#but for the first time in a while i feel optimistic. not doomed to fail. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

totowlff · 1 year

Text

extra — boundaries

➝ so this is how eve felt after eating the forbidden fruit?

➝ word count: 4,4k

➝ warnings: mentions of smut

Toto had been staring at the bedroom ceiling for a while. The scent of Cassie’s shampoo filled his nostrils, the hints of coconut and something fresh — maybe lime? — was keeping him wide awake despite him feeling physically drained. The same thought repeated in his mind, tracing a well-worn groove.

"You couldn't have done that".

Completely naked and curled against his body, Cassie slept soundly and peacefully. Strands of her auburn hair hung in her face, and she looked so content that it almost looked like she was smiling. It seemed like she was getting her first decent night's sleep in days.

"You couldn't have done that".

When he decided to come to Cassie’s flat to check on her after not seeing her at the factory since he’d returned from the doubleheader, he couldn’t have ever imagined the turn this night would take. He had to see her. She hadn’t answered any of his calls for two weeks, and seemed to be avoiding him at work. And so, he found himself ringing the doorbell to her flat shortly after he’d left work for the evening.

Perhaps he should have come sooner, but at the same time, Toto didn't want to seem too controlling, like he was smothering her or desperate, even if that was the emotion he felt every time he heard her voicemail recording, asking him to leave a message that she would answer shortly.

When Cassie opened the door to her flat to let Toto in, he was a bit shocked. Her eyes were puffy, like she’d been crying. They were sunken and underlined with dark circles. Her nose was red, and her hair was messy. It was like she’d lost the usual spark she had. Seeing her like that made his stomach lurch, a strange sense of doom settling in his chest.

— What are you doing here?

— I came to see if you were still alive — Toto answered — Are you drinking?

— Yes.

— You shouldn't be drinking, Cassandra — he said, scolding. She should know better.

— Why not? — she asked, taking a defiant sip — It’s not like I’m pregnant or anything.

Her words landed like a punch. While he was in China, Toto was convinced that Cassie was pregnant. He wasn’t entirely optimistic about the process, after all, there was a considerable chance it wouldn't work out, from what he'd read. But there was something about Cassie's excitement that made him believe he had become a father-to-be after their last visit to the fertility clinic. The silence that followed in the following weeks should have given him pause, but Toto remained hopeful, believing that there was someone growing in Cassie's womb.

Then, he thought, he should have known something was wrong from the fact that Cassie seemed to be avoiding him. He knew she had a scheduled blood test while he was out of the country. When he’d called once, she answered her phone and hung up without saying a word. Toto should have known then that the results hadn't been what they'd hoped. However, there was a part of him that still wanted to believe that silence was just because she was busy, or because she wanted to surprise him. Not even his natural inclination toward cynicism overcame his hope that Cassie was pregnant.

He let himself into her flat, sitting down with her to discuss the reasons she hadn’t told him, or hadn’t tried to return any of his contact, why she’d been avoiding him. Toto had always tried to make himself available and present, participating in the process as much as possible, and at that moment, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was failing in that effort. When Toto tried to explain that he cared and that both she and the baby could depend on him, Cassie exploded.

— There is no child, Toto! There's no baby, there's no child, there's nothing! Nothing! Nothing! There is nothing because I failed. The process failed. Just another failure. I failed.

Seeing her collapse under the weight of her guilt and shame broke Toto's heart. He admired very few people the way he admired Cassie. He had admired her even long before they decided to take the step of trying to become parents together. She had a good sense of humor and an intelligence that never failed to impress him. However, getting closer to her as they went through the IVF process made Toto see Cassie in a brand new light. Toto discovered a woman full of willpower and courage, who was not afraid to face what many considered the greatest challenge that existed in life.

Seeing Cassie completely torn to pieces in front of him made him realize that she needed to know how he saw her. Toto hadn’t expected that, when he finished talking, after he promised that he would give her a child, Cassie would kiss him.

Her lips were warm and soft. Her mouth was inviting as her fingers grasped onto the collar of his shirt. With his hands on her face, Toto felt the path the tears had made down her cheeks, her pain turning into desire. He would do anything to protect her from any disappointment or sadness, even if he had to destroy himself in the process.

She parted her lips, inviting him to taste the wine that was on her tongue and Toto was about to do so when a flash of rationality hit him, making him pull away from her.

He couldn't do it. Not at that moment, like that.

— Please — she begged, her voice revealing something beyond simple carnal desire but some need that was deeper, more emotional.

— You're not okay right now — Toto said, talking to himself more than Cassie. In any other circumstance, he would have let himself get swept up in her passion, but now was not the time. She had been drinking, seemed like she hadn't slept well in days, hormones from the IVF treatments were likely still raging in her system, and she was clearly frustrated. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he’d taken advantage of her while she was so vulnerable.

— I need you — she whispered.

“I need you too, but not like this”, Toto thought, pulling her away from his face. After directing her to her room while he got her a Nurofen pill and a glass of water, he took a deep breath, wondering if he should stay at her flat, sleeping on the couch so he could keep an eye on her for the night.

However, when he stepped into her bedroom, it was obvious she had other plans.

She was completely naked, with a purposeful look on her face as she walked slowly towards him. Her body was just as he'd imagined it, with shapely legs, firm breasts, and skin dotted with freckles. He was also surprised to see a tattoo splashed across her ribcage. It was a design of what looked like a Grecian bust or statue of a woman with a serious face with sharp features, and an ancient-looking helmet on her head. It was designed to look like a sketch, surrounded by inky splotches in the shape of laurel leaves. He didn't know she had a tattoo, let alone such a large one. He was transfixed as his attention shifted from her chest to her eyes, which were dark with desire.

— Well — she said softly — I want you.

Part of Toto wanted to tell Cassie to get dressed and go to sleep. Part of him wanted to leave her flat and not come back until the next day, when she had sobered up, gotten some sleep, and was in a better frame of mind. Part of him wanted to move out of the gray area they were in as two people looking to co-parent as friends, and to raise their child in a romantic relationship. Part of him wanted to honor what he'd said to her, to the lawyer, and to himself in that office when they'd been drafting their parenting document.

There shouldn't be any chance of them having anything.

The possibility of him falling in love with Cassie should be nil.

He couldn't want her.

— Fuck, Cassandra — he growled, kissing her again.

“You couldn't have done that”, thought again, while flashes of their union invaded his mind. He remembered the pressure of Cassie's heels at the base of his spine, the sway of her breasts with each thrust, the way her nails dug into the skin of his shoulder blades as her eyes rolled back and her muscles quivered.

It wasn't like Toto hadn’t ever thought about what it would be like to have sex with Cassie. His contribution to the fertilization process had been the fruit of his fantasy about her. However, his imagination was something harmless, secret. He could live with the fantasy of having her gasping and writhing in pleasure underneath him, but he wasn’t sure he could live with having experienced the real thing, knowing that he shouldn’t have. It was like he’d tasted forbidden fruit.

But at that moment, with Cassie naked sleeping next to him, Toto was sure he had screwed up. It was a huge mistake, and the worst thing was realizing that there was no turning back. He would never be able to forget the feeling of being inside her, let alone the way Cassie had begged him to not pull out, the implication that she wanted him to get her pregnant.

“I will, Cassie, but not like that”, Toto thought, as he felt her shift, curling up closer, seeking the warmth of his skin. Carefully sliding her head onto the pillow next to her, he tried to get up, reaching first for his underwear, then for the duvet that had been kicked aside. As he tucked the blanket around Cassie’s shoulders, she opened her eyes sleepily.

— What are you doing? — she asked, her voice husky.

— Just covering you up. You were cold.

A small, sleepy smile appeared on her lips.

— Thanks.

After tucking her in, Toto turned around, his eyes searching the room for the rest of his own clothes. However, if he expected Cassie to have fallen back asleep, he would have been wrong.

— What are you doing now? — he heard her ask from behind him.

— Looking for my clothes.

— Are you leaving? — she asked.

Toto took a deep breath.

— Well, I don’t want to impose — he answered.

— You could never impose on me — Cassie said, immediately.

Finally, he turned around and took a long look at her. She was sitting up in bed now, the duvet gathered around her lap. Her hair was disheveled and her breasts were bare, dotted with red marks from where he’d sucked them into her skin. She didn’t bother moving to cover herself up, likely because she was tired, or because he’d already seen everything.

— Cassandra, I think it’s best…

— It's late, Toto — she argued — And you're tired. You can't drive home like this.

He stared at her in silence.

— Please, stay — Cassie said softly, looking down at her lap — I don’t want to be alone.

Before his brain could process a response, his feet brought him back towards the bed, his body settling down on the mattress beside her. With a small smile, Cassie laid back down next to him, planting a kiss on his shoulder before settling her head on his chest where it was before, cuddling into the side of his body again.

"You couldn't have done that", he thought again, as he felt his eyes grow heavy. Toto hadn't realized how tired he was feeling. With his eyelids closing, he allowed himself to drift off, one hand resting at the base of Cassie's spine.

Suddenly, a loud, metallic clang made Toto wake with a start. Jumping out of bed, he ran down the hall, his footsteps heavy against the wood. He went downstairs with his heart racing. It sounded like someone was trying to break in.

While Toto was expecting to find a burglar clad in black clothing climbing in through a window, he was faced with a completely different scene once he got downstairs. Standing in front of the kitchen island, a little girl in green pajamas and messy red hair was holding a mixing bowl, looking at the floor.

— Uh oh! — the girl said.

— We need to be more careful, my love, if we're not going to wake your — he heard Cassie say. Then she appeared from behind the counter, a cloth over her shoulder and a spoon in her hand. She smiled as she caught sight of Toto standing in the doorway — Well, I think we woke him up.

The girl, who couldn't have been more than four years old, grinned, and jumped off the stool she was standing on, running around the kitchen island and racing toward the doorway, stretching her arms up so that Toto would pick her up.

— Guten Morgen, Papa! — she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek once he’d lifted her.

— Guten Morgen — Toto replied, a little hesitantly.

— Mama und ich machten Pfannkuchen. Aber ich ließ den Löffel auf den Boden fallen — she explained, looking a little embarrassed — Verzeihung.

— Kein Problem, Liebling. Ich war sowieso schon wach.

Cassie approached them with a smile on her face.

— How about speaking in English to include me in the conversation?

— She was just telling me you were making pancakes and she dropped her spoon on the floor.

The girl nodded, her fingers playing with Toto's hair.

— What kind of pancakes are you making?

— I was planning on banana and strawberry, but someone reminded me that her Papi prefers them with hazelnut cream, so — Cassie smiled, slipping an arm around his back. Alternating his gaze between her and the little girl, Toto saw that the two looked very similar, with the same dark eyes and the same wavy red hair. However, he could still see something of himself in her face. She was a perfect blend of them.

— She knows me well — he said, a half smile on his face.

— Of course, she’s your daughter.

— Our daughter, you mean — Toto replied, kissing the girl's cheek, his heart full of warmth and something that made him feel airy and light.

Happiness.

— Well, since you are here, can you help me finish getting breakfast ready? — Cassie asked.

— Of course — he replied, smiling.

— There’s a pan and some batter next to the stove. Go ahead and make the pancakes whatever size you want them. In the meantime, I’ll make the coffee.

— Okay — Toto said, planting a kiss on Cassie’s forehead, before putting the little girl down on the floor and heading toward the frying pan that was waiting on the stove. And when he touched the handle of the pan, he felt a searing pain, as if he had been burned.

He woke with a start again.

Sunlight entered the bedroom timidly through the gap in the white curtain. Toto glanced around, his eyes bleary, trying to figure out why he wasn’t in his own room, and where he was. He caught sight of a bookshelf against a wall, his eyes landing on a picture of a red headed teenager in equestrian clothing with her hand on the reins of a dapple gray horse. It reminded him of what he’d been up to the night before.

Turning to the opposite side, his eyes found Cassie's face. She was still fast asleep beside him. Toto brushed away a strand of hair that was falling over her cheek. The movement made her sigh, shifting on the mattress. She looked peaceful and at ease.

Unlike him.

Getting up carefully so as not to disturb her, Toto decided to look for his clothes in the mess of Cassie's room. Then, with his shirt and pants in hand, he went into the bathroom to wash his face and get dressed, trying to figure out what he would say to Cassie when she woke up and saw him in her kitchen. He thought about leaving before she woke up, but treating her like a one-night stand was not the way to handle this predicament.

Maybe he would simply tell her that it was a big mistake, that they shouldn’t have done what they’d done; not just because they agreed that it wouldn’t happen, but because he couldn't stop even knowing she wasn’t in a good place. Cassie was emotionally fragile, in one of the most difficult moments of her life. And he had slept with her.

However, at the same time that he condemned himself for that, Toto couldn't forget the way she had said that she wanted him, that she needed him. She hadn't said it once, but several times, without a hint of hesitation. She was so full of resolve that Toto didn’t have the heart to deny her, especially when he wanted her just as much.

Staring at his reflection in the mirror, he considered his options, but could only land on one conclusion.

— I need some coffee.

Toto was waiting for the water to heat up in the coffee maker in Cassie’s kitchen when he heard footsteps behind him. He sighed, bracing himself for Cassie's reaction to seeing him standing there. A few seconds later, he heard a chair being dragged behind him.

— Are you making tea? — Cassie asked.

— Coffee — Toto replied, an involuntary smile on his face — Would you like some?

— Yes — she replied softly.

He got another mug out of the cabinet.

— With milk?

— No. Just sugar. Thank you.

Awkward silence hung over the kitchen as Toto fussed with the mugs and the coffee pot. Then he turned, handing one to Cassie. She thanked him. As she took the first sip, Toto took a moment to look at her. Her red hair fell in waves, her eyes fixed on her drink. She was wearing a well-worn navy blue T-shirt with the University of Cambridge logo on the chest. The color seemed to highlight the light purple marks on her neck, just below the chain of the necklace she always wore.

Marks he'd made.

— Cassie, about last night…

— Sit down — she said, interrupting him.

— What?

— Sit down, Toto.

He complied, going around the kitchen island and taking the chair next to Cassie. After a few seconds of silence and another sip of her coffee, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at Toto.

— Now, about yesterday…

— I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done that to you — he snapped — I shouldn’t have taken advantage of your moment of weakness and just gone to bed with you. I should have gotten it into my head that you weren't okay and told myself not to give in, but I… Forgive me, Cassie.

— You don't have to apologize for anything — she said quietly.

— Why not, Cassie? You were clearly not well, you had been drinking...

— Toto — Cassie said sharply, interrupting him — What happened last night was something consented to between two fully aware adults. I won’t deny that the way I acted was influenced by some... Emotions, but the fact is that nothing that happened was forced or unwanted on my part. I’d had a little bit of wine, but my faculties were fully intact, I assure you.

He still didn't have the heart to look at her. He felt ashamed.

— Really, I mean it. You have nothing to apologize for. It's okay — she said, laying her hand over his. It felt warm and soft — It felt good. Very good indeed.

Toto looked up at her.

— You liked… It?

Cassie smiled.

— Yes. You are… You certainly know what you’re doing.

— I appreciate the endorsement of my, um, skills — he murmured, making her laugh.

— I have another question — Toto said — Just for the sake of my curiosity.

— Yes?

— I saw the tattoo you have, the one on your side. I guess it surprised me. You, uh… Never seemed like... I mean, not that it’s a bad thing, it's just… Well, given what you’ve said about your upbringing, I guess. You just have never seemed like the rebellious type.

Cassie set down her coffee, mid-sip, to laugh.

— What’s so funny?

— Nothing, I just wasn’t expecting you to ask about it.

She lifted up the hem of her t-shirt to expose the piece. It was over her ribs on her right side, stretching over her entire flank, from just below her armpit to the top of her hip.

— I drew it myself, you know. Not the tattoo, but the art for it.

Toto admired the way the lines looked messy and sketch-like, but it was all done in a very intentional way. He looked at the way there were swirls and globs of ink came together to shape the sharp expression on the woman’s face, and the laurel leaves surrounding the bust that looked like they had been inked and pressed directly on her skin.

— You did? What… Who is it?

Cassie lowered her shirt again.

— It’s Athena. I know my mother picked my name just because it was a name from classical literature that she thought sounded nice, but I’ve always identified with the mythological Cassandra. She was said by some writers to have had auburn hair, and nobody ever believed in me, just like she was cursed to have her prophecies go unheeded. But, I got this because Cassandra put herself under the protection of Athena during the fall of Troy, and Athena killed Ajax in revenge for defiling her temple and attacking Cassandra, so, I figured… Maybe Athena would protect me too.

— Oh…

It was strikingly profound to Toto, but he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. He knew Cassie was very smart, incredibly well-read, and studied the Classics in school, but it still struck him. Even after all of these years of knowing Cassie, he was still fascinated by her. Even despite how close they’d gotten in the past few months, it still felt like she had several layers that he wanted to peel away. He wouldn’t dig any deeper than she allowed him to. It may have been his imagination, but it seemed like maybe she wanted someone to see what was at the very core of her, and had just been waiting for someone she trusted enough to look for it.

— I decided to get it after the last time I spoke to my father, just after my sister’s wedding. We had a huge fight, because I’d just switched to the marketing course in University, and I turned down this man that my parents were trying to set me up with. Some… Other things happened that year, too. And then, I just decided I didn’t care what my parents thought any more, so I got a tattoo.

She laughed.

— It’s kind of an empty protest, because it’s not like they know.

Toto was silent. He was surprised. He thought they talked about a lot in the few years they’d had their regular talks over coffee in the factory canteen, but this was the first time he was hearing about it.

— Do you not like it? — Cassie asked, tentatively.

— No, actually I… I really do. The artwork is gorgeous, I had no idea you had such talent. I mean, I knew you were creative, at least from the things you do at work. And I didn’t expect you to be the… Rebellious type.

Cassie laughed again.

— You should have seen me when I was in University. Maybe even before that. I wasn’t ever what one would call a wild child, but… I had my moments.

Both of them fell silent again, focused on their coffees. Birds were chirping outside Cassie's flat and the soft sound of early Saturday traffic indicated that Oxford was still waking up. However, there was still something nagging at Toto.

— Cassie…

— Yes?

— Yesterday you said that… There would be no way to try a new round of IVF, something to do with someone's inheritance. Can you explain what you meant?

She sighed.

— It’s just, I paid for the first round myself, with the money that was left to me when my maternal grandmother died a few years ago. She divided her inheritance with all her grandchildren and left a good amount for each one. However, with so many changes in the middle of the process, your costs that I didn’t factor in, the fees for the lawyer, the cost of your exams... Let's say my budget was blown.

— How much?

— A few hundred pounds.

— Cassie — he murmured.

— I know what you're going to say, Toto. That you have enough money to pay for everything and that I don't need to worry about it, but I don't want to… depend on anyone to make my dream come true.

— Who said that the dream is yours alone?

She blinked.

— Cassandra, I committed to getting into this with you because I also dream of having a child. But I want to live this experience fully, not just the happy moments or the things that are easy. Fatherhood has difficult, frustrating moments too. I want to experience those with you as well, all of it.

Cassie sipped her coffee, staring at the counter.

— If you want to stop here, we can stop. We can no longer talk about children, or babies or anything like that. We can go back to being just friends and coworkers, as we were before. But if you want to continue, if you want to try again, I'll assume all the costs you incur, and we will continue to prepare for the day when we will have a positive test. But I need to know what you want.

She was silent for a few moments, her lips pursed. He silently asked God or whatever that was above them for her to say yes, for her to want to try again. Toto knew the process was physically and mentally taxing on her. The medications and hormones made her feel ill, and she once remarked that she felt like one of the broodmares in her father’s barn. Even still, she said that the idea of being a mother was worth the hassle. Toto wanted to be a father, and he didn’t want to share that experience with anyone other than Cassie.

— I want to try again — Cassie said quietly — do you?

— Yes, I do.

— Then… Let's try again.

— Okay. Let's try again — he said, a small smile on his face.

#toto wolff #toto wolff x oc #formula 1 fic #formula 1 fanfic #formula one fic #formula one fanfic #formula one x oc #f1 fic #f1 fanfic #f1 x oc #wlffog #collab #etlwlff

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versadies · 3 years

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Hello! Can i request scaramouche x reader (before dating) where the reader is very optimistic and happy-go-lucky and a scaramouches assistant?

—THE TERRIFYING AND THE JOYOUS, a hc.

penpal: i love opposite attract relationship so thank you for this request 👊👊👊

pairing/s: scaramouche x gn!reader

sypnosis: in which the loneliest harbinger of all has one friend.

warning/s: ooc scaramouche (?), toxic (this is scaramouche we’re talking about), threats (harmless?), mild swearing.

-> everyone who knows the terrifying scaramouche will agree that whoever is his assistant must’ve suffered a lot from the harbinger.

-> consider them surprised when they realized that one of the most joyous fatui members known around the organization is scaramouche’s one and only assistant and the fact that you don’t act like you’re his assistant.

-> i think he didn’t intend on having an assistant, since he has his subordinates to do the dirty work. he probably has one just to handle his busy schedule or because he got so annoyed with a subordinate that he decided to hire an assistant to not deal with any subordinates at all.

-> during your first months with the guy, he’ll treat you like how he treats everyone. harsh and insensitive.

-> “hey, call one of those idiots who are assigned on that mission and tell them to go here— oh and drop that look on your face will you?”

-> “cancel the trip to liyue. you better do it right now or you’re fired.”

-> and people are wondering how the hell you’re still sane from how scaramouche treats you

-> as his assistant, he def makes it hell-like.

-> when you arrive to his office, he’ll give you many duties such as: visiting a visitor that he’s supposed to meet but doesn’t want to because the visitor is an ass, acquire some resources for a mission, buy some items in case scaramouche doesn’t have the time for it, clean up his office while he’s away, etc.

-> honestly, it’ll probably take a year or so for scaramouche to act comfortably around you. when he does, it’s most likely because of how he’s used to your presence to the point where he always calls your name and didn’t realize you’re somewhere far away.

-> he’ll still treat you harsh though— just not threatening like before.

-> scaramouche won’t get used to your attitude at all. he feels weird whenever you get so joyous for little reasons but never comments on it anymore.

-> as he starts to notice you a lot, the harbinger will start to wonder why a person who is full of positivity be a part of the fatui. he’ll be suspicious of you and think that you’re a spy.

-> at first, he wanted to request for another fatui agent who can be his assistant instead, but after hearing from you that the tsaritsa is the one who sent you, he knew he was doomed.

-> but after many investigations and logic, he’ll be frustrated with how there are no signs of you being a spy. all he has is information on your background (which didn’t help at all). he then decided to not dwell on you being a potential threat to him and just be cautious around you.

-> most of his suspicion washed away when u protected him from a certain astrologist’s attack when you two were investigating on meteors that have fallen and made people fall asleep. the fact that you’re willing to sacrifice for him is definitely something a spy wouldn’t do.

-> “i’m just doing my job as an assistant, boss.” you’d say happily when scaramouche asked harshly why you protected him (despite you knowing he can handle by himself just fine).

-> by the time scaramouche is finally comfortable around you, he’ll treat you nicer than the others. he’ll start to increase your payday, will ask if you have eaten yet, make sure you’re by his side by glancing on you whenever you two walk together around the lands teyvat could offer, etc.

-> and yes, the way he does this is not as affectionate as you might think.

-> “what do you mean i increased your salary? i don’t even care how much you get paid.”

-> “did you eat lunch yet? wait, no? are you an idiot or what—?! when you’re getting hungry, don’t try to escape your duties as my assistant just to eat. it’s your fault for not eating yet.”

-> “why am i glancing back at you? well obviously i’m just checking if you’ll stab me in the back! just because you’re my assistant doesn’t mean i trust you wholly.”

-> scaramouche doesn’t know why but he often feels guilt swallowing him every night whenever he speaks ill at you.

-> me? feeling guilty for some assistant? pathetic, he’d thought.

-> since you’re a happy-go-lucky and optimistic person, you’d give compliments to other people right?

-> well congratulations, you’re now scaramouche’s ego booster.

-> “well done sir, your enemies are no match for your powerful vision.”

-> “the tsaritsa will be pleased with the outcome of this mission, boss.”

-> ngl, scaramouche would find your personality innocent. he’ll either have the urge to protect you or have dark thoughts about it.

-> he’ll definitely defend you if he hears a single person badmouthing about you. whether or not it’s a harbinger, a fatui agent— he’ll use whatever he has to his advantage and make them regret in even looking at you in such a bad light.

-> if there’s somehow a time when scaramouche falls in love with you, he will take a long time to even confess about it. why, you ask?

-> it takes a long time for this man to finally accept that he fell in love.

-> i’d think scaramouche would soon realize that he does love you when you’re away for a long time. when he does, he’ll try to either keep it to himself or try to ignore it until it becomes too irresistible.

-> he’ll start to lowkey try to get closer to you by taking his advantage as your superior. oh, you do your paperwork in your home? well would you look at that, you now have your own office besides scaramouche’s. oh you don’t follow scaramouche whenever he walks around inazuma for his errands requested by the tsaritsa? oh looks like you have to follow him and assist him in every way you can.

-> the choice of being oblivious to scaramouche’s (failed) advances is definitely up to you. either way, it’s either you wait for a longass time for him to confess, confront him about your feelings yourself or none of you are planning to confess at all.

-> either way, when the time is right, you’ll definitely be considered as someone he considers as a companion, if not friend or lover.

-> cue slow burn 🤌🤌

#sorry if this is cringe or too short KSHDND #scaramouche x reader #genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact fanfiction #genshin headcanons #scaramouche x y/n #scaramouche hc #scaramouche headcanons #scaramouche genshin

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zeta-in-de-walls · 3 years

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Tommy’s character and the theme of failure

One thing I’ve always rather appreciated about Tommy’s story in the Dream SMP is how it explores the idea of failure. It can be a challenging one to do right as it means exploring a character’s weakness a lot and can start to feel unsatisfying if the character never succeeds but I feel like Tommy’s story avoids this issue as his arc is ultimately an encouraging one. His character never stops trying or gives up in spite of his losses, showing the perseverance to keep going until eventually he starts to find happiness, no matter how elusive it seems.

Tommy’s character is no stranger to failure of course but I’d say this theme starts to become prominent with November the 16th. Tommy had two goals: to save L’Manberg and to save Wilbur. He was pretty optimistic about both. And he failed. The day ended in disaster with Wilbur dead, Technoblade, his idol, mocking his heroism and telling him to die, and his home in ruins. It takes him a long time to come to terms with who Wilbur was, separating Wilbur into two in his mind: President Wilbur and the ‘crazy’ Wilbur who blew up L’Manburg.

But Tommy continues on, quietly moving on as L’Manburg gets rebuilt. No matter what, he still believes in L’Manburg; it’s still alive. Also, he wants to finally get his remaining disc back from Dream, feeling the need to do this after putting it aside for so long.

But of course, things don’t go well. That which he had taken for granted, his bond with Tubbo, was under fire. His personal wish to get his discs back was causing division. A simple prank gone wrong was tearing everything apart as Dream threatened L’Manburg once again. None of these things were purely Tommy’s actions, and yet his actions played a part all the same as Dream essentially took advantage of all of Tommy’s weaknesses. Tommy was being viewed as a liability, a troublemaker, as self-centred, as a problem.

Tommy’s character likely blamed himself somewhat for his failure with Wilbur and L’Manburg the first time but it had been out of his hands and his reactions were more shock than being truly broken by the events and he kept up his optimism. Yet this time, the problems were not things far beyond his control. It seemed it was his own mistakes spelling his doom and it impacted him quite severely. As much as he recognised Dream as an antagonist here, his friends distrust of him was his failure. Despite his best efforts, he could not convince Tubbo not to exile him.

Rather than seeing the fairly resilient, optimistic Tommy like the first time he was banished, this time Tommy’s defeated. We see the full effects it takes on his mental state and the narrative does not pull its punches. Tommy’s already depressed and we start to see evidence of suicidal thoughts very quickly. This is all made far, far worse by Dream who encourages his dark thoughts and feelings of worthlessness, telling him everyone’s better off without him while breaking his spirit and making him miserable by repeatedly blowing up his items.

Dream was of course Tommy’s enemy, he’d recognised before that what Dream had been doing to L’Manburg, with the obsidian walls and insisting on banishing Tommy, had been unfair even if Tommy had been helpless to stop him. Yet over exile we see him really start to internalise Dream’s words, starting to really believe that narrative that he is unloved and a liability, despite his best efforts. As his mental state worsens we see him starting to believe Dream’s lies so much that he begins to believe that Dream is really his friend who cares about him. Meanwhile, he’s angrier and lashing out at the people he cares about, we seem him kill Jack, break the bridges he built and generally lashing out at the people he misses the most.

So through exile, we see Tommy at his weakest and most vulnerable. We also see some of his flaws with his uglier side, his uncontrolled emotions, his dependency on others, his deep self-worth issues and how he can be so successfully lied to. This deep exploration of Tommy’s character allows us to really see how the repeated failures and setbacks and losses affected his character mentally and depict it as yet another obstacle he needs to overcome.

And ultimately he does, ultimately deciding to fight back and run away from exile on his own. Tommy’s arc goes to very depressing places but manages to remain an inspiring story by showing you at his weakest and yet also show him never truly giving up but pressing on, in search of that happy ending. Running away from exile has him also realising that Dream is his enemy, not his friend and he commits to fighting back against him.

But of course the narrative doesn’t entirely move on. Tommy’s struggles and failures continue to plague him as the mental issues he has with self-worth and his confused feelings towards Dream do not go away. He managed to continue but that wasn’t the perfect victory as most of his problems are still there and he’s still the same person. at Techno’s house, we see him and his confusion. He’s lighthearted and joking about but he’s still deeply troubled without a clear stance on Dream or L’Manburg or Tubbo and he clings to the idea of the disc as a simple goal. It seems as if he’s doomed to become the person he hated or make the same mistakes again. He once failed to save Wilbur and it seems as if his greatest failure would be to go down Wilbur’s path too, blowing up the country he once loved.

And Tommy nearly goes too far. He finally meets Tubbo again and his anger, his issues all come back as does some self-centred behaviour as he declares that ‘the discs are worth more than you ever were’.

And he immediately regrets it. He apologises, he turns around and gives them up to Dream. He won’t let himself turn into Wilbur.

And yet, every little victory he fights so hard for is met with an even greater failure. He switches sides on Technoblade while giving Dream exactly what he wanted. His story isn’t a happy one in spite of him trying his very best and making the decisions that are right for him. And we can only wonder how inevitable it was or if he could’ve done better for he hurts Techno deeply. Is he doing better or does his very nature doom him to make the same mistakes again and again?

Once ore, we see L’Manburg blown up and this time Tommy declares it a lost cause. Despite his best efforts, it’s over and we can only stare at the ruins of the nation he’d once helped build with Wilbur. Additionally, Tommy is dead to Techno now, that relationship seemingly broken forever.

But it’s not the end. Tommy is defeated once more, with each failure hitting harder than the last but he doesn’t give up. He keeps on fighting. For all he’s lost, he’s won Tubbo back, and the experiences may have been terrible but he has learned something through all of it. Even if all that is, is understanding suffering a bit better and getting back the courage to apologise and reconcile.

He and Tubbo go after Dream and it’s almost, almost too late. He’s nearly locked in prison forever and Tubbo almost killed.

But it’s not end. Just this once, it’s not a failure. They bet it all and finally had that victory. The rest of the server comes to save them and Dream gets locked in his prison while Tommy and Tubbo are finally free.

Course, Tommy’s story isn’t over there. And the thing with this theme of failure is that it keeps on cropping up. They may have finally gotten a victory but Tommy’s issues aren’t over. he tries to start again, building his hotel but the trauma from exile has made an impact on him. It’s something that can’t be solved in a day, but only over a long time. And despite everything, the issues keep coming back. Tommy feels like things are unresolved with Dream and visits him again.

And he gets locked in prison and dies and then gets resurrected. And its all absolutely devastating and it seems as if Tommy will never get better, that he’ll never truly have his happy ending. His hotel gets stolen from him and its as if everything he tries to do ends in failure.

He tries to sort things out, tries solving things with killing Dream and it just gets Ghostbur killed and the guilt can only eat at him. Wilbur is back at Tommy’s afraid but time has passed and he’s starting to see Wilbur more for who he is. After all he’s been through, he understands him way better than he did before. He once more commits to helping him but Tommy isn’t the naive kid he once was.

Tommy still lives in the very same spot he always did. He still wants the same things he always did: a home, security, peace, friends, and he’s been experiencing many losses. And yet, his story is not a hopeless one. Because in spite of all that’s happened, he’s still trying again. And he’s learned and can avoid making those mistakes again. Right now, he’s doing better, he’s committing to living peacefully in a way he hasn’t in a long time. He’s been attempting to build bridges and though all his failures haunt him, he is gradually healing day by day, still trying to find that happy ending.

I think Tommy’s story is very cool for the way it really explores these themes of failure. It does not pull its punches, its dark, never easy or straightforward but that’s also what makes it so powerful. Those bright spots, feel so good, they feel so rewarding because they were so hard-fought. We root for Tommy’s character because we’ve seen his journey and really feel he deserves his happy end even though its never going to be perfect and indeed every failure is a mixture of forces outside of his control and his character which he has been trying to improve, learning to be nicer, more forgiving and more aware of his own emotions. He can’t fix Dream nor does he know how best to help Wilbur but he can help himself and that’s what he’s always trying to do. He holds himself to account and always tries his best.

#tommyinnit #meta #analysis #dream smp #long post #finally got round to writing this #dream smp meta #heh i blame the music i was listening to #ive been thinking about this subject a lot but suddenly listening to this song called 'the same mistake' one too many times #and i finally wrote my thoughts out #this is mostly from his character's perspective if it sounds like im blaming tommys character a lot here #he's biased ofc - he's just trying his best and didn't deserve the consequences he received #aaah a lot of characters on the smp have failures but i like how tmmys really toy with the ideas of failure a lot #i love character who never give up no matter how many times they fail a i find it super encouraging #so yeha i do love tommys character

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misslovasstuff · 3 years

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Why Dazai is a complex character

We all know how hard it is to get in this man’s mind, right?

First, let’t take a look on what makes a character complex:

- Conflicted or contradictory motives - Change or grow as a result of the story’s actions - Decisions advance the story’s plot - Create conflict in the story’s plot or theme - Learn something about themselves

It fits Dazai perfectly, right? Now let’s take them one by one.

1. Conflicted or contradictory motives

- to die/to find meaning/to save others/? What the audience is given to realize is that Dazai wants salvation through death. His desire to die comes with a shade of humor to hide how sad and tragic it really is. Other than that, one motive of his is the promise he made to his friend who died on his arms. You see it right? Dazai’s motives are contradictory because he saves people but can’t really save himself. Although Dazai is on the side of ‘good’ which is actually something that doesn’t really exist in BSD world because everything is more like in a gray area, his motives are more focused on others rather than himself. While on the mafia, his focus was on himself, his doom and suffering. That’s what made him so miserable. People aren’t sure whether Dazai has changed, and they question his conflicted motives. But in reality, it’s very simple. Dazai has no hidden motives other than the ones we already know. He’s not the type to aim for power and fortune. Dazai just wants a bit of happiness, he wants to answer questions that are impossible to answer. I’d like to quote a Dostoevsky saying:

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

2. Change or grow as a result of the story’s actions Dazai’s grow is something people fail to see. I’ve read thoughts on this matter and some claim that Dazai hasn’t changed at all. That is partly true. Before Oda’s death, Dazai was not open to people (and still isn’t) but the difference stays on how he dealt with it. In the dark era, Dazai drowned himself in misery, seeing only darkness and claiming that this is how it always has been for him. Whilst in the time being, Dazai hides his misery behind a smile and happy facade. Bsck then, he made no attempt to change, nor did he tried to look things differently. Dazai was alone, completely. There were times he was surrounded by people he genuinely cared about, like Oda. Now, the thing is, without Oda, Dazai may have never gotten the development he got. Hardly would the things lead differently if Oda was still alive. With Oda, Dazai felt comfortable, not judges. He felt like he could open up with him because Oda would always listen to Dazai without joking around or judging him. That’s the reason why Odasaku was the only person that came close to understanding Dazai, because he was the only one Dazai opened up to. I believe that is becuase in reality, Dazai trusted Oda. We know how easily he can see through people. Perhaps, he saw in Oda that kindness and goodness that intrigued him. He saw such integrity and selflessness that made him lower his guard. Their relationship was beautiful. They let aside the ranks and always had each other’s backs. Sometimes, between two people, it just clicks. It feels like you’ve known each other for a long time and you find yourself comfortable, you let yourself be. That’s how Dazai was. Maybe, the only thing that kept him happy, was his friendship with Odasaku and Ango. Because those were two people that accepted him the way he was, people who appreciated life and had dreams and goals, something that Dazai longs to have. When Odasaku died, Dazai’s hope died with him. Although extremely intelligent, Dazai is optimistic. He had hope that he’d find a solution to his problem, but Oda’s words shattered him.

Dazai did not cry. But you can tell that he’s ready to. Look at his face and tell me that that’s not the most devastating Dazai you have ever seen. His lip trembles and his eyes give away how hard it is for him, how hard it has always been. This is the moment that Dazai takes the decision to change, keeping the promise of his friend to become a good man and protect others.

3- Decisions advance the story’s plot Dazai is the one who comes up with brilliant strategies, but that’s not all of it.

- He took Atsushi under his mentoring and hired him as an agent in the ADA. Atsushi plays a very important role in almost every mission or situation that ADA is in. If Atsushi wasn’t in the ADA, things might have gone completely different. - Dazai decided to join the good side. Yet again, if Dazai didn’t join the ADA, there would be no Atsushi, no shin-soukoku and probably the ADA would have already fallen due to the immense power the mafia would have with Dazai in it. More people would die, wars would destroy the city and things may have gotten to be worse. - The creation of shin-soukoku The plot goes around Atushi and Akutagawa as the new generation of the double black, a powerful duo brought together for the good of the city, to defeat the greater evil. Their mentor, who sees the potential in them better than everyone else, has forcefully made them work together, which had successful results. If Dazai didn’t make such decision, Atsushi and Akutagawa may had already killed each other. - Dazai decides almost any plan and strategy there is. He plays his cards well and the way he thinks and acts determine the aftermath.

4- Create conflict in the story’s plot or theme - Dazai’s a problematic character for a lot of reasons. He’s lazy, distracted, unbothered, mysterious and secretive. Sometimes, unwillingly he creates conflicts that sometimes as viewed lightly by the audience. Like the shin-soukoku conflict. A part why Aku hates Atsushi is because he is Dazai’s junior and that he gets almost everything that he himself once desired. He gets praise and acknowledgment from Dazai. The latter, has not acknowledged Aku that way he wants to, but surely he has acknowledged him on his own way. Dazai made him part of the new double black and puts his trust in him and Atsushi. Dazai too believes in the quote that ‘only a diamond can polish a diamond’. Furthermore, we have the conflict between the mafia and the ADA. You may think that it’s not directly tied to Dazai, but he plays a major role. Having Dazai in the opposite team, makes it harder for the mafia to create successful operations. Not only Dazai’s intelligent and cunning, but he’s an ex-member himself which makes him even more of a threat to the mafia. His suicidal tendencies is the reason why he met Atsushi in the first place. So in a way, Dazai drives the plot of the story.

5- Learn something about themselves I believe that this is the point we are all looking forward to. Although we have already caught a glimpse of Dazai considering his worth as a human being in the Dead apple movie, but also in the manga countless times.

Just look at his expression. How his eyes close so peacefully when Atsushi claims that he does things that let him know that Daza’s a good guy (visiting graves and also in the end of the movie...)

Dazai sees himself rather harshly. He judges himself for his past and puts himself in constant misery. Maybe he doesn’t accept the fact that he’s a ‘good guy’, but he’s desperately trying to be.

Take a look to the following panel (chapter 50)

You can tell how much Dazai wants to help and this warms my heart so much.

“Yosano could heal me and I could help in the search”

He clenches the sheet because of the frustration of not being able to help; that his ability is holding him back.

HE’S BLAMING HIMSELF.

Like one would say that he’s injured, or that he was shot, but no. Dazai puts the blame on himself like he always does.

I’d like people to acknowledge Dazai’s growth because our boy is trying so hard. Dazai literally went from hell to salvation. He has already found his salvation but he hasn’t recognized that yet.

In conclusion, Dazai is the complex character we so much love. In the future, maybe we’ll be able to see him a bit more happy. Genuinely happy.

(sorry this was very sloppy but I hope you get the point)

#bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs dazai #bungou sd #bungou stray dogs analysis #bungou stray dogs theories #dazai #Dazai Osamu #dazai analysis #being a dazai stan is hard #dazai manga #dazai san #dazai scenarios #bsd dazai #bsd dark era #bsd anime

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amanda-teaches · 2 years

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Shockwave (3)

Series Summary: When you’re caught in an attack and get struck by an enemy shock wave, Bucky saves you and brings you to the Avengers for help. They quickly discover that the wave altered your genetic structure to send out energy bursts, energy bursts that you can’t control. Fearful of the damage you could cause, you refuse to be around anyone except superhumans Steve and Bucky, the latter of whom you form a quick, intense bond with while he teaches you to control your newfound powers.

Chapter Summary: Agreeing to stay at the compound means a little change in scenery. You’re moving out of the infirmary to your own set of rooms, and Bucky’s coming with you.

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Word Count: ~4000

Warnings: Depression, nightmares, feelings of hopelessness, Bucky being supportive because it’s not all doom and gloom

A/N: Thanks to a rewatch of TFATWS and some wonderful encouragement and love for this series, especially from a sweet anon friend recently, I finally starting writing this one again. If you decide to pick it back up and give it a chance, I would love it if you would share what you think. I promise the next update won’t take nearly as long. ;)

Need to reread the first two chapters or catch up? Shockwave Masterlist

When Bucky had first asked you to stay, you’d felt optimistic about finding a cure.

Thinking it would only take a few days, maybe a week, to find the right treatment, you were hopeful. But weeks had passed since then, weeks with little to no progress, and, with every failed test, the possibilities diminished.

Optimism was getting harder and harder to fake. Your days felt lonely now, confined to the infirmary, and the isolation was really starting to get to you. There were the doctors of course, every specialty under the sun, but although you were surrounded constantly by their whirlwind of activity, you could barely feel it. The distance of your new reality was slowly building a barrier between you and everyone else, especially the doctors. They bombarded you with tests, poking and prodding at you throughout the day, all from the safety of their full hazmat suits.

Not that you blamed them.

Bucky visited every day, like he’d promised, often trying to coax you out for a walk or to meet the others between treatments, but you refused every time. Not when you couldn’t control the energy. Bucky was one thing, but how could you trust yourself around anyone else? Especially not after last time.

Thankfully, Dr. Cho had made a full recovery from the incident. Now, she led the research team to find a way to restabilize your genetic structure, or at least that was how it had been explained to you from the other side of a very thick pane of glass. What had also been more than heavily implied, however, was the fact that, despite their best efforts and round the clock work, the team wasn’t any closer to finding a way to reverse the damage.

“Just give them a few more days, Y/N.”

You scoffed at Bucky’s familiar platitude, tugging your oversized cardigan a little closer to your body to block it out. Keeping your back to him, you squeezed your eyes shut so he couldn’t see the tears welling inside them. Instead, you focused on your breathing, keeping your voice as steady as you could in an effort to chase them away. “Yeah, that’s what you said last week, Buck.”

He came up behind you, gently placing his hand on your shoulder, but you shrugged it off, taking a few steps away from him instead, towards the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on the rolling grounds and forest beyond it. Pausing there for a moment, you glanced down, savoring the chance to get out of your own head for just a second and watching the impromptu touch football game folding out below. It was filled by agents, staffers, and Avengers alike, friends and equals both on and off on the field. Everyone was laughing, a carefree snapshot of the camaraderie they’d built, but you didn’t join in. You wanted to, wished you could, but it all seemed so hollow from up here, distant, like you were watching from inside of a mirror you couldn’t break free. A shell of the person you’d been just a few weeks before.

You hated that you couldn’t find your way back to that. “I’m not going home am I?”

The sudden question was a drastic shift in your conversation, but if Bucky was surprised by the detour, he didn’t say it. He didn’t answer you either, not that he had to. His hesitant sigh gave you all the answers you needed. “You know, I think we should wait for Steve…”

Steve, the only other person you’d let within yards of you without protective equipment, was finishing up a briefing with your medical team. After all these days, you really didn’t need to be there to know what they were saying. “I’m not blind, Bucky. I see the pity in their eyes, even under all those layers of plastic and kevlar. It’s not going to be good news.”

You turned to him, seeing the confirmation reflecting in his eyes. “But, you already knew that, didn’t you?” you asked, a bite of a challenge in your voice.

He groaned, exasperated by your tone, and clenched his jaw, his head tilting as he searched for the right words. Running his tongue across the back of his teeth, his frown shifted slightly, but before he could respond, Steve filled the doorway, knocking on the open door. “Morning, Y/N. Buck. Can I come in?”

Your eyes remained locked with Bucky’s for a moment before you tore them away, your head nodding slightly in Steve’s direction. “Yeah, come on in. As a matter of fact, we were just talking about you.”

“Anything good?” he asked with a laugh, but when he caught the sullen expression on Bucky’s face, he sobered. “Right…So, I guess Buck told you about the briefing.”

“Mmm,” you nodded again, suddenly feeling a wave of exhaustion sweep through you. Holding the energy in was a constant fight, taking a huge toll on your body. You found that the more you tried to keep it in, the more fatigued you got. And the more irritated you became.

Walking over to the chair you spent much of your days in, you sagged down onto the plush cushions. Mulberry Silk, one of the best money could buy, or so Tony assured you. It was usually your sanctuary, a change of scenery during the weeks you’d spent cooped up in your hospital bed, but it wasn’t doing anything to raise your spirits today.

Looking over at Steve, you let out a small, exasperated laugh. “That must’ve been really fun, huh? You, Tony, and a bunch of the world’s top doctors talking about the next steps for their latest little science project.”

You could hear the hardness in your voice, but you didn’t have it in you to disguise it. Besides, it wasn’t like it was something Steve or Bucky hadn’t heard from you before, especially over the past few days. You hadn’t exactly had the energy or the inclination to bother hiding it from them anymore.

That’s why Steve didn’t even attempt to sugarcoat the news. “I’ll be honest, Y/N, it’s not good. Helen was able to isolate the gene sequence causing the energy surges, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to reverse the damage. At least in the research and medicine they’ve been through so far. Tony’s going to try to create some sort of nanotechnology that can rearrange the structure to match a blueprint from your old medical records, but until then…”

“Until then, I’m stuck like this,” you finished for him, your words landing heavily in the air as the tears you’d been struggling to hold back all day finally began to fall from your eyes. Both of the soldiers fell silent as you began to sob, knowing firsthand that there were no words they could give you in that moment that would ease even an ounce of your pain.

It stayed like that for at least ten minutes, the two men standing motionless, deferential, as they averted their eyes and you, quietly crying yourself to a sense of peace. Once the stillness finally settled, you looked up to meet both of their watchful eyes, a surprising sense of resolve swelling up inside you. Feeling sorry for yourself wouldn’t help you survive, so you were determined to do something that would. “So, what’s the next step?”

Bucky looked to Steve, who exhaled deeply. “Well, until they can find a cure…”

“You mean if they find a cure,” you swiftly corrected.

Steve nodded. “If. But until that happens, we think you should stay here. At the compound. It would be the safest place for you to get your power under control in the interim.”

You glanced around your hospital room, your eyes filling with a panic Bucky quickly picked up on. “You wouldn’t have to stay in the infirmary. Steve set up a room for you, a real room, on the other side of the compound. No more doctors, no more round the clock tests.” You started to object, but he cut you off with a look. “And before you go all Y/N on me and say no, the area’s still mostly under construction, so there won’t be anyone around to bother you.”

You mean anyone around for me to accidentally hurt, you thought, but you didn’t say it out loud, deciding instead to astonish Bucky and nod your agreement. “Okay, if that’s what we need to do, I’ll stay.”

Bucky’s eyebrows raised with a skeptical half-smile. “Really?”

“Really,” you repeated, standing up and crossing towards the dresser on the other side of the room. “Steve’s right. I have to get the energy under control before I can be around anyone else. It’s not like I can do that at home.”

“Okay…good then,” Steve agreed slowly, probably still a little worried that you’d spook and change your mind. Pushing past his caution, he started to go into the details of the new room when Bucky’s voice suddenly rang out, echoing across the room.

“I’m coming with you.”

You careened to a stop in front of the dresser, the surprise spinning you back around as Steve’s head similarly whipped towards his friend. “Buck…” he warned.

But, Bucky ignored him, his whole focus staying centered on you. “I can set up a room next to yours. Be close by if you need anything, help you learn to control the energy.”

It was clear from the way Steve was staring at Bucky like he’d lost his damn mind that this hadn’t been part of the plan, but you couldn’t deny that the thought of having him close felt like a safe harbor in the storm. “Are you sure?”

Bucky broke into a wide smile, before he shrugged nonchalantly. “Yeah, I mean, if you want me. You might get tired of having me as a neighbor real quick.”

Steve waited until you smiled your acceptance before laughing, shaking his head softly. “I’m sure she’s already tired of you, buddy,” he joked, taking out his phone to make the call. “I guess if you two are sure. Good luck living next door to this one, Y/N. You’re going to need it.”

You watched Bucky playfully hit his best friend and fire back an insult before smiling to yourself and turning back to the dresser to pack your limited belongings. You assumed that it would take a few days for the arrangements to be made, but it didn’t take long at all. In fact, you ended up moving in with Bucky that afternoon.

He wasn’t joking about the seclusion of your new home though. The area of the compound where your rooms were really was deserted. There were two spacious bedrooms off a short hallway, a shared bathroom at the end and an open archway on the opposite wall to a combined kitchen and living space. It reminded you of an in-law suite your parents had installed for your grandma in their house when you were a kid. The apartment style units were being built as an option for agents with families who wanted to live on the grounds, but, since it was still under construction, there wasn’t another soul around. After Steve explained the details to you, he left, promising that he would come by as often as he could to help Bucky train you and deliver supplies and groceries for the kitchen.

Other than that, you and Bucky were on your own.

The first night you were there, Bucky was fidgety, out of sorts. After an hour or so of frequent side glances and tense pacing around the living room, you deduced that he was oddly determined to make you feel comfortable, but he couldn’t quite figure out how.

It didn’t stop him from trying, even though he made quite the spectacle doing it.

He decided to make you one of his favorite dinners from when he was a kid, a spaghetti bolognese. He’d never made it himself before, having had his sisters for help and about 90 years of distractions in between, but he was confident he could figure it out. “How hard could it be?” he kept repeating.

Apparently very hard. Needless to say, it ended up going sideways. He burned the sauce, giving the pasta just enough time to boil over and create a cloud of smoke big enough to cover the whole ceiling. By the time Bucky was running around the kitchen with the sizzling pot clutched firmly in his metal hand, you stepped in, averting disaster and cleaning up with him.

After your first good laugh in weeks at his expense, you ended up ordering the takeout, left ever so cautiously on the landing outside the door at your request. Bucky, still determined to make a contribution, supplied the chilled beers to go with dinner, insisting that had been his plan all along. He spent the rest of the meal regaling you with stories of Steve from when they were kids, eventually accomplishing his goal to make you feel better, if not in an unconventionally roundabout way. By the time he recounted the story of when he’d convinced Peter to reprogram Redwing to land Sam smack dab into the middle of the Hudson river, holding Redwing in the air over his head, your sides were splitting from laughing so much, and you felt so normal that you’d almost forgotten about what had landed you here in the first place.

After dinner, Bucky lingered in your room, driving you crazy until you put him to work helping you unpack the things Tony had brought over from your apartment. He’d gotten them sent over even before you’d agreed to stay, thinking of everything you might need in advance.

In the weeks since you’d been in the infirmary, you’d been texting people that you were on vacation, but now that it was an extended absence, Tony had also taken the liberty of creating a cover story for you too. He’d made up some official sounding excuse for your job and paid to cover your apartment lease, clearing the way for you to stay at the compound as long as you needed, or more accurately as long as they needed to fix you. All that was left was for you to do was to call your family, something you’d insisted on handling yourself.

Bucky left you alone for that part, assuring you he’d be right outside if you needed him. You stared at your phone for a solid five minutes, trying to think of how you could explain this to your family without them worrying and flying right out to be by your side. As much as you wanted them to be there, craved having them at your side, you knew you couldn’t bear it if anything happened to them in one of your episodes. They couldn’t know the truth.

After continuing to agonize over the phone call for another five minutes, you finally just decided to text them, knowing that if you called, your voice would give it away in a second. The text was vague, saying that you’d gotten a great opportunity at work, but you’d be traveling for it and may not be able to keep in touch as much for a while. You promised you would try to check in as often as you can before quickly shutting off your phone before they could blow it up with too many questions.

It wasn’t long before the tears started falling, softly at first and then harder, full body sobs racking your body. Bucky threw the door open and raced in at the sound of your crying, but he stopped short when he caught sight of you. “Y/N, are you okay?! What happened-”

“Stop,” you shouted out, holding your hand up to keep him at bay. Your body was still shaking from crying and you stared at your outstretched hand like it was a bomb, hastily pulling it back and gripping it to your chest, terrified that it would suddenly explode with energy. Bucky lifted his foot to step forward, but you shook your head. “You should stay back just in case. I never know what will set it off.”

Bucky ignored you, grinning as he shrugged and began walking towards you purposefully. “Not to sound too much like a broken record, Y/N, but how many times do I have to tell you that I’m not worried about you hurting me?” He sat down next to you and your body immediately relaxed. You took a deep breath, exhaling slowly to calm yourself down so you could give him a weak smile.

“You’ve got quite a high opinion of yourself there, buddy,” you laughed, surprised that you still had any energy left to joke.

He was equally surprised, his eyes sparkling as his grin widened at your teasing. “Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

You laughed again, but your mood fell just as quickly as he had raised it. You swallowed hard, and Bucky placed his hand on your shoulder. “Hey, if anyone knows how it feels to be out of control, it’s me. Trust me, you’re going to get through this, Y/N.”

“You don’t know that.” You could feel yourself getting upset and losing control again, but Bucky moved his hand down to yours, interlacing your fingers with his.

“Take a deep breath and count to ten.” He waited for you to do it, nodding slowly as you counted out loud. “Good, that’s it. One breath at a time.”

You turned to him, meeting his gaze while his grip on your hand stayed firm. “Thank you, Bucky. You learn that trick in Wakanda?”

“Something like that,” he said with a shy smile. He stood to leave, but you held him back, impulsively pulling him back down and into a hug without a thought. He seemed as surprised at the sudden contact as you were, stiffening against you while your body sagged into his. When your subconscious registered his reaction, a surge of embarrassment flowed through you and you moved back in a panic. Before you could pull completely away and pretend this never happened, a soft, involuntary sob escaped your throat, the last hold you had on your emotions falling apart at the seams.

Bucky stopped your retreat as soon as he heard it, placing his hand first on the back of your neck and then firmly against your shoulder blades, pulling you back into him and wrapping his other arm around your back to keep you there.

He was warm, exceptionally so, and, with the contrast of his cool metal arm against your back, you instinctively cuddled closer, letting the sobs break free while Bucky held you, his stubbled chin resting on top of your head.

"I am so goddamn sorry, Y/N," he whispered against you, his fingertips tightening at the nape of your neck, intertwining with your hair. "This is all my fault. I promise you, I'm gonna find a way to fix this."

He held you tight to him as you cried yourself out, gradually quieting with a series of soft hiccups against his chest. “My God,” you laughed wearily, leaning your head back and gently tugging on his saturated shirt. “As if crying in front of you wasn’t enough, now I’m crying all over you.”

He mirrored you and leaned back, smiling a goofy, lopsided grin that brightened your face faster than a ray of sunshine. “Eh, don’t worry about it. Sam actually just complimented this shirt this morning, so I pretty much have to throw it out anyway. You did it a favor.”

You froze for a second before bursting into laughter, the unexpected joke lifting you right out of your self-pity. Bucky winked at you, releasing his hold and scooting away from you on the bed.

“You okay?” he asked sincerely, if a little warily. “Seems like there’s a bit of an up and down of the emotional level in here…”

He was blunt but spot on, and you appreciated the refreshing honesty. You didn’t need kid gloves. “Yeah, no, I’m pretty much a mess,” you admitted. “But that’s not going to be something I can fix overnight, right? I’ll be okay. I just need a little time.”

Bucky nodded, and, with one last assurance that you were really okay, he left, leaving you alone for the night once again. But, this time, you didn’t cry or fall apart. You didn’t have a chance to, because, as soon as your head hit the pillow, you fell asleep, your first deep, restful sleep in weeks.

The screams woke you.

Every muscle in your body responded when the cry first hit your ears, jolting awake out of pure instinct, tingles running up and down your body. For the briefest of seconds before the sleep haze wore off, you thought that the screams may have been coming from you. But they weren’t, they were coming from behind the wall, from the room next door.

Bucky.

You didn’t hesitate to go to him, jumping out of your bed instantly and racing into the hall to get to him, not even caring that you could be racing right into danger.

When you threw open the door to his room, your eyes flew to his bed, but it was empty, stripped down the sheets. For a second, you panicked, thinking something horrible had happened to him, but then you heard a groan coming from the other side of the room, behind the bed.

You found him on the floor. He wasn’t screaming, at least not anymore, but he was tossing and turning beneath the thin blanket that covered the lower half of his body, his bare chest uncovered, dripping with sweat, even against the cool, concrete floor.

He was breathing heavily, clearly in distress, so you reached out, softly calling his name and touching his shoulder at the same time.

His reaction was swift and fierce, even in his sleep, and he extended his right arm with his full strength, pushing you back with it, the flat of his palm hitting you squarely in the chest and sending you up and flying back through the air.

He came awake with a start when he heard your scream. Calling your name in a panic, Bucky sat up and looked around wildly, but when he saw you, he fell into a shocked silence. You were floating in mid-air, a bubble of purple energy forming a protective cocooning barrier around you, stopping you inches away from hitting the wall.

Bucky’s eyes darted around the edges of the crackling field before finding their way back to you. “Y/N…” he trailed off, the question lingering in the air.

You shook your head, the field slowly dissipating as you relaxed and gently lowering you until your feet touched the ground. “I don’t know,” you whispered, dazed, “I just felt myself flying, and I reacted. I guess I just wanted to stop myself.”

He held up the hand he’d pushed you with, staring at it for a moment before looking down at his metallic left arm hanging beside him. “If you’d been on my other side…”

“But, I wasn’t,” you interjected, moving back and dropping down on the floor to kneel in front of him. “Are you okay?”

His eyebrows raised ever so slightly as an ever more common slow grin spread across his face. “I nearly send you careening into a wall and you ask if I’m ok?”

You looked back over at the wall and then down at your hands, feeling the power that still tingled in your fingertips without an ounce of fear welling inside of you. For the first time since you’d blasted everyone in the infirmary, it actually felt like a strength, not a curse. “Well, apparently,” you smiled teasingly, your stomach flipping in an involuntary reaction to his grin. “It seems like I can handle it.”

He leaned forward, his dog tags swaying to hang in the air between you, an impish look crossing his face. “Well then, I’m thinking it's about time we stop waiting around for Stark and his merry band of geniuses and start seeing what else you can handle.”

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfic #shockwave

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logicalbookthief · 3 years

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Things Left Unsaid -- An Analysis of Rei & Touya

Apparently Rei has been getting a lot of flack lately, all of it undeserved, and since I had a post analyzing her relationship with Touya in the works already, I figured no time like the present.

Disclaimer #1: There are a lot of issues with the writing for Rei’s character that have nothing to do with her and everything to do with how the storyline is using her, which I will address and examine.

Disclaimer #2: I’m someone who, while always curious as to what kind of relationship Rei had with her oldest son before he died, never thought it would be revealed that Touya was close to his mom. I don’t think you get the Dabi we see in Chapters 290-295 without him being so warped by his relationship with his father yet so dependent on his attention that he was willing to kill his brother and himself simply for his father’s acknowledgement.

But that’s what I find so interesting about Rei and Touya -- it’s a relationship that mainly consists of regrets and things left unsaid. There isn’t the anger or resentment Dabi feels for Endeavor, because that intense level of emotion sprung from the loss of the father who used to be his whole world. His feelings toward his mother seem more amicable, but also more distant.

And while she could’ve done some things differently in regards to her oldest, I want to make it clear that the distance between them was very much by design.

After all, Touya was the end goal of their marriage. It was never any secret as to why Enji wanted to marry her and to some extent Rei must’ve realized that this child was not meant to be hers: the child was the transaction, the thing she was needed to create, to give to her husband. Of course she loved Touya and was likely his primary caregiver for most of his life, but there was no doubt that once his quirk manifested and he could begin his hero training, his life would be dominated by his father. Which is what happened.

Here, I would like to point out something I noticed in the flashback chapters. We never see any panels of Enji alone with any of his children during their infancy -- even with Shouto, the perfect child he longed for, we see Rei holding Shouto, sitting by him as he sleeps. Enji is there tangentially. Once Shouto begins his training, that is when we see him with his father.

So to see Enji with Touya when he was a baby, prior to his quirk manifesting, strikes me as a big deal. But it makes sense if you remember that he’d placed all his hopes, dreams and expectations on his firstborn. Initially, it doesn’t look like he even considered the possibility that Touya wouldn’t be his successor or that his little eugenics experiment would fail; this was his first, most optimistic attempt at a masterpiece. So I don’t believe it’s far-fetched to see him spend more time with Touya right off the bat (it’s what will make the eventual abandonment all the more crushing).

However, Rei isn’t seen at all in the snippet of Touya’s infancy, despite us knowing she was relegated to the caregiver role. Rei is literally out of the picture. Compare this to how she features prominently in Shouto’s infancy or how we see her holding a baby Natsuo. You could argue that, hey, we don’t see her holding a baby Fuyumi either, but there’s other scenes where Fuyumi’s attached to her mother’s hip or crying over her being hurt. Things that suggest a closeness, when the only scene we get of just her and Touya is one where they’re at odds.

As we move further into Touya’s childhood, though, Rei becomes the only voice we hear advocate for him against his father. I’m referencing two specific instances:

When Enji coerces her into having more children to replace Touya now that his father has deemed him a failure, something she knows will hurt their son deeply.

And after Touya lashes out at Shouto, which Rei doesn’t blame on Touya, but rather on his father. She delivers such a satisfying condemnation of his actions, probably the most cutting one Endvr’s received to date, and it so accurately sums up one of his major character flaws.

How can you call yourself a hero when you can’t even face your own son?

The tragedy of it all is that Rei never said any of this in front of Touya -- it was always said in private, just to her husband. That alone took courage, yes, but it would’ve meant everything to Touya to hear her condemn his father aloud. Instead when she does speak to him, she says this:

It’s why I can’t wrap my head around that scene in Ch 302, where after Enji admits he didn’t know what to say to Touya, Rei replies, “Neither did I.”

When we’re shown in flashbacks during that same chapter that she did understand her son. “He just wants to be acknowledged by you” is quite the indication that she, at the very least, understood the cause of Touya’s turmoil even if she couldn’t fully relate to it herself. So why can’t she say any of this to him?

The answer is in the way she addresses Touya, as it is nearly identical to how Nao addresses Tenko in this scene:

Both Touya and Tenko grew up in similar households: the father had all the power, physical and financial, so the mothers were left to try and comfort their children in a way that didn’t go against their husbands’ desires -- and so, to use Tenko’s own words, they would “reject them with kindness.”

So it’s no wonder that Touya lashes out at his mother after she suggests he pursue other things. He isn’t five like Tenko was, he’s thirteen and has a much clearer understanding of why she says this and why it’s a bit hypocritical, since he’s aware of her situation, too.

Just as she was bound by her family, who wanted her to marry Endvr for the money and status, he’s bound by the expectations of his family. I’m not sure if I’ve seen anyone else touch on this detail, but when Touya states that he knows his grandparents sold his mom into marriage so his dad could have a child, we could infer that Touya knows enough to realize that his mother might not have necessarily wanted him.

Not him specifically, but any child — the story has neglected to flesh her out beyond her marriage and motherhood, so we have no idea if Rei wanted to become a mother prior to this arrangement, despite how much she loves her kids now — although it is possible that he might’ve internalized it this way.

So you have Touya, who at least knows with certainty that his father wanted him to exist, yet he comes to understand that his father only wants him if he can meet a specific set of expectations, and if he cannot, he’ll be discarded. If he can’t surpass All Might, he can’t fulfill his reason for existing and his father will have to replace him. So to have his mother urge him to follow a path other than becoming a hero would mean, to Touya, accepting that he is the mistake he fears he is. Of course he isn’t going to respond well to that.

I don’t like when people try to compare Touya’s reaction in this moment to Shouto’s when Rei tells him he isn’t bound by his father’s blood, using that to paint Shouto as the “good” child and Touya as the “bad” one. They didn’t react differently because of any innate sense of goodness or lack thereof -- they reacted differently because the situations are different.

Telling Shouto that he didn’t have to be like his father comforted Shouto, who only knew his father as the bully who hurt his mom. He associated his father, and his father’s fire, with all of that fear and pain -- and thus, he associated the part of himself that took after his father with those feelings. She wasn’t denying his dream of becoming a hero, only assuring him that when he became a hero it could be whatever kind of hero he chose to be, that he wasn’t doomed to be like his father.

Whereas what she tells Touya sounds a lot like what his father told him, which was to give up on being a hero and pursue other aspirations.

Encouraging Shouto to become his own version of a hero still falls in line with what Endvr ultimately wants, which is for Shouto to be a hero capable of surpassing All Might. Whereas this is what happens when Touya continues to train to do that against his father’s wishes:

This is where the framing begins to bother me and where Rei’s characterization becomes inconsistent.

So in this scene from Ch 302, we see Enji abusing his wife for “letting” Touya continue to train, punishing her for her “failure” to stop him. Obviously, none of that is Rei’s fault. If anything, Enji would be more responsible for preventing Touya from hurting himself since he’s the reason his son is hurting himself in the first place.

Moreover, the fact that he hits Rei over this sort of muddies the water of an previously-established narrative. Since the Sports Festival arc, we’ve known that Endvr abused his wife because she tried to interfere with Shouto’s training. It got to the point where she was terrified of her husband and it drove her to a breakdown. Why introduce this new aspect to the abuse, when it was already established that a) he was physically abusive and b) his motivations for abusing her were explicit to the audience?

I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense that a man who hits his wife for one reason could find another reason to do it and justify his actions to himself. And while the scene does portray Endvr in a bad light to show how wrong his actions are, literally draping his figure in shadow, why does it even dare to suggest the idea that Rei was remiss in her duties as a mother? Again, the scene isn’t even necessary, since the narrative has long-since showed the audience that Enji abused his wife.

By itself, the scene would read as further exploration of how Rei was victimized and how it affected her children. When you look at it with the chapter as a whole, though? Remember, this is the chapter where Rei claims that all of the family shares the blame in what happened to Touya, displacing some of the blame that rightfully rests on Enji.

But my major gripe with this scene is how it reframes the sole moment we get of Rei and Touya alone. Because we know that Rei understands Touya, based on her confrontations with her husband in Ch 301 & 302. Rather than encourage him to be what he wants or acknowledge that his father is in the wrong, however, her advice falls in line with what Enji wants -- to stop Touya from training. And this comes after a scene where we see Enji beat his wife when she doesn’t stop Touya from training.

With all that in mind, it could potentially be read as Rei trying stop Touya for the sake of protecting herself and the family -- I don’t think it’s coincidence that in the scene where he hits her that we see Shouto, Fuyumi & Natsuo all as witnesses who are very distressed by what’s happening to their mother -- at the cost of Touya’s need to be validated. And if executed well or at least better than it has here, that wouldn’t be a bad choice of narrative per se, and it would fit into the pattern where the households the villains were raised in -- notably Shigaraki, Dabi & Toga -- mimic the society they live in, just on a smaller scale.

Except. Does that sort of narrative make sense based on what we already know about Rei?

Certainly, it is natural to want to protect yourself under physical and/or emotional duress by appeasing your abuser. This sort of complicated dynamic appears in the Shimura family, too. Just like in the house that Kotaro built, the Todoroki family revolves around the desires of the abuser and is dictated by his whims.

I would argue that Nao does give us a well-written example of this narrative. From the beginning, it’s established that she loves Tenko dearly. But in the house her husband built, there’s no room to love her son as he deserves. She prioritizes the feelings of Tenko’s father for the sake of maintaining peace in the household and this is established quickly and plainly.

Early on in the flashback, Kotaro exerts his control over the house, while Nao + her parents look uncomfortable. Despite this, we watch as they comply with his rules, all at the expense of Tenko’s feelings. When she stands up to Kotaro at last, it is not where Tenko can see and already too late. It’s a painful story, full of regret and sadness, but it is consistent from start to end. Nobody feels out-of-character or there to prop up anybody else.

So why doesn’t Rei feel as consistent in this narrative?

Because it doesn’t fit with everything we knew about Rei prior to her abuser’s subpar redemption arc.

The way she interacts with Touya would make sense, if this was how she was portrayed from the start. However, her behavior in Shouto’s flashback -- where she was first introduced -- contrasts what we get in the later Todoroki flashbacks.

Let’s compare this to the scenes in Ch 302. Here, Rei interferes on Shouto’s behalf. She advocates for her son in front of Shouto where he can hear. She stands up to his bully/villain and tries to protect him, while also validating his feelings in the process. Directly after this, Enji hits her, not for failing to comply with his demands, but for defying him.

It is difficult to reconcile this Rei with the Rei we get in Ch 302. And if you try to find an in-story reason for the inconsistency, the options either do a disservice to Rei or make things even more painful for Touya. But I’m sure most of you have realized that I’m going to suggest a reason for this inconsistency that goes beyond the canon.

Because when Rei was first introduced in the story, Endvr was unequivocally the villain in the Todoroki family, not some misguided patriarch trying to atone for his “past” mistakes. Years later and in the midst of his redemption arc, the narrative seems to be intent on making this man more palatable to readers, and it’s used Rei at every opportunity to prop up his efforts to be better. Often, though, it takes some of the heat off Enji by displacing it onto other family members, most significantly Rei & Touya.

Like, you can literally see the difference in the frame from early in the manga to now:

Ch 39: Endvr trains his five-year-old to the point where he’s throwing up due overextension and being punched by a fully grown adult who is also his father. Rei tries to protect her son and gets slapped by Endvr. All the blames rests squarely on Endvr, who is clearly the aggressor and painted as the villain here.

Ch 302: Endvr hits Rei for not preventing Touya from sneaking out to train, knocking her to the ground. Again, Endvr is clearly the aggressor, but oh this time it’s not driven solely by his selfish desires it’s also cocnern for his son; Rei is the victim but oh she also should have been watching him more closely, and oh well why was Touya going out in the first place, when everyone has told him to stop and he knows his mom will get punished for it?

Honestly, I can understand where some people have mixed feelings over Rei’s character, particularly since the writing has done her such a disservice recently. With that being said, however, it takes a minimum amount of critical thinking to recognize that while you can criticize some choices she made, you cannot hold her to the same standard of accountability as Enji, it’s absurd. The power imbalance was obviously tipped in Endvr’s favor, always.

It is a shame, too, that we can’t have more discussions that don’t turn into some readers (a lot of whom are attempting to make Endvr sound less horrible than he actually was) trying to demonize her. It’s doubly a shame the story itself doesn’t bother to flesh her out as a person, instead using her as a prop, because the complex relationships she has with Touya -- with all her children, really -- has plenty of room for exploration.

Like, there was no reason to add this new dimension of resentment due to her spouting Enji’s words back at Touya, when there was already a source of tension supported by previous canon -- the neglect the Todoroki kids suffered because Rei couldn’t be the parent they needed, due to her declining mental health and eventual breakdown.

Or, if you want to complicate their dynamic further, why not add something that focuses on Rei and has nothing to do with Enji? We learn in the flashbacks that Rei agreed to the marriage more-or-less to please her family, lamenting that she “intended to smile through it to the end,” essentially admitting that her hope was she could grin and bear it. It is telling that she had this attitude before entering her marriage; evidently, she was raised with the idea that she should be acquiescent to her parents’ whims and not express herself if she was only going to be contrary. Maybe she didn’t know how to deal with Touya’s very expressive, very emotional outbursts as a result. And her inability to respond would be the exact opposite of what Touya was seeking.

Not to mention that Touya died, and for the last decade, Rei was under the impression she had lost her son forever. He died while she was hospitalized, torn up with guilt over what she did to Shouto, only to find out that her other son died in a frankly horrific manner, and she could do nothing. By the time she would’ve found out, it was too late to even try to do anything. I can’t imagine what she must’ve felt in terms of regret alone, plus her grief. And I’m still mad we were robbed of her reaction to Touya being alive, because now suddenly there is a chance to do something, to change what was once written in stone.

Or what about Touya’s feelings for his mother, that have yet to be given much depth? As the oldest and most aware of his existence, it seems like he was the first to truly understand his mother’s situation and I can’t help but wonder: If Touya knew he vessel for his father’s ambition, and his mother was sold into role of creating/caring for him, did he question her love for him? Once he found out one parent’s love was conditional, it wouldn’t be a leap for him to consider it for the other. And yet if that’s true, Dabi doesn’t appear to hold any ill-will towards her for that. He was angry at her hypocrisy, because he knows she should understand, but her words to him didn’t reflect that.

All of that is fascinating and so much better than what we got in canon, so far at least. I’m hoping for them interact in the present at least once before the end of the series, and I think they will, but as to how satisfying a reconciliation it’ll be, I guess we’ll have to wait to see how the Todoroki plotline progresses from here on out.

#bnha #touya todoroki #rei todoroki #bnha meta #bnha analysis #this took way too long because I kept having more thoughts which made it even longer lol #and it actually gave me another idea for a touya & rei meta post but this is already a monster so that'll have to be its own separate post

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goggles-mcgee · 3 years

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Too Late: Luka & Kagami (commission for miner249er)

Chapter 6 of the commission for @miner249er

Previous Work

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Summary: Luka and Kagami just being there for one another and trying not to drown in their guilt and grief

It was mostly quiet between the two, Kagami had taken to channel surfing while Luka strummed his guitar aimlessly till he got sad and frustrated that he couldn’t find a melody. Then he would meditate before trying again. Mostly he was trying to get back into the music for his mom and Juleka’s piece of mind, he knew they were worried about him, he knew they noticed the lack of music in his life, but he also knew they knew why. Marinette. Even just thinking her name made his heartstrings tug painfully. How had everything gone so wrong? Him and Kagami had a plan, at the time it seemed like a good plan, but thinking back on it now he couldn’t help but see it for all it’s flaws, and there were...many. He felt like a fool, but he hadn’t brought up their failed plan because he knew Kagami could not handle hearing about their failure. He could hear it in her song, he could see it in her eyes, it was seeped into her very being, and all he could feel was pain and regret. That’s why there was no more music.

The “music” he would make would sound like his heart and his thoughts, and at the present they sounded like someone threw silverware in a blender and he felt like he was in that blender himself. Constantly hurting, constantly trying to get out and heal, but never being able to because he was too caught up in the motions. Once he had gotten the Snake Miraculous, he thought he understood the saying, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” His power was all about learning from the “past” and that saying had always been something that had stuck with him. He thought him and Kagami were well prepared to handle anything with their plan, but the more he thought of it, the more he screamed at himself that they should have told Ladybug, they should have told Marinette, they should have said something, anything.

Romeo & Juliet had always been his least favorite Shakespeare play, he hated miscommunication in tragedies. It worked well as a plot device in comedies, but in tragedies it was just frustrating. Luka always believed people could be better than the famous star-crossed characters and everyone else in the play, he truly believed he was above that level of miscommunication. Sure he had trouble explaining himself, more often than not he used his music as his voice, confident it would make sure his feelings were communicated clearly. Then Marinette came and he found himself wanting to talk without his instrument as the voice, each day built his confidence, he had never been that confident in his talking abilities, and then everything crashed and burned. Miscommunication was the fuel.

He was sure if he hadn’t cried as much as he had already he would be in a fit of sobs at the moment, but as it was, Luka was all cried out. So was Kagami it would seem, whose mother uncharacteristically was actually giving her time to herself, time to grieve, and time with her “friends.” Luka knew the only friends Kagami had were him and Marinette, and there had been that air of almost more that hung above them all, but just thinking of that hurt him more than he could ever put into words or song. It was easier to deal with the heartbreak of the things that came to be and passed rather than the ones that hadn’t even had a chance to see the light, or even have the opportunity to be a proper thought that was discussed. No. No. He wouldn’t think about it. He couldn’t think about it.

“Luka? You okay?” He heard Kagami’s soft voice ask. He looked to her immediately hoping he wasn’t showing the desperation he was feeling, but at the tight smile he got in return he knew he failed hiding it. “Thinking about her again?”

He made a noise somewhere between yes and no. It was harder to talk when she disappeared, but he didn’t want to leave Kagami to have to interpret all his sounds so he cleared his throat and pushed past the lump that seemed to be stuck there no matter what he did. “Shakespeare.”

Kagami nodded and took a seat beside him on the couch and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Romeo and Juliet again?”

Luka sighed and nodded as he closed his eyes and leaned his head on top of Kagami’s softly. “I know it’s not technically history, but it’s a part of history and it made me think.”

“I would say stop thinking since that’s all you’ve been doing today, but I know that is not easy and not actually achievable.”

“If I could stop thinking that would be great. I just...she would still be here if I had-”

“If we.”

“If we had just communicated we wouldn’t have lost her...I...we…” Luka growled before sitting up and grabbing his guitar and playing an angry harsh cord. He held his guitar to his chest like a lifeline, his grip not loosening, the string biting into his skin and for a moment he wished it stung or imprinted but his callouses protected him.

“I know. I know. She...Marinette was my first friend. The first friend I had ever made on my own. Not one my mother made me have because it would be good for the company or because it would make me or her business partners look good.” Kagami started to tell Luka, of course he paid attention, Kagami wasn’t really one to open up about how she felt. Even with all the time she had spent with him and Marinette and all the encouragement they both gave her to be more open with them. “I thought...I believed our plan was foolproof. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t stop to think of human error, and everything that could go wrong. Marinette...Marinette and you gave me optimism Luka. I had never looked at the world or any situation I had faced with optimism. It’s not how I was raised. Or any Tsuguri for that matter.”

Luka didn’t know what to say so he held Kagami’s hand and gave it a squeeze for comfort and a way to say to continue if she felt comfortable. There of course was an anxious little voice inside his head that was screaming that, maybe, just maybe, if Kagami hadn’t spent so much time with them, everything could have been avoided but he quickly shot that thought down. He would never regret becoming friends with Kagami. Never. She was Marinette’s and his compass. She gave them control and direction when the two of them wandered too far. Luka was the calm, he was the ship’s wheel. He followed the compass and made sure to keep them all steady and comfortable, but he was always ready to change the course if they all needed the change of scenery.

At first, Luka thought of Marinette as the sea. Beautiful, full of life and emotion, taking care of all the creatures and life in its waters, and filled with creativity. Then she changed in his mind to a lighthouse, something that would call him and Kagami home, a safe haven, something to strive for. Again the image in his mind changed to her as their anchor. She kept them both grounded, she made sure Luka didn’t get too lost in his thoughts and she made sure Kagami didn’t second guess herself. She kept them safe. Marinette was all those things and more.

“But you guys,” Luka tuned back into Kagami and berated himself for getting lost in his thoughts, “you guys gave me optimism. I was no longer just thinking about the bad that could happen in things. When we made our plan, I thought I had been thorough, that we had been thorough. I wanted to believe we were doing the right thing. The intelligent thing. Most importantly, I wanted to believe we were doing the helpful thing. I was optimistic. I was hopeful. And in the end we lost her…”

“Kagami...There is nothing wrong with being optimistic.”

“Did I say there was?” She snapped before her expression fell and she held Luka’s hand in both of hers, her eyes teared up as she looked at him. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you didn’t mean it Gami.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Maybe not but you have already apologized. That’s what makes it okay.”

“If you say so...I’m just not entirely convinced, but okay. It’s just, I love that you and Marinette are optimists. I liked seeing things positively for once and not always thinking what could or will go wrong if I didn’t do things perfectly. But the one time I do so, it bit me in return. I...I hesitated Luka. Now Marinette is gone, the media only reminds us of her akuma and only wants to speak of her akuma and not the wonderful person she is. Except maybe Nadja and Aurore’s blog. It’s all that’s on TV, then there’s the whole Agreste situation that I would prefer not to think about but again, the media is focused on it.” After Kagami let all that out it was like she deflated and sunk into the comfort of the couch. Luka decided to join in and just flopped himself back into the couch and just stared up at the ceiling.

“Oh yeah...that. On one hand I can believe it, on the other I don’t want to but yeah let’s just...not get into that today. Maybe another day,” Luka grimaced at the memory of all the Agreste “rumors” flying around, and honestly he understood why Kagami would prefer not to think about any of that.

“Or ever. That could be beneficial too.”

“Gami. You know it’s better to face something than avoid it.”

“Perhaps, but avoidance sounds like the better option considering everything that has happened.”

“Have you spoken to Adrien at all?”

“No. Not since I found out he had no spine. And now...now I don’t even know how I would go about speaking to him. I do feel for him, but he’s not someone I consider a friend anymore. If anything he’s an acquaintance by necessity.” She huffed out with a shrug of her shoulder as she once more grabbed the remote for the TV and returned to channel surfing.

“Yeah, I get what you mean. It’s....talking with Jules has been hard. It was hard before, but now it’s...I don’t know. I know she wants to talk to me, I try to talk to her, but she won’t talk to me. She used to before Lila. Then we fought...we never fought...but she didn’t want to listen to me about Lila and her screeching of a song. Juleka got mad that I couldn’t see the “true” Marinette. She said I was blinded by my...my feelings.” Luka preferred not to remember him and Juleka fighting but it had become normal ever since his sister had started listening to Lila Rossi. After everything that passed though, Juleka wouldn’t even look at him unless it was in worry, like she couldn’t look at him. Not because he wasn’t worth her time, but because she seemed to believe that she wasn’t worth his.

In the simplest of terms, it was heartbreaking.

“Rossi has been exposed now though. She knows you were right.” Kagami said full of confusion, and Luka could admit it sounded confusing no matter how you looked at it.

“I think it’s because I-we- were right.”

Luka glanced over at Kagami and saw her frowning, “She’s angry that you, that we, were right?”

“I think it’s more shame than anger. I don’t doubt there is anger there, but it’s most likely directed at herself. Her song is all over the place…” He admitted with a sigh, he just wished that Juleka would open up to him like she used to so he could help. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew that something was happening at her school and it wasn’t good for her or her classmates. He hated thinking his sister was getting bullied but with Marinette’s rise to fame as an akuma and her almost cult-like following and those who raised her to martyr status all around, he wouldn’t be surprised if the “Akuma Class” was being “taught a lesson.”

“And yet she still won’t talk to you?”

“It’s...complicated. We are both not the strongest talkers, but it has always been worse for Jules. Now with everything that has happened…” Luka let out a frustrated breath and ran his hands over his face. Before him or Kagami could say anything else to add on to the conversation they heard rushed footsteps hurrying down the stairs towards them. Immediately, Luka recognized them as Juleka’s footsteps.

Juleka burst into the lounge from the deck, one look at her and Luka felt his anger rise. His sister’s clothing was ruined, her jeans that she had painstakingly sewn the lace to the outer edges of herself were splattered in paint and if he wasn’t mistaken there were rips on the knees. Her shirt looked wet and paint splattered, as did her hair, and one glance at her only visible eye told Luka she had been crying. She seemed startled to see them there and for a while none of them spoke, the only noise came from the TV where it had seemed to stop on a news channel since Kagami stopped her channel surfing in favor of focusing on Juleka’s entrance.

As soon as Luka stood up to comfort Juleka, maybe ask who the hell did that to her, she just as quickly shouldered past him and ran into her bunker with a slam of the door. That was another new thing, though not unneeded, they both got separate rooms after...after Marinette had helped Luka convince his mom they deserved separate rooms. Especially because of Jules and his ages and the fact a curtain wasn’t enough privacy but then there was the fighting due to the Lila and Marinette situation. It was just easier for them all if he and Juleka got separate rooms, his mom agreed, he knew it was because she noticed the tense silences and the loud music coming from them both during that time. So Kagami and Marinette helped Luka clean out another bunker room that had been used as a storage room and then helped him move in.

Luka didn’t know how long he stood there just looking at Juleka’s door but he came back to himself when he felt Kagami place her hand on his shoulder. He looked down at her to see her giving him a sympathetic smile and gave his shoulder a squeeze for comfort. It was grounding, but Luka’s heart still hurt at his sister’s refusal to talk to him or Kagami. He knew she needed him, and honestly he needed her too, he just wanted to be her brother again, and her be his little sister that was sometimes annoying but it was in a loving way. Everything had changed and Luka felt like he was on a sinking ship with nothing to grab onto for support except Kagami but he didn’t want to drag her down with him.

“I just…” He started, his voice tight with tears.

“I know.” Kagami answered.

“...Collège Françoise Dupont.” Both of their heads whipped towards the TV once they heard the name of that school. On the screen were two reporters that neither were very familiar with but they had seen the news channel in passing.

“Is that right? An investigation?” The male reporter asked.

“That is correct Robert! It has been confirmed by inside sources that a full scale investigation will be launched on Collège Françoise Dupont! Not only for its horrible negligence against The Protector but because of new reports made by students who no longer fear having to be akumatized since Hawkmoth has conveniently disappeared. Apparently the number of calls to the Board of Education was just appalling. As were the reasons behind the reports.” The female reporter announced with a plastic smile, but if you looked it would twitch every so often like she was fighting to keep smiling.

“I would like to say I’m surprised Madeline, but that would ultimately be a lie.” Robert quipped back with an equally plastic looking smile.

“Yes it would Robert.” The reporter called Madeline chuckled as she said that. “In other news still connected to The Protector, her parents will be getting an official apology from TVi Studios after said studio used footage of their daughter without permission written or otherwise.”

Luka and Kagami winced at the mention of Tom and Sabine as they knew the couple were having a hard time, but they had no idea that TVi Studios showed that segment without permission. Luka especially had a hard time believing it considering Nadja worked there and was a good friend of Sabine’s. Kagami looked particularly worried about this so Luka nudged her as a way to ask what was wrong. “Do you think they sued the studio? I don’t think M Dupain and Mme Cheng are in the right state emotionally to go through a lawsuit.”

“Well...they said it was an official apology so I don’t think they sued, which is good, because you’re right. They are in no state to go through a lawsuit or anything much at the moment.” Luka agreed.

“On to World News, there has been an amazing recent discovery in Northern Scotland. It has stumped the people, and historians. When we come back from the break we will talk about this historic find and what it means for the people of Scotland. See you after the break Paris!” Robert said before the commercials started up. Luka didn’t know why, but something told him that discovery was important.

Next Chapter

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keets-writing-corner · 3 years

Text

Oscar is an underrated badass

Can we just talk about how awesome Oscar is? This post might get long so I’m going to do a cut

Ignoring the fact alone that the first time we met him was right when some rando started talking in his head telling him to go to Haven and Oscar had the audacity to say “Bruh no! That’s crazy!” and it took a while for Ozpin to wear him down, Oscar has done some pretty brave things throughout the show.

Like, at first they’re pretty small things in comparison to our main protagonists who are out there literally fighting monsters. First thing Oscar ever does (besides having enough spine to tell Magic-Head-Voice NO) is freaking leave his home and entire life behind all on a whim of a voice that his aunt can’t even hear. It’s not until he meets Qrow that all this crazy conspiracy proves itself to be true and that he’s not completely crazy, and that Ozpin is in fact real. Maybe it’s the homebody-introvert in me, but that’s pretty terrifying, especially when you had nothing to go on but the word of some dude you never met before just showing up in his head.

Second scary thing that again might be my introvert head rearing was when he knocked on the door of team RNJR’s place, and held his ground when everyone was immediately hostile towards him. This boy had heard of huntmen and huntresses, saw a room full of them, all of them standing up aggressively towards him and didn’t even flinch. All he did was, as politely as possible, point out that ummm heyyyy so there’s this blackout drunk dude with me right now and uh maybe put him to bed or something.

And again, from an introvert perspective, the entirety of volume 5 was an introvert nightmare. Oscar is stuck at this house with people he doesn’t know, talking about things he doesn’t understand. Everyone is friends with each other, and even friends with the freaking voice in his head, EXCEPT HIM. Even scarier, these are all people Oscar idolizes given how he was a bit starstruck being around them initially. Oscar is a polite bean, so he doesn’t exactly make it obvious, but it’s very clearly there. And he sticks around anyways because it’s what he feels is right.

You heard about picking your fights? Oscar decided that his first real fight would be with a highly acclaimed huntsman who was the headmaster of a HUNTSMEN academy. He just casually decided to do that after learning that Leo sold everyone out. And let’s not forget that it took Ozpin forcibly taking control to stop Oscar from trying to fight a real life Tank-Man. I honestly don’t think that Ozpin was picking Oscar’s opponents for him.

AND THEN WE GET TO VOLUME 6. Ozpin is being paranoid and vague with everyone, so Oscar decides to put his foot down and literally fights Ozpin while he’s in control in order to help the team. I don’t know how many vertebrae that boy has in his spine, but holy freezing popsicle sticks, Oscar just decided that uh no, he was gonna fight against the man who had lived thousands of years through countless lifetimes, who uprooted his life, and could in fact take control of Oscar’s own body. Like MY BOY WHERE DID YOU GET A SPINE LIKE THAT CUZ I NEED ONE.

The rest of the volume for Oscar was kind of dedicated to him deciding what sort of person he wanted to be despite that he would soon lose himself to Ozpin, which honestly, that in it of itself is pretty cool, BUT special shout-out to JNR’s reaction and Oscar not once panicking or freaking out. Was he very alarmed and scared of Jaune’s reaction? Absolutely, but he still stood his ground.

Volume 7, Oscar was kind of hidden in the background for a lot of it, but he still had quite a few moments of “Yeah sure, I’ll give advice to ADULTS, no wait scratch that THE HEAD OF THE ACADEMY AND MILITARY” which is pretty great, but his shout out moment is at the end of Volume 7 (of course) when despite being badly beaten by Neo, being exhausted, and losing the Lamp, Oscar STILL went to go talk to Ironwood alone in the hopes that he’d be able to fix things despite everything Ironwood had done. I’m honestly in the boat that it takes more courage to be optimistic and hopeful in the face of negativity and doom than it does to just be practical. Of course it doesn’t work out, and Oscar falls down to Mantle, and like still never panics ONCE.

And then Volume 8, the literal entire reason I wanted to write this. Oscar gets KIDNAPPED by Ozpin’s violent Ex, imprisoned, mistreated and TORTURED, and how does this boy react? “mmm Imma mess with Ozpin’s ex since we’re here”. And what does that get him? Literally he was already escaping BY HIMSELF when Yang, Jaune and Ren showed up to “rescue” him. Oscar could’ve been the damsel in distress. He could’ve been the proactive damsel in distress that ultimately fails to escape. He could’ve just been spitefully quiet in the face of Salem. He could’ve chosen that in fact, no, he doesn’t actually owe Ozpin anything, and especially not such cold-blooded torture and just give Salem what she wanted (I mean this would’ve been really out of character unless he just cracked or something, but it’s still an option he had). BUT NO. Oscar decides “Screw it, we’re here on her creepy whale. Let’s see how she likes it when I mess with her the way she does with Ozpin”

Oscar is so self sufficient it’s incredible. But he’s also so full of like small badass moments that have accumulated into straight up heroic moments that I really just want to give this boy a medal and a spa-WEEK cuz huuuuuuuuuu he has not slept since volume 7 and that boy needs those ZZZs

#Oscar Pine #RWBY #volume 8 #does this count as spoilers?#it's been a while since he did that #Anyways I love Oscar #He's a little underrated #ITS THE BEAN #WHERE DID OSCAR GET HIS SPINE???#I really want one like his #You heard it here first #Oscar is a badass

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hyrule-kingdom-updates · 3 years

Note

🌼 any of them

Whoops, wrote a fic

Describe one of your OC’s worst nightmares.

An optimist would look at the world of divination with wonder. The universe is a but a magnificent hall of tapestries, beautiful pieces of art woven into anything you could imagine. Tapestries where you are a hero, tapestries where you are royalty, tapestries where your people live with riches, tapestries depicting your eternal victory over your enemies. The universe is endless and bountiful, for in the future, all futures are possible.

This is how Astor usually can depict the good fortune tellers from the worse.

If they’re an optimist, they’re most likely a faker.

The only true divinator that he had met that was even a bit of an optimist was his mother, and even then, he had always had the sinking feeling that she hid a deeper sorrow behind her simple shoes of colorful flames and shining moon and starlight. No, it was quite hard to stick to true, unfiltered optimism in this field, as while it was true that all futures and choices were possible, that freewill ran its course through all who walked the vast possibilities of the universe, the issue came in the fact that you could not travel it to and fro.

There are futures where you live, there are futures where you achieve your wildest dreams, timelines where your childhood is happier, and timelines where you find true love and satisfaction.

But you aren’t in those timelines. The future you have is this one, and it is set in stone.

Walk all the roads you want, say all the words, read all the stories, but when a seer analyzed exactly what world we live in, exactly what end is destined for this string of the universe, there will be no holding back. There is only the unfiltered, raw, typically pessimistic truth of the end. Savor it.

“In truth, Elane, I hate my job. Fear it, even,” Astor set his teacup down, looking out the balcony towards the inky, midnight view. “I fear one day I will find the prediction—the true, ultimate glimpse into the night, that seals in the fact that we’re doomed.”

The Queen only cocked her head with a smile. “Well, I’m flattered that there’s still a ‘we’ in this scenario. Good to know I’ll be joining you in the lockup when my mother find our contraband cucco nuggets—“

“I’m serious, Elane.”

She only laughed quietly, before leaning back in her chair, and gazing out into the pleasant evening. “I know...”

There was a quiet between them, not quite awkward or stiffening, but quiet in the way that you might hold your breath after someone embraces you warmly. Quiet in acceptance, quiet to make room for the sounds of something rare and fickle.

“I swear, I might retire early,” Astor finally said. “Quit while I’m ahead. Head off to Hateno or Mabe and bury my head in the sand.”

“You might want to try Gerudo then, if sand is what you’re searching for. I’m sure Urbosa would be thrilled.”

“Tsk. I am inclined to disagree.”

Elane chuckled again, and she let the quiet embrace her for a moment.

“Eternal doom aside, for a moment, I would posit that there’s hardly anything to fear. You’ve foreseen my daughter’s growth, analyzed the future livelihood of the kingdom, and predicted our victory over Ganon. I’d say it’s hard to bargain with that.”

“Maybe, but I could be wrong.” Astor circled his finger on the lip of his cup. “It happens, people make a prediction, but miss one star, or slip up one word...or perhaps one cow suddenly dies, or one ember quickly fades, and suddenly we’re actually in an entirely different timeline than predicted.”

“Didymos Astor? Wrong about something? Oh my, I never thought I’d see the day...” Elane smiled to herself again as she lifted her cup for another sip.

Astor clicked his tongue. “Well. You should hope I’m not wrong about anything. If someone of my skill makes an incorrect prediction, it would probably be disastrous for everyone.”

Elane winked as she set down her cup. “Well, good thing you’re a prodigy, then.”

“Good thing, indeed.”

Quiet keep their third company once again. Astor still had not sipped from his cup, but Elane was already heading for her fourth refill, no doubt begging for any energy after tucking her daughter to bed. A young toddler with enough energy to power a Guardian army, Elane has always found it quite odd that she used up a lot of her energy to annoy the Royal Seer. It was charming to see him get put off by a Mallory’s boundless curious aura, but mostly relieving in the sense that the Queen could get a moments rest and trust little Zelda would be alright.

Elane looked back inside through the half open door, and smiled at a bundled sleeping figure, surrounded by an army of stuffed animals. She then turned back and finally noticed Astor’s continued silence on the next refill.

She sighed. “Although I would be saddened to see you leave,” she began, “If a retirement would make you happy, Astor, I would loathe to do anything to stand in your way.”

He looked up at her, analyzing her body language and expression. She was genuine, of course, as she always was in these sorts of talks. Astor finally let himself exhale in peace, as he smiled and shook his head.

“Unfortunately I don’t think it would do me much good, anyways. Location won’t let me escape my own thoughts and visions.” He took a sip of his tea—a bit citrusy this evening, a hint of apple—and relaxed. “I’d imagine His Majesty would miss me dearly, and I simply wouldn’t want to leave him in distress.”

“Ha! Oh yes of course, Rhoam would be crying tears if you left us...” she replied, sarcastically. “Tears of deep, deep sorrow.”

Astor looked out into the night in silence again, not touching his cup.

“But I’ll tell you what Astor,” Elane began again. “If you ever receive that world dooming prediction, whatever may happen that may instigate your view of the deepest hells,” she raised her cup. “You come find me, and we’ll have a drink.”

He raised an eyebrow. “A drink? What sort of drink?”

She shrugged. “Whatever you like. Tea, wine, beer, water or juice if it’s your fancy. Whatever will keep your spirits high.”

Astor smirked, solemnly. “I don’t think you understand just how severe and dreadful certain predictions can be. When we say ‘all futures are possible,’ we do mean all possibilities.”

“And I understand, dear seer. I truly do.” She tilted her head as she kept her cup in the air. “But the way I see it, is that with divination or not, doom and hell come into people’s lives one way or the other. But it hasn’t really stopped the majority from loving their lives now, has it?” Her eyes twinkled like starlight. “Dearest Astor, if our destined doom is predicted one day, I command you to at least smile through our tea party.”

Quiet.

He finally sighed, the corners of his lips perking. His protests drowning in her expression.

“I suppose if you’re the one pouring, it’d be difficult to refuse.” He raised his cup and clinked it with hers.

She was dead eight days later.

With her death came the final factor. The final star.

“Your daughter is destined to fail us,” he said again. “The Calamity shall rise and consume us all, and she won’t stop it in time.”

Rhoam slammed his fists on the desk, but the seer did not flinch. “We’ll train her hard, we’ll start now, even! I’ll get those clerics from the temple to teach her the starting prayers!” he yelled.

“It won’t work.” Astor replied, simply. “Perhaps she might attain them down the line, but she most certainly won’t awaken her powers by Ganon’s rise. It’s over.”

“You told me we could do this!” Rhoam pointed a finger, accusingly. “You saw our prosperity, our victory!”

“That was what I initially saw, yes. But unfortunately we live in world where the Queen of Hyrule is dead, and thus the threads of our future weave accordingly.”

“You’re a liar!” Rhoam bellowed again. “You saw her death, saw our end and lied to us since the beginning, haven’t you?!!”

“Don’t you think that if I knew Elane would die, I would say something?! That I would give ample time for her to say goodbye to you and her daughter??” Astor finally raised his voice, met with equal silence. “I failed to correctly analyze our timeline the first time around, and for that I am sorry. But I can not control what pieces of the future fate allows me to see. It’s not an open novel for you to give me a bad book report grade on. It’s a museum of endless tapestries, of which I am task with analyzing one stroke at a time to identify which is woven to a singular man, and the fact that I have given you a complete enough answer now is a gift within itself, so don’t even try to accuse me forgery and lies.”

The two men clenched their jaws, staring angrily at each other.

Astor finally whispered. “Overtime I might gather more specifics, but overall—this is over.”

Rhoam balles his hand into a fist. “We’ll start a new schedule for Zelda first thing in the morning—“

“It won’t work, it’s futile—“

“We’ll make it work—“

“This is set in stone, this is the world you live in—“

“Well what if you’re wrong again?”

“I’m not.”

“But what if you are?”

“I’m. Not. I’ve read the signs again and again and again, in fact I’ve been reaching the same conclusions repeatedly for the last four weeks. It. Is set. In stone.” He tapped his finger on the wood with each syllable to emphasize. “Perhaps the futures of prosperity are accurate for the Rhoams and Mallorys that live in a different time, but unfortunately for us, we live in one where Elane is dead. This is our reality and you’re doing no good denying as such.”

Silence.

Rhoam made his way towards the door. “You’re a liar.” The seer scoffed. “You’re a liar and you don’t know what you’re saying! Borderline treason if I’m being honest! You’re pathetic, and a rotten fake—“

“If it pleases His Majesty to confirm the integrity of his humble subject,” Astor cut in, sarcastically, “It might be good to know that also I’ve predicted you won’t imprison me, or exile me, or execute me, given you’re still ever reliant on my uncontested skills for more personal matters. That, and you wish to try and keep me around to hopefully prove me wrong, in which you can then tell yourself you’d be in the right to truly punish me.” He stared the regent dead in the eyes. “But don’t worry, you won’t.”

Rhoam slammed the door shut as he stomped off.

That night, Astor has another dream. Or perhaps it was a vision, he wasn’t sure, as the details were so surreal and horrific and captivating that it would have surely been a blessing to chalk it up entirely to vivid imagination.

There were screams and the sound of rocks crumbling. Bones were cracking and monsters were squealing and shrieking. And be felt his arms burn, and he felt his soul drain, and he looked down to see his skin peeling into dark flakes, his muscles, sludge. And in the distance, a young woman with golden hair laughed at him, but her eyes were hollow and gold. And she laughed and laughed as his body was slowly broken to pieces, bones torn asunder, skin burned to smoldering malice, senses vivid until the final moment when he woke.

But the good thing about nightmares, was that...that was it. There was no where else to go. There was nothing left to offer. No more pain to fear.

It made sense of course. Of course, of course. He never went to the funeral, he never offered his sympathies. There was no longer anything to mourn, as he allowed himself to view the world in its true, disgusting form. The people were doomed, and the dead, well...perhaps they might have deserved it. Yes, that was the only way this all made sense, of course. He even stopped trying to warn other folk after a few too many dozen harsh rejections to his character. No, now in complete isolation and resignation of his path, there was nothing else that could possibly drag him back to—

“How do I die?” Zelda Mallory Hyrule asked, one day.

At first, he was confused, and he turned in his chair. “What?”

She was seven at the time, and it was truly an odd and concerning thing to be coming from a seven year old girl’s mouth. Or perhaps it wasn’t, given the circumstances.

“How do I die?” she said again. She was laying down on his worn carpet, fiddling with the frilled edge.

Was she truly that bored? Already out of other questions? Hmph, he had always warned her to stay away, as a seer’s office wasn’t really meant for childish entertainment. Yet still she always came and asked to hide away from her father, and, well...anything to spite that man...

“Why do you ask?” he finally replied. Had someone said something to her? A threat? He clenched his jaw. I swear, if that fool tried to force her powers by—

“You’re always going on about how I’m wasting my time with praying and stuff...but father says I still gotta to stop the Calamity or else we could all die.” She didn’t look up from the bits of carpet string she was playing with (and contemplating on popping in her mouth), “So I figured if you tell me how I die we can settle the debate for good!”

Astor just sighed. “Well, of course you d—“

He stopped himself, but not for the reasons a more put together person, might. Not because of the generally frowned upon action of telling a child how she dies, no, that was not exactly beyond him. No, Astor cut off his sentence simply because it had crossed his mind that—

“...I’m not entirely sure...” he whispered.

He suddenly stood. Walking towards the other end of his office, carefully stepping over the child. “E-Excuse me a moment.”

Why had he never considered this? Of course, he had seen the signs clearly enough, the visions, the stars. A girl cries over a corpse, a light vanishes in the night. Malice plagued the sky and dooms the day. But did the Calamity actually kill her? Does she drown in rubble and malice like the others? Slain by a demon or monster perhaps? Or if not, then, would that mean...?

The princess soon forgot about the question by the next day, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next.

Astor spent nearly eight sleepless nights into finding an answer.

But he never truly did.

These things happened more times than one may think, when it came to predictions. Vagueness was commonplace, but specificities and straightforward answers were about as rare as a green sunset. Of course, he knew she would die, goddess blood or not, she lived the life of a mortal. But how? When? While it certainly wasn’t impossible to predict a person’s death, but whatever the circumstances of Mallory’s was made the process was infuriatingly impossible.

It was possible she would die of malice or suffocation under rubble, even circumstances where she dies at the Ganon’s hand himself. But then there were clear visions of her living, walking through a grassy field, ruins in the distance covered in leaves and moss, her turning and calling to a friend to keep up with her pace.

But no, nonono. She would die during the Calamity’s rise, that was the majority of what the futures offered to her were. That was the probable outcome.

But the factors and visions and signs and alignments were so fine and minuscule in difference, that Astor truly couldn’t a true statement, a true prediction, a true answer to the question. What timeline did we live in?

It taunted him.

Maybe it was better if the question was put to rest, did it even matter?

“Mallory?” he asked. “That’s a stupid name.”

“What?! No it’s not!” Elane laughed and shoved his shoulder. “Please, YOU’RE not one to talk.”

“Well as a victim of stupid first names, I think I’m qualified to speak accurately on the subject.”

“Aha! But it’s not technically a first name.” Elane tapped his head. “It’s a middle name, her first name would be ‘Zelda,’ of course.”

“Yes, and that is also a s—“

The queen shoved his shoulder into the wall before he even finished the sentence. “Oh would you shut up...”

He laughed, unconventionally carefree. Her Majesty’s happiness these days truly was contagious. Or perhaps that was a side effect of pregnancy? Did all expecting mother’s give off this aura?

“I think it’s a wonderful name.” Elane said. “Reminds me of a cute little duck, like a mallard!” She tucked her arms and flapped her elbows to imitate as such. “Quack, quack!”

“This is further adding to my argument actually”

“Hmph! Ok then Mr. Overseer of all names” She tapped a finger to his chest. “If it’s such a stupid name, then when she starts getting bullied for it around the castle, I shall expect you to take care of her in full.”

He scoffed. “Oh, I’ll be sure to do so. She’ll definitely need it.”

Elane pecked his head with a kiss.

“Good! I grant you my blessing lovingly tease her, as well. And I expect the best from you, Astor!”

His face suddenly warmed for some reason, and he couldn’t form words.

“What?”

“.....W...”

He was suddenly whack in the head with a rolled up piece of paper. Astor sprang awake from his desk. “...W...What...?”

“Morning, Mr. Astor!!” Princess Zelda-Mallory beamed. “And happy birthday!!! Sorry I woke you up early, but I needed to give this to you before the winter solstice festival later and—“

She continued to ramble on and on, but Astor simply opened the rolled up paper she had handed to him. It was simply filled with dozens and dozens, arguably hundreds, of hand drawn stars. In the corner was written, “You always look at the same stars so here’s some new ones!” in crude purple crayon. At the time, he failed to notice the accompanying note on the back that read “One for each year of how old you are!” Thankfully he was too busy looking through the different stars, with varying degrees of sparkles and smiley faces.

He finally looked back at the princess, who was still rambling on and on about her day, and her father’s day, and her newest stuffy dress, and her latest adventures with her stuffed toys, and—

“Why are you always here, Zelda?” Astor finally said. She stopped talking, looking at him, quizzically. “I mean...” he grumbled, “You know I don’t really like you, right?

“Eh, I don’t care. I think you’re neat!!” She held out her arms as she zoomed around his circular office. “Your room is so cool! And you got fun books!”

“Necromancy isn’t necessarily what I would consider ‘fun’ reading material—“

“Plus your outfits are cool, and you’re super smart, like my mom.”

He blinked.

“Plus, you’re the only one that’s not mean to me about my dumb powers. But really that’s just a chair on the top!”

“Do you mean cherry on top?”

“No! I meant chair! Watch me!! I’m gonna do a backflip off of this—“

“NO.” Astor immediately stood up, and snatched the girl off of the wooden chair. “NO. No backflips.” He set her down on the rug and pointed to a side of the room which held a broken table, stool, and a few old chairs—the victims of the princess’ previous acrobatic attempts.

She crossed her arms and stuck out her tongue. “You’re no fun!”

“I’m running out of furniture, is what I am.”

“But I’ll let this slide since it’s your birthday! Hmph.”

She started pulling at the loose threads of the carpet. “Don’t know why you had to stop my birthday backflip! Who cares if I get a little scratch?”

“I do—“

“YOU DO?!” Mallory was immediately up and clinging to his robes.

Astor sputtered, instinctively waving his arms to free himself from the child’s grip. But then he finally processed her question, and...

“I...” He looked at her starlight eyes. She had that stupid, naive grin that he always remembered from her mother. A stupid, pathetic, horrible, terrible, optimistic smile.

He finally scoffed. “I just can’t have you getting hurt on my watch, as otherwise, I’d probably be a dead man. That’s all.”

The princess lifted her hands in a “hooray!” fashion, and yelled the exclamation, accordingly. She then resumed her zipping and zooming around the room, much to Astor’s unexpected relief.

That night, he visited the question again.

Why? He didn’t really know.

The question wouldn’t offer him anything, it wouldn’t relieve him of anything—in fact it really did just the opposite. If he found that died miserably, it would be another scream in the nightmare, another nail in the comforting coffin of despair. But if he someone found that she lived, that there was a day after the Calamity, where even a child such as her could possibly prosper...

Having hope and seeing it fail anyway would probably be the most torturous of all.

Again, he had a dream, of a world tainted by blood and malice. But this time he was floating. He was floating and watching the end of it all.

Castle Town was nothing but ruins and ash, and no colors existed but red, black, and grey.

He couldn’t hear anything but a shrill hum in his ears, but he knew there was screaming. He looked to his hand, expecting to see malice or blackened skin, but instead found a strange floating device in his palm. It spin slowly, pink constellations drifting across its surface.

The hum in his ears turned into a groan, and then a whisper. It said something familiar, but he was sure he had never heard it before.

It is time.

The next night he had a dream of a girl standing in a green field, calling out to her friends somewhere behind her. She rested under the ruins of a collapsed pillar, and ate a homemade sandwich with a memorable smile.

Astor reached a conclusion.

In most futures, the girl dies horribly. He wrote in his journal. To be expected, I would assume the rise of the Calamity isn’t exactly easy to survive from.

But what I have discovered is a very specific set of circumstances that lead to a more favorable outcome, at least for her.

I have no way of knowing if it accurately depicts the comings of our time, or another. There are too many variables and specifics. Too long I have spent trying to discern our fate, but the probabilities and possibilities for doom are so interchangeable that it really go either way. The only truth I know is that she lives if—

He paused, tapping the dry quill to the desk again in thought. He dipped it once more.

I’ve decided that if I ever find myself in the scenario where I can solidify her a more favorable destiny, I will take it. I can only hope dare to alter my existing nightmare into something different, there’s really nothing left to lose, is there?

Astor leaned in his chair for a moment, savoring the silence of his office. He looked out the window and took in the night. The stars were gorgeous this evening.

Although if it fails I hope it kills me.

Call it arrogance, but I don’t think I can handle being wrong again.

The seer sighed, then suddenly flipped to the next blank page, angrily.

If I had never met her it would have been fine. If I had just minded my own damn business and continued to work in being resigned to our fate, at least then I could have—

There was a soft knock at his door.

He knew who it was.

Astor pinched the bridge of his nose as he opened it. “It’s past 2am, Princess, what could you possibly have to tell me?”

She looked down and shuffled her feet. “I had a nightmare...”

“Yes, people do have those sometimes.” He immediately closed the door.

Another knock.

After a moment, Astor opened it again. “Don’t you have guards outside your room, how did you sneak up here?”

“Secret tunnel!” She grinned, proudly, as she replied with a sort of sing-song tone.

“That’s nice.”

The door slammed shut again.

She knocked once more. There was the longest pause.

“FFFFFFine!” The world was out of his lips before he even fully swung open the door, and Mallory happily scrambled inside. “But no touching anything, I’m working.”

“It’s ok, I just wanna stay up all night and read your books!” She was already scrambling for the necromancy section, again.

Astor sighed, and went to slump back into his desk. The princess was already sprawled across the floor, distracting herself with another stack of wondrous, ill-recommended book. He didn’t really care.

I don’t really care. He wrote once again. I know there are futures where I dedicate myself to the Calamity, and she dies anyway. I know it doesn’t really matter, I know it’s hopeless to care, and that’s why I don’t.

He looked back at Zelda, he saw her slowly blink back her tiredness. He knew in a few hours or so, he’d have to drop her sleepy figure back off to those useless guards, and berate then for letting her wander off again, as it always was.

If I do this and it’s all for nothing, he began, I fear it will be worse than if I had just stood to the side and perished. It’s already doomed, and this pathetic, foolish optimism might cause me to turn this nightmare into something even worse.

He sighed, and the hours passed as he just sat with his thoughts.

Zelda was using and open book as a pillow.

Astor opened the door, and went to pick her up.

I’m not living through another nightmare. He thought, as he descended the stairs from the observatory. The girl’s breathing was steady as she wrapped an arm by his shoulder.

If it fails I hope it kills me before I see it. He repeated again.

I can’t handle being wrong again.

#Didymos Astor #out of character #oc ask game #I’m actually really proud of this I might shove it into canon story one day

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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years

Video

youtube

‘today’s silm vocaloid song: clear sky engine (クリヤスカイ機関) by nyanyannya and hara ft. rin kagamine and zunko tohoku

this one’s about elrond, maglor, and the sudden non-ending of the world. you know that thing where you build an elaborate fandom video in your head for a completely unrelated song, but you don’t have the most basic art skills you’d need to make it a reality? yeah, i square that circle by writing them out. here, have an extremely long songfic/filk/commentary/thing

It was just another day, beneath a black sky

The bustle of camp churned on around me

I wasn’t paying attention to what my hands were doing

Dreaming of a shining star-lit sky

we open on elrond, living in a world about to die. the fëanorians were forced to abandon amon ereb years ago, and now the last of the host ekes out a precarious nomadic existence, raiding deserted villages for food and losing more people they can’t replace with each battle. they’re still doing better than everyone else on the mainland, though. their blades, at least, remain sharp

(the smoke from the fires of angband has risen to cover the whole continent in dark clouds. some of the sun’s warmth still gets through, and on good nights the star of high hope is still faintly visible, but the light-filled skies of old are little more than memory. all the survivors know that the end is near. it’s only a matter of time)

He’d broken a promise he’d made to us

So I was a little more annoyed at him than usual

He chatted with me while I worked to make up for it

And I made all my usual complaints

elrond and elros are at this point... i’d say very early teens? not that they had much of a childhood; the fëanorians are so short-staffed the twins have been doing odd jobs around camp pretty much since it became clear they weren’t going to run away. today elrond is taking stock of the medical supplies, less because he has any interest in the healing arts than because it’s a job that needs doing and everyone else is busy

maglor is hovering within talking distance, doing elrond-doesn’t-care-what. the twins’ relationship with maglor is extremely complicated to say the least, their mercurial hellbeast protector who scares the shit out of everyone else they’ve ever met and who has stood between them and the darkness for as long as they can remember. recently, he promised to stay with the twins while they did something difficult, but he failed to do so for a whole host of reasons, including getting into a two-hour shrieking match with maedhros at the last possible moment. elros shrugged it off, like elros shrugs everything off, but elrond is a simmering cauldron of adolescent rage at the best of times

which is why maglor’s checking on him, giving him an outlet for his anger before it can turn into despair. because what would be the point, in the end? they’re all going to die anyway. one of the reasons maglor’s resisted sending the kids to balar so hard is that no matter where they are, eventually morgoth will sweep down and destroy them all. there’s nowhere safe left, nothing they can do to protect them. none of this is even new, it’s a shadow that’s hung over them all since the twins grew old enough to understand this

so maglor and elrond chat, or rather elrond grumbles incessantly and maglor snarks as upliftingly as he can remember to. it’s a day like any other, nothing about it to distinguish it from the hundreds that came before or however many will come after. that is, until one of the lesser minions comes over, yelling, ‘boss! boss! you have to see this!’

elrond turns around. for the first time ever, he sees true hope on her face

“Have you finally grown tired of us?” I hissed

But in that moment excitement ran round the campsite

And someone cried out with joy

“The hour we thought would never be, the return of the light, has finally come to pass!”

far, far away, the hosts of the valar are landing on the shores of beleriand. disembarking from their luminous ships, clad in radiant armour and carrying blessed weapons, their brilliance pierces the dark fog that has settled over beleriand for so long. shining like the stars come to earth, the hallowed army of valinor begins its long march towards the gates of angband. far above, ships riding jets of light slice open the smog

this news - this unexpected, unbelievable, impossible miracle bestowed unto doomed beleriand, this chance that their enemy might actually fall - is the greatest thing anyone in camp’s heard all century. maybe in more prosperous times the host would have groused about the valar finally seeing fit to get off their asses, but in this world turned to ash any chance at victory is to be celebrated. the minions throw a massive impromptu party, of the kind they haven’t since before sirion. elros is right there with them, singing off-key and laughing as loud as anyone else. even maedhros cracks a tiny relieved smile

maglor watches the festivities from the outside, more genuinely optimistic than he thought he was still capable of. elrond joins him, brow furrowed as he tries to comprehend it all. they talk

“It feels like a dream I’ll never wake up from”

“What are you blabbering about now?”

elrond is voiced by zunko, maglor by rin. the song’s more of a dialogue than a duet, so i’ll be bolding maglor’s lines

The sheet of paper I held in my hands read

“The hosts of the West have come! Our world is saved!”

the letter’s from gil-galad, or at least his administrative apparatus. it’s not even that hostile; apparently the armies of the gods showing up out of nowhere to save them all from certain doom has him in a magnanimous mood. there’s some drivel about surrendering and eärendil and all wrongs being forgiven, but neither maglor nor elrond is paying attention to it

“Hey, do you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Love and justice and valour and hope”

“I remember the sea of blood you drowned everything in for them”

elrond didn’t really have any formal schooling - nobody had the time - but he has managed to pick up a lot of stuff from the stories the people around them tell. that the fëanorians came to middle-earth for high noble ideals, and that it was trying to fulfil those ideals that led them into darkness, is something maglor told him once, when he was in a darkly honest mood

“Haha, that’s just details, everybody makes that kind of mistake when they’re young”

“Why are you like this?”

a mood maglor’s obviously not in at the moment, if he’s laughing off the kinslayings like this; elrond knows this isn’t how he actually feels about them. normally elrond would just roll his eyes and move on with his life, but things are different today

The camp was full of laughter, as if everyone had lost their minds

elrond’s not used to happiness. not full, unironic happiness, untainted by the shadow of their inevitable death, not from the fëanorians. the sheer jubliation suffusing camp is fundamentally alien to him, a child of a world about to end. he doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge that maybe they won’t all get eaten by dragons. he doesn’t know what to do with the hope in everyone’s eyes

so instead, when maglor wanders away from the party, elrond catches him with a song

“What if for one more year, ten more years, a hundred more years, the shadow still reigns?”

“Then ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, a million years later, we’ll see it fall! For certain”

“What if I lay out all one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight of the fears I carry?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine songs I can give to you”

maglor’s been teaching elrond how to do this, how to snatch someone into a world of music and throw your voice at them until one of you can’t take it any more. maglor wins this one, as usual; even if his song is incapable of anything but violence he’s got centuries of experience on elrond, enough to turn the sharp edges of his voice into blades in elrond’s hands. and that is what he’s doing, clumsy and harsh as he is; he’s trying to give elrond a reason to hope

elrond is the one who breaks the spell, dropping the melody, letting the music dissolve into the air. maglor flashes him a grin and walks off, humming merrily. elrond just stands there, still unable to understand

I’ve heard it before, it’s all anyone can talk about, even if I try to avoid it it stabs into my ears

cut past a decade or so, to well into the war of wrath. elrond and elros are in their mid-teens now. they’re still with the fëanorians, but these days the fëanorian warband is effectively an auxiliary unit to the amanyar army, skirting around the edges of that much larger force. for the first time in a long while, elrond and elros have regular-ish contact with people outside the fëanorian sphere of influence, mostly peripheral edain and the sindar who run messages between the camps. it’s different, talking to new people

(the sky is still covered with smog, but it’s gloomy grey, not oppressive black. the sun is faintly visible through it, most of the time. the rain is much less poisonous than it used to be, and on good nights you can almost see the moon. the closer they get to angband, the darker the clouds grow)

“It is as the gods have decreed, soon the darkness will be swept away and the Enemy will be cast down

And after the war in the purified world, we will all live happily together

Building new homes in a land unmarred by evil”

the people outside the host are much more optimistic about the future, for one. the fëanorian minions are happy morgoth is getting trounced but they don’t really talk about what comes after that, like they can’t imagine a world without war. the sindar, and especially the edain, on the other hand, have all these plans about the cities they’ll build, the arts they’ll perfect, the children they’ll raise in a world without danger. elros is super into this; he barely spends time with the fëanorians any more, he’s so busy going between different edain camps, making friends, planning for the future. elrond, though...

Even my twin knows what future to reach out for...

elrond doesn’t know what to do with any of this. the very concept that someday the war will end and the sky will clear and he’ll have a bright future is still something he doesn’t fully understand. even more, he’s defined himself for so long as not-a-fëanorian, now he’s regularly interacting with people who doubtlessly aren’t he’s having trouble figuring out what else he is. he’s stuck between people who are lowkey hoping they’ll die gloriously in battle and people who have been dreaming about what they’d do in a world without darkness all their lives, and he doesn’t know what he even wants, not really, not yet

so he keeps on living, just like he always has. he’s been promoted to sick tent dogsbody and is learning how to heal with song from the last minion who can kind of still do it. he acts as a proxy between the fëanorians and the more timid outsiders they keep running into. when he goes (or elros drags him) exploring in other camps, he keeps track of every new detail he comes across, in case it’s somehow useful later

and he keeps talking to maglor, with anger and spite and sarcasm and whatever other emotion he’s covering his uncertainties with today. maglor always listens, usually offers to help, and sometimes elrond even lets him. the fëanorian camp settles into a rhythm of buildup-fight-recovery-buildup-fight-recovery, so regular it lulls elrond into complacency. he takes the future he still doesn’t quite believe in one day at a time, until suddenly the ground crumbles beneath his feet

You say it’s to ‘fulfill our ideals’ but what you mean by that is ‘to sate our bloodlust’, I know

With their blades and teeth sharpened for battle, the kinslayers broke away from the light and disappeared into the shadows

there’s a whole mountain of reasons why, as they draw near to angband, the dregs of the fëanorian host abruptly peel off from the valinorean army and vanish into the night. they know they're more effective as a stealthy shock ambush unit, they’re somewhat concerned the amanyar will turn on them the second morgoth is no longer a problem, they're making one last desperate rush for the silmarils, all that and more. it’s not the first time they’ve suddenly packed up and left before their enemies can react, probably not even the first time they’ve done it to the hosts of valinor. there’s just one little difference

Leaving us behind? Leaving you behind

they’re not taking the twins. said twins only find out about this, like, the day before they decamp. maedhros’ justification is something about them not being able to support noncombatants on the march, but the twins believe that about as much as they believe that the fëanorians are doing this for any kind of hope. elros, of course, was half-planning on leaving anyway, going off to chase his own ambitions with his new edain posse. he copes with it pretty well, relatively

but elrond’s mind goes blank. once he thought the day they let them go would be the best day of his life, but now it’s come it feels so wrong, and this horrible coldness is seeping into him. in a flash of what feels like foresight, he suddenly knows the people who raised him will never come back. how dare - why - he can’t -

with a sharp desperate burst of sound that’s a surprise to even himself, elrond lashes out a song to catch maglor

“For ten more minutes, one more week, half a year, please, let me stay with you!”

“In a year’s time, ten years’ time, a hundred years’ time, we’ll see the starlit sky together”

“What if one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight times I begged you not to go?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine of your other wishes I’ll hear”

and elrond just stops. he lets the song trail off, staring at maglor. he’s in an incredibly weird mood, with something that could almost be compassion in his eyes

there’s only one way he can find out what’s happening, elrond realises

“In that case - !”

maglor was never really demonstratively affectionate with the twins. it would never have come off as real on his part, and they wouldn’t have believed it in any case. still, he supported them. he let them trail behind them, all but cling to the backs of his legs, in those first horrible weeks when they were terrified of absolutely everything. he taught them to ride and he taught them to read, how to reinforce a blade with nothing but song and close a wound with needle and thread. on the darkest nights, when all the world was filled by the howling beasts of morgoth and the wailing of the unhallowed dead, he held them tight and flared his own fires high, a warm smoky bonfire between them and the void. he answered their questions, and told them stories

and sometimes, he tried to be kind

“Sing me a lullaby like the flat of a blade”

“Which one would you like?”

“I want to see a flower that will still bloom”

“I know just the one”

“I don’t care what kind of monster you are! Just please stay with me, for even one more tomorrow...”

“...I’m sorry”

“What do you mean?”

“You were given your name because your parents wanted you to see the stars someday”

it was easy for maglor to justify keeping the twins when they didn’t have a future. the shadow of death blotted out the sky, so why not hold them close for whatever little time they had left? no matter where they were, the void would soon claim them all

except it didn’t. in the end they were not forsaken. the sacred light came out of the west to burn away the darkness and finish the war he once thought they could never win. the hosts of the valar have gotten farther in decades than the noldor did in centuries, and soon enough they’ll cast the enemy down and release the world from his terrible maw. and then the future the free peoples dreamed of will stretch out before them, full of possibilities beyond measure

and that’s why maglor has to let them go. the magnificent people that elrond and elros are already becoming will only wither among hopeless kinslayers who have nothing left but the sword. to flourish into their full glorious selves, they need to be with people who dream, who can travel towards the future alongside the twins with light hearts and songs on their lips. maglor refuses to let his own darkness drown the last people in the world he does not hate. elrond deserves so, so much better than maglor is capable of giving him. he deserves to see the stars

hearing all that, there’s only one thing elrond can say

“You can’t even keep one miserable promise! Don’t pretend like you’re my father, kinslayer!”

and that’s the last elrond sees of maglor. the fëanorians vanish in the middle of the night, leaving elrond and elros (and about half a dozen minions who are taking their last possible chance to get out) behind. elros takes up with his edain buddies and starts making contacts and forging alliances. elrond winds up in gil-galad’s orbit, surrounded by people who are very understanding about how awful his childhood was, which just pisses him off more. he doesn’t throw tantrums or refuse to work, those aren’t luxuries he was raised with, but he spends a fair bit of time spurning every bit of sympathy and aid he’s offered and trying not to cry himself to sleep

with time, though, he finds a place. it starts with círdan, the first person who believes elrond about what his time with the fëanorians was like. then he befriends erestor, and then gil-galad starts actually respecting the way elrond feels, and then he gets officially taken on as an apprentice healer. he starts learning about his own ancestors and their peoples, and reaching out for stories he never knew could be his. as the final battle of the iron hells begins, elrond is doing... better

and soon, the hope that no one in beleriand once dreamed would be fulfilled becomes a reality

And then, as if it had never held power, the darkness was cast down...

they win the war. the armies of angband are crushed. the peaks of thangorodrim are torn down. the prisoners of the deepest pits of the iron hells are freed. the forces of evil are scattered to the four winds. morgoth, the fallen vala himself, is defeated and captured and bound with great chains, unable to ever hurt anyone again. the precious remnants of the light of the trees, the remaining two silmarils, are recovered. the dark clouds evaporate, and for the first time elrond can remember, the sky is perfectly clear. the war of the jewels is finally over

elrond has grown so much since the day he first heard that the hosts of the west had come. he still can’t quite believe it

They held a great celebration beneath a star-speckled sky I’d never seen before

“The world is saved and we are freed! Evil has been vanquished forevermore”

The triumphant voices of the generals poured out over the victory feast while the stars shone true above the happy ending

the soldiers of valinor and the people of beleriand (what’s left of them) throw a truly massive party. it’s still tinged with their grief over everything they’ve lost, but the atmosphere is primarily one of ecstatic relief. they’re alive, and they’ve come out the other side. dwarvish tailors dance with high maiar, humans who don’t remember the moon get drunk with elves who remember cuiviénen. even after the official festivities die down and people start hashing out what they want to do next, the general mood remains buoyant and cheerful. at long last, they live in a world without danger

none of it feels real to elrond. gil-galad’s talking about building a kingdom on the other side of the blue mountains, elros and his grand edain alliance are trying to bully the maiar into letting them set up on tol eressëa, and elrond feels so disconnected from it all, like he’s watching someone else’s life. he’s happy the enemy has been overcome, of course he is, but he’s not feeling the overwhelming joy everyone else is. he can’t let his guard down yet, something is still wrong -

Except he hasn’t come back, they haven’t come back, where did they go, what have they done?

The word raced around as fast as the wind, giving me an answer I never wanted to hear -

where is maglor? the fëanorians broke off to fight the war their own way, but the war is over now, where are they? they were so happy to hear that the amanyar had arrived, he can’t imagine them not thrilled to see the enemy they hated more than anything else fall. in the warm afterglow of victory, it feels like even their sins might be forgiven, and they could finally go home. they have nothing else left; why wouldn’t they take that outstretched hand?

but nobody’s so much as glimpsed their flag since some time before the final battle. elrond quietly assumes, perhaps even hopes, that they all died fighting, and yet he can’t shake the cold dread crawling up his spine

elrond has mixed feelings about the silmarils, and doesn’t particularly care to be near them. by the time the news of their theft reaches him, maedhros and maglor have already fled into the night

Still driven on by their oath, they turned their blades on their kin one last time

“And stole away the hallowed light”

Yes, that light which sank all of our lands beneath a deep dark layer of corpses and ash

all elrond sees is the aftermath, the blood sinking into the ground. it’s far from the first time he’s seen people killed, but somehow now it’s all hitting him, all at once. he sees the bodies and it knocks the breath out of him. all he can see is the dead, from finwë on down, the rotting carcasses of every last person who was slaughtered for these gems, a whole continent bleached with death. they call the silmarils the most beautiful things in the world, jewels shining with the very light of creation, but elrond can’t see it for the blood they’re dripping with

that’s the immediate thing that has his hands shaking and his breath running cold. by morning it’s had a chance to sink in a little, and -

He lied he lied he lied he lied

maglor regretted the kinslayings! elrond knows he did! it was never even something he actually said, it was obvious from the way he talked about them. every single one was a complete disaster, nothing the fëanorians ever got out of them was worth what they lost in the process, and afterwards things always got worse in ways they never expected. and maglor hated the person the kinslayings had turned him into, elrond spent enough time around him to pick up on that much! surely he’d do anything to not have to commit another one?

apparently not! apparently all that regret, all that loss, the arguments and the nightmares and the coldly determined efforts to stop them following his path, it all meant nothing! he still gave in to despair or maedhros or whatever, killed yet more people, stole from the army whose return he said was like a dream come to life, spat in the face of his last chance to go home, and vanished! gil-galad’s people were right! he really is nothing more than a monster!

the shock of it all makes something snap in elrond, whatever fragile optimism he absorbed from the people around him draining away until he feels completely hollow. hundreds of years of suffering and death, and for what?

Smeared with the blood of untold hundreds, untold thousands, untold millions of people

Did they buy us peace for even half a year, even a week, even ten minutes?

Noooooooo!

Even the very land we lived on crumbled and drowned

What was the point?! What was the point?! What was the point?!

I feel like I’m going insaaaaaaane

morgoth may have fallen, but beleriand is dead! nothing remains, not the lush green lands of the stories, or even the dessicated forests of his childhood, just desolate earth and the devouring sea. almost everywhere he’s ever known, almost everyone who lived and fought and dreamed there, are lost forever. nothing was saved, everything was destroyed, what good is a clear blue sky when there’s nothing beneath it?! how can they call this a happy ending?!

elrond can’t see any light here, all the great battles and heroic deeds seem absolutely pointless in the face of everyone and everything immolated in the endless grasping for these gems. the hosts of valinor leave the continent they shattered, the remnants of gil-galad’s people escape the raging forces of nature, and the survivors bicker and fight over resources just like the fëanorian minions elrond grew up around. the world is never going to get better, he realises. the dream of a paradise will never come true

and then one night, running a message down the craggy still-turbulent coastline, he hears a snatch of a distant, familiar voice

I can hear a voice whittled away to a weapon singing what could almost be a lullaby -

elrond leaps off the ridge and onto the rocky beach, scrambling over the uneven ground. he’s heard the rumours about where maedhros and/or maglor went - all of them, there’s dozens of them, he didn’t pay any particular heed to the ones where maglor wandered the coast, but if they were right, if he’s here -

his own voice has grown strong over the years, solid and forceful and mature. elrond screams his song into the emptiness, hoping against hope it will be heard

“What if for one more year, ten more years, a hundred more years, the shadow still reigns?”

“Then ten thousand years, a hundred thousand years, a million years later, we’ll see it fall! Isn’t that so?!”

“What if I lay out all one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-eight of the griefs I carry?”

“Then there’s one billion eight hundred million three thousand and sixty-nine days for you to live!”

“That must be it...”

the impression of a hand touching his cheek, the ghost of a smile. for a moment someone else’s voice slips into the ebb and flow of his song, a shadow reaches out to wipe the tears off his face. live, it whispers. you who i held dearest last, live

elrond’s breath catches in his throat, and the song, and the shadow, vanish. it’s just him on a forsaken beach, the only sounds the waves crashing and the gulls calling. the sky is completely overcast, the clouds dull and grey. he watches them drift along for a while, as his pulse slows down and his airways clear up. live, the word echoes in his mind

he waits until his breathing is back to normal and the churning emotions inside him have settled into a form he can handle. then he wipes his face and clambers back onto the ridge

(life. it’s not much, but it’s enough. it has to be. his home is destroyed, but he is alive; his family is broken, but he is alive. he is alive, and they want him to live, as much as he can while he still has a chance. the world he lives in will never be perfect, but he knows how to work with that)

(and besides - elros, círdan, gil-galad, erestor, the other healers, the small knot of elves of all stripes who seem determined to follow his banner. he hasn’t lost everything, not yet, and he won’t let the world take away what he has left. he’ll never abandon those he loves)

the clouds are lightening. soon the stars will be out. elrond takes a deep breath, and starts running towards his future and the person he’s going to be -

thousands of years later, a memory resurfaces

“Two million, two hundred and forty-one thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine days... Ah, yes. I know I forgot to say it earlier, but you did a very good job”

a smattering of notes are lifted by the ocean breeze. they travel inland, across the worn-down mountains, around the weathered hills, above the tangled forests, up the untamed rivers, and finally into the hidden valley

in the gardens of imladris, lord elrond hears a voice he hasn’t for millennia. a watering can slips out of his hands, and suddenly he can’t breathe

It was just another day, beneath a dark sky

The ocean and the wind roared on all around me

I wasn’t paying attention to how my tears were falling

Trying to remember a clear star-lit sky

that youthful dream of a world free from evil never came true. the shadow came back, and it kept coming back, taking his people, his friends, his family, his wife. everything they built after the defeat of morgoth has been reduced to dust by the weight of time, and every year more of it slips through his fingers. elrond doesn’t know how much more of it he can endure. he doesn’t know how much more he can lose

he chases that scrap of music all the way to the seashore

I ran down the path between the rocks and the spray following that voice I never knew why I loved

But in the end I could only stand weeping

elrond searches up and down the coast, scouring the shoreline for clues, asking the locals, listening. sometimes he hears whispers of song, long wailing lamentations that make his heart ache all the more now that he understands how that despair feels. occasionally it’s loud or consistent enough he can track it, trying to pinpoint the singer’s location in the intense storms of bitterness and grief

but he never finds anything

“You fool, he’s already gone. Like he was never there at all...”

all that’s left is a voice on the wind

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riversofmars · 3 years

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The Doctor and her friends try to escape a deadly trap as Dorium’s bar and the planet burn up. Meanwhile, River is continuing her research into the Timeless Child...

Chapter 5: The Pieces Are Moving

The Maldovarium, 52nd Century

The sun was blazing down and Dorium’s bar, built mostly from metal, was heating up even faster than the surface of the planet. The sun was growing bigger in the sky, it was getting closer.

“The Master must have found so much more in the Matrix than he led on.“ The Doctor pressed through gritted teeth as she considered how this was possible. “This is like the Time Lords of old, able to wheeled so much power… what they became in the Time War… he wasn’t there in the final days to know the horror…“ She mumbled, trying her best to prioritise her thoughts. Time was changing around them. They were in grave danger. There was no time to wonder how the Master had accomplished this, there was any number of ways he could have done it and finding out which it was would not help save them. She looked around back to her friends who awaited an explanation.

“You shouldn’t have come. This is far too dangerous for you.“ The Doctor realised, slowly shaking her head. “He knew I’d come here. Perhaps a Matrix prediction… it’s a game and he’s one step ahead of us at every turn.“ Her mind was reeling but they had more immediate concerns. The sun above the planet was growing closer, they appeared to be heading towards it and the temperature kept rising. “Dorium, do you have a way off this planet?“ She asked and stepped into his line of vision.

“I’m nothing if not well prepared, Doctor, there is a shuttle for emergencies outside, but we can’t just abandon my bar, this is my life’s work!“ Dorium protested. “What is happening out there?“

“If you don’t get out of here right now, you won’t have a life.“ The Doctor interrupted him. “One of you will have to carry him. Get to his ship.“ The Doctor gestured towards the box and Yaz complied while Jenny rushed to support her wife who looked as though she was about to faint. Vastra’s body couldn’t regulate its temperature at all. Yaz and Jenny seemed to have trouble breathing the hot air and even Strax was beginning to show signs of struggling as beads of sweat formed on his head.

“But Doctor…“ Yaz wanted to protest, trying her best to hold Dorium’s head level.

“This planet is being dragged into that sun, get off world and quickly.“ The Doctor shut down any protest and glanced out of the window again. The sun continued to grow bigger and the temperature inside the bar was becoming unbearable. They didn’t have time to argue. She could sense that this was only the beginning.

“But we have the TARDIS, can’t we just…“ Jenny jumped in but the Doctor interrupted her:

“No you don’t. I need to find the Master and I’m doing it by myself, it’s far too dangerous.“ She looked around, assessing what she had to work with. “Get off this planet, I’ll be in touch and pick you up to take you home but right now, I need to find him. He is messing with the fabric of time itself and while you’re close to me, you will be in danger!“ She explained hastily and rushed to a computer terminal in the corner.

“Doctor, you can’t.“ Vastra protested weakly.

“A Sontaran does not run away!“ Strax exclaimed, outraged.

“Whatever we’re doing, can we do it now? It is really very stuffy in this box!“ Dorium called from his box.

“We’re coming with you.“ Yaz insisted but the Doctor shook her head.

“No, you’re not.“ She stated and sonic-ed the computer terminal. A teleport beam engulfed her friends.

——

Shuttle outside the Madovarium, 52nd Century

“Ugh! That insufferable man! Woman!“ Vastra collapsed onto the floor as they found themselves in a shuttle. The temperature was bearable, the insulation for space travel was far superior to the bar, but temperatures were rising even in here.

“I hate to be the bringer of bad news but unless we leave this planet right now, we will be fried, and I’m lacking hands to operate the controls.“ Dorium realised the Doctor had managed to engaged his emergency evacuation teleport. He was glad to have spent the money. It wasn’t like he could have walked anywhere in the event of a disaster and it had proven a sound investment already. “So if you wouldn’t mind.“ He glanced to controls, having no better means of pointing.

“How do we fly it?“ Yaz sat his box down by the controls hoping for instructions. She pushed her anger at the Doctor’s actions aside in favour of getting off the planet in one piece first.

“Step aside. A Sontaran can operate any kind of combat vehicle. Strap in. Someone secure the head.“ Strax instructed pushing her aside.

“We can’t just go without her.“ Jenny launched a weak protest as Strax started the engines. He engaged the shields and the temperature dropped significantly, allowing them all to breath more easily.

“It seems we have very little choice, my dear.“ Vastra replied weakly, as her wife helped her to her to a seat. “She will come to her senses.“ She had been the Doctor’s friend long enough to know that they couldn’t change their mind by force.

“Unless she gets herself killed first.“ Yaz huffed as they launched and shot off into the atmosphere, away from the planet that was hurling towards its doom. Below, the Maldovarium caught fire.

——

The Maldovarium, 52nd Century

The Doctor checked the computer console. Her friends had reached the shuttle and set off. Good. Step one. She looked around herself, the building had just caught fire. The temperature was still rising. Judging by its speed, she calculated she probably had about seven minutes: three minutes until the air would be too hot to breath and she would have to use her respiratory bypass, five until her skin would start to blister and seven until her core temperature would rise so high that the proteins in her body would break up and she would die. She’d have to work quickly.

Her fingers flew over the keyboard on the computer terminal as she pulled up the security camera footage of the last five minutes. Good old Dorium, of course he wanted his establishment well protected. She fast forwarded through it and there it was: one moment, everyone was having a lovely time, the next blazing sunlight streamed into the bar and the customers disappeared into thin air. Some screamed, some just looked confused, but they all vanished. Time was being rewritten. They had never come here because the planet was not where it had been. So the planet had moved, not the star.

She wondered how far back the footage would go. Would it go back far enough to show who brought Dorium back here? Unlikely. He’d probably had to rebuild and set up everything anew upon his return. She had about a minute of breathable air left and she was struggling already. She looked around, the TARDIS was in the other room, she would need a minute to get there at least and above her, thick smoke started gathering. She would have to feel her way forward at this stage. Her mind was racing. Any clues she would find here, she’d have to find now or they would be lost forever. She couldn’t think. The moment had passed and the air had become too hot to breathe.

“Think, Doctor, think!“ She snapped with her last proper breath, she ground her teeth. When I arrange for your death, I expect you to stay dead. The Master’s words echoed through her head. Nothing was gained if she she risked her life chasing after clues that probably weren’t there. The Master was too clever to leave traces; which begged several questions: why would he reveal himself to Dorium; why allow him to see his face, knowing a description would point her straight towards him? Arrogance? Was he trying to taunt her? Or did he just not care? Did he think he was so far ahead of her, that it wouldn’t matter? Something about this didn’t feel right. She had to get back to her TARDIS before the fire bared her way. The skin in her hands was starting to go red and raw.

——

Space, 52nd Century

“That was a close call…“ Jenny breathed a sigh of relief when they cleared the gravitational pull of the planetoid and the sun alike. It wasn’t a moment too soon, the planet was beginning to burn as it hurdled closer and closer to the sun.

“How was that even possible? You can’t just move a planet…“ Yaz shook her head in disbelief as she watched the destruction on the monitors.

“You and I might not be able to… but anything is possible, given time…“ Dorium mused.

“The Master is a dangerous foe but this does appear beyond the capabilities they have displayed so far.“ Vastra sat in the copilot’s seat as she recovered, her body temperature normalising.

“Maybe he’s not working by himself…“ Yaz mused. “Last time we saw him, he’d allied himself with the Cybermen… maybe he realises he can’t do it by himself… Maybe he’s found new friends.“

“A sound stratagem.“ Strax commented.

“What do we do now?“ Jenny asked. They had retreated to a safe distance nearing the outskirts the solar system but they had yet to determine a new destination.

“Wait for her to come and pick us up?“ Yaz suggested half-heartedly, she didn’t believe the Doctor actually would be back so soon but she decided to try and be optimistic.

“We have no way of knowing when that would be. Besides, we don’t know if she will even be successful in her endeavour.“ Vastra retorted matter-of-factly.

“Then what do we do?“ Jenny asked, feeling at a loss. They all so desperately wanted to help but the Doctor had cut them off.

“We have hyper speed travel, yes?“ Vastra turned to Dorium who was watching the screens, looking melancholy at the loss of his life’s work.

“State of the art systems, I only purchased it last week, what a shame, the hull is all blackened…“ He sighed, pulled out of his thoughts.

“We made a promise to the Professor to look after her child and so far, we’ve failed. We will carry on, even without the Doctor.“ Vastra decided, pulling herself up. “Perhaps we will find whoever is responsible faster than the Doctor weighed down by her hunger for revenge…“

“Excellent. It would be most disappointing if we were to miss out on the fight and the opportunity for a glorious death.“ Strax announced with glee.

“Where do we start?“ Yaz asked, nonplussed. She couldn’t help but feel abandoned by the Doctor, and so soon after her previous disappearance. She was, however, glad for the company she found herself in. If she was going to be stranded in the far future without means of time travel, an ancient lizard woman, a potato-headed warrior, a Victorian maid and a blue head in a box seemed like appropriate company. “Where could the Master possibly be? Would he have taken the child with him or maybe he’s got a base and people who work for him? Or maybe, this is the Master earlier in his time stream? Maybe to him, the destruction of Gallifrey hasn’t happened yet…“ All the questions were becoming overwhelming. It seemed like an insurmountable task, particularly without the Doctor at hand.

“We can’t discount any possibilities.“ Vastra agreed. “We are rather more limited with our means of travel but there is one point of interest in this time period. Somewhere where the Doctor is stubbornly refusing to look.“ She had given it some thought and a plan was forming in her head.

“Where?“ Jenny asked and her wife smiled:

“The Library, of course. Professor Song might be able to tell us where to start looking.“ She nodded decisively and turned to Strax to provide coordinates for their destination. “And if nothing else, she deserves to know the truth.“

——

The TARDIS

The Doctor slammed shut the doors to her TARDIS. She took a deep breath, fresh oxygen reawakening her senses. She rushed to the console. As sturdy as the TARDIS was protected by it’s shields, she didn’t want to tests its limits by staying on this doomed planetoid any longer than she needed to. She ran a final scan, searching for the shuttle her friends had escaped in, and noticed with relief that it was just clearing the solar system. They were safe. Safer than they would be had they stayed with her. Content - if not happy - with her decision, as she launched the TARDIS into the time vortex.

The Doctor gave a sigh of relief once she had left the Maldovarium behind. She stepped away from the console but didn’t get very far. As her adrenaline levels normalised, she felt weak and became aware of how close she had come to reaching her physical limits. She struggled out of her coat that was singed in places and sank to the floor, trying to catch her breath. Her hearts hammered in her chest, her hair was sticking to her head with sweat, her hands and face were red and raw. She had to pause for a moment, gather herself, before she could carry on. The TARDIS circled around the vortex waiting for coordinates, buying her time by staying where time didn't pass.

“Perhaps I just need a moment… maybe some after-sun…“ The Doctor mumbled to the TARDIS that hummed and wheezed in response, almost scolding her for having been reckless.

The Doctor didn’t like stopping, even for a moment. Those where the times when she had time to think and those things that she had been trying to avoid, those feelings she had been pushing down, had an opportunity to catch up with her. She was in no way closer to finding her son. In the absence of her friends she allowed herself a moment of weakness. The tears stung on her burnt skin of her cheeks. What would the Master want with her son, apart from torture and hurt her? He was being used as a pawn against her. She would make the Master pay for this.

Slowly, she got to her feat. Unsteadily, she staggered back to the console, deciding on her course of action. She wouldn’t be able to properly rest until she had found her child so she had to keep going. For now, the Master was her best lead. It was time to see the destruction she had left behind as she had fled Gallifrey. If the Master had found a way to escape death, she would find answers there.

——

The Library, 52nd Century

“Someone is having you on. Whatever it’s meant to be, the Timeless Child, it doesn’t exist.“ Anita closed the book she’d been reading and pinched the bridge of her nose. She couldn’t focus anymore. “There is no reference to it. Anywhere. Are you sure that’s the phrase we’re looking for?“

“I’m certain of it.“ River confirmed but couldn’t deny she was getting frustrated as well. They had been at it for days now. Or was it weeks? River was starting to lose track of time. And they had nothing to show for it. Initially, River had enjoyed finding stories about the Doctor’s past; adventures she didn’t know about that she hadn’t been part of. It had been entertaining for a while, as were the essays written about her and the Doctor. Who would have thought they would become such a popular subject matter for students at River’s alma mater?

“Well, it’s not mentioned anywhere.“ Anita sighed, leaning back into the cushions of the sofa. “How did you learn about al this anyway?“ She hadn’t pressed River for information so far but it seemed about time.

“Those words, those exact words, the Timeless Child… Dorium was so sure that’s what it was.“ River closed the book she was reading as well. It was time to stop.

“Well, maybe he got it wrong.“ Anita shrugged.

“Maybe…“ River couldn’t deny that it was possible. In her head she recounted the message Dorium had sent her. He had mentioned a Time Lord giving him the information, as if it would give weight to it. Since he hadn’t given a name, part of River had believed that it might have been the Doctor himself. Perhaps he was keeping his identity hidden for any number of reasons; most likely not to interfere with his own timeline… But now she wasn’t so sure.

There were other Time Lords out there. The Master. The Corsair… From what the Doctor had told her in their time on Darillium, Gallifrey was still out there. Not just the Gallifrey of the past, before the Time War that River had visited not so long ago. Gallifrey had never been destroyed in the final days of the War, just hidden away in a bubble universe at the end of time. Maybe they were starting to emerge again, taking a few tentative steps back into the universe but why now? Why this? Were they maybe just trying to mess with her? Or the Doctor? Had all this just been a pointless goose chase and she had walked right to her death on a fool’s errand? She shook her head to herself. No. There was something else, something she couldn’t quite remember. It was right there at the edge of her mind.

“How long have you been at this?“ Anita asked, breaking the silence.

“I don’t know, you tell me, I’m starting to lose track.“ River chuckled half heartedly. She had always had a very special relationship with time, being the child of the TARDIS, but inside the Library computer, cut off from reality and actual time, it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

“No, I mean before this, before you came to the Library. You said you’d been researching this before and couldn't find anything and you hoped there would be answers here…“ Anita prompted.

“There clearly aren’t…“ River stated in frustration.

“How long, River?“ Anita frowned, noticing her deliberately evading the question.

“Well, let’s just say it wasn’t obvious I was… expecting when I left the Doctor and started researching.“ River answered at last, her bitterness evident in her voice. Anita remained quiet for a moment. They had hardly spoken about River’s pregnancy and son, bringing it up seemed to make it all the more painful.

“Did you find anything at all? What were you doing?“ Anita tried to steer the conversation back to the subject matter.

“All sorts… I knew it had something to do with the Time Lords so… that’s where I went looking first and of course I got myself involved in yet another of the Doctor’s adventures… younger Doctor that time, very young, couldn’t tell him who I was of course… I went to Gallifrey but I had no time to look around really, not with a fight for the very fate of the universe going on…“ She gave a half smile. When wasn’t the Doctor fighting to save the universe? As much fun as it had been, it had distracted her rather… As she recounted her adventures in her head something occurred to her. She blinked, confused. How had she forgotten about it? How had she failed to make the connection? “But there was something…“ Maybe the trip hadn't been entirely wasted.

“What?“ Anita frowned, confused by her sudden wistfulness.

“As I… things went a bit pear shaped. I was pulled inside the Matrix.“ River revealed which suddenly seemed a whole lot more significant than it had at the time. She considered how furious the Doctor would be if he ever found out what she had put herself through whilst being pregnant. She couldn’t deny that she herself had been incredibly relieved to find her son completely healthy at birth. She hadn’t exactly been taking it easy. There had been a few close calls in the early stages which was why she settled for desk research when she’d become less agile on her feet.

“What’s that?“ Anita asked. “The Matrix?“ She’d felt like she should know what she was talking about but she didn’t.

“The Matrix… it’s like a super computer, not unlike this one. Time Lord minds get uploaded as they die so it’s the sum knowledge of their race, so to speak… Algorithms generate prophecies, predictions, extrapolations, possible futures. In the golden days of the Gallifreyan Empire, they would base their interference around time on them and heed their warnings.“ River tried to explain the best she could. “I used my… affinity for all things Time to help the Doctor: bring him back to where he needed to be. Only barely got out of there myself in the end… but while I was in there… I can’t quite remember but there were flashes of something… I was very preoccupied, mind, but I think subconsciously they did register… maybe the Matrix sensed that I was looking for answers…“ She hadn’t thought it significant at the time, she had had bigger things to worry about but the more she thought it about, the more she believed it couldn’t have been coincidence. The images were beginning to take shape in her mind, as if she was only now able to remember.

“And you saw the Timeless Child?“ Anita asked perplexed, wondering why she hadn’t mentioned it before.

“I don’t know… maybe…“ River tried to focus, struggling to reproduce the images in her mind. “It was a little girl, standing in front of a gateway…“ River closed her eyes as the image became more clear. Why hadn’t thought about it until now?

“A girl though? Didn’t you say you had a son? Then it’s probably not related to you?“ Anita mused disheartened as it seemed like just another dead end.

“Time Lords don’t take the whole gender thing very seriously…“ River couldn’t help but chuckle as she continued watching in her mind’s eye. Someone was approaching the girl.

“River…“ Anita reached out for River’s arm, trying to get her attention.

“Just hang on…“ River was doing her best to remember. She didn’t recall seeing any of this before. Apparently her subconscious had picked up much more in the Matrix than she had realised.

“River!“ Anita insisted, her voice urgent and River opened her eyes, ripped from the otherworldly portal she had been watching but she didn’t find herself in the cosy living room the Library computer had generated for her. Instead she found herself in a laboratory. She jumps to her feet in shock and not a moment too soon, as the sofa also disappeared from under her. Anita looked around utterly confused. Was this a computer glitch? There were other people too: the woman who River had seen approaching the child and the child herself, sitting in a chair being examined.

A/N: You may have picked up on my using the events of Doom Coalition here which canonically are set between Darillium and the Library, if you happen to have been following those Big finish audios. I thought it could work really well with the whole being pulled into the Matrix thing. I know a lot of people don't know the audios though so I'm trying to write it in a way that you don't have to know them and anything significant will be explained. I hope that works for everyone. Please let me know if you find things confusing at any point <3

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twentytarot · 3 years

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hi everyone! let’s figure out what to do about that crush you have. this is, of course, for singles. pick the image that sets your thoughts off and scroll down to your respective pile for your reading! 💝

PILE ONE: OFFICE

ooooh it’s a no from me chief. and honestly, in the end you really won’t be that upset by it. the person you have your eye on right now simply doesn’t have you in their heart right now. they’ve got exciting things at work going on, they’re booked and busy, they probably actually like someone else; hell, they probably only winked at you those two times because they were bored and wanted some attention.

so, what should you do? well, nothing. really. this person is just not worth it. just live your best life, work hard, hug your pet and you’ll more or less forget about it before you know it. and the great news is: the faster this person is behind you, and the faster you appreciate your singledom, the faster someone who is truly interested in you will come along and steal your heart (for real this time).

PILE TWO: SCENERY

first things first, this person likes you too for sure. now, the question is: what do you want to do about it? you don’t have to be the initiator if you don’t want to, but you do have to give your crush an opening of sorts. i’m seeing the best way for you to do this is have a little quality time with them. listen to them talk about their day, ask them for their opinion on things, and offer yours too whenever they ask. and stay optimistic! let them feel like it’s okay to tell you how they feel. at the same time, they will be impressed by your hard work and dedication, so don’t get too distracted by your crush, or spend so much time trying to make something happen that you forget about work and business. just let things flow. this is almost guaranteed to turn into something more very soon. i’m really excited for you!

PILE THREE: ICE CREAM

this looks like either a sort-of ex, or someone you rejected and then regretted it. either way, a lot of these problems are you-problems— that is, you’re going to need to sort yourself out on your own before entering any kind of relationship. there’s something about your past that has coloured your view of relationships a very pessimistic grey. are you carrying the burden of others’ failed relationships on your shoulders? or are you holding onto something bad that happened to you and just waiting for every romantic encounter to end up the same way? you won’t be able to support and love your other half if you don’t let these fears go first.

don’t be discouraged, because there definitely is someone waiting for you at the other end. depending on how patient this person is, it could be them, or it could be someone else.

PILE FOUR: ESPRESSO

your situation involves two people, and one person is the “safe option” while the other is the “dangerous option”. now, don’t be embarrassed, we all love a i-knew-you-were-trouble romance. it’s exciting, it makes you feel like you’re living in the moment, and stable relationships sometimes make you feel like you’ve got to sort out your health insurance this weekend. i completely relate. so, really, it’s not your fault you can’t even look at the “safe” person without thinking about the “dangerous” one. and yet, it’s not fair, is it? this person has been your friend for a while now, and how do you tell someone, much less a friend, that’s developing feelings “hey, you’re really cool and i totally would’ve said yes but right now mentally i’m sitting behind this hottie in a leather jacket and they’re riding the streets of paris at 2am on a harley davidson sooo”???

so neither relationship is going to really last, but lenormand seems to think your friendship with “safe option” is already doomed, so maybe have fun while it lasts. you should have enough time to pick up the pieces later.

#pick a card #pick a card readings #pick a pile #tarot readings #love reading #free tarot readings #PLEASE DON'T RUN YOUR LIFE WITH THIS FREE WILL EXISTS #WE SUBSCRIBE TO INDETERMINISM IN THIS HOUSE

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periminkle · 4 years

Text

Orphic | 04

After moving into your own place, it seems life is finally going your way; the path to independence leading you to a quaint suburban town where even the grass seems to grow a little greener. Although a shocking encounter leads you to believe that perhaps appearances can be quite deceiving.

pairing: hybrid!jk x reader (first person)

genre: hybrid au, angst, fluff

word count: 7.6k

rating: PG-15

warnings: swearing, descriptions of blood and cleaning wounds, mentions of cannibalism (o.o)

author’s note: mMMm setting deadlines is effective but exhausting, so the pacing of this might be a bit weird? also im def not late bc it’s still sunday in some timezones so ;))

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I stared intently at the grungy nick in the otherwise spotless wall, mind racing a mile a minute.

The better half of the last hour had been spent pacing back and forth, gaze unmoving from the unconscious man in fear of missing the twitch of a finger or the flutter of an eyelash. His complete stillness persuaded me to check on his pulse frequently, glad to feel the faint, yet steady, beat beneath layers of smooth skin.

When I received a second call from my cranky saviour to inform me that he was nearly here, I forcefully sat myself down and practiced that infamous square breathing that every zen yogi swore by. By the persistent bouncing of my knee, it was evident that the yogis had failed me.

Rain was pounding down in thick sheets onto the pavement outside and at this point I was convinced the world had it out for me, using every trick in the book to further complicate this surely doomed rescue mission. Nonetheless, I optimistically hoped that the incoming storm would soon subside.

My unfortunate lips dealt with the brunt of my merciless canines, rendering the skin raw by the time a distinctive series of raps against the sturdy door caught my attention. It was the very same pattern in which I’d regularly knock on the door to the cleaning storage, craving the company of someone other than the three musketeers I’d gotten to know better than my own blood.

Although I ordinarily would be enthusiastically welcomed and greeted with nothing less than a wide, heart-shaped grin, the circumstances now were undoubtedly exceptional. Thus, the crinkle between his brows and the disgruntled glare fixed on my sheepish smile were to be expected.

Needless to say, Hoseok was not impressed.

“What the hell?” the typically friendly janitor barked out, huffing out his frustration at having his slumber disturbed. “You do know that it’s almost two in the morning right? How did you even get in here? Why couldn’t this wait for tomorrow?”

His hair stuck up in a multitude of different directions, evidently having rolled out of bed, slipped on a jacket and came to my rescue. The wrinkled, blue horse character on his pajama set eased some of my nerves at the familiarity of its nose, in the shape of Hoseok’s smile that was, understandably, nowhere to be found with the current circumstances.

I gripped the distressed male by his lithe shoulders, imploring him to slow down. “I’m not coming in tomorrow. Listen, this is gonna sound absurd but—”

His eyes drifted past my smaller form and I firmly shook at his torso to prevent him from spotting the other man. “Hey! Eyes down here.” A hint of curiosity bled through his agitated exterior when he focused on my stern exterior once more. “You can’t freak out, okay?”

Hoseok shrugged his approval, murmuring, “Yeah, I get it, directly disobeying the head researchers is pretty satisfying and all, but did you really have to drag me into this? Especially when you know I start early on Saturdays?”

At the reminder of his strict schedule, I withered marginally as I originally hadn’t intended to involve him at all. A shameful appreciation began to eat away at my conscience, grateful for his presence in spite of my outrageous request. I wouldn’t know what to do if Hoseok hadn’t come through and in my eyes, he remained an angel who was too good to be true.

“I’m sorry, I promise this is really important.” I brought my arms back to my sides, glancing down at my feet in order to organize my swirling thoughts. “I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t an emergency.”

What I didn’t notice while lost in my reverie was Hoseok’s rebellious stare, wandering over the injured man’s form. “What the fuck?” He gently shoved me aside, stumbling deeper into the laboratory. When he was planted by the stranger’s table, he repeated, “What the actual fuck?”

My head tipped back in exasperation, disappointed that not even my last minute backup strategy was going according to plan. “Hobi, please.”

I could practically envision the gears whirring in his head, a natural reaction considering the mutant in front of him. When he finally craned his neck back to me, he mumbled with wide eyes, “Say sike right now.”

“Stop talking for two seconds.” I groaned, marching up to position myself between the janitor and the table in an attempt to calm him down. Immediately upon noticing his trembling digits, I reached out to clasp them within my own quivering hands. “Listen, this experiment they’re conducting? From what I know, it’s all some screwed up excuse to inject animalistic characteristics of their choosing into humans. And their track records point to a lot of predator species.”

“Predators? Wha—why would they even want to create a predator-human hybrid?” Hoseok took a tiny step back and out of the fear that he would flee, I fiercely clamped down onto our conjoined limbs.

“I don’t know yet,” I faltered. “But, honestly, I couldn’t care less because of how unethical they are in their approach to this project.” At his puzzled expression I somberly gestured to the unmoving lump in the corner, willing myself to postpone any tears for a safer location.

Hoseok must have connected the dots at the midnight black shade of fur peeking out underneath the fabric matching the colour of the hybrid’s ears and tail, as his stare hardened and his breathing began to even out from the rapid pace it was at before. “I’ll need more details later on, but let’s get him out of here first.”

At his command, I retracted from Hoseok's hold, scoping out the rather barren area for something other than the masses of files and papers strewn about. “You think we can carry him together?”

Simply comparing the difference in size between the stranger and Hoseok, there was no doubt the copious, hulking mass of muscle outweighed my friend’s slimmer figure. Our combined strength would have to somehow prove formidable against his bulky body.

Hoseok’s grimace spoke volumes about his faith in that idea, although there wasn’t much of a choice considering the alarming time crunch and our limited accessibility to other parts of the laboratory. Due to my blind confidence in the ostensibly foolproof scheme I constructed, the only cameras shifted were directly located in the path from the front entrance to the changing room to the upstairs lab.

Oh, how I was regretting that naivety now.

Using an abandoned stretch of fabric that had been stuffed into one of the drawers I rummaged through earlier, I covered his immobile body with the thin cover to provide some decency and act as a layer of defence against the torrents outside.

While Hoseok stood directly behind his head, leaning forward to loop his arms underneath the hybrid’s triceps and around his chest, I grabbed each of his ankles, cradling them to my abdomen. Even with our best efforts to avoid any of his wounds, there was no way to avert the countless scratches and bruises that littered every inch of visible skin. We counted on the sanguine belief that he wasn’t conscious enough to feel any of it, reluctant to use any tranquilizers when we weren't aware of how much juice they’d already injected him with.

“On the count of three?” Hoseok asked.

With a nod, I tightened my hold and widened my stance. “One, two,” after taking a generous inhale, I heaved, “three!”

The two of us managed to maneuver the stranger down the length of the dingy hall before we were forced to gently place him onto the ground, desperate to grant our aching muscles the break they demanded. Currently, construction was being done on the elevator, which meant that the flight of stairs was the next obstacle to be tackled.

I lost the brief, but fierce, battle of rock-paper-scissors and endured the frightening prospect of marching down the stairs backwards—in the dark. All because Hoseok was unwilling to sacrifice the slightest bit of his comfort for the both of us to step sideways.

It was safe to say the stairs themselves took ten minutes to clear.

On the first floor, we were able to cross over to the main entrance in a breeze thanks to the spacious nature of the lobby. After scurrying to Hoseok’s car and laying the hybrid in the back seat, I returned to the lab to dutifully lock up the front door and jogged back to the vehicle.

Hoseok sent me a befuddled brow lift from the front seat when instead of the passenger’s side, I hesitantly stood a stride away from the driver’s door. “He’s fine, hurry up already so we can get out of here.” He motioned to the space beside him with the flick of his chin, his bed head dancing along with the movement. “It wouldn’t look too great if anyone caught us right now, especially with the man-cat knocked out cold in the back. Plus, the lab just radiates spooky vibes at night, look at my goosebumps!”

“Okay, okay, give me a second,” I grunted, opening the door to the back seat as I bowed inside to avoid a painful meeting with the roof of the vehicle. While gripping the back of the stranger’s skull with one hand and his upper back with the other, I lifted his torso and slipped inside. Tenderly, I placed his head on my lap.

“What are you doing?” Hoseok stared at me through the mirror, evidently unnerved by my proximity to the man. “He could literally wake up at any minute and there goes your throat!”

“Or he could get juggled around from your shitty driving and open his injuries again,” I countered, “which I think is a lot more likely, no?”

He scoffed, taking full offence to my jest. “Never mind. I hope he throws you out the damn window for calling my driving anything less than spectacular.”

The rush of excess blood coursing through my veins as a result of my overactive heart pounded in my head, nearly loud enough to block out the boisterous revving of the engine echoing throughout the empty lot. Tires squeaked against the pavement, jolting the hunk of metal into action as we sped away.

“Where were you thinking of leaving him?” he asked, taking a breath before mumbling, “that is, if you thought about this at all.”

“Hobi!” My jaw dropped dramatically at his not so subtle jab, shaking my head as I commented, “You’ve been hanging around Yoongi too much lately. I mean, all this sass couldn’t have come from nowhere.”

He slowed down behind the only other car in sight, flicking on his signal to turn. “Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not, I was just commenting on your drastic change in behaviour,” I rebutted, crossing my arms across my chest at his determination to aggravate me tonight. “For your information, I actually planned this out for weeks; who do you think got the key card to the upstairs lab, the keys to the building itself, moved all the cameras—

Despite the leather seat between us, I knew he was sporting a sly smirk, for his conceit was bleeding through his supercilious tone. “And who begged me for help halfway through this ingenious plan?”

My jaw clenched shut, astounded at his cheeky retorts. At first, I was unsure of how the relationship between the jovial custodian and the chilly facade that Yoongi donned among strangers would progress, but judging by the sheer number of occasions in which I’d walked into a room with the two chatting away—gummy smiles all around, it seemed to be advancing better than expected.

“Whatever, you came anyway.” I sank back into my seat, careful not to disturb the comatose man peacefully resting on my thighs. Hopefully he was narcotized enough to remain oblivious to the various disturbances around him and would only rouse when the sun made an appearance.

Hoseok blithely sneered, pressing harder on the pedal as he spun the steering wheel to the right. “Yeah, well it’s kind of hard not to when you claim that Hyunho’s going to sue your ass for thousands of dollars.”

“And was I wrong?” I recalled our earlier conversation, where I hadn’t yet mustered up the courage, much less the patience, to confess to the details of my crimes. In a panicked state, I simply presented the consequences which would follow Hoseok’s absence—Hyunho’s wrath.

“No, now you’re just gonna get your ass handed to you by Namjoon and Yoongi,” he countered. “But I guess you’ll save some money while you’re at it.”

Merely the thought of their reactions to my late night escapade made me want to shrivel up in a ball. “Who said I’m going to tell them?”

“You’re not telling them?” The car slowed as he gradually came to a graceful stop behind a red light, turning his torso to face me with the help of his hand on the central console. “You know better than to release the man-cat, he’ll just get caught again.”

Rolling my eyes like a petulant child being scolded, I muttered, “I’m not releasing him.”

“But you can’t deal with him on your own either!” he snapped, the lack of sleep shortening his tolerance. After a pause to regain his senses, Hoseok rapidly shook his head and twisted back to focus on the empty roads ahead.

"Listen," I gritted out between my teeth, my own temper flaring. “I think you’re forgetting that I was well aware of the fact that I would be housing some kind of animal for a while, just didn’t know he would be this big.”

“Or this dangerous? This costly?” His firm grip on the wheel tightened, knuckles turning white as his emotions boiled over. "You’re not prepared to deal with him, I'll just take him back to my place."

A puff of air escaped my throat at his ridiculous solution, stating, "You live with your sister. There's no way she won't find out."

"Like you're any better off," he quipped, staring me down through the rearview mirror. "You live alone. If he were to do anything to you, we’d be none the wiser about it."

"Well, we can't risk anyone discovering his existence. There's no other way.” By watching the stranger’s chest rise and fall with each elongated breath, I was able to simultaneously avoid Hoseok’s prying eyes and collect my own thoughts.

While impatiently waiting for his arrival back at the lab, my mind had trudged through copious possibilities, overwhelmed with the pressure to choose the right one. Eventually, I came to the disconcerting conclusion that, be that as it may, the most secure option remained to bring him back to my place.

I reassured, "Don’t worry, I cleared out my bedroom so that there’s nothing in there that could potentially be used as a weapon. We'll secure him down, lock the door, and I'll camp out in the living room."

"Y/N, we don't have any clue what this guy is capable of,” Hoseok stressed, worry colouring his voice as he sharply gesticulated with his free hand. “Hell, look at him! He has cat ears, Y/N, and do not get me started on his tail.”

I stole a glance at the accused appendage in bewilderment, unsure of why that aspect was at the forefront of Hoseok’s concerns regarding the mutant boy. “What’s wrong with his tail?”

“My point is,” he accentuates, “we have no idea what we’re dealing with here. What if he has some kind of monstrous super strength and his diet consists of human flesh? He could probably rip right through any restraints and bam! That'll be the end of you."

I held my tongue at ridiculing his absurd speculations when some sort of man-cat hybrid was currently strewn across the back seat of Hoseok’s run-down Corolla; a dim display exposing the current, ungodly hour of the early morning.

“Do you have any better ideas?" Although my question was met with radio silence, we steadily continued on the potholed path headed away from my house. I spoke up again, "Where are you taking us?"

"We're going to Namjoon's place, and we're gonna think of a better alternative all together."

"Hoseok," I seethed, fists clenching next to my thigh. "He'll make us take him back. We're already too far in to go back now."

The car jerked violently due to the bumpy road and being suddenly reminded of the wounded boy, I shot out to grab at his thin waist in order to nail him to the seat. Despite my best efforts, crimson liquid soaked through the thin blanket and I cursed under my breath.

"I can't leave you there alone with him!"

"Please, we'll be careful." A beat passed as I greedily inhaled the fresh air flowing in through my open window, gathering ideas to negotiate. "I'll stay awake the whole time and I'll text you every hour."

Regardless of my pleas, the car kept at its incessant pace to Namjoon's apartment. Sweat began to accumulate at my temples at the unsure fate of what censure awaited me. To distract my nerves, I gripped the fabric that covered the man’s body, tugging it over his shoulders to rest just below his chin while pressing a bunch into his side in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

Past the low hum of the vehicle, a gentle utterance met my ears. I lifted my head to inquire whether the sound was merely a figment of my fatigued imagination when Hoseok repeated, "Every half hour."

My eyes widened, darting to examine his stoic expression from the rearview mirror. "Yes! Yes, yes of course. I can even do every ten minutes if that’s what you want." I shrugged my shoulders, pointing out, "I'll be up all night anyway."

"No, I'm good. Unlike some of us, I don't deserve to be punished for my crimes and would like to salvage the little sleep I can get," he declared as he performed a U-turn at a wide intersection.

My grin expanded exponentially at the change in direction. "Suit yourself."

I allowed my thoughts to clear, tracing a clear droplet on the window as it raced to engulf another, merging into one, larger globule that ran down the smooth expanse until it was out of sight. Unknowingly, I mindlessly carded my fingers through the stranger’s dampened strands; more so for my own comfort than for anyone else.

Before I knew it, we’d arrived at my quaint cottage and with the addition of another individual residing under its roof, the place seemed tinier than ever. Hoseok and I shuttled him over to my bedroom as gracefully as we possibly could, aiming to avoid whacking into any obstacles along the way.

Other than his lengthy legs knocking into two door frames, we were clear.

The second his back met the rigid mattress, we collectively released a weighty exhalation from the excessive exertion that strained both our physical and mental states. Although the chances of the stranger waking up now were low, seeing as he was out like a light throughout the whole journey, I hurried to collect the sturdy ropes that I purchased in advance.

“Ooh, you’re into some kinky shit, huh Y/N?” Hoseok quipped, taking the material from my hands.

My eyes rolled back at his stupid antics, glaring at the pleased crinkles forming next to his drooping eyes. “Ha ha, very funny. Now help me tie him up, so I can kick you out of my house.”

“And what’re you gonna do to him when I leave?”

Snatching the rope that he stole from me, I shoved Hoseok to the side by pressing against his firm bicep—which definitely carried more than his fair share of the hybrid on the way here—and grumbled, “Guess If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.”

Hoseok burst into a short fit of contagious laughter, invoking a couple quiet giggles that I was unsuccessful in fighting down. As he raised the stranger’s arms to the bed frame, I looped the braided, nylon material snug around each of his wrists. Along the way I checked to ensure that the restraints weren’t too tight before moving onto his ankles to repeat the process. Luckily enough, his height stretched the entire length of my minuscule bed with his feet dangling off the ledge.

“Tell me you brought more tranquilizers in case?” Hoseok asked immediately upon securing the last knot. Throughout a tedious explanation on how foolishly lax I was behaving with the hybrid, he went back to inspect my handiwork, tugging the ends of the cords closer together into a grip that nearly cut off the hybrid’s blood flow.

Over his nagging, I sneaked a victorious grin as I displayed the syringes I’d nabbed from the lab. He spent a few more minutes fiddling with various safety measures consisting of the pepper spray he stealthily retrieved from my purse, the bedroom door’s lock and an air horn that he remarkably pulled out of his coat’s pocket. Although it was questionable if the blaring sound would awaken even my closest neighbours due to the sheer distance between our houses, I didn’t dare attempt after imagining old Sangmin marching over here on his rickety cane to bark my ears off.

Refusing to bother expending effort on pondering over the rationale behind Hoseok’s little magic trick, I blithely shooed him out before any more ridiculous objects could be plucked out of his jacket.

The last straw was his finger approaching the sensitive button on said air horn. Unwilling to face the consequences of his brash actions, I slammed the front door closed behind Hoseok, the space suddenly void of his rowdy antics. I wearily blinked the drowsiness out of my eyes, the stillness and tranquility of the early hours slowed my heart rate from the fast paced, action packed night.

My sock-clad feed padded their way back to the bedroom, snatching my phone out of my black hoodie to fiddle around with an app that I discovered upon moving out. In order to relay my continued existence to my family, I scheduled texts to be sent every week, which would prove useful at this time as well. Knowing my own forgetful nature, one update to Hoseok would slip my mind, and either four, furious men would burst through every available entrance or I would have the whole police force upon my front steps in minutes.

To prevent such a disastrous event from taking place, I tampered around with the settings and added the fretting male to the list.

I halted in my tracks when faced with the mundane sight of the four walls where I spent most of my sleeping hours, not a hair out of place other than the addition of the injured hybrid on my dirtied bed. The crimson stains jolted me into action, retrieving my brand new first-aid kit and finding it hilariously ironic that the dressings were going to be used on the very same criminal that broke in to steal such supplies.

In order to fight off any cold that could have possibly slithered its way past the weak barrier draped over his body, I peeled the flimsy, sodden cover off and replaced it with a puffy comforter. Traversing through the storm that continued to rage outside definitely put a strain on his already weakened state, and his pale countenance wasn't very reassuring.

I slid the blanket down to access the sullied wound at his rib cage and grabbed a couple pads of gauze to firmly press onto the area. Thankfully, some blood had already begun to coagulate around the edges, so I didn’t have to wait too long for the trickling stream to cease. With a clean towel, I wiped the surrounding skin to get a better look at what I was dealing with, grimacing at the bruises forming galaxies across the jagged edges of ripped skin.

He was in worse shape than either Hoseok or I could have predicted. At this realization, the fleeting worry that he might succumb to the severity of his wounds grew, festering a nasty doubt in my mind.

Deciding whether to clean the laceration commenced another strife within the whirlwind of emotions inside my head, but I poured a few drops of antiseptic onto a cotton ball anyway, fearful of infection. As I tried my best to carefully dab the soaked material across his wounds, I peered up at his face to search for signs of consciousness.

My eyes involuntarily softened at the small cuts littered across his neck, travelling past his jaw and over the slopes of his hollowed cheeks to his forehead, which was partially hidden under his dark locks. When the cotton was thoroughly besmirched with a blend of bright crimson and a muddy brown, I drenched another and advanced up to other regions after the more serious lesions were taken care of.

A closer look at his sinewy torso allowed me to examine the scars scattered all around, mostly clustered around his upper arms. Absentmindedly, I wondered whether their appearances were linked to the cruel methods of the laboratory. How had he gotten within their clutches in the first place? For how long was he suffering under the justification of being an experiment?

What were they trying to accomplish with him?

My mind raced with all the different possibilities of what could have brought the hybrid into this situation in the first place, and before I knew it, I was pushing back the disheveled strands on his forehead to clean the last of his cuts. There were definitely more on his dorsal side, but I wasn’t willing to undo his restraints and flip his hefty weight over on my own. I would either wait until he woke up or ask Hoseok to stop by again after his shift.

In my current position, I was close enough to feel his warm breath fanning across my skin, observe the tiny brown mole under his lip and how utterly breathtaking this man was underneath the cuts that marred his skin. He was undoubtedly attractive at first glance, although I wasn’t able to appreciate his masculine features while under the stress of saving him.

Once every laceration in my reach had been disinfected to the best of my limited abilities, I swiftly bandaged his side again and stuck Spider-man themed band aids onto the smaller cuts in memory of the Hello Kitty ones that decorated his body earlier. I settled back on the chair, admiring my handiwork and fighting back the looming threat of dormancy that approached with every elongated blink. My head leaned back as I crossed my arms, thinking that a little snooze never hurt anyone.

I was blind to the cocoa orbs drinking in the darkness.

The bright light streaming in through the numerous cracks between my blinds prodded my eyelids apart, pupils struggling to adjust past the groggy haze of an unexpected slumber. Rather than revelling in the bountiful energy supplied by a restorative nap, an obnoxious cramp in my neck made its presence known alongside the bleak, obstinate tingle of dormancy that lingered within every tightened tendon, pulsating throughout my entire body.

Although the pain gradually ebbed away after I rolled my head around in wide semicircles, I knew from experience that the ache of sleeping in an uncomfortable position would linger.

Gold streaks were painted on the hardwood floor as a result of the sun’s harsh rays, a stark contrast to the dusk of a few hours ago. As I began to fuzzily recollect the memories from yesterday, I spotted the growing number of discrepancies between the room I’d seen before I closed my eyes and now, from the open door to the ruffled sheets, devoid of any sign of life.

Fortunately, I seemed to be in the same position, seated on the tough chair that I snoozed off in a few hours ago. However, I found it odd that it was particularly difficult to do much else than squirm around, and that was when I realized the problem lied in the nylon material tied around my wrists and ankles, binding me to the furniture.

A cold dread washed over me, much like a freezing bucket of ice being poured over my head. The hybrid escaped.

Well, at least he didn’t exact his fallacious revenge on my sleeping form.

“Awake?”

I squeaked at the whiplash that followed the movement of my head twisting a second too quickly, intent on identifying the furtive speaker. My eyes widened exponentially at locating the muscular hybrid, black ears twitching at my cry and tail swishing in curiosity. Being clad in only boxers, I shifted my gaze away out of instinct, a fiery blush overtaking my features despite having ogled the man’s ripped physique before.

It felt completely different when he was unconscious and my only intent was to treat his multitudinous wounds though.

He slowly blinked, clearly finding my astonishment puzzling with the bewilderment laced in his orbs. Waving a large palm in front of my face to get my attention on him, he calmly said, “No hurt.”

The tight rope that currently hindered my motion was definitely the same one that had been previously occupied with restraining the hybrid to the bed. Yet the very same male stood in front of me, free as a bird. “H-how did you get out?”

Instead of answering verbally, he extended his defined arms out to the side, imitating the position he was tied up in, then robustly swinging both limbs towards one another. So he broke through those thick, durable ropes with sheer strength and willpower. Comforting.

The tranquilizers laid scattered across the floor, much too far to even consider reaching them.

“Where’s your blanket?” I questioned, suppressing the tremor in my voice as I found it outrageous that my throat was still intact at this point. There was no guarantee that he wasn’t harbouring any motives to rid the world of my presence, but the fact that he wasn’t actively making any moves to rip my heart out was a good sign.

The mop of dark chestnut swayed along in the same direction that he tilted his head over to; a habit revealing an emotion that I couldn’t place on the stranger. “Warm. No like.”

His broken English revived a flurry of trepidation. I recalled the night of the break-in, the terror and hysteria that I’d buried away under the incorrect pretense that a burglar never hits the same house twice.

I didn’t know if that sentiment applied to kidnapping the criminal and using your place as his hideout, as well.

As I noisily gulped, I felt his stare dart to my esophagus and in a wild panic, my wide eyes met the doe-like curve of his own. The hybrid edged closer to my trembling form before treading past me, out of sight. I closed my eyes in preparation.

This is it. Goodbye world, it was pretty shit while it lasted.

I heard the rustling of fabric behind me and silently applauded the man for thinking of a quick and easy suffocation to reduce the amount of clean up afterwards.

His bare feet slapped against the floor, trekking over to my front again. When a couple seconds passed and none of my airways were blocked nor was there any piercing pain to be felt, I cautiously cracked an eye open to see the stranger standing there, the puffy blanket from before wrapped around his broad shoulders.

“Good now?” he inquired with a bunny-like smile.

My jaw dropped slightly as I nodded, attempting to formulate a sentence but coming up empty. The stark contrast between the brawn enveloping his body and his innocent features threw me in for a loop. This must have been part of his grand scheme to ruthlessly murder me—lulling me into a false sense of security before executing me on the spot.

Outwardly, the hybrid appeared to possess more human features than his animal counterpart, leading me to wonder which instincts ruled over the other. Was he more level-headed and rational or was he unable to suppress his bestial instincts? Did he get sudden, violent mood swings or go on occasional, bloodthirsty rampages?

The lack of knowledge I had regarding the man, who had somehow gained the upper hand through his brute strength, was worrying. A tinge of regret for not skimming through a few files on said hybrid before Hoseok’s arrival made me softly curse under my breath.

As I shifted in place, I was reminded of my own predicament. “So, uh, any chance you’ll let me go?”

With his broad grin still on full display, he made his refusal clear by shaking his head back and forth. It was worth a try. “Not fair. I tied, now you tied.”

His childish logic caught me off guard and a bark of laughter shook my stiff shoulders, marginally relaxing at the prospect that he might postpone the bloodshed for a later time. The mystery laid in how he could distinguish my harmless intentions from the head researchers’ diabolical ones. Maybe it was the lab coat?

I made a mental note to never wear my own lab coat in front of him.

A grumble snapped me out of my reverie. I observed the stranger’s startled features as he glanced down at his abdomen, then, unabashedly, back up to my face. Recalling his screams of horror back at the lab, the barbaric treatment he received there was indisputable and based on his raging stomach, I guessed that it had been a while since he’d eaten anything of substance.

Of all times, Hoseok’s ridiculous words of the hybrid’s diet consisting of human grade meat played back through my brain and jitters erupted over my limbs, wanting to please the man before he was picking his teeth with my freshly cleaned bones.

“Hungry?” I prodded, pushing other priorities to the side in favour of feeding the rumbling beast.

His dark orbs immediately lit up with pure, unadulterated glee. The hybrid gracefully tied the ends of the fabric around his neck like a cape and rounded closer to me with mirth written across every crease on his countenance.

Unsure if his giddiness was attributed to the assumption that I was offering up the meat lining my organs, I squirmed in protest, attempting to cause a ruckus in order to spur his excitement towards another source of protein in the fridge.

Not having much choice in the matter with my limited range of motion, I watched in worry as he scurried out of sight again. “Hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here and—”

Despite being prepared for his unpredictable nature, a yelp flew past my lips when I was effortlessly lifted into the air, chair and all. His forearms caged my thighs as he gripped the bottom of the seat, hot pants of air blowing onto the back of my neck from his position.

His elation was practically tangible as he flew past the open doorway and sped off through the foyer. He must have ventured deeper into the house while I was blissfully unaware, since his strides towards the kitchen were filled with nothing but confidence in every step.

Hastily, I spat out, “I’m not that delicious, trust me! My budget’s been pretty strict this month, so I’ve just been eating junk, and I don’t imagine that’ll taste very go—”

The force holding me upright loosened when we reached the fridge, permitting my feet to find the floor. “Dee-lee-shiz?” He tried to imitate, turning to point straight at me.

“No! No, no, not delicious.” I corrected, violently shaking my head.

His outstretched arm retracted to his side, staring like a hawk at my chin tipping towards the metal cooling box behind him, and I repeated, “Delicious.”

As he flung the door to the refrigerator open, nearly ripping it right off its hinges, he yelled, “Dee-lee-shiz!”

Utter fascination at the chilled temperature and the rather meager array of food etched onto his features, sending relief through my veins. I encouraged him to ravage the tenuous stock of food while simultaneously rejoicing at successfully having deterred him from eating me alive.

Packs of eggs, blueberries, condiments, and essentially anything within his reach was hauled out, forming a growing heap on the countertop. When a zucchini found its way into his grasp, he took one puzzled look before chomping down on one end. I wasn’t too sure how raw zucchini would taste when eaten as though it were a cucumber, but he seemed pleased enough to take another bite that resounded throughout the space with a loud crunch.

I reclined back into the stiff chair, content on observing the ravenous hybrid empty my fridge and taking an occasional nibble on snacks that piqued his interest. Although, his grab at the bundle of raw chicken was when I decided to voice my concerns. “Ah, that has to be cooked!” At another tilt of his head, I explained, “You could get sick if you don’t cook it.”

By his furrowed brows, I deduced the concept flew over his head, but he threw the package onto my lap anyway and peered down expectantly. “Cook.”

“You tied me up, remember? I need some mobility to cook.” I tugged at my subdued arms to demonstrate my current inaptitude.

He hummed in thought, enveloping his lower lip between his lengthy canines as he weighed the pros and cons of being able to consume the meat by setting me loose. Finally, after clearly expressing how torn he was between his hunger and his teasing, it seemed that he’d come to a conclusion when he latched onto my left forearm.

Just as I was about to jib that I was no longer on the menu, a searing pain ripped across my wrist. I hissed through my teeth with my fists clenched as I teared my tender arm out of his grip, protectively cradling the limb to my chest.

He flinched away from the sound, taking a step away from my defensive form. At the sight of my disgruntled frown, he withered into himself, chin to his chest while I examined my sore wrist, whimpering at the edges of the flaming red, torn skin. I was a second away from viciously reprimanding him for the bruise that was more than likely to form by tomorrow, but one look into his guilty, fearful eyes made me pause.

With his strength, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he possessed the ability to do much worse, which didn’t seem to be his intent from all the fretting—ears tucked into the crown of his head and tail hanging low. As he seemed to be repenting without a chiding needed on my end, I redirected to a softer approach. “It’s fine, just be more gentle next time, okay?”

“Mm,” he complied weakly, his prior enthusiasm having substantially deflated. Before I could dismiss the topic and entice him with more food, he knelt down to my ankles, gripping the rope with both hands this time as he effortlessly tore the material apart, careful not to graze my legs in the process.

A shiver crawled down my spine at the display of power, mentally noting that there was probably enough strength in his fingers to flick my stunned form across the room; yet the man proved his duality by proceeding to grab one loose end of his makeshift cape and gently tie it around my unscathed wrist. “No run.”

Surprisingly enough, I hadn’t made it a break for it as soon as I was liberated. Although I sustained minimal injuries, he expressed his remorse and made no moves to consume my flesh, which was another good sign. As more time passed, he was revealing to be more and more of a passionate bunny stuck in a wrestler’s body.

After all, I hadn’t gone through all the trouble of kidnapping him just to sprint at the slightest sign of trouble. I confirmed, “No run.”

Some of his original ardour reappeared at my acknowledgement, along with a faint giggle that evoked a tiny smile on my own face. I figured that with his minimal experience revolving around homemade dishes, simply slapping on some salt and pepper to flavour the meat with a side of boiled vegetables would suffice. Thus, I took the package from my lap and got to work.

Cooking with another, rather useless, individual essentially attached at the hip was difficult, to say the least. In the beginning, the man fired question after question, curious about every ingredient and spice going into the dish, but after realizing that he lacked the correct vocabulary to obtain the information he sought, he became a silent observer.

Basically, he followed me around like a lapdog while munching on another zucchini to occupy his restless hands.

After pulling him around left and right, occasionally giving a soft tug on the blanket when he would unintentionally zone out, I finally threw all the components into a single pan, deciding to serve a simple stir-fry. With only the expanse of the puffy fabric between us, I was constantly elbowing the hybrid while mixing the ingredients together, which I considered a redeeming form of payback for his carelessness with my arm.

While the mouth-watering scent of lunch wafted around, he extended the wrist connected to mine, sidestepping over to the island to fish for a bag of baby carrots before coming to stand next to me by the stove. Spotting my stare, he flashed another blinding grin and I couldn’t help but imagine long, bunny ears extending off the top of his head, his slender tail replaced with a fluffier ball of fur at the back. That seemed to better suit his ardent personality.

The chicken gradually changed colour as the exterior of the vegetables softened, and I brought the meal along with the chair by the fridge over to my tiny two-person table, prompting him to take a seat in front of the steaming plate. I expected him to ravenously dig in and devour every crumb, yet he refused to move a muscle, staring out the glass doors to the backyard and into the forest instead.

“I hurt.” He stumbled over his words, somberly bringing his gaze to my cocked brow. “No mean to hurt.”

Thinking back to the scuffle that seemed eons away at this point, I flashed a reassuring smile his way, explaining, “I get it, you were injured. Um, I was kind of mad at first because you broke my door and everything,” I offhandedly gestured towards the broken contraption, “but I forgive you.”

“No.” He clenched his jaw, analyzing the surface of the table as if the words he was searching for were etched on the surface. “Now. Sorry now, too.” To drive his point home, he delicately grabbed the arm not wrapped in the blanket, streaks of red decorating my wrist like a tight bracelet.

I hummed my understanding. “Ah, I told you it’s fine already,” I reassured, patting his hand.

Content at my acceptance of his makeshift apology, he began to dig into the chicken. His nose twitched at the unfamiliar taste, but he made no complaints. Anything was better than nothing, in the end.

I let him enjoy his food for a bit before asking, “Did you have a name? Something like J3?”

His eyes went back to scanning the outdoors, the sound of his chomping coming to an abrupt halt when he spotted a sad lump on the porch.

“Bud?” he inquired, the light glimmering in his irises.

The nickname stumped me, as I had difficulty imagining Hyunho or Minzy affectionately calling their experiment ‘bud’. “What are you talking about? Is that your name?”

His finger poked out to the cylindrical pile of tuna outside, then back to himself, “Bud.”

Befuddled now more than ever, I tried to laugh it off and nodded my head towards the plate again, silently advising him to continue eating.

Unfortunately, he didn’t seem too keen on evading the topic, whimpering in frustration at either my lack of understanding or his incapability of properly communicating due to the language barrier. His unending appetite was going to be put on hold for this. As he stood up, the chair behind him screeched, and he clutched on to the blanket, pulling me towards the back door.

Refusing to allow history to repeat itself, I rushed ahead to slide the hairband off and pushed the door open, allowing him to slip through. I figured that when the man drifted off to sleep tonight, I could replace the rapidly decaying tuna in hopes that my kitty would visit again.

While I was lost in thought, he undid the knot connecting the two of us and sprinted into the forest.

His back disappeared within the thickets fencing the towering maple trees and I froze in place, my jaw going slack in an ugly mixture of bafflement and betrayal, believing that he had simply taken advantage of my hospitality then ran off. Although, all attempts at making sense of the hybrid’s actions were cut short when familiar noises of horrifying, crackling sounds met my ears, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end.

When the underbrush twitched, leaves fluttering from the movement of an animal hidden within their cover, a sinking feeling entered my chest. And that was the moment I met the vibrant, emerald eyes that had dug their own space within my heart.

#jungkook fanfic #jungkook scenarios #jungkook imagine #jungkook x reader #jungkook au #jungkook hybrid au #bts fanfic #bts scenarios #bts imagine #this chap gave me an aneurysm and a half

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agirlandhermonster · 3 years

Text

Starter for @rulesxunbroken

30 days. One full moon cycle. Okay, yes, more accurately put, it would be 29.5 days, but Samira wasn’t about to split hairs about a measly 12 hours when her own soul hung in the balance.

Just a few years ago, she would have said that there was no such things as curses and demons and horrifying other realms where life wasn’t really life, it was just survival until death. But now? Now she was in possession of an Eldritch horror all her own, complete with tentacles and a host of strange side effects that came with living in symbiosis with said creature.

The demoness that had tricked her into this particular situation had come to Samira in her hour of need, when the girl was mere hours from the other side, offering her her life back if only Samira would fulfill a small favour. Thanks to the amount of medications pumping through her system, the hospital’s attempt to help ease the pain and pressure of her failing organs, she’d seen the frightening horned woman as nothing more than a near-death hallucination.

What harm could indulging a hallucination do? And hell, if she were real, then Samira would live to see 30, all for the low cost of giving what she assumed would be another demon a place to stay for a bit.

But we all know how deals with the devil tend to go, and so they went.

30 days.

For the first time since that fateful deal, Samira had found herself in the company of the demoness who’d tricked her into hosting the monster she’d come to call Poppy, and the woman almost wished she were still enjoying the calming effects of a truly ridiculous amount of morphine pumping through her veins, as it might have made the meeting slightly less terrifying.

It’s about time you fulfill your end of the deal, my little horror.

The monster in Samira’s head seemed to cringe. She couldn’t see it, but she felt it. But when she opened her mouth to try and ask just what was going on, it was Poppy that spoke through her.

Already? Poppy’s voice was Samira’s voice, accompanied by a lilt, high and low, like an echo. Samira prodded Poppy inwardly for answers but the monster paid her no mind.

You’ve had your time, now it’s my turn. You know what to do, and I expect you to do so, lest you find yourself in a far more unpleasant situation than the one in which I found you.

Poppy’s anxiety raised Samira’s heart rate, and yet the woman was still ignored. Poppy nodded with Samira’s head. And just like that, the demoness vanished.

30 days, Poppy told Samira afterwards. In 30 days they needed to be in a very specific place. Poppy wouldn’t say more, not until Samira threatened to heave herself under a bus.

Poppy needed to be somewhere far north by the end of the current moon cycle, and it was going to result in the death of their host. Terrified beyond reason, Samira panicked. But what could she really do? Poppy had agreed to complete a task that they wouldn’t explain in return for passage from the Lower Realms to the Middle Realms and the acquiring of a host so that they could survive.

From the visions that Poppy had shown Samira over the years, the woman couldn’t blame them for not wanting to return, much less get sent somewhere worse.

Searching for a way out, Samira was determined. There must be something. A new host? Doubtful. And Samira couldn’t stomach the idea of dooming someone else to her same fate just to save herself. Besides that, she’d formed a bond with her monster, despite the uncomfortable nature of their meeting.

But there was only 30 days, Poppy argued, and Samira shrugged it. A month wasn’t so bad. Surely they could find someone with the sort of power they needed in that time?

Samira liked to call herself an optimist, Poppy liked to call her naïve.

Either way, travel was necessary, though not cheap. The first part of their trip north (all the while searching for some sort of strange power that could possibly help the both of them) was taken by bus, all the way up the eastern coast from Florida on.

Upon reaching the border of New Jersey, they followed the strings of rumours that led them to a town rumoured to have been touched by an odd magic. Some said it was a demon, some said there was a portal to another world.

Samira and Poppy couldn’t confirm either, but as they traveled, there was a certain note of..something in the air. Static maybe. Or magic?

Don’t get your hopes up, Poppy commented in Samira’s mind as they entered the town that seemed to be at the center of it all. Doesn’t look like anyone has lived here for awhile.

Samira shrugged, walking steadily towards where the air felt thickest.

“It’s worth a shot”, she responded aloud. “Obviously something happened here.”

The houses were nice enough, and Samira could see this was probably once a fairly nice suburban neighborhood. Nothing look broken exactly, but there were some things that didn’t seem to belong. A brand new house with a car in front that looked new but from fifty years ago. A streetlight with an odd grayish hue. Just little things, but odd nonetheless.

There was an empty lot with just a few wooden planks and concrete blocks, like someone had given up on building a house an hour into the process. Beside it was the house that caught Samira and Poppy’s attention however, giving off an energy that seemed to swirl, and Poppy swore that it was gleaming, though Samira brushed it off as a trick of the light.

The front door wasn’t locked. Even if it had been, Samira had been participating in the borderline illegal activity of urban exploration long enough to know how to pick a basic lock.

Stepping into the home was like stepping into a museum. Everything was dark and dusty and felt stuck in time, but the energy moved almost like a breeze as she walked through the house, seeking the source of the unusual sensation.

Careful, Poppy warned as Samira approached what she assumed was a cellar door. This feels similar to her energy.

Samira suppressed a shudder and pushed the door open, throwing caution to the wind as was her habit.

Down into the darkness, she pulled the flashlight from the side pocket of her backpack, always in easy reach. The first section of the basement was normal, but as she kept going, following the string of energy she swore she was starting to become visible, the beginnings of greenery began to creep over the walls.

“This must stretch under more than a few houses”, Samira muttered as the size of the basement mystified her. The hallway stopped abruptly, expanding into a circular area with doors heading off in several directions.

I don’t like this, Poppy asserted. This doesn’t feel right. We should go.

Samira flashed an irritated expression to the room at large. “Well I don’t like the idea of not going for any chance I’ve got at surviving to see my next birthday.”

Poppy sulked in Samira’s mind, the miniature tentacle that resided in her mouth full time, Poppy’s connection to the physical world, lashing anxiously against the inside of her cheek.

Turning in place, each door got a good examination. They appeared rather average, as much as a door in the oddly large basement of a house in a damned ghost town could be anyway.

“This one has a weird light. Are you seeing this too?” Samira asked aloud, gesturing to a door that shone shades of red and purple at the edges, just enough that it was only noticeable if one were looking for it.

The monster remained silent, so Samira pressed on. Stepping towards the door, she reached out for the doorknob. It was warm in her palm, like somebody had just been holding onto it.

The moment she opened it, the world went silent. There hadn’t been any real noise a second ago, but still Samira somehow felt as if there was not just an absence of sound. There was Silence. On the other side of the door was what probably served as a storeroom of some sort, if all the crates stacked one atop the other were any indication.

“..okay?” Underwhelmed and vaguely disheartened, Samira sighed and closed the no-longer-shimmering door. But when she turned around, the entire presence of the area had changed. Walls and floors and doors were still all where they were meant to be, but there was new life in the air, and the greenery wasn’t limp, but lush and thriving and seemed almost like it was reaching out for her.

“What the hell?”

#rulesxunbroken

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shinycorvidae · 3 years

Text

How Vic and Hiro Ended Up Sharing a Brain Tapeworm

(cowritten with @smilepal)

Part 6 of 6: In Which We Piss Off Our Pseudo-Father Figures

"Please proceed to insert the jack below the ear, although not too deep"

"... auxiliary neurosockets..."

"If I hit a vein by mistake..."

"...end up like Deshawn...fucking try me..."

"I think I have it."

"V! We're at viks, just..."

"... cannot...need...rest"

"Misty!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(I got stuck writing this for two weeks and I want to get to the rest of the story SO HERE HAVE SOME BULLET POINTS ✌️)

Vik taking V from Hiro's arms. He moves right into surgery and leaves a blood soaked Hiro to pace and listen to Delamain tell Vik that she’s going to die. Misty tries to convince him to go wash off the blood he’s covered in. Like hell is he leaving till Vs stable. She instead sits him down within eyesight of V and wraps up his torn palm. It’s cyberware, the best she can do is stop the leaking.

Hiro uses his anti-anxiety medication for the first time since he was a teenager. He doesn’t have time for panic attacks, he needs to be sharp, he’s got multiple people to protect.

Vik finally manages to stabilize V. He forces Hiro out of the clinic, V will be fine tonight, he needs to go home.

Hiro goes home to an empty, silent apartment. Watches V’s blood wash down the shower drain.

He doesn't sleep that night.

Hiro returns the next morning with three coffees. He’s not optimistic enough to bring one for Takemura or V.

Not that he’d bring one for the corpo anyway.

Vik is tired. There are dark circles under his eyes and he's slumped over on his stool staring into the distance. Hiro’s gut sinks, and he reflexively checks that V’s still breathing.

That’s Vik’s bad news face.

Hiro hands Vik the coffee and they sit in silence for a while. Watching V breathe.

Vik puts down his coffee and sighs.

“Do you want the good or the bad first?”

“Just tell me Vik”

“She’s stable. I removed the bullet from her head and she’ll recover fully from the wound. She’ll have a nasty scar and nothing else.”

“...but?”

“It’s hard to explain kid.”

“Vik.”

“The item V and Jackie were sent to filch? It’s a biochip, a Relic. Arasakas “upload a dead person” magic trick. But this one’s different, a prototype. Somehow it got slotted into Vs head.”

“What? Why would she do that? That...that makes no sense. Vic’s an idiot sometimes but...she wouldn’t do that.”

“Might not have been a willing choice kid. Might have been a desperate action. Maybe she was just reckless. I don’t know. Doesn’t change the end result. There’s a biochip in her head and I can’t get it out without killing her.”

“What? You can’t just unslot it?”

“When Deshawn shot her, she was dead. Just for a minute, maybe less. Then the nanites in the chip booted up and brought her back. That Relic is the only reason she’s breathing on that bed right now.”

“Fuck. Fuck, she...never mind, keep going Vik. Tell me all of it.”

“There’s only bad news left Hiro.”

“Keep going. Please.”

“...alright. That reboot, the bullet to the head? It activated the construct on the biochip. The virtual psyche of the person written on that chip. Johnny Silverhand.”

“...the rocker?”

“The terrorist more like. He’s...he’s overwriting V. He’s-It’s going to scoop out everything that makes her V and replace it with Silverhand. She has a couple weeks before there's nothing of her left, maybe a month at best.”

“How do we fix it?”

“There’s...-kid there’s nothing I can fix. I can slow it down a little with some medication, keep her a little more comfortable. But I-I can't fix this.”

The floor drops out from under him. No. Not now. She lived, she survived a bullet to the fucking head. A little piece of tech isn’t going to-

Fuck. FUck. Not another one, please not both of them, he cant-

And V. V who hates any loss of control, who’s so sure of who she is. Getting erased...he can’t think of a worst fear for her. A worse torture.

He leans against the counter heavily, the only thing supporting his weight. He can’t even look at her. He failed her. HE failed them both.

Vik's hand falls on his back. He can barely feel it. Barely hear him talk.

“I tried kid. I worked through every possible solution. Nothing works. The closest I got was splitting the engram but its not going to-”

Hiro will take anything. Any deal, any bargain to keep her here.

“Split it. How would you split it.”

Vik just looks at him. Keeps his mouth shut for a beat.

“Hiro-”

“NO! Vik, I refuse to- we won't lose her. We can’t, I can’t-. You aren't going to hold anything back from me, I swear-”

“Fine! Fine. If you split the engram, you might, MIGHT alleviate the load on Vic’s brain enough that she can fight off the engram, partially. Enough so she keeps control. It's a slim chance. More likely it will just buy her time, a couple months, and doom the second host to the same fate. And it might just outright kill her and the second host. I'm not going to take someone off the street and subject them to that. And I don't know anyone who'd do it willingly.”

“...I will. Use me. I’ll be the second host.”

“No.”

Viktor’s no is immediate. He's both horrified and shocked that Hiro would even offer. He watched him fight to survive as a teenager. To see him gamble his life on the slight chance to save Vic...

He won’t. He practically raised the kid, he’s not going to kill him on his own operating table.

Hiro gets right in his face, desperate and angry.

“We have a chance Vik! You're just too scared to take it!”

“It’s a fool’s chance! At best you buy her a couple months-”

“You said there's a chance it’d cure her completely.”

“A tiny one! It'd be like betting on a five year old in a one-on-one with Razor Hughes. Its suicide.”

“If V’s that five year old I’m taking that god damned bet.”

Vik just stares at him. He’s completely serious. He knew Jackie's death was affecting him, but he hadn't realized he'd lost his mind.

“Hiro-”

“I am BEGGING you Vik. I will get on my knees if that makes a difference, PLEASE. If you have an ounce of respect for me you'll do this, its my body, my fucking choice”

Hiro ups the ante at the sliver of weakness of resignation in Vik's face. He’s terrified and it’s making him desperate, making him mad.

“If you don't I will never forgive you, I fucking swear. You will never see my face again. You can’t not give me this chance to save her,-”

Vik's face goes hard. Stony. If the kid is going to guilt him with that, fine. He's an adult and obviously he doesn't care anymore. Let him risk his own damn life.

And. Hiro’s desperate enough, Vik KNOWS, he just knows that Hiro won't give up. He’ll find a different ripperdoc, one willing to do it. And they’ll fuck it up. No one willing to do that would be good at their job. He has to do it. Or put Hiro at even greater risk.

A little part of Vik hates Hiro for it. For backing him into this awful corner. For forcing him to be complicit in Hiro's death. In V’s.

“Alright. Alright. Go change into one of the scrubs, the sooner we do this, the better. For you and for V”

“Thank you-”

“DO NOT thank me for this Hiro. Do not. I don’t want to do this. It’s wrong and I’m pretty sure V would-”

“V lost the right to an opinion when she slotted this thing in her fucking skull in the first place.”

Vik performs the surgery. They both live. He makes sure Hiro is comfortable and asleep before opening up the scans of their brains. Of the Relic, still nestled in Vs head untouched. His stomach drops.

His prediction was mostly right. V isn't cured. Hiro bought her a couple more months, maybe 2 or 3. He's only delayed her death. Stretched out how long it will take Silverhand to devour her. Hiro has connected himself to her and the Relic but in a stroke of luck not her death. The relic isn't trying to scoop him out, but it will put stress on his synapses. He’ll have migraines, nausea, even possible seizures at the end of V’s life but when her final thread of self snaps, the bridge between their brains will collapse. He may be left with some permanent effects but he’ll live. Thank god he’ll live. He mourns for V but selfishly, awfully he's so grateful Hiro lived and will live. He will never say it out loud but he'd sacrifice V, a good friend, if it meant Hiro could live.

Hiro wakes up the next day. He refuses to believe Vik's final diagnosis. He’s bought V time, they’ll find some way to fix this.

He spends the week at Vik's, recovering and waiting for her to wake up. He tries to help around the clinic, but his relationship with Vik has been severely strained. Any conversation is awkward and stilted.

V wakes occasionally, short periods of not full awareness. Murmuring words, clenching her fists, eyes barely opening.

The first time she does it, Hiro's sitting right next to her bed, fiddling with the dismantled pieces of a shotgun to keep busy. He happens to look to his left. He’s shocked by the sight of V’s yellow brown eyes, staring at him lazy and warm.

“Hiro...”

“Hey V. Go back to sleep. It's too soon for you to be waking up.”

“K. G’night.”

A surge of deep want goes through Hiro as he pushes Vs hair back. He wants her.

Ohhhhh fuuuuuck he wants her. Not just as a friend. Or a roommate. Or a want for her to be safe. Oh no. oh nooooooo.

Apparently he’s not gay??? At least not completely. MAybe it's just men AND V. like an exception? Fuck this is bad. This is bad AND weird.

But he definitely wants V in his bed. He wants to know what her nails feel like on his back, her teeth on his lip. The playful look in her warm eyes as she drags her hand down his chest-

NOPE. NO. He’s not doing this right now. V is sick, V is DYING, he’s not- nope we aren't thinking about that.

It takes a couple hours for his ears to stop being bright red.

V wakes up late on the 6th day, Vik is sitting right there. Waiting for her to wake up.

V takes the news quietly. She's tired and obviously weak but her voice only wavers a little. She only begs Vik for a solution once, when she learns she’ll lose everything she is. She doesn't tear up or panic but examines every option she has. Looking for a way out. She can break down when she’s alone. Vik looks like he’s struggling with this enough. He doesn’t need to see her pain and fear too.

Hiro watches the whole thing from across the clinic. In a dark enough corner that V wouldn't immediately notice him. He watches her push down her feelings. Comforting Vik about her own fate for fucks sake.

He shouldn’t be here. Now that she’s lucid she probably hates him for not coming with them. He shouldn't creepily watch her be vulnerable without her consent. But he can't manage to drag himself away either.

Vik shakily wipes his face and delivers the final blow

"Hiro bought you sometime so you have a couple months instead of weeks. But you’re still dying V-"

"Wait Hiro? What did he do? Where is he?"

Fuck. Well now he really can't just sulk in the corner anymore. He comes out, walking up to her bed silently. He has no clue what to say to her.

V doesn't leave him drowning for long. She gives him a small smile, tired and pained but happy to see him anyway.

"It only took me dying to get you to learn to be sneaky, huh?"

A small choked laugh, suspiciously wet, escapes him. Only she would pull a laugh out of him right now, the brat.

Misty helps Hiro move her to a wheel chair so he can bring her home. Vik explains the meds to him too. He can tell her later. When she's not fast asleep in a wheelchair.

She's snoring and her hair is stuck around the handle. She's an idiot. She’s adorable.

Fuck.

#hehehe #HIRO CAUGHT FEELINGS #Vs doing...k.#just k #viktor vektor #hiro oda #victory delvin #cyberpunk 2077 #there you go kids.#we did it #There will be an epilogue thing and an extra tho

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