He’s so showstopping spectacular guys

🤧🙏🏻

Wish You Were Here

First of all, I have to say thank you to @deanbrainrotwritings for helping me on this one - I really really appreciate it 💖 & @impala-dreamer for the perfect song for this fic💖

Another one done for the @jacklesversebingo :)

Square filled: "I want to be the last one you love." will be in bold

Word count: ∼4.5k

Trigger warnings: Suicide, suicidal ideation, trauma, depression, mental illness, panic attack, angst

My Masterlist

You woke up abruptly. Clock on the nightstand glowed at 3:23. There was no way that you could fall asleep again now. You blinked away the tears that were welling up in your eyes. Feeling them roll down your cheeks, you sat up on the bed, trying to ignore the empty side next to you.

You had dreamt of him again. Actually, the more you thought about it, you realized, it wasn't just a dream. It was a memory of three of you- you, Jensen, and your daughter Elis flying a kite at your lake house on a beautiful, autumn evening a couple of years back.

It was the beginning of September- days were still warm but after sunset, it got cold quite fast.

Elis was running around with the kite until she stumbled on a rock. Jensen quickly ran after her to grab the kite by the string she had let go when she fell. "Hey, Princess, you okay?" He tried to help her, but she just stood up, took the kite back from him and said happily: "Yes, thank you, Daddy! " And ran away again. He shook his head and smiled to himself. "Like mother, like daughter." He said quietly.

You pulled him up and put your arms around his neck. "What was that?" You asked him, your lips teasingly hovering over his, but still not touching. "I said that she's just as stubborn as her mother. Never letting me help her. What am I supposed to do with the two of you?"

You swatted him lightly on his shoulder and made sure that Elis was out of earshot before continuing."Oh, shush, honey. Besides, didn't you help me last night? I remember letting you be really, really helpful. In the bedroom and on the balcony." You said slowly as he pecked your lips softly between your words. Sometimes you were glad you didn't have any close neighbors and that Elis is a heavy sleeper. Otherwise it would've been a very, very uncomfortable situation.

"In the shower too." He added.

You looked flirtily up to him. "Yeah, no, I definitely don't remember that."

"Hmm...I'll have to remind you tonight then, if you promise to keep quiet." He laughed cheekily, and pulled you close to him, and pressed a kiss on your forehead. You stood in comfortable silence in his arms, watching closely how Elis chased after your dog in the backyard, laughing and trying to catch up with her. The kite was already abandoned somewhere on the ground.

It started to get dark, so it was time to head inside. "Elis, honey, let's go inside now!" You called after her. "But moomm! Little bit more, please!"

"Not today, Princess! It's getting cold soon!" Jensen said and she immediately came running back to you, jumping into his arms. She has always been Daddy's girl. "How do you always get through to her?" You were amazed by him. "Let's just say I've had some practice." He gave you a wink and started walking towards your house.

You decided to linger behind to watch them go.

Small moments like these are the ones you would never forget. Now, these memories are even more precious. This dream has been a recurring one for you, ever since his funeral.

You got out of bed and walked downstairs to the living room, picked up an album from the shelf and sat on the couch. Looking at the pictures there were many thoughts in your head. Why didn't he talk to you? How could he let things get so bad that he saw no other way to get out? Why didn't he ask for your help? That's what hurt you the most. That after 8 years of being married, you felt like he still couldn't trust you enough to tell you how he was truly feeling. He suffered alone and you didn't see it until it was too late.

Knowing that this was his choice, was agonizing. Jensen chose to leave you, your daughter, and everyone he knew and cared about. How were you supposed to be able to accept that? It's been close to a year already and no matter what your therapist or anyone else says, it does not get better with time. For you, it still hurts the same.

You've had easier days and hard ones after that. You knew already that today will be especially hard for you to function. You missed him every day with your body, mind and soul, feeling like you were just an empty shell slowly moving through your daily routines. But today, you wanted - no, needed him to hug you, kiss you and tell you that everything's going to be okay. Even if you knew that it was the biggest lie ever, Jensen still always managed to make you believe it.

You sat there for a few hours, flipping through the album, looking at your wedding pictures, focusing really only on the smile on Jensen's face. How the happiness it was showing was just a cover up for all the pain he must have been feeling inside. And he hid it well. "Why did you do this? I don't understand. I could've helped you. Why didn't you talk to me, Jay?" You asked, voice barely above whisper, brushing your fingers over a picture of him and Jared laughing together, hoping to hear him answer. Turning the page you saw both of your handwritten vows you kept from the wedding. The memories brought back the tears that had already dried on your cheeks.

"Y/N, my dear, I love you. More than anything. And I will tell you that every day for the rest of my life. I promise to take your hand today, to hold and to guide you through life next to me, until we're old and wrinkly. I want you to know that I accept all your flaws and quirks because these little things make you who you are.

And while I adore your grumpy, almost lethal glares in the mornings when I forget to put sugar in your coffee, I promise that I have finally learned from my past mistakes.

You are the perfect woman and you make me try to be perfect too. You really are my dream come true, standing right here in front of me. All I ask from you today, is one promise: please promise me that your love for me won't ever fade. No matter the hardships we'll have to go through. I want to be the last one you love, because you are the one for me."

He did tell you that every day. Even when you had the biggest fight that day, you never went to bed angry and not once did you miss the I love you’s. You couldn't help but smile through tears when you read his vows over again, thinking of the excitement and happiness you were feeling when you first heard it. Now, it fills you with sadness.

It was almost 6am and you know Jared usually wakes up at around 5:30. It felt pathetic to call your late husband's best friend at 6am but you just needed to talk to him. Jensen was more like a brother to him. He lost that part of him that day, so he knew what you were feeling. Almost. You dialed his number and waited for him to pick up.

"Hey, Y/N. How are you?" His quiet voice rang through the speaker. "Not good, Jared." There was silence on the other side as he waited for you to continue. "I had a dream of him again today. I miss him. So much." You added with a shaky breath.

"I know. I miss him too. Can I-" he breathed in deeply. "Is there anything I can do?" You started thinking of how anyone but yourself really could help you.

"I don't know." You whispered. "I guess I just have to get through it somehow." For some reason you felt like the "acceptance" stage of grieving, just wasn't on the horizon for you, not any time soon.

"You are not alone, you know that, right? You can talk to me. About anything."

You nodded, but realized he couldn't see you. "I know, J. Thank you."

"Would you like us to pick up Elis for the day? We were planning to go to the fair today and I know for sure my kids would be thrilled to have her come join us. You could have the day to take care of yourself."

You always hated the feeling of being helpless and weak. Lately, it felt that it was all you were. Weak. For the last months, someone has been over to help you frequently. Your parents and in-laws came over the most. Surely, they just wanted to check on you and see their granddaughter, but every time they came, you and your home were always a mess. Deep down you knew that they would never judge, but it still made you feel like you were failing as a mother.

"I don't want to burden you."

He sighed. "Honey, you would never be a burden to us. Don't ever think like that. I'll pick her up around 9, is that good?"

"Okay." You said, exhaling deeply, hoping you'd finally get the rest that you've been missing for the past few months.

You dried your face from tears and dragged yourself to the kitchen to make some tea for you and Elis. After preparing breakfast, you went to wake her up. You were glad she didn't wake up earlier. You wouldn't want to let her see you like that.

"Morning, sweetie!" She was stirring in bed tiredly. "Morning, mommy." She mumbled out quietly. She sat up and shuddered. "Are you cold?" You asked and sat on her bed to pull her close to you. She climbed fully onto your lap and you held tight while she was still waking up.

"I talked to Uncle J today. He wanted to see if you'd like to go to a fair with them?" You had a feeling you already knew what her answer was going to be.

"Can we go? Pleeease?" All her tiredness was being swept away.

"He'll pick you up soon, so let's get you some breakfast." You said as you started to go through her closet to pick some clothes out.

"You're not coming?" The disappointment in her voice broke your heart. "Not today, sweetie, but you'll go and you will have fun for both of us, okay?" Giving her a small smile, you stood in front of her with three outfits. "So, what's it gonna be today? Purple, green or yellow?" Elis was at that age, where she had to do everything herself, but she always wanted her outfit to match head to toe, so every morning you gave her some color options and tried your best to match clothes up. The combinations weren't always the best, but it made her happy, so you were happy. "Purple!"

"Okay, purple it is. Come downstairs when you're ready." You gave her the clothes and left her to dress. "Yes, Mom!"

You heard a car pull up and minute later, Jared let himself in, greeting you loudly. "Hey, girls!" He came to give both of you hugs. "You want coffee or to eat something? Help yourself." You said and pointed to a table full of way too much food for just you and Elis. But you couldn't help it, you love cooking, and most of all, you love cooking whenever you're stressed. "I'll just quickly do her hair and then she's ready to go." You ushered Elis to the bathroom to brush her teeth and braid her hair.

A little bit later, you were saying goodbye to them when Jared hugged you again and whispered. "I meant it, Y/N. Please take care of yourself, okay?"

"I will, I promise. Probably passing out as soon as I close the door behind you." You chuckled. "Good! Do that! El, you ready?" He asked louder. "Yes!" And she gave you one last hug. "Love you, Mom!"

"Love you too! Have fun!"

Almost an hour had passed and you hadn't fallen asleep, instead of it, you laid in bed, thinking of what to do next. You knew exactly what you should do- get back to work full time. You were a freelance photographer, so you had some freedom in shaping your work schedule.

For the last months though, you had held back on taking new projects on. You had plenty of events already that had been planned long in advance and those kept you busy enough. But you knew it was probably the best for you to get out there again. Jensen would definitely say the same. For the sake of your mental health, you decided that coming Monday morning, you'd reach out to your contacts to see if anything new was coming up.

Since you couldn't sleep, you didn't want to let the day go to waste, so you decided to get busy instead. And you were honestly surprised to see how much you got done that afternoon. You managed to actually go and get the groceries for the week, instead of getting them delivered and cleaned the house from top to bottom. It wasn't a lot, if you'd think a year back, but even this seemed like a huge success for you lately. At least it kept you busy for hours. Still, you felt like your day was going too good for you and you were dreading the moment when you'd crash. You knew it would come. It always did.

It was early evening when Jared let you know that they'll take Elis with them to dinner before bringing her home. This gave you a few more hours alone. And you still had leftovers from this morning, so instead of just moping around, you decided to take a long shower. Maybe it would make you feel better about yourself.

You entered the bathroom and undressed, suddenly feeling exhausted and drained. You turned the water onto the hottest setting, hoping the burn on your skin would ease the pain you endured on the inside. You didn't know how to go on without him. You didn't want to. It was hard. And you couldn't help but think that Jensen found an easy way out. Like he gave up too easily, without giving you a chance to help him. Yes, you didn't have any idea how bad it must've been for him, but to you, it also felt like your promises of standing beside him, no matter what life would throw at you, were broken against your will. You couldn't stop the thoughts that passed through your head. What if I just do it? End it all. It sounds so easy. I'd be finally free of this constant pain and the feeling of being useless and pathetic. He did it. What's stopping me?

"Elis. You will not give up because of her." You said out loud, hating yourself for even having these stupid, stupid thoughts.

You stood under the hot stream of water for some time, scrubbing your skin until it was red. Starting to feel lightheaded from the heat, you got out of the shower. You stood in front of the mirror, taking a long look at yourself and you couldn't recognize the woman in the reflection. That there wasn't you. You refused to believe that. She looked small, fragile and tired. Not a sign in there of a confident, happy woman you used to be.

You pulled a towel around you and walked out of the bedroom to get dressed. You stopped in front of your closet and you were nailed in place. You could see it clearly. He was laying in there, like the day you found him. When it was already too late. You knew this was just your imagination but you had to shut your eyes painfully tight to make the view disappear. This is not real, I'm just seeing things. This is not real. This is not real. You kept repeating to yourself in your head.

Then it hit you like a ton of bricks. Your ears were ringing and your body started to shiver uncontrollably. "No, no, no, not now." You whispered and lowered yourself to the floor before your legs would give out. Leaning against the wall, it felt nauseating to just sit there, but you couldn't move. You didn’t know how long you were sitting there, but after some time you heard the front door closing and someone walking downstairs.

"Y/N, dear, it's me." Donna's voice rang through the hall. "I thought I'd come see how you're doing. You didn't answer your phone." His mom was here and you couldn't be more thankful for her for coming over right now. She and Alan supported and cared for you like your own parents did.

"I'm..here!" You called out to her shallowly. It took a minute before she found you. Her expression dropped immediately, when she saw you down on the floor. You looked up at her. "I'm so sorry, Donna. I'm - I should've-" I should've helped him, is what you wanted to say to her, but choked up in tears instead. You lost your husband, she lost her son. You couldn't even imagine what she must be going through.

She sat down next to you and pulled you into a hug. "Shh, honey, it is not your fault. Not at all." She whispered and held you close until you started to calm down a little bit. When someone other than yourself said it, it didn't seem as big of a lie. You took some deep relaxing breaths. "Let's get you dressed and downstairs. I'll make us some tea, okay?" She asked gently and let you go from her embrace. "Yeah, okay." You said quietly and got up.

After getting into your sleepwear, you followed Donna downstairs, where she was already waiting for you with tea. "Careful, it's hot." You sat down next to her on the couch and accepted the mug she offered you. "Thank you." You held it with both hands to warm them up. Feeling the first long sip warming you up from the inside, you sank more into the couch. Donna gave you some time in silence.

"Where's El? With your parents?" You took a sip of tea and shook your head. "No. She's with Jared today. They went to a fair and he thought maybe I'd need some time for myself. She should be home soon." She looked at you like she'd want to say something, but stayed quiet instead. "Hey, I know that look, you know? You can say what you're thinking." You laughed. You had more than once received it from your loved ones. "I'm sorry, Y/N, it's just I'm worried..Are your panic attacks getting more frequent? Have you talked to your doctor about them?" Yep, you knew this was coming. "Well, they're not as often as they used to be. Sometimes they just hit me hard. Sometimes, like today, I get triggered, because my imagination decides to just screw me over." You left a little pause in the conversation.

"I saw him in there again." Thinking back to when Donna found you in front of the closet. "I knew this wasn't real, but I saw him in there. I can't get that sight out of my head. I just can't. It feels like nothing is helping me." You let out a frustrated sigh.

She put her hand over yours. "I know this is a big thing, but have you thought about moving? Maybe this house that you spent your lives together in, itself is triggering you?"

"I haven't thought about it. But it's the only home Elis knows. All her memories of her Dad are in this house. I don't know if moving would be the right decision. Maybe someday in the future, but not yet."

Suddenly your phone rang in the kitchen. You got up to answer it.

"Hey, Y/N, we'll be home in about 20. Elis is totally out, sleeping in the backseat already."

"Okay, perfect, we'll go straight to bed then. See you soon!"

You ended the call and joined Donna again. "They'll be home in 20. I thought you'd get to say hi too, but he said that Elis is sleeping already." You smiled at her.

"Oh, it's okay. I actually wanted more to check up on you today. Had a feeling I should, you know?"

"Thank you for coming. Really. I needed that."

She hugged you. "Of course, dear. Maybe she can come stay with us for the weekend next week?"

"Oh, I'm sure she'd love that."

You said your goodbyes and stayed in the kitchen to wait for Jared and Elis. While you were sitting at the kitchen table, you remembered the first Holiday party that you and Jensen hosted in your home.

Saying that you were nervous that night, would’ve definitely been an understatement. You planned the dinner for ages, before getting the menu just perfect. It wasn’t going to be anything big, just your families coming over for Christmas dinner/ housewarming, but it meant a lot to you to get this perfect. And you still managed to run out of time, so at the last minute you were cooking, decorating and then redecorating the whole house.

“Relax, Y/N, it doesn’t have to be perfect. We'll be fine.” Jensen remained calm as he tried to get you to relax. “It won't be perfect, I can't even make a simple dinner party happen.” You sniffled. He came to stand behind you, while you were slicing oranges for the cider that should've been all done by this time, and started to massage your shoulders. With a deep sigh, you finally let yourself lean into his touch. “Listen...” He put his arms tightly around you. “I know that tonight's important to you, babe, and it's important to me too, but it's still just our own people. They’d hate to see you so stressed out over a dinner for them.” He kissed the top of your head. You turned around and locked your arms around his waist. “You're probably right.” You said quietly and took a deep breath. “So how about we'll let everyone know that dinner will be a little later tonight, and we could turn this into a cooking party instead? We already have everything we need and I'm sure everyone will still have a great time.”

And he was absolutely right because that night ended up being some of the most fun that you've had. Everyone loved cooking dinner together. Jensen and his siblings fooled around the kitchen like children and more than once you had to scold them. After that dinner, both your and Jensen’s parents started to ask about when you two would have kids, joking that you’ve had practice with multiple already.

A little later Jared's car pulled up the driveway. He opened the door and you saw Elis step out, groggily walking towards the house, a new light blue bunny in her hand. "Hey, baby, how was your day?" You asked her quietly when she reached for you to pick her up. "Good." She said quietly and put her head on your shoulder and almost fell asleep again.

"So, I have to come clean. We didn't hold back on spoiling the kids today, I was actually worried if she'd fall asleep from all that sugar." He laughed. "I hope it's okay."

"Of course it is. I think she needed that, so thank you again."

You got Elis awake enough to get her to brush her teeth and into pajamas. She sat in front of you when you were loosely braiding her hair for bed.

"Mommy?" She asked tiredly.

"Yes, honey?"

She turned around to look at you. "Can you sing to me tonight? Like Daddy did?" You felt your eyes tearing up a little. Since the funeral, not once had she asked for you to sing to her. This was her’s and Jensen’s little thing together, so it meant the world to you right now. "Of course, baby." You hugged her. "But you have to know, Daddy was a much better singer than me." That got a little laugh out of her, which brought a smile to your face too.

You got up from her bed. "Come. Take your Bunny with you. You're sleeping with me tonight. You have your Bunny but I want some cuddles too." Her face lit up out of happiness and she looked so much like Jensen, especially when she smiled. She had the same bright green eyes as he did. She jumped off the bed and hugged you. "I love you!" You hugged her back. "I love you too, go on, I'll be right behind you." You said and watched as she ran off into your bedroom. You followed her in there and climbed into bed next to her, pulling her close to you.

"Do you want the same song that Daddy used to sing?" You looked down and saw her nodding silently against your chest. "Okay." You took a moment to see if you still remembered all the lyrics, even though you knew she'd probably sleep in a minute.

Hey Jude, don't make it bad

Take a sad song and make it better

In your mind you could see Jensen singing it to her for the first time, when she was almost one year old. At least that was the first time you heard him sing it.

Remember to let her into your heart

Then you can start to make it better

He was in her nursery, sitting in the rocking chair next to her crib. She had just started teething and was crying all night long.

Hey Jude, don't be afraid

You were made to go out and get her

Jensen had gotten home for a longer break from filming the show and gave you a chance to rest, so he sat up with her, trying to get her to sleep.

The minute you let her under your skin

Then you begin to make it better

You remember standing quietly by the door, listening to his voice carrying out the lyrics.

After that night, him singing this song almost instantly calmed her down in any situation. That's how amazingly good his singing was. Not that you needed any confirmation on that.

And any time you feel the pain

Hey Jude, refrain

Don't carry the world upon your shoulders

For well, you know that it's a fool

Who plays it cool

By making his world a little colder

You finished singing when you knew certainly she was asleep again and pulled her closer to you.

The thought that this song is something that will always stay with you, filled you with joy. And while it would take another year or decade, you knew that one day thinking of Jensen would bring a smile to your face and be a little less painful than it was today. You love him and you would always love him, no amount of time would ever change that.

Tags: @jackles010378 @cevansbaby-dove @deanwinchestersgirl87 @alternativeprincess94

when i’m walking in my sleep

anonymous asked:

Hii, i love your writing, just finished your new buddie fic. Loved it! If you have inspiration for a storyline like the following i would be so happy to read: Eddie taking care of Buck after the screw removing surgery.

I deleted the original post due to it not showing up in the tags, so sorry if you didn’t see it, anon! But here it is again :) 

trigger warnings for this: use of painkillers even though taken as prescribed, mention of an unspecified nightmare, and to be safe emetophobia as it’s mentioned

Eddie has always had the innate need to care for the ones he loves and the ones who need it. When he was five, he tried his hardest alongside his sisters to save an injured squirrel that ended up at their doorstep. He’d take care of his parents when either one of them was sick as he grew up. The need to help everyone never simmered, only grew when he joined the Army, boiled over when Christopher was born. Firefighting was the perfect job for Eddie, he got to feed his desire to help those in need and find the camaraderie within his team that he’d been missing since his Army days. 

Helping people helps him, so he really can’t stop himself from jumping at the opportunity to take Buck home after he gets his screws out when everyone else’s schedules are too busy. He cares about Buck a lot -- maybe too much and not in the way someone cares about their best friend -- so making sure he’s okay and comfortable after a surgery he knows Buck was scared shitless for, it’s not a big deal for Eddie. 

He finds that maybe he’s a little in over his head when Buck greets him with a loopy smile. He’s just a tiny bit in love with Evan Buckley, and having dealt with post-surgery Buck before, Eddie is sure his heart might burst with every zany grin and stage-whispered expression of appreciation.

Buck’s surgeon, who Eddie has met more times than one should have, strolls into the dimly lit recovery room with an amused smile. “Good to see you awake.”

Buck snickers. “You say that every time, Doc. Soon you’re going to have to stop acting surprised that I’m invincible.”

Eddie can’t tell if what Buck just said makes sense, a twenty-four hour shift with very little sleep does things to your common sense, but his doctor seems like he’s heard it before.

His doctor shakes his head, albeit fondly, as if it’s something he expects but can’t believe he’s hearing. “How many times am I going to have to warn you that you’re not invincible before you stop ending up in my OR?” Eddie suspects every time. “Hopefully, there won’t be a next surgery for you Mr. Buckley. The screws are out, everything should be smooth sailing after that, unless you decide to test that invincibility theory.” 

Eddie can’t hold back the laugh as Buck’s face displays his disbelief. “I may be stupid, doc, but I’m no idiot.”

His doctor turns to face Eddie as he facepalms. “I wish you all the luck and patience in the world taking care of this one.” He jests.

“You know I’m always gonna need it, Doc.” Eddie grins. “There anything I should watch out for or steer clear of with him?”

“You know, the usual; don’t let him walk without his crutches, make sure he eats before he takes his next dose of pain medicine we’re sending home with him, and keep him off the leg as much as possible. Elevate it, ice it if the pain gets too much, spare some time for your own sanity.”

Buck grumbles. “I’m not that bad, right? Tell him, Eds.”

“My mom taught me to always tell the truth.” Eddie teases but relents when the pout Buck gives goes straight to his heart. “Fine. You’re a joy to be around, Evan Buckley.”

“You heard him, Doc! I’m a joy to be around!” 

“Never said you weren’t, Buck, just saying your joy is here more than either of us would like.” He smirks. “Alright, alright, I’m sure Eddie wants to get out of here as much as you do so you’re free to go. Everything looks fine post-surgery and as long as you take correct care, it’ll stay fine. You know to call me if there’s an infection or it takes longer to heal than it should, you know the drill. I will see you in six weeks, Buck. Please not a second sooner?”

Buck sends him a sloppy thumbs up and thanks him, says he can’t promise anything but he’ll try his best and Eddie doesn’t want to think about waiting through another one of his surgeries. He’s fine with the aftercare, but waiting to see if Buck came out of each surgery alive is something similar to hell, he’s sure.

When the doctor leaves, Buck looks Eddie’s way. “Eddddieeeeee, my man, a little help?”

Eddie shakes his head and grabs the bag of Buck’s clothes before going to help Buck sit up on the side of the stretcher he was on.

Buck giggles. “My hospital gown is open in the back so don’t look. My ass isn’t really my best feature.”

Well that’s a straight up lie.

“Aw, Eds, thank you. Your butt’s pretty great too.” Buck grins like the compliment means the world to him. The implied compliment that Eddie definitely did not mean to say aloud.

The only thing that keeps him from hiding himself in embarrassment is that Buck is as high as a kite on his painkillers and most likely won’t remember even leaving the hospital. 

He prays the blush doesn’t show on his face as he helps Buck into his basketball shorts. He couldn’t tell you why he gets flustered every time he had to help Buck this way. They were adults, it wasn’t anything domestic, really, just… intimate. He’d help whenever and whatever way Buck needed, because if Eddie Diaz was anything, he wasn’t shy. He was never uncomfortable. Just flustered beyond belief. 

Buck falls back onto the stretcher dramatically after he’s got his shorts on, taking Eddie down with him. He’s laughing hysterically as he wraps his arms around Eddie’s body in a side hug.

“Hey, Eddie?” He looks up at him. “You’re strong. Can you carry me to your truck?”

Eddie lets out a surprised laugh. “I don’t think so, buddy. I can ask for a wheelchair?”

Buck snorts. “Being wheeled out is just embarrassing, man,”

“And being carried out isn’t?”

He responds with a whine. “You don’t have to be smart all the time, you know? My bones feel like they’ve been replaced by jelly, you won’t even try?”

Eddie fondly rolls his eyes. “You can lean on me, okay? I don’t have to carry you to not let you fall, Buck, I’ve got you.”

“You’ve got me?”

“Yeah, I’ve got you. Now, up you go.” 

By the time Buck is settled in Eddie’s living room, foot elevated under a pillow on the coffee table and more blankets than Buck could ever need by his side, they’re both exhausted. Eddie plops down next to Buck on the couch and doesn’t question it when he leans his head on Eddie’s chest. 

Eddie raises an eyebrow when Buck moans. “You alright?”

“I don’t wanna throw up.” He whines. “Make it go away.”

“You’re nauseous?” Eddie asks, already standing to get the trashcan from his bathroom for him but is stopped by Buck. “I’ll be right back, just gonna get you the trashcan just in case.”

Eddie has always hated pain medicine. He hates not having any sense of control of what he’s saying if he’s going to remember it the next day, he hates the nausea that comes with, and he hates that every time, without fail, it makes Buck cry.

His lip is quivering as he looks up at Eddie, and it’s just then that Eddie realizes how actually gone he was for Evan Buckley. 

“Don’t leave me.” Eddie probably would have teased him if Buck had been whining but he wasn’t. There was real fear in his voice, like Eddie would leave out the bathroom window or something. 

“So you’re not nauseous anymore?” He goes with instead, eyebrow raised and arms crossed. He remembers Buck calling it the dad stance, but if it gets Buck to let go of his shirt so he can grab something to stop him from vomiting on his floor, he’ll use it.

Buck shakes his head, stopping abruptly as he pales.

Eddie snorts. “Don’t lie to me ever again.” He reaches for Buck’s face, cupping his jaw in his hand and rubbing his thumb across his cheek. “Let me at least get you a bowl. You’ll be able to see me better in the kitchen.”

Buck finally lets go of the grip on Eddie’s shirt and turns to watch Eddie walk away. Eddie hates himself for the way he subconsciously walks to maybe impress Buck. Thanks to the painkillers, he knows that Buck thinks his ass is nice, he can feel Buck’s eyes watching the back of him, and Eddie prays that Buck is at least the slightest bit interested in him. 

What is he thinking? There’s no way Buck could be interested. They’re best friends, that’s all they are, it doesn’t matter how stupidly and pathetically in love Eddie is. 

Buck is half asleep by the time Eddie is back with a bowl that shouldn’t be missed. 

The second Eddie sits down next to him and hands Buck the bowl, he holds it to his chest and goddamnit why is this so adorable? 

“I doubt you’ll make it through the first minutes of it, let alone an episode, but you down to watch Avatar?”

Buck smiles tiredly, eyes refusing to open. “As long as you’re talking about The Last Airbender and not the creepy movie.”

Eddie chuckles. “You think Avatar is creepy?”

“You don’t?” Buck raises an eyebrow, still not opening his eyes, and gives Eddie a look that says he’s shocked no one else feels the same. “I read somewhere there’s a new one coming out in 2021, like, why?”

Eddie snickers. “I can kind of understand your fear of Child’s Play because it’s supposed to be horror, but c’mon, Avatar? I cried, if I remember correctly.”

Buck gasps. “Child’s Play is horror, thank you very much, and terrifying. End of discussion. Put on The Last Airbender so I can stop thinking about that thing.” 

“That thing has a name, Buck. Chucky. He’s your friend ‘til the end.” Eddie teases but opens Netflix on his TV, quickly selecting from his Keep Watching list. 

Buck doesn’t say anything after that and Eddie assumes he’s asleep, until Buck mumbles something. 

“What was that?”

“Would you stop being my friend if you knew I was in love with you?” Eddie hears him loud and clear this time but he’s stunned at what comes from his best friend, disbelief that he even heard him correctly. 

“Come again?” 

When Eddie doesn’t get a response, he turns and finds that Buck fell asleep right after he gives him a heart attack. 

Fantastic. Fan-fucking-tastic. Though he thinks he heard Buck loud and clear, it can’t be right. He dreamed of Buck reciprocating his feelings many times before, but that’s all Eddie could ever believe it was. Dreams. He hadn’t even known Buck was interested in men, let alone interested in him. 

Eddie doesn’t know how long he’s in his head for, but when he notices the sweat glistening on Buck’s forehead, none of it matters. He places the back of his hand on Buck’s forehead, fearing a fever due to an infection or flu, but he doesn’t have a fever.

Then Buck jolts and suddenly Eddie knows what’s going on. It’s not the first time he’s seen Buck in the middle of a nightmare, it’s not his first time dealing with nightmares, either, so he knows what to do.

He distances himself from Buck as far as he can and still is able to shake him. He knows from personal experience to never stay close when waking someone from a nightmare, the black eye he’d accidentally given Buck one night being proof. 

“Hey, Buck, you gotta wake up, buddy.” He shakes his shoulder lightly. “It’s just a nightmare, you’re not there.”

When Buck doesn’t wake up after a third try, Eddie tries a different tactic and scoots a little closer, grabbing Buck’s shoulder and shaking heavier than before. “Evan, Evan, wake up!”

Buck jolts awake, Bobby’s name on the tip of his tongue, swallowed by a scream. He can’t catch his breath, Eddie can tell he hasn’t fully grasped that wherever he just was in his nightmare was long gone and that he’s safe so he does everything he can to clear that fog. 

He takes Buck’s shaking hand in his own and squeezes. “Hey, Evan, you’re at my place, on my couch, nowhere near any danger. You’re safe, okay?”

He can practically see the fog clear from his mind, taking in his surroundings and squeezes Eddie’s hand in his. “Eddie?”

“Yeah, man, I’m here. Feeling calmer?”

Before Buck can respond, he winces and muffles a scream of pain by biting on his lip. Eddie jumps into action as Buck grabs onto the bottom of his cast tightly, as to squeeze out the agony he was feeling. 

Eddie checks the time. “You’re due for your next dose of your painkiller at least.”

But Buck isn’t listening to him. He’s too focused on the pain that Eddie can only now vaguely remember after getting the bullet removed from his shoulder. Before long, Eddie realizes Buck is mumbling something in between choked sobs and muffled screams of agony.

“Evan,” He tries to use his name again in hopes it’ll get him to focus on Eddie and not the pain. 

Buck’s face is twisted in pain when he finally looks at Eddie and not for the time, he wishes he could take Buck’s pain away. 

“I hate Freddie Costas. I hate him so much.” He sobs freely, still holding his bad leg like it’s a matter of life or death. “Fuck, it hurts.”

Eddie stands. “I’m gonna get your pain pills and an ice pack.”

Buck gulps the pill down with no water and Eddie has to stop himself from finding that oddly one of the most attractive things he’s seen Buck do. He also holds back a cringe, never one for taking pills in any way. 

As Eddie unwraps the beginnings of Buck’s cast, Buck starts to calm, his tears slow, his body relaxes against Eddie’s side. 

“I’m sorry,” He whispers. 

“Don’t be. Trust me when I say I get it.” He looks Buck directly in the eyes. “Never feel sorry about feeling things.” 

He doesn’t ask if he wants to talk about it. He knows Buck will talk about it if or when he wanted so it ends up being a useless question. 

It’s quiet again after that. The only sounds that could be heard around Eddie’s was their breathing and the air conditioner running. Avatar is paused on the TV and Eddie doesn’t make any move to unpause it. 

Then Eddie is in his head again.

If he heard right, why would Buck be into him? He wants more than anything for it to be true, but he couldn’t see how it would be true. But he knows he heard what Buck asked, knows he should be thrilled Buck loves him back, but the doubts eat him up. What if he was just asking in general, not personally? What if he thought he was talking to someone else? Maybe he’s exaggerating his gratefulness for taking care of him and he means it platonically?

It’s killing him not knowing.

Eddie clears his throat. “Hey, uh- earlier you asked- before you fell asleep, do you-”

He’s a stuttering mess, hasn’t stumbled over his words this much since he asked Shannon out in their senior year. 

Buck cuts in, putting him out of his misery. “If you’re asking if I remember asking you if you’d still stay my friend if you found out I was in love with you, then yes, I do remember and I’m so sorry.”

Sorry for what? I’m sorry I was just loopy, it was just a question, I’m not actually in love with you? 

Buck swallows hard. “Do you hate me?”

Eddie’s eyes widened completely at the question. “Why would I hate you?”

“Because I’m in love with you and continued to be your friend without telling you as such?” 

His heart is racing a mile a minute because Evan Buckley loved him back and he’d had no idea the entire time. He shakes his head with a smile and unshed tears burning his eyes. “I would be the biggest hypocrite if I hated you for that.”

It looks as though Buck hadn’t heard right as he shook his head, but he hopes he understands. 

“Come again?” Eddie can’t help but snort at how similar Buck and him are sometimes. “Why are you crying? Don’t cry!”

“I’m crying because I love you and I just found out it’s reciprocated, okay? Give me a second here.” He lets out a mix between a laugh and a cry. “Holy shit, you love me!”

Eddie’s mind is reeling. The more the shock wears off, the more joy and excitement he starts to feel. 

“You love me!” Buck grins and leans forward, stopping to look Eddie in the eye and ask for permission -- which he eagerly grants -- and soon, what Eddie dreamed of since the Grenade Incident is happening. Their lips touch and Eddie Diaz tries not to be a cliche, but it’s a whole show of fireworks, kissing Buck. More than he could have ever imagined. 

It’s an hour later, and they’re laying in Eddie’s bed, bodies pressed up against the other. Eddie hasn’t felt so secure in years, can’t even remember a time when things felt right until then. Lying next to Buck, things feel light for the first time since he doesn’t know how long, and the feeling of security is what lulls Eddie to sleep. 

Until Buck starts to sniffle and then Eddie is wide awake again.   

“You okay, Buck?”

Buck shakes his head rapidly with a pout. “No, I have to pee.” 

He tries to keep in his laughter, he really does, but the shock and amusement outweighs his ability not to laugh at things that aren’t funny to other people. 

Buck sniffles once more. “Why are you laughing?”

“Because you’re adorable and I love you.” Eddie’s lips quirk into a soft smile. “Now, c’mon, up you go.” 

Buck grumbles. “Love you too.”

When he’s done, Eddie turns back to get his crutches and gets the surprise of a lifetime when Buck reaches out to slap his ass.

“Hey!” 

“What? I did tell you you had a nice ass.”

“Oh my God.”

Everything Wrong With The Umbrella Academy. Episode 4, Man on the Moon.

We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals

Run Boy Run

Extra Ordinary

Disclaimer: This is all in good fun! I wanted to do a really nitpicky re-watch of the series and found some really cool and interesting things I didn’t notice before. This is meant to have a Cinema Sins-esque tone. However, I did take off a lot more sins than Cinema Sins would have because I do genuinely like the series and the people that made it possible. So all of the good things got one sin off and all the bad things got one sin added. This is a really long post, so grab some popcorn. If there’s anything that I missed, feel free to add it!

I would also like to add, that normally you wouldn’t watch a show this way. I am purposefully looking for mistakes, easter eggs, and other things that we’re not supposed to notice. To be honest, I am seeing a lot of the things I’m pointing out for the first time because I am watching not with the goal of entertainment, but for analysis. 

Man on the Moon

Tom Hopper’s workout routine. -1

What was Luther holding in his hand? A lighter? A toy? I can’t tell. It’s weird that they put something there at all. +1

Klaus knocked down the wall between his and Vanya’s rooms. That was the one thing in the house that said Vanya ever lived there and he destroyed it. +2

However, Klaus’s room looks really, really cool. Set designers, you win this one. -1

The bike. I have questions about that bike. When did Luther get it? Or did it belong to all the children? Sinning because no way Reggie would buy Luther a bike. Or give one to the children. +1

The shot following Luther directly gave me a bit of motion sickness. +1

Netflix subtitles have Reginald saying “Attention, Master Luther” when it is clearly Pogo. +1

“Mission alert” +1

Everyone else is gone! Luther has no backup. Reggie is a dick to Luther. +1

I know I should have mentioned this in the last episode, but Reggie put five young children in leather catsuits. Potentially six, but we never see Five in one. And he still makes Luther wear it as an adult! +6

Luther never leaves the house and keeps going on missions for Reggie because of a sense of responsibility. I can understand that. -1

However, Reggie was the one who fostered that in Luther. He made Luther think that he was responsible for saving the city, when in reality that’s up to law enforcement officers. +3

Why didn’t Luther go to a real hospital? Did Reggie take him home? How did Luther end up back in the Academy after that mission? +1

Was Luther dead? Reggie feels for his pulse and says “dammit”. Did the ape serum bring him back to life? +1

How long was Luther on that table? We see him with a beard in episode one, but it isn’t as crazy as this one. Also, does Luther bleach his hair now, or what? I am confused by Luther now being a brunette with impressive facial hair. +1

Tom Hopper nails ‘dawning horror and shock at now being an ape’. -1

Pop goes the weasel. +1

Who wound that box and placed it there? And why? The only other people there are Reggie, Grace, and Pogo. No way they did something so cruel and juvenile after permanently disfiguring him. +1

The umbrella the monkey-in-the-box suddenly has the title when it didn’t earlier. +1

“There’s something you have to see”. Yes Allison, continue to be vague. I’m sure Luther will appreciate it. Why not “I think the assassins killed Mom. Come take a look.” Is it because that would have been too logical? +1

Luther is still calling her “Grace”. +1

“Poor Diego. I mean this is gonna be so hard on him”. Choke on that irony, everyone. +1

 “I don’t wanna discuss it”. This family. Allison said the same thing about Claire moments before telling Luther everything. Parallels. +1

Vanya spent the night at Leonard’s house. Sigh. +1

“For one day I’ll think you’ll be fine”. What makes you think that, Leonard? +1

Vanya takes one sip of her coffee and never touches it again. Leonard doesn’t even drink his. What is the point of the damn coffee? +1

“When I was a kid I felt like I had to apologize for even breathing.” Reggie is a dick. +7

“I don’t think my Dad ever forgave me for being born” foreshadowing patricide. +1

Vanya and Leonard talk in front of the Icarus Theatre. Comics fans, you know why that’s significant. +1

Helen doesn’t acknowledge Vanya’s greeting like a normal human being. +1

People are already tuning, Vanya! Get your ass in the theatre so you can do the same! +1

Leonard is stupidly charming. I hate that he’s sort of likable, but it makes sense for what they’re using him for. +1

The kidnapping of Klaus Hargreeves. +4

Klaus is too kinky to tourture. -1

Where is that blood on his chest coming from? +1

Ten hours of tourture! Fuck you show for making Klaus go though that. +10

 “He’s a freak like his brother”. Which one? You met Luther and Diego. And they presumably know Five through the Commission. But which one is the freak into kinky shit? Diego? +1

“Remember Trinidad”. Noodle incident. (if you don’t know what that is google Noodle incident TV Tropes)+1

This motel has a surprising amount of towels in the bathroom. Some of the nicer places I’ve stayed don’t have that many. +1

Patch lives in house 204. “2” and “4”. Hmmm. +1

Does Diego show up on Patch’s doorstep being emo often? +1

Why is she still thinking about the 1938 fingerprint? We know that it’s plausible because of Five, but the police department should have thrown that out. It doesn’t make any sense and fingerprints can be alike. +1

She mentions the 30s cold case and Diego starts to look up in recognition. Even if he doesn’t know about the Commission or the Apocalypse, he does know about Five’s ability to time travel. He even mentions “The Boy”. Diego thinks that it was Five based on the fingerprint and his examination of the two crime scenes. -1

“For once, just try things my way”. Foreshadowing. +1

Diego hasn’t bothered to clean up the blood on his face from last night. Weirdo. +1

Allison is already forming a plan to kick Leonard’s ass the moment she sees his silhouette. Good. -1

Also, not the first time the audience has seen Leonard creeping around. Remember when he stole the journal? +1

Allison takes him down easy. Character moment showing that her superhero training hasn’t left her. Also, Allison is a badass. -1

Allison sees right through Leonard. This scene is excellent. -1

Lance has a really cute dog. -1

After seeing the shady deal while tailing Meritech, Five decides to tail Lance instead of just watching the building. Good job, Five. -1

How do you bill insurance companies for fake things? You need an insurance ID or SSN to have a patient. Where does Lance get these fake numbers from? +1

Why are eyeballs such a hot commodity? +1

“Names and numbers and I need it NOW” Five is scary. -1

Five jumped into the seatbelt. Did his powers secure it for him? +1

Five has a really organized desk. I wish I could read what he labeled the binders. +1

Luther decided to search Five’s room for clues. Pogo would be excellent at cinema sins. +1

For all we make fun of Diego’s stupid outfit, just remember, comics Diego has an even stupider one. This is the stupidity turned down. +1

The labels are now upside down on the binders when they were right side up in the last shot. +1

Either Five was a really good artist, or Reggie let Five have a poster above his bed that didn’t feature the academy. No explanation is given. +1

Five’s wallpaper depicts a boy pulling a mannequin in a wagon. -1

Luther punches a hole in Five’s wardrobe. This is never mentioned again. +1 

“When you watch those nature shows does it turn you on?” Diego is a dick. +1

If you look really closely, you can see something that looks suspiciously like the ending to Apocalypse suite in Five’s room as a piece of art taped to the wall. I checked with the comics. It looks very, very similar. -1

There are two cylindrical things on the wall. One on Five’s wall and one we can see through the doorway on the wall across from Five’s room. What is it? Nightlight? Loudspeaker? Alarm? +1

Ben Hargreeves enters the chat. -1

“Stay calm, Klaus” stay calm. +1

Hazel and Cha Cha spent over 10 hours beating the crap out of Klaus but they didn’t think of the training manual, something Cha Cha clearly has memorized, until now. +1

When did they grab his coat? Klaus was wearing nothing but a towel. Did Hazel decide to grab it on a whim? +1

“Asthma medication”. Klaus is still coherent enough to come up with an okay lie after 10 hours of tourture. +1

“Amputee hookers”. Nice call back to the comics. -1

Hazel and Cha Cha don’t hear Klaus say “not until they're high as kites” when responding to Ben. +1

“Klaus, be strong”. Ben’s facial expression was really weird with this line. +1

Klaus cracks after 10 hours of tourture while going through withdrawal. Impressive. -1

The multi-screen effects look really cool. -1

Watching Hazel and Cha Cha burn down Meritech while high as kites amuses me. -1

Watching this later while knowing that Meritech doesn’t really matter means that I don’t really care about this building. I wish there was something to make this more interesting instead of just making the eye a red herring. Leonard hasn’t lost an eye yet, so it doesn’t matter. +1

What were Hazel and Cha Cha dancing to in universe? Was this song playing on the radio or something?? +1

Luther goes through the door that’s too small for him because he’s Number One and Diego goes through the door that would actually accommodate Luther’s size. +1

Vanya’s book should be way more beat up than that if it survived the literal apocalypse with Five for 45 years. The ink looks too fresh, too. Unless this is another, newer copy of Extra Ordinary? Sin for confusion. +1

Five got way too close to that explosion. Five survives this without injury. +1

We see him lying amongst the shrapnel for crying out loud! +1

Gossip magazines. “We’re doing fine!” +1

Tween Hit is still a popular magazine seventeen years later. -1

“Vanya, she’s gone” is the vaguest wording ever. +1

However, Vanya understands this. Sin on the writers. +1

“It was those psychopaths last night” weird delivery. Allison’s tone is off. +1

Does Vanya not have any students other than Leonard? She’s perfectly free on some random afternoon so she can have a drink with Allison. +1

Hazel and Cha Cha coming down from their high. -1

Cha Cha hates doughnuts. +1

Reginald Hargreeves put his eight year old son in what amounted to a tourture chamber so he would stop being afraid. Reggie is a dick. +8

Why is Ben stuck in the closet with Klaus? +1

The cleaning lady (her name is Claudia, according to a card she leaves) has one of her ears uncovered. She totally would have been able to hear him. +1

Callback to the screw Hazel threw away to remind the audience that it’s important. -1

Ben’s whiny bullshit. Now is not the time, asshole. +2

We know why the dog ear is important, but why would Patch? At this point it’s a random piece of fabric that might look like something she saw on surveillance footage (Cha Cha’s mask). Point is, that could be something from Meritech and not necessarily urgent. +1

Patch gets the message intended for Five about Klaus. When Diego thinks that the missing brother is Five and that’s who he meant when he was talking to her. Choke on that irony and miscommunication. +1

This show is shot like a comic book and I love it. -1

“That’s what you do when you’re 17” in this specific circumstance, yes. In others, not so much. You don’t have to leave when you’re 17. +1

Luther calls out Diego for not being a real grown up while also not being a real grown up himself. +1

Diego asks “You ever even been with a girl”. Diego is a dick. +1

“We’re orphans again, dude”. When were you ever orphans? Sin for the writers for writing this or to Reggie for making them believe that they were regular orphans he adopted legitimately instead of buying. +1

“Do you ever stop talking. Wow that was easy.” I wheezed.-1

Five is drunk in the library with Dolores with equations scribbled all over the place. No one stopped him when he started writing on the walls in sharpie. +1

Five has two bottles of hard liquor with him. +2

 “Drunk as a skunk” +1

The comedic timing of Five’s hand letting go of the bottle. -1

“Jerk off on your Mr. Snuggles teddy bear”. First of all, eww. Second of all, yeah, Vanya these are all valid points she’s making. You just met this dude! +1

“But sometimes men are unredeemable shits” yeah. Sin for men and for the fact that Vanya doesn’t know this. +1

“Yay sisters” -1

What are Allison and Vanya drinking? Seriously, what are their drinks of choice? It looks like Vanya has something like a gin and tonic or a vodka soda and Allison has a rum and coke, but I can’t really tell. This is a sin until I know for sure. +1

That is a lot of extra blood on Klaus with no explanation. +1

Draw Ben like one of your French girls, Klaus. -1

“Is your brother here now.” “You’re gonna have to be a little more specific on that” -1

Ben’s wink. -1

Reggie is a dick to his adopted children. +7

Torturing a literal child and calling it training. +4

Reggie, you dramatic bitch. +1

Warrants exist for a reason, Patch. +1

Also, Patch decides to follow Diego’s shitty advice without any backup. +1

Drunk Five being carried bridal style by Luther. Aidan Gallagher being carried bridal style by Tom Hopper. -1

“I’m going through puberty. Twice.” Sucks to be you. +2

You had two bottles, Five. And you somehow didn’t die of alcohol poisoning. +2

Diego’s face. -1

Aidan Gallagher doesn’t play drunk very well. To be fair, he’s never been drunk (or at least I hope he hasn’t), but it’s still a sin. +1

“You know I hate code names”, okay Spaceboy. +1

“I’m the four frickin horsemen” or Gabriel’s horn. -1

“You haven’t been this sober since you were a teenager, since you decided to keep the ghosts at bay”. I hate the delivery on this last line, but to be fair to Justin Min, it was a shitty line in the first place. Sin for delivery and for the writers. Also, gee Ben, I thought he was just doing drugs to be contrary. +2

Zoya Popova is so underrated. I love her. -1

Ben’s lil smile. -1

Vanya’s apartment is so warm and nice with all the lights on, but this is the only time we get to see it that way. When she is on good terms with Allison. Lighting cues. -1

Allison, you’re too tall to fit in Vanya’s sweatpants. They’d be sweat capris. +1

Have I mentioned how much I love Allison’s jacket in this episode yet? Because I really like it. -1

Creepy flowers are creepy. +1

“She knows it was a misunderstanding”  Allison’s face all but says. “Do I?”. Emmy Raver-Lampman rules. -1

Also, Vanya speaks for Allison. +1

This is where they decide to show just how much of a creep Leonard is. Well done, show. -1

Leonard is a creepy, manipulative little bastard. +1

Sin off for the gory sfx makeup in this episode. The ghosts look brutal! -1

Syd the tow truck driver is back. Too bad he’s dead. +1

The dead cheerleader is disturbing. +1

This episode sort of confirms the headcanon that Klaus can speak/understand many languages. -1

The gore on Klaus keeps changing. +1

The switch in camera angles shows the shift in point of views, hence why the ghosts disappear. Clever. -1

Ben voice: Nicely done. -1

Patch waited a pretty long time. How long was the walk from the library to thy gym? +1

Chair scoot. Klaus is smart. -1

Klaus gives himself a concussion. Sinning because he had to give himself more trauma to escape from touture. +1

Claudia gives Patch the key to the room without question and then runs.+1

Klaus is coherent enough to think to hide in the vent. Klaus is a smart cookie. -1

The death of Detective Eudora Patch. +1

The Klaus theme -1

Kenny’s mom appearance! Her hat and jacket have matching flowers that also match her pants. Cute. -1

Klaus’s wink. -1

Kenny’s mom definitely saw a lot more of Klaus than what was already on display. +1

Time traveling briefcase! -1

Kenny’s mom looks for Klaus under the seat. What??? +1

Diego gives Dolores a chair. How nice of him. -1

Diego’s Prime 8s poster. If you know, you know. -1

Aidan Gallager sucks at pretending to sleep. +1

“You throw another one of those goddamn knives at me, I’m pressing charges”. I love Al. -1

It was a half hour walk from the library to the gym. Patch waited a really long time. +1

Now you remember Klaus after you found Five, who wasn’t really in any danger. +1

The little pat Luther gives Dolores. -1

Diego takes his gloves off. It’s like he wants to get framed. +1

This scene is really emotional and made me cry the first time I saw it. +1

David Castaneda is a really good actor. -1

The fridging of Detective Eudora Patch. +100

Overall Review:

This episode starts off on a really high note. I follow Tom Hopper on Instagram. He’s really fit. There is no denying that. I also appreciated the way he played Luther this episode. The scene where Luther realizes what his body looks like was heartbreaking to watch and really well acted. 

Speaking of heartbreaking to watch, the fridging of Detective Patch pisses me off. For those who don’t know, “Fridging” is when a female character is hurt or killed in some way in order to move a man’s story/emotional development forward. Considering that Patch’s death is what starts Diego’s character development, I would say that this applies. I am genuinely disappointed in the writers for doing this to Patch. I think it’s been established that I respect Patch. She doesn’t take any shit and she follows her moral compass. That is her real character. She only screws up when it comes to Diego and this is no different. She decided to be reckless like him and paid the ultimate price. However, this is completely out of character. Based on what we’re shown, Patch should have brought up her suspicions to Beeman (the other detective) and went from there. But instead, she had to die. That injustice done to her character is what deserves 100 sins. The show really dropped the ball with this one. 

Moving on, Vanya and Allison have some really good interaction in this episode. I think it’s a little weird how quickly Vanya forgave Allison after the shit she said last episode. Diego and Allison treated Vanya like a fragile object, which is what led her to Leonard. To be fair, Vanya was pretty stupid that last episode when she didn’t run away, but that doesn’t excuse what Diego said and Allison agreed with. Overall, the yay sisters thing was a good, but sus moment. 

Next, Klaus and Ben. Almost everything Ben said in this episode pissed me off. The “that’s the real tourture” speech was awful. For all the fandom loves him, Ben is a prick. However, Ben was also able to keep Klaus calm and encouraged him to control his power over the many, many ghosts in the room. So it’s kind of a wash for me this episode. I hope season 2 explores more of his character and why he would choose to say something so awful while his brother is being literally tortured. 

As for the main plot, Five’s only lead, not that it really matters yet, has been destroyed. Hazel and Cha Cha realize that they’re going to end the world if they complete their mission. And Leonard has finally been revealed to be a creep who wants something to do with Vanya’s pills. On a rewatch, we know why that’s significant, but a first time viewer would be confused in a good way. The show wants the audience to ask: Why? Vanya’s pills have been there for important moments up until this point. And now there are being forcibly taken out of the equation. Why?

Total: 193

Sentence: Getting drunk in the library with your mannequin wife while trying to do math. 

Im so sad too with all that´s happening around TBWDOA, it was magical the first time that I listened it: so much life, love and humanity even in the darkest places of the world... I felt that the hope around it was more strong that any problematic subject... I know that maybe im being naive and self-blinded by my own privileges, but im so angry that the controversy destroyed what for my was so beautiful. I dont know if this is weird, but I wanted to talk with someone that maybe feels the same :(

Hey dude, I thought exactly the same thing. I actually still think it, but every time I see any trace of the show in my camera roll or the copy of the album, it’s so hard not to think about all the angry people. I think now that it’s been a few weeks however, I can fully hold a discussion about this musical without feeling guilty or sad. Despite what other people think, I really don’t believe that the writers has hostile intents at all. If you look at old posts like this:

You can tell just how passionate they were about this show. & plus, I realized recently that these guys tend to write shows about topics that are not normally talked about as well. Example: this show and ‘Talk To Me’– a show about a child who is on the Autism spectrum. I suppose you could kind of count their other show “With The Right Music” as kind of that? However I’m actually not totally clear on what that show is about since it wasn’t actually written to the end– though I think it is about a closeted teenager in high school. I suppose this counts because there aren’t that many musicals written about closeted teenagers. I truly don’t believe that they were trying to offend anyone– simply were just so so invested in trying to get a story out there, maybe one that was unfamiliar to them, and perhaps it was also bad timing that the full show was released? Or maybe they were just as naïve too when they wrote the show probably around 2015 (earlier?) I used to always get their attention (unintentionally I swear) on Twitter when I’d talk about the show. Those dudes were really kind. And they follow back a lot of their fans. So, perhaps it was just naïvety? I’m aware that they’re attempting to make it right, and they are probably at the moment in conversation with Afghan Americans. That’s important, and speaks more than words I think. I know Troy, Nikhil, Sittichai, and Jonathan have been under fire. Troy has gone silent and if I’m not mistaken I think Sittichai and Jonathan as well? Other actors in the show such as Osh (Zemar) and though a small appearance– Shiv Pai (future Paiman’s son) have gotten no such comments I realize. Maybe the show was bad timing. Perhaps it would’ve had a more positive outcome in terms of rising popularity had it been talked about in a past tense; in a sense that “this practice doesn’t happen anymore” so that the setting is not modern day, but instead sometime in the late 1900s?Would that have made the show less controversial? Maybe? But we can never be sure. Would it have been less controversial if they minimized the extend of the abuse? Or removed that altogether and made it that it was simply two boys falling in love in rural Afghanistan who were coming terms with the fact that they were feeling this feeling with each other? well, yeah, because it would just be a love story in a different setting, and we’d probably see Feda and Paiman exploring the marketplace as well. If this was the case, I’d assume the conflict of the story would be homophobia from parents/internalized homophobia itself, or struggling to understand themselves. Another conflict could be something that many teenagers experience as well, such as fear of the future. Maybe arranged marriage could still be a conflict, and since Feda’s name literally means “sacrifice” he’d probably still have to die in the end. Perhaps they could have rewritten the show like that and the show would have little to no controversy? The music is incredible, and it could even portray the beauty of Afghanistan through their amazing way of writing music. I’m just brainstorming and rambling here, sorry! when it comes to this show it seems as though that I always just vomit out more words than anyone cares to hear. Let’s address why it was controversial as well though... Many were repulsed by the idea of s-x trafficking as a musical, and even more outraged with the musical being about Afghanistan. It showed negative parts of the country, and that would add on to people’s perception and dislike toward Afghans, which if you live in America you are aware of the racists’ stereotypes and disdain toward Afghans. (If you are naïve like me, you probably did not catch that as well. I truly forgot that there were people who perceived Afghans in a negative light. I was awed by the diversity in the show and so focused on that) I believe that they also have said how gay men are usually perceived as pedophiles as well and this show did not help to minimize that harmful stereotypes. I’m obviously kind of dumb because I didn’t realize that stereotype.

However it is true, because realized I often see this trope in fiction books about “creepy uncles preying on their nephews”. Though people don’t agree with the fact that it is a musical, I always saw it as a different way of storytelling. There’s a book called The Kite Runner that talks about the same topic in this musical by the way. I didn’t know this but my friends have had to read that book as an assignment in their English class. I thought, well, TBWDOA, it just tells the story through songs. So all in all, these were many of the points people made, and you cannot be upset with them for being angry. When I first listened to the show, I was aware it was controversial, but I thought the controversy would be something that can be discussed and debated while being enjoyed. Similar to how Hamilton is often debated for glorifying the founding fathers while still being a good show. However, when I replied to one comment because I thought that this was how it was going to go, I was bombarded with several other comments, I was called pedophilic and was told that because I was not Afghan that I should not speak and when someone said that, I realized “okay, I was wrong to think that this was an issue that could be debated!” I did not realize how much deeper it would be. As a result, I was flooded with comments from instagram and twitter and it was STRESSFUL and overwhelming that I just couldn’t sleep and had to take a break! However someone told me that even the most controversial, flawed works of art should be appreciated or discussed. It’s up for debate if that’s true. The show is incredible in portraying the strength of the human spirit— “find your voice, even if it’s weak, using it can make a difference that will lead to a greater change.” It showed a boy who used something that was SUPPOSED to degrade and silence him as a tool to lift him up and strengthen him– that was an incredible theme. He found power in the resources he could. Dancing was supposed to be something he could not decide, but he made it his own, would not let it weaken him, and used it as a tool to push him toward more positive hopes. There’s something so powerful about people taking back the thing that was supposed to weaken them, and twisting in into something that gives them strength. Though just because the music embodies the main characters incredibly and the message is empowering, we cannot ignore that perhaps, yes the show was quite insensitive to many Afghan Americans. It might take me several months before I can listen to any song from this show again though. But the show has such a special place in my heart, for making me fall in love with music theory and musical instruments all over again, for pulling my heart strings with incredible themes/life lessons, and the show embodying that theme in a heartbreaking final song, and then lastly providing a beautiful love story. Am I insensitive for saying that? I really don’t want to be, but a story like this has never made me feel like that before. I was intrigued by Islamic wedding customs and researched into that. I fell in love with the purpose of whirling dervishes, and fascinated by how beautiful that was. I watched videos about them, i read about them. Feda talked about an old Afghan poet in the show and god, for hours I looked up that poet and read the translated English phrases (didn’t finish however). I was taken by the beautiful geography of Afghanistan. I researched beyond the show to look at Afghan culture and I appreciated that. I understood that, of course this wasn’t a common practice that is active in Afghanistan. But I’m aware now that so many people will not see it that way at all. They saw the show as indulging the idea that this practice is apart of their culture which is not true, and the original theater did not market that well at all.. I want to hope that this was just really bad timing, that this show was misinterpreted, and in the future will be enjoyed and discussed rather than torn apart. I never like being on the controversial side of things, but, gosh, I don’t know.

But, I know exactly how you feel. And I welcome any asks/my messages are open for discussion about this show now.

Forgiven, Ch 3

This has been on Ao3 for a while but I never got past posting Ch 2 here ~

Link to Ch 1 and Ch 2 :)

Lesser eldrazi had many qualities that made them deadly predators, most of which made them relatively pathetic prey. The power to desiccate the land was a great liability when it gave your pursuers a trail to follow, especially when moving in packs. The average drone’s physiology, so adept at ambushing and bringing death, made them slow and clumsy when on the retreat.

The swarm had had a full day’s head start before Nissa, Sorin, and Nahiri set out on their trail. A day’s worth of travel that the planeswalkers could cover in considerably less time.

Unfortunately, what the Eldrazi lacked in natural advantage, inland Tazeem made up for by being an impenetrable maze of massive hedrons, cavernous ground, and rolling, titan forests. The eldrazi hadn’t even followed the Umara river, where the planeswalkers might at least have relied on reports from the merfolk settlements to indicate where the swarm was headed.

Thankfully, Nissa still felt the itch. One massive, festering, migrating rash for the mass that had abandoned the Halimar Basin, and minute irritations that helped her, Sorin, and Nahiri take care of any stragglers as they made their way north, through the reclaimed stretch of Oran-Rief.

Nahiri was dispatching two such stragglers now, far below in one of the forest’s many cavernous shafts. Nissa knelt by the mouth of the tunnel, a sheer drop of ridged stone in the middle of a large grass clearing. Sorin stood a few paces further off, one hand tapping irritably and irritatingly at his pommel. A pair of merfolk kitesailors watched from a slight distance.

“Wouldn’t that go faster with all three of you folk down there?” The smaller of the two merfolk called.

“Not enough space,” Nissa responded, gaze fixed on the tunnel. For the dozenth time she pressed her hand to the damp grass around the mouth of the cave shaft, feeling for signs of life. The underground networks were less-used nowadays ever since the threat of the Roil had subsided, but there was always a chance that a few elves might have gotten caught between the cave walls, the eldrazi, and an angry kor lithomancer.

“She’ll be careful,” Sorin said, unsolicited. “Nahiri has a skill of precision with her stonework like no other.”

“Thank you for the input,” Nissa muttered back. No unexpected pulses of life moved in the tunnels, which was the far greater reassurance at the moment.

“What sorta coat is that, mister?” The small merfolk asked.

“Demon hide,” Sorin replied, voice flat.

“Demon hide, he said, Olmer. What do you make of that?”

“Seems unlikely,” The tall merfolk replied. “But the world’s full of unlikely things, I suppose.”

Sorin rolled his eyes. “I could go help her. She shouldn’t be having this much trouble, if it really is just two.”

“The caves are vast,” Nissa said. “I’m not surprised it’s taking her a while to find them.” She glanced up at Sorin. “You have a lot of faith in her.”

Sorin crossed his arms. “She’s ruthless and she knows what she’s doing. That’s just the truth.”

“Then she’ll be fine. You’d just get in her way down there.”

Sorin sniffed, and ignored another question from the merfolk. They passed a minute in silence before he spoke again.

“We fought as a team on Zendikar before, you know. On many different worlds, for that matter. We can work together, and rather effectively, I might add.”

“I look forward to you showing me.”

That bought another two minutes of the vampire’s sullen silence. Nissa remained crouched by the tunnel shaft, trying to focus on the trailing winds drifting through the network of hedrons and trees that surrounded them. On the long, wild grasses trailing under the breeze.

“Ha!”

They both started at the sound of Nahiri’s laugh echoing up out the shaft, followed by the faint clash of stone on stone. Nissa let out a small relieved breath. Sorin’s shoulders slackened noticeably.

Nissa watched him out of the corner of her eye. He glanced down at her twice, and looked back away both times. One of the nice things about having eyes that glowed bright green was that Nissa could observe a person without them really knowing exactly what she was looking at.

  If you have something to say, mover, you should not feel fear to say it.

Nissa narrowed her eyes. She was cherishing the silence-

  Silence immersed in actions undone is no true silence.

“You’re very concerned for her,” Nissa blurted out in a whisper. “In light of what she took from you.”

Sorin shrugged and flicked his the wrist. “I’m allowed. I can be angry about what she’s done and worry as well.”

“You just sound like you regret what happened-”

“Of course I regret it! My entire plane-”

“That’s not what I meant. You seem like you regret it because you lost a friend as well.”

Sorin’s crossed arms tightened around each other, like a snake’s coils drawing close. “You say it like you think I’m incapable of that sort of regret.”

Nissa suppressed a twist in her stomach. No need to planeswalk away. Just deal with the confrontation at hand.

“You’ve never given me a reason to think you’re someone who regrets the consequences of their actions until a few days ago.” She turned to fully face Sorin. “I’m not complaining, but if you asked me whether I thought you were a creature of regret a week ago...well I’d have said ‘no’.”

“I’m very lucky, then, that your opinion on the matter means nothing to me.”

Nissa felt a stab of anger and irritation. She turned back away.

  Are you satisfied?

Nissa shut her eyes, and sighed. “No I suppose not.”

“What was that?” Sorin asked.

“Speaking to myself.” Nissa stood. Behind Sorin, the merfolk were whispering to one another. “And...I apologize. I’m was trying to be honest, not hurtful. Your regrets are your own business.”

Sorin nodded. “Thank you.”

He was avoiding her eye, but his jaw unclenched. “It’s...it’s a matter of preservation. If that makes sense.”

“Not entirely.”

Sorin pursed his lips, frowning. A long breath trailed out his chest. Nissa wondered how much of that was habit, and how much was for effect.

“I prefer change in the world that I can control. The eldrazi were always the antithesis of that. I fought beside Ugin and Nahiri because by defeating the titans we preserved the multiverse as it was. I preserved my home from the possibility of uncontrollable, devastating change. When I thought the multiverse safe, I moved to ensure its preservation in the future.”

Nissa nodded.

“I took it for granted that the bonds I had made would preserve themselves. Next to the dangers to the physical worlds, the bridges of companionship seemed...well, much less assailable. So I neglected them. Then one friend died. And another almost lost everything she had fought for.”

“And then you lost the plane you’d given everything else up for all the same.”

Sorin nodded, slow. “All because I neglected the connections I’d made. I regret the ruin to my home most of all. And I am angry in a way that I don’t think will ever fade away. But for all that I still have space in my soul to regret that I did not preserve my friendships.” He looked past Nissa, toward the tunnel.

“That makes sense,” Nissa crouched back by the mouth of the shaft. After a beat Sorin stepped forward to stand at the edge, just a few paces away.

“Ha-haaaaa!”

A glow lit the depths of the tunnel, growing brighter and hotter with each passing second. Nissa and Sorin ducked back from the cave mouth.

A rush of air roared up, and Nahiri burst form the shaft, a cow-sized eldrazi clutched in each stone-gloved hand. She hovered above them a moment, bearing a grim grin of triumph along with her trophies. Then she set down onto the grass and cast the bodies to the ground.

“Just these ones, but if you want to check...”

Nissa nodded and felt for the leylines. The ground below was twisted and scarred still, but the active itch had subsided.

“We’re done here.” Nissa stood. “North, again.”

“That’s quite a trick, miss,” one of the kitesailors called from a slightly further distance. “How’re you flying in them tunnels?”

Nahiri grinned and patted her boots. The heels and soles, constructed so that bars of stone could slot into them, glowed with the hot-white flare of lithomancy, and gave her a lift several feet into the air, where she somersaulted over Sorin. “It’s all in the rocks, girls.”

The taller of the merfolk whistled appreciatively. Sorin pursed his lips.

* * *

The tangle of roil-sculpted earth, titan trees, and mountainous hedrons thickened the further north they ventured through the reclamation zone. And they ventured quickly. There was an urgency to Sorin and Nahiri that pressed them to weave impatiently through the roots, trunks, and floating rock. Nissa found herself relying on Ashaya more often than not for a ride and the speed necessary to keep up.

Above and to her left, Nahiri swooped under a low-floating hedron, scattering a flock of manta. Years ago there would have been no shortage of dangerous creatures about, even without the eldrazi, but the largest predators had been slow to return to the Rief, and the speed and suddenness of the trio’s travel had so far been too startling for the ones who had to even consider ambushing them.

To Nissa’s right, Sorin sprinted along a branch three times as thick around as he was tall. He hadn’t tired yet. When they’d first struck out, Sorin had suggested simply planeswalking off Zendikar, then using Nahiri and Nissa’s expertise to ‘walk back where the swarm had run to,’ to save time.

“It’s possible,” Nissa had replied, “But if the swarm disperses, I would prefer we do a thorough search on foot than have any of them scattered around the continent.”

So far the itch had remained a coherent mass. Whatever guided the drone and spawn movements, it had only led a few of the eldrazi to disperse along the way, and those few were easily dealt with without undue delay.

The merfolk, who’d introduced themselves as Olmer and Ton, had followed the trio from the cave on their flying kites, jabbering and shouting questions all the while. Occasionally Sorin even answered them back.

“Are you certain there aren’t any settlements ahead?” He called, the second such question in an hour.

“Not a one,” Ton, the shorter merfolk called back. “Most everyone’s still sheltered in an’ around Coralhelm. You’ll miss that by a good 30 miles if you keep this heading, and you’ll have nothing but leagues of dead woods around you by then.”

Nahiri caught Nissa’s gaze, nodded over at Sorin, and rolled her eyes. Nissa just grunted, and scanned the paths ahead. The low ground to the left faded into shadows as a web of roots and curved pillars of earth lifted the trees well above the dirt. On the right, the ground rose in a mossy shell of roots and massive, fallen logs.

Ashaya opted for the higher ground, and the elemental’s tread became light as the falling leaves as he loped through the moss. The trees here left tough remains, but it was the careless traveler who ruled out the possibility of a decayed spot taking their feet out from under them.

A speck of pale blue on the carpet of green ahead caught Nissa’s eye.

“Likely you won’t find any folk wandering this stretch of Tazeem for a while,” Ton drawled. “Mostly it’s bolder folk like Olmer and me who-”

“Body!” Nissa shouted to her companions. “There’s someone up ahead!”

Nahiri and Sorin split off to the left and right, as they’d discussed before leaving the wall. If either didn’t return in five minutes, the remaining two would treat the figure ahead as a trap. Ashaya slowed to a stalk and padded forward silently, Nissa scanning the surrounding trees as they approached. The merfolk landed on either side of Ashaya at her signal for caution.

“Haven’t seen much in the way of wildlife,” The taller merfolk said, just under her breath.

“It’s the despoilers, love.” The shorter merfolk pointed to the trails of dust and spots of twisted stone that grew, almost indiscernible, against the black bark of the trees.

Ashaya halted a hundred paces from the body. Nissa crouched low on the elemental’s shoulder and shut her eyes. The leylines were quiet, save for the itch to the north. On the edges of her mind the creatures that had fled from the Eldrazi’s path went about their business, a short distance displaced from their usual haunts. Calm, but alert.

Nahiri emerged first, gliding down from the trees, signaling ‘all safe’ with a brusque wave. Sorin emerged a second later, one hand wrapped around his sword, another around a grey sack that trailed spiked tendrils.

Ashaya crossed the distance to the body in a handful of long strides. The thing dangling from Sorin’s hand was covered with glassy, half-lidded eyes. An eldrazi. One of Kozilek’s drones.

“Hit it from behind.” Sorin threw the drone to the ground. A diamond-shaped gash ran straight through its body, leaking a faint distortion into the air, like it was full of gas. “It was waiting up in the branches, watching the body.”

  Impressive.

“I didn’t feel that,” Nissa said, a cold lump forming in her stomach.

Sorin shrugged. “They’ve got all sorts of tricks.”

  The one you called Kozilek was an apex of distorting the senses. There is no shame in having missed a trick, so long as you recognize it the next time it is played.

“So the body’s bait?” Olmer called from a distance.

Nahiri knelt by the merfolk. “Not a body.” She put two fingers to the merfolk’s neck, along his flattened gills. “There’s a pulse. We need to get him to a healer.” She ran a hand along the chest, mottled with ugly, plum-colored bruises. “Ribs shattered. He’s probably bleeding underneath. I can do some simple mending but-” She paused, as if remembering something, then looked up at Sorin.

“What?” He stared back. “We stabilize him and then what? Are we going to carry him with us?”

Nahiri’s face twisted into a scowl. “Maybe.”

“If we delay-”

“Please.” Nahiri squeezed the words out between grit teeth. “You said you were helping. This is the least you could do.”

Sorin wrinkled his nose, but still knelt across from Nahiri, laying hands on the merfolk’s neck. His fingers flexed and the veins tensed in the merfolk’s neck. The chest rose slowly, and then the belly, then the veins in the arms bulged as Sorin pushed the blood to flow to where it was needed.

“Splints.” Nahiri looked to Nissa.

“Splints.” She nodded and thrust her staff into the mossy log underfoot. Emerald shoots tore through the bark, twisting together in tight bundles. In seconds a small arc of saplings surrounded her.

Nissa pulled one up, and directed the skysailers to do the same. They exchanged wary looks, but followed her lead, stripping away the stubby roots with their trail knives. By the time they had cut the saplings to the appropriate size, Nissa had produces a length of vine to lash the splints to the fallen merfolk’s limbs.

He was drawing breath now, and a steady rise-and-fall had returned to his chest. A faint whistle of breath trickled through his lips. The bruising still looked horrible, but the body beneath was less shattered. Less sunken.

“Blood’s out of his lungs.” Sorin rose to his feet, and produced a handkerchief from his breast pocket. With slow, deliberate strokes he began to wipe down his palms and each finger. “and I’ve healed what the veins can heal. He won’t be moving under his own power without at least a month of bed rest, and he certainly won’t be able to defend himself out here.”

“We can take him to Magosi,” Ton volunteered. “We’re due there in the next week; won’t hurt too much to get back a bit early.”

“Thank you.” Nahiri glared at Sorin. “Are there survivors enough to take care of him?”

Olmer laughed at that.

“Plenty. And when they find out he was ambushed and used as bait by the despoilers? Well, you’d think folk would get tired of stories like that, but they’ll all be clamoring to hear it. Yeah, he’ll be well looked out for.”

Ton and Olmer spent the next few minutes rigging a hammock between the frames of their kites, joining them into a single, two-winged arrangement. Then they mounted the closest tree, Nissa following close behind on Ashaya, who cradled the injured merfolk in its arms.

“This’ll do.” Ton scrambled out onto a broad branch, grappling the kite with Olmer to get it up onto the limb. Ashaya lay the merfolk into the stretcher between the kites, and Nissa helped lash him down.

“Glad we found you.” Ton offered a hand to Nissa, who politely declined it. “Good to work with good people in these dangerous times.”

Nissa smiled faintly. “Always danger in our world, isn’t there?”

Ton shrugged. “Always good to find good people, then.” With a wave, she and Olmer kicked off from the branch, and glided quietly away through the depths of Oran-Rief.

* * *

Nahiri called for a short rest before pushing forward any further. She made the flight via lithomancy seem effortless while she was in the air, but the energy needed to move that way was clearly taxing her.

Oran-Rief didn’t lend itself to campfires, but Nahiri had enough energy in reserve to set a small boulder to glowing, providing some warmth for herself and Nissa. Sorin stalked off into the woods, and returned nearly an hour later, leaves and sticks tangled in his hair and clothing, two iridescent snakes hanging from one hand, and a handkerchief-wrapped collection of roots and fruit in the other.

“Supper,” He placed everything in a pile next to the stone.

Nahiri took the snakes without a word. The stone flared brighter, and she reached three fingers into the white-hot surface. When she pulled her hand back the fingers clutched a long, square knife. She let the blade cool, and began stripping the skin and scales away.

“These are poisonous.” Nissa held up several of the fruits before tossing them aside. “These are fine. This one should be cooked before we eat it. And this...well, this is technically edible...”

Sorin shrugged. “Then I guess it’s technically supper.” He didn’t move to sort through any of what he’d scavenged, and didn’t appear the least interested in partaking of any of it.

“Are you just going to stand around and look unpleasant then?” Nahiri had one snake skinned, and tossed it on top of the stone. The meat struck with a hiss and sizzle, followed by a stinging smell of cooking meat.

Sorin bristled. Nissa busied herself with rearranging the inedibles into random piles.

“Or were you looking for a ‘thank you?’”

“I never asked for thanks,” Sorin replied, tone cool. “I would appreciate not being treated like I haven’t been contributing.”

“Baby,” Nahiri replied, carving a strip of scales from the second snake with a flick of her wrist.

“Beast,” Sorin growled back.

“How about that.” Nahiri sneered up at Sorin. “Looks like the selfish old bat isn’t as willing to let things go as he claims.”

“There’s no shame to you, is there?” Sorin’s feet shifted, though he did not step forward. “Not a bit of remorse for what you’ve done and who you’ve hurt. It’s all just my fault for not being there for you, isn’t it?”

“If you call a thousand years imprisonment ‘not being there,’ then sure.”

“I did that to you,  Nahiri. What you did was an act against hundreds of thousands. That is not justice of any kind.”

“You want me to do something to you?” Nahiri tossed the second snake on the stone, and pointed her knife at Sorin. “All you had to do was ask. I’ll cut off that dainty face and shove it-”

Ashaya took a step toward the three planeswalkers. Sorin and Nahiri froze and fell silent.

Nissa continued to re-arrange produce.

For a long minute there was no noise but the cooking of snake-meat. Nahiri leaned forward and flipped the pieces with her knife.

“It’s like Ugin used to say, Sorin. We’re older than some planes’ gods. We don’t do shame.”

Sorin folded his arms. “Perhaps that has been our mistake.”

“by the Pistons...” Nahiri rolled her eyes, and they landed on Nissa. “What do you think? Am I a monster like he says?”

“I didn’t-”

Ashaya shifted again, cutting Sorin off. Nissa hefted one of the fruits-a deadly green and purple thing the size of a fist-in her hand, and looked up, meeting Nahiri’s collarbone with her own gaze.

“I don’t think you care about what I think.”

Nahiri snorted. “You’re damn right I don’t care about-”

“Which is just as well, because I don’t care about what you’ve done.”

Sorin rounded on Nissa. “How can you say that? You were there! You fought the eldrazi on Innistrad. You saw the devastation!”

“Yes, I was there. I did see what happened and I did everything in my power to mitigate.” Nissa’s fingers tensed, and her gloves dug shallow furrows into the fruit skin. “And if I had been the person responsible for the things that happened on Innistrad...well personally, I don’t think I could ever look at myself without some disgust for a long time.”

Nahiri’s lip twitched.

Sorin threw his hands up in the air. “Then-”

“But that was then.” Nissa relaxed her grip on the fruit. A small crack ran down the skin where her index and middle finger had rested. “The damage is done, and it will always be done. What am I going to do about it? Kill you? For revenge? The multiverse doesn’t care about justice the way you do. I don’t care that you let worlds fall apart because of your neglect, or that you brought Emrakul to his world. Those problems are dealt with, and neither have any bearing on what we need to do next to fix the world.” Nissa met Nahiri’s eyes. “So unless you plan on turning yourself over for execution on Innistrad-” she jerked her head at Sorin “I-I suggest you do what he’s doing and focus on doing good with the power and the freedom you have.”

“Well, I would have had a lot more time to do good on the planes,” Nahiri impaled a snake with her knife and ripped it off the stone. “if someone hadn’t thrust me into a demon pit and forced my inaction.”

Now Nissa felt a hot pit erupt into her chest. She let the fruit fall to the ground, where it burst along the seam, leaking pale juices.

“It must have taken a while to make all your preparations for what happened on Innistrad.” She kept her voice level.

Nahiri scowled. “Yes. I’m not trying to hide that. I-”

“We were fighting against the Eldrazi for months. Sometimes...sometimes I feel like I spent a whole lifetime ripping out every inch of myself to preserve any scrap of our world from them. All Zendikar rose up to drive them back, and more lost their lives than anyone could ever mourn. And yet, I don’t think I ever saw you. Not in my travels. Not when we finally brought down the titans.”

Nahiri’s jaw twitched. Her eyes were flared. She lowered her knife from her face, until the snake nearly dragged against the moss.

“I thought you didn’t care.”

“I’m not angry about what you did, not anymore. I’m upset by what you could have done instead. And...and I think you should be just as upset. You said before your regrets don't matter, but I don't trust someone with no regrets.”

Nahiri just glared across at Nissa. When Nissa said nothing more, she glared instead at the rock and started tearing chunks of meat off the knife with her teeth, letting the second snake to burn on the stone.

Nissa turned to her small pile of fruit and started eating herself, not even bothering to cut anything up, but letting the pulp stain the sides of her mouth.

After the silence stretched into minutes, Sorin spoke. Nissa almost wished he hadn’t. The strange silence between angry companions was miserable. Breaking it was worse.

“I’ll...take watch. If you two need to sleep.” There was still anger in his voice, but he drifted up into the treetops without any further comment. Nahiri settled back against her tree once she’d finished eating, and turned away so that Nissa couldn’t have told whether she was sleeping or not, even if she could have brought her eyes up to look the kor in the face a second time that night.

  You wielded your words with conviction and truth.

Nissa almost jolted to her feet. She had, for the first time in a long time, forgotten the squatter in her mind.

  You should be proud. With every ounce of self-belief you cultivate, the closer you come to being a true mover of existence.

Nissa didn’t reply right away, but lay back, letting her head sink into the moss. Her stomach hurt, her mouth felt dry, her head felt like there was a stone where her brain should be, and she would have felt entirely miserable if not for Ashaya. The elemental sat cross-legged at her side, wind trailing through his lusher body parts.

“Life isn’t chess, you know,” Nissa said at last, murmuring up at the treetops.

  The games of the flesh minds are just a simple way to express what I mean. What matters is not the metaphor, but that it helps you understand. You deserve to be the one who directs your life. Whether it is pieces or lives you deal in, there is the risk of becoming a passive reactor. Be the actor. The one who puts ideas and movement into the minds of others.

“I don’t want to manipulate anyone,” Nissa said at last. She kept her voice to barely an echo of a whisper. “I’ll use the leylines where there’s good to be done, but I won’t force my will onto others.”

  I don’t mean by force, unless force is brought against you. Though it is a skill worth cultivating. You’ve seen that not all great powers are as friendly as I.

“Then I don’t know what you mean.”

  Many among your companions, past and present, have had the power of the word to inspire and direct and bring others together. A magic that needs no mana, and that I see you struggle to even try to use.

Nissa almost laughed, despite the heaviness pulling at her eyes. If the eldritch voice in your head spoke, what was there to do but listen?

  I worry sometimes, mover, that you will let life slip through your fingers without ever seizing what you want.

“I’m very happy in my homeworld, actually,” Nissa snapped. Nahiri stirred slightly, and Nissa clapped a gloved hand to her mouth before continuing. “I’m satisfied with the work I do, and I don’t need you telling me I should be dissatisfied because I’m not...because I’m not powerful enough.”

  That is-I will not argue that. Presuming the intent and wants of the flesh has not been my own greatest strength. I will say, whatever your intentions in this world, or any other, power will help you meet those goals. Power and understanding how to wield...no, how to apply it.

“And what would I need that for? I can heal the world with what I know.”

  You should listen when the binders speak. There’s more than what you can touch that you can fix. And that’s with just your words. Or would you tell me you don’t want peace between your companions?

Nissa glanced over at Nahiri. Her pale shoulders where rising and falling in slow time. Above, Sorin was just visible as a sliver of moonlight hit his breastplate.

“Are you telling me you wouldn’t just...reach into their heads to have them do what you wanted?”

  I can twist minds to embrace my being, and that is a type of victory. I myself am not satisfied with that sort of adoration. I want my foes and my friends to decide themselves that I am right, not to have to twist their minds to bring them to that conclusion. The final decision should be theirs, made freely.

Nissa rolled over so her back was facing the stone. The forest was cold. And she’d left her blankets and bedroll behind to move quickly. “I’m going to rest, now.”

  Yes. The burner?

“Away.” Nissa curled her knees up, and shuffled closer to Ashaya. “Away, please.”

* * *

Nissa managed about four hours of sleep before the itch clawed her awake, burning a trail of fire-ant bites down her back. Her groggy grunts stirred Nahiri, who rolled to her feet, face calm, but brandishing her dagger in a tight-knuckled grip.

“Are you alright?” Sorin floated down, nearly at a dead drop, sword drawn.

“Fine. It’s-” Nissa shook her head, and flexed her shoulders, trying to steady her heartbeat. The itch subsided by degrees as she focused. “-the swarm is close. Moving slower.”

“Good.” Nahiri hurled her knife into stone between them. It stuck fast, then melted into the rock. “I’d like to kill something, and I don’t want to rest again until that happens.”

* * *

Nahiri led the renewed chase with a grim energy and a speed that left Nissa and Sorin trailing behind where the terrain got rough. After a mile they had lost sight of her entirely.

The trail grew more confused miles along as the markings of the retreating swarm intersected with larger swaths of eldrazi devastation. Further still and the trail disappeared entirely as the reclaimed swath of the Rief disappeared into the dusty ghost of itself.

It was at the edge of the ruined forest that they found Nahiri, staring out over the dusty landscape. The same shapes of trees and roots and bridges of earth loomed above them, but pale and desiccated. It was as if a sculptor had sought to re-create the forest from the memory of another, and had nothing but ashen whites to work in.

“It’s like this for miles further,” Nissa offered, gently, as Nahiri stared. “They didn’t get all of it, obviously, but...”

Sorin grit his teeth, audibly. “The Oran-Rief covers most of the continent for miles ahead.”

“It does.” Nissa slipped down from Ashaya’s shoulder to stand behind Nahiri. “It did. I believe it will again. Part of the forest we’ve traveled through is the result of our efforts to regrow and revitalize. Much of the land around Coralhelm and along the Umara has regrown as well, thanks to the waters returning in full. The land is eager to heal, and-”

“-and they have you.” Nahiri nodded, jaw set. “Someone with relevant skills. I’m glad,” She added, when Nissa cringed back from the result. “I really am. I couldn’t have done something like this.”

She rushed out into the forest ruins before Nissa could respond.

“Rash,” Sorin muttered. “Still rash.”

“Did you take the destruction of your home any better?” Nissa asked, quiet.

“Hardly.”

Nissa nodded. “I’m still waiting on you to show me you can work together.” Ashaya scooped her up and took a step into the dusty tangle, then another, and fell into a jog.

“I shouldn’t have called her a beast,” Sorin muttered, drifting forward after them. “That was a wound that didn’t need to be opened again. I’m sorry.”

“...Thank you. I’m not the one who needs to hear that.”

They both ran ragged to catch up. Nahiri’s pace fluctuated now, between bursts of speed that took her out of sight, to long, lagging floats through the air to the point that Nissa and Sorin would pass her by a quarter mile before she matched pace. Another hour into the chase and, without warning, she burst through one of the desiccated roots, one wider than a wurm’s neck, and swearing, doubled back once to pulverize the broken section into dust.

  The remorse of a game badly played.

Nissa made no attempt to respond to Emrakul. The itch was growing stronger now, and she had to focus every fiber of her mind to not let the inflaming sensation overwhelm her. They were close. So close. They could put an end to this horde soon...

Ashaya sensed her agitation. His pace doubled, outstripping Sorin and the still-fuming Nahiri.

Nissa shut her eyes. There was life, even here, if she followed the leylines deep enough. True, it was buried under hundreds of feet of chalky forest-corpse, but it was there, ready to thrive again. Here worms still turned the soil. Here there were still minerals for life to grow strong on. Nissa sent mana through to these pockets of life, and felt them swell. Felt them jolt with energy, and begin the long climb through the waste to taste the sunlight.

There were years, maybe decades to go before Oran-Rief looked anything like its former self. In truth, there was little chance it would ever look exactly as it had. That was fine. Recovery was a slow process, change was part of recovery, and Nissa would be there to help her world heal every step of the way.

  The land is steeped in my brothers’ touch

Nissa grit her teeth. “I’d noticed. Or did you miss the months I’ve spent trying to heal the land?”

  An ambitious and a powerful endeavor. But I didn’t mean the wastes. My brother’s-

“I’m done hearing about Ulamog, actually,” Nissa hissed.

  No, mover, not my one brother. I mean that my brothers pieces are-

A noise from behind shook Nissa’s focus. Sorin was calling after her. Bellowing something.

Her name.

The itch flooded Nissa’s mind like a rush of filth-laden water. Ashaya had passed under the bent form of an eldrazi-withered tree, and ahead, a small, sunken clearing radiated the itch from every direction.

Even below.

The ground beneath Ashaya splintered and burst upward in a column of shattered, desiccated plates. Nissa and the elemental were thrust up into the air. Trees shattered into dust. Purple-blue arms shot through the newly-formed hole in the forest floor, followed by taut red muscles and a face of blank bone.

A crusher. One of Ulamog’s brood.

Nissa leapt from Ashaya’s back onto an airborne sheet of hard packed-dust. It came apart under her feet as she sprinted along its length and flung herself onto a second chunk of airborne debris, just behind the crusher’s head. She bent her knees and sprang through the air, drawing her sword mip-leap and scoring a deep gash along its shoulder.

But not deep enough to kill.

And there were more coming. Spawn poured out of the hole. Drones leapt down from the grey-white branches of the ruined trees, filling the suddenly much larger clearing. Ulamog’s brood moved over the brittle ground with ease, and Kozilek’s obsidian-clad eldrazi added twists of bismuth to the surroundings as they threw themselves down into the clearing.

It was the swarm they had been tracking, and then some, all joined together for an ambush. Nissa swore and dove off the crusher’s neck just as it slammed its hand down where she had crouched. The blow echoed like an explosion, ringing in Nissa’s ears.

She hit the ground, rolled to a stand, then raised staff and sword as a tidal wave of eldrazi spawn flung themselves towards her.

Nissa stepped back with her first swing, cutting through the skull of one spawn and voiding the space where its companions slashed and stomped and lashed out with a dozen types of limbs. Each swing of her sword necessitated another step away from the horde. Each blow felled an eldrazi, but there was a pit full of them, a crusher just behind her, and nowhere else to dodge. Nissa threw a desperate glance over her shoulder. Ashaya had landed safely and was grappling with the titanic thing, though the crusher’s arm alone arm alone outweighed him two-to-one.

A sudden disorientation swept over Nissa, and she slipped on a sharp divot. She hit the ground hard, her vision nearly inverted. A crab-shaped eldrazi hovering above her, an upside-down crown of obsidian emitting iridescent pulses all through the clearing.

At least a dozen eldrazi converged on her. Nissa held out her sword. Her vision filled with red, and her chest a sudden, overdue fear.

“Too many.” Her gasp was barely a whisper. “Too many.”

  Breathe, mover. You’ve faced worse odds.

“I had friends,” Nissa whispered. “I had-”

  You still have them.

A blur of white and red swung down from the trees, scorching the air in its wake. The sizzling pendulum swept away a score of the eldrazi. The remainder of the spawn menacing Nissa lurched to a sudden stop. Their skulls burst. Their bodies fell limp to the dust.

Sorin and Nahiri loomed behind them, the vampire’s hand outstretched in an invocation of blood magic, the kor rushing forward, a molten sword in each hand.

Nahiri swept through the front ranks of the eldrazi, leaving each sword buried in the breast of a still-standing eldrazi before sweeping Nissa up in her arms. The stone that had smashed into the swarm followed in her wake like a blazing comet.

“This them?” Nahiri shouted over the rush of air.

Nissa nodded, weakly. The distortion in the air made it difficult to tell where Nahiri’s face ended and the white of the dead trees began. A blur of purple slid into her vision behind Nahiri’s head-

“Look out-!”

Nahiri swerved in the air in time to miss the full force of the crusher’s blow, but the glancing hit still sent both planeswalkers tumbling from the sky, and rolling into the dust.

Nissa recovered in time to register the looming shadow over them. Nahiri must have noticed it too, and they flung themselves in opposite directions just as the fist struck again. The ground caved in under the blow. Fragments of chalk peppered the air.

The fist jolted back up, and Nissa braced to roll out of the way of a third strike. Then the disorientation hit her again, and she fell, clutching at her ears. The crab-eldrazi was right above her. There was so much noise in the distortion. The light howled in her skull. A few feet away, she registered Nahiri scowling up at the air. The rock, which had fallen and embedded in the ground, glowed hot and streaked toward the crab-drone.

It never touched the creature. A blur of black and silver collided with the crab, and Sorin tore it neatly in half with a sideways stroke of his sword. The rock shot through the now-empty gap in the air, and glanced off the crusher’s face, cracking its skull across the bottom with the sound like a thunderbolt.

The fist still fell, square over Nissa.

This time she didn’t even flinch. With so little life in the surrounding earth, she sensed Ashaya’s approach with ease. The elemental threw himself over Nissa, intercepting the crusher’s blow and dragging the massive eldrazi off-balance. As it flailed backwards, Nissa noted that its other arm now ended in a ragged, purplish stump, and that Ashaya was splattered with similarly-colored gore. She sprang to her feet to face a second wave of the swarm with her comrades.

“Stop getting in my way, Sorin!” Nahiri had recalled her boulder, and split it in half to form two jagged, long-bladed gauntlets that covered her up to her forearm.

Sorin, coat still splattered with the remains of the crab-eldrazi, snarled.

“Keep your wits about you, then! I can’t coddle you all the time!”

“Just keep clear of me!” Nahiri shot back over her shoulder. She moved toward the trees, wading into the torrent of Kozilek’s eye-riddled drones and began cleaving their many limbs from their bodies.

“Oh, so now you don’t want help.” Sorin flipped his sword in his hand and spun in the air, striking the crack in the crusher’s face. The skull splintered, and the nightmare that passed for a face underneath was visible for a moment, until Sorin shoved his sword through the gap up to its hilt. “Good! I’d hate to respond the wrong way and have you try to kill me again!”

“Focus!” Nissa shouted, already racing towards the crusher. Ashaya followed a step behind. Even stabbed through the face, the giant eldrazi swiped at Sorin. With a thought from Nissa, Ashaya pounced at the eldrazi’s arm, somersaulting through the air, a buzzsaw of wood and root and earth. The arm, already cut deep by Nissa’s sword, was ripped from the crusher’s shoulder with a sound like a hundred coils of rope tearing apart. Sorin pumped plumes of blood colored magic into the crack in its skull, and a second later it burst, showering them all with solids and semi-solids which Nissa decided not to think about too hard.

“You don’t get to use that against me!” Nahiri screamed, she’d pinned the largest drone in the latest wave to the dust with her gauntlet. “Not when you wouldn’t even listen to me after! Not after you left me to rot in that demon filled hell!”

“I think I can use just about whatever I want.” Sorin rode the crusher’s body to the rim of the pit, and leapt off, diving through a crowd of sinew-winged spawn. Each one he dealt a single blow, cleaving their bodies in half. “unless stating facts is somehow more heinous than genocide!”

Nissa ducked under the swipe of one lanky eldrazi, and found herself face to no-face with a trio of spawn that looked like floating mountains in miniature, with fibers of alien flesh strung Between the peaks.

  Ah, that’s me. One moment.

The mountains froze in place, then dropped heavily to the ground, their weight embedding them in the fragile earth. Nissa was so dumbfounded by the sight that the gangly eldrazi’s second swipe caught her in the stomach, folding her over.

Too many.

  Not too many. Not for you. Breathe, mover. See them for the mass they are.

Nissa fell to one side to dodge another blow. As she fell she drove the butt of her staff through the underside of the lanky eldrazi’s skull. The force of the strike lifted the creature up and over the rim of the pit, where it fell away without a sound.

Perhaps it was the quiet of their opponents, Nissa mused, that let her comrades keep up their screaming match.

“Do you think-” Nahiri shouldered aside one squat eldrazi, then stabbed another right through its obsidian crown. “-That I don’t regret what I did? That I’m not just as angry with myself as I am with you? I have fucking nothing now. I was a protector. I kept the multiverse safe for centuries. Now I’m another gods-cursed killer.” Nahiri strode up the small pile of corpses, white face shining with sweat. “I wish every damn day I hadn’t brought that monster to your world!”

Sorin snarled, diving to the ground with a drone impaled on his sword. “Try acting like it, then!”

“What do you want to hear?” Nahiri roared, an upward swing bisecting one of Ulamog’s brood from groin to crown. “An apology? Do you want to hear sorry??”

Sorin sprang up, plunging his claws through the skulls of two more drones. “It would quite literally be the least you could do.”

“Please focus!” Nissa bellowed. An obsidian-crowned eldrazi with rows of eyes lining its bulging arms swiped at her once, twice, and shattered the rim of the pit with a scream that made the air ripple. They both stumbled, but Nissa kept her balance better than the eldrazi, and ran her sword through the flesh where a neck might have sprouted on any other creature. She jumped back and let it fall into the pit, knocking several other eldrazi down with it.

Sorin started to shout something back, but then the air was split by a vision-blurring screech, and a long-limbed eldrazi sprang from an overhanging branch, wrapping itself around Sorin, and slamming him flat into the dust. The other Eldrazi converged on him in a pile of pounding, flailing, grasping limbs.

Nissa and Nahiri paused for just a heartbeat, but that was enough time for their own opponents to capitalize on their distraction. One of Kozilek’s brood warped the space around Nahiri’s arm, slipping past the joint of her gauntlet with an oily sucking sound. The kor swore and screamed horribly as her arm went limp. Ashaya was just barely able to pull Nissa away from a disemboweling strike, but not quickly enough to keep the bony claws from drawing blood.

Nissa instinctively reached out for something. Dirt. Seed. Vines. There was nothing for miles, save for Ashaya. All that time spent coaxing growth back into the plane and she still found herself with nothing to call to their aid.

  Your connection is with your plane, mover.

“I’d noticed, actually,” Nissa grunted, brandishing her sword. She cut down the spawn in front of her with a savage thrust, and began wading toward Sorin. Ashaya took her flank, providing a buffer and a plow through the crowd.

Well,  this is your plane now. And not just the dirt and the vines. You are no less able to-

Nissa didn’t have the energy to focus on a retort, so she screamed, pushing forward with greater fury.

Sorin was nowhere in sight. More eldrazi piled onto the mass already pinning him down, unable to reach to the center, but adding weight with every drone.

“Sorin!” Nahiri’s scream matched and outstripped Nissa’s, as she hacked through the spawn with her good arm. “Don’t you dare die here, you selfish ass!” She hewed her way through the crowd around her with wide swipes, carving a gore-spattered path to the Sorin. Other eldrazi converged behind her as she started to carve through the pile. The blade of her limp arm flowed over her shoulders and head, hardening to shield her from the eldrazi piled onto her back.

That was the last glimpse Nissa had of her ally before the next wave of spawn roared up from the pit, joining the clutch that already beat down on her from the forest side. Her warpath came to a sudden, heavy stop. Even Ashaya could not wade any further through the crush of bodies.

  Sword and stick won’t solve this, mover.

“It’s all I have,” Nissa screamed back, pressing closer to Ashaya’s back. “Look around you! They’ve cut me off! I can’t bring more of Zendikar here in time!”

  Zendikar is here. It may not look like it once did. It may not look like how you plan it to look in the future. But it is still here. A rusted sword may not slice, but it can bludgeon.

To Nissa’s left, eldrazi were still pouring up from the pit. She could hear Nahiri bellowing somewhere far away. There were so many. Too many. Their presence flowed like a dirty stream across the leylines.

  Will you swim against the current, or flow with it?

Nissa felt for Zendikar again. Delving desperately as she beat back drone after drone. This time she did not dig. She let her mind rest on the dust and desiccation right at her feet.

The voice that answered back was sickly. Strange. But it answered.

“I think,” Nissa grunted, “That I’ll dam up the whole stream.”

  Magnificent.

Chalk blew out in geysers from the shattered edge of the pit, knocking several spawn back into the darkness as they tried to clamber onto level ground. A crack ripped down the side of the hole, bursting with even more dust.

A gaping maw tore itself free from the pit wall and reared up, Jaws of desiccated earth slammed down beyond the rim. Skeletal teeth punched into drones and spawn, pulping them to the ground.

Then the maw-thing, the soul of the wastes, fell backwards, dragging dozens of eldrazi with it, crushing the rest of the eldrazi rushing out of the pit against the walls. The grind of its fall echoed through the clearing, even as the eldrazi that remained pressed against Nissa all the fiercer.

  Absolutely magnificent.

“Can’t...can’t do that again.” Nissa was panting hard. She could barely keep her sword and staff in front of her, barring the crush of eldritch limbs. “Check. Or however that damn game goes.”

  The game is in disarray. You’ve made one important realization already: When the game has gone poorly, you always have the option of ripping the board out from under the arrangement of pieces that displease you. And now that they lie on the ground, let me give you another clue: who is to tell you that you may not take whatever piece you want for your own?

Nissa blinked, then furrowed her brow. Three spawn sprang at once, the bone-faced ones spreading their arms wide, the eyeball-covered one leaping at an angle that gravity should have made impossible. Nissa killed one with her sword, and found herself grappling with the other two.

They pressed in with rough shoves. They were not especially strong physically, and they blocked out the spawn gathering behind them, but the press of the whole crowd moved them forward. A sack-like limb struck Nissa across the jaw. Claws the color of twilight jabbed through the gaps. A slash tore through Nissa’s wrap and tunic, ripping flesh and scoring a nick on her ribs.

  This is simple, mover. If your opponent would kill you, what must you do?

“Fuck off,” Nissa grunted.

  I think you’ll find this germane to your present situation, mover.

Nissa almost laughed at that. At the bank-faced monsters pressing in around her. She felt something wet seeping into her tunic along her flank.

Suddenly Nissa felt as if she was seeing the eldrazi for the first time. Alien, yes. Horrifying in numbers, yes. But they were not gearhulks or elder dragons or gods-

 This is ridiculous. I’ve laid better opponents than this low without every drawing my blade.

  Yes!

Nissa relaxed her muscles, and the crowd shoved her back immediately. She let them push. Ashaya flowed around her, embracing Nissa in a cage of wood with just enough space for her to fall back, as the limbs of the eldrazi scratched at the wood and grasped through the holes of the cage. Leaf-coated vines descended from the roof of Ashaya, wrapping around Nissa’s flank to staunch the flow of blood. She felt the lines of Ashaya’s vital force surrounding her, and, using that as her starting point, reached out to the eldrazi.

Their lines were confused. They were individuals, certainly. Yet in another, truer sense, parts of greater, more intricate wholes. Wholes that had been burned out of existence, leaving a hole in the multiverse. Leaving these lesser eldrazi severed. And yet fragments of the ties that had bound them to the larger entities remained; strands of power, severed at one end, but alive, in their own strange way.

Nissa seized those strands by the metaphysical handful, gathering them together and folding them into a single thread. Grasping them was tricky. Like snatching streams of current from the water. Some she fumbled. Some wriggled through her grip. But with each pull of her mind, more spawn twisted under her power. Her influence radiated outward from where she stood, and slowly a growing number of eldrazi stood still, providing her a bulwark against those that remained hostile.

Nahiri cried out.

Nissa couldn’t see the kor from her position, so she directed the drones closest to Ashaya to lift him up, over the heads and head-like appendages of the crowd. Ashaya peeled open as he rose, wooden limbs curving outward like petals to protect Nissa from the eldrazi on the ground, though none in the immediate vicinity made a move towards her that she did not direct.

Further out, spawn still fought their way towards her, and towards Nahiri. Nahiri had met them with a fury that outmatched anything the mindless drones could hope to amass. Her stone armor was cracked and pitted in a dozen places. She was bleeding from more wounds than Nissa could count. Still she shredded eldrazi, one-handed, bellowing and driving closer to the pile atop Sorin, inch by hard-won inch.

“I’m sorry, you miserable corpse! Isn’t that what you wanted to hear?!” Her armor flared red-hot, singing the drones closest to her. A second later it exploded outward, and debris ripping through skulls, sinew, and eldritch flesh. She thrust the hand of her good gauntlet into the pile, and heaved.

Sorin emerged. At least, his arm and upper body did, the rest still pinned under the swarm.

But he lived, and somehow, still moved. His other arm cut free of the pile, gripped tight around a strange, jagged-edged knife. Nissa sifted further into the horde, grabbing more and more of the eldrazi and commanding their stillness, reaching out for the mass that menaced her companions.

“Sorin!” Even from a short distance, Nissa could make out the look of manic relief on Nahiri’s face.

“I hear you.” Sorin gasped. His flesh was bruised and torn, his garments shredded ribbons of leather and cloth. He thrust with his strange knife, impaling a drone at Nahiri’s side before it could slash at her. It died, but Sorin’s arm crumpled under the creature’s weight. “I said I wanted an apology, not for you to die.” He thrashed, freeing his legs from the pile and turning his knife back on the eldrazi that had buried him.

Nahiri snorted. “Who’s dying? It’ll take more than-”

Sorin’s blow caught her in the shoulder. Nahiri stumbled to one side. A spike of obsidian punched through the air where she had stood, and then, just as easily, through Sorin’s breastplate, pinning him to the ground.

Nahiri was back on her feet in seconds, swatting aside spawn left and right, desperately trying to keep them from converging on Sorin again. Nissa grit her teeth. She could set the eldrazi she had under her influence on the ones that still fought against the planeswalkers, but that wouldn’t stop the hostile ones before they tore her allies apart. And if she couldn’t grab control of the rest in that time-

A bolt of black flew into Nissa’s periphery. Just as quickly, Ashaya lashed out with a tendril, deflecting another spike of obsidian into the dust. Nissa glanced up into the trees. A broad-chested drone was perched in the ashen branches, a long spiral of tapered black stone forming from its throat, aimed right at her. She scowled and, with a strain that drew blood from her nostrils, reached into the dead leylines of the wastes and severed the branch. The eldrazi plummeted to the forest floor, where it landed among the still-growing horde that surrounded Nahiri.

Nissa gasped. She tasted iron as her blood ran over her lips.  There’s too many

  You see them as individuals and grasp them as individuals, Mover. A general does not call soldiers by name, but by unit.

Nissa blinked, and furrowed her brow. “What do you-?”

The spike-shooting eldrazi reared up suddenly from the crowd, a thorn of obsidian still forming in its throat. It lunged through the crowd, bowling other drones aside, its spike aimed at Sorin’s head.

It made it within a foot of the vampire’s face, and not an inch closer. Nahiri grabbed the spike with her gauntlet, stopping it dead and, with a scream, super-heated the spike until it cooked the drone from the inside out.

Nissa watched for only a moment until her attention was grabbed by a shape lying in the space the drone had cleared when it charged. More of the round, mountain-shaped eldrazi lay unmoving in the dust, unmarked by any weapon. Emrakuls in miniature A quick glance around the clearing confirmed a dozen other like them, some lying where none of the fighting had taken place.

  Dealt with all at once. Like snapping my finger.

Nissa shut her eyes. In her mind, the eldrazi had were bundled together like bales of hay, the ones she did not yet have under her control lying loose like straw littered in a field.

“Straw will take too long to gather,” She muttered.

The image in her mind shifted. The spawn of Kozilek were like silt pouring through of muddy, running water. Rough. Difficult to perceive. She formed a sieve in her mind, and dragged it across the stream, collecting up the alien consciousnesses of the brood. In one swipe, she had half the clearing frozen under her control.

Ulamog...Ulamog was salt. Drying. Desiccating. In her mind Nissa pictured the clearing as a table, and swept the grains of Ulamog’s spawn into a bowl.

When she opened her eyes, every creature was still. All except Nahiri.

Sorin hung at an angle with the ground, forming a triangle with his body on one side, the earth on another, and the spike as the third. Nahiri cracked the spike with a blow form her gauntlet and pulled Sorin off onto the ground. He was bruised over every inch of exposed skin, and a hole ran straight through his belly.

Nahiri, at a sudden loss of anything dangerous to hit, then channeled her fervent energies at Sorin.

“I’m sorry!” Nahiri screamed down at Sorin’s still form. “Please! I shouldn’t have done it! It was wrong!” She didn’t seem to even register the circle of drones around her, still and watching.

Softly, Nissa commanded the Eldrazi to lower her and Ashaya to the ground. There was a slight buzz in her head as she instructed the individuals holding them up, but it faded away as she tucked them back into the collective in her mind, and strode through the still crowd toward her comrades. Ashaya plodded behind, the chalky ground crumbling under each of his steps.

Nahiri looked up as Nissa neared. Her eyes were wild. Bloodshot. There was something between a smile and a grimace on her face.

“They can’t have killed him, right? He wouldn’t just die like this. Somewhere like this.”

Nissa grimaced. “Nahiri-”

The Kor’s sudden gasp cut her off.

Sorin’s head lolled, then slowly dragged upright. His eyes slid open and a groaned.

“No fear there.” He lifted a hand slowly and lay it across his breast. “I freed myself from an impaling trap made by the meanest lithomancer in the multiverse. What’s one spike from a cockroach?”

Nahiri’s set Sorin down in the dust. “I-I thought so!” She laughed. A rough, manic bark. She held the smile for a moment, then it fell off her face. “I’m sorry.”

Sorin shook his head. Barely a twitch of his neck to the side. “You don’t have to-”

“I’m sorry,” she echoed, soft. “I really am.”

His face twisted. “I can’t accept an apology from you. I don’t deserve forgiveness any more than you do. I hurt you in a way few people in the multiverse have been hurt, and I did it deliberately, to preserve my own selfish peace in the world.” He lay a hand on Nahiri’s. “I don’t want you to be what I pushed you toward being. Not when I know destruction isn’t what your soul is meant for. I’m sorry. That was selfish as well.”

Nahiri shook her head, rapid. “It’s no excuse. Whatever happened to me, it’s no excuse for...for...”

She stood, suddenly. She stared past Nissa like she was seeing something far off among the dead trees. Nahiri’s chest rose and fell with an increasingly furious pace, and she stepped over Sorin, past Nissa, almost to the edge of the eldrazi circle.

Then she just stood, staring.

Sorin and Nissa exchanged glances. The Vampire’ face was contorted as he pumped blood magic into the hole in his chest, but the contortion was mixed with...it was the same look Gideon used to make when he fretted over the others.

Nahiri fell to her knees, screaming in a sudden rage.

“Damn you!” Her fists broke the brittle ground easily. “Damn me! Another fucking killer!” Her fists quickly reduced the patch of ground to a conical pit of powder. “The sealing, the hedrons...none of it means a damned thing now!”

“You kept your plane alive for millennia!” Sorin shouted, horse. There was a horrible sucking sound as he yelled, and Nissa realized with a start that he only had one inflated lung. “That’s not nothing.” He struggled upright, and Nissa ran forward to grab him under the arm before he collapsed again. He wheezed, and looked up at Nissa. “Thank you.”

They ambled over to Nahiri. Sorin knelt nest to her, head bowed. “What I did to you...where I left you. I owe you as much of an apology.”

“You didn’t kill anyone to hurt me. Not on purpose.” Nahiri’s response was ragged; barely a whisper through a scream-sore throat. “You were a fucking selfish bastard but you didn’t try to kill anyone other than me. I’m worse than you.”

“Maybe.” Sorin said it automatically. “Probably. I still wronged you.”

Nahiri shuddered suddenly, with a violent sob. She reached out and seized a handful of Sorin’s torn sleeve, and slammed her other fist against the dusty ground. Her shoulders shook, and her hand twisted the leather around. Sorin did not move or back away. Nissa wondered if  she should.

“I’m a murderer! Evil! I don’t deserve anything!”

“That’s true,” Nissa whispered. She leaned back against Ashaya, holding the vine-bandages wrapped tight around her side. “But life’s not about what we deserve; it’s about what do.” Her legs started to buckle, and she slid down the elemental’s leg to sit in the dust. “What we’ll do next.”

Nahiri drew in a dry, rattling breath, and shuffled around to face Nissa. “Next?”

“This...this is good, what we did here today. Together. Look how much fewer we’ve made the spawn that still threaten our world.” Nissa looked down at the waste beneath her. “Look at how much world remains to be saved.” She lifted her head and looked from Sorin to Nahiri. “You can heal. You can build. I can grow. And if you can work with each other, I would...happily work with you.”

Sorin nodded, slow, and looked to Nahiri. She returned his gaze with eyes red and watering, but unblinking.

“No forgiveness.” She held out her hand to him. “We build something new, starting today.”

“That...that works for me.” He grasped her hand, and they shook; a quick, singular motion. He turned to Nissa, and inclined his head. “And I hope we might do the same. My actions against you and toward your world-”

“When I said I didn’t care, I meant it. And I meant nothing of malice against either of you.” Nissa jabbed a head at her temple. “I’ve had this force in my head for some time now. By most sane definitions it is evil, a thing that’s twisted and killed millions. Still I tolerate it. I listen to it. I try to use its guidance to do good, because I do not have the power to oppose it, and because the alternative is to leave it unattended.”

My guidance  has been of great use.

“I had a friend who believed in justice. Who believed that there were good actions in the world, and wrong ones, and that the latter should be opposed without question.” Something rose up in Nissa’s chest, but she forced in down, breathing slow to calm her heartbeat. “But he believed in every person’s capacity for good, no matter their past. I can’t say if he was right in the end, only that that sort of justice is the only kind that’s ever made sense to me.” Her arms felt heavy, but Ashaya lifted his own for her. “So please. Let’s do better, and let our mistakes be lessons, not yokes.”

The other two said nothing, though Nahiri nodded, slowly. Sorin leaned forward, hand still pressed to his breast, fingers still weaving healing magic.

Silence and dust drifted through the clearing. When the latter settled, only silence remained.

* * *

They sat around another stone fire that night, back where the chalk wastes gave way to the green remains of Oran-Rief. Nissa sat cross-legged in front of the stone, both hands laid in the comforting sponginess of the moss. The remaining spawn, a little under four-hundred by Nahiri’s count, all lay a distance away, huddled together in a crude corral of vines and stone bells to alert the trio if they starting moving while Nissa slept.

Her head was full of buzzing, and there was a throbbing ache behind her eyes.

But it was better than their last rest. The tension had gone out of her companions, and Nissa could breath easier.

“There’s pockets all over,” Nahiri said over a supper of roasted tubers and wild onions. She picked at her food with her left hand, her right still hanging limp in a sling. “Not just spawn, but opportunists taking advantage of ruined settlements and wild creatures displaced by the dead stretches on the plane. We could, the three of us, we could give those Zendikari a better chance at starting their lives over.”

Nissa nodded. She was leaned up against Ashaya, moving as little as possible to not disturb the lacerations along her side.

“That’s true, though I would like to set aside time to continue replenishing the forests. Oran-Rief is a daunting project, and I still hold out hope for restoring Bala Ged to a place for the elves.”

“Is it true, the stories about the elemental?” Nahiri was much more eager to talk since the battle.

  All the words unsaid over the past week.

“Yes. Yarok, they call it. Another creature we may have to coexist with.” Nissa dared a small smile. “But, coexisting is something we’re all getting much better at.”

Nahiri nodded, suddenly interested in wolfing down the rest of her supper. Sorin just nodded from where he reclined on a stone slate cushioned with harvested moss. Faint wisps of blood magic crawled over his form, and the bruises that mottled his body were beginning to receding by bits. He pointed in the direction of the spawn. “Will they be coming?”

“Until I can find something useful for them to do. There is a strain, trying to keep them in line,” Nissa noted after a time. “I expect we may still need to face more in the days to come.”

“Not the companions I expected,” Nahiri observed through a mouthful of food. “But...beats having enemies, I guess. Were you ever able to track down Ugin?” She asked, looking to Sorin.

“Not a sign since Tarkir. When it comes to that dragon, I don’t know what to believe anymore.” The barest hint of a smile crawled over Sorin’s face. “Remember how surprised we were to find out he was in contact and collaboration with so many other walkers? Even in the middle of that accursed mess on Ravnica?”

Nissa lowered a piece of onion from her mouth. The memory of the spirit dragon, bright and looming, flashed briefly in her mind. He’d been there at the end last time. He’d spoken to her. To Jace. To...to Gideon and-

“Of course. I stopped trying to kill you, I was so intrigued.” Nahiri chewed her lip. “Do you think it’s true?”

Sorin glanced over to Nissa. “The mind-mage was your companion, right? Do you trust him?”

“With my life,” Nissa said, soft. She pressed down another lump in her chest.

“What about you?” Nahiri asked Nissa. “You didn’t-I never even thought to ask how your companions fared after the...well, the war, I guess we’re calling it. The mind-mage and the pyromancer and-”

“We’re fine,” Nissa replied. “All fine.”

“Ah.” Nahiri nodded.

“More hands couldn’t hurt here,” Sorin ventured. “If we can’t get the spirit dragon...I don’t know how many of your companions are able and willing to help, but I saw many talents on display against Bolas that would help here. The time mage, certainly. I believe I saw another elf calling upon dead spirits as well. Plenty of those to go around. Even the fire-flinger might be useful for clearing out-”

Nissa didn’t hear the rest as she, much to everyone’s surprise, hunched over and started sobbing.

“...but maybe not...?” Sorin finished.

Nissa tried to catch her breath, but she could not stop the heaving in her lungs, and the twisting of her face as tears spilled out over her chin and into her lap.

The other two didn’t say anything right away. Through shudders Nissa could see them exchange nervous glances.

“I’m sorry,” She muttered, choking out the words between sobs. “Sorry, I-”

“It’s fine.” They said it together automatically. Nahiri leapt up from her spot to amble over and sit next to Nissa. Nissa dug her fingers deeper into the ground, if only to keep herself from covering up her face.

Nahiri lifted her good hand, and it hovered over her own lap a moment before she moved to rest it on Nissa’s shoulder. Nissa shook her head. A tight, frantic shudder that might have been mistaken for more shakes from her crying, but Nahiri took her hand back all the same.

“I’m sorry.” Nahiri lay the hand instead on the grass next to Nissa’s. “I owe you one as well. If I...if we distressed you – I mean, if we acted in such a poor way as to-”

“No.” Nissa shook her head, a more deliberate movement this time. “Not you.

“Mostly not you,” she added.

Sorin cleared his throat. “Is it...is it something we can help with?” The words stumbled out from him so unnaturally that Nissa almost laughed through her tears.

“I-no? I don’t know.”

The other two exchanged another look. What look, Nissa couldn’t say, but even through blurred eyes she could see them turn toward each other.

“Is it the pyromancer?” Sorin asked after a moment. “Did something happen to-”

“I don’t know!” Nissa pulled up a fist and punched the ground, grinding her knuckles into the moss. “I haven’t seen Chandra in months! I – she came to see me and then she just-she just...”

“What did she do?” Nahiri’s own fingers clenched, and the heat from the stone rose perceptibly. “Did she hurt-”

Nissa shook her head. “She just...she just came and left. And I  let  her. I stood there like an idiot and I just  let her.” She brought her elbow up and coughed into it. Snot was starting to run down to her lips. “I’m sorry, this isn’t important, I just-”

“Clearly it’s important to you,” Sorin interrupted. “So it is, by definition, important.”

Nissa shook her head. “I just wanted her to be  happy  . She said distance was what she needed, and I let her...of course I let her go. I  love her. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

Sorin drew and released a breath in a long sigh. “You need to be a bit more selfish sometimes.”

“And what?” Nissa replied. “Force her to stay with me? Make her do something that will make her miserable?”

“You said yourself,” Sorin returned after a short silence, “that you didn’t even tell her how you felt. That you let her make assumptions from your silence.”

“What would you know?”

“It’s what you did last night,” Nahiri cut in. “Until I provoked you. Um, sorry for that.”

“She said she wasn’t right for me.” Nissa steadied herself, and drew in a short, rattling breath. “She said...she knows I like the quiet sometimes. I liked that about her, that she understood that. But then she said she couldn’t-that we couldn’t be...I don’t know.” She brought the back of her glove up to clear her eyes. “She thought...she thought I wouldn’t have made space for her in my life. That I wouldn’t have liked making space for her in my life” She breathed in again, longer this time, steadying herself.

“Would you have?” Nahiri kept her voice low, just loud enough for the three of them.

“I think so.” Nissa lifted her head. Sorin had sat up and to face them. “It wasn’t the firs thing on my mind when we parted the first time. There was too much work for me here. But I did think about it when I came back again, after Ravnica, but there was still so much to do, and...” She choked again. “I took too long. I didn’t...I needed more time. I didn’t think she’d just-”

“That’s not your fault for needing time,” Sorin said. “No matter what came of it, there’s no shame in thinking through a hard decision.”

“Months though?” Nahiri said. “I mean – sorry, that’s not the point.” She lifted her hand again tentatively, but put it back down on the moss without Nissa having to say anything or shake her head. “It’s...it’s been a strange time for all of us, since, well since we were all together last. A hard time for introspection.”

“I don’t think she had to wait for me,” Nissa whispered. “I just wish she had.”

For a while there was no sound but the occasional hiss of the wind carrying a stray leaf into the stone. The trails down Nissa’s face started to dry, and she drew in slow breaths of the cool night air.

“Your paths could easily cross again,” Sorin offered, eventually. “She knows where you are, and even if you don’t-”

“I do.”

“...what?”

“I do,” Nissa said. “I mean, I could know. I can feel many things in the leylines now. More and more since I traveled with the Gatewatch. Since...since Emrakul began speaking to me. If I focus-” Nissa held out her hand, and channeled mana into the leylines that threaded through the air. There were so many on Zendikar. The plane was so abundantly alive in a way that so few other planes were.

“-She burns brighter than anyone I’ve ever met. If I wanted to – that is, if I felt it was right, I could just follow that light.”

“So why don’t you?” Nahiri leaned in, voice louder now. “Go and tell her what you told us.”

“She said we weren’t right for each other. What if she still feels that way?”

“Then you’ll have tried,” Nahiri replied. “You’ll have told her how you feel about her, and she can make her decision knowing what you want. Otherwise she’ll just go on thinking that she made a choice that you agreed with, and...well, it doesn’t seem like that’s the case.”

Nissa tensed. The thought of doing just that had occurred to her weeks ago, and seemed laughably implausible since then. Nahiri suggested it like a real possibility, but...going to Chandra? Using her words to express whatever it was she felt for her? It made Nissa’s whole body seize up from the inside out. But if she could bring the right words…

“I...think I would like that,” Nissa said at last. “But, even now, I don’t know that I’ve given it the thought it deserves.”

“Then take the time,” Sorin said. “You’ve got us now, as long as you need us. You don’t need to run yourself as ragged as a one-elf savior across the whole plane. We’ll all do our good work, and we’ll be your counsel as you work through your thoughts. And when you’re ready, whenever that might be, you can go to her with the right words.”

Nahiri nodded. “If you want our help, of course.”

Nissa was silent a long while. Her head still ached from the commotion and confrontation of the day. Her body still throbbed with pain from a dozen wounds, and the alien tinge of the eldrazi spawn still crawled along her body like a new limb. She didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to do anything but close her eyes and rest.

Still, the comfort of caring company made the night just a degree less cold.

“I think...I think I would like that. Thank you.”

* * *

  Mover, before you sleep…

Nissa groaned softly. She had just lay her head down and begun to close her eyes. The soft ground felt like a balm against her buzzing scalp, she had only a few hours before Nahiri woke her for her turn at night watch, and she wanted nothing more than the quiet of sleep.

  If you’d rather wait...though I find the sooner the debrief-

“No, let’s do this now,” she muttered, keeping her whisper low.

  You’ve added great power unto yourself. We’ll discuss that.

Nissa waited for Emrakul to say more. The eldrazi titan remained silent.

“I’ve reached out and taken control of another mind. Minds. Or lack of a mind. Several voids where minds should be. I’m not sure I understand entirely what I’m going to do with them, and I’m not sure that qualifies as becoming more powerful.

  You used one method to add the power of my brothers’ pieces to yourself. You used another to add the power of your companions, the binders. Even the mere act of finding a new application for an existing competency is an act of growing power.

“Yes. Nissa poked wearily at her connection to the herd of drones off in the wastes. “That will take...it will take some getting used to. And there’s peace between Sorin and Nahiri now. I’m not certain how much of that was me, to be honest.”

  You facilitated a renewal of their companionship. Indirect intervention is still intervention. It’s all part of becoming powerful.

Nissa blinked. “I...I’m pleased to have them as allies. As friends, even. But I don’t know what you...I haven’t been sapping their powers or taking power from them or-”

  Friends are power stored in other bodies. A friend made is power added unto yourself, and better still, power that aids you willingly. Joyfully.

The earlier battle flashed in Nissa’s mind. The crush of bodies. Emrakul’s voice booming in her mind all the while…

“If my opponent is about to kill me, make them my friend.”

  Yes.

“I don’t know how to feel about that. What if making a friend means conceding part of who I am?”

  Then you get to decide if it’s worth it to you. Look around though, and I think you’ll find you’ve conceded very little.

“I’ve conceded to interrupt my work healing the plane. I’ve conceded to speak the language of the eldrazi. To let them into my mind.”

Emrakul was silent a long moment.

  You’ve spoken my language with me for some time now. Has it not been worth your while?

“...let’s talk about that later.”

  ...has my presence been unwelcome?

“No but...having someone else’s thoughts in your head all the time makes it challenging to know what thoughts are your own.”

  This is so. I do intend only to advise, mover. I do not wish to control a fellow controller.

“I’m glad,” Nissa whispered. “And glad you’ve been less prone to objecting to our fight against your...pieces.”

 I am not beyond learning, mover. And any sentimentality for what remains of my brothers does no good. All in the past, as you said to the binders.

Nissa nodded vaguely. Her eyes were growing heavier by the minute.

  On the topic of my presence, do you wish for the possibility of dreaming of the burner tonight?

“Why do you call her that?” Nissa’s eyes opened slightly. “Burner? She had a name, you know. I have a name.”

  She is defined by her burning. That is what binds the two of you.

Nissa pursed her lips. “That’s all you think binds us? That we killed eldrazi together?”

  The burning of my brothers is not what defines her to you, Mover. It is her mind that burns for you, so she is the burner.

It seems obvious to me, at least , Emrakul added.

“You call them the binders.” Nissa nodded at Nahiri's sleeping form, and at Sorin, hovering further away.

  They bound me. It was a significant, defining thing that they did.

“That’s not what defines them to me.”

  It’s not always about you.

“Mm.” Nissa laid her head back. “Sure.”

  Mover...the burner?

Nissa stared up a long while, past the looming edge of the hedron mass overhead. A thousand pinpricks of starlight filled the open stretch of night sky beyond that.

“Not tonight. If I dream of her...” Nissa lapsed. A pair of glints, like from twin panes of glass filled her mind, along with a brush of cinnamon. “If she’s in my mind, I prefer she remain there.”

Emrakul did not reply, but a warm rush crawled along the back of Nissa’s scalp as her eyes slid shut.

The above is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used  are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Avyan Immortal Dynasty, Chapter 9: We All Have Our Own Accomplishments

Index

< - Previous

Kite’s mostly a quiet baby -- and man, that’s a relief. Right now, I’ve got my mixology I want to work on.

Level 8 flies by; even if I have to pack up my bags and go bringing the portable bar places. Like our neighbor’s, Because Gino wants to spend some time with his family in general and specifically to meet the newest of his kids, Soren. Yeah, there was another one. “Calm down, Gino, I thought elders were supposed to be careful about their woo-hoo,” I joke. And he laughs uproariously. Head back, deep from the belly, rocking his kid until he giggles.

Kate’s another sweet brown-haired, green-eyed toddler these days, shouting for her “da.” I’ll want to keep an eye on this family. As thanks for Gino’s help, right? Hahaha.

Fire-breathing tricks are fine around toddlers, right? Speaking of. So. When we eventually get home, it’s evening; just before work, as a matter of fact.

And I’ll be able to max mixology after just a second. Just an instant. And tonight at work, I’ll get that promotion -- and then I’ll have finished my first aspiration. It’s just a minute more… And that’s when I drop the lighter for my fire-breathing trick. Into my wooden bar. Full of bottles of liquor, renowned for its flammability.

Forbidden words. There goes that idea. “Aaaah! There’s a fire! Quick, where’s a -- we don’t have an alarm! Why doesn’t this town have a fire fighting force!” Is about the scope of Gino’s input. Zest’s comedy practice is interrupted by the chance to flail and scream three fight from the slowly-growing inferno of my bar. Thank you, team. The fire licks up, rising towards the roof of the porch overhead, gnawing at the wooden floorboards of our porch. An orchestra of color, flashing in brief vivid blues as a bottle of an especially good vintage goes up, dancing red and orange as it spreads. But hey, you know what?

I got this. I have this under control. Unlike some chuckleheads, who think waving their hands and screaming will definitely put the fire out, I can actually use my brain for five seconds. I’m more worried about being late for work, which is a bummer, but what’s a fire to Kestral Avyan? I just use the fire extinguisher all over the bar, until eventually the flames are drowned out by a layer of white foam, puffs of smoke and chemical mist hanging in the air around me. Not a beat is missed, not a hair is out of place.

Because I’m the boss. Now, if I get going just now, I’ll only be a minute late. “See ya.”

“That was… A little spooky. We all saw that, right?” Asks Zest, left in my wake, staring at the house from the safety evacuation mandated distance. “A woman on a mission is a powerful thing, my boy,” is Gino’s answer, nodding to break his stare at the middle distance. I’ll order a new one; it’ll be fine. Miko ends up getting home from work just in time to have totally missed the fire. “Aw, man! I just missed something really cool, didn’t I?” Miko can only sigh, having missed me being incredibly impressive. Well, part of me being incredibly impressive.

Because guess who started a fire, put out a fire, got a promotion, and is going to max mixology in just a second? And she’s got a spiffy black uniform, too!

And there we are. Mixology maxed – and my first aspiration complete. It feels like a weight off my shoulders that I hadn’t even noticed. A deep sense of satisfaction wells up within me, a sigh into the cool night air. This is going to be doable, I think. Not that I didn’t know that, of course, I mean! I just really felt it in that moment.

And so I spend a moment relaxing with, well, someone who was kind of my first friend in this. “We’ve come pretty far, haven’t we, Zest?” “We really have. A round of applause!” He says it with an almost teasing laugh, but he claps anyway. I take a little bow of my head, all humility. “A decent house, we’re both advancing in our work, I’m done an aspiration...A wonderful wife… A perfect boy…” “And me, right?” … “Sure, Zest.” “Say it like you mean it! Put some, heh -- Zest into it.” He is my friend, I will not pour the contents of this tumbler onto his head. He is my friend, I will not pour this tumbler onto his head. He is my friend… He adds, clearly too satisfied, “...I had to. But hey! The crowds are starting to like my style!” “And you’ve had a kid with a normal name, if the message on our answering machine is right.” “...Heh. Yeah. Uh. Let’s maybe not -- let’s maybe not worry about that, right now!” He tries to stop me, as if I could be restrained by mere human hands. “How many kids you’ve never met is this?” “...Um. Well. A few.” “We all have our own accomplishments, Zest.” “Don’t say it like that!...They’re probably better off without a dad to fight the whole way." He stares forlornly, his usual smile just an abrupt twist in his lips. He pushed his food around his plate, even as it's perfectly tasty. “ I turned out OK striking it out on my own, didn’t I?” You know, I’d never thought of Zest as having folks. I mean, I guess he probably did, but if you told me he’d been born in a chemical accident at a whoopie cushion factory, I’d have given about the same response: seems legit. Still… I get the feeling that it’s still kind of a wound with him. And better not to touch it; I know I wouldn’t want someone poking around about my parents. “You were so desperate for something that you moved into the house of a woman who didn’t have a house.” When I point that out, he winces. It’s not exactly good comfort, but I’m not super good at comforting. “Either way, I can only tell you how to live your life when it’s convenient to me. So you should do what you can, and enjoy what you can.” “...You’re a weird girl, Kestral... They'll be fine. Yeah! Of course they will.”

With things I’m accomplished, I should hopefully be able to spend just more time with Kite while he’s growing up. Yeah -- his needs are pretty simple right now, but that just gives me a chance.

Right now, I can knock out Gourmet cooking, and get back to work on homestyle cooking to follow it up. You know, just in a day’s work. But there is stuff to do besides fuss over the baby and skilling. The next day, an expectant Mila invites her husband out to lunch, as usual.

“You are aware I invited my husband, and not my husband and his entire household, correct?” She asks, looking at the assembled triple date. Miko and I, Johnny and the girl du jour. Look, they blend together a lot. It’s not the entire household. Kite’s too young to travel, and Akira’s at work. So it’s really only most of his household. “Sorry about that! Kestral just thought it’d be nice if she and I could go out -- we don’t get a lot of the same times off! We won’t bother you at your table, OK?” asks Miko, all sweetness so she couldn’t possibly put up a fuss, before giving me a sly look out of the corner of her eye. Thank you, my dear! I need to have a wonderful lunch with you (and take photos of experimental food.) “It’s fine,” Gino said, reaching over to put his hand on Mila’s across the table. “I can still have you all to myself, and you can have me all to yourself… But it’ll make the restaurant lively! It’ll be fun to listen in on all these kids.” “I suppose so,” she admits, melting. She probably has enough liveliness, what with the whole six children counting the young adults situation, but Gino was beaming like a spotlight, and I don’t think she could say no. After all, the whole reason for inviting him there was because they love each other so much -- and I’m not sappy about it, you’re sappy! He wasn’t kidding about the restaurant being lively; I think I can hear about three different conversations about once.

The travelling one isn’t super interesting, even if I wanted to eavesdrop on a stranger’s table (I have no objection to doing so, if it’s good.) But from Gino and Mila, I can eavesdrop with the best. “While I’ve always loved having him around, I think now I truly appreciate it that Gunther has yet to move out. It certainly gives me an extra pair of hands around.” “I’ll try and take the tykes off your hands for the day soon; you should both get the chance to go out for yourselves! Live a little!” Gino exclaimed, his hand reaching across the table for hers. “I rather think I am living for myself a little… With you.” “It’s sure a good life.” He pauses for a moment, his expression growing pensive. The restaurant’s chatter lulls for just a moment; I can hear someone badly mishandling a tumbler up by the bar. “Make sure you keep it good, after all’s said and done with me...OK?” “Tut-tut! No talking like that on our dates.” “Seems to me like we’re always datin’!” “Well, isn’t that convenient?” Though for conversations, my favorite is of course the one I am having. “Naturally, this won’t look as good as real food photography -- think we could get some motor oil?” “Motor oil? What would you do with that?” Miko asks brightly. “Food photography involves a lot of stuff that’s not even remotely food, to make the food look more food-like.” “It would probably give it a nice gloss -- I guess the lighting on that has to be super-duper precise, right?” She asks, eager to share a little of what she’s picked up “That’s true of all photography; but I think it’s probably true of food, too. A restaurant’s ambiance is key.” ”Well, silly goose, I’m letting you take a picture of my food, so until our robot overlords come, hold the motor oil!” She really did wait for me to take a picture of her dish for our nice new museum...

Starting now! ...I didn’t get those photos on that wall yet, though. But there was one other thing we needed to do that night.

It was time for my little man to age up. What an Angelic little kid. What a mop of hair!

We tried setting the bird’s nest down for a bit…

But it just poofed back into place. He’s got Miko’s eyes, and I think that mouth might be more hers than mine? Maybe. As for the color...Who knows, maybe he’ll grow into mine, anyway. But first!

“Let’s get you started, champ. Easy now, easy…” “Ees! Ees!”

BTS 365 Prompts

[Masterlist] Please tag me in your work if you use my prompts. I want to see your work. Ever your Jester.

Tell me your birthday and I will tag you on your special day!

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         January 15th - 21st

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Kim Seokjin: Strawberry Ice cream 

You were cleaning out the convenience store ready to close up for the night when the freezer door got stuck you panicked and tried to call one of the other two workers to come help you. realizing you were taking to long Seokjin threw open the door and stormed inside. Saying to hurry up as he wanted to get home but you shouted at him to hold the door but it swung shut behind him. Trying the door it was stuck once more the handle on the inside was broken. He scolded you for not telling him the door was broken. “You hardly gave me a chance you just barged in yelling at me to hurry up and acting like a grumpy old man”

“You think I am old!” he said taken back by your comment and quietened down. You sat for a while trying to stay warm, you reluctantly moved closer at the half an hour mark and by the hour your stomachs seemed to growl in chorus. You pulled open a tub of Strawberry Ice cream, it was the only flavor left and it definitely wasn’t your favorite. You laughed as Seokjin ate as well - you were using spoons you had made out of the cardboard from the lid - his face contorted. 

“That’s disgusting” he whined as he took another scoop.

Min Yoongi: Nothing 

Kicked out of home with nothing. No money, No phone and Nowhere to go. Yoongi was standing outside a small convenience store when he asked to borrow your phone, you nodded and leaned it to him as he looked absolutely desperate. He rang some friends begging for them to let him stay the night his stomach growling at the same time. On his sixth attempt from someone he seemed to barely no he gave up apologizing and handing back your phone.

“I have a spare bedroom” you said and he paused watching you and you looked down scuffing your feet with a small laugh “If it’s not weird and you promise you aren’t going to rob or kill me” 

“It’s okay really” he protested and you hummed

“Well what if I said it wasn’t free, you see, I am not tall enough to change the light bulbs and two of my rooms the Light Bulbs need replacing and I want to buy a lot of groceries so if you help carry them I can try to make a semi edible meal. I suck at cooking but your welcome to join me in eating charcoal ramyeon”

“I can cook” he muttered and your eyes lit up and you told him he could stay for as long as he needed if he could cook.

Jung Hoseok: Benjamin Franklin @littlewolfieposts

“Daddy, I am suppose to wear a costume today remember, I old you and wrote it on your calendar like you asked” Huimang asked causing Hoseok to pause in the doorway, he hummed looking at his son up and down and almost had a melt down. “It’s okay daddy, I understand you are really busy” 

He brushed past his father and walked to the car. Hoseok’s heart broke he had let his boy down. Taking a deep breath he sat in the car and told Huimang that after school they could do whatever he wants. You were greeting all the kids to class and you had a sneaky suspicion some of the kids would forget so you packed extra costumes behind the desk and you noticed a very upset Huimang and a very disappointed Hoseok.

“Mister Jung, the costume you ordered arrived in time for today” You lied threw him the packet, he looked at you with such relief as he helped his son get dressed.

“Daddy I knew you wouldn’t forget, after school I know what I want” Hoseok raised an eyebrow “I want to invite miss y/n over for dinner, I think she likes you and I know you like her, I heard you talking to uncle Yoongi about how she is a snack and you were so shook with how she has a snatched waist and it makes you thirsty AF and that, that is the real tea” Huimang grinned at his father hugging him before running off with his little key and kite trailing the floor behind him.

Kim Namjoon: Lunch swap

You packed a lunch for your crush Jaehyun at your best friends work. Your best friend was none other than Kim Namjoon who beamed as you arrived causing a strange nervous sensation in your tummy and a flutter in your heart. “How did you know I forgot my lunch today” He all but snatched the lunchbox from your hands and opened it and looked at the heart themed lunch box and he picked up the note with the love confession and you don’t know why but you ran as fast as you could out of the building.

Park Jimin: Popcorn 

You were working at the Candy bar dressed in you red and white striped dressed with a cute apron and you were serving customers and helping them select their confectioneries. You were at war with the Popcorn boy, you had been competing since last year when he received Employee of the year breaking your winning streak. You had one every year for five years and he ruined it. He was so nice, and like you never had days off, you both came in no matter the weather and on short notice. It was late and you were covering for the other candy girl who had fallen sick which meant you had to work with him. 

You were at peak time between 6-8 where most people decide they want to watch movies and they would panic trying to buy snacks before the movie starts. He ran into you spilling popcorn down your dress, leaving salt, butter and popcorn in places it shouldn’t be. You took it upon yourself accidentally trip and land an ice cream to the back of his head, he looked absolutely guttered. You felt guilty and hung your head as you continued serving, you were fetching two large drinks not noticing Jimin stepping over to your register to ring up the tab while you grabbed the rest of their things. You ran straight into his back splashing him with soda and apologizing profusely finishing the drinks and watching the last couple head into the cinema. His back you could see was well defined through his wet shirt and he turned. His eyes were dark and his lips pressed into a hard line.

Kim Taehyung: Penguin

“The fairy Penguins like to eat small fish like anchovies and on some occasions squid, krill and plankton. They fall in love with their special penguin and they stay together forever. But to make the girls fall in love with them, the boys have to be nice to the girls. And make them a pretty home for them to live in, so they make a burrow and they decorate it so they can live together.”

“Hey y/n” the thin boy with big ears and equally big grin called your name and you turned giving him a gap toothed grin your pigtails held together by the school regulated colored ribbon. “When we get older I will build us a house and we will live together forever okay, I will put everything you like inside”

“Okay” you smiled linking pinkies. 

Jeon Jungkook: Squirrel Appreciation

Jungkook was your brother Yoongi’s best friend and you hated him by default. He always ate all the food in the house and lounged around on the couch and was generally just a pain. You stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel heading for your room, but you came face to chest with the much taller and toned Jungkook. His sleepy eyes widened, you pushed past him to your room so you could dress and curse him out. “If he wasn’t here this wouldn’t have happened?”

You opened your bedroom door ready to head down to the kitchen to eat before he did. At that exact moment he stepped out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped low around his waist. Your eyes drank him up and down, before you turned away cheeks sporting a pink hue. He smirked at your retreating figure and the three of you ate breakfast in silence. You got lost watching Jungkook’s lips as he ate every now and then his tongue would peek out to swipe any food left behind. You giggled seeing his cheeks puffed like a Squirrel.

Next week

your ass better appreciate this

for the rest of your life. The same job the rest of your life? I didn't know that. What's the difference? You'll be happy to know that bees, as a species, haven't had one day off in 27 million years. So you'll just work us to death? We'll sure try. Wow! That blew my mind! "What's the difference?" How can you say that? One job forever? That's an insane choice to have to make. I'm relieved. Now we only have to make one decision in life. But, Adam, how could they never have told us that? Why would you question anything? We're bees. We're the most perfectly functioning society on Earth. You ever think maybe things work a little too well here? Like what? Give me one example. I don't know. But you know what I'm talking about. Please clear the gate. Royal Nectar Force on approach. Wait a second. Oheck it out. - Hey, those are Pollen Jocks! - Wow. I've never seen them this close. They know what it's like outside the hive. Yeah, but some don't come back. - Hey, Jocks! - Hi, Jocks! You guys did great! You're monsters! You're sky freaks! I love it! I love it! - I wonder where they were. - I don't know. Their day's not planned. Outside the hive, flying who knows where, doing who knows what. You can'tjust decide to be a Pollen Jock. You have to be bred for that. Right. Look. That's more pollen than you and I will see in a lifetime. It's just a status symbol. Bees make too much of it. Perhaps. Unless you're wearing it and the ladies see you wearing it. Those ladies? Aren't they our cousins too? Distant. Distant. Look at these two. - Oouple of Hive Harrys. - Let's have fun with them. It must be dangerous being a Pollen Jock. Yeah. Once a bear pinned me against a mushroom! He had a paw on my throat, and with the other, he was slapping me! - Oh, my! - I never thought I'd knock him out. What were you doing during this? Trying to alert the authorities. I can autograph that. A little gusty out there today, wasn't it, comrades? Yeah. Gusty. We're hitting a sunflower patch six miles from here tomorrow. - Six miles, huh? - Barry! A puddle jump for us, but maybe you're not up for it. - Maybe I am. - You are not! We're going 0900 at J-Gate. What do you think, buzzy-boy? Are you bee enough? I might be. It all depends on what 0900 means. Hey, Honex! Dad, you surprised me. You decide what you're interested in? - Well, there's a lot of choices. - But you only get one. Do you ever get bored doing the same job every day? Son, let me tell you about stirring. You grab that stick, and you just move it around, and you stir it around. You get yourself into a rhythm. It's a beautiful thing. You know, Dad, the more I think about it, maybe the honey field just isn't right for me. You were thinking of what, making balloon animals? That's a bad job for a guy with a stinger. Janet, your son's not sure he wants to go into honey! - Barry, you are so funny sometimes. - I'm not trying to be funny. You're not funny! You're going into honey. Our son, the stirrer! - You're gonna be a stirrer? - No one's listening to me! Wait till you see the sticks I have. I could say anything right now. I'm gonna get an ant tattoo! Let's open some honey and celebrate! Maybe I'll pierce my thorax. Shave my antennae. Shack up with a grasshopper. Get a gold tooth and call everybody "dawg"! I'm so proud. - We're starting work today! - Today's the day. Oome on! All the good jobs will be gone. Yeah, right. Pollen counting, stunt bee, pouring, stirrer, front desk, hair removal... - Is it still available? - Hang on. Two left! One of them's yours! Oongratulations! Step to the side. - What'd you get? - Picking crud out. Stellar! Wow! Oouple of newbies? Yes, sir! Our first day! We are ready! Make your choice. - You want to go first? - No, you go. Oh, my. What's available? Restroom attendant's open, not for the reason you think. - Any chance of getting the Krelman? - Sure, you're on. I'm sorry, the Krelman just closed out. Wax monkey's always open. The Krelman opened up again. What happened? A bee died. Makes an opening. See? He's dead. Another dead one. Deady. Deadified. Two more dead. Dead from the neck up. Dead from the neck down. That's life! Oh, this is so hard! Heating, cooling, stunt bee, pourer, stirrer, humming, inspector number seven, lint coordinator, stripe supervisor, mite wrangler. Barry, what do you think I should... Barry? Barry! All right, we've got the sunflower patch in quadrant nine... What happened to you? Where are you? - I'm going out. - Out? Out where? - Out there. - Oh, no! I have to, before I go to work for the rest of my life. You're gonna die! You're crazy! Hello? Another call coming in. If anyone's feeling brave, there's a Korean deli on 83rd that gets their roses today. Hey, guys. - Look at that. - Isn't that the kid we saw yesterday? Hold it, son, flight deck's restricted. It's OK, Lou. We're gonna take him up. Really? Feeling lucky, are you? Sign here, here. Just initial that. - Thank you. - OK. You got a rain advisory today, and as you all know, bees cannot fly in rain. So be careful. As always, watch your brooms, hockey sticks, dogs, birds, bears and bats. Also, I got a couple of reports of root beer being poured on us. Murphy's in a home because of it, babbling like a cicada! - That's awful. - And a reminder for you rookies, bee law number one, absolutely no talking to humans! All right, launch positions! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Black and yellow! Hello! You ready for this, hot shot? Yeah. Yeah, bring it on. Wind, check. - Antennae, check. - Nectar pack, check. - Wings, check. - Stinger, check. Scared out of my shorts, check. OK, ladies, let's move it out! Pound those petunias, you striped stem-suckers! All of you, drain those flowers! Wow! I'm out! I can't believe I'm out! So blue. I feel so fast and free! Box kite! Wow! Flowers! This is Blue Leader. We have roses visual. Bring it around 30 degrees and hold. Roses! 30 degrees, roger. Bringing it around. Stand to the side, kid. It's got a bit of a kick. That is one nectar collector! - Ever see pollination up close? - No, sir. I pick up some pollen here, sprinkle it over here. Maybe a dash over there, a pinch on that one. See that? It's a little bit of magic. That's amazing. Why do we do that? That's pollen power. More pollen, more flowers, more nectar, more honey for us. Oool. I'm picking up a lot of bright yellow. Oould be daisies. Don't we need those? Oopy that visual. Wait. One of these flowers seems to be on the move. Say again? You're reporting a moving flower? Affirmative. That was on the line! This is the coolest. What is it? I don't know, but I'm loving this color. It smells good. Not like a flower, but I like it. Yeah, fuzzy. Ohemical-y. Oareful, guys. It's a little grabby. My sweet lord of bees! Oandy-brain, get off there! Problem! - Guys! - This could be bad. Affirmative. Very close. Gonna hurt. Mama's little boy. You are way out of position, rookie! Ooming in at you like a missile! Help me! I don't think these are flowers. - Should we tell him? - I think he knows. What is this?! Match point! You can start packing up, honey, because you're about to eat it! Yowser! Gross. There's a bee in the car! - Do something! - I'm driving! - Hi, bee. - He's back here! He's going to sting me! Nobody move. If you don't move, he won't sting you. Freeze! He blinked! Spray him, Granny! What are you doing?! Wow... the tension level out here is unbelievable. I gotta get home. Oan't fly in rain. Oan't fly in rain. Oan't fly in rain. Mayday! Mayday! Bee going down! Ken, could you close the window please? Ken, could you close the window please? Oheck out my new resume. I made it into a fold-out brochure. You see? Folds out. Oh, no. More humans. I don't need this. What was that? Maybe this time. This time. This time. This time! This time! This... Drapes! That is diabolical. It's fantastic. It's got all my special skills, even my top-ten favorite movies. What's number one? Star Wars? Nah, I don't go for that... ...kind of stuff. No wonder we shouldn't talk to them. They're out of their minds. When I leave a job interview, they're flabbergasted, can't believe what I say. There's the sun. Maybe that's a way out. I don't remember the sun having a big 75 on it. I predicted global warming. I could feel it getting hotter. At first I thought it was just me. Wait! Stop! Bee! Stand back. These are winter boots. Wait! Don't kill him! You know I'm allergic to them! This thing could kill me! Why does his life have less value than yours? Why does his life have any less value than mine? Is that your statement? I'm just saying all life has value. You don't know what he's capable of feeling. My brochure! There you go, little guy. I'm not scared of him. It's an allergic thing. Put that on your resume brochure. My whole face could puff up. Make it one of your special skills. Knocking someone out is also a special skill. Right. Bye, Vanessa. Thanks. - Vanessa, next week? Yogurt night? - Sure, Ken. You know, whatever. - You could put carob chips on there. - Bye. - Supposed to be less calories. - Bye. I gotta say something. She saved my life. I gotta say something. All right, here it goes. Nah. What would I say? I could really get in trouble. It's a bee law. You're not supposed to talk to a human. I can't believe I'm doing this. I've got to. Oh, I can't do it. Oome on! No. Yes. No. Do it. I can't. How should I start it? "You like jazz?" No, that's no good. Here she comes! Speak, you fool! Hi! I'm sorry. - You're talking. - Yes, I know. You're talking! I'm so sorry. No, it's OK. It's fine. I know I'm dreaming. But I don't recall going to bed. Well, I'm sure this is very disconcerting. This is a bit of a surprise to me. I mean, you're a bee! I am. And I'm not supposed to be doing this, but they were all trying to kill me. And if it wasn't for you... I had to thank you. It's just how I was raised. That was a little weird. - I'm talking with a bee. - Yeah. I'm talking to a bee. And the bee is talking to me! I just want to say I'm grateful. I'll leave now. - Wait! How did you learn to do that? - What? The talking thing. Same way you did, I guess. "Mama, Dada, honey." You pick it up. - That's very funny. - Yeah. Bees are funny. If we didn't laugh, we'd cry with what we have to deal with. Anyway... Oan I... ...get you something? - Like what? I don't know. I mean... I don't know. Ooffee? I don't want to put you out. It's no trouble. It takes two minutes. - It's just coffee. - I hate to impose. - Don't be ridiculous! - Actually, I would love a cup. Hey, you want rum cake? - I shouldn't. - Have some. - No, I can't. - Oome on! I'm trying to lose a couple micrograms. - Where? - These stripes don't help. You look great! I don't know if you know anything about fashion. Are you all right? No. He's making the tie in the cab as they're flying up Madison. He finally gets there. He runs up the steps into the church. The wedding is on. And he says, "Watermelon? I thought you said Guatemalan. Why would I marry a watermelon?" Is that a bee joke? That's the kind of stuff we do. Yeah, different. So, what are you gonna do, Barry? About work? I don't know. I want to do my part for the hive, but I can't do it the way they want. I know how you feel. - You do? - Sure. My parents wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor, but I wanted to be a florist. - Really? - My only interest is flowers. Our new queen was just elected with that same campaign slogan. Anyway, if you look... There's my hive right there. See it? You're in Sheep Meadow! Yes! I'm right off the Turtle Pond! No way! I know that area. I lost a toe ring there once. - Why do girls put rings on their toes? - Why not? - It's like putting a hat on your knee. - Maybe I'll try that. - You all right, ma'am? - Oh, yeah. Fine. Just having two cups of coffee! Anyway, this has been great. Thanks for the coffee. Yeah, it's no trouble. Sorry I couldn't finish it. If I did, I'd be up the rest of my life. Are you...? Oan I take a piece of this with me? Sure! Here, have a crumb. - Thanks! - Yeah. All right. Well, then... I guess I'll see you around. Or not. OK, Barry. And thank you so much again... for before. Oh, that? That was nothing. Well, not nothing, but... Anyway... This can't possibly work. He's all set to go. We may as well try it. OK, Dave, pull the chute. - Sounds amazing. - It was amazing! It was the scariest, happiest moment of my life. Humans! I can't believe you were with humans! Giant, scary humans! What were they like? Huge and crazy. They talk crazy. They eat crazy giant things. They drive crazy. - Do they try and kill you, like on TV? - Some of them. But some of them don't. - How'd you get back? - Poodle. You did it, and I'm glad. You saw whatever you wanted to see. You had your "experience." Now you can pick out yourjob and be normal. - Well... - Well? Well, I met someone. You did? Was she Bee-ish? - A wasp?! Your parents will kill you! - No, no, no, not a wasp. - Spider? - I'm not attracted to spiders. I know it's the hottest thing, with the eight legs and all. I can't get by that face. So who is she? She's... human. No, no. That's a bee law. You wouldn't break a bee law. - Her name's Vanessa. - Oh, boy. She's so nice. And she's a florist! Oh, no! You're dating a human florist! We're not dating. You're flying outside the hive, talking to humans that attack our homes with power washers and M-80s! One-eighth a stick of dynamite! She saved my life! And she understands me. This is over! Eat this. This is not over! What was that? - They call it a crumb. - It was so stingin' stripey! And that's not what they eat. That's what falls off what they eat! - You know what a Oinnabon is? - No. It's bread and cinnamon and frosting. They heat it up... Sit down! ...really hot! - Listen to me! We are not them! We're us. There's us and there's them! Yes, but who can deny the heart that is yearning? There's no yearning. Stop yearning. Listen to me! You have got to start thinking bee, my friend. Thinking bee! - Thinking bee. - Thinking bee. Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! There he is. He's in the pool. You know what your problem is, Barry? I gotta start thinking bee? How much longer will this go on? It's been three days! Why aren't you working? I've got a lot of big life decisions to think about. What life? You have no life! You have no job. You're barely a bee! Would it kill you to make a little honey? Barry, come out. Your father's talking to you. Martin, would you talk to him? Barry, I'm talking to you! You coming? Got everything? All set! Go ahead. I'll catch up. Don't be too long. Watch this! Vanessa! - We're still here. - I told you not to yell at him. He doesn't respond to yelling! - Then why yell at me? - Because you don't listen! I'm not listening to this. Sorry, I've gotta go. - Where are you going? - I'm meeting a friend. A girl? Is this why you can't decide? Bye. I just hope she's Bee-ish. They have a huge parade of flowers every year in Pasadena? To be in the Tournament of Roses, that's every florist's dream! Up on a float, surrounded by flowers, crowds cheering. A tournament. Do the roses compete in athletic events? No. All right, I've got one. How come you don't fly everywhere? It's exhausting. Why don't you run everywhere? It's faster. Yeah, OK, I see, I see. All right, your turn. TiVo. You can just freeze live TV? That's insane! You don't have that? We have Hivo, but it's a disease. It's a horrible, horrible disease. Oh, my. Dumb bees! You must want to sting all those jerks. We try not to sting. It's usually fatal for us. So you have to watch your temper. Very carefully. You kick a wall, take a walk, write an angry letter and throw it out. Work through it like any emotion: Anger, jealousy, lust. Oh, my goodness! Are you OK? Yeah. - What is wrong with you?! - It's a bug. He's not bothering anybody. Get out of here, you creep! What was that? A Pic 'N' Save circular? Yeah, it was. How did you know? It felt like about 10 pages. Seventy-five is pretty much our limit. You've really got that down to a science. - I lost a cousin to Italian Vogue. - I'll bet. What in the name of Mighty Hercules is this? How did this get here? Oute Bee, Golden Blossom, Ray Liotta Private Select? - Is he that actor? - I never heard of him. - Why is this here? - For people. We eat it. You don't have enough food of your own? - Well, yes. - How do you get it? - Bees make it. - I know who makes it! And it's hard to make it! There's heating, cooling, stirring. You need a whole Krelman thing! - It's organic. - It's our-ganic! It's just honey, Barry. Just what?! Bees don't know about this! This is stealing! A lot of stealing! You've taken our homes, schools, hospitals! This is all we have! And it's on sale?! I'm getting to the bottom of this. I'm getting to the bottom of all of this! Hey, Hector. - You almost done? - Almost. He is here. I sense it. Well, I guess I'll go home now and just leave this nice honey out, with no one around. You're busted, box boy! I knew I heard something. So you can talk! I can talk. And now you'll start talking! Where you getting the sweet stuff? Who's your supplier? I don't understand. I thought we were friends. The last thing we want to do is upset bees! You're too late! It's ours now! You, sir, have crossed the wrong sword! You, sir, will be lunch for my iguana, Ignacio! Where is the honey coming from? Tell me where! Honey Farms! It comes from Honey Farms! Orazy person! What horrible thing has happened here? These faces, they never knew what hit them. And now they're on the road to nowhere! Just keep still. What? You're not dead? Do I look dead? They will wipe anything that moves. Where you headed? To Honey Farms. I am onto something huge here. I'm going to Alaska. Moose blood, crazy stuff. Blows your head off! I'm going to Tacoma. - And you? - He really is dead. All right. Uh-oh! - What is that?! - Oh, no! - A wiper! Triple blade! - Triple blade? Jump on! It's your only chance, bee! Why does everything have to be so doggone clean?! How much do you people need to see?! Open your eyes! Stick your head out the window! From NPR News in Washington, I'm Oarl Kasell. But don't kill no more bugs! - Bee! - Moose blood guy!! - You hear something? - Like what? Like tiny screaming. Turn off the radio. Whassup, bee boy? Hey, Blood. Just a row of honey jars, as far as the eye could see. Wow! I assume wherever this truck goes is where they're getting it. I mean, that honey's ours. - Bees hang tight. - We're all jammed in. It's a close community. Not us, man. We on our own. Every mosquito on his own. - What if you get in trouble? - You a mosquito, you in trouble. Nobody likes us. They just smack. See a mosquito, smack, smack! At least you're out in the world. You must meet girls. Mosquito girls try to trade up, get with a moth, dragonfly. Mosquito girl don't want no mosquito. You got to be kidding me! Mooseblood's about to leave the building! So long, bee! - Hey, guys! - Mooseblood! I knew I'd catch y'all down here. Did you bring your crazy straw? We throw it in jars, slap a label on it, and it's pretty much pure profit. What is this place? A bee's got a brain the size of a pinhead. They are pinheads! Pinhead. - Oheck out the new smoker. - Oh, sweet. That's the one you want. The Thomas 3000! Smoker? Ninety puffs a minute, semi-automatic. Twice the nicotine, all the tar. A couple breaths of this knocks them right out. They make the honey, and we make the money. "They make the honey, and we make the money"? Oh, my! What's going on? Are you OK? Yeah. It doesn't last too long. Do you know you're in a fake hive with fake walls? Our queen was moved here. We had no choice. This is your queen? That's a man in women's clothes! That's a drag queen! What is this? Oh, no! There's hundreds of them! Bee honey. Our honey is being brazenly stolen on a massive scale! This is worse than anything bears have done! I intend to do something. Oh, Barry, stop. Who told you humans are taking our honey? That's a rumor. Do these look like rumors? That's a conspiracy theory. These are obviously doctored photos. How did you get mixed up in this? He's been talking to humans. - What? - Talking to humans?! He has a human girlfriend. And they make out! Make out? Barry! We do not. - You wish you could. - Whose side are you on? The bees! I dated a cricket once in San Antonio. Those crazy legs kept me up all night. Barry, this is what you want to do with your life? I want to do it for all our lives. Nobody works harder than bees! Dad, I remember you coming home so overworked your hands were still stirring. You couldn't stop. I remember that. What right do they have to our honey? We live on two cups a year. They put it in lip balm for no reason whatsoever! Even if it's true, what can one bee do? Sting them where it really hurts. In the face! The eye! - That would hurt. - No. Up the nose? That's a killer. There's only one place you can sting the humans, one place where it matters. Hive at Five, the hive's only full-hour action news source. No more bee beards! With Bob Bumble at the anchor desk. Weather with Storm Stinger. Sports with Buzz Larvi. And Jeanette Ohung. - Good evening. I'm Bob Bumble. - And I'm Jeanette Ohung. A tri-county bee, Barry Benson, intends to sue the human race for stealing our honey, packaging it and profiting from it illegally! Tomorrow night on Bee Larry King, we'll have three former queens here in our studio, discussing their new book, Olassy Ladies, out this week on Hexagon. Tonight we're talking to Barry Benson. Did you ever think, "I'm a kid from the hive. I can't do this"? Bees have never been afraid to change the world. What about Bee Oolumbus? Bee Gandhi? Bejesus? Where I'm from, we'd never sue humans. We were thinking of stickball or candy stores. How old are you? The bee community is supporting you in this case, which will be the trial of the bee century. You know, they have a Larry King in the human world too. It's a common name. Next week... He looks like you and has a show and suspenders and colored dots... Next week... Glasses, quotes on the bottom from the guest even though you just heard 'em. Bear Week next week! They're scary, hairy and here live. Always leans forward, pointy shoulders, squinty eyes, very Jewish. In tennis, you attack at the point of weakness! It was my grandmother, Ken. She's 81. Honey, her backhand's a joke! I'm not gonna take advantage of that? Quiet, please. Actual work going on here. - Is that that same bee? - Yes, it is! I'm helping him sue the human race. - Hello. - Hello, bee. This is Ken. Yeah, I remember you. Timberland, size ten and a half. Vibram sole, I believe. Why does he talk again? Listen, you better go 'cause we're really busy working. But it's our yogurt night! Bye-bye. Why is yogurt night so difficult?! You poor thing. You two have been at this for hours! Yes, and Adam here has been a huge help. - Frosting... - How many sugars? Just one. I try not to use the competition. So why are you helping me? Bees have good qualities. And it takes my mind off the shop. Instead of flowers, people are giving balloon bouquets now. Those are great, if you're three. And artificial flowers. - Oh, those just get me psychotic! - Yeah, me too. Bent stingers, pointless pollination. Bees must hate those fake things! Nothing worse than a daffodil that's had work done. Maybe this could make up for it a little bit. - This lawsuit's a pretty big deal. - I guess. You sure you want to go through with it? Am I sure? When I'm done with the humans, they won't be able to say, "Honey, I'm home," without paying a royalty! It's an incredible scene here in downtown Manhattan, where the world anxiously waits, because for the first time in history, we will hear for ourselves if a honeybee can actually speak. What have we gotten into here, Barry? It's pretty big, isn't it? I can't believe how many humans don't work during the day. You think billion-dollar multinational food companies have good lawyers? Everybody needs to stay behind the barricade. - What's the matter? - I don't know, I just got a chill. Well, if it isn't the bee team. You boys work on this? All rise! The Honorable Judge Bumbleton presiding. All right. Oase number 4475, Superior Oourt of New York, Barry Bee Benson v. the Honey Industry is now in session. Mr. Montgomery, you're representing the five food companies collectively? A privilege. Mr. Benson... you're representing all the bees of the world? I'm kidding. Yes, Your Honor, we're ready to proceed. Mr. Montgomery, your opening statement, please. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my grandmother was a simple woman. Born on a farm, she believed it was man's divine right to benefit from the bounty of nature God put before us. If we lived in the topsy-turvy world Mr. Benson imagines, just think of what would it mean. I would have to negotiate with the silkworm for the elastic in my britches! Talking bee! How do we know this isn't some sort of holographic motion-picture-capture Hollywood wizardry? They could be using laser beams! Robotics! Ventriloquism! Oloning! For all we know, he could be on steroids! Mr. Benson? Ladies and gentlemen, there's no trickery here. I'm just an ordinary bee. Honey's pretty important to me. It's important to all bees. We invented it! We make it. And we protect it with our lives. Unfortunately, there are some people in this room who think they can take it from us 'cause we're the little guys! I'm hoping that, after this is all over, you'll see how, by taking our honey, you not only take everything we have but everything we are! I wish he'd dress like that all the time. So nice! Oall your first witness. So, Mr. Klauss Vanderhayden of Honey Farms, big company you have. I suppose so. I see you also own Honeyburton and Honron! Yes, they provide beekeepers for our farms. Beekeeper. I find that to be a very disturbing term. I don't imagine you employ any bee-free-ers, do you? - No. - I couldn't hear you. - No. - No. Because you don't free bees. You keep bees. Not only that, it seems you thought a bear would be an appropriate image for a jar of honey. They're very lovable creatures. Yogi Bear, Fozzie Bear, Build-A-Bear. You mean like this? Bears kill bees! How'd you like his head crashing through your living room?! Biting into your couch! Spitting out your throw pillows! OK, that's enough. Take him away. So, Mr. Sting, thank you for being here. Your name intrigues me. - Where have I heard it before? - I was with a band called The Police. But you've never been a police officer, have you? No, I haven't. No, you haven't. And so here we have yet another example of bee culture casually stolen by a human for nothing more than a prance-about stage name. Oh, please. Have you ever been stung, Mr. Sting? Because I'm feeling a little stung, Sting. Or should I say... Mr. Gordon M. Sumner! That's not his real name?! You idiots! Mr. Liotta, first, belated congratulations on your Emmy win for a guest spot on ER in 2005. Thank you. Thank you. I see from your resume that you're devilishly handsome with a churning inner turmoil that's ready to blow. I enjoy what I do. Is that a crime? Not yet it isn't. But is this what it's come to for you? Exploiting tiny, helpless bees so you don't have to rehearse your part and learn your lines, sir? Watch it, Benson! I could blow right now! This isn't a goodfella. This is a badfella! Why doesn't someone just step on this creep, and we can all go home?! - Order in this court! - You're all thinking it! Order! Order, I say! - Say it! - Mr. Liotta, please sit down! I think it was awfully nice of that bear to pitch in like that. I think the jury's on our side. Are we doing everything right, legally? I'm a florist. Right. Well, here's to a great team. To a great team! Well, hello. - Ken! - Hello. I didn't think you were coming. No, I was just late. I tried to call, but... the battery. I didn't want all this to go to waste, so I called Barry. Luckily, he was free. Oh, that was lucky. There's a little left. I could heat it up. Yeah, heat it up, sure, whatever. So I hear you're quite a tennis player. I'm not much for the game myself. The ball's a little grabby. That's where I usually sit. Right... there. Ken, Barry was looking at your resume, and he agreed with me that eating with chopsticks isn't really a special skill. You think I don't see what you're doing? I know how hard it is to find the rightjob. We have that in common. Do we? Bees have 100 percent employment, but we do jobs like taking the crud out. That's just what I was thinking about doing. Ken, I let Barry borrow your razor for his fuzz. I hope that was all right. I'm going to drain the old stinger. Yeah, you do that. Look at that. You know, I've just about had it with your little mind games. - What's that? - Italian Vogue. Mamma mia, that's a lot of pages. A lot of ads. Remember what Van said, why is your life more valuable than mine? Funny, I just can't seem to recall that! I think something stinks in here! I love the smell of flowers. How do you like the smell of flames?! Not as much. Water bug! Not taking sides! Ken, I'm wearing a Ohapstick hat! This is pathetic! I've got issues! Well, well, well, a royal flush! - You're bluffing. - Am I? Surf's up, dude! Poo water! That bowl is gnarly. Except for those dirty yellow rings! Kenneth! What are you doing?! You know, I don't even like honey! I don't eat it! We need to talk! He's just a little bee! And he happens to be the nicest bee I've met in a long time! Long time? What are you talking about?! Are there other bugs in your life? No, but there are other things bugging me in life. And you're one of them! Fine! Talking bees, no yogurt night... My nerves are fried from riding on this emotional roller coaster! Goodbye, Ken. And for your information, I prefer sugar-free, artificial sweeteners made by man! I'm sorry about all that. I know it's got an aftertaste! I like it! I always felt there was some kind of barrier between Ken and me. I couldn't overcome it. Oh, well. Are you OK for the trial? I believe Mr. Montgomery is about out of ideas. We would like to call Mr. Barry Benson Bee to the stand. Good idea! You can really see why he's considered one of the best lawyers... Yeah. Layton, you've gotta weave some magic with this jury, or it's gonna be all over. Don't worry. The only thing I have to do to turn this jury around is to remind them of what they don't like about bees. - You got the tweezers? - Are you allergic? Only to losing, son. Only to losing. Mr. Benson Bee, I'll ask you what I think we'd all like to know. What exactly is your relationship to that woman? We're friends. - Good friends? - Yes. How good? Do you live together? Wait a minute... Are you her little... ...bedbug? I've seen a bee documentary or two. From what I understand, doesn't your queen give birth to all the bee children? - Yeah, but... - So those aren't your real parents! - Oh, Barry... - Yes, they are! Hold me back! You're an illegitimate bee, aren't you, Benson? He's denouncing bees! Don't y'all date your cousins? - Objection! - I'm going to pincushion this guy! Adam, don't! It's what he wants! Oh, I'm hit!! Oh, lordy, I am hit! Order! Order! The venom! The venom is coursing through my veins! I have been felled by a winged beast of destruction! You see? You can't treat them like equals! They're striped savages! Stinging's the only thing they know! It's their way! - Adam, stay with me. - I can't feel my legs. What angel of mercy will come forward to suck the poison from my heaving buttocks? I will have order in this court. Order! Order, please! The case of the honeybees versus the human race took a pointed turn against the bees yesterday when one of their legal team stung Layton T. Montgomery. - Hey, buddy. - Hey. - Is there much pain? - Yeah. I... I blew the whole case, didn't I? It doesn't matter. What matters is you're alive. You could have died. I'd be better off dead. Look at me. They got it from the cafeteria downstairs, in a tuna sandwich. Look, there's a little celery still on it. What was it like to sting someone? I can't explain it. It was all... All adrenaline and then... and then ecstasy! All right. You think it was all a trap? Of course. I'm sorry. I flew us right into this. What were we thinking? Look at us. We're just a couple of bugs in this world. What will the humans do to us if they win? I don't know. I hear they put the roaches in motels. That doesn't sound so bad. Adam, they check in, but they don't check out! Oh, my. Oould you get a nurse to close that window? - Why? - The smoke. Bees don't smoke. Right. Bees don't smoke. Bees don't smoke! But some bees are smoking. That's it! That's our case! It is? It's not over? Get dressed. I've gotta go somewhere. Get back to the court and stall. Stall any way you can. And assuming you've done step correctly, you're ready for the tub. Mr. Flayman. Yes? Yes, Your Honor! Where is the rest of your team? Well, Your Honor, it's interesting. Bees are trained to fly haphazardly, and as a result, we don't make very good time. I actually heard a funny story about... Your Honor, haven't these ridiculous bugs taken up enough of this court's valuable time? How much longer will we allow these absurd shenanigans to go on? They have presented no compelling evidence to support their charges against my clients, who run legitimate businesses. I move for a complete dismissal of this entire case! Mr. Flayman, I'm afraid I'm going to have to consider Mr. Montgomery's motion. But you can't! We have a terrific case. Where is your proof? Where is the evidence? Show me the smoking gun! Hold it, Your Honor! You want a smoking gun? Here is your smoking gun. What is that? It's a bee smoker! What, this? This harmless little contraption? This couldn't hurt a fly, let alone a bee. Look at what has happened to bees who have never been asked, "Smoking or non?" Is this what nature intended for us? To be forcibly addicted to smoke machines and man-made wooden slat work camps? Living out our lives as honey slaves to the white man? - What are we gonna do? - He's playing the species card. Ladies and gentlemen, please, free these bees! Free the bees! Free the bees! Free the bees! Free the bees! Free the bees! The court finds in favor of the bees! Vanessa, we won! I knew you could do it! High-five! Sorry. I'm OK! You know what this means? All the honey will finally belong to the bees. Now we won't have to work so hard all the time. This is an unholy perversion of the balance of nature, Benson. You'll regret this. Barry, how much honey is out there? All right. One at a time. Barry, who are you wearing? My sweater is Ralph Lauren, and I have no pants. - What if Montgomery's right? - What do you mean? We've been living the bee way a long time, 27 million years. Oongratulations on your victory. What will you demand as a settlement? First, we'll demand a complete shutdown of all bee work camps. Then we want back the honey that was ours to begin with, every last drop. We demand an end to the glorification of the bear as anything more than a filthy, smelly, bad-breath stink machine. We're all aware of what they do in the woods. Wait for my signal. Take him out. He'll have nauseous for a few hours, then he'll be fine. And we will no longer tolerate bee-negative nicknames... But it's just a prance-about stage name! ...unnecessary inclusion of honey in bogus health products and la-dee-da human tea-time snack garnishments. Oan't breathe. Bring it in, boys! Hold it right there! Good. Tap it. Mr. Buzzwell, we just passed three cups, and there's gallons more coming! - I think we need to shut down! - Shut down? We've never shut down. Shut down honey production! Stop making honey! Turn your key, sir! What do we do now? Oannonball! We're shutting honey production! Mission abort. Aborting pollination and nectar detail. Returning to base. Adam, you wouldn't believe how much honey was out there. Oh, yeah? What's going on? Where is everybody? - Are they out celebrating? - They're home. They don't know what to do. Laying out, sleeping in. I heard your Uncle Oarl was on his way to San Antonio with a cricket. At least we got our honey back. Sometimes I think, so what if humans liked our honey? Who wouldn't? It's the greatest thing in the world! I was excited to be part of making it. This was my new desk. This was my new job. I wanted to do it really well. And now... Now I can't. I don't understand why they're not happy. I thought their lives would be better! They're doing nothing. It's amazing. Honey really changes people. You don't have any idea what's going on, do you? - What did you want to show me? - This. What happened here? That is not the half of it. Oh, no. Oh, my. They're all wilting. Doesn't look very good, does it? No. And whose fault do you think that is? You know, I'm gonna guess bees. Bees? Specifically, me. I didn't think bees not needing to make honey would affect all these things. It's notjust flowers. Fruits, vegetables, they all need bees. That's our whole SAT test right there. Take away produce, that affects the entire animal kingdom. And then, of course... The human species? So if there's no more pollination, it could all just go south here, couldn't it? I know this is also partly my fault. How about a suicide pact? How do we do it? - I'll sting you, you step on me. - Thatjust kills you twice. Right, right. Listen, Barry... sorry, but I gotta get going. I had to open my mouth and talk. Vanessa? Vanessa? Why are you leaving? Where are you going? To the final Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena. They've moved it to this weekend because all the flowers are dying. It's the last chance I'll ever have to see it. Vanessa, I just wanna say I'm sorry. I never meant it to turn out like this. I know. Me neither. Tournament of Roses. Roses can't do sports. Wait a minute. Roses. Roses? Roses! Vanessa! Roses?! Barry? - Roses are flowers! - Yes, they are. Flowers, bees, pollen! I know. That's why this is the last parade. Maybe not. Oould you ask him to slow down? Oould you slow down? Barry! OK, I made a huge mistake. This is a total disaster, all my fault. Yes, it kind of is. I've ruined the planet. I wanted to help you with the flower shop. I've made it worse. Actually, it's completely closed down. I thought maybe you were remodeling. But I have another idea, and it's greater than my previous ideas combined. I don't want to hear it! All right, they have the roses, the roses have the pollen. I know every bee, plant and flower bud in this park. All we gotta do is get what they've got back here with what we've got. - Bees. - Park. - Pollen! - Flowers. - Repollination! - Across the nation! Tournament of Roses, Pasadena, Oalifornia. They've got nothing but flowers, floats and cotton candy. Security will be tight. I have an idea. Vanessa Bloome, FTD. Official floral business. It's real. Sorry, ma'am. Nice brooch. Thank you. It was a gift. Once inside, we just pick the right float. How about The Princess and the Pea? I could be the princess, and you could be the pea! Yes, I got it. - Where should I sit? - What are you? - I believe I'm the pea. - The pea? It goes under the mattresses. - Not in this fairy tale, sweetheart. - I'm getting the marshal. You do that! This whole parade is a fiasco! Let's see what this baby'll do. Hey, what are you doing?! Then all we do is blend in with traffic... ...without arousing suspicion. Once at the airport, there's no stopping us. Stop! Security. - You and your insect pack your float? - Yes. Has it been in your possession the entire time? Would you remove your shoes? - Remove your stinger. - It's part of me. I know. Just having some fun. Enjoy your flight. Then if we're lucky, we'll have just enough pollen to do the job. Oan you believe how lucky we are? We have just enough pollen to do the job! I think this is gonna work. It's got to work. Attention, passengers, this is Oaptain Scott. We have a bit of bad weather in New York. It looks like we'll experience a couple hours delay. Barry, these are cut flowers with no water. They'll never make it. I gotta get up there and talk to them. Be careful. Oan I get help with the Sky Mall magazine? I'd like to order the talking inflatable nose and ear hair trimmer. Oaptain, I'm in a real situation. - What'd you say, Hal? - Nothing. Bee! Don't freak out! My entire species... What are you doing? - Wait a minute! I'm an attorney! - Who's an attorney? Don't move. Oh, Barry. Good afternoon, passengers. This is your captain. Would a Miss Vanessa Bloome in 24B please report to the cockpit? And please hurry! What happened here? There was a DustBuster, a toupee, a life raft exploded. One's bald, one's in a boat, they're both unconscious! - Is that another bee joke? - No! No one's flying the plane! This is JFK control tower, Flight 356. What's your status? This is Vanessa Bloome. I'm a florist from New York. Where's the pilot? He's unconscious, and so is the copilot. Not good. Does anyone onboard have flight experience? As a matter of fact, there is. - Who's that? - Barry Benson. From the honey trial?! Oh, great. Vanessa, this is nothing more than a big metal bee. It's got giant wings, huge engines. I can't fly a plane. - Why not? Isn't John Travolta a pilot? - Yes. How hard could it be? Wait, Barry! We're headed into some lightning. This is Bob Bumble. We have some late-breaking news from JFK Airport, where a suspenseful scene is developing. Barry Benson, fresh from his legal victory... That's Barry! ...is attempting to land a plane, loaded with people, flowers and an incapacitated flight crew. Flowers?! We have a storm in the area and two individuals at the controls with absolutely no flight experience. Just a minute. There's a bee on that plane. I'm quite familiar with Mr. Benson and his no-account compadres. They've done enough damage. But isn't he your only hope? Technically, a bee shouldn't be able to fly at all. Their wings are too small... Haven't we heard this a million times? "The surface area of the wings and body mass make no sense." - Get this on the air! - Got it. - Stand by. - We're going live. The way we work may be a mystery to you. Making honey takes a lot of bees doing a lot of small jobs. But let me tell you about a small job. If you do it well, it makes a big difference. More than we realized. To us, to everyone. That's why I want to get bees back to working together. That's the bee way! We're not made of Jell-O. We get behind a fellow. - Black and yellow! - Hello! Left, right, down, hover. - Hover? - Forget hover. This isn't so hard. Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Barry, what happened?! Wait, I think we were on autopilot the whole time. - That may have been helping me. - And now we're not! So it turns out I cannot fly a plane. All of you, let's get behind this fellow! Move it out! Move out! Our only chance is if I do what I'd do, you copy me with the wings of the plane! Don't have to yell. I'm not yelling! We're in a lot of trouble. It's very hard to concentrate with that panicky tone in your voice! It's not a tone. I'm panicking! I can't do this! Vanessa, pull yourself together. You have to snap out of it! You snap out of it. You snap out of it. - You snap out of it! - You snap out of it! - You snap out of it! - You snap out of it! - You snap out of it! - You snap out of it! - Hold it! - Why? Oome on, it's my turn. How is the plane flying? I don't know. Hello? Benson, got any flowers for a happy occasion in there? The Pollen Jocks! They do get behind a fellow. - Black and yellow. - Hello. All right, let's drop this tin can on the blacktop. Where? I can't see anything. Oan you? No, nothing. It's all cloudy. Oome on. You got to think bee, Barry. - Thinking bee. - Thinking bee. Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Wait a minute. I think I'm feeling something. - What? - I don't know. It's strong, pulling me. Like a 27-million-year-old instinct. Bring the nose down. Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! - What in the world is on the tarmac? - Get some lights on that! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! - Vanessa, aim for the flower. - OK. Out the engines. We're going in on bee power. Ready, boys? Affirmative! Good. Good. Easy, now. That's it. Land on that flower! Ready? Full reverse! Spin it around! - Not that flower! The other one! - Which one? - That flower. - I'm aiming at the flower! That's a fat guy in a flowered shirt. I mean the giant pulsating flower made of millions of bees! Pull forward. Nose down. Tail up. Rotate around it. - This is insane, Barry! - This's the only way I know how to fly. Am I koo-koo-kachoo, or is this plane flying in an insect-like pattern? Get your nose in there. Don't be afraid. Smell it. Full reverse! Just drop it. Be a part of it. Aim for the center! Now drop it in! Drop it in, woman! Oome on, already. Barry, we did it! You taught me how to fly! - Yes. No high-five! - Right. Barry, it worked! Did you see the giant flower? What giant flower? Where? Of course I saw the flower! That was genius! - Thank you. - But we're not done yet. Listen, everyone! This runway is covered with the last pollen from the last flowers available anywhere on Earth. That means this is our last chance. We're the only ones who make honey, pollinate flowers and dress like this. If we're gonna survive as a species, this is our moment! What do you say? Are we going to be bees, orjust Museum of Natural History keychains? We're bees! Keychain! Then follow me! Except Keychain. Hold on, Barry. Here. You've earned this. Yeah! I'm a Pollen Jock! And it's a perfect fit. All I gotta do are the sleeves. Oh, yeah. That's our Barry. Mom! The bees are back! If anybody needs to make a call, now's the time. I got a feeling we'll be working late tonight! Here's your change. Have a great afternoon! Oan I help who's next? Would you like some honey with that? It is bee-approved. Don't forget these. Milk, cream, cheese, it's all me. And I don't see a nickel! Sometimes I just feel like a piece of meat! I had no idea. Barry, I'm sorry. Have you got a moment? Would you excuse me? My mosquito associate will help you. Sorry I'm late. He's a lawyer too? I was already a blood-sucking parasite. All I needed was a briefcase. Have a great afternoon! Barry, I just got this huge tulip order, and I can't get them anywhere. No problem, Vannie. Just leave it to me. You're a lifesaver, Barry. Oan I help who's next? All right, scramble, jocks! It's time to fly. Thank you, Barry! That bee is living my life! Let it go, Kenny. - When will this nightmare end?! - Let it all go. - Beautiful day to fly. - Sure is. Between you and me, I was dying to get out of that office. You have got to start thinking bee, my friend. - Thinking bee! - Me? Hold it. Let's just stop for a second. Hold it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone. Oan we stop here? I'm not making a major life decision during a production number! All right. Take ten, everybody. Wrap it up, guys. I had virtually no rehearsal for that.

Powerless Part 7 (Branjie)-athena2

A/N: Sorry for the cliffhanger! This was such a hard chapter to write. I redid parts of it 4 or 5 times, and I really want to thank youre-a-kite for betaing and dealing with my endless questions for this. I really appreciate all your comments and feedback! They kept me going while I wrote this one, and I would love if you had any more for this chapter! Also, I have some ideas for a sequel, so I’d love to know if you’d be interest in that or if there’s anything you would want to see in one! 

—

She’s in Vanessa’s bed.

Vanessa’s warmth is dizzying, intoxicating, and it could be a sugar high, but Frost thinks she can do it. She wants to do it, wants Vanessa to understand that she trusts her with everything she has. She told Vanessa everything today, why bother with the mask anymore?

She’s free from the neon spandex. She feels bare without it. She’s never let anyone see her like this, and it’s bare, yes, but it’s also…free. Like she doesn’t have to hide anymore, doesn’t have to put it on to exist. She can just be. Even if the person behind the mask isn’t someone she knows how to be just yet.

Vanessa’s hands are on her face, gentler than she imagined for a firecracker like her, and Frost is warm. Warmer than she can ever remember being. Vanessa has reached deep inside her and warmed places so cold she didn’t think they could feel anything anymore.

She wants–she wants to touch Vanessa. Would Vanessa be okay with it? Vanessa’s hands roam over her lips as if in response, and Frost lets her thumb meet Vanessa’s cheek. It is every bit as warm and as soft as she thought it would be, and it heats her entire body, but all she can think about is how many times she’s punched this cheek, stolen its warmth with an ice blast or tainted its caramel color with a bruise, how many times Vanessa has hurt because of her, and the tears are falling before she can stop them. She waits for Vanessa to tell her crying is bad, to punish her, but it never comes. Instead, Vanessa just wipes her tears away and rubs her back, and she’s safe. She’s safe and she wants to stay in Vanessa’s arms forever and–

–she’s not in the bed, she’s on the floor, carpet rough against her cheek, and she’s desperately trying to remember last night but it’s like trying to keep water in her hands; the memories are pouring out of her brain and she can’t hold on.

Vanjie is on the floor too, eyes glistening with tears. But why is Vanjie here? And where the hell is she? She picks herself up, staggering a little, and looks down at Vanjie.

Vanjie’s pleading with her, practically begging. She calls herself Vanessa and insists that Frost knows her. She asks aloud who Vanessa is, confused. Frost doesn’t remember ever knowing a Vanessa in her life, but it does seem familiar, like when you saw an old friend years later and all you had was a vague idea of their name.

She’s still trying to get the fog to clear out of her head when Vanjie shoots fire at the others in the room, and whirs past her, two thumps ringing out as people hit the floor.

“Frost!” someone booms. The voice almost shatters her eardrums. She whirls around and sees the General and her doctor looking expectantly at her. When did they get here? When did she get here, for that matter?

It’s a tiny apartment, pretty cozy-looking. She must be in the living room, judging by the brown leather couch and squashy green armchairs. Has she been here before?

“Frost!” Right. Focus.

“On your knees,” the General commands, and Frost’s body obeys and her knees sink into the carpet.

“I’m gonna be nice to you.” The General crouches down and takes her chin roughly, forcing her to look at him. He is inches from her; she can see the snake-like veins running through his gray eyes. “I am going to wait right here in this apartment. You have one hour to bring me that fire bitch. You do that, and we’ll forget everything that happened today. I won’t even punish you. Fail to bring me her, and you will be punished until you beg me for mercy.” His words are cool and matter-of-fact, and once Frost has absorbed them into her brain, they won’t leave. She knows what she has to do.

“I understand,” she tells him, rising to her feet. “I’ll bring you Vanjie.”

Vanjie is out in the street, talking in hushed voices to her friends, Almighty A’Keria flaunting a hot pink suit and the Silkworm in some black outfit reminiscent of a cockroach. Her mouth tingles with confessions she thinks she told them, but she also can’t remember ever even meeting them.

She gives herself a shake. Get Vanjie. “So we’ve got Little Miss Sunshine, low-budget Spider-Man, and Melisandre over here,” she taunts. The words feel strange once she hears them, like she opened her mouth and they just came out without her knowledge.

But Vanjie doesn’t call her anything back. Instead, she looks sad, and all she manages is a soft, “Frost, please.”

Her voice is gentle, without its usual roughness that makes her sound like a lawn mower that’s taken up chain smoking. Something deep inside Frost begins to ache. Why is Vanjie being nice? Can she really bring her to the General? But if she doesn’t–

–The General throws her into a tiny room, door slamming shut as she clatters onto the tile. She had failed her mission; she was supposed to kill a man trying to stop the General but he had gotten away. The room is hot–searing, scorching hot–and a thermometer on the wall reads 175 degrees. Her skin feels like it’s blistering and she thinks she’s suffocating, and the thermometer hits 193 before she blacks out–

“Are you okay?” Vanjie is the one speaking but the other two look equally concerned and as Frost becomes aware that sky surrounds her, not tiled walls, she discovers that she is hunched over with her hands pressed against the sides of her head.

“Leave me alone!” she sends the other two flying backward with ice blasts before they can do anything, leaving Vanjie for her to take. The punishment last time was her fault. She won’t fail a mission again.

She hooks her fingers into Vanjie’s shoulder, dragging her down the street. Vanjie just lets herself get tossed around like a rag doll, and it makes Frost’s blood boil. “Why aren’t you fighting me?” she challenges as she throws her onto the pavement. Vanjie sucks in a breath and cringes as her side scrapes against the sidewalk and Frost feels good. She doesn’t want to but she does. Vanjie jumps to her feet like a cat, expression sad yet calm, more subdued than normal.

“What, no nickname for me? How about Frozone?” Frost demands, her fists going at Vanjie faster than ever. It’s like they’re out of her control entirely as they bruise Vanjie’s skin. The anger is buzzing inside her and she wants to tear the world apart with her hands, starting with Vanjie. It scares her but she can’t stop it, the anger pulsing with each frenzied heartbeat.

“Frost, this isn’t you. I know it’s not. They did this to you. But we can help.” Vanjie somehow keeps up this endless stream of chatter while dodging the avalanche of punches, and in another life Frost would tease her about her motormouth and Vanjie would laugh, and her lips would stretch into a grin, and her eyes would shine, and–

“This is me! Stop acting like you know me!”

“Frost, please. I do know you. I care about you. Do you remember anything from last night? You took your mask off for me, remember?”

Frost has an open shot at Vanjie’s face but doesn’t take it. She took her mask off. She couldn’t have. But she has the faint idea Vanjie is right. She has a flash, almost like a dream, of the cool spandex in her hands, but can’t remember the mask ever leaving her face. She feels the ghost of a warm hand on her cheek but doesn’t know whose it was or how they might have looked at her as their touch heated her skin. The images feel real, and she simultaneously remembers and doesn’t remember. It’s like watching scenes from a movie, like seeing glimpses of someone else’s life.

“You’re lying! You don’t care about me!” She kicks at Vanjie’s leg and grins as she hits the ground. She rises slowly and just looks at her, brown eyes wide, but still doesn’t even raise a finger in retaliation.

“Frost, I do care. I like you, and I want to help you and make sure the lab doesn’t hurt you again. Whatever they gave you, it’s making you sick. You’re not being you right now. I care about you, you have to believe me.” Her eyes are intense, worried crease on her forehead, voice oozing sincerity, and Frost longs to surrender. To just stop fighting. She’s so tired. But she can’t. She has her orders, and if she fails–a sudden pain bursts in her head like a bolt of lightning, and she thinks Vanjie’s asking if she’s okay but she’s not there–

–she’s in an uncomfortable bed in some kind of hospital, surrounded by doctors. The lights above her head are blinding and she squints against them. There’s sticky things on her chest connected to monitors with lines and numbers she doesn’t understand, and there’s a brace on her right arm and a dull ache in her left arm where tubes have been inserted from her hand to her elbow, and she’s not sure she’s completely awake. She feels like she’s in that half-conscious, going-to-the-bathroom-in-the-middle-of-the-night state, trying not to wake all the way so you could fall back asleep right after.

“W-where am I?” The words feel funny coming out of her mouth, like her lips aren’t moving. Her entire body feels like it’s not hers. The tips of her fingers are tinged blue and she can’t stop shivering.

“You’re in the lab. You don’t need to worry about that,” one of the doctors tells her. “Do you know your name?”

She opens her mouth and nothing comes out, and the fear grips her like a vise. She never thought much about her name. It was a reflex, rolling off her tongue without a thought when someone asked. But she can’t answer. She doesn’t know it, and she hears the monitors beep around her as her heart races. She can’t breathe, and ice is running up her arms as tears are running down her face—

The doctor slaps her, hard enough that her numb cheeks sting. “Don’t cry. Crying is bad, you understand?”

She hears him tell another doctor that they’ve been successful and she has no name recollection. He tells her that her injuries are severe, that they’ve started fixing them, but she can’t listen. Her head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton and the room is spinning and she grabs fistfuls of the sheets as she squeezes her eyes shut. Maybe this is all just a dream, because this can’t be right. How did she get here? Where is here? She remembers a plane, and screaming, and then it’s all blank. There’s a pinch in her arm, and she doesn’t care anymore. The doctor tells her to be a good girl and sleep, and she does.

“Frost, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” Vanjie’s voice is more concerned than it has any right to be, and Frost just can’t take it. She brings a hand to her cheek, the pain of the slap overtaking the caress of the mystery hand. Her head is throbbing, a ticking time bomb coming closer to detonation with each flashback. The images flicker in her mind on repeat: the thermometer on the wall, the lumpy bed in the lab, the doctor’s face, and a different bed, a soft one, with someone asleep beside her–a scream pierces the air and she thinks it’s her own. There’s a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs it off and secures Vanjie to the wall in a spray of ice. She’ll come back for her later, she needs quiet.

An alleyway shelters her and her back slams against sun-baked brick. She fixes her hands over her ears like it will stop her head from exploding. Why did she keep seeing these stupid memories? And the doctor– he had said they were successful when she didn’t remember. Did that mean they wanted her to forget her name and lose her memory? All that medicine she’d been given–it was to make her forget. They didn’t want her to remember anything.

They did this to you, Vanjie said. But what exactly had they done? The alleyway is tilting like she’s on a carnival ride and her stomach lurches dangerously. Of all the places she could pick to throw up, this alleyway reeking of piss and moldy garlic is very low on the list, and she clamps her mouth shut, legs quivering. She doesn’t even have much in her stomach, except for…hot chocolate. Yes, hot chocolate, with a mountain of whipped cream towering above the mug, and her tongue is still scorched from the hot sweetness but she can’t recall actually drinking it, or who gave it to her.

Every time she blinks the walls get closer, sweat trickling down her neck. Her cheeks are damp; fuck, is she crying? She’s looking at the world through a cloth; everything seems hazy, the colors and shapes dim and blurry. That same cloth is lodged in her throat, because she gasps for air but nothing gets in. She’s dying, and maybe that’s okay because then she won’t have to bring Vanjie to the General or get punished for not doing it…

There’s a hand on her shoulder, not as hot this time, soothing words being whispered near her ear, slowly creeping in to her brain. She can feel the calm seeping into her suit, like magic, and her chest expands as air gets in this time. A dam breaks somewhere inside her and the fear rushes out as the walls become solid again.

She cautiously opens her eyes to see a vision of bright pink, A’Keria smiling warmly at her.

“Just take a breath. It’s okay,” A’Keria tells her and Frost believes it. She lets her lungs fill with air as the last bits of anger and anxiety melt away and the fog parts in her mind.

“I…thank you,” she whispers hoarsely.

“No problem. Got someone who wants to talk to you, though,” she motions her head toward the mouth of the alley, where Vanjie stands, the sun framing her petite body.

Frost nods. She hears Vanjie murmur a thanks to A’Keria as they pass, and then Vanjie stands firmly in front of her, hands on her hips.

“I know you don’t want to hurt me,” Vanjie says quietly. “You don’t want to hurt anyone. You never did.”

She doesn’t want to hurt Vanjie. She really doesn’t. But her mission… she forms a half-hearted ice spear and just holds it, doesn’t even lift her hand.

“You’re not a bad person. All that stuff you did, it was them, not you. I know you can fight it. You fought it when you saved me. You fought it when you told us what happened to you. You’re a good person, Frost. I can see it in you. A’Keria sees it in you. Even Silk does, and that bitch kinda hates everyone.”

The icicle falls from her fingers and shatters, and she imagines her mind fragmenting the same way.

“Look, I know you’re scared and you’re angry, but they’re making you that way, okay? You gotta fight them. Don’t let them make you something you’re not. You’re a good person, remember?”

It was them, not me. I’m a good person.

Flashes of events she’d long forgotten assault her brain, nearly splitting her head in two.

Vanjie laughing so hard she stopped her punch in mid-air after Frost called her Prince Zuko.

The day the doctor took so much blood she fainted.

The scent of hot chocolate, Vanjie wiping whipped cream off her nose.

When one of the lab’s medicine samples made her so sick she couldn’t move for two days.

The General breaking two fingers when she asked her name for the second (and last) time.

When they fought outside an ice cream place and Vanjie tossed a cone at her as a joke.

Vanjie bursting into laughter when Frost threw jalapenos at her the next night as payback.

She and Vanjie going easy on each other when they were both exhausted.

Vanjie smiling at her across the mattress. Vanjie’s hands on her face. Vanjie’s hands in her hair.

Why did her mind keep coming back to Vanjie? Why did she always feel the best when she was with her? She can’t remember everything from last night; her brain hits a roadblock every time she tries to think about it. But she knows that Vanjie was kind to her, and that she trusted her, and that’s enough. She knows that Vanjie clears the fog in her mind somehow. Or maybe that’s not quite right. It’s more like she’s the light shining through the fog, on the other side of it, and if Frost can make her way out of the darkness, she’ll get to bask in that glow too.

Frost wants that glow. She wants the light and its warmth. She can fight through the fog, Vanjie is right. She’s done it before and she can do it again.

She knows what she has to do.

Frost lowers her head and finally lets her lips meet Vanjie’s. She crouches slightly so Vanjie doesn’t pull a muscle trying to reach, burying her hands in the soft brown hair. Vanjie’s arms are strong around her, the warmth starting in her back and spreading all the way to her cheeks. Her own heart is pounding, and she feels Vanjie’s heart beating in time with hers, proof that she is here and in her arms. She can never give this heart to the General.

She forces herself to pull away from the kiss. “Vanjie, there’s…there’s something I need to do.”

“I’m coming with you!”

“Please, I have to do it alone.” She can’t take the risk of putting her right in the General’s hands.

Vanjie’s mouth opens but she closes it and nods. “Just come back to me.”

“Promise.”

“Give him hell, girl,” A’Keria whispers as Frost passes her.

Her long legs quickly cut the distance back to the apartment building. She puts her head down and refuses to stop, knowing she won’t make it if she does.

“Well?” The General questions. “Where is she?”

“You can’t have her.”

“Are you disobeying me?”

She hides her hands behind her back so he won’t see them shaking. “Yes. Yes I am. You can’t have Vanjie. Take me instead. Do whatever you want with me.” She keeps her voice detached and expression blank as the icicle spear grows in her hand, hidden from view.

“Oh, there’s a lot of things I’ll do with you, Frost. The heat room was always a favorite of mine. Maybe we’ll put you back in there, see how much you can take? Or maybe we’ll test some new medicine on you?”

She’s across the room in seconds, icicle spear at the General’s throat–something sinks deep into her left thigh and the icicle drops while she curses in pain, looking around wildly to see the doctor in the corner of the room, gun in hand. How had she forgotten about him?

The gun fires again, bullet embedding in her stomach this time. The pain doesn’t stop her. She sends another icicle flying through the air and watches as it sails clean through the doctor’s throat.

She works the ice through her hands, the spear point sharper than ever. The General grunts as she shoves him into the wall.

“You’re such a disappointment,” he spits. “You were our biggest hope. We took you out of that plane crash. You had no one to miss you. We madeyou. And this is what you do.”

She positions the point over his heart. “You don’t want to do that,” the General says. “That’s bad. You know what happens when you’re bad. Are you bad, Frost?”

“I’m a good person,” she echoes Vanjie’s words. “You’re the bad one. And you won’t hurt me ever again. Fuck you.” She brings the icicle straight through his chest, watching the hatred go out of him as he collapses onto the floor. He can’t hurt me again.

She stumbles out of the apartment in a haze. They can’t hurt me anymore. They can’t hurt me anymore. If she keeps telling it to herself, maybe she’ll believe it, because right now it feels like a cruel trick and hope is something Frost doesn’t really know how to feel.

Vanjie. She needs Vanjie. She spots a glimmer of red spandex down the sidewalk, like an angel, and it keeps her moving, even as the pain catches up with her and her leg screams from the bullet hole. Her abdomen is bleeding heavily and her side is sticky with blood where the stitches must have torn.

“Vanjie,” she groans. Her legs no longer work, and she drops, Vanjie’s arms darting in to grab her before she hits the ground and carefully lowering her to the concrete. Her face is marred with bruises–bruises that I gave her, Frost notes with a rush of guilt–and she winces as she kneels, but her attention is entirely on Frost as she pulls her into her lap.

“Oh my god,” Vanjie whispers. “You’re bleeding, are you hurt bad? I’m gonna call Silk, just hang on.”

“‘M fine,” she mumbles. “There’s two dead bodies in your apartment though. Sorry.”

Vanjie laughs nervously. “Jesus.” She grabs her hand and jerks back like she got burned. “Fuck, your hand is freezing.”

“Ice powers, remember?”

“No, you’re really cold.” No jokes, no witty remarks, and Frost allows a tiny speck of worry to take shape in her chest.

She takes Vanjie’s hand back. “Vanjie, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize now. Don’t act like this is a deathbed confession or some shit,” Vanjie moves their linked hands to put pressure on the hole in Frost’s stomach, whispering a sorry when she hisses in pain.

“No, I want to tell you. I’m sorry, and the truth is, I…I love you. I really do. I just wanted to make sure you knew.” She watches Vanjie’s eyes sparkle at her words, and she smiles slightly.

She loses the fight against her leaden eyelids and Vanjie’s concerned voice is the last thing she hears before–

–she’s in her bedroom. Her childhood bedroom, with the flowered bedspread. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since she’s thought about it, but it’s exactly as she remembers (or at least as she thinks she remembers): light purple walls, the bedspread, her overflowing bookcase, her army of stuffed animals. And above the bed–her heart skips a beat–the nameplate. The long painting with her name in the middle and ballet slippers at the ends. Ballet slippers. She used to dance. It comes to her suddenly, and it feels so right, a perfectly fitting puzzle piece, that she can’t believe how she forgot. Of course she used to dance.

But the letters are gone. The slippers are there, but the middle is blank. The tears are hot as they roll down her face. How can she remember her bedroom but forget the most important part?

“Hey, it’s okay. Just focus. I know you can do it.” A soft voice appears out of nowhere.

“You can do it,” Vanjie repeats.

“It’s me. It’s Vanessa. I know you’re in there somewhere, and you can be you again, okay? They can’t hurt you anymore.” Vanjie–no, Vanessa–puts a hand on her shoulder and guides her head to look up at the nameplate.

Six letters, she tells herself. There should be six letters. An R somewhere, maybe?

She stares at the picture, willing the letters to appear, and Vanjie’s hand is wrapped around hers, but that’s not then, it’s now, and—

She remembers. She remembers.

“Vanessa, I remember,” she says breathlessly.

“My name,” she pauses, savors the words on her tongue, the joy of finding something after an endless search, of getting that Christmas gift you wanted after months of waiting.

“My name is Brooke.”

“Brooke,” Vanessa repeats softly, tears in her eyes. “Oh, Brooke.” Her warm hand smoothes over her ice-cold cheek.

It would be so nice to close her eyes…

“Hey, hey, stop that. Please stay awake. Brooke, please, I love you, okay? I love you, and I can’t lose you already…”

“It’s okay,” she whispers, and it is. The pain is fading. Everything is fading, and she barely registers that she is being lifted into Vanessa’s arms.

It really is okay. She knows her name now. Vanessa knows how she feels. And she knows how Vanessa feels about her. It’s more than she ever thought she could have.

She just wishes she could have kissed Vanessa one more time.

Random thoughts while watching...  OSK Revue?

I finally saw my first OSK Revue show (Dracula, 2017), so thought I'd write about it. This is not a proper review, just a bunch of random thoughts. I will be making a lot of comparisons to Takarazuka in this, and please understand that I do not mean to imply that OSK is just a zuka copycat, I simply wanted to compare the two and see what they have in common and what not (also, all opinions are about this production and these actresses only, I'd need to see more shows to form a proper, better educated opinion on OSK's style as a whole.).

First impression was a surprise at how small the production is. I knew OSK isn't as big as zuka, but still, the theater's stage was very small and there were only about ten actresses, many of them pulling several roles, I think. I felt like I was watching a Bow Hall show cut in half both by stage length and actress numbers. Having a small number of actresses causes there to be some slower, quieter scenes, where a character monologues for a while so that everyone else has time to do the costume change.

Even so, it still felt very similar to zuka. Despite the small stage, they do dance, including a post-show minirevue that includes the main otokoyakus dancing in pretty, sparkly tailcoats and a duet dance with the main leads. The makeup is similar but there's some small differences that I'm not expert enough to point out (don't know anything about makeup). There are some stylistic differences in zuka makeup too, so it felt like I was watching a sixth zuka troupe and this was their troupe's personal style.

Minirevue dancing (and look, some parade feathers. Small feathers but feathers none the less.)

Otokoyaku still sing like otokoyaku and musumeyakus sound just like zuka musumes. I liked the leading otokoyaku's voice, it was pleasant to listen. Though she has to do a lot of angry angsting throughtout the musical, which is occasionally bad for her voice, making it sound like she has a bit of a sore throat. The songs were ok, nothing particularly memorable or catchy. A lot of the music is rather simple, like piano music and such.

I admit, when I was putting the disk in the DVD player, I was chanting in my head ”Please follow the book at least barely, please don't be weird and rewrite the story wildly.” Well, no such luck, this isn't a book faithful adaptation. Which unfortunately leads to me not having a clue what the hell is going on most of Act 1. But I am happy that it's not a comedy or a super weird adaptation.

I have to say that seeing a completely serious take on a vampire musical is a breath of fresh air and something I wish zuka could do. Don't get me wrong, I love the lighthearted vampire shows like Seal of Roses (which maybe didn't aim for lighthearted but kinda accidentally became one). Zuka always makes the vampire stories, well...  kinda weird (I've already ranted about the randomness, plot holes and inconsistent vampire lore in my Random Thoughts While Watching Zuka #4). I appreciate them thinking outside the box and surprising me instead of recycling the most generic vampire story plots and tropes, but as a vampire lover I would die for vampire show that actually takes itself seriously. I suppose the Poe Family show is a serious take on the subject (no comedic parts or weird story elements), but that is probably thanks to the source material. Zuka can do cool&dark, they've done Elisabeth, so if they wanted they could make truly awesome vampire shows.

While I said that this is a serious take on a vampire story, there's still a short comedic song number in the beginning of Act 1, where a bunch of reporters try to interview Dracula after his arrival at London, only to have him scream NO COMMENTS at them.

This show uses sound and screen effects a lot. Most of the time they make sense (like hearing the sound of a train in the station) but there are moments where I hear a random noise or see strange images projected on the screens and go ”What the hell was that?”

There are only three big roles in this show: Dracula, Mina and Jonathan Harker. There's also this one lady in black who I suspect to be the spirit of Dracula's dead wife, who he grieves and longs for all the time. So yeah, the beginning of Act 2 reveals to us that this show has taken inspiration from Coppola's Dracula and lifts the vampire's origin from the movie. He was a warlord in medieval times (which means he's dressed in armor and has a sword YES me likey) and somehow a false letter was brought to his wife claiming that he had fallen in battle, which led to her committing suicide. When human Drac got home to discover his wife dead, he was devastated and broken, that is, until he hears that the church refuses to bury his wife because suiciders are sinners who go to hell. There's a literal DUN DUN DUUUUN sound effect as the count builds up rage, then curses God and allows the forces of evil to corrupt his body in order to revenge. He then proceeds to kill all of the priests/monks/whatever the church folks were supposed to be.

This slaughter of innocent unarmed humans would be brutal and super dramatic, but the fight choreography leaves...  much to improve. Yeah, zuka battle choreos can look like they're from the 60's Batman too, with punches that miss by a mile, but here...  the stabs are so lazy it looks like the poor victims are literally walking into his sword.

If Heaven won't accept

my suicided wife

I'll follow her to Hell!

(...and lick her knife.)

Not gonna lie, this is something I haven't seen zuka do. Sure, they've implied licking things, but it's always done quite swiftly and * elegantly * and not, well, like this. Tongue out and all, literally licking the knife prop.

I was curious to see if the kisses are still fake or not, since OSK is free to have their own traditions and don't have to follow rules set by Hankyu. Also, I keep hearing rumors that OSK is supposedly more daring than zuka when it comes to love scenes. Not in this show, at least. The romantic scenes are very chaste and more cute than sexy (also, the blood drinking scene, while definitely romanticized and very nice&dramatic, not any hotter than the blood drinking scenes in zuka). And the kisses are very much fake. Oh well, the actresses are spared of messing up their lipstick.

Speaking of messing up lipstick, I know that stain is supposed to be blood but it looks like a group of amorous ladies gave the count several sloppy kisses.

So, my guess for the plot is that Dracula comes to London in search for the woman who is the reincarnation of his wife. To lure women for him to see, he puts up...   a fashion show or something? Dresses are on display, including dead wife's wedding dress. Which Mina gets to wear, and Dracula is immediately convinced she's the incarnation and for the rest of the musical never calls Mina by her real name, just by the wife's name. Which is...  Elisabeth. I don't remember what the wife's name was in Coppola's movie, but still, the dramatic way Dracula pronounces this name does make it sound like it was lifted from another musical.

In Act 2 Jonathan, on his way to rescue his girlfriend from the vampire's castle, meets an annoying little kid. And yeah, just like in zuka, there are no child actors in OSK, children are played by adult women using cutesy kiddie voice and being super genki. But then the kid finds the knife that Elisabeth used to suicide herself and turns to face the audience while holding it, and I was like ”Great. The annoying kid has turned into a creepy kid.” If the child had turned out to be a vampire and in team Drac all along, that would have been an awesome plot twist. But instead he's actually an angel or something like that, providing Jonathan with the weapon that can kill the vampire.

Dracula has a bunch of vampiric minions at his castle, not just the three brides. I have to ask, what is it with vampire shows having one main vampire who behaves normally and then having a bunch of background vampires/minions who speak/sing like they're high as a kite and lumber around dancing artsy inteeeerpretive dances? It's...   weird. Why are some vampires normal and some complete fruitbats?

This Dracula must be the angstiest version of the character I've ever seen. There's occasionally great moments where he's charismatic, seductive or in rage mode, but the majority of time he is either silently depressed or actively whining (even many of his angry scenes come out as more whiny than aggressive). It's a very dialogue heavy show and because of the language barrier and free adapting of the story, I have no idea what his angsty dialogues are about. But whatever he says, he actually manages to win Mina's sympathy and they dance together. Even if they kiss, I still think Mina's feelings are more pity and less sincere romantic interest. Also, I should point out that I have nothing against depressed, angsty, reluctant vampires in general, it's just that I don't usually associate that kind of behavior with Dracula (depression and angst is more sir Francis Varney's thing.). Dracula is cold, ruthless, cunning and irredeemably evil, not some emotional lovelorn wreck.

I have said this before and will say again: Dracula does not aishiteiru.

Jonathan makes an attempt to save Mina but doesn't get to kill the count. Which is good because while the Jonathan of the book would definitely want and be able to fight the count, this musical portrayed the character as a cute and awkward softie nerd (I approve, not all male heroes need to be tough guys) and avoiding getting his hands wet with blood was a good move. Poor guy would be traumatized for life, even if it would be to save his girlfriend, he's just not a killer. Instead, Dracula decides to let the lovers go free and suicides himself, like he usually does in adaptations where they make him have a romance with Mina.

You know how in zuka there's the tradition that in the end the dead characters make an appearance dressed in white, to sing and prance around in an afterlife epilogue. Well, not in this show, but there is something kinda similar. In the ending scene the spirit of Elisabeth appears behind the dying count and poses dramatically with him, spreading her cape like white bat wings, taking him with her to afterlife. I think it looks cool.

To end this, let's talk about the blood drinking scene. In all vampire stories, these are the most important scenes, in my opinion. Blood drinking is what vampires do, it's their trademark thing, and if you chicken out of showing it or handle it lazily, then why the hell are you making a vampire story in the first place. You don't make Phantom of the Opera adaptation and fail to have the unmasking scene be the most dramatic and memorable scene, and similarly, you don't make a vampire story and fail to deliver the blood drinking scenes properly. Yes, I have weirdly strong opinions about this, deal with it.

Very early in Act 1 we see Dracula suffer from malnutrition, his hair turning gray and his knees failing, making him slump to the ground, very visibly suffering. For emergency he empties a small vial of blood that doesn't seem to make him get any better. And it is this moment when Jonathan decides to visit him for the first time for work-related reasons (no idea what his profession is in this story. In the fashion industry?). So, we have a thirsty vampire and a nice, cute bloodbag in the same room all alone.

Me: Drink him!

Dracula: Nope. I'd rather suffer. :)

What the hell? In the book he totally noms Jonathan. Is this because he's a male? This Dracula afraid to drink from someone who has icky boy blood? Oh well, he gets better later anyway, so I assume he gets some blood off-stage. But still, it was very confusing to see a starving vampire not take advantage of an opportunity of some easy blood.

Well, later Dracula is introduced to Mina and immediately decides ”This is the One.” And I cheer him on.

Me: Drink her!

Dracula: No. Now is not a good time. :)

Me: Damnit! DRINK SOMEBODY!!!

We have to wait all the way to the end of Act 1, but finally, we get a genuine on-screen blood drinking scene. Just as important as the moment of blood drinking itself is what leads up to it. In this musical it's Jonathan piecing together all the clues and finally getting Dracula's real identity (in a rather nerdy monologue of stuff like ”...Dracul means Dragon, and the A at the end makes it Son of the Dragon...   wasn't there a warlord named like that in Romania hundreds of years ago...”).

Nerdsplaining time!

Terrified with his discovery he tries to save Mina, who Dracula has just kidnapped, spilling the beans for her as well. The revelation of Dracula's vampiric nature scares the two humans and there's plenty of dialogue that goes over my horizon, but I do get that the thing that makes Dracula snap is when Mina confesses to loving Jonathan.

The jealous vampire then starts to torture Jonathan by...   some kind of Darth Vader mind-choking magic. Well, I suppose it's choking, because Jonathan holds his hands around his throat as if struggling against invisible fingers, but the sound effect doesn't suggest choking at all. It actually sounds much more gruesome and painful, a nasty ripping sound, as if the count is telekineticly tearing the poor man limb from limb and simultaneously flaying him alive. Eww, it's a gross sound effect.

Mina obviously can't idly just watch as her boyfriend is painfully tortured to death while she has the power to put an end to it. To save Jonathan, she loudly exclaims that she doesn't love him. And the count, being a little bit of an idiot here, buys it. Strangely, Jonathan seems to buy it too, crying Mina's name in disbelief. The torture ends (thank goodness), and to make sure no harm comes to Jonathan, Mina tells Dracula that if you're really a vampire and if it's blood you want, you can have mine!

Just let me gather this bothersome veil...

...and Behold! Vampire bait.

She dramaticly pulls the veil of the wedding dress on one shoulder and reveals her neck. I love this. And so does Dracula. This is the one moment where his eyes actually light up with passion and while he attempts to stay cool, you can see his chest rise as his breathing gets faster with excitement. Darn right, count. Blood offered by free will is the best stuff there is. And it was about time you finally drank someone.

It's always interesting when humans offer their blood to the vampire out of free will, because there's usually good and complex reasons behind it, and this is no exception. Mina doesn't offer her blood out of sympathy or under the influence of vampiric hypnosis or even being seduced by the pretty blood drinker. It's offered by free will but it's very much not concensual. The offer of blood is the only way she can distract the vampire long enough to let Jonathan escape and get help. By playing along with the count's delusions about Mina being the reincarnation of his wife, she is cleverly buying time, manipulating him. Only, unfortunate for these two, there is no van Helsing or any other member of the book's league of merry vampirehunting men in this show for Jonathan to run to, so all he can do is to follow them to the castle and attempt a lone rescue mission (which fails).

Frankly, the one who eventually defeats Dracula (kinda) is Mina, who manages to win the count's sympathy (making him learn the good old ”if you really love someone, you'll want what's best for them and let them go instead of selfishly trying to force them to stay with you”). And this blood drinking scene is the first time we see that she is aware of the power she has over the vampire. Maybe in the end she didn't exactly intend to make him commit suicide, just trying to make him let them go, but old Drac was living a horribly depressed and angsty unlife anyway, so it doesn't surprise me that he decided to end it. That's why the (kinda). Mina has great influence over Dracula but I do think his decision to die a final death seems to be not a result of manipulation but a genuine decision. Though he still technically makes her do it, by forcibly placing the knife in her hands and then grabbing her wrists, stabbing himself, making her involuntarily deal the killing blow. Kinda dick move (Mina is quite horrified of this, understandably), but at least I'm happy Mina doesn't kill herself too in this one (yes, I'm still angry at that ending in 2011 Wao Youka's Dracula. The count kills himself so Mina can go back to being human and back to Jonathan. And then the dumb woman makes the count's sacrifice completely pointless by throwing away the life he attempted to save.) Dracula ends his unlife but Mina and Jonathan return to the world of the living, where they belong.

Final random thought: Knightly warlord Dracula looks a bit like Lancelot’s long lost, dangerously unhinged brother. (it’s the wig and the silver armor with blue details. The actresses are very different.)

The Savage Hero [Dreadnaught prestige class story]

Entry 78

I had to do night watch duty tonight. It’s not a hard job, but it can be dull. At times, I wished the enemy would attack us in the middle of the night so it would give me something to do. Then again, most of these dainty elves need their beauty sleep lest they get more ornery than a Plainstrider in heat.

It was a full moon, and the stars were out so I didn’t need a torch; too much light can ruin your night vision, you know. As I strode along the perimeter, I heard the crunching of boots behind me. I gripped my axe in anticipation, then whirled around to meet my follower. A Forsaken wearing black robes and a black brimmed hat looked up at me, his rheumy, undead eyes beaming.

“Well hello there,” he said in a raspy baritone, “my ostentatious oxen. Are you burning the midnight oil as well?”

“Braun,” I replied, pushing down the urge to pulp his skull like a ripe melon, “you should know better to sneak up on me like that. It will be your death sentence some day.” Despite my response, I knew that “Professor” Braun Bratosus was a dangerous sorcerer, even though he acted like an idiot most of the time. In the past, before joining the Sunspears, I had done odd jobs for him, collecting dangerous reagents for fruitless experiments. At least he paid well.

The undead rubbed his metallic jaw in thought. “I suppose. Guess they’d just have to stitch me up again. Try not to damage anything important when you kill me, okay?”

“Whatever you say, Braun.” I rolled my eyes.

“It’s a serious request, Muroco. I still have many experiments to conduct.” Braun tapped the butt of his staff on the ground. “Say, that reminds me, I had a question for you, one that is likely impertinent.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“What are you going to do when this is all over?” Braun paused. “Well, assuming that the Legion doesn’t triumph, enslave us all, and turn our dear planet into a ball of molten fel.”

“What do you mean what am I going to do? Fighting is a full time job. Even after the Legion’s defeat, there will be plenty of enemies to kill. Bank on it.”

“Ah, but my boisterous bovine,” Braun said, crooking a bony finger towards the camp, “even most of our elven compatriots have lives of their own. Some of them have families, some of them are craftspeople, and others have to lord over their lands. They don’t fight all the time.”

“I’m a Grimtotem exile,” I said, “fighting is the only thing I’m good at.” It was the only thing I was taught to do, even from a young age. The Grimtotems are never developed self-sufficiency, and only truly survive by raiding, pillaging, and killing everyone and everything that isn’t them. As such, the vast majority of Grimtotems are expected to know how to fight. A Grimtotem that wants to open up a general store is viewed the same way a street-goer might view an organ grinder’s monkey.

Braun and I continued our conversation, but I don’t think he understood my point of view. I don’t think anyone can.

-

-

Entry 104

I went to my “peaceful spot” today. It didn’t turn out to be so peaceful.

When I was still an Initiate, I found this pasture several miles south of the Dawnspire. It is nice and quiet; miles of plain with rolling hills and some trees. Silvermoon City is cramped, and sometimes I need to get away to stretch out.

While I sit underneath a tree on a hilltop and meditate, I sometimes see a little girl, about six or seven winters old, named Verina. She has a black cat named Olive, and I’ve helped her pull her kite out of the tree a few times. Despite her youth, she speaks to me without fear or hesitation - more that can be said about a lot of people I’ve met.

I made a stupid mistake today. My guard was down, and I didn’t hear my attackers sneak up on me. A robed man - some elf - approached me when my eyes were closed and cast a binding spell. As I stood up to attack him, I felt coils of fel energy ensnare my wrists and hold my legs in place. Struggle as I might, I couldn’t break free. I heard him snicker to himself as shimmering forms behind him coalesced into being. A felguard and a shivarra wielding wicked looking scimitars appeared, advancing on me. As they got closer, I could hear Verina’s high-pitched voice shouting, “Leave him alone!”

The cultist turned, saw her clumsy attempts at striking him with her fists, and kicked her to the ground.

I could feel the binding spells weaken as his attention was turned elsewhere...but something snapped in me. Something about seeing that girl being hurt drove me into a rage I hadn’t felt in years. Rage can be a powerful weapon; the dirtiest, flea-bitten peasant can be pushed into feats of heroism if everything they hold dear is threatened. With a roar, I shattered the cultist’s spells and rescued my axe from the ground. I beheaded the felguard with one chop, then turned my attention to the shivarra. Her blades nicked and grazed me, but I was too angry to care. I severed her, limb from useless limb, until she collapsed to the ground.

I turned my attention to the cultist next. He attempted to cast a spell at me, but squawked in protest as my plated fist landed square in his face, snapping his beak-like nose and knocking out most of his teeth. I grabbed him by the neck, ignoring his pleas for mercy as I slammed his head into the tree’s trunk. I bashed his skull in repeatedly, even after he was dead, his head nothing more than a bloody stump.

I only stopped when I heard crying.

I turned around and saw Verina cowering.

She wasn’t afraid of the corpses of the demons. She was afraid of me.

Before I could say anything, she turned and fled, her legs carrying her as fast as they could as she screamed in terror. With a sigh, I ripped the cloak off the cultist’s mangled corpse and heaved myself to the pond residing at the hill’s base. As I cleaned the grime off me, I looked at my distorted reflection on the pond’s surface. I wasn’t wearing my helmet, so blood had spattered on me.

I looked just as I did when I was still a Brave in the Grimtotem tribe, raiding orcish, night elf and tauren settlements with little care of who was in the way.

For once in my life, I felt disgusted with myself.

-

-

Entry 105

I decided to stay the night in the countryside. The sun was setting when the cultist attacked me, and I didn’t feel like marching back.

A warrior learns to sleep lightly while outside, and this time I was not about to make the same mistake twice. As the sun began to rise, I heard someone moving towards me. I grabbed my axe and rose, preparing to cut down the intruder.

I paused as the man in front of me yelped in surprise and jumped back, his hands held up in supplication. He wore rough hewn clothes, and his tanned skin look weathered from time in the sun. A farmer.

“I, ah,” the man stammered, “thought I might find you here.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“You saved my daughter yesterday,” the man said, his eyes glancing cautiously the edge of my axe.

I set my weapon down upon the grass and sat down on a nearby tree stump overlooking the pond. “It was nothing. You don’t owe me anything. What’s your name?”

“Gaeril. And it wasn’t ‘nothing’. My daughter is the most precious thing in the world to me. I am not a warrior like you, and I shudder to think what might have happened if you weren’t here.”

I rested my head in my hand. I wasn’t accustomed to praise like this. “I scared her off, you know. Horrified her with what I did. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I just don’t fit in with,” I furrowed my brow in consternation, “With…”

“With whom?”

“Elves. Especially ones that don’t fight. No offense.”

Gaeril frowned, taking a seat on another tree stump near me. “Then why are you here, if I might ask? Don’t you have a family? A tribe?”

“Not anymore. I’m exiled. I left Kalimdor to continue my pursuit to become one of the greatest warriors of the Horde.” I looked up at the sky and saw the towering parapets of the Dawnspire in the horizon. “Sunguard let me in because I’m useful for killing things. Doubt they did it out of charity. Otherwise, I’d just be another wandering mercenary, looking for fights.”

The farmer nodded. “Then perhaps, tauren, the Sunguard is your new tribe. Whether you want to admit it or not, I am sure many of them appreciate your combat prowess - they can come home to their families each day because you’re there to watch their backs. You may be...savage, as you claim, but you’re a hero to many in ways you don’t realize.”

I remained silent after that. I couldn’t think of anything to say. A simple farmer had just laid out the truth to me, an epiphany that no seer or sage could ever manage to elucidate in their best efforts.

“Maybe so,” I said at last, “maybe so.”

-

-

The Defense of Thalassian Pass

Muroco stood near at the front of the Sunguard’s lines, gazing at the advancing Legion forces. The pass connected the borders between the Eastern Plaguelands and Quel’thalas. A fel reaver thundered at the vanguard of the invading force, flanked by eredar, felhounds, felguards, and other demonic aberrations. The tauren lowered the visor of his helmet. If the demons made it through their defenses, they would pour into Quel’thalas, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake.

Muroco nodded to himself as the demons closed the gap. Let them come. Let them try. When he was younger, he strived to find every fight he could. As he got older, however, he understood that the best fights would come to him eventually. Being in the Sunguard would provide him the fights he craved.

The warrior jogged forward, his battle-axe in both hands, eventually breaking into a charge. He raised his weapon to strike as his bounding hooves brought him closer to the Legion. The elves might be an odd bunch, but they were his elves. His tribe.

And anyone who threatened his tribe would receive a brutal end.

zimbits. “Less homicidal thoughts about your annoying coworker right now, please. I’m in a meeting over here.” pLEASE

Charlie asked for this about 30 years ago but I’m just getting around to it now. It’s prompt from this list. 

If he thinks I’m going to let a single tart anywhere near his ruinous Trump-sized hands he’s got another thing coming. Actually, no. He can have as many tarts as he wants. Kill ‘em with kindness, and arsenic worked into the whipped cream. I’d have to add more vanilla to balance it out but–

If Jack wasn’t in a sponsorship meeting, he would be inclined to promptly bash his head into the wood of the table. It had been like this for a few weeks ago, a voice filtering in at the most inopportune times, going on diatribes against who he was presuming was the voice’s coworker (”–even the way he counts out change is annoying. The Lord is testing me. We should’ve kept the antique register, it would have hurt more when I ‘accidentally’ shut the drawer on his fingers that he just licked to count out the bills. Yes, I would LOVE my spit covered change. THANK YOU.”)

Unfortunately, Jack thought it was unlikely that NIKE would appreciate their new brand ambassador actively giving himself a concussion, so he shot the representative across the table a smile and nodded to whatever was being said before reverting back inside his head.

As ambitious as your assassination attempt is, if you could keep it to yourself I would appreciate it.

There wasn’t even a moments pause before he got his reply.

Is this God? Because if it is, I have a bone to pick about using self control when it comes to giving people flaws. There’s such a thing as overdoing it.

No this isn’t– why would you be giving God advice?

Because he’s made quite a few questionable things and this monster that’s supposed to be human is one of them. Not the point though. I’m pretty sure it only counts as an assassination if they’re important. No one’s about to miss someone who thinks it’s fine to switch out baking powder for baking soda.

Well then.

Jack spent the rest of the meeting attempting to focus on learning about his duties as brand ambassador while massaging his temple in an attempt to ignore the elaborate murder plans that were being passionately laid out inside his head. Apparently if all else failed the voice was going to pull a “Mrs. Lovett”, whatever that meant.

After an hour negotiating two conversations at once, Jack was nursing a headache and was ready to head home. He was about to reach the door  when a firm arm slid around his shoulders, tugging him close. “Zimmboni! Why long face?” Tater boomed while Jack winced. “Long meeting.” He said replied vaguely, “Look, I’m just about to head home. So maybe we could–” “You are needing sugar! Sweet things make everything good. Is rule. We go to bakery and get dessert. Not tell nutritionist. Is our secret, yes? Cupcakes turn frown the other way. Becomes smile.”

Jack is just about to protest when his brain processes what Tater said, “Bitty’s?” he asks, aiming for casual but landing on hopeful. Tater grins, “Of course, is best.”

Bitty’s Bakery is only fifteen minutes from the rink by car. It’s almost impressive that Tater’s off key singing to whatever song he doesn’t know the words to on the radio can do such a significant amount of damage to Jack’s headache in such a short period of time. If Jack is honest though, it’s most likely worth it. Ever since Poots brought in a pie for the to sample (they demolished it) it had been a favorite of the Falconers and quickly became Providence’s worst kept secret, and rightfully so.

Tater eagerly bursts into the store, the jingling of the bell over the door less of a jingle and more of a chaotic clang with the force he uses to push open the door, and Jack trails behind trying to be less conspicuous. While Tater makes a bee line for the glass case showcasing the fresh goods, Jack takes his time making his way over, his eyes going first to see who’s behind the register.

And there he is.

Bitty’s Bakery may be Providence’s worst kept secret, but Jack’s crush on the small southern employee of said Bakery was probably the best kept. His diet doesn’t allow daily visits, but his designated calorie intake means he can come regularly enough to awkwardly interact with the blonde man behind the register and then sit in the corner and shoot shy glances at him while drinking his coffee before leaving on a weekly basis.

The man, Eric his name tag reads (Jack has read it many, many times), notices them and Jack raises his hand in a small wave. Eric grins and waves back before turning back to the customer he was helping. Jack is in love.

“So many options! Maybe we try them all?” Tater suggests brightly, ever the optimist. “I think will one will do it.” Jack replies, but upon seeing the disappointed expression Tater’s face, he acquiesces slightly. “Maybe two. But only two.” He’ll lie to himself and say that came out firm.

Tater dithers a bit more, weighing the pros and cons of a smores pie against rocky road cookies, before marching up to the register. “We ready, small baker.” He says cheerfully. Jack resists the urge to cover his face with his hand. “What can I get you two gentlemen?” Eric asks politely, shooting Jack a wink. Jack opens his mouth, closes it and opens it again several times before Tater finally cuts in. “I get very LARGE slice of smores pie, and two triple chocolate chunk cookies. They not too big, two count as one.” Jack is fairly certain that’s not how that works, but Bitty is looking at him expectantly and Jack is still trying to find his words.

“Black coffee.” He manages to get out, and then realizes he’s being rude, “Please.” Eric pouts as he rings it up, “Nothing sweet? Surely you can let yourself have a little treat.” He asks, and Jack is fairly certain it’s very strong wishful thinking allowing him to interpret that as some sort of euphemism. “I just pulled some peanut butter cookies out of the oven, they’re divine if I do say so myself.” It’s not so much what Eric is saying but rather how he’s saying it that sells Jack. “Just one,” Jack allows, “one could be good.”  

Eric happily rings up their orders, and before Tater can pull out his wallet Jack has his out and is handing over a twenty. Eric hands back the change, and Jack slides some of it back into his wallet, the rest serving as the generous tip he deposits into the festively decorated jar at the counter. “Well thank you very much!” Eric says, surprised but pleased. Jack can’t help but find it endlessly endearing that Eric always seems surprised that Jack tips, even though he’s done it every time that he’s been here.

“So that’s one big slice of smores pie, two rocky road cookies, one black coffee and one peanut butter cookie.” Eric recites, moving to grab the tongs to pull out the cookies. “I’ll just get your food ready and then Mark will–” He stops, bright expression turning into a tighter smile, eyes gone narrow. “If you would just give me a minute.” The tongs are forcefully set down and Eric zips back to the kitchen.

Jack is left standing at the counter, Tater having already wandered off to stake a claim in the corner where there’s a sofa and an armchair that will actually accommodate his size. There’s tense whispering coming from the kitchen, a few times Jack can hear Eric’s voice getting louder followed by a much lower one, but both voices always revert back to inaudible tones. Eric comes stalking out back to the counter, and Jack immediately takes and interest in rereading the menu board.

“I am so sorry about that. Little miscommunication.” Eric says tersely, and if it weren’t for the murderous look in his eyes Jack would be deceived by his smile. “Oh. It’s okay.” Jack says, unsure if he should bother asking for his receipt which is currently being crumpled to death in Eric’s death grip. “You were just–” I was on my lunch break my ass. We both know you were out back getting higher than a kite. I’m gonna personally string you up and fly you like one if you don’t stop bringing pot into work and trying to– Oh no. Not now. Jack’s focus is brought back to the conversation where Eric is looking at him with concern, “You alright, honey?” Jack nods stiffly, embarrassed. “Yeah, sorry. My coffee. You said someone’s going to make it.” There’s still a buzzing in the back of his mind, and he knows the complaining is still going on even if he’s trying to ignore it. “Sure thing, I’m just gonna do it myself. Why don’t you go sit with your friend over there and I’ll bring it over. You’re looking a little unsteady.”

Jack nods, turning to go when he hears a voice again, “I should make you come out here and make the damn coffee yourself. Use that arsenic whipped cream and have you taste test it.” He stops, turning around to look at Eric. “Did you say something?” Eric looks up from the coffee machine, smile plastered on his face, “Not a thing. You hearing voices?”

Jack blushes, and waves it off. “No, no. Just tired I guess.” Eric nods with understanding before returning to busying himself with prepping their order. Jack could have sworn it had been Eric talking, but then again he’s been hearing talk of poisons and slow deaths all day. Hopefully the question will just be a small blip in Eric’s day and he won’t think of Jack as his strange customer who’s hearing things.

Jack’s lucky Eric’s so nice.