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makeste · 4 years

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BnHA Chapter 286: VESTIGE ANTICS ARE A GO

Previously on BnHA: Deku was all “what’s the record for most consecutive bone breaks within the span of a single minute” and, without waiting for an answer, proceeded to unleash roughly 17 Smashes onto Tomura. Kacchan was all “THAT DOES IT, I’M TAKING THE REINS OF THIS SHITSHOW” and carried Endeavor and Shouto up to where the action was so Endeavor could hit Tomura with a Prominence Burn. AFO was all “Tomura would you rather burn to death or let me take over your body” and Tomura was all “...” and so AFO TOOK OVER and was all “STABBITY STABBITY” and used his Stabbing Quirk to do some Good Old Fashioned STABBIN’. First he stabbed Endeavor, and then he was all “hee and now I’m gonna stab Deku”, but Kacchan was all “SIR THAT’S MY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT RIVAL” and so he rushed on in AND GOT HIMSELF STABBED INSTEAD. And so basically THIS PAST WHOLE WEEK HAS BEEN A RIDE, LET ME TELL YOU.

Today on BnHA: Kacchan is all “sup Deku lemme just downplay how I totally took this fatal blow for you just now” before he dramatically passes out and is caught by Todoroki “BTDUBS I CAN FLY NOW” Shouto, who is also carrying his dad because the kids really are just doing it all, here. AllForRaki Tomura For One is all “HAHA BAKUGOU IS PRETTY DUMB”, at which point Deku just LOSES IT ENTIRELY and ASCENDS INTO A NEW PLANE OF FURY LIKE A LITTLE GREEN RAGE BUDDHA. But then like two seconds later Tomura is all “ANYWAY, SO” and FUCKING TOUCHES DEKU’S FACE, CAUSING THE TWO OF THEM TO ASTROPROJECT INTO THE FREAKY OFA/AFO MINDSCAPE BECAUSE THIS CHAPTER IS BANANAS. Vestige!AFO is all “reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated but aren’t you glad I saved your life though, Tomura”, while Tomura is all “!!” because he’s hopefully starting to get A Clue, and meanwhile Deku just stands there watching all “what the fuck.” The chapter ends with SHIMURA MCFUCKING NANA showing up all, “HI, I HEARD SOME BITCHES WERE TRYING TO HAVE A GIRL POWER ARC, AND THEY DIDN’T INVITE ME.” Go on, Nana. Give ‘em hell.

you guys. I’m not normally one to take pleasure in another human being’s misfortune. BUT THAT SAID, there are exceptions to every rule, and so let’s just say certain events have transpired early this morning which have PUT ME IN A VERY, LET’S JUST SAY, NOT-TERRIBLE MOOD which this chapter will hopefully improve upon!!

oh my god Deku’s one non-fucked-up eye that he still has control over is SO WIDE YOU GUYS

hmm I know I shouldn’t be all (゜▽゜) while the two of them are all (； ▼ Д ▼) (⁰ Д゜;) ... and yet here we are. btw I’m worried tumblr’s formatting will ruin those two emojis which I worked so hard to get just right so I’m gonna repost them on another line here just in case

(； ▼ Д ▼) (⁰ Д゜;) that’s them. Kacchan and Deku. my boys

HERE COMES THE CHEESY “JUST GOT STABBED BETTER PLAY IT OFF ALL COOL!!!” ONE LINER OH MY GOD

(ETA: really love how my son, with what for all he knows could be his dying breaths, decides that the absolute most important thing is to preserve his selfish asshole facade so as not to fuck up his status quo with his rival. “LOOKEE HERE I GOT MYSELF ALL STABBED AND SHIT FOR YOU, BUT I TOTALLY JUST DID IT BECAUSE I WAS TIRED OF YOU GETTING ALL THE COOL HERO MOMENTS” yeah, that’s right! SELFLESS MOTIVATIONS, WHAT ARE THOSE sob.

also tbh I’m glad they didn’t delve any further into their feelings right here and now because this really isn’t the place or time for it sadly. WE WILL JUST PUT THOSE ON HOLD UNTIL AFTER THE ARC ENDS, when they are all recovering from their various wounds and traumas and have time to catch up and have some long-overdue heart-to-hearts. it deserves its own chapter or two or three. maybe time to head back to Ground Beta once they’re healthy? “healthy” perhaps being a relative term given their current condition fjsdjkf.)

by the way it looks from here like only the ones through his torso and shoulder actually hit, so that’s something at least. WE’VE LOST ENOUGH LEGS TODAY. I need to conserve my remaining puns

MEANWHILE TOMURA IS HAVING A CRISIS

ARE YOU MAD AT YOUR EVIL DAD TOMURA. HE JUST WON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER WILL HE, THAT GUY

anyway so it looks like Kacchan might have caught a break here because AFO/Tomura is pulling the stabby quirk activation tendril things back out! rip, “Kacchan vs. Deku part 3″ theories

p.s. I got ALL CAUGHT UP IN THE DRAMA and thus glossed over the chapter title which is “one among us”! hmmm this is definitely AFO/OFA related, calling it now. ooh lord I am excited

NOW MY SON IS DRAMATICALLY FALLING

THE BLOOD FROM THE MOUTH OOF NOT GOOD AHHHH. DEKU’S FACE AHHHH. HIS BODY JUST WENT TOTALLY LIMP DID HE PASS OUT AHHHH. SOMEONE CATCH HIM!!

BY HIS FOOT, SHOUTO?!

well NOT EXACTLY THE MOST GRACEFUL THING I’VE EVER SEEN, but we’ll allow it because HOLY SHIT BOY. ARE YOU ALREADY CARRYING YOUR DAD ON TOP OF THAT?? HORIKOSHI PLEASE CONFIRM, IS TODOROKI MOTHERFUCKING SHOUTO FUCKING FLYING AROUND UNBALANCED AF ON HIS ONE FLAMEY LEG, CARRYING HIS 500 LB POP AND NOW HIS FLOPPY PASSED OUT BEST FRIEND AS WELL?!? HOLY SHIT TODO?!?!

LADIES AND GENTLEFRIENDS OF THE VILLAIN STANDOM, FEAR NOT, TOMURA’S HAIR IS THE FIRST THING THAT GREW BACK LOL

even before his eyeballs kfldkakjk. which, btw, how does he even know what’s going on right now? “this fight has shed a lot of useless blood” sdkmkjl okay well (1) WHOSE FAULT WAS THAT, AGAIN??, (2) SERIOUSLY THOUGH, HOW DOES HE EVEN KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING. DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO YOU STABBED?? ARE YOU EFFECTIVELY BLIND FOR THE NEXT FEW SECONDS HERE, WHAT’S GOING ON, and lastly (3) I seriously can’t tell if this is AFO or Tomura talking right now. or are they going back and forth?? help this is so confusing

HEY

THE DISRESPECT. I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW KACCHAN ANGST IS NEVER USELESS!!

AND NOW HE’S BACK TO THE STABBING JFKJLKJLF I AM NOT TOO HAPPY WITH YOU RIGHT NOW MISTER

okay and now we’re cutting to some quick panels of the unconscious Aizawa, Gran, and Ryuukyuu, along with the “still conscious but in a very real sense might as well not be counted” Manual who is really having a day, that poor guy

anyway but then there’s also some dialogue boxes being all “if you act out of rage your power will respond accordingly, the most important part is to keep your head clear.” which I’m like 90% sure is Deku/OFA related, but honestly NOTHING ABOUT THIS CHAPTER IS CLEAR SO FAR YOU GUYS. except for the Shouto-is-a-badass part anyway

HMM YEP I’M GONNA GO WITH DEKU-RELATED

it must be a callback to some line I’m forgetting. maybe Lariat explaining Blackwhip to him that one time. probably should have been in italics if it was a flashback quote, but hey. anyways the point is Deku is absolutely, 100% following this advice to the letter (/s)

(ETA: yep I’m almost positive this is the same quote from chapter 213. “listen, when you use this power out of anger, it’ll really start working for you. what really matters is controlling your heart.” which is still one of the weirdest pieces of advice in the entire series, but basically I think he was just trying to tell him it’s okay to get mad, so long as it’s calmly mad. like, controlled fury, as opposed to this white-hot berserker nonsense he’s been running on as of late. anyways I do still love me some shounen rage all the same but Lariat has a point.)

...

it took me a minute to realize THOSE WERE DEKU’S EYES. holy --

AND ANOTHER MINUTE TO REALIZE THAT DEKU FUCKING GRABBED THE ACTIVATION TENDRIL WITH HIS BUSTED UP OFA HANDS AND BIT INTO IT WITH HIS RABID OFA JAWS AND SNAPPED THAT SHIT LIKE A FUCKING KITKAT KLJLKSJDLKJFLK WOOOOOOOO I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING BUT GODDAMN. POWER MOVE

(ETA: this is a two-page spread omg. I didn’t even realize at first. this scan ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT DO THIS BADASS PAGE ANY KIND OF JUSTICE but I can’t wait to see the real deal on Sunday holy shit.)

LMAO

DEKU RAGED SO HARD HE TURNED INTO AN ANGRY GHOST SONIC THE HEDGEHOG FKLSKG

(ETA: he actually looks a bit like the Vestiges/Kurogiri tbh.)

meanwhile Tomura basically has the exact same face I would have had in his position. yeah for real man. I don’t even know

p.s. WHEN will people learn to STOP INSULTING KACCHAN IN DEKU’S PRESENCE. WHEN, I ASK!!

WHAT IN THE CINNAMON TOAST FUCK

if this was a physical page I was holding I would have FLUNG THAT SHIT AWAY LIKE THERE WAS A SPIDER CRAWLING ON IT. WHAT THE FUCK

HOT DAMN. well uh. so that’s SUPER DISTURBING, what a lovely panel of Tomura’s melted face slowly growing back while his ears lag behind, and meanwhile that little scar that had been growing and growing and which at one point certain people (ME) thought might turn him into a BEAUTIFUL BUTTERLY instead RIPS HIS FACE IN HALF to reveal the KINDER EGG AFO SURPRISE UNDERNEATH AHHHHH TAKE IT BACK

THIS IS WHY YOU DON’T LET MAD SCIENTISTS PERFORM EXPERIMENTS ON YOU, KIDS. PSA. JUST SAY NO

-- NO!!!

HORIKOSHI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fuck

oh my god. I almost would have rather cut away right after the Kacchan incident than freaking cut away NOW of all times, jesus. THAT’S JUST A BITCH MOVE, IS WHAT THAT IS. if we don’t cut back within the next three pages I SWEAR TO GOD

anyway so GUESS WHAT GIGANTOMACHIA’S DOING YOU GUYS. if you guessed “the exact same thing he was doing last time we saw him” then you are absolutely right, because it was actually PRETTY EASY TO GUESS

anyway but he says he detects “master’s scent”, except that there’s apparently two of them. interesting! one in Tartarus and one in Jakku, right? lol Horikoshi has burned me so many times already with his excruciatingly slow reveal of this that I’m not gonna hold my breath just yet, but I’ll get the hype train warmed up JUST IN CASE

okay so meanwhile in downtown Jakku, the heroes are handing off the civilians over to the police and rescue forces while they prepare to engage with “the villain”, by which I assume they mean Gigantomachia. does this mean Iida and Ochako are gonna fight Machia you guys omg

OOH!!!

“PLEASE INFORM THEM ON FOOT” well I know a certain SPEEDY BOI who would be PERFECT for that job oh my. make haste, Tenyar FastmLeggy

WAIT WHICH WAY ARE THEY HEADING

ARE THEY HEADING TOWARDS MACHIA OR TOWARDS DEKU AND AFO

so rather than answering my VERY PERTINENT question, Ochako is instead spending an entire page thinking about how their complete clusterfuck of a life keeps getting exponentially worse all the time! well but she’s not wrong though

NOW SHE’S ALL “GUYS...!” and, rather than explaining ANYTHING AT ALL, Horikoshi is again cutting back to THIS, OMG AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

(ETA: good thing Kacchan wasn’t awake to see his dramatic “I’ll just get myself impaled for Deku’s sake” plan result in this outcome ALL OF TWENTY SECONDS LATER smdh.)

I ACTUALLY PREFER MY DEKUS NON-CRUMBLED, THANKS. ALSO JUST ON A SIDE NOTE, POOR SHOUTO THOUGH. THE LAST NINETY SECONDS OR SO HAVE BEEN ENOUGH NIGHTMARE FUEL FOR A LIFETIME HAVEN’T THEY

so now he’s all “MIDORIYA!!!” because OF COURSE HE IS. his best friend just got impaled, and his dad too, and now he fully expects to see his other best friend crumble to dust right before his eyes holy shit. T R A U M A ™

-- !!!

somehow in the excitement of the moment I forgot his actual goal for a sec lol. meaning I instantaneously switched from HORRIFIED to GRINNING LIKE A MANIAC :D :D :D come on OFA time to show him what’s what

AND NOW WE’RE SWITCHING OVER TO EVERYONE’S FAVORITE TRIPPY DREAM LANDSCAPE FOR ADDITIONAL DRAMA, WELL OKAY

I’M ON BOARD WITH THIS, WHATEVER. also it’s becoming increasingly apparent that Deku is in fact nekkid underneath that mystical cloud bs, so let’s hope one of his remaining yet-to-be-unlocked quirks is a pants-conjuring quirk lulz

“this place...” yeah we all fucking know what this place is son, let’s get on with this. by my count we’ve only got four pages left so PLEASE BUDGET THEM WISELY

OH MY

holy shit. I have so many screaming thoughts about this lol but I just want to keep on reading lkjlkjlkjl okay I’ll come back later and edit them in, how’s that

OR MAYBE I’LL JUST RANT ABOUT THEM NOW GODDAMMIT

shit. okay let me just try and sum this up as quick as I can

so just in case it wasn’t already crystal clear, AFO’s soul being roommates with Tomura’s seems to be just about 100% confirmed now. good for you, All For One For All theory!! the “Kacchan loses his quirk” theory died so that you might live on in glory

AFO does seem to have almost fully taken control now. it looks like Tomura’s still fighting back, but AFO clearly has the upper hand now if their body language is any indication. Tomura on his knees with AFO calmly holding him down and ignoring his struggles... not looking too good for him at the moment

people seem to have somewhat lost sight of this in the midst of the great “heroes vs. villains Who Is Right Who Is Wrong What Are Morals” debate of 2020, but just a friendly reminder that AFO is in fact responsible for 100% of all of Tomura’s suffering from pretty much the moment he was born up till this very moment we’re now witnessing!! like, you can go ahead and blame Nana and Gran and The Complacent Apathy Of Hero Society and whatever the fuck else from here till Sunday, but All for One is the reason Kotarou was orphaned. All for One is almost certainly the reason why the seemingly quirkless Tenko suddenly just magically developed THE MOST FUCKED UP QUIRK OF ALL TIME at the worst possible moment. All for One is probably the reason why no one helped Traumatized Baby Tenko in the immediate aftermath (I can and likely will write a separate post about this in the near future). All for One is definitely the reason why no one helped Tenko at any point after that. All for One is the reason why Tenko grew up all fucked in the head (“HERE’S YOUR DEAD FAMILY’S HANDS, MERRY CHRISTMAS”), and the reason why he grew up blaming Heroes and Society rather than the sole person who was actually responsible who was literally standing right in front of him the entire time. and lastly, All for One is the reason why Tomura has now been manipulated into unknowingly sacrificing his own body and possibly even his mind. so THANKS A LOT FOR THAT. more like jerk for one amiright

basically what I’m trying to say is that Deku and Tomura are not actually enemies here, and they never have been. the two of them have a common enemy, and I’m convinced Tomura’s story is about him eventually coming to realize this. and this looks to be the first step towards that, for two reasons. one, because AFO is finally starting to out himself to Tomura as the rat bastard he has always been. and two, because Deku is catching a glimpse of this now for the very first time. up until now he didn’t have a damn clue lol. but this is now something for him to file away in the back of his mind, and perhaps follow up on at a later date, once all of this craziness finally subsides and he has some time to process

anyway, so that’s basically it! tl;dr AFO is the final villain and unless I’m very much mistaken, this scene is going to finally start to set that up. let’s read on!

OMG

NANA?!?

lKDSJFLKSHGLISHDOGIHOLRKL

NOOOOOO I can’t believe it fucking ended there I can’t fucking believe it, fuck everything

smdh. what a place to end it. didn’t confirm a damn thing. not even whose mental landscape all of this is actually taking place in! like, don’t mind me though Horikoshi, it’s not like THE FATE OF THE WORLD HINGES ON THIS QUESTION OR ANYTHING except oh wait it really kind of does. kljkj

but seriously. because if it’s Deku’s mind, it means that Tomura’s attempt to take his quirk wasn’t successful. but if it’s Tomura’s mind, though... well... hhhhhhkhfff

or it could be both, I guess. more of that “AFO and OFA are the same quirk and thus linked” goodness. oh man. anyways stay tuned for next week when Nana presumably helps Deku out with the rest of that black fog and also hopefully finds him some pants. or maybe Nana can just go fight AFO herself. a little payback for everything he’s done to her protege and to her grandson. either way I CAN’T WAIT omg. VESTIGE ANTICS ARE A GO

#bnha 286 #midoriya izuku #shigaraki tomura #all for one #bakugou katsuki #todoroki shouto #shimura nana #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #never thought we'd be this close to getting to see nana punch afo in the face #please horikoshi I beg of you please let this happen #if this holds up next week pretty much every single lady of bnha will have gotten their chance to shine in this arc #well except for ochako #but things are looking up on that front too!#what a time to be alive

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hargrove-mayfields · 3 years

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Just A Dream Away

Chapter 4/13 read here on ao3!

for @harringrovebigbang

~~~~

Steve doesn’t know why he does this to himself.

It’s been, god how long has it even been since the funeral? Almost a year now according to the calendar, though in his head it’s only been weeks.

Time doesn’t really have much to do with it though. Unless they found a way to go back, Billy would still be gone, and he’d still go back to the cemetery each morning just to pretend he wasn’t, leftover alcohol in his system from the night before melding each passing day into a jumble of numbness.

And Steve, as he falls deeper into this routine of self torture, he’s becoming exhausted. Where he was once optimistic, or at least trying to stay focused on looking for the positives and back on the good times, now he's just empty.

He can’t pretend he’s not depressed anymore, and he can’t pretend things are going to be okay either.

As much as he is still hurting, Robin doesn’t let him just mope. If she knew what was making his heart ache, he thinks she might let him have a little more room to grieve, but she doesn’t know, she doesn’t even know how bad he truly gets when she’s not around, so she had made him accept the video store’s job offer they’d left for when his time as representative was finished.

Work is something to do to take his mind off of things, sure, and it’s a way to get him out of the house, but the only reason he accepted was because halfway between his house and the family video is the cemetery, and every day, whether he drives it or walks it depending on if he’s sober enough to take the car, he stops to pay his boyfriend a visit.

Most often he brings flowers, maybe blows a tearful kiss to the ground and moves on, but some days, like today, he feels a heaviness in his heart that tells him to show up hours before he’s due at his shift, ready to talk it out until he absolutely has to leave.

Maybe it’s a habit from the hospital, starting when he used to be cheerful and sit in the grass to talk about happy stories and good things that happened in his day to make Billy feel better. But a year into talking to the dirt instead of his lover had left him bitter, and he was far past that optimistic point, all that’s left now is guilt, remorse, all the feelings about the loss he’d thus far kept bottled up.

This particular morning, he’d awoken from a nightmare, what happened at the mall never leaving his memory, the flashes of sorrow and pain and death lingering behind his eyes when he tries to get even a moment's peace; everyday is hard, but when he wakes up with tears in his eyes, he knows what kind of day it’s going to be.

So he comes out to Hawkins cemetery, no gift in hand today except his company, and kneels in the muddy grass, damp from an overnight storm that contributed to his plagued rest and left him running on an hour, maybe two, of good sleep, and he just starts talking.

He starts with the basics, the generic greetings and declarations of love that he promises each morning, but his emotions quickly rise to the surface. Reaching out to trace his fingers over the indentations in the upright stone, his voice wobbles slightly, and he shifts from venting to what he came here for:

“Billy. Baby, I’m so sorry. I’ve been pretending things will be okay, but I know they won’t. I failed you. I wasn’t there for you and it’s my fault what happened to you. I don’t even deserve to sit here and cry with you. I know Max has but, have you forgiven me? I don’t know where you are now, but I don’t want you to hate me. I love you so much.”

The silence in response is daunting. Makes him want to scream so loud he could tear the earth apart looking for his Billy, but instead he just repeats his apologies and promises again and again until his tears slow. Eventually, when he’s run out of things to say, he stands, stray tears dripping from the end of his nose and rewetting the soil, and leaves.

Drives away to his job like nothing happened, strolling in some thirty minutes late for his shift. Because today is the premiere of some mainstream pop culture film that’s gone way over Steve’s head on video, the Family Video is packed.

“Hey, dingus. Could’ve used you at the start of your shift.” Robin shouts over the shop noise as he strolls past to his post.

Steve shrugs, an over-exaggerated gesture in case she can’t hear him over the crowd, “Well I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“You are, but I don’t see you working. I need help restocking once those shelves are cleared out.”

“Yes ma’am.” Steve does a mocking salute, the grimace on Robin's face making it clear she can see through his overdone gestures that he’s hiding something, overcompensating for the emptiness he feels.

She doesn’t have the chance to bring it up though, because the both of them get whisked off into separate duties working the over capacity video store. Only, while Robin handles it like she would any other day, with mild annoyance and enough spite to get through it alright, Steve is too fragile. All he can register is commotion, chaos: the buzzing neon lights in the ceiling, surging crowds bumping into him, chatter and bustle filling his ears, and he starts to break down.

But because he’s Steve, he tries at first to just power through. Tries to block it out and resume productivity, but he is already knee deep in a panic attack, so he pushes back through the customers, probably a little too roughly, to tell Robin with that lilt of fear and upset to his tone, “Robin, I can’t be out here.”

She barely looks up as she kindly responds, “I get it, Steve. Go take your break, I’ll handle the rush.”

That’s exactly what he does, is go straight to the back room, but instead of his standard fifteen allotted by the overheads, he stays in the back for an hour, and then another, leaving behind customers arguing over who should get the last copy of the new movie, people in line out the door, tapes knocked off of the shelves, all while people are in trying to do their normal returns and rentals. It’s again total chaos out there, only made worse by the fact that Robin is now alone at the counter.

She would also have to clean up once the rush died, and maybe even replace some tapes if people weren’t going to start watching where they’re walking, and as much as Steve wanted to feel bad for disappearing into the back room for the past hour and a half and leaving her with all of that, he can’t be bothered with coming back out, his morning at the cemetery having taken too much from his emotional threshold to be productive, or remorseful even, now.

There are two big plush chairs and a couch in the back, a much nicer room than the icebox that was the Scoops break area, but Steve sits on the floor instead, his back pressed to the door and his stained up knees drawn to his chest. From where he is, the endless noise and bustle drifts down the short hall to the break room, but he’s too in his head, thinking about nothing and everything to pay it any mind.

It takes probably another an hour and a half for all the crowd to die down, the line clearing out and Robin chasing away most of the stragglers after explaining for the hundredth time that until the already rented out copies were returned, they wouldn’t get any more in and that no, they weren’t hiding any in the back.

Steve can hear her cleaning up a little before she gets too behind, cardboard boxes being broken down and the irritating scrape of broom bristles against dusty tiled floors, followed quickly by loud boot steps toward the door that make his chest ache, pretending it was the echoes someone else instead of his best friend.

The break room is locked behind him, something that is forbidden by company policy, but Steve felt necessary, and Robin beats on it with the palm of her hand, startling him out of the half dazed, half alert state he’s been in all day, “Harrington, what are you doing in there? I just did a whole rush by myself, asshole.”

He can’t father the words to respond, tears welling up and choking anything he might say off in his throat. So Robin calls again, the door knob rattling like she’s trying to get in, her voice more concerned, “Steve? You alive in there?”

“Steve.” She tries again, more desperate, and Steve finally finds it in himself to say something, sniffling and responding weakly, “‘M’fine Rob.”

“Can you let me in?” Robin suggests, just on the side of hesitant, making Steve feel something like guilt for shutting her out, both emotionally and in the literal sense, so he stands, shaky and unbalanced, and unlocks the door for her.

He must look as bad as he feels, because Robin's pinched face of concern melts into one of sympathy as soon as she lays eyes on him.

She steps into the back room with him, after a moment of pause which Steve had come to hate, knowing that meant whoever was speaking was going to take pity on him, asking, “You doing okay in here, buddy?”

“What does it look like?” There’s sarcasm and bitterness in his tone, though it’s muffled by his tears. He doesn’t worry about offending Robin, she’s been dealing with his breakdowns for a long time now, and she knew how he could get.

Patiently, in spite of his snappiness, she asks, “Can you tell me what happened?”

Steve’s not sure how that’s even a question anymore.

What happened was fighting monsters at the Byers. Was getting tortured in the Starcourt mall. Was losing his Billy.

To say that those things had a huge impact on him was a gross understatement. Hell, even Robin was affected too, the both of them incredibly emotionally fragile these days with about a thousand things that could trigger them, both were plagued by nightmares and flashbacks and panic attacks at random points in time. It shouldn’t be a mystery what was wrong now.

But having two hour long breakdowns in the employee lounge, Steve had to admit that was new, and Robin was obviously scared for him because of it.

So he lies, “It’s nothing, Robs. Just the same old stuf.” Steve isn’t a very good liar though, he can’t hold eye contact and his voice trails off, revealing him every time.

“Steve.” It was an attempt to appeal to him, maybe to ground him so he’d open up to her, “Please talk to me.”

An attempt, which he shuts down with, “We’re at work right now.”

Robin frowns, a crease in her eyebrow. He’s never seen her look more frustrated as she says, halfway between an insult and a joke, “No, I’m at work. You’re crying in the break room on the floor.”

But again, Steve is having it, “I’m serious, I don’t wanna talk about it here.”

He feels bad about being harsh with Robin, but his grief, this breakdown, it’s not for the general reasons she thinks, it’s specifically because of his visit to Billy’s grave this morning. The heavy realization of everything he’d vented to that cold stone that stood in place of the beaming face, the beautiful boy that always knew what to say, who he loved and still hadn’t told her about, that was what had pushed him over the emotional threshold.

“Alright, well, we’ve got like, an hour left before our shift is over, so you can just veg out back here or you can come and do some work.” Robing announces with a quick glance at her wrist watch, standing and patting the top of Steve’s head just to mess up his hair like he hated before walking out of the room.

At least she was trying.

It takes him a few minutes to find the will to follow her out, but eventually he does sidle up beside her at the front counter, his posture weak and his muddy shoes dragging on the ground, but he’s there, earning a taunting flash of Robins biggest and snarkiest grin as she slides him a stack of tapes that need rewinding.

They don’t get many customers after the initial rush of the early afternoon where he was out for, but he can tell Robin was still keeping her eye on him, just in case he needed a break, or in case he did break himself. Anymore, and much to his dismay, it doesn’t take much to get him overwhelmed, especially not if he was already upset, but he makes sure not to let that show now, putting on a mask like everything is okay, and he is managing it just fine.

Because the thing is, he isn’t managing anything, he’s still grief stricken and he’s drinking himself half to death and he has no future ahead but more sadness, but he’d be damned if he let anybody figure that out. Let anybody worry about him, when he was still living. In his eyes, it’s selfish to expect pity, when you’ve already survived the worst.

He thinks though, by the time their work is almost done, that Robin is starting to suspect something, because the second their shift is over, before the guys to cover the closing shift even show, she’s dragging him out of the store, snatching the keys for the BMW out of Steve's back pocket.

It goes without discussing anymore that on bad days, Robin doesn’t take Steve back home, which is to say, the two of them had been pretty much sharing her dinky little duplex apartment, the two of them living in the right side with a nosy older lady in the other. They both were afraid of what he could do when he was home alone, and, Robin didn’t really know this, but Steve was also afraid of what his father might say the day the dozens of rooms in that house weren’t enough to avoid him, when he realized how pathetic a state his son was in.

The living arrangement didn’t change much though. Steve still wasn’t very good at talking through his problems, and he still wouldn’t eat or shower or sleep regularly. He knew it scared Robin, because it scared him too, but he had other things to worry about.

Maybe it was true that he was so sensitive that it took practically nothing to send him over the edge, but it's not a big deal, he’ll be alright, how are you doing anyway? Robin always has to fight so hard just to get him to talk to her, his best friend who he all but lives with, because all he is worried about is other people. Something to do with losing the one person he was always caring for, trying to make up for not being able to save Billy’s life, or help him through his hardest moments. He knows that, but it doesn’t matter why he’s selfless, as long as he is, right?

Further, he reasons, so what if he’d had a concussion so bad that he still gets migraines that leave him bedridden at times? His friend is hurting and he needs to be there for her. Who cares if he has nightmares so intensely vivid he can’t sleep for weeks at a time? Robin has panic attacks in crowded places, and each time he has to fret about it for days.

It makes her worried sick all the time, knowing that Steve all but refuses to tell her if he needs something, but he doesn’t like feeling studied, can tell she is always looking for signs that something is wrong, watching him to make sure he didn’t do anything he shouldn’t. All she wants is for him to just stop bottling everything up, because she claims she had and it made everything easier for her to cope with, but he’s stubborn.

That just isn’t the way his brain works, and she’s probably sick of trying to get through to him. Somewhere in the back of Steve’s mind, he knows she’s not far from a breakthrough with him, his own coping mechanisms exhausting him to the point he might consider external help, but she doesn’t have to know that yet. For now, she sticks to what she always does in place of these tougher conversations, and that’s to make Steve tea and try to work him down to the point where he’ll talk to her. Today, it’s not going to take much convincing.

The second day he’d ever come over here, she tried to make a pot of coffee for a little chat like this, and Steve had started crying like a baby just from the way it smelled. It reminded him of his mother, of diner dates with Billy and nurses bringing him breakfast, so she had to switch to tea. He could tell it would always bother her when he wouldn’t tell her why something like that was making him so upset, but as Robin would have to come to realize the more he stayed with her, that was just the first of many things she didn’t understand about Steve Harrington.

There were endless triggers that set him off that she witnessed, and when she comforted him, he could tell she understood some of them, like when the lights would flicker when Dorothy ran her vacuum and he’d stop breathing, or when a siren would start up in the distance and he’d get so dizzy and his hands would shake so badly. But it was those overly specific things, like the smell of coffee, that she was sure had nothing to do with what they went through, and her confidence through those breakdowns would be noticeably a lot lower.

Pine tree air fresheners, the click of stilettos on tiled floors, leather car seats, the busy tone of the telephone, cigarette smoke, rose scented perfume, hairspray, crystalline ash trays. The list of things that reminded him of his parents and the utter helplessness of growing up alone and scared, and of his Billy, of everything he had lost when he died. To Robin, who didn’t have the context of his feelings, it just felt like every day there was something new that would set Steve back ten steps in the progress he’d made, and he knew it was making Robin feel so helpless and guilty.

She was getting better while he was still so thoroughly depressed, and she would take missteps on purpose to not get too far ahead of him. He was sabotaging his best friend with his own misery.

The thought draws stinging tears to his eyes, and Steve sits down at the table without saying a word to Robin, knows his composure will crack the moment he opens his mouth.

She finishes making their tea, specifically lemon flavored with two spoonfuls of honey and one of sugar, sliding him his tea in a tacky mug she’d bought him from a yard sale as a sort housewarming gift, an invitation to stay as long as he needed, and sits in the unbalanced chair across from him. “Are we gonna talk about it?”

Steve taps his fingers on the side of his mug, eyes trained on the paint stained and scratched surface of the table, “What do you want me to say? I freaked out at work, nothing new.”

Robin sighs shakily, and it makes Steve feel a pang of guilt in his chest. Despite her best efforts, he gets so defensive all the time anymore, the careless goof he was before Starcourt buried underneath all that was depressing him, and that he wouldn’t share with her. He was an awful friend, spending so much time with his past actions and losses, he’d forgotten how to live in the present.

“But there’s something you haven’t been telling me, Steve.” She bumps their knees together under the table to get him to look at her, “I’m not trying to be nosy or intrude, really, I just want to help you.”

“I don’t need help.” Steve raised his mug to his face, mumbling into it, “It’s supposed to get worse before it gets better, right?”

That same worried crease above her eyebrow appears, “Who told you that?”

He doesn’t answer, staring into the swirling mug before him. A sign for her that he still wasn’t ready to talk. She must decide that she would do most of the talking then, because she puts her mug down, takes a deep breath before saying, “Listen, you don’t have to tell me everything, I just want you to get better and I don’t think you should do it on your own. I haven’t, and I think it’s time I try to be there for you live you’ve been for me.”

There’s a long stretch of silence where Steve didn’t know what to say, the plastic clock Robin had taken from her grandmother’s kitchen ticking away the seconds, the minutes that passed before Steve swallows hard and looks up from the spot he’d been focusing on, trying and failing to find the right words again before he explains himself, “I just think.. I feel like everyone moved on way too fast.”

“From Starcourt?” What she meant didn’t need to be said. She didn’t need to specify the torture, the battle with an interdimensional monster, the fall out afterwards, for him to understand, but that wasn’t it, and he shakes his head no.

Confused, Robin clarifies, “Then from what?”

“All those people that day, Robs, they died and life is just supposed to go on like normal. We still have holidays and we got jobs again, but all those people, they-“ There are tears in his eyes so he cuts himself off, hoping that Robin got the point anyways.

From the look of clarity on her face, she does understand now where this is coming from. Steve had been struggling with survivor's guilt, Robin knew that because he insisted upon attending each and every funeral he could with his schedule at the hospital, and she’d reluctantly driven him to them without question, no matter how unhealthy it was for him.

He had even told her once, when he was drunk off his ass and knocking on her bedroom door in the early hours of the morning, that he didn’t think it was fair that he didn’t die, but all those other people did. She had never gotten an answer out of him when she asked why he thought he deserved to die, and he hoped she’d have forgotten it by now, but now he was cracking, and she was going to figure it out, so he keeps going.

“It’s just, how are we supposed to go back to normal when there’s so many people who can’t? They died, a-and they left behind their families and friends and partners.” He sniffles, tears starting to roll down his colorless face for the second time that day, “How can we act like nothing ever happened when it’s our fault?”

That makes Robin pause, her eyes going wide, “What?”

Steve freezes, hadn’t meant to say that, and he stays quiet until she asks him a second time, “How is it our fault, Steve?”

“Because we were so caught up with that stupid transmission that we missed our chance to help them. And for what? I was just trying to play the hero for Dustin, but I could’ve stopped it if I wasn’t so stupid.”

“What could you have stopped?” Asking so many questions made her sound like a pushy therapist, and it’s making Steve increasingly frustrated, answering harshly, “The-The shadow, Robin! The Mind-Flayer!”

“Okay, I’m sorry. But Steve, I really don’t think there’s much we could have done.”

Steve just shakes his head, insists, “If I hadn’t been so-so focused on doing something I thought was important, I could’ve done something that actually mattered before it was too late. I wasted so much time in the mall. But they needed me and I-I failed them. You feeling bad for me and telling me it’s not my fault doesn’t change that.”

“Steve, if we hadn’t been down there, nobody would’ve known about the gate, and the mind flayer wouldn’t be dead now.” Robin comforts, a deep frown on her tear tracked face, “There wasn’t anything anybody could’ve done.”

It’s not what Steve needs to hear.

“Stop saying that.. I could’ve saved him, and then none of this would’ve happened.” A sob wracks through his body as soon he finishes, the gut wrenching sound echoing through Robin's tiny apartment kitchen.

“Who?” Robin asks, reaching across the table and taking his shaking hand in her own, “Steve, who could you have saved?”

Through his tears he’s able to stutter out the answer, accented with a pointed sob, “Billy. I could’ve saved Billy..”

She doesn’t say anything in turn, occupied with putting the pieces together, though she’s still missing the larger context, instead pushing her chair back on the scratched kitchen tiles, pulling Steve up out of his own chair into the tightest hug she’d probably ever given anybody. They stand like that for a long time, Steve crying into Robin’s hair and her trying to comfort him through her confusion until his tears slow, or at least the hyperventilating is under control.

When eventually he does pull away from her, he wipes at his eyes and whispers, “Can I tell you something else? It’s about him.”

“Of course.” Robin answers quickly, something like relief, an unfamiliar look on her face anymore, written behind her eyes, making Steve yet again feel a twinge of guilt for hiding so much from his best friend.

He speaks quickly, struggling to get the right words together again, “You know how I said that the only time I was ever in love was with Nancy Wheeler?”

“Yeah?” Robin frowns, and Steve can see it in her face that she’s trying to work through it, what his love life has anything to do with his grief, but it’s a lot harder for him to admit than it is even for her to understand.

“I lied.” He chews on his lip, the faint and bitter taste of blood on his tongue, “And you know how when Dustin asked if we were together, I told him that you weren’t my type and we laughed about it because I’m definitely not yours either?”

“Steve I told you-“ Contemplation is replaced with fear, but he quickly cuts her off, “No, no, it’s not like that. I-I’m not done.”

Steve takes a deep breath, “You sort of are my type, but it was always someone else with-with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes and freckles all over that I was in love with.”

“I don’t understand. Who?”

Steve’s realizing he’s come full circle in this conversation, almost identical to the one they had on the bathroom floor over a year ago now when Robin can out to him, his tone and the distress in his features softening, “Robin.”

The pieces click into place, a whole range of emotion from shock to confusion to finally, sympathy, crossing Robin's face, “Oh, Steve. I’m so sorry. When did you…”

“Christmas Eve last year. Night of the snowball he apologized for being an asshole, and a few weeks later he kissed me.” Six months. The time that they’d had together was now as long as he was in the hospital, and since then how long Steve had been grieving him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She sounds almost hurt by it, the realization that her best friend didn’t come to her with this, especially when she of all people would be understanding. But Steve doesn’t have an answer to that, he doesn’t really know why.

All he does is shrug in response, tired of talking it out anyways, so with a forced sigh Robin tells him, “Well anyways, I’m glad you told me now. You shouldn’t have been doing this on your own for so long.”

Steve smiles weakly and lies, just as he’s been lying for so long, “It’s okay Robin. I’ve been getting better.”

But it doesn’t have the effect on Robin he wants, because she insists, for the first time not just letting him stew in his guilt and bottle everything up, “I don’t think drinking your life away and breaking down more often than ever really counts as doing better.”

Of course he tries to defend himself, anyone would against that, “Come on, Rob-“

But Robin cuts him off, “No, Steve. I’m serious. You need to get help.”

“I’m not going to a therapist.”

“Okay, but you still need to come to me with this stuff.” Steve looks away, and Robin’s tobw gets more desperate, “Steve, please. You can’t do this by yourself. I understand, I’m your best friend. I just want to be there for you.”

“I’ll.. think about it.” Is the last thing he says before he turns to leave, stopping short when he hears Robin sniffle, even on her worst days almost never seeing her cry, “Shit.. Robs.”

“No, no. I’m done talking about it Steve.” Robin shakes her head, her face flushes red as she fights back tears she doesn’t want him to see, biting her knuckles, “Just.. go ahead. I won’t bother you anymore.”

Numbly, he does. He turns and goes up the stairs to the used to be closet Robin turned into a room for him when he comes over.

~~~~

Billy doesn’t know how long he’s been in this hell.

His hair is getting longer, almost down his back now. It’s a matted mess that’ll never brush out even if someday he gets back to water that runs clear and his Gee conditioner he used to slip Susan a few bucks to buy for him, but he can’t bring himself to cut it.

He does shave though. Takes a knife to his face and does his best to use broken and grimy windows and mirrors for accuracy. It seems pointless, and for the most part it is, but his dad used to grow a beard in the winter, and the very last thing he wants is to look like him. Seeing him again would be one thing, but becoming him? That’s something Billy's willing to take a few knicks from a rusty old blade to avoid.

He used to keep track of the days, measured by the patterns in the storms constantly churning overhead, with a notch in the dying bark of a tree he passed between the convenience store and his house, the two places he’d been able to call his safe haven since he found himself trapped.

But then the dogs, as he’d come to call them now, changed. They used to circle the woods, patrol the other side of town, blocking his access to the downtown areas, like the hospital, the police station, Steve’s house. Then suddenly, they started closing in on his side, and from the many encounters he’s had from strays and crossing their invisible boundaries, he knew he couldn’t stay in that place.

So he’d lost his home, the ghost of his family that had been keeping him grounded, gone as he salvages anything he can, and leaves.

For a while, it feels like relief almost. The burden of how long he’d been here and how alone he was lifted, but he knows that’s just a way of comforting himself. He’s actually devastated.

He wants to be able to sleep on his back porch and he wants to be able to look at all the damaged family photos inside the overtaken house, no matter how fake the smiles and poses are, and he just wants to be home. Not that the building means much, home is the feeling, being with the people who he cares about and who care about him. He’s not sure he ever had the sense of what that really meant, but he’d take any dysfunctional upbringing over this.

The best he had for a while was Steve’s place.

Steve is never there, in the physical sense or in that freaky, spiritual, can be heard but not seen way. Inside the mansion is somehow pristinely kept, even in all of this wreckage that destroyed the rest of Hawkins. Mrs. Harrington would be proud of the intact decor and the spotless floors. Whatever those white particles were, which were slowly making it harder and harder for Billy to breath, were the only blemish, everything coated in at least an inch of the stuff.

Outside is another story entirely. The lawn is ripped up, the chairs and lawn ornaments are mangled or missing, and the pool is completely drained, in the place of water gangly vines and more sticky decomposition than he’d seen in even the most remote areas.

He remembers Barbara Holland. He remembers Steve saying she drowned accidentally in his pool when she got brought up. He remembers the fear in his eyes when they were out at night, the way those honey browns would scan the treeline for danger, on his worst days drawing the curtains and refusing to go out back for anything.

He starts to wonder, if maybe the vines mark the victims. His house, Steve’s pool, both completely overtaken. Heather’s house is only a street over from Steve’s, but he can’t will himself to go in there and see if his theory is correct. Same goes for the steelworks, or the community pool.

But, nice as it was, Steve’s house didn't last long as a refuge. He only stays there for a couple of weeks before he again has to grab what he can and abandon it, the dogs having followed him and cut another chunk out of his territory. There was a pack of them wandering the yard, a couple breaking off to charge at the back doors, and Billy has to decide between holing himself up in that hideously wallpapered room that had come to be another definition of home, and running for his damn life.

He chose the latter, scaling the shed roof from the upstairs bathroom window just as the monsters break the glass double doors. Down the rattling drain pipes he prayed would hold his weight, and into the shed to regroup. He’d gotten out with almost nothing of Steve’s, not that polo shirts and nike shoes were great for apocalyptic survival gear, but he wished he could’ve nabbed anything more, a picture, a coat, a bag, at least something he could use.

All he made out with though was a red bandana, which, if he ever gets out of this hell, he has to ask Steve about that, no way his reformed prep was freaky enough to walk around Hawkins advertising his preference for taking it elbow deep, an empty notebook, a pair of scissors as a just in case weapon, and an old banged up Bic which was out of fluid anyways.

The bandanas alright, paisleys not his pattern of choice and he’s more of a navy blue and grey guy than red, but it’d do well enough to keep that nasty shit in the air out of his lungs. Everything else he grabbed is basically useless to him though, so he scours the shed instead, sneaking in through the back door with a sharp eye on where the dogs broke into Steve’s.

In there he gets a little better of a haul, most of it still just junk he can repurpose for tending injuries, but on the back wall, held up by a barely standing shelf, is the golden find, a machete the length of his arm. Brand new and sharpened, a little worn from the rot but clearly never used, the Harrington’s had a gardener to trim back the branches, and everything in here was just for show so Mr. Harrington wouldn’t feel emasculated by not doing any work but answering phone calls and yelling at underpaid workers anyways, so Billy grabs it, finally having more than an old mower blade and a collection of knives from decorative to army to kitchen, most of which were all too small and almost got his arm torn off.

It’s that machine he’d stumbled upon that bittersweet day that he carries now, dripping with the oozing blood of one of the dogs, slightly bent now because another got it between its teeth and more dull from cutting through rubbery skin. The damn thing has saved his life though, many times over as the territories shift again in quick, unpredictable cycles, this last time ending with him cornered in the hospital's courtyard.

He was over there raiding for bandaging and medicine, anything that might help in the long run, but of course, it would have to come in handy just a little sooner, silly Billy for thinking about the future, because the monsters find him.

Thankfully, none of them actually get him, though one is particularly disgusting, it’s head, for lack of a more delicate way to put it, basically explodes when he stabs through it, another damn pair of his jeans getting ruined by the sticky, reddish spatter. The only worry he has time for before he has to kill, or scare off in most cases, the rest of the dogs that step forward, is the damned stain.

There aren’t too many, and those whose brains aren’t dripping off of his weapon, or as annoying as it is, his clothes, run off quickly, leaving Billy himself to move on.

First Cherry Lane, then Steve’s, and now the hospital. Guess it’s time to fucking leave again.

Hawkins is deceptively big for a country bumpkins paradise. The town and its shops and the surrounding neighborhoods only make up some half of the city, even he used to live on the edges of the civilized part, the rest of town stretching on for miles and miles of rural farmland, a couple of houses here and there the deeper you get into the country.

He’d never been over that way except maybe once when Max flipped the map upside down and they got lost on the way to Cherry for the first. That wasn’t much help now, but he was otherwise out of options. It was getting lost in the woods trying to find the more hidden houses, or it was being dinner for the dogs, which he could still hear chittering somewhere nearby, regrouping for the next attack probably.

The decision isn’t hard for Billy. He grabs whatever he’s salvaged and just bolts, bandana mask around his neck, machete in the bag on his back so he doesn’t cut himself up and make all this surviving for nothing, just getting the hell out of there before they decide they want to fight him again.

Because frankly, after as long as it’s been, his energy is getting low. He doesn’t know what he’s surviving for anymore, let alone if he’s going to be able to for much longer. His lung capacity is getting lower by the day, he’s got old wounds that won’t heal. The dogs probably aren’t too far from finishing him off if he gets attacked too many more times, so he’s just not chancing it.

Billy runs and he runs, coughing up a little blood in the process, until he ends up in a neighborhood he’s never seen before. Right now, that’s good news, so he slows his pace and takes his machete back out, just in case he let his guard down too soon.

Over here it’s a little brighter, a little less destroyed maybe, but still not right. Houses still slump and there are still pulsing vines all over, the roads still dusted with toxins. But there are a lot of houses, and that’s usually good news for avoiding the monsters.

As nice an area as it is, there's still something bigger drawing Billy to this area. Immediately he thinks back to the cemetery, how he’d felt and heard Steve that day, an event he’d come to think, after so long without a repeat feeling, had been only in his head, and he panics, for just a moment.

He knows he can’t let him slip by this time. Closing his eyes, he tries to pinpoint the feeling in his chest, like an arrow that can guide him in the direction of this, a compass pointing straight to his love.

Trusting that this feeling isn’t a warning, and he’s not about to walk into a nest, he follows it, slowly at first but with more fervor when he hears two echoing voices at the same time his chest clenches. He recognizes one as a vague face in his memory, Steve’s best friend, the one Heather never had the guts to tell about the crush she had on her, Robin maybe was her name. The other voice, well, the other voice is Steve’s.

They’re coming from a rotten duplex with no doors or windows. It looks a lot like a marked house, and he wonders if Robin knows she got a discount because the owner of the house was dead, melted into a monster that has tried to kill her along with the rest.

Approaching the house, he doesn’t know what to expect, if maybe they’ll be inside, or if this is just some delusion from a lack of oxygen to his brain. It doesn’t really matter. He steps up, careful to avoid rickety spots in he steps, and goes inside.

First, he leans his machete against the mushroom wall. There’s two reasons he never brings the weapons all the way in, first being that any mess he made in the house always had to be cleaned up by his step mother, so outside of the deepest throws of teenage rebellion, he always did what he could to minimize dirt in he house, and that included bringing a machete dripping with brains inside, even if there wasn't anyone around to see it, it was a habit built by thankful glances and praise, albeit somewhat backhanded, from his parents, so it was one he continued to honor.

Second, he harbors a deep respect for the houses he’s stayed in, despite the lack of doors on this one, each and every home he’s entered, no matter if it was for five minutes to steal some food or upwards of weeks where he slept there, these buildings were his shelter, and he feels the need to respect them, so, weapons stay at the front door. So far, the dogs haven’t followed him inside.

Looking around, he can tell Steve isn’t here either. The house is definitely abandoned just like the rest, and his heart sinks just a little, until he hears it again. A vague whisper that’s just barely audible to his ear.

He knows he’s in the right place. Every inch of him aches for Steve, but he can’t see him. He tries again to call out for him, an echo of the cemetery, “Steve? Can you hear me?”

No response comes.

“I don’t understand, why can’t you hear me?”

Things have gone silent on the other side, and Billy feels hopeless. A bout of frustration turns him around, the urge to forget about his stupid rules and just tear this house apart until he finds his Steve, curbed by seeing the wall phone.

He’s not stupid. He’s been over here long enough to realize he’s not in Hawkins, not the real one anyhow, that they, Steve and his family and everyone else are instead. The how and the why are another story entirely, but he has the basic understanding that he is alone, and they are parallel to him. Coexisting in different planes.

And if that is the case and he’s not on the worst trip of his life or just completely off his rocker, him and the dogs he kills an Agave and Pentheus type situation, then he can contact the other plane, say, by telephone even.

Luckily for him, Robin is forgetful, and there’s a list of numbers taped to the wall by the phone, only slightly worn with black gooey rot. He picks up the phone and listens to the emptiness, no dial tone in his ear. His hands are shaky as he slowly, hesitantly punches in the numbers, the three and the eight buttons getting monster blood on them from his fingers.

He raises the phone to his ear, the sound of his own ragged breathing echoing back in his ear as he waits for someone to answer, the line ringing, and ringing, and ringing.

#harringrove big bang 2021 #harringrove #billy x steve #steve harrington #billy hargrove #robin buckley #tw blood #ej writer #story by ej!#more tags on ao3

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psychewithwings · 3 years

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The Canary Pt. 2 Todoroki x F!

hi, this is pt 2 of my Shouto Todoroki x musician!reader where its a hot mess bc its kinda a love triangle with Enji????

Listen if ya missed pt 1... its here

TW: anything on my page is 18+, fuck outta here children and get some juice... manipulative relationships, messy love situation/ love triangle, hints at abusive relationship (between reader and her ex), her ex is also a drug addict... and a criminal... if you're wondering why this is such a messy fic its inspired by my watching the show euphoria...

and lemme address this: i know enji got a redemption arc but i wanted to write him with a similar vibe to nates dad from euphoria... to explore the manipulative sides of age gap relationships or relationships with clearly unbalanced power dynamics, my portrayal of him here is not what i would deem perfectly canon but more a vessel for the plot and ideas i want to explore with this piece and the complexities within it, now... that being said... i give you a long awaited pt 2 to The Canary

You watch as Shouto opens the front door and slips away into the night. The door closes and upon hearing the latch click you realize you’d been holding your breath. You exhale long and slow, still stunned by Shouto’s vulnerability. He worries he will never be able to save himself. Yes, you very much relate to that problem. There is something about Shouto that scares you, looking at him in person, it feels like he is someone you’d known forever, that you should have memories of him but the place in your mind that they should be, is blank.

How he feels about you is still incredibly unclear. You had been very aware of how carefully he watched you during your meal, his eyes seemingly tracking each of your movements and committing them to memory. Dinner was uncomfortable, you had wanted to hide and simultaneously prove yourself to him; that you were different from his idea of who you must be considering the circumstances. You knew what he thought; that you were just some shallow girl dating his dad for the money. But that wasn’t the truth.

Maybe someday you and Shouto would learn the truth of who the other was, your pasts, desires for the future, and maybe what that feeling was that made him seem so familiar. You could easily picture yourself trying to make him laugh on a warm spring day and you smile to yourself.

“Well I’m glad to see you smiling,” Enji remarks as he sits next to you on the couch. “Shouto can be a bit harsh, I apologize…” Enji murmurs and wraps his arm around you, a protective and comforting gesture. “No, it’s okay, it’s only natural for him to feel suspicious or confused,” you console. You pull your legs onto the couch and snuggle into the cushions.“I’ll talk to him about it,” he offers but you shake your head. “No, it’s really okay, I think he’s warming up to me.” Enji raises an eyebrow at you and smiles slightly. “Shouto doesn’t warm up to others easily… or at all,” he dismisses and kisses your cheek. You look up at him and blink. “I’m not worried ‘bout it… best to just give it time,” you smile. Enji gives you a single nod before his expression falls stern. “As much as I enjoy your optimism, we need to discuss Friday, I won’t be able to go and I don’t want you going alone.” You inhale slowly and hold your breath until you can figure out the words exactly.

“Enji, I told you, I can take care of myself for a night, I don't need you to watch over me every time I do a gig.” His gaze bores into yours, eyes piercing. “And I’ve asked you nicely not to play this weekend, you’re sophisticated now, a place like the Viper Lounge should be considered beneath you.” You move away from his touch, crossing your arms. While Enji is more supportive than anyone else about your music career, he still didn’t understand. He had been a hero, a place like The Viper is considered scummy in his circle but for you it’s the holy grail of performance venues. You explain time and time again and the words are becoming dull and grey with repetition. “It’s one of the best places for someone who’s looking to get scouted to perform… and the Viper invited me, that's a big deal.” Enji shifts to face you, “I know this feels big to you but it’s just a small set in a shitty dive.”

A part of you wanted to cry hearing those words, but the tears didn’t come. Just a small, sad smile. “There’s going to be talent scouts and agents there… just to see who was selected for the line up and I’m the closing set… It's a pretty big deal.”

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Shouto walks from the house, his head filled with thoughts of you. Your smile, your voice, that ridiculous yellow guitar. Your eyes, their inquisitive nature. He thinks back to his answer to your question, “I'm afraid that no matter how many people I save, that I’ll never be able to save myself.” He sighs, he can’t remember the last time he could be so honest with someone, let alone someone who was practically a stranger… But there is something about you that seems oddly familiar, though for what reason he felt this way was unclear.

He is about halfway to his car when he feels how light his pants pocket is. His phone… he must have left it inside somewhere, maybe the kitchen? He sighs, he doesn’t want to return to the house, to have to look at you again after being so honest. He had been bold in hopes of- well he isn’t all that sure why he had said something like that so openly, all he knows is the heat is creeping to his cheeks. He takes a breath before hesitantly opening the door. He collects himself, hoping you wont be able to see his embarrassment.

“I told you, there will be plenty more opportunities and you won't have to perform in such a dump,” he hears his fathers voice. He knows that voice… Shouto opens his mouth to call out but shuts it again hearing your icy tone, “you’re not listening... Enji.” Shouto’s eyebrows raise in surprise, you’re not as childish as he first thought. In fact, it seems you’re holding your own against his father in an argument of sorts. He hears Enji laugh mockingly, “I’m not listening? What about Kai?” There’s a long pause, the sound of cicadas filling Shouto’s ears while the name Kai tumbles around his mind. He knew that name from somewhere. “What about Kai?” your voice is so low he can barely hear it. “Is he going to be there?” Enji pushes. Your voice raises slightly in aggravation, “I don't know, I don't talk to Kai, I haven’t said a word to him since the day I left.” Enji scoffs, “Really? It’s suspicious that the Viper Lounge invites you to perform when you’re almost a year out of that scene, he has connections there, what if he’s just using this “gig” as an excuse to get close to you? C’mon y/n, use your head.” Enji’s tone is viciously condescending. Shouto clenches his jaw, waiting for your reply. “I’ve thought about that possibility, but it's an event to showcase new upcoming artists and I haven’t performed there solo before, so I don’t find it totally unbelievable they would ask me.” For once Enji has no rebuttal and you take that as your cue to continue. “Kai isn’t even in the line up… and even if he was, I’m going because this is important to me, this has nothing to do with him.”

Shouto couldn’t keep standing outside listening, he had to get his phone now. He briskly steps inside and shuts the door loudly behind him. “I left my phone,” he announces as he walks through the house to the kitchen. The silence that follows his interruption makes him worry you both figured out he had been listening, though perhaps you were both just embarrassed to be caught arguing. He finds his phone by the kitchen sink and pockets it quickly, before heading back towards the door. He nods towards you both before turning his back.

“Hey Shouto?” The sound of your voice stops him in his tracks. He shifts carefully to face you and sees your eyes glinting with mischief. “You own a hero agency right?” Shouto nods, watching carefully to see where you were going with this. “I’m sure then that you would have a hero capable of a simple bodyguard job, for just this little gig I’m doing on Friday, I know it’s last minute so if you don’t have anyone… I’ll be fine.” He had to play this carefully so as not to expose himself for eavesdropping. “Where’s the gig?” “The Viper Lounge,” Enji scoffs. His father must be furious that you’ve now involved a third party. If there was something Enji Todoroki hated, it was airing his dirty laundry. Shouto was careful not to laugh… you were far smarter than he initially gave you credit for.

“I’ve performed at the Viper before… tons of times-``''You have, but only with Kai Chisaki.” Your face tells Shouto that name hits a sore spot. Hearing his whole name sparks Shouto’s memory and he realises who Kai is. Kai Chisaki, an underground rapper… face tattoos and some nasty habits that earned him a hell of a rap sheet; burglary, assault, possession of unlicensed weapons, public indecency, drug counts too high to keep track of… He’d been arrested again a few months ago, but just like the last, he was bailed out and the charges were dismissed.

“But the Viper asked me to be a part of this gig for showing off upcoming talent… Enji’s just worried for me because he can't be there and my ex has a reputation- ``''That’s putting it lightly,” Enji interrupts, “he’s scum, deserves to rot in prison.” You rub your palms on your thighs and smile gently at Shouto. “I just think the situation would be more comfortable for everyone if I had some protection… Maybe you know of someone that could watch out for me for the night?”

Shouto resists the urge to volunteer, though the temptation of hearing your voice again is overwhelming. “Tch- as if I would trust any of the foolish heroes Shouto babysits to watch after you in that cesspool…” You gaze at Enji with big doe eyes, your body turning, hands inching towards his father’s legs. “You trust Shouto don’t you?” Enji pauses, before he sighs “I do.” You give him a winning smile, “then he’ll pick someone fit for the job.” Enji’s brow creases pensively, “Shouto,” he addresses. Shouto meets his father’s eyes, his heartbeat quickening as he realises what he’s about to ask. “What are your plans Friday? Could you take her?”

Shouto pretends to consider it, but really he counts the seconds until he can agree. He didn’t really know what it was about you that made him want to go with you so badly to this gig. It’s a separate part of himself that Shouto was unfamiliar with, a part of him that wasn’t thinking but desired only to know you… or understand you? There was just something about you. That was all he knew for sure. He nods, trying his best to hide his true feelings. “I could make arrangements to accompany y/n, as long as,” he looks at you, “you’re comfortable with that.” You hold out your hands defensively and shake your head, “if you have to move things around- you’re so busy- I-I don’t wanna cause you any trouble.” Shouto dismisses your statement, “it’s not trouble, I wouldn’t agree otherwise.”

You shift uncomfortably, “as long as you’re sure…” Shouto turns towards the door, facing forward as he leaves you with these words. “It’s important to you, right? Just accept my help.” He opens the door, and holds the frame tightly. He knows he shouldn’t, he hears the chorus of voices telling him not to look back, but it's that one part of him again that takes control and turns his head. He can’t help but smile slightly seeing your expression. Mouth parted and brow raised slightly in surprise. Beautiful.

“We’ll connect about details sometime during the week,” he confirms, “see you Friday.” He hears you call out your gratitude as he closes the door and makes for his car. He slides into the driver's seat and turns on the engine and looks towards his childhood home. The light from the windows casts a glow onto the grass. He finally exhales and with each new breath he gains more clarity about the situation. He shouldn’t care about you, he can’t let himself get any closer. He would help you with this gig and go back to avoiding family dinner like the plague. Shouto leans his head back into the seat and puts the car in reverse. He tries his best to shake off these thoughts but that little devil on his shoulder keeps cackling and whispering suggestions he chooses to immediately ignore.

He pulls out of the driveway and onto the road, pushing thoughts of you away and doing his best to find another topic to think about, something to distract him from the confusion of his swirling emotions. But as much as he tries, he can’t stop thinking about you.

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screamingatanemptyroom · 4 years

Text

Please Fix the Story! Pt 5- Fantasy World

Here is the next part! Starting out in a new world!

I made a master post with chapter links! - linked here

Enjoy!

_________________________

It was the emptiness between worlds.

I hung there, formless, empty, in total darkness as a slow sense of confusion washed over me. From what I could remember transfers between worlds had always been rapid. The longest I had ever spent in this nothingness had been a few seconds. But as seconds turned to minutes, and confusion grew into panic, I finally called out, surprised I could hear my own voice.

“Am I done?” Had this task of transferring between story worlds finally finished? Would I get my memories back? Go home?

There was a flash of joy at the thought, followed by an uneasy feeling as I thought about the person who had followed me the last two worlds.

Liam. Is he really waiting for me in the next one?

Before I could examine my thoughts or feelings too closely, however, words formed in the space in front of me, the bright blue letters glowing in the surrounding darkness.

Have you learned to accept you fate?

“Accept my fate?” I shook my head. “You mean that I’m destined to travel between worlds being useless and bitter side characters?”

You can go home. You can have everything back.

“Wait… I can?”

All you have to do is accept the destiny given to you.

What does that mean?!!I wanted to know who I was, I wanted to end this constant world hopping. But even as I prepared to accept, a severe stabbing pain filled my head. Something had been forgotten, something desperately important, but the harder I tried to catch it the further it fled. As I struggled I felt something deep within my soul rise up, and a single word was shouted instead of the agreement I had initially meant to give.

“NEVER!” It came out a snarl, filled with bitterness and rage, and overwhelming hatred and anger flooded my senses.

I couldn’t give up.

I WOULD NEVER give up.

Even if I wasn’t sure what that meant.

Very well. It was just silent text, but I could sense the disappointment behind them.

Then continue.

Before I could respond, the words faded, and I was in a new world.

_________________________

“Help me!” A young voice filled with fear called out.

I opened my eyes, blinking in the bright sunlight, taking in the world around me.

Trees. Massive trees, in every direction I could see. A thin film of sunlight passed through the thick canopy of leaves, illuminating the ground covered in flowers. Butterflies of every color flittered around me, moving frantically from bloom to bloom. A dense smell of grass mixed with a sweet aroma of the flowers around me filled the air. It was a paradise.

“HELP!” Hearing the voice call out again, I leapt to my feet, feeling oddly unbalanced.

Why do I feel so… small? Looking down at my hands, I saw that they were much smaller than any of my previous bodies, with chubby, childish fingers. My legs were short, the small toes of my bare feet buried in the grass in flowers. I wore a simple green smock that came to my knees, the dress hanging straight down over a flat chest.

I was a child.

Well… this is new.Before I could truly process the new body, I heard another scream of fear and ran towards it, trying to cope to the much shorter leg length than what I had previously taken for granted in the zombie world. As I passed between two large tree trunks, I skidded to a stop, gaping at the sight in front of me.

There was an elven child under attack.

He was about the same size as me, with pale skin, delicate features, and long pointed ears that poked through golden hair. A pair of bright green eyes, filled with tears and fear stared up at me. His small arms and legs flailed wildly trying to strike at the dark monster that pushed him to the ground.

I grabbed a branch on the ground, stumbling a bit from the weight and my lack of strength, and dragged it over. Screaming out, I swung the branch at the creature attacking the boy, knocking him several feet away.

The shadowy monster landed on its feet, turning towards me with a loud snarl. It had the vague form of a large wolf, but its entire being was made of darkness, the edges of its body blurred, as if it were something unnatural pushing against the edges of reality. From in between its black pointed fangs, a dark liquid dropped, burning the grass it touched. The only color that could be seen were its eyes, that were a startling shade of dark blue.

“Get behind me.” I snapped at the child, brandishing my makeshift weapon again.

He stared up at me silently, his eyes confused, his body frozen in place.

“Or you can just lay there and let the monster eat you. That works too I guess.” I felt sorry for the kid, but it wasn’t like I had time to coddle him.

At my sarcastic words he seemed to shake himself, rolling to his feet and stumbling behind me, just as the shadow creature pounced.

SMACK! The branch connected solidly with the creature’s head, the wood sinking into the shadow for the briefest moment before the monster was thrown back into a tree.

It growled softly, getting back to its feet. A slow trickle of blue blood ran from the wound, floating in the air and dissipating into nothingness.

“Bad shadow wolf! Go back to your home!” I held up the stick again, groaning. “Where’s a spray bottle when you need it?”

Before I could bemoan my lack of canine training tools, the creature lifted its head, seeming to hear some silent call. It pointed its jaws to the sky letting out an eerie howl, before leaping into the air and disappearing, leaving only the wreckage and dead plants as evidence that it had ever been there.

I sighed with relief, turning to the child behind me. “Are you okay?”

“You… you drove it off!” His eyes were wide with shock. “You saved me!”

“No big deal…”

“It was so scary.” He clenched his fists. “I was too weak. I couldn’t do anything.”

“Um… I wouldn’t really worry about…” Sensing a character development monologue coming, I desperately tried to interrupt.

He picked up a branch swinging it in the air with a fierce expression. “I swear on the graves of my parents, I will become stronger, someone who can defend the weak!” Looking over at me, he added. “You won’t have to worry anymore, I’ll protect you.”

“Weak? Seriously did you not just see me beat it up…”

“After all, I owe you my life.” He reached over and grabbed my hand enthusiastically. “So I’ll stay by your side until my debt is repaid.”

Uh oh. Adorable elf boy, dead parents, attacked by monsters and vows to grow stronger? My male lead senses are tingling. Better get away.

I smiled blandly, pulling my hand out of his grasp. “I was saving my own skin. You don’t owe me anything.”

“I do!” He put his hand to his heart and bowed. “I am K’lliean.”

There was an awkward silence.

Crap! I haven’t gotten the mission or the character’s memories yet. Well last time they let me rename my character… here’s hoping.

“My name is Blaire.”

“Belaire?”

Bright blue words formed in the air beside me.

You have chosen to select the character name “Belaire” All characters’ memories will be adjusted accordingly.

**** Confirm character name? ****

Slightly off… but … “Sure.”

Character name confirmed.

I stayed calm, even with the scrolling text in the sky that only I could see. This had happened before, in story worlds where a cellphones didn’t exist. The text simply appeared on the sky, responding to voice instead of typing.

Now that K’lliean’s memories had been properly adjusted, he had backed away, a look of disgust on his face.

“Stay away from me, you… you…” He glared at me. “Stupid girl!”

“How will I ever recover from that insult?” I held a hand up to my head. “But sure, I’m fine staying far away from you.” Always safer to not hang around the male lead type too much.

“I’m NEVER going to marry you, so don’t even think about it.”

“…” I shrugged. “Ok.” I’m already hating this plot, and I don’t even know it yet.

“I’m going to be a great warrior one day! I’m not some HELPER for a stupid priestess!”

“No one’s arguing with you, dude. Go live your life.”

K’llean stared at me for a few moments, and then looked away suddenly. “I mean… if you REALLY want to marry me, I’ll let you stay by my side.”

“Literally never asked for that.”

“But don’t forget that I don’t like you! I’m only marrying you to help save the forest.”

What in the world is this plot?!!!

I rubbed my forehead, a headache forming. “Don’t worry about it, kid. I’m sure there are other alternatives besides matrimony to save the forest. I’ll figure it out.”

“SHUT UP!” K’llean stomped his foot. “I’ll save this forest, and I won’t need the help from a stupid girl like you!” With that he ran off, leaving me behind to stare at his back in shock.

“Knew the trend of reasonable male leads wouldn’t last.” With a chuckle, I sat down with my back against an enormous tree trunk and spoke to the air around me. “Open mission.”

Words began forming in the air in front of me.

**** NEW WORLD: THE CHOSEN ONE ****

This world is an incomplete epic fantasy novel, centering on the heroine Stella. Stella was an average 21-year-old college student, until she was transported into a world of fantasy, swords and magic. Learning that her arrival was predicted by prophecy, and that she is the Chosen One who must save the world, she harnesses her newfound magical abilities and goes on a epic quest to defeat the Lord of Darkness.

“So far so good. Maybe she’ll be a fun heroine like last time…”

During her journey, Stella falls in love with a elven warrior named K’llean.

“CALLED IT! He’s totally the male lead!” I high fived myself, and then felt embarrassed at the lonely gesture.

K’llean returned her feelings, however, he was already married to the elven priestess, who was tasked with saving the forest by combining their light magic abilities. The high priestess, hurt by K’llean’s betrayal, initially tried to send away Stella, but instead, in a terrible battle against the dark forces, chose to sacrifice herself to save the Chosen One’s life.

“I have a bad feeling about that priestess character.”

This story was discontinued after the author quit the story, fed up with complaints from the readers. There was a huge backlash at the story’s treatment of the elven priestess, a fan favorite character. Additionally, very few readers supported the romance subplot between Stella and K’llean, given that it began in earnest while K’llean was still married. There was general complaint that Stella and K’llean never received any consequence for their betrayal of the loyal priestess, and that her death was simply to pave the way for the “Chosen One.” The story world was abandoned and left to be destroyed.

The author’s main regret is the sad fate of the elven priestess. To complete their wish and stabilize this world, please allow the elven priestess to live a long, happy life. For this mission to succeed, the world must still be saved from the Lord of Darkness without sacrificing the life of the priestess.

**** DO YOU ACCEPT THIS MISSION?****

“…” I stared at the words thoughtfully. “So I just have to find this priestess and make sure she doesn’t get married to the cheating idiot and lives happily without sacrificing her life for them?” My eyes narrowed. “I feel like there’s gotta be a catch. What if I say ‘no’?”

**** DO YOU ACCEPT THIS MISSION?****

The words appeared again. I wasn’t surprised. There was only ever one option.

“Yes.”

My brain was filled with a flood of information, foreign knowledge, memories and emotions belonging to my character. I closed my eyes, groaning with pain, my fist hitting the ground beside me over and over until the skin split, my blood staining the leaves and grass.

“Well… this sucks.” I knew there was going to be a catch, but when I figured it out, all I could do was smile bitterly at my new identity.I should have guessed.

I was the elven priestess.

_________________________

I leaned my head against the tree trunk, sorting through the new information, the rough bark digging into my scalp. A slow trickle of tears overflowed from my closed eyes, as I fought back the emotions that weren’t my own.

The priestess had truly loved K’llean.

She had known from an early age that she was to be a priestess. Her strong light magic, tested from birth, left her with no choice but to serve her people. Part of that role required her to marry an elf with strong magic, combining their powers to allow the forest to be protected. K’llean was one of many young elves that had been approved as a potential partner.

They met in a similar way that I had just experienced, with her saving his life from a shadow beast. From that moment on, they had spent every waking moment together, growing up side by side. And on the night of her adult ceremony at the age of eighteen, she had chosen him without hesitation.

I could feel her memories, of K’llean watching her with a loving gaze.

“I’ll stand by your side, even if no one else does. Forever.”

She had believed him, whole heartedly.

But he was the male lead, so his love, his true love, was only ever given to the heroine.

The Chosen One.

This world was made for her, for her happiness.

How could one priestess stand against it?

When she found them together… she tried to protest, tried to remind him of the love they had shared. But in the end, Stella had everything. Her people’s trust. Her husband’s love. Even her mission, to save the forest, the one she had trained her whole life to fulfill, had been handed over so easily.

She had nothing.

When she burned through her life force in the battle against the darkness, fueling a magic powerful enough to drive to out the dark creatures and purify the forest, she had felt nothing but a weary resignation.

She had fulfilled her task, protected her people.

But she had not left happily.

I covered my face with my hands, sobbing loudly with a pain I hadn’t experienced, but had become my own. It took some time, but eventually the storm passed. My throat was sore, my eyes sore, but my emotions slowly calmed down.

“I give you…us… a happy life.” I felt a sense of completeness at the words, a almost inaudible relieved sigh in my ear.

Shaking my head, I stood up, stretching with a groan. According to my memories, this character should be about eight years old.

I had already met K’llean. It was probably for the best. If I had the memories I had now, I might not have saved him, child or no.

His cold, careless eyes as he watched his wife sacrifice her life to protect his lover and himself was still fixed firmly in my mind. I wasn’t too happy about it.

The main issue was that I needed to be able to protect the forest, and that would be difficult to accomplish without either burning up my life force or combining my magic with another light magic elf… and K’llean had the strongest magic.

No way in hell am I marrying that guy. My thoughts strayed briefly to the man who had planned our wedding in the last world, wondering if I would see him again, before I reigned them in firmly. So I just need to be powerful enough that I don’t need the cheater’s help. He can run off and romance the heroine to his heart’s content. I’m going to be the greatest light magic wielder this world has ever seen!

I rubbed my hands together, feeling excited. This was my first magic world, and I was starting out as a child, meaning I got to learn from the start. Elves in this world aged similarly to humans, which gave me about 10 years to prepare for the large scale battle against the darkness. Magic lessons should begin at age ten, but it shouldn’t be too hard to get them to start early.

Magical powers, here I come!

A villainous laugh filled the air, completely out of place in the beautiful elven forest.

_________________________

“You’re too young.” The Elven leader’s lined face showed his concern as he shook his head at me. “It’s good to be eager, but you should enjoy the freedom and childhood you have before you’re forced to spend all your time studying.”

I glanced off to the side, where a group of elven children were playing. K’llean could be seen in the middle of the group, swinging a branch, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“I’M THE GREATEST!”

Spare me a childhood with him.I smiled at the elder. “It is my duty, and my joy to work hard for the sake of our people. I have a sense that I need to start early to be able to protect our forest.”

The leader eyed me suspiciously. “You were given a prophecy?”

I kept my smile firmly in place. “Sure.” It’s not completely a lie. In a way, I do know what the future holds.“If I’m not powerful enough by the time I reach adulthood. I will die, and the forest will be in grave danger.”

No need to mention the Chosen One for now. Don’t want them skimping on the training resources.

I struggled to keep my thoughts from showing on my face. The elder had been one of many who had supported my character whole-heartedly... at least until the heroine had shown up. Then he had cast her aside just as quickly.

While still expecting her to be willing to die to protect him and his people.

This life will be different from hers. I’ll give them no choice but to want to stay on my good side.

Perhaps something in my tone or my gaze convinced the older elf. He sighed quietly, patting my head. “Very well. I hope you don’t regret this decision. Once you start, you can’t quit halfway, even if you want to go out and play with the other children.”

I again looked off at the group of young elves. K’llean was squatting over a boy he had just knocked down, farting in the other child’s face while yelling. “YIELD TO THE MIGHTY ELVEN WARRIOR!”

I turned back to the elder. “I am so sure. You have no idea how sure I am.”

“Then let’s begin.”

#writing #please fix the story #fantasy world #fantasy #magic #world hopping

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ciarapsychedelic · 3 years

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Ciara why do you smoke pot?

- I wake up really sad some days. Like some days it's really hard for me to desire to get up and out of bed and "do" things, small general things, let alone big life things or daily life requisites! And inhaling that smell....I'll admit it totally, the whole ritual of weed, even dab culture, I love it! Breaking, grinding, scooping things into devices, beautiful, artistic glass pieces, to smoke it and get a head change, yea, wow, I'm into it! Muchly satisfies my oral fixation and figity tendencies, with a mellow psychological effect. Weed makes me feel happier some days. The whole thing brings small joys into my life daily. Other things do too....you have to keep a balance always! Over consumption of anything, or it being my only coping mechanism, the singular thing I turn to for relief to do life, would be unbalanced. Everything works in tandem together. Mind, body, spirit....I'm working on leveling up more in the mind and body departments in order to really do deeper spiritual work. It feels like I've hit a plateau there, I'm also completely out of whack and working on striking a much needed balance... Spirit is where I've spent most of my time and dedicated a lot of my mental explorations and energy, even my purely academic pursuits have always ended up in the humanities. It's just who I am. Always searching and asking questions of ourselves...I believe in order to go any further in my spiritual pursuits I need to make a solid af foundation to return to because this shit isn't easy, as many who take it upon themselves to dabble deeper into their subconscious than say, maybe their mothers and fathers have before them, find out along the path. I forget exactly why we brought this all up. Maybe it's because sometimes I feel guilty for being a weed smoker. I grew up with DARE, and Jesus ha. I never really got involved in hard drug use..I think I got really lucky. Anytime I felt pain, I was always so curious about it. I think a lot of people want to numb pain out, especially when you're young... It's the first time it comes, how would we know to sit with it? Especially when you don't have anybody giving you a good example of how to do it...in positive, effective ways. I'm just painting a picture here...so yes, I think I got really lucky that weed worked for me that way it did. It helped me become more meditative. It helped me find out things about myself. But it has always been really hush hush for the most part. People who didn't understand it gave me alot of shit for it back in the 2000s. Ha wow, it's crazy that that was 20 years ago now! And weed has gotten so mainstreamed since. It's more socially acceptable and on its way to full national legalization, fuck yeah. I think all of this is positive. What I'm getting at is that I have some internalized shame around needing a medicine daily to enjoy my life more, even if it's not the singular thing that I turn to.... and I shouldn't feel that way. I'm done justifying it. Even though this whole conversation is me justifying it ha. Life can be so beautiful, we shouldn't beat people down for when they say, hey this helps me do human things everyday better, be that people who are sick with addiction or taking behavioral meds...we should be celebrating you advocating for yourself and trying to survive in this really fucked up place that can sometimes be the world we live in right now. There's no shame in any of it. Because we're all just humans trying to get by and we all get stuck, we all fall on hard times. We shouldn't shame people for needing help but rather build each other back up stronger and all the better for asking for help doing it.

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roseclouds-writes · 3 years

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In the Frosty Air ⛸️

Summary: Lance McClain is impossible to say no to; which is probably why Keith is spending Christmas Eve humiliating himself at their local ice rink.

Inspired by the ‘ice skating’ prompt from @monthlyklance‘s Klancemas prompt list!

Read it on AO3 here!

It was Christmas Eve, and instead of being huddled up in front of a warm fire, Keith stood shivering in a parking lot, waiting.

Strings of lights twinkled in the distance, hanging lazily across the pop-up ice rink that was situated outside the main entrance to the nearby mall, forcing angry shoppers to find another place to park.

Since it first arrived at the mall, Lance had been dancing in excitement at the thought of visiting, but the holiday season proved to be unfairly hectic for his ice skating plans. Both Pidge and Hunk were on holiday with their families, leaving Keith to receive the text that had urged him here tonight.

The ice rink would be packing itself up and moving on tomorrow, and so in spite of himself, Keith had reluctantly agreed to thrust himself into the cold December wind and risk his entire dignity on the ice purely for Lance’s enjoyment.

“Keith!”

The other bounded towards him, not hesitating to wrap him in a hasty embrace. His gloved hands found the back of Keith’s neck, sending a shiver up his spine as they dusted softly over the exposed skin.

Lance pulled back, smiling broadly even as he clasped his hands together to keep them from freezing up. “Man, I can’t wait to get back on the ice,” he said, beaming. “You ready to go?”

Keith couldn’t have been less ready to go. He’d never been ice skating before; hell, he’d never even been roller skating before. Leaving his balance in the hands of a decade-old pair of hire skates was terrifying, and having those hire skates betray him and send him plummeting onto his ass in front of Lance, no less? Mortifying.

Still, he nodded his way towards his demise – surely it couldn’t be that hard.

***

It was.

Even attempting to put the skates on was proving difficult for Keith, who was quickly distracted at the sight of Lance who was now towering over him with the help of the blades beneath his feet.

He could practically feel his legs wobbling and he hadn’t even gotten up yet. Taking his sweet time to tie the laces of his second skate, Keith pondered how long he could stall by pretending he had a keen interest in sitting down, but he quickly faltered at Lance’s sudden presence inches away from his face.

He quirked a brow at the mess of laces in Keith’s hands. “You managing okay over here, buddy?”

“Yes.” No.

Lance bobbed down with ease to finish lacing Keith’s skates for him. “You have them way too loose, man. It's like you want to fall over or something.”

Or something, preferably. Still, no matter how tightly Lance managed to tie them, Keith was still sure his ass would be doomed to meet the icy floor at some point.

“So, are you more of an ice hockey kind of guy,” Lance quizzed, “or are you gonna surprise me with some triple axel spins out there?” There was a lingering smirk on his lips.

“I...” He was expected to spin? “Yeah, uh, totally,” he said, opting to ignore the crack in his voice. God, he was about a second away from outing himself as an ice-virgin.

Lance lifted himself back up with a hearty laugh, seemingly satisfied with his quick lacework and the growing blush on Keith’s cheeks. “Alright, come on, grandma,” he said finally, offering an arm for Keith to take.

Keith snapped his previously agape mouth shut. “I can get up myself.”

“Uh-huh,” Lance hummed, “you probably can with your walking stick, but I’m not waiting forty-seven years for that to happen.”

Keith grumbled to himself, averting his eyes from the outheld arm that spread his already prominent flush down the length of his neck.

“Come on, dude,” Lance said, “it’s pretty obvious it’s your first time, so let go of your pride for a second and let me hold you.”

“I don’t—” Keith huffed. It wasn’t as though he was going anywhere on his own, and settling for this sounded a bright side better than sliding all over the ice. “Fine.”

He snatched the hand out in front of him, pulling himself up impulsively fast and stumbling right back down onto the bench.

Lance barely repressed a snigger. “Cool your jets, Keith,” he said, chuckling and steadying Keith with his other hand. “Here.”

He hoisted Keith slowly up by his elbows, most definitely noting the way Keith’s knees immediately buckled inwards as he found himself entirely too wobbly for his own liking.

Lance grinned. “This is the easy part, hotshot, we’re not even on the ice yet.”

Keith stomached the urge to smush his hand into Lance’s face – he wasn’t losing the only form of support he had, even if it was embarrassing to be clinging to Lance as firmly as he was.

Lance watched him expectantly, looking between Keith’s eyes and his skates.

Keith scowled, meeting Lance’s eyes with feigned confidence. “I don’t know how to move,” he admitted.

Lance pursed his lips together to stop himself from laughing again at Keith’s expense. “For now, just walk.”

Right.

Keith was less than graceful, taking strangely raised steps towards his destination, but it wasn’t too much of an effort to get from the safety of the bench to the railing of the rink without the slipperiness of the ice hindering his movements.

“Now, you could hold onto the railing like a baby,” Lance began, nodding towards a group of young children who were doing just that, “or, you can hold onto me and join the big boys in the center,” he said with a waggle of his brows.

Keith glared at his support, then released a deep sigh. He supposed he would have to settle for the oncoming barrage of digs, too. “Just help me on, idiot.”

Lance bit back a grin and stepped onto the rink, turning so that they were facing each other. Great, as if his ice prowess wasn’t already intimidating, he was also going to show off and skate backwards.

He pulled Keith gently onto the ice, taking care to hold him at the small of his back while his other hand clasped tightly onto Keith’s.

“Alright, now you want to glide,” Lance instructed simply, as though Keith had any idea what that meant. “Like this,” he said, demonstrating the movement on the spot. “Push yourself gently forwards, and make sure you pick up your feet a little at the end of each glide.”

If Keith had never experienced the instability of a newborn giraffe, he had now. His legs flayed apart the moment he moved from his stationary position, skidding on the ice as his body fell backwards, only barely caught by Lance’s quick embrace.

“Woah, woah, keep your weight forward,” Lance said, inching his hand up Keith’s back to prop him back up. If the ice wasn’t enough to get Keith’s legs trembling, that certainly did it.

At this point, Keith was convinced he could have left his jacket at home, because the heat that shot through him at Lance’s touch was already making his forehead sweat against his bangs. Whatever. He could blame that and the rosy tint on his cheeks on the cold, right?

Pushing off slowly this time, he intertwined his fingers with Lance’s even as the thickness of their woolly gloves insisted that he didn’t. He half-expected a snarky comment, but Lance only tightened his own grip.

“That’s it!” He cried triumphantly. “That was good, Keith!”

By ‘good’ he assumed Lance had meant that it was impressive that Keith hadn’t tumbled over this time, but regardless, Keith kept a growing smile to himself as he found his balance.

“Now let’s see if you can overtake these third graders,” Lance mused, immediately receiving a light smack to the gut that wildly unbalanced Keith and forced him into a humiliating dance before sending him crashing down onto the horribly icy ground beneath him.

And Lance laughed, really laughed, snorting even as he carefully picked Keith back up onto his feet and kindly ignored the way that Keith was sporting more of a soft gaze than the glare he had intended.

“That was really something,” Lance managed through light giggles, allowing his hands to stray from Keith’s for a moment to brush frosted shavings from Keith’s now wet jeans. “Are you gonna call the Olympic scouting team, or should I?”

If anyone was getting scouted for the Olympics, it was Lance. That boy could perform a perfect triple-apple-whatever right here in the parking lot of their local mall and Keith wouldn’t even be surprised.

Ignoring the little girl who passed Keith with an obnoxious twirl and resisting the urge to send another swat to Lance’s stomach, Keith flicked stray hairs from his eyes with a shake of his head. “Would you just shut it and hold my damn hand?”

Lance narrowed his eyes, but his lips were stretched into a warm smile. “Pushy,” he said, linking their hands back together. “Better?”

Keith gave him a curt nod, pulling all his focus onto the ice they were ever so slowly moving across. Whether he appreciated the close contact for the safety or the fluttering feeling that Keith had grown acquainted with over the course of their friendship was irrelevant.

He was painfully aware that they looked the like the town’s newest couple on their first date, leaning close to each other, foreheads almost touching as Lance guided Keith forwards with little bouts of encouragement; but truthfully, he didn’t mind one bit.

“You know,” Lance said in a hushed voice, watching Keith’s slowly improving movements, “I think you might actually be getting the hang of this.”

“Just—” Keith wavered at the comment. “Don’t let go yet,” he muttered.

“Enjoying my company that much, huh?” Lance teased.

Yes.

***

The music that crackled out of the twenty-something-year-old sound system grew softer as night really set in. Most families had left by now, only a few couples and friends remaining on the rink.

"Oh man," Lance breathed as they dropped their speed, "lugging you around has me spent."

"Who's the grandma now?" Keith snickered under his breath.

"Oh, don't you even,” Lance warned, “I could drop you right here, right now."

As if to prove his point, Lance took his hand off Keith's back and moved up ahead of him, leaving about a foot between them and forcing Keith to stumble around until he managed to clutch onto the barrier.

Lance offered a smug applause. "Very smooth, Kogane."

“Get back here and help me off,” Keith said, “dealing with you all night has me spent, too.”

Lance gave a mock gasp but held out a helping hand to Keith, who took it quickly and let the other lead him back onto dry ground.

“Here, take a seat and unlace,” Lance instructed. “I’ll get us some water.”

Keith released a shaky breath as he settled onto the closest bench. His heartbeat was rattling against his chest and he had barely moved beyond a power walk (or skate) since they'd been out on the rink. In hindsight, Keith was exceptionally thankful for the fact that Pidge and Hunk hadn’t been available tonight; otherwise, he may very well have been teased out of existence a good twenty minutes ago.

Lance returned with two paper cups, handing one off to Keith who gulped it readily and set it down beside him.

“We should do this again sometime,” Lance said as he took a seat next to Keith. “I bet with another hour or two of lessons from yours truly, you’ll be whizzing and leaping all over the place.” There was an air of sarcasm to his voice, but Keith only laughed, tucking his hands between his thighs to stop them from so obviously shaking.

He met Lance’s eyes with a sheepish smile. “I’d like that.” And god, his voice came out so sickeningly sweet that it almost made him cringe.

Lance seemed to take in every feature of Keith’s embarrassing expression before turning his head away the moment a smile crept onto his lips.

“Yeah,” he agreed with a nod, turning back to Keith with a beautifully infuriating smirk. “I mean, I suppose you’re not the most insufferable student I’ve had.”

Keith nudged him in the ribs, relishing in the little yelp he earned in response.

He began to ramble about how Keith should ‘be thanking him’ and how he would ‘pay for that one,’ but Keith had almost entirely tuned out of his exaggerated monologue.

There was a light pink coloring to Lance’s cheeks and the tip of his nose, and Keith was fighting an incredible urge to fix the tiny flick of hair that was sitting across Lance’s eyebrow.

And then, he wasn’t sure what overcame him.

His hand grazed over Lance’s jaw, startling the other into silence.

Whatever Lance had been saying about attacking Keith with his expertly made snowballs or something of the like was now caught in his throat as he gazed, stunned, into Keith’s eyes; and Keith couldn’t settle anymore.

He smoothed his thumb over Lance’s skin, entranced by the way the boy’s blush grew at his touch. Then, leaning forward, he took in the subtle scent of peaches and strawberries before letting his lips press softly against the other’s.

It was chaste, yet fulfilling; so unimaginably fulfilling for Keith, who could only bring himself to lean back an inch or two, still wrapped up in all the warmth and sweetness that Lance carried with him.

For a moment, Keith wondered whether the icy wind had frozen Lance in place, but his lips released a heavy breath a moment later, his eyes wide with the surprise Keith should have seen coming.

What the hell was he thinking? Shiro wouldn’t be picking him up for at least another twenty minutes. Did he really expect to be able to survive an agonizing twenty minutes of rejection and disgust and—

Lance’s lips found his again quickly, pressing into them with purpose and engulfing Keith with that overwhelming scent that made his entire brain turn to water. He brought his hands up to cup Keith’s face, cooling his hot cheeks and making them burn up all at the same time.

As he pulled back ever so slightly, Keith could hardly ignore the way the lights around them looked so naturally a part of Lance's eyes. He was smiling back at Keith in a charming daze, laughing softly as his fingers moved to sweep Keith's hair back behind his ears, making his skin break out in pleasant tingles.

They each shuffled closer, sporting sheepish grins as they allowed their foreheads to fall against each other with a gentle thud.

“Merry Christmas, Keith.” His voice was barely a whisper, tickling against Keith's nose.

"Merry Christmas, Lance."

#klancemas #monthlyklance #klance #klance fic #keith x lance #vld keith #vld lance #keith kogane #lance mcclain #vld #my writing

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victorie552onepiecespeedrun · 3 years

Text

Reading One Piece pt 185: MONKEY FAMILY DRAMA GET POPCORN

Chapter 432

Thoughts:

- Ok, here we got nice list of ranks in the World Government. First go World Leaders and we have a food chain of officers. Handy :) (why are there Petty Officers as an official title???)

- So, according to the chart, Grandpa Garp The Vice-Admiral is fourth in the chain of command (Aokiji is 2nd or 3rd depending if he’s a Fleet or Land Admiral but I think Fleet so 2nd)

- You know what, I think I see the resemblance between Garp and Luffy :D It’s all in that jaw structure tho eyes and nose are a little similar too. Yeah, that tracks. Welcome to the family, Grandpa (lol)

- “Hero of the Marines”, huh? Big names in your family tree, Luffy. On the wrong side of the conflict too I may add but eh, details

- …dude, what

- Well, that explains how Luffy got so strong in the first place but Tough Love MUCH??? I was also under an impression Luffy was raised in a barn, what’s up with that

- “I trained you to be a strong marine!” “I always said I wanna be a pirate!” YESSSS FAMILY DRAMA

- Lol, Garp just called Shanks a Bad Influence :D I mean, I guess :D but it’s still hilarious

- AGHFJKSGADSKHS THEY FELL ASLEEP WHILE FIGHTING I LOVE MONKEY FAMILY

- That scolding is hilarious :D

- LORE ABOUT SHANKS EVERYBODY QUIET

- Four Emperors. Holy shit, I finally know what an Emperor is

- (I recognize Shanks and Whitebeard but who are the other two? Also shit, will Luffy have to fight Shanks for the title of The Pirate King? I mean, as I understand it, right now you can become a Pirate King only by finding One Piece so Technically fights for the title aren’t necessary buuut you also need to be strong enough to, you know, keep One Piece for yourself (nobody even knows what One Piece is, lol, maybe possibly probably assumed to be weapons tho) AND strong enough for Pirate World to accept you and your position. I’m sorry but fights seem inevitable. Thought I don’t think Shanks would have a problem with Luffy as a Pirate King per se so we may avoid THAT disaster. But Straw Hats will fight Whitebeard and the other two for sure)

- Ok, before we go further, what was Shanks doing in any proximity of the grandson of Vice-Admiral, like what. What are the odds

- “The “Marine Headquarters” and “Shichibukai” exist in order to counterbalance these four! Their power is so influential that should these “three powers” become unbalanced, the peace of the world would crumble.” Ok, 1) Thank you, Grandpa Garp, I understand One Piece politics now (not like after Five Elders explained it, Grandpa is clearly superior in that aspect) and 2) MORE POWER TO THE PEOPLE if 4 guys are so popular and influential they can crumble your government THEN THEY SHOULD (it’s yet to be determined if Emperors fight for the people. I know at least Shanks isn’t AGAINST people but is he WITH them? It’s not like he printed and handed out papers with his political agenda on them)

- (…Damn, that election messed me up. I’m from EUROPE)

- (And again, what a weak-ass power balance it is. Elder Stars and World Leaders are OLD. Whitebeard is SUPER SICK. IT WILL ALL FALL APART ANYWAY CAUSE THEY WILL DIE FROM NATURAL CAUSES. That system has NO future and NEEDS TO BE CHANGED. THE WAR IS COMING NO MATTER WHAT YOU PREACH GRANDPA GARP BECAUSE THE SYSTEM IS FLAWED)

- “I don’t really understand, but I’m happy to hear they’re fine. I miss them…” oh Luffy :D

- Lol, what a chain of events :D Zoro got lost while trying to get back to Straw Hats to warn them about marines and some guys tried to mug him so Zoro beat them up. After that, they had to show him a way back to his house. “And now they’re like “Sorry for almost mugging you” and he’s like “Don’t worry about it, thanks for the guidance!”. I love Zoro :D

Now, will he cause a commotion or what

- Huh?

- Looks like we got a fight here :D a friendly fight, clearly, go deck each other boys :D

- That marine (:D) can use Soru! (The thing Cp9 could do. It was for being faster I think but I won’t remember so whatever)

- “Chief Petty Officer! Petty Officer!” WHY ARE THOSE REAL RANKS IT’S TOO FUNNY

- “Long time no see” “Who are you?” lol

- It’s Coby!!! (from 2nd to like 7th chapter if you don’t remember) :D but yeah, he looks TOTALLY different. He looks like a teenager, not a child. Nice glow-up, keep it up, kiddo. (How old are you by the way because I kinda feel creepy right now)

- Luffy and Zoro can’t believe their eyes :D

- Why is Helmeppo looking kinda cool now? Still like an asshole but with a fashion sense? THAT HAIR WHAT’S WITH THE HAIR

- Ok, no, I’m not looking at them by myself, have a screenshot

- As marines go, they’re second only to Hina-san, like what’s up with that

- Lol, Zoro doesn’t remember Helmeppo

- “I’m the guy who almost drove you to the death penalty!!! Roronoa Zoro!!!” Nope, doesn’t ring a bell :D

- “I’m the idiot son who rode my father’s coat tails!” NOW THEY REMEMBER :D

- “Ok guys, enough. Go fix up that wall” Grandpa put the hole in, he will put the hole out :D with assistance :D

- Yeah, Luffy and him are super related :D

- “By the way, Luffy, I heard you met your dad” WHAT! WAS THAT BLACKBEARD GOD PLEASE NO NOOOOOOOO

- “I have a dad?” everyone has a dad, Luffy, come on. And you’re a shounen protagonist, you have like a Turbo Dad x20 Deluxe Edition

- (PLEASE NOT BLACKBEARD)

- (at least we know it’s definitely NOT Shanks now. I mean, I knew that, but I finally got to the part in canon where it’s said loud and clear)

- “Oh what, he didn’t introduce himself…? I heard he saw you off at Logue Town!” …give me a minute

- …it’s either Smoker. Or Dragon The Cult Guy. And it’s NOT Smoker.

- Oh Luffy. I’m so sorry

- (AT LEAST IT’S NOT BLACKBEARD)

- “Your father’s name is “Monkey D. Dragon”, The Revolutionary” why did they draw him like that, Cult Guy doesn’t deserve it

- (Monkey? Is he Garp’s son? Or did he took his wife’s name? Will I ever finish that chapter?)

- …What’s with marines reaction. Like chill guys

- “What’s up with this family!?” yeah, Vice-Admiral, Revolutionary, Future Pirate King… they don’t do things in halves, that Monkey Family

- Lol, Everyone’s panicking except Luffy and Zoro :D these two really don’t know anything :D just like me :D

- Ok Robin, hit us with knowledge

- Revolutionary Army, got it

- Ah. Ok.

- “Ack!!! Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything!!! Then nevermind about what I just said.” AHDJJDKJKAGDFSSGASDGFHSHK

*busy wheezing* GRANDPA FOR THE WIN

rOP 184 rOP 186

Dragon/Monkey family meta

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justreadingfics · 5 years

Text

Looking For a Heartbeat (14/?)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes X Reader

Series Summary: You and Bucky used to be in a relationship. Feelings were hurt, you left. It’s been two years and you’re back. You both will handle the reunion well, won’t you?

Chapter Summary: The truth is out there.

Word Count: 6.5k

Warnings for this chapter: angst, pregnancy stuff.

A/N: @suz-123 is my angel and I love her. And I love you all for the unconditional support even though I’m such a mess with updates. Thank you for your patience! I really hope you like this chapter, please, I love reading your rants! Links are ruining posts, you can find the masterlist link on my description.

“You’re one strong little bean, aren’t you?” You smile to your belly, caressing it lazily with your good hand while having the other wrapped in an orthosis, “You must’ve taken it from your daddy.”

A shuddering breath takes the place of your smile and your head falls back to the inclined hospital bed as reality sinks in. You’ve been regaining your senses in the last few minutes, and you’re starting to fully understand what has happened. They said you were in a car accident and hit your head, making you unconscious. Luckily the passenger from the other car was ok and so were you and your baby, despite some scratches and an injured wrist. Through your stupor you’ve managed to say you were pregnant and the hit might’ve gotten you confused, since you now remember they said something about a fiancée at some point.

“I’m sorry little one,” you whisper as a single teardrop slips from your eye. What a great mother you already are. You’ve promised to protect your baby, you’ve felt strong enough for it, inclusive to make yourself safe enough to take care of them and the first time you feel a little unbalanced you manage to let all of that behind and put your baby at risk. The thought of what could’ve happened makes your chest tight.

You still have a lot to work on yourself. It’s more than clear now.

A series of knocks on the door grabs your attention. “Yes?” you say, after wiping your cheek with the back of your hand.

“Hey,” Wanda’s head pops in from behind the door, “Can we come in?”

You can’t help but let out a small chuckle when three other heads find space in the doorframe to peek at you. Nat, Sam and Steve.

“Of course.” You wave them in.

Wanda and Nat take the lead in propping the door wide open and rushing to your sides, "How are you feeling?" Nat looks down at you, carefully sitting on a small space beside you on the bed, the crinkle between her eyebrows an expression of her concern.

“I’m ok, thanks.” You nod at her and then at a just as apprehensive Wanda, who places her hand over your right one, which hasn’t been affected by the accident.

“You scared the hell out of us, darling.” Wanda squeezes your hand gently.

“I scared myself, to be honest,” You admit, giving her a knowing look, before turning your face ahead to see your two other visitors standing by the end of the bed.

Your eyes narrow at the sight. Steve is using one hand to support his elbow as the other he uses to cover his mouth. His brows are furrowed as he looks at you, seemingly on the verge of tears. At his side, Sam has his arms crossed in front of his chest and he’s barely holding back a smile on his face.

“Ahm… hello, guys?” You tilt your head at them as your eyes narrow further.

“I fucking knew it,” Steve blurts out, as he swings his arm to the side with the palm turned up, uncovering his mouth and revealing a watery smile.

You almost jump in the bed when Sam lets out a full laugh, clapping his hands. Raising your both eyebrows, you turn to Nat for help.

“Oh yeah,” she says nonchalantly, “The doctor totally spilled the beans and the word about our little peanut is out.” Nat smiles, tapping fondly your belly.

“What?” You yelp, snapping your face back at Steve and Sam and catching the smiles still unyielding on their faces.

“To be honest, for me it was just a confirmation,” Steve fills his lungs with pride, “No one seems that sick around my cologne and you had never not drunk whiskey in a party before.”

You gulp down, entirely unprepared to deal with more people knowing about your pregnancy. Despite the feeling of not having to keep a secret all the time being liberating and the happiness plastered on Steve and Sam’s reactions being nothing other than heartwarming, there’s still so much to think about, to consider…

In a second, both of them take Wanda’s and Nat’s places, positioning themselves on each side of you, “Are you and the peanut ok? How far are we?” Sam asks and the endearment on his words is enough for you to let any worries aside.

You allow a huge grin on your face, “We’re just fine and on our 14th week.” You turn to a clearly emotional Steve as your lips curl down, before continuing, “I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell you guys. I was just… waiting, I guess.” You avoid getting into more details at that moment.

"Don't worry," Steve shakes his head, "We're just glad the two of you are ok."

He places his hand on your shoulder and you lean your cheek over it, accepting the comfort of his words and gentle touch.

"Hey," Sam catches your attention, "How did it happen?" He nods towards your few injuries.

"It seems like I overran a red light." You shrug.

"They told us that, but...Y/n, you're the best driver I know, something must've happened to make you take a slip like that." He crosses his arms again, tilting his head.

You don’t know how to answer. You were certainly emotionally distressed and not thinking clearly. You know that under normal circumstances you would never let that happen. But telling them that would mean you would have to tell all about the conversation you had a few minutes before the accident, and God knows how much you don’t want any more drama…

“Come on... It’s not the time right now. We can talk about this later.” Wanda says, cutting through the silence your lack of response caused.

While everyone’s attention is on you, your eyes meet Wanda’s and you see it in the way she’s looking intently at you, keeping her jaw tight if to hold back what’s on her mind. She knows… if she’s seen it by accident or not, you wouldn’t know, but you aim a thankful look at her.

"How did you guys find out I was here?" You asked, breaking the silence, hopefully turning the subject towards a different direction.

It doesn’t slip from your attention when Steve and Sam shift on their feet, while Wanda and Nat exchange glances.

"Do you know who your emergency contact is?" Steve bites his lips and places his hand into his pockets.

Your eyes narrow, trying to remember when was the last time you even thought about that…

Oh shit.

You freeze, staring at the girls with wide eyes.

"The hospital called Bucky.” Nat purses her lips. “And Anna called Steve while they drove here from the airport. Apparently they were going on a trip."

"He's here?" You whisper, already feeling your body shrinking into yourself.

"He was.” Steve answered, “He said he was your fiancé to get info on you." He adds with a smirk.

Oh…you don’t ignore the jump of your heart at the information, but you have to focus on breathing…does that mean he-

"That's how the doctor spilled the beans.” Wanda says, nodding as she shares a knowing look with you. “He told Bucky you and your baby were fine."

The ice cold rush hits your spine like a bomb before waving down your whole body. “Oh, God,” you let out a whisper as your hand grips on the sheets beside you.

He knows. He knows. He knows…

The thought repeats inside your mind at the same rhythm of your thundering heart, as you avoid looking at anyone, trying to not give away how helpless Bucky knowing makes you feel. That’s not how you wanted for him to find out about your baby. Not in the slightest.

You listen to Sam saying Bucky got static staring at the doctor like he was from mars or something like it and then he just left… Anna on his toes. Steve tried to call him, but he didn’t answer.

"Y/N…” Steve speaks more sternly and you look up at him, seeing his equally stern eyes, which could, even like this, express a deep sympathy the way only Steve could, “He’s the father, isn’t he?”

You breathe in harshly and blink a few times, letting the inevitable question sink in. Before you have time to answer in anyway, a soft knock comes from the door, which catches everyone’s attention, but Steve’s, whose gaze remains stuck on you. Trying to ignore it, you watch as Nat walks to the door and opens it. As the door is opened towards you, all you see is her devilish little smirk at the one behind it.

“H-hi, can I come in?”

You smile at the familiar voice.

Natasha nods and step aside to give room to Harry, who, as soon as he steps in with his Harry Potter t-shirt and spots you,he makes a beeline towards you. But when he glimpses Steve and Sam at your sides he halts at the end of the bed, almost tripping on his feet right beside Wanda. She holds back a chuckle and so do you.

“Hey, how are you?

Your grin goes bigger, “I’m fine, Harry. Thanks for coming all the way here. How did you find out?” Your forehead creases.

“Oh, ahm, Blac-, uh, your friend Natasha,” He points his thumb back at her, “She called me through your phone and told me what happened.” He clears his throat, adjusting his glasses on his nose, before timidly waving, “Hey, everyone,” He looks at Steve, “Cap-Captain.” He nods.

Steve nods back with a small smile, while everyone waves their hellos.

“Oh yeah,” Natasha moves her shoulder away from the door, before sashaying her hips towards you, “I got your phone and there were zillions of calls from this one,” She winked at Harry, whose ears are about to explode in red, as she takes your phone from her pocket and hands it to you, “So I called him back.”

You are not about to ask how she got your phone, but you are thankful she called Harry. You realize just now how, without you even noticing, he’s become a very important support system to you.

“Ok, we should go now,” Wanda claps her hands, sauntering past Sam to give you a kiss on the top of your head, “We’re already working on your transfer to the Tower’s med bay,” She smiles down at you, “But they said it’s another day of observation, tops, and you’re good.”

“Oh, thank God,” you breathe, “Thanks, Wands.”

“We’re coming to get you in a few,” Sam adds, winking at you.

After winking back at him, you turn to Steve, “We’ll talk another time, I promise.” You press your lips together.

He nods with a small smile, before leaning over to give a kiss on the cheek, “Don’t worry. I’m just so happy for you,” he whispers before moving away.

Natasha is already by the door when she blows you a kiss. They all say their goodbyes to Harry and you wonder if he’ll ever lose the dumbstruck expression at their presence.

With your friends out of the room you turn your gaze to Harry, who moves closer to you, standing by your side.

“Ugh, I keep forgetting you’re an Avenger,” He puffs, crossing his arms and nodding towards the door.

You laugh softly, before casting your eyes down and biting your cheek.

“Are you really ok?” He takes a step closer, his head angling to the side as he looks down at you.

You suck in a breath, “It depends,” you look up at him, feeling your eyes as tired as the rest of you, “Physically, yeah.” You shrug.

“What happened?” He asks, pulling a chair to sit next to your bed. The genuine concern on his tone warming your restless heart at least at bit.

“He knows I’m pregnant…Bucky.” The words burst out of you, “The doctor told him.” You pant.

“Oh… wait? Is he here?”

“Was… picture that,” you snort, “he’s still my emergency contact.”

“Shit,” he grimaces, “But hey, at least it’s out there… You’ve been saying you couldn’t handle the secrecy anymore.” He tilts his chin to the side as he offers an attempt of consolation.

“Yeah… I have been saying that, haven’t I?” You mumble, staring ahead.

“What are you gonna do?” Harry tentative asked, breaking through the small moment of silence.

“I don’t know…” You answer with a shrug before turning to him again, “He just ran away when he found out.” You feel your jaw tensing, “You know… He… Bucky deserves to be happy. I want him to be happy.” You state matter-of-factly, “Me and the baby? I’m not sure we’re the best for him right now…” You place your hand over your belly, turning your gaze away as your conversation with Anna replays in your head. It kills you that you’ve caused him so much pain… He seems better now. Everyone says she’s helped him a lot…It crushes you there’s a possibility that you may get in the way of his happiness again…

When you look back at Harry his lips are a thin line, the corner of his mouth is twitching a bit and his eyes a little wider than normal. You sigh, that’s an expression you’re starting to be familiar with… when he really wants to say something but doesn’t know how.

“Say it.” You nod and indulge him with a small curl of your lips.

“Alright...” He moves on his seat, closer to you, as he rests his elbows on his thighs, “I can’t really speak for you and him, but… God, I think about when I found out about my kids. Me and Lisa were in our honeymoon.”

Your eyebrows pull a bit closer as you tip your head, offering him his full attention. You didn’t know that. Despite spending a lot of time with him the last few days he hadn’t spoken about his wife that much.

“We were just starting our life as a married couple, she had just gotten the job she’s been fighting so hard for so long and the last thing on our minds were kids.” His jaw tightens, “We cried in bed together the whole night. And no, it wasn’t happy tears.” He chuckles softly and shakes his head, “She was a very religious woman and not for a second did she consider an abortion. As for me, I respected her decision even if I was terrified… God knows how damn scared I was…the closer I got to take care of something until then was a tamagotchi.”

In spite of his serious tone, you can’t help let out a small laugh and shake your head, which he follows.

“To be honest, I didn’t want to be a father at that moment. I wasn’t ready and I didn’t want it.” He admits.

“What happened then?” You ask.

“We went to the first ultrasound. At first I was unimpressed by the smudge on the screen,” He makes a face, “I couldn’t see the appeal…” Before he continues, you catch the glint softening his eyes, as the memory flashes in his mind, “But then, their little heartbeats resounded through the room… fast …furiously.” A wide grin spread across his face, “That was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard and I caught my own heart in my throat.”

You can’t help but smile at the sincere love he pours out with his words as you remember your own first time with the heartbeat of your little one.

“They came in two and they took my breath and my heart away.” Harry sighs “They still do… Most times literally. Try to go to the mall with two 3 year old little devils under a sugar rush…” His eyes widen comically.

Laughing, you reach out and squeezes his hand, “I get it.” You say tenderly, “It’s been the same for me.”

“What I mean is, becoming a parent was life changing for me, even if I wasn’t ready, or even wanted that when it happened... And you say it’s been the same for you… You know Bucky way better than I do. Maybe better than anyone…Do you think he would want to be kept out of it?” Despite the challenging words, his tone is nothing but fond and caring. “Do you want to keep him out of it?”

Do you? The question echoes in your mind as you gulp down. Is leaving Bucky out of the picture the right thing to do?

The questions keep hunting your thoughts on the next day, and then the next one and the day after that…

~~~

After you’re released from the hospital you remain in observation at the tower’s med bay for another day and then you’re completely released with a physiotherapy schedule for your wrist.

The very first thing you do is to set up a session with Heloise. You feel like a complete an utter failure for letting the accident happen. You’d been doing good, in control of your emotions and not being reckless in any way until that day and you just feel like you’ve made no progress at all, which Heloise quickly disagrees. She makes you see you had a breakdown episode triggered by a very emotional moment, yes, and it’s ok considering how good you’d been doing. All you have to do is to accept it and, in her words, to stop being such a “whining preggo” and carry on.

The team couldn’t have taken the news of your pregnancy better. It seems like the Avengers are truly a bunch of uncles and aunts just waiting for a kid to spoil. Tony is the most thrilled, you dare say, going as far as starting to reform an entire floor for you and your baby.

Your protests and attempts to tell him you’re not even sure if you’re staying at the tower fall on death ears.

Nobody mentions the fatherhood of the baby again, but you know the subject lingers in the air. You’re grateful they keep it that way. You really want to talk to Bucky first… eventually.

The next days you spend without a single word from Bucky. You don’t try to reach out either. You’re too scared to do so. You know he’s in town, cause Steve subtly gives you the information during dinner. But that’s all.

While the avoidance game you’ve grown so used to play right now doesn’t blow up in your face, like you know it will without a doubt in the world, you follow Heloise’s advice by heart and try to move on with your life.

That’s why you’re now full of bags in one hand, being followed by a just as packed Wanda to your room, after a tour through a series of maternity shops. You couldn’t help yourself and visited a few baby shops, too. With the secrecy gone, it’s the first time you buy something for your baby and it’s been more fun than you ever imagined.

“I can’t believe how tiny this is,” Wanda gushes, sprawling one of the jumpsuits you’ve bought on your bed, where she’s sitting, after you get into your room and leave the many bags around the floor.

Sitting right next to it, you admire the small piece of fabric. It’s white, with little green hearts all over it. Beaming, you imagine your baby in it, wondering how they would look like...

“And these, oh my God, I can’t deal with these,” Wanda squeaks, pulling a micro pair of sneakers out of one of the bags.

Chuckling, you reach out and she hands them to you, “I can’t believe you convinced me to buy these... I doubt the baby will wear it more than once or even at all.” You shake your head, not resisting to bringing the tiny shoes to your nose and relishing at the adorable baby smell.

“Oh, you’re gonna need good shoes alright, it’s a super soldier’s kid after all, this baby will run marathons before we even know it-“ She pauses when she spots your smile falling, “Oh, honey…” She places a hand on your cheek.

Your head drops and you shrug, “He didn’t even call me…” You stare at the pair of sneakers on your lap. You hate you’re feeling like this. In the end, you were hoping he would want to talk to you, even if it were to yell at you, blame you for not telling him or saying he wanted nothing at all with you or your baby… it would kill you, but you would prefer that at the complete silence.

“Hey,’ Wanda lifts your chin with her finger, “Everything will be alright.” She gives you a sweet smile and despite you doubt it very much, she says it with so much conviction you smile back at her, letting her comforting words reach your heart.

At your request, Wanda hasn’t told anyone about what she saw in your mind of your conversation with Anna and hasn’t even touched the subject with you again. She did seem displeased about the subject, but she’s one of your sisters, of course she’s biased.

“I love you. You know that, right?” You say in a low,soft voice.

Her lips grow even wider, “Of course I do. And I know you’ll love me even more when head to the kitchen to grab us some sandwiches…. Nutella and peanut butter, how about that?” She wiggles her eyebrows.

Your mouth waters. The smartass little witch. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you’re reading my mind.” You eye her.

“I would never,” She gasped exaggeratedly and places her hand in her heart while getting up, “The things I have to endure in this tower… the accusations…so unfair…” She keeps her chant of faked outraged exclamations while swaggering to leave your room. Not without winking at you before closing the door.

You giggle quietly and shake your head at her antics. You let your back fall down to the mattress and sigh, beholding the little shoe in your hand. It truly is the cutest thing you’ve ever seen…

A few minutes later, a knock on the door makes you hold back a laugh and roll your eyes, ‘You better be knocking because you have my sandwiches in your glowing hands, Scarlet Witch.” You shout before you get up and run to the door, opening it at once.

You halt completely at the sight. It’s not Wanda.

Bucky is the one who stands before you, instead.

You suck in a breath as your heart runs up to your throat. If it’s a second, a minute or several of them you wouldn’t know. But you two spend a moment like this… frozen in time, staring at each other.

It doesn’t slip from your attention the knots on his hair as the locks falls around his face, the deep circles in his eyes, his even thicker and disheveled beard, the crumpled t-shirt…

Your heart shatters.

When your eyes look for his again, you notice they’re not focused on your face anymore. They’re dropped to your hand and you realize you’re still holding the baby sneakers. You instinctively tighten the grip on them.

His blue gaze meets yours one more time before you hear his husky voice, “Is it mine?”

The sting in your chest makes your whole body stiffened as your eyes shut down.

It's not a surprise he would ask that, you ́ve been imagining scenarios for this conversation in your mind the last few days and in every single one of them that specific question was said, and it is a fair question, you know it is. But in spite of you it hurts… a deafening and profound pain. Deep down this is not how you really wanted to first hear from him, unrealistic as the other option would be, this is not how you wanted it to go… You're tired, you realize, so damn tired, and you can ́t help the frustration, the anger bubbling in your chest as you snap your eyes open.

“Fuck you, Bucky.” You burst out through clenched teeth, pushing the door to close it.

“No, wait …” He stops you from shutting the door with his hand. “Please...I need… I need to talk.”

You study him and regard the plea plastered not only on his words but into his whole demeanour as he worries his bottom lip between his teeth and his darting eyes roam around your face.

Breathing in a long and hopefully calming intake of air, you step back, opening the door fully as you do so. He’s right. You two need to talk. No more delaying this.

He follows you to inside your room after taking in a deep breath for himself. As you take your seat on the end of your bed, you gesture to the armchair in front of you.

While he tentatively sits down, shoulders pulled together, you watch him glancing at the many bags on the floor, before his gaze turns to the little jumpsuit outspread over the sheets. As much as you try, you can’t read the expression on his face… You keep holding the little sneakers in your hand, as if they’re a shield to protect you from however this conversation goes.

“Yes,” you finally break the silence before he looks up at you with a frown, “It's yours.” You nod and can’t help the defensive tone to sweep into your voice.

His eyes shut and he hangs his head low, ‘I know, I know…” he mutters, sounding frustrated. You know him too well to understand the frustration is at himself when he raises his gaze back to you, “I knew it from the very first moment I found out… I don’t know why I asked that…” He looks apologetic.

You nod and the tenseness in your jaw is almost painful as the silence settles between you two and his hands clutch his thighs. Your throat hurts with unsaid words, but you hold yourself back, more for selfish reasons than to favor him. You’re not sure what to say just yet, what he wants to hear…

It’s almost a whisper when he speaks again, eyes bored into yours, “That night… when you called me,” he gulps down, “You said you had something important to tell me…” he falters, but he doesn’t really need to finish.

“Yes,” you purse your lips, swallowing back the emotions swelling in your throat, “I had just found out.”

The hurt twisting his features it’s like you’ve just stabbed him, “God,” his head falls down and he dips his fingers into his hair, supporting himself with his elbows on his legs, “I was such a fucking jerk.” He hisses.

The guilt burning your chest on how miserable he looks is stronger than any other of the many feelings inside you right now and you have to refrain from running to him and holding him tightly in your arms, “Bucky, I-“

“You should’ve said it anyway,” He snaps his head to you, eyes red with unshed tears and voice harsh with…anger, resentment. “You should’ve told me over the fucking phone anyway, instead of insisting we should meet in person-”

“You said you had no interest in hearing what I had to say.” The way you shout shuts him up, all your muscles stiff as a rock, “Not if it had anything to do with us,” your voice grows lower, almost weak. The warmth of a tear runs down unbidden over your cheek.

He keeps his mouth shut. Staring at you as his chest heaves.

“I know I could’ve handled it better.” You admit, looking down at the little shoe still in your hand, “But do you think it was easy for me? Hearing how you didn’t want anything to do with what I had to say when I had just found out about our- m-my baby?”

His up till now hardened expression softens and his gaze drops to the sneaker in your hand. Your heart pounds into your chest watching how he bites his trembling lips.

“I did try to tell you at Steve’s party, but-” You sigh, cutting yourself off as your shoulders falls. You don’t want this. You don’t wanna fight him. So you tell him exactly that, “I’m tired of this Bucky… This vicious cycle of us hurting each other, over and over… I really don’t wanna fight you.” You plead, succeeding on steadying your voice.

He reconnects his gaze to yours and you can see how hard he’s trying not to break down, making your chest even tighter. He nods once, “Me neither… I’m sorry.” His soft voice sounds crumbly.

You nod back, sweeping your tongue over your dry lips, “I’m sorry, too.”

“I- ahm- is everything ok with you? Both of you?” His voice is small but you can hear him as he looks down at your belly and fidget with his fingers, “You’re three months long, aren’t you?”

A small smile curls your lips, “Yes, we’re both fine.” You brush your belly with the hand wrapped into the orthosis, “Ahm… It’s counted in weeks nowadays, we’re getting into our 15th together.”

You love to see a small and brief smile twisting his lips as well. The heaviness from moments ago slowly leaving the air.

“The accident,” He frowns, “How did it happen? You’re the best driver I know.” He repeats Sam’s words.

“Oh,” the smile leaves your face, “I just… I got distracted,” You shrug, “Aparently; it happens a lot to pregnant women.” You purposely omit the part where you had an emotional break down after talking to his girlfriend. It’s really not the time, if there will ever be a time to talk about it.

He fixes his gaze on your face, studying you for a moment and you know he’s not really satisfied with your explanation, so you decide to move the subject to something you consider the most important thing at that moment.

“How are you feeling about all this, Bucky?” You ask with no hesitation, dying to know what’s really going through his mind.

His lips part at your question before he looks to the side. Breathing heavily, he uses the back of his hand to wipe a tear that finally escapes from his eye. “I-I don’t know Y/N… I don’t know if I can do this,” he murmurs without looking back at you.

Your stomach drops as you struggle to breathe properly. As much as you understand it can be hard on him, you can’t deny you hoped it would be for him as easy as it was for you to be happy about your pregnancy, despite all the doubts you do have. Instead, he’s a well of insecurities and uncertainties, looking miserable and ashamed to even look at you. God, you hate how vulnerable you feel right now.

A quiet “Oh,” is all that slips from your lips as you instinctively hold tightly the little sneaker, the one you kept secured in your hands this whole time, against your belly.

“It’s all so…I- I’ve never thought this would happen…” His voice is small as he keeps his face away from yours. “Especially not now… you and I, we-”

“Listen, Bucky.” You interrupt him, raising a hand.

His broken gaze meet yours once again and you bite your lip, almost faltering in what you have to say. But you have to, for him… for you, but mostly for your baby. You let the strength gather in your chest.

“I understand how new and unexpected this is…Trust me, it’s all the same for me. And yeah, I completely understand you need some time to think. I just need you to know that, if that’s what you want, I won’t keep you from being a father.”

He shifts in his seat at the word, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by you

“I couldn’t do that.” You continue, keeping your voice surprisingly firm, “Not to you and not to them.” You look down at your belly briefly, before fixing on him, “You have a choice, and whatever you decide you have my acceptance and support.”

You pause and he nods, casting his eyes down.

You sigh, getting to the point you’ve been pondering about all these days and finally decides it’s the right thing for him and all of you, “However, if you’re wondering if this baby will change anything between us, it will not. And I’m sure we’re on the same page here.”

He directs his full attention to you in close knit eyebrows.

You straighten up your posture, “If you want to be a part of this,” You nod down to your belly, “Our relationship will be restricted to this kid, and nothing else. Like you once said and now I agree: this love of ours. It ain’t good for us.” You shake your head, trying to ignore the lump growing in your throat as you say these words.

You’re surprised the mask you’ve put on your face hasn’t crumbled down yet and only hope he doesn’t notice how hard it is for you to say that. It’s not a lie. You truly realized that, despite the tremendous and unyielding love you will always feel for him, you two as a couple hasn’t worked and will never work. You’re finally agreeing with him, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy, not at all.

“Oh, I get it.” His expression is back on being hard as he speaks. Shoulders high and chest puffed, “You’re with that guy from Steve’s party... Harry, right?”

“What?” Your eyes narrow as you’re genuinely confused, not trusting in your ears.

“That’s why you’re telling me all this, you’re with that guy, aren’t you?” He challenges, with his chin up and folding his arms in front of his chest.

Your mouth parts in sheer disbelief, “Oh my God, Bucky...” you get up, dropping the little sneaker on the bed as you bring a hand to your forehead. You turn away from him, trying to breathe and calm down before you would punch the guy in the face, “See?” you briskly turn to him, throwing your arms to the air in exasperation. “We keep ourselves in this lingering loop of hurt, of anger... I need Peace, I need to focus on my baby right now, I don’t need this...”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He raises his hands in a sign of peace, “I’m just... being dumb, I guess. I’m sorry. I’m a fucking mess. It’s... It’s all too much.” He runs his hand over his face, squeezing his eyes shut.

Staring down at him, you take another calming sigh. You really don’t want to fight him anymore. Stepping closer, you kneel down in front of him, placing each of your hands on the arms of the chair. As he holds your gaze, you catch the twitching bone on his jaw.

“Listen...” You say softly, “I’m not with him, or anyone else.” You shake your head…Despite everything, the idea of being with anyone else is still unthinkable to you, “I don’t want a relationship right now. I need to be on my own... me and my baby.”

He remains quiet, just listening to you. Your lighter tone doing little to make his expression lose the hardness.

“And you…” You continue, “You need time to think about all of this, if you want a part in this or not and you need…” You breathe out, “You need Anna.”

His eyes widened for a second before he blinks a number of times. Lips parted slightly, as the hardness on his face vanishes.

“I remember when I first saw you with her,” You force a sad smile to twist your lips, “You ran into the room and swept her into your arms. I’d been back for weeks and hadn’t seen you smile yet.” With a finger you wipe a stubborn tear. You don’t want to cry. You want to remain strong… for you and for him, “You looked so happy in seeing her. The most beautiful smile on your face.” As sadness takes over your features, his face is now stoic… unreadable. You hate when you can’t guess what he’s feeling, “I know how much I’ve hurt you, Bucky. This loop of ours I keep talking about… I know I’m the one who started it… If she made you happy after that… I truly think you need her.”

There. You said it. The sound of your beating heart hammers in your ears as your eyes keeps unyielding on his indecipherable ones. You know that’s exactly how he feels, though. You’re just finally agreeing with what he said to you that night in this same room, which seems like happened ages ago now. You can’t lie to yourself. You said then you would go down with this ship and that’s true, but it’s also true you’re tired of hurting him and yourself. You don’t belong together and if Anna is the one who makes him happy, so be it.

While the sad blue of his eyes fixed on yours, the silence lingers… and it starts to weigh on your shoulders. You need him to be ok, you know he agrees with you, but you get your pregnancy might be a lot for him to take in…Your hand tentatively reaches for his… When he pulls out, you flinch and a sting cuts through your chest.

You’re tired… so damn tired…

“It’s been an exhausting day, Bucky.” You say after a few seconds of heavy silence and swiftly get up, avoiding his gaze this time, “I think you should go home and whenever…” Your eyes flick to him for a split second. He’s not looking at you. “If you make up your mind and realize what you want… we can talk again.” You walk past him towards the way out of your apartment.

You open the door and turn back around. He’s right there with you already and rushes past you without saying a single word, vanishing into the hallway towards the elevator.

When Wanda knocks on the door with a trail of sandwiches you thank her and says you actually need to rest, leaving the sandwiches for later.

When you lumber to your bed, you reach beneath your pillow and grab the little blue velvet box, the one which hasn’t left your side every night since when it was handed to you. A symbol of what you lost… After you glance at the beautiful diamond one last time, you lock the little box inside your safe.

When you lay your weary body down on the mattress and shut your eyes close, trying to drag yourself to sleep, you don’t notice the little white jumpsuit with green little hearts all over it is no longer where you had left it.

Part 15 coming eventually.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes series #bucky barnes angst #bucky angst #looking for a heartbeat

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bxllafanficc · 4 years

Text

My Dear Apprentice - Anakin!Skywalker x fem!reader - Chapter 5. PART ONE!

Anakin's pov

*One week later*

"And you're sure you can handle this?"

The obnoxious girl walking in front of me turns her head backwards to meet my question with a smile.

"Well of course! What, you're worried about my safety, huh?"

So optimistic... Especially considering this is her first task. It's not a complicated one, at least that's what I'm guessing since the council directly went to her and asked if she felt ready, with my guidance, of course. And I guess her excitement has to do with the fact that it's her first day outside the temple this week ever since we started her training.

And sure, she's gained knowledge since her first day but it's not to remarkable lengths. Besides, she still continues to argue about the staff being too unbalanced at the 'hilt'. And without doubt, it is. But that should not be a functional error for a Jedi, considering that you can't always know what kind of tools you'll find at hand.

Since I don't deem her fit for a lightsaber, while on our way to this task, we went into a rather... sketchy shop to buy her a weapon. The ones catching her attention were to my surprise, two short bladed daggers with a serrated edge. When we entered the shop, a simple sword came to mind for her to use, plus that she would get to practice more with a balanced blade as well. Though, the weird light in her eyes were almost giving off actual sparkles and with that said, I bought them for her.

Thus, simple blades of steel would never make any difference in a fight against someone using a lightsaber. But considering we're out to hunt down a smuggler dealing with unauthorized drugs, spotted in a mall on Coruscant's center parts, coming cross an obstacle wielding one is highly unlikely.

Limited information were given to us other than we were to watch out for someone wearing a green seal of a crooked lizard claw. It's the company's signature sign used to help buyers identify their seller, and in our case, our target. Sure, it's a vague task and not very complicated but it fits (y/n) and her current skill level. Besides, this drug called Pixie dust is known for causing the user to behave extremely lustful and even violent if provoked. So it should be a relief to get that behavior off the mall since it's causing bothersome scenes and fights repeatedly. And what's worth mentioning is that the same seal has been spotted at different factory chains all around the galaxy dealing with unauthorized weaponry and human trafficking. Therefore, arresting one of them and interrogating them would lead us to new information about this league, for later use.

(Y/n) slows down her pace and join my side, one hand resting on her hip and the other one twirling one of the daggers between her thumb and index finger.

"What if I am? Would that be so strange? You're my responsibility, after all. Besides, I highly suggest you putting that thing back where it can't be seen before entering the mall. The citizens here will feel unsafe if they see you flailing it carelessly like that."

She returns it to her belt with a nod and runs a hand through her (h/c) locks, strands smooth as silk glowing in the bright afternoon sun. The sun looks so radiant on her skin, a phenomenon I have not seen, or at least noticed on anyone before. I have never bothered to look for details like that regarding anyone, but it was almost impossible not to see on (y/n).

"It's not strange. I just don't hear you saying nice things to me very often. It's a pleasant change for once."

Nice things, huh? I don't think I have that much nice to say about you, my dear.

I chuckle, which causes her to look at me with searching eyes and a tilted chin. Her bottom lip twists slightly before she speaks up.

"What's funny?"

I shake my head and flash her a smile as I reach up to pat her shoulder.

"Nothing. I just find you kind of adorable when you're not super loud and annoying."

The streets are crowded with all kinds of people as always. Stressed moms and dads carrying their children, working men and women in a hurry, to senior married couples showing affection in public. At every shop, there's always an employee promoting their agency while inviting costumers into their outlet. Citizens of all kinds of species from all around the galaxy eating at the outside service of the food chains and stressed waiters hurrying to serve their guests food and drinks.

The remarkable tower aligned with several buildings attached to another with glass windows all over is right ahead of us. I speed up my pace and go ahead to open up one of the entry doors for my padawan.

She stares me blank in the eyes and walks through with quick steps. Inside there's citizens filling up the spaces while doing things like chatting in groups, shopping groceries or buying drinks at the bar. (Y/n) stops a few shops in and turns around to look at me.

"If there's one thing I'm not, then that's adorable. Intimidating, maybe. Adorable.." she snorts and crosses her arms.

"Never."

"Sure , what about sweet and cuddly then?" I tease and reach out a hand to pinch her cheek.

She swats away my hand and points a tense, angry finger at me. The people around us doesn't seem to notice our quarrel and I think that's just perfect. We've fooled around enough. It's time to actually concentrate on the task.

"I'll cut you." She whispers and blares her teeth. I raise a sloppy hand and shakes it slightly as I continue walking.

"Yeah, yeah. Do that later. We have a task to complete."

I turn my gaze just in time to watch her roll her eyes at me with an exaggerated head turn.

Though I should have looked where I was going, cause neither were the woman hurrying with a bag of groceries in front of me.

*thud*

The elderly woman bumps into me with such force that it causes both of us to tumble over and fall to the floor. A lot of heads turn in curiosity and I cuss silently at the unwanted attention.

"Excuse my acquaintance, miss! Let me help you up..." (y/n) exclaims and quickly moves to kneel down beside the woman and hold a firm, steady grip on her shoulders.

So she helps a random woman rather than helping her master? Ridiculous...

She lifts the lady back up on her feet and picks up some fruits that had fallen out of her bag. The lady looks at her and starts smiling.

"(Y/n)! How good it is too see you again. I was just shopping some refreshments for Mister (s/n), you know how your father gets when he ends a meeting without his favorite meal!"

Mister (s/n)? Who's this woman and why isn't her father shopping his own groceries? It can't be (Y/n)'s mother since the lady calls him by mister, right?

(Y/n) freezes and glances at me, lips slightly parted in some kind of surprise.

Interesting. Why did that startle her all of a sudden... and why is she looking for my reaction?

"Yeah, I know that..."

"Well well, time is running and so should I. I gotta go but it was nice meeting you. Take care, dear!"

I grunt loudly and get back up with a little help from a bench right beside me, using it as mainstay. (Y/n) looks after the old lady as she stumbles away through the shops and out through the entrance. I position myself in front of my apprentice and take a firm grip around her arm, tugging her along and further into the mall.

"Who was that? You seemed oddly quiet and acted pretty suspicious when she mentioned your father, you know."

She yanks her arm away, holding it close to her other hand as she takes a few steps to the side to add walking distance.

"That, was my father's maid. And the reason I acted weird is because my father is Hiram (s/n). I'm sure you've met him already." She exclaims and walks ahead and into one of the shops selling what appears to be magic potions and supplements alike.

Wait.

Senator Hiram (s/n)! That's why her surname seemed familiar...

That man is a total asshole, And more importantly, he absolutely despise the Jedi code.

"Your father is a Senator, not to mention that he hate the Jedi and what we we stand for; And you choose to defy him by turning to the Jedi temple shape your life according to the Jedi code?"

"I don't want to talk about it." She sighs and puts a hand to her forehead.

"Maybe I could tell you some other time. But right now we have other things to focus on."

I nod.

"I'll take the right section of the shops, you go with the left. We'll search through all of them eventually and meet up at 'The rumbling horse''s bar at the end of the hall." I say and head to the section opposite of (y/n).

Enough time wasted.

*time skip*

...

"(Y/n)! Over here! Heeey giirllll, you here for a drink? And you brought a hottie with you too!

...WAIT, IS THAT ANAKIN SKYWALKER?"

Excuse me? What?

Two drunk girls are standing by the bartenders bench, one drink in each hand. The one shouting is tall and red haired while the second one is even shorter than (y/n).

How is that possible?

They wave their arms and the red haired one attempts to wolf-whistle but ends up spitting and laughing instead.

(Y/n) and I had headed to The rumbling horse after failed attempts at finding anyone with the green seal. We asked around with caution as well, leading us to the crowded bar. Most of all, we wanted to question the owner if any strange people had visited the bar repeated times. But it apparently looked like it wasn't gonna be that easy.

"Shush, Deborah! You're causing a scene!" (Y/n) whisper aggressively while flailing a hand furiously.

She then groan and hurries to clasp a hand over the laughing girls mouth. The shorter girl now beside (y/n) giggles and tries to twirl a strand of (y/n)'s hair, to which (y/n) grabs her arms and twists it in her grip with a growl. The shorter girl whine and shouts.

"Ow, (y/n)! Let me go!"

Sigh.

"I assume these are the friends you've been cussing about?"

Deborah turns her gaze that was previously locked onto (y/n), to focus onto mine... Well, I wouldn't say focusing. More like trying to. Seems like the alcohol has gotten to her way worse than her shorter friend.

Deborah's eyes are TRYING to focus onto mine but instead they keep twitching and turning like her vision is spinning.

I've seen that sign one too many times and would much rather skip it today.

"Hells yeah we are! And you're one lucky guy to meet us!" Deborah yells and ends up laughing again, snorting in the process.

"(Y/n), we can't stay here if they're going to fool around like that." I grunt and glare at the two girls while scanning through the closest people standing beside us.

So far no green seal, just some man with a leather jacket full of different patches and stickers. I exhale heavily and turn back my attention to (y/n) just in time to see her friends stumbling their way to me, their feet barely carrying their running.

Instinctively I move away, letting my feet carry me to the side from where I previously stood. I arch my back and position myself in a low key battle stance, ready for a heavy impact if the two of them tries another attempt at whatever they were trying.

The girls's piercing laughter stops as they run past me and stop. Confused eyes stare back at me in shock and I prepare for another attack.

Then (y/n)'s, now comforting voice, calls out to me and I gaze at her with widened eyes.

'What are you doing?!' She mouths to me while moving her lips audibly. Her eyes then dart back and forth from my hand to my eyes and I look down in hesitation.

Oh. I see.

Apparently, while dodging the crazy girls, my hand had gone to the handle of my lightsaber by automacy. I had been close to ignite it and ruin our probably non existent cover.

"Oops...Sorry, (y/n)." I say with hesitation and laugh nervously at a glaring (y/n), visibly gritting her teeth through her plump.. soft looking lips... What am I doing? My brain must be affected by the strong scent of alcohol, as thick as a wall in here. Yeah, that's it. That's why.

Deborah and her yet unnamed friend regain their balance and head towards me a second time just as I'm about to sneak away to the other side of the bar, to which I immediately leap away and walk behind (y/n) with my back against the bar desk, leaning to grip her shoulders in a tight grip, using her as a shield.

(Y/n) sigh and turn her head to look at me, her left hand clenching lightly into a fist.

"Do they scare you that much?"

"Don't blame me, they're drunk, loud and without care!" I answer in defense and duck my head instantly as the two girls position themselves in front of (y/n).

...

"Ay, sweetheart! Melisma! Did you find another man while I was gone?"

Come on, not another one.

The shorter girl, now known as Melisma, squeals excitedly and hugs the arm of a human guy in leather robe walking up behind her. His eyes are big and underlined with some kind of dark paint and the stubble on his chin and jaw reveals that he hasn't shaved for awhile.

He scoffs and waves at (y/n) and I, his hand combing through short and spiked hair put up in a read headband. He holds a large class of some blue sparkling liquid in his right hand and takes a big sip of it.

"And may I ask who it is that you've met today, Melisma?" (Y/n) asks and draw a tired hand above her eyes and leans it down her chin. I straighten my position and let go of her shoulders to relieve her of some tension.

"Oh (y/n), This is Jax! We met an hour ago and he's sooo funny! We've been chatting ever since he went to attend some guy in the corner and then you guys came! Isn't it a coincidence! You bring your hot Jedi boyfriend here and I find myself a good looking man the same day." Melisma stops talking and leans her cheek on in the palm of Jax's right hand that he previously used to tickle her neck.

"He, is NOT my boyfriend!" (Y/n) exclaims with raised and irritated voice, her cheeks tainted red already.

Jax's previously happy and relaxed smile seem to stiffen and he slowly retract his hand from the short girl's grasp. His eyes watch mine carefully but still with attempted happiness. He then scratches his chin and chuckle at the woman clinging to his arms.

That's when I see it. The green seal of a lizard claw. It's a ring on his left thumb and he's noticeably trying to hide it be turning the seal at the opposite direction while trying to act as normal as before.

(Y/n) glance at me and I nod back in response.

Great, she's noticed too.

I move out from my hideout behind (y/n) and take a step forward to greet Jax who now is inspecting me carefully.

"Pleasure to meet you, Jax. Have we met before? I swear that I've seen you somewhere but it escapes my memory! Now, would you like to follow me and discuss the matter outside of the bar where we can hear each other better?" I smile and cross my arms in front of my chest.

But Jax seems to know what's about to happen, cause without blinking, he yanks his glass forward and causes the blue liquid to spill in my face. At the same time I feel two hands shoving me backwards and hear running feet. (Y/n) swear loudly and calls out to me.

"I'll go get him." She then darts after the fleeing man and I'm left at the bar floor.

Whatever liquid he threw at me, it's working just the way he wanted.

I quickly help myself up and try to brush the burning sensation out of my eyes. After one failed attempt, I try to locate myself out of the door with a little help from the image of the room I previously made up.

I hear grunts and shouting as I bump into a load of people on my way out, excusing myself with a tense hand above my aching eyes.

After a few seconds I regain my vision and head right, out of the exit doors of the mall.

To be honest, there's really just two paths they could've gone and I'm just choosing the exit because it's the closest way out on the streets.

I run outside and try to follow the track of shocked expressions by the passing peoples to guid me. A frightened man and an angry girl leaping through the streets and disturbing the slow paced citizens would surely be a sight enough for people to react to.

A few minutes later the vague sound of steel against steel catches my attention and I head to a smaller street where the sound came from. I then find (Y/n) and Jax in a blind alley, Jax clutching aggressively to a long bladed dagger of unknown sort and (Y/n) with her twin blades drawn out.

The alley is long and narrow which doesn't leave enough space for me to ignite my lightsaber... I don't have any other weapon on me either...

She must have chased him into this dead end which caused him to draw weapon as the only remaining solution left for him.

But maybe my help isn't needed. He's certainly not professional on wielding a dagger but not bad either, and (y/n) seem to be getting an idea of how to counter the dealer's attacks.

Her quick feet easily bring her to the places she wants and her quick reactions cause her to evade Jax's attempts.

Jax leap forward with a growl and attempts to cut low with intention of slashing her right hip, to which (y/n) block his attack, locking his blade shut with hers crossed against each other. She then raise her left leg and kick the man right in his abdomen. Once to make him stumble backwards to gain some space and twice to force him to twirl sideways, back now facing her.

Impressive. A flawed move, in it's own way but not if it's done right. And she remembered to enhance the gap between them. In a close battle with relatively short blades like these it's even more important to gain some distance and that's exactly what she's done.

Jax quickly spin around to face (y/n) once again and leaps forward to attack once again. (Y/n) separates her feet in a hunched forward battle stance and skid to the side as an attempt at regaining her lost advantage, but Jax puts his dagger back into his belt, stopping her getaway while taking a hostile grip around her left arm. Hands stubborn and confident, he hold her in a tight grip and puts himself into a tense stance. Her struggling following right after is useless, his grip doesn't change the slightest.

That's when it hits me, what he's intending to do. Panic wash over me like a tidal wave and the still glowing sun suddenly feels cruel and burning. One wrong turn and I could lose her, the Jedi order would lose her. But will she handle it on her own if I choose to stand by and watch?

Jax blare his yellow stained teeth at (y/n), suddenly and grabs her right wrist as well, forcing her own dagger so slash forward to the direction of her neck.

One blow and her fragile neck would...

I prepare to run at (Y/n)'s aid, hand hovering just above my lightsaber. But before I get the chance to do any of that, (y/n) growls and twists her arm in a bent angle, using her elbow to knock Jax's arm upwards and away from her neck.

Instead, the tip of the twin blade graces the right chin of (y/n) on it's way from her body and she lets out a hiss.

She yank her wrists out of the man's grasp, causing him to lose balance and take a few steps to regain it. Right after, she use her right elbow to whack him at the back of his head.

With reflexes quick as ever and fury tainting her eyes, she then leaps forward in a high cut, slash him in the left shoulder.

Jax roar out in pain and cradle his wound, spinning around to prepare another attack by the girl wounding him so badly.

That's when I decided that they've had enough fun for today.

I leap forward on quick feet and pull out the handle of my lightsaber. The sound of the blade igniting itself causes the man to snap his attention at the much more dangerous threat. His eyes widen in shock as the glowing blue light display at the thick walls like ocean waves and he squint his eyes in discomfort.

(Y/n) takes the man's temporary confusion as her cue and grab his shoulders in a steady hold.

Jax immediately try to spin around but falls short on his feet as she use her leg to thrust the shallow crook of the opposite side to his kneecaps outwards. The unprepared impact causes the man's knee to bend forward and his entire weight clash into the hard concrete.

She then drops her twin blades to the side and yank the man's own dagger out of his fist, pulling his arms behind his back and putting a foot to his back.

Jax attempts to get up on his feet but the weight of (Y/n)'s entire body pressured onto her foot makes it an uneven fight and he goes limp, laying back onto the ground with a thud.

"Well, it looks like I'm not needed after all. I'm impressed, (y/n), I really am." I say with praising voice and pull back my turned off lightsaber into it's belt.

(Y/n) tilt her head upwards with a proud grin, though she's squinting her right eye as a reaction to the sharp, stinging cut on her cheek.

---

Tagglist: @tomisbaeholland . PART TWO IS OUT ALREADY DUE TO TOO LONG OF A CHAPTER!

#anakin skywalker #art #movies #quotes #obi wan kenobi #anakin x reader #anakin x y/n #anakin fanfiction #oh anakin #poor anakin #anakin imagine #star wars anakin #star wars fandom #star wars x you #star wars x y/n #star wars x reader #star wars fanfiction

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paynesgraey · 4 years

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on normal people

“She’s not leading the same kind of life as other people. She acts so worldly at times, making him feel ignorant, but then she can be so naive. He wants to understand how her mind works. If he silently decides not to say something when they're talking, Marianne will ask “what?” within one or two seconds. This “what?” question seems to him to contain so much: not just the forensic attentiveness to his silences that allows her to ask in the first place, but a desire for total communication, a sense that anything unsaid is an unwelcome interruption between them (26).”

I am currently re-reading Sally Rooney’s Normal People. I have realized that this passage was the moment when I first found myself within the narrative of Normal People. And when I find myself saying “what?” to break the silence and stares, it is also as a response to the notion of being carefully watched, dissected, and interpreted in the eyes of someone else. Someone whose opinion should not matter, but does. Someone who your happiness should not be based on, but is. And someone who you think cannot hurt you, but will.

I think what makes this novel resonate so much is how authentic it feels to the relationships I find my friends and me to be in. Where things are a relationship and also are not. From the outside, it resembles one. However, from the inside, both parties are spontaneous and open but ambiguous—quick to draw the line of where labels exist but carefully teetering the space before it and consciously never crossing it. It is in this space, where I constantly find myself analyzing everything. Sometimes, it even feels like a form of self-protection—if I can fully understand what I am feeling and why, my emotions will no longer be able to hurt me. However, contrary to that idea, is the inevitable reality of misapprehension. It also leads to this unavoidable response of accidental hurt to be shock and betrayal. Just because I am fully aware that this romantic relationship is unhealthy, unbalanced, not a very good idea, or never capable of a happy ending, it doesn’t mean that it can’t hurt me. That is why when it does, it feels like an absolute bombshell. And rather than being directed at the true origin point of self that these emotions stem from, they are often targeted at one another.

The heart of Normal People is this tension on how it is not actually about the way people hurt each other in relationships, but rather the way that hurt and true intimacy go hand in hand. Rooney is emotionally truthful about how people can hurt each other while simultaneously letting her characters fall in love with people who hurt them. She showcases how one lives through things before one understands them. In a way, there is this element of romanticism in her writing. People can hurt each other but still mean the world to one other. That despite clearly doomed relationships, Rooney’s writing subscribes to this idea that if two people make each other happy then it is working. Her compelling take on this possibility of allowing pleasure to reside above better judgement—how I can recognize my relationship is doomed and still let it make me happy in the moment—is Rooney at her most empathetic. It is this unwavering empathy and authenticity that draws me into Normal People in a way that I have never connected to a story about love before.

#sally rooney #normal people

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cline564 · 3 years

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Women of ABC News 'Lean In,' Share the Best Career Advice Ever Received

presentation: Sheryl Sandberg is the female force behind the best individual to single correspondence site on the planet. As Facebook's head working position, Sandberg has bound obstacles in Silicon Valley, yet has seen far less women rising the conditions close to her barbara fedida .

That is the drive behind her new book, "Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead," which hits stores today and has starting late opened up a trade on women in the workplace. Sandberg, moreover a top of the Walt Disney Company, parent of ABC News, urges women to "lean in" and to take an action to show up at their moderate cutoff and the most raised inspiration driving their motivations driving living.

In the spirit of Sandberg's "Lean In" campaign, we proposed the female specialists from ABC News to "lean in," likewise, and to share the best work counsel they have gotten. Take a gander at to see what our ABC News secures, include authors, and producers in the foundation need to state.

quicklist: 1 referring to: title: Robin Roberts url: media: 18434237 substance: "I got back home from calling day in center school. I told my mom that I would have been a real ed teacher and ball direct. My mom was a reliable educator, so I thought she'd be substance with my decision. She advanced toward me for what veritable legitimization I had picked this calling way. My response: Because at work day I was instructed that is the essential occupation for a youthful grown-up wanting to remain related with sports. Luckily, my mom let me know never to let someone else pick what I could or couldn't do ... there's nothing more to it. I continued understanding my dream and changed into the basic ethnic minority sports maker/broadcaster at ESPN."

quicklist: 2 class: title: Barbara Walters url: media: 18334949 substance: "Don't be destroyed; by far most of us don't find our satisfaction. Never fear, your satisfaction will find you. I went confronting confusion when I changed into the central female news co-anchor on a gigantic association. I was a level out lemon, yet my nonattendance of accomplishment in that experience moved me to work all the harder in my various endeavors. If you have a mishandle, you will rise; you will be fine; you will work your way back. As opposed to sinking, keep above water whether it handles keeping above water for a piece. You will show up at shore."

quicklist: 3 class: title: Martha Raddatz url: media: 18686714 substance: "When I started my calling as a TV writer ages earlier, I was picked to get the boundlessly open sections that my 'family' editorialists were getting. No youthful grown-up shows for me. If they were covering police strikes, I was other than. If they were covering City Hall, I was furthermore.

"This was not exclusively to show a point. This is what I found spellbinding and testing, so certainly I could do it!

"Notwithstanding, one brilliant explicit reporter offered me everything considered spectacular bearing as I tried to walk my way to deal with oversee regulate direct progress: 'You ought to have a sharp proclivity.' really I by and large had rebuked myself and chuckled at unequivocal conditions where I ended up as a woman, yet I was convinced if I did that in a specialist atmosphere I wouldn't be set up on. An astounding talk.

"If you can relate to your additional items and those you cover as a persuading yet ensured solitary, I think it is far less extraordinary to be essential for a work environment and overwhelm."

- Martha Raddatz, ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent

quicklist: 4 class: title: Bianna Golodryga media: 18686677 substance: "Undoubtedly the best suggestion I've gotten relating to my business came from one of my first accomplices, Maria Bartiromo. Maria is a certifiable pioneer in the field of money related news-envisioning. She was the central woman to report from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, truly crossing the unbalanced need that for a gigantic long time cleared females dependent on what was seen as one of the last male posts.

"Maria once depicted a dash of the disturbing, brutish, and greatly stun treatment she endured energetically in her start of checking. Obviously various men didn't require her there and were attempting to send her a message through their standard disturbing. In any case, she before long regarded that her best inverse delivery would come from an ensured about response.

"'Never let them see you cry, Bianna,' she let me know.

"Hold your head up high, and look past your doubters was the message. She never let them see her cry.

"I loosened up this to set up that, while women are persistently noticed (and perceived) for their compassion, it should never be confused with need."

- Bianna Golodryga, co-anchor of "Good Morning America's" weekend translation, ABC News' Business Correspondent

quicklist: 5 class: title: Juju Chang url: media: 18686784 substance:

"Totally when I was an energetic, single youth at ABC News, I spent a mid year making a few political pieces with one of the greats, Cokie Roberts. As editorialists going creation the rounds reliably do, we started sharing anecdotes about our own lives. She let me think of her as days canning peaches and being a homemaker while her life extra worked. Besides, I revealed to her my darling wasn't suggesting that I get hitched and that I harmed for being a mother soon. I gave up with the 'working mother' title. She uncovered to me something that I've told limitless women all through the total length. She passed on, 'Juju, you CAN have it all, yet you can't everything considered have it all the while.' Sometimes one requires to give.

"Conflictingly, I figure my head will explode. The fight is general and the allure I'd layer on top of what Cokie said is that nobody yet YOU can depict what 'having it all' takes after. In addition, nobody notwithstanding YOU can draw that line among give and take."

- Juju Chang, ABC News Correspondent

quicklist: 6 depiction: title: Lara Spencer media:18688461 text: "Face challenges and don't be reluctant to have a go at something new. In the occasion that you're not unnerved, that isn't joking."

- Lara Spencer, "Striking Morning America" anchor

quicklist: 7 depiction: title: Christiane Amanpour media: 15519353 substance: "Encountering pubescence in Iran, I went to a riding school run by a past Iranian facilitated power experts official. ... This changed into my game. ... Beginning when I was just five years old, I would be put on a goliath horse, not a little pony, which expediently set the bar high for what I was depended on to do, how I was needed to deal with a titanic test. ... I used to tumble off the horse consistently, yet there was no deficiency of leaving, or concerning stress or completing the improvement midway. My educator would walk around, pat my cheek, and lift me straight back on. Dismissing the course that, by then, I motivation driving conviction didn't get mental demand, it was an early exercise concerning it. Each time you fall, get yourself, dust yourself off and push ahead. As it wrapped up, the activities I controlled vanquishing spread a strong foundation for the unprecedented calling of living and working in battle zones and various dissatisfactions that I've taken on."

- Christiane Amanpour, Global Affairs Anchor for ABC News, excerpted from "The Person Who Changed My Life"

quicklist: 8 class: title: Elizabeth Vargas url: media: 18686892 substance: "The best business drawing in I ever got was from a redesign and it was misleadingly key. I was feeling paralyzed and truly hurt to talk reality concerning a twister of introduction and quality that established another upgrade who had beginning late been picked. I had never gotten that much thought myself, and it was hard not to consider the higher viewpoint from a certified point of view and not to progress toward pushed for what substantial clarification I showed up, plainly, to guarantee about unnoticed.

"Right when I yielded my necessities to an ornamentation, he completed me, and honestly, 'Unsurprising positions continually succeed finally.' He held guiding me to focus in on my work, and said that all that hullaballoo around that new select would in a brief timeframe decrease. He was right. It did. I have industriously investigated how short or how tremendous that charm was, or what the conceivable increment of doing your closest to perfect when all else misfires, is around the end, the significant concern we own."

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