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chloecherrysip · 1 year

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Just Beyond My Reach, There's Someone Reaching Back For Me (speculative mario movie fic, mario & luigi centric, around 3600 words.)

[OK SO i literally could not stop thinking about this post in the mario movie tag from last week, which turned into me trying to write out my thoughts about how the scenario could unfold, which then turned into me writing a full-fledged fanfic that's over 3,000 words long??? I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I've truly lost my common sense, but I just felt like I HAD to get this out before the movie arrives and their reunion is nothing like this in any way whatsoever.

This is a speculative fic of just one possible scenario out of millions, no actual spoilers; i'm working off info we've seen in the trailers/TV spots/promotions/etc, and all the characterization is based off those too, so it might ultimately be off-base. Please don't @ me after the movie comes out and get on my case about details being wrong! I AM IN THE PAST (and jealous of you in the future for having already seen it).

I present to you: A Version Of Mario & Luigi's Reunion in the Mario Movie That Would Cause Me Irreparable Psychic Damage.]

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Mario hears him first. He would know that panicked yelp anywhere.

By that point, he’s lost count of how many of Bowser’s minions he’s tried to interrogate as he fights his way through the airship. There’s so much shouting and clanging all around him, and his voice hurts from yelling loud enough to be heard over it, but he can’t stop. “Where do you keep prisoners? Have you seen someone who looks like me — but tall, skinny, and green? If you take me to him, I’ll go easy on ya, I swear—”

it’s hard to tell if they’re just refusing to answer him, genuinely don’t know any useful information, or can’t actually communicate in a way he understands — probably some in each column. But he’s about to grab another angry Koopa by the shell and try again when there’s a commotion far off in the distance. The yell that echoes out to him is faint, but it tugs hard at Mario like a rope tied around his middle. Something from his memories, the nightmares he’s been having this whole adventure that he hasn’t told Peach and Toad about. Something instantly, certainly familiar to him in a way that few things are.

His heart is suddenly lodged in his throat. He barrels his way past the troops and the Kongs fighting them, moving fast towards it.

The area of the airship he’s in starts to slope down further ahead, surrounding a huge open space that, judging by the flickering embers in the air and heavy heat that’s got him sweating through his shirt already, has a whole bunch of lava simmering at the bottom. On the other side of the chasm, there are a whole group of what look like angry blue penguins beating down some feisty stacks of Goombas with their bare flippers. There’s also what impossibly looks like a star, with a face and everything, beaming bright and doing twirling cartwheels in the air, giggling at the carnage underneath. And behind all that, he can see—

Mario reacts without having to think. He jolts forward against the railing, reaches a hand out, and yells as loud as he can. “LUIGI!”

He can only see glimpses of his overalls and green hat at first amidst all the other chaos, but then pieces of the ongoing fight tumble further to either side, giving a clear view. Mario watches wide-eyed as his brother frantically swats away Goombas, shrieking and flailing his arm furiously when one snags some teeth through his sleeve until it comes loose. He looks terrified and a little queasy, but also very determined, even jumping in to help when one of the penguins gets pinned down. They seem to be working together.

Luigi is here. He’s really here, alive and fighting and still in one piece. Mario isn’t too late. It feels like a 20 pound weight’s suddenly gone from his back that he hadn't even realized he was carrying around.

His yell is half-drowned out by the chaos, but Luigi’s head still snaps up, eyes wide and stricken and bright with recognition. “Mario?” He cries out, his voice cracking badly. He kicks another Goomba away and then starts spinning, searching the surrounding area with increasing desperation. “Mario!?”

“Over here!” Mario wishes he had another raccoon powerup so he could just fly across the gap and reach him right then and there. He has to settle for taking off his cap and waving it in the air like a flag. “Luigi! Over here!”

Finally, their eyes meet across the gorge. It’s not necessary at that point, but Luigi still tears off his own hat and starts flailing it around too overhead, as if just to make absolutely sure his brother knows where he is. “MARIO!” He shouts, his tired face instantly transforming into a relieved, overjoyed smile.

“Are you okay!?”

“Y-Yeah! I mean, define “okay,” but I, I'm not hurt or anything like — wait, how did you get here!? We’re way up in the air!”

Mario’s face already hurts from how wide he’s grinning. “Not anymore! And whaddya mean? What do ya think I’ve been doing all this time? Looking for you! You don’t think I could find you wherever you are, even if it’s a million miles in the air? Give your big bro some credit, eh?”

A laugh bursts out of Luigi, surprised and shaky. Mario has missed that sound so much. “Right, right. I did think…I mean, I hoped, or…” His brother shakes his head, his voice failing him. He lets out a deep breath, so deep that it’s almost like he’s been holding it in ever since they were separated, still smiling like the sun. “I knew you would. Mario, you — look out!”

Mario turns just as a hammer goes whizzing past his ear, tumbling down into the lava pit. He dodges the next one more capably and then catches the third one that comes his way. In one smooth, lightning-quick motion, he throws it back at the attacking Hammer Bro, nailing him in the face and knocking him out cold.

“Whoa!” He turns back to see Luigi staring with his mouth agape. “When did you learn how to do that?”

“It's kinda a long story!” There will be plenty of time to get into all the details about his adventure when he’s gotten Luigi safely out of an active warzone. “What about you? I thought you were a prisoner here!”

“I am! Or I was, I guess! We — me, and the penguins, and Lumalee,” he gestures wearily up overhead, where the blue star-thing is idly playing with a pinwheel that it somehow conjured out of thin air, “and the others — we broke out! We, ah, we’ve been trying to find a way outta here ever since, but this place is a maze and we need some kind of hot air balloon or one of those floating clown-car thingies to even get away in the first place, and—”

“Spinies at four o’clock!” One of the penguins shouts, at the same time that Mario yells “Luigi, on your left!”

Luigi jolts at the sight of the three spiky, spinning shells approaching fast. He jumps high enough to leapfrog right over them all, causing them to ricochet off the wall unexpectedly and careen off the side straight into the deep pit.

“Nice, Weegie!” Mario cheers. “You always were the better jumper.”

“Keep your head in the fight, soldier!” One specific penguin calls out to Luigi. He’s wearing a very fancy gold crown — probably their king? “We’re not done here yet!”

“I know, I know, but look!” Luigi gestures excitedly across the chasm. “My brother’s here! He made it!”

“Good show! If he’s as brave as you said, he can help us beat back these dastardly troops once and for all! We’ll all see the light of day again soon!”

The rest of the penguins cheer, thrusting their flippers victoriously into the air, and then let out a wave of new, guttural battle cries. The Penguin King smiles over at Mario and salutes him before rejoining the fray. There are more of Bowser’s minions crowding the walkways on both sides, Mario realizes with a newfound wave of worry. He needs to get to Luigi now.

“Stay right there!” He calls, starting to run alongside the railing. “Don’t move! I’m coming!”

“Are you kidding!? Wait!” Luigi starts running too, mirroring Mario. “I can meet you faster this way!”

Mario laughs. “If you can keep up with me!”

“You’re on!”

The road ahead of him is pure chaos, filled with attacking enemies and whooping Kongs and weapons flying every which way, but Mario runs. He runs until his heart burns, dodging and weaving, almost tripping here and there because he can’t stop looking over the gap to make sure Luigi’s still there on the other side, stumbling his way through his own gauntlet. The two areas are winding closer together, slowly but surely. They must meet somewhere. He’ll find it. He has to.

“Hey, Luigi!” He yells, breathless and happy. “Remember when we were fixing Mrs. McGrady’s sink a couple weeks ago and talking about the future? Did you imagine it’d be anything like this?”

“Whaddya think!?” Luigi shouts back jokingly. “I-I mean, I imagined people being mad at us, but those were customers. There was definitely a lot less lava, and magic, and crazy green pipes that send you to places from your literal nightmares!” He laughs, which swiftly turns into a yelp when he has to dodge away from a red Koopa. The next words come out thicker, almost strained. “Mario, you, you’re really here, you — I missed you, I…”

Even with the distance and the distracting noise and the heavy breathing, Mario can hear the familiar tearing in his brother’s voice, and it pushes him to run faster. Luigi is so much braver than many people in their life have given him credit for, but he has a breaking point, and Mario can recognize it like the back of his own hand. Heck, he could use a good cry right about now too. They're so close. Just a little further.

He’s never been the biggest hugger — that title belongs squarely to Luigi, who always holds on a little too long, especially when Mario protests, swinging him up into the air until Mario has to grab him in a headlock and wrestle him down, both of them laughing by then — but he genuinely doesn’t know how he’s ever going to let go of his brother again once he’s within arm’s reach.

“I missed you too! Every day!” He calls out, and if his voice cracks, well, that’s okay. “Hold on! It’s gotta be just up ahead!” There’s a solid wall coming up where they won’t be able to see each other across the way any longer, but the sharp curve of it looks extremely promising. “I’ll meet you on the other side!”

“Okay!”

The wall comes between them. Mario's finally in the clear, having left all the attackers in the dust. His legs and chest hurt, but it doesn’t matter. He's about to get his brother back. He feels invincible, unstoppable.

“I told you, bro!” He can’t hear Luigi at all any longer, but he shouts anyway, hoping the words reach him. “Even if it didn’t turn out like we thought, it’s all gonna be okay! This is crazy stuff, but as long as we're—”

Mario turns the corner and skids to a sharp stop. The words die in his throat, turning to ash.

Bowser is in front of him.

The King of the Koopas nearly fills the entire space wall-to-wall, hulking and monstrous, even bigger than what Mario imagined. He breathes out an angry, deep growl that prickles at Mario’s skin, star-bright embers scattering in the air, the smell of burning getting stronger and stronger. But none of that is what Mario is focusing on. He’s frozen in place at the sight of Luigi, wriggling in one of Bowser’s gripped hands. A thick, scaly finger is coiled tight over his brother’s mouth too, keeping him from making any noise besides a variety of muffled, panicked sounds.

“Thought you didn’t know him, Greenie,” Bowser says in a low voice to Luigi. “Wasn’t that what you said? Boy, you wouldn’t like what I usually do to liars. It involves fire — a lot of it.” His rows of sharp teeth part, just enough for a big exhale, tinged with molten heat. Luigi cringes, turning his head away as far as he can manage. He’s trembling. “But lucky for you, turns out you’re not entirely useless.”

It takes a moment for Mario to come back into his body, remember how to move and think. But slowly, his hands ball into fists. A voice erupts out of him that barely sounds like his own, grave and angry, angrier than he’s ever been in his life.

“I’m only gonna say this once, ya overgrown turtle,” he says, shifting his footing into a fighting stance. “Let my brother go now.”

Bowser looks down at him with a derisive sort of amusement for a long moment before laughing outright. "Give me a break, shortie! You’re even punier in person — 50 of you couldn't stop me. But that hasn’t stopped you from trying, has it? You and your little friends — your pathetic excuse for an “army,” if that’s what you want to call it. But that all ends now.”

As if on cue, Mario hears DK and a few other Kongs turn the corner, whooping and hollering, only to pause too at the sight of Bowser. “Let’s get ‘em! He can't take us all at once!” Someone says, and there’s a rush of new movement behind Mario. Bowser turns Luigi in his hand, holding him out a little closer to Mario with a shake of the wrist — a taunt. One of his claws pulls up just a little from the rest, the sharp tip arched and pressed lightly to his brother’s neck. The implication is clear.

“Stop!” Mario shouts, half-strangled. He must sound serious enough that DK yells “hang on, hang on!” to his brethren, grabbing them with both arms and holding them back from attacking. On Bowser's other side, Mario can see the penguins watching what’s unfolding too with wide eyes. Even all the minions in the area have gone still, weapons lowered, waiting to see what Bowser does before making their next move. The space is suddenly quiet.

The claw finally relaxes again. Luigi’s eyes are very wide, and there are tears on his face as he stares at Mario. He tries to say something, the sound of it hopelessly muffled against Bowser’s hand — an apology, or a plea, or simply Mario’s name.

Mario is shaking. He grits his teeth hard, desperately tries to hold himself steady again. He hopes Bowser can’t see it — but there’s a gleam in the King’s eyes, and it couldn’t be any clearer that he does.

“Do you know how long I worked on this plan?” Bowser says, his tone softer, more thoughtful all of a sudden. “Orchestrating these invasions, gathering forces far and wide to serve me, taking the almighty power star for myself. I’ve wanted this for years!” His wide mouth curves up, plainly wicked and self-satisfied. “And now here I am, about to rule the world like I deserve, and a couple of useless, pipsqueak plumbers from who-knows-where think they’re just gonna waltz right in and ruin it for me.” Bowser chuckles to himself. It’s a dangerous, sharp-edged sound, echoing on and on. “Ain’t that a laugh, Mario?”

Mario doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even know if he’s breathing any longer. All he can do is glare.

Bowser shrugs. The large fingers on his occupied hand flex ever so slightly, a slow, malicious ripple of movement, all the scales glinting in a wave. “You’re less fun than I thought you’d be,” he says gruffly. "What does the princess even see in you? A tiny little killjoy who loves ruining things for others. Guess it’s only fair I ruin something of yours to make us even."

There’s no further warning or fanfare. In one brutal motion, Bowser crushes his grip tighter around Luigi. His brother’s mouth is still covered, but the way he cries out is starkly, unmistakably pained.

Mario’s vision floods with red. Something inside of him, the patient, careful part that was still desperately clinging to one last scrap of self-control, snaps cleanly in two. He runs at Bowser full-speed, fist cocked back, teeth bared.

“I said LET HIM GO!”

He doesn’t make it there. Bowser, grinning outright, moves so much faster than Mario would have ever guessed he could. He spins, and his tail comes out of nowhere. The impact is like an oncoming train, catapulting Mario into the nearby wall with a sickening crack.

There’s a horrible ringing sound in his ears. His head hurts. He hears Bowser laugh, followed by a roar and a burst of fire breath, awful-smelling and close enough to singe. There’s a lot of shouting, and panic, and thunderous footsteps, moving in a hurry. He can’t think any longer. Why can’t he think? All that comes to mind is—

(They’re fifteen, hiding in their bedroom with some smuggled bandages and antibiotics from the medicine cabinet because if their mom finds out Mario punched out a kid behind the school, she will LITERALLY murder him. Luigi wraps each bruised knuckle carefully as Mario winces and complains about the stinging ointment. His brother looks angrier than he’s ever seen him before, though, and that makes him quiet again in a hurry.)

“You want him so bad?” Bowser is much further away, his voice a distant rumble over the flickering flames. Get up, Mario tells himself. He’s gasping, struggling to push himself back up with useless, trembling hands. His legs feel numb. Get up! “Then come and get ‘em already!”

(“You never stop and THINK first, y’know?” Luigi shakes his head, badly trying to hide the tears budding under his eyes. “And now you’re hurt, and it’s all my fault, and — and I don’t need you to do stuff like that for me! I can handle it, e-even if you think I can’t!”)

“Mario!” That’s Luigi, terrified and wheezing, finally able to talk again. An intentional decision by Bowser, no doubt, just to be cruel. Mario can barely hear his brother at all, and the sound of his voice keeps growing fainter. “No! Let go! MARIO!”

(“What are you even saying? That’s not why I did it at all!” Mario insists, using his uninjured hand to flick Luigi’s nose with a few fingers. His affronted expression at that makes Mario laugh, and the motion quickly turns into them trying to be the first one to swat each other in the face without getting blocked. At least the tears are forgotten, which is what he wanted from the start. “Don’t ya get it? I know you can take care of yourself. But if anyone wants to hurt you, they’re gonna have to go through me first. I’M the big bro, and that’s just how it is forever.”)

Luigi!

He’s standing again, even as his body protests every pull and push of the way, even as he’s still struggling to open his eyes. Someone strong and furry offers some extra support on his right side.

“You okay, man?” Donkey Kong asks. “Geez, that looked like it hurt. Hey, anyone have an extra mushroom?”

Stars are flashing across his vision, but finally they fade away. There’s a line of fire in front of them like a makeshift barrier, slowly but steadily dying out. Sure enough, Bowser and Luigi are gone. Mario’s heart lurches hard against his ribs.

“Setting a devious trap for sure,” The Penguin King grouses from further away. “Using one’s own flesh and blood! Does that dastardly Koopa’s depravity know no limits?”

“I’m fine. Never better,” Mario groans. He points past the fire. “He went that way, right?”

DK blinks, looking a little uneasy. “Uh, yeah, but we should probably regroup first and — hey! Wait a second, you idiot!”

Mario’s already charged full-speed ahead, jumping over the flames. Others yell after him too, saying it's too dangerous, but he’s running anyway, chasing the smell of molten heat, the faint, far-off echoes of yelling that feel like pinpricks in his lungs.

He knows it’s a trap. He knows. He just doesn’t care.

He already let Luigi literally slip through his hands once before. Heck, he isn’t sure if he’ll ever be able to forgive himself for that alone. No matter where he has to go, who he has to fight, how much abuse he has to take, he's getting Luigi back right now, and he's gonna pound that overgrown bully's face until he regrets every life decision that led to him daring to hurt Mario's little brother.

It can't be too late. He can't have screwed this up again. He'll do anything. Even if...

The feeling of something on his cap startles him out of the thought — the softest boop-boop-boop, like someone very small is bouncing on it. He assumes he’s just imagining things until the blue star-thing (Lumalee?) floats down further, easily keeping up with his top speed, humming what sounds like a lullaby. Mario gawks in its direction.

“The biggest sacrifices are often the ones that burn the brightest, out in space,” it says, bright and sing-song. “Did you know that?”

“What are you even talking about!?” Mario yells. “Sorry, but I’m a little busy here!”

It’s unbothered by that, twirling close enough to give his mustache a little, playful poke. “Not existing any longer is natural, inevitable. We all go into the light someday.” The way it’s staring at Mario is unnerving, as though this little, creepy star knows exactly what he was just thinking about. “You look scared of that. Are you?”

Mario swallows thickly.

“No,” he says. “If that’s the only way, then…” His eyes are burning at the edges, just a little. “If the people I love are safe, then it doesn’t matter what happens to me.”

Lumalee smiles a dreamy, thoughtful smile.

“Oh,” it sighs, little more than a breath. “This is going to be so much fun.”

And then it floats away.

Mario doesn’t have time to stop and wonder what that was all about. He throws himself deeper and deeper into the airship, even when a heavy metal gate slams down behind him to separate him from the others, even when the slabs of rock under his feet sink down into the lava from the weight and don’t resurface, erasing any way out. Mario thinks of his training, of Princess Peach and Toad cheering him on, of the exhilaration and hope he felt looking out over the Rainbow Road, of Luigi smiling in the warp zone right before they were ripped apart. He steels himself for what’s coming next.

Further ahead, he hears his brother call out for him.

Mario runs.

#mario movie #mario movie spoilers #super mario bros #mario and luigi #super mario bros movie #cherrysip fic #super mario bros movie spoilers #(again NO SPOILERS IN THE FIC ITSELF unless you've been avoiding all trailers and TV spots but just to be safe)#(although i AM going to post a small music-related spoiler down here in the tags so don't read if you want to avoid!!!!)#'hey what were you insinuating with that weird convo at the end there' NOTHING [pointedly stares at one up mushroom in promotional stuff]#LOL this is WAY TOO DRAMATIC and probably too violent for a kid's movie but LOOK #i just need them to pay off the 'bowser is looking for mario's weakness and luigi ultimately IS the weakness' thing. I NEED IT #even if it's just in a small moment. bowser wants to fight mario but he does NOT play fair if he thinks he'll lose. I CRAVE THE ANGST #i was actually going to go a little further with the scene and carry it all the way to bowser saying 'let's end this' like in the trailer #but i just really liked this foreboding ending note #if you are curious about what came next in my head (and also where the heck peach is in all of this) mario ends up in bowser's throne room #and sees that peach has been captured too which is a whole new fun wave of horror that he didn't know about #luigi's been thrown in with her and she's helping him because he's obviously a little hurt after being SQUEEZED #the power star hangs over bowser's throne like the chekhov's gun it is. and we begin!#(the only thing i really wanted to write that i didn't get to by cutting earlier was some more mario + bowser dialogue)#(i think mario would be too tense to say much in the scene i have but once they're squaring off he's a smartass for sure)#(he's known a lot of bullies in his life and bowser is just a much bigger scalier one)#(the title is from the song 'holding out for a hero' which apparently according to a new interview is IN the movie!)#(during mario's training montage so i started listening to it and it basically become my background music for writing this lol)#(last stupid thought before i shut up: bowser hitting mario with his tail is included because i recently played mario odyssey and bowser #kept absolutely BODYING me with that move in the end fight. i died twice because i am bad at games lololol)

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dropout-ninja · 10 months

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The Hollow Knight, Bretta, Nightmare King Grimm

One of these is solely because I want to see you admit your favorite ship on main, I cannot stop myself

I think I need to not attempt ask games because I am too talkative and make long ass posts help

The Hollow Knight: What was the saddest part of the game for you? Which ending is the most sad to you?

All of it

But seriously, so many moments. I’ll throw the Nosk Den out as one, alongside the Abyss. A lot of the settings give feels, like the empty basin. The White Palace’s everything always makes me feel Emotions. A lot of the ghosts make me sad. MARMU. Agh.

Which ending isn’t sad? That said, I am going to go with Sealed Siblings as the worst feeling ending. It feels like the one that has the most damage caused and the least hope. Dream No More is a ‘good’ ending, though, but it gives many sad feelings (just of a different nature than the long scream of SS/THK ending)

Bretta: Favorite Hollow Knight ship? Favorite fanfic?

Why you do this

I have so many ships, because I’m the type of person to read what looks like a crackship and if it’s written with crunch then now I’m shipping it (hi grimmnet). It doesn’t take much and I don’t tend to have notps, my personality is a continuous shrug (me out here sometimes reading pale nightmare and causing you unknowing psychic indigestion)

Grollow was my first HK ship and I’d probably call it my favorite. I also really like Pale King/White Lady. Some of the more cursed ships I favor are Pale King/Radiance (or PK/Radi/WL) and Radiance/The Hollow Knight, exceptionally messy and toxic. There you go, Ashe, get me on main saying it all.

All of yours are the answer XD (I mean it). From Eyes to W&G/Red Sky to Butterfly, sorry not sorry. Other favorites are Soul of God, Form of Moth by @basilbellona, which has been my favorite HK fic since April 2022, and In Defiance of Time (and associated oneshots) by @ganondorf--apologist.

Now for a list of absolutely random things I’ve got in my bookmarks, which are excluding the multiple HK fics I have open but am still reading. I’m going to make too long a post just because I always want fics to get more love. Some of my other non-Ashyr favorites from bookmarks (no specific order and genre) are: Captivated, Until Dawn Shall Break, Not Too Late for Second Chances, Hold The Future With Silver Hands, Camouflage of Great Renown, It’s All Well Above Wonder Anyway, The Clock Stopped Ticking Forever Ago, Pale Revival, A Tribe Betrayed, Void Given Focus, Workshop Safety, To Reclaim A Dream, To Love A Lamprey, Moving Onward, Will Terribly, If You Will At All, I Swore I’d Have No More Knights In Shining Armor, We’re So Close But So Distant

Someday I’ll have even more to recommend when I finish reading the fics open in my tags (hi Tori fics, hello)

Nightmare King Grimm: Which boss battle was the most intense for you? The most satisfying to defeat?

What if I said Nightmare King Grimm

Each one I came across the first time I played faskfsdaf. I’m going to go with Absolute Radiance just because I remember the noises I was making on stream when I accidentally beat her in P5 the first time. But in terms of my favorite boss fight/the one I’m most satisfied about my skills in, I’ll go with the cliche of the NKG fight XD My one skill in this game is being able to absolutely bully the man and kill him hitless before the best part of his song plays. I put all my irl XP points into getting good at him. Other favorite fights are Sisters of Battle, and probably Pure Vessel even though they are gatekeeping me so hard in my all bindings P4 run and so I cry.

#ask game #fic rec #fic rec too I guess #that's what this spiraled into #oh boy #gonna flee into the swamp after this one

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berenwrites · 9 months

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Beyond the Battle - Chapter 40 - Stranger Things - Steddie

Beyond the Battle: Action & Consequence

A/N: Apologies for this being so late - I was hoping to get it finished Thur evening, but I twisted my wrist while opening a quiche (don't laugh 😝) and couldn't type. It was okay again by the next day, but it threw off my writing schedule because we had my husband's nephew down from Friday to Sunday. He's going to uni near us in Sept, so we were showing him round.

Click here for All Posted Chapters

Summary: Steve hits things with a bat or gets hit depending on who you ask. He definitely does not have anything to do with the psychic stuff. That is El’s domain. However, as Vecna is defeated, the rules change.

Pairing: steddie (Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson)

Other Relationships: Steve & Robin, Steve & Dustin, Eddie & Dustin

Rating: Teen

A/N: Multi-chapter story, updated regularly. Honestly not sure how many chapters it will have yet because it's still a bit hand wavy in the middle, but definitely more than 12. Thank you to my beta for find my mistakes and to all those who read/like/reblog.💖 Follow #st:beyond-the-battle for updates.

Also on AO3

Chapter 40. The Realities of Hawkins

For a moment there was absolute silence. Steve was pretty sure he would have been able to hear a pin drop. Owens seemed to have the dramatic pause down perfectly.

“We didn’t jump through your hoops and come here for hyperbole,” Ted Wheeler said loudly as several other people commented their surprise, although not as brashly.

Of course Nancy’s father would assume that. Steve knew the man had a rod up his ass.

“No hyperbole,” Owens said, lifting his hands in a small gesture for quiet, “a simple statement of fact. The phenomena which caused so much damage to Hawkins have nothing to do with tectonic movements and were not an earthquake. Had the young people in this room, along with Jim Hopper and Joyce Byers not done what they did, the fissures would have eventually spread beyond this town as our reality was invaded by another one.”

“Another reality?” this time it was Lucas’ dad who got a question in before Ted could pipe up again.

“There is another dimension, a world if you will,” Owens explained, “which almost touches our own in this location. Because the barrier is so thin here, gates can be formed to allow things to pass from one to the other.”

“We call it the Upside Down,” Dustin piped up.

“What a ridiculous name,” Ted Wheeler muttered.

“It’s because if you go through a gate, it’s Hawkins but everything is upside down. You fall to the floor,” Mike defended the choice.

“Hawkins Labs was studying the phenomenon in 1983 when Will Byers disappeared. A creature from the Upside Down came into this reality, took him, and trapped him on the other side,” Owens went on, flicking the switch on his projector as he did so. “Regrettably, those in charge of the project at the time chose to cover up the disappearance rather than seeking to solve it.”

Steve was a little shocked when a drawing of a Demogorgon appeared on the screen, even as he recognised the spin Owens was going for. It seemed the man was not pulling any punches while also making sure the blame was squarely on Brenner’s shoulders.

“The official title for this lifeform is unhelpful, so we have adopted the children’s term for it,” Owens said as half the room stared at the illustration in horror. “This is a Demogorgon.”

“Total nonsense,” Ted said, standing up. “That is a drawing from a comic book. I don’t know what games are being played here, but I have heard enough.”

Steve watched Owens share a glance with El, clearly there was a plan for this. El held out her hand and the coffee table that had been pushed to the side rose into the air. She floated it to in front of where everyone was sitting and placed it gently back on the ground.

“Thank you for that demonstration, El,” Owens said with a smile.

“Now parlour tricks,” Nancy’s father spluttered.

“Sit down and shut your pie hole, Ted,” Hopper said in a flat, no-nonsense tone, “until you know what you’re talking about.”

“Ted, sit down,” Karen hissed at her husband when he didn’t immediately move.

“It is not a parlour trick, Mr Wheeler,” El said politely. “I could lift you to prove it if you would like.”

Ted sat down, shaking his head.

“As you can see,” Owens went on with his presentation, “El has uncommon abilities. Moving things with her mind is only one of her gifts, closing interdimensional gates is another. El was an unfortunate victim of my predecessor’s obsession with such abilities.”

“El was a prisoner in the lab,” Mike piped up. “She escaped after Will was taken and helped us get him back.”

“Thanks to the children, El was kept safe and was able to send the Demogorgon back to the Upside Down, unfortunately to the detriment of her own health,” Owens took up the explanation once again. “So much so that we all believed she had died. Luckily for all of us she had simply been displaced and was found and protected by Chief Hopper.”

“And you have all known about this since 1983?” Charles Sinclair asked, looking over to where everyone in the know was gathered.

“A simple show of hands?” Owens suggested. “Please would everyone who was involved in the Upside Down in 1983 raise their hand.”

Steve put his hand up, along with Nancy and Jonathan, Hopper and Joyce and all the kids except Erica.

“I was brought in to maintain Hawkins Labs after it was believed that my predecessor had been killed by the Demogorgon,” Owens added. “At the time it was a containment operation, because the gate to the Upside Down was still open and we had no way to close it. Unfortunately, in 1984, creatures from there once again broke into our Hawkins.”

The man removed the image of the Demogorgon and placed a slide of a photograph in its place. Steve slipped his hand into Robin’s as the image of a gate made him go cold. It reminded him too much of being pulled through the bottom of the lake.

“This is a gate,” Owens explained. “All we could do at the time was burn back any contamination which came through. However, unknown to us, there was another fissure. Creatures known as demodogs,” Owens changed the slide again, “which we now know to be an immature form of a Demogorgon, invaded Hawkins.”

“There were lots of them,” Dustin said.

“Fortunately, the creatures from the Upside Down operate as a hive mind,” Owens continued. “They require a link back to the Upside Down to sustain themselves. Once again, thanks to the efforts of those present, the demodogs were kept in check long enough for El to once again risk her life, this time closing the gate. Once cut off from the Upside Down, the creatures remaining on this side of the gate died. At the time, we had hoped that would be the end of it.”

“But it wasn’t,” Claudia said, looking at her son.

“Unfortunately, not,” Owens agreed. “Next came Starcourt.”

“The fire had something to do with this Upside Down?” Ted Wheeler asked, and at least he seemed to be buying into the explanation now.

“Oh yeah,” Robin said, squeezing Steve’s fingers.

He could see Robin’s parents both looking at her now.

“Mayor Kline was not simply corrupt, he was also a traitor to his country,” Owens revealed. “Starcourt was a Russian infiltration operation to exploit Hawkins’ connection to the Upside Down.”

“Russians, in Hawkins?” Ted actually sounded like he was on board at that.

Steve almost wanted to laugh, of course that would be what got to Ted Wheeler, but it was only an almost. He felt Robin move closer to his side.

“How did you let that happen?” Ted then demanded, which was much more like him.

“Not my department,” Owens replied simply with a smile. “I was tasked with incursions from another dimension, not for a foreign power. The Russians used the new mall as a cover for the power they required to run a machine with which they opened their own gate to the Upside Down.”

“So, was that how you found them?” Robin’s mom asked.

“I wish that were true,” Owens said, “but no, we were unaware of the danger in Hawkins until the fire.”

“Then who..?” Lucas’ mom asked.

Dustin, Erica, Robin and Steve shared a glance and slowly put up their hands.

“How on earth?” Robin’s dad said.

“I was working with Steve at Scoops,” Robin jumped in, “and when Dustin came back from camp, he told Steve he picked up a transmission. It was in Russian. I translated is, but it was a code. Then Steve realised the sound we could hear in the background was one of the ride on horses in the mall. That made the code kind of obvious.”

Steve gave her a look for that, because it definitely hadn’t been obvious. Robin was selling herself short.

“We found an elevator,” Erica piped up, “not that we knew it was an elevator until we were in it. It took us down to a base under Hawkins where we found the Russians using a machine to open a gate.”

“Why didn’t you come straight back up?” her mom demanded.

“The elevator needed a keycard,” Steve finally spoke up. “We were trying to find one when they realised we were there.”

“They caught you?” Erica’s mom sounded horrified, almost exactly the same way his mom had done.

“Steve and Robin held a door so me and Erica could get away,” Dustin said, before Steve could answer that question.

“But you still came back for us, even when we told you to go get help,” he responded, giving Dustin a look.

“There wasn’t time,” Dustin replied. “They would have killed you by the time we got back.”

“Yeah,” Erica agreed. “I mean look at the state you were in when we found you anyway.”

Steve did his very best to make shushing motions without it being too obvious, but by then it was too late. The only parents who needed those details were his and Robin’s, but now there were questioning looks on all faces. Only belatedly did he realise he and Robin were now so close it was like they were trying to merge into one. Robin’s grip on his hand was like a vice.

“Unfortunately, the Russian experimentation had allowed something from the Upside Down through,” Owens took up the story again, taking the focus off them. “For some time before the Scoops Troop,” Steve was surprised the man knew that name, “discovered what was going on under the mall, an entity we refer to as The Mind Flayer started to invade Hawkins. As far as we can tell, it infected Billy Hargrove first, after which he brought it more victims, each mind controlled and sent back into Hawkins to work for the Mind Flayer. Most of those listed as lost in the mall fire, were in fact absorbed by this entity. Its aim was to kill El and all those helping her to prevent anyone being able to stop it.”

Steve’s eyes zeroed in on Max’s mom at the mention of Billy. She was sitting ramrod straight and staring at Owens in a fixed manner.

“There was a showdown at the mall in which the youngsters held off the Mind Flayer while Hopper and Joyce attempted to shut down the Russian machinery to close the gate and cut off the monster the Mind Flayer had created,” Owens continued.

“Mom,” Max spoke up, “Billy sacrificed himself to save El and give us more time. At the end, he beat it.”

Max’s mom looked at her daughter and let out a sob. Max was over to her mom in a second, and Robin’s mom who was sitting next to the poor woman turned to help as well.

“We all believed Hopper was killed in the resulting backblast when the Russian machine was disabled,” Owens continued in what Steve suspected was an effort to give Max’s mom the illusion of privacy.

“What did happen to you?” Lucas’ dad asked, looking at Hopper.

“Russians,” was all Hopper said, apparently as unwilling to talk about it as Steve was.

“So, if the Russian gate was closed,” Robin’s dad asked, “who opened another one? I assume that’s what happened recently.”

“Not quite,” Owens replied. “What we did not realise until the death of Chrissy Cunningham…”

Steve looked over to where Eddie was standing among his friends. He saw the way Gareth put his arm around him at the mention of what had started everything this time.

“…was everything that had transpired was being caused not by a faceless entity from the Upside Down, but by a man,” Owens continued to explain. “Henry Creel, son of Victor Creel, was gifted like El.” He changed the slide to a picture of the Creel family. “While my predecessor believed him to be deceased, he had in fact been translocated to the Upside Down, where he joined with the hive mind of the creatures there and took it over. The murders that occurred this spring were his work as he used them to open gates to our Hawkins. When he succeeded in murdering four children, the Upside Down began to break into our reality.”

“Four?” Robin’s mom said, looking up from where she was still helping Susan. “I thought there were only three.”

“I was the last,” Max said quietly. “I died for a little while until El brought me back.”

“This is crazy,” Ted Wheeler said and to Steve he sounded as if he was genuinely having trouble processing what he was being told.

“Tell us about it,” Eddie commented.

“And what part did you play in this?” Ted asked, apparently having decided that Eddie would do as a target for his frustration.

Steve had had enough.

“He died,” he snapped. “Eaten alive by mutant bats while distracting them so they didn’t get to Dustin or into Hawkins.”

It was blunt, it was graphic, and he had the pleasure of seeing Ted Wheeler go pale.

“Died?” Claudia said, hand over her mouth is horror.

“Got brought back by Vecna as a minion, luckily for me these guys ended him for good and pulled my sorry ass back to the real world,” Eddie said, much more gently with his eyes on Dustin’s distressed mom.

“Who’s Vecna?” Charles Sinclair asked.

“Henry Creel,” Lucas replied. “Before we knew who he was, we called him Vecna. Nancy and Robin figured out who he was for us later.”

“We were trying to kill him before he could get to Max,” Erica explained, “but Jason Carver and his goons got in the way. If the adults in this town hadn’t let the sanctimonious moron off his leash the fissures never would have opened.”

Steve watched a couple of guilty looks being exchanged.

“We managed to hurt him,” Nancy finally spoke up, “but we couldn’t kill him. Not until El, Hopper and the Byers all returned to town. After the town was evacuated, we helped El finish him off.”

“What about the army?” her father asked.

“They got in the way,” Joyce said in a very derisive tone, “so we worked around them.”

“Unfortunately, the man in charge of the operation at that point was the same one who attacked this house the day before yesterday,” Owens revealed. “He was of the opinion El was the danger, refusing to believe the evidence about Henry Creel, even when it was right in front of him.”

“He wanted to arrest us for saving the world,” Dustin said, clearly never going to be over that part.

“Luckily I was in time to prevent that,” Owens continued. "The attack on the Harringtons’ home was his last-ditch attempt to eradicate the threat he believes El poses, even though she is the only reason we are all standing here today.”

“Man was crackers,” Will spoke up for the first time and had everyone nodding along with him.

“Mad as a box of frogs,” Wayne agreed.

“You have all been given this information because your children deserve your love and support,” Owens said, looking around the room and meeting all the shellshocked eyes.

“Why now?” Erica and Lucas’ mom asked. “Why not when this all started.”

“There have always been factions within the government who wish to suppress all information about the Upside Down and everything associated with it,” Owens replied. “They held sway on who was and who was not allowed to be read in. However, after the latest fiasco, those of us who do not agree with this policy have the upper hand. We believe there is only one way to protect those who have saved us times and again, and that is to be very loud and specific with the cover story for everything the world has witnessed happening here. We wish to name all those involved and have them recognised as the heroes they are so they will be too high profile for shady government organisations to touch.”

“What?” Steve said at almost exactly the same time as everyone else in their group expressed similar reactions.

No one had mentioned that, but when he looked towards his mom, it was clear she had known this was coming. Thinking about it, it had her fingerprints all over it.

“Wouldn’t that make the kids bigger targets?” Karen Wheeler asked.

“They already are targets,” Steve’s mom spoke up now. “Be under no illusions, the government has files on all our children and probably us too. The only way to ensure their safety is to make them too high profile to touch. I would not be putting my faith in this plan if I did not believe it was the only way. Our kids have been facing this mess without our support because shadowy men in suits decided we were not allowed to know what they were going through. This way they never get to dictate to our families again.”

It was probably way more complicated than that, but Steve could see what his mom was doing. He could also see how her good reputation in Hawkins was perfect for the role she had chosen in this. Even Ted Wheeler looked as if he was coming on side.

“Look,” his mom went on, “I am sure you all have questions and there are things we all need to talk about, but there is food and wine for those who think they need it. If you’re anything like me, you probably also want to hug your kids right now too.”

That got everyone moving. Steve was loath to give up Robin’s hand, but her parents made a beeline for her, so he reluctantly did. He really didn’t expect to be swept into a hug along with her. It seemed the latter part of the afternoon was full of surprises.

End of Chapter 40

Chapter 41

#stranger things fanfiction #steddie #steve harrington/eddie munson #steve x eddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #eddie lives #stranger things #st:beyond-the-battle #fanfic #post season 4 #vampire eddie #hurt/comfort #vampire eddie munson #steve harrington has powers #steddie fanfic #steddie fic

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prof-peach · 3 years

Note

if fans wanted to include peach in stuff they write, would that be okay? and how would they write peach's personality? aside from "FIGHT ME" anyway, i think that much is a given lol. i only really write the anime characters 'cause that's what i know, but it sounds like it'd be kinda fun to try making a version of ash that fits into this blog's universe! nerf'd Obviously, but i think she'd probably appreciate how hands-on he gets when training his pokemon!

Ok, I get a lot of these messages, and I often hear folks wanting to throw peach into their stories and comics and writings, and I will always simply ask that if it’s published online publicly, to be linked to it so I can snoop and enjoy the content too. If someone asks about her in your work, let them know about the blog I guess? But literally I love that people take this stuff, these characters and stories, and make new stuff with it. No ones making money off my work here? So where’s the issue? Go for it buddy, knock yourself out, I’m all for it.

For you, and all the others out there who want to add peach, and other characters to your world building, I will give you a detailed rundown of the main lot, and how they behave, what they do, how they function. You can use that, use bits, or use none of it, I do not mind at all. If you’re creating something, you’re in control, not me.

So, peach doesn’t actually fight people as much as you’d think. She’s very aware most cannot and do not want to do that, and so she likes to keep to herself with regards to that aspect of her life, she doesn’t ask to spar with people, or even bring it up at all, but people ask her all the time, even if they clearly would lose or become hurt should she miscalculate during the fight. She looks at people like they usually create problems, and often has a somewhat reserved nature to other humans. You have to work quite hard to get anything more than formalities out of her. She will dead-pan handle people with blunt and very to-the-point statements, aid whenever possible, but very quickly get back to handling the Pokemon she so carefully tends. Her focus is clear, she’s all about hard work, her very small select family, and the Pokemon.

Her brutal, loud and brash personality only comes out with friends, family, difficult humans, OR any Pokemon. She will joke and laugh and play with Pokemon, but clam up around humans, maintaining tight body language and generally will be a little cold by regular standards. She does however have some weaknesses in this emotionless shield she puts up. When peach was young she was always angry, which swung so fast to sadness, back and forth. Her teenage years it just got worse and worse, it was crippling at points. She is to this day, full of fire and rage, even sadness, but now she has learnt to control it, to use it. When she sees that in others, it’s familiar, and she is pushed to drop the front, and be very real with the person. Underdogs I suppose, people who get bad reps, but deserve the same as everyone else. She can’t ignore it.

Once you start to pry open her personality, you’ll find she’s a lot more laid back and fun than originally appeared, you just have to work hard to find that side of her. She will meme reference, can’t dance to save her life, loves her coffee, and can be caught in quiet contemplation while gardening. This hobby is her calmest, and often is why she can stay so level headed when her quiet rage boils up again. Without time outside she will become grouchy, a little snippy, and lethargic. Will not go in the ocean for any reason other than life or death, is fine with ponds and rivers, or water at wading height. Likes the rain.

With regards to her training others, they usually have to tolerate her somewhat strict nature. She is a little....unforgiving, holds a grudge if you make a lot of mistakes, and has no tolerance for ignorance in the age of information that we all live in. In previous posts I’ve mentioned she’s only recently selected two students, after many years of testing kids who want to learn from her. Hundred tried out, only two have ever been approved. How she teaches is very fast paced, be prepared to get some scrapes and bruises, she will test your physical and emotional tolerances with intense tasks, carefully watching students like a hawk. Bad posture in your stance? She’ll be the first to tell you to sort it out. Not hearing your Pokemon partner? Right, now you spend the day without using words trying to communicate, let’s see how you like not being listened to.

This is a woman who has spent her life saying very little, and watching everything, she watches Pokemon and can see an issue from a mile off, and in battles, her observations are why she can react fast, and chose effective strategy to avoid damage and achieve results. Don’t let her body fool you, her strongest asset is analysing, watching, planning. Those skills have over the years transferred to people too. As a student, mistakes don’t go unnoticed with this professor.

Her methods are harsh but fair, and should you prove yourself, she will protect you with her life.

Because of her disinterest in kids and lots of noise, she does pass the training of students on to the other staff members whenever possible. Grey takes on the lions share of battle lessons, he is far calmer, more open and friendly, with patience for people, and an empathy that peach sometimes struggles to have. When you go through a lot of harsh training, and difficult events, it’s hard to change how you feel or think, with peach, well, she’s been through it. Most do not come out the other end in one piece, but she did, and it made her strong. You may think I mean strong like buff and big, and yeah sure she is, but I mean it mentally more than anything. Peach will not quit. She has learnt to destroy the boundaries that stop people getting hurt, gone is the fear that freezes you in your tracks, that feeling that you’ll pass out if you go one more step. She’s learnt to ignore it.

This means she’s a little forgetful at how it is to be normal, to be vulnerable and soft and squishy like students so usually are.

She has her issues, but for the most part, visitors get a laugh, a smile, a calm assertive confidence, and facts. She will indulge those who have genuine interest, or show a connection with nature, an understanding of the balance that needs to be struck for everyone to live well together.

Despite her many flaws, she’s fiercely protective, and will go above and beyond to defend the island, it’s staff, the Pokemon and the visitors. Injustice is her biggest gripe, along with littering, and she doesn’t stand by quietly if something happens that seems unfair.

You will not see her without Valka, her vulpix, close by. That Pokemon doesn’t like to be touched by strangers, at all, and will run the second someone comes at her with that intent. Peach will scold you for pushing yourself onto her, should you persistently try to get close to pet Val. They are in sync, if peach is sad, Val is sad, if Val is stressed, peach is stressed, and so on. They are inherently connected, it’s just been that long, the psychic bridge between them has been built, and reinforced over the years.

The only other Pokemon who follows her so endlessly is Booker, a teddiursa who’s pretty rough looking. He quietly trots behind, grouchy and stoic, they fight closely together a lot. He lost his mom a long time ago to poachers, and peach took him in, and changed her whole life for him. Not many people know, but Booker was the reason she left the rangers, changed career, and got so strong. Will tolerate people petting him but isn’t keen at all, grumbles a lot and tries to move away.

You may also need to know about the others, for the sake of writing, she here a few more bits that may be important to you, or others wanting to do this.

Grey is very tall, very burly, composed, tells bad dad jokes, is a bit of a goof if allowed to be. If he sees a pun, he’ll say it. Can’t help himself. Very nice guy to work with, good at keeping people calm and grounded. Pokemon are drawn to him like a moth to a flame, he gives off warm energy, and has inhuman amounts of patience. If you wrong his family however, he will snap back.

He grew up in the city, loves to swim and hike and cycle, can snowboard, is really sporty. A total brain box with held items, and boosting stats. He will explore many paths, to make sure visitors and students get the information they need, in a way that can be remembered and retained for later. Is a huge guy, but will get on the floor to play with a tiny Pokemon. Treats big “meaner” looking species like babies, very good with all pokemon.

His free time is spent either tinkering, swimming, or trimming his bonsai trees. This guy stares at screens a lot, so appreciates time away from them. Peach built him his own little greenhouse for his trees and tools, which he keeps clean and loves dearly.

His methods as a teacher are built around fun and games, he makes hard work easier to do by distracting trainers from the difficult bits, and focusing in on something more interesting or compelling.

His most commonly seen Pokemon would be a houndoom, Saxon, old battle veteran, retired now to herding and being a good boy. Very gentle, loves a pet.

Pari, now a fully fledged nurse, often oversees the labs front desk and pokecentre features, such as healing pokemon, and informing trainers who come to visit. Her skills with eggs and hatchlings is high, she’s great with younger Pokemon, and hands out good advice to trainers a lot. She’s not a fighter, never was, but can find any file, any study, any book, and any refrence you may need. A true bookworm, loves her romance novels, chat shows and upbeat celebrity gossip mags. Will cry at a lot of stuff, be it sad or happy.

She’s got a seriously upbeat personality, but if caught off guard or shocked, she gets a little flustered. Too much chaos will overwhelm her, but usually she’s on top of things. The years spent on the island have made her better at maintaining composure in emergencies. With lots of siblings, she’s very competent with others, and has a good ability to disarm cagey people with her jolly nature. Because of this, she can sometimes gain information from trainers that some of the more harsh professors may not have access to. Charming is a word for it.

Her partners are an eevee, and a happiny. They are quite sweet and well adjusted, the eevee gets a bit bouncy if you get it too excited.

#if you dont want to use the refs #im really cool with it #just enjoy yourself buddy #pokemon #prof.peach #peach talks #prof.grey #pari #dotaku island #dotaku staff #PLEASE #just ask me if you dont know something #or feel i missed something in what i wrote

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jnixz · 3 years

Photo

Concept art turned illustration, because I cannot stop myself when I have a vision. Right well I just popped off from inspiration from @aquato-family-circus post and this post too :)

Green area is like the brainframe and works like the backrooms in Hollis’s hotstreak.

Staticky snow because its causing interference

So little set up before the panic attack, the heartbreak phase starts off with the hyperhyglaciator activating and freezing everything in the mindscape. It literally freezes over the sea of emotion and flees, ignores raz and lili and distracts itself by finding a way to repair its broken arms.

This is where this part where a weird audio thing happens. They can still hear the frantic breathing, even though 0tt0 is far away, but its less staticky. Raz and Lili are confused on what to do since they can’t fly and ask the psychic 7 for advice/help, except well– due to 0tt0’s hyperhyglaciator still active, there is a snowstorm. And in snowstorms its pretty hard to get a signal.

So Raz and Lili has been cut off from the psychic phone call and are alone, just the wind of a snowstorm and frantic breathing with no source they can discern from.

At the same time, the psychic 7 are concerned for the kids. They’ve been regulating something in the mindscape so Otto doesn’t completely and utterly collapse from and sending the rest of their spare energy to support the more nimble kids at fighting the boss.

Their psychic call can’t reach them, and while the adults can multitask in talking irl and projecting at once, the kids can’t so they don’t know what’s their status since heartbreaker started without pulling out the smelling salts (and they could be in the middle of something so they don’t do that just yet).

Granted they haven’t even had the time to consider as they see Otto eyes flutter open but have a glazed and panicked look to him.

Literally having a panic attack while dreaming and the rest of the psychic 7 could recognize it and oh boy that’s not good. First he falls unconscious when the psychoportal got placed, which is suppose to put you in a trance instead of that.

Now there is this, which is like, a person with their eyes open while having a nightmare. Ever get woken up by being too anxious in your dreams? Yeah that happened to me a couple of times and like its so disorienting and jarring, real bad way to start my day I tell ya.

0tt0 has been damaged enough that Mental Otto got enough energy to do something than just receiving and sending emotional feedback. I got this little visual of like, seeing both mindscape and irl like its glitching in between tv channels.

So like, Otto manages to calm down a bit with the physical help from Compton and Ford since the Panic Attack can’t be mentally beat up yet. He calms down enough to be able to use his powers to like control the railing so he could go up to where Raz and Lili are at.

Unfortunately the panic attack suddenly blocks the way as it lurches for the Plant Mech, and Otto basically smacks on top of the Panic attack, grabs on as it surfaces. Now comes the challenge of defeating a Giant Panic Attack which oh boy the kids don’ have their mech and Otto doesn’ have enough mental energy to do big psychic construct stuff.

I’ve got like 2 versions of how to continue but this em like a good stopping point.

edit: fixed the format

#psychonauts 2 #psychonauts 2 spoilers #Otto mentallis #razputin aquato #lili zanotto #fanart #obdlc #otto's brain dlc #jnixartz #afc my vers obdlc

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shit-the-vampyr-cast-never-said · 2 years

Text

Headcanons

Well, the general consensus seemed to be that followers of the blog were interested in the headcanons I have for Vampyr. Because it’s a bit of a long post, and there are some spoilers for those who haven’t played the whole game, it’s under the readmore. They’re more for fun than anthing else, and I hope you enjoy.

Jonathan

Jonathan has written poetry in his spare time. However, he doesn’t want anyone to know, so it’s all hidden in a lockbox. If he decided to have it published, it would most likely be under a false name, but he doesn’t think it’s good enough for that.

He really likes to annoy Geoffrey, such as doing daft or weird stuff when they’re alone, because no one would believe the hunter if he tried to tell anyone.

He has a fondness for cats. He likes their independence and that if they don’t like someone, they’ll just make it known.

Sean

He is a ‘do no harm but take no shit’ kind of man. While Sean is not the type to start a fight or look for trouble on purpose, he has no qualms about defending himself or his flock if he has to.

In addition to the above, Sean knows the bible is against killing, but it is somewhat fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.

Despite the time period and his upbringing, Sean is accepting of LGBT+ people, people of colour, and those with other difficulties in life. This is a man who helps look after a group of skals after all, and considers them God’s children. He also would have most likely met many different people in his work as the manager of the night asylum, and that would have certainly opened his mind, if it hadn’t been opened already.

Geoffrey

He is a lot cleverer than he lets on. He just pretends he doesn’t so people underestimate him and possibly give out important information because they think he won’t understand it. He also does it to mess with Edgar.

He practically runs on caffeine and spite. Sean most likely has to remind him to eat or at least take something portable he can carry in his pocket. Despite this, he has a sweet tooth.

He has a letter in his desk that he wrote to his brother. A letter he can never give him, but still keeps around all the same.

Elisabeth

At one point, she slaps Edgar so hard he’s launched out of the hospital window and into the river Thames. She refuses to apologise for it.

Romance novels are a bit of a guilty pleasure for her.

She calls Charlotte ‘rascal’ when she knows Charlotte has been up to stuff, like teasing Jonathan. This started when Charlotte was a child and it just stuck.

Edgar

If turned, he does indeed go with his promise to experiment on himself. However, he does give it a rethink after accidentally lobotomising himself and taking more than a day to heal from the damage.

He does have some remorse over being the cause of the skal epidemic. When first turned, he was cocky about being alive when he had been so close to death. However, he still has his ‘for science!’ moments.

If the skull he owns happens to get lost, stolen, or broken, he already has another one on hand to replace it.

Other characters

Myrddin is perfectly capable is talking like a normal person; he just chooses not to.

Usher has some level of psychic ability, but he also just does a lot of cold reading.

Old Bridget actually befriends Ichabod at one point, and he even recognises the skal he let go when he sees them with her.

When not busy hunting vampires, Ichabod does help out at Sean’s shelter, usually with things like heavy lifting and helping check stock.

Clarence is always cold, no matter how it is or how many layers he has on. He’s just one of those people that is always cold.

#Mod Flower Speaks #Not a Quote #Long post #Vampyr #Vampyr Headcanons

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according-to-the-laura · 3 years

Text

StackedNatural Day 60: 5x10, 6x09, 9x07

StackedNatural Masterpost: [x]

November 19, 2009

NOTE: I’m putting the finale in it’s own post that will follow this one shortly. I think that the psychic damage it will deal me to watch it again deserves it’s own place.

5x10: Abandon All Hope...

Written by: Ben Edlund

Directed by: Phil Sgriccia

Original air date: November 19, 2009

Plot Synopsis:

Dean and Sam get to know the whereabouts of Lucifer and want to hunt him down. But Lucifer is well prepared and is working his own plans.

Features:

Crowley has the best character intro ever filmed, the best hard zoom ever filmed, retrieving the colt, Cas drinks with the girls, family portrait, Meg and her hellhounds, the devil’s deteriorating vessel, Jo and Ellen’s sacrifice, shooting the devil in the head, raising death,

My Thoughts:

I watched the cold open 3 times while watching this episode because it made us laugh so hard. GOT HIM.

I love Crowley so much, he’s been a fruity little crossroads demon since the beginning and we owe Mark Sheppard everything. He didn’t have to go so hard with the eyes and the face before he kissed that sleezy banker, but he did that for us. He gave us not one but TWO gay kisses in this role. A hero.

The scene when the boys meet him and they’re so baffled by him… I love them. They’re so stupid.

Lucifer is still an actually scary villain in this season, he has a ton of gravitas and control and I forgot how much I loved that until I saw it contrasting so sharply with, for example, Inherit the Earth, where he was mostly whined and said “cuck”. The colouring and the aesthetic of this episode also fuck extremely hard, especially when Cas is walking among the reapers and then standing in the ring of holy fire all lit from below, doing the same hand turn that he does in On The Head of a Pin. And they still use Cas’ wings to great effect this early into the series as well.

Bonus points for Deangirls and hellers this episode. Dean says, I’d like to die for a cause (do NOT think about the finale in this context), and then he gives Jo the same “last night on Earth” speech that he gave to Cas in Free to Be You and Me.

Cas is making friends with Jo and Ellen, which makes it even sadder that they die in this episode. I love them so much, Jo especially, but I do like that she got to go out a hero and that she and Ellen got their emotional moment at the end.

Cas and Lucifer are great foils for each other in this episode. They both rebelled and were cast out, but for opposite reasons. One for hatred of humanity, one for love of it. @meg3point0 pointed out that Lucifer, even through rebelling, is playing the role that his Father has been writing for all of existence. One brother has to fight the other, Lucifer vs Michael, Cain vs Abel, Sam vs Dean. This is God’s book, and it needs conflict.

Cas looks sooo pretty in this episode, and while I don’t personally ship Megstiel, this episode makes me see the appeal. They have chemistry, hot damn.

Notable Lines:

“Your choice. You can cling to six decades of deep-seated homophobia, or give it up and get a complete bailout for your bank's ridiculous incompetence.”

“To him, we're just servants. Cannon fodder. If Lucifer manages to exterminate humankind, we're next. So, help me, huh? Let's all go back to simpler, better times, back to when we could all follow our natures.”

“Sam Winchester, having trust issues with a demon. Well, better late than never.”

“What a peculiar thing you are.”

“I rebelled, I was cast out. You rebelled, you were cast out. Almost all of heaven wants to see me dead, and if they succeed, guess what? You're their new public enemy number one. We're on the same side, like it or not, so why not just serve your own best interests? Which in this case just happen to be mine?”

“Oh, I don't know, Sam. I think it will. I think it'll happen soon. Within six months. And I think it'll happen in Detroit.”

“I was a son. A brother, like you, a younger brother, and I had an older brother who I loved. Idolized, in fact. And one day I went to him and I begged him to stand with me, and Michael—Michael turned on me. Called me a freak. A monster. And then he beat me down. All because I was different. Because I had a mind of my own. Tell me something, Sam. Any of this sound familiar?”

“Lucifer is the father of our race. Our creator. Your god may be a deadbeat. Mine—mine walks the earth.”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 9.5

IMdB Rating: 9.3

6x09: Clap Your Hands If You Believe...

Written by: Ben Edlund

Directed by: John F. Showalter

Original air date: November 19, 2010

Plot Synopsis:

The brothers investigate a series of abductions attributed to aliens. However, when Dean disappears and then reappears, they realise that the culprits are fairies and that only someone taken to the fairy realm can see them.

Features:

The quintessential soulless Sam episode, Dean gets abducted, having a soul equals suffering, little glowing hot naked lady with nipples, fairy deals, counting grains of salt.

My Thoughts:

When I think of Soulless Sam, this is the episode that I think of. He has tons of funny lines (thanks, Bedlund), and it’s Jarpad’s best soulless acting (perhaps because he doesn’t need to emote). The use of Ground Control to Major Tom is very funny. I like to see big men hold little teacups. Also, the lighting in the prison scene is really good. Sam dumping out the salt is a fun way to bring it back to classic fairy lore.

I'm not a fan of the off-putting homophobic jokes, but in the grand scheme of things they're not the worst.

Also, they mentioned brownies, so I spent a fair amount of time watching this episode daydreaming about DTA instead of paying attention, sorry.

Notable Lines:

“Close encounter! What kind? First? Second? [...] Third kind already? You better run, man. I think the fourth kind is a butt thing.”

“t’s fine. I mean, I’ve had time to adjust.” “Did it happen when you were kids?” “No, like, half an hour ago. “

“So, say you got a soul and you’re on a case, and your brother gets abducted by aliens— [...] what about when there are no more leads for the night? Are you supposed to just sit there in the dark and suffer, even when there’s nothing that can be done at that moment? [...] But couldn’t I just do all that and have sex with the hippie chick?”

“Nipples?”

“Dean? Did you service Oberon, King of the Fairies?”

“You’re missing a certain piece, right in the center, ain’t you?”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 7.8

IMdB Rating: 8.5

9x07: Bad Boys

Written by: Adam Glass

Directed by: Kevin Parks

Original air date: November 19, 2013

Plot Synopsis:

Dean and Sam visit Dean's old boy's home that's now being haunted by a ghost.

Features:

John was a liar, D-Dawg, Dean’s troubled adolescence, Sonny’s home for boys, John Winchester’s A+ parenting, Dean’s first girlfriend, protection from beyond the grave.

My Thoughts:

In this house, we hate John Winchester.

I mean, in a meta sense I love him because I thrive on conflict and Dean is such an interesting character because of his relationship with John, but in reality I am just frothing with rage at a dad who would say his son can rot in jail because he was stealing food to feed his younger brother. And then he lied to Sam to make it seem like it was Dean’s choice to leave him and that he ran away. And Dean still defends his choices to Sam all these years later!

Dylan Everett is so great as young Dean, he honestly nails all the classic Dean Winchester expressions and mannerisms. And he makes me so desperately sad that I want to claw at my own face, so.

The first time I ever saw this episode, I assumed that there was going to have been a case when Dean was a teenager and that’s how Sonny knew about the family business, but there wasn’t. Dean just got to be a teenager for a couple months, and he kept in contact with Sonny all that time and felt close enough to him to tell him what the business was so that Sonny could call him if he ever had trouble. I am actively soliciting fic recs for a fic exploring Sonny and Dean’s relationship over the years. Sonny said he was proud of him, and ten years later he knew that his dad was possessed because he said that he was proud of him.

Dean is so good with kids, it’s tragic that Jack never de-aged for an episode so we could watch him be a dad to a toddler. It’s what we deserve. I just kept thinking about the line, “Hunters are never children. I never was.” I’m sad! His benchmark for good is “no one sexually assaulted me or burned me with cigarettes”! He didn’t actually like being a hunter! He wanted to be a mechanic.

I also really like that even though this episode is centered around Dean, we got a little bit of Sam character stuff as well. He understood the orphan who lost his mom in a fire. He got to see a side of his brother that he had never seen before. And because he’s the parallel to Timmy, we get to see Dean as the parallel to the ghostly mother, protecting her son to the point of causing harm, or in Dean’s case allowing a violation of his bodily autonomy to keep him alive.

Love the parallel with Drag Me Away (From You), with John as the mysterious shadow in the front seat, not the father welcoming home his child.

Notable Lines:

“It was Dad's idea. And then it just – you know, the story became the story.”

“He found me. He found me quick. But he left me here 'cause I lost our money.”

“Well, his old man called. Once he found out what happened, he said `let him rot in jail’.”

“Cars are freaking cool as hell. Fixing them is like … a puzzle, and the best part is when you're done, they leave, and you're not responsible for them anymore.”

“Sometimes you got to do what's best for you, even if it's gonna hurt the ones you love.”

“I mean, here I was thinking this was the worst part of your life, and it turns out it was the best.”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 9.6

IMdB Rating: 8.4

In Conclusion: This Stacked was going SO WELL and now I have to watch Carry On.

<< Previous Day | Next Day >>

#Stackednatural #supernatural #spn #5x10 #6x09 #9x07 #Abandon All Hope #Clap Your Hands If You Believe #Bad Boys

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keroujack · 4 years

Text

not perfect (good)

billy liked to read. steve had always known that. heard the way he answered questions in english, saw his car outside the library from time to time, watched a new book (or two) spill out of his backpack whenever he came over to do homework

it wasn’t until they got a place together, until they’d been together for nearly two years and they were lugging heavy cardboard boxes up a flight of hot stairs that he realized just how much billy liked to read

until they’d been living in the apartment a month and suddenly there were books everywhere. on shelves, on billy’s bedside table, on the coffee table, under it

most of all, steve saw them in his hands. cracked spines in pink palms, a left hand with a pen that liked to underline, a right hand that helped keep the page flat so that it could wear a thin post-it note. calloused fingertips that turned page after page after page

steve came home from work on more than one day to find billy sitting in more than one odd place with his nose in a book. up on the kitchen counter. upside down on the couch. slumped against a wall in the hallway. flat on his stomach in the middle of their bedroom floor

steve loved it. loved finding an odd place to sit so that he could curl up next to him, could put his head on billy’s shoulder, or bury his nose in his neck, or wrap an arm around his waist, or pull his feet into his lap, and just listen to him breathe. listen to him turn pages. listen to him talk whenever he felt like it

books were a part of billy he liked to keep hidden and steve felt lucky every day that billy’d given him the chance to find it. to see it. see him

steve didn’t see him when he walked into the apartment after work today. he ducked his head into the living room, the kitchen, their bedroom. no billy, though

the only sign of billy was the worn paperback sitting on the coffee table. the spine was so cracked it had turned white. the pages so worn they were completely curled at the edges. so many post-it notes sticking out of the side that steve thought they looked like confetti, more than he’d seen in any of billy’s books before

East of Eden

steve was curious. he wanted to know what the post-it confetti was all about and billy never minded if he thumbed through any of his books. if anything, steve could sort of tell billy loved whenever he asked, could see it in the way his cheeks would go pink, the way he’d crinkle his nose, the way he’d sit at steve’s side and answer any questions steve would throw his way

so he sat back on the couch with the book in his lap and opened it

there were too many pages to read it outright. there had to be like, a million or something, if steve had to put a guess on it. billy always picked out the best lines anyway, so steve decided to jump around through the post-it notes

the first one was short, simple

‘people like you to be something, preferably what they are.’

huh

steve figured there was some truth to that. thought about his father, and billy’s father, and robin’s mother, about how the lack of willingness to become mirror images had turned them all into family disappointments instead

he’d never seen it put like that, not exactly, but he knew it was right

so he flipped to another. shorter

‘all great and precious things are lonely.’

more truth. billy had spent 18 years in a house feeling lonely, a house that broke him down and convinced him he wasn’t great or precious or even anything at all

steve knew he was all those things and more, but he still wanted to burn that house to the ground

wanted to destroy everything in the world that had worked so hard to convince billy that he wasn’t great or precious

he flipped to another

‘i wonder how many people i have looked at all my life and never really seen.’

he remembered the first time billy knocked on his front door with blood at the corners of his mouth, the fact that that night had also brought so many other firsts with it

first time steve saw billy smile for real, first time he heard billy’s laugh for real, first time billy called him steve instead of harrington and the first time they drank coffee together because billy had made it in the morning to say thank you

it was the first time billy let him see beneath the mask he liked to hide behind. and the first time steve could say he truly saw him

made him wonder if that was the first time billy saw him, too

he flipped to another

‘do you take pride in your hurt? does it make you seem large and tragic? ...well, think about it. maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.’

billy used to make himself bigger when things were going wrong at home, that was how steve could tell, after that night with all the firsts. knew when billy was having a hard time because he would get louder, mouthier, brasher, bolder. he was better at it now, at breathing, at staying calm

maybe it’s because he didn’t like being on stage when he was angry anymore

maybe billy found truth in those words, too

steve flipped to another

‘..it's awful not to be loved. it's the worst thing in the world...it makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.’

this one made steve pause. hard. made him run his eyes over it a second time because there was. there was something about it. something unspeakably billy in those words.

made steve think of split knuckles and tear stained cheeks and sleepless nights curled together because billy’s heart was filled was broken glass that liked to poke and twist and tear him in two

but, for the first time in all the post-its, steve sort of thought the words were wrong

maybe once upon a time billy had been mean and violent and cruel, but he wasn’t anymore. he was hurt, irreparably damaged from years anger and pain, but he wasn’t mean and violent and cruel

did billy still think he was mean and violent and cruel?

steve kept going

the next one was longer, made him squint while he ran his eyes over it

‘just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? the face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?’

monsters. they knew monsters. demogorgons and mind flayers and angry fathers that liked to leave bruises in places no one could see

but a malformed soul?

that was wrong, too

billy didn’t have a malformed soul. at his core, he was light and bright and beautiful, even if steve was the only person that knew it, the only one that was allowed in close enough to see it

there was no way billy saw himself in those words

billy didn’t think he had a malformed soul, right?

he flipped to another.

‘i think i love you, cal’

‘i'm not good.’

‘because you're not good.’

no.

no, no, no

more wrong

billy was good and steve loved him

and steve loved him because he was good, not for the lack of it. he was so good. even when he didn’t believe it himself, steve knew he was good because he could see it, could tell

knew his heart was still trying to mend itself, was filled with stitches that one wrong tug would tear and reopen, but steve held it with gentle hands and watched its wounds close, watched it grow stronger, warmer

steve didn’t really want to keep going anymore, didn’t want to keep reading if all these words were just going to lie to him

but he could do one more, he could read one more

so he flipped to one last post-it

‘and now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.’

the front door swung open just as steve felt his heart climb up into the back of his throat

he closed the book with a thud, put it down on the coffee table and pushed himself up off the couch so that he could meet billy by the front door

billy, who smiled at one corner of his mouth when he saw steve coming, had his keys in one hand, a big, brown paper bag that smelled like takeout in the other

“hey, i didn’t feel like makin’ anything so i got-”

steve cut him off with a kiss before he could finish the rest of the sentence. pressed their lips together and brought a hand up to hold the back of billy’s neck, to hold him there. heard the big, brown paper bag hit the floor and felt billy’s hand go to his waist

still had his eyes closed when steve pulled away after a few long seconds, tilted their foreheads together

“what was that for?” billy asked, a laugh at the edge of the question

steve didn’t return it, swallowed hard and kept his voice even when he opened his mouth and said, “you know you’re good, right?”

billy flinched at that, brow pinched, opened his eyes and lifted his head up to get a good look at steve. “what?”

“you,” steve said again. “you’re good.”

“yeah, no. i heard you the first time, but i don’t-”

“i read some of the post-its. in your book.” steve watched billy’s expression smooth out at the words. “all this stuff about being bad and broken, but you’re not and i don’t-i don’t love you ‘cause you’re bad”

billy didn’t say anything right away, just looked at him. looked back and forth between steve’s eyes and pursed his lips while he thought quietly to himself, parted them a couple quiet seconds later to say, “i used to be”

but steve shook his head. “you were hurting, not bad. they’re like, two totally different things”

billy hesitated again. let silence wrap around steve so hard he could hardly breathe.

billy hardly moved his lips to say, “i know”

but steve said it again, because billy had hesitated too long. said, “i mean it. you’re so fucking good, billy,” and tilted his chin again so their foreheads were touching again. “so fucking good.”

and billy said it quicker this time, said “i know,” and leaned forward again to kiss steve again, to whisper, “you are, too, you know,” against his lips and pull back with a soft smack. “real good”

steve smiled, ducked his head so he could look down at the big, brown paper bag by their feet

“did you get chinese?”

billy laughed, a closed-lipped huff that he capped off with an easy roll of his eyes. “obviously.”

“y’see, this is what i’m talking about.” steve kissed him again, made billy laugh again, louder this time. “so good.”

“shut up”

“the best.”

“alright.” billy pushed him away with a soft hand on his chest, leaned over to pick the bag back up. “you say that now, but you’re gonna get pissy when it’s cold, so let’s go”

steve followed him into the kitchen with a smile on his lips

ate all the extra fortune cookies and stole noodles out of billy’s container. sat on the couch next to him afterwards and put his legs over his lap, pressed his nose to billy’s shoulder, felt billy rest the book on top of his shins

it was then that he listened to billy talk about his favorite quote in the whole book. the one steve had read last

‘and now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.’

and it was also then that steve realized that one was his favorite, too. with his arms wrapped around billy’s bicep and billy’s voice low in his ear, the words on his tongue like they’d been written specifically for him

because billy wasn’t perfect, but he was good

and steve loved him

because he was good

#harringrove #harringrove fic #my fic #steve harrington #billy hargrove

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shadowfae · 3 years

Note

As someone who is a survivor, I find that, yes, it's fiction, but there's also a certain level of romanticization with it. Exploring darker topics in fiction is absolutely fine, but if those topics are displayed in a context where it's not deemed as wrong it personally rubs me the wrong way. I'm not trying to judge you as a human being because you genuinely seem very caring, but I guess I'm just explaining why the concept of your writing could be seen in such a negative way

Aight, then don’t read it, it’s not for you.

It personally rubs you the wrong way. It doesn’t rub me the wrong way. You know what does rub me the wrong way? Trans men being pregnant. It fills me with such dysphoria it takes me a good fifteen minutes of forced, counted breathing to not want to throw up, and it can still ruin my day.

Does that mean other trans men shouldn’t be allowed to talk about wanting to get pregnant, how to do so safely, and all the fancy stuff that comes with it? Hell the fuck no. And it is incredibly rude to me to ask anything more of them but maybe ‘can you tag that so I can block that?’. And even then, they are not required to say yes! They can say ‘nah sorry I don’t want to’, and that’s fine. Then I unfollow and that’s that.

Because ultimately... People need to learn boundaries, and deal with their own disgust. I know that I can’t wish away my dysphoria, if I could I would. I can’t make you magically stop having trauma, I’d do that too if I could. But I’m not going to hide my self-expression for fear it may upset someone who I ultimately don’t know and don’t see any need to account for. I tag it. Before you open up the works, you have to agree that you are willing to see the content, because it’s marked as explicit. You probably also read the tags.

If you don’t like those tags, the works don’t interest you, or really any other reason, then just don’t click on it.

Could it hurt you if you read it? Maybe. I’m not you, I’m not psychic, I have no way of guaranteeing that. But it can’t hurt you if you just don’t read it. Maybe your reaction is “Ew why would anyone write that” and then you move on. But if your reaction to the tags themselves is full on panic, then there is not a damn thing I can do about it. If I removed the tags, then you wouldn’t know what the work contains, you’d start reading, and then you’d have to deal with the graphic scenes that are probably much worse for you.

I get why people would be disgusted by it. I’m not an idiot. I just also know that it isn’t my problem, and that calling me a pedophile or someone who consumes child porn when nothing I do is even remotely similar is not only uncalled for and super rude, but majorly fucking queerphobic. (You know queer folks for DECADES have been called pedophiles and freaks and then demonized and imprisoned and killed over almost-always-false accusations of pedophilia? You know that, right? You studied your queer history? And you’re willing to call some guy on the internet who does everything he can to ensure folks can make their own choices about the media they engage with can do so with informed consent? Bad hill to die on.)

Worst fic I’ve ever read that actually damaged me the most was a rape fic of my favourite character. It was on ff.net, untagged, and it took me years to undo the SWERF rhetoric it caused me. Had it been tagged, I never would’ve clicked on it, and I wouldn’t have been dealt that damage.

The tags are warnings and invitations and signposts and they mean “This is what is ahead. Now you know. If you walk the path anyway, that’s on you, not on me, you know what you’re doing.” If the tags are too much, then walk away, deal with your disgust and panic, and accept that it’s a really good thing someone bothered to warn you instead of letting you walk into something that would hurt you without at least trying to let you know what’s ahead.

I’m sorry you went through what you did, truly I am. But I have done more than my fair share to ensure that all those who read my fics can make their own choices on what they’re willing to engage with. If you don’t want to engage with it, don’t click on the fic. Blacklist the word ‘shipcourse’ and you’ll never see these posts from me again.

But I can’t magically make you okay with content not everyone is okay with. And I am not going to stop writing things for me, that I graciously share with the world, because someone else was bothered by it. I wouldn’t ask my fellow trans men to never get pregnant again because it bothers me. I don’t get pissy about other people’s donuts because I’m on a diet or celiac or whathaveyou.

Let people do what they want if its existence doesn’t mean someone got hurt in the making of it. Past that, it’s on the reader, not the writer.

#asks #anonymous #on shipcourse #Anonymous

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dolcetters · 3 years

Text

vanilla sunday .

no one asked, i just heckin’ felt like it m’dude. under readmore for length. i’ll try to keep my answers relatively to-the-point, too, since this’ll be a longer post but feel free to inquire on things or ... whatever u-u/ aye. i go sleep now.

is your muse a romantic? do they dream of love and marriage?

short answer: no.

as a teenager, dol didn’t have much interest in pursuing a romantic relationship with any of his peers around yuflam--or at all, really. by the time he got to academy things were either too busy or starting to get too tense for him to consider the idea. and shortly after that he went over a decade thinking he’d never even see sunlight again.

at this point, he just... --it’s just another thing he might want but doesn’t recognize it as something he wants. because he’s earnestly so bad at listening to his own desires and is more than willing to cast them aside if it means aiding someone he cares about achieve their own.

is your muse a deviant? are they overly flirtatious or forward?

no. there’s no real expansion on this, just no. <xD he tends to be much more bashful and sheepish, partially because of aforementioned inability to recognize he might want a relationship with someone. and even if he DOES realize this, he’s... extremely self aware. we’ll leave it at that.

is your muse good at kissing? are they experienced?

NOPE. and no. he’s never kissed anyone.

does your muse initiate a lot of physical contact?

nooooo no no no. he has an anxiety disorder (haphephobia) revolving around physical contact and even something as “small” as shaking hands or a shoulder bump can make him very nervous, uncomfortable and alert. the reaction is almost doubled if it comes with the sensation or energy of being grabbed.

it’s going to take a lot of time, patience, and trust for him to be comfortable initiating physical contact with you.

is your muse comfortable with public displays of affection?

no, for both the above reason as well as the paranoia that comes with being a fugitive/legally dead. the less attention that’s drawn to him, the better. at most, he’d hold your hand... but refer to the previous question for that.

does your muse steal clothing from their partner?

less “steal” and more borrow. due to having limited resources after escaping the labs and very few belongings he can truly call his own, dol wouldn’t/doesn’t just take or use things that belong to friends, family or potential partners (part of this spurs from his OWN resource guarding). he’d be more likely to approach you while you were brushing your teeth and be like “hey, s’it cool if i wear your hoodie today” and then respond based on that answer.

and he’s going to ask you every time. he doesn’t assume.

is your muse the big spoon or the little spoon?

varies! but most likely, when they’re facing each other, he little-spoons because pressing his face into the curve of the neck just above the collar is not only secure and comforting somehow, but he can hear your heartbeat.

when one of them is facing away, he tends to big spoon. --and obviously this is all assuming he’s at that level of comfort when it comes to physical touch + the partner.

is your muse comfortable with, or proud of their body? are they insecure?

complicated?

he’s very comfortable and proud of his body when it comes to his physical build, strength, fitness, etc. his strength and speed is something he values and keeping himself healthy and capable is very important to him. he knows he’s done a good job (those arms don’t lie) and he takes pride in that.

~however~, being a chimera... --he’s optimistic, yes. he’s just happy to be alive, of course. it’s not so bad. ...but he is fully, deeply, and painfully aware of how someone might react to witnessing some of his “quirks” when it comes to his splice or the idea of being with someone who isn’t entirely human. and the fact that he often became a target of light jabbing and jokes with the nesties, because dog behavior is much more well-known and commonly familiar than croc or snake or bull behavior, has only added to this awareness.

then, of course, there’s the added detail that he’s not even a perfected chimera. he’s just a successful one. a C- on some government biology test; barely passing.

so yeah. there’s some surface level pride, but... a lot of shame underneath.

is your muse attracted to any features in particular?

physical? no.

he has a soft spot and respect for people who refuse to give into their pain, though. where he experienced trauma and fear and let it make him hardened in a lot of ways, there are other people who have only become brighter, warmer, and do whatever they can to keep someone else from experiencing what they have.

to say he admires that trait in a person is an understatement.

have their crushes been mostly male, mostly female, or evenly split?

he’s only really had two, and they’ve both been gals, so i guess that makes it mostly female. i’ve mentioned before that he might have been uselessly in love with martel in the time before the raid (whether she felt the same is unknown) and he in default verse is lowkey sweet on rose.

have their partners been mostly male, mostly female, or evenly split?

he hasn’t had a partner.

is your muse easily flustered? do they blush, swear, etc.?

yes, yes, yes. him being flustered is usually a combo-result of: (1) not being used to that kind of attention from someone he actually likes, (2) having no idea how to respond, (3) internalized shame over what he is, and (4) he’s a fucking idiot.

where is your muse most sensitive?

his head, mostly, especially on his hair line and around the ears.

and i can 10000% promise to you that if he ever lets you comb your fingers in his hair or rub around his temples and you make some kind of dog-related-comment, you’re actually going to cause a shit-ton of psychic damage i’m gonna need you to roll like 10d6 for me.

please, please please please don’t ever refer to him as--or make jokes connecting him to--a dog in moments that are supposed to be vulnerable and/or intimate, i can’t... express this enough, it will hurt him.

is your muse more submissive or dominant in a relationship?

idk, i guess submissive but again: idk

would your muse ever tempt their partner, e.g. flirting, wearing tight/sexy clothing?

nah. not really his thing.

if he does “tempt” them it’s going to be sincerely accidental. like... yeah you walked in on me doing pull-ups i guess. would you hand me my water bottle? i’m parched.

does your muse initiate heated/sexual contact, or do they wait for their partner?

i feel like this question deserves it’s own post because i have a LOT of thoughts regarding rosecetto, specifically, on this topic.

outside of that ship, however, the answer is likely no. he’s not the initiator primarily for touch-anxiety reasons and also chimera-related-shame reasons, even if the partner has assured him there’s nothing wrong with him in the past.

does your muse leave hickies? do they ask for them?

eeehhhhh???? ... i guess accidentally sometimes?? and no.

does your muse like to be pinned down, or to pin their partner?

that’s a big NO. if you pin him down, even if he’s reached a point of security with you that he allows you to touch him, you’re going to flare up any of that anxiety that had previously subsided. he’s been physically restrained and held down far too long and all for bad/painful reasons, and he can’t associate it with anything other than “they’re going to hurt me and i need to get away, no matter what i have to do”.

as for pinning his partner, it’s likely also a no because he’d just... be too aware of his own trauma to even try doing it and he’d probably be uncomfortable being asked to do it.

has your muse reached first/second/third base? home run?

honey, he’s done nothing, he hasn’t even swung--

would your muse be interested in engaging with multiple partners?

no. he doesn’t see anything wrong with it when it comes to other people but this is definitely not for him or something he could be comfortable with.

would your muse ever send a sexual text message? would they send pictures?

n/a, but even in modern verses the answer would be no

does your muse read smut, own magazines, or watch p-rn?

nah

is your muse the type to discuss their sex life or sexual prowess with others?

abso. fucking lutely. not. no no no.

at absolute. MOST? he might open up to sakura (yinseal) about it. maybe greed (avadite). and it’d only be if he felt like he was doing something wrong or felt overwhelmed and self-conscious. but otherwise this is his and his partner’s business.

is your muse a top, a bottom, or a switch? do they have a lean?

defaults to bottom but will top if asked or in some circumstances.

crystal has confirmed that rose (forsakenflora) tops, so jfdlfjklsjkldhsd

how interested is your muse in sex and sexual activity?

he’s not.

it’s not a priority of his, and he definitely doesn’t want to hear about yours.

do they have sex frequently, occasionally, or rarely?

not at all right now jf kljdklhshf lhfklsdg

#♠: prompted headcanons .#////nsfw /// / /#////suggestive // // ///#[ and with that i bid you goodnight ]

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paperanddice · 4 years

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Animated Carriage

When you’re a major power in a heavily magical world, you’re going to make use of that magic for everyday life in some capacity. Sure, small towns and areas with less consistent access to powerful magic may get by on charms, inconsistent rituals and traveling wizards, but the centers of power will have wonders that match or exceed the things available in our own modern world. One such example are animated carriages to bring people about.

Far more efficient than horses, an animated carriage can function for decades after its creation without any upkeep aside from cleaning and simple structural repairs. They come in a variety of designs and styles, from simple utilitarian versions to ornate noble coaches. They are tireless and can travel with enough speed to leave behind the majority of simple predators found in the dangerous wilds, making them excellent for carrying passengers and supplies long distances. They do not excel in open battle however, being too lightly armored and armed for it. Some special versions have been iron plated, festooned in spikes and sent careening into enemy lines to cause as much damage as possible, but there are better designs for that sort of thing. The most effective use of a simple animated carriage in a fight is to move fast and let the riders and passengers fight from within or atop it as needed to drive off whatever threat is coming. At the very least they are moderately bulky, just due to their size and heavy wooden frames. They can take some punishment before breaking apart.

5th Edition

Animated Carriage Large construct, unaligned Armor Class 11 (natural armor) Hit Points 105 (10d10 + 50) Speed 50 ft. Str 18 (+4) Dex 8 (-1) Con 21 (+5) Int 1 (-5) Wis 5 (-3) Cha 1 (-5) Damage Immunities poison, psychic Damage Resistances piercing Condition Immunities blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned Senses blindsight 60 ft. (blind beyond this radius) passive Perception 7 Languages - Challenge 3 (700 XP) Animated Vehicle. The carriage can carry up to 6 Medium creatures inside of it, and up to 4 on top. If more than 2 creatures are inside or on top of the carriage, creatures in that location must squeeze to fit, and if more than 6 are inside the carriage they are too tightly cramped to fight or cast spells. Large creatures count as 4 toward this limit, while Small and Tiny creatures count as 1/2. Creatures inside the carriage have three-quarters cover against attacks and effects that originate outside the carriage, while creatures on top of it have half cover against effects originating below or distant from the carriage. Antimagic Susceptibility. The carriage is incapacitated while in the area of an antimagic field. If targeted by dispel magic, the carriage must succeed on a Constitution saving throw against the caster's spell save DC or fall unconscious for 1 minute. Charge. If the carriage moves at least 20 feet straight toward a target and then hits it with slam attack on the same turn, the target takes an extra 4 (1d8) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeedon a DC 14 Strength saving throw or be pushed up to 10 feet away and knocked prone. False Appearance. While the carriage remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from a normal carriage. Trample. The carriage can enter a smaller creature's space. The first time it enters a creature's space on a turn, that creature must make a DC 14 Dexterity saving throw or take 5 (1d10) bludgeoning damage. If the saving throw fails by 5 or more, the creature is also knocked prone. Actions Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6+4) bludgeoning damage.

13th Age

Animated Carriage Large 1st level blocker [construct] Initiative +0 Hit and run +5 vs. PD - 10 damage Natural even hit or miss: The target pops free of the carriage and loses its next move action. Overrun + 5 vs. PD - 5 damage First natural even hit or miss: The animated carriage moves again as a free action and can make another overrun attack against a different target. The carriage has +4 AC against opportunity attacks provoked by this movement. Limited use: The carriage can only use this attack if it starts its turn unengaged. Animated vehicle: The carriage can carry up to 6 smaller creatures inside of it and 4 on top of it. Creatures inside of it have +4 AC and PD against attacks from creatures outside the carriage, while creatures on top gain +2 to the same defenses. If more than 2 creatures are in either spot, all creatures in that area have a -2 penalty to attacks, and if more than 4 cram inside they don’t have enough room to fight at all and someone will have to get out. AC 15 PD 14 MD 8 HP 65

For both 5e and 13th Age, animated carriages are mostly only threats to low leveled parties, and that’s more from their durability and the fact that getting hit by a carriage hurts. Their goal is typically to protect the occupants, smashing into enemies and knocking them away. What the end goal of the occupants is defines the winning state of the battle, whether it’s escape from the threat or chasing down a target.

The animated carriage is based on nothing more than my own fun thought of a city full of animated carriages and what impact that could have on conflict within or around the area. If you like this post, consider following my Patreon to get access to content like this a week ahead of everybody else, plus updates on other projects I’m working on! Right now my latest 5th Edition D&D adventure, Experiment X63L, is available early access to my Patreon backers.

#D&D #DnD #Dungeons and Dragons #5th edition #13th Age #my homebrew #monster #construct

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goodluckdetective · 4 years

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Fic: smile, you’re trending

Ship: Jon/Martin

A03: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26567242

Warnings: Canon typical violence, alluded past child neglect, alluded past police brutality, horror, off screen gore, brief mention of body horror, mentioned past character death

Tags: Angst with a happy ending, emotional hurt comfort, protective Martin, Lonely!Martin, one shot, character study

Characters: Jon, Basira, Martin

Rating: PG-13

Length: 9K

Summary:

Post 179 but not episode centric

During an encounter with another Avatar of the Eye, Jon faces his past, Martin takes a turn at playing Kill Bill and Basira has a second look at the monster she’s determined to see.

For three people associated with the Eye, they could all use some perspective.

Author’s Note:

Formally “a matter of perspective” and then I realized that was an episode title and felt very silly. This is the tumblr version because I forgot to post a version here, I only posted the link, whoops.

Big thanks to Impatiens_capensis on AO3 and lamella who served as editors to this piece so it can beheld without taking psychic damage. Their input was a massive help and I cannot thank them enough for their time. Big thanks to namiofthesea as well for advising me on the small details of beauty youtube. Your cursed info was essential.

Fic below the cut:

Jon knew they couldn’t die in this new world they inhabited, but he wasn’t quite sure about the specifics when it came to being harmed.

His new powers were useful despite being unwanted, but they had their limits. Hypotheticals were the biggest one. He could tell what path was safer to take, but not if an Avatar might change their mind to follow them. He knew Basira’s gun would always have bullets in it, but he didn’t know if that would apply to any other weapon she picked up, or if her gun would always work against what chased them. And he knew they could not die, at least not yet, but he didn’t know what would happen if someone tried to kill them.

“So if I shot you,” Basira said as they took a brief rest to light a fire between a domain of the Stranger and the Vast. She’d met up with them just outside of London after their brief split with a few new scars and a heavy tread to each step. But she was alive and that was something to celebrate. “Your wound would just heal?”

They made camp in a domain of the End, a giant graveyard that while unpleasant, wasn’t the worst place to rest. There was a fallen tree that made a good enough bench to sit on for Martin and Jon, and Basira sat across from them on a rather large boulder.

“Given past experience, that seems the most likely,” Jon replied, ignoring the look Martin gave him at the comment. They had discussed his attempts to make an anchor before he went to Jared, and Martin turned out to be fond of all ten of his fingers. After the incident with Daisy, Martin fussed for a full day as it healed up, even offering to carry him across a few domains. Across from them, Basira looked nonplussed. “The best guess I can go on is my leg and that managed to heal up within the day. But I can’t be sure if that will be the case everywhere.”

Basira scowled at the mention of his leg. It was a painful reminder for the both of them. Jon’s pant leg was still stained with blood and rips from the incident. “Because it’s a hypothetical?”

“Something like that. That or the Eye thinks Knowing will take away all my fear of it and doesn’t want to spoil the fun.”

“It’s spoiled enough fun already if you ask me,” Martin said, just under his breath. Jon allowed himself to smile and reached over to squeeze Martin’s knee in response. They weren’t big into public displays of affection as it was, but with Basira around they’ve tried to keep snogging to a minimum. It might be the apocalypse, but awkwardness apparently lived on.

Basira ran her thumb across her chin, deep in thought. She was less outright hostile to them after they met back up in London , but there was an edge to her that told Jon she still wondered if he was worth trusting. “And we can’t die either?”

“No, at least not for good. At least not now.” Jon paused after that and closed his eyes. Since Daisy, he knew more about the laws of this new world, how it shaped and bent around emotional logic. The specifics on how that logic changed from place to place was what he struggled with. He tried to Know the specifics, reaching out for that endless pool of knowledge but he came back empty handed with the taste of battery acid on his tongue. “I don’t know anything more than that.”

“Another hypothetical?”

Jon looked up at the sky. “I think more trying to keep the fear of not knowing fresh.”

He explained what he meant by that later, when Basira was asleep and he felt less watched despite the thousands of eyes in the sky. Martin was a good listener and patient when Jon struggled for the right words. After being a mouthpiece to others’ horrors Jon still found it difficult to voice his own.

“You think after everything, I wouldn’t be able to feel fear anymore but… I can,” Jon said, lying on his back with his eyes closed. He could still see the eyes in the sky, he could see everything around them, but if he focused very hard on a domain of the Vast, he could sometimes pretend the stars from that sector were the ones actually in front of him. Back before Basira joined them, he would sometimes list the constellations to Martin who in turn would tell him the mythological stories behind each one. “I still do. I don’t think I’d be able to be the Archivist if I couldn’t.”

Martin was next to him, side to side, his hand holding Jon’s tight, thumb brushing across his knuckles. Somehow he managed to remember how to be gentle despite everything. “You don’t seem scared.”

Jon turned to him, opening one eye to look at him properly. Martin looked tired, bags under his eyes from lack of restful sleep, but he watched Jon with rapt attention. It was calming, seeing those brown eyes focused and fully present. One of Jon’s worst memories of the Lonely was Martin staring at him with pale empty blue irises that looked so close to that of Peter Lukas.

Jon forced a wry smile on his face. “Would you believe I’ve become a fantastic actor?”

The raise of one eyebrow that Martin gave him in response was easy to interpret without Knowing. Jon sighed, and closed his eyes again, rolling closer towards Martin. Martin’s arm reached around his side in a loose embrace and Jon made a mental note to move within 10 minutes or his arm would fall asleep.

“Fair enough,” Jon said, voice somewhat muffled by Martin’s shirt. “I suppose it’s that a big part of fear is the unknown. I am scared of the pain fire can cause, but the fear of dying from it or being burnt by it permanently: that’s gone now.”

That was true. The entire time Jon faced down Jude Perry, the fear in his bones was only that of pain, not what might come after. It was such a contrast to the fear he’d first felt facing Jude, that he’d been almost power drunk on it, reveling in the fear coming off of her in waves that Jon himself no longer felt.

Jon didn’t want to ever admit it out loud, but sometimes it was intoxicating to be the predator instead of the prey.

“That takes some of the edge off, knowing what is coming, at least for me. No, it’s the fear of what I don’t know that is still sharp. And that’s what the Eye wants, I think. The fear of what comes next when all you know is that there will be a next.”

“After all this, it’s still feeding on you,” Martin said, rubbing Jon’s back with the hand under Jon’s side.

“I don’t think it ever intends to stop.”

Martin was quiet before he pulled Jon in closer for a proper embrace, resting his chin on the top of Jon’s head. It reminded Jon of lazy mornings in the cabin, back when they thought things might actually be alright. Comfort might no longer exist in the world, but if there was anything close to it left, the sensation of being loved and protected was the next best thing.

“Think if we find a domain of the Desolation, we can dig up a rocket big enough to fire into one of those pupils?” Martin mused, his hand still rubbing Jon’s back.

“It wouldn’t-“

“I know it wouldn’t do anything, Jon; I mean solely for the satisfaction.”

Jon did consider it and he couldn’t help the smile that crossed his face. He Knew the eyes in the sky wouldn’t even blink if they tried it, but picturing it anyway was indeed satisfying. “I’ve never lit fireworks before.”

“Neither have I.”

“I don’t know if the Eye will allow me knowledge on how to prank it.”

“Good thing we’re likely clever enough to figure it out ourselves. And if not, Basira can probably put it together. She might even like it.”

“Maybe she will,” Jon tried to picture Basira smiling under a display of fireworks. She hadn’t smiled since Daisy and Jon found he missed it. Despite their current antagonism, Jon never wanted her miserable.

Daisy wouldn’t have wanted that either. She told Jon once that Basira and her would go for pubs on weekends. Instead of drinking, they would play trivia and laugh whenever they got an answer horrendously wrong. Jon Knows what that was like, he can even tell you the smell of the peanuts on the floor mixed with spilled beer, but he wished he could have seen that laughter for himself.

“You aren’t responsible for the world, Jon.” Martin whispered into his hair.

“Are you sure you're not an Avatar of the Eye with that insight?”

“No. I don’t know everything. I just know you.”

Jon opened his eyes and looked at Martin before craning his neck up for a brief kiss. It hurt his neck to do it for too long, but the kiss was sweet and reassuring. He moved Martin’s arm so he was no longer lying on top of it and smoothed his hair back.

“Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Martin did. As he rested, twitching with nightmares he never remembered, Jon thought about what he was still scared of. The Web for sure, the strings he couldn’t see. Jonah, for what he did to him and what he could still do. He feared for Melanie and Georgie’s safety and if they hated him as much as he thought they should. He worried if Basira would ever be okay again, if he ruined everything he touched, if she was right to sometimes look at him like he was something dangerous.

And Martin. He feared Martin’s devastated expression if they killed Jonah and this hell still stood. He feared the Lonely, coming back and telling Martin that being alone was better than being with a monster. He feared losing Martin’s hand in his, the sound of a soft snore at night, and the whistling as they walked when the landscape was particularly horrendous and they needed a distraction.

Love was the only thing that could prompt such overwhelming fear, Jon thought. That was why it was so powerful a feeling: no one would dare to risk that horror of loss otherwise.

No, Jon Sims was still scared of so much. It was hard to quantify all that fear: Jon sometimes felt he could drown in it. Martin helped keep him afloat and in turn Jon kept him from being lost in his own quest devastation. They were each other’s safe harbor.

“Lord, I’m becoming a poet,”Jon said to himself, amused. He glanced at Martin who began to mumble under his breath about the cold. Carefully, as if not to disturb him, Jon grabbed his discarded jacket from next to them and laid it over Martin. It didn’t stop the muttering but there was less of it than before. Small miracles. “I suppose there are worse fates.”

With that, Jon began his watch as his comrades slept on.

______________________________________________________________________

The thing was, Jon never considered what would happen if he ran into another Eye Avatar.

The domain they walked into was one Jon chose as the most safe. When it came to domains, the Desolation and the Corruption were best avoided, so when Jon found himself picking between the two and then the Eye, he went for the Eye. It was a smaller domain, a former multimedia office turned into multiple hallways and rooms of endless monitors. It seemed the Eye had a fondness for the digital age.

The domain belonged to a former internet influencer by the name of Irene Hatchette. In her mid-twenties with a relatively popular makeup series, she fed on the fear of exposure. Her relationship with the Eye began as a child by tattling on her step-sister before the took the same scheme to school where she would steal her classmates cell phones and told everyone what she found, while implying even more to let people come to their own worst conclusions. In university, she learned to make fake accounts and emails to lure people into sending her things she could publish widely out of context, and as an internet star, those fake identities triples as she used each to speak to her rivals, invade their fan groups and personal pages for information she could sell to gossip magazines or twist for her own use. Once, she had to spend months pretending to be a therapist to get scoop on someone’s past hospitalization involving horrendous burns, which she dug up medical photos of by calling the right stupid hospital tech about changing “his corrupted password.” Once she published the pictures all across the internet, well, the rival stopped being a problem. It was business, sure, but there was a thrill to it too, much like pinning a still living butterfly to a corkboard to put on display.

Before the Change, she found rivals would now just tell her things behind her new identity of the week, their greatest insecurities without months and months of building a fake persona. It was like they wanted her to know, like they wanted her to tell everyone about how little they deserved what they had, and she took full advantage. It was a minor power, but a useful one for her line of work. She’d started going after just regular people before everything started, wrecking them with perfect pieces of information when she found someone who deeply feared being seen. Now her entire domain was dedicated to the practice, a full multimedia center for her to broadcast whatever she wanted.

The statement Jon gave after he walked in followed the format of an online video tutorial script. When Jon told them this was a domain of the Eye, Basira decided to stay behind to listen to the statement. Martin plugged his ears and hummed a song Elias used to complain about them playing in the Archives. When the statement was done Basira stared at him, looking like she smelled something rotten.

“What?”

“I may have nightmares of you saying “remember to like and subscribe” in that tone.”

Jon couldn’t blame her. The instructions to “make sure to peel away the skin so you can expose their heart to the viewer! It’s important to be authentic: well it’s important for them to be authentic. Your job is just to watch ,” was particularly vivid. He was glad he never got into social media with all the mess happening in the Archives if this was even a little what it was like.

The dozens of television monitors and screens around them show a different person’s secrets, twisted into a show. The man who edited his photos to hide his ache scraped of his skin with a rusty razor on one screen. A woman who claimed she lived in luxury was buried by her piles of bills in her crumbling apartment. On a monitor right behind Basira, another man removed each tooth from his mouth by hand. The like counter in the corner shot up with every howl of pain he made.

“Another Eye Avatar?” Martin asked them after Basira gave him a recap of the statement.

“Yes,” Jon said, pulling his gaze from the screens.

“You know, it’s surprising we haven’t run into one before now,” Martin said. “Unless you’ve been keeping us away from them?”

“I haven’t.” That was something worth considering later, Jon thought. Martin was right: it was unusual this was their first one.

“So this domain is what?” Basira asked as they headed down the halls and through a room full of even more televisions. They had to walk slow from the hundreds of cords and wires that littered the floor. “The fear of being exposed?”

“Something like that,” Jon said. “Imposter syndrome too. It doesn’t have to be a real secret to be preyed upon.”

“And the Avatar?”

“In the media room. She shouldn’t be a problem: she’s setting up a new stream,” Jon said, glancing at one of the monitors in the room that had a countdown on it. He didn’t envy the poor soul who was about to grace the captive audience.

Most of the walk through the domain was quiet, nothing but the hum of technology and the noises coming from each screen. It was a small place, just hallways of computer monitors cataloguing fear to a delighted audience. If they hadn’t been interrupted, they wouldn’t have been there for more than an hour relatively speaking.

Later, Jon would suspect Jonah to be behind what followed. Or perhaps the Eye was his blind spot, the one place where he couldn’t quite see. Regardless, he only knew the Avatar was coming right when she appeared at the end of the hallway, phone in one hand, headset around her neck. She was small, smaller than the three of them, with pale skin and a slender build. She looked mostly human. Only two things were off: there was an artificial light to her, almost like that of an edited photo. That and her eyes were a brilliant bright green.

“So you’re the Archivist,” she said. She had an American accent (came over for Uni for a degree in business, able to afford cost of London with her parent’s income, learned secrets were the best weapon for attention by ratting out her step-sister and- focus, Jon, not now ), blonde hair curled up into ringlets and nails sharpened to pointed tips. When she spoke, there was a sneer to it that reminded Jon of his wealthier classmates at Oxford who wanted everyone to know how many zeros graced their bank accounts. “I was expecting someone… older.”

Jon heard the tape recorder in his backpack click on. He could tell Basira and Martin heard it too by the way they stiffened. Something was going to happen here and the Eye wanted to watch.

“We are just passing through,” Jon said. He knew what she wanted now, and he cursed himself for not figuring it out sooner. He should have known an Avatar obsessed with her self importance would take offense to anyone she deemed ‘competition.’ “I’m not here to intrude on your ‘production’ here.”

“Then why walk in like you own the place? She said. “And what’s with the extra luggage?”

“Luggage?” Martin scoffed. “That’s the best you could do, really?”

She ignored him. “I’m just saying, walking in without an introduction is rude. I mean, don’t you know who I am ? You know who everyone is.”

“I know who you are,” Jon said. “And I swear we are just walking through.”

“And if I don’t let you through?” The Avatar took a step closer. Basira pulled out her gun, aiming straight ahead.

“Don’t move.”

The Avatar didn’t look phased. She tilted her head to the side, curious. “Or what you’re going to put my down like your Partner?”

Static grew in Jon’s ears. He turned to Basira. “She’s baiting you.”

“I know that,” Basira snapped, through gritted teeth. The Avatar didn’t move, staring at them with bright green eyes. It wasn’t the same effect as being stared at by Magnus but it was similar, an itch under the skin of being terribly seen.

“Does he know that you thought about shooting him instead for a second?” The Avatar said. “You thought he could be lying, about not being able to bring her back. Maybe killing him would have fixed this. But you picked his word in the end. Sided with the other monster—”

“If you think you can pick me apart, you thought wrong,” Basira’s aim was steady, but Jon could tell she was tense by the grit to her jaw. “I’ve already lost everything. There’s nothing left for you to put on your screen.”

“Jon, I know we’re trying to move away from Kill Bill but we might have to this time,” Martin whispered, his hand on Jon’s shoulder. Jon nodded watching as the Avatar took another step towards them.

“I know.”

A shot rang out as the Avatar took another step in their direction. Jon watched as it passed through the Avatar, the image of the creature only glitching from the attack. Basira shot again and the second bullet was just as ineffective as the first.

“Shit,” Basira said, jumping back. Looking down, Jon saw the cords that lined the hallways twist up and reach for Basira’s ankles, wrapping around one with a tight grip. She yanked her foot loose with another pull but he could see the other wires begin to writhe beneath them like maggots feasting upon a corpse. Some of the cords plugged into monitors disconnected from their respective screens and rose up coiled like snakes. Electric sparks spit from the plugs, more dangerous than any venom.

Jon watched the Avatar take another step, the gaze in her eyes one he’d seen in Elias’ and on his own when he passed reflective surfaces. She was hungry.

Martin and Basira would look like the perfect meal for the Eye.

Jon straightened his shoulder, grabbing his tape recorder which was still recording, focused on the static in his ears and the endless gaze of the eyes above that were watching, always watching. He stared at her, drinking in all the information he could, about where she came from, what she feared, what she had done. The tape recorded whined. “ Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon —”

The Avatar paused mid step. Jon could see some strain to her face as the Eye looked down at her. But unlike the other Avatar’s he’d done this too, the strain looked like an annoyance rather than imbolizing. It didn’t make any sense: she wasn’t stronger than the others he’d faced so far. Then how—

Then he Knew. This Avatar was of the Eye, Jon destroyed the rest by using the power of the Eye against them but in this space that power was hers as well. How could you destroy someone with the power of Knowing when they were already known?

“Jon? What’s wrong?” Martin asked. The Avatar’s smile grew wide, all teeth as she stared at Basira. Basira who was not entirely steady with how her hands shook.

“Run,” Jon said, grabbing both of their hands and taking down a hallway at the same moment the Avatar ran at them at full speed.

It was a short chase. The many cables made navigation difficult when walking, let alone running. As the Avatar passed a monitor, she stuck her hand in it, pulling out a large piece of glass with a very sharp end. Perfect, Jon thought, for gouging out his eyes.

“See that guy: I heard even his mother didn’t like him. I mean, how shitty of a person to you have to be for that to happen? You know there has to be a reason behind it, right?” The Avatar’s voice was different then earlier, an airy sort of tone to her voice was layered with false concern.The monitors chimed in unison, showing a picture of a woman who had Martin’s eyes but none of the warmth of his expression. Comments with wild speculation ( he’s a liar, no he’s a fraud did you see his CV, no it’s because he’s petty about the smallest things it’s so annoying, or maybe he’s just stupid he never even finished university, I can’t believe he put his own mother in a home and barely visited how heartless-) popped up beneath it, blocking the image except for the woman’s empty eyes. “I could never do something like that to my Mom.”

Chirping noises of notifications and comments rang from the monitors covering the walls, high and shrill as more responses rang in. The noise consumed the hallway, painful in volume and pitch. Jon looked to Martin who was keeping his gaze away from the screens and focusing on the floor.

“And her-” The Avatar continued. “I feel so bad for people who have to work with her, it has to be so hard. I mean, she just strikes me as so self righteous. Look at me, I’m the law, I know best for the whole world. I mean, maybe she’s just trying to help, but like, she’s also such a hypocrite, you feel me? I mean, did you see what she said back there? If that’s how she greets her allies, I’d hate to be her enemy.”

The monitors changed again to that of Basira, pointing her gun at Jon in the forest as another loud shriek of chimes came from the monitors. Another round of comments appeared (she was just in it for the power anyone can see that, no loyalty whatsoever too did you hear what happened to her partner, I bet she’ll find someone new to blame next time she always does nothing can ever be her fault) . Basira turned around and fired another shot, this one going through the Avatar and hitting one of the monitors behind her.

“Keep running, a left and a right and we’ll hit the exit-” Jon said. He lagged behind the other two; his running abilities still the worst of the three. All seeing Eye powers did not provide sudden physical fitness. That wouldn’t matter once they were out. Outside her domain, she wouldn’t have the advantage. They were so close.

"Hello Jon.”

That voice from the monitors, in just the right intonation and tone that Jon heard from his own mouth on the worst day of his life, caused him to misstep. He tripped over a bundle of cords, falling down with a loud thunk. They wrapped around his legs as he fell, securing him to the floor.

“Jon!” He heard Martin shout from ahead of him. He began to struggle to his feat but before he could, the other Avatar was upon him, the glass shard held high right above his face.

“What makes you the king of this new world?” the Avatar growled, her image flickering like that of a hologram, each pixel looking to be made up of a different colored eye. The concerned tone she had from earlier was gone, envy dripping from every syllable. “You don’t even want the power. It’s wasted on you!” She stabbed down and Jon barely dodged the attack by craning his neck to the left. A cord came up from the ground and wrapped around Jons’ neck, not tight enough to choke him but tight enough to hold him still.

“You weren’t qualified for the job you had, you never were and now we’re supposed to lay our hands off because you were the key to the door? That’s all you are: a shitty old key. A piece of metal! He made you that way, made sure every scar and mark was another notch in your useless body to force open a door. Why do you get to be in charge when all you do is open people up to their own nightmares?”

The fog consumed the hallway before she could finish her sentence. A small wave rushed in across the tiled floor under Jon’s hands, replacing the endless path of wires and cords. The taste of sea salt coated his tongue, and when he waved his hand in front of him, the Avatar was gone. All that remained was mist and empty space.

Jon’s stomach dropped and the chill that entered his body wasn’t just from the cold. He stumbled to his feet and looked around. All he could see was Basira, running towards him in a full sprint.

“Jon, are you hurt?” She reached out as if to inspect his neck but he turned away. Now wasn’t the time.

“Basira, have you seen Martin?”

She shook her head. “No. Last I saw he was running at you. What happened?”

“I think Martin did.”

Basira frowned. “He’s still tied to it.”

“He always will be. That’s how it works: the trauma doesn’t just leave you. It just gets quieter.”

“This isn’t quiet, Jon.”

“No, it’s not. Can you see enough to not get lost here?”

She nodded. Jon turned to head into the fog.

“I’m going to find Martin.”

He didn’t stay long enough to hear her reply.

______________________________________________________________________

It took around five minutes of searching to find another figure in the Lonely. He could see them just barely at first, a lone person curled up on their side in the endless mists, but as he gets closer he can make out a better shape.

The figure in the shallows isn’t Martin. It’s the eye Avatar. Her makeup is gone, washed off her face from the waves and she sits curled into a ball expression blank. Around her the fog curls up into figures of people Jon has never met, staring down at her with a blank expression. With each roll of the tide she fades more and more.

“This is my apology video,” the Avatar said, voice so soft it was barely audible. “I’m not actually sorry, no one is when they make these, but this is what people want me to be sorry for so I have to pretend to be. That’s all my life is, pretending. It’s probably the thing I’m best at.”

Jon tried to take a step away but he found himself frozen. This statement was different from her first one and the Eye wanted to drink it in.

“I don’t know who my real father is: Mom always told me it was a famous celebrity or something but I’m pretty sure that’s a lie. She’s the one who taught me how to lie; she was the best at it. Before she married my Step-Dad, she talked so much about how she always wanted to be a step-mother and how happy she was that I’d have a sister. I knew she was lying; she never wanted me, and she didn’t want Odessa. But she wanted my Step-Dad and that’s what mattered—”

Jon watched as she continued to speak, the fog around her shifting and forming into rooms and people she once knew. He listened as she talked about how lonely she was in the big house they moved into, how her stepsister helped but never replaced that void of parental attention she craved. She talked about how when she was ten she realized confessing to her mother how Odessa broke a treasured vase made her mother shower her in praise for being a good for, how joyed her mother was to tell her stepfather how much his daughter was a liar. Her voice began to echo as she recalled how she began to tell her stepmother every secret Odessa trusted her with for those scraps of praise, how it made her feel terrible but not as much as it made her feel adored. How when her stepsister found out and stopped talking to her, she was forced to read her diary for scraps of intel.

“Mom convinced my step-dad to send her to a boarding school for troubled kids when we were fifteen.” the woman who was once Irene Hatchette said as her story wound to a close. “And then I had no secrets left to steal. So I watched the housekeepers and my classmates and my teachers and then my competition because nothing was worse than being ignored. And now everyone can see me on their screen except they don’t see me at all, not really. That’s fitting I guess. I can see everything but no one can see me. Isn’t that funny, guys? I think it’s funny.”

Another wave washed over the ground and the Avatar vanished leaving nothing but an imprint of her silhouette in the sand behind her. That would soon be gone with every wave that passes. No record that she ever existed would remain.

“God,” Jon said. Statements of Avatars always got to him. They were always the strangest mix of evil and pathetic.

It scared him to think that his would likely be the same.

He didn’t have time to dwell on that thought. Instead he looked around, really looked, and Martin was there, only a few meters away looking down at the space the Eye Avatar once occupied with a blank expression. The fog swirled around his feet like a cat, cozy and content, not feeding at him but waiting at his beck and call. It made Jon’s stomach turn.

“Martin.”

Martin looked up. His eyes were a glassy white blue, the color of sea foam. Jon was beginning to hate that color. “Jon.”

Jon walked towards him stopping right in front of Martin. He reached out for him on reflex and then pulled his hands back as one passed through Martin’s side. “Time to stop this. She’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?” Martin’s voice had an edge to it that told Jon that he knew exactly what Jon was talking about. Like he was making a wry joke. Martin had always been petty and snarky but in the Lonely those twisted again in the mists to make him cruel.

“... fair enough. But time to let the Lonely go. This isn’t—”

Jon cut off. This isn’t you, that was what he wanted to say. But that wasn’t quite true. Martin had such an affinity to the Lonely because it was a part of him, just like Jon’s thirst for knowledge had always made him a part of the Eye. Martin would always find himself feeling alone in a crowd, Martin would always have a bitter edge that came with years of cold air for comfort. To deny that would be wrong.

But Martin’s loneliness had also encouraged his depth of empathy, his unwavering compassion and his helping nature. It was the reason he reached out to others who looked lost, and the reason he brought a fresh cup of tea to his grumpy boss each morning because he always seemed so isolated. Martin would always be tied to the Lonely, yes, but it didn’t have to be who he was.

Jon reached up a hand to cup Martin’s face. He was cold to the touch, eyes the same pale empty blue that reminded Jon far too much of Peter.

“This isn’t who you have to be,” Jon said, swiping his thumb across Martin’s cheek. Then, stronger. “This isn’t who you want to be.”

For a moment, nothing changed. The fog lingered, swirling at their waists and there was no sound but the rush of an empty ocean and a ticking clock. Then Martin closed his eyes and the fog receded, blown away by a gust of wind. The ocean smell faded, the sound of the ticking clock was replaced by the hum of multiple monitors.

When Martin opened his eyes in the monitor filled hallway, they were brown once more.

______________________________________________________________________

They fled the domain quickly after that, spending little time after finding Basira to escape. When they made it outside, they all stopped to catch their breath, a wheeze coming from Jon who was still no good at running.

“Are you alright, Basira?” Jon said between gasping breaths.

“I’m fine. What the fuck was that?“ Basira gestured to Martin. Fog still clung to his ankles and he exhaled more every breath. While now solid, the edges of him blurred like a mirage. He was glaring at Basira, that cold edge to him still apparent in his expression.

“Me, saving our skins.”

“By summoning the Lonely?”

“It was the best idea I had. She was hurting Jon! Not that you’d care about that.”

“That’s not—” Basira cut off shaking her head. “Since when could you do that anyway?”

“Basira—” Jon started but was soon cut off by Martin.

“I don’t know, I’d never tried it before!”

“Martin—” Jon didn’t get to say anything more than that before Basira responded.

“Do you even know how it works? What if it just consumed you instead? Or Jon?”

All hopes Jon had for this conversation ending civilly died with that question.

“I would never hurt Jon. Not like you planned to. We all heard what it said back there.” Martin almost growled. When he spoke next, his voice echoed. “Why are you looking at me like that, Basira? Thinking you put down the wrong monster again?”

“Enough!” Jon’s shout was enough for Basira and Martin to both take a large step backwards. “Martin that was uncalled for—” Jon kept talking as Martin began to argue. “And Basira, I’d appreciate it if your first reaction to Martin saving our lives wasn’t outright suspicion. We’re all tense with what happened. We need to cool off.”

Basira turned away first, walking towards the street where some burned out cars were. Martin watched as she went and ran his hand down his face.

“Shit,” he said, the echo in his voice still present but not quite as obvious. “You should probably go talk to her. I’ll go sit over there and check our supplies.”

Jon grabbed his wrist as he began to walk away. Thankfully despite the blurring edges to Martin’s form, he was still solid enough to touch. “Do you need me to come with you?”

Martin shook his head. “No. I just need a bit of time to… think.” His eyes were still brown, and Jon felt his pressing concern fade. “I’ll keep in sight just in case. Deal with Basira first. I don’t want her splitting off again: it’s too dangerous. Even if I’m pissed with her.”

“Okay,” Jon said before pressing a kiss to Martin’s cheek, just to feel the cold skin warm a degree. He was worried, but he also trusted him. With that, he let go of Martin’s wrist and walked over towards Basira who was glaring at what was once a car.

“What Martin said was uncalled for.”

Basira nodded. “It was.” She brushed some dirt off her pants before turning to look at Jon. “But I get why he’s pissed. Given what she said back there.”

Right, that. Jon hadn’t forgotten what the Avatar said about Basira’s opinion on him. “So it’s true then?”

“Don’t you know that already?”

“I told you I wasn’t looking,” Jon said, irritation bubbling over. He’d assumed as much, he wasn’t oblivious, but he’d never looked to know for sure. Having it confirmed wasn’t a surprise but hearing that Basira assumed he was looking stung more than he cared to admit. He couldn’t do this right now, he thought, and turned on his heel to go after Martin.

“Wait, no, Jon—shit this is not how I wanted this to go.“

Jon stopped at the tone in her voice: still stern but not hostile. Instead he waited, still staring back at the empty building where they came from. Did Basira look at him and just see a monster just like the Avatar they had escaped from? A man obsessed with information that he could wield like a knife and rip people open?

Did Basira see him and just see another Elias?

“You don’t talk about yourself much,” Basira said.

“Neither do you.”

“No, I don’t.” Basira was quiet for a moment before she spoke again. “What that woman said—about you being a key to a door—true?”

Jon clenched his bad hand, thumb brushing over the burn scar there. A key notch, that was what the Avatar compared it to. He hated how right the comparison felt. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried,” Jon snapped, curt. “You didn’t listen.”

He was surprised by how angry he sounded. He thought he was used to this by now, resigned to not being listened to. Basira wasn’t the only one who did it: she was just another person in a long line who decided Jon was better worth blaming than hearing out. And to be fair, she had plenty of reason to, after some of the things he did. She had more reason than most.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“I’m listening now,” Basira said, her voice sure and steady. Jon took a deep breath through his nose, burying down the anger under layers of guilt that left it at bay. He turned to look at her. She hadn’t moved any closer or farther away. Her hands were at her sides, open palms facing her knees.

“And why is that?” Jon’s voice was quiet. Basira was silent for a few moments and when she spoke next, it was with a hesitance Jon rarely heard from her.

“You said with… Daisy… it was the first time Jon heard her say Daisy’s name since everything happened. A pang of grief and hurt washed through him as he remembered two versions of the same woman: the one who held a knife to his throat with hungry eyes and the one who sat with him in his old office and taught him exercises to stop the phantom pain in his bad hand.

He missed the friend he had and he feared the monster who hunted him. Neither canceled out the other.

“You said that I couldn’t hunt a monster I refused to see.” Basira said, drawing him out of the memory. “I think the same might apply in reverse.”

“Oh?”

“I can’t find a human when I’m determined to see a monster. So I’m listening. If you want to give it a try.”

She looked sincere. Part of Jon was afraid this would go like it always did, that he would finish this story to be told he only had himself to blame. Yet, the opportunity of a different ending is enough of a temptation to give it a try. So he does.

He explained Elias’ plan and how he fit into it, the ways he was kept in the dark, the marks he needed to have the perfect notches for the door Elias wanted to open. When she asked about the marks he goes over each, some quicker than the others, sparing the least amount of time for the boy and the book. It wasn’t like a statement, he didn't linger in the emotion of it, but it bleed through in his tone when he wasn’t careful. The whole explanation couldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes but it felt like hours.

When he finished his story, Basira spoke first.

“So you were 8 then? When it started?”

Jon’s voice was not steady when he answered.“If you consider the first mark the start then yes.” For a second he could feel the smooth paper of the book under his hands, and the gasp of breath as he ran away from the house that would haunt his memories well into adulthood. All of his past traumas are like that now, as an archive he feels each memory as vividly as it first occurred, but the Web remains the worst one to revisit.

“Daisy was 11,” Basira said.

“What?”

“She didn’t talk about it much,” Basira continued. “I don’t know the details, just that she was young.”

Jon instantly Knew without trying. He saw the creature on the top of the stairs, he felt the fence dig into his back and leave a scar there that will become Daisy’s nickname, he tasted the fear she felt seeing every new report of Calvin’s escalating violence. All the trauma flooded his head in a matter of seconds.

“Oh,” Jon said, when it was over. “I didn’t know.”

“She didn’t like to talk about it,” Basira shrugged. “I assume she didn’t know about you and the Web either.”

“No. I—”Jon’s mouth felt oddly dry. “I...I hadn’t told anyone until a few months ago. Unless you count the tapes.”

Jon didn’t count the tapes. They listened but they never responded, an impassive audience. Not like Martin who upon finding Jon frozen in front of a spider web outside their cabin, pulled him gently inside, made him a cup of tea just warm enough to drink without burning him and said “It’s not your fault what happened. I promise, it’s not your fault.”

“I don’t hate you, Jonathan Sims,” Barisa said. Jon turned his gaze down to his shoes. The blood on his pant leg from Daisy’s attack makes his stomach twist.

“You should.” He thought about the Avatar back in the building, how she’d peeled open his biggest regrets and laid them out for display. How pathetic he was, to have ruined everything so badly.

Basira took a step closer, still far enough away to give Jon space but close enough that Jon could see the mud and tar caking her shoes.

“I think I’m the one who gets to decide that,.” she said. “I am angry; Ithink I might always be. You dragged me into your mess and you’ve hurt innocent people. That doesn’t just go away.” She took another step forward, close enough to reach out if she wanted. “But it doesn’t make you a monster either.”

“What does it make me then?”

“What I wish Daisy got a chance to be; someone who decided to make a different choice before it was too late.”

“Who says it isn’t too late for me?” Jon looked up at Basira. She raised her hand up over Jon’s shoulder but didn’t touch, waiting for a sign the gesture was welcome. Jon gave a slight nod, and she held his shoulder gently and gave it a light squeeze.

“It might be. But I’d like to think you’re the one who gets to decide that.” She removed her grip from Jon’s shoulder and took a step back, giving him space once more. “You should probably talk to Martin: I doubt either of us is feeling friendly right now.”

“I’m sorry for what he said,” Jon said.

“You still apologize too much,” Basira said and a small hint of a smile passed her face. “I’m going to do a weapons check. I’ll join you after.”

Jon watched as she got down on her knees and began to open her pack. In another life, he thought, they could have been friends, joined by their mutual love of books and mysteries. He didn’t think that was a possibility now, after everything that happened. This world was not conducive for new friendships.

After this conversation, however, maybe they might find something close to it. Not quite friendship, but understanding at least.

With that thought in mind, Jon went to follow Martin.

______________________________________________________________________

He found Martin sitting on the ground next to a half-rusted bike and a few empty plastic bottles. He looked less faint around the edges, more solid than when they left, but when Jon got closer he could feel the chill that still wrapped around him like a blanket.

“Martin,” Jon said, sitting down next to him. Martin’s gaze was fixed on his shoes but when he spoke there was no echo to his voice. That was good.

“Jon. How’s Basira?”

“Pissed at you but otherwise better than expected. We had a talk.”

The chill intensified, just a fraction. Jon Restrained the urge to shiver. “What kind of talk?”

“The good kind. I think we’ve reached an understanding, if that makes any sense.”

Martin nodded and the chill went back to how it was when Jon first arrived: enough to be noticed but not enough to demand a jacket. They were silent for a while, Jon making sure he was close enough that their arms were touching. Just enough to provide a weight of presence.

“I’m sorry. About Kill Bill.”

“What?”

Martin still didn’t look at him, twisting his fingers together. He did that when he was nervous, one of the gestures Jon could now read without any supernatural knowhow. Normally he would reach out and with slow movements, drag one of those hands free for a kiss. Martin looked too upset for Jon to try it now.

“For trying to encourage you to go all avenging angel. Back when we first left the cabin and all. I’m sorry.”

Jon was rarely shocked by anything these days, but this threw him off guard. He thought they covered this a long time ago. “Martin you don’t—”

“No, no, I—” Martin breathed in deep and Jon was elated that he couldn’t see the other man’s breath. Back when Martin first escaped the Lonely, a winter fog followed every inhale for at least a few days. It made it hard for Jon to take his eyes off him, so scared he was that he might disappear. “Back then, I thought it would be good to get rid of them—”

“I know—”

“Let me finish.” Martin untangled his fingers to hold up his pointer finger. Jon stopped speaking at the gesture. “I thought it was good to get rid of them, that we could maybe help people or something.” His shoulders slumped, and Jon could read shame in the slant to them. “But I also thought it would feel good, for the both of us. To not be chased around for once by things we can’t stop, to finally turn the tables on the things giving us nightmares for years. Let them know what it’s like. And when I wasn’t the one doing it, it kind of was. Not entirely, but just enough to feel right.” He kicked one of the empty plastic water bottles forward. “But back there… When I did it myself, I just felt—”

He finally looked up at Jon and Jon’s heart twisted to see the stricken expression on his face. “I just felt terrible Jon. That woman was objectively evil: she used people’s darkest secrets against them for clicks on the internet and her own amusement. The fact that her childhood was shitty doesn’t change that. But when I was there making her feel just as lonely and isolated as she deserved to be, all I could think about was how I sounded exactly like… exactly like… him.”

Jon didn’t have to ask who Martin was talking about. Instead he reached forward and placed his hand in Martin’s squeezing tight. A reminder that Jon was there, that Jon was listening, that Martin was not alone, not anymore.

Martin kept talking, squeezing Jon’s hand back, “I’m not saying we’re the same: Peter threw people in the Lonely for tribute and I only did it to save you. Our reasoning was entirely different even if the end result was the same. I’m not Peter Lukas because of that.” He said that with more confidence, the tremor from earlier gone. “But I think doing that, while it doesn’t make me more like him, it doesn’t make me better either. It makes me—”

“Feel worse?’

Martin leaned against Jon, resting his head on Jon’s shoulder. It was awkward with how much taller Martin was, but not unpleasant. “Yeah. So I’m sorry, for not getting it.”

Jon thought back to the power he had with Jude and with Jared. How the rush of finally being in control would fade to a rush of shame. “It’s hard to understand.”

“That doesn’t mean I couldn’t have tried sooner.”

“You’re not like Peter, you know,” Jon said. “Not even close. Not now, not then.”

“Thank you.”

They sat there for a few moments, quiet in each other’s company. Martin still ran cold, but he warmed up with the contact. Jon listened to his heartbeat, the reminder the Martin was still alive, that he still had a heart, that he hadn’t lost him to death or the Lonely’s endless waves. Jon was not a lucky man but for as long as he lived, he would be thankful he had just enough luck to have this, even if just for a little while.

“So you’re not going to cast Elias into the Lonely then?” Jon asked after a period of quiet. Martin shrugged, the gesture causing his hair to brush against Jon’s chin.

“I don’t even know if it would work; I think he’s too self absorbed to be lonely properly.. If your thing doesn’t work and I have no other choice I’ll give it a go, but otherwise I’m thinking the traditional route might be best.”

“Oh?”

“I have two hands and the institute probably has some loose pipes in it still. I was thinking I could take a page from his book.”

Jon snorted. His worries about his powers not working on Elias faded to the back of his mind, a matter of concern he could examine later. There would be time to think about the implications of what happened with the Eye Avatar. For now, some banter would suffice.

“How’s your swing?”

“Not bad but I’ll make sure to practice on the way there. I can see how I do against some stop signs.”

“The domain of traffic laws won’t see you coming.”

They both laughed, quiet but strong. When Basira came over to join them, Martin stiffened but with a look from Jon he kept his mouth shut. Knowing the pair of them, Jon thought, they would respectively apologize to the other soon enough. All it would take was some time.

He wasn’t sure how much time they had left, with Elias waiting for them at the end of it. The Eye could only tell him so much and it had no intention to tell him how this would all end. If the world could be saved, if they could survive this ordeal would remain unknown until it happened, leaving Jon to marinate in the fear of what could be.

For now, Jon was content to stay in the dark, the man he loved humming an old song with his head on his shoulder and Basira quietly watching them with something that was close to fondness. The man who understood him best and the woman who was making an effort to try. It wasn’t the worst moment to be in, at the end of the world.

It was something almost like peace.

#tma #tma fic #the magnus archives #the magnus archives fic #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #basira hussain #sometimes you forgot to make the tumblr version it happens my dudes #welcome to the plot is just a train for character development and we're gonna ride it #tma 179

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