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#for reference and it’s probably the best decision I’ve made. need to remember to do that more often
puppyeared · 1 year
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Custom linkeroo (using @gaylactic-fire cursed link generator ^^)
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ticklystuff · 1 year
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“I hypothesize...”
a/n: i didn’t want to write something for alhaitham till his story quest, but i’ve had this idea ever since his demo dropped and really wanted to write it so here we are. kaveh might be out of character, but i had a lot of fun doing this one and i hope y’all enjoy it too
word count: ~1.5k
characters: lee!alhaitham, ler!kaveh, ler!cyno, ler!tighnari
summary: alhaitham’s curiosity gets the best of him and his friends are more than happy to help
"Are three people really necessary for this?"
Alhaitham glanced between the three faces peering down at him. Kaveh was the most excited between the three, to no surprise. Cyno held his usual blank expression, though Alhaithm managed to catch a glimmer of curiosity in his eye before the other promptly looked away. Tighnari's ears flicked about impatiently, seemingly ready to begin. With the way things were, Alhaitham couldn't help but feel nervous, hoping that the steadiness of his breath could mask the unease.
"Well, I'd need backup in case you start kicking or swinging," Kaveh responded from atop where he was seated on Alhaitham's arms,  "You're not getting nervous over your own idea, are you?"
"That was something meant to be kept between you and me," Alhaitham huffed, already regretting his decision to get Kaveh involved.
He knew he shouldn't have let his curiosity get the best of him at the sight of Tighnari tickling Cyno. He knew he shouldn't have stayed up all night contemplating whether he himself could experience the same feeling. He knew he shouldn't have discussed these thoughts with Kaveh.
And now he was on the floor, trapped underneath his friends with only himself to blame.
"A little bit of tickling won't harm anyone," Tighnari piped up, shifting his head to look at Alhaitham from behind Cyno. The forest ranger had taken a seat on top of his ankles, hindering any violent kicking that might occur. "We won't even remember afterwards... probably."
"Maybe you won't, but I certainly will," Kaveh reached to his side as he spoke, holding up a pen and notepad that Alhaitham hadn't seen previously. "We'll take note of how he responds to each spot being tickled and rate them on a scale of one to ten!"
Alhaitham's eyes widened at the sight of the notepad and the mischievous grin on Kaveh's face. "Wait, that wasn't part of what we talked about," he said nervously, uselessly pulling at his limbs in hopes of now backing out.
"Well, we can't let perfectly good data go to waste, of course!" Kaveh scoffed.
"Surely you're not scared of some tickling?" Cyno spoke from where he straddled the scribe's waist. Though his face hid it well, Alhaitham could sense a smirk behind those words.
"Of course noHOHOT!" An unfamiliar sensation at the top of his right knee caused his leg to jerk in response and Alhaitham found himself mortified not only by the sound that had managed to slip past his mouth, but the fact that he was indeed ticklish.
"Oh! Oh! He's ticklish!" Kaveh exclaimed excitedly. "What would you rate that as?"
"Hmmm, well it's difficult using a scale of one to ten in this case, since we don't really have a frame of reference for his usual reactions," Tighnari started in thought, "but I'll give his knees a solid five. They're surprisingly sensitive."
"Good, good!" Kaveh briefly scribbled in his notepad, before looking back up. "Come on, try more spots!"
"W-Wait, guys- aGHAHA!" His words were cut off when Cyno unexpectedly homed in on his sides, giving each end a quick poke.
"Sides are an eight."
"Hmm, but you targeted both at the same time, whereas Tighnari only tickled one kneecap," Kaveh said, as if they were having a discussion over experimental data. "The stronger reaction might skew your results, so maybe try again, but just one this time."
Alhaitham shook his head as Cyno made eye contact with him, barely having time to brace himself for the sudden pinch to his left side. A strangled whine escaped his throat, rather than the squeal from earlier and Alhaitham could hear the faint scribbling of Kaveh's pen as he tried to catch his breath.
"Okay, I'll give his sides a seven."
"Guhuhuys, stohohohop!" Alhaitham giggled, feeling fingers skitter along his thigh, before the same hand made its way to just under his knee.
"Thighs and underneath the knee don't seem too bad," Tighnari said. "I'll say four and three, respectively."
"He seems to be at least somewhat sensitive everywhere," Kaveh mumbled, busy scribbling away before looking down at Alhaitham. "Oh man, you should see how red you are!"
"Sh-Shut it," Alhaitham panted embarrassedly, trying to avoid eye contact with his roommate, until Cyno's hands were at his underarms, tickling without warning. There was a brief second of respite, before his eyes widened at the overwhelming tingles flooding his brain all at once with the most ticklish sensations yet. "GAHAHAHAHA! STAHAHAHAHAP!" he cried out suddenly, his eyes screwed shut as heavy laughter filled the room.
"Oh-! Ah!" Both Kaveh and Tighnari struggled to maintain their balance as Alhaitham violently pulled at his limbs, doing anything to stop the tickling at his armpits, but Cyno was resilient.
"He seems to be really ticklish here!" Cyno nearly yelled over Alhaitham's laughter.
"Wait, wait, Cyno, stop!" Kaveh placed a hand over one of Cyno's hands, promptly stopping the tickling, much to Alhaitham's relief. "Remember, tickling both at the same time would yield inaccurate results."
"Ah, right." Cyno removed one of his hands, but his other hand was stopped by Kaveh once more.
"I'd actually like to see for myself this time," Kaveh said with a grin, before looking back down at Alhaitham.
"Don't you dare," Alhaitham growled weakly, but there was nothing he could do, except twitch his arm pathetically, watching Kaveh's free hand descend onto their designated target, before falling back into another fit of laughter as those damned fingers scribbled relentlessly. "Kaveh- NOHOHOHO! PLEHEHEHEASE!"
"Oh? We got him to beg," Kaveh chuckled with a smirk, his fingers lingering longer than he had originally planned, clearly enjoying Alhaitham's candid reactions. "Alright, a perfect ten for armpits."
"Aw man, you guys got all the fun spots," Tighnari whined, crossing his arms.
"Well, don't forget his feet too," Kaveh reminded him. "Oh, and Cyno, we should still try his stomach and ribs."
At the mention of his feet, Alhaitham did his best to stall Tighnari's hands, flexing his ankles and curling his toes, but Tighnari simply grabbed one from the top, pulling his toes back to stretch out his foot and glide his fingers down the bare sole. "A-Ahahahaha! Stahahahap!"
"Feet are a six, maybe a six point five."
Kaveh tilted his head in response, as if contemplating this brand new information. "Let's just round up and make it a solid seven."
Alhaitham barely had time for a breather before a new bout of tickling occurred, this time at his ribs, courtesy of Cyno. Normally, Alhaitham wouldn't be caught dead making embarrassing sounds like the squeaks and squeals that managed to escape his mouth just now, but at this point, he wasn't sure he cared. The only thing that mattered was finishing this experiment, a mistake on his part that should have never been entertained in the first place.
"I give his ribs a seven and his stomach an eight," Cyno said, finishing his tickles with a slight dip into Alhaitham's navel, earning himself a strangled yelp.
"Alright, I think that's every- Oh, wait!" Kaveh interrupted himself, bringing his hand down next to Alhaitham's head and wiggling his fingers around.
"H-Hey! What are you-!" Alhaitham grunted as he confusedly moved his head to avoid Kaveh's hand from touching random spots.
"Heh, guess you're not so sensitive there," Kaveh said, removing his hand and grabbing his notepad once more. "Alright, time to discuss the final results!"
"Wait, what, no! Kaveh-!"
"Tops of the knees are a five," Kaveh began, reading down the notepad in his hand. "Sides are a seven. Thighs are a four. Under the knees is a three. Armpits are at the very top and our only ten."
"Kaveh, stop!" Blood rushed to his cheeks as Alhaitham grew more flustered listening to Kaveh broadcast his sensitivity as if he were presenting in a lecture hall for the whole class to hear. His pride was out the window by now and the scribe wanted nothing more than to lock himself up in his room and maybe evict Kaveh too.
"Feet and ribs are both a seven," the blond continued, unperturbed by Alhaitham's protests. "Stomach is an eight. Per my own observations, neck is a three and ears are a two.
"That's the last of it, right?" Tighnari spoke again once Kaveh finished reading. Kaveh set his notepad down and nodded. "That's right."
"So, we're done here then," Alhaitham said hastily, frowning when Kaveh shook his head in response.
"Alhaitham, you should know by now that a good experiment always leaves room for a follow-up to further support your hypothesis," Kaveh explained matter-of-factly, as if Alhaitham didn't already know this. "Wouldn't you both agree?" he turned to the other two and Alhaitham watched in dread as both Tighnari and Cyno nodded.
"Th-This is absurd!" Alhaitham struggled weakly, feeling preemptive giggles already build up in his chest as he watched the three pairs of hands poise at different sensitive areas, ready to strike at any moment. "You don't even have a hypothesis!"
Kaveh's hands drummed lightly along the outer parts of Alhaithams underarms, just barely tickling, yet Alhaitham was already turning into a giggling fit. "I suppose my hypothesis is that," Kaveh began, smiling as he paused just to let Alhaitham's faint laughter fill the room, "you're the most ticklish man in this room."
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lykaonimagines · 1 year
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Rest of Our Lives (Part 2) - Sherlock x Reader
Part 2 of Rest of Our Lives, but can be read stand-alone.
(I’ve got power back! Still waiting on wifi, and data is still sketchy but hopefully will be back to normal soon ^_^ )
Paring: Sherlock Holmes (BBC) x F!Reader
Word Count: 1,619
Description: Sherlock sets his plan in motion to make their relationship more permanent. 
Other Things: Fluffy fluff. Proposal.
Warnings: Anxious/nervous Sherlock.
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This was absolutely maddening. Sherlock can’t remember a time in his life where he was less decisive than at the present moment. Y/N’s hand tucked snuggly into his own as they walked in the chill December night air, the little box in his pocket practically burning a hole there.
This was supposed to be simple. Say four words, hand over the ring. All done in the comfort of their flat. Then John and Stamford had to make him doubt his plans.
He had found the perfect ring surprisingly fast, then found himself invited out to the pub that very night with the two. They’d been surprised but happy for him at his declaration that he was going to ask Y/N to marry him, but it all fell apart from there.
-
“So what are the fancy plans for tomorrow then?” John asks as he sips his beer with a bemused expression. “How dramatic and grandiose are you planning? Any disguises?”
“Posh restaurant surely,” Stamford chuckles as they both look up at a confused Sherlock.
“Fancy plans? I was going to ask her after our dinner at home while we watch tv and chat,” he explains as his brow furrows.
“You’re going to ask her to marry you after take-out on the sofa at Baker Street?” John asks incredulously. “That’s it?”
“Does it have to be more? I thought at home was best. What is wrong with that?”
“It’s just that… well… Sherlock many people look forward to being proposed to. It’s a special occasion, and a story to tell their friends and look back at fondly,” Stamford explains patiently as Sherlock grips his own drink tightly.
“Something to show her she’s special and like you made an effort,” John adds on. “Sliding a ring on her finger while you’re watching telly isn’t exactly er… romantic?”
“You think that it needs to be overtly romantic for her?” He questions.
John nods and chuckles, “You’re asking her to marry you, an incredibly romantic and intimate thing. So yeah, she probably is going to want something romantic Sherlock.”
“Dinner then?” He asks as he taps his free fingers on the table.
“Fancy dinner works as long as no one comes back from the dead during it,” John replies with a knowing look.
Sherlock winces at the reference and mutters another apology as he stares down at his drink.
“Fancy dinner is nice, or some big romantic display. Something that fits the two of you,” Stamford suggests. “Make an effort and make it romantic and I’m sure she’ll like it.”
“I’m not… particularly… romantic,” Sherlock bites out, shame at this perceived inadequacy washing over his face.
“Could have fooled us,” John teases before seeing the somber look on his friend’s face. “She loves you mate, and you know her. You’ll figure it out.”
-
Y/N’s tug on his hand brings his mind back to the present for a moment, and he lets her lead him down the street toward the bridge.
They’d opted to walk home from the restaurant, which had been a disaster in his eyes.
He’d managed to get the reservations, and get Y/N and himself there dressed up. But the moment never felt right.
It felt like everyone was staring at him waiting for something, though he knew logically they weren’t. They couldn’t have had a clue of what he was planning. Even he wasn’t entirely sure of how he planned to do it.
He had been nervous and on edge the whole time, that his food had been tasteless and the wine did little to calm his nerves. Each moment he thought he should ask, doubt crept into his brain.
What if she said no? What if she only said yes because there were people watching? What if she was angry with him because he put her in that position? What if it’s too cliche?
And so he didn’t ask. It felt like there were far too many eyes about to do it justly. It needed to be their moment, just theirs.
Though now he found himself running out of time on his chosen day, and frantically trying to figure out a romantic proposal he could spring on her between now and Baker Street.
He couldn’t disappoint her. Not on this. They said she needed a story she could tell her family and friends, that he did something right as her partner. Something romantic and thoughtful and…
Something that wasn’t him blowing apart their kitchen, running around the city after a murderer for a week straight, leaving body parts in their fridge, or missing any other basic cue of a relationship he may have.
He needed to give her something normal and worthy of this, he needed to feel worthy of this he realized as they stopped on the small bridge under the glow of a streetlight.
Y/N turns to him with a laugh, her features glowing in the light, her eyes sparkling as she reaches toward him.
“You’ve got snowflakes caught in your hair,” she says affectionately, her fingers running gently through his curls as his eyes focus intently on her face.
A sudden surge of energy bursts through him and he drops immediately to his knees as she stares at him with a bewildered expression.
He hastily remembers only one knee, shifting the other back up and scrambles for the box in his pocket and thrusts it out at her, “Marry me. I mean, that is, would you? Would you marry me?”
“I- Sherlock I never would have thought!” Y/N stares at him in shock, her eyes glancing at the box in his hand.
“Never would have thought what?” He asks breathlessly.
“That you would want this, would want to get married,” she explains.
“I do,” he says quickly, the feeling of dread coiling in him as he tries to steady his arm. “Do you… not want that?”
The cold ground sends a chill up him the longer he kneels, his eyes staring into her own pleadingly, feeling dangerously exposed.
“I do! Of course I do Sherlock!” She shouts, gripping his cheeks between her hands. “I’ve always wanted to, I just thought it wasn’t something you would do and had accepted that. But I definitely want to!”
“You do?” He asks quietly, his own voice sounding small to him.
“I one hundred percent do,” she says warmly, her thumbs stroking over his cheeks.
Climbing back to his feet, he hastily opens the box to pull out the ring, scolding himself to still as he slips it onto her finger.
Looking down briefly at the piece of jewelry, Y/N throws her arms around his neck to pull him down for a kiss.
Her lips practically caressing his own, slow and sensual, causing a chill to run up his spine. His own arms wrap tightly around her as he finally lets out the tension he’d been holding onto.
“Is this why you’ve been so tense today?” She asks as their lips break apart.
“Yes,” he admits sheepishly. “I was told it had to be significantly romantic, and that is not my realm of expertise. I hope that it was?”
“You didn’t have to do anything special, I’d have said yes anywhere at any time I hope you know,” she smiles and slowly releases him. “But yes, under a streetlight in the flurry snow is significantly romantic.”
“Good,” he responds quickly as his cheeks flush. He curls one arm around her shoulders protectively and pulls her into his side as he directs them to continue down the street.
“So what brought this about so suddenly?” Y/N asks as she rests her head against him as they walk.
“I… want to be with you permanently,” he grumbles out quickly.
“You thought I was going to leave? If I did something to make you doubt that I-” she begins before his hand quickly covers her lips.
“No! Nothing of the sort,” he responds immediately spinning her to look at him. “I want to be your husband, I want to be at your side, I want to hold you every night. I want this, properly. Forever. You’ve been more than I could have ever asked for. More understanding, and lovely, and supportive… You are everything, and I want to be that person for you.”
Lifting her hand he gestures toward the ring, “This is my promise that I will be that man, that I will be there for you, and you will forever have me in every way there is to have me. No matter what the future holds, I will always be there Y/N.”
Her hand in his tightens its grip on him as her eyes search his, and a slow smile spreads across her face before she launches herself against his chest.
The moment seems to freeze as his arms loop around her, until a sniffle pulls him back to the present.
His free hand carefully lifts her chin to examine her face and the tears dripping down her cheeks, “Have I said something wrong? The intention wasn’t to make you upset darling.”
“I’m not upset,” she sniffles again and turns her cheek into his palm. “Happy tears Sherlock, very happy. That was the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
His own soft smile curls on his lips before he leans in to press a kiss to her own, “I suppose I can be romantic.”
She hums in affirmation, pressing a kiss to his jaw, “I think that’s one realm where you’ve always underestimated yourself, I’ve never had any complaints.”
Burying his face in her hair, he smiles at her words, “Let’s go home, I believe some celebrations are in order.”
----
Sherlock Taglist: @stephenstrangeaddictions​  @strangeions  @asgardianprincess1050  @rbymoon  @elisa20beth  @black-and-white1  @gaitwae​ @azu21​ @mirikusashes​ @bubsonnobx​
If you want to be tagged in any future Sherlock stuff let me know or fill out the taglist form on my channel navigation/masterlist. 💙
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odessasilver · 8 months
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When dealing with mythology, religion, and beliefs in fiction
Whenever I write a story which involves mythology, there is something I always make sure to do. Be respectful and do my research. Even more so when I’m not writing about my own beliefs or culture. I want a reader to see my writing and think “oh wow, this author has done their homework” rather than “this is nothing like them”. And one of the key things to respect them is by learning what you can about the subject, and applying it. Even in fantasy.
For fantasy to be truly believable, it needs good immersion, and to get that you need all the small details you don’t think about, little hints here and there at something bigger. And I think the same when applying things that don’t belong to me.
Another thing to remember is that some things we may write about, people still believe. We might not believe it, but it’s important to them, and I don’t think it should be taken lightly. I strive to get things as correct as I can in my stories, only taking liberties when I can’t find something, or to bend the rules slightly to add things such as magic.
Of course genre can change how the information we have found is applied. A parody piece might have gods acting nothing like their real-life counterparts and that can work. However, in more serious pieces, if you have a god in your story and they are nothing like their counterpart except in name, readers can take it badly. I certainly do, and it can put me off so badly I’ll tell people to avoid it. I don’t want this to happen to me, and so I work hard to stay true to the research.
Sometimes liberties have to be taken, there are gaps in knowledge, or even things not being translated so you can learn it. Sometimes you need to make things easier for your readers too, especially if they are quite different from the original culture. I find this a lot with my stories in Japan, and have to pick and choose a happy medium. One such thing is name order. In Japan it goes [Surname, First name] and people often call people by their surnames. In the west it’s [First name, Surname], and we often call people by their first names. So then I have to make a decision. When people introduce themselves do they do it the Japanese way, which would be true to culture, or the western way, which would be localised. In this case, I have opted for the western way, however I do have character refer to eachother with surnames when appropriate. I try to make it super clear to my readers which name is first and surname too, though it can be tricky. I feel like this is a happy medium that keeps things true, but means my readers can follow along if they aren’t sure on Japanese customs.
Another thing I have done is about spelling and pronunciation of words, the best example being the word yokai. In Japanese it’s actually transliterated as yōkai with the ō being an ou. So if I was going to do a direction translation, I’d use youkai. However, the -ou sound is different in English than Japanese and we would easily pronounce it as you-kai, whereas in Japanese the pronunciation is closer to yokai. So I decided to drop the u, and it’s still mostly correct, and it keeps the pronunciation closer than being exactly correct.
There are things, however, that I know I’ll do and write which won’t be right simply because I haven’t grown up in that culture, nor have I had the chance to visit Japan yet. All I can do it make it as authentic as possible, as anybody who is Japanese can probably pick out that I’m certainly not Japanese, nor grew up in that culture.
I’ve seen it from the other side, reading a story written by an American about England. It was the tiny things which gave it away, descriptions which made sense in an American setting, but certainly not here. It really broke my immersion, something you really don’t want to have happen to your readers.
On the other hand, I have seen it from an author who went above and beyond for her stories. Michelle Paver wrote one of my favourite series The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. They’re technically children’s books, and it’s a historical fantasy series, but the worldbuilding in them is breathtaking. I noticed it when reading the first book Wolf Brother even as a child, and it still sticks with me now, nearly twenty years later. And what did she do? She went out to get as much first hand knowledge about what she was writing—or as close too as she has fantasy aspects too—and built her world on that.
Through all that research and being able to add it into her stories, she also imparted knowledge onto her readers. Before those books, I didn’t know about aurochs, juniper berries, how hunter gatherers did sea fishing or how tools were created. And while enjoying reading the storyline of the whole series, I learnt so much. That’s exactly what I want to do with my stories too.
And from that I can then build on the more fantastical aspects and incorporate it to what I have learnt. Especially when dealing with the supernatural yokai, as for some little is known. But knowing the cultural rules and how other yokai act, it’s easier to make the lesser known ones fit right in place.
I also give a little leeway with timelines too. For example in my story One, Two, Three I have an indigo farmer, and a dye maker. Indigo dyeing certainly happened in Japan… however not til a little later than my intended year span. If I were writing historical fiction then I wouldn’t stray too far, but because I’ve got the fantasy element, I’m blurring the edges a little. And the benefit is I get to share really interesting things too. I’ve looked into the indigo dyeing and it’s really cool!
When it comes to writing about yokai themselves, I always treat them with care. They’re so much more than supernatural beings of the west and even now some still permeate into every day life for Japanese people. One of which is the zashiki warashi—and there is a great documentary video if you want to learn more about it here. We don’t really have an equivalent, but I can tell from my research they’re special. So I’ve taken what I have learnt from such research, and I apply it into the past for my stories, as there is a lot of culture around the world which has stayed the same for many years.
Lastly, and the most fun part about researching, you find out so many cool things. It can be frustrating having to research for information every few paragraphs, but the upside is that I can stumble on things which spark new ideas or give me something to filter into my stories as background information.
Sometimes I feel like I go too far trying to make things correct, but then I remember Wolf Brother and the appreciation I have for it, and hope one day someone can appreciate my stories like that too.
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ellie-the-oracle · 1 year
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The Unseen Tragedy of the Clones
Alright folks, I am back once again with another Star Wars discussion. And yes, I could be putting my time towards actual school work yet here I am…we live with the choices we make….anyways! 
MAJOR SPOILERS ahead for both The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch! 
CONTENT WARNING! Mentions of torture, eugenics, and slavery. If any of these topics are sensitive or triggering to you, please do not proceed.  Mental Health first, take care of yourselves!
With out further ado, enjoy!
I’ve been thinking about this for a really long time and it has finally reached a point where I need to formulate my thoughts. Basically (as you can probably tell from the title), I wanted to discuss the tragedy that is the clones. I know this is not a new concept whatsoever, and that most if not all people have thought and/or talked about this by now, but I wanted to post about it regardless. 
The clones, right from the moment of their creation, were tragic. They were bred to fight in a war they had no choice in, and in turn, were never given the opportunity to think about what they were truly fighting for. Their opinions, thoughts and feelings simply never mattered. By design, literally right down to their DNA, they were made to be subservient and obedient child soldiers. Moreover, they were subjected to cruel and unjust treatment at the hands of the Kaminoan’s, undergoing inhumane procedures from the [standardized] accelerated growth of all clones, to random biopsies and other enhancement operations. Yet, when a clone failed to meet Kaminoan expectations, they are “decommissioned;” in other words, eugenics. However, it can be argued that the whole Kaminoan cloning operation is eugenics (selecting desirable traits, etc.), but that’s a topic for another time. 
Referring back to the clones disposition of accelerated growth is another point of concern. Sure, it was a “necessity” in order to get an army ready as fast as possible, but when you take a step back and look at what’s really going on, you have an army of clone children (chronologically); albeit, they are physically and mentally adults. Irregardless, it is an extremely fine line and depending on who you ask, it can be acceptable or unacceptable.
 Now for the rancor in the room: the clones are literally slaves. They were unpaid (chronologically) child soldiers who were not viewed as humans by the general public, they did not have rights whatsoever, they were not allowed to make any decisions for their own lives (have a life beyond being a soldier of the GAR) and most importantly, they were viewed as replaceable cogs apart of the ever-turning wheel that is the war. This looks extremely bad on its own, but when you apply the fact that this army is the army of the Republic? It’s far worse, let me explain. The Republic, a government that not only preaches but actively advocates for peace and liberty, has an army made of soldiers who do not have liberty. The hypocrisy is unrivalled. And sure, you could argue that this is due to Palpatine and his master plan to destroy the Jedi and the Republic. But when you remove him from the equation, the hypocrisy remains. The “Great” Republic isn’t as great as its made out to be. As all things are, there are a lot of grey areas here. What remains though, is the fact that not many, if any, senators or civilians advocated for clone rights. Only Senator Padmé Amidala had ever advocated for them when she was trying to stop their needless production. And we all remember how that turned out. Sure Palpatine was the devil on the shoulder of a lot of senators, egging them on to one direction over another. But the fact is, those senators and those civilians never bothered to consider any of this. They remained complacent and were happy to accept an army of expendable soldiers. 
Even with all of these disadvantages in their lives, the clones made the best of it with what they were given. Not all people were against them. They made strong bonds among their brothers and found friendship in their Jedi generals. They also found a way to be unique, through different hair styles to tattoos and even armour paint. They made their lives bearable. But what really cemented the fact that they meant nothing to the people they protected was during order 66. This is not the fault of the people but rather their failure as a people to question the unethical operations of the Kaminoan’s and protest against it. Had they done something small like that, it would’ve put a lot more into question, like what were the ethics of the clone production, what did they do or didn’t do to them, etc. It is the job of the people to constantly challenge the politics of their government in order to keep it in check and to always strive for an even better democracy. Where the Republic had failed, the people of the Republic failed as well. The clones were merely the physical embodiment of the failure of a democracy that had died long before episode 1. And the clones, along with many others (civilians, sovereign planets, etc.) were the victims. That is the unseen tragedy of the clones.
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writingwithcolor · 3 years
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What Does Our "Motivations” PSA Mean?
@luminalalumini said:
I've been on your blog a lot and it has a lot of really insightful information, but I notice a theme with some of your answers where you ask the writer reaching out what their 'motivation for making a character a certain [race/religion/ethnicity/nationality] is' and it's discouraging to see, because it seems like you're automatically assigning the writer some sort of ulterior motive that must be sniffed out and identified before the writer can get any tips or guidance for their question. Can't the 'motive' simply be having/wanting to have diversity in one's work? Must there be an 'ulterior motive'? I can understand that there's a lot of stigma and stereotypes and bad influence that might lead to someone trynna add marginalized groups into their stories for wrong reasons, but people that have those bad intentions certainly won't be asking for advice on how to write good representation in the first place. Idk its just been something that seemed really discouraging to me to reach out myself, knowing i'll automatically be assigned ulterior motives that i don't have and will probably have to justify why i want to add diversity to my story as if i'm comitting some sort of crime. I don't expect you guys to change your blog or respond to this or even care all that much, I'm probably just ranting into a void. I'm just curious if theres any reason to this that I haven't realized exists I suppose. I don't want y'all to take this the wrong way because I do actually love and enjoy your blog's advice in spite of my dumb griping. Cheers :))
We assume this is in reference to the following PSA:
PSA to all of our users - Motivation Matters: This lack of clarity w/r to intent has been a general issue with many recent questions. Please remember that if you don’t explain your motivations and what you intend to communicate to your audience with your plot choices, character attributes, world-building etc., we cannot effectively advise you beyond the information you provide. We Are Not Mind Readers. If, when drafting these questions, you realize you can’t explain your motivations, that is likely a hint that you need to think more on the rationales for your narrative decisions. My recommendation is to read our archives and articles on similar topics for inspiration while you think. I will be attaching this PSA to all asks with similar issues until the volume of such questions declines. 
We have answered this in three parts.
1. Of Paved Roads and Good Intentions
Allow me to give you a personal story, in solidarity towards your feelings:
When I began writing in South Asia as an outsider, specifically in the Kashmir and Lahore areas, I was doing it out of respect for the cultures I had grown up around. I did kathak dance, I grew up on immigrant-cooked North Indian food, my babysitters were Indian. I loved Mughal society, and every detail of learning about it just made me want more. The minute you told me fantasy could be outside of Europe, I hopped into the Mughal world with two feet. I was 13. I am now 28.
And had you asked me, as a teenager, what my motives were in giving my characters’ love interests blue or green eyes, one of them blond hair, my MC having red-tinted brown hair that was very emphasized, and a whole bunch of paler skinned people, I would have told you my motives were “to represent the diversity of the region.” 
I’m sure readers of the blog will spot the really, really toxic and colourist tropes present in my choices. If you’re new here, then the summary is: giving brown people “unique” coloured eyes and hair that lines up with Eurocentric beauty standards is an orientalist trope that needs to be interrogated in your writing. And favouring pale skinned people is colourist, full stop.
Did that make me a bad person with super sneaky ulterior motives who wanted to write bad representation? No.
It made me an ignorant kid from the mostly-white suburbs who grew up with media that said brown people had to “look unique” (read: look as European as possible) to be considered valuable.
And this is where it is important to remember that motives can be pure as you want, but you were still taught all of the terrible stuff that is present in society. Which means you’re going to perpetuate it unless you stop and actually question what is under your conscious motive, and work to unlearn it. Work that will never be complete.
I know it sounds scary and judgemental (and it’s one of the reasons we allow people to ask to be anonymous, for people who are afraid). Honestly, I would’ve reacted much the same as a younger writer, had you told me I was perpetuating bad things. I was trying to do good and my motives were pure, after all! But after a few years, I realized that I had fallen short, and I had a lot more to learn in order for my motives to match my impact. Part of our job at WWC is to attempt to close that gap.
We aren’t giving judgement, when we ask questions about why you want to do certain things. We are asking you to look at the structural underpinnings of your mind and question why those traits felt natural together, and, more specifically, why those traits felt natural to give to a protagonist or other major character.
I still have blond, blue-eyed characters with sandy coloured skin. I still have green-eyed characters. Because teenage me was right, that is part of the region. But by interrogating my motive, I was able to devalue those traits within the narrative, and I stopped making those traits shorthand for “this is the person you should root for.” 
It opened up room for me to be messier with my characters of colour, even the ones who my teenage self would have deemed “extra special.” Because the European-associated traits (pale hair, not-brown-eyes) stopped being special. After years of questioning, they started lining up with my motive of just being part of the diversity of the region.
Motive is important, both in the conscious and the subconscious. It’s not a judgement and it’s not assumed to be evil. It’s simply assumed to be unquestioned, so we ask that you question it and really examine your own biases.
~Mod Lesya
2. Motivations Aren't Always "Ulterior"
You can have a positive motivation or a neutral one or a negative one. Just wanting to have diversity only means your characters aren't all white and straight and cis and able-bodied -- it doesn't explain why you decided to make this specific character specifically bi and specifically Jewish (it me). Yes, sometimes it might be completely random! But it also might be "well, my crush is Costa Rican, so I gave the love interest the same background", or "I set it in X City where the predominant marginalized ethnicity is Y, so they are Y". Neither of these count as ulterior motives. But let's say for a second that you did accidentally catch yourself doing an "ulterior." Isn't that the point of the blog, to help you find those spots and clean them up?
Try thinking of it as “finding things that need adjusting” rather than “things that are bad” and it might get less scary to realize that we all do them, subconsciously. Representation that could use some work is often the product of subconscious bias, not deliberate misrepresentation, so there's every possibility that someone who wants to improve and do better didn't do it perfectly the first time. 
--Shira
3. Dress-Making as a Metaphor
I want to echo Lesya’s sentiments here but also provide a more logistical perspective. If you check the rubber stamp guide here and the “Motivation matters” PSA above, you’ll notice that concerns with respect to asker motivation are for the purposes of providing the most relevant answer possible.
It is a lot like if someone walks into a dressmaker’s shop and asks for a blue dress/ suit (Back when getting custom-made clothes was more of a thing) . The seamstress/ tailor is likely to ask a wide variety of questions:
What material do you want the outfit to be made of?
Where do you plan to wear it?
What do you want to highlight?
How do you want to feel when you wear it?
Let’s say our theoretical customer is in England during the 1920s. A tartan walking dress/ flannel suit for the winter is not the same as a periwinkle, beaded, organza ensemble/ navy pinstripe for formal dress in the summer. When we ask for motivations, we are often asking for exactly that: the specific reasons for your inquiry so we may pinpoint the most pertinent information.
The consistent problem for many of the askers who receive the PSA is they haven’t even done the level of research necessary to know what they want to ask of us. It would be like if our English customer in the 1920s responded, “IDK, some kind of blue thing.” Even worse,  WWC doesn’t have the luxury of the back-and-forth between a dressmaker and their clientele. If our asker doesn’t communicate all the information they need in mind at the time of submission, we can only say, “Well, I’m not sure if this is right, but here’s something. I hope it works, but if you had told us more, we could have done a more thorough job.”
Answering questions without context is hard, and asking for motivations, by which I mean the narratives, themes, character arcs and other literary devices that you are looking to incorporate, is the best way for us to help you, while also helping you to determine if your understanding of the problem will benefit from outside input. Because these asks are published with the goal of helping individuals with similar questions, the PSA also serves to prompt other users.
I note that asking questions is a skill, and we all start by asking the most basic questions (Not stupid questions, because to quote a dear professor, “There are no stupid questions.”). Unfortunately, WWC is not suited for the most basic questions. To this effect, we have a very helpful FAQ and archive as a starting point. Once you have used our website to answer the more basic questions, you are more ready to approach writing with diversity and decide when we can actually be of service. This is why we are so adamant that people read the FAQ. Yes, it helps us, but it also is there to save you time and spare you the ambiguity of not even knowing where to start.
The anxiety in your ask conveys to me a fear of being judged for asking questions. That fear is not something we can help you with, other than to wholeheartedly reassure you that we do not spend our unpaid, free time answering these questions in order to assume motives we can’t confirm or sit in judgment of our users who, as you say, are just trying to do better.
Yes, I am often frustrated when an asker’s question makes it clear they haven’t read the FAQ or archives. I’ve also been upset when uncivil commenters have indicated that my efforts and contributions are not worth their consideration. However, even the most tactless question has never made me think, “Ooh this person is such a naughty racist. Let me laugh at them for being a naughty racist. Let me shame them for being a naughty racist. Mwahaha.”
What kind of sad person has time for that?*
Racism is structural. It takes time to unlearn, especially if you’re in an environment that doesn’t facilitate that process to begin with. Our first priority is to help while also preserving our own boundaries and well-being. Though I am well aware of the levels of toxic gas-lighting and virtue signaling that can be found in various corners of online writing communities in the name of “progressivism*”, WWC is not that kind of space. This space is for discussions held in good faith: for us to understand each other better, rather than for one of us to “win” and another to “lose.”
Just as we have good faith that you are doing your best, we ask that you have faith that we are trying to do our best by you and the BIPOC communities we represent.
- Marika.
*If you are in any writing or social media circles that feed these anxieties or demonstrate these behaviors, I advise you to curtail your time with them and focus on your own growth. You will find, over time, that it is easier to think clearly when you are worrying less about trying to appease people who set the bar of approval so high just for the enjoyment of watching you jump. “Internet hygiene”, as I like to call it, begins with you and the boundaries you set with those you interact with online.
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roger-that-cap · 3 years
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peace
natasha romanoff x fem!reader
summary: natasha wanted to marry you more than she wanted everything, but how was she supposed to propose to you and ask you to be hers forever when she couldn’t give you even the simplest of things?
warnings: so this is minimal angst, don’t be fooled, this is fluff, ya know the drill. this may or may not be cheesy, but i tried 
word count: 6.4k, short and sweet 
so, i listened to peace by taylor swift while i wrote this one. take that information how you wish lollll. also, not edited!
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Natasha met you years ago. You were the bright eyed girl at the front counter of an ice cream shop near the tower, soft serve shop. Natasha, ever the reader of mankind, immediately knew that you were kind, patient and simply sweet. Sweeter than the vanilla cone she had treated herself to, the one that you had made yourself because your coworkers were on an extra long break that wasn’t exactly authorized. 
  You knew who she was, but you didn’t ask her for anything. No autograph, no murmuring of a catchphrase, nothing about whether or not Captain America would be into you. Natasha admired that. She loved that she saw the flash of excitement and recognition in your eyes, but that it never went further than you asking her if she wanted sprinkles. 
 That one encounter led to many more. Soon, you two were on a date, after you had been brave enough to ask if she wanted to go on a picnic in the park after she kept coming into the store. And that one date was enough for you both to know that you wanted to see each other again, and again, and again. 
You and Natasha spent two months dating each other before making it official, and it was the best decision either of you had ever made. 
You made her feel like she was needed and loved, and she made you feel like you were cherished and safe. The feeling that you got when you looked at her was just so… natural. You weren’t worried about angering her, or about messing up in front of her. She made you feel calm, and one look at her washed all the jitters out of your nerves easily. 
And in return, there was no one on the entire planet that made Natasha as happy as you did. You were the one, and it was almost over night when she realized that you were it. 
One night, she was in bed next to you after a long day of training recruits and having a briefing for an upcoming mission. She had only been in your apartment for about twenty minutes, just lying in your gentle and welcoming arms, and she was fighting the urge to nod off where she felt safest. She was tired, but she knew one thing above everything else, and it was that she wasn’t going to waste an entire night with you because she wanted to sleep. 
“You don’t have to stay awake, sprinkles.” You said to her in the dark room, your hand smoothing her hair. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you all day.” Maybe that’s when Natasha should have noticed. When the urge to talk to you was stronger than the drive that she had while training recruits, or when she nearly forgot that she couldn’t go home early because of how much she was just ready to. 
“I won’t be upset, you work hard,” you said softly. “You deserve some peace and quiet. Sleep, I’ve got you.” 
Natasha did a few things for the first time in a long time that night. 
One: she felt at peace enough to fall asleep immediately. 
Two: she went to sleep with the sound of someone humming in her ear. 
Three: she realized that she was completely in love with her girlfriend. 
There were plenty of times that hinted to her that she was falling in love. She looked for you or an essence of you everywhere, from seeing something the color of your eyes to looking over at your favorite brand of yogurt in the grocery store and contemplating buying it. Whenever you smiled, she couldn’t help but grin twice as big. If you laughed, she was happy. When you were upset, she wanted nothing more than to make it better, than to eliminate whatever it had been that made you feel that way. She would do anything for you. And she really believed that you would do anything for her right back. 
 Your relationship wasn’t perfect, but it was damn near it. It was the thing Natasha was most proud of, just like you were the person that Natasha was proudest of to call hers. And she wanted that. She wanted you to be hers for the rest of your life, and she wanted nothing more than to be officially yours. 
And that was why she stood in a high end jewelry store that specialized in special rings, closed for two hours from the public just for her. And Tony and Steve, who desperately wanted to tag along. 
  Tony was more of the planner and the doer. He was the one pointing out the rings that seemed pretty, the ones that looked like they would fit your style. He was the businessman, ready to negotiate price even though he could easily afford the entire store ten times over. Steve, however, was the mother hen. Hovering mostly silently, an excited buzz flowing out and touching everyone else in the vicinity. He was excited for Natasha, it was obvious, and he also wanted to make her feel as comfortable and ready as possible. 
  “That one’s pretty, isn’t it?” Tony muttered, pointing towards an intricate ring with a diamond in the middle of the studded band. “Y/N likes stuff like that.” 
“No she doesn’t,” Steve cut in, and he pointed to a ring that was quite literally the opposite of the one Tony was referring to. It was a simple ring, one with a silver band and a decently sized diamond in the middle. It was clearly an engagement ring, but it wasn’t flashy. “That one is probably closer to what she’d like.” 
Everyone in the tower knew you well. Natasha made sure that you knew her friends well when you two started to get really involved. You introduced her to your siblings and parents, and she let you meet her own family, the Avengers. Natasha remembered the day that you met everyone vividly. Everyone had loved you immediately, and she was so proud of the way that you handled yourself while being so nervous. Hell, she was always proud of you. 
  You made fast and sturdy friendships with everyone and fit in well, and that was all Natasha could ever ask for. Eventually, she started to bring you over at least once a week just to hang out with everyone, to get you familiar with every member of her found family. 
  Perhaps that was another sign that she should have taken and read. She had never introduced a significant other to the family that she cherished so much, not once before you. 
“Steve’s right,” Natasha murmured, and she heard Tony’s playful scoff. “But I have no idea when I’m going to actually do it.”
 “You don’t have a trip planned?” Tony asked incredulously. “Well, I can schedule anything you want, whenever you want. Just ask me.” 
Natasha knew exactly what Tony was referring to. He had gone above and beyond for every romantic gesture that was ever for Pepper, and Natasha knew that your relationship wasn’t like that. You didn’t need grand gestures or long trips to beaches. The both of you were happier than ever just being with each other. She knew that you would cry in the middle of a Wendy’s if she popped the question there and held her hand patiently waiting for the ring. The location mattered the least. 
“We probably won’t do a trip, that’ll make it obvious.” There was one thing that Natasha was very picky about that had to do with the whole affair, and that was surprise. She wanted you to be the most pleasantly surprised you had ever been in your life, and she wanted to watch those beautiful eyes of yours light up and start to water in the most joyous of ways. She wanted the cheesy hand-over-heart move, the hand grabbing, the excited chatter of a small gathering of random people looking. And most of all, she wanted to hear your elated yes and she wanted to slip the ring onto your ring finger, and she never wanted to see it off from that moment on. 
But that was just her. 
Natasha, Steve, and Tony spent another hour in the jewelry store. The owner was buzzing around, clearly excited for the amount of business that their presence was sure to rope in. He took a picture of them and promised not to release it until Natasha proposed, even though he was quite literally bursting at the seams to brag about it. In the end, Natasha ended up getting a pretty ring with a silver band and a nice sized diamond, simple and just your type. 
They were on their way out when Tony spotted paparazzi. He stopped in his tracks and turned around. “Okay, I’ll go first to lead them away.” 
“Why?” 
“If Y/N sees you on a tabloid at a ring shop with me and Steve… the surprise is up.” Tony made a clicking noise with his tongue and left without anything else to say, strolling out and indeed leading all of the people with cameras away from the shop, all of them entranced by the billionaire. 
To be safe, Natasha and Steve waited for a few more minutes before walking out and getting jumbled in with the crowd. Her grip on the bag was tight, and she was holding the box in her hand through it. So, are you excited?” 
“Not as excited as you,” she teased, but even she could hear the nerves in her voice. “I just don’t wanna ruin anything.” 
  “Please,” Steve scoffed. “Y/N is so in love with you that I forget that you two aren’t already married, honestly.” 
  Steve saying it aloud made Natasha’s heart race, even though she already knew that. That was one of the million wonderful qualities about you. She never had to ask you for validation, because you told her with everything you did. You tapped her hand three times at parties. You whispered it into her ear before you both went to sleep. You kissed her cheek or her jaw when she started to get antsy, and rubbed her back while you did it. Every touch, every kiss, every breath that the both of you took told the other that you loved them. There was no question about that. 
“So, what are you worried about? She’ll say yes. Everyone knows that.”
If only Steve knew that it was so much more than you saying a three letter word instead of a two letter one. 
They walked back in silence to the tower, comfortable silence between two friends who were both deep in their own heads even as they swiped their clearance cards and went into the elevator. 
§§
Natasha always felt bad when she lied to you, no matter how small or white the lie was. One day, it was small and for the both of you, but it still didn’t smooth the guilt. 
She had told you that she had a late night meeting, top secret, and that she would call you when you could come up in her room. “So, that’s the plan.” 
“You’re gonna pop the question of your lives in the park?” Tony asked, a brow quirked upwards. “Well, to each their own.” 
Wanda rolled her eyes. “That’s a really sweet idea, Nat. Tony, here, is just annoying.” 
“Thank you, Wanda.” Natasha said, and then turned to the billionaire. “So, what would you do, then?” 
“I would go on a crui-”
“Yeah, I’m thinking Nat wants a more casual approach,” Sam said, giving Tony a once over. “So the park would be great.” 
“I know,” she said absentmindedly, thoughts already on the next hour, where she would be on the couch in her quarters with you, watching one of your favorite shows together. 
“We’re still allowed to come, right?” Wanda asked, gently bringing Natasha out of her thoughts. 
“Of course.” That was another thing she really wanted. Her family had to see everything happen first hand, that was non negotiable. “Just lurk in the shadows, she’ll know what's happening if she sees all of you.” 
That night, she left the tower to go to your apartment rather than just have you come over and swipe your card that Tony had made you. She figured that the less people around that knew about the proposal, the less likely it was that someone was going to spoil it. 
  She wasn’t an idiot. Weddings were special to you. Hell, when you were younger, you used to want to be a wedding planner. Natasha knew that a goal in your life was to be loved by someone so much that they wanted to spend their life with you, and luckily, the both of you found that in each other. 
  “Baby,” Natasha called when she stepped through the threshold of your apartment, her ears already pricked up as she heard the television coming from the room that you had moved half of her belongings into. She smiled as she walked closer, purposely making her footfalls a little louder so that she didn’t startle you. 
  You were smiling at her when she opened the door to the bedroom, and Natasha felt her heart stutter for a second as she caught her bearings. “Hi, sprinkles. How was work?” 
She would never get tired of the sound of your voice. “It was alright.” Natasha walked over to you, and you leaned into her hand, the same one that always reached for your face and cradled your cheek, her own little greeting. “You weren’t there, so.” 
“Sadly I was doing soft serve,” you said, rolling your eyes at the customers you had encountered. “And one woman was particularly… not nice.” 
“Oh, I’m sorry, baby.” Natasha said softly, pulling you closer. “At least now all you have to worry about is sitting down in time to catch your show.” 
“That is my only worry,” You agreed playfully. “Come sit, I’m tired. And I know you are, too.” 
§§
Natasha thought that she was going to do it as you walked through the park, on a trail that the rest of the Avengers were following you on flawlessly. She was surprised that they could keep that quiet for that long, especially Steve, with his non-stealthy physique and training. But they were doing it. In a way, it made Natasha worried out of her mind that you couldn’t feel that five people were trailing you. But she forced that part of her mind, the one that was always so overwhelmed with the need to keep you close and safe, to the back of her mind, and instead felt for the little box in her pocket. 
“Oh, do you hear that bird singing?” You asked softly, trying not to disturb the peace. She watched your eyes scan the tips of the trees, watching as a smile grew on your face and planting one of her own. “I wish I could see it.” 
“You go bird watching all the time,” Natasha mused at you, and you snorted a bit. 
“But we never really sit down and do it together,” you said after a moment, and just like that, Natasha’s excitement was dried out. Her fingers left the box in her jacket pocket, and her hand swung at her side with the other held by your hand. 
“What?” 
“We just don’t do it much, ‘s all.” Like you sensed that you had said something that changed the mood of your little stroll, you turned to look at her. “There’s nothing wrong with that.” 
But there was. There was everything wrong with that statement. Mostly because it was one hundred percent true. The two of you didn’t have any time to bird watch or stargaze like you wanted to. And it wasn’t on your end, no, it was on her’s. 
She came home late more often than not. She left early in the morning, sometimes before the sun even rose. She was sent on missions that were weeks long, sometimes even months. Sometimes, she didn’t even get to warn you or say goodbye before she had to get on a quinjet, just up and leaving and sending a text, apologizing for things she couldn’t control. 
  “Nat?” She hadn’t even realized that she stopped walking. But she had. Her arm was stretched out towards you because you hadn’t dropped her hand yet, and you closed the gap between the two of you with a look of concern on your face. “You okay?” 
“Um, yeah.” She cleared her throat and rubbed her face with her hand, blinking a few times as the familiar guilty feeling burned in her chest like acid. “Wanna keep walking?” 
For the rest of the walk, Natasha was stuck in her head. She was good at multitasking, so she indulged you and your words to the best of her ability while she thought about how terrible she felt for you. She couldn’t even take you birdwatching. And she thought that you would want to marry her? 
“Are you ready to head back, darling?” Natasha asked once the sun started to finally make its retreat, and after she felt that the others had left and were far ahead of them. They knew her just as well as you did, and they knew that it wasn’t the day that she was going to ask. 
“As long as it’s with you,” you murmured, and then you turned around to press your lips to hers in an innocent, binding kiss, and then pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I love you.” 
“I love you, too.” Natasha said back just as sincerely, wrapping her arms around you and hugging you right in the trail, closing her eyes tight and waiting for the feet and doubt to subside. 
It didn’t. 
§§
It took two more failed attempts for Steve to finally come knocking on her door one night. The night of the third failed proposal attempt, everyone was anxious to see a ring on your finger, and everyone just wanted it to be done so that they could plan the wedding. 
 Natasha was not on the same page. 
At first, the team was confused. Natasha’s love for you never wavered. It was as certain as the sun rising and falling, as the tide coming in and going out. It was constant, and it never faltered. So her backing out of making it official, of finally tying to knot with you, confused everyone. And then, they thought about what exactly made the change in conversation.   
  Wanda was the one to crack the code. She subtly picked at Natasha’s mind during the last of the failed proposals, and when she came back out into the present, she didn’t seem surprised at all. 
  The first thing that Wanda said when they all got back to the car was, “she doesn’t think that she’s enough.” 
Doubt. 
Natasha Romanoff never doubted herself. She was the best assassin in the world, capable of literally anything that she put her mind to. She had no reason to doubt herself. Until she started to work for someone else, not just for herself.
  “What is she doubting?” Tony muttered, the exhaustion at watching one of the boldest people he knew dancing around a woman who clearly loved her to death. “Y/N is going to say yes. She would say it if Nat asked her on the toilet.” 
 “No, it’s not that,” Wanda said softly, shaking her head. “She thinks that she’s… neglecting her. That her presence isn’t often enough. She feels guilty about her job.” 
 Silence. 
That was something many of them who had relationships dealt with. The balance between domestic life and life as an Avenger was hard to achieve. Not only did the Avenger have to know when to separate things. The Avenger also had to find someone who knew what they did, what their job entailed, and that they would both have to make sacrifices.  You knew how to do those things. So what was the problem?
“Y/N takes the distance and the danger really well,” Steve stated. “So, what’s the problem?” 
Wanda shrugged. “There was… there was more. But I didn’t have enough time to really see.” 
  While the others tried to figure out what was going on the the former assassin’s brain, Natasha was back in her room, sitting and twiddling her thumbs as she thought. Her eyes kept going back to the box, resting on it very now and then before she looked away in apprehension.  
 There were three knocks on her door, way too harsh and precise to be you. Besides, you hardly ever knocked, just as she never knocked on your door. “Um,” Natasha started, and then her brows furrowed as she put the ring in a drawer just in case. “Come in.” 
Steve Rogers was standing at her door, arms crossed, a slightly disappointed look set on his face. “What’s up?” 
Natasha raised a perfect brow. “You came to my room, Cap.” She crossed her arms as well, even though they both knew that neither was on the defensive. “Are you okay?” 
“Why haven’t you done it yet?” 
Her heart dropped to her toes, but she knew how to control her facial expressions. She was sure that she would never lose that skill, no matter how old she got and how much she would start to forget things. “Done what?” 
Steve shut the door. “You haven’t proposed to her yet. Why not?” 
“The time wasn’t right.” 
“That’s a lie.” 
She wasn’t used to Rogers calling her out so fast. Typically, she was an A list liar, and the only person she failed at lying to was you. She rarely ever did that, and when she did, it was for the better. Like, when she would tell you that she would be back within a few hours knowing that it would be about two nights still. Or when she would tell you that she wasn’t hurt, knowing good and well she had been bleeding out five minutes not even two minutes before she made the call. 
The second lie that came to mind came flying out of her mouth. “I’m scared she’ll say no.” 
Steve rolled his eyes, to Natasha’s surprise and sligh humor. “She’d find a way to say yes to you even in the afterlife, Natasha. You can’t play the lying game. Not with me, not with us, and especially not with her.” 
“Why are you so worked up right now?” 
“Because you deserve happiness, and it’s right there in front of you. You’re throwing it away, for what?” 
  “I never said that I wasn’t going to propose,” the redhead defended, but Steve just put his hands on his hips. 
 “I can see it in your eyes. You’re not going to unless someone pushes you, and because Y/N can’t in this situation, then I will.” His “Captain” voice was on. “It’s much more than you being worried about something that won’t ever happen, so what’s wrong, Natasha?” 
Natasha stood there for a second, her eyes narrowed on him as her face stayed still, and her mind raced a thousand miles an hour. She pursed her lips after a few seconds and breathed in, trying to decide whether or not to spill everything to one of the people that she trusted the most in life, one of the few that she trusted with her very life itself. Her mouth started moving before she could even approve its speech. 
 “Because of who I am and what I do, I can never give her what she deserves. I can never give her the suburban life, the calm life, the one where all she has to worry about is whether or not she’ll have to go to the store to get more cheese. I can never give her that.” 
 “I have money, she’ll never have to worry about going hungry or not being able to do things, yes, but at what cost? At the cost of me leaving her by herself one day for forever because of one wrong step? At the cost of me not being there to hold her at night or wake up with her in the morning? I can’t even do simple things with her like stargazing because I don’t have time for it. I don’t have time for her, do you realize how horrible that is? How terrible I feel?” 
Whatever Steve was expecting, it surely wasn’t that. Natasha was never one to have an outburst, even with the people she was the most comfortable with. But there she was, spilling all of the feelings she had been harboring within seconds, her eyes resting on Steve’s as they both refused to look away for more than a few seconds at a time. 
  “I can never give her a calm life without worry, or without pain. She’ll have to be scared about whether or not I got shot in Siberia, or if I’m rotting somewhere at the bottom of a cliff, or if I’m a prisoner halfway across the world. All I bring to the table is worry, and all I want to give her is what she gives me every second I’m with her. Peace. I want that so badly, and she deserves it more than anything. And I can’t give it to her.” 
Steve was silent for a moment, and a singular moment turned into two. “Have you ever asked her what she wants?” 
 The question stopped Natasha’s erratic thoughts in their tracks. “What?” 
 “Natasha, she’s been with you for years now, and I’ve never heard her complain about your job. I’ve never even seen her cry about you being gone more than anyone else would. She knows what you do, and she knew that when she agreed to be your girlfriend. She wouldn’t have stayed with you if she couldn’t handle it.” 
 “How do I know she’s handling it?” 
“Ask her.” Steve said softly, like he was nudging her with his words alone. “You’ll only know if you ask her.” 
  As she drove to your apartment that night, her mind was buzzing with nerves. “Ask her,” she mocked, making her voice deeper. “Not that easy.” 
  The door was open when she got there, enough to make Natasha shout your name with anxiety in her voice, and that sound was enough to make you come poking your head out from the kitchen. 
“You alright, sprinkles?” 
Natasha could breathe again. And when she inhaled, she smelled chicken in the air. She grinned. “Perfect now,” she said, shutting the door, locking it, and walking over to you. 
§§
It hit her in bed with you that she should bring it up. You two always had conversations before bed, it didn’t matter what about. Sometimes, the conversations were as serious as a heart attack, and other times, they were about whether or not Candyland was a good game. That night, it was leaning on the more serious side. 
  “Y/N,” Natasha called softly, and you hummed in response. “Do you… are you happy? With me?” 
The soft humming that was coming from your throat cut off abruptly at the question, a question Natasha had never asked you before. To say that you were confused was an understatement. You two had almost always been on the same page, and if one of you were to be unhappy, the other would know. “Of course I am, Natasha. Why? What’s wrong?” 
 “Do you think that my job complicates things between us?”
Natasha sat up after you did, looking at her like she was in the process of growing a second head. “What?” Before she couldn’t say much else, you were talking again. “Who put that idea into your head? No, your job doesn’t put a strain on us, unless you feel something on your side?” 
  “No, no,” Natasha rushed out. “I just… I don't want you to feel like I’m neglecting you. I don’t want you to feel like you’re not getting what you need from me, as a w-girlfriend.” 
 “Natasha,” your voice was soft in the night, a satisfied and sweet whisper that never failed to calm her nerves. “You give me everything I could ever ask for. You always have, and I think you always will. Is this about stargazing?” 
  “What?” 
“Don’t think I didn’t notice the way you got weird when we were walking in the park,” you said softly, your fingers tracing little hearts on her back. “I told you that we didn’t go stargaze or bird watching together, and you got upset. Is that what this is about?” 
  She couldn’t lie to you. “Somewhat.” 
“Oh, Nat,” you said, and you pulled her closer to you, resting your head on her chest and listening to her heartbeat, steady and constant. “I don’t care about that. All I care about is you.” 
 “Do you even see enough of me?” 
“Your job does not affect me whatsoever,” you answered. “I knew who you were and what you did when I asked you to go to that picnic with me, remember? I knew exactly what you did, and I knew around how much I could or could not be seeing you. I knew everything. So, why would I back out now after all these years? And why would I leave you?” 
  You had no idea how soothing your words were to Natasha in that moment. To you, it was just reassurance, affirmative words. To her, it was everything. It was the solution to all of her worries regarding the ring that was in her dresser back at the Tower. 
  “The point is, I could wait up for you to get home until four in the morning and make dinner for you after a long mission every day for the rest of my life, if you wanted me to.” The tracing of hearts never stopped on Natasha’s skin, but her breathing surely did for a second. “Because, what’s losing a few days compared to sharing a lifetime?” 
  Natasha smiled as the fear washed out of her system like it had never been there. More or less, you had just confessed to her that you wanted to be with her for a lifetime, and that for that lifetime, you didn’t mind any of the things that she was worried about. She was going to do it.  
§§
  After a short chat with the team, Natasha was finally ready. Like they could all tell that it was the day, they gave her a serious pep talk and Tony even muttered his premature congratulations, even though Wanda insisted that saying it before was a form of bad luck. 
 The plan was set. She was going to get you from work, pretend like you were going to go to dinner, and then take you stargazing. And then, she was going to pop the question. And hopefully, most likely, you were going to say “yes”. 
 When her car rolled up to the windows of your store while you were cleaning, you laughed. “Hi, Nat! What’s up?” 
 “Just here to pick you up,” she said with a smile, and your grinned at her. 
  “Alright, give me fifteen.” 
By the time you had gotten home, gotten dressed and were both seated in the car, Natasha’s hands were sweaty, and the weight of the little box was somehow heavier than anything Natasha had ever carried before. Her leg was bouncing up and down in the driver’s seat, and she hoped that you paid no mind to it. 
 “It’s pretty tonight,” you mused, and she nodded.  
“Yep, very clear.” And it was pure luck. She thanked all the gods that were ever worshipped that it was a clear night. “You can see everything.” 
“Yeah, you can.” 
“Do you… do you wanna go look at the stars?” She asked, and you turned your head to the side to look at her, a spark in your eyes that had just caught flame. 
  “You didn’t reserve anything, right?” 
Natasha had forgotten about the fake dinner already, her eager mind already onto the next stage. “Oh? No. I didn’t.” 
 “Then, we should ditch the food and do that. I’ll make you dinner after.”
 When Natasha parked on the side of the road, it was empty. It was emptier than it usually was at night, and the closest street lights were off. It made it much easier to see the stars. You were the first one to sit down on the dry grass, and you patted the spot beside you, urging Natasha to sit down with you. The second she did, you laid down and sighed, eyes on the sky. 
After a few moments of holding hands with eyes to the stars, roaming the dark blue sky in silence, you quietly began to speak. “It’s so pretty,” you murmured. “I haven’t done this in forever, and I hardly remember what it was like, but I can’t imagine that any other time could have been better than a time with you.” 
  Natasha turned her head into your neck, resting it there like she always did. “I love you,” she whispered, and you shivered at the intensity laced between the three words, the sincerity warming your heart. “I love you so much.” 
  “And I love you,” you responded, just as genuinely. You tapped her hand three times with your pointer finger, saying it twice. “More than I love the stars.” 
You two stayed there for hours, just watching the sky and ignoring the dull hunger pains that kept leaving and coming back. You spent a little time pointing out constellations, and Natasha told you how to navigate using the stars. Eventually, it was time to leave, and Natasha reached her hand out to you once she stood up. 
Natasha slowly walked you towards the car, but you didn’t notice how out of character it was for her to walk without a sense of urgency in the moment. She knew that you couldn’t hear their footsteps, but she could. They were soft and familiar, trying not to alert you of their presence, and they were succeeding. Natasha cleared her throat softly and swallowed her fears.
“Y/N,” she started, and you furrowed your brows at the usage of your name. “Do you remember how we first met?” 
You stopped walking, your back towards the approaching people. “Of course I do,” you responded, a smile on your face as you reminisced. “You ordered a cone with no sprinkles, what a weirdo.” 
 “Is it weird for me to say that I knew?” 
“Knew what?” 
“I knew that you were going to be a part of my life somehow. Whether it was going to be a friendship, a relationship, or even just an acquaintanceship, I didn’t know. But I knew you’d be around.” 
“That’s so sweet, Tasha.” Your bottom lip poked out and you went in to hug her, closing your eyes as you held her tight and then pulled away. “I think I knew after our third date.” 
Natasha cracked a smile, even though she felt like she was going to throw up. “Coney Island?” 
“Coney Island,” you confirmed, eyes glimmering under the starlight. Natasha was about to get lost in them, well on her way, before she shook her head and cleared her throat again, checking behind you discreetly to make sure that everyone was hiding before she turned you both sideways, so that your side profiles were visible to the others. 
“But… you have the most beautiful soul that I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting. You're everything I could ever dream of asking for, and I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life. You’re my day and night, my high tide and low tide, and you’re the only person I’ll ever admit that I need. Because it’s true. You give me a peace that I never hoped to ever receive from anything, and I love you even more for that. You are just… you’re the one for me. And I…” she swallowed as her eyes tore away from yours, and she wiped her sweaty palms on her jacket. “I’m sorry I’m no good at speeches, but I...”
   She reached into both pockets at the same time and pulled the box out in a swift movement, and before you even knew what she had done, she was on one knee right in front of you. A strangled noise came from your throat, a gasp and a sigh all the same, and then you put one hand over your mouth. 
 Natasha’s eyes were watering, and so were yours. “I would be the luckiest woman in the world, the most privileged and honored person in the entire universe, if you let me marry you.” 
 There was utter silence for a second besides your harsh and surprised breathing. Then, a gasp left your mouth. “Natasha!” You shrieked, a hand still over your mouth as the tears ran down your face, reflecting the joy you felt on the inside. Your emotions roared and rushed inside of you, like a furious river of elation. You blinked rapidly, but you were so happy that your eyes didn’t even get that familiar burning feeling that came with the tears. 
“Is that even a fucking question?” You bent down to her level and your lips met hers, passionately and full of love and relief. Neither of you noticed the clapping and cheers after being so immersed in each other. 
 Natasha pulled away, a shit-eating grin on her face as she started to say something to you, right when you noticed everyone else around you. “Wait, baby, let me put the-”
“Have you been here the whole time?” You shouted towards the rest of the team, who were all watching with proud and excited expressions, and Wanda nodded. 
  “Most of the time,” she grinned, and you wiped the tears from your face, only to see the one and only Tony Stark recording you and Natasha, who was still on one knee in front of you, holding one of your hands. 
  “Can I?” Natasha asked from her kneeling position, gesturing towards the ring, and you nodded excitedly. She slipped it on your left ring finger, and you yanked her up with such excitement that she was sure that one of her bones popped, but she didn’t care. She kissed you again, a sweet and meaningful kiss, before she hugged you tightly. 
 “Thank you.” 
You would have been confused if you weren’t on a high.  You were going to get married. To Natasha. You were going to have forever with her, like you always wanted. “For what?” 
She kissed the shell of your ear softly, and then your jaw and cheek, right where you always kissed her. “For everything, darling.” You leaned back into her, your face in her neck, and she made brief eye contact with her friends, who were all looking at the display of affection with soft eyes and even more tender hearts. She closed her eyes as she felt your heart beating against her chest, savoring the feeling of being so close to the woman that she loved unconditionally, her soon-to-be wife. “For everything.” 
****
hey guys! hope y’all liked this one, i wrote it in two hours, and then thought about deleting it, but here she stands. if you liked it, feel free to like and reblog! comments are also widely appreciated, i love those! also, i wanna make friends up here so feel free to blow up my messages! hope you have a great day/night 💕
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wingodex · 3 years
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The Old Guard Speech Patterns Analysis
I made a post on the speech patterns of the main characters in The Old Guard, and a lot of people seemed interested in it, so I’ve cleaned up and clarified the rest of my notes. What I’ve looked at specifically here is mostly related to syntax, so grammar and sentence structure. I’ve vaguely looked at pragmatics, which has to do with how context contributes to meaning, and semantics, which deals with the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. I’ve also looked at sociolinguistics, which has to do with the effect of society on language, but I want to be upfront in saying that it’s not my personal area of interest so my knowledge is lacking there. On that same point, I have no formal linguistics training, I’m just into conlanging and everything I know about linguistics is self taught. For each of the characters I’ve talked about contraction usage, colloquialisms, phrases, verb and verb tense usage, ellipses, sentence composition, adjective and adverb frequency, discourse markers and fillers, profanity, vocabulary(ish), and questions.
You can also find all of this on ao3.
Couple of disclaimers to start: while this is obviously a great tool for fic writing, and can help you get a feel for the way that the characters speak in the movie, I’m asking non-Black writers to be very careful about the way you use some of this information when it comes to Nile. When Nile speaks, she uses a lot of colloquial/vernacular language, and while she doesn’t speak AAVE in the movie, her syntax does contain vernacular features. The history of transcribing colloquial language and vernacular dialects—African American/Black English in particular—is racist, classist and ableist. Your decision to write in colloquial language or to incorporate elements of Black English, rather than using Standard English, into Nile’s dialogue can potentially continue a tradition of racial othering if you’re not wary and conscious. Colloquial language in written form is often used to imply a lack of intelligence, a lack of education or a lower class. Be especially considerate of transcribing colloquial reductions like “wanna,” “gotta,” etc. Avoid eye-dialect at all cost, please, I am begging you. In general, the best way to transcribe dialects is through rhythm of prose, syntax, idioms/figures of speech and vocabulary. Even if you rely on those techniques for Nile, I’m still advising the utmost caution due to the complexity of syntax of AAVE and other dialects. For those unfamiliar with AAVE, I go into more detail about it here. If you do decide to use vernacular language for Nile, I’m going to insist you look into copula deletion/zero copula in AAVE outside of this post. It’s usage is very complex and specific. If you decide to use colloquial language for her to really take advantage of the intelligent way that she uses style-shifting in the movie then, at the very least, remember that the other characters (with the exception of Nicky) also use colloquial language frequently in the movie as well. If Nile is the only one in your fic using colloquial language, that’s a problem.
Most of the contextual analysis as it relates to sociolinguistics is based on my own speculation and interpretation of all the data I’ve collected. They contain my own personal biases and are influenced by my own experiences. If you have another interpretation of any of this, I’m absolutely interested in hearing it. Also, there is simply not enough data for any of my observations to be definitive, especially for Joe and Nicky. The two of them combined say around the same number of sentences as Booker, and he only says half as many sentences as Andy. There are literally verb tenses/aspects that not a single person uses in the whole movie. It’s also important to note that I am fallible, and while I do think most of this is accurate, I probably fucked up and missed something or miscounted! More than once! In some cases, I was only able to find one example of something and while I’ve included those observations, they are in no way indicative of a pattern, so don’t view them as strict rules.
I threw around a lot of jargon in this, and there wasn't really an easy way to avoid doing that while talking about most of this stuff. Descriptions are provided throughout the post. I've done my best to define all the more complex and lesser-known concepts, and to provide specific examples from the movie but feel free to reach out if you're unsure about any of it. Basic English grammar things that will be helpful to know to understand all of this post: parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, interjections), clauses (subject + predicate), tense–aspect–mood for verb conjugation (in English we have: past and non-past; perfective, imperfective, and progressive; and indicative, imperative, and subjunctive), phrase structure, auxiliary verbs, phrasal verbs, wh-movement (who, what, when, where, why, how) and sentence sequencing (in English it’s SVO, or subject-verb-object).
On ellipsis: for Andy, Nile and Booker (and Joe, a little bit), the types of ellipses I focused on were mostly the types that you only see in spoken colloquial English. For Nicky, I talked a lot more about further classification of ellipses that do sometimes apply to the other four, but aren’t as noticeable. 
For phrases, I mostly included idioms and expressions to avoid listing every single phrase in the movie. I generally avoided noun phrases (with a few exceptions), and I don't think I mention any adverb phrases. 
For my own purposes, I’ve decided to define fillers as discourse markers without lexical content that are used to indicate that the pause while speaking is only temporary. The rest of the discourse markers use standard classification.
Thank you to both @disregardandfelicity and @youknowthegirls for looking over this post for me!
Andy
Andy uses every contraction for auxiliary verbs and personal pronouns (e.g. I’m, you’ve, it’s, etc). I mean, she actually doesn't in the movie, but she comes so close that I feel confident in saying she would use all the others. The Wikipedia page for English Auxiliary Verbs has a great chart for contractions. Of the characters, she's literally the only one who does this with this level of consistency.
Her contraction usage isn't limited to personal pronouns. She uses contractions with demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns. She also uses contractions with "there" and "where", and presumably with “when” and “how” although there are no examples of that in the movie. She uses contractions with negative modal verbs.
Andy uses both the simple future and the more colloquial going-to future construction at various points in the movie. She seems to have a preference for going-to future, and the only time she uses the simple future is in her dramatic opening monologue and when she’s trying to reassure Nile. Otherwise, she sticks to going-to construction.
Simple future: “Will this time be the one?”, “Me and those three men in there will keep you safe.”
Going-to future: “And you’re going to help us.”
Andy also typically uses the colloquialism “gonna” when using going-to future construction. When she uses “going to” instead, it’s during moments of sincerity. As mentioned, she also iconically uses them both in the same sentence.
"I knew this was gonna happen", "You think knowing is gonna make you sleep better at night?"
“You’re not a Marine anymore. They’re going to lock you up.”, “When we leave a footprint in the sand, in the snow, in the ether, you’re going to sweep it.”
“You’re going to protect us from those who want to put us in cages, and you’re gonna help us find those jobs that are best suited to us.”
Andy uses the verb “have” and the phrasal verb “have got” interchangeably, and with no real pattern. Important note: I am only referring to the verb “to have” in the present tense, not when "have" is used as an auxiliary. She doesn’t seem to use “have got” in the negative (i.e. “haven’t got” vs “don’t have”).
“We have to find Copley.”, “I have the new one.”
“You’ve got blood in your hair.” “He’s got Joe and Nicky.”
“We don’t have all the answers, but we do have purpose.”
Andy also uses the colloquialism “gotta” in sentences where she uses “have got” with the infinitive “to”. When she does this, she usually uses contracted have/has. Occasionally she drops the auxiliary.
"You’ve gotta feel it, Nile.”  "There's gotta be a price."
Andy drops the auxiliary when she says, "We gotta go" instead of “We’ve gotta go” and “Sometimes you gotta work with people you don’t wanna eat with” instead of “Sometimes you’ve gotta..”
Andy uses the colloquialism “wanna” in the place of “want to”.
“Well, sometimes you gotta work with people you don’t wanna eat with.” “You really wanna do this, kid?”
Andy incorrectly uses the object pronoun “me” like a true native English speaker
“Me and those three men in there will keep you safe.”
Andy seems to generally say “Yeah” but she says “Yes” when she really means it. She also says “Mm hmm.”
Andy uses several discourse markers throughout the movie. Discourse markers are words that are used to connect, organize and manage sentences while speaking. Andy uses discourse markers to start sentences, as responses, as interjections, etc. The discourse markers that Andy uses are:
Sentence openers: actually, so, come on, here, look, listen, now, oh, well, you know,
Sentence closers: I guess, maybe, right, 
Responses: yeah
Interjections: hey
Connection: to be honest
Andy doesn’t use any fillers. Instead, she pauses and repeats herself as needed.
“Remember what it... what it was like to feel unbreakable.”
Of all the characters, Andy uses the imperative mood the most (throughout the movie Andy tells someone to do something 35 times using this mood)
When Andy repeats herself for emphasis, she usually does it in pairs. The only exception is when she says “why?” three times to Booker in the scene with Copley
Andy uses ellipses, which is when words are omitted from a sentence and the sentence can still be understood. This isn’t particularly noteworthy in what it says about her speech patterns, as everyone uses elliptical construction. It’s just part of how speech works, how dialogue works and how writing works. It’s a feature of English, spoken and written, rather than an anomaly. I do feel it’s worth mentioning though, because I’m going to talk a lot about some specific kinds of ellipses (null subject, null auxiliary and zero copula) that are only found in colloquial and spoken language. For more about elliptical construction, see the Nicky section.
Andy uses noun and verb ellipses when she says, “I’ve been here before... over and over again, and each time the same question.” 
Andy uses answer ellipsis. That means that when she answers questions, she often speaks in sentence fragments rather than full sentences.
[Who’s gonna fly the plane?] “We don’t need a pilot” instead of “[Nobody is going to fly the plane.] We don’t need a pilot.”
Andy occasionally uses sentences with a truncated null subject (i.e. she doesn’t use subject pronouns), but not as frequently as the other characters. 
“Can’t wait” instead of “I can’t wait.”
Andy frequently uses null auxiliary construction and zero copula when asking questions that normally use subject-auxiliary inversion. This means that she will drop the leading auxiliary verb. For more information about zero copula, see Nile.  
Andy uses “You found Copley?” instead of “Have you found Copley?” and “Everyone still with me?” instead of “Is everyone still with me?”
When asking questions, Andy typically uses either the method described above or intonation if she can get away with it. However, she does still ask yes-no questions without dropping the auxiliary. Andy is also one of the only characters to use a disjunctive question. In contrast to the disjunctive (which is often condescending), Andy is also one of the only characters polite enough to use an indirect question.  
Intonation: “Joe and Nicky?”
Disjunctive: “You don’t speak Russian, do you?”
Indirect: “Would you like me to take one for you?”
Andy doesn’t use the subordinating conjunction “that” at any point in the movie.
“Last time I checked, you had to be American to be in the CIA” instead of “Last time that I checked...”
Andy says “What the...” when she’s confused.
Andy makes a humming sound when she’s pleased that’s transcribed as “Mmm!”. Interesting to note that every time she makes this sound, it’s in response to Nicky.
Profanity used by Andy: asshole, fuck, goddamn, motherfucker, shit, shitty
Phrases, idioms and expressions used by Andy: bend it to [your] will, broke [a promise], changes nothing, come on, do the same, enough of this, for all I care, get some sleep, go big or go home, going out for a bit, gotta go, last time I checked, let’s, next time, now and always, on board, play dead, set up, straight to [something], tie off, to be honest, welcome back, what [he] said, whatever it takes, work out
Unrelated to word count or time spent speaking, Andy says more sentences than any other character. She says more than twice as many sentences as Booker and four times as many sentences as Joe and Nicky. Nile says a little less than 2/3 as many sentences as Andy. 
Sentence composition**: 57% of Andy’s sentences are simple sentences, 31% are sentence fragments, 5% are compound sentences, 6% are complex sentences, and 1% are compound-complex sentences.
Languages spoken on-screen: English
Adjectives and adjective phrases appear in 13% of Andy’s sentences. Adverbs and adverb phrases appear in 9% of Andy’s sentences.
Andy is very consistent in her speech. She doesn’t style-shift much and almost exclusively speaks in a colloquial style of Standard American English. There are two exceptions to this: when she was talking to the tourists in Marrakesh, she was overly polite; and when she was dealing with Copley, she enunciated herself far more and was less likely to use contractions. When I say that Andy speaks Standard English, what I mean is that she speaks the dialect of English which has undergone the most regularization and standardization. It’s the one associated with public communication, the one that's used in commerce and government, and the one that has the most institutional support and sanction. Andy is very familiar and comfortable in this dialect, to the point where she even uses common grammar mistakes that native speakers do. Her speech is very casual. I would say that Andy has spent a significant amount of time recently in the United States or Canada, and I also suspect that English is the modern language that she is most comfortable in. I think that Andy has likely spent a lot of time speaking casually with other English native speakers and that her grasp of the language was formed without any kind of formal language training. Andy doesn’t use much descriptive language, and her sentences are typically short and clear. While I think Andy does read a little bit, it’s had very little impact on her speech patterns. I doubt she reads any kind of serious formal writing, or academic works. 
Nile
Nile uses every contraction for auxiliary verbs and personal pronouns (e.g. I’m, you’re, it’s, etc). She also uses them with other nouns and names. Nile is very deliberate about contraction usage. For the most part, in casual speech, she uses contractions, although she does use a lack of contractions to express disbelief or for emphasis. Nile also uses a lack of contractions to show condescension or disapproval. When she’s trying to be authoritative, she’s less likely to use contractions. When she wants to make sure she’s understood, she also doesn’t use contractions.
“I am not jumping from a plane!” “You do not listen to her, you listen to me.”
“We are looking for this man. He has killed many of our people and many of yours.”
Nile uses contractions with demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns. She also uses contractions with "there", "where", “why” and “how.” She uses contractions with negative modal verbs.
Nile doesn’t use the contraction “y’all” in the movie. In fact, she specifically doesn’t use it.
“How are you all in my dreams?”
Nile uses both the simple future and the colloquial going-to future construction at various points in the movie. Like with contractions, Nile is less likely to use colloquialisms when she’s serious or trying to be authoritative. I think it’s especially poignant when she uses it to express bravery (with Booker). Nile always uses the colloquialism “gonna” when using going-to future construction. 
Simple future: “I’m the one who will walk out of there, one way or another.”
Going-to future: “People that are gonna worry.”
Nile uses the verb “have” and the phrasal verb “have got” interchangeably, however she has a very strong preference for “have got”
“You have my phone?”
“I got people that love me,” “You got a satellite link?”
Nile also uses the colloquialism “gotta” in sentences where she uses “have got” with the infinitive “to”. When she does this, she always uses null auxiliary construction (see below for more details).
“We gotta get out of here!”
Nile uses the colloquialism “wanna” in the place of “want to”.
“I just really wanna hear my mom’s voice one more time.”
Nile truncates “trying to” as “tryna”.
“I’m tryna save you, man!”
Nile truncates “out of” as “outta”
Nile uses a lot of discourse markers. She uses more discourse markers than any of the other characters, although Booker comes very close. Discourse markers are words that are used to connect, organise and manage sentences while speaking. Nile uses discourse markers to start sentences, as responses, as interjections, etc. The discourse markers that Nile uses are:
Sentence openers: so, well, wait, here, yeah, now
Sentence closers: or something, maybe, you know, okay, man
Interjections: come on, what, no way
Responses: yeah
Nile uses some fillers when speaking, however she doesn’t use them often. The fillers she uses are: uh, yeah
While Nile does occasionally use the imperative mood, she’s far more likely to give commands based on intonation alone, rather than syntax.
Intonation: “You do not listen to her, you listen to me,” “We gotta get out of here!”
Imperative: “Land this plane.”
Nile uses elliptical construction when speaking, which means that when words are omitted from a sentence, the sentence can still be understood.  Again, this in and of itself is not very noteworthy, see Nicky for more details. 
“South side of Chicago, a million different ways we could’ve went left.”
She also uses answer ellipsis, meaning that when answering questions, she speaks in sentence fragments.
Answer ellipsis: [You have someone?] “Just my family” instead of “[I have] just my family.”
Nile frequently uses null subject elliptical construction. When using null subject construction, she drops personal pronouns.
“Talked to Copley. Said he could fix it.” instead of “I talked to Copley. He said he could fix it.”
Nile’s use of ellipsis is mostly characterized by her usage of null auxiliary, which is when she drops auxiliary verbs from sentences. The way she does this is very distinct and she’s the only character who speaks like this. While the other characters who use null auxiliary construction do so in the specific context of asking questions, Nile’s usage is more complicated.
Like the others, Nile frequently uses null auxiliary construction and zero copula when asking questions that normally use subject-auxiliary inversion, but unlike the others, she also sometimes drops the auxiliary in wh- questions. For more on zero copula, see below.
"You gonna be okay?" "So, you good guys or bad guys?" 
“Where you taking me?”
Outside of asking questions, Nile also occasionally uses both null auxiliary construction and the zero copula. She is the only character who does this (Andy does this, but only with one specific word/phrase. Nile's usage is less restrictive). Zero copula is a linguistic phenomena where the subject is joined to the predicate without marking that relationship (i.e. there’s no verb). In English, the main copula is the verb “to be”, so zero copula in English describes situations where inflections of “to be” are omitted. When the characters use null auxiliary construction to omit the inflected forms of “to be” while asking questions, they are using the copula deletion. 
In the above example questions, all of them are examples of copula deletion as they are omitting inflections of the verb "to be"
When Nile says “I got people that love me”, she uses null auxiliary construction to omit the auxiliary “have”. Nile always drops the auxiliary “have” when using the “have got” form.
When Nile says “This the shit you into?” she’s actually using the zero copula twice. You’ll notice that she’s missing the leading “is” and in the dependent clause, she’s missing the “are (“Is this the shit you’re into?” in Standard English).
At one point in the movie, Nile includes a further truncated null subject, where she doesn’t use both the subject and the auxiliary verb. Joe does something similar in the present tense.
Nile says “Killed in action when I was eleven” instead of “He was killed in action when I was eleven.”
When asking questions, outside of wh- questions, Nile usually relies on intonation or dropping the auxiliary from subject-auxiliary inversion questions as described above. She does occasionally use inversion for yes/no questions without dropping the auxiliary. 
Intonation: “You have my phone?”
Indirect: “So... you’re even older than him.”
As the audience surrogate, Nile asks the most questions in the movie (she asks 69 questions LMAO)
Another way that Nile formalizes her speech is by inserting the subordinating conjunction “that” into sentences where they would normally be omitted.
“And that was a blank that you shot me with.” “But... you said that we were immortal.”
Nile says “Uh uh” to mean “no” or “don’t even think about it”
Phrases, idioms and expressions used by Nile: a little help, backed down, brains of [the] outfit, come on, follow the money, gave [them] up, honest-to-God, how the hell, what kind of [noun], killed in action, let’s go, move on, never hurts to, no way, one more time, one way or another, roger that, sit your ass down, some bullshit, son of a bitch, stay tight, steal away, went left, what’s up (greeting), 
Profanity used by Nile: ass, bitch, bullshit, damn, fuck, hell, shit
Sentence composition**: 60% of Nile’s sentences are simple sentences, 30% are sentence fragments, 3% are compound sentences, 6% are complex sentences and 1% are compound-complex sentences.
Adjectives and adjective phrases appear in 18% of Nile’s sentences. Adverbs appear in 4% of her sentences. Nile doesn’t use any adverb phrases.
Languages spoken on-screen: English, Pashto
Of all the characters, Nile’s use of English is the most deliberate. While the others are obviously fluent and capable in English, Nile’s use of style-shifting throughout the movie demonstrates a mastery of the language that the other characters simply don’t have. The way that she shifts between formal and colloquial language for emphasis, for clarity, to express disbelief or disapproval, to act authoritatively, to appear casual and friendly, and to invite others to engage with her, speaks to what she is capable of by her word and syntax choices. All of this is obviously enhanced by her tone, her cadence, her pitch, her volume and her speaking speed. 
When Nile speaks, she doesn’t speak in AAVE. That being said, her speech does contain vernacular features. The two elements of Nile’s syntax that are most noticeable are her use of the zero copula and her deletion of “have” in situations where it can be contracted (to clarify: using copula deletion is not necessarily an indicator of AAVE. When the other characters use the zero copula, they are not speaking AAVE. The subtle differences in the context of their usage of copula deletion is what makes Nile’s speech distinctly Black). Some of Nile’s word choices and noun phrases are also reflective of the typical speech of Black people, as pointed out to me by this anon. It’s very likely that Nile can speak AAVE, but doesn’t in the movie. She was raised by two Black parents in a very residentially segregated city, and while Nile didn’t specify the neighborhood she grew up in (you can make some guesses to the general area based on how she talks about it, but that’s not quite the same), Chicago’s South Side is predominantly Black, so the people she was around, the place she attended school and the church she went to were all likely predominantly Black as well. Due to the fact that Standard English is the language taught in public schools in the United States, Nile has obviously also developed a fluency in that dialect as well and can probably code switch between the two dialects. The fact that she doesn’t speak AAVE in the movie isn’t particularly unusual. Society is largely hostile towards Black people speaking AAVE, so language self-policing becomes a survival tool. Nile had also just spent an indefinite amount of time in the US military, which has its own style which has its own style of speaking as well which she would have been using. And then she basically got kidnapped by mostly white people, some of whom have noticeable accents, so having her speak AAVE would’ve been an odd character choice, but not totally implausible.
The way that Nile switches between formal and colloquial English is a type of code switching that I would honestly refer to more as style-shifting. Because she isn’t actually speaking AAVE, I can’t say how the dialect factors into her speech patterns. I think it’s possible that Nile’s ability to style-shift between formal and informal language could have been an ability that she developed as a result of needing to code switch between AAVE and Standard English in an educational environment. I do want to make it very clear however, that when I’m talking about Nile style-shifting, it has very little bearing on the vernacular features of her speech, but rather the colloquial features like contractions, verb choice, ellipsis and her use of phrasal verbs. It’s possible that she uses code switching in the same way, however we don’t have evidence of that in the movie.
Booker
Booker uses most contractions, but not all, and with much less consistency than Andy or deliberate purpose like Nile. He uses contractions for auxiliaries and their inflected forms for personal pronouns. When speaking casually, he uses contractions, but when he’s upset, he uses them far less consistently. He doesn’t use contractions with the past tense inflected form of have (i.e. “had”).
Booker uses contractions with demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns. He also uses contractions with "there", "where" and “how. He uses contractions with negative modal verbs.
Booker uses both the simple future and the going-to future construction at various points in the movie. He doesn’t seem to have a preference either way.
Simple future: “They will get to learn your secret.”
Going-to future: “It’s gonna take time.”
Booker always uses the colloquialism “gonna” when using going-to future construction.
Booker doesn’t seem to use the phrasal verb “have got” but I could only find one instance of him using the verb “to have” in the present tense, so this isn’t definitive either way. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that, like Andy, he uses “to have” and “have got” interchangeably.
Even though Booker speaks less than Nile and Andy, he uses close to the same amount of discourse markers as them, meaning that they appear far more regularly in his speech. Discourse markers are words that are used to connect, organize and manage sentences while speaking. Booker uses discourse markers to start sentences, as responses, as interjections, etc. The discourse markers he uses are:
Sentence openers: come on, hey, oh, well, listen, I mean, ooh (expressing pleasure), yeah
Sentence closers: right, of course
Responses: yeah, alright
Interjections: hey, ow! (expressing victory)
Connections: by the way, tell you what
Of all the characters, Booker uses the most fillers when speaking. The fillers that he uses are: oh, uh, um, yeah 
Booker pauses and repeats himself as needed. He only does this when he’s upset. Otherwise, he seems to use fillers instead.
“Everyone you love is gonna... is gonna suffer and is gonna die."
When Booker repeats himself for emphasis, he always does it in pairs.
Booker often uses elliptical construction, and the most frequent type seems to be null auxiliary construction. He does use other types of ellipses though (For more about ellipsis, see Nicky). 
“Just because we keep living doesn’t mean we stop hurting.”
Booker uses answer ellipsis, but almost to the point of incomprehensibility. Dude just gives the bare minimum. That means that when he answers questions, he speaks in sentence fragments rather than full sentences.
Answer ellipsis: [You found Copley?] “Nothing, but dead ends” instead of “[I found] nothing but dead ends.”
Booker frequently uses sentences with a truncated null subject (i.e. he doesn’t use subject pronouns).
“Lost the plot after that” instead of “I lost the plot after that”
Booker frequently uses null auxiliary construction and zero copula when asking questions that normally use subject-auxiliary inversion. For more information about zero copula, see Nile.
Booker says “You good?” instead of “Are you good?” and “You have someone?” instead of “Do you have someone?”
When asking questions, Booker almost always uses either the method described above, or intonation. The only time Booker asks a question without dropping the auxiliary is when he says “Are you all right, boss?” to Andy in the cave. 
Intonation: “Oh, she gave it back?”
Booker doesn’t generally use the subordinating clause “that,” but he will sometimes.
“What I do know is she was alone for a long time before she found anyone like her.”
“And they will tell you... that you don’t love them.”
At two separate points in the movie, Booker references Elizabethan literature. “Misery loves company” is from Dr. Faustus by Marlowe and “That way madness lies” is from King Lear by Shakespeare
Phrases, expressions and idioms used by Booker: all in, by the way, calm down, change of clothes, come on, dead ends, give [her] time, give me your hand, how’s it going?, I’ll see you soon, in the open, leave no footprints, let’s go, lost the plot, moving out, misery loves company, reach out, stick to the plan, take time, tell you what, what’s going on, won’t hurt
Profanity used by Booker: shit, putain de merde
Sentence composition**: 59% of Booker’s sentences are simple sentences, 24% are sentence fragments, 3% are compound sentences, 9% are complex sentences, 1% are compound-complex sentences and 4% are not in English
Adjectives and adjective phrases appear in 16% of Booker’s sentences. Adverbs and adverb phrases appear in 8% of Booker’s sentences. 
Languages spoken on-screen: English, French, Italian
We know from Booker’s backstory that he’s French and he’s from Marseilles, and other people have spoken about how Booker’s native language would likely have been Occitan, although he speaks French as well. Like Andy, Joe and Nicky, English is not Booker’s native language, although he does speak it with a high degree of fluency. While there are aspects of Booker’s speech that are more related to him being a non-native English speaker, I wanted to talk about French first. It’s worth noting that French is the only Romance language that isn't a null subject language (and as far as I can tell, Occitan isn’t either). This means that when Booker uses null subject construction, that’s either something he picked up from another language or from being around people speaking colloquial English. The thing that stands out to me the most about Booker’s speech though, is actually the way he uses intonation (and to a certain extent, null auxiliary construction as well) when asking questions. While French can use subject-auxiliary inversion, for the most part, you just ask questions by intonation. In the French dub of the movie when Booker asks “You travel?” he says “T’as voyagé?” which in English directly translates to “You travelled?” or “You’ve travelled?” While I could get into semantics about verb tenses, do-support and modality, what I’m getting at here is that both “You travel?” and “T’as voyagé?” mean the same thing and are expressed in a form that feels semantically similar to me even if it’s not syntactically similar, in the same way that ending a question with the tag “right?” (which Booker uses a lot) feels the same as the tag “non?”
There are a couple of things that I think are interesting about Booker’s manner of speech. Booker primarily speaks in simple and fragmented sentences, which is pretty normal, but what’s different about him is the way that a lot of his speech is referential. What I mean is that Booker relies on a lot of common phrases, common clauses, clichés and quotations when he speaks. In a lot of ways, Booker speaks the way your typical action hero is supposed to. You get a sense of Booker engaging in a broader cultural and literary conversation. I don’t know how to explain this exactly, but when Booker speaks, you just know he reads and that he watches tv and movies. And not just that, but that he borrows and imitates aspects of what he reads. But besides the pragmatic element of Booker’s speech, all of the things that are notable about Booker’s speech are things that you also see in Andy, Joe and Nicky. Syntactically, there’s nothing about Booker’s speech that is distinctly unique to him, unlike the rest of the characters who all have their own little quirks. It’s almost like Booker is imitating the others, or borrowing someone else’s words. There is one notable exception, and that’s when Booker is talking to Nile in the cave. As the conversation goes on, you see this breakdown of Booker’s language as he attempts to tell his own story. Suddenly, a lot of the conventions established about Booker’s speech prior to this scene don’t apply. Obviously there are multiple explanations for this, ranging from English not being his first language to the fact that he was talking about something deeply personal and traumatizing to someone who was essentially a stranger. But what makes this scene stand out is the fact that in his next major scene, Booker is clearly on the verge of a full breakdown, but because he’s again relying on this established lexicon, you don’t see it reflected in his speech the same way that it is in the cave.
Joe
When Joe bothers with personal pronouns, he usually uses contractions with auxiliary verbs (e.g. I’m, she’s, it’s, etc). The exception to this is that Joe doesn’t use contractions with the past tense inflected auxiliary form of have (i.e. “had”).
Joe uses contractions with demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns. He also uses contractions with "there". He uses contractions with negative modal verbs.
Joe only uses a future tense once in the entire film, and when he does, he uses going-to future construction. When he uses going-to future construction he uses the colloquialism “gonna"
“What are you gonna do?”
Joe doesn’t use the colloquial “have got” and always uses “to have”. 
“We have to find her”, “Well, now you have even more.”
This may be because Joe isn’t in the movie as much as the first three, or that he just genuinely doesn't use them often, but he uses considerably fewer discourse markers. Discourse markers are words that are used to connect, organize and manage sentences while speaking. Joe uses discourse markers to start sentences, and as interjections. The discourse markers that Joe uses are:
Sentence openers: oh, so, well, yeah
Interjections: hey, what
After Booker, Joe uses the second most amount of fillers. He uses more fillers when having a back-and-forth style conversation with someone than when he’s essentially monologuing. The fillers that Joe uses are: mmm, uh
Joe sometimes uses ellipses when speaking. Again, not super noteworthy, but I wanted to mention it nonetheless. 
“He’s the moon when I’m lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold.”
Joe uses answer ellipsis in the movie, but he doesn’t actually speak in sentence fragments when he does this. While answer ellipsis is pretty standard in English, Joe’s commitment to saying more than was asked of him isn’t.
[So... you’re even older than him.] “Nicky and I met in the Crusades.” instead of “[Yes, we are.] Nicky and I met in the Crusades.”
Joe uses sentences with a null subject (i.e. he doesn’t use subject pronouns).
“Depends on the century.” “Fought thousands of battles side by side.”
Joe uses sentences which have both a null subject and uses copula deletion. See Nile for more details on zero copula.
“Very pissed off.” “Faster than the elevator.”
In the movie, Joe only really asks wh- questions. He does ask a few using intonation, although most of those questions act more like additional tags on a wh-question, rather than a question by itself. As such, it's unclear whether Joe uses null auxiliary construction or the zero copula when asking questions.
Intonation: "Bedhead?” “So we just leave her out in the open?”
When Joe repeats himself for emphasis, it’s usually in groups of three. 
Joe says “what” when he doesn’t hear something/doesn’t understand something
As previously mentioned, Joe uses some formal words like "thus" and the impersonal pronoun "one". Here are some other words to consider having Joe use unironically as well: alas, amidst, await, behest, ergo, hence, latter, much, nor, notwithstanding, promptly, quite, shall (modal), thence, thereupon, thoroughly, whereas, whom (used correctly of course), yield
Even though Joe speaks quite formally a lot of the time, he never uses the subordinating conjunction “that” when it can be omitted.
“The first immortal Andy found.”
Phrases, expressions and idioms used by Joe: all in, attention to detail, come on, I guess, out in the open, measure and reason, over a [time period], piece of shit, proved [their] case, side by side, way back
Profanity used by Joe: goddamnit, shit
Unrelated to word count or time spent speaking, Joe says the least amount of sentences out of the five main characters, although this doesn’t mean very much, considering Nicky says exactly one more sentence than him. 
Sentence composition**: 57% of Joe’s sentences are simple sentences, 21% are sentence fragments, 5% are compound sentences, 4% are complex sentences, 4% are compound complex sentences and 9% are not in English.
Adjectives and adjective phrases appear in 29% of Joe’s sentences. Adverbs and adverb phrases appear in 8% of Joe’s sentences.
Languages spoken on-screen: English, Italian
The best way to describe Joe’s manner of speaking is that it’s like he has two different styles. You get the sense that sometimes Joe just says whatever and sometimes he says something that he’s rehearsed in his head. Joe is a Maghrebi Muslim man from the Islamic Golden Age so he comes from a culture and time with a rich history of and respect for both written and spoken poetry, both impromptu and memorized. I think he carries that tradition quite well. When Joe is orating (van speech and Quynh backstory), his sentences are much more structured and he uses more formal language. He doesn't speak in sentence fragments, he doesn't use any colloquial language besides contractions and he doesn't use discourse markers or fillers like he does in the more casual back-and-forth conversations. If you look at Joe's sentence composition percentages, you'll notice that Joe has comparatively less sentence fragments than other characters and that’s purely because when he orates, it's in full sentences (minus poetic ellipsis, but that's allowed). That's why it seems to me as though Joe rehearses some of what he says in advance. I don’t know the extent to which he does that, but at the very least it seems like he’s sat down and thought “how would I explain Quynh to the new immortal?” or “What would I say to someone belittling my relationship with Nicky?” Even in the delivery of the line “Faster than the elevator” there is quite a long pause between him seeing that Nile jumped out a window and actually making the joke, as if he’s thinking about it first. The majority of the sentences Joe says are in the van speech and while telling Quynh’s backstory. In casual conversations, Nicky seems to take the lead more than Joe.
I’d also speculate that Joe is quite literate. Obviously there’s his own affinity for storytelling and oration, but his use of language hints at a larger vocabulary. You see him use a frequently neglected pronoun in English and a relatively formal adverb. He also uses adjectives like “grotesque” and “infantile”. He does end sentences while prepositions though, so he obviously does not give a fuck about John Dryden and Joshua Poole. That being said, I think the idea of rearranging Joe’s sentences so they don’t end in prepositions is funny and fits his whole vibe.
Joe uses null subject construction in English, and while that’s pretty common in everyday speech in English, it is worth noting that both Italian and Arabic are null subject languages. The way that Joe uses null construction in English is far more similar to Italian than Arabic, which requires a change in sentence sequencing but I still think it’s neat. The thing that Arabic brings to the table that I’m more intrigued by is the fact that it’s a zero copula language. It’s not a matter of copula deletion like AAVE, there straight up is not a copula in the present tense, so the lack of a verb (and specific sentence sequencing) is the copula in the present tense. When Joe drops both subject and verb in the present tense he is, in effect, simulating a similar situation due to the ambiguity of the sentences themselves where the only way you can correctly interpret the sentence is by understanding that the missing verb must be a copula. He gets rid of a subject pronoun as a shout out to Italian, I guess, but also because it would sound so silly if he didn’t. I don’t think Joe necessarily picked up this habit from Arabic, but I do think it’s a fun coincidence.
Nicky
Of all the characters, Nicky has the least consistent contraction usage for personal pronouns and auxiliaries (e.g. I’ve, you’re, it’s, etc). There are examples throughout the film of him using a contraction and then in the next scene he just doesn’t. Unlike with the other characters, who have a discernable pattern (Andy always uses contractions, Nile uses contractions for dramatic emphasis, Booker becomes more inconsistent with contractions when upset, Joe doesn’t use contractions in certain tenses), Nicky is totally random in his contraction usage.
My personal favourite example of this is: “She’s more alone than she has ever been in her entire life.”
Nicky uses contractions with demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns, however this usage is just as inconsistent as with personal pronouns. He also uses contractions with "there.” He uses contractions with negative modal verbs.
Outside of contractions, Nicky doesn't seem to use colloquialisms in the movie.
Nicky doesn’t use the colloquial going-to future construction and relies on simple future construction
“You will not be able to give him what he wants”, “If it’s now Andromache’s, nothing you do will stop it.
Nicky doesn’t use the colloquial phrasal verb “have got” and instead uses “have”
“I have something for you”
Nicky only has a few discourse markers in the movie. Discourse markers are words that are used to connect, organise and manage sentences while speaking. Nicky uses discourse markers to start sentences, as interjections and as responses. The discourse markers that he uses are:
Sentence openers: so
Interjections: hey, wait, what
Responses: yeah
Nicky doesn’t use any fillers. Instead, he pauses and repeats himself as needed.
"I believe it's because we... we are meant to find each other"
In my other post, I mentioned that Nicky speaks in full sentences, and while that is mostly true, it’s a bit of an oversimplification. While that kind of a statement is fine for an overview post, I felt it would be disingenuous to leave it at that. Nicky speaks in sentence fragments just like everyone else. In fact, he speaks in sentence fragments more than Joe does. He uses ellipsis, but the way he does it is functionally different from the specific methods of null subject, null auxiliary and zero copula that I’ve talked about with the other characters. While the others are quite formulaic about their usage of ellipses, Nicky’s is far more nebulous because it’s very much dependent on context. 
Nicky uses answer ellipses, like the others.
[Bedhead?] “Nicely tousled.”
The next way that Nicky uses ellipses might better be described as anaphora. That means when he’s eliding words, the omitted words in the sentence can be found through the context of the sentence preceding it. 
The sentence “The only reason we haven’t... is that it’s not our time yet” is missing a past participle. The missing verb is found in the previous sentence: “Everything has to die, Mr. Merrick.”
In fact, almost all of Nicky’s use of sentence fragments and ellipses can most easily be characterized this way. If the sentence that Nicky says is incomplete in some way by itself, that’s usually because he’s referring to something either he, or someone else, has said. In some cases, it’s as if he’s continuing or adding additional information to the sentence preceding it.
“We killed each other.” “Many times.”
“It was a woman. A Black woman.”
Another way of characterizing some of his use of ellipses is to imagine he’s using answer ellipsis to a question nobody asked him. 
[What did you see?] “Dirt floor, clay walls.”
In one particular instance, Nicky says the noun phrase “A fine justification.” It’s already an example of anaphora, as it is referring back to Kozak’s “I believe this can change the world.” Nicky’s sentence bears some similarity to Joe’s “Faster than the elevator” as it’s also an example of a sentence which is missing both verb and subject, however when Joe uses this kind of construction, he only does so before an adjective phrase. One could extrapolate from this that Nicky uses null subject and zero copula construction with adjective phrases and Joe similarly uses it for noun phrases, but that’s just speculation.
The final way that we see Nicky use ellipsis is honestly the most baffling and I’m still not entirely sure how to best explain it. The sentence is “Spend eternity in a cage.” It is clearly not the imperative mood, it wouldn't make sense for Nicky to be telling Nile to spend eternity in a cage. Unlike the other examples of Nicky’s use of ellipsis, the preceding sentence (“That’s the reason we dread capture”) provides context but not specific form. Breaking it down from an English language perspective, the only thing that makes sense to me is that “spend” is actually the infinitive phrase “to spend” where the infinitive "to" has been elided and there is an implied “[We are afraid][to] spend eternity in a cage.” I want to be clear here: I understand this sentence. I know what Nicky is saying, I simply have no idea why I know what he's saying. I don't understand why this sentence works. For further theories, look at the section on sociolinguistics at the bottom.
Sometimes Nicky adds unnecessary pronouns to a sentence.
“But then, Andy and Quynh, they were accused of witchcraft themselves and they were trapped and caught.”
Nicky does use the subordinating conjunction “that” but there are also times when he doesn’t. The common Nicky pattern of *shrug*
“The only reason we haven’t... is that it’s not our time yet”
“As much as I like watching you sleep, I’m glad you’re awake.”
When Nicky asks questions, he doesn’t use any kind of null auxiliary construction or zero copula for subject-auxiliary inversion questions. Nicky is also the only other character (after Andy) polite enough to ask indirect questions, and he uses them when talking to people who kidnapped him, which is kind of a power move. Nicky doesn’t seem to use intonation much when asking questions either.
Subject auxiliary inversion (yes/no questions): “Are we too late?” “Are you sure?”
Indirect: “I don’t suppose it would be possible to get these chains off of us?”
Intonation: “Nile?”
Phrases, expressions and idioms used by Nicky: as much, cast off, do you know, get some rest, getting away, I suppose/don’t suppose, judge of character, love of my life, 
Sentence composition**: 47% of Nicky’s sentences are simple sentences, 24% are sentence fragments, 3% are compound sentences, 15% are complex sentences, 2% are compound complex and 9% are not in English.
Adjectives and adjective phrases appear in 23% of Nicky’s sentences. Adverbs appear in 6% of Nicky’s sentences. Nicky doesn’t use adverb phrases.
Languages: English, Italian, Nuer
Before I start this, I want to say that despite having a strong accent, I think Nicky is quite proficient in English. He knows the subtle differences between words like “unethical” and “immoral,” he’s aware of and capable of using expressions with irregular syntax and he uses sophisticated linguistic phenomena in English. He uses so many complex sentences it makes my head spin. Leaving all that aside, I think that Nicky probably translates from Italian into English while speaking. Like Nile, Nicky is very deliberate about his language but in a different way. While Nile uses style-shifting to accomplish a number of different things, Nicky is primarily concerned with clarity. I think that Nicky’s tendency towards more formal language is a kind of overcompensation to make sure that he’s being understood. Another thing worth noting is that I think Nicky has actively studied language before, in a class setting or by himself, and has at least some knowledge of linguistics (specifically syntax). At the very least, he is knowledgeable about both Italian and English syntax.
This theory is largely based around the idea of overcompensation. Nicky is primarily concerned with the clarity of speech and because of that, he doubles-down on grammar and structure. Italian is a null subject language so you actually see Nicky use null subject construction when he says “Sono qui” and “Dovremmo tonarci” but you don’t see anything similar in the way that he speaks English even though all the other characters frequently rely on truncated null subjects. He demonstrates a clear awareness of the standard language restrictions of English and how that compares to the restrictions of Italian. And not just that: there’s actually an example in the movie where Nicky adds an extra and unnecessary pronoun in English. In another sentence, Nicky could have used a contraction on two separate instances and deliberately only contracted one of them because the contractions were two different tenses. For the most part, this overcompensation makes it so Nicky’s speech—while unconventional—is still grammatically correct. That’s how you get things like Nicky saying, “The love of my life was of the people I’ve been taught to hate,” which isn’t how most native-speakers would intuitively phrase it themselves and as a result, a further layer of nuance is added by the use of the Present Perfect Continuous. Despite the fact that Nicky uses some unconventional phrasing in English, he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it or concerned about it. He’s more than willing to experiment with his speech and seems very confident in it as well. That’s why I think he has some kind of formal language training with English, because he clearly understands the system that he’s working with but is less aware of some of the common ways of speaking. I seriously doubt that Joe and Nicky spend much time speaking to each other in English.
Another point that I think is worth mentioning: while Joe seems to thrive while orating and speaks relatively simply otherwise, Nicky is the exact opposite. Nicky’s language capabilities are on full display when he’s engaging in discourse, but when he’s telling Nile about Quynh, you see a lot more irregular syntax structure from him. It’s during this discussion that you hear the line “Spend eternity in a cage,” that I’ve struggled with above. The other possible explanation for the use of this unconventional sentence construction was actually given to me by @rhubarbdreams, who said that the sentence actually makes more sense syntactically in Italian, which has an impersonal imperative. In fact, in the Italian dub, that’s allegedly what it does (“per non passare l'eternità in una gabbia.”) Whether Nicky’s apparent tendency towards unconventional speech in this circumstance is a chronic tendency from overthinking while speaking English or a result of the specific topic they were discussing is up for personal interpretation, although I do think it’s interesting that Nicky was the one primarily leading conversation up until Joe took over specifically when they were recounting a story. I think this is especially interesting considering Nicky was apparently a priest, however this might just be a limitation to him in languages he doesn’t use as often. 
Bonus: Quynh
Quynh doesn’t have that many lines, so it’s not really possible to do any kind of meaningful analysis about her speech patterns (she says 16 sentences and 10 of those are screaming “no” or someone’s name). That being said, I do want to look at all the lines she presumably said in English (I’m ignoring Lykon’s death scene because if Lykon really did die in the 6th or 7th century, then they absolutely weren’t speaking Modern English, you know?)
So first we have the lines from the witch trials:
“I’ve never been burned alive before. What do you think it’s gonna be like?”
“Just you and me.”
Okay so obviously there’s some ambiguity over exactly when this happened, since Joe said 500 years in a box and TOGTH lists it happening around 1750. In the comics, Noriko fell overboard around 1590. I simply think the 1750 date is incorrect based on when people were being burned at the stake for witchcraft and heresy. I could talk more about that and my own headcanons about when it happened, but this is a post about linguistics, so what’s important to take from all this is that it probably took place at the earliest sometime in the late 15th century and, at the latest, the very beginning of the 17th century.
Taking all that into consideration, I can say almost certainly that all of Quynh’s lines are some kind of misremembered modern translation of what she actually said. She uses two contractions (I’ve and it’s) that were maybe in use, but likely uncommon. “It’s” was used, although you would be far more likely to see its counterpart “tis”, and contractions with “have” and “had” were only becoming common towards the end of the 16th century. There’s also the problem of the pronoun “you” and how singular “you” would not have been used in this informal context. And since “you” should be the singular “thou”, the archaic singular second-person conjugation of “do” would instead be correct. And finally: going-to future construction may have been used at the time (I can’t speak to the commonality of it), but I honestly can’t say with any certainty whether the colloquial “gonna” was in use. The first recorded use seems to be the 19th century. I’m sure there are other things that are anachronistic about the speech but I don’t know enough about Early Modern English morphology and syntax to speculate any more about it. 
So yeah, Andy and Quynh’s conversation is either Andy’s misremembering of it in Modern English, it was never in English in the first place like the other scene, or just Hollywood movie magic for the viewers (I would love to see someone attempt to translate it back into Early Modern English though, I’m just saying).
“It’s nice to finally meet you.”
The one line that I feel has legitimate value in the analysis of Quynh’s speech patterns in English is the final one that she says to Booker. She’s using ME, obviously, with its contractions and singular “you.” She’s also using a modified idiom, “Nice to meet you”, which is interesting because that absolutely wouldn’t have been used when she went under water considering the word “nice” was derogatory at the time. All of this implies to me that Quynh has definitely spent time on land before she finds Booker. Also she split the infinitive ("to meet"). I don't know what that says about her speech, but I sure am looking at it.
Fun Quynh fact: of the 6 times that Andy’s full name is used in the movie, half of them are said by Quynh
**A note on sentence composition: I intentionally didn't go into detail about sentence composition outside of brief mentions. If any of you are curious about it, you can ask. I'm more than willing to discuss sentence clause structure, but I didn't want this to become even longer and more convoluted than it already is. Part of why I’m reluctant to give it any weight here is because of how lenient I was with what was considered a sentence fragment vs. a simple sentence, as the characters are speaking colloquial English. A movie isn’t formal writing and to evaluate dialogue by that same metric is silly. Also, I considered interjections sentence fragments to start and then realized halfway through that that was a bad idea and they should have had their own separate section, but at that point I was in too deep, and didn’t want to go back and do it all again. In the same way, there are sentences that I considered compound or complex sentences, but that “technically” aren’t because a lot of characters drop pronominal subjects and like. Officially you can’t have null subject clauses in English, because that’s not how the language works on paper (imperative mood aside). Or they elided part of the sentence so that technically it's not a clause. But people don’t actually care about stuff like that when they talk. Also I may have messed up a few times, because complex sentences are hard and sometimes I get phrases and clauses confused. It can be difficult to tell when there’s a lot happening, you know? (this is about Nicky. Sir, why do you talk like that) 
If you’re a fanfic writer, I’m going to advise that you take the part about sentence composition with a grain of salt or ignore it entirely, unless you’re already familiar with sentence clause structure in English. It will not be helpful to you for writing character dialogue until you’ve actually put in the work to understand it and practice. As mentioned, I still mess it up sometimes if a sentence has too many phrases. Basically, if you think too hard about it, I guarantee it’ll stress you out.
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Prompt: "I'll Be Here To Protect You" - Loki x Reader - Words: 2,564
A/N: This sort of follows the oneshot "Worthy" but can be read alone. Basically, Reader is Silver Shadow (see Marvel character list for reference), Loki and Reader are married, yada yada, you'll see…
"Silver? I think you should take a look at this," Cap said over the comms. You, Cap, Loki, and Widow had gone to investigate a Hydra base you'd received intel on. You'd been informed that the base was abandoned but that they still had some records stored there.
"On my way," You replied to the Captain, teleporting over immediately. "Oh my goodness," You gasped at the sight that greeted you. There, lying curled up in a small cage, was a girl no older than 5 or 6. Cap ripped open the cage and gently pulled her out, holding her in his arms. She whimpered slightly and you could tell she'd been beaten. Instantly, you wanted to kill the people who'd done that to her.
"Can you help her?" He whispered, not wanting to startle her any more. You nodded and held out your arms to take her. As soon as you touched her, you started working.
"You might need to hold me up," You warned the Captain. "This is going to be tiring."
"Alright," He nodded. "Then let's get you out of here." He easily lifted you both and carried you out to the quinjet. You vaguely heard him talking on the comms but were a bit too focused to actually make out his words. He set you down on one of the chairs with the girl curled up in your lap. After a while, before the others got back, she seemed to be healed and sleeping. You were exhausted so you adjusted yourself slightly in the chair and dozed off as well.
"Y/N?" You turned your head, eyes still refusing to open with exhaustion, and groaned slightly feeling the kink in your neck from sleeping weird. "Y/N! Please wake up, hm? Please?" Someone said. Now they were poking your arm. Your other arm however seemed to be asleep, as you couldn't feel it, and you had a weight on your legs and chest. Suddenly remembering what all had transpired, your eyes shot open. "See? I told you she would wake up if I did that!" Natasha said, with what you knew to be false happiness, to the girl on your lap. The girl simply glared back at Nat before turning her attention to you, with a completely different expression. Her eyes widened and she tried smiling as though she was out of practice and waved slightly.
"Hi there," You smiled. "My name's Y/N. What's yours?" She frowned and looked away before mumbling something. "Hm? I couldn't hear you," You said.
"Helius," She replied with a frown.
"Oh," You replied. "Well, do you like that name?" She shook her head vigorously. "Would you like a new name? One just as pretty as you?"
"Really?" She asked, eyes lighting up once more.
"Yep! And then you'll have a special name for yourself! Just like I do, and just like Natasha," You said pointing at the redhead. "And-" You were about to point to your husband when you realized for the first time since waking back up that he wasn't with the team anymore. Your eyes darted back to Nat who looked worried.
"Y/N?" The little girl said quietly, pulling on your sleeve.
"What is it, dear?" She whispered in it in your ear and you nodded. "Oh yes, um. The bathroom's right over here." You took her over and opened the door.
"I get to use that?" She asked, surprised.
"Yes," You replied slowly.
"Wow! You're really nice!" She hurried inside and closed the door herself. You stood there for a moment, shocked, and Nat walked up behind you.
"She's not even accustomed to using a normal bathroom, Nat!"
"Those people, if they even should be called that," she said, shaking her head. "Are monsters." You looked around once more, trying to see if Loki had shown back up. "He's up with Steve," She said, pointing to the cockpit.
"What? Why? He's willingly spending time with the Captain?" You said teasing.
"He said he needed to think."
"Did he give any clues?"
"Not verbally. But I think he's nervous."
"About what?" You exclaimed. She nodded towards the bathroom door.
"Being a Dad."
"A Da-" you interrupted yourself, chuckling lightly. "You think just because we found her means we'll be her parents?" Nat smirked and nodded. "First of all, Tony will probably have a cow if we wanted to keep her."
"Well your husband had a horse, may I remind you."
"That was a made up story! Would you please stop referencing it!" You shrieked.
"Only when it stops being funny," She laughed.
"Second, there's probably already some rule in place that states we need to put her in the custody of Child Protective Services."
"We'll see about that."
"She's yours!" Tony said 2 hours later once you'd arrived home and gone straight to a conference room to meet with him.
"What?" You exclaimed. You hadn't even had the chance to talk with Loki yet. You glanced outside the room at the girl sitting in the hallway. The whole team was there with you but Loki had still not said a word. You looked at him but he refused to make eye contact and you couldn't read his expression. "Don't get me wrong, Tony. She's wonderful and I think she deserves the world but why?"
"You found her! Who knows if she has powers? It's best to have one of our own caring for her just in case. And besides, according to Romanoff's story, the girl practically glared daggers into anyone else who came her way."
"Alright I guess. I mean," You sighed. "Loki? Darling? Um, what do you think?"
"You've already made the decision, Stark. I will respect that and allow my wife to make the necessary changes to our living quarters to care for the child. Now is there anything else you'll be needing at the moment? I need a shower."
"Uh, no. It's-we're done," Tony said, seeming surprised at Loki's attitude just as you were. You all started to head out but Tony stopped you for a moment. "Here," He said, handing you a credit card. "Buy whatever you want for her." You smiled and shook your head.
"What do you know? The man of iron does have a heart."
"Yeah but don't tell anyone," He chuckled.
About a week later, Helius was in her new bedroom, thoroughly showered in gifts from Tony, but still not talking to anyone. Neither was Loki for that matter. You yourself were exhausted, staying up late nights keeping the girl company when she woke up screaming from nightmares. When you eventually came back to bed, you often found your husband had gotten up already and disappeared somewhere to 'be alone'. With Helius, you offered her a few ideas for a new name but she didn't like any of them. You even told her some ideas the others had suggested but she hated those even more. You seemed to be the only one she was comfortable with. With Loki, you'd tried to talk to him, even calling and texting him but he wouldn't answer. Today, though, you decided you needed to do something about both of them or else you were probably going to go crazy. First, though, you had some formal paperwork to take care of with Tony in order to have legal guardianship of her.
"I don't know what to do about it, Stank," You sighed, hours later. Tony wrinkled his nose slightly at the nickname but listened. "Half of this I honestly still can't fill out for you because she won't pick a name. I don't know how to make her socialize and I sure don't know how to get Loki to spill what's bugging him." Tony got up and walked to your side, putting his hand on your shoulder.
"I'm not sure what to tell you either, Shiny."
"Watch it," You hissed, whipping out a knife you always kept on your person and holding it dangerously close to his baby-maker. He backed away quickly.
"Maybe you just need to corner your husband and, uh, pull that trick on him," He chuckled nervously. "Ok, well, um, just hold onto that paperwork and send it to me when it's done, alright?" You nodded and gathered it together before heading back to your floor. It was early afternoon and you thought you may have a shot at talking to your husband while Helius took her nap. She'd found her own little routine to keep her occupied during the day in her room even when you weren't there. But you always had to be home when she slept because of her nightmares and she refused to socialize with others.
"I'll be in the bedroom until dinner is ready," Loki said upon your return.
"Can we please talk first?" You asked.
"There's nothing to discuss," He replied, quickly walking to the bedroom and slamming the door.
"Oh yes there is!" You exclaimed, teleporting yourself inside the bedroom.
"I hate when you do that!" He yelled.
"Well I hate when you do this! Now man up and tell me what's wrong or I really will back you in a corner with my knife!"
"I don't want to talk about it, alright?" He hissed. "Now keep your voice down or else you'll alert the child that we're having a disagreement."
"Oh, so you're finally acknowledging her?" A guilty expression flashed over his face and he turned away. "What is it, Loki?" You pleaded. "I don't want to argue. I just want to know what's going through your mind. Ever since we found her, you've been-"
"You found her," He said. "I want no part in raising a child that is not my own."
"What about your own blood?" You asked, wondering for your own future if he was against kids in general or not.
"I-" He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "I don't know. But I certainly don't want to adopt. I've never seen a good result of adoption."
"Oh," You said slowly. "So that's what this is about."
"What do you mean?"
"You're worried about your own background. Is that it?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," He huffed, crossing his arms and further distancing himself from you.
"Loki, please. Listen to me. You may not have had the best family situation yourself, but that doesn't mean you won't be a great Dad. I think-no-I know you'd do wonderfully! Please believe me!"
"I-"
"Mommy!" A voice called out, sounding frightened. Your eyes and Loki's widened in surprise. She'd never called you that before.
"I had better check on her," You sighed. Loki nodded and you rushed off. Half an hour later you came out of her room to find Loki waiting for you on the couch.
"What happened?"
"More nightmares," You groaned and slumped down next to him.
"Is that why you're never in bed anymore?" He asked quietly.
"Yeah. It seems she can't go more than half an hour without having another one." He nodded silently and took your hand in his.
"Well, I suppose I should commend you for your sacrifices for her. I just don't know if I can-" You shushed him, pressing a finger to his lips.
"I understand, Loki," You smiled sadly. "Mind you, I don't exactly agree. But I respect how you feel. I guess I can talk with Tony tomorrow about finding her a new home." You got up quickly, to hide your own emotions from him, and went to prepare dinner. That night, Loki made you go to bed extra early so you could actually get some sleep. You appreciated it, but your internal clock had gotten so used to it already that it woke you up a few hours later about the time Helius would be having her first nightmare. When you didn't hear anything from her room, you got worried. You rushed out of your bedroom and, as you approached her room, heard voices.
"Where's mommy?" Helius cried, again sounding frightened. Drawing your knife outside her closed door, you were ready to teleport in a surprise whatever intruder was there.
"She's sleeping, sweetheart. Do you think your new Dad could help you?" You nearly cried at hearing Loki's voice so soft and gentle with her. It took you a few more seconds to process that he'd referred to himself as her 'Dad'.
"I thought you hated me," She whispered.
"I don't hate you, little one," He assured her. "Do you want to know why I haven't talked to you yet?" You didn't hear a reply but as Loki went on you could only assume she nodded. "I never had a good father. And when you came along a week ago, I was so worried that if I tried to be your father I would mess something up. And I couldn't let that happen because you are too wonderful and too beautiful."
"I don't have a beautiful name," she sighed.
"Hasn't mommy come up with any good ideas?" He asked.
"No, well, yes but I didn't like any of them. They're pretty but," she trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished.
"May I suggest one of my personal favorites?" You cracked the door open just a little so you could see. Their backs were to you, sitting on the edge of the bed. Loki had his arm wrapped around her as she curled onto his side, dwarfed by his height even sitting. She nodded slowly in reply to his question. "How about Arabella?"
"I love it!" She exclaimed, standing quickly and jumping up and down. "Thank you, Dad," She said smiling brightly as she threw her arms around his neck for a hug. He was surprised but gladly gave her a somewhat awkward hug back. "But what if the monsters come back?" She asked, voice trembling slightly.
"I'll protect you."
"Always?"
"I, Loki of Asgard, hereby make a promise to you, Arabella, my daughter. I'll be here to protect you forever and always." Arabella hugged him again and started crying. "Why are you crying, my dear?"
"Because you're the most bestest Dad I could ever ask for."
"Well, I, uh, thank you," He stuttered, not used to that kind of compliment. "I've got an idea. How about tomorrow morning I introduce you to some of the others here?"
"Why? I don't wanna!" You bit back a chuckle at her childish exclamation.
"But they're all really nice and they'll be like your new Aunts and Uncles!"
"Well, maybe," She conceded.
"Good! Now why don't you go back to sleep and I'll stay right here until all the monsters go away for tonight." She nodded and gave him another hug before allowing him to tuck her in. You smiled, wiping away your own tears, and snuck back to your bedroom. A couple hours later, Loki snuck back in himself.
"So how's the bestest Dad doing?" You whispered. Loki tensed up when you said that.
"So you heard us?" He said. You got up and wrapped your arms around his waist from behind.
"Yep," you said. "And I couldn't be happier. You really mean it? This means I don't have to talk to Tony tomorrow?"
"Absolutely not!" He replied grinning.
"Well then I have some very exciting news for you." He turned around, quirking his eyebrows questioningly. "How would you like to be a father to two?"
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crowfootwrites · 3 years
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The Boyfriend | Part IV [Taza Romero x Fem!Reader]
The final installment. I like it, and I hope y'all do too! Thanks for sticking with me 'til the end of this one!
Warnings: angst (and fluff); pregnancy complications/references to childbirth complications; hospitals | Words: 1,502
Part I of The Boyfriend | Part III of The Boyfriend
Taglist: @chibsytelford @megapeacelovemusic-blog @est1887
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A rhythmic beeping beside your ear burrowed its way into your head. Your senses returned slowly and you gasped at the overwhelming ache in your belly. Panic simmered at the edges of your mind as you were flooded with the last of your memories; it was followed swiftly by the deep smolder of fear for your child. Your eyes snapped open and you squinted at the blinding light above your hospital bed.
Immediately you felt the warmth of Taza’s hand on your arm. You turned your head slowly to look at him, afraid to read the expression on his face, knowing it would tell you what had happened. Your eyes met his and he smiled softly, and that was a good sign. “Mi alma (My soul),” he murmured, pressing his lips gently to the back of your hand. “Tenemos una hija (We have a daughter).” Tears welled in your eyes and you didn’t move to stop them as they spilled over, your mouth curling into a joyous grin.
“She’s ok?” you croaked.
“They’re still checking her out,” he explained in hushed tones, rubbing his fingers soothingly over your hand, “but it seems like she’s a strong little girl. Just like her mamá.”
You breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed back onto your pillow.
“What happened?”
“You had a placental abruption,” he admitted soberly. “The doctor said it was severe.” He paused, his jaw clenching at his remembered anguish. “I could have lost both of you.”
You reached a gentle hand out to caress his cheek and you watched as his dark eyes focused on you again. Your eyes slid over his shoulder for a moment, and you blinked in confusion as you registered the presence of your mother and father standing by the door to your hospital room. Your gaze landed back on Taza, your brow knitted in displeasure.
Taza squeezed your arm lightly, reassuringly.
“When you called me, I tried calling your father,” he explained. “I – I just wanted to have someone here for you, and I knew he could get here before I could. But I couldn’t get a hold of him… so I called your mother.” He paused, searching your eyes for any anger or resentment towards him. “I’m sorry if you’re upset with me, (Y/N). I know you two have things to work out… But when I called her, she didn’t hesitate, didn’t question. She just came. She was the first one here.”
Your eyes slid again to your parents huddled worriedly in the doorway, then immediately back to Taza.
“I’m not angry, amor (love),” you said, squeezing his hand reassuringly.
You didn’t know if it was the recent addition of your daughter to the world that had you feeling so forgiving, or the tremendous cocktail of hormones that were sure to be raging inside you, but you motioned your parents forward.
They stepped closer to your bedside, your father looking quite faint and your mother looking completely repentant, an expression you had never seen from her before.
You allowed your parents to hear the words that you hoped would reassure Taza. “No estoy enojada (I’m not angry). I’m just overwhelmed, I guess. I just… I don’t know, I thought this would be different. All of it. I thought I would get to celebrate this huge milestone with my family, that it would be… joyful and sentimental.” You stopped to breathe, speaking a much greater endeavor than you had anticipated. Taza handed you a plastic cup of water and you took a sip gratefully.
“I hoped that people, especially my own parents, would – would be able to see how much we love each other, and how much of a blessing this is for us. That we would get to have our home birth and it would be private and special. And I know that things don’t always go according to plan,” you rushed on, “and that’s fine, but this… our baby came into the world under such traumatic circumstances and I haven’t even met her yet, and it’s just… hard to come to terms with.”
You sighed, pressing your fingertips to your temples. Your eyes felt heavy, but you fought it, desperate to sort things about before you met your daughter. You didn’t want to add to her trauma before you had even brought her home.
Your gaze returned to Taza and you took a deep breath. “Would it be alright if you give me and my mom a minute?”
Taza’s smile was proud and he nodded, squeezing your shoulder reassuringly before guiding your dad out into the hallway. Your mother moved forward sheepishly, taking the seat beside your hospital bed.
“I’m not going to apologize for the decisions I’ve made in my life,” you mused, your mother’s eyes glued to the white sheets of the hospital bed. You tapped your fingers on the bed, capturing her attention, and she glanced up at you. “You did a good job raising me, mom. You can trust me to make good choices.”
You adjusted yourself against the pillows, your insides aching with every motion. “I know that you don’t understand them. I know this probably isn’t what you had imagined for my life. But… I’m happy. I love, and am blessed to be loved in return. And that’s–” you blinked back tears, your mind wandering to the daughter you hadn’t met yet, “it's really all I’ve ever needed.”
Your mother peered back at you and a chorus of emotions flitted across her face. She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, (Y/N).”
Your mother had never apologized to you for anything.
“I want the best for you, (Y/N). Not just better than what I had, but the best that it can possibly be. You’re my child, you’re… you’re precious to me. And I know I’m not always the best at showing it, but you are.” She paused and you studied the way her fingers tied themselves in knots in her lap.
“I am sorry. I’m sorry that I let my opinions get in the way of our relationship. In the way of your happiness.” She placed her hand gently over yours on the bed sheet, and when you didn’t pull away, she gripped it tightly. “I do trust you,” she promised. “And if you’re happy, then I will work harder to try and understand your perspective.”
She straightened in her chair, sniffing and hastily wiping tears from under her eyes. “Apparently, I’m a stubborn mule,” she grumbled, rolling her eyes dismissively, “so it might take some time for me to… rethink the rules I’ve always lived by, honey.” She patted your hand softly. “But I promise, I’m trying.”
“I know, mom.”
She got to her feet just as Taza and your father came back into the room. You watched with a touch of incredulity as your mother pulled Taza to the side to speak as your father came to your bedside. He dropped heavily into the chair, a soft expression on his face as he gazed at you.
“A stubborn mule, huh?”
Your father chuckled and shrugged. “It was about time she heard it.”
“And how much of this,” you began, motioning towards your mother talking in a hushed voice with Taza in the corner of the room, “was your doing?”
You father chuckled, rubbing a hand nervously over the back of his neck. “We, uh – we might’ve had it out a couple of weeks ago, hence the mule comment.” He grasped your hand tenderly, wearing a pensive frown. “You know, baby, I’ve been content, for my whole life, to take a backseat to your mother. Because when she’s in her element, she’s… a sight to behold. Much like you.” He smiled fondly. “But when that fire, that drive, is aimed in the wrong direction? It can be devastating. And I couldn’t let that happen to you. To us. She had to make peace with you. And with herself.”
More tears pressed behind your eyes and you sniffled. “I love you, Pop.”
“I love you, too, baby,” he said, leaning forward to plant a tender kiss on your forehead.
It was several hours later that you were able to hold your daughter for the first time. She had been given the all-clear and when they finally placed her in your arms, your heart skipped a beat, unbridled joy bubbling up in your chest.
Taza rested against the hospital bed, his strong arms wrapped around you and your daughter, tenderly smoothing your hair and running gentle fingers over her tiny hands. The two of you marveled at the incredible little being your love had made.
Your parents gathered delightedly beside the bed, your mother resting her head against your father’s shoulder. “What’s her name?” your father asked, his smile wide as he gazed down at your little family.
“Kasimira,” you murmur, the name you and Taza had agreed on only a week ago. You hum in amazement as the appropriateness dawns on you: “It means ‘commands peace’.”
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Texts from The Lost Tomb, part 3
I didn’t mean for this to stray into angst but like the lack of updates with Li Cu in LTR?? I had to do it to em.
Wushanju Crew Chat, 11:05pm
Li Cu: what’s up losers I’m outside
Li Cu: someone come on and open the damn door
Wang Meng: Language:(
Li Cu: fine, someone come on and open the damn door please
Snake Eyes Chat, 7:00am
Wu Xie: hey are you awake? Sorry I missed you coming in:) was finishing up some work. How was the end of your first semester? Did that geology paper go well? Did the food budget work out or do you need some extra money next semester?
Li Cu: yeah about your work
Li Cu: heard a little rumor
Li Cu: about you going through some stuff during ur recent trip
Li Cu: some stuff you maybe forgot to mention
Li Cu: and you told me we gotta check in with stuff, so this is me checking in, okay
Wu Xie: oh? What stuff?
Li Cu: idk just like
Li Cu: THE STUFF WITH YOU ALMOST FUCKING DYING FOR FUCKING MONTHS AND THE WAREHOUSE SHIT AND ERJING AND PEOPLE HURT YOU AND WHAT THE FUCK IS A THUNDER CITY AND NOONE FUCKING CALLED ME ABT THOSE PARTS ONCE
Wu Xie: oh. That stuff.
Li Cu: yeah asshat I’m in the kitchen whenever you’re ready to explain your fucking bullshit. Also you’re out of milk wtf how am I supposed to make breakfast here
Main Chat, 11:14am
Wu Xie: okay so it’s possible I fucked up a little bit.
Wang Pangzi: THERES JUST SO MUCH YOU COULD BE REFERRING TO I DONT KNOW WHERE TO START
Zhang Qiling: What’s wrong?
Honorary Wu Chat, 11:30am
Wang Pangzi: KID IM SO SORRY THAT PUNK IS A TRAINWRECK BUT YOU KNEW THAT
Wang Meng: Welcome home, Li Cu <3 not much has changed, ultimately.
Wang Pangzi: IT DIDNT EVEN OCCUR TO ME THAT HE WOULDNT TELL YOU EVERYTHING ABOUT IT ONCE THE REST OF US FIGURED IT OUT
WAIT HOW DID YOU FIND OUT
Li Cu: it’s okay. not your fault, uncle. Doesn’t matter how I found out. Wait wait hold on what do you mean “the rest of us figured it out” who figured it out
Wang Pangzi: SAY HELLO LIU SANG
Liu Sang: …hello.
Wang Pangzi: SAY MORE THAN THAT.
Liu Sang: uh…so you’re Wu Xie’s protégé, huh?
Li Cu: oh well howdy there homewrecker
Liu Sang: Excuse me??
Zhang Qiling: I think someone on the roof is calling me and I should go find out.
Wang Meng: I would also very much like to be removed from this conversation.
Wang Pangzi: AHAHAHAHA KIDDO IVE MISSED YOU
Li Cu: all I’m saying is aren’t you the little creep who’s obsessed with Xiao Ge
Liu Sang: ???
Zhang Qiling: Li Cu is referring to a brief period of irrational thought on Wu Xie’s part, where he mistakenly believed you to be a threat to our relationship.
Liu Sang: what do you mean a threat??
Wang Pangzi: WHAT DO YOU MEAN TIANZHEN HAD “A BRIEF PERIOD OF IRRATIONAL THOUGHT”
YOUVE MET YOUR HUSBAND RIGHT
Wang Meng: can you please take me off this chat.
Liu Sang: Wait, so Wu Xie told you about me, but…reading between the lines, he didn’t mention the cancer or anything bad that happened? Oh yikes.
Li Cu: don’t change the subject “Liu Sang”
if that is your real name
Like yeah you’re right abt it but still
just saying
heard you got good ears but I’ve got snake powers
kinda
so like no more funny business okay you superhearing harlot
Wang Meng: LANGUAGE, LI CU. IN THIS HOUSE WE SHOW GOOD MANNERS.
Wang Pangzi: LMAO OH DO WE NOW
Zhang Qiling: Li Cu, this is all unnecessary and childish. Please apologize.
Li Cu: you say that now bruh but apparently you weren’t complaining when he was all “idol this” and “idol that”
oh and hey Wang Meng while we’re here can I show you my business class grade report later bc Wu Xie is all “what matters is that you learned and enjoyed the experience” blah blah all eat pray love you know how he gets and I want to actually discuss areas to improve so that when I take over this joint I do better than Wu Xie? Tho that shouldnt be hard lol
Wang Meng: hurtful but accurate. I’ll bring my best red pen:)
Liu Sang: oh my god. I’m too jetlagged to keep up with any of this.
Wang Pangzi: BEST. DAY. EVER. IM SCREENSHOTTING THIS FOR HEI XIAZI.
Not A Homewrecker Chat, 11:52am
Liu Sang: Okay, we started off on the wrong foot.
Li Cu: I agree let’s start over
Start with how your little prank game almost got ppl killed
Liu Sang: And I seriously regret that. But we moved past that.
Wow, he seriously skipped over so much bullshit but didn’t skimp on mine, huh.
Li Cu: AHA so you ADMIT IT
Liu Sang: I’d like to think I’ve grown since then. That I’ve come to see Xiao Ge as a person and mentor, rather than an idol. I count Pangzi and Wu Xie as my close friends. I’m going to be staying here with them right now, I hope you can be okay with that.
Li Cu: see in my head you were going to be a lot less mature about it and I had a bunch of great follow-up insults planned
Liu Sang: I figured. I’d like us to be friends, though. Or at least not enemies.
Li Cu: okay but only bc you don’t know me yet so you won’t judge too much for this and I need to get this out to somebody I’ve been thinking about it for hours and my friends are still in finals and I’m stressing a little bit maybe
Liu Sang: ?
Li Cu: I yelled at dad
*Wu Xie sorry autocorrect
Liu Sang: …uh huh.
Li Cu: I yelled at him earlier. for keeping all that stuff from me. He started crying
Liu Sang: Wu Xie has been pretty emotional since we got back. Not necessarily your fault.
Li Cu: I made him cry right there at the kitchen sink and it felt like maybe the worst thing I’ve ever done
Snake venom and stabbings, no tears
Me saying I wouldn’t have gone to his funeral, all tears
Which I know was shitty to say but I was really mad
Liu Sang: If it’s any consolation, I think Wu Xie can understand the concept of being led by his emotions to make bad decisions…better than most people.
Li Cu: Xiao Ge came in then and looked weird
Like weirder than usual
Like he didn’t know which of us to be more mad at
Liu Sang: A common problem for the iron triangle, I understand.
Li Cu: I just ran out I didn’t have words right then and I feel stupid
but whenever they come back from their walk I’m gonna say sorry and stuff bc i could’ve come home to his funeral and I’m mad about it but also like. I could have come home to his funeral. I can get mean when I’m in a freakout mood. It’s not like I was scared or anything at all I don’t get scared really anymore ever but just like. Freaked out.
Liu Sang: He’s probably going to say sorry, too.
Li Cu: sorry I called you a homewrecker. Didn’t mean to slut-shame either
Liu Sang: I admit that after the initial shock, it was pretty funny. Super hearing harlot, it should be on my business card;)
Li Cu: this situation with Wu Xie is weird but kinda good ya know. And I have these freakouts sometimes that something maybe bad could happen to this situation. So consider this a shovel talk. But like, also not a shovel talk at the same time.
also I appreciate you saving his life and whatnot
Liu Sang: Noted. Now. Coffee?
Li Cu: sounds sick.
Be in the kitchen in 10. You can pick out what we watch for the household tv show tonight. no way is Wu Xie choosing some dry documentary about gravestone rubbings again. Pangzi just watches real housewives reruns and Xiao Ge won’t watch tv after he caught the last half hour of A Walk To Remember. Also i need my phone now to send some $ to Hei Xiazi since I owe him for…providing some intel
Liu Sang: Not even surprised.
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yellowmagicalgirl · 2 years
Text
Camelot Meat 3.1415926535897932384626433...
Krel has a new project to help his homesick boyfriend.
This was written for Diane as part of the KlebBuckets Secret Santa.
Contains mild referenced gore if you squint (mainly canon-typical eye horror, pun not intended) as well as references to canon character death.
The title is based on the first 26 digits of pi.
AO3
FFN
“Do you know what I miss the most about Camelot?” Douxie asked. His head was on Krel’s shoulder, and Krel made sure to keep that shoulder still as he continued typing out his computer science homework. Both of them were so busy, between Krel’s educational prison (even if he had come to enjoy it, sometimes) and Douxie’s trying to hide Nari in New York City, that a lot of their “dates” were really just coexisting.
“Let me guess, the people?” That was the answer that was to be expected, the answer that other people thought was obvious and expected Krel to answer with when he was asked what he missed the most about Akirdion-V. And sometimes, that was the correct answer. The things he missed the most, some days, were his sister, his best friend, and his bodyguards.
(His parents, well, they weren’t part of Akiridion-V anymore, so they didn’t count.)
“Um…” Of course, Douxie, like Krel, didn’t always answer things the way most people thought was obvious. And that made Krel feel hopeful, because if his boyfriend could go centuries without ever figuring out how allistic people worked and still be well-liked, maybe so could Krel. Besides, some delsons, Krel would take not getting sensory overload from Earth’s myriad of colors over Aja, Eli, Zadra, and Varvatos with less than a quarter-secton’s decision.
(Not that he wanted to go back for more than wardon-long trip. He just didn’t like all the eye strain, since Akiridion eyes were really only built for a couple of colors. He should probably start wearing glasses. He won’t break them. Not like Aja.)
“What do you miss the most about Camelot?”
“The meat pies.”
Krel hit compile and wrinkled his nose, remembering Steve’s complaints. “Didn’t they have eyeballs in them?”
“Not usually. I mean, I know I messed up my memories, but I’d remember eating an eyeball. Archie tried to feed me squirrel eyeballs when I was little, and I never forgot how gross they were.” Douxie took his head off of Krel’s shoulder and shook it. “No, Steve was just an unfortunate victim of how Camelot didn’t have a Food and Drug Administration. To be fair, neither did the rest of Europe at that time. But I still miss those pies. Nowhere I go has ever got it the same, nor any time I’ve ever tried to recreate it.”
Krel shut his laptop on the error messages, maybe a bit too forcefully, but he had a new project.
“Uh… is that really safe?”
“I made it; it’ll be fine. Besides, which human thought it was a good idea to put a semicolon at the end of every line? So unintuitive and frustrating. I need a break from the code. It isn’t due ‘til Monday anyways.”
“Hey, Lucy?” Krel asked as he walked into the kitchen of the Mothership. “Can you help me cook something?”
He had finished his computer science homework (the stupid, infuriating, good-for-nothing semicolons had added an extra three mekrons) and then he had spent four-and-a-half horvaths last night researching recipes until he found one that was narrowed down to the proper part of modern England as well as the correct time period. It would be easier if the Mothership could duplicate complex foods, and maybe if Mother was still around her AI would have advanced enough that she could. Krel would just have to work with what he had, and that was a large amount of raw ingredients and a Blank who enjoyed cooking.
Her smile grew unnervingly wider. “The first step to making pancakes –”
“– No, I want to make this recipe.” Her smile fell away completely. Krel placed the print-out on the counter in front of her. “It’s for Douxie.”
Her smile came back slightly as she picked up the recipe. “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”
Based on Krel’s understanding of the human body, Lucy’s statement was wrong. If one really wanted to get to a human heart quickly, one should go through the ribcage. And if Lucy had decided to start talking in metaphors again (he was never fully sure how literal she was being), the way to Douxie’s heart had been DJing (and therefore ears) because apparently Douxie’s crush on Krel had started at the Battle of the Bands.
Krel got the butter out of the fridge for Lucy. Maybe later, after he had perfected the meat pies, he’d let her teach him to make pancakes. But this was more important.
On Monday, Krel set the container down on the table he and his friends were eating lunch at. “I made these to share.” Krel then batted away Toby’s hand. “With Steve and Claire. Not you.”
Jim patted Toby’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I still care about and will make food for you.”
“The recipe only made five, and the other three were dinner last night,” Krel said. Despite what his friends may have thought, he wasn’t trying to be cruel. Just practical. “I need Steve and Claire to tell me if they’re accurate to Camelot’s meat pies.”
Steve looked between Krel and the pies with horror. “Whose eyeballs did you use?”
“Wouldn’t you have noticed if there was an eyeball shape in the other five pies you tried to eat in half as many minutes?” Claire asked.
“Douxie did say they weren’t supposed to have eyes in them,” Krel said. “Said it had something to do with how Camelot didn’t administer food and drugs?”
“He probably meant by a Food and Drug Administration,” Jim said. “We’ll be learning about that later this year, right before we cover World War One.”
“But anyways, I want Steve and Claire to tell me if these are correct so I can surprise Douxie with them.”
“I blocked the taste out of my mind,” Steve said.
“I didn’t eat any; I was more focused on…” The shadows under Claire’s eyes that indicated she hadn’t slept last night darkened just a little. “Other things. But didn’t the ones in Camelot have more holes in them?”
Steve looked at the pies more closely. “Yeah, they did. Eight, not three. Also, the outside edge had this pattern that made it look kind of like a flower.”
“Crimping?” Jim suggested.
“No, like actual petals,” Steve said.
“When was the pie tin invented?” Claire asked. “Because that might’ve made any crimping uneven and look more like flower petals than modern pies.”
“1957,” Toby said, looking at his phone. “Wait, no, that’s the frisbee. Oh huh, that’s cool, the guy who made pie tins also made frisbees.”
The next day, Krel brought more meat pies to school, this time with Steve and Claire’s suggestions. And he brought enough of them to share with Jim and Toby as well.
“I made you something,” Krel said to his boyfriend the following weekend.
“Oh? What’s it do?”
Hopefully, put a smile on your face.
“It doesn’t do anything. It isn’t technological. Oh, stop giving me that look. I can do things other than engineering and music; I just normally choose not to.” Krel pulled out the container and pulled off the lid, revealing ten meat pies.
Douxie’s eyes widened. “Are those…”
“Yeah.”
“How did you… they look just like the ones I had growing up.” Douxie looked ready to cry as he smiled between Krel and the pies.
“Steve and Claire helped me make it look right. Go ahead, try one.”
Douxie took a pie and closed his eyes. He smelled it before popping it in his mouth. He chewed slowly before swallowing and opening his eyes. “It tastes great.”
“I got it right?” Well, of course he got it right. He was a genius and good at anything worthwhile.
(Except for maybe avoiding getting knocked out. That was worthwhile.)
(And so was understanding people, for that matter.)
“No.”
“Oh.” Krel cringed away. He didn’t like failing, especially not when he had tried so hard. Or when it was someone he really wanted to impress. “I’m sorry.”
“Krel. You tried. That’s honestly more than I expected out of anyone, to try and recreate them. Thank you, my love.”
Author's Notes
Me 🤝 Krel
Being frustrated by C and Java's insistence upon ending all lines with semicolons. We computational physicists like our Python's lack of semicolons thank you very much.
Krel's errors in meat pie making include not using goat meat (the recipe I found online after a few minute's research was chicken, and I decided that Krel would use a recipe similar to that one. However, the eye that Steve spat up was a goat eye based on the pupil shape) as well as some modern American ingredients being different from modern British ingredients, much less medieval British ingredients.
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ptitelidio · 3 years
Text
Part 2: Secret Mission in Marley
Part 1 here: https://ptitelidio.tumblr.com/post/656269653517205504/secret-mission-in-marley-involving-petra-ral
Summary: the scene takes place two weeks ago from the 1st part when Petra was chosen to receive the jaw titan by Captain Levi Ackerman himself. She meets her team and she discovers a little more about her Captain’s past.
Involving: Petra Ral, Levi Ackerman, Theo Magath, Colt Grice and Pieck Finger.
Point of view: Levi’s
Italic font = flashback
PS: I made two fake screenshots this time, hope you’ll like them!
“Captain, hey… are you okay?” Warrior Ral interrupts my thoughts and gets closer to me with a worried expression on her face.
“Uh? Yeah it’s nothing to worry about…”
For a minute I almost forgot we were on a train. When I look around me, Petra, Colt and Pieck are sitting altogether in a four-seats space just on my right. Petra is standing in front of me encouraging me to join them. Why not. After all, Theo assigned me this team but I’m not good with socializing.
“Come on Captain!”
I follow her and sit on the empty seat. It seems that they were getting long very well, they were laughing about some stuffs and discussing about others. I didn’t really know how to join the small talk, but Petra helped me when asking a question.
“Well Captain, I.. I’ve been wondering about your choice for the jaw titan. Why did you choose me? I mean there are a lot of talents among the warrior candidates.”
“Mmh… the jaw titan is particularly known for its assistance to people, not only it is able to break any material, but it also is very agile. Strong and helpful, I think you were the perfect candidate.”
“That’s true, Petra” Pieck says “Porco was just like you. You both like to take care of other people. Even of the most troublesome hahaha”
“You mean that little brat Gabi Braun?” I ask knowing the answer yet.
“Anyway, I’m sure a woman that strong and pretty as you will convince the whole military you’ll see” Cold says.
“Thank you guys, I am honored to join your team. By the way… I heard our destination is a city near the ruins of Lagos, isn’t it?”
“To be honest, I don’t know.” Colt continues “The only ones to know are our Captain and Commander Magath.”
They all turned towards me waiting for an answer.
“You’ll know when we arrive. Reiner and Ziek are waiting for us there.”
“Ziek? Why is he there?” Colt asked
“It’s probably to establish a strategy for the next raid over Eldia I guess” Pieck answered.
I didn’t answer but she is right, it’s exactly what we’ll be there for. Oddly, Petra looks uncomfortable, she’s very pale but I don’t point it out. If she is who I think she is, I have to investigate in secret because if she isn’t, nobody would trust her anymore. And I think trust is important to her.
I remember doubting about her when we met for the first time, not that she has been behaving awkwardly but as a new warrior candidate, she seemed to know how to fight. She was too talented, too much to not notice it. I also noticed her habit to say “soldier” instead of “warrior” but I could be wrong.
“The ginger candidate, she’s very promising.” Theo said to me as we were flying over the Middle East. “You should pick her in your team with the two other”.
“I didn’t make a decision yet. There is something disturbing about her.”
“What? Do you think she’s not devoted enough to Marley? If so, you should still pick her up.”
“What the f*ck do you mean?”
“Don’t forget that we still need a candidate for the jaw titan, if she gets it, as her Captain you will be able to watch her anytime. If she ever betrays us, you’ll know it very soon. After all, you’re the one that knows best the Eldians, don’t you think?”
He was referring to my father, an Eldian. I didn’t know him, but my mother did when she was a prostitute. Even if we were Marleyans by blood, we were still poor. One day that guy promised my mom to get her some money but instead he made her pregnant. Fortunately, Magath is the only one who knows this story and as a friend of my deceased mother, he kept the secret. I owe him a lot.
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“If you say so…”
The train stopped and as we were getting out from it, the candidate Gabi Braun shouted
“Here we are! Finally! I’ll show everyone I’m the worthiest for the armor titan!”
“Shut up brat” I said
“Gabi, don’t be impatient or Falco will run after you as ever.” Petra said with a warm smile on her face. I don’t know why but that face makes me weak. Maybe it’s her tenderness…
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weirdthinkingdragon · 3 years
Text
Welcome To The Family (5/???)
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / here
Had no idea how to connect with Aizawa. Hopefully, this works. Sorry about my hyperfixation on this. 
Warnings- some swearing
---------------------------------------------------------------
I get ready for yet another day of babysitting Eri. Thinking back on the festival yesterday, the uncomfortable feeling between the two men is something I’d rather not experience again if possible. They’re together as well, so why did Hizashi put me between them? I could have sat on the other side of him if he wanted me beside him so bad. Don’t think Aizawa was too happy about it either with the narrow look he gave me, now that I think about it. It’s best to try to avoid those situations in the future.
While in my mind, I didn’t notice my friend in front of me and bumped into them. Ryo doesn’t look too good. They have bigger eyebags than I’ve ever seen and are frowning with their arms crossed. “Glad to catch you. I stayed up all night waiting for you.”
“Ryo, whatever it is, you could have just texted or called me.”
They frown deeper. “I’ve been trying to stay happy for you, I really have. I and a few of the others really miss you hanging out with us. We’ll even blast your favorite song the whole day and night. Just… Please join us for a whole day once again.”
I knew what they were getting at. Damn it, guilt is really starting to rise in me. I desperately want to hang out with them, but that stupid dinner I’m pretty much forced to go to this Sunday… Ugh, why couldn’t they wait until next Sunday!? “I’m sorry, Ryo, but they want me to babysit the kids again this Sunday. I told them I’m not available next Sunday though! We can hang out then!”
Their frown goes deeper than ever seen by me. “Come on, Y/N! We haven’t had a day to hang out properly in like, what? Months? Every time you return you’re too tired to join us. Those damn kids can go ONE. DAY. without you taking care of them. Don’t you think you’ve done enough for them yet!? The only day we had was Sunday, but for the last few you’ve been stuck with them AGAIN. For how much you take care of them, the adults shouldn’t even HAVE them!”
I nearly snapped at them for the last thing they said. They seem angry though, so I try to not let it get to me too much, or it could end badly for both of us.
It’s easy to tell they all care for each other, and taking one of them away from their little family would be greatly unethical. What also holds me back is remembering Ryo doesn’t know the story of the kids, or that the adults are heroes and teachers. Man, I wish I could tell them. Surprised they haven’t made the connection themselves yet of at least figuring out they’re teachers. “Their jobs are highly demanding. Trust me, they’d much rather be with their kids if they could. I’ve seen how they act towards them.”
“That doesn’t mean shit. For all you know, it could just be a front!”
I shake my head. “Don’t think so. Pretty sure one of them would be incredibly bad at acting.”
They glare at me. “Whatever you think.” They then storm off, leaving more guilt to eat away at me. Ugh, I feel like crying out of frustration.
The mold-quirked male comes up to me when Ryo leaves. “Sorry about them. They’re kinda in a bad spot with the police right now. They got a little too drunk and spat at an officer yesterday.”
“Again? I thought they learned their lesson last time from me scolding them.”
“Sadly, no. I think they’re losing control since their impulse control is gone.”
Now I’m more annoyed than guilt-ridden. Ryo is a few years older than me. They shouldn’t be such a child about it and need my help when they decide to drink too much. “Thanks for informing me, uh… sorry, I don’t think you ever told me your name.”
His eyes widened in realization. “Oh! Right! Just call me by my first name, Tadao.”
First name basis off the bat is a little weird, but he says it, so sure. “Right! Tadao, Can you keep an eye on them for me still? I’m still rather busy as you might have noticed.”
He nods. “I can do that. Just do me a favor, and try to take it easy for yourself one of these days. You seem a little worn out yourself recently.”
I shrug. “It’s more of what’s happened lately, and what’s on my mind I think.”
He seems unsure about my answer if anything about his dark brown eyes is to go by. He just nods again though and goes to follow Ryo.
I push what just happened to the back of my mind and head towards their home again. After the Ferris Wheel yesterday, Hizashi gave me a key and told me to use it to enter their house from now on since they might be too busy to answer the door. They haven’t had trouble answering the door before, but I’ve learned by now to not question Hizashi’s sporadic way of mind. It doesn’t ease the discomfort that I feel like I’m intruding by randomly entering their house though.
I unlock the door and enter to see a rather concerned Eri hugging the new stuffed animal with the dog and the bunny. “Hey, Eri. What’s wrong?”
It looks like she’s torn from being happy to see me, to having great worry. “Dad’s sick.”
Aizawa’s sick? He was just fine yesterday. I think she calls Aizawa “dad” and Hizashi “daddy” if I’ve noticed correctly. Sometimes it’s really confusing having same-sex parents and trying to know which they’re referring to. “Is Aizawa okay?” I ask, just to be sure it’s the right one.
She nods.
Hitoshi comes into the living room. “He’ll be fine. It was a quirked villain from the ambush yesterday. It’s not contagious, but he’s not allowed to go to the school for twenty-four hours. The principal said he’d have the other teachers kick him out if he enters the school. Even Recovery Girl and no one wants to deal with her wrath.”
“Recovery… Girl?”
He looks like he wants to slap himself. “Right. Uh… She’s the healer after our fights basically.”
“The name makes sense then.”
He nods. “In his shape, he can’t take care of Eri though, so we didn’t tell you to not come.”
“Sounds good,” I smirk, though internally I’m cringing at the thought of being alone with the quiet man. “So, you guys want me to check in on him a few times today as well I’m guessing?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “If you wouldn’t mind, that is. It’s obviously not something you’re hired for.”
I shrug. “It should be fine. I don’t think he’ll be very demanding of me doing things for him if I know him well enough by now.”
Hitoshi smirks in reply to me. “He’s too stubborn to even take cough medicine.”
“I didn’t expect anything different.” Seems rather childish though for a full-grown man. Not like I’d ever say that to his face though.
Hizashi comes out of what must be their bedroom and sees me. “Heya, little lovesong! Did these two fill ya in already?”
Love… song? What’s with the sudden nickname? He always seems to call people “listeners” or whatever, so maybe it’s just a more friendly type of thing?
He also makes his arms go outstretched and looks at me expectantly. He wants me to hug him? Again, this is really sudden.
Screw it, it won’t hurt anything, right? It’s just a hug. I hug him.
He squeezes a little too tightly and wouldn’t let me go for an almost awkward amount of time, even when I try to pull away.
I pat his back to try to get him to let go. “That’s long enough I think. You might want to go before you and Hitoshi are late for school.”
He lets go. “Right! C’mon, little Hypno-man!”
“Little? I’m almost as tall as you.”
“But you’re not yet!” He shouts as he bolts out the door. Hitoshi quickly goes after him. It just leaves a silence between Eri and me. I shake my head at their antics and look at Eri. “Do you think they even left him a glass of water or something before taking off?”
“Daddy gave him water before. A long time ago.”
A long time ago probably means a few hours at most. I sigh. Better check on him then. I go towards the door of their bedroom and knock on it. He doesn’t answer. Oh well, he must not need anything that badly. No, I’m not just trying to stay away from him as much as possible.
I go to walk away, but Eri gently grabs my hand and leads me back to the bedroom door.
“Why do you keep staying away from dad?” she asks.
“What do you mean?” I ask, trying to play dumb. She doesn’t need to know about adult things yet, such as not everyone will like someone. That should be their job to teach her. “Toshi and daddy notice you avoid him. He’s not mean though!”
Do I really have to tell her? Her questioning eyes are begging me to answer.
“It’s just… I don’t think your dad likes me very much. There will always be people who don’t like a person for one reason or another. I don’t know why your dad doesn’t like me, but I respect his decision and want to let him keep his space.”
“But dad doesn’t hate you!” She huffs.
That's a surprise to me. “Unless he tells me otherwise, I’m going to keep believing he does. And honestly, your dad kinda scares me.”
She looks away. “He can be kinda mean sometimes,” she looks back at me. “But he really cares for people!”
A part of me doubts it, but another part can kind of see it, especially with how he acts with Eri and Hitoshi.
I decided to try changing the topic. “I’ll check him in a bit. He probably doesn’t want to be bothered right now. Let’s go play with your stuffed animals for now.” I try to walk away again.
Yet again, she grabs my hand and drags me to the door. She opens it without knocking and makes me enter as well. I noticed the rather large bed before anything. It couldn’t have been a king. Definitely something bigger than that. It has a light red and black blanket covering the whole bed, including the paler-than-usual man under it. His eyes are open and looking at us, but surprisingly, he’s not glaring. I thought he would be from an interrupted entry…
I notice the empty glass on the nightstand next to him. “I’ll get you more water.” I then grab the glass and go to the kitchen. Eri stayed in the bedroom. While filling the glass, one of the cats rubs their head against my leg. The white eyebrows make me know who it is instantly. “Hey, Oreo! Why don’t you come to help your dad?” I ask him and shut off the sink after the glass is nearly full.
I pick him up with my free arm and carry them back into the bedroom. He immediately jumps out of my arms and goes onto the bed. Aizawa almost seems to grow a weak smile at the sight of the cat. I set the glass down back on the nightstand.
“Thanks.” He rasps, catching my surprise. I really wasn’t expecting him to thank me for it. He didn’t strike me as the type. He drinks some of it.
It’s quiet between us, and I want to do nothing but leave him be before the awkwardness gets worse. Plus, he needs all the rest he can get to heal faster. Or is the quirk he was struck with a time-based thing regardless?
Eri suddenly gets up from sitting on the floor and tugs me so she could whisper in my ear. “Talk to him!”
“I don’t think he…” I lock eyes with Aizawa who is surprisingly still not asleep and sigh. I have no idea what to talk to him about. What do you talk about to someone who has hardly ever said a word to you?
I then remember the explosive kid and nearly being hit. It’s worth a shot bringing him up I guess. “Had a close call with one of your students yesterday. Don’t know his name, but he nearly blew up my face if Midoriya wasn’t there.”
Despite his state, his eyes widen a sufficient amount.
“Toshi isn’t happy with him.” Eri pipes up with her arms crossed.
“No harm was done though, right? At least he didn’t hit me,” I shiver remembering his expression. “I’d rather not be in the line of his wrath again though. It’s terrifying to the point I almost feel bad for anything he goes against.”
“Bakugou.” He’s able to hiss it with annoyance. Okay, glad he doesn’t seem annoyed with me the same way he is with that kid.
Bakugou? Isn’t that one of the kids Midoriya told me causes the most problems in his class? “So he must be one of the kids you like to call “problem children”. Midoriya told me you call him that as well. Don’t know how he’s one, but I know if you call him that, you have a really good reason, so I’m not going to comment on it.”
“You seem rather… connected with Midoriya.” He says “connected” like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth.
“Oh yeah! He’s a good kid. He comes around frequently with Togata,” His eyes narrow and my fond mention of Togata. He better not be getting the wrong idea, I don’t see either of them that way for obvious reasons. “It’s so great they’re able to wear dresses so comfortably. Well, Midoriya is still a bit uncomfortable, but we’ve been working on his self-esteem with Togata. I also still have to thank him for saving me from the Bakugou kid. I don’t think that could be fixed with him though from the feral energy he gives off.”
“Still have to-” he coughs. “Work on that then. He won’t be able to get anywhere if he keeps nearly injuring innocents.”
I smile at him. “I wish you the most luck with him then. You’re definitely going to need it.”
He replies with a slight nod and closes his eyes. Oreo climbs onto Aizawa’s chest and starts purring. He brings one of his arms out of the covers and pets Oreo. The cat’s purring gets louder in appreciation.
Eri lights up. “I’ll go get Mochi and Sundae!” She bolts out of the room. No! Come ba- and she’s gone.
For one stupid reason or another, I feel like confiding with him right now.
“You know, I hate to admit it, but I’m rather envious of you,” He quirks an eye open to look at me. “You have such a lovely family and a significant other that greatly cares about you. I can only hope to have a relationship like you and Hizashi in the future. It’s going to be so strange when I leave your family.”
His other eye opens to fully look at me. His eyes flash some sort of emotion I can’t read. Maybe I overstepped a boundary or said too much about myself? Shit…
“Uh… Sorry about that, Aizawa. That’s probably something stupid to go off about or to bother you with...”
“Shouta.”
“Huh?” I question, just to be sure I was correct in hearing him.
“Shouta. It’s-” he coughs again. “illogical for me to be the only one not called by my first name,” He looks at Oreo, then back at me. “You’re a part of our family. Even Oreo likes you. Sometimes not even I can pick him up.”
“A part of?... No, you’re thinking too much into it. I’m just a sitter that likes taking care of Hitoshi and Eri.”
He slightly shakes his head. “Same thing with Hitoshi. He’s never let anyone but us call him his first name. You’re different.”
I’m having a hard time accepting I’m special in any way. They must just be slightly delusional or something from having multiple bad sitters before. “I’m sure if you got a sitter similar to me, he’d have done the same thing with them.”
“Doubtful. For one, you’re the first that’s not us to not fear Hitoshi for his-” he coughs yet again. “quirk.”
Maybe I should make him stop talking so he can rest before more damage can possibly be done to his throat.
“I found Mochi!” Eri yells from somewhere outside of the room. She enters the bedroom, waddling like she did before with Mochi in her arms. He’s nearly being dragged on the floor, but only seems uninterested in helping her move. She seems to be having a slightly easier time than before carrying him. Not sure if he’s lost some weight, or if she’s gotten stronger. Maybe even both.
I laugh and go over to her to help her carry him. He’s still rather heavy. Heavy enough to cause a rather large dip in the bed when we place him on it. We place him down by Shouta’s feet. He doesn’t even move. Just flops onto his belly where he’s placed. I go over back by Shouta’s side, since that’s closer to the exit of the bedroom. I still feel like I’m intruding in their bedroom.
She immediately takes off again out of the room.
“Eri! I don’t think-” I’m interrupted by Shouta gently grabbing my hand. His hand is rather rough- probably calloused- and rather clammy. Most likely from him being ill. Uh… This is weird.
“It’s fine. The cats are a good distraction,” He lets it go before I can try to pull away. “That’s another thing. Even Eri bonded with you rather quickly. I’ve never seen her so happy to see someone besides us or Midoriya and Togata.”
I shrug. “It’s the previous sitters’ faults for not caring for her. She’s beyond adorable, and I honestly had the thought if something were to happen to her, I’d kill everyone in the room, then myself on my first day.”
He exhales his breath, almost like a chuckle. “Zashi says the same about you.”
I have no idea what to say to that. Oh! He must mean Hizashi would do the same thing for Eri, his mind is just mixed up on his words from his illness. Sounds a lot more logical than someone admitting they really like an adult they just met back then.
Eri comes in with the last and final cat, Sundae. He seems a little more uninterested in being in here than the other two. At least until Eri places him on the bed, and he sees the other two. He jumps onto Shouta’s stomach and tries to push Oreo off to take his spot on Shouta’s chest.
I can’t help but laugh. “You need a little help there?”
He grows the tiniest smile again. “No.” He pulls out his other arm from under the blanket and uses it to pet the other cat as well. That seems to do the trick as he stops trying to push Oreo off.
He coughs yet again. I feel rather bad he has to deal with it. “Would you like some tea maybe? It’s not cough medicine, but it might help your cough a bit more than the water is.”
He turns his head back towards us. His eyes again showing that unreadable emotion. “That's another thing. You’re caring. You’ve respected us the most. You didn’t even try pushing me to tolerate your presence, just accepted it.” Okay, that’s enough talking from you, you need to rest more. I swear, if he’s the type that suddenly has the urge to clean the house when sick… I’d do absolutely nothing. I obviously can’t do much against a man with years of grueling training, even when he’s sick. Might have Eri help me scold him though.
“I’ll get the tea. And do us both a favor, stop talking for now. It’s honestly great hearing you talk more for once, but now is really not the best time.”
“No promises.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The rest of the day was rather uneventful, other than checking up on him a few other times. With how frequently he talked, I started to wonder if he and Hizashi somehow swapped minds. He must be one of those odd people who seem to be more talkative when sick, as clearly found out.
Leaving their house, my body freezes at the familiar feeling of being watched. For a moment, I wonder about going back into their house and asking them to bring me to my home. No, I can’t do that to them. They've already had a long day.
… At least, that’s how I felt at first. But the farther I walked, the more I wished I did. Fuck, the feeling won’t. Leave. Taking out my phone, Hitoshi is the first one to come up in my contacts.
“Hey, Y/N! Fancy seeing you around here. Heading home, huh?” Asked a familiar voice behind me. That feeling was still around, but just knowing Tadao was with me helped. I turn to face him. His hair was… Glowing green? It made him look like a glowstick, and made me wonder how I’ve never seen his hair do this before. Never met him in the dark though.
He laughs at my expression. “Mold isn’t the only thing my body can absorb. It can also do the same with fungus. Found out years ago I can make my hair glow from the bioluminescent fungus. Cool, huh?”
I smile at him. “Definitely! But you know I now have to call you glowstick, right?”
He groans. “Man, was really hoping to escape that, but I guess it’s deserved, huh?”
“It really is your fault if you don’t naturally have it.”
Because of his glowing hair, it was easy to tell he rolls his eyes. “Anyway, wanna walk with me back to the apartments? Just got off of work myself today.”
“Well, it would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
“Yep.”
We start walking.
“How’s Ryo holding up?”
He sighs. “Not well. Really starting to question their mental state. They told me this morning they don’t even want to talk to you for a few days.”
My face quickly becomes a frown. “Seriously? They’re going to act like this now?”
He shrugs. “Try not to let it get to you. We both know they can be overdramatic at times.”
I sigh. “I hate that you’re right.”
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@angelicblackwolf 
here ya go. hopefully it works!
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nevertheless-moving · 3 years
Text
Suicidal Misunderstanding Part Three: SW Time Travel AU #27
Part One
Part Two
Obi Wan woke with a dry mouth and a moderate headache. A fairly typical morning these days. 
He peered around his bedroom in the temple confused. Wasn’t he just with Cody? Shouldn’t he be on the Negotiator? No wait, the war was over, Cody tried to kill him, and the Negotiator was a part of the Imperial Armada, of course he wouldn’t be there. He closed his eyes, snuggling back under the covers. Before he could drift back to sleep, his sluggish mind processed that last thought. 
He BOLTED upright in bed. The temple had been razed, his personal chambers scorched with particular thoroughness. Just being on Coruscant was an automatic death sentence. Faint tendrils of panic began to curl around his throat before he remembered his decision to give Spice a try. He had reasoned that he should probably find at least one pleasure in his new life, instead of focusing incessantly on what was lost. 
So what if he lost a few brain cells? Good riddance. 
Obi-Wan had been a bit nervous, but this had ended up being his best decision in years. His goodbye to Cody had been painful, but deeply cathartic. Spice Hallucination Anakin didn’t scream like Nightmare Anakin, and the color of his eyes was perfect. Far better final memories to cling to than reality- a reminder of the good times. Comforted, he relaxed backwards in bed, pulling his blankets back around him.
He LURCHED out of bed, covers tossed aside, movement a blur.
He was still hallucinating?!? Spice shouldn’t last in the system this long! He might’ve been uncertain about whether he was supposed to smoke or snort the substance but it was a well known fact that its exhaustive but rapid passage through the body was half what made it so addictive. If nothing else, his well-restedness and thirst indicated it had been at least six hours. He looked frantically around the room, searching for some thread of unreality to pull at.
This...was not good. Hadn’t the subconscious manifestations of his friends mentioned drugs that interacted poorly with force users last night? He had dismissed it at the time but...
He clearly was stuck in some sort of drugged fantasy combined with force-enhanced memory recall. Kriff, he had to wake up in the real world before he died of an aneurysm. Or just dehydration.
He sat on the ‘temple floor’ to meditate. This could be tricky as he couldn’t risk lowering his outer shields to reach out to reality. It would be deeply embarrassing as well as horrifying if the Emperor managed to find him and, by extension, Luke because he got stuck in a bad spice trip.
The door to his room clicked open quietly. 
“Oh! You’re awake. Sorry to come in without knocking, Master. I wanted to let you sleep, but I’ve been checking on you every two hours to make sure you were still, you know, breathing. You were...pretty out of it last night and I would be a pretty bad ‘best friend in the whole galaxy’ if I let you choke on your own vomit, right?” His blue-eyed Padawan explained with a grin.
Obi-Wan just stared. Oh this- this hurt. It was easier last night, when the whole fantasy had a kind of drunken blurriness. Sleeping and waking had brought sober clarity to the dream world. He could see the bags under Anakin’s eyes as well as the sheepish slouch of his shoulders as he instinctively ducked at the door frame. It was just so real.
“Obi-Wan? Are you feeling ok? Do you still feel drunk?” Anakin asked concerned.
Obi-Wan shook his head. He hesitated, before deciding to just go along with the interaction. He didn’t want to risk his subconscious throwing a less idylic scene at him by pretending to ignore this one. And besides, last night had been, all totaled, a huge relief- an unburdening of things left unsaid. This was probably the closest thing to therapy available to him these days, he might as well take advantage.
“I’m just...processing. Not to mention dealing with some mild dehydration.” He finally answered.
“Processing, huh? So does that mean you, uh, remember last night?” Anakin asked nervously.
“I do.” Obi-Wan smiled gently. As heart-wrenching as this was, it was also adorably sweet. Maybe it was worth it to push off waking for a little while. He could get some closure, maybe even work through some of the past to see where the two of them had gone wrong. It might even be helpful for Luke! Force willing, he would probably end up training Anakin’s son someday.
(the boy wouldn’t have many masters to choose from)
If this dream world could help him figure out specifically how he had failed as a Master, then he owed it to the galaxy to see it through. Satisfied, he resolved to let the fantasy play out. At least for a few more more hours. And...he had missed what Anakin had said. Wonderful start.
“I’m very sorry, Anakin would you mind repeating that? I was still a little distracted, but I promise, I’m focused on you now.”
Anakin shuffled nervously. “It’s nothing.”
Obi-Wan tried to project reassurance without actually projecting. “Please Anakin, I’d like to hear what you have to say. I know I wasn’t the most observant or approachable Master, and I’m sorry for that. But I have always cared about your thoughts and feelings.” It was a struggle and the words caught in his throat, but the raw burn of the apology was cleansing in an almost addictive way.
Anakin flushed. “Did you mean everything you said?” he asked nervously.
“I’d...rather not talk about seeing the destruction of the temple, seeing you... Maybe later...but please, I just don’t want to focus on it while I’m sitting here, looking at you,” Obi-Wan said quietly.
“That actually wasn’t what I was talking about,” Anakin responded quickly. “I mean, I do want to help you with that at some point, but I get not wanting to talk about visions, even if you should probably should. Of course if you do want to talk about that stuff, that’s more important, but since you don’t we can talk about the other stuff you mentioned. I was more referring to, you know, us, and what you said about our friendship?” his voice got progressively higher the longer he rambled. 
Obi-Wan thought back. “Well some of it is a little hazy, but overall yes. I...for a very long time I’ve considered you my best friend, and its not so easy for me to let go of my affections. I miss spending time with you; there are times I turn to say something and am still shocked you’re not there. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, with real words, how much I cared. I’m sorry I didn’t hug you as much as I wanted, looking back that was a nonsensical Jedi custom. It’s not in the code; it’s just an affectation of dignity. All things considered, the fact that you often snuck out to see Padme doesn’t really bother me.” He paused. “Was that everything?”
“Oh. Yeah, that pretty much covered everything.” Anakin looked embarrassed, but happy. “I wasn’t sure if you were just saying that stuff because you were drugged, or really drunk or something.”
“No, I meant what I said. I suppose it just took an altered state for me to relax enough to actually say it instead of just thinking at you and assuming you would know. I must admit, its difficult for me to maintain this emotional honesty without feeling drunk, but it’s good. This is good.”
“Ah, that’s... wow. So you weren’t drugged? Cody was concerned you seemed to off for much you actually drank.”
Obi-Wan frowned. Hadn’t that been a trip? Vision blurring from desert hovel to some nameless Catina he once visited with Cody. The continuity since then was almost unsettling. But, then again, Obi-Wan always did have a remarkable talent for self-delusion, didn’t he. He waved away the concerns.
“My substance consumption was entirely deliberate and exactly what I needed. There might have been some unknown additions with some unforeseen after-affects, but like I said- I’m not drunk. I’m clear minded and in full control right now and I knowingly accept the current fallout from whatever I took. I could meditate and force purge to completely recenter, but I think it would be far wiser to just see where this goes. Do you disagree, Anakin?”
Anakin grinned widely. “Whatever you say, Obi-Wan. Just remember this is your idea. Also, I’m taking you to the healers tonight if you’re not completely back to yourself.”
Obi-Wan signed, “If I’m not back to myself in 12 hours, than I fully agree that’s a problem worthy of the halls of healing.”
“Right,” Anakin nodded decisively, “I’ll go get you some water then comm Cody to tell him you’re still alive.
Obi-Wan smiled weakly in response. This wasn’t just a hashed up memory; the responsiveness was more that. He quickly got dressed, hands lingering over soft fabrics and sand-free linens.
Anakin dropped off a cup of water; Obi-Wan sipped at it hesitantly. Dear force, this was dangerously vivid. It actually felt like a relief in his parched mouth. Clearly his subconscious was pulling out all the stops to trap him in this soft delusion. He would have to deal with the thirst and hunger until he woke up- it was probably the firmest link he had to his real body.
He took one last look around before rushing out of his room, eager to take advantage of the time.
Anakin looked nervously up from the comm when Obi-Wan started pulling his boots on. “You’re not going out in the temple like this, are you?”
“Of course! I want to visit the gardens and the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Not to mention spend some time with a few of the other Jedi. You might still be the dearest being in my heart, but there were other Jedi that I care for, and dammit I’m going to tell them that.” He finally finished lacing up his left leg and moved to the right.
Anakin was dumbstruck, presumably as burnt by the ‘dearest being’ comment as Obi-Wan was. Then he rallied, “Wow, wow, No. You are not running around the temple drugged so you can, I don’t know, give Mace Windu a hug. I thought when you said you were going to ‘deal with the fallout' from whatever the kriff you’re still on, you meant you were going to lounge around the quarters all day!”
His former padawan physically blocked the door when Obi-Wan started to leave, sounding vaguely hysterical, “You can’t run around loopy! You’re a High Council Member!”
“Not anymore,” Obi-Wan replied bitterly. 
“What do you mean not anymore,” Anakin said fiercely, grabbing on to his shoulders . “Did they kick you out? Is that why you’re acting crazy? Did you resign?”
Obi-Wan responded by pulling Anakin into a hug, which was immediately returned, “Of course not, don’t be absurd. Fine, I suppose I’m technically still a high council member, it just seems like a bit of a moot point.”
“What the kark does that mean? You used to dream about being on the council! You’re the wisest Master in any of those stupid chairs!”
‘Master of the High Council’ Kenobi just sighed heavily in response. He maneuvered around the confused errant Knight and into the hall. 
"Obi-Wan wait! At least eat something first! Or let me put my shoes on!”
“Very well, you have one minute to make yourself presentable. I only have a few hours before I’m going to need to get back to reality, and the longer I linger the more I fear extreme measures may be necessary.”
“What does that mean?” Anakin shouted from inside. “Extreme measures sounds really ominous, you know.”
“I’d rather not get into it, alright? Let’s just enjoy the here-and-now, eh, ad’ika?
Anakin crashed out the door with less than a second to spare. “What did you just call me?"
“Ad’ika,” Obi-Wan answered, striding down the hallway in the direction of the hanging gardens. “Surely you must have picked up some Mando’a from the troopers?”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t sure if I heard you right, bu- um- ori'vod,” Anakin fumbled out. “Uh, you’re not going to call me that in front of anyone else, right? You do remember that the council already gives us the side eye for over-attachment right?”
Obi-Wan hummed thought fully in responded. “There are far worse things a Jedi could do than admit to affection they already feel. Maybe if I had been honest about my attachments, they wouldn’t have ended the way that...” he trailed off quietly.
“The way that what,” Anakin asked frustrated. “You’re really giving me some emotional whiplash over here, and I’m starting to think that putting off dragging you to the healers is a stupid idea.
“There are far stupider things a Jedi could do,” he responded cheerily. “Oh look, there’s Plo Koon. MASTER KOON!” He shouted, startling the Kel Doran Jedi.
“Yes, Master Kenobi?” He replied slightly concerned as the two human Jedi came jogging over.
“I just wanted to say that I consider my former padawan my family. I raised him, I care for him deeply, and I don’t want to let go of those feelings.”
Plo Koon nodded seriously in response. “I feel just the same about my former padawans, and the Wolffe pack, of course. Denying my attachments isn’t, personally, a practical way to handle them. I’d rather honestly live as an imperfect Jedi than pretend to be a perfect example of the code. If I must have some imbalance, I’d rather it be an excess of compassion than a dearth,” he replied earnestly.
“I always admired that about you,” Obi-Wan replied ruefully. “This might be a little odd, but could I have a hug? I hold you in the highest regard and I’ve realized that there are so many Jedi that I never directly expressed my affection for and...”
Plo Koon didn’t wait for Obi-Wan to finish before wrapping his arms around him. “Of course, dear boy. You’ve had such heavy burdens placed on your shoulders during your life, especially in the last few years; it saddens me to see how deeply they’ve weighed you down. If there’s anything I can do to help, in any way, you simply have to ask.”
Obi-Wan sniffled slightly into Plo’s Shoulder while Plo rubbed soothing circles over his back.
A few passing Jedi gave the embracing Masters uncomfortable looks before hurrying on their way. Anakin stood slack-jawed.
When they finally pulled back, Plo Koon hesitated before finally asking, “I don’t mean to pry, but what brought all this on? I can sense much grief from you, even through your impressive shields.”
“It’s a long story,” Obi-Wan replied, wiping at the corner of his eyes. “I’d rather not get into it.”
“He’s high,” Anakin offered bluntly. “He took something last night and won’t go to medical wing.”
“Ah,” Plo said. “Is that true?”
Obi-Wan looked a little embarrassed. “I have the situation under control. My connection with reality might be...slightly altered right now, but my emotions, and what I chose to do with them are my own. I’m just, taking advantage of a unique opportunity to express myself.”
Plo Koon seemed to scrutinize him intensely, “If you’re sure this is what you need, than I support you. Just don’t do anything too foolish.” he finally offered.
Obi-Wan beamed. “I appreciate you saying so, I thought you would be supportive. Farewell, Master Koon”
Obi-Wan offered a respectful bow and then turned to walk away briskly. Before Anakin could follow, Plo rested a claw on his arm. 
“Feel free to comm me if his behavior reaches a point where you think he truly needs a healer. I’m happy to help you drag him there if need be. A little cathartic release isn’t in of itself such a bad thing, but if he starts acting too out of control...”
Anakin nodded in acknowledgment, then ran off to see who else Obi-Wan had chosen to throw himself at.
Part Four
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punkpresentmic · 3 years
Text
Traitor Aizawa AU Pt. 3 — 1, 2:
Shouta ran away in the middle of the night. When Hizashi woke up, it was to an empty bed, to fists pounding at their shared suite, to UA in lockdown. Hizashi was immediately forced outside & taken in for questioning.
Shouta had left Nezu a resignation letter, in his own unmistakable handwriting. It's blunt, concise, & it contains detailed descriptions & evidence of his betrayal. It makes no excuses for his actions & it does not discuss his motivations.
When Shouta visits that night weeks upon weeks later, he says nothing of the letter & nothing of his motivations. Shouta is silent as Hizashi sobs, dutifully keeping his Quirk erased as asked. It's been a pressure building on Hizashi for far too long, so when the dam breaks, there's no stopping it. It's an unwelcome but necessary catharsis—one he needs because of Shouta, one he can have because of him. Hizashi cries himself to sleep in his husband's arms.
& in the morning, again, he wakes up alone. It could have been a dream, but this time there's a note on his nightstand. It's painfully simple, the script rushed: I'm sorry I couldn't be here when you wake up. I'm sorry it has to be like this. I want to talk with you soon. I love you, Hizashi.
He should report this. Shouta betrayed UA, he's a wanted villain, & he expressed interest in taking Eri. Hizashi should turn in the letter.
Hizashi makes himself a coffee, & he sets the letter in front of him, & he stares at it blankly while the Sun rises slowly outside. The moment the light hits it, it's like the decision has made itself. Hizashi puts the letter through their paper shredder, tucks the pieces into his pocket, buys a muffin at a coffee shop, & throws half of them away in his napkin in one trash can, half of them in another down the road. He doesn’t tell a soul. Not Nemuri. Not Eri. Not Nezu.
He has to see Shouta again.
It’s two weeks before there’s another Shouta sighting. One day Hizashi comes home & senses the difference immediately. &, oddly, it's not a bad different. He knows exactly what it means. So, he takes off his gear in the entryway. Locks the door. Takes a few calming breaths before he calls into the apartment: “Honey, I’m home.”
He steps into the bedroom. Sure enough, Shouta is sitting on the bed.
Hizashi stops. He looks like shit. Exhausted, face sallow like he hasn’t been eating, eyes red & irritated like he hasn’t been using his eye drops. It occurs to Hizashi that his prescription probably ran out. He can remember the last time he picked up a bottle from the pharmacy; he’d teased Shouta about his 'special eyes' that regular eye drops don’t work on. “How did you know I was here.” His voice is rough too. Hizashi wants to offer him water, a meal, something. He hovers in the doorway.
“I’ve felt your absence since you left. Of course I know when it’s changed.”
Shouta says nothing. Hizashi relents slightly, asks him if he’s eaten. As expected, he gets a shake of the head. Hizashi turns on a heel, brings the both of them tea & leftover takeout. Shouta scrunches his eyebrows in confusion when Hizashi hands him what’s always Shouta’s order. Hizashi shrugs, nonchalant as if he didn’t take up ordering it after Shouta left. Shouta opens his mouth to speak, but Hizashi holds up a hand. “Eat.”
& they do, in silence. Shouta is positively ravenous. Hizashi has so many questions. So many questions. But he shares this strange meal with his husband, wordlessly offering Shouta what he doesn’t finish as well. Finally, Shouta clears his throat. “You didn’t tell anybody about me.”
Hizashi doesn’t have it in him to glare—to make any expression, really. It’s all very… heavy. Fragile. Ephemeral. Breakable. Dangerous. Wrong. Hizashi purses his lips. “You’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.”
He winces. "Hizashi, I wish I could tell you everything, but I can't."
Hizashi swallows the emotions that rise like bile in his throat, a potent mixture of fury & nausea. He has little control of what falls from his mouth. “You know, somebody referred to you as my ex the other day.”
Shouta’s expression is pained. He shakes his head & pulls his wedding ring out from its necklace tucked away as always in his ratty costume. Hizashi almost laughs. When Shouta commits to something, he commits fully, with his whole chest. It’s why so much of this doesn’t make any goddamn sense. It all threatens to choke him, but he laughs around the lump in his throat & shakes his head too, taking Shouta’s hand & squeezing hard to imprint the indent of the ring he put there into his palm. “It’s just not right, man.”
This time, Hizashi takes a page from Shouta’s book & bumps their foreheads together like a cat. Hizashi offers a watery smile. Shouta lets his eyes fall closed, inhales deeply. “I know it was too much to ask in my letter for you to believe that I'm still the person you believe me to be, but…” Hizashi freezes and pulls back, causing him to trail off.
“Shouta… what are you talking about?”
A flash of confusion, then fear crosses Shouta’s face. “The first letter I wrote to you. When I… When I left.” Shouta’s eyes search his for any sign of recognition, clearly troubled when he finds none. “I wrote everyone in my class letters. & Nezu. & Kayama. Hell, even Yagi—do you really think I wouldn’t face you of all—”
“—Shouta. None of those people received letters. Besides Nezu. I read your… resignation letter. Saw the evidence you laid out so logically for him. But I…” Hizashi’s blood suddenly grows cold. “Shou, the police took me down to the station that morning & searched the apartment. I didn’t think they took anything.” His breathing picks up. “They never told me anything about a letter—”
Shouta is barely breathing. Finally, after a long pause he swallows. “Nezu. Nezu must have found his first & arranged for a search & seizure. He would have extrapolated there were more.” He wipes a weary hand down his face, shaking his head. “You never… None of the students…” He covers his eyes, which must be aching. Hizashi has never been hesitant to offer physical reassurance to Shouta Aizawa, but he hesitates here & hates that he does. He pulls Shouta close with an arm over the shoulders.
“It’s alright,” he lies. Shouta knows. “We can talk now.”
So Shouta reiterates what was in the letter: what he’s done, how he loves him, how he wouldn't leave or do this without him if he had a choice, how he intends to return when this is settled, how in the meantime he would trust nobody else to watch over his students & Eri, how he needs Hizashi to trust that he is who Hizashi knows him to be.
“How am I supposed to be certain of that?” Hizashi whispers when he’s done.
It hurts him, Hizashi can see that. But all of this hurts. “I don’t know how to answer that.” They’re still holding hands. “But I want to,” he adds. “I want to prove it to you.”
“I want that too.”
There’s a tension in the air as they hover, faces close, uncertain if it would be okay to kiss each other. They think better of it, pull back with small sighs.
Instead, they discuss Eri. Shouta has been watching from afar when he can safely. He knew how she was struggling with her Quirk. He saw the doctor visits that hadn’t improved anything. He wanted to help. He also knew that he couldn’t sneak into UA forever, that the instant UA caught wind of it security would render it impossible & arrange for his capture. But if she’s with him, he can still help.
Hizashi shakes his head. “Shou, wherever you’ve been, it’s nowhere fit for a child. Your Quirk helps her, but her support network is here at UA. You were part of that network. & now you’re not. She is not leaving UA.”
Shouta shrinks, & after a moment he nods. He was always one to listen to reason. Hizashi, again, has to relent. As far as he can tell, Shouta only wants what’s best for her & it’s killing him not to be able to participate in that. So Hizashi elbows him lightly & pulls up pictures on his phone of all Eri has been up to lately, some of the students also making appearances. He leans Shouta onto his shoulder. It’s a tender moment. Almost normal. But all too soon it has to end. It’s not safe for Shouta to stay the night & there’s a certain window of time he has to catch to slip past security.
Shouta says he’ll return. He squeezes Hizashi’s hand as he goes to the window—the hand with his ring on it. Promises.
(pt. 4)
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