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fandom-necromancer · 2 years

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Fragile Peace

This was prompted by an amazing anon! I love Allen60 so much, thank you for prompting this! Enjoy!

Fandom: Detroit become human Ship: Allen60 Warnings: None

'I want to marry you.' Allen opened his sleep-heavy eyes and smiled. 'I know...' 'No, I mean I want to marry you like you want it.' 'What?' Allen was suddenly wide-awake and propped himself up on the elbow. 'For real?' Sixty grinned and kissed him on the nose. 'I want to marry you on the beach where you've planned it. I want to marry you with all your family and all your friends and that dog that doesn't like me. And you can tell everyone you want to that you will marry me.' Allen closed his eyes. 'Are you sure?', he asked, not quite believing what he’d heard. Sixty ruffled the bedsheets and cuddled closer to him. 'I am absolutely sure, sweetheart.' 'Sixty.' He hugged him and pressed him close to his chest. 'You made me the happiest person alive.'

This entire day at work Allen couldn't help but smile. He walked with a spring in his step and everything he did seemed to go easy off his hands. And every time something frustrated him, he just had to look over and see Sixty deep in some tactical evaluation and grin again. It was a big gesture of the android and Allen really appreciated it. Sixty, who had been adamant on keeping his very existence a secret. Special clauses on his contract with Fowler not to boast with him when it came to the workplace with the highest android percentage within law enforcement. For the outside world, the fifth precinct had two androids working as detectives, what happened with SWAT was something kept a secret on Sixty’s wishes.

It had been a dark day when Sixty had first told him why. ‘I can’t do this anymore’, he had said, holding onto his arms so hard it hurt. ‘Joseph, I just can’t.’ It had been a case gone wrong, a few radical androids demanding crimes against their people before the revolution should not be absolved. Of course, they were right, but at some point, you had to think if the peace between humans and androids they had fought for wasn’t too important than to lose it this way. They had taken innocent humans hostage feeling like their voices weren’t heard otherwise. And when negotiators couldn’t resolve the situation, SWAT was called. Tasked with freeing the hostages without casualties, things had escalated out of hand and shots had been fired. And it had hit Sixty hard, no matter how tough he usually was.

‘It was a horrible accident, Sixty’, Allen had tried to comfort him. ‘No one told them to open fire. It’s horrible, but we had to defend ourselves.’ Sixty had pushed his hands away then. ‘You don’t understand!’, he shouted, jumping from their bed and turning away. ‘There is always a choice! There is always a decision.’ His anger had left him as quickly as his strength and he sat back down on the bed. ‘I know how it was to not have a choice and I didn’t feel that way back there.’ ‘Is this about your past?’, Allen had asked carefully. ‘You don’t have to tell me, but I can keep a secret if it helps you to talk about it.’ ‘It’s between me and Connor’, he hummed, worrying his fingers. Then he stood up and let himself fall back on the bed next to Allen. He leaned against him and the human put his arm around the android. ‘I threatened to shoot Hank. I threatened to shoot Connor. My mission was to stop the revolution. And back at Cyberlife tower I had no agency. I was so hell bent on killing them and at the same time it felt natural. It was a mission, I didn’t have to think about wrong or right or how it would feel for me or them. I was just a tool. That’s how you feel when you don’t have a choice. Like someone else made it for you and you could do nothing but follow.’ ‘It’s not your fault’, Allen had tried to fill the silence.

‘But is it?’, Sixty asked. ‘Deviancy is a thing. If I had felt like the mission was wrong, I could have tried to disobey. Maybe it would have worked. But I didn’t try, Joseph.’ Allen had never liked his first name. But hearing it back then, spoken by his boyfriend, his love and said with such a meaning… ‘You couldn’t have known. You told me you weren’t activated long before the revolution.’ ‘Allen, I could have tried, still. I could have tried and I feel guilty about it ever since. I swore myself to never ever not try again. Now I know what’s right and what’s wrong and I know how it feels if you truly have no choice. Today I had the choice to shoot and I did it despite knowing it was wrong. I will quit, I can’t do this. Never again.’

Allen sighed and turned to put both his arms around the android to pull him close. Sixty had gladly accepted it and since then Allen had never seen the android this desperate. ‘Sixty, I understand how you feel. I also had my fair share of mistakes in my life. Things I regret and that haunt me to this day. Things I did as a rookie under a corrupt boss, who let the gang leaders go if they paid him enough and why I still think he is the sole reason we have such a big problem with Red Ice now. I know how it feels and if you truly can’t live with this, I fully support you.’

‘How do you cope?’, Sixty had asked then and Allen couldn’t forget to this day how vulnerable he had sounded then. ‘How can you still work in the field?’ ‘I think of the good I have done since I learned from my mistakes’, Allen said. ‘And if that is not enough I remind myself that if I quit, someone else, who might not have these qualms will follow in my footsteps and won’t quit when faced with what I’ve seen. Someone else might not feel bad about taking blood money or will take this job for a chance to kill and get away with it. And I don’t want that.’ Sixty stayed silent after that, but after half a year, Sixty was still working as his partner, so maybe his words had helped him. ‘Is that why you don’t want to be recognised?’, Allen had asked after Sixty’s artificial breathing program had stopped, a sign he was finally relaxing again to have the capacity to suppress “useless programs”. ‘Yes’, the android nodded and buried his head under Allen’s chin. ‘I’m the android who nearly ended our freedom. Doesn’t matter if I was controlled by others, it’s still a blemish I have on my soul and can’t wash away just yet, if ever. I want to do good, to make things better. The people who I trust know and they can make their own picture of me based on my actions. Everyone else doesn’t have to know and wouldn’t understand.’

It had been a conversation Allen wouldn’t forget and all the more he was happy about Sixty opening up. So far, he had told his parents that he lived together with his boyfriend, who he had met at work. And each time they had wanted to meet him, Allen had told them they would when the time was right and that his partner was extremely shy. Allen had wanted nothing more than to share him with everyone, to tell everyone how perfect he was with pride in his chest. But he had always thought the wedding to be something very private, just for them both. And he would have arranged it and it would have been amazing, but knowing Sixty wanted to do something bigger was the biggest gift the android could have given him.

Allen was still smiling to himself when it was time to go home. He left his office and frowned when he couldn’t find the android. ‘Hey, have you seen Sixty?’, he asked one of his colleagues. ‘Oh, he went out half an hour ago. Told me to tell you he had some errands to run and that he will meet you at home.’ The SWAT Captain furrowed his brows. ‘And he doesn’t tell me that himself?’ ‘Maybe it’s a surprise boss’, his colleague teased with a knowing wink. Allen rolled his eyes. Yeah, right, him smiling all day and the whole team knowing exactly what was going on between them both really was a bad combination.

Still, he drove home with a weird feeling in his guts. It was likely nothing, but Sixty would have told him if he was out to get something. A short text or something, if not telling him in person. Except it really was a surprise, who knew? But another one after the one in the morning? Unlikely.

He made it at home for exactly three hours until his gut feeling didn’t let him stay idle any longer. He called Sixty countless times, all of them were answered by an automatic status answer that the unit wasn’t available. What meant that either Sixty had switched off his network, he was in stasis or he was forcefully deactivated. Allen just couldn’t find any more excuses that calmed his paranoia.

He drove back to the precinct to see if anyone had seen him since and if not retrace his steps. But he didn’t even have to get to his office; he had just entered the police building as he saw people flocking around the TV in the breakroom. ‘Captain Allen! Thank god you are here!’ He was about to give the person his attention, but then his eyes fell on something very familiar on the screen. Famous RK800 “Connor” hostage of anti-android group. The line was the first he read, jumping to a picture of Connor, then over to the reporter. He frowned, when he saw Connor standing in the front row and then, suddenly all fell into place.

No one out there knew Sixty even existed. To them, there were three RKs: Markus, Connor and Nines. ‘Allen, we couldn’t reach you, Sixty is-‘ Sure, they couldn’t reach him because he was calling Sixty nonstop instead of acting. ‘They send us their demands and where to meet for the exchange, but-‘ Sixty was with an anti-android group, off the net. What would they do to him? ‘They’ve sent their demands to the press long before we knew anything, this was planned.’ Allen felt his heart beating in his chest, making up for his frozen body.

‘What do they want?’ The overall mumbling died down. Everyone knew they were close. ‘They don’t want androids in law-enforcement’, Connor answered, turning away from the television. ‘They demand me and Nines to step down as the first of all androids like us. They think we won’t treat humans and androids equally. As the majority of citizens is still human, they want human police and humans to judge them. Allen looked down. ‘And I guess we’ve already stated we won’t accept demands?’ Connor shook his head. ‘We heading out. I’m Connor, they have someone else. And I’m the negotiator, maybe I can set things right.’ Allen almost commented on how well that had worked before, but something more pressing came to his mind. ‘Connor, you can’t tell them who Sixty is.’ ‘What? That is our best chance of saving him. Show them how human judgement can be false first-hand. If we meet their demands, androids will be back on the streets. The peace is fragile enough as it is so soon after everything.’ He placed a hand on Allen’s arm that felt so familiar it hurt. ‘Sixty would understand, I’m sure. Surely he would value his life over something that happened a year ago he thinks is his fault.’

‘I don’t think so’, Allen disagreed. ‘Connor, Sixty only started opening up with this. If you unmask him in front of everyone on the news, he will go into hiding, maybe forever.’ ‘Then what would you have me do?’, the other RK800 asked exasperated. ‘Tell me how to get him out of there without harm in any other way and I’m listening.’ Allen sighed, pressing his eyes close. It was a desperate try; he was no negotiator. He was only good with words when he knew the person and his experience was next to none. But Connor’s idea would hurt Sixty at the core and Allen didn’t want to see him at his lowest ever again. ‘Let me speak with them.’

‘Are you serious?’, Connor asked. ‘If this goes wrong, we don’t just risk Sixty but an uprising from either side.’ ‘You have to understand, I am compromised in this. I only truly care for my partner, but I’m aware of the risk. Just please, as someone who knows how Sixty blames himself still, please, let me talk to them first.’ Connor was thinking it all over and Allen was sure he would disagree. He had already readied more arguments and he wasn’t above resorting to begging. But then the android answered: ‘Fine. Talk to them. Just please, you have to solve this without any blood spilled, else everything we achieved in the last year was for nothing.

It was on the ride over to the location of the meeting, that Allen realised he had no idea what to say to them. Connor could have analysed the situation and said whatever increased the chances of them agreeing to the deal. He on the other side would have to rely on his social skills. What was a real problem when everything he could talk was either work or his heart speaking.

In the end he stood at the entrance of a deserted shopping mall, thinking this was the perfect place for an ambush. His experience told him this was also their hideout, likely close to a different exit. Surround the building and they would find them. And Sixty. But Connor was right in one aspect: Any violence against this group would cause others like them to take action or at least be fortified in their opinion. This had to go smoothly.

His steps echoed in the empty, dim-lit mall. Several levels made it difficult to keep the whole place under observation and with the empty shops to both sides with dirty storefronts and no lights inside, they could come from everywhere. But then he heard more steps joining his own and the silhouette of two men and a woman. ‘No weapons?’, one of them asked with a rough voice. ‘No weapons’, Allen nodded and lifted his hands up. ‘Are you alone?’ ‘I kept my promise, other than you, as I see.’ ‘You can’t trust cops.’ ‘I’m sorry you think that way.’

‘Stop with the chit-chat’, the woman demanded. ‘If you want your pretty-boy back, all androids at the police have to step down. That’s our condition.’ Allen swallowed but forced himself to be calm. ‘We can talk about that once I know Connor is safe and well.’ ‘First you-‘ But the man behind them gestured her to stay quiet, before stepping forwards. ‘That’s only fair’, he said softly. ‘We’re no monsters. And we are not blind either, we know androids are alive and persons.’

He came closer, lifting up a phone. ‘Here he is, you can talk to him, the video is live.’ ‘Connor?’, he spoke as he accepted the phone. ‘Can you hear me?’ ‘Joseph?’ ‘Yes, it’s me. How are you?’ The video showed Sixty in a small room, likely for maintenance equipment. He wasn’t restrained in any way, but Allen guessed the door to the room was heavily guarded. ‘I’m okay, I’ve been threatened with a gun, but otherwise they left me alone. What’s happening?’ Allen sighed in relief. ‘I’m talking to your captors. You’ll be back home tonight, don’t you worry.’

‘Okay, that’s enough’, the woman said and reached for the phone. ‘Now to our conditions. Do you agree?’ Allen scratched his neck. ‘I’ll be real with you, I don’t think we can accept that.’ ‘I knew it, we shouldn’t have-‘ ‘Not without understanding your reasoning’, Allen stressed. ‘We can talk about this. If we disagreed to begin with, this place would already be swarming with SWAT or the military. So let’s talk. Why do you want them gone?’

The man in the back spoke up again: ‘As I said, we are aware androids are persons. And as persons they make mistakes. Like being biased in human-android crime. That’s why humans should investigate other humans. This soon after the revolution androids would always side with other androids, no matter what they did. Killing a human would always be self-defence, no matter the actual motive.’ ‘You are aware, it’s the same the other way around’, Allen argued. ‘I would say quite a lot of people still think of androids as machines or at the very least as someone that would always side against them. A human attacking an android could be ruled as self-defence by a human just as likely as in your example the android would side with its kind.’

‘Sure, and androids are so much more objective’, the woman grunted sarcastically. ‘Come on, he’s clearly one of those robot-lovers.’ ‘I agree neither party is objective nor right. That’s why it’s important to have both sides on the team, best even if partnered. So sides are seen and heard.’ ‘Sure and if the human partner disagrees with the android he’s the racist.’ ‘And if the android disagrees with the human, he’s the deviant that hates us’, Allen held against it. ‘Listen, if androids hated us all, the revolution wouldn’t have been peaceful. They had the knowledge and power to fight, to overrun us. But that didn’t happen.’ ‘There are always individuals’, the man in the front grumbled. ‘And that’s enough to damn the entire people?’, Allen asked. ‘Listen, it’s not just that. You are so hell-bent on seeing the world divided in androids and humans. If we agree to your conditions it will be again. If androids step down from their jobs, others will rise up to protest against it. Humans will answer the accusations in turn. It could lead to another December ‘38. I seriously doubt that’s in anyone’s interest.’

‘Well, if we just hand your android over, we’ll be arrested for nothing and others who share our beliefs will follow with more extreme measures’, the one in the back said. ‘We could meet in the middle’, Allen suggested. ‘Instead of banning one part from the force, say human-android crime always has to be investigated by a human and an android. You would get the justice you seek, androids have no reason to protest and human-siding groups would see that one can have progress without violence.’

‘Your words are nice and all’, the woman said. ‘But who knows you follow through on them?’ ‘You have to trust me on that, unfortunately’, Allen shrugged. ‘But I promise you, I’ll personally see that it will be brought up. And if I don’t do it, people will feel cheated and resort to something like this again. I want my colleague back safe and sound. It’s in both our interest.’ The three turned to each other and wordlessly exchanged looks. ‘Get it to the press’, the man in front ordered then. ‘Tell the press you agreed on a change in how android-human crimes will be investigated. Once we see it on TV, we will let Connor go.’ ‘Okay. I’ll have to go make a few calls.’

Allen’s knees were close to buckling when he went outside and towards the waiting police car. ‘You heard all of that, Connor?’, he asked into the earpiece. ‘Yes’, came the immediate answer. ‘Fowler already writes the press release. He tries his best not to sound too much like we gave in to kidnappers’ conditions and more like it was our own idea. Is Sixty save?’ ‘If they keep their word, yes.’ ‘They will’, Connor said. ‘They won, after all. Good job by the way. You could join the negotiators here.’ Allen shook his head, knowing the close bench was his saviour. ‘No, I couldn’t. How the hell do you do this? I just want Sixty back.’ ‘You will. Give it time.’

Allen gave it time. He waited on the bench in front of the mall, refreshing the same three news-sites on his phone on repeat. Then, finally, the headline appeared he had been waiting for. Police agrees to reform investigation policy. That was all he needed. He stood up and turned around, anxiously waiting for them to keep their word.

Sixty came out running. The android smashed into his front hugging him and not planning on letting go anytime soon. ‘Joseph! RA9, I’m so happy to see you.’ ‘Sixty, you know the news drones are probably recording you now? Connor wouldn’t hug me.’ ‘Don’t they know it anyways?’ ‘No’, Allen hummed, gently caressing him. ‘No, Connor wanted to come but I went for him. Everyone thinks Connor was kidnapped and no one knows you exist.’ Sixty almost went slack in his arms. ‘That’s a relief.’ ‘Well, if you continue like this, they will ask questions.’ ‘I really don’t care. Let’s just please go home and never leave the bed again.’

‘Fine with me.

#detroit become human #dbh #Allen60 #Captain Allen #RK800-sixty #sixty #sixty dbh #Wow the trains are a mess sorry for being late

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legends-live-in-memories · 3 years

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I Have Too Many Opinions. ep. 1

lmao. i got encouragement to post my opinions on fandom things and now i want to make a miniseries doing just that. so here i am. doing just that.

im putting it under the cut cuz this was 4 whole pages including the disclaimer. yes i put a disclaimer and i explain why.

Anyways, here is the first piece in what inevitably will become fandom info dump, this time on thomas astruc’s writing on miraculous ladybug. but only some of my opinions cuz we would be here all day otherwise.

So… a disclaimer before I begin…

I do not hate Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir (yes i'm using their government name). I am quite a fan of the show actually despite its faults. I am also older than the intended audience but was obviously younger when the show first aired which is how my interest was piqued (the fact that its been 6 years and only 3 seasons says more about the show than me being a fan for that amount of time but also i never want to rush content creators cuz they're doing their best) and due to my age, there will be inherent bias in my approach of what i'm about to say as there is in EVERY opinion. The fact that it is an opinion should imply the presence of bias but most people tend to lack the critical thinking skills required to draw that conclusion ANYWAYS…

If I did hate the show I would not have this blog nor would I be even writing this because i tend to not give more than 2 seconds of thought to things i actively dislike (some of yall should give this a try) and i'm allowed to like things that are designed for an audience that i was originally a part of but grew out of. (I don't suddenly stop liking things because I'm older despite what many younger fans seem to believe about older audiences. I also don't need to be ‘allowed’ to do anything cuz i wasn't asking for permission anyways.)

This will not be character bashing, astruc bashing nor fandom bashing cuz, again, that would imply i hate any of those elements and if i did, i would not dedicate brainpower to them. Analyses and criticisms of media are fun and engaging and required if you wish to produce good enjoyable content. Now most of this should be already assumed and self-explanatory but people on the internet like to play morality roulette roll dice on purity culture and I rather have documentation that I am in fact not bullying fictional 14 year olds or a grown man. But alas, people get trigger happy whenever someone has less than 1000000% positive opinions on something they like and will throw out words they can't define (gaslight, baiting, toxic, problematic, gatekeep etc) in an attempt to defend their blind devotion,

which is not needed, if you like something you never have to defend it, even if i don't like it. If you respond to anything I post saying you disagree with me, I will not argue with you. I won't debate back and forth and try to convince you that the things you like are wrong. Unless you are being absolutely tone deaf to what i'm saying, you wont get a negative reaction from me. So don't try to fish for a fight. Please. I got metaphorical hands for days and I'm mean, you don't want me hurting your feelings on the internet. Do yourself the favour. Difference of opinion is how we get diversification in media and is inherently a good thing. Now that that's out of the way, please don't ever let me have to say that again. I beg.

Now onto the fun stuff

I didn't know what I wanted as a first topic so my trusty internet friend @moonlitceleste suggested astruc’s writing…

AND BOI do i got some opinions on ole tommy boi. Again I don't hate the dude. In fact, he has worked on a few shows that had defined my childhood, including but not limited to W.I.T.C.H. (all eps available on youtube for those interested, 2 seasons, general fun time all around).

So I don't think he’s scum of the earth but I do think his approach to writing mlb specifically has more misses than hits.

The first big miss is that he has no idea how to write 14 year old girls. At all. Almost every girl he has ever written feels like some terrible archetype built entirely for marketability and childish projection and pubescent self-insert (kind of). He has never been a 14 year old girl. I have. In fact when the show first aired, I WAS around the (assumed) age of the mlb characters. The behaviour he passes off as quirky or awkward or just the character’s genuine personality tend to perpetuate harmful stereotypes of teen girls found in the media and are never actually addressed as harmful. they just get swept under the rug. Marinette’s exuberant collage of teen heart throb model boi Adrien Agreste and her very painful almost fan worship she has of him (which flip flops like a paper sandal in the rain) being portrayed as a cute school girl crush uwu, Chloe being the y7 Regina George, Alya being the token best friend of colour with her ‘sassy’ personality (i want y'all to imagine me eyerolling so hard i bust a vessel in my eye), Kagami being the very damaging Perfect Asian Child stereotype. And before y'all get on your dusty soap box and defend going on about “BUT IT'S FOR CHILDREN”,,,, know this.

i don’t give a solid fuck.

Not one.

Children arent stupid. Children are always going to remember the richy bitchy blonde who bullies the art kid, and the big kid, and the shy kid, and the non white kids, and was only nice to her equally rich white friend who she probably had a crush on or was only ever civil to her equally white lapdog. They're going to remember the half asian girl who was never allowed to actually be asian or the only black girl who existed solely as a soundboard for enabling bad habits or chastising the main character for the same habits she enables in the first place (boi aint THAT a topic for later). Like do i really need to explain that alya chastising marinette for taking max’s spot in gamer just to play with adrien rings absolutely hollow when she actively encourages her to sabotage the contest she’s in just so Kagami doesn't win?? Like I don't have to explain that right?? Again kids arent stupid and its quite something that Mari gets chastised for proving herself the best video game player regardless of her intentions just cuz it comes at the expense of max’s feelings/ego but is actively encouraged to sabotage not only kagami but herself by extension cuz kagami is ‘competition.’ Adrien is not a trophy to be won. And no I don't expect 14 yrs old to be perfect and to always make good decisions but these decisions are never addressed as being bad decisions. they get swept under the rug cuz those decisions were necessary for the ‘plot’ but astruc can barely keep characterization consistent and his characters suffer for it and it's the same children you preach are watching it that suffer as well. Cuz guess what? I KNOW 14 yr olds aren't like that cuz i've been there done that (this is the last time i'm saying that i promise) so I know astruc is just metaphorically throwing darts to figure out who says and does what without consideration for pre established personalities to drive the stalemate plot along. The same kids you say are watching this don't know that that's not how preteens work and will absorb and internalize those dynamics like baking soda and vinegar. Cata-fucking-strophically.

And I haven't even gotten to the boys yet. Which honestly doesn't require much explanation anyways cuz they suffer the same fate as the girls. Tired archetypes with nothing to give them life. Nino falls into Adrien’s person of colour token best friend who dates the female lead’s person of colour token best friend so they can have cute double dates uwu. Except the plot goes nowhere and we have no inclination of romantic development beyond moments that only act to actively convince me to anti ship the lovesquare (i don't want to do that so i self indulge in fanon that actually cares about the characters and plot. may i interest you in True Sight on AO3?). Max is the residential nerd but it doesn't matter (cuz he and everyone are dumbed down for the sake of ‘plot’), kim is the sports jock (which interestingly subverts the asian comedic relief stereotype but only barely) and luka is cute older guy ™ that wears black nail polish and is in a band. The point of all this is to say there is no depth in the characters. It's especially blatantly obvious with the characters astruc doesn't like (chloe). Again, it being a show for kids is not an excuse to be absolved of putting effort into the characters you make.

This is one of the biggest misses astruc has. I haven't even gone into all the nuances of this particular miss. And i havent gone into how that works against him in the plot either. Mostly because the plot itself hasn't gone anywhere and partially because I wanted to go into the plot (or lack thereof) separately as its own miss.

AND BOI is it a miss.

SO home boy astruc wanted to reap the benefits of a serial show with ‘engaging’ plot without putting in any of the work to make a linear storyline and relying on the episodic format for, again, marketability. You can't have the best of both worlds, you are not Avatar: The Last Airbender. Which btw has a lot less episodes and a desired end goal that didn't involve top dollar. Legend of Korra did but that's not the point and it had its failings with that too. I challenge you, tell me how many episodes actually contribute towards a plot point or introduce new thematic elements to the show? Can you name them? I can and I'm going to include the plot points that moved the story in some direction if only temporarily. Yes only temporarily for some of these and i will explain later. (if you're in the server you already saw this list *wink*)

25/26. Origins- self explanatory, the beginning of the story,

24. Volpina- introduction of the grimoire and Master Fu (kind of) and no, Lila is not a plot point,

28. The Collector- proper introduction of Master Fu,

37. Sapotis- introduction of Rena Rouge,

41. Syren- introduction of new aquatic power ups,

44. Anansi- introduction of Carapace,

47. Frozer- introduction of new ice power ups,

48/49. Style Queen- introduction of Queen Bee,

51/52. Heroes’ Day- introduction of Mayura and mass akumatization,

66. Startrain- introduction of Pegasus,

67. Kwami Buster- Marinette wears multiple miraculouses,

68. Feast- backstory as to how the miraculouses were lost,

69. Ikari Gozen- introduction of Ryuko,

70. Timetagger- introduction of Bunnyx,

71. Party Crasher- introduction of Roi Singe and Viperion,

73. Chat Blanc- alternate timeline that essentially means nothing but got a reaction out of fans anyways (myself included)

77/78. Love Eater/Battle of Miraculous- Marinette becomes guardian and other heroes lose their miraculous,

New York Special- other heroes exist and there is an American miraculous box,

That's 21 episodes. 21 out of a heaping 78 plus 2 specials. Everything else was just your typical akuma of the day episode and everything that happened outside that had no lasting consequences on the plot thanks to the miraculous status quo. Was it entertaining to watch Lila stir the plot of the class dynamic? Hell yeah. Too bad it meant nothing by the end of the episode cuz we were struck with miraculous status quo. She literally doesn't appear again until Heroes Day. that is from episodes 25 all the way to 51, she means nothing and yet she is treated with the severity of a b-villain/rival thing. She means nothing by the end of Volpina if I'm being honest. She is only relevant for 20 mins of episode time she’s in then it's back to magic status quo that undoes any shift in dynamics and relationships. It's like Spongebob who can't get his driver’s license. The worst part is I actually like Lila and I wish the story treated her with the seriousness we as an audience are expected to treat her with. Despite being painfully inconsequential by the end of each of the 3?? 4?? episodes she’s in, it's entertaining to watch a character create drama just because.

Too bad it means nothing.

Astruc is constantly building up suspense to something ‘important’ only for it to not deliver and fans are constantly having the rug pulled out from under us. Oblivio teased us with a reveal only that gets undone cuz memory akuma. Chat Blanc teased us with romantic development but that gets undone cuz time travel bullshit. Feast introduced more miraculous lore and the history of the guardians but that means nothing by the next episode or ever (i'm not including any reference to the season 4 trailer cuz i've been around the block a few times and im familiar with this lil dancy dance). Heroes Day teased us with a possible future team of heroes but that gets undone in Battle of Miraculous cuz ????? why?? (here's why; astruc was having a jolly ole time letting us know how irredeemable Chloe is at the expense of shooting his own stagnant plot in the foot. Again, discussion for later.)

Too bad anything that slightly swerves off course from the akuma of the day gets undone or ignored. Too bad nothing has any lasting consequence. I mean, if anything did, the episodes would have had a consistent order and release schedule so im not scrambling to watch the leaked ep in Portuguese or something while the french dub is two episodes behind while the english version hasnt even been dubbed. I really wonder how he plans to conclude the show when he’s so afraid to step out of the corner he painted himself in.

Again, not going into nuances. If you want you can ask for more specifics (i doubt anyone would) but this is really just a slightly detailed general overview of my opinions on astruc’s writing.

I was going to include another miss in his approach to this show but imma save that for another time.

How’s that for a ‘first’ post?

#mlb #opinions my guy opinions #i dont wanna tag this as salt #but mlb criticisms and analyses #IHTMO #the hashtag for this series #thomas astruc #miraculous fandom #miraculous ladybug #miraculous: tales of ladybug and cat noir #yes the government name again #come get yall juice #miraculous

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equalseleventhirds · 4 years

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quick disclaimer before fic: this is not meant to excuse or absolve melanie and georgie of outing jon; what they did was wrong and they should not have done it. instead it is an... examination of a character who is Maybe working some things out but, due to Internalized Issues, is harshly rejecting it both for herself and other people. (i’m aware i wrote something with the exact same FUCKING premise back when i was in the sh*rl*ck fandom dear god don’t read that linked fic it is from a deeply shameful time of fandom i only linked it as proof i did the same thing before. almost like i’m still working through the same stuff via writing fanfiction. hm.) (further discussion on THAT in post-fic notes; i wanted to keep it under the cut for personal reasons.)

furthermore: warning for discussion of sex (but not explicit depictions of sex), characters experiencing aphobia both internalized and not, mention of sexism wrt jobs, characters outing other characters without their consent (more than once, and more than just jon), and mention of consensual but unwanted sex (as in, consent was given, but the consenter did not enjoy it, and consented due to expectations).

- - -

It starts with: “I don’t, I, I usually can’t—Lately. I mean. Lately I can’t.” Melanie shuts her eyes so she won’t have to see Georgie, her hand on the sheets, judgment questions in her eyes. “Since I got—shot. It’s more difficult, is all.”

“Melanie—”

“You can still try,” she says, the words falling too fast, too panicked. “If you want, sometimes other people—and it’s fine! I’m always, it’s fine to try. Sometimes I do. I just might not. You know.”

“You might not orgasm,” Georgie finishes for her. It’s hard to tell how she’s feeling about it—until her fingers brush Melanie’s chin, turning her face up.

Reluctantly, Melanie opens her eyes, and then she’s glad she did. Because Georgie’s smiling, not a mocking smile, gentle. And they said this was just, just casual, just between friends (there’s too much going on with ghosts and the Institute and Georgie’s ex sleeping on her couch when he isn’t being kidnapped for it to be more than that), but Melanie’s glad Georgie is smiling.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Georgie says. She’s sitting up now, not lying almost-not-quite between Melanie’s legs anymore. She looks gorgeous, naked and cross-legged on that horrible mattress with a microfiber sheet wrapped around her shoulders, and Melanie wants to curl up in the sheet with her and eat the leftover pizza from earlier and fall asleep together with grease on their hands.

No. Focus. “It’s okay,” Georgie says again, gentler. “If you can’t right now. If you don’t want to. You certainly gave me a lovely orgasm—”

“—or three—”

“—yes, thank you, and if you’d rather just call it there, I’m not pushing it. As long as you enjoyed yourself.” She frowns, suddenly, glancing down at Melanie’s hands. “You… did enjoy yourself? I hope we didn’t—”

“I did!” She always does, when it’s other people coming, when she gets to be touching warm skin and watching someone fall apart. It’s… nice. “It’s just, you know. I got shot.”

(And isn’t that a convenient excuse, she sneers in her own head, and it sounds like Toni refusing to come back to the team, it sounds like the most sarcastic videos about her breakdown, it sounds like Elias. Isn’t it convenient that now you can blame your little problem on blood flow, or nerve endings, or stress. Never mind that you didn’t have those excuses a year ago. Or two years. Or back when you had a real girlfriend, and you always said yes but she got tired before—)

Georgie tucks a strand of hair behind Melanie’s ear. “Okay, good. If we, you know, try this again sometime? If you’re feeling better? Then I can try.” She stops, licks her lips, watches Melanie’s expression. “Or I can… not try, if you’d still prefer that. Later. You know. If.”

“I’m not—” And she’s rushing again, always rushing, she doesn’t even know if she and Georgie will ever—

“No, I know! It’s fine! But like—Look, this isn’t exactly new for me, you know? If that’s something you want. Something you don’t want. Or I, I’m saying it’s not a problem, if you do or don’t want me to make you come in the future, or even if you don’t want to have sex at all, I mean, when we were dating Jon didn’t—”

That’s where Georgie stops, as if talking about Jon is too much, as if she hasn’t been speaking Melanie’s secret insecurities out loud in bed like it’s something they can talk about, as if all of this hasn’t already been too much and too terrifying already.

Melanie stands up, grabs the comforter as a makeshift cloak (because Georgie has the sheet, and suddenly she isn’t sure she wants to share the sheet with her). “Right.”

“I’m just—I have a friend. Who you might talk to, if you wanted to talk about this.”

She steps away from the bed, towards the door. “Sure. Pizza? I’m hungry.”

The problem is, Melanie doesn’t much like Jon. He was such a dick about the Youtube thing, and about her statement, and about Sasha. And even though she knows (sort of) that part of it hadn’t been his fault, she still isn’t going to talk over her disinterest in sex with him. It’s mortifying. Even if he wasn’t her boss. And Georgie’s ex. And currently out of the Archives, anyway.

But she wants to talk to somebody, about Georgie’s words running around and around and around her head, about the sheer panic mixing with almost-relief and then the visceral no no no churning low in her stomach that had made it a struggle just to choke down her pizza. She wants to ask someone is this normal, am I allowed, is it even enough to be halfway to ‘not at all’ or should I just suck it up. She wants to talk that out desperately.

It’s just… she doesn’t have many friends left, after her whole fall from Youtube ghost hunter grace. She’s not going to ask Georgie about it, any more than Jon, although for pretty much the opposite reason. Who’s left? Her shiny new coworkers? Tim, who seethes and hates everything and everyone in the Archives? Martin, who’s still upset that Jon so much as spoke to her while he was on the run? Basira?

When Melanie met Sasha—the real Sasha, the one apparently no one but her even remembers—she’d been the only woman in the Archives. And Melanie had chatted with her about haunted pubs, and maximizing SEO, and how to talk to people who’d seen a white dog while they were drunk and thought it was a ghost. And about their jobs, of course, which led to both of them scoffing about the sexist bullshit of academia and how someone like Sasha could be just an assistant and the only woman on her team.

And then Elias hired Melanie to replace… the thing that replaced Sasha. Hired another woman to replace the only woman. You learn to see patterns from the kind of person who might say diversity the same way as toilet plunger: something necessary, but distasteful. Melanie was filling a role he needed filled, and she could live with that.

And then Basira.

Who wasn’t there because she wanted to be, of course, but was still there. Was still another woman in the boy’s club of terror they’d apparently signed on for. Could maybe, maybe, be someone Melanie could connect with. Someone she could talk to.

Maybe.

“Do you know if he and Jon ever…?”

“No clue, and not interested!” She’s laughing, about to just dismiss it out of hand, but… maybe. She can feel the questions she never asked Georgie, the words sharpening their claws on the edges of her mind. The no, not me, not allowed sinking in her gut.

“Although…” Make it light. Make it interesting. Make it about someone else. How to hook an audience without having a public breakdown and becoming a— “According to Georgie, Jon… doesn’t.”

It feels wrong as soon as she says it. Like she’s dirty. Like she’s lying. Like a thousand eyes are looking at her, watching her, waiting for more. Make it a story. Engage your audience. Like it’s 2013 in a convention hotel room and Pete just told everyone Don’t worry, Mel likes girls actually, and even though they were all fine about it that moment of sharpshock terror in her throat as they all looked—

“Like, at all?”

The one thing she never learned was how to stop talking. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, that does explain some stuff.”

And that’s… it, really. That does explain some stuff. Jon is a dick, has always been a dick, overfocused on work and not on other people, and that does explain some stuff. Right. Yes. Like her last girlfriend had told her, about all you do is work, I can’t even get you off. An explanation, just like she always knew it would be.

It doesn’t really matter. She has a boss to go kill.

“I think,” she says, slow, like every word is being dragged out of her, “that I might not like. Sex. As much as, you know, people do.”

“You’re a person,” her therapist says, firm, and she has to bite back a sarcastic laugh.

“Right. ‘Course.”

- - -

post-fic notes: i myself personally have previously identified as: heteroromantic gray-ace, heteroromantic ace, aroace, aro gray-ace, aro bi, bi, arospec bi, aro bi again, and aro bi but sex ambivalent. part of that has been natural progression and change; part of that was bcos some people i considered friends got very into aphobic discourse, and i internalized a lot of what they said. in recent months i have been examining my sex ambivalence (sometimes repulsion) and considering what that means about whether or not i am on the ace spectrum. i’m still thinking about these things. i’m still, deep down inside, afraid of the aphobic people i respected and cared about hearing about this.

in part i wrote this to work through some of My Own Shit regarding this. in part i wrote this bcos i will get my grubby little aspec hands (bcos regardless of anything else, i am aspec, whether that’s ace or aro) on every character i can. yes, even the ones who did an objectively shitty thing to jon, the one canonical ace character. bcos sometimes people (like me) internalize things and make mistakes.

#absolutely not beta'd or britpicked or even edited much #i needed to get this out and now it's late but i'm WORKING THROUGH SOME STUFF #uhhhh ambiguous ending about melanie's like! decisions! identity! feelings!#ambiguous if she or georgie EVER talk to JON #nothing is resolved! nothing is fucking good and light and happy! it's all MESSY #it's also so long i'm so sorry but melanie spent a lot of time looking at georgie and then a lot in emotional turmoil so like #what can ya do.#anyway. fuck it. posting a thing.#fanfiction #algie writes things #the magnus archives #hopefully i have rambled long enough this doesn't get maintagged sry if it does ignore me i needed this for ME #and i guess like. i do want other ppl to read it. but i do not want to maintag it. u kno how it is.#NOW WITH EDITING

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laufire · 4 years

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Roswell NM 2x05

My thoughts of this episode could basically be summed up on “Extremely Mixed Feelings” lmfao.

Let’s start with Rosa, obviously. Gosh, I adore her. ADORE her. She feels so lively and real and colourful among... well, everything and everyone else xD. She did even in death. She makes this show better by being the point of contention in the narrative. The mixed feelings come when she interacts with anyone else, because though she remains her incredible self, (almost) everyone else isn’t and I keep chaffing against the dominant narrative :P. She’s also hilarious lmao. I love every one of her zings xD. The “bitch-ass aliens” was obviously the winner, but her calling Max & Isobel’s nonsense “psychic twincest weirdness” was close LOL.

Like, I don’t know how I feel about the show even JOKING about Rosa possibly forgiving Max & Co. The scene itself with Rosa DEMANDING her own room was perfect, but. Yeah. Don’t even joke about that xD. To add that, I actually really love her scenes with Max, both in previous episodes and this one, when he briefly convinced her of stopping his resurrection (I kind of love that the episode was so close to Easter, btw, it’s so on the nose xDD). The energy between the actors works REALLY well and I find myself suddenly paying attention to Max, which hadn’t happened so far xDD. However, I’d enjoy those scenes even more if I could be reasurred that Rosa is always going to have mixed feelings at best about him, and will never be reduced to prop him or Liz/Max (like in the moment where Rosa almost has to comfort Liz about Max loving her. Leave my kid out of this pls). But. Yeah. I also have some guesses as to where the Rosa vs. Max storyline will go now that a.) she has more control of her new powers, and b.) his resurrection is the one that’ll follow the Came Back Wrong pattern, but they’re half-formed/half-wishful thinking so far lol.

I love love love the physicality of Rosa’s scenes with Liz too, even if sometimes I’m bothered by other elements. I’m just amazed by how the actresses manage to make it come across that despite the obvious visuals, despite how ~youthful and reckless Rosa feels... she’s the older sister, still. That’s how she feels, and Liz gets ~swayed by this. Like how she bundles herself agaisnt Rosa’s chest for comfort (and in the second one, the transition to that after Liz holds Rosa’s face in her hands), or how Rosa talks about her “sweet little sister”, etc. It also helps making the relationship feel less proppy than it would otherwise --younger sisters doing something for their older ones feels different than the reverse, idk. I have Thoughts about this but they’re all tangled up with myself projecting stuff on them, so idk what I’m trying to convey here xDD

I’m less conflicted about Rosa/Isobel. STAY AWAY FROM HER ISOBEL. Seriously, I full on despise her now. Fuck her. At the beginning of the season it looked like I might start finding her interesting, but nah. That’s over. And in particular I want her as far away as possible from Rosa. I’m even surprised by the strength of my reaction lol, but I wanted to yell at her to take her dirty paws off Rosa xD (seriously, the scene where she puts her hand on Rosa’s chest felt so so creepy? Was that just me? Add that in Isobel’s comment about having a “threeway” and deugh. GO AWAY ISOBEL). And frankly, it’s hard to miss how Isobel is always at her worst with women of color (I’m wary of her attitude to men of color, after the blatant sexualization/mind control thing with Kyle or all her bullshit with Arturo, too). Her comments on Rosa’s addiction (let alone assaulting her or locking her body in a closet ofc) didn’t help her case. I really, really wish Rosa had chocked a bitch xD. BTW, I’ve seen people attribute Isobel’s shittiness to her connection to Max and his darkness when a.) we saw NO SIGNS of this, and b.) she’s been terrible from day one, okay xD. If the show goes there to absolve her of responsibility like it did in s1... ugh.

My connection was crappy af last week and I somehow missed Michael’s “help me move a body” scene until I saw the parallel done with the one this week and... did this bitch really joke about desecrating Rosa’s body in front of Liz’s face?? (who said nothing because she’s now completely on pod-people’s POV land, ofc. I had flashbacks to Delena joking about Caroline’s rape right there, too). Seriously, the pod-people, ALL of them, have an enourmous debt with Rosa (EVEN MORE NOW), and I really, really wish she collected.

I wish we’d seen Arturo & Arturo-Rosa stuff this episode. It’ll still be tainted by the circumstances (*hates Isobel even more*), but I’m very curious about them. And about how Rosa’s bio-father ties to this stuff --that side of Rosa’s family is being left out of things so far and I don’t like it, tbh. It seems to be simply because it’s too far from the pod-siblings circle of influence ¬¬. Or about how Arturo is processing all this (he still thinks Rosa drove and killed the two other girls and that Max is A Very Nice Boy *barfs*. I seriously resent the very real posibility that Rosa’s story will never be untangled, to her father and to the town).

Not-Rosa-centric stuff under the cut, I guess, because this is getting long xD

I also have mixed feelings about Maria’s scenes with Alex (and Maria’s scenes in general). OTOH, she looked amazing (this is important, js. It’s such a shame we didn’t see Michael’s reaction to that last outfit of hers *-*); I love the actor’s easy chemistry, too; and I think it’s very, very interesting, that Alex basically nudged Maria towards Michael and Miluca. OTOH, I dislike how the conversation immediately turned to supporting him, and especially the false equivalences between Maria falling for Michael and Alex contributing to the lies to her (though I don’t find him as responsibly for that as Michael and especially Liz --since it was Michael’s secret and he planned and struggled to tell her, while Liz was pretty comfortable keeping her in the dark except for her own emotional needs, and knew too well why those secrets could cost), or between looking at your mother’s search history and forgiving someone for keeping you in the dark and endangering your life, js. That he guilted her into forgiving Liz (and so fullfilling Maria’s prophecy about how Liz only struggled to tell her because she wanted support, and my own about how little her anger was allowed to last) made it worse.

I feel terrible for Kyle. You could feel the toll he’s taken smh. My heart broke a little when he told Liz “you called, I broke the speed limit”, too :/. His relationship with his mother is hanging on the balance after all his lies too, which doesn’t bode to well for him either. I liked the scene between him and Alex, at least, though I still don’t think I could ever ship them, given Kyle’s romantic history with someone that ALSO was hung up on another person, js.

Other people have talked about how Alex’s scenes with Michael often highlight his classism and how little it’s talked about in this fandom, but yeah. His comments about Michael’s “wasting” his life... I Felt that.

Related to that, Max’s comment about how someone “has to clean up [Michael’s] messes” is part of why the pod-siblinghood thing is never ever ever going to work for me, sns xDD. Sure, it’s mostly because I don’t like Max or Isobel at all, or Michael 40-50% of the time, but yeah, things like that, or Isobel assuring him of the BLATANT lie that Michael means as much to her and Max as each other... they make it harder to get into the ~spirit lol. Another issue is how TERRIBLE the editing to make them appear younger looks xDD

I had to, HAD TO, roll my eyes at Max’s martyrdom. Ooooh, he’s not doing this for HIMSELF, he would NEVER care about being in PAIN, he’s doing this for US. And the narrative conveniently doesn’t take him at his word and saves him, ofc, because’s he’s a lead and that’s what’s up. It was interesting seeing the other characters coming to acceptance at first, however --I hope it’s a Sign. There are other Signs (of Max’s narrative maaaaaaybe weak spots) that really *pop* in this episode. Like the fact that there’s doubt over who is more important to him, Liz or Isobel. In a show with a really strong male lead, the answer would unquestionably be Liz: she’d know it, Isobel would know it, we’d all know it. And sure, I know a lot of people would say that it’s “better” (?) for a show to acknowledge the ~importance of familial and platonic bonds~ and what not, but c’mon. I don’t doubt that if Liz had been white things would be different. But that’s not the case here. And there are strong arguments for Isobel being number one... like the fact that this amnesia plot in the promo seems to ONLY involve Liz? I mean, he seems to remember Isobel just fine. A male lead forgetting the love of his life is very, very tricky. OTOH this is good in the sense that I’m all for anything that makes Max take a fall... but his & Liz’s stories are too tangled up and I’d fear she’d surely go down with him :/

#roswell: new mexico #rosa ortecho #maria deluca #ortecho sisters #roswell thoughts #roswell spoilers #my thoughts #talking to the void #antimaxevans for ts #antimalex for ts #except not but i Say Something Negative so *sighs*#antiisobelevans for ts #kyle valenti #liz ortecho #antilizmax for ts #antimichaelguerin for ts #antipodsiblings for ts #bitter lau tag #favourites: soul siblings

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the--sad--hatter · 5 years

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Name Calling (42)

FANDOM - MARVEL MCU, DEADPOOL & X-MEN

PAIRING - BUCKY X READER (female reader, no physical descriptions)

WARNINGS - ALL OF THEM, SMUT, VIOLENCE ANGST

DESCRIPTION -

Vernichtung - Destruction, Annhialation.

It was what you were named and what you were supposed to be but the only thing you wanted to destroy was Bucky Barnes.

The ongoing and bloody war of words between you and Bucky turns in your favor when a disgruntled one night stand of his lets slip a secret when you run into her in the elevator… Now you have all the ammunition you need to destroy your enemy but you don’t plan on killing him quickly. Oh no, Bucky Barnes was going to suffer and you were going to enjoy every second. You just didn’t count on enjoying it quite so much.

But when your past catches up to you in the form of the mad scientist who made you, Bucky might be one of the only things that can save you from yourself. You can’t run from what you are but with his help, you can fight back.

Current Word Count - 118,143

MASTERLIST or Read on Ao3

Moodboard by @talesofakindredspirit

Chapter Forty-Two - The Truth Hurts

“You got truth cookies from the God of lies?”Clint whined.

“It’s called poetic irony.” You sniggered.

“I am terrified right now but I’m also kind of proud and impressed.” Sam admitted.

“Here are the rules of the game, you tell me something you don’t wanna tell me and you get the andtidote.” You informed them.

Clint, Natasha, Bucky, Steve, Sam, Thor, Wanda and Vision all looked very very nervous as you watched them through the screen and it was incredibly satisfying.

“So, anyone want to tell me anything?” You asked sinisterly.

Wanda slapped her hands over her mouth and you laughed.

“I’m afraid that will not save you.” Loki informed her.

“How about you Sam? How about you tell me how you really feel about me dating Bucky?” You probed.

“I think you’re good for each other and I like that Barnes knows how I feel now that he has to compete with me for your time the way I do with him for Steve’s. I know I’m your best friend you’ll always have time for me but I like teasing him and I know he’ll always look after you because he’s a good man.” Sam blurted.

“Awwwww” You cooed.

“I’m furious that I just admitted that.” Sam bemoaned.

“Ok, Sam passed.” You smirked.

“I am not afraid, I have nothing to hide. I am grateful to have Loki back in my life and grateful you all have given him a second chance.” Thor said with a happy grin.

“Sentimental oaf.” Loki muttered but you did notice the slight pink tinge on his cheeks.

“I would like to point out that as I am a synthetic being I do not believe this potion has had any effect on me.” Vision informed everybody.

“Try telling a lie.” Wanda suggested.

“I am bright pink right now.” He said and everybody sulked at his successful lie.

“Whatever, Vision wouldn’t have had anything juicy to admit anyway.” You said with a small pout.

“Vision and I both know who your biological father is.” Wand said and covered her mouth again in horror.

You gulped nervously.

“I’m incredibly annoyed that you know that and I don’t.” Natasha snapped.

“Wanda’s out. Someone else go!” You said quickly.

“I’m very disappointed in you.” Steve said.

“Well nobody needed to give you truth serum to figure that out.” Sam snapped.

“I’m not disappointed, I’m mad but her devious side is really hot.” Bucky said.

“Not at all a shocking announcement Barnes.” Natasha quipped.

“Yeah this is coming from the guy who fucked her on the gym mats after she headbutted him.” Clint snorted.

“What?!” Sam shrieked.

“Wait, I don’t think I thought this through.” You admitted to Loki, covering the mic.

“What a surprise. Don’t worry, this will hurt them more than it hurts you.” Loki assured you with a very unreassuring smirk.

“Oh please, she drugged him and he practically wanted to propose.” Steve added.

“Getting off track here folks.” You told them.

“Oh are we Kotoynok? Because I think there are a few truths you don’t want to be spoken. Like how you ran into Barnes one night stand in the elevator and found out he’d said your name instead of hers and decided to use it against him.” Natasha said with a savage grin.

“You what?” Bucky huffed, looking hurt.

“Barnes did what now?” Sam asked looking amused as hell.

“Is that why you suddenly started flirting with me, dating Steve and wearing all that tight clothing?” Bucky asked.

“No sweetie, of course not.” You soothed him.

“OK good because I still wonder if you really love me or if deep down you know I’m not good enough for you but I’m too in love with you to let it stop me. I know this is too good to be true and I’m going to get my heart broken but I’d rather have my heart broken by you than turn away from you.” He said.

His confession was met with silence. His face was burning in embarrassment as he waited for you to say something but you didn’t.

“Doll?”

Nothing. You didn’t answer and his stomach twisted.

The doors opened and you stepped through them. You refused to meet his eye or anyone else’s as you walked past them all and picked up a cookie and steeled yourself. Biting the bullet, or the cookie in this case you shoved it into your mouth and swallowed it before you turned back to them.

“James Buchanan Barnes I love you more than I have ever loved anyone and sometimes I think that if I could go back and change the awful things that happened to me I wouldn’t risk it in case it meant I never got to meet you. I’m awful and I don’t deserve you but I want you so much it actually hurts and being with you is more important than anything else. I would rather die than break your heart.”

All the sadness and apprehension in Bucky’s face was wiped away in a single instant and it was like he was lit up from within as he strode across the room towards you.

“I’ve been lying to you to all of you though and I don’t deserve your love. I don’t deserve any of you.” You blurted out before he could reach you and he faltered.

“Kotoynok there’s nothing you could do I wouldn’t forgive.” Natasha said immediately.

“You’re overly dramatic so whatever it is I don’t think it’s going to be that bad.” Steve said.

“I’m with Steve, you’re a damn Drama Queen and an adorable idiot but you couldn’t hurt anybody here with anything you have to say.” Clint agreed.

“You’re my best friend and I would do anything for my friends, plus I trust that you’re a good person.” Sam added.

“I have forgiven for Loki for so much, I am inclined to forgive those I care about for terrible transgressions.” Thor announced.

“I didn’t want to make you feel bad by telling you I knew but I figured it out when you did and I never thought any less of you.” Wanda admitted.

You tried to stop yourself but as soon as you’d bit into the cookie you’d given up control of your mouth and the words poured out of you.

“Vernichtung isn’t a malevolent force trying to take over me, I created it because deep down I want to give into the darkness and do what I was born to do. I want to destroy the world and I hated myself for that so much that I buried it and created a second personality, a shadow self to absolve myself of the guilt.”

You hung your head in shame but you didn’t have to look to see the shift in the room. You felt Bucky take a step back from you. You peered up at him and saw the shock on his face.

“I was afraid you’d reject me but I desperately hoped you wouldn’t.” You chocked out through a sob and covered your mouth, fleeing from the room without looking back.

You ran all the way to Tony’s lab and burst in. He looked up in alarm that didn’t fade when he took in your state. You flung yourself at him and he caught you, wrapping his arms around you.

“What’s wrong?” He asked frantically.

“I told everyone the truth about Vernichtung and Bucky rejected me.” You sobbed.

You felt him stiffen under you and he wrenched you off of him.

“Where is he?” Tony asked.

“Don’t hurt him, I love him so much and if you do it’ll destroy me.” You told him.

Tony clenched his jaw and forced himself to calm down, pulling you into his embrace again.

“I love you but I lied when I told you I didn’t want to know who my father was. I want to know but I’m so scared of what I might find when you tell me.” You said through your tears.

“Kit Kat it doesn’t matter, you don’t have to do anything.” He soothed.

“I want to know, I want to you just tell me but I’m afraid to ask out loud.”

Tony sighed heavily and crushed you in his hug before he told you what the truth serum had forced you to admit you wanted to know.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Where is she?” Bucky asked frantically as he burst into the lab.

“Gone.” Tony told him flatly.

“I didn’t mean to reject her, I was just shocked. I don’t care that it’s her. I don’t care about any of it. I know who she is and I love her.”

“Too little too late.” Tony snarled.

“She and Loki doused us all with a truth potion and it backfired so she took it as well. I was taken aback by what she said Stark because I know I’m a mess and I was scared I would be the worst thing for her. But I love her and I would do anything for her.” Bucky pleaded.

“Fuck. A fucking truth potion?” Tony said, shooting to his feet.

“Yes.”

“Oh shit.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Logan I believe you should go outside. Miss Stark is currently driving up the driveway.” The Professor said with urgency.

Logan hurried to the front door in time to see you pull up, screeching to a halt and practically falling out of the car.

Your eyes were bloodshot and wet and your looked frantic as you rushed towards him, stopping a few feet away.

“How could you?” You demanded.

“So you know then.”

“You knew all along! Why the hell didn’t you tell me? How could you not?” You practically screamed.

“Wasn’t my place princess.” He said gruffly.

“No, no you don’t get to put that on Tony you fucking coward!”

“He’s your father, I’m just some guy who knew your mother a long time ago.” He reasoned.

“She died in my arms and I didn’t even have a name for her grave you bastard.” You shouted through the tears.

“I didn’t know I was your father then I just knew I didn’t want to be the one to tell you that your mother was the daughter of the man who killed her.” He snarled.

You reeled back as if he’d struck you.

“The daughter of... Docherty is...” You started to hyperventilate.

“You didn’t know that?” He frowned.

“Shit.” He added as you sunk to your knees.

The tears were pouring now as you tried to breathe. Your stomach twisted as it sunk in and you heaved.

Docherty was your Grandfather.

He kept his own daughter locked up for so long she’d lost her mind.

He killed her just to send you a message.

He kept you in a cage your whole life and tortured you.

And he was your Grandfather.

“It’s alright kid, it’s gonna be alright.” Logan tried to say soothingly as he approached you.

You screamed in horror as the rage and disgust consumed you and Logan was blasted back by the power surging out of you.

You could feel Vernichtung at the edge of your consciousness, you could feel her rage and it was even more intense than your own.

“Let me out, I’ll make it all go away.” She whispered to you.

“DON’T” Xaviers voice screamed at you inside your mind.

You tried to push her back down but you couldn’t. Your careful control had been shattered because truthfully you didn’t want to lock her back up. You wanted to retreat and hide away from this and let her do her worst.

The world didn’t make sense anymore and as black veins rippled across your arms you tried to tell yourself that this was a school, there were innocents here but it wasn’t enough.

The knowledge of who you were had broken you.

Somebody wrapped their arm around you and forced you to look at them.

“Ma petite you are stronger than this.” Remy promised you.

“You can’t be here. Run.” You urged him.

“I ran once and left you behind. Not today. Remy will not leave you.”

You shuddered as you battled inside your mind with your darker side.

“This is who you are, who you truly are. The only way to make this pain you feel stop is with blood.” Vernichtung whispered.

“I can’t fight anymore.” You whispered weakly and closed your eyes, surrendering to the inevitable.

You were a monster, descended from a monster. This was who you were and you couldn’t deny it any longer. Vernichtung could have your body and you would take the cage because you couldn’t do anything else.

“You just need a reason to fight.” Remy whispered.

And then he kissed you. And in desperation, in need of something to cling to, you kissed him back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Please don’t hurt me. Please.

@nerdandproud-86 @harrison-shot-first@thejourneyneverendsx @thelostallycat @inquisitor-selvala@the-corruptor @iovher @kendrawr-kitkat @phoenix-whiskey-tears @the–real-wombat @buckitybarnes @fairislesheets@angieptt @meganjonezzzz @dugan365 @fluffeh-kitty@memanda17 @krystallynx @theonelittleone @piscesbarnes@free-as-fishes @tarastudiesalot @captainamericasbeard@dropthepizza346 @jaynnanadrews @likes-to-smell-books@drdorkus @life-wanderer @metalarmlover @animegirlgeeky@jsmith509

#hattersmarvelverse #bucky x reader

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blancheludis · 5 years

Link

Tagging: @tokky231

Fandom: Marvel, Avengers Characters: Tony Stark/Steve Rogers, James Rhodes, Pepper Potts, Bruce Barton, Steve Rogers Chapters: 12/?, Words: 66.712

Summary: Tony meets his soulmate under the worst possible circumstances. It is not just a kidnapping gone wrong. It turns out Steve and his gang picked him on purpose and they want some personal revenge. If only he had managed to say the words written on his soulmate’s arm before they threw him back out into the streets.

—

Groaning, Tony blinks back to consciousness. His head is pounding and one side of his face feels wet. When he reaches up, his fingers come away bloody. As he stares at the crimson stains, time appears to come to a standstill in which he tries to make sense of his situation.

The folder, the drive to the police. The crash. The crash.

Suddenly alert, Tony rips his eyes away from his fingers and looks ahead. He is still in the car. Some alarm beeps incessantly. He is alive.

In the front, Tony sees Happy’s shape slumped over the steering wheel, unmoving. With a jolt, Tony jerks forward. Pain shoots out from his broken ribs, pushing all the air out of his lungs, but he barely notices, too focused on the body of his friend.

“Happy?” Tony calls, hearing the hysteria rise in his voice. “Happy, talk to me.”

He scrambles to unfasten his seatbelt and curses when he cannot release it at once. His fingers are slick and clumsy, trembling even while adrenaline rushes through him. When he finally hears the absolving click, he throws himself forward with no regard for his own injuries and reaches out for Happy.

“Happy,” he pleads, repeating the name like a prayer. He cannot lose anything more, cannot have more of his life in ruins.

Happy does not react. A thin trail of blood runs from his mouth that nearly has Tony despairing.

Reaching out, Tony leaves smears of blood on Happy’s collar and neck as he searches for a pulse. He fixates on the red until he almost collapses in relief when he finds a heartbeat, steady and strong. Happy is only unconscious, then.

Tony still has to call an ambulance immediately. He will not take any chances where his friends are concerned. He has so precious few of them left. When he turns back to search for his phone, his eyes fall on the street in front of them and he remembers the man they hit. Cursing, Tony scrambles to get out of the car.

Despite his dizziness and the reawakened pain every movement causes, Tony pushes the dented car door open and climbs out. Outside, it is eerily silent even while Tony’s ears are still ringing, filled with the sounds of the crash and his own panic.

The cold air stings against his new bruises but he does not pay them any mind. The bike they hit is lying on the street, one of the wheels is still spinning uselessly in the air. There is no sign of the man, no matter which direction Tony looks. He remembers something flying over the car.

They were not driving very fast, but it is still possible that the man was thrown a good distance. While Tony limps forward to look for the man, one arm wrapped around his torso as if that would actually help with broken ribs, he pulls out his phone to finally call an ambulance.

Blinded by the shockingly bright light of his screen, he sees nothing more but a shadow moving out of the corner of his eye. By then, it is already too late. Tony tries to duck out of the way, but he can see the blow coming for him almost in slow motion.

It does not connect.

Before Tony can fully realize what is happening, a second person engages the would-be attacker in a fight. For a long moment, they are simply two dark shapes grappling in the dark while Tony backs away, mind reeling to understand what is happening. Then he notices flying red hair, which gives his saviour away as Natasha even before Tony can catch a glimpse of her face.

Her presence more than anything makes him realize that this was not an ordinary crash. The timing itself is very curious, with Tony carrying his folder full of damning evidence, after his almost-argument with Obadiah.

When Tony’s breathing gets difficult, he blames that on his broken ribs, not on the fact that his godfather acts fast – and is definitely serious about taking Tony out. He should be running, should be getting that ambulance, should guard Happy’s unconscious body. Instead, Tony stands transfixed, watching the fight in front of him wide-eyed and full of denial.

The fight is short and brutal, and ends with the man whimpering on the ground. At least before a perfectly aimed hit renders him unconscious. At least Tony hopes he is just unconscious. No matter whether the man was hired to attack him or not, Tony does not want any more blood on his hands.

He stares as Natasha reaches down and secures the man’s hands behind his back with zip ties. That is good, Tony thinks. Surely, she would not do that with a corpse.

“Are you hurt?” Natasha asks even while she is cataloguing the blood on his face and the way he stands curled in on himself. “What about your driver?”

Tony opens and closes his mouth several times. He has not yet regained any control over his racing thoughts.

“Unconscious,” he manages to say.

Natasha nods but walks over to the car nonetheless to check for herself. She sticks to the shadows to keep her face hidden in case Happy is awake by now. Tony can only watch, his phone forgotten in his hand.

Everything happened so quickly, he can barely make sense of it. The man on the ground does not look like someone sent to take Tony out. Especially not like this, with blood on his face and barely breathing. He is breathing, though, Tony notices with some relief.

Only a few moments later, Natasha is back at his side. She does not say anything, so Tony guesses Happy’s status has not changed. He should ask, but then she puts an arm around his waist and gently pulls him back towards the car. Tony’s legs move before he can make up his mind whether he wants to snap at her to stop touching him. It is certainly the shock, but he does not feel unsafe with her.

When they reach the car, Natasha guides him to sit down on the backseat, still surprisingly kind. Reaching out for his face, she turns it to inspect his wounds in the dim light. It hurts when she brushes the skin over his brow.

That pain is what brings Tony back to the present, throwing off the shock enough to move out of her immediate reach.

“What the hell was that?” he asks, not as biting as he aimed for. The dizziness is only just receding.

Natasha looks at him for a long moment, likely pondering what she is going to say. “Stane offered us five million dollars to kill you. He seemed desperate,” she finally replies, her voice impassionate as if she is not just serving Tony another blow. “It is only natural that he went looking somewhere else when we declined.”

Five million, Tony thinks, wondering whether his life is worth that much. Five million to get rid of the unruly godson who could not leave well enough alone. Too late, it occurs to Tony that he should question this information. Things are strained between Obadiah and him but –

Laughter crawls up his throat, burning like his father’s old scotch. He is only making things harder for himself by still trying to find excuses. His godfather hired the mob to get his hands on Tony’s secret projects, and when Tony wrecked his business, Obadiah decided to get rid of him for good. He could have known. Tonight, in the tower, Obadiah’s behaviour was off. Turns out, Tony’s paranoia was not misguided.

“I talked to him half an hour ago,” Tony says, mostly to himself.

We’re on the same side, Obadiah has said. And then, a few minutes later, This is not over. He apparently wants it to be, though. Permanently.

“And then you were reckless enough to go out alone.” Natasha clicks her tongue, chiding him.

Of course, Tony went out alone. There was no reason to suspect Obadiah would send someone after him like this – apart from the fact that he has already done so once before.

“I didn’t think –”

All traces of pity vanish from Natasha’s eyes as she cuts him off, “Clearly.”

That has Tony’s adrenaline spiking again. He looks at her, at how she stands like nothing has happened, as if there is not an unconscious man lying somewhere behind her. She is wearing black clothes, a bulletproof vest. Her expression looks even slightly bored.

“Why do you sound so pissed?” Tony snaps, wondering how this is his life. “Do you think only you are allowed to beat me up?”

Natasha frowns at him, displeased but not surprised. “Nobody is allowed to beat you up,” she says and has the audacity to sound like she means it.

Tony remembers that quite differently, remembers how she just stood by when her friends lay into him. It is rather hypocritical of her to now care whether someone offs him out in the streets.

“Did you tell Barton that?” Tony asks.

Only now does it occur to him to wonder whether she is alone. Her sudden presence is convenient enough that she must have been following him. There could very well be someone else hiding in the background. The thought of Barton or Barnes being close has a shiver running down his back.

In front of him, Natasha shifts to fill his vision better, almost as if she knows what he has been looking for.

“You’d be surprised at how vocal he was about taking Stane out,” she says conversationally. To them, murder is likely an accepted topic for the dinner table. “He has a special arrow reserved just for him.”

Tony knows what she is doing, offering a conversation to take his mind off things, to stave off the lingering traces of panic. She needs him to compose himself before she vanishes back into the night.

“You know what? I’m not surprised at all,” Tony says. He does not want to know about any of this. “Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

He closes his eyes so he does not have to see her. Distantly, he thinks he is being ungrateful. She might have just saved his life. In any case, she saved him from whatever unpleasantness Obadiah’s hired goon had in store for him. He might have an issue with the mob shadowing him, and he will have words about that with Steve, but right now, he should be glad she was here.

“Because of those words on your arm that you all seem to put so much stock in,” Natasha replies, her voice surprisingly earnest as if she does not know Tony’s question was mostly rhetorical.

This has Tony looking up in surprise. His eyes fall unbidden on her arm, and before he can stop himself, he asks, “You don’t have any?”

Natasha’s teeth flash as she smiles at him. It looks more like a threat than anything else. With a careless motion, she rolls up her sleeve, revealing an ugly burn scar covering her forearm. “Mother Russia isn’t as sentimental as Americans.”

The air between them is tense, even after Natasha lets her sleeve down again. It does not feel like this is something she should – or would – reveal to just anyone. Tony is not sure it is a good sign that she would make an exception for him. It implicates that they are not yet done with each other, that there is no escaping this, no matter how fast Tony runs.

It is too much. He glances at Happy, who is still not moving, and then at his own hands, which are still bloody. His body is aching, but the physical pain is almost welcome since it dampens the emotional chaos inside him a bit.

How is he supposed to go on from here? How can he get over the fact that the last living member of his family just tried to have him killed?

Worse, he now owes the Avengers his life. Or he owes it to Natasha at the very least. He told Steve to keep out of this, and he has been surprisingly silent, but of course, he had someone shadowing Tony. Of course, he could not keep away completely. Tony can hardly yell at him for it since it might just be him lying zip-tied on the ground now, ready to meet his maker.

He will have to admit that his grand plan of dealing with his traitorous godfather was to hoard all the evidence until he was pushed into doing something, and then he got stopped while he was on his way to the police. He could have sent the files, could have had officers come by the tower. He could have had JARVIS lock Obadiah inside his office and make sure he could not use his phone or computer, could not communicate with the outside world to send an assassin after Tony.

He could have done any of these things, and yet he walked right into another trap. All because he is not able to stand up and deal with this like a man. Stark men are made of iron, Howard used to say. Well, they all knew that Tony ended up on the brittle end of that spectrum. Always a disappointment.

A hand on his arm startles him back to the present. He looks down, sees Natasha’s light skin contrasting with the caked blood on his. When she withdraws, he follows the movement, eyes wandering up until he meets her gaze.

“I – I can’t do this,” Tony says and is not quite sure himself what he means with this. Everything, probably.

“I understand that,” Natasha answers, still surprisingly gentle. She actually sounds like she does, too. “Steve doesn’t, although he will if you give it time.”

She thinks he is talking about the soul bond. In a way, Tony is relieved. That is far less damning than admitting that he has no idea what to do with his entire life at the moment. Compared to this, the problem with Steve appears barely worth mentioning.

Then, however, Natasha keeps talking, and it appears she has understood him better than he feared. “As for Stane, you can’t wait for him to set the next trap for you.” She speaks of a next time as if there is nothing to it. Business as usual. “You need to deal with this.”

Rubbing frantically at the dried blood on his hand, Tony says, “I’m trying to.” He does not dare to meet her eyes, unable to deal with her cool professionalism. All of this is wrong.

Natasha scoffs, but even that is not as harsh as it could be. “By carrying that folder around like it’s going to protect you?”

Yes, Tony thinks because in the world he thought he lives in people do not try to kill him, his godfather does not hate him, and Tony does not need to fear betrayal at every turn.

“That folder contains everything we have on Obadiah. Evidence,” he argues, unable to suppress the hysteria rising in his voice. “That’s what you need when you want someone to get locked up for their crimes. But of course, that’s not what you would do.” Gritting his teeth, Tony stares at Natasha in challenge. “Let me guess, you’ll say I should hire a killer of my own.”

She meets his eyes unflinchingly, showing no outward reaction that she thinks his accusation is misplaced.

“Do you want me to do it?” she asks nonchalantly, cocking her head to the side as if they are discussing the weather.

To his great shame, Tony’s first instinct is to say yes. He realizes that is borne from the aching sense of betrayal that has not let go of him since he talked to Steve after the press conference. He just wants to be done with this. He wants Obadiah gone so he can pick up the pieces of his life and his company and maybe build something new from them.

He does not want Obadiah dead, though, he realizes with equal parts relief and dismay. He maybe wants to hurt his godfather like he has been hurt, and he wants him to pay for his actions. That will not happen if Obadiah dies.

“I knew Steve was lying when he said you don’t kill people,” Tony says, voice full of accusation. He realizes that is mostly because he wants to distract himself from the fact that he, if only for a moment, considered her offer.

“He doesn’t,” Natasha says simply. “I haven’t always been an Avenger. And that’s not all I am now, although Steve likes to think otherwise.”

Mother Russia. Secret Agencies. Spies. All of that sounds like it has come right out of a bad movie. And yet, one look at Natasha and Tony believes it without a doubt.

Straightening in the car seat as best as his protesting ribs allow, Tony says, “For the record, no, I don’t want you to kill my godfather.”

Amusement flickers over her face but is quickly replaced by the unfazed blankness from before. It should be unnerving to have her towering over him, filling the open car door, effectively trapping him. Despite that, he still feels safe with her so close.

“Then deal with it,” she says, just short of an order. “Steve might be against murder, but he will kill me if I let you commit suicide by letting your godfather take you out.”

Tony drops his gaze, wishing she would stop putting it so bluntly. There is no escaping the truth like this, but Tony is just so tired.

She appears to read his mood correctly because she takes a step back from the car. “You should call an ambulance now,” she suggests, then points at the man still lying unmoving on the street. “I’ll take care of this.”

An ambulance, right. Quickly, Tony looks towards Happy again to reassure himself that he is still there. The blood on his chin has dried and he is still too pale and still. While he fumbles with his phone, Tony scoots forwards to check for Happy’s pulse again. It is still going strong. When he turns back around, Natasha is still watching him. While neither of them says anything, she offers him a smile, so small it could easily be overlooked. It holds the same kindness her hands did.

When he finally dials emergency services, she turns around and gets to work. Once he has finished his phone call, he can only wait. He watches helplessly as Natasha puts the bike upright again and then picks up the still unconscious man as if he weighs nothing. It looks practised, how she flings the body over the seat of the bike and then climbs on herself.

“Tell the police that it was a hit and run,” she calls as she turns on the engine. It cannot be safe to drive the bike after the crash, but she does not seem to care.

“Are you going to keep following me around?” he asks, even though she should leave before the ambulance arrives. He does not care much for the Avengers, but he does not want her to be caught.

Natasha looks at him with an expression he cannot quite interpret. “Steve wants you protected.”

Tony nods, even though she does not appear to be waiting for an answer. Only when she has disappeared into the darkness, does he whisper, “Thank you.”

---

Happy wakes up before the ambulance gets to them, and he insists he is fine, but they still go to the hospital together since Tony knows how adrenaline can mess with one’s senses. With everything that is going wrong lately, Tony does not want anything happening to his friends on his watch.

He also does not want to go back to the tower where, only a few hours ago, Obadiah stood in front of him, making conversation while planning to have Tony killed. He did not need Natasha to tell him that he has to deal with this, and soon, but first off, he needs to make sure that Happy is all right.

A very insistent nurse bullies Tony into taking an x-ray of his ribs and then he stumbles through an explanation of why he would have a few weeks-old breaks. The doctor does not believe Tony’s tale about hazardous lab experiments. With his luck, someone is going to interpret it as a result of unsafe sex practices and write a nice article for next week’s rainbow press. It does not matter. Tony has bigger problems.

Two of the ribs are re-fractured and a nurse tapes them as efficiently as Bruce had the first time. Then she cleans the cuts in his face and on his arms before she asks whether he wants to talk to someone from their psychiatry department. His withering glare must have been answer enough for she does not mention it again.

It takes an eternity before he can get to Happy, who has a mild concussion and a broken collarbone – so much for being all right – and has to stay for at least the night. Happy greets him with as much worry as Tony is sure is visible on his own face. Bad enough that Obadiah tried to kill Tony, he endangered his friend too. That, in itself, is unforgivable.

“I am so sorry,” Tony says as he pulls a chair up to Happy’s bed. It is hard to meet Happy’s eyes, but he forces himself to.

Happy’s face is bruised, and Tony can still see the blood running even though the wounds have been cleaned and bandaged much like Tony’s own. This will be a sight he will never forget.

“Nothing to be sorry about, boss,” Happy says, aiming for a cheerful tone that ends up drowsy thanks to the pain medication the doctors gave him. Tony has refused his to keep his head as clear as possible. “You hardly arranged for that man to crash into us.”

Dismay has Tony closing his eyes briefly. He might as well have coordinated the crash himself, considering how lax he has been with his friends’ and his own safety. What did he think, facing off with Obadiah like that?

“It wasn’t an accident,” he hears himself say. By then it is too late to take the words back.

“What?” Happy asks, alert despite the pain medication.

This neither the right place nor time for this discussion. It is also unfair to unburden himself on Happy. Tony has done enough for one night.

“Don’t worry about it right now,” Tony tries to dissuade Happy, despite knowing it will never be successful.

“Boss,” Happy warns. He sits up straighter, wincing when it jostles his broken collarbone. He is wearing a sling to keep it in place, but he still should not move too much.

Reaching out, Tony pushes him gently back down. They stare at each other, and Happy silently conveys he is only going to comply if Tony starts talking.

With a sigh, Tony nods. It still takes him a long minute to gather the courage to begin.

“That man,” he starts and trails off again. It occurs to him that he has never fully seen the guy’s face. That means he does not even know who to search for when he looks over his shoulder now. Then again, he might not need to, considering that Natasha said she was going to take care of it. It might be entirely possible that nobody is going to see that man ever again. Tony is not sure what to think about that.

“He was trying to kill me and he didn’t care about collateral damage,” Tony manages to say, then shrugs. “So, I have everything to be sorry about.”

Silence falls. This time, when Happy sits up, Tony does not stop him. He is too busy fighting his own shame.

“What happened?”

Tony has to start at the very beginning. Contrary to Pepper and Rhodey, Happy does not know about the kidnapping or the weapons deals. He certainly knew something was up, the press conference and Tony’s sudden reclusiveness made sure of that, but never any details.

The story comes out in bits and pieces, and Happy listens patiently, his expression growing stormier by the minute. It helps Tony to let it all out, pushes the loneliness back, even though he does not want to involve another friend in this. Happy is already right in the middle of it, of course.

Happy nods and frowns at all the right places, but is still too perceptive, even in pain and on medication. “Where did the guy go?”

If Happy had woken up just a little bit later, they could have avoided this question. Like this, Tony has to explain how he did not just avoid the assassination attempt but also cleared the crime scene, all while injured and in shock, in the little time before Happy regained consciousness.

Tony is not sure how much he wants to tell. It is time, he guesses, to come clean. To tell Rhodey and Pepper too about Steve and the Avengers, about his soulmate and why everything is going wrong lately.

“Someone helped,” Tony says evasively, unable to truly commit to the truth right now. “They –”

A glare from Happy is enough to cut him off. “Someone just happened to come by, save you, and get rid of the evidence?” he questions, full of scepticism. “Just like that.”

Fighting the urge to pull his knees up to make himself smaller, Tony stares at the sling covering Happy’s chest, the ultimate proof of where secrets got them.

“The group that kidnapped me –” he begins, then shrugs. “We’ve come to an understanding when they realized I wasn’t who they really wanted.”

He is obviously not ready to come clean. This whole soulmate business just makes everything more complicated.

Happy is silent for a long moment, his expression stony. With a sigh, he then nods. “Are you all right, boss?”

“I –” Tony swallows, surprised that he would be allowed to get off this easily. This is not the end of it, of course, but Pepper would have never accepted this non-answer. “You’re the one with the concussion.”

Happy reaches out and clasps Tony’s arm as if Tony is the one who needs comfort here, as if it is not him who is at fault for this entire miserable situation. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

“I’m dealing with it, Happy,” Tony says, forcing his expression into something far more confident than he feels. There is no escaping that anymore. “I’m – not all right, but I’ll get there.”

That is what he has been promising himself for decades. As long as he can remember, really. First, when he tried to escape Howard’s teachings, then while working on overcoming his parents’ deaths. Through hundreds of scathing articles and bad encounters. Through alcohol and reckless exploits. Through acting like someone he does not recognize in the mirror.

“So you have all the evidence,” Happy says, not quite letting it go after all. “In the folder you were clinging to earlier?”

As if it can actually protect you, Natasha’s mocking voice adds in Tony’s ear, although she has been nothing but kind during their entire encounter. He will have to deal with the emotional repercussion of that too, at some point. For now, the Avengers are not at all just monsters anymore.

Pushing all of that far down – he can barely deal with the emotional whiplash of Obadiah not turning out as the person Tony thought him to be without adding the Avengers to the mix – Tony nods. There might be blood on that folder now, but he has digital copies and no more excuses.

“Have JARVIS send it. Preferably right now,” Happy all but orders, likely recognizing Tony’s indecisiveness.

“It’s not so –” Tony protests, despite knowing the time for that has passed.

“Boss,” Happy warns. His tone is not accusing, and yet Tony feels chastised. “This is not a game anymore.”

It never was a game, of course, and yet Tony was searching for a way to win this. In the end, it was only ever a question of how much he is going to lose.

Tony nods, defeated in a way he should not feel. There was never any going back from this. When Obadiah first hired the Avengers, he had sealed his fate. Perhaps even when he sold the first weapon under the table.

Briefly, Tony wonders whether he should call Pepper. It was late when he left the tower, so she should have already been at home. The need to check up on her is pressing, but at the same time, he does not want to alert her. If he calls her from the hospital, she will insist to come. Everybody close to him is in danger for now. He cannot allow that, not after hurting Happy.

“And you’ll need better security,” Happy continues, satisfied for now with Tony’s acquiescence.

If Tony stays in his tower for the foreseeable future, he will not have to put someone else in the line of fire. Yet he knows that Happy is right, just as Steve was before. If Obadiah offered five million to take Tony out, someone is bound to try it again.

“I know someone,” Tony says, putting it on his ever-growing mental to-do list.

“Not JARVIS,” Happy protests, knowing Tony too well. “You can’t go anywhere alone if that bastard is trying again.”

When the use of bastard has an immediate urge to protest rising in Tony, he almost laughs. They are way past the point of pretence, and yet Tony’s heart does not seem to get with the program.

“I’m on it, I promise,” he says and means it, even if he did not know that Happy will involve Pepper in this the moment Tony is out of earshot.

“Give me their name,” Happy demands, clearly not trusting Tony to act in his best interest. Or perhaps he is trying to make up for the fact that Tony was almost killed on his watch. “I’ll vet them.”

Tony shakes his head, but he manages to smile while doing so. “You concentrate on getting better. He’s ex-military. I’ll ask Rhodey to look into him.”

He hopes that Thor Odinson will live up to his godly name and put Tony’s mind to rest. At least for as long as it takes to finally take down his treacherous godfather.

#stony #soulmates #tony stark #steve rogers #whump #mob boss #leave the gun on the table #slow burn #angst #car crash #happy #i totally forgto about him #and then i introduce him like this #i feel like a bad person #fanfiction #ao3 #my writing #avengers #natasha

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starcitysirens · 7 years

Text

[fic] A Wednesday Evening in Late June

Title: A Wednesday Evening in Late June. Pairing: Sara Lance/ Rip Hunter Rating: PG Word Count: 1800 Summary: Reaction fic for 3x01. Six weeks after Rip disbands the Legends, Sara runs into him at a bar. Inspired by Sara's line in 3x01 about running into one of Rip's agents and stealing his entrance badge. This is a scenario where that agent is actually Rip himself. Notes: I'm sure writing a variation of this is required for every writer in the fandom. I couldn't resist. Special thanks to @teruel-a-witch for being my sounding board for this.

{read on ao3}

A Wednesday evening in late June, 2017, the shittiest bar in Star City. Beer-sticky counters and cracked peanut shells on the floor. A man sitting at the bar. In his clean, bureaucrat suit, he stands out as a thing that doesn’t belong.

An anachronism.

She’d recognized the back of his head as soon as she walked into the bar. That ridiculous haircut. The sell-out suit. It’s not enough for him that he took her ship, her job, her city, now he’s gotta show up in her bar, too. But she’ll be damned if she lets him keep it.

She mentally unfurls her laundry list of grievances, fully intending to make him hear every one of them. There's no magic time portal that can save his smug ass from her wrath this time. So she takes the empty seat to his right (and isn’t that ironic) and waits for him to notice her. When he turns, he looks at her through red-rimmed, tired eyes and there's no surprise there, just the somber, heavy resignation she's used to seeing him carry. Disappointment tempers her ire down to irritation.

He’s already drunk.

Back up. Rewind:

Around six o’clock on a Wednesday evening in late June, 2017, a man walks into a bar.

The place, a dive bar at street level with three apartments upstairs, smells like cheap booze and cigarettes. Four or five men, middle aged, are drinking at the bar. They are probably construction or maintenance workers, blue-collared, unlike the man who’s just walked in. But like him, they seek to drown themselves in cheap, bitter drink to postpone arriving home alone to face the scary emptiness. He flags the bartender, orders a scotch, and keep them coming, he says.

Tonight, he intends to forget.

Fast forward, three, four hours. A woman walks into a bar. She is angry and he is already drunk.

It’s been six weeks, but the sight of him still boils her blood, the betrayal burning like a fresh wound, and she wonders if he will ever stop getting under her skin.

It’s been six weeks, but really, it's been five long and lonely years and the sight of her, so alive in her anger, still leaves him dumb.

“Miss Lance,” he says. Her name feels heavy on his liquor soaked tongue. Yet inescapable.

“Rip,” she answers, intentionally despoiling him of any of his titles, bringing him down to her lowly civilian level. If looks could kill he’d fall over dead on the spot.

The air between them hums with all the things they haven't said. Their silence, negative space. If one squints just so her anger transforms into hurt, his dismissiveness into longing.

In front of them, on the TV above the bar, a teary woman talks to a reporter about the mystery blonde woman who saved her from an attacker. That woman is a hero, she says.

His lips quirk up in a sloppy smirk.

“Gee, I wonder who that was.”

“Screw you,” she says, resenting the sarcasm in his voice.

“Ah, there she is.” She’d managed to make it a whole three minutes without cursing him. He's impressed.

“ Was that something else I was supposed to give up on your decree? What do you want from me?”

“Well, you have to admit, you're not exactly being very subtle, miss Lance.”

Of course it would be about that.

“Are you afraid I might save the wrong person and upset your new friends at the Bureau? Are you afraid you might have to come after me?”

“They’re not my friends,” he slurs into his glass.

He figured it out eventually. That’s where he’d gone wrong with them, the Legends. He’d kept them at arm’s length when he thought of them as only tools in his arsenal against Vandal Savage. (Not her, though, she'd always managed to get under his skin.) And then, after, when willful duty bound them together, he watched them all grow closer, but the circle of friendship had been closed to him. No one to blame but himself really. He can't fault them. He'd never let them in.

He'd tried to let her in.

And she, well she’d thought they were friends, once. He'd seen the worst of her and he hadn't been afraid. He saved her life. He gave her purpose, he'd said I believe in you and the memory of it still steals the breath from her. But then he’d stabbed her in the back. She’d let him go that day because she thought he needed to find himself. That, she understood. But she thinks about the man who emerged from that portal in Los Angeles, standing tall and proud like she'd never seen him before and she wonders if they'd broken something in him when they broke time. If the real Rip is out there somewhere displaced in time. She’d gone to the ends of time trying to save him before, she'd do it again if it meant fixing this.

“I missed you, miss Lance.” He wouldn't be saying that if he were sober but he's waited five years to see her again and it doesn't matter that he's not supposed to be saying things like that.

“You don’t get to say that. Shut up,” she says. How dare he? How dare he say that when he’d been the one to walk away? And why does she care? Why does she allow him to continue to hurt her?

Why does she still crave his validation?

“How can you can sit here and tell me you missed me after what you did? To me?”

He flinches away from the volcanic heat of her hurt. He hadn't lied when he’d praised her leadership, hadn't faked his belief in her. Only, he'd looked around and found no room for him by her side. And so he walked away. How was he supposed to know things would unravel the way they did?

“I didn't do anything to you.” Liar. “This is so much bigger than your feelings, Sara. I’m trying to fix things.”

“What does that mean? Fix what?”

He doesn’t answer, he's said too much already. He swallows down his response with what's left in his glass. He feels the world tilt and sway around him.

He's too drunk to fight and she's too sober to keep it going. She's had enough of his secrets.

“I'm taking you home,” she says. “Where's your place?”

“That's classified.”

Sara huffs, resigned, “My place it is, then.”

Sara's place is small, just a studio with only the bare essentials: a bed, a table, two chairs. It feels like he takes up too much space just by standing there. She can't breathe.

What's she going to do with him now that he's here?

He’s here, in her space, unsteady on his feet, his eyes heavy and fixed on her face, his cold hand on her neck, thumb to the butterfly flutter of her pulse. He’d snuffed that out once. It still haunts him.

“I’m so sorry, Sara,” he says, slightly pressing his thumb down. “You died. I had to let you.”

Phantom pains stab in Sara’s side. She remembers how cold she’d been lying on the snow, blood pouring out of the wound he'd made on her body. His hand on her neck feels suddenly disquieting. But he goes on ...

“And your sister she was…”

Her heart seizes, her breath falters as she realizes what he’s talking about.

Three arrows to her chest. A tumble off a roof. Knowledge of a thing cannot impede it. He knows this, perhaps better than anyone.

“I wanted to tell her I understood because I’d also held my dead love in my arms that way. But I couldn’t. So, I lay flowers on your grave. Gardenias and rain lilies. And I would look at that date on the gravestone and remind myself it wasn’t forever. That your death had an expiration date and I would save you.”

He touches his forehead against hers, his scotch laden breath on her face.

“I changed time for you.”

“And you let her die.”

He’d killed her, too, and she forgave him, because she held herself responsible for his trauma. But for Laurel? She calls on that old rage just to get through tonight, Sara, just get through tonight. She pulls and pulls on the thread but the anger slips away from her grasp. How can she hold onto it when he’s staring at her with liquor hazed wet eyes, looking, for a moment, like the man who’d once absolved her and declared himself the monster instead?

Her own uncomfortable revelations threaten to come forth. She holds her tongue instead of saying: I used to hold your compass to my chest, hoping it would lead me to you. And I blame myself for what the Legion did to you. What's the point of baring herself to him? In the morning, he'll be gone again and it'll be as if this never happened.

The morning will take all truth from them.

“Sara,” he whispers, her name on his lips like benediction. “Please, forgive me my unworthiness.”

He might as well render her amnesiac with a flash of his machine.

She sets him down at the foot of her bed. She strips him of his suit jacket, letting him take care of the shirt buttons. She pushes his oxford shirt off his shoulders until he’s left in an undershirt and lets herself look, without the guilt this time.

It's been five—no, nearly seven—years and he is not a man in mourning anymore. And she could reach out and lay her hands upon the pale skin of his freckled shoulders, push him back and take them to that yet uncharted place between reverence and wrath. But she doesn’t because if he were to circle gentle hands around her wrists to stop her, she thinks she just might pierce the world with the steel of her hurt.

Come here, he says, curling on her bed like he's done it many times before. Like he belongs there. She takes off her boots and her jeans and settles on the bed beside him.

The narrow space between them might as well be a chasm.

“Someday, Sara,” he says, before he closes his eyes.

How perfectly mistimed their timing.

He reaches out toward her chest, and she holds her breath. His palm flattens over the space between her breasts, where her heart beats strong and steady.

Five years. And one of them with her dead.

Her hand curls over his.

In the morning, she’ll reclaim the anger and remind herself of the dangers of confusing energy with possibility. But for tonight, with his hand on her heart, she’ll embrace the sadness and let herself sink under the weight of what could have been.

#time canary #ripsara #sara lance #lot fic #rip hunter #sara x rip #nelly writes sometimes

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