#in constant threat of or even constant literal beatings
Note
Did Henry VIII forbid Princess Mary from any correspondence after she was bastardized by statute? Different biographies claim different things, was hoping for some clarity and insight.
If he did, he did a fairly poor job of enforcing the rule:
1172. Anne Shelton to Henry VIII.
I have spoken with my lady Mary, as you desired, and asked her by whom she sent the letter to master Carowe. She said she sent it by her servant Randal Dod, and that lady Bryan delivered her lady Carowe's letter open, the effect of which was to desire her for the Passion of Christ in all things to follow the King's pleasure, otherwise she was utterly undone. After I had spoken with my lady Mary I went to my lady Bryan, and she affirmed what was said to be true. Hunsdon. this Sunday, at 8 o'clock in the evening. Signed.
'Henry VIII: September 1534, 16-20', in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 7, 1534, ed. James Gairdner (London, 1883), pp. 453-457. British History Online.
This contradicts the below:
968. Princess Mary to [Cromwell].
Apologises for her [poor] writing; "for I have not done so much this two year and more, nor could not have found the means to do it [...] but by my lady Kingston's being here."
'Henry VIII: May 1536, 26-31', in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10, January-June 1536, ed. James Gairdner (London, 1887), pp. 402-420.
Which contradicts...
1253. Marillac to Francis I.
Saw letters of hers in French, written to the Emperor's ambassador in the time of her “ennuy.” [...] [Her] chamber woman says that when her mother was first repudiated [1531 or 1533] she was sick with “ennuy,” but, on being visited and comforted by the King [1536], soon recovered and has had no such illness since.
'Henry VIII: October 1541, 11-20', in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 16, 1540-1541, ed. James Gairdner and R H Brodie (London, 1898), pp. 585-592.
And, it even contradicts Chapuys, who mentions her correspondence during this time, as well. There are times he's unable to receive any messages, but Mary was writing him frequently at some times, intermittently at others. Like, during 1534, Chapys falls for some false flags (such as, crowing about how Mary managed to secure the best place on the barge setting out for Elizabeth's new household, sent word to him where the barge would be sent so that he knew which place to wait for her appearance on the shore... shortly followed by him whining about how this showcase of defiance seems to have intensified her mistreatment, and caused the arrest of "a young lady who did her the most service", including interrogation by the Duke of Norfolk as to how, exactly, Chapuys learned which place at which riverside he needed to wait to watch her pass...), but from 1535 onwards, she even manages to send her own letter to the literal Emperor, and she claims it will be very easy to slip out of her sister's household, that all she has to do is drug Anne Shelton and shimmy out a window to accomplish this, all the way to 1536, where she manages to copy a letter her stepmother has written to Anne Shelton and send it to Chapuys, and sends him word that she approves of the plot to oust her stepmother from the throne ("On 2 May 1536, he wrote that Mary had encouraged him to get rid of Anne and, on her advice, he employed various means to do so [...]", Inside the Tudor Court, Lauren Mackay).
There is of course, the possibility that it was 'forbidden' to Mary officially, but that the unofficial policy was to turn a blind eye/allow it so that her correspondence could be monitored. Warnicke espoused this theory, I'm not terribly convinced, however, because while Chapuys does mention Mary's letters, he also, in the thick of the Exeter Conspiracy arrests, claims he's not too terribly worried for Mary's well-being because he's long told her to burn correspondence from him, and he himself has already burned her most controversial correspondence, kept the red herrings he dictated and sent her some for good measure, should her household be searched (since a complete absence of correspondence from Chapuys would be suspect). Although, the possibility that Henry knew his eldest daughter had solicited foreign invasion would perhaps put the pressurizing of his council for her arrest six months afterwards, into an...interesting, context? (Was he planning to hold onto this information/evidence just in case he ever needed to use it? Had he not acted upon it until that point because he wanted to leave the option of an Imperial alliance open? Had he not told his council, but was he planning to if she refused the oaths yet again, mid-1536? Et al)
Tl; dr again, if that was his forbiddance, it seems it was either rather toothless (it would be instructive to read the letter Shelton was responding to here, wouldn't it) and/or inconsistent. There seem to have been periods within this timeframe where this 'rule' was more strictly enforced than others.
#anon#correspondence with her mother; i believe so; correspondence period?#it doesn't seem like it#and yeah there is not much consensus btwn the available mary i biographies#not even on whether or not she was on (virtual) or (literal) house arrest#there is the comparable example of elizabeth's house arrest during the marian era#which begins with the tide letter and ends with her gaoler forbidding writing materials until she has petitioned the council like. 100 time#in her royal nuisance era#my sense of these years has evolved quite a lot bcus when there is a controversial subject i tend to focus in on it#historians have moved from an insistence that mary lived in a succession of houses of horror#in constant threat of or even constant literal beatings#with every single privilege one could imagine denied#(90s and the aughts)#to...well; mary was a dissembler and well-versed in the art of self-fashioning#ie what she herself wrote does not always seem to have been necessarily true#for example; she claimed in the immediate aftermath of the boleyn downfall#that the only reason she had not written to her father from 1534-36 was that she was denied writing materials the entire time#and yet...see above#i have had a similar journey. it is a matter of reading the dispatches of the imperial ambassadors primarily#and then tabling them against all other available primary sources#this letter/source is also illuminating bcus it means the narrative that all her supporters advised rebellion was not true#this is a compelling piece of evidence that disproves the narrative that chapuys was in such concert with mary's supporters#bcus it shows they were advising her to submit two years before chapuys did so#*ambassador
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
DP x DC: The Most Dangerous Card Game
Ok so Danny has essentially claimed earth as his. And he is fully aware that there are constant threats to the planet. Now he can’t stop a threat that originates on earth (that’s something he’ll leave to the Justice league) but he can do something about outside threats. Doing some research on ancient spells, rituals, and artifacts, he cast a world wide barrier on the planet to protect it from hostile threats so they cannot enter. This will prevent another Pariah Dark incident. However, barriers like this come at a price. You see, there are two ways to make a barrier. Either make one powered up by your own energy and power (which would be constantly draining) or set up a barrier with rules. The way magic works is that nothing can be absolutely indestructible. It must have a weakness. The most powerful barriers weren’t the ones reinforced with layer after layer of protective charms and buffed up with power. Those could eventually be destroyed either by being overpowered, wearing them down, or by cutting off the original power source. No, the most powerful barriers were the ones with a deliberate weakness. A barrier indestructible except for one spot. A cage that can only be opened from the outside. Or that can only be passed with a key or by solving a riddle. So Danny chooses this type of barrier and does the necessary ritual and pours in enough power to make it. And he adds his condition for anyone to enter.
Now the Justice league? Find out about the barrier when Trigon attempts to attack, they were preparing after he threatened what he would do once he got to earth. How he would destroy them. The Justice league tried to take the fight to him first but were utterly destroyed, so they retreated home to tend to their injuries, and fortify earth for one. Last. Stand. Only when Trigon makes his big entrance…he’s stopped.
The Justice league watch in awe as this thin see-through barrier with beautiful green swirls and speckled white lights like stars apears blocking Trigon and his army’s advance. The barrier looks so thin and fragile yet no matter how hard the warlord hits, none of his attacks can get through and neither can he damage said barrier. That’s when Constantine and Zatanna recognizes what this barrier is. Something only a powerful entity could create. For a moment, the league is filled with hope that Trigon can’t get through yet Constantine also explains that it’s not impenetrable. And clearly Trigon knows this too for he calls out a challenge.
And that’s when, in a flash of light, a tiny glowing teenager appears. He looked absolutly minuscule compared to Trigon and yet practically glowed with power (this isn’t a King Danny AU though).
And that is when the conditions for passing the barrier are revealed. And the Justice realize that the only thing stopping Trigon and his army from decimating earth. The only way he can get through….is by beating this glowing teenager in a card game.
Not just any card game though. The most convoluted game Sam, Danny, and Tucker invented themselves. It’s like the infinite realms version of magic the gathering, combined with Pokémon, and chess. And Danny is the master. So sit down Trigon and let’s play.
(The most intense card game of the Justice league’s life).
After Danny wins, this happens a few more times with outer word beings and possibly even demons attempting to invade earth, yet none have been able to beat the mysterious teenager in a card game. Constantine might even take a crack at it and try to figure out how to play. He’s really bad though. Every time this happens, the Justice league worry that this might be the time the teenager looses. Yet every time, he wins (even if only barely).
Meanwhile, Danny, Sam, and Tucker have gotten addicted to the game and play it almost daily. Some teachers might seem them playing the game are are like ‘awww how cute’ not realizing this game is literally saving the world. Jazz is just happy they aren’t spending as much time on their screens playing Doomed.
#DPxDC#dcxdp#Danny makes a card game to save the world.#Technically he worded the ritual so that they had to ‘beat’ him as those are the most powerful barriers and most reliable.#keys can just get lost or stolen (like the one to Pariah’s Coffin)#A riddle would be useless once someone figured out the answer. Like how no one takes the sphynx seriously anymore.#(Sorry Tuck. But it’s true).#And there is NO WAY Danny is just leaving a hole open for anyone to pass through. No thank you!#So…beating him. But it’s not like Danny wanted to fight so…he edited the ritual a TINY bit. Card games are good. Much less painful too.#Danny Tucker and Sam made the most complicated card game they could imagine.#It’s based on their strategies for fighting ghosts. Capturing them in thermoses. And MUCH based on a on field battle strategy.#It often requires spontaneous thinking on the spot. So Danny? In his ELEMNT. It doubles as practice for his actual ghost battles too.#They had SO much fun making this.#Sam added an entire series of plant cards that act as traps and healing ointments and duds that just take up the field.#Tucker added legitimate hyroglyphics combined with Latin as well as English and ghost speak.#Yes. You actually have to speak that language to play. With proper pronunciation. (Amity Parker’s think the three are talking gibberish.)#I headcanon Sam and Tucker are fluent in Ghost.#Constantine WILL figure this game out SO HELP HIM!#Some of the cards also have combinations related to constellations either in name or placement on the board.#By the way the board is based on a Hexagonal summoning circle with Rhunes along the edges#And the placement of the cards on the board and on what rhune MATTERS.#Also the cards move disintegrate and have certain abilities. Think of Harry Potter Wizard Chess.#But they are normal when Danny plays at school. This is just for ✨effect✨ Against invaders.#Danny faces multiple opponents. He also halts alien invasions.#While Danny COULD stop crime on earth he’s not sure how to fight a normal human and hold back so he sticks to ghosts.#The Justice league are going crazy trying to figure out who this entity is and after deep research are convinced this is some sort of#Ancient being who has protected earth for millenia. They have paintings on ruins and everything.#Danny is not aware they think this.#Raven starts praying to Danny as if he is a god and wrangles the other Teen Titans into doing so as well. Danny is still unaware of this.#Danny is not a King or an ancient. Just a very VERY strong ghost.
2K notes
·
View notes
Text
blame the “hitting on your mom as a punishment” tiktok i just saw that literally blew my brain up. established because they’re disgustingly in love and because i say so
Eddie would normally consider himself pretty immune to the roar of arguing teenagers. Chaos surrounds their little Party. They’re not a quiet bunch when all together. It’s all shoving and yelling, giggling and roughhousing. Carpet-burned battle scars from the floor of Steve’s living room.
Lord knows Eddie himself wasn’t an inside-voice kind of person. He was certainly wont to standing on coffee tables and screeching demands for the remote when it was unjustly stolen away by villainous hands.
Eddie loved these people to death, and they were a lot of fucking fun to hang out with, it’s just this...this was an unreal level of noise. A normal sleepover night turned a little too rowdy, the adolescents celebrating the start of Summer with a bang.
Steve had already asked them to keep it down four times this evening. Nothing seemed to calm them. Not requests. Not threats of being sent home. Usually their Dungeon Master threatening their characters’ souls did the trick, but no go.
Getting teenagers to listen? A feat more impossible than defeating creatures from an alternate universe.
Dustin and Erica were in a bitching match about the best D&D class. Lucas and Mike had been fighting over movie choices for the last half hour. Eddie’s money was on the VHS player breaking before that, the constant mishandling and shoving of tapes had the poor thing practically smoking.
Will, ever the diplomat, was trying to be an impartial party when asked his movie opinions. Which, of course, caused more yelling.
Max and El had been the only ones being semi-quiet, but that quickly ended when they followed through on their surprise attack pillow fight, pummeling the boys senseless and causing the already unbearable volume to kick into overdrive. Eddie could practically feel Steve’s migraine building, even from where the dude had retreated to the kitchen. Dinner had been pizza. Quick. Easy. Clean. Or, it would have been if it hadn’t had been for the food fight. Steve was still in there scrubbing cheese out of his parents’ tiled backsplash. Dishes clattered in the distance when the cacophony hit its crescendo.
It was the proverbial straw.
“Alright, that’s it! Hey. Come on, guys. Knock it off,”
Nothing.
“HEY!”
He maybe overdid it that time, but the absolute ear-splitting boom of a yell he let out stopped the ruckus dead.
Silence rang for a beat.
Huh. Maybe Eddie should try out incorporating that into his music. He honestly hadn’t known he could get to that range.
The teenagers in the room stared at him, not cowed in the slightest, but curious enough to know what the hell Eddie’s problem was. Max was the first one to quirk an eyebrow at him.
“Geez, need attention much?”
Eddie folded his arms to show he meant business. “Steve has asked you guys to tone it down. You’re waking the fucking dead. Why don’t you guys, like, actually go be good human beings and help him clean up your mess you all made in the kitchen, huh?”
Lucas snorted. “Yeah, okay, mom. Why don’t you go help him, you guys will probably just make out in there, anyway.”
It was a teasing comment. Meant to jokingly rib before getting back to doing whatever the hell they wanted to do.
But, see. That just gave him an idea.
Never let it be said Eddie couldn’t be creative with his punishments. He was a DM after all.
“Alllllllright. New plan. Listen up or suffer, ankle biters,”
He really didn’t appreciate the snickers that brought about when he was trying to be intimidating. Rude.
“You going to send us to our room or something? I’m real scared,” Erica’s scathing, dry wit was unparalleled, truly.
“Nope. Better. It’s a new rule: You little shitheads give me attitude and don’t listen, I hit on your babysitter.”
It was silent for a minute, brains audibly computing that statement and coming up ERROR. Will hesitantly spoke up.
“Uh, Eddie, I really don’t think that’s--”
“Yeah, what the fuck?” Mike interrupted. “Why would you beating up Steve hurt us? I mean, like, I guess it would emotionally, but that’s fucked up, man.”
Eddie rolled his eyes, still smirking wickedly as his plan solidified.
“Oh, I don’t mean that kind of hitting, young Wheeler. Though, it may yet get physical--Hey, Steve?” He called out. The sink in the kitchen shut off after a second.
“Yeah?”
“Can you come here?”
The kids shuffled around on the floor warily as the other man walked into the living room. The energy had obviously shifted, it was probably an odd vibe to walk in to, but Eddie cut Steve off before he could ask any questions.
“You tired?”
“Uh, no. I’m fine--”
“It’s just you just keep on runnin’ through my mind constantly. I figured you’d be exhausted, sweetheart,” Eddie purred, the words cloyingly sweet and full of exaggerated charm.
There was a countdown, three, two, one...
A collective groan let out. A few uncomfortable laughs.
“Dude, what the hell?”
“You guys agreed not to be gross in front of us!”
“Oh, my god, can I actually get sick from how cheesy that was?”
Eddie had to work at keeping in character when his very first line had pulled the intended reaction. He was already reaching forward to curl an arm around Steve, pulling him in in a slow, sultry attempt at being smooth.
“What? Can’t I be sweet on my guy? You all will understand when you’re in love one day. Right, sugar?”
Fake gags and retching sounds, too dramatic to be real protests, but still indignant and annoyed. Eddie was pretty sure Dustin slapped a hand over his eyes.
“Uh...yes?” Steve, who had previously looked like a car accident had happened directly in front of him, was catching on to the play. He eyed the disgruntled floor-children with a growing grin and let Eddie snuggle up to him.
God, his baby was so clever. He always knew what Eddie was thinking.
Too busy having a non-verbal conversation with Steve on how to best annoy the kids, Eddie didn’t see Mike turning his attention back to the tv. He did, however, hear him telling the others to “Just ignore them, they’ll get all gushy and leave us alone.”
Oh, Michael, Michael. Wrong move.
“How you doing, babygirl?” Steve flushed, deep and red and--huh. Okay. Revisiting that one in the future. “You good? You need anything? Your head hurting, sweet thing? I can kiss it better,”
Eddie ducked forward to kiss Steve’s cheek. It was chaste, a sweet little thing...that Eddie made infinitely worse by the smacking, obnoxious kissy sounds he emulated there. The chorus of groans and protests started up again. He didn’t even pull his face away to call over to them.
“I’m sorry, is that attitude? Am I hearing more attitude?”
“Dude, Eddie, noooo!”
“Jesus, it’s like watching your parents make out, oh my god.”
“You guys, let’s just go already,”
“Yeah, I’ll take washing dishes over this,”
The grossed out teenagers whooshed past them. Grumbling and glaring--except Eleven, who smiled up at them sweetly--leaving Steve and Eddie standing in the living room, still wrapped up together.
It was too tempting then, with the kids safely out of range, for Eddie to resist the temptation to drop his kisses a little lower down Steve’s neck. To let them get a little less chaste. Just a little.
What can he say? He’s a weak man.
“That was evil,” Steve hummed. His shoulders dropped, though, relaxing into Eddie’s hold, the closest thing they’ve had to quiet all night settling in.
“Hey, I accomplished two things. Got them to chill out and I get the perk of feeling you up in the middle of sleepover night. It’s a win-win.”
A crash and a muffled argument broke out in the kitchen before Steve could respond to that.
The audible scuffling was cut off by Eddie calling out “Your ass looks great in these jeans tonight, Harrington!”
The fierce whispers and shushing were enough to get both of the older boys cackling loudly.
#Listen this is cheesy and poorly written but i HAD to#go find that tik tok because it was hilarious but also radiated love and healthy parenting#they called it 'gentle parenting with malicious intent' looooool#steddie#the party#my brain vomit
4K notes
·
View notes
Text
practical magick
a stiles stilinski x witch!reader
plot : just when stiles thought he had gotten used to the dramatics of the supernatual, he happens across you performing magic in the forest. when you fail to wipe his memory, his thursday afternoon gets a whole lot weirder.
wc : 4.678
contains : sfw. kissing at the end. the picture for look inspo is fair-skinned but the reader's skin color is not described! reader has hair! google translated latin sorry 😞i like my men loserish and obsessed sorry.
a/n : yasss a little halloween special. rewatching teen wolf for the third time bc idfk. is it obvious i love witch!reader's yet.
for the first time in over a decade, stiles stilinksi was bored out of his mind.
he had previously thought that given his adhd gave him a deep desire to be doing literally anything all the time that the word bored wouldn't enter his daily vocabulary until he died.
yet here he is, kicking his feet at the dead leaves on the ground as he searched for any hidden traces of wolfsbane. the only reasons this had even happened was because he had opened his big mouth too many times and was sent on a busy quest by deaton, to "make sure the surrounding areas were safe for werewolves."
just reminding himself of what led him here was enough to tick him off again. it wasn't like the past two years have been easy, being under the constant threat of werewolves, werewolf hunters, kanimas, etcetera etcetera. it was enough to stress out the most stable of adults, and stiles was the direct opposite of that, so of course he got nervous and started talking over people and pissing them off.
"stupid wolfsbane, stupid werewolves," he mumbles, kicking at more of the dead brown leaves on the forest floor, tearing a line of the familiar purple plant up from the ground and stuffing it into the brown sack in his other hand. once he was done it was likely it would either be tucked in jars in deaton's stash or burned. he wouldn't mind seeing the latter.
its another twenty moments of grumbling and scavenging before a sound in the distance stops him in his tracks. he stands still, making sure that he barely breathes before he relaxes, figuring his anger and memories are making him paranoid of the woods.
a minute later he wishes his mind was playing tricks on him, because he nears the noise again, but this this its louder.
"its closer," he thinks.
he barely even registers when his legs start running. he may have a bag full of wolfsbane, but there was no guarantee the threat was something the plant could harm. and he didn't feel like tempting fate today.
at this point he's slightly lost his direction, but when he passes the stunted redwood stump he and scott carved their names into during the fifth grade he starts to understand where he is, and as his heart beats in his hears he knows if he turns right here he'll come up onto the old willow tree-
in the span of ten seconds he smacks head on into a hard object, falling on his ass and gasping as the air is knocked from his lungs. he blinks quickly to try to rid of the black spots in his vision, and before he can comprehend it he's making eye contact with you.
he's slightly embarrassed that the first thought that races across his mind is how pretty you are. he knows he should be wary of you, but he can't help it. your hair is a rich (h/c), seeming to almost shine despite the sun being blocked by clouds. your skin is smooth and your eyes are gorgeous and big and still staring straight at him.
you both rush to stand up. he holds his hands out in a way that you would calm a wild animal, hoping it doesn't piss you off.
you continue to stare at him. which isn't helping calm down his racing pulse.
"uh, alright. look, i'm not gonna hurt you, alright? i'm just...looking for something..."
before he can finish his sentence, you raise your hands to cup the sides of his face. his words die in his mouth and he feels his cheeks warm up to the point he's surprised they haven't burned your palms. you look determined, and for a second he feels like he's gone to heaven
"convertere et perge quid agas. oblivisceris quid hic vidisti."
turn around and continue what you're doing. you will forget what you saw here.
his mouth opens and his brows scrunch in shock. he never thought those latin lessons he took online and with lydia would pay off, but he's really glad he did them now.
he considers doing what you said, just turning around and forgetting all about this encounter. but unfortunately his curiosity is getting the better of him, and if his suspicions are correct he needs to know more about you.
"i'm gonna guess you just tried to put a spell on me, right?"
your eyes widen so largely he's afraid they're going to pop out of your skull.
"i..i don't understand, that should have worked. are you a warlock? druid?"
"no, no. i'm just stiles." he tells. his guess that you were something supernatural is partially confirmed, since you know about druids and the whole tried to put a spell on him thing.
"well, stiles, unless you tell me why my spell didn't work on you i'm most likely going to have to kill you." you deadpan.
he thinks you're kidding so he eta out a strained laugh. you don't even twitch.
he wracks his brain for a good enough excuse that will save his life before his arm moves without command and thrusts the bag in your direction.
"well, i have a uh, a bag full of wolfsbane, if that matters at all. pretty sure it does since…yeah…wolfsbane”
yours eyes dart from him to the bag, most likely not trusting that their isn’t some insta-death powder that will pop out as soon as you open it, so he looses his thumbs grip and steps closer so you can see the purple herbs inside.
“hate to admit it but you’re right,” you sigh, pushing back some hair from your face. his eyes follow the movement before darting back to yours.“ that much wolfsbane would make most supernatural or magical doings wonky.”
"yes, yes! exactly. that makes sense. im sorry about that-"
"why would you even have that much wolfsbane anyway? are you a hunter?"
"what? no, no! im not, i swear to you im not a hunter. i can explain this, really i can." he nearly chokes on his words at the speed he speaks.
you stare at him for a few seconds more before crossing your arms over your chest, hopefully about to let him explain why he has a bag filled to the brim with a dangerous plant on a random afternoon.
when you start to walk directly past him into the forest he doesn’t think he’s ever been more confused.
"fine. you can explain it on the way back.”
he’s as still as a statue as he process your words. you just accused him of being a hunter and now you want him to follow you to whatever mysterious place your going? even for him this is weird, and he’s ten seconds from refusing-
“hurry up.”
he rushes to catch up behind you.
after around twenty minutes of stiles repeatedly asking where you were going followed by silence on your end, you finally reach a clearing in the woods filled by a large victorian-era house, fully black with large looming windows lit up by warm golden lighting coming from inside. there's a nearly fully glass sunroom/greenhouse on the right side, and he can see from here the varying flowers and plants that fill the room. he wants to ask how a house like this could be kept under wraps from the rest of the town, but then he remembers.
magic, duh.
you lead him through the threshold of the home and down a hallway until you arrive in what must be your living room, not giving him a chance to admire the room before you're pushing on his shoulders so he sits in a loveseat, taking your own seat across from him. your legs spread and you rest your elbows on your knees as you glare at him, causing him to shift in his seat.
"why are you carrying a bag full of wolfsbane?"
"my friend's boss, deaton. he asked me to pick up any wolfsbane in the woods to make it safer for them when they do the whole wolfing out thing."
"deaton's working with werewolves again? does he have a death wish?" your brow raises in confusion, he notes how the fingers on your right-hand scratch at the skin on your right.
"i'll be honest, you're kind of creeping me out."
"thank you. why is he doing it?"
"my friend, scott. he's a werewolf. and so are our friends erica and boyd. and derek and his weird uncle peter-"
"the fucking hale's are back? are you kidding?" a scoff leaves you and you get up out of your chair, starting to pace back and forth in front of his chair.
"yeah, it was this whole thing with peter being evil and killing his niece, and he turned scott but scott thought it was derek who turned him. it was a whole thing. not to mention how peter came back from the dead-"
you continue to walk around the room while occasionally pausing to pay attention as the boy details the events that have happened in the past year. despite you being a stranger it felt oddly cathartic to vent about everything that had happened to him. admitting to the countless times he felt scared out of his mind but had to stay strong lest his enemies take advantage of it.
"that's a lot for a normal human to go through in just a year with no prior knowledge of the supernatural. i'm surprised your brain didn't implode from the stress."
he blinks. "thanks. i guess."
"you're welcome. i'm going to make some tea. stay here," you say, moving from standing across from him to heading to a room near the side of the room, able to faintly see some dark counters and pots and herbs hanging from the ceiling, "not like you'd be able to leave anyway."
that's reassuring, stiles thinks to himself, bouncing his leg up and down where he sits. after a minute he figures you won’t kill him horrendously if hes looks around a bit, so he gets up and starts observing the countless pictures on the walls. some are old, like the people in them are wearing outfits from a few hundred years ago, while some are colored and recent. in most of the recent ones, you’re with three older women who look just as dark but ethereal as you do.
he continues looking at some pictures and hung-up trinkets when you come back into the room with two cups of tea, handing one with a smile to the wary boy with a halfhearted promise that it’s “totally not poisoned.”
“can i ask you a question?” he asks, sipping at his tea after he discovers it’s not poisoned and actually really good. he was never really fond of tea, always preferring coffee or energy drinks when he was in a low-energy period. he remembers his mom liked chamomile tea.
“you just did. but go ahead.”
“why would you let me in here? you could have just questioned me at the willow tree, you didn’t have to let me into your house. not that i don’t like your house. i like the whole victorian gothic vibe.”
you don’t answer for a solid minute, slowly drinking from your cup as you stare into the lite fireplace.
“witches pride ourselves on our knowledge. to be aware of our abilities and surroundings at all times to best stimulate our growth. and as much as i’d like to be this powerhouse who could take down any threat, i know i’m not. if you actually were powerful and i tried to take you on myself? who knows what would happen.”
“and i’m guessing that magical barrier around the house would protect you in case i really did try anything?” he gently asks, not wanting to talk too loudly to distract you from opening up to him.
“exactly. plus if you tried anything my aunts probably would have put a curse on you and your loved ones. something not too flashy to attract attention, but enough to cause great suffering.” he notices your soft sigh when you stop talking, almost like you’re disappointed you won’t get to see this suffering play out.
“plus it’s better to know where your talents excel,” you continue, setting your cup down on a skull patterned coaster on the coffee table in front of you. “i’ve always been better at using my magic to investigate my surroundings. helps to find materials or signs of psychos roaming around.”
something you two have in common. it makes his mouth quirk up.
“so, the werewolves and all the other things being back in town, that’s a problem for you and your aunts, right?”
“yup. if it was just werewolves it’d be normal for beacon hills, but kanimas and a whole pack of alphas? who knows how much that can disrupt the natural balance and what more they’ll bring.”
he thinks over his next words carefully. scott would likely be upset at first at him for trusting you, but he was also the nicest person stiles had ever met. if you could help them then it was worth the risk.
“then how about a trade. you help us with this alpha problem, and you get the experience you need to become a great and all powerful witch. pretty soon you'll be riding your broom to your heart's content."
you can’t help but scoff a laugh as you think it over. he starts to think you’re about to reject the offer as you stare him down before you get up and offer him a hand.
“you’ve got a deal.”
after shaking on it, you send the boy back with his bag of wolfsbane and a few more helpful weeds from your greenhouse, giving him a note to give to deaton so he won’t ask too many questions.
when he returns to the vets office he dumps the materials on the operating table, ignoring isaacs joke about how if he took any longer they’d all be alpha chow by now. he can tell deaton is concerned about where he got the vials of strange red and yellow herbs, but when he reads the note his eyes widen and he lets out a mix between a laugh and a sigh. scott asked insistently what was on the note but his boss refused to tell him what it said.
before he left to drive home, deaton pulled stiles to a corner and told him that he had been in close contact with one of your aunts before something happened a few years after the hale fire that caused them to go into hiding and cut contact with all supernaturals they had previously been helping, including him as the emissary of the hale family.
as he lay in bed that night staring up at his ceiling, all he could think about was you. you were a welcome distraction from the chaos of his current life, a pretty distraction at that. if not a bit scary. which he didn't mind all that much.
the both of you spent more time together in the following weeks. at first, it was just simple conversations by the willow tree talking about the werewolf situations and checking what materials deaton needed from your family. as time went on his curiosity got the best of him and he started to ask you more questions about your life.
"so hit me if this is stupid but did you have any family in salem? or can you like make a potion ina cauldron to see if I did because I could use that as massive bargaining power in fights with issac-ow! why'd you hit me?"
"you said i could."
"yeah but not so hard. jeez, ever thought of quitting this witch thing and trying boxing."
"never thought of it. maybe i should start now. with your face."
"really funny."
(your threats kind of reminded him of derek, but had less of an 'i'm about to rip your throat out and eat your esophagus vibe.' slightly.)
but as time went on it got deeper. as he told him more about himself you started to do the same, once even apologizing for "giving off psycho killer bitch vibes" and chalking it up to being so isolated from people for most of your life. he told you he didn't mind the vibes, assuring you he liked it maybe a little too excitedly.
he could really feel the shift when one day he came up to the willow tree and he saw you, standing with a frame photo in your hands and nearly on the brink of tears. he was so shocked at seeing you show such intense emotion he wasn't watching where he was going and stepped on a branch, alarming you as your head whipped to him like a deer in headlights.
"i...im sorry. i can leave if you want."
"no no, it's," you shook your head, looking down at the photo once again. "it's fine. it doesn't matter."
"well if it's enough to make you cry id say its world ending-"
"could you just shut up? for once in your life?"
it's quiet for a minute, the only sound in the air being the gentle breeze. even thought the comment stings stiles knows all too well you're just lashing out in anger and hurt.
"im sorry."
"don't apologize. i get it, i do." he moves closer until he's standing beside you, walking slowly so he doesn't make you lash out again.
he looks down at the photo and he gets it. its you, about six or seven with a bright smile on your face and standing with two people he can tell are your parents. he can see the resemblance. you have one of their smiles and hair color, the other's nose, and by their clothes, the same dark style.
"its been over ten years. since i lost them," you whisper, your voice sounding more weak than he's ever heard it. "itd be nice if I was staying with my aunts for some sabrina the teenage witch reason but no. i don't have a choice."
he gently puts a hand on your shoulder. "i get it, i do. i lost my mom. every day i remember things about her in things i do. it hurts but its better than forgetting."
you sniff and hes about to back up when you put your hand over his on your shoulder, gripping it tightly. it hurts a bit. he doesn't really care.
"its not fair."
"its not."
"...thank you."
"don't mention it."
you give him with the materials and he's about to leave when you stop him, your hand grasping his wrist. he wants to ask whats wrong but he stops. you're staring right at him, into his soul he thinks, and all he wants is to hold you and tell you any pain he's suffered the past few years is worth it because it led him to you, that even if you asked him to sacrifice himself on an alter for a spell that would make you happy for a minute he would do it-
"this bracelet. i want you to wear it and don't take it off no matter what, all right?"
hey, that works for him.
as soon as the bracelet was clasped around his wrist he felt different. like his nerves were tingling and his brain was warm. he felt like he was going to get the most powerful migraine in existence and reached to take it off when you took his hand again.
"please. just give it a minute."
and so he did.
only thirty seconds of dull pain later and he felt normal, if not better. like when you're a kid and have the best day of your life and return home to a good meal. a nice bath, and a great night's rest. he feels almost powerful.
"hey what is this thing? did you just give me powers? is this gonna make me your servant or something?"
"bye stiles."
he gives deaton the materials after telling scott where he was ignoring the weird look on his face before the boy goes back to examining an adorable beagle on the operating table.
deaton takes the bag and bottles with an appreciative smile, his eyebrows scrunching up when he notices the jewelry on stiles wrist.
"where'd you get that bracelet?"
"uhh, i found it. at a thrift shop. thought it looked cool. why?"
deaton clearly doesn't believe him but decides to entertain stiles anyway. "the band is a normal bracelet but the charms are what makes it special. they're pagan."
"could you explain them to me? just because you know."
the vet just shakes his head and laughs before pointing to each one.
"this one, the witchs knot. standard symbol for warding off evil. its mostly used as a protection charm."
stiles admires the charm, the metal silver with the symbol burned into it. it looks like a circle with a line roped in and out of four points of it.
"this, hecates wheel. a goddess of magic, as you probably already know. symbolizes the power of knowledge and life."
this charm is a bit heavier, the stone looking weathered with a scratched labyrinth engraved on it, a distinct 'x' in the middle of it.
"and this one is..." deaton starts before his words trail off. stiles looks at it. it looks like four combined circles, each with symbols inside them. the two across from each other on the side looking like two crescent moons, the one on the top holding a basic pentagram. but he doesn't recognize the one on the bottom-two perpendicular lines forming an 'x' with little swirly lines coming from the middle on the top and bottom.
"what? what does it mean? is it bad?"
"no, it's not bad at all, stiles. the crescents and pentagram are used in another basic protection spell. more protection for the user."
"and the one on the bottom?"
"well, i don't honestly know what it is. its most likely a personal sigil made by the person who made it. but by my guess, based on others I've seen before, it might mean whoever made it has a deep love and affection for whoever they gifted the bracelet to."
stiles thought he was keeping his cool, but scott made extra sure to remind him the following days and the dumbass look on his face when deaton explained the symbol to him.
he didnt know what to do. this had to mean you felt the same way he did about you, right? why else would you gift him a love sigil on a bracelet you insisted he wear? for a second he considered it was a love spell you tried to put on him, but he was feeling iffy about that. mostly about how he wouldn't care that much.
(he apparently admitted that in a sleepy haze when he was sleeping over at scotts, and he's never wanted to die more than when he woke up and realized issac of all people heard him.)
the next time he saw you he tried as hard as he could to act casual. you asked him about ten times if he was okay, and he eventually came up with a good enough 'just a slight stomach bug' lie and regretted it immensely when you invited him back to your house, telling him you'd been practicing making simple health remedies and you had the perfect thing to fix him.
the whole walk to your house he was on edge, his palms feeling sweaty for the first time in his life as he repeatedly wiped them off on his pants. just like the first meeting, you tell him to wait on the couch and he lets out a shaky breath when you leave into the kitchen.
what does he do? does he confess? does he need to? he was so scared that he was being too obvious and maybe that's why you put the sigil on the bracelet, to let him know you returned his affections. but what is he wasn't obvious? and he was basically telling you he only liked you because you liked him? what if-
"stop staring into space and drink this tea, dummy."
he laughs awkwardly and takes the ornate cup from your hand, sniffing the tea before he drinks it. it's sweet but savory, smelling like nutmeg and milk. he can see little flakes and leaves floating on the top. he takes a sip and hums at the taste.
"screw boxing, you should be a professional chef. i'm gonna need you to give me this recipe."
"yeah right. a witch never reveals her secrets." you scoff before sitting down next to him on the couch. you put your arm up on the back and rest your head on your wrist as you cross your legs, your foot brushing against his leg. he nearly spills the tea over his lap.
he can't help but admire you. he had given you a few magazines he'd gotten from stores and stuff to better show you how people were dressing these days, and while you'd hated most of it you took to some trends, wearing a pair of black ripped skinny jeans and a pair of combat boots. he tried to focus on the rips in your jeans as to not let his eyes wander up, where you were wearing a leather halter camisole with nothing underneath. he can't help but laugh in his head when he thinks of the word camisole. maybe he was spending too much time around lydia.
"stiles? seriously are you possessed or something? normally you'd be talking my ear off trying to guess exactly what ingredients i used for the tea."
he sets the cup down after taking another long sip and turns his body to you, your eyebrows raising in what he can tell is amusement. most people could easily get annoyed by his theatrics, but after your near trauma bonding at the willow tree, you had always made sure to welcome them with a smile.
"look, i have something to say. which you probably already know, but i need to say it to you anyway to make sure you really know, y'know?"
you blink. "go ahead."
he breathes in and out a few times, his previous confidence suddenly disappearing.
"let me guess, you saw the sigil and now you're going to confess your love to me?"
he goes into a near coughing fit.
"how, well thanks because now i dont have to actually say it, but if you had given me a minute-"
before he knows it you're scooting closer, your faces just a few inches apart. you're staring at him with that same look you had when you gave him the bracelet. his breath is picking up and he bites his bottom lip, your eyes darting to the motion.
"can i kiss you?"
"yes, god yes-"
your hand grips his chin and brings his lips to yours, the intensity and plushness of it nearly driving him insane. he doesn't really know what to do with his hands, settling to just keep them on his lap before your other hand brings them to your waist and squeezes them in place. at this point you're nearly on his lap and that combined with the kiss and the fact he swears he just felt your tongue poke his lip is going to be the death of him.
he pulls away from the kiss and kneads his hands on your hips, able to feel the softness of your skin on the places where the camisole lifts up.
"wow. i mean just...arent you a recluse? where'd you learn to kiss like that? have you like, conjured up clones to practice with or something."
"stiles?"
"yeah?"
"shut up and kiss me again."
"whatever you say, babe."
for the first time in his life, stiles stilinksi thinks everything is gonna work out.
ty for reading! had to tell myself to get up off my ass and write at 3am and wrote about half of this so sorry for any dialogue inconsistencies. love you bye bye.
#teen wolf#teen wolf x reader#stiles#stiles stilinksi x reader#stiles stilinski fluff#stiles stilinski x witch reader#stiles x reader#witch reader#witch!reader#deaton#scott mcall
639 notes
·
View notes
Text
Another Rough Day
gif credit @chrishemsworht
Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 13.7K
Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort
A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long). As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that
ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello
ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing
anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall
---
You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.
Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession. You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets. The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.
They’re… awful.
Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it. The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.
Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to. You don’t even really feel like a person right now. The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life. It feels sick. Wrong in your bones. Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop. Not until all of them stop moving.
You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops. Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago. Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.
Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground. It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception. What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all. You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now. No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams. No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.
You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move. The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again. It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.
Silence. Silence. You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement. You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are. You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder. You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—
“P-Please don’t kill me!”
His words remind you of something. Reality, maybe. A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.
It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands. “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”
Behind the mask, your expression furrows. Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying? They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat. Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy. It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.
No, this is a trap, it has to be. Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.
You pause, staring down at him in shock.
It’s him, you recognize him immediately. It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances. Oshua Ryler. Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened. A stormtrooper? His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense. What is he doing here? Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them. They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.
“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers. “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”
“Shut up.” You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done. You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet. You hate looking at his face. It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.
“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust. His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat. He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby. You know what needs to be done. Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over. It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.
But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”
“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”
“The Empire is ashes.” You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears. “They hold no power anymore. Why are you with them?”
“Because the one thing they have left is money!” The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green. “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…” He stares wide eyed at you and gulps. “C-Conditioning.”
Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now. “Were they expecting the baby?”
“W-What?” He squeaks up at you.
“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?” You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side. “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”
“Who is ‘he’?” The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around. “What are you talki—”
“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!” You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him. Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about. “Now—”
“If it was I didn’t know!” He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight. “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty! They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”
You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling. You could still kill him. You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.
Shit. “Who put the bounty out on you?” You ask sharply. It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.
“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”
“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.
“Yes!” Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”
Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it. You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask. Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something. Din was cut off before he finished. Help? Know what to do? You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by. The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.
But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice. The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him. Get to Nevarro. Tell Karga. Get to Nevarro. Tell Karga.
You look back at the quarry. “How many of you are there?”
“At the base? Around three hundred,” he immediately spills. “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours. There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”
“So around a hundred left,” You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker. “How many were dispatched on the search?”
“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground. “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”
Of which, four you’ve already taken care of. In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence. That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector. If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon. And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.
You make the decision immediately.
“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel. “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”
“You…” He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands. “You want to rescue the men?”
Ideally? Sure. Realistically? You don’t say anything in response. Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.
Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do. The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it. They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip. Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.
“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you. Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease. It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.
When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression. Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood. Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color. Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.
“Can you make it up to the cockpit?” You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder. Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again. “I need as much information as possible about the base.” You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm. Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard. It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.
Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest. While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking. Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now. Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission. Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.
Besides. What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?
It’s just… not really your thing.
---
They’re everywhere.
They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors. Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger. Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.
Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next. His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears. When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.
He’s not thinking much. He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread. If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces. He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind. Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers. Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.
His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base. He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.
Din needs to go.
And yet… if he was another man. If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go. With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get. He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat. Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range. Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind. He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.
Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.
Run, sweet girl. Run.
---
You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard. Not far from here, three minutes or less. The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers. It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.
“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.
“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers. “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”
Your mouth twists downwards under the mask. Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible. Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed. The turrets, then. “Are they automatic?”
“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.
“Radar?”
“Old. Only engages above fifty meters.”
You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel. “What about ships?”
“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport. TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”
“Anything else?” You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got. You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?
The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here. Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here. The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here. Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not. He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.
Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul. If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.
You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator. “Mando?” You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway. Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing. “I’m coming to get you. Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside. If you can’t, I’ll just… uh. Try to figure something else out.”
That’s it. That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to. Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction. Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose. Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily. It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.
“Where’s your helmet?” Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.
But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls. “I’m not a Mandalorian.”
“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit. “You cover your face like one. You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”
“I’m not a Mandalorian.” Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now. “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”
But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he? He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan. All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge. You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood. This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby. In a sense, it still feels that way. The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family. The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.
Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch. He’d know, you tell yourself. If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow. Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.
---
There’s too many for Din to handle.
They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore. The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response. In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet. These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.
Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back. Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms. The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.
An officer, he assumes. Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.
“Well now, what do we have here?” Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter. The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh. “What a shame.”
Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.
“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add. “How were you able to find us?”
Silence. The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now. He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red. Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality. The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead. Useless, then. Good to know.
After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.
“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor. Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention. “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”
Gideon. The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite. It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened. But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it. The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.
“For what? This Mandalorian?” The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.
“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms. “Orders were to capture him, alive.”
“Hm.” The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head. “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees. “He must want the beskar. I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”
All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive. He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.
Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.
“Binders!” A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.
The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed. There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury. It’s such a punchable jaw.
After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues. “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”
Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth. He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize. Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible. You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety. Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually. It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.
“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive. Assistance may be required.”
It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk. They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost. You’re both long gone by now. They’ve got no idea you even exist—
“He also spoke of a girl.”
And then he feels his heart stop in his chest. Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response. His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it. How the fuck did he know? He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?
But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile. Who’s this, Mando? She’s just darling, isn’t she? Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?
“A girl?”
The trooper nods. “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”
He’s going to kill them, Din decides. Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man. The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul. His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun. He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.
Except, then—
“Mando?” The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet. “I’m coming to get you. Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside. If you can’t, I’ll just… uh. Figure something else out.”
And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.
The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember. He’s panicked before. He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time. This is different. This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.
He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection. There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now. The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat. You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.
Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it. Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you. Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.
“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out. His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision. For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.
All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…
Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground. There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.
---
You’re right on time.
The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about. Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.
Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed. It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground. Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.
For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him. Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up. Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.
“Which ones are in charge?” You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.
“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on. Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—
To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them. If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways. The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.
The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge. Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.
“Lift up!” You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull. You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door. “Now! We have to go now!”
You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up. Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel. Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears. The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.
As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping. You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.
Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense. Deadly tense. Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—
It flickers into existence all at once. One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.
A star destroyer.
Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life. It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it. All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking. You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.
Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.
---
The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before. Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear. Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship. But now, everything has changed.
You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap. Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared. They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is. You can’t seem to breathe like he is. It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.
After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand. Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.
“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh. A close one.”
You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now. Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing. You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you. When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain. You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.
Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment. You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through. You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now. However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest. Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline. Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.
Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you. His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.
You feel something this time. It’s… cold. A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin. Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood. You did that.
There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word. You can’t find a single word to say. The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones. It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet. There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.
You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden. Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.
But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement. He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip. It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.
“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.
Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features. His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to. You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there. He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.
Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor. You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves. Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.
You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.
“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly. Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself. “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”
He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.
But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly. Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t. Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult. You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive. There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.
He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.
But then there’s a moment. One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.
“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty. There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t. “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”
Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it. Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones. You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.
He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands. He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from. It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.
When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you. The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood. Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.
Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face. The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.
After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground. It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet. Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.
Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back. Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.
Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand. It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang. You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground. The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.
“Are you hurt?”
He sounds… dead. So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state. He doesn’t move. His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last. If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.
“No,” you eventually whisper.
The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else. Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying. You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him. You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.
You feel… nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor. Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes. Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done. Tasks to complete.
Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown. Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain. The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert. You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy. If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him. It was… isolating. Lonely by yourself. The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.
When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp. Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner. Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath. One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.
You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet. You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…
What? At least what? Comfort you? Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions? What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him? You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.
The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically. He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you. You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do. If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself. At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.
Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment. Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul. Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover. You keep hearing their screams.
So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on. You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again. You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand. After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.
Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone. After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in. The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings. It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.
After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent. You don’t feel anything as you do it. You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm. Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.
Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster. The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything. They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.
The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower. Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy. Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.
After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent. When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.
You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls. Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today. You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.
You can’t sleep. You don’t even try, it’s pointless. The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself. You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking. You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago. You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong… They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.
You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation. You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point. In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.
You also can’t face Din yet, not like this. You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure. How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices? Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t. You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him. You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance. You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.
Figuratively, of course. Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been. Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.
So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you. A long time ago, what would he tell you?
Din would tell you… that you killed someone. Multiple people, this time. He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done. The end result won’t change. You own this now. You’ll carry their deaths with you.
You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice. He wouldn’t argue with you. He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them. It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.
And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount. You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned. You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive. You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him. If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.
That’s it. Focus on them both, alive and well together. Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.
Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness. It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself. Hours, maybe. Time is strange in hyperspace.
You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.
---
When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.
“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are. You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways. After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”
“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair. He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet. “Don’t say anything. Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”
“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes. You did save him. You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent. “I tried. Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself. I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”
His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul. Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.
“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you. It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up. “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”
“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.
“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat. They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses. “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”
“Stop,” he chokes out. The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body. “St-Stop it, please.”
Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.
“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself. The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking. You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.
“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.” Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes. “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”
Your heart goes cold. Again, everything turns numb. It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today. It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it. For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.
“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks. “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me. I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger. I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe. And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II. Do you know why I did that?” The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart. “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”
You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand. You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up. Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away. But then, instead…
There’s a flicker of something inside you. Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying. It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die. You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.
“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t. “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones. Especially the trained ones. Anything else was meant to be your last resort. Not your choice. Not something you chose.”
“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself. The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him. Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried. You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen. “I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t a choice.”
“It was,” he tells you. He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words. “And it was the wrong one.”
“What was I supposed to do?” You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster. Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care. “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”
“Yes.” It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless. Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against. It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”
It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean. Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.
“No.” The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child. Never. You’ll die before that happens. “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that. ��Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing. Not even you.”
Din stares at you. His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant. It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become. You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.
After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both. He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”
You stay quiet. It happened. What’s done is done, you can’t change the past. He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so. This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child. You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them. Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.
“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers. It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak. Broken. “You wore mine once before, and it was…” He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away. “It wasn’t real. It didn’t fit. It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out. I liked it because it wasn’t real.”
“Was it… really that bad?” You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad. You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but… Not a Mandalorian, he’d said. Of course not. Of course not.
“It wasn’t the armor.” Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again. “It was you covered in blood. It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger. You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship. And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too. You…” He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice. “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”
Not a Mandalorian.
“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you. “You don’t fly into war zones. You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me. You said you tried to be brave… like me.” His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand. “I’ll never ask you to be brave. I’ll ask you to survive.”
“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight. They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time. Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again. It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside. You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.
After a while, Din quietly breaks it.
“How many?” He murmurs to you. You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.
You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.
“That didn’t deserve it?” You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory. “Four.”
And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that. Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain. You’ll never be able to change it, though. This belongs to you now.
This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”
And that covers everything.
The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else. Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come. You need to tell him. You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.
“Din?” You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor. “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat. “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”
“A star destroyer.” He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time. He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine. You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.
He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before. It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.
“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms. His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing. “What do I do?”
He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today. All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty. You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now. If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.
“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer. Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him. “We’ll figure it out together.”
---
@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!
#the mandalorian#the mandalorian x you#the mandalorian x reader#din djarin#din djarin x you#din djarin x reader#mando x reader#mando x you#reader insert#fanfic#star wars#rough day#no-droids
2K notes
·
View notes
Note
can you tell a poor soul what's going on with the hctcg meta because i am unaware of anything other than that it exists
okay, the short version is "prankster good".
the slightly longer version is that the way the current meta works, being able to do a lot of damage fast is generally better than other strategies, because currently there isn't a lot of combo pieces or acceleration that would make other strategies better than "knock out opponent really fast". the number of damage dealing options at the moment can GENERALLY overwhelm people trying to play slower, unless they're using stuff like rare joe and rare pearl, but even then, the damage dealing is more consistent than stall most of the time, since the best stall options require a coin flip.
prankster is just the best deck at dealing fast damage.
rare mumbo, a prankster card, is the most reliable way to do this - "quite simple" doubles damage when there's another prankster on the bench, and while it's a coinflip attack, it's still reliably able to punch enough damage through armor to be one of the best attacks in the game. additionally, unlike a lot of other high-damage attacks, this attack only costs two items, so a mumbo, one other prankster, and a double obsidian is all you need to bring him online and start smashing.
this alone wouldn't make him good - impulse with one of the other boomers, for example, has high potential for hitting like a truck as well - but combined with what the other two prankster cards are, it makes the deck hard to beat. rare stress has a move that instantly knocks both herself and her opponent out. this can both easily cheese wins (if you get a stress online before your opponent gets a second hermit online you can win basically instantly; the meanest way this can happen is 'use a clock on turn 2 to skip your opponent's turn so you can get that third obsidian on her') and is a constant threat. your opponent about to knock your stress out? take both of you down with her. rare grian, meanwhile, just has a good second move for 100 damage, and has a first move that can steal his opponent's effect cards - useful when armor is so common in the current meta.
all of this together means that mono-color prankster is one of the best decks you can build at the moment.
additional meta thoughts: TNT is the best common damage dealing card, and golden axes are good if you have rare slots available (in a prankster deck you won't). remember, damage fast is currently the way to go! it's generally currently agreed that a lower hermit count but more draw cards is better, but the meta may shift; prankster literally can't play more than nine hermits at the moment (because there are only nine prankster hermits and their only other option would be ultra rare etho, since he's a generic), but it certainly PUNISHES fellow decks that can often only open with one hermit.
armor is also VERY GOOD because it reduces damage from EVERYTHING. if you are equipping an effect card to your hermit, it should basically always be armor. iron is better than gold, there are times gold is useful. netherite armor is also obviously good if you have the ultra rare slots for it.
finally, other decks i've seen that are pretty decent but not prankster: things based around terraformers/farmers seem to be good (rare joe and rare pearl stand out as good cards for a reason); mono-redstone is looking really good due to the fact most people don't run outs for poison/burn and redstoners are the ones that do that.
finally part two: the types of cards i think would shift the meta the most are - more complicated/reliable combo pieces, any way to search cards at all, DUAL ITEMS (they would INSTANTLY make non-mono strategies much more consistent), more hermits with generic attack options (also make non-mono strategies more consistent). if i made a ban on a single card it would be double prankster item if i wanted to COMPLETELY wipe out the deck, but it might be to limit mumbo if i wanted to just nerf it a bit (limit here being used like the ygo meaning, IE, you can only play one copy). meanwhile if there was a way to errata a card it would be "make mumbo's quite simple base damage higher but remove the doubling effect; that or make it one generic item more expensive". i'd also probably say by rule that the effect that knocks stress out happens before knocking her opponent out (as opposed to simultaneously).
uhhhhh... yep, those are my meta thoughts! hope this helps some? also keep in mind i'm hardly an expert, there's a whole discord of people who probably have stronger, more refined opinions than myself! go check it out there if you want like, more expert thoughts on the matter!
95 notes
·
View notes
Text
Beat the RE4R on Friday. I love pretty much almost everything about it.
My favorite changes
Leon's character. They perfectly show how jaded Leon is
Krauser. I particularly love what they did with Krauser. Leon's Major, teacher and a dark reflection on what Leon could've become if he allowed himself to be jaded and corrupted by power. Also a reflection of what happens when the US Government turns their back on their soldiers and sometimes attacks their own soldiers and even silences those who dare investigate such war crimes.
Ada. At first I was skeptical of the new voice actress, but she grew on me and handled Ada's characterization well. Cold hearted spy, but has one moment of redemption and turns her back on Wesker.
Ashley. I really love what they did with Ashley here. She goes from scared, to helpful to Leon's savior. Also the tease of Ashley becoming an agent?? Did someone see my Revelations 3 pitch of Ashley and Sherry becoming partners????
Luis. Luis steals the show. This Spicy sexy motherfucker stole my heart and I was so disappointed when he died.
Leon's antagonism to Ada. I feel this was more realistic. Leon shouldn't want anything to do with Ada. She's shown her true colors to him and there is no going back.
The Wesker tease. I am unsure how I feel about RE5 being the next remake. I still say RE1 should get another remake. And even I know CVX needs a remake before 5. But the tease was done well and I am digging Wesker's new voice.
My only complaints
Saddler's presence feels very little. Difference between the original and the remake is Leon and Ashley meets Salazar from the Church and he's a large and looming threat. Leon literally meets Saddler in the final two chapters. He should've been a constant presence from the church to the island and keep the damn sass in the calls.
The one positive thing about Saddler is they showcased how bad Religious Extremism can get and Saddler's done so creepy and those little cuts to Saddler were ominous, but did so little for him.
No Salazar and Leon banter. They had those intercoms in the castle and they didn't have Salazar and Leon trolling each other? Huge missed opportunity.
#Resident Evil#Resident Evil 4#Resident Evil 4 Remake#Leon S Kennedy#Ashley Graham#Jack Krauser#Ada Wong#Luis Serra Navarro#Luis Serra#Albert Wesker#Osmund Saddler#Ramon Salazar
110 notes
·
View notes
Text
My playlist as QSMP
(warning im shit at english lang so my interpretation of songs may be way off... im also ace and often miss romantic implication so.. yeah if a song has lyrics which are like about an s/o and i havent specified i probably dont mean for it to be shipping)
songs included: tongues & teeth (the crane wives), pink in the night (mitski), gb eating gb whilst listening to gb (crywank), going to brighton (fresh)
TONGUES & TEETH - The Crane Wives
hideduo fit pov
fit as a self serving survivalist from a wasteland experiencing love in this cursed fuckin island
• "ive grown a mouth so sharp and cruel its all that i can give to you my dear" habits from 2b2t even little things like his lack of trust, hasnt confided his true intentions to anyone - constant lies by omission - hes flawed and hes recognised it
• "if you're fine with that you can be mine like that" theres very much something going on with hideduo but fit is insistent on his baby steps bc he doesnt want to hurt pac. 'are you fine with that?'
• "you gotta know that this wont last" this is soooo fit coded bffr. i adored the conversations fit n ramon had but one thing that stuck out to me was that he would always specify that only he and ramon would escape. never mentioned anyone else. selfish in the most understandable way
• "i will ruin you, its a habit i cant help it" again 2b2t ingrained habits that never leave. linked w above point, hes selfish and that isnt necessarily a bad thing just not great for a blossoming relationship
• "i will love u like the ashes in my cigarette box" hc 2b2t!fit smoked - ramon told him off once but now that the baby's gone hes picked it up again, a headcanon bc i cannot imagine ccfit smoking since hes such a health buff - feels so out of character lmao
strong thoughts about qfit no one even try to fight me - his entire character occupies a space in my brain
PINK IN THE NIGHT - Mitski
phissa missa pov
devotion easy
• "i love you, i love you, i love you, i love you"
• "can i try again and again and again"
i dont think i need to say more - tbh this could go for guapoduo too but the "can i try again" made me think of missa + how he wants to live up to phils expectations
GB EATING GB WHILST LISTENING TO GB - Crywank
phissa still missa pov
"in a busy room youre all i see" literally THEM sorry during the mexican independence event they were literally all they could see.. them doing the dance together - it may as well have just been the 2 of them + phil jumping in front of missa to take pics of him alone w/o him noticing
"calm down dont let her see how fast your heart is beating" missa saying "im speaking weird so the translator doesnt pick up, i love you" THIS GUYYYYYYYY
"i think about you but i know im not good enough" bffr mr missa "ill come back when im a good enough father" sinfonia
"and I built you up to much, now I can't say what's on my mind in case I go and scare you away" missa doesnt want to burden phil because he feels like hes been such a bad father compared to phils dedication - now that hes back he doesnt want to disappoint him anymore
"and how could i compete with the world at your feet" missa coming back to like 3 men at phils whim LMAO
"i wouldn't want to hurt you by letting you hurt me you don't deserve to feel guilty"
"i just want you in my life"
sorry im so obsessed with their puppy love
GOING TO BRIGHTON - Fresh
tubbo coded, i mean with the name i had to give it to him
in my mind hes talkin to phil
• "things i care the most about dont seem to ever get old" his excitement over everything even the simplest things is so refreshing
• "i feel the fire inside me trains passing over head" his determination posing a unique threat to the feds and i feel like its such an important part of his character. also he likes trains :)
• "there are things i learnt inside my head that they cant ever take away from me" lil bugs and just knowledge of the game make him a great bug tester for the admins lmao. this guy takes any chance to glitch his way through life
"starting over is a sign of strength"
also honorary mention to that one person who said the garden was codebreakerduo coded because you are so right and true and based and i think of that post everytime i listen to that song. being so normal by peach pit was very celltw (is that what pac and cellbit are called?) to me but i didnt really have much reasoning
#qsmp#qsmp philza#qsmp fitmc#qsmp tubbo#qsmp missa#qsmp cellbit#im so qsmp brained i cant even listen to my music without thinking of these cubitos#hekp
32 notes
·
View notes
Note
Do you think the original Phantom of the Opera book has any sort of fairytale-like elements to it? If so, could you list some?
This ask is seven billion years old, but yes!
For one thing, the Phantom story is essentially a more specific version of the old Beauty and the Beast fairy tale - in both, a father "gives" his daughter to a terrifying monster who appears to be dangerous but turns out to love her, and she must find a way to love that monster in turn in order to keep herself safe and search for a happy ending. The Phantom story adds embellished elements, such as the heavy focus on music and the Phantom being a disfigured human instead of a cursed one, but the story is essentially the same, which means it carries over a lot of beats from the original fairy tale.
If you didn't know I'm a sucker for Aarne-Thompson-Uther, you do now, so let's go down a quick list of some of the fairy tale elements we see!
The Child Who Won't Leave Home: Lots of fairy/folktales have this element, where a child needs to leave home and make their way in the world or they will never truly grow up (which usually, in these stories, means they won't be able to be happy and/or they'll be a burden on their aging parents/community). Christine fits this trope, remaining somewhat locked in eternal childhood, focused on her memories of her father and his tales of the Angel of Music, until she is finally forced to see reality and make choices about her adult life.
The Girl as the Monster's Wife: This is a common fairy tale/folklore stock element: a beautiful young girl is given to a monster to become its bride. You see echoes of it in dragon/monster sacrifice tales, too, but the story usually uses its fairy tale themes to address real-life anxieties about women in earlier centuries having little to no control over who they married or how they were treated when they did. (And parents' fear over that for their daughters!)
The Animal Bridegroom: A subset of the Monster's Wife above, there are an absolute load of stories about young women being forced, either through trickery, blackmail, or magic, into marrying actual animals. Often, these animals can later be turned into humans through the power of her love and/or loyalty and devotion, but sometimes the moral is more about making the best of a weird situation. Obviously, the Phantom story inherits this from its Beauty and the Beast roots, even though the Phantom is no longer a literal animal.
The Dangerous Husband: The most common version of this is probably the tale of Bluebeard, but it appears in many stories and cultures (from the same anxieties as above!). In these stories, the husband is hiding a dark secret, and his innocent wife must realize he's evil and get out before it's too late or join others he has previously preyed on; in the Phantom story, Christine must realize that her "angel of music" is actually the murderous Phantom, and is in a constant state of discovering things like torture chambers and death threats until she and Raoul finally resolve the situation and escape.
Disenchantment by Kiss: In many fairy tales, the curse/transformation/evil is broken or defeated by a pure kiss from a loved one; in the Phantom story, it is Christine's kiss on his forehead (or mouth in later derivative versions) that causes him to realize that he has been behaving like a monster and end his reign of terror.
In addition to all this, there's also of course the mythology angle, which I mention a lot in reviews! Greek mythology is especially good with this - the Phantom story has heavy overtones of both the myth of Hades and Persephone, in which the god of the dead rises up from the underground to kidnap the beautiful young goddess of spring and everyone goes absolutely bonkers trying to get her back, and the myth of Eros and Psyche, in which the beautiful Psyche is forbidden from seeing her lover, who always comes to her in darkness with his face hidden, and when she breaks her promise and brings in a light to see him destroys the relationship and suffers as a result. The first has obvious parallels to Erik's kidnapping of Christine, while the second is a pretty clear comparison to the unmasking scene.
#phantom of the opera#mythology#fairy tales#anne pretends to be a real librarian#did you guys know they'll just let you learn about this stuff? for free?
108 notes
·
View notes
Text
Poking the Bear
Not too long ago, my good friend @akiizayoi4869 recently made a post detailing a rather...verbose discussion that happened on the TheLastAirbender subreddit. If you haven't seen it before, here's a link detailing to that post in question. To summarize real quickly, it's about a discussion of how the Gaang was acting in self-defense towards Azula during the events of The Search.
...to begin, let's see what a definition of self-defense really is. Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this:
self-defense
n. the use of reasonable force to protect oneself or members of the family from bodily harm from the attack of an aggressor, if the defender has reason to believe he/she/they is/are in danger. Self-defense is a common defense by a person accused of assault, battery or homicide. The force used in self-defense may be sufficient for protection from apparent harm (not just an empty verbal threat) or to halt any danger from attack, but cannot be an excuse to continue the attack or use excessive force. Examples: an unarmed man punches Allen Alibi, who hits the attacker with a baseball bat. That is legitimate self-defense, but Alibi cannot chase after the attacker and shoot him or beat him senseless. If the attacker has a gun or a butcher knife and is verbally threatening, Alibi is probably warranted in shooting him. Basically, appropriate self-defense is judged on all the circumstances. Reasonable force can also be used to protect property from theft or destruction. Self-defense cannot include killing or great bodily harm to defend property, unless personal danger is also involved, as is the case in most burglaries, muggings or vandalism.
-taken from the Legal Dictionary on Law.com as found here.
The key phrase here is "the use of reasonable force to protect oneself or members of the family from bodily harm from the attack of an aggressor". It effectively means that self-defense boils down to defending yourself from a legitimate threat.
Thing is...Azula never actually presents herself as a threat to the Gaang in the comics. Unpleasant to be certain, but she's not to the point she's throwing fire at them or anything. Hell, she even saved Sokka's ungrateful ass from Spirit Vines and fended off the Wolf Spirit. The only time she did act aggressively was when she was in the middle of a breakdown.
And to be more specific, she reacted to this happening:
What did Azula do? Have a psychotic episode where she couldn't even tell right from wrong or even know what was real.
...yeah...
Hell, at worst she accuses them all of conspiring with Ursa to ruin her life...but granted considering they've been treating her like absolute trash from day one, it's kind of easy to make that assumption.
Remember the boomerang scene?
Sokka literally makes a threat, Azula's not too impressed, and shoots him with lightning. Without the intent in injure mind you. And what's the follow up?
Katara assaults her for no damn reason, then Zuko blames Azula for escalating things.
This is not self defense. Especially if Azula's not actually being actively hostile. This is downright harassment. And it's a constant throughout the comic. It's already horrendous enough that Azula is suffering from hallucinations and clearly isn't in her right mind, yet every time they come at her with violence instead of trying to deescalating the situation.
But it's somehow even worse when you consider how fucking stupid the Gaang are acting.
They are doing everything in their power to provoke Azula and inciting her to violence. Who I might add is a fairly skilled firebender who shouldn't be estimated whether she's mentally sound or not. Their actions have cultivated a scenario where violence is inevitable. And they've got nobody but themselves to blame if something happened. Hell, if Azula wasn't mistreated at the asylum and in better fighting condition, one of them would probably end up DEAD.
I'm sorry, but you can't exactly have your heroes not only be cruel, but be this mindmeltingly stupid. It's the equivalent of launching the Hulk into space with a faulty shuttle that could explode and cause serious damage if you push the right buttons. What the hell did you THINK was gonna happen?
#azula#azula meta#princess azula#azula deserved better#anti atla comics#atla comics critical#you keep using that word#i do not think it means what you think it means#atla comics meta
89 notes
·
View notes
Text
Between Yearning and Obsession - By Karasumashimei (7.5/10)
Sadism is a character trait that is often written as a fetish. It's not used as the main character trait for a love interest very often. I'm not even sure if the sadistic love interest will be the endgame villain or not. Our former lady turned servant heroine has two men to choose from, and the sadistic one is the obvious looking loser. That makes me suspicious. It's a little too obvious.
This is Julia. She pretty clearly used to be a noble woman, but now she has nothing. Her childhood friend is currently "protecting" her. Without his favor she wouldn't have a job or a roof over her head.
Julia is super traumatized by some kind of mysterious incident. Camille is the only person left in the world who actually knows her, and treats her like a person. She also doesn't have a voice by the way, unless she's speaking to him. Camille has blessed magic that temporarily relieves curses.(He's probably using magic to take away her voice so she can't make friends) So, Julia is disabled and she's a low ranking maid. She can only speak to her only friend, who just so happens to be the second son of the man who owns her.
Jealousy.
Jealousy fucking everywhere. All of Camille's servants, including Julia, adore him. He's generous and his magic is gentle. He is their pride, and everyone prefers him over the actual heir. Camille's affection for Julia makes her a target.
This ugly guy is the actual heir. He beats up Julia almost every day. He's pissed off all the time because he knows his younger brother has more power than he does. He hates Julia. She's not actually that great at servant work, but he can't fire her. Nobody can because Camille pities the useless, disabled Julia.
Camille pays attention to Julia. She cries and vents with him. She only speaks to him. Most of the servants believe she's pretending to be mute to get his attention. Jealousy makes people strange. The servants think Julia is the villain, who is taking advantage of their angelic master. They also think she's whore who is trying to seduce their beloved master.
Camille really, really likes it when Julia relies on him. It turns him on. Yuck. It makes him a rather unique sadistic yandere. Obviously, he will never let her die. However, he's more than willing to starve her and let his brother beat her. He's also ok with the other servants constant abuse. I think he's the sort of yandere that sees the object of their affection as a pet. Not in the fetish way. In the literal way.
Julia grew up beautiful because of course she did. That makes the envy even worse. Camille adds fuel to the fire. He invites Julia to lunch. He tells the cooks to feed her pastries. This is a very strict society. The cooks are not allowed to eat the fancy ingredients they prepare. When Camille tries to make them give Julia things he's kind of spitting on them. He's blatantly saying that Julia is more important than them. Naturally, they blame Julia because Camille isn't suspicious. Even Julia doesn't suspect him.
She gets locked in a shed. She almost gets raped. Camille is watching the whole time. Possibly with magic. Julia often goes to bed hungry. She cries herself to sleep alot. She is trying by the way. She's not lazy. Whenever she finishes her work the maids in charge literally dump garbage around her. Just because they cannot stand her. She can't be a competent maid. She has to be a villainess. That's the only way they can justify their own behavior.
Julia adores Camille absolutely. I cannot wait for her to notice his string of betrayals. The second love interest hadn't even appeared yet, but I like this one. The psychological warfare is nice. Camille is an unpredictable yandere, and the servants are to be feared. I truly believe that Julia could be murdered soon. The jealousy Camille cultivated is seriously that bad.
Look at how toxic this relationship is?! Look at it! Are you creeped out? I am, and Camille also seems like a serious threat. Some yanderes are a little too cute, but I don't think Camille can be stopped by anything but force.
#yandere#male yandere#yandere male#yandere boy#recommendations#recs#rec#recommended#webtoon#Between Yearning and Obsession
152 notes
·
View notes
Note
i may or may not want more Matthias info. For science, of course. drop the lore pls
You asked and you shall receive!
Jung grew up in a small village close to the Drachman border, as the middle child of a rural family. Since his childhood he had learned about the looming threat that comes from Drachma, which is why he joined the military once he was old enough. He wanted to protect the country, but also prove himself and get out of the village as quickly as possible. His military academy years were rather uneventful and he didn’t really stand out with his skills, which were relatively average at that time. After his graduation, he was transferred to Fort Briggs.
Briggs back then was completely different from what it is during canon time. Disputes between Drachma and Briggs were a constant problem and truces were impossible to achieve. On top of that the Fort was in a bad shape, literally and metaphorically. Between the soldiers there was nothing of the loyalty and cohesion that we see in Brotherhood and in the military Briggs was seen as the last stop of one's military career.
When Jung came to Briggs, he quickly understood how crucial Briggs was for the safety of the country and that something needed to change for it to stay stable. Because of that, Jung decided to climb up the military ladder to get more and more commanding authority. And he was very successful at it: There were little people at that time that actually put an effort in their work and Jung was smart. On top of that he seemed to be a naturally effective leader. After honing his skills through years of practice, he eventually became a respected soldier whom many people looked up to.
Jung shaped Fort Briggs quite a lot, he managed to improve its fighting force and people began to get loyal to the Fort and actually started to put effort and meaning into their work. Because of his own success, Jung’s goal started to change: He didn’t just want to shape the Fort, but also climb to its top and take the seat of commanding officer. And he had good odds at that!
Briggs’ current general was growing close to retirement and would name a successor from within the Fort. It was very unlikely someone from Central city was eager to take his place, after all Briggs was still seen as someone’s end of their career. On top of that the Ishvalan Civil war had just started and everyone in Central was eager to prove themselves in the war.
With his standing at the Fort and a big group of loyal soldiers siding with him, Jung is more than certain that he would take the seat as commanding officer. However, there is still another young soldier that climbed Briggs ranks and is ready to take the command: Olivier
And this is we’re he ties into the story: Jung is Olivier’s rival in becoming Briggs’ commanding officer. Both of them are highly skilled, smart and have loyalties within the Fort. Olivier is determined to beat him, whereas Jung doesn’t really see her as a proper threat. While he sees her skills in fighting and leadership, he doesn’t think she has what it takes to command to Fort (plus she’s four years younger than him).
To him, Olivier’s strategic steps are more than apparent and she’s easy to anticipate. However she managed to puzzle him with her latest move. Jung doesn’t understand why she brought the two young men to the Fort, after all none of them are soldiers. He does see potential in the young doctor, even if he just finished his medical training. However Jung just can’t understand why she would bring the other man here. Though if Jung is certain of something, it’s that the grey haired man is hiding something.
#I’m glad you’re interested in him!! he’s such a complex character and so much fun to write#tried my best to give some info without spoiling too much#I Hope it’s not confusing but feel free to ask more if it is#writing this kinda made me want to restart the comic I began#oc Matthias Jung#fma oc#ask#fullmetaleditor#oc story#oc art#oc lore
26 notes
·
View notes
Note
How do you feel that Glitchtrap might be fucking dead and might not play a role in the story anymore? Do you think they could have done more with him? What would you have done with him and his character?
Well, he was always gonna be defeated anyway.
I just feel like Steelwool is too scared to commit and they might be aiming to copy old-school fnaf mystery, but the thing is, the first fnafs did commit to some points with a lot left to interpretation. Everything in Security Breach is up to interpretation and it feels like a puzzle with missing pieces and also other puzzle pieces have been thrown in.
About Glitchtrap, I just wish he appeared more in Security Breach, being the main villain. This circles back to the whole "I wish we saw more Vanny!" because Vanny is literally Glitchtrap taking control of Vanessa. The Vanny/Glitchtrap problem in Security Breach is what differentiates them from the animatronics? On a threat level, they're the same. Or if I dare say saw, Roxy and Monty were more of a threat to me than Vanny. Vanny was easy too to escape for a character that was so hyped.
The same thing goes with the Burntrap ending: my biggest threat was Roxy because I did not understand I was supposed to use Chica's voicebox with Freddy. Actually, the only thing Burntrap does is sending animatronics after you and trying to possess Freddy (that's two things!). Which, I get is like ooh scary he's powerful enough to send everyone after you but the thing is he's not powerful enough to walk down the hallway and kick my ass. I could just hit him with a metal bar in the knee and he would not get up.
I'm kind of disappointed that they hyped Glitchtrap up in HW2 with his face and corruptions on the games only to hit us with a secret ending (obtained with tasks that have little do to with said ending) that is just to tell us something we already knew: that Vanessa beat Glitchtrap and freed herself.
It's sad because they actually nailed HW1, with his almost constant presence next to you, watching you, leaving you to wonder who he is and what does he wants and he is going to be a threat in my game selection menu or am I ok there?
His level was one of my favourites, it gave me old fnaf mystery vibes actually. It reminded me of reading fanfics at 1am and felt like actually playing the fanfic - if that makes sense.
All that being said, is he really gone tho?
In Ruins, we have a "new" villain coming from nowhere (no the books aren't an answer I'm sorry but if it's not stated in the games it is not in the games that's how storytelling works. and I am not buying and reading fucking books to understand what's going on in the game I already paid a lot for) that mimics others. Glitchtrap's whole thing was to mimic William.
To me, they're obviously linked and even if it's not Glitchtrap himself, the Mimic still holds Glitchtrap's legacy.
Plus it's been discarded but can we talk about the fact that it's been pointed out multiple times that Vanessa isn't Glitchtrap's only possessed victim?
You have yourself, the player in Help Wanted 1 who ends up being possessed and locked away. But then we never mention this again?
And then you have that one note in Security Breach, about how Vanessa was hired by someone in the hierarchy despite her not being qualified for the job. Which doesn't mean anything by itself, for all we know she could've been hired by family as well. But this could also mean it wasn't family and it could have been someone also possessed? Or were they blackmailed?
This is just a detail but this is one of the many details that they didn't commit to giving us an answer and all adding up we barely got an answer for anything and that is one of Security Breach's weakest points.
#hw2 spoilers#answered#fnaf#an-archaic-archivist#glitchtrap#long post i'm sorry#fjhffsbfsd#get me to talk about fnaf and i do not shut up#to anyone reading this i am open to discussion just be respectful
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hello everybody!! Big massive announcement and achievement, me and my best friend made a book together which has taken literal years to create - it just got out on the kindle app! I am the illustrator 🙂 We’ve worked really hard and even just a sample read would help so much and we’d love feedback 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻
Loud, brash, headstrong, and entering her third year of high school, Dakota McGregor has a bad reputation—but it's not her fault. Well, not entirely.
She and her friends haven't exactly acted like the best role models, and she doesn't mind introducing her knuckles to whoever causes any of them trouble. Though Dakota has grown up in Hollygate, Varona, for years, people give her a shoulder colder than the subarctic climate Varonans call home. And it all has to do with that elemental symbol she so gladly wears every day—an emblem that, in the present-day 2113 world, tends to evoke either hate or fear.
That same emblem will soon draw more than just local negative attention. While elemental wielding and magic arts sink further into a rapid decline in favor of technology's increasing influence, a vengeful cult of unknown entities is scouring the planet in secrecy. Aware of ancient knowledge that society aims to abandon, they seek forgotten artifacts of mystic power that most of the public can't even hope to use. When the malicious group appears in the Far North to take their search through Varona, silent watchers from beyond decide it's time to recruit a team of elemental wielders for a special case.
With graduation less than two years away, Dakota just wants to have fun with her quirky crew and beat down the paralyzing weight of a past accident with optimism for the present and future. But while they each have their own inner turmoil marring them, the troubled teens may find themselves carrying targets on their backs and burdens of responsibility as they build upon their powers and skills to ward off the constant threat of bloodthirsty danger—both new and painfully familiar. Past, present, and future are barreling toward them all at once, whether they're ready or not. Just how far are they willing to go—and how far can Dakota actually go—for a turbulent world that doesn't want their kind around?
Content Guidance and Warnings:
This novel contains, explores, and references numerous sensitive themes and mature subjects, including: frequent fantasy violence; gun violence; strong language; graphic depictions of blood and gore; death; crude, mature, and morbid humor not suitable for younger audiences; drug and alcohol use; discrimination, hate speech, and fictional slurs; mental illness; self-harm; suicide; abuse, torture, and sadism; and unnerving imagery. Because of the potentially offensive, disturbing, or triggering content, reader discretion is heavily advised. Please read with care, and always do your best to stay safe and look after yourselves and those around you.
Dakota: Elemental Rebirth https://amzn.eu/d/a8CYOWc
#bookworm#books and reading#books#original book#free ebooks#kindle ebooks#good ebooks#ebooklovers#kindle#kindle fire#please read#action#comedy#Dakota elemental rebirth
8 notes
·
View notes
Note
i also want to give u megs and his duplicitous sluts but i have not sorted out their names to memory. the ones i enjoyed from the clips and any other ones he may have that make a fun duo with him
GOD BLESS U KFHBGJHDF o777
technically in terms of duplicitous sluts i feel like thats just screamer, and a small minority of like. only in one show guys (knock out the gay car, par example). (assuming meaning = duplicitous TO megs) beast wars megs, whose crew is made of entirely of ppl who want to over throw him, minus two extremely horny for him (googles how ants are related to scorpions) Antropods. is an outlier and is not being counted.
but i CAN do u. megstar variations. plus extras.
also COMPLETE opposite of a duplicitous slut megs and his most loyal guy sound.wave (tape deck guy. deadpan guy) is a constant standby classic. competency ship. and comedy gold. and even tho i dont like the show it gets extra comedy points in prime cause that megs is completely off his shit fucked up over the meg.op breakup and (plot bullshit) cursed amulet rocks. i DO think this specific sounders is like. probably ready to explode about how badly this whole operation is going. also all megs are fond of creatures (bond villian ass trait) and he comes with em. so makes sense if tf was a world ruled by logic (its not) and mid compelling.
knock out is only duplicitous when hes following screamer to over throw megs but he has the MUCH higher quotient survival instincts so WILL chicken out and run away. AGAIN in a world with a less divorced megs this would be funny. most deadly guy every and his little unserious fop. who does violence and medical malpractice for fun. does NOT make sense. compels me for its LACK
SAME show meg.star is like. this show is logically challenged. so it doesnt make sense. nothing they do makes sense. its not HIGH on the compells me scale cause its not very cunty either. but theres merits. its. extant.
cv meg.star. already made that post. more unstable variant in the makes sense stat. im eating it up tho.
g1 meg.star THE GOAT!!! makes sense TO MEEEE. Compels MEEEEE. this is cartoon universe with cartoon logic its like tom and jerry romance. please. makes sense in context. COMPELLING
animated meg.star. essentially the same as g1 but screamer basically actually kills megs in ep 1 and when megs gets his body back he kills screamer right back. but. (plot magic crystal) screamer becomes unkillable so. they just go back on to trying to kill each other. EXPLAINED IN UNIVERSE. makes sense slapstick. slightly less compels me personally BUT not its fault.
arm.ada meg.star. THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY REAL AND SAD. instead of an over throwing screamer this one turncoated to the good guys. and hes so conflicted and sad and whatever. wet cat. this arm megs actually beat screamer in a duel and was like. well maybe one day youll get good enough to beat me (chewing glass). AND for the final arc of. the bots and cons have to work together. megs too driven by his own shit to see the.. (handwave) existential threat to them all. oppie is fighting him (their normal way of solving debates) and screamer actually BUTTS IN like. this is MY dramatic emotional gay fight scene. gets fatally wounded on purpose just to ask megs to work with them. 'do it for me'. LITERALLY REAL MAKES SENSE in a tragic failed way. infinitely compelling.
#some shit#its not called cisformers#links all of my own posts just for clarity and bc ive become a wiki imitating monster#took a while cause i got called away to other posts then needed to eat THEN added the links. <- saying so cause its funny to know.
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
Spiderwebs #15: Tape VIII (Fever)
Masterlist
content: lab whump, captivity, immortal whumpee, death wish, very brief discussion of addiction
It wasn't as bad as the vivisection, but it was close. A new point on that sliding scale of bad experiences. Jackie had never suffered through an illness before, but he thought this must have been similar—a smothering, constant pain, drowning out all other thoughts and sounds and sensations, radiating out from all over his skin. Different from the blooming, jagged pain of a deep cut, but no less tolerable. There was no way to shake off the heat. It came from somewhere inside him, deep below the skin, nestled between the veins. He barely noticed Heather's return.
"Get up. I have some painkillers."
"Cool." He staggered upright, shoulder against the wall to prop him up. Talking had become difficult, almost painful. Every motion of his jaw was comparable to speaking through barbed wire. He reserved his sentences to a few words. "I'm ready, doc."
She dropped a pill capsule onto the bed. It was a pale red thing, the size of a pin. He took it, pushing past his exhaustion, and placed it in his mouth.
The water bottle was across the room. Swallowing it dry would be unpleasant, to say the least. Trying to walk all the way over there would be worse. Waiting the pain out would be at the top of a list of terrible ideas. Who knew how long that drug lasted? If Heather did, she wasn’t telling him. Wouldn’t want to interfere with the experiment.
Heather followed his gaze. “Want me to get that?”
He nodded the best he could, which was still a fairly weak movement. She walked out of his view, returning with the bottle. The cool metal was a welcome relief from the heat as it was pressed into his hands. He lifted it up. He swallowed. The temperature of the water was just as pleasant when it went down his throat. Jackie hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. He drank again. Then again.
“It should take five minutes to work.” Heather sat on the bed beside him while she spoke to the recorder. “Tape eight. Seven hundred milligrams of artificial opioid administered as of…” From the corner of his eye, she glanced at her watch. “One-thirty in the afternoon.”
He put the bottle down and held it there, on his lap. Already, he could feel the change, feel the heat dissipate. Even if it was a placebo, it was helping.
Heather didn’t stare at him, but she didn’t move. It was an uncomfortable position, sitting next to her on the same bed. Not in a literal, physical sense. It was too close for his liking, was all. Too casual.
Not that his captor respected things like personal space, of course. Still, her presence was alarming. So terrifying for such a casual scene. He expected a threat, but she was devoid of her usual violence. Motionless. Silent. No more than a few inches away. Saying nothing and doing nothing to break the perceived tension. Just waiting. Just another warm body, another beating heart.
While Jackie’s anxiety rose to a fever-pitch, Heather was untroubled. She looked bored, in fact. In her eyes, this meant nothing. He wondered what it was like, to do all these horrible things and not bat an eye. To keep a stranger in one’s home. To keep such a terrible secret under the floorboards, and continue living as before. Did she ever feel the weight of her sins? How heavy was his presence, forever rotting underground? How deep did that guilt run? Was it even real, or a performance to convince herself of her lingering humanity? To convince Jackie? She was such an impassive figure. Her desires and dislikes came as a surprise. He couldn’t unravel what this all meant. He couldn’t breach it.
“Time’s up.” Her voice startled him from his thoughts. “How do you feel?”
“Oh. I’m okay.” He cleared his throat. “Pain’s gone. I feel kind of numb, actually.” He touched a hand against his face. “Weird. I can’t feel anything.”
“Anything? Do you feel this?”
He glanced down. Her hand grazed his, and he hadn’t even noticed. It was an uncanny sensation—there was his body, and there was hers, but he might as well have been a spectator looking on. Even the feeling of heat had faded, along with the cold press of metal. Controlling his own body became unfamiliar, like controlling a puppet, every movement stiff and deliberate.
He shook his head. She blinked in disbelief, and tapped his shoulder. Nothing. He gave her an apologetic shrug.
“How strange. The opioid has completely numbed the nervous system, according to Jackie. Do you really not feel anything?”
He ran a nail across his arm. It was like scraping rubber. ”Yep. Nothing at all.”
Looked like Jackie should have kept his mouth shut, because now Heather was getting ideas. He could see it in her eyes, a whirring hailstorm of ideas, a veritable sleet of thoughts and possibilities. Her pupils glinted, catching the light in the motion of her gaze, with all the slow, mechanical turning of a heavy-geared clock.
But he supposed there were worse things. He liked the feeling of numbness, actually. It was a nice break from the pain and heat. And if her deranged ideas killed him—well, Jackie would be nothing but grateful.
“Another trial will be needed, I think.” Heather played with the edge of the recorder. “With a drug this strong, I’ll have to be careful. I don’t know how much permanent damage will occur. Jackie, do you feel any fatigue? Headaches? Nausea?”
“No, I feel great.”
“How great? Do you feel euphoric?”
“Euphoric?” He gave her a bemused smile. “No, just okay. You really got drugs like that, doc?”
“That’s classified information. For a good reason.” She narrowed her eyes. “Have you ever witnessed opioid addiction?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Thank your lucky stars, then. And don’t go around asking me for drugs.” She sat up from the bed, haughty as a cat with its head high and its tail up in the air. “You might feel some discomfort as the effects wear out, but it’s temporary. Today’s experiment is over.” The recorder clicked to a halt. “Enjoy the rest of your afternoon. We’ll begin again tomorrow.”
“Sure.”
There was that funny feeling again. Enjoy the rest of his afternoon? How? Reading a little, drawing a bit, then laying in bed? That didn’t sound very fun. It wasn’t so bad, as far as being kidnapped went, but he still didn’t like it.
Time appeared to stretch out, long and languid. A sort of cabin fever had descended upon him, like a leech to an open artery. His impatience burrowed deep. The days took on a distorted frame, with only Heather’s visits to punctuate them.
When had he last seen the sun? He shouldn’t have started out so strong with that list. He shouldn’t have asked for so much. Jackie longed for sunshine, for fresh air, for a view that wasn’t concrete and cold. The yearning was a physical thing, heavy in his skin and bones, weighing him down.
“Hey, lady—I mean, Heather?”
She stopped midway on the stairs. “What?”
“About leaving the basement. I know I’m not in a position to ask for anything, but—“
“You’re going to try and run off the first chance you get,” she interrupted, leaning forward with a hand on the railing. “No.”
“I won’t, I swear. I don’t even care about going outside, just out of this room. I’m okay with walking around the house. Maybe looking out a window?” He stood up. “Say you’ll think about it, at least.”
For a long time, Jackie thought she wouldn’t answer. Or she’d come back down to make him regret ever asking. It was hard to tell with her, hard to know what would make her snap. And there was no way to take it back, once that fuse was lit.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
And then she was gone.
Jackie sat back down. He hated asking for such simple things. He hated the basement. He hated her. He wanted to shove a metal rod down her throat every time she said no or shut up. He wanted to punch her every time she pulled out that stupid tape recorder.
He should have never gone to that gas station. He should have never spoken to her. He should have ran, let her shoot him if she wanted—even if he wasn’t immortal, what did he have to lose? His life? Like that was worth anything. Like that mattered.
It was such a strange concept. Immortality. Jackie still couldn’t quite believe it. Some people would kill for a chance at living forever. All those bathers at the fountain of youth, all those alchemists searching for an elixir. But those people had pleasant experiences with life. Everything Jackie saw only convinced him that he was better off pushing daisies. Yet that choice had been taken away from him, just like every other choice and freedom. He was not even allowed the dignity of death.
Well, then. That was depressing. Wasn’t getting him anywhere. Wasn’t doing him any favors. I’ll think about it. Such an answer was better than a flat-out no, wasn’t it? Besides, who was Heather to taunt an immortal? He had seen the face of death and socked it in the nose. He had touched the void of no return and laughed. Heather was a cardboard cutout compared to him. Heather was nothing.
Happy Halloween! (in 4 days)
Taglist:
@theelvishcowgirl
@lthrboy
@whumpy-wyrms
#Spiderwebs toyybox#lab whump#immortal whumpee#whump#whump writing#my writing#one time I had a fever and I started hallucinating that the air was thick#I can't explain it so just trust me on that one#not a very fun experience
10 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
silavarun
syd
gloomymoon-arch
Gloomy Monarch
fortunehq-a
go to @fortunehq !!
a-rose-is
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
eastoneva
welcome!