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whumble-beeee · 4 months

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Show Me What You're Made Of

The (Un)Official Guide to Hero-Keeping | Cont'd from Part 2

CW: escape attempt, disabled whumpee, trans whumpee, flashbacks (ptsd), past captivity references, needles mention, tied up, gunshot, general violence

* * * * * * * * [There are some scenarios in which you will want to invite a staged escape attempt just to foil it. Usually, this is done as a way to give hope to your captured hero only to viciously rip it away, but it can also be useful in making them reveal any powers they may have previously kept hidden.

It must be noted that inviting a non-staged escape attempt is very risky and generally a terrible idea, as there is always a chance the hero will be able to overpower you. Don’t get cocky, and always have a fail-safe. If done correctly, a failed escape attempt can be devastating to both a hero’s emotional and physical well-being and aid in long-term hero-keeping.]

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Stan was not a fast runner in any capacity. Especially without the use of his cane or any magical intervention to help his knee move along.

He could run without a mobility aid, sure, but that didn’t mean that a sharp pang of protest from his damaged knee didn’t light up his entire leg with every heavy step, and it certainly didn’t mean that he had the balance required to keep running smoothly like your average able-bodied person.

That realization blasted him like a truck as soon as he stood up and took his first steps to bolt toward the door, but at that point, it was way too late to turn back.

He pitched himself toward the wall and slammed into it with a methodically placed shoulder, using the cold cinderblocks to keep balance. With that support, and if he ignored the steadily increasing pain-filled protest from his leg, he could practically run normally!

Then a yell. He could hear footsteps pounding up behind him, gaining on him.

For a brief moment, he could already feel the iron grip around his wrist or his shirt, or the arm snaking around his stomach, the heave backward just as his fingers brushed the door handle, the slam to the ground, how he’d be bound up and forced back to that stupid chair and probably be tortured or whatever else the mercenary saw fit to do to him.

Fuck that.

If he couldn’t outrun him, he’d just have to fight him off.

Stan whirled around and sent out the sturdiest force he could muster to grab onto the bounty hunter's ankle. Just enough so that it caught in the air and missed the floor entirely, and the hunter pitched forward with a surprised shout and fell face-first into the concrete floor, the residual blue glow of the magic still half enveloping his leg. Stan could feel the energy seeping out of him like a punch to the gut, but he didn’t stop to see the rest of the damage before turning around and booking it again.

He slammed the mercifully unlocked door open wide and frantically ran outside, hesitating for just a moment because he didn’t expect to run face-first into what looked to be a warehouse wall, complete with a wide hallway he couldn’t see the end of, high ceilings, blank walls, and cold clinical lighting like a goddamn horror movie.

And no exit door in sight.

He raced to the nearest hallway turn, ignoring his pounding head and screaming weak knee and imminent exhaustion and burning lungs and the ever-threatening presence of the bounty hunter and just focused on the one and only task of ‘RUN!’ He couldn’t afford any other thoughts.

He finally barreled past the blind corner, and there was a door! Stan allowed himself a small relieved laugh at the sight of it.

A flash of the mercenary streaked in his periphery. Stan only squeaked slightly. He needed to get away, to slow him down again, he was so close, so close. So he twisted around to throw some sort of magic bullshit at him again when–

And his knee torqued.

He stumbled.

Lost his balance.

He shoved into the wall again so he didn’t fall flat on his face, and tried to push up again and run, or attack, or do something. And in that moment, despite everything, he saw a flash of red on the back of his hand that he hadn’t noticed before that drew all his attention; A tiny little smiley face, no doubt carved in the first time the bounty hunter messed with him when he was tied to the chair.

Then the bounty hunter tackled him to the ground.

Stan fought to get back up, but all he managed was a terrified shuffling of limbs and a feeble attempt at drawing up enough energy to fight the mercenary off as he quickly pinned Stan down with a straddling of the hips and threw a devastating punch across Stan's jaw that made him have to blink exploding stars away.

He held up his arms to protect his face, instinctively trying to curl up and away from the source of the pain. Noise surrounded him, that frizzy buzzing sensation filling his head with cotton and making it hard to think. His entire body felt like it was seizing up.

He wasn’t done yet. This wasn’t done yet.

“GET OFF!!”

Stan used every last bit of power he had to push the man off of him. The walls around them glowed an electric blue, and the bounty hunter lifted violently up into the air with a surprised yelp. But not before he grabbed the front of Stan’s shirt and dragged the hero right along with him with an equally terrified shriek.

Then Stan slammed face-first into the ground, barely managing to get his arms under himself in time to soften the landing. One which was not made any softer by the person landing on top of him.

“Holy shit... you don’t know when to quit, do you?” the voice above him cut through heavy breaths, a suddenly prominent southern twang vibrating through a growl of his voice.

Stan felt a punch in the right of his ribcage.

His muscles seemed to stop working entirely for a moment. Then a strange blooming agony started working its way outward throughout his torso.

His eyes unfocused. He curled in on himself as much as he could. It wasn't much at all. He couldn’t move. He felt an increasing pressure emanating from the area, the unbearable stinging pain spread throughout his torso and he squeaked trying to hold in a full-blown scream, breathless yet barely able to suck in a single gasp into his shuddering body.

He barely even noticed when a hand tangled through the hair at the back of his head until it yanked him up and arched his back, causing what felt like knives stabbing through his ribs. He gritted his teeth. If nothing else, he wasn't going to give the bounty hunter the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

The hand slammed his face down into the ground. The sides of his vision starting to go dark. Then slowly receded back again. A ringing sound reverberated throughout his entire body, and he all but went limp pressing his forehead into the floor.

“Y’know, runt,” the voice of the bounty hunter penetrated Stan’s clouded mind with hard breath. He could feel the man messing around with his belt pouches as he pressed his knee sharply into Stan’s lower back. “I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to use this. I think it's demeaning and kinda inhumane, but you just had to fuck around and find out, didn’t you?”

Stan shook his head and squirmed fruitlessly, terrified of whatever this guy could possibly think was demeaning and inhumane.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out, because suddenly a strip of smooth leather ran under his neck and pulled tight under his Adam’s apple.

Stan froze mid-struggle. Clenched his hands, and his teeth, arched his back and pressed his face into the floor even more. He could only see bright white.

He already knew what the collar felt like.

And suddenly he wasn't in the dingy warehouse corridor anymore.

"No, no, no no no NO NO PLEASE STOP PLEASE!!"

The red eyes flicked down to his sister, pressing her face into his side and squeezing into him as tight as she could.

Then back up to him, holding his hand out threateningly, blue glow dancing across his fingertips.

“How old is she?”

He snarled, arms protectively pulling her into him. “Stay AWAY from us!”

The eyes softened slightly.

So why was a gun still pointing at his head?

–

He threw his hands violently out at the person in all-black combat gear and a slight electric blue glow enveloped their side. Their narrowed their eyes and hissed in annoyance.

“Collar the older one, and for gods sake, find the younger one and dispose of it or something.” The person in all-black combat gear nodded at him. “She’s the only one we need alive.”

–

He tried to fight back. He didn’t have the cane back then. Didn’t need one.

His powers were so new, and they were so many, and he was just a kid.

He never stood a chance.

The gun. The eyes behind it. Red sparkles, red and scary.

He faced them down.

They were supposed to be gone forever.

Then the rough woven fabric of a collar too tight around his neck.

The large hands squeezing his upper arms painfully, forcing him forward.

Restraining him.

Fighting.

Held down.

Experiments.

Needles.

NEEDLES.

Where was his family?

He clutched at the collar as it wrapped around his neck. He could feel his powers leeching away as he fought to keep his freedom.

CLICK.

The sound reverberated through his skull.

And now the cycle had begun anew.

An arm wrapped around his chest and strong-armed him to his feet. Stan would have screamed if he remembered how to. Instead, a strangled gasp choked out of his vocal cords as a heavy hand clasped onto his shoulder and propelled him forward.

He immediately stumbled and fell to one knee, agonizing pain bolting up and down his bad leg and almost face-planting in the process, because when were his hands cuffed behind his back again?

He felt the collar sitting on his throat and he tried to bring his hands up to rip the damn thing off, but he couldn't.

He couldn't, he couldn't, he tried but he couldn't.

A voice lilted somewhere all around Stan, and he could feel the hands grabbing at him. He shrieked and fell forward, scrambling all of six inches before he was backed up and shivering against the wall staring up at the heaving bounty hunter.

He did not look amused.

“You are so pitiful, you know that?”

Stan brought his knees up and pressed his face into his legs, as if that small protection could put the world between them.

“Chiquito, if you don’t get your ass up and walk with me back to that room, I will pick you up and throw you over my shoulder like a sack of goddamn potatoes and spike you into the fucking floor when we get there, do you want that?”

Stan stared glassily into the floor. “... you– you– y-you were– you were there-ere.”

“I was–... What?”

Stan’s gaze snapped to his eyes. Those dark eyes. He couldn’t see it now, but he was sure there was a red glint in the right light.

“You!” He shouted, as if that would clear up his babbling. “You were– it was you!”

The mercenary stared at him. Then clenched his fists, looked up, took a hissing deep breath, and released his fists again.

“You can have a mental breakdown when we get back, runt. Are you gonna walk there or am I dragging you there?”

He didn’t remember.

Of course he didn’t remember, it must have been ten years ago. Stan was just a kid, and everyone thought he was a girl back then. He himself thought he was a girl back then.

Things were different now. Things were going better.

“I– I– We–... Walk.”

“Great.”

He reached down and dragged Stan up by the upper arm, completely ignoring the way he violently flinched and tugged back.

Stan did his best to keep up, but in addition to hunching over the searing pain in his chest and trying to ignore the prickling bruise that must have been forming on his cheek, his leg was oozing spikes of lava up and down his entire hip and leg. Stan stumbled and almost pitched forward if it hadn't been for the bounty hunter's iron grip.

The bounty hunter groaned incredulously. “Oh my god!”

“Wait, wait, I– Don't–!”

That was all he managed to get out before he was swept off his feet and thrown over the man's shoulder, hitting the soft part of his stomach right on the bone, knocking the wind from his lungs and setting his side on fire all over again. And now he was upside down. His brain felt like it was made out of slime.

He barely managed to gather his bearings enough to start kicking and yelling when he was unceremoniously dumped against the wall, where his head cracked against the cold cinderblock and he bounced to the ground with a strangled gasp.

The world went bright white as the searing pain shot through his entire being, snaking around his brain and squeezing it in a chokehold so that there was no more thought, nothing else but the primal urge to curl up into a little ball to protect himself and the silent open-mouthed screams of a trapped animal clawing desperately for its life, seizing and twitching and paralyzed all because of a too hard smack to the head short circuiting any chance it had at survival.

Stan could barely feel anything over the deafening ringing in his ears, the buzzing feeling in his body as if he were entirely made of bees, the dizziness tilting the world around him on its axis like some bad carnival fair ride.

What was that all about?

Then he finally spotted the mercenary again, coming at him once more with chain in hand, and he may as well have been dunked in ice water with how fast that image sobered him up.

He clumsily kicked out with all his might, pressing his back into the wall as much as possible to get away while simultaneously realizing that with the wall behind him, probably concussed, dizzy, tied up, and in agonizing pain, there was no way he was going to win this fight.

He kicked anyway.

Even as the hunter seemed to grab the ankle of his good leg easily, he still tried to slam his foot into the hand of the bounty hunter to just get him off. He even managed to get a solid kick in, causing the hunter to jolt back with a pained cry and let go.

Stan felt some sort of twisted sense of pride that he managed to get a hit in even in his sorry state.

Which was quickly crushed when two hands grabbed either of his ankles and lifted them up high into the air, so high that Stan was only touching the ground with the upper part of his back. He couldn’t even use his arms for extra support with the way they were firmly stuck near the small of his back.

There was panting above him. “Alright, you gonna–”

“Let me GO!” Stan yelled, trying once more to kick out of the hold, pressing painfully down into the ground with the back of his head and writhing around erratically in one last herculean act of defiance. He kicked even as his bad knee screamed for him to stop, to rest, even as the fists around his ankles just tightened and became more rigid in response, even as the mercenary grunted out a string of curses trying to wrangle him in.

He wasn’t just gonna give in.

“¡Basta ya! Fucking stop, you lost!”

“Fuck you, make me!”

A sharp kick struck him square in the middle of his spine, and he nearly cracked his teeth with the clench of the jaw he made trying to hold back the scream. He almost involuntarily had to take a moment to catch his breath, then before he could start his protestations again, the cold metal claw of a manacle clamped around his ankle and locked in place with a final click click click that made Stan’s hairs stand on end.

But he was still upside down. The mercenary didn’t let go.

In fact, he held Stan up by only one leg now, and seemed to be fiddling with something that Stan couldn’t see because of his own overturned and battered body getting in the way. He could hear each heavy breath the mercenary seethed out, each one filling him with more dread.

He felt like he’d been hit by a truck. The adrenaline of the situation finally started to ebb away as it started to sink in that he was well and truly trapped, leaving room for the much more paralyzing fear that Stan had been battling since the moment he woke up here.

Not to mention the blood rush from being upside down for so long was stinging at his face and making his brain hurt. And dizzy. And everything felt like it was shrouded in clouds. Or maybe that was the concussion.

“Jesus Christ,” the mercenary finally breathed. “One hell of a fucking kicker…”

Stan wrenched his head up to snarl at the man and tried to kick his hand off his ankle.

He snatched it out of the air mid-kick, haphazardly pressing a small bundle of twine into his skin as he knocked Stan’s ankles together and held them there as he began to wind the thread around them.

“Yeah, no more kicking.”

Stan still tried to wriggle out with increasingly weaker and weaker cries of anger, even as his ankles were anchored together, even as the blood rushed to his head and made him more and more dizzy, feeling the pressure in his face rising, and his breaths becoming shallower and slower.

Even as all of his efforts did absolutely nothing, and he was left panting and shaking with effort to not go completely limp as his legs were still held up high above him.

Stan didn’t even have the energy left to fight anymore. Tears stung at his eyes as he finally let his head lay on the ground.

“All tuckered out?” the mercenary's voice came from above him. “This seems to work pretty well on you. Maybe I just just let you hang like this for a bit. I’ve got this like, chain thing in the middle of the room hanging from the ceiling, I could probably just like, clip this in–”

“No, no, no, no no no…”

“You’re sure?” The southern drawl was ever-present. “Just wanna make sure you learned to never fucking do that again… y'know, I could hogtie you, you’re already most of the way there.”

Stan felt something break just then. He heaved in a desperate, hitching breath. “Just… please just put me down. Please.”

His voice was barely even a whisper. Every breath put more strain on his lungs.

A moment passed.

Then the hold on his ankles released, and his body came crashing to the ground. His feet hit extra hard, and his bad knee felt like it was being attacked by angry stinging bees.

But he didn’t care.

He just rolled onto his side so he wasn’t lying on his bound wrists and lay there.

He heard the boots of the bounty hunter approaching him, and he used whatever energy he had left to open his eyes and stare up at him, pleading with him to not actually hogtie him, whatever that meant. He didn’t think he could handle more.

But the bounty hunter just stared back down at him, briefly meeting his eyes before giving his body a once over, then a small nod. He nudged Stan lightly with the toe of his boot, and Stan’s wandering eyes opened and focused back on the man before he even realized they had closed.

“Not gonna pass out on me, are ya?” the mercenary asked, as if they had just had a light sparring match instead of an irrefutable beatdown.

It almost seemed like he cared. Maybe he did.

Stan swallowed. “I’m– not.”

“Good. Don’t.”

The mercenary whipped around and started to walk away, giving Stan a faceful of the revolver strapped to his hip, still completely clipped in and unused.

He never stood a chance, did he?

Despite everything, a feeling of something akin to a mix of rage and sorrow bubbled up within his stomach.

“He-hey! Wait!”

The bounty hunter turned to face him again quizzically, and somehow that made Stan’s annoyance just grow.

“You didn’t even–” Why was he mad about this? “You didn’t use the gun! Coward!”

The mercenary’s gaze shot to his hip. Then back up to Stan. His nose twitched. Face blank, calculating.

Then in one smooth motion, the gun was out of the holster and pointing directly at Stan, and a deafening blast rang out throughout the entire room.

Stan felt a burning sting whiz by his ear, high-pitched and cutting through air microseconds before the blast shook him to his core. He screamed and ducked into himself, violently shoving back into the wall and cowering into a small ball.

Even as the ringing died down and Stan realized he wasn’t a splatter on the wall behind him, the stinging on the shell of his ear didn’t die down. It got more intense. He felt a single drop of something tickling down the side of his ear before dripping down onto his shoulder. Then another.

His attention ripped up to the mercenary, only to scramble further into the wall when he found the gun still pointed at him.

Another drip.

The mercenary flipped the revolver once and shoved it firmly back into its holster.

“I’ll use the gun next time.”

* * * * * * * *

taglist: @flowersarefreetherapy

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ikemenomegas · 1 year

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Omega!Gojo Satoru x Alpha!Reader

I believe we are fated to do the things we choose anyway*

gege akutami is the kind of mangaka who makes fun of almost all their characters. with utmost affection, gojo deserves to be bullied a bit. we love that he's a little heartless, a little frivolous, that he's powerful as a fact, that he cares a little bit strangely, so doing him a bit of justice, here's the mirror to Getou's youth story

tw: canon character death, spoilers for the manga, gojo's emotional constipation and egotism

Toji Zenin cut so many threads the day he arrived on the Tokyo school grounds, but the one between you and Satoru survived. It's already a miracle that Riko was the only one who died that day. The miracle of surviving should have been enough, but now you've lived long enough to find out how much you could love someone too. You get to see how afraid someone is of loving you. Gojo Satoru had one friend. Gojo Satoru had one mate. That was it, that was all he could let himself have.

Springtime Tokyo is still cold. Not as cold as up north in the mountains, but the winter uniforms are blessedly warm. An assistant manager drops you off at Tokyo Jujutsu Technical School on a milky March morning where you are met by Yaga-sensei, the first year teacher.

This teacher has some kind of idea about building community, which is why he's clustered the four of you first-years in the same building, around a loud blue-eyed boy who barely takes one look at you, squinting around a pair of blackout sunglasses, at your purposeful non-expression, before he is grinning, far too wide and it feels like he gets even louder, movements expansive to pull you into the range of an argument he's having with a tall slim boy with long hair tied at the back of his head.

Yaga-sensei just shakes his head and introduces you to Ieri Shoko, who is physically leaning away from the noise as if to escape some blast radius and has the most distant smile you've ever seen in your life on her face.

It's unsettling is what it is. The dark haired boy is just rolling his eyes at the one who had somehow both dismissed you and pulled you into his orbit. The automatic response is to try and get that attention back, but you have at least a little more self respect than that. You climb the stairs to take a room on the same floor to Shoko-san's and leave them to their snipping. You don't see Gojo fall silent for half a second before carrying on bickering, Yaga now stepping in to separate them.

School hasn't quite started yet. It's a boarding school so everyone is just around, getting the lay of the school, setting up their rooms, exploring Tokyo, running into one another and trying to figure out how their pieces fit together.

Satoru has already sorted you all into neat little piles of adjectives

Polite: the boy with the long dark hair, Getou Suguru, although this doesn't necessarily mean nice he notes gleefully. Self righteous and reactive, as in he can be baited into a no holds barred fight, which is new for him. He hasn't been able to fight someone who could hold their ground for more than a minute since he was thirteen. Subversively irreverent.

Morbid: the shortie with the short hair, Shoko Ieri. She discovered her abilities somewhere and even Satoru has to admit some of the diagrams she pulls up are admirably disgusting. Neutral. Satoru has never met someone else who sticks so close to their own whims before but she isn't like anything he expected, dismissive, meandering, goading. And she can't explain how she does what she does, which is aggravating because he can't do it.

And you, the new one. The last to arrive. Fresh meat. Quiet, wary.

You catch him not following you, but showing up near where you are a little too frequently to feel coincidental while you're making a point to meet the upperclassmen. He adds opportunistic and watchful to the list when he notices you do this, but some of the older students seem to find it vaguely endearing - the clan ones like a small animal they can toss treats, the recruited students who aren't trying to suck up to the clan kids with the cautious familiarity of greeting another outsider.

He tries tossing you a treat, granting you some offhanded attention in the common space of what is now the first years' block. Suguru laughs at him when you mostly look confused and apologetically tell him you've never seen either of the movies he wants to debate before refilling your water bottle and wandering back out onto the school grounds with your umbrella.

School starts regardless with some tentative unspoken agreement between the four of you to try and be friends, or at least classmates. There is after all, no one else to be friends with.

Class is boring, so Satoru watches his classmates. Where Shoko is passive and watchful and Satoru is staring into the air, you're openly attentive and Suguru more casually mirrors your attention. Which makes him want to call you another boring small-town bumpkin

Except you are in the same the advanced mechanics elective he is, and you and Shoko become animated discussing the curse anatomy lectures. Yaga takes you away to practice hand-to-hand with his dolls while he lets Satoru and Suguru pummel each other, which makes him think you must be too fragile to handle the two of them. Most people are, so he doesn't think much on it.

Satoru sometimes goes out alone to train when he can't sleep. He lashes out at the wooden dummies on the practice field, ducking under wooden arms and lashing out to see sections of it spin faster. On one of these nights, a week or two into the first year, he sees you standing outside the track, leaning on a railing, face buried in a thick scarf. He's aware of your vague attention, watching him without any particular interest, like how one might watch water sliding under a bridge, but when he sneaks a glance around the practice dummy, you're just as often more fixated on the sky. The moon is full and you're watching the clouds chase across the deep blue expanse, listening to Gojo Satoru's knuckles impacting on wood. And then at some point, he looks over and you're gone, your weird cursed energy signature fading in the dark.

Satoru only sees your technique the first time a substitute makes you spar with everyone else during training while Yaga is away. Apparently the teacher is someone you know because you get into the first argument he's ever seen before you send a spear flying so fast it hits the center of a target and topples it over.

The same teacher makes you fight Satoru, to already defeated attempts at appalled refusal. He'd usually help you push back just on principle, but he hasn't gotten to go on a mission with you yet and his sometimes oppressive curiosity has settled on whether you actually can keep up with him after all.

You can't, but this is Gojo Satoru at fifteen, not fully realized, and the first time he fights you he amends how he feels about "opportunistic". He flies right at your face and swears he makes contact, but you step back at the last minute and he feels an impending impact from his left that is almost the same strength as his own attack. He tries again and you twist out of the way much faster than he had expected. He tries to throw you and you end up descending slowly to the ground, trying to get the teacher to end the bout. Eventually Satoru overwhelms you and breaks your arm when you try to block too many hits in rapid succession. Shoko fixes it, and you wince with gritted teeth and tears in your eyes but don't cry or sob or glare at him with the kind of face that is calling him names you can't say out loud. The demonstration has him, fortunately or unfortunately, folding you into the energy of your little first year group like you'd been there all along.

He's a shaman clan kid, so it's interesting to see you now as not necessarily opportunistic but curious about the other sorcerers, about other people. What a novelty, to be inconsequentially curious. If he'd been too curious as a child he would be either lectured on responsibility or nearly drowned in related gifts meant to appease his moods

You don't appease his moods and the attention of him, one of the strongest sorcerer of the generation, doesn't appease you.

Satoru tries to bait you and things go right over your head. He tries to disrupt your silent, invisible schedule and you let him drag you away with minimal fussing, especially when Shoko or Suguru is involved, but will wander to the side on outings and either find some accidental trouble or something that makes him a little surprised at the intensity of your focus.

He forces you into a combat-determined wager that demands you stop using honorifics with his name and Suguru's name and Shoko's name (without asking the other two) and there's no way for you to get out of it or win so that forces some artificial closeness that becomes real. Language is very important for creating distance, for creating hierarchy and Satoru somehow isn't interested in a hierarchy between you.

He is however far more self conscious of his omega status than Suguru is. He won't say it, but it's a relief when none of you make a big deal out of it when you find out and also a surprising comfort when you and Shoko who don't have to suffer through the literal additional headache of heats try and make them comfortable

For Satoru this involves distracting him by playing video games with him, watching movies, or tossing balls of paper at him while he tries to stop it with his technique. Mostly he's with Suguru, especially if they sync up, but Satoru doesn't have the same heat symptoms as him. During first year even though he sleeps more than he does as an adult, it's typically less than the rest of you might want. Where Suguru gets tired, Satoru will get cranky and mean because he's bored and feverish and Suguru is too tired to entertain him. His family also was never very comforting during his heats so he knows what to do as far as nesting, but having people around is new for him.

He likes to call and text you if you're on missions during these times, which is typical given his clan's sensitivity to him being around alphas at these times.

So even when you're on campus, you and Shoko only spend a few hours with him at a time. Sometimes you play games and the heat makes him almost slow enough to beat on a DS link game. Sometimes he makes you do his homework. Sometimes he likes to throw throwing things at you to see how you use your technique to deal with it.

He adds "sentimental" to the list of adjectives when he realizes he can so easily pressure you in these times into revealing more of yourself to him than you usually do. He's bored and there's only so many things to talk about before you start telling him about an encounter with one of the rare cats that will tolerate living around the cursed energy of the campus, when you grimace and tell him about a terrible noodle stand in Yamanashi province that you still crave somehow, when you tell him about saving fallen leaves in a heavy dictionary you use for that purpose, or the one time you reveal that you've kept every pair of shoes your parents bought you to wear on the first day of school. You tell him these things and it makes him feel like maybe, someday, he might want to tell you things too.

It's not soft but there's a softness to it. A genuineness in the four of you together, in Satoru's and Suguru's growing strength and self surety. Satoru tries to make himself the center of the world, because it's fact that is where he has been all along. But he's not so easily the center of your world. You didn't come from his world.

Satoru doesn't fall. He doesn't think hard about why it becomes so. He barely thinks about it all. He just knows at some point that you're one of his. You're one of his and he wants you to pay him the attention he' accustomed to as center of the world (except he doesn't maybe. He'll be able to say it one day that what he loved was you treating him like he was as human as he could be)

He's terrible at acknowledging whether this possessiveness is anything in particular. After a sparring session, you watch Shoko patch a cut on Suguru's arm with so much longing and a pang of something worms its way in Satoru's chest. He crowds in next to Suguru before Shoko's done, draping over Suguru's shoulders. You don't see the way Satoru's eyes flicker from Shoko's steady hands to your wide-eyed gaze.

He's jealous the way a child is jealous of a favorite toy, hooking his arm around your neck if any omegas outside of school talk to you in the street. If you brush him off when he's trying to use you as a tool for self-affirmation, he sulks around until you acknowledge him in some other way and he will not admit to a single soul why it matters. When he's forced to go home for holidays like oban and returns in a terrible pique, you may fight with him if he lashes out in the worst, most personal ways. You push back and talk to instead of around him or through him and you also don't realize that is why he backs off.

He realizes slowly that he has to be careful with you. He forgets sometimes that you're more fragile that Suguru, that you need help Shoko doesn't need. On what you call the "worst school trip in existence" and Shoko calls "lucky we didn't all die" and Suguru smiles and calls "well we all made it out in the end", even Satoru got injured, yet he feels invincible, like he caught a bullet and threw it back.

When Toji nearly kills him and everyone he ever cared about, he awakens with the power to keep it from happening ever again. He thinks he can carry the world for all of you, for everyone, reveling in his power. He doesn't realize that his presence, the gravity well he made in the monster class's lives, doesn't exist the same way while he's not there because he has a tendency to think everything will be easy for him to fit back into when he returns, or not to think on the fact things could change at all.

Then Suguru leaves and the center of Satoru's world, his reference point, collapses

You're there in Shinjuku the day it happens. It's getting cold again. You're there to meet Shoko. Suguru has gone missing, Satoru is... away. Again. Still. He's been absent whenever he is around anyway. The jujutsu world doesn't have the resources to devote to hunting curse users in particular so the effort to find Suguru has been halfhearted at best and even if he's on your minds, you have jobs to do still.

You're there in Shinjuku and when you don't find the person you're looking for, you find someone else, It shouldn't happen, but it does. You run into Satoru, mind reeling at Suguru's betrayal. You nearly don't see him and he nearly doesn't see you except he sees everything and he's been walking around the district like a ghost.

He appears like a ghost too, tall and pale and ridiculous eyes. You'd tried to see if the world reflected in them once, but now it's more obvious to you than ever that it's just him, nothing more and nothing less.

"Let's go back," he says, and for the first time in months, you return to the college, side by side on the train, feeling like there should be more people in the near-empty car. You get as far as you can before you get to a station that's closed where you can no longer transfer and then you get out and walk in silence.

You walk like there's another person jostling for space between you. When you get to the school, Shoko meets you at the red tori gates. When you get to the mostly empty dormitory building, now a little emptier, Satoru looks at you. And looks and looks and looks. This time, he feels like you might disappear in the pre-dawn light casting your faces in blue.

Maybe it's because he's already lost one precious thing long before he noticed it was gone that he grips your shoulders tight, so tight you almost wince, but turn into it instead, tilting your head as though, were you less careful people, you might brush your cheek against his hand. Just for a little bit of comfort, for a little familiarity.

Then Shoko makes a noise at the top of the stairs, the scuff of her foot, the tap of her palm on the banister. What a terrible day it must be if Shoko is interfering. And you step away.

Satoru doesn't go to bed. For the first time in his life he feels like he doesn't know who he is. He watches your light come on and then go off. He doesn't see you stand at the mouth of the hall leading to Suguru's room with a blanket around your shoulders until eventually you turn away and fall asleep on one of the common room couches, near to where a year of his body in the same spot had left an indent. He doesn't think about the world where you aren't here, where he never sees you again, because he can't quite fathom it.

Because even when he was gone, he never felt like he had let any of you go

It makes him feel sick to his stomach, the closeness of someone else, but it feels worse to push you away so you sit shoulder to shoulder with him some time in the morning. He pretends not to see the new dark shadows in your eyes. You sit and watch the mist burn off and pretend his warmth can hide how the world is a little colder.

*I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we'd choose anyway. And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you ― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars

#gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru #a/b/o #a/b/o dynamics #omegaverse #alpha!reader #omega!gojo #reader insert #gn #i'm sorry this is so much longer than the getou one #I changed styles to write something else and couldn't get back to the broad strokes style of the getou bit #i want to expand on both #this show is really good and the potential here is too much to resist #the quote came to mind because the six eyes user has a specific kind of fate #but the idea of fate has a lot of interesting discussion around it in between religions #jjk plays a lot with buddhist/shinto/christian imagery including the idea of a fate thread tangled between certain power centers #i was raised in a christian centered culture which has certain beliefs about predetermination that can get incredibly depressing.#fate is generally defined as a predetermined and inescapable path of action or consequences #you can't escape it no matter what choices you make #which seems glum #karma on the other hand has something more to do with tendencies - the things you do to yourself/by yourself that lead to consequence #karma is separate from fate. even if you escape the cycle of karma or samsara you cannot escape fate #little interaction with fate are common - seeking explanations of future fortune or charms to pull you in the direction you want to go #ultimately there is a tension between the human ability to act at will (karma/free will) and fate #How do you justify acting if everything is predetermined? one can trap themselves in ontologic questions about purpose and actions #there is an inevitably and circular in accepting that maybe we can't escape fate but that fate also can't escape us #our actions were always going to matter #io.omegas

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starblizzard247 · 1 month

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How are the English cast of FE3H in literally *everything*??? Not that I’m complaining (they are all f*cking incredible) but holy crap

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grandorderconfessions · 2 years

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#it's too late you need to accept your fate #(ba dum tss)#once you're in you can never escape #you watch some anime you dont know much about at your friend's house back in high school #eight and a half years later your entire bedroom is covered in merch of a guy from that show #and you have the obsessive completionist need to read every piece of work the author's ever written #sfw #type-moon

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indelicateink · 1 year

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this 10yo 100K-note post articulates more clearly than I ever could why i love the idea of lestat being 34 and not 21.

guy doesn't get to go on his big hero's journey for another 13 years. whether he's stuck in Auvergne or doing the starving artist thing in Paris (I like to think the former; how relatable), I want to know that story

#always dig when the molly grue post comes around #this time i was like oh hey thank god this says everything i've been wanting to say in a whole ass other fandom #iwtv #rotting in Auvergne for another dozen years can you imagine the angst #doomed to gabrielle's same fate (only without the asshole husband and childbirth and misogyny)#you can possibly-suicidally go after a wolf pack in your thirties as well as you can in your 20s but in his 30s--#*slaps roof* this baby can fit so much more despair inside #just don't marry him off rolin #i want him bitter and running his family's estate for a decade and occasionally trying to escape as he has in the past and #always being thwarted as in the past #never giving up. not quite yet. it's not in his character. but coming close #THEN the wolves come #and set everything in motion #how much more poignant and unexpected to find your beginning at 34

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willowcrowned · 1 year

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the thing about qui gon and rael is that like. rael thinks qui gon is the version of him who didn't fail, right? qui gon was the one who didn't have to kill his padawan in the end. qui gon was the one who didn't fuck up in a way that unmade him. and qui gon knows that. qui gon believes that. qui gon thinks that all that's standing between him and the utter destruction of what's left of rael is the bare fact that he wasn't the one to physically kill his padawan. rael for qui gon is a version of himself that he hates. and that's something he can't ever acknowledge

#something something golden child complex #at least the fuck up gets to admit there's something wrong with the system and they got screwed up because of it #you don't because the only thing keeping you together is the system #your entire identity is invested in it. and if you lose that then you're unmade #like. the daddy issues of it all #because the ways they construct the ways they relate to the world are purely through rules #rael in how he bucks them and qui gon in how he obeys them (not necessarily jedi rules. but HIS version of jedi rules)#and dooku being... dooku.#dooku being strict and unforgiving and doing it because he cares about his padawans! that's how he knows how to love!#he loves by pushing and pushing and pushing until the thing he loves is how he thinks it should be #you grow up with that and you start to have a voice in your head that's always telling you how you messed up again #and it starts out sounding like your master and then it just sounds like you #and suddenly you're middle aged and the man in front of you is everything the voice inside your head hates (and you know you ARE the man in #of you. you know the only thing separating you two is luck) so what can you do but despise him a little bit. almost as much as you envy him #what can you do but try to convince yourself it wasn't luck you escaped his fate. what can you do but try to convince yourself that you got #out because you're better #quirael #star wars #rael averross #qui gon jinn

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avallachs · 25 days

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rip sephiroth you would have loved ethel cain

#ophelia.txt #these crosses all along my body remind me of who i used to be and christ forgive these bones i’m hiding from no one successfully #jesus can always reject his father but he cannot escape his mothers blood he’ll scream and try to wash it off of his fingers but he’ll #never escape what he’s made up of. the fates already fucked me sideways swinging by my neck from the family tree #i’m just a child by i’m not above violence #i am no good nor evil simply i am and i am come to take what is mine i was there in the dark when you spilled your first blood i am here #now as you run from me still. run then child you can’t hide from me forever #freezer bride your sweet divine you devour like smoked bovine hide funny i never considered myself tough #i’m so normal about sephiroth (+ jenova).

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daisyachain · 1 year

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nyoom

#trying out sequences. he is so bouncy and easy to draw. more ponchos in comics I say #daisya barry #dgm #d.gray man #realize I screwed myself with the backgrounds but is IS supposed to be flashing between hometown and death city randomly #run run run as fast as you can you can’t escape your fate little football man

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whileyoureinschoolidothisallday · 11 months

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I just saw someone say 'my hot take is touya would've been miserable as a prohero' on twitter and whoever you were bestie you are SO correct

If touya would've gotten everything he wanted, that kinda pressure would've cracked him like an egg eventually and I will stand by that in court

#dabi #touya todoroki #it would've been like steven universe where he never tells anyone he's struggling until he has an even WORSE mental breakdown than canon #probably still burns himself pushing too hard #shouto probably still has to be the one to get the family together #there is no other way this story can go #it will always play out one way or another you cannot escape your fate #the todorokis are the very epitome of doomed by the narrative

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regallibellbright · 3 months

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as i have recently finished madoka magica (and rebellion) i can confirm Megumi Yakushiji is Diet Homura

Oh yeah she is SUCH Diet Homura. Make a deal with the shady mascot for the sake of the person you love! Do things you consider morally questionable at best for their sake! Discover the mascot was misleading you all along!

Fortunately for Megumi, she’s not actually in a horror story where the world itself is so actively hostile it needs to be fundamentally rewritten for a hopeful ending to be possible. She goes into it distrusting Fluffy because he’s manipulating her but so blatantly so she knows she’s selling her soul. (Also, pretty sure the cast are at least a year or two older than the Madoka crew on the whole which helps Megumi be a bit more skeptical.) Also fortunately for Megumi, Fluffy is more trustworthy than Kyubey… I have questions about why his particular plan was the best option, but it did work so I guess we have to assume it was.

Also fortunately for Megumi no one told the writers “okay so it turns out this was super-popular so we’re going to make a continuation movie” and then subsequently went “this is a good script but can you give us a sequel hook so we can keep going from here?” Which motivated a last-minute twist. And then that sequel hook/twist turned out to be so massively and immediately contentious that they didn’t keep going for a decade and Urobuchi reportedly wrote the script for the coming movie before working on Thunderbolt Fantasy so it’s been sitting in a drawer since before 2015. Which doesn’t necessarily mean anything about its quality for it to have been shelved, but… Concerns, y’know?

#yeah in case you couldn’t tell I have… Thoughts about the ending of Rebellion #which are pretty fundamentally informed by the fact that this wasn’t planned this was a decision made for further sequels #and while I theoretically think it could work it is 1000% dependent on how they treat her in the followup #which not making for a decade. did not help.#(I’ve also yet to watch Rebellion myself and ‘could theoretically work’ is therefore divorced from how the movie itself frames it all #which matters A LOT in how much trust I’m willing to give the team as a whole for Walpurgisnacht Rising)#but fortunately 13 Sentinels is not a universe stacked against its characters! so Megumi and Juro can escape their fates #without needing to fundamentally rewrite the universe to do so

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faillen · 2 years

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Dissaya getting mad during the Christmas Concert was not an isolated one-off

Because what likely happened, what I imagine happened, was that as high school came around, Pat and Pran got closer, and they got better about scheming re: grades, competitions, etc.

But that means that things are closer to a fifty-fifty split than they might’ve been in the past. And I’m sure that Dissaya, as good as Pran is at acting, likely picked up that something was off re how much Pran cared about beating Pat, just as much as she was getting increasingly antsy regarding how often Pat was beating Pran.

So while Pat and Pran are growing closer, Dissaya is getting more and more nervous and distressed about Pran’s future and success, especially because he’s verging on the age she was when she got everything taken away from her.

The Christmas Concert & Pran getting pulled out was not a singular instance of Dissaya witnessing that Pat & Pran were friends. It was likely her, standing in the grocery store and hearing some other mothers talking about the concert band Pran had told her nothing about, and realizing with dawning horror what she had let occur under her own nose—that she had failed to thoroughly protect Pran, that Pran had gotten ensnared in the same trap she had.

It was a culmination of the pieces falling into place regarding the previous few months and all the things Pran might’ve hidden from her, combined with her paranoia, her overprotectiveness, and above all, her guilt for not realizing. It was her wondering if Pran had perhaps been letting Pat win due to their newfound friendship (yes, but not quite in the way she thinks) and being absolutely terrified of that thought, of the way Pran had made himself vulnerable.

If Pat and Pran hadn’t become closer friends before the concert, it’s likely that the concert would’ve been a blip. It’s probably why Pran wasn’t so scared about initiating that relationship—he didn’t expect the fallout to be so great. But in initiating it over such a long period of time, he inadvertently guaranteed that Dissaya would respond drastically.

In the worst way, they doomed themselves.

#morning have some meta that’s been rattling around in my brain for a month #bad buddy #bad buddy meta #fai thinking thoughts #anyway where’s the high school fic from Pran’s POV #where he’s so blinded by the sparkles of this new friendship that he doesn’t notice Dissaya’s increasing concern #but the reader can see and interpret all of her feelings once they get past Pran’s rose-tinted POV #and are screaming at the page trying to tell Pran to shut up or act better or not lie and just come clean #but it’s a train wreck and you already know the characters can’t escape their fates

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the-crow-binary · 1 year

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I think i know how to resume perfectly (my vision of) Mathias' evolution and changes throughout the centuries, in just one sentence:

Pre-Elisabetha's death Mathias would highly DESPISE Dracula if he were to meet him post-Lisa's death.

And there's multiple reasons why (get ready for the long post):

Firstly, Mathias has a hard time understanding his hate for humankind. He can imagine the pain of losing Elisabetha, and how MAD at God he would be if it were to truly happen (the man spent his whole life serving him, wishing for nothing more than his lover's safety, and it's the ONE thing he didn't grant him. I would be pretty upset too ngl), so he can kind of understand how Dracula must feel about Lisa's, but not to the point of wanting the whole world gone. Even about Elisabetha's death, because he hadn't gone through it yet, imagining him hurting Leon in such a cruel way is hard for him (still can't decide if he cared about Sara or not tbh).

So yeah, we're off to a good start with Mathias who doesn't understand Dracula's decisions... and then comes the second reason why he would despise him: THEY HAVE A SON AND HE TRIES TO KILL HIM ?? THE FUCK ?? Knowing how much Mathias loved Elisabetha (and since Dracula still seems to care for Alucard), pretty sure he would have been the HAPPIEST man in the world if he had had a child with her. So he CAN put himself in Dracula's shoes regarding the son he had with Lisa (and can also imagine how it feels to love her)... wich is why he, once again, can't understand him, and what could POSSIBLY drive him to try and kill THEIR SON. MULTIPLE TIMES, MIND YOU. There's grief, there's hate, and then THERE'S TRYING TO KILL THE CHILD YOU AND YOUR WIFE HAVE BEEN RAISING AND LOVING FOR YEARS.

It doesn't get much better than that. The more Mathias learns, the less esteem he has for future him. The curses, the wars, the deaths, the manipulations... the never-ending, seemingly always-growing hatred. The absolute egoism, the disrespect he has for both their wives for going against what they both would've wanted (aka NOT trying to kill people). AND he trapped LEON'S FAMILY into HIS never-ending cycle of death and destruction ? It's very simple: Dracula represents everything Mathias hates about himself and has always feared to become.

I can see him as being a man who doesn't trust nor love easily. Getting on is good side is a prowess in and of itself that not many people has been able to achieve in his entire human life. So to be someone he doesn't only tolerate, but CARE about, is basically a miracle. And when he cares, he REALLY cares, as shown with Elisabetha (and even Leon). I can also see him as having low empathy. In the sense that, if he doesn't like you to begin with (not hate you either, just, is neutral about you because he doesn't even know you for example), he just can't bring himself to care about your misery. He doesn't understand you and can't put himself in your shoes (wich is also the reason why he doesn't understand Dracula himself). Now it doesn't mean he won't do the "right thing", or at least what he THINKS it is. But that's because there was people to directly tell him what was wrong and right, not because he would feel it himself. And i definitely don't think he had only good influences in his life... Leon and Elisabetha were probably a good chunk of his most humane decisions.

But anyway, the point is, i think Mathias have feared more than once that he would end up as a cruel, uncaring man. He was completely aware of how different people can see the world from him. Mathias have a very "blunt" view, one that make him forget about basic, real human emotions sometimes, to favors "facts" over "feelings". It can be a good thing sometimes, but it not always is. Elisabetha and Leon probably told him many times how he needs to take others into consideration more (he has less problem doing so with the people close to him than with random strangers, or even his own men). And as rough and demanding Mathias can be, he doesn't want to be a bad guy. As hard it is for him to feel empathy or sympathy, he wants to do good, to be good, just... well, he has his own way.

So when he comes face to face with Dracula, with the very personification of evil, of cruelty and everything he has ever feared to become... how can he not despise him ? How can he not be absolutely disgusted, hopeless, even ? The despair in the face of his own future is so grand he can't even bring himself to actually hate the guy. Mind you, Dracula can't understand Mathias either. And he sure doesn't "like" him. He forgot how it felt to be him. He disdain him for being "weak", for being... simply human. He wants Mathias to become like him, while Mathias wish Dracula would come back to be like him. They can't see eye to eye, because they're so, so different... yet so similar at the same time.

And i think it could be use for a very interesting story. One where, while Dracula learns to appreciate his human side once again and be better, Mathias learns to let go and accept his terrible fate. Then, both their previous wishes will come true: Dracula will go back to be like Mathias, while Mathias will become the Dark Lord.

A tragedy, truly.

#if it wasn't clear enough that i love this character already (...“these characters” ?)#'but if Mathias knew what he would become why-' GOD FORBID I WANT SOMETHING POETIC.#but fr i don't think Mathias can truly escape becoming Dracula #even without 'fate'. i mean...#this man might lack in empathy but when it comes to his own emotions he's a WRECK #you can be sure that even if he KNEW what would happen afterwards and feared the future #once he would actually live the loss and grief he would stop giving a shit #his hate for God would take place in his heart and he would go apeshit without a care in the world #...and so the cycle begins anew.#castlevania #vlad dracula tepes #mathias cronqvist #castlevania talk #local bastard

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