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o-w-quinlan · 3 years

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Digimon Adventure: (2020) Final Thoughts

Considering I stopped reviewing this series episode by episode months ago, they’re more positive thoughts than you’d expect, though still not all that positive.

To summarize, this is an entertaining series with plenty of individual good aspects and great episodes that nevertheless leaves me cold as a whole. Much as I enjoyed following it week to week, I can’t say I recommend this series to anyone but hardcore Digimon fans, or hardcore fans of the wider “monster” genre.

Action

It felt appropriate to start with this, considering a focus on action was what the initial interviews promised, and they delivered in spades. It wasn’t perfect or too consistent, there were several times when the Digimon not evolving when they could just broke any tension the fights had, but this series had some of the best fights in any Digimon anime. Anything in the first 3 episodes, Greymon/MetalGreymon vs MetalTyranomon, SkullKnightmon vs Greymon and Garurumon, Mugendramon vs DoneDevimon, Mugendramon vs WarGreymon, Millenniumon vs the dragons, Omegamon vs Abbadomon Core… all of them among the best things the franchise has to offer in terms of action scenes, which after so many series where fights were solved by having a protagonist Digimon evolve and one-shotting the enemy, comes as a breath of fresh air (to be fair, this series also had a lot of that, but it had actual great fights to compensate).

Worldbuilding

Another thing promised in interviews was the use of Digimon from all over the franchise, and not only did they deliver, but they also included plenty of references to the “null canon” to enrich the experience for the most hardcore fans. The series made sure to constantly emphasize the savage nature of the Digital World, bringing back the Tamers worldbuilding of Digimon consuming weaker Digimon in hopes of achieving evolution. Along the way we saw a lot of allies fighting back against this status-quo, from things as overt as Leomon organizing a resistance or Petaldramon protecting weaker Digimon from the all-consuming Entmon, to less dramatic stuff like weak Digimon settling down to live together, or the mere presence of a restaurant where everyone can rest for a while of the hardships of their world.

The biggest flaw here was in how the series handled its antagonists. With very few exceptions, every single enemy Digimon in the series lacked dialog, whereas nearly every single ally Digimon could speak normally, and this disparity cheapened the whole thing, because instead of coming across as “this mentality is normal for this world”, it came across as just your normal “everyone lived together in harmony until the villains attacked”, which is very much not what the series was telling us.

Characterization

That brings us to the next point: the lack of personality for most villains. I joked elsewhere that Minotaurmon from episode 19 was the most compelling villain of the series, and that’s not completely a joke. Almost every single villain of the week was flat, plenty of the “main” villains were lacking in dialog (Algomon in the first few episodes, Nidhoggmon, Millenniumon) or turned mindless halfway through (Devimon, DarkKnightmon). Negamon/Abbadomon in the final episodes managed to benefit from this by being the embodiment of an “instinct”, but in general this meant a mook-of-the-week like Minotaurmon managed to be a highlight among the villains simply by having dialog and non-trivial desires.

But what of the protagonists? The popular opinion is that everyone is far blander than they were in the original series, and I agree. But rather than comparing it with the first series, let’s look at what it had to offer to us. Where in other Digimon series, the backstories and issues of the protagonists and their reactions to what’s going on around them make for most of the drama, in this series the drama comes from the villains trying to destroy everything, and for the most part that means the protagonists only need to be distinct and charming on their own, no necessity to create conflict between them. There is an overall character arc for all of them, though: accepting and interiorizing their new duties towards the world they had ended up stranded on, getting to know and love the Digital World. Was this well done? Not really.

Taichi and Takeru, for example, were so much the embodiment of the stock shonen hero that accepting their place in this new world didn’t really reveal anything about them we hadn’t already seen from their first few appearances.

Jou got stuck as an unfunny punchline 90% of the time, to the point of damaging his few “serious” moments in some of his focus episodes. His development of becoming assertive was compelling in theory, but it got muddled with so many unfunny and uncomfortable hotsprings jokes that the impact was lost.

Hikari started as an even more blatant plot-device “mysterious character” than she was in the original series, before unconvincingly changing to cheerful little girl afterwards (the whiplash between her in episode 33 and her in episode 34 was something else), and only really managing to settle into a compelling character in her last focus episode (58, defending the Digitamas from the Bakemon and SkullBaluchimon, which to be fair is a great episode and probably the best showcase for Hikari as a character in any product or continuity).

Koushiro was mostly fine, although we all remember the several times the series seemed to promise it might do something with him (his uneasiness when his family was mentioned, or that line about having to “face the darkness of his past” in the HerakleKabuterimon episode) that ended up being nothing.

Mimi is the fan-favorite, being charming in nearly all her appearances and having some of the best focus episodes, and it’s mostly deserved. If there’s anything I criticize from her, it’s that her focus episodes don’t really add up to anything.

Yamato was fine, started out as a stock shonen rival before becoming the single most chill “lone wolf” in any Digimon series, probably because of what I said before of the conflict between the protagonists no longer being the source of drama. He gets a slow development of caring only for his brother to starting to care for other Digimon for the sake of Sora and Gabumon to caring about the Digital World just as much as everyone else.

Sora was made fun of by a certain section of the fandom for having the worst focus episodes early on, and I agreed, but having finished the series I can’t get rid of the impression that her focus episodes, while perhaps not that good on their own, when taken as a whole explore her character the best of any other. Yeah, this mostly means exploring her compassion (these are not very multi-dimensional characters), but they deepen and deepen both her impact on the Digimon she saves and how she is impacted in turn by them, moving her away from saving others through her combat prowess to saving others by empathizing with the grief of another caring soul, and by the end I honestly ended up considering her my favorite character (despite none of her episodes making it to my list of favorites).

As for the Digimon… it’s following in the footsteps of other Digimon Adventure products by not really having much of interest for the Digimon themselves except for Tailmon.

Overall, for the most part the main characters were decent, but besides Mimi and ultimately also Sora, I don’t think they’re very memorable. All of them start out promising, but never really improved from that promising start (again, except for Sora).

Pacing

And now we get to the biggest problem of the series: Pacing. I’ve seen it stated elsewhere that this series was more episodic than most (any?) other Digimon series before it, and part of the backlash it got was from not being as serialized as fans expected it to be. This isn’t exactly true. From episode 16 (Eyesmon) to episode 24 (DoneDevimon), this series was as serialized as any other Digimon series has ever been, with nonstop escalation that demanded you keep watching it week after week. Then, from 25 to 35 (Angewomon) or 36 (BlitzGreymon), it pulled slightly back from that never-ending escalation, but was still pretty serialized. It was only afterwards that it became heavily episodic, and by that point it wasn’t expectations set up by previous series that hurt it in the eyes of the fandom, it was expectations set by this series itself in its first half.

Not that the episodes themselves were bad. Honestly, I found myself significantly more entertained by the episodic later half of the series than the serialized first half. Maybe it was because they didn’t feel the need to convince me they were the most exciting, tense thing I had ever seen when they were clearly not (hello, Mamemon episode), or maybe it was that there were more than just endless fights to them, but I normally ended up those episodes entertained and satisfied, whereas with a lot of episodes from Eyesmon to BlitzGreymon, I mostly just felt frustrated after watching them. I agree with the criticism that, when seen as a whole, breaking momentum so hard for so long after months of never-ending escalation wasn’t the right choice, but when seen week after week, I can’t see this change of approach as that bad of a thing.

Conclusion

I think that sums up the series for me. On a weekly basis, it’s pretty entertaining. It’s when seen as a whole that the problems really become clear. There’s been some speculation in the past few weeks of how much the current situation in the world might have impacted the series, but ultimately, I have to judge what actually happened, and I can’t help the impression that this series ultimately left me with nothing of substance after it was all said and done. Like, I enjoyed this more than, say, Appli Monsters, but Appli Monsters have things that stick with you after it’s over. Not so much here, unless you’re a hardcore fan that loves the Omegamon lore this added (which I am, btw; love that Omegamon lore). I don’t think I can recommend this series to anyone who isn’t a hardcore Digimon fan, or at least a hardcore fan of the wider “monster” genre.

One thing I’m grateful to this series for, though, it’s the commercial boost it has given the rest of the franchise. I’m not going to credit it for all the successes it currently has, after all the Card Game would have fell off by now if it wasn’t genuinely well-done and the Vital Bracelet happened because of years of the virtual pet division progressively building up its audience after it had nearly died off, but it’s undeniable they wouldn’t have sold as well without this anime advertising the franchise week after week. Next week, we’ll have the first episode of Digimon Ghost Game, the first time since 2001 that we have a Digimon series being immediately succeeded by another. If that isn’t a sign of how well the franchise is doing right now, I don’t know what is.

Favorite Episodes: 1 (Tokyo Digital Crisis), 6 (The Targeted Kingdom), 12 (Lilimon Blooms), 20 (The Seventh One Awakens), 32 (Soaring Hope), 42 (King of Inventors, Gerbemon), 49 (The God of Evil Descends, Millenniummon), 56 (The Gold Wolf of the Crescent Moon), 58 (Hikari, New Life)

#digimon #Digimon Adventure:#Digimon Adventure 2020

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kaitycole · 3 years

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Two Worlds Collide

Summary: Liam and Luke talk, Liam visits his mother’s actual resting spot and Liam goes back to Walker Ranch.

Word Count: 2014

Pairings: Drake x Riley, Jackson x Eleanor

Warnings: Mentions of character death, loss of a mother,

A/N: Just a reminder, here’s a link to my character profiles if you’re interested. You learn somethings about a few that won’t be written directly in the series: here.

Song Choice: n/a

Part 18 of WP. To catch up, read here.

It doesn’t take Luke long at all to find Riley on social media. It also didn’t hurt that she seemed to lack privacy settings. He was a bit shocked at how quickly she replied and gave him the information he inquired. So here he sits, a foreign number on his phone waiting to be filed. Call or text? Most people his age text; the thoughts of holding a verbal conversation was just anxiety inducing. However, would a king text? Just thinking like this caused Luke to short circuit. He decides to leave the decision up to his older brother.

Luke: It’s Luke, can we talk? (8:40 am)

Liam scrunches his face when he hears his personal cellphone start to buzz. There were only a handful of people who had the number and only a few of them actually used it. He almost ignores the unsaved number but doesn’t.

“Uhm, excuse me.” Liam stands up from the kitchen table, leaving the breakfast Riley has prepared and steps outside.

He starts typing before deleting it and starting over. He does this a few times before giving up momentarily. He really wasn’t someone who enjoyed texting, there was too much left unknown about tone and meaning. It was usually only Riley that he’d even humor texting back half the time, but he wasn’t sure about Luke.

Liam: What would you like to talk about? (8:51 am)

Luke is pacing around his room, worried he might have offended his brother. Maybe he should’ve asked Riley, or maybe she had sent him another message and he missed it. Quickly switching back to the social media app, he scrolls but finds no message detailing whether or not he should text or call Liam.

Part of him wants to just go back in time and not have sent the message, but when his phone finally buzzes, he feels relief.

Luke: There’s somewhere I’d like to show you. Are you free? (8:54 am)

Liam looks at his screen, sitting down on the back-porch steps. He really wasn’t ready to go back to the ranch or to even see Jackson. Drake had just barely forgiven him for punching Jackson and he’s sure if it wasn’t for Riley, Drake wouldn’t have been so understanding.

But at the same time, he really doesn’t want to disappoint his brother.

Liam: I don’t think I should be around Jackson today. I am sorry. (9:02 am)

Luke figured that would be the case which is why he has no plans on them being at the ranch, to be honest he doesn’t want to be around his father himself.

Luke: Good thing where we are going isn’t near the ranch, eh? Wanna go? (9:06 am)

Liam: Where should I pick you up? (9:07 am)

Liam shakes his head with a laugh, if looks didn’t prove they were related, the clear evidence of this mother’s laidback attitude surely would.

* * “It’s just up here, around this corner.” Luke says to Bastien as they drive silently. Shortly after Luke had given Liam the address of the corner store he had been waiting at, he was picked up and the two brothers started their journey.

The ride, for the most part, is silent, the directions Luke gives the guard being the only ones spoken, but it’s comfortable. There’s something about being around each other that both Luke and Liam enjoy.

“This is it. We can walk from here.” Luke says, rushing to take his seatbelt off and jump out the door just as Bastien pulls the car to a stop.

“Walk? Are you sure about this, Your Majesty?” Bastien doesn’t even try to mask his hesitation; Liam had refused to allow the guard to do any investigating/background checks on his younger brother, though the king already knew he had them waiting if he ever wanted them.

“I’m not going to take him out in a cemetery, how morbid.” Luke teases and Liam fails at holding in a chuckle; Bastien just glares.

“It’s fine, Bas.” Liam rests a calming hand on the guard’s shoulder before looking at Luke, “lead the way before you give my best guard a heart attack.”

Luke tilts is head to the right, “this way.”

They share a brief amount of small talk, mostly about things they recall about their mother. Luke has more memories but they both just find comfort in hearing about their mother, Luke asks a little about this Leo he heard about the other day.

“He seems like the opposite of you.”

Liam laughs, “I hear that a lot. But he can be a really decent guy when he wants to.”

“Here we are.” Luke points at the freshly cleaned gravesite. Liam feels a knot form in his throat as he tries to swallow it, his heart drops.

When he learned his mother had left Cordonia, he felt a relief when he went to her grave in the royal cemetery. To be completely honest, he had felt silly for all the years of going there to talk when in reality he was talking to an empty casket. But here, now, this was it. She really was here, there was no more hopeful thinking that she was still alive somewhere, this casket was full.

Liam feels himself get uneasy, his legs act as if they might give out, causing him to extend a hand to press it against the tree nearby. He’s not sure why, but he feels sick and he for a brief moment regrets not begging Olivia to accompany him; he knows it’s wrong to put that emotional burden on her, but in this instance, he needs no one but her. Luke clearly picks up on him unease and reaches out for his brother.

“I’m sorry, if it’s too much, I can go get Bastien.”

“No, no I’m fine.” He clears his throat, “I just realized that she’s really here. At home, it’s empty, but this one isn’t.”

It finally dawns on Luke that all the years that he had Eleanor, Liam grieved her. Liam didn’t get birthdays and holidays with his warm and loving mother, but instead he only had the comfort of what he thought was her resting place. He knows that Liam already told him that he doesn’t blame him, that the decision was between their parents, but how can he not feel guilty in some way? How can he just not feel as if he’s part of the reason his older brother grew up without a mom, how his other brother and sister grew up with their dad.

“I’ll uh, give you some time.” Luke waits for Liam to nod before he walks a little bit away, stopping when he sees Bastien walking towards him.

“How is he?” Bastien doesn’t look at Luke, rather his gaze is trained on Liam. It hurt him to see the King like this, he’s known him for years, watched him grow up, and Bastien himself had also mourned the loss of the Queen and guardsman. He’s been trained in various fighting styles, both offensive and defensive types, but he didn’t know anything to help the King right now.

“Better than I would be.” His voice cracks which gets Bastien’s attention, “I don’t know how he doesn’t hate me or maybe he’s just that good at lying.” “King Liam doesn’t lie.” Bastien’s voice is steady, his words clear and concise. “He’s a fair person, so if he said he doesn’t hate you then he simply doesn’t. There’s no reason for him to, is there?”

“It’s my fault he lost his mom.”

“Children often end up carrying the burdens of their parents’ decisions. Liam understand that more than most.”

Luke looks at the black-haired man in a suit, feeling an odd sense of relief even though his words were a bit riddle-like. He stands there next to Bastien, silently, allowing Liam the time to actually finally grieve.

* * “I’ve been doing this for years, but this time it feels awkward.” He laughs, looking at the tombstone with his mother’s name. This time is different than all the times he visited her so-called grave in Cordonia, this time she was actually here which makes him feel suddenly self-conscious about talking to her. Not to mention he knows Bastien and Luke are close by which just adds to the anxiety.

“I know I couldn’t possibly understand what you went through, how scared you must have been especially of Constantine. But that doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you because part of me is. You just left me, left me with him all alone and came here to raise your new family.” Tears start to slip down his cheeks, part of him hating the fact that he’s mad at the one woman he’s always held up.

“I won’t understand why you made the decisions that you did nor can I judge the ones you made, but I’m struggling to give that same curtesy to Jackson. You would probably tell me to judge you both equally since you were both involved in the decisions made, but I can’t. Everyone says that I was born to be King and a fair ruler,” he trails off, “oh yeah, I’m the King, Mom. Leo abdicated.”

“But how am I fair when I can’t be fair in a personal matter? Though you’d probably tell me that it’s normal to not think clearly when personal feelings are in play, that there’s councils for those moments, but where’s my council for this? I don’t want your memory tarnished in Cordonia, but other than Olivia, I have no one to talk to at court that I trust with this.”

Olivia expressed hesitation on him even coming, which is why he’s avoided calling her. Riley also didn’t care for Jackson, so she wasn’t exactly as third party as he needed nor was Drake who in Liam’s opinion was too caught up on the fact his dad was alive rather than what his dad did all those years ago.

Liam starts crying, not really caring to hide it. He wasn’t in Cordonia, he isn’t King right now, he doesn’t need to appear strong when he’s falling apart inside. He raises his hand to place it on the top of the tombstone, dragging it down slowly to trace the engraved letters of her name. His voice breaks as the sobs wedge their way in between his words, “I needed you…I need you, Mom.”

He leans his head back, letting out a deep breath and taking one in, trying to calm himself. He realizes that he never really cried at her grave in Cordonia, only ever at her portrait and maybe some how he knew, but he thinks it’s mostly because kings don’t show their emotions in public. Standing up, he pats the tombstone, realizing who he really needs to talk to about all of this, who can actually give him the answers that he needs.

* * “You know, today’s been pretty emotional, you can always come back tomorrow.” Luke tries to reason with Liam, mostly wanting the chance to talk to Jackson before Liam does. Though Luke can’t be sure if Jackson would even be telling the truth if he talked to Luke separately or all of them together.

“As much as the idea of a lengthy stay is ideal, I do have a country to run so I can’t drag out these things.” “Oh, yeah.” Luke is still struggling to comprehend his eldest brother’s life and title. Maybe he was being selfish, but all he really wanted was to sit down and just chat with him, like brothers do, right?

Liam smile, patting his younger brother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, regardless of the continent I plan on being a good big brother.”

Luke looks away, cheeks blushing before he shakes off Liam’s hand, “I wasn’t worried.”

“Luke, where on earth have you been?” Jackson comes rushing out the front door, ruining the small moment between the brothers before his eyes land on Liam and he stops. “Liam.”

“Jackson, I think we have a lot to talk about.”

#witness protection #witness protection au fic #the royal romance #choices #trr Liam rys #trr Jackson walker #trr Eleanor rys #trr drake walker #oc luke walker

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redschillzone · 4 years

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Raindrops (Rey x Reader)

(Gif found Here!)

Pairing: Rey x Reader

Prompt: #40. “If you get hurt i’ll kill you” | Prompts

Word Count: 2.8k Words

Warnings: Maybe a slight suggestive scene at the end if you squint?

Summary: Rey has always had bad memories with the rain so you show her not all memories have to be bad.

A/N: I actually enjoyed writing this little prompt and with it raining outside, I decided why not add it to the mix! I hope you enjoy. :)

The rain pounded hard against the rocks and trees outside the cave that you and the other Resistance members had called home for the past couple of months. It was a decently sized cave, you had to admit; It branched out in several different tunnels and led to more wide open areas, so it was the perfect little setup for what remained of your band of rebels as Leia had called you. Despite Ajan Kloss being the perfect place to hide away from the First order with it’s dense forests and jungles, it just so happened to also be one of the most hot and humid planets you had ever traveled and lived on. Any chance you got to get off the planet you took, wanting an escape from the humidity and heat; Nobody honestly blamed you for it. More times than not you could be found hiding out in the Falcon, claiming that it was much cooler in their then outside. If you weren’t there, you were cooling yourself off under one of the many waterfalls on the planet; More times than not Rey, Poe, and Finn joined you and you guys would make a day out of it whenever you all had the spare time.

So when you had gotten up this morning and smelled the familiar scent of rain you all but ran to get changed before you made your way to the large opening of the cave and watched as the dark sky provided some much needed rain to the ground blow; You could tell the plants were all but rejoicing at the fact they were getting some much needed water. But that was where you resided at the moment; Leaning against the rocky cave wall with your eyes shut and your arms crossed as you listened to the rain patter against the opening of the cave.

You enjoyed the rain. It brought a calm, soothing aura to you and more times than not gave you a reason to actually relax because you knew once it rained, there wasn’t much to be done on base; Just a lot of paperwork and filing of said paperwork. Plus it provided a nice change in scenery to the always bright and sunny planet. It was rather interesting, to say the least. As you let your mind wander with thoughts, you opened your eyes and allowed yourself to take a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the freshly fallen rain before you held your breath. You counted to five in your head before you allowed the breath you were holding to escape your lips, allowing a smile to appear on your face as your once tense shoulders began to relax.

“Enjoying yourself?” Rey questioned as she made her way to stand beside you, a small smile on her own face to see you in a rather relaxed state. She will admit the past couple of months had been rough with everything that happened on Crait and Ahch-To so seeing you like this was a rather nice sight to see. You turned your attention to her and gave a small smile, giving a nod as you looked back out into the rain.

“Yeah, I am actually. You?” You questioned, looking towards Rey who seemed a bit uneasy and you honestly didn’t know why. She looked a bit scared as well and you suddenly began to grow worried.

“Baby.. What’s wrong? You seem tense.. Like something is wrong.” You spoke, pushing off the wall and moving over to her to wrap your arm around her waist; She even felt tense and you couldn’t help but keep the frown that appeared on your face as you watched her eye the world outside, mainly watching the rain as it fell.

“I.. Well you know this is like, the third time I’ve seen rain.. Correct?” She asked you to which you blinked and let out a breath as you glanced outside the cave; She was right. You had recalled the first time she had seen actual rain was on Ahch-To when she went to find Luke and you had joined her. She was honestly adorable upon seeing it, stretching her hand out to feel the raindrops as they fell onto her hand, the warm smile she wore as a small laugh escaped her form. It was honestly one of the cutest things you had seen but sadly that little moment was interrupted when Kylo decided to connect with her via their dyad as Rey had told you. The second time was when she was confronting Luke after finding out the truth about Kylo and you couldn’t help but glance away at the memory; It stung a bit, to say the least so this would account for her third time seeing rain. It was then that you felt determined to make it so that she felt the same thing you felt whenever it rained; You wanted to help her feel calm, to feel at peace with it.

“Right, I uh- I forgot about those moments.” You had admitted, moving your arm that was around her waist to her hand and gripped it tightly before a smile overtook your frown.

“Come on then.” You told her, beginning to walk backwards out into the rain and you could see her eyes widened as she hesitated but followed after you; She trusted you after all. You wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, would you? She couldn’t help but bite her lip as you both made your way out of the cave and down the cliffs to the large opening below. Rey was shivering a bit as the cool rain hit her bare arms, her jedi robes doing very little to keep her warm but that just made you chuckle as you shivered as well. For the planet being normally humid, the rain was surprisingly cold, and it felt rather cool out.

“(Y/N)... Why are we out here? It’s wet and I’m getting cold.” Rey pouted at you, some of her hair beginning to stick to her face as you chuckled and moved in close to her, wrapping your arms around her waist to keep her close to you.

“I want to teach you how nice the rain can be. How calming it can be. I know most times it’s raining you've associated them with uh.. Some rather bad memories. So I want to fix that, I want to make them better.” You told her, watching as she gave a hum and rested her head on your chest, sniffling every so often because of the cold. You rested your head on top of hers and swayed lightly with her in the rain, your arms wrapped tightly around her waist and you had no intentions of letting go.

Rey listened to your heartbeat; How slow and calm it was. Your heartbeat combined with the rain began to open her mind to what you were talking about; She was beginning to see how you could find such noise calming. With a small hum she continued to listen to the rain patter around you both; The rain hitting various trees, leaves, rocks, and even the ground below you. She felt it patter on the top of her head, on her arms, even her clothing as she just swayed with you in the rain. Sure, you both were probably bound to get sick but at least you two would do it together. Besides, this moment? Neither of you were going to forget it anytime soon anyway.

You must have stayed there for what felt like hours before Rey pulled away to look at you, a smile on her face as she placed her right hand on your cheek, gently wiping away at a few raindrops that managed to land on your face.

“I love you, (Y/N).. Thank you for this.” She spoke which caused you to smile in return, moving your head in her hand to gently press your lips against her palm.

“Anything for you, Rey.. I love you so damn much.” You told her to which the scavenger turned Jedi gave you a grin, having you look at her before she gently pressed your lips to hers. You gave a low hum of approval as you tightened your hold around her waist, kissing back just as gently. Kissing in the rain, who would have thought that was something you could mark off your bucket list, huh? The kiss was slow, sweet, and full of passion as you both shut your eyes, allowing the raindrops to fall onto you both as you kissed; Neither of you wanted to pull away. You would have gladly stood there for hours just kissing but eventually your lungs began to scream at you for air so you had no choice but to pull away first. Your lips were only a few centimetres away from hers as you opened your eyes once more to look into her brown eyes, a smile on her face as she opened her eyes to stare into your own eyes. She was gorgeous, beautiful even as she stood here in the rain soaked to the bone. You couldn’t help the chuckle that passed your lips as you kissed her once more, this one a bit heated compared to before and Rey gladly returned it.

You didn’t push the kiss any further then that, just enjoying the feeling of her lips on yours and the closeness of her body against yours. It was perfect and when you pulled away, you both just smiled at one another as you brought her close to you once more. It was only when she sneezed that a laugh escaped you and you looked down at her.

“Come on, let’s get you back inside and dry off before we both get sick.” You told her, going and keeping her close to you as she gave you a nod of agreement. You both made your way back up the cliff and into the base, shivering as the warmth of the cave began to reach you both. You were both soaked to the bone and Leia couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped her once she spotted the both of you, making her way over.

“There you two are.. I was actually looking for you, (Y/N).” Leia spoke, a small smile on her face at the two of you. Leia was like the mother you never had; She was there for you no matter what happened and more times than not she took care of you before you even knew yourself what was wrong. You would do anything she asked of you in a heartbeat. You couldn’t help the smile that made its way to your lips.

“Sorry General I uh- I wanted to show Rey the rain, make some better memories for her with it.” You admitted to which Rey gave Leia a small wave as she sniffled and wiped her nose clean. Leia gave her a small nod, another smile aimed towards Rey before she looked at you once more.

“I just wanted to tell you that tomorrow I’m sending you and Dameron out on a mission. It’ll last about a week or so.. I want you and him in the meeting room tomorrow for the briefing. That's okay with you, right?” Leia asked you to which a serious expression appeared on your face before you gave a nod. You didn’t even need to think twice of the answer but you shifted your gaze to Rey as you felt her tighten her hold around your hand; Rey always hated when you were sent off on missions without her, but she trusted Poe so she knew you’d be in good hands regardless of what would happen.

“Yes General. I’ll see you tomorrow then.” You told her to which she gave you a smile and a nod.

“Good, now go get yourselves dried before you get sick. You do have the day off after all, remember?” Leia spoke to which you blinked, a confused look on your face. In all honesty, you didn’t have the day off and after you were finished watching the rain you had intended to start your long list of things to do; There was work that needed to be done and when you were about to comment on it that’s when you caught her wink and relaxed, a smile spreading on your face once more.

“Of course, how could I forget?” You spoke to which she chuckled and headed off in her direction while you and Rey made your way to your room. Once there, you both stripped down of your clothes, hung them up to dry, and took a quick pop in the refresher to warm yourselves up; Both of you taking separate showers for the time being. Rey was quiet as you washed yourself off after she had gotten out, her mind racing with thoughts and you could sense it from where you were. You shifted your gaze outside of the refresher and watched as she clutched the towel around her.

“Rey? You alright..?” You questioned to which she jumped, letting out a breath as she turned to you and nodded.

“I’m fine. I’m going to steal some of your clothes, alright?” She questioned you and you gave a nod in response.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Take whatever you want.” You told her before you returned to your shower, deciding to make it quick so you could talk with her. Once you were warmed up and cleaned off, you turned off the refresher. Getting out, you grabbed the towel and dried off before you made your way into the room and glanced at your bed. Rey was laying there, scrolling through a holopad you had; Her face was expressionless but you could tell her mind was racing a thousand thoughts a minute. She was currently wearing one of your shirts and a pair of shorts she had found and she honestly looked really good, you would admit but you wouldn’t allow your mind to wander to such places right now. You gave a small hum as you began to dress yourself before you joined her on the bed, resting your head on her shoulder as you watched her scroll through many of the mission reports on your holopad. It was quiet, the only noise heard was each other's breathing and the occasional thunder and lightning combo outside.

“You’re scared of me going out tomorrow, aren’t you?” You questioned to which she tensed up, her finger hovering just above the holopad before she sighed and placed it aside, shifting her gaze to you.

“That obvious?” She questioned to which you nodded, going ahead and adjusting yourself so you were holding her close, her head once more against your chest as you rubbed at her back; Her hair was no longer in it’s usual buns but splayed out across her back and you couldn’t help yourself as you ran your fingers through it.

“I’m going to be okay, baby.. I promise. You know Poe wouldn’t let anything happen to me.” You told her, watching as she moved to lay on you, her arms wrapping tightly around your midsection as her legs intertwined with yours. You took the time to adjust and laid back on the bed, your head hitting the pillow as you continued to play with her hair and rub at her back.

“I know he will and I know you’ll be careful but just.. If you get hurt I'll kill you, got it?” She threatened as she shifted her gaze to look at you, her chin resting on your chest, a serious look in her eyes. You blinked carefully at her before you began to let out a small fit of laughter.

“Alright baby, I’ll be extremely careful. I promise.” You told her once more, leaning forward to press your lips against her forehead. You could feel her relax, her face moving once more as she rested it back on your chest, listening to your heartbeat as it beat in a slow, rhythmic pace in your chest.

“Okay.. I trust you.” She spoke, keeping her arms around you as you hummed lowly and continued to play with her hair, detangling it as your fingers ran through it. You knew you would be safe regardless of what the mission was, Poe always made sure whoever he left with he returned with.

“Let’s just relax and enjoy today, okay baby? It’s just me and you, nobody else and no distractions.” You told her to which Rey gave a smile and nodded as she began to cuddle into you.

“Yeah.. I like that. I love you, (Y/N).” She told you as she looked up at you once more and you smiled at her smile; It was always intoxicating and made you smile even on your worst days. Rey was possibly the best girlfriend in the galaxy for you and you loved her more than anything else in the galaxy; Rey had thought the same for you.

“I love you too, Rey.” You told her and watched as her eyes lit up once more in a rather mischievous look before she pressed a kiss to your lips, moving herself so she was now sitting on your hips. Seems like she had plans for the day and they all included you and that bed.

#Star Wars #Force Awakens #Last Jedi #Rise of Skywalker #Rey #Rey Skywalker #Rey Palpatine #Rey x Reader #Rey Skywalker x Reader #Rey Palpatine x Reader #Rey x Fem!Reader

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lixiefe · 4 years

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Can’t Touch - k.sm

Chapter Six: September

Words: 2.8k (I couldn’t divide it)

Warning: none for now

(I’ll add a gif cuz it made my day)

IT WAS NEARING your wedding day and Mrs. Kim was as busy as ever. You've met Seungmin a couple of times already. It was mostly because of his hyperactive mother, who invited you to his company whenever she visited, shoved you inside his spacious office and closed the door in a jump-scare way. Even though the first few seconds consisted of inadequate staring, it erupted small talks between the both of you, starting from 'how are you's to 'you know what's.

You noticed that he was very soft-spoken and decorous. He didn't necessarily give you small answers to avoid speaking too much, but his speech was adequate with the amount of words. You got to know quite a few outer things about him, that you could probably also discover on a magazine. But hearing it from him seemed special. And you felt special because he answered all your questions patiently.

He was nice to the point you could actually hope of your romantic happy ending. Arranged didn’t seem so bad.

And at one point, he seemed to enjoy answering you. He often cast down his laptop lid at the sight of you. And peered at you with undivided attention- with that heart wrecking look on his face, which made you feel even more flustered.

And you loved the fact that he didn't question your rather simple, in your words- trashy outfit choices, which heavily contained random uniforms. You would've dressed up for him- you screamed at yourself too, but your meetings were always spontaneous, so you went out with whatever you were wearing. (“Y/n! I need you right now! Come with me please.” Mrs. Kim hollered. “Right now? b-but I need to change--” “There’s no need, dear. It doesn’t matter. Quick!”)

Seungmin didn't seem to care about your attire. At all. Once you’d apologized for coming in poorly and he had given you a mocking eyebrow lift. After jeeringly looking you up, he replied that its your comfort that mattered. Even though, in this case, your comfort wasn’t your choice (Its was your workplace’s), your inner self could but swoon at him.

You also noticed one of his many many impressive traits- he was always honest and authentic on his opinions. Maybe it was a habit he’d grown since diaper-hood but you admired it. Nothing about him and his words were over-sentimental, be it for press or himself in general.

Today, you were scheduled for a planned meeting with Seungmin, in his home. His living quarters (The thought was chilling). You were to bring your mother as well, but she felt slightly sick, and forced you to go alone. You had your worries set on her, but nonetheless, you went. You made sure to imprint a better impression this time. So pairing with a nice, decent, navy dress, you wore some matching earrings- that you didn't think you had- and applied slight makeup.

You got out of the taxi and stepped your sandal clad feet on the pavement in front of his building. You exhaled a deep breath through your lips in an attempt to boost up your confidence and proceeded towards your destination, preparing to be awestruck with Seungmin and his stupidly lavish home. Mrs. Kim had said that today was special for the both of you, and that you could look forward to it.

Suspicious, but who are you to question it anyways?

"Hey!" you heard a cheery voice from behind you, shaking up at the unexpected call. You turned around to search for the source of the voice, coming face to face with the brightest smile adorning a squirrel like face. At the first sight, he looked undeniably cute and sort of – as much as you thought of it as cheating, you couldn't deny- attractive. He looked like the unplanned diva, innocently blind to the attention he absorbed- or maybe not. His eyes sparkled with immeasurable joy, with a smile so contagious that it could be severely infectious to each and everyone around. He wasn't much taller than you and had dyed blonde hair styled in a flaunting manner.

"Hello," you staidly greeted as you proceeded to give him a bow.

"Whoa, you don't have to be so polite." He said. You felt that he seemed hesitant all of a sudden, but nonetheless, he exuded warmth and cordiality.

"I'm Han Jisung," he introduced himself, extending his hand towards you for a handshake; smile still adjacent to his radiant face. You shook his hands, again giving him a little bow with your head. His never- wavering smile encouraging you to reciprocate.

"I am--"

"I know, I know. I cannot not know my best friend's soon to be wife now, can I?" he flirtatiously giggled. Cordial and friendly people like him were so rare and that made you crack a soundful smile as well.

"I, the mighty and fantastic Han Jisung, am your escort for tonight. Please anticipate today's event," he acted out skillfully, bowing to you with victorian hand motions and elegance . He reminded you of superficial historic knights, except he was a modern stylish man with dramatic acting skills. You couldn't help but laugh.

"Come one, I'll show you the way," you followed behind him, constantly looking around you in awe. When you thought the dress boutique was extravagant, Seungmin's company building was baroque. It excelled in decorative composition and was keenly pleasing to naked eye. And the employees were just as fashionable as the interior. It made you feel inferior among all the diva-like presence.

You were so focused on eyeing your surroundings that without knowing, you arrived at an almost deserted part of the floor. And you wondered why there weren't any people in this particular area. You looked ahead to Jisung's walking figure, heading towards what looked like an elevator. And when you were close enough, you realized that it was, indeed, an elevator. A very entrance door looking elevator.

"After you," Jisung mused as he stood aside in front of the gates, pressing on the buttons and the gates immediately opened, revealing a vacant space.

Without keeping the latter waiting, you stepped inside the elevator, gawked yet again. The theme of the space seemed to be matte black and gold, and it was absolutely gorgeous. It had mirrors above your head and right behind you, along with a tiny hanging shelf which contained a bunch of hygienic equipment, a little opaque bottle of perfume and a few other things on the adjacent folders that you couldn’t see.

"Seungminnie likes privacy like no other. That's why, he has his very own personal elevator. Although it's smaller than the public ones." Jisung informed. It was as if he read your mind when he replied to your unasked question. You 'hmm'ed at him, mentally marveling how he'd said "seungminnie'.

It was cute.

You had gotten the fact that Seungmin was exceptionally self-kept. But it bugged you when he said this was a small space, because it seemed to be as large as your home bathroom- which you were much satisfied with. But he didn't need to know that.

You both reached the top floor in seconds and swiftly got out, facing a rather plain door right in front of you. You stood still, this place was new to you and you didn't want to be the one knocking on the door first. You knew for a certain that claustrophobia wouldn't hit you all of a sudden, but it was still sort of nerve-wracking.

everything was nerve-wracking for you.

You grasped that 'knocking' seemed irrelevant when you saw Jisung casually pushing in the pin number and unlocking the door in seconds with a single ting sound. You were stiff, both because you were unknown to this place and because this was Seungmin's abode, somewhere you were to live as well. That thought made you feel uneasy for a moment. For someone who lived their whole life in a mediocre and sophisticated way, you couldn't imagine yourself calling an amenity like this, home.

Jisung ushered you to go inside, pushing the door so that it was wide open for you. You cautiously walked inside, Jisung gliding in after you. As you got in, you were instantly faced with Mrs. Kim to whom you bowed, showing courtesy. She nodded at you, smiling and brought you further inside by your arm.

The inside was just as you thought, lavish and deluxe furniture decorating the span of the living room. There was a large curved-screen TV placed in front of the davenport. You didn't dare determine just how expensive the structure was. Everything was absolutely immaculate. Spare dust; you couldn't even see any misplaced item or any obstacles to the eye when you panorama-viewed the interior. It looked extremely akin to a newly bought apartment, with basically no flaws.

Mrs. Kim was explaining to you where Seungmin was and asking you occasional questions about your mother and your well-being. You saw Jisung leisurely dropping berries into his mouth while sitting on the divan with one of his legs smugly resting atop the other. He looked like it was just as much of a home to him as it was to Seungmin. He could spread out on the divan and watch a movie; yet be completely careless because no one would object his actions.

Minutes after, Seungmin came from the hallway that lead to other rooms. You greeted him with a curt bow and small smile which he reciprocated, looking like the same handsome man you’d seen these times.

Mrs. Kim left both of you supposedly to bring some important 'thing'. Before that, she excitedly tugged Jisung inside with her. Her smile permanent. Because of the harsh tug, Jisung stumbled to get up from his posh sitting, but managed to steady himself just fine; and ran after Mrs. Kim with clumsy feet.

"Take a seat, please," Seungmin offered. He directed you towards the divan, hands ghosting over your back. This was the closest you've gotten to him since that day. It was polite to not touch someone's back while guiding them, but you couldn't help but feel like there was an ulterior motive to it. But that was not what you wanted to think about.

As you sat down on the comfortable seat, Seungmin took the opposite seat from yours.

"You look like you changed your styling preferences, but you still look very nice," you complimented him, with a soft yet quite voice. Coincidentally, you both matched in color. He was wearing a navy blue shirt with slightly rotated collar, making it look dispositional yet elegant, but you knew this was fashion. He also wore black slacks which matched him greatly.

How can someone manage to be this perfect and bat their lashes like it’s nothing?

"Those formal stuff can't be altered to match updated style much, you'd see me wearing this type of clothes more if I'm outside of work," he replied. He sounded like a chic person in general, a stark difference to you. His attire was casual yet sophisticated, and you wondered how he looked more dashing the more you got to know him. He was handsome and dressy from the first, but everyday he turned even more perfect. Are humans supposed to work like that?

Maybe you were too sleepy.

You heard excited shouts and hysterical 'woo's which you knew were coming from Jisung in the most chaotic way. You both paid attention to the upcoming people as you averted your eyes. Mrs. Kim came with a square and shiny gold packaging with Jisung carrying a dark cake with his barely stable feet. You promptly went to the wavering boy and helped him set the cake on the table.

You felt embarrassed when you saw it was a birthday cake for Seungmin, with candles forming the number 26 above the cake. You felt like you didn't care enough to know his birthday and it made you feel guilty. Before apologizing, you made sure to glue this date into your head, September 22. This was a crucial information, so there was no way you could forget it.

"I never knew it's you birthday, I'm extremely sorry--" Seungmin shook his head, reminding you that it was redundant. In unabated embarrassment, you smacked your lips together, looking anywhere else but him.

"Eyy, you weren't supposed to," He says, pert. And shied at that, face hidden behind the shelter of your hair. You lifted your head at Mrs. Kim. And before you knew it, she had shoved the wrapped up plastic knife in your hands and forwarded you right in front of the cake. You felt the others surrounding you and the lighted cake.

His mother animatedly motioned you to cut the cake. Jisung already clapping faintly in a rhythm with hyped whistles. You weren't supposed to be the spotlight, it wasn't your special day. You meekly looked Seungmin. To which he encouraged you to proceed as well.

But you couldn't cut the cake for someone else's birthday. So you shook you head at him and held the knife in front of him. He took it from you and fleetly cut the chocolate coated cake. And right before that, the other two had started singing happy birthday to him, like he were a little boy. And with an eye-smile, you joined them, singing it in synchronization.

You heard a somewhat giggle like sound from Seungmin, your heart beat reacting to it in an instant and incredibly speeding up. For a second, you admired him with his blatantly dazzling smile lighting up his face and the raw happiness in his shining eyes. He was like any other smothered only-child, celebrating his birthday in sheer commemoration.

Seungmin fed all of you a bite of the cake with a spoon. Even more than the moment he fed you, what you loved the most was the unwavering smile of his lips and the bright stars in his eyes. You saw a whole constellation, one that stretched into abyss and sparkled like polished diamonds. It was your first time seeing him so exultant – and so smiley- that you wished you'd see more of this Seungmin.

But what you didn't notice was how he wiped the handle of the knife with the decoration-handkerchief stuck to his belt. You didn't, but Jisung did. And he applauded Seungmin for turning his sneaky means into fashion.

"Alright, now get ready for the main event of this day," Jisung yelled, clapping his hands to attract your attention. Both you and Seungmin looked at the older male, providing him 'undivided attention'. While Mrs. Kim swiftly extracted two velvet boxes from the mysterious sparkly bag. Your eyes were now on her as she stood in front of you both, the boxes in her hands. You could see one of them being crimson while the other was a beautiful royal blue. You were instantly striked with jitters in the anticipation of what’s to come.

"Tada! Y/N's ring is chosen by Seungmin, so you can answer yourself if its too glamorous," she stated with a sing-song voice and giggled heartily. She came to you as she handed you the red box, placing the other on Seungmin's outstretched hand. "Open up."

You opened the lid to see the most delicately ornate ring you'd ever seen. And you were touched so deeply at the first sight of it. You could only imagine the cost of it, and so, a part of you felt bad. So much money was spent on you that it was unimaginable.

"Do you like it?" you heard Seungmin ask you. You immediately thought, 'what a nonsense question' but you didn't say it out loud. This ring was so beyond your expectations. It was obvious that you cannot but love it.

"This is so beautiful. I don't even have words for it," you said, with sincerity. And true enough, you were lost of speech. The ring wasn't too sparkly, it was elegantly modest. There were three pearly diamonds gradually decreasing in size from left to right. It sparkled even more as you rotated it under the lights. It was your engagement ring, so it held so much more to it than just the beauty of it. It wasn’t anything grandiloquent, but sincere.

Seungmin smiled at your response.

You saw him pick up his ring and wear it on his ring finger- by himself. Your heart felt a heavy weight, the feeling of disappointment. And you realized, that he wasn't going to hold your hand like a prince charming and fit the ring into your finger. I mean of course not, he wasn’t marrying you out of love.

You forced yourself to accept it as it is without further illogical presuppositions . Expecting more from him would be fairly selfish, and you didn't want that. Expectations were futile, and it only made you brittle.

Mrs. Kim furrowed her brows as she opened her mouth to object her son's action, but her attempt was replaced with Jisung's ringing voice.

"Minnie, wouldn't you thank your mother for the ring? She was the one who chose it." Jisung nervously laughed. Seungmin looked up from his ring and thanked his mother; telling her that he loved the ring to which she only smiled with hesitance. Jisung huffed a sigh of relief.

You didn't wait anymore. Picking up the ring, you slid it into your ring finger, pretending to admire how beautiful yet – a bit out if place- it looked on your finger. And as everyone eyed your reaction to it, no matter how much you liked its artistry and glamour, how much it concisely meaningful it was, your mind repeatedly asked why Seungmin didn't put it on you; it left a heavy weight pulling down your heart and you could only feign a grateful smile.

It wasn't sincere, you knew it. And Jisung knew it.

a/n: I’m not happy about this at all. My writing is going down the hills and that’s a fact. T.T

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darnloveablecharacters · 4 years

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Prove Me Wrong, Part Twenty-One: The Archer

Series Summary: Caithwistë, born from the only known pairing of an elf and a dwarf has spent most of her life in hiding. When an old friend, (or a certain meddling wizard) finds her in the woods, everything changes. Now, she will have the chance to prove the world wrong about her value. A ‘The Hobbit’ fanfiction based off of the following imagines from @imaginexhobbit: This One is the basis of the story, and This One and This One will be added in later. If you recognize it, it belongs to Professor Tolkien or Peter Jackson. But, as usual, the story and all of the mistakes are my own!

Prove Me Wrong - Masterlist

Chapter Notes: Okay y’all, truth time. I’ve had this chapter written for WEEKS. But as I was reviewing it to post this morning, I realized there was that one thing I wanted to do, but couldn’t find the right time for. This was literally my last chance to work it in so.... the first half may have excessive errors because I just wrote it in the past couple of hours lol.

Warnings for this chapter: pretty fluffy... but in a friendly way? lol

Tagged: @imaginesreblogged @chevycastiel1967 @rices4me93 If you want to be added just let me know!

The Company gathered at the end of a narrow pathway, waiting for Bilbo to return. Mithrandir had asked him to scout ahead, much to Caithwistë’s frustration. He believed that Bilbo would have an easier time of staying undetected as the pack would most likely focus on the scents of Thorin and Caithwistë to track. She knew the wizard was most likely correct, but she still felt uneasy with Bilbo scouting alone.

“Shall we start calling you Auntie now?” Came Kili’s voice, breaking her out of her thoughts.

Caithwistë rolled her eyes. “Focus Kili.” She chided softly, listening intently for any signs of Bilbo or the pack.

“Leave her alone Kili.” Fili said and Caithwistë glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. “She is definitely our Auntie.” He added quietly, leaning toward Kili with a mischievous grin.

Kili clasped his hands together, smiling widely. “Wonderful. Since we don’t seem to have a moment of time in this quest for you to help me with my archery, we will have plenty of time after we reclaim the mountain!”

Caithwistë shook her head, equally amused and exasperated with the brothers’ teasing already. “Would you like your first lesson then?” She asked, crossing her arms.

Kili’s eyes widened. “Really?” He asked with barely concealed excitement.

Caithwistë grinned and nodded, and Kili stepped toward her eagerly. “The first lesson is silence.” She said, waiting for his reaction.

“Oh.” Kili said, slightly dejected. Fili laughed at this until he caught Caithwistë’s glare.

“An archer can survive with decent aim, for a time;” She began, circling Kili. “however, the true hunter is most effective when the target does not realize they are there. To achieve this, you must be silent and aware of all that is happening around you. Your eyes only show you what is in front of you, but your other senses can give you a greater understanding of what truly surrounds you.” She stopped and noted that Kili was watching her intently now, as were the other members of the Company. “Close your eyes.” She commanded quietly. Kili squeezed his eyes shut and she smiled at his enthusiasm. “Allow everything in and try to identify everything as it comes to you.” Kili nodded and furrowed his brows in concentration. “What do you feel?” She asked.

Kili cocked his head to the side and smiled. “A breeze, from the North.”

Caithwistë nodded. “Very good, what do you smell?”

Kili wrinkled his nose. “Dwalin.”

Caithwistë giggled at that but continued. “We may need to work on that part. Now, this is possibly the most important. What do you hear?”

The Company was completely still now, waiting for Kili’s response. “There’s a rustling in the trees, behind me.”

Caithwistë nodded again. “Take out your bow and aim.” She whispered, knowing what he had picked up on.

Kili hesitated. “With my eyes closed?”

“Yes.” She said firmly. Kili pulled out his bow, nocked an arrow and aimed in the direction the noise had come from. Caithwistë took a deep breath, and gave him the command. “Release.”

Kili did as she asked, and she smiled at the sound of the impact. He had hit his target. He opened his eyes, glancing at her uncertainly and she gestured to the trees. “Go and fetch it then.”

Kili dashed through the brush and Thorin stepped to her side. “Do you think this is wise?”

Caithwistë smirked. “Do you wish to eat tonight?” She asked as Kili called out in triumph.

He re-emerged from the trees, holding out the rabbit he had just killed. “Did you see that Uncle? I did that with my eyes closed!”

Thorin let out a sigh and smiled at his nephew. “Well done Kili.” He eventually said with pride.

Kili’s mouth dropped open in shock, then he glanced at Caithwistë with glassy eyes before the rest of the Company gathered around him, offering their own congratulations.

Thorin turned to Caithwistë. “Thank you, Unalê.” He whispered softy, gazing at her affectionately.

Caithwistë reached out and squeezed his hand but gasped when another sound reached her ears.

“What is it?” Thorin asked, suddenly on edge at her abrupt change in mood.

Caithwistë closed her eyes in concentration and after a moment, smiled again. “Bilbo.” She breathed in relief. She opened her eyes at the sound of a snap, watching as Thorin and Dwalin rushed forward with their weapons at the ready to meet the hobbit.

“How close is the pack?” Thorin asked as Bilbo ran into sight.

“Too close, couple of leagues, no more.” He said running past them toward the center of the company. “But that’s not the worst of it.” He added, turning back to Thorin.

Caithwistë stepped between Fili and Kili, wondering what he had seen when Dwalin asked. “Have the Orcs picked up our scent?”

Bilbo shook his head. “Not yet, but they will do. We have another problem.”

Mithrandir stepped in behind him with concern. “Did they see you? They saw you.”

Flustered Bilbo shook his head again. “No, that’s not it.”

“Good, what did I tell you?” Mithrandir said, visibly relieved. “Quite as a mouse. Excellent burglar material.”

The Company began to add their comments of agreement, but Caithwistë stayed silent watching Bilbo’s agitation increase. “Will you listen?!” He complained. “I’m trying to tell you there is something else out there.”

Caithwistë tensed and stepped passed Thorin toward the path, listening again.

“What form did it take? Like a bear?” Mithrandir asked as her gaze darted to the trees.

“Ye…Yes,” Bilbo stammered. “but bigger. Much bigger.”

“You knew about this beast?” Bofur asked incredulously.

Caithwistë glanced back as Mithrandir turned away in deep thought.

“I say we double back.” Bofur suggested after a moment of silence.

“We do not have time.” Caithwistë muttered.

Thorin nodded in agreement. “We’ll be run down by a pack of Orcs.”

“Then where do we go?” Ori asked with wide eyes.

“There is a house,” Mithrandir began slowly, turning back to the Company. “it’s not far from here, where we might take refuge.”

“Whose house?” Thorin asked in frustration. He had already been misled by the wizard, forcing their journey to cross through Imladris against his wishes. “Are they friend or foe?”

“Neither.” Mithrandir admitted. “He will help us, or he will kill us.”

Caithwistë furrowed her eyebrows and turned back to the trees, drawing Emel-o Orcrist.

“What choice do we have?” Thorin asked, before a loud roar rang out among the trees. Thorin was at Caithwistë’s side in an instant, ready to help her defend against their new enemy.

“None.” Came Mithrandir’s unwavering voice.

Thorin glanced at her and she nodded with determination, pulling him back toward the now retreating Company.

As they dashed through the trees, Caithwistë could now hear the sound of the pack drawing nearer as well. Their pursuit was stopped; however, when another roar called out from the forest.

“This way! Quickly!” Mithrandir commanded, leading the way into a clearing.

Caithwistë moved to follow but stopped in her tracks. Bombur was frozen in place in front of her with wide eyes and she saw his bottom lip quiver in fear as he focused on a spot behind her. She ran to him, Thorin still at her side and they both grabbed him, trying to pull him forward. “Keep moving Bombur.” Caithwistë warned.

Bombur nodded, shaking out of his daze and took off with an inexplicable speed. By the time the small house was in sight, he had made it to the front of the Company and was leading them to safety.

As they approached the gate, Caithwistë drew her bow and nocked an arrow to cover their entrance but Mithrandir grasped tightly onto the arrow, glaring at her. “Caithwistë do not shoot him! You will only anger him more.” She glanced at him uncertainly but followed his wish and returned the arrow to her quiver. As Thorin dashed through the gate, they turned toward the house. “Open the door!” Mithrandir cried as the Company pushed against it.

Thorin shoved his way forward, releasing the latch and they pressed into the house quickly. Caithwistë was the last to enter and she was roughly pulled further in as the doors were closed, blocked by the head of the bear that had followed them.

She watched in shock as the Company struggled against its strength. It was massive, taller than even Mithrandir on all fours and was snapping at them menacingly. Mercifully, the bear quickly relented its attack and backed out of the opening, allowing the Company to close and bar the doors.

The dwarves leaned against the barricaded door in their relief, panting from the exertion.

“What is that?” Ori asked, turning to Mithrandir.

“That is our host.” Mithrandir replied with a smirk.

Caithwistë glanced at him with surprise. “How could this be?” She asked curiously.

Mithrandir regarded her with amusement. “His name is Beorn, he’s a skin-changer.” He said, glancing around at the Company who were all watching him with wide eyes. “Sometimes he’s a huge black bear, sometimes he’s a great strong man. The bear is unpredictable, but the man can be reasoned with. However, he is not over fond of dwarves.”

Caithwistë had begun to wander through the house as Mithrandir told the tale, Thorin and Dwalin trailing silently behind her. At those last words, she glanced at Thorin whose face had fallen into a deep grimace. This was yet another complication they did not need in their quest that had already been a great challenge.

“He’s leaving.” Ori said with his ear pressed to the door.

“Come away from there!” Dori pleaded, rushing forward to pull his brother away. “It’s not natural, none of it. It’s obvious, he’s under some dark spell.” Glaring darkly to Mithrandir.

“Don’t be a fool.” Mithrandir said with a huff. “He’s under no enchantment but his own.” He took his hat off and tossed it onto a chair before commanding them to get some rest. “You’ll be safe here tonight. I hope.” He said, with a glance out the window.

“I will take the first watch.” Caithwistë offered, noticing Mithrandir’s unease.

“You will not.” Thorin commanded, crossing his arms. Caithwistë turned to him and crossed her own arms, watching him carefully with her silent challenge. In her periphery, she noticed Dwalin roughly pull Fili and Kili out of the kitchen as Thorin stared her down. It wasn’t until they were out of earshot when he finally stepped closer and asked quietly. “When was the last time you slept?”

Caithwistë raised her eyebrow and smirked. Thorin dropped his eyes and scratched his head then, chuckling. It was the rare moment of bashfulness that she had come to treasure, but he was not deterred. “I mean a full night of rest.” He asked after a moment, meeting her eyes again.

Caithwistë considered the question and sighed with frustration when she realized, she could not remember. He smiled when she tapped her fingers against her arm, confirming his thoughts. “Sleep Unalê.” He urged, gripping her shoulder comfortingly. “There may be no other warm place for us to rest between here and Erebor.” He stepped back, gesturing to the area the Company was settling down for the night, but she didn’t move. She was still glaring at him and Thorin rolled his eyes, guessing at what was troubling her. “There will be no watch tonight. We will all rest.” He assured her.

Caithwistë smiled then. “Thank you, My King.” She said quietly. She kissed his cheek and skipped cheerfully down the steps, plopping down to the empty space next to Bofur who was already snoring. Settling herself comfortably in the bed of hay, she glanced back up at Thorin who was rooted in place watching her. She narrowed her eyes at him and he sighed, stepping down and taking the spot next to her.

Caithwistë found herself drifting to sleep quickly with her shoulder pressed against Thorin’s. She wasn’t sure if it was reality or dream but as her consciousness faded into slumber, she felt a gentle kiss to her forehead and Thorin’s deep voice washed over her. “Hurun ganat, Amrâlimê.”

“Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum ishi krimpatul.”

Caithwistë woke with a start, trembling. The dream had been so vivid, and yet she could not recall the words that had been spoken. Only the fear that they had ripped through her at the sound. She glanced down at Thorin, who was still sleeping peacefully and took a steadying breath. She pushed herself to her feet slowly, hoping to not disturb him with the movement and silently slipped out of the door at the back of the home.

As soon as Caithwistë exited the home, she took a deep breath of the crisp air of the night. She picked up an acorn as she wandered the gardens, absentmindedly turning it over in her hands. Eventually, she slumped on a bench and closed her eyes, trying to center herself. She was distracted though at the sound of light footsteps. She glanced up and smiled at the hobbit approaching her warily. “Are you all right?” Bilbo asked when he reached her.

“I’m fine Bilbo. Just a bad dream.” She assured him with a wave.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Bilbo asked, regarding her compassionately.

Caithwistë shook her head. “Not really, I would prefer to forget.”

Bilbo nodded in understanding and took a seat next to her. They spent a few moments in a comfortable silence before Bilbo smirked. “So, you and Thorin then?”

Caithwistë’s lips quirked up in a small grin, but the smile fell as she considered everything that had happened. She glanced down at the acorn she was rolling between her fingers before responding. “I love him, very much but I am afraid.” She finally admitted softly.

Bilbo waited for an explanation, but when none came he glanced at the house and sighed. “You’re afraid that he’ll see you differently when he finds out you’re not a hobbit?”

Caithwistë’s eyes snapped to him in shock. “You knew?”

Bilbo raised an eyebrow and nodded. “It’s not hard to figure out if you know what to look for.”

Caithwistë looked down at her shoes and smiled bitterly. “I suppose not. Do the others know?”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe so, but I also don’t believe it would matter to them. They care about you, and they clearly trust you. Surely that’s enough to give them your own trust?”

“Perhaps.” She said glumly, thinking about his words. There was more at stake now than she had imagined there could be. She loved all of them but was also lying to them. It was hard for her to deny even now that Thorin cared deeply for her. How much of that would change when he knew the truth? She couldn’t bear the thought of the pain it may cause for all of them when she explained her deception. She would have to though; the lie was too great of a burden to carry any longer.

She was cut from her internal battle when Bilbo squeezed her hand in a comforting gesture. “Things will work out.” He said gently. “No matter what happens, I am glad to have met you.”

She smiled at him with glassy eyes. “Thank you, Bilbo.” She said gratefully. A thought suddenly struck her and she released herself from his grip pressing the acorn into his hand. “You should plant this in your garden at Bag End. It will be a fine addition to the seeds you gathered from Imladris.”

Bilbo’s eyes widened. “Thank you Miss Caithwistë!” He exclaimed, pulling her into a tight hug.

Caithwistë returned the embrace, chuckling. “It’s me that should be thanking you.” She said pulling away. “You mean the world to me Bilbo. Thank you for being here.”

Bilbo smiled, eyes twinkling before shooting another glance back toward the house. “I think we should go back inside. I would rather not be caught by Gandalf or Thorin out here when we’re supposed to be sleeping.”

“I think you’re right Master Baggins.” Caithwistë said with a smirk. “The last thing we need today is a lecture.”

They crept back into the house and quietly slipped back into their places. Caithwistë laid next to Thorin who was snoring softly, and she smiled at the peaceful King. Perhaps Bilbo was right, she considered as she closed her eyes.

Maybe, he would understand.

Translations: Unalê – My Tracker (khuzdul); Hurun ganat, Amrâlimê – rest well, My Love (khuzdul); Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum ishi krimpatul - One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. (black speech)

Authors Note: I had half a mind to follow the book of them entering Beorn’s house because it always makes me giggle but for this particular story… we need the tension. *sigh*

#the hobbit #the hobbit imagine #Thorin Oakenshield #thorin x ofc #thorin imagine

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pseudorganized · 4 years

Text

The Bachelor(s)

Summary: (Sequel to My Best Friend's Wedding)

"It's the night before the Big Day. Are you ready? See you at the Bachelor Parties tonight! #bakahusbands"

Or Daiki and Ryouta are getting married but Daiki needs to get through the bachelor parties first.

Characters/Pairings: Aomine Daiki, Kise Ryouta, AoKise. A bunch of cameos.

Notes: After two years, #bakaboyfriends will finally become #bakahusbands because it took me two years to write up the sequel lolAnyway, here is my actual offering for AoKise Day but I am fashionably late, it seems. There will probably be mistakes and those are mine. But anyway, I won't delay you any more. Hope you enjoy!

Also available over at Ao3!

"Aomine-kun, Akashi-kun has a problem."

Tetsu's eyes were huge in his face like they usually were but for some reason, they gave Daiki an uneasy feeling just then. The feeling didn't ease when Daiki found himself meeting eyes with Akashi who looked too calm and too serious as always..

"Aomine, I apologize." The apology felt sincere and Daiki wished Akashi would blink. "I don't have smaller bills."

Not for the first time in the past few days (weeks, months) Daiki had no idea what was going on. "...What?"

"For the night's… entertainment," Akashi non-explained delicately, quietly, still very seriously and Daiki really wished he knew what he was talking about.

Satsuki only told him to come pool-side where “his” side of the bachelor party was going to be. No one told him he was going to have any part of keeping things organized, never mind having to hold Akashi Seijuuro's hand through commoner pre-wedding festivities.

He probably looked like the actual idiot he was because Akashi's face was actually starting to look a bit pinched. You kind of start to notice his shifting expressions after spending some time with him and he often told you to run laps until you dropped dead.

"I don't have the necessary denomination for tipping the exotic dancers--"

"Wait."

Daiki felt like his head had exploded. He held up his hand to Akashi's face to stop him. He must have really just experienced brain damage because he actually dared to just put his hand up to Akashi's face within stabbing distance.

What the fuck?

Daiki looked urgently at Tetsu. "Exotic--I thought Satsuki said no strippers?"

Tetsu looked at him quietly for a long time.

Big, innocent eyes on his stupid, fucking child-like face.

"Yes, Momoi-san definitely said no strippers," Tetsu confirmed.

Daiki absolutely felt his blood pressure shoot up. "Then why did you--"

"Oh, I understand now." Akashi interrupted Daiki mid-mind explosion #2. Now those eyes were on Tetsu.

Tetsu turned his head and looked right back at Akashi.

No fear, ice cold. He just needed a milkshake and a pair of sunglasses.

Akashi looked back at him like he was about to wage some kind of war. It felt like the Winter Cup Finals back in first year high school all over again. "That was not funny, Kuroko."

In turn, Tetsu smiled a little, the Rakuzan ass-kicking asshole. "I kind of thought it was, Akashi-kun."

And Daiki left them there because he did not need the added stress on his already huge pile of it the day before his wedding. Where the hell was Kagami when he needed him?

Two years ago, Satsuki got married and Daiki had been involved with some tasks and responsibilities for the wedding. He had seen first hand what kind of stress and turmoil one had to go through just for one special day and he had thought himself adequately prepared for it. As usual, he was wrong. It was a whole other ballgame when it was you on the way to be shackled and it was your soon-to-be spouse who was stressed because no, Daiki, we can’t just do it at our favorite outdoor court! Among other things.

And now they were at this beach resort with a bazillion of their family, friends and acquaintances (It’s just about a hundred people, Daiki, don’t be dramatic--) for the ceremony. Tonight was the bachelor parties which took up the bar and restaurant and pool areas. Too many people they knew and vaguely did were milling around socializing, eating, drinking and having a great time before the big day tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Daiki was overwhelmed and kind of tired but that wasn’t anything new nowadays.

"Hey, Aomine!"

Daiki stopped then sighed before just turning towards the voice, not at all surprised to find himself face-to-face with his brother-in-law. Well, sort of brother-in-law.

Hamada Tadashi was a robotics engineer who was involved in developing technologies towards making the world a better place. More importantly, he also happened to be married to Satsuki, thus explaining his presence in the party. What was strange was how he was seated at a table with his old Touou Captain, Imayoshi Shoichi, and one Kuroo Tetsurou. Looking at all three of them together already made Daiki's head hurt a little bit more.

"Are you okay?" Tadashi asked, looking genuinely concerned. Daiki might not have gone out of his way to befriend the guy until he did the right thing and proposed then married the girl Daiki considered his sister but he had always, grudgingly, thought the guy was a decent one. Always friendly and accommodating and wasn't deterred by Aomine's attitude one bit. "You want to sit down with us for a while?"

"You do look kinda overwhelmed," Imayoshi put in and Daiki was pretty sure his old Captain was giving him a surveying look.

Beside him, Kuroo hummed in agreement as he looked around idly. “It’s kind of a madhouse around here right now, huh?”

A madhouse was right and if Daiki thought about it a bit harder, his brain would most likely die. He had no idea how he and Ryouta were able to accumulate these many people as friends and acquaintances through the years. Take for example Kuroo here who was a member of FC Tokyo and was currently sitting in the smart kids’ table. Before Tadashi noticed him, they must have been talking about something brainy, like Tadashi’s latest project that had something to do with robot nurses or whatever they were called. It almost always flew over Daiki’s head whenever Satsuki tried to explain it to him.

“I have no idea where all these idiots came from,” Daiki grumbled as he took a seat beside Kuroo which faced away from the chaos happening in the pool area behind him. Normally, Daiki wasn’t one for socializing but people were here for his wedding and he supposed he could spend some time being welcoming.

“Well, you’re gonna have a wedding in a beautiful beach resort plus food and booze. Most everything’s free,” Imayoshi shrugged easily before taking a sip of his own drink, something amber and expensive-looking. “Are you really that surprised, Aomine?”

Daiki gave his old senpai a bit of a glare. “And all of you didn’t have to come.”

“Come now, Aomine, you can’t be this annoyed about us accepting your and Kise’s invitation, are you?” Kuroo has a hand over his heart, shit-eating smirk on his face, and right then Daiki knew how he and Imayoshi could get along like a house on fire. “I’m hurt. It wasn’t cheap coming out here, you know?”

Was it too late to regret his choice to sit down? It probably was.

“I think Satsuki and Kise did a great job organizing everything, though.” Tadashi came to his rescue with a winning smile, that smile that always came out when he talked about his beloved wife.

“They’re a powerful combination,” Imayoshi noted with a nod and even Kuroo had to smile at that.

It looked like Kuroo had something to add to that but then a loud whoop swelled from the pool area. Daiki looked over to that direction and found Midorima walking away from the ruckus with a bit of a pinched look on his face and the day's lucky item in one hand. It seemed to be a rolled-up sock.

“What’s going on?” Daiki asked, a bit worried that someone might come in and call everything off.

Midorima looked at Daiki like this was all his fault. “An arm-wrestling match.”

“Between who?” Kuroo suddenly asked, looking far too interested for anyone’s good.

“Iwaizumi-san and Matsuoka Rin.” Everyone turned to find that it was no other than Nijimura-senpai who spoke and tagging along was Himuro, of course. It was still kind of strange seeing their old Teiko Captain with Himuro Tatsuya but apparently they were friends. Or something.

Himuro was almost grinning. “We’re on our way to witness an epic gun show, according to Matsukawa-san.”

“Any bets going around?” It was Imayoshi who asked, unsurprisingly, as he rose up from his seat.

“Not that we know of as of yet but we can always ask around, Imayoshi-san,” Himuro replied with playful cheek and it didn’t take long before Imayoshi was walking off with them followed by a very curious Kuroo.

“Are they going to be okay?” Tadashi suddenly asked from the side.

Midorima pushed his glasses up against the bridge of his nose as he did. “I expected better from Iwaizumi-san and Matsuoka-san both but I suppose the occasion inspires a reckless sense of fun.”

It still sounded like Midorima was blaming Daiki but he had known Midorima long enough that he knew just to just ignore it.

"They're grown ass adults," Daiki said with a scoff. "They should know what they're getting into."

Thankfully, Midorima made no further comment and politely excused himself.

The noise level behind them was rising and normally, Aomine would have been in the middle of that. An arm wrestling match between Iwaizumi Hajime, his old College roommate and former volleyball ace, and an actual Olympian? Aomine would have been all over that but not today.

He sighed and he noticed Tadashi just kind of smiling at him sympathetically.

"...What?" he asked with a bit of a frown.

The smile on Tadashi's face barely shifted. "You want to take a breather? I can cover for you."

Daiki actually took a bit of time to think about it. What were the consequences if he stepped away from this circus for a while? How painful would they be? Could he actually trust Tadashi?

"Can I trust you?" he asked and Tadashi got points for not making a fuss about even being asked.

He just smiled that friendly smile and Daiki could really sort of tell why Satsuki fell for him. Tadashi was just a really nice guy.

"I think anyone would want a break every now and then."

And wasn't that true? Daiki was pretty sure Tadashi would even have some science to back all that up.

With a sigh, Daiki got up from his chair and made to go, nodding at Tadashi as he went.

"Stay outta trouble, Hamada. Don't get into any arm wrestling matches or whatever."

Tadashi's laugh sent him off. "See you later!"

Daiki raised a hand and quickly made his escape. Finally.

Walking down the path toward the restaurant and bar area made him realize that it wasn't long before sunset. The path leading to the restaurant cut through a well-maintained garden with a sea view. The sky was slowly turning into a mix of yellows, pinks and purples and even Daiki could definitely appreciate the sight.

Honestly, he could get married anywhere, even just a basketball court (wearing his favorite Jordans, of course), but he had to admit it was a good idea to have their wedding in a beautiful place like this.

"Oh there you are, Aomine-kun."

He had to look away from the view to find Mibuchi Reo coming up to him and he felt an instinctual urge to flee. Mibuchi was one of Ryouta's so-called Groom Squad, a group of Ryouta’s friends from all over who offered their assistance to Ryouta and Satsuki as the wedding approached. Daiki barely ever saw the lot of them the past few weeks without it involving some wedding-related task.

"Hey, Mibuchi-san," Daiki greeted, deciding to try and make this as painless as possible for his own good. "What's up?"

"I'm so glad you're here, Aomine-kun," Mibuchi replied, waving a well-manicured hand toward the direction that Daiki just left from and making an annoyed-looking face. "Imagine if I have to go over there where all the brutes are? No, thank you."

"You were looking for me?" Well, that was a dumb question but Daiki asked anyway.

"Yes, Mr. Husband-to-Be--" Daiki thought Mibuchi was about to reach out and pat or pinch his cheek; he didn't. "--Ryou-chan says to meet him by the Sandbar."

It was probably super sappy to say that his heart thumped when he heard that Ryouta was asking for him. "At the Sandbar?"

Mibuchi waved him off. "Yes. Go on now. He's waiting."

And after what felt like years, Daiki felt like smiling.

"Okay," he said with a nod but before he went, he took a moment to look Mibuchi over. "You look tired, Mibuchi-san."

Mibuchi made a less than elegant, very weary face and Daiki would have laughed if he could but he got it.

"Satsuki-chan runs a tight ship,” he quipped dryly. “But I love her and Ryou-chan so Neesan will persevere. I will tell you this, though, Aomine-kun.”

Mibuchi lifted a finger poignantly. “Yu-chan and I are most definitely eloping."

And that did make Daiki laugh. "I don't know if Kasamatsu-san would agree but hold on just a little bit more. This’ll all be done tomorrow."

"Thank God."

Daiki didn't waste time on making his way to the Sandbar after talking to Mibuchi. Now, the Sandbar wasn't some piece of land that sprouted up from the sea. The people who came to the resort just called it that because there was a lot of sand and there was a bar. It was an area by the beach where a bar and dining area was set up. Low tables were placed down on mats over the white sand where you could sit or even lie down comfortably and enjoy some drinks or a meal while looking out towards the beach. And if you decided to go for a swim, you were just a few steps away to doing just that.

He found Ryouta some ways away from where the early dinner crowd was, looking over to the direction of the sea and away from his phone, finally. The setting sun's golden light reflected on his hair and eyes, making him glow and look even more beautiful if that was even possible. He seemed to sense Daiki's stare as he came closer and he turned his head to smile at him.

"Aominecchi~!" Ryouta called, drawing up the old nickname teasingly that Daiki had to scoff and lean down to give him a kiss for it.

Ryouta smiled when he kissed him back and it made Daiki feel warm. That little detail was something about Ryouta that he would never get over.

Daiki sighed when he drew away. During the kiss, he had gotten a hand down to lightly cup by the side of Ryouta's neck to end up with fingertips caressing his nape. Ryouta was smiling still, looking fond and sweet and also a bit like he was tired. Daiki kissed him again for good measure. When was the last time they were alone and this close?

"Daiki must have missed me," Ryouta observed with a grin a moment later after Daiki settled beside him. Daiki didn't care to occupy his own side of the table, happy enough to just squish up against Ryouta as much as possible that he was almost on his lap. He even leaned his head by Ryouta's shoulder and closed his eyes. When he breathed in, he smelled Ryouta's lavender shampoo layered with the sunblock he must have just reapplied. Ryouta smelled so good and familiar he could fall asleep right then and there.

"Could we leave and go to bed already?" Daiki asked with his eyes closed. He bothered to ask even when he knew the answer would be "no".

A soft giggle and Daiki felt fingers playing with the hair by his nape. A shiver ran through his spine and he almost groaned. Ryouta and his magic fingers...

"But we still have the ending program for the bachelor parties, remember?"

Daiki actually groaned at that. "There's more?" He almost turned his head and nipped Ryouta on the shoulder.

Another giggle, more petting, this time more soothing and indulgent rather than playful. "Just some games and we gotta give a 'thank you' speech for the guests. Poor Daiki. I'm sorry, baby." Finally he got a kiss for his troubles. "You must be tired. Daiki needs to recharge, hm?"

"Do I get a lapdance from you at least?"

Ryouta tugged at his ear kind of hard even if he did laugh at the question. "No, Ahominecchi! Not when my sisters are gonna be watching, come on…"

That tug hurt a little and Daiki frowned but he just grumbled under his breath and took more cuddles for compensation.

If you asked him, this big, flashy celebration was not really Daiki's style. It was something he decided after having to follow Satsuki around for months to make sure she wasn't obsessing over little details too much and that she got enough rest. Wedding planning was stressful as all hell and he would prefer to not have anything to do with it if he had a choice. He could get married anywhere and have it done anytime. All that mattered was that Ryouta would be the one standing with him and that he would say "I do".

But Ryouta wanted the big, flashy wedding because it was his style. In his own way, Ryouta loved the planning, the hassle, the stress. He wanted to make memories and have people to share them with. Plus, Ryouta just loved a good party and why not make his wedding the best one ever?

And since Daiki loved him and knew what it took when it came to getting together with Kise Ryouta, he agreed to the beach resort wedding with the bazillion guests. Also the crazy bachelor parties though his batteries were drained and he would prefer not to see anymore people for the next year or so.

But for now it was okay because he was in a corner away from all that with just Ryouta and he was getting his hair petted while waves coming up the beach sounded in his ears.

"Daiki."

"Hm?"

"You awake?"

He must have dozed off for a bit because when he opened his eyes, the lights around them had been turned on and night had fallen. It was cooler and with a deep sigh, he shuffled even closer against Ryouta. He wrapped his arms around him and was prepared to get settled for a bit longer when a smell distracted him.

A waiter had come up with a bit of a smile, a tray held over one hand. On the tray were two plates of food and he laid them down carefully before them.

One plate had some beautifully grilled chicken and a hefty vegetable salad on the side. On the other plate was a burger, the patty thick and juicy and topped with finely shredded cabbage, paired with wedges of potatoes.

"I ordered us dinner!" Ryouta chirped after sending off the waiter with a smile of his own. "Did you know that they served Teriyaki Burgers here? I thought you might want to give it a try."

His burger definitely didn't look anything like the ones he got at Maji Burger but his stomach rumbled at the sight of it. When was the last time he ate?

"Do we have time for this?" Daiki asked even as he already reached to examine the burger. He wasn't sure about the cabbage but well, he was hungry.

"I asked Momocchi for at least an hour," Ryouta answered as he picked up a knife and fork and immediately pierced one of Daiki's potato wedges. Rude.

Daiki took one of the bite-sized pieces of chicken Ryouta had sliced up as payment.

"An hour?"

Ryouta hummed in answer. "An hour to have dinner and just to hang out." He offered Daiki another piece of chicken with his fork and Daiki obligingly ate it. "I told her I missed you."

Daiki cut up about two bites' worth of his burger and placed it over one side of Ryouta's plate.

"I missed you too…"

Ryouta gave him that pleased, happy smile that always crinkled his eyes, very unlike those polished ones he gave cameras, and Daiki sighed. He reached to wipe off a bit of dressing that was by Ryouta's lip with his thumb.

"Now eat,” he told him. “And you better finish all of that."

Ryouta nodded obediently. "Yes, Daddy."

And then laughed when Daiki scowled and rolled his eyes at him.

Sometimes, Daiki really couldn't believe he was actually marrying this annoying (precious) brat.

The burger was juicy with the right amount of teriyaki sauce and the cabbage added a good crunch. It was pretty good and Daiki enjoyed it as he and Ryouta had their dinner. It was their first time having a meal alone since they arrived at the resort and it was a nice break. They got to catch up a bit with each other and how the whole day had been so far. As usual, their conversation flowed smoothly, hardly a dull or quiet moment.

Daiki watched Ryouta as he told him about his day, voice lilting and always in motion. Ryouta had always been animated, full of life, glowing and golden, and Daiki often had a hard time looking away. He had long grown past the embarrassment of getting caught staring at Ryouta for too long and now, they had come to the point where Daiki knew he wouldn't really be able to look away ever again. And that thought was…

Ryouta was smiling at him, amused, and Daiki knew he was caught just staring again.

"Ah, Daiki is so in love with me," Ryouta sighed wistfully as he lifted a hand to his forehead like he was going for a swoon. "How is he to survive another night without being married to me, I wonder? This must be my curse for being so handsome."

"Oi, stop that," Daiki grumbled as he reached and took the hand that Ryouta had to his forehead, the one with the ring he gave him. "You really need to stop picking up shit like that from Oikawa-san."

Ryouta was laughing again, flushed from giggling too much and that random cocktail he ordered, while he held onto Daiki's hand and looked like, well.

Daiki's Forever.

"Ki-chan! Dai-chan!"

Satsuki appeared with a wave and a smile and Daiki sighed because he knew it was time to go back to the party. Joy.

"Momocchi!" Ryouta waved back with his other hand that was not holding Daiki's. "And Cheekinui too!"

"Can you just go back around and take that demon with you?" Daiki asked as he eyed Satsuki and the plump plushie in her arms. The plushie that resembled Ryouta down to the blond hair and big amber eyes. Daiki had no idea why Kise Ryouta plushies existed but there was probably a method to the madness and it included fangirls and wishful thinking.

Satsuki shook her head just as she handed over the plushie, Cheekinui, to a Ryouta making grabby hands. "You're always so mean to Cheekinui, Dai-chan. What did he ever do to you?"

"It's a trespasser," Daiki answered just as he avoided soft sausage hand pats that Ryouta was inflicting on his cheek via Cheekinui. "We're on a dinner date. And it’s evil."

The plush might look like Ryouta but it was evil to its core, Daiki just knew. He could tell by its penetrating, judging stare.

"Then I’m a trespasser, too," Satsuki said with a shrug and ignored Daiki's answering groan. "It's time for you two to come back and make an appearance at your party."

"Tell them we're busy," Daiki insisted and no, he was not whining. What are you talking about? But he stopped and just sulked a bit instead when Ryouta kissed his cheek.

"Give me just 10 minutes, okay, Momocchi?" Ryouta said as he got up, smiling that professional Kise Ryouta smile. "I'll just freshen up."

Satsuki beamed. "Okay, Ki-chan!"

Ryouta turned to Daiki and wordlessly held out Cheekinui like the plushie was a baby, hands under the plushie’s armpits while his feet dangled. Cheekinui had a wardrobe change--blue and white Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts, usually he wore a tiny Kaijou jersey--and somehow he had white angel wings strapped to his back. Daiki really didn't get it but he took it like a man and just accepted the Ryouta-looking plush. He was rewarded with a happy beam from Ryouta.

"Be right back!"

Daiki watched Ryouta go with a sigh before sitting back on his chair and putting Cheekinui over his lap. It was weird, sitting a plushie over his lap like it was a child, but he had probably done weirder for Ryouta and would continue to do so in the future for sure.

He felt Satsuki's eyes on him and he turned to meet her gaze.

She was smiling at him, something soft and fond, and it made him just hold Cheekinui closer for some reason.

"Are you ready, Dai-chan?" she asked and Daiki knew she didn't need to elaborate.

He knew what it was she was asking and he also knew his answer.

"Yeah," he replied easily, calmly, and he looked back to the direction Ryouta went.

"I am."

#aokise #Aomine Daiki #Kise Ryouta #Kuroko Tetsuya #Akashi Seijūrō #Tadashi Hamada #Imayoshi Shouichi #kuroo tetsuro #Midorima Shintarou #Himuro Tatsuya #nijimura shuuzou #Mibuchi Reo #Momoi Satsuki

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sweetsmellosuccess · 4 years

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TIFF 2020: Days 5 & 6

Films: 5

Best Film of the Day(s): New Order

Good Joe Bell: Or, The Education of a Straight White Father. What Reinaldo Marcus Green’s film lacks in depth, it tries hard to make up for with earnestness. Mark Wahlberg plays the real-life father, who was in the process of walking across America in honor of his gay son, who committed suicide after being badly bullied in his smalltown Oregon high school, before he was accidentally hit on the road and killed in Colorado, six months into his planned two-year sojourn. The story is cut up between the present, with Joe on the road, doing terse speaking engagements (as Wahlberg plays him, the taciturn Bell isn’t much for public speaking), at local high schools and churches, and flashbacks to the past, as his son, Jadin (Reid Miller), attempts to get through his high school experience while being the subject of bullying, both in-person and via the Internet, until he reaches his breaking point. The message is certainly resonant, and Miller plays Jadin with the right amount of heartbreaking pathos, but Green’s film feels unnecessarily mechanized in order to put Joe front and center of the story (using a hallucination of Jadin at the beginning, which allows Joe to interact with him feels more than a little manipulative). Bell, with his quick temper, and impatience for anything that’s not directly to do with him, is a reasonable stand-in for exactly the type of straight white male who should be watching the film (but more than likely won’t). Wahlberg is gifted at playing this sort of character, who wants to have the full attention of everyone any point in time he chooses (“Did you hear what I said?” he asks incredulously after making an announcement and not receiving the proper praise for it). He’s a complicated dude, which the film alludes to without entirely capturing: He’s ready to fight at a moment’s notice, but shies away from directly confronting any of Jadin’s tormentors; has the good intention to take action to draw attention to the problem, but doesn't seem the least bit prepared to give a speech that really makes an impact (one detail the film does make work: His manner of saying “I love you” to his wife or sons, but only as a way of getting them to say it back to him). Connie Britton plays Lola, Jadin’s mother, a largely thankless role as the nurturer of the family, loving both her sons (Jadin’s brother Joseph is played by Maxwell Jenkins), and staying supportive no matter their father’s attitude. Near the end of his journey, as Joe begins to see the true folly of his ways, he meets a Sheriff (Gary Sinise), whose oldest son is also gay, which allows the two men to sit on the front porch of the sheriff’s house and contemplate the ways in which their lives didn’t go as expected. It’s clearly meant for the kick-ass Wahlberg audience (as Jadin says earlier in the film, they’re the actual problem), but I very much doubt they will be heading in droves to see it.

New Order: Meet the new boss, only in Michel Franco’s damning portrait of a society locked forever in cycles of oppression, revolution, and new oppression, it makes no difference who you are, what your belief system is, or whether or not you subscribe to a moral set of ethics. After an ominous opening montage of imagery largely taken from the film to come, we shortly begin at a resplendent wedding held at the city manse of a wealthy businessman for his daughter, Marianne (Naian Gonzalez Norvind), and her betrothed, Alan (Dario Yazbek Bernal). As Marianne’s mother, Pilar (Patricia Bernal) happily secrets away the envelopes carrying the new couples’ gift money in her safe, and rich and powerful families co-mingle, the distant danger of a furious revolution, lead by violent rioters raising up against the economic disparities of the city, seems at first to be light-years away. Until it isn’t. As rioters infiltrate the house, with the help of an insider, chaos reigns and bullets fly. The next morning, many people have been shot, the house has been utterly pillaged, and Marianne has been taken hostage by a rogue group of military, who snatch up wealthy-seeming refugees and hold them for ransom at an undisclosed outpost. By film’s end, Franco, working from his own screenplay, leaves no man, woman, or child unmarked. The wealthy are callous and vain, the rioters bloodthirsty and cruel, the hostage takers unbelievably greedy and horrible, and the righteous vanquished by further corruption at even higher levels of power. It’s a bit like the ending of a Coen brothers picture (Burn After Reading comes to mind), in which all loose ends are closed, and few, if any, people are any the wiser for it; only, there’s nothing the least bit arch in Franco’s thrown gauntlet: We aren’t spared the worst of it by indelible Coens’ proxies. We are all to blame, it would seem, and it has nothing to do with original sin: Our conniving, violent nature will undo any and all attempts to curb it. Insatiable avarice is our continual undoing, washing over us like the green paint the rioters hurl at passing cars and pedestrians, marking them as the enemy. In Franco’s thunderous film, nobody emerges unscathed; we’re all set on fire.

Wildfire: It’s a hoary Hollywood staple to substitute individuals as emotional stand-ins to capture the direness of historic catastrophic events, scaling everything down so we care more about the couple in star-crossed love than the war going on all around them. In Cathy Brady’s Irish drama, however, a pair of sisters are reunited after a year’s absence in the North Ireland bordertown in which they grew up, products of the uneasy peace, post-Troubles, in which everyone is meant to get along as one country, though hard feelings still abound. Kelly (Nika McGuigan) returns to the staid home of her sister, Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone), after taking off on her own the year before, and, by all appearances, living as a vagabond. Initially thrilled to have her sister back, Lauren is also still angry with her for taking off suddenly and not making any contact since. When the girls were little, their father was killed in a political bombing, and their mother might have committed suicide as a result (the car accident that killed her was, apparently, suspicious). Left to their own devices, then, they developed a fierce protective shell against any outsiders, including, it turns out Lauren’s increasingly concerned husband (Martin McCann), and longtime family friend Veronica (Joanne Crawford). The film changes gears when Lauren finally accepts Kelly again, and the two reform their partnership as intense as it was before. As the film points out, in a real sense, they are all each other truly have in the aftermath of their tragic childhood. The film clicks better into focus as well in its final act, when the sisters are reunited against all comers, and the world around them is better revealed for what it is: They represent the schism still very much a part of their community that no one else wants to see. Instead, people hang about in bars, or at work, nursing the bitternesses and hurts of the Troubles in private, and putting their public energy to getting along. Kelly, with her wildnesses and significant impulse control issues (trying to teach a young boy how to hold his breath underwater is, perhaps, not best accomplished by holding him down until he begins to panic), is at least honest with her feelings, open to her various wounds, and refusing to put the past behind them. Their mother gets referred to as “crazy” in the town’s estimation, but it’s more likely she, like her two daughters, represents the clear-eyed view of someone who refuses to live in denial.

Concrete Cowboy: Philadelphia as an open prairie has a nice vibe, and Ricky Staub’s film about a troubled teen who mother takes him from Detroit to where his father, an urban cowboy, lives in North Philly in hopes to setting the kid straight, is made with genuine care and gets solid performances from its mixture of professional and amateur actors. If this sounds like faintly damning praise, it’s only because despite its strengths, it still feels like a great set-up in search of a suitable story. Based on the real-life Fletcher Street stables (and the novel from Greg Neri), in which locals on the rough streets of the city shelter and take care of a group of horses for the sheer love of riding, the story follows the difficult maturation of Cole (Caleb McLaughlin), a decent enough kid, but searching for his place in the world, and the tough-love tactics of his dad, Harp (Idris Elba), a longtime cowboy, who hasn’t been in his son’s life in more than a decade. Cole starts out hating everything about his new situation, from Harp’s barebones lifestyle (not only are the cupboards empty, and the fridge filled with nothing but Coke and Bud Light, Harp keeps one of his horses in the living room, sharing it with his son), to being forced to muck the stalls out at the stables to earn his chance to ride, takes up with an old friend, Smush (Jharrel Jerome), a charismatic kid caught up in the drug life. Naturally, Cole’s choice comes down to which sort of life he wants to have, his father’s hardscrabble but honest approach (made more attractive when Cole develops a bond with his own horse, Boo), or Smush’s push for increased market share and more money to buy his own piece of land out West. Shot on location in North Philly, and around the city — one shot, in which Cole sits astride boo in full silhouette against a mottled purple sky, the lampposts standing in for saguaros, hits just the right note -- Staub’s film has a properly gritty texture, and the use of some of the real Fletcher cowboys adds further verisimilitude, but the story moves predictably enough, beat-by-beat, that it doesn’t hit with the potency it might have been capable of with a less predictable narrative arc.

In a year of bizarre happenings, and altered realities, TIFF has shifted its gears to a significantly paired down virtual festival. Thus, U.S. film critics are regulated to watching the international offerings from our own living room couches.

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lena-in-a-red-dress · 6 years

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Agentreign: after a long time Sam gone off the radar; she rescues Alex and start flirting with her (post s3). It could be great if there’s a talk between Kara and Sam about all the Lena/kriptonyte fiasco and about Alex/Sam status.

Alex doesn’t get paid enough for this shit.

Or rather, she gets paid too much to be running across rooftops after an alien that managed to blind half her team on their way up the stairwell after it, and losing the other half when he leapt across a narrow divide onto the next roof.

Alex was the apparently only one who didn’t get the memo that it was too far. She charged ahead at the front of her team, and jumped right after him, only realizing halfway across the next roof that her team remained behind, trapped by the expanse.

Faced with continuing the pursuit or holding back to stay with her team– meaning, standing around doing nothing while their perp got away– Alex had rerouted her team the long way around and tried to maintain a visual on their subject.

It seemed the right choice at the time, but now that she’s dangling from her fingertips on yet another roof that really was just a hair too far a jump, Alex realizes her folly.

“This is Danvers, requesting backup on my location!”

Her comms are silent, no doubt trashed by the same alien pulse that had leveled half her team in the stairwell.

“Shit!”

Her fingers sweat in borrowed gloves that are too big, the leather sliding on metal plate that lines the edge of the roof. They’re too bulky to get a decent grip, too thick to readjust without plummeting to her death.

She nearly calls for Kara, before remembering the whole damn reason she’s here is that her sister is laid up in the infirmary, bruised and without her powers. With no backup, no Supergirl, Alex’s heart gallops frantically in her chest.

“This is Director Danvers requesting– augh!”

Her fingers slip, and she plunges with a cry for one, two, three seconds of heart stopping terror before fingers circle her wrist in an iron grip. She shouts again as her shoulder jolts against the socket, protesting the sudden halt. Then Alex coughs in relief, staring at the ground still far below her.

“Impeccable timing,” she tells her sister, covering her pounding heart with sarcasm and not much else.

“I’ll say.”

Alex’s head snaps up so fast her neck twinges, startled by the rich voice that most definitely does not belong to her sister.

Brown eyes shine down at her, along with a blinding smile. Alex is so flabbergasted– Sam! Here! Now! – that it takes several moments for her to spot the patch of vivid blue sky between the building and where Sam hangs in the sky, weightless.

“What the fuck.”

“What the fuck, Sam,” Alex repeats in the safety of her kitchen after she’s debriefed and carefully lied on multiple official reports to exclude any mention of– well, she’s not quite sure who’s sitting on the far side of the kitchen island.

“I swear it’s me,” Sam vows, as though she has a direct line of communication to Alex’s thoughts. “Just me.”

“How could you possibly know that…” Alex trails off when she sees the guilty press of Sam’s lips into a thin line. “Lena. Of course.”

Of fucking course Lena knows, is helping, is hiding the truth.

“Don’t be mad at her,” Sam pleads, sliding a hand across the countertop. “I swore her to secrecy.”

The three years of Sam’s absence stabs like a knife. Her return awakens all kinds of unresolved emotions in Alex’s chest, feelings she’d stuffed so far into a box she’d been certain they’d never see the light of day again. The fact Sam has been hiding from them adds a sour dose of resentment to the mix, and it’s that feeling that Alex chooses to cling to.

“You should have come to the DEO,” she all but spits, clenching her hands into fists. Her knuckles press painfully against the marble counter. “We could have helped you.”

“Lena wasn’t sure I’d be safe if the government knew,” comes the soft reply. Alex scoffs. Despite L-Corp’s uneasy truce with the DEO in recent years, not even Alex would pretend that Lena actually trusted the agency. “Neither was I. I couldn’t risk it. Not with Ruby.”

Alex’s throat locks at the mention of her old roommate. “How is she?” she asks softly.

“Good,” Sam says quickly, too bright. “Good, she’s good. She’s safe.”

Anger simmers in a tight kernel behind Alex’s ribs. It’s been three years. Ruby’s well into her teens, and Alex wants to know who she’s become. Is her hair a new color? Does she have piercings or wear the same black band tees that Alex used to? What music is she into? Is she still taking French?

She doesn’t ask any of those questions. If Sam wanted her to know any of that, she would have called. Or texted. Or emailed. Sent a postcard or goddamned holiday photo.

Instead, it’s been radio silence for three years.

“Congratulations, by the way,” Sam says to fill the silence. “On the promotion. I bet it’s helped with the adoption process. Or fostering? Did you decide what you wanted to do?”

Alex shrugs, ducking her chin to stare at her hands. “Single professional who pitches herself off rooftops doesn’t exactly scream ‘capable caregiver’ to the people who make decisions.”

J’onn had given her the job hoping it would give her stability enough to make progress towards parenthood. Neither of them had realized how demanding the role of director could be until she’d tried to do both. Despite her initial readiness to leave the DEO for good in order to be a mom… she might have liked being an agent, but she loves being Director. She couldn’t stop. Not yet.

“I looked into donors,” she continues, despite her intention to not do that. “That didn’t work out either.”

Sam’s gaze softens. “I’m so sorry, Alex.”

“I have time,” Alex offers with a shrug. “It’ll happen. I’m just not there yet.”

Silence hangs between them in the wake of the awkward exchange. Alex wants to shake her for information, for all the good it would do against a woman who is essentially Kryptonian. When she finally lifts her eyes, Sam is gazing at her like she has things to say too. Neither of them quite know where to start.

Finally, Sam inhales, and when she releases it, her features soften into vulnerability.

“I wanted to, you know,” she says softly. “Tell you.”

Something in her voice sends Alex’s chest aflutter. “Yeah?”

“Of course I did!” Sam exclaims, raking a hand through her hair. It’s shorter than Alex remembers. Not by much, but… it’s sportier. It looks good on Sam.

“Alex, I regretted leaving as soon as Ruby and I hit the interstate. I’ve never clicked with a group of friends like I did in National City. Every time we’ve moved before, I never felt like I was leaving anything behind. Nothing ever felt… unfinished.”

Alex’s mouth runs dry. Saying goodbye to Sam and Ruby had hurt nearly as much as saying goodbye to Maggie. Knowing Sam had felt just as conflicted eases that ache by a fraction. A tendril of hope worms its way out of the shell around her heart.

“Did– are you guys back, then? For good?”

“We were thinking about it. Ruby wants to stay.”

Alex holds Sam’s gaze, challenging and eager all at once. “What do you want?”

Sam swallows audibly, meeting Alex’s gaze. “I wanted to see you.”

A rush of heat courses through Alex, starting from the top of her head and pooling deep in her belly. The spark in Sam’s eye deepens, making Alex wonder if she hears and recognizes the sudden uptick of Alex’s heartbeat.

In slow, deliberate strides, Sam comes around the corner of the island to stop only inches from Alex.

“I know,” she continues, voice low with intent, “that we can’t just pick up where we left off. But maybe…”

Her fingers brush the swell of Alex’s bicep, so gentle Alex barely feels it past the flush that spreads from where their skin makes contact.

“Maybe we can get to know each other again. Properly, this time.”

It doesn’t occur to Alex to stop and think. She follows the tug of her heart onto her tiptoes and presses her lips to Sam’s.

Later she might blame it on the rush of a near death experience, or the shock of Sam’s sudden return after so long, but as Alex stumbles backwards towards her bedroom, shedding articles of clothing as they go, all she knows Sam’s hands cradling her face and the scent of her perfume.

She falls back on her bed and drinks in the sight of Sam topless before her. Then her lips are captured again as long, powerful fingers start to roam.

“Welcome home,” Alex mumbles against lips hot and damp with heavy breaths.

Sam’s movements sharpen, taking on an edge of urgent want.

“God, I missed you.”

#prompt-a-thon #the final prompt!#we did it!#agentreign #sam saves alex #alex danvers #sam arias #kryptonian!sam #this was actually almost 3 prompts in one #so i pieced together what was feasible #2 out of 3 ain't bad #sam's return

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mrmallard · 5 years

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My thoughts on Paladins so far!

jaaaaaaaank. I keep seeing character models that aren't moving, or they're like lying on the ground and sliding around? My Switch isn't in the best place for Wi-Fi, but the sort of model glitches that I've consistently been getting is a bit rough. I also tried to open that spray/mount/whatever menu for the first time and the game crashed. It just feels a bit rough around the edges.

I like TDM and Onslaught! I kinda like Siege, but it's frustrating when your team woN'T MOVE THE GODDAMN PAYLOAD (see I've always been down with payload memes, but this is my first time experiencing it firsthand and realising that the feeling isn't exaggerated as much as I thought it was)

I don't know how to feel about the currencies. I heard that there was a Radiant Chest that you could open with gold, but that's been gone for ages - now you need to pay premium currency, and it's both scarce to earn in the game and pricey in the eShop. I feel like the progression is going to dry up soon, after like 2 days of play, so I'm getting uneasy regarding the currency.

Dude, the main menu music is great. The first night I played Paladins, I couldn't get to sleep for ages because I had the main menu song stuck in my head.

So many characters! It's going to be a right pain in the ass unlocking all of them, if I stick around long enough to do so. My current main is Grohk, because I like support but I also like Grohk's very decent attack damage. I can also use my main attack beam as a healing beam just by aiming it at my team mates, it's very efficient.

Bomb King is so cute?????? I suck at using him but I love how he looks. I wanna get good at Bomb King, he's fantastic.

Ruckus is one of those heroes that seems similar to Overwatch, but I like using him so I mean whatever. Pretty solid character for a beginner like me.

The only hero/s I'm not sure about right now is the furry bait characters, I'm waiting for a game and then a big-boobed fox girl wearing rave clothes comes onto my main menu screen. Like... what? plz no. also a Pip didn't heal me one game, looked straight at me as I died. Bleh.

I feel like the character design can be a bit inconsistent. I like Grohk and Bomb King a lot, and I'm down with the human characters - but I'm seeing a lot of forgettable human faces, and the characters like Mijo and the fennec foxes and Ruckus feel a little disconnected? Like they pull from a few noticeably different styles, without an underlying sense of harmony to it all. I don't know how I feel - just an observation.

I know Fortnite is a joke or a meme or whatever the fuck to a lot of people, and it's a different type of game to this one, but my last big f2p competitive game was Fortnite and I put as many hours into it as my attention span would allow - add in the fact that I played it on Switch just like I'm doing with Paladins, and you can see why I might be quick to compare the two.

This lacks that Epic polish that was just always kind of there in Fortnite, but it offers a new flavour of gameplay that I'm really digging - this game has infinitely more variety in its playstyle for example. It feels good to be able to jump into a random f2p match and have a choice between characters that play radically differently, y'know - I'm glad that Paladins is f2p, and I'm not particularly upset that I had to uninstall Bayonetta so that my Switch would have enough room to fit Paladins.

I'm on board the Paladins train for now, but I don't know if it's going to be an experience that's compelling enough to take me through this coming December. Despite the critical turn that this post ended up taking, I'm having a lot of fun with Paladins and I hope it'll keep me coming back for more.

#paladins #paladins champions of the realm

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isthemedia · 5 years

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Ao3 Link

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8 WARNING: Hinted Body Horror

Chapter 9 Warning: Minor Body horror alluded to

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13 (Implied Sexual Situation-Dream only)

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17 NSFW

Chapter 18

Chapter 19 NSFW-ish

Chapter 20

Hizashi is now fully on the "watch list" for villainous activity.

There was just something more to this. There had to be. Nemuri refused that one of her closest friends was a villain this whole time.

Just who was this guy with the erasing Quirk?

And how was he making it so Hizashi would just go along with him?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 20

She didn’t want to believe it. But it was right there.

‘Present Mic was accompanying the assailant, and willingly aided them in the attack on the Miyono Loans .’

He was there. Hizashi was there and he was helping him. It didn’t make sense. There just had to be something more to it. There just had to be. What did that guy have on Hizashi? Did he know about Hizashi’s...feelings? Was he just playing along? Using Hizashi?

Nemuri casted a sidelong glance to Hizashi’s old desk, bare of everything now. All his belongings gathered up and confiscated, hopefully to find some clue as to how long he was the mole.

She pulled open the drawer of her own desk. The pages she printed out from his computer. She looked them over again...Miyono was on that list. In fact it was circled.

Her eyes scanned the page. Reaching for a pen, she marked it. The next name on the list.

She was going to talk with Hizashi even if that means confronting him at the scene of the crime.

She needed to get her friend back.

Eraser sighed as he let his eyes drift shut as the blonde snuggled up to him. They had to lay low. They made their way down to the basement area of Iwasaki Medical to shut down the generator for the time being.

Hizashi yelped as flailed a bit, as he brushed past some cobwebs.

“Eraser!!” the blonde whined. “Why are we even down here?”

“We need to turn the generator off. I’m sure the heroes are doubling their efforts to find me...and you.”

“Why the heck is it even still running?”

Eraser looked to him. “Hitsumori LLC installed it, and he’s the only one who can uninstall it due due his contractual agreements.”

“So why has--”

“Because to him it’s easier to forget about this place.”

Hizashi sighed but followed after. “But this place is completely off the grid--”

“I don’t trust it though,” Eraser said and that was it for the conversation.

Hizashi trailed close behind the other. It was damp, and just eery down here. There were tons of cobwebs, and he could feel his skin crawl. He was going to have the feeling of something crawling on him for days, he just knows it.

Looking around, something caught his eye. Breaking away from the other he cautiously made his way over. T-they looked like cells, but much smaller...and with a glass door. He couldn’t see clearly in them. When he leaned in to have a closer peak--

A hand grabbed him by his shoulder and forcefully turned him around. He was met with glowing red eyes, and a very upset Eraser.

He opened his mouth, but no sound could come out with the other’s Quirk activated.

“Do NOT touch them. Don’t go near them. Don’t go IN them.”

Hizashi swallowed thickly and nodded. The sternness in the other’s voice made it so he didn’t even want to argue.

Just what were those things? H-he...maybe he could ask Eraser another day.

It was going to be hard for the next day or so; but they couldn’t risk being found here. No electricity nor water. They could manage. He always had, and the blonde despite his appearance and personality seemed to be fine with the adjustments. He couldn’t tell if it was because of him or if the other was that flexible with sudden changes.

Even if the generator itself is considered to be “non-existent” by Hitsumori , the fact that power was being supplied to this abandoned building would draw suspicions.

“Hmm….after these last two...are there any more backers?” Hizashi asked, breaking Eraser from his thoughts, and he opened his eyes. “Or anyone else who had a hand in the QAP?”

He felt his eyes drift shut once more as the blonde nuzzled his neck. “There were the doctors behind this...most are retired...a lot of them have regrets.”

Hizashi hummed a bit as he kissed along his neck. “You visited them?”

“Some...they all seemed grateful I was alive…” He gave a small groan as the blonde gave a small nip to a fading mark. “Did you want information or not? You’re distracting me.”

The blonde couldn’t help but laugh. “Hey hey….15 years is a long time to pine over somebody.”

Eraser gave a small snort, but tilted his head back some to let the other continue. “You’re….you’re sure that this is alright? I mean staying here like--”

Hizashi placed a finger over his lips, and shushed him. “It’s only for a few days. I can manage. We can manage. Alright?”

Eraser smiled some and nodded as he reached up and pulls the other down and kissed him.

Nemuri chewed on her thumbnail as she kept an eye on the reports. So far there was no hint at where Hizashi or that eraser user was. He hasn’t returned to his apartment since THAT night, at least that’s what it sounded like. It was so unlike Hizashi to just up and abandon everything.

He hated to cancel anything, he’d go for days without a decent night sleep just so he could keep everyone happy.

But now?

He was willing to just, drop off the face of the earth for this guy? It didn’t add up. How could Hizashi be sure that it’s him? That this was the same boy from all those years ag--

There was an alert. A riot was brewing in the center of the city. All nearby heroes were requested to assist.

No, that didn’t seem to be the style of the eraser user...so there was a chance Hizashi wasn’t going to be there.

But she had that fleeting moment of hope.

Just for a moment.

“So...you do go on patrol,” Hizashi said, voice light almost teasing as they both were perch high on a rooftop.

He complained about being dragged out of the warm little nest that was their so called bed. Three days without electricity, and running water did make him a touch moody.

However, it seemed that during his sleep Eraser restarted the generator. And, very rudely in Hizashi’s opinion, woke him up. He didn’t give much more detail other than that they needed to head out tonight.

The blonde assumed it was another “visit”...but it seemed Eraser had another surprise for him.

Eraser shrugged at the question. They watched as the riot below broke out. Civilians rushing to find cover, as villains intimidated and used their Quirks to push them away.

To threaten them.

“Should we jump in?” Hizashi was feeling his natural instincts kicking in. He was still a hero...maybe not in name anymore. But he just couldn’t sit back and just watch.

“Wait.”

He looked to Eraser about to argue, but stopped himself when he looked to him. Those blurry eyes, intently watching the scene below. Studying it. Like he was waiting for a sign to be given before they could jump in.

There was a scream. Something was thrown into the air, and crashed; the sound of shattering glass was so loud that they could hear it from their position.

“Now,” Eraser said as he jumped down. Hizashi didn’t hesitate to follow after.

By the time Nemuri arrived to the site, she was in just as much of a state of shock as the rest of the heroes. The villains who, they assumed, were responsible for the riot were bound tight. Civilians were giving their statements. How two men dropped down into the middle of the whole thing, and helped quell the situation.

They couldn’t be quite clear as to what their Quirks were due to everything that was going on, but they were certain one had to be connected with their voice. They also noted just how well they worked together. How...protective they were of one another.

Voice? Nemuri knew she heard them talk about one of the unknown men using their voice. Hizashi? Would that mean the other was…

But why?

What was--

She caught something out of the corner of her eye. Movement in a darkened alleyway. She didn’t care she was being called after...she rushed down the alleyway. Maybe...maybe? Maybe it was them....

There was a clatter, the sound of somebody stomping on metal grates. The sight she came to--

Had the breath taken from her.

It was Hizashi. Even though he didn’t have his hair in the usual fashion...and his sunglasses were nowhere to be seen--

So he never did go back home after he was taken from U.A.

Above him, on the old rusted fire escape was the the eraser user. She couldn’t make out the details of him, but could tell just by his stance that he was not happy about her being there.

She shook off the uneasy feeling before turning back to Hizashi. “W-what….Hizashi what are you doing?”

The sigh that left him, almost sounded...annoyed? He...he was annoyed with such a simple question?

“Oh, ya know...the usual,” he answered. There was something under that response. Something that struck Nemuri a bit hard.

“It’s not! Hizashi what’s wrong?” She glanced up quickly before looking back to the blonde. “What is he doing to you? What did he say?”

“Doing? Nemuri...he’s not doing anything,” Hizashi argued in an offended tone. “This is all by my choice.”

“Ho-how can you even say that!? Tensei told me Hizashi! How can you even be sure that’s him!? He couldn’t just be using y--”

“He’s already proved it to me Nemuri.”

“How can you be--”

“You can doubt me all you want,” He stated. “It wouldn’t be the first time you know.”

Nemuri winced a bit. W-why did that hurt? The clattering picked up again, and the ladder to the fire escaped finally dropped. She watched as Hizashi hopped up and pulled himself up the ladder rungs.

“I want to help you!”

Hizashi was pulling himself up to the first flat, before he looked back down at her. “You want to help me?”

“Hizashi...we’ve been friends for years. Of course I want to help you.”

He leaned over one of the guard railings. “I assume that all my stuff at school was confiscated?” She nodded. “There was a file in there. Big old manila file folder. You get that, and all your answers are going to be right in there.” He sighed as he started up the second ladder.

She hesitated for a moment. S-she couldn’t let them get away. She had--

As she pulled her sleeve open, and froze. That pink mist wasn’t pouring out. What was--

She gasped as she looked up. Red eyes glowing brightly in the dimly lit alley way. She felt herself almost break out in a cold sweat. When those heroes mentioned how terrifying it was to see those red eyes...she couldn’t feel it just through the description.

But now...staring back...she felt as if her heart was going to burst through her chest.

“Don’t, follow me Nemuri.”

She looked to Hizashi who was now besides the other. His own eyes almost glowing too. She forgotten just how intense and bright green they were.

“You know what I can do with my voice…”

It was a threat. A genuine threat.

By the time she collected herself, they were both gone...that pink mist finally returning. With shaking hands she pulled her sleeve back together. A file folder? A large one from Hizashi’s desk…

She’ll need to see if she could get her hands on it.

#erasermic #maizawa #villain!aizawa #villain!eraserhead #eraserhead #aizawa shouta #present mic #yamada hizashi #nemuri kayama #midnight bnha #What do I Dream to be?

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mydarlingfilm · 3 years

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TIME DOESN’T HEAL

This is going to be a very long post and I would love to read it over and over again. It was painful and timeless at the same time. This conversation is hold between an Rolling stone and Pk.

In her first-ever in-depth interview, Michael Jackson's daughter discusses her father's pain and finding peace after addiction and heartache

Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson is staring at a famous corpse. "That's Marilyn Monroe," she whispers, facing a wall covered with gruesome autopsy photos. "And that's JFK. You can't even find these online." On a Thursday afternoon in late November, Paris is making her way through the Museum of Death, a cramped maze of formaldehyde-scented horrors on Hollywood Boulevard. It's not uncommon for visitors, confronted with decapitation photos, snuff films and serial-killer memorabilia, to faint, vomit or both. But Paris, not far removed from the emo and goth phases of her earlier teens, seems to find it all somehow soothing. This is her ninth visit. "It's awesome," she had said on the way over. "They have a real electric chair and a real head!"

Paris Jackson turned 18 last April, and moment by moment, can come across as much older or much younger, having lived a life that's veered between sheltered and agonizingly exposed. She is a pure child of the 21st century, with her mashed-up hippie-punk fashion sense (today she's wearing a tie-dye button-down, jeggings and Converse high-tops) and boundary-free musical tastes (she's decorated her sneakers with lyrics by Mötley Crüe and Arctic Monkeys; is obsessed with Alice Cooper – she calls him "bae" – and the singer-songwriter Butch Walker; loves Nirvana and Justin Bieber too). But she is, even more so, her father's child. "Basically, as a person, she is who my dad is," says her older brother, Prince Michael Jackson. "The only thing that's different would be her age and her gender." Paris is similar to Michael, he adds, "in all of her strengths, and almost all of her weaknesses as well. She's very passionate. She is very emotional to the point where she can let emotion cloud her judgment."

Paris has, with impressive speed, acquired more than 50 tattoos, sneaking in the first few while underage. Nine of them are devoted to Michael Jackson, who died when she was 11 years old, sending her, Prince and their youngest brother, Blanket, spiraling out of what had been – as they perceived it – a cloistered, near-idyllic little world. "They always say, 'Time heals,'" she says. "But it really doesn't. You just get used to it. I live life with the mentality of 'OK, I lost the only thing that has ever been important to me.' So going forward, anything bad that happens can't be nearly as bad as what happened before. So I can handle it." Michael still visits her in her dreams, she says: "I feel him with me all the time."

Michael, who saw himself as Peter Pan, liked to call his only daughter Tinker Bell. She has FAITH, TRUST AND PIXIE DUST inked near her clavicle. She has an image from the cover of Dangerous on her forearm, the Bad logo on her hand, and the words QUEEN OF MY HEART – in her dad's handwriting, from a letter he wrote her – on her inner left wrist. "He's brought me nothing but joy," she says. "So why not have constant reminders of joy?"

She fixes her huge blue-green eyes on each of the museum's attractions without flinching, until she comes to a section of taxidermied pets. "I don't really like this room," she says, wrinkling her nose. "I draw the line with animals. I can't do it. This breaks my heart." She recently rescued a hyperactive pit-bull-mix puppy, Koa, who has an uneasy coexistence with Kenya, a snuggly Labrador her dad brought home a decade ago.

Paris describes herself as "desensitized" to even the most graphic reminders of human mortality. In June 2013, drowning in depression and a drug addiction, she tried to kill herself at age 15, slashing her wrist and downing 20 Motrin pills. "It was just self-hatred," she says, "low self-esteem, thinking that I couldn't do anything right, not thinking I was worthy of living anymore." She had been self-harming, cutting herself, managing to conceal it from her family. Some of her tattoos now cover the scars, as well as what she says are track marks from drug use. Before that, she had already attempted suicide "multiple times," she says, with an incongruous laugh. "It was just once that it became public." The hospital had a "three-strike rule," she recalls, and, after that last attempt, insisted she attend a residential therapy program.

Home-schooled before her father's death, Paris had agreed to attend a private school starting in seventh grade. She didn't fit in – at all – and started hanging out with the only kids who accepted her, "a lot of older people doing a lot of crazy things," she says. "I was doing a lot of things that 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds shouldn't do. I tried to grow up too fast, and I wasn't really that nice of a person." She also faced cyberbullying, and still struggles with cruel online comments. "The whole freedom-of-speech thing is great," she says. "But I don't think that our Founding Fathers predicted social media when they created all of these amendments and stuff."

There was another trauma that she's never mentioned in public. When she was 14, a much older "complete stranger" sexually assaulted her, she says. "I don't wanna give too many details. But it was not a good experience at all, and it was really hard for me, and, at the time, I didn't tell anybody."

After her last suicide attempt, she spent sophomore year and half of junior year at a therapeutic school in Utah. "It was great for me," she says. "I'm a completely different person." Before, she says with a small smile, "I was crazy. I was actually crazy. I was going through a lot of, like, teen angst. And I was also dealing with my depression and my anxiety without any help." Her father, she says, also struggled with depression, and she was prescribed the same antidepressants he once took, though she's no longer on any psych meds.

Now sober and happier than she's ever been, with menthol cigarettes her main remaining vice, Paris moved out of her grandma Katherine's house shortly after her 18th birthday, heading to the old Jackson family estate. She spends nearly every minute of each day with her boyfriend, Michael Snoddy, a 26-year-old drummer – he plays with the percussion ensemble Street Drum Corps – and Virginia native whose dyed mohawk, tattoos and perpetually sagging pants don't obscure boy-band looks and a puppy-dog sweetness. "I never met anyone before who made me feel the way music makes me feel," says Paris. When they met, he had an ill-considered, now-covered Confederate flag tattoo that raised understandable doubts among the Jacksons. "But the more I actually got to know him," says Prince, "he's a really cool guy."

Paris took a quick stab at community college after graduating high school – a year early – in 2015, but wasn't feeling it. She is an heir to a mammoth fortune – the Michael Jackson Family Trust is likely worth more than $1 billion, with disbursements to the kids in stages. But she wants to earn her own money, and now that she's a legal adult, to embrace her other inheritance: celebrity.

And in the end, as the charismatic, beautiful daughter of one of the most famous men who ever lived, what choice did she have? She is, for now, a model, an actress, a work in progress. She can, when she feels like it, exhibit a regal poise that's almost intimidating, while remaining chill enough to become pals with her giant-goateed tattoo artist. She has impeccable manners – you might guess that she was raised well. She so charmed producer-director Lee Daniels in a recent meeting that he's begun talking to her manager about a role for her on his Fox show, Star . She plays a few instruments, writes and sings songs (she performs a couple for me on acoustic guitar, and they show promise, though they're more Laura Marling than MJ), but isn't sure if she'll ever pursue a recording contract.

Modeling, in particular, comes naturally, and she finds it therapeutic. "I've had self-esteem issues for a really, really long time," says Paris, who understands her dad's plastic-surgery choices after watching online trolls dissect her appearance since she was 12. "Plenty of people think I'm ugly, and plenty of people don't. But there's a moment when I'm modeling where I forget about my self-esteem issues and focus on what the photographer's telling me – and I feel pretty. And in that sense, it's selfish."

But mostly, she shares her father's heal-the-world impulses ("I'm really scared for the Great Barrier Reef," she says. "It's, like, dying. This whole planet is. Poor Earth, man"), and sees fame as a means to draw attention to favored causes. "I was born with this platform," she says. "Am I gonna waste it and hide away? Or am I going to make it bigger and use it for more important things?"

Her dad wouldn't have minded. "If you wanna be bigger than me, you can," he'd tell her. "If you don't want to be at all, you can. But I just want you to be happy."

At the moment, Paris lives in the private studio where her dad demoed "Beat It." The Tudor-style main house in the now-empty Jackson family compound in the LA neighborhood of Encino – purchased by Joe Jackson in 1971 with some of the Jackson 5's first Motown royalties, and rebuilt by Michael in the Eighties – is under renovation. But the studio, built by Michael in a brick building across the courtyard, happens to be roughly the size of a decent Manhattan apartment, with its own kitchen and bathroom. Paris has turned it into a vibe-y, cozy dorm room.

Traces of her father are everywhere, most unmistakably in the artwork he commissioned. Outside the studio is a framed picture, done in a Disney-like style, of a cartoon castle on a hilltop with a caricatured Michael in the foreground, a small blond boy embracing him.It's captioned "Of Children, Castles & Kings." Inside is a mural taking up an entire wall, with another cartoon Michael in the corner, holding a green book titled The Secret of Life and looking down from a window at blooming flowers – at the center of each bloom is a cartoon face of a red-cheeked little girl.

Above an adjacent garage is a mini-museum Michael created as a surprise gift for his family, with the walls and even ceilings covered with photos from their history. Michael used to rehearse dance moves in that room; now Paris' boyfriend has his drum kit set up there.

We head out to a nearby sushi restaurant, and Paris starts to describe life in Neverland. She spent her first seven years in her dad's 2,700-acre fantasy world, with its own amusement park, zoo and movie theater. ("Everything I never got to do as a kid," Michael called it.) During that time, she didn't know that her father's name was Michael, let alone have any grasp of his fame. "I just thought his name was Dad, Daddy," she says. "We didn't really know who he was. But he was our world. And we were his world." (Paris declared last year's Captain Fantastic , where Viggo Mortensen plays an eccentric dad who tries to create a utopian hideaway for his kids, her "favorite movie ever.")

We couldn't just go on the rides whenever we wanted to," she recalls, walking on a dark roadside near the Encino compound. She likes to stride along the lane divider, too close to the cars – it drives her boyfriend crazy, and I don't much like it either. "We actually had a pretty normal life. Like, we had school every single day, and we had to be good. And if we were good, every other weekend or so, we could choose whether we were gonna go to the movie theater or see the animals or whatever. But if you were on bad behavior, then you wouldn't get to go do all those things."

In his 2011 memoir, Michael's brother Jermaine called him "an example of what fatherhood should be. He instilled in them the love Mother gave us, and he provided the kind of emotional fathering that our father, through no fault of his own, could not. Michael was father and mother rolled into one."

Michael gave the kids the option of going to regular school. They declined. "When you're at home," says Paris, "your dad, who you love more than anything, will occasionally come in, in the middle of class, and it's like, 'Cool, no more class for the day. We're gonna go hang out with Dad.' We were like, 'We don't need friends. We've got you and Disney Channel!'" She was, she acknowledges, "a really weird kid."

Her dad taught her how to cook, soul food, mostly. "He was a kick-ass cook," she says. "His fried chicken is the best in the world. He taught me how to make sweet potato pie." Paris is baking four pies, plus gumbo, for grandma Katherine's Thanksgiving – which actually takes place the day before the holiday, in deference to Katherine's Jehovah's Witness beliefs.

Michael schooled Paris on every conceivable genre of music. "My dad worked with Van Halen, so I got into Van Halen," she says."He worked with Slash, so I got into Guns N' Roses. He introduced me to Tchaikovsky and Debussy, Earth, Wind and Fire, the Temptations, Tupac, Run-DMC."

"His number-one focus for us," says Paris, "besides loving us, was education. And he wasn't like, 'Oh, yeah, mighty Columbus came to this land!' He was like, 'No. He fucking slaughtered the natives.'" Would he really phrase it that way? "He did have kind of a potty mouth. He cussed like a sailor." But he was also "very shy."

Paris and Prince are quite aware of public doubts about their parentage (the youngest brother, Blanket, with his darker skin, is the subject of less speculation). Paris' mom is Debbie Rowe, a nurse Michael met while she was working for his dermatologist, the late Arnold Klein. They had what sounds like an unconventional three-year marriage, during which, Rowe once testified, they never shared a home. Michael said that Rowe wanted to have his children "as a present" to him. (Rowe said that Paris got her name from the location of her conception.) Klein, her employer, was one of several men – including the actor Mark Lester, who played the title role in the 1968 movie Oliver! – who suggested that they could be Paris' actual biological father.

Over popcorn shrimp and a Clean Mean Salmon Roll, Paris agrees to address this issue for what she says will be the only time. She could opt for an easy, logical answer, could point out that it doesn't matter, that either way, Michael Jackson was her father. That's what her brother – who describes himself as "more objective" than Paris – seems to suggest. "Every time someone asks me that," Prince says, "I ask, 'What's the point? What difference does it make?' Specifically to someone who's not involved in my life. How does that affect your life? It doesn't change mine."

But Paris is certain that Michael Jackson was her biological dad. She believes it with a fervency that is both touching and, in the moment, utterly convincing. "He is my father," she says, making fierce eye contact. "He will always be my father. He never wasn't, and he never will not be. People that knew him really well say they see him in me, that it's almost scary.

"I consider myself black," she says, adding later that her dad "would look me in the eyes and he'd point his finger at me and he'd be like, 'You're black. Be proud of your roots.' And I'd be like, 'OK, he's my dad, why would he lie to me?' So I just believe what he told me. 'Cause, to my knowledge, he's never lied to me.

"Most people that don't know me call me white," Paris concedes. "I've got light skin and, especially since I've had my hair blond, I look like I was born in Finland or something." She points out that it's far from unheard of for mixed-race kids to look like her – accurately noting that her complexion and eye color are similar to the TV actor Wentworth Miller's, who has a black dad and a white mom.

At first, she had no relationship with Rowe. "When I was really, really young, my mom didn't exist," Paris recalls. Eventually, she realized "a man can't birth a child" – and when she was 10 or so, she asked Prince, "We gotta have a mom, right?" So she asked her dad. "And he's like, 'Yeah.' And I was like, 'What's her name?' And he's just like, 'Debbie.' And I was like, 'OK, well, I know the name.'" After her father's death, she started researching her mom online, and they got together when Paris was 13.

In the wake of her treatment in Utah, Paris decided to reach out again to Rowe. "She needed a mother figure," says Prince, who declines to comment on his own relationship, or lack thereof, with Rowe. (Paris' manager declined to make Rowe available for an interview, and Rowe did not respond to our request for comment.) "I've had a lot of mother figures," Paris counters, citing her grandmother and nannies, among others, "but by the time my mom came into my life, it wasn't a 'mommy' thing. It's more of an adult relationship." Paris sees herself in Rowe, who just completed a course of chemo in a fight against breast cancer: "We're both very stubborn."

Paris Jackson was around nine years old when she realized that much of the world didn't see her father the way she did. "My dad would cry to me at night," she says, sitting at the counter of a New York coffee shop in mid-December, cradling a tiny spoon in her hand. She starts to cry too. "Picture your parent crying to you about the world hating him for something he didn't do. And for me, he was the only thing that mattered. To see my entire world in pain, I started to hate the world because of what they were doing to him. I'm like, 'How can people be so mean?'" She pauses. "Sorry, I'm getting emotional."

Paris and Prince have no doubts that their father was innocent of the multiple child-molestation allegations against him, that the man they knew was the real Michael. Again, they are persuasive – if they could go door-to-door talking about it, they could sway the world."Nobody but my brothers and I experienced him reading A Light in the Attic to us at night before we went to bed," says Paris."Nobody experienced him being a father to them. And if they did, the entire perception of him would be completely and forever changed." I gently suggest that what Michael said to her on those nights was a lot to put on a nine-year-old. "He did not bullshit us," she replies. "You try to give kids the best childhood possible. But you also have to prepare them for the shitty world."

Michael's 2005 molestation trial ended in an acquittal, but it shattered his reputation and altered the course of his family's lives. He decided to leave Neverland for good. They spent the next four years traveling the world, spending long stretches of time in the Irish countryside, in Bahrain, in Las Vegas. Paris didn't mind – it was exciting, and home was where her dad was.

By 2009, Michael was preparing for an ambitious slate of comeback performances at London's O2 Arena. "He kind of hyped it up to us," recalls Paris. "He was like, 'Yeah, we're gonna live in London for a year.' We were super-excited – we already had a house out there we were gonna live in." But Paris remembers his "exhaustion" as rehearsals began. "I'd tell him, 'Let's take a nap,'" she says."Because he looked tired. We'd be in school, meaning downstairs in the living room, and we'd see dust falling from the ceiling and hear stomping sounds because he was rehearsing upstairs."

Paris has a lingering distaste for AEG Live, the promoters behind the planned This Is It tour – her family lost a wrongful-death suit against them, with the jury accepting AEG's argument that Michael was responsible for his own death. "AEG Live does not treat their performers right," she alleges. "They drain them dry and work them to death." (A rep for AEG declined comment.) She describes seeing Justin Bieber on a recent tour and being "scared" for him. "He was tired, going through the motions. I looked at my ticket, saw AEG Live, and I thought back to how my dad was exhausted all the time but couldn't sleep."

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nuvya · 7 years

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Michael Jackson: The Human Being Behind The Superstar By Paris Jackson

Paris Jackson: Life After Neverland (Rolling Stone Interview )

In her first-ever in-depth interview, Michael Jackson's daughter discusses her father's pain and finding peace after addiction and heartache

She also has tattoos honoring John Lennon, David Bowie and her dad's sometime rival Prince – plus Van Halen and, on her inner lip, the word MÖTLEY (her boyfriend has CRÜE in the same spot). On her right wrist is a rope-and-jade bracelet that Michael bought in Africa. He was wearing it when he died, and Paris' nanny retrieved it for her. "It still smells like him," Paris says.

Her dad wouldn't have minded. "If you wanna be bigger than me, you can," he'd tell her. "If you don't want to be at all, you can. But I just want you to be happy."

Paris' chosen decor is somewhat different. There is a picture of Kurt Cobain in the bathroom, a Smashing Pumpkins poster on the wall, a laptop with Against Me! and NeverEnding Story stickers, psychedelic paisley wall hangings, lots of fake candles. Vinyl records (Alice Cooper, the Rolling Stones) serve as wall decorations. In the kitchen, sitting casually on a counter, is a framed platinum record, inscribed to Michael by Quincy Jones ("I found it in the attic," Paris shrugs).

"We couldn't just go on the rides whenever we wanted to," she recalls, walking on a dark roadside near the Encino compound. She likes to stride along the lane divider, too close to the cars – it drives her boyfriend crazy, and I don't much like it either. "We actually had a pretty normal life. Like, we had school every single day, and we had to be good. And if we were good, every other weekend or so, we could choose whether we were gonna go to the movie theater or see the animals or whatever. But if you were on bad behavior, then you wouldn't get to go do all those things."

She says Michael emphasized tolerance. "My dad raised me in a very open-minded house," she says. "I was eight years old, in love with this female on the cover of a magazine. Instead of yelling at me, like most homophobic parents, he was making fun of me, like, 'Oh, you got yourself a girlfriend.'

Paris isn't sure how Michael felt about Rowe, but says Rowe was "in love" with her dad. She's also sure that Michael loved Lisa Marie Presley, whom he divorced two years before Paris' birth: "In the music video 'You Are Not Alone,' I can see how he looked at her, and he was totally whipped," she says with a fond laugh.

Paris blames Dr. Conrad Murray – who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in her father's death – for the dependency on the anesthetic drug propofol that led to it. She calls him "the 'doctor,'" with satirical air quotes. But she has darker suspicions about her father's death. "He would drop hints about people being out to get him," she says. "And at some point he was like, 'They're gonna kill me one day.'" (Lisa Marie Presley told Oprah Winfrey of a similar conversation with Michael, who expressed fears that unnamed parties were targeting him to get at his half of the Sony/ATV music-publishing catalog, worth hundreds of millions.)

Paris is convinced that her dad was, somehow, murdered. "Absolutely," she says. "Because it's obvious. All arrows point to that. It sounds like a total conspiracy theory and it sounds like bullshit, but all real fans and everybody in the family knows it. It was a setup. It was bullshit."

But who would have wanted Michael Jackson dead? Paris pauses for several seconds, maybe considering a specific answer, but just says, "A lot of people." Paris wants revenge, or at least justice. "Of course," she says, eyes glowing. "I definitely do, but it's a chess game. And I am trying to play the chess game the right way. And that's all I can say about that right now."

Michael had his kids wear masks in public, a protective move Paris considered "stupid" but later came to understand. So it made all the more of an impression when a brave little girl spontaneously stepped to the microphone at her dad's televised memorial service, on July 7th, 2009. "Ever since I was born," she said, "Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine, and I just wanted to say I love him so much."

She was 11 years old, but she knew what she was doing. "I knew afterward there was gonna be plenty of shit-talking," Paris says, "plenty of people questioning him and how he raised us. That was the first time I ever publicly defended him, and it definitely won't be the last." For Prince, his younger sister showed in that moment that she had "more strength than any of us."

The day after her trip to the Museum of Death, Paris, Michael Snoddy and Tom Hamilton, her model-handsome, man-bunned 31-year-old manager, head over to Venice Beach. We stroll the boardwalk, and Snoddy recalls a brief stint as a street performer here when he first moved to LA, drumming on buckets. "It wasn't bad," he says. "I averaged out to a hundred bucks a day."

Paris has her hair extensions in a ponytail. She's wearing sunglasses with circular lenses, a green plaid shirt over leggings, and a Rasta-rainbow backpack. Her mood is darker today. She's not talking much, and clinging tight to Snoddy, who's in a Willie Nelson tee with the sleeves cut off.

We head toward the canals, lined with ultramodern houses that Paris doesn't like. "They're too harsh and bougie," she says. "It doesn't scream, 'Hey, come for dinner!'" She's delighted to spot a group of ducks. "Hello, friends!" she shouts. "Come play with us!"Among them are what appear to be an avian couple in love, paddling through the shallow water in close formation. Paris sighs and squeezes Snoddy's hand. "Goals," she says. "Hashtag 'goals.'"

Her spirits are lifting, and we walk back toward the beach to watch the sunset. Paris and Snoddy hop on a concrete barrier facing the orange-pink spectacle. It's a peaceful moment, until a middle-aged woman in neon jogging clothes and knee-length socks walks over.She grins at the couple as she presses a button on some kind of tiny stereo strapped to her waist, unleashing a dated-sounding trance song. Paris laughs and turns to her boyfriend. As the sun disappears, they start to dance.

From being a kick-ass cook to a strict dad, here are the 5 things we learned about the King of Pop from Paris Jackson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0kjc3VEwFM

#paris jackson #michael jackson #rolling stone magazine #childhood #prince jackson #the jacksons #blanket jackson #captain fantastic #jackson 5 #moonwalker #fatherhood

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starlit-scifi · 4 years

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Chapter 12

First • Previous • Next

Life goes on.

Crawling, flying, swimming, or moving around in a microscopic pulsating spinning way, life keeps performing its everyday functions, just one piece of the unfathomably complicated puzzle that is a living, breathing planet. You're just there to observe, measure, and catalog it.

Life goes on.

Walking, talking, working, or sitting in the comfortable silence you've come to enjoy, life keeps pulling you closer, a deep bond growing where you're not sure you should want one, and maybe not even sure you do want one— so, you decide, you're just going to observe, measure, and catalog it.

One of the things people say about space travel that you didn't really believe until you’d experienced it yourself was just how much the subtle differences in atmosphere, gravity, and ambient light affect the way your body functions. As comfortable as Unity's artificial environment is, being on this planet— a paradise planet, they call it, one of a handful of truly Earth-like worlds— makes you feel happier and healthier than anywhere else. The air isn't sterile and recycled, the gravity is constant, and the feeling of real, gloriously warm sunlight on your skin never gets old.

Your home planet, Irthtu, is close to Earth-like, though its temperatures are at the cold end of the habitable range. The icy, densely forested planet seemed like paradise to colonists who remembered their great-grandparents' tales of a dying planet that had lost its ice caps and rainforests, becoming half firestorm-plagued desert and half brackish wetland. To a young girl with an allergy to lab-grown wool and an aversion to the cold and wet, Irthtu was anything but paradise This part of Bernubos-3, wet as it is, is much more comfortable in terms of temperature.

Lori hasn't had many complaints about the heat either, which you assume is partly because the habitable regions of Lotanak are similar in temperature, though far drier since there's only so much water that can be generated or captured from comets. Unlike this planet, however, Lotanak's ecosystem isn't very exciting to study since it's just a meticulously designed piece of biological clockwork. The terraforming of Lotanak is a work of art, a monumental achievement of science and engineering, but the ecosystem is evolutionarily fixed by design and, in essence, just as sterile as the environment aboard any Alliance starship. But this planet, the way that everything happened to fall into place in a pattern suitable for human life at this moment in geological time, is quite literally one in a million, at least.

And the way this has all fallen into place, you and her and this grand adventure you're taking together…

It's really nothing special, you remind yourself. You're partners, just like all the students before you and those that will come after. You're here for the project, and when it's done and you graduate you'll go your separate ways, and go back to your separate lives.

You sigh.

"What's up?" Lori looks up from the satellite receiver setup she's been fiddling with while you count your soil microbes.

You turn away from the microscope and let your eyes rest for a minute.

"Life."

---

There's a large underground lake you've been working your way towards this entire time, and two and a half weeks in, you finally reach it.

“Okay, this is going to be cool. And I don't just mean because it'll be about ten degrees cooler than the surface temperature.”

Lori snorts. “Thank the stars.”

“Yeah. But there's this species of bioluminescent aquatic fungus that’s found in this cave, and there's bound to be more really unique stuff down there. We just have to take samples and find out.”

“And that's what we've been lugging these around for?” She asks, pulling a pair of wading pants from her pack and handing them to you.

“We've made use of them! —but this was sort of the main reason, yeah.” You pull your boots off and tug the waders on, securing the waistband the best you can. “We go as deep as we can walk, which is decently far since the lake is pretty shallow. It'll be worth it, trust me.”

You leave everything behind but your headlamps and the equipment you've brought, and descend into the cave. Nearly instantaneously, it's blissfully cool. You walk onward for a few minutes, pausing when your feet hit water.

She looks back at you. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Water sloshes around your feet, your calves, your thighs as you wade into the lake.

“Okay,” you say, when you think you've gone deep enough, reaching up to your headlamp. “Lights out.”

Lori nods and flicks the switch on her own lamp, and you both wait in silence as your eyes adjust.

The fungi are everywhere, floating on the water, sticking to the walls. You trail your gloved hand in the water, and they flicker and swirl like the arms of a spiral galaxy. Lori stands still, her lips parted slightly and eyes wide in wonder. In the soft light, she almost seems to glow too, and for a moment you're mesmerized by the beauty of it all.

“I've never, ever seen anything like this,” she says softly, turning slowly in the water. “Thanks for putting this in the plan,” she adds. “Wow, it's just… wow.”

A fizzy warmth blooms in your chest, and you can't make it stop. You don't want it to stop. You know you need to tell the truth to her, somehow…

“I wanted to do something special, to make you happy. I… I like…” You feel numb and electric all at the same time. “That you're a good partner,” you ramble on. “You're nice.” Aaand I'm an idiot, you think to yourself. She can't see you blushing. There is no way she can see you blushing.

“Thank you,” she replies with a smile, but she definitely sounds confused.

Probably because you've got everything confused! There's no way there's actually anything there.

“Well, we should get to taking samples,” you say, and click the lamp back on. She blinks for a moment, and the magic moment is truly gone.

"Right. Okay. Just talk me through it again, please." There's a sort of stiff formality to her tone that you hadn't heard from her in weeks.

She feels awkward, you realize. I've made things awkward and I don't know if I can fix it again…

You stumble through the procedure once more, looking down at the water-collecting device in your hands rather than daring to look at her face. You're afraid of what you'll see there, that this sort of nice companionship you've had might be gone for good.

You work in silence. The only sounds are the soft distant dripping of water and an occasional quiet curse from Lori when the valve on the water collector gets stuck again. You glance over at her every once in a while, until you happen to catch her looking up at you.

"What's up?"

"Nothing," you say quickly. "It… just looks like I'm about done here."

"Okay. Cool." She counts the vials in their case. "I've got everything too."

"Great. Thanks."

"Mm-hm."

You return to the surface in that same strange uneasy silence. There's not much to say, after all. The cacophony of insect and reptile life is almost soothing, compared to the total mess your feelings are right now. She doesn't seem to want to make much conversation either, so you walk behind her in silence.

Once you've made it back to the campsite and she's gone out to forage, you have just enough time alone to cry it all out.

I've messed everything up!

I should be completely focused on the project and nothing else!

I shouldn't have let my feelings take control of me!

I shouldn't have let myself feel anything at all...

---

At this point in the solar cycle, dusk falls just after dinnertime—not the prelude to true nightfall quite yet, but a long twilight where the animal life of the forest becomes highly active. After being dive-bombed by one too many moths as well as the flying reptiles that appear to be their main predators, the two of you decide it's better to bring your work and those insect-luring lamps into the tent, cramped and stuffy as it might be. Though you've slept in this tent for weeks now and done homework together for months before that, working at the same time in these close quarters now feels different enough to put you strangely on edge. Maybe it's just the change of scenery, maybe it's your worrying about what happened in the cave earlier—or maybe it's that you've talked so much for so long that you seem to have run out of small talk.

"What's it like, having that arranged marriage?" Lori asks out of the blue as you're entering the day's data. You look over at her, a little startled, but she doesn't look up—she’s focused on fixing her radio antenna that got knocked over by, presumably, a flying lizard. "I mean, clearly you don't care much for the guy. And most Tusies I know disregard the whole thing during their time at Unity, so…"

You bite your lip, unsure what she wants to know, or really why this is coming up all of a sudden. You decide you may as well start from the beginning. "It was set up when I turned thirteen… everyone else I knew was getting theirs done too. The blood tests, the physical, all of that. The genetic screening part of it is a planet-wide program that creates a huge database of compatible partners —didn't you have to do the same when you reached puberty?"

She shakes her head. "I don't have to until I choose someone I'd want to procreate with. I had my genome done for Unity, but that's different."

"Right. Well… after that, it was just a matter of waiting for the results to come back—and there's hundreds of candidates, usually. Then your parents help you narrow it down to people with similar interests and goals, people closer to your age who live nearby…"

"And people whose parents have something your parents want."

"Sort of, yeah." You shrug awkwardly. “In the end, it is your choice —I was nearly eighteen when I'd finally decided on mine. Most girls usually figure it out by fifteen. It was—" You laugh, feeling your cheeks go hot, "Really awkward, dragging my dates along to all these gatherings with much younger people. But I ended up with a decent one, I think."

"You said he's so boring your parents will probably break it off for you, though."

"I… I don't know. I feel like I'm always going back and forth on it." You sigh, staring at the data table floating in front of you. "All I have to do is produce a kid. Even artificially fertilized embryos will do. Artificial gestation is expensive, but if I'm the one who's going to have a real career —especially one involving frequent space travel— carrying a fetus is really out of the question anyway. My mom had to put her whole career on hold when she got pregnant, but thankfully I don't have to do the same if I don't want to."

As you've babbled on awkwardly, her expression has gone blank. Finally, she says. "You have it all thought out, don't you?"

"I don't," you say, laughing awkwardly in an effort to dispel the tightness in your stomach. "It's all thought out for me, really."

"Hm." She's silent for a moment, and you sneak a glance at her. She's frowning as she tries to pry a panel off the side of the receiver box. You return to your work. "But…" she asks suddenly, "besides all those… gatherings, with your marriage candidates, have you ever actually dated anyone?"

"No…" You fidget with your fingers until you realize you're toggling back and forth between spreadsheet tabs. "I had a few little… flings, I guess, in secondary," you say, silently praying your face isn't as red as you think it is, "but nothing serious, especially once I'd picked my match."

She turns to face you fully now, the antenna forgotten. "How do you know what you want, then?"

"What do you mean?"

She shrugs. "It sounds like your parents just picked a bunch of really similar guys, and then you dragged your feet until you had to pick someone you didn't really like and still haven't connected with." Her sharp gaze cuts through your every pretense. "It sounds like you've never really experienced what's out there."

"When you put it that way…" you murmur.

She raises an eyebrow. "It sounds really fucking miserable?"

You shrug awkwardly. "Yeah, but… it's just how things are. I can't change that."

"But… What happens if you're not attracted to guys?"

You roll your eyes. "Oh, it's not like I have to actually sleep with him, thank the stars. It can all be done in a lab, from fertilization to the first breath. He doesn't even have to be on the same continent, really. His material can be mailed."

She snorts. "Who needs to make love when you've got science?"

"It's a matter of convenience, that's all," you mutter, your face hot.

"Convenience," she says dryly. "Must be nice."

"Yeah, well… I don't know. It's complicated. I don't really want to worry about it right now." She shrugs and turns back to her work; you enter in your last few data points and start to save and close out of everything. As you take off your control bracelets, you ask hesitantly, "On… on your planet, is it usually inconvenient?"

"What?"

"Starting a family."

"No… I mean, it's easy enough to produce a child the normal way, and most people are good about planning for it. Accidents happen, but usually families are strong enough that if you end up pregnant, you have support." She frowns as she wiggles a connector into place. "It's not easy, having to suddenly provide for one more, but… people find a way." She connects the battery pack, and nods in satisfaction when the indicator lights on the antenna come on. "The thing is, I'm not from a big family. I'm an only child. All three of my parents have lots of siblings and niblings, but I know they'd like grandbabies too. Which sucks, because besides the obvious risks of my future career, I'm also not attracted to men at all."

"Ah." So that bit of gossip was right, you think. "But what about IVG?" She raises an eyebrow. "The… the thing with two egg cells that—"

She shakes her head. "Can't afford it. Won't be able to afford it, probably. A donor would work, but it's still a hassle, and still expensive. It's hardly ever a covered procedure and pretty much all of the Alliance's allowance goes to just surviving." She starts to screw the panel back on.

"I'm sorry," you murmur.

"Why?" She asks over the soft buzz of the electric screwdriver.

"Here I am talking about having the kind of money to grow a fetus in a tank, and you're worrying about your entire family having enough to live."

"You can't change the way things are," she says quietly. There's no kindness in her voice—but no blame, either.

"I can't." You think about the man you're supposed to marry for a moment, the dullness in his eyes and his habit of scratching at his pimples. "It's… inconvenient."

She shrugs and starts to put away her tools, and you get up to put the airscreen computer to charge and pull down the blinds for the night. You both work in silence, your mind lost in thoughts of home, and you wonder where her thoughts are. By the time you've both laid down, you're dying to know but terrified to ask, but as your head sinks into your pillow you find that you're honestly too exhausted to think much more on the matter. You feel yourself drifting off, until her voice snatches you back.

"Muhh?"

"You should really tell your parents, you know."

For some reason nervousness twists in your belly. "About what?"

"That you're not into any of the men they picked. That you probably won't ever be." There's a gentleness in her voice, but all it makes you feel is a weird electric tension.

"Things would get messy," you whisper.

"Messy is better than miserable."

"Do you really think so?"

There's a brief silence, then she sighs. "Honestly, I don't know," she says wearily. "But I've never gotten anywhere good by lying to myself or anyone."

"Hmm."

"Either way, you don't have to worry about any of it for about three weeks, right? You have time to—" she yawns. "—figure things out. Stars, I'm so tired."

"We don't have to go anywhere tomorrow, so you can sleep in. I can take your measurements and stuff, it's no big deal."

"I think I'll take you up on that offer," she says, snuggling up against her pillow. You get comfortable in your own sleeping bag.

"Aurie?"

"Hmm?"

"Thanks for today. The cave, everything." Her voice is low and warm when she adds, "I really liked it."

"You're welcome," you murmur, and your heart is suddenly beating way, way too fast.

Keep it together, you tell yourself. Just… keep it together.

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#update #original writing #original sci fi #wlw sci fi #space lesbians #starlitscifi #i hope yall are doing well #and i hope my work can bring a little joy to these dark times

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the-hound-of-new-vegas · 7 years

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To Forgive Is Divine

Fandom: Overwatch Rating: General Audiences Characters: Aleksandra Zaryanova, Reader Insert Relationships: Platonic Zarya/Reader Warnings: None Notes: Based off an idea I mentioned to @overwatch-reader-imagines, where the reader is a specialist who acts as an “Omnic Doctor”. In this, the reader attempts to convince Zarya to give Omnics a chance. The title is a reference to a quote by Alexander Pope. At some point I’ll be posting this on my AO3, and will add the appropriate link to this post at that time.

You had been warned- and multiple times, at that- about the woman’s temperament, her staunch hatred of Omnics. Yet you had not worried about it. In the course of your life, you had dealt with dozens of souls who shared her mindset. You had marched past protesters in order to continue doing your job, you had endured both verbal and attempted physical assaults, and you had stood your ground when biased individuals threatened your patients. Knowing that you would not be alone with her was the only boost of confidence you had needed.

Except, of course, you had not truly grasped the magnitude of her misgivings. Admittedly, you also hadn’t been prepared for her stature (though you at least had the excuse of not being forewarned about that particular detail). Part of you felt like nothing could have readied you for the sheer disquiet caused by her presence. How could you be fully comfortable next to someone who both despised what you believed in and was more than capable of breaking you for it? Even with your fellow medics beside you, anxiety hung over you, cast over you just as fully as the Russian woman’s shadow.

After all, Aleksandra Zaryanova was essentially your antithesis. She had spent her whole life in fear of what you strove for, in conflict with what you found peace in, and at war with those you dedicated your life to healing. Where you found hope, she found disaster. If not for a dangerous situation requiring a joint-operation, she would have never accepted working with Omnics- even just a couple- and, as such, you wouldn’t have been called to join the med team, meaning the two of your would have never had to face each other. But here you were, awkwardly slumped in the seat next to her on a transport shuttle.

So far you had managed to avoid exchanging any words with her, but you had caught her giving your a hard stare several times, and she seemed to be mulling over which words to berate you with. All the while your fellow doctors sent you sympathetic looks from the other side of the vessel. They had discreetly offered to swap places with you several times, though you had yet to feel unsettled enough to take them up on it. In fact… part of you had started to consider doing more than simply survive the trip alongside Zarya- you wanted to converse with her. No matter how resolute in her opinion she seemed to be, it was in your nature to hope that you could sway her from her extremism, that you could convince her to give more Omnics a chance.

Alas, words were not your tools of choice, and you doubted your persuasive abilities. Still… you believed in your cause with the entirety of your being. That had to count for something, right? You had to hope so, as it wasn’t much longer before the Russian broke the uneasy silence.

“You are no doctor,” she said, tone steady, yet laced with venom. There was a slight pause before she continued, her steely gaze locked upon a pair of Omnics who sat farther in the back. You sincerely hoped that they were unaware of her bitter attention. “Why do you pretend to be one? All you are is fuel for tyranny, not a healer.” Although her words did not hurt you, seeing as you were used to this kind of talk from others, you couldn’t help but be a little unnerved by the way she said them. Every syllable was pronounced bluntly, her voice unwavering, solid as rock, as if she was speaking an absolute truth. There was no room in her speech for doubts. Yet still you gathered up thoughts for a reply, vowing to stand strong, even if you could not persuade her.

“When people are injured, they come to me, and I do what I can to heal them; just as any other doctor does,” you countered, somehow not even flinching when Zarya gave a loud scoff.

“Omnics,” she started, snarling the word out, “are not people! They are machines, and they cannot be trusted.” Several of your fellow travelers perked up at the sound of her booming voice, a few others gulping or exchanging worried glances, having been anxious about the possibility of this very scenario. Keeping your head high and gaze steady, you did your best to project a sense of calm. No matter how stormy your thoughts were, with worries flailing about, it was in your best interests to appear level-headed. Letting Zarya see your fear of her was not an option. As long as you kept your cool, your companions would be able to draw strength from you. More than that, it would hopefully prevent the Russian from digging too deep into your concerns, even if your courage (or lack of trembling) made her furrow her brow. “You are a fool to believe otherwise. One day you will see, and I will have no pity for you.”

There was a thickening tension in the air. You felt like if you moved, you would be able to feel it, a pressure similar to moving through water. But you swallowed your nervousness and prepared a response. If I can at least get her to lower her voice, you thought, maybe the others will be able to relax. I don’t want this trip to be any more stressful for them than it has to be. With one last deep breath, you looked Zarya right in the eyes and spoke.

“If anyone is to pity anyone here, it should be myself pitying those who face collateral damage from your anger- or do you harbor disdain for the human doctors as well, simply because they work with me?” Just as the Russian had, you kept an even tone, somehow not betraying the storm of nerves within you. That seemed to make the woman pause for a moment, her gaze trailing around the shuttle’s passenger bay. When she realized that all eyes were on her, except for those that flicked away as soon as she turned to them, the faintest of blushes appeared on her cheeks. Evidently she hadn’t fully realized how loud she had gotten. As soon as her attention was back on you, you continued to speak. “I’m more than comfortable with discussing my profession with you, Ms. Zaryanova, but please try to keep your voice down. Everyone’s already nervous, with the mission and all, and I want them to be as calm as they can be.”

There was a pause as Zarya glanced at the others one more time, seemingly evaluating the situation. After a few seconds she turned back and released an oddly gentle sigh.

“I understand,” she said, voice far quieter than before. A strange twinge appeared in her eyes, something akin to admiration, and you had to wonder if your ability to stay firm under her pressure had earned you some modicum of respect. Hopefully it had- after all, the Russian would be more likely to listen to an individual she held in a decent regard. “I have no fight with the others. They are not contributing to my people’s destruction- unlike you.” Despite the accusing nature of her words, you noticed that most of the venom had slipped from Zarya’s voice. It was clear that she was still far from convinced, of course, but she seemed to be more willing to hear you out… if only to try and counter your arguments.

“The Omnics I help have no desire to add to your country’s suffering. Their willingness to come to my clinic proves that- they’re helping work towards union between humans and Omnics,” you replied, answer coming quicker than you had anticipated. Guess all my ‘practice’ paid off, you thought, recalling your previous verbal ‘sparring’ matches. This wasn’t exactly like those you remembered, yet it was similar enough to help sustain your confidence. “Trust me when I say I understand your hesitance to trust Omnics. They’ve hurt you, hurt your country, your family… but they’re not all the same- just as no two humans are alike.” As you continued to speak, you saw Zarya muse about your words, brow furrowing tightly. It surprised you to a minor degree, considering the fact that you doubted you were the first to say these things to her. Still… you tried to take it as a good sign.

“They are no more than machines,” the Russian eventually countered, voice as steady as ever, “they don’t have hearts, they don’t have brains, and they don’t have souls. All they have is faulty programming, how can you-”

You interjected before she could finish, not allowing yourself to flinch or waver in the slightest.

“Aren’t humans machines, too? A complicated group of systems, each with their own function, that work together to perform a task. We even run on energy, too, and we have to recharge ourselves after doing something,” you explained. Unexpectedly, Zarya didn’t try to reply immediately, and you took the chance to keep going, hoping that you were starting to break down her prejudice. “As for souls… do humans even have those? That’s been up for debate since the start of civilization. Who are we, simple people living our lives, to answer that kind of question?... What would give us souls, anyway? Would it be because we were created by something grander, in its image, and imbued with its knowledge or love?” With a pause, you smiled softly, hoping that Zarya would get your implication. Once she had a few moments to process your speech, you took a deep breath and tried to get the last of your points across.

“I know it’s hard to think of Omnics being anything like humans, especially with how some of them have affected your life, but you can’t blame them for wanting be like us, to live like us and with us. For decades humans strove so hard to make robots that were a mirror image of humanity. We tried time and time again to create life in our image, to make something capable of thoughts and growth, just like us. Omnics are the result of that effort- so who are we to get angry, or frustrated, when they ask to be treated like us?...” You asked, trying not to get too emotional. Every word you said came straight from the heart. What you said was exactly what you believed, what you fought for, what you knew that one day you might have to die for. “Not all of them have gone about coexistence in a peaceful manner, that’s true. I won’t argue with you on that. But far from all of them want war or death to humanity, or anything like that. They want the right to exist. Isn’t that what humans have fought for countless times?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve fought for all your life?”

Zarya had looked away halfway through your speech, eyes cast to the distance, chin falling to prop up against her hands, both elbows resting on her knees. There was more calmness in her stature than you had previously seen her with. Hell, something about her expression almost felt serene. Peaceful, even. But when she finally turned back to you, gaze meeting yours without hesitation, you saw the turmoil in her eyes. Maybe you had started to make her rethink her opinion of Omnics… but you knew you were far from convincing her to abandon the very belief she had held onto her entire life. It was clear that she was having trouble finding her words, and you did your best to let her know that she didn’t have to say anything if she didn’t want to.

“I don’t expect you to agree with everything I’ve said, nor would I want you to turn from your opinion immediately. People can’t turn their back on what they believe in, at least not quickly, without hurting themselves. Whatever happens next, I promise I won’t judge you for it, or hold it against you, especially if you ever need my help in the future. If you never want to talk about this again, that’s fine, but if you’d like to talk about it again some time… well, then I’d be more than happy to indulge you,” you explained, feeling a bit like you were rambling. Blushing softly, you gently rubbed the back of your head, finally allowing yourself to show a sign of your nervousness. Zarya seemed to notice, and she almost seemed to crack a small smile.

“You know,” she started, slowly breaking into something akin to a grin, “I’ve never met an Omnic supporter who could stand up to me. Maybe you aren’t so bad after all, Doc.” With that she let out a chuckle, a strong hand clasping your shoulder. Even though she seemed to be trying to be gentle, the movement practically shoved you forward, a little squeak leaving your lips as well. This only made the Russian laugh a little more before removing your hand. “My apologies, Doctor. It is hard to hold back this kind of strength, da?” You couldn’t help but laugh a little as well, glad that the woman had loosened up. It gave you no small amount of hope for the future. “Usually these kind of talks end up with someone in a headlock, not mutual smiles. For that, you have my respect. Perhaps we will talk again after all, Doc.”

With a grin you nodded, unable to hide your excitement at the prospect of speaking to Zarya again. As terrified of her as you had been at the start, you now felt at ease in her presence, and couldn’t help but be proud of the progress you had managed to make in such a short time. Sure, you hadn’t converted the woman to your cause; but you had gotten her to hear you out, to listen to your side of things. That was more than you had even hoped for. In time, of course, you’d try for more- for grander things than an attentive ear. Maybe you’d even get her to forgive some of those who had wronged her, or at the least admit that she had wronged others.

After all… to err is human, to forgive, divine.

#my writing #aleksandra zaryanova #reader insert #platonic #zarya x reader #overwatch #omnic doctor

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whoisleft-rp · 7 years

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M A R Y A

W A R R I N G T O N

AGE [TWENTY SIX] ; ALLIANCE [CIVILIAN] ; BLOOD [PUREBLOOD] ; HOUSE [FORMER SLYTHERIN] ; STATUS [CLOSED]

THE SOLDIER; Marya grew up wanting whatever she didn’t have. She was hard to satisfy in every regard, early bored, impossibly flighty. The grass always seemed to be greener somewhere else and the moment she got her hands on something she’d wanted (for ages and ages and ages, by her own admission) she’d already tired of it. All through school she was this way– never staying in a club for long, never keeping a consistent course load of the same subjects. There was always something that needed to be changed, or could be improved, or should have been different to start with. Even her marriage to Tyler Warrington went this way. He’d been her betrothal of choice; she can still remember the day she pointed him out to her mother at a ball and left the rest of the arrangements to her parents to figure out. From afar, he’d been handsome and rich and talented and all the things a husband should be. Although she didn’t interact with him much directly, she played a heavy hand in planning their wedding– everything had to be ‘just so.’ She spent months and months getting every detail down until it was perfect. The day of the ceremony, she was both moody and deflated. Although everything had been done to her specifications, it just didn’t ‘feel’ perfect. But everything went off without a hitch, and soon she was living in a new house with her new husband and spent all her time peering over the fence to make sure the neighbors didn’t have something that she wanted more.

All of that changed when her son was born.

She and Tyler were in no rush to get pregnant after the wedding. All things considered, they’d created a powerful familiar alliance and merged two large fortunes, but she didn’t really know him at all. He had work and–although he didn’t tell her about it in any great detail–Death Eater matters to attend to. She had lunches with the girls, shopping trips abroad. There was a household to be run…or, at least, someone had to supervise the house elves while they ran things. After a couple years of marriage, Marya fell pregnant with her and Tyler’s son. He’s now 4 years old, and everything about him terrifies Marya– because finally, for the first time in her life, she has everything she ever wanted. She’s never been more content at home; she’s never been closer to Tyler; she’s never felt like she’s had such a solid direction in life. For the first time, she’s also aware of how dangerous Tyler’s involvement in the Death Eaters is; how many things could go wrong in trying to raise her son; the horror of the constant state of flux in the world.

The grass is finally greenest in Marya’s own backyard, and she has no idea how to keep it that way.

THE BLUEPRINTS;

Marya is constantly redecorating her home. She just hasn’t gotten ‘that feeling’ of nesting yet, and so there’s always at least one remodeling project going on. First it was the bathroom, then the guest bedrooms. The kitchen’s been done twice. The master bedroom is in a constant state of flux, and don’t even get her started on the backyard patio. Ironically, the one thing she hasn’t touched is her massive walk-in closet–– she adds to it constantly, but is happy with the way it’s built and organized.

Although it’s ‘expected’ for pureblood couples to want a male heir first, Marya really, genuinely did want a little boy. For someone so feminine herself, she couldn’t shake the notion that she wanted to spend her pregnancy buying tiny ties and dress shoes and trousers instead of frilly tutu dresses. Her mother says it was just her sixth sense kicking in, but Marya likes to think it was a way of willing the universe to give her what she wanted.

Marya doesn’t have a job at present, and she was never committed to getting one during school, either. She’s very outspoken and intelligent, but she’s a little naive about the way the world works due to all the years she’s been home and sheltered. She doesn’t know the extent to which Tyler keeps bad news away from her, and she’s not sure she wants to.

CONNECTIONS;

[Tyler Warrington] Husband. It was originally a marriage not unlike many pureblood marriages: mostly for power, partly for money and to secure a relationship between houses. Now, however, they find themselves getting closer emotionally as both of them start to buckle under the fear of the growing uneasy climate around them.

[Cristina Malkin] A frequent patron of Madam Malkin’s, the two women have become decently close over the years - and both have a love for gossip, and therefore never any shortage of discussion topics.

[Bellatrix Black] Seeing each other over the years at various pureblood social events doesn’t necessarily mean these two have ever had much contact - but Marya has always found herself jealous of the simple fact that Bellatrix is the eldest Black daughter, an honor that Marya will never be able to have.

PLAYED BY [LEXIE] ; FACECLAIM [MARGOT ROBBIE] ;

#margot robbie fc #margot robbie #harry potter roleplay #marauders rp #hprp #hp rpg #bio rp #fc: margot robbie #marya warrington bio #blood: pureblood #group: civilian #house: slytherin #closed #closedf

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