didn’t even realize that they sold those.

“Anyway, what I’m really trying to say before everyone in the audience gets fed up with me for taking time out of their intermission is, well,” Yoongi teeters on his feet awkwardly, leaning his weight from one side to the other as he twirls the rose between his fingers. “Will you go to prom with me?”

You open your mouth to respond but Seokjin beats you to it.

“Say yes!” He shouts from the sidelines, making Yoongi laugh.

Yoongi looks so nervous. So unsure of himself yet so hopeful, wishing and wishing and wishing. You’ve got a four year streak of turning him down and for the longest time you swore you’d never break it but things are different now.

“I’d love to, Min.”

Yoongi lights up, not even like a Christmas tree but like the whole fucking Christmas display at the mall, the one with reindeers and snowflakes and everything. He lights up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. He carefully gives the rose to you but you crush it between your fingers as you hug him, pull him close.

Everyone in the audience cheers. Taehyung’s shouting, “That’s my best friend! That’s my best friend right there!” Next to him, Jungkook’s got his camera up, filming the boy in all black with a pink tinge to his cheeks and the girl in tattered rags with dirt covering her face.

When you and Yoongi walk off stage to join your friends behind the scenes, he laces his fingers in between yours. You don’t anticipate on letting go for a long while.

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“Can we banish them from the couch?” Hoseok asks loudly, over the music playing from the television. “They’re being all date-y and shit.”

“We are dating, you asshole,” Yoongi shouts. He’s got one arm wrapped around your side as the other holds the phone up in front of your faces, your body curled into him with your knees tucked close to your chest, leaning against him.

“That’s up to the man of the house, Hobi,” Jimin says as he hands Hoseok another root beer. He motions to Seokjin, who is entirely too busy laughing his entire ass off as he plays What Do You Meme? with Namjoon, Taehyung, Eunbi, and Jungkook on the carpet. They seem to be having a grand old time. You move your head over slightly to see them battling over who won the card with that blue button meme with the giant word NUT written on top of it. Namjoon eventually gives the round to Seokjin, prompting everyone else to accuse them of cheating because they’re dating.

“I hate this so much,” Hoseok says, sighing. “What are you guys even watching?”

“It’s this video of an owner dressing up as their dog’s favorite toy,” Yoongi says without taking his eyes off of the video. The dog starts smothering its owner in kisses. God, you don’t deserve dogs.

“You guys might not want to sit on the left side of that couch!” Seokjin shouts as a warning from across the way, eyebrows raised and cheeks tinged a hazy red in the dim light of his living room.

You and Yoongi look at each other, confused for a brief second, before the both of you start groaning, quickly getting up from where you were seated and searching for another place of lodging. Did you need to know what Seokjin and Namjoon do in their free time? Absolutely not. Did you find out anyway? Unfortunately.

“Hey, deal us in,” you say to Taehyung, settling down in between him and Jungkook. Yoongi takes a seat beside you as Taehyung hands each of you seven cards. Your boyfriend—God, that’s so nice to say—instantly laughs, hearty and loud and wonderful, upon reading the first one.

The next meme Namjoon pulls from the box is the one photo from when Obama gave Joe Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Everyone laughs at the sight of it as they play their cards. It’s Seokjin’s turn to judge.

When he flips over the last card, it’s a freestyle one. Taehyung immediately claims it as his own.

“Go on, give us what you got, Tae,” Namjoon says.

Taehyung clears his throat before announcing, “When Y/N finally said yes to going out with Yoongi after four years of being too constipated in her feelings to realize that she liked him.”

The night fades out like the end of a film, the last scene of a play, with everyone laughing as you beat your best friend with your fists for being so goddamn awful. Yoongi presses an insistent kiss to your forehead as Seokjin easily hands that one to Taehyung, who takes the meme card with pride.

The curtain closes.

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thank you so much for reading! i just learned that i can’t put links on my posts otherwise tumblr x-nays them for the search engine, so if you wanna talk to me, hit up my ask box!

#yoongi fluff #yoongi angst #bts fluff #bts angst #bts scenario #yoongi scenario #suga scenario #suga fluff #suga angst #bts au #bts imagine #yoongi imagine #suga imagine #yoongi au #suga au #IM SORRY IVE BEEN SUCH A BUTT AND DELAYED THIS FOR SO LONG #BUT IT'S FINALLY HERE #HAPPY BIRTHDAY EM !!!! U FUCKER !!! THIS IS FOR YOU !!!!#w: a heart full of love

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anistarrose · 5 years

Text

Space Purgatory (TAZ Amnesty One-Shot)

Summary: Spending months in close proximity to the goddess Sylvain herself, shooting television shows and making battle plans and fighting monsters alongside her, is… unprecedented, to say the least, throughout the planet Sylvain’s entire recorded history. So unsurprisingly, no one anticipates the effect this prolonged contact has upon your fragile human soul.

Word count: 1300

Warnings: (canonical) major character death

AO3

Big finale spoilers! A Ned and Billy-centric fic.

***

When Sylphs die in their homeland, the blessing of their goddess allows them to take on spectral forms and linger for as long as they like, passing on when they so choose.

When humans die, no such thing happens — at least, most of the time.

Spending months in close proximity to the goddess Sylvain herself, shooting television shows and making battle plans and fighting monsters alongside her, is… unprecedented, to say the least, throughout the planet Sylvain’s entire recorded history.

So unsurprisingly, no one anticipates the effect this prolonged contact has upon your fragile human soul.

***

You exist without being alive. You know things without thinking them. You feel nothing, but regret everything.

You cling to scattered memories — fewer and fewer as time passes. If you could think, if you could reason, if you possessed any of your naturally sharp wit in this state, you would guess you’re only skimming the surface of the long, dangerous life you once lived. Only remembering the last few memories you made before you left that life behind.

There are seven images and sensations that light up the numb, empty void you exist in:

An orange, crystalline pendant.

A voice listing times that go down, down, down each time it speaks.

Two letters, carefully sealed away in envelopes.

Your finger on the trigger of a child’s toy.

A sarcophagus.

The sound of a gunshot.

And the stars above you.

Those seven experiences cycle over and over again, devoid of context, sometimes bleeding into each other. It’s a good thing you can’t feel, because if you could, they might hurt even worse than the wound that killed you. Even knowing this, you still can’t bear to let go of them.

But like the other memories you once had, they too are now fading without giving you any choice in the matter. You lose the way the pendant always caught the light, the feeling of the fountain pen in your hands as you wrote the letters. The hurt and betrayal in the counting voice. The last constellations you ever saw in the winter night sky —

Light-years away, a pair of deft hands runs across a control sphere.

PAIRINGS > 14198_EARTH_SYLVAIN > MEMORY SCANS > EDMUND CHICANE

OPEN FILE?

>YES NO

You’re you again. More or less.

There are gaps in your memories. Fuzzy patches where the picture should be clear. You can remember remembering details before, but not what those details are.

But you know you are Ned Fucking Danger Discretion Butterfly Trustworthy Vamoose Kelly Chicane. And you can feel something pulling at you from behind, tugging you towards the sky above.

Oh, and you can see the sky again, too. The sun is the only star visible this time, beaming down on home sweet Kepler. The full moon is there too, sitting just above the horizon, as if it knows what this day means to humans and Sylphs.

The tugging grows stronger, but you resist. There’s a commotion nearby, and it’s been a long time since you last had the ability to feel curious. You’re not going to squander this rare chance now.

You drift closer to the mass of people, and you hear your own voice. You see your own face.

The season — no, series finale of Saturday Night Dead plays for the crowd, who react with equal parts laughter and longing. In the front row are Aubrey and Dani, tears in their eyes and hands interlocking.

Behind them, Barclay reveals a statue with a dramatic flourish, and you recognize Mama’s craftsmanship instantly.

It sinks in, now. That the world — both worlds, and maybe even more than the two that you knew — are finally safe, and their inhabitants are happy.

And out of all the things they could be doing, with this great freedom opened up in their lives, they’ve chosen to celebrate you.

You still feel like you’re being pulled towards the sky, but you make an effort to linger a little longer. You catch glimpses of Duck, of Kirby, of Cryptonomica regulars. Of a tall, muscular woman and strange, bearded man whose face you can’t quite place — yet you still feel connected to them too, in a way.

Someone enthusiastically relays information about what life is like in a town called Chicane. It takes you a long time to piece together that you knew this town as Sylvain. At first, you chuckle at the rhyme, before the disbelief sets in. It’s the only time you seriously entertain the thought that you might be either in the world’s longest dying dream, or purgatory.

But the laughs and the cheers and the tears and the toasts to you all sound real. You pride yourself on your imagination, but you don’t think you could imagine this into existence.

Which seems to contradict all your hazy memories about pendants and countdowns and letters, but surrounded by partygoers, it’s hard to dwell on it.

You join in the celebration, laughing along with your own jokes from the tape and playfully elbowing Kirby while giving him pointers on how to keep the crowd under control. Either he’s a psychic and he can actually hear you, or he’s learned a lot about tourist trap management, because most of the time he actually does what you suggest.

Eventually, the party dies down. People go home, or to their friends houses in other worlds to visit for a few days. The sun sets, and the full moon rises higher and higher in the sky as the stars once again make themselves visible —

And you let go.

You’re staring at a familiar actor’s face from the other side of a… computer screen?

Hey there, Gosling Goat, how are you doing? you ask. Your voice comes out more robotic than you’re used to it sounding, but it still has a hint of your usual inflections.

Ned? Billy blinks, then enters a few new inputs through his control sphere. His voice is equally robotic, but pauses much more awkwardly as he continues. I’m… very happy to see you. I found your memory files earlier. But running them didn’t do anything…

He rubbed his chin. Even when we would turn those files into bodies, they needed one of us to inhabit them. If we didn’t, then they didn’t DO anything. Didn’t act alive. But I guess your mind was still out there. Somehow…

I’m afraid it doesn’t make a lick of sense to me either, Friend Billy, you reply. I seem to have spent my entire afterlife being as out of the loop as one can possibly be… what brings you to this neck of the, er, galaxy? Or universe? This isn’t Earth or Sylvain, is it?

It’s not. Billy sighs. I’m cleaning up a mess. I made… not all of it, but part of it. So fixing it is… the least I can do to make it up to y’all.

You’re a noble goat-man, Billy.

I’m not really a goat, you know. That body was just supposed to be temporary.

And I get the feeling I’m not supposed to be a ghost haunting your computer, either!

Billy laughs. So what do you want me to do with you, Ned? Do you want to keep being a computer ghost?

I don’t know. I’m not really sure what it entails, yet — I think I’d like to give it a trial run. But, you know… I may still not be caught up, but it’s a brave thing you’re doing there, Billy. Doing everything you can to fix your mistakes is… brave.

You smile as much as your digital form allows. And I am a firm believer that no one should have to walk that path alone. So you can count on me sticking around for a while longer, Gosling.

***

(sequel I probably won’t write: ned hacks into the FBI database on earth and deletes his entire criminal record under all his aliases)

#taz #taz amnesty #taz amnesty spoilers #ned chicane #billy taz #taz billy #taz spoilers #rosalia writes fic

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poeticsandaliens · 6 years

Text

In the morning hour she calls me (post-finale MSR )

This is my take on the post-MS IV canon compliant babyfic. Title is taken from Country Roads (John Denver). Based in part off a post from @foxmulders about Mulder and Scully’s magic teenage son who can explode heads but knows nothing practical about adulting. Tagging @today-in-fic.

Pairing: MSR

Rating: Explicit

Summary: Slowly and strangely, Mulder and Scully reconnect with their son.

He bought the ring years ago. She saw it tucked away in his underwear drawer, once, during the early days of living with him. Two silver bands twirled around each other in a neverending optical illusion. It had taken her a second to realize what it was, another second to realize what it meant, and a third to remember that no, they weren’t already married. They certainly fucked like newlyweds, on every surface that would hold them and some that wouldn’t. They had cracked every piece of furniture but the coffee table.

She wondered for months if he’d actually do it, drop to one knee and go through the romantic motions. Or if he’d wander into the living room one day, unshaven, hands shoved in his pockets and casually ask her to marry him. The funny thing was, meeting Mulder had solidified her desire never to get married. He was everything she found attractive in a man, and he irritated her endlessly in spite of it (and in hindsight, at least partially because of it).

He never asked. When she peeled out of the driveway with her life measured in boxes and medical journals, she was glad for it.

They are slurping cheap shaved ice at a roadside shack, indulging the July heat. Scully has one hand wrapped possessively around a cup of mechanical snow and raspberry syrup, the other shoved into her pocket, pressed flat against her stomach in an ongoing attempt to even process the last week’s events. She can still feel her muscles ripple beneath her touch. She wonders what will come first: the vanishing of her taut abdominal muscles or the baby’s fluttering kicks. What will she hear first: a new heartbeat on a sonogram or her son’s heart beating itself back to life on the river bottom, some confirmation he sends her that he is alive and well? She feels it in her gut, but she waits for him to tell her himself.

“Hey Scully,” Mulder’s hand is on her shoulder. “You okay?”

She nods vacantly. “Thinking,” she replies. About what, she doesn’t have to say. She eyes the grape slush at the bottom of her cup. “Ready to go home?”

“Yeah, but first,” he says, almost sheepishly, in his something to say that I want to be a surprise voice that she always indulges. “I was thinking too, about everything that’s happened in the last couple weeks. I mean, Spender’s dead, Monica’s dead, Skinner isn’t out of the woods yet, William…” he trails off. William is—their son is. Mulder rummages around his jeans pocket. “And I realized, why don’t we get married? Not now, exactly, or even at some set date, but sometime.”

Her bottom lip trembles. “Mulder…”

“Scully, will you marry me sometime?”

And there is the ring. The wedding band he saved for over a decade, that Scully had all but forgotten about, in his outstretched palm over the sticky table. His hands have blue syrup on them. Her eyes water.

“Yees,” she promises. “Sometimes.” She takes his face in her hands and plants one on him, right there between the shake shack and the Taurus. He tastes like blueberries and cheap candy.

That night, between shuddering orgasms and sweet breath and beads of perspiration, they finally break the coffee table.

* * * *

Sunrise curls through the window. Her stomach churns at ungodly hours of the morning, so she kneels each dawn before the porcelain god, then compulsively organizes the kitchen. She needs something to do, even more so since Kersh had informed them of their suspension. So she moves the salt shaker three inches to the right to make room for a potted succulent.

Hey, Dana. Nice plant. It’s Willam’s voice. She’s never heard it in person, but God, she’d know it anywhere. That cavalier, undeniably Mulder-ish tone, as if he were a stranger who could waltz into her life without preamble.

“William…” Her lungs flatten into her ribcage. “Jackson…”

I’m sorry about the whole dying thing, he says carefully. But you understand why I had to do it. They have to believe I’m gone. They have to believe their experiment failed.

“William—”

He cuts her off. Do you think you could answer some questions for me?

“William they may claim ownership of you, call you their experiment. But no matter what, you’re still a person. No matter how afraid and bitter I ever sounded. You will always be our son, and you have a place here if you want it.” She sighs through her nose; she hopes he knows what she’s telling him.

Worry about the little one right now. Of course he knows about the baby. For a moment she’s squared up to give him a talking to for being a know-it-all, but he’s such a stranger to her still. She lacks that kind of authority. That thing’s… what, the size of a blueberry? William continues. That’s what you told that Mulder guy. It’s a lot more fragile than I am. I just need to ask you a question. There is an awkward pause. She counts second until finally, William mutters, if I cut the mold off a sandwich, can I still eat it?

She can’t see him, but oh, she sees Mulder’s son. She stifles a weepy laugh. He isn’t making promises, but she chooses to focus on the fact that he hadn’t refused to come home, either. She’ll see him soon—she can feel it written like a prescription in the fiber of her bones.

* * * *

William communicates sporadically, over the next few weeks. She will be swinging on the front porch, as Mulder collects dead branches and hurls them across the property for Daggoo, and William’s voice will slice into her consciousness. Images will flash through her mind, sometimes the mundane and sometimes the extraordinary. One day he asks, What is it called again when you can make an object float? Telepathy or Telekinesis? The next day, can I put this burrito into the microwave with the wrapper on? And so on. What’s an easy way to hide the bullet scar in my head? How do I get coffee stains out of a white t-shirt?

Sometimes, he sticks around in her head long enough for Mulder to notice. He catches that glassy look in her eye, asks her to tell William he loves him, wishes he would come home. She always says the first part, never the second. She understands now, she cannot ask William to simply melt into their family. “He’ll come when he’s ready,” she promises Mulder, curious if William can still hear her.

I don’t feel like a William, he muses one day. That’s what you named me, right? I don’t feel like Jackson either, but I’m not sure if William is what I want to be called forever.

“We can call him Will,” Mulder suggests cautiously, hunched at his desk. He’s taken to inscribing their adventures in brilliant fiction. His reading glasses suit him.

I’m okay with Will. Like that boy from Pirates of the Caribbean, the one who died and came back. He was pretty cool. Man, I loved those movies as a kid. He’s stopped paying attention to what he relays to her. She enjoys those oblivious moments before their connection is severed.

* * * *

She lies on their tattered couch, a medical journal propped half-heartedly against her knees. She’d stopped reading awhile ago, when the flopping and fluttering began in her stomach. She’d felt it earlier, tiny jerks of movement from the inside, but nothing like this. This is the most tangible, physical reminder of the impossible baby developing inside her. She has softened, her body less wiry now, but still, she’s hardly showing; only Mulder takes notice, and he’s particularly interested in her breasts. She presses her fingers into the side of her belly and is rewarded with somersaults that make her wonder if the baby that make her think of acrobats in the Cirque de Soleil. She thinks of an old X-file, a town of Floridian sideshow performers. If it seemed odd once, she and her family would fit right into it now.

There’s a knock on the door. Skinner comes first to mind—he is their only contact with the FBI, the only person who knows where they live. She and Mulder aren’t the type to make couple-friends at local restaurants.

Mulder thumps downstairs to the door. “I’ve got it, Scully. Don’t get up—” his words catch in his throat.

“Mulder? Who is it?” Scully swings her stiff legs over the couch and moves to join him. She fetches her sidearm from a drawer, just in case. Her heartbeat quickens as infinite possibilities flicker through her head—agents, assassins, aliens, for God’s sake. Even that crosses her mind, if only for a second.

But oh–there are no thick-coated men in black outside the door but her son. Their son, lanky and shaggy and taller than his father. He wears a denim jacket, ratty black jeans that cling to his legs and a t-shirt with what Scully presumes is a band name plastered across the front in such spectacular lettering she has to squint to make sure they’re letters.

“Hey, Dana. Mulder. I’m in town for a few days and I thought, maybe I could crash here?” He looks almost guilty, his lower lip sticking out like Mulder’s. She’s struck by his rumpled, rebellious frame and how closely it resembles Mulder in his youth. And if there was ever any doubt who his father his, she can cite the genetic tendency to die dramatically and spring back to life.

“Of course,” Mulder says and wraps him into a hug, and he lets out a little oof of surprise. He takes it in stride, though, turning to Dana with a twinkle in his eye that wasn’t there before. When she hugs him, her arms fit around his waist and not his shoulders. God, he’s a foot taller than her.

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

He shrugs awkwardly. “I didn’t want you to.”

“Come,” Scully says, because she’s not sure what else to say, here on the front porch of their unremarkable house. “Come inside.”

He follows her into the house, glancing around at the creaky furniture, explosions of books and manila folders, and a smile spreads across his face. “This is a cool place.”

“I’ll show you the spare bedroom.” Scully gestures to the stairs. But when she turns around, Will’s eyes are fixed somewhere else. Her breath catches, because there on the desk is the first sonogram of her unborn child. The other physical evidence, paired nicely with the barrage of kicks where her belly pokes almost unnoticeably over her slacks.

“How old is it?” he asks, and there’s an unidentifiable cadence to his voice.

“Thirteen weeks.”

He nods slightly. “You two are cute parents.”

Her heart cracks at the present tense. Are, she thinks, not will be. Are. She remembers that when three days later, he vanishes from their lives once again.

* * * *

They see him once or twice more in the coming weeks. Scully has learned to recognize the rat-tat-tat of his beater car pulling into the driveway. When he does come back, he often brings some strange, uniquely tourist-y food from wherever he’d last stayed, and they work it into the evening meal. Mulder reminds her that their son has a lot to unpack at his age.

She gets mental postcards of his life. Breathtaking scenery, shadowy forests backlit by an industrial flashlight, harkening back to her youth. He asks about laundry at first, then about her old cases. Verbally, in immense detail as she’s walking or reading or shopping for a shitty IKEA crib, she gives him the X-files. Every case feels like a pound of weight off her shoulders. She tells them like an epic, passed orally from bard to bard. It is Will’s turn now.

* * * *

Whoever called it a ‘baby bump’ had an extraordinarily easy pregnancy, she muses bitterly. Twenty-three weeks, she was a fuller, freckled, flush-faced painting of herself. A little heavier, probably healthier if she’s not lying. She’d hit twenty-four, like a fucking timer, and done a double take in the bathroom mirror. She looked pregnant—not long gone due-any-day, but undeniably with child, her midsection smooth and rounded out, protruding slightly even beneath her pajama shirt.

Mulder had looked at her like she’d plucked the sun out of the sky and handed it to him. She had lain in the backyard grass next to him and it felt like they had come out of time. He pressed his hands to the sides of her belly and grinned. He had, in the course of one afternoon, told the baby about Flukeman, Sasquatch, and the Mothmen in vast detail.

Strolling through the supermarket, she feels exposed, like her life is laid out for the world to see and judge. To line up her crow’s feet with the stretch marks on her stomach. She swears Will wasn’t this big at twenty-four weeks, or perhaps the frame he grew into hadn’t started out as tiny and tightly wound.

“Did you ever hear the one about the woman who gave birth to a beetle?” the check-out attendant asks her. “When he got older he really bugged her!” The guy belts out a jolly laugh, and if she were anyone else she might take it in stride.

She purses her lips. It’s not his fault that he hits too close to home. She can’t think about it, or it’ll all consume her again—Pennsylvania fields littered with tiny, mutated bodies, devil-children cremated outside mansions, insects pulled from women’s wombs. Will sliding into the world in some Godforsaken ghost town into the arms of a woman who seventeen years later would inevitably die in vain.

The woman who gave birth to a beetle? He came out of her screaming and wide-eyed and wet, like any other baby but greener than poison. He suckled her breast with pincers. She read it in an X-file, once.

It’s too much. She presses herself into Mulder later, kisses him hungrily, seeks in him the antithesis to all her anxieties. He takes her from behind because that’s all they can manage now, and she comes so quickly and loudly it’s almost embarrassing.

* * * *

Mulder pokes the peak of her belly. A foot pokes back. She indulges him—all smiles and salt-and-pepper stubble, pushing up her t-shirts reverently touching the ponderous curve of her. She remembers his absence seventeen years ago too distinctly. She pretends not to adore the wonder in his eyes.

The rhythmic puff of a shitty tailpipe rouses them. They know that car. He helps her off the couch in a daze of frantic limbs as they hurry to the door because he’s here, in all of his snarky, ratty adolescent glory. He looks good. He looks genuinely happy, for the first time since they met him. He looks stronger than last they saw.

“Will,” Mulder calls across the driveway because he can’t help himself. Will waves at him with a crooked smile, ambling up to the door. He has a backpack with him, and a box of what appear to be butter croissants.

“Hi Mulder,” he says as he’s engulfed in a hug. “Hi Dana.” His gaze flicks to her stomach; hi eyebrows shoot up, and does he realize how long he’s been gone?

She smiles at him. For a brief moment she’s worried she should have more to say, but Will has been a more constant presence in her life than in Mulder’s simply because he can slip in and out of her mind as he pleases. Right now, she’s said enough.

“I need to put these on the table,” he says, holding up the croissants. “They’re to share.”

They sit around the cramped kitchen table. They bustle awkwardly, preparing sandwiches and opening windows to let the evening sunlight in. With it comes a summer warmth, a red glow on the windowsill. “Why don’t we go outside?” Will suggests. Every time he opens his mouth, Scully expects him to tell her how long he’s staying. Or, she expects an apologetic air, to be able to read the conflict in him and know he will leave in a day or two. She hasn’t felt it yet.

Scully nods and moves to get up from the table. Slowly, with a conscious effort she resents. She sways as she stands, her balance off-kilter. It’s been so long since she’s looked like this. It shocks her how unprepared she is for the shift in her center of gravity. These days it feels like her skin his made of leather, her bones of cold ceramic, and before she can reassure her near-grown son, say, “oh this is normal, you know,” Will’s hand shoots out to steady her.

The heartache flares. It should be the other way around. It should be the other way around. She should have been there to hold him up as he tottered. “Dana?” he asks, and his voice is laced with unanswerable questions.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m just not used to this yet.” She smooths her hand over her belly, her palm jumping as the baby’s foot protrudes out one side. She feels Will’s dark eyes on her, suddenly so much younger than the rest of him. Perhaps he thinks of his own birth. She certainly does. She thinks of how Mulder put his hand right there when he kicked, and how painfully long ago it all was.

“Remember,” she tells him, “we can’t be young forever.”

Will looks at the otherworldly shape of its foot, pushing on her like a drumskin. He looks at the sharp lines of her cheekbones undercut by the quiet, tranquil determination in her eyes when she touches the errant limb. He looks at Mulder looking at her, with unadulterated wonder. It slips out of his mouth, clearly unexpected. “Can I feel?”

Scully is misty-eyed—some combination of hormones and her body awash with history—when she nods. She sways again; it’s all so overwhelming, and Mulder moves behind her, his hand on the small of her back. She takes Will’s callused hand, her eyebrows raised at him to make sure it’s okay, and places it on the hard mound of her belly.

He grins. “I can feel it move.” A laugh escapes him. She guides him to where the foot pushes out lopsided. He taps it, and it taps back. She flashes back again to Mulder, in the hospital, his palm flat on the skin that enclosed the amoebic creature to become Will.

William is a boy tailed by Death; it clings to his skin like spiderwebs, haunts him wherever he flees to. She hopes Will finds peace here, feeling his sibling move inside her. It is unspeakably weird, all of it, to have the baby she mourned for decades turn up grown before her eyes. In a way, she’d always pictured him outside of time. But neither does he last forever, so here she stands with stubbled spook-writer Mulder, her adult son holding her steady and clinging with one finger to her unborn child.

She wishes they could hand Will the sun, but all they can hand him is home, whatever that may be.

#the x-files #txf fanfic #fox mulder #dana scully #william scully #jackson van de kamp #ms iv #ms iv post-ep #ms iv fanfic #baby fic #msr fanfic #today-in-fic

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jojuarez26 · 6 years

Text

If you only knew how truly Erudite Blue you actually are not

Divergent fanfiction: Eric/OC Mature content and strong language. I do not own any part of Divergent

Tarrin's POV

I haven't seen or spoken to Eric in almost two weeks now, although Four has and admittedly, I am jealous as hell. Eric finally submitted all his legal documents. So the proverbial cat is out of its fucking back and the psychotic bitch that rules Erudite with a damn machine gun has flipped her shit.

Jeanine went on a rampage the second she knew about Analisse and the fact Eric was able to not be made compliant with threats as we for once are actually the ones two steps ahead of the game.

First she turned Erudite upside down on it's head trying to locate my daughter and I. Then being the oh so logical thinker we needed her to be, Jeanine stormed Amity because that's where Jacob of is at. Apparently both Jacob and Johanna Reyes told Jeanine to go pleasure herself with a barbed wire stick and get the ever living fuck out of Amity. Well maybe what they said was slightly more Amity but still the same interpretation.

Next she tried, and I do stress tried, to go to Candor and strong arm Jack and my Aunt Kathy. I'm totally confident that it would be accurate to say Aunt Kathy literally told her to fuck off and get the hell out of Candor.

The funniest part of the way Jeanine thinks is that she did not, nor would she ever think to so much as email Abnegation. As far as she is concerned Eric would rather poke his eye out with a stick on fire than ever stoop so low as to ask Abnegation, the useless stiffs, to help him find a pencil.

Technically she would be right. Eric would not and did not. But, Four would and he did. Well not the Faction itself, but a specific member. A divergent sympathizer and one of the nicest people I have ever met, Natalie Prior.

Without a second thought, no questions asked and not a single ounce of hesitation because of who I am essentially married to Natalie snuck the three of us into an unused and pretty much abandoned house in the older unused section of Abnegation.

Her and her daughter Beatrice made sure to come check on us every day and bring us anything we needed that they were capable of procuring.

Natalie's husband Andrew is on the council. This allowed Natalie to be in communication with Eric without any suspicion yet not giving up any knowledge of the where abouts of Analisse and I.

Eric and Natalie where still extremely careful of the content of their contact and mostly used codes and key phrases to relay information to each other.

Although Jeanine for the most part has Dauntless in her back pocket, they would still never allow her to rand sack Dauntless or shake them down looking for Eric's missing fiance' and mystery child that ninety percent of all people question even exist. I did such a spectacular job at hiding my pregnancy, not to mention how Eric's parents snuggled us out of Erudite, most had no knowledge or proof Analisse did indeed exist.

However Max was completely ok with pretty much monitoring all of Eric's daily life in Dauntless. From planting bugs and surveillance equipment in both Eric's office and apartment to placing spy details that followed his every move.

This was the reason Analisse and I have had no kind of contact with Eric period. Needless to say we are both going threw withdrawal and driving poor Four bonkers.

"Good morning Tarrin." Four murmured pouring himself a cup of coffee just waking up.

"Good? Seriously Four what the hell is so good about it," I spat sarcastically.

"Ok. Well I'm just going to get dressed and run some parameter checks, like all day," Four replies cautiously. Now I feel bad.

"Four wait! I'm sorry. Please don't leave me alone today," I suddenly burst into tears.

My horomones and the severity of my situation have me a hot mess of fuckery. Seeing as how Four is the only adult I have interactions with and well, Analisse only cries, eats and fills her diapers, Four gets shat on. Alot. Everyday. By the grace of God he takes it with a grain of salt and rolls with the punches.

"You T, I really do like you even with your poor taste in men. However even though said man is an asshole, at least he is consistent. He is constantly an asshole. You my dear are as inconsistent as the bowel movements of the elderly. Quite frankly your mood swings give me whiplash," he says all this in a quiet yet serious tone.

"I very very loosely understand that just having a baby turns you into a lunatic because your horomones are in overdrive. I also get being stuck in seclusion with a newborn and a stranger are probably about as helpful as a full moon at a daycare or in a nursing home but, damn you and mini Eric are exhausting me," he dramatically threw his head back throwing an arm over his eyes.

This is what I love about Four. Although I know he hides alot of pain and demons behind his humourous approach to life, it is relaxing and breaks the tension.

"Oh admitted Four, you loves us. Seriously though, I am so sorry. I know you didn't choose this mission, Eric ordered you to take it. For what it's worth I'm grateful you did."I tried to hold back the tears as I spoke.

"T it's not-"

"Let me finish. Please." Four just nods for me to continue

"I'm not exactly sure to the full extent why you and Eric hate each other so much. What I do know is Eric trust you and respects you as a loyal Dauntless soldier. Considering we are born and bred Erudite regardless of our aptitudes and Eric very recently defection to Dauntless. We were raised to keep your acquaintances close and your competition closer," I pause to make sure he is still on the same page as me.

Reading his facial expressions and body language, he understands, he's just not sure where I'm going with this.

"The point I am trying to make is this. The short list of people that is logically acceptable to trust, especially with someone with Eric's nature, is already exceeding it's limits at best. So the fact that he trust you. Especially with it being with mine and Analisse's safety, actually speaks volumes." I'm once again trying to choke back tears to continue.

"Both myself AND ERIC, are and will be eternally grateful. I know Eric will probably never say or acknowledge that, but I will. Thank so much for being here when you don't have to be. You have also become someone I would consider a friend so..... Thanks," I sniffed and put my head in my hands.

I suddenly feel hands on my shoulders. Four is rubbing them soothingly. This truly suprises me especially with him being former Abnegation. Once he can tell I've calmed down, he moves to sit across the table from me.

"Complete honesty, when Eric recruited me for this," he waves his hand around the room," I was baffled. I was slightly shocked any female could tolerate him for more than a one night stand let alone long time girlfriend who just had his child." He has an amused look on his face but his tone of voice is still serious.

"Four if your just going to bash Eric, I really rather not at the moment if you-"

"Hey. I let you finish. Let me finish. Please." He asked and pauses to see if I will. I do.

"Ok. So I generally viewed Eric as a cruel person who's only emotions are bored, angry and sadism. Well except when he is intimating people into pissing their pants just by glaring at them, I think that actually gives him joy," Four smirks and I can't help but laugh.

"That is until he told me about the situation and about you and his mini-clone. I actually saw love, fear, sadness and frustration. And it wasn't fake, forced or sarcastic, it was genuine. To say I was shocked is putting mildly. No I was not thrilled or happy at all that I had to do a favor as I saw it, for Eric. But I was more curious and intrigued when I got a glimpse of an actual human with actual humanity. I had come to believe he was really a machine and possessed a switch that turned his humanity off most likely permanently." He sipped his coffee and I took the opportunity to ask a question.

"What where you actually curious about, what made you more accepting of the situation?" I was liking the distraction of my craziness by this conversation.

"I wanted to see what ridiculous, crazy, hooker looking, sluty nose had actually melted some ice off of the cold steel that was Eric the asshole heart," he grins ear to ear.

"Excuse you!! Did you truly think so disgustingly of me?" I ask half shocked half offended.

"Of YOU personally? No. Of the mystery woman Eric knocked up, absolutely. However the second I laid eyes on you I was actually shocked, possibly slightly in denial," he smiles.

"How? Why?" Now I'm curious.

"You looked nothing like a hooker. You're actually really pretty, and normal looking. You're also nice. I am actually a little envious that an asshole like Coulter managed to have a woman as smart, beautiful, caring, yet still sassy and classy as you." He blushed and looked away.

I knew that Four wasn't actually jealous Eric had me personally or that he harboured secret feelings for me or something crazy like that. He was just jealous Eric had a good person who loved him in general. Four is extremely lonely with a very low opinion of himself for reasons I can't fathom. What I do know is someone in his past damaged him, scared him deep emotionally. Who or why is what I don't know.

Just as I was about to start asking him about his self, my peanuts piercing banshee wails filled the air. I stood up letting out a deep sigh.

"Hold that thought mi amigo. I have to attended to my motherly duties. This conversation is far from over though. I am going to pick your brain some more. I want to know more about you."

His demeanor faulted ever so slightly to nervous, maybe worried. It was quick, but I still caught it.

"How very not true Erudite of you? Wanting to actually listen when someone else speaks and value their opinions," he almost sounded desperate to change the subject with his attitude change.

"Oh fuck dick. I got your number. We are most definitely going to talk about you too," I playful shot over my shoulder as I walked away.

@pathybo @tigpooh67 @lunaschild2016 @emmysrandomthoughts @jaihardy @beautifulramblingbrains @clublulu333 @iammarylastar @kenzieam @captstefanbrandt @badassbaker @badassdauntlessgirl @gotlokis @kgurew @that1girloverthere @girlslovestorys @onceinamillionlifetimes @sporadichologramblizzard-ed17414 @dani5102 @book-boys-are-my-guilty-pleasure @littlesouthernrebel @haliannej

#jai courtney #divergent eric #eric insurgent #eric coulter #eric divergent fanfiction #eric coulter fanfiction #lil girl

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hale-of-stiles-heart · 7 years

Note

💐

For whatever reason, the bouquet emoji made me think of weddings and florist!Cas. I added a twist and here we are! (also on ao3!)

Dean's best friend was supposed to be getting married in two months. The key phrase being supposed to because, according to Gabriel who had just called Dean ten minutes ago, the wedding was off.

As horrible as it sounded, Dean didn't think he had ever been so relieved. Which he knew made him a complete and utter jackass in addition to the worst friend in the world but it wasn't exactly his fault.

Cas' fiance — well, former fiance now — was an even bigger asshole than Dean. A smarmy Brit with a posh accent and a superiority complex the size of the UK, Arthur Ketch was a certified piece of shit.

He was some kind of higher up businessman for a London-based corporation called the Men of Letters. Apparently, his company had connections with Roman Enterprises and the Alpha Corporation in Chicago.

Together the three companies formed a mega-conglomerate that Cas ironically referred to as the Leviathan. Dean had thought the nickname was clever.

Ketch? Not so much. He took personal offense to the name.

Dean wasn't sure why. It wasn't like Ketch actually owned any part of the mega-corporation, he was just a guy in a suit with a plush corner office and a PhD in business.

Or so he said. Dean had always suspected that Ketch was actually just a pencil pusher. An accountant who played with numbers all day.

Dean had tried to get along with the guy for Cas' sake. He hadn't wanted to rain on Cas' parade and point out all of his new boyfriend's blatant flaws, sure that he would notice them himself soon enough.

But Ketch had made things insufferably difficult. He resisted any and all of Dean's attempts to spark some sort of rapport.

He thought American football was simultaneously barbaric and infantile, claiming rugby was superior in every way. He hated beer, especially American beer, sticking to Scotch or wine instead.

He thought American TV was all mindless drivel, especially melodramas like Dean's beloved Dr. Sexy. He even despised American food, turning up his nose at the fantastic blueberry pie Cas made in favor of ranting and raving about his aunt's spotted dick.

Dean had tried to grin and bear it. To just smile and nod whenever Ketch went off on another rant about his travel around the world or his most recent business meetings.

But it was extremely difficult considering how boring the guy was. Not to mention, condescending as all hell.

He subtly belittled Dean's profession any time they were in the room, straightening the lapels on his fancy overpriced suits while curling his lip at the sight of Dean's dirty jeans and band t-shirts. He even insulted Dean's car, calling it an overcompensating phallic symbol on wheels.

But Dean could forgive all that.

Could forgive the way Ketch sneered when he learned Dean was a high school dropout. Most people did, anyway. Ketch wasn't special in that regard.

Could forgive the way Ketch rarely deigned to even acknowledge him when Cas invited him to dinner. More often than not it was better than the alternative.

He could forgive nearly everything. Every subtle dig about his family or his line of work. Every eye roll whenever he showed up at Cas' for movie night.

But what he couldn't forgive was how Ketch treated Cas.

Couldn't forgive the way he constantly talked over Cas, cutting him off mid-sentence in order to correct him. The way he critiqued everything Cas did from the way he decorated his home to the way he dressed.

Couldn't forgive the way he always insisted that Cas get a better job than the one he had, despite the fact that he owned his own flower shop, that he was doing what he loved. The way he treated Cas more like an arm piece than a boyfriend or fiance.

Dean couldn't forgive any of that. Because Cas was his best friend and he would be damned if some British bastard treated him like shit.

And yes, Dean was man enough to admit that part of the reason why he hated Ketch so much was because he had been ass over ankles in love with Cas for the past eight years.

He had managed to ignore his feelings for the better part of a decade, tamping down on them so he wouldn't completely fuck up their friendship. He refused to lose Cas over something as stupid as his pathetic little brush.

So he had tried to be as supportive as possible when Cas had started dating Ketch. Had bitten his tongue and kept quiet about how much he despised the limey bastard.

He hadn't raised any objections when Cas announced his and Ketch's engagement. He had graciously agreed to be Cas' best man.

He had helped with all of the wedding planning, all of the minutiae from picking out the color scheme after staring at paint swatches for two hours to mailing out needlessly ornate invitations. He had spent days dealing with Cas' overly dramatic wedding planner, Crowley.

Hell, he had even helped Cas pick out the flavor of the wedding cake when Ketch couldn't make it to their appointment with the baker, giving only a bullshit excuse about work.

Thoughts of all the hours he had spent helping Cas put together a list of songs for the reception, sitting in the waiting room at the tailor while Cas got fitted for his tux, listening to Cas go on and on about how excited he was for the wedding flitted through Dean's mind as he climbed into the Impala.

When Gabriel had called him, Dean had been expecting an update on the situation with the caterer who kept trying to haggle. But Cas' older brother had instead relayed that Ketch had broken things off.

After recovering from the shock, sure that Gabriel was playing some sort of cruel joke, Dean had snapped to attention and raced out to his car. His mind was racing and he was still in shock, but he had the presence of mind to know that he had to get to Cas. Had to make sure he was alright.

The drive across town was blessedly short, mostly because Dean's lead foot had him going well over the speed limit. Fortunately, no cops pulled him over and he made it to Cas' cozy little house in record time.

He didn't bother knocking. He just let himself in with the spare key Cas had given him for emergencies.

Getting dumped by one's fiance two months before the wedding? Definitely counted as an emergency.

Everything seemed normal, every ridiculous throw pillow in place and the ever-present scent of flowers hanging in the air. The only thing that struck Dean as odd, that made him pause in the doorway, was the shattered vase in the middle of the living room.

There were flowers in various shades of red strewn around on the floor amongst the shards of broken glass. A crumpled up note sat discarded along with the livid blooms.

"Cas?" Dean called, kicking the door shut behind him before he took a few steps further into the room. When no response came, he cupped his hands around his mouth and called again, "Cas?!"

There was still no response but Cas' car was parked in the driveway, so Dean continued on. Bypassing the living room and kitchen, Dean made a beeline to Cas' bedroom.

He found Cas there, sitting on his bed with his face buried in his hands. His shoulders were shaking as he sniffled, sounding so despondent and miserable it immediately broke Dean's heart.

"Cas...?" He said questioningly, tentative and quiet as he walked closer to the edge of Cas' bed. When Cas didn't say anything, Dean took a seat by his socked feet, reaching out a hand to lay on Cas' knee. "Cas? Buddy?"

"He dumped me, Dean," Cas announced through his tears, keeping his face hidden in his hands. His voice slightly muffled and thick with sorrow, he continued, "Arthur dumped me. With fucking flowers."

"What do you mean?" Dean asked, shifting closer. Cas didn't answer at first, too choked up, prompting Dean to give his knee a reassuring squeeze.

"He sent me flowers..." Cas explained, hiccuping a bit. "He sent me flowers to break up with me."

His hands curled into fists as he dropped them to his sides. His face was streaked with tears, blue eyes puffy and red-rimmed.

But where Dean expected despondency and dejection, he found righteous anger. He felt almost an electric tension in the air as Cas absolutely growled, "He sent me flowers from my own fucking shop to break up with me! He sent Mick to deliver them!"

Ah, Mick. Ketch's cousin and one of Cas' only two employees at the flower shop. The one who had introduced the two. Ketch's would-be best man.

Poor guy probably had no idea he was delivering a break-up bouquet. Dean highly doubted Ketch would have volunteered the information to his well-intending cousin.

"Fucking asshole," Dean hissed under his breath as Cas' anger melted away, dripping away like wax from a candle, leaving only a puddle in its wake. He watched helplessly as Cas wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, his breath labored and shaky.

"What am I supposed to do?" Cas wondered aloud, not really directing the question at anyone in particular. "I have to cancel everything. The venue, the catering, the band, the tailor. I lost ten pounds for that stupid tux. Oh, god, what am I gonna tell my family? If Gabriel hasn't already told everyone."

"You're not gonna tell em anything, Cas," Dean announced, surprising both Cas and himself. He knew what he was doing was stupid and desperate but at that moment he didn't care. "The wedding's still on."

"What are you talking about, Dean?" Cas whined reaching for the box of tissues on his nightstand. Dabbing at his eyes, with the corner of a tissue, he announced, "Arthur made it very clear that he doesn't want to marry me. And after all this, I don't want to marry him, either."

"You're not going to," Dean informed him, hoping he sounded much more confident than he felt. At Cas' confused squint, accompanied by one of his trademark Castiel Novak head tilts, Dean mustered up all the courage he could and announced, "You're gonna marry me."

"Very funny, Dean," Cas said, rolling his eyes as he gave a weak attempt at a laugh. "But I'm not in the mood for one of your jokes."

With a frustrated grunt, Dean shoved his hand into the pocket of his leather jacket. He dug around for a few seconds, his keys jingling, until he closed his fingers around the box.

The one he had bought two years ago. The one he had been carrying around ever since. The one holding the single most important piece of jewelry he had ever owned apart from the amulet Sam had given him for Christmas half a lifetime ago.

Pulling his hand out of his pocket, he thrust the box out at Cas. He kept his eyes down, cheeks burning with a bright blush, refusing to look at Cas' face.

He couldn't bear to see the rejection. The disgust. The pity.

This was better. If Cas was going to let him down gently, he didn't want to see the soft, sad forgiveness in those blue eyes.

He would rather keep staring at the bedspread. At the dark damask pattern of the comforter he had helped Cas pick out when they went shopping together after Cas moved into his house.

Cas had picked the blanket, deep blue with a navy pattern, because it reminded him of damask roses. Brilliant complexion, Cas had said while admiring the blanket in the store. They symbolize brilliant complexion. And love.

Dean's bittersweet reminiscing was cut short when he heard Cas suck in a sharp breath. Cas' fingers brushed his as he gingerly took the box from Dean's hand.

He let out another gasp when he opened the box. "Dean...? Is this...?"

"Meteorite," Dean confirmed. He kept his eyes lowered, fisting his hand in the denim of Cas' jeans. "I know how much you hate gold and silver 'cause they're not really rare and you'd rather have something more unique. And I know you hate that stupid ring Ketch got you because you hate chocolate diamonds."

He barely paused to take a breath before steamrolling on, "Look, I've known you for a long time and I've loved you for just as long. I-I bought this ring a while ago. I was gonna ask you out the day you introduced me to Ketch. And I know it's wrong and selfish and stupid, but I wanna marry you, Cas."

There was a small rustling sound, followed by an almost metallic clunk accompanied by Cas' soft laugh. It was only then that Dean chanced a look up to find the dark silver ring he had bought Cas on the man's ring finger, Ketch's gaudy diamond ring set aside on the nightstand.

He flicked his eyes up to Cas', his mouth slack with shock. "Do-Do you really...? You wanna...?"

"Yes, Dean. I'll marry you," Cas announced, scooting close enough to wrap his arms around Dean's shoulders. "On one condition."

"Anything," Dean breathed, settling his hands on Cas' waist as the dark haired man shifted closer, pressing their foreheads together. Cas could have asked for Dean's heart and he would have carved it out of his chest himself and presented it to Cas with his dying breath.

But all Cas asked was, "You have to help me mail out all the new invitations."

Then, after years and months and interminably long seconds of pining and perishing, Dean finally pressed his lips to his best friend's. His fiance's. His angel's. His Cas'.

#alternate universe #destiel #destiel fic #my fic #fic #friends to lovers #engaged!cas #past castiel/arthur ketch #getting together #marriage proposal #pining!dean #implied pining!cas #florist!cas #best friends #brighidestone

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orenashii · 7 years

Link

Author's Note

Whew. I'm finally back. It's been a crazy week.

I want to quickly shoutout to two people who gave me the inspiration to write this story. Trap3r (on ff.net) and @peppertower. Back in May when I first published Chapter One, I had no idea where this was going. Seriously. I even wrote that in the author's note. Not a clue. But I talked to some people, most notably these two users and suddenly, inspiration hit and now we have this. So thank you for inspiring me. This story would not have happened without you.

Enjoy!

I Exist

Chapter X

"Iset?"

"Yes, dear?"

Ashi looked up at her companion. She had woken up from her slumber, feeling a little bit more refreshed yet still weakened. She had asked Iset if she could try walking. She knew her steps were slow but the goddesses in her company were patient.

"There is something I have been meaning to ask you."

"Hm. What is that?"

Ashi swallowed, twisting her fingers together, knowing the question she wanted to ask but feared the answer. "What's going to happen to my sisters? What is their fate?"

Iset nodded her head in understanding. "They, like you, must have their souls purged of the evil within."

"But they were also innocent. They did not have the freedom to make their own choices in life. Will they have to endure a test like I did? What if they can't defeat the evil? Will they not exist? Will they—"

"Hush, darling. Yes, you had to fight to rid your soul of darkness. Because you are special. For I pulled you from the depths of unawareness and have given you consciousness. Their souls will be redeemed but they will feel no pain. And one day, when they have been relieved of evil, they will be born anew. To this, I can make sure."

She dipped her head down and nodded. Her voice was quiet. "Thank you."

"I can sense something else is bothering you."

Ashi grimaced. There was something bothering her. Something had been bothering her for a long time. She'd never expressed it to anyone and had trouble expressing it now.

"I just feel... guilty. Like I don't deserve," her voice shook along with her head. "Any of this."

"Ashi, what you are feeling is normal."

Ashi continued, Iset's words falling on near deaf ears. "It was luck that kept me alive. Pure luck. Jack should have... killed me. That day. But he didn't. I was allowed to live. And I might get the chance to again and my sisters will never have that."

"It is part of the healing process," Jahnavi chimed in. "A way to cope with a traumatic loss."

"But, why me?" Ashi lamented, more to herself than anyone else. "Why me?" She was never particularly close to any of her sisters, her mother would not allow it. They were comrades. Nothing more. She did not truly understand them as their own individuals. She did not even know how they would react to situations she had experienced. She wondered if it would have even been possible, had another survived, had they all survived, to teach them the error of their ways.

Her mother did always say she was the most unfocused. Would they have wavered in their mission? Would they have been capable of seeing the truth?

Was she... better? Than them? She felt terrible just thinking it.

"Does it make me a bad person? To want to live again?"

"Absolutely not," Iset said firmly. "You have worked hard to get to this point. You are deserving of this gift. And know that you have done the world a great service. Because of you, because of your samurai, you saved billions. Your sisters will never feel that pain again. Because of you."

She nodded but was not completely appeased. She felt pride in herself for her choices. But she could not shake her guilt.

"I know you have these feelings and I cannot say that you will ever cease to have these feelings. But do know that you are worthy."

Iset placed a comforting hand on her progeny's shoulder. Ashi's head lifted to look into the goddess' eyes. An easy smile passed between them. Jahnavi interrupted the two with a slight clearing of her throat.

"Ladies. I do believe we are nearing our destination."

Ashi gasped at the stunning sight before her.

Jack and Kali sat together in a private sitting room near the throne room. The Pharaoh had so graciously offered it to them to use for the late afternoon so that Kali could 'fulfill her duties' as the Prince's personal scribe. Jack sipped from his teacup slowly as she relayed questions she'd had about the details of the Scotsman's life.

"He had red hair that he kept pulled back in a ponytail. He was balding at the top. He had a very thick mustache and faint green eyes."

Kali smiled at the description. "It almost sounds like your describing an older version of the Courier."

Jack laughed. "No, no, I do not think so. If the Scotsman were to ever meet the Courier, I'm sure he would have a few words about his stature."

"Like?"

Jack held out his arms to gesture at his own body. "The Scotsman was a very large, imposing man. I'm sure he would advise your Courier to 'thicken up' by eating some of his wife's haggis."

"What is haggis?"

"Sheep stomach stuffed with meat and barley." Jack stumbled over the words as he laughed, remembering how enthusiastic the clan was about the dish. "I cannot say I was too fond of it."

Kali laughed along, jotting down notes in a leather notebook. The notebook was her constant companion.

"But speaking of the Courier. I noticed he is quite the... personality."

She grinned. "Isn't he, though? He is nothing if not entertaining."

"That is a word for it, certainly."

"What did he do?" she said with a roll of her eyes. "Some ostentatious display of masculinity, I'm betting."

"Well... there was something that struck me as rather odd. He told me that you had taken... some sort of liking to me?"

"What?" Kali deadpanned.

"But he did not sound too happy about that."

Now her eyebrows lifted. "Really?"

"Yes. But when I commented on his displeasure, he made a... joke? That you had killed his father."

Kali reeled back. She was silent for a few moments. "He told you that?"

Jack tried to wave off the unease in her expression. "He assured me he only said it in jest. I assumed it was an attempt at dark humor."

She wrung her hands together nervously. She avoided Jack's gaze. He spoke again. "Is something the matter?"

She sighed heavily, a groan of irritation and worry. "Listen, Jack. I don't know why he said that to you upon your first meeting but," she said in a low voice, trailing off. "But, I actually did kill his father."

Jack's head jerked slightly in disbelief. "What?"

"It was an accident! A mistranslation. But it was my fault. His father is dead because of me."

He squinted his eyes. "I don't understand. What happened?"

Another heavy sigh. "The Courier's father was a very high-ranking member of the Scottish navy. Some members of his troop were visiting India, not on official business or anything, and we hosted them at my father's inn." Kali told the story as if exhausted, as if she had explained this many, many times.

"I was still quite young, an adolescent. I overestimated my English speaking ability. He was accidentally served a dish that contained an ingredient that he was fatally allergic to. I must have mistranslated.

"The Scots were enraged, thinking it a deliberate assassination. My father tried to reason with the other members of his troop, we and the people of India had no qualms with the Scottish. They thought it some... misguided attack on the English for their occupation in our land. I had to be sent away, go into hiding, for my own protection.

"The Courier came to my father seeking work. He had colored his hair and masked his accent so as not to raise suspicions about his origins. He began transporting letters and packages for my family, unbeknownst to all of us that he would read them, gathering information on the whereabouts of his father's killer.

"He did not know it was me until the night we met."

It was raining outside. A light drizzle. Not loud enough to drown out the heavy creak at her door. She climbed out of bed nervously, groping her way underneath it to pull out a shovel that she had stored there for just such an occasion. A deep voice made itself known.

"Mahakala. I have heard quite a lot about you."

"Who's there?"

"Hn. I did not know you would be a woman."

She arched an eyebrow. "You've heard a lot about me but didn't know my gender?"

A pause. She thought she could hear a quiet 'fuck' echo through her room.

"Anyway, that is not why I'm here."

"Why are you here?"

"You are a murderer."

"No! That's not true! It was an accident."

Silence fell. Only the quiet patter of raindrops could be heard on the cobblestone floors outside.

"Show yourself," she said bravely. But her heart was in her throat. This was real. She'd have to defend herself. Would anyone hear her if she screamed? Would anyone get here fast enough to save her?

A light creak. Then the light of a candle. Her eyes adjusted. Her assassin had brought a lantern?

That was rather… odd.

She watched as the light bathed over her assassin's features. He was clean shaven. He had a narrow chin and a wide nose. His eyes were wide, almost…

Incredulous?

"You?" He shouted. His mouth hung open, aghast. "You are the one responsible for my father's death?"

"It was an accident!"

He continued on as if he wasn't listening. "But you're just a little girl!"

"I am not a little girl!"

He took a step forward to get a closer look at her face. She stepped backwards instinctively, gripping the handle of the shovel in her fists.

"How? How did you do it?"

Her hands shook with fear. She swallowed hard before answering.

"S-Sesame seeds."

"What?"

"Your father was allergic… and I did not know! I must have heard him incorrectly. I swear it was just an accident."

"Sesame seeds. You killed my father with sesame seeds?"

He laughed. Not maniacally or dramatically, it was slight. Little puffs of air breathed out of sheer disbelief.

"Was it… hidden?"

"No? The seeds are… quite common where I am from."

He ran a hand through his dark hair. "They told me he was poisoned!"

"Are you going to kill me?"

She could see his eyes widen in shock by the glow of his lantern. "I was going to. We sent someone. But I took his place. I wanted to meet the man responsible for that bastard's death. I thought you were gonna be some evil brute, a former enemy or something! But now that I see that it's just a wee lass…"

"I am not a—"

"How old are you?"

"What?"

He spoke slowly. "How old are you?"

"Fifteen… almost." She answered the question with her voice pitched high, as if she were asking a question of her own.

"Fifteen," he wheezed, as if this was all some sort of cosmic joke. He stepped forward again until he was face to face with her. She noted that he looked nearly as young as her. He wore an expression of stone. Then, finally, he offered a small smile. "Farewell."

"What?"

He gripped one of her shoulders and spun her around so that she was away from the window. He opened it and placed a foot on it, preparing to step out. He turned to look at her one last time.

"Fifteen. What a fucking load."

"Months afterwards, my father sent for me. The conflict was over. Apparently, the one responsible had been 'dealt' with. And… that was it.

"I did not see him for years after that. But when I finally did, he was, well, who he is now. Red hair, cocky attitude," she smiled. "And he spoke to me as if nothing had happened. And he's been with me... well," she said with a slight blush, "with my family ever since.

"I am… grateful. That he spared me. I told him the truth, that it was just an accident, and he believed me. He knew I was innocent and that I did not deserve to die for a mistake, even though he'd set out to do just that.

The two sat in silence for some time. Jack could not help but feel a connection to her tale. Of forgiveness. Of second chances.

"That is a story I can relate to." Jack finally shrugged. "Sort of."

Kali offered an inquisitive gaze. "How so?"

Jack issued a heavy sigh. Sadness overtook his features. Kali spoke softly, assuring him that he did not have to tell her anything if he was uncomfortable. Jack shook his head.

"No, please," Jack said quietly. "It is time... I tell you her story. Our story."

"Welcome, Ashi. To the Tree of Nine Worlds."

The tree was massive; unfathomable to measure its scale, with branches that weaved together like the threads of a tapestry. It was alive. The threads moved like the flowing waters of a river, twisting in themselves, coursing like blood through veins. Large, spherical crystals, perhaps snow, maybe hail, dotted its leaves like the stars in the night sky. The smallest droplets of water fell from wide leaves, shrouding the landscape in a fine mist.

It stretched higher and wider than any tree Ashi had ever seen. She felt immeasurably small. Was this how an insect felt? When it looked upon something so much greater than itself?

The roots of the tree were submerged in a massive pool; the water as clear as glass. Iset and Jahnvai stepped over the foot-tall bricks that served as the pools enclosure. Ashi was hesitant. Was it possible to walk on water? Iset nodded, urging her on. She placed a tender step on the water and was amazed that she did not sink in.

Eventually, the trio arrived at the base of the gargantuan tree. Seated there were three ephemeral goddesses, each wearing crystalline white robes of a fabric so thin that it could be seen through. The goddesses rose their heads at the same time.

Blonde hair, nearly as white as their robes, sat neatly behind their shoulders. Their skin was so pale they almost looked featureless. Their beauty was... unnerving. Almost sinister.

The three were identical, save for the color of their wide, open eyes. They sat in a row. The goddess at the furthest of the line had deep, blue eyes. The one in the middle's were green. And the one at the end's looked nearly black upon first notice, but closer inspection revealed them to be violet.

"Hey. I know you," the purple-eyed one said, looking to Ashi.

"You do?"

"We all do," the blue-eyed one said. "I was in charge of forging your soul." Her voice was cracked, like that of a much older woman, yet her appearance radiated with youth.

"You forged my soul?"

"Did I not just say that?" the goddess rolled her eyes. Ashi noticed that the purple-eyed goddess also rolled her eyes, looking away from her counterpart.

"I'm sorry."

"Worry not," the green-eyed one spoke. "We knew you would come here eventually. This one," she said, gesturing to the purple-eyed goddess on her left, "kept unraveling the threads of your destiny."

The goddess in question shrugged. "It's not my fault I was not satisfied with the ending you all chose."

"It is not our job to be concerned with satisfaction," the blue-eyed one said bitterly.

"And yet here we are."

Ashi looked between the beings in confusion. "If I may, and I apologize if this is rude. May I ask who you are?"

This time Iset spoke up. "They go by many. The Moirai, the Parcae."

The three seated goddesses spoke in order from left to right.

"I am What Once Was."

"I am What Is Now."

"I am What Shall Be."

Iset continued. "But they are most commonly referred to as the Norns: The Three Sisters of Destiny."

Author's Note

I apologize that this chapter took so long to post. I've been working on yet another story and it has taken over my life. But don't you worry. I will not forget about this one. Problem is, I have the ending outlined, but getting there askdhklad. It'll happen. I promise.

Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you! for sticking around and reading this story. I feel so loved. ;-;

Reviews are always welcome!

#samurai jack #samurai jack season 5 #samurai jack finale #samurai jack fanfiction #samurai jack fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic #my writing #orenashii #ashi #jashi #jackx ashi #jackxashi

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redscullyrevival · 7 years

Text

Fool’s Fate: The Tawny Man Rundown

@sonnetscrewdriver I’ve moved on to Dragon Keeper!

Plot/Setting/Narrative

Jesus

Okay

Holy shit???

I need a moment

Alright, so lets start easy

Being the Age of Sail nerdo I am this book’s voage bits were amusing and then a bit dissapointing; an apprecaition of sailing and living the sailor LifeStyle isn’t really a Six Duchies thing it seems, huh?

I was SO excited with getting a glimpse of my precious Bingtown babies in the last book that I was stoked for a high sea adventure in this book but wah waah mostly it was sea sickness and brooding

Honestly I let myself down because this is a Fitz story and, well, how else would the sea be depicted?! LOL

Poor Thick

Poor everyone for the most part, yikes

Farseer had a lot of mystery to it, a lot of slow burn world building/concept reveal with answers eventually given; Liveship Traders showed it’s cards on the table for the most part but thrived of the suspense of all the threads coming together or possibly unraveling; Tawny Man is the first series where I understood events before the characters did, the results of which made the series much more subdude than the last two.

Not in a bad way, just, ya know, different.

“Life Is Change” is very obviously the big overarching connecting theme between the Realm of the Elderling series and I only have praise for the fact each series has it’s own distinct tone and approach to the same (and shared) characters - it’d be a hallow utterance if the book narratives themselves did not change and grow series to series.

The change in Tawny Man is big; it’s big for the narrative space and it’s big for Fitz and it’s big for the reader.

And you can accept the change or reject it, that’s a option we as the reader has.

I choose to embrace it.

But oh man, oh my god, I will miss The Fool. I’ll miss “Fitz and The Fool” as a unit. I know there is a new series and I’ll get to it eventually but I’ve got four Rain Wild books (YAY!) before I come back to Fitz and his part of the map so this is a solid goodbye for a while and it feels odd to part with them in the place we do.

Odd, but new.

I’m talkin’ out my butt - I’m a little sad okay?! But I’m happy too.

And I think that’s what this book was going for; a kind of reaffirmation that life and change is hurt and happiness and a lot of effort went into guiding readers through feeling that message as well as understanding it on an informative level.

Ultimately I enjoyed Tawny Man more than Farseer, it’s just much more my-type-of-story.

I never really agreed with/bought into Fitz’s choices within much of the Farseer Trilogy. I understood Fitz’s logic of course, so his choosing to let expel his pain and hide away (and all the other choices along the way) were not make or break issues for me; there is much to enjoy simply being along for the ride.

But with Tawny Man it was very satisfying for me to see Fitz come back again and again to his past decisions and not cast them off as impervious to change or impossible to face.

That’s a beautiful message.

I embrace that message very much in my mind and I will try to embrace it within my own life as well.

And this isn’t relevant to anything but a little thing I’d like to preserve for my own amusement: This was the first book I’ve ever read on a Kindle! Lee got me one for my birthday for my “Year of Book” project. It took a little time get use to but once I adjusted I really enjoyed it - particularly the fact that if you are reading a borrowed book from an online library it shows you what others have highlighted as they read! I found that very interesting and I enjoyed highlighting my own favorite bits (which, not shockingly, coincided with many other people’s favorite bits).

For Rain Wild Chronicles I may start a new section for these write ups where I relay some of my highlighted sections, ‘cause why not? These are already long and useless, might as well really own them.

Fitz

I know there is a lot we could talk about when it comes to Fitz in this book

But I kinda already covered him in the setting/plot/narrative section above

And I really just want to let anyone bothering to read this know that I’ve never liked Fitz more then when he cleaned up and donned fancy Jamaillian digs and walked into Molly’s family chaos to tell a grieving family he is FitzChivalry Farseer and he’s gonna look after them.

I was shocked and horrified and thrilled and laughing

Fitz truly changed! It wasn’t just description of his inner change (although that was lovely, good for The Fool, thank you Fool) but the end of the book drags a bit as it does so as to allow Fitz to act on this inner change - which is something I’ll never hold against Hobb.

So many books end quickly after their narrative climax but Hobb likes a good post cuddle and god bless her for it.

Cutting a story off after the final movements have played is dramatic and can help events stand out as an experience in an audiences mind; but there is unique pleasure in seeing the individuals of an orchestra pack up their belongings and shuffle out isn’t there? There is a true affection for humanity’s relentless plodding along in those final chapters. Fine by me.

The Fool

):

So I freaked out towards the end there, ya know?

And much like with when it happened to Fitz, a part of me thought it a cruel thing to do, to bring someone that far gone and that brutalized back.

I understood the thematic ouroboros of The Fool’s return and as a fan it was a relief of sorts but there is still that small part of me that found it cruel all the same.

I’m floored with how moved I was by the aftermath of the Fool’s death. Fitz’s quest to find the body and then to restore dignity to his friend - that was some rough stuff.

It wasn’t “true grief” like with Nighteyes (for me anyways) but rather a form of anticipatory mourning, but in reverse? Hard to explain.

The point is yes, I cried.

Oh oh oh how I hope The Fool can learn to manage in a world they can’t see into or shape. I hope to see the Fool again after visiting the Rain Wilds.

Hap

lol

fuckin’ Hap

I love this idiot

I love how all around Hap epic and fantastical things happen and his story is just him coming of age and figuring his shit out

Good for him

Does he know who Fitz really is though?! This was never addressed?!

Prince Dutiful

Dutiful cracks me up

I love how he’ll go into PRINCE MODE and be near perfect Sacrifice and royal and awe inspiring

then he laughs at boogers

Dutiful is hilarious to me, how I see him switch back and forth between mature young prince to out-of-his-depth-survivor brought me much joy

I love his friendship with Thick; I love how he falls for Elliania’s transparent baiting; I love how he’d be cool outwardly but skill “WTF is happening?!?”

What a joy!

Chad

In the last book Chad really slipped through my fingers but now we’re back to our normal rocky relationship.

I like Chad

but then I don’t

And I think, finally, I’m okay with that duality

Thick

My sweet little man

Everything about Thick is my favorite thing

I especially love how he is often described as being bored

Discussing intrigue and espionage and dragons? BORED

Hahaha!

No wonder he and Nettle get along so well

I especially loved how he decided, for himself, to stay with Fitz on Aslevjal

I’m excited to come back and hear more, learn more, about Thick

Nettle

I wouldn’t wanna be on Nettle’s shit list, would you?

What a storm of a person!

Nettle isn’t very defined still, she is a bit reactionary and never quite gets totally fleshed out by the end of the book.

Which is a bit of a shame.

But! Nettle of the Dream World is a different story.

She feels much more defined there and I dunno, maybe that’s intentional?

I like her but I’d have to spend a lot more time with her in the solid narrative space rather than the abstract dream/skill narrative space to really have opinions or emotions over her as her own character rather than her as a character and how she relates/involves/moves Fitz, Burrich, Molly, or Thick.

Elliania

Elliania has a similar disadvantage as Nettle does but at the same time she still has more definition (to me) then Nettle; her motivation and actions are followable and her personality is filled in with Outisland society.

And she ain’t afraid to smack a bitch up with her titties out.

So she gets some mad bonus points right there.

I really felt for Elliania’s struggle and she totally won me over in the scene where she comes up from inside the Pale Woman’s domain dragging her forged sister and mother with her.

One of those scenes where the grandure, emotion, and awe of it all was very powerful

loved it, love her

Web

YEAH

Don’t need permission to do what’s right - fuck yeah

Web’s the friggin’ best guys

I want a spin-off of him teaching Old Blood children and Fitz

Swift

This little shit

I love him, I love all of Molly and Burrich’s wild children, but Swift gave me anxiety lol

I’m actually really intrigued by Swift but he’s too brief and wild at the moment, I hope he mellows out a bit but still keeps that confrontational fire and uses it for good

Burrich

NO.

God

Damn

It

When my man showed up on Aslevjal I was shocked

I was so mad

I was also very happy of course but ughgughgu

I WAS CONFLICTED and had good right to be

Oh this man, I really adore Burrich even though he is a flawed person - that’s what is so compelling about him though.

We kept learning things about and from Burrich up until the very end.

I’ll miss you, Heart of the Pack.

Molly

I’m devastated for Molly

I’m Happy for Molly

I’m very pro-Molly in general even though she is a bit vague

Like, she is more than just a plot device but not by a whole lot, ya know?

What I wanna do though is sit her down and have a real heart to heart; ask her if she really thinks Fitz will ever be truly free himself of his duty, from his duty to the Farseers or from his own idea of honor.

That man is going to leave off on some quest or some shit you know it, I know it, she must know it!

Be safe Molly, but happy, but alert

#realm of the elderlings #The Tawny Man #Year of Book #fandom talks

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