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floralseokjin · 3 years

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⤑ made-up love song x (m).

Your first encounter with Kim Seokjin doesn’t go so well, nor your second, or your third… and maybe that’s because it shouldn’t work on paper. You’re an elementary school teacher, never left the country despite hitting the third decade of your life not so long ago, and you’re unable to remember the last time you dated. He’s the dad of one of your students, nearly a decade older than you and divorced. Oh yes, and just another minor detail – he’s a multimillionaire.

Your lives are lightyears apart, yet somehow, your paths having now crossed, things just seem to fall into place…

pairing; kim seokjin x reader au/genre/warnings; strangers to lovers, romance, single dad! seokjin, ceo! seokjin, elementary school teacher! oc, age gap (oc is 30, seokjin is 37), seokjin is a dilf, romance, happy ending, jin has stubble lmao, smut; morning sex, oral sex (f receiving), soft sex, spooning, jin has a thing for boobs this saturday morn, everything gets so fluffy words; 6,243

↪︎ chapter index

chapters; i • ii • iii • iv • v • vi • vii • viii • ix • x • epilogue (+ drabbles)

When you heard the doorbell ring twenty-five minutes later you were up off the sofa in seconds, heart thrumming against your ribcage as you rushed towards the entryway, a nervous kind of excitement flurrying inside your stomach. Yanking the door open, you were unable to keep the smile from your face as you saw Seokjin stood in front of you. He was dressed in sweatpants and a baggy white t-shirt which was slightly creased. His hair must have been freshly washed, soft and fluffy on top of his head, but it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a while, hints of stubble growing along his upper lip and along his jawline.

“Hi.” You were grinning by now.

“Hi,” he murmured softly, stepping forward. Immediately you found yourself in his embrace, the familiar scent of his laundry detergent welcoming. You wrapped your arms around his middle, pressing the side of your face to his chest. You felt still, relaxed for the first time in days.

Kissing the top of your head as he pulled away, he took your hands and let out a small chuckle. “I was halfway here when I realised I still had my slippers on.”

You looked down at his feet, giggling as you spotted the blue slip ons. Linking your fingers with his, you gently tugged him forward. “Do you want head to the living room?”

He nodded, letting you lead the way, and you paused by the kitchen, turning back. “Want something to drink?”

“Water, if it isn’t any trouble.” He asked. Classic Seokjin, you thought to yourself, leaving him to sit, too polite for no reason. When you came back, handing him the drinking glass he smiled and said his thanks. You sat next to him watching him take a sip and lean over to place the glass on the coffee table. You didn’t know where to start, you had so much to say, but it seemed like he had been thinking his piece over in the car ride here.

Exhaling, he turned to you with a serious expression. “Just before you say what you need to, I want to apologise.” He paused, seeing if you would let him continue, when you didn’t object he reached for your hand. “I’m really sorry for the way I acted Sunday. It was unacceptable and I’m really embarrassed you had to see me like that.” He sighed then, “I was just so... I was so mad that Nana turned up and spoke to you like she did. I let all my frustrations regarding Arin take over too.” He was staring you straight in the eyes, eager to make you see how sincere he was. “I never meant to compare you both and I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable.”

“Everyone gets angry, Seokjin. Don’t feel embarrassed because of that,” you told him. “It was just jarring to see. Plus it was all so overwhelming.” He nodded in understanding and you smiled and squeezed his hand. “I appreciate your apology regarding the comparisons though.” What was done was done, but he sounded regretful. “Have you spoken to Nana since?”

“Yeah,” he murmured, averting his gaze for a split second. He sounded remorseful. “I saw her yesterday afternoon. She wanted to be with Arin this weekend so I finished work early and drove her there. Nana…” He stopped himself and started again. “I know why she was so hurt over everything. We talked it out a little. Barely touched the surface but things are headed in the right direction. I apologised to her.”

“That’s good to hear,” you said. There was no good only apologising to you. Nana deserved an apology just as much, maybe even more. You were glad they’d managed to be civil and you hoped it was a step in the right direction.

“I know Arin missed school but I called Principal Jung.” Seokjin was eager to explain himself. “I didn’t go into details of course, but he said it was okay.”

“That’s fine,” you chuckled quietly. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. It was only one day.” How cute. You didn’t take your job that seriously. At least the mystery was solved though. You had stressed over nothing. He wanted nothing more than for Arin to see her mother, regardless of what his relationship with Nana was like. This extra weekend together meant a lot to not only Arin and Nana, but him too. Harsh words had been shared in frustration and anger, but he hadn’t lost sight of what mattered the most – his daughter.

“I’m glad you talked to Nana,” you smiled, unsure how to voice all your thoughts. What mattered was he’d seen the error of his ways, and hopefully Nana had too.

He nodded sternly. “I was out of order that day.”

You grew serious too, hesitating before you said his name. You knew you had to ask him, knew you had to have this conversation, but it didn’t stop you from feeling slightly afraid. “Seokjin, why didn’t you tell her about us?”

He closed his eyes briefly, shame written all over his face, and he let go of your hand to run a hand through his hair. It draped across his forehead instantly. “I made a mistake.” He was looking straight into your eyes again, chocolate irises pooling with genuine regret. “At first I didn’t know what would happen between us. It was all brand new for me – for you. Letting Nana know was the last thing on my mind, but as things got more serious, I just…” He faltered, gaze falling to his lap. “I didn’t want to burst the bubble. I was so happy. I didn’t want anything to potentially ruin it.

“It was stupid, considering Arin could tell her at any moment. I just wasn’t thinking, I was being selfish. I understand why Nana was so hurt. I would feel the same if I found out Arin had been spending time with a man I didn’t know.” He exhaled deeply. “I took it all to heart because deep down I knew I’d done wrong.”

You appreciated his honesty. “We were definitely in a bubble. I never even thought to ask if you’d let her know. I –”

“It’s not your fault.” He was quick to tell you. “It was my responsibility and I didn’t want to do it. I regret it now and I’ve told her that. I’m sorry to you too, it wasn’t my intention to keep you a secret.”

You were quiet then, unsure what to say. You still had questions, still had things you needed to understand and as if he read your mind, he placed a gentle hand on your knee, tilting his head to watch you. “Y/N, is there anything else you want to know?”

Your fingers picked at your pyjama pants, heart beating rapidly. There was one important thing you needed the answer to, it was a dumb question, you were nearly positive, but yet you knew you needed to ask it.

“Anything you want to ask, I’ll be 100% honest with you.” He gently nudged, sensing your reluctance.

“T-this may seem stupid,” you began, finding courage. He was Seokjin, your Seokjin, he wouldn’t judge you. However, you hoped what you had to say wouldn’t hurt him. He waited patiently for you to continue. You held his gaze. “You’re not just looking for a mother figure for Arin, are you?”

His forehead crinkled in confusion, his hand leaving your knee as he processed your words. “What do you mean?”

You felt a wave of panic. “I know it sounds stupid, but I just need to know if you like me for me.”

He watched you carefully, brow line now creasing in concern. “Of course I like you for you.” And then he took your hand, lacing his warm fingers between yours. You could see the concentration on his face as he tried to find a way to word his thoughts. “I’m not looking for a mother figure, I never was. Yes, I’d love it if Arin saw her mother every day, but I’m not trying to recreate it elsewhere. I was wrong to compare you both. Nana loves Arin, I know that, she’s trying her best, and you’re…,” he took a breath, “I would never expect you to take on all that responsibility. You’re my girlfriend, I would never intentionally put all that pressure on to you.

“Y/N, I’m Arin’s father,” he continued when you didn’t reply. “She means the world to me, so knowing that she adores you makes me happy, as does knowing you adore her. I always thought dating in my position would be really hard – that’s why I never did it. Having to trust someone that much to potentially let them into my daughter’s life, that was such a frightening thought. But it wasn’t with you.” His eyes were wide, pleading as he tried to make you see. As he spoke he used his other hand to cup the side of your face, you softened into his touch.

“There were other worries too,” he continued to confess. “I thought nobody would want a divorced dad as a boyfriend. It’s fine, I understand it’s not everyone’s ideal, but with you it was never a problem. You accepted me and what my life involved and I’m not going to lie, that made me fall for you even harder but I wasn’t using you because I wanted some sort of permanent mother figure in Arin’s life. That’s absurd and it makes me really sad to know I potentially made you feel that way.”

Your chest felt lighter hearing those words. Nothing like the tight, anxious mess you had felt all week. It was good to know your worst fears weren’t true. Your doubts, even though valid, hadn’t been needed. You believed every word he said.

He lowered his hand from your face, sensing you were about to speak, and instead clutched the hands laced together in your lap. “Hearing those things you said to Nana, it made me… It overwhelmed me. Made me think that you’d been expecting too much of me this whole time, or like maybe you’d been searching for something I had no clue about.” You admitted.

You hadn’t liked being used as a weapon. It had made you feel horrifically guilty. You told him just as much, being as frank as you possibly could because he needed to hear it.

“I understand,” he nodded. “I promise I’ll never do it again. All I can give you is my word.”

“And I’ll believe it.” You told him, needing him to know something else as well. “Seokjin, I really do care about Arin. I’m beyond touched that she’s accepted me into her life but my place will always be different.”

Seokjin frowned at that. “You are still an amazing person in her life though. She’s become so much happier these past few months and I can’t deny it and say that’s not partially down to you, even if it’s just a fraction of the reason.”

You opened your mouth to disagree with him, he was being too nice, giving you too much credit, but he wasn’t having any of it. “No, Y/N. You need to hear these things. You make Arin happy too, and I think that’s a beautiful thing.” He felt you relax, smiling when he noticed you do the same. “I fell for you because of many reasons, and yes, one of them was because of how you treat Arin, but it’s not the only one.” His voice was soft as he began to make a list. You couldn’t help but giggle. “You’re sweet, caring, funny, beautiful – inside and out.”

“You’re a real charmer, hm,” you teased.

He chuckled, but grew serious once again, giving your hand a squeeze. “You could have anybody but you chose me, the man whose life is overtaken by work and is struggling to be an OK dad.”

“Seokjin, you’re an amazing father,” you scoffed. If he expected you to listen then he needed to as well. “You work so hard and you’re constantly exhausted but that doesn’t stop you from being one of the best fathers I know. You need to give yourself more credit.”

“Thanks,” he said, plump lips tugging up into a half-smile. You really wanted to kiss him, it had been long enough, so you leaned forward, pressing your mouth to his. Gentle and chaste. When you pulled back he was smiling harder. You couldn’t help but join him.

One of his hands lifted, weaving into your hair as he brought your face to his chest, the hand holding yours letting go so he could wrap his arm around your middle, holding you to him. You were both silent, content for a moment as you listened to his heart beat steadily. It comforted you, let you know that everything was okay.

“I’m sorry if I put pressure on you,” he murmured, chin resting against your hair. “It’s just when the three of us are together it feels so right. It feels natural and I love that.”

“I love it too,” you agreed, your face still pressed into his chest, your palm too. “But Nana is her mother and I don’t ever want to take her place.” You paused, slowly pulling away to look at him. “I want to make my own place. And I don’t know if that means being a stepmom so soon, but it’s definitely moving in that direction.” You’d had enough time to think about everything. You were more than serious about him. “I want a future with you, Seokjin. A future with you and Arin. You both mean a lot to me.”

His mouth slowly spread into a grin, he looked and sounded unbelievably happy. “Do you mean that?”

“Of course. I spent these past few days thinking really hard about us and what we were – what we are. I’m serious about us, and I hope you are too.”

He pulled you into another hug, kissing your forehead. “I most definitely am, but we’ll take it at your pace,” he assured, “and Arin’s pace.”

“And your pace,” you added, moving your head back to look at him, hands resting on his shoulders. “Nana’s too. She needs to be involved because no matter what, she’s still a part of your life.”

It wasn’t about just you and Seokjin, you understood that now, and so did he. “I agree. I really think yesterday was a turning point for me and her. I want our relationship to be better for not just Arin, but you too. I hate that you had to witness all that.”

“It’s okay, Seokjin. Please don’t beat yourself up about it.” He needed to let it go and move forward. You had already.

“Listen, I, er, I’m…” He hesitated, serious once again. “I’m sorry for not telling you why we divorced.”

Oh. In your happiness you’d actually forgotten about that. You waited for him to continue, wanting to hear what he had to say because it had been the source of some of your hurt. You rubbed his shoulders, wanting to encourage him as he struggled to find the words.

“It’s complicated,” he started. “…Finding out Nana had been cheating on me was what triggered the divorce, but it had been over long before then. It’s… difficult to admit this out loud but for the longest time I was embarrassed. I couldn’t believe that she’d cheated on me – it was an ego thing. I didn’t care because I no longer loved her but at the same time it was mortifying and it made me very bitter.

“I didn’t tell you because you’d trusted me with your own story. I learned how cheating had affected you and my situation was completely different. I don’t know,” he sighed, unsure if he was making any sense. “I regret it now because I should have told you.”

“I understand why you didn’t,” you said simply, attempting to process the huge chunk of information you’d just been given. “But I think, regardless of our different circumstances it still affected you in some way. There’s no right or wrong way to deal with being cheated on.” It had obviously left its mark if he was still bringing it up nearly three years later.

He still wasn’t convinced. “But Nana was right, that’s why I got so angry. I couldn’t admit it to myself, not until this week. By sleeping with someone else she gave me a way out. I didn’t want to be the one who ended it because that would mean I was the reason for Arin’s broken home. To ease my conscience I could blame the breakdown of our marriage on her.”

“Seokjin, that doesn’t make you a terrible human being. You need to let all that go,” you told him gently. “At the time you did what you thought was best for Arin. You thought by staying together it would give her a better life but it doesn’t work like that and you’ve realised that now.”

You didn’t want to stick your nose in business that wasn’t yours, but you understood what had happened. By staying together they had become increasingly bitter towards one another and the result was still ongoing. There had been a lot of hurt and that would take some time getting over.

You noticed the slight nod he gave you, a silent agreement. The sooner he accepted his mistakes the easier it would be to forgive himself. “I still should have you,” he whispered.

“That’s not important anymore,” you insisted.

“It is.” He clutched your waist, his eyes glassy. “You shared so much with me about how you got hurt, and I kept something big from you.”

You gave him a reassuring smile. “Well, I know now.” You weren’t going to hold it against him, it had obviously been playing on his mind the entirety of your relationship. “That’s all that matters.”

He relented, kissing you softly, just once, unable to help himself. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking too these past few days. I talked to my therapist. It’s been a while. I’ve just been so happy I didn’t need to until…” Trailing off he gave an embarrassed shrug.

“That’s good you got back in contact with her.” He hadn’t actually spoken about his therapist since your first date and you’d never thought much about it, but it was great that he knew to seek help when he needed it.

“We talked a couple of times about everything. It was helpful.” He rubbed your back with a soothing hand. “I really am sorry my relationship with Nana is like this. There’s a lot of bitterness and hurt left over from all the years we stayed together. Maybe the truth is we should have never gotten married in the first place. We brought out the worst in one another until in the end it turned to hate, but I can’t regret it because she gave me my world.”

“Maybe realising all this is the next step for some type of closure,” you offered. He and Nana couldn’t keep this up. They needed to get along for Arin’s sake. They had to try and salvage some type of relationship if they wanted to continue co-parenting their daughter – their world.

“I think you’re right,” he agreed. “Now that everything is out in the open I feel so much better.”

“I’m glad.” You leaned in to kiss his cheek.

“So,” he hummed, sounding a lot more like himself, “where do we go from here?”

“I think we just carry on from where we left off.” As far as you were concerned everything had been resolved. All your questions and worries had been answered. You were both on the same page now and you could move on together. “When I was waiting for you to come back with that salad.”

“Sounds perfect.” He laughed, wasting no time with kissing you, properly this time, cupping your face to bring you closer. You settled in his lap soon after, his lips soft and warm, each glide of your tongues making you realise that all you wanted to do was be with him. Always.

“There is one change I’d like to make though,” he murmured, pulling away gradually, kisses becoming gentle pecks until he had the will power to stop completely. “I was going to wait until I took you to Paris, but maybe grand gestures don’t mean shit after I thought I’d lost you.”

Your heart flipped inside your chest just from the look he was giving you, the sheer determination in his eyes, and the way he cupped your face firmly. You thought you knew what was coming.

“I love you.”

You were still speechless for a moment though, but it was okay because he was still busy confessing.

“I know it may seem too fast and I don’t want to scare you away but I’ve fallen head over heels in love with you these past few months. I can’t remember what my life was like before you appeared in it.”

“I love you, too,” you gushed, coming to. “Of course you wouldn’t scare me away. Everything you just said, I feel exactly the same way.”

“Really?”

“Yes!” You exclaimed.

“It’s not too fast?”

“Not at all,” you shook your head. You’d been worried it was at first, but you’d been upset and scared. Now everything was clear. “Actually, there’s no such thing because I’m in this 110%.”

He chuckled then, brow line crinkling in the middle. “That sure?”

“Mhmm,” you nodded enthusiastically, hands holding the back of your neck. “Thank you for reversing into my car.”

That made him snort. “It’s no problem at all, but,” he leaned forward, tone serious, “I hate to break it to you, I’m in 1010%.”

You rolled your eyes playfully, ignoring his goofiness to kiss him again. Although this time there was something you couldn’t ignore any longer. “Oh my god,” you complained, itching your lips.

“What?” He was very obviously concerned.

“Your stubble keeps pricking me!” You whined. “What is going on?” You cupped his face, getting a better look at the situation. He did look rather handsome with stubble, you admit, but you’d keep that to yourself. “A few days without me and you forget to shave.”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “Isn’t that a thing? When you think you’ve lost the woman of your dreams you have to start growing out a beard, right?”

You snorted lightly. “You’d be there for years trying to grow out that thing.”

He tutted. “Rude.”

“But what, say that again? I’m the woman of your dreams?” You teased, pressing for more.

“I take it back now,” he scoffed.

“You can’t! You’ve said it now.”

“Shush,” he laughed. “Come here.” He wrapped his arms around you, pulling you close. “Stop talking and let me love you.”

It took a single press of his lips for you to listen.

You were slow and still sleepy when you awoke the next morning, gradually coming to, your eyes still closed. It was raining, you could hear the soft patter of it against the window as you became more aware, but you found it didn’t hinder the good mood you’d woken up in. Why would it?

Finally opening your eyes, although with effort, a soft focus Seokjin came into view, already awake and leaning over you slightly. He smiled when you saw him, a hand caressing your hip. “Good morning, beautiful.”

You smiled back, rolling into the side of his body, making the most of your sleepy state – and your boyfriend’s warmth. “How long have you been awake?” You asked with a small yawn.

You didn’t actually remember falling asleep last night. After you’d made up (and you were done with all that kissing), you’d asked him to stay over. You’d laid in bed, wrapped up in one another as you talked about anything and everything before your eyes had started to get heavy, Seokjin’s voice and your own sounding distant in no time. And now you were here.

“A few minutes,” he murmured, morning voice always an octave lower. It never stopped being sexy. You tangled your legs in his as he laid back down and realised his were now bare – he must have gotten too warm in the middle of the night.

He cupped your face, wanting you to look at him. “I was using the time to admire you.”

“Cheesy as always,” you chuckled.

“Of course,” he agreed easily, leaning in to rub his nose against yours. “I woke up and thought last night might have been a dream.”

“It wasn’t,” you whispered, getting lost in his eyes for a moment.

“I love you.”

With a soft groan you rolled onto your back. “Not fair, I was about to say that.”

“Too bad,” he laughed, that deep morning chuckle you loved, wrapping his arm around your middle as he kissed your cheek. “You snooze you lose.”

“I wasn’t snoozing.”

“You were – and snoring. I heard you.” He was trailing kisses along your jaw now.

“You didn’t!” You exclaimed. That was something you definitely did not do. “I don’t snore, take that back!”

You attempted to wriggle out of his hold but he wasn’t having any of it, both of his hands beginning to tickle your sides. “Seokjin!” You shrieked, starting to thrust your legs but he rolled on top of you, caging your body easily.

He stilled all movement and looked down, having way too much fun teasing you. “What?”

Before you could even think to reply he was kissing you. Somewhere along the way last night you’d gotten used to the stubble, quite liking the tingle across your lips now, so you didn’t gripe this morning. Holding your face he trailed wet kisses down your throat, teeth gently sinking into your collarbone. You let out a gasp, your fingers tangling in his hair as you pushed against his body, eager for more of his mouth.

His hands soon began roaming your body, slipping under your pyjama shirt to caress your skin. His fingers delicately traced the underside of your breasts, lifting his head up to kiss your mouth once before he spoke his request. “Can I see you?”

You smiled and nodded, watching as he started to undo the buttons with expertise. When you were fully revealed he looked at you with a grin. “Woah,” he stated simply.

“You’re acting like you’ve never seen them before,” you giggled.

“I don’t know, I’m pretty sure they’ve gotten bigger.” He mused, weighing your breasts in his hands.

You snorted, mouth dropping open when he captured one of your nipples between his lips. His used his hand to palm the other breast, pinching the nipple with his fingers and you moaned, arching into his touch. Against your crotch you could feel him growing hard – rapidly.

“Take this off,” you urged, tugging at his t-shirt. Your need for him was rising too, breathing becoming unsteady as Seokjin kneeled upright and ripped the piece of clothing off. You sat up, running your hands across the muscular swell of his chest. “Yup,” you nodded to yourself, “definitely gotten bigger.”

He chuckled quietly – shyly almost, and helped you take your shirt off, kissing across your shoulder as he eased you back against the pillows. Next, he got you out of your pyjama bottoms, kissing his way back up your stomach and between the valley of your breasts as his hand slid between your legs, rubbing you above your underwear. Squirming, warmth flooding you as his mouth found yours, your tongues mashing together in haste, your arms wrapped around him, holding him tight.

He slipped his hand inside your panties and loved what he found. “You’re so wet, honey,” he murmured, playfulness in his tone as he circled your clit with the pad of finger. His touch was so light it was unbearable and you whined, nuzzling into the crook of his neck.

He circled your entrance next but didn’t enter, collecting your arousal to rub your clit again. You dug your foot into the mattress, raising your hips to get more. His dick was fully erect now, pressing into your thigh, but he was in no rush, fully devoted when it came to pleasuring you. Dragging your underwear down your thighs, you helped push them off entirely, reaching for him and pulling him into a kiss, although he didn’t stay at your mouth long, kissing across your chest and down your stomach until he met his destination.

He didn’t get very far though, his hot breath making you wriggle about, thighs clamping around his head. “It tickles.”

“Tickles?” He repeated in amusement, nosing your inner thigh. He kissed your bikini line, ignoring your feeble giggles. “I’m not trying to tickle you.”

You held your breath as he placed a testing kiss against your centre, willing yourself not to squirm, but Seokjin took it slow, easing you into it, because your body had suddenly decided to turn hypersensitive in his absence. He continued to kiss your core, his tongue coming out to wash against you too, and soon enough you got used to the sensation.

“Good?” He asked against your clit, the vibrations making you flutter.

You nodded in reply, fingers of both hands reaching to tangle in his hair. He gave you a quick smile and then started to flick his tongue against the bundle of nerves rapidly, making your hips rise in shock as a moan drew from your throat. He gave you no time to recover, sucking on your clit now as he hummed in satisfaction. Body with a mind of its own, you spread your thighs, wanting to feel him even better.

He got the hint, using his hands to plant your feet on his shoulders, legs bent at the knee to open you up even wider for him. He continued to suck you softly, the tip of his tongue flicking back and forth at the same time, the stimulation so glorious you were sure you had tears in your eyes.

“Oh God, Seokjin,” you moaned as he pulled away abruptly, your head falling back against the pillow. You had been moments away from coming, you were almost positive.

He moaned himself as he licked a strip up your centre, pushing your knees higher up your body, exposing your clit even more so this time when he rolled it between his lips your hips jerked around uncontrollably, the pleasure too much. You felt him ease off but begged him not to stop, sounding possessed. “No, don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

He continued, his eyes on you as he made your legs tremble and you dug your toes into his shoulders, clutching at his hair. “You gonna cum, baby?” He husked. You whined in reply, hips rolling into his face with desperateness. “Give it to me then.” He told you, once again suctioning his lips to your clit.

Your eyes clenched shut as you concentrated on his tongue, panting loudly as the muscles in your gut tightened. Your release hit you seconds later, lifting your hips up with one last burst of energy as he continued to work his tongue against your thrumming clit, your orgasm crashing through you in waves as you cried out. It was amazing, almost euphoric if you wanted to be dramatic (you did), your whole body satisfied and warm.

Seokjin tried to ride it out as long as possible, but soon you grew sensitive, your hands detaching themselves from his hair to fall limply to your side, chest rising and falling deeply as you tried to catch your breath. He wrapped his fingers around your ankles delicately and placed your legs down on the bed before hovering over your body. He was just as out of breath, your arousal smeared across his mouth and chin, and you kissed him greedily, wanting nothing more. You could feel him rutting against you, attempting to gain just a little bit of relief, and taking pity on him you cupped his erection over his underwear, giving him a squeeze. He groaned at the sensation, breaking away from your mouth.

You started to rub him as best you could as he kneeled between your legs, watching your hand at work. He chuckled in disbelief. “You have me so hard, shit.”

“That is my area of expertise,” you gloated, pulling his dick out of his boxer shorts. You ran your fist up and down it a few times, revelling in the smooth skin, thumb circling the head that was beading with precum.

His patience was crazy this morning, enjoying the way you touched him so much he leaned in to kiss you again, panting quietly against your lips as you sped up your movements, dragging your thumb across his slit in a bid to spread his arousal. He hissed, jerking into your hand, and you just about lost it. You wanted him, no, needed him inside you. Right this instant.

You looked him deep in the eyes, your noses practically touching as you gave him a squeeze. “Make love to me, Seokjin.”

He broke then, unable to deny you or himself any longer. His underwear was gone in a flash, thick cock bobbing as he guided you onto your side, fitting in beside you perfectly. He wrapped his hand around your calf, lifting your leg over his to spread you out a little and then he angled the head of his cock at your entrance, kissing your shoulder as he slowly began to push inside you.

You closed your eyes as you felt the drag, both of you groaning as he continued to fill you, his hand pushing one of your butt cheeks up a little so he could successfully bottom out. You stayed like that for a while, kissing one another, one of his arms hooked underneath your neck, hand cupping your chin, the other caressing your body, tracing across your stomach before softly cupping your breasts. The sensation had you sighing sweetly, pushing back into him and he couldn’t hold off any longer.

He thrusted slowly, practically all the way out just to push back in, filling you up over and over. It was glorious, his rhythm eliciting moan after moan, especially as he played with your chest, rolling your hardened nipples between his fingers. You could hear yourself, how wet you were, and you rolled yourself onto your side more, pushing your ass into him in a bid to get more.

He got the message, speeding up as you reached behind and ran your fingers through his hair. He loved that, grunting as he spoke against your ear, “A little faster, baby?”

All you could do was nod and respond with a garbled noise from somewhere deep within your throat, Seokjin’s thrusts gaining momentum as he started to pound against your ass, his laboured breathing blowing hot air against your cheek. One of his hands dug into the round of your ass, his teeth sinking into your shoulder as he growled softly, thrusts purposeful, unrelenting.

“Let me see your pretty face,” he panted after a few moments, pulling you into him and cupping your jaw. You twisted yourself, half flat to his sweaty chest as you spread your legs too, letting him thrust up into you. Your breasts jiggled with the force of his movements, his tongue pushing into your mouth, kiss sloppy and everything good.

His breathing got heavier, his movements turning slightly sloppy as he adjusted your body once again so he could kiss and caress your breasts instead. A hand played with the left one as his mouth licked and sucked the right, grunts falling from his lips now as he quickly lost himself. His thrusts got harder and his teeth grazed against your nipple. When you cried out, he loved that, squeezing your boob roughly, tearing another sound from your throat as your walls clamped around him, gripping him for all he was worth.

You knew he was done for when he sought your mouth again, chuckling huskily as you pecked kisses against his plump lips. You felt his dick pulse, thrusts messy as he chased his end, and then he stilled, groaning as his orgasm hit and he started spilling warmth inside of you.

He wrapped his arms around you tightly once it was over, hugging you to his body with even more kisses, both of you panting softly, enjoying the come down. In fact, you didn’t want it to end. Gradually falling soft, he stayed buried inside you and made no attempts to slip out. If anything, he was damn determined to stay there for as long as possible it seemed.

“I love you,” you told him sweetly, sweeping some of his hair out of his eyes, still engulfed by his heat.

He smiled, practically goofy, still drunk off your lovemaking. “I love you too, of course.”

And then it was back to kissing.

You had a week’s worth to catch up on, and an entirety more to look forward to.

*BONUS*

You (10:25am) Seokjin came over last night, we talked it out and made up 😊

Soojung (10:29am) Finally! ILY and I’m so happy for you best friend! But thanks for the heads up, I’ll be giving the house a wide berth this weekend See you Monday 😘

Written 2020 - 2021. Please refrain from posting my work elsewhere. No translations allowed. © floralseokjin 2021

#seokjin fanfic #bts fanfic #bts smut #seokjin smut #fic:mls #floralseokjin:writings

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scullydubois · 3 years

Text

memory-bound: a revival one-shot

Set between Rm9sbG93ZXJz & My Struggle IV, Scully moves back into the Unremarkable House after her smart home burns down and returns to an age-old ritual: coloring her hair.

T, 1.8k, fluff/domestic fluff, read on ao3 here.

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

Lamp light casts shadows on the wall as Scully unpacks in a place she never thought she’d find herself again: the master bedroom she and Mulder shared for almost a decade. She lays her remaining clothes on the tribal-patterned bedspread and smirks at how little the room has changed. She expected to be put up in the guest room and was perfectly fine with that. They had rarely gotten any use out of it--she figured an inhabitant would do it some good. Imagine her shock, then, when Mulder told her he hadn’t slept in “their” room since she left. That the room was all hers.

It shouldn’t have surprised her that after a decade of a bed, he returned to what he knew upon losing what he had known. He swapped the couch he slept on for seven years for a Barcalounger. An old man needs his amenities, he joked while showing her its heat and massage functions. And she felt a gnawing in the pit of her stomach, the mark of a fool.

She salvaged what she could from the fire, but most of her Bethesda things were ruined. That soulless smart house was never worth its automated thermostat system, let alone any of its other data mines disguised as gizmos. Mulder hated it--hated it, like, wouldn’t step foot in it, and if she’s being honest, that was the only selling point for her: the shelter it offered from his incessant search for truth & his unsatisfiable conscience. This was back when she felt like that was something she needed to get away from, of course. She had wanted to settle somewhere and mean it. Now, she realizes they were settled all along.

She rests a pile of folded clothes in the crook of her arm and pulls open her old dresser. She envisioned cobwebs--maybe even a whole family of spiders--in there, but instead, a ratty New York Knicks t-shirt greets her. And a Spaceship Earth one under that, and a Wile E. Coyote one under that. Her holy trinity of Mulder t-shirts. She refused to take them when she left, though he insisted. And in protest, he hadn’t worn them. She knows this instinctively, though the lack of laundry scent confirms it. They’ve been waiting in this drawer all along, captives to Mulder’s fantasy that one day she would open it again.

Scully squeezes her eyes shut, slips the pile in next to the shirts, slams the drawer, and grabs her toiletries bag off the bed, striding into the bathroom. She can’t dwell...she can’t. She’s learned by now that regret is a state of mind that freezes her up, and there’s no being frozen, not any more.

Unzipping the bag, she lines her various products along the counter. Age-defying this, anti-aging that...sunscreen is really the only thing that’s done her any good. That, and hair dye. She keeps the others around for show.

Speaking of...she pokes at her roots, scouring the mirror for signs that yes, she could theoretically be a grandma--and she can’t say for certain that she isn’t--but to her knowledge, she’s not, and as long as no one calls her Grandma, she won’t accept the title.

She won’t accept the gray hairs, either. One day, sure, but not yet. Mulder’s not even gone gray yet, and he has years on her. She’s told him that he would look great, and that the silver fox nickname would be nothing short of perfection, but he swears that he just hasn’t lost his “natural luster” yet, that he’ll embrace the gray when (if!) it comes.

Scully’s not been so lucky, though it doesn’t show. She’s been coloring her hair every three weeks since she was twenty-eight to keep the ravishing red. She’ll never forget when Mulder realized it wasn’t her natural color...the way his eyes widened as he moved between her legs…

It’s not as if he didn’t know; her mousy auburn had been on full display when they first met, and yet he’d gotten so used to seeing her as she is that it slipped his mind that she hadn’t always been that way. And once they moved in together--in this very bathroom, actually--he loved to help her with the coloring process, was as fascinated by it as the prospect of alien-human hybrids.

She chooses the tube of Rock it Like a Redhead dye from her product line-up, looks at her reflection. It’s been five--no, six--nearing seven--years since she performed this ritual in this room. She glances down, and sure enough, the tile still bears a rust-colored stain from one of her sessions gone wrong. It makes her smile...she has a history here. They have a history here.

She sighs. For old time’s sake, she might as well...she’s found herself thinking that a lot lately.

Her old robe--her usual attire for the occasion--fell victim to the fire, but she’s got a good substitute in mind. She pads back into the bedroom and plucks the Wile E. Coyote shirt from the drawer. It’s black, hopefully that will hide any stains. Her slacks are too damn expensive to risk an accident, so she briefly considers stripping to her panties before settling on a pair of gym shorts.

Her get-up in place, she grabs a few clips from her bag and pins her hair up in four sections. This is one of the reasons she got her chop; her long hair was sexy, but it was a bitch trying to cover all those layers. Plus, Mulder is fond of “the Scully shag” as he calls it, though she corrects him every time (it’s not a shag Mulder, it’s a bob!). It reminds him of their firsts, she imagines. It’s almost as if the longer her hair got, the further apart they drifted. And once they were okay again, it was imperative that she bear her neck to him...show him the place where his lips should land.

She decides to stand in the shower (water off, of course) so any mess can be rinsed away. She wonders, suddenly, if the square mirror they used to keep is still suctioned to the glass interior. It’ll be hard to do this alone if it’s not.

She peeks in, and it’s not there, and that must be the only thing in this house Mulder has moved. Figures. She slips off her shoes and grabs the applicator and dye tube. She’ll do the best she can, then use the bathroom mirror to make any touch-ups.

Scully steps into the shower. Its characteristic lemon scent is gone, and that makes her sad. It used to be a welcome change from the antiseptic hospital smell she dealt with all day. Wielding her tools, she starts at her roots, spreading the dye along her scalp with expert precision. Surely this counts as a workout--it takes a lot of energy to hold your arms over your head for this long. Will her Fitbit calculate how many calories she’s burning, she wonders?

She’s just started a new strand when a gentle rap echoes through the wall.

“Scully?” Mulder’s voice rings from outside the bedroom. She pulled the door slightly shut when she entered.

“Come in!” she calls. “In the bathroom.”

She hears footsteps in the adjacent room, then a hesitant breath as Mulder pauses at the doorway. “Are you decent?”

Scully looks down at herself. What a picture. “I’m in a Wile E. Coyote t-shirt and gym shorts. Does that answer your question?”

Mulder shuffles in, smirking at the sight of her through the open shower door. “What are you doing?”

She points to the crown of her head--which is already well within his field of vision--so she’s not sure why he needed to ask the question.

“Well, I see that,” Mulder concedes, “but I mean, why are you hunched over in here like you’re hoping to grow a third arm?”

Scully shrugs. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

“That’s just as lame as ‘boys will be boys,’ and you know it,” he counters, remembering a spirited lecture she once gave him on the misogynist undertones of the phrase. Scully smirks. They had that conversation years ago...post-William, pre-Bahamas. She’s surprised that it stuck with him.

She tilts her chin in a way that makes Mulder certain she’d have her hands on her hips if they weren’t occupied. “What do you suggest?” she challenges.

“Let me help you,” he proposes before she can launch a protest. His sneaker’s rubber sole meets the shower tile as he slips in beside her. The wall is cold against her elbow as she scoots back to make room for him.

“I’m fine. I’ve been doing this on my own for years, and I was long before you.”

“But now you have me,” he professes. “Here. Right now,” he clarifies, not meaning to label their as-yet undefined relationship status.

Their eyes meet, and Scully’s hit with the last time the two of them were in here--her legs around his waist, his hands sliding through her hair, droplets that couldn’t be placed as shower water, sweat, or tears. Her spine straightens against the very wall where she was pinned. Times change, yet they don’t. History repeats itself in a slightly different key.

“When I was younger, I did this because I liked the color,” she tells him, finishing a section and lowering her hands. “Now, I do it out of necessity. It’s sad, Mulder.” She juts her lower lip out in a faux pout. “We’re getting old.”

He would hug her, but he’d mess up her hair and it would be a whole thing. “Hey, I’ll be pushing your wheelchair with my wheelchair, remember?” he says, taking her slip into sentimentality as permission.

Scully nods, the delicate memories of years past bringing a slight frown to her face.

“Can you do me a favor?” she asks, raising to her tiptoes, then lowering again. Her eyes twinkle.

“Of course.”

She offers him the tube of dye, looks up at him with a smile.

“Can you get right here?” She points to a spot right above her temple, one she could definitely reach herself if she wanted to.

Mulder admires her. His woman, back in his old t-shirt and all. He plants his lips on her temple, breathing her in. No matter what she says about aging or being old, he’ll never believe her. She is as she was back then: the only semblance of peace he’s ever known.

He pulls away to meet her gaze, his voice warm and smooth. “Is that about where you want it?”

Scully grins. “Yes, that’s perfect.”

#this might be the only revival fic i ever write & i really enjoyed it #a chance to reflect and take a trip down memory lane <3 #the x-files #txf #txf fic #mine #todayinfic

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ieattaperecorders · 3 years

Text

Notes on Causality - Chapter 4: Gerry

A favor for an old friend.

Read on Ao3

As he fell away for the final time, he felt that all-consuming fear, and his only thought was to cry out for his mother. But with the last vestige of his stubborn will, he refused. She would not claim his last moment. He was silent.

And so Gerard Keay ended. But there would be no rest for him.

The recitation came to an end, the agony of being pulled through his own demise faded into dull awareness. He remembered himself, the negative space where a person had once been. Gerard had never liked ghost stories. He liked them less now that he was one of them.

The man holding the book was a stranger. He was old, though probably not as old as Trevor. His hair had been black once but was far more salt than pepper now, and his face was creased around the forehead and mouth. A pattern of scars on his face and neck made Gerard think instinctively of filth, and of burrowing things.

So. Either this was someone who’d taken the book from the Van Helsings, or more likely someone they’d threatened into using it so they didn’t have to look at him directly. Pricks.

“. . . Are they dead?” he asked tiredly.

“You mean the hunters?” the man shook his head. “No, I sincerely doubt I would have been able to manage that. But I took pains to cover my tracks.”

“You stole the book from them?"

“Well, it was stolen to begin with, wasn’t it?”

“Hmm,” Gerard tilted his head, smirking grimly. “Condolences to your family, then. Aren’t many in the world who can cover their tracks enough for those two.”

“I’m well aware,” the man sighed. “I’ve done what I can, nothing left but to wait and see now.”

They were in a small bedroom, inside what was probably a cabin. Gerard saw dark wood walls, oil lamps, and a tattered rug that bore some kitschy pattern he couldn’t be bothered to identify. Any view there might have been through the window was obscured by white-out snowfall. There was a fire in the fireplace, not that he could feel it.

“Who’re you, then?”

“My name’s Jon. I used to be the Archivist, until I took your father’s way out.”

He gestured towards his face, and Gerard finally noticed the scars crossing over his eyes -- false ones, probably. The implications sank in.

“Hard to tell how much time’s passing in here,” he said. An echo of an emotion, something that was almost sadness. “But unless you’re a hell of a lot older than you look, I don’t think you’re Gertrude’s predecessor.”

“No. No . . . I was her successor.”

“So she’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so,” Jon said. “She died holding a can of petrol, daring a man to shoot her.”

The thought warmed something in the absence of Gerard, and he smiled. “. . . Good.”

For a moment, he pictured Gertrude standing on a chair to disable the alarm in his hospital room so that he could light the cigarette she’d snuck in. A phantom ache came from where the IV had been in his arm. The hole was still there, still unhealed. It would never have the chance to be otherwise.

He took another look at Jon, tired resignation coming over him.

“So . . . ‘used-to-be-Archivist,’” he sighed. “You went to the trouble of getting the skin book from a pair of homicidal maniacs. I’m guessing you have questions.”

“Not really. I assume you want me to burn your page, I suppose I just wanted to talk to you first. Tell you what’s coming, and confirm that it’s what you want.”

“. . . It is,” he said adamantly. “Being like this hurts , there’s no real life in it. Whatever else there is, even if it’s nothing? I’ll take it.”

“I understand.” Jon paused. “I . . . if you want, I can let you go. Get it done right away.”

To his surprise, Gerard hesitated. He didn’t know what made him do so. Maybe it was fear, the thought of facing a second end, one that would hopefully be final. Maybe it was reluctance that he sensed in Jon, what was left of him reflecting the emotions of the living like the moon to sunlight. Or, hell, maybe now that he knew it would all be over soon he just wanted to linger a bit longer. He didn’t know, and he supposed it didn’t matter.

“Nah. I’ll stay a while. Got all eternity to not exist, right?” he shrugged. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a cigarette . . .”

“Sorry. Quit some time ago. And you couldn’t smoke it anyway, could you?”

“Guess not.” Something occurred to him, and he frowned. “Hey, how’d you read it?”

“What?”

“My page. You said you took my dad’s way out, right? He had to blind himself, and the book’s not exactly in Braille. How’d you read the page?”

“Oh! That’s uh . . . sort of a long story, actually.”

There was a pause, during which it became clear that he wasn’t going to follow that with anything.

“Well, summarize then,” Gerard said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“All right . . . I’ve actually met you before. I lived through a, hmm ---” he sighed, looking annoyed. “Well, Melanie insists on referring to it as an alternate timeline, which I really don’t care for. But I have to admit it’s a useful way to conceptualize it, so . . . .”

“Right, right,” Gerard waved a hand. “The whole ‘it’s not really this but we’re calling it this’ thing, I got it.”

“I was trying to continue Gertrude’s work of stopping rituals, which is how I met you originally. I burned your page that time as well . . . which, incidentally, did not go well for me. They did notice it was missing.”

There was a snippy edge to Jon’s tone, and Gerard smirked, unable to shake the feeling that he was on the receiving end of a cross-timeline ‘I told you so.’

“Better luck this time. Maybe the Van Helsings have gone soft,” he said without conviction.

“Oh yes, clearly they’re winding down to retirement,” Jon’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Regardless, things got pretty bad in those years. And, um . . . the world ended.”

“. . . Fucking hell.”

“More or less, yes.”

“Was it as bad as we thought it’d be?”

“Worse. Whatever you imagined, it was worse,” he said grimly. “Eventually, I found a way to pass my own memories onto my past self, and with that knowledge I’ve changed the course of events so that none of it ever happened.”

“Hence the world still being here.”

“For the time being. It took a long time to find the Hunters, even longer to put a plan together to get the book from them without leaving a trail. By the time we’d worked out what we’d be doing they’d moved on and we had to find them again, and so on,” he waved his hand. “But eventually . . . well, here we are.”

“Huh.” Gerard paused. He ran all that over in his head again. “Didn’t really answer my question, did you?”

“Oh, right,” Jon laughed softly. “Well. As it turns out, holding the book and reciting from memory is good enough. If that hadn’t worked, I’d have had to call my husband in here.”

“. . . Where is here, anyway?” Gerard looked around at the small room. “It feels strange. Couldn’t quite tell at first, but this place isn’t normal, is it?”

“It’s not, no. We found an artifact of the Vast, a snow globe that traps you inside if you look at it too long. Time passes at a different rate here . . . minutes become decades, hours multiple centuries. You don’t age or die, but you feel the passage of time, and you’re only released if the globe is broken. By then if there’s anything left of you you’ll return to a world you barely remember, a blip in your memories that are now eons long.”

“Right. And you’re here on purpose?”

“A friend of ours was holding it when we went in, she’ll have let it go the instant we disappeared. A few milliseconds for reaction time, then a second or two of freefall before it hits the concrete floor. Time enough to erase any trail that the Hunters might follow.”

Gerard frowned. “How does that work? Won’t it be just a second for them too?”

“Well, yes. But whether they find us has more to do with us than with them? You know how these things are.”

“Inside-out dream logic, yeah.”

“While we’re here we’re not running, and we’re in the grasp of another power that will greedily consume any fear we feel. If our theory's correct, when we return our tracks will be obliterated, and any breadcrumbs eaten by birds.”

“Yeah, I get it. What d’you think it is about the Hunt that makes everyone go for the fairy tale metaphors, anyway?”

“Couldn’t say. We should be here a few months, maybe close to a year if it doesn’t break immediately and Tim needs to use the baseball bat,” he smiled wryly. “We brought quite a few board games.”

“Sounds like a cozy holiday.”

“Yes! We’re trying to think of it that way,” he smiled, perking. “It’ll still be rough near the end, I’m sure. These things don’t come without consequences, you can’t throw yourself into something touched by the Vast without a taste of the horrors of eternity. But we’re good at keeping each other grounded. And I consider this worth it.”

“Unless something goes wrong and you’re trapped for all eternity.”

“True. It would definitely not be worth that. No offense.”

“None taken. Eternity’s a long time.”

Gerard tried to think of the last time someone had done something for him, with nothing to gain for themselves. Then he started to wonder if it had ever happened.

Something in him became still, then. Quiet, and cold.

“I . . . think I’m ready to go.”

". . . All right,” Jon hesitated, as if he might say something else, then nodded. “All right, then. Goodbye, Gerry. I dismiss you.”

Something flickered in him, and then he felt himself fade. The room slipped away, and he was once again nowhere and nothing.

He felt himself being torn from the book, felt leather split, waxed linen strain and snap as he was pulled from the binding that held him. There was a moment of breath, there was relief, and then there was only the fire.

It was nothing like being burned alive, and he would know. The pain was more insult than injury. What he felt instead was a frightening dissolution. Whatever was left of him – his thoughts, his memories, his feelings – he felt them disappear as he was being burned away.

The fear of his own end, the terror he had been bound in for so long threatened to return and drag him into oblivion screaming. But as the last vestiges of what had once been Gerard Keay were consumed, his mind drifted away from itself. He thought instead about Jon, about the last person he would ever speak to.

He didn’t think much, really. Just wondered if his plan would work, if he and his husband would escape the trap they’d put themselves into voluntarily. If they did this sort of thing all the time – burning Leitners and making enemies of Hunters – or if it was even remotely possible that they’d done it all for him.

Then Gerard Keay was gone. For good, this time.

---

Martin dropped the quartered logs in a pile next to the door, pausing to stomp the snow off him, take off his boots and brush the worst of it off his clothes. The endless snowstorm being what it was, he supposed there wouldn’t be much wandering around outside. Cabin fever was the whole point of this place.

The sounds of muffled conversation from behind the bedroom door had stopped just before he went out to the woodshed, and they hadn’t started up again. He decided to give the door a knock.

“Come in,” Jon’s voice came from beyond. “I’m . . . it’s done.”

Opening the door, Martin was greeted with the sight of Jon knelt in front of the fireplace, wrapped up in the soft flannel blanket from the bed. The book sat on the floor beside him, and he was shifting the logs with a long, metal poker. He turned in Martin’s direction and smiled. Lit by warm firelight, nestled in the blanket and one of Martin’s old jumpers, he made for a remarkably homey sight considering where they were.

“How’d it go?” Martin asked, coming to sit beside him.

“I think . . . Well. I hope that he got some peace, in the end.” Jon reached a blanket-swaddled arm across Martin’s back, pulling himself closer and drawing the warmth around him. “Thank you for doing this. It . . . means a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” Martin kissed the top of his head. “But it’s not just for you, you know. It’s a good thing we’re doing, setting them free. It’s the right thing to do.”

Jon nodded, nestling into him. "Did you take a look at the other pages?"

"Yeah. There's only a couple in English, so I figure we'Ll do them first, then I'll start breaking out the books and tapes we brought. If reciting it from memory worked, I might not even have to properly learn Sanskrit if I can pronounce it. Could be fun to try anyway, though."

"I'm still doubtful there'll be anyone who wouldn't rather have their page burned."

"Maybe, maybe not. Seems rude not to ask. And it's not as if we're on a tight schedule here."

"True enough," Jon smiled. "Time is something we'll have lots of. And . . . you're right to want to give them a choice. Even if they choose staying bound to a skin book for eternity."

"Mmm," Martin tried not to think too much about what the pages were made of, knowing he'd need to be handling them. "Anyway . . . looked around the place a bit while you were having your reunion. Whole cellar full of canned goods downstairs, easily a year's worth."

"I doubt they'll ever run out . . . fear of starvation would just distract from the dreadful creep of the endless aeons, after all."

"Mmm. Can always count on you to dispense these little nuggets of sunshine."

"Sorry. Too grim?"

"S'fine."

"We won't be here that long. A few months, a year at most. The others will get us out."

Martin looked into the fire. Any trace of the page thrown into it was long gone now. He hoped that whatever came next for Gerard Keay, it was kinder than what he'd been through.

"Well, if they don’t," he said, wrapping an arm around Jon. "I can't think of anyone I'd rather slowly go mad with than you."

"Nor can I."

#tma fanfic #tma #final update in this big honkin story!#because I always wonder about loose ends like these

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dammitadolfnomorecake · 3 years

Text

Once Bitten, Twice Stupid prt 141

141

Keith was tucked up in bed, saline IV drip in his arm. Lance had been jerking them off when Keith threw up across him. Orgasm, puke, panicked Keith. Moment ruined. Getting Keith up, showered, the bedding stripped and changed, his boyfriend was finally asleep. So much for coming back with a level head... Matt wasn’t Keith sitting ever again. Still, he was kind of cute when he was sleeping and sprouting nonsense. It wasn’t even funny nonsense. Their twins had been upgraded to cupcakes... so that was kind of funny, but Keith obviously not his limits both alcohol wise and mentally.

Heading into the living room, Rieva was back. He really wished they use the front door rather than balcony hoping

“How’s yours?”

“Had to put an IV line. Yours?”

“Tequila hit and he’d acquainting himself with the toilet”

“Did Matt say much?”

“Only that Keith was pretty much babbling by the third shot and obliterated by the 5th shot...”

“Surprised he made it that long... Am I... I did this, didn’t I?”

“Matt did. He wasn’t supposed to take Keith drinking while Keith was upset”

“Keith was upset because of me”

They’d got a lot done with Keith and Matt gone. He’d drafted his will, two copies, one in case Keith didn’t come back, which was now shredded, the other Rieva acted as his witness for. He didn’t have much, but if something happened he wanted Keith and the twins to be provided for. Everything but the coffee machine left to his boyfriend, which went to Pidge as a joke. Keith would decide how to split his assets and if there was something in particular their two best friends wanted Lance was confident Keith would let them take it. Shiro and Curtis to raise their twins if something happened. He hadn’t told Keith, because Keith didn’t want to think about things going wrong. He had a copy of his mother’s will, she’d tried to leave him things but he knew his siblings would contest it. The one thing he knew Luis would want would be Mami’s wedding and engagement ring set, to pass on. He’d slipped it off her finger before they flew back to America, then slid it back on at the service. Even if Luis wanted it, it was where it belonged. Where their Papi had slid it into place all those decades ago.

“Keith was upset because you’ve barely had time to talk about anything properly. Matt did mention you may wish to avoid the hotel lounge. Keith got a bit vocal about your sex life”

Lance groaned. Drunk Keith was a slut. Matt should have known better

“He’s lucky he doesn’t have alcohol poisoning... He’s also lucky Coran sent me back with extra medical supplies. Grab an IV bag if Matt needs one”

Rieva shrugged a shoulder

“He can suffer. I expected more maturity”

“I don’t know... Pidge turns to alcohol to solve all her problems”

“Yes, well. I only popped over to see how you were handling Keith. I can smell vomit in the air”

“Puked all over me. Gotta admit, as gross as it was, it was nice to not be the one throwing up all the time”

Not that Lance wanted to see Keith throwing up. He was pissed at Matt for letting Keith get into this state. Rieva was lucky he could see her and only smell Matt. His ego wanted to punch their friend in the face. Rieva screwed her nose up at his words

“At least mine made it to the bathroom. My plans for a swim are cancelled. Shall I pick you up something for dinner?”

“Yeah. That’d actually be great. Keith’s going to need food to soak up all the alcohol in his system. He still smells like a walking tequila bottle”

“He’ll be feeling it tomorrow. Alright, I’ll pop back soon. You should try rest too. You’re looking a little washed out”

“Try washing Keith when he’s crying, apologising, and groping me all at the same time”

“Nope. That’s a hard pass. I really am sorry for Matt’s actions”

“It’s fine. I totally owe you for today, so I’ll call it even”

“On the plus side, Coran’s fitting the drinks bill...”

He didn’t see that as a plus side. He’d have to pay something towards the room tab before they checked out. The rooms were something like $350 a night and he’d already been there twoish months... or was it three? He didn’t quite know where Keith got three months from. Maybe drunk Keith would tell him?

“... anyway, I’ll see you soon!”

Rieva was back out the window and across the next balcony before Lance could sigh. They were going to get busted for it. All it’d take was someone looking up and opening their big mouths over it. Just another reason why supernaturals shouldn’t be mixing with humans.

Heading back to Keith, his boyfriend was still in the same position Lance had left him in. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he placed his hand on Keith’s hair, letting the soft locks flop over his fingers. He didn’t know what Keith was thinking. Him taking the bite? What kind of crap was that? Keith would probably die before turning. If he turned, he’d have none of the benefits that came with turning young. He was trying to sign up for a life he knew wasn’t as glamorous as Hollywood made believe. He wasn’t going to take Keith’s warmth from him. He wasn’t going to curse him to their weird life. He loved his breathing happy human boyfriend. The feel of his strong heartbeat. The softness of Keith’s warmth as if cocooned around him. His scent. His smile. His ability to function without coffee. Humans were fragile, but he wouldn’t let Keith take the bite. One lifetime with Human Keith was as good as a million with vampire Keith who risked insanity and the troubles of ego. The constant risk of blood borne infection. Their egos might not even get along. Keith’s might outright reject the parts of him he’d liked as a human, and Lance might never recover from the guilt he knew would come if he turned him.

Stroking Keith’s hair, he wished they’d stay like this. Together. He shouldn’t have kept things from Keith, but Keith severely miscalculated how low Lance was. He’d barely started recovering when Mami passed. Yeah, he knew Keith hadn’t had a fun time, but... yeah. He’d fucked things up. The pat on the head and the reassurance he craved came from Rieva. She’d gone to get herself a glass of water from the kitchenette, seeing all the injections and stuff Coran had him taking on top of fresh blood, that he now definitely assumed had been cut off thanks to Keith coming, though feeding from Keith was dangerous. A full feed would leave him weak, his body not able to keep up with his desires to feed Lance as much as he needed. He supposed vampires would simply call in pets to entertain other breeders, that wasn’t what he wanted at all. Love was worth more than blood. Could a human not love a vampire? Or was Keith struggling with the idea of mortality?

Then there was what he’d said. Marriage. Um. Lance wasn’t in a rush. He didn’t feel he had to be married to be with Keith. It went against his romantic heart, but he also didn’t want an engagement ring out of duty. Things like marriage should wait. They hadn’t been together a year, rushing to sign up for the rest of their lives without ironing out the teething problems asked for trouble. Werewolves were different with their concept of marriage. Vampires different again. Vampires generally didn’t marry humans. Humans were generally only ever pets. Keith was not his pet. Did Keith not see them as partners? Did he really see Lance as out of reach permanently if he didn’t take the bite? He hated the thought. The thought he’d drifted so far away from being human in his boyfriend’s eyes. Why couldn’t what they’d had and would have be enough?

Falling asleep against Keith, Rieva woke him gently. Matt hanging back, looking like shit

“I’ve brought dinner up if you’d like to join us”

It was food time already? His nap schedule ruined, and his body making it’s dislike known. He’d barely had anything to drink either. One day back with Keith and he acting like a kid

“Yeah... smells good”

“Chicken and rice. Extra for Keith”

“Thanks. I’ll give you the money...”

“We already decided we’re even. I know I told you to nap, yet, I can’t say you seem too rested”

“I got too caught up in taking care of him that I might have forgotten to eat”

Rieva took him by the arm, pulling Lance off Keith who whined in his sleep, patting around for him. Leaning back, Lance kissed Keith’s cheek, his boyfriend’s breath hideous, but trying to brush Keith’s teeth didn’t exactly work when his boyfriend wanted to suck on the toothbrush

“Babe, you awake?”

“Ngggh...”

Nope. He needed sleep. The more sleep the better. He was going to be hung over as fuck

“You just sleep. I’ll be back soon”

“Unmg”

“I know. You regret your life choices. It’s okay, just sleep it off”

“Mhndssf”

“I love you, too”

The three of them left Keith sleeping, Matt throwing himself down on the sofa with such force Lance was worried it was about to break

“I’m amazed you speak drunken Keith. He stopped making sense to me”

Lance shook his head

“Thanks for that. I don’t, and I don’t appreciate you getting him drunk”

“Trust me, dude. No more tequila for him. no mas tequila”

Matt’s Spanish was like nails on a chalk board, making him cringe. He’d even thrown in a very bad Spanish accent trying to sell the three words

“Did he try hitting on you? He’s a slut when he’s drunk”

“No. That would have been easier to deal with. It was all “I love Lance!”. “Lance likes it when I hold hips down and fuck him!”. “Lance is perfection!”. “Lance is life!”. I want my cupcakes!””

Lance groaned. He’d never be able to face any of the hotel staff again

“You shouldn’t have taken him drinking...”

“I know! He just seemed like he needed to let loose”

There was any number of things Matt could have taken Keith off and done...

“Then take him for Karaoke. Give him like two shots and he’ll get up there... Do you have any idea what he’s been saying?”

“That he’s serious about being with you?”

“That the wants to be bitten”

“Ah. He’ll get over that”

Matt waved it off dismissively

“That doesn’t seem like something he’ll just get over, Matt”

Not when Keith had this idea of forever being unnaturally long

“He had something like 8 shots. He won’t remember”

“That’s beside the point because I remember. Couldn’t you have picked something else to talk about?”

“Trust me, I tried”

Rieva interrupted the pair of them

“Aaaaaanyway, Lance, you need to eat. One full blood bag and your food”

“I will”

“You’ll do it now or you’ll forget”

“I don’t forget. It’d be so much easier if I did”

“I don’t care for your excuses, eat, now”

He wasn’t trying to make excuses. He’d come out to eat with his... pack. He was just trying to learn about what Keith had said while drunk. Not putting off eating. This was why he had a hard time accepting the help of his friends because, despite wanting the best for him, he now felt slightly smothered.

Thanks to the feeling of being smothered, Lance was distant through dinner. Before he knew what happened he found his plate emptied. Matt and Rieva also having finished eating, with Matt looking too well after the greasy chicken

“If you’re going to puke, please try to make it to the bathroom”

The scent of Keith’s vomit was bad enough. He didn’t need Matt puking, he was liable to start vomiting at any moment as it was. The chicken looked good, tasted good, but the amount of oil coupled with the scent was definitely not good.

Matt nodded, chicken bone still his mouth

“I think I’m going to eat and run before you start sucking down that blood”

“Matthew!”

Matt shrugged

“He said to go if I’m feeling sick, I’m feeling sick, take care of meeee”

Eh. Close enough. He had Keith to nurse as it was

“I’m sorry, Lance. Matt’s banned from drinking until we get home”

Good luck with that one. Matt not drinking was like Keith not having coffee. If he wanted to drink, he would. That was just how Matt was

“What? Babe. Nooooo”

“You should have thought about that before you ruined our plans. You reap what you sow”

“Lance, please tell me we’re on the first plane out of here tomorrow”

He got it. He was interrupting their lives. Yep. He knew it. Rieva and Matt should be back in America. He’d lasted long enough on his own. He could manage

“You guys can go if you really want to, but I want to spend some more time here”

Rieva elbowed Matt

“Lance, we’re not leaving until you are ready”

Open wound. Pour in salt. Bam. Same feeling as what he felt at Rieva mothering him

“I’ll think about it some more. Thanks for the help earlier. It felt good to get things organised”

“You’re very welcome. Don’t stay up too late”

That meant no walk along the beach alone at night. Too bad for Rieva that he was going to. Lance supposed it was a bit weird, but to him it was like a treat for making it through the day. He could walk the beach, swim if he felt like it, breathe in the salt air and just let go

“Alright. Off you both go. I’ll take care of the clean up”

He’d said alright. Not that he’d promised to. It’d been far too long since he’d been swimming and he’d always loved the water. Going home meant returning to dry inland heat and not a pool in sight. Why couldn’t people just trust him to make the choices that made him happy and his head less busy? No one bothered him. He bothered no one. He always dressed warmly enough... He’d wake Keith up and let him know before he went. No one could be mad at him for that. This was why he’d been keeping so much to himself. Because he knew his mental health was being a little shit and his ego a flaring arsehole. He’d asked for time, not for love to be shoved down his throat at the first possible instance until it choked him.

#once bitten twice stupid #oncebittentwicestupid #ashratherose

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blackfemmecharacterdependency · 3 years

Text

14. A Shot in the Dark Part 2

Upfront: It has been a long time since I’ve known somebody who got shot (well enough) to have the exact parameters of how the hospital etiquette is, so I’m basically going to tap into the last time, and since that was about a decade ago and also in my hometown, Idk how far off the way that they handle it is. I’ll try to fill in the spaces with how not as close associates have portrayed their experiences with similar crises and maybe pepper in a little imagination for flow of story. But, the main takeaway is that the chapter has a heavy police presence and I know that can be extremely difficult to digest for people.

He had been crying for most of the night. He wasn’t that adverse to crying. Physically, it was a good release for emotions that the brain was trying to process. He did wish that he could stop for longer than fifteen minutes here and there, but there was too much happening in his heart and mind. It had been two hours. The police had talked to him, then he had to wait for detectives, and they were a “good cop, bad cop” team that he would have expected only in a fictional work, and that was fitting, since none of this felt real.

The way that Grace’s body shivered in his arms, then just… stopped moving. The way that she wasn’t breathing and he was too scared to let go of her wound to try to administer CPR… The way that he was convinced that he was watching the love of his life die in his arms and the fact that she had been in surgery for two hours and nobody but police and detectives would speak to him about anything, yet, nobody would try to contact her family, despite him repeating to them that she was Ambassador Monroe’s daughter…

3:48 am - At least they had contacted Sunetra. Apparently, she was Grace St. Catherine’s listed emergency contact. She and Xander showed up about an hour after Simon had been sitting there, with the police. Whenever they came in, both of them noticed him and he could see that Xander looked equal amounts of confused, angry, and scared. Sunny was less readable, only seeming to be curious, but rushed over to him, while the police tried to intercept her. “What happened?” she asked, over their shoulders.

Simon stared at her, glanced at Xander, and even though everything in him wanted to say, “You left her to fucking die is what happened!” Instead, he said very softly, “Grace and I were on a date and she got shot…” Sunny had an emotional response. She began to let tears fall from her eyes, though the rest of her was unresponsive as the police gently guided her away, asking that she and Simon don’t talk.

Xander had a look of… realization and resignation. Simon was gonna cover for them again. He and Sunny could stick with the alibi that they would have used if Grace had been found dead in the alley… “Is she dead?” Xander asked, shaking and crying/

“Surgery…” Simon said, feeling… equal parts bad for him but still extremely pissed off. He knew that he cared, he did know that… but they just LEFT her. They left her to die, not knowing that Simon was there for her, to avenge her nor to save her. They had left her to die in an alley and would have just… moved on without her, like they’d done with Heath. He felt his own tears forming again, angry ones this time around and he wiped at them with his sleeve. She deserved better.

At least now, he was ready to make his phone call. He just… didn’t want to potentially be arrested if Grace was gonna be alone. Hopefully, somebody would call her parents. She wasn’t close to them, but she loved them a lot, and they deserved to know where she was. She deserved to have them there for her. “Mom…”

“Simon? Baby, it’s 3 am, what in the world is going on?”

He sobbed and said, “Grace was shot..”

He heard the wind leave his mother like she’d just been hit. “Oh my God, Simon. Baby, I am so sorry. Where are you, I’ll come right down!”

“I’m at the hospital. The police want to talk to me. I’m scared that… That they’ll make me leave her here… that they might arrest me.” There was a pause, and he knew that she was trying to process something… “I was just trying to protect her. I killed somebody… He shot her and I…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. It wasn’t even the fact that he had done it, but telling his mother was… harder than he imagined when he mustered up the courage to call her.

“I’m gonna call the lawyer and come down there. What hospital?”

Simon wrote something on her hand.

It's not the first thing that she noticed. That was the room. A hospital room. What happened? For a moment, she didn’t even know who she was, much less where exactly she was and why, but her brain read her surroundings as a hospital room, and whatever happened, she felt very fuzzy headed and resolved not to say anything aloud until she could figure out more about what happened and why.

The second thing that she noticed was the badge.

It had a visceral and sobering affect on her. She thought about the ACAB button on her favorite canvas bag and her body felt actual elevated pain at even seeing the symbol - a symbol she hated and did not trust. The badge holder spoke, seeing that she was now awake, she mentally noted, not caring that she couldn’t POSSIBLY look like she was capable of holding a conversation, because she still was trying to figure out what happened. “Miss St. Catherine?”

“Monroe,” she groaned. Bitch, was that YOUR voice? She wondered, hearing something that sounded gross and pained come out of her and feeling a tremendous strain as the word flowed from her lips, even as her mind told her not to say THAT. Monroe. She hadn’t used that name in years, but… her brain still automatically spat it out when addressed. “Ugh…” she finally remembered more. Monroe. That’s correct. She had parents and her last name, from them had been Monroe. It took her a while to push out her explanation - both energy and concentration that the badge holder allowed her to power through. “I’m the daughter of Gethsemane Monroe… and Ambrose! Ambrose Monroe. Call him… My father… I’m… hurting…”

The third thing that she noticed was her pain. You’d think it would be instant, but her brain spent so much energy trying to formulate words and connect them to thoughts of questions that she hadn’t. But, by God, now she did.

“You’ve gotten medical attention, but we will contact your parents.”

“Cool. They’ll call the family lawyer.”

“You think that you need a lawyer?”

“I don’t think that you should talk to me in my condition. Can hardly think, and I’m in pain. I’ve…” I’ve been shot! THAT’S what happened. She remembered. Her blood pressure spiked at this realization. “Simon!” Her voice was stronger, in her panic and she moved quite violently, only to realize that she was handcuffed to the hospital bed. Both her wrist and her gsw hurt in that moment and she laid down, breathing hard and holding herself with her free hand.

“Simon Laurent?” The badge holder had been unmoved by her sudden jolt, and unphased by her obvious pain.

“I hope that whatever is in this IV doesn’t make me forget that you’re trying to talk to me in my condition, after the fact that I asked for my lawyer. I hope that they have a lot to say about me being chained to this bed after getting shot.”

The doctor had arrived to check on her and the detective ducked out, with Grace glaring at him. They brought her blood pressure down, gave her more pain medicine and spoke to her about her injuries and procedures. “Am I going to make it?”

“I think so. Good thing that your friend was there.”

“Simon! Is he okay?” her pulse shot up.

“Please try to remain calm, Miss St. Catherine. He wasn’t harmed.” She sighed and rested against the pillow. That wasn’t what I asked… But, that was when she noticed it:

“Remember our last date night! XOXO Simon” The doctor left the room as she stared at the sloppily written message, knowing that even though it looked shaky and/or rushed that it was Simon’s handwriting and he MUST have written it while she was injured… she knew this was an important message. Our last date night? Like… last date-date, date night or last “date night” date night? No… not our last date. There’s nothing special about that. He had recently asked her about their “last date night,” so she knew that must have been what he meant. Remember our last date night! XOXO Simon…

She knew what she needed to do. She waited, trying to breathe and meditate, silently hoping and wishing that she knew Simon as well as she knew that he knew her. She looked at the clock in the room. 4:14 am.

4:58 am, a VERY handsome couple stormed into the hospital and Simon recognized them immediately. Even if he had never seen the photos, Grace was the spitting image of her mother - the woman didn’t even look old enough to have a daughter her age. They could easily pass for sisters, and with a slight variation of her skin tone and hair texture, they had the exact same face, build, and body language. (Though, Grace's body language most likely mimicked her mom's to pass for normalcy) Her father was… clearly rich, because that woman was definitely out of his league and his style was more of a conservative fashion than the clearly purposely fashionable wife, but that was an earlier thought Simon had… not necessarily one he had on this night.

The man was slamming his finger onto the counter and speaking very sternly to the poor lady at the desk. Whatever was happening wasn’t her fault, but Simon figured the police had been just as shitty with them as they’d been with him the past couple of hours. The woman turned and noticed him. She came over and his mother took his hand and intertwined their fingers, seemingly to give him strength. They weren’t sure WHAT Grace’s mother was going to say.

“You’re Grace’s boyfriend,” she said. Simon… knew that Grace said her mom was English, but hearing that voice come out of “Grace’s face” was a bit shocking at first. He nodded his head. If Grace hadn’t announced that they had broken up, this wasn’t the time to. Maybe she also hadn’t mentioned that she’d rushed off because he was stalking her. “Do you know what happened?” She wondered.

The police were a lot more accommodating with allowing her to talk to him than they had been with Sunny and Xander, who were also in the waiting room, with officers beside them, and had been presumably questioned when they’d been guided to the detectives earlier. Simon glanced at them and he saw that the police were staring at him, waiting for him to finally say something. If he wasn’t going to answer them, he would maybe answer this woman. He squeezed his mother’s hand and let himself tell her. “Somebody attacked Grace. She was shot,” he pointed to where. “She’s been in surgery. They won’t say more. The man that shot her… He was somebody… that she knew… from her past, I think,” he said, tilting his head, hoping that Mrs. Monroe would catch what he meant. She stumbled, ever so slightly, letting him know that she indeed did get it. “I killed him,” Simon said. It was more of a proud declaration than anything else. The woman looked… relieved. Simon didn’t know if he was imagining that for his own ego, or if he was simply too disoriented to note things properly. But soon, the doctor approached Grace’s parents and they rushed down the hallway with him. She’s alive. She’s okay… Simon felt himself take the first relieved breath that he’d had in hours.

5:17 am. Outside of her room, she could hear her parents fussing with someone. The other voice wasn’t very familiar, but she ultimately gathered that it was that badge that had been in earlier. He had a hard voice, which, although he was speaking in a low voice, it cut through the wall and sounded very sinister as he told her parents that she couldn’t receive visitors until they figured out what happened in that alley. An accent of “the Queen’s people,” Grace considered it. She wasn’t that great at telling a lot of those accents apart, and found out that people snobbishly point out that their accents are special. Their accents are different. If they had the Queen listed whenever she looked them up online, she just threw it in a bucket. It was an effort on her part NOT to think about linguistics. In fact, she furrowed her brows that she was thinking about it so naturally just from hearing an Australian accent through a door. Damn it.

Her father spoke about the constitution, warned the dick that he knew the law, and her mother insisted that he was incompetent, subhuman, and corrupt. The door opened and the man returned, leaving her parents outside.

“Miss Monroe, or Miss St. Catherine, or whoever you wish to be called these days. Your parents have been alerted and they want to see you. Your boyfriend is out there, speaking to my partner. If you want to get your side out, I would suggest that you do so now.”

She frowned. Her side? Simon wasn’t telling on her. He wouldn’t. She looked at the note on her hand. This cop is trying to get under your skin, Grace.

“People sure do seem to die around you a lot. Hopefully, he'll realize that sooner, rather than later." He adjusted her blanket and smirked, his icy blue eyes seemingly having nothing human behind them as he covered up her still cuffed arm. "But, maybe I'm misunderstanding the facts. Maybe it's not what it looks like. Maybe you weren't trying to attack someone when they shot you in self defense, only to be murdered moments later by some poor fool under your spell."

Now, Grace smirked, but she was in enough pain that it could be mistaken for a wince, if Mace wasn't so receptive. "Yes. You ARE wrong."

"Explain it to me. Simon's certainly explaining it to my partner."

Sieve: Just explain to me what happened

Simon: Is Grace okay?

Sieve: Whatever you know, it could only help her.

Simon: (Sighs) I've already told the police and I also told you and your partner. That guy shot her and I shot him. He attacked, I reacted.

Sieve: What led up to it?

Simon: It happened really fast.

Sieve: Start from when you first saw him. We’ve got time.

Simon: Ummm… he seemed to come out of nowhere to me I don't know.

Grace: I spotted him throwing the trash out back there and I recognized him. I thought he might not recognize me, but if he did... I... Didn't want Simon to know. (Lowers her eyes to the note on her palm. Clenches her fist.) He doesn't know about my past. I didn't want him to know that I was... Product... And I certainly never expected to run into the man who had turned me into product…

Sieve: Did she say who this man was?

Simon: No... She... (Taps into Grace's personality. ‘If I were brainstorming the actions of a character like Grace, how would I outline her response to this line of questioning?’) She seemed paranoid. Secretive. I didn't know him, but I had a feeling that she didn't want me to, so I tried to give her space. I gave them too much of it…

Grace: I tried to get some distance between Simon and I to get a closer look at the guy. It was dark and I didn't know if my past was playing tricks on my mind. It's been almost 15 years now… I didn't really believe myself to be seeing him again, especially in such a random place as this alley.

Mace: But it was him?

Grace: (nods head) It was dark. I was walking up on him and I asked him a question about that day. Are you the nice man with the pinky ring in the white limousine? I asked it out loud before I could stop myself or formulate a more tactful way to handle it.

Mace: And then what?

Grace: (Looks into his eyes) And then he shot me.

Simon: I don't KNOW what she said. I don't know what happened. It was dark and they were a little ways away from me. From what I COULD figure, he seemed to be trying to kill her. I simply reacted.

Sieve: By emptying your gun into him?

Simon: That's… that's how I practice at the range. I've been practicing a lot. I'm a pretty good shot. I just... Went into my practice mode. He was running, but I imagined the firing range targets when they move forward.

Sieve: He was running towards you?

Simon: (Pauses) No.. the other direction.

Sieve: So, you admit that he was running away when you killed him.

Simon: I… never denied that he was running away… AFTER he tried to kill Grace. (Hands shaking in anger and frustration)

Sieve: But, instead of self defense, as you claimed, this sounds like revenge for shooting your girlfriend.

Simon: If you could only be self-aware enough to realize how absurd that is coming from the police. You all shoot people all the time out of fear. Unarmed people who aren't even being violent. This monster shot at us!

Sieve: At her. After she rushed up to him in the dark, in presumably a confrontational manner.

Simon: Why do you presume that?

Sieve: It sounds like your girlfriend rushed upon this man, if it happened so quickly that you can’t form how exactly it did happen. How far away would you say you were from him?

Simon: (Flares nostrils) I didn't measure.

Sieve: (More pensievely than accusatory) But, in the dark, with him moving in the opposite direction, you were a very precise shot. It was not well lit, he was an unknown distance away. Your girlfriend was probably on the ground by then. All on short notice, and in a random alley behind this man’s job. You hit him with every bullet in your gun. You didn't miss at all, and still had time to apply pressure to the wound and call 911.

Simon: I’m a quick thinker and I've been practicing.

Mace: So, the victim…

Grace: Me?

Mace: The murder victim.

Grace: The attempted murderer.

Mace: Had ties to someone you knew. Someone we spoke about before. Heath Farmer.

Grace: (Pulse accelerates. Face becomes firm) I don't believe that.

Mace: The night that Farmer died, he had been a part of a b&e, two of the culprits escaped. The homeowner didn't get a good look at them, but noted that they were all dressed alike and wearing masks. Some time later, a man was taken from his home, not to be seen again. His wife, who hadn't been on the scene when Farmer died, described the kidnappers in a similar fashion as Farmer had been dressed that night. Same exact clothing that was removed from your person for surgery.

Grace: (Unbothered) Sounds like they were stylish.

Mace: 148. That's what you told the police whenever you were initially arrested for beating a girl almost to death.

Grace: A gang member who murdered a small child that police failed to protect.

Mace: Heath Farmer once had a number too, and I'm sure that if I were to go through all of your friends, I would find more numbers. More members of your gang. More murderers…

Grace: I'm sure that you’ll find that there is no type of evidence to indicate that I have murdered anybody, anywhere. The only thing that you have is the word of someone who described an outfit of some people who maybe tapped into a description that her husband gave her when he spoke about work.

Mace: I never mentioned anything about his work.

Grace: You mentioned that the wife’s description matched Heath's death at his murder scene. Either somebody let a civilian on the premises during an investigation, or the woman's husband was on the scene for work, since she was not, as you were happy to inform me. (Bats her eyes)

Mace: (Glares) You were able to pin numerous murders on so-called stewards, who wore all black clothes masks to cover their identities, and yet, in several disappearances over the past couple of years, we find the symbol associated with your old gang. The one that you got away with acts of violence by being rich and pretending to be crazy. Several of those same kids who were on the streets were there for a year while you were allowed to sit in a room, dance and draw pictures with crayons. Maybe the ringleader felt bad for abandoning them. Maybe these people who are disappearing are doing so because the princess has decided.

Grace: This is inappropriate. The detective.

Mace: Why would you and Farmer have matching outfits and be near people associated with the old Apex in the middle of the night? More than one occasion, and it be exactly the same as what the witness saw when her husband was taken?

Grace: My date with Simon was after practice last night, and Heath must have stopped by that man’s house on his way to practice that night.

Mace: Practice?

Grace: (Deadpan) We have a dance crew. (Stare at each other) You can verify it with the Infinity Train Foundation Center. Sometimes we practice there and most of our performances have been there. For the kids.

Mace: You never said that you had practice on the night of his death. (Smirks)

Grace: I said that we cancelled some plans to hang out with Simon. Those plans were practice that night. My other friends wanted to size him up and Heath didn't make it to the little meet and greet. Maybe he was as unfortunate as me. Maybe he saw somebody that he just couldn’t stand not to address. Maybe that’s why he was killed, as opposed to wounded or apprehended for questioning. Sure would have made your job easier than this plot of yours to give me details of the investigation. You might think that you’re programming me to know stuff that I’m not supposed to know so that later that knowledge can be used against me, but I promise, I’m not as stupid as you think.

Mace: (Fumes in frustration as Grace stares at him, emotionless)

Grace: Are you on the take? Is that why you’re so passionately trying to pin cold blooded murder on an internationally recognized children’s book series author?

Mace: Maybe it’s him who’s in your pocket. Unfortunate young man who brings joy to children is a good, strong alibi for a murderous former gang member and child prostitute…

Grace: (Spits in his face)

“Book me for assault for that if you want to, but you don’t have SHIT else on me,” she hissed. “I can’t wait to tell my lawyer what you just said to an injured SURVIVOR of child trafficking, homelessness and the subsequent street violence brought on by aforementioned abuse. I’m a recovery success story, philanthropist, child welfare advocate, and payer of so many taxes… The way that my dad and the DA might as well be fucking each other, they’re so close, and you take my physically and mentally traumatized body, cuff it to a bed while I’m striuggling for my life, and question and accuse me while I’m under medication... I feel like… You should take a look in the mirror and ask yourself, ``Do you want to fight me?” He wiped his face with her blanket, uncuffed her and left the room.

Her parents were speaking with her lawyer whenever he came out. “Going to take Mr. Laurent to the station for more questioning,” he said.

“What?” Mrs. Laurent wondered, walking up with coffee for Mrs. Monroe that she had gone to fetch while waiting for Simon to finish speaking with the other detective. “Simon already told us all that he did what he did in self defense!”

“Other things have come to light, namely that the murder victim…”

“The assailant who tried to kill my daughter,” Mrs. Monroe corrected, infuriating him as well as her daughter had.

“WAS affiliated with the organisation that disbanded and became known as the street gang that your daughter was part of…”

Mrs. Laurent gasped. “Street gang? What are you talking about?”

“What he’s talking about is something that he has no legal RIGHT to talk about and now you’ve just slandered my daughter to a woman who only knows her after her terribly haunting childhood of being forced into a life of crime.” Mrs. Laurent’s eyes were already red from crying, and now they were simply confused, as well. “Mrs. Laurent… Our legal team already has representatives here on behalf of Grace. I’m more than happy to extend their services to Simon, as well.”

“I don’t know that we can afford something like that…” the woman said.

Mrs. Monroe doubted that Simon would have a problem with good legal representation, as she definitely already researched his net worth, but it was true that he didn’t have a team like the one that they did. “Don’t be silly. Our children come first, and it's clear that they are under attack right now. Why else would we be even be entertaining the notion that two beloved pillars of the community are somehow orchestrating a conspiracy theory to…” she gave Mace a look, “What were the claims? Killing a child trafficking gang member?” She finally took her coffee from Mrs. Laurent’s shaking hand, blew on it and took a sip, staring at Detective Mace, for dramatic effect.

It burned her tongue, but she didn’t flinch.

Sieve came from the room that he had been allowed to use in order to speak with Simon and he and Mace touched base, going over the discussions. Simon hugged his mother and Mrs. Monroe stared at the detectives. Her husband approached with the DA on his cell phone to speak with Mace. They watched as he stammered and tried to explain things, then he handed the phone back and punctuated with conversation (pointed at Simon), with, “We’ll be in touch if further questioning comes about. At this moment, no charges will be filed.”

Simon’s eyes smiled and he politely said, “Thank you so much, for everything that you do to keep citizens safe.” Mace knew he was being sarcastic, though there was nothing to prove it and the Monroes had just made it clear that this entire lot would be a unified effort. In fact, the woman was rubbing Simon’s back and talking kindly to him while his mother offered him her coffee cup. Mace left angrily. Sieve seemed less upset, but he always was.

The police were going to stay around for a while, and Grace was only allowed 3 visitors at a time. First, she saw her parents and the lawyer. Then, she saw Sunny, Xander, and Jalicia had come in too, by then. Then, her mom brought Mrs. Laurent in and the woman was trying to be very strong about having had it sprung on her this morning about Grace’s past and the entire situation with the police and things. Grace was extremely tired by the time that Simon finally got around to coming in. So tired, that she only saw his face, smiled, held his hand and fell to sleep, with him and the clock watching over her. 8:41 am.

15. I Trust Him With My Life

#AU Infinity Train #Infinity Train #Nesha Fanfiction #Infinity Train Fanfiction #fics #People Watching

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let-it-raines · 5 years

Text

Catch Me If You Can (30/40)

298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.

But then he came back and won the World Series.

It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

a/n: I am not a fan of the fact that there are only 10 chapters left. Like, not at all. Where did all of this time go? How are we at this point in the story? I feel like I was just writing it!

Anyway, it seems fitting that this chapter posts in a week where a lot of us have gone home to see family because Killian is going home with Emma to meet Ruth😘 Thanks to you all for being you and thanks to @resident-of-storybrooke for reading these words for me and checking my facts!

Found on AO3: beginning | current

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-/-

“Did you know that it’s Friday the thirteenth and a full moon?”

“Thank you, Alec Trebek.”

“No, seriously. That’s what it says on my phone.”

“Love, I know the date.”

“But did you know about the moon thing?”

“I did,” Killian sighs, picking his suitcase up off of the security belt and placing it on the ground while Emma grabs her sneakers. “I read about it the other day, and I am prepared for all of the haunted werewolves to come out to play.”

“Shut up,” Emma laughs before she plops herself down on a bench to tie her shoes.

It’s a little past four thirty in the morning, and JFK is nearly empty of anyone who isn’t traveling in some kind of suit. He and Emma are surrounded by people in black blazers and tailored trousers only traveling with a sleek black suitcase and their briefcase. He and Emma, meanwhile, are both in joggers with t-shirts on (Emma has on his Vandy sweatshirt over hers) and their hair tucked underneath baseball caps.

Emma got in from Detroit late last night, only taking five minutes to kiss him hello and take a quick shower before collapsing on his bed on top of the covers. The only flight they could get so last minute that wasn’t an exuberant amount of money is at the ungodly hour of six in the morning, so Killian insisted that she just stay at his place last night so that they could leave from the same place and save time. Considering they woke up ten minutes before their Uber arrived and could barely brush their teeth before they left, that didn’t exactly work in the whole saving time department.

It doesn’t help that Emma has pretty much been deadweight this entire morning until she started to wake up right before they went through security.

He, on the other hand, is wide awake. Nervous jitters run through his body, his stomach twisting in knots, and for someone who doesn’t get nervous for many things other than baseball, Killian is pretty much a wreck when it comes to meeting Emma’s family. Ruth is the last one, the final piece of the puzzle, and as intimidating as David was to meet, his mother might outrank her.

Killian both wants to spend the entire weekend sucking up to her and thanking her for taking Emma in and giving her the love she’s never had but has always deserved, but that could prove to be a bit much.

Then again, if Ruth hadn’t taken Emma in thirteen years ago, Emma would have never met David. If Emma hadn’t met David, David would have never taken her to the baseball game that truly allowed Emma to fall in love with sports. And if Emma hadn’t done that, he doubts she’d have ever gotten into broadcasting and found her passion there that makes her so damn happy.

The two of them also would never have met, and that thought sends a shiver down his spine.

It’s funny how such little things can change absolutely everything.

Everything.

So, yeah, Killian is most definitely a little nervous to meet Ruth.

“You want to go find some coffee, Swan?” Killian asks Emma as he props his foot up to tie his own sneaker. “I think the two of us are in some desperate need of caffeine.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll be able to find a coffee shop in an airport. There are never any coffee places here.”

“I don’t appreciate all of this sarcasm so early this morning.”

She pokes his stomach. “You’re the one who woke me up.”

“We’re going home to meet your family.”

“I don’t see your point.”

“You should.”

“Well,” Emma huffs, standing up and pulling up her pants so that he sees a flash of tanned skin on her stomach, “you should. Onto coffee we go.”

They both grab onto their bags and start walking down the terminal, passing gate after gate and store after store, but everything is black with the lights turned off and bars pulled over the stores. Nothing is open, not even the convenience stores, and the moment Emma realizes this, she stops walking and buries her face in his shoulder.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“There are vending machines,” he soothes. “I think they have coffee.”

“But it’s gross coffee,” she wines before wrapping her arms around his stomach. At first, Killian thinks that she’s being affectionate, but then he realizes that she’s using him so that she doesn’t have to stand on her own. He’s not sure he minds either way. “I need real coffee, and I need it in an IV.”

“Okay, Lorelai Gilmore.”

Emma laughs into his shoulder, the vibrations working through his shoulder. “You’re learning. I’m so proud, babe.”

“I might have watched an episode or two.”

Emma’s head pops up then, the bill of her cap hitting him in the chin. “When?”

“While you were gone. It was on Netflix, and it just kind of happened.”

“Good choice, twenty-nine. Good choice.” Emma’s lips brush against the corner of his jaw, and he tugs her a little closer as his hand runs up and down her back while she presses up on her toes to make contact with his lips. “I need a diet coke or something, and then when the stores open, I’m buying the biggest damn cup of coffee in this entire airport.”

“Whatever your heart desires.”

-/-

The flight is only an hour and a half, Emma sleeps the entire time despite them getting her the biggest damn cup of coffee in the airport right before they boarded, and Killian spends his time answering emails before closing out the app so that he won’t see anything else work-related for this entire weekend. It’s a conscious decision, one he’s happy to make, and it’s almost refreshing to know that he doesn’t have anything to worry about for at least a few days.

Well, anything to worry about except for Ruth Nolan and making sure that he can impress her.

-/-

The taxi they get from the airport takes them directly to Ruth’s house, so Emma doesn’t get much time to show him around, only pointing out a few landmarks. They pass the minor league baseball stadium here, the Portland Sea Dogs, and Emma tells him that she’s never actually been despite having such easy access. She was too caught up in everything having to do with New York and getting there that she never really thought about it. He teases her and tells her they’ll have to go to a game, but Emma turns him down by saying that she needs a break from baseball.

He does too.

So that’ll probably be knocked off the itinerary that Killian is sure Mary Margaret has made. Luckily, though, she and David won’t be here until early evening since they both had to be at work and school for half a day, so they’re pretty much free to do whatever they want with Ruth today.

He’s still slightly reeling from his injury and their fight and everything that came from that. He’s not angry or upset, but this is all still such an adjustment. He should be playing. He shouldn’t be here, but it’s his own damn fault that he is. He screwed up on so many levels, and owning up to it all has been a tough pill to swallow.

Hurting the people he loved nearly killed him, and he doesn’t want anyone to hurt because of him ever again.

In the blink of a bleary eye, they’re pulling up to a quaint two-story Victorian home with brown and white details and bright green bushes lining the brick-paved walkway to the front door. It’s a home, undoubtedly, one much the same as all of the ones in the city and yet entirely different in that he can see vibrant green grass and flushed trees that spread out all over the neighborhood. It reminds him of growing up in Ohio, even if they were not the ones to have the spaciously fenced-in backyard, and a little fluttering of his heart takes place as Killian takes it all in.

He’s always kind of wanted a place like this – away from everything.

“So, this is the place?”

“This is the place.”

“It’s nice.”

“Yeah, I’ve always thought so.” Emma hikes her bag up a little higher on her shoulder and turns to look at him, trepidation written across her face. “We can still turn around if you want to. There are hotels around here.”

“We’re going inside, love.” He leans down and quickly brushes his lips over hers. She tastes strongly of coffee just from the little taste that he got. He’d like to kiss her more, to have the privacy of the hotel so he can show her just how much he’s missed her the past few days of her being gone, but they’re not doing that. “Besides, I believe I just saw Ruth peeking her head through the window looking at us, so it’s too late to turn around now.”

“Yeah,” Emma sighs, “I guess it is.”

Emma steps forward and begins moving up the path, Killian following right behind her, and Emma barely gets a chance to knock on the door before it’s swinging open and Ruth is lunging forward to practically smother Emma with a hug.

Damn. Ruth Nolan is a force of nature.

Then again, she was already for being a single mom most of her life and still taking in foster children, especially one as stubborn as Emma. He can’t even begin to imagine.

He fully intends on finding out this weekend. There are a million questions running around in his mind.

“Oh,” Ruth coos, shaking Emma in her embrace. A dog escapes the front door and comes to sniff at Killian’s feet. This must be Wilby. “I have missed you so much. I think I’m going to have to move to New York so I can see you more often. Do you have room in that apartment of yours?”

“Only if the couch is comfortable for you.”

“I think it may kill my back.”

“No, it’ll definitely kill your back. I have no doubt. It kills my back. Killian’s couch is super comfortable, though.”

“Well, I hardly know the man. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to sleep over in his apartment.”

“Who cares about proper, love?” Killian teases. “I would be remiss to not let a beautiful woman sleep over at my apartment.”

The words slip out of his mouth before he’s able to stop them, and he immediately regrets them. Ruth may not be Emma’s mom, the title something that Emma still struggles with no matter how much she loves Ruth, but she’s very much a mother figure. Yet here he is spewing words that pretty much scream in her face that he doesn’t care about proper and has been fucking Emma for months now. What a smooth start.

The pit in his stomach becomes a heavy, solid weight, one that’s going to have him breaking the wood of the wraparound front porch.

Shit.

But then Ruth is leaning her head back in laughter, her eyes shining brightly as her hair falls off of her shoulders, and that weight lessens a little bit.

“I’m not much of one for proper either,” Ruth says with laughter still on her lips. She releases Emma and steps toward him, wrapping him in a hug as well, even if this one isn’t quite as smothering. It likely helps that he’s larger than Emma. “Hello, sweetie. SoSo, you’re the infamous Killian Jones I’ve been hearing about?”

“From Emma?”

“No, my grandson. He loves you. I think he was probably more devastated about your arm than Emma was.”

“How did you know I was devastated?”

Ruth pulls back from him to look at Emma. “Intuition told me that you’d be upset over the fact that your boyfriend is injured. Mary Margaret gave me all of the other details.”

Emma’s eyes roll. “Of course she did.”

“You know she can’t keep a secret.”

Killian looks over to Emma to see what she’s got to say, thinking that this first meeting is going rather smoothly, but then Ruth’s eyes are snapping back to him and looking him up and down in a way that has him feeling rather naked under her scrutiny.

Obviously, it was wishful thinking for him to assume he was quite out of the woods.

“You’re much more handsome in person than on TV.”

“Thanks,” Killian laughs awkwardly as he reaches up to scratch behind his ear. “I, uh, appreciate that.”

Emma looks over to him with raised brows that are pinched together, probably wondering when he turned into a stumbling fool instead of someone who can charm anyone, and all he can do is shrug is shoulders at her. She shrugs back before squatting down on the porch to scratch behind the dog’s ears.

“Have you eaten breakfast yet, Ruth?” Emma asks, obviously trying to save him. “We’ve had coffee but not food, and we’d love to take you out to breakfast.”

Ruth waves her away. “Nonsense. I’ll cook breakfast for all of us.”

“You really don’t have to do that, Mrs. Nolan.”

She smiles at him. “It’s Ruth, and yes I do. I hear you’re quite the baker, so you can help.”

“Well, who told you that?”

“Mary Margaret. She’s where I get all of my information, don’t you know? Emma and David don’t give me nearly enough.”

“You know, Ruth,” Killian smiles, “I have heard a little bit about the two of them not sharing a lot of information. You practically have to drag it out of them. I would never do such a thing as keeping secrets.”

Emma scoffs but there’s that loving, playful smile. “Too soon, twenty-nine. Too soon.”

Ruth guides them inside and sends Emma off to take their bags to her old room. Killian raises his brow in question to make sure it’s okay for them to share a room, and Emma simply rolls her eyes before taking both of their bags up the stairs while Ruth ushers him into the living room.

It’s just as homey as the outside. Everything is covered in warm colors from the deep brown of the leather couch to the inviting green of the wall. Two windows sit on either side of the stone fireplace where the television is mounted, and that’s when Killian spots the myriad of picture frames on the mantel, as well as on the bookshelf in the corner of the room.

This is exactly what he’s been so excited about.

(Besides getting to spend a weekend away with Emma where she spent the last of her teenager years.)

There are a few photos of David as a child, ones of him alone and then ones of him with both of his parents. Most of them, however, everyone is a tad bit older. Killian knows that it’s so Emma can be included in all of the photos, and his heart swells a bit at the thought of Ruth being that thoughtful so that Emma doesn’t have to feel left out in any way.

A picture of David, Mary Margaret, and Emma sits in the middle of the mantle. David and Mary Margaret look much the same, if not younger than they look now, but with different hairstyles. Killian makes a mental note to tease David about his shoulder-length hair. Emma, though, is definitely a teenager here. Her face is rounder, far less angled, and he can see the tepidness of her smile as she leans into David in the picture.

“Are you looking at how cute I am?” Emma questions as she walks into the room.

Killian turns to look at her and at the shy smile on her face now, and he opens up his arm to let her walk into him so that her arm can wrap around his back while her head rests on his shoulder.

“How old are you here, love?”

“Um, that’s a question I don’t know the answer to.”

“Sixteen,” Ruth supplies, and Killian doesn’t miss the way she’s smiling at the two of them standing there. “That’s from Thanksgiving. Emma still wasn’t too sure about us.”

“I’m still not.”

Killian squeezes her hip. “Liar.”

“Nope, I’m serious. You’ve only just met Ruth, so I don’t think you can judge her character yet.”

“Oh no, darling, I can. She’s promised to tell me stories about you while we cook breakfast, and that’s good enough for me to love her forever.”

Emma groans and dips her head down. “Just let me sulk, and I’ll come to the kitchen when breakfast is ready.”

“Just like when you were a teenager,” Ruth teases.

The morning is mostly spent in the kitchen where they eat waffles and bacon, which is definitely not on his diet but he’s not playing right now anyways, and he gets to listen to Ruth tease Emma all about what she was like as a teenager. Emma’s cheeks are painted red, the embarrassment very clearly there, but she takes it like a champ and smiles and laughs along even when Ruth tells a story about Emma nearly breaking her arm while trying to sneak back into the house after meeting a guy who she wasn’t supposed to be meeting.

“Not my finest moment,” Emma admits as she bites into a piece of bacon. “And definitely not my finest boyfriend.”

The stories continue, and as the day passes on, Killian’s stomach hurts from all of the laughter. Everything about his time here just seems so…perfect. And he knows that there is no such thing as perfect, but the crisp breeze of the air with the sunshine filtering through the leaves of the trees tells him otherwise as the two of them help Ruth with some of her yardwork. Of course, he hasn’t done yardwork in over a decade, so he’s a little rusty. Ruth and Emma make sure to point that out to him every time he cuts a shrub in the wrong way or manages to screw up turning on the lawnmower.

It was complicated, okay?

And Killian definitely wasn’t aware that this is how they’d be spending the first part of their afternoon. It was not at all mentioned in Emma’s pitch of asking him to come here.

Not that he would have ever said no to helping. It’s good to feel useful when he’s been feeling a little useless lately no matter how well he thinks that he’s handling his injury layoff.

It’s decidedly different than the first time around. It likely helps that the injury isn’t as serious and that Killian knows that the end of it is in sight, even if there’s still bits of uncertainty that no one can answer and predict for him. Yet, it also has everything to do with the fact that the people closest to him know exactly what’s going on instead of him letting it all fester inside of him. Honesty is the better policy this time, even if his hand was the slightest bit forced.

Watching Emma easily guide him through Old Port with a beatific smile on her face may help as well.

No, it definitely helps.

She’s such a force of light in his life, even if she doesn’t like admitting that sometimes, but the fact almost seems reinforced after having been apart from her and facing the thoughts of what his life may be like without her in it outside of being someone who he works with.

Frankly, it would be kind of dim. She’s integrated herself so easily into every aspect of his daily routine, and while at first, he thought it really only had to do with her clothes in his closet and her shampoo bottles littering his shower, it’s more in the way that he’ll be sitting with Elsa and look over to see her texting Emma or the way that whenever he wakes up in the morning and she’s not in bed with him, his first thought is to check his phone for a text from her. It’s ridiculous and yet also…not.

She annoys him more than anything or anyone in the world, but he also loves her more than anything. It’s easy in a way that it’s never been before, and Killian wonders if this feeling of fluttering deep in his belly is what he was missing in the past.

They grab a late lunch at a quaint little seafood place, one he can tell is family-owned simply from the atmosphere, and instead of sitting inside, they settle down at one of the umbrella-covered tables outside so that they can have a view of the ocean with the salt-water breeze wafting over them.

He’s missed the water.

Of course, he’s been around it living in Manhattan and traveling to several places around the country that are surrounded by water. Hell, he’s even been back in it in the three years since the accident with Liam. But it’s been a long damn time since he’s sat and simply enjoyed getting to spend time near the water.

During the off-season, he and Emma are going somewhere that’s surrounded by water for at least a week, and they’re not going to let any outside distractions get to them. It’s making plans for the future, and that’s all that he wants right now.

(Some would call it baseball mating season, and while he doesn’t plan on them reproducing anytime soon, they can sure as hell practice.)

They get a call that David and Mary Margaret are nearly there when Emma is showing him some of the lighthouses while using a ridiculous voice that she calls her “tour guide” voice, so they quickly gather their things and start walking back to Ruth’s car since she absolutely cannot wait to see the rest of her family and refuses to have them be at her house before she can get back to her house.

David and Mary Margaret get there first because they are apparently the fastest drivers on the planet today.

And Leo practically tackles Ruth in all of his ten-year-old glory when he sees her.

That’s how Addy and Lucy are with Elsa’s parents too, and Killian imagines that being a grandparent is a hell of a lot of fun since you aren’t in charge of molding a little person into a functioning human being. You just have to give them candy and all of the things their parents don’t want them to have.

Or, at least, that’s what he thinks Ruth does.

(That’s what he does as an uncle and wishes his mom could have done as a grandmother.)

They all eat takeout dinner together from an Italian place that Emma and David swear by, and while it’s certainly not the best thing he’s ever had to eat, it’s pretty damn good. Then again, he’s had so much to eat today that his stomach very well may explode soon. He’ll have to get up and go for a jog in the morning.

But right now, it’s a little past ten at night, he’s been up for over eighteen hours, and all he really wants is to sleep. His body is dragging enough that he imagines he’ll have no trouble falling into a slumber as soon as his head hits the pillow.

He’s wrong.

Because then he sees Emma’s teenage bedroom and sees just how empty it is. It’s absolutely nothing like her apartment in New York full of throw pillows and blankets and every artificial plant known to man with a colorful paintings above her headboard. Everything here is rather…beige.

Emma walks out of the bathroom where she’s been getting ready for bed, and he watches as she rubs lotion up and down her hands and her forearms. “Why that glum look on your face? Are you still trying to figure out better ways to argue with David over soccer? Because that dinner conversation is long over. I thought Leo was going to climb on top of the table and start beating on his chest or something equally ridiculous.”

“Hm, no,” Killian chuckles, opening his knees so that Emma can step into them and his hands can find their spots on her waist, warm flesh against his fingertips.

“Then what?”

He blinks up at her, not entirely sure if now is the right time to ask, but then he sees the glint of his mom’s ring falling against Emma’s chest and is reassured in who he is to Emma. “I can’t help but notice that your room here is not quite as colorful as your room at home.”

Emma sighs, and he squeezes her hip in response so that she looks down at him and smile. “It’s kind of a stupid reason. You don’t want to hear about it.”

“I’d love to know more of your beginnings, Swan.”

“Haven’t you heard enough about them today?”

“There is never enough information, love.”

She smiles and reaches to push his hair back off of his head, her hands a magic touch as they move through the strands there. “I’m not a sentimental person. Or, I wasn’t.” Her right hand leaves his hair to find the chain around her neck. Killian’s heart stutters at that movement. “And I never trusted that I was going to stay in one place for very long, so if I had the chance to decorate my room, I didn’t. I kept everything I owned in a little box that was always ready to go.”

His heart may actually break for Emma in this moment, the sad reality of what she’s telling him something that’s hard for him to take in. He can’t imagine what it must be like for her to have lived that way.

“I think this place worked out for you, though.”

“Yeah, it did.” She smiles again, but Killian can see the twinge of sadness in the corners of her lips. “You sure you still want to know about these beginnings of mine when they’re a little bit sad?”

“Like I’ve said before, love, we make quite the team, sad backstories and all. I do, however, think that you need a little something on these walls of yours.”

“I think all of the home décor stores may be closed.”

Killian winks. “Well, I think I’ll just have to get a little creative then.”

His hand slides around her back to squeeze her ass before he’s pushing Emma back from him and getting up from the bed to walk out the door. Everything is darkened with the lights turned off, and since he doesn’t want to wake up everyone else in the house, he uses the flashlight on his phone and quietly walks down the stairs to find his way to the kitchen where he knows there were sheets of paper in the printer as well as a few pens in a cup right behind it. Emma is on his heels, questioning what the hell it is he’s doing, but he doesn’t tell her until he’s grabbing the paper and a thick blue marker.

“What are you doing?” Emma hisses.

“I’m making you some artwork for your wall.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s endearing.”

“You say that about every weird thing that you do.”

“Because the weird things are endearing,” he corrects, looking back at her and smiling. “What kind of drawing do you want? I’m pretty talented, if I do say so myself, but it’s been awhile since I’ve drawn anything.”

“Just…do whatever you want. I’m going to fix myself a hot chocolate. Do you want one?”

“Does Ruth have any tea?”

“I’m going to make you the hot chocolate. It’s better than tea.”

Killian rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t protest as he starts sketching out what he can remember of the view of the lighthouse today. It’s rough, definitely not his best work, but considering his original plan was simply going to be writing her name out, it’ll have to do for quick work.

Strange things happen when he’s far past tired.

“Milady,” Killian sighs, picking up the paper as well as a bit of tape before walking the few steps toward Emma as she sits on a barstool at the island with two cups of hot chocolate, her mug piled up with whipped cream and sprinkles of cinnamon, “I present to you your artwork for your wall.”

Emma’s eyes glance over it before glancing up at him with a slight smile on her face. “You’ve got to sign it.”

He taps the corner of the paper where he’s scribbled in his number. “Already done.”

“Ah,” Emma laughs, “how could I have missed that?”

“You were distracted by the beauty of the picture.”

“Exactly.” Emma presses up over the countertop and leans forward to quickly brush her lips over Killian’s, and while a part of him wants to deepen it, he doesn’t want to get carried awhile while here. “Thank you. That is very sweet of you to do.”

“Endearing, right?”

“Sure.” She shakes her head and slides his mug over to him so that he can have some of his hot chocolate. “I hope today hasn’t scarred you for life, especially since you still have to survive tomorrow.”

“It’s been fun, Swan. I’ve been…I think it’s gotten me majorly out of my own head. I needed that. And I liked getting to see you be so happy. My only complaint is that I’m under strict instructions not to make your bed squeak. I don’t like that rule.”

Emma reaches over to slap his shoulder, but he moves it out of the way quick enough that she doesn’t get it. It also causes a slight twinge in his shoulder that reminds him that he needs an ice pack for tonight. He hasn’t gotten to put ice on it all day. So, he turns toward the fridge and opens up the freezer, grabbing one of Ruth’s ice packs, and placing it on top of his shoulder before turning back to Emma whose fingers are tracing over the drawing.

Emotion lodges in his throat again, something that’s been happening quite a lot tonight, and it’s what propels him forward to step behind Emma’s back and wrap his arms around her stomach before resting his chin on top of her head.

“I’m not going anywhere, Emma,” he promises, meaning every word. “Not unless you tell me to go. So, you can plan on hanging paintings and making plans and keeping little trinkets in more places than a box. I love you more than I know how to tell you. That’s not going to change.”

Emma audibly sighs, something that he feels under the palms of his hands, before leaning back into Killian and simply staying in that spot so that he can breathe her in.

“I love you,” she breathes out as her head tilts up so that her lips can move across the underside of his jaw. “Let’s take the hot chocolate upstairs and go to bed.”

“And your picture?”

“Yeah, that too.”

-/-

Killian’s arm tingles, the feeling nearly gone, when he wakes up in the morning and finds Emma’s body pressed around it. This isn’t how they fell asleep, not even close, and he’ll probably never have use of his arm again. It doesn’t seem to matter, though, and he flexes his fingers a bit before nuzzling his nose into the back of Emma’s head in an attempt to get to go back to sleep.

They were up until maybe two in the morning talking, sleep never really coming to either of them no matter how much they both wanted it, and judging from the dim light coming through the blinds on the window, it’s still early yet.

He desperately needs coffee. He’s probably not going to be able to go back to sleep, and he desperately needs coffee.

Slowly, Killian begins to extract his arm from Emma’s grip, stopping when she flinches, and after several careful minutes, he’s able to quietly get off the bed and step out of the room, leaving her door cracked so as not to make any kind of noise. He walks down the hallway and uses the guest bathroom before walking down the stairs and wandering to the kitchen in search of coffee.

To his surprise, David is already there sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open and a cup of coffee sitting next to him, the smell wafting toward Killian.

“Hey,” Killian greets. David nearly jumps out of his chair and knocks everything over, and Killian can’t help but laugh at the shock on his face. “Did you really not hear me coming down the stairs?”

“I, uh, I – ” David is stuttering, obviously at a loss for words, and Killian can’t quite figure out what’s going on. He doesn’t think Dave is usually this flustered in the mornings. “I wasn’t expecting you or Emma to be up this early.”

Killian shakes out his arm, still trying to wake it up. “Believe me. I wish I wasn’t up. Do you always work this early in the morning on a Saturday?”

“No, I don’t, but my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with emails this morning, so I came downstairs to see so it wouldn’t wake Mary Margaret up.”

“Ah, I turned off my emails this weekend for that exact reason.”

“You probably shouldn’t have done that.”

“What’s that, mate?” David coughs in response, and Killian steps forward to the table and sits down across from David, confusion running through him as his stomach twists and turns. “Seriously. What?”

David can’t look at him, not really, and that doesn’t help calm any of Killian’s nerves as he tries to figure out what in the world is going on with him this morning.

“I didn’t know this was happening, I swear. I’d have stopped it if I got one whiff of it, but there’s been an article.”

“An article?”

David turns his computer around, and Killian reads a headline that he’s always expected to see and yet has always hoped to avoid.

The Truth Behind Killian Jones: A Story Told by His Father.

“Fucking hell,” he murmurs, his eyes taking in the picture of his father that’s plastered on the screen. Killian hasn’t seen him in years, actual years, and yet he looks exactly the same. “What kind of shit is this?”

“It gets worse.”

“How could it possibly get worse?”

“Look at the journalist.”

Killian’s eyes glance toward the screen again, his gaze finding more words he didn’t want to see.

Walsh Osborne.

As in Emma’s ex, Walsh Osborne who she still works with at ESPN. Though, this article is decidedly not on ESPN’s website.

Holy fucking shit.

Killian’s got to go back to bed. This isn’t real. This is all some kind of messed up nightmare that he’s experiencing, and soon, he’ll wake up and none of it will be real. And yet Killian keeps scrolling through the article, skipping the words to instead look at pictures of himself that Killian hasn’t seen in years. His father shouldn’t have these pictures. Liam should have all of them. And yet, somehow, he doesn’t.

Childhood pictures are nothing, though, at least for right now, when at the bottom of the article are pictures of Killian and Emma standing in the airport yesterday with Emma’s arms wrapped around his waist as well as a picture of them kissing in his car from who knows when. Then there’s one that he knows is from the hallways of Yankee stadium in what was supposed to be a private room.

“Everyone knows about you and Emma,” David tells him.

This is too much. It’s all too much, and he doesn’t know how to handle the reappearance of his father and the very public reveal of his private relationship.

Fuck.

#catch me if you can #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan fic #captain swan

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thegeminisage · 5 years

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merlin thots about the s5 opening episodes.......

here’s your courtesy cut

one of my favorite things about s5 so far is how very nicely arthur and merlin have both 1. grown up and 2. grown into each other...they still give each other shit 24/7 but it’s a lot more companionable and comfortable now than it ever has been. furthermore, both of them exhibit the use of MULTIPLE braincells even at the SAME TIME. they work very well together as a team even in the heat of battle (we did see shades of this near the end of s4), despite merlin being kind of useless at physical combat when he couldn’t rely on his magic for a boost. they can have entire conversations without a word and they’re just INCREDIBLY synchronized. the whole #vibe has really gotten a level up

timeline-wise, it’s been roughly a decade since season 1. in s1 they said the purge began 20 years ago (upon arthur’s birth), and shortly after, he had a coming of age ceremony - 21′s an important number, so in season 1 arthur began as being 20 and turned 21 before the end. season 2 = 22. gap year for s2-s3 = 23. season 3 = 24. s3-s4 gap year = 25. season 4 = 26. 3 gap years betweeen s4-s5 = 27, 28, 29. season 5 = 30. i don’t know how long it was in real life between seasons 4 and 5 (definitely not three years), but i really do feel like they’ve both aged SO much and they absolutely act like people who have known each other for a decade.

gwen as queen is AMAZINGNGLSDKJGHDSLFG she’s SO PRETTY i love her SO MUCH. love that she has her own serving girl now! this is what she deserves

the round table is good too altho it looks a bit too big for that room. it’s amazing though like...FUCK uther pendragon arthur has come SO FAR

merlin being nice to the new girl is very charming. makes him seem older and w-w-WISER (love that word) by comparison

also love that merlin gets to ride a horse while some of the footsoldiers walk. that’s #status. that’s *** ******

pretty sure i had a stroke during merlin’s vision of arthur’s death. the whole thing was done SO well - they go from the battlefield and arthur’s incredibly dirty face as he very realistically looks like he’s falling down and dying and then cut to a very alive and present arthur asking what’s wrong. you can really FEEL the whiplash, and also the dread settles in nice and deep, at least it does if you’re me and you’ve read spoilers, like, “only you can keep arthur safe” BUT I KNOW HE DOESN’T I KNOW HE CAN’T I KNOW HE FAILS and merlin might as well know it too because he looks ready to CRY and thru the rest of this 2-parter opening he acts like he thinks arthur may drop dead at any moment

i feel like i read somewhere once that actors don’t like to eat during a scene unless absolutely necessary because when you do 30 takes of something you get very full very quickly and some even go so far as to have a spit bucket just out of sight so that they can just get rid of it without having to eat any more. which makes it absolutely bananas to me that so often in merlin the characters are not only eating but eating very quickly as though they really have been roughing it in the wilderness all day & are absolutely famished...they don’t have to show them eating so often BUT THEY DO

arthur getting merlin into a tight spot by insisting he perform, planning on laughing at his failure? funny. merlin ACTUALLY USING MAGIC TO TEACH HIMSELF TO JUGGLE so that he could watch arthur’s jaw hit the floor? PRICELESS. i wonder how long it took him to do that, he definitely wasn’t using a body double

merlin is acting so bleak and dire in these episodes that even mr no-empathy himself asks him whats wrong, multiple times. they’re doing a VERY good job at really driving home the fact that arthur’s time is running short and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. merlin’s so sick with dread he’s making ME sick with dread. arthur’s here and being his normal dumbass self but the distance between them feels HUGE during the moments merlin is thinking about arthur’s impending doom

arthur all “i cant believe u can juggle i didnt even know you could catch” and then throwing the boots at merlin only for merlin to NOT CATCH THEM and arthur goes “see explain that” and merlin goes “wish i could” and i D I E

because he’s KNOWN HIM FOR A DECADE and he still can’t explain the magic and at this point it must feel like to him that he never, ever will UUUUUGH it’s funny how they can feel so close to each other one second and like THIS the next i am DYING

the little conversation they have when they make camp the next night is the same. the sad music plays, merlin keeps looking at arthur like it might be the last time he sees him, and arthur keeps insisting on asking merlin what’s wrong and trying to make him feel better...they’re really for real friends!!! they’re so serious and grown up!!!!!

ive lost count of how many times either merlin or arthur has been nearly dead and had to get hauled around by the other one

also of how many times merlin used his magic in a way that should have been obvious to bystanders and wasn’t

“if morgana doesnt kill you i will" “threatening a king is treason merlin” “what about threatening an ASS” listen. look me in the eyes. this is TOP TIER banter

remember how in the early seasons they’d bend over backwards to leave plausible deniability when expressing affection? like “we’d be good friends if you weren’t a prince” or “you’re not wise or anything but yeah you’re wise” or whatever dumb toxic masculinity bullshit...those days are OVER with. merlin speaks DIRECTLY from the heart. “i’m worried about you” and “i swear i’ll protect you or die at your side” he is not fucking around even a little bit. this fool is in love

they were ALMOST cuddling when they slept together under that overhang

the two of them trapped in that net was PRICELESS. in the early seasons i got a little tired of the frequent slapstick/juvenile humor and wished the series was a bit more serious but now that they’re here i cling to every shred of levity with my whole heart

i was SO relieved to realize gwen wasn’t actually planning on killing that poor girl - i kept saying the entire time it was very out of character for her, no way could she be that cruel

arthur: “you wanna kill me fine but my last request is for you not to kill merlin” merlin: “you wanna kill arthur fine but you’re gonna have to go through me” arthur: “for fucks sake”

merlin: i never do as i’m told! that’s *** ******

i dont care if mordred DID save their lives i NEVER wanted to see him less i am so full of dread

i can’t BELIEVE morgana also has a pet dragon. she and merlin could have been the BEST foils and i’m STAYING mad about it. she was actually so good in this episode - way less full of evil smirks - that i briefly rejoined the morgana defense squad and got REAL pissed when mordred eventually shanked her, ESPECIALLY after she was so happy she was nearly crying to see him again. WHAT IS IT WITH THAT KID AND STABBING PEOPLE KNOCK IT OFF

the snowy environments in this episode were soooo good. the scenery was just...top fucking tier and it’s nice to see them somewhere other than the same old places. also like NO allo but arthur looks really nice just wandering around through a bunch of fucking snowbanks with dirt all over his face

arthur and merlin’s little ploy to steal that dagger by arthur faking a collapse was SO GOOD. they’re SO IN SYNC. i was THRILLED. better still: he winked when he was done. he used like FIVE WHOLE BRAIN CELLS AT ONCE and he was ALMOST as proud of himself as i am proud of him. what a guy, that arthur pendragon

their escape was really good too. the nonverbal communication? top tier! they just give each other little looks and then proceed to wreck the whole scene. doubly funny when the slaver is like WHO SPILLED THAT STUFF and arthur just kind of jerks his head over at merlin. snitches get stitches, YOUR HIGHNESS

i barely felt one whole emotion for sefa or her dad but him dying was like. sad. this show is sad. why the fuck am i watching it. i hate character death. they were hugging

arthur seemed like he was having just the time of his LIFE sneaking into that big ol tower of doom. dude was all cute little quips and smiles. popped his head outta that lil minecart like a kid at christmas

i love also that you give percival nothing but a single sword and in short order he goes about liberating all the slaves, killing all the slavers, and then reappropriating their swords to a better cause. he’s a one-man army. i was SO impressed. and he really looked like he was having fun too

merlin seeing that lil baby dragon again was SO fucked up and sad. why can’t it TALK :(((

also lmao “merlin you cant be that stupid” “no i am if you dont believe me watch” and merlin bolts and arthur sighs with SO much longsuffering and says “im going after him”

the light in morgana’s eyes when she talks about wanting to have arthur’s head and then her stabbing him over and over without actually killing him...she’s batshit insane. rip

i do like that arthur sort of TRIED to talk her around...it’s the first time he’s really gotten to speak with her since the end of season 3 when he found out who she was

on a final note, though, i am less than thrilled with the knighting of mordred...how is it arthur can KNOW who he is, that he’s a druid, and can do magic, and LET HIM INTO THE KNIGHTS, and still have sorcery be outlawed in camelot?? it doesnt make any SENSE

#personal #merlin blogging #the preview for 5.03 played after this ep was over #i dont usually watch them on the first try bc idw spoilers #but i watched it this time #and it SPOILS it a little bit #im glad i didnt watch and got to be shocked

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davidmann95 · 5 years

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Best comics of 2018?

A handful of disqualifications up front: since they’re just beginning, I’m not counting Electric Warriors, Martian Manhunter, The Green Lantern (though Evil Star explaining his name in #2 might be my favorite moment in comics this year), Ironheart, DIE, Shazam!, Killmonger, The Batman Who Laughs, or Miles Morales: Spider-Man, all of which almost certainly would have ended up somewhere in here with some more time. Additionally, I switched to a new online pull list system in March, so I don’t have a list of what I got before then - if I’m forgetting about something great that came out early this year, there’s a good chance that would be why.

Honorary Mentions: While there were plenty of comics I was happy to keep up with, a number stood out as exemplary examples of straight-take relatively traditional capeshit: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV and companies’ Justice League, Steve Orlando’s Justice League of America (which would probably go among the best of the best if the art was a bit more consistent or the lineup more to my personal tastes), Brian Bendis and Nick Derington’s Batman work in the Walmart 100-Page Giants, Donny Cates’ Thanos and Doctor Strange work (the latter might not have quite made it, but that last issue with Irving and Zdarsky was gangbusters), Steve Orlando’s brief Wonder Woman run with Laura Braga, ACO, and Raul Allen, Tim Seeley’s Green Lanterns, Nnedi Okorafor and Leonardo Romero’s Shuri, Robert Vendetti and Bryan Hitch’s Hawkman, Saladin Ahmed, Javier Rodriguez, Rod Reis, Dario Brizuela, and Joe Quinones’s Exiles, Captain America by both the Mark Waid/Chris Samnee team and the current Ta-Nehisi Coates/Lenil Francis Yu lineup, Dan Slott and Valerio Schiti’s Tony Stark: Iron Man when it’s committed solely to being a superhero comic and not Dan Slott trying to be Contemporary, Brian Bendis, Patrick Gleason, Yanick Paquette, and Ryan Sook’s Action Comics, and Kelly Thompson and Stefano Caselli’s West Coast Avengers.

On the slightly different side of things, Steve Orlando and Giovanni Timpano showed how you do an intercompany crossover right with The Shadow/Batman, Max Bemis’s Moon Knight while not living up to all it could have been - and likely to age poorly - had moments of truly bizarre grace, Saga was Saga even if I’ve lost the plot, Ahmed and Christian Ward’s Black Bolt concluded as well as we all might have hoped, Warren Ellis and Jon Davis-Hunt’s The Wild Storm continued to build up steam in its own fascinating style, Doomsday Clock remains utterly captivating in spite of itself, and Tom Peyer and Jamal Igle’s The Wrong Earth is making the most of a deceptively tough premise. On the one-off end, Chip Zdarsky and Declan Shalvey’s Marvel Two-In-One Annual is an essentially perfect off-kilter Doom/Richards story, Action Comics #1000 had no chance of living up to all it needed to be but was largely a great set of Superman stories regardless, and while the remainder of the miniseries has thus far been fine, Tim Seeley and Carlos Villa’s first issue of Shatterstar was a strange, special delight.

My Favorite Comics of 2018

Rock Candy Mountain: Technically Jackson - the rail-rider who can beat Any One Man in a fistfight - reached the end of his journey for hobo heaven this year, and flat-out, every Kyle Starks comic is a perfect one. This is a book where the first issue has a dude beating ass with a beautiful savagery that leaves an awestruck onlooker declaring “He’s got punch diarrhea and their faces are the toilet bowl”, and by the end it built up to one of the most moving climaxes of the year. It’s a comic about fallen men finding redemption in friendship and in dreams, and also there’s a cage fighter who calls himself Hundred Cats because it would be really hard to fight a hundred cats.

Dark Knights: Metal: This is the final, perfected form of traditional Event Comic Bullshit. Everything good about Snyder, Capullo, Glapion, and Plascencia’s Batman post-Court Of Owls is retooled and reenergized to fit the scale of a Crisis event, everything that I would have considered to be a weakness regarding their partnership either burned away or placed in a context where it becomes a strength. This is the Morrison approach to the DCU rightfully ascendant and presented in a form even more fit for mass consumption, and manages to live up to being the first classic-style, large-scale DC event comic in almost a decade - Marvel may blow its own load every six months until it’s simply got nothing to offer anymore, but DC waited until they really and truly had something, and that something was bloodsoaked magic.

Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man (by Chip Zdarsky and assorted artists): I actually wavered a bit on whether this belonged in the best of the best as a whole; most of the issues this year were definitely very good (regarding Zdarsky’s run specifically, I haven’t checked out the Spider-Geddon tie-in stuff), but more on the honorary mention end of the scale. Ultimately however, the Amazing Fantasy arc and #310 are Spider-Man comics I’m going to be coming back to for years to come - the latter is going to end up in every ‘Best Spider-Man Stories Ever’ softcover from now until the end of time - and they tipped the scales.

Batman: Very much in the same boat as Spidey above; a lot of this year didn’t do it for me in the same way as this run has in the past, but The Best Man is the best thing anyone’s done with Joker since Morrison, the ‘wedding issue’ itself worked really well for me, Cold Days made a premise that’s often stymied creators work as well as people have always wanted it to, and the Dick team-up issue was a perfect little summation of a relationship, nevermind how much this year succeeded in getting me hyped up for things to come.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: This is one of those comics where it’s so consistently good in such a specific, quiet way that people stop talking about it, but for real, this has never not in the top five or six things Marvel is publishing at any given time for as long as it’s been around. Erica Henderson leaving right before hitting the Kraven story that had been building literally since its first issue 3 years earlier could have been disastrous, but North and new artist Derek Charm manage to hit their own rhythm and continue delivering one of the funniest, cleverest, most sincere superbooks on the stands every month.

Mister Miracle: Yeah, it really was that good.

The Immortal Hulk: So is this, and if I have to name a single best comic of the year, this has probably gotta be it. Al Ewing’s been Marvel’s best creator for a long, long time, and putting him and Joe Bennett (who holy moley, I don’t think anyone would have guessed had this in him) on a tentpole character Ewing’s got genuine reverence for worked out even better than a fanboy like me might have expected. It’s sublime horror, it’s perfect Marvel comics continuity bullshit, and if the superhero is at heart a morality fable, this is very much a soul-searing apex of the genre as it speaks of how we can all go wrong.

Eternity Girl: …or maybe this is the best? It’s probably gotta be this, Hulk, or Miracle. Mister Miracle’s where the comparison really becomes clear, as they’re both books way out on the fringes of the DCU dealing with a character grappling with depression amidst the mundanity of their cyclical existence. However, as perfectly constructed and rawly human as Mister Miracle is, this hits a lot more of my own buttons and expresses its own brand of more surreal emotional authenticity, and rather than the expected and beautiful next step of a pair of already-acclaimed creators with an established partnership, this was a shock coming out party for Visaggio and Liew, who do things stylistically just as odd to see in a DC Comic as anything King and Gerads came up with. It seemed to sail under the radar for readers but also seems to be racking up awards, and I hope this’ll attain the reputation it deserves in years to come.

Ice Cream Man: Likely the respectable fourth place to the three above, while I can’t quite sing its praises in quite the same way when it’s playing so hard-to-get that I can’t quite put a pin in what it’s ultimately about, oh my GOD this is as good as gut-punch horror gets. Not simply grody shock-value stuff, but pit-of-your-stomach-everything-in-the-world-hates-you-and-you-were-wrong-to-ever-believe-in-love shit that’ll rattle your bones and fuck you up good. Not usually a horror guy myself, but this is an essentially perfect comic.

The Man Of Steel: Screw all y’all, this kicked ass and after how hard the Rebirth books blew it - Jon and the new status quo were both excellent, Tomasi had good bits here and there alongside some quality fill-in teams, but those books were still aaaaaaaaaaassssss - this is exactly the fresh start Superman’s needed for years. Granted the Fabok interstitials had some wonky pacing, but this was on-point and insightful for Superman as a character, exciting as hell, and has thus far led to nothing but more good comics as far as I’m concerned.

Milk Wars: Did the various tie-ins live up to the bookends? Nah, though the Shade/Wonder Woman story was pretty good. But those bookends? Friends, those books were AAA+ sup-per-he-ro-bull-SHIT, and while I was initially let down because it seemed as though it would have Superman in a major role and then didn’t, this is even more of an apotheosis of the Morrison approach to the genre than Metal. ACO is ACO, Eaglesham slaughtered it, and Orlando and Way should be as joined at the hip as cowriters as Abbnett and Lanning used to be. This is a gold standard for strange, edgy, colorful, wondrous, fucked-up superhero comics, and there should be a million more like it every day.

Justice League (by Christopher Priest and assorted artists, primarily Pete Woods): On the exact opposite end of the scale, while I don’t think I can say I enjoyed this book as much as the current Snyder-helmed gonzo cosmic adventures, I absolutely feel this was the better of the two. More importantly, this run is the successful version of what just about every other Justice League comic of the past 15 years has been trying and failing to be as the post-Authority, post-Ultimates, post-Civil War take on the concept. It’s as smart and atmospheric and bold as a book like Justice League ever CAN be, building its exploration of the conceptual stress points of the team around one and two-part adventures and clever character dynamics, illustrating an interesting new take on how to handle the main team book with the power players: taking their ability to handle physical threats as a relative given, a structural conceit acting as a delivery mechanism for the politics and people in play. It hardly breaks new ground in terms of redefining the superhero concept, but it’s as far as they’ve gone with the marquis characters without ending in disaster, and it’s an approach I’d love to see more often applied to this scale.

Superman: Walmart 100 Page Giant (by Tom King and Andy Kubert): Of all the places for King to do a regular Superman comic, huh? Still, we’d already seen what he’d done in that Batman two-parter and Action #1000, so I’m more than willing to take what we can get (even if most are going to have to wait for this to come out in trade). There have been four installments so far: the first is the sort of stage-setting that’s common to this type of long-form arc but with a distinctly different atmosphere than how this is typically done with the character, evoking a sort of Miller-tinged Golden Age flavor connecting Superman back down to Earth before throwing him into the stars. The third is a great Fuck Yeah Superman Doin’ Superman Shit throwdown that gives Kubert a chance to shine. The fourth and most recent is haunting, inspired, moving, and tight as a drum. And the second begins as the worst-case scenario of Tom King doing a Superman comic, and ends as likely my favorite Superman story of the last 5 years. If it continues in its current direction, Superman: Up In The Sky is almost certainly going to be a perennial people are going to rank among the best Superman stories of all time for decades to come, and everything I’d want out of this team tackling my favorite character.

Detective Comics (by James Tynion IV and assorted artists): I’m honestly surprised at myself for putting this here, but I just have to hand it to this run - which had to go quite a ways to win me over, between its opening gambit with Batwoman’s status quo and centering the whole thing around my least-favorite Robin (even if it won me over to him over time) - as basically being the platonic form of Dang Good Superhero Comics. Not boundary-pushing, not the sort of thing you’ll remember in 20 years, but just really fun, exciting, good-looking, slick, character-driven adventures building on themselves into the logical culmination of 21st century popular Batman stories. This is Batman 101, but in a good way, and I honestly think that on reflection it’s gonna hold together better as a Batman run than its immediate predecessor in Snyder/Capullo.

You Are Deadpool: This is the smartest, funniest, most inventive big two comic of the year and even if you’re so tired of Deadpool that your skull bones are threatening to suddenly contract and spear your brain in an attempt at saving your weary soul from the prospect of seeing any more of him, you should get this.

Superman (by Brian Bendis and Ivan Reis): I noted Action Comics among the honorable mentions, as while it’s a dang good comic that I enjoy a great deal - and Ryan Sook may well have established himself as my ideal modern Superman artist - it’s very much the best possible version of *exactly* what you’d expect from Brian Bendis doing Superman. This, on the other hand, feels like Bendis stretching himself to do something truly different in a way he hasn’t in years, and the results are stunning. I won’t pretend Rogol Zaar has amounted to much of anything as of yet, but Bendis has acclimated to the realm of Cosmic Superman Punch-Ups in a way no one could have reasonably seen coming; he’s managed to sidestep his usual issues by anchoring each issue in a crazy setpiece and a single perfect Superman character moment, and Reis is doing work here than can unquestionably stand alongside his Sinestro Corps War heyday. Whether it’s #1 having Superman fight an astro-goilla in the middle of a questioning on his responsibilities to humanity, #4 going full Shonen in the best possible way with probably my favorite fight scene of the year, or #6′s storybook mythmaking building to the best, cruelest needle in the balloon possible, or the consistent delightful fucking with Adam Strange, every issue here has something I didn’t know I badly wanted to see, and damn if that isn’t exactly what I want in my Superman stuff.

Assorted one-offs: Along with the major arcs and runs, we’ve got stuff like the Thanos Annual and DC Nuclear Winter Special, as good as anthologies of this kind get. T-shirt Superman got one last ride under Morrison in the Sideways Annual, fighting his way out from under the wreckage of a weird DiDio book to get exactly the sendoff he deserved. The Injustice 2 Annual, of all things, was a perfect piece of bittersweet character work. Invincible #144 satisfyingly closed out The Best Superhero Comic In The Universe by essentially also doing Invincible #145-500 or so, putting this often tumultuous title to bed with the dignity it had earned. And finally, Slott and Marcos Martin’s The Amazing Spider-Man #801 was a perfect minor mediation not even on the title character so much as the basic moral appeal of the genre as a whole.

#Comics #DC Comics #Marvel #Image #Opinion

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asphaltapostle · 5 years

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What I have long predicted is now coming to pass: Google believes it should assume control.

Out of all the technology companies that have made my knees knock and my voice hoarse and my [Tweets manic](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q="google" %40ficklecrux&src=typd) as a technoheretic in the past several years, Jumbo Google would easily take home the winning trophy for Dystopian of the Millennium. I have been rehearsing an especially dear pet prophecy of mine, unsolicited, to family, friends, and podcast guests since 2011 in which I end up arguing quite convincingly that Google is a dead ringer for the 16th-century Vatican: an inherently self-isolating organization with an absolute monopoly yielding gargantuan levels of essentially passive income from a service which nearly everybody transacts with, but only Google understands (and is therefore assumed to be its only possible provider,) which inevitably develops such a distance from the rest of the populace and their way of life (in tandem with total notoriety and celebrity among them all) not intentionally out of malice, but from the delusion of mythically-bestowed philanthropic duty that is borned of and compounded by this economic and cultural isolation in a perpetual accumulation of power and wealth that radicalizes the monopolizers — the majority already highly predisposed to zeal as they would’ve needed to be in order to find themselves in this singular, universally powerful position over every other class — and leaves their egocentric minds to wander exempt from all criticism save for that of fellow radicalized monopolizers, who together begin to feel more and more comfortable wondering aloud about themselves in increasingly fantastic presumptions: what if all of this was bestowed upon us because we are superior to them? What if it is our divine responsibility as superior beings to take charge and shepherd the common people as our sheep — for they cannot possibly know as well as we what is truly best for them?

You see it, right? And you can feel a very specific flavor of terror that is both awed by the scale of the circumstances created by so few human minds and sincerely amused by the absoluteness of your own inability to alter them in any way. Perhaps you even recognize this taste as one perfected by Christianity’s ancient advertising business, but Google knows so much about you that it’s rumored to’ve been selling user data to the Judeochristian God for some time now at a 10% discount, and so we extrapolate and anticipate, yes?

Of course, it’s admittedly satisfying for me to deliver you to this godfearing place in the most perverse look what I saw first that you didn’t see because you’re just not as bright but lucky for you, I’m so fucking generous with my wisdom sort of thinking around which the entire personas and livelihoods of fringe movement fanatics are built upon, but this is my one thing, okay? I’ve been waiting years for the right time to formally argue this theory in depth, and — thanks to this year’s public spotlight finally pivoting on the giants who’ve been silently swallowing their competition and relentlessly forcing their already ridiculous margins higher and higher in relative obscurity for decades, the time has come, indeed. The common people’s trust in Google had a godawful week.

Don’t Be Evil

On Monday, Gizmodo reported that twelve frustrated Google employees were quitting the company in protest of their work assisting the Department of Defense to “implement machine learning to classify images gathered by drones” for the detail fleeting Project Maven, despite some 4000 employee signatures on a letter addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai requesting (in full) that he “cancel this project immediately,” and “draft, publicize, and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology,” citing the infamous “Don’t Be Evil” motto, which Google then proceeded to remove from its code of conduct for the first time in 18 years the day after the New York Times article went to press, on April 5th.

On initial approach to the abstract of this story, from the ass to our thoughts arrives an easy narrative of a Silicon Valley mutiny comprised of twelve brave, conscientious souls who’ve been eaten up inside by their complicity in the filthy deals made by their power-obsessed CEO over scotch and cigars in a dark D.C. study — kept awake for months by the sound of his puffing cackles at satellite images of dead toddlers in a bombed-out street.

Ah ha, we say. That man is no good, and he just wouldn’t listen! They knew they didn’t have a choice… They only did what they had to do…

The reality of internal disagreements at Google, though, manages to be even more theatrical. The sheer volume of correspondence must surely be beyond anything capable of the enduser’s imagination, so let’s phone a friend: my favorite peek into the day-to-days of inter-Google existence is an old blog post by Benjamin Tilly on his first month at the company in which he was compelled almost immediately to describe in great detail how best to “deal with a lot of email in gmail” at peak efficiency using shortcuts and labels. “As you get email, you need to be aggressive about deciding what you need to see, versus what is context specific.”

Now we have a bit better idea of the aggressive emailing that was a sure constant on a normal workday at Google in 2010, so it must’ve been deafening after 8 years of Gmail development as 4000 employees no doubt vented, debated, and decided to organize last month, though without making much headway because the leadership’s response was apparently “complicated by the fact that Google claims it is only providing open-source software to Project Maven,” this new knowledge having significant effect on our mind’s image of Sundar Pichai’s activities in Washington: he is now swapping seats with a frustrated Colin Powell in order to install OpenOffice onto his desktop from a flash drive, and we recall that Google’s Googleplex headquarters resembles nowhere in modern life more than a brand new playground built in a design language borrowing heavily from Spy Kids. And though these Twelve disciples are unnamed for the moment, a few of them could immediately land book deals by going public, and every single one would always have by default not only the badge of “I landed a job at Google,” (which is really to say I have hit Life’s maximum level cap,) but “I worked at Google for a while, but ended up quitting to do something else,” which is guaranteed to make you the most interesting, intellectually superior person present in whatever crowd for the rest of your life. The ultra-cool Sarah Cooper quit Google to become a comedian and even got to talk to Kara Swisher! I won’t pretend to understand big tech’s diminutive bastardization of prestige, but “more than 90 academics” jumping to publish an open letter (adjacent to a huge DONATE: Support the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots button) in which they “write in solidarity with the 3100+ Google employees” who’s terrible boss decided to help some lackeys in the Pentagon set up their email and didn’t text back for a whole hour doesn’t sound 100% sincere. Notably, I don’t know how or why the fuck 90 people would go about collaborating on a single document, but if it really was managed, they definitely used Google Docs… At one point, it was fun to think about the history of the friendly side-scroller-playing garage ghouls and dorm dorks who gave cooky, wacko names to their dot com startups in parody and defiance of the lame-ass surname anagrams on the buildings of their established competitors, but those who’ve stuck around have only done so by becoming expert at SUCKING UP EVERYTHING around them, and it pisses me off every day how worried I am that my species will finally be done in by a company with a name like Yahoo! and be known only to a bunch of adolescent interdimensional silicon blobs 30 million years in the future as that bipedal race who remained dignified until the last 0.01% of their reign on Earth, when in way less than a single generation, they all just went FUCKING INSANE and blew themselves up because they suddenly hated all sense.

“Google” is perhaps the worst of these to have to shout in fear and/or anger in your last moments as it sounds in American English like you’ve startled your subject with a ticklish pinch followed so immediately by an esophagus-busting chokehold that the two events appear simultaneous, and in real English English, it almost always sounds like a parent speaking of a character on a pre-K children’s television programme whom they find quite foul and upsetting, but will manage to refrain from expressing so otherwise because they know that Teletubbies shit is the most quickly forgotten stage of television viewership. It’s fascinating how exclusive the word “Google” is to American English because in everything else it really is complete nonsense, but lets halt all etymological discussions right now because we’ve only now just finished with Monday.

The Soul Ledger

On Thursday, all of my Google experiences, suppositions, and soul-detaching screenshots were usurped when a thoroughly alarming internal company video called The Selfish Ledger was leaked to The Verge, which I watched once then and do not want to watch again for the sake of this piece, but I will. Though the big V has been disappointingly timid for years about editorializing — when tech journalism desperately needs some confident, informed opinion more than ever — Vlad Savov’s accompanying article should be read in its entirety, to which I can add my own terror where he perhaps could not. The production style is technically identical to that of the very popular thinkpiece-esque, motion-graphics-paired-with-obligatory-sharpie illustrated videos which you find playing at max volume on your mom’s iPad from where she’s fallen asleep on the couch at 9PM, but the repeating stock string soundtrack multiplies one’s discomfort as such that we would all end up in the fetal position without remembering the transition were it not for the appearance of trusty old Dank Jenkins, who’s face I thankfully associate heavily enough with his infamous down-and-out Tweet to be a welcome respite in attention before the very scary hypothesis for which it’s been buttering me up, as best summed by Vlad:

> The system would be able to “plug gaps in its knowledge and refine its model of human behavior” — not just your particular behavior or mine, but that of the entire human species. “By thinking of user data as multigenerational,” explains Foster, “it becomes possible for emerging users to benefit from the preceding generation’s behaviors and decisions.” Foster imagines mining the database of human behavior for patterns, “sequencing” it like the human genome, and making “increasingly accurate predictions about decisions and future behaviors.”

The next time the what if they do something scary question comes up in a casual conversation about Google, you’ll have something a lot more substantial than just speculation. Or will you? The Verge reached out for comment and got an awfully convenient response.

> This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate.

Wow! Leave it up to grand ole Googe to reveal the ultimate excuse for just about any suggestion or behavior, though it does seem almost deliberately uncomfortable, doesn’t it? No matter — whether or not this video was ever about a project or tangible product development, or simply to explore uncomfortable ideas because it is proof that the company has reached that critical Vatican stage — if you’ll remember — where they now feel comfortable exploring Very Bad, but Very easily made Real Ideas amongst themselves about what would happen if they allowed their system to nudge its users around a different, slightly less optimal route to the bar, let’s say — without their knowledge — in order for the system to collect traffic data for the sake of its own interests? Which would be, technically, in the interest of all Ledger users now and in the future, so why not?

> The ledger could be given a focus, shifting it from a system which not only tracks our behavior, but offers direction towards a desired result.”

This, my dear privacy-obsessed friends, is the real issue with data collection — its power over huge groups by way of their behavior and it is never going to be remedied in any significant way by ad-blockers or VPNs because the EndUser shall always out number you 50 to 1, even decades from now. EndUser does not understand — or, crucially, have any desire to understand anything technical about what leads to the PewDiePie videos playing on his filthy screen. Here’s a great opportunity to escape Silicon Valley’s technolibertarianism and resign your Darwinian empathy in favor of meaningful and truly-effective action: if you want to avoid a future Google Church (or Google Government, more worryingly,) you should invest your time, effort, and knowledge into electing officials more capable of understanding and regulating Big Tech.

Google Government

The internet as it stands is made possible by Google as the goto resource for online advertising. In 2016, “Google held 75.8 percent of the search ad market, bringing in $24.6 billion in revenue from search ads,” according to Recode. By 2019, “that’s expected to grow to $36.62 billion in revenue, or 80.2 percent of the market.” Google’s edge in user behavior and targeted advertising combined with their extensive resources available developers to integrate independent platforms with Google’s software services at various levels makes it very difficult for any advertising-funded individual or organization to compete online without dipping in to the Google universe. YouTube — a Google property since 2006 — has actively invested in and supported a new career path entirely within their own platform that is rapidly becoming popularly aspired-to by young children, while the reality of existence as a full-time YouTuber is far less glamorous than the immediately-visible surface would indicate, and the effort already expended by my generation in its pursuit has already made us insane.

So, what would the internet look like if Google didn’t exist? We know they’ve been working with the government now on various projects, but what if some terrible exposed transgression of theirs suddenly warranted an immediate shutdown and seizure of all Google properties? Well, we know from a post on Quora by Googler Ashish Kedia that even 5 years ago, the sudden absence of Google for “2–3 mins” set the internet into a bit of a panic, reducing overall traffic by 40%. In the time since, we’ve all grown exponentially more dependent on Google properties: billions of people rely on Google Maps for directions and, thousands of companies (including the Pentagon and other government institutions) rely on Gmail and GSuites for intercommunication, file sharing, task management, etc., and more and more academic institutions rely on Chromebook devices running connection-dependent operating systems. It’s not much of a stretch to argue that Google’s sudden disappearance would constitute a Civil Emergency in the United States, which will only become a stronger and more serious incentive for regulatory bodies to look the other way.

Though the tangible results of advertising have been quantified significantly in the past 20 years, one can’t help but wonder after watching YouTube ads for the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class on toy unboxing videos if the companies who spend big bucks on Google advertising understand where their money is going, but they know that if they don’t advertise there, their competitors will. This, of course, is a fundamental practice of a monopoly, and it’s yielded Google so much fucking money that they cannot possibly spend it fast enough, as evidenced by their investments in life extension — so that, perhaps, they will have more time on Earth to figure it out.

When you build a collection of the world’s smartest people in a self-sufficient environment that discourages exploration of other lifestyles and ideas, and you sustain the society with a gargantuan, relatively low-maintenance revenue stream, you create a culture which is not only well-primed for isolationism, but is also extremely inefficient. In fact, with its vast collection of abandoned products and properties, Google must surely be one of the most inefficient companies in history. Thinking back on recent software releases along with its recent entries into the hardware space, Google is also one of the worst competing tech companies. Very little aside from Gmail, Google Photos, Google Maps, and Chrome have found their place or garnered significant usership. Google Play Music is unintuitive and impossible, Google Allo and Google+ are all but forgotten addendums to other services, and Google Search — its core, original function — has been out of control for years, and all of them are designed blandly and excruciatingly tiring to look at.

Google Shun

If this all has stirred nothing more in you than a desire to eliminate Google from your own online life as much as possible, there are alternatives in almost every one of the sphere’s they dominate. As of late, DuckDuckGo has accumulated a fair amount of buzz and coverage as a private, more relevant alternative to Google’s plain old search engine. Though it is clever enough to list us as the first result for “extratone,” I’ve found it simply insufficient as a replacement in my own life because, essentially, it rarely delivers what I’m looking for. By contrast, Dropbox Paper is such an elegant cloud notetaking and word processing software that it makes Google Docs look simply idiotic (and warrants its own review very shortly.) For getting around, know that MapQuest is not only still around — it’s now a very competitive mobile navigation app.

I, myself, have allowed Google as complete of access to my information and behavior as possible because I believe “privacy” is a completely futile endeavor if one wishes to be a part of society, though I do often use alternatives to Google services simply because I fucking hate the way they look. If you want a more complete list of services and software that allow one to shun the Google God entirely, you’ll be forced to seek out less dignified sources like Lifehacker and Reddit and decide if the additional time you’ll spend using most of them to accomplish the same tasks is really worth your digital angst.

If Google were to be more explicit with its users and staff about its aspirations to take over control of our lives, there will be little to do but accept the future they intend to create because they’ve long been too powerful to control. In the meantime, I’d suggest you continue to use whatever software works best for you and refrain from wasting your time fretting on conspiratorial suppositions of what the tech industry may be doing to “invade your privacy,” because there is no longer any such thing, nor will there be ever again. However, I would also urge to you worship your own Gods, whomever they may be, for Google will never be worthy. I, for one, shall only pray to our Mother Sun.

#social #google #future #web #privacy

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moczothe1st · 6 years

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Let’s Play Fire Emblem IV: Genealogy of the Holy War, Part 30: Man, oh Man, oh Manfroy

Part 29

Welcome back to Fire Emblem IV: Genealogy of the Holy War. Last week, we fought off like six armies all at once, and it was miserable, but on the plus side Hilda died. I think every game would be better if Hilda died. This week, we finish taking her castle and… *sigh* And we regret it, probably. This week, we start off mid-turn, so after moving most of my southern front up north toward the action, I end my turn and let the remainder of Hilda’s dorks take their shot.

… Why couldn’t they have gone down that easy last week, huh?!

Now, on our turn, the enemy is down to four dark mages with staves, and one dark bishop with a siege tome in the castle. I have Fee cut down one of the former…

And have Larcei and Seliph talk about love, because honestly I’m actually in no big hurry to finish this castle.

Larcei: I’m coming with you on this one!

Seliph: Of course you’re welcome to… but why?

Larcei: It’s odd… I’m actually a little scared…

Seliph: Odd indeed! If there’s one thing you’ve never been known for, it’s fear.

Larcei: It’s… I just…

Seliph: Shhh. I understand. Now come! After all, what could ever inspire courage quite like having you at my side.

(… Damn, Seliph, smooth like silk. You win a little more of my respect, bro.)

Larcei: Seliph…

This conversation gives Seliph +1 to his Strength; it was apparently supposed to be +3, but he was actually only one point away from his (oddly low) cap. Apparently Seliph only has a natural 25 strength cap! That seems weird considering his descent from Sigurd the Humungous.

And… sigh. Guess I should kill the stupid boss.

All right. Nothing left but sleep staves, and they can’t really hurt us. I have Fee and Altena purge them.

And now we have the problem dealt with. A little jumping around before I set off the next story segment; I have Finn zapped home, where he repairs and sells his Brave Lance. I’m going to have Fee buy it after we take Freege. Sorry, Finn, but you’re kind of just not holding up; you lasted longer than I expected you too, but despite being decent on offense you’re just kind of fragile. Oifey will also be benched here, I think, he can stay to defend Freege castle after we take it. Thankfully…

… The game is polite enough to tell us where the next part of the chapter will be coming from. So I do spend a turn or two moving the kids up to this gate and ready to rock. Seliph?

Seliph: But I can’t help but wonder… are the children at Belhalla still unharmed? I pray they are…

Lewyn: Funny you should say that!

(That’s not really the appropriate response to dying children.)

Lewyn: We’ve got a visitor who’s got a bit of news on that front, Seliph.

(“I’ve seen… terrible things. Thank the gods I have no sister, for I fear I would never be able to look her in the eyes again.”)

Felipe: On secret orders from His Majesty, the abducted children were moved here to Freege for safe-keeping.

(Orders so secret that we never actually got to see Arvis give them in that whole scene where he was desperately trying to save all the children at Chalphy and failing, being immediately caught, and then getting cowed into submission by a man infinitely less powerful than himself. STOP TRYING TO MAKE ME FEEL BAD FOR ARVIS, GAME.)

Felipe: Rest easy, sire. They’re all hiding in the city’s abbey, and they’re all in good health.

Seliph: And all under Hilda’s nose, at that! That you’ve kept every last child safe in Hilda’s own city… color me impressed!

Felipe: Actually, sire… Princess Ishtar deserves your thanks. Without her generous aid given in secret, we could never have done this. No Imperial soldiers dared come even close to the abbey, on pain of the princess’s wrath.

Seliph: Princess Ishtar?! But why… why would she-

Felipe: Few people in this land are as kind and caring as Princess Ishtar.

FEW PEOPLE IN THIS LAND ARE AS KIND AND CARING AS PRINCESS ISHTAR.

YEAH SHE’S A FUCKIN’ TREASURE.

Felipe: All along, the princess has toiled behind the scenes to aid our cause. It was Princess Ishtar herself who ensured that every last child escaped from the bowels of Belhalla.

(“Then… how comes she’s… you know… literally banging the Devil?” “Technically he’s a ghost dragon.”)

Seliph: I see… at any rate, thank the gods for their safety. I’m certain everyone will be glad to know the children are in good hands. You have my deepest thanks, Lord Felipe.

Lewyn: Well, Seliph, that’s one job done. Good to see we’re finally getting results out of this mess.

(Hey, screw you man, I’ve conquered three quarters of the country.)

Seliph: And yet, Julia still eluds us… where could she possibly be?

Lewyn: The only options left now are Belhalla and Velthomer. It’s got to be one of those two.

Seliph: And Belhalla is where Julius awaits…

Lewyn: Yeah. We’ll need to find Julia first if we want to go anywhere near Belhalla. Without Julia’s power on our side, we won’t have a hope in hell against Julius.

(Again, not technically true, but you really should listen to him on this one.)

Seliph: But no matter what’s happened, Julius is still her brother. Will she even want to fight him…

Lewyn: … You’ll have to convince her.

(I mean, you’ve met Julius. It won’t be super hard.)

Ishtar: This will require that I leave your side, even for a while. I beg your forgiveness.

Julius: Feh.

Julius: Why the rush to get out there so suddenly, Ishtar? All the soldiers they could ever throw at us could never so much as scratch me. Why even bother with those maggots?

Ishtar: Yes, I know… but for me, there is no greater pride than being one of Freege’s great mages.

(“Saving all those children? Doesn’t even compare.”)

Ishtar: My parents and brother lie dead, and I cannot stand to leave their murderers to run amok… please. All I ask is a chance for vengeance.

Julius: It sounds as if what you really want is to following your family to death on a rebel’s blade! Are you so desperate to escape me, Ishtar?

Ishtar: No… nothing like that, Lord Julius. I love you. Nothing will ever change that.

Julius: Hmhmhmhmhm… I know.

Julius: Very well! Fight if you must. I won’t stop you.

Ishtar: Thank you… now, I beg your pardon. Meng! Bleg! Mabel! We sortie at once.

(Oh god, we are really scraping the bottom of the name barrel this time. ‘Meng’? ‘Bleg’?)

Julius: Now, then. I think it’s time we put an end to this sorry show. Deadlords, move out! And order Arion’s unit to attack!

(… wait, what?)

So. You may recall I told you to remember this moment.

It was important for two reasons.

First: This is the moment the war becomes winnable. You see, Manfroy is not… really all that into Loptyr. Oh, he worships him, but it’s not really about loyalty so much as sadism. Manfroy hates the world, and every single human being in it. His overall goal in life is nothing more or less than to make humanity suffer as much as possible. But he’s generally pragmatic about it. He knew the best way to hurt humanity was to revive Loptyr, who possesses incredible powers and views humans as little better than food to eat and pets to abuse. This moment, right here, is the moment that Manfroy, flush with overconfidence in the presence of his god on earth and having enjoyed a long decade and a half tormenting the entire continent, finally makes a mistake. He lets his sadism overpower his common sense for the first time. And in so doing, he gives us a real shot.

Second: Because he’s still Manfroy, he’s a total fuckwad about it.

Remember Ayra? Waaaaaaaaay back in Verdane, remember how we recruited Ayra. How we had to get to a castle to turn her non-hostile to us, only she was between the army and the castle and she was trying to kill us the whole time?

Yeah, that’s happening again. Only it’s Julia, our lil’ atomic vampire gatling gun trying to kill us. Of course she’s just as strong as she was when she was on our side, why would you even ask. Oh, and just for fun…

Here’s the map of what we need to achieve. The blue X is where we are. The red X is where we need to get to save Julia. The ravenous piranha is Ishtar’s army, waiting to pounce upon us and tear us limb from bloody limb. And to her right, marked by the douche, is Julius. You don’t have to fight him, and you in fact definitely should not because getting anywhere near him will also draw the Deadlords out to fight you, but of course has a siege tome now and will cheerfully wreck the shit of anyone who gets anywhere near him, therefore heavily limiting the space we have to move.

And of course, Julia will be trying to kill us the whole time, and we can’t fight back and risk killing her.

And hahaha, yeah, Arion will be showing up soon.

This is not going to be any fun, is what I’m getting at here.

First thing’s first, let’s take a look at our piranha.

Ishtar has taken yet another level in badass; her magic has gone up two points, skill by three, luck by 2, defense by eight, and resistance by one. And this time, she’s got an actual army with her instead of fighting us alone; three Snipers, three Heroes, three Sages, three High Priests with Fortify (of course) staves, and of course…. *snerk*…. Bleg, Meng, and Mabel.

They’re three identical Falcon Knights, both in picture and stats, so I’ll only be showing one of them. Despite the intensely crappy names, they honestly three ridiculously dangerous units. They all have Earth Swords, meaning any hit they land is going to heal them, and they’ll be hitting often what with that maxed-out Speed and solid 23 skill. And to make things worse, they all have the Nihil ability to prevent us from just shooting them down with arrows or relying on Astra to solve our problems.

So! This is going to suck. A lot. But thanks to Ced being awesome, there’s an option I can take to make this a lot more manageable. Lana sells her Silence staff, and he buys it…

And with his 35 fucking magic he can overpower Ishtar’s 32 Resistance to Silence her up to three times, basically removing Mjolnir from the equation for this battle. And Mjolnir is like… half of this battle’s equation.

I literally cannot believe I’ve never tried this before. From here, the army moves forward, Seliph leading the way; he’ll be attacked by quite a lot of people here, but he’s a living iron wall of destruction, and the more of these people I can lure away from the main melee, the better. So. End turn!

(*sigh* Must you, now?)

Arion: Chalphy’s fall to our blades shall be the first step to winning back our fatherland. Now, move in! Show these liberators one final defiance from the drackoknights of Thracia!

A solid enough start! We hurt one Falcon Knight, and didn’t take much damage in return. And now that Ishtar is in range…

Oh, that is delicious. Now, my first goal here is to kill at least one of these three annoyingly fast pega-bitches, but I also have to get Altena (and yes it has to be her, of course it has to be her) down to the castle to intercept Arion. I hate everything forever.

One down! Let’s keep this train rolling and clear out some more jerks.

Two out of three ain’t bad!

Okay, I think that’s about all the damage I’m going to get done this turn. And not bad at all, frankly, so I’m happy. I have Lene dance Altena, and warp her home with Lana.

Ignore the pentagram. It’s a good pentagram. Down at the bottom, Altena equips Gae Bolg and flies to just outside Arion’s range. The rest of his buddies don’t matter at all, but I don’t want her to fight him. There’s a reason for this, of course. It’s unsatisfying, but it makes her happy.

The things I do for my kids, I swear.

End turn.

… Huh. They don’t attack her? Or maybe they can’t damage her. I honestly am not sure.

*sniff*

I remember the last time I played this map.

I died five times on this battle alone.

And now it’s going better than the fight against the fucking Beige Knights.

I don’t understand what’s going on.

Altena: How could you be so craven?! How dare you place your vanity and pride over what truly matters!

(You tell him, honey!)

Arion: What do you want from me, then?

(God, don’t ask her that. This LP is not rated Adults Only.)

Altena: Take a good, hard look at Prince Seliph! Ask yourself, this: why is he still fighting? For whom is he out here day after day, setting his own suffering to the side?

Arion: So Seliph fights for justice, and I somehow do not? Is that what you’re trying to say?

(…. YES!)

Altena: Very well, Arion… if you won’t see reason, so be it. Come on. Kill me. End this. My… my life is in your hands. I die with no regrets.

Arion: A-Altena… very well. You can rest easy now. I get it. I was wrong… my mercenary days are at an end, and my final task is with Seliph. Wait… no. With you. I now fight for you, Altena.

Altena: Arion…

Yeah, it would have been neat if you’d done this a few maps ago, jackass, but Arion is on our side now. Or, well, sorta. He doesn’t join the army, but his unit becomes neutral and are programmed to stay close to Altena and be hostile to any Belhalla units that get near them. I know we all sort of wanted to kill him, but he still has Gungnir and I really just didn’t want to risk a screwup when things are going so well. I mean, I’m not even gonna use him. At this point, letting him get near the enemy would likely result in him rushing Julius and dying, which sorta defeats the point. Let’s just end this; time to wipe out the remains of Ishtar’s unit.

And now, a special treat. Since Ishtar can’t fight, we get to see a conversation that even I have never actually seen.

(…. ‘Nothing but kind’.)

(Just sayin’.)

Ishtar: … I may be in the wrong. But I can’t turn back now. Forgive me, Tinni… please….

And thus passes Princess Ishtar of Freege. She died as she lived: getting nuked by her cousins. And without her leadership stars…

All right. Now, the rest of the army is going to stay right where they fucking are. Julia cannot be trusted to not kill herself, or more troublesome to not kill me. The only people going forward are Seliph and Ares, who are going to go north across the forest, out of Julius’s range, and try to lure Julia into following them. Their resistance is tremendous, and they’re both on horses. Ideally she’ll try to kill them, fail, and be following them and unable to catch up until I can free her. This will take a few turns of nothing but movement because I will not be going anywhere near Julius.

Trust me.

She seeeeeeeeeees uuuuuuuuuuussssss…

Okay. There’s two things that could happen here. She’s either going to go east and cut us off, in which case we’ll be dodging vampire lasers the rest of the map, or she’s going to go north through the forest and we basically win the game. Let’s see!

…. Bitch. Okay, straight west you guys! Hide on the healing church, you beautiful bastards. God, haven’t used one of those in awhile, with those fifty healers in the army lining up to zap everyone with staves.

Dammit, Loptyrians, I am trying to flee in terror from a small woman.

Okay. We can do this. Ares heals up, and all we have to do is clear out those priests and kill Manfroy. Go get ‘em, boys!

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Are you fucking kidding me.

Of all the.

That.

You.

HOW.

What the!

NO.

………………

Well. You know all those times when I was questioning my good fortune? The moments where I was like ‘oh, man, I don’t trust how generous the game is being, bet it’s gonna screw me later!’ Well, that just happened.

*sigh*

End turn. If I survive this, I will be genuinely stunned.

Oh hey it’s as though the Hel tome is really easy to dodge and you should have dodged it all along. But here we go…

(How do you know that’s Manfroy? You’ve never met him…)

Manfroy: So I did. And so long as I live, my puppet she shall remain! Hehehehehe! She’s every bit as helpless before my magic as her mother was…

Seliph: I should have known. If not for you, Mother… Gah! All of this misery… all these agonizing years… It was all your doing from the outset!

Manfroy: Heh… of course. Everything I’ve done has led to this moment: the revival of my lord Loptyr. And at last, it is so! Loptyr’s advent in the form of Prince Julius is complete, and darkness shall soon engulf the world. You cannot prevent it. Nobody can…

Seliph: Manfroy, you… Father’s grief… Mother’s despair… if not for you and your foul ambitions, none of this would have ever happened… Damn you, Manfroy! I cannot allow you to win! I will not! You’ll NEVER know mercy for your crimes!

Yeah, not the dramatic win I was hoping for after that great speech. But I guess I saw that coming. Reset! I start off a little differently; Seliph and Ares park themselves on trees. With the 20% dodge bonus, they should have no chance of being hit by Hel, and very little of being hit by Julia. We need to clear out these Dark Mages before we go for Manfroy.

Better! This repeats for all of them; one actually dies because they’re forced to attack at close-range thanks to being blocked off by their own buddies, which is great.

Yeah, yeah.

He only does one damage. Seliph could have survived him with no problem in any other situation. I hate this game sometimes. On our turn, I have Ares and Seliph each clear out a mage…

Then immediately go hide in the woods again. I am playing this as cautious as humanly possible, honestly. Better to spend three turns killing mages than let the reset counter jump up above the number of updates.

The enemy misses again on their turn, because they literally can’t not miss. Two more deaths…

All right! That’s that for dark mages. On the next turn, Ares is going to park his butt on the healing church forever, and Seliph goes to fight Manfroy.

You stay out of this.

Now then. It’s time. It’s time to face Manfroy himself. In direct combat. The enemy behind it all! The dark schemer who has given over our kingdom to the dark god. And he…

Is a loser. I mean, he’s not the worst enemy in the game. He’s okay. But he’s definitely no match for Arvis, or Ishtar, or… anyone with a holy weapon, really. Which fits, really; his danger is his skill and intellect, not his power. But considering he’s basically the final boss, it’s a little sad, still.

Seliph. Teach him some manners, bro.

And with two shots, he’s down to six HP. End turn.

I miss the days when I was the one with the Julia Beams.

*sniff*

God. That is just cathartic to do. Now. With Manfroy off to Hell, where I’m assuming he will meet Hilda and strike up a whirlwind love affair, Seliph can take the castle.

Lewyn: That’s right, isn’t it Felipe?

Felipe: My liege concealed the key within his most treasured memento…. The circlet once worn by Empress Deirdre.

(HURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRK!)

Felipe: If we can find that circlet, sir, the Book of Naga is yours.

Lewyn: Deirdre’s circlet…

And that’s that! Ares runs toward the castle, with intent to lure Julia toward us. Of course she’s still hostile, why are you even asking? She has to talk to Seliph to get back to our side. Tee-hee, Fire Emblem hates you.

God, you are just like your mother. Seliph, go fix this please.

Seliph: It was Manfroy’s dark arts. He brainwashed you into his service.

Julia: Manfroy… that’s right, he caught me…

Seliph: Thank goodness you’re safe.

Julia: Lord Seliph, I…

Seliph: It’s fine, Julia. I know. Lewyn told me everything. I’m sorry… I failed to protect you.

Julia: No… it’s fine. Don’t worry, Seliph. I finally know why I’ve survived for all these years. I know my fate… I’m fated to fight. I’ll never run away again!

Seliph: You’re right… This is the will of fate, tragic as it is. None can afford to cower or flee now. Until the bitter end, we must march on.

And with that, Julia rejoins the team. She’s just as strong as ever, barring one fact; she’s picked up Deirdre’s circlet, adding Renewal and Miracle to her list of abilities, which is a heck of an upgrade.

But not as good as the one she gets from reaching Velthomer.

Lewyn: It worked… it really worked! And there it is, the Book of Naga! It’s yours for the taking, Julia!

Julia: … Oh! How strange… it feels so warm. It’s almost as if I’ve known this book all my life…

And now, the game is over. See, here’s the thing… Julius is just as dangerous as before, if not slightly moreso. His stats are slightly lower than his first appearance where you are very clearly not meant to fight him, but he still has Loptyr’s game-breaking effect, and his ability list is now Wrath, Pursuit, Nihil, and Accost. So he can double most of our army, null critical hits and combat abilities, and gets a huge critical boost when his health drops below half. And of course, he’s on a castle and gets the defense bonus and health regeneration that gives. Basically, he’s borderline invincible. The only real option if you lose Julia is to have Seliph fight him, and poor Seliph can only do about 15 damage per turn (if he hits) some of which will then be healed. While getting blasted in the face repeatedly, so you’ll need to get someone in to heal him between rounds, and they’ll very probably die to having Meteors dropped on their head unless you’re very lucky. And then there’s the Deadlords, who are just a pain.

But if you do have Julia…

Yeah.

YEEEEEEEEEAH.

Naga is the best weapon in the game. +20 each to Skill, Speed, Defense, and Resistance, instantly turns Julia into a hyper-fast, hyper-accurate, hyper-durable killing machine. And as a light magic tome, it has no disadvantage to any kind of weapon. And, of course, it negates Loptyr’s half-damage effect. Your reward for the most annoying recruitment in the game is the weapon that ends the game. Big time.

So.

It’s time to lay back and let Big J play us out, I think. I have her do the Arena, just for old times sake. Nothing even touches her.

Julia: Seven wins, gained two levels. +2 HP, +1 Speed.

About as good as can be expected at this point, honestly. And it…. Doesn’t really matter, you know? She heads to Belhalla, and Julius has no chance to hit her with Meteor, so he doesn’t even try. The Twelve Deadlords rush up to meet her, of course…

They’re going to regret this. The Deadlords are named for the animals of the Chinese Zodiac, and each one has a different class and some very good weapons and abilities. They’re a dangerous group! Usually.

One down, eleven to go. End turn.

And then there were nine.

Sorry, seven.

Six of one, half-dozen of the other.

Fun fact, ‘Lepus’ means ‘Rabbit’. And ‘Dead’.

Well I’ll be! Someone landed a hit! Too bad Julia did too. Four to go.

I’m so bad at counting! It’s actually three. Congrats to Equus the Bishop on surviving a round with The Julinator. But with that, none of the remaining Deadlords will actually take a shot at Julia anymore, so I’m just going to ignore them. It’s time for a family reunion.

(He isn’t wrong.)

Yes, that was a single round of combat. Julius procced his Accost skill and made the fight last an extra round. This… was not helpful to him.

Julius vanishes, the spirit of the dragon arising from the castle as the entire map shakes…

But it’s just bluster. Naga’s power has destroyed Loptyr’s vessel, and with its bloodline finally ended the dragon’s grip on this world is gone. Loptyr returns to whatever void it came from, and with the power that animated them gone, the few surviving Deadlords vanish.

I’m going to cut out here, but no sense waiting a week, huh? So see you tomorrow for the epilogue, kids. I think we earned it.

Final Reset Total: 30. Y... yay.

Epilogue

#Let's Play #let's play fire emblem IV #let's play fire emblem #Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War #fire emblem #fire emblem 4 #my writing #lp #long post

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itsbeenawhile7 · 6 years

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The absolution of Dana Scully in the aftermath of My Struggle IV: one pissed off fan’s grand manifesto

–also known as, “what in actual hell happened to Chris Carter?”

If you have not already read through this interview, courtesy of Avi Quijada and XFN, I am going to need you to start there first.

And listen: before anyone goes there, I am not analyzing the fuck out of this to excuse Chris Carter for the disastrous finale he just served up to us. Rather, it’s that there are a lot of us who are products of the Scully Effect in one way or another, and we’d like to feel good about her legacy. We deserve to figure out a way to clean up this mess you left us with.

Some people write fanfic. Me? I do this. Get some hot chocolate and pull up a comfy chair.

Rant rating: R, for language and possibly some implied violence against Chris Carter

Content warning: I mean…you saw MSIV, right?

Did MSIV actually destroy Dana Scully for all of us forever? Nah. We just witnessed the apex of a once skilled writer complete his own demise. We just witnessed a writer who got in way over his head, who was trying to articulate extremely complex, controversial ideas and concepts, and doing so in about the most tone deaf way anyone ever possibly could. Having read his interview with Avi Quijada, I now think it is absolutely fair to say that Chris Carter actually did have at least some idea about what the right motivations for his characters were. But in a writing decision that will baffle me and the rest of the world forever, he did not heed the warnings of those around him, and convinced himself that his audience would be able to infer absolutely everything of import to his story, and that we didn’t need to see any of that stuff actually fleshed out on screen. Sure, fine, whatever, Chris. Challenge accepted, here we go.

Let’s review. In the space of a scant few ridiculous hours occurring over the course of MSIV, Scully found out all of the following:

the child she thought was conceived miraculously with her partner was not, in fact, created as a the result of that union

she was medically raped and violated in order for William to be brought forth into the world

the being that she has conceived of as their son for 18 years is barely human: he is a shape-shifting, unstable lab creation, who is far, far more dangerous than any of the many forces that have been out to destroy him

William was created specifically by that fucking bastard Carl, and for whatever purpose Per Manum previously served in this universe, Dana Scully and the rest of us ostensibly should now assume it was to obtain fertilized embryos for the CSM to screw around with and deploy when she made the biggest fucking mistake of her life going off with him in En Ami

she is somehow pregnant right now, at age 54 (because Chris is apparently fascinated by perimenopause? or some shit like that?), after having not gotten miraculously pregnant at any point before in her extensive sexual history with Mulder

William directly and repeatedly said to both of his parents of genetic origin that he does not want to be protected, and that he wants them to let him go [quick break here: sorry, Chris, but there is no way that the CSM is the literal genetic father here, because Scully had a fucking AMNIO in season 8, and therefore you will neverrrrrrrrr convince any of us that this could ever possibly be the case]

And in the midst of all of this, Skinner is killed (maybe), her now compromised friend Monica Reyes is killed (maybe), her partner witnesses the murder of their son (maybe), and her partner kills his father (maybe), after having himself killed or witnessed the killing of dozens of New Syndicate operatives (definitely, because: exploding entrails!!!).

Two things stand out to me. Number one: this level of emotional trauma and upheaval is far, far too much for anyone to even be capable of putting up a coherent verbal response to in its immediate aftermath. Number two, to reiterate points Gillian Anderson and Avi Quijada both made directly to Chris: this “grand vision” or “Big Idea” of his should have had an entire season or two’s worth of episodes behind it if it was ever going to stand a chance in hell at working. I do not believe that the simple act of making these specific storytelling choices is in and of itself the problem, no matter how I might personally feel about it. The X-Files has been telling us a story involving horrifying genetic, physical, and reproductive assaults on its characters since 1995. We just, y’know, occasionally used to think about the aftermath of those atrocities in scripts and on camera, in episodes like One Breath, Memento Mori, or the Emily arc. What is abso-fucking-lutely a BIG problem, though, is if your reproductive horror show is executed as poorly as it was written in MSIV. Full stop.

I will argue until I am blue in the face, though, that Dana Scully is not destroyed by this ending, no matter how poorly written it was. Chris Carter simply didn’t let this character actually do any of what she should have been doing with this ON SCREEN, where we could see her. We now know for a fact that Chris was aware that he was leaving all of this off screen, so what I want to know is…why? No, really. I really want to know the answer, here. Why on Earth didn’t you show us, Chris? Hell, you could have even gotten this done with one, or two, or six additional bloated voiceover monologues, since most of what went down in MSIV wasn’t articulated *~anywhere at all~* outside of post-mortem press conversations. (Exhibit A: the entire Monica Reyes sub-plot.)

As a parent myself, I cannot even fathom what it would be like to find out that your child was capable of doing horrific, terrible, inhumane things. That’s also a pretty relevant–if extremely uncomfortable–concept right now, one that could have been grappled with in an era in which we are beginning to finally engage with mental health, gun control, and domestic terrorism in very public forums. We are made to understand thanks to Avi, that Chris Carter apparently loves using The X-Files to ask us tough questions that don’t always have answers. So…why the hell didn’t he do it here? I mean, come ON! What does it mean to be the parent, biological or otherwise, of a child capable of these horrors? I’m not saying that any of us have to like it, but as written in MSIV, William is a sociopath. William is not a human being. William is not anyone’s child anymore, and William is for damn sure not something capable of being protected. William can only destroy, because that is exactly what Fucking Carl (trademark pending) made him for. Whether in the Supersoldier sense, or in the New Syndicate global-contagion-let’s-wipe-out-humanity sense, we have been told that the CSM made him to be nothing more than a tool to help execute his own post-apocalyptic needs.

So after 18 years, Scully suddenly and very traumatically has to process that William was an experiment gone wrong (or right, I suppose, if you go talk to Carl). After 18 years, this is the William we’ve got. Can you even imagine how much worse it might have been for Scully if she had actually been there the whole time, watching this happen? William had a good childhood, he was raised by good people, and he still turned into a sociopath, and he tells us so himself. Was Scully ever a parent to what William ultimately turned out to be? That’s…actually a pretty damn good question, in this context.

And the answer to that question, according to Chris, is that Scully was the mother of the idea of William, the mother of the idea of a child who was miraculously created out of nothing more than love. She was the mother to the ideas and imaginings that she had about William for 18 long years. She was that mother during her pregnancy, she was that mother during his infancy, and she was that mother when circumstances erroneously convinced her to put him up for adoption, in a move that we were told was to try to give him the best life she thought she couldn’t ever possibly give to him. She was that mother in Ghouli, pouring her whole heart and soul into the idea of her son William in that heartbreaking morgue scene. So, no, I don’t think it means that she instantaneously stopped loving that idea of her son, when the shit hits the fan in MSIV. But it does mean that she understands that her idea of William hasn’t ever been the right one: the “truth we both know" was actually a horrific lie. “William…was an idea, created in a laboratory…” is true in this universe, for better or for worse. Dissecting what that means for Scully, just this one single solitary point alone, should have been granted an entire episode, not 10 seconds on a pier.

“Scully, he was our son! He was our son!”

He was.

He was their son. For 18 years, they both believed that he was their son. I don’t think anything Scully stutters and stumbles to explain to Mulder in this moment suggests that she doesn’t actually believe that, or grieve for that. It mostly indicates that Chris Carter has no idea how to write this magnitude of dropped psychological bomb. I think he does know his own limitations, which is why it all happens off screen. Thanks only to Gillian Anderson’s acting, it does appear as though we are witnessing a confused, traumatized Scully here, one who has been exposed to so much death and destruction immediately proceeding this moment that she can’t even find the way forward. Gillian Anderson, thankfully, fills in the cavernous script hole, and gives us a Scully who doesn’t know how to begin to explain what she has been forced to understand to a now very visibly fracturing Mulder.

This is not a mother suddenly throwing away her decades of love for a child just because she is getting a “do over” baby. And the only reason we even had to consider whether or not that was the case at all, is solely because of the steaming pile of inadequate shit dialogue that was written for her.

Let’s step back now and consider Mulder, and how his presence impacts Scully’s reaction. Mulder, who shocks the hell out of all of us when he says, “if I am not a father, then what am I?” in MSIV. We have gone an exorbitant amount of time watching this man, who devoted his life to finding his lost sister, seemingly refuse to engage in the same manner with his own lost son. So, we could take this as an example of even more what-the-actual-Carter-fuckery-are-we-doing-now, OR we could choose to listen to what Chris tells Avi, and believe him when he says this is the hidden motivation that’s been driving Mulder all these years. You know, off screen. Because this isn’t at all yet another concept that needed its own entire episode to explore. Exploding entrails, bitches!

Or, how about we also revisit a much better writer’s take on all of this? Let’s pick up adoptive father James Wong’s narrative, because he actually kind of gets how this kind of thing might work. In Ghouli, Mulder tells us that we’ve had no idea about his state of mind on any of this. Not ever. And we can infer that that was intentional on Mulder’s part. He’s doing it because he thinks it is what he needs to do for Scully’s benefit. There is no possible way that Fox-Freaking-Mulder, you punks, didn’t have some ridiculously big feelings about all of this. He’s been presented on screen to us as having sublimated his feelings on the matter since he found out about William’s adoption in The Truth. He wasn’t there to make the choice, and whatever resentment or sadness he may feel about what Scully did, he is swallowing it for her. He’s standing right beside her, he’s just listening. That’s his choice.

Also courtesy of James Wong: we know that Mulder has outright lied to Scully about his feelings about William in the past. In Founder’s Mutation, he tells Scully that he’s had to put it all behind him. James Wong does what a writer should do to communicate a character’s motivations, by actually showing us that Mulder has lied to all of us at the end of the episode, and letting us see Mulder’s dreams about what parenting William could have been.

So yes, I am going to take Chris at his word that these really are Mulder’s feelings in MSIV, even though he failed to articulate those motivations appropriately on screen. Look, many of us have been complaining for years that Mulder’s seeming non-response to his lost son seemed wildly inconsistent with everything we know of his character. I will take the bone Chris has so generously offered us here as an attempt to rectify all of that. I think coming into peripheral contact with William in Ghouli began to dismantle Mulder’s carefully constructed walls of sublimation, and by the time he actually gets his hands on him in MSIV, the flood gates have opened and cannot be closed again.

I have no trouble at all buying the narrative that the idea of being a father has quiescently been the single thing holding Mulder together for almost two decades. Look, I am absolutely here for that. I think most hard core X-Files fans are absolutely here for that, too. We know Mulder pretty damn well at this point, and we know that the loss of his sister shaped him forever. You even made him bring it up in IWTB after years of dormancy. So, yeah, I don’t have any trouble believing that through it all, while on the run, while locked away and adrift in the Unremarkable House for years, and when ultimately left by a very lost Scully who couldn’t bear north anymore, that this broken man from a broken family did indeed secretly cling to the idea of being a father. That for all of his failings and losses, he wanted to believe that he had at least had a part in making this miraculous child he dreams is out there. That he could believe that William was, in fact, living an idyllic childhood, the kind of childhood that he himself never got to have. For so damn long, Mulder wanted to believe all of that. Yes, Chris, for fuck’s sake, I BUY that, okay? As obnoxious and stupid as that written line is, having now heard it for the 4,000th time, this concept is right on for Fox Mulder.

[Another aside: that line is the one and only moment that David Duchovny loses me in MSIV. But OMG, as an actor who has had to say this ridiculous line every which way to Sunday? I can’t say that I blame him. No one actually talks this way! There is no actual right way to play it without making all of us want to crawl into a hole and die.]

Okay. So Mulder watches his son die. The ideas and dreams that he has carried beneath the surface this whole time die along with him. Scully sees all of this happening to Mulder, and based on what the Wongverse has established, she has probably not ever seen it look like this for him. So, what we are getting here is that for this one instance, we are seeing Scully put her own feelings about William second to Mulder’s feelings about William. Every other moment between them thus far has been Mulder putting his own feelings second to Scully’s feelings about William, right? I do believe that Chris Carter is daft enough to think that Scully got “her turn” in Ghouli, and so in MSIV, there’s no problem at all if we only get “Mulder’s turn.“ (And apparently, we also have time for Ford Mustang’s turn.) That all plays into the nonsensical words coming out of Scully’s mouth at the end of MSIV. Scully can’t find the words to speak to the guilt and pain she is trying to absolve Mulder of. How could anyone?

Listen to Gillian’s work, actually giving us some damn meaning here:

“William…William was–”

William was.

Ultimately, here’s MY truth: I hate how the William narrative turned out. I have hated every single moment of the William narrative beyond the end of season 8. Existence absolutely could have ended the series in the way in which these characters deserved to have their hero journeys end. And you know, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I found out that Chris Carter secretly hates that this ending got away from him, too. I mean, look, we know Chris is a lying liar who is lying in all of the press he is doing right now, as he tries to convince the world that this has been The Grand Plan All Along. Never mind that this plan is contradicted by his own press prior to 2018, never mind that it is contradicted by all of the other writers and producers who worked on the William story at the time it was conceived, and never mind that it is contradicted by the simple reality that every zig and zag in the X-Files universe beyond season 7 is really the result of never knowing if David or Gillian were going to participate in the story anymore going forward. So, I’m sorry, but bull-fucking-shit that you had any of this in your head when William B. Davis wrote En Ami, Chris. Why not just admit that handling The X-Files was kind of impossible when one or both leads were maybe not going to be involved in telling the story anymore? We would all completely understand that, Chris, no one would ever in a million years question that. Of course you might wind up losing your narrative thread under those business circumstances. We aren’t blind to how the entertainment industry works.

I mean, there was never any hesitation on Chris Carter’s part to explain why all things had the intimations of a sex scene, not for one minute ever, so don’t try to tell us now that he just kept a lid on the truth about what role En Ami was actually fucking serving in this story for 18 whole years. Sorry, bro, I am not buying it. When you really think about it, how can Chris Carter possibly not know that he blew it years ago with William’s narrative? It is precisely the impossibility of navigating the logistics of telling a story far beyond the boundaries set by the involvement of the real people making it that drive showrunners like Vince Gilligan to give themselves a finite amount of time to tell it. Chris (or the Fox network, or whoever you want to blame) didn’t do that, and therefore he wound up giving up at least 4 other possible endings to The X-Files over to the uncertainty of actors continuing to involve themselves in this project. I really do wonder if that’s why he went down this particular path of turning William into a monster, and I wonder if that is why he seemingly worked so hard over the course of his Struggles to try to strip Mulder and Scully’s ties to him. Because this really wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen.

And so now here we are, hitting the do over button with a new pregnancy. I have no doubt that this guy thinks that he actually could hit the reset button just like that, and magically get back to the original poetic justice that these characters were given in their 2001 ending. He probably thinks that the fans would see this as a gift, even! I mean, shippers were heard, amirite? But even the idea of ending with a pregnancy, now many many many years too late, isn’t ultimately the real problem. All together, one more time for the folks in the back of the classroom: the problem is, and will always be, piss poor execution. You could hand this exact story to a Penumbra, or a syntax6, or an Aloysia Virgata, and I have no doubt it could be told in a beautiful (if utterly soul-crushingly painful) way.

So, fine. You want this to be the narrative, Chris? Fine. I will fill in the Grand Canyon of plot holes that you left us. The fandom will follow your stupid bread crumbs, and we will imbue them with the motivations and meaning you claim to have been driven by, but inexplicably chose not to write into any of your recent scripts. William was. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully have been letting him go, piece by piece, for 18 years. He was not meant to be. He was, ultimately, not ever theirs, even though he was created from genetic pieces of them. (Fight me, Chris, you can have that CSM created him, but FUCK NO WE ALL DRAW THE LINE AT CARL’S SPERM!) We can even give this bleak, wasted moodscape a soundtrack, if you want, in the form of a song you chose 10 years ago for them yourself: I will fire up UNKLE’s “Broken” right here, right now.

And OKAY Chris, I will even follow you down the rabbit hole of this new pregnancy, and I will take it in the spirit of the way I want to believe you intended it: as a way to desperately claw our way back towards getting the ending Existence gave these characters, the ending that was supposed to be their just rewards for all the nightmares they have lived through. Scully and Mulder are alive, they are a family, they are going to get to finally have a real human child, okay, fine, it’s fiiiiiiiiiine. I will go ahead and imagine that Scully, somewhere a few exquisite and bittersweet heartbeats down the road from the pier, is running away from the FBI and blowing up the motherfucking car (the Mustang, please). Scully is going to row a damn boat to an island paradise on her babymoon with Mulder, her vibrator, and a blobfish. You once wanted all of that to be the post-script for your characters, Chris. You lost the thread. I get it, I really do.

Look, I’m not a gifted writer or a gifted storyteller. I’m a Scully Effect scientist working in medicine, and I’m an overanalyzer at heart. My creative outlets skew in an entirely different direction. I am a woman, though, and I am a mother, and people with life experiences just like mine might possibly have had the perspective that could have saved your story, Chris, if only you would’ve consented to hear us out.

If I had been given the chance to help figure out how to crawl out of the William mess created by all those years of renewal-or-not uncertainty, here’s what I might have suggested to you, Chris: let’s make William a savior, not a monster. Let’s make William an empath with the power to heal others. Let’s reference Scully’s alien DNA, her chip, Mulder’s season 7 alien artifact brain shit, and let’s say that all of that came together and allowed for the possibility of superhuman recombinant DNA magic once those two people came together. Let’s give William the ability to read his biological parents’ minds and hearts from afar, but have it be a benevolent thing, and not a painfully torturous apocalyptic thing. Let’s have William come back to Mulder and Scully having harnessed his powers for good, after the New Syndicate killed his adoptive parents as part of a failed attempt to take him out of the picture. Let’s give some concrete evidence that William’s adoption did, for a time, keep him safe, to absolve Scully of that guilt. Let’s have him tell Mulder that he saw all of the same dreams about building rockets, and father-son TV nights and talk. Let’s end the New Syndicate’s plans by letting Scully have some motherfucking agency, y'know? Remember? Let’s let her do it all like she used to in the glory days, and go be the scientist that she is. Let’s have Scully save the world, by distilling out some saving grace compound from William’s superhuman blood, or stem cells, or whatever the fuck you want to ask Anne Simon to give you, to fight against the New Syndicate’s planned viral apocalypse. Let’s have Mulder and William vanquish CSM together; these two sons taking out this toxic, villainous “father” that’s been hovering over this whole show, and let’s have them reclaim the narrative of fathers and sons as something that is good, and positive, and right.

Where’s the writer? I want to speak to the writer!

In the end, Chris, you didn’t do Dana Scully any justice on screen at all. But your inadequate words don’t get to be the last words on the subject of Dana Scully, nor do they get to define what she means to us. You can’t ruin her, Chris. She belongs to us now. We’ll take care of her. We’ll give her the ending she deserves.

#dana scully #fox mulder #the x files #my struggle 4 #my struggle iv #ms4 #msiv #x files season 11 #x files revival #meta #x files analysis #william #i really do hate the william story with the burning passion of a thousand white hot suns #saving dana scully #msr #mulder and scully #x files negativity #but also x files positivity too #the scully effect

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glitchinthesystemspiderbyte · 6 years

Text

[33] Glitch in the System - Policy of Truth (Venganza pt. 4)

Sorry we’re a bit late. Hopefully it will be worth it!

In case you missed it, here is Part One, Part Two, and Part Three!

Reconciliation happens. _

“Amélie.”

Through the unfathomable depths of sleep, a voice called a dust shrouded name. It echoed across vast, empty space, its origin leagues above and away until it reached her: a whisper, drifting past on a slow-moving current. Though the tone and timbre were familiar to her, they were only so with the transient familiarity of childhood memories: there, then gone, then presumed forever passed both in time and relevancy.

“Amélie.”

She struggled to place with any certainty the provenance of this one-word demand for rejoinder. It was not warm. It was not ragged. It was not firm. Of the voices most familiar to her, this was not among them; yet, she felt it like a lash all the same, dragging her from the sprawling black into a light she didn’t notice until it was suddenly, blindingly there.

“There you are.”

Widowmaker, thrust violently back into consciousness, blinked hard against the light. At first, that’s all there was: searing, artificial fluorescence that felt to her torpor-addled eye on par with the sun itself. With the passage of seconds, shadows, then shapes crept into existence, their edges ephemeral though their subjects were inarguably real.

Then, no more than a minute later, there was pain.

Universal, consuming pain snarled white-hot fire with every breath and beat of her heart, so furious at its own existence she thought, for a moment, she could discern with horrifying acuity the presence and location of every nerve she possessed. The initial onslaught gave way to awareness of a few exceptionally tender areas: waist, side, and shoulder, where honed agony coursed mercilessly across nerves frayed by, assumedly, hours of much the same. Through the fog of dawning consciousness, she recalled - albeit vaguely - a dry elaboration on that prolonged sort of suffering:

“Colloquially, we refer to this as ‘quantitative pain’: frequent and durative exposure to deleterious physical stimuli lasting minutes, hours, days, and so on.”

It was such a casual definition, delivered with practiced, clipped eloquence so far removed from the topic question it may as well have been a poetic recitation of Shakespeare.

And then it - recognition - hit her, hard and mercilessly with the first wave of nausea. Which, specifically, left her retching into the stainless steel kidney dish held before her remained poignantly ambiguous.

“Are you very well done?” that same voice asked, suffused with indifference, if not inconvenience. Fighting against the pall of sleep threatening just beyond the edge of her vision, Widowmaker dug into what little reserve of will she possessed to take in her surroundings: empty cots; many-armed surgical assistance bots; glass front cabinets and shelves well-stocked with a remarkable gamut of implements; Moira.

There was the nausea again.

Moira O’Deorain loomed at her side, a brutalistic composition of angles and shadow supporting the tray in one gloved hand. Widowmaker forced herself to meet the geneticist’s mismatched eyes and found, predictably, the sort of expectant impatience more frequently reserved for misbehaving or unruly children.

“Well?” Moira asked, single eyebrow raised as if to underscore how terribly bothersome she found the situation.

“Oui,” the sniper managed, voice barely touching a whisper. For a word that required so little, Widowmaker found the effort to produce it nigh gargantuan. Even the smallest movement of her jaw provoked a fresh jolt of pain that started somewhere along the right side of her skull and radiated outward. That, in turn, resulted in a reactive wince that only started the entire cycle of discomfort anew. Closing her eyes, the sniper took a leveling breath - also excruciating - and focused her attention on simply staying awake. This was, essentially, an intake evaluation, and nearly a decade in Talon’s employ taught her that cooperation now meant Moira could do her job, ensure a speedy recovery, and depart. The faster the sniper shouldered through this grisly reawakening, the faster she’d be on her feet — and the sooner Moira would be gone.

“Delightful,” the other woman murmured as she dropped the half-full dish into a nearby wastebin, its brief but useful life concluded with a weighted thud. Moira removed herself from the sniper’s bedside, repairing to the broad island at the center of the room. In addition to the consoles which allowed one to manually control the assorted bots positioned about the room as needed, its surface was covered by a neatly arranged grid of printouts, x-ray negatives, and charts. “Now, then,” she continued, plucking one of the documents from the table and slipping it beneath the clasp of a clipboard, “on a scale of one to ten, how is your pain?”

Widowmaker stared, torn between compliance and the ache caused by the mere thought of response.

“Amélie,” the doctor intoned expectantly.

“Huit,” she hissed, forcing the syllable between her teeth with as little extraneous movement as possible.

“English, please.”

Again, she gawked at the other woman’s effortless detachment; this time, Moira glanced over the edge of the clipboard and met her gaze.

“Eight,” she grimaced.

Plucking a pen from the breast pocket of her lab coat, Moira popped the cap off with her thumb and took a few, quick notes. “Speech causes discomfort,” she noted, less a question than a statement of observable fact. “Unsurprising.”

As the other woman continued with her notation, Widowmaker peered downward and noticed, for the first time, the sling secured about her right arm and the intravenous port lodged expertly in the back of her opposite hand.

“Dislocation,” Moira said, her voice pulling the sniper’s attention back to herself. “Shall I go on? Just blink if yes.”

Widowmaker complied.

“Dislocation of the right shoulder,” the geneticist reiterated, stepping away from the island toward one of the cabinets lining the med bay’s far wall. As she continued, she set about procuring a handful of objects which she set gently on a rolling instrument stand. “Ribs three through five broken on right side. Perforation of the abdomen, right side. Nifty little fact—,” she paused, scooting the tray over to the sniper’s cot, “once a knife passes the abdominal wall, it rarely moves fast enough to penetrate the bowels. Lucky you.”

Lucky, Widowmaker thought with a note of bitter amusement, was about the last thing she felt.

Plucking a pre-measured vial and syringe from the stand, Moira pressed the needlepoint past the vial’s opening and recounted the sniper’s injuries as if they were items on an otherwise mundane shopping list: “Extensive fracturing of the skull, right side. Significant blood loss - remarkable, really, given modified heart rate and blood pressure. Grade three concussion. Which reminds me—,”

Widowmaker braced herself for the inevitable.

“—where do you live?”

Inhaling slowly, the assassin steeled herself against the portentous burn of muscle and bone preceding her reply.

“Presently: Venice.”

“What is your name?”

“Widowmaker.”

Moira’s silence succeeding her reply was cold enough even for her to feel.

“What is your name?” Moira repeated, emphasizing each word independently. Widowmaker met and held the withering, imperious glance offered her for a long minute as nausea welled in the pit of her stomach, bleeding into a pain all its own. At last, she relented, averting her eyes.

“Amélie Lacroix,” she said, spitting the name like bile.

“Perfect,” the doctor nodded. Tapping the side of the syringe to ensure the absence of any stray bubbles, she leaned over the injured sniper and slid the needle into her temporary IV port, depressing the plunger with measured force. “We’ve most of the extensive work out of the way already. An intensive regimen of nanomachines, rest, and physical therapy and you’ll be operational in a few weeks. Now, count backwards from one hundred and we’ll get started.”

Somehow more exhausted then before, Widowmaker merely closed her eyes and obeyed.

Consciousness treated her somewhat more gently the second time around, creeping across anesthetic-fulled synapses with the heavy silence of a winter storm. The pain, too, was noticeably subdued - by all meant present, but denied a pivotal ounce of acerbity by whatever monumental cocktail of palliative medicine Moira supplied her. What fire still burned - and there was still quite a lot of it - did so beneath a thick swathe of ash, smoldering persistently while it awaited the inevitable come-down.

Though this was better, it was by no means “good”. Widowmaker understood the fragility of the human form well enough to accept there was no simply walking away from the extensive damage she had incurred. Even with all the nanotechnology and sedatives at Talon’s disposal - even with Moira - bones needed time to mend, muscles needed time to knit, and bodies, to her chagrin, held onto trauma with impressive vehemence.

It was going to be a long few weeks.

The med bay was empty now, though evidence of Moira’s sudden and unwelcome apparition remained: a few cardboard boxes tucked against the side of the room’s center island; her coat flung haphazardly over an otherwise unoccupied cot; a collection of folios and scholarly periodicals stacked atop an unmarked industrial steel crate. Most conspicuously, Widowmaker noted with with quiet alarm the absence of the handful of medical personnel Talon kept on retainer. The implications of their absence were disquieting at best.

“—not going in there, Sombra. That’s an order.”

“I just want to see her.”

“You’re the reason she’s in there. ‘Fist says you’re not going anywhere near her until you’ve debriefed.”

Conversation from the hallway beyond the bay filtered through the double doors. Widowmaker canted her head in its direction, constraining the movement to little more than a slight tilt to subvert the threatening ache along the back of her head and neck.

“Please, Gabe,” Sombra begged. Beyond the doors, she and Gabriel argued, voices ineffectually and erratically hushed as their independent attempts at assertion caused them to raise, then lower their voices in turn.

“Listen to me,” Reaper said, a hint of focused compassion softening his tone just so. “You don’t want to see her; not right now. It’ll only make whatever you feel worse. I promise.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. Believe me, I do.”

Frowning, Widowmaker averted her gaze as a ghost of a memory came clawing back from the depths of her mind. Though time ensured the loss of detail, she recalled another act of incidental eavesdropping nearly a decade old, conducted similarly from the surface of a med bay cot. Then, she listened in a mix of confusion and curiosity as Moira proclaimed gleefully the success of the first phase of her “experiment” while Akande listened, peppering her with questions in trademark stolidity. That encounter predated the self-awareness that would ultimately allow her to draw the correlation between states of physical agitation and the specter of emotion - in that case, anger; this time, she understood the elevated thrum of her own pulse as irritation. She was right there and so palpably, existentially tired; moreover, Sombra and Gabriel’s conversation not only reignited the initial suspicion she’d harbored regarding their mission, but lent that suspicion a substantial amount of agonizing, undeniable credence.

It felt like a punch in the gut and, frankly, her gut had seen more than enough. As that irritation coalesced into the burdensome, leaden weight she attributed to sadness, Widowmaker simply settled back against the unyielding cot beneath her, swallowed the whine borne of the meeting of rigid surface and tender injury, and let her gaze drift aimlessly across the unremarkable surface of the ceiling above. Either this unwelcome moment would end or sleep would claim her anew; either was infinitely preferable to the present.

“You’re really going to stop me? You want to fucking try?”

Somewhere down the hall, the grating croak of metal on metal proclaimed the opening of a door.

“This is all very riveting,” Moira interjected, the tail end of her words trailing off into a yawn. “But you’ve been here twenty minutes and I do enjoy sleep on occasion. Could you please take your nattering anywhere else?”

A long, loud silence followed, stretching on for what felt like a year.

“Just… tomorrow. Okay?” Gabriel said at last, his tone somewhere between exasperated and plaintive. “Talk to Akande and you can see her tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Sombra grunted.

As the sound of light footsteps carried the hacker away, Widowmaker cast a sideways glance to the door, equally relieved and surprised Sombra didn’t further push her luck. While Moira provided Gabriel a brief update as to the implementation of regenerative nannites to expedite healing, Widowmaker felt that same shadow of déjà vu come worming back and, with it, the desperate wish she could be anywhere else.

“I might be so bold as to suggest now would be an optimal time for any necessary or supplemental recalibration,” the geneticist added. Widowmaker, unthinking, snapped to attention and ran headlong into a wall of wrenching discomfort so instantaneous and harsh she couldn’t even conceive of stifling the yelp that flew past her lips. With its dissolution, so, too, did the conversation in the hallway beyond peter to still nothingness.

“You know, maybe that isn’t one of your finer ideas,” Gabriel replied, heaping snide emphasis on “finer” in a way that made the convalescing assassin grateful for his beautifully unflinching capability to inform others of what he perceived as idiocy.

Moira’s retaliatory quiet spoke volumes to her displeasure. “Later, then,” she sniffed. As the shutting of her door echoed along the corridor, only Gabriel’s palpable disdain remained.

Though she couldn’t see him, Widowmaker could picture perfectly his expression: feigned indifference betrayed by the faintest upward curl of his lip, eyes narrowed on the doctor’s door as she disengaged with all the consideration regularly afforded an ant. She recalled that look so well, remembered the first time she saw it and recognized in Gabriel the same, seething dislike of Moira she harbored. She and Gabriel were things to her: “investments” and “experiments” that, while valuable on paper or display, were always precariously at risk of obsolescence.

Gabriel sighed, loud and heavy and sounding as tired as she felt. Despite the pang of dejection it caused her, Widowmaker wished, briefly, that Sombra were there lobbing witty rejoinders at Moira’s back. Shelving that desire for some future slight she knew would inevitably come, she returned her attention to the ceiling, idly tracing its contours until sleep graced her with its blissfully uneventful presence.

Tomorrow, as fate would have it, did not include a visit from Sombra; nor did the next day.

Widowmaker thought little of it: if it wasn’t Gabriel disallowing her visitation, it was Akande. If it wasn’t Akande, the sniper hardly found it unfair to assume of Moira some insistence her investment be left alone.

Truthfully, she didn’t mind. Those first few days confined to the med bay were far from her best. Though she was by no means a stranger to the heavy toll Talon’s line of work exacted on a body, Widowmaker was frankly astounded at the extent of her injuries and the resultant pain they caused her. Her frustration was compounded by the innate restlessness which governed her existence, now amplified by the frequent bouts of inactivity required of recovery. The result was a compound mixture of persistent discomfort and irritation that only fed the perpetual motion device of her anxiety. Everything hurt, and every day that passed amounted to another week of training to reattain the standard of conditioning she maintained for herself. Every second, every minute constituted the erosion of some degree of skill or finesse; that belief, like everything else, left her hopelessly cagey and acutely aware of the slowness with which her body seemed to respond to and incorporate the nanites implemented to facilitate rapid healing.

By all means, they were working. They just weren’t working fast enough.

On the fourth day, Moira begrudgingly cleared her for release from both the med bay and direct supervision, with the caveat she remain in bed the rest of the week.

“Small breaks here and there,” she explained, shouldering the bulk of the assassin’s weight as she guided her to her room with a tangible air of inconvenience. “Stretches, short walks; nothing more. If I so much as see you thinking about thinking of more, I will personally break your legs to ensure the rest of you mends.”

“That is very reassuring,” Widowmaker replied sarcastically, wincing at the dull ache bookending the statement.

Between the return to her own space, the assumption of increased autonomy, and the not insubstantial regimen of pain suppressants, she found herself capable of focusing on subjects beyond her own body for the first time in days. Unfortunately, that meant she inevitably returned to the mission itself and, consequentially, Sombra.

While restricted to the med bay and Moira’s constant attention, Widowmaker had neither the time, space, or bandwidth for any substantive consideration of what had happened; between the pain, the barrage of exams, and the imperative for rest, her thoughts were, while not exactly occupied, precluded. Now, with her wits at least somewhat about her and a sudden excess of free time, she met head-on a snowballing jumble of guilt, frustration, confusion, and hurt with which she was entirely unfamiliar: something deep, profound, and aching. With that came the questions: what, exactly happened? What went wrong? Why?

Combing through her memories for the first time in days, she pieced their mission back together bit by bit until there was only negative space left to fill - the skeleton of an event, devoid of the meat and flesh that gave it shape. What she could remember, she did with vivid detail: Sombra, leading them in an unremarkable infiltration; Sombra, leaving them behind; Sombra, surrounded by armed men; Sombra, suddenly there but so excruciatingly late. Every attempt at filling the gaps begat the same questions in the same sequence, the absence of any answers only serving as fuel for her frustration. Exhausted by the cyclicality of her own thoughts, Widowmaker sought distraction and found it in the small stack of books resting on her bedside table, topped with a hand-written note from Akande that simply read, “Take it easy. That’s an order.”

With the shadow of a smile, she tucked into the topmost paperback - an ancient-looking copy of Flaubert’s Salammbô - shouldering through her disquiet with pointed intentionality.

Hours passed, mostly uninterrupted save for the sporadic catnap, until the tinny grinding latches and plates made apparent the slow turn of the doorknob.

Glancing over the top of her book, Widowmaker met Sombra’s eye with catlike disinterest.

“Hey,” the hacker greeted her, gaze faltering. “How’re you doing?”

Closing Flaubert over one finger, Widowmaker scooted back against the headboard with deliberate gentility, righting herself against the headboard. The carefully-stitched incision along the line of her stomach screeched its dissatisfaction in a rolling wave of pain, gone as quickly as it appeared. “I am not dead,” she replied shakily, resisting the urge to shrug still-sore shoulders. “It is a plus.”

She watched Sombra, normally so self-assured, lingering behind the just-cracked door with all the cowed hesitancy of a child fully aware of their own misbehavior. That hesitant aversion - to her and to the uncomfortable situation before them - was so deeply contrary to the Sombra she knew that she almost invited her in out of pity alone. Pity, however, did not inform her invitation or the wave of the unbound hand signaled it; instead, it was that same, unfamiliar sorrow she struggled to identify and the want to see it addressed.

Closing the door behind her, Sombra crossed the room in a few, timid steps, scooting the sniper’s desk chair ahead of herself and positioning it adjacent the bed. Sitting heavily, she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and immediately blurted out the most graceless, albeit perceptibly sincere “I’m sorry” Widowmaker had ever heard her supply.

Taking a leveling breath, she dogeared her page and set the book on the mattress beside her, smoothing thin fingertips over the surface of her duvet as she considered her response. Widowmaker studied the woman before her, still in bedclothes despite their being well into the afternoon. Clothing aside, Sombra looked as if she hadn’t slept in days - and if she had, it certainly wasn’t restorative. One look was all that was required to see that Sombra had done her share of suffering, and even Widowmaker wasn’t cruel enough to add to it.

“I accept your apology,” she said at last. “Whatever you did, I do not think this was the outcome you intended.”

“It isn’t,” Sombra replied.

“What was your intent?”

Hanging her head, the hacker sighed, inhaled slowly, then sat back in her chair. “I arranged a meeting with Matin. I’d been fucking with them since the first mission we blew, and offered to stop in exchange for the virus they dropped on me. They finally said yes, but I didn’t trust them not to fuck me over. There’s only one of me; I needed backup. So I sold it to everyone like a takedown and left out the rest. I wanted that virus, spider. Bad.”

The truth felt like a slap in the face, raw and sharp.

“You lied,” Widowmaker said matter-of-factly. There was that peculiar mess of unnameable affectivity, buoyed by the sudden understanding of what went wrong. Finally, she could attach a name to it: betrayal.

“I lied.”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, the sniper closed her eyes as the sting of Sombra’s admission washed over her. “We would have helped you. I would have helped you.”

Sombra looked askance of her, violet eyes settling anywhere but on her.

Widowmaker frowned. “I understand. You lie. I expect there will always be secrets. But on assignment, Sombra? Do you not trust me? Have I misinterpreted… this?” She accompanied the question with a wave of her free hand between them.

“I trust you,” the spy muttered.

“Do you?”

As she pulled her knees into her chest, Sombra offered a single, plaintive nod. “I do. I just— I’m used to working alone, playing everything close to the chest. I have to do it that way; I can’t not do it that way. It’s how you stay alive, doing what I do; it’s how I stay alive.”

“I do not care if you lie to me every single day for the rest of my life as long as it causes no unnecessary danger,” the sniper explained. “This was incredibly unnecessary.”

Again, Sombra nodded her affirmation, this time lifting her gaze to meet the other woman’s. “I’m sorry I’m such a shit.”

Widowmaker pursed her lips, her expression softening incrementally. “You did a shitty thing. It is not what you are.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

“Look,” the sniper said, extending her hand to Sombra. She accepted it with some hesitation, eyeing the gesture with due suspicion before lacing her fingers through her own. “No amount of making you feel bad fixes this. You fix it by not doing it again.”

Though the hurt lingered - and Widowmaker suspected it would for some time - the clear sincerity of Sombra’s apology and the emotion informing it allowed the sniper a modicum of quiet, internal reconciliation. She couldn’t say she felt better, or that the situation was improved by any observable metric, but this was a start: a place from which to move forward and a foundation upon which she could allow Sombra to rebuild her trust. Nothing was ideal, but, then again, few things ever were for spies and assassins.

“I’ll do my best,” Sombra agreed.

“That is good enough.”

*Read from the beginning or check out our intro post! All stories tagged under #glitchfic. Table of contents located here.

#spiderbyte #sombramaker #widowsombra #sombra x widowmaker #widowmaker x sombra #sombra #widowmaker #moira o'deorain #gabriel reyes #reaper #amélie lacroix #amelie lacroix #olivia colomar #overwatch #overwatch fanfic #overwatch fandom #overwatch fic #glitch in the system #glitchfic

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entergamingxp · 4 years

Text

The Gaming Community Reacts To Yoshinori Ono Leaving Capcom

August 10, 2020 3:19 PM EST

The longtime producer and face of the Street Fighter series was met with thanks and well wishes from fans, developers, and media members alike after announcing his plans to depart Capcom.

On Sunday, Yoshinori Ono revealed that he will be leaving Capcom after nearly 30 years, marking what many consider to be the end of an era for both the company and fighting games at large.

The longtime producer has been the public face of the Street Fighter games for well over a decade, playing a major role in shaping the direction of the series while regularly interacting with the fighting game community through events, tournaments, and conventions.

“I’ve been with the Street Fighter brand for a long time, experiencing good times, bad times, and even non-existent times,” Ono wrote in statement posted on Twitter. “My heart is filled with appreciation to those players who’ve been giving warm and kind support on the brand especially little over the past decade or so as all the activities on the Street Fighter brand regained sunshine and grew liveliness.

“And now, after serving almost 30 years at Capcom, I am leaving the company in this summer. This means that I will resign my position as the brand manager for Capcom’s various titles including Street Fighter.”

As Ono mentioned, his run has seen plenty of good (Street Fighter IV revitalized the fighting game genre when it released in 2008 and Street Fighter V continues to be a well-supported staple of the FGC) and plenty of bad (Street Fighter V has its list of issues and games like Street Fighter X Tekken and Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite completely missed the mark).

But he left a remarkable impact on Capcom, the FGC, and video games as a whole. And that’s undeniable.

Ono’s announcement was met with tributes, thanks, and well wishes from fans, developers, and media members alike. Here’s just a small collection of them:

Thank you @Yoshi_OnoChin for helping build up the CPT. Your vision will be missed. We’ll try and do you proud in the years to come. https://t.co/WbRU4RH0VV pic.twitter.com/xqbILsUazh

— Capcom Fighters (@CapcomFighters) August 9, 2020

Thank you for everything Ono-san.

See you soon. See you soon Ono-san.

お疲れ様でした。ありがとうございました。https://t.co/orG820Qpuo

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) August 9, 2020

This man helped change the world of fighting games. He also helped change my life. Thanks for believing in us. Thank you Ono-san! https://t.co/MWg6EUeyy2

— Mark Julio (マークマン) (@MarkMan23) August 9, 2020

So honored to have shared some laughs with you over the years. I heard you got a “kick” outta having me around too! お疲れ様でした pic.twitter.com/waDoSZJ7Sm

— Kenny Omega (@KennyOmegamanX) August 9, 2020

pic.twitter.com/5uPPHOzMFL

— Kaiji Von Tang (@KaijiTang) August 9, 2020

Ono-san, thank you for weathering the good times and bad times! I got to work on Street Fighter IV when the series was first coming back, designing marketing materials and packaging stuff for it. That era is one of the most fondest times of my life in the video game industry.

pic.twitter.com/u2uAQpK9jK

— Brady Hartel (@BradyHartel) August 9, 2020

God bless you, Ono-san! I appreciate everything you have done for the Street Fighter community and the FGC! I wish nothing but the best for you and I hope to see you at tournaments/conventions when it’s safe to do so. You will definitely be missed!

Until next time!

SHORYUKEN! pic.twitter.com/gevUshGpyk

— Taji (@tajh256) August 9, 2020

Thanks Ono, you changed my life with Street Fighter IV. I will forever be grateful. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the way you made Street Fighter become esports.

Thank you

— Olivier Hay (@Louffy086) August 9, 2020

Thank you for your leadership, passion, and support of the #FGC @Yoshi_OnoChin Keep adding your light to the world. Wishing you much success in al that you do…

pic.twitter.com/Z8dOAAISNh

— Sandy Ho, Ph.D. (@DrSandyHo) August 9, 2020

Thank you for all your hard work, Ono-san. Street Fighter changed my life!

— Robert Paul (@tempusrob) August 9, 2020

Thanks for all of the joy you’ve given me with street fighter. Through all the rough times you gave it your all. I will always respect and appreciate your hard work & contagious optimism.

Love you and wish for your success wherever your next chapter begins.

Thank you, Ono pic.twitter.com/nodph676E9

— SonicSol

2021 (@sonic_sol) August 9, 2020

Thank you for everything Yoshinori Ono!

E3 2015

pic.twitter.com/kd4nUTnvs8

— 『jasmin』

(@jasminjoestar) August 9, 2020

Thanks for this picture and all that you’ve done for Street Fighter and the FGC. “We await your return, warrior…” pic.twitter.com/2Gtyc0VUqo

— WhitneyAsante (@WhitneyAsante) August 9, 2020

It was amazing getting to know you and witness your passion for the game! Thank you for everything, Ono-San! pic.twitter.com/DDUGOwWqrB

— Marcelo Ferrantini (@MHFerrantini) August 9, 2020

Thank you @Yoshi_OnoChin I’ve always enjoyed you at events and how you were working on your English just for us western fans each year. I’ll definitely miss you hopefully this isn’t the end of your FGC journey but if it is i wish nothing but the best for you

#GigasGang pic.twitter.com/xMyEBcV3e1

— FS | Infernal Spyro

#BlackLivesMatter (@Spyro9824) August 9, 2020

I’ll always be grateful of that game and Ono.

— zatsuza (@zatsuza_) August 9, 2020

@Yoshi_OnoChin I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you on a couple of occasions and the beautiful energy you share everywhere you go is something that will be missed. Thank you for the work you did bridging communities and cultures.

pic.twitter.com/Zsn8OwWtk1

— Kahlief Adams (@Kahjahkins) August 9, 2020

Thank you for all the hard work Yoshinori Ono! Still play your games as recently as last night.

I’m excited to see what new directions the street fighter series may now take. But your impact will never be taken away. Hope you go forward in life knowing you accomplished so much. https://t.co/XASdVP0jMF

— Shesez (@BoundaryBreak) August 9, 2020

This is from 2009 pic.twitter.com/Sv5Qq0n7hk

— Kyle Bosman (@KyleBosman) August 9, 2020

Huge news. Might not get as much credit as other big names in game dev do but Ono-san is definitely worthy of it. Street Fighter very much defined my gaming tastes and he was a big part in bringing the franchise back and making it a big deal again for new generations to love. https://t.co/dHJVsSkCKh

— Tamoor Hussain (@tamoorh) August 9, 2020

All the best in the future!

— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) August 9, 2020

Thank you for everything, Ono-san! Always fun bumping into you at events! pic.twitter.com/73ZSbp3qgS

— KeikoQvQ (@KeikoQvQ) August 9, 2020

First met at Capcom Cup 2013 and one of the most kind and dedicated people! Nothing but the best for your health and future endeavors!

Thank you Ono-san!! SHORYUKEN! pic.twitter.com/FxdtVMeRiq

— Chris L – CON DAD

Shadowbringers/Keep (@GaMeReVX) August 9, 2020

Yoshinori Ono may not have always hit it out of the park in his time with Capcom (lot of times he arguably didn’t hit it at all tbh), but if there’s one constant it’s that he always gave a shit about fighting games and the fgc, which counts for a lot

— sleepmode! (@SleepmodeAU) August 9, 2020

Thank you, Ono-san.

August 10, 2020 3:19 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/08/the-gaming-community-reacts-to-yoshinori-ono-leaving-capcom/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-gaming-community-reacts-to-yoshinori-ono-leaving-capcom

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nathanielwharton · 4 years

Text

My 2019 in Pop Culture

Same plan here as usual. I discovered this as a draft from back in January that I hadn’t found images for yet. Posting it now, without edits.

Top Forty Things From 2019

45. A Town Called Panic: Agricultural Fair I made a last minute dash into the city to see this at the New York International Children's Film Festival screening (I ducked in, huffing and puffing, as the lights went down), but I was so glad I did. I love these shorts, and this one was an absolutely bonkers, madcap wonder.

44. "Gotham City Guys" from The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part I enjoyed the second Lego Movie pretty well, but I loved this song.

43. Finding Drago This is an Australian podcast about the search for the author of Drago: On Mountains We Stand, a book about Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. It was a delight.

42. Crawl I had a pretty good time with a bunch of horror movies this year. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark made some good use of 3D realizations of Stephen Gammell's potent artwork. Ready or Not was a good cat-and-mouse with a fun ending to see with an audience. Happy Death Day 2U kept the comic frisson of the original, pushing it further into nutty science fiction, while slipping in some real emotion. But the one that probably gave me the most thrills was Crawl. An expertly nasty little piece of work, it efficiently keeps turning the screws up the the very end. Jesse and I remarked afterward that we basically alternated leaning forward with our hands on our faces and leaning back, bracing on the armrest, throughout the entire movie.

41. When They See Us Urgent and harrowing.

40. Mindhunter (Season 2) The rhythms of this show are so distinctive and engrossing. It's not exactly Zodiac: The Series, but it is fascinating in some similar ways and I hope they come back and make more of it.

39. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Season 4, Part 2) I might (okay, definitely) be underrating this final batch of one of my favorite shows on TV. Blame it on Netflix’s half-season strategy, and not on these episodes that were as overstuffed as ever with a breathtaking array of jokes delivered by a note perfect cast. I’ll miss if, but I'm grateful for those final moments. (The line "Your books make me feel safe” definitely made me tear up.)

38. They Shall Not Grow Old in 3D This documentary was fascinating as a look at the less-covered (at least in my lifetime) First World War, and it was AMAZING as a visual experience, watching 100 year-old documentary footage in such an immersive way. And the short documentary that followed my screening showing the process of making the film was worth the price of admission on its own.

37. Glass at the Shyamalanathon Few things can top the weird thrill of seeing the ending of Split before hearing even a hint about the ending (Jesse and I were audibly shocked and delighted, and then spent part of the credits explaining the reveal to the kids in front of us after they asked us about it). So I was pretty psyched for this one. I caught Glass at the end of a Shyamalanathon at the Alamo Drafthouse, where they showed Unbreakable, Split, and a preview screening of Glass, with a Q&A with Shyamalan himself. I had a GREAT time.

36. Amazing Grace I saw it with about 8-10 people in the theater, and folks were still witnessing with Amens and hallelujahs from the back of the auditorium. They were well warranted.

35. The Twilight Zone Revival I definitely preferred this to the last revival, and the hit-to-miss ratio felt pretty standard for an anthology show. Highlights for me were "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet," "Replay," and "A Traveler." Looking forward to the next batch of them.

34. One Cut of the Dead A twisty, surprising one-shot zombie thriller that reveals itself to be something much different (and much more charming) than you'd expect.

33. Star Trek: Discovery - Pike sees his future This season of Discovery had a number of really strong elements (and I'm super intrigued to see what they do with that setup for the third season), but the part that probably most moved me was in episodes 12, "Through the Valley of Shadows." Captain Pike (a wonderful performance all season by Anson Mount; definitely looking forward to that spin-off) is given a vision of his eventual fate, which we know from the original series, in which he is severely disabled in an accident. He is told that if he takes the time crystal from the Klingon temple to help save the day in the season's storyline that he cannot change this fate and is essentially dooming himself. And he gives the most moving, Starfleety performance in choosing the greater good over himself.

32. Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal This was a visceral, thrilling surprise. I caught the first four episodes as a screening at the Alamo and it knocked my socks off. The final episode of this initial run was also really rad. Pure animation.

31. Under the Silver Lake Seeing this one at a late night screening felt just right, as it creates such a bewitching, hallucinatory spell. As someone who enjoyed reading about conspiracy as a youth and recognizes but (hopefully!) avoided indulging the kind of solipsism on display in Garfield's character, I was pretty into this movie.

30. Missing Link This Laika joint was an easy lay-up for me (an adventurer helping Bigfoot to find a lost civilization of yeti? sold.) and it did the trick.

29. Frozen II It's not as clean a narrative as the original, and Kristoff's storyline is too sitcommy, but this still packed a lot of emotional punch for me, and I love that it's a huge Disney animated movie that interrogates colonialism and the way that our history can obscure misdeeds and trauma.

28. The Righteous Gemstones Another acridly funny and tonally daring series from the McBride/Hill/Green team. Loved this first season, and certainly excited to see where they want to take it next.

27. A Series of Unfortunate Events (Season 3) This show continued to be a really marvelous adaptation of the books and the adaptation of the final story (and the elements they included from the ancillary Snicket books) really landed wonderfully. I really wish Netflix had already announced the same team was doing an adaptation series of the All the Wrong Questions books (with Warburton somehow still involved as Lemony Snicket).

26. Klaus & Noelle Two streaming services served up two new Christmas movies this year, and I dug them both. Noelle doesn't quite pull of the same magic trick as Elf, but I found it charming and the cast (and the fact that it is set, in part, in Arizona) went a long way to endearing it to me. And Klaus was a gorgeously animated, very enjoyable surprise. Odds are decent that I pop both of them on again at some point next holiday season.

25. Deadwood: The Movie A bit of bittersweet nostalgia, a post-script, and an elegy. Just the right balance of warm and melancholy. And while the movie definitely didn't give us the Al Swearengen I expected, I was so moved by his story (and McShane's performance).

24. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 3) The obvious surface pleasures of this show (the costumes and set design, the snaky sinuous camera work, the charming and charismatic performances, the rat-a-tat dialogue) continued apace, while the storytelling continued to strike a really enjoyable balance between joyful wish-fulfillment and (semi-)realistic period exploration.

23. Adam Sandler & Eddie Murphy on SNL and in the movies The two biggest SNL alumni that had not been back to host (ever, in Sandler's case, or since he was still a cast member, in Murphy's) Adam Sandler and Eddie Murphy both returned too the show that had given them their start and pretty much lived up to decades of expectations. Sandler came back at the end of the 2018-2019 season and it was such a warm, funny homecoming that was really funny without just spending the time revisiting his old characters (the travel agent commercial he was in was one of the best sketches of the season and benefited hugely from his performance), and a genuinely touching tribute to Chris Farley. (And he capped his year with a fantastic, nerve-jangling performance in Uncut Gems, which was a Safdie special, exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure.) Then, following his really galvanizing lead performance in Dolemite is My Name, showing how hilarious and wonderful in a dramatic role he can still be, in the last episode before Christmas in the 2019-2020 season, Eddie Murphy returned to host, coming in with the enormous expectations that would accompany his return to the show at any time with the recent example of having seen it done so right. And they crushed it. His episode understandably featured more of the play-the-hits style of character reprisals, but they generally had clever ideas for using the characters (Mr. Robinson returned to a gentrified neighborhood, Buckwheat was a Masked Singer, and Gumby gave a hilarious Update rant) and, best of all, Murphy brought the necessary energy to make it all work. On top of that, he elevated the non-recurring stuff like a great Baking Championship sketch that he underplayed to perfection, or a North Pole newscast that he knocked out of the park. Both episodes were a joy.

22. Doctor Sleep I liked a lot of stuff in the book, but I think the movie improved on it! I love Mike Flanagan's style of horror story anyway, and it was a really good fit for Doctor Sleep. And the movie does a remarkable job of squaring itself with the Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick versions of The Shining, including a really moving appropriation of elements from the original book and potent movie imagery into a surprisingly touching combination.

21. Stranger Things 3 The run-up to this season was so much fun (special ice creams and store decorations at Baskin-Robbins, a whole Fun Fair set up at Coney Island), and then the season itself was a big summer blockbuster blast that Katie and I spent a whole day on.

20. The Lighthouse This one lingered! Two great performances, a beautiful visual scheme, and a bracing spiral into madness for a story.

19. Parasite Bong Joon-Ho with another what-genre-is-this masterpiece.

18. Watchmen on HBO This was so much richer and provocative than I expected. A compelling and mostly satisfying sequel to a book I didn't much demand a sequel to, it was one of the best shows I watched all year and honored the original by actually being about something.

17. The Farewell A warm and delicate story that really moved me, with a terrific performance by Awkwafina.

16. Jojo Rabbit I've been on Taika Waititi's wavelength since Boy, and this one worked for me as designed, which meant that I was delighted and then devastated.

15. Apollo 11 Like They Shall Never Grow Old, there was such power to seeing a new, vivid angle on major 20th century history.

14. GLOW (Season 3) This season, with it's Las Vegas setting and it stage-show status quo, created a bunch of new dynamics and fun developments (the Christmas Carol version of their show was a delight) while continuing to deepen the characters. Love this show.

13. Dumbo I am generally a Tim Burton guy, but I was surprised by how much I loved this movie. And every moment Michael Keaton was on screen was a great one.

12. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker This was a weird year for Star Wars, with Star Wars: Resistance coming to a satisfactory (but disappointing compared to the previous two animated series) ending and publishing having a handful of fun tie-ins to Galaxy's Edge and Rise of Skywalker, without anything particularly standing out. And all of it was capped off with The Rise of Skywalker, a film that definitely suffers from a bunch of competing storytelling interests. But the big moments that need to hit all pretty much hit for me and the final moments on Tatooine especially got to me.

11. The Irishman We went to see this movie during it's special engagement in a Broadway theater, which felt like an appropriate experience for such an epic. Surprisingly funny and, in the end, almost breathtakingly melancholy, this was a really special movie.

10. Lethal White Another cozy, gripping read. The mystery was less nasty/scary than the last one, but it was still pretty involving, and I certainly want to see what happens next for Strike and Robin.

9. Toy Story 4 This felt truly unnecessary (and even kind of unwelcome) when it was announced, but it turned out to be a genuinely worthy entry. It hits or improves on the expected Toy Story elements (the jokes hit and the characters are lots of fun, and it may be the most beautiful Toy Story, with stunning widescreen animation), and Woody's story builds to a surprising and very emotional climax. Once again, I'd be happy if this was where we left the characters, which is no small feat for a movie that has to push beyond the ending of Toy Story 3.

8. Disney+ (The Mandalorian, The Imagineering Story, Forky Asks a Question, etc) I was still working full time at school and working on my master's degree this fall, so it's not like I really needed a new streaming service to spend time on. But this was such a fun thing to explore. The Mandalorian immediately became appointment television for us (if that whole first episode hadn’t have done it, the final scene would have). But so was The Imagineering Story (one of the best showbiz documentaries I've seen) and Forky Asks a Question ("What? No!" definitely entered our daily lexicon).

7. Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood I loved it for the hang out (I want to watch Cliff Booth and Rick Dalton watch episodes of TV shows together!). I loved it for the incredible tension of the Spahn Ranch sequence. I loved it for the wry wistfulness of the neon sign sequence. I loved it.

6. Knives Out Such a thoroughly great time. I love Rian Johnson's movies in general, but this might be my favorite since Brick.

5. Us I'm reasonably receptive to the "bigger and more rococo" sophomore film, so I was ready to respond to this movie. But it still really knocked me out. I love it for all of the great surface pleasures (scary "monster" design, tense scare sequences, incredible dual performances by Lupita Nyong'o) and I loved it for the chewy thematic ideas it teases at. Peele is two-for-two, in my book.

4. Little Women I was only familiar with this story in a vague sense (like, I am sure I knew one of the sisters died in the book, but I didn't know which one going in). But I LOVED this movie.

3. Avengers: Endgame For this big, climactic year of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I had made note to include the Skrull reaction shots in Captain Marvel (Talos and the milkshake being the top of the heap), and Spider-Man: Far From Home was as consistently delightful as it's Spidey predecessor, but it's hard to think of a collective audience experience that was more fun than Avengers: Endgame. It basically played out as a series of huge payoffs and shocking moments for about three hours, and between the laughs and cheers and audible sobs, it really ran the full audience-reaction gamut. Hard to imagine another movie building up this kind of steam for a big finale again, and it was pretty special to see on opening night.

2. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance I was pretty excited for this show. The original movie is dear to me, I'd heard really cool, encouraging stuff about the show, and the trailers were pretty gorgeous. And the show exceeded all of my hopes for it. It was funny and exciting. It developed the mythology of Thra in cool, intriguing ways. It was absolutely dazzling to look at. It jockeyed for position with the number 1 spot on this list. I adored it.

1. Godzilla: King of the Monsters I loved this. I wrote about it at SportsAlcohol.com. I saw it five or six times in theaters. A full meal for my imagination.

Top Twenty-Five Things I'm Excited About in 2020

Godzilla vs Kong No question, I'm spectacularly excited to see this one. I loved all three of the previous films leading up to it, and the status quo hinted at in the credits of King of the Monsters suggests some directions that I really hope to see explored further.

Animaniacs revival & Looney Tunes Cartoons Here's hoping that this is finally the year we get to see the new Looney Tunes they've been cooking up (seems like HBO Max will be a good place to put them...) and while it feels like a while since there's been new word on the Animaniacs revival that's due on Hulu, maybe that'll show up this year too. Looking forward to whatever Warner Bros. animation we can get.

Bill & Ted Face the Music One of the few decades-later sequels that I've actively been wanting to happen. I'm so glad this finally happened, and I can't wait to see what it will look like. I love the title. I love the details they've shared so far. And I'm glad to have an excuse to watch the previous two movies in the run-up to this one.

West Side Story Spielberg finally doing his movie musical! And it's a great musical! With a script adapted by Tony Kushner, no less. Sign me up.

Muppets Now I don't know enough about the format of this show to know how excited to be yet (they're generally good at improvising, but the notion of ad-libbed shorts doesn't sound quite like the Muppet Show revival I'd really like to see on Disney+). Still, new Muppets!

The French Dispatch Seems like this one should hit his year after a festival run. Really looking forward to getting a look at what he's cooked up this time.

Death on the Nile #thirtyBranaghPoirotmovies

Onward & Soul Two original Pixar movies in one year! Super excited about this. (Also pretty psyched for another original film from Disney Animation Studios in Raya and the Last Dragon.)

MCU at the Movies I glad to finally get that Black Widow movie this year, and I'm certainly interested to see The Eternals, which has a great cast and sounds like another new avenue to explore in the Marvel movie world.

MCU on Disney+ As excited as I am for the two theatrical Marvel movies this year, I'm also pretty into The Falcon & The Winter Soldier and WandaVision. Now that my beloved Captain America has effectively retired, I'm pretty excited to see what happens to his best friends as Sam Wilson becomes the new Cap. And the word on WandaVision (that it's going to be pretty weird), coupled with the hints that they are taking inspiration from Tom King's run on the Vision comic book, makes this one sound pretty special. The Mandalorian set a high bar for how exciting these Disney+ shows could be, so I'm looking forward to seeing what Marvel comes up with.

In the Heights Hamilton melted my brain five years ago, and the trailer for this movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Broadway musical is so wonderful. Can’t wait.

Jungle Cruise Mulan looks super cool, but I've got pretty high hopes for Jungle Cruise. Jaume Collet-Serra is responsible for some wild genre excellence and I'm hoping he was able to bring some of that cracked vision to a big Disney adventure movie with the Rock and Emily Blunt. Sounds good to me.

Tenet Certainly looking forward to seeing Nolan return with another big, original genre picture with a great cast.

Dune Denis Villeneuve's last two science fiction films were aces and he's assembled a great cast here, so I'm hoping he'll do something special with this book.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife For as bad a taste as the ghost-bros left me with in their furor over the pretty fun 2016 remake, I'm loath to admit that I'm really looking forward to this. I liked the trailer, I'm excited to see the original characters return, I really like the new cast members, and I'm looking forward to a story with a different setting and everything.

Last Night in SoHo I like all of Edgar Wright's movies, and this sounds like an interesting change-up for him.

Star Trek on CBS All Access First up this year we know we’re getting Star Trek: Picard, and I’m particularly excited because this is a Star Trek that will be reaching past everything we’ve already seen and showing us a story set in the galaxy after the destruction of Romulus and Spock’s trip back in time. It looks really cool, and it’s pretty exciting to see Patrick Stewart playing the role again. Beyond that, we should have Star Trek: Lower Decks, which sounds like it should be a lot of fun, and the third season of Star Trek: Discovery which, based on the ending of the last season, promises to also explore previously unseen corners of the Star Trek universe/timeline.

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels I loved the original Penny Dreadful, and I'm pretty into the milieu they've set this...sequel? revival? spiritual successor? Pretty cool cast, too.

F9 Still really enjoying these big, wild, nutty movies. And I know my #family will be excited to roll out and see this one together.

Cosmos: Possible Worlds I loved the last Cosmos revival, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what they've come up with for this one.

Over the Moon Netflix is supposed to have a new animated film directed by Glen Keane this year, so I'm looking forward to watching it.

The Witches I love the book (and the original film version, for the most part) and I'm always rooting for Robert Zemeckis to make another stellar entertainment. Hoping this is one!

My Favorite Thing is Monsters Volume 2 Maybe this year!

Halloween Kills I loved the 2018 Halloween sequel, so I'm fully down to see the next two installments, starting with this one.

No Time to Die Daniel Craig’s swan song as Bond, this one has had some pretty rad trailers and a very cool director. Hope he gets to go out on a great one!

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adelaideattractions · 5 years

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11 days that destroyed Miley and Liam

Less than two weeks after a carefully-worded statement hit the press declaring that Hollywood sweethearts Liam Hemsworth and Miley Cyrus were separating, their attempt at keeping things amicable has been hit with a wrecking ball. It all started so respectfully. Our hearts were breaking from news that our favourite couple was on the rocks, but their press release offered plenty of hope that theyd one day reunite (again). Liam and Miley have agreed to separate at this time, a spokesman for Cyrus told People magazine on August 10. RELATED: Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworths pets post breakup RELATED: Miley Cyrus fired for buying Liam Hemsworth a penis cake RELATED: Miley Cyrus blasts cheating claims in a series of tweets Ever-evolving, changing as partners and individuals, they have decided this is whats best while they both focus on themselves and careers. They still remain dedicated parents to all of their animals they share while lovingly taking this time apart. Sometime between then and now, something snapped between the two, and Hemsworth suddenly filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences. So whats the real story behind this increasingly messy split?

media_cameraPlenty of people hoped the pair would work things out. Picture: Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney REUNION HOPES The original statement was a shock, but it didnt take a relationship expert to work out that theyd intentionally used soft language like separate at this time and lovingly taking this time apart. These are not the words of two people certain that they want to be apart forever and history told us they were prone to a bit of on/off action. Cyrus and Hemsworth met as young lovebirds on the set of The Last Song in 2009 and got engaged in 2012 before breaking up two years later.

media_cameraThey met as teenagers on the set of The Last Song. Then in 2016, they reunited with another engagement and secretly wed in December at Cyrus house in Franklin, Tennessee.

media_cameraThe couple tied the knot in an intimate ceremony at home. Picture: Instagram According to most reports, things quickly soured and Hemsworth and Cyrus separated in June, but had decided to keep their time apart low-key and respectful until it hit the press. Once it did everything changed. THOSE ITALIAN PHOTOS First, there were the photos of Cyrus, 26, kissing reality TV star Kaitlynn Carter, 30, during a PDA-heavy Italian jaunt.

media_cameraPhotos were released of Carter (left) and Cyrus kissing.

media_cameraHemsworth was said to be blindsided by news of the fling. The photos were released just hours after news broke of the separation, providing a jarring double-blow of a shock to fans and by many accounts, to Hemsworth himself, who was holed up with his brothers family in Byron Bay at the time. As the days rolled on and amid growing feverish speculation and whispers of infidelity, Hemsworth took the bold step of releasing a statement via Instagram. But from there, things took a nasty turn. THE BLAME GAME Suddenly, after weeks of staying quiet, sources from both camps were weaponised, hurtling barbs and thinly-veiled accusations at each other. Far from keeping us in the dark with their amicable and loving time apart, Cyrus and Hemsworth were via their sources increasingly trying to one-up each other in the blame game.

media_cameraCyrus posted a series of Instagram shots from Italy as news broke of the split. Given Cyrus occasionally wild past and the telling interview she gave with Elle in July, plenty of people assumed that a major factor in the split was her desire to revert back to her partying ways. I mean, do people really think that Im at home in a f***ing apron cooking dinner? I definitely dont fit into a stereotypical wife role. I dont even like that word, she told the magazine. PARTYING LIFESTYLE But as that narrative quickly began to form, TMZ published quotes attributed to a source on Cyrus side, insisting that it was actually the opposite. According to the outlet, the Malibu singer battled valiantly to save her and Hemsworths seven-month marriage but struggled to accept his heavy drinking and use of certain drugs a claim which he has since denied. People magazine also published a scathing story claiming that Cyrus had tried to kerb his partying and that he would lash out at her. Everyone always thinks Miley is problematic and immature and a hardcore partyer while hes this chill surfer dude, but thats actually (not accurate), People quoted a source as saying. That particular accusation may have eventually been drowned out amid all the other noise had it not been for the fact that just days later, Cyrus released a jaw-droppingly blunt song clearly aimed at Hemsworth.

media_cameraCyrus was back in the studio within days. Heres a snippet of Slide Away: I want my house in the hills Dont want the whiskey and pills I dont give up easily But I dont think Im down So wont you slide away Back to the ocean, Ill go back to the city lights Move on, were not 17 Im not who I used to be You say that everything changed Youre right, were grown now The message was clear: Cyrus wanted people to know it was Hemsworth, not she, who needed to grow up. [embedded content] IMMATURE STUNT But Team Hemsworth wasnt taking any of that lying down. It wasnt long before a friend of the Hunger Games star told Page Six that hed been blindsided and left heartbroken by the photos of his estranged wife and Carter. They are still married and they really did love each other. Shes really immature and always has been, a source said. One of Carters The Hills castmates, Brandon Thomas Lee, even weighed in on the drama, accusing the women of trying to mess with their exes (Carter also recently split from The Hills alum Brody Jenner). This whole is just so I dont know, I didnt want to even get involved with it, but it just seems so fake to me, Lee told E! News of Cyrus and Carters romance. Its just like, why? Theyre just obviously messing with their two ex-husbands. And theyre all friends! It just seems so ridiculous to me.

media_cameraJust a stunt? Picture: Instagram Page Six also claimed that people close to Hemsworth had revealed that Cyrus sources had been working overtime to paint (him) as the problem and that he was hurt by the coverage. Liam is one of the kindest, gentlest people out there. Him being wild or drunk or deadbeat is absolutely ridiculous, the source said, adding that the booze claims are 100 per cent a distraction from Cyrus alleged infidelity. MAKING IT PERMANENT Exactly eleven days after announcing their tentative separation, Hemsworth hired famed lawyer Laura Wasser and abruptly filed for divorce from Cyrus. Liam is just done with it. There is no turning back and he knows he wants to move on, E! News quoted an insider as saying. They have not had a lot of communication. There is nothing to say. So what made him break things off for good? Slide Away cant have helped, nor would reports of Cyrus basically having sex with Carter at an LA club last week. Either way, the events of the past couple of weeks flipped the relationship from separated at this time- to dead in the water. MILEY HITS OUT Perhaps it was the shock at his sudden filing that made Cyrus finally flip or maybe she was just desperate to finally defend herself publicly but after that, the words came tumbling out via a lengthy Twitter thread. I can accept that the life Ive chosen means I must live completely open and transparent with my fans who I love, and the public, 100% of the time, she began. What I cannot accept is being told Im lying to cover up a crime I havent committed. I have nothing to hide.

media_cameraThe singer denied the cheating claims. Picture: Instagram I f**ked up and cheated in relationships when I was young, she wrote. But the truth is, once Liam & I reconciled, I meant it, & I was committed. There are NO secrets to uncover here. Ive learned from every experience in my life. Im not perfect, I dont want to be, its boring. Ive grown up in front of you, but the bottom line is, I HAVE GROWN UP. I can admit to a lot of things but I refuse to admit that my marriage ended because of cheating. Liam and I have been together for a decade. Ive said it before & it remains true, I love Liam and always will. WHAT NOW? The only good news out of the situation is that the couple had a prenup, and with no requests for spousal support, the divorce should be finalised quickly a rarity in Hollywood. The agreement reportedly outlines a clear separation of their profits during the marriage, with both Cyrus and Hemsworth retaining the homes they individually purchased. Unfortunately for all the hopeless romantics following the Hemsworth/Cyrus love story over the past decade unlike other times, this breakup is likely to stick. Think about it: Cyrus and Hemsworth called off their engagement and split up back in 2013, but managed to maintain mutual respect and affection publicly in the years that followed prior to their eventual reunion. This time? Not so much and divorce has a finality to it that rarely offers a point of return. Originally published as 11 days that destroyed Miley and Liam https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/how-miley-cyrus-and-liam-hemsworths-amicable-split-turned-so-ugly/news-story/e0d2c9eefb3e60afa4deb532609a2bea?from=htc_rss

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