#bone breakage
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The Heart of the Matter Ch. 7
Chapter 1 (Parts 1-3), Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6
my understanding of the Guardians of the Universe is that they want to maintain peace in the universe but they’re also kind of assholes, and did some shady shit and had their emotions removed for a while? And then ended up using time fuckery to summon younger Guardians for fresh perspective to help run the corps better/be less asshole-ish.
Idk if Hal in cannon trusts them, but here Hal knows they did some shady shit but also knows they brought in newbies re:time travel to try & be less shady. And he trusts them to mean well even if their methods can be shit, so that’s why he’s trusting that they actually want to help.
(spoiler alert, the Guardians a few billion years ago already decided torture-slavery was a great idea, so bringing in newbies that are their past selves isn’t actually all that helpful)
***
Hal senses the incoming signal long before it arrives in the Batcave to punch him in the face.
He thinks it’s just another Green Lantern, at first.
As much as Oa’s offer of help had been just that - an offer - they’d also tried to impress a sense of importance and urgency on him. That whatever was wrong with Red Hood needed to be managed sooner rather than later. They’d insisted on it, making vague allusions to the danger of leaving it too long.
But Hal had given the Bats a few extra hours to cool off, just in case. So he figures, hey, maybe Oa got antsy and decided he was taking too long.
He feels like an ass putting the guy in a cage when he tries to bolt on them, especially when he looks so terrified.
He does his best to push the feeling aside; the Guardians had warned him that, among their guesses for the cause of whatever was up with him, the symptoms might go beyond simple emotional dysregulation to include psychosis, delusions, and possible hallucinations - among who knows what else.
That he may not be capable of thinking clearly.
Still, he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to restrain him.
Aaaaand of course Bats’ attempt at being comforting falls about as short as is possible.
Hal doesn’t get a chance to reassure the guy. He’s too distracted by the other Lantern; whoever it is is closing in faster than expected.
Closer now, they shine brighter than any Lantern ever has against his senses. He can just feel the faintest brushes of ‘protectiveness,’ even.
Somehow.
Then the only thing he’s feeling is the fist ramming into his nose.
He drops Hood and slams into the far wall, mind swimming with pain and confusion and betrayal.
Except when he looks up he isn’t met with another Green Lantern.
Instead, he meets eyes with a stranger - some kind of glowy meta with a royalty theme or an alien he just isn’t recognizing.
It rubs Hal the wrong way, how he looks at him.
Like Hood had, almost. Plenty of disgust, plenty of horror, but all of the fear is swapped out for rage.
It had felt wrong enough caging Hood, even if he was only trying to help. But now this….
Well there’s an unknown in the batcave holding their possibly-ill-with-a-space-disease-and-or-parasite brother and just attacked their ally, so of course the bats attack, cutting off whatever the unknown might’ve been about to say in favor of avoiding getting punched.
Just as well, Hal figures. They can talk once he’s got the two of them restrained and the uninvited guest isn’t possibly-about-to-punch-someone-else.
And yeah, okay, he also might have a broken nose and not be in the best mood about it - and holy shit does the guy have a mean right hook.
But in his defense, Bats’ other kids are putting themselves at risk taking swings at the guy. If Hal just stands there and watches because the guy ‘might want to talk, actually’ now, Bats’ll kill him.
He waits for them to get clear before he heads in baseball-bat-first, hoping to herd the guy back into a nearby corner so he can more easily get a cage around him - something made a lot harder by a flying target.
Instead, the guy takes Hood and flees through the ceiling.
Hal stops his attack just in time to avoid battering the cave walls.
He curses under his breath, floating back down to poke at his tender nose, flinching at the sharp sting of it - healing, of course, but still plenty sore.
“What exactly did Hood say to you earlier,” he starts, interrupting whatever Batman was about to say to Oracle. “Because I’m beginning to think something is wrong. And not in the ‘space disease and/or parasite’ kind of way. Unless space diseases and/or parasites that mimic Green Lantern ring signals can somehow give people phasing powers - and whatever else that guy’s deal was. Because he gave off the same feeling Hood did, and he looked more pissed than scared. Which reeeeeally isn’t lining up with my expectations here.”
“We can learn more after we find the unknown and rescue Hood,” Batman answers, turning back towards Oracle.
He is, again, interrupted before he can speak.
“He just was rescued!” Nightwing all but howls. “From us! What Jason said earlier was that he thought your ring was a damn soul! If that’s the second person you’ve sensed like that, what if he was right!?”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Red Robin yells, throwing his hands up in frustration before Hal could formulate a response. “I mean, what, do we not have souls?”
“Little Wing is still in a fragile state from the pits! For all we know his soul is just- exposed or something and YOU-” Nightwing whirls on Hal, poking a finger towards his face “-are some kind of- some kind of soul-battery using necromancer!”
Hal grimaces at that, looking at his ring and feeling more than a little unease.
He really hopes this is all some kind of misunderstanding.
“We can talk about this later. It is far more likely that Red Hood was just kidnapped than rescued. We need to find him now.”
“They’re in Gotham.”
Oracle and Hal trade looks at the accidental jinx.
Hal can clearly see the blinking red dot on the open screen, so he explains. “I can still sense them. Lanterns have a pretty big radius for sensing each other, and this new guy is…bright, for lack of a better word. Like staring into the sun - y’know, without the whole ‘searing pain and vision damage’ thing.”
“He certainly didn’t travel far,” she muses. “If he can sense you back, it’s possible he wants to talk.”
“Other than the initial blow to Green Lantern, the unknown made no attempt to fight back,” Robin notes. “Merely dodging.”
“He: opened mouth. Possibly: wanted to talk.” Orphan adds.
“Sure has a funny way of showing it,” Hal rubs his nose - mostly healed, thankfully.
“Yes, well, you did have my brother in a cage,” Nightwing says cooly.
Hal winces
“I thought he was having a health crisis! I was trying to help!”
“Help by-!”
“Take it easy,” Oracle interrupts. “Jordan might’ve caged him, but we didn’t exactly do anything about it either. We all messed up today. The path to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say. Let’s see if we can undo some of the road work, hm?”
She pulls up two feeds - a security camera inside of a café and one watching an intersection.
“His signal is coming from a populated café, plenty of foot traffic and no distress calls in the area - a regular Gotham miracle. I glimpsed him passing through the corner of the street cam in civvies, likely to the outdoor seating area, given the coffee he was holding. He also appeared to be talking to someone off-screen. So either he managed to get away from the possible-kidnapper, or we’re made and the person is probably friendly. Either way, we have an excuse to be there in civvies. I could go for some coffee. But first,” she spins around, putting her back to the batcomputer. “Let’s talk Lantern Corps.”
---------------------
Hal explains what he knows about the Lantern Rings, about the battery, about Oa.
He…doesn’t know much. Certainly not enough to sate the endless curiosity of someone like Gotham’s heroes.
He knows how the rings work, the general ‘hows’ of it - that they’re based on willpower, that they are largely self-sustaining, that they very rarely need a recharge on Oa.
He doesn’t know details.
‘Power source’ is way too vague. Way, way too vague when ‘literal souls’ has a possibility of being the answer.
Even if it is, like, a 0.00000000001% chance possibility. Hal would like a solid zero, please and thanks.
(Signal asks what it says about the Guardians' intentions for Hood if the rings are powered by souls, which sets everyone even more on edge.
And Hal…knows the Guardians care about peace in the Universe. He isn’t sure how far they would go to achieve that, but he already knows the answer is ‘too far.’
Knows when the rings were made. Knows the ‘younger’ Guardians they brought in to improve things were from after that time.
…He really hopes Glowstick Guy actually just also has a space parasite.)
Spoiler suggests asking ‘Mr Space Prince.’
They can all agree the guy probably has at least some of the answers they need, here, but they’re all hesitant to go charging in.
They don’t want to make Hood feel trapped.
(Nobody wants to make the same mistake a second time. Even without Glowstick’s intervention, it only took a little distance from the situation for them to start berating themselves about jumping the gun.
The sense of urgency the Guardians have given him - and that he had in turn given the Bats - was a lot more suspicious with this new context. Artificial. Insidious, if Hood’s feeling about his ring was correct.
And oh wow Hal had never wanted a Bat to be wrong as bad as he did right now, a chill of unease trailing up his spine at the thought.)
Instead, they contact the other Lanterns - no information about the ongoing case, just framing it as Batman’s incessant Need To Know Things getting the better of him.
All of the others were off-planet when the party happened, Hal being the only Lantern that could make it - the schedules wouldn’t line up for everyone to meet him at once no matter how they worked it. With so many people in the League, barring high-level threats? Thems the breaks - so they’d intended to meet Hood individually at a later time.
This meant none of them knew what had happened yet, so no worries about them reporting back Oa.
Which would be very important to avoid if it turned out the Guardians had….
Well, suffice to say it was a good thing they were in the dark. Where Hal would like to keep them until he knew for sure one way or another.
None of them know any more than Hal does.
Judging by the cameras around the café, Hood is still there.
They want to give him more time to cool off from the inevitable…maybe anger, maybe fear. They doubt any of their presences would help at this point.
But answers might. He’d been terrified not knowing why he was so scared.
When they ask to run some tests on his ring, Hal offers it up willingly.
---------------------
Tests don’t help.
Whatever energy the ring gives off interferes with the scanners, leaving them with nothing but junk data.
Signal’s vision is of no use - it’s just a ring, stable in his vision as any other inanimate object, if a bit brighter. But that would be expected even without souls being thrown into the mix.
And of course, with their ever-incredible luck, the JLD are all unreachable.
Two hours later and they haven’t learned anything they didn’t already know.
Two hours closer to the Guardians learning something is up; a disastrous outcome if it is a worst-case scenario.
Hal can’t join them, of course, since Hood wants to keep his secret identity a secret.
However, Nightwing promptly vetoes any of them going.
“We are going to call him,” Nightwing doesn’t demand, he states. “We are going to apologize, and we are going to ask if he’s willing to talk - in person or otherwise. We are not going to make him trust us any less than he already does - assuming there’s anything left to damage.”
The last part is a mutter, but everyone hears him loud and clear, grimacing or fidgeting their weapons or shifting from foot-to-foot.
They make the call on the batcomputer - after making Hal swear on his life to remain silent, lest he set him off somehow.
For all that they called, all of them are shocked when Hood actually picks up.
“I know what’s going on, if you’re willing to actually listen to what I have to say this time.”
A collective wince.
“Little Wing, I’m s-”
“Save it.” Hood snaps venomously, cutting off Nightwing’s attempt to apologize. “The only reason I am talking to you instead of shooting you all in the fucking kneecaps and promptly fucking off for the rest of eternity is because there is some major shit happening right now and Danny insists on trying the ‘talking things out’ option first. Civvies. My apartment. 30 minutes. Bring everyone, and tell Green Lantern his ass had better be there. And if it turns out he knew anything about this? May God have mercy on his soul, because I won’t.”
And on that incredibly ominous note, the call cuts off.
“Well that went well,” Hal deadpans.
“Considering my kneecaps are still bullet free, I’d say it actually did,” Red Robin says, voice tinged with disbelief. “Given what he was like at his worst and everything that just happened? That was downright civil.”
“Not instilling a lot of confidence here, Red.”
“Then take confidence in your continued cluelessness,” Robin offers from the base of the stairs. “And hurry up, we have a meeting to make.”
***
Gee, I wonder what the JLD could be so busy with
Up Next: Jason gets the scoop on the Lanterns, freaks out, debates the merits reverting to the ol' head-in-a-bag technique. The apartment meeting happens. GL & the batfam get to have a turn with the panic (and round 2 of beating themselves up)
Tags:
@skulld3mort-1fan @kyrianclawraith @jesimilu @bleuyellow93 @ocearnawrites @undead-essence @violet-catsarelife @sunsetdew0101 @tsukihimeyfan @the-legal-shipper @spideypoolalways @mariendall @jesus-camp-the-sequel @jotaroslooseeyebrowhair @akikoyuii @mrowsters @do3y @aikoiya @joaniejustwokeup @wwwwyamd @fox-sama97 @britcision @tealty @apersond @v-inari
#dpxdc#ghost cores are Green Lantern rings au#jason todd#danny phantom#hal jordan#batfam#bone breakage
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"I'll just stay in the rear lines of the war, it'll be no problem"
You idiot. You dipshit. Is there decoction instead of brains in your head? Did the red sunflower seed accidentally leave your ego enlarged? Maybe the frequent shocks from the gallbladder procedure damaged the standard knowledge of how wars are fucking wars wherever you go, and are not locked to a static tabletop board - bitch, anything could happen
#tearing my hair out bc rear lines move as the war changes and this weak little doctor might not be able to keep up#additionally im losing my mind bc while disease is incredibly common on the battlefield there will also be. you know. sword wounds.#i havent seen him address anything like lacerations or bone breakages yet i dont think?????#rakiel wtf#'rear lines'........... come on man#cpsm liveblog#ch 101
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He’s sleep again 🥺…
#just got back in from the hospital lol#rambling#my bro has a minor breakage in his bone#they stitched him up and all#my mom went to go talk to our neighbors and the father took her to Walgreens to get my bro medicine and stuff#animal control has to come out tomorrow tho#our neighbors said that they were gonna fix the gate but man
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[C.S.D]
(Four screens out of five screens go black, their connections shutting off. The last one remaining slowly expands to fill the screen. Static takes over for a bit, drowning out any sign of the bedroom. When it clears, it is to a ver different place)
((tw blood, tw bone breakage, tw death))
Blood pooled around her feet, ankle-deep and sloshing as she walked. Celia eyed it with mild distaste. It wasn’t exactly hygienic to be walking through blood. Though maybe that wasn’t what she should have been concerned.
She eyed her hands; they were stained red, reaching up to her elbows in places. It made her hands sticky; she didn’t like the feeling. And she had a knife in her hand…why was that so low on her list of priorities that she hadn’t noticed it before now? It had clearly been used. She gave a shrug and kept walking. She had somewhere to be, after all. So why did she have this niggling feeling that something was wrong?
She continued her trek, eyeing the black mounds as she passed them. Everything was black and red, as far as she could see. It made it very difficult to make things out. But she could tell from the shape that the mounds were corpses. She eyed the face of one; something mild twisted in her stomach, but it was only mild, like it was muted. It was a little odd, she felt like she knew this person but she couldn’t place where. How strange.
She continued on with little more thought to it. It didn’t concern her. Soon the landscape changed under her. Wet liquid gave way to smooth metal, not that she cleaned up any with the transition. But good, she’d be able to walk easier now.
…’good’? Really? That was her only thought? Something was wrong. She knew there was meant to be something more, something else that should be important about that. That wasn’t what other people would say, was it? She knew, but she just couldn’t quite grasp it. It felt like a fly buzzing just out of reach, but never being able to forget it was there. What was she missing?
She didn’t have much more time to think on that. She recognised the metal platform she was on; a catwalk. And there was someone ahead of her, looking over the railing. Someone she’d known once before. Before she knew it, she was running up to them.
The distance closed.
She outstretched her hands.
They started to turn around, just enough for her to see the shock and fear on their face.
Her hands made contact with their back.
Perhaps she blacked out, as the body went over the railing. She was sure she lost some time; she didn’t remember watching them fall. But she did hear the sound of vital bones shattering as they crashed into an unyielding floor. It was a sound she never forgot. It should have made her stomach turn; why didn’t it? She heard wet wheezes and fruitless struggling. Without wanting to, she automatically looked over the railing at the broken body below. The face that stared back at her was not the one she’d seen just before. It looked like her brothers, but also like her sister; it was all of them, and none of them too. It coughed wet and bloody, before smiling up at her with red stained teeth.
“You killed us,” it was almost laughing. “Aren’t you sorry?”
She stared blankly at it, hoisting herself up onto the railing to sit, never looking away. Numbness sat in her veins.
“…No. I don’t feel anything.”
#ce.txt#ask#the anons#mod tries writing#event: and I must scream#tw blood#tw bone breakage#tw death#adding a readmore cause this is kinda tw heavy
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Wow! The human body is incredible!
I have officially reached the age where stretching too enthusiastically causes injury
#text post#time flies#and if I could fly that would probably hurt me too#very human#muffin activities#funny#I’ll try to curb my enthusiasm#just a few more years until sporadic bone breakage
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Something I made in a post that I think'll be lost in the texts + expanded a bit more
These panels are chronological events following AFO's pursuit of Yoichi's Factor.
AFO could tell if people were related through a Quirk. AFO and OFA also are connected to each other. In Kamino, AFO could confidently tell All Might that OFA had been passed on, so all that All Might had left were leftover embers.
When AFO killed Kudo, he asked where Yoichi was. He knew Kudo wasn't the holder of Yoichi's Factor at that time. He also realized when looking at Yoichi's hand that Yoichi's natural Factor was so weak he hadn't registered its existence. This implies AFO could sense Factors since he was young, and Yoichi's natural Factor never stood out to him.
Below are three panels of Bruce (right to left). Bruce fought, AFO killed him, and looked away in disinterest.
When he beat down Bruce, he already had a sense that Bruce didn't hold the Factor anymore. That's why, rather than yell in his face to figure out where it is and interrogate for a long time, he pulled up his corpse to inspect him better.
Bruce's corpse isn't resisting anything. Look at his feet; AFO literally dragged him. Bruce is already dead. Yet he's looking for something from him.
Bruce doesn't have anything for him. Nothing AFO wants.
When he looks away, he's dismissing Bruce, because Bruce doesn't hold Yoichi. AFO is wondering where Yoichi is, because he knows now that he's out there somewhere. Thus the pensive look to the wind.
After Bruce is killed, AFO and Garaki meet for the first time. Shinomori has Yoichi at this time, and AFO never comes close to him, so AFO is lost. He doesn't have any leads, and Yoichi has vanished.
Now that he knows Yoichi can transfer, it's possible for Yoichi to be kept out of his reach for the rest of his life. So meeting Garaki and having access to Life Force gives AFO more time to search.
Yoichi is still missing for 18 years though, because Shinomori is in hiding. AFO couldn't find him during the Fourth's turn.
This is why, when he encounters Banjo, the Fifth and active wielder of OFA [Yoichi], AFO is smiling.
It's been a long time, but Yoichi's in reach again. He knows where he is now. And this is the first time he's encountered the current holder.
Thus his shock.
[Yet... you never behave as I wish.]
It was the first time a Quirk wouldn't let itself be stolen. This was AFO's first encounter with this wall: it doesn't transfer without the holder's consent, and requires willpower stronger than all the holders combined to override that.
The holder is never going to give him that consent. To override the collective willpower, he's going to need something greater.
Meanwhile, look at Banjo's arms. Shinomori is the catalyst to tip OFA over the edge, that an unprepared vessel will be destroyed by how strong the Quirk is.
Banjo's arms are both messed up below the shoulder, just like Midoriya used to be. And like Midoriya uses Blackwhip to reinforce himself and stay standing, Banjo uses Blackwhip to hold his fist / arm together. His hand is being wrapped to stay in a fist.
(What I think is) The reason the limbs turn red, and then purple, from breakage, is a matter of blood vessels. Small, itty bitty, fragile things.
Using OFA breaks the whole area, from bones to blood vessels, causing internal bleeding. Thus the redness. But breaking those vessels again in a second go turns the area purple, because it causes instantaneous internal bruising.
But En wasn't ripped apart by using OFA. There's a cut on his thumb that lines up with the path of destruction; AFO sliced him in half. Otherwise, he wouldn't have that cut if it were just OFA.
It's hidden by the text in [... you never behave as I wish], but depending on where you see this chapter, you can see he got cut on the thumb. It's clearer where we see Nana take his hair from him, in [I only want... to make you mine!]
I have a post in drafts about En being cut in half rather than it being because of OFA, but I also hit an image limit, so I'm gonna end here. Ta.
#from the [hood shouldve been shinomori] post#mha#bnha#my hero academia#boku no hero academia#spoilers#afo#ofa#all for one#one for all#bruce#banjo daigoro#hikage shinomori#yoichi shigaraki#izuku midoriya#kyudai garaki#please s7 be graphic over the ofa users deaths#dont sugarcoat it let the viewers see what afo did to the vestiges because he wanted yoichi#poor bruce got ignored by afo#en tayutai#analysis#manga#edit: the thing about ofa and blood vessels is based off of when i would play sports#i keep debating on if i should say where i got the idea from so im just gonna put it down here#i break the blood vessels and create little spots of internal bleeding. i keep playing.#the bleeding spots disappear for huge bruises that cover half of the limb instead#look at midoriyas hand. the uneven discoloring. thats bruising#but while i break tiny areas for little blood spots MIDORIYA BREAKS ALL THE VESSELS BONES + EVERYTHING ELSE FOR THAT MESS REPEATEDLY#midoriya RAN with it (you say run)
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Bloom
Bangtan Christmas 2023 drabble 2 - read the rest here.
In a post-nuclear war world, all you have is your son Jiwon. You'd do anything to keep him safe, including putting your trust in your new neighbour Kim Namjoon. You hope you haven't made the biggest mistake of your life.
Pairing: Namjoon x f! reader
Rating: 18+
Genre: Dystopian future AU, smut, single mother reader
Warnings: Sex, swearing, violence
Word count: 7.5k
With thanks to @vyduan for helping me work out the kinks (heh) in this story. Love you, Vy.
Author note: Written in response to an ask I got early in the year - a story I've kept chipping away at and now it's finally finished. Anon, I think about you often and I hope you and your kids are doing well. I hope you've had time to heal and no longer think of yourself as a heartbroken single mom, because you are and have always been more than that.
Your breath comes out in puffs of white as you carry an armful of logs to the furnace powering your greenhouse.
Inside, the air is humid, warm, perfect for the vegetables you’re carefully cultivating. Outside, the cold of a perennial winter’s seeped into your bones.
Nothing grows outside, not since the Great War.
You wonder why they call it ‘great’ when everything is worse now than it was before the war.
You’re emerging from the greenhouse, wiping your hands on a soiled rag, when you hear your new neighbour singing softly.
He’s got a melodious voice with a gorgeous husky tone. You smile to yourself as he sings a tune you know.
Suddenly he stops. ‘Oh shit!’
There’s a clatter of metal against worksurface, the unmistakeable sound of breakage.
You walk up to the wire fence and call out. ‘Need a hand?’
There’s another clatter, then the door to the greenhouse opens and you meet your new neighbour face to face for the first time.
He’s tall, broad shouldered, with a face that makes you wish you’d bothered to comb your hair before you stepped outside this morning.
‘I — uh— heard the noises and just thought I’d check if you were ok,’ you explain.
He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. ‘Do you have a spare pot? I’ll get you a replacement today, but right now my chilli plant is all over my worktable.’
‘Oh,’ you say, quickly turning. You enter your own greenhouse and emerge with one of your own pots.
‘Here,’ you say, holding it out to him. Your fingertips brush as he takes the pot from you, and you hope you don’t look too flustered.
You say, waving a hand, ‘Don’t worry about a replacement.’
‘My chillies and I thank you,’ he says, so solemnly you laugh.
He smiles warmly at you, and dimples appear in his cheeks.
The juxtaposition of his large frame and his delicately pretty dimples is doing something odd to your fickle heart.
You clear your throat. ‘I’m Y/N,’ you say, suddenly feeling shy.
‘Namjoon,’ he replies.
You turn as your son Jiwon approaches, rubbing his eyes sleepily.
You pull off your coat and wrap it around him.
‘Come on, let’s go inside before you get too cold, ok?’
Jiwon, wrapped in your coat, looks curiously at Namjoon.
‘This is my son, Jiwon. Jiwon, this is our new neighbour Namjoon,’ you say.
You put your arm around Jiwon and lead him back to the house.
‘It was nice to meet you,’ you call over your shoulder.
When you look back, Namjoon’s still standing by the fence, looking at you.
He waves, once, then turns to go back inside.
***
Jiwon regards you over the porridge bowl you’ve made for his breakfast.
His eyes are serious, too serious considering he’s barely eight.
You wish there was a way to protect him from the world.
Instead you make sure he eats, and drinks, and wears his warm coat, because the world may be fucked up but your son isn’t going to go without, not on your watch anyway.
You wonder where Jiwon’s father is now but can’t muster up any emotion about it. The burning desire to watch him suffer faded long ago, leaving nothing in its place.
A blank where your perfect life used to be.
You clear away the plates and pull on your coat.
‘Ready?’
You walk Jiwon to the single room, little more than a shed, where the makeshift school now is, and as you kiss him goodbye and promise him you’ll pick him up later, you wonder whether things will ever change.
It’s been five years since nuclear warfare destroyed the world, four since Jiwon’s father left, and you’re still waiting for life to get better.
Lost in your thoughts, you nearly bump into a uniformed guard.
You bow and apologise profusely.
You can’t see any of the guards’ faces, but you know they make liberal use of their steel batons.
The pain of a physical beating, though, would pale in comparison to being detained by the intention readers.
You could recover from a beating, but not from being thoughtwiped.
You shiver and resolve to be more careful as you walk the rest of the way to the community gardenhouse to start your work.
***
You glance at your watch and pick up the pace. You’re late to pick up Jiwon. There had been a raid at the gardenhouse just before you were due to leave, and you and the other gardeners had been searched for contraband.
You arrive at the schoolhouse just in time to see Jiwon being questioned by a guard.
Your heart stops, and you hurry forward, already apologising to the three guards standing over your son.
He’s slight, small for his age, and he looks even smaller surrounded by guards.
You step in front of Jiwon, putting your arm out to keep him behind you.
‘I’m sorry,’ you say, bowing low.
The cold steel of a baton nudges under your chin, hard enough to lift your head.
Terror slices through you as the guard stares down at you, but you try your best to keep still.
The other guard says, ‘Hey, Jaebeom. The General wants us back. Let’s go.’
The baton stills, then the guard withdraws it and holsters it.
He turns away without another look at you.
You grasp Jiwon’s hand, and you don’t let go until you’re safely home.
***
The thin light of dawn’s cutting into the horizon when you emerge from your front door.
Snow’s been falling all night, is still falling now, piled up on your short garden path. You lift the shovel off the hook by your door and get to work clearing the path.
This early, the snow’s still icy and hard to shovel away.
You’re breathing hard by the time you get to the gate, arms aching, face damp with sweat.
Your neighbour Namjoon’s front gate swings open and he walks out, wrapped up warm.
He slows down when he sees you but doesn’t stop.
You give a small smile which he returns before walking off.
You watch him go and wonder what he does to be leaving so early.
You see Jiwon’s light come on and hurry inside to make breakfast.
***
There’s blood in the snow when you arrive back home with Jiwon at the end of the day, drops of red splattered in a trail to your neighbour’s door.
You herd Jiwon safely inside and your conscience gets the better of you.
You walk next door and knock.
It’s a while before Namjoon answers, but as soon as he does you know you’ve done the right thing coming over.
He looks terrible, pale and wincing in pain. There’s a wound in his shoulder, his chest is bare.
You say, ‘let me help,’ and then he’s stepping back, sitting heavily down on a chair.
He’s so tall you barely have to lean down to look at his shoulder.
‘Can you stitch?’ he asks, voice tight, body taut.
‘I’ll patch you up,’ you tell him.
You worked in a field hospital during the War.
Namjoon grits his teeth, pale and tense, whilst you patch his wound.
By the time you’ve dressed it, there’s a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead.
You don’t like how pale he is.
‘I have to get back to Jiwon,’ you tell him.
He nods.
Something about the way he slumps back in his seat, quiet and exhausted, makes you say, ‘I can stay overnight to watch you, if you have a spare bed for Jiwon to sleep in?’
Namjoon stares at you for so long you make the decision for him.
‘Come on, let me get you to bed,’ you say.
He staggers as he stands, and automatically you slip an arm around his waist.
He leans heavily on you as you take him to his bedroom and help him onto the bed.
He lays down, eyes already closed.
You wait until his breathing eases and then you go to get Jiwon.
By the time you get back, Jiwon in tow, Namjoon’s dead asleep.
You make Jiwon comfortable in the adjoining room, hoping Namjoon won’t mind, and set your alarm to check on him periodically.
He sleeps most of the night, waking up once to stumble to the bathroom.
You get up to check on him. ‘Are you all right, Namjoon?’
Thankfully your presence doesn’t seem to alarm him.
‘I’m fine,’ he says, but you can see the sheen of sweat across his forehead.
You fetch a glass of water and some pain meds from his kitchen. He’s still awake when you knock on his door.
He gulps the water and swallows down the medicine gratefully and lays back.
There’s something about the irregular rhythm of his breathing that makes you offer your hand.
‘The meds will kick in soon,’ you promise him. You squeeze his hand gently.
He murmurs a thank you. When his breathing evens out and the grip of his hand eases, you pull the blanket over his chest and make your way back to the other room where Jiwon is.
It’s sometime just before dawn when you wake. Namjoon’s extra bedroom has a pretty view of his backyard, his greenhouse. The rolling hills in the distance are bare in the winter cold, starkly beautiful.
For the first time in a long time, you wonder where Jiwon’s father is, how he’s doing. If he ever thinks of Jiwon, or you. Beside you, Jiwon stirs.
‘Mama?’
‘Yes, baby?’
‘I’m not a baby,’ Jiwon says indignantly.
‘Ssssh, you’ll wake Namjoon up. Are you hungry?’
Jiwon yawns a little. People have always said he doesn’t look like you or his dad, but in moments like this you can see yourself in him.
‘Come on. Let’s go home and I’ll make breakfast, ok?’
You check on Namjoon as you pass his room, only to find he’s already dressed.
He stands when he sees you, and you’re reminded of the height difference between you.
You step back. ‘Sorry, I just wanted to make sure —‘
As though he’s aware of how his height and size intimidate you, he stops where he is.
‘I want to thank you for looking after me last night,’ he says. ‘Will you have breakfast with me?’
Jiwon marvels so openly at the sugary cereal Namjoon produces from a cupboard you can’t help but smile.
Single parenthood in a post nuclear war world has been challenging, and you’re scared about how many E numbers it’s taken to produce a cereal this unnaturally bright, but Jiwon’s so excited it’s worth it.
Namjoon offers you some, and you accept with a smile. He smiles back at you so warmly that you drop your eyes.
Even injured and tired, your neighbour is the kind of handsome man you don’t think would look twice at you normally.
You cover your skittishness by staring down into your cereal as if fascinated.
By the time you gather the courage to look up, Jiwon’s finished his food.
You’re about to get up to take him home when Namjoon puts out a hand to stop you. ‘Finish your breakfast,’ he says quietly.
He gets up. ‘Come on, Jiwon, I hurt my shoulder yesterday, can you help me in the greenhouse until your mum finishes her food?’
Jiwon falls into step beside Namjoon so naturally you have no qualms about letting them go together. There’s a funny lump in your throat as you watch them walking together through the kitchen window.
You tell yourself sternly to keep it together and not to assign a romantic narrative to your handsome neighbour who’s clearly just repaying your kindness from yesterday.
By the time Namjoon and Jiwon get back, you’ve finished your breakfast and washed up. The kitchen looks like you and Jiwon were never there.
‘Thank you,’ Namjoon says. ‘For looking after me yesterday.’
‘It was no bother at all,’ you tell him, sincerely. ‘Thank you for breakfast.’
You nod to his chest. ‘You should get the wound checked out at the clinic today.’
‘I will,’ Namjoon promises. He waves goodbye to Jiwon and you, standing on his doorstep until you’ve rounded the fence to your side.
***
You’re walking with Jiwon back from school when you realise there’s someone waiting at your door. You can’t see clearly in the evening light, and you tuck Jiwon closer into your side as you approach.
You call a greeting, and a moment later the person steps into the light and you realise it’s Namjoon.
‘Hi,’ you say, unable to hide your relief.
‘Hi,’ he replies, ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just by the river and I passed a cart selling these and I thought Jiwon might like them.’
He holds out a paper wrapped bundle of bungeoppang, still warm despite the cold.
Jiwon’s reached out, already thanking him, and you look up at Namjoon.
‘Thank you, that’s very kind of you, they’re his favourite.’
‘There’s enough for both of you,’ Namjoon says.
He’s stepping away, halfway down your yard when he stops.
‘Your gate lock’s broken,’ he says. ‘I can help you fix it if you want.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ you say hastily. The lock’s been broken for a while, you’d meant to fix it but it’s been a busy month at the communal greenhouse.
‘It’s not safe,’ he says gently. ‘Not with both of you in the house.’
His words, though gently spoken, send a flush of shame through you.
He must think you’re such a mess, incapable of even keeping yourself and your son safe.
He doesn’t give you time to answer. ‘I have tools. I’ll come over tomorrow and fix it, ok?’
‘Thank you,’ you say. There’s a quiver in your voice, you hope he doesn’t know you well enough to hear it.
You open your door and usher Jiwon in from the cold.
***
You’re clearing your garden path the next morning, shovelling snow, when Namjoon comes to fix the gate.
He nods politely at you, then gets to work. He doesn’t seem to want to chat, particularly, but that’s fine with you as you’re out of breath from clearing the path anyway.
Namjoon disappears briefly once the lock’s fixed, comes back with a bag of grit over his shoulder.
‘Let me grit your path,’ he offers, and you let him as he’s already brought the damn stuff over.
You invite him in as you prepare Jiwon’s breakfast.
He sits at your table, looking big in your small kitchen but not out of place.
There’s a picture on the wall of you and Jiwon’s father, from the Christmas that Jiwon turned two.
You can see him looking at it as you pass him a mug.
Namjoon asks, ‘Is that Jiwon’s father?’
You look at the photo. In it, you’re holding Jiwon up, and Hiro, Jiwon’s father, is laid on the floor, tickling his feet. There are the trappings of what Christmas was like before the war scattered all around you.
Luxuries that weren’t until everything else was taken away.
‘Yes,’ you say. You lean against the kitchen sink, hold up your own mug. ‘He left after the war.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He looks like he means it.
‘It’s ok,’ you tell him, honestly. ‘We’re doing ok, and Jiwon doesn’t remember much of him.’
There’s a moment of silence, then you hear Jiwon’s footsteps coming down the stairs.
He greets Namjoon with a total lack of surprise at seeing him at the breakfast table. You’re amused at the nonchalant way Jiwon greets Namjoon, and then you realise it might be because of Namjoon’s calm, gentle manner.
For all his size, you find it difficult to envision Namjoon ever hurting anyone or anything.
***
The guards come for you a few weeks later, late at night when Jiwon’s asleep. You’re putting away the washing up when there’s a knocking at the door.
Impatient, demanding.
You crack the door open only to have to step back quickly as the door is pushed inward, towards you.
The two guards who enter have epaulets on their shoulders signifying them as of a low rank.
Any rank can detain a civilian for thoughtwiping, though.
The chill in your spine is only partially environmental.
‘Are you the wife of Hiro Kwon?’
You keep your tone calm, steady. ‘We’re estranged. I haven’t seen him in years.’
‘We have reason to believe he stole a very important pre-war relic from General Dei.’
You know where this is going.
‘My son is sleeping upstairs, can I take him into the greenhouse whilst you search my house?’
The guard closest to you gives you a hard stare.
‘He has nightmares,’ you say, pleading.
You fetch Jiwon, get him dressed and take him outside whilst the guards search your house. He leans against you, quiet. You hate that events like this are a part of his life.
Next door, Namjoon’s light is on.
When the guards come out to tell you that you can re-enter your own house, you hear Namjoon’s door opening.
He walks up to the fence, and your heart stops.
He’s wearing full guard uniform, with epaulets that show he outranks the guards questioning you.
Sweet, gentle Namjoon from next door is a high-ranking official in the guard.
And you? You’re the biggest fool alive.
He’s looking at you and Jiwon, face impassive, a muscle in his jaw ticking as he takes you in.
Beside you, Jiwon’s shivering, and automatically, you slip your coat off to wrap around him.
You turn back to the guards. You’re still struggling with the weight of recent revelations but you need to get Jiwon back inside.
‘May we go?’
The guard stops you, drawing his baton, and you freeze.
‘He can go. We have more questions for you.’
You can’t look at Namjoon.
‘Of course. Let me take him up to bed and I’ll answer any questions you have.’
The walk back downstairs after you put Jiwon to bed feels like your feet are too heavy for your body.
You cast an eye at the mirror in your hallway. Your expression is a perfect blank, unreadable. You already know the lengths you’ll go to, to keep Jiwon safe.
The questions start innocently enough.
When did you last see your husband?
When did he last try to contact you?
You’re asked differently worded versions of the same questions repeatedly.
Your answers get shorter as the questioning goes on, and then the baton comes out even though you haven’t moved.
It raps on the table next to your hand, and you can’t help it, you startle badly at the sound.
There’s a knock at the door, then.
You look to the guards, and the younger one gets up to answer.
He returns with Namjoon.
Namjoon’s face is impassive. He gives you a once over, then nods to the two guards.
‘Leave us, I’ll handle this.’
The tension in the room ramps up as the guards leave, and by the time the door closes behind them, it’s taking all your strength to stay still.
Namjoon, as though sensing your turmoil, takes a step back, away from you.
His voice is low, quiet, but you have no difficulty hearing him.
‘Did they hurt you?’ he asks.
You look up at him, trying to read his expression. ‘No, they didn’t,’ you answer.
He lets out a breath that sounds relieved.
‘Have you heard from your husband?’ he asks.
‘I told you, we’re estranged,’ you reply.
You can hear Jiwon moving upstairs. You turn back to Namjoon.
‘Can I go to him? I’ll come back down, I just want to make sure he’s ok —-‘
Namjoon’s expression changes. He looks stunned.
‘Of course, I wouldn’t stop you.’
When you come back down Namjoon’s still standing where you left him.
‘It’s late, you should go to bed,’ he says. His eyes search yours.
You look back at him, at the epaulets adorning his broad shoulders.
He must have earned them somehow.
The thought makes you avert your eyes, set your chin.
‘I will,’ you say, neutral, cool.
Namjoon waits like he’s got more to say, but when you look up, he’s headed to your kitchen door, letting himself out.
You lock the door behind him and breathe out, fully, for the first time in hours.
***
You wake the next morning to sounds outside your window.
There’s a man in your garden, and you’d be alarmed if Jiwon didn’t have a similar profile.
It’s Hiro.
You open the back door and gesture him in.
He looks older, thinner, but he still has the spark in his eye that drew you to him. You’re surprised to find you don’t feel anything about his sudden appearance apart from the faintest pleasure of seeing someone who was once dear to you.
You moved on out of necessity, and there’s no going back.
‘The guards are looking for you,’ you say, once you’ve made him a drink.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I need somewhere to stay. Do you have any money?’
‘Not much,’ you tell him. ‘I can spare some.’
Hiro touches your hand, on the table in between you, and you pull back, startled.
You get up, gather the banknotes you’ve saved, and give him what you can.
‘Can I see him?’ Hiro asks.
You don’t have it in your heart to say no. ‘Don’t wake him.’
You take him upstairs to Jiwon’s room, let him peer through the crack in the door.
When Hiro turns back to you, there are tears in his eyes.
You have nothing left to say.
***
The raid on the communal greenhouse today was unexpected, and you weren’t quite quick enough to get out of the way of a wayward baton strike.
Your wrist throbs dully, your fingers are swollen, and the painkillers you dry-swallowed are only just about taking the edge off.
You’ve sent Jiwon to bed and are trying to dislodge the sack of fertiliser from the top shelf of your greenhouse one-handed, panting at the effort, when Namjoon’s porch light comes on.
Startled, you lose your balance and fall off the crate you’re balancing on, just about managing to protect your wrist as you land.
The noise you’ve made draws Namjoon to the fence.
Thankfully, he’s not wearing his guard uniform.
When he sees you on the ground he disappears, appearing a moment later on your side of the fence, breathing hard from rushing over.
‘Are you ok?’ he asks, helping you up.
You’re about to answer when his face darkens. ‘What happened to your hand?’
Your hiss of pain when he reaches for you makes him flinch.
‘Here,’ he says.
He cups a hand under your elbow gently, helping you back into your kitchen.
He frowns even more when he sees how swollen your wrist is.
‘We need to get you to a clinic,’ he says.
‘I can’t leave Jiwon, I’ll go in the morning,’ you tell him.
‘You can’t leave this overnight,’ Namjoon insists.
He runs a hand over his face. ‘I’ll call my friend.’
‘I’m fine —‘
‘You aren’t,’ Namjoon says, the shortest he’s ever been with you. ‘I have a friend who’s a nurse, I’ll call him.’
You sit quietly in your kitchen as he makes the call.
‘Jimin will be here soon,’ he tells you when he returns.
You’re too on edge to ask about Jimin.
You want to tell him that you’re fine, but when you open your mouth, you say, ‘Hiro, my ex husband, came here yesterday asking for money.’
Namjoon considers this in silence.
‘If the guards find out —-‘
‘I’m sure as hell not going to tell them,’ Namjoon says, sharp. ‘And neither should you.’
‘You’re a guard,’ you point out.
‘And you told me because you know I’m not like them,’ Namjoon says. His voice is neutral, without inflection.
‘I told you because I don’t want you to get into trouble because of your association with me. Especially after they came looking for Hiro,’ you argue.
You get up. ‘And yes, because you aren’t like them.’
As soon as you say the words you realise they’re true.
On some level you know, from the sides of him he’s shown to you, that Namjoon isn’t like the guards you’ve seen.
Namjoon rubs his eyes. He looks tired.
‘My father was a commander in the first generation of guards,’ he tells you. There’s a note of bitterness in his voice. ‘That didn’t save me from being thoughtwiped.’
You stare at him in shock.
‘I have all the right decorations,’ Namjoon continues, gesturing to his shoulders.
He meets your gaze. ‘I can’t excuse the things I’ve done in the past to earn them. I was young, eager to please my father, eager to keep my mother safe, and there’s nothing safer than being a guard.’
There’s bitterness in his voice now.
‘I had my limit though, as warped as I was, and I protested against an order I was commanded to carry out.’ He pauses. ‘I couldn’t do it.’
‘Your past is a fog once you’ve been thoughtwiped, but it comes back slowly, in flashes. Like a puzzle that’s incomplete.’
You’re so caught up in Namjoon’s story you’ve forgotten about the pain in your wrist.
‘This isn’t about me but I told you this because I want you to trust me,’ Namjoon says. He touches your arm, gentle. ‘There’s no threat to you, from me.’
You believe him.
You’re about to say so when there’s a knock at your door.
Namjoon gets up and returns with a man with kind eyes who introduces himself as Jimin.
He tends to your wrist with a gentleness that almost brings you to tears, binding it and placing it in a brace that eases the pain a little.
‘It’s probably broken,’ Jimin tells you, ‘but this is the best I can do until you can get to the clinic.’
You thank him gratefully.
‘Namjoon says you have a son. If you bring him to my clinic I’ll do a health check for free,’ Jimin offers.
You can’t thank him enough for his kindness.
After he leaves, Namjoon says, ‘Do you have a spare room? Or I can sleep on the couch.’
You stare at him, overwhelmed. ‘I don’t have a spare room —-‘
‘The couch it is,’ Namjoon says.
‘You don’t have to —‘
‘You did it for me when I was injured,’ Namjoon points out. He dimples at you. ‘Don’t let me miss my chance to play nursemaid….’
You can’t imagine anyone who looks less like a nursemaid than your tall, broad, handsome neighbour.
‘You can take my bed,’ you offer.
There’s a beat of silence, and you realise how it must have sounded to him.
Oh no.
You splutter in your haste to explain. ‘Oh my god, I meant you can take my bed, for you, alone. I can take the couch.’
Namjoon looks like he’s holding back a smile.
‘I’ll take the couch,’ he says, very gently. ‘Now you should go to bed, you look very tired.’
You take yourself off to bed before your mouth betrays you again.
***
You wake to familiar scraping outside. You get up, hissing at the dull flare of pain in your injured wrist, and head for your bedroom window.
It’s Namjoon, clearing your garden path. He pauses to wipe a hand over his forehead, breath coming out in white puffs.
You pull on a robe and head down to the kitchen, open the back door.
‘Hey,’ you call.
He turns immediately, face creasing in concern. ‘How’s your wrist?’
‘Still broken,’ you say cheerfully.
A dimple flashes in his cheek.
‘Go sit down, I’ll finish this and make us breakfast.’
Despite Namjoon’s instructions, you start on breakfast anyway, you’re used to looking after you and Jiwon.
‘I’ll walk Jiwon to school so you can go straight to the clinic,’ Namjoon says.
You look at Jiwon.
Jiwon’s bright smile is all the answer you need.
***
You wake in the dead of night, heart thumping, blood rushing in your ears.
You’re up and out of bed before you’re fully awake, hand on Jiwon’s door, when you hear it again.
The same noise that woke you up.
The creak of your front gate.
You hear footsteps to your front door, then the knocking starts.
You wake Jiwon, wrap him in his coat, wishing you’d remembered your own.
‘Open the door, by the order of the guard,’ shouts a male voice, making you stumble in fear, making your adrenaline surge.
You glimpse the grandfather clock on your landing as you hurry through to the kitchen with Jiwon.
It’s 2am.
You doubt this is a routine interrogation.
It feels more like a raid.
You grab Jiwon’s face, make him look at you.
‘If we get separated, run through the gate and into Namjoon’s greenhouse. Don’t wait for me.’
Your voice is calm, your eyes serious, and Jiwon, with the wisdom of a much older child, nods.
You pull his coat closed, and take a breath, gathering your wits about you before you pull open the back door.
There’s no one there. The guards are still at the front of the house.
You hold Jiwon’s hand, tight, and step into the night.
***
You make it into Namjoon’s greenhouse just as your kitchen lights come on.
Your heart pounds like drums in your chest, insistent, so loud you’re worried anyone within a half mile could hear it.
You tuck Jiwon into a corner between sacks of fertiliser, stacked up, and listen intently.
There’s shouting, the sounds of doors slamming.
You hope it’s snowing hard enough to cover the tracks you and Jiwon made.
There’s nothing you can do about it now.
You wait, Jiwon tucked as far back as you could put him, hands gripping the shovel you grabbed from the back of the door.
Beams of light bounce over the glass wall, freezing you into position. You close your eyes.
The door creaks open, and you stop breathing.
Steps, then in your terror it takes you a while to recognise Namjoon’s face.
Your eyes meet.
Namjoon holds up a hand, the barest of movements, then he shouts, loud and clear, ‘They’re not in here.’
Your heart pumps, and you start to breathe again.
***
It’s hours before Namjoon returns to the greenhouse, face drawn and tired.
He says, ‘We need to go.’
‘Where?’ you ask, when you’re really thinking, ‘We?’
‘I’ll tell you on the way.’
Namjoon scoops Jiwon into his arms like he weighs nothing, and you follow.
Your limbs are stiff from the cold and the tension of waiting to be caught, but you make them bend to your will, keeping up with Namjoon’s longer strides.
‘I’ve got a car, a mile from here, can you walk?’ Namjoon asks, terse.
You notice the backpack he has slung onto his shoulders.
‘I can carry something,’ you say, ‘Give me the pack.’
Namjoon’s tense expression softens, just enough to be perceived, as he glances at you.
‘Keep pace with me,’ he says.
It takes you a quarter of an hour to reach the car, parked alongside a warehouse.
Namjoon places Jiwon in the backseat, tucks a blanket over him, unlocks the trunk to place the backpack inside.
You climb into the front passenger seat, watch as he starts the engine. His hand curls around the gear shaft, and you put your hand over his.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ you ask.
There’s no going back from this. It’s one thing to not report you to the Guard, it’s completely another to help you get away.
Namjoon looks at your hand on his for a moment.
‘I haven’t felt this strongly about anything in a while,’ he says.
He looks up at you. ‘This is the only right thing I’ve done in a long time.’
He puts his other hand on top of yours briefly, then pulls away to start the engine.
He drives.
***
Dawn’s breaking by the time you reach your destination, a cabin deep in the mountains that you access via a narrow road buffeted with snow drifts.
Namjoon cuts the engine, sits back, rubbing the back of his neck. He looks tired.
‘Are you ok?’ you ask, tentative.
‘Better now,’ he says, some of the tension leaving his expression. ‘Better now that we’re here.’
Jiwon’s stirring now that you’ve stopped, looking at you and Namjoon with a quiet resignation.
You hate that he’s grown to accept his world constantly being turned upside down as his due.
Namjoon turns back to look at him, a dimple popping in his cheek as he smiles.
‘Hey, are you hungry, Jiwon? I have some cereal in the cabin.’
Your heart teeters at Namjoon’s easy kindness towards your son, about to fall.
You’re about to fall for this man who you owe so much to, fool that you are.
You put your hand on Namjoon’s arm, eyes alight with gratitude. ‘Thank you,’ you tell him.
Namjoon glances at you, hesitates.
‘You don’t have to thank me,’ he tells you. ‘I — I wanted to help.’
You think about his words as you help Jiwon out of the car and you head for the cabin together.
***
Jiwon’s asleep, you make sure he’s tucked in warm before you go into the main part of the cabin.
Namjoon’s standing by the window, his large frame taking up almost all of it, face tilted up, like he’s looking at the sky.
He turns when he sees you.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’ll get the generator working tomorrow.’
There’s a fire in the hearth, not quite enough to light up the whole cabin but it’s warm enough.
‘Don’t apologise,’ you tell him.
You can’t see all of his face in the shadows, so you step forward.
‘Jiwon and I wouldn’t be safe, here, if it weren’t for you.’
‘It was a woman and her son,’ he says, a change of subject so abrupt he’s lost you for a second before he continues.
‘They wanted me to thoughtwipe her because of something her son did. Something stupid, meaningless.’
He turns to look out the window again. ‘I refused.’
‘That’s when they thoughtwiped you,’ you say. It’s not a question.
He laughs, short, harsh. ‘And then they thoughtwiped her anyway. Last I heard she and her son were separated, sent to different sectors.’
You step forward again, wanting to see his face.
‘You’re a good man, Namjoon,’ you tell him. ‘You can’t be responsible for everything.’
‘I should have done more,’ he says, flat.
‘You’ve done a lot for us,’ you point out.
You still can’t see his face, but you can see the sadness in the line of his shoulders, poignant and beautiful.
You take another step forward, cup his cheek. His skin’s warm, and there’s the faintest pressure against your palm as he leans into your touch.
You shiver a little, more from the feel of him than from the cold, but he’s quick to react, slipping the fleece off his broad shoulders and placing it over yours.
For a moment his arms are around you, and you’re within a breath of turning away, would have turned away if you hadn’t felt the shift in his weight.
He’s leaning on you.
You curl your hand around his neck, and he leans down with the faintest pressure from your fingertips.
A thrill races through you as his lips brush yours, blooming into a pulse, heady and throbbing as you tilt your head to kiss him again.
He’s slow, so gentle it takes you a while to realise that his kisses are robbing you of your breath.
The tip of his tongue flicks at the seam of your lips, a question you answer by parting them.
Letting him in.
His hand travels down your side to land on your hip, tentative.
Another question.
This time you slide your arms around his waist, under his top. The warm skin of his back is smooth under your hands.
He grunts softly as you pull him closer, comes willingly.
He kisses you again, firmer this time, and you melt into him.
Gradually, in stages, closer and closer until you’re so close you don’t know where he ends and you begin.
He cups the back of your head, pulls away just enough to say, ‘The couch.’
You follow him to the couch, and he tilts his head for another kiss.
You put a hand flat on his chest to steady yourself, and he puts his own hand over yours, covering it completely, anchoring you to him.
‘I haven’t done this in a while,’ you tell him.
‘Me either,’ he says.
His dimple flashes. ‘We can remind each other.’
Namjoon’s a patient man, you knew this about him already.
You hadn’t expected him to be quite this patient though, not pushing you even though you can feel how hard he is under you.
‘Do you want to keep going?’ you ask.
‘So badly,’ he tells you, huffing out a breath, tilting his head back. His throat bobs as he swallows, hard.
You lick a stripe along his neck, and he shivers, gripping your shoulder.
‘Do it again,’ he says, voice dropped low. ‘Can I touch you?’
‘Please,’ you say, and to your delight, his hands drop to the front lapels of your (his) shirt.
‘You look good in my clothes,’ he murmurs. He kisses down your chest, slow, open-mouthed, and by the time he gets to your breasts you’re vibrating with need.
He takes the tip of your breast into his mouth, sucking delicately at first, then more strongly when you moan his name.
Every pull of his mouth makes you pulse and tighten, and you don’t realise you’re grinding against him until his big hand grips your hip.
‘Stop, or I’ll come,’ he warns, voice thick, gravelly now.
‘Take your clothes off,’ you say.
He undoes the fly of his jeans, and the damp patch you see where his cock’s tenting his boxer briefs makes your mouth water.
He stops you with your hands on your own sweatpants, says, ‘Let me.’
Before you realise quite what he’s doing, he’s slid onto his knees on the floor, has tugged your sweatpants down to reveal your thighs, the hot stickiness between your legs.
He hooks a finger in the waistband of your panties. Poises himself, open mouthed over your core.
Looks to you once, eyes hooded, and whatever he sees in your face makes him bend down and put his mouth to you.
You cry out, muffled behind your own hand, and he stops instantly.
‘Is this ok?’ he asks.
‘Yes, yes, please,’ you tell him.
He watches you as he slides his tongue over your slit, eyes hooded and hot.
He’s good with his tongue, you realise dimly in the back of your mind as he laps at you. He swallows audibly, and your hips dance under his mouth.
‘Joon,’ you moan, and he hums, deep voice vibrating against your skin.
‘Joon,’ you moan again. His hand splays on the curve of your hip, fingers tightening on your flesh.
This time, he moans in response, and you cry out, throaty and hoarse, as he sucks at your clit with renewed fervour, pushing you closer and closer to the edge.
‘Joon!’
He pushes a finger into you, and you come with a gush of wet, walls tightening around him, your entire body tensing for a glorious instant before giving way to waves of pleasure.
Namjoon groans, deep in his chest, and you reach out and grip his hips, guiding him between your legs.
‘Wait,’ he says, touching your face, gentle though you can feel him hard as steel at your entrance, the blunt fullness of his cockhead nudging, seeking. ‘Are you sure you want this?’
‘Yes,’ you say, ‘yes.’
Namjoon groans again, pressing into you, filling you so well your body arches like a bow against his.
‘Feel so good,’ he utters, jaw tight, voice raspy.
He moves strongly within you, taking control with a confidence that thrills you to your toes.
He says your name as he moves, guttural and wanting, the slide of him into you making sparks bloom behind your eyelids.
He grasps your hand, fingers knitting with yours, as you writhe and moan underneath him.
‘Sound so pretty,’ Namjoon groans. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t —‘
You grip his shoulder. ‘I want you to come, Joon,’ you breathe, mouth by his ear.
He groans again then, circles his hips, and then thrusts deep, spilling his warmth inside you.
He’s still for a moment, breathing hard against your ear.
You turn your head to kiss him.
You’re still holding his hand, and it’s a while before either of you let go.
***
You pour out a mug of coffee from the pot Namjoon’s brewed, go out to where you can hear Namjoon chopping wood outside.
He’s concentrating, splitting chunks of wood with a careful precision.
He looks up as you approach, and his smile warms you.
‘Hey,’ he says.
You’d ended up sleeping tangled up with Namjoon. Some time during the night you’d woken to find him pushing your hair back from your face.
You’d pulled him down on top of you, taken him in again, slow, languid, bodies moving together until you’d gasped and come, muffled against his chest.
‘Hey,’ you reply.
‘Jiwon still asleep?’ he asks.
‘He’s exhausted,’ you say.
‘Glad we didn’t wake him,’ Namjoon says.
‘He’s a pretty good sleeper.’
Namjoon glances at you, and you flush.
‘I didn’t mean —’
He laughs at how flustered you are.
‘Good to know he sleeps well,’ Namjoon says. There’s a spark in his eyes now, dimples flashing in his cheeks.
For all his size and height and seriousness, your handsome neighbour looks like a little boy trying to get a rise out of you when he’s like this.
He watches, amusement in his face, as you sip the coffee to try to hide your discomfiture.
When you look back at him, he’s gathering up an armful of wood.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘When Jiwon wakes up I need to talk to both of you.’
***
The sun’s high in the gloomy sky by the time Jiwon wakes, lured by the smells of breakfast and the warmth of the fire in the fireplace.
After breakfast, Namjoon clears the table, and then sits you all down.
‘We can’t stay here for long,’ he says, seriously. ‘The guards don’t know about this place, but it’s not safe, and they’ll still be looking for you.’
‘There’s a place close to the border where there’s a new community, away from the guarded sectors.’
You’re looking at Namjoon, carefully, and he’s looking right back at you.
‘We could go there. It’ll be hard, probably, at the beginning.’
You turn to Jiwon.
Hard?
Harder than the life you have now?
If there’s one thing you know, it’s that you need to find a better future, for Jiwon.
Stability.
You ask the question you asked in your head when you left home with Namjoon.
‘We?’
‘Yes,’ Namjoon says. ‘I’d like to go with you. If that’s ok.’
You’re looking at Jiwon again.
The hopeful expression on his face makes the decision for you.
***
Ten years later
You’re waiting at the train station for Jiwon.
There’s a chill in the air still, it’s cold for spring but warmer than it has been in recent years.
A lot’s changed in the last ten years.
You, Namjoon and Jiwon had moved to the new community at just the right time.
It had been hard at first, but nothing compared to the constant fear of being detained by the guards.
The world’s been rebuilding itself after the War.
With your experience as a communal gardener, you’d been able to set up your own hydroponic greenhouse, and demand built up for your produce, to the point where you’ve been able to hire your own crew of gardeners and expand.
Jiwon had thrived in the new community, and when universities re-opened, he’d been accepted as part of the first few cohorts of students.
His university was a few hours away, but the redevelopment of public transport meant there was a regular train linking his campus and your home.
The home you built with Namjoon.
In recent years, you’ve seen more and more of the light-hearted, humorous Namjoon and less of the troubled, serious Namjoon you first met.
Your love for him has only grown.
He approaches you now, a little older, but still as heartbreakingly handsome as the day you met him.
You think the best decision you ever made for you and Jiwon was to let him in.
And now Jiwon’s on his way back for Christmas, and your heart is full.
Namjoon hands you the coffee he bought you from the cafe, and when you tilt your face up to his he leans down.
It’s a learned response from years of adjusting his height so you can reach to kiss him.
You press a kiss onto his cheek, over his dimple, and his arm slides around you to hold you tight to him.
The train pulls into the station, and Namjoon grasps your hand as it stops.
The carriage doors open, and your beautiful son steps out.
Physically, he looks like you, but the confidence in his bearing, the kindness in his face, the roguish twinkle in his eyes?
That’s you, and Namjoon.
©hamsterclaw 2023
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tending to injuries
eren jaeger x f!reader
in which you help your roommate with an injury and find yourself in an uncompromising situation.
**roommate eren fic masterlist here
previous part linked here
-
Eren is a way better roommate than Nifa. Granted, the bar was in hell with that one but the two of you shockingly work very well together. You don’t talk to him very often and he doesn’t talk to you. He makes dinner but you do the dishes. He vacuums the floors but you do the laundry. Eren keeps you at arm's length, so you keep him there as well.
You learn that Eren is a soccer player, first string for the upcoming season in the fall. He’s currently a Computer Science major, hoping to develop technology for nonprofits to use. Because of this, he’s barely home - when he’s not at practice, he’s at his internship, coding away. When he’s home, you make sure you’re out, working, running errands, doing anything.
Eren makes you nervous. After the first night staying with him, you realized you have no idea who the guy even is and clearly doubt his line of thought when he made a decision to let you cohabitate with him based on seven questions, one of which was what your favorite color was. The thought of him scares you, his presence intimidating and domineering. He somehow sucks up all of the air when the two of you are in a room, leaving you feeling breathless. He’s also hot.
While you’re not one for physical conventions, you have to admit he isn’t bad to look at. His brown hair, green eyes, toned arms. After you and Eren fall into a normal routine, you decide Saturday mornings are the best part of the week. Having designated Saturday’s as your off day from working, you sleep in, make breakfast slowly, and take a bath - all before Eren comes home from soccer practice.
However, your current plans - listening to evermore and sitting in the bath for a few hours - were squandered when you heard a crash in your kitchen. You grab the closest clothes on the counter, rushing out to check what the sound was.
You turn into the kitchen to find Eren, with a purple eye, and one of the drawers of your fridge on the floor.
“Hey. My bad. Pulled it too hard.” he says, pulling out an ice pack before returning the drawer to its usual spot. You go to his side, reaching to touch the bruise over his eye.
“Hold on, Eren. Do you mind if I do an eye exam?” you ask, rummaging in the drawers for your flashlight pen.
He nods, as you pace around, gathering the items you need. He leans against the counter, watching you move around him. You start by placing your fingers on the side of his eyes, making sure there was no breakage near the side of his bone.
“What happened?” you ask, moving on to shine the light of the pen along his path of vision.
“Ball to the face. Ow.” he responds, wincing at your fingers brushing across the side of his eye.
“Sorry. Okay, can you look up for me? Then down? Right? Left?” you ask, holding the side of his face between your hands as you watch his pupils move back and forth.
You sigh, removing your hands and putting space between the two of you.
“You’re going to be okay. Ice it every hour, give it a break so your skin doesn’t get irritated. Advil for the pain. Tell me if it gets worse.”
“How do you know how to do that?”
“Doctor dad.”
“Me too.”
You start to pace around the kitchen, grabbing him a fresh ice pack, Advil, and a glass of water. As you move to grab your pen to do another exam, his fingers curl around the length of your wrist, stopping you in your stead.
“Hey, silly girl. I’ve got a question for you” he says, his breath tickling the back of your neck.
You turn to face him, your heart pounding at the sight of him staring down at you. What’s he doing? Why does he keep calling you that? You can feel him jeering at you, his eyes glinting at you.
“Why are you wearing my hoodie?” he asks, holding the fabric between his fingertips.
You feel your cheeks turn red, looking down to see you weren’t wearing your Spiderman crewneck but instead Eren’s soccer hoodie, which had Jaeger embroidered in big letters onto the back.
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry, Eren. The noise scared me - you’re usually not home at this time so I was coming to check what happened. I just grabbed what was closest when getting out of the bath.”
He smiles, pulling the hood over the top of your damp hair.
“Keep it. You look cute, silly girl.” he responds, sliding the ice pack off the counter and retreating to his room.
-
next part linked here
pls let me know if you want to be added to the tag list!!! just reply to this post or leave ur @ in my asks box :D
#eren jeager x reader#eren jeager fluff#eren jeager#eren x you#eren x reader#eren fluff#eren#eren x y/n#snk x y/n#snk x you#snk x reader#snk eren#snk#aot x reader#aot x y/n#aot#aot fluff#eren jaeger#seeingivywrites!#read more break#roommate eren
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the sun is also a star.
summary: Literally just two drabbles of mhin with my oc Li where they try to bring her back to life when she dies because there is nothing sexier than obsession that even death cannot stop!
notes: 2.2k words, necromancy (descriptions of bodies + cleaning bones + emotional aftermath of bringing someone back to life)
i. I Put Every Bone of Yours Back in Place
There’s a certain clean beauty about bones, Mhin finds, that provide a reassuring and familiar weight to death.
There are 206 bones in an average human body. 80 of those bones make up the axial skeleton, and the remaining 126 bones make up the appendicular skeleton. But what Mhin finds most interesting is that a human is born with 270 bones. Somewhere, during the process of growth and development, those 64 bones are fused with other bones. To change, you must give something up. To live in the world means suffering losses, losses one isn’t even aware of.
Of course, the pages of an anatomical textbook don’t quite capture the reality of a human’s growth. There are always mutations and exceptions. Bones don’t always fuse properly, or someone may simply have been born with extra bones in their hands. It’s difficult to tell if those bones don’t affect the quality of life enough to warrant a checkup with a medical professional. No, it’s only after death that one can gauge the extent of their own deviancy, marked into their very core.
Li, thankfully, only has the average number of bones. Two hundred and six exactly, with no outlying pieces. That makes it easy for them to collect all parts of her. When Mhin lays them on the ground in a facsimile of a human’s shape, they can almost pretend it’s Li again. Her delicate wrist bones, the curve of each rib, the twist of her femur, set in their proper places. She’s beautiful, right down to her skeletal structure.
They wipe their forehead, but all it does is smear grime across their skin: rotten dirt and the faint tinge of death, blood from their own scraped fingers and flesh (from who or what they forget) caught under their nails. It had taken months for them to find her body, months of feverishly patrolling the wastelands, even begging Ais and his disgusting minions for help when weeks of searching turned fruitless. They weren’t above that, not even when their fists tightened at his little smirk. Ais would hold it over their head, they knew.
But all that mattered was that her body was found, monsters and scavengers having already nibbled on every tender part of her, clothing long since reduced to tags and tatters. Her bones shone like stars in the muck. She would be unrecognizable to anyone else, but not to Mhin. There was not a world in which they would not know her.
They had run to her body. Finally, here she was again, and they had fallen to their knees as they picked up her corpse, hugging it to their chest, gore slopping onto their chest, mindless to anything else. It didn’t matter if their shirt stained. It would be better if it stained, if her rotting flesh sunk into the fabric, so they would always carry her with them.
It took time to clean off the bones, too. That was the most exhausting part. To take her body with them into the city in the darkness of the night, to run each part under water, to scrape off all the distended flesh and severed skin without chipping her bones. To gently detangle chunks of yellowing brain matter from the hollow cavity of her skull, watching the flesh fall with a wet slap in the sink. To brush carefully around each opening, which were more delicate and prone to breakage. Through hardened muscle, dead nerves, and congealed blood. To watch the bones pile up, piece by piece, like snowfall, day after day.
Sometimes they had brought her skull to their face, to stare into the eye sockets, the rows of teeth. It was the first piece of her that they had saved. They could feel the memory of her warmth when they closed their eyes, concentrating on how the flesh that once stretched over her skull felt. Her scarred skin, her callouses, the freckle on her knuckle.
They pressed their lips to the hollow teeth, where lips should have been. Nothing but the taste of soap and death. Their first kiss, in months.
She loved to kiss them when she was still around. Mhin would reciprocate begrudgingly, their sour attitude doing little to deter her from throwing her arms around them and peppering their face in kisses. She was like an over eager affectionate puppy, and Mhin had never liked dogs for precisely that reason. But she was an exception, just barely.
The kiss they remembered most had been in her shitty apartment, kneeling in front of each other on faded red cushions. There was a pot of cooling oolong tea in front of them, and Li had found a veil somewhere that she had tossed over her head, just for fun, she claimed. It made her look like a ghost, the lace fluttering over her galaxy of hair.
Wedding rites for their people always involved family, from the little Mhin remembered of matrimonial customs. But neither of them had family left. All they had was each other. So for the tea drinking ceremony, they poured each other cups of steaming tea, raising it to their lips to sip. To honor the only family they had.
There were the three bows, too. But they remembered thinking, even then, that they wouldn’t bow to anyone. Not the uncaring heaven, not their distant ancestors. The only one they would bow to would be to the woman in front of them.
It was an unofficial ceremony. There was no one to proclaim that they now belonged to each other, no city to record whatever they were. But that never mattered. They didn’t need anyone else to prove their relationship was real.
This had been real. Li, in front of them. The bitter tea lingering on their tongue. The sunlight, filtering across the dusty air, making her holy.
They had pushed back her veil, then, and she had smiled mischievously as she grabbed their hand, before pulling the veil so it fell over both of them instead. A benediction, as soft as snow, covering the world in a gauzy, dream of white as she brought her lips to theirs.
The very night they finish cleaning her bones, they return to the wastelands. And now they are laying her bones down piece by piece, in correct anatomical order. They had studied their own textbooks feverishly, just to ensure they wouldn’t mess up the placement, not at this critical juncture. They count over each bone, an obsessive gesture they’ve repeated throughout the night. 206. 206. 206. All in order, all laid out precisely as it would be if Li was taking a nap with her arms outstretched.
The moonlight filters down. Soulless call in the distance, but their dagger is ready at their hip. For an instant, Mhin lets themself relax, and bends down to caress Li’s skull again. The intimate parts of her, which no one but them would ever know and understand.
It was thoughtless of her to leave them behind. She had always been a little scatter-brained and clumsy, prone to having the money stolen right out of her pocket despite being a self-proclaimed thief. But this was her worst mistake yet. To die without them. To rest so peacefully, while making them suffer.
It went against what she always said: that it would just be the two of them, together. And yet she had left them. She had taken on a dangerous job, an escort mission across miles of barren wastelands, soulless at every corner. She had gone out that fateful night, blowing them kisses, promising to return, and then never came home. Hypocrite. How could she do that to them?
But it was fine. It would be fine, and they could forgive her. They would be together again. Mhin was simply fulfilling the promise they made. Even if she cursed them and cried and begged for peace, they would drag her back down to earth, back to their side. It wouldn’t be right otherwise.
They stare down at her bones again. Resurrection was a forbidden art, but Leander had lent them the proper tools for the ritual, the magic and the spells, like a snake whispering in their ear. Weeks of fruitless searching on their own, and Leander was the only one who could offer them what they needed. They would take whatever hand offered them a way to save her, even if it was from someone like him.
Because they were hers, and she was theirs, and not even death would separate them. They would bring her back, and they would tie her so tightly to them that they would be together in every life after this.
Mhin took a breath, and spoke the opening words of the spell as the moonlight spilled over Li’s bones, as if she was waiting for them, too.
ii. Even if You Come Back Wrong, You’re Still Mine
“Sorry.” That’s the first word Li spoke to them, with her palms outstretched in front of her, like a scolded puppy. “It fell.”
It’s easy enough to see the bone protruding from her right hand, the finger cupped in her palms. Mhin lets out a short little sigh. Things like this had become common as of late, her body disintegrating bit by bit after the ritual.
“It’s fine,” they say, gesturing for her to sit. “We can just fix it.”
Li obediently perches on the kitchen chair, and Mhin kneels in front of her, gently taking her broken hand in their own. Her skin is cold, and no amount of rubbing could bring the warmth back into her skin. They had tried, but whatever warmth from their touch her skin absorbed would simply dissipate in a few hours.
They take out the sewing kit from their pocket, a recent benediction from Kuras. When they had tersely asked him for medical supplies, for thick, transparent thread and needles that could puncture skin, Kuras had wordlessly handed them the kit without question. There was never any judgment or pity with Kuras, but his gaze had still seared their skin.
Mhin deftly threads the needle, holding the finger in place, and makes quick, even stitches across Li’s finger. They’re good at delicate work like this, that requires intense concentration and little thought. It’s soothing how the world can always be broken down into patterns and rhythms, into familiar, repetitive motions.
When they’re done, Li stares at her own finger like a stranger.
“Open and close your hand,” Mhin instructs, and she does. The finger moves normally, and they nod.
“Mhin,” Li says, slowly, absently.
“What is it?” they snap, and she only blinks owlishly. Before, she would have shrugged off their complaints as easily as one does water, with a blindly bright and foolish smile. She might have even called them cute.
Li had never been one for quick thinking outside of a fight, but now, her mind seems to move slowly, thoughts struggling to break through the murky surfaces of her own brain. She once worked on instinct and intuition, and now all of her animal senses had been deadened to a dullness that made her stumble where she once would have leaped.
It was as much as what Vere had said, when the bastard had swung by their apartment, ears pricking at the “new amusement” Mhin had been so fixated with that it meant no one in Eridia had seen them outside their apartment in weeks. Vere had deigned to chat with his old gossip partner for a few minutes, but with each dull response of Li’s, Vere’s ears flattened against his head, a sharp, displeasurable scowl on his face. Mhin had then considered slotting their dagger right against his heart when Vere suggested that they should throw away toys that no longer worked.
Li watched them with blank eyes the entire exchange, in the same way she watches them now. There’s a veil fluttering across her gaze, and if they only knew the right words, the right actions, they could finally reach past it to grasp her hand.
“Your face…” she says, and cups their cheeks with her cool palms. They’re still kneeling in front of her, and she gazes down at them, like a blessing.
“What about it?” They lean into her touch, into the smooth skin of death.
“You look…” she frowns. “Sad.” Her words are uncertain.
“I’m not.”
“Okay,” she says.
But for a moment more, they can’t move, can’t pull away from her hands, which have always captivated them. “Li, do you remember what we talked about?” Mhin asks curtly.
She tilts her head. “Which conversation?”
They bring their hands to cover hers, trapping her touch in place. “About what we are.”
She nods, and like a pupil reciting a lesson, states, “That we’re always going to be together, no matter what.”
“Right. Just be sure to keep that in mind,” they say. “That’s the one thing you can’t forget.”
“Okay.”
They close their eyes. “You’re here now,” they repeat. “You’re here. You’re right here.”
“I’m here,” she repeats.
Learned behaviors are just as necessary as innate behaviors. And love is also something that could be learned again, as many times as needed. As long as they kept their hands on hers, then they could believe that the chill of her winter had finally melted away to spring again.
#liya writes#liya’s ocs#touchstarved#mhin#li#sorry idk how to tag these things when its not x reader lmfaooooo#anyways i actually have like. an insane amount of lore for li hiding in my drafts this is just the tip of the iceberg#i just think its cute to pair mhin w someone who is so oblivious self confident and selfish she just pushes past all their walls
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Wheres the Dp x Dc Aus Where Danny HATES The Justice League.
He think they're a bunch a boot licking government dogs. Like he respected when Batman was a vigilante but the fact he just used his power and money to make what he was doing legal. Danny doesn't like that. He's had zero positive interaction with rich adults and government body's. He's leaning full on anarchist.
Green Lanterns a space cop? Space is cool and all but the cop part of the that equation. It's a no go.
Superman seems cool but he knows, knows in his bones, no ones perfect and anyone who makes their brand "I may be one of the most powerful beings on this planet but trust me because I'm nice" is hiding something.
He doesn't like Wonder Women's lasso or how ok she is with using it. He's took away peoples freewill through overshadowing and has decided he's against it. He understands that sometimes you need to use your full kit if worlds are in danger but over all not even the vilest should lose the right to control.
Aguaman is flat out a king and while he doesn't have anything strictly against the man he's against royalty on principle.
He doesn't have anything to big against Flash or Martian Manhunter other than they are a part of the Justice League but he still doesn't like them for that reason.
He figures they're all a bunch of power hungry people who named themselves the protectors of earth for fame, fortune, and government power. Or they're a bunch of a bunch of ppl who do want to help but decided they should pretend to bend to the laws. They despite being government now still operate like vigilantes and the fact they get away with so much law breakage just screams corruption. It doesn't help literally all of Amity Park sent distress notes and signals to the Justice League and they didn't even show up when the city got stolen into another dimension.
Even Sam isn't as against the league as Danny and Tuckers abit of a fan boy. Neither bring up the league to Danny bc they know if he gets started he could go on an hour or longer rant.
When Dani flew of into the sunset the first time Danny warned her against trusting any "superheros" that were legal. That the Titans seemed better than The Justice League but to still be weary.
This au could be phantom planet compliant or not but think about just how much worse his hatred would be if he had to wrangle his rouges, freind's and reveal himself to the the world all bc the "planets protectors" couldnt protect it. In the complaint au he fully blames them for any human experimentation that happens bc people know about half ghosts now. And when they show the Amity Park after the asteroid he's like "Anyone in the Justice League or associated his banned from Amity Park." And they're like "You can not do that" and he's like "Batman gets to! He gets to ban all meta's with no regard for the consequences! He gets to despite the spike in meta hate crimes it causes. Try and stop me!" (The meta hate crime is just fanon for this specific au) the league respect the ban bc they want to become ally's with this VERY powerful and VERY angry kid.
In the non complaint version the banning still happens but the league doesn't respect it. This causes lots of problems. In both of them discovering Amity's problem is what sparks the plot.
(he doesn't have a protection obessetion and he is trans in this au.)
#danny phantom au#trans danny phantom#danny phantom#dp x dc#danny fenton#honestly think the phantom planet complaint version is more interesting#i ddint put it in the text part but vals an average amount a fan of the Justice League
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Late night thoughts but, y'know what I really love in media? Imperfect relationships.
And no I don't mean relationships where they argue a lot or don't completely click together.
One of the tropes that I happen to dislike is the idea of people in love being each others "perfect half", that "complete each other" and "fill the gaps within them" (no innuendo intended).
Sure its sweet, heart warming, and gives off a sense of hope but, realistically, nobody truly completes someone!
Which is how I came up with my own little term for my favorite relationships; Kintsugi relationships.
For those who don't know, kintsugi, also known as kintsukuro, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery using gold, silver, or platinum dust! This creates a rather beautiful but imperfect appearance to the pottery, showing the lines of breakage while holding it together, but never truly healing it all the way.
One of my favorite current ships, Vashwood (aka Vash the Stampede and Nicholas D. Wolfwood from the Trigun franchise) reflect this type of relationship to me!
Both Vash and Wolfwood suffer from their own individual traumas, being filled to the brim with metaphorical and physical scars that eat away at them.
Vash struggles with hundreds of years worth of trauma, reflected upon his whole body after trying to save countless lives from death and violence. Some caused by bandits, some caused by his own brother, and some... Caused by him.
He struggles with nightmares and PTSD, remembering the incidents and death that was all his own fault, mourning the unknown lives that he had taken by accident during both the fall of SEEDS, the July incident, and the destruction of the moon. He relives it, and makes it his whole purpose to avoid those incidents from ever happening again.
And he suffers in silence, hiding behind a fake smile, under a red damaged duster and protective armor, with nobody truly knowing what goes through his head as he lives day by day, trying to provide some hope to the world.
Wolfwood also struggles with quite a lot of trauma, feeling the leftover scars deep within his bones, even though nary are visible upon his flesh. He remembers each bullet wound, each knife stabbing, each bit of blood that was shed before he drank a potion, forcing him back to life to continue fighting.
He also remembers the torturous abuse he went through to become a member of the Eye of Michael, to become their Punisher, forcing his body to age and grow beyond its means and become subhuman.
And even though he denies it, he remembers all the death he has caused too. All the bandits he's fought, all the targets he's followed, all to appease a faceless man to protect his childhood home at the orphanage. He drinks and smokes the pain away, never truly opening up to people while acting like a saintly priest, knowing how much pain he's caused for a cause he didn't believe in.
At least.... Until they met, and left together to search for Knives. And slowly but surely, unlike any other person they met, began to unravel and slowly heal each others open wounds.
The two of them find comfort in each others trauma, their battle scars, their imperfectness, spending every moment as they travel No Man's Land together. The bicker, they fight, they laugh, they smile, they rest and share tears. But they never try to fix each other, only bide their time and ignore their own pain, while finding a purpose in life to live and fight.
They are each others kintsugi, the gold that holds them together, that doesn't completely heal the countless imperfections, wounds, and trauma. But they don't care, because they'd rather share each others tomorrows and feel human for once, even for but a moment in each others presence...
The same applies to a pair of ocs my friend and I have developed for quite some time, with the two ironically mirroring Vashwood in terms of relationship! They both struggle with their own individual traumas, and while they can't completely heal the metaphorical and physical scars, they can mend and soothe the leftover wounds.
They both suffer in silence in their own ways, but find comfort as they unravel each others hidden scars. They're imperfect, they're damaged, they go through highs and lows... but the fact that they have someone to fill part of those gaps with love and comfort makes it all worth it.
And that my friends, is the key to a kintsugi relationship; Embracing and loving imperfection, and healing wounds but never getting rid of them
Also another really cool and similar example that my friend brought up was the Sashiko sewing technique, which like Kintsugi, is focused upon repairing damage on a piece of fabric by creating unique stitches!
To quote from them, “Nothing is perfect nor does it last forever but there is beauty it’s the wounds and cracks that it bears. Showing them healed and not fixed brings a humanness to things that otherwise wouldn’t have it.”
And man...
If that doesn't represent Vashwood's whole relationship in their story, I don't know what does!
They also mentioned, "Something born out of necessity but bringing beauty to it anyway, really does scream Vashwood," which seeing by this quote is absolutely true!
Anyway, for anyone who reads this, thank you for taking the time to do so, and have a good night/day!! Maybe in the future I'll discuss some more fun things with Trigun, my ocs, or maybe another fandom of a certain fantastical variety? 👀
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Angel was no stranger to kinks. Given his line of work and overall lifestyle, he had been through it all. From the normal to the strange, he had gone through every deviant scenario one could think of. By now every part of him had been sold to someone at some point for their own pleasure. This was all to say that, while he had participated in exhibitionism plenty of times, the person this request came from was what surprised him the most. But as he grinded against the giant, wet muscle inside Alastor's mouth, it began to make a lot more sense.
He had barely stripped off his boots behind the hotel before he heard a sound akin to the breakage of bone, and a dark shadow began to loom over him. When he tentatively raised his head, boots in hand, he met with the glowing, twin crimson dots in the pitch-black eyes of his love. His smile had been stitched at the corners by ghostly green thread, and his antlers extended far above and beyond his head. Aside from this fearsome change, he remained more or less the same Alastor he knew.
So he held no fear when he felt one of his giant hands scoop him into his palm, and he let his shoes fall to the ground. The two of them rose up until Alastor stood at least twenty stories tall, if Angel counted the hotel floors correctly. He must have served a tantalizing sight for the giant sinner as he rested on his hands and knees, because while his back was turned he felt something wet push roughly against his rear. It even reached between his legs to tease his dual sexes as it lifted him off the surface of Alastor's hand.
Angel moaned against Alastor's palm and shook from what he accurately surmised to be his tongue, before his lower half unceremoniously dropped back down as he drew away. Although he felt unsteady, the small spider rolled onto his back so he could get a better view of Alastor. He watched the tongue that enveloped him earlier taunt him as it dragged along the outside of Alastor's lips. A sight that left him breathless and brought a fire between his legs.
He wasn't bashful in how he played with himself in Alastor's palm. While his upper hands threaded eagerly through the fluff on his chest, his lower hands tended to both of his sexes. With one hand wrapped around his rigid member, he slowly stroked it up and down, and the other reached lower as it massaged his puffy lips. All underneath the intense gaze of the hungry giant. An observation more literal than Angel realized.
As he continued to pleasure himself, rivers of saliva poured from the corners of Alastor's lips. Soon, those yellowed fangs that made up his grin parted, and his enormous tongue snaked out from between them. But this time, Angel felt himself rise up to meet it. His heartrate increased and, before Alastor even tilted the hand he rested on, he knew what would happen next.
When he felt himself slide down his wrist, he didn't fight it as he got deposited within the giant's mouth. As soon as his body collided with that giant, wet muscle, saliva coated every inch of him. Although he tried to hold onto it, he found it impossible given its slippery, smooth surface. He only received the briefest view of his new surroundings as he looked around before the light of Hell disappeared behind Alastor's sharp-toothed grin. In this newly darkened space, he was left entirely at his mercy.
He couldn't deny the fearful flutter in his heart. Although he trusted Alastor, this was new even for him, and he stood in a very precarious position. Where one wrong move could spell a very unfortunate end for him. It honestly made it all the more exhilarating when he felt the tongue he sat on move with the smallest motions.
Those purposeful undulations rocked against Angel's lower body, aimed specifically for his genitalia. It quickly made him forget about his minor worries as he rolled his head back with a dull moan. With nothing to hold onto, he gave into these pleasurable waves as he sat back and rode them out as they came.
He rocked with the motions as if he rode a horse and grinded out his satisfaction. The small bumps that made up his tongue pressed into and spread his lips, before they dragged along the underside of his shaft. It gave a similar effect to the ribbed sex toys he had sampled on himself, whose ridges only served to heighten his pleasure. His breaths came shorter, and he pressed his lower hands against the flexing muscle as best he could as he kept himself upright.
One of his upper hands returned between his legs, and he pressed his throbbing erection against the giant's tongue as he bore his hips down on it. He bit back another groan that built in his throat and focused on the feeling that rose in his core. His hand wrapped around his length, and he furiously stroked it closer to the end he approached. Hot, humid, and completely drenched in saliva and sweat, exhaustion began to creep on him, but he pushed forward regardless.
His cock pulsed painfully with pent-up release, and his pussy similarly ached. Every exhale carried a moan lost in the cavern of Alastor's maw. But he knew he heard him as his throat rumbled an earthquake through his tiny form. It denoted the contented amusement he found in the writhing form of the man inside him. And that finally tipped Angel over the edge as he threw his head back with a powerful orgasm.
He sat flush against his tongue as he pumped rope after rope along it, down into the pit of his esophagus. Blind as he was, he couldn't see it, but that idea stuck with Angel as he humped the subsequent loads through his hands. Concurrently, his legs squeezed against the slimy tongue he sat on as he coated it with slick. Both minor deposits given Alastor's size, and Angel doubted he even felt or tasted any of it.
When Angel finally rested back, exhausted and content, he felt cool air wash over him and he was dropped back into his lover's hand. He gulped in lungfuls of air while he lay in a sticky pool of spittle. Through partially lidded eyes he saw Alastor peer down at him, somewhat concerned, which Angel dismissed with a weary thumbs-up. Reassured, he saw Alastor's tense grin relaxed, and he felt a large thumb brush against his defiled hair.
When Angel inevitably caught his breath, he blinked his eyes open and rolled over. He grabbed the base of Alastor's digits and pulled himself up just enough to peer through them. As he expected, they hadn't moved an inch from the hotel. That entire experience happened where anyone could see it and nobody was the wiser. Something that didn't sit quite right with the spider, as he felt exhibitionism was meant to draw attention.
He looked lower towards the ground, to the spot where he had disrobed mere moments ago. Then he looked back to Alastor's lower half, and found something that could fix that particular problem. A noticeable rise behind the fabric of his elongated dress pants, at least the size of a small mountain. Angel smiled and knew they were far from done.
If Alastor wanted to put on a show, that's exactly what they were going to do.
#fanfiction#fanfic#hazbin hotel#hazbin hotel fanfiction#angel dust#alastor#radiodust#radiodustday#radiodustday2024#drabble#soft vore#hazbin hotel smut#smut
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Avalil + northern lights? There's no way Ava's ever actually seen them in person
thanks to @frozenabattoir for giving me the idea for this ily 💖💖🥰
Lava Kiss
…
Ava opens her eyes and she is kneeling on the shore of a crack that runs right into the earth. Above, dim, like the stabbing of stars through the atmosphere, she can see the faintest flush of colour. The sky bewitched by light.
She knows, she knows what it is. Aurora. (Bea with her voice like warm rain. cold water. like swimming in the pool and the chlorine sticking to her skin. Bea, with her voice)
(i miss you i miss you i-)
The lights, she remembers, are caused by solar wind, by disturbances in the magnetosphere (how Bea’s voice almost vanished around the word sphere, a breathy ‘f’ snuck inside the sound of it). Ava likes her voice. Every sound it makes.
She tries not to think of another voice, the other voice. Breaking in the dark.
The dapple of bloodred light through membrane. The leak of molten orange and her, catching it in a cupped palm before it could touch Ava.
The northern lights are charged particles exciting the atmosphere, and then light. Light.
But you can hardly see it now. Ava, trembling, kneels on the edge of a breakage in the world and remembers.
Lilith.
Walking with her, wings tucked so tight they gasped for air together in the wretched heat. Lilith with her arms around Ava and outside…
Fire. The smell of spitting hissing spitting burning flesh and the grit of Lilith’s teeth. Ava pleading with her in the dark. “Phase. Please Lilith, please just-”
“Can’t.” her teeth. Ava knows how they feel inside her. “I have to leave you behind if I go.”
“Then go.”
Silence.
She didn’t leave and now. And now.
The horizon is a wash of fire, smoke and gas churning thick around them, but the flicker-beat of the halo makes an oasis of light where Ava kneels.
Where Lilith sits, curled into a ball. She is more than half-alight.
Lilith twitches, gasps. Shakes her stupid, beautiful head, the burnt-out ends of hair curled Medusa-like around it.
Ava sees the edge of Lilith’s smile and breaks like a bone. She makes a noise she will not be able to recall later. She moves, she cries, she is always too late.
Roughness underneath her. Young stone, warm to the touch, raw as an unwrapped wound. It tears at her knees and her palms as she darts toward Lilith.
There’s a soft hiss, a sizzling that becomes Lilith’s voice. Why can’t it ever sound strange to her?
“Don’t.”
She has one burning hand raised. Palmprint of blood and blisters. They pop. Molten flesh touches Ava's collarbones.
It hurts.
The palm and Lilith behind it. Hurts.
She is recognizable. That's the worst part of it.
“I’ll heal,” Lilith wheezes.
“Bullshit.”
“Watch.”
A quick-spar of traded syllables. She always loses this fight.
Ava sits back, trying to escape the blur of recollection. Of fighting Lilith, of stabbing slicing clawing biting breaking her. Again and again.
And the strange girl next to her letting it happen. Putting her body in the way like that’s all she can do with it.
If not for her, Bea would be-
“I can hear you thinking. Stop it.”
Her snarl is back already.
Ava tries not to cry about it. On the way through the fire, Lilith called her crybaby five times.
Halo-light makes her an effigy as Ava sits, watches, waits. Tries not to think at all, in fact, of the halo in her chest, the iron now wrapped tight around her heart and tendril-hooked through her spine. Inescapable.
“So,” she says eventually. Ava is not good at silence and she is worse at watching Lilith try not to scream as new flesh splits the skin of her flash-burned back. “Hell is really-”
other people?
“You weren’t in hell.” Lilith sits, burning, pedantic, on the rock next to Ava. Her skin is a swirl of colour, stone shot through with rainbow lines. “I just chose this way back.”
“You chose the path made of lava!? Are you absolutely batsh-”
“It was the only way to keep you intact. To keep the halo with us. I-I had to shield it. I had to-”
She breaks off. Ava can’t tell if it’s pain or frustration or hatred or pain or please, let it stop.
Lilith notices her staring. Always does. Never comments.
This is how they dance around the issue.
“It'll come back clean,” she says, meeting Ava’s eyes - oh, there you are - as droplets of lava leak down the sweep of her wing, bundled up like an old umbrella.
She leans into the curve of it, so small against her wingspan. Legs bare, leaking blood down to her newly-returned toes. Skin splitting, popping, blistering, burning.
Ava doesn’t flinch. She’s shivering, body aching for the humidity of hell. For the dry dunes, their wavering shapes that seem to walk during the night when you collapse at their feet. Beatrice told her once that there are spiders in the desert who will chase your shadow.
“Not you, just your shadow.”
Lilith has her eyelashes, still. Somehow. They cast shadows on her face as her eyes flutter open. Her voice sounds fresh from an oven, low. Little gouts of steaming air escape past her lips, which are all broken up, strings of whatever the mouth is made of hanging down. Bloody ribbons sticking to her chin.
She's a wreck.
Ava loves her.
#warrior nun#avalil#ava x lilith#technically avabealil#tw burns#tw gore#anon#ty for the prompt!#casper writes#(finally 😭😭)#bdbdbdbd i’m so sorry this is the opposite of what you probably wanted 🫠🫠
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Sans. Since we're on the topic of bones
Do they ever break?
Like yours or paps
I thought Papyrus would have broken his face with the block and it got me thinking
we can break bones for sure.
paps fell out of a real big tree once when he was smaller and got a fracture in his leg.
can't recall either of us getting any worse breakages than that, luckily.
definitely harder for a stronger monster like him to than for me to, but still possible.
p.s.
those puzzle cubes don't weigh enough to break a face. even the big one.
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What specific disabilities and medical problems do you think Levi experiences after the final battle? I find it astonishing he was able to survive at all, given how wounded he seemed initially after the thunder spear explosion and then how he aggravated those injuries and suffered new ones after the Battle of Heaven and Earth
Well, I'm no medical expert, so I can only give my very ill-informed impression of what I think Levi is dealing with, lol. But I think anyone can at least safely assume he's dealing with a lot.
Just obviously, his leg is clearly permanently damaged. Specifically, I think it's probably a problem with his knee, since that's apparently where the titan got a hold of him. The titan probably bit near clean through his leg, I'm guessing. It might have only been the metal harness from his ODM gear which managed to keep him from losing it entirely. I imagine he might have lost all of the cartilage in his knee, and probably also suffered severe breakage of the bones around that area. The bones were probably shattered, to be honest. All this would have only have been made worse by his continuing to fight afterward. I don't think Levi is paralyzed in any way, but he's probably suffering from pretty severe joint and knee pain, at the least, which probably has lead to all kinds of other issues. I imagine it's had a negative impact on his lower back and hips, for example. So Levi's need for a wheelchair, I think, probably comes from the fact that he's just in chronic pain, and can't be on his feet for very long anymore. It probably causes him a very large amount of discomfort to have to walk for any, real distance, though I assume he CAN still walk, albeit with a no doubt pronounced limp. It's probably just very hard for him, and so using the wheelchair is simply easier and better for his health overall.
As for Levi's other medical problems, well, we know he's lost the use of his right eye, leaving him blind on that side, which no doubt has a big effect on his depth perception and general awareness. I imagine that's got to be something that's really hard for Levi to get used to, not being able to tell when someone is coming up on him from the right. The close proximity he had to the thunderspear explosion probably also affected his hearing, though I'm not so sure about that one being permanent. But losing full sight in his right eye is going to make it more difficult for him to gauge where things are in relation to himself. That kind of thing can cause you to walk into doors or walls, or I imagine knocking things over that you're reaching for, etc...
I also know Levi suffered some pretty severe internal bleeding, and we can assume from that, that he suffered either severely lacerated or even ruptured organs. He no doubt required intensive surgery after all was said and done. That kind of physical trauma can't ever be fully recovered from, I don't think. It's probably had a big impact on his day to day life. I wouldn't be surprised if Levi needs to have regular doctor appointments just to make sure nothing is going wrong inside. That, on top of his disability, probably requires him to be extra careful with his body. He probably doesn't want to be taking any big falls or tumbles, for example. I think the physical trauma he's been through has probably left his body somewhat fragile.
And then there's his missing fingers, which no doubt had a very big impact on him. We don't realize how much we rely on our digits until we can no longer use them. Levi lost the middle and index fingers on his right hand, which is his dominant hand, I assume, so that would make things like writing and holding any sort of utensil or instrument much more difficult. It would make dressing and undressing more difficult (as would his bad leg). Even just turning pages in a book, or newspaper, would be much harder. Tying shoes, anything that requires minute precision with ones hands, etc... it would all just be harder for him. And again, that would be something that would be really difficult to get used to, no doubt.
I'm sure all of this had a terrible psychological impact on Levi too, especially when one considers that, for most of his life, he's been a physically superior person, stronger, faster, more coordinated, more athletic, than anyone. So to suddenly be faced with a life in which he can't do the things he once did with ease, to actually now be facing a life in which menial tasks which are easy for everyone else, are now daunting in their difficulty for him, must have been incredibly hard to adjust to and accept. I have no doubt Levi DID accept and adjust though, and didn't let it get him down or stop him from living a good and full life after the war, and I have no doubt either that Levi would do it all again if it meant he could saves lives. But there would have been a lot of adjustment, and no doubt there were days which were harder than others.
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Name: Adriana smith
Epithet: mangled, bone breakage deals less damage the more it happens.
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