#i'll have you know that it took me like 40 minutes to watch this 22 minutes long More | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ledalasombra · 10 months

Text

My not so normal little sister

Chapter 3: Regrets

Notes:

A little bit of context about what happened mixed with the present.

I hope all of you like it.

……………….........................

Tim stood there for a few minutes in front of the computer, still trying to believe what he was reading. "I have a sister... I have a little sister and she is sick…" he mumbled to himself and that was the only thought going through Tim Drake-Wayne's mind at that moment. He had a 22 year old sister who he didn't know about until 4 hours ago and she was going in for surgery. Tim leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes, staring at the screen in front of him with a half-lost gaze, coming to his senses when he heard voices entering the cave. He saved what was still open in his documents, watching Alfred bring Barbara closer to him.

The butler, who was much more of a grandfather than anything else, looked at him intensely, slightly raising his eyebrow, realizing that something was wrong. He didn't comment on the red eyes of the boy in front of him, just walking over and placing his hand on his shoulder.

" Maybe it's better that you don't go out today, Master Tim. I don't think you have the conditions to be part of the activities." Alfred paused briefly, looking again at the boy in front of him "I believe a good night's sleep will help, don't you think?"

"I... " Tim blinked several times, looking at him and sighing heavily. " I'll be in my room if anyone needs me." He didn't take long, getting up from his chair and heading towards the entrance that gave access to the mansion, bumping lightly into Damian as he entered the place.

"Tt. Watch where you walk Drake. This isn't that difficult if you keep your functionality to a minimum." He said as he saw him go up the stairs frowning " What happened to him? He's not in his normal sleep-deprived state…"

"I don't know Master Damian. Maybe he just needs some rest." Alfred says with concern "You should go change, the others will be here in little time."

…………………………

Tim knew what he needed to do. He went straight to his room, sitting on the bed and turning on the computer. He was going to arrange a flight to Paris the next day, but until then, he needed to find out everything he could about his sister as soon as possible. He took out his cell phone, typing her phone number and opened it to send a message.

Unknow number

I'm going to Paris as soon as possible.

Send me news when you can,

the sooner the better.

Be safe.

Tim

Paris – 7:40 am

Emilie got out of the car and headed straight for the bakery entrance. As soon as she walked in she could see Sabine at the counter finishing up with the customer. She smiled slightly at her friend, sitting at a table a little farther from the entrance, watching her friend from afar. She was happy to be able to have a good friendship with Sabine for the last 3 years, a bond that grew out of the relationship of their children. She still didn't understand why the two ended up, however both decided not to give details of the reason and just move on. The last 3 months were hard to see both of them walk away, even though they still felt something strong for each other. They were suffering, each in their own way and in their own corner.

Emilie watched her friend approach, standing up and hugging her tight as Sabine placed the tray on the table. Emilie could see Sabine's tired look, her worried eyes as the two of them sat in their respective seats. She held her hand, squeezing it lightly, but before she even asked what had happened, her friend started talking.

"I didn't know you had returned from London. How is your sister? I thought you would spend more time there…" Sabine said putting a cup next to Emilie and taking another for herself with some tea.

"Amelie is great and I ended up spending too much time there. Adrien was pretty wrapped up with college and with the two of them over, I thought I'd better return. He's been pretty reclusive for the last month."

"There's not much we can do, unfortunately. They're adults Em, they need to know what to do and if they need us we'll be there to help." She said after drinking some of her tea.

"I know it's just that… " she paused leaving her cup on the table "Am I the only one who sees that the two of them are getting hurt?"

Sabine took a deep breath before answering, but before she even started to speak she heard the bakery door slam, looking in the direction, seeing a young man her daughter's age come running towards her.

"Peter? Why are you here?" She said in surprise, arching her eyebrow.

"Aunt Sabine! Glad I found you here. I wasn't going to leave that stubborn one alone in the hospital and I came to stay with her. Only she refuses for two days to give me any information. I was going straight to the hospital but I thought it was better to stop by to ask your permission."

"Oh my darling." she said smiling " I'm so glad you came, even though I knew she didn't want anyone there…" she said getting up and hugging the boy who was much bigger than her.

"She's almost a sister... I wouldn't leave her alone now…" Peter replied, hugging her tight. In a way Sabine was very reminiscent of his aunt. Not that they were physically similar, but because of their posture and, sometimes, their way of acting and speaking.

"Hospital?" Emilie looked at Sabine without understanding what was happening, taking a deep breath before speaking.

"Marinette will have surgery in 3 hours. She's already in the hospital, Luka just texted me a warning. We were just finishing things around here and we're heading there. It was all very fast since we found out she was sick until they scheduled the surgery...."

"I was at the company yesterday and Adrien told me she was going on vacation?" Emilie looked at Sabine confused, trying to understand how this information didn't reach her. "As I understand it, everyone at the company thinks she’s on vacation…"

"She didn't want to tell anyone there and asked me to avoid telling other people" she said feeling Peter put his arm around the eldest shoulders, in a sign of support "She's in a difficult process, she said she doesn't want anyone worried anymore with her or for people to stop what they need to do to help her. She's closing down more and more... Peter and Luka are one of the few people she's been talking to." She sighed, lowering her head slightly. "I'm sorry for the lack of manners, Emilie…" she said, hugging the boy from the side "this is Peter Parker, a great friend of Mari, he lives in New York."

Peter extended his hand to greet the woman in front of him "It's a pleasure to meet you ma'am. Mars always speaks with great affection and admiration of you…"

" She told me about you... " Emilie smiled slightly at the boy, still showing a slight confusion and frustration in her face "How did she say... "if it wasn't for him I would be lost in New York until today”. " she smiled slightly at the memory, turning her attention to Sabine "What happened to her?

"Peter, why don't you keep your things in Mari's old room? Tom and I are leaving in a little while to go to the hospital and you're coming with us, okay?" He nodded quickly, heading towards the back of the bakery, greeting Tom quickly and heading towards the apartment at the top.

"She has a brain tumor, found out when she got back from New York a little over a month ago…" Sabine started talking as soon as she sat down again. "The doctors said that the surgery despite being very aggressive has a success rate of almost 100% but that the recovery is expected to be slow." Sabine took a deep breath, drinking a little more of the tea to calm down " it all happened so fast. One day she was fine and the next we were in the hospital after she had a bad headache and passed out. " Sabine started to cry as her friend held her hand to reassure her that she was there to help her. "She didn't want to tell anyone and with all the rush of exams that went on in the last month…"

"Hey, calm down Sabine... It's okay, it's going to be okay! She is a young woman, strong and it is obvious that she will be alright!" Emilie said, looking her friend in the eye "do you want me to go to the hospital with you?"

"No, you don't have to. She didn't want to tell anyone, if there are a lot of people there she'll get agitated" she sighed wiping her tears "I'll call you to let you know how the procedure went. All going well, the doctor said she should stay a little more than a week in the hospital." Sabine squeezes her friend's hand lightly, getting up and follows. "I need to go, she made me promise that we were going to leave the bakery open with Jonas taking care, because according to her, life can't stop because she's sick."

"Be well and send me news as soon as possible." She said hugging her friend "if you need me let me know! I'll come back later so we can talk better." They said goodbye briefly, with Emilie leaving the bakery and getting in the car heading straight for the company, while Sabine went to organize herself to leave as soon as possible to the hospital.

…………………

Emilie arrived at the company going straight to her son's room. Adrien was one of the directors and, despite not having finished college, he was doing very well at what he did. She glanced at the watch on her wrist and from the time she knew he still hadn't left for his late-morning classes. She knocked lightly on the door before entering, seeing him reading some documents on the computer.

"Adrien, my dear. I didn't see you when you left this morning…" she said as she entered and headed towards the table, sitting in a chair right in front of her son "I just met Sabine." She said putting her bag on the chair next to him, looking at him.

"I didn't know you were going there... How are they? I confess that I haven't been there since Mari and I broke up." - He finished the sentence with a low voice, sighing and turning his attention to her mother. "Did something happen? you usually come back excited from it."

"When was the last time you and Mari talked? Sabine told me she's in the hospital, checked in this morning... Did you know that Mari is sick?"

"What do you mean is Mari sick? What happened to her?" He got up from his chair, heading towards his mother, sitting next to her. He looked at her worriedly, trying to understand what she was talking about "mom, Mari was here in a meeting two days ago, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Marinette is going into surgery in two hours." She said, passing her hand on her son's face "Sabine didn't give me details, but from what I understand it's not very simple. She's going to have a tumor removed…"

Adrien leaned back in his chair, looking at the wall behind his mother not really knowing what to say and what was going on. "We haven't spoken directly in a month or so… she hinted that she didn't want to talk to me at the moment and had been avoiding me for the last few weeks. She didn't tell me anything." He spoke in a devastated voice, running a hand through his hair. "We had an argument when she got back from New York, I said I was sorry, that I wish we... I shouldn't and didn't want to break up with her…"

"Oh Adrien, I'm so sorry... but if you guys talked why…"

"She said you can't forget what was said and, honestly, you can't go back with the words I said. I said things to her when we broke up that she didn't deserve to hear, not after all she's done for me... When we spoke last time she made it very clear that she needed space and time for us to talk again…"

"Do you want to talk about it? We can try …" - She said hugging his son.

"No, I definitely don't want to talk about it." He took a deep breath moving away from Emilie "Do you have news of where and how she is?"

"No honey... Sabine promised me that she would let me know and give me news when the surgery was over. She asked no one to go there, she said her daughter didn't want anyone to know…" She said, rubbing her son's face, removing some tears that had fallen. "It's going to be okay and as soon as I have news I'll pass it on to you. Do you want me to stay here a little longer?"

"Thanks Mom." He took a deep breath "if you want to go, I'll be fine here. I don't think I'm going out today. I highly doubt I'll be able to do anything before I hear from her."

"Alright then I'll go to my office and take the opportunity to get you some tea... ok?"

Adrien just nodded, his eyes fixed on the wall in front of him. He sighed, remembering the day he'd realized the biggest mistake he'd ever made in his life.

Flashback

"MyLady, it's a pleasure as always to see you here…" He smiled in her direction "You've been missing for a long time since we've seen each other, were you still in training with the order?"

"Hello Chatton. My training ended a few months ago, but with the rush of everyday life I didn't have time for night outings" she laughed weakly "I was very immersed in work that was delayed precisely because of training."

"Did something happen? Any specific reason to call me?" He looked at her from afar. She was depressed, lacking the smile that always accompanied and lit up her face. Something must have happened. He watched the woman he loved so much sit on the only sofa in the empty living room, in front of a large window that overlooked a park with the Eiffel Tower in the background. It was the highest floor of the building and the view from the place was beautiful.

"I brought you here to talk to you about something important. A few months ago, Bunnix took me to the future to solve a problem. Not to mention things that could interfere in the future and to give a brief summary, an ancient secret organization called the League of Assassins managed to get hold of some miraculous and it can be said that things got out of control very quickly." she paused looking at him seriously "I need you to avoid going out like Chat Noir as much as possible. I know how important this is to you, but unless we have more information, it's best to keep the Miraculous as hidden as possible."

Chat's eyes widened in surprise at her comment, processing what was said. "Do you think there's any chance they're after us? I remember you commenting on them some time ago…"

"I don't know... But I'm trying to see the options we have. If they go after the Miraculous, the first place they'll look is…"

"Paris!" He completed her sentence sitting on the sofa next to her" especially after the news had become international. "He paused thinking about the matter" As the identities of the other wilders were not disclosed they will have no problems...

"I don't think so either... At the moment only Fluff, Tikki and Plagg are active, I don't think that's a problem." She paused, trying to direct the conversation as best she could. "Adrien, I brought you here because with the training of the order I was able to magically create something similar to the dimension that exists for the Kwamis and I want to try to give you access to it. You will be able to put anything in there, however you will only be able to take it out if it was something you put in. Just like you won't be able to take anyone inside... If you realize you're at risk, you'll be able to access the room from anywhere."

Ladybug stood up walking into the apartment, stopping in front of a door and reciting brief words with her hand on the door handle. When she was done, she opened the door, revealing a place resembling a small library, with books, a small sofa, table, and a chair. She took Chat Noir's hand, placing it over the invisible wall that restricted his passage in the room. After she spoke a few more words, which he couldn't quite make out, his hand went through the invisible barrier, allowing him through the door.

"Uow MyLady .... This is very ... " he looked at the place and was impressed, turning to her "I really appreciate you trusting me like that."

"I trust you for almost everything Adrien… " he turned around quickly "I call this place pocket dimension. The entire apartment is protected with some spells to prevent the place from having any kind of unwanted visitors. The magic placed here was made precisely so that those who are outside see mundane things even though it is discreet and difficult to track…"

Chat Noir looked at her somehow, a little hurt by the words, but he would come back to that question later "Whose apartment is it? How long have you been organizing all this?" He looked at her, seeing her turn towards him.

"I started to think about it when I was finishing my training in order. The apartment is in my name... there's something else I need to talk to you about before we leave. I'm going away on a trip and I don't know when I'll be back. Probably a month from now, or a little longer I think…"

"LB, what happened? You're down…" He said, looking at her intently. Ladybug was always a very energetic person and despite her insecurity when they were younger she always knew what to do and seeing her the way she was made him feel devastated.

She sat in the closest chair, still looking straight ahead "Some personal issues that came up…" Ladybug looked at him pointing to the spot next to her "My boyfriend and I ended our relationship after three years and things are a little complicated. Can you say that I'm still adapting?"

"Relationships are difficult. I know you liked him a lot from the few times we talked, but maybe it was for the better?" he said, sighing "It seems that these last few days have not been very good for either of us. My girlfriend and I broke up too. But if you want to talk, I'm all ears…" He said sitting next to her.

"There's not much to say, we can't change what people feel" she smiled weakly making a brief pause "But why did you break up?"

"Marinette is a wonderful person and I like her a lot, don't get me wrong, it was probably the hardest decision I made. But it didn't make sense to be with her thinking about someone else" he finished the sentence looking directly at her, the hint of his words being perceptible.

Ladybug closed her eyes lightly, letting a tear fall, wiping it away in the same instant he felt it. After a few moments she took a deep breath opening her eyes so she felt calmer. "When I told you that you wouldn't love the person under that mask you never really believed it... You always said you'd recognize me anywhere." he looked at her without understanding, seeing her get up and go towards the door, stopping without even turning to him "eight days ago you broke up with me because I wasn't the person with this mask. I'm sorry I was a little skeptical and emotional about what you just said, but it's a little hard to believe you at the moment.” She spoke without a hint of anger or resentment.

Adrien stood looking at her, not understanding what she was saying, when he finally registered what she had said. He sees all the glamour of the suit fall, the presence of the person in front of him being clear. His expression changed from confusion to desperation in seconds.

No... It couldn't be. He blinked a few times quickly, when he finally managed to react "Mari… ? No…"

"When you want to get out of here, just put your hand on the doorknob and think about where you want to go. When you open the door, you will be in the exact place you thought, as long as it is empty." she said putting her hand on the doorknob, taking a deep breath without looking at him" See you another time Adrien …" she opened the door and he could see her room just before she closed the door behind her.

#mlb x dc x marvel #dc x mlb #maribat #mlb x dc #damimari #marinette x damian #damianette #maridami #damian x marinette #daminette #damienette

96 notes · View notes

grumpygreenwitch · 2 months

Text

The Witches and Wizards Job 9 - 10 - 11

AO3 Link

Buy me a Ko-fi?

Remember: Tumblr has no algorithm. Reblogs give me life.

1-2 + 3-4 + 5-6 + 7-8 + 9-10-11 + 12-13-14 + 15-16 + 17-18-19 + 20-21-22 + 23-24-25 + 26-27-28 + 29-30 + 31-32-33 + 34-35-36 + 37-38 + 39-40-41-42

NINE

Morning came virulently early. No one had gotten much sleep, and in the end the team decided it wasn't worth the attempt. A few calls got enough food delivered to bury the kitchen bar under a variety of donuts, egg sandwiches, coffee and tea, and they stared at each other, simply because it wouldn't have been polite to stare at their consultant.

Harry Dresden, Professional Wizard, was sitting at one corner of the bar, eating slowly, looking like the victim of a bad suntan booth accident. He didn't look nearly as bad as he had when Nate had dragged him up to the loft, at least. As if the shower had washed away the burns.

As if they hadn't been real.

"Hey, man." Hardison was holding a bag of frozen peas to his head with one hand, and a smoothie with the other. He looked profoundly hungover as he took a seat between Parker and Eliot. The sweatpants Dresden was currently wearing were his; the shirt was Eliot's. "Thanks."

"No problem," the wizard replied, unfazed.

"Harry," Sophie asked as gently as she would've out of any of them if they'd been hurt on the job, "what happened down there?"

Dresden sighed and shifted minutely. Eliot knew that motion; he'd grown out of it himself many years back as a dangerous telltale, but he knew it. It was how you braced yourself to focus on what needed to be done, away from the pain. It went right into the hitter's mental file about the wizard, along with the scarred knuckles, the one bandaged hand, the ready way in which Dresden shifted so his back was nearly always to a wall.

"You found a Burning Witchwell." Nate scoffed minutely, but Dresden didn't seem to mind.

"A Burning… ," Sophie repeated carefully.

"Witch's Well," Dresden enunciated more carefully. "Shorthand, Witchwell."

"Is it still dangerous?" Nate asked.

"Probably. I'll go down in a bit and contain it," Dresden sipped at his cup. "It's a trap, a booby trap."

"Can't you destroy it, dismantle it?" Nate insisted.

"I can try." The wizard glared minutely at the mastermind. "Look, you gotta understand, I was not expecting to find a piece of arcane magic on my first night in Boston. Witchwells are incredibly old magic. I've only ever read of them, I've never even known of someone in the past four hundreds years with the chops to make one."

Sophie threw Nate a quelling look before she turned to Dresden once again. She was both amused and concerned that, at the moment, he looked very much like Parker did: frustrated, restive and angry. The wizard knew there was an enemy before him but he couldn't see it, couldn't target it, couldn't act. There was a great deal of physicality to the man; he was obviously rusty when it came to dealing with people, he'd proved that amply in Chicago, when he'd been about as tongue-tied in front of her as a schoolboy, but he was also used to the world lashing out at him while he had to stand there and take it. Parker was mad that Hardison had gotten hurt and there was no one she could hurt back in retaliation; Harry was just mad that someone had gotten hurt on his watch. "Harry, what exactly is a Burning Witch's Well? How is it a booby trap?"

The wizard sighed deeply. "The first thing you have to understand is that there are laws for me, just as there are for everyone else. There's a lot less for me," he said calmly, "but the penalties are a lot heavier. I can bend a lot of them to help you because you already know there's weirdness going on. I can twist some more because you've been put directly in the line of fire, and because honestly, I don't think anyone's going to be able to look you up for an inquest. But there are still questions I won't be able to answer."

"That's not what we hired you for," Nate protested, knowing it wouldn't matter but still wanting it on record.

Unsurprisingly, Sophie threw him a quelling look before turning back to the wizard. "Go on."

"You've read those fairy tales where someone finds a magic book or a magic cauldron, and read the inscription on it, and it activates?"

"'Speak, friend, and enter'," Hardison murmured.

"It works like that. A normal Witchwell is any item, any thing that's been empowered so you read the command words on it and it activates. It does the one thing it's supposed to do, and it turns off. Very neat, very clean - and very hard to make, because, I mean… Just like any other piece of machinery, anything magical needs power to run. You plug in a coffee maker, you charge a phone, you put batteries in a flashlight; magic's no different. A Witchwell doesn't need any of that. All the power it needs comes from its making, from it being used."

Hardison perked up; this sounded suspiciously like a Rule. He liked Rules; science and technology were full of Rules. Hacking wasn't even breaking the Rules so much as it was applying them in new and exciting ways. To hear that magic had Rules was exactly what he'd been hoping for. "Like a Rolex."

"Say what?"

"There's a rotor, a little pendulum thing, inside most Rolex watches," Hardison explained. "You don't need a battery, you just need to wear the watch to keep it going."

Harry looked surprised at this bit of trivia. "You can do that?"

Nate stepped in. "So this thing downstairs," he declared, trying to shepherd the conversation back in place. "It's going to keep running forever?"

"No," the wizard said forcefully. "It's going to run whenever someone reads what it says on it."

"I didn't read it, I couldn't," Hardison said immediately.

"But you tried," Harry said, not unkindly. "That's where the fernflower comes in."

"I'm very curious about this 'fernflower'," Nate said mildly.

Harry gave the mastermind a suspicious look. Apparently he'd already learned that 'mild', when it came to Nate Ford, meant danger. "For starters, it's not a real plant."

Nate pinned a vaguely murderous look on the wizard.

"Harry," Sophie was trying not to laugh. "You and Hardison didn't get hurt by an imaginary flower."

"The fernflower didn't hurt him, or me." He gestured, trying to ferry his own thoughts back into a semblance of order. "Fernflower's a flower of the Nevernever, the world on the other side, fairies, all th-"

"Fairies are real?!" Parker interrupted him.

Dresden closed his eyes and fought to focus. "Yes, they are, no, they're not nice, no, they don't grant wishes, if you see one, run."

"Why? What would you do if you saw one?" she challenged.

"Run," Dresden replied earnestly without missing a beat. "It's rare even there. It only grows in places of power, places were magic naturally gathers. It's that plant you hear about in fairy tales that gives you magical powers, but only for a little bit. It lets you talk to animals, protects you from curses or," he sighed, looking at Hardison, who immediately realized the cause-and-effect involved.

"It lets you read magic," the hacker said slowly, testing the words even as he spoke them.

"That's the booby part," the wizard admitted.

"Because even if whoever found the cylinder didn't know anything about magic, they'd still activate it." Hardison lowered the bag of peas. "That's nasty, Dresden."

"That's the harmless bit," the wizard told him wryly, "hangover aside. The killer in there was the night's breath."

"Let me guess," Nate pointed out dryly. "Another plant that doesn't exist?"

"Oh, no, you can grow night's breath on this side," Dresden replied in the same tone. "It's just illegal and if you do grow it a man in grey with a big sword's gonna show at your doorstep, torch your garden and cut your head off."

There was a very long beat of silence.

"That brought up so many questions I don't even know where to begin," Sophie declared, stunned. Nate scoffed and worked on refilling his cup.

"I got one," Eliot stepped in. "Dresden, you washed off the burns. You were covered in blisters. Hardison was covered in blisters. They were real."

"They sure hurt like it," Hardison muttered.

"But they still washed off. You're hurt, but you're not hurt as bad as you were."

"He doesn't actually have magic." Dresden pointed at Hardison. "Night's breath burns magic, corrodes it. In his case, it burned off the fernflower, not him."

"And in your case?"

"I sloughed off what it had damaged. A bit like scouring a wound that's gone bad; it's not pleasant, but at least the stuff underneath's healthy. And I'm thinking I can't afford to take my time healing, if you're finding Burning Witchwells just lying around."

The fridge began to rattle.

"Getting hurt doesn't work like that," Eliot protested tightly.

"Stuff from the Nevernever doesn't last on this side," the wizard countered. "It needs a power source, energy, will, same as anything else. For starters, the fernflower. But once that burned off, all it needed was belief. If…" He trailed off, staring at Hardison in sudden befuddlement.

"Alec Hardison." Hardison put aside the smoothie and offered his hand.

"Harry Dresden." Dresden shook it.

"Pleasure to meet you."

"You bet." Neither man missed a beat. "If I could get to Hardison before he realized what the night's breath had done, before it had time to cement itself in his mind, I knew he'd be fine."

Hardison started laughing a bit. "You had to catch me before it got compiled." He looked terribly pleased. Despite his words to Parker or Nate, Hardison had expected a hoax and a riddle in equal parts. What he had never, in his wildest imaginings, had expected, was that he (and Arthur C. Clarke) had been right. But he was, they were. In his own way, the partially singed Chicago beanpole was just a different sort of hacker, with a different language, with different tools. Just like Hardison was a master of his own science, so was Dresden. Dresden's tech was just incompatible with everything else.

The big ol' monolith was indeed just a different breed of computer.

"I think I'd like to know what's going on now, if it's not too much trouble," the wizard said evenly, looking at Sophie and Nate.

Surprisingly, it was the mastermind who replied to the request. "You go lock that canister down," he told Dresden. "By the time you get back hopefully we'll have hard copies of everything so we don't have any more screen mishaps -"

The coffee-maker chose that moment to chirp sadly and shut down.

"Yup." Dresden hopped to his feet.

"Eliot, go with him," Nate directed.

"Alright."

"Can I come?" Parker asked hopefully.

"Are you good at following directions in a hurry?"

"The sort of directions people give in a hurry, yes."

A smile twitched along the wizard's mouth, making him look younger and handsome for the briefest of moments. "Can't argue with that condition. Come on."

TEN

If Parker and Eliot had been expecting to see some magnificent display of magical fireworks as their contractor dealt with the canister, they were sorely disappointed. Dresden stepped warily enough into the room, and examined everything else: the table, the camera, the rumpled tablecloth on which the canister rested - everything but the canister itself.

"You got any duct tape?" he asked Eliot, further confusing both thief and hitter. Then, with utmost care, he taped a piece of cardboard from a box of straws on top of the inscription of the canister.

"That's it?" Eliot asked in disbelief.

"Yeah," the wizard shrugged. "Can't read it, it can't activate." He shook the canister slightly; they all heard something sloshing in there, and Dresden grimaced. "I don't like that sound, though." He wrapped the canister in the tablecloth, duct-taped that down as well, set it back down on the table and dragged a sharpie out of a pocket in his weather-beaten duster. He drew a long, deep breath.

Then he sketched a near perfect circle on the table and began to sketch swift, unrecognizable scribbles around the perimeter.

Parker brightened up. "What are you doing?"

"Making it so the owner can't track this thing to here," Dresden replied distractedly. "At least not without warning me that they're doing so. It's a warding circle." He gave them both a very level look. "Whoever did is very, very powerful. Powerful enough that just their image, not even their presence, is messing with your equipment. I doubt I can stop them if they really want their little death bottle back, but I can at least be here to get a good look when they come for it." The fingers of Dresden's bandaged hand twitched restlessly.

With Eliot carrying the camera, they headed back up to the loft. Rather than gathering before the bank of screens, they surrounded the kitchen bar once again, cleared of food and buried instead in any number of documents, printouts and paperwork.

Dresden picked up a chair and slid it back and away a whole two feet when Eliot put the camera down on the table. Nate shot the wizard a pointed look. "All done?"

"As much as it can be without my workshop," Dresden admitted.

"What do you need from your workshop?" Nate asked distractedly as he read from a very official-looking folder.

"The list is endless… Is that… Is that a police report?"

"No." Nate tipped his chin vaguely at the bar. "That's the police report. This is the insurance investigation report."

Dresden's mouth worked emptily for a moment.

"Harry," Sophie said mildly. "I think it's time we told you what we know."

"That'd be nice," he admitted, not quite managing to keep the doubt out of his tone or his expression. It quickly changed to disbelief as Hardison began speaking, even though every now and again the hacker got sidetracked into grumbling while he dug through the mountain of paperwork to find some tidbit or another.

"Is it magic?" Sophie asked into a brief silence when Hardison finished speaking.

"What? Yes." Dresden shook himself. "Yeah, of course it is. I knew that the moment I realized you'd found a Witchwell. Of course there's magic involved."

"You look so unconvinced, it's all," she pointed out.

"I'm not unconvinced, I'm -" He hesitated visibly, and then smiled wryly. "The people who hire me rarely tell me everything they know. Or anything at all."

Nate set a hand on the papers, looking deeply thoughtful. "Honesty, mister Dresden. I believe I mentioned that before."

"You did." Dresden said nothing else. He could feel the mood around the table sharpening, every eye coming to rest on Ford.

"You know what bothers me?" the mastermind said at last.

"That people nearly died?" Sophie suggested.

Nate flapped a hand at her. "That doesn't bother me, that upsets me. Very different."

"That they could have ruined the artwork?" Dresden suggested meekly.

"Argonite systems are designed to be completely safe to the art," the mastermind told him distractedly, picking up and tossing two stapled pages on the center of the table. "The Tetryakov Gallery is delighted, actually, that the Gardner Museum was willing to kill in order to protect the collection."

"Is that… Is that normal?"

"They're Russians, Harry," Sophie explained, leaning closer. "If you really want to see cutthroat, you should try to get an art loan from the Egyptians. Or the Japanese."

"What bothers me," Nate said firmly, "is that we found the cylinder at all." Silence fell around the bar. "Nothing else was this sloppy, not even the ones that could've gotten away with it."

"Rush job," Eliot murmured.

"Why?" Sophie asked. "What changed, what was different?"

"We were there," Parker pointed out.

"We aren't the target." Nate shot that one down. "We hadn't even taken the job at that point."

"Fedorov was there." Eliot picked up their dossier on the Russian enforcer and threw it atop everything else. "He did say this has been targeting people from their side."

Nate paused to consider that.

"I have been meaning to make time for the Sokolov collection, but I am a busy man, mister Ford."

"Fedorov might be a target, but this wasn't for him. He'd planned this visit ahead of time; they would have known he was coming, it wouldn't have been sloppy."

"The woman," Sophie murmured. "Baba Yaga."

Nate grimaced openly, then visibly braced himself. "Dresden, you're up. What can you tell us about Baba Yaga that we don't already know?"

"That I hope it's not her? If she is, there's next to nothing I can do to help you. You could call in a dozen wizards and they still wouldn't be able to help you." Suddenly aware that he had the team's attention, the wizard exhaled resignedly. "Stories and fairy tales aside, Baba Yaga is… a single step down and sideways from a god. Just like prayer and belief, and time, and a bunch of other variables empower a god, she's the same way. She depends on people to empower her, yes, but she's also been around so long that she has gained other sorts of power, magic, knowledge, alchemy, favors. She used to be a kind of litmus test for royalty, not just Russian, but most of the Slavic bloodlines. The Royal had to either trick her or survive her to prove they were worthy of the throne."

"And if they didn't?"

"She ate them," Parker replied before Dresden could.

The wizard, looking sheepish, had to agree. "She ate them."

"She ate p- like, for real she ate people?" Hardison demanded confirmation.

"You'd be surprised how many things out there think we're just convenient little walking snacks," Dresden said, voice tight. "But. It's entirely possible that she also just ate them metaphorically, like… eating their magic, eating their mind, their luck, their knowledge, eating half a dozen things that could, would, leave them alive. Just not in a way they'd appreciate."

"Better to just get eaten," Eliot muttered, daunted.

"Do we agree, then, that she's the target?" Sophie asked.

"No, we agree on nothing just yet, "Nate protested. "Only that she was there, unexpectedly. Someone saw a shot and they took it. So why was she there to begin with?"

"The portrait." Parker rummaged through the mound of paper until she found the printout of Nate's photograph, and frowned minutely at it. "She really does look upset."

"Can I see that?" Dresden asked politely, and Parker surrendered the printout. He squinted at it. "Do you have a bigger one?"

"Sure, the one hanging on a wall at the Gardner Museum, why?" Nate told him flippantly.

"This." Dresden stood up to move closer to the table, then hesitated. Hardison picked up the camera and put it aside, and the wizard set the paper down, pointing at the barely visible flash of green under the man in black's coat. "This is magic."

"How can you tell?" Sophie moved closer.

"I can't, that's why I want a closer look. But the setting around it, that silver, diamonds, whatever it might be? They just saw me draw something like it downstairs. A warding circle."

"Who's the man?" Eliot asked. "Did we figure that out?

Nate stared at the printout. "He was there, too."

"You saw him?" Sophie turned to look at him.

"I'm… not sure." The mastermind closed his eyes, trying to remember that moment. Motes of dust in the golden sunlight, barely stirring. The quiet murmur of a dozen admiring conversations. The portraits all around. Sophie nearby. Parker. Fedorov. The old woman.

The man, passing by the open doorway before the shutters slammed down.

Nate opened his eyes and shook his head. "I saw someone that looked like him, but it was just a quick glimpse. It could have been anything."

"Harry, who is he?"

"He could be anyone, a Royal, a pupil. It's said she took on apprentices every now and again."

"An asshole. That's what Fedorov said." Parker cocked her head. "I kinda agree."

"Hardison, did you get a chance to go through the security camera footage?" Nate shuffled through the paperwork.

"No, because every time I tried, my failsafes started beeping. How do you- is there any technology you can use?" the hacker demanded of Dresden.

"I've got a landline, and a VW Beetle," the wizard was trying not to sound amused at Hardison's plaintive demand. "Anything old. The older the better. Pre-WWII is pretty much guaranteed to work fine."

"Oh, my god, you want me using…" Hardison sighed in exasperation, hanging his head for a moment. "Fine. Fine, I guess backwards-compatible means we have to go way back." He looked at Nate. "I gotta go shopping, but I can have something set up by lunch."

"Parker and I could take Harry to the museum," Sophie suggested.

"Why? The painting's not there anymore." When everyone looked at her, Parker shrugged. "The MET demanded we move the collection to secure storage, and the Gardner doesn't have the vault space. It's in the MFA vaults now."

"How long would it take you to get in there?" Nate asked without hesitation.

"I can be in and out with it by lunchtime, too."

"No, I don't want you to steal the painting, Parker. You and your friend worked too hard to get this loan set up. How long would it take you to get yourself and Dresden into the vault?"

"Oh." She turned to look at him. "Can you make yourself invisible?"

"Uh, no. That's a little involved, and I don't have my workshop."

She huffed. "Magic's not very fun, is it?"

"Parker, how long would it take you to break into the vault if there were no other security concerns?" It was Sophie's turn to look like she was thinking hard.

The thief thought on it and shrugged. "Nine minutes from the front door to the vault. It's a Milwaukee 2300, they're a little temperamental sometimes."

Sophie turned to look at Nate. "We don't need anything from the vault. We just need Harry to get in, have a look and get out."

Nate paused to digest that. "The Mona Lisa?" he suggested. Sophie's smile told him he'd guessed right.

"Mix in a little Golden Fiddle, and we could probably go as long as twenty minutes before the police are even called."

"Hardison, how many decent fakes can you give me in," Nate checked his watch, "five hours?"

The hacker looked delighted. "Give me six and you can have a hundred solid."

"Lunchtime, then." Nate nodded and moved to the door, where Sophie was already waiting for him. "Dresden, make your list."

"My list?"

"You keep saying you need your workshop, which is fair, but I need you working at full efficiency. Make your list. I doubt it's endless but hey, we like challenges around here." The mastermind pointed. "Parker's going to run you through a little escapade -"

"Are we breaking into a museum vault?!" The wizard sounded a little indignant, and a lot full of disbelief.

"Well, yes," Nate admitted cheerfully, "but we're not stealing anything," he added, as if that made everything better, and walked out of the loft.

ELEVEN

The con went off just after lunch. It gave the team time to set up a few failsafes, and gave their hired wizard a chance to stuff his pockets with a variety of very strange things.

Around 3 PM, with the wind rushing down Huntington Avenue and the trains of the Green Line clattering back and forth, the nondescript white van finally found a parking spot a little bit away from the entrance to the museum. There was a sparse crowd hanging around, mostly art students waiting for the brief period when admittance was free. A great many of them had sketch pads and were busily putting down, in broad charcoal strokes or distracted color lines, the ephemera of the people passing them by. The rear doors of the van swung open. "Ladies and gentlemen!" A powerfully built man in faded jeans, heavy steel-toed boots and a comfortable jacket sat on the edge of the van's bed, his voice pitched to carry and catch the attention of those around him, his good looks and the peaceable, charming half-smile he wore like sunlight set to keep it. "How about we engage in some mischief!"

He gestured to the back of the van, where canvases sat in neat, orderly rows, hanging from a specialty shelf. "I have one hundred and twenty pieces of art here. Twenty bucks a pop, only one per customer, no refunds, no returns, no buyer's remorse." The man reached into the rack, gently dislodged one of the smaller canvases, and set it on his lap.

A sigh went up from the crowd. Renoir's 'Madeleine', one of the artist's smallest portraits, well known to be in a private Louisiana collection, gazed soulfully at them. "At least one of them," the man told the crowd while he had their attention, "is the real deal."

Gasps followed that proclamation. "Yeah, right!" Someone yelled. A crowd was beginning to gather around the back of the van.

Eliot grinned merrily. "You don't gotta believe me, man." He set the Renoir aside, reached for a larger canvas. The crowd cried out in disbelief. Titian's 'Salome' stared them all down haughtily. "It's your buck against my bang. You can just walk away."

"How much for the 'Salome'?" a woman's voice shouted from the crowd.

"Twenty bucks for each of the nine."

"Can I buy four?"

"One a pop."

"I'll give you fifty each for four of them," another man exclaimed, rushing up to the van.

"Nope, twenty each, one per customer."

"I can just come back," the man protested.

"My man, you're gonna what, take it off the frame and roll it up to hide it in your shirt? Titian's 'Salome'?" Eliot pinned a level gaze on the man, who caved pretty much immediately. He still passed out a twenty, and Eliot readily surrendered the canvas. "Pleasure doing business with you."

The crowd began to close in. Seemingly at random, Eliot grabbed another canvas and brought it forth.

Every voice went profoundly silent. The hitter peeked around at the painting. A masterpiece, missing since World War II, stared back at him. "Oh, that one." His grin was pleasant, his blue eyes full of cheer. "Got four of those."

"Twenty, I got a twenty!" A young woman surged breathlessly forward.

"You got it, sweetheart. Wanna wipe your fingers before you grab it, though," he pointed out, offering her a tissue so she could scrub charcoal dust off her hands.

The crowd detonated. People rushed forward, chatting, exclaiming, questioning. It was a lottery, yes, but at 100-to-1 odds it was brutally effective as bait. Word went out. Passersby detoured. Not everyone was buying, not everyone was convinced that any of the paintings were real, rather than merely exceptional copies. Arguments exploded discussing brushstrokes, pigments, styles.

Jessamine Lochlin fought her way to the front of the crowd. "One 'Salome'," she demanded breathlessly. "And I'll have you know this is just the worst -"

"One 'Salome' for the gorgeous young lady." Eliot turned the full force of his charm onto the young curator. "Picked it special just for you."

Lochlin went pink to the roots of her hair, her righteous indignation choking out with a squeak. By the time she recovered she was short a twenty, richer by a highly suspicious canvas, and the horrible man peddling a potential masterwork out of the back of a van had moved on to argue with two people who each wanted a copy of 'Madeleine' - except they wanted the same copy.

She huffed angrily, and pressed her mouth into a thin, undecided line. Some part of her still wanted to tell the man fifty different kinds of whatfor. A tiny part of her wanted another one of those gorgeous grins, but she stepped on that part with angry determination.

Most of her, however, was whispering very loudly. What if it's true?

That was the part that won, eventually. It would have won in any of the people there, most of whom loved art in one form or another. She turned and fought her way through the crowd, half-running, half-speedwalking to the entrance to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, rushing through the afternoon crowds and the beautiful displays without seeing either.

"Jessamine!" A familiar voice, a soft Russian burr, called out to her, and the curator turned in both surprise and exasperation. It was the Russian woman, Iggy's friend, the curator, apparently admiring the Japanese exhibit. "Hello, what a pleasant surprise."

"Oh, hi!" Lochlin beamed at the woman, paused exactly three seconds, not even listening to what she was saying. "Bye!" She ran on, leaving the other curator open-mouthed and puzzled. She burst into the main laboratory. "Michael, I need your Titian database!"

There were two men currently in the room, a vast, airy, sealed space full of sedately humming, dormant machinery under blue halogen lights. One was an older man, lanky and silver-haired, the unruly mane braided at his back. He had an indecent amount of stubble and a lab coat over a tee telling the world that finger-painting was an acceptable form of art, the writing surrounded by prehistoric hand stencils. The other was a short, stocky man with little hair on top of his head, but an impeccably groomed silver beard and moustache, a fine button-down shirt and slacks under his own coat. He sputtered in surprise at the invasion. "Jess, what on Earth -"

She hefted 'Salome' and while she didn't quite slam it on the work table between the two men, it was a close thing.

They gaped at it, speechless.

"There is a man out there selling these out of the back of a van. He's promised one's the real deal, I bought a 'Salome', and I need your Titian database, and then I need your Raphael database because he has a 'Portrait'."

"A portrait?" The lanky man straightened up. "The 'Portrait'?!"

Lochlin nodded intently.

"Fakes. All fakes. A conman's game, Eli, don't you dare, Elijah!" The other man was already running out. Michael Erlkist, one of the MFA's most seasoned curators and its Egyptian and Fertile Crescent expert, scoffed. "They're all fakes, they have to be," he protested at Lochlin.

"Michael!" she all but shrieked at him.

"Alright, alright!" The man moved over to one of the computers. "Mel isn't here, though, Jess. She's the Titian specialist, none of us are near as good."

The young curator paused, struck by the truth of that. As much science as one could apply to telling the difference between an original and its replicas, verifying artwork, particularly paintings, was still a matter of skill, of finesse, of expertise acquired on the field. "We're plenty good, you and I."

"I like mummies and you do watercolors." His tone was dry and deadpan. "And you bought this out of the back of a van."

"Michael, he has a 'Portrait'."

"Everyone always has a 'Portrait'."

"Are you willing to take that chance? The one in a million chance that it's the real 'Portrait'? That this is the real 'Salome'? He has nine 'Madeleine's!"

"'Madeleine' is in a private collection in Louisiana," he retorted primly.

"Is it? Would they have said anything if they'd lost it, if it got stolen?"

"Jess, what do you want?" He demanded impatiently.

"I want to know if this is the real 'Salome'!"

"What if it is?" Without letting her answer, he asked, "What if it isn't?"

"If it isn't that means another chance that one of the 'Portrait's is real," she told him with hyperbolic focus.

That shut him up. He turned and typed furiously on the computer. "This isn't going to work, you know. We know the theory, the basics. Never mind that no one can authenticate a painting without taking at least a few hours to do so. You need someone with more expertise, who's actually worked with other collections."

She huffed angrily at him, but couldn't dispute that point. Chewing on her lip, a sudden idea occurred to Lochlin. "Get started with the analysis, I'll be right back."

"Oh, what now," he moaned.

She was already gone, sprinting past the late afternoon crowds and looking about desperately. She nearly ran down a woman and her two kids as she closed in on her target. "Hey! Hi. Hello. Ekaterina, right?"

Ekaterina Yegorov turned and smiled her calm, steady smile at the younger curator. "Please, Jessamine, Kate is fine. Ekaterina is for formal occasions and for customers, you do not need to -"

"That's nice. Have you ever curated Titian?"

"Oh, another personal favorite we share, is it?" The Russian brightened up at once. "The detail work on 'Flora' is just so exquisite -"

"Good. Come with me."

Ekaterina found herself all but hauled along, her sensible heels clacking a harried staccato on the marble floors, her confusion warring with her implacably calm demeanor. Lochlin dragged her past several guards and security locks and very nearly shoved her into the lab.

"Jessamine Esther Lochlin, you do not bring strangers into my lab!" Erlkist cried out.

"She's not a stranger! She's an independent curator. She's good, too, I should know, I've spoken to her before! And she knows Titian."

Both curators turned to look at Ekaterina, who shrugged delicately. "My work is discreet, but not secret," she declared, flicking her fingers to the computer. "You can find it if you search for it."

"Let me just do that, if you don't mind," Erlkist replied with stiff, frantic courtesy, turning back to the computer and tripping over his own fingers.

"Between the three of us, we can surely tell -" Lochlin hissed impatiently at him.

"Ah-buph-buph-buph," he shushed her. "You brought a stranger into my lab, Jessamine Lochlin," he accused her irately, but equally sotto-vocce.

"We need more eyes on this," she snapped. The screen suddenly began to load a vast list of responses to Erlking's query. "Besides, she's obviously not a stranger," she declared, gesturing sharply.

They stared; they read. Ekaterina Yegorov was, as she'd pointed out, discreet but not a secret. Her work was there to be found, everywhere, from small private collections to some names that made both the curators glance nervously at her over their shoulders.

It didn't matter if they were being subtle enough or not, she wouldn't have caught them: Yegorov was curiously examining the 'Salome' Lochlin had left on the table. Lochlin elbowed Erlking minutely, and they both turned as covertly as they could to watch as idle curiosity became radiant focus.

Yegorov began to mutter in Russian. She wouldn't touch the painting, obviously, but she paced back and forth along three sides of the table, leaning close and squinting fiercely at it from each side she could reach. "Bozhe moi," she breathed after a moment, her expression stunned and her voice strangled, "is this 'Salome'? I thought we had lost it to some, some," she sought angrily for a foul enough word, "selfish private collector."

Lochlin gave Erlking a triumphant look.

"That is not proof!" he protested. "That is one opinion out of three -"

Elijah Randall burst into the lab, wheezing, his face red, carrying a canvas. "Oh, my god, I just bought the 'Madeleine' for twenty bucks out of the back of a van." He laid the canvas down on the table next to 'Salome' and leaned down, his cheek nearly on the table, making frantic little noises.

"It's a fake! Elijah, you know this con! We all know this con! This is Brooklyn all over again!"

"Wasn't one of those real?" Yegorov pointed out meekly.

"I know Renoir, Michael!" the lanky man fired back. "Oh, my god, I touched it, where are the glov - Sorry about the 'Salome', Jess.

"But," Lochlin blinked at him. "'Salome''s real."

Everyone in the lab came to a dead stop. He sputtered a question he couldn't finish. Lochlin gestured at Yegorov.

"Obviously I would need to go into more detail," the Russian woman admitted. "But I would readily offer my word that this is the real 'Salome'.

Eli and Jess crossed a look. "He's got multiple originals," she breathed.

"He's got a 'Portrait'," he choked.

"Who's got a portrait?" Yegorov asked in confusion.

"Everyone always has a 'Portrait'!" Erlking yelled. "It's the most counterfeited painting in the history of painting! Everyone wants to be the one who finds it, undamaged, safe, famous!"

"Wait, the 'Portrait'?" The Russian woman's attention sharpened all at once. "'Portrait of a Young Man'?" she asked Randall.

He nodded breathlessly.

"They're fakes! They're all fakes!"

Yegorov looked at 'Salome'.

They all looked at 'Salome'.

Yegorov looked at 'Madeleine'.

They all looked at 'Madeleine'.

"Um, I think, if you do not mind, I will go -" she said most politely, inching for the door.

Randall and Lochlin sprinted past her and raced out.

"No, don't -!" Erlking was too polite a creature to swear openly, but his face was blotchy and his expression was angry. "Stay right there!" he yelled at Yegorov, for lack of any other target to take the brunt of his mood. She jumped and nodded warily. He snatched for his coat and ran after his peers.

The lab was silent, only the quiet whisper of technology surrounding the lone woman.

Sophie gave the curators ninety seconds to get out and succumb to the mob mentality Eliot had provoked outside before she opened the door and peeked out, just in time to see Parker and Dresden coming up to her. "You are going to wreck this place," he told the wizard almost gleefully.

"I'm already breaking into a museum full of priceless art," Dresden shot back dryly. "Destruction of property is low on the list of crimes I'm committing today."

"Oh, you'll be fine, Harry," she grinned wickedly at him, holding the door open for them. While Parker could have breached the security defenses of the MFA, Sophie infiltrating instead had shaved nearly three minutes off their timeline. "It's just computers, machines."

Harry was staring all around him with a little grimace, trying to stay dead center of the room and as far away from anything digital-looking as possible. "The computers aren't important?"

"Not as much as the art. They can replace a spectrograph." Sophie put on gloves while Parker moved to the far end of the lab, where a door stood discreetly to one side, a lock blinking sedately at them all. "'Salome' can never be replaced," the grifter murmured, picking up the canvas with utmost care and setting it aside, safely out of the way.

Dresden blinked at her. "You m- You mean it's real?!"

"Yes, of course. The Golden Fiddle only works if some part of what you offer is real, Harry. Normally you have a fiddle, but sometimes you have to get a little creative."

"So this is the one real painting you had in there?"

"God, no," Sophie took off the gloves and pocketed them. "This con was geared toward people who know their art, Harry. One real work wouldn't have fooled them." The lock, under Parker's ministrations, beeped cheerily and the door hissed open to a tiny room that looked very much like an airlock, since it actually was one. "There's seven originals," Sophie explained.

"What is it you guys do again?" Dresden croaked hoarsely.

"We're past the lab," Parker said mildly.

From his spot in the service parking lot behind the museum, Hardison stared at the screen and the chatter he was getting from the earbuds of the team. There was an almighty amount of feedback trying to whistle into the collective channel from Sophie's line, which he took to mean she was the one currently closest to Dresden. Giving the wizard an earbud had nearly blown the other five; Hardison was sensible enough not to try a second time, but everything in him itched to know one of his teammates, however temporary, was in there without communications, without support. It made him twice as aware of anything else that might clue him as to Dresden's location and general state of being. When Parker spoke, he was ready. "Nate?"

"Internal power's off." Their mastermind had never been the sort to shy away from getting his hands dirty - literally, in this case, when he'd had to hunt down the immense generators that supplied power to the security systems of the museum and do mean things to them. He rubbed grease off his hands and scowled minutely. So much effort wasted for a hunch of 'magic'. "Eliot, how're you holding up?"

"Oh, we're fine, Nate." Normally a Gold Rush would have run with two people, but Jessamine Lochlin already knew three of the team's members, and Hardison had been needed elsewhere. Eliot, shuffling into the van to reach canvases further back, was having a blast with his current partner. "Dresden's security's working like a charm. Right, Mouse?" The immense Temple dog, sitting shotgun in the van, whuffled; after those gigantic jaws had caught and delicately held onto the hand of someone trying to break into the van, no one else had tried.

Hardison shut off the external power feeding into the lab area. Nothing much seemed to change for two of the three people stepping out of the airlock into a dimly lit hallway. For Parker, it was as if an incredibly loud world had gone abruptly silent. Chem-detectors, bubbling microscopically to themselves, went quiet. The delicate subsonic zap of the laser grid faded. The heat sensor began to cool with inaudible pings. Only the lights that dotted the hallway beyond the airlock, which ran on their own dedicated batteries, remained.

She led the way at a quick trot, Sophie a step behind, Dresden three. One of the lights above them crackled and fizzled out, and both women turned to glare at the wizard, who shrugged awkwardly. "Are you seriously going to crack a museum vault in nine minutes?"

Parker grinned at him. "I could do it in four, but I'm not gonna." She lifted a keycard with a picture of a stocky, older man, balding, with a neat beard and moustache. "Hardison, we're here."

"Restoring power now," Hardison replied. The lights brightened. The lock next to the door blinked back to life. Parker ran the card through it and the immense vault door clicked and clanked loudly as several bolts slid open.

"Sophie, tell Dresden to move away from you," Hardison said suddenly into the line. "The feedback's getting bad."

"He is away from us," she replied as Parker dragged the immense door open, glancing at the wizard, who was five steps away and looking decidedly uncomfortable with the proceedings.

Hardison chewed on his lip. "He might be affecting the intranet system I'm piggybacking for our communications." The buds would have never been powerful enough to get a signal past the tremendous amount of steel and concrete currently between the outside world and the three interlopers, but the museum had run its own communication network into the vaults. Unfortunately, as with most technology trapped in direct proximity to a wizard, it was becoming increasingly unhappy. "Hurry."

The door swung open on soundless hydraulic systems. "Harry, we're about to lose comms," Sophie told him tersely. "In, out, now."

He charged past them, his coat flaring behind him. They followed him into the vault. It was a cold, dark space, lighted only as much as necessary. Racks, easels and pedestals stood at regular intervals, granting no space for observation, merely for each piece in storage not to touch its neighbors.

"We need light," Sophie murmured. Both her and Parker reached for their phones.

A warm, silvery radiance filled the space, spilled all around them, touched the shadows and sent them scurrying away. Both of them stared. Dresden had lifted up the plain pendant he carried tucked under his shirt and it glowed like starlight between his fingers. Sophie could only gape; as magic went it was nothing, a tiny trick, likely easily replicated with tech. But it was there, before her, real. She'd thought herself willing to believe; she hadn't realized how far she'd been from taking the actual leap of faith until that moment.

Parker grinned triumphantly at the sight. Finally, some proper magic.

"Where is it?"

"Here." The thief led the way to the largest frame in the vault, Sokolov's double portrait. Harry followed after her -

The buds screeched feedback. Wherever they were, all of the team winced.

"Dresden!" Hardison yelled.

"Sorry, sorry!" Though Harry couldn't hear the hacker, he could readily figure out why the two women with him had jerked violently and slapped a hand to their ears, and stepped immediately back.

"No, Harry, you step forward, we step back," Sophie told him sternly, giving him a little shove, Parker and her moving further into the vault. Just like that, the wizard was before Sokolov's portrait.

Almost immediately he was frowning. "Stay behind me," he told them distractedly. "Can I touch it?"

"No," both women replied tartly.

Dresden lifted his free hand and ran it just shy of the portrait's surface. "Ok, this is -" He grimaced minutely. "This better not be another trap," he muttered and flicked his fingers.

There was a flash of deep, rich green light, brighter than what he'd conjured. On the portrait, the half-hidden emerald brooch shone like a star, as if someone had kindled a light behind it to show it off as one of the most striking jewels in the world.

"What is it?" Parker asked while Sophie stared, open-mouthed.

"A lock," the wizard replied without turning. "A literal lock." He took a full step back and threw his arms open. The entire frame, ancient gilt and carved wood, began to glow. "This isn't just a portrait, it's a door." He went very still. "It's a gate."

"Good or bad?" Nate asked on the line. Sophie repeated the question.

"Well, odds are it opens to the Nevernever," Dresden replied, then seemed to hear his own words. "So bad. Very bad. Except it's, you know, locked."

"Bad enough that we should take it?"

"No," Nate refuted at once. The line crackled over the one negative.

"Parker, no," Sophie gasped.

"I'm not leaving another death bottle lying around," the thief declared sharply. "Particularly around Jess. Harry?"

Dresden dropped his arms and his head and turned very slowly. "You… have a point," he admitted unhappily, then rubbed at his forehead. "You both saw it. It took nothing to activate the lock. Obviously without the key it's not doing anything, but if the key does show up…" He trailed off. "Almost nothing in the Nevernever's friendly. Neutral at best. Hungry, almost always."

Sophie gritted her teeth and made the only decision she felt she could make. "Everything we need to safely move it should be back at the lab."

Nate huffed, rushing out and hopping on the driver's seat of Hardison's van. "Eliot, start a few arguments. They'll need a little more time. Sophie -"

The line squealed feedback, fired off a few angry popping sounds, and Hardison hissed. "I lost the communication intranet. It burned out."

Nate exhaled sharply, turning to look at the museum.

The three people inside rushed out of the vault, Sophie giving out terse directions. "Harry, will taking the frame apart affect th-" They came out of the vault, around the immense door, and face to face with six people clad in black from head to toe.

Everyone came to a stunned halt.

One of the black-clad figures snarled something in Russian.

The three didn't hesitate: they stepped right back into the vault.

#leverage #nathan ford #parker #sophie devereaux #eliot spencer #alec hardison #the dresden files #harry dresden #fanfiction #my writing #urban fantasy #crossover

5 notes · View notes

justathoughtfulangel · 2 years

Text

What Could Have Been ~ Kai Parker One Shot

*not my gif

This piece was meant to be posted on June 26th, but I realized June 20th is the anniversary of the date I started writing for Malachai Parker! I figured it was worth a mini celebration :)

Word Count: 1,577

Description: They'd known each other their whole lives and were always meant to be. Unfortunately, not everything which is meant to gets to be. Some things are just left as what could have been.

This IS a reader insert fic; I just don’t like writing with Y/N in the place of names. Use Rosalie/Rosie/Rose as a placeholder for Y/N :)

Requested: No

Note: The structure of this piece will be a bit different. I'll be writing snapshots of Kai and the Reader character's (Rosalie's) life.

'~' denotes a switch between Kai and the Reader's POV and '~~~' denotes a change in scene. Kai's portion of the story will be written chronologically while the Reader's side of the story will be presented in reverse chronological order. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing it :)

A 5-year-old Kai hoisted his blue Mickey Mouse backpack over his shoulder and waved goodbye to his mom. Hand-in-hand with his twin sister, he skipped into the classroom, excited for his first day of kindergarten. He was a little anxious when Josette was sent into a different classroom. His lower lip had just begun to quiver when a little girl came up to him, holding out her box of crayons. “Hi! My name’s Rosie. Do you want to color with me?”

A 40-year-old Rosalie stood with shaking legs as Kai’s spell ended. The Coven gathered around him, chanting the same spell that cast him into the prison world. He was almost amused, and she was heartbroken. Long gone was the happy, young boy she’d met. They had turned Kai into this, and they’d brought this misery upon themselves. She felt her consciousness escape her, and the last of her life floated from her…

~~~

A 9-year-old Kai fell to the ground as his cousin shoved him. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t have magic, but everyone in the Coven treated him like he was vermin. Even his parents called him an abomination. The only person he liked playing with was Rosie. Her family was in the Coven, too, and they were the only ones who treated him with love. He wanted to go live with them. Rosie stomped over, pushing his cousin to the ground right back. “Don’t treat Kai that way!”

A 40-year-old Rosalie took the chart from the charge nurse, thanking her absentmindedly as she reviewed the symptoms. 22-year-old John Doe – complains of nausea, vomiting, and insomnia. CT scans clear. Knocking on the door, Rose stepped in. She couldn’t even bring herself to greet him. “Rosalie?” It was him. He looked just as he had the last time she saw him. “Malachai…” There were questions spinning through her mind at a mile a minute. For now, all she could focus on was the relief of knowing that he was here.

~~~

A 14-year-old Kai held a single flower behind his back. It was one he plucked from the hidden cove where he’d escape with Rose. He saw her walking toward him, dressed in ripped jeans and an old t-shirt with her hair in a carefree ponytail. He’d seen her at Coven dinners and jogging at the gym; Kai’s young heart fluttered all the same. Rosalie stood in front of him, leaning in for a quick kiss on his cheek. Before her lips brushed against his cheek, Kai turned his head and stole her first kiss.

A 40-year-old Rosalie shrugged her white coat off, folding it up neatly before placing it in her closet. She’d spent most of her life studying, and now she was teaching. She was surrounded by people during the day but completely alone at night – alone with her thoughts. There was always a thought that showed up without warning, like a plague she couldn’t escape. She thought of Malachai every day without fail. Rosalie had no idea that, many miles away, Kai had returned.

~~~

A 19-year-old Kai snuggled his girl as she slept, watching the sunrise from her bedroom window. Her parents were out of town, and they’d just spent their first night together. A strand of her hair was covering her beautiful face; he gingerly brushed it aside. As he did, Rosalie opened her beautiful eyes. The smile on her face was gentle and content. “I love you, Malachai.” He’d heard the name said so many times in so many tones. Hearing it from her was special, unmatched by any other. “I love you, too, Rosalie.”

A 30-year-old Rosalie glanced around her childhood bedroom. She was moving away forever. She couldn’t bring herself to come back, even to visit. Kai’s memory was around every corner, and it was too painful to remember him. She had faith he wasn’t dead, but what difference did it make? He was trapped in a prison for all of eternity, and she’d never be able to see him again. He’d never know how much she loved him.

~~~

A 22-year-old Malachai screamed as he fell to the ground. He had snapped, killing his siblings without a thought or care in the world. The Coven chanted around him, and the sky seemed to open up, sucking him upwards and to his death. At that moment, Kai felt many things: despair, anger, grief… most of all, he felt pain. He’d never see her again, and it was a punishment he’d brought upon himself.

A 22-year-old Rosalie ran to the site of the merge. She felt a deep sense of dread and anxiety. Something was going to go very, very wrong. She ran as fast as she could, but it was too late. Rose got to see one final glimpse of Kai before he vanished in a cold, harsh flash of light. The scream she let out rivaled the one he had released. She would never see him again, and it was a punishment she could never have imagined.

~~~

A frozen Kai lay in Rosalie’s bed. He couldn’t bring himself to leave the town, not when he could still somewhat feel her here. Kai had a few years to ponder what he had done, and he couldn’t truly regret it. Of course, if he had Rose, he would have learned to repent. But he didn’t. Kai wasn’t always a monster, but they had turned him into one. Now, nothing could stop him from finding his way out and killing them all – taking the Coven Leadership that was his birthright.

A 19-year-old Rosalie felt a loving hand brush away a strand of her hair, waking her up. There were just a few rays of sunshine in her bedroom, warming her just as the memories of their first time did. “I love you, Malachai.” She truly did. Every bone in her body felt love unimaginable for this erratic, crazy, beautiful boy. “I love you, too, Rosalie.” Taking a deep breath, she nuzzled into the crook of his neck, feeling his heartbeat chime in sync with hers.

~~~

A 22-year-old Kai exhaled as he felt his feet on the ground. He was back. After eighteen years of exile, he had returned to the real world. Malachai was changed now. He was hardened, unable to feel anything. Despite his sociopathic tendencies, his mind flashed to Rosalie. She was much older now. He was certain that for her, he’d been reduced to a childhood memory. Nothing or no one could heal him. Kai had one goal, and he would succeed no matter the cost.

A 14-year-old Rosalie dashed out the door, eager to meet Kai. They were going to head to the hidden cove where Kai could find some reprieve from his tough family life. She saw him waiting down the street, dressed in his grey sweatpants and a ratty black sweatshirt. She couldn’t help but smile, her young heart fluttering at her little crush. She stood in front of him, then, leaning in for a quick kiss on his cheek. Before she could, she found Kai’s lips against hers.

~~~

A 22-year-old Malachai waited for the doctor. He had been severely ill, and now, if he went down, the Coven would go down with him. It was strange. They’d destroyed any goodness left in him, but when he absorbed Luke’s personality, he wanted to try again. The doctor walked in, and his heart leaped, somehow simultaneously shattering into a million pieces. “Rosalie?” She was eighteen years older now, but he could never forget those eyes. Kai had remembered them no matter how the days blurred into each other, and with her here now, he didn’t know how to feel.

A 9-year-old Rosalie rushed out of the classroom, looking for her best friend. She always got very upset when people hurt Kai. Not having magic didn’t make him any less of a person. Her mommy and daddy made sure Kai felt accepted, too. Rosie glanced around the playground, seeing Kai’s bully of a cousin shove him to the ground. She rushed over, standing in front of her hurt friend, and pushed him away. “Don’t treat Kai that way!”

~~~

A 22-year-old Malachai took great pleasure in crashing his twin sister’s wedding. Tonight marked the end of the Gemini Coven – and the last night of Kai Parker’s life. He had a vial of Lily Salvatore’s blood tucked into his suit jacket, but he didn’t drink it. This would be his revenge, and then there would be nothing to live for. His last selfish act would be taking Rosalie with him in death. As the glass shard plunged into his neck, Kai’s gaze fell on Rose. She fell to the ground, her life leaving her. They were always meant to be, but now they would always be what could have been….

A 5-year-old Rosalie chose a Scooby-Do coloring page. She shuffled the crayons around, searching for the purple. It would’ve been so silly to give Scooby purple fur! Before she could start, a little boy sat beside her. He looked sad, and she wanted to help. Scooting over to the seat beside him, Rosalie held out the crayons to him and put the coloring book in front of him. “Hi! My name’s Rosie. Do you want to color with me?” The little boy sniffled, and his green eyes met hers – now twinkling with excitement.

~~~

Thank you very much for reading my new Kai Parker One-Shot! I hope the structure wasn't too difficult to follow. Through this piece, I wanted to give myself a structural writing challenge and also hoped to illustrate how darkness is never born, it is created.

Please feel free to send any thoughts/comments/constructive criticisms my way. I always welcome them :) If you'd like to be tagged in my future Kai Parker works, leave a comment here or shoot me a message!

If you enjoyed this piece, feel free to check out my other works from my Malachai Parker Masterlist <3 It's pinned to the top of my profile.

Until next time, JustAThoughtfulAngel :)

Taglist: @socio-kai-path1972, @bluelicious, @genevivetaylor, @prettybitchfatwitch

35 notes · View notes

pbandjesse · 9 months

Text

Today was actually a really nice day. I had a great day off I just wish it was longer.

Last night James and the boys came home and I was sitting in the kitchen eating a snack and watching a tik Tok. I had a really fun night and it was nice to see everyone back. We would all stay up for like an hour talking and laughing and telling stories and stuff. Turns out that the boys thought James was 22 and I was like how old do you think I am then and it was very silly. And I just had a really good time talking to Billy and he told me about his family and we all talked about like weird connections we have to Hollywood and celebrity. And Leon was talking about sports and it was it was just a really nice night.

Eventually the James said that we needed to go to sleep because they had work in 6 hours so we got into bed but then we ended up having a lot of laughs and just being very silly talking and I was catching James up on a bunch of gossip and it was just really light and nice and I was able to fall asleep very easily after that.

Sweetp My darling cat kept screaming at the door. The door to the bedroom is open he was trying to get into the studio and he would not stop yelling. James is going to make a vet appointment because I'm starting to think something is wrong. Like I feel like he might not be hearing well. He's eating and drinking and going to the bathroom normally but he seems a little swollen and also he's not responding to things and getting startled very easily and I'm not sure what that is but I'm worried that he might be going deaf. So fingers crossed he's not but it upsets me that he might be going through something and he can't tell me. So I got to make sure that we are getting ahead of this if there is something wrong.

So even though I did not want to wake up at 8:00 a.m. I did. I got up and I quietly got washed up and dressed. The boys were still asleep so I just came into the studio and started working on sewing together my squares. And I was in here for like 40 minutes maybe. I finished the whole row. And then very quietly I heard the door behind me open and Leon leaned in and just asked can we have breakfast please. And it was just very cute. I said of course you can have breakfast I don't know if we have anything here but I'll take you guys anywhere.

So they told me they want to go to macca's which is what people call McDonald's. I didn't know they did that in the UK I thought that was just Australia. But I was like of course I can take it to McDonald's I'm ready whenever you guys are. And they were mostly ready at that point so they got the rest of their stuff together and I kept bouncing around from room to room cuz I didn't know where to go. And we were out of the house around 9:30.

I drove us out to the McDonald's on York road so that we can go to the Target after. I wasn't sure of the address so I put the Target in first and then we had to backtrack one exit but that was fine. We got there at like 9:45 and when we got inside Braden and Dylan were there. Which was very funny that we were all there at once. And we all got sandwiches and I thought it was very silly that all the boys just stood around and ate. Like I sat in one of the chairs and they all just stood around eating their sandwiches and I was like okay. Whatever you live your best life.

I was texting Jess telling her that I felt like I was pretending to be cool mom today because I let the boys sleep in and then took them to breakfast and then we were going to Target. I was living my best mom life. And after we all finished eating, Leon decided he needed another hash brown so we waited for that and then we were off.

Leon had never been to Target before so that was exciting. And I was specifically they're looking for this dress that I saw on Instagram that I think would be really good for the wedding that we're going to this fall but I ended up not finding it. That's okay I'll keep looking. But we mostly just looked around and all of a sudden I lost them. They were kind of trailing behind me and then all of a sudden I looked by me and they were gone because they had gone into the video game section. And I was like whatever they'll find me again so I went over to look at the Barbie section because I wanted to see what jobs this line of Barbies has. It's like you can be anything type of situation. There was a farmer one that I thought was really cute and then later in the day a couple people sent me listings for art teacher Barbie which I thought was great. Not artist but art teacher. Very specific. There's also farmers market Barbie. I need to somehow combine these two things together.

eventually the boys found me and we continued on walking and looking at stuff. They were fascinated by how many different Oreo flavors there were and both of them would get cookies. I just got the lemonade powder and fig Newtons that I was there for. I still did not find the lemon packets. I don't know why those have become so hard to find. But the lemonade works just fine for me for now.

I also got a new nail polish that I thought would be more lilac but is a little more white but it's still very pretty. And then we checked out and I took them to camp.

On the drive back to camp I told them the story about the man that sold the Eiffel Tower twice. And they were fascinated by my story. I love getting to tell people about that. And then they were like we will give you money for gas. Well they said petrol but still. And I was like it's fine I know where you work don't worry about it. And if they want to give me money it's fine but I mostly just really enjoyed getting to give them an experience and James got to have fun with people at the game and honestly it was a win for everybody. Even if the Orioles lost.

after I drop them off I did not have a lot of gas left but I do not pump my own gas so I decided I would make one more stop before I went home and I was going to go to savers.

And I had a lot of fun looking around savers. I wasn't there for anything specific but I was enjoying looking at stuff and it was pretty empty of people. Maybe cuz it had just opened like 15 minutes before I got there but people were not all of them in my space and that was nice. And I had fun just looking around and seeing all the silly things. I did find a bodysuit that I really liked that has a zipper in the front and is from Hollister. And I found a kind of shirt dress. Which is something I've been looking for online for a while but is very hard to Google shirt dress because what you end up with are dress shirts which is not what I'm looking for. And while this one is a tank top which is not exactly what I wanted it is still really nice and has pockets and I'm excited and I'm probably going to wear it tomorrow.

I paid and went home. And it was still really early it was barely 1:00. I had only in half of my breakfast sandwich so I had the other half while I was driving and when I got home I put stuff away and I tried on my two new pieces of clothing. The shirt dress needed two places to be sewn down to look nicer on me because I have a short neck and the collar wasn't as flattering as I was hoping but once I sewed them down it looks way better. And then I worked on some stuff and kind of just poked around the apartment and chilled and watched videos and I finally finished my last six squares so I could really jump into assembling the blanket.

James would come home and they had stopped at the grocery store and got the bread and cream cheese that I wanted to make these little cinnamon rolls that I had seen online that are called snail rolls. So the plan was they were going to make us dinner and do the laundry and then after that they would go get gas for the car and I would make the snail rolls. This ended up getting pushed a lot later than we were planning because while James was cooking they were trying to get the oven to preheat and it just would not and it's the same problem we keep having where the pilot light seems to be on but it's not heating up and something is wrong with the oven. And it's been like this for months where you have to like kick on a burner for it to make the whooshing sound. But I was doing a lot of googling and then we tried taking the top off of the oven and then we tried taking the inside out of the oven and we just couldn't figure out why it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. So I came up with it seems like three options for what might be wrong and we're going to present them to Tina and see if she can get someone out here to try to fix it. Or replace it because it is very old.

But eventually after like an hour it did come on and James made us potatoes and made me vegetarian chicken nuggets. And they made this interesting cilantro avocado sauce that was a little too creamy in my opinion but I think would be really nice inside of an omelet. So I was really grateful for that. I love that they tried a new thing. And we chilled on the couch for a while and I had finished another row for my blanket so now I have 10 left. So I'm hoping to have those done by Friday. And then I got into making my snail rolls.

James finished up with the laundry and was folding it and as I was putting the rolled out cinnamon mini rolls into the oven They went to go get gas and I think they will be home in a few minutes. We're going to eat our little dessert and we're going to build a Lego and it's going to be a very nice night. Honestly today was just nice and normal and small and good. And I hope tomorrow is good too.

Tomorrow I start a new project which is going to be sock puppets and I do not know how this is going to go. But fingers crossed I have high hopes that the kids are more creative than me because I could not really come up with a very good sock puppet. But I hope that it comes out cool and I hope that the weather is nice. I heard someone say that we've had the last 90° days of the summer and I find that very hard to believe but it would be nice. If you look at the weather right now the next week the temperature drops the degree every day so maybe they're right maybe they're not. But it's going to be all guest. And August can be tough.

I hope you all sleep well tonight. I just took a shower and washed my hair and I'm feeling good. I hope I can sleep well tonight and I hope you do too. Good night everybody. Until next time.

3 notes · View notes

mackerelphones · 1 year

Text

Why would I post much here on Tumblr until I get more followers? Yet how do I accrue followers without posting?

It's the Twitter catch-22, except I did begin getting some followers there, gradually. Though a number of them have seemed to vanish or go inactive after Musk took over. In my periods of isolation, I took solace in them, too much. I might not have talked to anyone, but I could post a tweet and know the three or four accounts whose owners would reliably interact, and I always looked forward even to seeing their likes, and even more thrilling was when they responded with tweets of their own. To get to that point here, I guess I just need to shill this Tumblr page in enough future YouTube videos.

But the same catch-22 also applies to YouTube, though I still get the most eyeballs there. Creating a video takes an enormous amount of time, particularly for me, because every task takes me longer than it takes other people for reasons I don't understand. Two minutes of a YouTube video, or a video essay anyway, matches at least 40 minutes of creation and usually more. However, in return for this tremendous amount of effort, on YouTube very few people watch my videos, when measured against people who do YouTube professionally. If the Mackerel Phones channel was going to take off after these years, it would have by now. I would be wise to accept that I have failed.

The further problem is that I expect more people have Twitter accounts than Tumblr accounts, so calling on subscribers to follow my Tumblr for updates would be less accessible. Even so, I will.

I just don't have enough hustle in me. Writing is difficult enough normally, and I can barely focus on writing anymore. But being unable to write is about the same to me as feeling myself slowly die. And creating videos feels so pointless, honestly. I've been at the online content thing for most of a decade at this point and still have little to show for it. I am proud of almost nothing I have ever posted and actively dislike even more of it, and my videos and essays that I do regard well I do not consider anything valuable. In the past, I would hit on a video idea and work at it almost obsessively, losing sleep because I stayed up so late editing. When creating "A Pac-Man World of Loneliness," I spent every free hour working on it, no matter how scared and hopeless I felt about real life. I worked on it every day, for hours, for months, and went to bed wanting to get back to it. What happened to that feeling? But even that feeling filled me with sorrow, to feel such emotions over and put such time into a project I considered basically a piss take.

On the other hand, I have come so far and learned so much since I created my YouTube channel and first posted myself reading a terrible poem back in 2016. I can write, record, and edit material of a much higher quality than I would have thought possible when I began seven years ago. The entire process has been a learning experience, much as living for those seven years has been an experience of maturation. And I have met several friendly people as a result of my work on YouTube, and that is precious, very precious. Yet, on some level, even meeting people feels pointless now because whomever I meet online can only ever be distant from me, so no matter how many I might know, I will remain alone. Everything seems pointless. I feel like I had many chances, and I wasted every one, and now it's too late.

Someone once told me, "You have no hope." She meant that I had no ability to believe in a better future for myself or for anything. She was correct. This is why I don't take care of my health like I used to.

I'm sure once I finish up my current projects, though, and nobody cares about them, I'll return to my YouTube video idea backlog to quell whatever voice in my head has driven me to create even what I have so far. I'm sure when I mention my Tumblr on my YouTube channel, I'll get more followers here on Tumblr, too, until maybe someday most of my followers will not be those creepy sexy woman bots. I'm sure I still have plenty of time to, in fact, lead a good life.

I'm sure

#youtube #twitter

6 notes · View notes

the-insomniac-emporium · 2 years

Text

J Watches Arcane: Ep. 4a, Random Thoughts/Play-By-Play

Oi, only took me fucking months to finally get off my arse and watch the next episode, oops. What can I say, I'm allergic (and yet addicted) to sadness? Anyway, these are just thoughts that I have as I watch, with timestamps. Nothing super in depth, but I just enjoy keeping track of what I notice (might forget otherwise), and it helps with forming bigger pictures with the scraps later on.

Under read-more for length and spoilers (obvs). Seriously, tho, I had a lot of thoughts on this one, even if you ignore the parts that can be summed up with "J, your gay is showing" or "J, your gender envy is showing". I mean, seriously. I mean, like, I had to break this into two parts for formatting reasons. It's kind of absurd. Ends at roughly 22 minutes into episode 4

(1:53) WHAT IS THAT. I WANT TWENTY. FLUFFBALL. Why have I not heard of this fella before?

(4:29) Right up until this shot, everything post-intro/opening gave me low-key Bioshock Infinite vibes. I really should finish that game...

(4:42) Well, first of all, let me just say that I'm glad Caitlyn's mom is still a milf, I guess. Second of all... I know that there's a timeskip between episodes 3 and 4, and I think I read it's somewhere around 7 years, but the contrast between hearing Cassandra talk about Jayce now compared to the last time they interacted is just. It's there. I'm thinking about it. She's a politician, tho, yeah? Feels like she's got experience with putting reputation/public image first. Guess I'm just noting that here in case it pops up again- good source for conflict, yeah?

(4:52) MY WIFE! My wife has a dumb hat!!! I love her dumb hat!!!

(5:29, "we really have descended to anarchy") I am going to melt over her smile oh my god. Also, I appreciate her and Jayce's friendship/basically being siblings (which I have heard a bit about). The way that Cait is so clearly miffed about her post/things with her mother, but still softens up to joke around with Jayce- and the fact that Jayce took the time to come over in the first place :D

(5:55) OH IS IT MY BOY? IS THIS THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF MY GROWN UP BOY? I legit don't know if Ekko's role in the firelights (is that the right name? I have been trying to avoid spoilers) is, like, a huge thing/big reveal, so I don't know if I'll be upset that I got spoiled on it ages ago

(6:22) MY OTHER WIFE. Not to, like, make 50% of this post about how gay I am but-

(6:40) oh hey cool, I got the name right. also just want to say I fucking LOVE the firelights' designs, everything from their outfits to their tools to their sick ass hoverboards

(6:58) that was the smoothest fucking thing I have ever seen oh my god. if I was there to witness that, I would be proposing on the spot. marry me, cool mask man

(7:42, "oh no, she's here") is it my other other wife? is it time for me to start crying, from here until the end, as the chances of recovery slip further and further out of her fingers? will I weep neon pink tears of grape soda gamer fuel glimmer, as the echoes in her skull overwhelm? oh, to be so small, in a world so big and so loud, to feel like one must scream onto the void until their lungs give out, if only to be seen at all- if only to prove that you exist-

(8:52, "... hi")... I mean, like I said, it's a build up, ya know? the end of the rope doesn't feel as bad if you never saw how long it was to begin with, after all

(8:53, *click*) lmao never mind, love my poor, poor feral lass

(9:24) and so it begins. Or, well, it doesn't so much begin as it starts to rear it's ugly head. One thing that I've noticed, and will probably make a separate post for at some point (so the thought doesn't get lost in this jumbled mess), is that the little flashes we see of Jinx's hallucinations here aren't new, per se. Literally in the very first scene of the whole ass show, when the enforcers are walking through the smog, their masks glinting in the firelight, we see those flashes of comic-esque facial expressions, the sort of "signature Jinx graphic". From a design standpoint it's neat, but more importantly, recalling that from the first episode is a great way of showing two things.

Firstly, Jinx has been going downhill for a long ass time. It's not that what happened at the end of 3 completely broke her, it's that life stuck its fingers in the cracks of her mental state, and starting tugging until everything split apart. Also want to say that the fight scene between Deckard + crew and Vi + crew in ep1 also highlights this, specifically with the way everything goes into slow motion, and we Powder at the center of it all, back against the wall, eyes wide and panicked, unable to do anything- because poor girl is probably remembering that shit on the bridge

Okay, tumblr is making me break this up a little, please ignore this random thing, something about a characters-per-block limit?

Secondly, that whole opening sequence sets up the entirety of Powder/Jinx's trauma. Violence, flashes of light, clutching desperately to those who offer her comfort, culminating in the first major loss: Her parents.

Point is, this shit hurts my emotions. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, and please remember that I am not a psychologist/therapist, just a writing nerd with a skeleton full of closets :) yes I know that I fucked that one up, but honestly I think it's funny enough to keep

(11:13) oh. oh, Viktor, time will never be your friend, will it? Deep breaths, love, what you do with what you have will be more than enough. Also look at the little fluffball, back again. Look at them, Viktor, they will give you serotonin

(12:00) these are forbidden candy. I will fucking eat them. Jinx would take one look at these and cronch on one too

(12:35, "the next chapter of Hextech") oh, so you make it stable and the first fucking thing you build is a weapon? please tell me I'm looking at this incorrectly, but that looks like Vi's punchy gauntlet. *three seconds later* okay cool, it has other applications. had me worried there. I mean, I know it will be used as a weapon tho, so... it's a mixed bag :)

(14:00, "a decade?" "it zips past you in the blink of an eye") Heimerdinger, my dude. I know you're small and maybe can't see Viktor's face as well, because you as so close to the ground and so far away, but look at him. Are you really telling me that Heimerdinger is not at all aware that Viktor's health is declining? Has he grown so accustomed to the endlessness of his own life, that he has no concept of the fragility of humanity? just feels a bit insensitive, don't it?

(15:13) why hello, Ms. Bond okay, glad cameras are a thing, even if they're kinda basic at this point. wanted to make sure that my eventual dumb fics can include cute couple photos

(15:44) Cait. Cait. my god. Was that really the best landing you could do? What the fuck. Do they not make sure enforcers know how to get around a little? God, that landing was so loud. Loud landings = hard landings, hard landings = painful landings. You want soft, quiet ones, and not even just for stealth. The process just makes it a hell of a lot easier on your joints!

(17:16) um. okay. sorry, did... did Silco turn The Last Drop... into a night club?... no no no, it's okay, that's fine, no worries. I am just... surprised, is all.

(17:22) is this that one very minor side character that some folks on tumblr are really gay for, but not everyone I've seen can agree on their gender? and also they don't even have a page on the Arcane wiki? and I did definitely check because I saw a picture and suddenly understood tumble's interest?

(18:19, "the world's growing smaller every day") did Silco read that one post I made the other day, when I was having a breakdown at five in the morning?... is he disagreeing with me because I disagreed with him about how it feels to drown, or is he replying to the ending of my post, saying that "hey, no worries, the world does eventually get smaller?". anyway this has been a stupid joke

(18:27) Hawkeye?... oh, nope, just my gf again. sitting in the rafters (very gay of her, if I do say so myself). also, I love that Silco does not react at all to her dropping down directly onto his desk. How many fucking times has she done this? How often did she scare him before he got used to it?

(19:30) this part here is specifically aimed at me. because the creators know I hate eye stuff. I am taking this personally, and not just because it gives me an excuse to pause the show and not look at what I assume is about to be eye needle time. *half a second later* I hated that. Why didn't I just hit play while not looking at the screen? Oh, right, so I could see if I was right and then post about it, duh

(20:28) if anyone is still reading at this point, they're probably tired of me pointing out the fact that I have a crush on essentially every female character. So. Hey look, it's Mel, I can't wait to see what she's been up to :D

Okay, yeah, breaking this into two parts because I've now hit the whatever limit twice, and I have literally never done that before today, so...

#j watches tv #j watches arcane #arcane spoilers #arcane netflix #arcane meta #not super meta but there are parts where I go into it

3 notes · View notes

kuronanox · 3 years

Text

Our little secret-Kaien Shiba

"Kaien Shiba my super hot professor."

(Your Name) day dreams with brightful eyes as she sighs and smiles sheepishly.

"(Last Name)!" Kaien shouts smacking her desk with his rolled up paper as she flinched and looks up to him. His brows were knit and focused. "If you keep day dreaming you'll fall behind!"

"Ahh I'm sorry." She apologizes and bows her head respectfully as he laughs and grins.

"I'm joking, but seriously you should try to concentrate more."

(Your Name) chuckles and mentally screams, her tiny heart would hurt if he actually yelled at her.

"Wait he knows my name?!"

She looks back up and Kaien was already at the chalk board lecturing on the next chapter. With one hand on his hip and the other writing some unknown language on the board.

"Concentrate concentrate concentrate!"

She tries to smack her face lightly as she looks lower to stare at his butt and blushes a bit yelping as the students around her stared and she looked down embarrassed.

Once lecture was done she sighed from exhaustion and packed her bag before her name was called out.

"(Last Name)." Kaien calls out as most of the student cleared out of his lecture room and she mentally cursed.

"Yes sensei?" (Your Name) asks staring at her feet interested with the patterns of her new shoes.

"You can look up." He laughs a bit with both his hand on his hips. His tie moving along with his laugh and his tucked in shirt was so irresistible for her she licked her lips. "Anyways I was looking back at some of your test scores and you are falling behind! Is everything alright?" He asks now a bit concerned.

"No! Everything is fine! I'm just not understanding the material and I don't wanna stop class because of my selfish reasons."

Kaien pokes her forehead and grunts, lightly hitting the roll of paper on her head. "Everyone is here to learn. I guarantee someone else have the same question as you too."

(Your Name) goes back to looking at her shoes shyly as the older man sighs but in a concerning way. "How about I tutor you for 30 min after class each day you are here. Monday, Wednesday, Friday." His eyes raising for her answer as she slowly nods.

"I'm sure you are a busy man and I don't have money for a tutor."

"Don't worry about it, my students come first." He assures her with a smile as she smiles back.

"Jesus he's gorgeous! I can't believe he offered to help me learn on his own time for free!"

"I'll see you next week then!" Kaien cheers smacking her head once again before walking out the classroom.

The following weekend for her was so slow because she was excited to spend one on one time with him.

"He's my professor though! It would be wrong to like him! I'm sure he's married or dating already! I mean I should be too because I'm a junior year college student but still a teacher and student relationship would be to spicy."

Throwing her pillow across the room she squirmed in her bed like a fan girl. "A girl can dream though."

Composing herself she went onto her phone and searched through all social media to "research" him some more but she found nothing.

"Maybe he doesn't use social media? He ain't that old yet though." Putting her phone aside she closed her eyes and waited for Monday to come quickly.

Lecture time came as she sat towards the front of the class to concentrate more. Still this chapter and chapters before overlapped each other and she felt super lost and defeated.

Kaien would teach and sometimes look at her direction and from the expression on her face he knew she was struggling. Once the classroom cleared out he arranged his desk to be more roomy for her to set her things down.

"Cha! Are you ready?" He asks enthusiastically opening up his notes from a few chapters back.

She smiled and sat next to him as they got to work.

Over the course of their their tutoring sessions 30 minutes turned to 40, till it reached an hour and then till after dark.

Kaien didn't realized how much he was enjoyed her company that at times they would get off subject and just talked about themselves or their likes.

"I didn't think a 30 year old man would actually enjoy tutoring." He says to her as she gasped picking up her book bag and getting ready to leave their session.

"To be fair I didn't think a 22 year old girl would need tutoring."

Kaien waved her off, closing his classroom up. Looking out the window it was pouring all day. "Did you park in the garage today?" He asks putting his coat on.

"I did actually!"

"Me too, we can walk together."

The walk was normal it didn't seem like a teacher and student relationship, it was more like friends now. To Kaien there was nothing wrong with opening up your options even though he had none.

"You are still young (Your Name) go to parties and have fun." He tells her as she looks up to him, his eyes showed a bit of sadness but she couldn't figure out what.

"30 isn't old! But then again to see your professor at a party would be kinda sus."

Kaien chuckles and shook his head as they made it to the elevator. It was silent but her heart was racing.

They've spent a lot of time with each other since he offered to tutor her but she wanted to know him more. There was a part of him she could tell was missing.

"How was your college life?"

"Wild I did so many things." He tells her placing his hands in his pockets.

"Ahh me too, there are some pretty crazy frat parties." She tells him lightly as he laughs out loud.

"Tell me about it! I've been to plenty."

As they enter the garage, the rain started to pour harder as lightning mixed with the clouds.

"Will you be okay getting home in this rain?"

"Don't worry! I can wait it off on campus." She assures him as he shakes in head and unlock his car, opening his passenger seat.

"You wanna go to the bar? It's only a block down. We can wait it off there and then I'll drive you back to your car."

A part of her wanted to say no only because it seemed wrong to be drinking with her professor but she knew she wasn't a minor or some kid. It was totally fine and it wasn't like she was sleeping with him for better grades.

With a bright smile she gladly took a seat. "Sure!"

To her surprise the bar was pretty busy and it was blasting with music and people all ages mingling. He asked for a booth and took a seat across from her.

"He has to be interested if he took me to a bar or even offered to go out!"

Looking at the menu Kaien offered to pay for the night.

"Don't worry about it! I'm sure we are hungry also, it's been a long day."

(Your Name) was hesitant at first but gave in only because he wouldn't let her pay for nothing since he invited her out. They had a few rounds of drinks and it was easy for her to talk to him because Kaien was pretty open about everything.

"Yeah I remember falling down the stairs at a frat house blacked out in the bathtub after trying to get home." He tells her laughing his ass off thinking about his college days.

"Yeah it took 7 people to carry me out the house, I was dead weight and woke up in my friends house with different clothes." (Your Name) says sharing her side of stories as well.

"So you're a drinker? I wouldn't have thought." Kaien states as he drank the rest of his water. (Your Name) looks at her watch, it was about to hit midnight and the rain was slowing down enough to drive in.

"It's getting kinda late, I'm pretty sure your family is waiting for you." She says nonchalantly without realizing it may have been a sensitive topic.

Kaien slightly frowns but not enough to show discomfort. He kindly smiles to her after and says "no family, it's just me and I."

Her eyes widen in realization as she quickly apologized and bowed her head. He chuckles and ruffles her hair. "Don't worry, no offense taken. It gets lonely at times but I bare with it. Come on I'll drive you to your car."

The whole night they went out he was a gentleman, opening the car door and the bar door. Holding her bag and paying for dinner. It felt nice.

As they rode back she had to ask him, she wanted to know what this was.

"Kaien?" She asks and the way his name came off her lips felt foreign.

"Hmm?"

"Do you think this is weird? Going out to drink with one of your students and spending a lot of time with me even after tutoring me?"

There was a silence for a moment before he spoke truthfully.

"At first I was skeptical but we are both adults and what we decide to do shouldn't have to matter with imagine or what people think. That means yes I enjoy your company and I do like you."

(Your Name) blushed a bit, he admit to like spending time with her and hinted he didn't wanna stop either.

"How'd you know I like you?"

He smirks and shakes his head before pulling into the garage. "Word spreads fast around my students apparently."

Turning off his car Kaien walked her into her car so she would get home safely.

"(Your Name) if it's out of your comfort zone we could always try after you graduate." He seriously says to her leaning into her window as she gulped to how close he was to her.

"No I don't feel uncomfortable, I just didn't think this would actually be happening."

"Expect the unexpected." He says as she chuckles to how corny that was. "It can be our little secret for a while." Kaien adds with a toothy grin and she smiles.

"Yeah, our little secret for a while."

(Author Note: idk why I feel like I could make this one shot better but then it would turn to a whole story)

#bleach #tite kubo #bleach x reader #bleach oneshots #bleach imagines #bleach oneshot #bleach Kaien #Kaien Shiba

53 notes · View notes

casmybelovedass · 4 years

Text

The Destiel Folder: Season 5

[Season 4 here]

Episode 1:

Dean is visibly upset about Cas' death, especially at (6:07), and Zachariah notices. From here on, we have a progressive worse reaction from Dean to each of Castiel's deaths

Dean calls Cas a 'friend', again sounding very upset (8:20)

We also get a parallel between Dean and Sam: "I learned that from my friend Cas, you son of a bitch!" and "I learned that from Ruby." (9:10) ICWAW, this parallel would implicate romantic subtext

Cas comes back, bringing top energy onto Zachariah, and Dean just... checks him out (32:43) [this is a frequent thing by the way, I'm on S10 right now, it is]

Episode 2:

I'm so fuckin sorry but I'm laughing too hard at this: D"God" C"Yes" D"God" C"Yes!" (4:09) guys, don't sex-talk in front of Sam and Bobby

"I rebelled, and I did it, all of it, for you." (4:54)

Dean gives in to Cas' top energy "Dean, give it to me." (5:53) shit, guys, enough sex-talk

Episode 3:

The 'personal space scene'. Dean, love, if someone is in your personal bubble, and you don't want them there, you don't stand there for 10 seconds while flicking your gaze from their eyes to their lips TWICE (6:04) ICWAW, these scene would be read as full of sexual tension

Dean here compares himself and Cas to Thelma & Louise, from a movie with HELLA lesbian subtext. And the way he looks at Cas for 7 seconds, tongue between his teeth and just... this fucking look (7:37)

You don't look at friends that way. You don't.

"I need your help, because you're the only one who'll help me. Please". (7:58) Cas trusts Dean will help him while no other would, and he is right... also Dean keeps glancing at his lips

The way Dean fixs Cas' tie and collar, so domestic. (10:34) [This will parallel in 10x05 when Dean messes up musical!Castiel's tie for it to be a legit costume.] Also, the whole police station scene is full of Old married couple moments

"There are two things that I know for certain. One, Bert and Ernie are gay." And then they were voted best chemestry couple like Bert and Ernie. Just saying. (16:23) "Two, you are not gonna die a virgin. Not on my watch... let's go."... and Cas just follows Dean like nothing, but later on...

... Cas is beyond terrified at the idea of being intimate with a woman (11:24),

tho he followed Dean with no problem. ... Did... did he think Dean was making an offer?

He chugs down a beer in fear, poor baby

And he is so jumpy I'm dying

Dean admits Cas is the only one who has made him laugh for real in years (20:58), also, shoulder hug, and Cas, who was on the verge of tears a moment earlier, is smiling and comfortable now.

"Don't look at me, it was his idea." (26:57) the look Cas gives Dean, they're so fucking #MARRIED

"Today you're my little bitch." "... What he said!" Dean is impressed and amused by Cas' smugness (and top energy) (31:55) Basically "Well, mark me down as scared and horny!"

Dean understands how Cas feels, and wants to help. He says he feels good with him "I've had more fun with you in the past 24h that I've had with Sam in years... and you're not that much fun." (36:06) Dean doesn't want to be alone, didn't want Cas to leave.

Episode 4:

Dean sounds and looks like a teenager on the phone with their crush, teasing Cas while smiling softly (1:22). Also "I'll just... wait here then." (2:15)

Even as a mortal, Cas stuck with Dean through the apocalypse, living in pain, chugging down drugs, but never leaving Dean's side. Being his second during hunts. Having only each other

And this Cas can recognize this Dean is not his own only by glancing at him for a moment (... by looking at his dick?!) (18:37)

Dean is stunned and concerned about apocalypse!Cas and how his life turned out

Apocalypse!Cas sits like Dean. Aww, they've been rubbing off on each other [yeah, I bet] (22:27)

"I like past you!" and that smile. So sweet and nostalgic (25:35)

This whole scene (23:48). They are so #MARRIED

Dean is concerned about Cas doing drugs, being basically depressed and living like shit (28:03)

Cas saves Dean again. "We had an appointment." "...Don't ever change." and the way they stare at each other (38:49) look at those smiles and how longingly Cas looks at Dean

Episode 8:

Not a destiel moment, but Dean is totally BI: (12:04); "Sure" (12:42); "What makes Dr Sexy, SEXY, is that he wears cowboy boots!" (12:57); and Dean loves cowboys, just saying

Is... is Dean thinking about Cas being pretty? And about the fact that a creepy guy just called his angel 'pretty'? (20:26)

First thing Dean requests Gabe does is to bring Cas back, threatening him

Episode 9:

Dean reacting to Damien and Barnes being a couple is... LOL (36:27) and after that (38:40), he is on his own, fiddling with his keys, smiling to himself. And when Sam asks if he is okay, he responds "Yeah, you know? I think I'm good." while still smiling to himself. Is he happy about an queer man portraying him, about seeing himself in a confident, openly queer man in a relationship? What else could it be?

Episode 13:

Dean gets more and more worried when Cas gets/is hurt (9:45)(38:02). Also, he got Cas a honeymoon suite. Wow. How sweet.

Episode 14:

The phone call scene. The stares, the tension... look at this shit (10:00)

Dean, stop checking out Cas. You're working. But seriously, look at him. He likes his roughness. AND AGAIN WITH THE LIPS STARING (11:02)

Dean and Cas, after being touched by a cherub, stand shoulder-to-shoulder close to each other, in front of a bi-coloured window (13:26-13:33) I MEAN- Also, Dean, you're staring at a naked man's dong... just saying (13:33-13:36)... stop that, be a professional

Is this the first wink Dean gives at Cas? (14:37) for real? With a cherub in the room? Wow.

(16:16) "Where did he go?" "I belive you upset him." Look at Cas during this scene. #MARRIED

Cas asks Dean where his Famine-induced-hunger is, why he seems unaffected by it... and Dean stares at Cas, then the burger he is holding, then back at him, like he has everything he could want right there, in his Baby (29:22)

Episode 16:

... I'm sorry, but... did Cas really have to MOAN Dean's name to get his attention? (5:24)

I believe this is the first time we ever hear Dean say the words "I love you" (14:38-28:09), and he is saying them to Sam. The only other time we hear him say it is to his mother in 12x22. And the only other person he was supposed to say those words to was, in fact, Cas in 8x17. Let that sink in.

"You son of a bitch." Dean's been rubbing off on Cas, and this is not the only line he has picked up from Dean (38:29)

Episode 17:

This is such a sweet scene. Cas is showing himself weak once again, and Dean sympathises with him, reassures him, confides in him. How sweet. (30:17) ICWAW, this would be seen as a romantic bonding moment

Episode 18:

Cas legit looks like an angry wife. Look how pissed he is at Dean (6:19) #MARRIED

This is such a #MARRIED scene, with Cas being pissy at Dean "being a coward". Also "Yeah, you know what? Blow me, Cas!" and his look after that, like "Does... does he actually want me to?" (13:22)

and this is not the last 'sexual invitation' Dean makes Cas. In fact, minutes later...

"Cas, not for nothing, but, the last person who looked at me like that... I got laid. *wink*" ... just... that (17:53). ICWAW, people would believe this was flirtatious, SHAMELESS, teasing

Look at that FULL TOP MODE tho

"I gave everything for you, and this is what you give to me?" (25:28) Cas is not just angry at Dean for giving up on the plan, but for giving up on life, on them. "So you could surrender to them?" (25:17) not "So you can let them win". It could've been phrased that way, but this is not about the angels winning. It's about Dean giving up on them. Cas is 'cause Dean would be selfishly leaving them

Cas starts taking off his tie and... Dean just stares (31:46). Moments later, we find out Cas totally took his shirt off in front of the boys to make the banishing simbol on his chest, and by the way Dean was STARING when it was only a tie, I bet he either gawked or averted his eyes. Either way, GAY

Cas prefers to die rather than watch Dean fail and die himself (31:55) Also, Sam still thinks of Dean as a hero who can do no wrong, while Cas recognizes his flaws and weaknesses. He knows Dean

Zachariah grabs Dean by the collar and gets in his face. Dean does nothing but flinch a little, mantaining his strong appearance. He only submits and looks overwhelmed when Cas does it (37:50)

Episode 19:

Cas is priority to Dean over Adam. He's more family to him than his actual blood (5:29)

Episode 21:

Cas is basically human, bloody, hurt, powerless and weak. First thing he does? Reach out for Dean (3:16)

Cas is still weak and powerless, and took a bus for miles, just to get back to Dean (12:35)

Episode 22:

Moments before basically going and kill himself, Dean focuses on Cas instead of Bobby, his father figure (24:35)

Cas is on the verge of tears at the thought of Dean dying (25:20)

We know Cas can heal without having to touch the body, but we always see him reach for contact with Dean (35:52) [That's why in S15, it hurts to see Cas not touching Dean while healing him. It feels unnatural]

Dean loves cowboys, and associates Cas to a sheriff. Cas, knowing that, smiles softly at the idea(37:30). Also, Dean obviously doesn't want Cas to leave, and tears up when he does

[Season 6>>]

190 notes · View notes

imaginetrahs · 4 years

Text

I'm triggered, when I see your face

Triggered, when I hear your name

Triggered, I am not okay

You need to stay out my way

- Jhene Aiko, Triggered

Nalani

Dealing with Aaron's bullshit is something that I didn't have time for tonight. All I wanted to do was go home and take a shower so I could lay in my bed.

Let me tell you something about Aaron, he is the BIGGEST shit talker in the world besides Kaori. No matter what the situation is, you will always find Aaron having to put his two cents in.

Instead of entertaining Aaron I said a simple 'hey' and kept it pushing. I grabbed Kaori and we left to go home. The car ride home was quite for the most part aside from the radio, and all I could do was think about what my life has become.

Once upon a time Noah and I were happy, believe it or not. I honestly couldn't tell where we went wrong and it bugs me. Everyone loved him, especially my parents and I think it hurt them more when we broke up than it hurt us. I'll never understand why Noah didn't just tell me how he felt instead of broadcasting it to the whole world.

Pulling into the garage, Kaori cut the car off and we just sat for a minute.

"Are you okay?"

'Am I okay?' I couldn't even answer that question for myself let alone someone else.

"No, but I will be I guess. I'm gonna go take a shower and call my mom. Good night, I love you."

Walking up the stairs to my room, I went to my connected bathroom and started the shower water. Getting undressed I got in and put my whole body under the water and enjoyed how hot it was. I thought maybe if I turned the water up as hot as it could go it could rinse away my pain and sadness, but I was wrong. No matter how hot the water was I was still left sad and hurt.

After almost an hour, I got out of the shower and dried off. I lied on my bed for a while not wanting to get dressed and then put on a big t-shirt and underwear. Ironically the t-shirt used to be Noah's, but before I could get deep into that thought my phone rang.

"Hey mama. I was just about to call you."

2:15 A.M.

After getting off of the phone with my mom, I lied in bed watching Stranger Things on Netflix. Sometimes I wondered if the upside down was real and we didn't even know, because it's completely possible.

While contemplating about the upside down, I got a text from an unknown number.

Unknown

Heard you were at Waffle House

Sent 2:17

We all could've ate together

Sent 2:17

Nalani

Who even is this

Sent 2:18

Unknown

Noah

Sent 2:20

Nalani

You got a new number??

Sent 2:21

Why are you even texting me

Sent 2:21

I blocked you for a reason 🙃

Sent 2:22

Noah 🤡💩

Yeah because my other one is blocked 😔

Sent 2:24

I wanted to talk about everything that's going on

Sent 2:25

Can we meet up and talk, at our spot in 20

Sent 2:25

This man must be out of his mind if he thinks I'm leaving my house at damn near 2:30 in the morning to 'talk'.

Nalani

Right "Talking" 🙄

Sent 2:29

Noah it's 2:30 in the morning I'm not leaving my house when we can talk through text 🤗

Sent 2:30

Noah🤡💩

Please Nalani, I honestly just want to talk 🥺

Read 2:35

Nalani

Fine, but talking and that's it

Sent 2:37

Be there in 20, If you're late I'm leaving

Read 2:38

Noah 🤡💩

I'm on my way

Read 2:40

I can't believe I just agreed to meet Noah at 2:40 in the morning.

Getting out of my bed I went into my closet and grabbed a pair of sweats and my pink crocs, they're my favorite pair of shoes, and then grabbed my keys off of my night stand.

Walking down the stairs I heard Kaori's tv on and contemplated on telling her i was leaving. If I told her I was leaving she would tell me not to, but if I didn't she would be upset that I left without letting her know where I was going in case anything happened. Weighing my options I decided to just tell her I was leaving.

"Hey umm I'll be back in a bit." I said opening Kaori's door.

"Where you going?" I didn't know whether to tell her the truth or just say I'll be back.

"Noah wants to talk about everything so I agreed to meet him really quick."

"At almost 3 in the morning! Mmm, don't do anything I would." That's a pretty long list if we're being honest.

Giving a small nod I shut her door and started down the stairs out to my car. For the next ten minutes it took for me to get where I needed to be, I considered turning around at least five times.

It's been two months since Noah and I have broken up and for him to want to talk after all of the drama HE caused seems...weird. Finally pulling to our spot, I noticed his car was already parked but he wasn't in it.

'Out spot' isn't anything fancy, it's just a small field park that's made up with lights and benches, decorative things. Noah and I found this park when we first started dating, it was late and we were bored and decided to just drive around until we stumbled upon this place. To us this was OUR park and coming here became an everyday thing, until everything happened.

Hopping out the car, I walked through the park until I reached this big oak tree that we always sat under. Noah was sitting on a hammock-like chair on his phone but looked when he heard me walking towards him.

"Hey." He says putting his phone away

"Hey." This whole encounter was a little awkward considering all that we haven't seen each other in so long.

"I didn't think you'd come even though you said you would. But with everything that happened and everything that I said I just didn't think you'd show up" he rambled "but I'm glad you did."

"Well to be honest I thought about not coming but then I actually got in my car and stared driving here, and then I thought about turning around about half way here."

For a while we sat in silence not knowing what to say. I took that time to admire Noah's posture and think about how much I missed despite what's happened. Noah must've felt me staring at him because he looked at me and gave a small smile.

"I miss you Nola."

#black girl oc #noah centineo fanfic #noah centineo imagine #noah centineo imagines #noah centineo

7 notes · View notes

viinchester · 4 years

Text

Prompts

How/What to request

Please comment or send an ask with the number of the prompt(s) you want + the character + more details you want to be included. I'm feeling really creative right now, so I might be able to do some of your requests.

1. "Did you bring us here to die?" - "Obviously." - "I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not."

2. "You.. You are-.." - "Beautiful? A genius? Immensely talented?" - "Dangerous."

3. "All that blood looks good on you, it really brings out your eyes."

4. "You keep on pointing that gun at me and blabber about how much you've been wanting to kill me. I'm beginning to doubt your commitment."

5. "Remove your hand or I will rip your arm off and beat you to death with it."

6. "I don't care if you're panicking - just do it quietly."

7. "How long have you been standing there?" - "Longer than you'd like."

8. "Keep your morals away from me."

9. "When did you become so smart?" - "Since I stopped listening to you."

10. "I remember kissing you.. Why do I remember kissing you?"

11. "I was just kind of hoping that you'd.. y'know.. fall in love with me."

12. "Well, that didn't end the way I expected it to, but at least nobody important died."

13. "You're going to have to tell people you're leaving eventually." - "Yeah, but how should I do it? Shall I shout it from the rooftops or send a mass e-mail?"

14. "I have never been so insulted!" - "You don't listen much then, do you?"

15. "What are you doing?" - "… Eating." - "We're being held hostage and you decide to raid the kitchen!?" - ".. They didn't say the fridge was off limits."

16. "Come over here and make me."

17. "I have a name and it's not sweetheart."

18. "I wouldn't miss you. Nobody would." - "..." - "No, wait! I didn't-" - "Fuck off, I hate you."

19. "I really wish you were never born." - "Well, me neither. But.. life be like that sometime." - ".. You're an idiot, you know that?"

20. "I'm dying and you can't do anything about it, so please just hold me. I don't want to die here alone.."

21. "You're bleeding! Where's your friend!?" - "Left me to die to save their own ass. Guess you were right, I really am not worth it."

22. "Did you really think I cared about you?"

23. "This is what I get from trusting you.. Everybody told me to stay away from you, but I ignored them.." - "Yeah, that was really stupid. You should've known better. And for the record: I don't regret anything."

24. "You lied to me! Everything you ever did.. It was all just a game to you!" - "You found out? What a shame.. I kind of enjoyed playing with you."

25. "This is a joke, right? Right!?"

26. "What are you doing?" - "Just what's long over due."

27. "I'm a monster." - "You know you're not."

28. "Listen, I believe there's good inside of you somewhere.. Just.. Just put that knife down, okay?"

29. "Sometimes you need to make your sarcasm more clear."

30. "Oh crap. That's your »I did something bad«-face."

31. "This never happened. Understood?"

32. "Can't you be happy for me for just five minutes?"

33. "You don't give a damn about me!" - "Frankly, I do give a damn about you, my dear."

34. "Innocent until proven guilty, my friend."

35. "You did what!?"

36. "I know I'm very drunk, but I want to kiss you so bad.." - "Excuse you?"

37. "Are you done?" - "Depends."

38. "I should hate you, but all I feel is love!" - "Well, I have that effect on people."

39. "I didn't do it." - "Then why are you laughing?" - "Because whoever did it is a genius."

40. "Was it really necessary to hit me with the corpse's leg?" - "Necessary? No. Hilarious? Yes."

41. "Oh, you're still alive." - "Don't sound so disappointed, I might begin to think you don't like me."

42. "Hold on, you died!" - "Yeah well, it didn't really stick."

43. "I think I'm having a feeling. How do I make it stop?"

44. "This is a beautiful place." - "What a shame you came from so far away to destroy it, right?" - "Not really."

45. "I don't like how that ended. Let's pretend it never happened." - ".. Life doesn't work like that." - "It does now."

46. "I didn't-.. I didn't mean to! This wasn't what I wanted!"

47. "Do you feel any remorse for what you did to them? For what you did to me?"

48. "Please, you have to let me make this right!"

49. "How long are you going to keep on blackmailing me?"

50. "This is going to sound controversial, but I think that went well."

51. "You know, you're adorable when you're mad." - "I could literally kill you."

52. "Well, this is a nice change of scenery." - "It's a prison cell." - "I was being sarcastic."

53. "Run! Run away as long as you got the chance!" - "Run away from what!?" - "From me!"

54. "Rumour has it, I make you nervous."

55. "I can't focus with your damn hand in my- ah.. Oh…"

56. "How are you mad at me, when I'm the one with the broken arm!?"

57. "Well, shit. I'll need a fucking lawyer."

58. "Are you enjoying the party?" - "Party? This isn't a party." - "Not until somebody almost dies."

59. "FUCK! You scared the shit out of me!"

60. "Don't. Move."

61. "You're bleeding on my carpet."

62. "Excuse me, but whoever stood you up is an idiot and a jerk."

63. "Call me that one more time and you'll see what happens."

64. "It's pitch black in here and I can still see you're blushing."

65. "Am I supposed to be scared of you?"

66. "Murder is kinda against the law, you know?"

67. "Bend over."

68. "Beg for it."

69. "I'll make sure you never see them again."

70. "If you relaxed, it wouldn't hurt so much."

71. "There you are. Did you really think you were gonna escape?"

72. "I love you, I love you so much and I'll make sure you feel the same." - "You-.. You are insane.."

73. "Let me out of here! You're a fucking psychopath! I won't ever bend to your will!" - "Now, why did you have to make me mad by saying something so inconsiderate?"

74. "See, now was that so bad?" - "We're in the hospital, you idiot!" - "Yeah, but we could be dead instead, so I consider us lucky."

75. "How do you even sleep at night?" - "Oh, just like a baby."

76. "It'd be a shame if I had to damage that beautiful face.."

77. "Stop struggling. It doesn't have to be painful."

78. "I killed my own blood. What do you think I could do to you?"

79. Person A is wrapped in christmas lights, their body bound tightly to the chair they're sitting on. Person B comes in and grins. "Oh boy, I must've been good this year."

80. "Why don't you ever listen to my orders!?" - "I don't like being told what to do."

81. "I'll go easy on you."

82. "You don't look like a professional criminal.." - "Oh sorry, let me just.. grab my Ted-Bundy-Mask and put on some bloody gloves."

83. "You don't have to stay. I understand."

84. "You don't have to fight me."

85. "Watch me."

86. "You make a sound and it's game over."

87. "I'm like 75% sure this isn't going to kill us."

88. "Uhm, I don't think kidnapping is legal.. So if you could just let me go, that would be great."

89. "Please, I'm begging you.. I will do anything!" - "Anything, you say?"

90. "Cooperate with me and nobody will get hurt."

91. "Shoot him/her. Or I shoot you."

92. "I'm not going to kill you, Y/N. You will kill yourself."

93. "Your life is completely in my hands, so don't test my boundaries."

94. "Why are you crying?"

95. "I could help you, but it will cost you."

96. "Oh, you mean you need.. this antidote?"

97. "Go ahead and pray. See what good that does for you."

98. "What did you do to them!?"

99. "If we get caught, I'm blaming you."

100. "Complain all you want, but hurry and help me hide the body while you're at it!"

101. Person A to Person B: "There's no way in hell I'm doing that!" *Five seconds later* Person B to Person A while watching them do it: "You were saying?"

102. "They don't make a card saying »Sorry for almost bleeding out on your two thousand dollar couch and completely ruining it«, so I got you this instead."

103. "I didn't ask you, because I knew you were going to deny. And I don't need your fucking permission to do anything!"

104. "I am the only thing standing between you and all those people out there wanting to kill you, so I strongly suggest you stop pissing me off."

105. "Why is everbody running around like the city's on fire? What did I miss?"

106. "Alright, so I'll do this ridiculous thing you asked me to do, but in exchange you'll have to come to family-dinner with me and pretend to be my boyfriend/girlfriend, because I've kinda been lying to my family about being in a relationship to get them off my back and now they want to meet my partner."

107. "That's a terrible thing to carve into a tree."

108. "This is definitely not as charming as you might think."

109. "But that wasn't the fucking question, was it?"

110. "You take me instead! Do you hear me? Give her/him/them back and take me instead!"

111. "You know I hear you talking, but I still don't have my coffee."

112. "Take one more step and I'll snap her pretty little neck."

113. "This is real. You're real, I'm real.. I need you to come back to reality with me."

114. "You shouldn't have seen that."

115. "Whatever you do, don't make a sound."

116. "I'd rather be spitting blood."

117. "You can't have her and it's killing you inside."

118. "I could hear you screaming, are you alright?"

119. "I was made to destroy. Not to fix or repare, but to break."

120. "I know how this goes. First, you buy me a drink, then you tell me how pretty I look and at the end of the night, you'll ask for my number."

121. "I'm drunk and I hate everything.. Wait, lemme correct myself, I hate everything but you."

122. "Put the gun down, please. You're starting to scare me.."

123. "I'm right here. I've been here all along. Please, just.. see me."

124. "Stop looking at me with pity in your eyes. Stop it. Stop fucking looking at me like that!"

125. "You took adventage of me when all I did was help you. Others would've left a long time ago, but I kept on believing in you. But you only ever saw me as an opportunity to get what you wanted.."

126. "You really don't know how to talk to women, do you?" - "There was no need to until now!"

127. "You already know how this will end. It always ends with my blood on your hands. I've come to terms with it, you should get used to the idea too. After all, you can't change destiny."

128. "If you want to keep me away, then tell me a lie that will hurt me so deep I'll never want to see you again." - "I love you."

129. "Go ahead, underestimate me. That will be fun."

16 notes · View notes

bobbystompy · 4 years

Text

68 Quotes I Enjoyed From 2019

Below are my favorite quotes from 2019. Though most occurred throughout the year, some took place before but were encountered during.

1) “I don’t bitch about Millenials.

John Entwistle once complained that he didn’t understand rap. Pete Townsend said, ‘It’s not our job to understand it. It’s our job to get the fuck out of the way.’

New generations come of age. The older generation’s job is to shut up and adapt.” - @danagould

2) “I can’t do drugs with you until we kiss.”

3) “If you pay me $50 I'll show up to your funeral but stand really far away, holding a black umbrella regardless of the weather, so that people think you died with a dark and interesting secret.” - @DanaSchwartzzz

4) “A human being is a dangerous thing to let loose in a room with itself, when it cannot think.” - Roger Ebert

5) “There are no bad bourbons, only better bourbons.” - Dave Hernandez

6) “You can’t put a dollar in a kimono.”

7) “This is how it was.” - rampant takeaway from watching ‘Superbad’ several years after its release

8) “What if I had been born fifty years before you in a house on the street where you lived / Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike / Would I know? / And in a wide sea of eyes, I see one pair that I recognize” - Ben Folds, ‘The Luckiest’

9) “Learn the rules so you can break them.”

10) “Nobody makes chili for two.” - Stacy Massey

11) “‘Best city in the world,’ I mutter to myself, as i adjust my ‘driving blanket’.” - Chicago resident Deanna Belos, during the 2019 Polar Vortex

12) “Dude, no one’s ever got arrested for listening to Counting Crows.” - Ricky O’Donnell, justifying late night music volume at his party

13) Bill Belichick: We’re going to have fun tonight. Rob Gronkowski: Yes we are. We deserve it. Belichick: You’re damn right. Gronk: I haven’t stepped out in like eight months. I gotta step out tonight. Belichick: I’m with you, man. I’m even going to step out. Gronk: Oh, I like it!

A Super Bowl winning exchange.

14) Center David Andrews thanked Bill Belichick for giving him "a shot".

Belichick disagreed with it.

Andrews: Thank you for giving me a shot. Belichick: A shot? I didn't give you shit. You earned it! I don't give anything.

Another Super Bowl winning exchange.

15) “We elected one of the very worst living human beings to be President, and it's exhausting. Each and every day, it's an exhausting slog, just to exist in a world where that's true.” - Michael Schur

16) “Some of y’all always picked Odd Job when you played Goldeneye and it shows” - @thedad

17) “Any app is a dating app if you try hard enough.” - Z.W. Martin (though he says it’s lifted)

18) "Once you're as woke as I am, you learn to feel bad all the time.”

19) “Everything’s a balance beam when you’re 90.” - John Dingell

20) [I wake up in a world where The Beatles never existed]

Me: Check out this song I just wrote

[I begin playing “Ob La Di Ob La Da” without having first built up years of goodwill]

Crowd of people: Wow, this sucks ass

-- @seanoneal

21) “People change people.” - Corey Matthews, Girl Meets World

22) “The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.” - William Goldman

23) “Dan could be like a difficult uncle. I didn’t love his fire-breathing conservative politics. I didn’t love the transformation that came over his novels. In Semi-Tough, he created two benighted Texas jocks and laid their prejudices bare. He was declaring himself a member of the Mark Twain coaching tree. In later books, Dan seemed to be trying to prove he could still tell a racist joke. He insisted that his memoir—the last truly immaculate piece of writing he delivered—include a tirade against political correctness. When his editor said people might be offended, Dan said, ‘Fuck people.’

There are certain writers whose style you pilfer. Certain writers whose moral fiber you try to inherit. For me, Dan represented a third category: a writer whose aura you replicate—or, failing that, try to stand in for a while.” - Bryan Curtis, on Dan Jenkins

24) “Never marry anything. Never choose. Even in love, it's better to be chosen.” - La Dolce Vita

25) “An uncluttered, uncomplicated happy ending might sound wonderful, but it’s hardly ever satisfying. Because the value of great stories lies in the tension between desire and need, between the yearning for the ideal, and the unshakable conviction that ideals don’t really exist, at least not the way we want them to. A great story should hurt a little when it leaves us. There should be some hope, but that hope should remain somewhere just an inch beyond our fingers, because that’s the truth. Even if you had all the perfect moments in the world, you’d still be reaching.” - Zach Handlen, on the Futurama series finale

26) “You can’t see him because he has sunglasses on.” - Alissa Levy

27) “The cinema is the greatest art form ever conceived for generating emotions in its audience. That's what it does best. (If you argue instead for dance or music, drama or painting, I will reply that the cinema incorporates all of these arts).” - Roger Ebert

28) “‘Are you gonna let politics ruin a friendship?’

Yes tf I am

People talk about politics as if it’s this isolated, abstract concept that only matters at election time. Somebody’s politics is their world view. It’s whether they think certain human beings deserve rights. It’s how they think the world should be. And if somebody thinks that the world should be colder, meaner, less accepting and downright hostile to people that are different to them, then sure as fuck is the friendship over.”

29) “Can the Supreme Court get me mushrooms?” - J-Papp

30) “Any song under two minutes already has a head start on its way into my heart. Just scream at me and then leave me.” - Drew Magary

31) “Long neck cold beers never broke my heart.” - Clemson Tom

32) “I’d just like to point out that the last spoken words of Game of Thrones were:

‘I once brought a jackass and a honeycomb into a brothel.’”

- @Authoroux

33) “Just once before I die, I want to toss my keys to someone and tell them ‘Bring the car around’.” - Mike Skully

34) “For all the weight they're given, last words are usually as significant as first words.” - Grand Maester Pycelle, Game of Thrones

35) “The best remedy for unrequited love is a trip around the world.” - Cheers

36) [on switching from a hotel to a motel]

Manny: I don't like the sound of that. A lot of amenities disappear when an H turns into an M. Jay: Hey when I met you, you were eating cereal out of a bucket.

-- Modern Family

37) “You and Lindsey don’t want to be ‘estranged’. Estranged is the relationship we want to have with our mothers.” - MegFil

38) “Cigarettes are undefeated.”

39) “My toes are like my fingers on my feet. I can pick stuff up with them.” - Tracy Cunningham

40) “Republicans govern without shame, Democrats shame without governing.” - Bill Maher

41) Sam: I don’t understand the vagaries of the Internet Josiah: Post often, without thought, and you’ll either get cancelled or cancel someone else.

-- Blink-155

42) “Hang a lantern on your problems.”

43) “What a weird web we weave.” - The Situation, The Jersey Shore: Family Vacation

44) “Let the ocean worry about being blue.” - Alabama Shakes, ‘Hang Loose’

undefined

youtube

45) “Honesty without tact is cruelty.” - Shelley Rokos

46) “My whole life is the wrong porn link.”

47) “One parent can take care of 10 kids, but 10 kids cannot take care of one parent.” - Joe Gestetner, via “an old Yiddish saying”

48) “There are no heroes in the room.” - Classics of Love, ‘Gun Show’

undefined

youtube

49) “If I am a little dismissive, it's only because of my harrowing backstory.” - Mitchell, Modern Family (on why he doesn't like sports)

50) “Every time I’m wearing black, I meet a dog.” - Tracy Cunningham

51) “Shower sex? Why would I fuck in my crying chamber” - @chridollarsign

52) “My theory about quarterbacks, having written about some of them, is you either have to believe in god or think you are a god.” - Mina Kimes

53) “The contradictions of capitalism always manifest in our lyrics if you look deeply.” - Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker, Riot Fest 2019

54) “Got a ‘hang loose’ from the weakside bartender.”

55) “It’s Jennifer’s birthday always.” - Eric Hutchinson

56) “I can’t think of a less relevant artist in 2019 than Kanye West. A Jesus freak in a MAGA hat. Yeah, congrats dude -- you’re every grandma who watches ‘Young Sheldon’ and mails checks to Joel Osteen now.” - Dan Ozzi

57) “The past and future are in the mind. I’m in the now.” - Tom Brady, via someone else

58) “Sometimes you walk around boring places and you feel like the most exciting thing in it.” - Drew Magary

59) “Sitting is the new smoking.” - Modern Family

60) “I'll straight up fight folks at a book club and discuss books at a fight club I really don't give a shit anymore.” - George Wallace

61) “Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.” - Rose Garvey via wine country

62) “It’s all ‘ok boomer’ until you need someone who can drive stick shift.” - @OrdinaryAlso

63) “He likes the result of the math.” - Dad, talking about my worst subject frustrating during the process but satisfying in the end

64) Stepmom: Do you want a Bears urn or Alabama urn? Dad: Ask me after they play Auburn.

65) “A cold body carries a warm heart.” - Stefanos Tsitsipas’ Instagram, after his Iceland sabbatical

66) [preparing a dish called the Sandwich of Justice with his friend’s recipe]

"The fun thing about it is when you give it to someone, you can say 'Justice is served.’ That's, uh, Ryan's line. I built my whole life on the backs of my friends." - You Suck At Cooking

67) “Usually three people can keep a secret only when two of them are dead.” - The Irishman

68) “An artist can't control who consumes their content any more than a chemist can control how their chemicals are used once they're created.” - Brian Crooks

3 notes · View notes