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sometipsygnostalgic · 2 years

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that post about entrapta's classpect is DEEPLY fascinating and i was wondering if you had any other thoughts on the aspects? I've been thinking about how Heart, in the context of being heavily linked to identity or want, would be excellent to model an OC or two on, but i thought you might have some ideas on the aspects that could prompt an interesting idea or two?

In reference to this post here

I am not sure. I am able to pop off if you say "how does x character relate to Y aspect?", but if you asl mea more general question like "what do the aspects themselves mean?", i don't know what direction to approach that question, nor do i have any tantalizing ideas for it.

because there are 12 aspects and 14 classes and there are so many options to cover, not just in terms of combinations but in terms of what sort of PEOPLE would bring out what SIDE of each classpect (Prince of Hope Catra would be different to Prince of Hope Eridan)

and Heart in particular, as youve seen, it's a bit less abstract than some concepts like Space, but Heart applies to EVERYONE. I mean that not just every She-Ra character, but also every Homestuck character can be tied to Heart. Because Heart is the "self".

The reason I'm interested in tying someone like Entrapta to it is because not many people choose her for it, and her storyline screams Heart out the wazoo with how she helps so many develop or discover their identity, and she has the Dirk robots and covering her face with masks (which is dirk AND terezi) and the LUVD crystal, but other people will say she's diehard Space (her character is so much like Jade), or diehard Breath (unhealthily detached from reality), and that Entrapta doesn't have the key identity struggles as someone like Adora who may be a better representative of Heart, or Bow who wears the damn thing on his chest, though personally I see Bow as a Blood player since his ties to themes of identity are pretty nonexistent (outside of coming out as an archer yadda yadda).

So, here are what I think are the differences between Heart/Mind/Blood/Hopem since those are the 4 that get mix and matched the most often.

1. Heart relates to your own identity and soul. Destroyer-class Dirk Strider struggles with splintering his own soul into many fragments, some of which end up into real villains. Dirk's problems are being constantly confronted with the reality of his Self, no matter how much he tries to escape it.

Rogue-of-heart Nepeta likes to ship off her friends into many pairings, and understands them well, but is a bit off-key with her own identity and prospects, not being able to fulfil whatever violent role was set out for her on Alternia... and it is implied this is because she is autistic, hmm? But let's not get distracted again.

2. Mind relates to the the decisions people make and the structure of their thoughts, rather than who they are. We only have one solid case study. A good Mind player, like Terezi, will be good at understanding the thoughts and feelings of others, but may struggle with identity issues of her own. Terezi wore lots of masks, and puts aside her own desires, sparing Vriska, in order to fulfil her duty of protecting the Alpha Timeline. She kills her instead, and has a full mental breakdown over time. Alpha Terezi also thinks the choices a person has made in a specific timeline override their whole, so she doesn't credit herself as being the same person who killed Vriska and then saved everyone from GAME OVER, despite having the same Heart. This is the OPPOSITE of Heart player Dirk, who thinks all the terrible decisions his alt selves made apply to him as well.

A good example of a Mind player in She-Ra would be Double Trouble, who is able to understand the insecurities of others at a glance and figure out what buttons to press to make them follow a specific set of actions, calculatedly destroying the enemy from within, just like Terezi Pyrope.

Heart vs. Mind

As you can already see, Heart and Mind are two sides of the same coin. Dirk could pass for a passive Mind player with his many splintered selves and calculated understanding of his friends, while Terezi could pass for an active Heart player with her identity issues and journey of self discovery. Dirk creates robots to throw parts of himself in for entertainment, while Terezi builds scalemates. They are both sword ninjas with a skewed moral compass. They are intrinsically similar characters. I would say that Mind represents order and predictability while Heart represents chaos, and characters in those aspects will dance with both. And it's no coincidence that, in the HS Epilogues, Terezi is the only character who can challenge Dirk in terms of narrative power, being able to read his control over the story and retain some of her independence. But that's a bit too abstract.

To further jest about this, in She-Ra, DT (Mind) and Entrapta (Heart) could be interpreted as the opposite, with Double Trouble being able to see straight into the heart of their opponent while seemingly having no fixed identity or wants of their own (we never find out anything about who they are), and Entrapta having a very fragmented mind and all of the Terezi masking (but for her it's unconscious), especially with her cheery disposition that she sometimes pushes when upset, but her decisions - as unimportant as she initially thinks they are - being key to basically everything that happens in the show with how she influences others’ paths. Both of them thrive in the chaos of Heart and participate in the sheer power of Mind, Entrapta unconsciously, Double Trouble consciously, which is the definitive difference between the two.

And an additional note: Double Trouble invites other people’s characters into themself, taking on their personas, while Entrapta puts a bit of herself into everything she makes for other people, including the LUVD crystal, Emily, and the colour-coordinated space suits.

3. Hope relates to faith, to the act of believing. We have several representatives of Hope, but none of them are nearly as vital as Dirk or Terezi, so it's a bit less examined, but here I'll try to deconstruct it. Hope, to me, follows the Pratchett logic of if you BELIEVE in something hard enough then that belief in itself will grant unimaginable power. So, every Hope character has something they want to believe in, and may struggle with that faith. In particular, themselves - all 3 Hope characters see themselves as "hopeless". It actually has ties to Romance. They are all hopeless with their relationships, with Jake having "false hope" in terms of everyone being interested inhim and then all those relationships falling apart.

Eridan ends up "destroying" hope, when he turns evil, kills Feferi and blinds Sollux, and most importantly, shatters the egg where the futures of the entire Troll species lie. He dooms his species.

Its suspected "opposing" aspect, Rage, is represented by Gamzee, who as we know has blind faith in the Messiahs, and his Hope is shattered into tiny pieces by Dave Strider, and then Gamzee loses his shit and immediately latches onto the next cause he sees (Lord English).

Adora, I think, would be a strong example of a Hope character in She-Ra, much stronger than Jake or Eridan. Adora has the Hopes of all of Etheria on her shoulders, and it is such a mounting pressure that she lets it get her down. But at the same time, she also has a blind faith in both the Horde, when she was still a cadet, and in the cause of Light Hope, who she doesn't understand has bad intentions for her. Adora's Achilles Heel is how she is so desperate to find something to believe in that she is easily manipulated, and willing to dehumanize herself.

Adora's growth through the show is letting go of this faith in a false cause, and developing some in herself instead. Believing in herself and her own capabilities, not in She-Ra as some alter ego.

And, as a side, Hope tying into relationships - if she is a Knight of Hope then she has been guarding away her feelings for Catra this whole time, and as a fully realized player, she is finally able to use her feelings to PROTECT Catra.

Also, Hope is the most powerful aspect in terms of raw power, and let me tell you, She Ra is the most powerful character in the universe.

4. Blood is represented by Karkat and Kankri Vantas in Homestuck. Because of Kankri’s life as the Sufferer and how he said he was able to see into his Pre-scratch life where he worked together with all his friends, and because of how Karkat was able to get everyone to work together, it is commonly theorized that Blood is the BONDS between others. The Blood of the Brethren is thicker than the Water of the Womb, as they say!

Karkat is able to safeguard his team as a Knight of Blood, and he also physically stops other people from seeing his own Blood, covering up his mutant hue with an iron grey, which it was revealed later is the colour of the shackles that held up his ancestor Kankri (Troll Jesus). Kankri meanwhile ended up becoming a real asshole in his pre-scratch life, constantly pointing out the differences between his friends and trying to open rifts between them, as his unrealized self.

Karkat’s shining moment is when he is able to pacify the terrifying Gamzee into submission.

A strong case for Blood in She-Ra is Bow, who works hard to keep Glimmer and Adora working together, as well as having some of Karkat’s anger issues....

....the key Blood moment for Bow in She-Ra is when he is able to pacify Scorpia - someone he barely knows, and who has been mind controlled - using their kinship as the friend who always puts others first.

Scorpia herself would be another strong case for Blood, because of her heritage and ties to the Fright Zone, and how they had been taken away by Hordak. Scorpia is also the only person who unequivocally supports Catra through to the middle of season 4, where, like how Karkat cut ties with Gamzee, Scorpia cut ties with Catra and it ended up in her having a mental breakdown.

Blood players are underdogs in their own class because Karkat had never unlocked his Blood powers, he didn’t have any connection to them in the same way Terezi did to her Mind powers, but he was always passively using his aspect in the more abstract sense. Bow and Scorpia are both underdogs because unlike the other people in their friend groups, they lack any remarkable abilities or ambitions of their own. However, they keep their squads tied together, just like Karkat.

I think Blood deserves a better writeup, but honestly, I was never that interested in Karkat.

What’s most important, however, is the key differences:

Heart has more to do with the Self, and Blood has more to do with connections to other people. Heart has more to do with who you are as a person and your relationship to your identity, whereas Blood has more to do with the ties that bind, whether that’s your heritage or your friendships.

Hope and Heart both have a connection to romantic relationships, but with Hope this is far more pronounced and integrated into the characters’ relationship prospects. With Heart it amounts to a few shipping jokes and that’s it. More evidence is needed for this area. Hell, even Blood may have a connection - Karkat is super interested in relationships and in preserving the quadrants!!!

Heart and Mind follow different philosophies - Heart is what ties you to all aspects of yourself across timelines, and Mind is what makes you different from those other selves. Dirk thinks he’s like all Dirks, Terezi thinks she’s different to other Terezis.

Hope and Blood are often mistaken for each other as well, because of how abstract they are as concepts, but Bow doesn’t tie back into Hope, or Heart, in any fundamental way besides the surface level, whereas he has strong connections to Blood as described above. Bow doesn’t just believe in friendship - he works to maintain it.

Anyway that’s all my thoughts for now, I hope this was fun to read.

#she ra #spop #homestuck #entrapta #double trouble #adora #classpects

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hetalia-reacts · 3 years

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Ok maybe soft Yandere husband Allies with a nation darling. The darling could care less if they're a powerful nation or not, because in the darling words they said " It doesn't matter, because at the end of the day you're still my beloved husband no more no less ". The darling also doesn't mind their possessive behavior, they actually think it's kind of hot. So in a way, the boys and the darling's relationship is kind of healthy.

America

Alfred feels so lucky

Not only are you a nation, meaning you aren't a pushover and won't be leaving him anytime soon, but you also love him sincerely

You aren't even intimidated or are competitive over him being a world superpower either

as a matter of fact, you had never cared if he was strong or not, and that really takes a weight off his shoulders he didn't think was there

not only that you had willingly, willingly, agreed to marry him

You didn't even want resources or were doing it to make sure he didn't hurt anyone you loved! You just agreed! Just like that!

Alfred is even more pleased to find out that you actually liked his obsession and possessiveness over you

he definitely noticed the way you would blush when he got a bit more aggressive with you regarding who you could and couldn't see

and when he would get rid of those who dared mess with you or get too chummy with you, you always thanked him and would act extra loving for the next few days

of course, he probably noticed this a long time ago before he became your husband

I mean he was never subtle in his nature and neither were you with your love of it

needless to say, he's rather fond of the idea that you still think he's a hero and love him for the things he does for you

Aside from Alfred being, well, classic yandere towards others, no one would even notice that this relationship may not be the healthiest since you looked so genuinely happy with how much Alfred cared for you

England

Arthur feels over the moon about this

you being a nation means you won't ever have to leave him

death will never have to do either of you part and that's how he likes it

this also means he can take care of you, your people, everything! He can do everything for you so you never have any reason to leave

which you had agreed to! You even married him! Heck, you probably suggested it first which really threw him for a loop

and you saying you never have or will care if he was strong? well you've just made him swoon even more

tho he will reassure you that while he doesn't look stereotypically strong he certainly is

during his time being your husband he definitely notices that you enjoy it when he gets possessive over you

when he tells you not to go out or dictates your outfit, or even forces you to stay in the house you don't ever complain or cry

as a matter of fact, you seem almost smitten with him

this makes him all the happier, how could it not? Arthur sees this as you truly loving him for who he is

People don't even notice how kind of unhealthily you both are swoon for the other, of course, Arthur is more subtle and secretive with his tendencies so most people aren't even aware he's so possessive of you until it's too late

Canada

Matthew has never felt so loved and accepted

he's surprised when you bring up loving him whether or not he's strong

it's kind of a new feeling considering he thought for a long time someone would only love him if he was like America or well if he forced them to love him

you also married him, joining your countries in a permanent alliance

He's even more surprised considering you agreed to marry him without him having to pull any tricks or threats, you even looked excited when he has asked you

Matthew definitely noticed how you reacted every time he kept you from leaving him, or when he would forcibly remove those who would come close to you

Though he knows how you feel, if you were to openly state that you loved his possessiveness and how it made you feel safe and loved well

Matthew might melt and may just have to treat you to whatever you wanted, even if it was to see someone else or go out somewhere

nobody noticed him before so nobody notices how weirdly healthy this unhealthy relationship is, and since nobody notices him and now by extension you, nobody has to disappear

France

Francis' heart is completely melted

first, you were a nation, a proud nation, who he managed to swoon

second, you agreed to marry him long ago without him even having to force you

and finally, you never have and never will care if he is strong

I mean Francis can't be any more in love with you at this point

Francis honestly never noticed how much you loved his possessive tendencies before becoming your husband

he was more focused on keeping you with him, protecting you from anyone else's prying eyes

but now that he can relax more since putting a ring on you, he definitely noticed how much you enjoyed how he protected you

I mean it's hard not to notice that you attempted to push his buttons so he would get possessive

when it finally all connects in his head that you like his behavior he teases you about it

how can he not? It's incredibly gratifying to know you love his true nature

I feel like only certain people notice how odd Francis has become and how weirdly okay you were with his possessive behavior, nobody comments on it though after Francis made it very clear what would happen if anyone tried to come between him and his wife/husband

Russia

Ivan is still stunned honestly

I mean you were a nation, a strong-willed nation, that agreed to marry him after he had kidnapped you so many years ago and you weren't even faking it or agreeing to get out of trouble

and you didn't care if he was strong?

I mean laughable because of course he's strong, but endearing that you would love him if he wasn't

All of these things just make his heart do the happy thing

Ivan noticed early on that you truly loved his nature

Out of all the yandere allies, he is certainly the cruelest so it wasn't hard to figure out that you enjoyed his sometimes cruel punishments and possessive behavior

he was certain you would purposely put yourself in situations just so he would get possessive and protective

He honestly doesn't mind, for the most part, he rather enjoys that you love his nature that others often call creepy, violent, and suffocating

Everybody and I mean everybody even strangers notice how this relationship is, nobody would ever say anything to either of you tho, fearing that you would tell and Ivan would take it as a challenge or threat to take you away

China

Yao is honestly in disbelief

you were a stunning and powerful nation who apparently loved him from the start as when he proposed to you, you didn't even hesitate

and you often would reassure him that you never cared about his power or status, you loved him for him

though he may get a bit insecure if you say this because in his mind why would you mention his strength unless you were concerned he couldn't take care of you

so he would have to show off a bit that you would never have to worry about that

oh and he noticed how you reacted when he got possessive, it was clear since the beginning since he never tried to hide what he did for you from you

Yao thinks being honest with you is crucial, you had to know everything, otherwise, your love for him would be fabricated and he couldn't handle that

but he was so ecstatic to know that you loved his possessiveness over you

Nobody but those closest to him would notice his behavior or how unhealthy this truly was, however, no one would comment on the relationship since you seemed happy with how Yao was treating you

#aph america #hws america #aph canada #hws canada #aph england #hws england #aph france #hws france #aph russia #hws russia #aph china #hws china #hetalia #hetalia reactions #hetalia headcanons #hetalia scenarios #yandere #yandere hetalia

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i-dreamed-i-had-a-son · 4 years

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Can I just say Bones does not get nearly enough credit for how well he reads people?? Like, we all forget that he is not only a doctor, he's a psychiatrist as well. And not only is he insanely good at reading Jim, we also see him read and understand Spock (who is his opposite and with whom he frequently disagrees) and push him when it's necessary. It's Bones' words that make some of the most powerful exchanges out of all the 79 original episodes. Here is proof (and there's a lot of it):

Balance of Terror

Jim's doubting himself and is dealing with a lot of stress because of all his responsibilities and the burden of making decisions, and asks Bones, "What if I'm wrong?" This is an incredibly vulnerable moment for Jim, who always has to be strong, and when Bones starts to answer, Jim gets up and says "I wasn't really expecting an answer."

Bones immediately puts his hand on his shoulder, stops him, and says, "Well, I've got one." Completely unexpected by Jim. Bones starts off by saying "This isn't something I'd usually tell a customer," then gives the speech we all probably know, about how there are millions of possible earth-like planets, "but in all of that, and possibly more, only one of each of us. Don't destroy the one named Kirk."

Let's break down why this is so good. First, Bones lets Jim know that he sees how vulnerable Jim is being and that he's talking to Jim as a friend. He recognizes that Jim's identity is fundamentally tied to his role as a captain, and also acknowledges how deep Jim's doubts are going, and at the same time reminds Jim that he is the one in control of himself (something very grounding for Jim) and he is not alone (because Bones is supporting him). Most of all, he doesn't dwell on the vulnerability Jim's expressing, but encourages him to take action, which is Jim's natural bent. He perfectly adapts to how Jim functions and knows what to say to get him back into a place where he can do what he does best: lead.

The Ultimate Computer

Jim has been been feeling insecure and threatened this entire episode, because a computer may take away his role as captain. Twice he seeks out Bones for comfort. First, he tells him that he has concerns about the computer, but worries about his motives. "You have my psychological profiles; am I afraid? Of losing my job? ...Daystrom's right, I could do a lot of other things. Am I afraid of losing the power, the prestige? Am I that petty?"

Bones replies, "Jim, if you're self-aware enough to ask that question, you don't need me to answer it for you. Why don't you ask James T. Kirk? He's a pretty honest guy."

Breakdown: Bones responds beautifully by once again reminding Jim that he knows himself and is in control. That sense of confidence is all Jim is after. He also establishes earlier in the conversation that what Jim is feeling is not unusual and can be understood. Brilliant.

The second time Jim reaches out to Bones (this episode is my favorite for a reason), he's doubting his role even more intensely, having just been blatantly insulted and called useless (affirming his insecurities). He left the bridge, silently, by himself, and even Spock didn't follow him out. Bones knew he needed help and went to him, with some drinks (Jim initially responds that he's not interested in eating--coping by losing interest in food) and a joke and light-hearted attitude, so that Jim can feel comfortable expressing himself. Jim puts on an air of not caring (shutting himself off from his emotions) and says he's never felt so useless, and makes a cynical joke as a toast, "To Captain Dunsel" (the insult from earlier, meaning "unnecessary").

Bones stops him, looks him in the eye, and says "To James Kirk, Captain of the Enterprise." Jim says softly, "Thank you, Doctor," and when he downs his glass, Bones follows suit.

There's just so much good about this. Bones seeks him out even when he was trying to isolate himself because he knew Jim tends to distract himself and unhealthily repress things. And he doesn't let Jim get away with being blasé about how he's been hurt, but he doesn't force him to be honest either; instead, he lets Jim know he sees how he's feeling and how deeply he's hurt, and also reaffirms that Bones still cares about, respects, and most of all, believes in him. When Jim starts talking after the drink, Bones just listens and lets him talk, and when Jim responds to the call to the bridge, he follows him out. Back in action, and another job well done.

The Trouble With Tribbles

Just a brief point with this: Spock is just being silent here, which is typical for him. But Bones asks him "What's the matter, Spock?" seemingly out of the blue. Spock responds with, "There's something disquieting about these creatures," which means that he was feeling off, and Bones picked up on it. Bones then makes a joke ("Don't tell me you've got a feeling!") which lets Spock know that Bones sees what he's saying but isn't treating it as unusual (since the joking between them is their normal behavior). And when Spock continues talking, he hears him out (although it eventually degenerates into their typical spat).

All Our Yesterdays

Spock has begun degenerating into a pre-reformed-Vulcan version of himself. He gives up on trying to get back to their proper time and becomes irritable. Bones notices that something's wrong almost immediately.

He starts by asking about Jim (because he knows how deeply Spock cares for him), and Spock responds apathetically. This clearly shocks Bones, who then says "I don't believe it, Spock. It's just not like you to give up trying." When Spock doesn't acknowledge something's off, Bones presses him: "I understand. I never thought I'd see it, but I understand. You want to stay here. In fact, you're highly motivated to stay in this forsaken waste!" Spock deflects again, and Bones keeps pressing, which leads to Spock grabbing him by the neck and saying angrily, "I don't like that. I don't think I ever did, and now I'm sure." Bones simply looks him in the eye and asks calmly, "What's happening to you, Spock?"

Instead of hassling Spock about why he isn't doing more, he focuses on what's wrong with Spock himself, and he clearly has a deep understanding of who Spock really is. He starts by trying to get a feel for Spock's emotional state by going to ground 0: Jim. And he doesn't back down when Spock tries to blow him off.

Seeing that he's getting nowhere, Bones bides his time, and then starts something with Zarabeth, knowing Spock will jump to her defense.

When Spock pins him against the wall, Bones calmly says, "Are you trying to kill me, Spock? Is that what you really want? Think! What are you feeling? Rage, jealousy--have you ever had those feelings before?" Spock is clearly affected by this, and says it's impossible, since he's a Vulcan. Bones sees his opening, saying "The Vulcan you knew won't exist for another 5000 years! Think, man! What's happening on your planet right now, at this very moment?" Spock answers with the facts, and Bones tells him flat-out what's going on: he's reverting. Spock falls quiet, and says, "I've lost myself. I do not know who I am."

Bones is specifically structuring his responses (both here and earlier) to cause Spock to evaluate himself--to think, which has always has grounded Spock. Bones indirectly (so that Spock doesn't feel as threatened by the accusation) indicates that Spock's being too emotional. He wants Spock to see for himself that something's wrong, so Bones asks questions or makes open-ended statements so that Spock will have to respond. He also provides enough evidence (pointing out the emotions Spock is feeling) to prove he has a point and guide Spock towards a conclusion. He's talking Spock through it, using reason and logic, which Spock has always responded to. Bones' questions are also phrased so that the answers are objective facts--he's bringing Spock back to the verifiable, Spock's comfort zone. Finally, he does the analysis for Spock, telling him what's undeniably happening, but leaves the course of action open to Spock, so that he can regain control of himself by deciding how to proceed. Bones smoothly and logically guided Spock to the delicate realization he needed to have.

Of Bread and Circuses

Then of course we have this iconic exchange. Jim's been separated from the both of them and they are all in danger. Spock is pulling at the bars although he knows it will be futile.

Bones calls him out on this, and then thanks him for saving his life. When Spock brushes him off and keeps his walls up, Bones says, "I know why you're not afraid to die, Spock. You're more afraid of living. Every day you stay alive is just one more day you might slip--and let your human half peek out." Spock is silent and looks away, and Bones continues, now smiling slightly: "That's it, isn't it? Insecurity. Why, you wouldn't know what to do with a genuine, warm, decent feeling." His face makes it clear he's gently baiting Spock, who then looks back at Bones and says, "Really, Doctor?" Bones replies softly, "I know. I'm worried about Jim, too."

First thing: Spock's theme starts playing when Bones corners him. So we're supposed to get that Bones is really laying him bare. But starting from the beginning of the scene, Bones recognizes Spock's anxiety through his illogical behavior. He takes the time to thank Spock for saving his life, in an effort to remind Spock that he is competent and in control--basically, trying to calm Spock down and reassure him. When Spock refuses to deal with his emotions productively, Bones is having none of it, and shows Spock just how much he knows. He can tell Spock isn't worried for himself ("you're not afraid to die") but also is well aware of Spock's actual fears (which are coloring his current behavior towards Bones). Basically, Bones is saying, "this facade of yours can't keep me out. You're understood. You're not alone." Saying it in those terms, though, would just make Spock feel weak for unsuccessfully trying to mask his behavior, so Bones frames it as a gentle challenge. When Spock looks away, he can tell he's hit the nail on the head, and he smiles because he's getting through to him. His face as he says "you wouldn't know what to do with a genuine, warm, decent feeling" telegraphs to the audience that he's not actually serious, but is looking for a response. And he gets it--Spock acknowledges, as Bones had intended, that he is currently dealing with emotions. And that's where Bones wanted to get him, because now that he's admitted it, he can move forward; but Bones doesn't want this admission to go unrewarded, and definitely doesn't want Spock to go on believing that Bones meant what he'd said about not knowing what to do with feelings, so he again tells Spock that he understands what's really going on, but without challenge this time. He just accepts it and reassures Spock that he's not alone: "I know. I'm worried about Jim too." They're in it together, and now that Spock is a little more vulnerable, he's able to see that Bones is right beside him.

So that was a lot, but there is definitely even more. Basically, give Bones the appreciation he deserves, because his emotional intuition is off the charts. (After all, as he is so fond of reminding us, he is a doctor!)

#star trek #star trek tos #spock #jim kirk #bones mccoy #bones #meta #my meta posts #quality meta seal of approval #photoset #kay can i just catch my breath for a second #kay watches tos #1k #this post will be quiet for a while and then suddenly pick up like 200 notes at a time and it makes me really happy to see 😂😂

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crystal-witchiness · 3 years

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***Okay so I found this in my notes from May 2021 as a reaction to the scenes in the beginning of Endgame when Captain Marvel first brings Tony and Nebula back to Earth, when they first get off the ship, and when Tony yells at Steve a few scenes later when he looks like ‘Death Warmed Over’ in his robe and i thought I’d share -

Every time someone argues with me about my ABSOLUTE 100% belief that Steve and Tony had romantic feelings for each other, I’ll just show them this scene. “And I needed YOU.” He didn’t say “You guys” or “Your help.” Tony looked at Steve with so much pain in his eyes and said, “I needed y o u.” And Steve is just as broken watching Tony. This isn’t the first time this has happened between them. They had MANY scenes like this in Civil War (but I like to pretend that movie didn’t happen cause ‘ow blow a hole in my ship why dontcha?’) I mean technically I could submit that whole movie as evidence of their feelings but there are too many negative emotions wrapped up in it and it hurts. This movie is the first time they’ve seen each other since Civil War and when Tony first gets off the ship he basically falls into Steve’s arms. First of all, Steve fricking S P R I N T S when he sees Tony getting off the ship, then Tony sighs in relief and lets Steve take his weight. AND IMMEDIATELY begins unloading his grief about losing Peter cause he knew Steve would understand and comfort him. You can SEE s e e when Pepper runs up that (Ofc Tony does another sigh of relief that the snap didn’t take her (which I wish it did sorry Pepper your character stopped being interesting in the 2nd Iron Man)) Tony has to pull himself off of Steve and pretend to have it more together than he does because Pepper immediately begins crying and Tony has to comfort her. But Steve doesn’t leave his side. Tony cradling Pepper but he’s turning his body so that Steve can cradle him and ugh. Honestly I would have accepted a polyamorous relationship. Tony NEEDED someone to be the leader. THATS LITERALLY WHAT PEPPER WAS TALKING ABOUT. Tony NEVER rests because he always thinks he has to be the one to do everything, EXCEPT for when Steve’s around. Steve is the Captain and even though they bump heads (a lot, awww couples’ squabbles) Tony ALWAYS defers to Steve when it’s important. And Steve? Steve HAS to be a leader, to be helpful, in a healthy way because he couldn’t be that for most of his life in the past. He was a scrawny defenseless guy who always had to depend on Bucky. So to be able to take care of this group of wonderful people who are so powerful and yet STILL NEED STEVE? It’s who he his. It’s who Tony is too but he doesn’t WANT to be that way, he does it because he has to. He does it when no one else can or he doesn’t want to lose anyone else. This scene right now is Tony feeling helpless and so he lashes out at the easiest person, Steve. Steve is their leader and has saved them many times. Tony saw that picture of Peter and couldn’t handle his own feelings of helplessness so he lashed out to bring down the next ‘leader figure’ of the group. Steve and Tony have always been the parents of the Avengers. Steve is the most dad-est dad ever to dad. Meanwhile, Tony invites everyone to live with him while feeding them, clothing them (armor and civilian clothes) and making sure they have top of the line protection. HE LITERALLY EVEN SAYS THIS IN AGE OF ULTRON. SUCH a mom. So he wanted to make Steve feel his pain because Steve made a promise that they would lose together and Steve wasn’t there on that moon. And OF COURSE Tony knows that Steve was on earth fighting his own battle against Thanos but he wasn’t WITH Tony. And they are always stronger together than apart. (Civil War kinda proved this too) Tony sees Steve’s absence as the reason they lost, because ‘if only they’d been together’ ‘maybe we could have won if we’d only been together.’

ALSO DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON TONY LITERALLY GIVING STEVE A REPRESENTATION OF HIS HEART. I know he did it out of anger and to make a point but he took away this piece of him, that he made SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE HE FELT VULNERABLE WITHOUT THE ARC, and gave it to Steve. Once again shedding that responsibility and giving it to Steve. Because even with the residual anger over Civil War, Tony trusts Steve. He says otherwise in this moment out of anger but that “vision” he talks about here? He literally watches Steve die (YEAH THATS RIGHT I SAID STEVE. Not PEPPER, NOT RHODEY, NOT ANY OF THE OTHER AVENGERS.) Wanda showed him his worst fear in Age of Ultron and it was the death of the Avengers, but he didn’t see THEM die. Everyone else, Thor, Bruce, Natasha, and Clint were already dead. Tony watched STEVE die and it was STEVE saying that Tony could’ve saved them that spurred him into creating Ultron. He was so scared of losing them and letting Steve down (and letting him die) that he wanted to wrap the whole world in armor to protect him. And he tries to do it again in this scene. He means it to be spiteful but he gives Steve his armor and tells him to hide from Thanos. WHICH IS ANOTHER THING UGH. Tony doesn’t know that out of all of the people who fought Thanos in Wakanda that day, Steve was the one who engaged in hand-to-hand combat with him. Everyone else had armor and suits, weapons, etc. Steve has his serum strength and he u s e d it. It didn’t help for very long but he used his BARE HANDS to fight an alien-monster wielding 5/6 of ALL POWERFUL infinity stones, and ofc he was never going to win, but even Thanos looked at Steve in incredulity at his bravery and resolve. A human (a super charged one at that but still a human) fought him with his bare hands and wasn’t going to stop. (Steve proved this again at the end of Endgame when he’s the last one standing against Thanos and his entire army and just tightens the strap on his broken shield, (and most likely broken arm, based on the flinch/hiss) and readies himself to fight alone. Steve also gave Wanda time to destroy the mind stone (unfortunately, that didn’t mean anything in the end)

AND YET Tony doesn’t know any of this. He doesn’t know how hard Steve fought, just like Tony did on Titan, to stop Thanos. And I REALLY wish we had seen Tony’s reaction to Steve standing up to Thanos at the end of Endgame OR EVEN WIELDING MJOLNIR, but anyways.

Back to the basics. Boss level stuff most people don’t remember or think about- Tony’s dad very unhealthily IDOLIZED Steve. He canonically compared everything Tony did to Steve. So Tony grew up idolizing this man that he also despised because it fueled his father’s abuse of him. Tony shows this anger in the first Avengers. When they have their argument on the quinjet. “Everything special about you came out of a bottle.” He even says something about how Steve didn’t live up to his father’s hype (I don’t remember Tony’s exact words but that’s the gist) And ofc Steve says Tony’s nothing without his armor. But then they go on the prove each other wrong multiple times, but mainly in their last moments in the MCU. Steve proves it by standing alone against an ENTIRE alien army and later by picking up mjolnir. And Tony? Tony is that ONE factor in a million that Stephen sees. Tony, a beautifully pure human-being, with no powers or serums to help, takes on the powers of the stones. KNOWING it would kill him. He had proof. It nearly killed Thanos and Bruce and they were hulking (pun intended) beings with super strength and all that.

Tony and Steve were always set up to be spoils to one another and that makes them perfect together. They balance each other out. Pepper was a boss b****, no doubt, and I loved their relationship in the first two Iron Man movies, but as their characters grew and Tony’s personality was intrinsically changed through trauma- Pepper was no longer right for him. She was good for him, no doubt, but Tony couldn’t relax with her as he did with Steve. Tony could trust Steve to take over and everything could be fine. Pepper was like that for Stark Industries but not in other ways. Tony always saw himself as Pepper’s protector. I will 100% give her props for telling Tony that he’d never rest until he tried Scott’s time travel theory, but other than that she wasn’t particularly supportive of Iron. Man. What Pepper never seemed to understand, and what Steve didn’t understand when he FIRST met Tony, is that Tony and Iron Man are synonymous. Their is no ‘man outside the suit.’ Tony Stark is Iron Man and Iron Man is Tony Stark. Steve was placed into an already created persona of Captain America. Steve didn’t create Captain America even though that’s who he was. He was literally MADE for the role. Tony on the other hand, MADE Iron Man. He was the one who built the first suit - dying in a cave in Afghanistan. He was the one who took responsibility for Obadiah and his father’s actions and became a superhero to save the countries that were affected by Stark tech. Steve may have volunteered to be a superhero because he felt like he had no one other choice but Tony DIDN’T HAVE TO. He had fame, money, power, ALL OF IT. He could’ve EASILY hidden his company’s dark underside once he found out. But instead, Tony was like “Hey um so my company has done some bad things and instead of delegating aid through my money and power, I’m going to personally handle this with a titanium alloy suit and technology that I helped create in a cave while being held captive by a terrorist cell.”

Where was I going with this? OH YEAH.

I will believe in TonyxSteve (Stony) for the rest of my life and I will use fanfiction to fill the void of their deaths. Basically, if I lost anyone in the word vomit above, what I’m trying to say is that- Steve and Tony completed each other. They provided something the other needed. Tony needed stability and protection. He needed to feel like he could let go. Steve needed an anchor in the present. Someone lively and opinionated, SOMEONE ADVENTUROUS AND FUNNY, who Steve could smile with and protect. But also. Steve trusted Tony to be a leader as much as Tony trusted him. They had their ups and downs. Trauma and the Accords didn’t help their relationship at all, but should’ve been it for each other. And I honestly believe they would have t h r i v e d.

Honestly I applaud anyone who made it this far. I don’t know where this all came from but I will not apologize✌🏻

I rest my case your honor.

#avengers endgame #steve rogers #tony stark #captain america #iron man #stony #marvel endgame #steve x tony #i will die with this ship #i ship them #rip stan lee

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ceoofanticatradora · 3 years

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We need more anti C//A who are Adora stans (like you seem to be) so that people can understand that C///A is bad for Adora. Heck C//A is bad for Catra too, but the shippers don't seem to realize it. If Catra had been able to let Adora go maybe she could have healed instead of her festering and the abuse may have ended instead of escalated.

Hello Dear, welcome on my Blog and a big thank you for your message! Firstly I wanna apologize that this response is reaching you more than three full days, almost four later. Just real life getting into the way of my online presence (at least I got my A-Levels admission!) but I assure you that replying to you was on my To Do List the entire time. And while I could've typed something quick, I thought you deserved a full length response just as much as the person before you received. That goes for anyone really to ask/write me anything in the future.

Adora is a character that has flaws, her own interests, things she struggles with/is insecure about etc. but she also still works on being better (up to Season 5). This makes her relatable, fleshed out and overall three dimensional. Overall for me that makes Adora very likeable. Which is funny because when I first watched the show I thought of her as too goofy and felt like she as a character was overall just flat. Her character design did not speak to me either, the ponytail with the weird hair poof and these pointy shoulders of her jacket just really were not my taste. Isn't it amazing how perceptions can change?

As you can guess from that description I did not always stan Adora and she's probably still not my favorite character but over the almost two years I've been in this fandom I've grown rather fond of her. Other important characters to me are Kyle (a very relatable comfort character of mine, he learned to stand up for himself and others and I support that, f*ck Season 5 for barely acknowledging his existence), Lonnie (apart from treating Kyle badly (which I really do NOT support or excuse) I really love her, man, some women just do me like that, I mean she really stood up to Catra like that), Entrapta (I'm autistic too! It's great to have some representation, seeing the ableism/treatment she experiences in the show is not so much though), Seahawk (I don't even know why, I have some issues with his behavior towards Mermista at times but overall I love this dork), Scorpia (she reminds me of myself so much and I really wanna give her hugs, I'm so glad she chose to no longer let Catra treat her like that even though I will be forever salty she just immediately forgave her), Peekablue (I can explain this even less than Seahawk, especially since it was not even really him in the end but his existence somehow helped me cope with Season 5, without him I probably would've left this fandom ... and also my favorite color is blue) and Double Trouble (now there's enough people already critcizing how they're not exactly great Non-binary representation but this dramatic lizard will forever be in my heart, that reality check they gave Catra, basically slapping her in the face with facts was satisfying as h*ck, also I like lizards overall).

Now there's plenty of characters I like, dislike (or even hate) or am simply indifferent about but after all this is not a tier list but me talking about Adora, Catra and Catradora. Adora started off as this girl that was so sure what she was doing is right but once she was taught differently she was willing to leave everything she knew (except Catra, because she valued her despite everything) behind. And not only that, she broke out of the abuse cycle that Catra tried so hard to keep upright. And that is exactly what makes Adora such a good role model. She teaches children (or people) that:

Your past doesn't define what/who you are or what/who you can become

-> Adora used to be a Horde soldier and did not know where she came from, but nonetheless she found herself a family and became a hero that saved thousands of people

You can always change your mind and start a new life if you feel disappointed in what you are doing/who you are as a person

-> Basically the exact same point, Adora started a new life as she saw what the Horde really was and changed her mind about who to fight for

You deserve love too, be it platonic or romantic (or se*ual???) (If you're aro and/or ace just ignore the part that does not work for you)

-> While Adora for various reasons thought her only use was to please others and meet their needs and expectations (mostly due to Shadow Weaver and Catra) she learned to accept that she too deserves love and validation (if the love aspect would not have been focused on it being romantic love so she could smooch Catra in the finale this would've been a billion times better because she got love from her friends that showed her her real value)

You can walk away from something/someone, that does not make you egoistic/selfish

-> Adora walked away from the Horde, after Catra stubbornly refused to come with her despite many offers (basically Catra broke the promise, not Adora) from her too and that did not make her a "traitor" or "selfish", h*ck, Adora in the end did this for a bigger purpose too, even if part of it was her not wanting to live with such wrong morals

Your opinions, feelings etc. about a person/something can change and that is perfectly fine and valid, being able to change is part of what makes someone human

-> Adora's views on many things changed throughout the show: The Horde and the Rebellion, the First Ones, Catra, being She-Ra, herself, her priorities and so on ... she actually makes use of her brain, which is why Catra saying "Don't you ge it?" or calling her an idiot and dumb never sat right with me, she's a realistic character for shifting with her thoughts, feelings etc. and sometimes just does not fully think things through

You don't have to let other people treat you like sh*t (just because they have some issues they never worked through does not give them any right to let it out on you)

-> This point is obviously centered mostly around Catra and her abusing Adora almost every chance she gets, which is why Adora standing up for herself and not letting Catra blame her for her own decisions and mistakes is so important, "You made your choice, now live with it" is one of the most powerful lines throughout all the five Seasons

Now I'm sure there is still more to Adora's character than what I just listed and unfortunately almost all the points basically got pushed aside, well, Adora as a character got pushed aside in Season 5. All her growth, the things that made me love her, see her as great role model for so many people robbed of their value for the sake of making everything revolve around Catra. That brings me to her and how you are absolutely right that Catradora is harmful to both characters. Of course Adora is affected most by it in the end but Catra too is obviously suffering under the fandoms obsession and just the overall idea of them being romantically involved.

Just like with Adora the stans make almost everything about Catra over her relationship with Adora. She too can barely exist outside of it and if she wasn't the fan favorite she'd most likely would too be mostly in Fanarts that include Adora and not just her (if you google "Catra Fanart" most content is still Catra and Catra only but here and there Catradora still peaks through). But for whatever reason the fandom still views her more as her own person as the other ones? Catrouble and Scorptra Shippers might actually still get less hate than Glimmadora Shippers (I'm not denying they don't get any, they most certaintly do) which is just plain hypocricy and favorism. Kinda like the: A woman needs to be loyal to her husband and her husband only but if the husband wants to be active with other women that is perfectly fine because "that is just how men are" or how i like to call it ... sexism. Now in this case they are both women so it's not sexism but yo do get my point.

But much more importantly, Catra has an unhealthy obsession with Adora. Signs of that are for example:

Constantly talking about Adora, even when said person is not around (to Shadow Weaver, Scorpia etc.)

Obsessing over having control over Adora like in that one Episode "Are you kidding? I finally got control over Adora, I'm not giving that up!"

Building her entire character and her actions around Adora "We need to take Adora down", "Adora left me", "I'd rather see the whole world end than see you win!", also shown in Season 5 where she states she does save Glimmer only for Adora and not for Glimmer or to do the right thing

Getting aggressive or very emotional over Adora like clawing the wall, having nightmares etc. (destructive behavior towards herself and others)

Having no or barely any characteristics outside of her relationship with Adora like, we don't know her interests or likes and dislikes outside of being evil, obsessed with Adora, being abused by Shadow Weaver ...

Trying to force Adora to meet her needs and expectations regardless of Adora's owns

Sacrificing her oppurtunity to be happy in the Crimson Waste for the sake of her Adora obsession and being better than her at all costs

So yes, you were very right with saying that not putting Catra in a relationship with Adora would've benefited both characters. Catra could've learned to exist on her own, develop interests and a life outside of Adora. Learn to accept herself and eventually come to terms with her childhood abuse. She could've been free and not "the abusive cat girl that ended up with the person she unhealthily obsessed over to the point of no return" she kinda is now. Even if we ignore the whole "dating your long term abuser" part from Adora's side and "being rewarded" for horrible behavior, Catra alone is not giving a good example to people watching. As much as I dislike Catra, disdain her even, an ending where she is dependent on Adora, unable to stand on her own two legs after she led armies in war is not what I would wish for her, even with a decent redemption arc (that she did not get).

#anti catradora #anti c//a #anti catra #spop critical #response #my post #spop salt #ocd #role model #anti catra stans #anti catradora stans #comfort character #adora deserves better #honestly its worse once you know its not just bad for adora #anti+catra #anti+catradora

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doorsclosingslowly · 3 years

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No-one will ever call this bluff

When Obi-Wan and Ventress fight Maul and his apprentice on Raydonia, a crate breaks open. Inside: an airborne poison. 6.6k | TCW Episode 4.22 Revenge AU | warning for serious illness

“Down!” Ventress shouts. “Down, Kenobi!”

Blindly, Obi-Wan throws himself to the floor and only then he rolls and risks a glance over his shoulder. The miss was far too near. Obi-Wan’s unexpected ally intervened just in time: the lumbering Sith almost managed to drive his lightsaber into his back. In the crate a foot’s width behind Obi-Wan there is a smoking hole at chest-height that could have spelled his doom, but now, with wide swings of her ‘saber, Ventress forces Savage Opress away and towards another one of the myriad crates stacked here in this nondescript cargo hold that Obi-Wan woke up, in after Maul and his new accessory Opress beat him up.

Her next swing connects, though unfortunately the small flesh wound in the Sith’s dominant left arm won’t disable him. It just spews out strange green miasma, even though the cut should have been cauterized. The following strike cleaves a massive hole into a durasteel crate, because Opress apparently learned how to duck just in time. Whoever packed this freighter was not beholden to Republic safety standards, it seems, because the whole crate, besides being completely unsecured to the wall, is just stuffed full of some fine white powder that now plumes out, dusting the crouching Sith all over with its fine particles.

A warning in the force, just in time again, and Obi-Wan jumps up and parries Darth Maul’s attack with Ventress’ second lightsaber.

Maul does not press his advantage. He throws a curt glance in the direction of his apprentice, disapproving and disappointed. Obi-Wan almost hopes for Ventress’ cry of victory, but then the flurry of movement at the edge of Obi-Wan’s field of vision reveals that the massive zabrak must have regained his footing and is locked in his battle with Asajj Ventress once more.

It’s their distinct advantage, Obi-Wan realizes: he and Asajj have fought side-by-side in their weird alliance before, but for all that Opress appears to be beholden to his fellow zabrak, they do not seem to fight together. Opress kicked Obi-Wan around at Darth Maul’s direction—strange, too, that he would eschew the force for fists—but they’re not fighting as one. Just next to each other. Unless Maul gives the other zabrak direct orders, and even then, they are less than a seasoned team. A few weeks ago, Opress was still Dooku’s lackey, and back then he was just as lousy of a team player. He does not seem to have improved just because his new Master shares his species. We’re outmatched, Obi-Wan just told Ventress, but perhaps…

Perhaps…

Obi-Wan does not want to flee. He came here to Raydonia—at least presumably that’s where they still are, he hasn’t heard any tattletale vibration of engines—he came to this obvious trap at the behest of a long-buried monster, but also: for a mountain of corpses. He saw them in the holo, and before Savage beat him up and dragged him in here, he smelt them. He’s had a regrettably thorough acquaintance with the stench of burning flesh since becoming a frontline General of the GAR, but still, he fancies the Raydonia massacre even more horrendous, more pungent, for what it represents. Civilians, children, monstrously slaughtered, and for what reason? Simply as the holo message to the temple said: to draw him out?

He does not want to flee—he came here alone despite all the signs that that’s what his enemy expected—because this is Darth Maul. The unfinished business he thought done and dusted years ago. The death that merited his promotion to Master. The murderer of the halcyon Jedi Master, his beloved teacher Qui-Gon; the harbinger of the end of eons of Jedi supremacy over the Sith; the enemy that Obi-Wan cut apart. Quickly he was distracted away from his nightmares back then because he needed to keep up with his new whirlwind padawan, but there was one moment he could not forget. Sai tok. Bisection. That confused painful grimace. The sheer brutality that Obi-Wan used to dispatch his assailant on Naboo seared itself into his mind, never mind that it was rightly deserved then and a few hours ago proved to be far better than Maul deserves… Never mind that the monster somehow survived his mutilation…

He does not want to flee. Darth Maul murdered these people to draw out Obi-Wan. If he escapes, there’s every reason to believe he’ll do it again.

Besides, Obi-Wan was but a padawan when he bested Maul. In the intervening decade he has taught, studied, followed the force. He has led the GAR into battle. He can turn this fight to his advantage, especially with Ventress by his side; regardless of Maul’s acquisition of Dooku’s castoff acolyte he can now do it right and aim for the neck. They just need to be smarter about it. One against one is fine, but if they take out the weak link together and then focus their combined might on Maul… It’s worth a try.

So Obi-Wan strikes at Opress whenever he gets in range, and he tries to get in range as often as possible.

Savage Opress, rudely, seems exclusively preoccupied by Ventress; even when Obi-Wan manages to wound his other shoulder he quickly focuses all his attention, his growls, his attacks back onto her. The two have a history, though: and not just under Dooku, it seems from Opress’ growl in the beginning. A Dathomir witch—she betrayed me, he said. Whatever that means. He apparently can’t let go enough of his past to realize that in this fight, Obi-Wan is at least as deadly a foe. Despite this fact or maybe because of it, it doesn’t take long before the gargantuan Sith starts faltering. His attacks miss by wider margins; his feet barely find stable ground. Once, when Obi-Wan comes close, he can see the sweat beading on the zabrak’s brow, the feverish tinge to his yellow skin. He’s fighting for breath. Maul, meanwhile, doesn’t seem at all aware of the predicament his apprentice is in. Maybe Obi-Wan’s attacks, designed to make him dodge as far back as possible, have managed to distract him, or maybe he just doesn’t care.

Ventress, however, throws him an amused smirk. She’s moving in a perfect complement, pincer-like, subtly helping cage in the lesser Sith towards the cockpit of the ship.

Slash, stab, slash, and then—

Opress trips. He trips, or it’s the coughing fit that suddenly wracks his massive frame—whatever the cause, he tumbles to the floor, barely keeping hold of his ignited double ‘saber. Barely keeping hold and barely not cutting himself up with the still-burning energy blades, missing his own arm by a hair’s breadth when he tries to shield his chest with his hands out of some strange useless instinct and then he hits the ground, back-first and uncushioned. The access pad of the cockpit blinks red just meters to the right of him, and his face answers, flushed unhealthily pink and sweat-slick.

“Gotcha.” Ventress raises her ‘saber—

A sudden whirlwind of naked tattoos and metal chicken legs, Maul parries her.

The sound is so quiet behind the whirr of the lightsabers that Obi-Wan almost thinks he hallucinated it, but why would he? No, that sounded like Opress, and it sounded like… “Didn’t let him free. Not allowed to take two mates. Not him too.” Gibberish, and he has no time to decipher it, curious as he may be as to the fatuous Sith’s motivations.

Darth Maul sets his hand down on Opress’ head to steady himself—Ventress’ strike must have been strong enough to unbalance him, or he chose the wrong footing in his rush—and then he wipes it against his own head: leaving a stripe of white powdered residue. He raises his lightsaber. He grins. “Two against one. That brings back some memories, does it not, Kenobi?”

“This time when I dismember you, I’ll remember you’re a cockroach,” Obi-Wan replies.

A dismissive shrug is all he receives in answer. “Feel free to join me when you’ve finished your midday nap, apprentice,” Maul throws over his shoulder, and then he starts feinting and stabbing tirelessly until both Ventress and Obi-Wan have retreated several tens of meters back across the cargo hold. He’s as acrobatic and cocksure as he was on Naboo back then, guarding the whole width of the cargo hold against both of them. Guarding. Yes, that is the word, Obi-Wan suddenly realizes. Flashy as they may be, his strikes are defensive in nature: designed to keep them occupied and retreating, but barring a gross mistake none would be the kind to wound. And yet, Darth Maul lured Obi-Wan here, presumably to murder him. You will suffer as I have suffered was the threat if he recalls correctly. This is not suffering. He’s abandoned his original aims, then. Opress’ sudden dizzy spell seems to have unsettled Maul.

Maul is far more hardy than his apprentice was, but even he has his limits—after what feels like an hour of Maul jabbing and both of them dodging, and Opress’ pleas to various family members (mother, brother, sister, brother again), his face is shining with sweat just as Savage Opress is, though with his red coloring there’s no way to see the red tinge that is probably present as well. Barely, he dances out of the way of Ventress’ strike before trying to drive her back again. It shouldn’t give Obi-Wan any pleasure to realize this—and it doesn’t—but the defeat on Naboo seems to have robbed Maul of much of his grace, his skill, even though it has only made him more bloodthirsty.

He won’t be able to wage this battle forever. Obi-Wan rejoices in his instincts, and in the force, that told him not to flee: even if Maul decides to give up on this battle now and manages to escape, his brutish companion hasn’t moved from his spot except to jab listlessly at the imaginary girlfriend he’s been whimpering to. He’ll be easy prey. Maul is the diseased brain, and taking him out would benefit the galaxy far more—but in a pinch Obi-Wan will settle for his new stooge.

He’ll—

The thin hairs on Obi-Wan’s arms raise with electric static, and then thunder shakes the cargo hold. The walls bob and drop like those of a capsule on a water planet in storm; more crates drop, releasing their miscellaneous contents, spreading mealpacks and hydrosacks and another burst of white powder and holopads and sundry more items all over the floor; and Ventress grabs Obi-Wan’s shoulder to steady both herself and him. Maul has no such luck, no such compatriot, and he keels over sideways.

There’s no breach on the hull of the cargo hold, at least, as far as Obi-Wan can make out. It sounded like a small laser cannon, the blast, but though it definitely hit—and who knew the impact in a landed ship would feel like this—it wasn’t strong enough to penetrate, or the ship’s defenses haven’t yet given out. That will probably change with a few more blasts, if whoever attacked them keeps up their assault. They’ve got another problem.

Ventress strides over to the window next to the loading bay, obviously preferring survival over a continuation of the fight, and Obi-Wan follows her. He keeps his eyes locked on Maul, though, who winces when he pushes himself up with his hands—should have taken a second to decapitate him, missed chance—and looks just as disquieted as Obi-Wan feels. Not one of his plans, then.

There are people outside the window. A few of them are pulling charred bodies off Maul’s victim pile, some are inspecting Obi-Wan’s ship—still there, luckily, though far enough he’ll have to run for a few minutes to reach it—and most of them are hauling around a small fighter ship using massive ropes. They’re shouting something that’s inaudible through the thick transparisteel pane of the window, but looks incredibly angry, and then Obi-Wan’s hairs raise again. He and Ventress grab for the cross bar behind them, and—shake.

“Villagers,” Ventress hisses.

“Quite.” Obi-Wan raises his voice. Wherever Darth Maul and his delirious lackey are right now, they’ll be able to hear him. “They have come to avenge their families murdered by a broken, unbalanced monster.”

“And kill us, too.”

“Now, I’m sure that once I tell them I’m a Jedi sent in to bring their murderer to justice they’ll—”

“Duck.”

Obi-Wan glances out of the window again, and outside, the people must have noticed them: they gesticulate wildly towards the window, and their towed ship’s laser cannon is pointed right at—

His knees ache. They’ve hit the floor hard, because Ventress has pulled him down with impressive force, and another boom shakes the freighter.

“What about the word ‘duck’ do you not understand?” Ventress gets up again and inspects the window, which hasn’t—yet—shattered. “I’m disappointed, Kenobi. I thought I’d taught you how to obey my commands.”

“My ship is out there, but we won’t make it that far.”

Ventress sighs. “Well aware. Our only way out is the freighter, and…”

Obi-Wan follows the direction of her eyes. Maul has made his way back to his apprentice. Back where the cockpit is. He must have reached the same conclusion. He’s whispering something inaudible and trying to pull the other zabrak onto his feet. Even with his chicken legs compensating for their height difference, though, he’s not strong enough, not when Opress isn’t cooperating at all. They’re only tens of meters away from the salvation of the cockpit door, a distance the sickened Sith apparently cannot crawl anymore and is too heavy to be dragged.

“Help me, brother, help me,” the big Sith moans weakly. He’s attempting to push Maul’s hands away, completely ineffectively, lightsaber forgotten. “I don’t want—please don’t—Sister don’t—”

Ventress looks over at him, an unreadable expression on her face, before she says, “If they get into the cockpit before us, we have a problem. But they’re both exhausted. As long as they don’t manage to close the door, we can make it.”

As soon as Obi-Wan and Ventress approach, though, Darth Maul drops his feverish apprentice with little care—Savage’s head hits the wall with a clang, though he has little brain to even lose from traumatic brain injury—and strides a few meters forward, lightsaber ignited. He looks more focused now after the break in battle, even if still sweat-drenched and trembling, and the barrage of laser strikes that hits the freighter doesn’t keel him over the way the first attack did.

“You have decided to return and die, then,” Maul says.

Ventress sneers. “You barely managed to hold the two of us back.”

Another volley of shots. The villagers are firing more and more often, and however well-armored this freighter may be, it won’t hold out forever. Every attack could be their end. With dawning dread, Obi-Wan realizes they might not even have timeto fight a newly revitalized Maul for the cockpit. And that means…

“In their drive for righteous vengeance against you, the Raydonians will kill us all if we stay here. And soon. You cannot get into the cockpit without giving us an opportunity to attack; we cannot defeat you fast enough. I therefore propose a temporary truce for our mutual survival.” The words are bile on his tongue, proposing a deal with a mass murderer to help him escape his victims, but needs must. Obi-Wan is a General of the GAR, and more battlefields than this one require his guidance. Maul is but a single washed-up revenant of a Sith, and he’ll find death sooner or later.

He takes a step towards the cockpit. Savage Opress shudders.

Ventress catches up to him, and Opress winces and curls into a ball.

“No,” Darth Maul says.

“If we do not take off soon, you’ll die!”

Opress, on the floor, uncurls and coughs. Flecks of something come out and hit the floor, red—blood. Instinctively, Obi-Wan moves closer.

The feverish Sith, mid-coughing fit, pushes himself up with trembling arms. Glowering, he forces out, “You won’t—” cough— “hurt him, now, I’ll—” cough, cough, cough, and more blood spraying towards Obi-Wan. There’s a visible sore on the zabrak’s shoulder from this vantage point, right where Ventress managed to injure him, massive and red and swollen with a necrotic black center. A clue towards his mysterious illness, if Maul’s irrational desire to let them all die before cooperating wasn’t far more pressing.

“My apprentice is right,” Maul says. He’s sweating profusely, probably feverish, and subtly bracing himself on an upended crate, but he’s probably no less lethal when cornered. “We do not trust you.”

“I give you my word as a Jedi Master.”

Maul’s eyes go crazed suddenly, wide and burning, as he howls, “Your word? Your word? I fought with honor. I could have booby-trapped that palace, and yet I did not. I fought honorably, two against one, and yet you would not even give me death, you—”

“I thought you’d died—”

“You gave me pain, pain, pain! For a decade I crawled in refuse and I fed on nothing but hatred for the Jedi who would not even grant his honorable enemy an honorable death!”

“I really thought you’d died,” Obi-Wan repeats weakly. “How was I to know you could survive a sai tok?”

“Here is what I think of your honor, Jedi.” Maul spits on the ground. Is it Obi-Wan’s imagination or is there blood speckled in…

Another blast hits the freighter. They’re running out of time.

“Ventress, then,” Obi-Wan offers. “She is of the dark side, just like you. I trust that’s more agreeable?”

She’s flushed red and sweating slightly, too—just what kind of contagious illness is this?—but she nods in Obi-Wan’s direction and stalks forward.

Again, Savage Opress starts whimpering as soon as he sees her face, and that’s Maul’s cue to block the path with his ignited lightsaber.

“What is it now?” Obi-Wan is the Negotiator, but even he can be forgiven for his lapse in tone now, as he tries to convince an obviously insane murderer to choose his own survival—and that of his apprentice, too. His apprentice… Perhaps… But no, Maul has never shown care for a living being beside himself, so appealing for the preservation of his fellow zabrak would be pointless. There must be a better argument. If only he knew… “What do you have against Ventress? She may have chosen to help me this time, but I promise you, we are at best friendly enemies.”

“My apprentice is afraid of her. I am more inclined to trust his judgment than yours,” Maul says, as if the shudders of a delusional feverish oaf of a Sith was enough reason to condemn them all to death by village mob. Without more information, this is a knot impossible to untangle.

“Ventress, do you—”

“Leave it.”

“—do you know why Savage Opress is scared?”

There is no answer. Asajj Ventress strides back towards the cargo bay.

Maul has retreated to his apprentice, perhaps having decided that Obi-Wan currently won’t instigate a fight. He’s squatting in front of him on his ludicrous chicken legs, a critical eye turned back over his shoulder on the other zabrak. “You’re burning up,” he says quietly. Obi-Wan is barely close enough still to hear him. “And as for the violent coughs… the armor is not helping.”

Savage swallows and shudders and presses his hands to his covered belly.

“You are of no use to me dead.”

No answer. The other Sith coughs out blood and then curls up again, the very picture of misery.

“I shall keep them away from you.”

“From you,” Savage rasps. “Keep them from… I am—” cough— “already lost. They must not hurt you.”

“If you die, you are of no use to me,” Maul repeats. His lip curls, though it’s impossible to tell whether from impatience or cruelty or worry. “You promised to protect me. How will you do that, apprentice, if you are dead?”

It seems to have worked. The word ‘protect’—a revelation Obi-Wan should perhaps have seen coming, but who would expect anyone to look at Darth Maul and see a creature worth protecting, a person in needof protection?—it rouses Opress into a weak kneeling position. He paws at the right shoulder pad of his armor, again and again, but…

“No-one told you how to take it off.” Maul’s voice is entirely flat, and Obi-Wan’s almost offended by his lack of shock. Who—how—why would someone wear an armor they could not remove? “Be still, then, apprentice.”

He raises his lightsaber and cuts, carefully—pausing twice just before a coughing fit wracks Savage’s frame—first through one shoulder pad and then the next, and the pauldron too. The undershirt beneath is dotted with burnt holes, and Darth Maul pulls it away from his apprentice’s body and cuts it as well. Opress is heavily scarred, shiny burn scars all over his shoulders and torso beneath the armor, and a massive overlay of lichtenberg figures down his back—but beside the lesion of the infected wound on his shoulder from Ventress’ attack which has engulfed his whole arm now, they’re all healed enough to be at least a few weeks old. Maul directs him to pull off his boots, too, but allows him to keep his skirt.

“This armor was useless against anything but blasters, anyway,” Maul says. “And it’s obvious that you are not used to moving with its weight. Whoever gave it to you did not act in the interest of—”

“Don’t let me interrupt, boys.” Ventress smirks as Maul’s head whips up. The Sith looks panicked and strangely guilty. “But the mob outside has found another ship with a bigger cannon. We should probably get going.”

Savage’s head clanks against the floor again, Maul’s uncharacteristic tenderness forgotten as soon as he remembers his audience. Lightsaber raised in a defensive position, Maul repeats, “No.”

“Ventress can take the ship, and I’ll stay here as collateral—she won’t decouple the cockpit.”

“No.”

“You really want to die here?”

Maul turns his face away. His arm is trembling.

You cannot imagine the depths I would go to to stay alive, he said when he attacked Obi-Wan. And the depths he’ll go to to kill Obi-Wan, apparently, including mulishly waiting for his own death, and the miserable demise of his own apprentice as well.

“Savage is sick,” Obi-Wan tries. The guarding, the careful removal of his armor—the relationship has to count for something. Even Darth Maul would not sink as low. “He needs medical care. By your stubborn refusal, you condemn him to death. Your apprentice will die here.”

Maul’s eyes are pools of fire and darkness. Vicious and dead. His voice is flat, empty, when he says, “There is no mercy for the weak. No mercy. There never was.”

Laser blasts shake the freighter again, and all Obi-Wan’s negotiation attempts have come to nothing. Trapped with a madman. He’ll just let all of them die, and for what? Stubborn Sith suspicion? If he will not yield, then… Desperately, he suggests, “Take the cockpit yourself, then. You do not trust either of us, but I am prepared to stake mine and her lives on your—on your honor. You insist you fight with honor. Prove it. We need to take off, or we all die.”

Down on the floor, Opress mumbles something that almost sounds like assent. He’s always looked vacuous and inexpressive to Obi-Wan, barely reacting to what should have been pain or mortal danger, but whether it’s the infection or the situation—he’s grabbed onto the ruined pauldron and tries to shield his bare torso. He’s swallowing, painfully, but he cannot force down his expression of sheer unadulterated dread.

There’s something more going on, something far beyond anything Obi-Wan could have suspected when he chose to come to Raydonia. This fear… Opress appears convinced that despite the laser cannons barraging their shelter, despite the mysterious onset of his brutal illness, it’s Obi-Wan and Ventress who pose a danger beyond his wildest nightmares. And Darth Maul…

“No,” Maul says. “I will not leave him for you to swallow his mind and carve up his body.”

It’s madness.

Mystifying. Hopeless. Madness.

Obi-Wan kicks one of the scattered meal packs on his way back to the cargo bay for another, probably fruitless, check on his own cruiser. Ventress stays behind, coughing softly. It’s no use escaping, though, just as Obi-Wan predicted—the sky is dark and the mob of villagers have probably mostly gone to sleep, but they’ve posted guards at the doors of the freighter and there’s no question they’ll spot Obi-Wan on his run, and if Ventress starts succumbing more deeply to the mysterious illness too… she won’t make it, and duty to the galaxy and the Republic would demand he leave anyway to rejoin his place at the GAR’s helm, but she came here to rescue him. He might have died at Maul’s hands—the sickness might not have broken out at all—if she hadn’t come. Whatever Maul thinks happened on Naboo, Obi-Wan knows honor. He won’t leave her behind.

He meanders back slowly, wracking his mind for any possible course of action, and suddenly his boot kicks up white dust. The crate! That innocuous crate that broke open, and unleashed its mysterious ills. He probably shouldn’t touch anything or even breathe here—but then he’s weathered this infection much better thus far than either of the zabraks or Ventress, he’s feeling as fine physically as he ever did after a drag-out ‘saberfight, and perhaps a clue as to the cause of the malady or a possible cure would give him leverage over Darth Maul. If it doesn’t, well… if he can’t find a way to the cockpit, he’ll get blown apart or dragged out by the angry mob he came here to avenge. He’ll die anyway.

There’s nothing at all helpful about the crate, though. It doesn’t even have a Caution! Do Not Break! marking or a biohazard or toxic warning. No, only an impressed and dirt-crusted set of numbers that may well have been there since the crate’s manufacture, and a mysterious stencil proclaiming the vendor one S.I. Rosenfeld. A custom-exemption stamp for Iridonia. The powder itself smells of nothing. It tastes of—well, whatever it tastes of, even in this desperation Obi-Wan refuses to put it in his mouth.

Hunt for clues abandoned, he instead carries back four hydrosacks.

A token of goodwill, at least. Obi-Wan himself is parched after the battle, and with how feverish Ventress and Darth Maul look, not to mention delirious Savage Opress… it’s worth an attempt, at the very least. But whereas Ventress takes her water gratefully, Maul only stares at the sacks that Obi-Wan kicks his way, even after Obi-Wan demonstratively drinks from his own. When Opress blindly reaches for one of the hydrosacks, one of Darth Maul’s chicken claws forces his hand back down.

Back to the standoff, then. Ventress periodically dis- and reappears with new sacks of water. Obi-Wan meditates. Darth Maul, meanwhile, paces in front of his sick partner, waiting for…

Whatever he is waiting for, it doesn’t come.

“You’re growing weaker, apprentice.” There’s no inflection in Maul’s voice now, nothing like the unhinged raving he directed at Obi-Wan earlier, and yet… “The dark side will give you the strength to survive. It is the only path.”

He reaches towards the other zabrak’s face, not the top of his head the way he braced himself up before but cupping one of his cheeks: a tenderness that hours before, Obi-Wan would not have thought possible.

Opress cringes away. He’s more lucid now, at least, but his breath is shallow and wheezing. “Brother,” he begs. ��I would not… survive the lightning now. I can’t. I never could.”

A flinch answers him, tiny, almost invisible if Obi-Wan had not been watching the revenant nightmare for hours now, and then Maul whispers, “There is no lightning.”

“Master Dooku said—"

“Dooku was a liar and a fraud. He is a Jedi pretender, not a true Sith as we are, apprentice. In his refusal to credit you with interiority he overlooked the suffering he could have utilized, and so he had to cheat. The genuine test of the dark is that which already lies within, I have learnt.” Maul’s bright yellow eyes gleam over at Obi-Wan. He pauses. Considering, perhaps, what he should reveal before his audience.

Obi-Wan crosses his arms, extinguished lightsaber still at the ready. He won’t turn away. For now, though, he won’t interrupt either—something tells him to pause, though when he reaches to the force for guidance, all he feels is the cold and the unfathomable deep.

Opess moans in pain again.

Whatever misgivings Maul might have had, the sound wipes them away. “You’re in agony now, aren’t you?” he murmurs, an alien gleam in his rich genteel voice. “You feel the infection take hold of you more with every passing beat of your hearts. The fever, the ache. You can hardly breathe. It has colonized all of your vital systems. You are your body, and your body is pain. One careless moment, and he caught you, and now nothing exists but agony and dread and terrible thirst. Feel it. Sink into it. Luxuriate in your misery.”

Savage Opress, blood dribbling from his mouth onto his brother’s thumb, closes his fever-bright eyes.

“I have felt this, and yet I survived. You’re terrified, and in mourning for the life they stole from you. That he… that she—” and he looks up at Ventress—“that she stole. You hate her for the brother she took, for the mind she enslaved, for the involuntary shudder of your body whenever you recall her touch. That is enough, apprentice. That is enough for the dark. You know it is worse than any lightning that amateur could throw at you. Terror, pain, betrayal and loss and burning rage… Peace is a lie. There is only passion. Through passion I gain strength. Through strength I gain power. Through power I gain victory. Through victory my chains are broken. The force shall free me. Repeat these words, as I did in the putrid chasm. They are a mantra gliding through your fingers while you feel.”

More hacking coughs, and in-between, the movement of lips. Obi-Wan should interrupt this—this venal induction into the dark side of the force, and yet… Opress fell already, and he is almost dead now.

The force pushes in through every orifice, every pore, pushes and pushes, a static pressure unlike anything he’s ever felt from the light. There is no sound but Maul’s voice and the bloody gasps for air, and even if a cannon hit the freighter right now, it would not penetrate air that is suddenly as thick as ocean floor water.

“You feel,” Maul encourages. “You feel. You will not die here in front of this woman who enslaved you, who forced you to murder your own brother. You will not. You hate her, don’t you? You are not allowed to hate her because she owns you, but you do. You hate her every look. Every unwanted touch. Every breath she takes, and every second she could try to kill the only brother you have left…”

In shock, Obi-Wan tries to meet Ventress’ eyes—he knew she was of the dark, but this cannot be truth—but she’s hardly better off than the yellow zabrak, fever-flushed and coughing on her own in the shadow of an unopened crate.

Maul is almost in a trance now, purring, as if there was no-one present but him and his apprentice and the sudden icy waves in the enclosed cargo hold, “She might impel you to kill me with your bare hands. You hate her.”

You cannot imagine the depths I would go to to stay alive, Maul ranted. Fueled by my singular hatred for you.

Are these the depths?

Is this how he managed to survive Naboo?

“You hate her, and you hate yourself—because you were weak enough to let it happen. You will not be weak now. You are Sith, apprentice. You are not weak. You will not submit to another nightsister. You will not kneel before another Dooku. Whatever it takes to gain power, you will do. However vile you need to become, you will. You do not belong to her. You do not belong to your sickness. You belong to the force, and it will devour your agony and your dread and your fever. It will devour you,” and Darth Maul bites the solid air with his rotten teeth.

“But you are strong. And you will wrest that which eats you into yourself and sink your teeth into its frozen innards. Feast on the force, apprentice. Feast on the force, and feed it pain and terror, and it will keep you alive until it grows fat on the misery of the entire galaxy.”

Opress lies still. Quiet. His bare torso is exposed to air so cold Obi-Wan expects to see hoarfrost cover every surface, but he does not cough, does not bleed. He does not fight against Maul’s hand, one bracing the back of his head and the other against his cheek still—

Against his cheek, and then digging in with pungent anger that bleeds into the force like the blood welling under Maul’s fingernails.

The sudden pressure spike threatens to implode Obi-Wan’s eyeballs. With his fingers massaging his closed lids and through eardrums thickly waterlogged, he hears Maul hiss, “Surely you did not expect to leave your path this quickly, apprentice? Mother Talzin sent you after me, but you followed me off Dathomir, and in that moment, you were mine. You left your brother behind and dead on the ground but you will not abandon me.”

A soft keen is all that answers his tirade at first, and then follows a river of anguished moans and scuffling on the ground and the pitter of—of blood, scratching, mangling. Obi-Wan startles and only when he trips over a clattering something in the pitch dark does he realize he just tried to protect Opress—protect Savage Opress!—from Darth Maul. The Sith is beyond mindless now, howling as he did when he blamed Obi-Wan for all his ills, all traces of the strange tenderness forgotten, and yet—Obi-Wan pauses. This is desperation. This is grief.

As cruel and insane as his words are; as blasphemous as the dark powers he is beseeching—this is not a monster.

This is the pure madness of attachment.

“You swore you would never betray me,” Maul wails in the deep and frozen dark of a trashed freight ship. “Did you trick me, brother? Was this your play? To pretend at kindness when I was weak so I would unlearn the most elementary of lessons? And I did.”

An answering gurgle that sounds like brother, no.

“You are leaving—”

Another barrage of wheezes—

“—but if you are still even capable of loyalty after you murdered your brother… I trusted you.” Maul’s eyes gleam in the pitch dark, not plain Sith yellow but—wet. They beckon, call, howl; they are the last thing that seems to exist. “I trusted you. You called yourself my brother. I trusted you. I learned to despise the world, and yet, somehow, I trusted…”

The wails lose all coherence after that. In the primordial calm of the freezing cargo hold, Obi-Wan holds his breath, for any sign of Savage’s life, for another gambit, another invocation of the dark force, for anything at all.

The pressure plummets as quickly as it appeared. A far too quick resurfacing, and it dizzies Obi-Wan, but Maul… Maul sinks down onto the floor softly, his chicken legs collapsing in a way even chicken legs shouldn’t, still holding onto Savage and clutching his brother’s head like a doll against his chest. The handle of the ‘saber clatters from the fist he presses against Savage’s back. The red Sith is not sweating anymore, but the ordeal seems to have exhausted him: he blinks his lighthouse eyes open, and open, and open, and then he doesn’t.

Obi-Wan drops to the floor. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for now. For the true horror of the Sith power that he just witnessed to reveal itself? The pressure and the gloom are all but gone now, and even the unnatural icy wind is beginning to dissipate. And yet, this cannot be the end. If this was the dark side of the force, it is far beyond anything he felt in his deepest meditations, and it shouldn’t just… go back to sleep.

Or maybe, he’s waiting for Maul to rise up and attack him? But the Sith looks more peaceful than he ever did, wrapped tight around his—brother, his brother, whom he somehow cares for and mourns.

Or—he’s waiting for Obi-Wan himself, who came to finally kill the Sith?

That is his task, and his duty to the galaxy and the Jedi and to Raydonia, to Qui-Gon, but after this moment… it feels profane, impossible, to kill Maul who is vulnerable now because he chose to beg for his brother’s life. The monster displayed a tenderness, a humanity that Obi-Wan would never have thought him capable of, and though it is deeply irrational, Obi-Wan walks past the spot where unmoving Sith cling to each other and into the cockpit.

He pilots the freighter to the nearest planet with an advanced toxicology medcenter.

He carries Asajj Ventress inside, paler than she has ever been and gone passive with bloodloss. Regardless of what he might have learned—and he is still not sure what to make of the fragments whispered by a lying Sith—she came to his rescue, and silently he prays that the force does not will her death. He is quarantined as well, despite his pleas—there are Sith, night-dead but Sith, up on the rooftop landing bay, and if they won’t call the Jedi Order to dispatch them they should know (and he pauses, but he just can’t) they should know the Sith are also grievously ill—and he gives the healers all the clues he picked up, the symptoms and the white powder and the name on the unprepossessing crate, and they give him nothing in return. No information on Ventress’ status (she will cross his path in a few months, and she will not answer his questions) and no audience with the Iridonian in ambassadorial robes frowning through the durasteel window of his isolation room, and no heads up on the squad of anti-bioterrorism police droids they sent to the freighter.

No warning that the ship has disappeared.

That, he finds out from Master Windu who retrieves him from his quarantine cell after two days of manic pacing.

Maul, at the very least, must have survived, and Obi-Wan could have killed him when he passed out cradling his brother. Maul has survived, and taken the ship and its murderous infective powder away with him. Maul has survived, and Obi-Wan will bear the weight of every person he kills hereafter. Will bear the pressure and the dread and the pleading in his ears.

Savage Opress is still by Darth Maul’s side when they attack Florrum and murders Master Adi Gallia, and Obi-Wan can’t catalogue the emotion he feels.

#darth maul #savage opress #savage oppress #obi-wan kenobi #asajj ventress #dimtraces makes things

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lady-plantagenet · 3 years

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Ship bingo: Anne Boleyn & Henry VIII (I know, I'm not the most original person in this site); and Eleanor Cobham & Humphrey of Gloucester

Hey hey sorry for answering this shipbingo so late hh. Hope you’ll still be interested in my odd and headcanon-y analyses. Since you requested 2 I will write shorter comments if ur ok with that :) x

Anne Boleyn & Henry VIII

‘I broke England from the Church yeah I really am that secksy’ or something along the lines is said by Anne’s character in Six: The Musical. I sorta resent that. I’m not very passionate about this ship nor do I take any ‘sides’, but I must admit I’m more partial to Catherine of Aragon and consider her to be Henry’s true love. The odd thing is, this is also cause a part of my feels like Anne was in some ways to good/evolved for him?? We all know the whole seductress Anne trope or poor set-up pawn Anne, we don’t know which are true but one thing we know for sure is that there was ‘pious outspoken religious reformer Anne’ and that’s what I am more interested in. My admiration grew 1000x when I realised she was heavily critical with where the desolution of the monastery funds were going - how they enriched ministers and lackeys of Henry as opposed to going towards schools. I say all this because my mental Anne Boleyn might be a bit different from most people’s and that will influence how I also see this ship.

I guess the above paragraph explains the ‘I’m picky about it part’, I hate anything that is major baby drama. Delicious and intrigued are oddly left out because I don’t really feel that myself though I understand why others would. It is perhaps because it’s such an overportrayed relationship and because by the time it became a thing Henry was already kind of obese I believe. Sue me, I like both my ship parties to be attractive XD. I would read fic for it just like I would read anything provided it is well written enough. I’m currently reading ‘Chained in War and Love’ by Lady Perserverence on AO3 (you know that one really famous fic in the Tudor fandom) which I suppose counts but since it’s a Francois I of France/Anne Boleyn AU I guess it doesn’t count (and I much prefer this pairing). This ship is one of those historical pairings where it’s hard to deny it was not romantic and sexual, one must remember that there must have been something about Anne in particular that attracted Henry and her educational background was unusually worldly for a woman of minor English nobility, given the fact that she could very well have been 32 (and age which is considered old for motherhood even by our times) by the time she married Henry simply put there must have been a romantic/sexual attraction beyond just her being fertile. She, herself, may have also had reason to feel attracted to him (despite his fatness) because he appears to have exuded the character of a Renaissance Prince which I feel she could have been drawn towards.

To be honest the ‘it’s complicated and unhealthily’ kind of speak for themselves. I feel like a part of the breakdown went beyond her not being able to hear a son because he does not seem to have properly tried like he did with Catherine of Aragon - the marriage was only three years long. I also feel like he was a bit too set in the past for her and she may have felt disillusioned with how he carried out the reformation. I also feel like Henry thought he would find a woman with Catherine’s brand of strength but with an ability to bear children, but despite both women having education in common Anne’s Protestant beliefs made her someone entirely different. Their feelings were strong but they clearly were not made for each other. With that said, theology fasincates me so to an extent I am more interested in the consequences (the reformation and how it changed the fabric of England) then even the ship itself - that is not to say the ship doesn’t interest me. And yes. I could/want to be convinced that this ship is interesting but if anyone wants me to get on board you will have to first throw off ‘seductress Anne’ or ‘poor maligned pawn Anne’. Only mercurial Henry and reformer Anne will do for me. With that said, I really wouldn’t mind the unrequited love trope thrown in there but with Anne accepting him only because Cromwell and co convince her that this is the only way England’s religion can change. I also liked the ‘Anne of One Thousand Days’ spin where it’s unrequited on her side and then turns unrequited on Henry’s side. Now that’s super tragic and would grab my attention. Overall, I like Anne Boleyn but I don’t ship them because I don’t think they were compatible, I don’t like Henry and I hate how the reformation was carried out and how the knock-on effect was the death of the Tudor figures I care the most about: Cardinal Fisher, Thomas More and Margaret Pole.

Eleanor Cobham & Humphrey of Gloucester

I love ships where both figures were described as intelligent by their contemporaries because there’s also a meeting of minds there. It also gives this partners in crime vibes which I really like. This connects to my whole ’delicious’, ‘romantic’, ‘best friends’ and ‘I’m intrigued’. A lot of fun things could be done with this ship and so I would read fic for it but I remain unpicky (except for , you know, prose as per usual). As it happens I also already read fic for this pairing and unless you are her, I would recommend @nuingiliath who writes loads for this couple and is the resident shipper - I believe this is her OTP. On Ao3 she is ‘heartofstanding’ she has plenty of stuff both on her tumblr and on that site so just follow the tags. Also all I know about these guys is from her pretty much.

The thing is, Eleanor Cobham is like Jane Shore for me, she brings out very weird feelings because I am very traditionalist and boring and hate my infidelities and tend to have an aversion towards mistresses. However, like Jane Shore, Eleanor Cobham appears to have had some virtues and was more than a pretty face (apparently Jacobia herself was quite dull and that’s one of the things that turned Humphrey off her but I’m not sure if that’s hearsay). So just like that, I don’t get an ‘ugh’ feeling like I would with people interested in the Bourbon mistresses in the 18th century or such because I much feel like it wasn’t that physical. This is where ‘softly’ comes, the age difference makes me imagine Humphrey as having that dad-aura Idk (and btw no I’m not pleading daddy issues at all - I feel like it quite undermines this couple), his incredible level of learning further feading into this wise persona but obviously his skirmishes with the administration give me an impression of this grand daring man as well. He seemed the picture of true aristocracy and in all the way he falters from those expectations (eg lack of martial talent) I also like to see. As I said, Eleanor also being described as intelligent makes me feel that she was at his level and while I am satisfied that the necromancy charges were shams it does indicate that she was considered bright enough by her contemporaries in order for such charges to be levelled in the first place. While it is true that the whole affair was targeting Humphrey, I really feel like Eleanor herself possessed (or at least was perceived by others as possessing) a certain dangerousness and this course of action was pursued by their rivals in order to kill two birds with one stone. After all, we have seen how easy treason charges can be conjured against magnates who though not technically speaking guilty have acted against the wrong faction eg Clarence’s case. With that I also put ‘best friends’ because I feel like like all those traits derived from the facts I’ve been privy to point to the fact that the two were friends as well as in love and attracted to each other. They really give me a partners-in-crime vibe and I’m always all for that. Not to mention I’m also a sucker of one part of the ship dying (preferably the woman) with the other following not late after or at least never living a fulfilled life as a widow-widower. It’s cruel but I love my doomed couples. So yeah, I ship it, I really do. I also have a great admiration for Humphrey as I have a soft-heart for scholarly people, I also admire how he was not blindly loyal and quite brazen. It’s a personality that intrigues me.

#🍷❤️#ship bingo #don’t be shy anon #humphrey duke of gloucester #eleanor cobham #humphrey of gloucester #henry viii #anne boleyn x henry viii #anne boleyn

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gcldenchild · 3 years

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let it be known that goldie is not okay by any stretch of the imagination.

as shown in the ask post, he has some serious mental health issues. his most pressing? his suicidal tendencies and thoughts. this covers how those came to be, and how they’ve affected him throughout his life.

to say that he’d always dealt with it is inaccurate, but it certainly has been persistent for a good portion of his life, even before the attempt at transmutation.

at first, it was only the thoughts. they were minor, of course. after his mom died and he and al were truly left orphaned, ed had wondered if it was because he existed that their dad left. hohenheim was crying in that one photo they had together, after all. it always stuck at the back of his mind, and thus began the fantasizing in order to somehow justify what had happened to him and his brother.

he grew a mild fascination with death. constantly envisioning what it would’ve been like if he’d never been born- or died before he could damage his parents relationship somehow- and how al would’ve lived afterwards.

how al would’ve felt having a normal family to take care of him for his whole childhood, instead of it being completely taken away when he was only four.

part of it stemmed from an inherent longing to see his mother again in some fashion, twisted into childlike fantasies where he’s the one to die first and watches on from whatever kind of heaven he’d go to, reunited when the rest of his family passed on. peacefully.

he didn’t want to deal with grief anymore, but he couldn’t deny his true reality. their mother was gone, their shithead father was nowhere to be seen, and the house was unbearably lonely. things began to get overwhelming. he’d begun to grow slightly delirious in his study of alchemy.

most of it is masked as enthusiasm. it becomes a subconscious habit to talk about alchemy with a fake sense of determination, in order to fool the people around him into believing he wasn’t losing his mind understanding the greater world of science ahead of him, with every single word he’d read swirling around in his brain as he attached it all to the fading face of his father.

yock island, though instilling a certain lesson, does intense damage to his psyche. it was the first time he’d started to grow uncomfortable with his own fascinations. at this point, it wasn’t his own life at stake- it was al’s, too. he’d already started losing it by studying things for days on end, but nearly starving to death with his brother really put things into perspective.

he learned the meaning of all is one and one is all, but the cost could not be justifiable. not when a pool of fear stirred in his gut constantly, him finally aware of the true nature behind all his “harmless” fantasies.

he tried to shut them out. to ignore them. and then izumi had to go and warn them to never commit the taboo of human transmutation.

something broke in ed the day he even suggested that they try to find a way to crack human transmutation. so much had grown. he’d barely been able to get up that morning. even still, he acted like everything was normal. like he wasn’t struggling to even stand, being crushed under the weight of his spiraling, pent up emotions and thoughts.

he just talks with al, and something in him just... breaks. completely. he can’t bear the weight of it all anymore, and he finally talks, from the darkest recesses of his soul.

“i think we could bring mom back.”

he wishes al could’ve known better. he regrets ever saying those words, ever pushing his brother to help him with it all, ever placing his hands on that transmutation circle.

for a brief moment, he feels like he dies. it’s almost satisfying, to him. and then he wakes up in the fucking gate, truth taking his leg as payment. and then- the fucking thing they brought to life, for the cost of al’s whole body and his leg. it spits blood, reaches out at him, and he has to literally resist the urge to retch and let himself bleed out.

he only continues for al. to get al back. al didn’t deserve this. he was only ten, damnit.

it gets worse. he screams during his automail surgery, ranting about anything he can think of, trying to keep himself breathing. trying to push through it all for alphonse. everything is boiling over, and he can’t handle it.

he slowly begins to develop anger as a protective shield. it’s the only way he’s able to shut everything in his head up. the only time it begins to boil over to a point he can’t control is when he can’t bring himself to be angry.

ed still cared for other people, no matter how much he tried to ignore it. he still does good things out of his own natural moral code. unfortunately, though, being that nice? it actively hurt him, because it lets the chaos spiraling in his stomach return. he’d barely be able to get up the next day without a solid thirty minutes of extra “sleep.”

his naps become ways for him to cope with the hellish cacophony. it’s just so much easier to yell and not acknowledge the fact that people want to help him, no matter how much he may need it.

when nina happens, the nightmare that follows- although not the first of its kind- is one of the only ones to render him inconsolable upon waking. he can’t just go back to sleep, but he can’t talk, either. he has to sit through it, with his heightened breath, the heavy feeling in his chest practically choking him the entire time.

he shuts people out. he shuts his own brother out. the normal facade serves its purpose well.

when scar almost kills him, he is pained to say that the conflict in his head is wildly disproportionate.

living for al’s sake is outclassed by the want to die.

it’s the first example of his thoughts breaking out from their prison. he was ready to accept death, above all else. and then al punches him for being stupid. with everything having already snapped, he can only respond as if he were a deer in headlights, unable to truly comprehend the situation.

things just get worse. and worse. and worse. he can’t cope with it all. his anger keeps exploding, trying to protect him from himself. to keep him from going through with some of those thoughts and just sacrificing himself to get his own brother’s body back, as if the world would be better off without him.

to an extent, he was convinced it would. he never acted upon it consciously, however.

ed would never make a direct attempt. he’d do stupidly self-sacrificial things sometimes, yes, but he’d never try to kill himself outright. he wouldn’t want al to see- al had already had enough death in his life, and ed didn’t want to burden him with both his own death and the fact he was his own murderer at once.

this doesn’t stop the fantasies from getting worse. though. nor does it stop him from looking at himself in the mirror, hallucinating both the feel and sight of choking himself. (not like that would be the only way, though, of course. he’d imagined so many, over and over, and they played in his head constantly.)

he thinks about it so, so much. al is the only thing to keep him grounded. his little brother is the only being that grounds him.

it doesn’t stop him from doing things to harm himself, though. when he’s alone, he finds himself knocking against the side of his own head hard or pulling on his hair to intentionally cause pain. his head becomes sensitive, but only because hes desperate to do anything to drown everything out.

one could even find scratch marks along his arm from when he gripped onto it too hard during one of his fits, paired with the tips of his automail having a sharper edge. he hates letting people see those, but at least they’re faint. he can play them off as simple wounds from getting into a fight. the bruises are a different story, but its not as if he cant make something else up to explain them.

he panics when people see through his facade, and retaliates with even worse anger. he goes on the attack like a caged animal because deep down, he WANTS help. it’s just hard for him to even receive it before he’s been completely, utterly broken for that day.

being separated from al is debilitating.

even though he knows that alphonse can handle himself, it still does not change the fact that he’s become unhealthily dependent on him. al is his entire reason for living, and being far from that tether eats away at what composure he has left.

when he’s impaled, he wasn’t even sure if what he was going to do would even work. to envision himself as a philosopher’s stone? he’d never had that sort of a handle on his own soul before.

as he’d seen with envy, though, the yelling of everything inside him, screaming to be let out perfectly matched the stones of the homunculi. ed saved his own life, only letting himself live for alphonse, wherever he may have gone.

the months of being separated are fucking torture.

or, at least, they are, for only a while. by the time he was in alenthaal, ed had grown ... unnaturally hopeless. even though he looked fine, almost everyone in town saw through his mask.

luitumi is the one to break him first.

“edward?” “yeah, whats up, luitumi?” “you don’t need to pretend anymore.”

he’s completely dumbfounded. she attacks him right at his core. naturally, he puts up his shield, trying to force her out. to get her away from his problems. and then she fucking takes his normal hand, squeezes it, and looks at him with those unwavering glass eyes, and he breaks.

it’s all let out at once. every thought swirling around manifests as panicked crying, yelling, whining- really, anything he can verbalize. he says “you don’t know anything,” and she shuts him up completely by saying “i wouldn’t be talking to you if i didn’t, edward.”

she doesn’t destroy his shield. she takes the other route of forcing him to put it down.

ed still doesn’t remember a lot from that day, other than the feeling of being hugged by multiple people at once. the entirety of team lazarus.

emotionally drained, he can barely get up the next day, too. but instead of suffering through it by himself, he can feel a hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him through it.

he’d fallen asleep inside the living room, and lucaun and carson were waiting for him the next morning. luitumi was making food with yularosá, and cobalt was talking with heinkel and darius and greed.

it’s ... sickeningly domestic.

and yet, it wasn’t something he’d experienced since mom died. he hadn’t felt this familial safety since then, not even at the rockbell house. luitumi had broken down his walls in a single night, most likely fueled by whatever emotions charity had been able to pick up on, and now the rest of the people who could be considered “friends” in this fucking town are doing what they can to help.

talking with any of them about his feelings becomes mandatory. they don’t give him a choice, and for some reason, he can’t bring himself to fight it. the better part of him knows that he needs it.

at first, its twice a day. usually luitumi and lucaun handle it. cobalt and carson deal with his constantly presenting daddy issues, though. carson knew the feeling of growing up with a dad who didn’t love him (and, initially, no dad at all), and cobalt knew the feeling of fucking hating his own father.

his need for a parental figure slowly dies down. cobalt will never be a father to him, just like mustang, but he’s okay with that. cobalt doesn’t have any legal standing over him unlike the colonel, and he’s a lot more fucking comfortable with that.

cobalt doesnt have to pretend like he’s a father in any capacity for ed. what he does is out of his own heart, not because he sees ed as a ward.

at least, that’s what ed believes. and he likes it like that. people not pretending to be things they aren’t helps him shut away that one need.

it moves to once a day. he trails them a lot. his attachment issues come into presence, but they keep reminding him that its okay to need someone. slowly but surely, he’s able to deal with being left alone, though not for very long.

it moves to every other day. his thoughts are a lot less loud than he remembers them being.

it moves to only twice a week. the first time ed doesn’t artificially smile is for their christmas and new years celebrations, when luitumi drags him into the dancing circle with her. the whole thing reminds him of some of the celebrations they used to have in resembool in the summer. he says he’s not a good dancer, but luitumi doesn’t care. he lets her take the lead for the start, and just like everything else in his life, he learns fast.

he finally begins smiling, completely free of his thoughts for once. he actually has fun that isn’t tethered to everything he’s been building up for over these many years.

alenthaal becomes his safe place. “whats said in alenthaal, stays in alenthaal.” he genuinely believes it to be true.

when the promised day draws closer and closer, he promises to come back. it’s not just al he’s living for, anymore. he’s living for this town, too, full of people who make him feel safe.

when al sacrifices himself to bring his arm back, it sets ed back what feels like years. his anger returns, completely unstoppable, and his one focus is to kill father. and then greed dies.

it just gets worse. even with the bastard gone, his progress is still set back significantly.

he yells at hohenheim. calls him a rotten father. he didnt want to deal with any of that self sacrificial garbage, not because that was the man who left them, but because thats exactly what ed does.

he thinks. thinks so, so hard. finally, he draws out the circle, everything finally becoming clear.

he sacrifices his own alchemy. ed doesn’t need it anymore, not when it’s caused him and his brother so much pain.

he has the town of alenthaal. he has his friends. he has his family.

who needs alchemy, when he’s got them?

and he beats truth, in his own special way. al is brought back. even though they spend months in rehabilitation, ed’s head is so much clearer than its ever been.

he returns home resembool. everything was worth it.

when he visits alenthaal once again, luitumi’s changed. she’s permanently merged with charity as a result of the promised day. they become two extremes- a complete lack of any alchemy at all, and a newfound power that still has so much unknown alchemy to tap into. even still, they share that hug, ed having kept his promise to not die.

he does his best to be more open. alenthaal is his safe haven, but having more than one isn’t impossible.

in the time before he goes off to the west, he tries to open up, bit by bit. its hard. the thoughts aren’t gone, and he knows they never will be. he’ll still have times where he’s rendered useless by them all, but this time, winry and al are there to help.

his emotions are genuine. his smiles are genuine. he doesn’t have to fake anymore.

when decides to study alchemy in the west, he knows every possible risk. he continues, despite the danger, because this would be his way of coming to terms with what happened to hohenheim. he ties alchemy to him, and even in death, that doesn’t change.

his father is gone. his father was one of the greatest alchemists the world had seen.

so ed will just overcome him, even without being able to perform alchemy anymore. he’ll prove that he’s more than just his kid. he’ll make his dad proud, as much as he hates calling him by that name.

luitumi joins him on his journey. they ground eachother. neither will have to deal with their pain alone, not this time. ed knows suffering through it isn’t an option for him anymore.

the thoughts will return, once in a while.

ed no longer shuts them out at this point. he lets them be, allowing them to stir until the mental soup is done. until his head finally becomes clear.

#tw suicidal thoughts #cw suicidal thoughts #tw suicide mention #cw suicide mention #tw self harm #cw self harm #goldie is seriously fucked this is a general warning #post promised day hes a lot better but before it? he still needs consistent help. things still constantly overwhelm him.#even though he gets a lot better at dealing with it in alenthaal it still very much is all there.#this is also a uhhh super fucking long post HGDJHS #{|❂|} THE GOLDEN CHILD | edward.#{|❂|} HE WHO TRAVELS THE STARS | info.

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evak-fic-rec-turtleanon · 4 years

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Evak Fics - Proposal

** Bonus: Not proposal fics but related to it and an Isaks fathers pov fic

Spring or Autumn by orphan_account (199 words, 2017) - A cute one shot

Two Happiest Guys in Oslo by Cardamom21 (330 words, 2017) - An amalgamation of cuteandtwisted fic titles

Proposal? by Isabeauu (449 words, 2017) - “Proposing? You think that was proposing? You really think I would ever propose to you in a shitty way like that?”

Say yes by Cherrielips (463 words, 2020) - His eyes widen when he says an email titled "Order confirmation" from an engagement ring company. He holds his breath. He feels Even still besides him.

Alle Hjerters Dag by evak1isak (737 words, 2018) - Even is away for work, so Isak is going to spend Valentine's Day alone ... or so he thinks.

Let's Both Propose by givemepizza (899 words, 2019) - Even abruptly interrupts Isak's marriage proposal because He has other ideas.

No Need To Dine And Wine (when you're already mine) by clerence (1k words, 2017) - Isak knows that Even is always full of surprises. But not this. Never this.

I don't think it's very strange by boxesofflowers, Eeyoreneedsahug (1.1k words, 2017) - Isak wants an explanation for Even's dream marriage proposal, and Even won't miss the chance to tease him.

nothing sure in this world by withoutwords (1.1k words, 2017) - “What’s this?” Sana asks, pointing at something over Even’s shoulder. “Cheese toast? On a wedding menu?” “It’s a thing.” “Right.”

The Kitchen Cupboards by dear_ida (1.1k words, 2017) - Even has a thing about leaving cupboard doors open. Isak thinks it's cute. They dance a bit.

you're an idiot, even bech næsheim by hippopotamus (1.2k words, 2017) - Isak thought Even was dropping hints for Isak to propose - and Isak was going to. He bought a ring just last week. But it seems he was wrong about why exactly he was dropping hints, because there’s a ring hidden in the bottom of the drawer, and it’s not the one Isak bought.

The Boy Who Saved Me by smilewright (1.2k words, 2017) - Isak has a plan for his five year anniversary, and it involves video editing.

The Milk Incident by wyoheartsmusic (1.3k words, 2018) - It's two in the morning and Isak is unhealthily obsessed with milk and he needs someone to hug him.

I'm not going anywhere by maia_nn (1.3k words, 2019) - “Oh my god Even! Look out the window! Look at the ocean it’s so beautiful!” “Not as beautiful as you.” “Jesus, you’re so corny.” Isak blushed.

i have loved you since we were eighteen. by Prettything_uglylie (1.5k words, 2018) - In the dark cast of the kitchen, the only source giving off a semblance of light is the closeted curve of the lights above the sink, casting moonlight-like splashes of silver over the grey tiles of their floor. Isak would dare to bet that they would be cold on bare feet but with woolen socks to protect his own feet and Even's immortal euphoric episode, neither of the boys feel it either.

the softest proposal by Bellakitse (1.5k words, 2019) - A drunk and high Isak shares something with Even he wasn't ready to share.

so i'm writing the future. by milominderbinder (1.6k words, 2017) - They're lying in their bed, Isak's cheek cushioned in the crook of Even's shoulder and his arm thrown around Even's waist, taking long deep breaths in time with each other, when Even asks, "do you ever think about the future?" Isak turns 21 at 21:21, on the 21st of June.

I didn't plan it by Masterless (1.6k words, 2017) - Inside the box was a ring. It was a thick band of silver, with heart shapes cut out of the metal.

for the blessing by cammm (1.7k words, 2017) - Even really wants to ask Isak to marry him. He's picked out a few rings. And knows just how he wants to ask Isak... all he has to do is get the blessing.

Save the Date by tangledupin_blue (1.7k words, 2017) - Isak was silently glad there was no balcony or nudity involved. In fact, he was a little surprised by the simplicity of the proposal, after all the grand gestures Even had made in the last few years for birthdays, anniversaries and reunions.

Small Grand Gestures by nofeartina (1.8k words, 2019) - This is it, this is the moment. It feels right. It doesn’t get much bigger than this.

other lives and dimensions and finally a love poem by iphigenias (1.9k words, 2017) - "Marry me," Isak says. Even almost drops the can of tuna he's holding.

Marry me baby by nneazzz (2.1k words, 2017) - Even proposes to Isak like he said he would in 3/08.

Don't Wanna Walk Alone by cwtalton (2.1k words, 2017) - "I will, you know," Isak says. "Will what?" Even asks, confused. "Marry you."

No Surprises by orphan_account (2.2k words, 2017) - In where Isak and Even like to slow-dance just for the sake of it. Also, they are idiots in love, so things scalate real quick. You have been warned.

The Tears and The Highs We Breathe by ultimatelawrence (2.3k words, 2018) - Sometimes Even feels like a burden. Isak is desperate to show him that he's anything but one.

And I'll never not take your hand by everything_else (3k words, 2017) - There’s a lot of them together, curled around each other every which way: at home, at parties. There’s one Eskild took on the sofa at the Kollektivet of Even asleep in Isak’s lap. Isak is looking down at him, reverent, stroking gently through his hair.

let us cling together as the years go by by sargentblue (3.1k words, 2017) - It's been sitting in Even's front pocket for a while. He could feel the weight of it against his leg throughout the day, and Even feels like it sticks out like a sore thumb, but Isak (or anyone else, for that matter) hasn't noticed.

here, on bended knee by thekardemomme (3.3k words, 2017) - Jonas tries to find handcuffs in Isak's closet. Instead, he finds something else.

the world is ours by ihatefindingusernames (3.6k words, 2018) - As Isak stood there, staring at the most beautiful man he had ever seen, he couldn’t help but smile. This stunning man was his soon to-be husband. Isak just smiled and watched.

Starry Nights by sensualstalker (3.6k words, 2017) - Even and Isak go to the cabin to look at the stars and they have a bangin time that ends in cuddles. Proposal ish.

21 Roses by germericangirl (3.8k words, 2017) - Even is trying to think of a great gift for Isak's 19th birthday, and what would be better than a marriage proposal?

fucking finally by theyellowcurtains (4k words, 2017) - It was nearing Christmas and Isak had to do something. He really wanted Even to be in his life forever now.

a life to live by champagneleftie (4.2k words, 2018) - “We'll have to get married before we apply for the visas,” Isak says behind him. The spoon clatters to the ground, sauce splashing on the floor, the cabinets, Even's jeans. “Wh-what?”

Stop the world I wanna get off with you by LostInAdmiration (4.3k words, 2017) - set in the future, in which Isak and Even are very busy grownups, but are still just as gross and in love as they are right now.

would you do me the honors? by cammm (4.7k words, 2017) - Even loves Isak. So much that he's going to ask him to marry him. He gets some of their friends involved to help him make this happen. He wants everything to be perfect.

Through the Orange by grxcecxldwell (5k words, 2018) - Isak and Even met in high school and since then it's been a whirlwind of love, angst, and some fluff - mix in a rough proposal and a flawless wedding, and then you've got an epic love story!

First Star of Christmas by Laika_the_husband (5k words, 2019) - A sequel to The first star you see may not be a star which is a VERY angsty, beautiful fic. You can read this without reading the first one but if you can handle dark themes, I absolutely recommend the first fic. Isak can't handle being touched, because of his traumatic childhood. Him and Even make do.

you wear nothing but you, and you wear it so well. by Skamtrash (5.3k words, 2020) - Isak has two left feet and keeps crashing into Even in the school hallways which doesnt make sense since Evens 6'4 and hard to miss. It might be the universe trying to bring them together.

and so i happily concede, this is all i ask, this is all i need by lovedisak (5.3k words, 2017) - Even is fucking owning this marriage proposal thing. (with a little help)

He Moves Me by warlocked_mundane (5.3k words, 2017) - Even talking about their future like there is no way but for them to spend the rest of their lives together and build a family of their own, makes him giddy with so much joy. He’s never felt so happy in his life before.

It's Like Here by sasnill (5.5k words, 2017) - Late nights, mountains, creative endeavours, an ever-expanding to-watch list and the future: a quiet weekend.

363 Days by cuteandtwisted (5.8k words, 2017) - Even surprises and dedicates one random day besides his birthday to Isak every year until the end of time. Aka: the reason why Even said 363 days and not 364.

You are in Love by pressurerin (6k words, 2017) - Even is so in love with Isak. Isak feels the same.

love makes a fool turn into a king by GayaIsANerd (6k words, 2018) - “We’re getting married,” Even whispers, and Isak’s smile turns wider. “We really are, baby.”

moving through this world as a two-man team by moonlightphan (6.9k words, 2020) - Even and Isak go to weddings throughout the years, and learn what they want from their possible future wedding. They learn what the concept of marriage means to them.

hope you feel the same by noeller (8.4k words, 2019) - 5 times Even falls a little bit more in love and 1 time he makes sure Isak knows it.

In Vino Veritas by Sabeley (9.9k words, 2017) - After seven years apart, Isak wakes up to find Even in his bed and a wedding ring on his finger.

hell yeah, you the shit (that's why you're my equivalent) by colazitron (10k words, 2017) - Sometimes your boyfriend proposes and you just really want to sit on his dick.

In A Week by allyasavedtheday (23k words, 2017) - A sequel to Things Look Different in the Morning. “You and Even spend the five nights up to Saturday apart. If you do, we’ll pay for your honeymoon.”

We're Not Broken Just Bent by TotallyTinkerbell (25k words, 2017) - Getting back together fic. They had made a decision that didn’t fall easy on either of them. A decision that still kept Isak awake at night in his bed that was too big and in his kitchen that was too empty in the mornings. On the couch in front of his tv-cabinet which was void of Even’s film collection, and in his hallway which no longer had a dozen pairs of shoes in it.

Lovestruck by Sabeley (29k words, 2018) - 5 times Isak asked Even’s daughter an important question and 1 time she asked one back.

prize your heart of gold (the way i do) by orphan_account (30k words, 2017) - Isak's a bit unsure about his future royal duties, but he's more unsure about his feelings towards Even Bech Næsheim, the guy who is out to take his throne. A Princess Diaries 2 AU

Time Can Do So Much, And Still You're Mine? by cwtalton, mlbee (60k words, 2017) - First, Isak and Even are going to a New Year's Eve party. Then, Isak has something important to ask Even on a cold winter night. The Multi-Chapter Evak Wedding Extravaganza fic

I May Be Younger, But I'll Look After You by alotofphandoms (90k words, 2017) - Isak’s mom met Even’s mom in high school, then they met Isak’s and Even’s dad’s in college. When Even was born, Isak soon followed, two years later. For as long as they can remember, they’ve been in each other’s lives. Hopefully, they'll stay in each other's lives.

When you're near to me by skambition (138k words, 2017) - A story about Isak and Even and their beautiful future together.

***** BONUS *****

Ringed by angelboygabriel (493 words, 2019) - Isak and Even have an engagement party.

I Swear My Life to You by sensualstalker (947 words, 2017) - Isak and Even write their vows without realizing because they're that in love.

why something blue? by theyellowcurtains (2k words, 2017) - The one where they learn how hard planning a wedding is.

don't come then by theyellowcurtains (2.1k words, 2017) - The one where they tell their parents.

too good at goodbyes by everythingislove (straykid) (3.2k words, 2018) - the life of Isak, as witnessed by Terje Valtersen.

Dear Even, if you're reading this then— by cuteandtwisted (6.1k words, 2018) - Not a proposal but it's so sweet. "He's totally getting you a puppy," says Mutta. "You think?" Even asks.

everything that happens is from now on. by Skamtrash (6.7k words, 2020) - Part 3 of at the mere sound of his voice, I'm weak in the knees. their life after being together for six years featuring a bit of angst as usual, alot of future planning, married life being 10/10, adding a member to their family and them being cute as shit.

#evak fic rec #skam fic rec #proposal

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potuzzz · 4 years

Text

I can’t fucking do this.

I can’t play this game.

I’m so tired.

I can’t do anything I want. I don’t even know what I want.

All I know is that anyone who’s ever given me a reason to smile feels infinitely far away right now, and I’m left with a cold, unforgiving world that values things that I simply cannot give.

I don’t even want to leave the cesspool, because of knowing there are people like me I’d leave behind. Fuck I think I just want to die. I think everybody just has to die. Thank God I believe in the immortal soul and a relatively good afterlife because if I didn’t I don’t know what the despair would do to me.

It’s so ugly. I cannot even look at it.

I was a knight, and I was stripped, and now, I do all the things I scoffed at. All the things I promised myself I would never do.

I’m just sitting here mindlessly fucking around on the same 3 websites, nothing is changing, I’m just melting my brain in hopes that it will dull some of this horrible feeling.

But this visceral feeling is deeper than that. It’s deeper than surface emotions. It’s in my fucking soul. my soul is on fire and thers nothing left on this world to put it out. theres nothing that brings mejoy. i dont care. even if something pops up right now that would make me feel better, it will be fucked. it will all exist for the wrong reasons. i cannot even, for example, hope to meet a random new friend, because i cannot make new friends. it has, tried-and-tested proved to be impossible. im too broken. my mind just doesnt function the same way. if they dont hate and reject me, i will hate and reject them. i will pour everything into a rose colored illusion i project, and be viscerally, cripplingly disappointed when i finally dare to remove the veil.

im slowly accepting the veil. i was told by so many powerful entities that i must not submit to apathy. but im sorry. im too high maintenance. i just cant do it. i cant do anything i promised of me. at least, i sincerely doubt it. i just cant. i cant change the world for better. i can even be nice anymore. i forgot how to be nice, “stop being nice” they said, “ you need ot take care of yourself. you need to fight back against this ugly world.” well now im ugly and i cant go back. i used to be naive and unjustifiably forgiving and cringey and annoying and unhealthily passive and pathetically submissive and i fought those things just to become the thing i hated. and now im turning into a young adult and my formative window is over. i cant change myself. i can only hope to get a fucking aneurysm from the stress of just being sober or of not actively participating in self destructive behavior. im so tired. let me destruct. let me go out in a blaze of glory, an explosion, dont let me die softly with a pathetic whimper before fading nonchalantly into the background, to be easily forgotten. what a curse.

just let me stop working, fuck. either let me be a sheep, a slave, a workhorse, trained to rationalize on my own accord how everythings okay and im the main character and its all gonna be good and cool, but dont fucking put me in this middle ground. dont leave me alone with the darkness and then make me hop back and forth back. this is dehumanizing. this is...this isn’t fair. if they came to hear me beg, they’ll be satisfied. allow me the small dignity. allow me this one fucking thing.

take it out of my hands. put me in a war. a big one. one where i can pretend that im doing something good, fighting for something bigger than myself. one where i have comraderie with people who i would easily hate in an other siutuiaton. youb know, bdy conditioning class in ghigh school was fucking great for this reason. all these shitty peole who would bully me, who would hold me in the loewst, cruelest form of contept, who would even continue this view of me at the beginning,w e all became equals through the trials of fire. imagine what bonding could be had over death and squallor and rage and intense, immeasurable, uunignorable suffering.

that’s the fuckign problem with the is world . all the suffering is way too damn weasy to ignore. death by a billion paper fcuts. slice me asuner with a fork of lightning, dont give me this undignified death. its cruel, pointlessly cruel. you lose nothing buy giving me somthoing dignified.

i cant even fucking sleep. i cant even have my own self for comfort, me versus the world baby. noep. its dead. i cant even talk to ymself. i cant even look at myself, as if ive done something wrong, when ive literally not done antyhting wrong, buefcause i havent done a fucking thing. i dont areif this is hyperbolic.

im so tired of saying the same words over and over

im so tired of seeing the same 5 different types of peopl,e

im so tired of being disappointed. show me something whimsical. something truly magical. something awe inspiring. terrigying. attack me in my dreams. rip my soul out its soft, comgfy shell, and thrust it into the sky, that visceral discomfort. am ai really a coward beause i didnt go sky diving or something? i dont know. am i ca cowrard because i stopped allowing myself...WHATEVERT THE FUCK WOULD HAPPEN IN MY DREAMS???? I DONT NOW!

blah blah blah wow noah this is going to be so useful in your brand building campaign wow hahaha youre so cool oure going to be famous boy! FAMOUS BOY! youre gong to be big and famous and universally olloved! everyone will be yor friend! eveerything woikll work out in the end. nbody you love will ever die or ever hate you. it all works onut in the end. it all works out in the end.your going to be GFAMOUS DUDE LAOL HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHH HAHAHAHAHAHAHA THIS IS ACTUALLY MAKING ME SMILE!

DUDE, FUCK YOU!

FUCK OFF!

FUCK OFF! FUCKI OFF!

WOW THIS IS GOING TO BE GREAT FOR THE ALGORITHYM THIS IS GOING TO LOOK SO GOOD ON THE RATIOS AND THE METRICS AND THE RED LINE GO WEEEEEEEEEEEE EAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY THIS IS GOING TO LOOK SOOOOO GOOOOD ON YOIR PORTFOLIO WHERES YOUR PORTFOLIO CAN YOU LINK EM TO THE SONG DUDE YOU JUST GOT TO LNK ME TO YOUG MUSIC MAN!!!! IM SURE ITLL BE GREAT ILL LOVE IT :) :) :) O))IK

fuck YOU

WHY DO I HAVE TO GO TO WORK TOMORROW LE ME STYA UP ALLLLLL NIGHT

ALLLLL NIGHT BABY THIS PATTY GOES ON ALLLLLLLL NIGHT

CAN I GET AN AMENE LOUDER FOR THE KIDS IN THE BACK

KIDS I N YOUR BACK ITS JUST THE KIDS IN YOUR BACK

YOU LL FEEL HOLY JUST HOLD STILL FOR THE

ahahhaahhaahahahahahahahahahahhahah

if you’ve killed yourself Your’e a Damn Hero a(TM) and im not nmade at you. not anymore. i used to be, sre, but now i get it. i fuckin get it my guy. how fucking 1st world of me to think you wouldn’t. honestly. its amazing uyou put up with what you did. you’re souch a good musiciain dude. HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH an ARTISSSSTTTTEEEEEEE I GOT THE BIG BRAIN BIG THINK TIME MY FEELINGS ARE IMPORTANT IM AN ARTISSSSSTTTTE

dont show your ASS FOR A SECOND OR THEYLL RIP YOU TO SHRED SBOY

just osme advice before the planks fdrtop

yeah just make sure you never do any of tis

dont hsow weakness for even a second

dont beg

dont you pathetic loser

just be happy

just make your life happyier

you know

they always this new bullshit ass looking way of things, the whole, “they killed themselves it woas outside of your control there is nothing theyhat you could have done it was doomed from the start they made the decision THEY made the decision

like literally fuck you dude. whatever you tell yourself to sleep at night.

you might just be a grain of sand, but a grain of sand is a lot more than 0/. i get to live every single day with my sin,s, they are variou s and many and oh boy they are GREAT. , if i may do say so myself. but i dont.

pause

more dirnk

*jeopardy song(

All i have is imagined scenarios. All i have is parasocial relationshiops. All i have is people im supposedly super close with that i feel a constant need to hide gfrom.

you don’t know me. and when i let the mask slip for a seocnd you are repulsed. fuck you.

i’d like...i liked to think it was because i was special. because i did omthing outside of the norm, that brought this...new thing that had to be contended with...HAD to be contended with...for the human speices to evolve. i was just a small LEOG brick in the gram dn sceneme of things, sure, but i was an actaual...i was a VESSEL. I was a VEHICLE>. now what am i. nothing. a waste of tiem.e a waste of love and anergy and resources. of hope. how dare you hope for me. you have no idea. luck is in not many people’s favor but i dont even have the money for the lottery tickets. i wouldnt even know how to read the numbers if i wanted to. i’d be too much of a prudish, self-centered, egotistical, unbearably annoying hipster to use the numbers even if i could read them, and i know this to my fucking core. it’s like i’d rather ...

FUCK THIS HALFWAY POINT

THE HALFWAY POINT BETWEEN SLEEPING AND AWAKENING IS HELL

AND I HAVE SETTLED PERMANENTLY ON IT

for why?

SPITE

I SWEAR TO GOD BECAUASE I CAN THINK OF NO OTHER RESOASN.

it doens’t matter.

i have to stop typing and go to bed.

and shut my eyes.

and sit in silence.

alone.

so alone.

and wait for sleep to take me.

and then wake up and flip burgers.

it has to happen. i cant stay up all night. i’ll fucking die tomorrw. i wish i could just stay uo all night.

amyabe i should? like i mean seriously, accelerationist based shit but like, maybe i just need to lose my job just to...rip the bandaid off.

everyone, im sorry if youre reaing this, i;m okay. im just in a rough spot. im sorry, please ignore this. im sorry.

#doubleups

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proiida · 5 years

Text

“plus ultra, go beyond.” it’s one of the core themes of bnha, and it’s a common theme in a lot of stories. after all, trying your hardest is typically a good thing. with the way that bnha writes it, though, often trying your hardest means pushing yourself past a reasonable limit. while there are certainly situations where this is necessary to ensure the survival of others, such as the number of times when all might pushes past the limit of one for all in order to ensure the safety of others, there are some situations where it’s just ridiculous to apply the mantra of “plus ultra”. doing so means sacrificing your physical or mental health in order to succeed in something that shouldn’t matter as much as life or death.

one of the best situations in which characters’ application of “plus ultra” is excessive is during the sports festival, a school event that pushes students to extreme actions to win, despite the relatively little harm that failing would cause. sure, failing would mean they lose a chance to show their skills to pro hero agencies, but it is no life or death situation. no two characters juxtapose each other quite so neatly in their approach to the sports festival as monoma neito and bakugou katsuki. the contrast between the two provides a great way to understand how bnha’s narrative promotes the idea of “plus ultra”.

now, why am i mentioning monoma, a character who is, in the grand scheme of the story, a pretty minor character? well, his introduction in the sports festival arc was likely very intentional and for greater purposes increasing class tension and comedic value. he plays a pretty important, yet subtle role in it. yes, he is mostly just seen starting shit with class 1-a and getting wrecked by bakugou’s intense ambition, but he gives us a way to compare the attitudes of the main characters with an “inappropriate” attitude. he is, to put it simply, the anti-“plus ultra”.

now, i am not saying that monoma’s approach to the sports festival was incorrect. hell, were the primary purpose of the sports festival not to put yourself out there for pro heroes to see, then the plan to make other classes underestimate class 1-b would have its merits. the primary purpose of the sports festival is what it is for the sake of advancing the narrative, though, and the narrative intends to portray monoma’s approach to the sports festiva as incorrect. he is in a story where one of the core messages is “plus ultra, go beyond,” meaning that he was doomed to fail from the beginning. that’s the point. we’re supposed to look at monoma and go, “well that didn’t work, which further proves that plus ultra is the way to go.”

but what exactly is monoma’s approach? well, let’s see a few of the actions he takes in the sports festival. i am going to include what monoma says was class 1-b’s approach to the sports festival, because it was likely driven by monoma, and monoma strongly identifies with class 1-b. first, class 1-b decides to throw the race and hang back so that they can scout class 1-a’s quirks. then, when monoma’s team in the cavalry battle goes from 2nd place to 4th place, he’s resigned to taking 4th place (only for bakugou to refuse to let monoma slide by without trying). in short, he lacks the “plus ultra” spirit that bnha so frequently refers to.

i believe the moment that most portrays monoma’s approach as incorrect is in the cavalry battle, with his team’s various clashes with team bakugou. now, you won’t hear me saying that bakugou’s character does something better than another character in bnha very often, but within the scope of the sports festival, he acts as the best example for “plus ultra”. midoriya, you say? jesus christ, no. i loathe to imagine how terrifying it would be to see a kid break that many bones on live television. unless “plus ultra” means “let’s all get seriously injured, thank god we have recovery girl here to allow us to do that!”, then. yeah. bakugou is the one we want to talk about here. (although, as i will discuss later, even bakugou’s practice of “plus ultra” ends up causing harm to him.)

so how does monoma foil bakugou, and by extension, the school’s motto of “plus ultra”? well, obviously, we’ve got to talk about bakugou’s actions during the sports festival to understand that. for starters, bakugou very clearly tries during the obstacle race, landing an impressive 3rd place. is he satisfied? no. in the obstacle race, bakugou, unlike monoma, refuses to settle for a place that will only get him to the next round. no, he wants an undisputable 1st, and he’s damn ready to take the million point headband from todoroki, even when his team has enough points to secure 2nd place. then, in the tournament, bakugou treats each of his opponents with a necessary respect by battling the best he can, expecting the same out of them. it’s his chance to prove that he’s the best on a level playing field, where he’s surrounded by peers who could actually give him a run for his money for the first time in his life. with the way he grew to see the world around him, he does not see any option outside of “plus ultra”. he would never even consider the strategy class 1-b took, because in his mind, to win, you just win. you don’t lose to win.

this idea of not losing to win. “plus ultra”, or if you’re really fancy, “ne plus ultra,” which quite so literally means “no further beyond”. the top is the top, and you just keep on going until you can’t possibly go any further. what all might says when rewarding bakugou with the first place medal (a scene i have a number of issues with, but that’s besides the point) really highlights the mindset bakugou takes. “in this world where people are constantly being compared publicly, there are not many who can keep aiming for the top of an unchanging scale.” unchanging is the keyword, this idea that personal achievement is not defined relative to others or to yourself, but rather defined by a position on an absolute scale. sure, there’s first place, which bakugou does end up getting in the sports festival, but then there’s “ne plus ultra”, the point where he isn’t just winning in comparison to others, but reaching the highest point of possible achievement.

being the absolute best that you can possible be sounds good and all, but when you consider the scope of human capability, it plays out pretty unhealthily. bakugou is basically that kid who sets the curve on a test, but breaks down in class because he didn’t get every question right. and as annoying as those kids may seem, especially when you aren’t considering what’s going on inside their minds, it is genuinely sad to think about the kind of perspective you have to have of the world to believe that first place isn’t good enough. you can’t relish the small victories, because for you, winning is the expectation. “plus ultra” becomes driving yourself to a standard that is simply unrealistic to reach every single time. by taking out the sense of relativity, it becomes less about doing the best you can do, and more about doing the best anyone can do, which are two very different concepts with two very different impacts on a person.

now, to bring things back to what i really wanted to talk about, one of the frequently repeated phrases in bnha. is “plus ultra” really the best way to go? i mean, at the end of the day, it is just a sports festival. it’s one thing for all might to push himself past the limit in a situation where failing to means putting his students in grave danger. it’s another thing to consider the physical and mental strain put on midoriya and bakugou because of a school event. and yes, i include midoriya, because this is the arc when he starts feeling the pressure to becoming the next symbol of peace (and again, the arc where he breaks way too many bones on live television). these are kids almost fresh out of middle school, being told, “yep, this event pretty much determines your future, and you’ve only got three chances at it.” i mean, from a purely narrative point of view, it does up the stakes of things, but jesus christ, the things it does to some of these kids is sad. it shouldn’t have to be something you get that torn up over, whether physically or mentally.

while i understand that bnha is a shounen manga and that it’s difficult to just scrap the high-pressure stakes of the sports festival, i do believe more could have been done to address the consequences of these extreme “plus ultra” attitudes. you can’t present the idea that “plus ultra is the way to go”, while simultaneously showing that there are serious effects to this attitude. so far, we’ve seen so many instances within bnha of how trying too hard causes more harm than good, and yet there has been no direct commentary made on the motto’s negative impacts on the characters. “plus ultra” is still a motto that is portrayed as inspirational, which sends some pretty conflicting messages. i can understand that it’s probably hard to tackle the issue. “try your hardest!” seems like an innocent enough message, and you don’t want to necessarily say you shouldn’t try. there has to be a way to go about promoting trying your hardest without saying, “work yourself to the point of breaking”, though.

#meta #bnha meta #my meta #mine #sports festival arc #i'm smart

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life-love-and-alcohol · 7 years

Text

Don’t throw this dog a bone (Victuuri one-shot)

yet another fic no one asked for...I have a request to answer and this is all I can bring myself to write (for the lovely anon who requested fluff+makkachin...this may kind of suit your needs...but I promise to do something better and more specific for you within these days!)

MORE UNDER THE CUT

(if you are on mobile, here’s the ao3 link)

Yuuri let the waiter guide him through the restaurant, taking in the fancy decorations and marveling at every small detail. He didn't even bother to consider the tables inside, since it was a beautiful Friday night and they were right next to the shore. So he timidly pointed at a little table for two outside on the patio, surrounded by the hum of the river and people's light chattering.

He hanged his coat on the backrest and sat down, telling the waiter he was waiting for someone else when he was offered to see the menu, and thanking him for his gentleness as he watched him leave to attend other tables.

Taking a look at his watch, he made sure he had arrived on time. In fact, he had arrived a bit early. His nerves and his excitement were to blame, to be honest. It had been ages since he had had a proper date, and no matter how many times he reached to loosen the knot on his tie, it would still feel way too tight.

The waiter came back to leave a little basket with bread and butter in front of him. Should he take a bite? No he shouldn't, he was on a diet. The candle seemed to be too close to the basket, so he moved in just in case. In reality, he just needed to move his hands and release some tension. He sighed, drumming his fingers on the table, and taking in the sight of the busy restaurant as a distraction.

The place looked fairly expensive, elegant, and for a moment he wondered if he had enough money to pay. He had made sure to grab more than usual just in case it was too fancy, but he hadn't count on the fairy lights, the wonderful view of the river and the refined crockery staring holes into his wallet.

He felt a drop of sweat running down his forehead, and he slyly took a napkin to wipe it as he stared at his reflection on the window next to him. His hair was still on point, slicked back with gel, but he fixed it a little more obsessively. That lilac shirt looked good on him, at least that's what Phichit had said when he pushed him out of the apartment that night. "You look great!" he had reassured him, with quite a hard pat on the back "You'll leave him breathless!". Yuuri doubted he would give his date an asthma attack, but he really wanted to cause a good impression.

After all, the man had never seen him outside the office, outside his overly-stressed, sweaty persona, with that dull working outfit and the glasses. This was his chance, the chance to prove him he had a life outside the paperwork and his desk.

Maybe, it was also the time to prove it to himself, too.

Just when he was about to take a culprit hand to the bread basket, he felt something touching his feet and turned to see a brown dog sniffing his shoes. He smiled, wanting to pet the curly head, but a loud whistle coming from another table interrupted them.

"Makka, come here" the poodle immediately responded to the call, walking towards a table where a young man sat alone "Don't bother other people"

Yuuri wanted to say that it was ok, that he really liked dogs, but then he realized he didn't want his date to arrive and find him all covered in fur.

The man stared at him funnily, arching a brow, and Yuuri looked away. There weren't many people around, just a group of girls that seemed to be celebrating a birthday, some elderly couples, and the man with the dog. Of course there weren't families with kids, it wasn't a family restaurant. And the place was way too quiet for someone who ate constantly at McDonalds.

He checked the time again, his feet beginning to tap involuntarily as he saw it was nine o'clock already. His date should be about to arrive.

He was happy, very hopeful about that night. Not only because he had been drooling over his co-worker for months already, but also because it had been ages since the last time he had been out of his house for some reason other than his job. If he wasn't in the office, he was at home, studying. Phichit insisted it wasn't healthy, and that he was going to start putting on weight again if he didn't move. But he wasn't eating much, either. He wasn't really hungry when he came back from work, and the only lunches he had were the ones in the lies he told Phichit.

He didn't like lying to him, he was his best friend, not to say the only one, and he was worried about him. But he already had enough with his complaints about his social life to add even more drama about his lack of appetite, and he didn't want him to worry. Phichit had a life of his own, after all. And he had to take care of it.

As he watched the group of friends singing happy birthday on a distant table, he couldn't help but remember his parents' gift when he turned twenty.

He and Phichit had been considering leaving their small, humble town in the search for better opportunities, but paying for the stay in a larger city until he got a proper job in there was a huge amount of money. And his parents had surprised him by saving and gifting him every penny to their name, and he was finally able to move out.

He smiled, remembering the moment, staring at one of the elderly couples at the distant tables.

He missed his parents. And his sister. And his dog. He missed his family like crazy. As well as his hometown, the people he used to know, the streets he used to walk… From one day to another, he was suddenly miles away and all he had been able to take with him was his best friend. Which he was extremely thankful for, since Phichit was his anchor to sanity.

But still, he hadn't been ready to give his back to the life he had been so used to. And, unlike Phichit, he wasn't very good at dealing with changes.

“Sir, do you want to see the menu yet?”

“Oh, no, sorry. I’ll wait a little longer”

“Alright, sir”

He took a hand to the basket, taking a small piece of bread. Just a little wouldn’t do any harm. The waiter turned to take the order of the man with the dog, and Yuuri tried to read his lips out of mere boredom but he had never been good at it. What he did read, though, was the title of the novel between his hands. Stoner, by John Williams, it read. He didn’t know the book, but he found himself wondering what it was about.

He felt his phone buzzing in his pocket and he almost jumps off his chair. With rapid, desperate fingers he checked his notifications, but he turned off the screen and left it aside on the table as he saw it was just Phichit. He breathed in, trying to soothe his ridiculous nerves, and sitting down properly and elegantly against the backrest.

His friend just probably wanted to check on him, to know if he was having a good time. Mainly because he cared, but also because he was unhealthily nosy. It had been him who convinced him of asking his co-worker out on a date, after all. Being as shy as he was, all he used to do was rant to his floormate about this really kind, handsome man who worked in the stall next to his own.

He took another piece of bread, this time, a bit larger. He couldn’t help it, he was getting hungry. And nerves had always been quite a big enemy for his diet. The dog from the other table stared at the food in his hands, and he would have shared him some, but it was not his dog, and that would have been impolite. The owner continued reading his novel, drinking some wine he hadn’t even noticed when it arrived, seeming fairly concentrated. He looked up for a second to check on his pet, but his eyes caught Yuuri’s as he did and he smiled politely, whistling again to call his dog back towards his side.

Yuuri couldn’t quite stop staring at the poodle, mainly since it kind of reminded him to his own pet back at home. Just like the money for him to move out, it had been a birthday present. Only that that had been many years ago, back when he was still a child.

And, unlike moving out, he had never regretted Vicchan.

He looked at his phone, wanting to check if there were any messages from his date as regards his delay. He knew he had put the device on vibrate and that he should have felt it buzz if that were the case, yet he couldn’t help but checking just in case. The digital clock marked it was already twenty past nine, and the only notification he had was that message from Phichit from a while ago.

The man of the nice dog was getting his food served, some meat and a colorful salad, for what Yuuri could see. That made him even hungrier, so he reached for another piece of bread. This time, he even put some butter onto it. The waiter approached him once again, and Yuuri repeated his speech lawfully.

Should he text his date? He thought he should maybe wait a while longer, but people in the tables nearby were beginning to look at him funnily. Including the man of the dog who didn’t look that concentrated in his novel anymore.

He opted for a discreet “I’m on a table outside, look for me there” text, so that he didn’t feel like was hurrying him or anything. He didn’t want to be annoying, but he had already emptied half of the bread basket.

Having nothing else to do, he chose to read Phichit’s message. It was a simple “Good luck” with many thumbs ups and heart emojis, but Yuuri couldn’t bring himself to smile at the sight. Instead, he set his eyes on the door. Just like he did at the office every day when he arrived early, waiting for the man to come in.

His watch marked five to ten when the waiter approached him once again, and Yuuri simply shook his head this time and he understood.

The man of the dog had already finished his meal, and he had given the left outs to his dog. The poodle was happily chewing on a bone, way too distracted to become a distraction, and Yuuri didn’t know what to do anymore.

He looked at his watch again, as if he hadn't checked the time just one minute ago, and he couldn't read the numbers. His pulse was trembling. Had he got bad the time of the meeting? The address? Paranoia made its way crawling down his skin, drawing goosebumps, making his spit taste acid. Suddenly, everyone around looked just like him. The elderly couples, the waiters, the people passing by the shore. Everyone was so frustratingly similar. Being the eyes, the smile, that something...they all looked alike, and they all got his heart to race.

He tried to chew on a piece of bread, just to do something with all the energy, the radiation of nerves, his anticipation breaking like atoms and overwhelming him with adrenaline.

He felt every eye in the room was on him, observing, making assumptions. Assumptions he had already made, but he yet had to acknowledge. The whispers made it even worse, from the girls of the birthday and the man with the dog, pitying him, not understanding the situation at all. No, they didn't understand. They didn't know his date would arrive at any second. He was just late. That was all.

He swallowed and fished for his phone again. This time, he called. He was going to prove them, prove himself, that the plan was still on march. That the candle on the table still had some few minutes of light, and he still had faith. On him, and on himself.

The phone rung, and rung, and rung. Yuuri's heart was beating to its beat. Slow, long and infuriating. Suspenseful, dragging the curse of every note, making it eternal.

"Leave your message after the tone…”

"Uhm, hi. It's me, Yuuri. I...I've been waiting for about an hour and...yeah. Sorry to bother, I just..." Come, please. He wanted to say. People are staring at me, I'm running out of bread, and just like the candle of the centerpiece, the waiter's patience is melting "Could you..."

He cut the message, embarrassed, dropping the phone in his pocket and resting his head in his palm. He sounded pathetic, and he didn't want the guy’s pity. It was already enough with the restaurant's, the man of the dog looking at him like he may throw him a leftover bone.

He thought about Phichit, about how excited he had been when he told him about the date. He thought about the day, how excited he had been, how he had planned what clothes to wear and what perfume to use, pouring all his hopes into the night. And he thought about his parents, the only request they had made when they saw him leave: "no matter what you do, please be happy"

There were tickles in his stomach, crumbles, of bread and badly digested disillusion. He had to cover his face when he started crying, but his shoulders were shaking, and he knew the people around him could see him. He sunk his face, feeling the factual burn of his throat as he tried to keep himself from sobbing. But the tears just wouldn’t stop falling and his lungs demanded him air, causing him to whimper, and drawing even more eyes on him.

He was embarrassed, so embarrassed, so tired of fucking everything up, his every hope going to hell after he kept failing and failing, always making a fool of himself. He must have looked so stupid, all dressed up and nervous and smiling, with that damn lilac shirt he had spent hours choosing. For what? For being stood up? For being mortified and made fun of?

He didn’t want to go back to his apartment. No when he knew Phichit would be there, still so hype and happy, as oblivious as Yuuri himself had been. He didn’t want to pop his bubble, not just yet. He would let him enjoy it a little longer.

The waiter didn’t even approach him again to leave the menu, and Yuuri continued to sob, silent and alone, hoping he would run out of tears.

“Uhm, excuse me” He peeked his face from behind his hand, covering his nose, knowing it was runny “Are you ok?”

The man of the dog looked at him from his own table, novel closed and eyes full of pity, speaking with the gentleness one would talk to a child.

“Do I look like I’m ok?”

He knew he was being rude, but he was in no mood to deal with other’s sorry. He already felt too sorry for himself.

“Do you need something to drink? Do you want some wine?”

Yuuri looked up, wanting to deny the offer. But as he tried to voice a no, he felt the rests of bread still stuffed in his throat.

He nodded, since he knew he needed a drink to push it down, and help him digest the anguish still clogging his chest. The man of the dog poured the remaining beverage into his glass and set it on his own table, pushing the chair across him slightly with his foot, as if telling him to sit down.

As Yuuri stood up he noticed the rest of the customers had already left, much to his relief, and for a second he wondered what time it was but he didn’t want to stare at his watch. Instead, he sat in front of the only remaining witness for his misery, and gulped down half cup of wine in one blow.

“Easy there, you don’t want to choke” The man smiled at him. Forcedly, Yuuri could tell “Are you ok with that? Do you want me to order some water?”

He shook his head, looking away. The dog came to him wiggling his tail happily, so oblivious to the happenings, and rested its head on top of his lap. He petted him, gently, and his fur was just as soft as he had imagined. As he remembered Vicchan’s was.

"Look, about what happened...” Yuuri flinched at the words. As if he had been physically intruded. “I don't know who you were waiting for, but...I’m sure they have a good reason"

"He didn't answer my phone calls" He sobbed "I think his reason is clear enough, he's not interested"

"Was it a date?" the man asked, and Yuuri nodded grumpily, as if it were obvious "Don't worry, dates come and go! You deserve someone better, there's no need to be sad for just a..."

"It's not just the damn date" Yuuri cried, grabbing his head with frustration. He hadn't meant to sound ungrateful, and he only noticed he did so when he saw the surprise on the other's face "I’m sorry, I just…everything's been hell for me lately. It's been a bad year"

The man quieted, looking downwards for a second, realizing he had maybe pressed too far. Yuuri rubbed his eyes, still sore and swollen, and took a deep breath in the hope of easing the post-crying headache. He felt so weak, so feeble, like the minimum weight could wreck him down. And he knew it showed, he knew he must have looked so childish and pathetic right then, petting his dog and crying his eyes out, softer than he had ever been.

“It’s ok, we all have bad times. It’s normal to be sad” The man said, face solemn and serious, eyes still soft with sorry “What’s your name?”

Yuuri looked up and sniffed, clearing his voice a bit before he trusted himself to speak again.

“Yuuri”

“I’m Viktor” He introduced himself, then he pointed at the poodle “And that’s Makkachin”

“It’s a really nice dog”

“Isn’t he?” He smiled, trying to pick up Yuuri’s stare with his own “He seems to like you”

That wasn’t big news. Unlike people, dogs always seemed to really like Yuuri. And Yuuri liked them a lot, too.

“I guess he does” He sighed, trying to clean the stuffed air inside his mind and clear his thoughts. Makkachin had been a good cable to guide him back to his senses, but he needed to acknowledge the kindness of his owner, the actual human who had put up with his pitiful crying, and who had friendly offered his help “I…I’m…” He tried, only then remembering that humans were not dogs and that they could look so cute all of a sudden when they listened to him and smiled “thank you…for the wine”

“It’s ok, I think it wouldn’t have been a good idea to empty the bottle myself, anyways” He said, and he seemed so amused by the way Yuuri snorted in response “Plus, I think that you needed it more”

The short laugh seemed to lose up his soul a little, making his chest feel lax and lighter, like stretching a cramped muscle.

“Ugh, you must think I’m so wretched” He said, more humorous than expected, as he tried to rub the rests of grief out from his face.

“Hey, at least you had a date. You are talking with the man who was eating at a fancy restaurant alone on a Friday night”

“Uhm, rude. Makkachin was here the whole time”

Viktor laughed, and Yuuri felt the sound echo through himself, bubbly and tickly, uplifting.

“You get the point” He said, leaning forwards and crossing his arms on the table “We are both lonesome”

“Yeah…” Yuuri averted his eyes, mirth washing off all of a sudden, as he stared back at his coat still hanging from the other chair “I don’t want to bother you though, thank you very much for your kindness and everything, but I think I should…”

“No no, stay!” Before he could fully stand up Viktor stopped him, grinning gently; hiding what had sounded like a plea “You are not a bother at all, please. At least finish your wine”

The truth was Yuuri didn’t want to leave, either. He still didn’t feel ready to face Phichit and tell him the story, and he didn’t feel ready to face his apartment, the scattered clothes in his room and the mess in the bathroom, that had watched him leave so happily just some hours ago. But he didn’t want to abuse from that man’s compassion, either. Maybe he just wanted to spend a relaxing evening alone with some wine, a good book and his dog. Comforting a crying basket case surely wasn’t part of his Friday night’s agenda.

Yet, as he began to drink from his glass once again, it was in slow, tiny sips.

“Are you feeling better?” Viktor asked, just before the silence began to feel uncomfortable.

Yuuri hummed in agreement, licking his lips reddened by wine.

“I’m not exactly delighted” He grimaced, moving his head to the side “But I think I’m ok…maybe I need some vacation, go back to my hometown for a while”

“Oh? Where are you from?”

“Hasetsu”

“Oh! What a surprise…so you are not a city boy, then” Viktor said, arching Yuuri’s brow in confusion “I should have thought so”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…everyone here seems to be in such a hurry all the time, so worried with work and so full of themselves. You seem like a humble guy, tranquil and good-heartened”

Yuuri blinked, unsure of what to say. To be honest, that was actually the reason he felt he didn’t fit in the city, at all.

“Don’t you think you are making many assumptions?” He mocked, just to avoid the intrusion of having been read so thoroughly “I could be a meanie for all you know”

Viktor chuckled, lidding his eyes.

“Nah, the smile gives you away. You are a good person” He said, resting his chin on his palm “Besides, wat kind of douche uses the word meanie, anyways?”

Yuuri pouted, hiding a grin and looking away, distracting himself with Makkachin again.

“What about you?” He asked “Were you born here?”

“Born and raised”

“So you are a city boy, then?” He teased, stealing his words from before and using them against him. All that crying had gotten him a little light-headed, and words slipped easily from lips moistened by alcohol.

Viktor seemed shocked by the question, like it had taken him by surprise.

“A really unpleased one, yes” He said, and now it was Yuuri’s turn to be surprised “You see, the thing about city boys is that we don’t like being city boys. We like to think we are oh so special and different for hating the city, but hating the city may or may not be a part of being a city boy”

Yuuri outlined a furrowed, puzzled smile.

“Are you being poetic or delirious?”

“We are very poetic, you see” He smirked, playing with him, and with a stain of wine that had spilled on the table “We are birds in steel cages”

Yuuri chuckled, wetting his lips on the glass, not wanting to empty it.

“You don’t sound like a city boy” He said “My friend Phichit, my roommate, he loves it here. He moves around so easily…that’s a true city boy”

“Was he born here?”

“Oh, no. He came with me all the way from Hasetsu. We kept saying we would move to the city together ever since we were kids…but I guess he got luckier than me. He got used to it so quickly.”

He could feel his mood beginning to deflate again, but he wasn’t even disappointed. His humor was balancing on a tightrope as thin floss, and he was abusing from his luck.

“Did you come here for a job?”

“To study, actually” He shrugged “But I need to pay rent so I got a job at an office. No important task, I just check for mistakes in some documents before they are delivered”

“Oh, I see. And what do you study?”

“Language arts” He said, and the other looked fairly intrigued about it. But just when he was about to return the question, the waiter walked right beside them, and Viktor stopped him before he left into the restaurant again.

“Would you like to ask for the bill, sir?” He looked at them suspiciously, narrowing his eyes, not really sure of what was going on or why they were sitting together.

“It depends…Yuuri, would you like to order something?”

Yuuri froze, unready for the offer. So before the lack of words, he instinctively made time to gather his thoughts with the stupidest of questions.

“Me?”

Viktor laughed.

“Yes, you. All you ate was bread…wouldn’t you like some dessert? I pay”

“Oh, no…you don’t have to! I couldn’t…”

“Nonsense” He turned to the waiter “Bring us some chocolate ice cream, please”

“What? No! It’s not necessary! Don’t…”

The waiter stood still, unamused, probably thinking they didn’t pay him enough for this.

“Aww, come on! Ice cream is good for heartache!”

“Ok…but we’ll split the bill!” Yuuri insisted, looking at the waiter apologetically.

“Deal”

“We don’t serve ice cream” The waiter announced.

“For real??” Viktor said, looking genuinely disillusioned “Well…bring my bill then, please”

“Alright sir”

The man left, clearly annoyed, and Yuuri sulked childishly, drumming his fingers on the table and looking at the other with puppy dog eyes.

“So…no ice cream?” He joked, smiling cheekily.

“Well…we could have some ice cream…” Viktor trailed off, leaning forwards and way too close “If you would like to go on a date with me, someday”

Yuuri deadpanned, his humorous mood smashing into pieces and reveling a much colder expression instead.

“On a date?” He almost bit his tongue, remembering his co-working saying the same thing as he asked him out that same morning.

“Yeah! We could grab some ice cream together one of these days, I know a really great ice cream shop that has the craziest flavors. I could take you”

Yet, Yuuri wasn’t convinced. He tried to pet Makkachin, to relieve his tension through his fur, but the dog was soundly asleep at his feet already, away from his reach. Away from his reach…just like his owner.

“Don’t…” He tried to say, gritting his teeth, feeling anguish coming back to bite him right in the pit of his stomach “Don’t ask me on a date out of pity, please”

Viktor blinked in surprise, opening his mouth so say something but closing it immediately after, and Yuuri sucked his lips inwards in shame. He didn’t want to sound rude or anything, but he was not in the mood for another disenchantment.

However, as he stood up and his gaze fell to the ground, there was suddenly a strong hand stroking his arm, grabbing him in place.

“Pity??” Viktor said, forcing their eyes together “The only pity I feel is for the guy who lost the chance to date you”

Aaaaa should I continue this? Is it worth it?

#yoi #yuri on ice #yuri!!! on ice #yuri katsuki #yuuri katsuki #viktor x yuuri #victuuri #viktuuri #viktor nikiforov #victor nikiforov #victuuri fi #viktuuri fic #victuuri fanfic #victuuri fanfiction #fanfic

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that-is-vexing · 7 years

Note

BOND/Q COLLEGE AU!!!

HERE HAVE A WHOLE SET OF ONE-SHOTS THAT I WROTE FOREVER AGO THAT ISN’T FINISHED YET!!!!!!

But actually, I can also share part of the next oneshot with you guys:

“So this is where you grew up?”

“Yeah.”

Q stared out at the view, entranced. James snuck a glance athim and smiled slightly.

“We can go hiking tomorrow, if you want,” he offeredoffhandedly. “We are gonna be here several days. Did you bring your boots?”

“Mm-hm. Can we really?”

“Yeah. I’ll show you all the best hiding places.” He shot Qa grin as they approached a rusting, run-down gate. “I used to playhide-and-seek with Kincade for hours. Of course, he called it “trying to catchthat bloody bairn in time for dinner”, but that’s because he didn’t like me forthe first four years of my life.”

“What! I don’t believe you,” Q chuckled, punching James’shoulder lightly.

“It’s true, I was an unholy terror when…” James trailed off,as they pulled up to the house, and his expression became closed. Q stared,slightly disturbed by how quickly his friend had shut down. But then James wasunbuckling and climbing out of the car. Q followed, swinging his rucksack up onto his shoulder. He had his laptop with him, as well as his new and improvedportable solar panel for recharging the battery. He was going to work on vacation; as R, they needed him almost as muchas they needed Uncle Boothroyd. He’d just do it between hikes and explorations.

“James!”

An older man with a graying beard stepped around the cornerof the house—manor, really—and beamed. James laughed and strode to him.“Kincade! It’s been too long!”

“That it has,” Kincade chuckled, and shifted his shotgun outof the way so he could exchange a hug with James. Then Kincade’s eye fell on Q,still standing awkwardly by the car, and his grin turned sly. “And you must bethe Q he wrote about in his letters,” the old man greeted him.

“Yes, I am,” Q answered, with an amused glance at James; hewrote letters? And they included Q? James looked a bit pink, but he had hismost pleasant poker-face on. He must be very embarrassed indeed. “Pleased tomeet you, Mr. Kincade.”

“Just Kincade to any friend of James’. Come on, both of you,let’s get to my house. This place is too dreary today.”

James went with him gladly, so Q did, too.

James and Kincade chatted comfortably about the contents ofJames’ letters and the few interesting things that had happened to Kincade, andQ listened with half an ear, admiring the landscape and looking often at themanor. Then they turned away from it, and James suddenly pulled Q into theconversation.

“Hey, Q, why was Eve so excited about her motorcycle, I’veforgotten.”

“Liar,” Q sighed, “You never forget anything related to hermotorcycle. I modified it so it was quieter, but it’s got a few extrahorsepower,” he told Kincade, who did seem a little interested. “I also helpedher paint it, so now it’s matte black. She’s… very grateful.”

“She said she’d buy him ice cream every day for ten years,even though he’s the most expensive of our lot,” James elaborated, and laughedas Q made to kick him and missed.

“It’s not my fault all the good ice cream is expensive!”

“Yeah, but it’s your fault you’re so picky when it comes todessert and nothing else.”

“Picky? Who’s the one who won’t eat Ferrer Roche becausethey look like poop pebbles?”

“They do, though!”

They bickered back and forth for a while about sweets until Jamessuddenly turned on Kincade and demanded to know his opinion, and that set off atotally new tangent with all three of them arguing whether sours were better.

Kincade’s cottage was a cozy affair, and Q liked it at once.There was only one bedroom, but the big room that was sitting room, kitchen,library, and dining room all in one had a fireplace, within which danced a small,cheerful blaze, and the rug before the hearth was thick and soft. Q wouldn’tmind camping out here. In fact, James went right to the fire and dumped hissleeping bag and backpack next to it, on the opposite side from the stack offirewood. Q followed his example, looking around with interest. He sawelectrical appliances, though they were few, and a tall floor-lamp beside anold padded rocking chair. Most of the light came from the opened shutters,though. There was another chair, an armchair, that looked comfy and well-used.James immediately flopped into that.

Q found he was shivering, and drifted closer to the fire.There was nowhere else to sit, and he knew the rocking chair must be Kincade’s,so he settled cross-legged near the hearth with his back to the fire and soakedup the warmth.

“This is a very nice home you have,” he told Kincade, as thegroundskeeper settled into the rocking chair.

“Thank you, lad,” Kincade answered comfortably. “I hear youlike hikin’.”

“I’m out of practice, but yes. I used to think I was goingto be an artist—trying to draw landscapes and the like—but coding is an art,too.”

“I’ll take your word for it. I’ve never touched a computer.”

“Never?” Q’s eyes widened and he knew he looked unhealthily stunned.“Everyone’s used a computer theseday, even if it was for only one game of Solitaire!”

“Never had reason to,” Kincade replied, smiling indulgently.Q wondered what he must think of Q. What James’ letters had made him out to be.But he couldn’t just come right out and ask, now, could he? So he just shookhis head in wonder. Even the oldest nanas and grandads he knew had at least tried a computer.

But that wasn’t why they were here. So he asked, “Are theretrails near here?”

“Afraid not,” Kincade answered. “You’ll have to make duewith James’ bad memory.”

“My memory’s not thatbad!” James objected, rolling his eyes. Q smiled. James had the best memory Qknew of; it was just that he rarely used it for anything except studying. “Iremember everywhere I fell down.”

Kincade’s chuckle was a warm, bear’s rumble of a laugh. “Aslong as ye don’t toss him down a slope.”

Q’s smile widened. “I’ve been taking several self-defenseclasses. I believe I can dodge if he tries anything.”

They continued to chat, and then Kincade asked if they’d haddinner yet. When they answered in the negative, he stood and told James, “You’dbetter not have forgotten how to shoot a rifle, lad. We’re off for some supper.Have you ever shot anything?” Kincade asked Q.

Q nodded, then clarified reluctantly, “Only paper targets,though. And I’m only proficient with handguns.”

“I’ll be teaching you to shoot, then, while you’re here,”the groundskeeper decided firmly. “Come along, James. Will you be coming too?”

“No, I’ll only get in the way. May I set up my laptop?” Qasked, gesturing to his laptop case.

“Of course. We won’t be long.”

James was proud that he hadn’t lost any aim. Of course, onceQ had gotten him a visitor’s pass, Eve had taken to dragging James to the MI6shooting range every other day, and James had been able to polish up. Now heshowed off by bagging the rabbit before Kincade could see it. Kincade raised aneyebrow, and James flushed.

“You forgot to mention that in your letters,” the groundskeepercommented, striding over to fetch the bunny. James followed, eyeing the groundwarily. Kincade could navigate the area blindfolded at night, but it had beenyears since James was here.

“Mention what?” he asked.

“That you’ve been keepin’ up your shooting,” Kincadeelaborated blandly. Then, because he was a cruel, cruel man, he added, “And youforgot to mention that you fancy your roommate.”

James slipped then and almost fell, but caught himselfquickly. “I do not!” he snapped, buthe could feel his face and neck turn a fiery red.

“No need to hide it from me, lad,” Kincade chuckled. “Iwon’t tell.”

But there was a secretive glint in his eye, and it madeJames uneasy.

When they returned to the cottage, it was to find Q on theroof, affixing something to the peak.

“Oh, James, Kincade!” he greeted them cheerfully, and Jamescould hear the tremor in his voice. He’d picked up speed before he could think,until he was climbing up the ladder quickly, shotgun left leaning against thewall of the cottage. “So glad you’re here. I seem to be stuck. I thought I’d befine—it’s only one storey—so I should be alright, shouldn’t I?”

“You’re a dolt,” James scolded, but his tone was moreanxious than angry as he crawled up the roof to where Q sat. Tension wasvisible in every line of Q’s body, and he was trembling. “Come here, I’ll helpyou down. Come on. I’ve got you. It’s gonna be fine.”

Murmuring soothingly, James coaxed Q into slithering more orless into James’ arms, and then helped him back up until their feet stuck out overthe edge of the roof. James went first, and guided Q’s feet down. When Q wasactually on the ladder, he lost some of his tension; but James kept close,blocking the other in with his body so he wouldn’t fall, even though really itwasn’t at all that far to the ground.

As soon as they were standing on solid ground again, though,Q gasped and exclaimed, “The wiring! I forgot the wiring! It’s my solar panel,I was going to see if it works here, but I didn’t do anything about thewiring!”

“We’ll do it tomorrow,” James promised, wrapping his armaround Q’s shoulders. “For now, we have some rabbit for dinner. Let’s getinside. It gets dark early around here.”

Q didn’t prefer rabbit, but Kincade was an excellent cook,and Q ate two helpings. Kincade tried to convince him to take another—“Skinnyas you are, you could use some more meat on your bones.”—but Q politelydeclined, and instead withdrew to the hearth to fiddle with his laptop. Jamesmurmured to be excused and went over to sit on the floor next to Q, leaningback on his hands.

“What’re you up to now?” James asked in a murmur.

“Nothing much,” Q answered absently, “Just commandeering asatellite so I can get a decent internet connection.”

“You can do that?”

“I can do anything,” Q murmured without pride.

James smiled. Kincade saw, and smirked; Q didn’t, andtherefore was completely surprised when James wrapped an arm around hisshoulders.

“Can you get Netflix on that?” James inquired innocently.

“You just want to watch Sean Bean,” Q accused, butteasingly.

“Hell yes I do.”

So Q pulled up Netflix, and they watched a Sean Bean film.He didn’t notice how he leaned against James, nor how James seemed to watch Q morethan the movie. Kincade noticed, but since the younger men were facing awayfrom him, neither of them saw his sly looks.

Q did notice when James’ arm slid down from around Q’sshoulders to around his waist, hugging him closer still. Q almost went rigid inalarm—but James wasn’t looking at him, and anyway, wasn’t this something he’dlonged for? To actually be cuddled?

So, carefully, Q laid his head on James’ shoulder, and theycontinued watching.

When the film was over, Q didn’t want to move. He was warm,and comfortable, and James seemed reluctant to move as well. So Q quicklypulled up a show they’d been watching together for a while, just so he wouldn’thave to move away—and then the arm around his waist shifted, and James stood,his hand not quite brushing against Q’s back and the nape of his neck. Q lookedup, surprised, but James was turned to Kincade, asking, “Is it alright if we camphere? We have sleeping bags.”

“Isn’t anywhere else to sleep,” Kincade answered with ashrug, though his eyes twinkled and he smirked, as if he knew a secret. Qlooked up at James again, who seemed confused; and then all of a sudden heblushed and scowled, and Q stared, stunned. But James recovered quickly,stomping to their bags and wrestling free their sleeping bags. Q set his laptopaside and went to help.

By the time they had everything set out properly (with Qclosest to the fire), Q was yawning. James pointed imperiously; Q obedientlycrawled into his sleeping bag, set his laptop in sleep-mode, and snuggled downa little deeper. The sleeping bag was just worn enough to be comfortable, andjust new enough to be warm and fluffy. Someone plucked the glasses from hisface; he murmured a sleepy thank-you and closed his eyes. Within four breaths,he was out like a light.

He woke because an arm was settling over his waist. He couldtell by the stillness of the body pressed against his that the person the armbelonged to was still dead asleep. That made him smile, and he fell asleepagain, feeling warm and comfortable and, most importantly, safe.

#00Q #therealpigfarts23 #askalicious

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